Personal

The Heller Decision

Beau Monday — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:02:00 GMT

I was busy last week, and didn't post, but rest assured I knew about the Heller decision about 4 minutes after it was announced. And yes, I did a happy dance. As i told my dad later, I never had the Supreme Court decide on something that I so strongly believed in, and it was a bit overwhelming when I heard the decision.

Where to start. Wow.

First, the biggest thing in the decision was the fact that all 9 justices, including the most liberal ones, agreed that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right, not a collective one. Let me say that again: All 9 justices unanimously concluded that the right to keep and bear arms as bestowed by the Second Amendment is an individual right, not tied to service in a militia or other organized group. The “collective right” argument was the mainstay of the anti-gun movement, so it's incredible that the court struck down that argument quite thoroughly the first opportunity it has had to address it.

Some interesting quotes I read throughout the week:

The same folks who can read the Constitution and Bill of Rights and find an unassailable right to abortion and gay marriage can't find a right to possession of a firearm. http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2008/06/the-great-equal.html
(For the record, I support gay marriage and abortion. Because I'm a Libertarian. But the point is valid, given that guns ownership is mentioned as a right in the Constitution and the others are not.)
It's true that the dissenters' view of that right is somewhere between "minimalist" (to be charitable) and "incoherent" (to be accurate). But nonetheless, all nine Justices specifically said the right is individual, and thus rejected the "collective right" position on the Second Amendment, a position that's been the mainstay of gun-control groups, newspaper editorialists, and lower federal courts for decades, and one that was presented by those adherents as so obviously correct that those arguing for an individual right were called "frauds" and shills for the NRA.

Yet the collective right theory could not command a single vote on the Court when actually tested. It was, it seems, a paper tiger all along. (InstaPundit)
Of course, the originalism of both Justices Scalia's and Stevens's opinions are in stark contrast with Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion, in which he advocates balancing an enumerated constitutional right against what some consider a pressing need to prohibit its exercise. Guess which wins out in the balancing? As Justice Scalia notes, this is not how we normally protect individual rights, and was certainly not how Justice Breyer protected the individual right of habeas corpus in the military tribunals case decided just two weeks ago. (Wall Street Journal: News Flash: The Constitution Means What it Says)
Team Obama declared the DC gun ban as “constitutional” on November 20, 2007, during a period of time when he was busy sucking up to the hard Left and their confiscatory inclinations on the Second Amendment.

Suddenly, with the general election looming, Obama discovers that his campaign’s statement was “inartful“. This seems rather puzzling, because before he ran for public office, Barack Obama was supposed to be a Constitutional law expert. One might expect the “inartful” excuse on wetlands reclamation or some other esoteric matter of public policy, but the Constitution is what he supposedly studied at Columbia and Harvard. One has to wonder whether Obama has any competence even in his own chosen field to have seven months go by before realizing that he got the Constitutional question wrong. (Next in Bus & Driver: Obama’s position on guns)
On page 2 of Stevens' dissent, when referring to US v Miller and the National Firearms Act, he leads off with:

"Upholding a conviction under that Act, this Court held that..."

Of course, Miller was never convicted and US v. Miller certainly didn't uphold any convictions. That's just factually invalid.

How did Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer all miss that when US v Miller is the core precedent that the dissent was based on?
Ah, yes. The living constitution. Which is like a living contract between your mortgage company and you. I know we agreed on 6.5%, but the contract is living so now it's 19.4% and you're required to clean our local branch office.

The funny thing is that it is capable of evolving. The founders had a good first try, however not all their ideas have worked perfectly nor did they cover all the bases. They, being rather intelligent people, realized they couldn't be perfect so they came up with a pretty good system that allowed the people to modify the Constitution if the need arose. The modification wasn't to be done by a few judges, but by a vast majority of the people.

I don't know what I'm enjoying more. The fact that we actually moved a back a bit to the freedom this country was founded upon, or the fact that leftists' heads are a'splodin'. (Sharp as a Marble: When Historians Attack)

More later.

