http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/ I'm bald, I'm a geek, and I have an opinion. Check in every now and then and see how silly it is. en Copyright 2010 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:04:30 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Ballmer, excuse me, posterior. Read the depressing details here, if you dare. Basically, M$ is getting unconditional amnesty from the financially strapped state of Washington for past tax evasion. We're talking OVER A BILLION DOLLARS. Corporate crooks have long existed in American business. Meet the most prominent one today. ]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/02/microsoft_taxpaying_as_opposed.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/02/microsoft_taxpaying_as_opposed.php Annoyances Ballmer Injustice Microsoft tax evasion Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:04:30 -0600 5x12 wouldn't be willing to toss a few bucks or Euros their way because of the enjoyment that the venerable work continues to provide. The problem is that there is no way to do that, short of mailing a check made out to Mick Jagger to what you hope is his home address. Their record company would never allow it. And the RIAA, of which their record company is an affiliate, would never, ever, EVER allow it. Fans, it's time to change the business model.]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/02/compensating_musicians_and_rec.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/02/compensating_musicians_and_rec.php Annoyances RIAA Sat, 13 Feb 2010 07:59:03 -0600

March 1996: cocaine possession at a hotel party celebrating his 30th birthday. Irvin showing up to court in a full-length mink coat. He pled no contest to the charges and was sentenced to community service, ordered to pay a $10,000 fine, and put on 4-years probation. My favorite part of the whole disgusting mess: Irvin asking an arresting cop "Do you know who I am?"

1998: Irvin allegedly inflicted a two-inch cut in the neck of Dallas guard Everett McIver. McIver did not press charges, and rumors swirled that Irvin brokered a six-figure settlement with McIver to drop the matter. Accounts of this incident after the alleged settlement became difficult to find or research in the local Dallas press.

2000: Irvin was arrested on drug possession charges.In this case, Irvin was in a Dallas apartment with an unrelated woman. Police entered the apartment forcibly and found drugs. Irvin and the female were placed under arrest, though charges against Irvin were later dropped.

]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/02/michael_irvin_and_the_art_of_s.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/02/michael_irvin_and_the_art_of_s.php Annoyances Annoyances ESPN Michael Irvin Sat, 06 Feb 2010 06:22:48 -0600 I Hate the Home Team!, a forum for folks to gripe about having relocated somewhere far away from their beloved favorite teams, and who are now forced to deal with local media and fans of teams which they likely don't care about. Anyhoo, I decided to give SMF (Simple Machines Forum) a try. The open-source product is absolutely amazing! I recommend anyone out there starting/running a forum to give them a try. Not only does it install painlessly (with shell access, anyway, my preferred way of doing business), but the platform is absolutely loaded with add-on modules written by the community. There are hundreds of themes to choose from. I settled on the Black Phoenix look, simply because I didn't have hours to peruse every example. I was looking for a lean, mean, clean look, and Black Phoenix worked perfectly. It's in the modules themselves where SMF shines like a beacon.]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/01/great_forum_software.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/01/great_forum_software.php Software FOSS Software Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:45:29 -0600 Rolling Stone magazine and myself began a relationship that continues today. Though I gave up the extreme left-wing articles several years ago, I continue to hit their website to get the only truly unbiased opinions of what music is good or otherwise. Now Rolling Stone album reviews aren't perfect. I remember they trashed ABBA pretty hard during the late 70's, and I've come to appreciate the tight harmonies and flawless engineering of their stuff in my more mellow years. And so has, for that matter, Rolling Stone, being kinder to them in retrospective reviews than they were at the time. But the fact is that when RS gives out an infrequent five-star review, it's because the artist has earned it, producing a great work that transcends musical genre. Thus, a rock and roll fan can listen to Bill Monroe's Bean Blossom and know that he was hearing the best bluegrass music that is out there. And that's how my own musical appreciation eventually spread out to include music other than that produced by loudly amplified electric guitar. However, five stars is the highest honor that can be bequeathed upon an album by the Powers that Be over at RS. So, the question arises: what can you do when a master has accumulated a lifetime of musical accomplishments that all rate five stars? How do you discern the greatest of the great?]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/01/the_problem_with_being_a_long-.