Thoughts and Ruminations

For Americans born more than a decade or so before me, a defining moment in their lives was the assassination of President Kennedy, immortalized in pop culture by the question "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" Location, time, age and other details of November 22, 1963, are forever etched in their memory.

At lunch recently, a co-worker posed the question: what is the equivalent moment in your life?

It actually seems odd that as imprinted as September 11, 2001, is in my mind and how vividly I remember the surreal feeling while driving to work that morning, it was *not* the first event that came to mind. Nor are any of:^[1]

* August 16, 1977
* March 28, 1979
* November 4, 1979
* December 8, 1980
* March 30, 1981
* the fall and winter of 1989 (notably the days around December 21, 1989)
* April 19, 1995

So what's missing?

January 28, 1986: the launch of STS-51-L.

I was 16, sitting in American History during my junior year of high school, seated halfway back in the right-most row of the classroom, my friend Krista sitting to my left, when we received news that the Space Shuttle Challenger had blown up during launch (an inapt description, but what we were told at the time), killing the crew of seven which included Christa McAuliffe, the first member of the Teacher in Space Program. Seventeen years before we had in-depth analyses of falling foam and dislodged tiles, we had frozen O-rings and exploding SRBs. And, at some point along the way, we learned that the crew didn't die quickly in the disintegration of the launch vehicle and spacecraft, but may have drowned in the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere east of Florida.

Perhaps it was a crack in the feeling that American endeavors are infallible (allow me my delusions... I'm too young to've experienced Watergate, Vietnam, or previous NASA disasters). Maybe it was just a realization that shit happens and the reality of life is sometimes harsh. Regardless, that is the Kennedy Moment of my life to date.


¹ not that I think any of these are really all that relevant either; in fact, I don't rightly care about the first two, though I do remember where I was when I heard about Elvis' death.

Ya know, I have low expectations for Microsoft and administration of their products, but I want to have some faith in Apple. However, at every turn it seems like Apple is set on proving that they think too small.

For a company that produces "servers" and would, seemingly, like some market penetration with their products, they don't seem overly interested in making it possible to administer more than a couple of machines in any sort of scalable manner.

The latest stumbling block is SSL CA certificates. Now, I realize that it's not neceesarily common to install new trusted root certs, however, sometimes it's useful, say for doing SSL stuff internally and not wanting to get ass-raped by BigCert. That given, and ignoring the fact that they also completely changed the way this is done between Tiger and Leopard, why on God's green earth does Apple not make this easy to do centrally and programmatically through a scriptable command-line interface?

My installation is only a couple dozen machines, not, say, 3000, but even that's more than I want to Lay Hands on to install certs through some point-and-click Keychain Manager. The machine has openssl installed, why can I not just drop the certificate and hash into the certs directory and make the system happy? I'll even live with the PKCS12 nonsense rather than PEM or DER (as God intended).

I can't even decide whether Tiger or Leopard is worse. Tiger is perfectly happy with PEM, but The Way to Add a Cert seems to involve copying X509Anchors to a user's keychain folder and then hitting the GUI. Leopard... straight to the GUI.


Off to try copying X509Anchors between systems to see if it works...

Having read all but the conclusion of This paper (it's a PDF), I would like to note that, in my opinion, the "researcher" is looking for fire where there's no smoke. Perhaps I am reading way more into than she intends, but using loaded words like "hyperwhite" certainly seems to indicate that she categorizes "nerds" as bigots as a result of their chosen diction. Why not continue down the path and offer as further proof the fact that the bookworms generally opt not to engage athletic activities.

Well, I suppose if you can't just outright ban firearms, you might as well do it with onerous requirements for ownership.

House Bill 760 calls for every gun in the state (with the exception of antiques) to be registered with the state police, and that registration must be renewed annually. The cost would be $10 per gun, per year. The bill also requires fingerprinting and a background check of each gun owner. A new photograph must be submitted each year and the registration card for each gun would have to be carried with the firearm at all times.

An application would include name, age, sex, Social Security number, business and home address, telephone number, date of birth, citizenship, two recent photographs of the applicant and any additional information that " ... the Pennsylvania State Police may deem necessary to process the application."

