A Slow Blogging Day, Saved By E-Mail

Occasional Reader Rob sends along the following...

That DOES resemble SN1.  Sorta.

Didja Catch This?

That's Google's generic search page for June 9... Les Paul's birthday.  (click for full-screen)  You could play that guitar and even record your playin'.  I almost missed it because my Google search page is customized with a Red Wings theme, so I never see the cool stuff Google comes up with... unless someone tells me about it.  In this case it was a tweet from Blog-Bud Cynthia.

Further:

If there were a doodle hall of fame, Google’s latest doodle would be inducted. 

In commemoration of legendary musician Les Paul, who would have been 96 today, Google’s homepage has been transformed into an interactive guitar. The doodle features a stylized guitar that lets you mouse over the strings to make music, and even record your song. Recordings can be up to 30 seconds long and the site gives a URL for the recording so rocker-wannabe’s can show off to their friends. 

To learn more about the ‘father of the electric guitar,’ simply click on the doodle itself and a web search of Les Paul opens up. 

Cool.

Outage

I awoke at a fairly reasonable hour today... around 1030 hrs, which is reasonable for ME... fired up the 'puter, and attempted to read the overnight mail while the coffee was brewing.  Two and a half hours later... our network connection is restored, the mail has been read, and now it's off to make the rounds and see what's happening in the world.  

We take SO many things for granted in our modern lives... running water, electricity, our internet connection... and we're lost when one of those things goes belly-up.  But, Hey!  Opportunity.  My bathroom got cleaned (along with other areas of El Casa Móvil De Pennington), and that reminds me of this old piece from The Onion.  Productivity.  It's what's for breakfast.

Verizon

Ya know those ads you love to hate?  Well, this ISN'T one of those:

That ad makes me smile, especially the way Lil Susie is dressed.  And the VCs.  Heh.

OK, that one is cool... and it's 180 degrees out of the overplayed and f*cking clue-FREE Verizon hockey-themed ads.  Like this.  And this:  

"Ovechtrick," my ass.  I gotchyer Ovechtrick, Verizon... right here.  Stick to what you know and stay the hell away from hockey, mmm-kay?  Coz these things ain't cute, they're just annoying.

Well, OK. What-evah.

We're up at the crack o' noon again today and we're finishin' up our second cup after readin' the overnight mail and such.  We also took a quick look at SiteMeter and see someone from P-Ville paid us a visit earlier this morning.  I'm always curious about how folks get here, especially my fellow P-villians.  This person did a Google search on "portales blogpost" and did his homework either before or after dropping in to EIP... what with reading what the News-Tribune had to say about me, as well as checking out my Technorati ranking  (I know this because Google changes the colors of the links on the search page, indicating which have been read).

I hadn't been to Technorati in quite a while so I went and looked, too.  Here's what I saw:

Well, now.  They've added a "hockey authority" ranking and you can see I'm the 134th bestest hockey blog in Technorati's universe.  That may sound cool (note EIP is #7245 out of the bazillion or so blogs on the planet) but I'm 134 out of 158 when it comes to hockey, which ain't cool at all.  I looked at some of the other blogs ranked above me in this space and see there are a couple of spam-blogs with higher rankings.  So much for Technorati, eh?

OTOH... they may be right.  Which is why I bought this shirt:

Heh.  Self-Promotion Я Us... to no avail.

Down. And Out.

Down... for almost 24 hours:

Google’s Blogger service has been offline or unreliable for much of the day, with Blogger-hosted blogs changed to read-only mode, and posts and comments made after 7:37 am PT on May 11, 2011, removed.

In a post on the Blogger help forum, the product team said that it had rolled back a scheduled maintenance release from last night and that its “engineers are working hard to return Blogger to normal and restore your posts and comments.”

Google’s reply for a request for comment was, “The team is working on this.” The company has posted some short updates to the Blogger Twitter account and Status blog, but hasn’t yet explained what’s happening, how widespread it is, and what will happen to users’ content.

Blogger had started rolling out its first major redesign in years in April. The team said in a tweet that the outage was not related to launching the new design.

Update: At 6 am Friday Google said Blogger would be “back to normal soon.”

The posts I put up yesterday still haven't been restored and Blogger has only been back for about a half-hour as I type.  I also noted that videos have gone missing on the blog as well... all ya see is a "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" message where the vid should be.  So much for putting all yer stuff in the cloud, eh?

