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December 29, 2009

Recover XP Admin Passwords

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/gr/ophcrack.htm

I was able to recover some passwords with the ophcrack LiveCD, but only passwords that were 4 characters long. So, I decided to look around some more, and found this:

If you can login with another user account:

If you share your computer with other users it's fairly simple to regain access to your account. You could ask one of the other users to log on to Windows with their password and perform the following steps :

Click the Start button
Click "Run"
In the "Open" field, type "control userpasswords2" (without the quotes)
Click ok
Windows opens a user accounts dialog. Select the user with the lost password and click the "Reset Password" button. Enter a new password (and a second time in the confirmation box) and click ok. Click ok once again and you are ready.

Now you can log on to your account using the new password.

So, this worked for me. Doh!

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 29, 2009 at 11:57 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 26, 2009

Leaving on a jet plane...

Jen and I are going to attempt to fly home tomorrow. Lord only knows what it will be like now that the muslim terrorist(s) flying into Dearbornistan tried to blow up a plane this week. I'm reasonably sure it will suck in a big way. Merry Christmas.

Update: It looks like the terrorist tried to detonate some PETN, but was unsuccessful. PETN is a high-grade military plastic explosive.


TATP, PETN, and Semtex - Terrorist Playdough

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 26, 2009 at 10:52 PM : Comments (1) | Permalink

Remote Control Plane, On-board Videocam, Fireworks, & AC/DC

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 26, 2009 at 10:05 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

'This Is a Frightening New Side of Barack Obama'

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/12/this-is-frightening-new-side-of-barack.html

"No offense intended to New York Post reporter Charles Hurt, but the behavior of Barack Obama is not showing us a "new side" of him. This is who he's always been. You don't sit in the "church" of Jeremiah Wright for two decades and not be angry and resentful toward America. You do not write books with Bill Ayers and learn how to love America. Trashing America in nearly every speech isn't anything new for Obama."

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 26, 2009 at 10:31 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 25, 2009

Northern Shrike (Lanius excubitor)

So I was looking outside my window this morning and I saw this little grey bird with a dark eye patch fighting with another bird. Or so I thought. On closer inspection, I saw that he was actually eating the other bird, which appears to be a male house finch. I'm not surprised, really. There's not a lot of food up here in the winter time, or there doesn't appear to be, anyhow.

I couldn't really understand what was keeping the bird from falling. Couldn't see what was sustaining the weight of the bird as it was being devoured.

So I grabbed a stack of Colorado bird books and identified this carnivore as a Loggerhead Shrike, aka "Butcher Bird". It says that his feet aren't strong enough to hold his prey, and they're known to skewer their meals on barbed wire, thorns, anything to keep it suspended while they devour their prey. And sure enough, I went out to investigate and discovered that he'd skewered the bird to the scrub oaks.

Update: I had initially identified this bird at a Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus). After posting to Whatbird.com, I've been corrected. The bird is actually a Northern Shrike (Lanius excubitor), which I caught by chance at the very southern end of their range, in the dead of winter.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 25, 2009 at 2:17 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 24, 2009

Tracey is Wrong

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 24, 2009 at 1:21 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Allie and Jen

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 24, 2009 at 12:00 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 23, 2009

Why It's Better To Pretend You Don't Know Anything About Computers

http://gizmodo.com/5431497/why-its-better-to-pretend-you-dont-know-anything-about-computers

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 23, 2009 at 11:39 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 22, 2009

Mac Scrollbars: Making Sense of the Senseless

I'm trying to figure out why the scrollbars on Wendy's Mac behave the way they do. It makes me want to kill myself. When you click on a vertical scrollbar, it jumps all the way down to where you click, instead of going down a page at a time. Maddening. This post seems to describe what I'm experiencing:

"As for the scrolling, the convention for "paging" with scrollbars is to click the "track" for the slider. Apple undermines this convention because now how much you scroll depends on where you click. I recall MS IE had this once (I don't know if it was an intended feature or a bug, but it quietly appeared then disappeared around Version 6). I drove me crazy. You couldn't just position your pointer at the bottom of the track and click-click to page-page. You had to guess about how far to move the pointer each time. I would miss content and not know it."

