Brought the House Down

This is clearly Eastern Europe. So, why did the comment say it was a 4th of July calibration? Is the 4th of July special in this country as well?

Dog wakes up

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who does this every morning.

Very Local News

• Microsoft views piracy as it's number one competitor. Linux comes in second, followed by Apple. These are world wide numbers. This tells me they intend to tighten up on piracy and make it a pain in the ass to get anything useful out of a box running a pirate version of their OS. Go for it Microsoft. The harder you make it for folks to copy your stuff, the more people will realize there are free choices out there that are great. The more people on Linux the better I say.
  Some say Google is more of a threat to Microsoft than another OS. Not sure how I agree.
  
• In France they call 'Affirmative Action' 'Positive Discrimination' which, is true to be honest. The person talking about this fact thought it was ridiculous to use that term. At the moment, it is illegal to keep track of someone's race in a senses in France. I almost like that idea.
• I went through my Facebook friends last night and updated some contact information. It freaks me out how many people put their name, birth place and date of birth on the page, but won't put a phone number or email up. I don't think they get the concept of finding people.
• The shelf I use at work to hold my monitors works great. My father built two of them out of plywood. One is at home. Trouble is, I now have two huge monitors at work. I need to add about ten inches in width to the shelf at work. I hit my elbows rolling back and forth trying to keep up with my mouse pointer.
  I do enjoy complaining about how vast my work monitors are.
• Some annalist used a term "jy-mongo" when describing the stimulus save-the-economy thing that just went though.
• I went in to work today (Saturday). I was able to get what I needed done in a quick hour and a half. I then went on to do some grunt work that I had put off. It was nice. The phone never rang.

Pictures

Several of these are sunsets from the last couple weeks. One is Adam before Soft Drinks. One of these days I'll have to explain what that is.

Armoured Mine Layer

Those are mines this thing is popping over the field. This thing drives right down the front lines and pops mines in front of an approaching enemy. How convenient.

I'm not bleeding heart liberal, but I think no one should be aloud to make any money off mines or distribution of mines until they figure out a way to pick them up as fast and as safely as this thing lays them down. What do you think?

Low on office supplies

This office really needs to reconsider their budget for office supplies. Come on. A pencil sharpener is like five bucks.

That or this is one of those Pentagon $40 million pencil sharpeners. Damn fine looking point on the pencil.

Trik-back-flip

That counts!

WD

WD, Adam's step father, had a heart attack. All I can do is prey for him. They do not have mobile phones. Adam was unable to get hold of them for the longest time. It makes me glad my parents are in to mobile phones.

I remember Adam saying something about WD. Adam said that WD mentioned that he did a sit-up once, and didn't like it much. WD got no exorcise. I don't think he ate right either. Not sure. I hadn't spoken to him much in the last couple years. WD is the most laid back human being I know.

Adam's father, Wayman, has had a heart attack too. He is the stressed out type. He is a quite kind of guy who you can just kind of tell worries.

WD was not a worrier. At least, he didn't show it.

This makes me worry about Adam. He is a lazy tub like myself. I want him around for a long time. I wonder if he has gotten checked out. The man is approaching 40. Time to start getting the tests.

My grandfather had a couple heart attacks. He was over weight all his life. My father, God bless him, has some health issues, but takes pretty good care of himself. He had a kidney thing a couple years ago. I'll post that picture some time. He looked like a refugee.

I still haven't heard back about how WD and the family is doing. This makes me want to exorcise. Good luck with that Kelly.

Very Local News

• Deja vu is the time traveling consciousnesses entering and exiting our existences. I just know it.
• My podcasts would just not come in last night. I tried once last night and again over night. The downloads just would not complete. I wonder if the ISPs are  blocking the traffic in an effort to slimy copyright infringement. Thing is, these are all legitimate podcasts. It must just be the connection timing out. That happens some times with DSL. More lately it seems.
• Music:
  
• The podcasts being out of whack made me listen to music today. It was nice to be honest. I needed a break from the news. "Mr Brownstone" came on. I liked it. I forgot all the memories G&R touched. I like rose colored goggles. They make things seem so much more rosy. I do hate that little "Yalza" at the end of the song. It is a blemish in my opinion.
• The Go-goes came on. Our Lips Are Sealed came on. For years I thought they were saying something like "Alix, I see you." I like my version better because it made the song about a person. It turns in to a stalker song with intrigue. It makes the song creepy. I liked it that way.
• do-te-do bang! bang! Maxwell's silver hammer .. made sure that she was dead. do-te-do
  
• I spent much of this morning fixing bugs and making warnings and errors go away.
• Warnings are good advisement, but look bad. Noteworthy events should be noted, not necessarily acted upon.
• Good old '2>/dev/null'. Nothing beats that. Well, except maybe trapping the error or writing the code so it doesn't error. Details details. Computers are too picky.
  
• Had another UPS pow-wow. Only a couple of trucks showed up. I really wonder what is going on with these folks. It looked like they said something to each other and then pulled away. No pic. I'm board with it.
• I took one look at my paycheck this morning and said aloud "I need to start robbing banks." someone chuckled.
• The radio I listen to on my commute sucks. It was a $5 radio. The third set of earphones is dying. I do not want to replace this radio with another FM radio. I want something that does high definition radio or something. Since there is no satellite radio any more (soon anyway) I have to be careful what I get.
• I have two wonderful monitors at work. I use them every day. They are enormous. Sometimes, when I double click in an email body for example, a window will pop up a meter away. I'll miss it and wonder why my email program just locked up. Remember, I have to get very close to the screen so my peripheral vision is limited to the spot in front of me. I have to lean back and look around the acre of screen for the new window.
  Nice!!!
• I have so much to do and yet,  I still want quitting time to hurry up and get here. I'm staying over like an hour today so I don't know why I'm worried about it. I'm coming in tomorrow as well. There is so much to do it is nuts.

Very Local News

• I road right past the bus stop again this morning. One second we were rolling up on Willcrest and the next second we were a hundred meters past the my stop.I had to run up to the driver to get him to pull over. Otherwise, I would have been at the Beltway. I took some generic NyQuil last night because i was caughing my head off. Slept like a baby. I was still half asleep walking in the front door at work. All was good aftter the first cup of coffee.
  
