February 29, 2008

Your Bill of Rights And You.

"You cannot expect phone companies to participate if they feel like they're gonna be sued. I...I mean...It is..These people are responsible for shareholders. They're private companies."

—President George W. Bush, January 28, 2008, talking about the warrantless wiretapping program and the "Protect America Act".

What is it about that statement that makes my blood pressure spike? Again, when did my rights as an American citizen suddenly vaporize? Whatever happened to my Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure?

I don't give a shit about the telco companies. I don't give a rat's ass if they get sued six ways to Sunday by every one of their customers. They chose to aid the government with this program (except for Quest), they have cadres of expensive lawyers who tell them what to do, and they can sink or swim on their own. It's obvious Bush doesn't care about being responsible for us, the citizens of his country, by the letter of the Constitution, which requires that a warrant be supported by probable cause and sworn to by someone who is accountable for it. We as citizens should be outraged by this invasion of our privacy, but we're not.

The argument "I don't care if they listen, because I'm not doing anything wrong," is weak and ignorant. We have laws that state clearly what the President is allowed to do in the interest of national security; in this case it's the 1978 FISA act, which never required a court order in the first place. This administration felt it needed to expand the scope of its powers beyond any type of oversight or accountability, which immediately makes me suspicious of its motives.

When a government oversteps the written laws, the erosion of those laws is the inevitable result. Grabbing for unlimited power is human nature, and our laws are there to keep that impulse in check. This administration has repeatedly asserted that it is not accountable to Congress for its actions, many of which make a mockery of its claim to defend "freedom".

I feel less and less like I want to participate in this society if I feel like I'm living in a police state, governed by vague threats of fear and panic. My President should be accountable to his shareholders too, but nobody seems to give a shit about what this administration does.

Update 3.7.08: See this article for more information on abuses of power.

Posted on February 29, 2008 11:11 AM | link to this entry

February 28, 2008

The King Of Beers.

I couldn't wait for the full two weeks to pass, so I popped one of the beers in our basement and sampled the brew this evening. The result: A rich, medium hopped wheat beer with a sweet finish and a pleasant carbonation. Very tasty.

Posted on February 28, 2008 10:26 PM | link to this entry

February 27, 2008

No More Surplus.

Aw, crap. One of my favorite junk rummaging locations, State Salvage (google cache), is closing its doors. Over the last couple of months their inventory has been getting thinner and thinner, in contrast to years past when it's been filled to the gills with desks, chairs, computers, and heavy equipment. The guy at the desk told me they're selling what they have left on the floor and then it's all going on the internets, at a site called Govdeals.

Crap! Where am I going to find $10 coat racks or $5 steel shelving now?

Posted on February 27, 2008 4:28 PM | link to this entry

February 26, 2008

Guitar Lesson, Week Eight.

My repertoire has been expanded to five songs since I picked up the guitar in January. I've got the first two, "Peaceful Easy Feeling" and "Boys Better", down cold. The chord changes that stymied me weeks ago are solid at this point. I've got two R.E.M. tunes figured out but not clean: "Texarkana" and "Radio Free Europe", each of which contain tricky changes between C and B chords. Finally, this afternoon I learned the iconic opening phrase and bridge to "There She Goes" by the Las, which is a lot of fun to play.

I've been pretty lax with my practice schedule, which has made itself clear at my lessons. Two hours of frantic playing right before my lesson does not make for a spectacular performance, but I'm in love with the growing familiarity of the chords and the natural feeling of playing along with the few songs I know. Lessons are going on hold for a little while as I catch up to some other commitments, but I'm not going to stop playing—this is too addictive.

Posted on February 26, 2008 11:12 PM | link to this entry

Snorkel Beach 2

It's day 4,000 of gray February 2008, so I thought I'd post a picture of some sunshine and blue water to remind myself what "warm" felt like.

Posted on February 26, 2008 8:46 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

February 24, 2008

Old Friends, New Friends.

This weekend, I took a drive up to White Marsh to see my old girl, and to help her new dad take her apart in order to start the process of restoration. Based on the weather we've had this past week, I was expecting a cold slog through the mud and ice to bang knuckles against cold metal, so I wore about fifteen layers, but somebody upstairs was smiling on the three of us. The sky was deep blue, the air was clean, and the sun was warm on our backs.