These people seem to be describing a similar problem in Firefox on a Mac.

For the record, her Mac is running OS X 10.5 (Leopard), though I'm not clear if this matters. Half the articles I read are about Mac trying master the complexities of the two-button mouse, or, heaven forbid, a mouse with a scroll-wheel. These mouse features have been available under Windows for eons, but Apple Inc. has only recently begun to try to implement them. So maybe I'm asking too much here.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 22, 2009 at 11:35 PM : Comments (1) | Permalink

December 20, 2009

Female Northern Harrier

Female Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus) near Hill City, Kansas.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 20, 2009 at 11:53 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Postcards from Nowhere: Kansas

Brian and Scottie and I snuck away for a little pheasant hunt in Kansas this week. These photos were taken in December of 2009 near the town of Hill City, Kansas. The images were all captured on one of the following:

Note: All of my lenses have been repaired at this point, although I did get some communication errors on one of my 17-85mm lenses.

The images are compiled into a 25 Meg (4:24) Adobe Flash slideshow(kansas.swf) that you should be able to open and view with any browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.). To view the slideshow, just click on the photo above. If you want to view the slideshow as a Windows executable, you can play this version (kansas.exe), and it allows you to play, pause, skip forward, backwards, etc.

Image post-processing was done in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended. The slideshow was created using Imagematics Stillmotion Pro.

The soundtrack is Round Here by The Counting Crows off of the album August And Everything After.


Lyrics in the extended entry.

Click here to view the other slideshows.

Continue reading "Postcards from Nowhere: Kansas"

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 20, 2009 at 8:57 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

10 Bad Things That Are Good For You

http://www.livescience.com/health/top_10_badthings_good.html

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 20, 2009 at 12:57 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 15, 2009

Bird Hunting

I'm going pheasant hunting in Kansas with Brian and Scottie for a few days. Thank God I've got all of my cameras and lenses working properly. Read about my last trip here:

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 15, 2009 at 7:53 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 13, 2009

Times Sq. gunman held weapon like rapper causing it to jam

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/side_show_doomed_thug_vct6JLQrWau8DRZpdvdaFO

A Times Square bloodbath was narrowly avoided because the machine-pistol-toting thug who fired at a cop flipped the gun on its side like a character out of a rap video, causing the weapon to jam after two shots, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

When scam artist Raymond "Ready" Martinez held the MAC-10-style gun parallel to the ground, it caused the ejecting shells to "stovepipe," or get caught vertically in the chamber, the sources said. The gun is designed to be fired only in a vertical position.


Posted by Rob Kiser on December 13, 2009 at 9:13 AM : Comments (3) | Permalink

Intense Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks Sunday

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091211-geminids-geminid-meteor-shower-tonight.html

Late Sunday night is the peak of the year's most prolific annual cosmic fireworks show--the Geminid meteor shower (Geminids picture).

The meteor shower has been growing in intensity in recent decades and should be an even better holiday treat than usual this year, since it's falling in a nearly moonless week.

Coming fast on the heels of its more famous cousin the Leonid meteor shower--which peaked less than a month ago--the Geminid show should feature as many as 140 shooting stars per hour between Sunday evening and Monday morning.

The Geminids are slow meteors that create beautiful long arcs across the sky--many lasting a second or two.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 13, 2009 at 12:14 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 12, 2009

Jump Street

Update: I think this was at:
10081 W Bowles Ave
Littleton, CO 80127
(Bowles and Kipling)

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 12, 2009 at 8:51 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 11, 2009

ZOMG I CAN SHOOT AGAIN!!!!

