Windows Mobile on the iPhone

I'm moving to Norway.

Home Sick

Things I've learned being home sick.

• Daytime TV still sucks.
• Windows XP will run under linux. So far everything works.
• Sometimes a stomach bug just makes all kinds of noise, makes you nauseous and then goes away after eight extra hours of sleep.
• Bend it like beckham has a story about a Muslim or is it Hindu woman who has to buck her family values forced upon her by her parents to play soccer. Does every western born movie that has women of Muslim or Hindu descent have to cover this same aspect of their lives? How many Christian women have mothers who attempt to run every single moment of their lives?
• Elle had this same thing Thursday. She is fine now.

I'm feeling much better. I checked work email and nothing. That worries me. I don't know if I should go ahead and wonder out to Faire or not. I mean, what if this is just the intro and the real whammy is headed my way?

Very Local News

• China wants to get out of the low skill low wage manufacturing market. It is the first sign of the end of all the jobs in the world going to China.
• More people died in the bombing of Dresden with conventional weapons than died in Hiroshima with nuclear weapons in World War II. Slaughterhouse Five. So it goes.
  
• I just heard some idiot on Talk of the Nation say "The country (U. S.) is a centrist nation." In other words, the center is the center and people not in the center are somewhere else. Dumbass.
• The U. S. is talking about talking to the bad guys in Afghanistan. It is inevitable in my book. It sounds like the art of paying people not to fight worked pretty well in Iraq. Maybe it will work in Afghanistan as well. It is cheaper than fighting them.

To precious to care

Sometimes things are very important to us. Some things come and go and no one cares.  Some things have false worth. I do not really need anything made of gold or diamonds. I do not need anything that regulated and made precious by someone for the sake of making something precious. I just don't.

Everything living dies. Nothing lasts. Even gold has a half life, it is just a very long time. Every molecule and atom will eventually decay in to something else. Change is the only thing guaranteed. Well, maybe not. Once you are dead, you are dead. No changing that.

Sometimes I mishandle my priorities. I take some things as precious, when I should not. I suppose every one does this. However, because I believe that all things are temporary, when I really want something to be precious, I push it away. I've done this all my life. I need to find balance. I need to understand that I can hold on to things for a while. Yes, everything changes. Everyone and living thing will eventually leave you if you do not leave them first. It is important to know this and understand that it is the time spent together that never goes away.

This comes from reading Slaughterhouse Five.

Snapshot

I call this one "Guy standing on top of a door".

Frigging drunks

Off in the weeds

Yesterday evening I chose to walk home on top of the canal across Westheimer from our house. It took longer, but I was able to walk down the other side and get out of all the traffic. I could hear the traffic just fine. It was not as treturous walking on the inside of the bank as it was on the outside. There are things to watch out for, don't get me wrong. The bank slopes in a lumpy fashion. It was clearly built in stages.

There is a huge aria to walk on inside. More in some cases than on the outside. The last bit of the bank before the water is extremely steep and dangerous, so I keep my distance. Once you fell in, you would have a difficult time getting out on your own. I remember walking over and looking at the water when we moved in. The water was higher and didn't look very deep. I'm glad I learned that lesson long ago. It turns out a foot in from where the water was at that time, it just drops more than five or eight feet.

It is a bit private over there and a bit scary because you could get mugged and no one on the street would be able to hear you haller or see anything. That goes for falling in the water too. I let myself picture camping back there and wonder if any one from the road would notice. If you kept the light down and had no fire, I doubt any one would know until they crossed the hill. It reminded me of a time when my family camped on the beach. It turns out that was  a very dangerous thing to do. We were blessed and didn't even know it.

This morning I walked on the very top of the bank. I could see in to the area I had walked the previous evening. It was still dark and the fog on top of the water was very thick. It was flowing in the breeze. It had waves and spikes moving like marching ghosts. None of this is visible from th erode. I felt just a bit privileged. My jeans are soaked because all that fog means a ton of moisture in the grass, which is about half way knee high.

My boots soaked through this morning. I swapped to my work shoes, but my pant legs are still wet. They will be for quite some time. Normally, they do not dry until after lunch at least.

Now I want to get back up there early in the morning to take some night shots. Not sure I have the equipment to capture the marching ghosts. Worth a try.

I had wondered why one particular part of the road always had fog before the rest of the area. Well, while walking on the top of the bank, I noticed that area drops about a foot or two overall. That is good to know. If the fog over flows right there first, so will any water should it come to that.

The fog had a different affect. It almost hid the fact that there is an area of water in the middle at all. I imagined someone running from the cops and taking off over the top of the bank from Westheimer. If their lights only briefly flashed past the level of the fog, they might be fooled in to thinking the ground was solid as their headlights continued down to the bank right in front of them. Then, the water might be hidden from sight because of high grass for just a second. That might be long enough for someone to cross it and plunge in o the water if they are in a great hurry. I shined my Maglite across the fog a couple times and it seemed feasible. Funny what you think of when walking in the cold clear, wet morning.

Very Local News

• Disney just released the first couple STD (Straight to DVD/Disk) Ferry videos. These feature Tinker Bell or is it Tinkerbell? Elle will be pleased. Nat will be pleased too.
• I know a couple of millionaires. New York is implementing something they call the millionaire tax. With the current economic climate, It will take a million dollars a year just to make ends meet.
• 'One minute how to' is a web page with micro podcasts that tell you how to do things.

Very cool bicycle stunts

I couldn't pop a wheelie. I couldn't ride in a straight line. I could barely get both wheels off the ground on a simple jump.

Broken box blues

I have a very low tolerance for broken operating systems these days. If a machine is broke and I can't figure out what is wrong in like half an hour, I rebuild it. Today, I had a box that would not boot all the way in Linux. The first error that I got was something about the inability to mount local file systems. I checked the fstab, I  booted in Knoppix and ran fsck. It found something small, but not the problem. I messed with some other settings. The machine took ages because of redundant BIOS bits.

By the way, my spell checker saw the word 'fsck' (file system check program in Linux) and promptly suggested the word 'fuck'. We are dealing with reality I suppose. It is a word and has a proper spelling.

I'm trying to think what this is a symptom of.

