https://buy-zithromax.online buy kamagra usa https://antibiotics.top buy stromectol online https://deutschland-doxycycline.com https://ivermectin-apotheke.com kaufen cialis https://2-pharmaceuticals.com buy antibiotics online Online Pharmacy vermectin apotheke buy stromectol europe buy zithromax online https://kaufen-cialis.com levitra usa https://stromectol-apotheke.com buy doxycycline online https://buy-ivermectin.online https://stromectol-europe.com stromectol apotheke https://buyamoxil24x7.online deutschland doxycycline https://buy-stromectol.online https://doxycycline365.online https://levitra-usa.com buy ivermectin online buy amoxil online https://buykamagrausa.net

Month: August 2008

***Dave Does the Blog (for Seven Years)

Yow! Posting frequency may fluctuate, topics may come and go, page layouts do (occasionally) change, but … seven years? That’s one hell of a persistently goofy hobby I’ve got…

Yow!

Posting frequency may fluctuate, topics may come and go, page layouts do (occasionally) change, but … seven years? That’s one hell of a persistently goofy hobby I’ve got here!

Many thanks to my readers (who provide me with tangible feedback) and especially to my wife (who puts up with it all).

Obama/Biden ’08

I’ll confess I don’t know as much about Joe Biden as I’d like to (or as I’m sure I will). He’s struck me as a generally intelligent and informed…

I’ll confess I don’t know as much about Joe Biden as I’d like to (or as I’m sure I will). He’s struck me as a generally intelligent and informed Senator, sometimes a bit too clever for his own good (including the occasional speech plagiarism), but neither diabolically nefarious nor bright-shiny glad-handing. He’s a political animal, certainly, and he’s not the charismatic type that Obama is — but I think he will lend a certain measure of “okay, it’s not all unknowns and first-times” to the ticket, in a way that will calm the electorate (whether reasonable or not).

In short, it’s not an exciting choice, but it’s not a controversial one, either, and Obama himself is exciting enough as a candidate to not need to have someone who’s also a “celebrity”

As to the key question — how would I feel if he had to take over the White House as President — I don’t know that it’s something I have a strong opinion about pro, but really no con at all. And short of something like that happening, I think he’ll serve as an intelligent, useful advisor to Obama.

(That said, I’m mildly disappointed that my text message announcement of the decision never made it to my cell phone. *sigh*)

Restaurant Review: Grazio, Lone Tree, Colorado

Overall Food Service Ambience Prices It is often said that the worst place to open a restaurant is at the site where a restaurant failed. It’s the inverse of…

Overall
Food Service
Ambience Prices

It is often said that the worst place to open a restaurant is at the site where a restaurant failed. It’s the inverse of the “Location, Location, Location” rule. We had a Hops down in Lone Tree that we used to go to before Hops imploded. The building sat vacant a while, until a Japanese teppan grill opened there — with some not-inexpensive TI involved. They went out of business within a few months, leaving the property vacant. So when signs went up for Grazio Italian Grill & Bar, we assumed much the same fate would befall.

If tonight was any sign, Grazio will be there for a while. And that’s a good thing.

Food: Grazio is essentially an Italian restaurant, thought there is a large bar in the front half of the place (an artifact of both previous incarnations). They have a minor specialty in sea food, but a wide array of pastas and various meat dishes.

Portion size was generous, and the food was generally quite tasty. Rather than the standard bread basket, there’s someone constantly circulating the floor offering fresh-baked cheese biscuits (which are extremely filling). Margie ordered a carpaccio appetizer that was larger than expected. The side Caesar salads had a good garlic and lemon flavor to them. 

I had a veal chop that was very good, along with tasty side potatoes and someone over-cooked asparagus. Margie had some gnocchi which were well made, though the sauce wasn’t all that special. The kids’ menu was lengthy and full of different things; Katherine had a grilled cheese sandwich, which was disappointing until they brought it out, as it was made with mozzarella and romano cheeses and was very tasty and distinctive. 

Of the six things on the dessert menu I was enthused about five of them, and they had an extensive gellato and sherbet selection.

The wine list was fairly lengthy, and ranged in price from the 20s to the 90s per bottle. We had a solidly good Super-Tuscan.

Service: They had a lot of folks on the floor. Our waiter was very good, very friendly and attentive (and, when need be, patient). The other help — bus boys, biscuit boys, gellato ladies — were all friendly. One minor order mishap which was speedily and generously corrected.

Ambience: The decor has been completely made over from the previous two tenants. It’s nothing special, and in places a bit in inconsistent, but overall pleasant.

