SpaceX

Launches the first privately designed and built (no recycled US or Russian parts) vehicle into orbit.

Lazy Monday morning

That's what I'd like to do-- spend the day in bed.

Jerry

Make backups

make backups

I like cupcakes too

Introducing the next president of the USA!

Watch CBS Videos Online

Sorry about the advertisement. Nothing I can do about that.

Paul

1925-2008

The "reduce taxes and spend" policy

I watched the first presidential debates last night. McCain talked a bit about his fiscal policy...basically the magical hope that if we just reduced tax revenue, the economy would grow and make up for the lost revenue.

How about something a little more realistic? How about some real fiscal responsibility instead of 20 years of foreign economically supported debt fueled consumption?

McCain sort of reminds me of the current mortgage crisis, in his fiscal beliefs. Basically, all you need to do is HELOC your way to happiness and wait for your home to go up in value. Magic! Everyone is rich!

Pajamas for Christ

Tonight I'm having a champagne pajama party. I still have quite a bit to do to get ready, but it shouldn't be too hectic. I'm off to go work out soon, then off to the dog park for some fun with Tom and Jerry.

Epic

Flying sharks

Network dipshits

I had some shows tivo'd last night, but of course dispshit dubya was on and fucked them all up. I'm fine with that...I watched fuckhead and heard what he had to say. THE PROBLEM was dubya pushed all the shows out 15 minutes. Of course, comcast didn't fix the schedule, so my two shows cut off 15 minutes early.

Not the end of the world.

SO, go online to cbs, fox, whatever thinking "surely they will post the shows online for me to watch." Of course not. I think cbs posted a minute and a half of one show, which I guess was supposed to be the shiz. The other site, nada, nothing. Well, guess what, I'm watching them anyway, just not on your stupid fucked up network website.

assholes.

Hey big dinosaur dying media...suck my cock. Get a fucking clue or get out of my way.

The wrong format

Here is today's gem:

brett: "The format of your office actions is wrong."

sean: "well, here is one of yours, and here is one of mine. They look the same to me. Can you be more specific?"

brett: "sure. See this? My title is bold. Yours isn't. See this? My heading is indented. Yours isn't."

sean: "Your kidding, right? And here I thought you had something substantial to talk about."

brett: "I want the client to see consistency between office actions."

sean: "Consistent, like for example, when the case was transferred in from the NY law firm and you changed all their formats to what you wanted? I mean, you didn't copy their formats so the client could see a consistent office action during prosecution."

brett: "That's different."

The wrong argument

Work has gone like this lately:

You pick apart the prior art, come up with a good argument, write it and think it's basically a done deal.

Brett looks it over and hands it back.

"It's the wrong argument."

Fuck!

sean: "We're after final. I'd have to write new claims."

Brett: "So write new claims and file an RCE."

sean: "Well, last time on final you said don't write new claims. You said it may invoke a new search."

brett: "yeah, but these claims suck. Actually these claims suck a whole lot more than I'd like. What if we get these claims allowed?"

sean thinking aren't allowed claims good?

sean: "OK then. RCE and new claims it is."

Scratch a whole day worth of work for nothing. I can't even bill for it.


And so it goes.

Those "well, fuck you then" moments

Lately, the first four words that I want to begin each of my responses with is: "well, fuck you then." I'd like to share these special moments:

When you needed something from me, but couldn't be bothered to engage in any more interaction than an email: well, fuck you then.

When I send an email, and I know that you've read it and haven't bothered to respond: well, fuck you then.

For the cock in the white van the other week that tried to kill me on 287 while I was riding my motorcycle: well, fuck you then.

For a 700+ billion dollar bailout for shady predatory lenders: well, fuck you then.

For charging me $3.50 at an ATM to get my money: well, fuck you then.

For bill collectors who love to call me at 8AM: well, fuck you then.

For being invisible: well, fuck you then.

Ear hair

Insomnia

Bad gym workouts

Fall

A garden full of green tomatoes

A half painted house

For not cleaning my pillow

For cleaning my first pillow, but never giving it back

You get the idea.

Negative, Houston

Being up at 3am and wondering how I'll pull off a 1200 mile 3 day motorcycle ride isn't that much fun at all. I'm not going after all, so I guess I'll just wait for the funeral. I can ride with Doug for that.

