Unsold Inventory

R2D2 Hoe-Down

Pretty cute. I feel this retailer's pain. I assume the only reason someone would have a dozen R2-D2 toy robots is because they had them left over after a poor Christmas season. It is pretty cool video though. Rough.

Blog Videos

Apologies for putting up so many videos on the blog. I have nothing to say of consequence. It is so easy to watch something and then complain about it on the blog. It is not entertaining to the readers I bet. Some of the videos are cool. I should be a bit more discerning. I have no deaths that I can think of lately. I had some complaints.

That's OK. Something very interesting could happen in my life and be bad. I prefer this. I hope no one minds.

By the way, I wrote these last several blog entries all at once. Adding a paragraph here and there. It was very late at night. Nat was watching What happens in Vegas and I was typing away in the corner like a tinkerer or a real writer or something.

Off to bed.

Nat and video conversion

Nat has iTunes on her box. She is converting several movies to fit on her iPod. It shoots them down as much as possible to fit. The software seems to do a pretty good job. We upped the RAM on her box from one to three gigs a while back. Even with this, it says it will take a day or so for it to happen. She gets invalid frames from the home made videos that worry her. I hope it will just skip the bad ones and move along.

She has Windows Vista on that box and the normal complement of software. Every program including Windows wants to update itself and restart the machine in the process. This is not a good thing when converting movies that take days. She has learned to sever the machine from the internet while this effort runs. Video conversion is still one of the most stressful things you can do on a box. Well, maybe not. It does make for tons of math.

When I get the new video camera I will not be able to use the software that it comes with. That is Windows and Mac only. I have been sifting through the Linux universe for the correct software to use for editing and converting to something useful. I've all but come up blank. I am just going to wait until it comes in and play with it. There are a bunch of programs for editing video on Linux, but they all suck.

Cinelerra is a full fledged video editing software. It is just too bad it never runs or only half it's features work for five consecutive minutes when in use. It is so bad that it doesn't really even exist right now.The people who wrote it are trying to rewrite what they have and that looks so bad that a bunch of new people are trying to write the same thing, but different because they don't trust the old people to do any better job this time round. I'm so proud to be a Linux user at this moment.

Kino only does chopping that I can tell and only works in DV files. You have to import any other format and then export as the format you want when you are done. the intermediate files are enormous and useless. It is a pain.

avidemux is a very simple tool again just for chopping and stitching. I think it does text too. Not sure. I'll have plenty of time to play with it if it even remotely works on the video I get off the new video camera.

Then come Wine. That is, running the video editing software that works in Windows under Linux using Wine. Did I mention that I've never gotten any complex software to work under Wine. Not completely. Not with all features. Not without modifying Wine. Not without spending hours and every Linux trick in the book to get that user friendly dribble crap junk software to work. Then it stops working the next time Wine updates.

VMWare might work. If I had a licensed copy of Windows, I might get it to work under VMWare. To be honest, this is the most likely thing to work. That is, if I had an extra $99 or whatever the cheapest version of Windows is going for these days to blow. The camera is only $209 last time I checked.

Israel vs Palestine

What a nightmare. I should stop there. I feel a rant. I must take a more light hearted approach. Some people complain that Israel's response is not proportional. What the hell does that mean? Whom ever thinks that needs to watch the untouchables. "If he puts on of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue." That is how it works. There is no proportion. The U. S. Did not consider a proportional response after Pearl Harbor. Screw the whole concept of proportional. Someone is messing with your kids (citizens) you take decisive action, not proportional. Decisive means they better fucking know they lost.

Here I go. I'm cussing. I have strong feelings on the subject. I do not like Jews over Muslims. I do not feel sorry for one or the other. I would love to live in a world where people could share resources without killing on another. The world is not cooperating. No, it isn't the world. It is the people.

Politics

India and Pakistan are at each other's throats. Well, not entirely. Nether has the stomach, thankfully, for a nuclear fight. I believe the people behind the attacks on India recently have been tracked to sources who have made it clear that they want a fight between India and Pakistan for some reason. I haven't sorted that part out yet. Not for lack of trying.  Maybe both India and Pakistan should nuke Cashmere.

Then comes Bolton earlier today. I can't help but pray that there are more people who get it out there running things. Maybe there is a vast intelligent conspiracy to run things and let pretty idiots prance in front of the cameras while the real work is done in the back without prying eyes. I have little patience for celebrity rule lately. I wish the average American were not so gullible. I think the lack of money to spend on high sugar drinks will make for a grumpy, but more attentive electorate. Perhaps I hope for too much.

When Iran goes nuclear, which I think is inevitable at this point, the news will get more interesting. It will boil down to a western power either surrendering to Iran or retaliating with maximum prejudice. That will make for something to blog about. I prefer lazy days between holidays at the end of the year.

Cars and health care

You can buy a diesel Jeep Wrangler in Europe that gets nearly 30 miles to the gallon. It does not pass emissions for the U. S. so no Economic Jeep. Our government frustrates me. Aren't the emissions standards tougher in Europe? But wait, the U. S. is big on making car manufacturers use specific bits of equipment instead of making them meet standards. This is how catalytic converters happened. I imagine this is why you cannot get a diesel Focus either. I just can't wait for our government, run by a bunch of geezer lawyers, to start designing cars that GM and Chrysler will be charged with selling. Good luck.

I can't even drive and I'm worried. I watch a lot of British car shows, just because they are there, and I can tell you the cars in Europe are smaller, but frigging better. People expect more from a car. They pay through the nose for fuel and for the car and for roads and just about everything, but they expect everything to be better and last. Not just cars.

Brits eat a ton of chips (french fries) and have socialized medicine. They wait in lines for hospital care and complain, but they don't just automatically loose their house when they get sick. Nothing is perfect, but what we have in the U. S. is not working and it is indeed time for something else.

Books

I"m reading a book called Queen City Jazz. I don't like it much. As I rapidly approach the end, I haven't finished it yet, I feel some twist coming. I don't like when a story feels sacrificed just for the sake of something unpredictable coming. Then again, I hate when I can predict what is going to happen. I suppose that is a contradiction. Not really. There are tons of stories that end the way I thought that I ended up liking. I can't think of any that had a twist for the sake of a twist that I liked. It is an amazing first effort though. Maybe I will go finish it.

I have an open request with the library for the blind for them to send me a random science fiction book on tape. I really like this because I have no idea what book to read next. I would have never chosen Casual Rex (it being the second in a series especially) or Queen City Jazz.

I find myself reading before bed. That is, listening to the tapes. I miss the tail end of some of the sides, but hey, it is science fiction. For a while I was getting some magazines like News Week and such. I get plenty of news online. I asked for all that stuff to be dropped. There are a couple of magazines devoted to science fiction that I still get. I'm addicted. I don't mind.

I can't wait to find out what I get next.

Hope you didn't stop at the front door

The forklift operator is pretty quick. The notes said he was 'almost crushed'. He simply had too tight a path. That load on the forklift was simply not going to make it. I've only driven a forklift once and even then it was just for fun. I picked up a one ton chunk of steel and put it back down. Backed the forklift through the shop and parked it. Anyway, glad no one got hurt here, but would love to know who got sued.

Better fuel economy

The more you do to your car, the worse it gets apparently. The only way to make your car more economical is to driver more smoothly and try to coast more before hitting your breaks. It's called hypermiling. It is a new geek thing to do.

It's up to me to check the tire pressure more often.

