Tuesday: That's at least better than a backslide, I guess.

One half of one branch of government is better than nothing, and Florida will have 1.4 million new voters next time, and it sounds like Michigan may have actual districts in the future.  All good things.  Not as good as a complete rout, but it's better than nothing.

I've never seen this kind of ballot.  It's like a touch screen, but paper, and there are faint little LED X's to indicate what you selected.  Also: this law is stupid.

It looks like all my selections except for Padinhareveetil/Plainsboro BoE won.  So that's good.  I didn't get a sticker, so that's bad.  I should have gotten doughnuts when I stopped at CVS this evening.

• One side has a vested interest in not making things sane and not making things more democratic.  "It's a republic," they say.  Then why do some representatives represent more people than others?  Justify that, other than "rich people and racists don't want to share power."
• I got "Cheddar and Beebo," which isn't what I was going for, but is what I'll accept.
• Bulbasaur care.

Thursday: A Good Day.

It didn't start out that way, as I had to get up early for a dentist appointment.  Ugh.  But then I got a good email, and the thing I've been fighting for like two months looks like it might be working finally.  A Good Day.

So I got celebration pancakes.

With requisite carnival kalbi.

There was also a legendary raid battle there, but it was dead by the time I got there. :(

But I saw Julie while fishing today.

I think I like Dr. Frog.

• I think the path forward is clear: I need to find some way to sneak this into the holiday music playlist.
• Wendy's time.
• RWBY.
• Honestly, Mick Rory should be in every CW/DC show.

Disasters.

Within the past week, there's been a jerk running over people in Nice, France, and a coup in Turkey.  Both of these are "I would rather not be there" kind of situations, which can easily be generalized to "some places become suddenly dangerous, and we should be able to help with technology."

This thought came to me this weekend while thinking about all of these events in combination with Pokemon Go, and then through the filter of "doesn't Twitter have a lot of information?"  I'm sure they have a similar level of information as PKMNGo, so it seems like they could set up a fairly robust "Emergency Mode."  Here's kind of a rough outline of things.

1. Twitter detects a disaster.  Although this could be a top level decision "Nice is in trouble.  Flag it!" it could also be something that you let be detected from the tweet stream.  It should immediately start trending in an unexpected way, which might trigger things.
2. A region of the globe where the disaster is happening is defined.  Every user in that region has the following things happen automatically.
1. Their tweets no longer contain location information.  This information is collected, but it is not released publicly.  There are many of these disaster scenarios where you have antagonists who might benefit from knowing where people are, so it's best to keep that private.
2. All users are presented with a pre-defined tweet screen.  They don't get to add to the tweets, but select from a menu:  "I am fine, and I am in a safe location."  "I am fine, but do not think my location is safe."  "I am not fine, and need emergency help."  These go out to the user's followers, so they don't need to use further communication resources contacting people.
3. From the known location information and the responses, narrow the disaster region to define safe and unsafe areas.  Share emergency information with authorities so they can move resources.  This can also be shared with users who do not think they're in a safe location.  "Shelter in place if you are secure.  If not, this map has been auto-generated, but shows the areas currently believed safe."
4. Pre-defined lists of "Emergency Users" are added to the users' following for a temporary period.  This might include news sources, but also things like the State Department's travel twitter.  I already follow them, and during the coup, they were spreading the information they had (largely "shelter in place").  I'm sure other countries have similar things, and can be added to lists for users from those countries (which twitter can easily sort out from location information, in addition to the user supplied location field).  The National Weather Service would be another option, for tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.
5. One option could be to add prompts for tweets/periscopes/etc. so that people who are in a place where reporters aren't could get information out.  This might add a lot of liability, though, because some people aren't smart enough to not put themselves into danger.
3. Once the disaster is resolved, everything goes back to normal, and the temporary following lists are deactivated.

I'm sure a similar thing could be set up with Google or Facebook, but since I use Twitter for pretty much all of my news, that's my obvious source.  Plus, they could make it a selling point: "even if you don't care in general, why not get Twitter so you can be on top of emergency situations."  I'm also pretty sure that news agencies would be interested in getting marked as an "Emergency User".  Fold in some after-the-fact "was this source useful?" polling, and they could check that those users actually help.

Monday: So apparently I hit publish last night instead of save for the temp work on solar powering Honolulu rail.

Whoops.  Also, apparently blogger is broken, so I don't know if this post will go up anyway.

Great.

Good job, google.

At least my lunch wasn't psycho cut.

• Good job, google.  "Hey, let's remove information!  That's a great idea!"
• Psyduck.
• It's a joke.
• I should probably start saving hamusoku links until the next day, to see if RocketNews24 picks it up with a more thorough translation.  This is about the cat plate from yesterday.

Friday: Today was a good day.

Well, except for this.  The drinking fountain I use like three times a day to fill up my water bottle is broken, so I had to go hunt down a different drinking fountain.

But the salad place had tomato basil soup.  Mmmm!  I have the thought that when they have that, to go get a grilled cheese at the other place, get a big thing of soup, and do grilled cheese/tomato soup for lunch.  I hope they wouldn't mind.

And then for dinner I had movie theater hot dog!

 Which means:

I went to see Marnie again.  I decided that if it's really my Best Movie of the Year, I should see it multiple times.  It is still wonderful.

