New chair

I had to get a new chair. The old one the gas lift went out, leaving the chair sitting at the bottom with no way to raise it. It was holding up good, but the seat was a bit hard and you can't get just replacement lifts so I decided to replace the whole thing. Now I just need to pack the old one up for disposal (probably take it to work and put it on the furniture junk-pile there for the recyclers to pick up).

A really bad week

This man has to qualify as having the mother of all bad weeks. A resident of Nagasaki, he was in Hiroshima on business on August 6th when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He survived it, albeit with injuries, and returned home the next day to recover. Just in time to catch the second atomic bomb. That has to qualify as using up your entire lifetime's quota of bad luck in one go.

And if you think that's bad luck, apparently there were 8 other people unlucky enough to have been in both places at exactly the wrong times.

Machine migrations

I'm looking forward to when I can build a new machine, but dreading the migration. Right now on my current machine I've got the current files, plus an archive of the previous machine, which contains an archive of the machine before that. Less a few things I bulk-deleted, of course. None of which is particularly organized. The next migration I definitely need to get things organized and cleaned up. Also, I want 2 machines: one Linux for regular work, one Windows for gaming. I'm tired of having to reboot to switch.

Motorcycle crash

This is why I've little respect for drivers today. From today's local paper:

Multiple-car crash kills motorcyclist on Route 163

2:00 a.m. March 13, 2009

A pickup swerved out of control on southbound state Route 163 and struck a motorcyclist, who was hurled into northbound lanes and suffered fatal injuries yesterday afternoon, authorities said.

The motorcyclist, whose name was not released, died at a hospital.

Traffic slowed to a crawl for two hours past the scene that involved four vehicles. The motorist who was thought to be responsible for the crash by cutting off a green Ford Ranger pickup did not stop, the California Highway Patrol said.

CHP officials said a witness saw a pickup change lanes abruptly in front of the Ranger south of Kearny Villa Road about 4:45 p.m. The Ranger driver veered onto the right shoulder, then steered left across the lanes and broadsided a white Ford sport utility vehicle.

The white Ford flipped onto its roof, causing minor injury to one occupant. The Ranger then struck the motorcycle, which burst into flames. Its rider flew over the center divider and was hit by a northbound compact car, the CHP said.

The two left lanes in each direction were closed until nearly 7 p.m. The entire southbound freeway was blocked for several minutes while CHP officers took measurements related to their investigation. –P.R.

Notice that the cause of the crash drives off scot-free. His driving record won't be affected. He won't lose his license, or even have his insurance rates increased. He'll remain a threat to everybody else on the highway. Meanwhile his victims will have to pay the price. Worse, the driver of the Ranger will probably be ruled to be at fault simply because the police have to pin the responsibility on someone. It'll probably be "failed to maintain a safe following distance" behind the pickup that cut him off. As if you can read the other guy's mind and know he's going to cut off your following distance before he does it. Faugh.

Hard drive prices

Hitachi 1-terabyte SATA hard drive. $90. GAH! I can build a multi-terabyte RAID array at a price point not too much higher than my traditional price point ($200) for a main desktop hard drive.

Karnor's Castle

This thing was the hardest dungone in the EQ2 RoK expansion. When it was released, it would eat level-80 raid-geared players alive and spit their remains back out. The first time we went in, we died literally in seconds. We haven't gone back since.

Until last night. We went in with 5 people, including a level 72 paladin. We burned our way through to the very back to get the drolvarg L&L book with no problems. Even on bad pulls with 3 mobs, we didn't have any deaths. And we got a nice set of legs for the paladin off the boss near the book. Then we went downstairs and almost got to Xalgoz. The last mob was a nasty pull, it's a 3-group that flies around high up, hard to spot and hard to keep track of when it comes in. Our healer got caught right in the middle and AOEd to death, and that was that. We're going to have to go back in and clear that place.

It did demonstrate why we need new computers, though. Major chunkage and 3-4FPS frame rates the whole way make it hard to pull cleanly. Our computers are just old and need upgraded to the current generation. My plan is to buy motherboards with the most current AMD socket on them, then buy CPUs with fewer cores but higher clock speeds (EQ2 doesn't take great advantage of multiple cores, it needs clock cycles) with the plan being to upgrade to CPUs with more cores as clock speeds on them climb.

Computer parts prices

Gods, I'm out of the loop on computer component prices. Just checked on memory with Crucial. DDR3, 4Gb kits, down in the $100 range. I'd expected at least twice that. Motherboards and CPUs likewise a lot cheaper than I expected.

I seriously need to build new computers. Primary desktops are single-core Athlon XP 3200 class, at least 3 generations behind the curve. AGP video. Need new machines.

Proposition 8 and the CA Supreme Court

Arguments to overturn Proposition 8 finished up today. Now, myself, I don't think the justices are going to go for the "revision to the state constitution" argument. An amendment is a revision, and it's allowed. There's no language in the state constitution itself barring amendments from changing existing terms. If that's all that's being argued, Propsition 8 stands.

I'd argue on two different grounds.

First, that while Proposition 8 defines marriage to be between a man and a woman, it doesn't remove the language elsewhere in the constitution that requires the state to treat all citizens equally. As long as that other language stands, Proposition 8 can't simply handwave that requirement away. If two men show up wanting to be married by the state, the state has to treat them the same as it would a man and a woman until a constitutional amendment removing that requirement is passed. And Proposition 8 doesn't remove that requirement.

Second, Proposition 8 is an infringement on freedom of religion and is barred by the US Constitution. No state is allowed to have provisions in it's state constitution that violate the US Constitution, after all. Religions do define marriage, that's what the Religious Right is in an uproar about here. But not all religions define marriage as being only between a man and a woman. By writing that definition into the constitution, Proposition 8 interferes with the right of those religions to marry couples according to their beliefs. You can only do that if you can show an overriding societal need for that interference and that there is no less intrusive way of meeting that need. Proposition 8 doesn't demonstrate that there's any overriding need to bar same-sex marriages, so it fails the test.

