Month: June 2015

The Bigots are Responding

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I’ll start locally. Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin of course used language that was a euphemism for ‘intrinsically disordered.” It must really suck to be a Bishop when the church is losing members left and right but yet you still don’t understand that history has passed you by and there is no going back.

Then of course the National Organization for Marriage with their head puppet/pumpkin head Brian Brown is just saying they’ll fight on.

Then you’ve got Senator James Inhofe saying his gay friends agree with his opposition to marriage equality. What gay friends is he talking about? Ken Mehlman and Condoleza Rice?

I think it’s now turned the corner, the arguments are over and all we have to do is ridicule the bigots. And I do mean ridicule them.

If for example they trot out the Levitical statement, ask them to go a text or two before – and answer the question of where the other people came from. You know the others I speak of right? When Cain goes out of the land of Eden, east into the land of Nod, and there finds a wife and spawns humanity, or so they’d have us believe.

And if they talk about the abomination thing, explain that eating shellfish is also an abomination, and pork too.  And let’s not even talk about shaving, mixing of fabric, working on the Sabbath etc.

Then explain the concepts of  copy error, translation error and editorializing. Because that’s the Bible we have today, whether it’s the KJV, NIV, or the like. I like how family guy treats it, that the abilities of Jesus may have been a tad exaggerated.

But in the end, haters gonna hate. So all we’re left with ridicule – just call it their puny god.

At last – marriage equality across the land

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I never thought I’d see this day. But it’s true.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the sixth district judgement and knocked down the bans in the remaining states.

Now back a few years ago I was all set to file suit against the State of Rhode Island. But the folks at GLAD found out and talked me down. But here’s the thing – the gains in marriage equality over the last couple years have been through the judiciary and not the legislatures. So the folks at GLAD were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Things to survive a 55 mile commute

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So I’ve been commuting into Cambridge, MA from Providence, RI for a year now.

Survival on that commute dictates a few necessities so that I don’t become nasty and brutish.

Music is a must – so the phone is stocked with music and a good set of Symphonized headphones and I’m a happy camper. They also serve the purpose of in effect saying “Don’t bother me.” That is worth it’s weight in gold. Anyone cute tries that might change, but alas nothing of the sort.

Now an hour and ten minutes of the commute is on a commuter train. So I need something to do. I had played on my phone but network service drops out around Sharon, MA so that was a no go. Plus the phone is small so reading a book on it was challenging.

So I bought an Amazon Fire HD6. It’s  a little six inch tablet but so much better. I’ve got a ton of books I’ve read and am reading on it. So that helps out a lot. And it’s funny – how many people are sitting next to me on the train reading a dead tree version of a book. Meanwhile I’m just swiping through pages on my Fire tablet.

So you can survive a commute via public transit.

A burning hatred for Microsoft Windows

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So I get home, open my ‘new’ Dell E6420 and I get dunned about Windows updates. I postpone for four hours. But then the machine decides to reboot into the updates some 20 minutes later.  But phase 1 of 3 took, in my opinion too long. So I shut the machine down via holding down the power button.

It booted and went right to phase 3 of 3. Even that was fucking klunky. I had to shut down again, the third try was the charm.

When I finally get to logon I get the reminder there are 24 updates available. This time of course it showed me what they were. Bunch of security updates.

But Linux and in particular Ubuntu – when it has updates you have to approve in essence. And it tells you PRECISELY what’s being installed. And in fact updates to software is pretty frequent on Linux. Windows is every few weeks. But not all updates require rebooting.

It’d be pretty easy for me to make the switch. I have an SSD with Ubuntu 14.04 on it. I should just snap it in and say fuck Windows forever.

A vexing Windows 7 problem might have resolution

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I’ve now got three different browsers on this Win7 box. Internet Explorer (aka Exploder), Google Chrome, and Firefox.

Now in Chrome and Firefox I note CPU swamping when I’m watching any flash based site. And h.264 and Silverlight are no joy either but they don’t cause as much of an issue as Flash.

I’m seriously considering reverting Flash versions to resolve this issue. Now we’ve always been told keep your software up to date for the reasons of security. But sometimes you just have to say ‘fuck it’ and go with an older version of the software because it can’t run on a 64 bit machine.

Now if I could only figure out why I can’t login to WordPress using two factor in Firefox 38. I key in my username and password and I’m prompted for the authentication code, which I plug in and WordPress blows me back to the login screen. So I’m using Chrome to post this article.

