If you remember, I installed a new privacy fence a few months ago. Back then, I replaced the chain link fence that ran along the property line between my neighbor’s yard and my own. At the time, the purpose of the fence was simple privacy. It was a fairly easy (and cheap) job that only took a few hours.

This weekend, I replaced the rest of the chain fence with the same 6×8 stockade panels that ran around the entire back yard of the house. I had no idea it was going to be such an huge project! It took 44 man-hours, loads of power tools, about $800 worth of fence stuff, and tons of back-breaking work. Quite a contrast from the last fence job.

Why did I decide to replace the rest of the fence? One of our dogs was getting out. From standing, she could leap over the old four-foot fence. While impressive, she was wreaking havoc for the neighborhood cats and was scaring children who walked by our house (the next door neighbor’s sadistic/tease-the-dogs child being the most notable). She was just doing her job (alarm system), but she’s supposed to do that from INSIDE. She never bit anyone and I seriously doubt she ever would—unless she felt her life depended on it.

Regardless, it had to be done…

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We started by measuring the amount of fence we needed and then going to Lowes to pick it up. We made a mistake so we ended up with one extra panel (we bought enough panels to cover the yard forgetting about the gates). Here’s what I purchased:

• 15 6×8 Stockade Fence Panels
• 16 4×4×8 Fence Posts
• 2 6×5 Stockade fence gates

• Gate mounting hardware (two boxed sets of hinges/latches and a handle/latch for two-way entry)

  We had to make two trips since the posts couldn’t fit inside Solid’s truck along with 15 panels.

  The job began easy enough: We unloaded the equipment and started to remove the old fence. Before long we had the front two sections on the sides of the house completed (with the gate installed). My Fein Multimaster came in very handy for this job as a vertical hole needed to be cut through the gate for the latch.

  After that, everything became much, much harder. The fence in the back of the house was completely covered in overgrown weeds, bushes, and trees. The job quickly changed from “lets put in a new fence” to “lets clear three decades of overgrowth and brush”. It took us all day on Saturday (4 of us working) just to clear away the brush and remove the old fence. This process involved bolt cutters, a sawzall, the Multimaster, my hedge trimmer, a chainsaw, an axe, two machetes, and lots of digging.

  On Sunday I lost two workers to tourism so Solid and I finished clearing the brush (dragging the remaining branches into the woods) and began what was supposed to be the easy part: Installing the new fence. It was 100x more difficult than before.

  There were three primary reasons why installing the fence in the back was much more difficult:

  1. The corner fence post was a metal pole that had my neighbor’s chain fence gate attached to it. Once we got permission, we took that old post out, flipped his gate around so it swung the other way, and screwed two metal fence hinges into the new wooden post. This required a lot of alignment and careful execution.
  2. While we successfully cleared away most of the brush and branches, there were still major root systems running along the fence line that had to be cut out to make holes for the fence posts. This was a huge pain in the ass and slowed everything down.

1. My property slopes upwards slightly from the corner fence post to the other end of the yard. This meant that the more fence we installed, the more we had to dig out to keep it level. The last five panels required some major trench-digging which meant even more roots to clear out! The last two panels had to be raised a few inches from the rest of the fence because the roots were just too think to cut out (very large and ancient tree at the corner of the yard).

   With the exception of the two front-facing sections, it was a lot of back-breaking work. I want to thank Solid, my father-in-law, and his guest for helping me out.

Recently Microsoft and Nortel flooded the press release channels, blogs, news sites, etc with a story about how the two companies are forming a “strategic partnership” to provide a “unified” voice technology platform. Nothing useful or significant will ever come of it. Here’s my take:

Here’s what they have in common:

• Both companies make crappy products and “innovate through acquisitions”.
• Both companies have thrived in the past on making their products extra proprietary. They’re kings of vendor lock-in.

• Both companies have a long history of working together. In fact, Nortel’s “latest and greatest” products all rely heavily on Microsoft software.

