Patrick’s Rants

When my partner called me the other day to tell me that his computer stopped working, I thought that he was pulling my leg. Essentially the computer was working, there was a static electricity discharge and the computer rebooted. After that he was no longer able to log in. He tried moving it to my office and it worked just fine. He moved my machine to his office and it didn’t work again. It was a bizzare computer failure that I couldn’t figure out over the phone.
Today I went into the office to set my mind at ease, and figure out what the heck he did to it.
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Last night on Boston Legal a character played by Michael J. Fox used the term “helicopter parents” to describe some parents on the show. This was the second time I had heard the term. The first time I heard the term it was at my daughter’s open house at school. The teacher said they didn’t want “helicopter parents” at the school. I mistakenly thought they meant parents who, like helicopters swoop in, drop off the kids and leave.

Noooo. They meant parents who “hover”.

As a matter of fact the school doesn’t want parents involved at all. I know, I tried to get an “appointment” with her teachers. An appointment! I’m used to marching right into the school and sitting down with the principal, talking to the teachers in the hallway and even visiting the classroom from time to time. And to be told that the teachers are too “busy” to meet with me during lunch time or even between classes is something I’m not used to.

The other things that the teachers did that I’m not used to is giving weird extra credit. Her English teacher gave extra credit for bringing in boxes that they use to store the 3 ring binders that all the kids have. Her Science teacher gave extra credit for attending any school sponsored event including football games, he also gave extra credit for any event so long as the students participated, ie. my daughter’s weekend soccer games counted, so long as she played. The only thing that he required is that they write about the event. I can see English class giving credit for writing. I could see PE giving credit for sports events, I could even stretch that to watching said events. I could see Social Studies giving credit if they were to write about the social interactions of others… as a kind of study. I could even - perhaps especially - see some kind of Journalism class. But Science?

I went to a football game at NAU. It was fun. I saw my friends there. We ate popcorn and looked at the players.

Extra Credit!

I even went to talk to her counselor at the school. You see my daughter has had a bit of a rough year personally speaking, and I wanted her counselor to be aware of the issues. I was told by the counselor after a weekly grade check that maybe we should let my daughter slide this year and get her back on track the following year. This is six weeks into the school year. Let’s just give up, tell her we’re sorry life is so rough and let her just fail. Maybe next year will be better. Yeah… and as Garth would say, “…and monkeys might fly out my butt!” I’m just not one of those people who says it’s OK to give up just because life has been a little rough. Besides we are all defined by everything in our lives and to allow someone to be defined by a very small portion of their life - when it can be worked through - isn’t fair to that person (something I told my little brother more than once - but that’s another story).

It was my daughter’s choice to go to Mount Elden Middle School, despite my reservations on a number of levels. I told her that she could keep going to the school, if she maintained certain grades. I told her this before school ever started.

We had looked a program that was at Flagstaff Middle School called TELC - Technology Enhanced Learning Center (everyone calls it NASA due to major funding by NASA). I was very impressed with the program. They want to teach children how to learn. And they do so by placing real world expectations on the children. Sometimes that means turning in an assignment late, sometimes it means redoing it and sometimes it means staying after to work on assignments. The teachers are available by phone until around 9pm, but they don’t take lame excuses about the kids not understanding the work - if the child understands the material in class they are nudged back to that knowledge and get right back to work - I know my kids (all of them) can really drag out an, “I don’t understand”. The teachers are extremely supportive of parents. The school in general seems a more parent friendly place. I am able to stop in whenever I like and I have the numbers to her primary - or “core” teachers. I can even call straight to the “pod” or the central phone for the classroom area. Her teachers even seek me out to talk to me about how she’s doing, sometimes two to three times per week.

I have talked to other parents about MEMS, and the responses are similar. Parents whose choice would be different if they could do it over. Parents who have moved their kids - just like I did - because they weren’t happy with their treatment there. And one - he happens to be a County Detective - who tells me that he just walks right in and talks to the teachers. Who’s going to stop a detective?

Any teacher that uses the phrase “helicopter parents” should take a better look in the mirror. It’s not just the parents who have “issues”. After all, unless they are crazy, there’s probably a reason that they are so interested in what their kids do.

I was having some difficulties with the previous Thunderbird (1.0) install and Enigmail, namely that I couldn’t import gpg keys. So I checked around, saw that the next version of Thunderbird (1.5) was a working release and installed it. When running it for the first time, it popped up a message indicating that Enigmail(the installed version) was incompatible and prompted me to check for an update. Easy. It installed the update and continued to load. I’m not sure yet if I will have the same problem with importing keys since I have most keys imported that I will need, but I did run across an interesting new feature that I had only glanced at. There is an anti-phishing or anti-scam feature. Thunderbird will warn you when the email appears to be the scam type email with a button to push to unmark it as scam email. There really isn’t anywhere that I saw that would allow the user to update a list training the scam filter - those scammers are constantly changing their technique to avoid filters - but this seems like a good first step.
Update: 01/18/05 Enigmail still seems unable to import public keys from key servers. I can however import the key using the command line gpg software. I did note that I am using gpg 1.2.2 or something like that and enigmail claims to work with 1.4.1. So I reran cygwin setup, and found that I must have installed gpg from outside cygwin. I checked the box to download the latest gnupg. Now I just have to find a message with an unverified signature… stay tuned.

