First off this is not the post I promised in the post where I talked about a big post coming I am planning to put that up on Monday night.
Tonight we had a function at church; we had dinner and then watched a movie. The movie was Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog 7. After watching it all I can say is wow. Krzysztof did not make any characters that were clean in it. If you are looking for a movie that is about 50 minutes long it is a good movie to watch.
I have been busy as of late, so I have not had any really good posts to put up as of late. But in the next few days I will be putting up a major post.
I was hoping that the anti-spam things I had put in place would have alowed me to stop blocking IP address, but I was getting more then 100 spam comments a day so I had to reblock all the address I had blocked before, I am sure glad I had backed up my .htaccess file.
I have had some good experience with the 2 new additions to my spam blocking. So I am going to put the full test to it, I have renamed my .htaccess file, and have turned off the IP blocking. I am going to see if the new anti-spam things I put in place will work. If this works I will not have to ban IP addresses anymore. I have had times when my own family can not get on my site because they got a new IP address from a dynamic pool and it had in the past been used to spam my blog. I will run this test for about 2 days and see what happens.
I know many in the blog community like to do Memes and Quizzes. And I kind of like them too, but if you wish to tag me on one, please do me a favor, please email me at mpop(at)mikeoconnor(dot)net so that I know that I have been tagged.
Well today my 40Gb iPod got the final mp3 that filled it to 100% capasity. So I had to start to cut down on what is uploaded to my iPod, so I set it up to not upload any file that is not check. I went in and unchecked a bunch of the podcasts. I know that there are other ways of not copying podcasts over, but they do not meet my needs. The 4 ways I know of to not copy othem over are: Do not copy any, Copy all, Copy only the most Recent, and Copy unplayed ones. I find sometimes I want to relisten to some that I have listen to before, or that I have more then just the most recent one to listen to. So I just set it to copy all that are checked, and then I unchecked them all, then I went over to my play lists, and told it to check anything that was in that play list. That freed up about 15Gb of space. So I should be set for a few more months before I have to go though and uncheck a bunch more again.
When I fist got my iPod back in Dec of 2003 I never thought I would fill up the full 40Gb, but then I started to listen to podcasts and the space on the iPod started to get eaten up really fast.
To give you an idea about how many mp3’s (aac’s) are on the ipod, there are 4825 mp3’s and the time counts to (based on what iTunes says) 65 days 7 hours 42 minutes and 44 seconds
They say a picture is worth a 1000 words. So with that in mind I have worked on a new icon for myself. I hope that maybe some day it will become synonymous with me, just as many know my by mpop, and when they hear mpop or see mpop they think of me, these people are my friends at WPLUG. The new logo is 
at the right of this post. I hope to make a larger version of it later.
Let me explain what the icon has in it. First the base of the image is the O’Connor Family Crest (hay this is because I am an O’Connor), above the Family Crest is a modified version of the Luther Seal (this is because I am a Lutheran), the modification I made to the Luther Seal was to replace the black cross in the center of the red heart with a gray Celtic Cross (since my family name comes down from an Irish heritage). Finally I have on both sides of the O’Connor family crest 2 penguins, Tux the Penguin the Linux mascot, this is because I am really big into Linux. I believe these images on the icon I made help to describe who I am.
I would love to hear what my friends think about the new icon I have put together. If the response is positive, I am thinking I might try to get it printed up an put on a T-shirt for myself, or would that be to egotistical?
Also if you click on the image to the right you can see a larger version of it.
I found a band called Brobdingnagian they do some fun Irish music. They got some good stuff. You can get their music off of iTMS.
As many probably know Bush has threatened to veto any bill that would block the Port transfer to the a company run by the United Arab Emirates. Well today I got one of Santorum’s campain E-Mail (yes I am on the email list for his campain, I did sign up for it, so it is not spam, it was requested, spam is unrequested) and in it he says
“That’s why I’m concerned any time it appears as if we’re not taking the terrorist threat seriously enough. As I write you,the control of six major U.S. seaports– including the Port of Philadelphia– could be outsourced to the United Arab Emirates, a nation that was implicated in the events of 9/11.”
and he goes on to say
“after learning of this troubling situation last week, I took immediate action to call for an investigation and a stop to this transfer of control of our ports:
Last Thursday, I requested that the President intervene and use his authority under the current law to prevent this sale;
I have requested that the U.S. Senate investigate the matter to determine if and how the application of the law needs to reflect the realities of a post-9/11 world, and;
I began discussions with a bipartisan group of Congressmen to determine what we could do if the administration doesn’t rescind the contract.”
so I think this kind of puts Mr Santorum and Bush at odds over this issue, I will admit I have not decided how I feel about it, but I don’t think we should let knee jerk reactions guide us here.
