Barnson.org

Just ran across a great tutorial on how to use the Pingback module for Drupal.

I’ve been a little bit out of the latest tools for blogging & social media lately, and Pingback as a replacement for Trackback is a really good idea. Basically, it’s Trackback with a vengeance: it forces that the site placing the pingback actually link to the article in question, and places limits on the number of links available on the destination pingback. Pretty sweet!

Ultimately, controlling spam while publicizing a site is one of the great challenges of running a long-standing blog. The spammers attack, and attack, and attack, wearing you down. I plan to implement this pingback utility just as soon as I get the spare time to update my Drupal install, too.

I’ve recently begun doing some research into how I can improve traffic to my web site. Yeah, I know, long-term readers would say “Uh, dude, start writing again!” I hear you, and I’m working on it, starting today here & now.

One of the sites discussing driving traffic to blogs mentioned one of the basics is being aware of “hot keywords”, where advertisers pay top dollar for click-through ads. Now, a lot of these, I feel like I’d have to sell my soul to capitalize on them. I’m talking about the ads for cheap viagra & cialis, payday loans, debt consolidation, and Nutrisystem eating plans. Well, OK, Nutrisystem is just a diet plan under the hood – and a well-advertised and above-board one at that – so I guess I’d be OK about that, but the rest seem to be largely the province of people who constantly try to spam my site with comments to try to boost their ad revenue, offshore pharmacy, or extortionate loan scheme.

I feel as if I need a shower just after mentioning those keywords! The people who hawk them online using spammish techniques are just that scummy that I can get second-hand scumminess by just saying the words they try to abuse.

One that stood out to me, though, was the huge number of links for people asking about how to buy a substance called “Tramadol”. I’d never even heard of this stuff before yesterday. So, as usual, I hit the web to do some research and figure out what’s going on. Like most things, you can find out the basics from Wikipedia. Tramadol is an analgesic for treating pain. People use it for a wide variety of pain-related therapies. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, headache, sores, difficulty breathing, seizures, and hallucinations. Why would someone want to take this stuff unless they absolutely needed it for managing pain?

In the description I found the answer that immediately stood out to me amongst the sea of other uses: “Premature Ejaculation”. You see, from long experience being the victim of spammers on the Web, I’ve learned that there are at least a few people are willing to pay top-dollar for anything that “enhances male performance”. From Viagra to Cialis, and now apparently to Tramadol, men seem to believe that lasting longer in bed, being better endowed, or otherwise enhancing their maleness will get them the babes.

Unfortunately, that these substances will solve the problems in your love life is a lie that the drug companies would like to you to believe.

And this relentless focus on self-medication – particularly, non-prescription self-medication from offshore pharmacies – really bugs the heck out of me. Do you guys have any idea how dangerous it is to try to buy this stuff from the kind of place that would sell it to you without a prescription? If you really need Tramadol to manage your pain, by all means, go see your doctor, have it prescribed in an appropriate dose, and have it filled at a reputable pharmacy. But if you’re self-prescribing it to try to last longer in bed, you’re taking a huge risk with your life, sanity, and health.

The reality, men, is that if you’re really wanting to do well with women, you need to learn how to be the man that woman is really looking for. Working on your level of physical fitness helps make you more appealing – that’s a topic for another entry later – as does improving your mental acuity and sense of humor. Most women’s needs, though, are not usually for a guy with the biggest muscles or longest schlong. That’s a myth perpetuated by the adult film industry, among others. Most are looking for the guy who knows how to meet her emotional needs. A guy who knows how to seduce a woman by appealing to those needs. And usually, those needs aren’t what the women say they are. And they aren’t what the pharmaceutical companies want you to believe they are, either.

Educate yourself to be the man of her dreams. Don’t medicate yourself into oblivion.

Because I’ve started writing my soliloquies again, I’ve changed permissions again for new users. Anonymous users are allowed to post again, as are recently-authenticated users, but all posts are moderated unless you’re part of the “Contributor”, “Barnsons”, or “Moderator” groups.