When you hear documentary what comes to mind? Unless you like documentaries, the first thought is probably, “boring”. Not so with Murder Ball, a four year journey into the lives of quadrapalegic rugby players. The movie follows the USA and Canada teams through World Championships and the Paralympics.

The film was well done, revealing the competitive nature of these athletes as they struggle with themselves and the misconceptions surrounding their physical condition. The fact that they are confined to wheelchairs fades from the mind even as I watched them playing a sport that looked like a cross between kill the man with the ball and a human version of Robot Wars. It is competition at its most brutal; these guys are tough and they aren’t about to let anyone forget it.

Just when you think there are enough catwomen, here come Halle Berry as the latest incarnation of the slinky, sexy, part hero part criminal that is Cat Woman circa. 2004. In the recent vein of cat women, a fall from great heights is followed by a supernatural transfer of powers from a cat to the recently deceased, soon-to-be heroine. Interestingly, she has a different name from previous incarnations of the Cat Woman, this time her name is Patience Phillips. The movie seems to have strayed from the idea that there has only ever been one such being to creating a line of cat women throughout the ages stretching back to ancient Egypt.

This is a typical supernatural being created by bad people, then getting revenge on the bad people. Patience develops a catlike swagger that some might call excessive hip shaking, but no one’s complaining around here. She finds herself unable to decipher whether she is good or evil, seeming to only be able to be clear about the revenge that she must seek against those who killed her. In the end, like so many comic book characters she is resigned to a life of lonliness and love lost.

The DVD was loaded with extra features that were at times more interesting than the movie itself and definately worth watching.

In the 3 to 13 age crowd it was a real hit.

When John Ashcroft resigned in 2004, he pushed a court case right into the lap of the Supreme Court. He was challenging a 1997 Oregon law that made it legal for doctors to administer or prescribe lethal doses of medical to terminally ill patients. Oregon citizens passed the law twice. Ashcroft decided that he knew better than all the voters in Oregon and brought the might of the Federal Government to bear on the doctors, essentially saying that Federal prescription laws control what doctors can or cannot do regardless of the state law.
Today, Ashcroft has lost that particular argument as the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Federal Government has no business in this state law.
Full Story

We start out with a couple whose marriage troubles have brought them to a marriage counselor. The problem is that they really don’t know each other. They don’t talk. And to top it off, they are both assassins leading double lives, lying to each other about their jobs.
The trouble really starts when they are both assigned to kill the same man. Neither knows the other is there and both manage to botch the job. When Mrs. Smith discovers that her husband, a man she hasn’t loved in five (or was it six?) years of marriage caused her to fail at her assignment, their relationship takes a turn for the worse as marital animosity turns to professional one-up-manship. With the stakes rising higher and higher, these two expert killers are unable to kill each other - even though there are plenty of bodies to go around. Remarkably, trying to kill each other brings them closer together as they find themselves in the sites of leagues of hit men.
The movie was a little predictable and the plot twists were more like gradual curves than hairpins allowing a look much further ahead than a true suspensful film would have worked toward. It was a decent film that didn’t try too hard to be clever, with a predictable ending, but worth watching through once for the action addict.

On January 11, 2006 Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt ruled in favor of snow making by the Arizona Snow Bowl. If this were the end of it then snow making would begin in a few years. Unfortunately, this is not the end and the drag on Flagstaff’s economy - absent any meaningful snowfall - will continue for the next half decade at least. The idea is that waste water, which normally has to be scrubbed cleaner than creek water, will be used to make snow on the San Fransisco Peaks. The project will take a couple of years to impliment requiring construction, tree stripping and the laying of a massive pipe running up the mountain to provide the “flushed” water. Previously this “flushed” water would end up flowing downhill as effluent, or discharge from the waste water treatment plants. (more…)

I only managed to catch a little bit of the confirmation hearings going on yesterday, but I have one observation: the Repulicans are determined to confirm Alito. When it was the Democrats’ turn, they turned the screws as much as they could, asking tough questions about recusal, Presidential powers, etc. while the Republicans threw such hardballs as, “Your name is Samual Alito, is it not?” Alito replies, “yes it is.” Republican Senator, “Thank you for your honesty, and integrity in answering such a tough question. You look tired, can we take a break for Judge Alito?”
Now, I’m paraphrasing and mocking the process, but that’s how it’s going for him, with Republicans asking simple questions that essentially answer the Democrats’ previous question in the form of, “your record stands for itself, but to answer one of the questions that was raised previously about recusing yourself from a case that involved Vanguard (a mutual fund company that he had something like $340,000 invested in). Isn’t it true Judge that if real attornies had handled the case (the plaintiff was Pro Se, self-represented) you would have recused yourself, and in fact you did so once the ruling was handed down (causing additional expense to the parties since the plaintiff had to retry the case) so really no harm no foul? (other than the plaintiff having to go through the action again)”

Send annoying email, or blog posts and go to jail.
This means just plain rude comments on this site, the semi-humorous post regarding my typo of “bumber” vs. “bumper” - I was annoyed. Maybe that poster should go to jail for two years. I guess the Anonymous Cowards over at Slashdot should be really scared - or only post non-annoying things. But then, isn’t that the reason to post anonymously? To be able to say things that you might not if you thought there would be repercussions? So, little by little we lose our rights. Little by little the government quietly steals with ink that which was earned and written by blood.