the frig blig

Intrepid blig readers may have noticed that the frig blig was down for a couple of weeks. This was caused by the death of the primary (and only) router in the data center. A replacement ordered from ebay took two weeks to be delivered; if I’d realized up front that it would take so long I would have purchased one locally.

Tech info: the old router was a Linksys WRT54G (the original model, about 5 years old); its replacement is a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54. I replaced the original firmware (in both devices) with spiffy and robust dd-wrt.

Our router is also a wireless access point. I considered getting one of the new 802.11n models, but since this protocol is still in draft I decided to wait until the final version is released, currently scheduled for 2009.

After setting up the new router, I upgraded our wireless security to WPA2 but alas, discovered that this protocol is not supported by the Dell Latitude C400 — waaah! Maybe there’s an inexpensive usb-based 802.11g device that supports WPA2 I can get for the C400.

On the way back from Seaside, S and I stopped for a spell in Tokeland. For Harold, Chuck, Sally, Doug, Sandy, Lisa, Kurt, Rick, Matthew, Kym, Jude, Debbie, Bob, Gwen, Dave, and my other homies — this one’s for you.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the old interrogation strategy called ‘good cop/bad cop’. Basically it works like this: when a pair of police officers (they always work in pairs) find a victim criminal but no evidence, one of the cops plays the ‘bad’ role in order to scare or beat him into confessing. If after an extended period that doesn’t work, the ‘bad’ cop takes a break and the cop playing the ‘good’ role sidles up to the prisoner individual and says, “hey, you look like a decent fellow…tell you what, if you run now I’ll tell my partner you got away, by the time he returns you’ll be safe.” When the sucker relieved citizen thanks him and starts running, the ‘good’ cop counts three seconds, removes his pistol and shoots him in the back ‘trying to escape’.

I was reminded of this strategy when a young woman rang my doorbell this morning looking to “register democrats to vote.” It’s so sad that so many young impressionable folks think the Democrats are the good cops and will save them from the bad cops. When in fact both political parties in this country are paid by the same bosses.

When I was a kid, people used to say “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

Nowadays people are frantically trying to figure out how to deal with what we’ve been doing about it, on a grand scale, after all.

Everybody loves cars, but hates traffic.

There seems to be a bumper crop of new bumperstickers popping up this spring. This one was on a Prius on Jackson Street:

Runners-up for today’s award:
2nd place goes to ‘Your humvee looks stupid’
3rd place goes to ‘WTF’ using the Bush team’s re-election logo design.