I believe in Duty?

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On this morning’s “This I believe” segment of Morning Edition on NPR, they had an essay by 13 year old Ying Ying Yu titled “A Duty to Family, Heritage and Country.

To be honest … I feel very sorry for Ying Ying Yu … she is far to young to be as jaded as she sounds.

From what I read, she considers it her Duty to be a lawyer … while I believe that it’s a fine career to pursue … she should only pursue it if she really wants to be a lawyer. “Duty” is something you MUST do. But a course of study, and career, is something that you should WANT to do.

I think the statement that made me the most sad about Ying Ying Yu’s life is this …

I don’t want any more dreams — dreams are illusions.

Ying Ying … everyone should have dreams … dreams give you something to strive for … even if you know you can’t attain it.

I dream of being a respected nature photographer … but I doubt I ever will be one. That doesn’t stop me from taking lots of nature photos and making them best pictures I can … and learning from every one of them.

[tags]npr, This I believe, dreams, duty[/tags]

Riley after play

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I took this picture of Riley this weekend … I was going for the depth of field with Riley in the background, slightly out of focus, and his cat toys in the foreground.

Came out pretty well, I think. I’m need to play around with that stuff a bit more … but I’m getting better at getting the picture I’ve got in my head.

[tags]Cat, toys, depth of field[/tags]

Home Improvements

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Oh the joys of home ownership … yes indeedy.

Today I acomplished two major household tasks … one required a lot of work … the other required just a phone call.

The first was fairly involved … at least for me. The toilet in the master bath (such as it is, the bath that is) was leaking underneath the bowl. I figured it was the wax ring, so I replaced it … but that didn’t fix the leak. I’m pretty sure I put the new wax ring on wrong, which caused the new leak.

I got a new item to replace the wax ring … it’s basically a funnel that goes down the drain pipe and sticks to the bottom of the toilet. Seems to be working … although the only way to really tell is wait to see if more water shows up.

This little project only required 4 trips to the home improvement stores (Lowes, Home Depot, and twice to Menards) and took 3 months to complete (yes, we were without a toilet in the master bath for 3 months).

The second major task was calling the sales person from Anderson Windows to tell her that we wanted to go with her proposal.

We’re getting new windows throughout the house … the windows we currently have are all aluminum, which lets a lot of cold through, most of the glass panes have blown seals … so there’s a lot of moisture between the glass, and at least one window’s mechanism is totally shot (we need to use a 2×4 to hold it open).

We got a quote from Pella also … which was significantly higher than Anderson’s … and, although the comments I saw indicated that both Pella and Anderson had quality products, the consensus I saw was that Anderson’s were somewhat better.

We tried to get a quote from Lowes … but it took them almost a month to send someone out to do the measuring … and after waiting a week for them to call me back with estimates, they didn’t even have the measurements available. I was told by someone in their custom installation department that I would be called on Saturday … but didn’t hear from them.

We actually paid $35 for the measurements from Lowes … which I’m going to try and get back, as it took such a long time for them to come back.

Final cost for the Anderson windows is going to be $14K. I think I can get $400 off on taxes ($200 off for the windows, another $200 for the patio door {assuming it counts as an exterior door}). It will probably take 10 years or so to recoup the cost in energy savings, but it will be a good selling point when we go to sell the house (nothing planned in that arena yet).

Luckily we have a fairly sizable amount in the home repair / improvement savings bucket … so the cost won’t kill us.

[tags]Home Improvement, windows, heat, savings, toilet, repairs, taxes[/tags]

Prairie Home Companion

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Ginny and I saw “Prairie Home Companion” today … in a word: Yawn

Don’t get me wrong … I enjoy the show on NPR (although I don’t go out of my way to listen to it), but this movie was just plain boring.

Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough for it … but I could find no point to the movie. The music was pretty lame, with one or two exceptions the humor was absent (the off-color jokes by Dusty & Left [Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly respectively] were good and Kevin Kline as Guy Noir was pretty funny), and I couldn’t detect a plot at all.

Garrison: stick to radio.

[tags]NPR, Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion, Radio[/tags]

Painful

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This is just way TOO painful …

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explained why he voted against the amendment and gave an amazing primer on how the internet works.

There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn’t going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people […]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.

[…]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.

It’s not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

– Your Own Personal Internet

And this guy is a senator?

Are you prepared?

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I had the oddest experience at the grocery store today.

I was running some errands, and stopped in at Dominicks to pick up some stuff.

I approached the checkout lane, and the cashier said “Are you prepared?”

Not knowing what she was talking about, I said “For what?”

To which she replied “The end.”

I figured she was probably a religious nut … and said “What are you talking about?”

At this point, she just started scanning the items I had and nothing more was said about it.

mod_auth_pam and flatfile

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The other day I found myself needing to restrict access to a web site to only users who had logins to a system … while also allowing other users, who didn’t have logins, to access.

mod_auth_pam was the solution for the users with a login … and standard ‘htpasswd’ access was the answer for the other users … but getting the two to work together was causing problems.

A bit of Googling turned up this technique that solves the problem quite nicely.

AuthPAM_Enabled on
AuthPAM_FallThrough on
AuthAuthoritative Off
AuthUserFile /path/to/htpassword
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Secure"
Require valid-user

[tags]apache, authentication, htaccess[/tags]

Auction for Bosses Birthday Card

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A rather unique group of developers out in Baltimore have decided to go with a different route to collect money for a birthday card & gift for their boss.

They are running an auction … the winner of this auction will get their name and website signed on the inside of the birthday card in big letters. The card will also be prominently displayed in their office lunch room.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:31&item=9532516908.

Update: Apparently eBay pulled the auction because they thought it was for a charity … which it was not. The auction has been reposted.
[tags]ebay, birthday, boss, auction[/tags]

Fighting Wolves

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Someone on one of the lists I run posted this today … I thought it was worth publishing:

An elder Cherokee chief took his grandchildren into the forest and sat
them down and said to them, “A fight is going on inside me. This is a
terrible fight and it is a fight between two wolves. One wolf is the
wolf of fear, anger, arrogance and greed. The other wolf is the wolf of
courage, kindness, humility and love.” The children were very quiet and
listening to their grandfather with both their ears. He then said to
them, “This same fight between the two wolves that is going on inside of
me is going on inside of you, and inside every person.” They thought
about it for a minute and then one child asked the chief, “Grandfather,
which wolf will win the fight?” He said quietly, “The one you feed.”

[tags]Wisdom[/tags]