Trayvon is a 17-year-old black boy. He likes Miami Heat, Blake Griffin, The Boondocks, Tu Pac, Friday, football and going fishing. He left his house, one day, in a predominately white gated community in Florida, to pick up a bag of Skittles for his baby brother. On the way home, he was shot and killed by a white man.

The white man, George Zimmerman, who shot Trayvon told 911 Trayvon was wearing a black hoodie and looked “suspicious”. Then, when he was questioned about the shooting, Zimmerman cited the “Stay Your Ground” law, which states that so long as you don’t pursue your attacker you may kill them without fear of prosecution. The problem with that is the man told the dispatcher he was following Trayvon. And then he shot Trayvon. Yet, he still remains free.

Miami Heat put their hoods up. Will you?

But guess what. So. Do. I.

I also have the right to hate him for whatever putrid thing comes out of his mouth, refuse to believe the lame-ass apology he made because his sponsors started pulling out and boycott any company or organization that supports him in any way. Just like you have the right to support his assessment of government-funded female birth control – though I don’t see Rush (or you) rushing (haha) to have Viagra removed from the list of government-funded medications.

(Hey, Rush! Doesn’t that make men on Medicaid or Medicare who are prescribed Viagra gigolos? So you, the taxpayer [ffs!], are already, in essence, a john. Worse! A john who patronizes male sex workers in dark alleys so no one will find out.)

Those companies and organizations have the right to choose to continue to work with him, and good luck to the ones that do. Maybe women’s rights isn’t as huge an issue as most of us think, and the movement doesn’t have enough supporters for the boycott of their goods and services to hurt their profit margin. But I’m going to guess by the number of huge companies that have pulled out, it is, it does and it will. If it hasn’t already.

So spew on, Rush. Keep being your usual self-indulgent, immature, hate-speech-slinging self. I think people are done ignoring the talk radio schoolyard bully and have decided to fight back.

<3
Over your bullshit since 1980

image by DonkeyHotey

Mostly because it needed to be immortalized somewhere besides TheStir, even if it is just on this itty bitty blog of confusion. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all lived this way?

Read the rest of the post. You’ll laugh your ass off. But, you know, don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m not paying to have your ass reattached.

This was the first time he said he was going to block me. The second was for my "questionable morals." Lol.

M and me are blocked by Adam Baldwin on Twitter. I shit you not. It happened awhile ago, and he deleted all his tweets to us before the end of the day. I’ve got all sorts of screenshots, but when it comes right down to it, it’s just not worth all the trouble. So, you get that one up there, and that’s it.

It was over that situation with the Marines, said to be members of an elite squad of the “best of the best”, who pissed on dead Taliban members, videotaped it, and then put the video into circulation.

Before I get into my opinion, let me remind you that my dad has worked for the government in some way, shape or form since before I was born. Two of the jokes-that-weren’t-completely-jokes most heard around our house, growing up? “I work for the government. I’m here to help you.” and “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” But his longest job – and probably what I’d consider his only actual career – was as a member of the U.S. Military.

I am a patriot in my own way. I love our country. I support our military wholeheartedly. I don’t hold against them the assignments they’re made to carry out, because I know what can happen to them – and in some cases, should happen, if we were to follow the full letter of the law as it was intended – if they’re insubordinate.

It’s not like when you ignore your boss at the office, or blow off your manager at the box store, or curse your foreman out at the mill. Soldiers can be issued a court martial for insubordination. At best, they’re dishonorably discharged if they’re found guilty, which can sometimes make it difficult to find a civilian job. Some insubordination warrants a stint in military prison, which I hear is even worse than a civilian maximum security prison. And other instances of insubordination are considered treason. You can be shot for treason.

I also support our military’s code of honor. Each branch says it a little differently, but when it comes down to it, they’re pretty much the same. Respect, protect and serve your country with honor and courage.

The U.S. Marine Corps claims to have three core values. They are honor, courage and commitment. These values are defined further in many places and many ways. About.com’s article on the Marines’ Core Values defines “honor” in great detail.

