To Blogger (gibbieshut.blogger.com)

Since i'm no longer paying powerblogs, i'm not sure what they are going to do w/ this blog. They may delete it, they may keep it up, who knows. Anyway.

I'm moving my (sporatic) blogging to Blogger. Reason? Sitemeter traffic is actually pretty good. 1000 hits/ month. That's not great, but not terrible either. Maybe i'll just focus on something like science or something. Or maybe i'll stop all-together. Dunno yet.

Anyway, the new blog is here.

Well, i've been blogging about 5 years, and i think it's time for a wrap. There has been so little news of my personal life that i wish to share with people lately, i don't blog it. I don't blog my professional life (usually), since i'm afraid it may come back to bite me. I usually blog really weird/interesting things, but then realize no-one actually cares, since no one reads the blog. So, anyway, i'm calling it quits. It was a nice run. If you need to contact me, follow this link.

Children of video-game addicted parents almost die due to neglect. Uhmmm, yeah, don't do that. In the guild I'm in, in World of Warcraft, there are two parents about 40ish in age. They have three kids. Usually one will be on, or the other. I see them both on usually later at night, when presumedly the kids are asleep. So i think they handle this well.

"I am questioning all the mummys"

Let me know what they have to say.

It's right up on the FOX site. Cool! It starts Sept. 25th (long time away).

How bad could it be? (That's a rhetorical question). I've noticed that japanese companies generally suck when it comes to tech service. (Don't get my father started on Toshiba). I played Everquest back in the day, run by Sony. The customer service was non-existent. The forums were constantly screaming fans saying 'Sony wake up'. Sony didn't care $0.01. Anyway, now I play World of Warcraft (not yet addicted, thanks), and the one time I had to call for a game master, the person was very friendly and professional and fixed my problem in 2 seconds (actually the problem was my stupidity, but that's a different issue). Generally WoW's customer service is believed to be quite good. Anyway.

An interesting article about a scientifically sound study looking at the environment of Greenland prior to the current ice-age.

The major finding is that there was evidence of forests and insects 450,000 years ago. This overturns previous theories that postulate that Greenland was last ice-free 125,00 years ago. This was done using DNA sampling (which not only shows what species existed back then, but how divergent they are from current species, and hence how older they are) and other methods to guess the age of the ice.

The scientific validity of this study was shown by using a 'young' glacier ice sample as a control, showing the presence of modern-day flora underneath ice 1000 years old (which is relatively young). Second, they used multiple techniques to verify the age at 450,000 years ago. This means that during the last era between ice-ages, Greenland was still under ice. This may mean that the current warming period may not totally melt the glaciers in Greenland and cause catastrophic sea level increases. Maybe. It depends on how hot the Earth gets.

Well, my car got broken into last night, for the second time in it's history. They smashed the windowpane behind the backseat roll-down window, called the quarterglass. So, what did they steal? Absolutely nothing. I hardly use the car, and i almost never keep anything in it. The last time this happened, they stole my nice stereo, plus CD case with CDs. Not again. So i got a cheaper radio and bolted it in to the car. However, i didnt' remove the faceplate, so that was a thief magnet. The thieves were unable to remove the stereo, since you have to dismantle the dashboard to do so. So, they left their tools in there, and ran. So i'm out a quarterglass, but not much beyond that. Unfortunately it can be pretty expensive to fix at traditional shops or say the deal. But you can get it used online and get your local friendly mechanic to repair it. At least that's what i did last time. Sigh. Not a happy 4th here!

Oh, and no news on the squirrel cam either. My mother-in-law got a bungie squirrel feeder, so i stuck two corn cobs on it as 'bait', and setup a webcam to record the happy even (namely, squirrel jumps onto corn cob and goes for a ride). But no such luck, i guess they don't like corn.

Some 'scientists'. I'm pretty sure i can answer these questions better than this panel.

Okay, at least one person in the panel answered the question correctly. But still, most of them only answered one or two correct answers. Shameful for those with PhD equiv. degrees.

From the horse's mouth, so to speak. The author "David Kilcullen is Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force—Iraq". He describes the basic strategy for the 'surge', which is to not only clear and hold pieces of territory, but is a population-centric and not enemy-centric startegy. And it could fail dramatically, because the question is, is there enough police/army troops to hold every single population center? That's what's going to happen, essentially, as we clear out the bad guys, they're going to go somewhere else. If we leave this new area, they'll come back. Do we have the patience for this? I'm not sure. I see this strategy taking 150,000 troops and 5 years to finish. With presidential elections in a year, we could be out of Iraq by then. If we do that, we'll lose. If we stay, we'll win. I think it's pretty simple.

This has been going on for the last 24 hours, but still not much has been reported. It's as big as the Fallujah offensives; it's the biggest push since the original invasion. At least 10,000 U.S. soldiers are involved in pushing Al Qaeda out of Baquba. Actually, the plan is to trap them in there, then kill them.

Here's this report on FoxNews (which was 'above the fold' for maybe a few hours.

Michael Yon promises to be on top of the story (practically the only journalist in the world who is, so far).

Mark my words, this will be a defining battle.

Update: Bill Roggio has the scoop on what is actually happening, as far as the scope of the operation and who is involved (which forces).

What do they have in common? Not much, but a child with a brain tumor got his wish to work with Blizzard for a day. Read more.

Having multiple CPU cores doesn't really do much for any application, except high multi-threaded apps. But there are needs for PCs that run insanely powerful CPUs; where I work, a database search can take days; that's days of downtime. Not good. Having well written software and a very fast CPU framework that could spit out those results in an hour would certainly make life much easier.

And I conclude from my visit that victory is still possible in Iraq--thanks to the Iraqi majority that desperately wants a better life, and because of the courage, compassion and competence of the extraordinary soldiers and statesmen who are carrying the fight there, starting with Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. The question now is, will we politicians in Washington rise to match their leadership, sacrifices and understanding of what is on the line for us in Iraq--or will we betray them, and along with them, America's future security?

As Instapundit says, read the whole thing.

If all of our politicians were as earnest on Iraq as Lieberman, the war would be very different (on the home front). The troops wouldn't worry about their funding getting suddenly cut, etc.

(a online game)...I have a legitimate illness, and can see a shrink, and the insurance company will reimburse me (because I have a legit illness, ie appearing in the DSM IV). That's what the AMA recommends, anyway.

There are oodles of things, from earmarks, to Iraq, to presidental politicking by those who could otherwise lead the senate, to other forms of corruption (no, really officer, the freezer magically generates wads of cash). But anyway, the percentage of those polled who think congress is doing a good job is now in the mid-20s. Here is a graph of data prior to this summer. Here is data from May. Sen. Bill Frist now says this number is in the mid-20s.

ANYWAY. My point is that since the dems have taking over in congress, they have done very little. And the public's opinion of congress as a whole has actually decreased from the anemic mid-30s numbers from the republican majority days of 06. And I don't necessarily blame the dems squarely.

But really, if they swept to power on a public mandate for change, how could they possibly do WORSE than the republicans? Surely its hard to do worse?

Earmarks matter. Iraq matters. So far they haven't taken leadership on any issue. Why would i trust them with the presidency? (By the same token, why would a trust a republican with the presidency, since their party isn't all that peachy-keen now.)

This article pretty much shows my point, with more eloquence and links.

Ralph Peter describes the (inevitable) comparison, and the question of what will happen if we pull out.

The [American liberal] left doesn't care how many Iraqis die, as long as President Bush can be humiliated. Four years ago, the neocons fantasized about a post-Saddam Age of Aquarius. Now the Murthacrats insist that, once we bail out, Atlantis will rise from the Tigris and Euphrates. The willful naivete is identical. The only differences are the timing and who gets blamed.

Look at Gaza, at the orgy of self-destructive savagery, the macho idiocy, the junkyard-dog religion and the murder-suicide cult sweeping Arab civilization. Then note that, barring a few fringe players, only two sides are fighting in the Gaza Strip.

That may be true, but if Arab civilization is truely incapable of ruling itself, as soon as we pull out, anarchy will ensue. Therefore, the timing doesn't matter. I hope and pray that is wrong, though. Iraq is different from other Arab states in that it has a huge bounty of oil at it's disposal, and a moderately educated populance (which is being depleted every day by killings and mass exodus of smart people). But these two factors alone may allow Iraq to rise from anarchy and have a truly stable state.