GRoK This!

Looking for short story

I was eating some spicy beef jerky that I bought this weekend, when I remembered a bit of a short story that I had once read. I can?t find it on the web, but maybe you guys can help me. Here?s the story as I remember it. I?m pretty sure it?s a fiction story.

It?s told from first person view. This guy walks into a restaurant (in Mexico? Texas?) and orders some food and some chilies to go with it. The food comes, but the chilies are not hot enough for him, so he asks for something spicier. The waitress brings back some spicier ones. Still not hot enough, so he asks for even spicier. She brings them back and he starts eating them like they?re not spicy at all. The waitress decides to introduce him to the mayor(?), who?s known for being able to eat really spicy chilies. They decide to have a contest. Lots of townsfolk come to watch. The two sit down at a table with chilies and some bread. The loser is the one who reaches for the bread first. After the first few, sweat starts breaking out on their forehead. Finally, the both eat this one chili that is just a jolt of pain. Both eye the bread because they are barely able to stand it. Finally the guy grabs the bread and eats it. He thinks that he might have been able to win, but he had looked around at the townsfolk and realized that the mayor?s reputation was on the line and decided not to ruin it. The mayor looks thankful and relieved. Townsfolk cheer for the mayor, everyone?s friends. Happy ending.

The real story is told much better than this. Please let me know if you find it.

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Posted at 09:15PM Jun 16, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

Obama, meet Godwin

From Wikipedia:

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies)[1] is an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."[2][3] References to Godwin's Law often actually refer to a corollary of it which determines that the person who first makes an unwarranted reference to Nazi Germany or Hitler in an argument loses that argument automatically.

The Christian Worldview Network has published these articles:

• A Former Hitler Youth Warns America part 1 Hilmer Von Campe was a member of the Hitler Youth movement. His book is "Defeating the Totalitarian Lie: A Former Hitler Youth Warns America." Von Campe says that the same totalitarian issues that were present in Germany in the 1930s when Hitler came to power are now becoming evident in America., (Feb 5, 2009)
• A Former Hitler Youth Warns America part 2 Hilmer Von Campe was a member of the Hitler Youth movement. His book is "Defeating the Totalitarian Lie: A Former Hitler Youth Warns America." Von Campe says that the same totalitarian issues that were present in Germany in the 1930s when Hitler came to power are now becoming evident in America.,
• 25 Similarities Between America and Nazi Germany, (Feb 10, 2009)

Beyond those little gems, there's this theme running through their various articles. Please note that I kept the emails, but some of the web content that is pointed to by the emails is now gone.

1. Is Obama a Muslim?
   • Is Obama more dangerous than Hillary? Was Senator Obama raised as a Muslim? Why did his friend and pastor reportedly travel with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to visit Col Muammar el-Qaddafi? Does Obama's pastor hate America, Israel and white people? What does all this say about Obama's worldview and how he would treat Israel if elected President? (Jan 8, 2008)
   • Obama, the Muslim Thing, And Why It Matters (Jan 9, 2008)
   • Brannon Howse: Topic one: Obama Did practice Islam (Jan 11, 2008)
   • Barack Obama through Muslim Eyes (Aug 8, 2008)
   • Muslim fingerprints in Obama's history (Oct 7, 2008)
2. Is a Muslim the next Antichrist?
   • Will The Antichrist Be A Muslim?, (Jan 7, 2009)
   • Antichrist A Muslim? "The Assyrian Connection" Part II (Jan 7, 2009)
   • Antichrist A Muslim? Gods War On Terror (Jan 12, 2009)
3. Is the Apocalypse coming soon?
   • Prophecies Currently Being Fulfilled (Sep 3, 2008)
   • How Much Time Do We Have Before A New War In The Epicenter? (Oct 21, 2008)
   • U.S. To Help Rebuild City Of Babylon In Iraq (Feb 17, 2009)
   • Jesus is Returning in Our Time: The Key Sign (Mar 4, 2009)

Fearmongering? Nah. They would never do that.