• I'm thinking of creating a Facebook group for my neighborhood. maybe we can gang up on the HOAs and racers.
• Several of the pills I take recently say something like "to be taken with a full glass of water." I thought they all had  some hydro component. but I thought about it and they are just cheaper pills that need more water to dissolve properly. Cheap bastards!
• I listen to a podcast called "Treks in SciFi". The primary guy who does this podcast was laid off from his company in Michigan. The company had something to do with the automotive industry. Things are tough all over.
  
• One of the podcasts had a little anecdote about picking out a journal. You know, a physical notebook for writing down of thoughts. The guy was agonizing over finding a non-distracting non-girly journal at a retail book store. He was worried about a good looking cover and thick paper. I'm thinking "Get a blog." The guy had to be half my age.

Book Review

Spoiler Alert!

"The Man Who Turned Into Himself " Is the best fictional explanation of time travel paradox I've ever come across. It is not the best novel in the world, but does a great job of walking the reader through the time loop and infinite number of universes created by choice scenario of time travel.

A man experiences a tragedy so intense that it sends him to an adjacent time line. He is thought to be insane. With the help of a psychiatrist, he learns to get back to his time line. Then, he learns to find another time line where the tragedy that started the whole thing can be avoided.

The novel is poorly written to be honest. I considered stopping reading it after the first chapter or two. I'm glad I stuck it out if only to get the thought experiment from the author. It makes up for it's lack of story or maybe it is depth of characters, by it's length. It is mercifully short.

This i the kind of crap I would write if I wrote. It presents a thought experiment in novel form. The dialog is mechanical. The characters are contrived stereotypes. I try to do the same thing. I come up with an idea and just want to put the idea down with as little fuss as possible. In good novels, every moment is important, even if it isn't. Not sure I have the skills to do any better than or as good as this novel.

Very Local News

• American Express is paying some customers who they do not make money on $300 to close their account. I think it looks makes them look desperate myself.
  
• Had another UPS pow-wow in the Target parking lot next to work. Didn't get a snapshot of it before they broke up.
• Buying an experience, like a vacation or a night out, makes you happier than buying a thing. The difference is the comparison and the social deterioration that happens with things does not happen with experiences because your neighbors, the Joneses, can't get a better one. Pretty much every experience is unique.
• Chrysler is in hard times. Chrysler sucks. They haven't made a good car since 1972 or so. Another really horrible vehicle manufacturer is Fiat. Every one I know who has owned a Fiat had problems with it. My father had a couple. Some friends had some. They all had issues. Now, Fiat wants to buy Chrysler. Shit leading shit in my book.
• My ideas/titles for books I might write.
• Focusing Rage
• Living as an Alpha Male Without Killing Stupid People
• Carnivore Stank
• Debate: The Art of Glaring and Screaming at People
• Look Less Like a Victim Than the People Around You, or Always be Able to Out Run Your Bear Hunting Buddies
  
• Ranting for Success, or Complaining Your Way to the Top
  
• Knowing When to Duck, Punch and Sue
• Nothing a Sledgehammer Can't Fix
  
• A couple years ago fourteen girls died in Saudi Arabia when they were not aloud to leave their burning school because they did not have proper public coverings. True.

Very Local News

• I really think that there are more trucks and SUVs traveling out of town during the morning commute than headed in. I noticed more small cars today along side the bus than I have ever noticed before. Something good is happening. If you need a truck get one. Otherwise, don't.
• A little girl in Briton was born without a gene that heightens the odds for breast cancer. She was genetically engineered to come to term without this gene. Watch Gadica. It begins. The doctor who was the subject of the interview I listened too, was very proud of wiping out a "blight" from the genetic pool. This same sort of picking and choosing the healthy cells has been done in Israel and the U. S..
  
• There is a movement to lower the drinking age again. I remember when it went to 21. I was so not worried about it.
• When I read stories that have people sleeping, I feel cheated just a little bit. I don't know why. The number one human frailty young people  would like to change about themselves is to get rid of the need for sleep.
• Nirvana "Never Mind" 1991, has sold over twenty six million copies.
• The president is on this evening. We are watching a PBS show about ferrets.

Just for fun

That was worth two minutes of my life.

Email

When I was using Hotmail a million years ago you were limited to x number of contacts. Yahoo did the same thing unless you paid. I looked at Gmail the other day and I only have like 300 contacts. The old limits were something like 250. Many of those contacts are businesses or family that I sent wedding info to once a long time ago. I have no idea how to keep this stuff updated. That is a service that needs to happen. Well, it is happing with Facebook. If I want someone's address or phone number I look on Facebook first and back check my contact information. I should make a print out of this every year or so, but there is no way to aggregate that data. sounds like a good Facebook application requirement. I should go looking for it. I bet someone has already written one.

I find myself only using my email account for bills and for keeping people's email addresses which I use to find them on places like Facebook.Now, I find myself going the other way round. Most people do not have their email exposed on Facebook so you cannot pull that information back in to your contact list in Gmail or wherever.

it is funny to me that the email address has become the unique identifier for the internet. yes, it seems to be working so far, but people have to change their email for all kinds of reasons. This causes a ripple effect and loss of contact to companies and people. I mean, keeping track of what email address and password you have used is very important to keep your bills straight. If you loose your email because your provider felt like making you change, you are just plane out of luck. That and people like Nat have nine different email addresses. This is good for covering your bets, but makes it a pain to find you on Facebook.

Very Local News

• When Elle gets upset and stomps her foot and says "Kelly! I'm sewious!" I cannot help but crack up.
• A rumor went around that the U. S. government was going to nationalize a bunch of banks. The stocks were dumped and took a powder. Some are penny stocks. People in the government freaked. Of course, no one intends to nationalize banks, until they nationalize them. I just don't believe them, banks or the government.
• it looks bad to drag a task across several weeks or iterations of a project. Even if that task is a one time thing that has to happen at the end of a project and was assigned at the beginning. Close it and just do the work when the work needs to be done. Just don't let things slip.
• Podcast facts and fiction
  
• Nerf first came out in 1969. Good year. It is also in the shitty spell checker. Considering the word "movies" wasn't, that is impressive.
  