She's in an enclosed yard, surrounded by semi tractors and utility equipment of all kinds, which is fitting, I guess, considering the lineage of the manufacturer. The only thing more appropriate would be a tractor repair yard.

B.'s already gotten a lot of work done since the beginning of the year—more than I would have in the same amount of time: both seats are out, the dashboard is out (wiring carefully marked, not a small or easy job), and the steering column through to the pump is out. After piling the parts on the ground and setting up a sheet of cardboard and plywood (cheerfully referred to as "Tennessee creepers" by our host) under the truck, we spread out some tools, rolled up our sleeves, and got to work.

First, we went after the seatbelt anchors, which were located in the center of the rear bed, and which are impossible to remove with only one person. After struggling to break them free with vice grips and a breaker bar, B. pulled out the cutting wheel and braved the rain of rust underneath to split them in half. Next we worked on the rollbar, and got three-quarters of the bolts off before being stymied by the remainder, tucked carefully under the front lip of the rear wheel arch.

I would have laid money on requiring an impact wrench, a weightlifter, and an hour of prayer to get either of the doors to budge, but surprisingly, both of them came off in about ten minutes. After a break for lunch, we pulled the hood off and started on the fenders, which were fastened with a bucketful of bolts in interesting and challenging locations. So the headlights, marker lights, and turn signals all came off in order to reach the last few.

Standing back to survey the results, it was surprising to see just how quickly it came apart, and how much we got done. There is, of course, much more to do, but it felt good to get ouside and get my hands dirty, and help B. with his new project. I'm happy to help him realize his dream, but I'll admit my motives are not entirely altruistic: Helping him rebuild the Scout, even if it's just lending a wrenching hand once in a while, makes me feel a little better about leaving it to sit in the driveway for three years. I'm excited to see it's finally getting the attention it deserves.

Posted on February 24, 2008 11:10 PM | link to this entry

February 22, 2008

Search Party.

The Search functionality on this site is now back to normal. Strangely, while it was an easy process to combine a search request across two separate weblogs in MT 3.16, it seems to be set up differently in this newer version. So, for now, the search only searches the main weblog. I'll get the Linkblog straightened out soon, I promise.

I'm digging the new features of this version, though. It's a nice upgrade from the older model—leather bucket seats, heated mirrors, cruise control, etc. Now, if I could just find something interesting to write about...!

Posted on February 22, 2008 12:53 PM | link to this entry

February 21, 2008

Upgraded Seats.

The site isn't quite finished yet, but I'm writing here anyway. MT 3.3 is pretty slick. I'm now only two years behind the technology curve instead of four, which will provide things like better spam filtering, a refined editing space, and better plugins. After this exercise is finished, I'm going to take a long hard look at upgrading to 4.1 now that my puzzle-solving synapses have warmed up.

Other than that, things around Idiot Central are pretty quiet. On Saturday I stopped over to the Beerfather's house to bottle the result of our efforts: two and a half cases of wheat beer, sitting neatly in the basement fermenting on the shelf where I stored the bin full of Scout parts. He and I are hatching plans to go wrenching on the truck this coming weekend, something that leaves me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth: I'm excited for him. His enthusiasm reminds me of myself ten years ago when I had a lot more money and big plans for my new truck, but it will admittedly be hard not to feel like I failed in my efforts to keep it in shape. So I'll be bringing a box of tissues along with my socket sets on Sunday, and try to keep the blubbering to a minimum.

I'm also signed up for some photography this weekend—the paying kind, and it will have me dusting off the panoramic rig for the tripod I was testing out last spring. I have to buy some cheap spotlights this week, and I'll have to spring for a copy of Stitcher to process the photos, but I'm excited to finally start working on this for real, and this time it's all paid for.

My Mom's new MacBook showed up last Friday, and I've played with it only enough to update the software. It's a really nice little machine—it feels solid, it's quick, and she's going to get a kick out of the built-in camera as well as a fresh battery. I got her old Pismo in the mail yesterday, so I'm going to transfer her data over and set her up with a chat account so I can use screen sharing to troubleshoot any problems with her machine. Meanwhile, I'm helping Jen's father work through problems with his wireless printer. Troubleshooting Vista over the phone has been like doing this year's taxes while guiding a non-english speaker through a root canal on a CB radio. He will explain what he sees on his screen, and I will frantically Google whatever he can describe to figure out what to do (I don't own a copy, and am trying to avoid buying one). Adding to the pain is the fact that his patch cords have all vanished, leaving him with no way to directly connect to his printer. Argh!