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Posted at 12:59AM Mar 20, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

An Evening with Stephen Hawking

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from a friend of mine that Stephen Hawking was going to be talking here in Southern California. For those of you who don't know who Hawking is, shame on you. He's only the most brilliant mind in physics that we have. For you, I say go read "A Brief History of Time". Unfortunately, he' also afflicted with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), so "talk" is certainly not used here in the literal sense.

At any rate, not even knowing what he was going to talk about, I bought tickets. Heck, I'm sure he'd have something interesting to say about shampoo and conditioner. It turns out his talk was entitled "Why We Should Go Into Space", as I found out when I received the ticket in the mail. I also found out that the event was held in Pasadena. I would be leaving from work in San Clemente and traveling up there. That's 70 miles through rush hour traffic. Luckily, the traffic was fairly light, and I made it up there in about 1.25 hours. By the way, Carl's Jr, it's not really supposed to get all over the place. I wish the traffic were a bit lighter, though, because the 110 north of LA is really fun to drive on when there's no traffic. Especially coming back home, where there's this little negative-bank turn that gives you a bit of a lift as you go over it.

There was a huge crowd there. In fact, the event sold out. It started a bit late, but when they finally announced the start, the whole room gave him a standing ovation as he entered from the back of the room. There were a few tech glitches in getting things right, but it got started soon enough. He wrote the speech ahead of time, and then delivered it line by line during the event by prompting his computer, which did the text-to-speech conversion. I won't go into the details of the speech, because I've found the whole text online. He's got a good sense of humor. I wish I could find the GDP graph. Hawking talked about increasing NASA's budget by 0.25% of the national GDP and what that could accomplish. The graph, showing NASA's budget from the 1960's on in relation to the GDP, really hit home. I also liked how he delved into Christopher Columbus and the New World, and how that discovery helped Europe and the world. Know that Hawking thinks in the long term. It took longer than a year, or five, or ten, for the New World to truly affect Europe. Likewise, our exploration of space will help us in the long term, as in tens or hundreds of years from now. But he says we should start now, and I agree with him. The knowledge and any new resources that we gain could help us solve our problems here on earth.

After the speech, there was a set of questions posed to Hawking by five high school and college students. All submitted in advance, of course, to allow Hawking to compose responses ahead of time. Some were humorous, and some were serious. One question was about cats landing on their feet and buttered toast. Hawking's assistant rolled out a small table with a toaster, bread and butter on it (no cat) and proceeded to do the experiment right there. That was funny. I wish that the serious ones were more profound, though. If I were to pose a question to Hawking, it would be something more like this:

Using the type of technology that we know about now, like chemical engines, or ones that we can envision, like the engines that emit photons that you mentioned, we could explore our little area of space, but it would still require many lifetimes to travel to another galaxy. If we did send such a generational ship out into space to another galaxy, there could be the chance that we later discover other means of travel, such as wormholes, that would get us to our destination much quicker, and would catch up to and pass the generational ship that would have been launched much earlier, rendering that ship useless and almost pointless. Should we bother trying to travel to other galaxies until we discover new modes of transportation beyond our current concept of propulsion?

And now I'm going to go off on a tangent. It's funny how much roads can be associated with your memories. The Pasadena Convention Center is within walking distance of the Pasadena Masonic Hall, which I passed on the way home, and which I've been to on several occasions for Victorian balls. Off of the 110 is the Heritage Square Museum, which is home to several Victorian houses and other buildings. My friends Shawn and Colleen Crosby were caretakers there for a while and actually lived on the premises. Jerry and Jill Wood were married there, and I was lucky enough to attend. Unfortunately, Jill died last year of cancer.

The trip also reminded me of when I first started working Renaissance Faire in 1987. For that year and the next, the faire was in Agoura Hills, and I took the 101 to the 5 to the 710 to get home, since I lived in Downey. Further down the 5, I passed by the Carmenita exit, which I used to take to get to the house that David, Randy and I rented in Cerritos. And finally, passing by all of the construction near the 5 and 91, it reminded me of what that intersection was like before all of that mess, when I had to get to and from Disneyland where I worked as a busboy and was living in Cerritos with my parents (around 1982).

