South African Dr. Sonnet Ehlers was on call one night four decades ago when a devastated rape victim walked in. Her eyes were lifeless; she was like a breathing corpse.
"She looked at me and said, 'If only I had teeth down there,'" recalled Ehlers, who was a 20-year-old medical researcher at the time. "I promised her I'd do something to help people like her one day."
Forty years later, Rape-aXe was born.
...
The woman inserts the latex condom like a tampon. Jagged rows of teeth-like hooks line its inside and attach on a man's penis during penetration, Ehlers said.
Once it lodges, only a doctor can remove it -- a procedure Ehlers hopes will be done with authorities on standby to make an arrest.
"It hurts, he cannot pee and walk when it's on," she said. "If he tries to remove it, it will clasp even tighter... however, it doesn't break the skin, and there's no danger of fluid exposure."
I support anything that hurts rapists, but this just has bad idea written all over it. Besides, it only works on the first guy as far as I can tell. So, it isn't perfect. Nice idea though.
Someone brought up a bunch of Bill Hicks to work. I've been listening for days. The man was insane. He genuinely believed he was abducted by aliens. I have far less of a problem with that than his politics. I do laugh like a fool when listening to his work. He died way too young. You know, he had a miserable life. There is a documentary about him that I want to find.
Reginald Denny. Remember him? He was the truck driver who got his ass kicked kicked during the LA riots. bill was in Briton at the time. This kind of thing dates him a bit. It still makes me laugh. Oh, and Rodney King too. He covers the Kennedy assassination as well.
Bill got his start in Houston in the late seventies or early eighties I believe. This is why I want to find that documentary. They cover his growing up.
He is honest about his hate for all things conservative. I'll give him that. He uses no politically correct language in telling his opinion. He uses the word "hate". Bill even makes the comparison between what he wants and what Saddam wanted. "Me and Husane are like this. Who knew?" There are people taking the comparison of jihadists and liberals and how they share many goals and ideas. Old Bill was on to something.
Some Quotes
"Lets lighten things up and talk about abortion."
"The people who hate people party." Trouble organizing the meetings, but I could get on board with that one. Well, until someone pisses me off.
Baseball and the affects of performance handling drugs.
Baseball and what people are trying to do to make the scores higher.
Me attending Shawn's birthday party and why I can't publish the videos.
How our daughter's treated us on Father's day.
Adam came along and seemed to mold the direction of the conversation well. It isn't like he tries to do it. It is just that baseball is one of those things that he can be sidetracked indefinitely.
I hate this show. It had Abraham Benrubi in it for goodness sake. They just killed him off on the most recent episode I watched. Now there is nothing I can do but stop watching.
Something I just learned, so many people have ripped off IMDB's descriptions that you have to get "IMDB Pro" to get to any real content. That is some creepy stuff. It is far more interesting than the show.
It is a show trying to be one of those shows that keeps piling mystery on top of the killing of characters and introduction of new characters until you can't understand a damn thing about what is going on. They then fail to explain anything before being canceled because the entire planet has lost interest or seen the show for what it is before they got sucked in. It has Amy Acker as well, but she is not nearly enough to do it for me.
I'm really trying to find some new shows to watch. The industry keeps cranking out garbage. I'm tired of this. There are some online cyclical shows coming up. Maybe they will save the day. They are our only hope.
Here is the Shawn birthday party footage. This is the tame version. I may not be able to put the bouncy castle footage up. It is a bit much. I mean it is all in fun and everything, but it might look bad to the prudish.
I'm going to go ahead and cut the video and try to get approval from some of the participants and responsible parties. It will most likely never see the light of the internet.
I hate it when I can't publish fun stuff I catch on video because
I have to pay attention to who is doing what. It isn't enough to let
people know you are videoing. They still do stupid stuff. Then they
regret it later.
No one did anything really stupid in front of the camera this
time. The worse thing that happened was getting a little too close
when people were collapsing the bouncy castle, but that is why you do
it. Still, people will be very upset if I show their teenage
daughters enjoying themselves playing in the water in a bouncy
castle, regardless of how innocent it may have been.
This is very much one I'm going to have to confer with Natalie
about. I have no idea if good or boring videos will be up soon. Wish
me luck.
SGU
I'm really fed up with SGU It is a well made show and has a bunch
of good actors. It is the politics and the list of problems they have
that piss me off. It is about the only science fiction show out
there that involves spaceships and space travel. Thus, I'm stuck
watching it.
What do I mean by wrong problems. The constant buzz of anger
between the civilians and military simply rings true. I hate that. I
wish one would succeed and the other would fail.. Then both sides
would accept that status and get on with survival and exploration.
Then comes the double chase. First aliens want the ship and when
this didn't do it for the ratings, there is a faction of human
element who are ruthless and want the ship. They make it aboard and
start killing people. Killing all the wrong people. They then take
the ship. I haven't gotten any ferther than this. yet.
I want to stop watching the show. Like I said, it is the only
science fiction show on at the moment. Yet, I hate it. Yay me.
3. When I verify medical insurance for a doctor's appointment.
4. When filling out a credit card or loan application.
5. When applying for or renewing a driver's license.
6. When applying for any kind of insurance.
7. When filling out college applications.
8. When donating blood.
9. When obtaining controlled prescription drugs.
10. When making some debit purchases, especially if I'm out of state.
11. When collecting a boarding pass for airline or train travel.
12. When proving I am of legal age to buy booze and cigarettes.
13. When voting at the polls.
14. When applying for Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid benefits.
15. When enlisting in the military.
16. When entering a military base.
17. When applying for food stamps.
18. When applying for disability or economic assistance.
19. When cashing a check.
20. When entering my place of work.
21. When applying for or renewing a passport
I'm sure there are more instances, but the point is that we citizens of the USA are required to prove who we are nearly every day. Why should people in this country illegally be exempt?
GO ARIZONA !!!
This is just some email a friend sent me. Kind of like it.
Walked to the bus stop in the heat and humidity. No big deal there. No AC on the bus. That sucked. Chatty bus driver. Annoying. When I get off the bus, I have to traverse a cesspool to cross the street to the building. They have fixed it a couple times. Which means they have not fixed it at all. Thank God the Feds are not in charge of the repairs. When I get in to work my coffee cup is missing. A couple things have disappeared off people's desks here lately, but I would have gone for the USB keys or CF cards or some other bit of electronics that at least promises more use than holding one's coffee from the floor. I found the cup on a walk past my normal haunts.
I got the following in my in box from CNN “Death row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed at 12:20 a.m. (MST) by a firing squad at Utah State Prison.” Something about this pleases me. There is another guy who needs to be put in front of a firing squad. I don't want to talk too much about it because I'm so pissed at the guy who committed treason and wikileaks who think they have a right to help our enemies.
Tried HTML 5 for the first time on Ubuntu 10.04 and Chromium last night. They finally have it down to a couple simple bullets in the instructions. It looks like the only thing that is working is the video playing function. The YouTube adds do not work anywhere. If a video has ads, you still have to use Flash. Looser. Get this crap up and running! How long does it take? It has been years for God's sake. 98.6% of the effort has been bitching over whether the knobs go up to 10, 11 or 100% or some bullshit like that.
