The Kudzu Files

Sun, Linux, and....Walmart????

This would be high on the list of things that, had I ever even thought of it, I wouldn't have believed I'd ever see:

Sun will begin selling Linux-based PCs through Walmart

This is one of those bizarre things life sometimes puts together. How many typical Walmart shoppers would have "Sun" or "Linux" high on their list of identifiable brand names? How much of the Linux community would think of Walmart as a source of technology? If I visualize these groups with a Venn diagram, I don't see the overlapping segment as being very large.

Speaking of Venn diagrams, if you're bored and want to look through a bunch of Venn diagrams, most of which seem to be pretty inane, go to Venndiagram.com. Or you can play with them at a more advanced site that includes a Java applet here.

Here and there in the universe

The Boston Globe has a good article on the Hubble Space Telescope and the decision to abandon it.....

Paul Allen, meanwhile has donated $13.5 million to help SETI search for alien life....

Not that anybody seems to care, apparently...

Yet another former Bush administration official is about to go public with charges that Bush simply used 9/11 as an excuse to do what he wanted to do since he took office - invade Iraq and depose Saddam. The evidence is beginning to be difficult to ignore that, at the very least, Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld knew they were over-representing the situation regarding Iraq, 9/11, and WMDs. It's increasingly hard to believe that we weren't lied to at some level. And yet, Bush has developed a sort of political Teflon on this issue. Because the American people generically didn't like Saddam Hussein, the ends justified the means. It seems to be like the Bob Dylan song, "Steal a little and they send you to jail, steal a lot and they make you a king". Bill Clinton lied about a small thing and was impeached. George Bush may have deliberately lied to take us into a war that has cost, to date, 578 American deaths and 101 deaths among Coalition partners, and the reaction among the rank and file of the American public is to consider those who object unpatriotic.

Blog maintenance

If you're like me, you're seeing your blog get occasionally spammed by having comments added for old entries advertising Viagra and such. Rather than going back and editing each entry, if you use mysql, open your mysql manager (mine is phpadmin) and run this sql statement:

update mt_entry set entry_allow_comments = '2' where entry_created_on < 'yyyy-mm-dd';

where yyyy-mm-dd would be, for instance, '2004-02-29' if you wanted to close comments for all entries before February 29, 2004.

mt question

Is it possible with Moveable Type to confine potential commenters to just the authors defined to your weblog? Or is the only option to just turn comments off if you don't want comments from outside the author list?

The Great Grill Search Is Over

Found! At Walmart, this grill. Fit everything I was looking for. And even better - when they rang it up, it was only $30 - on clearance. (Brian, it was at the Clinton Walmart, they had 3 or 4 left). Grilled on it tonight, burgers and steaks. Excellent! Charcoal >>>>>> gas.

From the Mouths Of Babes

Correction is relating some of the give and take with his 3-year-old daughter about the teachings of the Church:

"Jesus and the Fishermen

My daughter approached my wife recently and said, "I'm going to tell you a story. It's called 'Jesus and the Fishermen.'"

"Oh, how wonderful!" my wife said. "How does that story go?"

"Well," my daughter began. "Jesus and the fishermen went out on the boat. Then they saw some sharks. Jesus said, 'Don't be afraid.' Then he took out his gun and shot the sharks. The end."

God Is Everywhere

After a timeout, my daughter, sniffling, said, "I'm rude and bad. God won't love me." I said, "Oh, no sweetie. God always loves you. God loves everyone. That's one of the things that makes God so wonderful. God will never, ever stop loving you. He never stops loving."

Skeptical, she looked up at me and said, "When does he sleep?""

What Book Am I?

You're Stranger in a Strange Land!

by Robert Heinlein

Most people look at you and think of you as a Martian, even though you were born on Earth. Silly Earthlings, er, people. Anyway, you've been telling people about free love and relaxing like it's some radical idea. Most of them want you to go back to the '60's (or Mars), but others are in your groove. Grok on!