A lot of history on that little stretch of road, especially with so many roads here in Southern Cal.

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Posted at 11:22AM Mar 10, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

OC Register shows its bias

(This is about a week late, but I've been busy. But better late than never, right?)

Some say that the Register's libertarian/conservative bias only shows itself on the editorial pages. Well, unfortunately, here's a case where it's not confined to that section.

On the Sunday paper (Feb 1), there was a story on the front page entitled The Young Recolor Political Map. It shows a nice big graphic of how Orange County's younger set are turning the county blue. Now the story could have reflected the graphic and continued on about how well the Democratic party is doing and how it was making such inroads. Or perhaps it could have split the article between that and the Republican party's reactions and how they're going to stage a come back. Or they could have done what they did, which was to make it all about the Republicans.

The first two paragraphs talk about Democrats. Then it immediately goes to Republican and how they are reacting to the news. When I turned the page, I saw a picture of Lindsay Hopkins, whom I know. She's been a great political director, and I was hoping to hear some quotes from here. I was very disappointed. Besides no direct quote from Lindsay, there was also no quote from Frank Barbaro, the chair of the county party. But there were plenty of quotes from Scott Baugh, chair of the county Republican party, and Shawn Fago, past president of the OC Young Republicans and Lauryn Picciano, current president of the OCYR. The article only returns to the Democratic party for the last few paragraphs, past the time when most readers would have given up reading the article. The rest was all about Republicans and how the Democratic surge is temporary.

Sigh.

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Posted at 09:42PM Feb 11, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

Starting a huge history project, and you're invited to contribute

It's at photeus.com/huzzah, and I'll just repost what I put on that site:

Welcome to Huzzah! wiki. The purpose of this website is to be the raw source of information for a future website called Huzzah! That site's purpose will be to present the news of the Elizabethan times in an entertaining and modern style, like Yahoo! news (see example). Each day from roughly 1559 to 1603 (that's around 16,000 days!) will have their own page. Each person and place that is referenced here will also have its own page. Feel free to add to it.

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Posted at 01:53AM Feb 09, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

When Good is evil

Here at work, they issue employees Treos. They install Good Mobile Messaging (GMM) on them so that employees have access to their Outlook email. Me being the good employee I am said "Can I get that installed on my personal Treo as well so that I can check my email remotely?" And so GMM version 4 got installed. I soon ran into the first gotcha. GMM took over my phone's address book, and all of a sudden I didn't have access to my hundreds of contacts that I had accumulated over the years. Slight panic sets in. However, I checked on the web and found a solution that let me have my address book back.

Flash forward a few months. I notice that there's an "Upgrade available" message on the GMM screen. So, I click it and rather easily a new version of GMM is installed (version 5). I had forgotten about the previous problem and went on my merry way.

Flash forward a week or two from that. I'm in downtown LA with my wife, who's looking for fabric, and I need to look up a number for someone, so I go to my address book...and it goes to GMM. Yikes. I looked on the menus for a way to switch it back, and then finally go to the Web on my phone's browser and end up finding the same solution that I had used before. So, I do the same thing...with no luck. Slight panic again. I try it a couple of times in case I did something wrong. No go. Now I'm frustrated. It should be easier than this. So, I decide to wait until that evening back home to do a more thorough web search for a solution.

It turns out that GMM 5 is harder to avoid than GMM 4. So, I decide to delete Good. Just rip it out of my Treo. That didn't quite work. I had to go in, using Filez, to delete the GoodAddressBookApp and reboot. That ended up giving me an infinite loop on bootup. So I hard-reset my Treo, wiping out all of my data in ROM. Note to self: remember to hotsync before mucking with the Treo again. Luckily I had done a fairly recent hotsync, and luckily I had moved most of my apps to the memory card, so I only lost a few addresses and no other application data. But, thankfully, Good was wiped from my Treo and I have access to my own address book again. If my employer asks if I want Good re-installed on my Treo again, the phrase "not in this lifetime" will be running through my head.

