Shlrm.org Blag

So yeah, I haven’t blargd much lately. Haven’t had anything interesting to talk about. I could talk about the election some, but I don’t really want to. I’m writin ruby software and makin stuff happen. Go checkout my redmine projects.

Our representatives in the Senate and the House need to remember that they’re there to represent the will of the people. Not the special interests.

They need to know that ignoring the people is not right. Ring their phones off the hook, fax the hell out of their fax machines. Fill their email box.

Here’s a letter to help you out, feel free to copy and paste.

Dear <Name of Your Representative>,

Regarding the “new” bailout bill full of pork, there is only one decision that can be made. Do NOT support this bailout bill. I hope and pray that you will make the right decision regarding the “new” bailout bill that’s headed your way from the senate. There is only one decision that can be made. Do NOT support this bailout bill.

This bill is not new. It still has the same problems as the first rejected bill. Now, however, they’ve added more pork in an attempt to buy your vote. The amount of pork is absurd. There are tax breaks in there for the Filmmakers, verbiage to repeal a $0.39 tax on wooden arrows designed for children, and a research tax credit for large corporations. I don’t know how anyone who claims to be a conservative can vote in favor of this in good conscious. This bill is quite possibly the worst, and most pork-laden thing I’ve ever seen come out of the Federal Government.

Our representatives seem to have forgotten the meaning of the word “representative.” Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman said after his “yes” vote, “It was the right thing to do. I think people put the interests of the American people above party politics. The calls were 100 to one against this. But it is the right thing.” (from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26973888/) How on earth can this be the right thing to do, when he’s getting 100 to one calls against this?!? Representatives are elected to represent, not to dictate.

This bill is hastily thrown together and unnecessary. We need to slow down, suppress our knee-jerk reaction, use common sense, and let the market heal itself. This bill will give money and power to the very same people that helped facilitate this housing bubble in the first place! Not to mention, it’s the same people who, only a few weeks ago, were telling us that everything is okay, that we’re not in a recession. It sets a terrifying precedent for government intervention in free market dealings. This is not the correct solution. It’s not a conservative solution. This is a solution that expands government dramatically. Finally, this will only prolong our problem. This buys up “bad debt” but perpetuates the system that produced the “bad debts” in the first place! What we’re dealing with here is change. The market is trying to change so that something new and better can replace this which is failing. Resisting the change is like damming up a river; the pressure is going to build, and when the dam bursts, it’s going to be far worse than it was before.

Do NOT support this pork laden bailout bill.

NO MORE BAILOUTS!

This is ridiculous. The government has absolutely no right to place the burden of a failing company on the tax payers. If the corporation is crappy, it needs to die. This is simply capitalism at work; it hurts, but it works.

We need to stop our congress from making things worse and placing a burden of greater than $700 BILLION on the taxpayers.

Government - If you think the problems we create are bad, wait until you see our solutions.

I’m not terribly big on microsoft products, but I have to use them at work. I was emailing someone whos reply-to address was incorrect, so I needed to rewrite it on send. It was terribly annoying to have to remember to replace it everytime I hit “reply.”

Here’s some code that does it.

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
    'Trying to rewrite an email address on send
    Dim item2 As MailItem
    If TypeOf Item Is MailItem Then
        Set item2 = Item
        Dim str As String
        Dim r As Recipient
        For Each r In item2.Recipients
        If r.Address = "old.address@someplace.net" Then
            r.Delete
            Dim newRecipient As Recipient
            Set newRecipient = item2.Recipients.Add("new.address@something.more.useful.com")
            newRecipient.Type = olTo
            newRecipient.Resolve
        End If
        Next
    End If
End Sub

I wrote this to provide me a simple wget type program.

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
 
proxy_addr = 'localhost'
proxy_port = 8118
 
url = URI.parse('http://shlrm.org/baconflowchartvj8.jpg')
 
Net::HTTP::Proxy(proxy_addr, proxy_port).start(url.host)   do |request|
  puts "Connected to teh proxy"
  # connected to mah proxy
  to_save = url.path.split(/\//)[-1]
  File.open("c:\\" + to_save, 'wb') do |f|
    puts "opened file"
    request.request_get(url.path) do |response|
      content_length = Integer(response['content-length'])
      total_count = 0
      response.read_body do |str|
        if str.length > 0 then
          total_count += str.length
          print "Complete: #{total_count} of #{content_length}:  "
          puts "%4f" % (1.0*total_count/content_length*100)
        end
        f.write str
      end
    end
    puts "Written file"
  end
  puts "done connecting"
end
puts "all done"

So that’s it.