• People keep saying Twitter is the next big thing. I doubt it. I've read plenty of the Twitter stuff and I'm telling you that only one in a hundred thousand is worth a damn. It is like blogging and the main stream media. Blogging would suck without MSM to feed off of. If you ask me, blogging is a filter for MSM and not much more.
• Satellite radio is really going to die. It just plane costs too much. I know a couple people who recently purchased vehicles with satellite radio. The scuttlebutt is that the service will just plane go dark at some point in the near future. Think of all that useless hardware in people's cars. Think of all those people addicted to good radio. Think of all the conservative talk shows with no where to go.
  
• Sleeping promotes memory. If you do not sleep, you do not commit things to memory fully. Get restful sleep after studying or you loose the information far more easily.
• 16% of passwords online are a first name of the user or someone close to them.
• Expect a 4% tax on iTunes and other such places soon. Someone has to pay for that trillion plus book of earmarks and pork recently past.
  
• I just sort of randomly took a picture of a buddy working today. His office partner just sort of retaliated and snapped my picture not so randomly.
  

Generation Kill

I just watched the show Generation Kill . Very good show, even for the liberal haven of HBO. I watched it marathon stile. It was hard to watch in places. My favourite scene was mail call in the last episode. One guy gets a letter from his wife via a lawyer  saying she is taking the kids. Another gets a letter from his wife saying she has a handle on things and loves him.

There was a bunch of philosophy in the series. I didn't find myself thinking along with much of any of it. There was a bunch of racist banter and anti homoerotic banter. It is stuff I expect from HBO. There were incompetent leaders and marines who got screwed by incompetent higher ups. 

Watching war films makes me feel like I missed something. Honestly, I fear I would have been one off the incompetents getting people killed. I'm not a detail oriented mover.

deja vu

I had deja vu today. It was long. it was just me walking through the house in the clutter. It was from when Nat and I got together. I remember feeling the before effect long ago. Not so much li8ke I had been in this place or situation, but like I saw it coming from years ago. Is that deja vu? Is it a premonition? Is it my memory playing tricks on me?

I've noticed something about my episodes of deja vu. They accrue around times I feel good. This morning I felt good about life and the world in general. I'm over the kidney stone thing. I was able to weed-whack the yard yesterday. I'm not mowing today, but I will mow eventually. I've missed way too much work over sickness this month, but I'll get over that. Even the drug dealwers behind use have quieted down. I didn't even feel like calling the cops on filming the ass hole racers. I suppose I'm giving in. I just don't care. 

I can't let myself feel good. I get paranoid when I feel good or complacent. That is when bad things happen. That is when things blow up in your face. Feeling good worries me. I can never let myself feel happy. I can never find satisfaction with the way things are right now because they could always get worse and I feel I must be prepared for such things.

Where is the Balrog?

The internet nearly never surprises me any more. Every now and then I get a video of people doing something very stupid that I think, Why? This is not one of those videos. This one is very brave folks doing something rather amazing. I would never have the guts to follow, but hey. I can post the video.

A Balrog is the monster that Gandalf fought in the Lord of the rings.

Flying Sorceress

This witch flies like Nat.

Froggy went a courting (Pecos Pest)

Yoville

I joined Yoville just to appease Natalie. She is all about these Facebook games. I'm trying to get her to do Second Life or WOW. I just know she would love them. She refuses to do it though. No bit deal. I mean WOW costs money. after all.

However, it was not just a click or two to get Yoville to work on my Linux box. I had to install the windows version of Firefox and get it working under Wine. That is nothing to sneeze at. It really upsets me that that trick did not work for the CBS site. When I try to use their proprietary reader under Linux, the page laughs and calls me names. When I attempt to use the windows under Wine Firefox, my machine locks up.

That's love dammit! Well, the first bit. The second bit is just annoying.

Vote

There is a movement on the internet to get congress and the new president to put up a web page and let people air their opinion on who should get bailout money . I mean, it will never happen. Our representatives know they know better than the people. Who are these unwashed masses anyway. What makes them think they know what they want? I wonder if it would make them think about their constituents before their wallets? I wonder if it would make them think about what the idea behind a democracy is before they just agree with their party and tow the line?

Probably not. I mean the idea behind politics is not to make the people happy. It is not to satisfy the people. The idea is to run a government. The idea of the folks having any kind of direct say is purely a popularity contest and would make those difficult decisions like going to war a spur of the moment event that could not be avoided easily.

Still, I would join up just to bitch. I want a place to complain damnit. Someplace besides my blog that no one in a position of power will ever read. I want to ram my thoughts down the right throats.

The news will read "No one reads the forum on the government's new democracy by the people site." The complaints will go unheard. the prose will go unread, at least by any one in a position of influence. If I were them, I would not let my IP address get cought any where near that site. "We can prove that you read that idea on the Democracy by the People site. We are going to sue you for copy right infringement." Screw that.

Iowa

I watched a movie called Iowa . It was pretty good. It was hard to watch in places. It had drugs, women, guns, violence, more drugs, and a GTO. It also has an existential ending that doesn't make any sense. I like the music. I wonder if I can find the sound track.

It's funny. Lately I've liked the low budget filmed at home movies far more than most of the block busters that Hollywood puts out. Am I getting older? Is Hollywood circling the bowl?

Kidney Stone

I had a kidney stone today. I really hurt. It is funny that the pain will make you wonder if it is something else. I got Nat to take me to the emergency room. We both ended up loosing a day of work.. I hate that. I had things I wanted to get done. I now have one sick day left for the year.

It turns out my white count is still too high. This doctor gave me some antibiotics. I must still have the bronchitis or whatever it is. I am still coughing and I still feel like crap. It has been a couple of weeks since I went to the doctor for it last time.

Welcome to forty. Here, have a three day flue and a kidney stone. This does not bode well.

Determination

I still think he is a dumb-ass. I would kill him if he did this off my roof. Blood washes off concrete. "Why is that part of the roof leaking?"

I give the kid points for sticking with it.