Guitar lessons have gone reasonably well; I missed last week's lesson but got back in the groove this Tuesday. It's to the point now where I miss playing it if I go too long without it, which I'm taking as a good sign. I also broke down and bought an electric tuner after consistently coming in for lessons out of tune.

Add to all of this the fact that it's half past February and I've only done one illustration this year. I need to clone myself.

Posted on February 21, 2008 9:45 AM | link to this entry

February 20, 2008

Testing Yet Another New Entry.

This is coming from a new install of MT 3.3. Let's see if it works.

Update 4:12 EST: I done busted the template files, and the new way they (were) doing the comment form is really messy. More work to do...

Update 5:52 EST: Individual entry archives are looking good again. Everything else is still pretty awful, but I'm going to take a break and eat something first.

Update 8:58 EST: Category archives and the main index page are now cleaned up. MT 3.3 was using a tag called MT_TRANS, which was meant to do some kind of translation to other languages, but it was bollixing up the whole thing. So it's getting cleaned out of the templates, one at a time.

Update 12:26 EST: The linkblog is back up! It looks like I was doing a few things wrong on my end (not configuring the archives to publish correctly, for one) and the site root wasn't working correctly, but it's back up and running now. That doesn't excuse the lousy documentation, though. I've made a lot of minor tweaks to the site overall, getting the meat and potatoes working right. The search function, however, is completely fucked up. The Archives page is reorganized, although the thing I want it to do automatically seems to be impossible in MT 3.X. The Linkblog archives are currently hosed. And don't even look at the houseblog...

Posted on February 20, 2008 3:27 PM | link to this entry

February 15, 2008

Site Maintenance.

Hi folks– if you see strange things around these parts, it's because I'm doing a long-avoided upgrade to the CMS engine that powers this site. Comments are coming in, but they're not being posted to the live site yet, and there are several pages that look like poo. Plus, the sideblog is totally busted because the author of the plugin offers the lousiest documentation possible. Stay tuned here while I sort some stuff out.

Posted on February 15, 2008 1:54 AM | link to this entry

February 14, 2008

Driving With Handcuffs On.

On a whim, I went to look at a Scout for sale over in Dundalk this afternoon. While it runs, this particular Scout is worse off than the one I just sold, so no deal. But it did have a great steering wheel and a death's head shift knob. Bonus!

Posted on February 14, 2008 3:43 PM | link to this entry

February 13, 2008

Special Delivery.

A long time ago, when I moved into my first house house, I found an old Cloverleaf Dairy cooler in the basement, and I considered myself lucky. I love the idea that a guy in a white suit drove a truck around the neighborhood and delivered dairy right to the doorstep.

For a long time, I stored charcoal briquettes in it, because I had noplace else to put them. It sat in my old kitchen for a while, and when we moved into the Estate, it sat out on the front porch, briquettes intact.

Recently, Jen did some research and signed us up with a local organic dairy that delivers to our neighborhood. They offer everything from milk and cheese to bread, poultry, seafood and coffee. Two weeks ago, we ordered some milk, cheese, and butter, and we got the chance to put our dairy cooler out on the front steps.

I'm happy to report the 2% milk is wonderful. It tastes almost as rich as whole milk. The half and half had a small layer of milkfat at the top when I opened it. The sharp cheese is the equivalent of extra sharp, and very tasty, and the butter is good too. And, by coincidence, I bought some bread from their partner bakery this weekend, and it's delicious as well. We're definitely continuing with the service—it's all hormone-free and locally grown, which is something Jen's gotten more and more interested in this year.

The best part: ordering everything online is just as easy as the sticker on the inside of the cooler says: DON'T FORGET. JUST LEAVE A NOTE.

Posted on February 13, 2008 9:54 PM | link to this entry | Comments (4)

Back On The Air.

