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$21,650,000

Anglican Curmudgeon has been adding up the numbers, and that’s how much The Episcopal Church has spent in the past few years suing parishes and dioceses that want to leave.

$21,650,000

It takes your breath away at how much money that truly is, and it almost makes me weep to think of all the better uses that money could have gone to. Planting new churches? Helping the homeless? Missions in Africa and India? Shoring up pension funds? Keeping union labor at 815? Nope, it’s all gone, thanks to That Woman. She fiddles while Rome burns.

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Thursday’s Roundup

From the international news centre here at jimcofer.com… let’s do the news!

– Governments are at it again! Britain’s Race Relations Act 2000 apparently requires teachers to report any racist language thoughtcrimes committed by children as young as three, even if the kids have no idea what they’re saying; the U.S. Department of Energy apparently thinks it alone can decide what appliances Americans can buy in the future; and legislation has been introduced in Congress that would give the US government the power to shut down any piracy site anywhere in the world by invalidating their domain registration. One wonders how the U.S. would feel if say, China, could do the same to US sites. Regardless, more freedom down the drain, and no one seems to care.

– The Commonwealth Games are a sort of “mini-Olympics” held between nations of the (British) Commonwealth every so often. India is up to host the games this year, and it looks to be a complete disaster so far. The linked article has several pictures showing filthy bathrooms and beds with animal footprints in the athletes’ quarters, exposed electrical cables and giant holes in buildings, and child laborers working furiously to get stadiums ready for the games. Epic fail, India!

– On the other hand… the Chinese are known for ripping off the intellectual property of Western companies… but now China has duplicated an entire British private school, even down to the uniforms and house names.

– I have vague memories of seeing Burger Chef restaurants on interstate highways during family car trips when I was a kid, although we never stopped at one. Did you know that the chain was once America’s second largest fast food chain, second only to McDonalds, and then only by a couple hundred restaurants? What’s more amazing, the chain completely vanished almost overnight in the 1980s. Read more about it here.

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Stuxnet and You

There’s a new computer virus out there called Stuxnet. While I sometimes post about new computer viruses that can mess up your system, this one actually won’t. Because it’s not your average virus. This one wasn’t written by a lovesick teenager trying to impress a girl or Russian mobsters trying to extort a few dollars from you. No, Stuxnet is something else entirely. This virus is looking for one particular computer, and like The Terminator, it won’t stop until it finds it.

The virus is typically transmitted to Microsoft Windows computers via infected USB sticks. But the virus isn’t looking to infect Windows. It’s actually looking for a particular kind of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software built by the German industrial giant Siemens. This software is used to run industrial facilities like chemical and power plants. Once Stuxnet finds such a controller, it checks the SCADA software every five seconds to see if it’s the particular computer it’s looking for. If not, it simply does nothing but check again every five seconds. If it does find the computer it’s looking for… well, we don’t know what it’s programmed to do, but we know that it would execute certain commands, commands that would probably physically destroy the facility by opening valves or pipes or overloading turbines until something exploded.

Although the virus uses Windows to move from facility to facility, it should be noted that the hardware and software it’s targeting are proprietary to Siemens. This isn’t off-the-shelf stuff the virus is attacking. Whoever is behind the virus attack has deep pockets and really wants something destroyed… and that something is probably in Iran. And it’s probably the facility where nuclear weapons are being developed.

We don’t know enough about the origins of Stuxnet to say whether the CIA, Mossad or MI-6 is behind it… but we do have a precedent from the waning days of the Cold War.

Continue reading “Stuxnet and You”

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Alison Brie

In honor of tonight’s season premiere of Community of NBC, here are a few pictures of star (and Mad Men hottie) Alison Brie… RAWR!

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(click to enlarge)

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Mad Men: “The Beautiful Girls”

This episode begins with Don in his office making a lunch date. The “date” is an afternoon tryst with Faye. Their lovemaking is so intense that it knocks a lamp off a night stand. While catching the lamp, Don notes the time and says that he’s late for a meeting with a client. Faye says that she has a meeting at 4:00, and is coy when Don tries to get information from her about it. Don starts to get dressed and tells her to stay as long as she wants.

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At the office, Roger is on the phone with his agent, Ira, who is apparently having trouble selling Roger’s book. His phone call is interrupted by his secretary, Caroline, who says that Jane is on the phone. An annoyed Roger tries to go back to his call, but find that Ira has hung up. He reaches for a cigarette, and there’s a knock at his office door. It’s Joan, with some papers he needs to sign. He flirts with her and fails miserably. After Joan leaves Caroline comes in to say that Greg is being sent directly to Vietnam after basic training.

