Patrick's Rants

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
If you haven’t visited the Flying Spaghetti Monster website, do it now. I’ll wait.

Robert “Bobby” Henderson has written a great book on the religion he calls Pastafarianism, or FSMism. Like a never ending pasta bowl as the Olive Garden I sat down with my copy and devoured nearly half of the book in one setting. Subsequent helpings had to be taken in smaller doses, just like when gets nearly full from the never ending pasta bowl.

From his humble Disclaimer, “While Pastafarianism is the only religion based on empirical evidence, it should also be noted that this is a faith-based book. Attentive readers will note numerous holes and contradictions throughout the text; they will even find blatant lies and exaggerations. These have been placed there to test the reader’s faith.” to the assertion that the world was created by a drunken mass of spaghetti as the earth’s “baker” Bobby stretches the imagination with this ongoing spoof on “Intelligent Design” started as a joke when he wrote an open letter to the Kansas Schoolboard asking that the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory of creationism be taught alongside the “Theory of Evolution” and the “Theory of Intelligent Design”. What started as a joke has grown a life of its own. Pastafarians now claim a heaven complete with a beer volcano and a stripper factory.

If intelligent design or evolution have you scratching your head pick up a copy of the Gospel. It’s certainly something to think about, or at least to make you laugh. And hey, who wouldn’t want every Friday to be a holiday? Pastafarians do.

What’s this MySpace I keep hearing people talk about?
Does it have anything to do with the site: http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/myfox/ which used to be just http://fox10.com. Now, it’s mythis, mythat, mypod, myopia. I think it’s time we start reading something into the names. Like MySpace. It’s not really my space is it? It’s someone else’s. And they let me use it from time to time – in exchange for my advertising eye.

Having said that, I don’t have a my-anything account. I have even less time than Jake for that kind of thing

Today I took a bus full of kids to the state capitol for a college “thing”. The kids got to meet leaders of the state colleges and listen to about half an hour of speeches including one by the governor, Janet Napolitano and even had a question and answer session. During the proceedings, held on the front lawn of the government building, I stood back towards the street. When the governor walked out for her part in the event she had her customary body guards. Serious looking men in tan suits with short hair and the tiny DPS pin on their lapel. You can’t mistake them for anything other than body guards. I noticed one particularly large black man in the entourage. He looked like he could be an ex-football player.

While I was standing there, the body guards spread out so they could survey the croud of middle school students for threats; they were standing in typical “body guard pose”. Since this was right out on the street anyone could walk by on the sidewalk. After a while, a man with a thick greying mustache walked up wearing a baseball cap and a large black jacket that was too heavy for Phoenix; his hands thrust into his pockets. I was not the only one who noticed, the large black man lifted his hand to his mouth to speak into the microphone in his sleave. I saw the man ten feet or so to his left move his head slightly in the direction of the sidewalk and give a curt nod. The black man started moving to his right. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to work his way around the crowd or whether he was right where he was supposed to be – almost directly behind the governor. The body guard on the side walk took a step or two backwards toward the street so that he was behind jacket man, who could have just been homeless wearing a donated (but clean looking) jacket and work boots spattered with dry wall plaster or paint. He could have also had something in his jacket besides his hands and fell into an opportunity.

While the body guards made their moves I took a step or two backward. Not knowing if anything was happening or about to happen I figured that I should at least not be in a direct line with him between me and the body guards. He either became nervous, bored or maybe hungry and started walking in the direction that he originally was headed. About that time the governor finished her speech and the body guards starting walking off with her. I noticed the man started running as he reached the corner of the block and around the other corner came the unmarked cars holding four tan suited DPS officers apiece – I hadn’t even seen them until they went by me. I saw that they turned the corner to travel in the same direction as jacket man.

I can imagine them catching up to him, “hey, why are you walking around with your hands in your pockets?” Which is the same question I ask my stepson all the time.

And that was the most exciting part of my day.

In a story related to an interview with George W Bush, the (some claim left leaning) NPR gave the President more credit than he deserves – probably to not embarrass him any more than he does himself. In the story¹ Bush is quoted,

“If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly,”

. What the transcript² shows is that he actually said,

“If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly.”

Whoops. They pussy-footed that. If you listen to the actual interview³ what he said was,

“we will respond uuuuhhhh firmly”.

Now did he mean that our response will be to say “uuuuuhhhh”, but in the firmest of tones? Or did he merely mean, “we will respond uuuuuhhhh (oh, gosh darn, I can’t remember what Cheney said we were gonna do. Oh yeah!) firmly”. Probably the second.

Again from the story,

He responded to a question about the highly confident picture of Iraq painted by Vice President Dick Cheney by saying Cheney had “a glass half-full mentality.”

Oh, NPR, bastion of truth…. from the transcript,

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, another question about Vice President Cheney – he said last week that – here I’m quoting – “we’ve encountered enormous successes and we continue to have enormous successes in Iraq.” Two weeks ago you said, quote, “there hadn’t been enough success in Iraq.” So it sounds like there’s a conflicting message there.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Oh, I don’t think so. I think that the vice president is a person reflecting a half-glass-full mentality, and that is he’s been able to look at – as have I, and I hope other Americans have – the fact that the tyrant was removed, 12 million people voted, there is an Iraqi constitution in place that is a model for – and unique for the Middle East.

