I've had a rough time lately and the old blog has been neglected but I think I'm back to the point that I can focus on it. I'd rather not go into personal specifics and all that stuff here on the Interwebs, but I can say I have a good story if you catch me at FlashForward or some other conference and ask me about it..

Oh, and I am planning on being at FlashForward.
It's been a while since I had a breather and had time to go to a conference so I'm looking forward to it.

I've been working in Flex some.. wow. I tinkered with it way, way back but stuck with AS2 for work so didn't want to dive in and muddy the waters in my noggin. So it's fun to get back to it and start working with it. I keep wishing for a "groundhog day" so I can spend a year or two doing nothing but learning Flex and other things that I need to catch up on. Ah well.

I had a hard drive on my mac pro get wiped out. Totally. It was my "data" drive. The sad thing is, it was because I was setting up backup software (Chronosync) and configured it in such a way that it decided to totally erase the drive before my first little test of backing up my iTunes files on it with no warnings. Nice. I sent an e-mail to their support folks and after clarification of exactly how I set it up and what it did I got this response:

Ouch. We should get rid of Delete immediately or make it harder to use.
The Targets don't copy over otherwise you would end up with something like a
Documents folder inside a Documents folder. Which does not make sense. But I
can see where initially you would miss that.

Our next version does have stronger warnings about using the Archive.
Sorry for the mess.

Ahh.. ok. Good thing I had a somewhat recent backup and was able to recover the few other files I missed. In their defense it was kind of a crazy setup I tried, but if it'd given me a big warning (dude! you're about to wipe out data!) I would have changed course. As it was I lost some hours restoring my files and getting things set back up. The other irony is I'm normally super paranoid about data backup and back things up to 3 or 4 places and had my "data" drive set up as a mirrored raid array in case of hardware failure between backups... well.. before this little incident I'd been having some apps crash and other weirdness.. once I pulled that raid array out all the weirdness went away. I checked the drives and one was bad. I hadn't gotten a warning about it, but it was failing.

I ended up setting Chronosync up and have it doing all kinds of synchronizing and backing up fun. It's actually a nice app and easy to use. Eventually I'll upgrade to Leopard and use that nifty Time Machine thing, but in the meantime Chronosync will do fine as long as I'm careful.

I've been sitting on the sidelines of the democratic process in the US for oh.. about 20 years. I've voted, but I've never donated to a campaign, never put a bumper sticker on, never really gotten involved in it. I've always voted for the lesser of two evils and had just written the whole 2008 election off. I figured the Democrats would win this election (the online gambling sites and polls agree). However, this election I see something very, very different happening and it's actually scaring the crap out of me.

What I see happening is a clear, blatant, and successful attempt by the media and the GOP to sway Republican voters away from a a Republican candidate. There were weeks where I never heard his name on CNN, but heard the other candidates hundreds if not thousands of times. In hour and a half debates he might get 6 minutes of time. When cornered on the issue they point to low numbers in the polls. You don't get high numbers in the polls unless people see you on TV a lot first. I'm not alone in seeing this bias in action, as others are noticing it.

I'm not quite sure what we as citizens can do about it at this point and that's what frightens me. You see Dr. Ron Paul has the most support by far of the Republican candidates (and by support I mean people who are willing to do more than just walk in and vote like they've been told to). His grassroots volunteer support is the top at fundraising, the top at getting signs out, the top of going around knocking on doors and talking to people, the top of gathering and waving signs on street corners, the top of commenting on anything that moves on the web, the top of actually going and voting in online polls, and on and on.. and yet they can't come close to countering the effect of the "old" media. If his 200,000+ rabid supporters can't overcome the bias of the media, then heaven help us.

Enough about my fears of the menace of the media - here's some info on Ron Paul since you probably haven't heard too much about him other than the false memes presented by the media.

