Jack Hardcastle

I’m hoping to teach myself some more Ruby during our family trip down south over the next 7 days. With a running start, and some help, I’m up to the latest latest. Yay!

ruby 1.9.0 (2007-12-25 revision 14709) [i686-darwin8.10.1]

I saw a sneak preview of a movie based upon one of my favorite books last night. Apparently there is some controversy about it.

Religious groups gain political advantage and rally their followers by presenting themselves as embattled. Actually listening to the other side is tantamount to admitting you’re not really being persecuted.

What’s great, and Erin pointed this out, is what the religious groups are upset about. They’re not worried about the movie, because Hollywood has stripped all the controversy out of it. They’re worried that the movie will make kids go out and read the book.

This is in the same category as all of those other things that, as far as I am concerned, flow directly against the Constitution and the principles upon which this nation was founded. Free speech, open discussion, and ernest inquiry are principles, without which, we would still be in the middle ages. I’m disappointed that some groups of people, every time they are confronted by something they don’t like, shun it and avoid debate altogether. That’s not progress. That’s burying your head in the sand.

There’s an interesting (if cheesy) video on YouTube where a guy applies what is essentially Pascal’s Wager to global warming. Or human-induced climate destabilization, as “they” would have us call it.

A fantastic article forwarded to me from Ms. Weigand on the perils of ignoring the natural circadian rhythm can be found in the Johns Hopkins Magazine.

Someone want to disable my melanopsin receptors for me?

I have not spent two consecutive winters in the same bedroom in nine years — not since the eighth grade. In that time, I’ve lived in Derwood, Columbia, Glenwood, McDonogh, Wiess (4th floor), Kerby Place, Wiess (different 4th floor), Wiess (1st floor), Snow Meadow, and Bonnie Ridge.

I’d love to say this is the end of the great migration, but that’s what I said last summer.

The only other person out there who might be close is Erin, but the last I heard her list stopped at seven.

I think I may have solved an issue I was having with my Myth DVR where two of the three cards would record jittery, bad sync video and audio. They were dropping frames, or the tracking was off, or something.

As recommended somewhere out on the web, all I did was disable PNP in the BIOS. This seems to have locked down the IRQs for all the cards, and at least as far as I can tell for now, might just have fixed the issue.

Well, I’ve managed to improve my grocery bag usage. If only slightly.

Went grocery shopping today. Gallon of milk, carton of juice, crackers, cheese, bread. As I arrived at the checkout belt, the older cashier asked me if I wanted paper or plastic bags. Jumping at the chance to save the landfills from a few more plastic bags, I opted for paper. She disappeared beneath the counter for a few seconds, rumbling around in the cabinet. Eventually she reappeared with a handful of paper grocery bags. It was clear to me that she already regretted asking me the question.

The next thing that happened still baffles me. She stuck the paper bag inside of the plastic one, and started filling it up. Then, when it was full, she grabbed the plastic bag, lifed the whole bundle up, and settled it down inside a second plastic bag. She repeated this process for the second of my two paper bags.

Wow.

I hope that I am half as sharp as Walter Matthau’s titular character in “Kotch” when I am advanced in years. Senility seems to me to be a fate worse than death.

Sitting on your living room floor, using Lynx to browse your GMail, check stocks, pay bills, and post on your blog, while listening to MP3s from 1998 on mplayer and compiling homebrew DVR software.

Ahh, bliss.

And this is why I’m no longer a Republican. The party has been taken over by these religious ideologues in recent years. Yes, let’s ignore a drug that would eradicate a particular variant of cancer, because it might encourage more young girls to have sex. Can’t let anyone be having any sex, now can we? That’s a sin. Tsk tsk tsk.