Everyone that owns a cat should know these basic observations:

and I think he’s on to something here:

Mr President from LL Cool J and Boomdizzle on Vimeo.

What do you think? 1st amendment introduces the song, before some questions are asked. Lyrics to follow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Watch this video and negate the claims, please.

I really want to know how much is true versus how much is false… public records, not opinions! Ignore the obvious plugs for McCain’s campaign… focus on the rest.

If Obama had anything to do with the creation of this economic situation like this video claims, he should be crucified (not literally) by the media for it. Democrats always claim to look out for the poor, but all this has done has pushed them out to the curb. Someone present me with some facts I can feel better about… this seems all too good to be true.

A Little of the Geeky Background

Before you read any further, get this straight: I DO NOT OWN THE DOMAIN. It is still unknown who purchased the domain.

I’ve got the knowledge that should squelch any thoughts otherwise by any logical person. Admittedly, I found it amusing and slightly humorous, if for no reason but it was grounds for a great lesson in DNS and Domain Registration.

–Original Content Omitted–

I love my job and the technology I get to deal with on a daily basis… It’s amazing what some people will believe without understanding how the internet, browsers, email clients, and servers work when presented with partial evidence.

Erroneous Claims

All of the sites claiming or inferring John McCain’s campaign owns the domains and registered them privately to dodge the possible scandal are making up what they think is news without actually checking the facts. The truth is it could be anyone that registered the domains (including Sarah Palin herself) but the proof can only be obtained with a subpoena to the Private Registration holder DomainsByProxy. DomainsByProxy happens to be used by GoDaddy and Network Solutions, the biggest domain registrars on the internet. I have used DomainsByProxy for a couple of my domains in the past (and on a somewhat unrelated note I started receiving credit card offers in the mail shortly after I discontinued using their services). That doesn’t mean that my domains were once owned by John McCain’s campaign does it? To reiterate: for the record, I DO NOT OWN THE DOMAIN. It is still unknown who purchased the domain. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m with Garrett. I think they gave different weights to the liberal questions. I’d like to see a list of the candidates it decided were eligible. I also think there are “key” issues that decide which candidate is best for you. Whichever candidate thinks that your issue is “key” as well, and sides with you is your best match. Yes, that means there won’t be perfect matches for a lot of people. Anyways, I supposedly am a match for Barack Obama by 57%. Take the test yourself to see if you agree with our findings.

You match up well with…

	Barack Obama - 57% You must be ambitious and idealistic, like Barack Obama. Obama is a liberal democrat who, unlike his rivals, opposed the Iraq war from the start. With only 3 years in the Senate, his inexperience worries some and sometimes reveals itself in the debates, but he also has the charisma and popular support that the others lack.
	Sam Brownback - 54% As an “economically, fiscally, and socially compassionate conservative,” Sam Brownback is the candidate for you! You should consider our second choice, though, because Brownback dropped out in November 2007. The fiercely right-wing Senator from Kansas lets his religion guide his policy agenda- especially towards foreigners. He is best known for his unrelenting crusade against the genocide in Darfur and world-wide sex-trafficking. In a moment of particular compassionate, he co-sponsored a 2006 bipartisan immigration bill that branded him “Amnesty Sam” by critical conservatives and he later abandoned the cause. But there’s no compassion for homosexuals, the porn industry, or women seeking abortions. Brownback’s high-profile war against these groups has also put him in the spotlight.
	Tom Tancredo - 54% You must be REALLY concerned with immigration, just like Tom Tancredo. You’ll have to find another right-winger, because your top match dropped out in December of 2007. As stated, Tancredois almost obsessively preoccupied with the issue of immigration (illegal or not) and wants more than just fences and laws to keep out foreign workers. He also opposes birth-right citizenship and wants to deploy American troops along the US-Mex border. But aside from immigration, Tancredero has advocated for bombing Mecca to get back at Islamic terrorists, formally called for the elimination of public schools, and resists the President Bush’s big-government agenda. You might like him, but his own party thinks he’s a disaster- Tom DeLay told him that ‘you cannot think of making a career in [Congress]‘ and even Karl Rove told him that he would never ‘darken the doorstep of the White House’ again.

After reading Phragmunkee’s Q&A, I still had some questions left over for EPB.

Q. What bandwidth tiers are going to be offered?

A. We have not finalized our product sets or tiers at this time. We do expect to have multiple bandwidth offerings, ranging from 6 Mbps up to 20, 30 or even 50 Mbps, depending on demand. All customers will have dedicated bandwidth which means that it isn’t shared with other customers, and the customer who is paying for the connection is always getting the speed they subscribe to.

