Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everybody. If you’re offended by this phrase and would prefer “Happy Holidays” instead please feel free to raise the issue with the complaints department. They’re located down the hall in the Department of I Don’t Give a Fuck office.

Either way it’s Christmas weekend so this site is going to be dead over the holiday. Expect no posts tomorrow or the next two days following that.

Have a great holiday and try not to do anything too stupid OK?

Audio Streaming Can’t be This Hard

A new update was released for the Evo 4G last week which seemed to consist entirely of new bloatware applications. I didn’t install it on my phone because the update didn’t have any mention of fixing the audio issues I’ve had since the Evo went from Android 2.1 to 2.2. Well it’s a good thing I waited because instead of fixing the audio player the update went and introduced new streaming audio problems.

Basically streaming MP3s over HTTP protocol doesn’t work… at all. In an ironic twist of fate AAC audio works great (AAC audio sound quality was destroyed in the initial 2.2 update due to problems in the StageFright media framework used in Android 2.2).

Rant time. How fucking hard is it to test your fucking patches? Streaming audio isn’t exactly rocket science. All you need to do to test audio streaming is run some streams using several popular services such as Pandora and Last.fm. If streaming fails fix the problem and don’t release the Odin damned patch.

I’ve never in my life seen a single platform with some many damned problem related to media playing. Playing media isn’t difficult anymore, we’ve been doing it for quite some time. I understand if something like the 4G radio has problems because that’s new technology which is in no way mature. Media streaming on the other hand is old technology that’s been around, we know how to do it.

Is it really that much to ask for to have a phone that can properly play audio files? My fucking iPod from the 2003 could play audio files without an issue. My damned Treo 755p from 2007 running an operating system who’s last major version came out in 2002 could stream MP3s properly. The Evo 4G is a flagship product and can’t do the same things my old Palm Treo 755p could do three years ago.

Seriously, what in the fuck is going on over at HTC?

Revisionist History

Raise your hand if you’re a fan of revisionist history. OK, those with their hands raised get the fuck off of my site. I have a friend who’s political orientation I would best describe as Democrat. I don’t mean to say he’s liberal or “progressive” but a Democrat. Everything the party says is correct and if he disagrees with it he performs endless mental gymnastics until he “understands” why he was wrong and the Democrat Party was right. Needless to say a red flag was raised upon reading the following statement by him:

The Republicans are clearly on the wrong side of history over the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell just like there were during the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

It was an interesting statement to say the least as the second part is completely false. My response was as follows:

[Name Removed] I usually don’t question your knowledge of history dealing with the civil rights movement but I think we need to have some clarification from you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Vote_totals

The Civil Rights Act vote breakdown shows far more Republicans (by percentage as there were fewer of them in the legislature at the time compared to the Democrats) voted for the bill than Democrats.

Likewise the filibuster was done by a Democrat.

If you’re going to make claims that the Republicans were on the wrong side of that bill you should clarify what you mean by that. Because as I see it a larger percentage of the Republican party supported the bill.

Of course he never posted a counter argument as there isn’t one and he couldn’t admit that his beloved party did something reprehensible to him. When you look at the vote breakdown of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 you find the Republican party (in both houses) had about 80% of their people voting in favor of the bill while the Democrats only had roughly 60%. I’m not trying to make a statement on the quality of our political parties (as a libertarian I support neither party) but on the fact people like to craft history to their needs.

When you get into an argument with somebody it makes sense to have Google at hand to fact check their statements. People love to lie and sometimes they really don’t know that they’re lying (in other words somebody told them something and they couldn’t be bothered to do a fucking fact check).

Likewise watch out for people who try to revise history. A classic example of revisionist history is the idea that Abraham Lincoln went into the Civil War to free the slaves. That’s completely false as Lincoln stated several times he didn’t care whether or not the slaves were freed, he wanted to preserve the union (an easy read on the subject would be Lincoln Unmasked). A more recent example would be statements made by Supreme Court Justice Beyer on the Second Amendment.

Allowing revisionist history to go unchallenged does nothing positive and destroys any lessons that could have been learned from the actual events that unfolded.

Snowmygodmageddonpocalypse

Did you hear? We received snow… a lot of snow. This shouldn’t be too surprising since this is the state of Minnesota but we always get a little concerned when two and a half feet of snow pile on in one day. This lead to all sorts of fun and games.

First the roads obviously became practically impossible to drive on. I’m not talking a little difficult, I’m talking so bad that the country pulled the snow plows off of the streets. The local metro buses halter operations leaving at least one of my friends stranded at work. Local light rail was bogged down because of the additional passengers and the accumulation of snow on the rails. The Minneapolis airport shut down for a while until they were able to get one runway going partially (they would run it for half and hour, spend 20 minutes clearing it off again, then run it for another half hour). Something akin to 600 people went off of the road throughout the state. Hell the mail wasn’t even delivered in some areas. Basically it was a bad snow storm here in Minnesota.

Summing it up in words really doesn’t do it justice so here are pictures. Everybody on my Facebook feed was also talking about something related to vikings. I’m not sure what they meant but I think it was this song:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_gf0Btwp5E]

On a positive note when snow like this falls Minnesotans usually come together to assist one another. I think everybody I know helped at least two other motorists dig their vehicles out (I almost did but the guy I was going to help was a rude asshole so I left him there). Neighbors with snow blowers went to clear the driveways of their neighbors who had only shovels. A lot of people went on retrieval missions to get friends and families unstuck. And of course everybody enjoyed the pleasure of the police being unable to enforce many stupid laws (for instance a fun sport when the police are stuck and unable to respond is to get on a snowboard, hook up to a four wheel drive vehicle, and go wake boarding).

It’s weather like this that also reminds me why I drive a truck. Yeah my Ranger only gets 17.5 miles per gallon on the highway but when you kick it into four wheel drive that truck will tear through almost anything. Having roughly nine inches of ground clearance also helps.

The entire event can be summed up with the following phrase, global warming is bullshit (seriously when can we get some of that sweet sweet global warming?) and fuck you Al Gore for getting our hopes up!

Is Gun Blogging Getting Harder

Sebastian over at Snowflakes in Hell has an interesting post talking about gun blogging becoming more difficult. I’ve noticed this as well which is why there hasn’t been as many gun related topics as of late. Sebastian credits this to the wins we’ve scored as of late but I’m attributing it to a general lull in gun related things. No field of interest has interesting things happening, they usually have burst of interesting things followed by times of nothing happening. Currently there is no good or bad related firearms legislation on the table, no amazing new firearms are being presented or released, and for those of us up in the frozen tundra shooting competition season is over for the year.

When I started this blog my main focus was on firearms but I left it open for posting about other things. Needless to say with the lull in firearms related news I’ve been posting more about world news and technology.

Worry not though because whenever something interesting happens in the world of firearms or gun rights (and I hear about it) it will get posted here. The lull will eventually be over and there will be a glut of gun related things to write about again. At that point us gun bloggers will be finding it difficult to set aside time to write about it all.

Even China is Sick of North Korea’s Shit

You know North Korea is getting a whole lot of crazy when China is getting sick of them:

China: Seriously, you need to knock the crazy down a notch or two Mr. Jong.

North Korea: But we have uranium enrichment prant! We can nuke South Korea soon!

China: See Mr. Jong this is what we’re talking about. Honestly your crazy hatred of America is cute and we find it enjoyable to watch but you need to learn the difference between cute crazy and totally whack-job nuts crazy.

North Korea: What are you tarking about? I can nuke America!

China: You know what? Just get the fuck out of my office and do realize we’re not backing you anymore. You’re on your own.

North Korea: Oh, I’m so ronery.