Update: After a day's worth of DNS outage, and another day where the database disappeared, I'm back. Lesson learned: the way I was archiving my Movable Type database was wrong, very wrong. I'm not making that mistake again. Now, on with our regularly scheduled fun:

Jen and I ventured out into the freezing Maryland morning to vote yesterday in the Chesapeake Primary, also referred to as the Potomac Primary on CNN. We sat on the bed sipping coffee in the morning and talked a little bit about each of the candidates and how we felt about them, feeling guilty that we'd not done more research before today. I can't watch too much of the election coverage in the news anymore, because it's just the same stupid sentences repeated over and over again, like a toddler banging pots together, so I'm not familiar with the media's version of how the candidates stand on the issues. And really, that's my bad for not following up on it. I like to think I'm a social liberal and a fiscal conservative—I don't believe in welfare as the cure for all society's ills, nor do I believe religion has any place in politics, and I think that the states should make their own choices in many issues the federal government has taken up for itself. As you may imagine, the last eight years has sucked moose balls for people like me. (Remember peace and prosperity? A balanced budget and a federal surplus? The current guy pissed that all away real quick.)

One thing I'm highly confused about is the issue of super delegates. We saw the NBC Nightly News a couple of days ago, and Katie Couric handed the desk over to two morons who decided to explain the idea of super delegates with a cartoon reel, like America is supposed to be a class of second-graders watching Nickelodeon. Their "explanation" of the whole thing was that no matter who wins the popular vote in America, the super delegates have the final say when caucus time comes around, essentially negating the choice of the people, and that super delegates aren't elected by the people at all. Sounding familiar?

Well, on NPR this morning I heard a different story from a correspondent who claimed that the super delegates only carry 40% of the final say in the party's choice, not the final say. The example given, of Gary Hart vs. Walter Mondale in the 1984 elections, is sobering. While I don't pretend to believe anyone, Republican or Democrat, would have beaten Reagan in '84, the super delegates' choice in that race was, obviously, a poor one.

Wikipedia has a pretty decent article up about the issue, although it's Wikipedia, so the usual caveat emptor applies. They claim that super delegates only make up 20% of the total number of delegates. Their article on brokered conventions is also worth a look, because from all I'm able to gather, it's looking that's the future for us registered Democrats.

So here's the crux of my confusion: which is it? Do the primaries really even matter (I don't buy the "super delegates take the primary results into consideration before voting" line of crap) or did I freeze my ass off just to piss in the wind?

Speaking of pissing in the wind, we saw several lawn signs for Ron Paul on our way to the polls. What is it with that guy? Looking at his campaign platform, he's all over the damn place. For every thing I see that I like, there's another five things where I think, Damn, you're crazy, dude.

The other thing that has me thinking: I heard a woman on NPR this afternoon, interviewed in Wisconsin, who was looking at her choices for the Republican primary, and she sort of laughed and said that she didn't think he had a chance of winning, but that she was going to vote for Huckabee because she didn't think McCain had enough Christian values.

I stand before you, puzzled, and ask this question honestly. What exactly are Christian values?

I'm looking at some basic facts about the two Republicans, and as I've always said, with a few differences of opinion, I like McCain. He lost his way during the Bush years, but he's the best Republican I've seen in my lifetime, and I'd really like to like a Republican for a change. I don't agree with his hawkish stance on the war, and I don't like the fact that he's changed his position on a lot of things (Roe v. Wade, marriage, and taxes), but I like a good portion of his other opinions. I get the feeling he would do whatever the fuck he thought was right once he got into office, within reason.

Huckabee I can't get behind due to a lot of his public statements about gays, marriage, creationism, and taxes. And I have strong feelings about religion mixed with politics, as stated above. I don't want fundamentalists anywhere near the Constitution or the big red button in the current social and global climate, and I get the feeling he's just waiting to write whole volumes of amendments.

So what exactly does a candidate have to do to have "good Christian values"? If I remember correctly, the current guy got elected on a platform of "good Christian values", and look where that's got us.

Posted on February 13, 2008 8:49 PM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

February 11, 2008

Mixed Bag.

Saturday I took advantage of the freakishly warm weather (before the arctic cold blew in Sunday morning) and finished sanding the cabinet I'd started several months ago. After having spent a total of about 12 hours in a mask over the course of this project, I'm going to say this will probably be the last furniture heatgunning project I take on. Everything will get dipped from this point forward, and my fingers will thank me now that I have no skin left on them.