―:☺:―

 Photo:  David Guralnick / The Detroit News

Out.  That would be my Beloved Wings, who fell JUST short in their comeback quest last evening.  I had a very brief e-mail conversation this morning with a friend who said she knew I was "going to wax poetic" about the Wings today.  Well, there's this about that:

Ah, the Wings.  You'd THINK an adult... Hell, an OLD man... wouldn't get so wrapped up in something so trivial as the fortunes of a hockey team.  But I kept hope alive, even as the Sharks iced the puck with something like 00:01.4 on the clock.  "Icing!  Face off in their zone!"  That was me to SN1, who was on the phone for the last two minutes of play.  And then time ran out...

I turned the teevee off when the horn sounded, not bein' able to bear the Wonderfulness Of The Sharks from the likes of Versus announcers.  SN1 did the same.

I still can't believe they lost.  Fucking Neemee.  ;-)

I still haven't turned the teevee back on.  That's about as poetic as it gets today.

I'll be rooting for Vancouver in the Western Conference Finals, not that I really give a Big Rat's Ass.  When it comes to the SCF I'll root for whoever wins the East, for the first time in recorded history.

If You Say So...

From my in-box a lil while ago...

Heh.  I'm glad they included "blogger" in there.  And all y'all thought my hockey stuff was boring, eh?  Take THAT!

Speaking of... The Hawks/Canucks game was everything I thought it was gonna be AND a bag o'chips.  I mean... Vancouver up 1-0 until there's only 1:58 left in the third period when the Hawks tie it with a shorthanded goal?  A penalty shot?  In a Game Seven?  A penalty on the Canucks at the beginning of OT with the series on the line and the Hawks DON'T score?  And what about young Corey Crawford and his magnificent play?  That game had it ALL, Gentle Reader.  One more thing... so much for popular opinion in 49 of 50 states: Vancouver 2, Chicago 1.  You got yer work cut out for ya, Nashville.

That other Game Seven was a snooze fest.  Only a die-hard Flyers fan could have been happy with that, as the outcome was never in doubt and Philly won going away.  I had a hard time believing the Sabres managed to take the series to seven games based on the way they played last night.  Oh, well.  Win some, lose some.  We'll do it all over again tonight when the Bruins face the Habs in their Game Seven.  (Side note:  It's just TOO bad the Tampa Bay-Flightless Birds game is on at nearly the same time.  If ESPN had the hockey teevee contract we could choose either or both... but NOOOO.  Thanks, NHL.  You frickin' idjits.)

Sorry, Air Force. No Shuttle for YOU!

From the (other) usual source...

No Space Shuttle for Air Force Museum: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Tuesday announced the museums where the four space shuttles will go on permanent display once the shuttle fleet retires later this year. The National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, was not one of them. Instead, the Shuttle Atlantis will go to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex in Florida; Shuttle Discovery will reside at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia; Shuttle Endeavour will rest at the California Science Center in Los Angeles; and Shuttle Enterprise will relocate from the Udvar-Hazy Center to the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum in New York. NASA said the Air Force museum will receive some shuttle artifacts: the nose cap assembly and crew compartment trainer as well as orbital maneuvering system engines. Bolden's announcement coincided with the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle launch and 50th anniversary of manned space flight. (See also Air Force Museum release)

Well, that sucks.  Just for grins and giggles, here's a couple o' items from the Air Force Museum's web site on the subject:

01) Why does the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force want a shuttle orbiter?

Throughout the shuttle's flying career, the USAF has been an important NASA partner. In addition to contributing massive infrastructure and multifaceted operational support, the Air Force has provided NASA with many highly skilled shuttle astronauts. NASA and the Department of Defense began cooperating on space shuttle design in early 1969, and the USAF-NASA formal space shuttle relationship began on Feb. 17, 1970. Air Force satellite launch requirements largely determined shuttle design, and the Air Force saved the shuttle program in lean budget years during its development.

Recognizing this vital and historically significant partnership, the Secretary of the Air Force, in accordance with 40 U.S.C. §524(b)(2), has requested the interagency transfer of a shuttle orbiter to the Air Force's national historical collection. This acquisition is required in order to represent the USAF/NASA partnership and the contributions of the shuttle orbiter program to national defense.