• Having a bunch of stuff to do.
• Knowing how to fix a bunch of things. Hitting the obvious bullets and giving up too quickly.
• laziness.
• Not knowing what I'm doing well enough to diagnose and fix the trouble.

None really hit the nail on the head. I think it was the best thing to do in this case to be honest. That error is at the root of  OS. I could boot in level 1 (the most basic machine level). Level 2 and anything above would blow a gasket. I could mount the OS and the root  (/) from anywhere except when booting Linux. When I tried an upgrade option, the installer for Red Hat told me the system had not shut down properly, even out of run level 1, which did shut down properly, but must not have thrown some switch somewhere that says "Hey, I shut down properly. Don't freak out."

We are finally getting to the point of automating this setup business. There was not even a real written document when I started. I managed that. Jake came along and automated several steps. The only trouble is one script does not fit all. It is a complex process to set things up on a network these days. I remember when it was Net/BIOS and an Ethernet driver.

Both the Linux (completely redone) and Windows (not touched) worked when I was done.

Then came a Windows 2003 server. I couldn't get the NIC working to save my life. Twice the recovery failed. I installed Windows from the top. No NIC. Can't figure out the name of the motherboard without tarring the box apart. Guess what I get to do in the morning.

Very Local News

• Rock-n-Roll can be ugly .. when done properly.
• I wore my Rolling Rock t-shirt today. I remember Jack commenting that he liked Rolling Rock beer may years ago.   My parents got me the t-shirt a long time a go when they visited my mother's relatives in Pennsylvania.
• Elle needs some dental care. The frigging rich-kid dentist is telling us she needs a crown on a baby tooth. I do not have enough money to pay for a rich kid dentist. The family will end up on the street if we have to pay for that much work. I'm not kidding. We shouldn't have paid $1000 for fucking dance lessons. We are going to loose everything if this doesn't get fixed.

Very Local News

• The news said the congress was about to take a look at the unemployment numbers. Hey, that's great. Congress doesn't want to really solve the problem. They are hooked on cheap labor same as the companies. Remember, the 6.1% that came out recently only covers legal workers. No one counts the unemployed illegal workers. I have a suggestion two.
• When people are found to have employed illegal workers, make the employers pay those workers back taxes.
• Put a lot of small companies out of business. Loudly.
  
• Prevent people from heiring legal employees after having employed illegal workers.
  
• When a company outsources a job, or could employ someone stateside, the company gets to pay U. S. income tax and social security on that job.
• Will cause the export of entire companies if not industries.
• Might lead to a Value Added Tax sort of structure. The U. S. doesn't want that.
  
• I ate mostly MREs accented with eggs and turkey bacon for breakfast. I feel great. Normally I have a standing stomach ache from all the great barbecue I wolf down over the weekend. It is good food, it is just a lot to meat. This Monday however, I was 100% in good shape. Nat and I finally got fed up with the bouncy air mattress and just slept on the cots. That was an improvement. This kind of worries me. I also had zero soda this weekend and one really good beer (thanks Adam).  I had a bout fifteen sips off different alcohols. People share. I can't be rood. I slept like a log and was ready to go Monday morning.
• OPEC is cutting back in order to jack up prices. Bastards. They are terrified of over doing it. In Brion, 60% of the price of fuel is tax and duty at the moment. OPEC, fortunately for us, cannot enforce its own rules very well. Every time they tighten the spigot, someone, if not every one, breaks ranks to make a buck. Now Russia and Iran are getting in to the act with natural gas. Europe is shaking in her boots. Trust me.
  
• There is more in the news (podcasts) about Africa every day it seems. Africa has always been a hotbed of triumph and conflict. Many of the stories are personal stories of tragedy. Some genuine horror has occurred in spots.  Some beautiful things have happened too. I'm not as interested in becoming outraged. I like listening to the stories about the politics that happen because it makes me feel better about the middle school crap that continues to flare in politics in the U. S..
• Dr Who was designed  by comity in 1963. It was purpose built for the audience at home on a Saturday night. Sometimes comities can work.
• 100ct08. What the hell does that mean? Oh, the tenth of October 2008. That makes much more sense. That is one of those things that can throw you when you are not expecting it.
  
• Got home at 20:15. For all the time I spent at work, I got little acomplished. I did learn how not to set up a virtual machine or two. Should have better luck tomorrow.
  
• Elle needs some dentle care.

Couple videos

A couple of videos of cops knocking the snot out of people acting like idiots on motorcycles.

Mongo road an elephant at Faire for the first time just today. Glad this came after the fact.

Faire 2008-10-26

Work was nuts Friday. Isn't it nuts every day? I'm not sure. I block it out when I go home and recall it when I get back to work. I find that things go more smoothly doing this. I took off early Friday afternoon. I had worked some extra and no one was really waiting on more for things. All my test boxes had been stolen by people. The one thing I was working on had hours of work left on it before I got to a good place. So, I took off.

Nat and I showed up Friday evening to a new and disproved camp site. Only the large was there and a bunch of land pimples. We ended up in Diz's tent. We need a new tent I think. Several pieces to it are missing. The large was not in it's normal place. We were just to the East. It threw off the entire weekend. Fair started implementing an old rule that requires people to show their tickets before being aloud to camp. It was a bit annoying,  but worth it. It keeps some of the carloads of people looking for drugs and to steel shit out of the campsites. Well, or the most part.

Friday Evening

We set up. I walked around the grounds once. We ate a bite from somewhere. The rest of the evening is a blur. People came in and out of the tent. We had some great talks of thing that have happened and some things that need to happen. Plans for next season, next week, next day. All blurred together. It was great.

Saturday

I ended up not warring garb. I still had a ball. I'm tired of warring the same outfit every time. I need to get some more cloths. nothing outlandish. Just some variety.

Went in Took a million pictures. Ken, Johny and Breanne were messing with people big time. Johny and Ken would round around and kidnap women from their group and ransom them off to th\e crowd. It was all in fun. Most every one took it in stride with a smile. Couple of serious concerned faces. Goodness it was fun.

Monica, Nat's mom, caught me and said hi for part of the two hours she gets to enjoy all of Faire. She works and only gets some time off while the haunted house retools for the more adult oriented show on the latter half of Halloween weekend. I feel quite important.

