The other day I was tracking my diet for a couple of days, and discovered some big deficits of certain vitamins.

A friend of mine, Dr. John Elloway, is a wellness doctor. I asked him for his opinion on vitamin supplements. Does he think vitamin supplements are useful, or are they a bunch of hype?

He said he feels they are very useful. The vitamins we have the most problem not getting enough of are:

• Vitamin A
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin E
• Vitamin C

I asked him what he thinks about the U.S. RDA numbers for vitamins. I've heard that they are set just above the minimum to keep you from getting diseases like scurvy, but not high enough to give real health. He agreed.

What about vitamin B-12? Dr. John said that is very important for vegetarians and vegans to supplement.

I told him I had some trouble finding a vitamin supplement without extra iron. He asked if I cook with an iron skillet. Cooking with an iron skillet is a great way to end up with extra iron in the diet!

He takes 1000 mg. a day of Vitamin C, 1000 mg. of vitamin D. He said we have a problem with having enough vitamin D because we don't get enough sunlight.

Dr. John said he had learned about the importance of vitamin supplements from watching a friend of ours, Dr, Merton Shelton who lived into his 90's and was a big believer in taking vitamin supplements.

Hmmm... Almost a year since my last blog posting in this space. That's the problem with having too many places to post things at.....

What have I been doing in the last year?

• Learning how to make beads and glasswork, lampworking, and when they don't turn out right, melting them down into marbles!
• Doing further development on the Hivewiki software. It's now running on another server also, with a more up to do date version, Webmill.us.
• Reading books:
  • Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich - Working on cliff notes and a wiki version of it
  • Journey Round My Skull - Story of survivor of one of the earliest open brain surgeries
  • Do Cats Think? - Delightful book that answers "Of course they do!"
  • Health Power - Health By Choice, Not Chance

Think I've finished some others recently too, have to come back here and update the list.

Yesterday I encounted a foolish deputy at the Napa County jail who recoiled in horror when she saw me carrying a Libretto laptop.

"Is that thing wireless?" she demanded.

Me: "Oh no, of course not..."

Dopey Deputy: "Those wireless ones interfere with our radios!"

What a moron. The odds of that happening are about -3%, that is, less than zero!

Many ts:police departments have welcomed wifi as part of their operations, they are not pretending there is an interference risk.... Michigan prosecutes man who used free cafe wifi from his car.... New York county makes it a crime for businesses to have an unsecured wifi connection

In Japan, someone is going around selling baby lambs to celebrities by convincing them that they are miniature poodles. A celebrity was embarrassed on TV when she complained that her new puppy wouldn't eat dog food, and wouldn't bark, and was informed on the air that her new "puppy" was in fact a baby goat.

What's next:

• Muscox being mistaken for Giant Saint Bernard?

In a search on Amazon using AWS or the Amazon website itself, for

    web site content

Link #13 is:

The Longing (2003) Plot Synopsis: Cyrus, Tim and Erik were high school buddies and meet again ten years later. They spend the summer together in Brazil. All of them are occupied in dealing with experiences from their past but new developments make them face their inner conflicts and their friendship with each other. Plot Keywords: Male Frontal Nud?ty | Homos??ual | Murder | Nud??y | Redemption | S?x | G?y | G?y Interest | G?y S?x | Cybers?x | Search For Parent | S?x On The Beach

What in the blazes does this have to do with website content? How did this happen?

I am very disgusted that AWS would return such an obviously out of place piece of garbage in the middle of a site about web design! What do I need to do to filter such trash out of the results I am getting from Amazon? I am trying to run sites that are family and child friendly, not sites that push this kind of stuff in people's faces when they aren't looking for it.

Even more stupid, this garbage outranks Net nanny. Here is the AWS descriptions in order for this search:

The Longing Jürgen Brüning $19.99(USD) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ready for an admittedly tawdry but s?xy melodramatic romp through sun-drenched Brazil with two h0t men? Does Saved by the Bell s A.C. and Zack locking l??? and l???? on a white-sanded beach turn you on? (Editor's note: Yes I obscured a couple of words. The actual description is about twice as long and much more graphic.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net Nanny 5 Web Site Filtering Blocks Adult Content $39.95(USD) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Filters allow you to block objectionable material on the Web, while enabling access to everything else. For parents, this means you can reliably manage what Web sites your children see. Kids need to be able to access much of the Web for its informational, educational and entertainment content. However, a lot of sites out there are inappropriate and potentially damaging for children, featuring illicit content or promoting hate and violence. Get a monthly updated block list of inappropriate Web sites. Know exactly what your kids can and cannot see. Fully view and edit block lists. Create a "whitelist" of certain Web sites so that only those sites, and no others, may be visited or viewed. Create keyword lists to filter out inappropriate, vulgar or sexual terms on Web pages, in chat rooms and in emails. Use pop-up blockers to keep your screen from filling up with advertisements from adult sites and other over-zealous advertisers.

