Patrick’s Rants

My 14 year old daughter has decided to start writing on herself with magic marker - it’s a kid thing. Supposedly it was supposed to be an emoticon type “grinning pirate”. It looked more like she wrote “X F C” so I asked her if Colonol Sanders was tagging on her. After a little discussion I told her that she should wash it off so she didn’t get uromysotisis - which is a very serious condition. And that’s all I told her, that it’s a very serious condition. She scrubbed at the arm for a while and showed me the almost clean spot… thank’s Jerry, I owe ya one!

In my office, we use software that is written by Atx for tax preparation. Towards the end of each year, we create our annual letters that are a simple merge from the client list exported from the tax software. With Atx, it’s an export to an excel formatted file. We then take that file, open it using OpenOffice.org, edit it a little and fire up the client letter.

This year, the spreadsheet was blank. Thinking that it had been done incorrectly, I tried it myself. Still had a blank spreadsheet. I finally tried using OpenOffice.org on the Windows based computer (previously, it was the Linux based machine that we have used from the beginning) and it worked. So then I did a Save As, using the Win* version of OpenOffice.org and was able to open the file using the Linux version.

I have a minor theory that I haven’t tested. Two even. The first theory is that ATX uses a different library for exporting excel files than the previous version. This would lend to the whole conspiracy of “Uncle Bill” writing libraries that lock out competing vendors. The other is that the version of OpenOffice.org on the *nix machine (2.0.2) has a bug in the libraries that read excel files. This isn’t as fun because the conspiracy isn’t quite as obvious, but it still points to problems with using “Uncle Bill’s” software since the developers of OpenOffice.org have to reverse engineer anything from MS due to everything being hidden in MS software. Either way, I will be upgrading - soon enough - OpenOffice.org on the *nix machine and can find out for sure.

In a rare theater trip (I would take more if I got critic passess, hint, hint ;)) the the family and I went to see Night at The Museum and fanciful film starring Ben Stiller as Larry Daley a new night watchman in a museum that comes to life at night. Daley soon learns that an ancient Egyptian curse is to blame for the strangeness that grips the museum at sunset. And he has to learn his history in order to encourage the inhabitants to get along with each other and work together.

Not only is the film fun, keeping the attention of the entire family, it has a not so subtle moral element, getting along.

Sometimes the thing you are hunting for turns up the strangest results. I was actually trying to find out why upgrading software using YUM caused a huge spike in memory usage eventually consuming all available RAM and swap space (700mb).

Need a Good Laugh? The Thread about nothing [Archive] - Atari Forums

Note: I downgraded sqlite(to 3.1.2-3) and all is good again.

Arrrrrrggggggg…..
The loser couple is back promoting the new Sonic Smoothie. Unfortunately the wimpy guy can’t bring himself to call it a smoothie and retardedly keeps saying, “love me a ruffie.” Too bad we can’t see how the script spells it, cause according to dictionary.com a roughie is a mean joke. And if it’s spelled, roughy, then it’s a fish. So what is he really drinking through that straw?

This guy is a worse loser that George Costanza, who we actually could like.

Arrrrrrggggggg…..
The loser couple is back promoting the new Sonic Smoothie. Unfortunately the wimpy guy can’t bring himself to call it a smoothie and retardedly keeps saying, “love me a ruffie.” Too bad we can’t see how the script spells it, cause according to dictionary.com a roughie is a mean joke. And if it’s spelled, roughy, then it’s a fish. So what is he really drinking through that straw?

This guy is a worse loser that George Costanza, who we actually could like.

Updated: 1/08/07 11:10 am

No, this is not the book that inspired the Sandra Bullock film with a similar title (“28 Days”). Instead “24 Days: How Two Wall Street Journal Reporters Uncovered the Lies that Destroyed Faith in Corporate America“ is a third person narrative written by Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller that reminds me of “Inside Job: The Looting of America’s Savings and Loans“.

