Slashback.org

A veteran's take on the mosque issue

Would you like some pie, sir?

This past weekend I went to St. Mary’s and got in nine jumps. Usually that wouldn’t be too spectacular, but my last jump put me in triple digits. As I was logging jump number 100, my fellow skydivers decided to follow a little bit of long-standing skydiver tradition:

Click the screenshot for a video

So yes. I went to St. Mary’s to jump out of an airplane a few times and I came back smelling like whipped cream (even though I showered and washed my hair). I think it’s still seeping out of my pores.

Oh, and here’s the video from the actual jump:

Who’s got the butt? I’ve got the butt.

Not exactly the best exit, but it was fun nonetheless. You may not be able to tell in the screenshot, but I’m smiling.

Dio has rocked for a long, long time...

…now it’s time for him to pass the torch.

For those of you not familiar with Ronnie James Dio’s work, here’s a YouTube link to one of his most popular songs, Holy Diver.

Reddit rant

Sorry for the post blackout, guys. I’ve been busy with wedding plans and such.

In any event, I came to rant about the decline of our fellow man, specifically those that spend their time on reddit, a popular link-sharing “social site”. Given that most redditors are fellow geeks (like me), I generally believe them to be of above-average intelligence, but it looks like the collective IQ has dropped over the past few years.

The way this site works is that someone will share a link and people can vote it up (good) or down (bad) and comment on it. Posts with the best scores are put on the front page of the site, which means huge traffic for the link.

The comments are moderated by the herd as well. One would think that an intelligent comment like this one would get a lot of positive attention, right? WRONG!

I don’t get it. I (nova20) answered the question to the best of my knowledge. I tried to be insightful and add something to the conversation, and I even tried to throw in a little humor… yet my comment was voted down to a score of -1 (keep in mind you start off with a score of 1).

“But Tim,” you say, “maybe you just weren’t insightful enough. These are the greatest minds in all of the internet, right?”

Wrong again. Here’s an example of another thread I replied to but got a score of 36 points (My comment is the second one in the thread: “damned oxygen thieves”).

As I look through comments that get high scores, I usually see a disturbing trend… stupid jokes, cliches, memes, and pun thread comments are the only ones that get decent scores while intelligent posts are ignored and/or downvoted. Ugh.

My best birthday present this year...

…is a fiance.

For months, Erica (my then girlfriend) has been asking me what I want for my birthday. I kept telling her “all I want is you”.

So, this morning (my birthday), I woke up and retrieved a small box from the top of my closet. I turned around and said to my sleeping girl “You know how I’ve been saying that all I want is you for my birthday? I wasn’t joking.” I then presented the ring and asked her to marry me. She of course teared up and said yes… then kissed me and called everyone she knows.

Apparently the news hit her father’s Facebook page before I left for work; he’d been holding on to that news since the middle of last month.

Sadly, the only picture I have of the ring is a crappy one I took with my phone shortly after I bought it:

Click for bigger pic (though the pic is still just as crappy) and more pics coming soon

Since that’s such a crappy picture, here are some details:

simple setting in white gold
center diamond and two trapezoidal baguette diamonds
center diamond is 0.96 carat, F color, I1 clarity, brilliant cut
wedding ring is a simple setting in white gold with two trapezoidal baguette diamonds and a center rectangular bagette diamond

So yeah. Happy birthday to me!

Tim vs. the shower door

That’s right, folks. I got tired of dealing with shower curtains — they’re always getting mildewy so they can make you sick when they stick to you in the shower — so I got a shower door.

If you click that picture you can actually see a close-up of the etching in the glass.

It wasn’t that hard to install, and I think all this practice is making me better at cutting straight with the hacksaw.

Showering is so much more pleasant when you don’t have to worry about a curtain sticking to your wet body like it’s glued there.

...on the coolest movie of 2009

…which is, of course, Avatar. Star Trek comes in as a very close second, despite the distance inaccuracies in the skydiving (base jumping?) scene.

The only thing bad I’ve read about this movie is that it’s a “white man’s sorrow” movie, much like Dances with Wolves… but wait, what’s wrong with that? Didn’t Dances with Wolves win all kinds of awards? Wasn’t it an awesome movie?

