Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/09/02/guthrie-city-of-new-orleans/
I’ve got Arlo Guthrie in my head, and uploaded some pictures from December, 2000 that I took in New Orleans.
Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail
All along the Southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
And rolls along past houses, farms and fields
Passing trains that have no name
And freight yards full of old black men
And the grave yards of the rusted automobiles
Good morning, America, how are you?
Said don’t you know me, I’m your native son
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
Dealing card games with the old men in the club car
Penny a point aint no one keepin’ score
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
And feel the wheels rumblin’ ‘neath the floor
And the sons of Pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father’s magic carpets
Made of steel
Mothers with their babes asleep
Rockin to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel
Good morning America, how are you?
Said don’t you know me, I’m your native son
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done
Night time on The City of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Halfway home, we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness rolling down to the sea
But all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still aint heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
The passengers will please refrain
This train got the Disappearin’ Railroad Blues.
Good night America how are you?
Said don’t you know me, I’m your native son
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/09/01/new-orleans-livejournal/
Pointed to a fascinating blog from someone who is manning a Data Center in New Orleans. I haven’t been preoccupied with the disaster, and pretty good about focusing on work, but this is really interesting stuff.
Highlights:
- They’re still online. But are down to one carrier at the moment.
- Bell South is working on bringing lines back up.
- Looting is completely out of hand. Civilians and police.
- Civilians are firing at Police and Fire workers.
- New Orleans PD has no command and control.
- The Data Center has taken on diesel fuel to keep generators running.
- “Dead bodies everywhere: convention center, down camp street, all over.”
- Building management is still functioning, and has requested supplies from tenants, including ammunition.
Why are these people so uptight about staying online? Well, apparently the guy works for “Directnic” and the “NIC” implies that they control WHOIS and DNS information for a lot of domains that may have nothing to do with New Orleans. So, it is pretty critical that they stay online, if possible.
I saw some other chatter on IRC that national fuel rationing may come within a month due to the refining capacity that we have lost in the Gulf of Mexico. I take that with a grain of salt, but it is an interesting possibility. It sounds as if a lot of the nation’s oil is offloaded and then refined down there, and then transported throughout the Midwest and East . . . so, that doesn’t trouble me so much in California, but that doesn’t sound so great as you move East.
Update: “THE REAL MILITARY IS NOW FLOWING IN. National Guard is being replaced before our eyes. Watch the feed. Word is that the Marines are at 1515 Poydras where our OC4s are. I think we’re coming back online in force shortly.”
Also, BBC has some excellent coverage, particularly pictures. I find this one especially moving, whereas this guy ought to be target practice.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/08/23/daily-show-piracy/
We watch The Daily Show every day. It is actually one of the very few shows we watch regularly, and so instead of spending tens of dollars a month on cable television, we download our television off the Internet. It is a little less convenient because I have to download the shows manually instead of setting up a DVR, and the video quality is often inconsistent. On the other hand, the people who upload the shows edit the commercials out beforehand, and I can copy the files to a laptop to watch on the plane.
Wired magazine publishes an interview with Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart and producer Ben Karlin:
Wired: [The Daily Show is] among the most popular shows traded online. People download and watch the whole thing, every day. Were you guys aware of that?
Karlin: Not only am I not aware of that, I don’t want to be aware of that.
Wired: Well, don’t go shutting it down.
Stewart: We’re not going to shut it down – we don’t even know what it is. I’m having enough trouble just getting porn.
Whew! (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/07/04/usa-christian-roots-faq/
“What of America’s Christian Roots?”
From what I can tell, the founding fathers were about as Christian as other Americans. Which means, some were plenty Christian and some were pretty open-minded, or minimalist, like me. I think this excerpt from The Week, June 10, 2005 explains our Christian Heritage fairly well: (more…)
3 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/14/outrage-fatigue/
Joe told me he made a deliberate effort to stop reading political blogs, and I said that I never really did bother to read political blogs, because they generally don’t go past provoking self-righteous outrage at the other side, and since about 2003 or so I have definitely had “outrage fatigue.”
But that doesn’t mean I still don’t pay attention, and that doesn’t mean that I am ignorant of the outrages. I get a trickle of the worst, usually from The New Yorker, and that’s when I feel compelled to re-tell the stories of the greatest outrage.
Amnesty International recently referred to Guantanamo and other prisons like it as “the gulag of our times” or words to that effect, and the Bush Administration and conservatives flipped out over that . . . (that outrage!) because really, our suspending the Geneva Conventions and inprisoning a classified number of people throughout the world based on classified intelligence without ever charging them with a crime is nothing at all like the Soviet gulag, where millions of Stalin’s own citizens were worked to their deaths.
And you know, they have a point, or maybe I was daydreaming about something else when I read the chapter in “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” that was similar to this passage, from Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker, May 30, 2005: (more…)
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/13/dear-jesus/
A while back, I signed a petition for the American Family Association to oppose Ford’s support of gay people. I didn’t do this because I agree with them, but as a subversive act to put obviously bogus names on their petition. The idea being that if anyone ever reviewed their anti-gay petition, they would see that “Jesus McChrist” was definitely opposed to Ford’s gay ways.