Saturday evening Was Friday evening all over again. The drum play outside the large attracted some jerks, but they were dealt with. More great conversations. My blog came up in conversation. Love that. We laughed at the pictures we all took.

Sunday

Fell out of bed. Declared that I was not going in, nor was I going to hurry taring down camp. I sat around, ate breakfast, got the car packed, was ready to snooze the afternoon away, and a bunch of friends of mine showed up at Faire and wanted to go play. So, I went in waring regular cloths for the second day in a row. There is a reason I do not go in on Sundays. I get tired quickly and basically waste a ticket. That happened again today except I did have fun with some work buddies. No pictures. Remember, I had packed the car already.

We went back to camp and entertained the neighboring group while tarring down the Large. We had more fun today than we have ever had before in my experience taking down a tent. We laughed and made references to cartoons and music. We told stories of past adventures among the group.

Pictures

Link to the whole batch

Off to bed. Showered and clean. Now we pass out and deal with the means of paying for Faire.

Shopping Carts

I always wondered how the shopping carts got so messed up. I mean, they are tubular framed cages for god's sake.

Very Local News

• Web 2.0 is dead. Long live Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is the whole blog, or user content driven area of the internet. It is dead because most every place you go on the net has incorporated some sort of user interaction because it works for getting people to turn back up.
  
• Russia, Iran and some other asshole countries are joining to gather in an OPEC-esk company full of assholes. We need to declare ware on OPEC and frigging take the oil. Ware for oil!!! War for oil!!!
• It has been seven years since the first iPod came out.
• One of the commenters said something I like on one of the podcasts today. If a company is too big to fail then it is too big to exist. it needs to be broken up. If we bail them out and let them merge, they will just get bigger and even harder to let fail. I like it.
• Parking garage Map. This one is the first floor map with all the entrances and exits.
  
  
• Parking garage Map. This one is the rest of the floors. Taken from the sixth floor. There must be laws that require thes things.
  
  
• South side map
  
  
• North side map
  
  
• Natalie (from work) brought her little one up to work for a little show and tell. Cute little guy.
  
  
• Broken revolving door. The baring was going out and the door was getting harder and harder to push.
  
  
• Swamp next to work. Every time it rains this thing fills up and stinks. It is a mosqueto trap as well.
  
  
• There is no map for the seventh floor of the parking garage. The elevator only goes up to six.
  

Shoot! SHOOT!!!

These have got to be contractors. The radio chatter just doesn't sound military enough. The names at the end are a bit hinky as well.

I remember some 100% civilian member of congress giving some person who represented Halliburton a trainload of shit about abandoning a truck that had a flat tire. Well, here is why you just might want to abandon a vehicle with a flat tire in a combat zone.

Very Local News

• The new kind of contact fluid works wonders. Too bad it is so frigging expensive.  I mean, it is like warring a new pare of contacts every day.
• OPEC is about to close the spigot a notch or two to prop up the price of oil. These people are not our friends. They are our competitors and we need to start treating them like revels. We can call allies, but every one knows we are all at each other's throats.
• The stock market plummets, gloom and doom. The stock market jumps, cushions optimism. The surprise will be a flat day.
• The powers that be are finally take more than the cost of food in to the poverty level. They will take in to account pharmaceuticals, school, transportation, rent and goodness knows what else.  The feds may not play along. Cities and states are getting in to the act. Who knows what will come of it.
• I have a buddy who is a prison guard here in Texas. Due to a recent incident where an unscrupulous guard obtained a cell phone for a prisoner who then threatened a state representative, there is a move on to make prison guards pat each other down on their way to work. ... I can just see my friend (Chris) having to perform this task. He will perform it professionally and with every consideration for security and privacy possible. I will giggle and point.
• Zero tolerance for contraband ... in prison ... on death row. I guess it depends on your definition of 'zero'. It is a bit vague. If I draw a zero on something will it be tolerated?
• Legacy Media is worried that Obama will not have enough time to spend all the money he has collected.
• Timothy Leery died of prostate cancer and had his ashes shot in to orbit.
• There is a to-do about McCain using come copy write protected material to prove a point.  YouTube took the video down,  but it is fair use. The story is about any threat of lawsuit causes material to be taken down. I can't blame ISPs to be honest. The story they gave was of a guy who had his own self created music on his own site having to fight an ISP to let him show it on the internet because he didn't have a lawyer to prove he owned the rights. Innocent until proven guilty does not apply to intellectual property.
• Winter is on the way. Tonight some rain storms will come through and bring with them some cooler air. Maybe very cold air for Faire. need to get my jacket ready.
• I am beyond sick of the election crap. Ads all over TV and the radio. Then you watch the news and they sit there and bitch about the ads and play them again. I'm sick of it. it is up to me to decide. I will make the decision five seconds before dropping the paper or clicking save or what ever the mechanism is when I get there.
• Got Windows XP running on my work Linux box using VMware. it works pretty well. It works so well that I'm having the exact same network issues on the virtual machine that I have on my real Windows box under my desk. Way to be accurate VMware. don't worry, all this is above board. Some of our customers use VMware. We need to know how it works with our stuff before they start asking heavy questions.
• Science Friday had a whole show illustrating how to convince skeptics that global warming really exists and that humans are at the root of it. The intro was all about "Why do people believe celebrities over scientists."  Things change. The Romans grew olive trees in England. Hey, it is almost a break from election stuff. It sounds a bit like they deliberately said "No references to the U. S. election."
• Streptomycin, the primary drug used against Tuberculosis, was discovered like many other antibiotics in dirt.
• Just thought I would snap this on the way through McDonalds drive through.
  

So tired

Came home, ate and tried to find some stuff I'm going to need for work. I got basically nothing done. I might have mowed or done something constructive. I can't keep my eyes open.

Story at Teatime

A motorcyclist who posted footage of himself on YouTube performing "lunatic and grossly irresponsible manoeuvres" at up to 130mph was today jailed today.

Sandor Ferenci, 28, performed wheelies, skids and raced on the opposite side of the road around Banbury, Oxfordshire, and then put the footage on the video-sharing website.

Ferenci, a carer, then inadvertently spilt the beans to police ab More..out the YouTube footage after being reported by a member of the public who saw him performing wheelies and other stunts on his Yamaha R6 bike on the A422 Banbury to Brackley road on June 10 this year.