Well it’s the same with Avatar. Yes, it is a white man’s sorrow movie, but I don’t see anything wrong with that, and the movie itself kicks ass. The CG was awesome, and the Nah’vi species was well constructed (language, warfare, religion, etc. were well designed). The plot, though honestly a bit tired, was compelling and dramatic.

One thing that bugged me is the fact that they played all kinds of commercials for the armed forces before the movie — Army, Air Force, Marines, etc — but the movie itself cast armed forces (specifically, Marines) in a bad light. I believe one redditor put it best:

before Avatar: Fuck yeah, Marines!
during Avatar: Fuck, Marines!
after Avatar: Fuck Marines.

PRESENTS!

In other news, if you want to get me a present this year, check out my Amazon Wish List. I’ll be expecting expensive gifts from every one of you sorry suckers that have nothing to do besides read my blog.

That’s right, you too. You better whip out that Visa card right now. Maybe if you spend enough money I’ll send you a crappy hand-made card sometime next month.

Customer Service! Please hold.

I’ve always been a big fan of The Oatmeal, but this comic hits the nail on the head. It goes right along with at least one of my earlier posts.

That is all.

Powermat

Some time ago, I wrote about wireless power. One commenter pointed out that, given the timing of my post (April 2nd), it was most likely a hoax for April Fools’ Day.

It turns out that commenter was wrong. A few months ago I started seeing TV commercials for the Powermat. I guess it just took them a while to get the bugs worked out (2.5 years at least).

I want one.

…and a Receiver/Cover for an iPod Touch.

That is all.

Mediacom still sucks

After the tornado almost 3 years ago, I switched to Mediacom for my internet. At first, it was horrible in terms of reliability (and speed), but it has greatly improved in the past few years. Despite the fact that my internet is faster and more reliable, I am still displeased. This time it’s a matter of principle.

You see, some time ago a service popped up called OpenDNS which offered alternative DNS servers that anyone could use instead of their ISP’s DNS servers. They promised to be more efficient and speedy than your current DNS scheme, with an extra “feature”.

They called it “typo-proof DNS” or something like that. Basically, if I typed “googgle.com” (note the extra ‘g’ there) into my browser’s go box and hit enter, OpenDNS would redirect me to a search page to make sure I get to the right page. It’s a simple thing to implement… if there’s no DNS record for the url I typed in, give me a search.

The problem is that it messes up Firefox’s “Friendly URLs” feature. In firefox, if I type “google” with no “.com” or “www.”, it will try every combination of domain name with “google” in it…

google.com
www.google.com
google.net
www.google.net
…and so on…

…until it finds a domain that has a record (in this case, it would stop on “google.com”). This feature worked fine with several sites that ended with a common TLD (“.com”, “.net”, “.org”, etc) whether they used the “www.” or not — google, slashdot, yahoo… even this blog.

However, if I used OpenDNS, it would stop at “google” and redirect me to a search page, short circuiting Firefox’s feature. It drove me nuts, so I decided not to use OpenDNS unless I absolutely had to.

I said all that to say this: now Mediacom has decided to copy this feature on their DNS servers. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

I guess I’ll have to cheat and use USG’s DNS servers (if I can use them at home).

Digital Music OCD

Ever since I got a Mac (2.5 years ago), I’ve been looking for a good software package for CD ripping. For windows and linux, there are a multitude of freeware packages that are awesome, but everything I’ve found for Mac either sucks or costs at least $20. I guess most everyone assumes if you’re using a Mac you won’t mind having your mp3 library thrashed by ripping CDs in iTunes.

I’ve tried many different freeware packages, and most of them have at least one of these problems:

It’s buggy or slow.
It wants to take over your music library.
It won’t allow you to fully customize the directory structure of the finished product.
It doesn’t know the difference between an Album Artist and a Track Artist — which plays havok with my music library directory structure. That’s my main complaint with Audion 3.
Doesn’t support mp3. I know, I know, most of you are like “Why don’t you use flac or some other lossless encoding?”. Look, I value my hard drive, and I see no point in keeping a 20 MB audio file around when I can keep a 5 MB audio file that sounds perfectly fine to me. Also, flac is not supported by my iPod, and I refuse to move to any version of “this will only play in our music player” encoding.