For those of you that would see the fill text of the email You can see it at Rick Santorum’s ReElection site
This could be intersting to watch how all this falls out.
I had a great time last night listening to the Short Wave radio. I will admit I stayed up way longer then I should have. At about 1am this morning I started to pick up The Voice of America for Africa. It is always fun to tune around the Short Wave bands to see what you can pick up. I also was picking up some station that was playing Blue Grass music. I also found a station with some nutty right-wing nut jobs, they were so far to the right they made me look like an ultra-lib 😉 and if you know me, you know I am very conservative. Also I had my ham radio on (VHF) and I heard some people talk about how the HF bands were open, first one question if you like HF why are you on VHF talking about how great that they are open get on HF and have fun, and what I heard only confirmed what I was hearing last night on the Short Wave Radio bands, that the SW or HF (about the same area on the RF spectrum from about 1Mhz to 50Mhz) are wide open, and it is going to be great fun, for both Short Wave Radio listeners (me) and the HF Ham Radio Operators.
Tonight I turned on my Short Wave radio for the first time in about a month and a half, I had not turned it on in a while since back about a month and a half ago the bands seemed to be dead aka I was not getting anything. Well tonight I am getting a lot of stuff, I was getting stuff in the range of 1.6Mhz to 4.8Mhz and I had not really gotten things in that range even 2 months ago. I am getting things all over the short wave radio bands tonight, this is just so great, I love it when things come in all over the place it is such a great thing to listen to, in my opion. So if you are a Short Wave fan, the bands are open tonight, I hope they stay open for a long time.
To give you an idea how open they must be, I live in an apartment so I can not have an outside attena, so I have 450 feet of wire that I strung around my apartment as the attenna, so if you live in a house and can get an outside attena, you will be so happy with what you can recive.
Well as I said in the post “Watch out for the fire storm in Ham radio to start” Well over at QRZ the fire storm did really start around page 10 it is starting to get really funny, there is major hate going on. There is one guy there that when ever someone posts a comment that is in favor of dropping the code and the person is only a Technician class operator, he will respond with the following
[code]
Callsign:
[/code]
So I decided to asking him “what does some one’s Class have to do with anything, unless you believe they are less of a person or ham because they are not as high as you.” and I got the following responded (and I kid you not)
[code]
If you don’t have a CDL, then how should your opinions about over-the-road hauling be taken?
[/code]
{sarcasm}Wow what logic, I am blown away by that brilliant logic{/sarcasm}
The problem with that logic, is it says unless you have license or degree in an area you are not allowed to have an opine in it, aka the contour example I gave is that by that logic maybe most people should not vote since most people don’t have a license to practice law, I was trying to show how stupid that logic the person gave was.
QRZ is running store on how the FCC is highly likely to drop the CW tests for entry into the HF bands of Armature Radio
I will say watch out for the Holy Wars on CW to start, I am thinking I might not want to go on the air for a while; it is bound to get very heated. For those of you that are not ham radio people but are Linux people here is something that will let you know how heated it can be, just think about how heated the Emacs vs. VI holy wars.
If you head over to QRZ to look at the story, look at the comments, they seem to be tame this time around, but I am sure if the FCC drops CW there is going to be a bit of a backlash against no-coders. Oh well, time moves on things change, and anger will eventually get soothed over.
On a lark I decided to start up a new yahoo group. I call it Irish Lutherans. I know of one other Irish Lutheran, but I wonder how many people out there have Irish ancestry and are Lutheran, not a common combo to my knolage. The group is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IrishLutherans/ I have not really set down any group plan my idea is for any one that has Irish ancestry and is a Lutheran can join and talk about what ever.
I hope that there will be some talk about Celtic Music, I have found that I do like Celtic Music.
Maybe since it is a Lutheran group, we could get some talk about Lutheran Thelogy going too. I still have not picked a logo for the group, I am thinking of doing some kind of cross between the Luther Seal, and an Celtic Cross.
Yes I know that the 2 limits I have put on the list, will make it smaller, but I am sure for those of you that fall into those groups, will be glad to have it small like that and people in that group set.
I is nice to see that the Olympics does not have that stupid trapazoid behind the goalie net. I want to know what drunk thought up that for the NHL. I really wish the NHL would get ride of the new rules, they have really hurt the game of hockey. I will admit I miss the old hockey game.
I will admit I do not like the automatic iceing rule that the Olympics have, but I can see the logic behind it.
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