When officers called at his home after the complaint, and before they had a chance to say anything to him, Ferenci asked them: \u201cIs this about the YouTube video?\u201d Police then discovered that he had posted the video clips of himself on the internet.

The footage, which was played to the court, had been filmed by a friend from various angles including from a footbridge. It shows the bike performing wheelies, wheelspins and skids, causing the tyres to smoke, the bike undertaking other vehicles and driving at excessive speed.

Brian Payne, prosecuting, said it was impossible to attribute an exact speed at which Ferenci was driving, but police have estimated he may have reached up to 130mph.

Judge Terence Maher - disqualifying Ferenci from driving for two years at Oxford Crown Court and ordering him to take an extended driving test before he is allowed on the road again - told Ferenci that he had carried out \u201clunatic and grossly irresponsible manoeuvres at considerable speed\u201d.

Sgt Bryan Smith, of Thames Valley Police, said: "It's important to qualify that we are talking about public roads and they are there as a transport network, not a race track or show ground.

"It's incredibly dangerous. A trophy video has been used on the internet and it could incite other road users to behave in the same way."

LiveLeak

We spoke of this video today at teatime. The big boss brought it up. Hope it's the correct video. It lead to a brief mention of the blog and a long discussion of jerks who have no regard for human life.

Hole

 

This hole is on the north of Westheimer. I cross the street now to avoid the mud pit that is a construction area that will soon be a set of apartments. I tried to use my walking stick as a scale. I have no idea what is in the hole so I could have electrocuted myself in the third picture. Didn't Think of that until I saw the picture. The first picture will tell you how frigging dark it is early in the morning. The cover is next to the hole. I tried picking it up to move it, but it is either heavy or the grass is holding it in place. This thing is right next to the road, but hard to spot unless you are looking for it. Imagine if a hole like this were in the middle of the road. It would be fixed in fifteen minutes.

I am going to forget about this hole at some point and break my neck. I just know it.

Watched Hopscotch

I forgot how good a movie Hopscotch is. It was made in 1980. It was all cloak and daggers then. Now it is all bits and bites. There was something so much more romantic about the old way of spying. That is why most new movies about spying are about the good old days. That and the freedom of Information act.

It would be so nice to be this good at evading the best efforts of society to get one's aim. It would be nice to have the knowledge to get away with it. To make it look easy. To laugh a bit along the way and to get the girl. I'm a very minor cog in a machine just like every one else I know. It would be nice to be this good. I'm far too loyal to ever know. To be honest, that is the way I like it. I prefer playing games that mimic reality to reality itself. I like my games and movies interesting and my reality boring. That is just me.

Firefox sucks

Previous post

I'm at the stage of having removed everything from Firefox. The jittery videos stuff still happens after the Firefox program has been up for a long time. The conclusion is that Firefox has a problem. You must rest it every couple of hours of heavy use. It does not survive being left on over night. There is a resource allocation problem. Upping the amount of resources is only a temporary fix. Now the waiting game begins. Waiting for a better choice to come along or for Firefox to get their crap together.

Oops

Now both fire trucks are wrecked. I remember a buddy of mine who worked in a steel shop working on a fire truck. He said they got to driveit around the parking lot and blow the siran. What had happened was rust and neglect to the body. They should have painted the truck many years ago. Now they were putting in some new brackets and a bunch of flat body panels, then painting everything bright red.

I used to live somewhere that had yellow fire trucks. I don't remember where that was now.

What a dumbass

I've read about the religious laws that govern Muslims. I may comprehend why a very few young men would want to go out in a bang feeling like they had done something for a cause larger than themselves. But this guy is probably sober. He has money in a country where even modest amounts of money will get you all kinds of goodies. Then, he acts like this. This is what happens when people consider life and living beings as disposable. Use one up and get another. It is sad.

Frigging Firefox

Keywords:

Sometimes Firefox takes a little half second nap ever about ten or fifteen seconds. This is annoying on its own, but when playing videos, it is a pain in the ass.

Click on a Flash video. YouTube, LiveLeak and any number of other places use these players. I've poked around on the internet and found that I'm not the only one who has this trouble. No one is doing any forensics. Here goes.

• Removed all the extensions I do not use every day.
• Removed noscript that allows you to not run script by default. You have to allow pages to run script one at a time. Saves some trouble over the long haul.
• Removed FlashBlock. Same as noscript, but for flash.
• Restart Firefox.
• Problem solved.

Not exactly. The problem goes away when you restart Firefox for a while. This means it is some kind of resource issue. Something gets tired of holding up its end of the log and shit starts sagging.

So, how do I know it is just restarting Firefox that fixed it? Because I put FlashBlock and NoScript right back in Firefox. Restarted and the problem is still gone. Bad news. It would be nice if it had broken again. That would have told me that one of those two extensions was the culprit and it would be little effort figuring out which.

I also removed Grease Monkey extension. I have in the back of my mind that this guy just might be the bad guy. I don't think so because it is a more rare extension and too many people complain about this problem.

I have not put Grease Monkey back on the machine. It is time to wait and continue with my normal hammer of the box until the problem represents. Then, run without one of the extensions and repeat. Then run without any extensions and repeat. Then Try a different browser. My God, this may stop me from using Firefox all together. Switching is not bad. Hell, I have IE 6 working to a point under Linux. Someone else did all the leg work, but I installed it and that counts in Windows.

Nat will love this

Natalie will get a kick out of this video. It looks like they used one of the many backside projection screens with a computer or video feed played in mirror. I bet all those projectors for sale at Dell and other places have that functionality. You don't even have to modify or play with the video.

Very Local News

• The U. S. Government is spending 10 billion dollars a week more than it takes in.
• Island stock market fell 77% a couple days ago. The international community worries Island will go bankrupt. The whole country.
• Today, was about to type in 'll' which is a short cut for ls -al?? in Linux. My left hand accidentally hit the control and I managed to find out that if you hit ctrl-l in Gnome Terminal, it performs a reset and clear. Funny how you learn things when you are not paying proper attention. This is a little thing. I might have found out the magic sequence that causes a black hole and swallows the Earth, but I didn't. There, I always knew I would save the earth one day. My life is complete.

