RedCrystal

Circuit City

Michele said she heard Circuit City was closing, and wondered where we would then go to get our electronics.

Turns out, not all of them are closing: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27515440/

But Best Buy seems to be hanging in there.

And Papa needs a new TV.

Party splitting?

Remember how everyone said the Democrats couldn't get themselves into a cohesive whole, couldn't stay on message, unlike their Republican counterparts (a la Wednesday Meetings)? Well...

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1463341016/bctid1866657225

Someone get that man a Sausage, Egg, and Cheese McMuffin. With black coffee and a hash brown. Stat.

Stupid Vending Machine Vendors

Where I work, there are two beverage vending machines. My experience is that this is typical. One is for Coke. The other is for Pepsi.

I generally choose Coke products. Whatever. However, whichever brand I choose, I prefer to have a reasonably wide assortment of beverages from which to choose.

More to the point, I would really like to be able to choose a calorie-free and caffeine-free flavored beverage, whether or not it's carbonated.

Here are pictures of the Coke machine:

Typical lineup.

Top row: Fruit juices (calories), V8 Splashes (calories), Godiva coffee (caffeine + calories), Full Throttle (you're insane)

2nd row: Water (unflavored), Powerade (calories)

3rd row: Sweetened Tea (caffeine + calories), Lemonade (calories), Vitamin water (calories -- yes, really) and it costs twice as much a diet soda

4th row: Sprite (calories), Diet Coke (caffeine)

Last row: Coke (caffeine + calories), Coke Zero (caffeine)

Can't I get a Diet Sprite? Can't I get a diet orange? Do we really need that any many bottles of lemonade and tea? And do we really go through that many bottles of Dasani, when the water at the workplace is free and chilled already?

The Accidental Tourist

I finally finished reading The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler. I was not prepared for it.

Before I talk more about it, understand that I assume you have already read it. If you haven't, there are probably spoilers in this entry, although I'm not going out of my way to make them.

Although the entry is not available right now, I once talked about why this web site is named "twilight soul." It has a lot to do with my "inner self," which exists in a state of permanent sadness. I don't really know why, and it no longer has the sort of control over my life it used to. But there it is. Inside me is a fundamental affinity for melancholy.

So the protagonist of this story, Macon Leary, seems to have been cut from the same cloth as me. What was most interesting to me is how that shows up differently for different people connected to us. Ms. Tyler did a remarkable job with the characters around Macon. I could wish that the people around me could see through her eyes in order to see me.

Like Macon, I find that I frequently express strong emotions through some very unconventional channels. We both share a fondness for systems, although I suspect that this is a actually a coping mechanism designed to not have to work with emotions. And we have difficulty distinguishing who we are from who we are being when we are with the ones we love.

However, I'm pleased to say that this is no longer a mystery for me. I believe Macon made the right choice between Sarah and Muriel at the end. I wonder if this story reveals anything about my choices. While I have not had to choose between one of two partners in life, I do find myself facing choices about other people important in my life. I struggle with that. And, like Macon during most of the book, I am resisting any decision. I'm probably hiding my true feelings by expressing them through other channels. I'm not even sure which channels. Maybe writing in my blog more.

The part that frustrates me most about how I do this is that I feel incompetent at expressing the more positive emotions I have in a way that is accessible to those around me. Everyone I know says I'm "too wordy." Maybe that's how I do it. Maybe I do it the way the rest of my family does it, with not communicating at all unless there is bad news. (Weird juxtaposition, huh?)

I don't know. At the end of this entry, what I do know is that I will remember having read this book for the rest of my life, and will probably never want to see the movie.

Will it blend? -- the Man Cave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ppc4gaAS_Q

Comment left on NPR blog: Defiance

http://www.npr.org/blogs/politics/2008/10/defiance.html

Srsly!

Phil Town on The Real Culprits

http://www.philtown.com/phil_towns_blog/2008/10/the-real-culpri.html 

A quick read of Phil's post might suggest that the real culprits of the financial debaucle we're heading through might be the subprime mortgage borrowers, and there is a slight insinuation that he means racial minority mortgage borrowers.

I read a little more carefully, and I think he didn't mean to imply that minority mortgage borrowers were the culprits, but that it was due to attempts to deregulate the bank lending policies so that minority borrowers could qualify for mortgages which they had previously been wrongly denied. As a result of this deregulating, and also because banks began aggressively promoting adjustable rate mortgages toward real-estate speculators and house flippers, we are now in the mess we are in.

I trust Phil's perspective, and want to make sure he's not misunderstood.

Wondering if she reads this blog...

I'm going to buy Michele some flowers today on my way home. Just because. I'm not in trouble. It's not her birthday. She's been trying to convince me that I'm no longer romantic, but I don't believe her.

Special Commentary from Keith

It's not so much that I lean left, as much as I think McCain/Palin are just so outrageous.

