I'm sure that the majority of us have read reviews of how the "protection" features in Windows Vista are, at least in beta, more arduous than actually being infected by malicious software, asking you for confirmation for practically everything, to the point where it brings to mind the old joke "Windows has detected a mouse movement, and must reboot." Well, I'm here to tell you that Vista isn't the only operating system trying to protect me from myself, nor is it the most overzealous protector in general - that award goes to Windows XP.
Today I enabled SSL on this host, using a self-signed cert. It's some $45/year to get a properly signed one, and I'm not sure it's really worth it, so I went ahead and self-signed. If I ever start taking credit card payments, and not just using paypal (once I even get ecommerce module working properly) then I'll probably change my mind.
Regardless, you can now access this site via https if you would like to be stealthy. It would be better for the freedom of the common man if all traffic were encrypted, so I like to encourage every possible use of encryption.
Following is my response to an email sent to the staff of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). It was addressing legislation regarding the broadcast flag. If I actually get a response to my talking points, I will add it here. (Nothing as of August 23, 2006.) I have not edited any text, only inserted formatting. (Preformatting text often has poor results.)
Currently there is a fire going on near Highland Springs Reservoir in Lake county. The name of the incident is "Highlands" due to where it started. I spoke with sonoma/lake/napa unit information officer Kevin Colburn, who informed me of a website other than the primary CDF website, which has more up-to-date information: http://www.calfires.com.
Today I upgraded Drupal from 4.6.x to 4.7.x. This came with some special problems, but none of them were in drupal itself, but in modules. To wit, the ecommerce module summoned satan all over itself; it is using the new method in drupal where modules can create their own database tables, and it's not creating them all. I went so far as to disable all the modules, manually remove the tables, and then put the modules back in - which changed nothing. I wasn't actually selling anything anyway, so I went ahead and kept the upgrade.
The Beeb is reporting that the Pew Internet and American Life Project surveyed 233 "active bloggers" and found that 65% of them do not consider their blogging to be journalism. The article seems to take the stance that blogging is therefore not journalism.
A little while back I got an intake off ebay, with the description "93-01 IMPREZA BAJA LEGACY FORESTER AIR INTAKE W/FILTER". Turns out it was a 97-01 intake, the intake manifold and/or throttle body changed somewhat in there and things have moved. This made the job considerably more "fun" than it should have been...
Last Tuesday I crashed my Mercedes. I was behind a guy who wouldn't get over, he went extra-slow around a turn which put me on his ass, then he hit the brakes. He had ABS, I didn't. I bent his bumper, the front of my 300SD was pretty-well mangled, though it seems repairable. He said we would simply deal with the issue between us, and then called my insurance company.
Luckily, I was not left without a car for long...
The day before yesterday, I replaced the thermostat on my 300SD.
Every time I work on this vehicle I have it shoved in my face that it's meant to be serviced on a lift, and only on a lift. I actually went and bought ramps for this job, which only works because my driveway slants down, and I put the ramps there, somewhat leveling the vehicle (it was still down slightly in front.)
I've been fighting for some time to come up with a layout that really genuinely works. I want to use CSS and end up doing strict XHTML, so I'm working towards that end mostly by trying to eliminate all tables.