Very Local news

• I need to figure out how Evolution plugs in to Outlook/Exchange calendar. No!!!!!
• Had left over fajitas for lunch today. Left from the free lunch yesterday. i had a huge plate. I could have eaten a plate full of onions. Not sure why I craved them. Good stuff.
• It was pretty side today. I snuck out for a few minutes just to walk around in the parking garage and soak up the sun and breeze.  It smelled wet even though it was mostly dry.
• Last night there was a millipede was walking toward my toe on the kitchen floor. Nat spotted it and let me know. She ended up getting it to walk up on a napkin and letting it go outside.
• My six word memoir:
• "I tried, then I tried more."
• "The world owes me some time."
• "God loves me, I love little."
• "I always knew when to duck."
• "Work hard. Me, I like sleeping"
• "Gravity doesn't exist. Earth just sucks." (I heard this one somewhere.)
• "Fell and fell and up again."
• "Tore up from the floor up." Again, not mine.
• "Life is like a yellow light."
• "Rise cracking thunder, poor's the slumber."
• "Kid's meal, six count, Cherry Coke."
• One of the podcasts interviews some business owners in Mexico. They spoke about dealing with drug cartels and having to defend their employees. The business owners considered deaths and 'protection' as costs of doing business."Not that big a deal." Thank God I live in the U. S..

Window

Once, on a plane, I gave my self away as a southerner by saying "winda" instead of "window". A window by any other name is still a window.

Once, when playing poker with friends for real money, I was told that I have so many tells that I should not attempt to correct them because they confuse people. I took this as a complement and a sign that I should never play poker for real.

Yesterday at tea time I was described as giving someone a murderous stare. I had an ex girlfriend tell me I scowl at people when I'm listening to their side of the conversation. I have flaring eyebrows, I wonder if that has something to do with it. I was tired and in a spot with some code that I'm in the middle of. I was sitting there not listening, I was just distracted. I worry that someone will take that exhausted look wrong.

At multiple times, I've been told I stomp like I'm angry when I walk. I blame wondering the halls in school. I learned that if I look like I'm supposed to be walking around, people leave me alone. I have no idea how to change my walk. Not sure I want too since I walk the streets of Houston. Who knows how many people have been detoured from messing with me because I already looked pissed.

Many people think I am a genius when it comes to computers. There are some who think I'm incompetent. I'm somewhere between.

On spelling, I cannot spell to save my life. I've had people tell me that I can write, but the misspelled words are too distracting to take me seriously. That's fine. I hope I make you think. My middle school teachers gave up on me.

Every once in a long while I have something creative come along. I'm thinking of blue roof and a poem I wrote before I started blogging about being tired and over worked.

UK Cars

BMW let a bunch of people go who worked at the Mini plant in England. They were temporary workers hired through an agency. BMW didn't even want to acknowledge that any jobs were lost. These people didn't count as a layoff.

The Mini is a successful car. It is not like the Mini is going away. The drop of the number of the Mini drops jobs all over the place and all the way back up the line of the component suppliers.

It mimics exactly what is happening in the U. S.. The unions have been fighting like mad to prevent temporary workers and change the laws so temps have to be treated similarly to permanent workers when it comes to unemployment and such. This is to make it matter the same whether a company heirs temps or permanent workers.

If those UK temps had been hired in a different part of Europe, they would have had rights like being warned before that morning and they would have received some kind of payment.

The drop in sales was something like 30% at Mini. The job loss goes down as a 0% in the books.

This touches my world because I was a contractor at my old company. I worked there for over nine years. I had no seniority. I doubt the powers that be counted it as a loss anywhere on the books. I like to think that I was missed and difficult to replace. Wouldn't any one?

Very Local News

• California is staring at bankruptcy. "There is no way California will default." People in the government are worried how this will look on the Ca. credit rating. California is one of the biggest economies in the world.
  
• "Lay-offs are better for moral than pay cuts because the people who are affected are gone." That statement is not entirely true. I got pay cuts at my old company and never felt like I got back to where I was before. The pay cuts were called temporary, but were quite permanent.
• Got a free barbecue lunch today. Not too shabby.
• Pong is 40.
• The check was invented in 1759. It is a bit outdated these days.
• Ireland may be the first EU country to go belly up.
• Allen Stanford is the new Madoff. Someone made a doll of Madoff that you can hit with a hammer.  This prick is not a New York prick. He is a Houston prick.
  
• "Of Mice and Men" was eaten by a dog before it was published.

Very Local News

2009-02-16

• The BBC is great. There was an interview in one of the podcasts where they went over a bunch of satire from Orwell and others and applied it to the situation today. Animal Farm seems a good fit.
  
• Several of those fires in Australia where set deliberately. They are already calling it mass murder. People say it looks like a nuclear bomb went off. Scary stuff.
• Obama took a question from the Huffington Post, a liberal blog. He should have to take one from Little Green Footballs or the Jawa Report in my opinion.
• Left Right and Center all seemed to agree that the stimulus will not work. At least, not as people want it too.
• "No one is really looking long term right now."  This said as part of an editorial. I agree. Either the market will survive or not.
  
• I listened to another interview about Israel and Palestine. I just have a hard time focusing on the same old bullshit rhetoric spewed by the same people or their progeny. I just zone out and and roll my eyes. I can't help it.

Sorry

I haven't blogged much lately because all I want to talke about is how much I hate this house and Wish I could move. It is amazing how many people say "why don't you move?" right after I tell them that I have no money or equity in the house and it would cot me $20000 to leave this shit hole house. No one gets that. They can't get past the fact that houses have always had increasing value for our entire lives.

I'm going to end up in jail or prision over this house.

I need to find another place to sleep. I can't take it any more.

Off to not sleep.

Warhammer Tank

Never played. I have some friends who did. Pretty cool that they would put together a real tank to promote a new video game.

Passengers

I watched the movie called Passengers . It is one of those movies that tries to confuse the hell out of the viewer and have a million twists. It was mostly hard to follow and none of the characters made me want to care if any of them ever found their way or not. I was not disappointed because  I never heard of the movie until I watched it. It sucked.

"That was my dog, he died when I was six." Excuse me while I swallow my own eyes and run away.

Mexican Wedding with gun play

Not only does the band never stop playing, they start sounding better. Either that is the best live to tape conversion in history, or that band has some stories I would love to hear.

Very Local News

• Watched the aftermath of another plane crash this morning. Not so lucky as the last.
• Foggy even late this morning. Elle was impressed.
• Another Friday the thirteenth.
• My goodness I feel better than I did even yesterday. I did not know how good I felt until the good was taken from me. Thank you Lord.
• Yesterday on the way out of work, in the elevator, I noted to two folks who work with me how dirty my glasses were. I said "I could build pyrimidine with the stuff on my glasses." This cracked up my coworkers. One said "What a random thing to say." I'm proud of that.
• There was a story on the BBC about a couple people who tried to stop a gang of kids from vandalizing a car near their home. They got the snot kicked out of them and the kids got off with a slap on the wrist. Their injories will last the rest of their lives.I'm glad I live in Texas.
• You know when you open Internet Explorer for the first time, it opens a Microsoft page. If you do not go through this mechanism,, for example, on an internal network, IE will just always try to open that page regardless of where you tell it to go. It will never learn that it is not on the internet.

Mugging gone right

The title of this was "Mugging gone wrong" on Live Leak. The Asian guy gets mugged and beats the snot out of the mugger. The story said the mugger got ten years. If that is true, there must have been priers or aggravation of some kind. That or this happened in Texas.

Dive bomb

Pretty cool seeing it from the fish's point of view. Sucks to be the fish.

Sick, still

I'm home again today. I feel a bit better, but not good enough for the stresses of work quite yet. I hope I've been missed.

Sunday, i started feeling bad. Not sure how to explain it. I had a sinus headache last Thursday. I took some medicine for it and hoped for the best. I didn't know it would turn in to the three day event I have every other year or so. I really hate being sick.

Chills, aches, headache, fever, feeling like I'm going to pass out when I stand up, yet my blood pressure was up a bit. I completely lost my night vision there for a couple days. Loss of apatite, sore throat, grind sound in lungs, massive quantities of snot, all happening at the same time. And the chills ... I couldn't get the slightest chill because I would shiver violently.

The funniest symptom is my aching feet. For some reason I forcibly wiggle my toes back and forth and rub my feet together hard when I'm sick. It is subconscious. The muscles between the bones in my feet are sore from doing all this. I've nearly pulled a muscle in my ankle and I get foot cramps from it.  I can't stop. This symptom has died down a lot as well.

Just typing this blog entry has required a break or two.

My nose hurts from being stuffy then drippy, then stuffy. I've been gargling every couple hours. I'm doing the little gravy-boat nose thing once a day. It burns. I wish I had a way to reach in my lungs and just pull the gook out by hand. My rib cage aches from lying in bed so much. My kidneys start talking to me and I can't lie on my stomach or back so I have to get up.

I am feeling better. Not all better. The worse thing about the whole experience is not the three days gone from work. I've been a jerk to Nat because I'm so grumpy. I've also not been able to let Elle give me a kiss. Those two things really suck.

I've taken my medicine, probably more than I should have. Today is day three of ten days of antibiotics. I hope they really kick in. I must go back to work tomorrow.

It rained like mad last night. We were under a tornado warning. The wind blew the rain hard against the glass. I didn't notice any leaks. Honestly, I'm glad it woke me so I could listen to it. It was somehow pleasant.

Still sick

I don't feel like I'm going ot pass out every time I stand up any more. Not in a while any way. I'm still coughing like a 66 Plymouth. I still run out of energy quickly.My night vidions is still gone.  I'm going to try to go back to work tomorrow. I may only do a half day. I just don't want this to be the tree days gone illness I get every couple of years. I'm ... sick of it.

Bloggging will be light.

Idiot one and two

Idiot 1

Idiot 2

You know, I'm not this stupid. Cutting it this close will eventually catch up to you. It isn' like the wait would have been very long in either case. These people are all just out to get themselves ,killed.

Flame Out

This is how I've felt for the last couple days. It sounds like the engines got choked and conked out. I like the demonstration of the windows blowing off. I didn't know that is how it worked.

Automatic amule links and other stuff

It took me a something like an hour and a half to get ed2k links to work in Firefox under Linux. I've tried this before, with no luck. This time I finally got them to work. It took three tries and abandoning several links that I took a while to look up.No biggy.

I was at home sick today. You know, the next door neighbour plays his music loud when his mother is not around. How childish. I wonder if she boxes his ears when she catches him.

It took four plus hours to go to the doctor and get some medicine from CVS. I came home and crashed for a bit. Then I was woken up by, what is that word to describe children who stay home long past the time they are supposed to leave the nest? I don't remember. Anyway, his music woke me up. The dope medicine I'm on makes me a bit loopy so I will not be taking it during work.

I did call AT&T today to attempt to get my DSL connection set up to the next notch. It turns out we are on the highest notch for our area. It says 3GB, but I just don'e believe it. I ran a couple throttle pages adn they all reported over 2GB most of the time. Dang-it. I want more!

Hang on, I think one of the episodes finished.

Bike crash

There are laws against riding between the lines of traffic for a reason.

I turned 40

Today sucks. On top of all my problems with the neighbourhood we live in, I cannot get a DSL upgrade. No biggy I'll get hold of them tomorrow at work. Well, if I make it to work. I'm coughing my head off. When I sit down I get a flushed feeling. I've taken some over the counter medicine and not it is worse. That is what these medicine does. I'm cold then I'm hot. I'm sick.

The AT&T thing comes from not being able to log in using an AT&T account. I've been on DSL for a decade. I had one of the original email addresses. I never upgraded. This means I cannot change my account while I'm home, on the weekend, online. I had to call 411 to get the number for AT&T residential service 1-800-288-2020, by the way. They are not working on Sunday. Isn't that division now in India? Last time I checked, Nat and I use a 512 down line or something to that effect. I'm looking at a 3000 down line that is not much more money.

The sick thing started last week. I had a sinus headache Thursday, maybe Wednesday too. I've been working like mad and cannot sleep because of the cartel that moved in behind us. We get boom boom music until about four in the morning. The cops sit across the street saying they have no intention of doing anything about it.

I walked out earlier and picked up some trash out of my yard. I also gave the neighbour a dirty look for playing his boom boom music during the day. It, for the moment, is quiet in our neighbourhood. It won't last. I have to try to sleep tonight and I know the noise will keep me awake. I may snap.

The 40 thing is inevitable. It is just one more thing on the pile.

The work thing is bad because I'm working like a dog and getting nowhere. I'll never get a raise because I'm already over paid for what I do. The U. S. I all but headed for hyper inflation. If I stay stagnent, I loose ground. I suppose this is the plan. Now that I'm 40 I hit a new demographic. The don't hire because they are too old demographic.

I surfed to a blog that had a picture on the front of a beautiful woman. She was warring a long sleeve shirt and what kind of looked like swat pants. She was warring glasses and holding her child, asleep, in her arms and she was thinking about something. Possible comforting her sleeping child. She was not smiling. She was beautiful. The accompnaing story was about how she was killed in a car crash. I don't think they meant to show such a touching picture. I don't know ifthe meant to make me tear.

