BunkBlog

OK, once more into the LJ Styles breach…

I’ve revamped all four styles on my Livejournal. The two biggest changes are, of course, “LastN” and “Friends” pages, since they’re seen most. Following a model I discovered on the community, those two pages have been rebuilt using DIV tags instead of nesting TABLEs. The reason? Speed. Now, when you load my pages, you’ll not have to wait for the entire meta-table of entries to load before you can read the top ones. The Friends page also loads progressively like that. You’ll know you’ve hit the end when you see the “skiplinks” block (Previous 15 entries etc.).

I’m assuming this will look funky on Netscape 4.x, but it should be viewable on it at least. The boxes will be out of whack, but you really should upgrade to NS 6.2 anyway. Or Opera.

Cheers.

I guess with the advent of Naked Parts and their ilk, we don’t really need to do another Nekkid XXXmas this year, but I will miss the fun from last year, checking the post every hour or so to see who else got up the nerve…

To my friends in Asia and Australia, Merry Christmas! Those of us in the States just have to wait till tomorrow. 🙂

Some random thoughts for you budding web designers:

• Validate your web sites against HTML standards, so every browser can see your site.
• Don’t waste your time on a “splash screen” to start the site. Look at the big sites (Yahoo, CNN, etc) – Nobody visits them for their intro screen. Most people will either blow your site off because of it or bookmark your real index page.
• Your site is not best viewed in any particular browser. Don’t tell visitors what to use, some don’t have a choice.
• Consider heading over to Bobby to check your site for accessibility issues. It’s a requirement for .gov sites, but a good idea for anyone. You don’t want to block some of your visitors, do you?
• Don’t use the following:
  1. Poorly contrasting colors
  2. Tiny fonts
  3. Fixed size fonts. Those 8-pixel high things look like dots on a high-res monitor.
  4. Flash as your only means of navigation. Ever hear of Lynx?

Just my pet peeves of the day. I’ve been surfing some “personal” sites today, made by folks who think they’re Picasso with a mouse or something. Ick. Not everyone has DSL…
current_music: Nickelback – Good Times Gone
current_mood: tired

WELL I had another conversation with someone about Microsoft V Linux
I would love to know why I get into some many conversations about it, it much be because I am willing to stand up for companies that many people put down Namely Microsoft.
I wish people would just realize that companies are not out there to give you everything you want on a silver plater.

Um, let’s see how many English errors we can count, and then subtract that from the level of seriousness with which to take the opinions expressed therein.

Again I say – If you want someone to take your opinions seriously, spellcheck, proofread and then re-think the entire posting. After you’ve thought about it and run it through “ispell” or some other such tool, then go ahead and post. Your views might still be stupid, but more people will listen to them anyway.
current_music: The Vandals – Christmas Time for my Penis

I’ve got two online instructors this semester, one in English and one in Economics.

The economics professor is actually a high school teacher who picks up the online course in his spare time. He barely interacts with the class at all, and his midterm included vital terms not defined in this edition of the textbook – way to review the test and book. He signs emails with “Professor Xxxxxxxxx.” The only assignments in this class have been ungraded discussions.

My English professor is in the forums constantly, emails whenever something of import occurs, and is basically a good instructor, considering the limitations of the medium. She also signs her emails with her first name. She has had 4 graded assignments so far.

Check out my wishlist at Amazon, or CDnow. Still time to get presents before Christmas.

OK, seriously, how about voting for my shirt designs? Or, maybe even visit my store and buy a shirt or teddy bear or some such? Those teddy bears are really cute with Origami designs on the front. 🙂

[organization] will be enforcing strong passwords to ensure that [network] logon passwords are compliant with current password policy. [network] password policy is based on recommended settings provided by the National Security Administration’s NT Security Technical Implementation Guide.

IMPACT TO CUSTOMERS: Each new password will be evaluated according to current [network] standards for robust passwords as itemized below. A new password that does not conform to these standards will be rejected and followed by a dialog box to explain why the password does not comply.
PASSWORD CRITERIA:
Passwords MUST:
1. Equal exactly 7 characters (no more, no less)
etc.

So, um, a password of a fixed length (rather than the much more common “at least 8 characters”) is strong security? Yeah, ok. Thank you for making it easier for crackers to break in. No reason to check for random length passwords, because they know they’ll all be the same length.

From an email received yesterday:

Hello Andy,
…yada yada yada…

At 04:25 PM 12/10/2001 -0500, you wrote:
Below is your form’s result. It was submitted by
Gary Bunker andy@andysocial.com on Mon Dec 10 16:25:23 2001.

