January 2011

There were 62 posts published in January 2011 (this is page 3 of 7).

Fun weekend

I had a fun birthday weekend. Friday night, my parents came over for dinner, after which Kelly and I went out to see Blue at Burning Coal Theater. We then hung out at Slims for a bit before heading back home.

Saturday we went to Meymandi Concert Hall to hear The Mozart Experience. It was an excellent production, with mimes and great music. The kids had a great time and it was fun seeing all the people we knew from Conn. Also, the kids (and, ok, me too) enjoyed playing the instruments before the show at the “instrument zoo.” I think I want a trumpet now!

Saturday night I went out to have a beer with my friends Scott and Holly Reston and Reid Serozi, again at Slims. Scott and Holly had to head to a show, so Reid and I headed over to 18 Seaboard to continue our conversation.

This morning we hopped in the car once again and headed over to the North Carolina Museum of Art for the Norman Rockwell exhibit. It was jam-packed but it was great to see this prolific artist’s work up close.

After lunch I went to work on a pile of fill dirt left in our driveway by a friend. I’m building up the garden area in the backyard and the dirt was much-needed. I should sleep soundly tonight!

The Cap’m

I love the looped audience track in this song.

The Cap’m (YouTube)
They Might Be Giants

Do you think there’s somebody out there
Someone else who’s better than the one you’ve got?
Well there’s not, there’s not

When I talk you keep looking away from me
‘Cause you probably think that I’m high on pot
But I’m not, I’m not
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Highlights of 2010: changing jobs

The year 2010 was special in one very important way: I landed my dream job. It rescued me just in time from the slowly maddening existence I had at my last job.

First off, let me say that the company I used to work at wasn’t all bad. In fact, it’s one of the top-ranked places to work in the country. There were bagels and fruit on weekday mornings and beer Friday afternoons. The benefits were good, too. All of that would’ve been great had I not been in the department I was in, where sweatshop-like schedules were the norm.
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Inaugural address of John F. Kennedy

Fifty years ago today, almost to the minute, John F. Kennedy was wrapping up his famous inaugural speech. I listened to it again today and it still inspires.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered his only inaugural address at 12:51 (ET) Friday, January 20, 1961, immediately after taking the presidential oath of office administered by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Kennedy began his speech at 12:51 (ET) Friday, 20 January 1961, immediately after taking the presidential oath of office.

The address is 1364 words and took 13 minutes and 59 seconds to deliver, from the first word to the last word, not including applause at the end, making it the fourth-shortest inaugural address ever delivered. It is widely considered to be among the best presidential inauguration speeches in American history.

via Inaugural address of John F. Kennedy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Highlights of 2010: fun with the family

Meeting the Canyon

One of the biggest highlights of 2010 was all the fun I had with my family. There were many events which made it special and I wouldn’t trade my family time for anything.

The biggest highlight was our March vacation to Sedona, Arizona. We joined Kelly’s family for a week of sightseeing and hiking around this beautiful desert community. We did a ton of hiking around the local mountains. We also took a trip to see Montezuma’s Castle and took a train to the Grand Canyon. Later we took a trip up to Flagstaff to see the Lowell Observatory. When we weren’t running around, we were relaxing at our rental house, including making use of the hot tub. It was a wonderful visit to a place far more beautiful than I had expected.
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Fetzer on idiot bloggers and mean politics

Happy to be doing my part!

When former state GOP chairman Tom Fetzer gave his farewell speech over the weekend, he did more than just talk about all the Republican victories last year.

“If I could give you one piece of advice, please ignore the idiot bloggers,” Fetzer said. “I don’t know those these people are and why they have time to do this stuff. But they need to get a life.”

via Fetzer on idiot bloggers and mean politics | newsobserver.com projects.

Tisdale family gets legal representation

News comes today that the family of Delvonte Tisdale, the teen who stowed away in an airplane wheel well, has retained legal representation in an apparent effort to sue the airport.

As I said before, it’s tragic that Delvonte Tisdale died. However, this young man chose to climb an airport fence and then attempted to steal free travel to Massachusetts. I think it’s pretty clear who is at fault here.

These kinds of lawsuits drive me crazy.

Stuxnet – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fascinating. This reminds me a of a hacker attack the CIA allegedly pulled on a Soviet gas pipeline way back in 1982.

Stuxnet is a computer worm targeted at industrial equipment that was first discovered in July 2010 by VirusBlokAda, a security firm based in Belarus. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems, it is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems, and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.It was specifically written to attack Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems used to control and monitor industrial processes. Stuxnet includes the capability to reprogram the PLCs and hide its changes.

The worm’s probable target is said to have been high value infrastructures in Iran using Siemens control systems. According to news reports the infestation by this worm might have damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities in Natanz and eventually delayed the start up of Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. Although Siemens initially had stated that the worm had not caused any damage, on November 29, Iran confirmed that its nuclear program had indeed been damaged by Stuxnet.

via Stuxnet – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Hu Jintao arriving for state visit

I guess I’m fascinated with China, like it or not. I was reading this WaPo article about Chinese President Hu Jintao’s upcoming state visit to America when I noticed this interesting tidbit:

After U.S. officials, including Clinton and Jeffrey Bader, senior Asia director at the National Security Council, tussled with Chinese security guards at the Copenhagen Climate Conference at the end of 2009, and China reacted strongly to a U.S. decision to sell $6.4 billion of weapons to Taiwan, the Obama administration’s tone changed.

I was unaware that there has been a “tussle” with Chinese security guards at this conference. My Google-Fu fails me here, too, as I can’t seem to find any mention of a physical confrontation at the Climate Conference. Was this somehow hushed up? And if so, how could it have been hushed up at such a public conference?

Could this lack of search results on this event be somehow related to China’s alleged hacking attacks against Google?

via Hu Jintao arriving for state visit focused on economics, security, human rights.