House of the rising Moonglum

Am I a bad person? I am getting waaay too much enjoyment out of all the apple news today.

The people in Cupertino have been busy monkeys lately. So what were the updates today? iPhone/iTouch firmware update, 5 EFI firmware updates (for all the intel macs), as well as keynote, pages, numbers and iWeb updates. Pretty impressive. Someone at apple hates customer support. But the thing that has really been making my day fun is reading all the drama about the people who unlocked their phones to use with other carriers who are now trying to figure out what to do. There are posts all over the web and they all keep getting updated as more info comes in. One minute it turns your iPhone into an expensive brick, the next it doesn’t. Tons of FUD and chaos and no one knows what is really happening.

Oh the humanity!

Mostly I just wanted to say that. Chicagoist points out that the DHS is suing the state of Illinois, to not allow them to enact a law that doesn’t allow companies to use a spotty DHS database. (Yes, all those negatives are needed.) The case has the provocative name “The United States of America v. The State of Illinois”. (But what does it mean? I don’t know, but it’s provocative.)

Recent studies have shown that both acupuncture and “fake acupuncture” help relieve back pain. This is awesome, you don’t even need to be an actual acupuncturist, just poke some needles in the back and watch the pain go away. So far the operating theory is that the stimuli distract the brain from the pain coming from the injury, though the effects last for a considerable amount of time. I think I’ll stick with my stretching and exercises for now though, thank you very much. If I really believe that they will work, do I get the placebo effect as well?

As anyone who has read this blog for a while knows, I feel pretty strongly that once you have overthrown a existing government, you have a responsibility to stay in until a (effective) new government is in place. When Obama said that he wants to bring all the troops home now, I was actually pretty upset with that statement. It felt rushed and not well thought out. But the more I look at what is happening now, looking at charts of the number of Iraqi’s killed, and the number of soldiers killed, any up or down is a local change. The global trend is a constant. We have been in Iraq longer than we were fighting in World War II now. I begin to see Obama’s point, but there is still this nagging feeling that we would be abandoning the Iraqis if we pulled out.

And then, on the Daily show last night, I heard the most compelling argument to pull out yet. Ret. Gen. Wesley Clark is giving a football analogy to Jon Stuart, saying Patraeus is the reserve QB brought in in the fourth quarter, and told to “Pass Pass Pass”. Jon comes back with the obvious response, But he wrote the book on running plays and isn’t being allowed to use it! To which Wesley responds, “it’s too late to do the strategy that he wanted to do because we’ve already lost the hearts and the minds of the Iraqis by the conduct of the first three years.”

Read that last line again. If that is true, it doesn’t matter how many troops we have over there. More, less, they are no longer able to contribute to the process. That is a horrifying thought. I have to admit I am coming around to Obama’s position.

And now before the election of the president, you get yet another anti-syrian lawmaker assassinated in Lebanon. I haven’t posted about Lebanon in a while, but things have been pretty crazy over there this summer. The army showed some real courage and actually engaged in some heavy fighting to get rid of Palestinian terrorist elements within their country. Unfortunately they are still no match for (Syrian backed) Hizbollah which still claims to be the true defenders of Lebanon. Never mind the democratically elected government. So now when the government is on the verge of a major presidential election another anti-syria member of parliament is killed? And we thought we had election problems here, they just keep killings the anti-syria MPs. What a mess.

Jackie’s still being open. The fire didn’t go out of the one apartment.

Discovering a new middle eastern restaurant within walking distance.

Stepping back and noticing how far you have come on a multi year project.

My wife was pointing out how good life was earlier today, and I was just thinking how many good things I noticed today as well. Life is good.

I recently posted about three people being shot in a week in Uptown. It could be worse, apparently Richmond, CA (used to be on my commute to work) has had three killed and 11 injured in one day during a bit of a gang war. Not only that, but the police are being targeted as well, by snipers. Richmond was always bad, my paramedic friend always wore a kevlar vest when he worked there, but snipers? 30 shots into a crowd? That is a war zone.

Update: More police shot, this time in Florida. What is going on here?

