Brian A. Thomas .com
Random Musings of Brian A. Thomas. Love for Ari and Sidd.
New WoW Cataclysm Starting Zones
Jul 5th
I have been playing a bit of the World of Warcraft and having a good time. I have started and abandoned a number of characters. Right now I have Ardaamis, a level 44 Dwarf Hunter, and Sthel, a level 25 Night Elf Druid. I probably would be near level 80 now if I would stop creating new alts and leveling them for a while then deleting them.
Anyhow, there is a new expansion coming out this fall called Cataclysm, and it looks to be pretty exciting. There will be two new races to play Worgen, a type of warewolf, and Goblins, which we have seen around and interacted with a lot, but are just now coming up as playable. Two of the races get their own starting zones (they have been sharing) Trolls and Gnomes. It is all pretty exciting. Right now the game is being Beta tested (I am not on the Beta yet… grrr….)
Somebody made some videos of how the starting zones look and played through them. They are after the break. They are about 30 minutes each, but are all cool.
First Amendment Shut Down to Protect BP
Jul 5th
The first amendment has been shut down to protect BP from looking bad. Officials at BP and the government are lying about how many skimming vessels are in each perish. In one perish they say they have 96, but the perish only has 19. How much worse would this disaster have been if we had an even more oil industry friendly government in place?
PHPGedView vs GenoTree
Jul 5th
Once upon a time I used to use PHPGedView, but they haven’t updated since 2009. Is that project still alive? Is it safe to use?
There is a newer program called GeneoTree, which appears to do much the same thing. Perhaps not as pretty, but still the same thing, and more important has been updated recently.
How do they compare? I know there is Second Site, but I prefer to avoid an HTML based solution, even if it works more directly with The Master Genealogist more directly.
UPDATE: In the end I went with Webtrees as I was having issues making PHPGedView work. For some reason every time I would go to the PHPGedView directory it would get rerouted here.
It’s the End of Democracy
Jan 22nd
Olbermann’s tendency for hyperbole is actually drastically understated here. In a few years this country will not belong to us, it will belong to the wealthy corporations who will literally rape and pillage the American citizens, and won’t care (corp owners never care) about the death of democracy, the environment or anything else. Time to get the fuck out of the US.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The one and only hope is an Amendment to the Constitution:
Visit http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/ for more details.
Sidd and Ari Update
Oct 3rd
Okay, the main purpose of the blog is to keep family and friends up to date with what is happening with my family. To that end…
Ari is enjoying Kindergarten and his bus ride home. No real news to report there yet. They went on a field trip to see a ballet of Peter and the Wolf, which “was good but not too good.”
At the moment we have only one car, so Sara and the kids have to take me to work, then she and Sidd have to take Ari to school. Why only one car? The other day Sara calls and says that the truck feels funny, like it has a flat and the brakes weren’t felling right, but she pulled over and the tire didn’t look flat, and decided (against my instructions) to continue on. Later she calls broken down. A friend of hers came and got her and the kids and took them down to their place since that was where she was heading anyhow. We learned that the lug nuts must not have been tight enough and that they came loose (odd thing is, I thought I tightened them, and the truck drove fine for days afterwords). This resulted in one of the bolts getting sheared off. So now we have to replace the 5 bolts… not an easy task. The alternative is to replace the whole hub, but that costs a crap ton and since it only needs bolts, we’ll wait until we can get that fixed…
Meanwhile, Sidd is rolling over both directions really well. His rolls to his back are sometimes met by him bumping his head, but for the most part he does well. He sleeps on his side it seems. He is also starting to get some of the mechanics of crawling… well, scooting. He hasn’t figured out that if he got on his knees that he would be more mobile, but he does try to scoot to get stuff that is out of his reach.
Sidd’s colic is gone. For the most part he cries if hungry, wet, wants attention, is too bored or really tired. Otherwise he is a fairly happy kid. Still needs lots of attention.
The apartment is okay. We are nearly unpacked. The downstairs is cleared of all boxes. Sidd and Ari’s room still has boxes, but not much we can do about those as those hold toys and we can’t have them all over the floor as Ari’s toy box is already full. Lots of boxes in our closets, but nothing we can do there either as there is no room in this place for the stuff to be unpacked.
That should be the quick rundown of all that is going on here.