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 11, 2009 at 10:53 PM : Comments (1) | Permalink

Kaffy Luk: Craigslist Scammers

I've had my bike listed on Craigslist for about a week or so now and I'm always surprised that I get so many scam emails from a listing. Right away, I got an email from "Kaffy Luk", using the email kaffyluk06@gmail.com, kaffyluk07@gmail.com, and kaffyluk10@gmail.com:

Hello
I really appreciate your response to my email.I want you to consider it sold, pls do withdraw the advert from craigslist to avoid disturbance.I
want you to know that i will be paying via bank certified check .I will like you to provide me with the following. information to facilitate the mailing of the check to you .
1.....Full name to write on the check
2.....Full Physical address to post the check
3.....City, State and Zip Code
4.....Home & Cell Phone to contact you
*** Note that the payment will be shiped to your address via UPS NEXT DAY SERVICE and I will like you to know that you will not be responsible for shipping i will have my mover come over as soon as you have cashed the check** Thanks

Of course, it's a scam. I wasn't clear how it worked though, so I googled it. Generally, the deal is that they just want to send you a cashier's check for too much money. So, say you're selling something for $1,000.00, they'll accidentally send you a check for $1,200.00, because the secretary made a mistake, and then you deposit the cashier's check and wire them the difference back via Western Union. Of course, the cashier's check is no good. It's just a piece of paper. The bank it's drawn on may not even exist. The check bounces, and you're out $200 (in this case).

So, it's frustrating dealing with all of these criminals. I googled the web and found that "Kaffy Luk" has been around for a while, scamming countless others.

It's frustrating that these people are out there, on the fringes of society, preying on people from third world country with impunity. It makes me want to scam the scammers, which I have neither the patience nor the intellect to pursue. But then I read about this guy. He apparently scammed two guys so bad that they were killed in the madness of sub-saharan africa.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 11, 2009 at 2:41 AM : Comments (1) | Permalink

December 10, 2009

My Christmas Decorations

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 10, 2009 at 9:36 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Anthropogenic Global Warming as a Religion

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 10, 2009 at 5:12 PM : Comments (2) | Permalink

December 9, 2009

Obama Snubs King of Norway

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-09/obamas-oslo-snubfull/

"It's very sad," said Nobel Peace Center Director Bente Erichsen of the news that Obama would skip the peace center exhibit. Prize winners traditionally open the exhibitions about their work that accompany the Nobel festivities. "I totally understand why the Norwegian public is upset. If I could get a few minutes with the president, I'd say, 'To walk through the exhibition wouldn't take long, and I'm sure you would love the show. You have no idea what you are missing.'"

Meanwhile, the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet is reporting that the president has declined an invitation to lunch with King Harald V, an event every prize winner from the Dalai Lama to Al Gore has attended. (The newspaper's headline: "Obama disses lunch with King Harald.")

Also among the dissed, according to news reports: a concert in Oslo on Friday that was arranged in his honor, and a group of Norwegian children who had planned to meet Obama in front of City Hall.

"The American president is acting like an elephant in a porcelain shop," said Norwegian public-relations expert Rune Morck-Wergeland. "In Norwegian culture, it's very important to keep an agreement. We're religious about that, and Obama's actions have been clumsy. You just don't say no to an invitation from a European king. Maybe Obama's advisers are not very educated about European culture, but he is coming off as rude, even if he doesn't mean to."

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 9, 2009 at 9:02 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Starving Mule Deer

I shot this video today of a couple of mule deer bucks near one of my trailers. There's a lot of snow on the ground right now and when the deer can't find anything to eat for a few days, they resort to eating pine trees if you can believe it. It's far from their favorite food, so you know when you're seeing them eating trees, they're seriously hungry.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 9, 2009 at 6:21 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Jon Stewart Joins The Tea Party

I think it's funny that Obama's approval rating has fallen so low that even the uber-liberal washed-up late-night-talk-show-talking-heads are tearing him limb from limb. Welcome to the party, Jon. Glad to see you're alive.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 9, 2009 at 11:23 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 8, 2009

Tiger Woods Mistress Decoder Ring

If you're having a hard time keeping up with the skanks crawling out of the woodwork claiming to have slept with the famous Oriental golf legend Tiger Woods, you're not alone. Here's a secret decoder ring to help you keep up with all of the trailer trash claiming to have carnal knowledge of Tiger:
http://backporch.fanhouse.com/2009/12/08/tiger-woods-mistresses-the-still-growing-cheat-sheet/

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 8, 2009 at 3:23 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

A True Tale of Canadian Health Care

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 8, 2009 at 3:03 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Massive Waves Slam Oahu - Eddie Aikau memorial big-wave surfing contest has begun

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2009/12/eddie-aikau-memorial-bigwave-surfing-contest-gets-green-light-for-today.html

"The Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau big-wave surfing contest at Waimea Bay began today at 8 a.m. Hawaii Standard Time, 10 a.m. PST.

