A Good Imagination and a Pile of Junk

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So That One just came on and announced his economic team and babbled a bit about economic conditions.

This man is not going to be a leader.  He’s going to do what he did today, continually hedge against making a strong stand or making a decision himself on anything of note without it being backed by armies of advisors.

He’s so terrified of culpability in the event of a fuck-up that might make him look bad.

People who are looking for someone to tell them what to do will always find willing volunteers.

After all, that’s how he got in to office to begin with.

So I went digging around and finally got myself plugged in to the south park episodes online.  I watched, over the last few hours, the better part of season 12 and I’ve gotta say…

South Park sucks now.  I mean really.  It’s really bad.

I used to love it so I went back to some of the early seasons just to be sure I hadn’t become a total stick in the mud.  I was relieved to find that yep, it’s the show, ain’t me.

It’s sorta sad, but I think Matt & Trey should hang it up.  It’s pretty pathetic.

I’ve got to tackle the clashing of my two WordPressPlugin scripts.  On one hand, there’s the simple regular expression issue of mixing render-time processing transforms that create href tags out of plain text (nesting them is really icky.)

But what I had NOT anticipated is the fact that php or WordPress (I’m not sure which) imports the plug-ins into the same namespace, so I’ve either got to give everything retarded prefixes, ‘class’ify the code for namespace partitioning, or use a common library (taking the plugins away from OneFilePerScript land, which I don’t like at all.)

Merging the two plugins is not an option, even though it’s the simplest technical solution available.  The difference between the two at this point is really about three lines of code.

I suppose that simple fact dictates the solution.

Ickypoo.

So I’ve been a fan of XKCD for an awful long time.  I’ve sat and clicked on ‘random’ for half an hour, I’ve traced the whole thing from the beginning, etc.

I just noticed there are alt texts on everything.

I’ve gotta go back and start

all

over

again

I just made a double-batch of this eggnog recipe that I posted last year but never got off my kiester in time to make.  So it oughta be ready for Christmas.

Unfortunately the 4 jars it fills take up most of my fridge.  I’m going to have to stare at these bourbonlicious glass jars for a month plus.

On the plus side I’ve gotten pretty good at separating eggs.

hmm…waitaminute… it’s all plus side.

*shrug*

*hic*

UPDATE:  See, it’s just fun being me.  I’m sitting here and the present but dying smell of sugar and bourbon hit my nose and I thought to myself I thought “is it ready yet?”  But no.  Christmas Eve.

Watch out Obama supporters, here it comes…

‘Millions of jobs’ in danger next year

“If we don’t act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year,” Obama said in prepared remarks for the weekly Democratic radio and video address.

damn far cry from

Obama Promises Plan to Create 2.5 Million Jobs in Two Years
President-elect Barack Obama said today that he has directed his economic team to come up with a two year plan to “jump start job creation in America” with the goal of adding 2.5 million more jobs by January, 2011.

Want another example?

• Go look up his reversal on the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy.
• How about the fact that he’s filling his cabinet with Clinton era insiders and largely moderate liberals (rather than the team of ‘gut the USA’ wingnuts the far left was hoping for)?
• Or the delay to the famed tax increase (tax increase is the NYT’s uncharacteristically honest term) he’s already buffering you for.

Tsk tsk tsk. “Change” coming from a politician…

Some people will believe anything.

Wanna Come Over and See My Antlers?

Guy #1: Shoot him in the dick!
Girl playing Big Buck Hunter: I like dicks, but usually I make them do the shooting!
Guy #2: I like where this is headed!

–Black Bear Lodge

and I’ll likely be there tonight (Sunday) for a bit.

(note:  WordPress chokes on the shebang, so consider it implied.)

while :
do

make clean
echo
make test
echo
echo
echo “…resting…”
echo
echo
sleep 5

done

That little block of nonsense has changed (improved) the way I write software more than any single other thing.

Must Conservatives Rally Around The Messiah?

No — because the left’s vision of “unity” means surrender in the war of ideas.

Several associates of mine, aware of my red-state predilections, approached me after the black day that was November 4 and demanded my allegiance — I’m serious — proclaiming, “He’s your president so you should stand behind him.” I thanked them but rebuffed their suggestion. As mentioned above, none of these individuals ever saw fit to do the same for our 40th, 41st, and 43rd presidents, so by what precedent should they expect special treatment for their Barackstar? None of which I am aware. Their hypocrisy is hardly surprising.

Yeah I’ve gotten this routine myself a couple times.  The problem is it really SHOULD be surprising.  We SHOULD be living in a world where hypocracy of that depth is laughed out of public discourse.  But it’s so fundamental to the newspeak of the left that it won’t happen for a very long time.

Regardless of the answer:

When is the last time you added something to the world?

