Why Gemcraft was acting so wierd

We've heard through the rumor mill that Gemcraft Homes is probably having some financial problems because they are shutting down some of their building sites. I don't know the specifics of what is happening inside Gemcraft, but this may help explain why they acted so erratically and canceled our contract when we brought up concerns about the home and settlement date.

Doggy friends

Yesterday Em and I took the boys (Toby and Zeek) to meet the dog sitter and their dogs, 3 border collies which are twice the size of Toby and 4 times as big as Zeek. Toby and Zeek will be staying with this family while we are back in Utah packing up our stuff. Toby took to the new dogs rather quickly and started chasing/being chased. Zeek just kept trying to hide behind Em and I. One of the collies took a liking to Zeek and decided to torment him by pushing him and sitting in his hiding places. After he warmed up to the new dogs another collie started herding him like a sheep, she did a very good job keeping him trapped in the corner of the kitchen :)

After all the fun and excitement of making new friends the boys took a nice nap in the back seat while we grabbed lunch and drove to the dog park. This park has separate areas for large and small dogs. This time Zeek only took a few minutes to warm up and they both had lots of fun teaming up to chase the other dogs around, and occasionally stopping to get attention from the other dog owners.

After we got back to the hotel both of the boys just zonked on the bed for several hours. They were so tired that we had to bring their food into the bedroom to get them to even eat!

RGB Rant on the software industry

RGB recently posted a rant/editorial to the beowulf list that discusses Microsoft as a monopoly and why we should be afraid of (not hate) Microsoft, even if we use their products or work for MS. His arguments are based on history, economics, and human nature instead of MS hate. Long but an interesting read. The font used in the linked to site sucks, copy it somewhere else :)

New House (hopefully)

We have an offer in on a house. It is out in the country Northwest of Havre De Grace. You can see in the link that we are right near the Susquehanna river and surrounded by farm land. The house is a rancher (ground level floor + basement) built in the late 1950s. We've had the first inspection and it is in quite good shape for it's age. I'll post more when I get pics or when we close, whichever comes first, maybe even a walk through video from my little camera.

Best jerky ever!

Em went out to Erda with her Grandpa a few months ago to get some jerky from Thompsons Smoke House (Recommended by Em’s coworker). This particular jerky was She just opened the buffalo jerky, wow is it good! Very Very tasty and moist! Get some :)

12 Angry Men

Nate at work recently recommended the movie 12 Angry Men. Em and I recently watched it on the free movies section of Comcast On Demand. Other than the opening and closing scenes the movie takes place entirely in a jury deliberation room. The story line involves a jury that must decide whether or not an 18 year old is guilty of murder. The group is made up of a diverse cross section of society and personal histories. As the group struggles to come to a verdict the individuals tackle lots of issues including personal bias, what is beyond a reasonable doubt, and the place in society for those who are likely to cause it problems.

The movie left me with a few observations that afford further thought. If juries really think about/discuss cases put in front of them it should be hard to be sure beyond reasonable doubt that someone is guilty. Can our legal system operate if it is this hard to convict someone? even if it can’t operate, how much are we as a society willing to give up before we convict an innocent person?
One of the more interesting topics touched on during the discussions was that the young man may have been doomed to commit a heinous crime during his life because of his upbringing. One juror pushes farther and states that because he is doomed to this fate he and those who were not Nurtured properly in their youth should just be locked up before committing any crime. This statement scared me quite a bit as researchers have a profiling computer program that assigns a murder score to an individual that indicates how likely they are to murder. This program may be used by law enforcement initially in probation risk assessment, but I suspect will creep into other aspects of law enforcement as well, possibly becoming a thoughtcrime like detection system. In a similar vein the UK is looking at legislation that will allow the detaining of those who fail to pass minimum mental health standards (Nature, previous was Nurture). I don’t think that the society that we know and enjoy can exist if these ideas are promugulated and basic liberties are attacked.

In short, watch the move.

Continuous play for Podcasts on Ipod

I just spent a while trying to figure out how to get multiple podcasts to play sequentially on my Ipod without kicking back out to the main menu. I found lots of people with this same problem but no solution. This behavior is caused by the random setting on the Ipod being enabled. If the Ipod is set to random song or random album then only one podcast will be played and then it will return to the main menu. If random is set to off then if you put the podcasts in a playlist or smart playlist it will play them one after another with no intervention.