I've been moonlighting at autoblog. But i don't know why i do it. The comments there are ridiculous. Most things are easily broken down into the 'yuppy foreign car loving fags' and the 'broken tooth southern redneck who loves his domestic pickup.' I recently responded to this article about the new saturn aura. I posted this: (as comment # ??? )
#37 "When you drive the car, you are spending hours in it's interior, not staring at the chrome wheels or the foglamps." When I drive i prefer to stare at the road, at which point the car just melts away and all that matters is the feel of the car and the sounds from the stereo and exhaust. I am not going to buy an Accord or Camry so I can sit in it and stare at the interior.

Maybe I am missing something but I really, fundamentally, don't have a problem with my old '91 Oldsmobile. It gets good gas mileage and runs quite well. I don't plan on replacing it, maybe supplementing it with a 4x4 but that's it. I just can't understand these ricer kids' logic. Actually I haven't put the post up yet because the autoblog email confirmation hasn't been received yet. I guess in the end I keep going back to autoblog because I keep waiting to hear more specifics on when there is going to be a compact pickup coming out with a (turbo)diesel engine. If any of the three (though I don't like the dodge dakota's current look but I could get a wrangler instead) came out with such a vehicle I'd have already bought it. Maybe I should quit waiting for now and check back in 4 years.

Update: i forgot to include the link.

Just got back to my computer after being away for 4 solid days and I see all of these /. Messages about Thanksgiving and such. I probably won't read any ... not that I don't care what others have to say, it's just that i don't care what others have to say.

Now onto the good stuff: I was hoping to put up a range report about my Ruger New Vacquero .45 Colt revolver. (patience, the ruger site takes a while to load.) I was able to fire off 5 rounds and it shot a bit left. I'll have to put it on paper at 10, 25, and 50 yards sometime and get some scans to put up some other weekend. But other than that the gun felt great. I shot some Federal semi-wad cutter hollow points at 900 fps. w/ 405 ft lbs. of energy and the recoil was fine. Definitely less than my .40 caliber (s&w) semi-auto. I plan on putting some reloads together once I get enough brass and I'll put those at about 1000fps on up to 1100 fps. 1200fps or so is common on the Ruger Blackhawk, but my guns frame is just a little bit smaller so I won't push it that far.

On another note, my car got 30 miles per gallon on the last portion of driving for the weekend. I kept the Oldsmobile '88 under 70 on the interstate and I think that's the key to good mileage on the series uno 3800 v6. I didn't baby it the whole time either, did a little rodding around but I kept it low on the highways and all was well. It sounds like a goddamn pickup truck engine rolling down the road so I'll get it checked to see if it's lean or rich. .....anyways, peace. i'm out for now.

Does anyone have experience with this? I always thought it would be fun to write some apps or maybe even some games for a phone. A WinCE type cell phone goes for about $250. The only other option these days is BREW which I am frankly scared of more than with .NET. Though I suppose the performance problems may be the same as those with Java Embedded type stuff on phones; it would be nice to know before I drop $250 for a phone that is huge and I don't really want or need. Maybe I could write some stuff up, test in the visual studio device emulator, and then do some performance analysis on my boss's ppc 6700? haha. I know I could make a fun little racing game on this type of phone if the performance would be good enough. (Think RC Pro Am on a Gameboy. Something that wouldn't need a gas & brake button just two buttons for turning.)

Tonight on CNN there is/was a piece on Islamist aggression. Now I don't want to waste too much time here: The problem with Islam is that extremist views aren't easily silenced. The good Muslims don't have many/any courses of action in retaliation against their extremist brethren. For that matter, what happens when someone tries to leave the faith? They are outcast, sometimes killed. The women aren't treated fairly, the Dhimmi are ... dhimmi. How can a country under Muslim control escape this sharia? This lack of freedom -- especially religious freedom, this combination of church and state is FUCKING SICKENING! I don't think that Islam can be classified as a religion, not with these levels of sanctioned integration into society, law and government. Now don't get me wrong. I support the right of Muslims to practice religion as they see fit -- for now. I also am fully prepared to go get my guns. This is the fourth thing which I am prepared to lay down my life for: (This is because the practices of Islam infringe directly onto the first three.)
* God
* Family
* Country
* Fighting the Muslims

The only question that remains is how will the Civilized world get through this 'medieval period' of Islam? If there is not some massive undertaking on the part of the mainstream 'Islam Nation' to (1.) silence extremism and (2.) separate church and state I just don't see us escaping World War 3.

With this mic device
I spit nonfiction
Who got tha power
This be my question
Tha mass of the few
In this torn nation?
Tha priest tha book or tha congregation?
Tha politricks who rob and hold down your zone?
Or those who give tha thieves tha key to their homes?
Tha pig whos free to murder one
Shucklak
Or survivors who make a move and murder one back?

