For as long as there have been humans, there has been the Law of Unintended Consequences, the sad and unavoidable fact that for every problem humans solve, new unforeseen problems crop up. The taming of fire gave early humans light and heat but singed more than a few Neanderthal eyebrows. Humanity’s use of energy changed over the millennia and as ( Read more... )

Thursday, My 20th 2010 is “Draw Muhammad Day”, a protest in support of free speech, liberty, and the Enlightenment values we should and do enjoy in a liberal industrialized Western democracy.

My entry is “Trackless”


( Read more... )

So I was raised Catholic. I went to Catholic school from first through fifth grade at St. Colette’s in Rolling Meadows, IL. I was confirmed in Newtown, PA. And that’s the end of my Catholicism. I wasn’t raped, I didn’t develop any sexual or guilt hangups, or fetishes involving school uniforms. About the worst I can recall is being forced to wear a ( Read more... )

The following is a minor edit of a comment I left on Stephanie Zvan’s blog Almost Diamonds regarding the ongoing trainwreck of a small Mississippi community willing to cancel (or at least hide) their prom, lest two lesbian students attend.

Stephanie kicked it off with a wonderful open letter to the kids who attended the ‘secret’ out-lesbian-free ( Read more... )

So yesterday I asked how to do this bit of zsh:

foreach dn (CONT* SETT*) {

cd $dn && run_cmd.sh ;

}

in Windows PowerShell. The answer I came up with is:

$a = Get-ChildItem - Filter “SETT*”

$a += Get-ChildItem - Filter “CONT*”

$a | ForEach-Object {

set-Location $_ ;

& run_cmd.cmd ;

set-Location .. ;

}

Things to note:

• I can’t find any documentation ( Read more... )

Summary: While trying to automate the creation and execution of a bunch of nearly identical command-line tasks, I attempted to learn Windows PowerShell. The code didn’t fail me, the massive quantity of unreadable and disorganized documentation did.

It’s a long story so go get a beer before continuing.

( Read more... )

Parked as I was last week at a table in one of Austin’s many fine non-corporate wifi-enabled all-hours coffee shops (note to Chicagoland - you suck at this; get your shit together), I could not but overhear a pair of UT’s best and brightest working on a business plan. I’m assuming the pair were business majors working on homework.

I’m an engineer ( Read more... )

I discovered a great cocktail at The Berghoff - the Angel, Second Class.

Between the Sheets and the venerable Harvey Wallbanger are very good, but my go-to drink right now is the Mai Tai, followed up closely by the Caipirinha and, of course, the Pimm’s Cup.

I’ve been surprised that I can talk about race and religion with people in Chicago, ( Read more... )

I’m not very good at this ‘blogging’ thing. Fact is, when I make it a priority I can actually write short posts on a regular basis unlike my normal “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” treatises. Not to get all navel-gazey (too late) but I’ve been spooting out regular updates to Twitter instead; I think the 140-character limit helps a lot.

Anyway, ( Read more... )

She’s left for Texas.

I feel like I should get some groceries, some peanut butter, to last a couple of days. While I’ve been avoiding the windows, I have not yet started tapping phone lines or burning notebooks. Regardless, I am living like a man on the run, some combination of the Kevin Mitnick “Player’s Club” lifestyle and the Pripyat, Ukraine ( Read more... )