There’s only one moderator besides me. If you’re an honorary Barnson, you know who you are. There are no Contributors yet… those will be any folks who I don’t want to be able to host a blog here, but who are active enough to warrant posting without moderation.

Also going through and deleting massive numbers of spam accounts from my system. At a rate of approximately 6 to 10 new spam accounts per day since 2001, the user database has gotten huge.

Found this article in my local online rag this morning.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Attorneys general from 13 states — including Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff — sued the federal government Tuesday, claiming the landmark health care overhaul is unconstitutional just seven minutes after President Barack Obama signed it into law.

This is the same Attorney General who claims we don’t have the resources to enforce the Utah State Constitution, yet we somehow magically have the resources now to take up a challenge to the first bill — the first few baby steps — to reform the horribly broken, incredibly expensive bureaucracy that is the US healthcare system?

I understand that, without a public option, this amounts to an unfunded mandate like No Child Left Behind. And that execrable act at a cost of around $30Bn a year, leaving $9Bn a year to be made up by the states, still never received as much criticism as this one.

“The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage,” the lawsuit says.

Legal experts say it has little chance of succeeding because, under the Constitution, federal laws trump state laws.

Let me get this straight. I’m in good health. My kids are in good health. My wife is in good health. As a taxpayer, I’m already funding health care coverage and retirement for America’s over-fifty majority through FICA, and capped my Social Security benefits years and years ago… I will never see a dime of the $13,500 max (EDIT: Uhh, that’s changed. It’s over $15,000 as of 2010) the federal government is allowed to take from me every year. My employer pays $700 a month for my health insurance, and I pay $810 a month for it. So the total cost of health insurance — not including dental, vision, and life insurance — is over EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR. Add that to FICA — which is really just a big, charitable donation at this point — and between the Feds and the insurance monopolies, I am out potentially over $30K a year.

Thirty. Thousand. Dollars. To pay for somebody else’s retirement, somebody else’s health care, and oh, by the way, a few hundred bucks of health care for me and my kids every year.

My employer refuses to give me a raise. Know why? The rising cost of health care, they tell me, IS my raise. And the amount I’m paying for health care DOUBLED over just the past nine years. We have to do SOMETHING to curb this crisis, and I’m just happy to see someone have the constituency and courage to finally get started on the process.

Then the AG for my state gets a bug in his butt to kowtow to the insurance company lobbyists, and here we are. I’m already subsidizing someone here. In my point of view, all this bloody bill does is show the average taxpayer who it is they’re paying for.

In Michigan, the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, a Christian legal advocacy group, sued on behalf of itself and four people it says don’t have private health insurance and object to being told they have to purchase it.

You know, I get this part. The Feds mandating that every American buy private health insurance is a little bit grating. We should really have a low-cost, minimal-coverage public option that everybody could pay for if they don’t have other coverage.

Oh, wait. The right wing and insurance lobby killed the Public Option. Now they are the ones grousing about not having a public option. What the heck?

But I kind of see the point now. See, without a Public Option, this bill is an absolutely enormous win for the insurance lobby. Now everybody HAS to have insurance! What a marvelous recruiting opportunity for insurance companies!

The lawsuit claims the bill violates the 10th Amendment, which says the federal government has no authority beyond the powers granted to it under the Constitution, by forcing the states to carry out its provisions but not reimbursing them for the costs.

Right. Just like NCLB did. And all these Attorneys General lined up to block that pig-headed, anti-education mandate under George Bush, Jr.

Oh, wait. They didn’t.

Other changes would not kick in until 2014.

That’s when most Americans will for the first time be required to carry health insurance — either through an employer or government program or by buying it themselves. Those who refuse will face tax penalties.

“This is the first time in American history where American citizens will be forced to buy a particular good or service,” said Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, explaining why his state joined the lawsuit.

Actually, untrue. We are required to purchase auto insurance if we drive an automobile. We are currently required to purchase health insurance if we don’t have the cash to pay for huge medical bills out-of-pocket, bills that are so huge because we’ve already been forced to fund emergency-room visits for uninsured individuals and fund huge lawsuits which are the legal community’s equivalent of winning the lottery.