Prices: The gnocchi was $13; the veal chop was $27. Prices — for the quality and quantity — seemed quite reasonable.

Overall: If I had to compare, I’d say it’s a distinct tick up from Macaroni Grill (in service and food quality), but not as good as Pesce Fresco (which they compare to, price-wise). But, yeah, we’ll go back. While their domain, graziorestaurants.com, implies more than one, so far there is just the single restaurant in Lone Tree. Based on the quite decent crowd coming in the whole time we were there, I would expect that won’t be true for long. I look forward to returning.

Grazio Italian Grill & Bar – 9271 East Park Meadows Dr, Lone Tree, CO 80124 – 303-227-0076 

Who

I forgot to write about our marathon session watching the last three eps of the current Doctor Who — which I’ll simply sum up by saying (a) it would…

I forgot to write about our marathon session watching the last three eps of the current Doctor Who — which I’ll simply sum up by saying (a) it would be hard to get more epic in scope while still remaining faithful to the show, and (b) I’m almost willing to let the show fall into its planned slower pace of production, as it might take us a few years to catch our breath from the drama.

Meantime, courtesy of Les, here’s a homage to the 45-year history of the Doctor (or, for those who have no idea of how cheesy the sfx on the show used to be, some clear illustrations of same). There’s actually very little Doctor face time — but lots of pics of the Bad Guys.

 

Good stuff.

If you don’t know how many houses you have …

… then either you’re mental processes are slipping, or you have too many. A bit of Obama’s speech referencing McCain’s most recent (and a few others) gaffes on the economy (emphasis…

… then either you’re mental processes are slipping, or you have too many.

A bit of Obama’s speech referencing McCain’s most recent (and a few others) gaffes on the economy (emphasis mine):

But the fact of the matter is that John McCain is offering more of the same. He said a while back that he thought that we had made great progress economically during the years that George Bush has been in office. Now, that raised some eyebrows. Great progress economically. Who is he talking to? And it turns out that you get a sense of who he’s talking to because some of you saw the Saddleback Forum with Rick Warren. He was asked, well, who do you consider rich? And he thought about it for a second, I don’t know. Maybe if you make $5 million. $5 million, then you’re rich. Which means, I guess, if you’re only making $3 million a year then you’re middle class. I guess that’s what he meant.

His top economic adviser said the other day that Americans should stop complaining; they’ve become a nation of whiners. That all these economic problems everybody is talking about is just a mental recession. And if you would just change your mind, everything would be okay. Somebody’s been laid off, their plant’s closed and gone to Mexico or China, change your mind. It’s all good. Then, yesterday, he was asked again, what do you think about the economy? He says, Well, I think the economy is fundamentally strong; said the economy is fundamentally strong. Now, this puzzled me. I was confused as to what he meant.

But then there was another interview – this is yesterday, same day – where somebody asked John McCain, how many houses do you have? And he said, I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with my staff. True quote. I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with my staff. So they asked his staff, and he said, at least four. At least four. Now, think about that. I guess if you think that being rich means you’ve got to make $5 million and if you don’t know how many houses you have, then it’s not surprising that you might think the economy was fundamentally strong. But if you’re like me, and you’ve got one house, or you are like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so they don’t lose their home, you might have a different perspective. And by the way, the answer is John McCain has seven homes.

So there’s just a fundamental gap of understanding between John McCain’s world and what people are going through every single day here in America.

McCain is, I believe, the 4th richest man in the Senate, a club that generally is made up of pretty wealthy guys. (Obama’s not hurting for money, but at least he made his fortune writing a book.) Unbuttoned collar and folksy ways or not, it’s unclear to me how McCain can portray himself as “just plain folk” when he’s not sure how many houses he has (though I’m pretty sure none of them are facing foreclosure).

Was McCain tortured in Viet Nam?

Well, of course he was. Looking at the litany of mistreatment as a POW in the hands of the North Vietnamese, how could we not call it torture? Um ……

Well, of course he was. Looking at the litany of mistreatment as a POW in the hands of the North Vietnamese, how could we not call it torture?

Um … because it was really “enhanced interrogation” techniques, at least according to the current administration calls such acts when they okay them?

In all the discussion of John McCain’s recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration’s definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of “long-time standing” that victims of Bush’s torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely “enhanced interrogation.”

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects. Feel safer?

 

So either McCain was put through conditions that are perfectly acceptable (to our government’s eyes) as a means of ongoing interrogation, and certainly don’t constitute torture — or, if he was, in fact, tortured, that’s exactly what our government is doing.