Transcript here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27054958/

Desperate Deception and Clear Evidence of Fox News Bias

One of the headlines today is that Palin is going on the offensive, and she's doing it by attacking Obama's character, more than his plan or his substance.

Specifically, she's conducting fear-mongering (what a surprise...) by making a desperate attempt to associate him with terrorists. Here's her quote from FoxNews.com:

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

-- FoxNews.com, Sunday, October 5, 2008 http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/05/attacks-personal-campaign-calendar-ticks-election-day/

Follow that link, please. No, really, go and read it. Read the whole article. Notice that Fox makes no attempt whatsoever to either support or deny the claim. Rather, they let the claim stand on its own merit, as though it had any merit. The only thing they do is quote Senator McCaskill (D-MO) refuting the allegation (at the end of the article), but only after they extensively quoted Senator Lieberman (I-CT) as saying that a double standard is at work and that Obama's campaign would have made the same kind of attack if they could.

Now, please go read just about any other news site about the same event where Palin made her claim. I'll provide some links, but you should also do some searching yourself. If you're at a loss but generally think that Palin is credible, then you should know Palin told Fox News that she reads the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal (the latter is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which also owns Fox News).

• AP: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h2TC1ztefVzOiXeCNcmY7lIelBNwD93K34700
• MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27022487/
• NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/us/politics/05palin.html
• Wash. Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/04/AR2008100402126.html?sub=AR
• Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-bill-ayers-obama,0,4485492.story
• CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/04/palin.obama/index.html
• LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-palin5-2008oct05,0,118648.story
• Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122315505846605217.html (start at 3rd paragraph -- and note that this one seems to skew almost as much as Fox News does)
• ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5957466&page=1
• CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/05/politics/fromtheroad/entry4502414.shtml

Nothing from NPR, PBS's News Hour (which generally leans right, according to FAIR), or BBC World News yet.

From what I gather, Palin's got the info from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html

That article made it abundantly clear that there is nothing substantial about his relationship.

Seriously, Sarah! Does this mean Obama could start attacking you because of your relationship to pit bulls?

Security Development Lifecycle

“Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative is perhaps the most advanced and comprehensive application security program in the industry.”
“Managing Application Security From Beginning To End,” Forrester Research, Inc., August 2007

Security Development Lifecycle

This Biden v Palin debate condenses 90 minutes into 4.75 minutes. Faithfully.

Although I would have like to have seen Lisa address the jaw-dropping part about where Palin says she wants to expand executive powers into the legislative branch beyond where Dick Cheney took it. That's just stupefyingly scary.

LisaNova Live

LisaNova does the best Sarah Palin impression. It's in the same ballpark as Tina Fey's impression.

I bet Karl Rove already knows this. Too well.

I read this on The FactCheck Wire:

Fact-Checking Is Useless

Apparently, here is a tactic which, though counter-intuitive, works really well:

1. Tell a damaging, outrageous, but plausible, lie.
2. Watch as people wonder whether it's really true.
3. Wait for your opponent to vigorously refute or deny it.
4. Watch as people get even more certain that it really is true.

It seems that the technique works best on Republicans.

Why would Karl Rove (who symbolizes all the dirty politics that the Republicans play) be interested in a technique that solidifies his own base?

Because most Americans tend to follow the person with the most confidence, right or wrong (which explains why George W. Bush was elected). And by that, I mean confidence in him/herself, as well as the confidence of his/her followers.

This tactic is easy to employ; thinking of lies is just like, ... oh, thinking, for most politicians. One could say they are one and the same. But here, your opponent does most of the hard work for you when they challenge your lie. And better still -- there's no down side for you. Especially if the other side is silent.

Why? Because the Republicans are more susceptible to this tactic, and so they become ever more confident that the lies they believe are really true, and the average American, who's paying more attention to American Idol anyway, will just go along with the last most confident opinion they hear. Which will usually be a Republican.

If only I could think of a more effective counter-tactic....

CruiseControl.NET and CVS with pserver

Wow. This was really painful.

I'm setting up CruiseControl.NET to build our projects at work. I'm forced to use a CVS server for the source code repository that has been configured to use the pserver mode for authentication.

It was easy to figure out how to set the cvsroot settings in the config file, but it was not easy for me to figure out how to set the password.

Turns out I didn't exactly need to. Here's how it seems to work:

First, you should know we're using CVSNT, so YMMV.

Run the cvs.exe with the -d parameter for your cvsroot, and use the login command. It will prompt you for the password.

And then it automagically saves it somewhere, I know not where, nor do I care. But I do know it is specific to the user profile. So, in our case, the CruiseControl.NET service will run as a faceless/system account, which will have its own profile. You'll have to temporarily run the cvs command as this system account in order to do the login command for it to save the password.

The documentation for CVS sucks really big rocks, by the way. All there is is a lot of reference material with no guidance, and a lot of questions from people who wouldn't be caught dead using pserver.