Why not insurance-industry reform instead? Let’s have some oversight over the out-of-control insurance industry that charges extortionate sums and refuses to cover many of the claims. We know now that the past forty years of incredible rise in medical costs can be laid at the foot of the insurance companies, not technology or litigation.

Oh, that’s right. We can’t reform the insurance industry. They are making unheard-of profits, and own most of our politicians. That’s the only reason the current health-care bill saw the light of day: because despite the hugely-divisive nature of health care reform, this one is just enough of a sweetheart deal for the insurance industry to buy key politicians who might have considered voting against it… or voting in some other reforms.

Can you tell I’m ambivalent about this bill? I’m optimistic, but given that the public option was excised from the bill in order for it to pass, I look at it now as more charity for the bloated, unproductive insurance industry… and we need to fix that as soon as possible.

Until today, I have largely ignored the Tea Party. Decided to read some of their own literature today. After careful study, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a mostly-male thinly-veiled white-supremacist organization hell-bent on eliminating religious freedom from the USA. Apparently some 11% of the USA sympathizes with them. Yuck.

Here are a few specifics I’ve discovered in my half-hour of skimming their stuff. Note that I’ve had practically no exposure to their party up until now… I heard about a few poorly-attended rallies and people buying tea to throw into local harbors, but just kind of brushed it off. However, they made one of the front-page links of CNN because they are considering the creation of a third major political party in the US. Facts I learned:

• 6 out of 10 members of the Tea Party are male.
• After extensive Googling, I have never seen a photo of a black member of the Tea Party.
• Around 40% of Tea Party members are retirees.

I found a few more interesting things reading their “Declaration of Redependence”, a re-write of the Declaration of Independence with modern-day Christian sensibilities rather than the Founding Father’s Enlightenment principles:

Free-market Solutions for Healthcare Reforms, Entitlement Program Reforms, Education Reforms Are Needed – Failure of our leaders to find free market and spiritual based solutions for these human needs cause citizens to flirt with compromising God’s 5th through 10th behavioral mandates. Attempts to leverage human needs and suffering and the redistribution of wealth for political power or personal enrichment has its roots in the breach of Gods first three Commandments.

Wow, do I have a number of concerns with this statement. First, they are saying that by not finding a “free market and spiritual-based solution”, political leaders are violating commandments 5 through 10. Assuming we’re talking about the Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:6-21, those commandments are:

17 You shall not murder.
18 Neither shall you commit adultery.
19 Neither shall you steal.
20 Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor.
21 Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

So a public option for health care, according to the Tea Party, will cause you to flirt with murder, adultery, theft, perjury, and covetousness. OK, that sounds fairly whacky to me, but now I know where they stand.

This document gets weirder.

Judicial Reforms Are Needed – The unconstitutional legislating from the judicial bench, establishing immoral precedents and ignoring the original intent of the US Constitution. Judicial arrogances prove a complete contempt for Gods first three Commandments and selective disregard for our Creators 5th, 7th, and 10th directives, while facilitating their erosion.

So, apparently, it’s time for “out with the old, in with the new”. Let’s throw out the checks and balances and go with, I don’t know, say, the Divine Right of Kings instead? Apparently, to the Tea Party, this is the new ideal: No judiciary!

What a grand idea! No check on legislative powers! Why didn’t the Founding Fathers think of this? We should ensure there are no powers to review a new law — however poorly imagined or implemented — other than how the Chief Executive chooses to implement it. Genius!

Seriously, though, I think the Tea Party folks are sore about Roe V. Wade. Apparently the Tea Party is unaware of the Constitutional Amendment process. I believe that is supposed to be the ultimate balance against judicial impropriety, and in fact we as a country have used it a number of times.

In fact, at least once in modern history we squeaked through an amendment banning alcohol from coast to coast. It took over a decade, but eventually we the people realized what a stupid idea that was, how much crime it created, what a dramatic reduction in quality of life it created, and we repealed that very bad, poorly-thought-out amendment. Since that time, we’ve been extremely cautious about passing amendments. So cautious, in fact, that despite the very loud outcry from Pro Life activists, an anti-abortion provision in the Constitution has never seen the light of day.

