Author Archive for pylorns

Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver

(link)I would not have heard anything about this had I not heard it on Fox news channel this morning. Basically what this man, Jeff Peckman, is suggesting is that we have a commission of panel of experts to “create a responsible, common-sense strategy for dealing with issues related to the presence of extraterrestrial beings on Earth.”

The Fox News anchors took their turns at cracking jokes and making fun of him, which I think was the only reason why he was brought on the show. This in itself pissed me off. Are we as a country that idiotic to assume that we are alone in this galaxy? Even Carl Sagan, the renowned astronomer, never denied that we should always continue to search and study all claims of UFO’s. While he stated that we have no evidence that extra-terrestrials had ever visited us or will in the near future, we would be fools not to study all of the evidence given.

So these Fox News anchors asked him about how many people thought he was crazy, and if he was a moon-bat, and lampooned his efforts to suggest something that, our Federal government has already done. So are we saying that because our Federal government has done some research that our local governments should not even broach a subject? We have trained emergency response teams for all sorts of things, should not local civic planners at least consider the implications of every “what-if” scenario that they can come up with in order to not be faced with the scenario and not have some guidelines?

In fact that many cities and towns across America did not ever think that someone would fly some planes into the buildings in New York. But now across America small towns now include contingency plans on the happen stance that terrorists would try to destroy a building or a plant or a factory in their humble corner of their state. So given something like this – do we have to wait until an event happens before we at least give some thought to the civic duty of at least developing some sort of plan?

All this man is really suggesting is that we as citizens write up how we should handle situations. Logically it makes sense. We plan for outbreaks of super diseases, asteroids hitting the planet, etc. Why would you want to deny that we should at least discuss a common sense approach to how we could deal with the situation as far-fetched as it may seem.

I guess what bothers me is that people can be so dismissive and close minded that they don’t look at the logical aspects or possibilities. The fact is that we really don’t know our real probabilities of being visited. In the absence of evidence we don’t know if we have in the past or will in the future but we all are truly morons if we are arrogant enough to assume that we are the only ones out of the vastness space out of the billions of billions of stars and solar systems.

Gas Prices : Cause and Effect

Let’s talk for a minute about our three political candidates and their proposals for the “Summer Energy Crisis
We have to agree that for every cause or action there is a subsequent reaction or effect. So the proposals so far actually effect us more than we expect.

McCain:
Called for several highly targeted tax cuts and federal spending initiatives. Included were a summer gas-tax holiday that would suspend the 18.4¢ federal gas tax and 24.4¢ diesel tax, and a doubling of the personal tax exemption for dependents, from $3,500 to $7,000

Clinton:
“We will pay for it by imposing a windfall profits tax on the big oil companies,” she said on Tuesday. “They sure can afford it. This is a big difference in this race. My opponent opposes giving consumers a break from the gas tax but I believe the American people are being squeezed pretty hard.”

Hillary will impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use the money to temporarily suspend the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax and the 24.4 cent per gallon diesel tax during the upcoming peak summer driving months.

Obama:
Against Summer Holiday but for windfall profits tax.

Ok, so first of all, we decide to give ourselves a break 18.4cents per gallon. What’s the up and downside? Upside, gas may be slightly cheaper. Downside, our regularly scheduled repairs and maintenance to our bridges and roads won’t have their budget to do their jobs. Where do we get the money?

Secondly, to get the money we tax the bejesus out of the oil companies, who because of demand and the cost of a barrel of oil rising, have made more profit. Some would call it a Windfall Profits Tax. But what about the billions of dollars they lost prior to this year?

Cause:
Tax Oil Companies to Pay for 18cent/gal summer.

Effect:
Demand goes up, price of oil goes up more.

Because consumers see “oh look, we might save some money because of a fed. holiday on gas prices” the normal demand on fuel increases, thus because supply is still short and our domestic oil production is still stagnent, the price of gasoline increases.

I’d like to do the dirty math though to see what I’m really supposed to save. So being that I’m in Austin, what is that math?

Gas Tank: 18gallons
Average Tank Fills Per Month: 3.5
Cost of Premium: $3.77/gal
Cost Per Month: $237.51
Gas Holiday:
.184/gal
Savings:
$43.70
Cost with Savings Per Month: $193.81

So, I’d save $43.70 a month over the summer. Obama stated that it would average out to $28 over the entire Summer, so his Math is fuzzy. But let’s look at what really will happen.

Cost of Gas during the summer: $4.05
(Including Oil Companies Taxation)

Cost to Fill 18 Gallons 3.5 times:255.15
Savings: $46.94
Cost with Savings:
$208.21

So now I’m paying $14.40 dollars more because of the demand of oil, inflation of the dollar, and the summer gas holiday paid for by taxing the bejesus out of the oil companies. Yeah, sure this is all a real good idea.

Where is Dennis Miller when you need him?