Middle Class

The term middle class means you are caught in the middle when things go bad.
You are the one left holding the bag.
When things are good, you get too little to move up.
You are the one too rich to get help and to poor to wait it out.
You are the one who cannot afford the attorney to enforce your rights.
You hate taking hand outs because you know it was another middle class person who gave.
You work for your meals and the lazy winers get it for free.
Your kids want the new iPod and you worry about the water bill.
Everything costs more every year and your paycheck stays the same.
You don't have time for poetry.

Beer tax code, how tax breaks work

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.  If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:                                 The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.                The fifth would pay $1.                The sixth would pay $3.                The seventh would pay $7.                The eighth would pay $12.                The ninth would pay $18.                The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.                  So, that’s what they decided to do.                  The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.                  The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected.  They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men?  The real paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.  But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.  So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.                    And so:                    The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).   The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).   The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).   The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).   The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).   The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).                Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.                  “I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man.  He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”                  “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man.  ”I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten t imes m ore than I!” “That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man.  ”Why should he get $10 back when I got only two?  The wealthy get all the breaks!”                  “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison.  ”We didn’t get anything at all.  The system exploits the poor!” The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.                  The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him.  But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important.  They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!                  And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works.  The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction.  Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.  In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.                                   David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.                   Professor of Economics                   University of Georgia                  For those who understand, no explanation is needed.  For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.  Bottoms up! ChanceLitton.com

I love simplified examples like this. It makes you think. It makes me even more upset about people saying "Where is my tax break?" when they don't pay any frigging taxes in the first place. Wonder why the rich flea Europe? Wonder why shakes in the middle east only visit Europe and the U. S. and don't take up residence?

I found this bit of wisdone here.

Very Local News

• Had another UPS pow-wow at about 11:30 in the Target parking lot near my work today.
  
• Frigging SCSI drivers!
• So far so good on the new contact fluid. The hydrogen peroxide stuff really does work better. It is too expensive to use every day so I'll probably use it every couple of days. Of course, the little plastic bucket is $7.xx and the travel pack with two small bottles of liquid and one bucket and holder thing is $7.xx. Go figure.
• Went to get gas, eat some Cony Island, and then mowed the front yard. Busy evening.
• Installed VMware Player at home. It seems to work. I cannot get anything to work.
  

Rain and Faire

Keywords: TRF, Texas Renaissance Festival, drugs, fight, camping, partition, drum circle

It pored rain last night. The ground was very wet on the way in. I crossed Westheimer to avoid the constructions site. The strategy seems to have worked. Though wet, boots are pretty much wearable. I wore my flashlight around my neck because it was dark. In the mornings, the West bound lanes are far more empty than the East bound lanes. I can walk in the street for much of my trip.

The rain is supposed to stop before the weekend. That is a good thing. Faire is up again this weekend. We plan on going. It will be muddy, but manageable or so it sounds right now. It requires a bit more planning. I still cannot find my pouch. I have no idea where it is. I looked this morning, but nothing so far.

Nat was on a forum discussing Fair and things that happen at Faire. People were pissed that a fight broke out at the drum circle. People were pissed at all the infants (sarcasm) looking for drugs or offering drugs all over the place. Underage drinking came up. It started in to a "I've been camping longer than you." one-up competition.

The word petition came up. I hate to say it, but the guy who owns Faire is all about the money. If camping becomes a headache, he will just say "Go camp somewhere else." and we will all be out on our asses. I suggest taking a more laid back approach and start calling the cops on people who offer you drugs. It is all a sorted web.

There are seventy acres of camping at TRF. There are usually two cops on duty. The closest emergency room is something like thirty miles away. There are a bunch of drunk East Texas red-necks walking around int kilts who have nothing to loose,. There are ravers who want the next thrill, even if that is getting the piss knocked out of them by a gang of red-necks. There are a million teenagers who are rebelling against their middle class parents. They want to get drunk, laid, not pay any consequences, boys and girls. There are predators of every variety.

It is not the cops fault. They do a great job out there. It is not a fault of Faire. They provide grounds and security. It is not the patrons. They show up and have a good time. Most people agree on the definition of showing up. It is the term 'good time' that causes conflict.

It is just people. It is dark. It is smoky. There are camp fires all over the place. Most people are in tents that are sprinkled over the grounds higgldy-piggldy. People might invite you in for a drink or a bit to eat or just to rap for a while. There are people from all over the world. Rich. Broke. Republican. Democrat. Every Religion and a couple made up on the way there. There are new people and there are old timers. There are some wonderful friends. There is an endless supply of wanderers. Up to this year there was some amazing barbecue.

If anything happens to camping, I guarantee we will cut our attendance back to one or two weekends a year. We might indeed find another place, time and reason to camp. It will not be as good or even close to the same experience.  here is hoping that the wonder does not end for a few jerks who think they are something special.

Prophecy

Something I've learned about Prophecies Is either no one remembers them, or they are self fulfilling.

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-Christ is: The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40's, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything.. Do we recognize this description??

Got this in an email today. It is one interpretation of the book of Revelations. I think the best answer is Osama bin Laden. I wonder who it would have best fit ten years ago. One hundred years ago. A thousand years ago.

Define 'everything'. Am I correct when I say that Islam did not exist when this book of the bible was written? What is the wording of the book?

Very Local News

• I don't like hating a state and everyone in it. I've said that I'm sick of New York and California to the point that I want to trade them to Europe for a more conservative state. This is a bad thing. So, I started listening to a podcast called All Before Five that comes from rural upstate New York. I find myself not hating New York the state so much as just New York the City. Now I need to do the same thing with California because I bet I'd like northern California. It is San Fransisco and L. A. that piss me off.
• I'm trying that other form of contact solution, the one I spoke of where you have to let your contacts sit for six hours minimum. It is the kind you cannot put in your eye. It is not good for you, and it hurts like fire if you do. I hope to stick to the rules and get very clean contacts out the other end.
• It rained several times today. I had to take off my boots at work and switch to regular shoes that I keep there. The boots were so bad that I didn't put them on until I got down stairs.
  
  
• Teatime. Apples with peanut butter being made, and eaten.
   
• 
  

Very Local News

• Rain today. Rainy gray Tuesday. Cool breeze. Glad to have the sun for Faire. The grass needs the rain. People run from cover to cover. Thunder cracks way off. It is a Fall rain.
  