UPDATE: I was being largely rhetorical but people are starting to actually post answers so I’d bloody well put up:  Last thing I added, frankly, is the restoration of 1800 otherwise inaccessible previous posts and writings through a piece of code that may or may not be useful to other people.  Today I am working on creating a partition of this site where it (and other things) will be posted.

So I looked at the web logs (not to be confused with weblogs) and the search engine crawlers seem to have found my 1785 new posts and done a collective “WTF!?!”

My random google engine hit count ought to start crawling up a bit over the next while.

I am kinda surprised that the entries that were added via my script all have “comments disabled” which I think I’m going to have to go in to the database and manually fiddle with.  Aksimet does a damn fine job of catching the crap, so there’s really no reason, especially if I’m adding wiki cross-linking to this stuff to invigorate it a bit, to prevent commentary.

So I’ve spent the last couple hours farting around with some perl code that I ripped against an archive of the old “Universal Church of Cosmic Uncertainty” posts and uploaded them in here.

So now there is almost double the post-count that there was about 3 hours ago. They’re all interleaved in time appropriately.

I really didn’t have the motivation to port the comments over. It would easily have tripled the coding task.

I may go back and do that at some point as I have all the data. This was admittedly pretty quick and dirty.

The new (old) posts all have the ‘UCCU’ tag, much like the ancient ones have the ‘OldRadioBlog’ tag so they’ll be easy to find.

A choice quote from the reason I was kept up from an ostensibly early bedtime (11:30) to 5:30 this morning

…I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand.  Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips.  I often wonder about the hours when  a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking.  I wonder what great things have come from such hours.  When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind - and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.”

“Do they ever think?” she asked involunterily, and stopped; the question was her one personal torture and she did not want to discuss it.

The old man looked as if he had noticed the sudden stop and understood it; but he did not start discussing it; he said, intead, “I don’t like the thing that’s happening to people….

Nor do I.

Malcolm Gladwell is… well, he’s someone who writes pop non-fiction books with all the intellectual rigor of your average hippy trying to defend pot legalization on the basis of “hemp biomass” rather than just fessing up that he wants to smoke it.

Joel Spolsky is, on the other hand, an intelligent man; and he expresses some frustrations that have been plaguing me about this crap for some time…

Anecdotes

…This review captures what’s been driving me crazy over the last year… an unbelievable proliferation of anecdotes disguised as science, self-professed experts writing about things they actually know nothing about, and amusing stories disguised as metaphors for how the world works…

I liked Tipping Point.  It was cute.  What it is NOT is science.  I’m not sure I’d get behind it as accurate.  But it certainly was a fun read.  People are going to keep buying this guys books and I suppose good for him.  Within the next month I have no doubt I’ll be invoked in bar conversation on this topic several times.

But instead of reading creampuff Gladwell books so that you can pretend you’re smart, why don’t you read something that’s actually challenging and might teach you something?

Like Howard Bloom or Christopher Hitchens.

Office mate (confused after not getting the whole story): You paraphrase like a boy. We’re girls, we want to hear the truth.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania

From Overheard in the Office

(emphasis mine)

Listen.  I know most people reading this aren’t any closer to being economists than I am.  But here’s the deal with the automakers:

This isn’t the financial crisis.  It’s not the credit crunch.  It’s the latest episode in a long line of industry failures that’s spanned most of my life.

Right now the heads of the auto industry (including the insidious parasite the UAW) are before congress trying to terrorize them and you into writing them a check.

They are blitzing the media with advertising about what a catastrophe we’d have to endure if they didn’t get this check.  Millions of jobs in all kinds of industries spanning the country, they threaten.

They’re even confessing that this check is only to hold them over until they need the NEXT check in five to six months, because it’s really THAT bad.

I learned an interesting lesson about 16 years ago when a friend of mine was taking care of a little girl named Claire, a two and a half year old.  When it was time to go to the store, Claire was having none of it because she saw the choices on the table as go to the store or not (even though there wasn’t much of a choice.)  It took a bit of frustration before the position was reframed:  “We’re going to the store, do you want to walk or take the stroller?”  She described to me the look on this little girl’s face when she knew something was going on but couldn’t quite put her finger on it as neither choice would provoke the desired scene.

Well my friends the auto industry is doing the same thing to us, and this time it’s decidedly NOT in our best interest.  They’re framing their argument in an intentionally deceitful way:  Either they get the money or millions of jobs are going to disappear as they fail.  Right?  That’s the rhetoric from them and their advocates and shills in the media (Phil Lebeau from cnbc comes to mind.)

But there’s another option.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows these companies to continue operating, while restructuring internal and external contractual obligations.  It gives them the exact opportunity they need.  It frees them from the chokehold of the united autoworkers union, which is bleeding the industry dry.

