I came across from a link on one of the gun boards.

Watch the first 60 seconds or so. See that loaded mag he takes out? Is there a round in the chamber? Does he check? Which way is he pointing the gun when he starts to take it apart?

First time I saw the video, I seriously though the gun was going to go off. I literally said "What?!" out loud when I saw him start to take it apart without looking in the chamber to make sure it wasn't loaded. That's firearms safety rule #1: Every gun is loaded. You must check the chamber when you unload it. You keep it pointed in a safe direction, you keep your finger away from the trigger and you check the chamber. Then you take it apart and clean it or whatever, once you know it's safe. And even when it's safe, and you know that it's safe, you treat it like it'll go off if you so much as look at it the wrong way.

I made a comment there asking him to please edit the video and add a part about checking the action. He deleted my comment and sent me a nasty message saying basically "hey captain asshole, you don't like my vid, don't watch... I know which guns of mine are loaded and which aren't". My point was that he's trying to help new gun owners (which is cool and I appreciate what he's trying to do), but by not checking the action, he's inviting people to follow along with him in a really unsafe way. Anyway, the dude took personally what I thought was a fairly innocuous comment.

So I replied, told him that if he wants to shoot himself in the face, that's his own business. I said that I think he's borderline negligent teaching people to handle firearms unsafely like that. His video is aimed at new gun owners, and he's got them started out on the wrong (and very unsafe) foot. I also told him that I, too, know which of my guns are loaded: they all are -- even after I unload them. You start off thinking that way, you keep thinking that way, you stay safe. Safety for him merits only a casual mention, an afterthought.

I just don't get it... it would have been quick and easy to impart a lot of basic gun safety into his otherwise helpful instructional video. Some kid is going to be watching that video while taking apart his dad's 1911 and there's going to be, at best, a hole in the ceiling. And that korn guy could have prevented it from happening to begin with if only he'd taken the 3 seconds to check the action after he removed the magazine. He's presenting himself as a teacher, yet he's teaching bad, bad things. That's completely irresponsible and in my opinion gives gun owners a bad name.

If you presume to teach people about guns you have a duty and an obligation to do it properly and safely. I wouldn't want someone's death or injury on my conscience. Apparently he feels differently. That's really sad and I hope nobody gets hurt following his advice.

I just happened across the FISH! Philosophy.

If anything like that happens where I work, I'm walking out the door instantly and not going back.

This kicks every manner of ass:

Iron Man Exclusive Trailer

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark?! I have to admit it kind of works.

Between then next Batman movie and this, my inner comic geek will be well placated this summer.

"Dwarves don't toss each other".

Finally one that really does fit the category name: This web site is pretty amusing. I don't understand half the shit in those pictures, but every once in a while they have some darn funny ones. (And a few NSFW^TM ones, too.)

If you ever wondered why Trey rocked, and how much, here's all you needed to know:

That's about the coolest band poster I've ever seen. I know, I know, his was friggin' cool and all, but the nod to Andre gets me. And an the faux stop sign tops it all off.

Rock.

And they do, too! Check out their . The Surfside IV is a certifiable great band.

Holy shit this is a cool pad: http://kensparkesphotography.com/?p=42.

I don't know why that image amuses me so much.

Tess managed to find a b-day gift for me that was at once something I've always wanted and something I had completely forgot that I always wanted: A grappling hook! How fargin' cool is that?! It's a fold-up model, and even came with its own black rope. Super cool!

Who says you have to start getting "old" presents at age 40? I mean, what's to stop and "elderly" guy like myself from wanting his very own grappling hook? I've had my eye on one of those since I was a little kid (for all the obvious reasons) and had forgotten all about it. I mean, I could have bought one for myself by now, but it just ever occurred to me. So in steps the coolest wife a guy could have. And now I have to find things with which to grapple!

I found this article about the ten manliest guns to be fairly amusing. The guy who wrote it is an SF author of a few books, makes his own knives and is still in the military going on 20 years now.

I haven't been a scout since I was kicked out of the cub scouts for stabbing a fellow cub with a pencil (no, you may not touch my pinewood derby racer, you lout). And since I always knew they'd never let me back in, I gave up on being a scout -- even though I'm honest and virtuous and I help old ladies cross the street all the time. So imagine my excitement when I came across the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique. What ho!

Potential members need the following qualifications:

- not opposed to alcohol.

Check. Possibly double-check.

- fond of IPCC reports (especially the pictures).

I've seen not only Gore's movie, but also Gore himself dissecting it and providing many colorful charts, some of which I think maybe could have come from the IPCC.

