Phil's Osophies™

Friday, March 05, 2010

Alleged Vail cocaine dealer asked, officer obliged - The Denver Post

That’s funny.

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_14520306

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Op-Ed Contributor - We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change - NYTimes.com

Whatever your personal opinion of the man, he’s an intelligent writer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Boulder Skier’s Ham Radio Key In Saving His Life - cbs4denver.com

http://cbs4denver.com/local/boulder.skier.rescued.2.1509445.html

Monday, February 15, 2010

Spam, A Lot

Gosh, I’m getting so many emails for Viagra and inexpensive Rolex watches, maybe I should buy some. I mean, the folks who send me these emails work so hard telling me about these great deals. And they could use the profits towards education: they need to learn basic spelling and grammar. But golly, I do appreciate their gumption and tenacity.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Pick Any Two…

...to the exclusion of the third:

• fast
• cheap
• good

Friday, February 05, 2010

An Interesting Question

My girlfriend posed an interesting question last night. Say you’re in a car accident. The police and fire department who show up are paid for out of our tax dollars, right? We don’t have to pay them hundreds if not thousands of dollars for this critical service. Why then should an ambulance ride cost so much? Shouldn’t that be paid for out of taxes as well (as well as healthcare in general)?

Here’s a bad idea: let’s privatize police and/or fire departments. Oh wait, that was done already. If you didn’t have their medallion on your burning house…  well let’s just say that “for profit” was the rule.

I think if we all chipped in a little bit we’d all be a lot healthier and happier. Just like Canada. I believe that a good quality of life should be for everyone, not just the rich. This includes access to basic services such as police protection, fire department service, and basic healthcare.

Don’t get sick, America. If you do then you’re pretty much screwed.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Sit Down, You’re Blocking the Dote

Standing ovations are too liberally dispensed nowadays. They should be reserved for especially outstanding performances or occasions.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Two Words:

jobless recovery

:(

Thank you for your interest in (business name obscured).  Unfortunately, this position has been filled internally.  Best of luck in your job search.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Osophy on Correctness, Incorrectness of

In stark contrast to the Mad Men line and Brett Williams book title, “You can be right or you can be married,” I believe that apologies are not concessions; in fact the first one to apologize wins. It demonstrates character, introspection, and a commitment to peacekeeping, even at the cost of “winning.”

I also found this when searching the source of the above quotation:

What is interesting about these “Right Fights” is that they are not about needing to be right, but come from the feeling of being wronged, hurt, or unloved. Couples want to right the wrong they feel, and then get mired in their battles over blame. The solution is to address the feeling of being hurt or unloved, by connecting as a couple. Our wounds cause us to withdraw, and that is why communication fails. By remaining close, two people are able to discuss their differences, express their pain, and feel more intimate afterwards.

from http://www.helptalking.com/you-can-be-right-or-you-can-be-married

Friday, January 22, 2010

The Internet is NOT the World Wide Web

So many times people have told me their “internet isn’t working,” yet I find their email programs and web browsers working, only perhaps that Internet Explorer is broken. I just realized this morning: Windows XP calls the default web browser “Internet” in the start menu. Microsoft really did a number on people’s perceptions all these years.

Folks, the “Internet” as you know it is called the World Wide Web: you know that “www” before almost every website? There is so much more to the Internet than the web. Email, FTP, chat/IM, all that stuff is still on the Internet but they’re not all HTML: the language web browsers like Internet Explorer speak.

So the next time you say “the Internet is broken,” which by the way isn’t really possible nowadays, please consider the actual problem and help you to help yourself: perhaps your web browser isn’t working. Or just describe the symptom: “I can’t get Internet Explorer to work.” It’s communication like this that will help us get you the assistance you need quicker and more efficiently. Who knows, the browsing experience you save could be your own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#Terminology

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Kelly’s Website

Should have linked to this one a long time ago. kellytwedt.com

I’m So Very Tired Of This Over And Over Again

Sometimes… I’m just… so tired. Tired of job hunting. Tired of job hunting in this shitty economy. Thank you very much, American Greed.

I’ve been looking for so long for a job that has… you know… things like health insurance and a wage that will pay for… you know… things like car repairs and dinner with my girlfriend and ... life.

A job that won’t slowly devour my soul.

Is that too much to ask?

