A few days ago, Fark was having a photoshop contest that I thought I'd participate in. I really liked the image. I only got as far as making a blank image (with no labels or reflections on it), so I just stuck it on my web server and linked to it in the Fark forum so that anyone who wanted a blank for their own submission could use it. I also made the image into my desktop wallpaper for a while, but I had to change it into something that didn't cause the blood vessels in my head to rupture slowly over time.

Well, I noticed this huge spike in traffic to 27.org in the log stats summary, and so I went looking for the cause. It turns out that a few people had seen my post to Fark, liked the blank image I made, and then posted links to the image on my server in various online forums. Here are some of the forums that I found:

- one
- two
- three
- four
- five

I went looking at the forums that linked my image and decided I'd rather they not have the liberty to see my content. I've got nothing against ricers (don't bother with any of that racism nonsense; it's not my term, just a very descriptive one), but read some of the .sigs that the people in the forum use. Not my crowd. So I took a cue from Jeremy Zawodny and decided to give them a new image to link to. (That new image is not safe for work, BTW, so don't bother clicking the link if you're at church or whatever.)

After I made the changes, I went back to the forums to see that they took effect. The comments are way funnier now than they were before. Yes, that is some "trippy shit".

I've always wondered why online music people were so clueless. It's like they all smell money and nobody can agree on who gets the biggest share, so nothing gets done. All people want is a decent selection, at a decent price, without artificial obstacles in between them and their purchase.

The Apple Music Store is fine. Unless you don't have an Apple. Or unless you want to move your encumbered music files to a different format or player or computer or operating system or whatever.

Buy.com (I never know how to capitalize a URL that starts a sentence) recently launched their service. They sell by the song (and therefore album) like Apple, which is also fine. As long as you own a computer than runs Windows so that you can use what you purchase.

I like neither of the above because none of the music I would purchase will play on the hardware I want to play it on. And the "Suck it up and get a Mac/Windows box" argument is misguided. I have over 40 GB of MP3s that I've taken great pains to rip, tag, and store in a very orderly fashion. I don't want to have some music which can play on my stereo (or in my car) and some that won't, just because a bunch of lawyers smelled cash and decided a hampered format was best. I want music that matches everything else I've been using for the last 5 years. If I buy music, I want to be able to use where I want to use it.

I just found what I was looking for: emusic.com.

They let you buy music on the subscription model. You pay $9.99 a month, and you can download as many honest-to-friggen-god MP3 files as you want. And they have 200,000 files to choose from. And -- get this -- they even support Linux! And Mac! And Windows! Will wonders never cease? I thought I was hallucinating when I saw that.

The music they have is... "not necessarily mainstream". Which is exactly what I've been looking for. I mean, I could give a shit about Britney or Beyonce or some hip-hop crap. The flip side is that it's hard to know what a song sounds like without listening to it. That's not a problem because they let you hear 30 second samples of any song on any album, so you can quickly listen to a new band and figure out if the (free) download is worth it. It's a great way to find new bands. In that last two hours, I've picked up 12 CDs worth of music, 4 of which I have been meaning to buy for a long time now (Cramps, Frank Black, Django Reinhardt, etc.). The rest I'd never even heard of until I listened to some 30 second samples (I'm fairly fond of The Future Sound Of London). So far, my favorite new artist is Yo La Tengo.

Anyway, I couldn't even find most of the stuff I've gotten in music stores (they even have El Vez for cryin' out loud), and the stuff I did get would have cost over $60 in physical media (which I would have instantly ripped and then shelved; I don't care about liner notes or lyrics or whatever). I've paid for 6 months of my yearly subscription already, and I haven't even gotten to their jazz or blues collections yet.

The coolest part is that you get whole albums, and they sometimes have reviews which helps. I've always kept my music collection napster-free. Everything I have I've bought and ripped. It's not so much out of altruism as pickiness: I like having an entire album of a known quality, and hearing the songs in succession (although I play all songs on random a lot). I think music should be listened to the way the artist intended it. Would you throw tracks from Dark Side of the Moon randomly into a directory? Sgt. Peppers? Miles Davis? Hell no! Each one represents a collection of music, like a snpshot in time, and it's supposed to remain whole. Besides, people who just get whatever songs they like and dump them into unordered directories are basically after personal radio. I'm after digitally archiving my music library.

