Stemming the flow of evincible Ignorance. We must try to understand for the sake of understanding.
Archive for August, 2008
California Tortilla’s Blackened Chicken Caeser Burrito.
15 years
by Jesse Morgan
in Uncategorized
I sent the following message to California Tortilla via their website. I hope they fulfill my request. I somehow doubt it, however.
I require urgent assistance. I lived in the Arlington, VA area for 18 months and ate a BCCB almost every day for lunch. In 2006 I moved back to Michigan.
I miss the BCCB.
Please open a location in Troy, MI so I may once again enjoy a delicious BCCB. Preferably near the intersection of Stephenson Hwy and I-75.
In your debt,
Jesse Morgan
This Thread Delivers!
15 years
by Jesse Morgan
in Uncategorized
So while browsing fark, I came across this:
And OH MAN, did it deliver. Wow. Einstein was a fraud, heliocentric model of the solar system is wrong, we live in the united states of Cabotia, Rockefeller is running a conspiracy with Encyclopedia Britannica to remove all negative catholic articles, the WTC attacks were NUCLEAR attacks, the us constitution is condemned by catholic law, Tesla blew up russia or some crazy shit, and the guy who runs the site knows everything about who killed kennedy… argh I just had an aneurysm from trying to gauge the level of dumbfuckery on that site. I’m awestruck at this.
Seriously, the part of me that has hope for humanity desperately clings to the chance that this is a parody/spoof/satire site, but after seeing some of the crazy shit that’s been going on lately, it’s just… damn, I can’t tell. I haven’t found any solid evidence that it is parody, and I’ve been looking for a good half an hour. I just don’t want to accept this as being real. It can’t be.
What’s that tell you about the state of affairs in the world right now?
The StraightSpam Express
15 years
by Jesse Morgan
in Uncategorized
So guess who I just got an email from?
Rick Davis, McCain Campaign Manager [ecampaign@gop.com]
Dear Supporter,
The reviews are in from Saturday’s Saddleback Civil Forum on
the Presidency, moderated by Pastor Rick Warren. The critics
agree – John McCain’s straight talk emerged as the big winner
of the night.
blah blah blah
You know what’s amusing about this? I did an experiment a few years back- used a bunk email address to try and “get an ipod absolutely free.” The email address in question was very unique and contained the name of the spamming company so I could track whether or not they did sell the address.
See, this particular scam company turned around and sold the shit out of my email address. Granted, in the fine print they reserved the right to resell it to anyone and everyone willing to pay $0.02 for it, so I can’t bitch too loudly. After making it impossible to get an ipod without entailing some cost, these scammers sold the address to spammers who sold the address to brokers who sold the address to anyone who came along.
I’ve been keeping track of it over the last few years and giggling when I saw some other company lose any future business by spamming me. And guess who bought the email address this time? The GOP, as shown above.
The only way they could have acquired that email address was if they purchased it from someone who purchased it from someone who was a scammer. There was no clean way to acquire this address- it had a tainted root. In either case I’m not a mccain supporter, though I’m sorta expecting the Obama email to come to the same address (however I tend to peg the current republican party as a bit more slimy than the current democratic party).
I thought Mccain was ok in 2000 during the primaries, but now he’s just a shriveled old douchebag who spams me. Go to hell, and get off my interweb tubes! The cool part is I can flag this email as spam with the hopes that any future GOP emails to gmail get flagged as spam. Assholes.
BTW, if anyone wants to level any moral outrage at the GOP, Mccain, or Mr Davis, on my behalf, knock yourself out. And to the GOP- money is tight so I’ll accept hush money to go away and remove this post (provided that it’s a legal bribe like what Ted Stevens got).
Science at work
15 years
by Jesse Morgan
in Uncategorized
So I read this awesome article about faster than light information transfer between two photons and thought it was an excellent example of scientific method at work. Here’s the short version of what I mean.
Scientists did something and something SPOOKY happened.
- They observed something spooky and say “How the hell did that happen?” and take notes.
- They review their notes and say “This makes no damn sense, unless…” and come up with an idea of how it happened. (Note that this is a hypothesis, not really a theory since there’s no supporting evidence, yet.)
