What will they think of next?

When I'm having an out-of-apartment experience like visiting fam or friends and such, sometimes I get the urge to check for email or do the other Internet things. Sometimes I just might need to do some other computer stuff with apps that maybe my hosts computer don't have installed. Google Docs takes care of most stuff. Anyway, the idea got me playing around with portable Firefox and it is very cool. Running it from a USB stick makes it a little slow but that's not a big deal to me. I like having the history and such from those sessions, with me when I get home. It doesn't leave a mess on my hosts computers. I can even blog and stuff from the portable browser like I'm doing right now to test the FF 3.0.1 version upgrade I just installed. Now I'm going to sniff some of the other portable apps. Hmmmm, maybe KeePass will help me get rid of that huge list of password stuff I have to keep up with. Then there is TrueCrypt to encrypt and password protect the whole schtick in case I lose it or something. And it's all free like I wish food, water, shampoo, shelter, carz, gas, electricity, doctors and a way to keep the stick syhcronized with an online encryted version of itself that I could zap onto a new drive from any computer in case I lose this one.

Strange

The internets went black from here about 4 o'clock central. I use OpenDNS on my 'chines. So I tried the IP address of their system status page. Slowly it came up and showed their system was up and okay. I switched to automatically get any DNS available and got connected .. kinda. AIM and Yahoo messengers would not connect and no Gmail. A tracert to OpenDNS's numbers showed everthing stopping at some strange (.....ntt.....) probably a router. Sent message to OpenDNS. Got some suggestions back to tracert to some other numbers etc. but everything went back to normal about that time. I'm guessing something got rebooted. All is well.

Footprints

Creationist hate 'em

Footprints...especially human ones, which creationist "investigators" keep discovering in the same strata as dinosaur bones or footprints, and paleontologists keep demonstrating are nothing of the sort. It's been my experience that creationist authorities (oxymoron) usually end up admitting that they weren't really human prints after all. But they are somewhat lax in passing that information on to their flocks of True Believers, with the result that your average grassroots creationist is under the impression that the fossil record is replete with human footprints, clear back to the beginning (suggested by Floyd Waddle). (To my knowledge, there are NO "manprints" in mesozoic strata that are claimed as such by the main creationist organizations. It's only a few fringe crackpots that continue to make those claims, and embarrass the "mainstream" creationists, who have to eventually denounce them. Your pot has to be SERIOUSLY cracked to get even your fellow creationists to admit you're over the top.) Much more>>

A Great Metaphor!

The Republican National Convention will be held in the Excel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota this year. That's symbolic enough but wait for it.... That's right across the street from the Science Museum of Minnesota. Contrast... but wait. The Science Museum of Minnesota is being closed to the public for the duration of the convention. Metaphor complete.

Where are we?

I was reading a news story this morning about some guy beating a speeding ticket because it turned out that the GPS tracking thing in his car showed he was going the speed limit instead of 17 mph faster like the cop's radar claimed. That reminded me of something I've been wanting for a long time. A way to know where I am and what or who is near by. There are lots of variations on the idea already available but not quite available to me. There are GPS systems for cars, planes and boats. I've used lots of nav systems over the years from RF direction finders to VORTAC to Loran to Inertial Nav to VLF to GPS and systems that were used integrations of sensors from several of those technologies. The idea I like best for everday purposes would be a cell phone type technology that could use GPS, cell phone tower locations and built in accelarometry to locate the cell phone on a built in map database that could be customized by connecting to networks and grabbing info like new map layers, updates for the map info and locations of other stuff. I would like to make my location and condition available to "freinds" at all times. I'm kind of a dog type personallity as apposed to a cat type personallity, where cats kind of sneak around about stuff they do, a dog doesn't care who's looking, if a dog can do it everyone can watch and is just as happy if you don't like it as it is if you do. I wish I knew where other people were so we could connect easier when we are close by or when we are doing something the other would like to hook up for etc. etc..... Of course I want it to all be free, open source and I want to do the internets and my email from the same gizmo. But I want a big screen and full size keyboard, lights, camera, action that all folds down to pocket size. I guess that will all have to wait for some new technology. Pocket Holideck that just creates all that in thin air when you need it, anyone?

Road Trip

Two of my cousins lost their mom last week. The generation in our family that I belong to has been very fortunate to have had long lived parents, aunts and uncles. They afforded us a view of the places and times they lived first hand and in living color. Ours like most families is made of very different personalities and experiences that gives each generation and every individual connected to us a rich set of histories to draw on when we need it. Our "bunch" has a lot of "independent" souls and more than a few mavericks. But, we have a strong sense of family ties on both sides of every branch of the family bush. We came together Wednesday to honor aunt Audie by sharing our memories of her and those ties among the people she loved. My sisters and I made a road trip out of it by visiting towns and home sites where most of our grandparents, parents aunts uncles and cousins grew up. We took pictures recorded oral histories and visited museums and did some shopping. All of which our kids will have to sort through some day. We all came together for Audie's service. Her memory was strong there. The service reflected her personality by the way we seemed to act as if she was there and in on every conversation. Good job aunt Audie! We left the service and drifted on over to Rodger's place to visit and mix and carry on like we always do. On the way, we checked the cemetery for the rest of the kin laid there. It looks like they're still right where we put 'em. A bunch of that got recorded too. More hours and hours of family evidence for future generations to deal with. The technologies today will make it virtually impossible for our kids and future generations to deny where they came from. Ha! Now I return you to your regularly scheduled programming in progress.

Crumbs

I couldn't resist. I grabbed some crunchy chocolate chip cookies while I was hunting and gathering groceries the other day. They are in one of those packages that has a little plastic thing inside that keeps them all in little rows and the outer bag has a tab on it that, when you pull it, opens the the whole side of the pack and has some sticky on it so that it's easy to re-seal the pack to keep the crunchy in over the week or so it takes me to eat 'em. I gave that tab a yank and looked in and all the cookies are in their respective little compartments all CRUSHED to bits. Not one whole cookie in the bunch. Few are even bite size. The plastic thing isn't even dented. They must have delivered them to the store via one of those Soyuz re-entry capsules with the defective parachute. It wouldn't be too bad if I had some ice cream to pile them on. But I am not going all the way back over there and through the maze just for ice cream. I'll just pour them in a bowl and eat them with a spoon. It is probably a marketing gimmick to make people buy ice cream every time they buy these cookies just in case the cookies are crushed when they get home and open them up. That is all. As you were.