I have to buy a pair of new shelves and cut them to fit, a big piece of luann for the backing board, and have three new panes of glass cut. Finally, the original brass hardware is soaking in citrus stripper, and should be clean in another day or so. We're thinking a medium colored stain, nothing too dark, and this will make a fantastic bookcase.

Update: I found a picture I took of the cabinet before it got stripped:

With the cold air in town, we also tested out the insulating job I'd finished on the window last week, and the verdict is success, mostly: I didn't get each pocket entirely filled filled with insulation. I have to pull each spring out, stick some sort of wire down the hole, and break up the empty space at the bottom of each space, then stuff some more insulation in there. But the part that is insulated is toasty warm compared to the other windows in the house, and that's worth it to me.

In other news: I had no idea Bill Clinton was going to be in Catonsville yesterday. If I'd known that, I would have gone to see him, elbowing the retirees out of the way to shake his hand. Crap.

Trivia corner: Am I the only one who didn't know that the largest denomination the U.S. Treasury prints is the $100 bill?

And finally, a New Favorite Drink: The Lychee Martini, introduced by good friends at a dinner party on Saturday evening over a table of Korean food. Who knew that radish kimchi was so good? (Now, the problem: Identify radish kimchi from the hundreds of different varieties on the shelf at the Korean grocery.)

Posted on February 11, 2008 8:43 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

February 8, 2008

Rumble.

I don't have a whole lot of money to throw around right now, but there's a solid-state Acoustic 120 bass head for sale on Craigslist right now. We had one of these in high school, with a matching 2x15" cabinet, and I remember it blowing the paint off the walls at volume 5 or so. Eventually I'd like to build a nice retro bass cabinet setup, but it gets further down on my list as time goes on. Besides, I'm more concerned about my acoustic guitar, which has developed a nasty buzz at the second fret on the two middle strings. It didn't sound this way in practice on Tuesday, and it's not like I've used it to drive railroad spikes since my lesson, so the phantom buzz is disturbing. I hope I haven't broke my guitar.

I decided instead to go for a tax writeoff and buy a copy of Leopard, as well as brokering the purchase of a new MacBook for my Mom, who is limping along with an old Pismo and wondering why she's out of room on the hard drive. 6 gigs won't get very far these days. She's getting a sweet little setup and I am gaining the ability to troubleshoot her machine remotely, which will save us many headaches down the road.

Posted on February 8, 2008 5:02 PM | link to this entry

February 7, 2008

Home Brew.

I love beer. It has been well documented in picture, story, song, and interpretive dance that the Idiot enjoys a cold frosty beverage after a long day in the sun, a stout by the fireplace on a wintry day, or a crisp pilsner with his sushi. I have entertained the idea of brewing my own beer for years now, but due to my other commitments, jobs, and hobbies, pursuing the thought has taken a back seat to other things. It was with excitement, then, that I accepted an invitation to learn to homebrew with the new father of the Scout.

After cracking a hefeweizen and adding some lemon, he stepped me through the process carefully, explaining the methodology and the purpose of all the tools laid out in careful order on the counter. He's been brewing beer since 1998, and has careful notes of each of his batches, from ingredients to alcohol content. After boiling the water and adding the wheat, we sat and chatted as it cooked. It's pretty striking how may interests we share, from old trucks to home renovation to camping.

After an hour's boiling time, we added the beer to a tub of cold water and made plans to reconvene in a week or so for the bottling process. Meanwhile, I am taking baby steps, looking into a kit of my own. Plastic fermenting tub or glass bottle? Red Irish ale, Raspberry wheat, or Oktoberfest lager? The mind reels at the possibilities (and the mouth waters).

Posted on February 7, 2008 9:54 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

Bar

Posted on February 7, 2008 9:42 AM | link to this entry

February 5, 2008

Guitar Lesson, Week 5.

While not completely vanquished, I've got some basic chord changes down pretty good now. My fingers aren't as handicapped as they once were, and the muscle memory is developing well, to the point that I can go to the D chord without thinking about it—a HUGE improvement. I have "Boys Better" down pretty well, and the changes are clean enough that if I miss one finger I can still fake it.

