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Article posted on Dec 29

I don't often laugh at my own jokes. Actually, I do all the time.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 29, 2006, 8:40 pm

<%fo0bar> http://tweakers.net/reviews/604/4 <-- ist sata dur cablehosen de bork bork bork

It would have been nice if the article was in English, but I did get the information I needed from the pictures. Namely a 4-lane SAS connector on a backplane can be fanned out to individual SATA/SAS connectors on a 3ware controller. I eventually found the cable needed to do such a thing.

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Article posted on Dec 29

John Edwards in Reno, NV

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 29, 2006, 7:35 pm

I just got back from seeing John Edwards speak at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno (formerly Reno Hilton). It was an interesting experience.

There were a group of about 15 people just outside the parking lot with a banner that said "Utah Republicans for Bush" (which I found a bit odd considering the Utah border is a good 12 hours away), but they were peaceful and respectful. I got to the doors at about 5:10PM, just as they were starting to let people in. The convention space is a very large place, but it was walled off with dividers to form a small room, and there was seating for a few hundred people, maybe 500. However, by the start at 6PM, there were a good 3000-4000; they eventually removed one of the side walls for the standing room crowd.

Edwards spoke for about 1.5 hours, with a 20 minute speech in the beginning for the usual stuff (education, the war, political reform, universal healthcare, etc), and spoke about his presidential announcement. The bulk of the time was spent answering questions.

What I noticed from the start was although he really liked to talk and tell stories, he would clearly answer the question somewhere in the answer, as opposed to dodging the question. For example, when asked about a running mate, he stated that he isn't prepared to talk about potential candidates... THEN he spent a few minutes dancing around the issue. Because of this speaking style, I was a bit confused the few times when he gave short answers, most notably about gay civil unions and stem cell research. For the former, he repeated the question. "Do I support civil union rights and recognition for gay and lesbian couples? Yes." And for the later, "Do you believe that federal funding should be used to support stem cell research?" "Yes."

This got me thinking... Why the different demeanor? Is he lying? Does he really agree? While I can't exactly get inside his head, I think the most likely reason is, he didn't want to create sound bites. Those two specific issues are very controversial these days and aren't clearly divided across political lines, so he's probably doing CYA (while at the same time not being wishy-washy, which I appreciate).

Overall, I came out with a good desire to vote for him if he makes it through the primaries (he's currently ranked at #3 in terms of possible-presidential-candidate favor, behind Clinton and Obama). Of course I don't agree with him on all issues. Most notably, with regard to Israel/Palestine, he takes the "Hamas doesn't want to work for peace so we shouldn't work with them" line, which is in line with the current administration. However, he did explicitly say that he favors both a secure Israel and a sovereign Palestine, so there is room for improvement. That being said, I continue to look upon him favorably. (I always said during the last election that I disliked Kerry, but hated Bush. I said it would be nice if Kerry won and then croaked, making Edwards president. (Don't read too much into that. It's a joke, I don't really wish death for Kerry.))

I didn't get called on for a question due to the sheer number of people with their hands up. I wanted to ask him about his thoughts on the recent elimination of Habeas Corpus, and was disappointed that nobody else asked about that. However, over all the questions were very good, even though there was some swooning. He thanked everyone for coming and shook a few hands.

And I didn't even have to sign a loyalty oath.

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Article posted on Dec 29

Yes, my penis is quite large actually. Thank you for asking.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 29, 2006, 3:51 pm

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md0              2.7T  217M  2.6T   1% /mnt/wooboy

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Article posted on Dec 25

Dear Nintendo...

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 25, 2006, 1:35 am

I just sent this to Nintendo:

To Whom it May Concern,

Every time I try to go to nintendo.com, it redirects me to http://www.nintendo.com/old_browser.vm , which says "Viewing this site requires at least Netscape 6.2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, Safari 1.0 or Firefox 1.0." However, I am using Debian's version of Firefox 2.0, though it is called "Iceweasel" instead of "Firefox" for legal reasons.

The old_browser.vm does allow me to continue, but it takes me back to the main page, instead of the page I wanted to go to (in this case, the Wrist Strap Replacement page).

For your website detection code, I would recommend changing the user agent detection from "Firefox/N" (where N is >= 1.0) to "Gecko/N" (where N is >= 20041107, the Gecko engine version used for Firefox 1.0). That way it will continue to detect all "branded" Firefox agents, as well as Firefox derivatives such as Camino, Galeon, K-Meleon and Iceweasel.

Thank you,
Ryan Finnie

I've got even money split between "we've forwarded this to our web site team and they'll look at it" (and then nothing is ever changed), and "LOL GO TO THIS URL TO GET WRIST STRAP" (with a link to the same URL that started this all). I'm hoping for the former, which at least gives me misguided hope.

Also, Merry Christmas!

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Article posted on Dec 7

Does 3 years of festive terrorism make it a tradition?

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 7, 2006, 11:27 am

Marry ecksmas!

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