Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Rush plays Pat Metheny Group "Forward March"

Just listening to Rush Limbaugh and he is recreating the failed presidential bid of Michael Dukakis. He uses the odd but funny music of a seemingly out of tune marching band. I bet very few people will recognize this song as Forward Mach by the Pat Metheny Group from the First Circle album! Obviously this was a throw away bit of fun for PMG but it is funny to hear it used in this new context.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Excused!

Ah, I dodged a bullet and was dismissed as a juror. I was certain I was going to be called for a civil case involving personal injury and a car accident.

Judge Miller of Montgomery County (sixth circuit) asked a bunch of questions. I responded to one regarding previous jury experience. I was also later asked about my previous work experience since I was listed as retired. I answered that I previously worked for Microsoft which elicited a remark from Judge Miller asking me if I was a member of the Fortune 500 richest people to which I said no. This seemed to amuse some of the other jurors. Afterwards, a couple of the jurors commented to me that they thought it was inappropriate for Judge Miller to make such a remark. I chalk it up to the general egotism of those in the legal profession such as Eliot Spitzer.

Jury Duty

So, today I had to report for jury duty. I was threatened with jury duty a couple of years ago but didn't have to show. This time I actually had to report. I did serve on a jury back in the 80's so I guess it was my time again.

At least the jury waiting room has excellent wi-fi so I brought my laptop. It allowed me an opportunity to test out some remote access stuff I have been working on lately.

First, I have recently setup a Slingbox solo player so I wanted to try that out. It works flawlessly and is really cool to be able to watch anything on my Fios TV service either on my laptop or my Palm Centro pda/phone running on the Sprint EVDO service.

My next experiment was to test access to my Slimdevices Slimserver using the secure SSH tunnel protocol. I had been playing with this for a while and was pleased with my results. I also have been working to harden the security to keep the internet idiots out of my network. I've been meaning to write up some tips that I have discovered along the way including the ability to run a session completely off of a portable usb stick.

Anyway, I am pleased to report I can easily access my full slimserver music system using the Softsqueeze java client and listen to streaming music on my laptop. The slimserver has the ability to transcode music files on the fly using the lame mp3 engine so you can accommodate limited bandwidth. Since I store all my music in lossless FLAC, this is a very nice feature.