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s that you need overwhelming support to pass a law overturning the judgment of the Supreme Court. And apparently Americans aren’t yet willing to throw their rights under a bus driven by the whims of their state representatives. The day they are, rather than the Tea Party trying to eliminate the power of the Judicial branch of the American Government, why not have a big rally and start the kick-off party for your Constitutional Amendment banning abortions in the USA?

Heck, make it a celebration larger than any the world has ever seen. Maybe you’ll drive those leftist, commie-pinko Liberals to emigrate to Mexico or Canada where they’ll get their monthly abortions in the mail alongside their latest episode of “The Nation”.

America’s Judeo-Christian Spiritual Foundation and Responsibilities of American Citizens Recognized – Disrespect for our God and Creator, His Words in the Holy Bible and the Ten Commandments, His imprint upon our founding documents plus the assault on the traditional family and life issues moral decline in our society, contributes to the loss of our principles, values and Common Sense. Our current government leaders and judiciary revel in the violation of Gods first three Commandments and cause our citizens to be in frequent conflict with His other behavioral dictums.

Which God? Zeus? Thor? Allah? JHVH? The Great Mother?

Here’s where the Tea Party totally lost me. This nation was founded by many religions and by Enlightenment thinkers who understood that the “Divine Right of Kings” was absolutely a wrong approach to government. The power of government, to our Founding Fathers, derived not from God, not from the Bible, not from the Commandments, but from the PEOPLE. The Founders understood that to fairly govern, the government must first and foremost look after the people, not any specific religion. They wanted most of all to depart from state-sanctioned religion as experienced under the oppressive hand of England.

The Founders got their wish. Now the Tea party wants to force the US government to bow its knee to their God. We, the people, are the government; its officials are only our representatives. I would no more force my Muslim neighbor, my Hindu neighbor, or my Jewish neighbor to kneel before the Christian god than I would force a Christian to bow to an idol of Shiva.

So there you have it. Ultimately, these kinds of statements cast no doubt that the Tea Party is nothing but America’s Taliban: religious extremists hell-bent on seeing their interpretation of Christianity shoved down the throat of every American.

Whether we want it or not.

So, I rarely post anything I heard at Church, but this is worth quoting.

True story: A pastor went to a conference in the bible belt and when it was his turn to speak, he said: “40,000 people died of starvation today and you people don’t give a shit”. The conference drew in its collective breath and sat there slackjawed. He said: “I’ll say it again, 40,000 people died of starvation today and you people don’t give a shit.”. There was rumbling in the crowd, and he looked at them, and pointed out what I think is the difference between happy, pretty, right-wing, Fox-News watching “Christianity” and the kind of Christianity I want to believe in.

He said, (and I paraphrase): “Which part of that sentence really bothered you?” – because for many, it was the “curse” word, and in fact theres nothing really wrong with that word. We get so pissed off at politicians and people we work with, and that @$$hole who scratched our car. These little things that maybe, if we had a little perspective, we would brush aside, focusing our anger on real injustice or real pain, then maybe be moved to throw a couple of bucks toward folks who need it.

Whatever you believe, its a good message. Gonna go throw a couple more bucks toward Haiti, since I’m thinking about it. How bout you?

Updated Drupal today to version 6.15 from 5.X. No issues at all, it went perfectly. Not entirely sure I want to re-enable all the old modules. But I am sure I want to start writing in this dang thing again. It’s been months since I’ve posted due to some personal reasons. Yet the compulsion to write is hitting me again!

Got a question from a relative the other day: “Why are SSDs so much smaller than hard drives?” Here’s my layman’s response:

A hard disk has several spinning platters. It is one of the most common failure points in a computer because it is a moving part. It’s the thing that gets replaced the most in my data center, followed closely by fans. If you eliminate those two failure points, you eliminate a lot of problems. Spinning hard disks also get quite hot due to friction and the motors involved in spinning the platters, and if you drop your laptop while the hard drive is spinning madly at 4500-10,000 RPM, it’s likely to get damaged. Hard drives are also noisy, between the noise of the spinning itself and the motors moving the heads.