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Grilling America

A charcoal grill, specifically. Our old one, unused mostly since we got a gas grill years ago, finally collapsed last year from rust and self-pity. The gas grill, meanwhile, had developed a leak in the gas line, and needed a new burner element, and other stuff, and it, too, departed this life. I thought about getting a new gas grill, but gas grills just don't impart the flavor of charcoal. A new charcoal grill was what we really wanted. Nothing fancy. Just your basic grill, except apparently I want something that is no longer considered standard fare on most charcoal grills - a height-adjustable cooking surface. I've checked Walmart, Target, Sears, Home Depot, even Fred's and Big Lots. Only Walmart has one with an adjustable cooking grill, and I'm not thrilled with the design of that unit. All the Weber grills have a fixed surface. What's up with that? Am I wrong on this height adjustment? I really don't think I am. Maybe it's that nobody uses charcoal any more, so the grill makers don't put any effort into it. I just don't see it as being unreasonable to want to be able to raise or lower the grilled item. I'm pretty sure, when the Democrats had the White House, you could get adjustable grills. Maybe the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy didn't have anything to do with Billary; maybe it was a creation of the gas grill industry, to do away with charcoal burners.

I want a new grill!!! Now!!! I am an American consumer with money to spend, and I want the Land Of Plenty to produce a grill that meets my requirements. And it doesn't have to run Windows or Linux or anything, just let me raise and lower the cooking surface!!

Give A Damn

You remember the song called "Give a Damn"
Some group sang last summer?
About people livin' with rats and things
The paper couldn't cover?
Well, it wasn't very popular
Nobody wanted to hear
And that's a shame 'cause a pretty tune
Was just what we needed that year

Well, the reason that you didn't
And the reason that you won't
Is you think you got a lot to lose
And the other fella don't
Oh you give a damn, well so does he
'You think the rest of us are just fakin'?
I mean what do you need that you got to give
Less than what you're takin'?
Where could you go?
Who could you see?
What could you do the best?
The book is in your left hand
Your right hand knows the address
Address your questions, address your money
Address your telephone number
But above all else, please address yourself
To give a damn this summer

"Give A Damn", Noel Paul Stookey, 1971 Songbirds Of Paradise Music

Just a song I've liked for a long, long tim.

Phone line blues

I installed DSL Lite at my mother's house last week, so she could use MLB Audio to listen to Cubs games over the internet. Since the installation, however, if she's on the phone and someone calls, instead of her call waiting activating, her phone line goes dead. A couple of calls to the phone company and remote line checks have not resolved anything. More to come...

Mr. President: Please get the facts before speaking

President Bush has begun bashing John Kerry for trying to ""gut the intelligence services". This comes from a measure Kerry introduced in 1995 that would have reduced the budget of the National Reconnaisance Office by $1.5 billion over 5 years. Bush also says that was so "deeply irresponsible" that it had no co-sponsors. (This would have amounted to a 1% cut in the NRO budget, BTW). The problem with Bush's attack is that Kerry's measure had no co-sponsors because it was superceded by a measure introduced by Republican Arlen Spector (and co-sponsored by Kerry and well-known Republican liberal Richard Shelby of Alabama) that eventually cut $3.8 billion from the NRO's budget. And why were they cutting the NRO budget? Because the NRO had squirreled away that much in unspent funds, and had hidden that fact from both the Department of Defense and the CIA. Kerry's measure cut less than half the amount the Republican Senate and House actually cut. But the facts don't stop the Bush campaign from spewing this forth.

You want sources?

MSNBC
The Tallahassee Democrat

Changing Meanings

It's not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to know.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.

I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

"Father and Son" is one of my favorite songs by Cat Stevens. 30+ years ago, though, I was on the opposite side of the song. I identified with the stanza that followed:

How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
It's always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

I didn't understand then - although I do now - what the last line in the previous stanza meant: For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not. And had I understood, it would have seemed like a depressing sentiment. But now, from the perspective of 30 years further along this path, it's all different. And I find myself trying to make my 13-year-old daughter understand the things that I wouldn't have understood at her age.

All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it.
If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them you know not me.