"May I see your papers, citizen?"

I really wish I could find a better source for this, but it looks as if an ammendment has been added to S.1 in the U.S. Senate, creating Section 220, which could require registration for bloggers. Aimed at grassroots organizations, but including bloggers who discuss policy and have more than 500 readers, it would require registration and quarterly reports like any other lobby organization.

Perhaps the absurdity can be demonstrated by having *everyone* establish a blog which pontificates on government policy, and have everyone register. Maybe smothering the beast will kill it.


ref: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=ind_focus.story&STORY=/www/story/01-16-2007/0004507242&EDATE=TUE+Jan+16+2007,+06:34+PM

Migrating services from OSX to linux is special enough without such helpful documentation:

evilOSXbox% man opendirectorypdbconfig

opendirectorysamconfig(1) BSD General Commands Manualopendirectorysamconfig(1)

NAME
     opendirectorypdbconfig, Other_name_for_same_program(), Yet another name
     for the same program. -- This line parsed for whatis database.

SYNOPSIS
     opendirectorypdbconfig, [-abcd] [-a path] [file] [file ...] arg0 arg2 ...

DESCRIPTION
     Use the .Nm macro to refer to your program throughout the man page like
     such: opendirectorypdbconfig, Underlining is accomplished with the .Ar
     macro like this: underlined text.

     A list of items with descriptions:

     item a   Description of item a

     item b   Description of item b

     A list of flags and their descriptions:

     -a       Description of -a flag
:

The immediate question might, of course, be "what will he hunt?," but does it really matter in the big picture? In the short term, he might be hunting for sustenance, or a mate, or possibly even a new den. Once the goal is met, he'll be back out on the prowl again. Beyond instant gratification, what is his motivation for hunting? Tomorrow he'll be hungry again, the bitch will have moved on to another, and his resting place suddenly feeling too small.

Is an occasional "atta boy!" sufficient to perpetuate the cycle? Is each hunt unique enough to provide stimulation or does it become rote no matter the quarry? Is he happy just living care-free and in the moment? Is he is content to follow the leader, picking up scraps? Does he fear slowing would lead to stopping would lead to personal introspection and a realization that his life has been for naught and he doesn't know where he's going? His puppyhood dreams of leading the pack long discarded like last night's remains, he expects that soon the pack will abandon him. Without the support of the pack, he will soon fall prey to the Others, leaving behind nary a mark that he ever inhabited the territory.

However, the dog is too busy, now, scurrying to and fro to stop and communicate.

I think it's the fear.

Only 3 days since I mentioned the stupid names of MLS teams, and here I thought it couldn't get much worse. Proven wrong again. Apparently the New York/New Jersey MetroStars have been sold and will now be "Red Bull New York". I suppose it was just a matter of time before the corporate names move from the names of venues to the teams themselves.

As an interesting note for those who're familiar with the British footie hooligans (and, if you haven't read Among the Thugs by Bill Buford, do so), it seems that British prosecutors will be accompanying the English football fans to the World Cup in Germany, prepared to build cases with the local constabulary for the purposes of prosecuting any hoolganism back home in the UK.

Only recently did I learn of the efforts to destroy healthcare in California by one of the, presumably unhinged, members of the Californian Senate from the La-La-Land region. It seems that Sheila Kuehl (D-23), in Feb 2005, introduced SB 840 (last ammended 07/12/2005), titled "Single-Payer Health Care Coverage". It's already been through commitee votes in both the Assembly and Senate, and a floor vote in the Senate. Not surprisingly, it's passed all so far.

