SETI - nope, not in Ohio!

Here's the link to the Slashdot post, and here's the actual article from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette -

The search for extraterrestrial life has ended at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services in Columbus, Ohio.

The department Thursday fired a computer programmer who admitted to using a state-owned computer server to process data for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project, run by the University of California at Berkeley.

Charles E. Smith, 63, told administrators he didn’t think loading the SETI software on the server was much of a problem because he ran the program only when the server wasn’t being used, according to a disciplinary report.

Department head Tom Hayes disagreed.

“I understand his desire to search for intelligent life in outer space, because obviously he doesn’t find it in the mirror in the morning,” Hayes said. “I think that people can be comfortable that security has beamed this man out of our building.”

So OK then. If you are a programmer or systems admin or computer professional working for ANYONE - you shouldn't be loading shareware software onto their servers. I'm down with that. He deserved to get fired in my opinion. No need to kick the man when he was down though. You fired him - you don't need to basically call him stupid as well. Just my two cents.

The second Presidential debate

Watched most of the debate last night - Bush didn't really sway my opinion of him. I still think he's a weasel, and his attacks on Kerry didn't really go anywhere new. He just keeps hammering the same couple of points - "liberal", "flip-flopper", "unfit to be Commander In Chief". I thought Kerry handled himself well, and didn't get rattled by Bush's more forceful and confrontational tone - a real departure from Bush's performance in the first debate where he seemed really tentative and had long silences before coming up with something to say. Apparently, Bush's performance (and a odd bulge in his jacket) have launched a theory that he was wearing an earpiece in the first debate. Some say the picture is doctored, some say when he said "Now let me finish" in the middle of an answer that he was actually talking to the person in his earpiece (here's a link to a forum that has a Real Audio clip of this. I don't know if he did or didn't - but he didn't look like he had an earpiece in for last night's debate. One more debate to go - hopefully Kerry will continue to shine!

Good to be in DC!

Go to www.jibjab.com. Watch "Good to be in DC". Repeat as necessary. That is all.

Seriously - go now. It's really funny. You'll like it, I swear. GO!!!

A vision of the future

I read Robert X. Cringely's I, Cringely regularly and his latest article really has some food for thought. Although the ability to act as your own broadband ISP/Cable provider/VoIP provider is outside of the means and technical knowhow of most people, it's still a very cool idea. Wish I could do it!

Cheney : Not up on the whole internet thing

Hee. In Tuesday's Vice Presidential debate, Dick Cheney was trying to direct people to look at factcheck.org, a nonpartisan Web site run by the University of Pennsylvania. But what he SAID was "factcheck.COM" - which is a for-profit advertising site based in the Cayman Islands. They re-directed traffic (since they were getting swamped with hits) to a site run by George Soros, a billionaire who makes no secret of his opposition to the Bush administration. A lawyer for the owner of factcheck.COM said his client "picked the Soros site partly for its political views", but also because Soros can afford the cost of all that Web traffic. And traffic to www.factcheck.com is still being routed there - click the link above if you want to check. They have a disclaimer on their page - "We do not own the FactCheck.com domain name and are not responsible for it redirecting to GeorgeSoros.com. We are as surprised as anyone by this turn of events. We believe that Vice President Cheney intended to direct viewers of the Vice-Presidential Debate to FactCheck.org." Hee. I'll bet Cheney could be heard muttering after he was made aware of the error, "F*** the internet." Hee.

One small step for (a) man...

Congratulations to Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV) and their leaders, Burt Rutan and Paul Allen, and also to pilot Brian Binnie - SpaceShipOne completes 2nd Historic trip to space and wins the Ansari X Prize. The second trip needed to clinch the win happened on Monday. I was able to watch the landing, and it was a very cool moment. Check this link out to watch video of the flight.


On a sad note, Rodney Dangerfield died Tuesday afternoon. He was 82 years old. Rodney, we will miss you. And we respect you. RIP.

You've got to have an exit strategy

If Bush wins the election in November, I think I'll move to Belize. Yeah, or Canada. That could work.

The first debate

I watched very little of this, heard a little bit about it on NPR this morning. According to this Boston Herald article, the debate hasn't changed many opinions or helped many undecided voters make up their minds yet. Perhaps the next debate will help them. My mind is already made up (*cough* the banner at the top *cough*), but you should go out and do some research if you're still undecided yourself. Just be sure to cast your vote November 2nd - if you aren't registered, go here - but you need to hurry!!

Ewww, that's just fugly...

My wife loves this site - Go Fug Yourself - some truly poor fashion choices on display here. Go check it out!

Lost

The pilot for Lost finished up last night (and will be shown again this Saturday) - so far I'm really liking this show. I'm just hoping that the weird "monster" on the island with the crash survivors doesn't turn out to be something lame. If you haven't watched the show, definitely take advantage of the Saturday replay and check it out - you won't be disappointed!

Where is her miniskirt, made of snakeskin...

It's possibly getting a little too much airplay, but Bowling For Soup's 1985 is a funny song - funny video too!
If you have iTunes - click the link below to purchase 1985

There's only so much time in the day, you know.