Drug dealers behind us

I hear that the people who occupy the building behind us are an organized gang of drug dealers. I cannot fucking believe this. The cops, who look very suspiciously like they are on the take, are parked across the street well within earshot of the building.

I'm living a B-movie.

At least now I know why the cops will not do anything about this.

This is all hearsay, speculation and observation. I cannot prove anything.

I'm praying. I got nothing left but that.

Bad Movie Day

Quarantine the movie

This is the worst movie I've seen in a long time. It does all the bad tricks to try to disorient and distract the watcher. It doesn't scare though. There has been a crop of startle movies. I hesitate to call them horror movies because being horrible is not good enough to fit that genera.

Midnight Meat Train

Guy in a suit goes around on a train and very messily murders people. At least the person who did this film heard of a tripod. Other than that, there is just no suspense to speak of. There is little horror beyond gore. I"m not impressed.

Who pays for these pieces of crap? Is there some magic bad film ferry who finances this tripe?

Double Flip

Double forward flip in a five thousand pound truck and walks away with a back each. Not too shabby.

I cannot find a news story about it. Not even from the racing circuit folks. Just the video is there. Go figure.

Cultural Diversity

I live in a shit hole neighbourhood. I'm not only in a shit hole neighbourhood, but I'm surrounded by an even worse neighbourhood. Not only that, but I live across the street from a bar and next door to an empty building now being used as a illegal dance hall every night until dawn. My next door neighbour loves boom boom music and there are now noise limits in Harris County. The cops show up and say "It doesn't sound that loud to me." Even if the people in the building behind us are not making that much noise, shouldn't they get busted for running an unpermitted business?

I'm going to A) go nuts and rampage. I'm not good at rampaging, so no one will get hurt or anything. B) kill myself because of the non-stop noise. I can't sleep. Isn't this torture as defined by the people running our government now days?

If I could afford a lawyer to enforce my rights, or to move I would. These are not options. I'm taking this out on my family, and pets. I'm going to end up loosing my job because I yell at someone.

Ideas?

Very Local News

• iRobot , makers of the Rumba vacuum robot, is the probably the only company that sells to bot the Pentagon and to linens and Things. They also make robotics for clearing mines I believe.
• I listen to Market Place Podcast. I never laughed much during that podcast until the last couple months. I catch myself doing that "Laugh rather than cry" nerves chuckle perhaps three or four times per episode lately. The news is not stupid. What people have done and are doing to fix it is what makes my head ache.
• There is a shower head company that slows the flow to a trickle when the water reaches 95 degrees. This is to answer the need of letting the water run while you brush your teeth or whatever. You tap the head some way or another to get the water flowing. This is a green idea that I like.
• There is a fuel cell out there that fits inside a phone. The technology will not run a phone yet, but the technology is being improved at a mad pace. Some day a smart phone will run on hydrogen and last for weeks. Nice.
• Treks in SciFi had a sort of behind the scenes podcast for the one year episode. One of the folks said she got her mom and brother to play parts by ordering them to sit "down and act!"
  
• Facebook offered to buy Twitter. It didn't go through.
• Versions of windows include: starter, home basic, home premium, professional, ultimate and enterprise. Don't look for starter or home basic in the U. S.. God forbid Microsoft offer a cheep alternative. Well, there is always Linux.
• If the FCC had gone after Madoff in 2000, inverters would have lost only about seven billion instead of the fifty billion and possible growing number that happened late last year.
• Had a toasted egg salad sandwich for lunch.
• Every single person was at work Wednesday. The only name without a time next to it was someone who's last day was yesterday. I have no idea what this means. The company has seventy seven people on the time clock.

Day

I did a million installs today that required coordination with too many people. Everything too k ten times longer than it should have. I get home and my mother and wife ride my ass about not playing this silly little game called Yo-something on Facebook. It doesn't work on my linux box. I have to install Firefox for Windows under Wine and then install flash. It works for the most part, but it, as with all Wine adventures, is slow and takes ten times longer than it should.

Hey,I have a great idea. While I'm trying to get this to work under Wine, why don't I try to play Lost on ABC's page? They have their own viewer thing that refuses to work anywhere except windows, bastards. I didn't get it to work because it gets to 30% downloaded of a full episode and blows a gasket. My whole machine locks up. I'm talking big red switch time.

I even loaded Opera just to give it a try and the flash plugin runs even slower in it. YouTube videos are even chopier. The Geko browser in wine blows too. You can't get Flash running as far as I can tell. What good is a browser these days without Flash? It should not even be able to cll it self a browser. It should be an HTML viewer or something.

At work, a couple people had problems with the Firefox updates. The Google Desktop Search thing is causing IE and Firefox to crash. Now I'm going to have to figure out how that works in order to fix the problem. It is funny that the symptoms are different for the different versions of Google Desktop. At lest,the newer the install, the more likely it is to work. I mean, it could be the other way round.

I'm sick of dealing with windows crap. I've had it. I do this for a living and I'm sick to death of it.

The other day, my friend Adam said something to the order "Kelly, you have System Administration in your blood. No, your soul. When you die, you will network heaven and hell." I'm starting to believe him.

I've been so insanely busy at work that I'm too tired to think when I get home. I'm not sure when anything of substance will show up here. I found out recently that I was linked by www.chron.com. That would be pretty cool, but that is just a one time blip in hits. Then it is gone. I ownder who linked me and what they thoguht didn't suck.

Off to bed.

Board Frenchmen

I've neve been this French in my life.

Board Frenchmen play LARP Pong and video themselves.

Obama's Choices

Obama had to apologize for a nominee having to withdrawal over tax troubles. It is a bit early for the president to take a hit like this. It is but one chink in the armer. There are bound to be others. It is not just image I'm worried about. It is the lack of knowing what is going on. It is judging someone based on how you feel about them as opposed to their accomplishments.

Obama chose Clinton for Secretary of State based, in my opinion only, on political reasons. She is qualified, but is someone better qualified who Obama is not on a first name basis with?

Obama said a lot of things on the campaign trail that are going to be difficult to bring to reality. He is wishy-washy on the facts and figures.

He is anti-gun. He has always lived in a city as far as i can tell. Live in the country, 45 minutes away from 911 response and tell me you feel comfortable without the means to protect your family. If you say "Don't live there." you are not an American.