While the bill would be bad enough if it just attempted to provide basic, overpriced health care and higher taxes for all residents, emulating, to some extent the socialized medicine disasters of Canada and various European nations, it goes one step further. Let's start by quoting from the bill. Chapter 3, Article 5 (Subrogation) starts:



So, if this passes, there is no more private insurance. Even if you want it and can afford it, you can't buy the health care you want: to each equally, pretty much. Since the Glorious State would now be paying for your health care, they decide how much doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies will receive and what procedures will be covered. Worst. HMO. Ever! At least the UK system still allows you to pay for coverage beyond that provided by the state. The Canadian system, which already has problems with providing timely, modern care is about to keel over under the cost (several provinces are approaching 50% of budget going to healthcare). Senator Kuehl's bill promises to keep costs from escalating by cutting back on care and delaying introduction of new procedures when things get tight. So we get the worst of both worlds.

And, how about the provider end of things. The system will dictate what doctors may and may not use, and how much they'll be paid for their services. What's the incentive for them to provide care that approaches that of the third-world over time? Slow progress, low compensation, bloated patient lists; these are the things they have to look forward to. What about the research medical centers, like Stanford? Will they be restricted from using their experimental procedures, or will they have to take every patient that comes along as well, cutting into their research?

This bill will end up costing the state the half of the budget that education doesn't already consume. Taxes will continue to be levied against the shrinking number of "rich" and the exodus of people and businesses will increase, though, I suppose the businesses get to reduce their medical, dental, and vision costs for their California employees. Of course, their employees' failing health will contribute negatively to their productivity, probably more than making up for the savings on health care costs.

And, since my search turned it up: the website for the moonbats who support this nonsense .

With the move of the San Jose franchise to Houston, the owners renamed the Earthquakes to Houston 1836. The name honors the founding of the city of Houston 170 years ago, as well as making a nod to a similar tradition in the Bundesliga (eg, Hanover 96). When the team name was announced, I was a bit annoyed. After all, it would be nice if MLS would find its own identity rather than emulating the naming schemes of other leagues :

MLS Team	"Namesake"	League
DC United	Manchester United	English Premier League
FC Dallas	Fulham FC	English Premier League
Real Salt Lake	Real Madrid	Spanish Primera
Chivas USA	Chivas	Mexican
Houston 1836*	Hanover 96	German Bundesliga
* Now renamed Houston Dynamo

However, all things considered, I'd rather they stood by the name at this point. See, Houston's founding, coincidentally, coincides with the establishment of Texas as a new republic. How did this republic come about? Well, there was this series of skirmishes in the early part of the 19th century between some upstart Americans and the "rightful" owners of the land that came to be Texas: Mexico. In the end, the Mexican army returned across the Rio Grande and the settlers set up their own little country, until they were invited to join the United States in 1945. What do international disputes and Texas history have to do with a Houston soccer team? It seems that a portion of the victim culture plagueing this country has taken umbrage at what they take, not as civic pride but as an anti-Mexican statement.

Now, if the team were named the Houston Wetbacks, I might could understand the outrage. 1836? It's a date. Lots of stuff happened that year other than a chunk of land changing hands. Hell, for that matter, scanning a list of notable events from 1836, you'd think the outraged people might try to claim it as their own as it's the same year that Spain recognized Mexico's own independence. But let's accentuate the negatives, shall we? I guess we should cease July 4th celebrations because it might be seen to denigrate Persons-of-Britannic-Descent. Let's just forget all of history; well, unless it celebrates the achievements of anyone other than White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Males.

Back when I first started listening to metal in the mid-to-late 80s, my preference pretty much became Thrash. Not surprising given the choices of mainstream metal: glam, thrash, prog, and power from my limited recollection. At the time I wasn't aware of the existence of any of the other sub-genres, despite examples available through my primary conduit: MTV's Headbanger's Ball (hey, I was in Socorro, NM, where else was I to get exposure?).

While I dabbled with other bands, my preference was for Megadeth and Metallica. Keep in mind that this was around the time that So Far, So Good, So What? and And Justice For All were released, so the staples were essentially Peace Sells, But Who's Buying?, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets, all fine albums. Sure, I had the important Anthrax releases (Spreading the Disease, I'm the Man [EP], and later Attack of the Killer B's), some Testament, and later Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss, but I was pretty much focused on just 2 of the Masters of Thrash.

