2008 archive
Too Big To Fail 0
Robert Reich:
We used to have public policies to prevent companies from getting too big. Does anyone remember antitrust laws? Somewhere along the line policymakers decided that antitrust would only be used where there was evidence a company had so much market power it could keep prices higher than otherwise.
We seem to have forgotten that the original purpose of antitrust law was also to prevent companies from becoming too powerful.
(snip)
Maybe the biggest irony today is that Washington policymakers who are funneling taxpayer dollars to these too-big-to-fail companies are simultaneously pushing them to consolidate into even bigger companies.
And the rest of us are too small to be helped.
The “Voter Fraud” Fraud 0
Headline:
Chester man arrested in voter fraud
Crucial quotation (emphasis added):
“Workers are told that we will not tolerate fraud and that we will cooperate with authorities,” said Krista Holab, political director of Pennsylvania ACORN. “We tell them a felony is not worth $8 an hour.”
Holab said staffers immediately noticed problems when trying to verify information on the cards Barksdale submitted, and he was fired after eight days on the job.
“We called it to the attention of the Board of Elections in June,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that it has taken this many months for the D.A. to take action.”
Holab said ACORN is required to submit the cards to election officials even if fraud is suspected.
(Man, I’ve had to add a new category just for this stuff.)
Blog Backup Script Fixed (Updated) 6
You can read the full story of how I shot this trouble here. I kept it all in one place in case some poor jerk like me comes along looking for an answer to the same problem.
I’ve written a script to back up the database and set it up to run at five tomorrow morning. I’ve already run the script from the command line and it works perfectly. All I’m doing now is testing the cron job.
Addendum, 10/24/2008:
The script ran this morning, right on schedule.
End Addendum
If you’re interested in the script, it’s below the fold.
Mustang Silly 0
My neighbor just told me he got a text from a friend pointing out that the Federal Guv’mint took over the Mustang Ranch and lost money on it.
They couldn’t make money on whorehouse vacation destination and now they want to run* the banks.
___________________
*As opposed to “regulate.”
New Toy 1
I cashed in some AmEx rewards points and got myself a toy. It’s a Garmin Nuvi 205.
It’s not that I need a GPS. I actually like maps.
One of my conceits is that, whenever I drive into a state, I’ll stop at the welcome center and get the current official state highway map (Va., Md., Pa., and NJ excepted, because I drive into them frequently).
So this is definitely a toy. And it was already paid for.
I took it for a spin today. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.
No, I don’t leave it in the vehicle.
Linux Makes Inroads in Hospitals 0
Makes inroads:
(snip)
This raises so many questions. Will Richard Stallman insist that the baby be called GNU/Linux? Does a baby named Linux go to sleep and wake up without problems? How often does he outgrow his footwear and require a reboot?
Reportedly, they had another name picked out, but, when he arrived, they thought he was as cute as Tux:
Via Linux Outlaws.
Real Americans 0
Frankly, I resent the Republican Party’s implication that, unless you vote wingnut, you are not from the “Real America.”
My father’s people came here in the early 1600’s. My mother’s people received their family farm (which, unfortunately, her Grandfather drank away) in a landgrant from one of the Kings Georges.
My ancestors on both sides fought in the Revolutionary War.
They also fought (on the wrong side, sadly–something that caused Second Son great embarrassment when he saw a statue of my Great-Great-mumble not sure how many Greats-Uncle signing John Brown’s death certificate at the Harper’s Ferry Wax Museum) in the Civil War.
And my family has fought in American Wars before and since.
My older son wears the uniform of the United States of America and has twice served overseas in combat.
The little Baptist Church in which I grew up stands on land donated by one of my ancestors before the ratification of the Constitution of the United States.
And for some venal, insipid, pandering, ignorant pol to imply that I and my family members and anyone else who loves this country and what it stands for, no matter whether they have been here three months or three hundred years, who believes in the ideals of the Founders, who reveres the blood they shed and the risks they took, are somehow not “real America” because of our choices at the ballot box, is beyond disgusting.
