Entropy in the Stairway

If my memory is correct, my Father-in-law has been trying harvest an elk in Montana for the last 9 years.

He finally got one.  We are told he made a 400 yard shot with his trusty 7mm magnum Browning Lever Action rifle.  His guide was Travis Barker, general manager for the Ford Creek Ranch.

Click the photo below for a full-size version.

I find myself compelled to write in the realm of politics again.  Rather, I find myself compelled to quote and preserve the writing of another, in regard to the killing of a purported American citizen.  Before going any further, I must admit that I do not know for a fact that Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen at the time of his reported death.  If he had at some point renounced his citizenship, then perhaps much of this becomes pointless.  However, if he was still indeed a citizen of the United States of America, then I wish that every U.S. Citizen capable of critical thinking and objective analysis would read and consider the following words by Glenn Greenwald.

http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/30/awlaki_6/singleton/

Please consider the following excerpt:

What’s most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar (“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President’s ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki — including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry’s execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists: criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.

From an authoritarian perspective, that’s the genius of America’s political culture. It not only finds ways to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power (such as extinguishing the lives of citizens without due process). It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards.

When it becomes difficult to distinguish the actions of the United States of America from those who attack us, when we abandon the principles and doctrine upon which our nation is founded, we have forsaken too much.

I have no idea how long the article will remain available, but I want this work preserved and available for a long time to come.  I have quoted Mr. Greenwald’s entire article below.

Continue reading “Take off your blindfold, Lady Liberty… And Run Like Hell.”

I never knew what I had until I moved away from it.

We lived outside of Missoula, Montana from 1998 until 2005.  I complained more than a little about living there.  (Missoula  traffic congestion is out of scale for the size of the city, and I hated trying to get through town on a Friday afternoon).

Now, I spend too much money going back.

My wife and I spent Sunday, 9/11, on the Blackfoot River east of Missoula.  Actually, it’s the Big Blackfoot, though it’s not all that big. (The Little Blackfoot River is very different.)  This is the river made legendary (notorious?) by Robert Redford’s film adaptation of Norman Maclean’s story, “A River Runs Through It.”  I never fished this river when we lived in Montana.  I was an idiot.

We were guided by our new friend Joe Bloomquist, owner of the Missouri River Lodge and X-Stream Flyfishing ( http://www.missouririverlodge.com/ ), his own guide service he’s been running for at least 16 years.  The man is an amazing fly angler.  He’s worth every penny of his guide fee and whatever you can spare for a tip.

We had a spectacular day. Barely a cloud crossed the sky, yet we had no shortage of cutthroat trout to find and fight.  We even caught a fleeting glimpse of a Montana Bull Trout.  Joe estimated the ghostly beast to be about 34 inches when it briefly pursued a 14 inch cutthroat I was playing in to the boat.  It saw the boat and retreated to the deep hole from whence it came.  So close…

The photos above are some of the few we took of our catches.  These are not the largest trout we’ve ever caught (wait for my future post on our Missouri River fishing trip, coming soon), but this was a trip that I have dreamed about for nearly 2 decades.  The first one even earned me a high-five from Joe. I consider that to be a high compliment, as my flyrod skills are not that great.

Sadly, if I still lived in Missoula, I could do this 5 to 10 times a summer.  And I’d never tire of it.

Professionally, I am an “independent consultant.”  I even have my own little company with insurance benefits, retirement plan, and QuickBooks.  Yeah.  Among the many things I have lacked as an alleged business professional is a decent web site for the business.  A couple of factors pushed me to change this:

1. I was presenting at the HEUG/Alliance 2011 conference earlier this week
2. I’m kinda looking for work to keep me busy for the rest of the year

Having recently helped my wife set up a WordPress site as Blog and CMS, I decided the fastest way to put up a barely-presentable site for my business would be to take a similar approach: WordPress as content management system, with side-benefit of having built-in blogging capabilities.  You can see the results at: http://optimyzed.com

Wait… another blog?  Just another cobblestone in my Road to Hell.

“I had the best of intentions…”

And a personal note: the response from the presentation I gave alongside Miah Adams was well received.  More info over at Optimyzed.com!  I have to find a way to present more often.

I don’t live in the middle of nowhere, but I can see it from my house.

My home is located about an hour north of downtown Minneapolis, and to put it simply, we built out in farm country.  The nearest spot on the map is Dalbo, MN, a couple of miles away.  We are rural, and while we enjoy the benefits of quiet country living and ample space, we lack certain modern conveniences of city living, such as cable TV and DSL Internet service.

We tried WildBlue satellite Internet.  The latency of the speed of light made it unusable for even basic web surfing, such as booking airline tickets.  When I woke up one Saturday morning a year ago and found that my iPhone suddenly had 4 bars of 3G, not EDGE, signal on AT&T, I ran to the nearest AT&T store and picked up a USB data stick.

