Didn’t I just say in an earlier post that security measures at airports were only going to get worse? Here’s the latest tool in “the battle for security lies in identifying dangerous passengers”:

At airport security checkpoints in Knoxville, Tenn. this summer, scores of departing passengers were chosen to step behind a curtain, sit in a metallic oval booth and don headphones.

With one hand inserted into a sensor that monitors physical responses, the travelers used the other hand to answer questions on a touch screen about their plans. A machine measured biometric responses — blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels — that then were analyzed by software.

Groovy. A new type of lie detector test. Wonder if it’s any more accurate than the old type of lie detector test. I rather doubt it. I don’t think the results have been very good so far seeing as “the system caught 85% of the role-acting terrorists, meaning that 15% got through, and incorrectly identified 8% of innocent travelers as potential threats, according to corporate marketing materials”, and those were people pretending to be on terrorist missions. Yup, just one more hassle for travelers that won’t really do any good.

But all is not lost! The TSA is easing some restrictions on what is allowed on planes. Low blood sugar treatments, solid lipstick and baby food are to be once again allowed, but forget bringing anything aerosol, children’s toys and teethers containing gel or liquid, and mascara, because those have now been added. Oh yeah, you can wear shoes with gel soles, but gel insoles have to be in checked baggage, but you do still have to take you shoes off if you hope to get on a plane.

Don’t think you can buy any liquids or gels after you have passed through security and are on the “safe” side of the velvet rope where no one has anything evil a.

They also are randomly checking passengers at airport gates to make sure that they haven’t bought toothpaste or drinks at airport shops after going through a security checkpoint.

So, even things you buy right in front of the boarding gate are forbidden. I guess they think shop owners might be selling dangerous chemicals in the form of Dr Pepper or shampoo. Someone tell me how a tube of toothpaste or a soda bought on the “safe” side of the velvet rope can become dangerous? I’m pretty darn imaginative, and I can’t come up with anything.

To think, people actually pay vast amounts of money for the privilege and hassle of going through airport security. How many hours should one show up early now? Is it even really worth it for all but the longest of flights?

I would imagine that most of you know the airlines sell all the crap they confiscate from you on eBay, right? All those scary scissors, pockets knives, finger clippers, and other terroristic devices. Wonder what they plan to do with all those “liquids” they have been confiscating recently?

And what about the abundance of liquids and gels discarded since the alleged British terror plot caused U.S. airports to prohibit them? Edward Myslewicz, a spokesman for the General Services Department told the Seattle Times that state officials are considering selling some of those items too.

And:

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has perhaps the most charitable approach. Airport spokeswoman Lexie Van Haren told the Seattle Times it plans to give 11 boxes of surrendered items to the city’s human-services department, which will distribute items to homeless shelters.

I am left wondering, while they are busy obviously going through all these things before selling or donating it somewhere, are they bothering to determine if there actually are any dangerous and terroristic stuff in any of them? I first had this thought when I saw some images from one airport where they were dumping and pouring these liquids into a huge trash can … all mixed together in the can, as liquids will mix when allowed to do so. If you are concerned about liquids mixing together and being dangerous, wouldn’t you want to … I don’t know, sounds silly I guess … wouldn’t you want to not let them mix? It’s all just another scheme to make you feel safer and really isn’t going to do much at all except create more hassle in your life. Face it folks, the terrorists have managed to affect every aspect of our lives in a negative way. Books, laptops, liquids, iPods, pencils and notepads are all right now considered dangerous items to have on an airplane … because someone could do something BAD with them. Well, someone can do bad things with anything that exists.