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Posted at 03:14PM Feb 04, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

The end of Ken Calvert's political career

Last week, Ken Calvert, along with the rest of the House, voted NO on the stimulus package. And he was proud of it, notifying all his constituents through an email. Perhaps he forgot that he won his district by about 3% last November. Perhaps he thinks that Bill Hedrick gave up after losing to him. Perhaps he doesn't know that the DCCC has created ads targeting his decision. Who knows. At any rate, I hope his constituents remember this decision in two years and, assuming that the stimulus works, remember that Calvert didn't lift a finger to help.

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Posted at 12:55PM Feb 02, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

JBoss Web Hosting

A few weeks ago I finally decided to go for web hosting of my software and websites. I needed more than simple web hosting, though. I also needed a JBoss and a MySQL server. I found all of that in a company called eApps. It's costing me $30/month for all of that, plus I've installed their Subversion server as well. That's a lot better than the $40/month package that I currently have with Cox. I'm almost finished with the transition and can soon cut off the Cox home power user plan and just go back to their regular plan.

This is, I think, part of the future called "cloud computing". Not only are these companies giving you hardware to use, but they're offering applications as well. I don't have to worry about downtime or upgrades. That's all taken care of for me. Also backups, although I still worry about having backups for what I think is my most valuable data, which right now are my blog entries. Luckily, I can set up their MySQL to make a backup onto my own local copy of MySQL (my blogsite stores the entries and comments in the database).

So now photeus.com and soon encyclopaedia-wot.org will be served from eApps instead of my home computer.

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Posted at 07:43PM Jan 27, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

College dorm reunion

I went to school at UC Irvine from 1982-1986. During that time, I stayed in the dorms. Well, I stayed in one dorm (Bahia) for the entire four years. It was interesting meeting new people each year, and being able to see a pattern on how things worked. For example, When students first got there, it was party time. Then the first mid-terms came, and it got quieter after that when they saw their scores.

Two sets of friendships came from that time. The first was from my first two years there(82-83,83-84), and then the second set was from my last two years (84-85,85-86). Back in the 90's, the second set had some reunions. Now, with Facebook around, and also armed with the Alumni directory, I decided to hunt for as many dorm-mates as possible. I managed to get a hold of a couple of them from the first set (James and Leanne), and they knew some of the others, etc. We agreed to have a reunion on Jan 24, so I set one up at Karl Strauss at South Coast Plaza. I dragged my wife to it, telling her that she'd get to know me even better and understand what those days were like. It's always a little dicey asking your spouse to a reunion, because there's a good chance they're going to get bored.

I recognized everyone when they came in. Everyone looked just about the same (maybe minus some hair) as they did when I saw them 25 years ago. Mark Essayian and his wife, Colleen and Amir Bacchus, Rick Sanzimier, Jeff Claproth, Neil Schmidt, James Ni, and Tim Mengle were all there. The rest couldn't make it but really wanted to be there. The night was filled, of course, with us all catching up on what we were doing now and then swapping stories from the past. I brought along a few pictures, which helped ("Oh, yeah, I remember him/her!"). All in all, a great night. I had thought that we would be fine with another reunion about six months from now, but it seems everyone else wanted something earlier than that. So, I'm going to set up either a Google group or a Facebook group (or both). We'll continue trying to find other dorm-mates and trying to pick a time/place where more of us can meet.

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Posted at 08:17AM Jan 26, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

You know you're in trouble...

when you go to get a haircut and the person asks you if she should use scissors or an electric gizmo. How should I know? Just do it the way everyone else does! Geesh. I really don't pay attention to how they cut my hair. Then, while she washes my hair and afterwards cuts it, she treats my head and hair like it's made of china. It's ok, I won't break. Really. Can they give these people a couple of weeks more training before they release them into the wild? Just askin'.

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Posted at 08:39PM Jan 19, 2009 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

SMWD Directors vote to double their compensation

In a 5-0 vote on Wednesday, the directors of the Santa Margarita Water District(SMWD) doubled the maximum compensation that they are allowed to receive. This goes into effect immediately. Prior to this, the five directors were allowed $175 per meeting, up to six meetings a month. For the board as a whole, this was a maximum of $63,000 per year. Now they receive $210 per meeting, up to ten meetings a month. For the board as a whole, this is a maximum of $126,000, which is double the previous amount.

