Patrick Draper

Friday, 23 June, 2006. 03:43:35 PM

The DSL problems are now solved. It turned out to be a bad phone jack on my wall.

Thursday, 22 June, 2006. 10:03:42 AM

Everything is falling apart around here. Two days ago, my air conditioner went out and we had to have that fixed. Then yesterday, the ejection pump failed. I'm waiting for that repair to hapen. Now, the DSL line seems to be down.

Friday, 16 June, 2006. 10:23:00 AM

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. --Charles Darwin

Monday, 12 June, 2006. 02:22:19 AM

Garrison Keillor:

Meanwhile, the Current Occupant goes on impersonating a president. Somewhere in the quiet leafy recesses of the Bush family, somebody is thinking, "Wrong son. Should've tried the smart one." This one's eyes don't quite focus. Five years in office and he doesn't have a grip on it yet. You stand him up next to Tony Blair at a press conference and the comparison is not kind to Our Guy. Historians are starting to place him at or near the bottom of the list. And one of the basic assumptions of American culture is falling apart: the competence of Republicans.

You might not have always liked Republicans, but you could count on them to manage the bank. They might be lousy tippers, act snooty, talk through their noses, wear spats and splash mud on you as they race their Pierce-Arrows through the village, but you knew they could do the math. To see them produce a ninny and then follow him loyally into the swamp for five years is disconcerting, like seeing the Rolling Stones take up lite jazz. So here we are at an uneasy point in our history, mired in a costly war and getting nowhere, a supine Congress granting absolute power to a president who seems to get smaller and dimmer, and the best the Republicans can offer is San Franciscophobia? This is beyond pitiful. This is violently stupid.

It is painful to look at your father and realize the old man should not be allowed to manage his own money anymore. This is the discovery the country has made about the party in power. They are inept. The checkbook needs to be taken away. They will rant, they will screech, they will wave their canes at you and call you all sorts of names, but you have to do what you have to do.

Monday, 12 June, 2006. 12:50:54 AM

The scorpion species that I have is Centruroides vittatus. Only one other species lives around Austin. Unfortunately, it's not really suitable to be a pet because it can climb too easily, and small kids might have bad reactions to stings. For adults it's no more dangerous than a bee or wasp.

Monday, 12 June, 2006. 12:27:53 AM

I caught a scorpion in my house a couple days ago, and I've kept it in a box since then. It's just a little baby scorpion, and I'm thinking of keeping it as a pet.

Friday, 09 June, 2006. 12:26:43 AM

The amount of spam that I'm receiving is increasing exponentially after being relatively level for more than a year. A few months ago I was receiving about 20,000 spams a month. Now the total for April was about 80,000 and May was 125,000. Already for June I am at almost 50,000. I haven't implemented any blocklists, but I am considering a simple one. Most of the spam that I receive is sent from compromised servers overseas, in fairly quick bursts. One server might send me a thousand spams in a half-hour. I can implement a quick filter whereby every time a spam is recognized, the IP address is blocked for a period of 12 hours or so before another message is allowed. If that is also spam, then the IP address would be blocked for another 12 hours. This would do nothing to mail that isn't marked is spam, but would seriously throttle the rate at which spam-bots can send mail to me.

Thursday, 08 June, 2006. 05:56:46 PM

While I was on vacation in Hawaii, I received an actual hate mail in response to my political opinions I've posted on my website. Here's the wonderful e-mail:

Envelope-to: KarlRove@pdrap.org
Delivery-date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 00:43:13 -0500
From: Rod Manser 
To: KarlRove@pdrap.org
Subject: creep
Organization: Ecostar
X-SpamProbe: GOOD 0.1297039 778ced317230038583686a7bc78e8811

   W hating assholes in Austin Texas



   Un freakin believable



   you need to know that your B/S attitude is not appreciated by everyone



   You seem to think that it is OK to talk trash at your whim



   IT IS NOT OK,....so



   STFU!



   perhaps that appealed to your basilar instincts to behave yourself..

Rod Manser seems to be a little upset that I don't like GW Bush. More than that, he thinks that it's 'Un freakin believable' that I would hold that opinion. Mr. Manser seems to be unaware that the President is at less than 30% approval, and a great many people are not just upset at his unprecedented expansion of executive power, but are convinced that it is illegal. It seems that Rod's quality of information is lacking, probably from watching too much Fox news. Surveys have shown that people who watch Fox news have a much lower level of knowlege of current events than those who use other news sources.

Mr. Manser helpfully questions and warns me against talking trash at my whim. Unfortunately, his helpfulness is misguided and wrong. It is entirely OK for me to say whatever I want to say. I think GW Bush is the worst president I've seen in my lifetime, probably the worst president ever, he's immoral, a war-monger, and an ignorant git. No lightning has struck. Nobody's knocking on my door. I'm not sitting in a gulag. I guess that it's really OK for me to talk trash about a man who never should have been our president.

The most fascinating aspects of this e-mail are the poor grammar/spelling, and the overall aggressive and nasty tone. It starts out right away in the subject calling me a creep, and then calls me an asshole in the first line. I'm a bit puzzled by the last line which refers to something called a 'basilar instinct,' whatever that could be. I do hope Mr. Manser writes back to explain more of these basilar instincts.

I think that an overall evaluation of this e-mail is that it probably reflects more poorly on Mr. Manser than it reflects on me.

Thursday, 08 June, 2006. 01:09:31 PM

We returned yesterday from a week-long vacation in Hawaii. We stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu, and tried to see as many things as we could. I left my computer at home, which was a mistake. I thought that I wouldn't need it and that it'd be better not to be distracted, but without a computer it's a lot harder to get information about tours and sightseeing. It was also really hard to get around on the pathetic tourist and rental car maps.