Online Training Tools

I wanted to take a quick second to plug two online training tools you might find useful if you're working out, swimming, or just a huge tool.



The first is UberHuge, a lovely little tool written by Feld Alum Hunter Daley. Uberhuge is designed to log and manage your workouts and any dietary supplements you might be taking. It's like a personal trainer, only it doesn't call and cancel on you 7 days in a row. (Bitter much Alpha John?) It's a neat tool, and the author is fun to drink with.



The second is Dynoswim, a database of swim workouts that you can draw from or add to. While I've never gotten drunk with Dean and Josh, they were very interested to find out where I found out about Dynoswim (the message boards on the US Masters Swimming website), and were quick to make changes based on some feedback I gave them. Very cool guys, very nice site.

Sony Ericsson announces my new mobile phone

Finally! I've been waiting for months for someone to announce a new cell phone that doesn't make me yawn.

The fine folks at Sony Ericsson are releasing new versions of the K800 and K790 with a 3.2 megapixel camera on it (including a feature called BestPic where is snaps nine pics at once -- you keep the best) and a built in connector for Blogger.

!!!

This phone makes my boy parts go up and down. Totally boner-ific.

Your Kaitain Update

For those of you itching for an update...

: : cricket : : : : cricket : :

• I was able to get Apache up and running last night and all the virtual hosts happy as little clams. The httpd.conf never was so clean.


• I migrated the Perl Modules required to make my mod_perl sites run over from the busted drives last night. My sites are running outside of the chroot jails, but need to be fixed to run inside of them. Considering how I program, that's going to take a minute.


• DNS for eisenschmidt.com has propogated, and I'm beginning the slow task of making .COM the primary source for everything, with .NET and .ORG as squatters.


• Since it generates so many questions, and hasn't made sense since 1999 when I registered .ORG, I may drop 'jweisen' as my handle and change it to something more fitting. Stay turned for that unexciting bit of madness.
  

To Do:

• Get Wireless back up and running in the house


• Move Kaitain back into the rack under UPS power


• Backup scripts (backups at all) and get cron jobs back in place

I may need to take time off of work for this, it's like a full time job.

Unfortunately for us, George Michael makes news

: : sigh : :

When Google News said "George looked 'out of it'", I was hoping that the Washington Times had finally caught on to the fakeness of our Cyborg-Muppet President.

Sadly, the news is much gayer than that.

George Michael, of "men's room entrapment" fame (because neither his time in Wham! nor his rendition of "Last Christmas" merit celebrity status), was arrested this weekend after being found slumped over in the driver's seat of his Range Rover. It's possible all the pot and GHB he was found with had something to do with that, but I'm more concerned about them finding porn and sex toys in his trunk:

Police allegedly found a collection of pornographic material such as sex toys and masks in the boot of the singer's Range Rover, the Sun reported.

Michael has previously admitted to smoking cannabis to overcome depression and as a source of inspiration for his music.

Brother, in case you haven't heard your catalog, I don't think there is enough pot in South America to lift your spirits...that dog shit career of yours is un-fuckwithable.

Gluing Humpty-Kaitain Back Together Again

Thanks to George Email and DNS are back up and running. I just corrected some WHOIS errors that were causing eisenschmidt.com not to work correctly and updating some contact information on a few of the domains (which I thought I fixed nine months ago).

Today I'm working to get all the websites back up, which is turning into a bigger deal than it should (most likely because 100% of my coffee is still in my cup and not in my tummy). Now that I've got a patched raidframe kernel and I can mount my old drives, the "big deal" is no longer getting the data, it's getting all the sloppy programming I've done to behave in an Apache chroot.

And Kirsten just walked in and gave me the pony I've always wanted. How random is that?

There's a bug in my raidframe, dear Liza dear Liza

Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:38:18 -0500
From: John Eisenschmidt
To: Pedro Martelletto
Subject: Re: raid(4) users, please test this

Pedro,

FYI, I was having ongoing panics running raidframe on 3.2. Rebooting after the panic would work for a while until this past Friday when rebooting no longer fixed the problem. I built a 3.8 machine with raidframe and attached the drives from my 3.2 box and it still caused them to panic. This patch did however fix the problem, so I would suggest moving this over into -STABLE for 3.9.

Thanks,
John

----- Pedro Martelletto wrote: -----
> It'd be greatly appreciated if raid(4) users could test the diff below.
> If anyone needs more information as to what it does, please don't
> hesitate in contacting me privately.
>
> -p.
>
> Index: rf_openbsdkintf.c
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvs/src/sys/dev/raidframe/rf_openbsdkintf.c,v
> retrieving revision 1.27
> diff -u -r1.27 rf_openbsdkintf.c
> --- rf_openbsdkintf.c 28 Nov 2004 02:47:14 -0000 1.27
> +++ rf_openbsdkintf.c 14 Sep 2005 16:52:01 -0000
> @@ -2596,18 +2596,15 @@
> void
> rf_close_component(RF_Raid_t *raidPtr, struct vnode *vp, int auto_configured)
> {
> - struct proc *p;
> -
> - if ((p = raidPtr->engine_thread) == NULL)
> - p = curproc;
> + struct proc *p = curproc;
>
> if (vp != NULL) {
> if (auto_configured == 1) {
> - VOP_CLOSE(vp, FREAD | FWRITE, NOCRED, p);
> + /* component was opened by rf_find_raid_components() */
> + VOP_CLOSE(vp, FREAD | FWRITE, NOCRED, NULL);
> vrele(vp);
> } else {
> - if (VOP_ISLOCKED(vp))
> - VOP_UNLOCK(vp, 0, p);
> + /* component was opened by raidlookup() */
> (void) vn_close(vp, FREAD | FWRITE, p->p_ucred, p);
> }
> } else {