Continue reading “Mad Men: “The Beautiful Girls””

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-19

  • Yaaaaaa! GO STEELERS!! (sorry ATL peeps!) #
  • is about 95% back from reinstalling Windows over the weekend. Acronis: die in a fire! #
  • Holy crap… Dexter McCluster is FAST! #
  • is taking the skinheads bowling… #
  • sez :"If you don't got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin'…" #
  • We're #27 We're #27 http://tinyurl.com/2bykw3p #
  • Chloe says: "My momma's got more stories than Uncle Remus!" #
  • "They're saying 'Boo-urns… Boo-urns" #
  • Wooo! The Tar Heels got STUNG! 🙂 GO JACKETS! #

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FRIDAY FUN: “Message in a Bottle”

The Police first played “Message in a Bottle” in public on a BBC TV show called Rock Goes To College on February 21, 1979. Here they are, live from Hatfield Polytechnic:

If you get a chance, check out other Rock Goes To College clips on YouTube. It was an interesting concept for a show: the BBC would find an up-and-coming band and arrange for them to play at a university, usually giving tickets away free to students. They’d then air the show live on TV and radio simultaneously, which allowed people to watch the show on their TVs and use their home stereos to provide a big, booming sound that televisions lacked on those days.

Other bands featured on the show include: The Boomtown Rats, AC\DC, Rich Kids, Cheap Trick, Ian Dury & the Blockheads, George Thorogood, The Cars, Average White Band, Joe Jackson, The Specials, Tom Petty, UB40, The Motels, U2, Stiff Little Fingers, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Stranglers… whose set was only 5 songs long; the band walked off the stage after the BBC refused to give tickets to local non-students. The band played whatever minimum number of songs that were required in the contract and refused to play any more for “elitist audiences”.

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Mad Men: “The Summer Man”

This episode begins with Don alone in his apartment. He is now keeping a diary, and we hear his thoughts via his narration. He talks about his drinking problem, and how it’s affecting his work. He talks about how little he writes, and how he wishes he would have finished high school. We then see him having an early morning swim (and having a coughing fit whilst doing so!) and then getting dressed and heading into work. On his way in, he asks Ms. Blankenship, who has just gotten cataract surgery, for Bethany’s phone number.

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Meanwhile, Joey and the boys are up to their old antics. SCDP has apparently gotten a new vending machine, and Joey has gotten his watch stuck in it while trying to get a Clark bar out for Ken. A couple of the women, including Peggy, stand and watch as Joey and Stan pick up and drop the machine, and Harry offers the guys ideas for getting the watch out. They create such a ruckus that Joan comes to investigate. She orders everyone back to work, and Joey replies to her with a sarcastic “sorry, mom!”. Joan asks him to repeat that, and Joey asks her what he was supposed to do. She tells him to call the complaint number and “let an adult” handle the situation. Pete then walks into the hallway, asking what all the noise is, as he was on an important call. Joey tells Pete that Joan was “handing out demerits”, which makes Joan call him into her office.

In her office, Joan tries to dress down the cavalier Joey. But when she says that Stan might be better at his job than Joey, he asks her what she does around the office, “besides walking around like you’re trying to get raped?” He then calls her a “madam from a Shanghai whorehouse” and leaves the office. Peggy then walks in, attempting to use Joan’s office as a shortcut. Joan snaps at her and tells her to stop doing that, and that she could “use the extra steps”. Peggy, seeing that Joan is upset, quietly apologizes. Joan leaves.

Continue reading “Mad Men: “The Summer Man””

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COOL APP: MozBackup

I got my current computer as a Christmas present in 2008. At the time, I didn’t have a copy of the installation media for x64 Vista… so I couldn’t do the “reformat the computer to clean off all the crud HP installed on it” thing like I normally would. And by the time I did have a copy of the media, I was so far along that I didn’t want to do the reformat. I then did an in-place upgrade to Windows 7 back in October 2009. Over time, several niggling (but hard to diagnose) issues cropped up, and this past weekend I reformatted the old gal and started over.

Like most folks, I do a lot of stuff on the Internet. And nothing is as important to me as my Firefox profile. Not only do I have saved passwords and a browsing history to keep, I also have tons of extensions and UI tweaks that would take forever to redo. That’s why I fell in love with MozBackup:

mozbackup

As the name suggests, MozBackup backs up your entire Firefox profile to a single, handy file. It’s a stand-alone app that requires no installer: just download, unzip and run. The entire process of backing up your profile only takes around 6 mouse clicks, and restoring everything about your browser takes just 6 clicks more. And not only did MozBackup restore the stuff I expected it to, it even restored all of my GUI tweaks after the reformat!

MozBackup works with Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Flock, Postbox, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, Spicebird, Songbird, Netscape, and Wyzo and is freeware (even for commercial use).

Check it out here!

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Why KFC runs out of chicken

I’ve written about this before on this site, but the “why does KFC run out of chicken?” question just keeps popping up all over the Internet. I figured I’d do a recap of that old post, in hopes that the new post title might show up in search engines and spread some answers. Also, keep in mind that I worked for KFC over twenty years ago, so things obviously might have changed since then.

There are two instances where your local KFC might be out of chicken.

In the first case, they’re simply out of cooked chicken. This is actually a common occurrence.

Original Recipe chicken is cooked in a huge pressure cooker. It’s a giant machine, and every KFC I’ve ever been in only had one cooker. I don’t remember the exact capacity of the cooker, but it was something like 12 pieces of chicken per rack, with 5 racks total per batch. Each batch took around 16 minutes to cook, so therefore your average KFC can cook somewhere around 240 pieces of Original Recipe chicken per hour.

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