John McDonald

Blogging about politics, life, and the web

Monthly Archives: September 2009

Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 – an Incredibly Horrible Idea

September 30th, 2009

One of the major hazards of smoking at the computer is the early death of many keyboards. The ashtray sits above the slide-out mouse and keyboard level, so cigarettes that are left sitting to burn out often tip over and fall down to where the inputs are at.

That’s fine though, I’ve become resigned to the fact that I have to go out and get a new $20 keyboard every few months.

What isn’t OK is this Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000. As soon as I plug in and sit down, I realize that I can’t even type out my own name or other addresses of websites I own.

Wait a minute, how am I supposed to actually write content for a half dozen blogs if I’m learning how to type all over again? I’m used to typing 50-60 words a minute, just as fast as I can think them up for the most part. You never really appreciate how natural and unconscious typing is until you try to do it on an instrument shaped in a slightly different way.

I’ll call this situation extremely frustrating, but I’m being generous. I’m actually half tempted to drive right back to Wal-mart and demand a refund. But the lines there were ten people long and no one was working the service counter.

Why did I even buy this one? Well, they had two kinds of keyboards and the other one was the same exact kind as the one that had broken quicker than usual.

Now that I’ve been typing on it for a while, I know that I’ll probably be used to it within a few more blog posts. After 250 words in to this one, I am only consistently messing up on Cs, Vs, Bs, Fs, and Gs. It seems that the B and N keys are way too oversized, and they push everything else on the bottom left further than you’d intuitively expect it to be.

Eben staying vonsvious og this gavt, I van’t seem to vompensate. [sic]

Tulsa Welding School Provides Practical Education

September 30th, 2009

College obviously isn’t for everyone. Sometimes, I’m not sure if its really for anyone other than the student loan lenders, professors, and other direct financial beneficiaries. Obviously education is important, but a lot of students get distracted by classes and course requirements that are explicitly related to the goals and skills the student actually wants to learn.

Of course history is important, but does everyone need 9 credits in order to write computer programs? Does a Journalism or Communications student need calculus or pre-calc in order to write up a public relations campaign?

There’s obviously a need for people to have well-balanced degrees and wide ranges of knowledge – but college isn’t always the best way to accomplish it. Especially these days, because employers are looking for very specific skills more than ever. Where a liberal arts degree may have been good enough to get in to a new career, employers these days want to know if you’re specialized in IT or management or whatever it may be…

Unfortunately, our high schools don’t prepare students well for any technical jobs. Even professors constantly complain that freshman aren’t ready for college level work – and employers realize that their new just-out-of-high-school workers have few specific skills or technical talents.

Anyway, my friend is about six months in to a seven month program at Tulsa Welding School. Talk about a lot of focused and specialized learning in a short period of time!

He’s always been interested in welding, but its tough to get a start these days. Apprentice-like jobs are hard to come by as the employment market breaks down, and managers on job sites just don’t have time to play teacher to new workers.

Yet after just a few months of studying at a focused and fast-paced school, he’s now in a position where local businesses are starting to take his applications seriously. Even without the certificate of completion, the same hiring managers are suddenly much more willing to consider.

Hopefully, more technical and vocational programs will be included in future high school curriculums. Not everyone is headed to college, and its silly to think they will if you deny them other marketable skills. We’ve got an employment mess and an education mess in this country at the same time – so its a perfect chance to fix them both at once.

Fall comes to Jacksonville

September 30th, 2009

It was a good summer, but its officially done. The cool wind outside cannot be mistaken for the climate of a Florida summer. We’ve survived most of the hurricane season, and we haven’t lost any trees for it this year. We do still have some logs in the yard from the last one, does anyone need some firewood?

Despite a trip to Ireland, a nice vacation with the folks, and a lot of time in the sun and working in the yard, I can’t help but feel like I missed out on something. That I should have accomplished something else.

Perhaps its an instinctual warning, a reminder of the coming winter. The cold breeze makes me want to work harder, it inspires as much as it threatens.

There are no leaves changing color – everything is green and will likely stay that way. Cold won’t stop business and snow won’t make it this far south, but something about the prospect of winter’s approach still makes me want to prepare for hibernation.