References: | [1] | [2] |

Big, big, big ups to George for helping me out with this. He still needs to pick out his iPod.

AN OPEN APOLOGY TO CHEMESTRY

Dear Chemestry,

I'm sorry I had to drop you my Junior Year of high school. I wasn't sad to see you go, I couldn't even tell the difference between hot glass and cold glass.

It is my ignorance that I apologize for, as there is no excuse for not understanding the sciece of chocolate chip cookies.

I am so ashamed of myself.

Think happy thoughts

Imagine if you were standing on the corner of 14th Street and Constitution Avenue in DC, surrounded by bustling tourists with the Washington Monument in the corner of your eye. While you're standing and waiting for the traffic light to change so you can cross the street, your kid pulls away from you and runs into the street only to be struck by an idiot cab driver.

I feel like I just watched my child get hit by a fuck-face cabby.



kernel panic

FELD: If only your former employer was as sketchy as mine

Russ, one of the guys who used to work for me, dug up Sparshott / Feld & Check Smith appeal in honor of the lockdown going on at FELD. For the next two weeks, the building is on lockdown while one of the many lawsuits is being tried.

I'll let the decision speak for itself, and interject along the way:

Shan Sparshott and Charles Smith were both employees of Feld Entertainment, Inc., the operator of the Ringling Bros. circus. Smith was the Chief Financial Officer, a board member, and a minority shareholder; his responsibilities included management of firm security. Sparshott worked in the travel office. In 1993 the two began a romantic relationship; early in 1994 Shan Sparshott moved out of the home that she and her daughter Morgan had shared with her husband Tracy Sparshott and into a house for which Smith paid the rent.

Let me also add that Chuck Smith was the architect of Disney on Ice. Without Smith, it's quite likely that Feld would have never gotten into bed with the Mouse and subsequently paid Disney $250 million dollars in royalties since 1981.

In 1994 Sparshott found two recording devices under her
bed and connected to the phone jack. The discovery did not
itself tell her that it was Smith who was wiretapping her, but
was clearly evidence of a violation by someone. When Spar-
shott told Smith about this equipment, Smith suggested that
it was Tracy Sparshott, her ex-husband. Soon after that, she
enlisted Smith's help in wiretapping her ex-husband, her
daughter, and her nanny, and he provided equipment strik-
ingly similar to the recording devices she had found under the
bed. In 1995, picking up a suit of Smith's at the cleaner's,
she found in the suit an audiotape of her business conversa-
tions from work. According to Sparshott's own testimony,
Smith admitted making this recording but promised not to do
it again. This find gave her actual notice that Smith had been wiretapping her, as well as added reason to suspect his
denial of the earlier recording. Later in 1995 or 1996,
Sparshott found a recording device attached to the home
office phone. Smith admitted owning the recording device
but claimed he was simply taping his own business calls.
Altogether, the evidence of wiretapping gave Sparshott good
reason to be skeptical of Smith's explanations and promises.

[...]

In addition, Sparshott had substantial evidence that Smith
was spying on her in other ways. Starting after she had first
moved into a house separate from her husband, Sparshott
several times noticed that someone was following her, and in
January 1997 confirmed that the shadow had been hired by
Smith. She confronted Smith and demanded that he get
counseling. In early 1996, Sparshott discovered five video
cameras hidden inside her house. Smith responded to her
inquiries by saying that the cameras were part of a security
mechanism to protect their house from burglary; but he had
told her nothing about the video cameras earlier, even though
it was she and her daughter who lived in the house. For a
reasonable person these events would surely undermine
Smith's explanations, denials and promise to quit wiretapping
her.

Finally, in 1996, Sparshott's ex-husband, a police detective,
warned her that Smith was tapping her home and office lines.
He even had her sign an affidavit acknowledging that he had
told her of Smith's wiretapping. Though entitled to discount
her ex-husband's testimony to some extent (the marital
break-up was not a harmonious one, and active custody
disputes lingered), the fact that Mr. Sparshott was a decorat-
ed police detective and that he went so far as to have her
make an affidavit should have given her notice that she
needed to have this situation investigated. Her own actions
indicate that she at least took him somewhat seriously. As a
result of Mr. Sparshott's statement, she began leaving her
office to use a payphone to call him.