This is a facinating tale that follows the implosion of Enron from just before the collapse through the destruction of Arther Anderson. The authors painstakingly try to follow the complexities of off balance sheet financing and do a pretty good job. Through the course of the book we see Ken Lay, Andrew Fastow and Jeffrey Skilling, among others, as money-driven individuals who reaped millions from a company that inflated its earnings and hid its losses all while ripping off its employees and the citizens of California.
The authors could have enhanced their descriptions with diagrams that they stated they received in the course of their reporting, but chose not to, leaving the details just a little weaker for doing so. It is much harder to visualize the intricate web of inter-relationships without these visual aids.

With such bizarre sounding names as Chewco, JEDI and Raptor, it is only a small leap to realize that the financing and reporting methods used by Enron were as fanciful as the names of the companies they used to hide their losses and inflate their earnings. About the only thing that we didn’t hear from Enron was the Chewbacca Defense.

In the end the greed that festered inside Enron engulfed their accounting and advising firm Arther Anderson whose fear of lost revenue kept them from advising against the increasingly outlandish schemes to make money out of thin air. It also lead to reforms in the accounting industry that forces companies to rotate the accounting firm that provides book auditing services presumably in an attempt to catch irregularities in financial accounting. And in the long run, it increased the fees that accounting firms will ultimately collect by requiring more and more auditing and disclosure¹. If accounting firms were disallowed from offering advising services to clients whose books they also audited perhaps a fiasco could have been prevented. Firms of this type are often conflicted when they serve too many roles. The role of independent auditor is to scrutinize the transactions of a business to determine if they pass the smell test. That becomes difficult when they are reaping in large advisory fees for recommending the transactions in the first place.

Unfortunately for the book its 2003 publishing date means that recent events, such as the conviction and death of Ken Lay² and Jeff Skilling’s cooperation and subsequent jail term are not included, and contribute to a lower rating on the recommended list. If one is making a collection of the exposé type books this is one to have on the shelf.

1 - This is a huge windfall for accounting firms, especially the “big four” but may cause smaller companies to remain private as well as encourage some businesses to “go private” instead of remain in the public sector.

2 - Allowing him and his estate to beat the rap on having to actually serve a jail sentence and pay restitution.

As recounted on,
Daily Kos: blogger Spocko slammed it to a Disney affiliated station by writing to the advertisers. If you are unfamiliar with right winger radio shows, they tend to read advertising copy between their mad rantings. This is what Spocko wrote about, vile calls for torture mixed with ads for AT&T. I haven’t actually listened to the station in question, but have no doubt regarding the veracity of his claims. That’s not because I know Spocko, it’s because I know right wing talk show hosts and their ilk.

Of course Disney responded to loss of advertisers by claiming copyright violations. Based upon the story, Spocko’s use of audio clips for critical purposes falls under the fair use doctrine. Disney has long been a source of political power when it comes to keeping their copyrighted materials forever tied up; now they have stepped over the legal line. Assuming that Spocko is able to garner an attorney, this should put a shot across the bow of every company that wields copyright to quiet criticism instead of dealing with the unprotected hate speech that pours forth from the so-called “right” like a science fair volcano.

Tell Nancy Pelosi to wake up.

THE FASTEST WAY TO BRING TO TROOPS HOME FROM IRAQ IS TO IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACHMENT ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/impeachment_now2.php

Before the coming of George Bush and his shadow president Dick Cheney, the greatest military blunder in American History was thought to be Custer’s Last Stand. It did not take a lot of hindsight to know that general Custer’s vain assault on a much larger force of better-armed native Americans would come to no good end. His own turncoat Indian scouts told him the encampment at Little Bighorn was far too large to be attacked. They were changing back into their native clothes en masse so as not to be associated with the white man. But in his supreme arrogance Custer believed that HE knew better than his own best sources of intelligence. We all know the result of that one.
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