You Lie!

Wow.

For those of you not paying attention, Joe Wilson heckled the President in a recent address on health care. Hopefully this isn’t even news by the time you read this, because it was dumb. Dumb like Kanye West interrupting an acceptance speech by Taylor Swift. Sigh.

Anyway, time for some names … people I consider friends, and many of whom I haven’t seen in a long time, but people I’d consider to be “average citizens”. The statements I make here certainly don’t frame the way I feel about them as individuals, but giving their names adds context and validity, so I’m disregarding the anonymity card. That’s what happens when you put your opinion on Facebook.

So, this past week, my family had a sister pass away. Nothing atypical, she had a stroke. She helped much more than her fair share of people, including my mother. I don’t think the details are important to the argument, but lets just say she’s in a better place than the rest of us and leave it at that. She didn’t have health coverage anymore, and I’m not in a position to explain the details of why, but I do know, from my own experience that controlling hypertension is greatly helped by frequent visits to the doctor, as well as diet, exercise, and medication.

So, this Joe Wilson nonsense happens, and I catch a glimpse, and think to myself, “Wow. That dude isn’t gonna make a public apology for a gaffe like that? Quit now.” Regardless of whether he was right or wrong, or how he felt (or how much Hennessy he was drinking before the event). That outburst was inappropriate. Honestly, I wasn’t watching, and my first alert to it was seeing a twitter post by Lora W., a high school classmate who works for Obama for America.

So… then Bethany M., another high-school classmate posts a bit, wondering if the miraculous medical option that allowed her twins to survive is going to be an option “if Obama passes this”. I *still* have mixed feelings about certain aspects of the statement. I mean, granted, it’s a fleeting idea, posted on someoene’s Facebook status. There’s not enough room for real debate there, but I’d say, based on what I know about Bethany, and her faith, that it is of sincere concern. What I don’t like, is that apparently she thinks that changes to legislation can prevent that kind of option, or more seriously, that God can be legislated out of our lives. I firmly believe that God is still in control. Bethany, give praise to God for that miracle, and don’t let some political pundit take that away.
So, I respond, basically so I can get alerted to comments, and so that I can pray for that situation in my personal time.

I had a really rough day/evening, which usually ends with me just writing something out of frustration. Anger has been fuel for me for far too long. And I was angry. Not angry *at* my wife and kids (in case they wonder), but they were not helping. And so, I come up with this summary pretty much as a reaction to the whole health care debate, and typical of my non-committal approach to, well, everything. My Facebook status goes:

Marland V. Pittman understands that there is a fundamental divide between those who believe government should do nothing to those who can do for themselves, and those who believe government should do something for those who can’t do for themselves. Here’s the thing. Government isn’t going away, so get on board and actively participate.

And then I turn in. Or attempt to, as my son doesn’t really do this sleep thing that often. I wake up to a few comments, not entirely unexpected from the “usual suspects”. Good friends, who’s friendship I value and opinions I respect, even if I don’t agree with them:

[Stacey Hearn-Hajj likes this.]
LOL. Stacey, what’s not to like? You can be on either side of an argument, but participation is required to move forward. I made a statement completely devoid of meaningful opinion.

[JT Hickman - Agree as far as State Gov't goes, disagree with the Federal Gov't, which is limited by the Constitution in it's duties.]
[Brandon Waite - The power does not lie with the Federal Goverment. It lies with the state, like JT said. Also if you think the goverment needs to take care of you , you need to wake up.]

The response I post below, is really to JT and Brandon…

[Michelle Wilmoth - nice I like your thinking]
Again, my thinking is that if I say something that means nothing, I can get away sounding intelligent, but I don’t make any meaningful contribution to the debate. I’ve gotten away with it for far too long.

[Julie Bousum Brackett - Well, not sure I am with ya on that one. What I do know is that I have never known or seen our country so divided and that we all need to be praying for that government and our great nation!]
Julie grew up across the street from me. There are so many things I could say about her, but recently, I’ve been inspired by her faith, so I’ll say that I agree with her statement.