If you continue reading, you will see the $500,000 judgement in favor of Sparshott was overturned on this appeal. The chaos that Chuck Smith caused, however, continues in the Pottker Lawsuit:

On a gloomy Veterans Day in 1998, Janice Pottker answered an unexpected knock on the door of her home in Potomac, Md., a woodsy, upscale suburb of Washington. Standing there was a man she'd never seen before, a private detective who introduced himself as Tim Tieff. He told Pottker, a freelance writer married to a senior government official, that he had a discreet message from Charles F. Smith, a former top executive with Feld Entertainment, owner of the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circuses, Disney Shows on Ice, and other subsidiaries that make it the largest live entertainment company in the world.

[...]

Over lunch, Smith recounted a campaign of surveillance and dirty tricks Feld had unleashed on her in the wake of her 1990 magazine piece in the now-defunct Regardie's magazine. Feld, he said, had hired people to manipulate her whole life over the past eight years. Feld had spent a lot of money on it, he said. He may have even tried to destroy her marriage. In fact, Pottker would eventually learn of a massive dirty tricks operation, involving former CIA officials and operatives, that would target Ringling enemies such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups, not just Pottker.

For proof, he told her to go to federal court in Alexandria, Va., and look at a suit he had filed against Ken Feld. In that suit, she would find an affidavit from a man named Clair George with attachments. Those, he told her, are all about you.

And then Smith left.

The next day, Jan Pottker and her husband went to the Colonial-style courthouse in Alexandria and asked for Smith vs. Feld, civil action case number 98-357-A. They opened the files and found the affidavit Smith had described.

"My name is Clair E. George," it began. "I was the deputy director for operations (DDO) of the Central Intelligence Agency from July 1984 through December 1987 during which time I was responsible for the CIA's covert operations worldwide." In 1990, when Pottker's article was published, George declared, he was "a paid consultant to Feld Entertainment and its affiliates on international issues."

The theme of "old men playing spy vs. spy" continues in the PETA trial:

4:34 p.m. August 31, 2005 | McLEAN, Va. – A judge sanctioned six lawyers representing the owners of the Ringling Bros. circus and ordered them to pay $51,000 in fines to the animal-rights group PETA for contempt of court and other violations.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sued Vienna, Va.-based Feld Entertainment, which produces the circus, more than four years ago, claiming Feld ran an extensive corporate espionage campaign against it. PETA alleged Feld paid millions of dollars to a former top CIA operative to help run its spy operation.

Don't get me wrong, I fucking hate PETA, but I have seen the invoices and cancelled checks on this one. It's one thing to defend your company against your enemies, but don't expect me to write a cheer:

Ready? Ok
FELD owns the circus, they make it so great
But the crunchy folks at PETA got nothing but hate
So some creepy men who worked at FELD, after they cursed
Made up a fake campaign they dubbed "Putting People First"
Through Richlin Consultants, they funneled some cash
To hire plants to work at PETA that busted their ass
To steal the PETA mailing list cause they were so mean
And use that list to feed the Circus propaganda machine

Incidentally, that machine still runs in full force to this day.

I remember reading that Salon article when I started working there, and thinking that it had to be 10% fact and 90% artistic license. After working there for three years, the things I've read like that Salon article are anything but far fetched. I'm probably lucky that I just got screwed out of money, and wasn't a target to have my life ruined (I'm not nearly important enough).

I will say it again, I miss that place like AIDS.

One Ingredient in Google's "Secret Sauce"

Google's marketing likes to tout their proprietary search algorithms as their "secret sauce", with over 150 ingredients. Har har har.

Apparently, one of those ingredients is the word "embattled":

What the fuck has happened to my country?

I don't even recognize these United States anymore, I should have pushed harder to get a UK Work Visa in 2004 and hidden overseas for a few years.

There is an article in today's NY Time$ about a secret program to reclassify previously classified documents:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 — In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

[...]

Among the 50 withdrawn documents that Mr. Aid found in his own files is a 1948 memorandum on a C.I.A. scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain and drop propaganda leaflets. It was reclassified in 2001 even though it had been published by the State Department in 1996.

Another historian, William Burr, found a dozen documents he had copied years ago whose reclassification he considers "silly," including a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program.

[...]

"I think it's driven by the individual agencies, which have bureaucratic sensitivities to protect," said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, editor of the online weekly Secrecy News. "But it was clearly encouraged by the administration's overall embrace of secrecy."

National Archives officials said the program had revoked access to 9,500 documents, more than 8,000 of them since President Bush took office. About 30 reviewers — employees and contractors of the intelligence and defense agencies — are at work each weekday at the archives complex in College Park, Md., the officials said.

Many of these documents are being posted on The National Security Archive hosted by George Washington University.

Now that's what I'm talking about

Pony? Indeed.