Anyway, emusic.com has a free trial where you can download 50 files free, whether they'r from one album or 50. It's worth a look. I've purchased hundreds of songs for $9.99 so far tonight. That's a screaming deal, in my book.

Check out this movie called Batman: Dead End. It's fan fiction, kinds of like Troops was. The guy that plays Joker isn't so good, but the ending is pretty unexpected. The quality is impressive, too.

Let's just get this out of the way right now: SCO (in general) and Darl McBride (in particular) can suck my ass.

And Darl, leave Linus the hell alone.

I recently came across the Stalin vs. Hitler online comic again, and noticed something in panel 10: Adolph Hitler's last name wasn't Hitler. He changed it. That got me curious about Hitler, and a search led me to a page called The psychology and development of Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber. I have no idea how much of what is written there is true, but it's an interesting read. He certainly has a lot of sources. But the layout and design... they just scream "Stop reading! Crackpot!" It's conflicting.

In all fairness I have to say that abelard.org is one of the funniest sites I've ever been to. They have yaks, for crying out loud. As awards, I mean. Even the colour key is amusing. And I really wish there were some writings about abelard's conversations with the good fairy. This is ground-breaking stuff, and not just for the site's extensive (and mostly exclusive) use of color as meta-information.

I wound up exploring the site for quite some time. It's sites like that which make me love the Internet. You used to have to get stuff like this through the mail.

Never could the category title be more apropos. Where to start?

I put this SQL file with all the ISO 3166 country codes on my other web site. It sounds dumb, but it gets a couple hundred downloads a week. Someone obviously finds it useful. And in fact, I sometimes get emails thanking me for putting it on the web. I get maybe 5 emails a month, and it's nice to read them. It makes it feel worthwhile, like I've helped someone in some small way.

Anyway, I got an email tonight from this guy Ted. He said thanks, and he also said that "by way of compensation" I might enjoy this web site if I was "a thinking sort of man" in need of a mental break. And I am. And I do. It was a clever 'thank you' to get -- easily one of the best so far.

So I kept hitting reload for a while and then it occurred to me that I could use these images at home. I already have a pretty decent collection of random images just from what people send me attached to email. These would make perfect additions to my collection. I wrote a small script to grab them all and store them on my internal web server. Then I wrote a little PHP code for the server's main page that grabbed a random image and displayed it along with the page.

This was nice and all, but something was missing. The images needed captions. Random captions for random images. So I added a little code to print the output of the fortune program, right below the image. I wound up reloading that like a dumbfounded idiot for about 15 minutes.

It's absolutely amazing how some of the captions fit the image exactly. I'm serious. About 75% of them apply to the image somehow. It's eerie. Spooky, even. It's also often hilarious, at least in a Zippy sort of way.

It's cool when ideas come from all over and form a spontaneous completeness. Now my home page has a little moment of zen.

I can't decide if this IRC chat log is sad or funny. I admit to laughing, but I also feel bad for the guy. I mean, forcing a restart is one thing. Deleting files is something else altogether. Sad.

Naw... it's funny.

That was certainly fun. I had my hosting provider move us to one of the new servers. And I had all manner of problems.

For some reason, register.com was still doing DNS for this domain. That's not how it was supposed to be. I'm about 95% sure that I made Hurricane Electric authoritative. I mean, it does no good to ask them to move us to a new server (which obviously will have a new IP address) if they can't change DNS as well, right? I finally got it sorted it. I'm sure the changes haven't stopped propogating. Someone in Korea will get an error. C'est la vie.

The new server runs Apache 2.0. This is nice, but things like server-side includes and CGI scripts work differently. The format of htaccess files has changed a little bit. The database access has changed. Stuff like that.

It should be working now, though. Let me know if you see some busted, ok?

I came across the Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair 2001 page just a couple minutes ago, and I can't stop laughing. With "experiments" like 'My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)', 'Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria', and 'Women Were Designed For Homemaking', you know there's some hard science going down. I really wanted to see the descriptions from some of the honorable mentions; they were even funnier. I especially wanted to know more about the 'Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False' and 'Thermodynamics Of Hell Fire' experiments.