So, basically, in response to JT and Brandon, regarding states rights, I did a tiny bit of research and respond below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism#United_States

It’s dead guys. I understand the need for checks and balances. I don’t want the executive branch of the federal government taking over any more than the crazy people who believe that “the President is gunna take away my right to shoot people on my property or steal movies off the Internet.” However, I disagree with the need to legislate disparately across state borders. Why are there even laws that differ across state lines for things like alcohol sales, gun control, transportation, crime prevention, etc.? Giving the states power was a good idea. Allowing them to act autonomously is not. Checks and balances need to work in both directions.

Of course, if you don’t like that… get out of a backwards state like Indiana. LOL.

JT, you know I love you, man. And I know you love a spirited debate. Seriously though, you’ve gotta get the media that is supporting your ideas to focus on the constitution, rather than the “anti-everything that is opposed to us” hype that seems to be getting spread. There’s good ideas in there, but they keep masking them with the idea that those that are opposed to them are… bad people, rather than people with different ideas. It gets hard to listen to.

Brandon, you already know. The government won’t take care of you, but they have to keep people from getting railroaded by those who would take advantage of them. Large companies with deep pockets are tied deep into the government. They support officials and corresponding policies that benefit themselves and not the people that representatives are elected to represent. The only tool that average people like you and I have is a vote. I argue that the political effectiveness of the vote is rendered null by those with enough money to support a candidate. I agree, we need to wake up. We’re already being dissed by our government. The problem is, there are elements preying on our fear of it, when, in fact, we’ve already been shackled. Those in power aren’t interested in reform, because it brings power back to the people. However, they’ll say that the reform is what will actually enslave you. It’s a devastating argument. It takes the idea that you are born free, and completely turns it around.

Draw the parallels to “The Matrix” or black slavery if you need to, but seriously… you, wake up.

The hardest part of this for me, is balancing this with my faith. I know I’m supposed to pray for those who have authority over me. And I know that I’m supposed to be in this world, but not of it. I also know that I’m supposed to take what I’ve been blessed with, and spread it around.

I won’t be announcing my candidacy for office anytime soon. And I certainly won’t be launching my campaign from a local soul food restaurant. Thanks for listening. Now, those of you who are about advanced citizenship. Get your letters to your representatives and let them know how you feel. I’ve gotta go watch a video on how the CEO of my company thinks that cutting 5000 jobs will save the company I work at, but not for, $1billion in two years.

Test

I am testing this PostBot app from my Android Phone. I recently made another commitment to blog more. So here goes.

My wife’s pep talk.

So, I’m going to lose my job in the future. I don’t know exactly when, but I’ve already met the people who will be taking over for me. Suffice it to say, I’m not super happy about that. It’s been a rough ride, and this morning was particularly difficult, right from getting out of bed.

I didn’t go to the gym, which probably would have been a good idea. I didn’t talk to my wife either, which would have been a good idea also. I finally spoke as we were eating “breakfast”. She gave me a little pep talk, and we made some egregious jokes about getting calls and hoping for jobs and I felt better. I just wanted to take some time to write down how I felt, and let anyone who actually follows my life on this blog know that my wife loves and supports me, even when I don’t have my attitude adjusted correctly.

Thanks Holly, I love you!

Media Center with Windows 7 and Xbox 360 extenders

I’ve settled on using Windows 7 Media Center with Xbox 360 machines as extenders for our TV/Movie platform at home. We’re using basic cable (which makes our Internet from Comcast cheaper) and over-the-air broadcast programming. I have a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz machine in an Antec Minuet 350 case with 1 GB of RAM, a 750 GB hard drive and an ViXS PureTV-U TV Tuner which apparently was a great deal that I picked up from a local computer store, because of it’s low profile bracket and low price ($30).