Waves are 30 to 40 feet and conditions are fair at the legendary Oahu break. You can watch it live by clicking here."

http://live.quiksilver.com/2009/eddie/

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 8, 2009 at 11:37 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

EPA declares air a danger to human health

Now, keep in mind that trees need C02 to breathe. Without it, they would die. Be that as it may, the non-partisan EPA has declared CO2 a threat to human health and therefore something they need to regulate. Which means that they literally control the air we breathe at this point. And the declaration comes on the first day of the Copenhagen summit. Someone wake me when it's over.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 8, 2009 at 11:16 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text

"Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol."

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 8, 2009 at 11:02 AM : Comments (1) | Permalink

December 7, 2009

Never Forget...

Google has a long history of snubbing our soldiers. They snubbed the 65th anniversary of D-Day this year, choosing instead, to recognize Tetris, a computer game invented by a communist.

And today, Google snubbed Pearl Harbor. Well, normally, I'd just say "what's with those pinko commies", but then Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit pointed out that Bing chose to recognize the event - a defining moment in our nation's history. If you're not familiar with Bing.com, it's a search engine owned by Microsoft that's trying to gain marketshare and compete with google. Try it out and see if you can't use Bing instead of Google from now on. I know I can.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 7, 2009 at 6:02 PM : Comments (3) | Permalink

The Tetris God

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 7, 2009 at 5:53 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 6, 2009

the best cure for melancholy

"The best cure for melancholy is industry." - The Weight of Water

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 6, 2009 at 6:44 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

1974 White House helicopter incident

I saw some archival footage of this event in the movie "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" tonight on IFC. Somehow, I'd missed this story. Granted, it happened when I was 8, but I'm still surprised I've never heard about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Preston

At 2 A.M. on February 17, 1974, Robert K. Preston, a U.S. Army private, stole a United States Army helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland, flew it to Washington, D.C., and hovered for six minutes over the White House before descending on the south lawn, about 100 yards from the West Wing.[1][2][3][4][5][6] There was no initial attempt from the Executive Protective Service to shoot the helicopter down, and he later took off and was chased by two Maryland State Police helicopters. Preston forced one of the police helicopters down through his maneuvering of the helicopter, and then returned to the White House. This time, as he hovered above the south grounds, the Executive Protective Service fired at him with shotguns and submachine guns. Preston was injured slightly, and landed his helicopter.[7]

At the time of the incident, President Richard Nixon was travelling in Florida, and First Lady Pat Nixon was in Indianapolis, Indiana, visiting their sick daughter.[8]

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 6, 2009 at 5:34 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

The Coming Ice Age

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/03/climate-science-gore-intelligent-technology-sutton.html

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age."

Random House dutifully printed "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY ... coming of the New Ice Age." This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported "many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age."

OK, you say, that's media. But what did our rational scientists say?

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end...leading into the next ice age."


Posted by Rob Kiser on December 6, 2009 at 4:01 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Has Anyone Read the Copenhagen Agreement?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703574604574500580285679074.html

"We can only hope that world leaders will do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride around the charming streets of Copenhagen come December. For if they actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises. Draft text, you say? If you haven't heard about it, that's because none of our otherwise talkative political leaders have bothered to tell us what the drafters have already cobbled together for leaders to consider. And neither have the media."

Lord Christopher Monckton, the former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, gave this presentation on the true aims of the Copenhagen Agreement at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 6, 2009 at 10:06 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 5, 2009

How to complete a census


I've always liked Christopher Walken, ever since they left him behind in Nam in The Deer Hunter. Deniro returns to find him strung out on drugs and playing Russian Roulette in the red light district in Saigon and well...if you've seen it, you know.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 5, 2009 at 8:03 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 4, 2009

Oh Snap!

