LR2 Blogs

Those of you up north or who grew up driving in winter, please skip this post.

I wish I had the exact quote, but this idiot was on WOAI TV (in San Antonio) this morning telling motorists that if they find themselves on snow or ice to shift down to first or second gear.

It’s never a good idea to downshift on ice. It’s no different than hitting the brakes and can cause your tires to slide. Take your foot off the gas, steer into the slide (turn in the same direction your rear is sliding) and pray you regain control before you hit the wall.

If you’re sitting still and have a stick, try starting in 2nd gear. It’ll reduce the torque to the wheels and make it harder to spin out.

Tires work best when they roll. Once they start sliding or spinning you’ve lost traction and control. You cannot hope to regain control until the tires start rolling properly again.

Just SLOW DOWN! 4×4, rear drive, or front wheel drive cars all stop at the same rate on ice, even if they accelerate at different speed.

McCain jokes about suicide if Democrats win Senate | US News | Reuters.com

Arizona Sen. John McCain, a likely Republican presidential contender in 2008, joked on Wednesday he would “commit suicide” if Democrats win the Senate in November.

Now let’s just hope the Dems win.

Dean Skelos –

Senator Skelos is a dirty rotten spammer. He’s started sending me emails about 6 months ago and despite filling out the gop nosend form I’m still getting his crap.

I don’t even live in NY, I’ve never lived in his district, yet he’s sending me spam. Not so coincidently it’s to the same old address that I keep getting real estate spam to. It seems that there is an Anton Olsen living somewhere in NY on Baldwin, not sure of the town, that got associated with my email address.

Now I’m getting promises of tax breaks, better schools, and encouragement to vote for Senator Skelos.

Here’s an excerpt of the header from the last email:

Received: from LAKOTA ([172.18.0.70]) by LAKOTA.light-power.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830);
Fri, 13 Oct 2006 19:33:07 -0400
Thread-Topic: Investing in our local schools
Reply-To: “Senator Dean Skelos”


It appears the spam is originating from the same media company that developed his web site.

If anyone has any more examples, please let me know.

Bush’s Faustian Deal With the Taliban –May 22, 2001

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.

That’s the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that “rogue regime” for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban’s estimation, are most human activities, but it’s the ban on drugs that catches this administration’s attention.

So Bush gave the Taliban $43 million 4 months before 9/11. How much of that money went to fund the attacks on the US?

» Playing Google Videos In Windows Media Player » InsideGoogle » part of the Blog News Channel

Despite being an .avi file, a very standard video format, Windows Media Player can’t play it because Google has included in the file a bogus fourcc code in the file that WMP chokes on. Take that same file, change the file extension from .gvi to .avi, and almost every other video player can handle it, but for technical reasons, Microsoft’s can’t play it. It is such a specific and pointless change that it almost seems like Google changed the header code specifically to screw Microsoft.

A Microsoft lover finds a bug in Windows Media Player and blames it in a Google conspiracy. Like I’ve said before. When you can choose between consipiracy and circumstance, it’s almost always the later.

Analyzing 20,000 MySpace Passwords - CyberKnowledge Blog

Some passwords were terrible, and others were decent. A lot of them are simply “password”. An odd amount of them also contain the word “poop”.

I’m amazed that 20,000 people fell for the phishing scam. I hadn’t even though to go looking at the sites to see what kind of data they have collected. I wonder if phishers are just stupid, or if they leave it accessible so they can fetch the data easily later.

Greetings from Antony the Squirrelman: “Squirrels are cool!!”

Long-live the coolest animal on the planet. Squirrels! Can you imagine a park without them? I can’t. Prairie dogs try to be cool, but come on -they cause plagues. And, I’ve heard that their prairie dog holes trip innocent cows! Squirrels are clean animals that never even leave poo droppings for you to step on. And they would never trip cows.

My fight with Amazon Unbox - Alpha Blog - alpha.cnet.com

After the Install Shield launched and I chose uninstall, I got a login screen for my Amazon account. I just wanted to uninstall it. I shouldn’t have to log in to my account to do that. So I canceled the login, and the uninstall failed. I tried that three times, and it failed each time. Finally I gave up and logged in and the uninstall finished.

A few things here:

Why is he surprised that unbox has stupid restrictive DRM? While I agree that DRM sucks, and think it’s pointless, the lawyers that rule this world love it. They think it protects their companies. Until the companies get wise and fire the lawyers DRM is here to stay.

He tried to uninstall it three times and it failed each time. I don’t know what it is with Windows users, but they feel the need to try the same steps a few times to see if the process suddenly starts working. I’d consider something terribly amiss if I followed the same steps for the third time and it magically started working on the third attempt.

Let’s just wait a month or so and someone will probably figure out how to crack the unbox DRM, then we can have our movies and watch them too.

Waxy.org: Daily Log: Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist Affects Hundreds

Overwhelmingly and instantly, the ads from the fake women looking for male partners were inundated with responses, sometimes several per minute. All the other ads received lukewarm responses, at best. These results weren’t surprising, but some of the observations were… Many of these men used their real names and included personally identifiable information, including work email addresses and home phone numbers. Several admitted they were married and cheating on their spouses. Many included photos, often nude.

There has to be a way to profit from a scam like this. Maybe even without getting killed soon afterward.

Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Occasionally, Wikipedians lose their minds and get into edit wars over the most petty things. This is to document that phenomenon. This page isn’t comprehensive or authoritative, but it is designed to show the “worst-case” result of people attaching so much importance to some trivial detail that they are willing to engage in the lame pastime of edit warring over an even lamer cause.