Too Lazy to Fail

Since all my wife’s really “important” shows are coming to the end of their seasons, and money is tight, we decided we would cut back to basic cable service ($30/mo saved) and ditch the Tivo ($13/mo).

So I called customer service at 877-367-8486, waited on hold for 10 minutes, then told the operator that we were going to cancel for the next few months in the name of budget cutbacks. She offered to cut my subscription rate permanently to $6.95/mo without any catches: No contract, no extra fees, no obligation to remain as a member.

I suppose it makes sense, since now that my Tivo is out of warranty their only obligation is keeping TV listing information available on the web for it to retrieve. I guess their marginal cost for each subscriber is next to nothing, especially when I don’t even tie up a phone line anymore.

So if you’ve got Tivo, call them up and tell them that the high price is putting a strain on your budget. They may make you an offer you can’t refuse!

*bangbangbang*

(Paul looks up from his book, wondering if the pounding is at his back door, or at that of his neighbors. The cats dashing down the stairs and into the kitchen confirms that the ‘knocking’ is for him. He jogs to the door, grateful to be wearing pants, and locks the chain, figuring it’s probably someone with a key here to do maintenance.)

“Who is it!” (More an exclamation than an inquiry. Oh well.)

“It’s me!”

(pause)

“Who’s ‘me’“?

“It’s Ann from up the street a ways!”

(Oh, that clears everything up. Sigh. Paul unlocks the deadbolt and doorknob, opening the door with the chain still engaged.)

“How can I help you, Ann?”

“Was this the house my boyfriend came to last night?”

“No, no visitors last night.”

“He walked into the wrong house last night when he came back from the pool, and now the police are arresting him!”

“I’m uh, sorry to hear that. No, we didn’t hear from him.”

“It’s not his fault! He just walked in and went up the stairs before he realized he wasn’t at my house. He didn’t take anything or hurt anyone or anything! It’s not his fault! He was drunk, that’s all, and he made a mistake.”

“He’s lucky he didn’t get shot.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“He was drunk! He didn’t mean to do anything wrong, and now they’re going to arrest him for aggravated burglary!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I know that must be hard for you, but he didn’t come here. We lock our doors.”

(Thinking: Doesn’t aggravated burglary mean that it involved either a weapon or intent to harm?)

“Do you know anyone who can give me a ride to go see him? My license got suspended.”

“No, I uh… I would be more than happy to call a cab for you, ma’am.”

No, I don’t have the money for a cab. Thanks anyway.

“Good luck, ma’am.”

From Associated Press:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Former President Carter says President Bush’s administration is “the worst in history” in international relations, taking aim at the White House’s policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy.

The criticism from Carter, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush’s environmental policies and the administration’s “quite disturbing” faith-based initiative funding.

The worst in history? Pot, Kettle, etc.

Remember, this is the man who in 1979 was attacked by a giant swimming bunny.

I’m going to be in and out of town for the next two weeks, and am not certain that I will have consistent access to the net, nor am I assured of the free time needed to blog.

From Lifehacker:

$10 Police Flashlight Hack! - video powered by Metacafe

I make no representation of the soundness or safety of this design. Judging from my experiences with other CR123A flashlights, I’ll predict that the lens and/or body of the $4 cheapie flashlight will quickly melt under the intense heat. Also, the overvoltage on the radio shack bulb will likely shorten the service life. Still, I’d like for someone else to try it and report the long-term results.

If you’re looking for a cheap “tactical” (read: candy-bar sized but brighter than a Maglite) flashlight, but can’t shake enough pennies from your wallet to buy the $30 Surefire G2, I wholeheartedly recommend the Brinkmann Maxfire LX, which is available at Target. You’ll still need CR123A batteries, which I usually get at Surefire. Either way, there’s a head-to-head review of the two entry-level lights here.

Got a phone call from my wife at the newspaper letting me know that they’re getting reports of an explosion at the Milan Army Ammunition Plant. There was an explosion at one of the storage bunkers a few years ago that killed two employees, but what I always feared was an accident on one of the production lines, which could claim up to 50. No word yet on local news channels about the explosion, but I’m sure that right now American Ordnance is focused solely on containment and headcounts, not talking to the press.

I did an IT internship with American Ordnance there last year, and was impressed by their professionalism and obsession with safety. It was hands-down the best working environment I have ever participated in, and all of my co-workers are in my thoughts today.

More later when there are details.

Updated at 11:00 AM: I’m told it was a fire at one of the bunkers, and there are no injuries. They’re going to let it burn out before they attempt to approach it. That would be fun to watch, maybe from about 1000 yards.

