Wednesday, 30 October, 2002. 12:55:37 PMI've been really busy here in Oakland, but I'm done today. Since my flight
is set for tomorrow, I'm going to the airport to see if I can get a ride
back to Austin on standby. The news was reporting that ground delays in
Dallas were 30 minutes because of the weather, so it's going to be a
long day sitting in airports.
Friday, 25 October, 2002. 03:01:43 PMI'm flying out to San Francisco for two days next week. We don't have remote
access into a potential customer's site, so I have to go there to gather
assessment data.
Friday, 25 October, 2002. 09:23:47 AMHappy Birthday, Pablo Picasso. The Google website has a special graphic
for the day.
Thursday, 24 October, 2002. 06:28:07 PMThe Texas Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 that a police officer may not consider
the smell of burning marijuana to be probable cause to search a home.
From the Houston Chronicle:
Police, acting on an anonymous tip, arrived at the Steelmans' home on April 21, 1998. The officers peered into the house through a crack in a window blind and saw four men sitting in a living room but observed no illegal activity.
According to the court's opinion, the officers then knocked on the front door, which was opened by Ian Steelman, who stepped outside and closed the door behind him. The officers smelled the odor of burnt marijuana and proceeded to burst through the doorway, handcuff all the men and place them under arrest.
The marijuana was found about two hours later when police executed a search warrant. The Steelmans were charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession.
The majority said that because Ian Steelman had committed no crime in the officers' presence, the officers could not enter his home uninvited. The officers had no idea who was smoking or possessing marijuana, Holcomb wrote.
In strongly worded opinions, the dissenting judges criticized the ruling.
Presiding Judge Sharon Keller said that Texas now "establishes as a matter of law that people may not be arrested for smoking marijuana in their homes -- as long as they don't do it alone."
Judge Mike Keasler began his dissent with one word: "Amazing."
Thursday, 24 October, 2002. 05:17:46 PMAlex and I just refinanced our house at the new interest rate of 6.125%.
We probably won't have to do that again, unless the economy takes a very
bad nose dive.
Thursday, 24 October, 2002. 08:35:39 AMThe news is reporting this morning that two men were arrested in the sniper
case. From the information being reported it appears that the investigators
were making some good progress in the case. An alert driver at a rest stop
noticed a car that matched a description and called police.
Wednesday, 23 October, 2002. 09:40:57 PMIraquis linked
to Oklahoma Atrocity. This London paper claims that Ashcroft has been
given compelling evidence that the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City was helped
by Iraquis.
Instead, there are serious concerns that a group of Arab men with links to Iraqi intelligence, Palestinian extremists and possibly al Qaeda, used McVeigh and Nichols as front men to blow up the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City
Monday, 21 October, 2002. 05:40:48 PMThe sniper investigators are starting to look like morons to me. They took
two men into custody yesterday, but let them go today. The explanation
was that they were at the wrong phone booth at the wrong time. Now, the
police are asking the sniper to call them again because their audio tape
of the call was unclear and they didn't understand the message. Maybe
they think that the sniper can't put two and two together. They want the
sniper to call again so they can trace the call and try to catch him again.
Monday, 21 October, 2002. 05:38:09 PMDenise had a little girl this afternoon, named Andrea.
Monday, 21 October, 2002. 11:26:47 AMThis morning Kevin called to say that Denise is in labor. Alex and I are
going to have another niece today.
Thursday, 17 October, 2002. 06:54:13 PMThe definitive guide to hate relationships among Europeans
Friday, 11 October, 2002. 05:19:53 PMThere's an airshow in San Marcos tomorrow, put on by the Commemorative
Air Force. I'd never heard of that before. It used to be called the
Confederate Air Force, which is famous for their flying collection of
aircraft from WWII.
Friday, 11 October, 2002. 03:00:38 PMI've added a solution for configuring a user account to disallow shell
logins but to allow scp transfers to the code section.
Thursday, 10 October, 2002. 10:39:39 PMCANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) -- Australian scientists believe they have rediscovered an effective use for lemon juice -- as a contraceptive and also a killer of the AIDS virus.
Full article at CNN
Wednesday, 09 October, 2002. 01:43:40 PMFark just picked up the story about the big ass Spanish boat.
Tuesday, 08 October, 2002. 05:57:49 PMI'm chatting with Sean Stillwell right now. He tells me that Dave Richmond just
got married on Sunday, with Brad Hyman officiating. Very cool, I have to send
a mail to Dave. He also tells me that he figured out where Tracy Moran and
Chad Ludwig are: England! And they also got married. Can't wait to get back
in touch with her and find out what's up.
Tuesday, 08 October, 2002. 01:15:00 PMI've got a photo of my new niece on my website.
Link to photo page.
Tuesday, 08 October, 2002. 11:16:29 AMDad said that he would send photos of Sara Catherine tonight.