I have been saying it since the very first changes to airport security after 9/11: Fly nude with no carryon baggage. I have since revised that plan. Everyone is issued paper clothing, made with the same material disposable hospital gowns are made with. You pass through an xray machine/bomb sniffer, you are issued paper clothing, you get on the plane and stare at each other until you land (or watch family-safe movies, listen to family safe radio stations provided for your entertainment) Then the process is reversed, leading back toy you being given back your clothing and luggage. I decided I didn’t want to see your average human being sitting naked within inches of me. I decided paper clothing was the way to solve that problem without introducing any new dangers (though you might be able to strangle someone with it, who knows). Other than that, my plan still stands … the only thing that should be allowed on a plane is a human being wearing clothing provided to him, like prisoners going into a prison, because after all, aren’t we all dangerous? Any one of us could be a terrorist, right? The next time you get on a plane, think about it and compare what rights, privileges and freedoms you have at that moment as compared to that of a prisoner. We are all guilty (until proven innocent) these days.

My plan sounds ludicrous and reactionary, doesn’t it? Well, take a look at what is required to get on a plane to fly anywhere these days, and tell me how close we seem to be getting to my plan. When I see passengers getting on planes carrying their passports and wallets in little plastic baggies, and having to check books, computers, iPods, cameras, and freaking pencils while tossing out anything and everything from lipstick to deodorant rather than carry them on, I’d have to say it’s not too far a leap to instituting my plan of hospital gowns and no carryon at all. The really ironic thing about all these security measures is you really are no more or less safe than you ever have been, but a great many of you are far more terrified. So the terrorists have won, haven’t they?

Something in our entertainment system is non-functioning. We can’t get any sound from the PS2. We had a problem with this a few weeks ago too, only that time it was no sound from the TV. The problem fixed itself, so we, being normal procrastinating humans, went about our lives without worrying that either the VCR or the Dolby system was having issues. I’m voting for it being the VCR. It’s a $69 piece of garbage bought at Walmart a few years ago. We don’t want to replace it, at least not with another VCR, but without it, we don’t have the appropriate plugs for the Dolby system, which is also ancient. We’re just going to have to bite the bullet and replace most of the entertainment system. Painful and expensive, but true. Lin has begun the research. Unfortunately, I think he’s gotten hung up drooling on the flat screen TVs. The one thing we don’t really need is a new EXPENSIVE television. Oh well, I’ll let him dream a little longer.

I’ve wasted my time today trying to pick out software to run my built-in iSight camera as a webcam. I’ve narrowed it down to four programs that seem to work alright. Two of them are $10, and two of them are far more than $10 (but have more goodies). I don’t remember ever once using any of the goodies with the software I was using on the old computer, so it seems silly to have software that does more than slap a date and time on the image before uploading it to my server space. Though, you know, having goodies avialable for use shoud you want to use them is always nice. I guess I’ll mull it over a bit more. Naturally, none of the software I used to use has an Apple version. Bah, humbug. At any rate, I put the old webcam page back up, and tomorrow I’ll actually update the photo. I also have to figure out why the pop-up window code that works perfectly well in all my other themes doesn’t pop-up a window in the new theme. UPDATE: Fixed that problem. No idea what the problem was, but just like the entertainment system, it’s working, so I am going to ignore it again.

My problems accessing my own web site and a few others seems to be a mess of more than one issue. First off, there’s a Roadrunner problem, and on top of that, I think Firefox isn’t working so well on my computer anymore. So far it’s just a hunch that something is up with Firefox, but these problems started about the same time I upgraded to the newest version, so I am a little suspicious.

I’m getting hungry, so it must be time to heat up the leftover pizza send Lin to Taco Bell. Yeah, I ordered a pizza last night. I didn’t feel like cooking, and we’ve been eating BBQ leftovers for two days already. I like BBQ, but not THAT much. UPDATE: Lin ate his pizza for breakfast, unbeknowst to me, so there isn’t enough left for both of us. Oh well, I like Taco Bell too.

This heat and lack of rain has reached the level of being completely unbearable, and we are looking at another week of temperatures over 100. Earlier today Lin was watching the local weather report. On a scale of 1 to 10, the UV index today is … get this … 11! Yes, off the scale. Exciting isn’t it?