And now for something completely different

Beau Monday — Sat, 24 May 2008 01:01:00 GMT

I wasted my entire weekend last week catching up on The Adventures of Doctor McNinja. This comic strip started as a college project, but has matured dramatically, and was a competitor in the recent Eagle Awards for Best Online Comic (Order of the Stick won, another real gem in that genre, especially if you are a recovering D&D addict like myself).

If you have time to waste, trundle on over and read some of Doctor McNinja's adventures.

Here's a teaser. This is the Doc's dad (also a ninja, duh) explaining why he lit himself on fire to escape a pack of fake ninjas using an illicit drug to enhance their ninja-ness:

Heh. Great stuff.

Time for a new phone

Beau Monday — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:21:00 GMT

On a recent trip to Nawlins, I left my RAZR's charger in my hotel room.

Which means, obviously, time to get a new phone.

Truth be told, I've had my RAZR (v2!) for several years, having purchased it way back when the first black ones hit the scene. It's been a great phone, and I really don't have any complaints about it. But sheesh, I've never owned a phone this long, and it's starting to bug me. The only problem I've ever had with it is the battery gave out about 2 years in, but that was easily remedied (hooray for field-replaceable batteries!).

I'm looking hard at the new Z9 that just came out in April. The video streaming and built-in GPS functionality intrigue me. I looked at the iPhone, but ruled it out because it a) won't take my existing company-provided SIM and b) can't use it as a wireless modem with my laptop (tethering). Oh and c) battery is not user-replacable (see previous experience with having to replace my RAZR's battery).

Anyone have any experience with the Z9, or have another phone to recommend? I don't need email/SmartPhone-type features, just solid phone features. Access to a full keyboard of some sort would be a nice bonus, but not required.

The Seventh Sign of the Apolcalypse

Beau Monday — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:49:00 GMT

Today I saw a picture so utterly horrifying that I cannot even bring myself to include it within this post. You'll have to click on it, and by doing so you hereby release me from any claims pertaining to damaged psyche, mental anguish, or anything else that tends to result from the vile desecration of things you allow into the ring 0 of your soul.

You've been warned: click.

More details here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/04/prweb819754.htm

Back from Vegas

Beau Monday — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:42:00 GMT

I spent the week in Las Vegas, attending the CSI/SX and InterOp conferences.

If you don't leave Vegas broke, hungover, and tired.... well, you're doing it wrong.

Scars of 9/11

Beau Monday — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:28:00 GMT

I've never told this story, not even to my family.

9/11 is why I'm in the security business. Corny as it sounds, when 9/11 happened, I decided that the way I could contribute to making the world a better place was to apply my IT knowledge to securing the world's Windows networks. I had flown out of Logan airport in Boston the day prior to the attacks. I was galvanized. I quit my job, put myself through a number of SANS courses, and focused my 15+ year old IT career towards security.

I even traded my BMW in for a Jeep, in a semi-rediculous gesture of patriotism (Jeep was subsequently acquired by Germany's Daimler Corporation, ironically).

To say that 9/11 was a defining moment for me would be an understatement.

Now the weird part:

Since 9/11, I've had a little “twitch”. A day rarely goes by when I don't look at a clock when it hits 9:11. Either in the morning or at night, my subconcious rarely misses the opportunity to note the passing of 9:11 by drawing my attention to a nearby clock at that hour. It's fucking creepy.

So tonight, as I fed “I Am Legend” into the DVD player, I glanced down at the clock and was surprised to see it read 9:12. Holy Christ, I made it through an entire day without marking 9:11. A rare thing.

A couple hours later, I logged into a computer in Seattle to service some waiting firewall tickets. Look down at the clock on the computer in Seattle, and guess what it reads.

Nine fucking eleven.

Sigh.

Never forget.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some firewall changes to make.

Adobe Acrobat Reader - What a piece of fucking shit

Beau Monday — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 15:02:00 GMT

I'm not going to say anything here that hasn't been said by hundreds of people long before this, but it will make me feel just a little better to say it. In my own, expletive-prone fashion. Those of you with delicate sensibilities may want to turn away from the screen for a couple minutes.