There was a public hearing section of the meeting, where we were allowed to speak. For my turn, I mentioned that they may want to consider the following items:

1. The nation is in a recession, and tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs,
2. The district has just received their first fine ever for sewage spills, in the amount of $133,190, for 800,000+ gallons of sewage spilled last year,
3. And for the very first act after the election, where all of the incumbents got re-elected,
4. They are going to double their compensation

My arguments were rationalized away and the board went ahead and gave themselves a raise.

See also the article in the OC Register.

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Posted at 08:27PM Dec 18, 2008 by Gary Kephart in General  |  Comments[1]

SMWD in the news

The Santa Margarita Water District usually keeps out of the news, even when there's 100,000 gallon sewage spills. Not this time. There's a sewage spill that they're getting fined for, plus, the directors want an increase in pay.

From the OC Register: The Santa Margarita Water District was fined $133,190 Wednesday for two sewage breaks that occurred in 2007 and spilled more than 800,000 gallons of raw sewage. The fine by the San Diego Region of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board is the first of its kind against the district...The board vote was 6-2 to levy the fine against the district. The two Orange County representatives on the board, Gary Thompson, the mayor of Rancho Santa Margarita, and Kris Weber of Ladera Ranch voted against the fine.

Also from the OC Register: The Santa Margarita Water District's board of directors will hold a public hearing to consider giving themselves a raise, after going five years without one. The hearing on the proposal is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 17, at district headquarters, 26111 Antonio Parkway, Las Flores. The proposal would increase board member's pay from $175 for each day's service to $210. The proposal, if approved, would also increase the number of meetings a board member could be paid for each month from six days to 10.

I'll be there at the meeting. Come and join me.

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Posted at 07:07PM Dec 13, 2008 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

Homework for SMWD customers

If you're a customer of SMWD, take a minute and go to their website and find out the date of the December Board meeting. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Find it? If you looked under Leadership, you'd find a note stating "held every fourth Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m. in the boardroom at District headquarters". First, why is that on the leadership page? Why not on the front page, to make it as easy as possible for people to attend the meeting? Second, that would be December 24, which is the day before Christmas. Hmm. Sounds like they might want to move that. Well, they did, but you wouldn't know that from the website. You'd have to open the agenda for the November meeting and scroll to the bottom. There you would see that the meeting had been moved to December 17. Again, why isn't that information on the front page?

I'm glad that the district has finally decided to start adding agendas to the website. Note that they only have June through November listed. Not having agendas and meeting minutes on the website was something that I was campaigning about. I'm hoping that my campaign had something to do with the district deciding to post the agendas. I just hope now that the election is over that they'll keep posting the agendas.

Speaking of that, where's the December agenda? We're ten days away from the meeting, and it's not listed. They managed to post the election results quickly enough, but haven't gotten around to this month's agenda yet.

Well, I'll be there at the next meeting. I'm hoping you'll join me. "Water is the new oil" and we all should be aware of what's happening in our own water districts.

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Posted at 07:49PM Dec 07, 2008 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

Governor Oblivious

I'm a meat-eater. And I understand where our meat comes from. Haven't been to a slaughterhouse before, but wouldn't object to visiting one because I think it's important that we really do understand what happens. I think that our society has a sterilized view of what happens to get that cow, or turkey, onto our plate, especially compared to our society just, oh, 100 years ago. However, I understand that a lot of people do want that sterilized view. So, we should be a bit sensitive to that.

This is where Governor Palin comes in.

How could she not know what's happening in the background? And if she did know, how could she not know that some people could object to seeing it?

Posted at 05:24AM Nov 29, 2008 by Gary Kephart in General  | 

Tap, tap, tap...is this thing on?

It's been a while since I blogged. Probably close to a year. Now, though, my campaign is done and I have time to do this. First things first, though. Gotta check to see if all this still works.

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Posted at 09:02PM Nov 22, 2008 by Gary Kephart in General  |