I say all this to let you know that I’ve found (after years of searching) what I consider to be a passable piece of software. It’s called X Lossless Decoder, or simply XLD. Gotta respect the Japanese; they know the way of the samurai.

Now I know most of you are reading this and saying to yourselves “man, this guy is anal about his mp3 collection.” Damn straight I am.

My music directory structure is like this: ~/Music/{Album artist}/{Album}/{Artist} - {Track Title}.mp3. Compilations and soundtracks have the Album artist “Various Artists” unless something more pertinent can be specified. Some of the crappy ripping software I used would put each track of a soundtrack album in individual artist folders — when I ripped my Matrix soundtrack, suddenly there were 13 extra artist folders in my directory; one for each track of the album. I was not happy with that.
If I have one track, I’ve got the whole album (or at least one album the track appears on).
Very little of my music library is even questionable as far as legality. Chances are if you point to a track in my library I can either produce the CD or show you an email receipt from Rhapsody. It’s not because I fear the RIAA, it’s because I believe music is a commodity that should be purchased.
Whenever I buy music online, I re-encode it to my specifications. If those specifications change (sometime last year I made the leap from 128 kbps to 256 kbps), I am likely to re-encode my entire library, a process that can take days.
I hate having extra folders in my music directory. Apple software has a horrible habit of putting folders in there that don’t belong — like my folder for iTunes and GarageBand. I’ve figured out how to change the folder for iTunes, but GarageBand is incredibly stubborn.
I back up my music folder to my media server (after putting in exclusions for the files that shouldn’t be there), and I’m anal about keeping them synced up. Every now and then I’ll delete my music folder on the server and run a full backup out of paranoia.

Flying

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

As some of you know, I recently received my skydiving A license. Here, for your enjoyment, is a video of my 25th skydive. Coincidentally, this jump took place exactly 3 months after my tandem jump here in Americus.

It’s a link! Click it!

Yes, I know it’s been a month and a half since that jump. I’ve been ignoring my blog lately. I’m currently only 10 jumps (and a written exam) away from getting my B license.

Local Wildlife

For those of you that didn’t know, I’m building a patio onto the back of my house. Nothing fancy, just a cinder block wall and a slab of concrete. It’s slow going, so the cinder blocks are just piled up in my yard for now… and have been for a few months. Every now and then I’ll get inspired to work on it and I’ll get a little bit done.

This weekend I had some free time and decided to work on it a bit, and as I was picking up one of the blocks I found a nasty surprise.

Protecting her little ones

Being no stranger to indigenous creepy crawlies, I immediately recognized the two spiny eggsacks as those of the infamous Latrodectus manctans, also known as the Southern Black Widow. If you look closely at the picture, you’ll also see the mother lurking in the shadows of the web, keeping watch over her young.

These spiders are fairly common in southern Georgia, but I can’t say I’ve seen many of them in my time. In fact, the last time I’d seen one was down at the Fort Valley Gun Club when I was about 12. Luckily my dad was there to show it to me (from a safe distance) and promptly blow it away with the rifle he was carrying. Probably overkill, but it got the job done.

Sadly for this expectant mother and her young, she had precariously positioned herself between two cinder blocks… which I’m sure she thought were unmovable. Her hermit-like ways had left her ill prepared for discovery by an animal that could easily and quickly move the bricks together with a swift kick…

Yes, that black ooze in the center of the picture is what’s (visibly) left of the widow. Overkill? Probably, but I don’t take chances with dangerous critters.

Banner

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s now an actual banner at the top of this page instead of the placeholder. I’d like to thank my girlfriend Erica for the time and effort she put in to making it.

What do you guys think?

Double Dragon

Despite the fact that I usually have the latest in console and PC gaming gear, I find that there’s no substitute for old classics. Lately, I’ve been playing Double Dragon on nintendo8.com.

I don’t know what it is about DD that makes it so compelling… it’s a simple side-scroller with simple controls (kick, punch, and move around), but there are subtle things that make it fun. For instance, after you’ve gained your fourth heart (you gain hearts as your score increases, which unlocks special moves) if you stand a certain distance from your opponent and kick him, the foe will double over in pain and our intrepid hero will grab him by the hair and kick him in the face a few times.