I should get another tuner, but it’s working reasonably well now, and I really shouldn’t mess with it. I am using the wireless adapters for Xbox 360, but the signal just isn’t reliable enough, so I ran a wire out the window, down the side of the house, and down to the system in the living room, and it improved the Media Center extender experience considerably. Looks like I’m going to have to wire the house up. Wireless-G just isn’t going to cut it. My kids are pretty sensitive to the movie or show stopping or stuttering.

I have two Hauppauge HVR-1250 tuners that are PCIe, work in Linux, and have low profile brackets, but they acted funny (meaning they weren’t detected) in Windows when I used them in the PCIe slots on my BIOSTAR P4M900-M4 motherboard. I’m a little sore over that, especially since I got a motherboard to work with my old Athlon 3000+ socket 939 board that had two PCIe slots. Oh well, the Myth TV linux box may yet live. I always need a “development environment” to use, and not mess with the stuff that works.

I’m currently not using the “production” box with a TV at all, and letting the extenders do all the display work. Ideally, I’d just buy more extenders when I need a TV somewhere else, that’s cheaper than a PC with enough oomph to do HDTV and stuff, and the box does a great job of storing movies ripped from DVD, and recording TV. I suppose finding a low-profile PCIe video card and hooking up a monitor wouldn’t be a bad idea.

As far as ripping movies goes. AnyDVD seems to be the only real solution that works for decrypting on “everything”. Handbrake does a reasonably great job of smashing movies into h.264 encoded files to be served up. I really wish there were something on Linux that could compare for decrypting and ripping, but I guess if I’m going to pay for the software, I should expect the operating system to cost me something too. I’m content to run Windows on my main box for games, and I can just do the ripping and encoding there too, and them move them to the Media Center box over the network. The Media Center box does have an eSATA port though… very nice. I guess getting that Antec Minuet 350 wasn’t such a bad move after all.

So, that leaves me with a few Athlon XP machines, and an Athlon 64 machine, with Geforce 4 MX video cards, and not too many storage devices. I think that will have to be the Myth TV project that I’ll work on in my spare time. I can’t imagine it working any better than what I’ve got with Windows 7, other than being a bit more flexible, I guess, and “Free”. “Working” is better than free though.

Blog posts don’t have to be long.

I’ve struggeled with blogging lately, mostly because I figured I needed something significant to say, and that my usual, off-the-cuff comments just aren’t appropriate.

I recently read a post from on of my college associates about “EGR” If you don’t know what that means, feel free to ask me. The point is that her post was short, and I really felt it was significant. It kind of hit me in that moment. I’m kind of in the middle of 5 things right now, and her comes my son. So, that’s all. Thanks for listening.

Running is good. Treadmill is good. MP3 player is good.

I figured it was time to post something other than “I’m a racist” on my blog, since I’m friending up lots of people on my Facebook page. I’m pretty sure that is where most of the traffic on my blog comes from.

I’ve been keeping up with the 4-day-a week routine at the gym pretty well. I’m starting to at least look forward to completing the run, if not enjoy it. I think I like it more than lifting weights, so I guess that’s something. I’m going to have to stop eating so much if I really want to lose weight, but I guess that hasn’t really been a primary goal.

I did pick up a 16 GB flash card for my phone, so I guess I’m trying to decide whether I want to use it or my mp3 player, which has a 30 GB hard drive… and a strap, and an investment… but no bluetooth. I guess I’ll have to test it when a get a chance to load it up, and see if I get drop-outs like I did with the Shadow. Wired headsets may just be the way to go. The Zune’s been good to me. I might not sell it. (But hey, if you’re interested in a 30 GB White Zune, with some accessories, LMK. LOL.)

I don’t run outside, and I don’t run with others. My treadmill routine is pretty erratic, and my wife doesn’t run with me. Sometimes I run “against” people at the gym who look like their doing something other than just running as fast as they can, for as long as they can. Sometimes I just put my player on shuffle, and keep clicking through crappy songs, rather than a playlist (note to self… get more playlists…) but I can tell you that I can certainly fit all the songs that are good for “Treadmill Running” in a smaller set than what I’ve got organized now.