I guess you can call it the arrogance of youth. Or maybe it's the - paranoia? - of age, to see the things that can happen, and how narrowly disaster is sometimes averted. But I still can't really disagree with the meaning of those lines, not entirely. Even as teenagers, we have to make our own way through the situations of life. It's the lot of the young to fight the battle between the wisdom of their perception and the wisdom of their parents. And it's around this time that, as a parent, you begin to panic, just a little, knowing that this is the beginning of your child's journey to independence. It's the lot of the old to fight the battle between trying to protect your children, to control their world, and allowing them to begin to learn to stand on their own. I don't know which battle is harder.

More about the jobs report

February 2004 saw only 21,000 jobs created. Despite the brave face put on this, it isn't good news for the Bush Administration. And if you look behind the numbers, it's even worse. Goods-producing jobs, which includes things like mining, logging, and other natural resources production jobs, dropped by 25,000. Construction dropped by 21,000. Manufacturing jobs dropped by 3,000. Service-providing jobs (you can find the definition of these here.) helped offset this, by adding 46,000 jobs. That's things like wholesalers and transportation. Government added 21,000.

Think about that last: the economy added 21,000 jobs in February. If government had not added 21,000 jobs, job growth would have been zero.

Now I understand

Somehow I've suspected this all along...

Woo-hoo!

John Kerry wins Mississippi, and I helped!!

Another Light-Producing Strip Update

I experimented with Curad bandages, to see if their pull-apart wrappers would make light, and found to my disappointment that they exhibited none of the ability to do this. Maybe Curad doesn't use latex to seal their wrappers. Or maybe it's just not a fluorescent type of latex.

Spring!

OK, the calendar doesn't officially say it yet, but it's springtime in Mississippi. It all happened very quickly - last week was rainy, cold, nasty - I remarked to Janet that it was like a fall day - then the weekend came, the sun came out, temperatures jumped into the upper 60s and 70s, and the landsape responded. In my garden, the tulips have poked their heads up; the first early irises (flags) are beginning to bloom; the earliest daffodils are just past bloom. The Bradford pear in my front yard is in bloom, and the huge oak next door has that very faint green fringe that preceeds leaf growth. Wasps are everywhere (boo!).

But the real kickoff of spring here is the blooming of wild pears in the
woods. All along the highways and roads, you can look across fields and
see, in the edges (or sometimes in the depths) of the woods, the wild pears
blooming, splashes of white in a still-gray landscape. And you know the
redbuds and dogwoods won't be far behind. This, I tell myself, is why I
live in Mississippi.

Baffling Easter Candy

While in a store today at lunch, amidst the chocolate easter bunnies, malted milk bird's eggs, jelly beans, peanut butter eggs, Peeps of various forms, and other traditional Easter candy, I saw - a chocolate cross. Now, I'm a good church-going Southern boy, well-versed in all the Easter traditions, the religious kind and the egg-dyeing kind, and I participate enthusiastically in both areas. But there just seems to be something vaguely (or not so vaguely, I can't decide) sacreligious about eating a candy cross. Maybe it's a transmutation of the Communion thing; but mainly I think it's just in poor taste, although probably quite tasty. It was, after all, available in milk chocolate and white chocolate.

Update On The Light-Producing Breathe Right Strip Packaging!!

I emailed the makers of Breathe Right yesterday about this phenomenom, and got a reply this morning (that's amazing in and of itself!). Here's their response:

"Dear Mr. Boswell,
Thank you for your recent purchase of Breathe Right® nasal strips. We appreciate the time you took to contact us regarding the blue glow you saw when opening the nasal strip wrappers.

What you are seeing is a process similar to static electricity. Static electricity is the electric charge generated when there is friction between two materials or substances, like clothes tumbling in your dryer. Static electricity is what causes the sparks when you comb your hair or touch a metal object, like a doorknob, after walking across a carpet on a cold, dry day (especially during winter).

This is a common occurrence for latex based cold seal packaging. The adhesive joining the two sides of the wrapper together is actually a fine layer of latex. Energy is released in the form of static electricity when the nasal strip wrapper is pulled apart to expose the nasal strip. This presents no hazard to our typical consumer. "

Maybe they need to add a warning label:

"WARNING - DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OPEN THIS HERE BREATHE RIGHT STRIP IF YOU'RE IN A ROOM FILLED UP WITH GAS OR OTHER EXPLOSIVE STUFF!!!! ALTHOUGH UF YOU'RE IN A ROOM FILLED WITH GAS, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO BREATHE RIGHT BETTER ANYWAY???"

