After searching for an MP3 player on the car i bought a cheap player and a harness. After finding a howto video onYoutube i went ahead and installed the radio.

I lost two screws during the installation. The previous radio had a piece of metal that attached to the radio and to the car, each side with two screws. I lost one of each. How? I'm glad you asked. The attach-to-the-car screws were too hard to unscrew with the Phillips screwdriver, so i used another screwdriver that i got at Dollar Tree to go around the sides of the screw. That worked. The first came out nicely. The second did too, except (for some unknown reason) i stopped in the middle and continued by hand, which ended in a lost screw.

The attach-to-the-radio screws were simple. I had this great idea to attach the piece to the new radio. There was only space for one screw, but who cares, one is better than none. So, i tried installing the radio with dangling metal piece in the car. Wondering why i could not find the piece from under the dash, it hit me that the radio, being half the length, would not reach the bar. Duh! Seriously. I knew it was half the size, i even took pictures of it being half the size. But it still didn't dawn on me that half as long meant it would not reach to the same distance. Anyway, upon removal of the radio the screw fell. I now have two screws loose in the car. During the installation, when taking one of the panels off, a Canadian nickel fell out of a drawer which i dutifully put back. Too bad it wasn't a dollar. Had it been a dollar you could say there's a loony in my car with a couple of screws loose. Come to think of it, you can say that now anyway. Hmm... if i listen to music, we could work tune-ey into that pun. And yes, the former was probably the main impetus of writing this JE. I admit it.

The USB worked. Well, i thought it worked until it started playing the same mp3 over and over again. So, i re-downloaded LoTR, this time including The Silmarillion by another reader. Once at it, i downloaded The Hobbit by the same reader, in preparation for an upcoming trip. On a side note, i realized these are actually for sale at audible:

• The Hobbit
• The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Two Towers
• The Return of the King

Unfortunately, those are expensive. LoTR itself would be over $100. Being i liked the recording so much, and now i now it is still for sale, i would think of paying for it. But not at that price! I would rather not have listened to it at all for that, or just use some cheaper. So, what will i do for The Hobbit? But, i digress.

I tried listening to the mp3s. Previously, i deleted all mp3s except the appendix, which is what i am up to. The player played the first one over and over again never advancing to the next file. So, last night, not finding LoTR on my computer, i downloaded LoTR (including the Silmarillion) and The Hobbit, and put them on the USB (i deleted the earlier files forgetting they now existed in .Trashes) as there is no reason to split the mp3s anymore. On the way to office it played the introduction to the appendix over and over. Using next or the +/-10 didn't help. Random did, but only while random was selected. Deselecting it made it repeat what file it was on (unless it was the appendix that it played). Perhaps this is due to having more than one level of sub-folders.

I really need to leave hidden files showing on my mac. Now to delete .fseventsd, .Spotlight-V100, .Trashes, ._.Trashes, ._.DS_Store and .DS_Store from the usb key. Done. The next test will be on the ride home.

Eat it, liars:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/noaanasa-dramatically-altered-us-temperatures-after-the-year-2000/

I guess that the rest of the paper is actually good, past the layer of scum on the front page. Nevertheless Walmart's fisking of the NYT is good fun, (hat tip Instapundit).

On this week's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee , Sarah Jessica Parker uses the phrase "that's not politic." I guess I don't get out enough in wealthy leftoid circles to know that "politically correct" has been reduced to one word, and that is the context that she used it.

It was on the tail of her gem that there used to be signs in NYC that said "No Irish, No Entertainers, No Jews, No ..." Which is another new one on me. Her rendition of the "No Irish, No Negroes, Need Apply/Served Here/etc." now includes "entertainers."

While looking for a reference to, well anything that could be called research, related to this "No" sign, I found this interesting paper by Richard J. Jensen from 12/12/2004:

"No Irish Need Apply":
A Myth of Victimization
Abstract (the whole article at the link)

Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song, "No Irish Need Apply," purportedly by a maid looking for work. The song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the Irish--on the contrary, employers eagerly sought them out. Some Americans feared the Irish because of their religion, their use of violence, and their threat to democratic elections. By the Civil War these fears had subsided and there were no efforts to exclude Irish immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory.

As mentioned in the paper, certainly the occasional mention was made. One could read the NYT classifieds every day for 20 years in the 19th century and find the reference perhaps twice. The NINA signs appeared in England, but did not seem to make it across the pond in any numbers that could be called prolific.

And now, an actress wishes to add entertainers to the myth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOZ4KUD6C7s

Jay Carney: I Never Told A Lie
I am seriously interested, as an intellectual matter, just what the man's definition of 'lie' is.
There are national security matters that are off the table--got it.
Then there is carrying out orders--understood.
I guess the only way I can buy Carney's line is if the scope of the statement pertains solely to any matters of personal opinion into which he ventured while on the job.

Interesting article: http://evolver.fm/2012/10/04/guest-opinion-why-24192-music-downloads-make-no-sense/

Ain't got time to read or reply.

Yeah:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/190347/
That was quite a lawyerly slap in the face. "The dog ate two years of our email" nonsense isn't flying. I guess maybe Rachel Maddow and some of the slack-jawed sycophants on here are buying this steamer. It's all of a piece with Benghazi, ObamaCare, and Berdahl. What a river of lies.

