Why Don't I Post?

If you notice I haven't posted but three times this year. Why you ask are the posts down? Not enough time, I say. I work full time and blog for four different sites. Anyway through Posterous and bitly.com I find it much easier to microblog.

My Posterous site is: Inanetaskers.posterous.com.

Bitly.com pushes direct to my twitter feed.

It is a heckuva lot easier to do things this way.

Who Knew Obama Controls All Funding For Liberal Groups?

Via Riehl World View we come to understand that Firedoglake the angry liberal site is claiming that President Obama is stabbing the left in the back.

The anger is caused by the Van Jones resignation. Some on the left are claiming that Obama should have supported Jones through thick-and-thin. Now Firedoglake is saying that if you do not support Obama you lose all of your "institutional funding". I am not sure what that is but assume it is Democratic party or non-profits that fund liberal groups.

Anyway I did not know that the President was so powerful that he could cut funding to a blog or group overnight. If only the Republicans could get so organized.

Parker Griffith Hits The Big Time

Our local Congressman is Democrat Parker Griffith. He won a squeaker of an election to fill the seat of a surprise retirement. Griffith is considered a "Bluedog" conservative Democrat who has spoken out against both the health care reform bill and the cap-and-trade act. Now in an interview with The Huntsville Times after a town hall on health care he has hit the big time.

One of the criticisms from this fairly conservative district is that while Griffith may be conservative himself he supports the Democratic agenda in Congress generally and voted for Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to be speaker. In the interview Griffith now says that he "...would not vote for her. Someone that divisive and that polarizing cannot bring us together."

That statement has hit the blogosphere and is now all over Memeorandum as it got picked up by US News and World Report and various lefty and right blogs.

It would be good but it is hard to believe that if Griffith is re-elected which is not assured right now that he wouldn't go along with whomever the Democrats run for Speaker.

Army Email Getting More Portable?

I came across this article in Federal Computer Week about how the Army has put out a Request for Information(RFI) to unify its email systems. Right now the Army manages them at various command and installation levels. The RFI would be for an enterprise system to manage all email, calendar and other functions for all those using Army email. One benefit supposedly of this would be to reduce the cost to the Army.

One of the problems that the Army current system has is its security level. To access non-classified email you have to log into a computer with a Common Access Card (CAC) Card and pin. The card stays in the computer in order to utilize it. This means that to get your email away from your work site you use your CAC in a laptop or use a Blackberry.

Personally I think a Blackberry presents a whole host of security issues and in fact this whole idea highlights the major problem with the Army's IT set up: security. It has limited functionality and ads considerable cost. An employee if their manager desires email from home or off site requires a laptop or blackberry as well as whatever system they use at work. This increases the cost to the government to outfit each employee.

The proposed system is required to use a CAC so it will require dedicated machines to support. It would be hard to see how much cost savings could be made by this idea unless it maximizes the use of existing equipment and that owned by the employee.

More to come on this as it fleshes out but security will make this hard to implement.

Worst Lip Sych Evah!!!

It is tough New Wave melody with lots of keyboards and high pitched vocals but the female part of this Peter Schilling appearance on a German TV show has to be about as bad as it can get. Starts around 0:42. Peter doesn't do that great a job either.

Using Posterous

In a desperate search for traffic to my actual real blogs I have set up google reader to allow me to push stuff to Posterous. Then I have Posterous push it to my Twitter feed. We will see what this accomplishes.

Of course it is yet another account to remember.

A Rule Of Blogging About Arguments Or Arguments About Blogging

Not for me to come up with a rule for blogging but anytime an argument devolves into the court scene from Animal House I say it is over. The Other McCain goes there in the big Erin Andrews/Douglas/Little Miss Attila dispute.



Oh Yeah it wasn't over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.

When Fiction Becomes Truth - Big Bang Theory Strikes

I guess Wolowitz from Big Bang Theory did really design and fabricate the toilet on the International Space Station (ISS). It is reported that the waste disposal system has flooded the orbiting base.

Call of Duty Four Chernobyl Mission

If you have ever played Call of Duty Four here is the google map view of the hotel where you do the sniper mission near Chernobyl.



The portico to the right is instantly recognizable.

AP Violates Family's Privacy In Story About Privacy Being Violated

In a charming story about how a family in St. Louis Christmas photo ended up as a display ad in the Czech Republic the Associate Press includes a photo of the picture. So now not just a few thousand Czech people were able to see it but also millions of people across the world.

I won't link the story as the AP is paranoid about it but it should be easy to find. Just google "Xmas pic mysteriously becomes storefront ad".

Also make sure you choose the right policy on Flickr for your photos.

Whan All Blogging Is Vanity Blogging

This is my vanity blog. Hence the fact that maybe six people read it and most come through for my link to Bluegear.com's post on making a California legal AR-15. It seems to be a a hot topic -- making a California legal AR-15 that is.

There is an ongoing kerfuffle in the Blogosphere because the National Review Online's Ed Whelan outed an anonymous blogger who had criticized him. Personally I blog anonymous here just because -- I blog professionally under my real name elsewhere.

Now if you look at Memeorandum at around 1921 EDT this is what you will see:



So the topic of the outing has become one of those things where people discuss and link back and forth. Why the outing occurred probably is not so important as the fact. I would think, though, that if you were worried about your blogging affecting your employment you might not want to do it.

Google Trends And Hits

If you don't know I write two blogs related to government contracting and spending. I wrote a post this morning about how Congress is looking at saving the F-22 Raptor advanced fighter recommended for cancellation by Obama through foriegn sales. The post, Congress Using The Defense Budget To Try To Save The F-22, can be found here.

According to Google Trends the F-22 is the 8th hottest topic right now. (See picture below). My article is number one for news articles and number three for blog posts. I guess Google is confused as to what BNET: Government is about. It will be interesting to see what kind of hits I get. Unfortunately I won't know that until tomorrow.

Second Twitter Movie

Ten more random tweets from around 9:00 PM CDT. This was before surprise American Idol ending so nothing about that.

Newsweek, Spinal Tap and Me

Not to blow my own horn but I made this joke in February in this post. "Spinal Tap on their tour in the movie moved to smaller venues over the big arenas because their manager said they had become more exclusive. Newsweek is using the same excuse. I guess the same old liberal claptrap is more exclusive now."

Now, because of this article by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post, everyone else is making it. See The Corner here for example.

Heck they even got an Instalaunch. I never did.

More Xtranormal Fun

Here is a little video I made with my sons. WoW humor, what could be better?

Fooling Around With Xtranormal Beta

I always wanted to make movies. Xtranormal allows you to make short ones using text. Here is my first attempt.

Lileks on the Internet

I have enjoyed James Lilek's work since I discovered it on the internet back around 2001, I think. This paragraph he wrote in yesterday's bleat describes to me exactly how I use the internet.

"the internet is a giant distributed information storage and retrieval system, and the most powerful tools are the meat-and-water units attached at the end by their fingertips. But some, it seemed, googled it. That’s fine. But it reminded me that there’s a difference between knowing a thing and knowing how it find it. Does the distinction matter? Well, yes. For obvious reasons, it helps to know how to make a fire, as opposed to knowing where you can get pdfs online of the Boy Scout Handbook. But knowing things lets you make connections in your head you can’t get with the web; the intenret leads you from point A to point 85, and while it’s usually an interesting anabasis, all you remember at the end is how one damn thing leads to another, not connects to another. It’s as if we dump out a jigsaw puzzle on the table and compliment ourselves on seeing 500 pieces, instead of the picture they’re supposed to form.

I know, I know - I’m talking about knowing the source of an amusingly dubbed Hong Kong movie that concerns mock outrage over rice. I wonder if it’s on YouTube."

My problem is I never write things down or bookmark them and forget by the next day what I found. The same is true with Amazon and books, and YouTube with music. There is so much out there to find and remember.

Washington Post Gets Smaller To Serve Their Readers Better

In the continuing saga of print newspapers struggling to make money the Washington Post announced it is folding the business section into the front page section. Using the argument, as reported at the Politico, "designed to signal to readers the centrality of economic news, as well as the increasing overlap of political and economic events, in today’s world." They use the argument put out by Newsweek as we discussed in this post that their audience is more exclusive now. At this rate the Post will shrink to be like the New York Post - all one large section.

I Think Excite Weather is a Little Confused

I am hoping it is not really -15 degrees outside. I think it is more like 50 degrees F.

Interesting Tax Proposals from The Strata-Sphere

One of the blogs I read regularly is The Strata-Sphere. Today he has some interesting proposals on taxes and sharing the pain of the current economic conditions. They make too much common sense, like cutting the capital gains and business tax, to ever be implemented. They are though worth reading and thinking about. He proposes that nobody under 18, or 25 if in college, pay medicare or social security taxes. These people if they get a better education will make up the few years of non-payment and their extra income will help pay for school as well as put money in the economy. He also proposes that all people pay some sort of income tax, even if it is a moderate amount. We have a constant fight about that in Alabama as basically the system has been updated so that the highest tax bracket starts at about 18K. I never have been a fan of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and this would probably be one way to end it. Anyway, read his post here and see what you think.