Every time I see this e-mail, I get a little chuckle: (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/11/perl-convert-celsius-and-fahrenheit/
I recently had a need for two quick temperature conversion algorithms in a Perl script. I asked Google, but did not immediately get a great answer, so here’s my answer:
# Two quick helper functions: CtoF and FtoC
sub CtoF { my $c = shift; $c =~ s/[^\d\.]//g; return (9/5)*($c+32); }
sub FtoC { my $f = shift; $f =~ s/[^\d\.]//g; return (5/9)*($f-32); }
The regex is to untaint the input datum, and could be eliminated if you know that your variable is clean. This code has been incorporated into a systems health and data trend monitoring script for FreeBSD. For the vaguely interested, here’s today’s perldoc: (more…)
5 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/05/20/catholicism/
The words of Cardinal Joseph Bernadin, of Chicago:
“If one contends, as we do, that the right of every fetus to be born should be protected by civil consensus, then our moral, political, and economic responsibilities do not stop at the moment of birth. Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker. Such a quality-of-life posture translates into specific political and economic positions on tax policy, employment generation, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs, and health care. Consistency means we cannot have it both ways. We cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fibre of the society or are beyond the proper scope of governmental responsibility.”
(more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/05/18/george-galloway-american-patriot/
If you’re frustrated with the American government, then you may enjoy reading, hearing, or seeing George Galloway, a British MP falsely accused of oil profiteering, call our government for what it is, a pack of fabricating, war-lusting, profiteering liars: (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/26/awesome-blog-idle-words/
Now, I don’t believe the words “awesome” and “blog” should ever go together, but sometimes you have to make an exception. Maciej Ceglowski takes the time to write some truly enjoyable prose, putting weird and other pleasantly engaging images in my head. I enjoy reading every word, and you might as well. From his recent survey of New York Pizzas:
Back in the heady post-Soviet days, it used to be possible to get really bad pizza in Warsaw. Vendors in the little plastic booths on every corner would sell you a hot dog bun spread with tomato paste and pressed ham for about ten American cents. Then the Vietnamese showed up, with their cut-rate lunch specials and even smaller booths, and the Warsaw pizza market was no more. Finally the Health Department got funding, shut everyone down, deported the Vietnamese, and now the nation’s capital is a desolation of McDonald’s and hipster cafés.
If “The Unbearable Thinness of Crust” gives you a clue as to what may inspire Maciej’s writing, then that may help you determine if you will enjoy reading “Idle Minds” as I do.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/22/i-am-all-powerful-muhaha/
Increasingly, prospective and existing customers are interacting with corporations electronically, both for research and purchasing purposes. Those that ignore online inquiries are alienating consumers–especially young “affluents,” the 24- to 33-year-olds earning $75,000 or above who are the heaviest Internet users (and most likely to be asking the questions). In fact, our research indicates that 70 percent of consumers go to a competitor’s site if they don’t receive a timely response to an online inquiry. And losing those customers is a faux pas few companies can afford.
I don’t really need to read the rest of this CNET article because I already know all I need. Companies, fear my “affluent” wrath!! MUHAHAHA!!
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/18/sticky-riddle/
What is long and brown and sticky?
(more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/14/blacksmith-poet/
There was this poet, who decided to retire from poetry.
He went and enrolled in blacksmithing school.
He learned all about smithing, and pounding, and metals and all that, and became a master blacksmith.
He was later interviewed by The New Yorker magazine, and was asked,
“Why did you leave poetry to become a blacksmith?”
(more…)
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/12/best-buy-2-dollar-bill/
I just read the most stunningly bizarre story in the Baltimore Sun. It is about Mike Bolesta, who bought a car stereo for his son, but Best Buy gave him one that was too big for the car, then offered him a cheaper one, waiving the installation fee because they shouldn’t have sold him the wrong one in the first place. Then they called him up and said that if he didn’t pay the installation fee, they would call the cops. So, irritated, he goes in there the next day and pays in $2 bills.
He gets arrested.
Not only is every last employee at that Best Buy stupid, but the Baltimore Police are evidently wack-jobs as well. After some hours in handcuffs and leg irons the Secret Service comes along and explains that his currency is legal-tender, and that yes, it is not unheard of for a bit of ink to rub off of legitimate US currency.
ObTip: Use BugMeNot to bypass compulsory registration. It actually took me a few tries.
ObIdealism: stratusmonkey declares April 13th is “Two Dollar Bill Day” to commemorate the life and career of President Jefferson, and remind the American public that the paper money bearing his likeness is legal tender.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/08/biz-vs-gov/
Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the contrast between business and government:
“In government, everyone thinks that in business you say jump and everybody jumps. That’s not the way a good company is run. Good companies are run by leaders who delegate and build consensus. In business, people think that everybody in government is lazy and incompetent. That’s also not true.”
(more…)
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