BunkBlog

1. Where were you when you heard that Ronald Reagan died?

Work, in the break room, watching CNN(Cable News Network) Headline News.

2. Where were you on September 11, 2001?

Getting ready for work. Read about airplanes and something big on my LJ friends list. For some reason, I thought I’d be able to get onbase to work that day.

3. Where were you when you heard that Princess Diana died?

Lying in an empty barracks room in Monterey, the weekend before my refresher training in Korean.

4. Do you remember where you were when you heard Kurt Cobain had died?

Seattle, strangely enough. I believe that was the weekend I arrived from Korea on assignment to Fort Lewis.

5. Take one for The Gipper: What’s your favorite flavor of jelly bean?

Watermelon. It’s red on the inside and green on the outside, man.

6. Where were you when Magic Johnson announced he was retiring from the NBA(National Basketball League) due to AIDS(Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome)?

I was in Korea, or so says the calendar. I don’t remember.

7. Where were you when Reagan was shot?

Probably in school. I was 10, what do you want from me?

8. Where were you when the Challenger exploded?

High school. It was . . . memorable and shocking.

9. Where were you when the OJ verdict was announced?

Again, according to the calendar, I was in Korea. I’m sure it was a big deal at the time, but the most memorable part of the OJ murder thing was while I was at BNCOC(Basic Noncommisioned Officer Course) in Arizona, watching the lowspeed chase on TV.

10. Where were you when the Berlin Wall fell?

At DLI(Defense Language Institute), learning Korean to defend the free world from the commies and keep fighting the good fight of the Cold War. Shit.

Just caught a piece of the Fox News commentary on Kerry’s selection of a running mate. They were questioning his experience, since he has only been in the Senate since 1998, never holding an elected office prior to that. Gee, let’s see now…How many elected offices did the current President hold prior to becoming the highest-ranking person in the country? Oh, just the one? And how many years did he serve there? Five? Hmmm… I can see how the Fox folks would question the ability of a U.S. Senator with six years of experience in national politics but think a governor with five years of local politics is acceptable. Sure.

Oh, and for those of you outside Texas, the governorship here is largely ceremonial, except for all those death penalties they get to sign (152 in five years for Governor Bush).

It’s interesting to contrast our Independence Day with other countries’ similar observances. The one I’m most familiar with, Samil, is the Korean independence commemoration day. This is a rather long stretch from our own, though.

It is true that we “declared independence” on this day, but we took several years until we fought the British to a surrender. The Koreans declared independence from Japan on March 1st, 1919. They failed. The people were brutally subjugated and kept in near-slavery until 1945, when a foreign power (that would be us) gave them their independence.

I think we are unusual in not being given independence, but fighting for it tooth and nail. It took 5 years to win our independence from Great Britain. It took 26 years for the Koreans to be *given* independence from Japan.

Australia may seem like another former British Colony to us, but some in Australia say they are not yet fully independent, as their constitution stipulates that their Head of State (a ceremonial position, to be sure) is the British monarch.

What other countries have won independence, rather than having it handed to them as a gift?

Does anyone know a lot of Access/SQL tricks? I manage the databases at work, but don’t have any particular training beyond hitting F1. Well, the installation I’m stuck with is not one I’d prefer, but it is what it is.

I have to maintain two databases with identical structures but different data. How can I make a query that will provide me a unified view of the data, in a third “front-end” database? I know it must be possible, but I can’t figure it out. The SQL JOIN command sounded like a good avenue of investigation, but doesn’t look right for this. I need to be able to create a fake append, more or less, without modifying the data in the tables themselves.

An example: I’ve got two tables with lesson data (when it was assigned, completed, etc.) but I want to output one report at the end of the month on what was accomplished by everyone. I know, I should just leave everything in one database instead of two. I don’t have a choice. I know, I should use something more powerful than MS Access. I don’t have a choice.

Any help would be appreciated.

*Update* I convinced them to go with a sane configuration, and we’ll be going to one database with an optional field.

In the article Are the Browser Wars Back? – How Mozilla’s Firefox trumps Internet Explorer, Paul Boutin trashes IE and espouses the glory that is Firefox. What makes this most interesting is that he’s doing it on MSN. You just know he felt a little trepidation writing this one up.

Disney is counterattacking Michael Moore, releasing a movie which is about one degree removed from being a campaign film for the incumbent.

bq. Telephone callers to its advance ticket sales office may order a free bible study guide designed to go with the film.

A patriotic movie with a bible study guide? Does our devotion to the country really depend on one religion? I guess those Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, and others just don’t get to be as patriotic as the Christians.

I am a member of 1 clique of size 6

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I have heard a little about Project Looking Glass by Sun Microsystems lately, as they recently opened the source code for free use and update by all. Isn’t it pretty?

What I don’t understand is why anyone would care. I see it is pretty. But how does a 3d metaphor make better use of the desktop space? If you use Windows or KDE or CDE or Gnome or OSX, you minimize windows to a taskbar of some kind and you can bring them back with a single click. The programs continue to run and take up next-to-no space. With Looking Glass, you’d spin the window off to the side, where it would continue to take up a small but not negligible part of the main screen. Meanwhile, the content on the window is so obscured by the perspective shift that it is unusable, so why not just minimize the darned thing?

I must be somewhat dense, as I can’t figure out why a window which can be turned on edge is better than the metaphor of the flat desktop we use now, where windows are behind each other or minimized. What am I missing here?

This article (or more accurately, book review) raises some interesting points about the Democratic party leaving the traditional economic stance they were built on, and ending up with no platform at all beyond, “We’re not Republicans.”

