Lorum ipsum spam?

When one receives a spam email, one expects some sort of offer such as “MAKE MONEY FAST,” or “MALE ENHANCEMENT” or the like. This morning I got a particular spam email which included only the boilerplate lorem ipsum text:

From: “Deal Amazon” info@gocdidong.info
Subject: Deal of the Day – Offers – Deals & Promotions
To: “markt” markt at rules the universe dot qrz
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2012 00:06:43 -0700

Please enter your message here

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Are spammers really so lazy now that they can’t even be bothered to add their own text to their spam?

New Belgium lands in Asheville

Yesterday the rumors that craft brewer New Belgium was considering building a brewery in Asheville came true when the company and politicians announced the decision. I don’t live in Asheville but I do consider myself a beer connoisseur. I’m thrilled that New Belgium joins Sierra Nevada in making North Carolina a beer destination.

I remember finding out in the mid-90s about the Pop The Cap effort to change the state law, allowing higher-alcohol-content beers in North Carolina. Many of the Bible-thumping representatives didn’t want the change to happen. Then-Governor Hunt, a teetotaler, was also reluctant to make the change. The bill went nowhere.

Then out of nowhere (and after another questionable start), the Pop The Cap bill passed in 2005, bringing better beer to the state. Before long I was enjoying high quality, high-alcohol beer here at home.

Since 2005 the sky hasn’t fallen. Instead we have a whole new industry moving into western North Carolina, providing not only much-needed jobs but also a promising future. It’s wonderful to see how far we’ve come!

Call to duty

I’ve been tapped for jury duty and will thus report Monday morning to the Wake County courthouse. It’s not my first jury duty at Wake County: the last time I was summoned was perhaps 1995. Of course, I showed up for jury duty in federal court recently but wasn’t selected to serve. Prior to that I was asked to serve on the day my son Travis was born. I was excused for that one, needless to say!

Serving on a jury is disruptive, inconvenient, and sometimes costly. I could make a good case for dismissal, being that I’ll be lone parent around for the kids for most of this week. Still, I feel that would be weaseling out. If I expect our police officers to keep us safe, then I owe it to them, the defendants, and society as a whole to accept the call to weigh guilt or innocence. I take my duties as a citizen very seriously.

I don’t expect I’ll be blogging from the building but I will take mental notes of the experience and share them here afterward.


Update: I found out later that my jury number’s high enough that I won’t be needed after all.

Tony Shin taken to task

It seems that Earle Holland, Ohio State University’s assistant vice president for research communications, also got one of the mysterious Tony Shin Infographics, only Holland didn’t simply post it to his blog unquestioned. Instead, Holland took the time to thoroughly review the infographic, pointing out its numerous errors. [PDF]

Holland writes on his blog:

“Infographics,” first popularized by the coming of the USAToday newspaper, are a quick and easy way of conveying information. Sadly, however, they’re equally useful in simplifying data to the point of misrepresentation. Science as a subject is all too often seen by the public as too complicated to understand. It’s a normal tendency for people to reach out for, and maintain, simpler notions that require less work.
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Apple plans nation’s biggest private fuel cell energy project at N.C. data center

I’ve been meaning to blog about this all weekend. The N&O’s John Murawski has uncovered a very interesting aspect to the datacenter Apple is building in North Carolina: the country’s largest private fuel cell project.

North Carolina will be home to the nation’s largest private fuel cell energy project, a nonpolluting, silent power plant that will generate electricity from hydrogen.

Apple (yes, that Apple) filed its plans with the N.C. Utilities Commission on Thursday to build the 4.8-megawatt project in Maiden, about 40 miles northwest of Charlotte. That’s where Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple has built a data center to support the company’s iCloud online data storage system and its SIRI voice-recognition software.

The fuel cell project, the nation’s largest such project not built by an electric utility company, will be developed this year. It will be located on the same data complex that will host a planned 20-megawatt solar farm – the biggest ever proposed in this state.

But it’s the fuel cell project that’s generating buzz, eclipsing anything ever dreamed of in California, the nation’s epicenter for fuel cell projects.

“That’s a huge vote of confidence in fuel cells,” said James Warner, policy director of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association in Washington.