Bolton on Israel

BOLTON: Yes, well this whole idea of proportionate force is just something that's been dreamed up in U.N. and academic circles. Let me give you another example. Was the United States limited after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to a proportionate response? We sink as many aircraft carriers and battleships as they sank, and we have to stop our use of force at that point? Of course not. We were entitled as a legitimate exercise of the right of self-defense to eliminate the threat, and that's what we did. LOWRY: And Ambassador, why is it that Israel seems to be the only country in the world that evokes this kind of condemnation when it simply defends itself? BOLTON: Well I think it's not only Israel, and this to me is one of the really important parts about this debate about the right of self- defense and this argument about the proportionate use of force. Because while the focus is certainly on Israel, Israel in a sense is a surrogate for the United States. God forbid another attack comes against us, and we have a president who decided to respond to it, we will be criticized for the disproportionate use of force. We weren't criticized for overthrowing the Taliban, although, that was certainly a much larger operation than even the September attacks, but we were criticized for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The notion of proportionate force is something that can easily be turned against the United States. So the way this debate turns out over Israel has implications that go well beyond this current clash in Gaza. ... BOLTON: Well, Iran is one of Hamas' main funders, and it's been a supplier of arms and equipment and training over the years. And this is important because Hamas is basically a Sunni Arab group, and Iran obviously is Shia and Persian. This is a demonstration of the reach, the scope, the power that Iran has in the Arab world, and why we're looking at potentially a multi-front war here, not just in the Gaza Strip, but potentially by Hezbollah, the terrorist group in Lebanon attacking Israel from the north as it did in the summer of 2006. And indeed, the continuing Iranian quest for nuclear power. So while our focus obviously is on Gaza right now, this could turn out to be a much larger conflict. LOWRY: Now Mr. Ambassador, in your view, how does the equation change if and when Iran acquires a nuclear weapon? If the region's inflamed now and in conflict now, how is it different when Iran acquires that extra bargaining power if you will? BOLTON: Well, I think it gets much worse. Their ability to threaten and intimidate Israel and the Arab states in the region, obviously substantially increase. Every problem in the region that we have now gets worse once Iran gets nuclear weapons, and I am afraid we are ever closer to that point. I think sad to say the Bush administration's efforts following the lead of the European Union have entirely failed, and I don't think there's anything at this point standing between Iran and nuclear weapons other than the possibility of the use of military force, possibly by the United States, possibly by Israel. I don't see the Bush administration doing it, so it could well come down to Israel, and that's why the role of Iran here in citing this Hamas violence could be important because I think we are playing on a larger chess board.  ... COLMES: You would strike Iran right now? BOLTON: I would have done it before this. I think we're in a very dangerous position. I think at this point, as I say, there's nothing that stands between Iran and nuclear weapons, and if they get them, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, possibly Turkey, others in the region will get them, and the risk of somebody using nuclear weapons will rise dramatically. COLMES: Is there a risk -- if we were to do what John Bolton, Ambassador Bolton is saying what he who do, is there a risk in pushback in that by going after Iran, we introduce an even broader powder keg in the Middle East? BOLTON: Well, I think you've got a much worse situation with Iran with nuclear weapons. I'll say it again. I think the use of military force against Iran's program is very unattractive. But compared to Iran with nuclear capability, I think you have to look at it. COLMES: So if we do that, they strike back, are we then in danger of creating a broader war? BOLTON: I think in many Arab states in the region, although they wouldn't say it publicly, they'd be doing the equivalent of popping champagne corks because the Arab states don't want Iran with nuclear weapons any more than Israel does. What Iran could do is what's already happening in the Gaza Strip or what might happen if they unleashed Hezbollah, terrorist attacks on Israel. That's why the calculus for Israel's leaders at this point is so difficult and so complex and so risky, but whatever their circumstance is now, they are far worse with Iran with nuclear weapons. Real Clear Politics (Fox News)

My God this guy knows his shit. I'm telling you, I want John Bolton for president. Kick ass and leave the names for the history geeks.

Israel has been taking hits for years. They need to end the problem. Hamas is pushing Israel in the direction of genocide or religion-ocide or stop-shooting-missiles-at-my-citizens-ocide.. I'm getting to the point I'm just plane mad. How dare Europe hate the Jews this much? How dare Europe take sides because they need oil. 

I better stop here before I get myself in politically correct trouble. I'm about to rant about many thousand year old hatreds and how Europe only gave Israel to the Jews to kick them out of Europe. I better stop.

Too Many Troupes

In early 2007, the Marine Corps launched a program to expand its ranks - planning to add about 5,000 Marines a year for five years, and reaching a total of 202,000 by 2012. But this month the Marines already hit 200,000, and Gen. James Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, said they will meet their 202,000 goal in early 2009.  ... With the expansion all but over, Milstead said he has already told Conway he can reduce the pool of roughly 4,000 recruiters by more than 130 over the next two years - shifting those Marines back into other jobs. And the retention pressure will also ease. "We opened the aperture on the retention side," Milstead said. But now that the Corps is about to meet its 202,000 goal, he added, "we're going to have to close it. We're going to have to reduce the number we allow to hang around the Marine Corps." That will be accomplished, Milstead said, by cutting reenlistment opportunities. Military.com

Sounds like now that he surge is over, the military is cutting back on the growth pattern established to increase numbers. Now that the U. S. economy is in the toilet, it becomes harder to join the Marines. That is a bad thing. I know a few jar heads who got straightened out via the Core knothole.

What is a young person getting out of high school or collage to do if they want to work? I'm afraid for them. This is a really bad rough patch for the economy. Working families are loosing their homes even if they have a good job. People are loosing jobs all over the place and are unable to maintain their standard of living. People are going to have to lower their expectations. The general standard of living is going to lower over the next several years.

So many times I've heard that people in the U. S. (my family) have been living beyond their means. The rest of the world is drooling and laughing at our downfall. Our current president keeps using the ter "redistribution of wealth". That means take money from the working person and give it to some one who doesn't work. 

Nat says she will get a job after the doctor approves her. That is great. I believe she will use it to leave me. I'll have a house to pay for and two miles to walk to the closest bus stop. The car is in her name as well as mine so if she takes off with it I have little recourse. This is why I didn't want my father to pay it off last year.

Obama says he will reconsider buying the F-22. It is built here in Texas as well as other states. That will be just one more nail in the coffin. Japan says it may not buy buy any F-22 jets. They are great military aircraft, but the price shows it.

Is every single piece of the economy going to blow up in our faces? Now people are saying Yellowstone is rumbling. The end is nigh. HELP!!!!

Telescopic CyclopsT

Geosystems Situational Awareness Mast (aka Zippermast) from Travis on Vimeo.

Handy little guy. I have no idea how this thing works. It looks like there are little round bits of springy metal that sort of zipper (that was one of the words used in a description here) together to make the pole rise. They could do something about that shiny silver flat area that reflects when it is looking around. I expect some mat camo paint would take care of it.

Burnouts

That wine as he revs up is not a turbo. it must be a super charger. It lights up too quickly for a turbo. They come on after some revs have built up. There also appears to be little or now lag. Sure sign it is not a turbo.

This one appears to be from the same event. It is a Buick Grand National .The guy ends up with what may be a fuel leak and has to be pushed off the track.

Nat and I were just talking about an incident that happened in my youth. I was riding home with my mom from working at Randals late at night. A guy had just bout a Buick Grand National, used. He let a girl from our work drive the car around. He was behind us headed east on 2234. We turned right down Turtle Creek. Just before we cleared the intersection, the Grand National passed us going straight on the left. Some numb-nuts tried to make a left right in front of him and wham. The Buic smacked some little silver POS and sent it in to a third car that was on the other side of the median.

