Out of the Woods

When I first saw this photo, I immediately thought some turkey doctored McCain’s face to match his body stance. However, it’s a completely unretouched photo. The Reuters caption reads, "U.S. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) reacts to almost heading the wrong way off the stage after shaking hands with Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) at the conclusion of the final presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, October 15, 2008." Now, which candidate looks more "presidential" to you?

Given the last few posts, it should be clear that I’m a Barack Obama supporter in the upcoming election. I just took a test over at glassbooth.org and it turns out I should really be voting for Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party. Our views match with a 73% similarity. However, while I do support the idea of candidates running with party affiliations other than the big two, in this case, I think it would just be throwing my vote away to do so. The same quiz puts me at 71% similarity with Obama, so I think I’m safe continuing on my present course.

Here’s another great piece about the whole Bill Ayers controversy that appears to be the meat and potatoes of the GOP campaign these days. It’s written in a level-headed, even-handed style that is long on facts and short on hyperbole, which is the opposite of how Sarah Palin approaches the issue.

Now the Republicans are trying to downplay the implied association and are instead claiming that Obama lied when confronted with the accusation. Reading the above article and its treatment of the facts, we see that Obama really was telling the truth regarding his connection with Ayers, and, again, the Republicans are caught with their pants down.

I just wish every voter would read this type of treatise, since far too many "Joe Six-packs" are going to vote based on the 2-second sound bites the MSM is feeding them, courtesy of the Republican spin machine. Just look at that stupid woman who claimed directly to McCain that Obama is an Arab, or the guy in Florida who yelled out "kill him" (referring to Obama) in response to Palin’s hate-filled speech. It’s a shame that negative campaigning is so effective. It’s just not possible to run a winning campaign these days based on facts and issues, though Obama is doing his best to do so.

While Keith Olbermann takes Sarah Palin to task for her attacks on Barack Obama over his passing association with William Ayers, another columnist points out John McCain’s own questionable associations with one-time shady characters, whom he’s since seen fit to forgive and praise for the good they’ve gone on to do. (Should Palin Forgive Bill Ayers?) Did Palin not learn anything from the Bible that she so firmly holds onto and throws in people’s faces? Are the Republicans grasping for straws and running scared? You betcha!

This is one scathing commentary. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann takes on the latest Republican mud slinging by pointing out numerous truths about Sarah Palin’s own past associations and her complete lack of credentials to be a vice presidential candidate. I don’t know who’s running the Republican campaign, but it seems to be one public relations screw up after another. If McCain/Palin end up winning, it’s going to absolutely reek of voter fraud (the same way it did when GW won a second term). The segment is a little long, but listen to the end. It’s well worth it.

Congratulations to SpaceX for being the first private company to put a liquid-fueled rocket into Earth orbit. Three previous launches met with various degrees of success due to normal start-up issues, but the fourth launch was perfect. This company is on the fast track to being able to supply launch vehicles to put both payloads and astronauts into space. The Falcon 1 rocket that flew yesterday uses a single engine in its first stage and is suitable for small satellites. The Falcon 9, due for its maiden launch later this year, uses a cluster of nine engines to lift larger payloads and the Dragon module, which can be configured for space station resupply or up to seven astronauts.

I’ve been following the progress of SpaceX for several years now, and I’m looking forward to even more excitement in the coming years. Check out more details here and video highlights of the launch here.

I am bummed, though, that I didn’t get to see it on their live web feed. I knew the launch was going to happen this week, but they didn’t send an e-mail out until after it happened. They did blog about it, but I don’t check blogs often on the weekends. I couldn’t have watched it anyway, though, since we were at a Peter, Paul & Mary concert in Hartford, their first in a year and a half.

Why is it that every time I get this server humming, I muck around with it until it breaks? I’ve been running an old Debian Etch installation for years now, and I haven’t wanted to do a release upgrade for fear of completely breaking the whole system. However, yesterday I decided I wanted to at least upgrade all the packages to the latest in the Etch archives. So, I issued an "apt-get upgrade" and approved upgrading several hundred packages. All went well and it finished without any errors (which itself was a miracle). Then I discovered that my Squid proxy server wouldn’t start.

Fortunately, I had also recently cleaned up my system logging, and there were some helpful messages in the log. I did a quick Google search on the error, and in short order came up with this page. Someone else had this same problem over a year ago and was kind enough to write up a complete wiki page with step-by-step instructions for how he fixed it. Within minutes, Squid was back up and running. This Internet thingy is pretty cool!

Here’s a little Thunderbird tip. With the release of version 2, Mozilla turned off automatic image loading when displaying e-mails that contain HTML. When there are images blocked, there is a button you can click to load the images. There is also a link you can click that will tell Thunderbird to always load images for any message from that sender.

The way that latter option works is it checks your address book for the message sender, and if an option is selected in that address book entry, it will load images automatically. When you click the link to tell Thunderbird to always load images, it creates a new address book entry (if there isn’t already one) and checks the option to load images.

I started getting irritated, though, that my address book was getting cluttered with e-mail addresses of list servers and vendors, most of whom I’ll never send e-mail to, but do want to receive complete HTML messages from. Then I found a little trick in the Thunderbird documentation.

When Thunderbird checks to see if you have a sender in an address book, it checks all the address books. What that means is you can create a separate address book just for e-mails that may come in with HTML. As a result, you can have images automatically loaded on approved incoming e-mails without cluttering your primary address book.

One of my new favorite blogs is Photoshop Disasters. They specialize in drawing attention to botched Photoshop jobs, similar to the one where the Iranians tried to pull the wool over our eyes by transforming three missile launches into four. The picture here appeared on the TV Guide web site in a special section about Olympians to watch. You’ve got to wonder how, in the fraction of a second that swimmers pop their head out of the water for a gulp of air, Michael Phelps was able to move his goggles up off his eyes, open his eyes wide, get his chin in front of the water, and manage a smile, all for the camera. :o)

I wasn’t particularly saddened to see the closing of all CompUSA stores. I did enjoy walking around in them, checking out the latest technology. However, I never bought anything there. Everything was just too expensive. Even their fire-sale prices in the last days before closing their doors were higher than many sale prices at other stores.

I’d been on their e-mail  list and received regular e-mails about the current week’s sales flyer, and when they closed, I figured the e-mails would simply stop. I was pleasantly surprised when they didn’t, though. Pleasantly surprised because suddenly, without the overhead of brick-and-mortar stores, the all-new CompUSA has some killer prices. For example, the Jawbone wireless Bluetooth headset retails for around $130. You sometimes see it go on sale at brick-and-mortar stores for around $100. The cheapest I’ve been able to find on-line at any mainstream, non-auction site is $65. CompUSA’s latest sales e-mail lists it for $59.99. This clearly isn’t the old store.

Check out their site and subscribe. I received at most two e-mails a week, and they are never spammy.