As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

For extra richness, during the bit about "the rule of law", CNN cut to their only shot of former President Bush during obama's speech.

I was cleaning up some of my files and came across this old meme that I had partially finished. Since I hate wasting things, I figures I'd put it up now. I have no idea when I started working on it.

Bold all of the following TV shows which you've ever seen 3 or more episodes of in your lifetime.▪ Italicize a show if you're positive you've seen every episode of it. If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order).

This is just a brief note; I plan to get around to a more detailed write-up of the wedding later.

Over Thanksgiving, liritsvoice and I got a batch of photos from Alan Jenkins, the person who kindly volunteered to be the photographer for our wedding. We've gone through them, sorted out the ones we liked best, and put them up on Flickr. If you're on Facebook, you can also see the select few I put there. (And if you're not friends on Facebook, send me a request.)

I've also uploaded a couple of videos to YouTube. There's Becca coming (and singing) down the aisle and a video that a friend of ours, Marisa, put together. It includes photos of various things at the wedding and video of, among other things, our first dance and the garter toss.

New post on my blog:

Take My Stuff!

New post on my blog:

Change of Name

I'm behind on listening to the RNC speeches. I only just finished Fred Thompson's speech, but it was full of all sorts of ick. Tearing down Obama and building up McCain bacause McCain apparently knows that our country is the best nation on Earth and never needs to apologize to anyone for anything. Of course.

But one of the things that bothered me the most was after Thompson described the torture to which McCain was subjected, he said that McCain's captors demanded he name his fellow pilots. McCain named a member of the Green Bay Packers. At this, everyone broke out in cheers and applause. But these are the same people that support "enhanced interrogation techniques" for making the terrorists tell us everything. If McCain was right and just and honorable for lying to his captors when they interrogated him (enhancedly), how can we make any claims about the effectiveness of our own interrogation techniques, however enhanced? (Leaving completely aside the issue of whether we should be doing that sort of thing to other human beings at all.)

Next up is Lieberman. Gosh, I can't wait.

Now that liritsvoice is moved, it's time to do me. Come by and help us move my stuff on Saturday, September 20th. (I promise I have fewer things and definitely less furniture than liritsvoice.) Again, I'm aiming to start at 10:00. If you need an address or directions, email me and I'll get those to you.

On Saturday, liritsvoice and I will be at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, at least in the morning and early afternoon. On Sunday, we'll probably be at the State Fair in the afternoon. If you'll be at either place and want to meet up, call or text me. (If you need my phone number, send me an email.)

Busy, so a just a short post.

liritsvoice successfully moved into our new apartment last Sunday. We spent the preceding week packing up everything in her apartment, assisted on Saturday by Karen, who singlehandedly packed at least half the kitchen.

On Sunday, we had about six people, counting me and liritsvoice. (Thanks to chironcentaur, fuego, lalaf80, and Mike. Also to liritsvoice's coworker Greg who arrived in time to help unload. No thanks to shermantfrancis, who was apparently too tired to come out. :P) Even with a handful of people, the moving went pretty quickly, largely, I think, because everything was packed and ready to go by the time everyone arrived. We started loading the truck at about 11:00, put everything in, drove to the new apartment, unpacked about half the truck, stopped for lunch (Papa John's pizza), and were finished by 3:00.

I've got a new apartment set on Flickr that has photos of the new place and of the moving.

I saw this one and I had to do it.

Over on Very Good Taste there's a list of "The Omnivore's Hundred"--a list of things they've decided all omnivores should eat. The derivative meme is pretty simple:

• Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
• Bold all the items you've eaten.
• Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

There are a few things I'd never try, like balut or casu marzu, but I'd be willing to at least try most of the things on this list. I also added Wikipedia links for the things I didn't recognize on the list, so you can relish my ignorance.

( Yum! )

So I've had 47 out of their 100 things. Not too bad, I suppose. The list doesn't make for too poor a checklist for future eating, either.

liritsvoice and I have closed on an apartment, and now we need to move our stuff! liritsvoice is first, and we're looking for people to help move her on Sunday, August 24th. If you can help out, email me at phil_g@pobox.com and I'll give you the address. If you've got a pickup truck available, let me know that, too; if no one has one, we'll probably have to rent a moving van.

We're aiming to start at around 10:00, but latecomers are welcome, too. We'll have lunch for anyone there, and dinner, too, if necessary (though both might be pizza delivery).

And, just for future reference, I'll be moving on Saturday, September 20th, so keep that day open, too!

I was very busy this weekend, because it was Otakon, and I was working the convention again. Let me offer a brief recap:

I was again in the Lines team of Spec Ops. This year, I was the team second (for second-in-command). That ended up working out well, I think.

( Thursday evening was pretty easy. )

( Friday was brutally long. )

( Saturday was a little easier. )

( Sunday was a lot easier for me, mostly because I didn't have to work tear-down. )

( Monday was spent recovering. )

By Tuesday morning, I was pretty well recovered, though my muscles are still a bit sore.

All in all, it was a good, if tiring weekend. And I haven't even talked about the "Women in Anime" panel or the wonderful Baltimore street people we got to deal with doing the Arena lines, or the funwith my roommate, or, or, or... Those will be in later posts, if I have the time.

I've been setting up new servers at work, and we're finally getting some good hardware with disaster recovery options, chiefly RAID. The more important servers (mail server, file server) get hardware RAID, while the ones with lower performance requirements just get software RAID. Recently, I've been setting up some of the lower performance servers.

My original plan was to take a couple of disks, put them together into a RAID-1, put that device into LVM, and use LVM to split out any partitions I needed (just swap and a single root filesystem). Here's what I learned today: Debian won't install GRUB as the bootloader if /boot is in an LVM volume. Also, you can't partition RAID devices (which is why I wanted to use LVM on top of RAID.)

I like GRUB. I've recovered from several bootloader misadventures with GRUB, so I kind of wanted it instead of LILO.

Here's what I did: On each disk, made a 1GB partition, and a second partition that used the rest of the available space. I put the two smaller partitions (sda1 and sdb1) into a RAID-1 (md0). I put the two larger partitions (sda2 and sdb2) into another RAID-1 (md1). I formatted md0 (with JFS) and set it to mount on /boot. I turned md1 into a LVM physical volume, created a volume group (rootvg) on top of it, and created a swap partition (swaplv) and a root partition (rootlv) out of that volume group.

I'm not entirely certain LVM is necessary (I can grow RAID partitions if I need to), but I like the flexibility it affords me in case I decide I need it.

( partition setup )

New post on my blog:

DVD Video to Matroska Video, Losslessly

Obama did it! He's now got enough delegates to take the Democratic Party nomination for President. He's the first black person to run for President as the nominee of a major party, and on top of that I really like him.

Now, onward to November!

And, while I'm at it, I was impressed by an ad that aired in Puerto Rico. "Soy Barack Obama, y apruebo de este mensaje." Compare to "Te quiero, Puerto Rico." (about 30 seconds in).

New post on my blog:

Auto-locking My Computer When I Walk Away