Fun with Breathe Right Strips!!

You know those Breathe Right strips? They come in a little paper sleeve. If you turn out all the lights, and pull that sleeve apart, as the sleeve separates, there is a flash of light at the moment the two sides are pulled apart! I thought I was imagining this last night, so I pressed the sleeve back together and tried it again. Light!! This morning, I made my wife get under the covers with me (yes, it took some convincing) and had her watch while I pulled the sleeve apart again. Light!!

OK, this is wrong

Catholic Charities in California has been told by the California Supreme Court that they must offer prescription birth control through their employee health plan. I'm not Catholic; I'm not opposed to birth control. In fact, I think the Catholic Church is very wrong on this issue. But opposition to birth control is deeply imbedded in Catholic teaching. No one should have any doubt about where they stand. And if you choose to work for a part of the Catholic Church, you should expect to have your working conditions and benefits to be influenced by what the Catholic Church believes.

If not Kerry-Edwards, Then Who?

The idea of a Kerry-Edwards ticket, a hot idea just a couple of weeks ago, is beginning to show all the vital signs of the Howard Dean campaign after New Hampshire. And John Edward's late-blooming aggressiveness isn't going to help. So if Edwards isn't fated to be the VP nominee, then who is? There's talk that Kerry will select a governor, that having two senators on the ticket isn't a good idea. That may be a valid point - the only double senator ticket that won was Kennedy-Johnson in 1960. Conventional wisdom would seem to point to a governor as a running mate. But who? There aren't that many Democratic governors with much in the way of credentials. Thomas Vilsack of Iowa gets mentioned, I guess mainly because he was the first Democratis governor of Iowa in 30 years when elected in 1998, and got re-elected in 2002. He's a Midwesterner, so the theory of geographic balance would apply. But he's not exactly a known name nationally. Howard Dean is, of course, a former governor, but I can't see the Democrats running a ticket consisting of a Massachusetts senator and a Vermont ex-governor. Mike Easley of North Carolina would fit geographically, but he doesn't have any national presence at all. I think if it's going to be a governor, it would likely be Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

He's got the resume - US Representative, Secretary of Energy, Ambassador to the UN, and now Governor of New Mexico. It would work (in electoral theory) on several levels: Richardson is Hispanic; it could conceivably give the Democrats a chance at being competitve in the Southwest and West; being a governor of a state physically far-removed from Washington DC could let him play as an outsider. But there are some potential problems, too. Secretary of Energy is an office where you rarely make anybody ecstatic, but you can make people angry. Being UN Ambassador means you may have voted for something that could be twisted by your opponent. And holding both of these positions in the Clinton Administration would certainly not be overlooked by the Republicans. Beyond those reasons, Richardson has reportedly said he isn't interested in being the vice-presidential nominee.

So, what if Kerry doesn't pick a governor? Bob Graham of Florida seems to always be mentioned, but there's that Senate thing again, plus a health issue. Still, Graham would play on several levels. He could look in the US House of Representatives. Richard Gephardt would certainly get some consideration, but Gephardt has never shown any ability to garner support outside Missouri. It's difficult to see Gephardt on the ticket. More likely, I think, would be Gephardt as Secretary of Labor in a Kerry Administration. Dennis Kucinich can, I think, be safely ignored in this context. But there's not many Democrat representatives with any visibility, which speaks to a problem the Democrats have on another level. David Obey, I suppose, is a somewhat recognizable name, but I've never heard his name mentioned in vice-presidential speculation.

Outside Washington, there's always Wesley Clark, but there's some concern about him playing the role of the #2 Guy. I've heard Max Cleland's name tossed out, but not seriously. Bob Kerrey is still around, but Kerry-Kerrey would confuse people, and Bob Kerrey seemed to be a little - flaky. Not bad flaky, but flaky nonetheless. Plus, his one run for the Presidency didn't show much focus.

So, I come back to two names: John Edwards and Bill Richardson. While I have been saying how much sense John Edwards made as a VP candidate, I'm inclining towards Richardson at this point. He makes more sense. If, that is, he's not serious about not wanting the job.