I am not sure why i brought up this quote. I guess I have always liked Rage Against the Machine and this one quote in particular. and from 'Take the Power Back':

The present curriculum
I put my fist in em
Eurocentric every last one of em
See right through the red, white and blue disguise
With lecture I puncture the structure of lies
Installed in our minds and attempting
To hold us back
Weve got to take it back
cause holes in our spirit causin tears and fears
One-sided stories for years and years and years
Im inferior? whos inferior?
Yea, we need to check the interior
Of the system that cares about only one culture
And that is why
We gotta take the power back

Now I am just a dork white boy gringo, but it does disturb me what this quote refers to. This is the real racism. I may be a racist on some levels, but I treat everyone equally as a person, and I certainly see differences in peoples/cultures/classes as being just that - different.

I read all your comments, and I have re-evaluated my decision and am going to slightly adjust it. I now realize that my initial desire for the /. JE system to be a bastion of technical discussion and personal growth may have been an unrealistic goal (since it was apparently only my goal). I will turn back on messages to other people's JE posts, but that is it. I am now often making article comments as annonymous since I don't really care to worry about what people say back. If i want to find out I can just check my "recent comment" list and see if there were replies - this is not a matter I will worry about checking often.

On the technical side: I would like to get into J2ME development for mobile phones (for fun) and develop some games or something but my current mobile phone provider appears to not offer a java enabled phone (alltel sucks the big one). Any one have insight on this?

On the less technical side, this Kerry thing is pissing me off a bit. I have a cousin in the military who went into the Army after high school. He is a bright kid as are his 3 brothers (2 w/ college degrees, 1 w/ technical school degree). A friend i graduated from high school with was a genius, went into the navy for nuclear engineer. Another friend is in the guards and isn't dumb either, and will work on a college degree as he goes (or after deployment). Who the fuck does Kerry think he is? So of the three close people i know of that are or were in the military none are dumb. neither is my uncle (father of said cousin) who was in vietnam; did the rotc thing then went, now farms. I have a great uncle that was in Korea who isn't dumb either but never received a degree. There are bound to be some dumb people in any type of work like this (not requiring college degree, etc). To call out the whole armed forces and say such a thing is rediculous. Why kerry thought saying such a thing was necessary or a direct correlation is confusing; sure people in the military may not always have a college degree but to speculate (albeit indirectly) that they don't have the capacity? It is possible that I am out of line and mis-interpreting what he said though : "I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member or American who was offended," Kerry said in a statement Wednesday. Needless to say his joke has not been well received.

i am done with the /. journal entry system. it (in my view) is a failure as an efficient means for discussion among the /. community. i had perceived it as another route to learn about and discuss technical issues. but it has only a few times done this, and the rest of the time is useless banter. my recent discussions with pudge is the icing on the cake. you can look at my recent comment list to see, but frankly i don't care as i am now turning messages off and am getting back to doing shit with my life instead of wasting it checking slashdot too often. i'll check replies to this je in a few days but to all those i've befriended, later.

Setting up an externally viewable mysql database server is relatively easy. I used Solaris 10/sparc64 as the mysql server and WindowsXP/jdk1.5.0 as the client. It's running something ancient, like:

Last login: Wed Oct 25 18:51:39 2006 from 192.168.1.104
Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.10 s10_72 December 2004
$ mysql --version
mysql Ver 12.21 Distrib 4.0.15, for sun-solaris2.10 (sparc)
$

This is something of a milestone for me, as even during Software Engineering class I had the mysql server local on the windows box. Suffice to say here's the best way to do this: read the documentation. Mysql has great stuff on their website as does Java on their site. I could tell you the steps I used but that's really not necessary, read the documentation and take your time. (If you would indeed like me to i could write up something of a tutorial.) The one thing i'm not entirely sure of is how secure this data flow is, but it probably doesn't matter as long as it stays on the 'local' area network! I'll probably load up Ethereal sometime to see.

Here's the java code i wrote to test the connection:

/*
* Main.java
*
* Created on October 23, 2006, 10:19 PM
*
* To change this template, choose Tools | Template Manager
* and open the template in the editor.
*/

package javaapplication1;

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.sql.Statement;
import java.sql.ResultSet;

/**
*
* @author James
*/
public class Main {

/** Creates a new instance of Main */
public Main() {
}

/**
* @param args the command line arguments
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
// TODO code application logic here
try {
// The newInstance() call is a work around for some
// broken Java implementations

Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
String url = "jdbc:mysql://192.168.1.106:3306/";
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url, "userNameHere", "userPasswordHere");
Statement s = conn.createStatement();
ResultSet rs = s.executeQuery("SELECT Host, User FROM mysql.user;");
while (rs.next()) {
System.out.println(rs.getString("Host") + " " + rs.getString("User"));
}

} catch (Exception ex) {
// handle the error
System.out.println("sup now bitch" + ex.getMessage());
}
}

}

Sorry about the tabs getting chopped off.

PS: four journal entries in one day, that's retarded of me. i'll slow down now.