I just read through the entirety of xkcd in one sitting.

The other night I was removing my pistol for the night when I noticed that my Comp-Tac paddle holster had developed a nasty crack. This particular paddle was my favorite holster, and was used probably fifteen hours a day, six days a week, for nine months. I emailed Comp-Tac, who had me ship it in for replacement.

It’s oddly reminiscent of my first holster, a Comp-Tac “Shirt Tucker”, which I managed to snap the clip off of after a similar amount of time and use:

I’ve been swearing by Comp-Tac products since I started carrying, but I’m wondering after two broken holsters if I should move to leather. I’ve got a Don Hume JIT slide headed my way as a “backup holster”, but I may eventually switch my primary from Space Age Materials to the more rugged Dead Cow Materials.

Behold, the Trackstick II GPS logging device:

The Trackstick records its own location, time, date, speed, heading and altitude at preset intervals. With over 1Mb of memory, it can store months of travel information. The Trackstick is the perfect tool for individuals looking for a way to track anything that moves. Use it for recording the exact routes you take when hiking, biking or vacationing. Record the location of everywhere you went, import pictures and other information into Google Earth™ to offer an entirely new perspective of your journey. Includes GPX photo stamping feature for adding your favorite photos to you own maps.

The little doodad operates for about a week on two AAA batteries. The applications are many, with anyone from suspicious lovers to company fleet managers able to keep a log of the device’s movements (and stops) that can be downloaded to a computer an overlaid onto a map.

As PDB exclaimed when I showed him: We really do live in the future!

Fox News has been told by the gubmint that Gas prices are not expected to hit $4/gallon:

WASHINGTON — U.S. gasoline prices should remain at or close to $3 a gallon for most of the summer, but pump costs will not approach the $4 level that many oil market analysts are predicting, the government’s top energy forecasting agency said Wednesday.

The federal Energy Information Administration said it “does not expect the U.S. average price to get anywhere close to that level as long as the oil infrastructure remains largely unaffected this summer.”

The Energy Department’s analytical arm said gasoline prices are high because demand has been outpacing supply with so many refineries temporarily shut down, causing motor fuel inventories to drop.

“This year is certainly shaping up to be one in which consumers will likely see high gasoline prices throughout the summer months,” the EIA said in its weekly review of the oil market.

The national price of regular unleaded gasoline hit $3.05 a gallon this week, less than 2 cents from the all-time record high set in September 2005 after Hurricane Katrina ravaged oil production and refineries along the Gulf Coast.

In other news, the Government predicts that our campuses are safe, home prices will remain stable, and publicly-funded projects will remain on-time and under-budget.

From Scott Robbin:

If you’re a Wordpress user, and have the slightest grasp of HTML, then at some point in your blogging life you’re sure to have flung an insult at the built-in WYSIWYG editor that comes with Wordpress. While it suffices to accomplish the most minor formatting tasks, like bold, italics, and strikethough strikethrough, much is left to be desired.

Sure, there are keyboard commands to perform other standard formatting norms, like underline, but to the Wordpress noob these are non-intuitive and a bit wonky to use.

To those who have, or are thinking of committing WYSIWYG Hara-Kiri…..wait!!! All hope is not lost. That is to say, Wordpress 2.1 has a little trick up its sleeve: an Advanced Toolbar.

To activate another bar with some finer controls over the editor, Windows Firefox users can press Alt+Shift+V, Windows IE users can close the dozen popups in the way, then press Alt+V, and Mac Firefox users can press Ctrl+V.

Give it a shot. If you don’t like it, I’ll give you a full refund.

Well, Les Jones scooped me, so instead of a full-on reporting on the craziness, I will embrace and extend.

AOL allows users to select a password of up to 16 characters, but ignores all characters after the first eight. So if your password is “password\#)$8;-^” and someone tries breaking into your account with password “password” they’re in like Flynn.

But it’s even worse than Les thinks. Not only does AOL’s password hash ignore anything past eight characters, but it also ignores all non-alphanumeric characters. Furthermore, it applies the eight-character rule before throwing out special characters. Oh yeah, it’s also case-insensitive.

Thus, your hyper-paranoid password of mY_p@$$w0rD30uBI can also be entered as…

mypw.

It’s bad enough that AOL is often used by those without a firm grasp of information security, but to further hobble then by turning effective passwords into weak ones is incredibly insensitive. Now that it’s been exposed, expect to see some security changes in the next AOL client.