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Politics

More Political Fun for the Hopelessly Bored

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/03/hopelessly-bored/

From The John Kerry Loyalty Quiz:

Your score is 9 on a scale of 1 to 10. You are a pure, unabashed, die-hard John Kerry supporter. Nothing would give you greater pleasure than seeing Kerry run Bush and Cheney out of the White House, except maybe seeing them dragged away in handcuffs.

From The George W. Bush Loyalty Quiz:

Your score is 0 on a scale of 1 to 10. You hate Bush with a writhing passion. You think he is an idiot, a liar, and a warmonger who has been a miserable failure as president. Nothing would give you greater pleasure than seeing him run out of the White House, except maybe seeing him dragged away in handcuffs.

Zero on a scale of one to ten!? I am truly an underachiever when it comes to false patriotism!

Thanks for the link, Chip Taylor!

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Unsorted

Finnish Draft Deferment for Internet Addicts

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/03/finnish-army/

From Yahoo! News:

HELSINKI (Reuters) – A number of Finnish conscripts have been excused their full term of military service because they are addicted to the Internet, the Finnish Defence Forces says.

Ah, Finland! Back in 1994 I volunteered for military service. I was a hard-core computer geek, and one argument my Mother employed to try and dissuade me from enlisting was that I would be away for my computer for a very long time. While that would be hard, I viewed such separation as a character-building exercise, a valuable component of military service.

(Though, I did skip out on the Marine Corps after the recruiter told me that telephone access for Marines was generally two payphones per fifty grunts. In the Army at least I had a prayer of some day gaining access to a modem.)

These Finnish men get no free pass, however, they simply get a deferrment, some growing up time:

“They get sent home for three years and after that they have to come back … “

82% of Finnish men serve in the armed forces. That number is a lot better than we have here in the United States.

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Politics

A Humbling Reminder for Americans

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/03/bush-humble/

Jon Roma got me thinking, by quoting a speech from Senator Robert Byrd:

We are at a dangerous time in our Republic. The Constitution — the very foundation of this great country — is under attack by a presidency that is bent upon secrecy, that has to be dragged kicking and screaming to answer questions, and that follows a path of utter recklessness. Its policies have changed the face of America around the globe from that of a giant peacemaker to that of a schoolyard bully. People who once declared strong allegiance with America now question our purpose.

I supported the war. A lot of that is because the Middle East has been dangerously stuck in the past, and the few Iraqis I’ve met all seemed seriously haunted by Saddam Hussein, and the unfinished Gulf War in 1991, when they thought “liberation” may have been at hand. I even defended the distasteful way that Bush went about starting the war — by being a unilateralist bully — because we have had a tendancy to invade other countries, throughout our history, whenever we found it politically convenient, and I don’t see this changing any time soon. The “benefit” is that Americans and those in other countries who love America are reminded that, despite our martyrdom on 9/11, we are not perfect — we are a reckless, arrogant people, and there should be some wariness in dealings with America. (more…)

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Good Reads, Technology

Segway and the Death of the American Dream

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/04/lame-segway-adventure/

Best article lead I have read in a very long time:

Back in the good old days, strong men such as Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Ken Kesey went screaming across the great American highways with heads hopped full of sour mash and benzedrine. They performed lewd acts, taunted the police, harassed the stiffs and produced great art. These days we’re left with four twenty-something geeks traveling country roads at 10 mph with their Segways, iPods and blogs.

Okay, get this. A guy is going to journey across this great land of ours … on a Segway scooter.

That could be a respectible adventure in and of itself, but he’s going to be followed, at ten miles an hour, by three buddies in a “support car” holding 16 backup batteries, and a bunch of toys, merrily blogging their adventures the whole way through. The Register continues to pound out great copy:

Kesey and the Merry Pranksters were also said to have debated the use of text messaging on their trip across the US. In the end, however, they decided that a fridge full of acid-laced orange juice would be a more profound use of technology. For Kerouac, there was but a typewriter, gallons of red wine and meth.

(more…)

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Technical

Quick Linux Peeve

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/10/quick-linux-peeve/

You know what’s lame? I frequently log in to Linux boxen and try to invoke “vim” only to get “command not found.” Now, this would be reasonable on Solaris or BSD, where they maintain their own version of vi, but in Linux, vi is vim, only it is vi, and not vim. Why? … It seems so pretentious. “Vim? You mean ‘vee eye?’ I got one of them, sure, although it is just vim … but you’ll have to type vi. You know, that’s how it is done on Unix systems.”