We have given in to cowering in our dark and cool house for the weekend doing nothing more than watching old movies, surfing the internet and playing video games. Unfortunately, Monday Lin has to go to work, and I am going to have to go shopping and run some errands. It’s going to be awful.

This heat-wave could stop now, or at least the temperatures could come down just a little bit. This over-100 every day is getting REALLY old.

Welcome to the new site design, and Happy 5th Birthday to Just Orb! Yup, I have had this domain for 5 years now. I was trying to get the new design up for the official anniversary, but that didn’t happen. 5 years with my own domain and ten years babbling on the internet daily or nearly daily. Heavens that’s a long time.

I think I found the two problems IE was having with my CSS and implemented a fix of sorts. The top menu bar will look slightly different in each browser, but it’s fine that way. The side bar should be showing on the SIDE in all browsers now. Why IE has to treat margins and padding the way it does, well … it’s just insanely stupid.

I’m going to go ahead and leave it up the rest of the night and Saturday, so if it looks like crap in your browser, do let me know. I have only tested it with Firefox, Safari, Opera, and IE 5.5. I know there are some other browsers out there, and I also know it may look different on a Windows machine. I think it’s going to be OK though.

There are still a few things that I need to fix, like the archives pages not looking the way I want, but for now … I’m quitting. I have spent far too much time on this the last two days or so. Provided no one complains that it looks like total crap in their browser, I’ll start fixing the last of the design flaws and adding the rest of the things that are missing sometime next week. There might even be some actual NEW STUFF, but no guarantees on that for now. First I have to get the old stuff looking and working right.

Well I would have the new site design up right this minute, if it weren’t for the fact that Internet Explorer sucks donkey balls. I built the things using Firefox and Safari to verify that it looked right … you know, browsers that follow web standards … and so didn’t notice until I checked it on Lin’s computer that obviously IE screws it all up. I’m pretty livid at the moment, mostly because I don’t know how to fix it. The menu items and search bar at the top of the page are mostly hidden below the header image, and the sidebar has slid down below all the posts. Gods, how I HATE Internet Explorer. How valid XHTML and valid CSS can screw up so badly in a modern browser, I don’t know. Oh yeah, it’s Microsnot. Standards? They don’t need no stinking standards! Stupid IE.

I’m going to try to figure out how to fix this problem, but not this weekend … I don’t think. This really upsets me greatly. I finally had it far enough along that I could put it up and build the rest when I had time to work on it, and I love the new design. Since you aren’t going to get a chance to see the design ON the web site, here’s a sneak peak of what I have been working on the last few days.

OK, I’m annoyed enough to bother you, my dear readers.

Has anyone other than myself been having any problems with my web site loading … taking forever, images not loading, whatever? If my web site has been acting screwy for you, please let me know how and what browser you are using. I can’t tell if it’s a problem on my end or the server, and I don’t want to gripe about it being my server if it’s actually my install of Firefox.

Thanks!

Kenny came over yesterday, and he and Lin were hanging about the house from late afternoon until evening. When I had my fill of the rising testosterone levels, I went and took a long nap. Sort of antisocial of me, but I can only take so much of those two together in the same room. It gives me a headache.

Lin brought home a huge bag of Bill Miller BBQ, and we pigged out on that. There’s enough left over for one, maybe two meals. Lin has once again thwarted Pizza Night. I guess he’s really, really burnt out on pizza. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded having pizza tonight.

Called my mom today. She apparently had a very exciting week. It was a loooooong call. My arm and my ear fell asleep.

Other than that, there isn’t anything going on around here. I think I’ll work on my new site design for a few hours, and then it’ll be time for dinner and SciFi Friday!

Very early this morning:

Lin wakes up a few minutes ago and while guzzling my mug of ice water, starts griping about my little umbrella-shaped desk lamp. “That thing probably uses more electricity than the other lamp,” he says. Oh really. My little 15 watt desk lamp, which is only on a few hours a month, is using more electricity than a lamp with a 60 watt fluorescent bulb in it that’s on at least 8 hours or more a day every day. By my calculations, it costs a mere $1 a year for me to have my lamp on a few hours a week. Bite me, and here’s a buck.