It’s fast.

The problem with AT&T is that they are very conservative with their data plans.   $60/month gets you a maximum 5 GB of combined uploaded and downloaded data bytes, and they charge $0.05 per MB after that.  Those of you quick with the multiplication skills already picked up on the fact that this equates to more than $50 per GB in overage charges. Outrageous.

On the other hand, Verizon also claims to offer 3G speed in my area.  Two weeks ago, when I exhausted my 5 GB allowance from AT&T before I was done working at home for the month, I went and picked up a 3G hotspot device (the FiveSpot) from Verizon, which also functions as a USB modem.  Verizon charges $80 for a 10 GB allowance, with only $10 per GB in excess of the allowance.  Quite reasonable in a $/GB comparison.

But how do they compare speedwise?  Not very well, I am afraid.

Yin and Yang. AT&T is significantly faster, usually by a factor of three, sometimes five times faster. In fact, on a good day, I can get sustained 5 to 7 Mbits per second true download speeds from AT&T. On occasion, I have briefly exceeded 1 Mbit/sec on my Verizon device (in USB modem mode.) But Verizon costs less per GB, and seems to be more reliable. When I use the Verizon connection for VPN and Remote Desktop to work for my clients from home, I rarely have issues. I seem to get booted off a couple times per hour when using VPN via AT&T.  Hmmm.  Might they be trying to discourage this kind use of their network?

I love the AT&T speed. Technically, I’m getting speeds in excess of the new “4G” networks advertised by other carriers with my AT&T USB Mercury DataConnect device, which is 3G. Sadly, 5 GB per month is just too little, even when I try to carefully ration bandwidth.

So, as a businessman who relies on Internet service to be billable, my company pays for both.  Besides, anyone who knows me also knows how much I appreciate redundancy.

It’s become a family tradition: As soon as Christmas is over, bolt from the Minnesota homestead in a four-wheel drive vehicle loaded to the gills.  Destination: Missoula, Montana.  We take my son (currently 9) back there twice a year for a checkup with his world-class (and world-recognized) cardiologist, Dr. Bruce Hardy.  It’s a two day drive across one of the Dakotas and the state of Montana itself.  Often, the Interstate highway across either Dakota state is closed from storms.  Sometimes, you’re taking your life (and that of your spouse and children) into your white-knuckled hands.

Soon after the appointment, we make a 1.5 hour drive and settle into Fairmont Hot Springs Resort for two nights, and spend one entire day at the poolside (or in the pool).  This morning, the wife and kids were staking out territory, consisting of a picnic table plus two sitting chairs) at 7 A.M.  I experienced difficulty in removing my carcass from my rented sleeping area, so I joined them about an hour later.

It’s nearly 2:30 P.M. as I write this.

Here are a few photos from early in the morning, before the joint turns into a zoo.

Also, if you have a neuromuscular disorder, I must recommend against removing yourself from the outdoor hot pool, making a snow angel, then returning to the hot pool.  Some muscle groups have difficulty relaxing again after the adrenaline surge.

Take my Perfect Intentions, mix in a stove warmed reduction of top grade procrastination, simmer. Enjoy a taste of the World’s Most Disappointing Blog.

I hate myself. You know, in that “Laughing at myself so I don’t cry” kind of way.

Perhaps something of value within the next few days. I have 3 drafts in various states of progress!

There’s a first for everything.  I usually make fun of guys who have their photo on their blog.  Check that, I ALWAYS make fun of guys who have their photo on their blog.  No worries.  I’ve endured and invited ridicule my entire life.  And *I* just happen to find myself freakin’ hilarious.

The thing that pushed me over the edge is the fact that one of these photos made me stop and think, “There. That’s exactly how I’d like to be remembered.”

Click the image to magnify, if you dare.

Another collection of links I want to save:

http://peoplesoft.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/peopletools-l/ajax-to-iscript-3230064

SR #3-1289239891: Sending XML to iScript using XMLHttpRequest (AJAX) on Metalink. Basically, if your using AJAX to a post and XML document to and iScript you need to add a querystring parameter to the url that sets the postDataBin to y

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-jaxmsoap/

Step 1 – configure PHP to run in the version of Apache delivered with Mac OS X

Step 2 – turn on Web Sharing (Apache)

Step 3 – Install MySQL

Step 4 – Start MySql

Step 5 – Download and Install WordPress

Step 6 – Create MySQL DB and User for WordPress

Step 7 -  Configure WordPress to connect to MySQL DB

The last step, if you get “Error establishing a database connection”:

http://foolswisdom.com/mac-wordpress-error-establishing-a-database-connection/

Basically, with this last part, the MySQL install from MySQL.com puts the Unix socket “file” into /tmp  instead of PHP default location. Edit your PHP ini file in /etc to change the default MySQL socket location.

Official Apple propaganda on mySQL:

http://developer.apple.com/internet/opensource/osdb.html