On the heels of what was Tropical Storm (and briefly Hurricane) Humberto, Tropical Storm Ingrid is now churning towards North Carolina. My guess is that Ingrid will turn north before getting to us, but I Am Not A Meterologist (IANAM). I sure wouldn’t complain if Ingrid stopped by just long enough to dump a bunch more rain on us, though.
Buckets of rain!
After months of no significant rain we finally got a drenching today, and boy is it wonderful! By my estimate we’ve gotten at least 1.5 inches so far with more to come tonight.
Remember that big honking tank I purchased a few weeks ago? When I heard the rain was on the way, I slipped out to Lowes this morning and bought a flexible downspout pipe. I then spent 15 minutes attaching it to just one downspout, thinking I’d attach the other downspouts later.
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cat /dev/funkywhiteboys
This may be the funniest geek humor I’ve ever seen. I was building the OSX plugin for the XMMS audio player just now when I got this ‘error’:
checking pthread.h usability… yes
…checking for GTK – version >= 1.2.0… yes
checking for xmms-config… /opt/local/bin/xmms-config
checking for gawk… (cached) awk
checking for XMMS – version >= 1.2.0… yeschecking for white_boys in -lFunkyMusic.so… no
Warning: You may not have enough white boys to play your funky music.
Please obtain additional funky white boys.configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile…
Kudos to Bob Dean! We’ll see if it will work in spite of these limited resources. 🙂
[Update] Must not have enough funky white boys: the plugin segfaults. 🙁
They Might Be In Derm
They Might Be Giants announced this week that they’ll be playing Durham’s Carolina Theatre Friday, October 26th.
The last show I saw was at Raleigh’s now-defunct Ritz Theater. Must have been close to a decade ago. Anyhow, its worth a drive to Derm to see TMBG.
On a related note, I’m kicking myself for not seeing Elvis Costello last night. PTA meeting took priority. I was glad to see that Paul provided the setlist. Thanks, Paul!
Opposition mounts to Butner pathogen lab
Greg has alerted me to opposition forming against the BNAF, the Butner pathogen lab I wrote about earlier this summer. I can’t find any other links to the opposition, though. Bummer.
According to Greg’s post, the DHS will hold a public meeting at 7 PM on Tuesday, September 18th at South Granville High School. Wouldn’t it be great to see biohazard suits in the audience?
It all makes me wonder … is Ebola drought-resistant?
Removing old Drupal redirects today
I’m removing the old Drupal redirects today, the ones that make old, old, old links work. I’ve been using WordPress now for months so I figure its time.
If you don’t see new entries after September 17th, chances are you need to update your feed address. Get with the program, you lazy slugs!
[Update:] For the benefit of the extremely lazy, I’ll provide my new feed link here.
Google sponsors Moon X-Prize
This is interesting. Google kicked in money to fund a $30 million award to the first private group to land a robot rover on the Moon. The rover must be equipped with high-definition cameras, must roam 500m, and must do this before the year 2012. Google is teaming up with the Ansari foundation, sponsors of the X-Prize, to manage the award, officially called the Google Lunar X Prize.
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Then they fight you, then you win
Hmm. Must be politics day here at MT.Net. Someone I don’t know sent me this trash about Barack Obama. Guess who I just decided will get my vote?
Update 17 Feb 2016: Looks like the original link has been taken down, but the Internet Archive saved a copy. Here’s the text to the post, too, in case IA loses it:
The most radical and despicable of the Right WingNuts have a peculiar habit of trying to rub their propaganda in the faces of their Democratic acquaintances and relatives. My family is no exception to this participular form of attempted intimidation and brainwashing.
When you are ready, and particularly when supporters of Barack Obama have prepared themselves for a particularly infuriating experience, go ahead and read the “Extended Post Text.”
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Democracy in U.S. not a U.S. priority
Forget about Pakistan, we don’t even have democracy here. A peaceful citizen was refused entry to Tuesday’s Petreaus testimony, gang-tackled, and had his leg broken, all without apparent provocation. Watch how Rev. Lennox Yearwood is refused entry for unexplained reasons, then hauled to the floor, tackled, and arrested. See if you can spot the alleged “assault of a police officer” because I sure can’t.
I’ve asked Speaker Pelosi’s office for an explanation but I’m not holding my breath.
That’s democracy for you, folks. Outrageous.
(h/t Cristobal)
Phone phisher pileup
The “Tuscany Industries” group (rumored to be Great Atlantic Warranty) isn’t the only one who is dialing for dollars. For the past few nights, we’ve received calls with CallerID info of 206-415-9148. A look at the ever useful 800notes.com shows that calls claiming to be from this number are designed strictly to leave messages on answering machines. Visitors to 800notes.com note that if the call is answered by anything other than an answering machine, the caller hangs up.
The message tells the recipient (or rather the recipient’s answering machine) that they’ve won two free airline tickets and to call 800-514-1363 with a reference number.
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