What is particularly funny is how my computer, the lamp and the AC are the only things on in the house right this moment (well, and the fridge, of course, but I’m not about to turn that off). Usually when I go to bed first, he falls asleep on the couch or crawls into bed leaving on both the den lamp and the living room lamp, and sometimes he leaves on the TV … all night long. So while I am very sorry our electric bill for last month was outrageous, I hardly think it’s my desk lamp’s fault. In fact, I’d say between the two of us, I am responsible for far less of our household energy consumption than he … seeing as I use no lights during daylight hours, almost never watch TV during the day, and don’t mind moving around the house in the dark at night. If he wants me to become an Energy Nazi and start enforcing my personal restrictions on the whole household, I’ll do it, but he isn’t going to like it. He might have to adapt to it being warm in the house and not leaving things on all night long.

Makes me want to pull the light bulbs out of every light fixture in the house, and we can sit around staring at each other by candlelight.

I swear I am married to a total dork. :roll:

Somewhat later:

Speaking of dorks, it wouldn’t be a proper morning at Casa de Orb without drama involving my crazy neighbors. I was sitting here reading the news and forgetting to hit the publish button for the above post when I hear the delightful sounds of Linda screaming at the top of her lungs. Naturally, being the concerned and aware neighbor that I am, I ran down the hall, dove from the bedroom door onto the middle of the bed, arranged my pillows for absolute comfort, and stuck my eyeball up to the window blinds. No idea what she was on about this morning. When she gets shrieky, it’s hard to understand her through the double-paned window, and Randy’s voice is so low, it doesn’t carry at all, so all I got were the visuals: a lot of hand-waving, foot stomping, the throwing of papers, and angry faces. Then Linda jumped in their SUV and tore out of the driveway. Oh yes, I do love the sound of squealing tires in the morning! After that, Randy and one of his employees (who was standing there the whole time) toss apparently empty Foster’s beers into the trash can and open new ones before huddling over the previously thrown papers pointing furiously at various bits. Then, with open containers of beer still in hand, they got into their respective trucks and presumably went off to build someone’s fence.

I’m telling you, these people are INSANE!

Now that all the excitement is over and peace has once again returned to my little speck of earth, I’m going to go back to reading the news and trying to catch up on my email.

If you don’t watch The Colbert Report (also check out Colbert Nation), you won’t really get what this is about. Those of you who do will want to create at least one On Notice Board of your very own. Here’s mine:

Link via Metafilter.

Also, there’s been another link dump at Links of Note.

Tonight I added a few new things to my iMac which are worth sharing.

NeoOffice is finally installed. Now I can open Lin’s work files without having to touch my old computer. Why NeoOffice over OpenOffice X11? Had to pick one to try first, and the NeoOffice web site made more sense to me than the OpenOffice one. So far, no complaints. New beta version Aqua to be released later this month.

iClip Lite is a free Dashboard Widget that bloggers and web designers and graphic artists just have to have. OK, anyone who needs a place to stash images, snippets of text or any other little bits of things for ready use have to have it. Think of it as an extended clipboard.

MultiDash 3.0 is another widget I will probably find entirely too useful. This one allows you to set up several different Dashboards with different sets of Widgets for different needs. It’s the perfect thing for Widget addicts who want to have loads of Widgets but don’t need to have them all on the same Dashboard at the same time.

Google Importer is a Spotlight extension that searches Google when you search your computer using Spotlight and presents the results alongside your files and other local results. Very nifty.

Need a definition and citations for words like flarf, dinosaur wine, shamburger and demoflush? Look no further than the Double-Tongued Word Wrester: “A growing lexicon of fringe English, focusing on slang, jargon, new words, and more.”

I’m personally fond of the newest entry:

chief memory officer n. a person in charge of maintaining an organization’s collective knowledge, experience, and history.