No one was seriously hurt thank goodness. The silver car had a floorboard full of beer cans. The third car was occupied by a little old couple.

Burning out a truck isn't good enough. Burning out a bike isn't good enough. Burning out a bike in a truck while the truck is burning out is good enough for the moment. What is next in the adventures of these two white trash hicks?

I have to say, I'm disappointed it worked. I wanted to see mayhem and flames. Oh, well.

Best one yet and it's some Swedish prick.

Proof that there is a proper distance to view a burnout. This was a good distance for this burnout. I love the cloud taking on a life of its own and tumbling off to the right. Nice.

I'll skip the video of the guy getting out of his car while it was doing donuts and getting run over. The people watching ran over and picked the car off him. Least they could do I suppose. I don't think the helmet helped.

Wolverine

"Thought I'd cut your head off. See if that works." I'm so there.

Gulp

People say I eat fast.

Mowed

I had to mow the yard. Mostly I had to mow the front bit close to the road. The weed filled field next door has spewed its spawn all over my yard. The top half is not so bad, but that bit for some reason has trouble fighting off the onslaught.

I bagged. You do not know how long it has been since I bagged the grass. I went over the entire front yard, but only ended up with about half a bag of grass in the catcher. That is about what I expected. The ruts were a bit deeper than I hoped. The grass had not grown up in some time. I wish there were some way to kill off that field properly. Anything I tru will cost a fortune and I have no one to sue.

Mowing nearly killed me. I needed the exertion badly. I'm so freaking out of shape that I cannot walk across the front yard without panting. Well, not while dragging a push lawn mower half full of grass. Regardless, it shouldn't have phased me, but it made me feel nautilus. Mybe it was the gas fumes.

Flipping a convertible

Nat asked about this the other day. Bill has a Seabring convertible. That worries Nat no end.  I can find little or now information on the rollover statistics of the 2008 Seabring.

Renault is crackers

Pulling the bumper to change out the headlamps is nuts. You designed a shitty cars Renault. Reminds me of Chrysler. They put the oil filter inside the engine on one car. You had to pull the engine off the mounts and detach the oil pan to get to it. You had to replace the oil filter every couple of thousand miles.

My father said "Chrysler may have had a better idea, but no one said they used it." He had a bunch of Chrysler vehicles over the years.

I hate this neighborhood

I want to move. I hate this place. I am sorounded by people who insist on driving like manyacks. Pleple burn rubber and do donuts in the parking lots aorund my house. People peal out of my drivewya. I'm just waiting for tire marks in the yard. Therre are dug deals behind my house. There are people pissing on my fence. It happens all night on Saturdays. It happens durring the day when I'm at work. My family has to stay here. This is supposed to be my home. It is not a home. It is a prison I have to pay for.

I hate this place.

I hate this place.

I hate this place.

I hate the people who make it so bad.

I hate the cops for not doing anything.

I hate thecounty for being so piss-poor on law enforcement.

I hate this city for being full of assholes.

I hate this place.

I hate this place.

I hate this place.

I hate lawyers for costing so much and not inforcing my rights.

I'm sitting in my dining room on the computer in the house that I share with my family and own. Yet, I want to go home. That is how bad this is. I do not feel like I have a home. I feel like I live in an apartment.

I hate this place.

I hate this place.

I hate this place.

I want to go home.

Global Warming Predictions

It turns out that many of the predictions of post-apocalyptic bands of nomadic shade seekers roaming the vast North American continent leaving trails of sweaty head bands and empty mi-ti glasses in their wake were a bit over blown. It turns out that a great number of predictions made about 2008 on the subject of Global Warming never came to pass. Hell, the Farmer's Almanac hired a new climatologist.

“2008 will be the hottest year in a century:” The Old Farmers’ Almanac, September 11, 2008, Hurricanes, Arctic Ice, Coral, Drinking water, Aspen skiing We’re now well into the earth’s third straight harsher winter—but in late 2007 it was still hard to forget 22 straight years of global warming from 1976–1998. So the Old Farmer’s Almanac predicted 2008 would be the hottest year in the last 100. But sunspots had been predicting major cooling since 2000, and global temperatures turned downward in early 2007. The sunspots have had a 79 percent correlation with the earth’s thermometers since 1860. Today’s temperatures are about on a par with 1940. For 2008, the Almanac hired a new climatologist, Joe D’Aleo, who says the declining sunspots and the cool phase of the Pacific Ocean predict 25-30 years of cooler temperatures for the planet. “You could potentially sail, kayak or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer. Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice . . . is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008.” Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs, June, 2008. Soon after this prediction, a huge Russian icebreaker got trapped in the thick ice of the Northwest Passage for a full week. The Arctic ice hadn’t melted in 2007, it got blown into warmer southern waters. Now it’s back. (Reference) Remember too the Arctic has its own 70-year climate cycle. Polish climatologist Rajmund Przbylak says “the highest temperatures since the beginning of instrumental observation occurred clearly in the 1930s” based on more than 40 Arctic temperature stations. CFP

There are some other predictions that are just plane not panning out. Hurricanes for 2008 are down, even if we did get hit by one here in Houston. Aspen and Perth were not abandon due to lack of water or snow.

I'm flabbergasted. Who is making all the money on this clap-trap? Gore is not doing half bad. There are others. Some people are inventing a commodity called carbon credits to sell to epople. Billions of dollars worth of numbers that mean nothing. Someone is making billions off this Ponzy scheem.

Just industrious enough to be a dumbass

"oh damn, I think we blew another pump." That is an air matures pump. We used to use them to blow on a fire to help it get started when we had really wet wood out at Faire. This is ridiculous. I mean, look at all the weed that went to waist.

Firefox on Linux

So, I recently updated to Fedora 10 on both of my boxes. I tried one first and then the other. The second one was my server. It runs aMule, bittorrent and my web server. A) Fedora didn't work. B) some simple things like VIM didn't work. I cussed at it and cussed at it. Then it hit me that I hadn't updated all the repo files under YUM. Once I updated the repo files and got my install versions all meshed with each other, things started working.

It is a pain in the ass to keep machines up to date. If you update one thing it might break another. There is a group of people out there trying the updates before they go live. Shit still blows up. I'm the first to admit it is not easy. The distros expect to be taken seriously these days. They need to act like serious contenders.

I shouldn't complain. The distro I use is free. It is quality stuff. Some of the choices made in Fedora 10 make me worry that they are going down the Microsoft path of hiding things that make some people uncomfortable. For example, when you boot Linux, you get a nice list of things working or not working as they activate. It is a great way to catch trouble as it is happening during boot. Fedora 10 hides it by default. You have to dig through a bunch of settings to get it back. Microsoft is famous for hiding really important stuff to keep people in the dark so they do not know how to properly complain. That might get the trouble fixed and God knows, we don't want that when you make money fixing said problems.

I wonder how many software companies are moving their entire catalogue to the rent it online model. Google opened the doors a while back. I've heard of others through the years. Microsoft is throwing their hand in the ring with Office Live. Of course, it does not work when you are on Linux.

To use Microsoft Office Live, your computer must meet one of the following requirements: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or 7, running on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista. You can download Internet Explorer from the Windows Internet Explorer page.   Mozilla Firefox running on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. You can download Firefox from the Firefox download page. Microsoft

Surely Sun, the inventors of Java, cannot be far behind. They put a fortune in to OpenOffice and StarOffice which are frightfully close to one another. If Microsoft can put something online that is not compatible with Linux, perhaps Sun could put something that looks exactly the same up that is not compatible with windows. That would be funny.