The Bad Apples podcasts learns an important lesson. This guy has been a latest and greatest distro kind of guy for years. He was the kind who would find a problem, figure out who's bug it was and go file it. A real tester kind of guy. This is very important to open and closed source alike. He recently realized how much time this was costing him. He came to the conclusion that in order to get work out, he needed something stable and thus has adjusted his choice of distribution. He also reflashed his phone back to a standard image for reliability. Our little podcaster is growing up.
A machine on our network took a nap this morning. I had three people, one of which was the CEO, call me to fix it. The thing is, I have no network privileges. I cannot sign in to the servers or check things out. I'm glad people have such confidence in me, but I'm kind of surprised at the response. It was just a matter of waiting for the appropriate person to show up and diagnose the issue. It was more an inconvenience than an issue to be honest. Still, quite a few fingers pointing at me when it happened. Makes the back of my neck itch.
The humidity has a presents. The heat is by humidity's side. They stand at my elbows, breathing down my neck. They are silent, but their mass is not to be ignored. They are like a couple thugs ready to lay a hand on my shoulder and prevent me from running up a flight of stares or walk for the fun of it. I'm not sure to whom they answer, but I would love to know what I did to piss this entity off. Is it the place where I live, or the time of year I choose to cross a piece of it?
I have a hard time listening to the G Gordon Liddy show. This is because they are perching to the quire in my case. G brings in speakers and makes points that make sense to me. I do not agree with all of them. That is a sign that I'm listening if you ask. The trouble is that I listen to the show at work and want to stand up and yell at our government in anger. This is probably not a good thing to do at work.
I worry I'm going to have a stroke listening to the list of issues G brings up about the Obama administration. Things like Job creation, taxes, foreign relations, God, how our government is handling the oil spill, drug culture ... I could go on. It seems like the people running this country are out to destroy it. Not with nukes, with rules.
Obama and his top cronies in the legislative branch are socialists. They want to turn the U. S. in to a land of robots all fitting the same mold, regardless of how that kills individual expression and rights. You have the right to be a drone and follow the rules as the government tells you.
It is not big government that I fear. It is totalitarian government that rules every moment of my existence and tells me how to live my life and raise my kids to the n'th degree. By making every behavior illegal that some committee deems inappropriate. That committee of people hand picked based on the decisions they will make in favor of the government continuing their rule. This is always the way regardless of who is in charge or what they call their method of governing.
“I'm not worried about a clean energy bill. I'm worried about paying the bills.” From memory. Heard on NBC news last night from a citizen.
So, what am I going to do about the things I wish to change and the things I cannot change? I intend to complain. I will complain loudly and often. I will shout from the mountain top. I will do something more effective. I will blog and vlog and tweet. Will it make any difference? I doubt it. Will it make me feel better? No, not really. Does it satisfy some need to say it and mean it? Perhaps. So many things that might actually make a difference have been outlawed.
They don't hate us. They think our way of doing things is wrong. Same as we feel about their way of doing things. That is pretty much where the similarities end.
The Taliban has a point to the average Joe on the street. The U. S. military and Afghan government is up against a wall. People on the ground, who must live and exist in the area for their entire lives, say that security was better when the Taliban was taking care of it. There is huge differences in approach between the different entities who wish to run Afghanistan.
The Afghan government is weak, ineffective and corrupt. I haven't found any sources who say different except those trying to excuse the U. S. bailing soon.
The U. S. will be gone soon. No amount of firepower trumps this fact. No short term strategy trumps long term presents. This is just a fact. Well, except nukes. Nukes might trump long term presents. I'll have to think about that one.
The Taliban, however, will use a set of rules that have been written in a handbook for a thousand years, find out who the problem is, kill them and their entire family, everyone who helped them and everyone who sympathized with them. Problem solved. And, they are not going anywhere. The Taliban has been targeted for death by several of the most powerful countries and yet, there they are, standing next to you, waiting.
Get the idea? There is an appeal at the level of the farmer and blacksmith.
Now, there is a lot more going on. The Taliban is an international movement that needs to be reined in if not destroyed. The idea almost works on the micro scale. It is harsh, but effective. The movement has entered the macro scale via 2001-09-11 and supporting the distraction of Jews and basically all not Muslims across the world. I cannot believe there is a place for the Taliban going forward.
I left a comment on one of the Vlog Brothers videos yesterday. During the video the gentlemen said something about the world being run by totalitarian antisemitic jerks. He was talking about the Nazis, more specifically, one of the guys who invented calculation machines that helped the Allies decider Nazi secrets.
I left a comment that I'm sure no one liked. “Some say we are ruled by totalitarian antisemitic jerks.” I received no replies. This tells me the comment was not left up. That, or it was not nearly as venomous as I imagined. It was not my intention that it be venomous. It was just what I felt at the time. I haven't had a chance to go looking. Those videos have thousands of comments. I'm sure it just got lost in the shuffle.
Totalitarian as I mean it here is one who intends to do anything it takes to put the destiny of all people under the rule of a government totally. That is to put the government in charge of every decision of a person's life all the time and without exception. I believe that Obama and many democrats believe this is the correct thing to do. That is why I used the term.
Antisemitic as I mean it here is one who by action or inaction, by belief or habit inflicts or allows to happen regardless of excuse, wills the destruction or harm to Israel or Jews in general.
I didn't watch the speech. I was watching MythBusters on YouTube. I forgot there was a speech for What do we get? Nat mentioned it on the way home or I would have completely forgotten until listening to podcasts that mentioned the event.
New clean energy policy, Clean up the oil spill, Getting tough with BP. Blah blah blah.
You know, I'm not buying it. There is just too much to do. This president is not a doer. He is a bitch and sue kind of guy. He is so very concerned with assigning blame and making sure BP pays for stuff that he is missing the point that there is a frigging oil spill to clean up. If I were BP, I would give it a couple months and dissolve in to a billion bits, some absorbed by other companies and some just fading in to the wood work.
Independent third party Who the hell is independent? Did the independent people drive to the meeting?
This is just another crisis to be taken advantage of. What legislation can we get past in the name of slapping BP around? Put up another picture of an oily walrus, I mean seagull. That will distract the drooling masses.
They damn well better not start preempting YouTube for this kind of crap. I will not stand for that bullshit.
There will be a BAT in the U. S. within five years. Mark my words. VAT stands for Value Added Tax. This is a sales tax that is levied on products at point of consumptino. It is a consumption tax and hits people who cannot avoid it the hardest. The people who can avoid the tax are rich. The people who have a hard time avoiding the tax are poor.
The VAT will come in to existence even if it is called something else. It will be added to all other taxes. We will not eliminate the IRS or allow people to have exemptions. Any promises of these things are lies.
Some call it a fair tax because every one has to pay it. The more stuff rich people buy or import, the more consumption tax they pay. Illegal aliens residing in the U. S. still have to pay the consumption tax every time they buy a candy bar. They do not pay it on remittances. The biggest argument is that the middle class and poor people end up baring the brunt of this kind of tax because there are simply many more poor people and as a group, they buy more than the ever shrinking middle class. Why is socioeconomic discrimination OK when it it is against the rich and not the poor? Isn't it just as wrong one way as it is the other?
Remember that services and products will have the cost. It will show up on top of all existing taxes on phone, internet, pay TV, plumbers, rent, hell, even paying the Mexican guy who does your lawn will go up, b3ecause he too now has to pay VAT on lunch, gas and maintenance.