(via Les)

NPR Potpourri

There were just a lot of interesting articles today: Future Of Brutalist-Designed Church Not Concrete : NPR – I actually find the “Brutalist” style attractive (in small doses). It sounds like…

There were just a lot of interesting articles today:

Future Of Brutalist-Designed Church Not Concrete : NPR – I actually find the “Brutalist” style attractive (in small doses). It sounds like most of the buildings in question — including the headlining Third Church in Washington — suffer not so much from the Brutalist style as from a style-over-function problem (e.g., the light bulbs problem, the poor suitability of the concrete construction for heating and cooling). As much as I feel for the folks “stuck” with “historic landmark” status, I agree with the suggestion that in another 50 years people will be aghast

U.S. Softball Streak Ends, Beach Volleyball Continues : NPR – If I say I’m pleased as punch that Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh won the women’s beach volleyball gold, it’s solely because I’m a patriot. Really. And it’s a difficult sport. Absolutely. Well done, ladies.

Bacteria Fingered As Killer In 1918 Flu Pandemic : NPR – Interesting. The flu virus weakened people, but it may have been opportunistic bacterial changes that actually did the killing. Which might provide new tools for defeating a future pandemic.

Computing On The Cloud: Who Owns Your Files? : NPR – It’s amusing that this came out after my recent post on Flickr. I think the article misses the point — the fine print EULA isn’t the issue so much as you don’t have control over your data. It’s sort of like banks if there were no FDIC … the one down the street may be very convenient to put your money into, but what if it folds, or gets robbed, or decides to believe it when someone says you stole that money. The bigger the institution, the lower some risks (and potentially higher the others).  Of course, you can’t backup your money, but you can take steps to backup most online data. Which is a good idea, if you ask me (though do as I say, not as I do …).

Potpourri

Happy-happy See what Obama, McCain and leading political pundits… – A nice use of the Google Reader metadata. Though I’d like to know if they really read this stuff, or…

Happy-happy

Sad-sad

A Proud Member of the “Pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd”

In complaining about some of the lefties who have been suggesting that McCain’s “prison guard makes cross in the dirt” anecdote from Viet Nam might have been cribbed from Aleksandr…

In complaining about some of the lefties who have been suggesting that McCain’s “prison guard makes cross in the dirt” anecdote from Viet Nam might have been cribbed from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Michael Goldfarb writes on the official “John McCain” blog:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

 

Gee. Nice gratuitous slam at D&D players, Mike. (For the record, I’ve never lived in Mom’s basement, since she doesn’t have one.) I guess Real War Hero Men Don’t Play D&D.

I have no idea of the demographics of D&D players — which I’ll assume Mike would extend to be all those Satanic types who think “RPG” means “Role-Playing Game,” rather than “Rocket-Propelled Grenade” like Real Men do — but those I know are bright, imaginative, and fairly affluent sorts.

Apparently Mike felt the heat, and at least his apology is a bit humorous.

If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.

It was still a stupid quip. (It was an inane comment even without the D&D reference, but that’s another topic.)

 

 

 

“There! Indja! Did I ever tell you about the time I …”

(done in my best Commander McBragg voice, of course) Looks like I’m off to India in October on business.  Both excited and daunted — but most particularly not looking…

(done in my best Commander McBragg voice, of course)

Looks like I’m off to India in October on business.  Both excited and daunted — but most particularly not looking forward a 15 hour flight in coach on Continental from Newark to Mumbai (where we pretty much will be).

I am, fortunately, traveling with some folks who’ve been there on business before, and including one native son, so I’m not tooooooo worried. I am brushing up on my Kipling, though …

Logomania

The company came out with a new logo this week, which is a scosh snazzier than the old one (though, being a big engineering firm, “snazzy” is not a high…

The company came out with a new logo this week, which is a scosh snazzier than the old one (though, being a big engineering firm, “snazzy” is not a high priority). That means that the acquired company whose office I’m in has no more reason to put off making the change on everything to the acquiring company name, meaning all their old branded swag (pens, tape measures, water bottles, but also glassware and shirts) had to be disposed of.

So I dove in and grabbed some pretty fun stuff. It’s historical collector’s items, after all. 🙂

 

Flickers

I’ve been seized by the Muse of Photography (Clio?) and been pounding on my long-lagging digital photo library, making some nice progress (though still constrained by tight disk space on…

I’ve been seized by the Muse of Photography (Clio?) and been pounding on my long-lagging digital photo library, making some nice progress (though still constrained by tight disk space on the machine).

One thing I’m playing with is, again, screwing around with where I actually post these things. Originally I was doing everything in Gallery on the web site, but the version there broke and was not amenable to easy fixing. Then I started doing other web page generators, and then …

… well, I haven’t actually posted anything for several months.

