Category Archives: Uncategorized

queso rocks. x10 ad disable.

I know that someone, somewhere, for some reason really wanted to know about the ultrasonic velocity characteristics of cheddar cheese, and the effect that temperature has on said characteristics (warning: PDF file). Importantly, this study managed to “demonstrate the feasibility of using ultrasonic measurements to determine temperatures in Cheddar cheese” — this must be important to someone.

I gotta tell ya’, I’ve become pretty dang annoyed with the dang X10 wireless system ads that have started popping up under m y web browsing window. Thanks go out to Gael for a bunch of awesome links — one to X10’s explanation of the ads, and another to a page which will disable the ads. (The unfortunate thing is that that last link only disables them for 30 days, but in looking at the URL, there’s an argument that sets the 30-day variable; if that’s right, then this link should disable them for a year, and this one should disable them for 10 years.)

Schtuff

Today’s Mission List – (Thinks I’d like to do)

  • Shower
  • Laundry
  • Talk to my Sweetie
  • Go Grocery Shopping
  • Talk to my Little Bro (Maybe Catch a Late supper wth him)
  • Play with Newtie
  • Talk to Dave & Cathi (Maybe catch a late supper with them, too)
  • Evaluate finances for a first/last/security
  • Research New Apartments, condos, and house rentals
  • Find out more about yesterday’s fiasco

Hopping on item numbers one and Two now.

word of the day (something I do quite often)

totally unrelated, but fun image

parse PAHRS, transitive verb:
1. To resolve (as a sentence) into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactical relationship of each part.
2. To describe grammatically by stating its part of speech, form, and syntactical relationships in a sentence.
3. To examine closely or analyze critically, especially by breaking up into components.
4. To make sense of; to comprehend.
5. (Computer Science) To analyze or separate (input, for example) into more easily processed components.

intransitive verb:
To admit of being parsed.

Parse comes from the Latin pars (orationis), “part (of speech).”

and by the way –

happy birthday,

Well, shit.

Something you never want to see in a quiet neighborhood. A gang of cops with rifles pointing at your house, and an armed one at the door when you’re freshly naked from the shower.

Here it is in raw, uncleaned up format. Site Meter

Newt and I just were allowed back into the apartment, after 2 hours of being made to wait in a carport 4 houses down the street. My landlord (the apartment is an efficiency built into the side of a larger house) apparently decided to arm himself, take some vicadin, and scare his girlfriend. I don’t know the whole story yet, just that there were over a dozen police cars, a fire safety vehicle and a fire engine descending on my home. I was just drying after a shower when a BCS officer knocks on my door, and tells me to come out…I let him know I’m nude and ask if it can wait a moment as I dry and dress… he told me to hurry up, and asked me through my louvered windows if there were any other entrances to my apartment than the front door. I told him no… and asked what it was all about. He said for me to just please come out, and I said sure…’Could you please tell me what’s going on..” He then informs me of the above ‘armed-drugged, please leave for your own safety/may we come inside your apartment” I told him sure, as I had my pants on by then, and picked up Newton, and walked out and up the street, as fast as my sandaled feet would take me and my orange striped son. We go four houses down the street to the nearest neighbor I know, and knock on the door, asking if I may hang out on the porch for a while… they’re good about it (as I expected, and I filled them in on what’s happening…. we at and talked about the lunacy of the deed holders of my place, and how any mook can get a gun these days. Their daughter had never met Newton, and he charmed the 8 year old completely…she said that Newton could stay over in her room whenever he wanted. (I may take them up on it, if I ever have to leave town for a day or two…) It’s funny, I had a fear that I might never see any of my stuff at the house again, but I just grabbed the baby… I even left my laptop behind. (that stuff is all replaceable….Newton’s too precious to me to leave anywhere.)

This is “coprolite”: fossil feces, dinosaur dung, petrified poop… rocks tens of millions of years old…the fossilized leavings of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Like all petrified fossils, coprolite is made of different materials, depending on what the medium of petrification was. On the left, the agate-like material has been sliced and polished from a larger chunk. On the right, a small pyramid of spheres is made of Alabama marcasite. They are enlarged about twice life size.

https://i0.wp.com/home.att.net/~rickscott/Copro1.jpg?w=474https://i0.wp.com/home.att.net/~rickscott/Copro2.jpg?w=474

Counter to what some folks might say, you can polish a turd. 🙂

BlackICE defender is totally worthless.

ZoneAlarm, however, rocks the house as a firewall. bye-bye nasty bots.

I downloaded the current, completely free, version of ZoneAlarm 2.6 from the ZoneLabs web site and installed it on the “Sitting Duck” laptop. Upon restarting the machine I was gratified to receive immediate notification that the Zombie/Bot was attempting to make an outbound connection to its IRC chat server.

Meanwhile, the Sub7 Trojan was sitting quietly waiting for someone to connect to it. So I used another machine to “Telnet” to the port the Sub7Server Trojan was listening on. Up popped ZoneAlarm asking whether the nonsense-looking random character name the Sub7Server had chosen for itself should be allowed to accept a connection from the Internet.

Perfect performance from ZoneAlarm.

speaking of which,…

As you will see on the page below, if you use the RealNetworks RealDownload, Netscape/AOL Smart Download, or NetZip Download Demon utilities in their default configuration . . .

EVERY TIME you use one of these utilities to download ANY FILE from ANYWHERE on the Internet, the complete “URL address” of the file, along with a UNIQUE ID TAG that has been assigned to YOUR machine, and — in the case of Netscape’s SmartDownload only — YOUR computer’s individual Internet IP address, is immediately transmitted to the program’s publisher.

This allows a database of your entire, personal, file download history to be assembled and uniquely associated with your individual computer . . . for whatever purpose the program’s publishers may have today, or tomorrow.

VERY IMPORTANT: When I re-examined my findings in the face of RealNetworks’ insistence that I was absolutely wrong about my conclusions, I caught something that I had missed before: My exact personal name and private eMail address was being sent back to RealNetworks whenever I downloaded a file. When I confronted RealNetworks with this, they explained that it was due to the fact that I had purchased a product from them in the past, and the “cookie” my system had received during the purchase was being returned to them.

That certainly makes file downloads seem far less “anonymous” than RealNetworks continues to allege.

see more info here – http://grc.com/downloaders.htm

Clown Cops RPG

Palookaville used to be a thriving, bustling
neighborhood on the edge of the city. Inhabited by circus folk, the
neighborhood depended on the circuses, carnivals, parades and parties
that went on throughout the city. When the economy took a downturn,
the residents of Palookaville found themselves unemployed and
disenfranchised. Unfortunately, most banks, auto garages and
landscaping firms have no use for someone skilled at making balloon
animals or throwing cream pies. The out-of-work Clowns and other
circus people turned to crime and the occassional rioting in the
streets. The police cracked down hard but that only served to make
the situation even worse. Finally, the Mayor (Da Honorable Joey
Boombatz) signed a peace treaty with the leaders of Palookaville and
created a special police force comprised of Clowns. The Clown Cops
were born.

Continue reading Clown Cops RPG