Wont say what site or where - but I'm working on migrating something that was hosted in one of our offices to a shared hosting environment.

They had everything you can imagine copied into the site folder so I'm working through and removing stuff I don't need to upload to the new host. I find a directory that has phpmyadmin stuff in it. On a whim I pull up the production site in my browser and head over to that folder - logs me in automatically and I can browse all tables in the db. Just told the new ops director and I think he might pop a few veins.

Recently, an Anonymous Coward (but I have a couple of guesses as to who really wrote it) accused me of being racist because I am pro-life.

The AC's argument was: You say you want to ban abortion, but what you really want is to ban abortion except for the type that rich white people can afford, therefore, you're a racist.

The logical leaps in this argument are almost breathtaking in their stupidity. I'd be surprised, but I've had this account for probably a decade now and as such liberal stupidity is, quite frankly, nothing new.

Here's some pseudocode that explains my position on abortion:

bool MayHaveAnAbortion (Mother m)
{
if (m.LifeAtRisk() == true)
{
return true;
}
else
return false;
}

Please note, dear liberals, that in this example there is no consideration for race, socio-economic status, or any other victim groups that you like to place people in.

(Yes, I am aware that the method could simply be "return m.IsLifeAtRisk()" but let's face it, the liberals around here aren't smart enough to handle that and would only get confused.)

So to sum up: Yes, I am absolutely opposed to all forms of abortion for all women except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk.

Furthermore, the logical errors required to somehow twist that into calling me a racist are exceptional in their stupidity, and proves (yet again) the intellectual dishonesty of the "progressive" movement -- showing the "progressive" movement to be nothing more than a secular humanistic death cult.

I am currently using a Moto G as my primary phone for a bit. I brought it with me to Moscow. As soon as I got here I started getting "Emergency Alerts" like crazy. I think I had 40 or so the first afternoon.

So I googled it and found out about a US system for this kind of thing. I also found out how to turn it off. I couldn't find any info. on an equivalent Russian system. Whatever is making it happen, I can't read them. I just see random characters on my phone. Maybe if I used Russian the characters would render properly - dunno.

Anyway it's so odd that I thought I would mention it.

The most metal performance with a non-traditional instrument since I discovered there was such a thing as an electric violin. (The second group is much cuter though.)

Ok, I'm stretching a bit as a programmer in my current contract, because they're thrilled with the timeframe I've given. This contract is finally allowing me to learn MVC, which means *next* contract I'll be able to command a much higher rate.
 
However, using MVC on Microsoft tools means abandoning Ajax. I really need a good "Date/Time" control and a good cascading combobox. Anybody have any suggestions for an open source JQuery suite I should examine?

This is the Voice of Freedom broadcasting from somewhere in MagyarorszÃg.

I'm exhausted - should have never gotten the CBS NCAA tourney feed working at home. Slept 2 hours this morning. Fly to Moscow Wed a.m. dark and early. Life is hectic and I just keep looking at April 6th and telling myself I just have to make it that far.

I'm being melodramatic but this next couple weeks will be rough. Last week was superb - I'll post a write up later.

Pax

Definitively use art and materialism to deny the existence of life on Earth.

I used "social engineering" in a sentence a few minutes ago and wanted to look up some kind of official definition. Dang it is getting hard to find the definition that's not just the technical, hacking one.

On a second page of hits I found that Webster's still retains its historical definition:

Management of human beings in accordance with their place and function in society.

(Hey, what could be more moral than that, right?)

I say historical because it no longer describes an alternate state, rather now being concomitant with existence. I.e. it's no longer an "ism", it's an "is". So therefore it's not really notable as its own word anymore.

In general I lament when words, that already have a distinct meaning, get hijacked by the ignorant, and it catches on. Because then we lose the original meaning/no longer have a word to describe the first thing. (Which, of course if you're on the Left, don't mind at all if the politically manipulative meaning of that word pair gets obscured by the technology meaning one.)

"Hacking" is another one. As someone who went through a Computer Science program at a university in the late 80's/early 90's, its original meaning in computers meant to skip desiging and thinking about a program and just diving in to coding it. But I figure some journalist heard the term and grokked that it related to computers somehow but didn't know how, and made the incorrect assumption that it related to breaking in to computers, wrote an article, and the rest is histoire.

And for the latest example, Pest Buy is now running commercials that you should come in and buy Windows tablets there because they've handed some out to their employees first and they've taken them home to learn it, presumably to be better able to tell you how to use Windows 8. But they're referring to this process as "beta testing". Gah!

I've seen my 2nd news piece in days trying to besmirch North Dakota.