I think the most compelling part of the game is the fact that even though the enemies are cookie-cutter copies of a few basic types, they learn tricks as you gain hearts, which makes them a bit harder to defeat. If you can do a flying kick, they can do a flying kick — and they do so quite often.

Also, the gameplay is pretty much the same every time, but if you don’t know what you’re doing it’s rather difficult — though you can quickly learn the ins and outs, and it becomes fairly easy.

The reason I’m posting this, however, is to bitch. There are two parts of the game I think are unreasonably difficult, especially given how easy the rest of the game is:

At one point in the game, you face off against two huge muscle-bound dudes that enter the field by bursting through a rock wall. They’ll knock you down with ease, and tend to double-team you if you’re not careful… oh, and they tend to duck your flying kicks.
At another point in the game, you’re supposed to walk past a wall with bricks that shoot out and hit you pretty hard. Unlike most NES games, there seems to be no pattern as to when or where the bricks will come out, so you’re pretty much taking your hero’s life into your hands when you decide to move.

The problem is that these parts in the game come at inopportune times. The first time the two guys burst through the wall is at the end of a level when you’re low on health, and the moving wall comes at the beginning of a level that contains several guys with knives.

Just in case you’re wondering, I haven’t beaten the game (yet), but I’ve gotten incredibly close. Guess I’ll just have to keep on trying.

Tim and Joel vs. the new shower

Some time ago, my buddy Joel bought a house with the intention of fixing it up and selling it for a modest profit. We are both convinced that we could take is $50,000 house and turn it into an $85,000 with a little elbow grease and know-how.

In some respect, the thing has become a money pit — the previous owner didn’t know how to properly install flooring or molding, and would often use cheap materials or quick fixes to cover up a problem. Granted, neither Joel nor I had done anything on this grand a scale before, but we were determined to learn and do it right. I usually help with the bigger parts of the project even though I probably won’t see any profits from the sale myself… but what are friends for, eh?

Anyway, our latest project was installing a new shower and surround. I don’t have any pictures for you, but I’ll try to paint you a picture.

Initial Setup

When Joel bought the house, the bathroom had drywall, tile floor, and a cast iron tub with a tiled surround. The tile on the walls of the shower were mismatched and broken, the tub was on (slightly) unlevel because the floor underneath it was slowly rotting, and a hole in the floor next to the tub had been somewhat filled in with tile (which didn’t work out too well).

Immediate steps

The day the sale of the house closed, Joel invited me and several other folks over to take out the tile around the tub so it could be replaced. After several months of attempting to re-tile, put in a surround, and numerous other solutions, Joel was left with a tub surrounded by bare walls covered in plastic so he could shower… it was “a work in progress”.

Recent progress

Finally, he decided to scrap the tub and put in a one-piece surround/tub combination. Needless to say, he needed my help to move the old tub out and the new surround in. Additionally, we decided to replace the old cast iron/copper supply lines and drainage pipes with PVC since I was fairly confidant about my plumber-foo.

Problems arise

Iron tubs are heavy.
If you get a 30-inch-wide surround, it will magically expand when you get home so you won’t be able to get it through a 36-inch door without taking off the frame.
It’s much easier to tear down a wall and then rebuild it than it is to attempt moving a huge piece of bathroom furniture through a hallway. Trust me on that one.
Modern tubs and surrounds are made of fiberglass, so they’re pretty light (Joel and I could easily move it around), but the unfinished side is a deadly spike-trap for the cocky handyman that forgot to wear long sleeves or wear gloves.
Even if you have your plumbing design well thought out, expect to spend at least an hour at Lowes re-thinking your design and laying pieces out on the floor of the plumbing aisle.
Also, leave time to make a few trips back to Lowes because you will find that you got the wrong part, need something else, or break something.
PVC cement is a pain in the ass… when you have time for it to set, it’ll immediately set so damned tight you can’t budge it with a pipe wrench, but if you want it to set quickly it’ll take 30 minutes to form a tacky seal that you can easily overpower while putting the fixtures on.
Measure twice, measure twice more, cut once, then be prepared to curse because it still doesn’t fit right.
Getting the surround level is the least frustrating part of the job. That should tell you how frustrating the rest of it is.

Conclusion

After working for two days from 5pm until 2am, we finally got the surround in. The fixtures are just a tad off-center, but all-in-all I think we did a decent job, and we both have a new respect for plumbers and contractors everywhere.