Therefore, the National Museum of the United States Air Force and its governing body, the USAF Heritage Board of Directors, has identified the Air Force's space mission as its most important exhibit priority.

04) Which shuttle orbiter is the museum requesting?

The museum is open to receiving any available orbiter; however we are most interested in Atlantis due to it being the primary Air Force/Department of Defense shuttle. Atlantis is the orbiter that has flown five Department of Defense (DoD) dedicated missions, more than any other shuttle, and has also supported other DoD activities. The basic space shuttle design was heavily influenced by Air Force and DoD requirements, and Atlantis has included more than 30 Air Force astronauts among its crews. The Air Force and DoD also play critical roles in shuttle launch and recovery operations in a continuous, decades-long partnership with NASA.

Well, Atlantis will stay at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  I suppose the Air Force museum shouldn't be all that disappointed... Houston didn't get one, either.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden announced today the four museums -- the Smithsonian Institution (Discovery), the California Science Center (Endeavour), Kennedy Space Center (Atlantis) and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum (Enterprise) -- that will receive space shuttles for public display after the fleet retires this summer. 

As expected Houston, the home of human spaceflight, was snubbed. 

It's a shame. Houston's campaign, Bring the Shuttle Home, probably deserves some blame for being late to the game in terms of politicking for an orbiter. 

But I'm not sure any campaign could have saved Houston. The politics of this decision were pretty clear. President Obama appoints the NASA administrator, and Texas is a decidedly Republican state.

Me?  I blame George Bush. 

Fifty Years Ago Today

I was a sophomore in high school.. and I, along with everyone else in the world, was absolutely stunned to hear Yuri Gagarin had become the first man to orbit the earth.  You can ride along with Mr. Gagarin and see exactly what he saw in this brilliant film made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of this historic flight:

From FNC's web site, which is where I found this film:

As he edited together the film, Riley made an unusual discovery: Gagarin's short bursts of communication from the cockpit were very much akin to modern Twitter chatter. In addition to being the first man in space, Riley called him the first man on Twitter.

“It’s clear Yuri spoke in 'tweets’ -- as communications to the mission controllers were always brief and to the point," he said. " Today a text-based tweet is composed of up to no more than 140 characters, so in essence Yuri was the first perfect tweeter."

First man to orbit the earth and the first Tweets (sorta)... ain't that sumthin'?  Yeah, the film IS long, but it's also worthwhile.

Get With It, Daddy-O

From today's AFA Daily Report:

Ghost in the Smart Phone: Noted cybersecurity analyst and author Winn Schwartau warned the audience at AFA's CyberFutures Conference last week that the proliferation of personal hand-held computing devices and use of 4G networks is making it that much easier for the bad guys to access networks and information systems. From iPads to Android smart phones, there will be four billion networked computing devices in the world by 2014, and 20 billion by 2020, he said. There are more than half a million applications for these personal computing devices, yet there is no code review process for them and estimates show that more than 20 percent of the "apps" are infected with malware, said Schwartau. He called iPhone applications the "greatest hostile software-delivery system created by man" and said, "Your infrastructure has already been 'pwned,' to use a hacker term." (The term means "getting owned" in the sense of suffering a humiliating defeat.) Schwartau asserted during his March 31 speech that a "perfect storm" of vulnerability is emerging with the advance of computing technology.

I'm glad the editors told us what "pawn3d" means... except they misspelled it.  But the larger point is well-taken.  The Daily Report has been shot through with cyber-related articles ever since the referenced conference ended last week and the threat to the nation in this area is significant.   It's as if that tired old cliché about generals always being prepared to fight the last war doesn't apply here, given the military is paying serious attention to cyber threats.  Still, one gets the feeling the country as a whole (by that I mean industry and gub'mint at ALL levels) is woefully unprepared to face threats to our infrastructure, both physical (such as the utility grids) and virtual (like the banking system).  Just google "cyber threats" if ya need something else to worry about.

Taxes

We're doin' 'em and we are NOT a Happy Camper.  TurboTax is the source of my angst because I can NOT find my 2009 TurboTax files and believe me, Gentle Reader, I've spent waaaay too damned much time looking for what appears to be non-existent files.  I happen to be one of the most anal-retentive people in the world when it comes to file retention and I KNOW I saved last year's tax files.  I can find all my archived tax returns going back to the year 2000, but all I can find for last year is a PDF of my 2009 return... which means I've had to bypass TurboTax's auto-import feature and re-key most of my data.  I say most because the "import from Quicken" function still works as advertised.  Thanks for the small favor, Intuit.