Google Docs do 90% or so of what I need. I'm not looking to compose literature. I need to keep some information online. I've been through this before. Lets see, my beefs were no templates and ... what else. Oh, something pissed me off. Google Docs gets me down the road and lets me access a bunch of crap online that I would not otherwise have when I needed it.

You can already get to Google Docs from your G1. You will be able to get to your Microsoft Live from an iPhone soon. If you play games on a game machine hooked to your HD TV, what do you need a computer for anyway? You don't. I have a creeping feeling that no one will need a computer in the near future. I just hope there is some law that says I have to be aloud to take my data from one vendor to the other. I remember how stingy Phone companies were with my phone numbers. Soon it will be everything. They will charge a grand a gigabyte to transfer. And, why not? You are stuck paying it because there is no way to hack the system on a closed network like those phones. Not that I know of anyway.

God Help us all.

Limited slip heart

Just in case you ever wondered how the gears work in your differential, this will not illuminate you one bit. It is interesting. No need to understand whatever language the guy is speaking I doubt I our any of my readers would understand or care. Just keep watching.

New UK Ford assault vehicles

Bit over the top. I like the cup holders. "Would it be more comfortable to shoot from in here?" HA! Best job in the world.

Bus Race (and why not?)

These guys have the best jobs in the world. It must be fun being these guys. I've been on a bendy bus one the mean lumpy streets of Houston. Such fun.

No jiggle for iPhone

Apple will not let the above iPhone software to be sold in the Apple iPhone software store because they say it is pornographic. This is what you get for having a closed system. This is why Apple needs to take a pill and stop forcing their way of thinking on every one else. Oh, wait. that is how Apple has always done it. The Apple way is better. The Apple way is the only way. That is what Microsoft says to.

That is fine. Google's system is open. Someone will come up with a phone that will let this sort of software shine thorugh. Not that I will get one. I mean, it is just for freedom purposes. Really.

Hill Billy Cadillac

Yes, I found something to write about on Boxing Day.

I'm impressed. This looks like a turbo six. Sounds like a diesel, and smells like ass (I assume). Apparently there is a whole undercurrent of making vehicles with huge diesel engines. My buddy Heath has a supped up 4x4 diesel. I've only ridden in it once when he tapped the gas. Not even on 3. I would love to know what setting 3 is like in that truck. It sounds like a ball.

Just one more example. Nice looking ride, for a red-neck.

Not your grandpa's diesel

I just don't like Mustangs. I'll put nearly anything on this blog that makes Mustangs look bad. Oh, wait. It is Dodge I dislike. Or is it BMW? Whatever. Cool that a diesel truck takes a Mustang, regardless.

Christmas Day

The evening is turning out to consist of upgrading my server and watching the last of the Sopranos. 

The server is Fedora 9 I'm upgrading to Fedora 10. There is no more to it than that. Fedora 11 is right around the corner. If I don't upgrade to 10 eventually, I'll have trouble then. It is still running. I'm sure you will hear about it if things go poorly.

I never saw the last season. I've been waiting for a while to catch the last season of Sopranos. I heard the ending sucks. There is all this stuff to think about life and death and blah blah. I'm not sure I like it. I feel some kind of loyalty to the show for some reason. I have nearly tossed it aside a dozen times. I don't like how every one is getting laid in this season. I don't get laid every season. Ironically, I came home and watched the episode that had Christmas in it. 

This morning went by like a flash. I got up at 7:30 and showered and got half ready. I then went to bed for a couple hours and just couldn't wake up the rest of the day. I slept through the ride to Nat's family's place. I felt groggy there most of the time. Not sure why.

We spoke about family, jobs, hotrod diesel trucks, and retirement.

Elle got a bunch of cool stuff. Nat got pans she wanted and a nice unicorn stature. I got a nifty flashlight, cloths that I need desperately, and a Flip Mini HD. You just might get some more videos in the near future.

While walking around the yard at Nat's family's place, I noticed my balance was off. Sure enough, I get a headache and my ears are freaking out. I'll survive.

UPS delivery

This is about right for the kind of service we get. Our tre blocks the door, so they have to bowl up the side walk.

Christmas Eve

I got off work at around 15:30. It felt like 18:00 the rest of the evening. We went to my parent's place. We ate a wonderful dinner. Elle got a bunch of cool stuff. My parents gave each other some nice things that they had already picked out. Mainly they got a new TV. Nice. We had to do Christmas Eve because we have plans with Nat's side tomorrow. Should be a blast.

With our financial straights, we are unable to buy people gifts. It hurt my pride to go to my parent's place and accept gifts. Nat felt the same way. I hope things get better soon. I hope we can pay off the credit card and car. That will help greatly. Of course, that will just let something else blow up in our faces.

Lord willing, This family will be OK. Anything can happen between now and our next heartbeat.

In this economy I plan on keeping my job. I plan on paying things off as I can. I plan on not spending any money. I plan on rat-holing what I can. If I loose my job it is all over. If anything else comes up that costs money it is all over. If I loose it and cap one on the fucks trespassing on my property while they violate a dozen laws partying and racing up and down the perimeter of our property, it is all over.If any one decides to sue me for something It is all over. If I blow my top at a cop, it is all over. These are the kinds of things that happen to honest citizens.

It can't be all over. I can't drag my family in to that. I'm worried. I'm a worried man. I'm sober. I'm glad. Brother, can you spare a dime.

Religion

Why do so many scientists go along with Global Warming? All the numbers end up leading to shrugged shoulders and worried looks on both sides of the argument. Wait a minute, there is only one side of the argument.

Can you prove that God exists? Can you prove that God does not exist? Would it matter to people who believe either way what you think you can prove? If you disagree with people who believe they simply stop believing in you.

God is simply too popular to debunk. It is difficult to believe in something that you can see or touch for long because it will eventually fail you. Nothing that I'm aware of on earth or in human existence is perfect. So, we must make things up to put our whole hearted belief in. People die and lie and skip town with the box office. Idles crumble or are covered up by weeds.

What we believe in must be something that cannot exist as we know it. It must be outside of our area of focus. We must make that leap of faith, or the thing we believe in will eventually fail us. It is the leap we should believe in, not the thing to which we leap.

Quantum tels us that in order for reality to collapse in to .. well, reality, we must observe it. That is, we have to be looking at the little bit of reality before it bothers popping in to existence for us to observe. Before we observe it (
it" is such an awesome word) all possible outcomes or states of a single piece of reality exist at the same time. The answer is both yes and no and no answer at all. Then we look at the answer and 'pop' there is an answer.

Knowing or understanding quantum theory (or mechanics or whatever I'm talking about here) doesn't help you when you are hungry or dying or stub your toe on the way to the bathroom at night. Believing in God does. That makes the difference.

If so many people buy an idea like God or Global Warming, will the belief or leap on mass help it pop in to reality? Is the answer already there? Are all the answers just sitting there waiting to be properly observed? How many people deny the existence of God only to happily buy in to Global Warming?

I ask "What has caught on fire due to Global Warming?"

Someone might answer "Well, Global warming increases the odds that a forested area will be just that bit dryer and more likely to catch should there be a spark."

Can't God work the same way? Global warming has numbers that get bounced about. Once you look in to any one of the numbers they don't prove anything. There is a trend. There is general sway over a wide area that increases the odds of temperature rise. This rise will reap havoc on the environment. God is just a character in a bunch of books.

