Proclaim the Joyous News!

This is all thanks to the magic of URL forwarding, a free service of mydomain.com (many other companies provide similar services). I had a choice between Standard (or uncloaked) forwarding, and Stealth or (cloaked) forwarding. I chose Standard, which simply brings you here and displays the page's actual URL in your address bar. I tried Stealth, which displays thebudster.com, but changed it when I realized that it always would display thebudster.com, even if you were to visit an archive page, or to click the "link" at the end of a post. I intend to keep messing with this until I get it the way I want it, so expect the unexpected, as they say, for awhile.

PLEASE NOTE: If you've got the site bookmarked, or linked, you don't need to change anything. The current URL will continue to work. The advantage to using the new thebudster.com URL is that it will always work (provided I renew it each year) even if I change web hosts (no plans for that).

If you want to do the URL forwarding thing yourself, first you have to choose a URL (domain), then register it, then sign up for the free forwarding service. And then spend some time figuring out how to configure the service. It's not expensive, or too difficult, and it's so much easier to say "Hey! Check me out on the web at 'the budster dot com'", than it is to say "Hey! Check me out at 'home dot earthlink dot net forward slash tilde bud underscore long forward slash blogger dot html'".

Maybe it's kind of sad (or telling) that I'm into my second year of studying computer science and I'm just now figuring this stuff out. I mean, I knew that one could buy a domain, but I'd long assumed they were expensive and I had no clue how to go about getting one.

Oh well. Another year, and I'll know everything there is to know about computers, right? Ha!

Posted by Me at 22:43 link

More personal trivia

Downhill running

Mountainside breathes green
Mist and muddy rocks, trees, leaves
Fly by as my feet seek ground

Heart racing to beat the storm
Life racing to keep up with me

The dogs and I haven't been trail running for a while now, although there are numerous outstanding trail running trails within a couple of hours of here. For some reason, I've been wanting to go back to Green Knob, a minor "summit" near Mount Mitchell at the top of a steep trail. Good views from the trail and from the summit fire tower. The trailhead is at Black Mountain Campground, same as the Mitchell trail. Last time, which must have been summer of 2000, we saw bear scat (but no bears) and nearly got caught in a massive thunderstorm.

Stickers I must have for my bicycle helmet:
Visit www.DemocracyMeansYou.com to get any of these (or many other) stickers for yourself. Inexpensive. Expressive. Subversive. Who could ask for anything more?

Acting Someone Else's Age

• Boogie Pimps — "Salt Shaker"
• Tito Puente — "Ran Kan Kan"
• Jakatta — "American Dream"
• Tori Amos — "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (techno remix)
• Rachid Taha — "Barra Barra"

Bicycling around town while listening to high-energy mix tapes (discs, whatever) is illegal and dangerous. And a lot of fun!
[disclaimer - I do NOT endorse this activity]
Conventional Wisdom: 36-year-old people are not supposed to do stuff like this. Conventional Wisdom is crap.

I didn't mention that I gave into the dark side 6 days ago — that's right, I got an air conditioner. Haven't had it on much. I felt much better once I realized it uses less electricity than the dehumidifier. Dehumidifies better, too. And it cools the house instead of heating it up. Nothing could be finer. Still, I'm not going to use it much. Had it on 2.5 hours two days ago when it got up to 95° F, and I felt fine. Dehummer was running 24/7, and I was miserable.

Signed up for another semester of classes Tuesday. I pity the fool that hasn't signed up already. A lot of classes are already full, and so far only returning students have had the opportunity to register.

I'm finally going to learn Spanish. I hope it's useful, talk-to-regular-people Spanish, and not academic read-the-great-Spanish-masters Spanish. I'm also taking three computer classes.

This is what you mean by "quotidian banter", isn't it, "Hector"? Or is it "personal trivia"?

I couldn't face talking about politics today. Sue me.

Posted by Me at 22:55 link

Wachet Auf!

