Phonebooth chicken

Heh heh. The accompanying article is pretty funny.



At my advanced age I am (finally) learning how not to compete with fools on the highway. But of course, there isn't a day that goes by when some bozo or other whom I have managed to pass feels duty-bound to race past me just so they can say their dick is bigger than mine. Whatever.

I like to drive fast, and I don't care at all if someone wants to go faster than me. I move over to let them by, and I appreciate it when (though around here it rarely happens) someone moves over to let me pass. Of course, in rush hour traffic it's usually quite challenging to get past clots of slow(er) moving drivers, since many folks consider it right and proper to go the speed limit (or just below) in the left lane. I would disagree, but that's just me.

Most of the time it simply isn't worth the effort to duck in and out of busy traffic lanes trying to get ahead. Patience is the best strategy: wait for an opening and when it comes take it without hesitation. And if someone looks like they're in a bigger hurry than you, by all means let them past.

It may only be bent sheet metal, but my time is worth more to me than that. Principals are fine, too, but as some wise person once said: "A man can stand on his principals, and sit on his own stool." Or something like that.

Global warming?

Let's combat this problem with fewer polititians spewing meaningless hot air.

It seems fairly reasonable to me that we--mankind--are dumping huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And that the carbon in this dioxide is "new" carbon, having been liberated from the remains of plants that lived aeons ago. We are also venting prodigious quantities of chemicals that serve to reduce the ozone in the upper atmosphere, thus permitting more of the damaging ultraviolet and other shorter wave radiation eminating from the sun to penetrate to the surface.

Global warming caused by humans has become accepted by so many in the scientific community (I leave the research into the truth of this statement to the reader) that for anyone to continue to assert that it's "not true" evokes shades of those folks who continued to maintain that the earth was flat, when there was so much mounting evidence that it wasn't. We know how that debate ended, I think.

I don't buy the argument that the people who are telling us that global warming is a fact have anything to gain from raising the alarm, except to raise awareness that we are slowly cooking ourselves, and that we should prefer to go on living. Identifying global warming as a mere "excuse" to raise more funds politically is so much a Repuglicant^TM way of thinking. I'm not surprised the good Senator thinks that way; his party has perfected this technique. But still, I really can't believe scientists have eschewed science for politics. That a Senator is more an expert on politics than science comes as no surprise at all. He should stick to what he knows.

Finally, a comment on the Senator's evocation of Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear, in support of his position. Michael Crichton is a doctor--a medical doctor. He may have other degrees (you can look it up), but I'd be willing to bet climatology isn't one of them. Besides, his book was a novel, not a treatise. I do agree somewhat that some of the climate change we are seeing isn't due to our effects on the environment, but I am certain we are having an adverse effect on the environment. One that will only worsen over time. Awareness of a problem is the first step in remedying it. Now that we are aware of what we're doing, it's nothing short of complete idiocy to continue as we were, and do nothing. We need to start taking steps to reduce our emissions of CO₂, and start now. Our children (and their children, etc.) will thank us.

At home we have started turning off our computers and associated peripherals when we're not using them. I am also raising the temperature during the day (well, at least in the summer) when we're not at home to reduce our consumption of electricity. We have begun to replace (wherever practical) all the incandescent bulbs in the house with those spiral fluorescent ones. They're a little bit yellow, but you get used to it. Besides, they use a fraction of the power. We have also been carpooling to work for quite some time, and of course that will continue. When I think of other things we can do, I will start doing them.

You should do the same.

Abe Lincoln said: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." But of course, here I am opening my damn mouth ...

Very cool freeware tool!

For the longest time I have been wanting a tool for Windows that could tell me what is taking up space on my hard drive, and how much it is taking. Back in the "old days" I had Norton Desktop for Windows (3.1) that had a built-in directory scanning tool that could tell me this information. I found it quite useful.

WinDirStat is available for download as freeware, and it scans your system (you can choose which drives to scan) to report both in tree view and graphically how much space various files and directories are consuming. See a big green blob in the middle of the graphic view (it's a mass of rectangles of various sizes, all crammed together like a Dada Aztec wall) click on it and you can find out all kinds of information. Maybe that big blob is a backup of a file for a piece of software you don't even own, anymore. Maybe it's taking up 600MB and hasn't been looked at since 1998 (I have such files, too!). Think you can get rid of it? Yeah, probably.

One thing they mention: you can't select multiple files for deletion. You have to select and delete them one at a time. It's a pain if, for example, you are attempting to clean out your TEMP directory. In this case I would recommend opening a Windows Explorer window and using that to clean up the unneeded files. Then return to WinDirStat and refresh the cleaned-up directory. Conveniently, it sorts stuff by size, with the biggest things at the top.

If you're not completely comfortable in the knowledge of what you can remove, and what should stay, then I would err on the side of caution and not delete something you might really want. Of course, if you delete to the recycle bin the file(s) will still be around in case you need to undelete. Out of paranoia and habit I always keep things in the recycle bin for a few months just to be sure I really don't need them. Yes, I am paranoid, but I've been around long enough to know that shiat happens, and despite your best efforts, there will be times you will blow something away and then really, really wish you hadn't.

Anyway, check out this cool tool. Oh, and don't be no fool, neither.

Dell Wireless Printer Adapter 3300 and PC-cillin Firewall

I just bought a new Dell 924 "All In One" printer, and because we have too many damn printers in the office already, I decided to invest in the Dell Wireless Printer Adapter 3300 to share this funky new printer between our computers, and eliminate one other printer. Sounds like a plan, no?

Well ... long story short, I found that by default (i.e.: the "medium" setting) the Trend Micro PC-cillin Personal Firewall blocks communication between programs, ports, etc., that are not in the exception list. Meaning, well, that you can't get the printer adapter (think: wireless printer sharing device) installed and configured, because the ports that your computer wants to open to communicate with the device are blocked. By default. For all I know, Symantec and McAfee do the same thing, with the same frustrating result.

If you want to keep your firewall security level up--at least at the medium level--here's what you need to do to install and print. Note that these instructions apply only to PC-cillin, but you can probably assume other products work similarly. YMMV.

1. Go into the Personal Firewall settings. In PC-cillin, it's on the Network Security page
2. Click on the active profile (it has a green balloon next to it) to select it
   
3. Click on the Edit pencil icon to change the profile
   
4. On the Exception List tab, add the following 2 entries (click on the blue "+" icon to add):

• Dell Printer Adapter - TCP, Specified application: c:\windows\system32\dlcccoms.exe, Outgoing, Allow, TCP, All ports (should be OK to do), All IP addresses (should be OK)
• Dell Printer Adapter - UDP, Specified application: c:\windows\system32\dlcccoms.exe, Incoming, Allow, UDP, All ports, All IP addresses

Alternatively, you could set the Security Level to Low, which basically allows everyone to communicate on all ports, eliminating the need to add these exceptions. It's up to you, but I would open ports just for the Dell printer controller program specifically. If you have the "dlcccoms" program installed in a different directory, such as if your windows directory isn't "windows", then obviously you would change the above to match your system.

Of course this only applies to wireless networks. If you have a wired network, you probably won't be needing a wireless printer sharing device. You think?

Oh, and this is not officially documented anywhere on the Dell site nor in the installation documentation. I only got a clue when I saw a forum posting that mentioned reducing personal firewall settings to get the printer driver to install.

I used the freeware TCP port monitoring program Active Ports 1.4 to determine what was happening, and from there what to change. I couldn't be certain of the exact ports it uses, because I saw several, at different times. That's why I said "All ports". However, if you know the range of wireless IP addresses on your network, you could put in an address range (I did on my own network). Since I have WEP enabled and MAC address filtering on my router (and yes, the printer adapter's MAC address is in that list), I feel I've locked my network down pretty good. These days you can't be too careful.