- mostly in agreement with the "truth."

Get thee behind me, Intelligent Design!

- into badges.

Oh, you mean those badges. Yeah, sure I dig them. I even had a few of my own before I got booted. I never managed that knot one, and I didn't fare well on the bead count.

- grieving for the slow and miserable death of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Sure. Many a desktop wallpaper has come from the Hubble. I'm sad enough to see it go.

- possibly possessed of supernatural powers.

Hrmm. I'd have to think on this one...

- not in the business of total world domination

Nope.

- committed to the constant and diligent presentation of science stories, be it to editors, producers, directors, educators, relatives and/or friends of various ilk, in an effort to lessen the gap that is this thing we call public scientific literacy.

I've forwarded the occasional link. And many people have (probably unfortunately) heard me go off into the conversational weeds about arcane nonsense like why clouds are like pork and beans cooking on the stove, or why cashews aren't really nuts, or what the mineral composition and method of deposition are of the rocks on the side of a highway. I've even written a thing of two about such topics.

So I think I'm a shoo-in. If they let me in I'd even promise not to get stabby (as long as they don't touch my junk)

They have various merit badges, which I think is the best part. Here's the ones I think I'm qualified for (click on the links to go to the OOTSSOERAAAP description for that badge):

The "talking science" badge.

As stated above, it can take a few minutes between the zoning out and the "That's great dear"-style pat on the knee.

The "MacGyver" badge.

I once used old cash register parts as a server monitoring system. Does that count?

The "I'm pretty confident around an open flame" badge.

I think anyone who knows me knows the answer to that one.

The "inappropriate nocturnal use of lab equipment in the name of alternative science experimentation / communication" badge.

Back in the early 90's my roommate and I used a part surplus, part kit-built HeNe laser to shine Morse code at the dorms of our university.

The "destroyer of quackery" badge.

I'm going to have to take this one, even though I wish I could suspend the pedantry sometimes.

The "I may look like a scientist but I'm actually also a ninja" badge.

Well, I own a belt-fed, tripod-mounted, crew-served weapon -- and the first thing I did with it was take it apart!. That's lethal, I guess. Not so sure on the ninja front, though. I'll look at this badge as partially earned. It's a goal.

The "sexing up science" badge.

Halfway through my 9th grade biology class, the teacher decided he wasn't really teaching me much of anything, and put me and a couple other kids on a special science project for some self-paced learning. It involved breeding various fruit flies and counting them and such. After a couple weeks, we wound up soaking cotton balls in the ether used to anaesthetize the flies, turning the lights off in the lab and playing flaming hockey to pass the time. Until they caught us, that is. Then we decided to turn the flies loose and let nature decide if the recessive ones ought to live.

The "my degree inadvertently makes me competent in fixing household appliances" badge.

Tess will call me remiss if I don't choose this one, too.

The "I can be a prick when it comes to science" badge.

And she'd make me pick this one, too.

The "will gladly kick sexual harasser's ass" badge.

I'm probably not legally allowed to talk about this one.

The "has frozen stuff just to see what happens" badge (LEVEL I)

Yep. When I was a kid, I spent all weekend rounding up carpenter ants. I put a bunch into separate jars and then froze them all for varying times in the deep freezer on the back porch. The aim was to see how long an ant could stay frozen and still wake back up. I'm not going to say whether or not the "wake back up" part ended up involving a magnifying glass or not.

The "has frozen stuff just to see what happens" badge (LEVEL II)

All sorts of things have gone into a cooler with dry ice. Some of it may have been alive at the time. I'm not going to say.

The "I bet I know more computer languages than you, and I'm not afraid to talk about it" badge.

I think I'm going to have to take this one as well. Though I come across plenty of people every day at work who beat me by a mile in this category, I think I hold my own. I've even written (and run!) programs in Chef and Brainfuck. Beat that, COBOL-lovers!

The "respect me - I've published at an upper tier publication for popular science readership" badge.

In college I went on a trip to the Petrified National Forest to look for evidence of bee burrows in the petrified wood. The goal was to answer the question of which came first: the bee or the flower? As a result, I was a co-author of a paper on the topic. I wish I could recall the publication. I've tried looking for it, but it pre-dates the web. It's probably widely available via gopher.