Solid-State Disks, on the other hand, are perfectly quiet and have no moving parts. However, they are “memory”, and not a hard disk. The manufacturing process is completely different and much more expensive per gigabyte at the moment than hard disks, but they also have much, much faster “seek times” since a head doesn’t have to be moved by a motor to read or write to a sector. A typical USB flash drive is around $2 per gigabyte today, while a hard drive is around $0.10 (10 cents) per gigabyte (late 2009 prices).

So what are the advantages to having a SSD in your notebook instead of a hard drive? * Totally quiet * Creates less heat * Usually takes less power, resulting in longer battery life * Less likely to lose data during rough handling * Higher reliability across the board * Extremely fast “seek times” looking up data (no heads to move into position first). * Will get faster/larger in the future for the same dollar due to market demand

Disadvantages vs. a hard drive * Smaller capacity per dollar * Despite faster seek times, often no faster on sustained reads than a hard drive * Limited read/write cycles (typically a few hundred thousand before parts of the SSD are dead, though manufacturers work around this in various ways) * Cheap SSDs often have far worse performance and power requirements than comparable hard drives (varies by manufacturer)

Eventually, I see a day when virtually all portable computers will ship with SSDs instead of hard drives due to their rapid improvements and dropping prices. And, in truth, a single 20GB drive holds all the “stuff” I use day-to-day. Extra capacity beyond that is music, movies, and other storage-hogging material like my home studio recordings. Basically, at this point whether you go with SSD or a hard drive boils down to “how much storage do I need in my notebook?” which is typically dictated by whether you’re big into movies and music on your computer or not.

Good luck in your search!

Regards, Matt

What is it with LinkedIn recommendations? They seem so extreme, I have to wonder if a potential hiring manager would give them any credit at all. I’ve never given one to a colleague because I believe my ability to exaggerate is insufficient. But I’m turning over a new leaf. If any of you need a LinkedIn recommendation, I will happily provide the following (given with Matt as an example):

I have known Matt for many years. Just the awareness of his existence has improved my life. I suspect he is the smartest person alive today. Certainly the best looking. I’m sorry that I ever didn’t know Matt–those early years are a painfull fog in comparison to my life after knowing Matt. If you could add John Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Confusius, Buddha, Jesus, Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Socrates into one person, that person would not hold a candle to Matt. If Matt asked me to slit my throat, I would do it–he is that incredible. Just saying his name, “Matt…Matt…Matt” gives me hope and joy. I pray to Matt sometimes, and he grants my desires.

In case anybody is interested, I have the solution to the health care problem. It’s not a new solution. I’ve touted my idea before on the site. But here it is again, in a more succinct delivery, for anyone willing to put the solution in action.

The problem with the current range of health care solutions getting proposed by government is that it is based on the current system. This system is broken. If something is broken why try to refocus a cracked lens? Stop trying to build a solution out of a broken system and approach from anew.

My solution is born from the recognition that the issue isn’t about care. The issue is about health. I finally saw a stat today from the Minnesota Blue Cross CEO who wrote in an opinion piece that ‘most’ of the costs of health care come from preventable conditions. He gave a dollar amount in the billions to quantify ‘most’. This isn’t new. But it again demonstrates how health care is riddled by costs arising from personal choice – smoking and obesity.

My solution for health care is to change the nature of the proverbial carrot and stick. Right now, the stick in this country is a progressive tax system. You want to fix health care? Make health the stick.

Everybody gets public health care in this country. Unless you smoke. Then you don’t get health care. If you are obese by choice then you don’t get health care. You want to reduce the costs of health care and make it fair and accessible for everyone? Stop making tax benefits and tax breaks the stick and make health care the stick. Then institute the flat tax. With those two moves we change the entire landscape of government incentive away from ridiculous loopholes and bloated waste in a 9M word tax code and focus on a health society.