- They write down their good idea and say “If I’m right, then X should happen when I do *THIS*”
- They do *THIS*
- Once the smoke clears, they take pictures of the resulting carnage.
- They try to piece together exactly what happened (THIS is a theory as long as it allows you to perform more tests to strengthen or refactor your idea).
- Then say “hey guys, check this out…”
- Others check it out and say “Cool, I wanna try!”
and the process repeats. Depending on how you look at it, they are either on step 1 or step 7. That’s the beauty of the scientific method- it’s recursive.
The Curse of Kevin Smith
15 years
by Jesse Morgan
in Uncategorized
(10:33:03 AM) jmorgan: if you have any FAQ-type questions for deployment guidelines, let me know.
(10:33:13 AM) Developer Y: kk
(10:33:17 AM) Developer Y: not atm
(10:33:23 AM) Developer Y: ya know
(10:33:27 AM) Developer Y: every time i see atm
(10:33:32 AM) Developer Y: i think “ass to mouth”
(10:33:34 AM) Developer Y: then i realize
(10:33:37 AM) Developer Y: its “at the moment”
Stable?
15 years
by Jesse Morgan
in Uncategorized
Downstream Upstream
Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 3008 384
SN Margin (dB) 13.50 21.00
Line Attenuation (dB) 36.00 20.00
CRC Errors 14638 117
maybe? possibly?
Free Jabber / XMPP clients for a Blackberry?
15 years
anyone know of any good jabber clients for the blackberry? I’ve tried a couple with little luck, and most of them cost more than I can afford for this test. Features required
- Must run on BlackBerry 8703e v4.1.0x
- Connection server can be configured differently than jid address (i.e. you@morgajel.net for jid, jabber.morgajel.net for connection server.) This rules out Mobber as far as I can tell
- Requires SSL/TLS
- Non-strict cert checking
Let me know if you have any suggestions.
Line status…
15 years
by Jesse Morgan
in Uncategorized
Sat Aug 2 11:45:39 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 960 480 SN Margin (dB) 4.70 6.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 50.00 31.50 CRC Errors 47385 282 Sat Aug 2 12:32:18 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 480 416 SN Margin (dB) 8.50 7.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 50.50 31.50 CRC Errors 79196 557 Sat Aug 2 14:39:16 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 1152 576 SN Margin (dB) 11.50 6.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 39.50 21.50 CRC Errors 1850 119 Sat Aug 2 16:26:21 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 1152 576 SN Margin (dB) 8.00 6.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 39.50 21.50 CRC Errors 5569 452 Sat Aug 2 16:39:30 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 2144 704 SN Margin (dB) 4.00 7.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 38.00 21.50 CRC Errors 6226 683 Sat Aug 2 21:17:01 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 768 352 SN Margin (dB) -2.00 7.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 52.00 31.50 CRC Errors 256465 263 Sat Aug 2 22:15:07 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 736 352 SN Margin (dB) 6.10 7.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 52.00 31.50 CRC Errors 170871 3014 Sun Aug 3 14:38:46 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 960 384 SN Margin (dB) 4.60 7.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 51.50 31.50 CRC Errors 233986 1608 Mon Aug 4 08:18:50 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 672 384 SN Margin (dB) 8.00 6.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 52.00 31.50 CRC Errors 895516 3878 Mon Aug 4 08:22:55 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 896 384 SN Margin (dB) 6.60 7.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 51.50 31.50 CRC Errors 6884 4 Tue Aug 5 11:52:34 EDT 2008 Downstream Upstream Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 1088 384 SN Margin (dB) 17.00 21.00 Line Attenuation (dB) 34.50 20.50 CRC Errors 30199 543
You’ll notice that last bit the margins are much better…. I think they might have fixed the line, meaning we can crank the speed back up.
update
Tue Aug 5 16:11:40 EDT 2008
Downstream Upstream
Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 928 384
SN Margin (dB) 7.00 7.00
Line Attenuation (dB) 51.50 31.50
CRC Errors 112105 53
Guess not.
