The Talking Head

HR 1444

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:44:22 +0000

Please review this Bill at OpenCongress.org. The following letter was sent to Representatives Whitfield and Guthrie. I would urge you to do the same. I am concerned after the recent review of HR 1444, particularly in the fact that it directly challenges the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Section 4(b)5-6 both look to be infringing on the 13th Amendment. Sec4(b)5: The effect on the Nation, on those who serve, and on the families of those who serve, if all individuals in the United States were expected to perform national service or were REQUIRED to perform a certain amount of national service. Sec4(b)6: Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable MANDATORY service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. Amendment XIII, Section 1: Neither slavery nor INVOLUNTARY servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States,or any place subject to their jurisdiction. This bill is an attack on our individual liberties and must be defeated. There can be no consolation in wording this bill differently. The sponsors have shown their true intent by supporting the current verbiage. Please ensure that this bill is not only defeated, but deliver the message that we the people will not allow our liberties to be tread on. Thank you for your service to this great nation.

books read may 2009

Sun, 24 May 2009 16:16:11 +0000

World War Z - Max Brooks - 05/10/09 Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life - Neil Strauss - 05/14/09 Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse - James Wesley Rawles - 05/30/09

fishing season

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:25:17 +0000

Over the last few nights I have been getting everything ready for fishing this summer. I straightened my fly-line, checked all of my flies, re-spooled the backing and re-knotted the backing, fly line, and leader. I picked up a new battery and box for the trolling motor at Rural King. Last night I finished it all off by getting the boat mounted to the Jeep. It is going to be a good summer.

ar-15 build

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:02:59 +0000

I received my AR-15 kit from M&A today. I placed the order on March 19th and got the kit on April 4th. Not bad post-election turnaround if you ask me. The kit is top notch. I am getting a punch set tomorrow and will complete the build on top of a Charles Daly Defense stripped lower.

books read march 2009

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:25:27 +0000

03/04/09 - Watchmen - Alan Moore 03/17/09 - Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller 03/19/09 - All New Square Foot Gardening - Mel Bartholomew 03/30/09 - I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

books read february 2009

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:39:04 +0000

02/09/09 - Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank 02/10/09 - The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1) - Steven King 02/17/09 - The Road - Cormac McCarthy 02/20/09 - The Foxfire Book - Eliot Wigginton

this guy is in college

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:29:49 +0000

I don't know what to say about this. It isn't fair, but this guy made up part of your 54%. I am sure he isn't alone. Here is a closer look at Julio. Better than getting a PS3 for Christmas. I also liked the following comment from AoSHQ. I think this should be attached as the official transcript for this question and answer session. Man this is the shit that you came all down here and shit. So, YAAAAAAAH! Yeah, man, that's just awesome, so yo! You need to make somebody give me more benefits! Cuz I need benefits and I been here for like four years and they won't give me more benefits. So, yeah... Benefits. When you gonna make 'em give me more of those? You know, like free Cheetos and handjobs, I don't know... shit. Benefits! And the school should be givin' me more benefits too. What's up with that? They got this whole big ass building with computers and shit, so I know they could? But they ain't doing it, so what say you and me go down there and you can be like, "Hey, you know I'm the president now, right? So why don't you hook a brother up here, yo?" And I'll just be standing there nodding and pointing to you, cuz you're so money and shit. Like they've got these little carts that drive around campus that say "maintenance" and shit on em. I could use one of those to get around, cuz I slammed my Tercel last summer before I enrolled and then I hit this curb thing on campus and broke an axle and fucked up all my ground effects and shit. So, come on, you could hook that up, right? And what else. Oh! you know, I need some other place to crash cuz my Mom's always knocking on my door saying she smells pot, which is just bullshit cuz I've got a whole system set up so it all goes out the window. So why don't the school like have free dorms and shit? I mean, people gotta live soemplace, right? That's what I'm talking about, man. I need benefits like THAT. And shit.

1974 CJ5

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:24:20 +0000

Last week I purchased a 'new' Jeep. The 1974 CJ5 has a 304 V8 as its powerhouse, and a 3 speed T-15 transmission. The plan is to get it in proper running condition, which isn't going to take more than changing the fluids and bleeding the brakes, and then decide what the future holds for it. After locating a nice fiberglass canoe, I will once again be a denizen of Peabody.

Subsonic - Music Streaming Done Right

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:44:24 +0000

Last weekend I installed Subsonic on my Gentoo box with the intention of being able to stream my music library at home to my machine at work. I have to admit that I am a little sad that I didn't come across this application earlier. Not only does it work out of the box, but I have been thoroughly impressed with the usability of it over my DSL's paltry 384K upload. The prompting factor in this was the headache that I was encountering trying to keep 40GB of music synced between my home system and my work laptop. Using SolarWinds' Orion at work, I was able to tell that the stream was negligible on our network. If anyone is looking for a solution to stream their music library over the LAN or the internet, I would highly suggest this piece of software.