• At work I'm dealing with MAC addresses, virtual machines, and the politics of a small company network.
• What will fix the world economic woes? Ban lawyers and economists from holding public office. Eventually, I'll get round to banning every one from public office.
• One of the podcasts mentioned that investors need the proper motivation to start investing again. I picture Uncle Sam with a bull whip about to crack it over the heads of a bunch of banker types.
• I need to write the book "Lawnmower maintenance and the art of not giving a shit."
• GM, Ford, and Chrysler are all talking merger. Not that they will end up merging. GM is in bad shape.
• My watch battery is dying. The watch is loosing like ten minutes at random intervals.I would go back to the Kinetic, but the band is about to fall apart.
• Got an email today with samples of kit cars made from Smart cars. Cool stuff. This sort of thing will get people in to gas efficient cars.
• I blew right by my 3000th post. Didn't even miss it.
• I was looking at the pictures today and realized just how Laural and Hardy this picture is. It was the last picture I took of the entire weekend. I looked at Mongo and said "Strike a pose." This is what I got.
  
• On the way home, the family stopped at Sylvia's for dinner. It was OK. It was over priced and greasy. Just like I remembered the place. Anyway, Elle got a hamburger and fries. Go figure. Nat had trouble getting the catchup out of the bottle. The guys at the next table offered some advice. One had a British accent or something like that. I was able to get catchup out of the bottle with my patented tap the bottle at a 45 degree angle from the bottom where the bottle starts to taper toward the head. Nat says I got catchup out in record time.
• Take today for no good reason.
  
• Rain (morning)
  
  
• Sun (afternoon)
  
  
• Boxes (evening)
  
• Drive through strip club. What will they think of next?
  

Cops beware

All my friends who are cops, beware. Even the innocuous civilian might turn on you, or in this case put it in the wrong gear on you.

Painful political cartoons

Painful because they are true.

TRF Pictures Weekend 1

Only a few snapshots. No cool pictures. I would have to get pictures from other folks to get the good ones. Enjoy.

Frigging cat

Goddamn cat won't leave the guy alone for a second.

Fair Weekend 1 (continued)

Contacts at Faire

Sunday morning one of the young couples was about to put in their contacts. They are one of the good couples. That is, they fit. They make a cute couple. They even use the same contact solution.

They use the hydrogen peroxide stuff that has to sit for six hours to devolve. I've heard it works well and I would use it too if I wore my contacts every day.

Both their little containers got knocked over and the fluid did not work properly. One of them put in the first contact and it burned like fire. I had some regular contact fluid, even though I cannot ware my contacts at Faire any more. The dust is just nuts. Most people can get away with it with a bit of care. Some folks put their contacts in at home before they come out and do no take them off until they go home again. That is an option for some I suppose.

So many people ware glasses of the modern variety at Faire for just this reason. For non-participants it goes pretty unnoticed. People who work there seem to find ways around it.

My feet hurt

My feet hurt to the point that it worries me. One of the early signs of diabetes is foot pain. The soles of my feet start to hurt if I stand in one place too long. My ankles start to hurt if I sit for too long. My knees start to hurt if I lay funny, or sit Indian style. Indian style sitting is for the young. My feet may go numb if my pants are too tight when I sit Indian style.

Standing around is what kills me. Walking is not so bad, but I have to go at a pretty good pace. The walk of death (from camp to the front gate and back) feels good if it is not too hot. By the time I get back to camp, I'm ready to sit down, but feel better.

Hopefully I just need some new insoles on my boots.

Splitting wood

I had no idea my newly acquired wood splitting knowledge from Ike would come in handy so soon.

I was passed out in the large after walking Faire on Saturday afternoon when I hear this thump thump thump noise coming from our camp. Accompanied by cussing. Manic "Die! die! Die!" cussing. I stumble from the air mattress and the oven of  a tent, stumble to the court yard between the pit (kitchen trailer) and the GP large.  Shawn and Tim are there pounding on a single piece of wood. The wood looks like it has put up quite a fight. They have been hitting it with an ax for twenty minutes.

I would love to say that I split that sucker in one swipe. It took me a dozen. I used the ax to make a slit on the grain. Then Used the wedge and sledge to split th wood. Their trouble was they had the log on the ground. When They hit it, it just bounced. I set it on a high dry spot and leaned it up against a large log. No one cuts logs flat enough with chainsaws to sit them up on edge so you can split them.

Nat said she was proud of me. <smiles> Thanks Dad for the instruction.

Pictures

I'm very distracted by taking pictures. I left the real camera at home this weekend. I will take the real camera to Faire this season if I can. I do so enjoy snapping pictures up there. The snaps from this past weekend are just that. Snapshots. Nothing special. I had to modify some of the pictures to get contrast. Some look a bit cartoonish. They are better now than they were before. The smoke and dust were so thick that the flash lit up the floating particulates better than the subject.

Every one else got the good pictures. I lugged the camera around and only got normal snaps. I missed Heath sleeping on the cooler for one.  Oh, well. Next weekend.

TRF added a feature. It is a climbing wall in the shape of a castle tower. That is too cool. The only trouble is, I want to go up in the tower and take some frigging pictures. Alas, it is hallow with no way to get up the middle. They could have put a spiral stair case up that thing and charged people to take pictures. BAH!!!!

13 news chopper goes down

My friend is a camera man on one of the news 13 helicopters. He told me all about it This past weekend at Faire. I just walked over and asked him to talk to me out of the blue. He told me about the vacation he and his wife are headed for this week. He told me about cool opportunities he is working on and he told me about his new job at Channel 13 flying in one of the helicopters operating the cameras. He seemed to really enjoy it. He described some of the nuances of 95% boredom and 4% exhilarating excitement and 1% terror. He didn't put numbers on it. I made those up.

Lord Phoenix was not on board the chopper that crashed Monday.

He took a bunch of our wedding pictures. He is a just plane cool guy. His wife is nuts, but he likes her just the way she is. The rest of us do too.

I get news alerts at work because I don't have internet and the radio doesn't work worth a darn. I don't have time for it anyway. I get the following email.