Honor guides Marines to exemplify the ultimate in ethical and moral behavior; to never lie cheat or steal; to abide by an uncompromising code of integrity; respect human dignity; and respect others. The quality of maturity, dedication, trust and dependability commit Marines to act responsibly; to be accountable for their actions; to fulfill their obligations; and to hold others accountable for their actions.

Respect human dignity. I’d say an honorable person would respect human dignity. And peeing on dead bodies, regardless of who they were when they were alive, is not, at all, respectful of human dignity.

The excuse I’ve heard most for those Marines is that we’re at war. Worse things have happened during war in the past (and still occasionally do) than a few dead bodies getting peed on. The opposing sides do everything in their power to debase and demean their enemies. It’s the nature of the beast.

Adam Baldwin says to protest the treatment of “barbarians” (he later started calling the Taliban “savages” because Roland Hulme explained that barbarian originally meant “anyone who is not Greek”) is to prove yourself an enemy of your country. M told Mr. Baldwin he objects to the Marines’ behavior because it goes against their code of honor and is disrespectful not only to the dead people whose bodies they desecrated, but also the country to which they pledged their service. So Adam Baldwin blocked M for “defending barbarians.”

When I pointed out that M wasn’t defending barbarians, but was, in fact, defending The honor code the Marines say they hold dear, he said he was blocking me for defending barbarians. He didn’t, though.

Oh, and by the way? Only people who are pro-choice would have a problem with what the Marines did. Yeah, I haven’t figured the connection out, either. That’s when Adam Baldwin told me he was blocking me for the second time. When I told him I was pro-choice. I think I’m misunderstanding how this whole blocking someone on Twitter thing works, cause I can still see his profile and tweets.

Thing is, Americans are supposed to be more civilized than that. Or, at least, that’s what we like to think about ourselves. Until it’s our boys out there peeing on dead bodies. Then some of us get all caught up in the, “Yeah! Piss on the Taliban!” aspect, and completely ignore the fact that we’d turn an entire country into a really big lake if they ever did the same thing to even one of our soldiers. Hell, if a lot of us had our way, our government would openly assassinate every adult member of Westboro Baptist Church, and all they’ve done is protest at soldiers’ funerals. If one of them peed on one of those soldiers, instead of just screaming propaganda and hatred, we’d probably take matters into our own hands.

Well, they probably do that and worse to our dead soldiers. It just hasn’t been publicized.

Doesn’t make it right.

We’re motherfucking Americans, god damn it. We always take the moral high road, building it as we go when we get into situations about which we’re unsure. But we can’t have our cake and eat it, too. Either we’re civilized and enlightened, or we’re not. Either we live by a “more righteous” moral code than our enemies, or we don’t. Either it’s okay to pee on dead bodies, or it’s not.

But besides that, a man in the military raised me to hold our men and women in service (and especially those who’ve earned the right to be considered “elite”) to a higher standard than I would the average Joe. He told me that anyone who joined the military could be trusted implicitly to look out for me and my countrymen. He told me military personnel worth their salt would never do anything to embarrass our people or our country. They are trained to be respectful of all people, including their enemies, and to maintain professionalism even in times of war. Maybe especially in times of war.

I wouldn’t exactly call peeing on dead bodies “maintaining professionalism.” Matter of fact, I’d venture to say peeing on dead bodies is decidedly unprofessional. And dishonorable. Not to mention inflammatory and embarrassing. I am humiliated by the actions of those Marines.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no respect for the Taliban. I don’t feel they deserve anyone’s respect. Their tactics (and many of their beliefs) are disgusting. I understand that they think we’re the terrorists, and I get that many of them are doing what they think is right. (That’s one of the biggest problems with fanatics. Their logic is fucked, and there’s no way you’re gonna change their mind.) But even if they’re right, that whole “Anyone not like me is evil!” mentality is something I’ve never been able to get behind.

However…

Whether or not the Taliban deserves respect is not in question. There are very few Americans who think the Taliban deserves respect.

What is in question is the behavior of our Marines. Was their conduct unbecoming a U.S. Marine?

Personally, I feel it was. I don’t care that we’re at war. I don’t care that I can’t fathom what it’s like to be in the thick of it. I don’t care that the culture on a Marine base is different than anything I’ve encountered. And don’t give me that shit about gang mentality. Those Marines knew what they were doing, and they thought we’d be proud of them.