  Here’s my predictions:

• This new “partnership” will go nowhere fast. Neither company makes good enough products to make a dent in the voice-over-IP sphere. Especially when the real innovation is going on with open source right now (Asterisk, Freeswitch, Fonality, etc).
• Nortel will continue to lose market share at a rapid pace. In 2003 they owned 21% of the voice market. They currently own 18% and they’re $8.6 billion in debt (they were recently bailed out of bankruptcy by a $2.6 billion loan).
• Loads of existing Nortel customers will jump ship for newer, cheaper products. Mostly because the maintenance/support costs Nortel charges are more expensive than complete drop-in replacement solutions from their competitors (which provide more reliability, interoperability, and functionality).
• Nortel, in a year or two will be facing bankruptcy again thanks to an overpriced and inferior product line that relies heavily on Microsoft products for its unique (and proprietary) features (that no one will use).

• Nortel will be bought by Microsoft at an extreme discount as part of a deal to avoid a chapter 7 bankruptcy. Proving once again that Microsoft’s primary business model is to destroy businesses through “partnerships” and stealing their technology, using their monopoly power to force them out of the market, or just plain old buying them out. I bet the Nortel execs think Microsoft is doing them a favor!

Just saw this in my feeds today…

Many people realized early on that George W. Bush’s so-called faith-based initiative suffered from two serious flaws. First, it would likely violate the Constitution. Second, it would create a means for the Republican Party to reward Christian Right supporters – churches and non-denomination organizations – with huge government contracts and monetary awards. Both have come true.

Apparently “true believers” thought that giving government funding to faith-based groups would guarantee there would be no corruption. So much for that idea.

I’ll go even further and suggest that the President’s budget shouldn’t be funding any groups or charities. Our budget deficit is big enough as it is! Why are we donating money we don’t have? It is very irrational to donate borrowed dollars.

I have a few quotes from my collection I think are extremely relevant to this topic:

• “Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.” -Eric Hoffer
• “The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a persons standing in the political community. Government can run afoul of that prohibition in two principal ways. . . . . The second and more direct infringement is government endorsement or disapproval of religion. Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.” Justice O’Connor
• “Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion.” -Samuel James Ervin

• “A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.” -Aristotle (over 2000 years ago! When will we learn?)

Imagine you’re a school principal and you see two children fighting on the playground. Your immediate reaction is to break it up and haul them back to your office. Once separated, you ask the children to explain themselves…

“Alright, lets hear it. Why were you fighting?” You point a stern finger at the child to your left.
His eyes open wide with self-righteousness, “He started it!”
You must have heard this plea at least a hundred times. You reply in an authoritative manner, “It doesn’t matter who started it. You’re both in big trouble and unless you tell me why you were fighting you’ll be in even bigger trouble.”
Upon the completion of this statement, you see that the boy on the right has cracked half a smile. You douse it with a directed blast of sheer awareness in your eyes. His face melts into a zombie-like stare.
The boy on the left blurts out, “He refuses to accept the truth!”
Puzzled, you reply, “The truth? What do you mean?”
He gives the boy on the right a hateful look as he speaks, “He does not believe in the religion of truth. I’ve been trying to convince him forever but no matter what I say he never believes.”
Astonished by his words, you exclaim, “What?!? So you decided to beat it into him?”
The boy on the left realizes your dissatisfaction and retreats from his confidence, “I… I did the right thing!” his eyes turn to tears, “I just want… The book says I should fight unbelievers! We cannot let them spread their lies and evil!”
“Clearly this boy is disturbed!” you think to yourself. Yet something isn’t right about this whole situation. You have a sneaking suspicion that the other boy must have something to do with this.