Channel 13 Helicopter Crashes In Woods
A Houston television station's helicopter crashes while covering breaking news

Followed by the this in short order.

Pilot, Photographer Die In News Helicopter Crash
A pilot and photographer on board a Houston television station's helicopter die
when it crashes while covering breaking news in Montgomery County.

Right after the first mail, I called a couple friends trying to get hold of Phoenix because I do not have his number. I forgot to get it at Faire. I got a call back from Johnny who said he got hold of Phoenix. Things were good. He had been at work, but on the ground taking care of things there.

Anyway, "whew!!"

Random Note

What do you get when you mix Mountain Dew and Perrier? Probably Fresca. I've never tried it.

Proper use of horn

Before Faire

This morning was beautiful as far as the weather goes. The traffic was civil. I'm hitting the dark walk in again. During Summer I keep in the light time of the morning. As Fall comes on, I walk in the dark more and more.  It is perfectly natural. honestly, I prefer the dark because the glare is lower and people have their lights on. This makes the vehicles much easer for me to see.

This morning someone honked at me. I have to say it is the most present honk I've had in years. It was a proper use of a horn. As I approached the corner of a dark intersection, I had my head down because there is no sidewalk and the ground is rough. There is no light, so I have to concentrate. Now, I always and I mean always stop at the corner and look for people turning right before I continue across the street. I even heard a vehicle coming. I had planned to stop and look with both eyes, I just hadn't yet.

The vehicle coming up on my left  tapped their horn. I went ahead and stopped to look. It was a pickup towing a huge trailer. They were turning right and probably noticed that I was both looking down and warring earphones. They thought that if anything did happen, they would not be able maneuver their vehicle in an emergency manor and wanted to warn me of this fact.

Proper use of horn. I didn't think to shoot them a thumbs up or even smile or react in any way other than a sleep drone commute stare.  I wish I could let them know that I appreciate their effort.

Very Local News

Before Faire

• Yee-gads. They made a movie about the recount in Florida in 2000. What a nightmare. It is done by HBO. Kevin Space is in it. Please, let's kick this dead horse one more time. Maybe if his character goes nuts and started cutting bits off people, but no such luck I'm sure.
  
• The BBC came to the US and managed to find (and interview) some people who wanted to vote Republican and had good and bad things to say about both tickets. Bloody foreigners. =]
  
• I fought yesterday to get Evolution working at work. Evolution supports IMAP calendars and contacts on the server. We use web mail on the mail server. That's great. However, we do not have the calendar, tasks and contact stuff on the server. All the effort I did to finally get the software functioning was for nothing. Who the hell has time to make it work?
  
• I got an email early this morning from CNN. "Stocks fall 500 points in the first five minutes of trading." I laughed. I laughed that nerves troubled laugh one laughs when one is stressed and worried about the future.  Then I got the email from Click2Houston that said the Dow had dropped 600 points and was below 8,000. I gave exactly the same laugh. It is my canned response these days. My stomach hurts, but not from laughing.
  
• Life sucks then you die. I wonder if the afterlife needs IT people?
• I went to McDonald's for lunch and got 2 double cheese burgers and a side salad. It took thirty minutes to get my bag of food. I got half way back to the office, now a bit late, and figured out I didn't get the frigging salad. I so didn't want to dealt with the restaurant that I just blew it off. That really pisses me off.

Fair weekend 1

Friday Evening

Nat and I got in the car and headed north on the beltway to Fair on Friday evening. We pulled in. Nat had run up to the camp grounds earlier to drop off some stuff and start setting up. I really don't think she got anything done that she couldn't have done after I got off work. It worries me that she insisted on running up there and spending the gas.

We pulled in to camp, parked and unloaded. I remember schmoozing for a bit, have ing a drink or two and meeting some people who I am supposed to know, but have no clue who they are. I knew some people would not bee there and was sad, but happy for those who did make it out.

The tents go up like popcorn. I had my Friday night walk. I go around the back all the way against the back of the big camping area. There are four if memory serves. There is a new road this year that lets people cross a ditch to get to the back forty. Some folks got stuck last year. Or was it the year before? The new road almost threw me off.

I got to bed. That is, I listened to several people talk for a long time while I dropped off. That is fun in a way. People know you are there, but don't seem to care. We camped in Tony and Diz's tent. Thanks by the way.

Friday night brought hotdogs and chicken off the grill. This year, the contribute or go hungry rule is being enforced more vigorously. It is about time. Heath and Nicki Have been footing far too much of the burden.

Saturday

Got u up in a good mood. Didn't have breakfast until late. I got in a bad mood. I think it was something as simple as Nat asking me to carry her keys. That was just a little too much responsibility for me at that moment.

We went in to Faire and walked the place like four times. Nat stopped by her old employer and found that she may work again this year. We shall see. We went to Sherwood. Nat hadn't been there in a while. I had an apple turnover with ice cream. Man, that hit the spot. Nat's Mom's work is not accessible like it used to be. I wonder if that was by design. I'm sure it was. I'm glad if it was.

I ended up tuckering out early and heading back to camp for a nap in the heat. I don't remember when. I wasn't the only one. Scary how old the camp is getting.

I took a bunch of pictures Saturday evening. They all sucked. The eat if you contributed rule was enforced with a higher volume Saturday night. Nat parked on the stack of coolers in front of the pit. More people than I have ever seen showed up at the fire for a drum circle. Some girl danced in her underwear with a flaming hullo-hoop. That was a new one.

I tried to go to bed, but the group was sitting on our bed. The moment I fessed up that I wanted to go to bed they moved and let me. Again, I lay there and listened.

Sunday

This morning (Sunday), we all awoke to some prick revving his engine and racing down the road in front of all the tents. It was the only sound. The cops seem to know this guy. We got breakfast and decided  not to go in. We took nearly the entire morning packing up and shooting the shit with friends. The camp ground cleared out except for people staying until Monday morning. There were more than the normal amount of people staying to Monday because of Columbus day. What a frigging stupid holiday. We need one day for all famous people.

Now

We got home, emptied the car. ... Oh, Here we are. I'm passing on putting the pictures on the net tonight. I worked on them for a while and ran out of gas. I need to look at my Twitter and email notes that I sent myself to blog more later.