Been awhile since I've had time to post anything - work has really been sucky recently and I've been so busy I had no time to get one written. I'd get into why work sucks so bad, but that would just end up making me mad - so I won't. But on a different subject, a couple of my favorite TV shows had their season premieres recently - Smallville and Joan of Arcadia. Joan just premiered last night - it was great! I'd really missed the show, and it was a good episode. Love that show, and this season looks to be pretty good. Smallville was on Wednesday night here - we don't have a WB affiliate station, so WB shows play on weird days usually at 10pm or later - which sucks sometimes. It was a pretty good episode, but had entirely too much of two things - naked Clark was one, and Lana (just Lana in general, she's bad) was the other. The introduction of Lois Lane was cool, and I'm hoping they really do some good things with the character. I also REALLY thought it was cool having Margot Kidder play Dr. Swann's assistant, Bridgette Crosby. If you don't watch the show, it's REALLY cool because Dr. Swann is played by Christopher Reeve. Of course these shows plus all the other shows I watch - well... It's alot of TV. But you've gotta do something with what little free time you can get these days, right?

It's on like Donkey Kong!! (to quote Chip)

Didn't have enough time to post about this yesterday, but the finale of The Amazing Race was Tuesday. It was a great race, and the best finish in my opinion. Chip and Kim were my favorite team by far, and it was great fun to finally have the team I've been rooting for during the season finally win one!! One of the best parts of watching the finale was my wife's reaction to some interesting hats worn by Chip and Kim, and Brandon. You can see them in this picture -



That's right - red ski caps that say "Canada" on them and look like a maple leaf! Here's a bigger photo -



Neat, huh? So basically, every time my wife saw one she started giggling and going "I want one!" They are proving to be kinda hard to find though. Haven't had any luck except for one we found on eBay, and the bidding for it is over $33 right now. That's a little pricey. Gotta keep looking, I guess. But overall a great show (2 time Emmy award winner!) and a great finale!

A really good reason to not even open spam

Apparently, some spam emails "opt-out" links are actually JavaScript exploits. You click on the link and the malicious script uses an exploit in Internet Explorer to basically turn your PC into a email relay - opening it up to unauthorized access and turning it into a spam source. Nice, huh? No one should click those links anyway, since all it REALLY does is confirm your email address and shows a spam emailer that someone reads mail at that email address. Read the full article on The Register here. So it would be a good idea to not let your mail program run JavaScript, to not open spam mail at all, and to maybe use Mozilla's Thunderbird instead of Outlook/Outlook Express.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Saw Sky Captain Friday night. I really liked it a lot! Very interesting concept and I thought it was well executed and really looked great. The visual effects were terrific, and the whole style - with the animation and the CG backrounds and the colorized look - it was really effective to set the tone and pull you into this world. Go see Sky Captain - you'll enjoy it!!

Hmm, looks like it might be time to stop using that pirated version of Windows...

This article on news.zdnet.com goes over Microsoft's new plan to "provide a better experience for users of licensed software." Right. Sounds more like a way to find out more about who's NOT using licensed software to me. It's optional at this time, but who knows? They could start making it an automatic mandatory check, like whenever you go to Windows Update it would automatically check maybe. We'll see what becomes of this, if anything.

Make your own Flash movie

This site is pretty fun - D.Film Moviemaker. you can choose from pre-rendered backgrounds and characters, add some music and your own words and make a fun little flash movie! Have fun!!

Try it - you might like it

Been listening to some new bands recently on my iPod -

Coheed and Cambria - a quirky little band from upstate New York. You've possibly heard the single A Favor House Atlantic or seen the video for it. If your interested and you have iTunes, you can click this iTunes button to download it for yourself!


My wife heard this song and thought it was Rush - because she thinks the singer sounds like Geddy Lee. And he does - a little bit :)

Lacuna Coil - an Italian band, kinda Goth rock, I like the tune Heaven's a Lie a lot. A guy on a message board I frequent described Lacuna Coil as "Evanescence, but with talent". Hey, that's not nice... or am I dumb for thinking Evanescence has some talent? Again, if you're interested and have iTunes, you can download the song by clicking the iTunes button -




By the way - these aren't free downloads. If you want them, you'll have to pay 99 cents. Not a bad price to hear some cool new music, but I wanted to be sure nobody thought I was giving away free music or something!

Whoops, forgot one!

Forgot one game on the post from yesterday -

SIMS 2 - for PC - This is probably the most anticipated sequel of the year so far, I can't believe I forgot to list it before! It's getting good reviews from the game magazines - looks like it's even more fun than the original, and I'm sure it will sell VERY well.

New and upcoming video game releases

I know I said I'd be posting yesterday, but I had a big problem with my PC and spent a good few hours fixing it, didn't feel much like doing anything else on a computer after that! So, here's a little info about some upcoming video games (a subject near and dear to my heart) that sound like fun -

FABLE - for PC and Xbox - This game came out today, and it sounds really cool. It's a role-playing adventure game with a twist - everything you do from childhood (where the game begins for your character) to death - affects the game and your character, how he looks and acts and interacts with everyone in the game. Neat stuff.

HALO 2 - for PC and Xbox - This one doesn't come out til November 9th, and I can't wait!! It's going to be even better than the original Halo, check out the trailer if you don't believe me.

KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II : THE SITH LORDS - for Xbox on 12/04 and for PC on 2/05 - I loved the first KOTOR, and this one certainly is shaping up to be as good if not better than it was.

PLAYBOY : THE MANSION - for PC and Xbox and Playstation 2 - This game gives you the chance to BE Hugh Hefner, building the Playboy magazine empire from scratch. And as you become more rich and famous, you get to outfit the Playboy mansion and throw huge star-studded events. Could be a good time! (Definitely ADULTS ONLY, though)

LEISURE SUIT LARRY : MAGNA CUM LAUDE - for PC and Xbox and Playstation 2 - The new installment of the famous Leisure Suit Larry series looks like it will live up to the old games and will also push the boundaries of the Mature rating for video games! This one is out now, check it out - if it's your kind of game :) (Again, ADULTS ONLY).