I don't have a problem with VAT or consumption taxes as long as they are fare balanced across the board. They will not be balanced because there will be a cry that the poor cannot afford the tax. Don't mind that the poor use most of the services that are paid for by the taxes, currently paid for by people who are contributing to the economy instead of bleeding it dry. I hope I can be a contributing member of society for the rest of my life. There will most likely come times where I need help. It has happened before. Still, I'm not deliberately making career out of it.
The joke below is from memory. I heard this on a podcast from G. Gordon Liddy today. He is a conservative. He has many important points and a point of view that is difficult to find in today's liberal bias media. This joke however just plays in to the stereotype that liberal people have about conservative people. I don't like it. I didn't laugh at it. I did not think it was applicable or even appropriate for a conservative show. I listen to NPR and hate it when they lump all conservative people in to a group that I don't fit in. This joke only serves to make that situation worse.
While interviewing for a law enforcement job an applicant who had otherwise impeccable qualifications was asked to perform the following task.
The interviewer said “There is just one more thing you have to do to get the job. Take this firearm and shoot six illegal aliens, six Muslim extremists, six hippies, six drug dealers, and one rabbit.”
Is anyone using Second Life for anything besides porn? They are having layoffs. Some of the podcasters say they still pay the $14 a month because they own property. “When is the last time you logged in?”
Ruth Westheimer was trained as a sniper in the period after WWII while Jews were preparing to carve a state for themselves. Her family was killed in the Holocaust. No wonder she doesn't take shit from people.
'm noticing a loooooot of podcasts by individuals dropping off the radar. I suppose the fad has ebbed. It is funny which one's have lasted. The fiction podcasts have lasted. The geek one's have more or less hung around if they were being done by more than one person. The video game podcasts seem to have taken a huge hit. I try to figure out if the podcast still exists or if the URL has changed. This may explain some of the issues. Still, interesting layout of long term success.
Someone who has been at my work longer than I moved offices today. I noticed how little they had to move. Then I took stock of the hord I've acquired. It is inevitable that we will get shuffled at my employ. Perhaps it is time for a cull.
What is the difference between betting and investing? One is only legal in a few places.
What is it worth to me to cross the street to get to the bus going the correct direction? Well, it is apparently worth me putting my life in danger to some degree. Walking out of the house is a little bit dangerous. Mowing the lawn is more likely to give me a heart attack than chew off my leg. Everything you eat will kill you these days.
94,000 families got their homes repossessed last month. They were all fed a promos of better things by owning in one way or another. How many of these folks were thinking about laying $100,000 or more on a bet that they would be able to keep up the payments. Betting that they would not owe more on the place than it was worth. Maybe double. Maybe more.
Life is all about risk vs payoff. Opportunity cost.
OK, I admit it. I write down a bunch of notes at work for the blog. I've forgotten them several days in a row now. Thus, my blog is a day behind on many fronts. This sucks.
The American Consumers say they are confident, but they are feeling better about their job and gas prices, but they do not believe that the long term economy will get better. I believe that people are waking up that whom you elect as president and to congress actually matter. They have screwed up and things are going to have to change.
If you were just starting LOST, knowing how it ends, would you watch it?
Why are people being gunned down at drug rehab centers in Mexico?
People who are in cartels may be in rehab and there for be targeted as knowing too much to be aloud to live. Sounds plausible.
People who are trying to go straight are no long er customers and will convince others to follow the same path. They may also bring social change that leads to not wanting the drug cartels running the place. Not a bad hypothesis.
Drug cartels are recruiting people at rehab centers. From what I've heard about these centers, I doubt it, but maybe.
I have an opinion.
The drug dealers don't want people to get better. People are terrified to be in or work for a rehab center The cartels don't want things to start getting better because that might make the rest of the world stop viewing the regon as an area of victims that must be supported by the rest of the world. Once the area is no longer associated with victims, the conditions brought on by the cartels will not be tolerated by the rest of the world.
The drug cartel will attack anything that appears to be governmental authority. Any time the local people want or need help, they will have to go to the drug cartel people in order do do normal things like fix the streets or build a building or attend drug rehab. This will separate people from the government and make it difficult for the government to rely on local people for support when going after the drug cartels.
More workers quit their job than were laid off last month. People apparently are giving up the shit job they took when they had to and are now switching to the job they want. Some little ray of hope is out there. Not that it is real. ... That or the survivors at places of employment are getting over worked and getting the hell out of there.
Adsorption: This is a new word I have learned since this whole oil spill thing. It has something to do with a hair dresser. I can't wrap my head around it.
Several offshore drilling platforms normally stationed in the Gulf of Mexico are on their way to South America somewhere. Remember that moratorium on offshore drilling They will all be paying taxes and levies to one of the South American governments soon. Way to bring jobs and revenue to the U. S. Obama.
I sent out text messages to more than 15 people yesterday. Two got back with me. The age of texting is dead in my generation. That, or no one wants to talk to me. No, It must be the other one.
Headed over to my parents' place for a bit of good old grilling. Came back with an arm load of shirts. Some of them are brand new. My father is a close horse. Who knew?
Enough said. I'm glad to find someone on the internet who is not just falling on their ass.
Fully auto pistol
Not sure why people are impressed. Mac-10/11 machine pistols have been around for decades. They simply have an internal bolt leave the it open. To be honest, something like this hits me as a waist of ammo.
I felt a little tap on the top of my head as I past under a tree this morning. This just might have been a tick trying to land on me. I brushed myself off while walking. You can't be too careful. I've had a tick before. I imagine using one of those cranes to shave the sides of all the trees along the walk way. That would just remove what little shade they provide.
The scary thing is what was going through my head. I pictured a tiny blue buy sitting in a tree. He sees my huge pink noggin coming and starts to salivate. He plummets, cackling the whole way, smacks in to my scull and instead of being able to grab hair to steady himself, he slides, grasping at slippery sweaty leather and cursing under his breath. Then he falls from such a height shouting a tiny high pitched “Spooooooooon!!” on the way to the ground.
I just listened to a science fiction story about a society that started a war and ended up underground. They used robots to fight the war above. The enemy did the same. The people, of course, discover that the robots have been lying to them for some time. The war stopped very soon after all the people went underground.
When a group of people go above ground to inspect the scene, they are prevented from going back and telling every one else The robots, of course, bring both sides together on the surface to start a new. No need for diplomacy or politics because no one needs those things when they are worried about growing crops and getting enough rain.
This is the worse kind of happy ending. It is a lie. All of life exists to change the environment to fit their needs. This means all resources become precious at some point. This means not every one has everything they want and need all at once and forever. This story simply shows the robots hitting the reset button on humanity's condition. Changing from one form of distribution of wealth to another is not going to change the fact that want and need will eventually dictate action and distribution.
On the way in this morning I noticed something funny about the clouds. The high clouds were those choppy feathered clouds. I heard somewhere that this means there are high speed winds at high altitudes. They looked like they were headed East more or less.
As I road on the bus I noticed the low layer of clouds appeared to be moving north West. This means they were headed in nearly opposite directions. This cannot be good. That sort of thing cannot ever be a good sigh for the day's weather.