I’m currently alternating 20 minutes running and weight lifting on odd days, with long distance running (currently at 3 miles/40 minutes) on even days. But, I’m not really very good at sticking to that. Sometimes it is the clock, sometimes it is me. I guess I’m actually going to have to start charting it. Sigh… this is becoming a habit. I can live with that.

I’m a racist too!

Gee whiz… anyone see that cartoon in the New York Post? I’m not going to bother describing it much further here, but Google can help you out. Briefly, a couple of police officers are portrayed in a cartoon having shot a chimpanzee, and saying that they’ll have to find someone else to author the stimulus bill.

Sigh.

Today, one of my colleagues approached me with a problem that I created. For those of you who don’t know, which is pretty much everyone, I made a trivial mistake at work. I support an electronic Lab Notebook and part of my job is to create “notebooks” for scientists to record their data. Requests come in, and I create the notebooks.

So, these notebooks have identification, and it’s based on two things… a number that describes its place in a series, and an alphanumeric sequence that identifies the scientist. We have a group of scientists that all use the same alphanumeric ID sequence. I’m not that into the contents of the notebooks, but I assume we just farm out chemistry assignments of some sort to this group. They’re in another country, and their names are somewhat recognizable, and could probably identify their ethnicity.

Here at “the company” each scientist has their own unique alphanumeric sequence that identifies them. However, some of them have names that might identify them as a member of this same ethnic group that we farm work out to.

I created a notebook for a person with the wrong identifier. I used the identifier that is common among the scientists we farm work out to, and their name probably would place them in that group, but their location is here at “the company”.

Honestly, it was a mistake, but it looks pretty bad. The error is fixable, and I don’t foresee any negative consequences, but I feel pretty bad, especially after seeing something that has so many people upset about groups of people being portrayed as ape-like.

Seriously, what kind of editor doesn’t say, “dude… this might not go over well…”? Probably all of them, but they’ve gotta sell papers. I’m not much for censorship, but “censure-ship” probably should have kept this out of the spotlight. Somebody, somewhere, should just said to themselves, “um… no.”

People are never eager to read any sort of high-level satire into something like this. We’re looking at the most base, opportunistic interpretation, so that we can say something about it. Perhaps it is time to look at why we say what we say, as much as we study what is said.

Microsoft SharePoint

In a previous job, I was a Project Manager, and one of my assignments was to try to implement Microsoft SharePoint… more specifically, to convince people to use it for things that they already had non-Sharepoint methods for. Needless to say, I learned a lot, but the job was kind of pointless because I didn’t have any authority or resources.

Fast-forward to the future, and I’m working in at a huge organization that has implemented SharePoint, but calls it something else. I made the mistake of demonstrating my knowledge, and now I get lots of random questions, sometimes from random people, that have questions like, “can I do this?” and “can you do this?”.

Today, I got a “can I do this?” question, and for some reason, I wanted to post about it. I like answering these questions. The person who asks is always pleasant. The “can you do this?” questions are usually masks for “do this because I don’t want to learn how, but I want credit for it.” and those kind of suck… a lot.

More to the point, SharePoint is something that Microsoft got right, at least after several iterations. The harder barrier seems to be to convince people that they should put their files in a “website” rather than a spreadsheet on a network drive, and that they can actually drive more functionality by utilizing SharePoint than maintaining 50 spreadsheets.

WWJD? Yea, verily, I say unto you, “Stop using Excel and the network drives.” Too bad that’s not in the Bible, or even that most of the people in this organizations wouldn’t care if it were. They cling to those spreadsheets and network drives like they mean something. I guess in a sense, they do. Lots of people’s jobs are based entirely on managing spreadsheets and updating them on shared network drives, and they aren’t exactly looking to do their jobs differently. More likely, they see a mandate like that as a threat to their jobs.