From "moja_vera", American soldier in Iraq:

i tell those who hate me that the feeling is not mutual...that i understand where they are coming from...i can see why they feel the way they do...i don't agree with these things either....because why??? i read a book...i looked at a few websites...is that really enough...what will it take to end this hate...someone please tell me...i'm running out of ideas...

i sit here all night trying to change the world from my lap top...and it's beginning to weigh on me...there is a story here that deserves to be told...there are other sides to this multi faceted goliath...

i forgot to tell you what i feel...i feel like atlas...with the weight of the world as my burden...simply because i have woken up to it...

please...

someone else wake up and help me...

Here are a couple of pictures from our recent trip to Staunton:

Blacksmith forge, Frontier Culture Museum

Okay, now I'm really glad we didn't order "the special."

Posted by Me at 23:41 link

Technical Difficulties...

Please stand by...

Computerrs Are Perrfect

And if you believe that, I've got a great business opportunity for you, involving a large sum of money I urgently need to move out of my Nigerian bank account. It'll be worth your while...

When my friend SFL first alerted me to the potential for fraud inherent in new electronic voting systems, my first thought was "tin-foil hat time". Then I read a bit of what computer scientist David Dill had to say on the subject:

"The problem with this whole process is that nobody can really determine what's happening between when you push the button on the screen saying that you want to cast your vote and what vote is actually recorded," Dill says. "So we don't know if the votes are being accurately recorded. And as a computer scientist, I know that there are many, many ways that there could be unexpected errors, things you couldn't even predict, and even tampering, possibly even in the writing of the program, that could alter those votes."
[full story]

I became concerned, even to the point of writing to my state elected officials, asking them to introduce legislation requiring that any electronic voting machines used in North Carolina elections produce a paper copy of every vote. I didn't get any response from my elected officials, but a few weeks later, I did learn (again from SFL) that major voting machine makers had modified their machines to allow generation of paper vote receipts. Relieved, I thought that was the end of it.

Now I've learned that a large number of elections boards across the country are failing to mandate the use of hard copy (paper) validation. And then I read this from Bev Harris, once again via SFL:

For both optical scans and touch screens operating using Diebold election systems, the voting system works like this:

Voters vote at the precinct, running their ballot through an optical scan, or entering their vote on a touch screen.

After the polls close, poll workers transmit the votes that have been accumulated to the county office. They do this by modem.

At the county office, there is a "host computer" with a program on it called GEMS.

GEMS receives the incoming votes and stores them in a vote ledger. But then, we found, it makes another set of books with a copy of what is in vote ledger 1. And at the same time, it makes yet a third vote ledger with another copy.

The Elections Supervisor never sees these three sets of books. All she sees is the reports she can run: Election summary (totals, county wide) or a detail report (totals for each precinct). She has no way of knowing that her GEMS program is using multiple sets of books, because the GEMS interface draws its data from an Access database, which is hidden.

And here is what is quite odd: On the programs we tested, the Election summary (totals, county wide) come from the vote ledger 2 instead of vote ledger 1.
[full post] at Ishbadiddle

Does that sound like a good system to you?

If not, contact your US Representative and urge them to cosponsor HR 2239, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003. This bill, which was introduced in May by Rep. Rush Holt of NJ, would amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require that hard copy records of votes be kept. That would permit auditing and reliable recounts.

Here's the message I just sent to my US Representative:

I urge you to cosponsor HR 2239, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003. This bill would Amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require that a paper copy of each electronically-recorded vote be retained, which would permit reliable auditing and recounting of votes. Currently-available technology permits doing this in a timely, cost-effective manner.

Do you trust the ATM machine, or the grocery store, enough to make electronic transactions without receipts? If so, you're either unaware of the dangers, or a more trusting soul than most people! How much more important is the integrity of our voting system?

Currently, no hardcopy is required for electronically-recorded votes. As a student of computer science, I'm aware of the potential for error -- or even outright fraud -- inherent in a paperless system. Respected computer scientists across the country have united to demand accountable, verifiable voting systems. (http://www.verifiedvoting.org/resolution.asp)

HR 2239 addresses those concerns. Again I urge you to cosponsor this vital legislation.

Thank you for considering my views.

Or just go and rent 2001: A Space Odyssey again. What's that HAL? My vote wasn't recorded? Oh. Well, just print out a copy for me, OK?

Don't you love technology?

Posted by Me at 23:51 link