An odd aside, on that trip I also found a really cool fossil that's in a museum in Colorado now. It's true. I was off taking a whiz against these large, flat rocks sticking out of the side of a dry stream bed, and wound up peeing the sand right off this one that had really cool symmetrical ripple marks in it. After my business was done, I scraped off more of the sand, only to find all these paw/claw, tail, and tongue marks from a small reptile embedded in the ripples. Turns out this little guy liked to feed at the water's edge, and did so by hopping back and forth and then using its tail to launch it into the water, at which point it stuck its (presumably) sticky tongue out to catch insects in or on the water. The reptile in question was called Hesperosuchus agilis, and fossils of it are very common in the Park. But up until then, nobody knew for sure how (or what) the thing ate, and the marks in the sand clearly showed what its mehtod was. The downside? I had to carry that goddam 60 pound piece of pee-moistened sandstone 5 miles back out to the trucks. Shit, I'm taking the badge just for that.

Oh yeah, I'm not going to tell you if the bee or the flower came first. That would spoil the mystery! You'll just have to go to Arizona and destroy radioactive glass logs with a pickaxe to find out. Oh, all right. The entire story is here.

The "I've done science with no conceivable practical application" badge.

Lots and lots of it.

The "I know what a tadpole is" badge.

But of course! Though I've never frozen, burned or electrocuted one. I've blown a few up I think.

The "have used a dental drill and I've never been a dentist" badge

My best friend's dad when I was growing up was a dental technician. He made dentures and crowns and so forth. They had a lot of dental equipment in the garage that got put to good use.

The "experienced with electrical shock" badge (LEVEL I)

Sadly, yes.

The "experienced with electrical shock" badge (LEVEL III)

I've woken up on the ground after a big jolt, sure.

The "totally digs highly exothermic reactions" badge.

Hells, yeah! I've done more work in this area than I'd admit to publicly. Put it this way: when I was a teenager I built a rocket launcher. That is to say it was a shoulder-fired method for launching model rockets. All perfectly legal. Had a range of a few hundred yards, and was pretty accurate after I got the guidance system worked out.

The "science has forced me to seek medical attention" badge

Yeah, been burned by flame and acids, had to use the eye wash station once, been cut a few times.

The "somewhat confused as to what scientific field I actually belong to" badge

Started out in biology, spent a lot of time in geology, now it's computer science. So I guess I'd have to take this badge as well.

The "I'm into telescopes astro" badge (LEVEL I)

Who hasn't?

The "I'm into telescopes astro" badge (LEVEL II)

Indeed, a very large one at U of A. Even when it wasn't for a class (I took a few Astronomy course as electives), I'd go down there when the seeing was good or I was bored.

The "I've set fire to stuff" badge (LEVEL I).

Lots and lots of stuff.

The "I've set fire to stuff" badge (LEVEL II).

You bet. Magnesium rocks.

The "works with acids" badge.

Not any more, but I have in the past.

The "I build robots" badge (LEVEL I)

I have indeed. Not for a long time, though. When I was growing up, I wanted to do this for a living.

So there it is. Not a bad lineup! I can see them all sewn onto my sash right now...

What a difference 10 days makes:

All the cabinets are in, and the moulding is going on tomorrow. The Corian guys came in today and made measurements, and will have the coutners done Thursday. Two day turn-around. Not too shabby. Once the counters are in, Jim can put in the plumbing (read: sink) and the rest of the appliances. That's a good thing. It's tough using the bathroom, the garage, and the grill to make dinner. Later in the week is electrical and gas. We're in the home stretch.

As an aside: I'm so very glad I didn't attempt this myself. There's nothing being done outside my skill range, but Jim (our installer) has access to knowledge and parts that make the job 10 times easier. I would have done a fine job I think but it would have taken 3 months. Since our kitchen has completely weird dimensions and lots of hidden mysteries (which is probably why the last guys got the cabinets refaced instead of torn out like we're doing), every time Jim turns around he's got to put on his "craftsman" hat -- which is a hat he wears very well!

If we'd have had the guys who did our kitchen in San Diego do this one, we'd be screwed. Totally screwed, blued and tattooed. But we lucked upon a guy who spent 23 years in the Navy as a carpenter, and does this as a semi-retired job. The guys takes pride in what he does. Can you imagine that? A person who cares about doing a good job, because he's the person doing the work? What a completely novel concept. Jim makes even the stuff nobody will ever see very presentable. The guy cares about his workmanship. He even cleans up after the other contractors. Pride in what you do is a good thing, especially if you do it well.

We were talking the other day before he took off and I had a long discussion about craftmanship. He was shrugging it off, but I insisted that what he does qualifies. He's not just "hanging cabinets", he's designing and fabricating stuff. He's a carpenter, not an installer, and I told him that meant a lot to use. He's doing what we can't do to "make our house a home". It sounds cheesy, but Jim had a smile on his face in the end. Because I think now he knows that his skills and efforts are appreciated.