So, I was driving north last night around 10:30 (maybe a little earlier) and I wanted some Ice Cream. I’m not sure what Jackey’s normal hours are, but they never seem to be open when I am coming home from the late class, thus I was unsurprised to see that they were closed. I was a little surprised that they had the lights half on though. So I headed north and went north to the Baskin Robbin’s instead. Then when I was headed back south and home, I heard and saw a bunch of fire trucks coming in from every direction. I assume that the fatal fire in an apartment above an ice cream parlor is in fact the building Jackey’s is in. The 2400 block of Lunt certainly describes that. I assume the fire is personal and has nothing to do with the business, but still… having the building your business is in lit on fire. And if it turns out to be a murder as well. I am just glad that more people weren’t hurt, a fire in an apartment complex is never a good thing.

I am a bad feminist and I certainly don’t care about pop culture, so this is a pretty unusual post for me. I have to say however that when reading the Trib review of Brittany Spears’ performance at the MTV awards show, one thing jumped out at me in particular. While I agree that her performance was horrible (though I do kind of appreciate not even bothering to move her lips when lip syncing for that one part) I have to take issue with the notion that she is fat. Good lord, she is thinner than me, AND she has had two kids. There are plenty of reasons why she shouldn’t have worn that (lack of) costume, but her body isn’t one of them.

I’ve always known that my new neighborhood wasn’t as safe as my old neighborhood, but that honestly has more to do with the fact that my old neighborhood was quite safe for Chicago. A city is still a dangerous place though, as the three fatal shootings in the last week within 10 blocks of my old place point out.

I have to say, I’m pretty impressed by the off duty officer who tailed the murderer all the way down lake shore drive to the field. I do have to wonder what crazy maneuver the cab driver has to do to lose a tail on LSD though… I hope the police are able to find this guy quickly. It is spooky that someone can pull up in a cab, get out and shoot someone, and get back in the cab and get away. We had a similar shooting up here a while back, and I never did hear if they ever caught the guy.

I went with my wife to see the U505 exhibit down at the Museum of Science and Industry today. It was a really moving experience, not for the submarine, but rather the displays of what the country was going through at the time. There was a war, and everyone was involved. We decided that it was a war that we had to win and we placed the entire might of the USA behind winning it.

I remember bush saying something about not fighting a war with one arm tied behind our back, and letting our military do its job, but I see a war that has now gone on longer than the US involvement in World War II. I look around and I see more SUVs on the road, I see people going through their lives not even thinking about the fact that we are at war. I see the face of a military being pushed to the breaking point. And I see no request for sacrifice from the top. Where is the rationing? Where is the Marshall Plan? Where is the draft? I don’t see this nation doing it’s fullest to win this war.

So which is it George, are we at war or aren’t we? It is my personal opinion that if we decide as a country to fight a war, we should throw everything we have into that effort. If it isn’t worth throwing all of our might into it, it probably isn’t worth going into into. And what is worst, if we aren’t throwing everything into it, the people who are in a position to make money off of the war (and there is always room for someone to make money off of a war) they won’t even have the patriotic motivation not to skim all they can.

And then after thinking all these thoughts, I read a story about how contractors swindle millions of dollars that are supposed to be being used for the war effort (or reconstruction, which really is the most important part of the war effort). This type of swindling goes beyond the mere greed of your normal war profiteers, and into the realm of doing your enemies work for them. War profiteers have always existed. Putting the actual work of war in private hands in order to lessen the burden of that war on the general populace, seems the fastest route to failure. Not to mention the fastest route to failing our men and women in uniform who actually are doing their jobs for love of their country, and not much more.

I haven’t done a lot with computer security lately, but it still holds a great deal of interest to me. So I have been reading a little bit about the Storm virus which has been ravaging the internet for the past few months. One nice breathless article lays out the possible scope of the infection. This virus is particularly interesting because people are using it to make money. Take over a bunch of computers and use them to send out spam. I am especially intrigued by the fact that these people are testing the network out in different ways. DoS mercenaries in the making. Massive network disruption to the highest bidder. Wow, the future really is here. The only question is, will Wintermute be born in the machine?

Required PSA: keep your system up to date, use a firewall, and don’t open attachments that you weren’t already expecting.

“The Dark Lord will remember me, I was his most loyal, I was his most faithful.”

If these words ever escape your mouth, be unsurprised when your lord and master, Jobs, turns on you. I mean really, he is the DARK LORD, not the benevolent lord. However if it turns out that the dark lord is more interested in numbers than loyalty, perhaps screaming and shouting will get some results.

I really like the CTA, and I really want to take it for most of my trips. The main problem with it is speed and reliability. If I have a two hour meeting with a client downtown, in order to ensure that I am there on time the total round trip on the CTA will run me upwards of three hours. A quick calculation reveals that the half hour car trip saves the entire time of the meeting. Similarly, I used to use the CTA to go to a class I teach off the brown line. One hour each way vs. 15 minutes in the car. I still need to try the bike on that one, I bet with careful planning I could get it down to 20 minutes. This never bothered me until last week.

Last week I got back from Frankfurt, Germany. They know how to do trains. Three levels, the Trams, UBahn and SBahn. The SBahn is regional and is sort like the Metra. The main difference is that it is somehow more “mass transit” like rather than “train” like. I think it is just a bit more regular and considerably faster. It provides a fast way to cross the entire city. The UBahn on the other hand is the equivalent of the el. The main difference is that it has a schedule that it keeps. On some streets it travels next to the traffic, but in other places it uses tunnels. It is extremely regular (every 3-4 mins), and has such a broad range of routes that it is almost always possible to walk to a station. It is actually smaller than the el, but smaller trains more often seems like the correct trade off to me. The trams fill out the system with on street rail. They are all MUCH smoother rides than the el and generally much faster as well. The main disadvantage is that it is very expensive compared to travel here, about $3 a ride, however that is offset by the $7 go all day ticket and the $100 monthly, an excellent discount for commuters.

So, having seen something that really works, and mostly gets rid of the need for cars, why can’t we do that here? The el is a slow rough ride that isn’t even integrated with the Metra particularly well, and the busses are worse. I have high hopes for the system wide GPS on the busses making them more viable, although I imagine that is going to go away now that the CTA is cutting services, but over all the usability is abysmal. And we almost have twice the population density of Frankfurt!? Thoughts on why Chicago doesn’t have better rail? We should be an ideal city for it.

Chicagoist is claiming that Chicago Gym phenom, Cheetah Gym, is dead. That would be very sad if it were true. I have had a membership there for years, ever since I moved in with that guy in to Andersonville, grandfathering me into a nice low rate. Of course in recent years there have been ups and downs. The turtles were removed not too long ago, and, lets be honest, since beefcake isn’t my scene they were the real reason I went. OTOH they did get better at keeping the mens locker room clean as time went on. This will of course be much more depressing for my wife than it is for me. Fortunately we are both members at the local YMCA, but still. It was nice to be able to feel like royalty when working out sometimes.

Edited to add (from Wife): A more reliable source.

First off, a quick apology to anyone who actually reads this anymore. RCN pissed me off by having my internet (and PHONE!!! grr.) randomly go on and off for the past two weeks. And then take two weeks to get someone out here to fix it! Well at least when the guy eventually does get here, he is the superhero of service techs. Apparently the storms knocked out a pole down the street which changed a bunch of stuff. So after some serious poletop surgery the Lair of the Haggis is back online.

Which brings us back to today’s topic for discussion. So lets say you spend the entire summer teaching a class. A class that has one student. The only way to keep in touch with said student is via his cell phone. He has to leave the class at the end of the summer because of conflicting schedules. Three weeks later you might reasonably expect him to remember who you are right? I get this phone call from him today asking how things are going and wondering who I am since my name is in his address book in his phone. I’m pretty bad with names and I have to admit it took me a couple classes to remember his, but come on now. The only reason I teach this class is because I think I am actually making a difference in these people’s lives. Oh well, at least I have my regular students back from summer break.