I thought for sure it was a gag site. But it looks like it's legitimate. Which just makes it all the more hilarious. Be sure to vist their store. Where else can you get a Ruby Matrimony Thong? And if you can spare the time, go take a look at a site they link to for a Christian rock band called Zounds YRM. Sadly, they have no MP3 downloads or anything of that sort (they're "coming soon"), so I'll never get to hear the smoove crooning of Pastor Skeet Hoskins. Although I really want a pair of Zounds Abstinence Shorts -- mostly because of the name, but also to go with the matrimony thong.

One of my favorite shows of all times is Good Eats. I was a science geek growing up, and always wanted to know how to cook. Good Eats has both (along with humor), and that makes it imminently watchable for me. About 2/3 of my 30 hour TiVo is taken up by saved episodes, and I three 7-hour VHS tapes full as well.

Over the past two years or so, I've found myself wanting to make more and more of the recipes featured on the show. Tess and I have made everything from pan-seared ribeye (makes the kitchen smell like grease, and not as good as from a hot grill) to meat loaf (I wouldn't make it any other way) to broiled, butterflied chicken (skip the peppercorn mixture) to scramled eggs (a lot more work, but it comes out nice). As you can see, we typically go for the big-ticket items. There's just usually a lot more preparation in making his recipes, since he tends to do things unusually.

My favorite recipe has got to be one called "Chimney Tuna Loin". It's super thick Ahi (Yellowfin) tuna steaks marinated in a honey/soy/wasabi mixture, rolled in sesame seeds and cooked over an exceedingly hot flame. It sounds foofy, but it's actually really easy to make and incredibly tasty. I could probably eat Ahi breakfast, lunch and dinner. If Ahi was as cheap as beef, I'd never touch a New York Loin again. It comes out very rare, melts in your mouth and has an amazingly rich flavor without weighing you down like beef can.

A couple weekends ago, I went out to Home Depot and such and bought all the necessary items to make seared tuna like he did on the show. It took me over two hours to find the tuna, but it turned out very well. I'm going to make it again tonight, but I'm not going to cook the tuna over a chimney coal starter like he recommends. My starter must be a lot smaller than his since I can't flip the steaks from the cold to hot side. So I'm going to load the Weber up as much charcoal as I can and see if it gets hot enough. I might pair it up with some rice and maybe a bowl of miso soup (although the tuna is pretty salty all by itself).

Because I couldn't remember the recipe for the marinade/dipping sauce, I just went looking for that episode's recipes on the web. I discovered that one problem with Good Eats is actually not a problem with Good Eats at all. It's a problem with Food TV's web site. It blows. Their recipe search means you have to spend ten minutes looking for anything, and since Alton Brown tend to use weird titles for his recipes, the foodtv.com search engine comes up short nearly every time (or it comes uip with 100+ results). A better solution is to check out the Good Eats Fan Page. It has a recipe list which is organized by both title and subject. You find what you want, and get linked over to foodtv.com recipe database. Takes about 20 seconds to find what you're looking for.

The GEFP site also has an incredible amount of other info about everything relating to Good Eats. It has information even Alton himself couldn't find elsewhere (it's sad Alton didn't link to Mike's site; it took me a while to find it via google and the guy deserves props since he puts a lot of work into the fan site). I've wasted a couple hours wading through the trivia on the site. The story of Alton's watch was pretty amusing. The interview with Alton pages are going to need some more time. There's a lot of stuff to read there.

Oh, before I forget: Alton has a new book coming out soon. It's called "Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen" and it will be released in October 2003. In addition to everything else, I'm also a gadget freak, so I expect I'll be pre-ordering a copy.

So I switched from a Linksys BEFSR41 (for firewalling and NAT) combined with a really old Apple Airport (for the laptops) to a D-Link DI-614+. It was on sale as an open box at Best Buy, and a single unit, so it was a good deal. Configuring the Airport from a Linux PC wasn't always the most intuitive task. I'm also in constant danger of running out of plugs. Plus, the D-Link does port address translation, which was a feature I've missed since abandoning my old diskless Linux firewall box. Long story short (Ha! Too Late!), I now have one little, cool-running, silver box that lets me do all my networking stuff, wired or otherwise.

When I made the switch, I noticed a performance improvement. That was a pleasant surprise. The configuration options on the D-Link are numerous, and web-based. More reason to be happy. I also noticed that SSH sessions were timing out after about 15 minutes of "inactivity". That made me a little upset, and very nearly rendered moot all the other good points. I tend to open a lot of SSH sessions to various remote hosts and let them sit around all day so they're close at hand. When I'm done for the day, I turn them all off. Having the D-Link turn them off for me (ungracefully as well; I'd often have to go and kill all the processess from my previous session when I logged back in) was less them optimal. It was really annoying, in fact.