He:
- received more donations from active and retired military personnel than ANY candidate (Dem or Rep) and more donations than ALL other Republican candidates combined during the 4th quarter of 2007. Think about that next time you hear one of the candidates say they have the "support of the troops" or that the troops "want us to stay to finish the job with honor".
- has come in second (above McCain, Romney, and Huckabee) in two states (LA and NV) and may have won the most state delegates in Maine (the final vote isn't in yet).
- raised more money from individuals than any other Republican candidate in the 4th quarter.
- is a ten-term Texas congressman
- is a practicing OB/GYN doctor and has delivered over 4,000 babies (yes, he's pro-life but doesn't want the federal government overseeing that)
- voted against the Iraq War but is not opposed to war for defensive purposes (rather than preemptive war).
- is against NAFTA and steps we are taking towards a "North American Union"
- voted against the Patriot Act
- voted against the Real ID Act
- voted against internet regulation
- voted against those acts last year that stripped Habeas Corpus and Posse Commitatis
- voted against this week's Democrat sponsored Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (a precursor to internet filtering and University monitoring by the Department of Homeland Security).
- has written several books (he currently has one on the Amazon best seller list) on economics and unlike other candidates has put his economic plan out for us to see. See how McCain reacts when Paul asked a simple question about the "Working Group on Financial Markets" during one of the debates (McCain doesn't know the answer and just name drops).

He beat McCain in Maine, and is rumored to be set up to do well in at least 4 states tomorrow.

Now.. I don't know about you, but he seems like a viable candidate. Especially when the majority of the people in the US (and the world for that matter) want the US out of Iraq. So why would the GOP sit back and allow the media to force a pro-war candidate to be their nominee? Maybe they don't want to win this next election?... because they'll have to deal with this:


The value of your dollar:




The US national debt:



It's a mystery to me.

This is interesting too.. NC is currently considering not having him on the ballot (um.. he finished second in two states recently..maybe three of them when all the dust settles) and take a look at this:

Here's part of how NC determines who should be on the ballot:

"The list must be compromised of candidates whose candidacy is generally advocated and recognized in the news media throughout the United States or in North Carolina, .."

Yep, that's right. The media picks who goes on the ballot. Ugh.

Am I hoping people will vote for him based on this little blog post? Nope. I think the media has done it's job well of spreading the "long shot" and "McCain vs Romney" memes and there are very, very few people who will ignore what the talking heads on TV tell them. I'm hoping that as people come to this post they might read it, and then the next time they're watching CNN or reading a paper maybe a light bulb will come on when they realize that the media is choosing our candidates for us and democracy has lost.

(updated to add.. just to clarify.. I was aware of the media manipulating voters before, but what has shocked me this go-round is that it's much more evident. We now have YouTube to instantly share every instance of abuse, we have volunteers who put together sites like this one to track the media.. it's so obvious now, and yet it's still so widespread and it's not merely bias - it's censorship and blatant misinformation. The media is incredibly brazen with their attempts to sway the election.. as if they are above the people, above the government, and above the law. It's scary.).

The table below is from Journalism.orgs analysis of January 21 - 27, 2008 .. now you can't possibly tell me that the media gave equal time to the candidates. Bias is somewhat ok, but this is far, far beyond that. Bill freaking Clinton got almost three times as much coverage as Huckabee and more than ALL of the Republican candidates for crying out loud and Bill isn't even running for office.. well.. ahem.

So if you're into road racing and enjoy seeing cars that turn right instead of just left OR if you're into motorcycle racing then check this out.. a new track on the East coast of the US. And even better, it's close to me, so I won't have to haul my motorcycle as far for track days.

From what I've gathered it's designed primarily for the NASCAR teams to practice on, so it mimics some of the difficult turns on the tracks that they frequent. It's within 45 minutes or so from most of the NASCAR teams, so I suspect they'll be on there testing a good bit. The site says it's designed for "world class" motorcycle events as well, but from the looks of the layout it looks kind of scary to me. I mean it doesn't have the wide runoff areas that the new F1/MotoGP tracks being built these days have (see the Losail circuit built in Qatar for $58mil). If you followed the return of MotoGP to the US last year you might remember that there were lots of changes made to Laguna Seca for safety before MotoGP would even run a race on it.. and there were still lots of complaints from the riders about the track not being safe. But.. . maybe the track map just doesn't show the runoff areas. It does show a good bit of open space around the track (a few trees look kind of close to the track though) so maybe some of that space will be used for gravel runoff areas.

Notice that there's little or no mention of spectator seating or amenities on the layout.. kind of like VIR or Carolina Motorsports park.. or Barber.. this ain't no Bristol or Lowe's motor speedway. It's built for the drivers/riders and those watching on tv. Look on the track map for grandstands - none. (I'm assuming there will be some small grandstands, just not shown yet..)

The site is all in Flash.. not sure why.. but that might be part of the reason it's almost invisible on Google so long after it being released. I had to really hunt for it to find it... so I'm bumping it up a bit here. So note this you Flash designers out there.. this site doesn't even show up in the top 20 for searches like - raceway salisbury nc -,or - road racing track nc -. Bet it will soon though..