Today's Problem in Higher Education

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:07:37 +0000

This morning I stumbled upon this story of a student at UMass who is not succumbing to the collegiate norms. In a nutshell, Brian Marquis is bringing forth litigation against eight academic professionals because he believes his earned grade, an A-, was instead changed to a C based the results of a grading curve in one of his classes.
After reading the article, I felt that disgusting twist in my stomach that always resonates when speaking of the real world applications of college. Normally this is reserved for the professors whose beliefs deviate from the norm and their only way of being heard is to scream louder than anyone else in the room. Metaphorically speaking, I am referring to Ward Churchill.
Back to the story at hand, I feel that there is a growing discontent with rules of college compared to the rules of the real world. There is no reason that this man should be restrained from an earned grade because the TA thought his grade looked unfair in comparison to the rest in the class. This is absurd.
Another thing that bothers me here is the lack of forward thinking on the University's part when Mr. Marquis initially brought the issue to their attention. With an ounce of critical thinking they should have deduced that the TA had incorrectly graded the student, and this could have been resolved without incident. Instead, they chose to alienate a student and attempt to intimidate him into submission, some may be able to construe from the written responses to his initial pleas.
The bottom line here is that the collegiate systems need a wake up call to inform them that they are providing a service and that students are going to hold them accountable just like what happens in the real world.

RMA'd PS3 returns

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:52:34 +0000

I was greeted by a working PS3 when I arrived home yesterday. To celebrate the occasion I also picked up a copy of Warhawk. I must say that I am impressed with Sony's RMA process and the speed that they operate. I have only been without a PS3 for seven working days which I believe to be an acceptable turn around time. I watched 300 on Blu-ray last night and I must say that I am thoroughly impressed. Warhawk is something I am going to have to get used to. I have never been able to get a FPS that uses a gaming controller. The vehicle controls are great with the controller it is just the character controls that I am having an issue with. Hopefully I can find a server that I want to frequent. That is what makes these games worthwhile. Wil Wheaton had an interesting keynote at PAX this year. If you have the chance, take a listen.

A little issue with invading advertisments in magazines

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:11:50 +0000

Dear MAKE crew, I would like to make an appeal to you all concerning the inclusion of "pull-out" advertisements in the magazine. In particular is the emusic advertisement in the latest issue of the magazine. These types of advertisements are normally removed from the magazine by readers to make handling the publication easier. My removal of this advertisement did not go too smooth. The way that it was pasted into the binding caused me to rip the facing pages, so now I have a hole in the magazine that I love to read. If this were any other magazine I would not care, but your publication possesses a need to be archived for future generations (my future children). I have been a charter subscriber to the magazine and have kept my volumes in pristine condition, awaiting the day that I could pass them on to a young mind in need of a creative outlet. I honestly felt more despair when I ripped the magazine trying to remove this advertisement than when my PS3's Blu-ray drive went tits up in the middle of watching 300 for the first time. I guess I am getting a little dramatic, but I feel that for the subscription price we subscribers pay for a quarterly magazine, we deserve better than this type of advertising. Instead of the gimmicky ads like this one from emusic, could you keep things to just paper ads in the future? Thanks for the audience, and please keep supporting this great magazine.

PS3 is FUBAR

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:07:45 +0000

So I sit down last night to watch The Lookout on Blu-ray and my PS3 decides it wants the night off. I thought maybe it was a problem with the disc so naturally I test a couple other discs of varying media. Nothing works. A sense of dread washes over me. I believed that Sony still had the 90-day warranty on their products, which by my calculation according to the time I registered the system with them, would have been up exactly four days ago. Cue the beginning of a conspiracy theory developing in my brain. How in the hell is something that I haven't really used that much going to break a few days outside of its warranty? I soon found out that the warranty is actually a full year instead of 90-days. Whew! I walked away for a few moments to grab a beer and settle down before I called Sony. I knew that they were going to have me do everything I had already done, plus something else that I have been unwilling to do up to this time. My system was shipped with a Firmware 1.50 and I have left it there in the hope that the homebrew scene would come alive soon. At this point I knew I was going to have to send it in to be serviced and since I would be getting at least a FW 1.90 back, I decided to upgrade mine in the hopes that maybe it was a FW issue. This didn't work, so now I have a FW 1.90 PS3 sitting at home waiting for a box to show up from UPS so that I can ship it to Sony. I don't really like the idea of receiving a refurbished unit back from them, but the CSR assured me (LOL) that the unit I receive back will also be covered under that year warranty. I will post here with updates on how long this whole process is going to take.

LaCrosse BC-900

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:23:50 +0000

I just came across a great blog post over at KitUp about the usefulness of modern day battery rechargers. About six months ago I was in the market for just such a device and came across the LaCrosse BC-900.
My main focus here was to be able to keep batteries charged and ready for use in the Olympus FL-36 that I had just purchased. Because of the flash's strenuous use of the batteries I wanted to make sure that the charger I picked up was going to preserve the health of whatever batteries I purchased. The BC-900 does just this with a refresh function that repeatedly charges and discharges a battery until it has determined that the battery is at optimal capacity. Speed is also another feature that I had in mind when searching for a suitable charger. The BC-900 allows for variable charging speeds based on the amount of mA you decide to charge each battery with. This is variable between 200 and 1800 mA. The LCD is also a nice addition since you are able to glance and see where your batteries are in their recharging process. Overall I have been more than happy with this charger and it has received more of a workout than I anticipated since I have been introduced to its versatility.

Wilco's "Sky Blue Sky" == My favorite album right now

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:56:18 +0000

Wilco's recent release "Sky Blue Sky" has taken me all of three listens to finally appreciate it for what it is. The first time I went through, all I could think about was "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". This made me compare the sounds to what I already knew this band for. The second time I listened to it as background music while I was working, and noticed some decent riffs that stood out from the din. The third listen was on a 2-hour drive over the weekend and I was able to give it my full attention. I can honestly say that this will be one of those albums that I can go back to time and time again in the midst of many different listening moods. This band will be on my concert radar from now on.