This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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Just had a call on my cell. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voice mail. I have transcribed the full text of the message. The first word starts in the middle, so it is obvious the automated system had already said a sentence or two while my recorded “Please leave a message” thing was playing, so I missed the beginning.
From 877-778-2578 at 00:09 UTC on 2007 Sep 25:
… As you are on the DirecTV do not call list we are not able to contact you for these exciting offers. The reason I’m calling you today is to give you an opportunity to change your selections. If you allow us to remove you from the DirecTV do not call list please be assured that we will not share your information with anyone else. Please call 1-877-778-2578 to remove your account from the DirecTV do not call list. You will then be eligible to receive exciting offers in the future. If you prefer to remain on DirecTV’s do not call list we completely respect your decision and your privacy and no action is required. Thank you for being a loyal DirecTV customer.
Excuse me??? I’m on your do not call list, so you are calling me to ask me to please take you off your do not call list? So you can call me about crap I don’t want? Excuse me? EXCUSE ME? I already told you not to call me. Assholes.
We were already planning to switch away from DirecTV as soon as either of our two DirecTivos die since they are no longer manufactured and you can only get them on the secondary market for way over what was the market price when they were still being made… all since DirecTV decided they wanted to push their own second rate DVRs instead of real Tivos.
Anyway, this call just makes me not have any regrets on that planned move. It may even end up accelerating it. (Although I don’t see us switching until early next year unless our existing hardware does die.)
What a crock.
More Internet comments on unwanted calls from this phone number here including at least a couple comments suggesting that it might not really be DirecTV. Dunno. Very annoyed regardless.
 I screwed my computer up on Sunday, so this week’s topics are:
- “Borrowing” Software
- Leads to Fubared Computer
- Leads to Hijinks with Backups
- Leads to Ikea (of course)
- Leads to the Apple Store
- iLife Happyness
- Sucky Week
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I think I am going to rearrange the furniture in my home office. It has been the way it is for quite a few months. Time for a change. You might be able to see these efforts on the camera. But then again, it has a fairly tight field of view. I wish I had a fisheye lens for it, but I don’t. Also, and perhaps more importantly, I’ll probably have to shut off the computer at some point to move it, which of course will turn off the webcam.
And of course it will be incredibly boring. A few minutes of me moving furniture. If I even end up doing it right now. That dragging thing is still going on, so I may be just as likely to just lie down and not do anything.
All week long I have been seriously dragging. No definable being sick or anything. Just majorly dragging. No energy, off and on aches and pains, difficulty concentrating, strong desire to just lie down. I’m plodded my way through work, saving most of the energy for meetings, and otherwise falling a bit behind at the stuff I need to just do at my desk as I am going slower than I should. Then each day when I’ve gotten home I’ve essentially immediately collapsed into bed rather than doing any of the stuff I usually try to get done each evening at home. Then waking up in the morning feeling a bit better, but still with low energy levels I know will peter out by early afternoon.
Don’t know what this is, but I want it to go away now. I am glad it is Friday. I suspect I will sleep all day Saturday.
I’d been holding pretty steady for the last year or so, but I spiked a bit last night and this morning I hit an all time lifetime high for a single daily weight reading (although the moving average may or may not end up being a record, I haven’t calculated it yet and I do a centered weighted average rather than the more traditional method, so I’ll actually need to take a few more readings before I have the final value for that).
Oops. 86273 grams. Bad Sam. I really need to once again occasionally do something other than sitting at a desk or lying in a bed. Something involving vigorous movement every once in awhile perhaps. Hmmm….
(And yes, not all of those five digits are significant, the inherent error on the scale is probably about 100 grams, plus my daily variability is on the order of 1000 grams or more… which is why what really matters is the moving average, not a spot reading… but still… a new record… and yes, I could probably stand to lose 5% to 10% of the total mass to get to where I theoretically “should” be.)
It got stopped in the Senate, but could one of my lawyer readers (you know who you are) explain to me the argument for how what they were proposing to do was possibly constitutional? Isn’t Article I, Section 2 as amended by Amendment XIV Section 2 fairly clear that it is STATES that have representation?
Is the argument based on Article I, Section 5? “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members”? If that is the case it seems to open up the possibility of legislation adding Representatives for all sorts of other non-State entities. And that seems like it could be an absolutely horrible can of worms to get in to.
There is definitely a strong argument that people who live in DC should have representation. But it also seems clear (to me anyway) that an attempt to do this by statute is unconstitutional. A constitutional amendment, retrocession of most or all of DC to Maryland, or making DC a state all seem like options that WOULD be constitutional, but not this. The fact that a majority of both houses supported this and it was only stopped by filibuster in the Senate scares me. But then again, most legislation coming out of the congress scares me.
(For the record, retrocession is the only one of the options I would personally support. It is the ONLY one of the options that makes sense to me and does not seem to set bad precedents. I would leave a small federal district with no legal residents for the capital mall and surrounding federal buildings. But of the options it seems to have almost no political support and has not been looked at seriously in many years. )
We thought Skittles was doing much better. After Cheese died he hadn’t seemed to be doing well at first. But in the last few weeks he had perked up. He was looking very healthy. He seemed to be doing great. On this week’s podcast you can hear him chirping in the background. And he would chirp along if music was being played. He was eating well. Last night he seemed fine. This morning we noticed nothing. He seemed like a happy little blue budgie again.
But this afternoon he suddenly started acting sick and started to deteriorate fast. Brandy noticed him puffed up and on the floor of his cage. At the first sign of trouble Brandy made a vet appointment for first thing in the morning. (The vet had already left for the day.) I came home about an hour early to help. But by the time I got home he was in very bad shape. There were bursts of activity, but he was not doing well.
About 25 minutes ago, with Brandy and I there, Skittles cheeped for the last time, turned to look at me for a minute or two, then closed his eyes. A few minutes later he took his last breath. He had seemed absolutely fine and healthy less than 12 hours earlier. Poor sweet little guy.
We’ll take him to the vet to see if anything more can be determined as to cause for him or Cheese. The vet had warned that Skittles might have the same problem as Cheese, but we had thought we were just about over the hump and he was going to be OK. But that was not to be.
The vet also still has Cheese, who he was keeping in case more tests could have helped Skittles. When the vet is done with both of them we will bury the two of them together. They were best friends their whole lives. It is only fitting.
Goodbye Skittles. We’ll miss you.
 Ivan couldn’t make it yesterday at taping time, so as a special guest, Amy co-hosted with me this week and also picked all of the topics. So, today’s topics:
- Sam’s Birthday
- Online Television
- Microsoft and Verizon
- Stephanie Meyer’s Vampires
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As I type it is seven hours and a couple of minutes until the exact time I’ll be exactly 36 years old. It will happen at 14:13:38 UTC today. That’s 7:13:38 AM Pacific, 10:13:38 AM Eastern. Wow, I sure am old. I’ll probably be asleep when the exact moment hits. At least that is the plan.
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