Development frustrations

One of the most frustrating things: finishing up implementation of a feature, sending it up for build, and then being told that the feature isn't wanted anymore. Ah well, at least they're not making us revert it all back out again, it'll just go unused.

You'd think the business analysts could get things like this straight, figure out what's actually going to be wanted before development starts.

The economy

Don't look to the Crash of '29 and the Great Depression for a model for the current economic situation. Look instead to the Panic of 1873, the events that led up to it and the Long Depression that followed it.

Oh, and OPEC wanting oil at $70/barrel? Not happening, guys. Not unless they cut production by 100%, and maybe not even then. And they aren't going to shut themselves down to force the price of oil up. OPEC needs to accept that, given the current economy, their desires are just unrealistic.

Stock market

Looks like the Dow's headed to a close below 7000 for the first time in over a decade. The S&P 500 is flirting with the 700 mark. If the Dow closes under 7000, I expect a bad reaction the rest of the week. I'm also expecting the markets to continue to decline. Now's a good time to be solidly in money markets and other safe investments. Should make for some good profits once things bottom out and start to recover, though.

Stock market

Bets on the Dow hitting 7000?

Cool characters don't need nudity

The Norse pantheon

All you need to know about the Norse pantheon: "In short, the plan is a paratroop attack into an erupting volcano that's swarming with heavily armed giants. Half the Aesir tell Eric how jealous they are that he gets to lead the gloriously insane commando raid. And they mean it."

On pain

"Pain exists for a reason. It's how your body, and your mind, tell you that something's not right. Ignore it at your peril. If there doesn't seem to be a reason for it, perhaps you're not looking hard enough. Or perhaps not in the right place. You won't find a physical cause for a non-physical problem, nor will you find the physical cause if you keep insisting it's all in the head."

My father went through idiots who wouldn't follow that advice after his accident. His right arm was numb, painful and showing all the signs of nerve damage. All the tests they ran confirmed nerve damage. But since none of the X-rays showed any physical cause for the damage, the doctors kept insisting there couldn't be any nerve damage. Until finally Mom brow-beat the insurance into getting an opinion from the surgeon who all the other doctors named as the guy they wanted if they had to have work done on their necks. He looked at everything and said "OK, all the tests show there's damage, if we can't see the cause from the X-rays we'll just have to open it up and poke around and see what the X-rays aren't showing.". And when he opened my father's neck up, there was a nice loud clatter as a vertebrae fell out in about 3 pieces, to which the surgeon commented "Well, that's the problem right there.". No sign on the X-rays, but the insurance couldn't argue with the bits of vertebrae on the desk. And Mom made a point of rubbing the noses of all those other doctors in the photos of the shattered vertebrae that they refused to look for.

Peanut Corp. of America - RIP

It's official: PCA, the company mentioned before, is no more. They're filing for Chapter 7 liquidation and going out of business. Good riddance. The only thing I can hope is that the owner, who apparently knew of the problems and considered dealing with them to be a nuisance that was hurting his profits, gets nailed for negligent homicide.

More Peanut Corp. problems

This time they found rodent debris in the food. ""The order was issued after dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers were discovered yesterday in a crawl space above a production area during an in-depth Department of State Health Services inspection," the agency said in a statement.". Not a good thing to be finding after all the high dudgeon over China's problems.

No raises this year

No raises at work this year. With the economy, there's a very small pool of money for raises. Management set down a rule: raises are to go first to those in the lowest pay grades and with families. The reasoning was that those were the people being hurt most by the current recession, and they'd be able to spread that pool of money among the most people. So the high-paid people like me got pretty much nothing. Which I'm OK with, I'm in a better position to absorb not getting a raise than the guy making $30K.

OTOH, I'm watching the company's financials. When the economy and the company's profitability picks up again, follow-through will be expected.

Republican inanity

A wonderful quote from Rep. Steve Austria (R-Ohio) had this to say: "When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression. He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

Well, Roosevelt and the Great Depression are history, that's true. However, that's about all of his statement that has any connection to reality. The Great Depression began in 1929. Roosevelt didn't become president until 1933, 4 years later. Keynes didn't write his book on economics until 1936, 3 years after that.

Now, admittedly, after being presented with the historical record, Austria did backtrack: "I did not mean to imply in any way that President Roosevelt was responsible for putting us into the Depression, but rather was trying to make the point that Roosevelt’s attempt to use significant spending to get us out of the Depression did not have the desired effect."

Again, not exactly correct. The GDP had declined from $103.6 billion in 1929 to $56.4 billion in 1933, and started rising in 1934 to $66.0 billion and continued to rise through the start of WWII with only one drop in 1938 (the year FDR cut funds from a large part of the New Deal to help balance the budget). You can find detailed numbers at the BEA's web site.

Jury duty

I gots jury duty on Feb. 25th. Well, theoretically. What it probably means is I'll get to sit around all day at the courthouse being bored, only to be told I won't be needed after all. Or get called to a courtroom only to either not be called to the box, or be called only to be dismissed by one side or the other before I've actually got properly sat down. That's the annoying thing about the whole matter: all the disruption with little likelihood of actually serving on a jury for my trouble. That's one of the reasons I'd like to change a few things about the legal system, starting with a policy of "If you've gotten to the point that this court has hauled a bunch of people into this courthouse, made them sit through jury orientation and herded them into a courtroom, then gentlemen you will be making your client's case before a jury and that jury will get to render a decision. If you don't think that's a good idea now, you should have thought of that earlier.".