One reason why I like working from home so much is that having everything always open like this for hours on end means I don't "lose my place" like I would if I worked all day and then went home and started back up. I can just leave everything going while I eat or whatever, and I'll be right where I left off at all times (that's also why I like using Opera and it's tabbed browsing). I have a command history for every window, each one is on the right host, etc. I could use regular old job control or screen, and in fact I did for a little bit. But one of my hosting providers doesn't have screen (didn't use to at least) and using jobs for everything can be cumbersome. Besides, ttys are cheap, and konsole has tabbed windows. I like tabbed windows.

After digging around, I found that the D-Links have a TCP timout of 15 minutes, and there's no apparent way to change this setting. The support page for the router like mine (sans wireless capability) has an intersting entry in the changelog for the last firmware upgrade: "Added timeout (7500 sec.) for SSH and Telnet ports". That's an interesting number, because of this:

[wee@hostname wee]$ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_keepalive_time
7200

See, I had tried setting SSH to send TCP keepalive packets (I set it with: echo 'KeepAlive yes' >> ~/.ssh/config), but it wasn't working. I was still getting dropped. Because it does no good to have OpenSSH send keepalive packets every 7,200 seconds when the D-Link was timing out "dead" sessions every 900 seconds. You can find other solutions to this problem, but they're clunky at best. The real fix is to set the timeout on the router itself.

The added timeout fix exists only for the 604 model, not the 614+. Unfortunately, I can't use the firmware for the 604. Mine has wireless capability, and so needs the firmware for the 614+ (it's not like one had 4 ports, and mine had only a single port). I thought about it, though. The final solution for me is to set the tcp_keepalive_time to something below 900. Easily done:

[wee@hostname wee]$ sudo echo 600 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_keepalive_time

I used ten minutes just because I wasn't totally sure about the D-Link's 15 minute rule. And while this works, the bummer is that I need to do this on every host from which I wish to use SSH (or anything else that might benefit from not timing out). The right way to solve this is to have a setting in the D-Link. I've written them about it, with no response as of yet. I don't mind setting this on the two or three internal hosts I use for remote logins, but something about it bugs me. While it's nice to have the timeout "problem" gone, there's just something about a sypmtomatic solution that annoys me on a deeper level.

Oh, one more note: If you want to set the tcp_keepalive_time, remember to add a line like the one above to /etc/rc.d/rc.local or some such, because that setting will get overwritten when you reboot.

I have joy, so much joy. I love my fellow man. Or at least my hosting provider.

My other domain is 27.org. I use it mostly for mail and "projects" which can be separated from my semi-informed ramblings here. I keep the two unidirectionally distinct. Meaning, you might see links from here to there, but no links from there to here. This isn't because I mind the cross-pollination, but because 27.org is where I put stuff I wouldn't mind an HR department seeing. Monkeygumbo is just that: a randomness jambalaya. You might find anything here. I like keeping the two separate, with neither being secret. If you find me here then you found what you were looking for without me having to tell you where to go searching. Shame on you. You find 27.org then I hope whatever constructive bit I put up there helps you. Each is open, and I've got nothing to hide (why write it in the first place?). Google sees all.

For about two years now, I've been trying to get my 27.org account (27 and MG are hosted by the same company) moved to a new machine. When I got the domain, a Pentium 2/450 was the shiznit, and 256MB of RAM was beefy. That's what 27.org was hosted on for a long, long time. Up until about 45 minutes ago. I'm now on a quad-cpu 2.80GHz Xeon box. With two gigs of memory. It's bliss. I can't even tell you how nice it is.

See, I actually use my shell account on 27.org. Like, a lot. I've usually got four or eight ssh sessions going throughout the day. For instance, I use pine to check email and I dedicate a shell account for that purpose alone. So I notice when the server would slow down. In fact, just today I was typing something in a vi session and my crappy typing speed was outpacing the character echo by about 30 seconds. Stopping to correct a misspelling was taking over a minute. I checked the load average and it was over 30. Then all my connections got dropped. Some of those had connections to other hosts. You know how annoying that can be?