You announce, “I’ve heard enough” and point to the boy on the right; “Now what have you got to say for yourself?”
The other boy looks puzzled, “What?” he exclaims. You suspect that he’s hiding something so you stare his poker face to the ground. Guilt creeps its way across his brow.
In a very stern and slow voice you demand, “What did you do?”
His eyes look up then meet the floor, his mouth opens. It looks as though he’s trying to slowly inhale his way out of the situation.
Six or seven breaths go by before he speaks up, “I said he was stupid…” A look of shame suddenly befalls his face, “and I took his book.”
This doesn’t surprise you. “Typical,” you think to yourself. In a voice of disappointment you ask, “Where’s the book?”
In tears, the boy on the left shouts, “He threw it over the fence!!!”
Your heart begins to sink as you exhale, “Oh dear.”
“Is it true that you threw his book over the fence?” you ask.
You can see the fire ignite in the eyes of the boy on the right as he speaks, “Yes… But that was like three weeks ago!” Your eyes light up with curiosity as he continues, “It’s just a stupid book! You’d think I killed his sister or something, he won’t leave me alone!”

You’re befuddled at the situation. On the one hand, you can clearly see that the boy on the left has… Problems. He’s been mislead to believe in some sort of simplistic religion that only sees the world in black and white; truth or lies; believe or die.

On the other hand, the boy on the right overreacted and sounds like a bit of a bully. Come to think of it, this isn’t the first time he’s caused trouble at school. Throwing a boy’s book over the fence? What an insensitive clod.

“You two just started at this school, correct?” you ask both of them. They nod in reply. You shake your head, wondering how you’re going to keep these two from killing each other over the next several years.
You search your brain for wisdom and decide on the best advice, “Before I determine your punishment,” you pause in a stern voice, “I have a few words to share with you. They might just prevent you from getting into trouble again.”

You point to the boy on the left and gaze intently at him, “You need to re-think what is important. I’m no religious authority, but I can assure you that it is unethical to physically harm another person just because you disagree with them. I understand your frustration, but that behavior is unacceptable. If you keep it up, you’ll have a lot more than me to worry about in the future. It could bring a whole world of wrath upon you. Do you understand me?”
The boy looks down and states simply, “Yes… Sir.”

You then slowly move your finger towards the boy on the right as your gaze distinguishes the flames in his eyes, “and you need to learn restraint. You may find him annoying as all hell and he may even get you in trouble from time to time, but reacting the way you did is inexcusable. Do you even know who lives on the other side of that fence? If the people who live there find that book…” You shake your head at him, “Let me just say that I can only protect you when you’re in this school. We’ve had a good relationship with the owners of that property for quite some time now and I’d hate for an incident such as this to screw it up.”

Your eyes then return to the boy on the left as you warn him, “And don’t go getting any ideas about causing trouble with the people on the other side of the fence. They’re just dying for someone like you to come on over and get them all riled up. They’ll tell you that they’ll help you. They’ll tell you that they care. But when you need them most, they won’t be there.”

You shake your head and close your eyes for a moment to reflect upon what you’ve just said. You direct your voice at both of them, “You don’t have to be friends, but you have to get along. There are better things to fight for and there are better ways to go about it.”

You lean back in your chair and command, “I will inform your parents of what happened and both of you will serve a week of detention to reflect upon what I just said.” The boys look quizzically at each other. “Now get out of my office!”

This is so great, I just had to point it out. Here’s a sample of some questions you should ask entertainment industry representatives next time you get the chance…

Music industry questions:

2. The RIAA has sued over 20,000 music fans for file sharing, who have on average paid a $3,750 settlement. That’s over $75,000,000. Has any money collected from your lawsuits gone to pay actual artists? Where’s all that money going?

3. The RIAA has sued over 20,000 music fans for file sharing. Recently, an RIAA representative reportedly suggested that “students drop out of college or go to community college in order to be able to afford [P2P lawsuit] settlements.” Do you stand by this advice? Is this really good advice for our children’s futures?