I've been using Foxit Reader for quite some time now, years in fact. It's small, light, unobtrusive, and just fucking works. In other words, everything Adobe Acrobat is not.

Somewhere between version 5.0 of Adobe Acrobat (15 megs) and the current version 8.x (holy Jesus 167 fucking megs of the worst case of feature bloat I have ever seen in my entire 22 fucking years in this business), the team at Adobe just went off the friggin rails. Not only does the product work only marginally well, but it has been the cause of many browser crashes (some of my best blog rants were lost forever thanks to random Acrobat-induced browser crashes), drags system performance to its knees, and installs a bunch of needless bullshit on your computer. I recently had a rash of browser crashes that I couldn't nail down, so I randomly removed Acrobat. Crashes went away, like Jesus himself came down and touched my computer.

167 megs? Really? It takes 167 megs of code to display a pdf, does it? Foxit does it in under 3 megs.

I know what you're thinking: Just switch to Foxit and never look back.

Yeah, I tried that. Except one little thing. ADP, bless their hearts, issues W2 and pay statements in pdf format. And somewhere in the gap between Foxit's 3 megs of code and Adobe's 167 megs of kitten-killing bloat, lies the code that allows my W2 to be retrieved and opened through ADP's web site. With Foxit, I get a pretty little X where my W2 should be.

So, I am forced to reinstall that hellspawn of a program, Acrobat, so I can do my fucking TAXES. Talk about salt on the wound.

So I go, kicking and screaming, to Adobe's site, and download Acrobat (no, thanks, I don't want any of your free fucking tagalong offers), and install it so I can download my W2 so I can figure out how much money I owe Uncle Sam this year.

And what does it do, the very first second it finishes installing on my computer, before I could even get off a mouse-click? CRASHES MY FUCKING BROWSER THAT GOD-DAMNED FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT.

Whew. Done. I don't know about you, but I feel better.

So, I bought an HD-DVD player today

Beau Monday — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:38:00 GMT

You heard me. HD-DVD.

I know what you're thinking: “Dude, the format war is over. And HD-DVD lost.”

Yeah. I know.

Thing is, I bought a new-hotness 1080p plasma for my OKC house a couple months back, and was driving it with an old-and-busted 720p DVD player that I bought about 6 years ago.

I'm not convinced Blu-Ray is worth the premium they are charging (prices went up recently, in fact), but I wanted 1080p performance. The Toshiba HD-DVD's 1080p upconverting has always been well regarded, and when the local electronics outlets started their fire sales on HD-DVD gear, it seemed like a good time to upgrade. Walmart and Circuit City are selling the A3 box (1080i) for 75 bucks, and the 1080p-capable A30 is only $130 smackers at Circuit City. Given that most new 1080p upconverting DVD players are pushing 100 bones without the ability to play HD-DVD movies, it's a great deal. Plus you get 2 free HD-DVD movies in the box, and a coupon for a bunch more.

Now I can watch all my regular DVDs in 1080p while I wait for the fire sale to start on the HD-DVD movies...

And now for something completely different

Beau Monday — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 01:57:00 GMT

I have updated the Conferences list on the right-hand nav frame to just list the 2 conferences on my schedule for this year, both happening in April, as luck would have it.

Speaking of RSA:

I've received an invitation to attend the 2nd annual Security Bloggers Meetup during the RSA show. There may have been a little whining on my part immediately preceding the invite, I can't be responsible for remembering the exact sequence of events. The important thing, I think you'll all agree, is that I'll be there.

The Fridge Full of Win

Beau Monday — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:56:00 GMT

When I bought my house in Oklahoma I bought a special fridge. It is all fridge, no freezer. My decision was universally mocked. “Dumbest thing ever”, it was called by one friend in particular. “Where do you keep the ice?“ they said. To which I replied: “Who puts ice in beer?“

My friends don't always appreciate my vision. See, I had a special plan for this fridge. Yes, precious, I did.

Now my vision has been realized, and I just have one thing to say to you naysayers: WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?!?!

Actually, I have a second thing to say: “How about a Corona?”