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November 29, 2006
Workin' on the T'bird
I heart Thunderbird. I think it's a fantastic email client. But like all email clients, we abuse them and they break. With Thunderbird, it's a painful process to fix this. With Outlook, there is no painful process because you probably just lost all your emails. You back up regularly, right?
Note: my favorite all-time Email client was the old (1996-vintage) Eudora. I could activate my MP3 streaming from my home desktop to my work computer by sending myself an email. I also turned lights on and off by the same method. It was AWESOME. Sadly, it can't handle the crazy login methods I use nowadays, or RSS feeds, and the new versions that could got all sucky on me. I hear now Eudora's about to be re-written...using Thunderbird.
Anyhow. As for Thunderbird, you sometimes stumble into the Bad Parts. You might be eaten by a Grue. The Bad Parts are when you:
*Are moving a Tbird profile to a new computer
*Have trouble with your Tbird not starting
*Your Tbird emails are all "wonky" - displaying different titles, but always the same message?
I'm posting this here and in my wiki for future generations to amuse themselves with.
First, You need to find your Thunderbird profile, which is conveniently located in:
C:\Documents and Settings\[[USERNAME]]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\default\[[RANDOM STRING OF CHARACTERS]]\Mail\[[EMAIL ACCOUNT NAME]]
Note that the Application Data directory is hidden, so you have to go and turn on the "see hidden files" in Folder Options to get past there. You also have to be wearing the Hat of Pointiness and have reached level 5 in at least one class before passing through. Also note that all the other cool programs keep their data here. It'd be good practice except for having to type/find/use "Documents and Settings" instead of how Unices/Mac does it, with the more simple "home" directory. Anyhow. Don't blame Tbird for being so obtuse, blame Bill. Don't even get me started on where the Windows equivalent to the *nix /etc/hosts file is! (It's in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\ETC\hosts)
Back to our story. In this dark and abandoned place, you will find two types of inhabitants, FOLDER NAMES and their shadows, FOLDER NAMES.msf. First, use your one-shot Ring of Save Game and backup/zip/whatever the entire profile directory, then continue. If you're moving a Tbird profile to a new computer, you can move this entire profile directory over, but I seem to remember that blew up in my face and I ended up moving just the Mail folders over. Try it, let me know what works for you.
If you're having Tbird problems of not openingn/not showing you the right emails, keep reading.
Try deleting inbox.msf (While TBird is NOT running) (msf is the index of the email, Tbird will recreate it if missing) and re-opening thunderbird.
If that works, delete the other msf files. Otherwise, the best thing to do is to delete the entire profile directory (you made that backup, right???) uninstall Tbird entirely, reinstall the latest version, and set up your account again, then start dropping in the FOLDER NAME files (sans msf) while tbird is closed, and re-open it and see if that works.
Posted by griffjon at 06:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 25, 2006
Incremental Improvements
I fool around a lot with my old Dell Latitude CPi laptop. It's from 1998/99 or so (I bought it used at Agillion's dot-bomb auction in 2000). I run kUbuntu Linux on it, and use it as my travel laptop. It doesn't have much hard drive space, and very little memory, but it's light and has good battery life.
It's also a good learning tool. I find silly problems that I want to solve, and it lets me make progress. My recent mucking with it has been around general usage improvements, improving my usage of its limited memory while also optimizing for my personal usage. PArt of this was getting standby finally working (it takes forever and a day to reboot, and it's Linux, so doesn't really need rebooting like Windows does). Suspend I got working last year, and recent kernel upgrades made it so that I didn't have to much with the wireless card before suspending. Standby nevertheless wouldn't work right unless I deactivated the wireless card (it's old, an Orinoco silver, and doesn't have good power management).
Anyhow, I found a workaround; drop this script into your /etc/apm/scripts.d directory:
#!/bin/sh
# apmd proxy script to power down wireless cards
# that don't support iwconfig [interface] txpower off
# like old Orinoco silver/gold cards
case "$1,$2" in
suspend,*) ifdown eth0 ;;
standby,*) ifdown eth0 ;;
resume,suspend) ifup eth0 ;;
resume,standby) ifup eth0 ;;
esac
Then symlink to it from the resume and suspend directories (follow the permissions and patterns in there, I presume the numbers affect ordering of the script executions). Works like a charm!
