Our phone service is back, but we’ll be back off the Internet again soon. I will try to check my main hotmail account every few days or at least once a week at work… worse comes to worse we can go to my Mom’s or Sara’s parent’s house to check on stuff.

Bush: China must end detentions, ensure freedoms, the headline alone screams about the hypocrisy of Bush and his administration. Then you hit his quote, “America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists.” Let’s see… political dissidents held in prison by the US, check… raging a war for oil and religious reasons, check… spying on every single citizen without warrants, check… restricting freedom of assembly, check… lack of freedom of region (unless you belong to a Judeo-Christian based one, and some of the evangelical among them may say they don’t have as much freedom as they should), check… I don’t think the US has too much room to talk about China’s violations.
That’s not to say China isn’t bad, it is, it’s one of the worst in fact, but in today’s modern age, we are quick to forget the Olympics were held in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and the like (we did boycott the Russian games). But let’s look at a few things:
In terms of Press Freedom, the US ranks 48th. Behind Iceland (#1), Republic of Ireland (#8), New Zealand (#15), the UK (#24), Jamaica (#27), Australia (#28), Spain (#33), Italy (#35), Japan (#37)… in other words lots of countries are well above us. (The US also ranks #111, for “extra territorial” which I am guessing means war zones and the like.) China does rank #163 on that list, but still, we shouldn’t be talking until we are in the top 10 or so, especially since our First Amendment is all about Freedom of the Press.
The Human Development Index, a UN (I know, I know…) index measuring Longevity (life expectancy from birth), Education (literacy rate and combined gross enrollment ratio), and GDP (Gross Domestic Product). On that index, the US ranks 12th. Again Iceland wins at number one… number one in Press Freedom and number one on the HDI, they must be doing something right. Australia is #3, New Zealand actually trails the US here at #19 (but moving up while the US is moving down)… but still, we are all the way down at 12th. China is at #81 here, but far from the worst.
The Corruption Perceptions Index (a measure of “the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians”), puts the US at 20 (a higher ranking is better). Number one on this list is Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, Iceland, which does well on the others ranks #6 on this list. China ranks #72, far from the US, but far from the worst.
Even in terms of Economic Freedom, the US ranks #5, behind Hong Kong at #1, Australia #4… New Zealand ranks #6, and Canada at #7, but have the same score, both real close to the US score which isn’t as close to the #4 spot… Iceland here falls to #14. China is way down at #126, which is still a ways from the bottom of that list as well.
Anyhow, the point is, Bush shouldn’t be talking about freedoms when his administration rails against freedoms here. The Patriot Act alone is reason enough for him to shut the heck up…

Our phone got turned off today…well, we can get calls in for a week or so but can’t call out or check our messages. Our Internet has been off for a week (I can check at work if it gets too slow, but don’t count on it, this is a rare moment, so it may take a while to get back in touch with you if you try to get in touch with us. (The next 2 paychecks are spoken for, then the phone off the next, then the next is spoken for before we finally get to the one after that which will hopefully restore our Internet.)

Michael Savage claims that children with Autism are faking it…

Okay, well there’s Bush, Chaney, Rove and the whole fucked up administration as bigger asses but Savage managed to pull one off here. Unfortunately I am guessing he won’t be forced to apologize or fired…

You may notice that the pictures are gone. I edited a text widget and now all the widgets on my sidebar are gone. No matter what I do I can’t seem to get them to come back.
I have to say, I am not too impressed with the move from 2.3.3 to 2.5.1… First the comment errors with WordPress 2.5.1 and now this. And I am using Firefox, so it isn’t a IE issue in my case…
EDIT: It just got worse. Now all the Plugins are offline… and if I try to restore them I get an error. I may restore the database back one and see what happens…

EDIT: Both may be fixed. I’ll add the sidebars back soon. I rent back to the MySQL and had it repair the database. Seems to have fixed whatever the problems were. Perhaps I funked things up when I tried to repair the comment bug…

Johny Cash cover’s NIN’s Hurt.

Of the cover, Trent Reznor said:

I pop the video in, and wow… Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps… Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine anymore… It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure.

I just noticed an error with WordPress 2.5.1, which I recently upgraded to.
It says I have 4 comments waiting for approval, but when I go to the screen to approve them it says there are “No comments awaiting moderation… yet.”

I have searched Google, I found one suggestion to make sure the comment_date_gmt field is in the wp_comments table, which it is. I turned off Brian’s Threaded Comments to see if it was a conflict with that, no luck, so it isn’t that plugin, which aside from Akismet, is the only comment related plugin I use (I turned that off as well, and no luck either).
I have now tried plugins and problems with the database structure, but no closer to a fix. Anyhow, if you leave a comment, it may be stuck in the que until a fix is found.
EDIT: Forgot to add, it shows there are no comments found if I look in the “All Comments” and the “Approved Comments” sections of the Comments tab as well. Yet, if I check a post with comments, they are there.
EDIT 2: Obviously until there is a solution, I won’t see any comments at all, so if somebody has a solution the result will have to be emailed to r underscore flagg 10 at hotmail.
EDIT 3: The problem is there even with IE, so not a Firefox bug…
EDIT 4: Fixed.
For those having the same issue. First backup your database. Then logon to your cPanel, get to the phpmyadmin screen. Check the index option on the comment_date_gmt field in the wp_comments table.

I have decided to either go for a DeLorme (yes, the same company that makes the large street atlas you may have in your car or elsewhere) PN-40 (noted below) or the PN-20

$349.99 at Amazon (link above), but that includes topographic maps of the country, which can be used for full road routing. 1GB SC card and the usual complement of other stuff.
However… Factory refurbished units can be had for $199.99 from places like Tiger GPS and a few others. I have read the forums, and it seems factory refurbished units are just as good as (sometimes better than) new units. (May be better as the factory tests them more than new units.)
This makes it cheaper than the $234.09 Garmen Vista HCx (which by most accounts isn’t nearly as good)

and far cheaper than the equal model on the Garmin side, the one I would like to have of the Garmin’s the $299.99 60CSx (price dropped from last time I looked, perhaps due to the fact Garmin has a new GPS coming out soon)

But… there is always a “but.” But, there is a new DeLorme coming out called the PN-40, which by the looks of things is amazing… This is the one I would most want to have… but given economic realities, I’ll probably have to take the PN-20.

There were a few who voted against it strongly, Clinton, surprisingly among them, Ron Paul would have had he been able to be there (they added it to the calendar at the last minute and he had another appointment), Kucinich did also. Unfortunately, Obama did vote for it, and I may reconsider my vote for him just on this issue alone. Unfortunately I don’t feel I can vote for Bob Barr (Libertarian candidate) since he has conveniently flipped his positions before joining the Libertarian party to be more in line with them (he was one of the leaders of the Drug War, voted for the Iraq war, one of the leaders of the Defense of Marriage Act, voted for the Patriot Act… all of which he has come out publicly apologized for of came out against, too little too late I say, and I haven’t heard anything about him taking back his position to have the Pentagon bar the practice of Wicca in the military, and after all religious freedom is one of the main things that caused people to come here for and why the Constitution protects it).
What is important to note is that FISA itself worked fine, and WASN’T going to expire. The only thing this was for, essentially was to provide retroactive protection for the telcos (which technically violates the Constitution and I am sure we’ll see it challenged on that grounds very soon), and to expand the reasons they can now wiretap you without a warrant. Among the reasons they can wiretap you without a warrant is if they suspect you are trading files on the Internet.
I am just appalled at how many people still believe the Bush administration’s lies… Meanwhile I read a headline that Obama is trying to overcome the image that some Christians have that he matches the Bible’s description of the Anti-Christ, which is beyond odd since Bush matches it exactly. Bush is the one pushing to force people to be implanted with RFIDs, which Christians say is the Mark of the Beast.