The White House accused the Democratic Party on Wednesday of catering to the extreme left after Connecticut voters defeated Sen. Joe Lieberman in a primary election over his support of the Iraq war.

“I know a lot of people have tried to make this a referendum on the president. I would flip it. I think instead it’s a defining moment for the Democratic Party whose national leaders now have made it clear that if you disagree with the extreme left in their party, they’re going to come after you,” he said.

What I am trying to figure out is how exactly it’s the Democratic Party’s fault that Lieberman is a reactionary Republican in sheep’s clothing and lost the primary. It seems to me the voters voted and had their say … they want Lamont to run as their candidate. I suppose the Democratic Party should have insisted that no one else from the party run a primary race against the reigning incumbent? Last time I checked the Constitution, elected officials aren’t elected for life terms, and quite frankly, I think all the incumbents need to be ousted and term limits put in place for future elected officials.

What you see above is the coolest old kitchen gadget I own. I have no idea what it’s called, if it even has a name, but I know I’d like to find a new one just like it. I doubt they exist anymore. Kitchen gadgets have mostly gone electric these days … which is a shame, but makes me laugh when I hear from friends or neighbors that they couldn’t open a can of food because the electricity was out.

This gadget is a depression-era device I saved from being thrown away after my grandfather died. At the time, I wasn’t sure what it was or what it could do, but I knew it looked interesting and had always been in my grandmother’s kitchen drawer. Those were reasons enough for me to think it should be saved. It didn’t take too long for me to realize it was ever so handy with opening tight jar lids. All you do is put the toothed edge on one side, the handle edge on the other, screw the handle in and give it a twist. I haven’t encountered any jars it couldn’t tackle easily without me having to break a sweat trying to get the lid off. It also functions as a can opener and bottle opener, and I suspect it has other uses I haven’t even discovered yet.

The best thing about it though is how worn it is and how I know my grandmother must have used it countless times while working in her kitchen. I won’t ever part with it, even if I do find a new one just like it (which I doubt will ever happen). Maybe someday, far in the future, when I am willing and ready to bring my kitchen tools into the modern age, I’ll make a shadow box display for all the old kitchen gadgets I have rescued from oblivion. For now, I’m going to keep using my old, outdated but still quite useful gadgetry. Just because something is old and worn doesn’t make it useless. I wouldn’t trade you the newest and best can/jar opener on the market today for my old can/jar opener with chipped paint and rough edges. At least I can rest calmly in the knowledge that when the nuclear holocaust happens, I’ll still be able to open my jars and cans … and with that pointy bit, I might even be able to fight off home invaders.

I had to sit at the old Windows box this afternoon, to verify that some things I created on my iMac would function the same way in a Windows environment as they do in OS X. How the hell I used to sit at that computer and get anything accomplished is completely beyond me. Not only is it insanely slow, it’s also insanely broken.

It all started when I crawled out of bed to find Lin working at my old computer. He had a bunch of work-related photos he needed to resize. I don’t know how long it took him to do the first folder, but I transferred them over to the iMac, and each folder only took a few seconds to resize. Each folder full of photos … only a few seconds to resize. Then, because I’m cocky, I turned all the images in each folder into a multi-page PDF with the construction site name watermarked on each image. It took longer to set up my preferences for that than it did to create it, and neither of these things took any time at all. Lin either needs to start using my iMac, as I have told him to do, or get his own Apple. His life (and mine) would be so much easier.

Woke up with a raging headache, so I haven’t done much of anything at all today aside from go buy Dr Pepper and aspirin at Walgreens. Lin was going to teach me to drive the lawn tractor today, but the combination of headache and 100 degree temperatures nipped that idea right in the bud. I didn’t even want to be outside the few minutes it took me to run to the store. The thought of being out there long enough to learn how to drive his newest toy just made me want to crawl back into bed and hide.