Is it the nice happy path option?  No, certainly not.  But we’re in a time of serious economic pain and that’s a part of the process.

Fortunately (I can’t believe I’m saying this) we went through the TARP 700 billion dollar bailout (which neither Hank Paulson or the banks who received money are using for it’s intended purpose you might be interested to know) so Congress is almost justifiably skittish.

Listening to them ream these guys today was mildly heartening because they don’t want to get burned again and they’re mad as hell.

And it almost looks like they’re going to fold their arms and tell Detroit to go home and figure out their own damn mess.

But what else became clear to me today is that they are NOT hearing the inherent deceit in being asked whether they want to walk or take the stroller.  So what’s going to happen is the fear of “millions of lost jobs” is going to sink in to them in a way that can only happen to a politician whose career is on the line and frankly it will be Ghostbusters all over again (”and you’ll be saving the lives(jobs) of millions of registered voters.”)

So they’re going to grant them the money.

But don’t be fooled about what’s going on right now.  Detroit’s thrashing in the straight jacket like an addict in withdrawal.  They’ll say anything, promise anything they need to and offer nothing in return in order to get that check.  Then they’ll be back.

And the bitch of it all is that it is truly inevitable.  These industries will undergo major INVOLUNTARY restructuring be it via chapter 11, through massive mergers or whatever.  And this will happen whether they get the check or not.  This does nothing but forestall the inevitable a few months.

We did a good job letting Congress know how we felt about the bail out, but they were frightened in to action by a scaremongering Hank Paulson. (A side point is that the original proposal on the bailout was 3 pages, and Congress…. Congressed it to I think 680 so we really will NEVER know if the original plan would have worked.  It died in the first edit.)

Call or send an email to your Congressman.  It just might be possible to stop this crap from going through.

It’s NOT an all or nothing deal.  They’re lying.

One of the things in “Daniel Amen”’s book of things Mikey does to exhaserbate his ADD (among which are pretty much all the things that make me me, which ought to be a shock to precisely no one) is consume caffeine as a self-medication.

My caffeine intake primarily comes from diet soda, namely Diet Mountain Dew and Coke Zero.  And I drink (drank) those at a rate of about 4 liters a day.

Now I know that’s bad and I even have some grasp of how bad it actually is; so upon reading that I decided I was going to knock that shit off.  Not completely of course.  I’m not fool enough to think that quitting caffeine cold turkey has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding.

But I decided not to have it in the fridge any more.  Sure I need to go grab a Red Bull to mitigate the headaches and I’ll suck down a Coke if I get pizza (also on the new ‘rarely’ list.) But no more daily trips to Key Food for 4 2-liter bottles of whichever of my poisons I hadn’t depleted their stock of completely.

So now that’s what I do.  Except today.  Today I’m sinking it like I invented it.  I bought a 2-liter zero and couldn’t wait so I also got a cold one at the stupidmarket to drink while I walked the two blocks home.

Because today I have an exceptional hangover and the market closed below 8000 and I just don’t give a shit.

*buurrrrp*

So I’ve been grinding on the WordPressWikiPlugin and it’s in pretty good shape.  In fact, it’s in such good shape that I’m going to use this post as the documentation page for a while and see how that works out.

Currently the feature set (meager as it is) looks like this:

The WordPressWikiPlugin is a rendering time filter.  It scans the content of a post looking for WikiWords (two or more words capitalized, jammed together, no consecutive caps.)  When it finds them it does two important things:

1. Scans the database for posts with a title matching that WikiWord and replaces that text with a link to the post in question.
2. IF the page does NOT exist and a blog author is logged in, it uses the original WikiWiki convention of placing a link with the text ‘?’ after the WIkiWord.  If that link is clicked it takes you to the CreateNewPost page with that title filled in.

It doesn’t do any additional formatting, since WordPress handles that relatively well.  I will probably add some complex external linking stuff as time goes on.

CurrentIssues:

• There is a perfect lack of documentation of the “User Level” field of the user data structure.  So the “if an author is logged in” is a bit wonky at best.  It DOES detect if someone is logged in and if their user level is 10.  But I think that’s the admin level.  Tough to tell with no documentation.  I’m going to have to experiment with this.

And no, it’s not uploaded to this site just yet.  I have a bit more testing to do on my local installation before it’s ready to be released into the wild.

UPDATE: Ok, I’ve activated it on this blog (dogfooding and all) but I don’t have so many things linking back and forth yet, so it’s a little sparse. That’s ok. Notice that the link in the first line does indeed bring you to this post though. When I look at it, the missing links do have the “page does not exist” question mark link, which works really well. So I’m pretty happy with that so far.

I’m trying to decide what the path between here and public release is. There’s not really so much I want in the 0.1 version that’s not there now. I have to fix the user level thing. But it might be ready to go after that.