If you are using Firefox 3, such as we are, some parts of this site are may not rendering properly. None of the videos are showing up. They show up with Internet Explorer or if you use IE Tab on Firefox. Hopefully a fix will be found… Not sure if it is a Wordpress issue or a Firefox issue, or a plugin issue yet.

When we were at our camping trip, I took a fire spinning safety class.
The first lesson, take a want that was lit, and light your hand on fire then put it out, twice. Then we took the fire, pinched it between our fingers and transferred it to an unlit wand. Next up was lighting your pants on fire and smoothing the fire out (don’t pat, as that would inflame the fire). Then another guy lit himself on fire, you would yell “hold!” and he would put his hands up and we would put him out with a wet towel, the idea is spotter practice, you never spin without a spotter. Finally we put out poi itself.
Anyhow, we eventually picked up some practice poi, so here are some shots Sara took of me doing some of the things I learned at another class.


Need to get that left one spinning even…

Ari and I went geocaching Saturday (Sara decided to stay home and have some Sara time) and Ari played a bit in the park.
We still don’t have a GPS, so I still rely on Google Maps or Google Earth to locate things before I leave the house.
First we went for and got, The “Price” is Right! #2, GCWD82. This is a fun micro cache, where the stealth is more about timing and looking smooth. There was at least one more name from that day on the log.
Then we went for The “Price” is Right! #3, GCWD8C, but there were too many Muggles in the area to search too much, so Ari played for a while on the playground, looked at the ducks and geese, then we came back. Despite a bunch of Muggles were still at a picnic pavilion nearby, we managed to snag it. The log was too wet to sign.
I didn’t go for any of the others in Price Park.
Next we went and found Park Sandwich, GCXJ5Y. Not too hard, but required some forethought. We tried finding Rotary Rooter, GCVYCF, but without a good GPSr, this one will be really hard to find. Google Maps/Earth will only take you so far when it is deep in the woods of a park.
We also techinically tried to get BOOMERS LITE BRITE, GC13GNZ, but I didn’t mark it as an official attempt since I didn’t remember which pole it was at (it is a light pole cache). I looked at one, but didn’t look too closely (when I got home, turns out that was the one I should have checked better), then tried another pole but a Muggle was parked next to it as well and taking his sweat time. I waited for a while, but eventually had to go into the store. When Ari and I came back out, the dude was still there. So we putzed around some more, but the guy never left, so we didn’t get to try (which is just as well since it was the wrong pole anyhow).

So Francisco Lorenzo wins via an undeserved disqualification against Humberto Soto, thanks in large part to Lorenzo’s whining and acting as if the glancing blow was an actual hit. Now the WBC has decided to take the title away from Lorenzo. Now I have read some commentators suggest it isn’t fair, that a ruling is a ruling, however wrong, and Lorenzo should keep his belt. Originally, after watching the replays myself (thank you YouTube… ref Frank Cortez giving an interview here) I thought this was the correct decision, but upon further thought, I agree. While Lorenzo was clearly hamming it up trying for the DQ, the ruling was the ruling. If they want to give the ref, or at least the sideline judges and boxing commission the ability to use instant replay then that is one thing, but from what they saw, they decided it the way it turned out. Let Lorenzo keep the title, everyone in the boxing world will brand him a coward and he’ll loose the belt his next fight, be it a rematch or another match. If they want the belt to be left open, then the rules should say that a DQ results in a vacant belt.
What I don’t get is the comments from YouTube people against Cortez. The guy made a bad call, but from his angle and without the benefit of instant replay he made the correct call. Was it the correct call from our angle and having the instant replay? No, but refs make bad calls all the time. In this case it cost Soto a deserved title, which is perhaps why some of them are faulting Cortez, but again, we all have to play by the rules. Soto violated the rule by hitting Lorenzo while he was down, though yes, it looks like the punch may have been in process already so perhaps hard to stop, and Lorenzo’s acting helped things along. Don’t blame the ref, blame Lorenzo.
I should qualify all the above by saying I am not too familiar with either fighter. I do recall seeing Frank Cortez on a few other fights, and thanks to us not having TV, I haven’t seen many fights for a while.