Movie industry questions:

5. In several lawsuits, the MPAA has repeatedly said that it’s illegal to make a back-up of a DVD that I purchased. Why is this illegal?

8. If the MPAA-backed “broadcast flag” bill passes, I won’t be able to move recorded TV content digitally to my current video iPod. Why should TV studios get to take away my ability to lawfully time- and space-shift?

Be sure to check out the rest of the questions.

The primary problem with health insurance in the United States today is that it is not really, “insurance”. Insurance implies paying a premium to a central collector who will guarantee payment to make up for a loss should an unexpected problem arise. It is the insurer’s job to calculate the probability of such an event and try to gain enough clients paying premiums to make up for any statistically anticipated payouts.

This typical insurance scenario works for just about any unexpected event or scenario if:

• The insurer has all the information available to calculate accurate probability.

• There are enough clients paying into the insurance plan to reduce the price to an affordable level for the clients and a riskable level for the insurer.

  The reason why this system doesn’t work with health care is due to the the following:

• Patients need regular checkups in order to stay healthy (checking for minor problems before they become major). These are mostly covered by health insurance because it is statistically cheaper for the insurer to prevent a problem than it is to treat one. However, the fact that insurance pays for doctor’s office visits drives up the cost of these visits since care providers know that the cost to the patient is fixed (at the cost of the deductible). This creates some sub-problems:
1. Patients without health insurance are forced to pay a significantly higher price for checkups than they would if insurers didn’t subsidize the cost for everyone else.
2. Since the insurer has to make up for the costs of these visits through premiums and most their clients are taking advantage of doctor’s office visits, they have to increase premiums to make up for any aggregate price increase in services.

1. Since businesses bear most of the cost of insurance for their employees, they end up having to make up for the increased premiums (lowering wages, less raises, demand for more productivity, outsourcing, etc). This burden translates into an overall drain on the economy which eventually makes its way around to the health insurance companies who are forced to raise premiums even more (to make up for inflation, higher costs of living, rising price indexes, etc).
• Not everyone pays into the system. The poor don’t typically have jobs with health insurance benefits and the young typically don’t take advantage of health insurance (they’re the healthiest, nieve, and they also don’t typcially have jobs that provide health insurance). This means that the working middle class has to bear most of the cost of individual health insurance.
• The people who need the most expensive care are people with chronic conditions and the elderly (a specific kind of chronic genetically inherited condition =). Since the cost of care for these people must be made up for in the premiums of the non-chronic and non-elderly, premiums for everyone go up as a result. In essence, the insurance industry relies on the premiums of the perfectly healthy to subsidize the cost of the chronically ill.

• Competition hurts more than it helps: The more health insurance providers you have and the more people you have without health insurance, the more premiums have to go up to make up for the missing revenues of the uninsured and those who are on competing providers. It is a vicious cycle that is doomed to failure.

A draft bill about to be introduced in the Senate by Sen. Mike DeWine—at the request of the FBI—would force all network equipment manufacturers to build back doors into all networking equipment sold in the U.S. Besides endangering the nation’s security (back doors for the FBI == back doors for anyone on the Internet!), it would completely transform the power of the FBI from an investigative body into an all-seeing eye on the Internet.

Specifically, if the bill becomes law it would:

• Require back doors be built into any and all equipment that performs “routing” and/or “addressing”. Since that includes all networked operating systems, it would mean adding a back door in Windows, Linux, and anything else that is capable of networking. That includes phones, TVs, refrigerators, toasters, lawn irrigation systems, watches, DVD players, iPods, wireless headphones, stereos, cars, smoke detectors, light switches, power outlets, UPSes, and oh yeah, routers and switches.
• Expand the scope of wiretapping to include any and all “instant messaging”. That includes obvious things like AOL Instant Messenger and not-so-obvious things like your Warcraft 3 conversations and emails.
• Require ISPs to classify and record logs of any and all traffic going to and from their lines. The idea is to make it so that the FBI can ask Comcast, “Show me the destination addresses for all VoIP calls coming in and out from Customer X’s connection.” Besides being impossible (which VoIP? Skype? Google Talk? Asterisk? SIP? What ports? What about VPNs? Tor? Proxies?) it would require ISPs to log just about everything you do on the Internet which would increase their costs dramatically. And since the government doesn’t intend to pay for this extra requirement, that means the cost would be passed on to consumers (i.e. you and me).