If Truth Undermines Confidence, We Have a Big Problem

September 25th, 2009

Congress is currently in the process of discussing and debating a piece of legislation that would fully and completely audit the Federal Reserve bank – for the first time in the institution’s history.

Despite wielding overwhelming influence on the financial and monetary standing of the United States, no elected politician has even been allowed to take a look at what they’re actually doing with our money.  Several of the Fed’s board members are appointed by the private banks who own shares in the Fed, but a slim majority of the board is nominated by the president.  Once they’re in there though, all we can do is hope they’re doing the right thing.

Now, can you imagine a job that gives you immense power and influence without ever having to answer to anyone’s complaints and criticisms?  This is at the root of all the conspiracy theories – power and secrecy is a dangerous mixture for those stuck on the outside.

The Argument Against Truth

Defenders of the Fed are out there, even if they’re few and far between.  Of course, the best way to get defenders and supporters is to buy them – and one of the most telling defenses is being propagated by the Fed’s top lawyer.  He claims:

We’re concerned that [revealing the truth of our activities] would cause the markets and the public to lose confidence in the independence and judgment of the Federal Reserve

There are also plenty of professional economists who will repeat this or a similar argument.  And it should be no surprise, as this article explains exactly what it means to be a professional economist in a financial world dominated by secretive central banks.

Editors of academic journals, mainstream media pundits, professors – many of these experts work for the bank that doesn’t want us to see its books.

Want a more detailed idea of what’s going on?  Check out this excellent book:  Deception and Abuse at the Fed

When Stuff Actually Happens, There’s No Time to Blog About It…

September 24th, 2009

Its been a busy few days, and I find it ironic that as soon as I have a lot of things going on that I don’t have any time left to blog about it.  What an extreme difference from the usual problem:  too much time and nothing to talk about!

First, I’ve got someone who wants to learn about building websites and making some money online.  Hopefully, I can help.  The process of teaching does a lot to cement your own knowledge and force your own advances in thinking.

Second, I’ve got a new contract job to prepare for.  Its nothing special, but I’ll get to do online work for a set wage.  A little bit of extra income and wage stability will be nice considering the rapid fluctuations in the hosting industry and online advertising rates in general.  Although my websites have continuously grown in traffic since they started, the average prices of advertising space has fallen in almost a perfectly proportionate amount.  Go figure, its like people don’t have as much money to spend!

Now that I think about it, the fact that I have more work to do doesn’t sound like that interesting of a thing to blog about after all.

I’M STILL EXCITED, DAMNIT 🙂

Now where is all of this time supposed to come from…?

First Summer Farm – More Lessons than Food

September 18th, 2009

It was about six months ago that I got the bright idea to try growing some vegetables in the backyard, and if I wasn’t such a patient person I’d have to call it a miserable failure.

The rainy weather never let up, and most of what got planted ended up drowning.

I learned a few things though.

When an onion sprouts in the refrigerator, you can’t suddenly put it outside in the hundred degree heat.  Apparently, they sprout differently based on what time of year they think it is.  Needless to say, what looked like a green and healthy onion with multiple long leaves, really just made great food for bugs and worms and other agents of decomposition.

Another thing I learned is that pokeweed sprouts don’t look very different than pepper sprouts – and that someone without too much knowledge & experience might not know the difference until those darn black berries start popping up. This also reinforces the importance of using soil that isn’t already contaminated with various seeds – at least until I can recognize my plants better.  Pictures on the internet aren’t enough to make one knowledgable either, who would have guessed that peppers and pokeweeds both have small white star-like flowers with yellow stamen?

Also, berries are as picky about growing conditions as they are delicious.  Strawberries, blackberries, raspberries – no luck.  I was warned that most grocery berries would be sterile, but a few sprouts did pop up.  Where they weeds or actually berries?  Who knows, the non-stop rain flooded them out and killed off anything in those pots other than the dollar weeds.

Luckily, it hasn’t been a total loss.