Can't Global Warming work the same way? There are stories from people who lived thousands of years ago that speak to life to this very day. Pick a religion. It has a book that is a collection of rules and stories about how to act and what to believe. the stories help people get through life an know how to get along with other people.

When someone believes in God, they believe in a positive. God is almost always a good entity to be trusted and loved. Global Warming is a negative evil to be vanquished.

I believe whole heartedly in God. Come what may. I do not believe in Religion. I do not trust people who keep trying to sell me a religion called Apple Computers, democracy, communism, capitalism, Global Warming, Social Security or Homland Security. Some of these work. I might buy a Macintosh if I get rich. I use democracy and capitalism every day. I think Homland Security is doing a pretty good job of protecting American freedoms at the moment. I went to school on SSI.

What gets me about Global Warming is how many people accept it after hearing some convenient numbers and will defend to the death the idea that the whole world needs to bend over  backward to accommodate. No one with an opposing point of view is aloud to speak or present an apposing argument without irrational actions taking over. I wonder if Global Warming is the first of many Technology based religions. Maybe it is just the biggest so far. People are very connected to their Blackburies and Apples.

If Global Warming suddenly becomes a true reality, that is, it becomes obvious and attackable, I bet people will abandon the religion and deny its existence right in the face of the onslaught. It would probably be the same people who bought the story hook line and sinker from the start at the front of the denial mob.

Very Local News

• Government Twitter
  
• Tweet congress (U. S. Congress Twitter links).
• Twist (UK parliament Twitter links)
• I'm so glad I never got my own .com or .whatever domain name. Once you are in the whole database, you get spammed and become target for all kinds of phishing attacks.
• More search is done on YouTube than on Yahoo. If YouTube were still a separate entity, it would be the number two search engine.
  
• The Google Docs interface is poor. I just don't like it. In order to save the CSS (style sheets) from one document to another, I have to bring up an old document and do a 'save as copy'. That is just for crap. I want to have templates. That sounds doable. Come Google. Templates. I'm not asking for mail merge. Oh, well. Microsoft's online office suite is coming soon. Not that it will work on Linux. Not that it will be free.
  
• Google gave employees a phone that runs the Google OS for Christmas in place of a $1000 bonus. I wonder if that includes a contract. "Thanks for the year of bills boss."
  
• A dog can cost $20,000 over its lifetime.
• Obama will take the oath of office on the same bible that Lincoln used. It is Lincoln's 200'th birthday next year. That is a happy thought and a sad one.
  
• A gang in Guatemala went through the local phone book and threatened people to either pay up or they would come over and beat them up. The police did little or nothing. The locals made a militia. Six gang members were burned to death in a public street. Crime dropped. The police are going after the militia members. The term "social cleansing" is used.
  
• I listened to a song today at work called "Because I got high".It makes me feel just that little bit better about myself.

A hill-billy is a hill-billy

Very Local News

• There are a couple new drinks up Chicago way.
• Blagoiavitch (Tastes like evil.)
  
• Sennett Seat
  
• Impeach. ... I wonder if it is peach flavored.
  
• I'm waiting for the Bleep.
  
• Oh, my God. they are talking about changing the way contracts work. Regulating the market for loans, credit and other contracts like consumer products like toys and makeup. I just don't think it will work. I cannot put my head around it. I'll have to ponder the question a while.
• Now that the U. S. has  bailed out the car industry. Now Europe and the U. K. are going through the throws of bailing out an industry on the skids.
• Honda is talking about pulling out of Japan. How messed up is that? The Yen is too strong to make money based in Japan.
• I was cold as all get out most of the morning. Just before lunch, the sun came out. I don't think the temp changed a bit inside the office. I felt much warmer.
• Russian men have an average life span of 59 years. That is compared to something like 76 for American Men.
• $600,000,000 in remittances to one single province in Ecuador last year. That is dropping massively. People living in the U. S. cannot afford to live much less send money back home. People are coming back to Ecuador from the U. S. only to  find cheep immigrant labor from other countries having taken the available jobs. it sounds like the whole system is backing up.
  
• At lunch I walked the parking garage roof. The wind was blowing like mad. There was some kind of work going on behind Target. I could not tell what. A ton of sirens first traveled north on Willcrest and then East on Richmond. There were a unusual number of sounds all around. I do not know if the air was extra wet and dense to carry sound better or not. There were more sirens after I got to my office. No idea what was going on. or where the trouble originated.
  
• My goodness it was difficult to stay focused at work today.  I was able to finally work on some scripts and old low priority bugs. I got some things done. They needed doing. It was hard working on the day before Christmas Eve doing some mindless stuff. Yikes. I kept thinking of things to write on the blot and then thinking those things were terrible.
• I haven't had a chance to take a picture of the sunset in a while. Between the weather and holiday, it will be a while before I have the chance again. The world will move on.
• We had tea time this afternoon. It was more like a happenstance where Lance and I were both getting afternoon coffee at the same time. People just kind of showed up from that point.We, Lance, Bill, Rebecca, Woody (for two minutes) and myself covered what we all plan on doing over the coming holiday and week. We all have diverse things going on. Some are traveling. Some are lazying out.

Sneaky Bastards

Again my parents are the victims of a fake spy-ware tactic. My dad got busted by a page that looked a lot like YouTube saying he needed a video driver or some piece of software to run. This is preciously the sort of thing people should be shot for. I'm not kidding. My father found an article that said these guys are in Russia. Surely it is cheaper to higher some Russian hit men to find and off these pricks than it is to keep smacking them on the head as they turn up every five minutes. I bet word would get around pretty quick. You would only have to get a couple in different countries. Let them know that nowhere on Earth is safe and the problem will simply dissolve.

We have still not fixed the problem. I have to go to work tomorrow so I cannot head over there this evening. My father is off on his own for the moment. It sounded like he was talking to SpyHunter tech support. They will set him right. If not, I'll take care of it tomorrow. If I were not so broke, I would kick a couple bucks toward a real, long term solution for this problem, even if it is not the one I mentioned above.

Flying Cars (about time)

It's been a pipe dream for 30 years but now the world's first fully available flying car is set to hit the roads next year. Ever since the Back to the Future movies lit up our screens in the 80s, designers have dreamt of an automobile that could take to the skies at the push of a button. And now qualified pilots can order their very own Terrafugia Transition 'roadable' plane for just  £127,000, with delivery planned for late next year. Daily Mail

It is about time someone came up with a flying car. I remember an old TV show called Real People that had a prototype of an air plane/car. You had to take the wings off between fittings. That would turn off most aviators I imagine. This attempt looks pretty snappy. This one might take off. (yes, I said it).

I am kind of upset we have flying cars before we have autonomous cars. I can't get a drivers license or a pilot's license. BAH!

Very Local News

• I watched a bunch of videos about vehicles slipping and sliding around this winter and others in the ice and snow. It is amazing how much difference all wheel drives makes on icy roads. If we ever live in a place that has this kind of weather, we will be forced to invest in an all wheel drive vehicle.
• Some press interviewed a couple illegal aliens who were being deported. It was on an airplane. The security guards were doubling as flight attendants. It costs $680 per passenger to return them to Mexico or El Salvidor. I do not know where else they end up. Many people on the plane said words to the effect "I'll be right back. I have kids here. I have to come back as soon as possible."
  