Is it?

Come on now… employment… please tell me where can I sell my soul for a decent income?

Apparently having 98th-percentile smarts, a good work ethic, an MFA… all these things mean nothing.

Screw you, jobs. Hope. Career advancement. Let’s make crappy stuff overseas for Americans to waste their withering income on instead.

You can save for a rainy day but some day you’ll need an umbrella if it never stops pouring.

Monday, December 28, 2009

fetchmail -m bash script: printer and gcal

I just wrote this little bash script as a fetchmail MTA/destination. It automatically prints and adds to my gcal any new appointments scheduled for my by Fastteks. Since they have a crappy web calendar and only send notifications via plaintext email, I wrote this script to automate some things for me. Every five minutes it removes unnecessary information, sends it to my office printer, and adds an appointment to my business Google calendar all automatically.

In addition to fetchmail, this script needs gcalcli.

Cool.

#!/bin/sh

PRINTER=BrotherMFC9840CDW

TMPFILE=/tmp/emailprint.tmp
cat $1 > $TMPFILE

if [ -f $TMPFILE ]
then
      sed -e ‘/^First Follow-up Call Action Taken/d’ -e ‘/^Follow-up /d’ -e ‘/^Conclusion/d’ -e ‘/^Use end date/d’ -e ‘/^Message-ID:/d’ -e ‘/^X-Forwarded-/d’ -e ‘/^Repeat Type/d’ -e ‘/^Repeat End Date/d’ -e ‘/^Frequency/d’ -e ‘/^Group/d’ -e ‘/^Satisfied with Results/d’ -e ‘/^Content-T/d’ -e ‘/^Mime-Version:/d’ -e ‘/^      /d’ -e ‘/^  /d’ -e ‘/^Message-Id:/d’ -e ‘/^Please look on Fastteks Solution Center/d’ -e ‘/^http:/d’ -e ‘/^Received:/d’ -e ‘/^Return-Path:/d’ -e ‘/^Received-SPF:/d’ -e ‘/^Delivered-To:/d’ -e ‘/^Authentication-Results:/d’ -e ‘/^X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-/d’ -e ‘/^X-Mailer:/d’ -e ‘/^Customer Number/d’ -i $TMPFILE
#    cat $TMPFILE
      lp -s -d $PRINTER $TMPFILE
fi

if [ -f $TMPFILE ]
then

      WHAT=`cat $TMPFILE | grep “A new appointment has been made for you by ” | sed -e ‘s/.*Brief Description //’ -e ‘s/\”//g’`
      STREET=`cat $TMPFILE | grep “^Address” | sed -e ‘s/^Address //’ -e ‘s/\”//g’`
      CITY=`cat $TMPFILE | grep “^City” | sed -e ‘s/^City //’ -e ‘s/\”//g’ -e ‘s/\,//’ -e ‘s/\(.*\) /\1/’`
      STATE=`cat $TMPFILE | grep “^State” | sed -e ‘s/^State //’ -e ‘s/\”//g’`
      ZIP=`cat $TMPFILE | grep “^Zip Code” | sed -e ‘s/^Zip Code //’ -e ‘s/\”//g’`
      DATE=`cat $TMPFILE | grep “^Date” | tail -n 1 | sed ‘s/^Date: //’`
      TIME=`cat $TMPFILE | grep “^Time” | sed ‘s/^Time: //’`
      WHERE=”$STREET, $ZIP”
      WHEN=”$DATE $TIME”

      CMDTXT=“FT: $WHAT at $WHERE $WHEN”
      GCOMMAND=”/usr/bin/gcalcli quick ‘$CMDTXT’”

      if [ -n “$WHAT” ]
      then
          sh -c “$GCOMMAND”
      fi

fi

if [ -f $TMPFILE ]
then
      rm $TMPFILE
fi

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Motorola H390 Bluetooth Headset: No Good

I got a Motorola H390 Bluetooth headset for Christmas. I returned it because when turned on, in my ear, idle, and connected to my phone, it make a very quiet intermittent high-pitched beeping sound. It was annoying in a quiet room. I don’t know if it was only my unit that was defective or the design of the H90 itself, but I give it a 1 out of 5. My advice: if you have good hearing, try it for a while in a quiet environment before you toss the receipt or the packaging.