We did have some luck with the tomatos.  OK, at least one plant of the original ten seedlings is doing well.  They’ve got their own place in the yard next to the deck, and the tallest one has already used up four feet of lattice in its quest to reach the sky.  It might be too late in the season to get fruit from the plants this year, but we do know that tomatos like our combination of heavy rains and brutal sun.

There’s also been some luck with the long green onions.  Those guys are doing great in just a small container.  That’s going to be great next time I’m making nachos!

Next spring, we’ll have a slightly better plan in place before digging in to the dirt – and hopefully, it works out a bit better.

And Suddenly Dreamhost Speeds Up

September 16th, 2009

Oddly enough, the Dreamhost speed issue I had recently blogged about seems to have completely resolved itself.  Two or three seconds of extra time when you’re loading a page may not seem like a lot, but it is definitely noticeable enough to influence user behavior.  Its also a pain to go through submissions on a Pligg site and try to weed out the spam from the semi-legit contributions.

But whatever it was, a few days of an extra second or two of lag is still the worst experience during my time hosting sites on Dreamhost.  I’d say that’s a pretty good track record, and I’m looking forward to the next few years of speedy service 🙂

Heck, I still don’t even know that it was anything on the host’s end.  There very well could have been a problem with Comcast or any of the hops in between Comcast and DH’s data warehouse in California.  There’s a whole country worth of “internet tubes” in between us, after all. As with air travel, a lot of the internet data out of Jacksonville gets tied up with long lines and waits in Atlanta.

Comcast in Jacksonville – Fewer Choices at Higher Prices! (Or, Why the History Channel and Cartoon Network Suck Now)

September 16th, 2009

What a bad combination, I was paying my cable bill at the exact same time I was trying to find something to watch.  I did manage to pay the bill, but I’m still looking for something decent to watch.

A few years ago, Comcast bought up all the rights to the city’s cable infrastructure.  The lines have been in for a while, and as long ago as 1997 there’s been high bandwidth cable internet available.  Comcast themselves aren’t responsible for most of the line running through town, but they did purchase the rights so they’ve got a monopoly on cable access.

At first it was no big deal.  The lines are still the fastest source of internet in Jacksonville.  DSL and wireless offerings just can’t compare.  Unfortunately, the system is still prone to resets, short outages, and prime-time sluggishness.

What really sucks though, is the trend toward fewer and fewer basic cable channels.  It started a few months ago with Comcast putting Cartoon Network on channel 124 so you’d have to rent a “digital converter” if you wanted to watch.  (Someone should tell their marketing department that cable is already digital.)

Now they’ve completely gotten rid of the History Channel!  You can’t even find it on the nose-bleed channels, because its simply not on the Jacksonville line-up anywhere.

Of course, I can’t completely blame them.  The History Channel has turned in to a bit of a running joke on the internet.  Back in the day, they were jokingly referred to as the “Military History Channel” but these days their schedule seems filled with stories about UFOs and Alaskan truck-drivers and Bigfoot and Biblical conspiracy theories.  Now, I like conspiracy theories as much as the next guy, but they’ve so thoroughly abandoned anything resembling credibility in an attempt to make their wild stories seem believable.  Its not working.

Cartoon Network is also in a bit of a slump, so that may explain why Comcast is pushing their channel to the back of the list.  They haven’t been able to keep up with the high quality originals they introduced a decade ago:  Powerpuff Girls, Cow & Chicken, Johnny Bravo, Ed, Edd, and Eddie, Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Dexter’s Laboratory, etc…

For a while there, it seemed like they were on the cutting edge of cartoons, with shows that could be enjoyable to kids, young adults, and parents alike.  Then suddenly, they ran out of ideas or something because they ended up with rip-offs of the shows they had just canceled.

Even Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s late-night network, seemed to take a sharp turn for the worse.  With Colbert unable to work on Harvey Birdman anymore and Space Ghost & Brak faded to memory, the replacements relied heavily on live-action shows with low budgets.  Instead of situational comedy, they were relying more on visual gags, disgust factor, and shows that are supposedely “funny because they’re so bad.”

Well, guess what?  That’s not really funny at all:  That’s just bad!

So, for now, I have nothing to watch as far as cartoons and documentaries go.  And somehow I’m paying more for it than I did last year or the year before.  I might even drop cable outright, but the cost of internet without TV cable ends up making the extra channels practically free.  I could pay $90 for just the internet, or $130 for the internet with about 200 TV channels in one room and 50 in the rest.  Obviously, they figured out how to trap me in the services I’m using, but if too many more channels disappear from the lineup outright, I’ll have to seriously consider this satellite thing everyone is jumping aboard.

Slow Sites and No Hints

September 16th, 2009

The good news is that the air conditioner finally works properly again.  Not only does it work great, we also found a way to get it fixed for about a third of what the large local brand wanted.  So much for “branding,” all those billboards and advertisements are distracting from the cost-benefit of the product or service they provide.  I won’t name any names yet, because I don’t want to be one of those bloggers targeted for a lawsuit because some company doesn’t like the truth of their cost and quality to be revealed.  They spend big bucks to control the media conversation, so they have to employ judges and lawyers to fight some young guy like me with a personal blog and something to share.

Anyway, as soon as one problem is resolved, the next one will inevitably pop up.  And at the moment, my biggest problem in the website building biz is the fact that about half of my websites are loading incredibly slowly.  You can see it on this one here or any of the domains I’ve hosted on Dreamhost – the load time has just been painfully slow since the weekend started.  I was hoping for some relief, but there is no notification on the Dreamhost status blog.

For almost two years, I’ve been extremely happy with Dreamhost’s hosting services, so I’m a bit surprised to see this sudden slowdown across multiple domains.  These aren’t even high traffic domains!

I’m starting to wonder if one of my server-neighbors is hogging up the resources and lagging up our machine.  If so, I hope someone at Dreamhost realizes or else I’ll have to actually send in my first support request after 20 months of hosting!

Anyone else on the altair server noticing a slowdown?  Let me know!

Large Orb Weaver Spider in the Back Yard

September 9th, 2009

While we were out back checking out the air conditioner, we came across a really cool looking critter who had built up a web near our back yard fence.  Now normally, I’m not a big fan of spiders.  Jacksonville Florida is home to at least a few potentially lethal arachnids – and the black widows and brown recluse spiders are small, quick things that like to live indoors.

But that’s probably also why I like the golden orb weavers – they’re big and slow enough that you can keep an eye on them.  They also like to live outside, another big bonus for our ability to coexist peacefully.  Anyway, this thing is fascinating.

orbweaver1

The body is like three or four inches long and the legs obviously extend a lot further than that.

orbweaver2

Here the critter is stretching out, and presumably enjoying the late-summer weather.  The yellow mess on the web above the spider is actually some leftover mess from her dinner.  At any given time, there are a half dozen cocoons of poisoned and melting bugs.

orbweaver3

This shot gives some perspective on the weight and substance of this spider.  The bright orange/yellow abdomen gives a strong hint as to how much food this thing can consume.

And speaking of food:

orbweaver4This one is a little blurry, but when this spider springs in to action, it is a twitching and web weaving machine.  At this moment, she’s sunk her teeth in to and wrapping up some sort of beetle.

More About the Orb Weaver Spider:

First, you may have noticed I keep calling the spider “she” and “her.”  This is definitely the female of species – and the other spiders in the web are so tiny and insignificant that they didn’t seem interesting enough to take a picture of.  There are also a few small spiders known to freeload off the orb-weaver’s web, so I’m not even sure which one of the miniatures (if any) is another orb weaver.

And while the orb weaver spider is also poisonous, it is rarely if ever fatal.  In fact, the spider’s bite only hurts a human for a day or two.  I’m not saying thats a fun thing, but its pretty gentle compared to the more lethal critters around here.

And if you think the spiders in Florida are bad…

This orb weaver was discovered on a golf course in North Carolina and posted to Reddit:

And one Australian relative of the orb weaver spider is even making a name for itself because its been seen EATING BIRDS.  Yes, a spider eating a freaking bird.  Check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me!  I kind of still don’t believe it either, but I’m starting to realize how big these things can get.