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/01/the_problem_with_being_a_long-.php Everything Else Bruce Springsteen Rolling Stone Sun, 24 Jan 2010 07:46:51 -0600 I love Ubuntu. It's been my choice for a desktop Linux for three years. But I just veered down a side road. it's still Ubuntu under the hood, but the distro is actually Linux Mint. Mint is basically Ubuntu with all proprietary codecs thrown in. It also comes with its own menu manager. It's released a month or so after Ubuntu. I recently upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10, and something went screwy. I was getting X crashes, anywhere from one a week to several a day. I've successfully upgraded in the past, but this was a bad one. So I was going to have to rebuild. I decided to give Mint a shot. I'd heard good things about it. I wasn't disappointed.]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/01/linux_with_a_minty_flavor.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2010/01/linux_with_a_minty_flavor.php Ubuntu/Other Linux FOSS Linux Software Ubuntu Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:33:30 -0600 This is a tale of two golfers who decided to suspend their play. The first one found out that his wife of thirteen years had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The golfer immediately decided that golf was a secondary pastime, pushed far to the rear by the more immediate concern for his lady's health. So the first one made an announcement that he would be taking a break from the Tour, to be by his wife's side as she began aggressive treatment to wipe out the dreaded disease. His fellow golfers joined in on the cause. His good friend John Daly wore a pink pair of pants during a tournament. ALL golfers at the following week's tournament wore pink, in support of the golfer, his wife, and his family. Two months after his announcement of a hiatus, the world rejoiced when the golfer revealed that his wife's cancer had been contained. He would be rejoining the Tour. In September, two months later, the first golfer, four strokes back on Sunday morning, would go on to defeat the second golfer at the Tour Championship. The first golfer would epitomize the well-loved and and admired family man and good sport, and would earn the admiration of untold millions. That brings us to the second golfer to take time off from the Tour. http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/12/two_golfers_take_time_off.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/12/two_golfers_take_time_off.php Everything Else Golf Tiger Woods Sun, 20 Dec 2009 08:45:19 -0600 At my workplace, I've managed to integrate Linux and Active Directory so that I can use AD groups to control access to intranet sites. That was quite a breakthrough, allowing me to move my MySQL/PHP-driven apps onto Linux, where they feel most at home. I'm going to be learning asp and asp.net web development, so I built a Server 2008 machine this week where all of my new development will be living. I've managed 2000 and 2003 Server installs, so I know how things work. But let me say this: If you think Vista was an abortion, it's NOTHING compared to the piece of crap that is Windows 2008 Server. Basically, an admin is treated like an idiot. Things like managing services now involve at least two more mouse-clicks. I'm behind a strong firewall, I don't need Windows Firewall. But guess what? You CAN'T turn on Terminal Services unless Windows Firewall is running! Here's what it amounts to: our OS is so inherently unsecure that we are going to forbid you to make a connection to it unless our firewall is on. What rubbish. http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/11/oh_my_dear_lord_whats_happened.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/11/oh_my_dear_lord_whats_happened.php Annoyances Annoyances Microsoft Software Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:51:57 -0600 http://www.affordy.com/. It's not free, but you get a bunch of test drives from the iso. And if you decide it's for you, it's a measly 25 bucks. It's also Ubuntu-based. Basically, these folks have duplicated the Windows environment for those wanting to try something else, but who have gotten used to the MS way of running your computer. I'll have more to say after I actually run the desktop, but it looks extremely impressive. They're based in Israel (so a nice "up yours" to Al Qaeda fans by using it), and I hope that they've covered their tracks legally. After all, they actually include Internet Explorer in the distro. Anyhoo, check it out.]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/11/have_you_heard_of_titan_lev.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/11/have_you_heard_of_titan_lev.php Ubuntu/Other Linux Linux Software Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:08:34 -0600 WAS. That machine was a dog. It was as slow as a GX1 with a 350 MHz processor that I once had. It was driving me nuts to see its processor pegged at 100% for a full minute every time I switched websites in Dreamweaver. It has a gig of fully-VMWare-dedicated RAM, BTW. The server, FWIW, runs ONLY VMWare. No other applications at all, except for McAfee in the background and periodically scanning. And VMWare is running a total of TWO machines. Mine, and a utility machine running scheduled Access queries to keep databases of various flavors updated through the magic of linked tables. So I suggested reformatting it and installing CentOS5, along with the Linux flavor of VMWare. Good idea, said the powers that be, but we'll need to temporarily move those machines over to a new home. No prob, said I, I have a two-year old Dell GX620 with dual core Intel power and three gigs of RAM just sittin' around. I'll stick CentOS on there and make sure it and VMWare get along.]