I barely remembered we even have such states, until the Right started talking about it, how in this shitty economy there are supposedly jobs there and good paying ones, in oil industries. Hmm, someplace where capitalism hasn't been suppressed and is very successful, tapping our natural resources that are fossil fuels, well no wonder, it could only have been a matter of time.

Like supposedly a large army of muckrakers descended upon Alaska when Sarah Palin became a perceived threat to the ongoing advancement of Progressivism, it wouldn't surprise me if a Leftie swarm has descended on North Dakota to dig up or invent whatever's needed to counter the message of the possibility of free market prosperity and usage of the planet that's been provided to us.

And the fruits of their labors are starting to come out.

Picked up my new 13" Retina Macbook Pro ( not the same as a plane Macbook Pro - these guys are so good at marketing.) I've been using it for two weeks. I'm learning.
 
My favorite surprise was when I opened up the terminal app and started trying out commands. Everything was working so I went to see what environment I was in and saw that it was bash. This made me very happy.
 
I think on the gui end it is o.k. I prefer but I'm getting use to the way OS X wants me to do things. I've had to learn some weird gestures to get at what I want quickly.
 
Here are some of the issues so far. Installing software sucks. It comes in different file formats and how it gets done varies wildly based on where I get it from. It's confusing as all get out. Without a package manager I guess updates will be on a per software basis and apparently uninstalling means removing the program and then hunting down any bits it leaves behind. That's pretty idiotic. I had a hard core Mac guy try to explain to me why this was better.
 
There is this gigantic track pad below my keyboard and I wouldn't care if palm detection or whatever you want to call it worked better. As I type this the window is scrolling up and down as my hands periodically bump into the track pad. So far I can't find a setting that lets me try to fix this sorry state of affairs. This is my big issue with the lack of options. If things work correctly it's fine. If they don't, you are just hosed. And it never works correctly as much as the people who make these things think it will.
 
Battery life on all Apple products I've interacted with lately is just flat out impressive. This laptop is no exception.
 
It's the most expensive laptop I've ever owned. That changes my whole approach to how I travel with it. I have to be a lot more careful. I didn't realize how much I appreciated not worrying about my $400 Acer so much. This is more on me I guess but it's still a function of the machine. I do appreciate that full disk encryption is now a part of the OS. This puts it ahead of windows and helps it catch up with Linux a bit.
 
When Mac people are explaining some amazing feature to me that I've been using in KDE for years and years I do chuckle a little inside. Virtual desktops for example.
 
Multimonitor support is weak. It doesn't work as well as it does on my Win 7 machine. I don't think I'm alone in this. When I go to conferences it's a pretty steady stream of guys coming up to present and plugging their machines into the projector. It's the Mac guys that have the most trouble.
 
Speaking of that - my life was increasingly becoming dongle/incompatible power cord free. Apple just set me back quite a few years as I am not back to carrying around a bunch of wire and related junk that all just do one thing for one machine. I am not a fan of that whole mess.
 
It's very early on. I may end up turning into a true believer. Or maybe I'll have better options by the time I'm ready for a new machine. I'd love something with this build quality that ran Fedora well.

The fact that slashboxes have stopped working and I didn't see links for writing journals in the beta has me thinking that the site will move away from the level of personalization that it had before. So I'm thinking through what I'll do as a replacement. The idea I keep coming back to is I may go ahead and use a subreddit as my new journal. It would be a place I could post - people could follow it and respond if they were interested. It's possible to set one up so that people can read and comment but they can't submit posts themselves - basically what the slashdot journal is.

That seems the easiest. I have my blog too - but I've always liked having a 'spot' that is part of something bigger where I can post like this.

On the way to work this morning a co-host of some local radio station made an interesting point I thought. While "Republican In Name Only" traditionally meant a Liberal Republican, and therefore one who didn't really belong in the party, as the GOP nowadays seems to just want to be Democrat Lite, then to be a Republican is to be a moderate Progressive. Making me not a real Republican. Now I'm the RINO.

n/t

It is amazing the number of "gay cradle Catholic atheists" I meet who were trained by Jesuits during the worst of the clergy abuse years.

At the request of a fellow Catholic blogger, I'm reading Papal Economics by Fr. Maciej Zieba, OP. It occurred to me that since my journal circle has put up with my evolution from Karl to Groucho to Reinhard Marx, my thoughts on this book may be of some interest. I in fact already have five posts discussing the topics in the book.
  http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-utopia-of-jesus-christ.html
  http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-economics-of-sex.html
  http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/2014/02/private-property-is-under-mortgage-to.html
  http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/2014/03/decentralization-and-individual.html
  http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/2014/03/terry-pratchet-and-pope-john-paul-ii.html
Edit: ---
And the circle is complete as I blog about a comment in this journal