Sure enough, my mother texts me that Houston was under a tornado watch until 16:00. The weather was coming from San Antonio. That sounds about right. The high level winds would dictate the direction of the weather system's travel. The lower level flow would be directed to the storm if it is building.
Just before lunch, I looked up the weather map on my phone. “Here it comes.”
By lunch time, the skies looked a bit funny with choppy clouds and the wind blowing gently in many directions at once. The radar showed the mass heading right for us. No idea how much longer it would take for the bad stuff to land at our door step.
Nuke the Leak! You have tried everything else. Next time, use redundant flow controllers.
You are not on trial in this life. Everything you do matters, but this is your life. Live it.
Watch what happens in Israel over the next couple weeks. Get ready for this to happen to the U. S. in the following few years.
A buddy of mine is miraculous at learning musical instruments. Well, he learned the banjo in like a week. He has been playing guitar for years. I told him I wanted to have a split screen that was him playing dueling banjos. it might take me a year to learn how to do split screen. Sad really.
There was a story about all the crap available through Iraqi markets. Everything from bolts to generators. Everything must go. Rock bottom prices. People are finding things that should not have been sold available as well. It turns out Iraqi police and military are taking the bases over and selling everything that is not nailed down. The stuff that is nailed down takes a day or two.
Sir Patrick Stewart. It just doesn't ring. they are just handing those titles out like candy.
Lunch Conversation: I can't repeat most of the lunch conversation from today. It was complaining about work and inappropriate jokes.
There is no new Trek TV series on at the moment. Drag. Not sure why I care.
The taxi driver who went nuts and shot a bunch of people in the U. K. recently used a shotgun. They keep talking to victims, but I've heard nothing about why. He had a license for the guns. There are stories about arguments the day before and that morning. He started with people he knew and appears to have just gone nuts after that. Once he decided to kill himself, this removes the value of human life. He tended to go for older people..
“Is it too easy to get a license for a gun in the U. K.?” This is the first thing asked. People have to go through a ringer to get a license already. The next question is “Do they need to be more restrictive?” The answer is that the U. K has the most restrictive gun ownership rules in Europe and possible the western world. Japan may have more restrictive rules.
Remember, handguns are completely banned in the U. K.. The people being interviewed say that farmers and ranchers in the U. K. have reason to have shotguns. Hunting is a legitimate reason to own a gun. It is an Olympic sport.
Derick Bird enjoined scuba diving, a pint and was anything but a loner. He killed his twin brother, a former boss, his lawyer, then went on a spree. He was a normal guy pushed by something past some limit. No one says they saw it coming. No one says he was on some list to be watched.
What would they do if he used a board with a nail in it? They can't ban building materials can they? Notice no one shot back. Where were the cops? I imagine they were huddling behind something stout with the citizenry because they don't have guns to hand. This is of course will lead to the cops having more guns and the citizenry having less. Not sure I have an issue with the coos carrying more guns. The latter however worries me greatly.
Chinese workers building the iPad will get an iPad and a raise on top of it. this is to answer a rash of suicides at the factory in China. I wander how many of them will sell the iPad for a little bonus.
Every person in the U. K. owes 22,000 pounds in national debt. If someone pays you the amount in cash, can they pay lower taxes over the next twenty years? Somehow I doubt it.
The writing is on the wall. All the major ISPs are going to per-byte charges eventually. All in the name of the almighty dollar. the current regime will give them whatever they want just as long as the contributions keep coming in.
We had a DnD session last night at Adam's place. I turned up for the first time in a long time. I planned on it being boring because I wasn't going to play. I don't have a character rolled up. They are playing first edition just for the fun of it. It was not boring and there was no DnD plaid.
We got the table huge white board set up.
Got all the chairs and dice out.
Made cocktails, passed out some beers. (hmm, this may be a pivot point) Adam was calling this grapefruit and jinn drink a 'fuzzy star'. I'm sure he made it up.
We ordered food.
John didn't want pizza so he started ordering online from Jason's Deli. Thirty minutes of ordering go by and every one takes their turn picking a sandwich or whatever. The web page crashes and we loos it. Well, John nearly lost it. We ended up ordering, over ordering pizza. I only got one slice of the jalapeno pizza.
We discussed LOST
What happened.
We compared the final episode of LOST to the final episode of The X-Files.
We discussed the animated GIF that shows an alternate ending to LOST.
Adam described a room.
Someone started complaining about work and before you know it two hours had gone by.
Adam described the same room.
Someone said something else about work and we all laughed.
Adam folded up the DM screen and we continued to complain about work.
Then it was 23:30 and we started watching funny stuff on TV and then some Japanese Animation..
Long story short, we had a three or four hour session of DnD that got about three solid minutes of play time. We all enjoyed ourselves immensely. Sometimes you just have to vent about work. There is plenty to vent about these days. Well, every day. I cannot say that right now is any different than it has ever been, except there is more of it. That doesn't make sense unless you work at our company.
I would like it noted for the record that I could have had a viral video last night if it weren't for those pesky employment and friendship requirements. Details, details.
The next day I was fine. I had two stiff drinks. You would think I could take that without a headache. I was very tired, but happy for the experience. Work was still work. We complained about so many things that it is difficult keeping track of what is accurate and what is bullshit. It is nearly all accurate. Funny how that works. I do feel better for the letting off of steam and to be honest, I feel a bit better for the team building experience. Those really are important.
They are counting the days in the Gulf Disaster. “It is day 49 of the Gulf oil spill!” with the echo turned on. It is hard to listen to.
Digg started enforcing the bot problem they had. They lost 33% (13 million unique views) in a month earlier this year. Does that mean a third of their traffic was bots trying to drive up people's hits? That is frightening. I know I hate getting Digg links. I always thought it was a pyramid scheme for views. Guess I wasn't far off.
2010-06-06
Israeli blockade
I'm so sick of hearing about this. Every blog on earth is bitching on one side or the other. Here is what I believe.
Israel forces told the ships to stop. The ships did not stop. The Israelis boarded the ship. The videos I saw showed a scene of soldiers dropping from a helicopter and being mobbed by people armed with melee weapons and their faces covered. After some of the Israeli troops had been shot by the crowd, after the crowd had taken fire arms from some of the downed soldiers. The remaining soldiers, being surrounded on deck and taking fire, returned fire.
I believe this is what happened.
I also believe that there are enough people in the world who hate Jews to guarantee the vilification of Israel and Jews, regardless of evidence and the truth. There are many people still in this world who hate Jews. They want Jews to go away. Where? Anywhere but in their lives. It this means they all die, I suppose that is OK with some.
She let the mask slip. This is not the first time a member of the Obama White House has come right out and said something antisemitic.
Why do members of the left hate Israel? I believe that it is because Israel is not a nation of victims who must be take care of by western liberals. Liberals seem to hate every one who is not sufficiently a victim. The more victims there are in the world for Liberals to take care of, the more power Liberals have. Any one who is not a victim is evil. Any one who says people should be held accountable for their own actions and should be provided the skills and tools to take care of themselves is labeled a right wing nut job.
As long as the Palestinians play the victim, every western liberal on the planet will shout from the roof tops that something must be done about Israeli aggression. Why do Palestinians destroy green houses and infrastructure when they get it? Because they know they must be the victim. They cannot in any way succeed or be perceived as take care of themselves because they will loose the support of those folks all over the world who want the money and power too keep flowing with a fresh supply of victims to grease the cogs.