You know what this country needs is a jolt. Look we are fighting with these people over there, they’re our worst enemies. They live to kill us. I mean and we’ve got Alaska sitting up there and we bought it for dirt cheap, it’s loaded with oil and yet we don’t go in because there’s like five caribou in there, you know? Screw the caribou! I don’t give a shit [bleeped out] about the caribou! I say you run a pipe in there and suck it dry. The caribou can wait.

Seriously people, lets relax the tax and EPA regulations and boost our own supplies here in the US.

Chillville Sunday

Good Rainy Sunday to you all in Austin.  Today starting off good with yet some more great music from Chillville.  If you’re not in Austin you can stream 101x by going to 101x.com .  Make sure you also help the local Austin Music people by going to The Year of Austin Music.

Expect an updated Podcast from us here at wetwired at some point today or tomorrrow.  Sorry for the delay.

Also remember, head out to Cedar Park to the Exxon on Bagdad Road and get some cheap gas!

Wetwired Updated

Just updated to Wordpress 2.5.1 which contains 70 or so fixes and some security bugs etc.  Additionally they add a hash to the cookies which is specific to the site that makes it harder to hack.  Anyway, you guys won’t notice much, that changes are mostly all back end.

Austin Area Gas Prices

It’s actually interesting, I went to my first non-denominational church on easter of this year.  Now another Church in the Austin area is doing this:

Members of the HighPoint Fellowship, non-denominational church in Cedar Park, will buy down the price of regular unleaded gas to $2.49 at the Exxon station, 1900 Bagdad Road in Cedar Park, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. Customers will get to pay that low, low price for their gas as the church pays for the rest.

Austin-area gas prices hit an average of $3.44 this past week, according to AAA Texas.

The last time Austin-area gas prices were at the $2.50 range was in March of last year.

 

Wow, now that’s cool stuff. I just hope if I manage to get out there, people are respectful when they go to fill up and don’t fight over the lines.

 

Wetwired Studios and Podcasting

We’ll I’ve received my professional grade amateur microphone today via amazon. Bundled it comes with a pop filter but apparently those are on back order. Reason behind picking this up is that I needed a better quality microphone from what I had, and who knows, I might do some more phone voice over stuff like I have done before for other companies.  You know the voice behind the “press one for english” type stuff.  

I now understand why there are so many books and gotcha’s out there about podcasting.  Sure if you’re just doing a single podcast for yourself its not that hard.  But if you want music, jingles, to use skype for a dual podcast - then enter the technical learning curve of quantum physics.  Ok maybe not that bad, but yeah, not easy.  Actually certain things are easier to do on a PC than a Mac when it comes to the podcasting, but the better software in terms of quality/editing seems to be for Mac.  I did come across some stuff made for PC that had additional items - i.e. ability to drop small sound effects and wav files into - I have not found that easy function on a mac yet. 

I’m sure after some more time I’ll know everything there is to know about professional pod casting.  You see, when we do something, we want to make sure we do it well, not half assed.  I’ve listened to a couple other podcasts out there and some are good, but a lot lack that professional radio quality - excluding the ones that actually come from a professional source. 

Wetwired Studio

Here is a picture of the setup, microphone hooked up to the macbook.

Where are they now? Real Genius

Val Kilmer: Then

and now:

Mitch Taylor:
 

Remeber Kent from Real Genius?

He most recently was in Michael Clayton and this is what he looks like now:
 

Whoa!

 

 

Greetings from Las Vegas

I don’t have much time this morning but here are some pictures of the hotel room they stuck us in at the last minute.  Lets just say yesturday was not exactly the best of travel days, but, the hotel was nice.

 

 

 

 


Wordpress 2.5 Update

Things may be up and down as we are updating to the latest version of wordpress. I must say I’m impressed with it and all the new features.

Update: I’ve grabbed a new theme since I have been having so many problems with K2.

I’m now using futurosity which I’ve managed to modify somewhat to suit my needs. I think it will at least do until I am able to do my own custom programing for wordpress and wetwired.

Update #2 I’ve used the hack suggested for the RC4 version of K2 and re-uploaded it and the refresh problem with the site seems to be resolved.  This layout is more conducive to what we want wetwired to look like in the long run.  3-31-08 

Sunday Morning Round-up

PylornsIn case you missed it, Chillville was on 101x this morning in Austin.  I always try to catch just a little bit of it when I’m in town.  Today I found out about Gnarles Barkley’s new Album “The Odd Couple“.  This was Full Monty’s Catch of the day.   I have to agree after listening to the album that many more of the songs on this track are - bareable.   It seemed like the last album that came out only had one or two good songs - especially Crazy - very radio friendly and even today if you played it, it would still get stuck in your head. 

Today also was the very wet Cap 10K.  And our very own figment did it in 1hr and 2minutes and liz did it in 56minutes.  Congrats! 

I just bought my tickets to see Salvage Vangaurd’s Intergalatic Nemesis for the 3rd time.  This time it will be at the Paramount for one night only on May 9th.  You can still pick up tickets but all the good stuff has been sold out -rather all the close up stuff has been sold out - I got in the A seating. 

Airline Industry Madness?

Have you seen the news lately about 2 separate issues?  One is that the airline industries either already have or are in the process of outsourcing their maintenance on airframe and power plant to other countries in Asia or South America.  Issue two is the Air force outsourcing the contact for building refueling planes to Airbus - a European company. 

 Amidst a falling economy, both options are taking jobs outside of the United States.  Does this not strike a cord with you? As far as outsourcing maintenance - you have uncertified people working on airplanes/jets.  How many planes falling out of the sky will it take for that to stop?  How long will it take till the airline industry goes belly up because the people who would be buying tickets have lost their jobs to outsourcing?  Or will we go the way of other countries and have government intervention into airline industry.  

What the hell is going on with this country? 

Can he break the North Pole Speed Record?

Ben Saunders, long standing pole treker has been hold up in Eureka, Canada (Nunavut Territory) waiting on his plane to be fixed yet again.  Ben is setting out tomorrow - barring any other unforseen plane problems - to break the world record solo and unsupported by foot to trek from Ward Hunt Island to the Geographic North Pole.  He aims to put the record at 30 days - the current record is 36 days and 22 hours. 

Wetwired has previously pledged $100 bucks sponsership for a mile for his South Pole trip which got delayed, but when he goes we’ll cough up the dough.

A new level of Frustration with TXU

Last night the power went out in my subdivision.  I decided to not call because any one of the 120 other homes was prob. calling in.  Sure enough by about 9:50 a repair truck pulls up in my cul-du-sac with a repair man stepping out.  I walked outside and greeted him and asked him what was going on - he said “Not a good evening with the underground stuff,” he then asked where the underground box was located - thinking it was in my backyard.  It actually is directly behind my yard in the neighbors with a fence dividing it.  So I told the repair guy to go around the block and I’d shine the flashlight for him to see which house it was.

He drove around and walked into the back yard, where I was leaning over the fence with my light - and he discovered two things.  One the box had an ant hill on half the size of it, and two the other side of the box was covered in a giant bush in attempts to hide it.  “Guess they won’t like it when I chain saw this ‘motha down” he said, obviously a bit disgruntled, and proceeded to walk back to his truck.  Coming back he yanked the chainsaw Christmas Vacation style and proceeded to trim that bush down so he could get at it.   After another hour he and his other repair men left, unable to resolve the issue with it - and they searched for more problems elsewhere in the subdivision.  I gave up and went to bed and woke up to the sound of, no power still. 

I manually raised my garage and pulled my car out and as I drove out of the subdivision there they were, 4 trucks all working hard trying to figure out what the deal was.  Since I was a bit late I didn’t bother to ask what the deal was, figuring I’d call the customer service line once I got to work.  There in lies my frustration.  I should have stopped and talked to the “American/English is my first language Repair men,” where I could have gotten the poop on what was going on.

Now Austin (and surrounding areas) have several different choices for power, there is the Austin Energy Company, Perdernales Electric, Reliant, and several others.  But we went with TXU because of the 2 year contract we got with a discount.  So when I call customer service for TXU (Texas Utilities or Texas Electric and Gas) I expect to talk with a Texan, someone local.  But NOOOOOOOOOOO… I’m talking to Bangalore, India.  I’m talking to someone who can’t even get my address right after I’ve repeated it 3 times.  It’s not hard.   Then I realize that I’m talking to a company that has the highest customer dis-statisfaction rating.  Apparently there are some others that have come across the same problem.

I then realized that TXU outsourced my safety and security to another country, and even though I had told these people I had a medical condition, I didn’t get any help, nor could they help me as they weren’t even on our part of the globe.

Moving on, after my useless customer service rep figured out where I was located she then transferred me to someone else because I was in the wrong queue.  Mind you I called the 800 number, choose to speak to someone about an outage, yet I still some how ended up in the wrong place? The 2nd person I talked to was just as bad and asked me all the same questions the first person did,  but let me know that by 11am power “should” be restored. 

I await anxiously.

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Sigh, lost archives

I went looking through my old emails and have references to some posts in 2000 and 2001 that I just can’t find - that’s the problem when you go from “do-it-yourself” to blogger to movable type and now to Wordpress.  Who knows, maybe I’ll find something if I keep looking.

Remote Posting

There is a great tool out there if you have a mac that is called Wordpress Dash http://www.paniris.com/wordpressdash/index.php?action=download&v=4 that allows you to remote post without logging into your site. Its a widget that runs on the macbook dashboard. I’m fairly certain there is one for windows too as Wordpress has a pretty good api and there are many other remote posting tools out there. I actually forgot about this one, I used it when I went to Rome and could find sketchy internet here and there. Along those lines, todays travel tip: when you travel internationall, bring a very small laptop if you’re bringing one. I brought my macbook and its small, now I wouldn’t mind something even smaller like the macbook air.