Fantasy Rock Album

Thanks to my buddy, briwei for passing on an intriguing meme. For everyone who ever wanted to be in a band and make an album...

- Go to Wikipedia’s “random” page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page’s "random quotations":
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click “explore last seven days”
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days

The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it together.

5 - Post your photo to your FB page with this text in the "caption" or "comment" and tag friends you’d like to join in.

Here's my album:
Band: Winners and Sinners
Album: Badly Written Third Act



The photo is from here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stocksphotography/3305027150/in/photostream/

The full quote was from Truman Capote: "Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act."

Amazing and annoying feline trick

Our younger cat is quite talented and cute. He is also stubborn, single-minded, and often annoying in his pursuits.

We keep kitty treats in a high kitchen cabinet. He is well aware of the location of his favorite nibbles.

This evening, I came home to discover a new bag of kitty treats on the dining room floor, TORN open. The bag had previously been on the upper left hand shelf of the kitchen cabinet (see photo). Not only was the bag in the floor, but the cabinet was closed (cabinet shown open in photo for perspective).

How the heck did he get up there? How did the cabinet door remain (or get re-) closed?

The cats were not interested in obtaining dinner. Good thing, since we weren't interested in giving them any dinner. We locked them in the basement for the night in irritation. However, we kept wondering in amazement how he did it.

The older cat is too lazy to have been invovled in any aspect of the operation, other than enjoying the spoils.

My how they grow

I was going through some school pictures of my son this morning, and I was stunned by the changes over the years. He almost doesn't look like the same boy from six years ago. For your consideration:

Fourth Grade (pre-braces)

Eighth Grade (braces)

Tenth Grade (post-braces)

Fight Big Brother!

While the Internet Safety Act is not the first bill to propose forced record retention of Internet traffic logs, it is by and large the most far reaching and demanding of such bills. While this lengthy bill has laudable provisions for the supposed prevention of child endangerment, it's requirement that virtually ever Internet access point in the country keep two years worth of utilization records is not just highly invasive it is ridiculously burdensome to small businesses and individuals.

Just because the European Parliament is comfortable with this level of potential privacy invasion does not mean that freedom-loving Americans should become so complacent on the issue. Proponents of such bills say that requiring Internet Service Providers to maintain activity logs for two years allows law enforcement to review past behavior once someone comes to their attention as a potential threat to young children. What ever happened to 'just cause'?

Now, let's talk about the REAL duck on the table. Have you read about any electronic records breaches lately? Hmmm??? So, the Government wants providers to keep two years of records on everyone's activities in case THEY need them to investigate your past history. Isn't it more likely that other savvy hackers will steal those records for malevolent purposes? Identity theft? Blackmail?

Oh, BTW, stop thinking that secure-HTTP will prevent data thieves from stealing your banking, health, and other private information. It was announced this week that the bad guys are improving their ability to sneak their way into your private HTTPS sessions

The Senate bill is S.436. The House bill is H.R.1076. Note them. Contact your representatives. Oppose them. I have written my own Representative, both my Senators, and the President. I've only done this three other times in the last 28 years.

The European Union is still working on some barriers

If you live in the EU, and you have a driving license from country X (say Poland) and you get a ticket in country Y (say Ireland) you would think that police in country Y would understand how to extract basic information from other EU country driving licenses, no?

Guess again: Will the real "Prawo Jazdy" please stand up

Pretty humorous, if embarrassing for the Irish police.