Aielman’s blog

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.

• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.

• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.

• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.

• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.

• $500 million for state and local fire stations.

• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.

• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.

• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.

• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

• $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

• $850 million for Amtrak.

• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.

• $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts

• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.

• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.

• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

• $252 billion for income-transfer payments. This includes $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax.

Just about 270 billion that won't stimulate a damn thing.

So basically we have democrat politicians' 40 year wet dream for new permanent government spending being rushed through congress to "stimulate" the economy, authored by the same dumbasses responsible for the conditions that allowed the economy to get into the condition it's in, and opposed by the same dumbasses who are complaining about spending but who went through tax money like a drunken Hilton in the mall with daddy's credit card.

All that and it's going to be signed into law by the guy who ran on a platform of "change" but who hired every slick ass, Persian Bazaar snake oil salesman available, including the king of the heap, Tom Daschule, to be in his cabinet. Yeah...that's some change there, boy.

Way to keep up that Chicago tradition Mr President.

peace,
Aielman

Copied from my somewhat nerdly and quite literary neighbor Duck

Well...I downloaded Windows 7 Beta when it became available. Got it with relative ease along with 3 keys for installation.

The install itself went flawlessly. The 64 bit OS looks great and seems to run great on my wife's core 2 duo machine with 4 G of ram.

There's just one small, but fairly significant problem for my install...it cannot seem to hold a valid IP address, which makes it impossible to get on the network.

It's a truly odd problem as well. The system gets a valid DHCP address at logon and connects to the internet fine. But as soon as you try to use it to get a remote resource or go on the web, it is unable to make connection for more than a few seconds, if at all. Running the troubleshooter, it first tells you that it cannot find the gateway, and then after several minutes, that it does not have a valid IP to get on the web (it ends up with an APIPA address).

So of course my first instinct is that there is a driver issue. That in itself is odd because I was initially using a Marvell Yukon Gig NIC that is probably the second most commonly used network card on desktop machines behind the Intel Pro. So it's almost inconceivable that Microsoft would neglect to include a valid driver. But just in case, I downloaded the latest driver on another machine and then installed it...but to no avail.

So then I purchased a new dlink 530T, their most commonly used gigabit NIC, and installed first the 64 bit Vista drivers (Windows 7 is meant to be 100% compatible with all Vista drivers) and then the Windows 2008 driver, but the same problem occurred. It would get an IP...and then it would lose it. Then, from 5 to 20 minutes later, it would again get a valid IP.

Thinking it may be a bum install, I formated the drive and reloaded from scratch but the same thing happened. So...just to be sure, I re-downloaded the image and tried it...but again...same problem.

I also tried 3 different sources of DHCP addresses, just to be sure it wasn't a problem communicating from the server, but nada.

But wait...try hardcoding the IP you might reply. Alas...I did so, but it still didn't work. It again couldn't see the gateway.

It's all very disappointing. Everyone else seems to be having a great experience with the beta...but not I, which is a shame.

Oh well...Back to XP 64 bit if I can't find a fix in the next 24 hours.

peace,
Aielman

Let this be a lesson in why you want to proof-read anything you put on a webpage if you're selling something from it...

 

 

Went looking for a new firewall yesterday for my home, as we're going to be adding a couple of additional computers that the children will be using. Since they won't be directly supervised while using them a good portion of the time, I've invested in a content filter and I wanted to get a firewall appliance as well. Now I know Checkpoint makes a quality appliance as we use them in the rather large enterprise I manage at work. So I thought I'd check one of my favorite discount sites to see if they might have a refurb or something for sale.

 

Lo and behold, I came upon this little gem. Listed at $149 was this enterprise class appliance...something that was really much more than I need, but less than half the price of the class of device I was looking for. So after checking around to make sure it was the deal I thought it was, I immediately purchased it.

 

Today I decided to check the website to see how the order was progressing and found item in the picture. It seems they've discovered their error and the device is now "out of stock" but set for the correct price point...$1029.

 

I fairly certain that they will honor the price as they're a reputable company, so I'm feeling pretty good about the purchase and thought I'd share. Check those sites carefully...you never know what gem you might find.

 

peace,

Aielman

Wow...weeks fly by sometimes.

So the election is finally over. Thank GOD. Obama pulled it out. Good for him. Let's see what he does with it. Be nice to be able to take the offense and snipe over every little detail of his administration the way my liberal friends have done with this one. I kind of feel sorry for the poor guy. He's been touted as the second coming for so long by so many that they're really setting him up for a fall. Any mistake is going to get pounced on mercilously. Gonna be rough for him because so much that isn't in the control of the government is going on right now that people are going to blame them for when they can't change them.

 

So many things taking up my time recently. Work has been insane. Many projects and no money to do them but they have to get done regardless. Then there was the release of the new WoW expansion...had to check that out.

 

So the posts have been non-existent, and I haven't been visiting my friends blogs much. Sorry about that.

 

Hope all are well.

Peace,

Aielman

They're both completely full of shit.