Pudge and i recently had somewhat of an argument over politics. at the end of which he/she felt it was best to mark me as foe. i still have left pudge as a 'friend' and am not going to re-evaluate that any time soon. basically i replied to someone in pudge's je, after which pudge replied to me and refuted several of my statements. pudge's rebuttals fall within, and are in alignment with, his world-view as a republican. I questioned the bush's administration, stating various things which i did not approve of: I fail to see how post 9/11 policies are better for America. We have lost freedoms, increased national debt, stretched our military thin, and our military is in serious need of better equipment. Not to mention: in all likelyhood we are just as succeptible to attack as before 9/11. The terrorists attacks on 9/11 were probably a long time coming and we were going to have some attacks happen eventually, what we are doing now as a result is in-excusable. Not only is our social security system in trouble, so will our veterans programs be. Our federal government is writing checks that our butts can't cash. The next few years of petroleum stability are not better because of our war on terrorism either. src Basically the cost of this extra 'security' is too much! Pudge doesn't think our military is stretched thin, but John McCain does. It is interesting that the person(bmetzler (12546)) I replied to didn't reply to me.

It is my belief that it cannot be proven that we are safer now. Sure steps are in place that are likely to prevent further attacks of certain nature, but the likelyhood and possibility of future attacks remain the same. This is not a bad thing or a good thing, it is just reality. I don't want the government to be allowed warrantless wire-tapping for 'national security'. I will say, that given all the evidence most of the decisions made are probably not bad decisions, but as citizens we must question our government. The current executive branch (though they're not the only ones with blame), is showing habits that indicate that it doesn't like to share information with the people; this is not good.

For an example about the government hiding information one example is Wen Ho Lee's book My Country Versus Me. The short of it is that had the FBI released evidence in a timely manner, the later allegations would have been harder to fabricate. An interview from 1982 (i think) was kept private, later 'lost, and they had to 'reconstruct' it to fall within their view that he was a spy. He was not a spy, and they ruined his reputation. Had that earlier interview been made public they would have had a much harder time trying to prove his guilt. They also would have had no reason to jail him indefinitely before his trial -or not allowed him to post bail. This is something that I feel very strongly about, but apparently this and past administrations felt that privacy is more important than knowledge. I wonder if parallels can be made to cryptography algorithms being more secure with more eyes (and how our nation is not more secure, just kept in the dark when evidence is not shared with the people)?

Anyways, i'm sorry that Pudge had to foe me but maybe it's for the best. being called dishonest is something i am not ok with. if i am in error i will apologize, but i'm not going to try to argue with someone who thinks they're always right.

OMG it is/hopefully finally going to happen! Over at autoblog is posted info about a Jeep Concept vehicle. It is at the core a Jeep Unlimited Rubicon (dana 44, dana 60, all that shiznit) but with a DCX 4.2 V6 Diesel. I'm pretty sure it's a turbo but it doesn't mention that here. (no one -basically no one makes a diesel that's not blown) This utility vehicle would be perfect. I'd buy one and leave it with my brother out on the farm. I want this so bad. For a while I was considering buyin a '97 and later Wrangler and putting in a deisel but I couldn't figure out which engine i'd use. Damn I want this vehicle. A current gas '07 wrangler rubicon is $28K, with that v6 deisel it can't be too much more, maybe $32K or $33K.

First hebeserena (1016886) and now BLANCHE.APRIL (1015425). @$$hole keeps putting up JE related to some encoding/decoding programs. I foed both but it doesn't change the fact that I see their Journal Entries in the all inclusive JE search.

This weekend will be awesome. I am going hunting ringneck pheasants in one of the greatest states and locations to hunt them, South Dakota. Here's another picture of one. It will be the second time back to the farm after my grandpa died.

I also thoroughly cleaned my shotgun (a Winchester 1300 12 ga.) last night and I'm ready for another great fall season. Speaking of such things I really should find another Model 12. For those that may not know, the old Winchester Model 12 shotgun is probalby one of the best, if not the best pump action you can get. They sell used for anywhere around $400 and on up, but they're worth it. We've got 3 i think but I'd love another, especially a 16 guage. My dad speaks of that combination as though man doesn't even deserve it.

I have been delaying writing this album review because frankly I don't know what to say. I guess I'm disappointed. I have listened to it several times now and I can't get used to it. The energy is gone, the singing is better but the music lacks the intensity that 'Ascendancy' had. Start up a song like 'Like light to flies' and it just is a pure on-slaught. 'Declaration' starts off slow with a great intro, and then starts the thrash up. Even the more melodic and less screamy 'Dying in your arms' is more interesting than the stuff on 'The Crusade.' Notables non the less: 'and sadness will sear', 'becoming the dragon', 'to the rats', 'tread the floods', 'contempt breeds contamination.'

The album has just about no play through potential, which really caught me off guard. I am not impressed. On the bright-side I also picked up Fear Factory's Demanufacture which is an excellent album (circa 1995, sorta Industrial/Thrash Metal) and very worthy of listening to.

BTW: today is one of those days I really wish I wasn't developing on the Windows platform, or with bad C code.

it's a cold day out there. wind gusts of 26mph my arse.

I personally see no problem with the GPL. People that see problems with the GPL should simply not use GPL code with their projects. It's not a hard concept at all. In response to this i posted this.

I guess if anyone sees his point and would like to post a rebuttal to what I said feel free.