Mitch Scoggins' Weblog

I’ve never been one much for sports – either playing or watching.  I do enjoy watching some of the winter Olympic games, and once every four years I watch team sports for one month.  I’m talking, of course, about the FIFA World Cup.  I like football in general, but I can’t be bothered to support any of the “clubs” that play in various countries each year, but once every four years these clubs break up and the players go home to play football for their country for a month.  Sometimes this makes for some amusing match-ups, like yesterday when Brazil was able to beat the pants off their colonizing nation, Portugal.  Someday I dream of watching Israel  play Palestine, or watching Kosovo kick the tar out of Serbia.

Today starts the Round of 16, with the first game being Uruguay v. Korea.  The US is playing Ghana this afternoon.  Part of me would like to see the US win, just because they’ve not gotten past the quarter finals since 1930, but really I’d like to see Ghana win.  This year is the first time that the World Cup has been hosted by an African country, and after Round 1 Ghana is the only African country left in the competition.   I was really supporting South Africa, since I like to see the host country do well, but they didn’t make it into the Round of 16.

There have been some good bits in the competition so far; watching the French team melt down was a utter delight, watching Italy get beat by Slovakia and sent home in the first round was fun (nothing against Italy as a country but their footballers are a bunch of whining babies) , and watching South Africa win their final game (v. France) was pretty cool.

So, July 11 is the big day.  There’s no way to know for sure, but I’m calling the final game as Brazil v. Germany.  That’s the safe bet anyway.  Maybe we’ll be lucky and see an unexpected match-up like Slovakia v. Japan, or even Ghana v. England.

(3:00pm Update) Ghana won! In overtime at 93′ by Asamoah Gyan. It was a fantastic goal. Glad an African country is still in it. I bet my friends Fred Opuni-Mensah and Fred Kwami Kumah are ecstatic.

So I went on vacation a couple weeks ago, flying into and out of Omaha, NE. On my way back the Omaha airport was testing that delightful new privacy intrusion known as a “backscatter x-ray machine.” While intrusive, this device has been sold to the government – and by the government to us – as making us more safe (here we go again) while speeding up the wait lines at airports, and making life more convenient.

On day 1 at Omaha, this device was neither making lines go faster, nor was it making anything more convenient. I was wondering why the security line at such a small airport was so long, until I got close enough to see the new machine. It was taking 8-10 times longer for a victim to step into the box and be photographed naked, than it took for that same person to walk through a metal detector. As for the whole “convenience” claim, that was not happening either. In the early days these machines were being heralded as eliminating the need for removing shoes and other items from one’s body prior to scanning. In actuality, we had to remove more than before. Now, instead of just removing metal from our pockets, we were ordered to remove everything – pens, bubble gum, even paper – before stepping into the machine to do our Mickey Mouse Ears imitation.

Anyway, being the obstreperous person that I am, I chose to “opt out” of the scan, as the signs along the cattle chute promised I could. What bothered me was that out of the very long line of people in front of me, no one was objecting out loud – though I did see a lot of grimacing and rolled eyes. There was a vague look of shock from the screener when I told her I was opting out, but she did call someone over to “assist” me. I got a thorough pat-down from a very nice gentleman, and then got waved on.

I believe it’s my duty to be as difficult as possible as the police state continues to tighten the rope around the country. Although I remain a bit depressed that I seemed to be the only person who felt that way in the Omaha airport that day.

So, I’ll end this particular diatribe with a quote from Benjamin Franklin ~1775 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Go Ben.

So, I tried to update my blog (WordPress) software to version 2.9.2 today, but got an error saying that to use the version I had to have mySQL database version over 4.1 (I think I was stuck back at 4.0.??).  Sooooo, since I had a bit of time, I thought I would try to fix this – it was surprisingly easy.  I backed up my old database using 1and1′s integrated phpMyAdmin software, then created a new database.  Whenever you create a new database on 1and1 now, it automatically is created in mySQL5.  I imported my old database data into the new database and changed the wp-config.php file from my blog to point to the new database, and *poof* it worked.  Just that easy.