I was proud of them. Veryproud. Right up until the moment they filmed themselves peeing on dead bodies and posted the footage online. And if that makes me a barbarian defender, then so be it. At least I can now say my convictions got me blocked by a celebrity on Twitter.

The craziest shit happens to me.

There is some information in the ZoneMinder wiki on compiling and installing ZoneMinder on Centos 6, but these instructions are incomplete, and will not work. After helping a coworker get it up and running, and finding little information out there for Centos 6, I decided to turn it into a blog post.

The following procedure will allow you to compile and install ZoneMinder 1.25 on Centos 6 64bit with all options enabled. All actions should be done as root.

Procedure

1] Install Centos 6 using the 64bit minimal install DVD. I highly recommend using the minimal install, but you can probably use disk 1 of the full install if you want.

2] Run updates:

yum -y update

3] Disable SELinux by editing /etc/sysconfig/selinux and changing the SELINUX line to disabled:

SELINUX=disabled

4] Reboot

5] Install RPMForge yum repository:

rpm --import http://apt.sw.be/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt
rpm -ihv http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm

6] Install needed dependencies:

yum install gcc gcc-c++ wget mysql-devel mysql-server php php-mysql php-pear php-pear-DB php-mbstring \
bison bison-devel httpd make ncurses ncurses-devel libtermcap-devel sendmail sendmail-cf caching-nameserver \
sox newt-devel libxml2-devel libtiff-devel php-gd audiofile-devel gtk2-devel libv4l-devel ffmpeg ffmpeg-devel \
zlib zlib-devel openssl openssl-devel gnutls-devel php-process perl-Time-HiRes perl-CPAN pcre-devel libjpeg-devel \
perl-Date-Manip perl-libwww-perl perl-Module-Load perl-Net-SFTP-Foreign perl-Archive-Tar perl-Archive-Zip perl-Expect \
perl-MIME-Lite perl-Device-SerialPort

7] Install Sys::Mmap module if you want mmap enabled. Also install MIME::Entity and X10 camera support, if desired. Just hit enter to accept the default for any question you’re asked. Do each of these separately, one at a time (ie, don’t just copy and paste the following three lines in one go, do one at a time).

perl -MCPAN -e 'install Sys::Mmap'
perl -MCPAN -e 'install MIME::Entity'
perl -MCPAN -e 'install X10::ActiveHome'

8] Download Zoneminder install:

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://www2.zoneminder.com/downloads/ZoneMinder-1.25.0.tar.gz
tar xzvf ZoneMinder-1.25.0.tar.gz
cd ZoneMinder-1.25.0

9] Run configure. NOTE: The database username and password specified in this step are also used in step 13.

CXXFLAGS=-D__STDC_CONSTANT_MACROS ./configure --with-webdir=/var/www/html/zm  --with-cgidir=/var/www/cgi-bin --with-webuser=apache \
--with-webgroup=apache ZM_DB_HOST=localhost ZM_DB_NAME=zm ZM_DB_USER=YOURZMUSER ZM_DB_PASS=YOURZMPASSWORD ZM_SSL_LIB=openssl \
--with-extralibs="-L/usr/lib64 -L/usr/lib64/mysql -L/usr/local/lib" --with-libarch=lib64 --with-ffmpeg

If you don’t want mmap support, add “–enable-mmap=no“:

CXXFLAGS=-D__STDC_CONSTANT_MACROS ./configure --with-webdir=/var/www/html/zm  --with-cgidir=/var/www/cgi-bin --with-webuser=apache \
--with-webgroup=apache ZM_DB_HOST=localhost ZM_DB_NAME=zm ZM_DB_USER=YOURZMUSER ZM_DB_PASS=YOURZMPASSWORD ZM_SSL_LIB=openssl \
--with-extralibs="-L/usr/lib64 -L/usr/lib64/mysql -L/usr/local/lib" --with-libarch=lib64 --with-ffmpeg --enable-mmap=no

10] Compile and install:

make
make install

11] Start mysqld for the first time:

service mysqld start

12] Set your root mysql password by following the instructions in the output:

/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'NEWPASSWORD'

13] Create your Zoneminder database and user, and give the user access to the database, and reload privs. NOTE: YOURZMUSER and YOURZMPASSWORD need to be the same as in the configure statement in step 9. When prompted for the password for root, use the one you set in step 12.

mysql -u root -p
create database zm;
CREATE USER 'YOURZMUSER'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YOURZMPASSWORD';
grant CREATE, INSERT, SELECT, DELETE, UPDATE on zm.* to YOURZMUSER@localhost;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

14] Load in initial SQL data for ZoneMinder:

mysql -u root -p zm > /usr/local/src/ZoneMinder-1.25.0/db/zm_create.sql

15] Copy the start script to /etc/init.d and configure it to start on boot. Also set other services to start on boot:

cp /usr/local/src/ZoneMinder-1.25.0/scripts/zm /etc/init.d/
chmod +x /etc/init.d/zm
chkconfig zm on
chkconfig mysqld on
chkconfig httpd on

16] Copy Cambozola jar file:

cd /var/www/html/zm
wget http://www.zoneminder.com/sites/zoneminder.com/downloads/cambozola.jar
chown apache:apache /var/www/html/zm/cambozola.jar

17] Edit php.ini and set:

short_open_tag = On

This is off by default.
18] Start Apache and ZoneMinder:

service httpd start
service zm start

19] Browse to your web interface using http://YOURIP/zm. You should see the ZoneMinder Console web interface.

Troubleshooting

If you are not able to pull up the web interface, check the following:

Iptables - Centos 6 comes with a restrictive set of iptables rules. If you’re providing firewall through some other method (ex, a hardware firewall), you can shut iptables off and prevent it from starting on boot by doing the following:

service iptables stop
chkconfig iptables off

If you need to use iptables for firewalling, edit /etc/sysconfig/iptables and add a line just below the line for port 22 (SSH) to allow web (port 80) connections:

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

Then restart iptables:

service iptables restart

PHP Short Open Tags – Check your /var/log/httpd/error_log file. If you have error messages like the following, redo step 17.

PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected $end in /var/www/html/zm/includes/functions.php on line 2437

After editing the /etc/php.ini file, you must restart httpd:

service httpd restart

Next Steps

Once you have the web interface up, you’ll want to click on Options in the upper right.

The System tab will allow you to turn on authentication. By default, ZoneMinder does not require any username and password.

Under the Images tab, click the check box next to OPT_CAMBOZOLA to use the Java streaming client for better refresh rates.

On the main page, click Add New Monitor to start adding cameras to monitor.

The best stories usually start out that way, huh? This time, it’s just a little funny.

So we’ve got this friend! He’s a year younger than me. He got married a year or two ago. Naturally, being the typical American couple, that means they’ve just bought a house and had a baby.

Our friend went to <unnamed box store> and had the baby seat sitting on the child seat in the cart. He made the common new dad mistake of putting items in the child seat next to the baby seat.

You know where this is going, don’t you?

So New Dad goes through the line, gets all his stuff on the conveyor belt, rings out and pays. He heads back out to the car, unloads the cart and picks Baby up to put him in the car, and there, staring at him from the place Baby’s seat just was is a bottle of mouthwash.

“I had to take it back and pay for it,” he said. “I couldn’t wash my mouth out with those lies.”

Okay, maybe you had to be there. I’m still laughing.

Even WIRED magazine was outraged at this bill, reporting:

Senate Wants the Military to Lock You Up Without Trial

…the detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn’t limited to foreigners. It’s confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas’ Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — “U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority.”

I get it. We all get it. It’s winter. You want snow for the holidays. And there are even some tasteful ways to put snow on your website. For example, Picnik’s got unobtrusive, non-page-killing snow on their homepage. That’s some nice snow.

FIX YOUR DAMN SNOW! Or take it down. Either, or.

I know it’s new. I know Google+ isn’t as big as Facebook. But honestly? I like it better.

But the +1 button isn’t just for social networking, y’all. It’s for relevancy in a Google search, too! Gimme one and I’ll click it. YOU’RE WELCOME!