More inane discussion about my dating season

Chatting with Kristin, an old coworker of mine:

Kristin: so are you doing anything tomorrow night?
theAlphaJohn: i dont think so -- why what's going on?
Kristin: I think a bunch of people are meeting at Sully's in Chantilly
Kristin: I don't know if you ever knew Sunny who used to work in our dept
theAlphaJohn: no
Kristin: she's the lead singer of Dr. fu
Kristin: www.drfu.com
Kristin: and we're going out to see her
Kristin: Heather and her husband
Kristin: I think Kathleen is going
Kristin: maybe Nicole and her husband
Kristin: possibly Whitney and her husband, although I doubt it
theAlphaJohn: she's cute
Kristin: Whitney? Yeah...
theAlphaJohn: no sunny
Kristin: yeah, she is too
Kristin: HILARIOUS
Kristin: married
theAlphaJohn: of course. it was either that or gay.
Kristin: but if you're not doing anything, you should go
theAlphaJohn: like i want to hang out with a bunch of married people on a saturday night
theAlphaJohn: and kathleen
Kristin: ...
Kristin: well we're not the only people who will be there
Kristin: and my husband's not going
theAlphaJohn: but you're married
Kristin: so?
Kristin: I'm married and you're not and we're going to Prodigy...
theAlphaJohn: that's Prodigy at Nation, not Dr. Fu in Chantilly
theAlphaJohn: my future ex-wife is not at Sully's
Kristin: ok, fair enough
theAlphaJohn: we're fast approaching the beginning of my 2006 dating season
Kristin: the beginning of your 2006 dating season??? it's nearly March... what are you waiting for?
theAlphaJohn: patience dear, it's not for 2 1/2 more months
Kristin: oh - ok...
Kristin: you don't start dating again until April???
theAlphaJohn: link
Kristin: although if you were going to Ultra I bet it would start a couple weeks early
theAlphaJohn: ...
theAlphaJohn: what does a giant rave in Miami have to do with anything? it's not like im celebate out of dating season
theAlphaJohn: i'm just not...dating
theAlphaJohn: my mating season is year round, but my dating season is may-september
Kristin: ah...
Kristin: alrighty...
theAlphaJohn: don't act like my strangeness is something new
theAlphaJohn: we worked together for a very long time
Kristin: I'm not acting like the strangeness itself is new
Kristin: merely discovering its facets as we go

Music :: High Contrast

One of my favorite clubs is this gia-normous place in London called Fabric. Hosting very large dance floors on all three levels, it feels like a very hip, very clean, 'roid-raged version of Buzz at Nation on a Friday night.

In addition to being a club, Fabric is one of the few venues of this type that also has a music label and produces CDs (though my understanding is that unlike The Hacienda, which was Factory's 51st project, Fabric the club is Fab 1 and the first CD was Fab 2). When you walk in and get past coat check, there is a machine filled with nothing but various Fabric and Fabric Live CDs.

Better still, if you're a tosser like I am, you can join Fabric First and have their new CD mailed to you every month. The January 2006 CD, Fabric Live 25 features High Contrast, the alter ego of Welsh Drum and Bass DJ Lincoln Barrett.

While I am the first to admit that I will go get my sweat on in the D&B room when the main room is spinning something lame -- (MESSAGE TO ALL ELECTRONICA DJS: Rarely does a loop with some female black artist work. The Afropeans can make it work, The Crystal Method can make it work, Occasionally DJ Irene can pull it off, otherwise stick to a hook we can all get down to, such as "I wanna be your motherfucker") -- I am not really a big Drum and Bass fan. I will stand and listen to it, I will appreciate it, but I don't have any exclusively D&B CDs in my collection.

That is, until I met High Contrast. Now we're BFF, we have charms.

As a graduate of DJ school, and as someone who understands a thimble full of music theory, I realize that by definition that this is Drum and Bass, but often D&B feels rough and like the beat is being pushed, where High Contrast sounds more like hard house/electronica that is just so happy to see you that it's running around in circles until it eventually stops and pees in the middle of the floor.

I'm sure many of you are saying, "alrighty then, not my idea of big fun", but this CD kicks so much ass it just hurts. I want to own it up and down Main Street.

In other exciting Electronic music news, Dance Blogga is passing on news from XM that BT is producing Tiesto's new CD.

FEMA failures after Kartina, Bush's stupid statement about cartoon violence, Cheney shooting a Lawyer, BT producing Tiesto's new CD. This news cycle could not get any better if Fox News burned their own headquarters to the ground.

It's not more secure, it's more stupider

Bank of America has this swell new feature for their online banking called Site Key, where it shows you a silly picture if it recognizes your computer. The idea, of course, is to ease your mind that you're not a victim of Phishing, but none the less it's retarded.

Luckily, I am much more retarded than Site Key:



If I didn't know any better, I'd think that was a plug.

Today, I am a State Employee

Check out my food drawer:



What's that? You don't have a food drawer?

Ooohhh ... snap.

"A Quail, a Campaign Contributor. They all look the same to me."

Right Dick?

That's what CNN tells me. Now put the rifle down and come have some Ovaltine, you heartless shrill.

We get the picture, Dashboard

The latest version of MacOS, Tiger, has a feature called Dashboard that lets you have all kinds of widget-based applications running in the background for when you need them (calendar, clock, calculator, etc). I find it very useful because the background is transparent, so if I want to add a list of numbers on the screen I don't have to click back and forth to do so, I can see the numbers under the calculator.

Anyway, there's a weather widget that I also have loaded, and when I went into Dashboard to use the calculator, I was shocked to see that the snow on the weather widget (much like the snow outside) had taken over:

Music :: DJ AtomX - The February MiX 2006

It's been a year since I discovered an obscure trance DJ from Southern Maryland on the Groovenauts forums for DC Club Glow, but just in time for our anniversary DJ AtomX (a.k.a. Big Jim Slade) has managed to spin my new favorite mix:

From: Big Jim Slade
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2006
Subject: The February Mix. Peak Hour Trance!

Nothing but peak hour bangin trance/tech here for this month, so if your one of those who likes there music to build , listen to a prog set and then download this. here we go:

1. Friend Or Foe- JK Walker (original mix)
2. Pictures- Timo Mass (PVD remix)
3. Puma- Sunny Lax (original mix)
4. Static Bullet- Ton TB (Jochen Miller remix)
5. People Are People- Depeche Mode vs Tony Arzadon (Tonys original mix/AtomX H.O.U.S.E. version
6. Damager- Scott Mac (Marc Zimmons remix)
7. The Loves We Lost- Allure (original mix)
8. Take A Ride- Shocksteady (Shocksteadys brazillian wax mix)
9. Hung Up- Madonna vs K.I. (bootleg vinyl/AtomX H.O.U.S.E. version
10. System Overload- Fred Baker vs Fred Nash (original mix)
11. Monday Bar- Nic Chagall (original mix)

and here are the links: Copy and paste

Number 1 and Number 2

No idea how long the You Send It links are going to work, but there they is.

He's right though, Progressive Trance is for tossers.

Sex is like an HTTP request...

My favorite HTTP status code:

417 Expectation Failed

The expectation given in an Expect request-header field (see section 14.20) could not be met by this server, or, if the server is a proxy, the server has unambiguous evidence that the request could not be met by the next-hop server.

The worst part is when you finish having sex, and when you look into her eyes and get an HTTP 417 error.

XM adds "Oprah and Friends" to its lineup

This post isn't as much about Oprah moving to XM, it's about the media not understanding satellite radio at all.

I've read at least half a dozen articles about this already (AP, Reuters, CNN, Red Herring, Forbes) in an effort to see if the news outlets "get it".

They don't.

Satellite, much like broadcast radio, is about target audience. The difference between the two is really the balance between programming and advertising.

As many articles stated, Oprah was signed by XM to bring a predominately female audience 18-49 to a medium where they had little incentive to go otherwise. As several articles mentioned, this is why Sirius signed Martha Stewart a while back.

The mistake is drawing the comparison to Howard Stern, who was brought to Sirius to draw the "men 18-49" demographic. Howard and Oprah are in no way competitors, so if you're going to make mention of him you need to also mention that Opie and Anthony's XM channel (High Voltage 202) started broadcasting 18 months before he found his way to satellite radio.

By the way, before he started blowing the Sirius dog, Howard was schilling for the other team.



I get a little sensitive when O&A are slighted like that, but I was also told the other day that I'm having a relationship with them, so whatever.

Girls: Boozers, Users, and Losers

My friends at the Washington Post published this article today detailing a study which shows teenage girls are beating teenage boys now in the war on drugs:

Teenage girls, having caught up to their male counterparts in illegal drug use and alcohol consumption, now have the dubious distinction of surpassing boys in smoking and prescription drug abuse. In the past two years, in fact, more young women than men started using marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes, according to government findings being released today.

[...]

"It's really sad the girls are winning," said Warren Seigel, chairman of pediatrics at Brooklyn's Coney Island Hospital. "This isn't the game they should be winning at."

Adolescent girls who smoke, drink or take drugs are at a higher risk of depression, addiction and stunted growth. And because substance abuse often goes hand in hand with risky sexual behavior, they are more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease or become pregnant, warns the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which will announce its findings in New York.

This is the kind of shit that made me (more of) a head case when I was growing up. What you're telling me is, if I act like a teenager and do a little drinking and end up naked with one or more fellow teenagers, someone is going end up pissing blood and with child?

I call shenanigans on this bullshit data.

And no I'm not stretching, the advocates who don't like this data want that kind of spin on this, they want you to be afraid that the virgin you have safe sex with might give you herpes. Kids who are afraid, they fear, aren't going to mess around.

That is, until they get to college and end up playing "the extra" in every threesome on campus. Not that I would know anything about that...

: : whistles : :

BREAKING NEWS: DC City Council does something

Besides ban smoking, that is.

I'll admit, I haven't been paying attention to the National's stadium deal except the bits and pieces I pick up in the news. I made it to one game this past season with Joey and Andrew which promptly ended their winning streak. Suffice to say, I've stayed away.

After voting "No" yesterday to the latest stadium lease, the DC Council (motto: Until I get some bling you don't get nothing) voted four hours later to approve the deal with a spending cap. No word yet as to whether MLB will approve the lease or not.

How is it that we live in a town full of aspiring politicians -- little mutant hill staffers and aides who think they know everything and can change the world -- and yet none of them have made a push to get into DC politics (or shit, even Baltimore politics)? How hard could it possibly be to take over 9 wards and the Mayor's seat in DC?

I know there are people out there with polysci degrees or that are simply more well read than I am (like that's hard) that are like "you're out of your skull", but c'mon. If we can install puppet governments around the world, shouldn't a bunch of 20-something martini drinkers who fetch their Senator's lunch be able to turn this shit around? As an incentive, your victory celebration could be conducted in THE MOBILE COMMAND CENTER.



It will be like Space Camp, only with black people in it.

First Calculus Test

You don't need to understand integration to know that 28% is not a good grade.

The War on MySpace

CNN Monday is featuring this daisy about sexual predators on MySpace:

SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0) - Robert Young, a guest blogger on GigaOm, writes that the increased scrutiny of MySpace because of sexual predators who are using the social networking service to locate their victims could have a heavy cost. If the question of how to deal with sexual predation is "on the table, you can pretty much kiss major ad buys goodbye," argues Young. The dilemma for MySpace is that taking security steps like verifying users' identities could put brakes on the website's explosive growth. Murdoch's response, when asked by Newsweek about the problem: A third of MySpace's workforce is devoted to weeding out inappropriate content.

Reference is made to this ABC news report about kid touchers on MySpace. If you circle back a few weeks, Dateline did this phenomenal story about online sex predators, one they even caught twice in the filming of the segment.

We must destory MySpace at all costs.

Craigslist: Casual Encounters

Please click the image above for you hideous CL tranny of the day.

By the time I finish Calculus and my dating season resumes...

Big ups to Susann for pointing out this hilarious article in Today's Post (which I suspect she wrote under a nom de plume):

In a world of infinite possibilities, the notion of falling in love, of finding The One, seems itself like the taquito girl, small-town and old-fashioned. Once upon a time, The One would've lived in your village or another one like it. Now, she could be this sweet girl across from you at the dinner table, but she could also be someone you haven't yet met. What if there's another woman somewhere in the world, like this girl, but better? Someone who will snowboard with you, and doesn't do that strange throat-clearing thing?

"When I was buying a computer, there were so many features that for six months I didn't buy a computer," says Jillian Straus, 33, whose book "Unhooked Generation," due out Feb. 8, chronicles why people her age have trouble deciding on mates. The people in their twenties and thirties who Straus interviewed "see commitment to one person as a narrowing of lifestyle choices."

It's only a coincidence that Calculus ends in May (the end of the Spring semester) just as the Alpha John's dating season begins. Could it be that there is some form of multi-variable dating Calculus that can be used to best avoid the taquito girl and find the future ex-wife on one's dreams?

I could construct the definite integral from (age + 1 to age + 5) of the Riemann sum of (Nation Skank) + the definite integral from (age + 7 to death - age) of the natural log of the absolute value of (good mother who doesn't put out) + C (where C is equal to a string of tramps whose careers I can further).



Put that in your proof and solve it fool!

Luminis CPIP Connector Training: Day 1

I'm in four days of training this week for the Campus Pipeline Interface Protocol (CPIP) for integrating our existing web applications into the Luminis Portal.

I am just about one hour into the training, and so far:

Number of new facts learned: Zero
Ounces of coffee consumed today: Zero
Number of SCT Trainers who speak in iambic pentameter: One
Days of training remaining: Three
Pieces of bite-sized candy consumed: Seven (three of those were kit kats)

Useless acronyms thus far:

CPIP - campus pipeline integration protocol
ES - external system
EAS - external authentican system (vis a vie LDAP)
GCF - generic connector framework
LDAP - lightweight directory access protocol

I know all you marketing types need to go change your underwear.
The best part is that our trainer, who loves to travel by his own admission, is sweating balls and looks like he's going to have a heart attack in the next hour.

Weekend Update

I had made plans with Meredith to swim on Saturday morning, though my stomach decided to intervene so I could bail out and get a few more hours of sleep.

Annie had contacted me about swimming on Saturday afternoon long after I had made those plans with Meredith, but the timing wasn't good so I let her know that if she bailed and went Sunday instead I'd be open. We ended up playing phone tag all weekend.

Meredith and I had a long conversation Friday night about training cycles and overtraining, and I'm wondering if I had such a rough week last week because I'm looking at my workouts day-to-week instead of week-to-month (I don't think I'll ever need to worry about month-to-year, I'm seven lifetimes from an ultramarathon). I have rest days built into my schedule, but I don't have rest weeks. It may sound stupid, and then you have the kind of week like I had last week and you think "yeah that makes sense".

I slept about 10 hours on Saturday and 17 hours on Sunday, so clearly my body is a little sleep deprived. I'm really starting to think I just can't hang anymore, which is sad. I can barely drink anymore, it's a good thing that Bar Golf was cancelled indefinately.

Enough blogging, back to Calculus. Integration by parts couldn't possibly make my boy parts any more limp.