Yay!  It’s neigh on a year since I’ve blogged, bad me (again).

So, yesterday turned out to be a good day.  I was in Seattle for a couple days for meetings, and got to the airport a bit earlier than expected to fly home.  My boss and I decided it was worth it to pay the $25 to get home a couple hours earlier, so we got an earlier flight.  That flight was delayed for an hour (I was annoyed with that), but I still got home an hour earlier (10:20 instead of 11:20pm).  I found out this morning that my original flight was canceled, so the 1-hour delay doesn’t look so bad now

Anyway, the new home theater receiver we ordered arrived last night (the BluRay arrived last week), and it was the Yamaha RX-V465BL instead of the 463 that we ordered.  The 465 costs about $100 more.  I called the company this morning to see what was up, and they said they were out of the 463 so they gave us a 465 instead – epic win.  It’s got four HDMI inputs instead of two, and does Dolby Tru-HD sound.  Both of those were features I wanted but was not willing to pay an extra $100 for.  I spend 3.5 hours this evening setting up the new home theater, and it’s mostly working.  It’s really complex, but worth learning about ’cause it does all sorts of stuff.

The system included a antenna that I hooked in and ran it through some test cycle where it automatically set-up the surround sound.  That was neato.  The one bad thing was that our existing subwoofer would not work with the new system (it requires a woofer with its own amp) so we are currently sans woofer.  I do have one on order though, so we should have bass again in a week or so (Amazon free shipping is slow).  The remote that comes with the receiver is programmable so it can at least power on the other devices (TV/BluRay) so we might use slightly less remotes.  We are still thinking of getting a good universal remote, but maybe we won’t.

Ok, that’s all for now.  Oh, and if you didn’t understand the title of this post, it means you’re not reading enough Pearls Before Swine.  Check out the strips from Aug 10 & 11, they funny.

Well, a few things have happened in the two months since I blogged last. Finally got the truck sold, that was nice. It was kind of cool to have a truck for when we needed it, but it’d be cheaper to just rent one for the two times per year that we need it. My Taurus hit 130k miles and I decided I should get rid of that too. I went to several dealerships since they seemed to be motivated to sell these days, but they weren’t as motivated as I’d hoped. I had five dealers turn down offers I made – granted, they were lowish offers – but I didn’t think they were that low.

So, I went out to CraigsList and bought a car from someone there. Got a good deal on a 2007 Ford Fusion, V6, AWD with most of the options on it. It’s got satellite radio in it, but the subscription ran out a few days after I bought it. I just can’t get my head around paying for radio, so I don’t use it. It’s got a 6-disk CD changer that can read MP3s so that’s something over 70 hours of music right there, then it has regular radio and a jack for an MP3 player (iPhone in my case), so short of needing to drive for weeks on end, I think I have enough music to skip the Sirius radio. Oh, and I traded the seller of the Fusion my Taurus for a bit off the purchase price. So now I don’t have to sell another car.

My new(ish) car

Last weekend Amy and I decided to take a drive, you know, to see if the Fusion really works We headed up through the Payette National Forest to Lewiston (6ish hours), then from there over to Walla Walla. I haven’t been to Walla Walla/College Place since something like 1992. Some things had changed and quite a bit hadn’t. We drove around both towns and wandered around the Walla Walla campus for a bit. It was really hot, so we didn’t spend too much time outside. I took a few pictures, and we headed back. Came back via the interstate (I84) through Oregon. The whole trip took about 12 hours, and it was nice to get out a bit.

For the last few months, we’ve been thinking about updating our DVD/video/home theater stuff. Our home theater system is really old, and is not working so well. It’s pre-HDMI, and has built-in VCR and DVD neither of which work anymore. We have a DVR and DVD player hooked into it, just using the HT as a sound system, but it takes 5 remotes and a degree in engineering to run the thing. So, after a lot of research, we bought a couple new pieces yesterday (they should arrive in a week or so). We considered getting a “Home Theater In A Box,” but we did that last time and it’s a problem when parts start giving out like the VCR and DVD did. So we went modular this time. As a receiver we bought a Yamaha RX-V463BL 525 Watt 5.1-Channel Home Theater Receiver
. Since our couch is back up against a wall, there’s no reason to get a 7.1 system. One of the major deciding factors on this receiver is that it’s one of the cheaper ones that will pass-though HDMI audio, many only do video. We’re trying to reduce the number of remotes and complexity of operations, so HDMI audio is essential. It’s also got 2 HDMI inputs so we can run the BluRay player and DVR into those and out to the TV via one cable. This thing is also a Sirius radio receiver, but again with the paying for radio – just doesn’t seem right.

So, we also bought a BluRay player. Not so much for the BluRay part (we don’t own any BluRay movies) but for the fact that it streams NetFlix movies. After some research we got a LG BD 390 Network Blu-ray.
We wanted something fairly cheap, reliable, with Netflix and built-in wireless networking (for NetFlix, firmware updates, etc). It also streams Pandora Radio, but I really don’t care about that. Of course the BluRay player also plays regular DVDs (and up-scales them) so the backward compatibility means we don’t have to have a DVD set-up anymore. BluRay will play BR Disks at 1080p, but out TV is only 720p. Still, it’s very pretty even at that resolution, so I’m happy.

We’re going to keep our old speakers for now and wire them in to the new receiver. They’re old and not awesome, but we’re not really audiophiles. Someday we’ll stumble on a good bargain for a speaker set and we’ll hook up some new ones. No hurry on that though. I’ll still have to hook the Wii system into the receiver via component cables since Nintendo has not yet seen fit to release the Wii with an HDMI port. Silly Nintendo. That’s ok though, there are only 2 HDMI-ins on the receiver and I’ll use one for the DVR and one for the BluRay. If we ever get another HDMI device, I can get a switcher of some kind.

Hopefully all the stuff will arrive (from Amazon.com of course) by next weekend, and I’ll not have too much trouble setting everything up. We’ll see. Ok, that’s all for now.

So, it’s Memorial Day weekend and Amy and I took a trip out to Twin Falls to see the Shoshone Falls and the Snake River Canyon.  Here are some pictures, remember that you can click on them to see a larger view (with some browsers you may have to right-click the select “view image”).

Here’s a picture of me under the Snake River Canyon bridge just outside Twin Falls.

Here’s a picture of Amy in front of the Falls.

Here’s one of me in front of the falls.

While in Twin we also took a drive around the campus of the College of Southern Idaho, but we didn’t take any pictures.  Pretty campus though.

In other news, I’ve finally (mostly) abandoned Windows as an OS.  Since I’ve gotten bored with World of Warcraft and am not playing anymore, there’s not much tieing me to Windows.  I still have to boot into XP once a week or so to use Quicken since I can’t get Linux to play nice with it through the WINE windows emulation software.  It kinda works, but it kinda doesn’t too.  Still, I am almost full-time using Ubuntu-flavor linux with the Gnome desktop now, and I like it.  One of these days BioWare is going to release their new Star Wars MMORPG game, then I am going to have to go back to using windows – but until then I am having fun learning a lot about this new OS.

I did load Windows 7 onto my computer for a couple weeks to try it out, but it sucks so I took it off.  It’s really just Vista with some makeup troweled over it.  So, when I do have to use Windows, it’ll be XP for me.

Well, that’s all for now.  We’re re-finishing furniture this weekend, so I better get back to it.

So, the holidays have passed, and with them the snow (for now at least).  Had a few ugly commutes around Christmas/New Years, but I survived. 

I got a bunch of cool stuff for Christmas, mostly media, like the entire Red Dwarf series.  Got a few books, a nice pair of shoes, and other odds and ends.  Got a couple things from an unknown source, since there was no information in the box about who sent it.  Also I think I missed something.  On my wish list it seemed that someone bought me a saucepan that I had on there, but it never arrived.  So, if someone’s reading this that think they ordered a pan for me, get your money back.

So now I’m back at work and not expecting another holiday until sometime in February.  Interesting times to be working for state government, what with the recession and all.  As the government collects less taxes, they have got to reduce budgets since the Idaho Constitution requires that the state operate on a balanced budget.  So there have been all sorts of cuts, some budgets, some jobs, some other stuff.  And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.  But it certainly is interesting.

So, back to media:

* Games I’m Playing: World of Warcraft, Heroes of Might & Magic 5
(just finished it after cheating outragously), Fallout 3, and several goofy iPhone games.

* Authors I’m Reading: Neal Stephenson, Richard K. Morgan, Gustav Flaubert (but I’ve been in the middle of Salammbo for about 6 months now, so I guess I’m not really reading it anymore).

* Musicians I’m Listening to: Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, the Cafe Del Mar CD series, Nora Jones, Joni Mitchell, and lots more that I forget at the moment.

*TV I’m Watching: How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Burn Notice, Monk, Scrubs, and Red Dwarf (on DVD – thanks Kevin).

Ok, that’s enough rambling for now…..

I now own an Apple, inc. product (I feel so dirty). I don’t really “own” it since it was bought for me by my workplace, but I have an iPhone. It’s not bad as phones go, and it beats the hell out of the Palm Treo – of course a piece of tree bark would beat the hell out of the Treo so it’s not much of a standard to judge by.

When the iPhone first came out it didn’t sync with Micro$oft Exchange servers, which pretty much made it useless for business since Micro$oft still maintains its strangle hold on many businesses. Someone at Apple had a brainstorm that they could sell more of these things if they made it work with M$ Exchange – seems to be working since I have one.

All in all I am quite happy with the phone, it does all I need it to do and a lot of what I want it to do. And, with the App store, it does a lot of things I never expected it to do. I’ll get my new number out to people in the next day or so since I’ll not be carrying my Treo anymore.

So, it’s FISA day today, and – despite promises to the contrary, Obama’s going to vote for it (appalling).  I try to stay somewhat apolitical anymore – only because I hate them all pretty much equally, but I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that Obama had me just a bit suckered this time.  The fact that he was (or at seemed to be) an outsider, and maybe even had a conviction or two that were his own and not those of a committee or pollster, was intriguing to me.

I’ve long believed that no one can make it to the US Senate – much less the Presidency – without having wholly sold their soul to one or the other party, so I am not sure why I thought things were different this time.  Oh well, live and learn.

So, FISA.  Not only is the bill that will ammend FISA a bad one in and of itself, the added provision that grants the TelCos retroactive immunity is absurd.  The fact that this bill could make it through the House, and today will make it through the Senate – even when both are democratic – is a clear demonstration that neither of the two parties that have dominated America for too long have any interest at all in protecting Americans from the real danger.  No not terrorism, but from the American government who have been systematically stripping away our civil rights for decades.  The US government is so much more dangerous than any outside force threatening America today.

I’ll try to keep politics out of my blog in the future, but you might be able to tell I pretty pissed-off and wanted to vent.

Vote libertarian.

So, I am reduced to blogging about yard work, but the alternative (as you could see over the last few months) is not blogging at all, so….  I got up early this morning to take my dad to the airport, so had a long Sunday to get stuff done.  Amy and I went out to various stores (Lowes, Fred Meyer, and Home Depot) to buy a tree and some rose bushes.  It took us until 4pm this afternoon, but we got them all installed.

The tree is a “Veteran Peach.”  Here’s a picture:

And we got three roses in our front flower bed.  There was shade over two of them by the time we were done, so the picture didn’t turn out so well:

So, now we’re hot n tired, with sore hands.  But a prettier front and back yard because of it.   We also mowed and weeded today, with a bit more weeding to do next weekend.  We’re stilling looking for dwarf boxwoods (bushes) and Hastas to put in the back flower beds.  Might do that next weekend too.