Little Willie's senseless ramblings

Saturday, January 27, 2007

The real skinny

I had to get my hair cut, so that meant I had to spend a chunk of my Saturday morning, waiting for my turn, at a hair salon. Needless to say, the bulk of the reading material available was mostly concerning celebrities I couldn't care less about. And, of course, the first 1/3 of the magazines we're telling all about various and sundry diets and exercises to keep them thin. The ironic bit, is that ine of the magazine featured a series of pictures showing a celbrity in thier skinny phase, and in a somewhat larger size, and the results of a poll showing which look people prefered. In almost every case, the skinny look lost. Funny, it turns out most people think the Nazi death camp look isn't flattering.

Imagine that...

Friday, January 26, 2007

Celeb news you need to read

You know, while I'm plugging links to the Onion, I thought I'd include this one -- the best celebrity divorce coverage I've seen all year...

Kevin Federline, Wife Divorce

The Onion

Kevin Federline, Wife Divorce

The superstar rapper is currently seeking sole custody of the two children he had with his estranged wife, a singer and sometime actress.

I've been eating these my whole life -- even now at 41. So how long before this really happens?

Monday, January 22, 2007

A quiet thought...

We had snow over the weekend -- a couple of inches, then some light freezing drizzle on top of that. It was just enough that it made a nice crunch-crunch sound as I walked Alex out to the road to get on his bus. I lifted him over the snow bank at the edge of the road, and waved as they drove off. I turned around and as I looked up towards the house I saw two sets of foot prints, mine -- and my fathers.

I remember a time when I was younger -- not as young as Alex, but still young enough for my dad to be a big man. We were walking downtown by the Bank, and I noticed that as he walked, his foot prints showed that his left foot turned out a little more than his right. I asked him about it, but it was something he never noticed before. We kept going down the street, probably to stop by the village hall for something, and I never thought about it again.

Until this morning, as I looked toward the house and saw those footprints with the left foot turned out a little more than the right -- side by side with the footprints of his son.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Ignoring the inconvenient...

This isn't one of my personal Apple posts, just a cynical observation on the latest of the annoying Apple ads. Having used one now, I can tell you most of the ads really are a bunch of rot -- but this last one is a real piece of work. They have the "PC" writing a script for an iMac stand in, telling how overrated the iMac is. One of the implications is that the iMac is growing in popularity -- something I'm willing to believe is completely true. What they fail to point out, is that the iMac's growing popularity didn't come around until they started making Intel powered PC compatible iMacs.

So when do we see those ads?

Monday, January 15, 2007

The next to the last Apple post

It's there, sitting at the end of my desk, taking up more space than I'd like it to. It works, but does nothing that any one of 5 other PC's could do better (and with my 15" LCD, in less space). Oh sure, it can read to me, and I may find some usefulness in that st some point in the future -- but not upstairs. And yes, it runs OSX, OS9, and Windows application, but since Windows stuff runs under Softwindows98 (which is an emulator running under OS9 (which is an emulator running under OSX)) it's essentially unusable. The only saving grace to the machine is that I have some Mark of the Unicorn music gear in the basement that is supposed to work with PC compatible equipment, but doesn't (searches on the net for help yield advice on selling the equipment for stuff that will work -- or switching to Macs). So I will downgrade my hapless iMac a little (that 120Gb drive will serve better in another PC -- I've got a 20Gb around somewhere) and try it out with the music gear.

Then I'll write the last Apple Post...

Why hello there!

Is it just me, or does it seem that award shows keep the microphones down low so all the female winners have to lean over to use them?

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Gone with the wind...

Now, if you've looked at my last post, you might think I'm a person who dismisses alternative power sources such as wind, solar, and hydro -- but that's not the case. In fact, our new house is in what used to be a farmer's field, and lacks any major obstruction to the winds that can go zooming across the large, flat areas of our country. At 3:00 am this morning, as I lay listening to the wind howl outside my window, the thought of a few small wind turbines in the corner of the yard struck me as a pretty good idea (especially since our big new house comes with big new power bills). We could use it to supplement our electricity needs -- all we need is a fairly steady 12 MPH breeze to do it (and trust me, 12 MPH would be a lot mellower than what we usually have been getting).

I'll have to talk to the wife...

Scotty, we need more power...

My wife signed us up for a magazine call Red Herring -- it was labeled as a magazine for 'the business of technology' and since I'm a bit of a techno-weenie, she thought I'd enjoy it. Turns out, it's really a magazine for technology business investors (the NASDAQ crowd basically) so it's somewhat less than a "cover to cover, read it all the day it shows up" for me. Still, it has it's points.

Recently they featured an article on new hybrid and electric cars (written from the perspective of you average eco-techno-weenie), and how much better the country will be once all cars are electric, yada yada yada (zippety boom de boom). The latest issue featured a letter to the editor from a self proclaimed inventor dealing with the subject. He pointed out that the only way to make an electric car feasible is if the 'refueling' process works like gasoline powered cars. His solution was swap out battery packs -- you pull into a service station, and your exhausted battery pack is pulled out of the car and replaced with a fully charged pack by an automated robotic system. It takes about the same amount of time as a fill up (as opposed to the 6 hours or longer to recharge a battery pack. OK, this system works more like what people do for their gas grills than their cars, but it's the time element that matters. That would allow you to travel in an electric car without having to worry about range. Then he mentions the real kicker -- he runs the math on replacing a nation full of gas guzzlers with eco-friendly electrics, and discovers that we would need about 210% of our current power production to accomplish that. That means more than twice the current number of electric plants that we have now. That also means twice the pollution output from coal and gas fired plants, twice the nuclear waste needing to be stored, twice the number of lakes and rivers dammed for hydro-electric power, twice the acreage of land covered with solar and wind collection (and twice the number of animals affected by the new hydro, solar, and wind plants).