I talked how I was wanting to learn Java, so I could start making programs for the Android mobile phone platform.
A project that I thought of, but is perhaps beyond my ability for any time soon, is an application that will tie in with MySpace, Facebook and expendable to other social network websites.
Basically, it searches your friends lists, and if they have an Android phone as well and the location tracking feature turned on, you can see which of your MySpace/Facebook friends are nearby by using the Android’s built in GPS. There are variants I saw of this out there, but none I know tie in directly with the current social network, rather they setup their own networks.
Bes I can figure it, each user who has an Android device, sets up an application on their MySpace/Facebook page that detects when they enable the location feature on their Android. For privacy reasons, all it shows on the webpage itself is that location tracking is on. The back end of the application that the Friends can’t see, but the user can, allows them to block certain friends, or allow only certain friends to see their location.
If two friends have their location tacking enabled, then when they look at the application on their Android, it shows where they are via Google Maps. You can see in an instant if your friends are running late to meet you at the movie theater, or see when a friend arrives in town and a host of other cool features.
At the same time, there are the normal security concerns if some pervert is using a fake MySpace account to find young girls or something like that. I haven’t figured a way around that, but in all honesty I don’t know as if one does need to, since if they already got friended, they are already in, and as I said, the back end allows you to add only select friends to the location tracking, so hopefully that added level of security will be enough. Still the end user license would need to be written in a way so that the developer would assume no responsibility for abuse of the system. Personally, I would add a warning when they add friends to the location tracking that reminds them to be extra careful of whom they allow to track their location (this would be a dialog box that pops up each time, but would probably have a check mark so you could avoid the message next time). By default, it wouldn’t have any friends listed in the allow column.
Anyhow, that is the basics of it. I have more details floating around in my head.
Some of the variations out there currently (well, currently may not be the right word since Android itself isn’t out yet, but these are the ones that I know of in active development) that I know of:

There is a phone platform coming out called Android, which is a project of the Open Handset Alliance. A number phone manufacturers are going to be making mobile phones based on the Open Handset Alliance specification, all of which use Android. To program for Android, you need to know Java, and so I am starting on a path of learning Java. I chose C# over Java eons ago as I was mostly interested in Windows programming, so Java’s ability to compile on one machine and run on many others, even if they weren’t Windows machines, be they Linux, Mac or whatever, wasn’t a concern. Most mobile phones use Java for their games and applications. Apple’s iPhone is cool, but to program for it, you have to have a Mac, so no programming for the iPhone. Plus the iPhone’s market is limited right now do to the exclusive AT&T deal (you can unlock the phone and run it on T-Mobile for example, but most people won’t go through that much trouble). nVidia has a chipset coming out, but for the moment, none of the Tegra based phones are for Android, but Windows Mobile based phones (and other handheld devices). nVidia is a member of the Open Handset Alliance, so they may support somebody making a Tegra based phone that conforms to the Open Handset Alliance and Android. This will be cool since they seem to have the best graphics of the phones.
There are a couple of caveats however as I embark on learning Java. First, while most Java programs can be ran on many platforms, this doesn’t seem to be the case with Android’s implementation. While the language itself is the same, you can’t compile a program that will run on both Android and say a Windows machine, another cell phone, or something like that, and vica-versa. The problem is they apparently use a different virtual machine to run on than all other implementations. They did this so it would run better on a mobile platform as I understand it. It isn’t clear to me, but it looks like since the language is the same, you could do two compiles, one for Android and one for everything else, but I may be wrong on that part… of course if you use Android specific APIs, then it won’t work on anything else.
Anyhow, I am presently staring on reading Head First Java, 2nd Edition (I am just borrowing that copy, so I don’t have a good hardcopy of my own yet…). Early into the first chapter we do an exercise where we do the “99 Bottle of Beer on the Wall”. The program compiles and runs fine, but, as they note, the output isn’t 100% correct. It took me a while, but I found it.

