1:
So lots of people have been following the trouble in Texas involving the polygamist sect and all. What I found interesting was that at the beginning the news reports all referred to the people involved as the FLDS church. Lately, however, they're always referred to as the "polygamist sect". I thought that was interesting and would not be surprised at all if the LDS church PR department requested that the term FLDS not be used because the LDS church doesn't like the suggestion that there is an active association there.
2:
The church has a rule that your not supposed to have red punch in the meeting halls to prevent stains on the carpet/chairs/etc. I've thought about this as I was watching an X-Files about a cult. I think part of that rule might be to avoid the appearance of having people "drink the Kool-Aid" which is often associated with the suicide ritual of cults. Where the participants drink the red Kool-Aid which has been poisoned. It would certainly not look good to have visitors come to an activity where people are all standing around drinking red punch. Just a thought on the subject.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Why I will not be voting for McCain
This is one reason why I will not be voting for McCain:
Supporting the Bush Administration's policy of running illegal warrant-less wiretaps on US citizens is stupid, coming straight out and saying you'll do the same thing is unacceptable. You will receive no vote from me if your plan is to continue dismantling the Constitution in the same way the Bush Administration has for the last 8 years.
[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]--- McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign
We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.
Supporting the Bush Administration's policy of running illegal warrant-less wiretaps on US citizens is stupid, coming straight out and saying you'll do the same thing is unacceptable. You will receive no vote from me if your plan is to continue dismantling the Constitution in the same way the Bush Administration has for the last 8 years.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Moving On: Fighting the (Housing) Man
Phew, I haven't got that riled up in a while now. That, my friends, is why it is impolite to discuss politics at the dinner table.
Let's find something less controversial to write about.
Being the end of the month I knew I would be seeing the utility bill from management soon. I had allotted $50 in my budget to cover any electrical and gas expenses for May. I was hoping that this $50 would have plenty of extra room since May was fairly warm and we only needed the heat on for about 7-12 days.
When I saw the bill located on the door reading $115 I was a little enraged. That was more than double what we'd paid any previous month. It was ridiculous. So on Friday we went to the management office to tell them we would not be paying that amount, and asking to see the bills from the utility companies. Turns out their workers are just incompetent and their management unfamiliar with legal contracts.
The worker dividing up the bill did it incorrectly, so when it read $115 it should have said $76. The second part was that one of the managers decided that since two of the people with contracts weren't actually living here that they'd just charge the two of us for all the utilities. Now, from their perspective I can follow that thought process. But, we must also consider two other points of view:
1. In order to heat a house there is a baseline amount of gas that will be used regardless of how many people are actually living there, and since we only kept the heat at 65 F it wasn't like we were being excessive. So doubling our utilities bills is not fair to us simply because the other contract holders don't live in the unit.
2. The contract holders signed a contract stating that they would pay for utilities. They still hold the contracts (despite not living in the unit due to being unable to sell them) ergo they are still legally obligated to help pay for utilities.
To top it off, if they were suddenly to decide to change the distribution of the utility bill they should have had the courtesy of discussing it with us first.
Having taken care of the matter the $115 bill has returned to a more anticipated bill of $38.
Why do you have to fight with people just to get things done the way they're supposed to be in the first place? Why do the people that are too nice or perhaps not as savvy about things like this have to get screwed out of their money? We're the best tenants this company has ever had and they recognize us as such. We take care of the property, make it a million times better than it was when we moved in; just treat us with respect.
Let's find something less controversial to write about.
Being the end of the month I knew I would be seeing the utility bill from management soon. I had allotted $50 in my budget to cover any electrical and gas expenses for May. I was hoping that this $50 would have plenty of extra room since May was fairly warm and we only needed the heat on for about 7-12 days.
When I saw the bill located on the door reading $115 I was a little enraged. That was more than double what we'd paid any previous month. It was ridiculous. So on Friday we went to the management office to tell them we would not be paying that amount, and asking to see the bills from the utility companies. Turns out their workers are just incompetent and their management unfamiliar with legal contracts.
The worker dividing up the bill did it incorrectly, so when it read $115 it should have said $76. The second part was that one of the managers decided that since two of the people with contracts weren't actually living here that they'd just charge the two of us for all the utilities. Now, from their perspective I can follow that thought process. But, we must also consider two other points of view:
1. In order to heat a house there is a baseline amount of gas that will be used regardless of how many people are actually living there, and since we only kept the heat at 65 F it wasn't like we were being excessive. So doubling our utilities bills is not fair to us simply because the other contract holders don't live in the unit.
2. The contract holders signed a contract stating that they would pay for utilities. They still hold the contracts (despite not living in the unit due to being unable to sell them) ergo they are still legally obligated to help pay for utilities.
To top it off, if they were suddenly to decide to change the distribution of the utility bill they should have had the courtesy of discussing it with us first.
Having taken care of the matter the $115 bill has returned to a more anticipated bill of $38.
