A few days ago I gave a ride to a hitchhiker. It was 40 degrees and raining, and he looked OK. And had an umbrella. He was headed to New London from Groton, so I was able to at least get him over the river.
Curiously, thinking of the "serial killer" angle, I never took a good look at him. Round-faced, darkish skin was the impression I got; but I couldn't tell you if he was black or Hispanic, or white and tanned, for that matter. I guess I should re-read my "Hardy Boys Detective Handbook" on how to be observant.
Sue goes ballistic if I say I picked up a hitcher, but at some point being paranoid has to defer to being human.
Current events, nit-picks, cats, and other important things.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Lethal Injection
I just don't get the problem here. I am opposed to the death penalty altogether; I don't deny there are people whom we are better off without, but because there are major problems with identifying such people, and the risk so high of wrongly executing somebody, better to not execute anyone at all.
But that's not the issue here. Setting aside the death penalty issue, it should be readily agreed that the method employed should be humane. That is the ostensible reason for the electric chair, the gas chamber, and lethal injection itself. Given that there is reasonable doubt that the chemical "cocktail" used in the injection is pain-free, what is the problem with changing it? Isn't it a no-brainer?
Ah. There's the problem.
But that's not the issue here. Setting aside the death penalty issue, it should be readily agreed that the method employed should be humane. That is the ostensible reason for the electric chair, the gas chamber, and lethal injection itself. Given that there is reasonable doubt that the chemical "cocktail" used in the injection is pain-free, what is the problem with changing it? Isn't it a no-brainer?
Ah. There's the problem.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Looking Back
No, not looking back on the year past; looking way back.
In 2004 there was a reunion of my first sub, USS Kamehameha (SSBN 642), across the river in New London. I dug out some of my old photos and put them in an album, identifying the people I knew and supplying stickies and a pen so anyone could add notes. It went over well, and I promised to scan the photos and burn them to CD to distribute.
Three years later, I finally got around to it. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, instead of burning to CD I posted them to a Picasa web album (thanks, Google!). Here they are.
I have been corresponding with some old shipmates, and we've been trying to figure out just when that first patrol, in which we of the Gold crew brought the ship from the US to Scotland, took place. We have narrowed it down to 1983, since we did our Poseidon missile test launch (DASO) from Florida before we went over. We watched a Space Shuttle launch while in Florida, and, matching a list of DASO launches with Shuttle launches, that has to be Challenger, STS-6, April 4, 1983.
Fun getting back in touch with old shipmates.
In 2004 there was a reunion of my first sub, USS Kamehameha (SSBN 642), across the river in New London. I dug out some of my old photos and put them in an album, identifying the people I knew and supplying stickies and a pen so anyone could add notes. It went over well, and I promised to scan the photos and burn them to CD to distribute.
Three years later, I finally got around to it. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, instead of burning to CD I posted them to a Picasa web album (thanks, Google!). Here they are.
I have been corresponding with some old shipmates, and we've been trying to figure out just when that first patrol, in which we of the Gold crew brought the ship from the US to Scotland, took place. We have narrowed it down to 1983, since we did our Poseidon missile test launch (DASO) from Florida before we went over. We watched a Space Shuttle launch while in Florida, and, matching a list of DASO launches with Shuttle launches, that has to be Challenger, STS-6, April 4, 1983.
Fun getting back in touch with old shipmates.
So I have a Mac
As promised long ago, my Mac post.
My PC at work died; an old, slow machine, to which I had added (out-of-pocket) a 256K DIMM to bring it to a whopping 512K RAM. Not really missed, to say the least. I was able to salvage the contents of the hard drive, so no problem there. My supervisor, your typical Anything But Microsoft geek, preferred that I get a Mac. So he ordered me a Mac Mini with 1GB Ram and an 80GB HD. Sure, fine.
All I really use the computer for, at work, is a web browser, email, and a terminal window; and since I had just shifted all my email to Gmail (a browser-based email), even that was reduced. Even so, while not an MS-lover, I had at least beaten XP into submission; I had it set up the way I liked, I had bought (again, out-of-pocket) an SSH client (SecureCRT) that I preferred, and various test apps and utilities. Now I had to do the same for the Mac.
First, the SSH client: with SecureCRT I can open a separate window to each of 5-6 servers, each in a different color scheme: this allows me to easily keep track of which server I'm on. The latest version I bought added a tabbed interface, so now I can have one window, with a tab for each session. Not possible with the Mac; but since OS X is Unix-based, the ssh client is built in; and I found a free utility, JellyfiSSH, that "bookmarks" terminal sessions, so I can use that to open multiple color-coded sessions, at least. The new OS version, Leopard, seems to offer a tabbed terminal built-in. Hunh.
The browser is not an issue, really; I use Opera, and there is a Mac version available; but gmail doesn't work as well with the Mac version. I found a browser that uses the Mozilla Gecko engine, called Camino, and it does the gmail for me, as well as interfaces with some firewall devices we use that don't like Opera (on the PC, I used Internet Explorer for those). I also have to use Safari, which I don't care for, just to access my Sirius Satellite Radio streaming broadcast: the plug-in only works on it. So I'm running three separate browsers.