Obama is pro-choice. I'm pro-choice, but not for the same reason. I believe in population control. He says it is based on the already established person's rights (the mother) over the baby's rights. You have to draw the line somewhere. If you think there is not a difference then the biological father of an unborn child should be able to demand that the woman get an abortion. That is not going to happen. There is a difference.

Very Local News

• I have a pare of jeans with no watch pocket. I never thought I would use a watch pocket for anything, but I use it for a very essential piece of equipment at work. My USB key drive. Please keep putting watch pockets on jeans.
• I had a genuine lock up in Linux today at work. I mean, a real Windows like freeze. I'm trying to think if the last time this happened on Linux. Normally it is one application, or the system runs funny or the network dies and things can't authenticate, so you cant get anything done or some external influence. I had the following open.
• Thunderbird
• Firefox
• OpenOffice write and calc
• xmms
• Several Gnome terminals, with nothing running
• I had just started a podcast
• I had just plugged in my USB key. Auto run is disabled.
• Good enough computing. Companies and people want computers that do the same thing for half the price every 18 months. This is the flip side of More's law.
• Apple filed a patent that makes it look like they will turn the iPhone in to a video conferencing device. Sounds like a plan to me.
• The premier of Turkey gave the Israeli primeminister an earful at some meeting. It made him a local hero. Turkey has large contracts with Israel. If anything, it gave Israel just a bit more sympathy around the world. Just a smidge anyway.
• The first 3D commercial displayed during a Super Bowl was in 1989. 3D presentation images, as in movie, have been around since 1922 (or even earlier depending on what you count).

Very Local News

• Worst snow storm to hit the U. K. in decades. Damn global warming. it's funny how you can hear a snowball fight on the radio and it still makes you smile. "thump", "eeek!" "thump", "giggle" ...
  
• I got coffee today probably because I took the time to get it before I checked my email and tasks for the day. Priorities.
• I heard one of the podcasts interviewees say about our beloved government "...They only have 350 billion to play with and they don't know what to do with it."
• There is a toy called 'the yodeling pickle'. Guess what it looks like and guess what it does.
• Rolex had a layoff. Now, that's scary
• Many high-end lady's  shoes that say 'made in Italy' are really made in China and boxed in Italy. It is not just for cost, but quality and manufacturing terms (late changes() that firms like.
• Took a really long lunch today. We were gone almost two hours. We went to J. Alexander's. Never been there. Good food. High prices. Even on the company's dime I almost felt bad. The lunch was for completing a huge project that lasted nearly a year and was in place of overtime.
  
• I had a bag of peanut M&Ms this afternoon that was nearly half green.

Very Local News

• I grabbed a Sky News podcast this weekend. I listened to it today. The guy outright hated Israel. He said stuff "The sound you hear in the background is machine gun fire where civilians are dying ..." I could not believe my ears. It heart to listen to it.
• I was too busy to get coffee today. It just never came up until well after lunch. I did get a lunch, but that is because of a coincidence of circumstances.
• Nepal has a bunch of electric cars and charging stations. Now, the power goes off every day because there is not enough to go around. The cars are not on long enough to get a charge. Damn global warming.
  At least you can see the stars better at night.
  
• Watching Max Pain. It is as bad as any one said. I like watching Mila Kunis play a bad-ass. I keep expecting some fat guy to say "Shut up Meg!" and then get his head blown off.
  
• The last book I got from the library was so bad that I listened to the first chapter and a half and boxed it up. I returned it unread. It was someone spouting contribed facts and trying to use the history of the human animal as a story of a family. Something like every year was an historic event or something. It was hard to follow and hard to continue. Nice that they will just send me another.
  

Religion of hatred and euphoria

Now that George W. Bush has left the harsh glare of the White House and Barack Obama has settled into the highest office in the land, it might be reasonable to suppose that Bush hatred and Obama euphoria will begin to subside. Unfortunately, there is good reason to doubt that the common sources that have nourished these dangerous political passions will soon lose their potency. At first glance, Bush hatred and Obama euphoria could not be more different. Hatred of Mr. Bush went well beyond the partisan broadsides typical of democratic politics. For years it disfigured its victims with open, indeed proud, loathing for the very manner in which Mr. Bush walked and talked. It compelled them to denounce the president and his policies as not merely foolish or wrong or contrary to the national interest, but as anathema to everything that made America great. ... Bush hatred and Obama euphoria are particularly toxic because they thrive in and have been promoted by the news media, whose professional responsibility, it has long been thought, is to gather the facts and analyze their significance, and by the academy, whose scholarly training, it is commonly assumed, reflects an aptitude for and dedication to systematic study and impartial inquiry. ... Some will speculate that the outbreak of hatred and euphoria in our politics is the result of the transformation of left-liberalism into a religion, its promulgation as dogma by our universities, and students' absorption of their professors' lesson of immoderation. This is unfair to religion. At least it's unfair to those forms of biblical faith that teach that God's ways are hidden and mysterious, that all human beings are both deserving of respect and inherently flawed, and that it is idolatry to invest things of this world -- certainly the goods that can be achieved through politics -- with absolute value. Through these teachings, biblical faith encourages skepticism about grand claims to moral and political authority and an appreciation of the limits of one's knowledge, both of which well serve liberal democracy. In contrast, by assembling and maintaining faculties that think alike about politics and think alike that the university curriculum must instill correct political opinions, our universities cultivate intellectual conformity and discourage the exercise of reason in public life. It is not that our universities invest the fundamental principles of liberalism with religious meaning -- after all the Declaration of Independence identifies a religious root of our freedom and equality. Rather, they infuse a certain progressive interpretation of our freedom and equality with sacred significance, zealously requiring not only outward obedience to its policy dictates but inner persuasion of the heart and mind. This transforms dissenters into apostates or heretics, and leaders into redeemers. Consequently, though Bush hatred may weaken as the 43rd president minds his business back home in Texas, and while Obama euphoria may fade as the 44th president is compelled to immerse himself in the daunting ambiguities of power, our universities will continue to educate students to believe that hatred and euphoria reflect political wisdom. Urgent though the problem is, not even the efficient and responsible spending of a $1 trillion stimulus package would begin to address it. Wall Street Journal

Wow. I'm going to have to stop bad-mouthing the legacy press (quite so much). at least someone out there in reporter land gets it.

