He makes exactly the right argument.  Warrant-less wiretaps and the other provisions of the Patriot Act give the government complete power to declare any group they disagree with as a “terrorist” and proceed to spy on them 8 ways from Sunday and toss them in jail without due process.  And is it really so far fetched to imagine that the government wouldn’t declare the NRA a terrorist group?  Or for the people on the left, how about PETA?   I don’t think it is far fetched, because with limitless power comes limitless potential for abuse.  We have to hope like fun that the government will stay rational and use their powers for good.  If you take as dim a view of human nature as I do, then you’re probably not hoping too hard.  Glen Beck lays down that argument as well as anybody ever has and people should take note.

Of course, what pushes this post from surprising into awesome is that 8 years ago these same combatants were completely on the other side of the fence.   You could trade the names in the article and replace NRA with a liberal organization and its like we’re back in 2003 again.   Like Bart Simpson would say, the ironing is delicious.   In their zealotry to push their view point, each side has inadvertently supported the other’s side.  And if we are so unlucky to find the Patriot Act still around in 2012 or 2016 when power switches back the other way, then so will the argument, with neither side realizing their hypocrisy.  Yes indeed, Media Matters is wrong and, against all odds, Glen Beck is right.  Whodathunkit?

This is the first week of Project 35 – I weighed in at 288 pounds on Monday which means I need to hit 253 by December 22, which is 50 weeks away. That means I need to lose .69 pounds per week.

This week, lets discuss caloric intake. There are 3500 calories in a single pound of fat, so in order to maintain my pace, I need to cut out 2415 calories a week, or 345 calories a day. According to this calculator, 3322 calories would maintain my current weight, so to hit my goal, my target calorie intake should be 2977.

To help, I’m going to try out Calorie Counter for Android (see the QR code below). It provides a food diary, journal, charts and of course calorie counts. This should be a good way to manage my calorie intake.

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Today I bought myself a birthday present and upgraded to a WRT610N with all the fixins, including N band support which I will need soon (but I can’t tell you why yet). I considered installing DD-WRT on it, but in the end, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort and the aggravation. The build in firmware on the WRT610N does everything I need it to (port forwarding, firewall, etc, etc) and the only missing feature is the ability to add internal hosts to the DNS, which in the end I don’t really need. In the future, the WRT610N as fun stuff like a USB port for storage and media servers and other useful features.

So see ya later, DD-WRT, it was fun while it lasted, but I’m just looking forward to my network connection staying up for more then 24 hours at a time.

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Presented for your approval, the stoplight on Highway 119 and Weld County 3 and 1/2.  Highway 119 runs east/west and the county road runs north south.  There is a medium sized trailer park on the north side and businesses on the south side.  The light is timed in such a manner that any car traveling on the county road immediately switches the stop light and triggers about a 1 minute cycle of lights and turn signals. The problem is that there isn’t any timeout on the light (or it is very short) so that a car arriving just as the east west lights go green can trigger the cycle again.

Without a timeout, moderately heavy traffic or unfortunately spaced cars can cause a backup of the heavy morning traffic on 119.  That in itself is bad enough, but it gets worse.  True to human nature, impatient individuals stuck in traffic will find any way they can to avoid standing still even if the cure is worse then the disease.  In this case, the only opportunity to avoid the traffic is to turn off of 119 into the business park to the south of the highway and then emerge again by turning right on county road 3 and 1/2 and then left at the light.  At this point, you can see the problem.  The increased traffic through the business park increases the frequency at which the light turns and thereby increases the traffic on 119, and the cycle intensifies.

Luckily this only happens every once in a while, but it still pisses me off.  I wonder who lives or works in the area to convince the county fathers in far away Greeley to provide such an advantageous stop light?  Hmmm….

Also, while we are on the subject – I don’t care what anybody else says, I like Google Wave.  Google, can we have an Android app for it please?  Pretty please?

Qualcomm is in great need for Linux graphics engineers, especially ones with open source X11 experience.  Here is the req.

Qualcomm has been ranked as  one of the 100 Best Companies to Work for for 11 years now and the job is in beautiful Boulder, Colorado with copious outdoor activities and a highly ranked party scene (The University of Colorado Boulder ranks 11 on the top party school list).   And of course, Colorado has more breweries per-capita then any onther state.  The perfect place to hack on code and climb rocks and drink beer (not always in that order).

“Someone in Florida had made a second-mortgage loan to O.J. Simpson, and I just about blew my top, because there was this huge judgment against him from his wife’s parents,” she recalled. Simpson had been acquitted of killing his wife Nicole and her friend but was later found liable for their deaths in a civil lawsuit; that judgment took precedence over other debts, such as if Simpson defaulted on his WaMu loan.

“When I asked how we could possibly foreclose on it, they said there was a letter in the file from O.J. Simpson saying ‘the judgment is no good, because I didn’t do it.’

That part is amusing, but most of it is pretty scary.  I understand the idea of keeping government out of personal lives, but when people are this greedy and irresponsible what other options are there?

For the moment, all of my old posts will still be available at http://cosmicpenguin.net/drupal. Marc will be helping me import the posts into Wordpress for easy searching, but lets face it, they weren’t that great.

So, away we go with Wordpress. Good luck to me.