So making a long story not nearly as short as it could have been, I complained to my hosting company. I even went so far as to write an application which recorded various system metrics and saved them in a database. I figured that if I had a few months history I'd be able to justify my request for a server move. After all, if my web server was a kid, it would be starting first grade this fall. I wanted to be able to prove that it was getting old, and I needed test scores.

What I saw was atrocious. Over six months, the mean load average (doesn't that sound weird?) was something like 3.5. The highest was nearly 160. The 50 highest load average events started at like 60. The server sucked big ass and was a pain to use. I sent many many letters explaining things I've documented, and I worked with tech support to get them data they wanted.

Turns out that they listened. I don't know how useful my data was, but it did get accessed. And now they have a feature that will automatically move you to a newer server (Slackware 9 instead fo Slackware 4... w00t!). And I did it. And I'm happy now. And stuff.

That's all I wanted to say, really. It's made me inordinately glad, this new machine. Well, that and the three Stellas I've had to drink.

Now this job posting at the CIA's web site is odd. Why do they need locksmiths? I bet that would be a cool job, now that I think about it. Speak softly and carry a large slim jim.

It looks like the French are angry that the French language is . Everyone doesn't want to speak French? Oh no! France had better form a government committee to study the reasons why French entertainment and language isn't popular! They should enact legislation to subsidize the spread French culture around the world! They should create a government agency that makes sure the French language isn't sullied by foreign words and concepts! They should restrict the importation and broadcast of non-French movies and music!

Oh wait... they've already done all that. Thanks to Vichy France and Uncle Adolph, it would seem. You have to be at least a little suspicious of a country whose citizens rely on a government solution for everything -- even if that government doesn't have Nazi roots.

But why would an isolationist country with 71% of it's workforce employed in services industries expect to be able to export anything culturally? Why would they think their language would be internationally prevalent if their major contribution to the world economy is tourism and government employees? I'll be the first to admit that putting the adjective "American" in front of words like "cuisine" and "culture" can make for some wonderful oxymorons, but face facts: if your country researches and invents and produces things which the world needs and wants, then your country is bound to have some global influence. Now with the Internet genie out of the bottle, the English language will only get more popular, regardless of what the French government does. And that's how it should be. You can't legislate everything into being the way you want it to be. The world is getting smaller. Expect shrinkage.

I'm the proud owner of new debt. I mean, a new car. Well, I mean "SUV", not car. A Toyota 4Runner to be exact. Yeah, I actually bought an SUV. It's no worse than the Jeep Cherokee I used to own. And the new SUV gets better mileage than my truck did. It's actually classified by the EPA as a "low emissions vehicle". But who cares about the Earth, eh? I wanted features.

It's a nice ride. I got the plain vanilla SR5 four wheel drive model with the V6. It has a surprising amount of power. Runs like a stripped-assed snake, as my dad would say. It's got the goose. I splurged on floor mats ($180) and a roof rack ($220), mostly because they were already "included". Options == w00t for me. It's "Galactic Grey", which looks vaguely blue at night.

It's actually pretty damn nice, even though it's only the "base model". It has power windows/locks, lights that dim and such, cruise control, a multi-function display, climate control, ABS, traction control stuff, dual AC vents, CD player with surround, trahs bag holders, keyless entry, automatic windows, eight-way adjustable seats (with lumbar!), locking center differential and a bazillion more things that don't come standard on other mid-range SUVs and which I've not yet played with. I'll not want for buttons to push, lack of DVD touch-screen notwithstanding.

The ride is really quiet, the seats are comfortable, and I feel like a full-on yuppie. This is the fanciest car I've ever owned (and the second that didn't leak when it rained!), and I'm glad I got it. With Tess's help, we got it at just over invoice and with a loan at 4%. And a free alarm system. And a 75,000 mile warranty. It took three trips to a dealer to get that kind of deal, but it all worked out in the end. I'm not paying all that much more than I was on my old truck, and I won't be paying on this one for much longer than I would have been paying off the truck. We got a fair deal, and I feel good about it. Yeah, it's not the Sport edition, but that's fine. I can deal without high-end suspension systems for daily driving. I just didn't feel right buying the Sport model. That seems frivolous, this seems practical.