Maybe someone has an idea how I can run AWS search results through Net Nanny to keep my sites from displaying this trash and getting banned.....

Jonathan Nolen quotes from an article about the iPhone and the luxury of having Cingular service to go with it. being like an offer from a mob boss that you can't refuse...

We used to call an old boss by the nickname The Codefather. If anyone we gave a demo didn't get the point of our product, or they didn't immediately tell us it was the greatest thing they'd ever do, I'd put on my New York underling accent and say....

Eh Codefather... They don't just get it.... You want me to whack em'?

Another of my contributions to marketing in that company was inspired by Cool Hand Luke Anyone who doesn't get the point of our product, or the value of our patents, will spend the night in the box.

Cool Hand Luke Cool Hand Luke Soundtrack

BTW, my cell phone carrier is Splint, the crippled cell phone carrier. I'm surprised more people don't refer to them in that way. Back when Borland had a word processor called "Sprint", all of us in QA nicknamed it "Splint, the crippled word processor".

More IPhone stuff in tech stuff space...

(Trackback on typepad seems broke tonight, so here's another linklink)

The woman in question, Ms Lina Joy, 43, was born Azlina Jailani to Malay parents and brought up a Muslim. In 1998, she converted to Christianity and changed her name.

But the National Registration Department here refused to reflect her change of religion in her identity card.

Here appeal went all the way to the Malaysian Federal Supreme Court 3 judge tribunal ruled along religious lines, 2 to 1 against her, saying that she must go to the Syariah Courts for this issue. More on malaysia:Malaysia's Civil Federal Supreme Court Hands Over Non-Muslim to the Religious Syariah Courts.... malaysia:Malaysian Lina Joy and the Malaysian Federal Supreme Court Decision and the issue of Jurisdiction...

Today a telemarketer called me from "Doctors Group", (732)242-6502, trying to schedule me for a Chiropractic screening. After having fun with the telemarketer asking her what movie was he screening, I asked her where was the doctor located, since I didn't recognize the 732 area code. I learned a lot about geography today, including new states I didn't previously know about (like Cincinnati), cities like Petaluma being moved to those new states, and more?...

New telemarket:Ideas about how to deal with telemarketers...

See how loud you can get them to talk. You have to lead them on like you want their service, then have trouble hearing them and ask them to speak a little louder. If you're really prepared, you can pretend you are adjusting your hearing aid. Do this by having a discarded hearing aid handy, and turn up the gain so it makes a feedback whistle, then place it next to the phone receiver. See how much longer you can get them to continue talking to you while they have to listen to the feedback.

Goal: Get them to talk so loud that they disturb the other telemarketing calls in their office....

Last night, (June 30, 2007), Art Bell announced on his radio show that Walter G. Haut, the Air Force public information officer who handled the Roswell UFO crash incident, had left an affidavit in 2002 to be opened after his death, that would set the whole Roswell issue straight. Art Bell was interviewing the author of the a book [Witness to Roswell], by Thom Carey, who printed the affidavit in his book. Art Bell drammatically announced he was going to read the affidavit, (without announcing how he got it, after "the break"), after asking Thom if he knew Walter Haut well enough to verify the authenticity of what Art was going to read. Thom said he could.

It turns out the alleged affidavit has been on the internet, as well as in Thom's book. I annotated a copy of Walter Haut's 2002 affidavit with some additional notes. I discovered that this is not Walter's first affidavit. Walter Haut also made an Affidavit in 1993 which was published in 1994 book Roswell In Perspective.

I put together a comparision of the affidavits, and discovered they were contradictory. I invited Art by Fast Blast to challenge Thom with it, but Art didn't chose to do so. Art's mind was already made up that this was the "proof" he had been looking for. Art said the story was finally breaking all around the world, eventhough Haut had died in 2005, and the 2002 affidavit had been released months ago. Art continued to muse about the slowness of the media throughout his show last night.

Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60-Year Cover-Up Thomas J. Carey $14.99(USD) Witness to Roswell will hold you spellbound as you read the actual eyewitness testimony to an amazing event; the recovery of a UFO in 1947 just outside of Roswell, New Mexico. Witnesses will not only reveal that the alien crew were placed in body bags and packed in dry ice, but most astonishing of all, that one of them survived the crash. Witness to Roswell exhaustively presents accounts of witnesses to the crash, the military containment and recovery, the high level of security surrounding all phases of the cleanup operation, deathbed testimonies, sealed posthumous statements, and the extreme measures the U.S. government has taken to prevent people from telling the truth. You will be shocked to learn that: *The Air Force used death threats against civilian eyewitness and their children to silence them. *The Air Force turned a small New Mexico town upside down and inside out...in search of a weather balloon? *The Air Force's next "official" explanation for Roswell will be its fifth! *The true number of witnesses supporting an extraterrestrial event at Roswell versus those favoring the Air Force's balloon explanation. Hint: It's like comparing the Empire State Building to a low-rise. Witness to Roswell asserts that the truth cannot be forever suppressed: An alien vessel really did arrive, bodies were recovered, and they were not from here! Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60-Year Cover-Up Thomas J. Carey $14.99(USD) Witness to Roswell will hold you spellbound as you read the actual eyewitness testimony to an amazing event; the recovery of a UFO in 1947 just outside of Roswell, New Mexico. Witnesses will not only reveal that the alien crew were placed in body bags and packed in dry ice, but most astonishing of all, that one of them survived the crash. Witness to Roswell exhaustively presents accounts of witnesses to the crash, the military containment and recovery, the high level of security surrounding all phases of the cleanup operation, deathbed testimonies, sealed posthumous statements, and the extreme measures the U.S. government has taken to prevent people from telling the truth. You will be shocked to learn that: *The Air Force used death threats against civilian eyewitness and their children to silence them. *The Air Force turned a small New Mexico town upside down and inside out...in search of a weather balloon? *The Air Force's next "official" explanation for Roswell will be its fifth! *The true number of witnesses supporting an extraterrestrial event at Roswell versus those favoring the Air Force's balloon explanation. Hint: It's like comparing the Empire State Building to a low-rise. Witness to Roswell asserts that the truth cannot be forever suppressed: An alien vessel really did arrive, bodies were recovered, and they were not from here!

Roswell in perspective Karl T Pflock

Here is an incredible story of a homeless fellow trying to go from living in a cave he created to living in an apartment.... Old habits die hard, it's impossible to take someone farther than they can see.... I can identify with parts of the story. I escaped California's sky high rental market for a few years by living in an RV. It was a fun time, nice to save $1000 or more a month. However, I still have a habit of scanning for good places to pull over for the night, or looking for electrical outlets in parking garages that I might plug into..... For someone suffering from mental illness, and drug addictions, they may have lost the higher brain functions that would allow them to override the animal like tendency to live according to instinctual responses.

Al-Qaida cited in persecution of 200 million Christians

A report by Britain's intelligence service MI6 reveals for the first time an estimated 200 million Christians in 60 countries are now facing persecution orchestrated, in part, by al-Qaida.

By Michael Rush Monday, June 4, 2007

The report has been sent to the pope and church leaders. It is the first time the secret intelligence service has shared its information with religious leaders.

"We do so because we believe the situation is extremely serious," said an MI6 source.

The report is based on details from MI6 agents stationed in the countries. North Korea is identified as the world's worst repressor of Christians. More than 50,000 Christians are incarcerated in work camps because they refuse to submit to the extreme views rigorously enforced by the country's dictator, Kim Jong-il.

An estimated 40,000 Christians are imprisoned in China for their beliefs. The MI6 analysis calculates there are some 70 million "active Christians" in the People's Republic, all living in a climate of fear because of their beliefs.

I broke a virtual sweat trying so hard to make Virtual Iron work. I've done virtually nothing else since I got home Wednesday night. I went beyond virtual exhaustion and worked throughout the night virtually until dawn since it was so virtually close to doing what I wanted. But after it made it too easy to really wipe out my boot drive (nothing virtual about the machine no longer booting), hours spent trying to get it to recognize a USB external drive for offline storage of images and then thinking I'd virtually succeeded before I discovered a 40GB copy taking over 3 real hours, a virtual eternity to be locked out of the admin interface waiting for that to finish,, and then failing, and marking several of my volumes as continuing to be in use, even after a reboot. The source drives of the copies were marked in use which made it virtually impossible to do anything else with them. As well as having it really lose the database of virtual machines several times. Did I mention the waste of virtually my entire boot drive when VI decided to only use 40GB, and leave the other 100GB empty for all virtual purposes? Trying to solve that was probably what lead to it eating it's own boot partition... So I've virtually reach the end of my journey with virtual iron.

Right now the entire first page of the Virtual Iron Q&A message forum is virtually filled with messages about my travels. http://www.virtualiron.com/fusetalk/forum/categories.cfm?catid=14
I kind of feel bad about doing that to those hard working folks, can't see how anyone would virtually dare try their stuff now if they first see the message forum. But maybe I'll save some other poor soul from treading into the area where there be dragons and things. Their system is not for the faint of heart.

I gave them the benefit of a lot of doubt, several times during the ordeal I said "I'm going to stick with these guys no matter what." A second wipe of my boot drive cured me of that virtual insanity....

Maybe I'll get another box in a few months and give their stuff another try. I really hope they can succeed, I look forward to trying them again.

• More in ts:My Virtual Iron Questions, April 2007, and ts:VMWare virtualization notes