A few words on education...

The object of liberal training is not learning, but discipline and the enlightenment of the mind. The educated man is to be discoverd by his point of view, by the temper of his mind, by his attitude towards life and his fair way of thinking. He can see, he can discriminate, he can combine ideas and perceive whither they lead; he has insight and comprehension. His mind is a practised instrument of appreciation. He is more apt to contribute light than heat to a discussion, and will oftener than another show the power of uniting the elements of a difficult subject in a whole view; he has the knowledge of the world which no one can have who knows only his own generation or only his own task.

What we should seek to impart in our colleges, therefore, is not so much learning itself as the spirit of learning. You can impart that to young men; and you can impart it to them in the three or four years at your disposal. It consists in the power to distinguish good reasoning from bad, in the power to digest and interpret evidence, in a habit of catholic observation and a preference for the nonpartisan point of view, in addition to clear and logical processes of thought and yet an indistinctive desire to interpret rather than to stick in the letter of the reasoning, in a taste for knowledge and a deep respect for the integrity of the human mind. It is citizenship of the world of knowledge, but not ownership of it.

Woodrow Wilson
The Spirit of Learning, 1909

Say hello, Gracie

I would like you all to meet the newest member of the Faircloth/Moody family in Americus, Gracie.

Hello, Gracie!

Last week Erica decided she missed having two cats in the house so we went off to the Humane Society and got this beautiful, playful, loving, 1-year-old calico. Tomtom is still a tad suspicious of the new furball in her territory, but they haven’t killed each other yet.

Celebrity Deaths

I find it sad that, with the death of Michael Jackson, the death of Billy Mays was completely overlooked. Rest in peace, Billy. The angels’ gowns are now brighter now that you have convinced them to use Oxyclean.

On that note, I also find it sad that my first knowledge of MJ was through this song

Tim vs the Slow Drain (continued)

Sorry, folks. I forgot to take before and after shots and I’m not about to crawl under there again just to take pictures. Anyway, here’s my report.

For this project I used:

Tools:

1 “general metal” hacksaw blade
1 14” pipe wrench (can’t believe I didn’t have one)
1 wood rasp

Expendables:

1 can of “all-purpose cement”
1 5-foot length of 1.5” PVC
1 2-foot length of 2” PVC
1 1.5” PVC T-joint
1 1.5” PVC cleanout plug
1 1.5” PVC slip joint
1 1.5” PVC male thread adapter (unused)
1 1.5” to 2” rubber junction
1 2” to 3” rubber junction

Tools cost: about $20
Expendables cost: about $30
Total cost: about $50
Time cost: about 5 hours

Much better than paying a plumber about $100/hour to do it for me.

I thought I’d be able to join the pvc to the cast iron with male thread adapter, but when I tried, the adapter got stripped out in the iron threads and leaked like a sieve. Instead I joined two rubber adapters with about 3 inches of 2” PVC and slipped the 3” side over the cast iron junction, which was a pain in the ass because cast iron pipes have a bulges where they join with other pipes. I had to do some fenagling with my flathead screwdriver to get it over that bulge.

The rest of the job went well, and I even put a cleanout plug where there used to be just a 90 degree bend so if the damned thing gets clogged up again I can just snake it or hose it out. Yes, a Y-connector may have been better (so I don’t have to worry about getting horribly wet when I hose it out), but I can always replace the cleanout plug with a threaded Y-connector later if I need to.

Things I’ve learned:

All-purpose cement sets up fast — within seconds — except when the surfaces are wet and/or dirty, but will set even then in a few minutes.
The bond that the cement creates is very strong. If you took a pipe wrench to it, you’d probably break the PVC before the cement gave way.
If you can deal with spiders, dirt, and enclosed spaces, a house’s crawlspace can actually be a decent place to work in the summer because it’s cool and quiet. Also, no one can hear the stream of foul language that explodes from your mouth when you realize you have to forgot a tool.
PVC is a lot easier to work with than copper, galvanized steel, or cast iron. At one point I tried to cut the iron pipe with my hacksaw; after about twenty minutes of cutting I looked at my progress and realized I had barely cut through a millimeter of rust.

All in all, not that difficult a task as far as home improvement goes. My next trick will be to replace the 3” cast iron pipe with PVC.