• Also, the Supreme Court decided to have a second day where they do the right thing, so now everyone can get married.  As it should be.  And that caused my RSS to blow up, so I'm putting up the like 1/2 of what was there that I liked.
• Because sometimes you have to bend rules.
• Because even if things still aren't perfect, a victory is a victory.
• Because that's-not-the-Canada-you're-looking-for.
• Because despite everything, he has worked to make things better.
• Because I thought it was funny.
• Because it's not like that.
• Because it is like that.
• Because even if it's fake, yes.
• Because thanks, Obama.
• Because Clarence Thomas wouldn't understand dignity if it hit him in the face.
• Because this is how the government works.
• Because hedgehog.
• Because it is so ordered.
• Because there will be next steps.
• Because the internet.
• Because Brother Cadfael and Gandalf the White.
• Because the truth.
• Because the Onion knew, two years ago.
• Because capitalism, I guess.
• Because Vox made the best gif.
• And yes.  Despite having to fight Congress like he was trying to burn down the entire world, he's gotten a lot of very good things done.
• Marnie.

I am never doing that many links ever again.

Friday: I hate ParcelPool

It's this really stupid thing Amazon uses to mail things, which as far as I understand it, takes the packages from Amazon, drives them most of the way to the destination, and then dumps them for the USPS to deliver.  This generally means that a package from Amazon shipped from me to the mainland arrives there in two days, using regular USPS.  A package from Amazon shipped from me to me in Hawaii goes into a magical box for three days, at which point it gets a delivery date of a week from when it shipped, and is then delivered a day late.

This is pretty much how all of my Amazon packages seem to work now, and it's stupid.

Also stupid?  My internet service.  Previously I'd found a link that suggested that the shitty speed is due to an upgrade to the network that seriously degrades service on docsis 2.0 modems.  So I've been waiting for Amazon to get my fancy new cable modem to me.

Can you guess which tests were done after I installed the new modem?

So yeah.  Oceanic/TWC has broken their own service for people using the modems that they've provided.  They don't suggest that this may happen, and they don't preemptively send out notices that people should come and replace their cable modems with new ones.  I wonder what a report to the PUC would get me.

Anyway, at least now I'll be able to not wait for shit to load all the damn time.

• Corgis.  Our last line of defense against stupid gross cabbage.
• It would be nice.  He was an asshole, and people shouldn't try to gloss over that fact.
• This is a bit sad.  Clearly disagree with his politics, but Ephram Zimbalist Jr. is still the absolute best Alfred voice ever.

Friday: Success!

I am so happy that this finally works.

Friday: busy

I took today off from work. Things accomplished:

1. Doctor appointment
2. Lunch at Arby's, along with important shopping (books and basting brush. No more will I need to try to do eggwash with my fingers. I'm using tools now!)
3. Slurpee. I missed out on 7-11 day, and my car was super hot from being parked at the mall.
4. Trip to Punchbowl to go to the observation lookout.
5. Drove Tantalus/Round Top Drive waiting for the message on my phone that tells me that
6. My new laptop was delivered to the office (no matter where I deliver things, it's never the right place). Picking this up was next.
7. Arrive home to discover that the book I ordered on July 20th had finally made it's way from Toledo. Google tells me that I could have flown there, picked up the book, and then used a combination of bicycling and kayaking to return home faster than the post office.  
8. Battled installation issues (out of box Debian doesn't support wpa for wireless connections; stable doesn't support my video card, so the need to immediately upgrade to unstable was stronger than usual; I can never remember how to install "all the fonts," so tomorrow I'll have to install a bunch of packages until I get all the fonts I need).
9. Copycat dinner from yesterday.
10. Catching up on the internet that I've missed.
11. Watched an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. This show is worse than I was expecting.

Computing!

I've been down to just my laptop and a single ancient box since moving to Hawaii, due to the careful packing skills of my movers.  I finally bought a replacement, and have been having that old-school feeling of trying to get disparate parts working together.  Unfortunately, I fly out to Baltimore for a week on Wednesday, so I'm making this list partially as a to-do list for when I return.

Current status:

• HDMI display works to my television.  Unfortunately, the TV refuses to believe there is a computer attached, and so refuses to allow access to the overscan disabling functions.  What this means is that there's a fairly large border that the computer thinks is visible, but isn't.
• Surprisingly enough, HDMI sound worked with mplayer with only minimal tweaking.  This is a good sign.
• Wireless now works fine, allowing this computer to function as my wireless router.  I've enabled WPA, since I don't feel like doing MAC address filtering and running kittenwar net.  I am having some throughput issues, where the network stalls every ten seconds or so.  I suspect interference from neighbors, but that's a bit tricky to diagnose.
• mythtv sees the database, and looks like it should be functional with an evening of tweaking, once I get that overscan issue fixed.
• The IR remote I got apparently works randomly with mplayer.  I suspect it's a config issue.  I'm hoping that I can simply use the receiver, and train my universal remote to send the key codes.  
• My external USB drives live too high on the shelf to plug into the new computer.  I can probably solve this by just buying a few 2m cables.
• I don't have a video capture card yet, so it won't be a DVR quite yet, but that's the next project, once I get the rest of the system up and running.

James Bond knows his Pokemon

Take that, Xenia Onatop (I hope whoever came up with that name feels bad about it): Charizard always fucking wins.

....


Ok. I finally figured out how to convert an animated gif. Where did my damn video button go on blogger?

Edit: I see, it's only on the "old editor." Whatever.



The big red splotch is some artifact from the conversion.