Stupid People Wasting My Time
15 years
ok, this has been gnawing at me for the last few weeks. As I get older I become a lot less patient with people who waste my time on stupid things. I try not to get involved with religious or political debates mainly because they always seem to lead to hurt feelings and me putting someone on a life-long banlist.
However.
I’m getting *really* pissed at the anti-science bullshit that’s going on. I’ve made the unfortunate mistake of reading Bad Astronomy and Angry Astronomer as of late. It’s straight up madness. This shouldn’t be happening in the 21st century. What am I talking about? Well, let’s see here:
- People pushing creationism in science classes who can’t comprehend that creationism IS NOT SCIENCE BECAUSE IT HAS NO TESTABLE HYPOTHESIS AND CANNOT BE FALSIFIABLE. JUST SHUT UP. Come back when you have a real theory. I fear the day my son is dragged through a high-school level class where this vomit is spewed under the guise of ‘teaching alternative theories’. It’s not a goddamn theory. Stop it.
- People who claim evolution is false because it doesn’t cover what happened before the big bang or how life was started. News flash- SEPARATE THEORIES. Evolution makes no claim about that sorta thing.
- People who claim evolution shouldn’t be taught because it’s ‘just a theory’. Yes, much like gravity, atomic theory, game theory, string theory, etc. are all theories as well, should we not teach them? Either way…You FAIL.
- People who claim a banana is proof of intelligent design, while turning a blind eye to coconuts, poisonous berries, pineapple and of course the Durian. These are all either delicious or will kill you. Does that seem like a good idea? Ever see the delicious red berries of Belladonna, aka Deadly Nightshade? You FAIL.
- People who think the world is flat- seriously, there are people who think the world is fucking flat. It boggles the mind. This has to be some sort of sick joke- are we really still this backwards?
- In no particular order- people who deny global warming because winters are getting nastier, people who deny gravity is strong enough to cause stellar formation without having ANY science to back it up, people who think “controversy” should be taught in science by allowing bullshit into the classroom, people with political agendas who claim to know more about science than the experts in the field, people against stem cell research, People who buy into crop circles despite the original perpetrators admitting they did it for 15 years, etc
Before you try and argue this shit with me, go read The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It’s very readable, if not slightly depressing.
I’ve had some great science teachers in my life – my father and Mr. Mac being at the top of the list. I remember watching Nova and Newton’s Apple when I was a kid, specifically an experiment where they created a tornado in a box. I remember thinking how cool that was. I never forgot that clip, and whenever I think of science, it reminds me of that fuzzy memory from the early-to-mid 80’s. I can only hope I can inspire that interest in science for Ian as he grows up.
Now, I’m all for imagination and testing new hypothesis, but you DAMN sure better have some heavy science behind you before making that claim. It’s absolutely unreal that this shit is still going on. They’re not attacking just the ideas or the theories- I’d be fine if it was just that.
- Got an alternate theory for String theory? Go for it.
- More accurate equation to calculate gravitational forces? FINE.
Show me the math and wow me. More importantly, wow the people who are experts in the field. I’d love to see someone put out a theory that makes Hawkings say (in a robotic accent) “holy shit, why didn’t I think of that.” Just don’t attack science itself. Don’t attack Scientific Theory, the method for understanding our world. Don’t crap on how we try to understand our world unless you have a better way, and throwing your hands up in the air and saying “God did it!” doesn’t count. It doesn’t even come close.
At one time people thought a flaming chariot dragged the sun across the sky – seems silly now, doesn’t it. At one time, they thought the sun rotated around the earth – crazy talk now, huh? Hell, people even used to think the world is flat, but we know better…Oh right, we still don’t.
If you disagree with this rant in part or in whole, read the Sagan book, and follow the astronomy bloggers I mentioned above. Pay attention for one month. Then we’ll talk.
Update:
I also missed the AntiVaxxers– that group of wonderful people who pin an epic woe on a vaccine and encourage people not to get it. Thanks to this, there are people dying and suffering from easily treatable diseases, like polio- POLIO for crying out loud. Hey- the 1950’s called, they say they want their eradicated epidemic back.