(( this post was about the original web site for the track.. I've updated the link below to the new web site ))
Here's the site for High Rock International Raceway in Salisbury (or Spencer ?), NC

OH.. and I wonder if you'll be able to see that back strait from I-85.. it would be a riot to go down that back strait and look over at the wide eyed motorists only 200' or so away (if the map is to scale).

**edited 8/10/08 to add that the zoning board in Spencer approved the plans for the track.. it's moving forward **

I just finished cleaning a pc of malware for a kid.. he's around ten, a smart kid, and somebody had given him their old pc for Christmas and it was doing "weird" things. The system was a fairly fast one actually - an eMachines 2.9Ghz w/512mb ram, an 80Gb drive, dvd, cdrw, etc.. not a doorstop at all. Somebody gave it to him because it was too slow.
Well.. lemme tell you why it was too slow.. it was running XP Service pack 1, it was running AOL's awesome spyware protection, it was running the full Norton suite (license only 6months expired so no updates in 6mos), and oh yeah it had about two dozen of the greatest trojans and malware apps you could hope to find running on it.
It was a full fledged spam bot. I could sit and watch it churn out hundreds of spam e-mails in a matter of minutes. It was kind of fascinating in a way. It was also quite slow from all this junk running on it.
The kid had a nice system, but some creeps had taken it and turned it into a piece of junk.

I cleaned off all the malware (including norton) and have it running fast again. By getting WinXP updated with all the patches it will help a lot in keeping the nasty stuff off, and I've put some apps on there for him to use that are a bit safer. So he should be ok for a while.

But this leads me to rant a bit.. wtf is going on when AOL and Norton can run their anti-spyware crap and report back that the system is clean when it's sitting there with so many Windows security patches missing and LOADED with spyware and trojans?? This is the fourth computer that I've cleaned up that was running Norton (and all of them had expired licenses) and on each one of them the systems were almost unusable and yet Norton was merrily running along telling the user that their systems were ok. The problem is partly because these folks didn't fork over the dough and get their virus scanner updated, but I'm just at a loss as to why Norton continues running six or eight months after the license has expired. It gives them some false sense of security and sets them up for real trouble.
Another thing that really chaps my #ss.. AOL. Why won't it just go away? Just you try to convince an AOL user to take the training wheels off and move away from AOL. The marketing folks at AOL are masters. Masters, I say.

And no, I'm not going to try to get this kid to switch to *nix or mac. If his system were patched up and he did things just a tiny bit differently then he wouldn't have these problems. I'd like to switch (back) to mac soon, but it's not because of security fears or the fear of getting a virus. My XP boxens run just fine despite my dislike for things from Microsoft.


Here's some stuff that I recommend for Windows users.. kind of a toolkit that I put on systems when I refresh them.

Firefox - Use it for your web browser.

THunderbird - Use it for your e-mail

Eudora - Another good e-mail client

SiteAdvisor - is a brand new system that will warn you if files you are about to download have adware/spyware/malware, or if the site is going to add you to a spam list if you give them your e-mail address. Give it a look..
or..
Netcraft Toolbar - stops a lot of phishing attempts cold

ewido - a nice tool for getting rid of the nasty malware. Will find and clean off most trojans, adware, etc.

EasyCleaner - Registry cleaner (use with caution.. know what you're doing.. not for noobs..). Good for inspecting and cleaning up the messes left behind in the registry by malware.

ad-aware - The freeware version of their spyware scanner. Will find and clean off most trojans, adware, etc.

clamwin antivirus - free open source virus scanner. Set it up to scan nightly, and scan downloads on demand. Personally I think the "always on, lock everything down and run everything through the virus scanner" approach is a bit heavy handed for most users.. clamwin does all most people need.. set it to run once a day and manually scan any email attachments that look suspicious.

Use a server side e-mail virus scanner. Many e-mail services and web hosting services come with or can be upgraded to scan all incoming e-mail for viruses before they even get to your system.
And if your e-mail provider won't scan the mail then most of the new web based e-mail services have virus scanning. Try gmail ( http://gmail.google.com ) if you can get an invitation to try it..

and how to secure windows xp http://markusjansson.net/exp.html has some good tips on how to secure XP so it's much more difficult for the creeps to touch.
(a properly updated and secured system will stop most viruses and malware from doing their thing)