...When you pull the meat out of the refrigerator, it doesn't fart. ::cackle::

Not since Erin Gayle told the entire student body of my high school that I was gay (clearly a 17 year old who won't fuck a ginormous, bipolar heroin addict must be more interested in smoking pole) have I felt like I am on the wrong side of a whole lot of whispering about me.

In November, at the end of a FELD happy evening, Hunter (someone I worked with about six months) and I were talking and he said, "Man I thought you were gay, I'm sorry". Hunter is from Texas, I'm clearly a sarcastic liberal from New York who uses big words, and I can see how he might have made that mistake.

Then in December, Christine came out at happy hour and asked the big three: "Are you gay? Are you bi? Have you ever slept with a man?" -- I never realized this was such a burning question, particularly given the number of girls I worked with who I lusted over but enforced the "don't shit where you eat rule". I guess it says something that I can control myself so well.

Two in two months...I guess that could be a coincidence.

In January, at the next FELD Happy Evening, I made the proclamation (see, there I go with big words again) that, "Ok, now that we're at happy hour, does anyone want to ask me if I'm gay?" and motherfucker if this girl who worked in Ringling Brand didn't turn around and go "Oh my god? You aren't?" and she was serious as a heart attack. Have you seen how I dress? I stopped coloring my hair almost three years ago, and I know it's not normal to have a "dating season" like I do (although G-Spot has one also), but there's clearly something about me that is setting off the gaydar of tragic heterosexuals all over the DC metro area.

Three in three months is a little more like lottery odds, but I suppose it could still be random.

Yesterday though, that was the kicker. Dotted Line Boss Kirsten was going to the Aquatic Center to sign up for a membership, and I told her I'd walk over there with her. We were talking about all kinds of madness, and then I get the totally random: "Ok, so are you gay? Bi? I think you're bi, and I want you to meet my friend Ron..."

::fume:: Four in four months is definately a pattern.

I don't even feel like I have to defend myself, because I don't understand what difference it makes to anyone. Mark Mayes and I had a conversation about this in San Diego last spring. Mark is the archetype for Metrosexualty, and has just jumped from one smoking hot girlfriend to a new smoking hot girlfriend. That said, he made an excellent point: even if he is, what's the difference, and what does it change? The only person who needs to know or care about that is the person you're dating. Beyond that, it's nobody's fucking business.

I like to stereotype as much as the next person, and I'm not innocent of the crime I'm blogging against at this very moment, but why do we have to assume that a bachelor is probably a butt pirate if he's not actively working the local meat markets for his next meal? Do we need RFID and GPS to track how much trim people are getting? Should I be using graphs and charts to show who I am and whom I am not sleeping with?

Having thought about my conversation with Kirsten yesterday for all of 90 seconds in the past 24 hours, I decided that I certainly wasn't mad at her, but turnabout is fair play. I was able to get a couple digs about our conversation into my one-on-one meeting with Dotted Line Tom and Dotted Line Kirsten, so afterwards she IMs me:

Kirsten: so image this....
Kirsten: i'm working for you one day...
Kirsten: and you start calling me the lesbo from hell
theAlphaJohn: why would i call you that?
Kirsten: sorry for being so f'n nosey during yesterdays walk...
theAlphaJohn: omg you're fine
Kirsten: you need a t-shirt that says "no i'm happy not gay"
theAlphaJohn: i need to people to not worry about it. i can take care of myself
Kirsten: so why do people think your gay?
Kirsten: hmmm
theAlphaJohn: people usually tell me it's the way i talk if i grill them (unless they're not telling the truth)
Kirsten: no its not the way you talk...
theAlphaJohn: everyone i went to school with talks like i do. we're all a bunch of sarcastic self-important intellectuals
Kirsten: yeah maybe that ... the quick wit...
theAlphaJohn: it's certainly not the way i dress. i'd kill for the gay decorating gene
Kirsten: no doubt...
Kirsten: i think its your mannerisium (sp?)
theAlphaJohn: yeah
theAlphaJohn: i dunno, it's funny because my whole family is like that
theAlphaJohn: it's not like the men are especially fem, but the eisenschmidts think they're the kennedys so we're a bit more refined than we should be
theAlphaJohn: and camping is a sin in our family
Kirsten: see thats it....
theAlphaJohn: but then again, i drink and curse and own a chain saw
theAlphaJohn: i drive a sports car, i ski and play tennis and bike
Kirsten: and basically they try and sterotype you like your brilliant ass hole boss tried to yesterday...
theAlphaJohn: it's not like i have a seasons pass to the kennedy center and spend my weekend antiqueing in dupont
Kirsten: or the eastern market to see poetry
theAlphaJohn: i can count my trips into the fruit loop on one hand
Kirsten: you can call me an asshole., i deserve it...
theAlphaJohn: no way, it's not a big deal
Kirsten: but i had good motives ...
theAlphaJohn: you wanted to fix me up
theAlphaJohn: which is verboten
theAlphaJohn: my process for screening out potential ex-wives is very rigorous. i have perfected it over my lifetime
theAlphaJohn: i cannot let a referral cloud my ability to screen out the psychos, the co-dependants, and most importantly the girls with a foot fetish
theAlphaJohn: that mistake is only allowed once in a lifetime
theAlphaJohn: it's a finely honed skill

In any event, when my time here in DC is done, I plan to move far away where I don't know anyone. I'm going to speak an octave lower than I do now, speak in two syllable words, and sport-fuck like it's nobodys business.