Was he really calling Cheney optimistic? I don’t think so. I think he was calling Cheney a drunk. What is a half-glass but a shot glass and “full”? Do you really think that George is so dumb to misphrase a colloquialism or is a better explaination that he thinks Cheney is a falling down drunk? I mean, we could err on the side that George is that dumb, but where is the evidence of that? I mean he does have experience with alcholism. We should expect that he can dectect it in his second in command.

Finally, the transcript has mentions of nuclear weapons. Just what the heck are those? We know, if we have listened to the most powerful man in the country, that nucular weapons are the most dangerous things out there. No where in his speech does he mention “nuclear” weapons. Someone needs to set NPR straight and fast.

1. NPR story, interview with President Bush
2. Interview transcript
3. On air audio

• enclosure: http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/specials/20070129_specials_completebushinterview.mp3 13929146 audio/mpeg

I just upgraded the server. I’ve been holding off on doing that because I didn’t want to have to take it offline during the week… and I had a recent issue with a certain laptop and definately didn’t want this machine to be down. Today I took a deep breath, ran init 2 a special trimmed down version of the server that only runs sevices essential for remote login, shutting down email and all web services. So far there have only been a couple of minor configuration issues dealing with the web server and email. I will of course be keeping a close eye on everything to make sure that it really did go as well as it looks.

Oh and if you weren’t able to get to the site this past Saturday afternoon that’s what it was.
Edit: 1/28 10:42 AM
There was one web site issue that I didn’t notice right away. It seems some people are still stuck on the old school index.htm – you know from when we had filenames limited by DOS? – and that site lost its index page for a little while. I caught it though and fixed it. That’s worth a pitcher of beer isn’t it?

In order to get to Miami to help my mom move I had to fly. It’s been a while since I’ve flown, but I remember most of the “rules”. One I hadn’t heard before was that passengers are not allowed to walk around after the plane pulls away from the gate, but before liftoff. On the day I was flying a man tried to go use the restroom while we were waiting to taxi to our runway. The flight attendant asked the man what he was doing.

“Oh, I’m just going to go the the bathroom.”

“Sir, you have to sit down while the plane is moving.”

“But we’re not moving (we weren’t) I was going to go really quick.”

“Sir, if you don’t sit down I have to tell the captain and we have to stop the plane.”

Now, this could be post 9-11 security measures and valid. But I couldn’t help but think that it sounded like a parent threat, “don’t make me turn this plane around.”

At the local mall there is a play area that is designed for kids shorter than somewhere around 3 feet which makes them something like four and under. It’s designed to be a toddler play area and there is a sign showing height requirements. Most of the time there are kids running around from 6 months to about four years or so.

But there are always a few who don’t really belong. They run over the top of the little kids with no regard for what they are doing or whose binky they step on. And usually their parents are hanging out watching them. I almost feel sorry for them. Their parents are teaching them that the rules don’t matter, to be inconsiderate as long as they themselves are having fun. They are teaching them to not get along in society and that ignorance – the worst possible meaning of the word – is bliss.

So is it illiteracy, ignorance, inconsideration, or just plain stupidity that you want me to think when you let your oversized child run roughshod over the toddlers in the toddler play area?

All I’ve got to say is, good thing there are fewer than 500 readers of this blog. All kidding aside, this needs to go.
Congress to Send Critics to Jail, Says Richard Viguerie

In my last installment, A Christmas Review I was upgrading Fedora Core. The upgrade process went something like: install the base system, run yum upgrade, then install the next fedora-release, or redhat-release file depending upon version and then running yum upgrade again. I did this for three or four upgrade levels. The whole time I couldn’t get Fedora to recognize the soundcard – and I wasn’t the only one. It seems this sound card is a pain to anyone running the 600e IBM laptop. I was supposed to be able to run alsaconf and have the sound card configured. And I tried for each version that I upgraded through. Fedora/RedHat seems to have replaced alsaconf with their own script(s) system-config-soundcard. That script didn’t work at all… in at least three versions.
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It doesn’t get this cold very often, in fact we’ve set new records for lows and for the “lowest highs”. Since a decent part of my work means that I will be outside. At least the part that says I have to preinspect the vehicle that I drive – during predawn hours no less. In addition to the winds that whip through the area I (and my fellow drivers) have to fight the hood that’s frozen shut – sometimes a six inch ice dam has to be semi-melted before I can even get under the hood – dipsticks that are frozen in the tube, doors that don’t open or close.

Yesterday, I wore the most clothes that I’ve ever worn. I had my pants and long johns on, a shirt, an undershirt, the thermal shirt (which I don’t think I’ve worn ever) two, yes two, jackets, and my hat and scarf. It was still cold.

And getting ready for a trip was interesting. One of the other drivers left a garbage bag on the bus (it’s supposed to be clean). There was a bag of ice that someone had placed on the garbage bag that started to melt and then froze. The entire bag was frozen to the floor where the puddle had formed from the ice bag. It was great… not. I was able to eventually get the bag off the floor and into the garbage.

By the way, did I mention that it was cold?