Why do you have to fight with people just to get things done the way they're supposed to be in the first place? Why do the people that are too nice or perhaps not as savvy about things like this have to get screwed out of their money? We're the best tenants this company has ever had and they recognize us as such. We take care of the property, make it a million times better than it was when we moved in; just treat us with respect.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Lies, Lies, Lies
We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories ... And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.-- George W. Bush. May 30, 2003
No manipulation of intelligence reports would account for saying we found "weapons of mass destruction" when none existed. President Bush must have known these were lies when he was saying them. The American public continues to be misled by him and his administration.
When will we wake up? He has lied to us for 8 years straight about everything he's been doing involving the Middle East. The result? The United States of America is either ignored or despised by the majority of the world. Our former allies want nothing to do with us and our sinking ship of a nation. If we don't turn this country around soon we will be left behind by a world that is beginning to realize that it doesn't revolve around our country.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Interview Number 1: Are you a weirdo?
I started looking for some part-time work about a week ago. I sent my resume out to some places that had advertised on the CS department job board. Yesterday one of them contacted me to setup an interview. So I went and interviewed with them today. This interview was (in my words) simply to determine whether or not I was a weirdo.
The interviewer is essentially the head of HR as well as other sections (it's a small startup company), and he was nice enough to tell me up front that this interview was mostly for him to gauge my personality. So he asked some general HR type questions. I think I did a pretty good job of showing some character and being pleasant and avoiding the appearance of a mal-adjusted nerd.
I got to meet some of the other workers who seemed like cool people who would be fun to work with. The interviewer said he'd probably call me early next week to setup a technical interview. So I'm looking forward to that. I think I'd really enjoy working there, maybe if I get the part-time job it would become a full-time position when I (hopefully) graduate next year. We'll see what happens.
The interviewer is essentially the head of HR as well as other sections (it's a small startup company), and he was nice enough to tell me up front that this interview was mostly for him to gauge my personality. So he asked some general HR type questions. I think I did a pretty good job of showing some character and being pleasant and avoiding the appearance of a mal-adjusted nerd.
I got to meet some of the other workers who seemed like cool people who would be fun to work with. The interviewer said he'd probably call me early next week to setup a technical interview. So I'm looking forward to that. I think I'd really enjoy working there, maybe if I get the part-time job it would become a full-time position when I (hopefully) graduate next year. We'll see what happens.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Accidental Down Time
I run three websites off of my home desktop. They sit on virtual machines running within VMWare. This makes it convenient to keep them running without interfering with my personal machine, and I can easily backup or re-locate the virtual machines without disrupting operations.
As the newest Ubuntu release came out recently (Hardy Heron 8.04) I finally decided to upgrade my desktop to the latest and greatest. I had not anticipated the fact that VMWare does not currently have a release in the Ubuntu 8.04 repositories due to kernel changes. So I accidentally brought all three websites down because VMWare was no longer running. Since it was the middle of the day and I didn't have time to fix it (and I wanted to keep the websites up for the few visitors they do get) I thought of a solution and I thought it up quick (congratulations if you caught the Grinch reference there). I rebooted into Windows (haven't done that in about 8 months) and installed VMWare server there and got one of the virtual machines running again. The other virtual machine apparently got corrupted somehow and ended needing to be replaced from a backup.
Later that evening I rebooted back to Ubuntu and found the instructions to install VMWare manually.
Ladies and Gentlemen, that is why Virtual Machines are cool. Of course, what I should have done is send the Virtual Machines over to my laptop, and update my router to forward the traffic to it while I did the upgrade on my desktop. Live and Learn.
As the newest Ubuntu release came out recently (Hardy Heron 8.04) I finally decided to upgrade my desktop to the latest and greatest. I had not anticipated the fact that VMWare does not currently have a release in the Ubuntu 8.04 repositories due to kernel changes. So I accidentally brought all three websites down because VMWare was no longer running. Since it was the middle of the day and I didn't have time to fix it (and I wanted to keep the websites up for the few visitors they do get) I thought of a solution and I thought it up quick (congratulations if you caught the Grinch reference there). I rebooted into Windows (haven't done that in about 8 months) and installed VMWare server there and got one of the virtual machines running again. The other virtual machine apparently got corrupted somehow and ended needing to be replaced from a backup.
Later that evening I rebooted back to Ubuntu and found the instructions to install VMWare manually.
Ladies and Gentlemen, that is why Virtual Machines are cool. Of course, what I should have done is send the Virtual Machines over to my laptop, and update my router to forward the traffic to it while I did the upgrade on my desktop. Live and Learn.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Silly Children
I went to lunch with a couple of my sisters today. My nephews are hilarious. Here's a video of nephew the elder eating a muffin, he really likes his muffin:
I was going to include another video of nephew the younger eating a piece of bread, but I can't find a video editor for Linux that will actually work, since I want to cut the 70 second video to 10 seconds. So oh well.
I was going to include another video of nephew the younger eating a piece of bread, but I can't find a video editor for Linux that will actually work, since I want to cut the 70 second video to 10 seconds. So oh well.
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