Um, is my name not obviously Gary Bunker, based on the form results block? Why would I give my name as Gary and wish to be addressed as Andy? Morons.

I swear, I wonder about the logic used in naming government agencies. When I worked for the National Security Agency, the officers would bring virus-laden Powerpoint presentations into the secure area. Security. Yep.

Now, I work for the Defense Information Systems Agency, and nobody seems to understand computers at all. One of my 11 bosses (I have surpassed Peter in Office Space) doesn’t even know how to use Powerpoint, depending on an underling to make her slides for her. Apparently “Click here to insert text” is too complex a task and that help option is a complete mystery. Today, I get an email from one of my bosses, and he has sent me a URL to a password-protected website (the email was actually the “welcome” message forwarded through three guys), and wanted me to peruse it. Naturally, the site has no “click here to request access” option, and the boss was surprised at this. Way to check things before you forward them. Oh, and can I get more forwarded stuff with 800 headers attached please?

I’ve been assigned to one project that involves a secure network that I’d never heard of until I started working here. I’m not a network engineer, and about half of the terms used in describing the system’s problem did I even understand. But, apparently, since I “know computers” I was the obvious choice. Talking to that project’s bigger boss, he said I must have been selected for my common sense. Yeah, ok. So, after several weeks, I determine that the network is dead, irrevocably. The choices are a) put in new fiber or b) find a different path, such as copper plus fiber-copper connections at each end. Bigger boss doesn’t like these options, and wants to test the current line (which has been tested at least 6 times) and “get some answers” from the MIS guy in charge of the other end of the network. The answer is, of course, “It’s broken” but that is unacceptable and we must change reality now!

Information Systems Agency. pah!

This is hilarious. Cafepress runs a forum on EZBoard (questionable decision at best but whatever). This forum is “moderated” so the posts have to be individually approved by a CP employee. There was a 2-week period in October when no messages were approved, and the moderator eventually came up and apologized for not moderating the “previous week” (inaccurate) and they were just soooo busy they couldn’t handle the forum moderation as well as their new promos. I realize that CP can’t be a very large company, but they might be able to afford a couple IT folks, right? Now, there hasn’t been a single new post or comment approved on that board since the 19th of November. My opinion: unmoderated forums. You can always go in and nuke individual posts or users if they cross the line, but now nobody is reading, even though plenty of folks are talking. Bizarre, I tell you.
current_mood: bored

Johnny was a schoolboy
When he heard his first Beatles song
Love Me Do, I think it was
And from then it didn’t take him long
Got himself a guitar
Used to play every night
Now he’s in a rock ‘n’ roll outfit
And everything’s alright
current_music: duh?

I updated my Friends style, using one I discovered on the styles discussion group, modified slightly to suit me. I think it looks cooler than the Punquin-based one I was using.

I have too much time on my hands some days…

I have run into a relatively obscure limitation on my current webhost, and I would like to garner advice on other reasonably-priced hosts.

I’m using Virtualave, and they’ve been much better than my previous host, Freeservers. However, they don’t allow outbound port 110 traffic (POP servers). This means I can’t use the MailMan webmail host on my site. This is, obviously, not a big hairy deal most of the time, but it would be nice to have it available when I’m out of town and can’t clean out my mailbox by dumping everything to my mail program.

So, I’m paying $99/year for 75 megs of server space (which I’m using 27 megs of) and 1 gigabyte of transfer bandwidth per month (and I’ve used 548 megabytes in the past 30 days). I’d like to stick to a host that is somewhere in the same neighborhood, but hopefully allows telnet access as well as outbound port 110. Ampira and Cedant look good, but has anyone any other options?

Thanks and remember to vote often. 🙂

Heard this gem uttered from one of my coworkers to another:

They’ve got quick reactionary forces there.

Reactionary? Hmmm, I wonder how they handle pressure…

So, looking at stats for the first couple days of December:

• XXXmas is the #1 search term.
• “A t-shirt that slut on it” is a search item, so maybe someone will buy the SGT Slut shirt after all.
• Another seasonal search hit is “Santa’s Naked Helpers” which undoubtedly went to the XXXmas Archive from 2000’s Lianna Nekkid LJ Christmas.
• What did you expect to get when you used the search term “web” on Google, you twit?

OK, if you haven’t already gone to my wishlists, at least go here and think long and hard about how much you love me.