Re-entering data isn't really any Big Deal, it's just time consuming and SHOULD be unnecessary if the goddamned application worked like it was supposed to, right?

I know: bitch, bitch, bitch.  We're knocking off in favor of more rewarding, not to mention much more pleasing, activities and will resume this thankless task sometime this evening.

Beer me.  Right now!

Filler

I get the morning paper now... as of last Wednesday.

I don't know exactly why I waited so long to subscribe to the WSJ once I got my Kindle, but I did wait for quite a while.  Which is kinda weird, coz I subscribed to the print edition throughout my whole bid'niz life, only letting my subscription expire when I moved to P-Ville and only then because the WSJ doesn't deliver to the hinterlands.  I could have gotten it by mail, but who wants yesterday's news?  Going down to the library every so often to catch up worked for me in the past,  but no more.  Now all I have to do when I get up is turn the wireless on and the paper is ready to read after I finish making the coffee.

Yet another instance of We Technology!

―:☺:―

Today MIGHT be the day we break the seal on the AC...

It's already pretty warm, but it's bearable as long as we have our awning down.  We're keepin' a close eye on the WX, needless to say... as we're right on the cusp of having to furl the awning to keep it from blowing over to Lubbock.  The awning is good for winds up to about 20 mph and I'm hopin' we don't get much higher than that today, mainly coz full sun on the side of El Casa Móvil De Pennington coupled with temps in the 80s tends to make things semi-uncomfortable, AC or no AC.  And there's Happy Hour to consider, too.

It's On Again

The tech industry out in Kallyforhneeya is on another hiring binge and this piece in the NYT brought back some fond memories...

Computer whiz kids have long been prize hires in Silicon Valley. But these days tech companies are dreaming up new perks and incentives as the industry wages its fiercest war for talent in more than a decade. 

Free meals, shuttle buses and stock options are de rigueur. So the game maker Zynga dangles free haircuts and iPads to recruits, who are also told that they can bring their dogs to work. Path, a photo-sharing site, moved its offices so it could offer sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. At Instagram, another photo-sharing start-up, workers take personal food and drink orders from employees, fill them at Costco and keep the supplies on hand for lunches and snacks. 

Big money and perks!  Yup, I remember that.  I came out of my first whirl with (civilian) retirement to take a job with an SFO web services start-up in 2000.  The money was good great (including a tremendous furnish-your-trendy-apartment-in-Berkeley-with-Swedish-furniture signing bonus), there was a virtually unlimited supply of free Sierra Nevada and Anchor Steam in the company fridge, weekly catered lunches from SFO's best eateries, stock options, and a chance to get in on the ground floor with a start-up.  What's not to like about that?  

The dot-bomb implosion, that's what.  My company went from around 350 people a few months after I hired on to about 70 by the time I got tired of doing a lot more with a lot less (a lil over two years later) and said goodbye.  And those stock options?  They should have been printed on a roll, because then they would have been useful if less than absorbent.  And scratchy.

Let's hope this latest tech boom works out better than the last.

Photo:  In the office, October of 2000.  Don't I look pleased with myself!

Test Drive, Part Two

Well, not exactly like Part One of "Test Drive"...  I've bought this puppy, said puppy bein' Firefox 4.0, which has all the features of IE9 and a VERY slightly different layout.  Witness:

Click to embiggen, as always

FF 4.0 is off to the races...

After a slow start, Firefox 4 picked up its download pace considerably late yesterday and throughout the night: It scored about 7 million downloads in its first 24 hours after launch. By 9 am PST today, the download count blew past 8 million and there are no signs of a slowdown. Previews of Firefox 4.2 are already available.

And, appropriate for a racehorse, the browser is fast... much faster than 3.6.15.  I like the new layout, too, which is much like IE9 in that it gives ya more content space (without having to figger out how to hide your menu bars).  Muscle-memory is killing me, tho... I have to make two moves with the mouse to change tabs.  A lil more familiarity with the new interface and this, too, shall pass.

We all have out favorite browsers... I've downloaded and dabbled with both Chrome and the latest incarnations of IE... but I always come back to Firefox.  If you're one of those undecided but objective types when it comes to browsers, PC Mag has a good three-way comparison between FF, IE, and Chrome.  Spoiler:  PC Mag rates Chrome as the Editors' Choice.

