Today I heard on the radio the term "Turbo / Ozone style" in relation to a school formal that one of the radio DJ's daughter is going to, and the really sad thing here is that I understood the reference.

"I don't want to see the power and prestige of the United States president put at risk by rushing into meetings with the likes of [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chavez and [Cuban president Fidel] Castro and [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," Clinton told CNN Thursday. "I think we have to be absolutely clear that we are going to engage with the world, that we are not afraid to have diplomacy."

'nuff said.

Yoinked from letloverule42 :

Step 1. Put your playlist on random.
Step 2. Post the first a line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrasing.
Step 3. Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly. NO GOOGLING.

( Read more... )

Because I got tagged by pktaxwenchWhat does your username mean?

There is a long story behind it... I guess I have to go into it now...

OK, if we break it down, we have the first three letters "foo", which if you are a computer geek like me you will recognize very quickly as being one of those garbage variables that you use when you don't know what else to call it. "bar" is the other one, and of course together they produce the word "fubar", which any military person will be able to give you a proper definition of.  :)

So, that is where the foo part of my username comes from... now for the rest. Well, for a while I was using Foo as a nickname in some chat channels, but I found that this was entirely too popular and there were a lot of nick collisions. So I add a "z" to the end because other letters just didn't seem to work. Now we have "Fooz".

Now, from here, we go back even further into history.... anyone remember the movie "The Great Santini" with Robert Duvall? Yes? I knew you all would. Well, in once scene in this movie, Robert Duvall says quite grandly, "I... AM... THE GREAT SANTINI!"  This just naturally went over to providing me with an extended nick of Foozini, so that I could go around and say "I....AM.... THE GREAT FOOZINI!"

OK, kind of trite and silly. Whatever. It works, and that is why I have that as a username now.

Oh, and "Wells" was taken at the time. There is a whole other story concerning that username, which I won't go into here because that is NOT what the question asked.  :P

What is your default icon and why?

It's a penguin. Actually, it is a picture of a large statue of a penguin somewhere in New Zealand.

I have a bit of an affinity towards penguins, mainly because the penguin is the mascot of the linux operating system, from which I derive my work and life earnings these days.

The words "Penguin Lust" on the side were just something I came up with one day. It throws people off a bit, perhaps. I dunno. I gave up on coming up with new icons years ago and just stuck with this one. I do have to admit that I have a new icon on another BBS system which is a picture of a MIRV reentry through the clouds, but the only reason I have that is because it is pretty.  :)

Now.... who to tag.... who to tag...

alicia_kembrey, e_heidi_liz, kikipuddie, slingchrist

Actually, I know at least the origins of one of those, but I think it would be fun for others to hear regardless.

So, it looks like Rowling has given her blessing on a theme park concerning Harry Potter...

here is a sketch of it: http://mugglenet.com/viewer/?image_location=/officialpw_poster.jpg

Sad.... so sad.

With thanks to Alicia... ;)

You Belong in Australia

Ace! Sunny, upbeat, and cute You make the perfect surf bum Now stop hogging the vegemite!

"Spamtrap" - watch the video

'nuff said. :)

So today I got a bit silly with coding. See, right now there is a big push for learning recursion in object oriented programming in this class I am taking, to the point where the professor will not let us use traditional loops in any of our programs... we MUST use recursion. This despite the fact that a for loop comes very naturally to me in its implementation, and doesn't bother me a bit in how it handles things... Oh well...

Anyway, I got so bored with it that I rewrote the multiplication operator so that it uses recursion to multiply two numbers together...

( Multiplication recursion code )

And then, to get more rediculous, I also implemented some convergence code that the professor told us about a couple of weeks ago. This is something that apparently has not actually been proven by mathemeticians...

The idea is this: Take a positive integer... any positive integer.

If it is even, divide by two.

If it is odd, multiply by three, then add one.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Apparently this always converges on one, though mathemeticians have not yet been able to actually prove this.

So I wrote code that actually implements it:

( Convergence Code )

So, apparently ol' John C Dvorak is saying that Apple should stop all work on their iPhone product. I consider this to be a perfect endorsement for Apple to continue with the product, because it will probably sell like gangbusters.

In case you can't tell from the above statement, Dvorak is not considered by me to be the most accurate person in the world when it comes to technology.

Hrm... not really the grand post that I was hoping for. Oh well... I am still going to post it even though at this point I am really not all that pleased with it.

But... I have additions!

http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/P/PEOPLE_ALEC_BALDWIN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME

Apparently Alec Baldwin, a strong part of the Hollywood liberal crowd, is going to pay for the college tuition of a soldier once she gets back from Iraq in an attempt to show that he supports the troops without supporting the war.

While I think this is admirable, I have to wonder just how much of it is earnest supporting of the soldiers and how much of it is simply a way for him to get some press in order to make him seem a bit less like a complete wacko leftist. Sorry, the quesiton does still come up in mind, despite the goodness that the action achieves. Now, if he could get others from Hollywood to do the same thing, perhaps even set up an organization that does this, I would be even more impressed.

So, last night two people won the $370 Million dollar lottery in the 12-state lotto. One in New Jersey, the other in Georgia. As Neal Boortz says, "[i]Now is as good a time as any to remind people that not only is the lottery a tax on the stupid.[/i]"

That being said, I can't help reflect on someone in class yesterday saying that they were going with a buddy up to Georgia to buy lottery tickets.... we live a good hour away from the border.

People are this desperate to win the big one and retire on it... but do you ever hear of successful lottery winners?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/06/naomi_campbell_mops_floors/

Serves her right! I just wish we would see more of this sort of thing happening with celebrities that do stupid things when breaking the laws of this land.

It is good to see punishments that fit the crime.

I just received, quite possibly, one of the worst phishing emails I have seen in a long time...


Subject: i need your corporation

Message:
Good day,

I am looking for your cooperation in building a
Tourist Hotel, Real Estate or even to set up a
multinational company in your country based on your
best discretion.
I am sorry if this is not in line with your business.
I need an experienced person like you to assist me to
set up/develop this project.

So, does anyone see an issue with that subject line?  :)

So,a thread has been running on the campus computer coordinators list that has been somewhat annoying to me. Some of you probably even know what I am talking about. This is the matter of Alachua Freenet going away, and one person whining that it is going away.

This morning this person stated the following:

Hopefully, some elected officials will care about that and try to find a replacement.

Now, as a rule I do not post anything on the CCC list unless it has to do with my department wanting to get rid of equipment, but sometimes I would simply love to make an exception and respond to idiocy like this.

Sorry, it is NOT the role of government to make sure that everyone has free internet. You want free internet, you find a charity organization... don't look towards the government for free handouts.

So, yesterday I went through the horror of a TA interview with my programming group, in which he selected one of the members of my group for all of the questions concerning the program we had written. Correction: The program that I had written and that they should have been able to answer questions on simply by reading the godforsaken program specification that was given to us by the instructors at the beginning of this little assignment.

He failed.

Horribly.

We had a perfect score up until he did the interview, and then he blew it. We were the only ones out of 19 groups to have a perfect score up to that point. And he blew it.

This will not happen again.

And my instructors will pay for it with the assignment that they just gave us, because there are holes in the specification for this assignment that I could drive a truck through. I am hammering my instructor and TA with questions like there is no tomorrow, and this program WILL be fucking perfect dammit.

Of course, the rest of my programming group is going to be in pain once I am through with them as well. By god, if I have to quiz them all on what this godforsaken program does and how it works, I will. They will know this shit through and through so that I will not have to worry about it being a complete clusterfuck when the TA interview session occurs.

Me? Bitter? Hell yes.

Will they pay for messing with a SOTA? Oh, you had better fucking believe it.

An article by Thomas Sowell against unions.

For those liberals out there that will probably rant and rave how this is just a conservative's viewpoint, remember that Thomas Sowell is an economist first, and he approaches this subject from an economist's perspective.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/02/23/priceless_politics_part_iii

You know, I have been thinking about posting something for ages now, and for the last couple of days I have come up with all kinds of topics that I could rant and rave about. Of course, now that I am sitting here actually doing it, I can't for the life of me remember any of them.

I have been busy lately with both work and school. This week alone I had a test and two projects to turn in. The projects were easy enough, though my partners for the Java project suck balls... I think I have done pretty much everything so far for that project. If I have to present it to our TA tomorrow as well I am not going to be happy. Not because I had to do it, because the actual process of presenting it and answering questions about it is easy enough to do and I am proud of my work, but because the rest of my group are a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings.

The project that I had to do for my management course went fine, however. The rest of my group answered the questions, and I then proofread them and put them into a powerpoint presentation, which everyone else appeared to love. So I don't feel so bad in not answering the questions that the project had to cover. (hey... there were five members in the group, and only three questions... you have to divvy up the work SOMEHOW)

Warning... spoilers in the following article, so don't read if you don't want them...

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21158650-5001026,00.html

Here is a little conversation I just had with a good friend of mine... I just had to post it. :)

( Behind the cut )

From the Independent Florida Alligator:

The only reveler who was hospitalized, said Gainesville Police spokesman Keith Kameg, was Longwood resident Matthew Schlagheck. Schlagheck, 23, was sprinting naked across University Avenue when he collided with a car. He hit his head on the car's windshield, and he is now in critical condition at Shands at UF. Witnesses said Schlagheck appeared to be celebrating the Gators' win when he was hit.

There were other smaller injuries like a couple of dislocations and stuff, but other than this, no other major injuries. Now I am wondering what the carnage was like over at Ohio State....

"Yet many people who claim to be concerned about poverty show remarkably little interest in how wealth is generated or which policies make it harder or easier to create more."

- From Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

Heh... that was way too much fun. Some Christian youth group came by asking for donations and rang my doorbell just as I got into the shower. So I got out of the shower, dried off a little bit and threw on some swim trunks, then answered the door pretty much dripping wet. They didn't know what to say.

The title of the new book has been announced. I will put it under the cut to be nice and stuff...

( Under the cut... )

So, I was reading a book, and this one passage just really stood out to me...

A moment later an ant was smashed to its knees by a descending mass of mucus and vegetable matter. After a moment it shook its head and looked around in ant wonder at the largess from the sky.

OK... Ann Coulter is a fear-mongering bitch who represents the far-right as well as Nancy Pelosi represents the far-left. That said, from time to time she does actually make a decent point:

"History was made this week! For the first time in four election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp. the day after the election, accusing it of rigging its voting machines. I guess Diebold has finally been vindicated."

I left in the dripping sarcasm that is classic Ann.

(For those that don't know, I do read Ann Coulter on a regular basis, mainly for the word usage she has. There are very few people I know of that can write the way she does, and I am not talking about her politics.)

http://www.alligator.org/pt2/061030halls.php

While I admire this contest and what they are trying to do, I can't help but think about how pissed off dorm residents would be if I were living in one of the dorms with my systems... :)

You see, I have a large number of computers running at home. There is a reason why I have a relatively high power bill. I have actually been working to reduce the number of systems running, but it is a slow progression, because I like to play around with different operating systems and different system architectures.

Ah well... it just amused me is all.

I just did the medical equivalent of leaving a piece of surgical equipment inside a patient's body with a computer.

I had to open up a machine in order to replace a harddrive. Got the case open, pulled the bad drive, put in a new one, and attached everything up with screws and all. I then put the cover back on the case, picked up the screwdriver to screw the cover in securely, only to find that the phillips bit was missing from the screwdriver. Opened the case up again to find the bit still stuck in the last screw I screwed in.

Now I just hope the patient doesn't sue for malpractice....

OK... first, here is the article I am talking about:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/swift_us_privacy_violation/

Now... the headline on The Register's main page for this article is "US violated world's privacy with secret SWIFT checks". This, for intents, appears to put the blame squarely on the US. The story states that the US subpoened SWIFT, which is a Belgian firm, for financial transaction data. SWIFT complied, handing the data over in violation of Belgian law. They didn't have to, and could have notified the authorities about this request, but instead they just handed over the data.

So who is really to blame here, the US or SWIFT?

I think the answer is pretty obvious... and so is the journalist slant. Bloody poms.

So driving into work this morning, I was listening to the radio (the morning buzz, for those that are wondering) and they started talking about toys from their childhood. Most of the toys that they talked about were things like GI Joes and stuff like that, things that I never had and never could be bothered with. I had Lego and some toy cars (Hot Wheels and Matchbox)... that was good enough.

Anyway, it got me thinking a bit of the toys from my childhood, and at one point while driving down Museum road, waiting for people who don't know how to drive to move along, I remembered an old all-steel Tonka truck that I had. It was about a foot long, had big knobbly wheels, etc. I'm not even sure where the heck I got it, because it isn't something that I would have really wanted, and it isn't something that my parents would have bought for me, even at that age (10 or 11 years old). Anyway, the reason this truck is sort of fond in my memories is because of what I did with it. I tied a string to it on the front bumper or something, then pulled it behind me on my bicycle. I could make that thing dance along the road. I would get it to swing out to the side, much like a water skier, at which point it would start to roll, possibly spraying sparks everywhere (I said it was steel...not like these new-fangled pieces of crap made out of plastic... they wouldn't have survived the torment that I put this thing through...)

That truck lasted a very long time, considering how much I put it through.

This brings me to my next topic... an episode of "Pimp my ride" I saw recently. Yes, I watch this show. Some of the stuff that they do is really cool. And then there are times when what they do completely sucks ass. This was one of those times. They picked a girl who had a 1968 Volkswagon Beetle. This thing had seen much better days. Rust everywhere, floorboards falling out, one bumper pretty much falling off, etc. The guys on the show were calling it a piece of junk. I looked at that thing and said to myself, "Junk? No. That thing is a testament to the absolute toughness of that vehicle. There isn't a vehicle being produced today that could survive what that vehicle has been through."

They proceeded to butcher the car. Porsche front end (and not from a 914, which I would have accepted... the 914 and the Beetle have the same base frame allowing this to happen very easily), Ferrari side panels, and a rediculous air scoop on top to provide a point of suction for of all things a hair dryer in the car. The hair washing station in the front trunk was stupid as well, but that I accepted as this show being this show... they do stupid pointless crap like that, and when the car is driving down the road you can't see it. As far as I was concerned, they should have left the car as it was originally. It had more character and class then.

Anyway, my rant is done. If you want to watch a decent vehicle reconditioning show, try watching "Trick my truck" on CMT sometime (yes, CMT. No, I don't normally watch the channel... country music is just not my thing. The channel just happens to be in the between the History Channel and the Sci-Fi Channel on cable, so I constantly scan over it.) Although I don't necessarily agree with some of the things that they do, I have yet to see them completely destroy a vehicle they way I have seen on Pimp My Ride. Their artwork on the trucks is absolutely incredible, and I feel completely blows away the stuff done on Pimp.

There is another show out there along the same theme, called "Overhaulin'", but I have only seen one episode. They work on the basis that the driver of the vehicle does not know their vehicle is being reconditioned, and pull pranks and stuff on them during the show. Usually a husband or wife is in on what is happening. The only show I saw was with a Dodge Magnum being refitted, and they put a Dodge 300 front grill on it. It looked stupid, but then I don't like the 300's front grill. The Charger front end is better looking, I think.

So, I filled out the paperwork to re-enlist in the Navy for another two years. Granted, this is the inactive reserves, so the chances of me getting called up are pretty darned slim. The way I figure it is that they would have to build a ship before they called me up, seeing as they have to go through all of the active reservists first.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/7/19/155917.shtml?s=ic

Yerp. Seems really silly, to tell the truth. Let's see... he got a misdemeanor offense for reckless driving 31 years ago. He paid the fine, and there are no other charges. Yeah sure, it is on the record books as a misdemeanor offense.... so what? Think that is going to cost him his job? Heck, that wouldn't cost him a job even as a lawyer applying to the bar, I don't think. A number of other things he is rumored to have done might, but not that.

Thank you Keith Richards for costing the tax payer money in having to process this crap. Why don't you go ahead and retire like you should have done about fifteen years ago and leave us be? Lord knows the only person with any talent left in the Rolling Stones is Charlie Watts.

So, I just got back from a week long vacation down at Disney. Took my mom out there as it was the first time she has ever been able to go without having to drag around other people who didn't know anything. Basically, it was a chance for her to enjoy the parks on her terms, and not on anyone elses. We stayed on the property at Shades of Green, which is a resort that is on the Disney property and shares in the benefits of getting extra hours during the week at various parks, but doesn't have some of the other capabilities you get from staying at a true Disney resort. The difference in this one is that it is military only, and is owned by the recreation division of the military.

It turns out this resort is actually the first resort hotel that was built by Disney in the area, and used to be called The Disney Inn. Apparently it also has some of the largest rooms of all of the resorts at Disney.

Anyway, we hit all of the main parks, and it was a first for Animal Kingdom for both of us, and a first for MGM for my mom as well. We enjoyed ourselves, but good god was it a good thing that I had a day or so after this vacation to recover.

“I don't know what he proposes the world run on, maybe hot air,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “I don't listen to Al Gore in particular because he's a Democrat. And not only that, he's about as far left as you can go.

- Alberta Premier Ralph Klein

Just saw this in the paper: 

"The ink was hardly dry on another new law banning the use of money channeled through public colleges and universities for travel to terrorist states before it was challenged in federal court.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued June 13 in Miami on behalf of Florida International University's Faculty Senate and several individual professors. They contend the restriction violates their First Amendment rights and the federal government's powers to regulate foreign commerce."

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

• Government isn't restricting the establishment of religion.
• Government isn't restricting the free exercise of religion.
• They aren't abridging the freedom of speech.
• They aren't abridging the freedom of the press.
• They aren't restricting the right of people to peaceably assemble.
• And obviously they aren't stopping the petitioning of the government for a redress... The ACLU is practicing this right.

OK, the following statement was made recently concerning distributed computing projects...

Those signals are too weak to stand out from the universe's background noise.' Gomes also traces the origins of SETI@home to Berkeley computer scientist David P. Anderson, and explains that users stuck with the ET search rather than medical investigations in part because of nationalistic competition. Yet Anderson no longer runs SETI@home. 'Instead, he donates his spare computer power to a global warming project. But he doesn't presume to tell others what they ought to be doing with their CPU cycles.'"

Don't watch if you don't want to deal with depiction of animal cruelty. Yes, this is cruel. I am happy for the turtle involved, because it seems that it is living quite well despite the handicaps involved, but still...

http://kutv.com/video/?id=16431@kutv.dayport.com

I just sent this to a friend with a note attached to it, when I realized that it should go out to more than that...

You know, they are talking about cutting out the individual rings so that this sort of thing doesn't happen, but here is what I have to ask.... Why are turtles growing up in landfills where these sorts of things are? And if that is not where the turtle picked up the six-pack ring, what makes them think that the litterbug that threw this out in a place where a turtle could get stuck in it is going to cut out those rings before they litter it?

Hrm...you know, I realize that I use livejournal a lot to simply rant about stupid crap that happens in the world. This entry isn't going to be any different, but I figured I would at least acknowledge the fact that this is what I use livejournal for. Perhaps sometime I will use it for something other than a rant.

Anyway, for today's rant, I would like to narrow things down to a specific driving habit that some drivers seem to have that annoys the crap out of me. Imagine a four lane highway with an open turning median in the middle (for those of you familiar with US 441 through Gainesville, this should be easy to imagine.) There are no guard rails or raised medians...just lines painted on the road to demarcate that the middle "third" lane is to be used for making a left hand turn from either direction. Now, imagine that you are behind a vehicle that turns on its left turn signal, then proceeds down the road for another half block before starting to merge into that lane to make the left turn, all the time slowing down to less than half the speed limit. Imagine the frustration that starts to build inside you as the idiot in front of you blocks traffic... as the right-hand lane traffic goes by you at the normal speed limit.

Yeah.

The moral (or lesson, or whatever... label it as you like) here is: If you are going to make a left hand turn, put on your signal, get in that turning lane, and get the hell out of the way of traffic that is trying to go from A to B in a forthright manner without idiots like this in the way.

( Ten Years Later meme )

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060522/ts_nm/energy_gasoline_ftc_dc_2

Well what do you know... the gas companies weren't price gouging. Again. Thank god we have a public out there that know so much that it is obviously the gas companies fault when standard economic forces actually occur.

Well...since it wasn't the gas companies fault that prices rose so much, let's just blame Bush for it. Yep, he was at fault.

Hey, I don't like a number of the things that he has done lately, but if the greenies out there try to pin this on him they will just look that much more foolish than they already are.