• Eliminate the requirement for the FBI to report the number of wiretaps it performs each year. Presumably because with this new power they’d increase the numbers exponentially to the point where it is no longer about investigating individuals. When you have hundreds of millions of people all being tapped at once, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, the number would look pretty extreme (because it is).

  You can read more about it here

I just watched part of a 20/20 Special report on American education called “Stupid in America”. I will watch the rest later, but reading the Digg comments you’d think we had the problem figured out. They all seem to blame the same things:

• Teachers unions.
• Bad parenting.
• U.S. culture.

• The whole idea of public education (a libertarian view).

  Here’s what I would blame it on:

• The design of the system itself (rote teaching and memorization without practical application).
• The complete lack of variety in our educational system (behold the chorus: “math and English, math and English, MATH AND ENGLISH!”).
• The focus of the system on test scores as a measurement of a student’s worth and not as a teaching method to fill students’ gaps in knowledge.
• The resources devoted to sports and other unimportant after-school programs.
• The fact that parents spend more time working these days than they used to (less time with kids).
• The cultural celebration of children’s sports accomplishments far exceeds the cultural celebration of academic achievement.
• The meaningless barriers of entry for teachers (why the requirement for a masters in teaching?).

• The complete lack of experience and knowledge many teachers have in their subjects.

  read more | digg story

Today my wife and I attended the Sunday services at the Unitarian Universalist church of Jacksonville… A pretty big deal when you consider that I’m an atheist.

I’d read about Unitarian Universalism (UU) before. It always intrigued me that they actually allow atheists to become members (something like 18% of UU members are atheists), but I was never really interested enough to attend one of their services. Recently, my wife and I were looking to get a bit more involved in the community but trying to find secular (or even non-Christian extremist) organizations in Jacksonville has proved to be difficult. We decided to give UU a try.

My experience at the service was extremely positive! The “sermon” (which was more of an educational/democratic lecture than your typical instructional dissertation on how to live your life according to ancient mythology) was by Professor Julie Ingersol on “Millennialism”—which I thought I’d never heard of, but in actuality I have (under the term, chiliasm). It was all about the differences in what Christians believe in regards to the Bible’s Book of Revelations and why/how it is influencing America. It focused primarily on evangelical premillennialist beliefs in the U.S.

“What the heck?” Evangelical premillennialists (e.g. Southern Baptists, Pat Robertson’s group, etc) believe that the Book of Revelations describes events that have mostly already taken place and that we’re currently living in the second-to-last period described. In essence, they believe that they need to convert just about everyone to Christianity so that the conditions will be met for Jesus Christ to return and create heaven on Earth (or something like that) whereby he will “rule as king for 1000 years”. It is the mythology surrounding “The Rapture” which what the popular Left Behind book series is all about. (Note: Interestingly, the word “rapture” is not mentioned in the Bible)

One of the most interesting facts that I learned explained a lot to me in regards to why a lot of the extremely religious people I meet here in Jacksonville seem so, er, extreme. Simply put, to believe in premillennialism you need to interpret the Bible literally wherever possible and you need to interpret the New Testament by way of the Old Testament. This means—in a way—that the old school fire and brimstone stuff takes precedence over the warm and fuzzy New Testatment stuff.