I’m now reevaluating using Flickr as the place to post my pics, once I’m done sifting and sorting and editing them in Photoshop Expressions. My biggest concerns over Flickr have been (and/or are) both the nature of a hosted service, and just how Flickr is.

First off, if I post them on Flickr, they’re not in my hot little hands. I still have a concern over relying on an external host who can abruptly go tits-up, or change their service agreement, or get bought by Microsoft, or something. When it comes to something like my photos, which I consider an historic archive (albeit only of personal value), I want them safe. 

Granted, residing on my ISP’s space isn’t 100% certain, either, but I have a lot of faith in Hosting Matters, more than in the various hosted services that have abruptly closed down and vanished from the face of the Net.

Well, I suspect Flickr won’t be one of those; its critical mass is such that I don’t expect it to collapse. It might be bought by Microsoft at some point (as part of Yahoo), or it might suffer a big change of service, but so much is currently on Flickr that I seriously doubt anyone would be willing to screw it up big time at this point. The same can’t be said for a lot of other photo sites, whether from big names or small. (How long will Kodak, or Adobe, or some other independent site, actually maintain the same business model and actually stick around?)

The only other I might consider as an alternative would be Google’s Picasa. But that’s got less critical mass than Flickr, and in this case I don’t trust Google to not get some new bright idea in their head and go hallooing off after it. Aside from Google integration, too, it doesn’t really seem to have any added advantages over Flickr.

Most importantly, I’m not relying on Flickr. All my photos will also be on my (backed up, right?) own machine, with the tags and dates and captions all embedded in their EXIF info. If, using this model, Flickr were to suddenly die, it would be an inconvenience, not a disaster.

Belt and suspenders, man …

So PSE will actually export directly to Flickr, which is nice (the more steps that are removed from this process, the more likely I am to keep things up to date(er)). I played around with it last night (way too late, I fear), and it seems to do more or less what I want.

I’m not thrilled on the other hand (and this was the other anti-Flickr factor) with the, um, limits of presentation on Flickr. You can have any interface and info on the screen, as long as it’s — well, the interface and info they provide. Which is kind of bare-bones, not to say ugly. And Flickr looks at the EXIF date to determine the date of the picture, rather than the ITPC codes (which is how PSE stores the date info), which means that the dates on picture will be incorrect. I can fix that in some of the captions, and it doesn’t hurt the picture, but it’s still annoying.

That said, my original aversion to Flickr has faded a bit, as I’ve used it both to host the cell phone snapshots I take for this blog, and as I’ve seen how it works for Doyce and Kate at their wedding site. I’m not 100% happy with it, but if it makes it easier and faster to get my pictures online, that pays for a lot of less-than-optimal.

I’ll “announce” it when the “new” site on Flickr is ready to go into production.

 

Bike Racks of Terror!

Received from building management at my office today: On Friday, August 22, 2008 we will be removing the two bike racks located between  [my building]  and  [the plaza in front…

Received from building management at my office today:

On Friday, August 22, 2008 we will be removing the two bike racks located between  [my building]  and  [the plaza in front of the building]  temporarily do [sic] to the DNC. One of the bike racks will be located in the dock for tenant use, there will be limited space available. It will be located near the Dock masters office when entering into the dock. Please inform all employees that if there are bikes left chained to the bike racks on the plaza Friday morning, that the chain will be cut, and the bike will be moved to the dock.  We are also allowing during the week of Aug. 25th thru Aug. 29th that employees may bring their bikes to their floor using ONLY the freight elevator.  

The bike racks will be put back on the plaza September 1, 2008.  

So … worries about exploding bicycles? Oh, I suppose about packs/satchels on bikes, but this seems kind of lame.

And, um, our building is on the opposite edge of downtown from any of the DNC action. Is there a real risk we should be concerned about? Is someone so likely to attack our building with an explosive device left on a bicycle only during the DNC?

Feh.

Back to School!

First day of the Third Grade, fergoshsakes! Have fun, Kitten!…

First day of the Third Grade, fergoshsakes! Have fun, Kitten!

Wharrgarbl!

One of those great pictures that can be used in so many different ways. “Man, why are all my clients calling me at once?! Wharrgarbl!” “Having more fun than…

One of those great pictures that can be used in so many different ways. “Man, why are all my clients calling me at once?! Wharrgarbl!” “Having more fun than I can handle! Wharrgarbl!” It’s the visual equivalent of the “drinking from a firehose” metaphor.

(via De)

Putting human brain cycles to work

CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are those little “type the word/letters/numbers you see above” tests on various web pages to prove you are…

CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are those little “type the word/letters/numbers you see above” tests on various web pages to prove you are actually a human not just a computer. If you spend much time online, you are likely to run into them.

