Vice Admiral James Stockdale, a former Vietnam POW and 1992 Reform Party vice presidential candidate, died last week at the age of 81. During Adm. Stockdale’s captivity, he slashed his own wrists to protest prisoner abuse, which led to immediate improvement in the treatment of him and his fellow prisoners. When he learned he would be used in a propaganda film, Stockdale smashed his own face to prevent it.

The man was uncharacteristicly brave. If anyone deserves the Medal of Honor, he did. I can’t imagine being able to do what he did.

Later in life, Ross Perot picked him to be his vice presidential candidate. Adm. Stockdale described it as “taking a football player, telling him he’s now a boxer, and then putting him in the ring with Joe Lewis.” Its a shame most people know of him only through this campaign disaster.

Read about Adm. Stockdale’s amazing life in his obituaries in the Los Angeles Times and the Olympian

Watch Scott McClellan squirm as reporters rightfully call him on his abrubt turn-around on proclaiming the innocence of Karl Rove.

If Rove outed an intelligence agent, he should go to jail. End of story. Let’s see if Bush will stand by his earlier statement and fire Rove.

On Friday, I discovered a way to unlock Packet8‘s DTA-310 terminal adapters. Strom Carlson did some sleuthing and discovered the device Packet8 uses is the same as Sip-In-One’s. He flashed the DTA-310 wit a Sip-In-One firmware image and it worked. Thus, if you cancelled your Packet8 service and have no use for your TA, you can now flash it and use it with Asterisk.

I’ve added a link to Strom’s page on my Asterisk webpage.
Continue reading →

FSU starting quarterback Wyatt Sexton has been diagnosed with Lyme Disease. Last month, Tallahassee police found Sexton calling himself God and doing push-ups in the street. It sounded like a case of drugs – or that he simply flipped his lid from all the pressure. Sexton was a four-time member of the dean’s list and FSU’s starting quarterback – what more could any kid want?

I’m glad a cause has been found for his bizarre behavior and that he can get the help he needs. Lyme Disease is horrible, debilitating disease. I wish Wyatt a speedy recovery.

In a related note, Lyme Disease has derailed the latest Hall and Oates tour. Discuss.

Today is the third anniversary of our young family being front page news. We’ve had the framed article hanging in Hallie’s room ever since.

So far we haven’t been successful in getting Travis on the front page, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, eh?

(And once again, I’m less than impressed with the N&O’s link-unfriendly website. The original link goes nowhere. Sheesh.)

This story came out last week but didn’t get much attention. A study by Wake Forest University shows evidence that showering may be bad for you. The problem lies in inhaling the manganese that is in the water supply. Manganese is far more likely to enter your brain through breathing than through the other ways one encounters the metal: through eating and drinking. Showering for ten minutes a day for ten years leads to potentially damaging levels of manganese in your brain.

“Inhaling manganese, rather than eating or drinking it, is far more efficient at delivering manganese to the brain,â€? said Dr. John Spangler, one of the study’s researchers. “The nerve cells involved in smell are a direct pathway for toxins to enter the brain. Once inside these small nerves, manganese can travel throughout the brain.â€?

From my searches, there appears to be a wealth of medical research on the effects of managanese exposure, such as this scary article by Dr. Aschner for the National Institute of Health. Dr. Aschner is also a researcher at Wake Forest.

I’ve always been concerned about the strange metals in the water supply, but I never considered that my shower would be the biggest threat. Maybe its time to consider taking baths?

Pop The Cap, the effort to allow North Carolinians to enjoy better beer, has fizzled in the State Senate, according to the Greensboro’s News and Record’s Capitol Beat blog. According to the blog, Senators John Kerr, Jim Jacomin, and Larry Shaw — all from the Fayetteville/Goldsboro area — led the efforts to quash the bill, kicking it back to committee and keeping it from being voted on.

Why not take a minute to call these fine representatives and find out why they chose to keep good beer from the good people of North Carolina? I mean, what are they afraid of?
Continue reading →

Our yard has tons of Japanese beetles crawling over it. The apple and cherry trees were taking the brunt of the attack. I got fed up with the beetle invasion and bought a Bag-A-Bug beetle trap. The trap seems to work, drawing plenty of beetles into the bag, where they get trapped and die. If you’re lazy like me, though, the bag can begin to smell with ammonia from dead beetles.

The directions for the Bag-A-Bug say to change the bag frequently as the smell of rotting beetles is repellant to other beetles. That suggests the question: why not make the plants you want to protect smell like dead beetles? I mean, if this smell is what keeps beetles away, it seems to me the best way to protect your plants is to make them smell like ammonia.

I wonder if hanging a bag of dead beetles (with no pheromone bait) on the trees I wish to protect will keep the beetles away?

I spent the better part of yesterday evening working to repair Kelly’s color printer, which I had broken a few weeks before when I stepped on its power cord. The cord yanked the power socket loose on the pcboard, which made the printer not turn on unless you jiggled the cord a bit.

I popped the cover off the printer, located the offending socket, and promptly was confused. It looked like all the socket’s leads were still connected to the board, yet there was no power getting to the printer. After checking it and rechecking it, I decided the only way I was going to get the printer working again was to solder the cable directly to the board, bypassing the socket.

It’s been a while since I soldered, but I did a decent job with the soldering gun in putting the wires on the board. With a proud look, I plugged the printer in, and … nothing. I wonder now if the short in the socket right after I broke it was enough to fry the board.

Fortunately, color inkjet printers cost about, oh $20, so it really wasn’t worth my effort to repair it. Still, the practice with the soldering gun reminded me just how much of a geek I really am.