UPDATE The ifdown/ifup on suspend screwed with my suspend working; removing that seems to have fixed it. Things is weird that way.
Posted by griffjon at 02:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thanksgiven
I feel that my house's Orhpan's Thanksgiving went excellently. Three days effectively lost to prep, eating, and unwinding; but we sat down 16 people at our table and sent everyone home with leftovers. We demolished 18 lbs of turkey and 16 of ham, two types of dressing/stuffing, corn casserole, corn, broccoli, salad, two types of rolls, cranberry sauce, cranberry salad, sliced canned cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, two types of gravy, some rice casserole, and of course a green been casserole.
Oh, right, and 8 pies. We had a few latecomers so fed ~20-22 people in total.
The really sad part is that we ran out of turkey by the end, except for some gristly dark meat... so went out Friday and bought another turkey to roast to go with the remaining side dishes. :D
Posted by griffjon at 10:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 09, 2006
At least it's not chicken
Japan's robot sommelier thinks humans taste like pork:
But when some smart aleck reporter placed his hand in the robot's omnivorous clanking jaw, he was identified as bacon. A cameraman then tried and was identified as prosciutto.
Posted by griffjon at 11:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 08, 2006
Wha... Huh?
28 seats gained in the House, and teetering on a lead in the Senate also? Rummy quit (before he could become the target of an investigation, perhaps?)
GREAT!
Now, how about that PATRIOT act, those warrantless wiretaps, and Habeas Corpus? We've got some house cleaning work to do...
Posted by griffjon at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 07, 2006
Voting
(AP) -- Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts early Tuesday, delaying voters in Indiana, Ohio and Florida and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead...."We got five machines -- one of them's got to work," said Willette Scullank, a troubleshooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.In Indiana's Marion County, about 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper because poll workers didn't know how to run the machines, said Marion County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler. She said it could take most of the day to fix all of the machine-related issues.
Election officials in Delaware County, Indiana, planned to seek a court order to extend voting after an apparent computer error prevented voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts there. County Clerk Karen Wenger said the cards that activate the machines were programmed incorrectly....With a third of Americans voting on new equipment and voters navigating new registration databases and changing ID rules, election watchdogs worried about polling problems even before the voting began.
And we're calling Nicaragua's elections, which match predictions, independent quick-counts, and have received the EU, OAS and Carter Foundation blessings full of anomalies.
Posted by griffjon at 12:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
DC Taxi Zones
One of the most confusing parts of DC is dealing with the Taxi Zone system; as the one map that seems to be available is grainy and poorly made, only showing the "zone boundaries" and not landmarks, non-boundary streets, or things like that. It feels like an attempt to maintain an information advantage over the consumers (especially the tourists) and extract that extra fare from dropping you off on the side of the street that's the next zone out and sillyness like that.
If you know how to work and abuse the zone system, walking that extra 1/2-block on either side of your journey can save you a sawbuck. To help with this, I've plonked the grainy, fuzzy map of the DC Taxi Zones on top of Google Earth, so you can actually see where things are.
DCTaxiZones.kmz (1.6MB, requires Google Earth)
Posted by griffjon at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 06, 2006
VOTE
Vote early, vote on paper!
Inform people about the GOP Scam making it seem like Democrats in over 50 congressional campaigns are repeatedly robo-calling voters, failing to comply by the FCC regulations on such calls. Of course, this won't get resolved until after the damage is done. Again.
Posted by griffjon at 09:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nica Elections
Not content to muddle with our own elections, the US is trying to continue its policy of choosing the winner in Nicaragua's elections:
Rep. Dan Rohrabacher (R-CA), in a letter asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff "to prepare in accordance with U.S. law, contingency plans to block any further money remittances from being sent to Nicaragua in the event that the FSLN enters government." Many Nicaraguan families rely on money sent home from relatives working in the United States. Even though Rohrabacher's statement is total "muscle flexing" according to an expert on remittances at the InterAmerican Dialogue, who pointed out that the US hasn't even cut off remittances to Cuba, some Nicaraguans may cast their vote out of fear. Congressmen Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Ed Royce (R-CA) and Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) wrote variously to Nicaragua's US Ambassador and Condoleezza Rice threatening actions if Nicaraguans vote wrong. All their threats, of course, reverberate in Nicaragua where US Ambassador Paul Trivelli has intervened so loudly that even the usually quiescent Organization of American States has condemned US interference.
