I don’t mean the biological process of change that is backed up by mounds and mounds of evidence. I am talking about the program Evolution. Since version 2, it has been a total disaster of a program. I’m an advanced user of Linux, but I also don’t want to spend a lot of time futzing with the basic software components I use. In no particular order, these are my gripes:

1. IMAP support is slow. My whole box would often be pinned trying to deal with 9 IMAP accounts. Thunderbird has no such issues.
2. More than one instance of Evolution can’t work from the same IMAP server without conflicts. Thunderbird has no such issues.
3. Everytime I start Evolution 2.2 up on my Fedora Core 4 laptop, it crashes when trying to access my exchange account.
4. Trying to compile Evolution 2.4 is more trouble than it should be, and there exists no documentation that outlines a surefire way to compile it.
5. The shared/public folder handling is retarded. It used to be in pre-2.x versions, that shared/public were just browsed like normal mail folders. In the new versions, there exists this retarded method of making shared/public folders your “favorites”. Guess what? It doesn’t handle sub-folders. Idiotic.

I’ve tried compiling, I’ve tried reinstalling components, and clearing my settings, all to no avail. Evolution is now a piece of garbage software, buggier than Outlook and way, way less stable than Thunderbird. Thunderbird has been my choice of mail program for the last year, because of its stability, clean features, and overall speed. Never say never, but I don’t forsee going back to Evolution. It’s grown old and bloated.

I’m sure some die hard Evolution fans could try to convince me that “this new version fixes this and that” but who cares. I’m tired of struggling with it. You want Evolution to become a top email client? Fix the bugs, and have the interface make sense.

Despite the snickers I suffered courtesy of my fiancee Kelly, GNR Tuesday was a big success. I listened to Appetite for Destruction, Lies, UYI I and UYII. Been a long time since I did a listen through like that.

To continue along the same lines, I’m announcing ‘Mats Wednesday to celebrate the music of The Replacements. If you don’t know who they are, you should. They were the best unknown band of the 80’s.

To celebrate the return of GNR, I’m listening to the entire GNR collection today.  Everyone should join me and listening to this great band!

While I’m days late to realizing this, but some new tracks from the upcoming Guns n’ Roses album Chinese Democracy have leaked. They sound like demos to me, but pretty high quality ones. Here’s a link:

http://centralvillage.blogs.com/cv/2006/02/gnr_leaks.html

About two months ago, I began a dieting experiment in an attempt to once and for all to lose weight and change my dieting habits for the best.  See, while I eat a vegan diet, a vegan diet still can contain junk food.  My vice were chips, both potato and tortilla style.  For some reason, I couldn’t kick the chip habit.  I would be fine for a few weeks, but then I’d suddenly just have to buy a family sized bag of chips and eat it all in the car ride from or to work.  It was pathetic.  I hid the habit from everyone, though I suspect my fiancee Kelly knew I was sneaking snacks.  Some days, I would actually eat two full size bag of Tostitos, at the same time downing a 64 ounce drink of diet Coke.  Why diet Coke?  I don’t know, maybe I just didn’t wanna be a total pig.

When I decided to go to TAM4 back in November of 2005, I promised Kelly that I would lose twenty pounds.  It only seemed fair.  She was totally understandably concerned about my weight.  It was out of hand and my habits were horrible.  On top of that, Kelly a couple years ago decided to get into good shape, and surpassed that, and is now in awesome shape.  She works incredibly hard at it and it was not fair to her that my health was threatened by my bad habits.

For the first five weeks of my attempt to lose twenty pounds, I lost exactly no pounds.  I still had the chip habit and it was killing me.  On top of that, I added Triscuits into the mix.  Nothing like the greasy goodness of a wheat cracker.  Finally, after one particular night, when I woke up with amazingly painful heartburn, a bloated stomach, and asthma so bad I felt like I needed a respirator, I came up with a loose plan to conquer my snack habit.

I took it head on.  I decided to revel in the snack habit.  The first Monday, i bought two bags of chips, and ate everyone before I got home.  The next day, I bought one bag, and finished it.  The next day, I bought a smaller bag, and finished it.  And finally, the next day, I bought a small snack sized bag, finished it, and never looked back.  I dropped my calories per day to 1,000 for a week, to shock my system a bit, and slowly increased the number of calories.  I overcame a week of hunger pangs, as my body adjusted to the lack of huge meals.

I started eating more salads and whole grained breads.  Portions were smaller, and I increased my intake of water.  I love ice water.  Nothing truly refreshes you better than a nice glass of ice water.  The first week, I lost about five pounds, all water weight I’m sure.  But since then, the weight has come off pretty regularly.  I made it through Xmas unscathed, and trips to Vegas and the Superbowl did nothing to stop my progress.

I now have very few clothes that fit me, as most every pair of pants I own are too big.  Most of my shirts are too big, and some shirts that seemed too short on me before, are plenty long now that I don’t have a big gut.  I’ve gone through three belts in the last two months.  I feel so much better, people are noticing, and I think I notice a different way people look at you when you look thin.  That’s right, at this point, even though I know I have more weight to lose, I’ve lost enough weight that most people would look at me and think, he’s on the thin side.

The reason I am writing this today, is that today marks the two month mark, and my total weight loss to date is…forty pounds.  I’ve lost forty pounds in two months, the most weight I’ve ever lost in a two month period.  I shouldn’t even say I’m on a “diet” too.  I’ve really changed my lifestyle.  I think differently about food and health.  I’m obsessed with reading labels and calorie counts.  I’ve learned to make some new kinds of food.  I experiment a lot with spices.  Most importantly, though, after two months, I think it’s fair to say I’ve broken out of my bad habits and routines with food.

