The music industry considers Michele Scimeca a pirate. The Morris County mom has her own term for record executives:

Racketeers.

In what legal experts described as a novel strategy, Scimeca is citing federal racketeering laws like the one that jailed mob boss John Gotti to countersue record labels that accused her in December of sharing some 1,400 copyrighted songs over the Internet.

The Rockaway Township woman, who claims she was targeted for her teenager’s school research project, is among hundreds of individuals sued by the music industry since last summer. Another 531 computer users were sued yesterday in “John Doe” suits filed in Trenton, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Orlando. […]

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Saw The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra with the SNFC last night. The movie was awesome, and it is highly recommended… It’s one of those films which will infest the world with new catchphrases only used by the elite who have seen the film.

I’m back in NJ now, still haven’t heard anything regarding the job at Goodrich, but it’s still pretty soon after… They might have even had today off for the holiday.

The other day I asked my father to turn on my Mac back at home so I could grab some files off of it for my job interview. I grabbed the files, and was about to shut the machine back down when I decided that it might be a better idea to try and put it to sleep, and then set up Wake-on-LAN so I could bring it back when I needed it. I installed a VNC server on the machine so I could access the GUI. I found a simple Perl script that takes a MAC address as an argument and send the “Magic Packet” there to wake the machine. I tested this and it worked like a champ.

For the past few days I have been firing up a VNC client to put the Mac back to sleep, since I couldn’t figure out a way to do it from the command-line, but today I found this utility which does exactly that. So now I can wake the machine up and put it back to sleep from the command-line, which is pretty nice.. I wonder if my Mom, who is probably sleeping in my room back home, thinks the machine is possessed?

So that, combined with SSH tunnelling, gives me a secure way to access both my workstation and the webserver running on my TiVo (so I can schedule recordings and review what it has recorded, in case I want to delete any of the programs).

Does anyone know of an RSS aggregator for Windows that is comparable to NetNewsWire on the Mac? I am currently using SharpReader and it feels kinda hokey..

1. Are you superstitious? Not really, but do obey some common protocols of superstition (knock/touch wood, etc). But even though I participate, it is more for social reasons than actual belief.
2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition? My mother works in a psych emergency room and she says the crazies really come out on a full moon.
3. Believer or not, what’s your favorite superstition? Friday the 13th, just because everyone starts acting retarded.
4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual? I don’t really believe in luck until things have been going shittily for me for awhile… :)
5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not? Not in the least. So the position of the planets/stars has an effect on your fate when you are born. The gravity of the body of the doctor delivering you is stronger than that of even the closest planet to us. If some astrologist can prove that some force other than gravity is effecting us, I might give them the time of day (although I’d still call bullshit).

I’m still really wound up from my interview over at Goodrich. Things went well, as far as I can tell, so now I just have to sit and wait to hear from them. I interviewed with 5 people, including Garrett and Steve Schaffer, who I don’t really know that well but worked at RIT on SOFIA with , , and before I started my co-op there. It’s one big happy nepotistic family (at least I hope it is.. :P). In order to get this job, however, there will be very detailed reference checking, so those of you who I have worked for/with, don’t be surprised if you are contacted.

A job would be really, really good right about now.

I simply am unable to comprehend the current debate over Gay Marriage. Here are my incoherent thoughts on the subject:

First of all, I’d like to make my position on the subject clear. I could care less what two consenting people do with their genitals/lives. Happiness is tough to find, and if you find happiness in the arms of a member of the same sex, more power to you. Do I get a bit weirded out when I see two gays/lesbians making out in the subway? Sure… But that’s my problem, not theirs, and besides, I also get weirded out when two heteros are making out in public…. Public Displays of Affection are always awkward for everyone but the two people engaged in them. But lets get this train back on track.

Do I support same-sex marriage? Of course. There is no reason why a segment of the population should be outcast and ostracized.

The Children? What about the children? Well, if you ask me, I can’t see how a gay couple could possibly do a worse job of raising a child than a hetero couple, and two average gays could certainly do a better job than an orphanage. There are plenty of orphaned kids floating around today, and plenty of gay couples looking to raise them. How could a couple willing to take in a child do a worse job that one who concieved one by accident in the back of their Ford Fiesta?

The Sanctity of Marriage? Come on, the divorce rate is astronomical, I think the entire concept of the sanctity of marriage is pretty tarnished already. If marriage was simply a religious concept at this point, then this would be a non-issue. But there are so many advantages and laws set up to protect married couples that the religious and public concepts of marriage are intimately intertwined nowadays. If the Catholic Church doesn’t want to recognize gay marriage, that’s their deal, but the government should have to. Anything less is bigotry. What about two atheists? Are they allowed to get married? Of course they are, so why not two guys/girls who genuinely love each other?

Just the notion that Massachusetts and the US Government are considering their respective constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage (I’m sorry, to “define marriage as that which is entered by a man and a woman”) is nauseating. How can our lawmakers possibly think that it is OK to explicitly deny rights to a segment of the population? I just hope that the public isn’t as ignorant as our lawmakers..

Yesterday, before going to Cambridge, I painted ’s “closet” (it isn’t actually a closet, but I can’t think of anything else to call it, so it’s a closet -- It’s the big open former doorway to the right of the picture). She mentioned that she really wanted to have it painted so she could put some stuff away, so I figured I would take care of it. I have never really painted anything before, but I just guessed at the process and it came out pretty well. I am not painting the trim, though, so she can deal with that. :P She didn’t have a roller pan (well, she had one, but it was being used to catch water from the still-dripping radiator), so I just used a brush. Needless to say, she was pretty excited when she got home from school yesterday (I wasn’t here, but she called me).

Today, I did the same for the hall, which was a bigger area but seemed to go a bit faster (probably because I optimized the process a bit more). I also fixed the mounting of her intercom panel, which was barely attached to the wall. Now she has a ton of trim to work on, but that seems pretty straightforward, if not more tedious.

I have that interview tomorrow, which is for an aerospace company, and the job sounds pretty cool. Apparenlty there aren’t many (any) other people interviewing for the position, and there are multiple positions open, so hopefully my chances are good. It probably helps that the first person I am talking with tomorrow is Garrett. :)

I’d personally like to thank the White House’s Video Pool for the hearing test.

In other news, I have an interview tomorrow morning in Lexington, hopefully that will go well. I also need to see this movie.

I have a copy of the book that I have yet to read, but many of my friends really enjoyed Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. While the meta-idea behind the book (retelling of a popular story from a different angle)doesn’t appeal to me, so many people have recommended the book to me that I decided to read it. Unfortunately, the book has sat on a shelf for over a year now.

There is a new broadway musical based on the book.