August 2004

A last NBC Olympic gripe....

August 25, 2004

In what will probably be my last gripe about the terrible job NBC did in botching the Olympics.... Where did they find the sing-song bozo for the sailing coverage. I'd love to watch some of it but getting anything meaningful from the snippets with the TV muted is next to impossible. The only thing worse is listening to NBC's commentator.

This Is Rumor Control - The Things He Carried: Atrocities, Investigations and the Suicide of Lance Corporal Jeffrey Lucey

August 24, 2004

A must read for all Americans should be the tragic story of Marine Lance Corporal Jeffrey Lucey. Lucey claimed repeatedly, in the year between when he returned from Iraq and the day he took his own life, he had been ordered to shoot two unarmed Iraqi prisoners.

RNC to Cancel McCain

August 24, 2004

This is Rumor Control muses on the possibility of the Bush regime canceling Senator John McCain's speech before the Republican National Convention because McCain is too hot over the Bush regime's refusal to do the right thing and condemn fantasy ads about Kerry's service to the country during Vietnam.

The question that nobody I've heard has asked and certainly nobody has answered is why would Kerry have made his war record? Not now, but at the time.

Just how stupid do they think we are?

August 22, 2004

NBC just set a new record with their announcement tonight that they'll bring the lucky viewers "uninterrupted" coverage of the men's 100 meter finals. WHAT--- You mean you're not going to show a commercial in the midst of a race that is run in less than 10 seconds? Let's see it's only a 12 hour tape delay, but you'll be so gracious to bring us 10 seconds "uninterrupted". Amazing. Thanks NBC. I take back all the things I said before about how terrible your coverage has been. Since it is a political year maybe we can vote in the BBC to replace NBC... it wouldn't be the worst constitutional amendment being proposed.

Can you hear me now?

August 22, 2004

Note to Verizon: Why is it you can't get your call centers to work together? Why is it that every time I call I get transfered to at least three centers and the last one is "gone for the day"? Perhaps this why you have to charge such outrageous fees for your lousy service? Maybe if you weren't spending so much time transferring potentially fee paying customers about and putting them through to numbers only to hear "call back later" you'd have more money to improve your service. Just a thought...

Olympic Blogging

August 21, 2004

Wired has an article yesterday about blogging and the Olympic games.(Link from Scripting News.) It says "participants in the games may respond to written questions from reporters or participate in online chat sessions -- akin to a face-to-face or telephone interview -- but they may not post journals or blogs until the Games end Aug. 29." So here's my question to all athletes: What would you like to tell the world about your experience at the games (include your thoughts about competition, your sport, life in the Olympic village, etc.)? Please respond via the web - this website or yours - instead of via email.

You might see from that question that the restrictions the IOC is trying to place are a bit ridiculous. I wrote previously about the [Amy Acuff] Olympic Diary which is being published on Playboy's site. Friday's entry is entirely an answer to a question about acupuncture sent by a reader. It got me thinking that all an athlete needs is a foil to ask the right questions. So my question to would-be Olympic bloggers is what question would you like to be asked? Read more about Olympic Blogging

Insurance companies

August 19, 2004

When the insurance didn't pay the dentist we call the dentist to see why the discrepancy. We don't know call the insurance company. We call the insurance company, "The dentist is out of network."

Why would we choose that dentist? Because he is on the list of in-network providers the insurance company gave us!

False positives form chkrootkit

August 19, 2004

A quick FYI this morning I ran chkrootkit from a PORTS install on FreeBSD 4.9 this morning. It comes up with a few "INFECTED" files as so:

Checking `chfn'... INFECTED
Checking `chsh'... INFECTED
Checking `date'... INFECTED
Checking `ls'... INFECTED

There were no other errors. To be safe I built and used the GCC Fileutils including gls and again chkrootkit said the same files were infected. A quick web search found a few people having this problem with FreeBSD 5.x but no mention of 4.9. A quick trip to chkrootkit.org and I downloaded and installed the new version and it didn't show the problems. Unfortunately there is no mention of this in the changelog that is a part of the readme other than "small bugs corrected".

Process

August 18, 2004

Jumsoft has released Process 1.0 which it touts as afresh face in the tired throng of outlining applications. They tout Source Taking as a major enhancement to increase productivity by allowing project managers to manage and schedule an entire project in a single window.

Playboy publishes olympic blogger

August 18, 2004

It appears that in spite of International Olympic Committee regulations banning athletes from publishing to Blogs while in the Olympic Village, Playboy is publishing one. The page is Amy Acuff's Olympic Diary. Acuff, a high jumper for the United States has been making a splash recently as she and a handful of her Olympic athlete colleagues have posed for magazine spreads in mens magazines including Playboy, FHM and Stuff.

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