dannyman.toldme.com

You know everybody is sort of slowly accepting that maybe George Bush will get re-elected after all, and they might as well plan for another four years of darkness and incompetence. I don’t feel that way.

A month before the Iowa primaries Kerry looked like a pathetic loser unable to compete with the tough, say-it-like-it-is Howard Dean. Dean looked unstoppable, and inevitable, while Kerry looked doomed to a normal life. Dean is now a footnote. (more…)

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As reported on Yahoo! News, via Reuters, “a Malaysian man shot and killed his wife after he mistook her for a monkey picking fruit in a tree behind their house.” The guy was 70, and his 68 year-old wife had used a ladder to climb the tree to pick some fruit. They had raised thirteen children together prior to this tragedy.

There is good news from Malaysia as well. Nur Malena Hassan, the “Scorpion Queen” has wrestled her world record back from Thailand for spending more than a month in a glass box with 6,000 scorpions:

The 27-year-old moved into the box in a shopping mall in Kuantan, about 250 km (160 miles) east of Kuala Lumpur, on Aug. 21. She has only left the box for a daily 15-minute bathroom break, even though she has been stung several times … she lacks sleep because the scorpions crawl over her body. She has been warned she could pass out if stung three times within a short time.

She is going to further secure her title by spending another three days in the box. I am not sure who is crazier. Yahoo! have a slideshow of the Scorpion Queen, if you’d like to see.

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A good read from The Christian Science Monitor:

“9 out of 10 of the people I talk to, it wouldn’t matter who ran against Bush – they’d vote for them,” said a US soldier in the southern city of Najaf, “people are so fed up with Iraq, and fed up with Bush.”

(more…)

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Run regedit and review http://www.absolutestartup.com/help/Winstart.htm.

God I hate Windows.

And, for the record, Trend Micro PC-cillin sucks in many layers. I’m not going to elaborate.

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It is getting exciting today over at electoral-vote.com:

The poll also concluded that without Nader, Kerry is leading Bush nationally by 48% to 45% and with Nader by 46% to 45% with Nader at 3%. Among likely voters, it is Kerry 47%, Bush 47%, Nader 3%. The Harris national poll (Sept. 9-13) puts Kerry ahead 48% to 47% and the Pew poll (Sept. 11-14) puts Bush ahead 47% to 46%. In contrast, Gallup (Sept. 13-15) has Bush ahead 55% to 42%.

(more…)

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2600 has posted Notes From the RNC – The 8/31 Experience, a long recounting of the thirty three hours that one journalist experienced in detention, after being penned in by the NYPD for standing on the wrong sidewalk at the wrong time. It is definately worth a read by any American. (Thanks, Mike!)

I’ve been lucky enough to talk to a few people, both online and in person, who were also swept off the streets during the convention. We shared stories and experiences and it became obvious that we really needed to do this. A tale of injustice, even one that is dwarfed by others, needs to be told.

(more…)

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George Bush has this line in his stump speech:

“If John Kerry had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power!”

I think John Kerry could weave this in to his stump speech:

“If George Bush had his way, Osama bin Laden would still be at large!”

It makes me grin. (more…)

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Q: RealOne Player is evil and it sucks ass. I hate it. Is there anything else that can play RealAudio while sucking less?

A: Download Real Player 8 from http://forms.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html. This is a pretty decent version of the software that was written before they starting loading it full of spyware that auto-reinstalls itself. Be careful — it’ll occasionally offer to upgrade itself. Just hit cancel when it does.

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I had a list of files that someone requested. I wanted to put them in a tar archive, but the tar on the box doesn’t have an option to add a list of files. Huh. Well, this is quick and dirty, and will choke if you have any space in the filenames, but it met my purposes: (more…)

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We occasionally get intransigent customers who want things fixed but do not want to cooperate with us. I had to politely tell one off last Friday. Today a self-important customer wanted to blame us for the failure of a third-party web server. After explaining what I saw, he responded that I “had no idea” how important he is. No big deal. I wrote back, explained with a little more detail, and closed with:

I would further request that you maintain a professional tone when interacting with our staff. We take pains to ensure consistent support to all of our customers. A condescending tone on your part does nothing to yield results, and only builds animosity in relationships with your business partners. I thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

As someone who has played the part of smarmy know-it-all bully, I can tell from experience that when someone calmly confronts you head-on, gives you a competent explanation, and then requests that you behave yourself, well, unless you got some seriously sociopathic issues, that works really damned well.

But, we’ll see. I could have laid it down a bit more politely …

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California is suing Diebold, the nation’s largest manufacturer of touch-screen voting machines because the company lied about the machines’ security. According to the LA Times:

The system’s key vulnerability is that county election workers or others with access to the machines could type in a two-digit code and create a second set of results that would then be forwarded to the state as the county’s official tally.

I am curious what purpose that feature may have, beyond the obvious application of election fraud. (more…)

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I didn’t get his name. He hailed me as I was crossing the street. It was 11:30 at night on East Cermak, and I was on my way to the L.

“Excuse me,” he said, and stood back. He said he smelled, that was afraid he’d scared me … I was a little apprehensive, sure, but not scared.

He said he was homeless. It sounded like a recent thing. A few weeks ago, he fell asleep on the train and … he lifted his shirt sleeve a bit and on his arm I saw a lump covered with a jagged line of stitches, he pointed at a cut face and a missing patch of hair. (more…)

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