• One in seven (which includes us) American home owners are upside down in their mortgage. That is, we owe more on the house than it is worth.
• New carpet in the elevators at work. Blog worthy event.
• Brits still got it. A guy dying of 14 cancerous tumors, after years of loosing an eye and having many bits removed from his body now knows he is going to die from 'this' tumor was being interviewed. The interviewer said "You have been an inspiration for your charitable works and to know you are going to die at age 23. ..." The answer given by the guy was "Not ideal really." ... Now, that is British.
• Heptilion: The approximate number of stars in the universe is a 1 followed by 22 zeros.
• 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
• It is funny listening to all the podcasts and how many of the commentators have colds. I don't feel so bad. I have a cold. I'm popping expectorants like candy and washing them down with liters of water.
• RIAA announced they are going to get out of the business of suing their own customers. RIAA's customers are really the music industry giants, but I'm talking about the music industry customers vis a vis you and me. The music companies are looking to cut the budget across the board and the RIAA is pricey. this does mean your ISP must keep an eye on you and whether or not you are violating copyright rules.
  

Morning

I was the only one at the bus stop this morning. It is bitterly cold. It was just above freezing with a nasty breeze. That is the worst. Just below freezing, all the moisture exits the air. Just above freezing, the air is full of moisture and feels twice as cold as it really is. If only it had been just a bit colder my face might not have hurt. My fingers might not have hurt. The rest of me was warm.

I watched the vehicles driving by in the cold. Somehow I could just tell they were cozy out of the wind, in their heated portable home.

The sky was gray. The people on the bus were quiet and to the point. One lady sat on her knees and waved to someone across the street. Her  face glowed with the realization that whomever she waved too saw and recognized her. She was pretty for that moment. Then she went back to gray a moment later as the bus pulled away. How am I supposed to capture that with a camera?

I believe that still images will capture that beauty of the moment much better than a video. It is difficult to control and  capture that moment of beauty via video. That's why films need directors and editors. It is so easy to loose that moment in the bazillion frames flipping by. Video or film is not a forgiving medium. Any one can get lucky and capture a moment with a candid shot. It is more difficult with a video camera.

Big Boy Toy (real?)

The worlds most powerful pistol is the Austrian Pfeifer-Zeliska .600 Nitro Express Magnum. It is chambered to fire the British developed .600 caliber rifle  bullet originally made by Holland and Holland. This revolver was not originally a full production model but a one off, built especially for a wealthy Swiss gent...Mr. Zeliska. But if you would like one and I am sure that a few of you 'gunslingers' with a bit of disposable income would, then contact Pfeifer arms ( url near bottom of page ) and they will make one for you. Priced at 13,840 Euro's. This equates as $17,316* or £11,722* including Tax ( *at Exchange rate as of 20 November 2008 ) Technical Data Calibre: .600 Nitro Express or .458 Win Mag. Muzzle velocity: 462 m/s, FMJ 900 grain Muzzle energy:      6,230 joule's Weight: 13.23 lbs Capacity: 5 rounds Barrel length: 13 inches Overall length: 21.65 inches   The .600 Nitro Express cartridge was originally developed in 1899 for big game hunters who went to Africa with the intention of killing Elephants, (something that I despise by the way) and was fired from a double barreled rifle. Even though Holland & Holland no longer manufacture these cartridges, they can still be sought through the gun trade, small reloading companies or even over the internet.  Source

This thing is a freak show with a revolving cylinder full of gunpowder. Something like a ton of impact velocity. There are some other pictures on the site. I like the videos. I'll like to those too.

A friend of mine called the Smith and Wesson 500 "Cartoonishly overpowered". I think there is a new bully on the block. I just can't get over the look of this thing. It looks like a revolver. It should have a cartoon face and fire 300 rounds between reloads. Trees should jump when it fires. The bullets need license plates for god's sake.

Go Klaus

I like Klaus. I always new he was a secret agent in discise. Wait a minute. ...

Crazy dreams and reality

This morning I had a dream where I was laying in bed and two of my teeth fell out. I've had this dream before. I spent the rest of the morning putting my teeth back in the holes and going back to sleep. Then I would dream of something else for a while. Something inconsequential. Then I would notice my teeth, two of the front teeth, would start to fall out again. As I would push them back in, I would come closer to consciousness and realize I was lying in bed. The teeth falling out thing must be a mechanism to wake me up. Part of my brain wanted to wake up.

Eventually I had to pee. I got up, did so and went back to bed. It was 7:?? in the morning. It is Sunday. I'm sleeping in. I fell back asleep and this time I spit the teeth out in to my hand.  When I tried to look at them, they looked like strips of paper or a wet match. I felt with my toung and my teeth were indeed missing. I rolled over and reached for the tape player from the library for the blind. I hit play. I was awake and listening to my book. What happened to my teeth? I felt with my toung and sure enough they were bot in place and held tight.

The book began to play. There were a couple of dream sequences in the book. They sounded familiar in a way. When I write something substantial I will memntion the dreams about my teeth falling out.  I wonder if it it shte toung portion of the brean dreaming of having the mouth all to itself. That or some deep seeded primoridal fear of becomeing old and obsoleet. I do not dream of battling for who will become cheef. I do however dream of battling for some lost cause.

How many reems of books have been written on the interpretation of dreams? Google has more hits than it can count. Then again, I could make up something off the top of my head and who could prove me wrong? It is a bit like Global Warming. You cannot prove a nagative, so no one can disprove that global warming's existance. Never mind we have been getting colder over the last ten years or that NASA has had to recant some clames made about ice sheets disappearing over the last decade.

I lack passion this evening

There have been a couple of things I wanted to bring up on the blog. However, nothing strikes me as worth writing about. I would do a 'very local news' post, but I'm kind of sick of those.

Elle is helping Nat watch a bunch of Ghost Hunters. Elle is making little knickknacks for Christmas.

I'm depressed a bit because we cannot afford to buy Christmas presents for our family members. That hurts. There was a Christmas a couple years ago where I bought a remote control car and a PlayStation for my parents. They loved it. There are times where getting something for Christmas can make you feel better about yourselves. It is shallow, but just plane true.

We are not the only family caught in the economic turn. It is going to get much worse before it gets better. God help all of us make it through. I fear a new war before it is all over. I fear someone who hates the U. S. will use this as a good time for a one two punch or a hey-maker. We, as a country, are over extended. Things are bad. They are going to be bad for a while.I have no trust or belief in the people in charge that they will do any good. I do not believe in a bunch of rich lawyers to make the working-man's life any better. I still like the idea of banning lawyers from occupying public office.I will work most of next week. I have a few things I can work on. They are things that have needed doing for a while.

We have some plans for the week I have off work.

Of all the times for all the bloggers to go on vacation, now sucks. They are signing off for two week vacations in some cases. I'm off. I need something good to read. Legacy Media puts on a bunch of lame crap this time of year because they are all on vacation. Dag-nab-it.

Besides this, the whole family is sick. Nat has sinus headaches. I have a runny nose because I'm popping expectorants like candy. Elle just got over something. Hell, even the grey cat is acting all sick and has a stuffy nose.

2000 year old computer

Did Jesus have a laptop? No. This looks like it counts as a computer to me. Any objections?

No reason you couldn't hook this thing up to say a wind mill or a water wheel and have a continuous run. Not sure why that is important to note. I just think it is cool.