Baby Dancing Video
Sep 27th
To make up for the far too many political posts, here is a dancing baby.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Sep 26th
Both sides of the political spectrum keeps using words in ways to scare their base from the other side. This became most noticeable recently at the 9/12 tax party and at the ever so scary Value Voters Summit (where Carrie Prejean had the nerve to say” the level of intolerance is unbelievable”, this from a lady who is herself intolerant of those she opposes, and in fact keeps spreading the lie she was fired for said intolerance despite the fact she was fired for not making her public appearances as required by her contract).
At the tax party there were lots of signs and posters accusing Obama of being a Nazi and a Fascist, something pushed by conservative radio/TV hosts. The same thing with Communism and Socialism. All of which are so ridiculous that one has to conclude that the hosts, who probably know better, are using as a scare tactic to scare a gullible group of people into a fury that shouldn’t be. Both terms are misused and overused. More >
Another Example of How Messed up Our Health Care System is
Sep 5th
Just another quick example of how messed up our health care system is. Bush started negotiations with New Zealand…
Now New Zealand, like every other first world “westernized” country has universal health care. Every New Zealand citizen is covered. Also included in that coverage is prescriptions. The government of New Zealand negotiates with the drug companies to get a cheap price on prescriptions. A fair chunk of this price is paid by the government, the citizen then pays a small percentage of that. Basically it is like a prescription plan we may have here, but cheaper, and subsidized by the government instead of an insurance company. If you want to eliminate wait times and other stuff that comes with the universal system, you can buy supplemental private insurance from for profit companies, as I noted before that would be about $80 NZD a month ($55 USD).
Anyhow, one of the main issues the administration had was that the government of New Zealand was subsidizing prescriptions for their citizens and negotiating such cheap rates. They wanted them to not to negotiate such low prices so that American pharmaceutical companies could make more profit. It was Bush’s view then that it is better to see New Zealand citizens suffer and pay more to protect US profits. And I think this helps point out one of the many problems we have here. The fact that too many people care about profits and not enough about sick people.
A Good Health Care Reform Video
Sep 5th
The music on this one is a bit irritating, but the video message is great:
This video is obviously pro-reform. It is odd to see the people who want to keep the system going as it is. As if they want to protect the insane profits that the insurance companies make over the ill health of people, for those who have it. Odd how people like Glen Beck says we have the best health care system in the world, but just a year ago was talking about how all they care about is profit and they don’t care about people and it needs fixed, of course he was just released from a major hospital at that point. It’s crazy how so called “Compassionate” people don’t care that an insurance giant can deny a teenager a liver transplant, and many other fatal decisions every day, letting people die because it is better for their bottom line calling a government board a “death panel” yet that same board making a for profit decision isn’t a death panel.
Socialism isn’t Communism. They are vastly different beasts. The people complaining about socialized medicine don’t complain about other socialized stuff such as the police services, fire fighters, the military and the like. Could you imagine the disaster if the police department worked like our medical system does today?
Is socialized medicine perfect? No. Heck, that’s not what is really being proposed. What is being proposed changes nothing for most people save drastically lower costs and insure the many people who don’t have insurance now. Does it mean a bigger tax on the wealthy? Yes. However, in the end it may lower our health care percentage of our GDP, which right now is one of the highest in the world, despite being no where near the healthiest. The main focus of the bill, beyond the public option is to force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and not charge more for them, and this is a good thing, since people like Sara can’t get covered for the thing that most threatens her life because it is pre-existing.
Rachel Maddow Hits the Nail on the Head About Health Care Reform Here
Aug 8th
Rachel Maddow breaks it down simply. These Mobs are not debates with the Town Hall people about Health Care Reform, but mobs of people trying to shut things down. There are other reports about who is funding these mobs, and who is funding the busing of people in to create mobs at these functions which I may post later. We do need a real debate, not hot headed people trying to shut things down that they don’t understand. It is like those idiots who keep pushing for Intelligent Design to be taught in school, have no understanding of the real science, and how we got to where we are today in the science of cosmology, abiogensis and evolution (which they further confuse those three separate things into one). These people in these mobs aren’t educated on the truth of universal health care. They believe the horror stories that come from the systems while turning a blind eye to the many more horror stories coming out of our own system.
Anyhow, check out the video.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
What is amusing is that what is being proposed in Washington isn’t a single payer system like Canada at all.