So now I have to use three different browsers – IE to access office based stuff, Chrome to access WordPress and FIrefox for everything else.

The Evolution of the Light Bulb

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The though hit me today. We light our homes with a far different technology than we did in the 20th century.

First was the incandescent bulb:

Pretty wasteful – a lot of the energy went toward making heat more so than light.

For the most part they got replaced by Compact Fluorescent bulbs:

The CFL did better on power sure – but kind of toxic to dispose of them. So they got replaced by LED based bulbs.

About 3 to 5 watts less power consumption than even the CFL bulbs. The common areas like living room, bedroom, bathroom are all LED lighting

The main goal is to starve National Grid of revenue. I want to see them shrivel up and blow away.

Unbelievable lifespan for a computer

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So one finally bit the dust tonight. Old Dell XPS M140’s. By reckoning those machines were 9 years old. But the conundrum – if it could be called that is when the last one failed this evening I have no way of getting data off the machine. Or so you might think.

Since they’re vintage computers they use ATA-100 drives. So I got an ATA-100 to USB converter. Just plug it in and turn it on. Ordered a refubished Dell Latitude E6420 to replace the old machine. Cost about $300 with tax. I’m picking it up tomorrow. I got it from MicroCenter.  A warning, their site doesn’t play well with Chrome or Firefox – you have to use Internet Exploder/Explorer.

But the reason the machines lasted so long is that yours truly did a hell of a lot of preventive maintenance. Just to give you an idea, at age 4 I replaced the hard drives on them. And I can’t count the number of keyboards I replaced on them. Or the screens I replaced. In fact the only thing original on the machines were the motherboards. Oh yeah, wifi cards got replaced too.

In essence I get my moneysworth out of computers. But this upgrade is sort of necessary as the ‘new’ machine is Windows 7 Professional which will upgrade to Windows 10 with no issues.

Why your god does not exist

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I’m amused by people like Glenn Beck saying they have 10,000 pastors willing to die to prevent marriage equality in the U.S.

My response to this was that I’d like to help bring on the deaths of those 10,000 bigoted asshole pastors.

But someone had responded to my post on said article with:

“Chuck Hagen: Why does an “All Powerful God” need a Bunch of Lowlifes and Gutter Trash to Fight his Battles for Him???”

Right the fuck on. If their god is so all powerful that they are omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient then why does said god need all the fuckwits to witness for him/her/it?

That is a simple logical connection there. Because in the Bible it is mentioned that their god has all the above listed qualities. Except it isn’t so. I’m reminded of this wit by Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

New Wire Strippers Received

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So I plunked $20 on a pair of Irwin Wire Strippers.

I had been using a pair similar though not as sharp as  this:

They’re operated by pushing a piece of insulated wire through one of the holes. Spin then pull. Its effective sure but had a nasty habit of nicking the wire.

Just received these about half an hour ago:

These work a little bit differently in that you insert the wire, and squeeze the handles. The two little lugs at the top or left most side of the tool in this view rotate downward as they separate from each other. Takes the insulation right off the wire. I’ve tried it out on 22 gauge and smaller wire already. Works great. Less effort too.

Our Super Saturday

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It started at 8:00AM. Got all the weekly shopping done by 11:30AM. Reason for that was a friend of mine was getting married. Definitely an awkward for Keyron though. In my case I knew a few people there. Had run across them in my travels through my career and associations.  In fact that’s how I know the groom.

The groom and I both worked at a certain infosec company and knew each u other through the local DefCon group. The groom is someone who I can fully see working for the CIA, NSA and maybe even as one of the Kingpins of the anonymous group.

The ceremony was short, sweet and to the point. This was genuinely a couple that wanted to be married. Just a ‘With this ring I thee Wed’ and that was it. No religious gobbledygook which I for one definitely appreciated.

The groom by the way definitely made the rounds just before the ceremony. Thanked everyone with a handshake too.

We met a couple, the male half of which is involved with musical production, the wife at an arts non profit. One of the more stunning parts of which was the guy admitting he was an alcoholic who has been sober for seventeen days. Keyron offered his congratulations, me on the other hand was like slightly agog at just seventeen days. But then I realized, every journey in life has to begin at some point  In time. So seventeen days is as good as seventeen years.

Had a good time though. It was a nice Saturday. And it gave some ideas for our wedding.