There are several versions of the following viral video going around where a few kernels of popcorn are popped using cell phones.

Not only is it impossible to pop popcorn with cell phones, they are most likely a viral advertising campaign seeing how many similar videos were posted the same day by a few users. It could be a massively coordinated joke, but be it a joke or viral advertising, they are fake. See Physicist Debunks Cellphone Popcorn Viral Videos, and Snope’s entry which mentions the popcorn bit while debunking an earlier version of the joke where somebody cooked an egg between two cellphones that were on for 60 minutes (also not possible). The Snope’s article also includes a video where the British show Brainiac expands on the egg experiment by using 100 cell phones.
EDIT: Turns out it was an ad for Bluetooth headsets.

There is one essential right you have as a member of a jury that the judge will likely not instruct you on, as a matter of fact, he will likely be upset it comes up. The jury can acquit a defendant if they feel the instructions given to it by the judge were wrong, or most prominently promoted by defenders of freedom, if the jury feels the law itself is unjust. This doesn’t overturn the law, unless a large series of juries return the same result. This is called jury nullification. Largely however, it deals with bad instructions to the jury from the judge than the jury judging the law itself.
This video is presented in part by a much younger Ron Paul…

That is part one of three. More parts:

We picked up Ari’s glasses the other day. Here are some shots (today was a big photo upload day, so be sure to check out our full photostream at Flickr).

I found my first geocache! I specifically picked Pick Me…Pick Me At The Travel Bug Tree (GCXW4Z) first because it was supposed to have a Travel Bug in it, and when we go camping here soon, there will be a gathering of geocachers who will trade Travel Bugs. Also, based on it’s location on Google Maps, I figured I could find it before I got a GPS. Good on both counts!
The Travel Bug, is Buzz (TB121WH). As I said, I’ll be taking him camping with me, where on some day and time at some location on the campgrounds, some geocachers will gather for fun, talking, and trading of Travel Bugs. Since I won’t have time to get my own Travel Bug ready (I plan on getting one with the goal of sending him to New Zealand and then all over New Zealand, spending some time in the Nelson area if it can), I figured finding a local one would do, and I would do what I can to help it travel. Buzz’s goal is to visit all 50 states. He’s been in 7 states that I see off hand. Hopefully I can send him towards the West, or at least to a state he hasn’t been to yet. Once traded and we are back, I’ll drop the new Travel Bug off at the same location.
The cache itself was a fun find. I think when I go back to take the new Travel Bug, I’ll practice a little cache in, trash out since there seemed to be a few beer bottles lying around. Sara and Ari were with me, but I left them in the van while I ran for a quick search since we were on our way to her parent’s house and didn’t want to dedicate too much time looking for it. I was about to give up before I stumbled upon a likely spot and found it.
Just in case the pictures may spoil (though I tried to make sure I didn’t show too much) I’ll bury them below the break… of course if somebody got here via Google anyhow, they are probably looking at the full post, in which case advert your eyes.

Amazon has some Father’s Day GPS Deals. Unfortunately none of the GPSrs that I am looking at are part of the deal… as a matter of fact, none of the ones that they have a deal on would work for much of any of the stuff I want a GPS for aside from road navigation, none of them would work for geotagging photos, though a couple would work as very basic geocaching units, but aren’t really meant to be taken on a hike as they aren’t rugged enough. So I am still looking at the Garmin eTrex Vista HCx Color High-Sensitivity Mapping Handheld GPS as the unit of choice (at the low end, or the Garmin 010-00422-00 GPSMap 60CSx 2.6-Inch Mapping Handheld GPS at the high end since I decided against a Garmin Colorado 300 Bilingual Handheld GPS Unit with North American Maps for now due to firmware issues… though those will be cleaned up… probably soonish). I detailed everything in my last post, Locked Down on a GPS Choice.