Cross country on two wheels

Sister and I decided to go visit Grandma in Missouri Thursday. G isn't doing so hot...and probably won't make it much more than another week or so. I'll have to ride out on the motorcycle. The truck would be $400 in gas, easy.

The plan is ride Wed., visit Thursday, ride back Friday. I have a pj party here on Saturday with 50 peeps signed up...so I have to be back for that.

Free beagle

Jerry just loves to get in trouble. I had a BBQ at the house last night...and forgot to lock up my grill afterwards. Jerry, of course, ate a bunch of greasy bits from the drip pan, and puked it all up in the house. It was nasty and solid black -- perfect for my off white carpet. I ended up steam cleaning some spots after midnight last night.

I have people painting the house today. I ran over to home depot this morning to buy some supplies, and while I was out, Jerry somehow caught the bag of hamburger buns off the table. No more hamburger buns.

Other than that, he's adorable.

wistful

Spank me silly

"we no clean pillow"

sean: "I'm here to clean a pillow"

girl behind the counter: "hold on"
girl dissapears into the back. girl returns.

girl: "we no clean pillow"

sean (pointing to pillow behind her on the counter): "is that a pillow"

girl: "comforter"

sean: "are you sure? it looks like a pillow to me"

girl: "no pillow. comforter"

sean (reading tag on his pillow): "it says dry clean only."

girl: "no clean pillow here. you go now. clean pillow somewhere else."

Fall?

It's Sunday morning, and it's a bit cold out. Yesterday was nice. Sunny. Fairly warm. I spent about half the day working on some landscaping projects in the back yard. Yesterday afternoon I rode the motorcycle up to Estes park. It was a nice ride.

It's a bit rainy-cloudy out. Nothing serious, and hopefully it will clear up later. I'd like to do more work in the back yard today.

I tried painting yesterday, but climbing that ladder just seems to be a problem lately. I have this thing with heights.

I've still skydived and flown planes before -- but somehow that is different. Skydiving is still difficult, but not like staring down at the concrete below from the top of a ladder. I'm not sure why.

For lunch I'm meeting Tom and Greg down south at red robin. I hope it gets a bit nicer out before then so I can ride down instead of driving.

My garden went in about 2 weeks late this year, and I can tell. I have tomatoes but they are all still green. I doubt it will be a great garden this year.

I finished the last of my canned tomatoes earlier this summer.

I can't believe that in a couple of months we'll be voting on a new president. The sad part is, the race is so close. I sometimes wonder what the fuck Americans are thinking.

I believe in free markets. I also believe, however, that completely free markets and a lack of any restrictions on capitalism is not in the best interest of the people. Entities like the EPA and the FDA are necessary. Markets tend to be immediate reward oriented. Typically the feedback for long term consequences are weak. Entities like the EPA and the FDA put long term responsibilities on markets that typically would do whatever it took to make the cheapest product possible (i.e., poor food safety, pollution, environmental damage, etc.).

Somewhere down the line a cost/benefit analysis has to be done. Something like: is it worth 20 cents per carton of eggs in increased costs to preclude chicken farmers from including antibiotics in chicken feed? How about preventing chicken farmers from pumping raw waste into the local river?

What is the economic impact of reducing mercury emissions from coal fired power plants? Should the government provide market incentives for hybrid cars? Is the answer the same if hybrid cars require 3x the resources (i.e., electricity, materials, technology) to produce as an equivalent fuel efficient gasoline car?

big box of floppies

I guess I have windows 3.1 on floppy, if anyone needs it. I also have some random data:

Rake lawn
clean grill
wash floor

from a list of to-do items from march 1992.

Apparently here is my work schedule from about the same time:

Have to work from:
4 to 8 on Tues,
5 to 9 on Thrus,
8 to5 on Sat

I guess I couldn't spell then either.

not so fast there, sparky

well, I didn't even claim to be working at home today. I just told them I wasn't coming in. Instead I mowed, pulled a fuck-load of weeds, took a nap, ran the dogs, shopped for groceries, and did some laundry.

Not a bad day after all.

I'm not sure if I'm into dating at the moment or not. I guess it may depend on who the date is. Sad, but true.