Or is there some GNU vi that is going around?

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Unsorted

Things that Are Good

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/10/mocha-in-your-mouth/

A bite of Milky Way chased by a sip of hot, French Roast coffee.

“Yeah, chocolate and coffee go great together, it’s like a mocha in your mouth,” says Dennis.

I’ll testify to that!

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Technology

Taking it Well

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/11/taking-it-well/

So, after two failed attempts to upgrade eSupport, frustrated that a company that sells a support/helpdesk product doesn’t have all of its useful information right there in their own install of their own helpdesk product … I could go for a burrito. I call the girlfriend, do we have any cash? But no, she has a dollar, after I handed her the $25 in my pocket for her trip with the neighbor to Target last night.

“I could make pasta.”

“Dude, I could tell you didn’t want pasta,” my colleague admits. That is okay … we’ll get paid Friday. (more…)

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Unsorted

You Call This August?

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/12/you-call-this-august/

This morning it was so chilly that I had to don a turtleneck. I had to wear a sweater atop that last night, but that was excusable because I was out on the lake, aboard my boss’ Dad’s company’s boat. We got to see the fireworks at Navy Pier, which Yayoi loves. It was extremely groovy. I’ll try to post some pictures later, if any of them came out alright.

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Technical

lnk.to Progress Modest

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/12/lnkto-progress/

I keep messing with how the database table should work, and I had a hard time figuring out how to create a new key within a class referring to an object that I am hash-tieing to the lnkto table with Tie::DBI, but the good news is, that I’ve actually gotten started. It is a little frustrating at the moment, but the knowledge that I am building a class that will make writing the actual web site so much easier is good for morale. (more…)

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Technology, Testimonials

dotPhoto: Very Good, Inexpensive Digital Printing

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/15/dotphoto/

This weekend I was asked for my recommendation for digital prints. I had to scratch my head and cast about my e-mail archives because I had forgotten their name, and they were not in the top results returned by Google. But if you ask me, I am very pleased with dotPhoto. Why? (more…)

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Technical, Technology

Hoohah!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/16/hoohah/

The other tech support guy is out this week, so its all me, all day.

And of course, because its Monday, we have to be slammed by dumb people. (more…)

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Politics

Two Electoral Vote Maps

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/17/two-maps/

So, you may already know about electoral-vote.com, which shows the current state of Bush versus Kerry, based on all the latest polls, and Kerry has a wonderful lead just now. Then you start thinking about 2000 and you might start whining that you want popular elections.

Well, how about a compromise solution? The Fake Is The New Real Electoral Reform Map re-aligns the map of the United States so that we have fifty states that are roughly equal in size. (more…)

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Good Reads

Black Bear Prefers Rainier Beer to Busch

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/18/bear-rainier-beer/

From Yahoo! News

A black bear was found passed out in a campground, after having punctured and drunk 36 cans of Rainier Beer. The bear had tried Busch, but stopped after the first can. “He drank the Rainier and wouldn’t drink the Busch beer,” said campground bookkeeper Lisa Broxson. (more…)

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FreeBSD, Technical

Quick Unix Tip: “Look”

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/18/look/

You may already know about /usr/dict/words, /usr/local/share/dict/words, /usr/share/dict/words or wherever it is on your local system that the list of English-language words is installed. I don’t know how many times I have egrepped this file to check my spelling.

Apparently though, there’s been a handy command available since Version 7 AT&T UNIX. It is called “look” and it is handy for looking up words. (more…)

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Politics

Iraq’s Middle Road

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/08/19/iraqi-asshole/

Three marines were driving up the highway between Basra and Baghdad when they came upon an Iraqi insurgent who was badly injured and unconscious. On the opposite side of the road was an injured American who was semiconscious. As the Marines gave both men first aid they asked what happened. The American said, “I was moving north along the highway when I ran into this guy. We pointed our guns at each other and I said ‘Saddam Hussein is an asshole.’ Then he yelled, ‘George Bush is an asshole.’ We were standing there shaking hands when a truck hit us.

Thank you, _Playboy’s Party Jokes_

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