The Mating Ritual of the College Co-Ed Magic Player

I wanted to grab some lunch quick before my 1:15pm meeting ("worthless Wednesday"), so I ran over to SUB I to grab something and bring it back to my desk. The problem was that I couldn't actually find any to-go bags once I was all checked out, so I decided to grab a table and eat there.

In selecting a table, I chose something out of the way where I could spread out and avoid 19 year old hosers who think the height of conversation includes binge drinking and sport-puking. Apparently, that's exactly how the Magic players choose their table as well.

What follows is the a dramatic recreation of the 10 minutes I spent inhaling my food:



The young man facing the camera and to the left talked at length how Magic was clearly his calling in life. Definately an 'E' on Meyers-Briggs, when he wasn't talking his moves out he was correcting his opponet and both players playing the game next to him. We'll call him "Dark Mage" (hi Trevin).

The girl (yes it's a girl) facing the camera on the right somehow found herself at this table. We'll call her "The Hollow." She admitted she was not an experienced player, and within 8 or 9 heartbeats I realized she was only there because she wanted to get up-on Dark Mage and make babies with him. Sadly, with only two weeks until St. Hallmark's Day, Dark Mage is still working on a romantic bed and breakfast weekend in the country with the love of his life, his Play Station Portable.

There was much discussion about "casting" and "manna", and while the Alpha John admits he played Magic for a month or two when he was 12, it is at this point a dead language.

The love triangle appeared around minute six, when the guy that The Hollow was playing against (I'll call him "Makeout King") had taken stock of his situation. Never let it be said that gamers don't have game, because in just a few minutes Makeout King realized that The Hollow was hot-to-trot, and that it will be another decade before Dark Mage's genitals text message him to say "hey I'm here...when we gonna breed homes?".

The fourth dude really didn't say anything of interest, so I will take both his nickname and his birthday away.

So while Dark Mage is trying to reign supreme with his two-headed dragon, evil troll, tome of Jergins, and plague of weekends in the Student Union, his buddy Makeout King was putting the moves on the only double-X chromosome to ever grace that table.

EFF Files Class-Action Suit against AT&T

I was just thinking last week that I would love to see someone sue the telecom companies that were helping the NSA with their warrantless wiretaps, and apparently the EFF read my mind:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on January 31, 2006, accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications.

Good EFF, online donation.

Poor Bill Gates

Apparently, the IRS has a special computer to handle Bill Gate's taxes:

MICROSOFT founder Bill Gates, the world's richest man, said today the tax office in the US has to store his financial data on a special computer because his fortune is so vast.

"My tax return in the United States has to be kept on a special computer because their normal computers can't deal with the numbers," he said at a Microsoft conference held in Lisbon.

"So I am constantly getting these notices telling me I haven't paid something when really it is just on the wrong computer," he added in comments broadcast on television.

In other news, Bank of America sent me a notice the other day that my escrow balance is too low, so I have to write a check for $915 and then suck up an increase in my mortgage. Dandy. I'm wondering how much longer I'll be able to just stroke a check for something like that. I remember in the old days when I had a war chest, now it's a bit more like a skirmish change purse.

All I need to know about SOTU I learned from Ana Marie Cox

Ana Marie Cox, the original Wonkette (and queen of ass-fucking metaphors) did a guest liveblogging spot for Wonkette last night in parody of ABC's attempt at liveblogging. A couple of her finer moments:

8:57 PM Arresting Cindy Sheehan. So best. Not clear what they arrested her for, but I trust they’ve been listening to their phone calls and therefore know better than us.

9:02 PM The Veterans Affairs guy is the one assigned to stay away tonight. Seeing as how he’s the one of the ones demonstrably not doing his job, great planning.

9:03 PM Alito totally had his robe ready. Was trying it on in his bedroom a week ago. Fuck, a month ago.

9:56 PM John Roberts (the non CBS one): So hot. And I mean that literally. Those robes look very warm.

9:57 PM “Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research – human cloning in all its forms … creating or implanting embryos for experiments … creating human-animal hybrids” OMG HUMAN-ANIMAL HYBRIDS! BUSH SAYS NO TO WEREWOLVES. HEAR THAT CONGRESS? The man is taking a stand. To repeat: Hybrid cars: Good. Hybrid human-animals: Bad.

Ana's blog also has a diagram of the seating chart for the First Lady's box, which includes Rex the dog:

UPDATE: Rex as positioned in the SEATING CHART: GUESTS IN THE FIRST LADY'S BOX FOR THE 2006 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS. You have to wonder what protocol officer got stuck with this particular chore. ("Now, do you put the dog next to the Afghani National Assemblywoman? What about the Sudanese widow? I know, teacher of the year...") They wound up sticking him on the stairs. Some honor.

Clearly I missed nothing. Wake me up when it's January 2009.