We discovered a good trick: Whenever you go to buy a new car, get a good loan from your bank or credit union first. And don't tell a soul about the pre-arranged loan. Just tell the sales guy that you want to deal with the final price of the car, not payments. Tell them you don't care about payments, only the final amount you'll be paying for. Negotiate that final amount and nothing else. Then when you get to the finance guy after making the deal, tell him you need an options contract. You get to see the finance guy's eyes bug out. Then they try to work a deal for you such that you pay them interest instead of your bank. Basically, you get a free extended warranty if you want it. He has to do some jiggering to get you a good rate, but it means you have to buy more "stuff" from them. They make more money than they otherwise would because the loan is through them. Works for me. Sounds like a win-win. I'm not going to have to pay for any repairs whatsoever for as long as I'm paying off the loan on my new car. And that extra coverage is essentially free. Last year I paid $800 to have the fuel system on my truck flushed. I still had four years worth of payments to make and I was already forking out big cash for repairs and upkeep. That sucked, no pun intended. Not anymore. At least not for the next six years.

Oh yeah, I must mention Gunny, our salesman. We bought from a guy named Jeff, a retired Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. We hooked up with him on Monday night when we first went to the dealer, and we both liked him a lot. On that first night, we couldn't make a sutiable deal, and we wound up having to tell him that we were sorry we couldn't find come to an agreement. We said that we'd like to look at less expensive models, but since it was late (10:30pm at that point) we'd have to come back. I could tell he took it personally (but I didn't care all that much; business is business).

Gunny is kinda new at the car selling thing, and he has a earnestness that is somewhat infectious. He's honest. I know that sounds like bullshit, but he is. The other salemen don't seem to like him, and that seems like a good sign. He's actually not a very good salesman. I mean, he couldn't convince me to buy anything, but he's really good at facillitating a purchase. For example, gunny is severely long-winded. I made the mistake of asking him where the term "gunnery sergeant" came from and it cost us 20 minutes. Salesmen walking by hearing him talk would roll their eyes. It's almost like you can hear them think "Just farking close the deal already!" Tracy was thinking the same thing. I was happy to chat with the gunny... :-) In fact, I'm glad he got my money rather than those bag-lickers over at the first dealership I went to. I guess that's part of what makes you feel good about spending a lot of money on a big purchase like a car. At least to me anyway. I felt like gunny was fair with us and he deserves to make a little on the deal.

We're going to PHX tomorrow and then to my parents' cabin for the Fourth. I'm looking forward to the road trip. New car smell the whole way... :-)

Here's an update to my last post. It's official:

"Already, both houses of the Legislature have agreed on $80 million in additional cuts to UC, and there are Republican proposals to cut several hundred million dollars more from the University. We are continuing to make an aggressive case in Sacramento for the University's needs, but it is increasingly apparent that the next few years could be very difficult ones and that much more significant budget cutting may lie ahead."

Super duper. They have payroll for July 1st (which I already got) and August 1st, but September could be dicey if no budget is passed. And it'll probably get even worse in the next few years! Neat! It's like S4R all over again (except a devious salesmen and an incompetent CEO aren't at fault). I never thought working for the government would be like working for a start-up.

So last night I saw this story about California's budget crisis. Freaked me right out. Since I work for the California state government and all. You know... that. They told us not to expect a raise this year. And I heard tell that "there may be some pay cuts". Heard single-digit percentage type of numbers. Lovely. Thanks! Enron is the people's steward, Gray Davis is a lover of male farm animals.

In this morning's monthly meeting, the director of our department said that very shortly (I'm not sure when) the unions would be holding a vote on whether or not to unionize our department. The success or failure of this "everyone has equality, nobody has freedom" initiative is based on percentage of votes cast, so apathy costs the free thinker. The general consensus around the room was something along the lines of, "well, maybe the union will protect our wages from the cuts" (that's a near-direct quote). Uh huh. And maybe if they cut one job, the rest can stay at their current salary. Or get a meager raise. Kill one guy in the lifeboat, the rest eat free -- for a while. Who gets to go first? I say it should be a union member. For the good of the whole group, mind you.

They all seemed to really like the thought of being unionized. It made my skin crawl. Want to make a Libertarian anxious? Tell him they're going to unionize his workplace. It was all I could do not to swear out loud. I can't stand the government worker mentality. It's an infuriating herd-like thing. They all look at the one in front, like birds or something. Or ants or bees maybe. I can't be part of the collective. I won't pay dues or go to meetings. There's just no way. There is no way I will ever join a union. I'd sooner find new work.