I looked for some new songs to learn, first thinking that "The World Has Turned And Left Me Here" by Weezer would be good, until I found that the main figure is all power chords. "Just What I Needed" is pretty straight-up, but there are some odd B chords in there that make life interesting. I settled last night on that song and "Radio Free Europe", which features the tricky F# and B chords, as well as some others I've already learned in reverse order.

Probably the biggest thing now is just to keep practicing so that I'm not clamping down so hard on the frets, which leads me to miss notes and make playing painful. I put a good bit of time into it this past week, so I'm feeling pretty good about this afternoon's lesson.

Posted on February 5, 2008 9:35 AM | link to this entry

February 3, 2008

WIndow Upgrade.

One of the things I've loved about this leaky, creaky house we've called home are the warlbledy wooden windows it came with. Apart from the panes that have obviously been replaced due to baseball impact or misadventure, they all have the lovely bubbles, waves, and imperfections that mark century-old glass. Unfortunately, they also suffer from a fatal design flaw: The weight pocket on each side of each window is an open cavity which leaches our warm air outside.

Today I finally got the chance to install two Pullman window counterbalances, the first of what I hope are the solution to this problem. I've had them since early December but haven't had the time to put them in. Here's how I did it.

Seen here is what I have to deal with throughout the house: wooden casements hung with rope and pulley. Some are rope and some are chain; some windows have a mixture, and some casements have been opened to reattach the weights.

First things first.
I scored and pulled the sash stop molding off the window, exposing the whole front of the window and the nails securing the metal guide on each side. After I carefully pulled the nails along the front side of the guide on each side, I was able to coax the entire bottom sash forward, away from the casement, and put the guides to the side. After some convincing, I was then able to pull the rope out of the channel on either side of the sash (each side was secured with a toothed flooring nail, difficult to remove) and put the sash aside.

Now, here's the first roadblock. As with everything else in this house, nothing is easy. Lots of other windows I've seen have had pulleys installed with visible and accessible screws for simple replacement. Why should ours be similar? As you can see above, there was nothing on the outside of the pulley that hinted at how to remove it. After some exploratory prying and bending, I was able to remove the left-side pulley and found that it was designed to be pounded in with a hammer at the factory, and held in place with teeth on the top and bottom.

Knowing this, it was then simple to bend the top and bottom of the casing and insert a long screwdriver to bend the teeth back. After that, the second pulley popped right out.

Of course, the hole left behind wasn't large enough to fit the new pulleys, so I had to enlarge them vertically. I made three holes with a drill bit and then used a shiny new 7/8" wood chisel bought specially for this job to clean up the hole. I did some test fitting for the body of the pulley and then chiseled out a mortise to countersink it flush to the casement. It's ugly, but with a coat of paint, it'll clean up well—I have to figure out how to make a rounded mortise with the next one.

Fun with fibers
Next was the boring part. Knowing I wasn't going to pull the wooden molding off each window, I needed to find a way to get insulation into the cavity. These days, it's possible to rent a machine and blow fiber insulation into your own attic (why anyone would want to do this themselves is a mystery to me) so I knew I could find the fiber on the consumer market. After some searching, I found it at at the local HD in a 20-pound bag, with the brand name Green Fiber. The nice thing about this stuff is that there's no fiberglas in it, which makes it easy to work with. I made a wide funnel with some paper, taped it to the casement, and spent the next twenty minutes stuffing insulation into each cavity.

I predrilled holes and put both pulleys into place. From here, it was the reverse of what I'd started with: I attached each pulley tape to the channel of the sash with a sturdy wood screw, then slid each metal guide into the channel on the sides of the sash. Carefully guiding the whole thing back into the casement, I nailed the guides back into place and replaced the blind stop.

And there you have it. The window is in place, and the tape is just about perfect for a counterbalance—I'd say another added pound of pressure on each side would be perfect. It's too warm outside right now to determine if it's actually insulating or not, but we're getting back down below freezing later this week. Total installation time was about 3 hours, but I could probably get that down to 2, maybe an hour and a half, if I could find a good fast way to get the insulation into the cavity. I'm going to do a test with my shop vac on reverse to see how well it might work (and how messy it might get). At $25/pair, window pulleys are a much cheaper alternative to replacing each window with vinyl, so I'm hopeful it will work.