Oh, and this damn hot weather can certainly stop NOW. Lin finally got brave enough to open the electric bill. Even with me not using any lights and turning off the air conditioning during the day until I just can’t stand the heat … $250. I almost died on the spot. Never, in all the years of paying for electricity, have we EVER had a bill anywhere near that high. This month’s bill is going to be even worse, because as soon as the sun comes up, it’s almost in the 90’s. I’ve had to have the air conditioning on during the day, or I would be dead by mid-morning. I’d really like about a week of nothing but rain and grey days. This hot and dry weather has sucked far too long now.

I’m off to the hot kitchen to start dinner. Going to work on that avocado and chicken baked recipe that popped out of my head a few weeks ago. This time I am adding some lime juice and cilantro. Can’t wait to see how it turns out.

“The courts have sent a clear message to journalists, bloggers, vloggers, and all citizens that the U.S. government will and can with the help of the federal courts make every person in the U.S. an investigative arm of the government.”

A story about a blogger and his blog, video footage of a protest, and our beloved government: Blogging All the Way to Jail.

You think freedom of speech and freedom of the press are still as “free” as they always have been? You’re dreaming. Nothing about freedom in the USA is as “free” as it used to be, and it’s all been done in the name of a false sense of safety and security. Maybe someday everyone will wake up and realize that America has been on a downward spiral toward being the antithesis of what it was meant to be, but by then it’s going to be impossible to repair the damage. Personally, I think it’s already going to be almost impossible to make America the great nation it could be. Too many people aren’t willing to open their eyes and see what’s happening all around them. They are just too damn happy being kept safe from “evil doers” to care.

Click pic for larger view!

Here’s what I made while watching Eureka tonight! I grabbed the last skeins of bright blue, green and yellow acrylic and knitted them up in a long stockinette stitch strip (only 6 stitches wide). It rolls onto itself and makes a long, skinny, tube-like scarf. While it’s a little boring in this limp and lifeless acrylic yarn, I imagine in something fuzzy, sparkling, or otherwise unusual, it would look really cool. I’m getting all kinds of ideas, so there’s going to be a good deal of experimenting going on with these needles.

Now that I have my instant gratification needs filled, I am going to look for a project with a little more oomph to it. Not sure what, but tomorrow I am going to go through the patterns in my notebook and on my computer. I am bound to find something I just can’t wait to make. I always do. It’ll probably end up being another pair of socks or gloves. I haven’t knit any socks or gloves in so long, it’s going to be challenging all over again. I’m leaning heavily toward socks. I never did really conquer sock-making.

The only thing I am going to go conquer right this minute is a container of Fiji Apple Yogurt. Then … a Godzilla movie or bed.

If you happened to stop by the site while it was in total disarray, sorry. Some of the things on the site are just easier to put together while it’s “live”.

I got the main page very close to looking exactly right, and then I looked at it in Safari. Eeew. There are lots of other things that really need to be fixed too on secondary pages. I guess I won’t be getting it up tonight or tomorrow. Oh well, what’s one more day (or two)?

I’m starting to dislike the new site design. That’s usually what happens once I try to make it look good in all browsers and function with all my WordPress plug-ins. I’m going to proceed onward anyway. At the very least, having something up that drives me insane will make me work on one that won’t.

There was some sort of weirdness going on with the server too … like it had the hiccups. Might as well call it a night, at least as far as working on my web site goes. It’s giving me a headache.

I’d have a new web site design up, if I could figure out how to make Adobe PS Elements tell me what the damn codes are for the colors. It’s not just in that program either. I’ve tried them all. The problem seems to be Apple related. I hate the Apple Color Picker. After beating my head against my desk, whining, and generally getting grumpy about my situation, I turned to Google. Surely someone else has been peeved about this problem as well! Of course they have!

So now I have installed HexColorPicker, and my life is better again. It’s free, it’s a universal binary, and it’s solved my problem. What more can a girl ask for?

Of course, now I don’t have any more time to work on the CSS file for the new design, so you are all going to have to wait until after dinner (or maybe even tomorrow) to see my first design done entirely on the iMac. Don’t expect too much. It’s pretty simple, but I like it.