It begins

Baby To Be Born Without the Gene For Breast Cancer from Slashdot by ScuttleMonkey manoftin writes to tell us that next week a baby will be born without the gene for breast cancer, according to the BBC. "But he said that, in this case, not carrying the BRCA1 gene would not guarantee any daughter born to the couple would be unaffected by breast cancer because there are other genetic and environmental causes. Dr Alan Thornhill, scientific director of the London Bridge Fertility, Gynaecology and Genetics Centre, said: 'While the technology and approach used in this case is fairly routine, it is the first time in the UK that a family has successfully eliminated a mutant breast cancer gene for their child. It is a victory for both the parents and the HFEA that licensed this treatment.'" Slashdot

It has begun. There is no stopping it. What responsible parent would allow any imperfection that could be changed to remain unchanged? It is what parents are expected to do. If you don't, then why should you be alloud to have children? Welcome to Gattaca. That movie is pre-every movie gets a web page.  It is a whole 12 years old.

Very Local news

• Predictions (by others)
• China growth will hit zero (for real, if not reported) China has no plan B now that the U. S. consumer is not buying bags of cheep Chinese goods for no good reason any more.
  
• Italy just might abandon the Euro. This would devastating for the Euro.
• The guy on Geek News Central Podcast is pissed that one of the conventions that demands, all of a sudden, that any photographer/videographer be accredited before they are aloud on the floor for interviews.
• The situation between India and Pakistan is considered to be the closest approach to nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis. Some say it is even worse  because of the relatively weak governments.
• Half the office took the rest of the year off. Today was the last day for many people.
• Harris County is the deadlines in the nation for drunk driving deaths according to channel 11 (khou).
• Supposed to be 65 degrees F for Christmas. Nat is displeased. She says it should be cold for Christmas. I can dig that.
• NPR had a story about tipping in recent months. High end places are finding higher tips from regulars any way. Low end places are getting much lower tips. Delivery people are getting jacked. The main thing I took from it was the 15% rule has become the 20% rule at some point in the nineties.

This morning was muggy

Every one else who goes to my bus stop gets a ride. They all had heavy shirts on. One man had a coat. It was open. he did not look cold. One lady walked by all bundled up with a muffler around her neck. It was something like 70 degrees and dripping with humidity and mosquitoes.

I was in a sweaty t-shirt scratching at bug bites. I wonder what I look like to the other people at that stop. I wonder if I make more or less money than they do. I wonder if any of them have an idea that I cannot see properly.

No one I know has walked the mile that I walk every day. I have not walked their mile. I wonder if I could walk one of two of my friend's miles, just once. It might be worth tagging along for the ride of a day in the life of one of my friends. From dawn to dusk, just hang out and learn something.

Very Local News

• 2012 just doesn't sound four years away to me. people keep saying it is the next election and that car manufacturers have until 2012 to do x y and z. The difference between 2008 and 2012 just doesn't have the 'vast' factor that that so many commenters want it to have.
  
• Baltimore will soon not have a major paper. it is a pretty big city. Huston only has one major English news paper.
• The SEC had credible complaints about Madeoff for years. He had a 50,000,000,000 fraud going for decades. This is most likely the biggest fraud case in U. S. if not world history. He couldn't get four people to cosign his bail. He got sent away with an ankle sensor. Not sure I would want to be on the street if I were him.
• All those people who bought oil futures at $140 a barrel a couple months ago are a bit miffed right now as oil is selling on the open market for like $45 a barrel.
• "We don't know what to do, so we will lower the interest rate to a range of 0.25% to 0.0%. Good luck. and remember, we all still have jobs."  the Fed.
• Tons of construction on Richmond on the way home. People drove like nuts.
• Saw Rebecca at Target. She and we were both picking up kid's Christmas party stuff.
• Eye Spy. A film maker plans to plant a tiny camera in his prosthetic eye and film people saying things to his face that they might not say in front of a camera. Does it do sound?

Couple Videos

Dear Santa!

The sign at the end says "Dear Santa, Kelly is a boys' name too."

Enterprising young man

This young man has a dream. It is a simple dream. It is a dream of storing other people's crap for weed money. Hey, it is a dream.

Very Local News

• There was a story on one of the APR podcasts about giving carbon offsets as stocking suffers. I say print up some fakes and make people think they are offsetting your wallet. I have got to figure out a way to make up a new commodity out of (literally) thin air and make billions trillions of dollars for wining in public.
• The only reason Blagojovich is catching hell is because the news papers in Chicago are going under. They are out of a job and figured "what the hell? Lets pull the pin on the governor." Well, this is my speculation. Apparently he has been under investigation for some time. The media keeps making a big deal out of the fact he was led off in handcuffs.
  
• Brand Loyalty: Biology, Truth and Lies.
  
• While trying to figure out if the warnings work on cigarettes, some scientists figured out that The warnings do more harm than good. The worse the warning the more it worked in the opposite direction. They increase the draw of smoking by making it further from reality. The horrible pictures on foreign cigarette packs just make people crave cigarettes because no other product has that kind of warning. it makes smoking a unique experience.
  
• People today are exposed to an average of two million commercials over our our life time.
• Apple really is a mini-religion. It fires off the same parts of the brain as people worshiping a god they believe in.
• Mini Coopers were modeled to have a 'baby face' and appeal to that market. "Oh, its so cute."
• 12.5% of the American workforce is underemployed. That is not including the unemployed. Underemployed means for example, you are working part time when you want to work full time or you are working a job that does not use your skill set because you cannot find the full job you are qualified for. I think people with English degrees working in a book store should not count as underemployed.
  
• One in ten Americans are behind on their mortgage.

I Dress Up Nice

Our company picture was today. I changed in the mens room in to the cloths that make me presentable. I've learned not to ware the nice cloths in. I can't sit all day in the nice cloths. They are just not me. I did get told I look dapper.

CC stole the show. Adam and Lourie's little girl CC demanded to be held by Lourie while the picture was being taken. They Photoshop the pictures pretty heavily so it will get airbrushed I'm sure. I tried to suggest we all do a pouty faced picture, but no one else was in to it.

I wish I could put up a copy. Alas, no. We won't get the pictures until next month.

I changed in to cloths right before the photo and out again right after. Shawn passed me on the way to the restroom having already changed in to his casual garb. I had genes and a t-shirt in my hand. We shot each other a thumbs up.

Very Local Fiction

What is a soul ?

In order for a soul to interact with what we call reality, it must occupy some mass. The mass has to be at least a few grams. There are rules. The sole may come and go. A soul feels pain and emotions. A soul will not leave just because it hurts. Souls have somewhere else to go when they no longer find this world interesting. Souls do not have mass themselves. Though, some wonder if we may have found them in dark matter.

Very Local News

• YouTube has gone high-def. Nat and I need (OK, we don't need one I'm just typing.) an appropriate High-Def video camera. I've only seen two that really make any sense. No tape. I give up on tapes. Must be 720p or higher. Must have optical zoom of some kind. Must have a pretty wide angle of view. Must use either drive or flash cards of some kind. Must store in a format that I can at least manipulate in Linux. Must not have proprietary drivers or software.
• Flip makes one. Flip MINO HD. Records an hour of video at 720p. Requires specific software though. And has no optical zoom, only digital zoom. $200. Drat. I just can't imagine the optics are above 'sucks' rating either. Ah, well. I suppose I want too much.
  
• It got more and more misty all day. It looked like fog at 15:00. It was a thin misty rain.
• I'm sick with a nose cold. I've been taking an expectorant with a decongestant. One to knock it loose and the other to kick it out.
• Antihistamine - Make mucus thicker. Good for bed time.
  
• Decongestant - Make mucus thinner.
• Expectorant - Make mucus leave the body.
• Virgin Mobile in Europe will offer a 50 megabit line. Many cable connections are 1 megabit. You can download a Blueray video faster than you will watch it. I will wait for the rubber to meet the road to be honest.
  