OK, I mean, cutting off aid is bad, ask Lebanon. But remittances? That's cruel. That's below the belt, even for the US. Now, this is just some war-mongering congresscritter, but the reality is that we have and continue to muck with their electoral process:
The most public example of this campaign of manipulation is the US Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli. His statements are a constant reminder of the US government’s true agenda in Nicaragua. For example, he has stated many times, the US “will establish cordial relationships with any administration that is elected democratically . . . that has a reasonable economic policy and is ready to cooperate with us.”The Bush administration has made clear that a government “ready to cooperate with the US” is one that will do the following: (1) support CAFTA and other free trade policies, (2) participate in all the US requests concerning the war on terrorism, (3) ensure that the Nicaraguan national police receive training that blurs the time-honored distinction between civilian policing and military action, and (4) not maintain friendly diplomatic relationships with either Cuba or Venezuela.
Ambassador Trivelli has also made it clear that the election of the candidate for the PLC party cannot be former President Aleman, nor anyone he selects, and that the election of the FSLN party candidate, Daniel Ortega, will not be accepted by the present US government.
Now, José Serrano has spoken out against this:
“It is simply unacceptable for American officials to pretend our government will take punitive measures if Daniel Ortega is elected president in Nicaragua,” Serrano said. “Our position should be clear: we support free and fair elections and will work with the winner as we would any other elected head of state in the world. Perhaps some in the executive branch and elsewhere have forgotten that the U.S. does not have the right to intervene in other nations’ affairs. They would better serve our nation’s interests in democracy and rule of law by avoiding partisan commentary about other nation’s elections and candidates. To do otherwise is unseemly and counterproductive.”...“I am particularly troubled by the statements of Embassy spokesperson Kristin Stewart. She publicly linked Ortega with terrorist groups and said that the U.S. would revise its policy toward the Nicaraguan government should he win. I believe her words were unfortunate and wrong, and merit a withdrawal. Electioneering is not the proper role of an Embassy or its spokesperson.”
Stewart told the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa that “If a foreign government has a relationship with terrorist organizations, like the Sandinistas did in the past; U.S. law permits us to apply sanctions. [...] Again, it will be necessary to revise our policies if Ortega wins.”...
“I pledge that I will do everything in my power to make sure that the government of the United States will respect the wishes of the Nicaraguan people regardless of who wins their presidential election,” Serrano concluded. “Our nation desires nothing more than a flourishing democracy in Nicaragua.”
U.S.: It seems that you do not understand the concept of democracy. It means a people choosing their leaders through election processes. Some are more direct, some are, like yours, done via representation. It is expressly not having your leader picked by foreign nations based on economic alliances. Please check your work and definitions, and please revise. D-
Posted by griffjon at 11:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 04, 2006
Papers, Please
Slashdot links to an article (the site is slashdotted currently, see Google's cache)
Forget no-fly lists. If Uncle Sam gets its way, beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, we'll all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave-or re-enter-the United States.The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that all
airlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtain
clearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of the
United States.It doesn't matter if you have a U.S. Passport - a "travel document"
that now, absent a court order to the contrary, gives you a virtually
unqualified right to enter or leave the United States, any time you
want. When the DHS system comes into effect next January, if the
agency says "no" to a clearance request, or doesn't answer the
request at all, you won't be permitted to enter-or leave-the United
States.
*blink* What. The. Fuck. Are we Nazi Germany now, restricting our own citizens from leaving?
I suddenly miss being less than a day's drive from the Mexican border.
Posted by griffjon at 10:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 02, 2006
more religious right hypocrisy explosions
I think preaching and/or campaigning against deviant lifestyles must lead to deviant lifestyles:
Pastor Ted Haggard, the leader of the gigantic evangelical Christian New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned after being accused of having an affair with another man. Haggard is the guy who kicked famous atheist Richard Dawkins out of his church in the documentary The Root of All Evil.
Posted by griffjon at 09:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 01, 2006
The Dems don't even need to TRY to lose!
With Florida voting machines giving Democrat votes to Republicans (see also here and here).
Remember kids, vote early, vote with paper.
Posted by griffjon at 06:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack