http://mrzaius.com/blog Sean Crago's notes from Nepal Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:59:48 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I am now down to my last month in Kathmandu, Nepal - Month 23 of 24/Nearing the end of a two-year stint. Thanks to excellent support from the local staff at my employer, a massive house, and a quite helpful household staff, I'm among relatively few of my colleagues who'd ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=242 For Cameron: 1: It doesn't matter where you go to college, unless money is no issue. What does matter is carefully mitigating the insular experience at a liberal arts college through work off-campus and mitigating the lack of a compelling campus-wide social framework at a working man's community college or satellite ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=244 A year ago I posted a review recommending both Amazon and Rhapsody's MP3 stores in quite glowing terms. Both seemed to work from Nepal at the time, and Amazon has continued to work up until at least as recently as September 28th. Even the largely CC and globally available work ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=235 I've been silently fuming for months that the new President hasn't put pen to paper on the Rome Statute, but felt it inappropriate to call him on it during the middle of the current effort to pull the US back into the first world vis a vis health care as ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=228 I've been roundly disappointed by the Xandros Linux build on my 20GB Eee PC 900, but not quite enough to remove it. Ubuntu et al take far too long to boot; Moblin shouldn't work, given its new Atom requirement; Windows is too bloated and slow to boot, although it would ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=216 "When a passenger check-in desk at Terminal  Two,  Heathrow Airport,  shot up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame the usual people tried to claim responsibility." -Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul It's that time of year again. The Bullwer-Lytton Awards have been published, and, nice ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=212 I recently made a purchase from ThinkGeek, shipped to my diplomatic pouch address at the relatively isolated, xPO free post in Kathmandu and was *gasp* charged Virginia sales tax in spite of the pouch zip code's long-standing exemption. They deserve kudos, however, on three points: 1: Unlike most of their peers, ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=206 I decided to move when my employer's money ran out after a two-day training session in Bangkok, seeking lower rent and an internet bill I could pay without feeling sick with rage. What follows is a comparative side-by-side review of the Chateau de Bangkok and the Conrad Hilton: ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=200 From el Reg: Colonel: US Army has working electropulse grenades From The Washington Post: Lost U.S. Weapons May Be Going to Taliban, GAO Says Is this what safety feels like? Brings to mind an awesome idea for a finale to Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Using time travel, future humans who were somehow affected ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=195 [caption id="" align="alignright" width="320" caption="Ship stranded by the retreat of Kazakhstan's Aral Sea"][/caption] NPR reports that a scientist at NOAA, Susan Solomon, says that the damage done by our CO2 emissions has already reached the stage that a considerable amount of future damage is unavoidable, going so far as to use ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=190 It's official - Via's not going to come to market anytime soon. Considering the raging success of Intel's Atom, it's hard to imagine how (even in this economy), Via can't get the only viable competitor to market. I've previously written (maybe not here, but *eh*) about my desire to pick up ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=183 Complete review here. I'm 60 hours in to the 80 hour game, and I've already hit the level cap. While fan patches exist (http://www.fileplanet.com/194463/190000/fileinfo/Fallout-3---Skill-Level-Cap-100-Mod) they aren't the right approach: What the creators should do is: 1: Slow the development of all experience by 10-25% or drop the benefits from leveling by a similar ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=145 I personally abstained in the Cox vs Johnson race, as per my previous post, and voted Lib/Green in the Presidential Senatorial races, as per my previous post. Turns out that my predictions about the complete irrelevance of my vote in those races were confirmed. Each of the three races seems ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=142 The Washington Post recently put out a piece about the declining health of Cheney. This raises a question that I've always wondered about. Maybe someone knows the answer: What happens when a lame duck president or veep kicks the bucket? In those cases where the Presidency is staying in the party ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=140 There's a war on, and Buy.com won't accept orders placed directly by our service men and women abroad and folk attached to diplomatic missions. Read on for details, but the short story is "Use Paypal checkout or have someone in the states place your order for you if you want ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=131 Johnson's stats from the current Congress: Number of sponsored bills: 8 Number of co-sponsored bills 161 Number of sponsored bills passed: 0 Number of co-sponsored bills passed: 9 Our remarkably unsuccessful four-term Congressman in the fifteenth Congressional District in Illinois seems shockingly... well, unsuccessful this time around. If this fellow was a ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=126 Being registered in Illinois where Obama won the Senate race by a 30-point margin (and lost in my home county by the same), there seems to be next to zero chance that the state will vote Republican for the first time since Reagan. As such, I'd be throwing my vote ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=122 Here's what someone should build (Tom - Are you listening?): It seems patently obvious that there would be a market for an entirely self-contained, easy to use SOHO inventory management device. Call it "Library in a Pocket" or something like that, but all you need is a cheap little ARM based ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=116 I fired off the below after reading Corey Doctorow's recent news post about Wal-Mart's about face on DRM. It occurred to me shortly afterwards that there may be enough consumers affected by the Yahoo, MSN, and Wal-Mart server shut-downs that we might be able to make noise enough to get ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=108 [caption id="" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Click for the wiki article"][/caption] It's always (ie for the last 18 months [when I discovered these]) bugged the living hell out of me that there were no tablet netbooks on the market, though it could plainly be done. End user accessible kits even exist for the ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=102 Salon.com is reporting on dozens of protestors having their doors broken down and homes raided by assault-weapon equipped SWAT teams in the leadup to the RNC. Two or three times a week my drive to work in Nepal is marked by dozens of policemen armed with bamboo poles, assigned to ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=95 [caption id="" align="alignright" width="337" caption="Counterstrike and Jagermeister - Together forever"][/caption] Hit five liquor stores this afternoon to finish my liquor cabinet. Already had a scotch-for-company and some red label Johnny Walker that I wouldn't have to feel bad about using in mixed drinks. Already had my Kaluah and, though I could ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=89 http://badbarr2008.com/ http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080606/0136491330.shtml The libs aren't even running a libertarian (small L) this year? So which of these three folk who want to strip away my fair use rights am I supposed to vote for again? Bad year for IP counter-reform. Bad year for privacy rights. Bad year for consumer rights. Bad ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=79 The entire technical community needs to be a great deal more careful and cautious about promoting OpenDNS as a cure-all for security concerns in DNS. I used their service in the States for quite some time, and, while there were several major problems, it actually would have been an adequate ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=69 As a libertarian I really don't care if most of the workers of the world want to unite. That said, I do suddenly find myself a dues-paying union man. This May Day Labor Day, I suppose I am now obligated to post something that can help bring up the downtrodden, ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=40 Just a quick note - I just saw the much anticipated Hillary Clinton speech, and I must say, that was the most unprofessional, poorly written mess of a speech I've seen in a long time. Everyone's hero Mike Gravel could have done better. Did anyone else notice how it turned from a ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=29 "Russia says the West badly undermined its own arguments for the sanctity of Georgia's borders by supporting Kosovo's declaration of independence from traditional Russian ally Serbia in February." Makes ya feel all chuckly, don' it? It would be ever so much more cool now to spend time in Kosovo or Abkahzia ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=23 Joe Biden's pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record I'll be shocked if this news breaks outside of technical circles, but at least there's some vibrant discussion on CNet, /., et al about this man's frequent attempts to do substantial damage to our basic fundamental human right to privacy. Any chance at all ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=21 http://lightintheattic.net/mingleforfree/ I'm not normally a huge hip-hop person, but I was introduced to a new scene with several creative, original lyricists that are well worth your attention. What did the trick was having the track "45" by The Saturday Knights, bundled on an old 512MB RCA MP3 player w/free eMusic subscription. ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=18 (Major Update: Amazon suddenly cut off international IP address access to their store, including from countries that lack separate Amazon storefronts and including military and aid workers, and right before Christmas. If only I'd seen it a week earlier: Could and would have shifted $1000 of my gift spending elsewhere. ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=9 Obama's choice of veep is far from comforting. An active opponent of our basic fair use priveleges, Senator Joe Biden introduced and actively promoted legislation that would have criminalized far more than the already-rather-wretched Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1996. The "bill would [have? - is it dead?] make it ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=10 NTC still hasn't responded to any of my concerns or met the relatively simple http://www.doxpara.com test. It's gotten so bad that I'm seriously considering punking down the cash to buy dedicated VPN hardware here and in the US, but that doesn't help everyone else stuck behind their proxy and broken DNS ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=8 Retailers have apparently been rationing gas for a year or two, as a result of the Nepalese supplier's inability to break free of government regulation & fear of civil unrest to price their product properly, enabling them to pay their own bills.  It's a bit of a mess - What ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=7 NTC is ignoring repeated emails on this subject for two days, after the bug's been thoroughly beaten to death in the technical and even popular press for three weeks straight. Even worse, I've seen some evidence that they may already be getting hit by this attack or another type of ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=6 Summary: Nepal Telecom provides a decent, though not exemplary ADSL service, but compromises user security by running DNS servers prone to cache poisoning and a presumably equally obsolete Squid proxy that there is no way around, short of using a VPN from off-network. Update: Obviously I've had further issues with these ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=3 I'm here in Nepal. A month after arrival I'm still living off of the loaner stuff that was in the house before I moved in and the ~500 pounds of stuff we shipped in via air freight and carried on our backs, and bought here. That said, though, it's turning ... http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=1