This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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Maybe I should start watching SNL again:
Al Gore on SNL – 14 May 2006
Good evening, my fellow Americans. In 2000 when you overwhelmingly made the decision to elect me as your 43rd president, I knew the road ahead would be difficult. We have accomplished so much yet challenges lie ahead. In the last 6 years we have been able to stop global warming. No one could have predicted the negative results of this. Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack. As you know, these renegade glaciers have already captured parts of upper Michigan and northern Maine, but I assure you: we will not let the glaciers win.
via Huffington Post
DOJ Moves to Dismiss AT&T Class Action under Cover of Night
Early Saturday morning, in the darkest hours of the night, the Department of Justice made good its threat to file a motion to dismiss our class-action lawsuit against AT&T, contending that AT&T’s collaboration with the NSA’s massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications (which violates the law and the privacy of its customers)–despite being front page news throughout the United States and the subject of government press conferences and Congressional hearings–is a state secret. The motion was accompanied by declarations by Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander, Director, National Security Agency and John D. Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence. We will vigorously oppose this motion.
(via Boing Boing)
I just finished packing my box and labeling my chair and computer. Over the weekend the movers will move our group from the 5th floor to the 1st floor. I will get a new office mate. I hadn’t bothered to look at the spreadsheet until about an hour ago. Turns out I lose Ian and gain Jeff. I liked having Ian as an office mate. I may be able to suck more information I need to learn out of Jeff though. I’ve been learning a lot from him in the last couple weeks as I slowly brush up my Computer Science knowledge (last seriously thought about my freshman year at Carnegie Mellon) and my mad skilz with fun unix command line text processing stuff.
zcat blah.gz | grep ^foo | cut -f 5,6 | sort -u > newthing.txt
Woo! And SQL. I’ve always been near it and have occationally had to make trivial modifications of exsiting queries and the like, but I haven’t had to do the stuff myself. Now it would be very useful for my job, so I’m ramping up my hands on knowledge of such things.
My current office does not have a window, and neither will the new one. But in the current one I can look out the door and see plenty of sunlight. That will not be the case in the new one. It looks like it will basically be a cave. More lights may be in order. Dunno.
Jeff is also a Math guy. I like Math. He’s always writing equations on the whiteboards. Equations are good things. I like equations.
I need to work on my energy levels though. It seems I am often tired and find it hard to focus a lot. I just feel droopy. Have for a couple weeks now. And that kinda sucks. Eating right, exersizing and sleeping on a regular schedule would probably all help, but those things are hard. Maybe I can find some nice pills at the drug store that will deal with all that more easily. :-)
Anyway, time to head to a meeting. And then, since nobody has their stuff any more, it will probably mean everybody will just call it a day a little earlier than normal.
And then it is the weekend.
 Tonight was the night where for my location the moon was directly in front of the location of the DirecTV satellites. I had planned for weeks to go outside and look when the moon was in front of the middle of the three. And there it is. The moon from a spot where we could put a dish. Clear as a bell. Basically, this means we shouldn’t have a problem getting a signal when Brandy and Amy move out here and we get the dish installed here. I specifically chose an apartment complex that was clearly dish friendly. The only remaining question was if we could see the satellite from a location where we could put our dish. Yup. Sure can.
The view there is actually of the location for the 110 satellite. The 119 satelite had it’s moment a little later in the evening. It isn’t quite as clear a shot, but should be fine too. Because I didn’t think of checking all three until after the time for the middle one, I missed checking the first of the three, the 101 bird. I actually was outside around that time, just didn’t know I should be looking. I think it was fine though, with perhaps an even clearer shot than the other two. I’ll get a second shot at the 101 tomorrow though, so I’ll double check. 101 is actually the most important if I recall correctly… quite a few channels are on that one.
In any case, a quick double check tomorrow, but looks like we should be good. Whew!
This will carry us until the HD Cable Card Dual Tuner Tivos come out late in the year. Then it will probably be time to dump DirecTV and go with that. We shall see. All depends what everything looks like in 6 months or what not. I like DirecTV, but I have DirecTV for the Dual Tuner Tivos, not the other way around. (The new Dual Tuner SD Tivos are cool, but aren’t 100% if you have premium channels… the cable card one will be the way to go for sure.)
A sample seven day period logging all items with calories that I knowingly ingested:
Wednesday – 3 May 2006
* 5 UTC: Chicken Club, Fries, Coke from McDonalds
* 17 UTC: Cheese Omlette, 1 Sausage, 1 Slice Bacon and an OJ
* 20 UTC: One bag Microwave Popcoirn and a Pepsi
* 22 UTC: One small bag Doritos and an orange soda
Thursday – 4 May 2006
* 6 UTC: Half pound pasta with margerine and cheese
* 19 UTC: Chicken Cordon Bleu, Brocolli, Rice and OJ
* 21 UTC: Sierra Mist
* 22 UTC: 2 Recees Peanut Butter Cups and Orange Soda
Friday – 5 May 2006
* 0 UTC: Klondike Bar
* 2 UTC: One medium bag of Kettle Cooked potato chips
* 4 UTC: 2 Strawberry Nutri-Grain Snack Bars
* 17 UTC: Donut and OJ
* 19 UTC: Slice of Pepperoni Pizza and an Apple Juice
* 22 UTC: Big Amazon travel mug thing of coffee with lots of sugar and half and half
Saturday – 6 May 2006
* 2 UTC: Chilli’s chicken crispers, corn on the cob, fries and two cokes
* 10 UTC: 1 Nutri-Grain Strawberry Bar
Sunday – 7 May 2006
* 1 UTC: Denny’s fiesta chicken with corn, green beans, rice, garlic bread and 2 iced teas with sugar
* 7 UTC: 2 Strawberry Snack bars
* 8 UTC: 1 Strawberry Snack Bar
* 23 UTC: One can of beef stew
Monday – 8 May 2006
* 2 UTC: Red Robin Bacon Cheeseburger, Fries and two cokes
* 18 UTC: Big Amazon travel mug thing of coffee with lots of sugar and half and half
* 20 UTC: One slice cheese pizza, one yogurt, one coke
Tuesday – 9 May 2006
* 2 UTC: Cheddar Cheese Omlette with 3 pancakes and an OJ
* 7 UTC: Two Strawberry Snack Bars
* 18 UTC: Coffee thing with lots of half and half and sugar
* 20 UTC: Plain Cheesesteak and an Apple Juice
* 23 UTC: Bag of Skittles and a Pepsi
Ah, what might have been… just looked at how a bunch of the stocks I bought during my last couple years in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have done over the years since then. Just the ones I bought on my own, not retirement plans or options and grants and the like. Lets take a look at how they all have done over my initial cost basis. (Not counting dividends, which on a couple were pretty significant.)
GRMN, up 348%
WAB, up 201%
AAPL, up 127%
MER, up 117%
BAY, up 109%
PWI, up 72%
SPY, up 20%
DIA, up 17%
and then I did have three stinkers…
QQQQ, down 12%
TIVO, down 60%
VIGN, down 97%
Overall, not that bad…
Of course, thing is, a lot of those gains were in the last 2 years. And, well, in 2004 and 2005 I was strapped for cash and had to sell my stocks to live and such. I didn’t want to, I had to. Part of that whole thing with the previous job never coming through with what they had promised.
In any case, I didn’t sell it all. I actually kept one single share of each of the above. Just to say I still have some. So I can still be happy when they make new highs! And I still made out OK, most of them were up when I sold them, but not by all that much. I would have been a lot happier if I’d managed to hold on to what I originally had of each of those!
My original intention was to hold onto all of them for decades, but that just was not to be. :-)
I haven’t bought anything new outside of 401K’s for several years now. Once the house is sold and things are stabilized again, perhaps I’ll start buying a little bit of a few things again.
Of course, the very instant I do that will be the signal that the market has topped again, and we’re due for another correction for a few years… :-)
My “remember to blog” list has gotten too long. So here is another Minitakes. This time, for times sake, I’m thinking just links. I’d like to comment on each one, but I’ve got other things I need to do. In any case, these are all items I saw in roughly the last week or so that I thought were worth the read:
Courts With No Law
(Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish)
Roomba And The City
(Gizmodo)
MPAA Offers To Settle (Again)
(Shawn Hogan, Shawn Hogan Fan Club)
via Digg
A Baker Walks Into A Dinner, Again
(Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen, Wired)
via Digg
Dinosaur Shocker
(Helen Fields, Smithsonian Magazine)
via Digg
Actually, that’s five, which is enough for the moment. I’ve got other things to do. I’ve got more though. Perhaps later.
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