History Channel is great!

I rarely watch network TV these days, chosing to watch more cable TV. A little bit Discovery Channel, some A&E TV, but most of the time it's the History Channel. The variety of shows aired is what is great. Since 9/11, there has been a focus on military themed topics. The shows on special forces were very informative, including bringing Mark Bowden in to eleborate on such things as "Black Hawk Down" and "Killing Pablo".

Right now is a repeat of a show called "History of Torture" (rerun) which is a prelude to "Modern Marvels: Execution Tech" (rerun). After that, Mark Bowden is brought back for "The Dark Art of Interrogation" (new show). I'm looking forward to seeing what may be revealed in this show. I'm not saying that I support anything that goes on by our government to obtain information from apprehended terrorists.

Sunday ramblings

I'll repeat it again - working on the weekend sucks if you don't get paid for it! Then I get home, and for now my wireless internet is behaving. I've had trouble the last three days or so with an incredibly flaky connection, and problems with the ISP's ability to route address requests. For example, here's a traceroute I did a few hours ago:

Jennifer-Michaels-Computer:~ jennifermichaels$ traceroute 128.196.11.235
traceroute to 128.196.11.235 (128.196.11.235), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 5.462 ms 5.478 ms 117.221 ms
2 * 10.242.0.1 (10.242.0.1) 15.217 ms 82.576 ms
3 * * *
4 68.2.13.74 (68.2.13.74) 45.668 ms * *
5 68.2.13.30 (68.2.13.30) 47.191 ms 56.934 ms 50.246 ms
6 * * *
7 68.2.14.73 (68.2.14.73) 57.214 ms * *
8 * * chndbbrc01-pos0101.rd.ph.cox.net (68.1.0.164) 318.194 ms
9 * * langbbrj01-so060100.r2.la.cox.net (68.1.1.231) 48.874 ms
10 * * *
11 * * core-01-so-1-1-0-0.lsag.twtelecom.net (66.192.251.24) 60.496 ms
12 * * *
13 hagg-01-ge-1-3-0-508.tcsn.twtelecom.net (66.192.253.245) 72.112 ms 98.805 ms 48.744 ms
14 * 207.250.65.134 (207.250.65.134) 41.682 ms *
15 tuco.telcom.arizona.edu (192.80.43.57) 79.965 ms 61.697 ms 52.607 ms
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * *
19 * * *
20 * * *
21 * * *
^C
not to forget to mention that this took three minutes to process!

I'm still showing problems with simple traceroutes. But at least my connection is more stable and allowing me to IM (the connection is just quite slow sometimes but at least it eventually works).

I'm a bit fed up with the hurricane coverage. I just overheard this on CBS Evening News:
Blonde reporter: "It's kind of a ghost town here. Why are you still here?"
FA Local: "My home is my castle....my fish need me."
shakes head My cats will take care of your fish if you want ;)

I stopped by Wild Oats on my way home from work today. I was happy to find in the freezer case chicken nuggets and fish sticks that were gluten-free. I picked up more gluten-free pasta, and a gluten-free beef stroganoff (just add beef). Since I had coffee for breakfast, and it was pushing 3:00PM, I decided to try the chicken nuggets and some of the new pasta.

I really just need to accept that gluten-free pasta is pretty much going to suck. This was a corn-based pasta instead of being brown rice. The texture was very smooth (compared to the brown rice pasta I tried). But it was very chewy. The directions said only cook in boiling water for 4-6 minutes and don't overcook it. Perhaps I overcooked it, but it's hard to tell.

The chicken nuggets were an even bigger disappointment. It claimed that the chickens were free-range with no hormones. I only wish I could figure out how the got the breading on the "chicken". The breading was wonderful - crispy after baking. But the meat was crumbly and VERY dry. My gluten-free BBQ sauce helped some, but it was very disappointing. Hopefully the fish sticks are better.

Working the weekend sucks!

In a desperate attempt to fix a hard drive that is on the fritz, I'm trying to backup about 8GB of data then wipe the drive clean. There's no quick solution to backing up such a huge amount of data, so I get to spend some time reading up on the latest "cool" news. Which is good, since I woke up this AM with the return of my head pain. I guess I slept with my neck at a bad angle. I see my pain specialist in about a week, and should address this to him and see what he thinks (after all, the nerve causing me my pain innervates between C1 and C2).

This article I found was interesting. The patent on iris recognition is due to expire in less than a year. This article mentions some of the competition, and the possible implications of iris recognition software. Can anyone say "airport security"?

UPDATE: 8GB has turned in 13. As soon as I get past the desktop folder, I'm going to have to let it run overnight....

And we thought the Amish were harmless....

Five years after the human genome was mapped, some of the promises are being fulfilled. Gene mappers in Amish Pennsylvania are unlocking genetic diseases. Going on information from the human genome project, studying inbred populations is showing a genetic flaw in such diseases such as SIDS.

I visited the Amish country in Indiana when I was in Chicago a month ago. First of all, their lifestyle is strongly based on faith, which I can respect but not fully understand. As this article mentions, generations of marrying within your close community cause an increased rate of genetic mutations. That I can understand, but I can also (sorta) understand their fear of losing their way of life if they "outbreed". Yet if nothing is done, such isolated communities will lose their way of life because eventually they will not be able to have enough viable offspring.

So, what's the solution? Beats me....I can understand the long-term consquences of inbreeding, but there are no easy solutions to their dilemma because we respect their right to live the way they want to.