When you remove economics from political platforms, all you’re left with is culture and morality. Certainly the once-married teetotaling born again Prez beats out that other guy pretty handily, if that is the measure of the man. I sure hope that’s not the only way people determine their new leader, but history shows otherwise.

Gotta love this new helper object which installs itself into Internet Explorer. If you think your connection is secure because it has HTTPS in the address and the little lock is clicked shut in the status bar, you may be wrong. You could be sending your bank account information to a scriptbot that uses the “helper object” structure that Microsoft so *helpfully* added to IE.

Reminder to all, IE is not the only browser.

“Firefox”:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
“Opera”:http://www.opera.com

Just a thought.

Supreme Court Affirms Detainees’ Right to Use Courts

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that the campaign against terrorism notwithstanding, “a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.”

What a concept. So, just because we are at war against a concept, we can’t just go arresting people willy-nilly, or looking at their library lending history, or poking cameras in their faces, or telling them they can’t fly because they’re on some secret list they aren’t allowed to challenge? Wow. How revolutionary.

According to this article in the Washington Post, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team is recommending that web surfers stop using Microsoft browsers entirely, at least until the latest virii and worms have been clobbered.

So there, all you Mozilla-doubters!

Predict your love and sex life

It’s pretty funny. Really.

I added a pair of Size Matters stores to my Cafepress pantheon. Not that I actually sell anything, but it amuses me that such items exist. Don’t forget my other designs:
What Would Cthulhu Do?
I’m not wearing any pants (inspired by )
Army Girl
Sassy Bitch
Ninja
Eat Me
Get Odd
Mess With Texas

I’ve recently been accosted by some certification companies, and it got me to thinking of the future. IT security is a growth industry, with (according to ISC2) has 12 jobs for each qualified applicant. Combine that with a TS clearance with SBI, it seems that CISSP certification might be a good idea. Just thinking of positioning myself for future opportunities, not planning to move again anytime soon (egad, not again!).

So, anyone know the inside scoop on security jobs? Is the work shitty, are the hours crazy, is it a good deal or not? I’m looking at an average salary over *twice* what I make now, and that’s something I have a hard time ignoring. Taking care of my family is important, and it seems like the job might be interesting, if or when I get there someday.

How is it that it took 3 months before I heard about Reverend Moon’s Coronation at the Capitol? Moon claims to be the Messiah, back for the Second Coming. Yeah, right. But, we’ve got Senators and Congresscritters helping him with crown and scepter. WTF?

Here’s an example of the dissembling and absurd lengths our elected representatives will go to in order to suck up to Moon while claiming that they don’t even know who he is.

bq. CONGRESSMAN CURT WELDON (R-PA) – When first contacted by investigative reporter John Gorenfeld, Weldon’s press secretary stated: “I’m telling you, he didn’t go.” When Gorenfeld sent her some links showing Weldon was listed as a primary sponsor of the event, she stated that Weldon “planned to attend this awards show, but couldn’t make it due to his schedule.” When Gorenfeld next produced a photo of Weldon standing with a group of Moon associates at the event, she said that Weldon’s participation was apparently “limited to his attendance.” Soon after, Gorenfeld found a photo of Weldon actually giving the welcoming “congratulatory remarks” from the stage — as a photo was displayed of himself giving a pin to Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy. Gorenfeld, who has extensively covered Moon’s involvement in US politics, said that pin presented last year by Weldon to Khadafy was apparently one of Moon’s peace pins. Okay, back to Weldon’s staff for version #4 of Weldon’s explanation. Weldon’s chief of staff told Christian Challenge that Weldon “was at the banquet for ‘5 or 10 minutes’ to speak about his recent trip to Libya; Weldon neither saw Moon at the event, nor witnessed the coronation, nor heard his Messianic speech … [and] ‘in no way does Congressman Weldon share that belief.'” That he did not know of Moon’s involvement strains credibility (see yesterday’s story) as he and Davis also co-hosted Moon’s Capitol Hill event in 2003 and they praised him by name in the Congressional Record. Weldon later added — not that he has any remaining credibility on this issue — that he did not give Khadafy a Moonie peace pin but, rather, pinned a US flag to the anti-American dictator’s lapel.

You just have to love the understatement of the cop in this story.

bq. We consider these deaths to be very suspicious

Yeah, suspicious. They’re bound together with nylon cord and tied to *sandbags.* That’s suspicious. Wow. He must have been tops in his class at State the Obvious U.

Anyone a member of Orkut that wants to invite me in? I have a pathological need to find out what it’s all about. 🙂

Sixapart is once again Announcing Pricing & Licensing Changes to Movable Type. Go figure. I don’t see a huge difference, myself. With a paid license, you no longer have any limits on number of weblogs created, but there are author limits. With the free version, you’re still limited to *one* author, which seems silly for many people.

I only have one person authoring anything on my site, but that depends on your definition of site. I host “Lysa”:http://lysa.andysocial.com as well, so does she count as another author and weblog? Or, would she count as a separate installation? It’s kind of irrelevent to me now, since I’ve moved to the Open Source “WordPress”:http://www.wordpress.org for my weblog.

My biggest heartache with the pricing scheme they have at Sixapart is this: one piece of software costs different amounts for different people. It’s the same bundle of code, yet if it’s used by one person it’s free, by two people it’s 70 bucks, and by six people it’s a hundred bucks. Why?

Again I look at other software and think, “huh?” If I buy Adobe Photoshop, it costs the same for me to use it or for me and five other people to use it, on a single installation. It’s the number of installations that matter, not the number of users.