I blame the lack of real religion. That is maybe I should call it legacy religion. We now have a new crop of religion to follow. Things like global warming, political correctness,hating all the right people (right as in conservative) We need to teach a religion in school. Oh, wait, all of those new religions are taught to our children every day. Their curriculum is centred on environment. They are not taught to find the truth, they are taught to agree with their teachers. That will be a handy skill in university because this is how you get a PHD. You better not question your PHD advisor. You better follow exactly what they say or you will never get in to the club.

Then comes the media. The media wants, needs to sell. They need eyeballs on their advertisers and the best way to get people to your site is to make them feel emotion. If you make someone say "wow!" or "Oh, my God!", they are off their guard for what you are trying to sell them. The media doesn't care what the truth is. The media just wants to stir the pot enough to get people all bothered. Then, when the people are looking the other way, the media slips the adds under their nose. The truth never enters in to it. The legacy media is all about preaching. The message comes second to getting people to show up.

I think the freedom of the press should be limited to media telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as defined by someone other than the people who stand to benefit from what is being reported. This will never happen because nothing gets done any more without someone getting something out of it. No one buys books that tell the truth. Few buy papers with the intention of actually reading them. Magazines only sell for the ads containing pretty girls or toys.

And blogs ... ... Don't get me started. Blogs are the worst. I'm one of them for God's sake. I know no one reads this blog save a few friends, yet I plug away, toil for hours at a through just putting my thoughts here for no good reason. I would say this is a good enough reason to listen to me. I may not know what I'm talking about, but I say it with honesty and with no intention to sell you anything. I could type what we all had for dinner and satisfy my need to put myself out there. (not really)

Pyjamas Media just recently stopped their advertising business that was set up to keep some bloggers employed and blogging. This is an adjustment of the new media. Nothing to blog about really.

The legacy media has levelled it's very powerful guns at Israel and Bush. So many people buy what the legacy media sells that neither Bush or Israel may survive. Figuratively or literally. Bush will be vilifiied for eternity. Israel may be wiped off the map because Western media has convinced people not to listen to her plees for help. Who will be next? Our freedom to speak our minds back at the media is on the docket for destruction. There are people out there who believe that letting people who believe different than they do is a bad thing. This means that those people, not the people who agree with them, must be silenced. <cough>Pelosi </cough>

I vaguely remember Obama saying something about bipartisan government. The only thing bipartisan I've noticed is the Democrats won, have an agenda and the Republicans are obliged to step out of the way. This is about what I expected. How much is this monotheistic, er single sided government going to cost us? Somewhere between umteen trillion and absolutely everything.

USB boot drive

Several of our new boxes at work show up with no OS and no CD drive.  This is all an effort to save money. I'm all for that. It is annoying to try to put an OS on the box when the only device I have at the moment is a book full of CD/DVDs. Some folks are working on a PXE server which is great, but i guarantee it will not have everything I need.

So, I'm looking in to making some bootable USB drives to get things done as needed. I hop over to pendirvelinux for a look see. I like what I found.

To create a bootable USB drive with Knoppix as created in Windows, 5 steps. The same thing as created in Linux is 22 steps and has an additional 10 steps behind that. This kind of stuff is why Linux will never catch on. I have to say that I miss things that just work. I'm really tired of trudging through waist lands awash with command line business to get anything done.

The only step that should be forced upon me is to copy an ISO to a USB instead of a CD or DVD. I'm telling you, that should be all it takes to do exactly what I want.

Boom

The C-130 was damaged during a landing in Iraq I believe. That is how many millions of our tax dollars going up?

Super Bowl

Did I mention I'm not watching the Super Bowl? Nat seems to be. I have to live with the TV playing at 9000 DB. and her updating me every fifteen minutes on what commercial is playing. If I try to ask her nicely not to keep me updated she will claim that I'm cutting her off from my world or something. She

I love Nat. When i interrupt her TV watching she gets just as nasty with me as I get with her when she interrupts my blog reading.

We move on. Enough wining.

Please no one ask me or comment to me about the Super Bowl. I wish to bow out this year.

Thank you.

Update: 17-30

Nat is watching the full screen version of Serenity instead of the Super Bowl. She changed her mind. Love that woman of mine!.

ktorrent

I gave up on vuze. It was lying to me about upload speeds. I tried to get it to throttle back on upoads because hitting the upload side of your pipe hard causes a slow response for the entrie internet connection, regardless of what is going on with the download side of things. I watched as I typed in a number and that number was simply ignored.

Ktorrent at least usable and does not lie to me about its speed limits. Besides, you can drag columns around and get the data you are looking for right at the front.

Nat was getting on me about my downloads slowing her surfing. If your software gets my wife on my back, you are getting replaces. Come on. Now, I'm going to bad mouth Vuze for the rest of my life.

azureus

azureus or vuze or whatever they are calling this this week, blows. I love how they say "it plays HD video" when what it does is wrap itself around windows media player. It is one of the new generation of software that is made of other software that only exists to advertise other stuff. They do have a Linux client. They want to be a service. They want to charge you money every minute for every byte of data and for every click. They want to sandbox you in to one space so you can't go anywhere else while saying they provide a rounded full service one stop turn-key product.

Microsoft wants you to sign on to their cloud network and pay for everything you do for every moment you are there and for every moment you use their software to get there. They want to charge you for access and tax, I mean charge you for every transaction. They want you to buy their hardware using their software to access their software to get to their services that they charge for that only lead you to their pages which only work on their software and hardware, that they charge you for.

Nice work if you can get it. Doesn't Microsoft have 90% of the market on OS? Wait, didn't it used to be 95% a while back? Will it be 50% in ten years?

Movie Watching

I have a hard time watching a movie with Nat. She does one thing completely normal. She likes to watch every frame of the movie. I've become so jaded that I want to fast forward trough bits I find boring. It is so esy on the computer just hitting the right arrow and zipping through the boring or shocking for the sake of shocking bits of a movie. It is madening not to be able to do this when watching movies with others.

Nat backs up every time someone says says something to her. She pauses for bathroom brakes she takes and not when I take one. She yells at the cat and then backs up ten minutes. It takes her four hours to watch a two hour movie. I can't hang.

Oh, well. Such is life.

Update:

I sneezed while on the computer a minute ago and she backed up to catch what I sneezed over. humph!