Tim vs. The Slow Drain

In recent days, my kitchen sink has become incredibly slow… sometimes taking several hours to drain properly. In truth, it’s never been the fastest drain in the east, but usually I could cure it with some Liquid Plumber or Draino.

However, no amount of chemicals would fix this issue (trust me, I tried them all), so I decided to do a little home plumbing.

After checking the pipes directly under the sink (which I deemed to be perfectly clean except for a bit of sediment in the trap), I decided the trouble was deeper. I went to Lowes and got a drain snake. After a frustrating hour of snaking, I decided it was time to go under the house and try my hand at some real plumbing. Here’s what my drain structure looks like (or at least used to look like) under the house:

Obviously, that picture wasn’t taken from under my house, but I’ll explain. The concrete slab represents “under my house” and the area with the dead grass represents “just visible above the floor under my sink”. The copper pipe, as you can see, pokes up to the plumbing under my sink, extends down to a 90 degree bend (I had to hacksaw the pipe to get it out). The end of the copper pipe was pushed into the big end of the steel (yes, steel) pipe and duck taped so it supposedly wouldn’t leak (seriously, I found the cardboard center of a duc tape roll under there). The small end of the pipe was threaded into a large cast iron pipe (not pictured).

The duck tape “seal” was permeated with all kinds of rust (from both the copper and the obviously-not-stainless steel), and I figured that had to be the problem… oxides mixed and mashed inside the pipe and had congealed to one major clog.

To make a long story short (too late!) I cut it all out and found the problem. Here’s the end of the copper pipe that was duct taped to the steel pipe:

eeeeewwwww.

You can see where my snake punched a hole through the gunk at the bottom of the pipe. Here’s the big end of the steel pipe that was duct taped to the copper pipe:

EEEEEwwwww!

That picture was taken after my attempts to dig out some of the gunk. This picture of the other end of the pipe (which connected to the cast iron) is closer to what I saw before all that effort:

EEEEEWWWWW!!!

The clog actually continues on down the iron pipe a few inches, but I know it’s fairly clear past the clothes washer drain junction, so it can’t be too far, so I should be able to clear it out with the snake.

Tomorrow I plan to make some friends in the plumbing department at Lowes and replace all this myself with PVC drainpipe. If all goes well you may get to see it when it’s put in place and working.

To Be Continued

I am convinced...

…that pool (the game with the pocketed table and balls and sticks) was invented by men who wanted to see drunk girls in low-cut tops and tight jeans (or short skirts) bend over a waist-high table.

That is all.

Superman Flies (part 2)

This weekend Joel and I traveled to St. Mary’s, GA to start our career of jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. In spite of rain and cloud cover most of the time, I managed to get in three jumps, leaving four jumps until I can go solo (right now I jump out with an instructor).

I only landed incorrectly once (had to roll a few times), but I’ve got more bruises from the rig than I do from rolling across the ground. Those leg straps are rough.

I’ll post pictures soon.

The Kember Identity

Today in my travels, I ran across a page concerning The Kember Identity. In short, this guy (Elliot Kember) is looking for a 32-character hexadecimal string that that is the same as that string’s MD5 sum (he does a better job of explaining it).

The issue he’s running across is that there are 16^32 possible MD5 sums. That’s 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456, or roughly 340*10^36.

To store every possible sum, you’d need 17,592,186,044,416 YottaBytes of space. That’s 17.5 trillion times HP’s estimated data storage capacity for humans by 2013.

If one computer runs through 40,000 strings every second (approximately how fast my my machine goes, utilizing 100% of one CPU), it’ll take 269,757,076,770,150,354,724,263,228 years to get through them all.

If everyone in the world (6,790,062,216 people, according to CIA records) each used one computer to calculate 100,000 strings per second, it would still take 1,591,720,484,991,568 years — 1.5 quadrillion (1.5 million billion) years — to run through them all.

Kember’s idea is to have as many people as possible run the code, hoping somebody will get lucky and find a reversible MD5 sum in his lifetime.

Fat chance, but that doesn’t stop me from running a script on my machine that runs the task (currently I’ve gone through almost 600 million unique strings). I say help him out! Even if you don’t join his pool, it’ll be interesting to see how many people we can get in on this.