Q. Is bandwidth going to be symmetrical upstream/downstream?

A. Upload and download speeds will be symmetrical.

Q. Is a basic subscriber (like most subscribers) going to be NAT’d behind one EPB router, or are we going to be given a static or persistant dynamic IP address? Some of us may wish to port forward some things through our personal routers so we can utilize the resources of our connection for server roles (Email, Web, VoIP, Game, SQL, etc.).

A. The system will use a combination of public and private IP addresses in our network core. Static or persistent IPs will be available but we may require a separate service. We are in vendor negotiations now and this may be dependent on the vendor we end up choosing.

Q. Will our p2p bandwidth be throttled or even cut off (like Comcast’s “Sandvine”) or will non-abusive p2p/torrent (legal distribution) traffic be allowed by default?

A. We believe our customers know the importance of respecting others and policies that ensure fairness. For that reason, we will likely determine a usage policy that will be very favorable to the average to slightly-heavy user. Users who exceed these caps may be required to pay for additional usage.

Q. How does EPB feel about Net Neutrality? If EPB doesn’t have an official stance, how about the board of directors? Does EPB stand on the side of their potential customers (net-neutral) or their investors(whatever it takes to make more money)?

A. Our current ISP network is operated on a network neutrality basis. All ISP traffic is given best effort priority. As long as we operate a non-congested network, best effort for all users allows us to meet the bandwidths being purchased by the customer. It is not our intention to allow network congestion that would lead to prioritizing use for any user.

Q. Did EPB take notes from our Tennessee Valley neighbors in Dalton, GA (Dalton Utilities) on their “OptiLink” Service?

A. We have visited many FTTH providers and have tried to incorporate best practices learned from each.

In wake of the release of the new 3G-capable iPhone and the content I’ve been spidering about the Android SDK (Google phone) I’m going to let you in on a few of the things I use almost daily. This article also comes to you per suggestion on Skribit from Paul Stamatiou which has received some other votes. I’m adding the programs I use because to be honest, I don’t carry many gadgets around.

Firstly and most importantly, I have my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry 8830 “World Edition” phone. After using a generic LG flip phone for two years, when my contract was up for renewal I had come to the conclusion that I was ready for a smart phone or PDA. Research In Motion had a new, fairly powerful, handheld and what appeared to be the most capable for what I wanted to be able to do; so far it’s done a great job.

So what was I looking for in a new handheld? Firstly, a QWERTY keypad. You don’t understand the want for this until you’ve been using “T9″ or some other predictive text on a standard numeric keypad for two years and have a chance to toy with a friend’s QWERTY keypad. The next thing I looked for was Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t fall asleep easily when I’m on-call so I decided I’d watch Dexter Season 2. I didn’t want to download 4.1GBs of xvid/avi’s from my parents house to my place because it’s entirely unnecessary to have the videos in two places. So, let me explain how I got a Streaming Media daemon working on my server.

I did some searching and there wasn’t anything super awesome out there that would keep me away from using the command line interface of VLC. So, the first step was to install vlc. I also use screen so I can log out of my SSH session and just use the web interface available on VLC, so I’ll include steps for using screen.

sudo apt-get install vlc screen

During or after installing vlc, you might as well set up the port forwarding on your router for access to the web interface. Log into your router and open up port 8080 to your server. If you are not trying to stream over the internet or don’t have a persistant dynamic or static IP address, you can skip this step. Check http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm for information on how to port forward on your router. Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently, I’m only 61% geek…

61% Geek

Created by OnePlusYou

I’m sure you’re seeing a trend on a lot of the blogs and web pages out there with gas prices as they are giving you tips to save gas. They’re telling you to keep your maintenance schedule, carpool, and even change your vehicle. Well what about those of us that don’t feel that isn’t enough, or think we can get even more out of it? Now, I’m not telling you to ignore their advice, as they are the building blocks to maximizing your fuel economy.

Before I even get going, there are a couple of things I’m assuming you’re doing already to keep your car in shape and at the best operating potential. These include: using gas grade per instructed by your manual, changing your oil (with the type intended for your engine) every 3000-5000 miles, checking your air filter to make sure it’s clean, and keeping your tires inflated to their proper pressure. If you weren’t doing that already, you may see a significant increase in your gas mileage just doing that (an estimated 5-20% depending on the amount of change).

The next step is to change your habits about when you choose to drive. Read the rest of this entry »