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 4, 2009 at 11:58 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

The CBC's Rex Murphy on Climategate

Rex Murphy in Canada is doing the kind of tv investigative journalism that 60 minutes used to do. He slays them in this video.

"When Jon Stewart, the Bantam Rooser of conventional wisdom, makes jokes about it, you know Climategate has reached critical mass. Said Stewart, 'Poor Al Gore. Global Warming completely debunked via the very internet he invented.' "

"Stewart was half joking, but Climategate is no joke at all. The mass of emails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University let loose by a hacker or a whistleblower pulls back the curtain on a scene of pettiness, turf protection, manipulation, defiance of Freedom of Information, lost or destroyed data, and attempts to blacklist critics and skeptics of the global warming cause."

"Now the CRU is not the only climate science advisory body, but it is one of the most influential and feeds directly into the UN panel on climate change. So lets hear no more talk of 'the science is settled', when it turns out some of the principal scientists behave as if they own the very question of Global Warming."

"When they seek to bar opposing research from peer review journals. To embargo journals they can't control. When they urge each other to delete damaging emails before Freedom of Information takes hold. When they talk of 'hiding the decline.' When they actually speak of destroying the primary data....and when now, we do learn, that the primary data has been lost or destroyed...they've lost the raw data on which all the models, all the computer generated forecasts, the graphs and projections ... are based...you wouldn't accept that at a grade nine science fair."

"Now CRU is not the universe of climate research, but it is the star...these emails demonstrate one thing beyond all else....that climate science and global warming advocacy have become so entwined, so meshed into a mutant creature, that separating alarmism from investigation, ideology from science, agenda from empirical study, is well nigh impossible."

"Climategate is evidence that the science has gone to bed with advocacy and both have had a very good time."

"That the the neutrality, openness, and absolute disinterest, that is the hallmark of all honest scientific endeavour has been abandoned to an atmosphere and a dynamic not superior to the partisan caterwauls of a sub-average question period."

"Climate science has been shown to be, in part, a sub-branch of climate politics. It is a situation intolerable even to serious minds who are on side with Global Warming. Such as Clive Crook, who wrote in Atlantic Magazine about this scandal as follows: 'The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.' "

"Climate science needs it's own reset button. And Climategate should be seen not primarily as a setback, but as an opportunity to cleanse scientific method. To take science away from politics, good causes, and alarmists. And vest climate science in bodies of guaranteed neutrality, openness, real and vigorous debate, and away from lobbyists, the NGO's, the advocates, the Gores, and professional environmentalists of all kind. Too many of the current leadership on Global Warming are more players than observers, gatekeepers not investigators, angry partisans of some global re-engineering, rather than the humble servants of the facts of the case"

"Read the emails. You'll never think of "climate science" quite the same way again."

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 4, 2009 at 10:26 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Pennsylvania Finds Something to Cling to Besides God and Guns

That idiot Obama went out of his way to slam small-town hicks in Pennsylvania on the campaign trail last year. They cling to God and guns and xenophobia because their jobs evaporated, according Obama.

Apparently, some people in the Keystone State didn't take too kindly to his now infamous "Gods and Guns" slur.

"But just below the national political radar, Pennsylvania last month held statewide judicial races in which six of the seven contests on the ballot were won by Republicans."

So it looks like the Pennsylvanians have found something to cling to besides God and Guns - the Republican Party.

