On the mattress, not IN the mattress

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I just had to perform a slightly odd form of cat rescue: retrieve Riley from inside the box spring of the bed.

Riley likes to play around under the bed sometimes … playing with the fabric on the bottom if the box spring.

Today he managed to find a small rip in the fabric and make it larger. Once it was large enough, he crawled in and started exploring the inside if the box spring.

Both Ginny and I heard him under the bed, but it sounded kind of odd. He was also meowing in a somewhat odd way. When I looked under the bed, I didn’t see him. I did, however, see a jump in the box spring fabric. A bit of poking quickly identified the lump as Riley.

A quick slice of the fabric with my leatherman gave him an opening large enough for him to leave, but it took a bit if coaxing with some kitty treats to actually get to leave his new hiding place.

I’ll have to patch the rips today so he doesn’t get back in.

Adam Savage on Science Education and Creationism

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I found this Popular Mechanics pod cast while stumbling around today.   It features Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame (one of my favorite TV shows), discussing science education and his annoyance with the whole Evolution vs. Creationism debate:

What I do see as a huge issue is a very anti-science vibe. Like I said, the newspapers talking about evolution versus creationism is very much an attack on science as a type of religion—believing that the scientific method is some type of religious belief. And it’s not!

That kind of attack absolutely is damaging science exploration across the whole country. I do think that’s a significant problem. And until we can get our head out of the sand and realize that science isn’t about truth—it’s why this debate about the “theory of evolution” bugs the hell out of me. What scientists mean by theory is very different than what people think.

People want science to give them these ultimate truths. When of course it’s never going to do that.

No scientist will ever even tell you that he’ll guarantee the sun will come up tomorrow because that’s not a scientific statement. He can say it’ll come up because the evidence supports it and he can say he’s 99.99999% sure that it’s going to come up, but something could always happen.

And that willingness to have your mind changed – which is basically what that is – that willingness to change, to see something different based on the evidence, that’s deeply scientific, and it’s deeply creative, and I don’t think enough people realize how creative science is as a field.

What can I say? I agree with Adam 100%.

Popular Mechanics Podcast

Vote for the RIGHT reason

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Over the past few months I’ve heard lots of stories on the radio about the election and how people are going to vote.   I’ve got to tell you … there are some people that are just so incredibly stupid about how they make their voting decisions it just makes my blood boil.

Please, people, vote for the RIGHT reason … for instance:

  • Don’t vote for McCain BECAUSE he’s a veteran … vote for his position on veterans affairs.
  • Don’t vote for Obama BECAUSE he’s a African American … vote for his position on minority rights.

The worst example was from a story on NPR’s All Things Considered … during the primary they interviewed some women about Hillary Clinton running for the Democratic ticket … and one woman said that she thought it was admirable that Clinton was running … but it just wasn’t appropriate for her to be president because woman should be subservient to men.   To be fair, they were interviewing people at a conservative church gathering) … but still …   GAAHHHH!!!   What a stupid person.   People like that should have their voters registration cards revoked.

Of course, this raises one of my other pet questions … what’s worse … not voting or making an uninformed vote?

WordPress XML-RPC error

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I’ve encountered a weird error in WordPress … for some reason, when a post is submitted using the XML-RPC api (which is used by the WordPress iPhone app), any leading ‘<‘ symbols on the HTML is being stripped out.

Ginny noticed this a few days ago and I just confirmed it on a test blog.

The content that is posted looks something like this …

p>a href="http://beta.geekyramblings.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/p-
640-480-2fd9116d-5703-4e8b-b72c-2605beab02b5.jpeg">img src="http://
beta.geekyramblings.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/p-640-480-2fd9116d
--5703-4e8b-b72c-2605beab02b5.jpeg" alt="" width="225" height="300"
class="alignnone size-full wp-image-364" />/a>/p>

I’ll have to do some digging to find if this has already been logged or not.

I wish I was more skilled at PHP … I’m sure it’s someething I could sink my teeth into.

Update: FWIW I’ve opened ticket 7771 on the WordPress tracking system on this issue.

No Priuses Allowed

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In an effort to criticize John McCain’s economic policies and his apparent unwillingness to support “buy American” restrictions including Harley-Davidson motorcycles for the Secret Service, a group of American-made hybrid car owners and Harley riders rolled into downtown Grand Rapids, MI on Tuesday to support Barack Obama. The only stipulation for participation? Hybrids had to be American made, meaning no Priuses allowed.

– No Priuses Allowed at Hybrids & Harleys for Obama Rally

Darn, wish I had known about this before … would have been cool to roll along with in my Ford Escape Hybrid (built in Kansas City, MO).

Bad Video Card

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My poor little Laptop … something’s gone wrong with it’s video card.

A few days ago I was watching a video on the laptop and something went horribly wrong … the video got completely corrupted.   Even rebooting the system didn’t help.   My initial thought was that my external monitor had gone casters up, so I undocked the system and booted it up.   Video on the laptops display was corrupted too.

Got on another PC and started a chat with Dell hardware support … I was quite surprised that the tech I chatted with quickly picked up on the fact that I was technically competent and didn’t waste my time with each individual mouse click and key press.   He simply said “OK, let’s delete the video adapter from the device manager”.

After we deleted the video adapter and reinstalled the video drivers, the problem seemed to go away.   The tech had me run a few video intensive programs to see if the failure came back.   It didn’t.

Yesterday, however, the problem came back.

Continue reading →

Freedom of Expression?

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We’re watching TV right now and, as a bit of an anomaly, we’re actually watching a commercial … the commercial has a woman discussing that she loves “Freedom of Expression” … and then goes on to describe how she talked to her doctor about Botox treatment.

Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Botox actually paralyze the muscles in your face … thus freezing your expression?   It’s more like “Freedom FROM Expression”.

Regardless, shouldn’t any ‘cosmetic’ with the word “Toxin” in the official name raise just a tad bit of worry?

Testing the sump pump

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Considering the weather today, it seems to be a fine time to test the Aquanot backup sump pump.

It’s taking quite a while for the water level to go high enough in the pit. I’m a bit worried that the float on the pump is too high.

Problem here is that once the water goes over the input from the drain tiles, the flow slows down.

Of course, I suspect the fact that the ejector pit is taking on ground water isn’t helping this test. Yet another item to be added to the repair list. This one, however, is pretty pricy … As the utility room floor will have to be broken up in order to put a new pit liner in.

<time passes>

Well, the sump pump never did turn on. Rather frustrating. I did a bit more research and figured out that the float was not set right. It needs to have some play so it will turn the pump on and settle a bit before turning the pump off. Unfortunately, the primary pump interferes with the floats range of motion.

I’ll gave to call Permaseal about getting it reconfigured so it works properly.   Having a emergency backup sump pump doesn’t help if it doesn’t turn on in an emergency.