Sorry, got caught up in the whole “I’m a whore for attention” thing so prevalent on LJ this time of year. Maybe I should promise to flash my chest for presents? More likely be given stuff to keep my clothes on…
current_music: Cracker – One Fine Day
current_mood: amused

I’m trying to figure out something. Is the Flexistar from this site the same as the Hexyflex or Octyflex that I had 10 years ago? I can’t seem to find those older toys anywhere, so I’m assuming that the Flexistar line (which has a curiously similar name) is the successor. But, that Quix looks like the Octyflex…

Yep, I’m workin’ hard!
current_music: eror

Had to go to the staff meeting thingie this morning. I hate buzzwords. For instance, not only do these folks “talk to” a subject rather than about it, they take things “offline” for later discussion. OK, um, you’re not online now, bozo! What the hell do you think these words mean?

Other items I can’t stand yet hear all too often:

• collocated – pronounced “co-locate” The word is pronounced as one item, not two things slammed together. And, why not just say “located with” or “located near” instead? Does “co-located” make you feel good?
• Staff the document – Do you mean distribute for comments? Staff is a noun. It is not a verb. It will never be a verb. Deal with it.
• He authored that – You mean he wrote it? He’s not a damned novelist, he’s a tech writer.
• It’s in the wickets – Here’s a statement with near-negative information content. Where is it? “The Wickets” is not a neighborhood or region, so it must be “in the review process” or something, right? If you’re not sure exactly who has it, at least add some information to the exchange!
• Leverage – stop it stop it stop it!
• Out of the loop – Were you some kind of networking appliance?
• Utilize – Just say “use” eh?

And if I were a pointless internet survey, I’d be Buzzword Bingo.
current_music: Adema – Giving In
current_mood: amused

Shamelessly stolen from Infonaut on Slashdot.

The piece betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how foreign policy is shaped. First, the world we live in is not black and white. More often than not, we’re dealing with international problems that have no clean, clear answer.

For example, it’s easy to dismiss American Cold War fears of Castro’s Cuba. But then, he did ask for and receive assistance from the Soviets in the form of missiles, didn’t he?

The Vietnam War was by almost anyone’s estimation, a wasteful, stupid blunder of immense proportions. But let us not forget that a large part of the reason the US got involved in the first place was that the Soviets were making advances of one sort or another on almost every continent. They had what the US perceived to be a client state in North Vietnam.

The Soviet Union espoused a form of government that viewed the destruction of capitalism and the bourgeous democracies as a primary goal.

US foreign policy was dictated by the overarching threat of communism. Sure, now it seems a joke – it collapsed from the inside, from its own weight. But just as sabre-rattling from the West scared the Soviets, the US was scared by Soviet threats as well.

Yes, there are other factors at work. Yes, the Soviet Union is now dead. Yes, mistakes are still being made in US foreign policy.

But the September 11th attacks didn’t happen because Bin Laden was pissed off about the Vietnam War, or about the Bay of Pigs, or our meddling with Iran. Bin Laden was pissed off because we supported Saudi Arabia, a country whose rulers he sees as morally corrupt.

Our reasons for supporting the House of Saud over the years primarily stemmed from our desire to maintain stability in the Middle East. During the Cold War, the Soviets were trying as hard as possible to exert influence there, in hopes that by choking off the supply of oil to the West, Europe and the United States would become vulnerable.

We utilized balance of power politics, the same thing that Metternich used in Europe to avoid a major war for years. It’s not policy driven by right and wrong. It’s policy driven by expediency. It’s not perfect. Hell, it’s barely adequate much of the time.

But I’d much rather trust foreign policy to people who are thinking of overall balances and stability and peace, than people who would rather persue blindly optimistic policy based on idealism.

The track record of idealistic US foreign policy is pretty dismal. Woodrow Wilson got us involved in WWI too late, because he was loathe to go to war. Then his idealism failed at the Treaty of Versailles, because he went along with France’s desire to humiliate and punish Germany.

Jimmy Carter was so infatuated with the idea of working with the Soviets for detente, that when they surprised him by invading Afghanistan, he launched a massive arms buildup (yes, Reagan didn’t start it – Carter did) and sent the CIA in to support the mujahedin.

So while it’s easy to throw rocks, and it’s easy to look at history in retrospect, dealing with the day-to-daymatters of international relations is a mite trickier.

The UN won’t save you from terrorists. Germany won’t work to protect American jobs by keeping the price of oil stable. Japan isn’t going to keep India and Pakistan from nuking each other. It’s a big, complicated, dangerous world out there.

Finally, the argument that Americans are being misled by the government about US foreign policy is a load of crap. American foreign policy aims are well known to anyone who takes the time to read about them.

Foreign policy is a complex topic, and you can’t get a grip on it by watching E! Entertainment News. Less than half the eligible population of the US votes. News shows that stick to news get lower ratings than those that pander to the lowest common denominator.

Americans largely don’t want to think about international affairs. That is a far more serious problem for the US in the long run than any specific policy blunders.