I want more summer. I want less rain, so I can ride more often. I'm digging the motorcycle.

My 500G drive showed up today. I took a mirror image of all my data and plan on stuffing the drive into my safety deposit box in Boulder tomorrow.

Aren't computers a pain in the ass?

Hump day

Ah, hump day. I'm amazed that I've actually gone almost an entire two weeks without fucking off at home on at least one day during the week.

I've been filing a lot, which is good. I need to clear out my schedule for the next couple of weeks so I can write a couple of patents. My workouts are so-so.

I should get my HDD soon for my off-site data backup. I've already rented a safety deposit box in Boulder, for the large and egregious sum of 15 dollars a year.

I can't get anyone to call me back about painting the trim on my house. losers!

Let's see...not much else to tell. I've been spending too much money lately. Home depot seems to be the current culprit, of which I've donated more than I should have lately.

Summer is over. I think I may have some tomatoes in the garden under all those weeds. I should probably check.

The yesterday was warm, and today seems to be about the same. I'll ride the motorcycle into Boulder today.

I've been eyeballing season tickets to the Denver center theatre company again. I passed on that last summer, since I was pretty broke. I'm slightly less broke now, but I keep thinking of other things that need to be paid for, like paint, the LSAT, and some other random things.

Enough to pay the bills, but not enough to do anything really interesting, like remodel the kitchen.

I have tickets to see Henry Rollins sometime soon. I should probably look at the date. That should be fun.

Things that make your computer data go "mmmmmm"

I ran into an interesting problem last night after I came home from work. I booted my computer and walked away as usual. When I came back, vista was happily screwing up files on my 1TB data drive.

Of course, windows is the last thing you want verifying the integrity of your data on a hard drive. By this point the damage was already done. Windows had decided that a number of files no longer existed and prompt did something to make them disappear.

I checked the raid array -- it was fine. I ran a verify/rebuild on the data and it came back clean. The answer seemed to be windows screwing something up on the file allocation table.

After some wrangling with a backup set of data and vice-versa (a file compare program) I think we're OK. Think...though you can't exactly be sure. One nice thing about vice-versa is that it will calculate CRC data on your source and target files. This seems a reasonable way to determine if the files are the same.

This problem, of course, got me thinking about how to deal with long term data backup. I don't think I'm completely alone with this problem. For example, how do you make sure your 5 years worth of digital pictures, of which you have only digital copies, are really OK? How do you know that you haven't just backed up corrupted data? It makes me wonder how much data the average person will lose over the years to computer problems. Dingy Dan and silly Sally will be quite disappointed when they realize all their family vacation pictures are just a bunch of fucked up files.

Personally I have a box of floppy disks I haven't looked at for maybe 5 years. Besides the physical problems of long term magnetic storage, there are real problems -- I don't have a floppy drive anymore. I could get one, though. But if I wait 20 more years I might be out of luck. First of all, even if I could find a floppy drive, the interface might no longer exist to connect it to my computer. Second, and more insidious is that the physical medium might not last that long.

I have about 300G of data. This may be a lot for some, and not much for others. Most of it comprises music (from my CD collection, and entered with quite a lot of work on my part), pictures, and some video. I do generate backups of my data -- but they go on an external hard drive in a rotating set. By rotating set, I mean eventually old backup data gets deleted to make room for new. Since my backup drive isn't infinitely large, I need to delete old sets of data when making new sets, at some point.

I don't have any idea if I'm backing up corrupted data. Maybe some pictures/files/writings/projects are already lost. How would I know? It's not practical to verify the integrity by hand of 250G worth of data.

250G is about 50 DVD's worth of data, so it's not likely that I'll burn all that data to a set of DVD's. You can buy a 500G hard drive for 60 dollars, though. Mirror your data, and put the drive somewhere. Somewhere meaning probably in a safety deposit box at a bank.

If you do that a few times a year, maybe, maybe, maybe you'll get some decent backups in there that might survive the next 5-10 years. That is, if you can still plug the hard drive interface into some ancient SATA interface card you bought on Ebay for 5 bucks.

My high school writing assignments, all which were all backed up onto 5 1/4 inch apple 2e floppies, are probably a goner...even if I could still find the disks.