• It's the same cable with different bits on both ends.
• British Telecom (among others) are pushing fiber, but that is long term and a colossal investment.
  
• They are after the video on demand market. Good luck.
• Nat had to rent a new Carola because ours is in the shop for an alignment. It is a 2008. The dash looks a bit better and the ride is a bit smoother. Oh, and the headlights look different, but the same somehow. The nose looks different, but I haven't put my finger on it. Not many differences.
  

Getting Ready

Nat gave me a ride in today. She is a sweetheart. While we were all getting ready, Elle came and sat down next to me while I was watching the news. I was waiting by this point. She started up some small talk about what was going on this morning. I couldn't help but feel like she was buttering me up for something. I asked her what she wanted. She got an upset look on her face and said stubbornly "Nothing!" We sat for a while and had some more small talk.

Nat's alarm went off in the next room. "Time for every one to head for the car." We complied.

Elle was out the bedroom door like a shot shouting "Yay, I get to give my friend a book." She was clawing at the door to get to the car.

When we get in the car it is more small talk between Elle and I while we waited for Nat. Then, I get this from Elle "Oh, what about my lunch?"

Nat is locking the garage door and ready to go. I asked her just as she was pulling the key out of the door to the house "Was I supposed to fix Elle's lunch?"

The rest of the morning went by as a blur. Thanks Elle. Hey, we all made it to our destinations on time. Nat even managed to get the car aligned.

Icy Weather

Natalie says that she would prefer to live somewhere cold. "You can ware more cloths to get warm, but you can't always ware cloths that make you more cool." Something like that. She enjoys hiding from cold weather. She likes bundling up in fifteen blankets and watching a DVD. The coldest place she lived was Longview or maybe Lufkin. I'll let her comment any additional information.
I very much enjoyed watching the bus perform an icy, slope assisted power slide. Makes me want to ride the bus in Canada.
Still Sick. Still not getting the rest I should. I'm off to take a nap. Promise.

Sick at home watching movies

So, here I am sick as a dog at home watching movies. I gave the Kelly scan to a movie called The Mutant Chronicles . It is one of those all CGI all the time flicks. CGI must have dropped n price. It used to be something precious that you saved for the good bits. Now it is just air. They haven't gotten to the point yet where things look real. When you CGI the whole movie, it doesn't make all the whole movie look better or bring the level of reality down to a cartoonish stability. It just looks like crap. If you are going to do a cartoon, do a cartoon.

They didn't even get the steampunk stuff right. If you are going to do steampunk you have got to go all the way. They only went like half way on the crazy alien looking 1920's technology gone wild. 

Well, OK. I only watched one movie. I'm too tired to do more. I got a call from work "Where are you? We need you. You are coming in tomorrow right?"

"Yes, I'll be there tomorrow." says me. So, I'm off to get some rest. Maybe.

Bush Hatred

President (yes he is president at the moment) of the United States of America gets a shoe thrown at him at a press conference in a foreign land. A foreign land that the U. S. has gone to great lengths and a country for whom this president has made great sacrifices. That's gratitude.

There are two things to say after this video. Either "I wish I thought of that." or "I hope they strung him up." My trouble is that both of you read this blog. Some of the people I work with would go both ways. Then again, some people are just full of hate. Me, I just want to complain. Complain about the people on both ends of the spectrum, the middle, and those who complain. It is the only thing I'm any good at.

Between this news and the news about Palin's church being burned down, I've come to the conclusion that there is an air of disrespect for Republicans in this country. The media is going to get someone killed by saying that it should be done. It will probably be a blogger. This means a bunch of new rules about what you can and cannot say on blogs. I bet the legislation has been written and is just waiting for an incident to be enacted.

Author

I wish I could write. I listened to a audio book this morning that spoke about the intro to a story. An intro is called a hook. It needs to answer or at least establish questions like who, what, where, when, why and it must advertise the rest of the story. It has to set the tone. You may not get a paragraph. You may not get 100 words or 50.

The most memorable example was "Call me Ishmael." Ishmael was second in charge. He was the man behind the king so to speak. Readers in Melville 's time would have known that. The first line of the novel spoke volumes with those three words. I did not know who Ishmael was until I heard the article read out this morning. I'm not well read.

I would love to have written. I would love to have a label to leave on my tombstone that might make someone look me up. I want to be a keyword. I want a Wikipedia entry. There are a couple with my name already. I'm not linking them for obvious reasons.

I take pictures. I make some noise here and there on the net. Nothing any one would remember. I would love to write trashy fiction that people love to read. I would love to write something that makes people think. I want to be remembered.

I'm turning forty in two months. This is just about the right time for a mid life crisis. I've waited half my life to get here.

So, what do I intend to do about it? I have no idea. I may put some very short fiction entries on this blog to figure out what sticks. I intend to drink more coffee and practice existentialism, you know, just for kicks. Perhaps I'll shave my head and grow a beard. Oh, wait.

Where to begin? Where to begin? How do you get started with fiction. The great thing about writing science fiction is you can just crank out a bunch of goofy stuff and put it all down as new technology. My problem is that I think the future will be far more boring than the past. We will all be girly powder-puff wooses more concerned with our next meal and next kiss than invaders or interstellar conflict and intrigue. We won't go out with a bang or a whimper. We will simply continue on the way to boredom until we merge with our own machines just for something to do on a particularly blah Weekend afternoon.

So, I guess I shouldn't write about the future I foresee. I should write about the one that is non-existent, but very interesting. The future with exploding planets and folding, nay, collapsing universes, just in time supply should become just in time escape and salvation. Worlds collide, but Nigel Forthwith saves the day just in the nick of time, every time. Hell of a guy.

That will due. I've always wondered if Princess Leia, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, were working names that just happened to make it in to the final cut almost by accident.

Han Shot first.

Elle is never driving

I hearby forbit any teenager of mine to drive. They can leave home and go get a licens. Right? God help us all.

Nobby Tires

A) Get Nobby Tires on your 4x4. This is why you get stuck in the first place. I am sick and tired of people bad mouthing specific 4x4 vehickles that happen to have street tires and praising others that happen to have real off road tires.

B) There is a reason you use a medium duty truck frame for a tow truck. This video illustrates why. The ford pickup frame just is not up to the task of being twisted by its own torque, the wench in back and a truck in front attempting to hold the nose down.

I have to say, I was almost hoping the big truck would get stuck. That was a bad thing. I mean, it was a bit evil. It would have made for a video even more fun to watch.

Guitar Hero on a bike

Who says video games are not good exorcise?

Even this tubby fucker has wheels

He has more freedom than I do. I envy him. Or is it her? I can't tell. I still envy this human's ability to get around without having to deal with finding a ride.

I also have new respect for those little scooters. I wander what PSI those tires are at.

Text

I sent a text to a bunch of people yesterday evening (2008-12-12). I got several good responses. I have to say, SMS (texting) is what IM (Instant Messaging) was supposed to be. I know one person who uses IM, but it is for work.

Name	Thing
Jenny	If it snowed down here, we didn't see any.
Heath	Dallas
Johny	Home
Robbin	Work
Ken	Work
Bryan	In class in Clearlake. Hat to clear two inches of snow off my car before I could leave.
Trever	I was with Sue at her rehab (physical therapy) in Tomball
Suzanne	Dripping Springs Texas. It stuck for half a day
James	Home... We had two inches on the ground.
Josh	Was home, watching the back yard From the living room during the snow.

The question I asked was "Where were you when it snowed?"