All this reveals is that the wingnuts really have no understanding of what this nation, its history and heritage, its ideals, its sacrifices, its failures and triumphs, are about.
I have no words for my contempt for them and their arrogance and ignorance.
Either Something Is Seriously Wrong or I’ve Been Noticed 0
I’ve had to reboot the server twice today because it was dragging.
It’s not the OS.
Slackware is rock solid. It always works and never crashes.
Both times the database passed all the checks.
Guess I’ll have to see whether I can salvage the P4 that’s sitting downstairs on the treadmill with the dead HDD and turn it into a server. Somewhere I have an HDD sitting in a drawer.
New Jersey Is Stopped Up 0
Do We Call Chris the Plumber or Joe the Tow Truck Driver?
(snip)
The truck was reportedly carrying a load of toilets. The load will be offloaded before the truck can be uprighted before 8 a.m., Jones said. Traffic was being detoured to Interstate 295.
Real Coffee and the Morning Is Good 0
My shipment of Gevalia came yesterday. It’s worth the extra pennies.
No more Eight O’Clock (that’s my fall-back).
I’m drinking Kenyan this morning.
Tripe 0
That’s another word for “underbelly.”
From the Booman, and he’s right on target. He describes the foundations of Republicanism. In all its slimy reality.
Addendum, Later That Same Evening:
Racist bastards.
I Love Open Source Error Messages 0
Programmers who are not creatures of some corporation have a sense of humor and are allowed to display it.
When I started the burn, K3B told me that the image had an invalid file size and to “continue only if you know what you are doing.”
I don’t, but I continued. The worst that can happen is I throw away the disk.
By the way, I once reported a bug to the K3B developer (it had to do with retarding the computer clock when using the “Copy DVD” feature to copy from one DVD drive to another). We traded emails off and on for about six months. He’s a hell of a nice guy and jealously desirous of making K3B the best burner program around.
In the World of Window$, I’ve used Nero, Sonic, and Roxio. Nero and Roxio are about the best of the Windows bunch. I have licensed copies of all three.
K3B is better and easier to use than any one, two, or three of them.
Why Sarah Palin Talks That Way 2
Harry Shearer’s extensive research answers the question:
“mysqldump: Got error: 2002: Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/run/mysql/mysql.sock’ (2) when trying to connect” (Updated) (Updated Again–Fixed) 2
When entering the command
mysqldump -u [username] -p[password] –opt [databasename]
Man, I hate trouble-shooting SQL.
Now, I know more about SQL than most computer users. A good part of my work at Checkpoint involved supporting SQL databases, both in Crystal Reports and in M$SQL (I preferred Crystal). MySQL is not all that different. Structured Query Language is, after all Structured Query Language.
But what I know how to do is change the oil and check the fluid levels. Fuel injection is a mystery to me. So are the inner workings of SQL.
When I have fuel injection problems, I take my vehicle to Jack Smith’s; I know Donnie will get it right the first time and fix the problem.
I got no Jack Smith’s for SQL.
When I have to shoot this kind of trouble, it’s like reading a Proust novel in French using a French-English/English-French dictionary.
Oh, well. I’ll figure it out. I always do.
And when I do, I’ll write a script (it’s actually half-written) that makes a folder over there
—–>,
on my second hard drive, named with today’s date (year-month-date-hour-minute) and backs my database up to it. Then I’ll make the script a cron job so it runs every night.
No more three months of lost blogging for me.
(I know that Opie is the only regular I have who’s going to have any idea what the heck I’m talking about. That’s why all the links. We were all newbies once.)
Click to read the updates.
Read more »
Drinking Liberally 0
Tuesday, Tangier, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6 p. m.
Come celebrate the triumph of Republican economic theory cry into your beer.
Voter Fraud 0
ASZ has the story.
This appears to be the real thing, unlike the ACORN stuff, and, natch, it’s a Republican thing.