Lee.org

I now have a California driver’s license, California license plates on my car, and I’m a registered Libertarian (After hanging out with the guy who ran for Congress on the Libertarian ticket last year, I was reminded that a large number of Libertarians are insane. No matter, the ideals of the party are closer to mine than the two bigs. So I checked the “Libertarian” box)

I made a reservation to get my license in Oakland yesterday. Turns out that making a reservation doesn’t get you much (read: “anything”). I ended up spending 1 1/2 hours waiting outside for a guy to spend 60 seconds filling out a form verifying my odometer reading. Then another hour waiting… then… blah blah blah. Well, I got to the car registration part and the lady said my car needed a smog test and she needed $211 from me. I was a bit suprised at the price so I went onto the California DMV web site that evening and they had a little form where I could figure out how much my registration would cost…. $110. I went to the San Francisco office today, told the lady what the web site said and she… … … agreed! She reduced the bill by $101! That more than paid for the $40 street cleaning parking ticket I had gotten that morning!

Bring a printed copy of your California Vehicle Registration Fee Calculator results to the DMV. It could save you money.

Here are some images from the Colossus project. And a video clip. There will be lots more when it’s finished.

Zachary Coffin – the artist

Corbett Griffith – the chief engineer

The Google Toolbar is available for Firefox now, complete with Pagerank info.

I’m still shopping around for helpdesk software. I came across an article that mentions Magic Service Desk. I found that BMC software just bought the company… interestingly, I used to work for BGS Systems, which was bought up by BMC.

So, I go looking for this helpdesk app on the BMC site. The amount of Powerpoint generated, gold plated crap I had to wade through to see what the product was about was astounding.

Then again, if they are really getting the $5,000 per seat they are asking when free software is available that does it just as well…

Misdirection is alive and well, and living on the interweb!

PS. I never ever, not even once for a moment beliveved that any of those 23 year old babes in suits that they get from the stock-web-image catalog were going to come to my house if I bought their crummy software. Well, maybe just for a second.

Dear Lazyweb,

I’m looking for a good helpdesk application. Mostly what I’m looking for is tracking email trouble-tickets from thousands of customers. Can you recommend an app?

I’ve browsed Sourceforge.net, Freshmeat.net and Helpdesks.com and found a whole lotta apps that might fit the bill. But I just want one that works.

Any suggestions?

Update 1-24-10: Ok, if you thought the “300 things” list below was good, here’s
1575 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG!!!

CAUTION: If your sides begin to hurt while reading this, stop immediately! and come back tomorrow!

I stole this list.

(thanks to Dave for pointing it out to me)
Continue reading ‘300 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG’ »

[I installed this a couple weeks ago but forgot to blog it.]
Here’s a little something to make writing pretty comments a little easier.
I took it from Scriptygoddess, who took it from Alex King.

The tags I use in my lineup are:
bold, italics, blockquote, link close tags

You should see these buttons just above the Comments field when you write your comments to me. They make it a little easier for you to add HTML tags to your comments.

From Jennifer’s site (this was written for WP 1.2. The instructions are a bit different for newer versions. I’ve installed it for WP 1.5 just fine)

To use the “mini” version I made:

1) Download the js file and upload it to the root of your domain.

2) Open up your wp-comments.php page [in WP 1.5, comments.php in your theme] … Look for the beginning of the comments form – (search for “<form” in the file) and put this just above it:

<script src="/js_quicktags-mini.js" type="text/javascript"></script></form>

Look for the text area field for comments which looks like this

<textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="40" rows="6" tabindex="4"></textarea>

and add this directly above it:
<script type="text/javascript">edToolbar();</script>

And add this BELOW the textarea field:
<script type="text/javascript">var edCanvas = document.getElementById('comment');</script>

This is the method I’m using on this site – although I added the “h3” tag just for the one I use, since that’s what I use to stylize code on this site. You can easily add more… or start from scratch using Alex’s.

[written 5-7-02, updated 2-14-03, put into my blog 8-15-05]

Stop saying “God Bless America” in response to September 11th! That is what got us in trouble in the first place.

Insert rant here. Discussion points:

• Other, positive things that can be said
• Religious separatism is extremely counter-productive for: our society,
  world productivity, burning personal hatred, long term personal recovery 

  example webring text: source
  Christians all over the world, please pray for America and for all
  those involved in the terrifying and horrible tragedy that took place there in
  the USA. Pray also for the service men and women who are in Afghanistan! We
  know that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the only one that can give everyone
  the strength and support…

• Vengeful god vs. merciful god. Relate that to why we say "God Bless
  America"
• Separation between church and state
• Relate my personal internal pain. We’ve got to redirect the energy
  positively
• They take their religion very seriously and literally (IE 72 virgins in
  heaven). We do well not taking ours as seriously. So let’s keep it that way.
• How do you think it makes them feel when we say it?
• sidebar: "Ground Zero" as unfortunate terminology for gestalt.
  Suggest "The Pile", "The Site".
• Discuss the power that words and terminology have.
• Conclusion: It’s bad for everyone involved. So cut it out!

I see signs all over spouting about how great God is. There is this truck that’s been sitting just off the highway in Mount Olive for several months. It has a sign draped over it with a large flag and it says “God Bless Us All”. Another volunteered sign is on Rt. 519. It’s an 8′ x 4′ piece of plywood leaned up against a telephone pole crudely spray painted with the message:

That sign really freaks me out. Everyone is free to voice their opinion but
it really worries me to the core how caught up people are about their gods. And
I worry what terrible things my neighbors are capable of doing if someone or
something offends their sense of the infallibility of their god.

Look at that sign again… Look at the order he put things in.
"God" is first, "Country" last! So when the author refers to
Duty and Honor, that’s to his god and not to his country. It’s true that the
First Amendment of the Constitution refers to the freedom of religion, but he’s
forgotten that it’s an amendment. The Constitution itself (dry as the
text may be) and the country founded by it comes before all of the
amendments!

I suppose the author of this sign is angry at my critical commentary. I’ve
probably offended his Honor and his God. What do you suppose Duty requires him
to do to me?

Bibliography:

• God Bless America webring
  with 400 sites.
• news agencies, CNN, NBC, CBS, etc

I went to NIMBY to work on Colossus 2 nights ago. I got there about 7:30… worked a while grinding overly large welds made between the column and gussets. And then on to grinding the upper arms of the beast. I stopped for pizza and beer with the guys… for chatting with Elysia (who I will now call Shwa because that’s what her name starts with ;-) and her uncle… chatting with the woman making the 20 foot tall Ganesh (which, I just found out, will have an ancient stone finish) and…… I stopped to watch robots battle!!!

A woman came in at midnight or so and said the we should come out and see two robots fighting each other down the street. About 10 of us started out walking down the street. When we got there we found that the robots were fighting each other, they were fighting television! More precisely, they were about five televisions and computer monitors in a vacant lot; the two robots were bashing and smashing the televisions until they were nothing more but piles of plastic and smashed glass! The smaller robot was particularly good at spinning around and whacking things while the larger robot, with its propane fueled beacon on the top, it’s heavy steel armor plating, and larger frame would just hit things head-on repeatedly until it would roll over the smashed remains.

It was wonderful! After the robots had laid waste to all of the televisions the designer and pilot of the larger one was quoted on the way back to the laboratory as saying, “It’s cheaper than therapy.”

(Image courtesy it’s designer at THERM.)

Recently, my google search results have been more and more diluted with web spam. :-(

To the tune of “Kill da wabbit”, “Kill the spammers, Kill the spammers, Kill the spammers!”