I know Kelly won’t be thrilled to hear I probably spent $200.00 on chips in the last eighteen months, but today I had to come clean about it.  I’ve lost too much weight to try and say I wasn’t snacking before.   I had to get this all off my chest.  When she reads this today, I hope she accepts my apology for lying about snacking to her (and myself really), because she was my inspiration for losing the weight.

I love you Kelly, and I hope you have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

My last post was a slight departure from the normal posts that I have been writing. My fiancee Kelly pointed me to the “GOD or NOT” blog carnival, and after my recent experience at TAM4, I felt obliged to write something. Religion and the most recent attempts to put religion into our schools at the expense of science have been on my mind a lot lately. As a strong athiest and a die hard believer in the scientific process, it hurts my brain to see our country getting dumber and dumber about science, while China and India are stocking up on brainpower.

Right now, the focus of religious zealots seems to be the American biology class. However, as Phil Plait pointed out in his TAM4 presentation, it won’t be too long before the godiots start attacking other sciences. As his blog as pointed out, it’s perhaps already started.

My particular expertise in science is with computers and internet technology. I’m not sure I can imagine a way religious nuts could interfere with that, but perhaps I’m not being imaginative enough. If they do try to interfere, I’m afraid myself and other hackers will be at a big disadvantage. Not because they would be right, but because of the politically apathetic nature of hackers. When it comes to politics, most hackers get bored and move on. They’re not involved in the process, and they are very cynical about the whole thing.

When it comes time to lobby for legislation or policy, will there be the hacker point of view in the mix? Who represents us? Is there a PAC or 529 that represents hackers? Doubtful. Most technology is represented in Washington by billion dollar companies, who are only trying to protect their turf. Read Robert Cringely’s latest column to look at a current example. Think back about how many large companies want to outlaw reverse engineering, and then think how well armed the hacker side is.

Sure we have the EFF to a point, and a few other small groups who focus on free speech on the Internet. I’m just not sure they will be much use when Congress is trying to debate issues such as QOS TCP packet preference laws. We know how clueless Congress is. They’re a big joke. But hackers are going to have to get involved in the process or technology issues will be decided by the lawyer infestation in Washington who get their information from large corporations. The time is not to be so cynical as to not vote. It’s time to get informed, vote, and write your congressman.

In January of 2006, Americans were glued to their televisions, watching the coverage of twelve miners trapped in a mine in Tallmansville, West Virginia. Family and friends of the miners, as well as the national news outlets, all camped out at the Sago Baptist Church to do what many Americans do during crises: pray. The phrase “thoughts and prayers” went out over the airwaves a number of times. Relatives, friends, newsman, mining officials, and government officials could all be heard mentioning prayer. It would be preposterous to think that most people praying weren’t praying for them to be found alive. After all, we all know what happened, and we all know the reaction of loved ones when the truth came out. The shock and disappointment on the faces of the affected were broadcast for all the country to see. People prayed, so what happened?

As an atheist of course, the idea that prayer would work is ludicrous. After all, my wishes can not possibly change the course of events in nature. However, for religious people, prayer is very important. For them, it’s a way to connect to God, to get closer to the answers they desire. And during the time of the Sago mining disaster, it was a way for them to ask God to save the miners. Were their prayers answered?

I recently took the time to talk to a small group of Catholics over IRC to get a better insight into how they perceived prayer. The fundamental question I asked the Catholics, was by what mechanism did they think prayer worked? Did God only act if someone prayed? Did it matter how many people prayed? How much did it matter what the actual prayer was? The answers to my questions only led me to more questions. For example, everyone agreed that God didn’t need a prayer to act, because it was his choice. The word “choice” brings up some interesting connotations. If God needs to make a choice, that implies God doesn’t know everything. If God did, there would be no choice, right?

The very idea that God has to make a choice, also made me wonder if that meant God could be swayed by the number of prayers. In fact, some of the Catholics I talked to even brought up the word “sway”. Again, this goes back God being omniscient, which all the Catholics I talked to believe God is. An omniscient God, though, can’t be swayed, because the answers are always already known. The idea of swaying also brings up another very interesting point. The act of swaying God, implies more than one side, more than one thing being prayed for. If God chooses, then he’s choosing against the prayers of someone. Not everyone can have their prayers answered. When I asked the Catholics this question, the only answer they had, was that any outcome means the prayer was answered, that there was no such thing as a wrong outcome. I do not accept this. In a religion, where there are firm distinctions between right and wrong, I believe it’s incompatible to interpret every prayer as the “right” question.

At the end of my discussion with the Catholics, it was clear to me, that none of them really knew the answers to any of my questions. The thought of prayer was too ingrained in their world view for them to even confront the litany of contradictions that prayer brings. I concluded, and told them, that it was clear they didn’t know if prayer worked, but they all felt better thinking it did.

In the end, I believe that the Sago mining disaster puts the whole idea of prayer being effective on its ear. It was one of those events, where the sentiment of the nation was obvious, and the outcome was so tragically the opposite. It’s clear that prayer didn’t save the miners. If you’re an atheist, you know why the prayers didn’t work. If you are religious, then you must wonder if your prayer ever has an effect, or if God does what God does, and if you happen to agree with God, then your prayer might be considered “answered”.