I found a free text editor, TextWrangler, that I use instead of the standard TextEdit. I just like it better. And I had to find a wrap-the-cursor around the screen utility, because I use a trackball and that sort of thing makes sense for trackballs (and touchpads). And so on. A utility that locks the screen for when I am away from my desk, without me having to log out, or hibernate, or anything: just lock the screen and input devices: thank you.
Printing: we have a Canon multipurpose device. It uses a parallel cable. The Mac is USB-only. Got a USB-to-parallel cable, and it don't work: the cable does, but there are no drivers for this thing. I am using my sup's personal USB printer, and we're working on getting a new one from the company.
The worst part of the whole deal is Windows: there are one or two apps, particularly our billing/service-order management app, that are Windows-only. With the Mac I got Parallels, an app that lets me load Windows XP (any OS, actually) within a virtual machine running on the Mac (sort of like Apple's own BootCamp, without the reboot). It takes 512K of my 1GB RAM (any less and Windows would suck wind), and I can forget about doing anything else while it loads. When I am careful, I have no problems running Windows apps within it; setting up the networking to connect to the office network over a VPN was tricky, but it is working okay now. Point being it would all be unnecessary if I had just been given a PC in the first place.
All that said, the Mac isn't too bad. Nice wide-screen monitor, the CPU is zippy, and I can work on it with no problems. It just brings its own set of frustrations with it, after I had gotten used to the ones that come with XP. In addition, the keyboard (using the Apple key and so on) is different than what I am using at home: the key strokes, anyway, since I am using the same type of keyboard, not a Mac keyboard (and my own Logitech MarbleMouse trackball). And the close button for the window being in the upper left rather than the upper right. It's the shifting back and forth, work to home, that generates the (mild) confusion.
And thus endeth my Mac post.
My PC at work died; an old, slow machine, to which I had added (out-of-pocket) a 256K DIMM to bring it to a whopping 512K RAM. Not really missed, to say the least. I was able to salvage the contents of the hard drive, so no problem there. My supervisor, your typical Anything But Microsoft geek, preferred that I get a Mac. So he ordered me a Mac Mini with 1GB Ram and an 80GB HD. Sure, fine.
All I really use the computer for, at work, is a web browser, email, and a terminal window; and since I had just shifted all my email to Gmail (a browser-based email), even that was reduced. Even so, while not an MS-lover, I had at least beaten XP into submission; I had it set up the way I liked, I had bought (again, out-of-pocket) an SSH client (SecureCRT) that I preferred, and various test apps and utilities. Now I had to do the same for the Mac.
First, the SSH client: with SecureCRT I can open a separate window to each of 5-6 servers, each in a different color scheme: this allows me to easily keep track of which server I'm on. The latest version I bought added a tabbed interface, so now I can have one window, with a tab for each session. Not possible with the Mac; but since OS X is Unix-based, the ssh client is built in; and I found a free utility, JellyfiSSH, that "bookmarks" terminal sessions, so I can use that to open multiple color-coded sessions, at least. The new OS version, Leopard, seems to offer a tabbed terminal built-in. Hunh.
The browser is not an issue, really; I use Opera, and there is a Mac version available; but gmail doesn't work as well with the Mac version. I found a browser that uses the Mozilla Gecko engine, called Camino, and it does the gmail for me, as well as interfaces with some firewall devices we use that don't like Opera (on the PC, I used Internet Explorer for those). I also have to use Safari, which I don't care for, just to access my Sirius Satellite Radio streaming broadcast: the plug-in only works on it. So I'm running three separate browsers.
I found a free text editor, TextWrangler, that I use instead of the standard TextEdit. I just like it better. And I had to find a wrap-the-cursor around the screen utility, because I use a trackball and that sort of thing makes sense for trackballs (and touchpads). And so on. A utility that locks the screen for when I am away from my desk, without me having to log out, or hibernate, or anything: just lock the screen and input devices: thank you.
Printing: we have a Canon multipurpose device. It uses a parallel cable. The Mac is USB-only. Got a USB-to-parallel cable, and it don't work: the cable does, but there are no drivers for this thing. I am using my sup's personal USB printer, and we're working on getting a new one from the company.
The worst part of the whole deal is Windows: there are one or two apps, particularly our billing/service-order management app, that are Windows-only. With the Mac I got Parallels, an app that lets me load Windows XP (any OS, actually) within a virtual machine running on the Mac (sort of like Apple's own BootCamp, without the reboot). It takes 512K of my 1GB RAM (any less and Windows would suck wind), and I can forget about doing anything else while it loads. When I am careful, I have no problems running Windows apps within it; setting up the networking to connect to the office network over a VPN was tricky, but it is working okay now. Point being it would all be unnecessary if I had just been given a PC in the first place.
All that said, the Mac isn't too bad. Nice wide-screen monitor, the CPU is zippy, and I can work on it with no problems. It just brings its own set of frustrations with it, after I had gotten used to the ones that come with XP. In addition, the keyboard (using the Apple key and so on) is different than what I am using at home: the key strokes, anyway, since I am using the same type of keyboard, not a Mac keyboard (and my own Logitech MarbleMouse trackball). And the close button for the window being in the upper left rather than the upper right. It's the shifting back and forth, work to home, that generates the (mild) confusion.
And thus endeth my Mac post.
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