Monday, 07 October, 2002. 04:33:10 PMI did a Google search and the only site that has the phrase
"big ass spanish boat" in it is http://www.pinoylife.com/article.php?sid=84.
This article is obviously a joke, and it's amazing to think that some
journalist took it seriously enough to plagarize it. Well, now that I
think about it, it's really NOT that amazing that a journalist took it
seriously. The article is titled "Filipino American History Month Ideas". Here are some quotes:
Throw a party where the ratio of men to women is 15 to 2
Then you'll experience what it was like to be a Filipino immigrant back in the early to mid 1900s. Actually, there have been a few parties recently that still maintained this ratio.
Decorate the house with asparagus
In honor of the manongs that worked the farms of California and picked asparagus, we should commemorate Filipino American History Month by decking out all our houses with asparagus. Just imagine the smell of fresh asparagus lingering in your room every day in the month of October.
Find a Spaniard and boss him or her around for 333 minutes.
That's one minute for every year of Spanish rule.
Monday, 07 October, 2002. 04:30:04 PMThis is an actual retraction from "The Daily Evergreen"
Apology and retraction
October 4, 2002
The Daily Evergreen would like to sincerely apologize for an injustice served to the Filipino-American, Spanish-speaking and Catholic communities on the front page of Thursday's Evergreen.
The story "Filipino-American history recognized" stated that the "Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza," the galleon on which the first Filipinos landed at Morro, Bay, Calif., loosely translates to "The Big Ass Spanish Boat." It actually translates to "Our Lady of Good Peace."
Parts of the story, including the translation above, were plagiarized from an inaccurate Web site.
October is Filipino-American History Month. Members of the Filipino-American Student Association of WSU will hold events to celebrate thier history and culture all month. They should be able to celebrate without gross inaccuracies and poor coverage by the Evergreen.
We hope these groups accept our deep regret.
Monday, 07 October, 2002. 04:20:29 PMThe images from the Atlantis space shuttle launch were a disappointment. This
launch featured a little camera mounted on the external tank above and to
the right of the nose of the shuttle. The images were looking good until
just before the separation of the SRBs. The image from the camera broke
up, and then went completely fuzzy. During the launch there was a comment
from the announcer that something from the SRB separation had gotten on the
lens obscuring the view. I think that perhaps the sun wiped the camera out.
Just before the image was lost there was a growing glow off the aft of the
shuttle, which might have been the sun becoming visible to the aft of the
external tank. Then just a few seconds later, the image was destroyed. The
destruction of the image didn't appear to be instantaneous as if something had
impacted the camera lens at high speed. Rather it looked to be the somewhat
slower process of a CCD being cooked by the focused rays of the sun. In
any case, the camera was knocked out just before the interesting stuff started
happening.
Monday, 07 October, 2002. 12:58:20 PMMom left a voicemail on my cellphone with the baby's name. She didn't give
a spelling for it though, so the name could be some permutation of
"Sarah Katherine Grosser". Sarah could be spelled Sara, and Katherine could
be spelled Katheryn, or Katheryne, or Catherine, or Catheryn, or Catheryne.
I'll find out the actual spelling later tonight when I talk to Mom again.
Monday, 07 October, 2002. 07:59:33 AMSunday, Oct 6th, 2002, my sister had her baby. It's a girl weighing 6lbs 10 oz.
They haven't revealed the name yet. I guess they are waiting to see what
the baby's personality is before they make a final decision.
Sunday, 06 October, 2002. 08:22:36 AMMy father just called to let me know that Beth and Aaron are at the hospital
to have their baby. Mom and Dad are packing for the drive to Minneapolis
right now.
Thursday, 03 October, 2002. 04:47:20 PMThe Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan has what I think would be
the best solution to the conflict between Iraq and the United States that
has been presented so far.
Wednesday, 02 October, 2002. 01:30:12 PMLast night I was going to work on my compiler, but I had to print something
out and noticed that only half of my pages were printing. So, I got
sidetracked. I'm using pdq as the print setup on all my system. It's easy to
use, and about as simple as they get. In particular, I have it configured
to just connect to the printer over port 9100. I messed with the print
drivers, but nothing I did could fix the problem. So, I downloaded the
source code and traced through it. At the end of the printing process, the
printer-ready file is sent over the TCP connection to the printer using a
Perl program. I replaced that program with a simple cat/netcat setup and
everything worked perfectly. So, the problem was in the Perl program. After
some tinkering, I discovered that the printer had to substitute fonts
during the print, and was sending a notification message back to the Perl
program to that effect. But, the Perl program never read that message
before it closed the socket. As a result, the printer was getting timeout
errors and aborting the print job before the entire page was printed. I
made a fix to the program and reported it back to the author. Now everything
prints perfectly.
Tuesday, 01 October, 2002. 09:57:00 AMIt turns out that the material seized in Eastern Turkey was not uranium
at all, but a mixture of zinc, iron, zirconium and manganese.