Both candidates stretched facts, sometimes past the breaking point, as they addressed the financial crisis and misrepresented each other's position on health care during their second presidential debate.

Man I can't wait until this farce is over.

 

peace,

Aielman

You know...I really can't wait until election season is over. I'm at a point now where I am so sick of it all that I don't even want to vote.

In any case, having drunk deeply of the Obama Koolaid, my good friend E over at Eclectablog has been doing a bang up job of chronicaling every single possible mistep of the McCain campaign and all it's "lies," so in the interests of equal reporting, I thought I'd mention some of the Obama inconsistencies that the faithful seem to miss.

Now...Obama, much like any other candidate, hates to be behind is opponent in anything. Recently, it seems he's been concerned about being behind McCain in the number of ads that are completely bullshit about his opponent, so he's upped his game and he's in the process of catching up to him. I guess he was jealous of the amount of airplay McCain was getting on Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show for his less than accurate ads.

For instance, in several up for grab states, Obama ads have erroneously suggested (my buddy would call this a lie, heh) that Mr. McCain “has stood in the way of” federal financing for stem cell research. Now while it's true that McCain did once oppose such federally supported research, he broke with the President after that one time, and has consistently supported it since in 2001.

In another commercial running in NYC on Thursday highlighting McCain’s votes against incentives for alternative energy incorrectly asserted that he supports tax breaks for “one source of energy...oil companies.”  McCain’s corporate tax proposal would cover all companies...including those developing energy generation techniques.

In yet another tv spot playing all over Florida, and other states with high concentrations of retirees, reminds everyone that McCain supported the adminstrations failed plan of Social Security privitazation, accounts misleadingly clamed that McCain supported “cutting benefits in half..." a claim that doesn't hold up too well once an analysis of  Bush’s plan is done, which shows that such a cut would have applied only to upper-income Americans retiring in the year 2075. Good scare tactic though...sounds like something the GOP would do in their campaign ads.

Then of course there's the Spanish language ad that's been running for the last few weeks, and is still running, that links the McCain's support of Bush's rather sweeping immigration overhaul, to those of Rush Limbaugh. The ad implies Limbaugh is a close “Republican friend,”  of McCain, and goes on to quote Limbaugh calling Mexicans “stupid and unqualified.” The truth is that the quote was cherry-picked from a completely different context, and as much of a tool Mr. Limbaugh is, he never said it in the way it's been implied.The truth of it is that Limbaugh is a harsh critic of the Bush plan and, frequently, of McCain in general...and they don't get along very well.

The NYT, of all places, wrote a piece on this penchant for less than accurate campaign ads yesterday in the political section. From that piece:

In all, Mr. Obama has released at least five commercials that have been criticized as misleading or untruthful against Mr. McCain’s positions in the past two weeks. Mr. Obama drew complaints from many of the independent fact-checking groups and editorial writers who just two weeks ago were criticizing Mr. McCain for producing a large share of this year’s untruthful spots (“Pants on Fire,” the fact-checking Web site PolitiFact.com wrote of Mr. Obama’s advertisement invoking Mr. Limbaugh; “False!” FactCheck.org said of his commercial on Social Security.)

Never let it be said that Obama wasn't good at playing catch up ;)

 

peace,
Aielman 

peace,
Aielman

So...I'm sure everyone's seen the cute little ads by Apple in the "I'm a PC" series with Justin Long of movie fame playing the Mac. They're pretty good copy.  Good enough that they've helped seriously propel Mac sales enough to keep the company more than just floating just above insolvency.

Now Apple makes a nice product. They're fairly innocuous and are just fine for the home user who doesn't want to have to use their brain to compute, doesn't need to use the same productivity software most of the rest of the world uses and doesn't have a need for much networking. In the business world, however, Macs are pretty much a disaster outside of small design shops. They suck at networking in large environments...they don't interact well with the Active Directory used by Windows, or other LDAP based directory services that between the two of them are in use by almost every medium to large scale business. They require a different infrastructure for software and patch delivery and different anti-virus, as well as proprietary networking equipment for wireless connectivity. And they don't use business aps well unless you use parallels, and even then they can be iffy. Apple doesn't make a server worth a damn, and doesn't have a directory service so you can't make an all Apple shop to keep cost and complexity down.

All in all, they're a nice toy that can emulate a PC, but don't really do what a PC does.

Which is kind of the annoying thing about the ads by Apple, especially for an IT profession like myself who works with tens of thousands of computers on a daily basis. Because they imply that the Mac does replace the PC, and infact they infer that the PC doesn't work as well as the apple. That it's just a substandard device...which is patently ridiculous.

In any case...the cute little ads have run unopposed for a couple of years now. But that is about to change.

Microsoft has decided it's time to "tear down the walls for a better view", as they put it...and they've devised a series of their own cute ads to highlight the PC and Microsoft's products. There have been a couple of new ones with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates recently...and now there's a new one which will be out this week.

Check it out...

 

Not bad for the not so hip kids from Redmond.

 

peace,
Aielman