Too sunburned to blog

I'm dog tired and sunburned from Faire this weekend. Please forgive. I'll get pictures up ASAP. Unloaded the car and took a shower. More gory details to come.

Very Local News

• One of the podcast interviewees said that the regulations and lack there of over the last twenty years or so have turned Wall Street in to a casino. I have to agree. The mentality of the people in the industry strikes me as "win win win!!" instead of "invest invest invest." which I think is much more appropriate.
• Government is not a bad thing. If Wal-Mart was in charge of roads, all roads would lead to Wal-Mart. Government can do stupid things. There are hints that one of the big three auto makers will either get bailed out next year, or go belly up.
• I really think I would vote for J. W.  Bush again  before I vote for McCain. If Palin was running for president, I might vote for her. I may still right in John Robert Bolton. Ask me in the booth two minutes before I close my eyes and drop the little pencil on the page.
  
• I would love to have written something worth while. I would love to call myself an author. The Nobel Prize comity has a grudge against America and American writers. Some winners get up in front of the comity to accept their prize and all but chant "Death to America!" If I do make it, the Nobel comity can kiss my red white and blue ass.
• Mowed in  the dark. The raised mower goes much easier. I was able to mow and weed-whack front and back. I'm not in any better shape tonight than I was last time I mowed. I think one of the fence posts needs one more whack with the sledge.
  

Because it's my blog

I always thought Kari Byron was cute. This video does not harm that cuteness one bit. She took one for the team.

Very Local News

• I need to mow. Nat picked me up from work last night and I was not emotionally prepared to do the yard so I squandered the opportunity. I need to figure out how to raise the mower a notch or two. The little adjustment brackets are frozen. I figured out how to change the oil in that thing. That at least is done. The blade needs sharpening. I don't know how to do that either. Mostly, I need to get off my ass and do it.
  
• One of the podcasts interviewed some kids of a soldier. They spoke about how difficult it is to deal with school and ignorant people during a time of war. They can't watch the news for fear of hearing about firefights.  When dad came back, he hadn't just sat down and watched TV for a while. it interfered with the existing schedule.
  
• Some religious freaks are trying to say yoga is a religion and cannot be taught in public schools.  The argument goes "Kids are told at home to fill their minds with God's word. They are told at school to empty their minds in yoga." give me a break. It's not like the teachers are trying to inform the kids on how to avoid sexually transmitted disease or something.
  
• One of the best tools in photo editing software is the color level. It allows you to take a digital photo and define what is white and what is black. It should also let you adjust the center of the color. It makes a washed out picture become vibrant and suddenly a boring gray picture will have depth and definition.
  Every photo is different, but there are times I would like to run the same adjustment on a whole folder of pictures. Most software I've used in the past allows this, but not Gimp. I like Gimp, but it is insufficient for this reason. I bet there is a way, but I cannot find it.
• Somehow my Google results count went from 50 down to 10 at home. I like the longer listing. Typically my result is either the first or the thirty first entry in the results. I really do skim a bunch of results if the first hit is not obviously what I want. I have no idea how it got reset.  I do not remember resetting it. I hope my longer list of results is not something Google wants to change. I like my longer list of results. It is an emotional need as well. I hope it is not too much to ask from Google. Hey, I could set it to 100 according to their choices. I have no idea how much overhead this causes for Google.
• In a couple years there will be two billion "computers" attached to the internet. A few years more and there will be fourteen billion devices on the internet. All of this as social networks like Facebook and MySpace will decline. Places like Second Life will decline as well. People will turn to contacting people in reality.
• q:v]  "Kelly has a bunch of long bullets today."
  
•  8^)  "Yup."
• One of the podcasts interviewed the guy who invented (supposedly) the emotecon. He would only tack his name to the smile and frown faces. He griped there was no shock face.  8-O

Too much regulation

Sometimes regulation is all kinds of bad. At some point in the early nineties, our government voted in something they thought was wort while. A bill came along that said something to the effect "banks have to lend to minorities in order to boost minority ownership of private housing." This is really bad. Not that it has anything to do with minorities. It has to do with a mandate that says banks have to lend to people who may not be able to afford to pay the money back.

The real trouble is that the rules cannot be written to say anything like "People who are a minority get a lower interest rate." or "Minorities get a discount." This is considered not politically correct. This is why the term Affirmative Action has fallen from favor. People who do not qualify for the discounts scream bloody murder. Rightly in my opinion. Politicians say something like "There needs to be a sense of balance." In other words, "We need to hide the fact that some people get a break and some don't."  Now, even the banks do not know which loans are bad.

Bankers complied. They had little choice. Instead of just handing out money to some people so the banks could turn a prophet on others, the brilliant bankers came up with plans that let people get in to a house and hope to heaven the buyers would be able to refinance the loan after the bank sold off the debt to someone else. This is where Fanny and Freddy come in. Fanny and Freddy ended up getting stuck with most of the bad and many of the good loans. Remember, we don't know which are which any more. Fanny and Freddy can't sell anything off because no one is buying.

This is not so much a case of too much regulation. This is a case of really horrible mandates for the purposes of political correctness that cause far more damage than they fix. The purpose of business is to make money. Any time you inject something that is not fit for that purpose, you are throwing a wrench in to the machine.

Some highly intelligent person figured all of this out and said we need to insure all this stuff so when it all goes bely up someone will get stuck with the bill. See earlier post.

Halloween

A friend sent this. Scary, because it is true.

Elle on Tuesday evening

My aunt Judy and uncle Ron were in town this evening. Nat, Elle and I joined my parents in having a meal at Mom's Cafe. Elle hadn't felt good all day. She was a trouper and a very good girl all evening. We ended up moving out from under a hyper ceiling fan. Not until after the sun was through shining in my eye through a mirror no less. That is the sun over my mother's right ear in the picture below.

Hey, who cares. We had fun catching up. Hadn't seen aunt and uncle since the wedding. I thought the meatloaf was good. I brought home some fried squash. Life is good.

2 quick videos

Why?

This is how you light a bonfire.

Iron man targeting

Keywords: ironman, targeting, animated gif GIMP

I made a poor attempt at building an animated GIF of Ironman targeting a bunch of bad guys behind human shields. Just for grins and giggles mind you. I used GIMP. It worked more or less. The frames are in as much order as I could get them.