Patrick’s Rants

The Linux Users of Northern Arizona (LUNA) has planned an Install Fest for February 5, 2005.
Anyone interested in finding out more about Linux or getting Linux installed on theie computer, already have a computer running Linux and have questions about your installation feel free to come join us at the the Shoemaker Building at the USGS from 10am to 3pm. More details on the flaglug.org web site.

Jake over at Utterlyboring.com has just posted the most interesting excerpt from a job interview I have seen in a while.

We have standard questions we ask in every interview. One of them is “If there’s one thing you could improve upon, what is it?” Her answer? “Well, I’m not the most punctual person in the world, and I’m frequently late for my job.”

Okaaaaay…How about driving record? “I’ve gotten a couple speeding tickets, and I currently don’t have insurance on my car.”

http://utterlyboring.com/archives/2005/01/27/things_not_to_do_when_being_interviewed.php

In what amounts to justification of my paranoia, even your car can be attacked and infected with a virus if it uses wireless. Lexus cars are equiped with blue tooth wireless communications, and according to a recent article on infosec they are now being attacked by infected cell phones. Even potentially more troubling might be taking yours into the shop and all the cars on the dealer lot get infected. I guess the safest thing to do is to keep 15 feet away from all Lexus’ and cell phones

George W Bush does not have a mandate
I love the reports of people dressed in black, the snowball thrown at Cheney’s limo, the coffins…

Remind Dubya that he does not have a “mandate”

Here are some ideas:
Wear the Count Me Blue wrist bands blogged about here and sold at countmeblue.com
Wear a black arm band
Wear all black
Fly the American Flag upside down. as a sign of distress
Mail a package of pretzels to: The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW Washington, DC 20500
make it a small package.

Tell your liberal friends (and anyone else who is ashamed embarrased or dismayed by the state of our union) to do the same.

This morning on Today (actually last week by now), Katie Couric interviewed Newt Gingrich, who is promoting his latest ‘Contract with America’ book and some speculate feeling out the Republican primaries (yes, the 2008 primaries). I only managed to catch a few seconds of the interview due to this morning’s hectic schedule, but there he was, telling Katie that

“….our rights derive from God and what are we going to do about judges who don’t understand that?”

I guess I missed God’s signature on the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States.
What the hell is an activist judge anyway? How should the Constitution be interpreted? Do we need to make sure that not only are the laws constitutional but that they also pass the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John test too. Maybe the judges should just pray for God to come down and issue judgement. Hell, we should fire all the judges and hold ‘court’ in the church. God can speak to the accused, pass judgement and appropriately ‘smite’ the guilty. Maybe then we wouldn’t be concerned about all the people who get released from death row due to new evidence or even someone else confessing to the crime.
Wait, wait… you know there is thing called seperation of church and state. When I was in school there were students who did not have to say the Pledge of Allegiance due to their religion. (They also missed out on PE and ‘sex ed’ or human growth and development). Right now there is an atheist in California who is challenging the words ‘one nation under God’ in the Pledge. Should one man be able to take out those words? Those words that have been in the Pledge since the beginning, er I mean since we decided that the Communists in Russia must be Godless people and we could smoke ‘em out by making them say ‘one nation under God’. Do we not remember the persecution of our own people? Do we remember writers, actors, plain old ordinary mom and pop out of work, unhirable because some one put them on a list and they were asked- either out loud or behind their backs- “have you now or ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Do we remember in Salem long ago when they held womens’ heads under water- if they lived they were witches and burned at the stake- if they died oh well our mistake so sorry. These things are the result of church and state not being seperate. These are the things our forefathers fled. When our commander in chief requires the crutch of religion and Newt spouts off about ‘activist judges’ it really makes me wonder about the ‘family values’ religious right. Newt has been divorced how many times now? George W. Bush had a cocaine and alcohol habit. I guess as long as they profess that they are religious things are all right… yeah let God forgive them.
Don’t get me (completely) wrong, there are many good, honorable people who believe in a higher power whether they call it God, Bhudda, Mohamed or Cosmic Muffin. But things like priests molesting alter boys, rampant divorce- Rush, Newt-, drug and alcohol abuse- Rush, Dubya- among the ‘family values’ and the holier than though crowd makes me want to puke. If you were ever ‘better’ than me you are not now. You can’t ‘preach family values’ and have mistresses and prostitutes, divorce your wife when she has cancer or any of the other crap that the family valuers denounce (and then do).

Well, get comment spam under control and the next, latest, greatest thing in the spammer’s toolkit is something called trackback spam or trackback ping flooding. This great new automated spamming technique creates hundreds of trackbacks per day on WordPress blogs. A couple of people are working on plugins, fixes and workarounds for this obnoxious junk. I really hope they get something working soon… although I don’t see a benefit to the spam bots in flooding posts, it seems mostly annoying.