Bin Ladin gets his raisins

I thought that he got smoked years ago. Oh well. Better late than never.

ATT Uverse... Don't do it!

I've decided that ATT Uverse just plain sucks. I haven't had Internet that cuts out this often since this ol' dial-up days. If you've been considering ATT, my advise is to go with anyone else!

BTW: I'm posting this via Verizon. ATT is on the fritz again!

Wow... Just wow...

Where does one begin? This video is just jam-packed with industrial grade stupid. I don't know which is worse... Jesse Jackson Jr. blaming the iPad for unemployment or him calling for the American people to choose jobs in obsolete industries over their 1st Amendment freedoms...

What morons decided that this pinhead belongs in Congress?

Term limits

One lifetime only?

Raul Castro proposes political term limits in Cuba | Top AP Stories | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

The sound of heads popping

I'm listening to Ted Nugent on NRA News right now. And if you listen carefully, you can hear the Pop! Pop! Pop! of liberal heads exploding in the distance.

A question of scale

Congress is near deadlocked over ~$40 billion in proposed cuts. How much is that compared to the Federal deficit? One commentator put it this way: If the deficit is a Quarter-pounder combo from McDonald's, the proposed cuts are ¹⁄₅ of one French fry in that combo.

The host saga

If you will recall, I wasn't very happy with the responses I got from FreeServers.com when I complained about their antiquated software (including an out-of-date server kernel). I never got a satisfactory answer from them; just apologies without any pledges to actually fix the problems. As a result, I moved that site off of their servers and onto a new host. The billing department, as opposed to tech support, actually sounded concerned about my complaints. To their credit, they didn't try to hard sell me into keeping their crappy service. I guess they've heard this before.

I moved that site to a host I've used before for other projects: ipower.com. I'm very happy with them. If you're looking for a web host, give them a look.

Not a pretty mental picture

Software Firm Looking To Hire Naked Coders - Slashdot

Atlas-Shrugged-Movie.com unavailable

This is a good sign, no matter how you look at it.



Either there are tons of people interested in the movie, or it's generating enough buzz to attract a DDoS attack from concerned looters.

Green energy

Fair and balanced?

George Skelton at the LA Times writes about "subversive" Republican activists thwarting the "democratic process" by holding GOP toes to the fire over Jerry Brown's tax schemes. There's a brief tease about how Brown's labor allies are just as inflexible. But does that point get further discussion? Of course not! That doesn't fit the media template.

So that's how that works

I was wondering how that last picture got to the right place. Clever Blogger uploaded it to my Picasa account. I had just hit the picture button without thinking about it.

A fine haul

Bottling again

That hefeweizen is finally ready to bottle. I'm also putting some of that American stout into bottles as well.

The stout really benefited from an extra month in the keg. The hops mellowed a bit. Now there's a bit less bitterness and more flavor from the hops. There was also a hard water bite that was overdone that's gone now. I suppose that next time I should do something to accentuate the malt character more.

Finally: Something that John Kerry and I can agree on

Reducing taxes on small brewers

The mysterious minds of TV executives

What's up with the execs at CBS? What part of "Charlie Sheen" didn't they understand when they hired Charlie Sheen? Why are they getting upset with him for acting like... well... Charlie Sheen?

There's just no way that the grand poobahs at CBS didn't know what they were getting when they cast Sheen on 2½ Men. If fact, they had to have been counting on Sheen's history as a dyed-in-the-wool Hollywood bad boy as a way to attract an audience. And he certainly has delivered over the years. So why act surprised and upset now?

Poor journalism

The York Press needs to hire better journalists.

This story from January 21 recounts the terrifying day that Englishman Tim Stark found a .22 cartridge lying in the street.

THE HORROR!!

But one question remains unanswered thanks to some shoddy reporting: Did Mr. Stark wet himself? And if so, did he wet himself before or after he made his frantic call to the police to report the dangerous bullet?

The vicious Fossgate Bullet!

I suppose that it's a good thing that there wasn't a rabbit nearby. Imagine the carnage that might have resulted!!

I also got rid of that Tweety button thing

Either no one clicks it or it doesn't work.

An unfortunate change

There used to be a list of FReeper blogs over there on the sidebar. I had to remove that because most seemed to be dead. The one exception is AnnaZ, who I've added to the blogroll.

Now I'm not the guy to lecture about neglected blogs, but at least one had never been posted to. Others hadn't seen the light of day since 2005. Why am I complaining? I got that list from another FReeper who put in quite a bit of effort compiling a list of FReeper blogs. I wish I could remember who that was. It's sad to see their work go for naught.

Bad host! No biscuit!

I'm getting increasingly annoyed with FreeServers.com.

I manage a website there using one of their paid plans. (Not the freebie service!) Specifically, the plan is advertised as one for those who want to use WordPress to manage a blog. (I used to use Blogger.com for that site's blog, but they stopped supporting self-hosted blogs using ftp. In short, I didn't want Google to have an off switch for that blog. They have that here with this blog, and they should. It's hosted on their server and on their dime.) The problem started when I decided that I wasn't happy with the way the thing looked.

WordPress, for those who don't know, is a blogging program that's hosted on a blog's web server. It runs using the common web site programming language PHP. As such, all of the templates that one can download to change the look of a blog are, in fact, little PHP programs themselves. They interact with each other and the main WP software. WP is now on version 3.1. FreeServers uses version 2.0.4; a rather hoary old version. Modern WP templates assume that a more modern version of WP is on the server. Do you know how difficult it is to find one that will work with 2.0.4?

Now, I could try a hack solution. The WP software actually lives in a directory that a FreeServers subscriber has access to. I could just overwrite the old software with the latest version. There's a problem with that plan, however. The latest WP requires the latest PHP to work; at least something newer than v.4.1.2. (PHP is now on v.5.3.5!) It would also require a more modern version of MySQL. WP uses this database to keep track of posts. The latest version is 5.5.9. FreeServers uses v.4.1.22. These two items can't be upgraded by a mere subscriber. The PHP and MySQL installations are out of reach to subscribers.

I did a little searching and found out just how old these versions are. WP and MySQL date to 2006. The version of PHP they are using dates to 2002.

And then it gets worse!

While I was digging, I found that they are also running an out-of-date version of the Linux kernel on their servers. V.2.4.9-31 also dates to 2002. This just went from irritating to scary! I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that any script-kiddie worth his proxy could find an old exploit code and pwn my site and every other site on that server.

And I'm paying for this?

I complained to FreeServers. They responded that upgrading software requires time. I guess 9 years isn't enough!

Will FreeServers tech support read this, get off their lazy asses, and fix the problem? I doubt it. They're probably still using IE6. I'm not sure they can view this page!