Stossel's show was irritating tonight. The topic was Conservatism vs. Libertarianism. As a Libertarian, Stossel misrepresented Conservatism, and various Conservatives were on appealing to the same things Lefties appeal to; the greater good, majority norms.

Stossel said he used to be a Liberal, so that explains enough of an inability to think straight about things to be able to be a Libertarian. But it's shocking how Conservatives seem blithely unaware that effectively saying it's okay to legislate morality, means then the other side can legislate its morality on us. (And where we're only for it in certain cases, the Left is for doing it all but a few cases. I.e. it's a patently dangerous idea, and used vastly more against us than in what we favor.)

I might journal about some of the topics later (maybe if I can find a refresher of my memory of it on youtube), but the show spurred a chain of thinking on a particular topic that led me to the following.

Let's say I'm a landlord, and I'm also bigoted against homosexuals (which I am, but not in the following way), and refused to rent to them. Most people would say the government should step in and force me to rent to them. I.e. Despite homosexuals offending my sensibilities, I should be forced to associate with them anyways. Because otherwise they could potentially have a hard time finding a rental place to live.

Now let's say that instead I'm a landlord, and I don't refuse to rent to them, but I'm a very outspoken disparager of them in the region, and the homosexual community knows it. And let's say the homosexual community represents a significant %-age of the region. What if I'm having trouble keeping the complex full all the time? Should the government force some homosexuals to live in my complex and pay me rent, despite my offending their sensibilities?

And what about quotas. Lefties say that if a community is 10% Black, then roughly 10% of the programming jobs in that community must be filled with Blacks. Else there's racial inequities.

Well janitorial jobs, at least around here, seem to be disproportionately filled by Hispanics. Should the government tell Black people in that area that 10% of them need to switch careers into the custodial arts?

It seems like either quotas are a good idea or they aren't. And it seems like if it's good to force association between parties when one desires not to do so, then it's good.

If it's one thing I can respect Libertarians for, it's at least they're consistent*

*Well, except for their being pro-choice, which flies squarely in the face of being for individual rights.

I'm moving to a theory that carpet bombing with falsehood is all the Progressives have left. A good, but painful data point on the road to recovery.

President Barack "Lawnchair" Obama forces striking Philadelphia Transit Workers Back to Work. While he didn't go so far as to fire them, he did break up the strike for at least the next 1-4 months.

...

...

My employer pretty-well insisted that I get a certification. They went so far as to pay for the training and the first exam attempt.

To that end, I'm working on GCUX through SANS. So far, so good. It's pretty interesting.

From what I'm reading about how to prepare for the exam itself, it would be to my benefit to prepare a thorough index- something in the area of 30-50 pages long. O_O

Does anyone have any experience with that sort of thing? How does one know what should be in the index and what should not?

It started with the ability to show a network logo watermark. Networks would show a translucent version of their logo in the bottom corner for a few seconds, after resuming from a commerical break. Evidently someone who makes tons of money thought it was important that you be reminded where you're seeing the currently airing content.

I didn't mind that, at all. Stupid, but not really obnoxious. Then they moved onto the phase where they left that up all the time. I took me a while to train my brain to tune that out. Until I was able to, it annoyed the hell out of me.

Then they moved on to the next phase, of colored-in/opaque logos, that they leave up all the time. I.e. blocking part of the content (in that corner), all the time.

Then came promos for other shows on the network, after coming back from an ad break, that took up much or all of the bottom portion of what you're fucking trying to watch. I.e. all the commercials played, the movie has resumed, and you're trying to get back into it, and then here comes an overlay commercial, while the movie is still going. Sometimes it's animated, so basically you miss part of the movie they're showing.

So last night I'm flipping thru, and FX is showing some Ice Age or other cartoon animals movie (not at all my cup of tea, so I don't really know). Now I don't know if it had just come back from break or not, but it popped up an ad for the sequel to whatever it was, evidently now playing in theaters or coming soon.

I.e. they've taken the overlays from just promos for the network, to content-related adverts. I don't have for example a "smart TV", so maybe this has already started in other things.

I used to look forward to progress. When it meant a better picture, or more hp at an affordable price point, or easier and more advanced programming ways.

It's like standard of living is a bell curve. As technologies and advancement of capabilities has increased, our standard of living increased. But ever increasing capabilities doesn't seem to equal better quality of living, forever. My DVD player says "operation not permited by disc". WTF? Cars now have gadgetry to wrench the steering wheel from you or press the brakes behind your back. My dad can't go to a favorite finance site anymore, because it watched a few of his clicks and now doesn't show him general news but only the things relating the few topics it last remembers him clicking on. (I could try deleting cookies, as long as it's not fingerprinting him in other ways.)

So I don't think it's just old-fogeyism. I just like things that are better, not worse. And when you start running out of ways to make things better, I guess it's human nature to just keep on going, because the capabilities do. Didn't we used to be thinkers, or is that just another faulty assumption, about how the world works, of mine from childhood?

p.s. I have the flu, and feel miserable so I'm probably more babbling here than my normal level of babbling on.

...the more they stay the same. I think.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about how I stopped playing WoW and took up ST:TOR. Now, I don't even play that.

Things have been a bit hectic at my house- My wife's computer died (constant, unpredictable reboots and a corrupted hard drive), so she's taken to playing WoW on my system. She raids often, now that she's found a guild that does that sort of thing in the morning. My sleeping period has me getting up late morning. By then, I have an errand or two to do before I start getting ready for work. Rinse, repeat.

I need a vacation.