Now, he's making a whistlestop tour through the Lehigh Valley (think Allentown, Bethlehem). I hope those people in PA turn out in numbers to show him what they think of Obama's bigoted, racist views of the poor whites in the Keystone state.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 4, 2009 at 10:02 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 3, 2009

Anything I Got Ain't Worth Your Life

This is the sign I hung up in my yard when I moved in. Not knowing any of my neighbors, I wanted to make sure that there weren't any misunderstandings. Of course, once they saw the weasel and the M37, they probably knew that my house was about as well defended as your typical National Guard.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 3, 2009 at 10:53 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Canon Lens Repair

I mailed my third lens back to Canon today. So, as it stands, Canon has 3 of my lenses in their possession. I have none. Can't take a single photo. However, I should have 2 lenses returned to me within the next week or so. And I can wait a bit on the third one.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 3, 2009 at 10:17 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Chris Matthews Calls West Point 'The Enemy Camp'

You might think of the 'Enemy Camp' as being in Afghanistan, Iraq, Peking, or Moscow. But to Chris Matthews, the 'Enemy Camp' is United States Military Academy at West Point. So, presumably, enemies emerge from the 'Enemy Camp'. Here's a list of Chris Matthews enemies (graduates of West Point listed with the year they graduated from 'The Enemy Camp'):

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 3, 2009 at 9:54 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

FCC Attempts to Control the Internet

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/fcc-plans-for-death-of-circuit-switched-phone-networks.ars

The FCC is saying something about Voice over IP and getting rid of the Land Lines, it appears. However, don't be fooled. This is not about Voice Over IP. This is a power-play by the FCC to gain jurisdiction over the internet. That's what this is, plain and simple. Next.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 3, 2009 at 8:23 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

The World's 18 Strangest Roads

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/transportation/4338387.html

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 3, 2009 at 3:14 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Gore Abruptly Cancels Personal Appearance at Copenhagen

Gore has abruptly canceled his personal appearance at Copenhagen. People were paying $1,200.00 per person to get a photo op with him. I know they'll be disappointed. Obviously, this is related to the Climategate fallout. Hehehehe.

More at the Climatedepot.com, an online news aggregator that track global warming news report.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 3, 2009 at 3:02 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Minnesotans For Global Warming (M4GW)

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 3, 2009 at 12:41 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

And you thought Obama wasn't popular...

The Demogogues are proposing another job program that will cost us an additional $300 billion (they really just have no clue how wealth is created, do they?) But if you think Obama's not popular, you're mistaken because Obama is certainly popular among the drug users. Here's his image on some Ecstasy tablets (X), and here he is on LSD (acid).

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 3, 2009 at 9:15 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Peddler Charged with Eavesdropping for Taping Cops During his Arrest

http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1918823,peddler-taping-cops-arrest-120309.article

"A Rogers Park neighborhood man was charged with felony eavesdropping after allegedly taping conversations -- including the voices of officers who arrested him -- without permission while selling art for a $1 Wednesday afternoon in the Loop."

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 3, 2009 at 9:13 AM : Comments (1) | Permalink

December 2, 2009

Lord Monckton's summary of Climategate and its issues

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/01/lord-moncktons-summary-of-climategate-and-its-issues/

Enter Steve McIntyre, the one who had first realized that the UN's climate panel in 2001 had used a corrupt graph that had falsely abolished the medieval warm period with the aim of pretending that today's global temperatures are unprecedented in at least 1000 years. Later that day his website, www.climateaudit.org, revealed the truth about the conspirators' "trick".

In order to smooth a data series over a given time period, one must pad it with artificial data beyond the endpoint of the real series. However, when Mann, Bradley, and Hughes plotted instrumental data against their reconstructions based on the varying widths of tree-rings from ancient trees, their favourite form of proxy or pre-instrumental reconstructed temperature, no smoothing method could conceal the fact that after 1960 the tree-ring data series trended downward, while the instrumental series trended upward. This was the Team's "divergence":

"So Mann's solution ['Mike's Nature trick'] was to use the instrumental record for padding [both the proxy and the instrumental data series], which changes the smoothed series to point upwards."

Accordingly, though the author of the original email had said that the "trick" was to add instrumental measurements for years beyond available proxy data, his conspirators at the science-hate website admitted it was actually a replacement of proxy data owing to a known but unexplained post-1960 "divergence" between the proxy data and the instrumental data. In fact, it was a fabrication.
The next day, in a statement issued by the University of East Anglia's press office, Professor Jones fumblingly tried to recover the position:

"The word 'trick' was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward."