Heh

I coulda written the narrative to this clip (the usual disclaimer about f-bombs applies, coz there are more than a few):

Really.  That sounds just like me watchin' "Nature" or almost anything on the NatGeo channel.

h/t:  The Guardian.

Test Drive

I downloaded Internet Exploder 9.0 last evening and am still in the test-drive phase, which means I ain't sure if IE9 is gonna replace Firefox as the broswer of choice here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington.  A few things are immediately apparent:  (a) IE9 is fast, faster than Firefox by a noticable margin and (b) the interface is much cleaner than FF, with more screen space dedicated to the web page you're looking at, as opposed to tool bars, menu bars, yadda, yadda.  See for yerself: 

IE9

Firefox 3.6.15

The downsides, so far:  (a) IE9 puked all over me last evening when I went to post that cat video, throwing a 404 "Page Not Found" error where the vid should be.  I need to do some testing there.  (b) IE9 STILL doesn't have a built-in spell checker and that might be the fatal flaw that prevents it from becoming the Browser O' Choice.  I know there are add-ins in this space and I might play with that option a lil later.  (c) 64-bit IE9 still doesn't support Flash.  The 32-bit version does, so that's what I'm using.  (d)  IE9 only runs on Vista and Windows 7.  That doesn't affect me personally, but if you're running XP you're SOL.  If you're running something earlier than XP, well... I'll not insult you, even if you deserve it.  I don't know if IE9 works on Fanboi hardware, nor do I care.  Fanbois prefer Fanboi software anyway, like the "Let's Go Hunting In Africa With Native Porters and Shit" browser.

(Parenthetical diversion... FF has issues where videos are concerned, too.  Note the Goo Goo Dolls mysteriously appeared in the screen shot above where the cat video should be.  This "feature" has happened more than once to me in the past; the only cure is to paste the video embed code in the "Edit HTML" window of Blogger's post screen. WTF?)

The geeky set likes IE9... a lot.  Here's one such review, if'n yer in to that sorta thang.  My jury is still out, however.

Update, 1400 hrs:  Well, I'm thinkin' the road test is over and IE9 ain't for me.  IE9 doesn't seem to want me to log into the Disqus commenting application a few of my blog-buds use and apparently caused Google to doubt my identity, as well, seeing as how Google suspended my account for about a half-hour earlier today.  The suspension might have been an unhappy coincidence but I question the timing.  The lack of a spell-checker in IE9 irritates me, too.  So... thanks but no thanks, Mr. Gates.  Yer latest ain't seamless enough fer me.

Fanbois Rejoice!

The iPad 2 is here... it's actually been here since Friday but we failed to notice because of other events.  So here's what the LA Times has to say...

The ironic thing is you can't view the above vid on your iPad, since iPads don't do Flash.  But, Hey!  Who publishes or posts embedded Flash vids and what good are they, anyway?  No one or nothing of any importance (other than older YouTube stuff, before they changed their embed code)... right, Fanboi?  So move along now... there's nothing to see here, literally... and never mind that black hole in your screen where the LA Times should be.

Apropos o' Yesterday's Post...

...where I said "No one talks about it much, but after the Columbia disaster I'm thinkin' we ALL hold our collective breath when the shuttle comes home."

 I scare myself sometimes.    

(from the usual source)

Discovery Is Home

Space shuttle discovery rolls to its final landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (photo as captioned at FNC's web site)

Safe and sound.   No one talks about it much, but after the Columbia disaster I'm thinkin' we ALL hold our collective breath when the shuttle comes home.

So now Discovery is off to the Smithsonian, a sad but fitting end to an illustrious career.

How Strange

This:

That would be EIP translated into Turkish.  We had a visitor from Istanbul earlier today and said visitor was interested enough in our scribblings that he or she (a) spent a lil over 32 minutes with us and (b) took the time to translate EIP into Turkish.  Proof:

Once again: ain't technology grand?  Can you imagine being able to project our everyman thoughts two continents away as recently as ten years ago?  I can't and am thus amazed.  I'm no less amazed that someone in far-away Istanbul... a city I greatly admire and one in which I had some hella good times... would take the trouble to read me.  Small world, indeed.   

Hoşgeldiniz, benim Türk arkadaşım ... ve do geri gelecek.