I continued following the Megadeth releases, even through the late bad years
(Risk, anyone?), keeping the collection complete. As for Metallica, they ceased to exist in my reality after the release of the Black Album (Metallica for the unitiated); while I own a copy of the next recording bearing their name, I refuse to believe it can be the same band that produced MoP (I'm not sure if it's the addition of Jason Newstead or the subtraction of Cliff Burton that caused their downfall; maybe a combination of both). I picked up the occasional Anthrax and Testament album, but mostly stopped sometime around the time I moved to California (so, 1996-ish).

I think leaving college and entering the work world shifted focuses for a while, with the additional issue of the wane of metal, in general, on the radio in favor of the Seattle-sound and the rise of so-called Alternative. While I picked up some interesting music during that time period, none of it really grabbed me like metal had. In fact, for the most part, I entirely missed the rise of the Death and Black Metal sub-genres into the mainstream of metal (discussed briefly elsewhere).

In the last couple of years I've grown bored with alternative, pseudo-metal, and other broadcast garbage. So, I turned back to metal to find out what I've been missing. While I'm still trying to sample and figure out what I like from some of the newer bands popular in the metal community, I've also revisited the so-dubbed Masters of Thrash and realized that the bands I dismissed in favor of Mustaine and Hetfield's groups are probably better overall bands than Megadeth and Metallica, barring a handful of albums. Anthrax, Testament, and Slayer seem to have held up better and with a more consistent identity, despite turnover of members. Whereas Megadeth seems to suffer for Dave Mustaine's ego and Metallica for commercial success, the others have maintained a heavy sound (and in Anthrax's case, appears to have gotten heavier) that reminds me why Thrash appealed to me to begin with.

The recent time sink for the online crowd:

http://www.joeykatzen.com/alpha/ver4/


As of today, I've cleared all but 4 [ a, b, d, i ].

No great accomplishment, sure, but a nice diversion from the crap that is the normal work-day.

Being a fan of 80s era thrash, I'm finding myself to be out of touch with modern metal. Back in the day, lyrics were mostly understandable without straining too much. Modern metal, predominantly the Black Metal and Death Metal subgenres, seems to have taken a wrong turn somewhere. What's up with the screeches and growls.

Let's take the track noted in the 'Music' field. I rather like the music underlying the Cradle of Filth tracks I've got (Nymphetamine), but I find the screechy, scratchy vocals detract from the songs. How is this better than the, relatively, clearly sung lyrics of the previous generations of heavy metal music? Are Metallica's "Battery" and Anthrax's "Antisocial" lesser tracks because they have easily understood lyrics? The only band in my personal collection that even came close in the late 80s was Slayer, and they are crystal clear in comparison to some of the Black Metal bands; I'm sure King Diamond and some of the precursors to the European metal movement were worse, but they were not the mainstream of what I heard in metal at the time.

That's not to say that I dislike modern metal. On the contrary, some of the music has a refinement and complexity that far outshines the raw power of the 80s metal scene. Taking a couple of examples, while it sounds not too distant from a garage band, Powermad's self-titled album exudes a raw thrash sound with mostly simplistic lyrics ("Absolute Power" for instance), but it's good for what it is. On the other hand, you have Bal-Sagoth's Starfire Burning on the Ice-Veiled World of Ultima Thule, a Black Metal album with hints of Power Metal's epic-like themes. Beautifully crafted tracks (such as the title track) with lyrics (if understandle) better able to draw an accompanying picture.

Sure, it's not really fair to compare what amounts to retelling a myth to something whose depth is little more than that of a bubble-gum pop song (take "The Locomotion". Please.). I'm sure I could cherry-pick the other way as well, though I would have a harder time finding a comparable simplistic modern metal track (being unfamiliar with the bulk of what's out there), but I think, throwing out Power and Prog for a moment, because they wrench things up, that on average current metal tracks are musically more intricate than the average track in the 80s, especially if we don't exclude Glam which is far too visible a part of the music scene back then. Sure we had Ride the Lightning, but we also had Night Songs and Pride

Hopefully entries will be limited to non-contentious topics. At present, I'm thinking that I'll limit myself to ranting about work idiocies, music, and the affliction of kltuzdom.