dpk’s weblog

To help pass the time waiting for the #28 bus, running on a Sunday schedule this being the great American holiday President’s Day, I went to the corner market and bought a red pen and a pad of paper. Both were proudly made in the USA. The pen, red to be patriotic, or because it was the only choice available? You decide. The paper is white, and if you squint and are colorblind the cover might look like what you would have to assume is blue.

However, the pen does not write, even though I intended to extol the virtues of compromise, and the “power of pride.” What a shame. Instead, I had to write this on my made-in-Mexico cell phone.

They were thorough enough to include balls. Impressive.

One of the most difficult things to deal with while using a Linux desktop is the clipboard. There are apparently two clipboards on my desktop — perhaps more? I’m running Debian Etch w/ Gnome 2 based apps, if that matters.

If you copy text from one window, you may not be able to paste it in to another if it contains certain characters. For example, press releases on Google’s AP site include some sort of double-dash character. If you’re careful not to select that character, you can copy from the page and paste into gnome-terminal or xterm. A more annoying example: to copy text displayed in Flash, you have to select the text, right-click and choose Copy, and then paste it in to some other application such as Firefox or Pidgin. Then copy it from there and paste it to your terminal. It’s a major hassle.

Then there are situations where you’ll copy text in one window and try to paste into another, only to end up pasting something completely different that you’d selected ages ago. It’s almost enough to make me want to switch to Windows at work.

Those of you who use Linux as a desktop: How do you deal with this issue? Or, alternatively, how have you avoided it?

I’ve tried to use glipper, but it doesn’t seem to install properly, at least on my desktop. It won’t appear as a panel option, and when it’s run from the menu, nothing happens. It just sits there and uses CPU time, reading and writing from some buffer over and over again. If glipper really is the shit I’ll try to figure out what’s wrong with my installation of it, but if it’s shit I’ll look elsewhere.

Not only do they provide bizarre images to include on MySpace, to appeal to the under 18 voting crowd I presume, but they try to suggest that voting in the primary actually matters. It doesn’t. It’s the equivalent of a CNN web poll, for the Democrats, completely non-binding. It’s pretty much the same for the Republicans — 51% of the delegates are drawn from the vote, but it doesn’t matter because the few individuals that comprise the other 49% hold the real power (unless all 51% of the voters happen to pick the same candidate, which they know is unlikely).

That the primary is run through “official” channels makes the joke all the worse. It’s this sort of obvious illusion of choice (on par with the infamous “Stadium votes”) that furthers voter apathy and discontent.

I wrote an email to our Secretary of State outlining my desires, included below, if you want to read it. Re-reading it now, I see some issues with it, but oh well: what’s sent is sent.

Continue reading ‘Washington State’s Presidential primary is worse than a joke’ »

In football, after every play, there’s a seemingly interminable period until the next play starts, during which they show replays and talk about what they just saw. The delay is even longer for plays involving flags, and perhaps just long enough:

They could set up a SMS number and show it on screen after every flag, asking the viewers to tell them whether or not they agreed with the referee’s call, charging 25 cents or more per vote. Then after a short while they could display the results on screen.

If there isn’t enough time to gather and calculate the results before the next play, they could just post random numbers that almost always favor the referee, encouraging those that disagree to vote the next time. It doesn’t matter if it’s accurate, and it might be better if it’s inaccurate.

Easy money.

From the Seattle Times, a brief about Costco’s solar power:

The panels cost about $745,000 per store, and Costco typically doesn’t make that money back for three to five years.

If you own your building and you can get a return on capital improvement like this, how could you not do it? Go team.

I’m no fan of football, but my parents are, and I’m planning to head over to their place tomorrow to celebrate my brother’s birthday. I’m using the power of the Internet to figure out when it’s scheduled to be over (assuming it doesn’t go in to extra innings) but have met severe frustration. For example, check out what Yahoo! TV has listed for “superbowl“:

• Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials 2008 (Documentary, 2007 – present)
• The Fox Sports Special: XXXI Superbowl Green Bay vs. New England (Sports)
• Ralph Emery: On the Record With Mel

I tried clicking on the “when is it on?” link for the middle one since it was the most likely result, but apparently it’s not on in the next 14 days. I guess this is because this is a listing for the 1997 Superbowl.

Next up is tvguide.com. Search for “superbowl” there and you’ll get:

• Superbowl Smash 2006
• Superbowl Preview*: * 2008

Hey, Superbowl Preview 2008, right there! But when you click on it you’re informed that it won’t be on in the next 14 days, either.

On to zap2it. Search for superbowl, click on TV listings, and voila: they have no results whatsoever.

AOL TV has 24 results (only 20 of which are displayed on the page, with no link to a page with the other 4). Of the 20, there’s one that refers to Superbowl XLII. Success? Alas.

Finally! The site with the 7th result for “tv listings” has the answer: “Sports on TV – USATODAY” indicates it is on after the “pre-game show”, which ends at 6PM. Eastern time.

Phew.

While cleaning up my beard I discovered something new. It’s my first gray hair. I checked and re-checked, to make sure it wasn’t just shiny and reflecting the light in the bathroom, but no, it’s pure white. Man oh man.

Next on the agenda of inevitability: baldness!

I have other (personal) news on the horizon, but I’m going to wait until next week to share it. Stay tuned!