Maybe we should think about this some more...

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Colour my world...

OK, so they're commercials, but they're still really cool...

Balls

Paint

The first one is nice, in a sentimental way. The second is like the coolest fireworks you've ever seen -- only during the day.

No Parent Left Behind...

I was reading this morning about speculation on the future of the "No Child Left Behind" act -- part of G.W. Bush's plans to improve eduction. Since the NEA is such a big Democratic supporter, the assumption is being made that the new congress will find a way to blunt, or even scrap NCLB in favor of some other hare-brained scheme to improve the education standards in this country. As you may have guessed by my tone, I'm sceptical of any plan these people have, or will have in the future. But first, some background...

My wife is a teacher, has been for over 20 years, long enough to have taught second generation students; her parents were teachers (and school administrators); her aunt and uncle were teachers (and school administrators), her cousin is a college professor; and lastly my aunt is a school teacher, with about the same experience as my wife.

So does that make me an expert in education -- heck no! I don't even pretend to know how to teach (and I really don't have the patience to anyway). I do know how to listen though, and I've heard enough talking for the past 20 years to have a pretty good idea of what the people on the front lines think the problem is...

Brace yourselves...

THE PARENTS!!! Teachers have only so much time each day to try to give out so much information to 20 some odd kids -- it's up to the parents at home to make it stick. Unfortunately parents don't have the time to work with the kids, or the ability, or the interest, or even the desire. You can pass laws that say teachers have to take continuing education classes (non-reimbursed of course), have to meet cartain standards, pass certain test scores, or face funding reductions (like that helps) -- but it doesn't do any good until you start holding parents responsible for thier childrens education.

A popular plan offered every other election year is school vouchers -- take tax money originally aimed at public schools and offer it to parents to use to send their children to private schools where the children have better scores and better results. The politicians believe these better results are because the schools are so much better than the public schools, but they never stop to think why. Here's what they overlook: Poor children who do manage to go to a private school do so because a) they have an acedemic scholarship that pays for it, so you bet someone is making sure they're doing the homework and studying to keep the grades up, or b) mom's working extra jobs to pay the tuition, so again, someone's making sure the kids are keeping up. And while I'm sure the discipline in your average church school (which make up most private schools) is not nearly as physical as it used to be in the pre-70's, I'm sure it is far more structured than your average public school (which has had any discipline nuetered after years of court intrusions). Take away financial incentives to ensure your children's success, litigate all discipline out of the school system -- and the best private school will become no better than PS 130 down the street.

You want to educate the kids? Motivate the parents. The law holds schools responsible for the failings of a student -- but why not the parents? Try this, a child fails a grade in school, the parents have to pay cash money for the child to try again.

I bet that would help...

Monday, January 08, 2007

Killing time...

I don't really have much to say right now -- things are kind of slow. We've taken down most of the Christmas decorations and put them away, I've got my new notebook setup and running as I like, things at the store are slow -- just not much going on. I did finally get my guitar synthesizer back and working -- my fellow musicians at church were surprised to hear an organ sound coming out of my amplifier -- I just need to get things balanced out better (for instance, the organ sound is about 3 times louder than any other sound I used that morning). We also found our filing cabinet, so I have the paperwork I need to get our portable DVD player fixed (sometimes those extended warranties prove useful). We've been spending some family quality time watching movies on the wall downstairs -- oh sure, we're watching movies that are several months old -- but we're sitting on our comfy couch, the screen (a.k.a. the wall) is nice and big, and once we watch 30 movies on the wall instead of a theater, we've made up the cost of the projector. Ours is an inFocus IN24, nothing fancy, but it's 800X600 resolution is capable of the lower ranges of High Def video, and should work really nicely with the PC I'm building to connect to it (finally found an All-in-Wonder video card at a reasonable price). It could be fun playing UT2K4 and NOLF2 on a screen so large the NPC's are life size **.

Gee, I guess I found something to say after all...


** for the gaming impaired, UT2K4 is Unreal Tournament 2004, a first person shooter with independent and team battles, capture the flag, assault, and football modes -- NOLF2 is No One Lives Forever 2, a story based first person shooter where you play the role of Cate Archer, female secret agent for a '60s spy agency -- NPC's are Non Player Characters, the people shooting at you, or telling you where to find Kamil, or asking you to find their glasses.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

OMIGOSH!!!

I don't believe it! A writer for Slate.com who isn't another left-wing loony condemning the execution of Saddam. Read THIS. This is why I read Slate.com

Sometimes, someone makes sense...

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Break out the world's smallest violins...

Dahlia Lithwick has an article on Slate.com telling about the top 10 civil rights abuses of 2006. I'm not going to argue that some of the stuff does need to be dealt with. All those people at Gitmo need to be sent home -- I'm tired of the American taxpayers subsidizing their lifestyles. Give them back their freedom in the third world countries they came from -- I'm know being free is in a poverty and war torn country beats being imprisoned against your will, no matter how much better the food and lodging is.

But some of the stuff she's whining about is the same sort of stuff that liberals always whine about -- slagging the press, slagging the courts, not letting reporters read anything they want to -- that kind of thing. You know what, after several decades of watching liberal courts, and liberal media, and liberal administrations trashing my constitutional freedom OF religion, and freedom OF speech, I can only think one of thing...

Boo hoo, now you know how we feel...