I remember someone saying long ago that every one loves an underdog. No. I say that many people love victims. For every victim there is a need. For every need there is a cause. For every cause there is a group and flow of money. Every time you have a group and a flow of money, you have power. That is what people want. They need victims to get power.
I call this victim warship. I don't know what else to call it. Noting is going to chance until people stop believing that everyone deserves everything. I don't have everything. I don't need everything. There are people who have more than I. There are people who have less. Things just are. No one should exploit another, but that is exactly what victim warship is.
He was drunk enough to ware ice skates. That isn't the funny thing to me. They make this guy ride to the police station in the back of his own car. When he pukes on the way to the station, he has to clean it up in the morning. I love it.
Hole
Surely you have seen this in static pictures. The caption would read something like "Not Photoshopped!"
Bus vs car
Just makes you want to cross town on a local doesn't it?
Upset Starfish
This video is missing a caption that says "Asshole divers!"
Looping a chopper
... and making it look easy. I like the the fact that "... helfire misiles ... " is about the only word I understood from the announcer.
Plane almost crashes
Watch to the end.
Helicopter crash
The captions say no one was injured, but Jesus! they came close. Not sure the Twilight Zone music fits, but who am I to talk about music?
MilkyWay
This is the Milky Way galaxy as viewed from Death Vally. I bet it is amazing to view first hand, but I would not want to be caught out there ill prepared.
I'll write a better post about this later. Check out the video.
Enjoy.
2010-06-04
Notes:
2010-06-03
BP keeps apologizing. People keep getting sick while cleaning up. The dispersant is as bad as the oil some say. The CEO of BP want's his life back same as the people on the ground.
All currency is risk management. The reason currency exists is to level the playing field for trades of goods and services. People say the stock market has taken on too much high risk. The trouble is people forgot that there are no guarantees. Sometimes people and companies have to fail. It keeps those who succeed honest. This is risk.
Today at lunch, I went for a walk in the parking garage. It just didn't feel as satisfying as I have in the past. The pidgins were on holiday. The ground was wet from a fresh rain. That just made everything humid and steamy. That might have been it. Not sure.
There is a potential law coming down the pike that says customers have to be told what country and city they are being transferred to before they are transferred to an offshore call center. I'm not sure what to think of that idea. Part of me wants to have this in plan, the other part of me asks what difference it makes if they get the same job done.
There are whispers out there that a study is going to say that couples who have many children together are unhealthy on a genetic diversity front. I'm getting tired of scientists telling me how to run my life. The study has not even shown it's head and I'm trying to think of ways to counter the argument. This has got to be bullshit. I wonder if the person who told me has been misinformed.
Saw another ambulance this morning on the way to work this morning. It was not running with lights and sirens. Still, that is quite a few for a 24 hour period.
I spend the majority of the day as acting software Nazi. I go around to computers and pull all the keys. We count how many are in use and we count how many we pay for and make the numbers line up. it is fun in a causing other's pain kind of way.
We had a Dell tech come by work today to fix a computer. There was no power. Everything was plugged in properly. The tech swapped the power supply in like a minute flat. You could tell he has been doing this every day for some time. Box works. Nice.
Elle doesn't want her cherry pie because the cherries don't taste right. I think it is because they are those canned mashed up pie cherries.
I've been looking at audio recorders. They have gotten cheap. They seem to work pretty well. I want one that does stereo for recording live gigs. Nothing fancy, just stereo that doesn't suck. Maybe an external mic hookup. A file format that that is not proprietary. OK, I want one that will cost me about $100. No thanks. I'll use my phone, even with about a thimble's space to store audio.
These things are great for podcasts. There are not really places to post sound. I don't know how to set up an RSS feed. No one wants to listen to me complain. I don't have time or will to promote myself. I don't really want to be famous.
All day at work felt like we were the Omega employees. We were the only company open in the building that I noticed. At least the AC was switched on. Traffic was very light in the area. We don't get Memorial day off and our boss is an ex marine. It is strange.
Nat wanted to go to breakfast this morning. We tried to hit Denny's because it is on the way, but no one came out to meet us. The door was unlocked. We ended up at I-Hop. Good breakfast. Great service.
it was beautiful weather in the morning. The lady at I-Hop asked us if we were headed to the beach. Would have been nice, but no. I too have to work. the waitress was on until 15:00. That question made me wander about the beach the rest of the day. I have been to Galveston. I do not like swimming in a 24/7/365 oil slick. Still, it sounded better than work.
A friend of mine is a cop and gets holiday pay for days like today. That is not a bad idea at all.
By 09:30 at work we had 31 out of 89 people are absent from work. Two of those will probably come in later in the day. That is a lot for this company. This tells me that many of those folks are taking the day off as vacation. People have spouses and family with the day off. I bet if I ran down the list most of the people gone have kids.
Morning traffic, what morning traffic? Best part of coming to work today by a long shot.
Brisket, Matt brought in some brisket, taters and beans from a BBQ he had this past weekend. Aaron brought in some biscuits his wife made. This soured conversation about techniques for brisket and past experiences.
Video games
The lack of keyboard support on consoles inside games.
Still can't play people on the PC side of things.
The IR control systems on the Wii are a bit lacking.
Climate change and the shutting down of industry after industry.
Expiration of different products and do they mean anything. eradiated eggs.
Fans at the Arrows game shouting 'bitch' in Spanish when the other team's goalie made a kick.
More stores are closed on Memorial Day than New Year's Day. (No proof of that statement, but sounds plosable.)
I thought for sure I was going to eat alone at lunch today. There was a pretty good turnout.
I tried to get video of lightning last night. When I got the camera back in to the house and hooked it up, I noticed the lightening that I caught was blurry and over exposed. This tells me that I'm going to have to take video of lightening during the day with that camera. It has few manual settings for video and does not, of course, adjust nearly fast enough to capture lightening. Honestly, I don't expect it to capture lightening. Just thought I would give it a shot.
Nat and I got invited to a party at a friend's place. He got a house recently. It kind of hits close to my home because it is not far from a major road and he has the ass end of a strip mall right behind him. Nat and I have a fish market and a bar right in front of us and a night club on the other side. He has a half price books. We win for shit circumstances.
The food was pretty good. He served up all kinds of barbecue, but also had several vegetable trays. You know those prebuilt ones. They were great.
We walked in kind of on the late side. Pretty much every one who was drinking was drunk. as I walked up, I got a warning to be careful because they were throwing people in the pool. I brought a water resistant case and swim trunks. Still, I just don't like being bodily thrown in a pool. So, I didn't go out back until well after dark and most others had left.
We watched a movie. We watched another movie. I got an Irish coffee. We ate some popcorn. We argued with a drunk guy.
Did I mention that this is one of our redneck friends. Most of his friends are rednecks. Nothing wrong with that. I have the occasion to be a redneck.
I shot a bunch of video that all sucked. I ended up deleting the footage. I was hoping to get some waterborne footage, but it seems we were a bit late. Maybe if we had made it to the party before people started getting thrown in. Who knows.
This guy has another video of exhaust on a motorcycle engine running with no manifold at all. You can watch the valves spitting fire. Still, this is pretty cool in my book.
VAT stands for Value Added Tax. It is a way to do sales tax. Supposedly, it is calculated as bits are created in pieces all over the place and brought together in a products. Really, it is a sales tax.
Why is the president of the United States in the news every day? This just seems like a bad thing to me. There is no way it can end well. Any slow day in the news gives the press time to dig up something bad to hold under every one's noeses.
I heard a shoe shine ad on the old time radio podcast. That is something you just don't hear any more. They were so proud of the fact that their polish was “brushless”. It has been over a year since I polished boots. I've put water proofing agents on boots more recently.
YouTube bitched at me last night because I uploaded a video with the index at the end of the file. I understand why they want it at the front of the file. This is called 'flattening' the file.
When you render a video, you do not have the index information until the file is done. Thus, most software puts the data at the end of the file. This is fine if you double click a file on your system because the player can just jump to the end of the file and read the index info and play the file without trouble.
However, when streaming a video, you do not have the opportunity to just jump to the end of the file to retrieve the index. The index contains information that may come in handy for playing. Thus, YouTube has to mess with every file in order to ensure the index is in a good place for streaming.
Now, I have no idea how to do this in my software. I bet there is a setting ... somewhere. I hate that. Software is getting to the point you just can't figure out how to get things done because there are just so many settings for every little thing that you can't keep them all straight.
Apparently, if you upload a video in just the correct format with the correct settings to YouTube, you do not have to suffer through the delay that is built in. YouTube has an amazing mechanism in place for allowing people to upload all kinds of formats regardless of index placement and they just change the format after it is uploaded. I'm impressed by the effort. It must take a massive amount of energy and some pretty nifty programming. I'm glad it works. I'm sick of the delay.
I've heard it said that that that oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico would not be nearly as bad as it is if they had not deliberately sank the rig. By doing this, the oil is now gushing at the bottom of the ocean rather than burning off at the top. Who made the decision to sink the rig? I have not heard the answer to this. Then again, some say it collapsed without help.
Some of the chemicals they are using to help control the oil may be doing as much damage than the oil. Some of the employees who were on the rig used the word “detained” and “forced to sign wavers” to describe their treatment after being rescued after the initial explosion.
A bunch of people who live along the Gulf Coast are asking the question “What would be different if this had happened along the East Coast?” That is a fair question. Hasn't drilling been opened up along the East Coast recently? I'm sure more than a couple people along that side of the country are muttering the same question.
Elisabeth Burnbalm lost her job. I'm really not sure why they bothered. Who is going to taker her place? Will they do any better of a job. Who put her there? Are they going to loose their job? I think not.
This has been called an “Environmental Catastrophe” by execs at BP. Note, they took over a month to call it by that label.
I've lost track of how many things have been tried to stop the flow of oil out of the ground at the bottom of the ocean. They used a big box, a smaller box, shoving stuff down the hole, welding, and a bunch of other stuff. One expert said if nothing were done, there is enough oil under that hole to keep ejecting oil at the current rate for the rest of all our lives. Keep trying BP.
This is Obama's Katrina. People are pointing fingers at his administration and asking “Where the hell were the feds?” “What did the inspections show before this [insert big scary word]?” “Why weren't we prepared?”
There are words like “suspend” “cancel” and “moratorium” being thrown around when talking about offshore drilling. I know a lot of people who work in offshore. I hope they do not suffer.
How many cluster fucks does it take to loose confidence in a U. S. president? We have become too used to having a lackey upon whom to lash all our woes too large to deal with on our own. Cluster fucks happen.
Well, not arguing so much as trying to keep her occupied long enough for Nat to make it out of the Restaurant. This is parenting at its finest. Well, it is parenting. Well, it is something that works. Well, it is something that kind of works. OK, it hardly ever works. It almost didn't work this time. Elle survived, as did Nat and myself.
Some say there is evidence that North Korea is gearing up for war. I sincerely hope not. The Norks may lack enough food and energy to feed their own people, but they can make a mess and get millions killed in the process.
I called in on the grass along Westheimer where I walk .It is getting hard to walk through. I had to transfer through about seven people before I got to the guy who said “We started that section yesterday. It will take us a couple days to make it out to the county line. “ What timing.
I'm trying to think of something I learned today. There were a couple things. I had to order a bunch of 2 head KVMs today at work. They have gotten much cheaper than I member them. I also found a mouse/keyboard combo that would have been very handy for me a couple months ago.
Thank you Lord for the blank page. For, no page may be filled with life that is not born blank. May I scrawl pages to life?
Permanent is a not a state. Forever is not a goal or a measure. Eternity is more real because it has an end by definition.
You can measure distance in a straight line in Google Maps. It takes a bit of doing. We live 46 miles or so from the coast and 32 miles from the ship channel.
Yes, my life is moving along through my sea of bullet points on my way to the final bullet point at the bottom of the master list labeled “Die'”. There is another page of notes and bullets after this, but the pages are stuck together and I cannot read anything by holding a light up behind the paper. I have faith there is more to do.
Increasingly I feel out of control of what is going on around me, to me, because of me. This is not a sense of loss, it is a sense of realization. It has always been this way, I'm just now noticing it. I call this pivot point in my existence “Turning 40”. It took a long time to follow the other pivot point in my teens where I realized I had control of myself and my environment to a point that I labeled “Puberty”.
Every one is out to get my information. There is value connecting people and what they pay money for. The next time someone asks me for my name, I'm going to ask them how much they are going to give me for it. Is it worth a 10% discount on whatever? My credit card company just hands over that information at point of sale. Sounds like I should have a chat with my Bank.
It was hot and sticky outside at lunch. I walked around wandering just how much hotter, dustier and dryer it is in Iraq or Afghanistan in the height of Summer. this thought made me feel much better about walking around on the top floor of the parking garage. The concrete feels some how radiant with reflected heat from the sunshine. I can see a pool in the apartment complex behind the garage. It makes me want to go swimming.
Every one is so concerned over Iran's nuclear program. “Iran needs to reassure international entities about the peaceful nature if its nuclear activities.” No one who has the clout is going to stop Iran from achieving a bomb, or the means to deliver it.
I updated from Red Hat 5.4 to Red Hat 5.5 on my work machine. Things seemed to go well. That is, until I tried to drag and drop a file to the trash can. It would not let me. I tried hitting the delete key in the GUI and nothing. My user account is on the network. I had to change the rights to my .Trash file to 777 in order to move files to the trash can in Gnome. It worked before. What a drag. =]
Most of my day today was spent a) setting up a couple virtual build machines and b) finding hardware, mice and keyboards for people starting soon. Mainly I updated my spreadsheet every seven minutes. It is funny
Got the laptop kind of running. My laptop does not like the 2.6.32 kernel. I had to revert to the 2.6.31 to get it running in anything beyond low graphics mode. it is far better than nothing. That is for sure.
I'm not sure what to say beyond that. After the first season the forums were light up with people saying they were all dead and the island is really purgatory or some equivalent.
So, where was the line? I haven't read any of the synopses yet. I want to speculate on my own before reading other's opinions and conclusions. I may sound really stupid and inattentive, nothing new there.
The nuke worked. The time lines were split. In one time line, every one was dead and justhanging on to memories as they all cought up what was going on.
The other time line was the island. Every one dies. there is no 'now' here. Both time lines converged after death. No, not every one died at the same time, but every one met up at the end of it all as though all of life in all time lines happened in an instant.
In death, all the time lines you were in converge. There is no 'now' here. Even if you live ten thousand years in one of the billions of timelines you live through, you die at some point. There is only one of you in that place.
In at least one time line somewhere, Jack had a teenage son. In at least some time line somewhere, James was a cop.
There is no 'now' here. This is not a time line. This is something else.
It almost looks like the wind was blowing this massive ship in to a peer. The two tugs just can't counter act the wind blowing. The description says no one got hurt. Thank God. jump to the end to get an idea of the size of that ship and how much wind there was blowing the correct direction to move this massive craft. Do you know how much those shipping containers are? There must be thousands of them on this ship above the deck line.
Painful IED attack
These guys are just tooling along, minding their own business, waving at the locals, then, bang. What a fucked up war we find ourselves in.
Missing video
There was a really graphic video of perhaps twelve people in the bed of a pickup that lost it going down a normal hill on a normal looking road and flipped. It looked like many people were injured.I would have posted it, accept for the "free energy" ads that the poster attached all over the video. looser.
The way they used to make anchors
Anchors the size of an aircraft. And by hand. Look at the size of the mechanical hammers. It gets me how those me just seem to fall in to a pattern of ten men hammering with sledgehammers in one spot.
Aluminium air tank making
Here you go boys and girls. This is how a diving tank is made.
Suicide
Not embedded here. Man decides to kill himself. He climbs up a bridge. He lights himself on fire. Sits there for a long time. Scoots out to the end of the decrative bird thing he is sititng on and falls to his death, flaming the whole way.
I can think of less painful ways of doing oneself in. Who am I to judge. The less painful methods won't get you on the internet I suppose.
2010-05-22
Laptop issues
Ubuntu 10.04 and Xubuntu 10.04 bot die attempting to boot my laptop. It is a Ubuntu thing I suppose. It worked before. I'm telling you, there is only one way to express my feelings.
Fedora 13 doesn't come out for three more days. I may have to try that on my laptop to get me by. Why did I bother upgrading? I hadn't run that laptop in weeks. Why did i bother? At least now I know it is a failed effort.
There was a wireless access point on my shelf for about the last six years. I finally broke down today and tried to set it up. I really wanted to update my laptop to the latest Ubuntu. I decided to do this first for some ridiculous reason. Well, I cannot get my current wireless router to work at all unless I completely disable encryption. The WEP standard is apparently not as standard as one would hope.
I break open the box. It is funny working on new equipment that is several years out of date. Everything was wrapped in plastic and had that new electronics smell. I'm sure it is carcinogenic. Still it is fun to play with some new piece of equipment to try to get it to work.
I plug the thing in to the wall and my current router. Remember, it is an access point, not a router itself.
It took me a while to find the stupid thing on the network and connect to the IP. The book said the access point had a static IP by default, but they were, as usual, full of crap. It was using DHCP by default. It is no wonder no one sets up these old access points correctly. It is like the engineers were out to get you. You have to know the precise length of a WEP key and get no help even for limiting you hitting wrong keys in the web page interface. I should have known I was in trouble when the instructions said "You can user Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape to configure your access point." Yikes.
Then came configuring wireless. I made the normal settings, but no dice. The computer would not even believe that the access point existed. After fenagling for an hour, I read the box to discover the description '802-11a' on the side of the box. I don't think my laptop supports 'a' at all. I think it is an '802-11b/g' receiver in the laptop.
So, I connected my laptop to the router using the 20 foot cable that came with the access point and chucked the rest of the ancient equipment.
Remember me complaining about the 's' key on my server? Every time I hit the 's' key a specific program popped up. That was really annoying. Do you have any idea how many commands and words have an 's' in them?
I had to lop the head off Gnome and start over. If you go in to your home folder and remove .gconf and .gconfd folders, you effectively start your Gnome experience over again. This worked. I'm kin of pissed how many times I've had to do this in order to fix weird shit that just kind of happens in Gnome.
Fare tax is a tax on purchased items. I've covered this. It keeps coming up. I love the idea because people who normally do not pay income tax will have to pay the national sales tax, or VAT tax or whatever form it takes. That is great. The idea of a fare tax means you eliminate income tax. Voters know that if we allow a fare tax, we will still have income taxes to pay. We are not stupid.
If our government wants the tax paying voters to trust them, then how about eliminating the income tax first. Then letting us vote on VAT or national sales tax or whatever you call it. Trust us, we will make the best decision for you, government. Don't worry, we know how
G. Gordon Liddy needs a letter from the interior minister of Canada to enter the country. He is a convicted felon after all. One time when his paperwork was messed up, he got formally deported five minutes after crossing the border. G. makes a phone cal lat 01:00 and the guard got his ass chewed. When asked if he had any spy equipment with hem G. produced a pare of binoculars. The guard had to let him in anyway. Heard on the G. Gordon Liddy podcast.
The first ATM went in to business in 1966 in London.
3 terabyte drives on their way this year. You will need a 64 bit OS to use it it seems. I thought the partitions were the limiting factor, not the drive. Here we are again with OS limits on drive size. Remember the two megabyte limit? Me either.
My G1 phone will not handle Android 2.1 and beyond. This blows. They say in another year or so there will be perhaps hundreds of Android models on the market, half of them not able to support OS updates. What is with this crap?
Came home and straight mowed the yard. Lowered the mower for Summer. It works much better with a sharpened blade. Didn't weed eat.
SEOUL, South Korea -- Tensions deepened Thursday on the Korean peninsula as South Korea accused North Korea of firing a torpedo that sank a naval warship, killing 46 sailors in the country's worst military disaster since the Korean War.
President Lee Myung-bak vowed "stern action" for the provocation following the release of long-awaited results from a multinational investigation into the March 26 sinking near the Koreas' tense maritime border. North Korea, reacting swiftly, called the results a fabrication, and warned that any retaliation would trigger war. It continued to deny involvement in the sinking of the warship Cheonan.
...
An international civilian-military investigation team said evidence overwhelmingly proves a North Korean submarine fired a homing torpedo that caused a massive underwater blast that tore the Cheonan apart. Fifty-eight sailors were rescued from the frigid Yellow Sea waters, but 46 perished.
...
"Our Korean People's Army was not founded for the purpose of attacking others. We have no intention to strike others first," Col. Pak, the naval spokesman, told APTN in the North Korean capital. "So why should we attack a ship like the Cheonan which has no relation with us, no need to strike it and we have no significance in doing so."
North Korea's powerful National Defense Commission warned the South against provocative acts near their border, and urged the U.S. and Japan to "act with discretion," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch monitored in Seoul.
North Korea has waged a slew of attacks on South Korea since the 1950-53 fighting ended, including the 1987 downing of a South Korean airliner that killed all 115 people on board.
My dad helped rebuild part of South Korea after the First Korean War during his military service.
M. A. S. H. was based on the First Korean War.
It was the first real jet fighter war.
The U. S. should really send a massive bill to China and the Russians for all the provocation and help they supplied. I suppose they say the same about us.
Found in the manual page for a command named mkswap.
-f Force - go ahead even if the command is stupid. This allows the creation of a swap area larger than the file or partition it resides on. On SPARC, force creation of the swap area. Without this option mkswap will refuse to create a v0 swap on a device with a valid SPARC superblock, as that probably means one is going to erase the partition table.
Makes sense to me. I've put a couple of these up. There are some real gems in the manual pages in Linux in general. It is to do with open source and lack of committee oversight. this is good thing.
Yesterday, I took off from work a bit early so we could go get a bed from Nat's grandmother. I tried to video some highlights, but it sucked so bad that I just blew it away. Sometimes you cannot edit the bad out of a video.
The $10 mouse that I ordered showed up. Funny how a real mouse is cheaper than a plastic computer mouse. It is wonderful to have a mouse that is qualified. It is optical so it will not get dirty as easily as an old ball mouse. The middle mouse button that doubles as a scroll wheel works just fine on both tasks. This is not always true for my old, more expensive mice. The biggest thing is that Elle is off my back because she has her mouse back.
I got home last night and started weed eating. I tried to cut down the one green thing in my front flower bed that looks like a tree. It is actually a tall weed. I could not find my saw and tried to use my pocket knife. It didn't work out.
No sooner do I get done than the storms start rolling in. In the beginning of the storm, we had close and powerful lightning. I walked out to the garage, opened it and stood there with the water resistant case I got recently and just aimed it at the sky.
I captured two or three staggering strikes on video. I was a bit excited and made some stupid cometary. The rain came down sideways and blew in the garage. I gave up as I got soaked. As aiming the camera at the garage door and walking to the button to close the door, I accidentally captured the crazy lightning that simply obscured the entire garage door with light. this is toward the end of the video. Those are water drops on the waterproof case's lens. I don't think you can make this frame out on the YouTube version of the video.
Once inside the house the power blinked a couple of times. The power pole out back made a really loud “gzzzzzzzt!!!!” noise during one of the blinks. I thought for sure something caught on fire, but I noticed no damage later and the electricity was on the whole night.
Elle was following me around with four very scared stuffed animals in her arms. “Can hail break the glass in the windows?” she asked.
“It can Sweety.” I answered. “Let's hope it doesn't.”
She was quite concerned with electricity coming through the wires and killing the electronics. She is pretty smart because she explained how lightening can hit a wire outside and come through to the Microwave and TV.
No sooner did I get the video ready to upload than the second round of storms rolled in and I had to kill it and turn off the computers and went to bed. Fortunately, the second round didn't seem as intense as the first. Still a great deal of energy in the air.
The kids in Hawaii have every other Friday off because the sate does not have enough money to keep the doors open. I remember having every other Friday off. It sucks to work every day. It was nice having time on one week day every couple weeks to get week day stuff done. Tomorrow, I have to take off work to go get a bed for goodness sake. This should e a feature, not a bug.
Arianna Huffington is tired of the 'statuesque' from the Obama Administration. Arianna is a crushing San Francisco liberal. If Obama has lost Arianna, he has lost much much more than a noisy yes-blogger. It is a rare day when I find myself agreeing with anything she says. I'm quite sure Arianna and I would agree that we would like Obama to move, but in opposite directions.
Politicians are just happy to blame the world's banking system for all the financial woes lately. What are the politicians planning to reform the political system that has gotten us in so much trouble?
The Sunday BBQ video was not on the blog until lunchtime today. I took time to embed the video while I waited for the water to boil. It didn't take but a couple moments. Should have done it last night, but I was dog tired from getting home late and editing the video.
Walked in the door at the house, turned around and hit the yard with the weed whacker. Tried to cut down the huge weed masquerading as a tree in my flowerbeds, but I couldn't find my saw. Got half way through with my pocket knife and had to quit on account of rain. Elle wouldn't let me eat before I carried in her new shelves. Guess she didn't notice the other two sets that have been sitting there for two years in the garage..
What games were really worth the money from a playtime and enjoyment perspective?
Arizona's new immigration law
What the law says.
As far as I can tell - Once you come under the scrutiny of law enforcement, if there is any reason to believe you are not a legal citizen, the officer must apply and follow through with federal immigration laws.
Who is raising a stink?
As far as any of us could tell, a bunch of New York, LA, Austin liberals who are far more concerned with votes than rights are the ones blowing a gasket on this law.
What will happen differently when a cop stops you regardless of citizenship?
Pets and cleaning up after them
Puppies pooing
Cats puking
Music and who plays what instruments. We have some guys at my work who have a jam session every so often. I want to go get some YouTube footage one of these days.
We can't get some of the episodes in the U. S. yet, but here are a couple shots. These are shots through what appears to be a clear plastic dinner plat. The following are through a Dalek's eye.
Old Dalek
New Dalek
Going up against Daleks with a sonic screwdriver. That's balls.
This is very interesting. I thought for sure someone would come up with a non friction based zero shift system for transmissions. Even if this does not turn out to be a game changer, this is exactly the kind of enterprising sort of self reliance and self worth we should be teaching in school.
I would also like it noted for the record that this guy is a plumber. I'm telling you, people who do plumbing for a long time and really udnerstand it, are smarter and more creative than any one gives them credit for. Plumbers must have a grasp of space, matter, forces, problem solving, and just plain sense to be any good at what they do.
I had to delete and recreate my Gnome panel to get rid of an app/icon/whatever you call them that had no "remove from panel" choice. This is a symptom of upgrading. This only takes about five minutes, but it shouldn't happen at all. There have been a couple of things that have broken with the upgrade to 10.04. This kind of crap piled on top of the mouse pointer issues I've experienced make me second guess recommending Ubuntu in the future. They may sound trivial, but added up, they amount to a pain in the ass.
It would be so easy for me to loose myself in time. I understand how people let years slip by. I need to have the present day's date written near me. I would loose track of everything if I let it go.
This makes me like blogs and computers in general because everything that happens on a computer has a date/time associated with it. This is important because copmuters, like people and all of existence, exist in the 'now'. Things that do not have a date/time associated with them are not properly kept track of.
There was a time when only the end product of documents, the final cut was important. Now every keystroke and mouse move has a log entry that links it back to who did it and when. Why may be coming to a log near you soon.
In politics, this feature is more and more important. The 23 minutes of blank tape come to mind from Nixon's audio log. He thought he was doing a good thing by keeping an audio log. To this day, I wander if he and the nation would have been better off if had not. That horse has left the barn.
The technology is there to make everyone carry some kind of black box in their pocket that records every utterance. I'm quite sure someone somewhere has to ware one to fulfill their job requirements. Not sure off the top of my head who might. I'm thinking firefighters in a nuclear facility. Cops have dash cams and I believe many police radios have a black box feature along with some kind of location awareness. It is all a rich tapestry.
What was I blogging about? Oh, the date.
I figured out how to get the correct date format in Google Docs. You put a tick, also know as a high comma, inverted comma or apostrophe at the beginning of a cell in the spreadsheet cell and the auto fuckup correct is disabled for that cell. The apostrophe is not displayed.
This is great, but I had to find this out by having the same problem in Open Office and pooring through the help there. I then tried the same thing in Google Docs and had luck. The fix is probably in the help for Google Docs, but I didn't find it.
Looks like I won't be bothering with Microsoft Office Live.
To use Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, your computer must meet one of the following requirements:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 running on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. You can download Internet Explorer from the 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.
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