I finally got my car inspected Saturday, after going a month or two beyond the expiration date of my last inspection. As I flipped on my lights to drive home last night, I noticed my right headlight had burned out. Turns out it lasted just long enough to make it through the inspection! Thanks, Mr. Bulb!

A quick trip to the auto parts store and I was good as new.

I normally don’t let my car get that far beyond the inspection date, but the new inspection stickers are poorly designed. Rather than have big, readable numbers like the old ones, the new stickers have the due date punched into the sticker. You’ve got to have a slide rule and a magnifying glass to determine when its due.

The Great State of North Carolina was quick to send me a NastyGram about being tardy with my emissions inspection. Fair enough, but if they’re going to go to the trouble, why not send me a reminder letter instead? Like maybe 45 days before the inspection expires? That way I can put away my slide rule and keep my car’s inspection up to date.

Oh, the day I’m put in charge of the state gumint…

I found out about Cepstral from being on the Asterisk mailing list. Cepstral offers fantastic speech synthesis, for dirt-cheap prices.

Cepstral offers Linux and Windows clients, and a handful of voices to choose from. Each channel costs only $30, whereas comparable speech synthesis software costs $600 per channel (or more).

They’ve got some online demos to try out, and you can buy and download the product directly from their website. If you’ve got some projects that could use a good voice, check ’em out!

I spent a fun weekend chasing a cackling 18-month-old around the house. It was a good reminder of just what is important in life.

I’d love to find a way to get paid for doing nothing but chasing my daughter around. What kind of job could compete with that?

I found SISuite today, an open-source alternative to Norton Ghost. Like Ghost, SISuite can copy or replace an operating system image over the network.

Haven’t tried it yet but I’m happy to see such open-source apps exist. It may help me whip those dozens of computers I’ve got in storage into something useful.

In case (like Saddam) you were under a rock or something, the U.S. Army captured Saddam this morning. The old tyrant’s time had run out. Now that he’s all cleaned up, I suppose its only a matter of time until he spills the beans about those weapons of mass destruction. Because, you know, that’s what this was all about, remember?

Now that we’ve got him, what next? Does he become cellmates in Miami with Manuel Noriega, the villian of George H.W. Bush? Does he get his own cage at Guantanamo? Does he begin a new career making infomercials? What does one do with a former national leader? Sell him on Ebay?

Let’s hope this is enough to convince the Iraqi citizens to stop shooting at us.
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This can’t be good. Earth’s magnetic field has weakened 10% in the past 150 years. It could possibly be the beginning of a pole-reversal, for which the Earth is long overdue.

A weakened magnetic field could put a hurting on the ozone layer. Let’s hope that this is just an anomaly, for our descendents’ sake.

Yesterday, two Triangle-area men were arrested for spamming. Virginia authorities filed charges against the men, who are expected to be extradited to Loudoun County. Two men who once lived in million-dollar homes now face the possibility of 20 years in much smaller accomodations: prison cells.

You read that right: 20 years in prison. Damn.

Now I hate spam as much as the next person. Perhaps more than the next person, because as a system administrator I’ve fought it at the server-level. Yet, I don’t think spamming warrants the death penalty. And twenty years is a bit harsh, too. I’m more afraid of the government passing laws against things it doesn’t understand.

It drives me crazy that politicians don’t understand that laws will not spam. Uh, the Internet is GLOBAL, dumbasses! Your laws AREN’T (though one miserable failure is trying to change that, but I digress). Spam legislation is not the answer. Only technical solutions will defeat spam.

I’m wondering what got left by the wayside while Virginia officals were chasing down spammers. How many murderers slipped away? How many guns were smuggled through the state? How many meth labs escaped destruction?

Passing laws against a form of communication like email raises my First Amendment hackles, spam or no spam. There’s just no way to draw the line against the accepted and unaccepted, which threatens all speech. Our leaders have shown absolutely no clue when it comes to technology, making these laws much more dangerous.

Let’s save prison for violent offenders. Let’s use our limited law enforcement resources to go after the real threats to our society, not some stupid mass marketers.

My delete key can take care of the spam.

The Brothers Cup
Red Hot Chili Peppers
From the album “Freaky Styley”
—
Give it up to this planet full of strife
We’re the brothers cup cuttin’ sharp as a knife
With the pop of a snap and the flip of a flap
The cups went up like a natural fact
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