I do think that things are being rushed through without creating a whole new system that will work for everyone properly. Funny how those on the right are fighting against health care reform when they say they are the compassionate ones, they are the ones with Christ on their side. I say Christ hangs His head in shame over the way these conservatives are treating those that need affordable health care in this country, the country that claims to be the most Christian, but the only one not to provide affordable health care to every citizen, the only one not to guarantee vacation time, and a number of other areas that those who say they are compassionate, have no compassion for.
Are systems like they have in Candada, the UK, New Zealand and the rest of the world perfect? No. Are they better than what we have now? Undoubtedly. There is a great article at Science Blogs about Are patients in Universal Health Care Countries Less Satisfied? that I suggest people read.
Okay I Have a G1, but I Could Still Use a Good Handheld GPS
Jul 1st
I love geocaching with my G1 using GeoBeagle. It is a great phone with GPS abilities, and of course GeoBeagle is the best program out there for the Android platform for geocaching (plus, it’s free). However, there are times when you exceed the ability to use the program, especially if you need a map to find where to drive to and you are in an area not serviced by T-Mobile. Such was the case the other day when at the family reunion in Minerva.
There was an additional problem, I loaded my G1 up with the 500 caches nearest me, and they stopped just outside of Minerva. This was no fault of the phone, the program or anything other than there being too many caches close to me to include Minerva. I have since ran a search for Minerva and will add those to the list soon.
The big issue while there was the lack of a signal. I couldn’t find places on Google Maps as it requires a good signal, and I couldn’t find new caches in the area to add manually as I didn’t have a signal. At the moment, GeoBeagle doesn’t support offline maps, though it is on the feature request list. Of course even if it did, my lack of foresight wouldn’t have solved the problem of not having caches for the area loaded up. Once again we see the value of the lesson of what happens when you assume something. I assumed that the area would be covered in my 100 mile search radius, but it is just the first 500 in that 100 miles that the query pulls, and in this case I wasn’t loaded in from my full database, which probably includes Minerva already.
Anyhow, the offline maps issue and some others show the value of still needing a good handled unit.
To that end here is the list of handheld units I want… More >
Odd Statements from Republicans
Jun 16th
I am constantly confused when Republicans and those on the right talk about how they are the ones for individual liberty. Are they not the ones who oppose legalizing marijuana? Are they not the ones opposed to gay marriage? Was it not a Republican that proposed to have the Pentagon ban Wicca from our armed forces? It was the lack of individual liberty that made me move from the Republicans to the Libertarians long ago.
Of course now I have problems with free market capitalism as well as it suffers the same problem socialism (at least as a form of government economic policy which to me isn’t really socialism but) does, greed. If everyone played fair, true socialism would probably be the best route. It is the means that is most fair to the most number of people, everyone. My problem with it is then where is the motivation to do better? Of course perhaps that gets back to the playing fair part. If everyone played fair under a capitalist situation, then you add the motivation to do better, but then you create castes, and that by itself isn’t fair to the workers. So where I stand on economics is still in the air.
I’ve done lots of those “What kind of…yada yada… are you?” quizzes. I generally end up being an anarchist. This is perhaps true, Libertarians are basically anarchist with a capitalist lean rather than the default socialist lean. I am certainly not a socialist, at least not as it is traditionally practiced. So I find myself drifting without political or economic ties. When I find the near perfect system, I’ll let you know.
What Those on the Right Seem to be Ignoring
Jun 12th
Later today, more details about the torture the US did on detainees will be released. Those on the right are upset. They think that if the world knows what we did in detail it will threaten our national security. They believe that the release of any photos would do the same thing.
They are missing the point. If we never did those despicable things, there would never be anything to leak out and threaten our national security. We are, at least according to those on the right, the supposed moral leader of the world. Yet we committed immoral acts.
We are the most “Christian” nation in the world and yet we freely engaged in the torture of humans and think we are justified in doing so… the Nazis thought they were justified as well. That is not to say that the torture of those people is anything like the Holocaust. Obviously the murder of millions of people is far worse, but the point is that in both cases the people in power, felt justified in doing what they did.
We are the only industrialized nation not to provide affordable health care. The right can talk how nobody is denied health care all they want, but they again miss the point. Yes you can get health care, but can you afford it afterwords. Nobody is saying the poor can’t get the health care, they are saying people can’t afford to get it so they ignore it.