Overall, it was very educational and we met some nice people. We went to an orientation session directly after the sermon so our exposure to the other churchgoers was limited (which was a little disappointing). A couple of observations:

• The grounds surrounding the church are beautiful. The church itself was literally built around large trees and it makes you feel more like you’re in the woods than off of a major highway. There was also a nice boardwalk that went over a creek—also built around the trees.
• The cars in the parking lot had lots of great bumper stickers. Pro-peace stuff, “A mind is like a parachute, it only works when its open”, other similar sayings. There was even another silver Prius there (my car’s Science Fish Emblem fit right in). It was easy to see that I was immediately entering a place where people shared at least a few similar views.
• Immediately after the sermon there was a question/feedback session where you could either give the speaker a piece of your mind (e.g. “You’re wrong, and here’s why” or “I totally agree!”) or ask them a question.
• The Minister often isn’t the one giving the sermon (as he didn’t today). Looking at the services calendar the majority of the sermons aren’t by the Minister.
• The church also housed a small school area (a different kind of “Sunday school”) which had lots of great posters. Here’s an example that I’ve seen before.

• I look forward to going again, but I’ve yet to decided whether or not I want to become a member.

I keep seeing statements in news articles that amount to something similar to this:

• Internet Neutrality laws would prevent the companies who own the Internet backbones from charging more for faster access to web sites.

  What a load of crap! If people keep getting fed nonsense like that it isn’t too hard to understand why they’d be against Net Neutrality. If you’re scratching your head right now, here’s what Net Neutrality is really all about:

• Internet Neutrality laws would ensure that Internet service providers (backbone or no) cannot charge more, degrade, or block access to content based on the nature or source of such content.

  Imagine if you were charged more for talking on the phone with your mother about cholesterol medication than if you were talking about rising milk prices and you’ll have a closer representation of what Net Neutrality is all about. ISPs like BellSouth, AT&T, and Comcast specifically want the power to examine the data coming to and from your computer and charge more or less based on the content. In some cases, they may want to severely degrade or completely block your access to certain kinds of data.

  Why the heck would they want to do that? If Comcast offers $42/month television service over their Internet service, it would be against their interests for you to subscribe to a competitor’s service elsewhere on the Internet for $10/month. They wouldn’t even need to completely block it. They could simply reduce the speed to the point where it takes days just to download a TV show from said competitor. Their natural response would be, “Well, if said competitor wants to have priority access through our lines they need to pay for it.”

  That is all fine and good until you realize that said competitor may serve the entire planet and may not care about a few customers in the U.S. being slowed down. Alternatively, they may not be able to afford Comcast’s rates for priority access and no matter what they do, Comcast will always give a higher priority to their own content—which is like paying for nothing. The end result would leave us with less freedom on the Internet.

  Even worse than that, BellSouth, AT&T, and Comcast want to disallow their competitors access to their own content—meaning that you won’t be able to buy Comcast IPTV unless you have Comcast Internet access. This is what is known as “content fracturing” where certain sections of the Internet have exclusive content. Since ISPs don’t serve all areas, who and what you can access on the Internet would largely be dictated by geography.

  Only one small ISP in your area? Better hope that ISP is paying the big bucks for priority access otherwise everything you send and receive on the Internet will be of a lesser priority than the rich, er, big ISP subscribers. Having a super-fast fiber connection to the Internet would be meaningless without the guarantee of Net Neutrality since the backbone providers could limit your access to everything to dialup speeds unless both your ISP and the provider of said content/services is paying for “priority access”.

  The whole point the big ISPs are going for is that they can see the future of the Internet and it isn’t pretty for them. They can see that eventually, consumers will have fast enough Internet access that even the lowest speed tier is enough to cover much more than they will ever use. This means that their whole business model of charging a premium for higher speeds eventually won’t work anymore. They can see that if they want to retain growth and profits at their current levels, they’ll need to find a new source of revenue from their customers and that means charging for more than just the speed or the amount of data that crosses their lines. They want to charge based on who and what are being sent and to start charging for services that their competitors offer while degrading said competitors out of the market.