http://www.heckofaworld.com slagheap Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:05:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Sigh. Continual sapping of the same bunch of tax payers.  The system is broken.  The US is bankrupt. http://www.heckofaworld.com/another-250-handbailout/ I was quite amazed to read this article on cnn about Republican misbehavior during a congressional speech.  It makes me wonder why it is not the case that the sensible Republicans in the Republican party standby and let their party be hijacked by the extremists within it now.  It is ... http://www.heckofaworld.com/a-sensible-heckling-for-the-hecklers/ I secretly like juicebox. http://www.heckofaworld.com/juicebox/ Microsoft is campaigning heavily with bing.  This seems like a bad idea.  They seem to have already been staved off in such a fashion that even throwing the name "Microsoft" to a product does not ensure its survival in the wild.  If this is the case, then it will take ... http://www.heckofaworld.com/bing/ The poor economy causes for strange cutbacks at times.  Looks like CNN is trying to save some money on stock photos. http://www.heckofaworld.com/poor-economy-forces-cutbacks-on-cnn-stock-images/ The occasion might arise such that you're interested in looking at the total cpu time used of a system since boot. How much time has the cpu spent total, not just a snapshot, in userspace, kernelspace, niced, idle, etc? The answer lies in /proc/stat! Exhibit A: rwoodrum@frums:~$ head -5 /proc/stat cpu 309822 ... http://www.heckofaworld.com/linux-total-cpu-time-used/ It's disappointing to see it happening again.  Al Franken is locked in a court battle with losing Republican Senator Norm Coleman for a US Senate seat in Minnesota.  CNN's political ticker reports that the Coleman campaign has sued to stop the recount. Sound familiar? Despite the fact that Norm Coleman stated, while ... http://www.heckofaworld.com/republicans-move-to-steal-another-election/ UPS is consistently the worst shipping service I have ever used.  Their package guarantees which you pay for are absolutely useless.  Their customer service reps do nothing but give you the runaround when you're trying to figure out what on earth is going on.  Their IVR phone system is maddening. So ... http://www.heckofaworld.com/worst-shipping-service-award-ups/ I live in the Seattle area, much to my chagrin on a "private road", where there is little in terms of availability of broadband Internet connections.  This is particularly sucky because of the oodles of provider options in the area.  I use static IPs, so I typically have a business ... http://www.heckofaworld.com/the-crooked-verbal-contract-of-speakeasy/ There's been a lot of hullabaloo going around for the past week or so about Obama's staffing picks.  There's a lot of press on how he's building a "team of rivals" (Lincoln reference # 29,384,132) and how many of his would-be appointees are clear centrists.  CNN's political ticker notes that ... http://www.heckofaworld.com/obama-front-and-center/