Patrick’s Rants

Another hard drive bites the dust. It looks like it’s been hanging around a while… the last drive that it looks like I replaced in my trusty dusty firewall was in 2005… can that be? Hmm. It’s possible I guess. It’s the main drive for my firewall. No Operating System, no internet access. No nothing. I pull out my trusty box of old hard drives and look for a promising candidate. A 2g drive!

Of course I skipped a step or two. First thing I did was pull the firewall off the shelf that it sits on above my head. When I pulled the cover off I noticed a note written in permanent marker warning me that this CD drive has intermittent read errors. Aha… that’s the problem. I hadn’t been able to get the firewall completely up to date with the latest version of NetBSD because the CD drive was crapped out. Now it’s time to pull the old drive out and put it in the “Quality Connections pile”.

The same shelf as the firewall holds a stack of CD drives. I try them one by one to find one that doesn’t keep ejecting (BIOS issue?) all on its own. Then to the aforementioned box of hard drives. While I’m browsing the aisles, I look for faster NICs – that whole cable internet thing chewing at the back of my mind. And yes, like any true geek, I have aisles of old computer crap. Or at least shelves. I pulled a couple of D-Link 10/100 NICs from the shelf. They are marked DFE-530TX and DFE-530TX+. I vaguely recall recovering them from (Windows) computers they failed in. Like the pack rat that I am, I kept them. I pulled the 10Base-T cards, 3 Com Etherlink III NICs from the firewall and replaced them with the 10/100 D-Links.

A quick install of NetBSD 5.0.2 and I was ready to start figuring out all of my now gone configurations. It has taken a day of futzing around just to get the home network back online, but I’m there. I now have to remember what all of my customizations were and how to recreate them. Maybe this time I’ll make a backup copy of the configuration files, or not. I only seem to have to perform the Lazarus trick every five years or so.

I can only scratch my head. The GOP is calling the President’s response to the worst environmental disaster since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, since the asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs (Jesus horses to you creationists) as too much. In fact, they are calling for less regulation! Really Rand Paul? You want the government out of everything… then get the hell out of government, grab your guns and hunker down at Ruby Ridge with your Cool Aid and your bible. We’ll be right in to get you… or not. Maybe your crazy self with starve to death up there where you can become bear food and fertilizer for a tree you would rather cut down for your back deck.

Here’s a reminder of what less regulation is all about. The Savings and Loan meltdown under Reagan. Enron’s raping and plundering and rolling blackouts, triggered by the greed of potential electricity trading profits, of California under George W Bush. The “off the books” pillaging of the American military and, consequently, every single hard working American by Halliburton overcharging for meals and “support” of the troops in Iraq. And now, the faulty parts and equipment of Dick Cheney’s “former” company (Halliburton again) have blown their collective gaskets spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. This is the worst unnatural disaster ever. It will affect the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, even the entire oceanic coverage of the earth for perhaps hundreds of years. Drill baby drill. Let’s go. Let’s drill the pristine Alaskan tundra. Let’s drill the outer continental shelf. Let’s deregulate everything and stop picking on poor BP. Oil companies are just trying to supply what we want. So what if they make a few bucks, kill a few roughnecks and rape the entire planet of other, more precious resources?

Drill baby drill. Let’s fire up the drills. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

My interim boss just sent me 3 emails with attached documents. There was no message body. Just a single attachment per email. Then she sent me an instant message to tell me that she sent the emails. I won’t go into the content of the attached documents as I didn’t spend much time looking at them to compare them to existing documents. It is the rest of the comment that really has me scratching my head. She asked me to create a “web presence” that will indicate when a bus is running over 15 minutes late. I’m guessing, since she did not respond to my “WTF?” reply, that she told our incoming boss that this was easy to do. “Web presence”? That doesn’t sound like the interim boss. The new guy is supposed to be tech savvy. That sounds like a PHB or someone who really knows what it takes.

Even if I could find a widget that would do what I she wants, the underlying technology isn’t there. The buses would have to be equipped with some type of GPS unit. The unit would have to report and compare times to the routing software and determine when the routes are overdue. Unless of course, we just log into the web site every time a bus is running late and update the page. Oh wait, we run bussing from 4:00am to 7:00pm and I’m the only one with a login to that web page. I’m guessing that installing and configuring GPS units and then installing the tracking software – complete with connector software to talk to the routing software – will run $300.00 – $500.00 per bus. That would be roughly $25,000.00 to $50,000.00. I’m thinking that whoever thought up this idea did not take into consideration the costs to do this automatically nor did they take into consideration that I’m currently the only person who can update the Transportation website nor the fact that I work 11:00am to 7:00pm and I’ll be mufuggin damned if I’m getting up at 4:00am so little Johnny’s mom can see if a bus is running 15 minutes late to Johnny’s stop. I don’t usually say this, but they don’t pay me enough for that. They don’t even pay me enough to update it during my shift as, due to budget cuts, my office is the de facto receptionist. I don’t have, nor will I have time to update the damned thing when the phone is ringing off the hook.

It occurred to me this evening – watching the second after school production in as many Fridays – that we really do need extracurricular activities. Of course the reasons may surprise you. I’m not a big fan of football. I’ll watch the annual final match up between teams (I understand I’m not supposed to use the term SuperBowl. Ooops) and the occasional high school game if it’s convenient – or closely related in time or space to something else I’m doing. But I’m not really a sports fan per se. Football is a brutish sport that serves to maim and cripple its most ardent players, many former players suffer from lifelong aches and pains, obesity, heart problems and even early onset dementia from head trauma. They also suffer from fast burnout, cash depletion, inadequate retirement and nearly no marketable skills (unless they become a coach or sports announcer of some kind – but those jobs are limited).

But even football is important. Football, like other activities, inspires parents to be involved. Drama productions and concert band performances and student art shows and chess competitions all inspire parents to be involved. And this, I believe, is the secret. Parents don’t show up to watch their kids conjugate verbs, write their proof to the Pythagorean theory or write essays on the meaning of the Bill of Rights. They show up to watch their kid think through the bishop/knight fork or queen a handful of pawns. They show up to watch the Sheriff of Nottingham yell without blinking, “Oswald! What’s my line?” They show up to hear their child riff some zydeco, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy or even the “cantina band”.

I believe kids whose parents show up strive to do better. Parents who show up certainly seem more interested than those that don’t. Anecdotely I have been told that students most likely to be in trouble are not involved in any extracurricular activities. Students not involved in extracurricular activities are likely to have uninvolved and disinterested parents, and the cycle continues.

Schools – and districts – willing to cut away all “extra” classes like physical education, art, drama and music will end up losing students interested in those classes to private and charter schools. The remaining students will be academically flat, physically flabby and decidedly “unrounded”. And the cycle repeats itself.

More reading: www.expectmorearizona.org

The rattle trap camper trailer makes its way across town bearing the handwritten cardboard sign,

“I look like an Illegal Canadian. Are you gonna stop me?”

Ladies and gentlemen step right up! John McCain is running a series of new ads called, Avid Earmarker. Yes folks, before your eyes you will see tea party backed ex-sportscaster, the Joker himself, JD Hayworth called an avid earmarker. Don’t miss McCain’s other commercial touting how he earmarks over $9billion per year for Arizona. McCain is a true politician, speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

It’s time to get rid of both of these jokers, Hayworth and McCain. You can’t be for smaller government while at the same time trying to eliminate that reign on governmental powers, Posse Comitatus to put yet more (by law) ineffective National Guard Troops on the border.

Buz Mills is using his own money to pay for his campaign. Governor Brewer is using public funds – clean election funds to be exact. The law that covers the clean election funds allows for candidates to receive as much as their privately funded opponents. Buz’s commercial starts with the recently voter approved 1% state sales tax. The temporary 1% tax was overwhelmingly approved by Arizona voters as will go to fund schools, public safety and public health. Buz calls it the “Brewer tax” and then proceeds to say that Brewer is raiding public funds to run her campaign. Now, I’m no fan of Brewer, but let’s get this straight. Governor Brewer is using funds for her campaign that by law may only be used for elections. No the money didn’t come out the K-12 budget. It didn’t come from public safety. It comes from the clean elections budget. The money can only be spent on clean elections and no other money can go towards the clean elections fund.

“I’m no politician”, says Mills in his commercials but he sure lies like one.
Some more buzzed links
Arizona Star Net Clean Elections fund story
Buz likes the money the government pays him
Buz Mills makes a stupendous claim on statewide TV. Arizona schools have a 1:1 ratio of administrators to teachers. Total bunk as the interview shows. Buz seems to think that there is no need for bus drivers, janitors, cafeteria workers, etc. There should only be teachers in education. No support staff, no school resource officers, no coaches. Go (away) Buz go!

Conservative Buz Mills is running for Governor of Arizona. He’s running a commercial that shows the front of a political paper with a headline blasting the state of the State. Buz tells us,

“this is shameful. If I ran my business like this I’d be out of business. I’ll make the hard choices and cut spending.”

Here’s a news flash, this is not a business. I repeat, this is not a business. It’s a state. You cannot run a state like you run your business. In business the idea is to make a profit. Every time the state has any “profit” “conservatives” give it away. Does no one remember the alternative fuels tax credit? When times are good, conservatives want to cut taxes and spending. When times are bad, conservatives want to cut taxes and spending.

Cut spending? Today Arizona is voting on a 1% sales tax increase to fund firefighters, police and schools. We are already 49th in per student funding. Why? We have a legal, moral and even a religious obligation to care for our young, our old, and our infirmed. How can you do that when you keep sending any surplus into the pockets of your cronies? Run your business that way. Every time you have a profit in your business let your friends walk up the cash register and pull out some cash. Every time you have some profit built up into the bank, lower your prices so your profit is 0%. See how long you stay in business with that kind of attitude. As governor, try increasing your pay when the state runs in surplus (profit) like you can do in business.

If you run the state the way you are talking about you will irreparably damage this state for at least a generation maybe more. Why is that “old white dudes” (and ladies, Brewer does not get a pass here) want to cut spending on the next generation? That is truly shameful.

Warrent Buffett has come out in full support of Goldman Sachs, defending their hedge fund sales. He argues that everyone was essentially a “big boy” and that no children were harmed in the creation of the fund that was designed to fail. I will concede that traders were on deals like piranha on a side of beef, that greed made traders, Wall Street, and Main Street blind. There is blame nearly everywhere you look when it comes to housing prices and the collapse of Wall Street firms. It comes down to pure and simple greed.

Now, to the deal that Goldman is facing SEC charges over. Goldman created and sold “synthetic collateralized debt obligations“. Synthetic means fake, made up. So they (the investment community, not Goldman) made up an investment based on nothing. Well not nothing really, but the only value a synthetic CDO has is what someone else is willing to pay based upon a different but sort of related investment. Think of it this way, you are driving down a road with no stop lights, traffic signals, road bumps, etc. You are unlimited in how fast you can drive. You decide that your speed and even the direction you drive should be based on the car next to you. There is no reason other than you want to. The synthetic CDO is designed so that if the car next to you slows down, you slow down, if it speeds up you speed up. If it runs into an elk, your bumper needs to be replaced. Sound crazy? It kind of is. It’s not buying insurance on your car, it’s buying insurance on the other car. In the insurance industry you have to have an interest in the insured item – you cannot buy homeowner’s insurance on your neighbor’s house, you cannot buy car insurance on his car, you cannot buy life insurance on his wife. But with Synthetic CDOs that’s exactly what has happened. Insurance on something you don’t own and, therefore, can’t lose.

The deal that Goldman was selling was designed to fail. Yes, it was homeowner’s insurance on the house with exposed wiring, a pan of hot oil on the stove, the clothes iron plugged in, and the drying Christmas tree decorated with open flame candles. And the inhabitants are out of town for a week. The bet is that this house will burn down. Buffet’s argument is that the insurance company should have known that this house was going to burn down – nay smoke was already coming out of the windows – and it’s their own fault for insuring it. They’re big boys, they knew what they were insuring. I say not so fast. In the real world (not the synthetic one) this would be insurance fraud, the claim would be denied and someone would be in jail.

Buffett is a pretty smart guy, I don’t dislike him. I agree with some of his arguments about more fair taxes. I applaud his frugal behavior, his modest income when other CEOs are raping their companies and shareholders blind. But I don’t stand on the same side of the street on this particular issue. I suppose we will just have to agree to disagree on synthetic CDOs. Only time will tell which side is right, and whether the regulatory leash will be shortened.

I can hardly believe my ears and eyes. While oil is spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of five thousand barrels per day the right, in the form of Limpbaugh and laughingly Michael “heckuva job Brownie” Brown, are throwing accusations that the administration is “taking advantage” of the spill. Limpbaugh might as well have said that Obama blew up the rig for his own personal gain when he threw around the name Ayres and the term “blowing things up” in the same sentence. How far off the deep end are these nut jobs? I’ll tell you how far. This oil spill, which could go on and on destroying the fishing and tourism industries from Mexico and Texas to New England has the nut jobs rallying around the “Drill Baby Drill” flag. Really!? This shows that we need to drill more to make us safer against world wide terrorism!? And the White House along with those “lefties” need to stop picking on poor little British Petroleum and Haliburton.