We’re back!

After a long negotiation process between my DNS provider and the registrar of the domain thieves, virtual.net is back where it has belonged since early 1993: with me.  Huzzah!
My advice, in retrospect, is that if your domain is hijacked, immediately file with ICANN, over the protests of your registrar if necessary.  Fortunately I got my [...]

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Happy Almost New Year: You’ve Been 0wn3D!

I thought email had gotten very quiet over the last day or so. Better yet, we’ve been painting the livingroom, so I’ve been off the net mostly for the past few days. Yesterday my email seemed a little off, and today it was pretty much nonexistent. Now I know why. [...]

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Towards a Sustainable Environmentalism

Remember when nerds ran through the hallways of MIT chanting “The Ringworld is unstable! The Ringworld is unstable!”?  OK, I don’t remember directly, as it was rather before I got there, but my realization today was equally shocking.   Environmentalism isn’t sustainable, not the way it’s practiced currently.  Let me tell you how I got [...]

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word, part the second

The text (of my previous post entitled WORD!!) is a hyperlink of someone else’s words, but the sentiment is near and dear to me.
First let me say that I like the organization, I liked the folks I met at the installfest, and I plan to go back to future ones. I don’t think anyone [...]

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"Science" encompasses many things…

…including practices that will be thought of as sheerest quackery 50 years from now, as were some of today’s practices 50 years ago. I’m not interested in outlawing science, not even remotely. I AM interested in calling attention to the fact that a lot of *really bad science* seems to insist [...]

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Addendum: on dogs, and on animal research

Most people grow up so far out of touch with animals that they probably shouldn’t even be doing animal research. Researchers ’surprised’ by dogs’ abilities? Did any of them grow up with a family dog?
Growing up with one or more dogs, two or more cats, and various numbers of goats, chickens, and occasionally [...]

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animals, yes, they ARE smart, aware, feeling, etc

posted this great Washington Post article about cognitive reasoning and inference in dogs, who behaved similarly to 14-month-old children in an inference test. And I just have to RANT, seeing the ‘wow, who knew?’ tone of this article (not at him, at the world in general).
I grew up with animals. They [...]

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the businessmen, they drink my wine

Mike and I were expanding on the theme of ‘maybe they are ALL cylons’ (and which generations thereof) last weekend. He sent me http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2007/03/but_you_and_i_w.html a link to a nifty Chicago Trib column with LOTS of speculation in the comments.. Most of the variants I’m seeing are in sync with stuff we’re [...]

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kill, kill, and KILL AGAIN!!

Mac drop problem was thermal shock. Desk is no longer in kitchen/DR area, under cold HVAC, so basically can’t run iMac G5 when house ambient temp is 75-plus. #$%@!!
Cracking it open and blowing the dust bunnies out, of which there were very few, just cooled it enough so that it takes longer to [...]

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back on the air… maybe…

My desktop mac has been crashing randomly for the past several days. Downloading the 10.4.9 combo dmg, with a permissions fixer, did not solve the problem. Still getting sudden shutoffs, leaving -122 error in ../../private/var/log/system.log.
Also reported were a bunch-o-cruft about difficulties routing and mookin’ aboot (she sez, through clenched teeth clamped about a [...]

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