Dean was Right

Howard Dean was right.

Seriously, how long has it been since you've thought about Howard Dean? Cenk Uygur just published an excellent write-up of a speech given by Dr. Dean during his candidacy for President. This serves as a timely reminder of why Howard Dean's presidential bid was such a bonanza.

In short, it's because the man was right. Spooky, spot-on right. The reason Dean's message was so well recieved was that it was an intelligent viewpoint unaffected by politics. For this ability to see through the bullshit and call the establishment on it, he was eventually labeled a wacko by the media.

Well, the smoke has cleared, and Dean called it. We never should have gone to Iraq. Dubya should have appointed Dean to his cabinet, then he could have blamed Dean for "sabotaging" his stated foreign policy goals. As it is, Dean has simply predicted the outcome if this invasion, just as any intelligent person not blinded by television or oil money could have done.

Blog Spam

Ugh. My blog is getting spammed.

I recieved a comment on my last post, and I could tell instantly that it was a fake. The comment was left by an automated process, and all it included was a generic compliment and a link to a different blog. I did not want to encourage this character, but I followed the link out of curiousity. The first thing I noticed was the prominent product placement. But then, even more odd, was the large number of comments being left on this blog, considering it had been active for only a couple of days.

Those comments were a hoot. It was mystifying to see how many people fell for this guy's scam. "Thanks for checking out my blog, I didn't think anyone read it!" He didn't read it, dumbass. Even better were the indignant demands of "how did you get my email address?" (The blogger system will email you copies of all comments by default, but it does not give the sender your email address.) Anyway, I kept reading through these comments hoping to find someone that didn't fall for it. Of about 125 comments, I found two that indicated an understanding of what was actually going on, and only one that seemed appropriately angry. Thank you, Freedom Girl.

Messing Around with Blogger

After I got tired of writing (and more importantly, maintaining) my
own content management software, I began looking around for a free
service that I could use to easily maintain a web site. Blogger.com is
the first service I've used for this purpose, and it has worked out
reasonably well. I can use my own web space (zack.vpop.net, thanks
Joe!), and even change the design. I've done a bit of research into
that matter, and eventually I'll overhaul the appearance of this page.
My goal is to have multiple stylesheets. From a technical perspective,
I'm impressed that Blogger.com enables me to do all this.

Now I'm testing a feature that allows me to post to this blog without
have to log in through the Blogger.com website, a process which I have
always found to be very tedious for some reason. If it works I might
change to a shorter, more frequent format.

I probably wouldn't be fussing around with my blog so much, but I'm
currently waiting on some technical work, and am restless to get
started. I re-built the house network specifically for this purpose,
and I've been ready for about a week now. I'm still waiting on word
from my direct manager, with whom I have not yet communicated, about
what's next.

The wait seems interminable. I might hack together a new design for
this site by the time it happens for me. That would be cool.

Pen and Ink

Sure, I wanted to draw comics. I used to fantasize about drawing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for a living. Unfortunately I gave up this dream, partly because I honestly don't consider myself to be that good (perhaps I could be with practice), and partly because my hands shake when I try to use a drawing pen. Since I didn't take my pursuit of ink drawing too seriously, I left it at that and pretty much stopped trying. But I never stopped loving comics, or wanting to draw them.

So now mom wants a tattoo design of a gypsy, which sounds like fun to me. I've been using this as an excuse to practice with pen and ink drawing. The first thing I noticed was that I miss having a pencil drawing to go over. Oh, and my lettering sucks, mostly because I'm left handed and the pen nib scratches the paper in the wrong direction. Probably I'll have to learn to write backwards. I've got a better chance of learning to do that than learning to draw with my right hand.

Organic Produce is Expensive

It's true.

There are good reasons, though. We're not trying to rip you off or anything. I mean, just for starters, growing organic is just harder. What little money organic farmers save on poisonous chemicals (conventionals farmers go through a LOT of that shit) they can lose on, well, any number of things. All of those chemicals, although expensive, are useful because they allow a farmer to "hedge their bets" against the various forces of nature that can complicate cultivation. An organic farmer might do great one year, but then lose their crop the next two seasons. This cost has to be figured into the final price of the crop that does make it to market.

Another consideration where I work is the remoteness of our location. Our produce distributors are in San Francisco, which is about 8 hours away by truck. So while we pay the same price as produce departments in the city for the same produce, we have to pay a significant freight charge to get it shipped here. Then of course there is the cost of recieving and stocking it.

Recieving and stocking are the two things I do the most during the course of my work, I prefer the former but spend more time on the latter. This is just as well since the recieving shift is very hard on your body. I recieve the Friday load, which is the larger of the two weekly loads that come in from San Francisco. Sometimes I blast through it in five hours. Last Friday it took me about eight hours. The other thirty-or-so hours of the week I spend stocking fruit. All of that figures into the cost of your produce as well.

Often a customer will be shocked, just shocked at the price of a particular produce item. Many of them cannot shake the feeling that we're trying to pull one over on them. This is not the case. Organic produce is more expensive to produce, it really is. And if you don't like it, that's okay, I tell them. Purchasing the produce is optional.

The Return of the Network

Well, I've finally plugged back in.

The prospect of impending contract work has motivated me to set up a network in the house again. This of course means getting the DSL re-connected, because what good is a network without an uplink? I tried originally to configure my old laptop nidhogg, a tiny Toshiba that is under-powered for nearly every purpose but this, to acts as the router. I love this idea, and am loathe to abandon it, but the fact is I'm having trouble configuring it properly for the task. My hacked-up Debian installation is a confusing mess of configuration facilities that I've made some progress in understanding, but it's a daunting task. Trying to use PCMCIA cards as network interfaces for a router is surprisingly hard, at least on Debian.

Luckily housemate Terran has a Linksys router he isn't using, and that took the burden off nidhogg and me, at least for a while. I bought a Belkin wireless access point to extend the house wired network, and it worked better than I expected it to. So I bought a wireless router to go with it, and my plan is to use the access point as a network extender so that the wireless network can reach the backyard and probably our neighbors in the garage apartment behind us.

Once this is done, I can then use nidhogg for network services that the router won't provide. At least that way nidhogg can still serve a purpose. It bugs me no end to have machines that I can't use.