Congratulations Minnesota! May 13, 2013
Posted by truthspew in Uncategorized.Tags: Delaware, marriage equality, Minnesota, Rhode Island
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Now the Senate has approved equality and it’s on to the Governor’s desk for signing into law. Marriage equality that is. The State of Minnesota becomes the 12th state in the nation, behind Rhode Island and Delaware in granting full equality to all it’s citizens in matters concerning marriage.
It’s a fascinating time. For example, I never thought we’d see equality come to Rhode Island but it did. And then Delaware and now Minnesota! Three states in ten days. How’s that for something that will leave the bigots smarting. And as well they should all have a major case of the sadz! I want to see Brian Brown with tears in his eyes because his bigoted view of the world is rapidly become archaic.
With the RI Senate passage of Marriage Equality I wonder what the bigots think now April 24, 2013
Posted by truthspew in Uncategorized.Tags: bigotry, marriage equality, Rhode Island
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For instance, I did email my condolences to Christopher Plante, the head of the RI NOM. I was very nice about it, if maybe a little passive-aggressive but I couldn’t help myself.
And to Bishop Thomas Tobin – must suck to be him right now. His Catholic dogma doesn’t hold sway any longer.
And to his lackeys Rev. Bernard Healey and Rev. John Codega – they must be smarting a bit right now too. Good,
And to the various and sundry retards who testified AGAINST marriage equality, a great big FUCK YOU to all of them. It’s been a long ride and a lot of people deserve the utmost derision.
And Senate President M. Terese Paiva-Weed – she actually allowed the bill to come to a vote. Interesting, I wonder what House Speaker Gordon Fox held over her head in order for her to even let it come to a vote? I’ve long advocated he play hardball with her until she came correct. But alas, even though she allowed the vote she still voted against it so deserves a proper ration of shit for that.
All in all, it took longer than I expected but RI will have true equality in marriage. And the bigots can’t say a damned thing about it now, except to cry over their breakfast toast. I’m waiting to see the photo of NOM’s Brian Brown with tears in his eyes.
Champions of Marriage Equality in the RI House January 27, 2013
Posted by truthspew in Uncategorized.Tags: Gay rights, marriage equality, Rhode Island
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I’ve already put up the Rogues gallery but I thought it would be a good time to highlight the people who pushed the bill forward:
Speaker Gordon Fox
Judiciary Chair Edith Ajello
Representative Frank Ferri
Representative Christopher Blazejewski
Representative Art Handy
Representative Teresa Tanzi
THe Entire Marriage Equality Debate and Vote on 01-24-2013 January 25, 2013
Posted by truthspew in Uncategorized.Tags: Full Video, Marriage Equality RI Debate and Vote, Rhode Island
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Here’s the entire debate – the bigots, the supporters and the ludicrous.
This one even includes the invocation. And the Representative giving the invocation, Martin, he voted in the affirmative for equality!
RI Marriage Equality Vote Highlight Reel January 25, 2013
Posted by truthspew in Uncategorized.Tags: marriage equality, Rhode Island, RI House passes marriage equality
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I’ll be posting a Rogues Gallery later on with photos of all the bigots who voted against us. You know, just so we know who are true enemies are.
RI House Judiciary Unanimously Passes Marriage Equality Bill January 22, 2013
Posted by truthspew in Uncategorized.Tags: marriage equality, Rhode Island
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This is interesting. Kudos to Speaker Fox for finally growing a pair. It took you a long time Gordon but nice to see the stars aligning.
Now I know there is one Tea Bagger on the committee – one Rep. Doreen Costa. But even she voted for it. That is remarkable. And a big thank you to Chair Edith Ajello. She’s long been in our camp but just came to the chair a couple years back.
Now on to a house vote. The bill has 42 co-sponsors of the 75 member body. That’s a full 56% of the body and I suspect the passage in the house will go even higher. Now it’s up to Senate President M. Terese Pavia-Weed to let it vote in the committee and schedule it for a senate vote.
RI Marraige Equality hearing to be held Tuesday, January 15, 2013 at 17:00 (5:00PM) January 11, 2013
Posted by truthspew in Uncategorized.Tags: gay marriage, Hearing, Marriage Equality Legistlation, Rhode Island, RI House, RI Marriage Equality, Same Sex Marriage
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That’s right, the house hearing on Marriage Equality will be on Tuesday January 15th, 2013 at 17:00!
In the timeless words of the Jackson 5, I’ll be there! It’s always fun ripping into the politicians.
I voted the 2012 ballot November 6, 2012
Posted by truthspew in Uncategorized.Tags: Ballots, Custom Language Ballots, CVRS, CVRS Improvements, Election 2012, Rhode Island, Rhode Island Secretary of State
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It was a monster ballot this year. Five pages though compressed on front/back of 3 sheets.
Some things to note about this election in Rhode Island:
The Secretary Of State’s web site is down. Their main site and their RSS feeds are completely fubar at this point. Now this is interesting because when I worked there we never had an outage on Election days. Of course we hosted all our web services locally. But the State of Rhode Island decided all officers should host on THEIR side. So when you go to http://www.sos.ri.gov you get the little spinning icon and the page never loads because the geniuses in DoIT didn’t load balance the main page. Ooops!