No wonder the job of that mandate gets pushed down so far… Nobody’s interested in putting themselves out of work these days. I wonder what’s up with my colleague who asks me questions, and seems at least eager to learn, or ask me if I have any tips on how to do something she’s been asked for.

Oh well, on to my work.

Long Time No Blog.

Lots of people ask “how was your weekend?” on Monday… this past weekend was Valentine’s Day, so usually the conversations are a bit more interesting.

Mine was pretty cool. We went to a baptism of a family friends young daughter, and attended a Saturday Church service right afterward. A few specific things about the sermon struck a chord with me, but that’s not unusual when you get to hear the Word. My wife and I went out for Mexican with no wait, and I watched my 5-month-old niece for a few hours on Sunday.

I ran this morning (it is Monday) and I officially started the “two mile” mark. I talked with my Dad and told him I could run two miles… I had only run 1.5 at the time, but hey… it isn’t like he reads my blog, or was gonna go to the gym with me. But it was nice to hear him say I was doing better than him, since he’s always asking about how I am (physically, emotionally, etc.). I skipped out on any kind of healthy power breakfast, and forgot several items in a morning rush that involved my kids waking up and being slow-risers. I really, really, need to figure out what I’m going to eat if I keep this running crap up, because I almost died. Scarfing down a few slices of left-over whatever isn’t going to cut it. Like, protein, energy stuff.

I’m going to go ahead and invest in a heart-rate monitor and some gloves. It seems we’re serious enough about the gym activity that I should allocate something to get as much as I can out of it, and quit cheating/abusing my body just to say I went.

Twitter is my friend today… I think I tweeted, like 10 times, about random crap that wasn’t really important, but mostly just stuff that popped into my head while listening to my mp3 player. Speaking of which, I like my Zune. I hate using Windows, but I tell you what… that stuff mostly works. I’m so, so, so, tired of messing with Linux crap. I don’t have the time like I used to… and since time and money are on some sort of exchangeable medium scale, I’m definitely going to have to cut back on the “oh, I can get this to work for free…” and “my Freedom has value” rants. I got too much crap to do.

Apple, sorry, I’m not paying for another “workstation” and I’m not really a Laptop guy. Value for my money is still a priority, and your stuff is cool, but I got a family to feed, and my clothes ain’t fittin’ anymore. Maybe I’ll decide that used stuff is cool and go iPod on myself, because I hate inconsistent interfaces… but “good enough” is going to have to get it.

What the heck? I’m rambling… and I’m at work…and I have a doctor’s appointment before I get home. I guess I had better finish this work. Peace out. Mo’ better blogging is coming… I promise.

Saturday Morning Poop

I’ve certainly grossed anyone out who doesn’t care, but maybe that was the point… A brief visit to the gym on Saturday netted me a quick round of weights and a 1-mile run, broken into half by a diaper change while my son was at the gym daycare.

I had to stop in time to shower up and grab the kids before the Kids Klub closed at noon. Holly stayed home and recuperated from her back procedure. Taking the kids was supposed to let her relax a bit, but I sent her to do the impossible — install Word 97 on her Mom’s computer…

That ended up with me rolling through to find that her copy of Word came from the Home Essentials disk that came with her old computer. She needed to write a letter, and apparently OpenOffice.org Writer wasn’t familiar enough. That’s kind of funny, because I don’t even think Word 97 would be any more familiar to me than anything else at this point.

I spent a lot of time installing Windows 7 on some machines, and spare parts that I arranged into “frankenboxes”. good times… good times… for some reason, I find that rearranging of old parts that are too slow to do anything other than, well, get rearranged. soothing. Seriously, who would have guessed Windows 7 would install on a AMD Athlon XP 1600+ with 512 MB of RAM? Adding the Geforce FX5200 AGP card just to get Aero is kind of silly, but I did it.

I also got the two 250 GB drives installed in a spare, ugly box, with the 2.30 Celeron, and called it good. 120 days until the Windows Home Server Trial is over, but I’m thinking I’ll commit. Streaming movies from it to Xbox 360s is working very well.