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/10/running_windows_server_i_admir.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/10/running_windows_server_i_admir.php Software Annoyances Microsoft Software Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:07:01 -0600 I love Ubuntu. However, I'm not nuts about the six month rewrites. So, I decided to try a couple of less-often-rewritten distros on a Dell GX 755. A month later, I'm back to Ubuntu. Here's why: http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/08/ubuntu_it_just_works.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/08/ubuntu_it_just_works.php Ubuntu/Other Linux Linux Software Ubuntu Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:33:39 -0600 this fix for 8.10, but no amount of coaxing could persuade it to work with Jaunty. Enter Sun's VirtualBox.]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/07/thanks_vmware_but_its_time_to.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/07/thanks_vmware_but_its_time_to.php Software Software VirtualBox VMWare Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:22:15 -0600 Update: HSBC claims that I didn't request my credit balance to be mailed to me on 6/24/2009, the day I closed this account. In other words, they claim that I closed my account and, in essence, told them to keep the money. It will now take up to 21 days. During this time, they deducted 19 dollars from my balance for what they claim is accrued interest. The saga goes on, and if you are doing business with these people, I strongly suggest you consider dropping them and giving someone your trade who knows how to treat customers. I've been too busy posting lots of fossil pics over at my new site, What Is This Fossil?, to spend much time updating this blog. So, it's time for a nice gripe-fest. Why have so many companies forgotten what customer service is? Why do they tie their employees' hands so that they can't help their customers even if they want to? Specifically, I'm talking about HSBC bank, their credit card program in particular. We lost about 1500 bucks in monthly income last year, and it made things financially dicey. I did a refi on my house to stop the bleeding, and we're back on track now, I'm happy to say. But there was a time in January when I made an online payment to HSBC, and unfortunately, the direct payment from my bank account bounced. They had to run it through a second time. Jump ahead six months. The refi is closed, a cashier's check is mailed to HSBC. I log into their site and track its progress. Finally, credit is given. However, my card is unable to be used. So, I call the 800 number and finally get a rep online. It's some dude from way overseas who obviously has no decision-making power, so I ask for his boss. She gets on and explains that they have a"policy" of waiting five business days after posting payment in the case of someone who has had a payment returned. I respect that, I said, but reminded her that payment was made in the form of a cashier's check. Darn it to heck, she wished there was something she could do, but it's policy. She can't change it. "Look" I said. One of two things is going to happen here. Either you're going to lift this hold, so that I can begin using this card for my corporation, or else this account will be canceled on the spot. One minute later, HSBC and I had parted ways. Bad move. I'll be making lots of purchases for my little corporation in my newborn favorable financial situation, and paying the card off monthly. Now, that privileged arrangement belongs to Capital One. Oh well. At least HSBC can take comfort in the fact that their policies are apparently un-overrideable.]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/07/crappy_customer_service.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/07/crappy_customer_service.php Annoyances Annoyances Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:43:50 -0600 A small brachiopod, but exquisitely detailed. The soft rock preserves extremely fine details, as you will learn by continuing.]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/06/fossils_from_soft_rock_benton.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/06/fossils_from_soft_rock_benton.php Everything Else Fossils Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:38:45 -0600 This is exactly the SECOND crinoid calyx I've ever found. The first one still lies in the wash in the woods on my Pea Ridge, Arkansas farm home I enjoyed when I was fourteen. It's in a slab that was too massive for a kid to mess with. It's just as well. I'm sure I would have misplaced it by now, as I did with a bunch of massive oysters I found in Austin, Texas construction sites as a kid.]]> http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/06/fossils_from_a_recent_escapade.php http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog/2009/06/fossils_from_a_recent_escapade.php Everything Else Fossils Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:12:35 -0600