Went to vote around 9:00AM – there was a line of about eight people in front of me, and all eighteen voting booths were occupied. Took about ten minutes before I could get in a booth to vote.
I did note a few things though:
There seemed to be a fair bit of confusion over this ballot. Usually it’s a single sheet, sometimes duplex, but this time out there were three separate ballot sheets.
The other issue was language – and not foul language. I get kind of peeved that they have to describe the questions in both Spanish and English. The reason I get peeved isn’t because the Spanish is there but because we seem to be catering exclusively to those who speak either Spanish or English. It is the 21st century after all. It’d be a fairly simple matter to have a printer at the poll that could print the ballot in ANY language. The text doesn’t matter so long as the Approve/Reject fields are there. You could have a primary language field in the Central Voter Registry, and based upon that your ballot would come out in YOUR preferred language, even Klingon if you so prefer. Printers have gotten pretty fast and cheap over the years so it wouldn’t be a big stretch to do this.
The above would do two things. First it would eliminate 90% of the language problems. Second – it would mean in most cases you could vote the entire election on just one double sided ballot. And the serendipitous benefit, less paper!
They didn’t ask for ID – I just handed it to them and watched the slow search through the poll book. Here’s a suggestion to local canvassers, put indexing tabs on the pages. You know, Aa to Ab, Ac to Ae, etc. That way you can just look at the index tab, pull it open and find the name based on the first two characters of the last name.
Signed the slip, got my ballot and waited about a minute before an empty booth opened up. Now I had already researched the ballot before I went in so it was just complete the line, and so on. Took about 3 minutes to vote.
Did something I haven’t done in a long time though. When it came to the President, VP, state reps and senator, etc. I just ticked the Democrat box. Reason being the only office with any competition was for President. And of the seven candidates the most logical at this juncture was President Obama, and how the state reps had no opposition on this ballot, why waste the time ticking off each office.
Brain Tank Mini Con 2012 wrap up September 15, 2012
Posted by truthspew in Uncategorized.Tags: Brain Tank, Brain Tank Mini Con 2012, Geek Stuff, learning, Rhode Island
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Wow – this was quite an interesting mini-convention.
And yes, the above is my Staff badge from the event.
The Laser Maze was cool, so too the Lock Pick Village.
The presentations were fantastic!
Stand outs:
Evolutionary Bias in Social Engineering: An Anthropologist’s Perspective presented by Randy Rose. He went into some detail about genetic propagation and even touched on the fact that the game is rigged. Rigged because women are born with all the eggs they’re ever going to have whereas we men keep making more sperm.
I should have voiced that while men continue generating sperm, the quality of said sperm decreases with age which to me kind of makes sense.
Appropriate Technology – Making for Emerging Markets presented by Peter Haas was interesting too. He explained how he worked for a company that essentially translates inventions for use in the non-developed world.
Electronic Cyber LLC Hi-Jacking presented by mudsplatter told the tale of how his LLC got hijacked in Florida. An LLC is a Limited Liability Corporation. He also told us how using a fake ID (Which btw, are still fairly easy to come by!) you could take out credit in the corporations name to the tune of about $50,000, do it to ten companies and you’re talking half a million dollars. I did make the comment that this is a common method that can be used in just about any state.
Drink all the booze. Hack all the things. presented by Conrad Constantine. This one was an enjoyable meander through Conrad’s philosophy on things.
Dining Cryptographers: a protocol for anonymous message broadcast presented by Christian Ternus of Akamai was cool too. It had to do with passing messages among 3 or more parties without being detected. Neat little algorithmic explanation.
Information Security Awareness (In 14 Minutes or Less) presented by Roy Wattanasin. This one touched on several tenets of good infosec. After all this was sort of an infosec mini-con.
RFID for Idiots presented by mudsplatter – this one should scare the ever loving daylights out of anyone with a card that has embedded RFID. This includes things like credit cards, passports, etc. Of course there are ways of disabling the RIFD in a card – things like a camera flash circuit hooked up to a 13.56MHz transducer with the card underneath will work. There’s a slight chance of fire though. His best solution, locate the chip and put a nail through it.
Infrasonic Wave Resonance and Human Perception presented by Frank Feeley. Now this one dealt with low frequency sound at high power. The demo after the presentation was quite unpleasant. Maybe next year I’ll build my microwave zap gun and give the amplifier a good slug should he decide to present again.
“So you want to be a wireless hacker…” presented by Casey Dunham. This was an interesting talk about WiFi security. Please keep this in mind – you are responsible for securing your own network. Dunham brought up how he helps out businesses that he frequents when they have wonky WiFi security. But I brought up a point. I said that I knew that Cox and Verizon both push routers configured with easily crackable WEP out in the field. Dunham couldn’t give an answer to that – but I could. You have to EMBARRASS both Cox and Verizon somehow to get them to change their corporate screw ups.
All in all an interesting day. I almost can’t wait for next year.
And I have committed to the regular Brain Tank meetings, we’re going to drill on the amateur radio General and Extra pools. And we should all have Volunteer Examiner credentials. I did it, why the hell can’t we all do it, it isn’t that hard. When I think about this I have a very Borg like attitude – they will be assimilated.