I’ve written before about how large companies build their datacenters in North Carolina to take advantage of the cheap electricity: electricity generated from dirty coal. Yet, fuel cells are (still) incredibly expensive and are among the cleanest energy sources around.

Why would Apple build a fuel cell plant in our state? It’s ironic, really, since all of Apple’s products are manufactured in China – powered by coal-smoke-belching power plants.

Does this mean that my dream of one day having a dishwasher-sized fuel cell power my home is moving closer to reality? What’s really going on here?

via Apple plans nation’s biggest private fuel cell energy project at N.C. data center – Business – NewsObserver.com.

Festival au Desert

If the ancient Mali city of Tumbuktu wasn’t already remote and exotic enough, now it’s in the hands of Tuareg rebels after a coup took place in Mali March 21st.

For over a decade, Mali has been the home of an annual African music concert known as Festival in the Desert. I’ve long wanted to travel to this concert and see the Sahara Desert and the city of Timbuktu but the security situation in the country brings this into question.

It’s not that I was ready to jet off to West Africa any time soon but I still hope one day to ride a camel to hear some of the most beautiful music on earth.

Making FreeNX always suspend

I’m running my Rivendell radio automation software on a virtual host, connecting to it using FreeNX. It works very well for the most part, but there’s been one little piece which could cause disaster: the FreeNX server’s habit of asking me if I want to suspend or terminate my session. Because my music will stop if the session terminates, I don’t ever want that option. I want it to always suspend.

I spent a few minutes tonight tracking down the best way to do this. It turns out the /usr/bin/nxdialog script is being called. By patching this script, I can force the suspend option every time. Problem solved!

Below is the code that does the magic:

— nxdialog.orig 2011-10-24 11:45:14.000000000 -0400
+++ nxdialog-mine 2012-03-30 21:41:33.000000000 -0400
@@ -415,6 +415,11 @@
exit 0
}

+always_suspend()
+{
+ return 3
+}
+
#
# main case statement
#
@@ -427,7 +432,7 @@
${dialog_interface}_yesno
;;
yesnosuspend)
– ${dialog_interface}_yesnosuspend
+ always_suspend
;;
panic)
${dialog_interface}_panic

You can also download the raw patch here.

Police in the neighborhood

Hallie and Travis pose with Officer J.A. Kryskowiak, July 2010

Police are in my neighborhood and I couldn’t be happier about it. You see, they’re not leaving to go on another call, they live in my neighborhood. I know of at least two officers who’ve chosen to call my neighborhood home.

Why is this so great? Because as I learned on my ridealong a few years ago, no one knows neighborhoods like cops do. Cops like to live in places that have don’t have crime. Like everyone else, cops like to “leave it at the office” when they’re off duty. They want time when they can relax and just be themselves. And, any criminals thinking of committing a crime are going to think twice when they see a police car ont he street.

When an officer I know asked if there were any available homes in my neighborhood, I knew my neighborhood was in good shape.

Red Hat’s OpenSource.Com gets infographic-ed

Looks like Red Hat’s OpenSource.com has been infographic-ed. An infographic from “Education News” was posted today with the following comment:

We often talk about the higher education bubble and it being on the verge of bursting but what does that really look like? How does a “bubble” form and what causes it to burst? The following two part infographic does a great job explaining just that by showing where higher education has been, where we are, and without change where we will be. To me, it further highlights why open source technology and open source principles have such an important role in education reform from lowering costs to demonstrating a better way for educating our youth in the 21st century and beyond.

I’m betting the ubiquitous Tony Shin emailed OpenSource.com and personally asked them to post it.

Scratch another Honda Odyssey

Remember four years ago when the transmission in my 2002 Honda Odyssey disintegrated? Remember when Honda jerked us around and I said I’d never buy another Honda again?

I should’ve stuck with that.

On my way to work this morning, the transmission died in our 2003 Honda Odyssey. You know, the one that Leith Honda assured us wasn’t susceptible to the low coolant flow problem like our prior Odyssey. I was heading west on Wade Avenue at Ridge Road when the transmission began slipping. I was fortunate enough to hobble the car over to Kelly’s office nearby, rather than get stuck out on I-40 which is what could’ve very easily happened.
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