Two articles in the past couple of days — one on NPR, one at the BBC, talk about a new program, “reCAPTCHA,” that is tying CAPTCHAs into library scanning efforts to put the human brain to use deciphering faded text that computers can’t recognize.

In some documents, where ink has faded and paper has yellowed, the character reading software can flag up to 20% of words as indecipherable. The hard-to-read words are then farmed out to the many thousands of sites that have signed up to be Recaptcha partners. Words are supplied to sites along with a control word that aims to ensure the person answering is human.

The responses to the obscured text are added to a database and particularly mangled text will be put before several people to ensure it is read accurately. Reporting in the journal Science the Recaptcha team says the scheme is about 99.1% accurate – as good as professional transcribers and beyond the limit demanded by archivists.

Deucedly clever.

In the last year it has helped resolve more than 440 million words and has just helped to complete the conversion of the entire archive of the New York Times from 1908 into digital form.

 

Excellent. If I didn’t already have a similar mechanism on this site (the little TinyTuring “type the letter” test at my comments) that works so well and easily, I’d be sorely tempted to sign up. 

BSOD for the Gold!

Ha! The Chinese evidently make use of Windows, since one of the big projected images at the Olympics opening ceremonies included a huge XP Blue Screen of Death for, oh,…

Ha! The Chinese evidently make use of Windows, since one of the big projected images at the Olympics opening ceremonies included a huge XP Blue Screen of Death for, oh, a couple of hours. In front of 2.3 billion people. (Pics here and here.)

Can’t buy publicity like that.

And the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down …

We’ve been having pretty steady rain off and on in the Denver area since, well, Thursday evening — which is an unusual length of time for a system like that…

We’ve been having pretty steady rain off and on in the Denver area since, well, Thursday evening — which is an unusual length of time for a system like that to sit over the city. Aside from battling our ongoing roof leak (which I think we’ve got properly bucketed and wicked in the attic), it hasn’t affected us all that much — in fact, it’s been kind of nice and cool and pleasant.

Yesterday was a lazy-hazy day. Margie played some CoX (I joined her in the eveing), I played catch-up on my quotations for WIST (backlogging more to post during the weeks to come), and Katherine watched some TV and played with some friends. A nice, relaxing Saturday.

Today’s the last day showing with little rain clouds on the forecast, which will be nice. Rain isn’t nearly as much fun with the light rail on a commute day.

“That’s no moon …”

The Death Star over San Francisco, et al.   Nicely done. It all looks so very subtle and, thus, real. (via BD)…

The Death Star over San Francisco, et al.

 

Nicely done. It all looks so very subtle and, thus, real.

(via BD)

Seeking justice from Justice

Given the failure of the Attorney General to follow up on the illegal politicization of attorney hiring at the Justice Dept (which included the odd statement for an Attorney General…

Given the failure of the Attorney General to follow up on the illegal politicization of attorney hiring at the Justice Dept (which included the odd statement for an Attorney General that “‘not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime”), the lawyers who were blackballed for such horrid crimes as having a Democrat for a wife, or for being rumored to be a Lesbian, are suing.

Six attorneys rejected from civil service positions at the Justice Department filed a lawsuit today against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other top officials for allegedly violating their rights by taking politics into consideration in the hiring process.

[…] One of the rejected attorneys — Sean Gerlich — first filed suit against the department in June. Today’s amended complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, broadens the suit to include Gonzales; Monica Goodling, former White House Liaison; Michael Elston, former chief of staff to then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; and Esther McDonald, former counsel to Gonzales.

 

In it, the attorneys allege that top officials violated the applicants’ privacy and due process through the politicized hiring process in the Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program.

 

The suit alleges that in vetting candidates’ political affiliations — in part by Googling their names in connection with any political activity — the officials violated privacy rules requiring that applicants’ files maintain no additional information about the individuals’ political activity. The department’s failure to fully address this “reveal defendant Department of Justice’s utterly unredeemable obliviousness to its legal obligations, and its remarkably recidivistic failures to meet them, in the first place,” the complaint states.

The suit also argues that a wholesale shift in taking political ideology into account in hiring for the civil service positions violated the applicants’ constitutional rights. “This was an extraordinary, and uniquely successful, conspiracy to achieve political results that required the gross deprivation of hundreds of individuals’ constitutional rights…for which defendant Gonzales was legally most responsible,” the complaint states

I wonder if the Bush Administration will try to invoke Executive Privilege to get the suit dismissed. They seem to use it for everything else.