The US is the only advanced economy in the world that doesn’t guarantee workers get paid vacation time. New Zealand, Australia and much of Europe grantee workers at least 20 days, with some demanding 25 to 30 days, and those don’t count mandatory paid holidays. I get 5 days, and a couple holidays, and I am doing better than 1 in 4 Americans.
I could go on and on, and initially did, but I’ve touched on those subjects before, so I’ll leave them be for this post. How can we be upset the information is coming out? If we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t have anything to be ashamed of. If we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t have a threat to our national security. I think it would be better for our national security to let it all come out, and to swiftly prosecute those responsible. But Bush, Chaney and the rest of those responsible up for war crimes. What puts us at risk is not dealing with the issue honestly and punishing those responsible. If we investigated and punished all those responsible for these reprehensible acts, then we would in fact be more secure, as the world would see us as dealing with it and not willing to put up with it, even when it was us who did it.
Using GeoBeagle
Jun 8th
I made my first Wiki entry/edit today over at Cacheopedia. I made an entry on how to use GeoBeagle. Hopefully others will come along and help fill in what I left out.
Zoo Updates All Day Long
Jun 6th
If you were checking the site all day today you would notice that we kept updating with what was going on with our Zoo trip today. On the top right corner is my Twitter feed… though I am having troubles formatting it correctly.
Lots of New Caches Found Using My G1 and GeoBeagle
Jun 2nd
I have now found a total of 11 caches, 6 of which have been using my T-Mobile G1, and GeoBeagle that I downloaded off the Android Market. I have to say I find that the G1 does really well in the cover of woods. Far better than I expected. GeoBeagle is my favorite Android app so far, and its free, unlike some of the other geocaching apps for Android devices. GeoBeagle is still fairly early in the beta cycle, but there are no real bugs. A few features would be nice to have, and I put a request for those on the forums for it, and the UI could be made a little easier, but all in all a very good app with a very bright future. I am at a loss as to if features should be added/and current features tweaked first, or upgrade UI. With C#, you start with the UI and work on the back end after. This isn’t so much the case with Java, or so I’ve seen so far from what little I have done with Java. I am going to skip listing all my finds this time, if you want to know, the geocaching icon to the side of the page should take you to my geocaching profile. There are two Did Not Finds on that list, none could be blamed on the G1 or GeoBeagle. The one I got a hint for and forgot one of the obvious things about geocaching, the caches are not always on the ground, as for the other, nobody has found it and logged it yet, so it may be MIA.
I Found My First Geocache Using My G1
May 28th
I got a G1 recently. Great phone with a built in GPS. So now I can go geocaching.
First I got GeoBeagle (available on the Android Market) and it’s required application Radar. Then I had a moment to run accross the street from work… well okay, I drived across the bridge to the other side of the freeway… and went looking for the 77 Cemetery cache. I found it all right. Along the way I saw a baby bunny right next to the cache location, but I didn’t change to camera mode quick enough before he scampered off.
I have to say GeoBeagle works really well. Can’t compare it to the paid apps, but it does the job admirable.
Now to take Sara out with me soon.
Obama Attacks Bush While Announcing a Bush Like Program, Liberal Media Attacks Him
May 25th
In a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Obama, standing in front of the Constitution of the United States, rightfully attacked Bush for his policies regrading detainees. Bush and Cheney and all the others should be prosecuted for war crimes. No doubt they overstep the rule of law, no doubt they tortured, or at least ordered the torture of detainees. Unfortunately, Obama hasn’t had the courage to order a full commission into those war crimes. During this speech, in front of the Constitution, Obama laid out a new plan. A plan that includes putting people in jail because they might commit a crime. It is, as the video below points out, something out of Minority Report
Here is Rachel Maddow, one of the more liberal reporters out there, on the most liberal media outlet out there, attacking Obama for it:
Of course this is what separates the liberal media from the conservative media. Hanity, Rush, Beck, O’Reilly and their ilk would just as well such Bush’ and Chaney’s dicks before admitting that they were wrong on Iraq and torture. More >
Pages Gone
May 22nd
Either I deleted them, which I don’t recall, or they got deleted somehow. I’ll have to look over old tables to make sure…
Site Upgraded
May 22nd
Well, I finally upgraded the site. I have to say I like where WordPress is going with things. I don’t think there are too many changes so far as you the reader goes, but there are lots of changes to the admin areas. If you are running a blog, then I suggest WordPress without reservation.
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