As we shall see, Professor Jones was not telling the truth.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 2, 2009 at 10:32 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Panic Attack

This is totally awesome. An unknown filmmaker from Uruguay has been given $30m by a Hollywood studio to turn his $500 YouTube video of a giant robot invasion into a movie.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 2, 2009 at 9:07 PM : Comments (1) | Permalink

Jon Stewart on Climategate

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 2, 2009 at 6:35 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Canon Lens Repair

I talked to Canon today. They're repairing two of my lenses. I'm still sitting on one broken one here at the house.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 2, 2009 at 2:16 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Tiger Woods' Christmas Card

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 2, 2009 at 2:02 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Climategate Fallout: Australia Ditches Cap & Trade

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/02/lawrence-solomon-australia-ditches-cap-and-trade-in-climategate-s-aftermath.aspx

Emboldened following the Climategate scandal, the Liberal opposition in Australia's parliament threw out its pro-Kyoto leader yesterday and then today, under the leadership of global warming skeptic Tony Abbott, voted down the government's plan to pass cap and trade legislation. The proposed legislation, intended to be a feather in the cap of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd prior to his departure for climate change meetings in Copenhagen, failed by a vote of 41 to 33 in the Senate, Australia's upper house.

Despite speculation that Rudd would call a snap election on the issue - a threat some expected him to take up because polls show him to be a favourite over his opposition - a cautious Rudd declined to risk an election against his new adversary, a conservative who pledges to oppose any tax on carbon.

Hahahahaha. Suck it, tree-huggers.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 2, 2009 at 11:10 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Tiger's Wood

Here's some shots of Jaimee Grubbs, one of the chicks Tiger Woods has been working over.


The Jokes:
Apparently, the police asked Tiger's wife how many times she hit him. She said, "I don't know exactly, but put me down for a 5."

What's the difference between a car and a golf ball? Tiger can drive a ball 400 yards.

What was Elin doing out at 2.30 in the morning? Clubbing

Why did Tiger crashed into a fire hydrant AND a tree? He couldn't decide between a wood and an iron.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 2, 2009 at 10:50 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Decoding the Voynich Manuscript

http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_decoded/index.php

"All attempts over the past century to decode this mysterious manuscript have met with failure. I give examples to show that the code used in the Voynich Manuscript is probably a series of Italian word anagrams written in a fancy embellished script. This code, that has been confusing scholars for nearly a century, is therefore not as complicated as it first appears."


Posted by Rob Kiser on December 2, 2009 at 9:34 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

December 1, 2009

Full Text of Obama's Afghanistan Speech: ("Victory" didn't make the cut)

Obama says that our troops will start to come home from Afghanistan after "18 months". This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. All the soldiers fighting the U.S. in Afghanistan have to do is sit back for 18 months and wait for the U.S. to pull out. Brilliant, Obama. In the whole speech, he never uttered the word "victory". What a freaking moron. By the time Obama leaves office, he'll make Carter look like Reagan. He'll make Herbert Hoover look like Benjamin Franklin.

Full text of Carter's....er...Obama's speech in the extended entry.

Continue reading "Full Text of Obama's Afghanistan Speech: ("Victory" didn't make the cut)"

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 1, 2009 at 8:48 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Climategate: Heads Roll at UEA CRU

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/head-of-climate-unit-steps-down-pending-inquiry/

As the University of East Anglia investigates the disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages and documents from its Climatic Research Unit, as well as the implications of the contents for its climate research, the head of the unit is stepping aside. Here is the news release:

Prof. Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of e-mails from the unit.

I sent the professor an email today expressing my sincere condolences for his removal. Why don't you contact him at p.jones@uea.ac.uk.

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 1, 2009 at 8:37 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

For Sale: 2006 Honda XR650R

I've got my bike for sale on Craigslist. My goal is to replace it with either an XR650L or else a BMW GS1100R (or R1100GS, whichever way you prefer - I see it both ways on the intertubes.) But, as JP once observed, "you get your toys all fixed up to sell and you think 'man, why the heck am I selling this thing?' ".

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 1, 2009 at 5:21 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink

Ice Skating Monkey

Posted by Rob Kiser on December 1, 2009 at 12:09 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink