Justin Buist

Archive for December, 2007

I Read Too Much Into Things Sometimes

December 9th, 2007

I just stumbled across a story on what the presidential candidates don’t like to eat and saw this response from Huckabee:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: “Carrots. I just don’t like carrots. I banned them from the governor’s mansion when I was governor of Arkansas because I could.“

Little quips like that bother me. I know it’s silly, but they just leap right out at me.

I suppose that quip struck me hard because I’ve seen numerous reports of Huckabee saying he’d support a nation wide ban on smoking if he became president. From what I gather Huckabee has become pretty health conscious in recent years, and if you ever see some YouTube videos of him as governor of Arkansas you’ll notice he’s lost a lot of weight. And that’s cool, I like that, and think it’s really awesome that he got all health minded. But, Huckabee seems OK with the notion of shoving his lifestyle choices down our throats for our own good.

I do not hold to that.

Note to Huck: If the president thing doesn’t work out I’d suggest starting a line of fitness centers with the Chuck Norris Approved endorsement. I’m not being snarky here. It’s worth a look.

5 comments »

Posted in Ron Paul 2008

Mortage Rate Freeze

December 8th, 2007

Interesting post up over at The Liberty Papers: The Mortgage Bailout – Isn’t

In short no tax dollars are going anywhere so “bailout” is the wrong term.

Seems the lenders weren’t sure if they could modify the terms and still be kosher with the investors. However, now that the Federal government has said that they can modify the terms they’re going to do that.

The mortgage companies don’t want folks going into foreclosure right now because there’s no way they’ll recoup their costs trying to sell the homes on the current market. The buyers don’t want foreclosure either for obvious reasons. It looks like everybody is hoping that if they just keep playing along for 5 years with the interest rates pinned back to where they are now the market will catch up, buyers that can’t refinance will be able to sell without going upside down, the lenders are fine, and the investors will be a bit pissed that they didn’t make a great return, but they won’t have lost their shirts either.

Provided that this is actually a desired path by the lenders themselves I don’t see it as a disaster. If the lender wants to change the terms of the loan to be more acceptable for the buyer that seems like a perfectly acceptable “Free Market” solution. Whether or not the investors have a legal right to bitch about this is another matter, and that’s about the only thing the Feds are really meddling with it seems.

3 comments »

Posted in Economics

DateTime is Tricky

December 7th, 2007

I got to have a little fun today and I’d like to share that with y’all. I know a few techies that read this that might find the following entertaining.

I got an instant message from my company’s president today asking if I knew C#. I respond in the affirmative. Seems a company that has forwarded us a little bit of business in the past months has ran into a problem and wanted a little help. One of their developers was struggling a bit with some date issues in an application. I got the guy’s phone number and went to helping him out.

Here’s the scenario: They’re using Microsoft CRM (never touched it before in my life) and they’re trying to take a date field off one form, add a year to that, and store that as a field related to another form. Simple enough. But here’s the problem: User enters 1/1/2008 into the form, form is submitted, one year is added to the date and it comes back as 12/31/2008 on the next screen. The developer I’m talking with seems convinced that he’s just not using the .Net libraries improperly, or maybe there’s some quirk to them.

I have three ideas pop into my head:

1) Some yahoo has tried doing date calculations with string manipulation functions. A common mistake.

2) The 2007 daylight savings change mandated by the United States Government might be playing games with a pre-2007 date when you add a year to it. Yes, blaming the government is something I try to do even in software development.

3) It’s just your generic timezone problem.

Well, the code was clean (ie: not written by a moron unaware of the date library functions in .Net) and it wasn’t dealing with pre-2007 dates, so that left option #3.

First things first: I change his code from using .AddMonths(12) to .AddYears(1) to rule out any obvious quirks in the .Net framework. Same results.

We dive into the database behind the CRM and discover that 12/31/2008 date is actually 1/1/2009 in the database. We did deeper and find that the originally entered 1/1/2008 appears in the database as 1/1/2008 8:00am.

“Where is this server located?” I ask. “Tahoe (Nevada).” is the reply. Everything comes together.

What’s happening is MS CRM is taking the input date of 1/1/2008, which really means 1/1/2008 00:00am, and converting that to UTC before it stores it in the database. UTC is another name for GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, for those of you, like me, that learned about timezones before the UTC name was created. They differ slightly in technical terms but they’re close enough for the purposes at hand.

Now, when the code executes to retrieve that date and add one year to it it’s using MS CRM to get that value, and the CRM software is translating it back to local (Pacific) time as it does that. So, what is 1/1/2008 8:00am becomes 1/1/2008 00:00am, one year is added to that, making 1/1/2009 00:00am, and that value is rammed back into the DB without going through the CRM’s business layer.

Consequently, when you use the CRM software to pull back that 1/1/2009 00:00am value it rips 8 hours off that and you get 12/31/2008 4:00pm. Everything now comes full circle.

I show the developer where and how to turn that localized time back into UTC before he runs his computations on it and this fixes the error. The result is that we compute the 1 year addition on UTC time instead of the localized time so that when CRM pulls back the computed date it translates 1/1/2009 8:00am to 1/1/2009 00:00am and the display is correct.

Easy as 3.14159 when you know what’s actually going on.

3 comments »

Posted in Tech

Vonage

December 5th, 2007

Now that I’m working from home most of the time it’s become necessary to get a phone besides my cell.

Vonage got the nod.

So, I picked up a Vonage package at the local Meijer last week. The physical setup took about 5 minutes, nothing complicated there. I signed up online and activated the phone in another 5, and perhaps 10 minutes later the thing was live.

I don’t see the package I bought being offered online, but it was $80 and here’s how it works: There’s a “base station” of sorts that you connect to your network via Ethernet. That communicates with a wireless 5.8Ghz handset that has its own charging station. It rocks. I hook up a little 2.5mm headset that I got for an older cell phone to it for longer calls and I’m quite happy with it.

The voice mail system is awesome. It emails them to me as .WAV file attachments immediately after the message is left. It also puts them online so I can check them from anywhere I have access to a web browser. I tested it a bit and if I clear out a message online my handset knows I’ve cleared it out in like 30 seconds. So, if I’m out and about and clear a message via the web I wont’ come home to a false alert of having a message sitting there for me. Little details like that are what impress me.

The whole system is pretty portable too. Tomorrow I’ll unhook it all and haul it down to my office for the day. Reason: My clients know to contact me at this number. This number can go anywhere I have an ethernet connection. Bonus: Vonage offers the ability to forward to a different number if the base unit is ever disconnected. So, as soon as I unplug it from the local network all calls to that number get transfered to my cell phone. That’s awesome.

No comments »

Posted in Tech

Omaha

December 5th, 2007

Well some fuck nut took out 8 people with a rifle in Ohmaha today before he offed himself.

“Now I’ll be famous,” he wrote in his suicide note. Yeah, famous for being a failure. Hardly anybody knew about this guy before today, but now we know:

Hawkins was fired from his job at a nearby McDonald’s this week and had recently broken up with a girlfriend, Maruca said.

Wow. Way to go champ. Now you’re going to be famous as the guy that flipped out after he got fired from fucking MCDONALD’S!

You see, because you took the lives of innocents before you did this we’re going to push it out of our minds as fast as possible. I can’t remember exactly what the clock tower shooter in Texas was named, nor what he did in any detail. The same goes for the Columbine Killers and pretty much every other rampaging nutjob.

If I wasn’t addicted to the news I probably wouldn’t even know about this. Nobody is going to email this story to me. Why? There’s no entertainment value in it. It’s a sad story.

Now, the Darwin Awards on the other hand… those get emailed around. And boy, do I remember them. Remember the crook that stole a 1911 from a WWII vet’s house along with an old box of ammo? That one’s classic. He loaded the gun up and attempted an armed robbery with it. When the gun failed to fire he looked down the barrel to investigate the problem. Diagnosis: Hangfire. Result: 230 grains of lead in the perps head. HILARIOUS! See, no loss of innocent life = hilarious.

When something like that happens the local news crews don’t set out to find every detail of the perps life. They just report what happened and move on while the population forwards the news story on. On the other hand, when you drop 8 innocent people in your final moments everybody wonders “what went wrong” and they set out to find every fucked up thing that was going on in your life. You will be remembered as a failure. You will be remembered as the guy that flipped out because he lost his job at MCDONALD’S! Your girlfriend will probably be interviewed and we’ll find out if you had any “performance” problems. We’re going to learn about every single mental health defect you were ever even suspected of having.

If you really want to go out in a way that will be remembered you’ve gotta make it FUNNY. Darwin Award style. Play with some explosives in a remote field until you figure out how you’re going to do it. Maybe you could try spelling our your name with the charges so it’ll get reported in the story. That would be good. Just make sure you’ve got a BAC around 0.08 when you do it so everybody chalks it up to an accident. Accidents that hurt people are funny as evidenced by America’s Funniest Home Videos. If you can get national air time for getting whacked in the balls with a whiffle bat surely you’ll get air time when you blow your own drunk ass up.

Hopefully future nutburgers will take this advice to heart and come up with a more creative way of offing themselves while still gathering the media attention that they want.

3 comments »

Posted in Guns, People That Make Me Look Normal

Magpul PMAG Informal Military Test

December 5th, 2007

Read the THR post for full details.

Summary: They fucking rock compared to aluminum USGI mags.

Some quotes:

Marine 7-Ton test. Having seen the youtube.com test with the truck running over the mag, I was interested in seeing how far we could go. We took a fully loaded magazine in OD with window, placed it under the front wheel of the 7ton and put the wheel on top of the magazine and then turned the wheel back and forth several times. This was on gravel and resulted in severe road rash, but the magazine then fired all 30 rounds without a problem. One note, the rounds will become deformed inside the magazine, but it did function just fine. We did note that subsequent tests with 20rds or less in the magazine resulted in the failure of the magazine. All in all, this is a pretty tough test for a plastic magazine. The Marine 7 ton is rated at 7 tons off road capacity and 15 tons on road. I’m not sure how much weight is over those front wheels, but its got to be significant. Oh, and for those wondering, the USGI mag flattened, broke at the welds and shot its guts all over.

I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure he’s talking about this truck:

I’d say such treatment is far more abusive than anything I’d submit my PMAGs to in regular use.

The PMAGs I tested survived 7 drops before developing cracks down the spine. They were black windowed and non-windowed. If you continue to drop them after they crack, the crack will just grow down and out to the side of the 29th round.

Now, the good news. The mags that eventually split, still could retain the majority of the rounds. One or two would spit out. The benifit of the PMAG is that when it does crack, it doesn’t break completely off. The magazines that where dropped after cracking, where able to be loaded into the weapon with no additional effort from a normal magazine. Once inside the weapon, the magzine functioned normally. So, even if you somehow get a split magazine, you can still use it. Now, the USGI didn’t even compare. After four drops it could not even be inserted into the mag well, let alone feed anymore because the feed lips where totally jacked up.

Emphasis mine there.

Magpul might be onto something here. Perhaps there’s a DOD contract in their future?

No comments »

Posted in Guns

Sofa King We Todd Id

December 5th, 2007

Read it aloud if you have issues with the post title.

Well, this just takes the cake.:

In a campaign that has spread like wildfire across the Internet, a group of Israeli environmentalists is encouraging Jews around the world to light at least one less candle this Hanukka to help the environment.

The founders of the Green Hanukkia campaign found that every candle that burns completely produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide. If an estimated one million Israeli households light for eight days, they said, it would do significant damage to the atmosphere.

“The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won’t need another miracle,” said Liad Ortar, the campaign’s cofounder, who runs the Arkada environmental consulting firm and the Ynet Web site’s environmental forum.

Math time!

Ok, 15 grams multipled by 1 million homes is 15,000,000 grams of CO₂ or 15,000 kilograms.

So, what does it take to make 15,000kg of CO₂ by other means? Let’s look.

According to this reference humans output 0.02 cubic meters per hour of CO₂ while at rest but only 0.013 cubic meters while asleep. Now when we look over here we find that CO₂ has a mass of 1.98kg per cubic meter, so:

Asleep: 0.02574 kg/hour
Awake: 0.0396 kg/hour
Difference: 0.01386 kg/hour

So, the difference, in grams of CO₂ produced by a human while asleep versus being awake and at rest is 13.86.

15 / 13.86 = 1.08 and change.

So, to save the environment from 15,000 kg of CO₂ 1 million Jewish households would do just as much good by sleeping in for an extra 65 minutes over Hanukka. If you figure there are 4 people for every household that brings us to 16 minutes and 15 seconds of extra sleep per person.

So, sleep in a little bit this Hanukka season. It’s for the environment!

7 comments »

Posted in Global Warming

The Tax has been Axed

December 4th, 2007

Michgan’s service tax was repealed and has been replaced with a $750 million surcharge on the business tax.

This actually sounds like a much more business friendly idea to me, but it still doesn’t sit well. Why the fuck didn’t they do this back in April when the budget issues were first raised? Now businesses have been carrying on presuming they wouldn’t have to pay any such surcharge. A little lead time would have been helpful.

What also gets me is that the budget shortfall was $1.75 billion. Where the hell is the other $1 billion coming from? I don’t see any reports that they cut spending any further so it looks like we’re still facing a deficit which isn’t permitted under the Michigan State Constitution any longer.

Are we headed for another government shutdown or am I missing something?

At this point I’d be content with the State of Michigan pulling up the voter registration logs, figuring out what each individual person needs to pony up to cover the deficit, send out bills to those people, and call it the “You Elected Morons Tax.”

Fellow Michiganders, I say we make our mantra for the 2008 state elections “Not One Single Incumbent.” Let’s vote every one of these incompetent shit heels out and send a message. Sure, some of them are doing a good job, I don’t doubt that, but that message will make it clear that this nonsense must stop for any future legislator to have any hope of holding onto their position.