Our house is finally starting to come along. All we have left is the exterior wood damage to fix, stucco/paint in the front, a little painting in my office/spare room and the kitchen:

I swear this is the last fixer-upper I buy. What a complete pain in the ass. 95% of that pain is from , by the way. A pack of friggin' retards, all of them. I'm surprised half of them know how to wipe their own ass without someone pointing. Then again, I'm a misanthrope at heart so my cynicism may only be like 80% warranted. Ninety percent, tops.

My brothers, uncle and I met up with my friend Andy over the weekend. It was his birthday, so we decided to stay at his place on Staurday night and meet up Sunday to go shoot machineguns (he's got a Browning as well). They all shot flawlessly, which was something I'd wondered about. (You have to figure that these are hand-made, custom guns. A lot can go wrong.) I'm really happy with it. (Well, I had to file down the T&E a little so it would fit on the traverse bar, but that wasn't a big deal.)

My brother showed Andy the video he took on our last trip to the Big Sandy MG shoot in October. Andy was on the fence about going, and ended up staying home. While watching Shawn's video, he gained a new appreciation for the scope of the event. He just stood there watching it saying things like "No way..." and "Right on!". After it was over, he turned around and said "OK, we're going to need a shitload of ammo..."

We all put in our orders and he went to the store Monday. Took two hand trucks two trips to get it all out to his car:

Each one of those cans holds 400 rounds of .308 ammunition, and there are 23 of them. I think that ought to about do it.

I had seen the Steve, Don't Eat It site before, but forgot about it for some reason. After reading all the entries, I can honestly say that I'm more informed now than I was before. Who knew that Rosie O'Donnell's scrotum and bacon-flavored dog snacks had anything in common? Or that you can make wine with an old sock? Good stuff!

And his site has wonderful party tips. Like these weevil hors d'oeuvres:

I also vow to never, ever eat natto.

The dude is the business, man: too cool for school. To wit:

Those tribal-ish tattoos on a woman's lower back which extend outward? The Germans have a name for them: Arschgeweih. Which literally translates to "butt antlers".

Turns out that Jaegermeister sponsors a Miss Arschgeweih contest at bars. And they even have t-shirts which commemorate it.

I dig the Germans.

Tracy's friend Ian sent her an email about this guy who live a few miles from me. This guy collects tanks.

If I ever became insanely rich, I know what my garage would look like. That dude is my personal hero. I have to rty to make it up to the museum one day.

And if I did, it would be awkward and horrible. I could hurt my partner if I tried to dance; in fact, people have been hurt. But I have to say that "Get Down Tonight" by KC & The Sunshine Band makes me want to start dancing when I hear it. But then again I've been listening to Peter Frampton lately when nobody's around. So I could have a brain injury or something.

The latest addition to the locker is a big one:

It's a beaut, too: an Israeli-made Browning 1919A4 light machine gun, in .30 caliber (7.62x51). It's got a lot of newer parts, and has been completely re-parkerized. The trunion has almost no wear, there's not a weld in sight, and the tolerances are pretty good. I had to open the top cover with a rubber mallet the first time, in fact. The charging handle was pretty stiff, too. I'm going to need to take it apart and apply a generous helping of LSA to its guts with a shaving brush.

It's sitting on an M2 tripod of WWII vintage. The tripod has a brass id tag, but it was removed for repainting. The tripod's in very nice shape for being old.

Not shown is the T&E mechanism (well, it's shown; it's in the ziploc bag on the right, in the case by the manual). That mounts under the rear of the gun, just in front of the trigger/grip, and attaches to the traverse bar (the rod that runs between the rear legs of the tripod). It's a fairly complex device, and it's job is to raise/lower the muzzle, as well as move it left and right. This is done by using the adjusting knobs on the T&E itself (which are much like those on, say, a microscope), and/or moving the T&E across the traverse bar (which has gradations engraved on it).

The way it works is that once you get it all set up in a position, you sight the weapon in on one or more locations and then note the numbers on the T&E and traverse bar. That way, you can move between various targets without having to look down the sights; you're already zeroed in.

My uncle got one too (my friend Andy also owns one), so we were thinking of having a mini-competition next time we go on an overnight camp trip. We need to find a place that has some decent range, though. Then there's always the Big Sandy Machinegun Shoot, which was a hilariously good time back in October. It'll be a kick to go again as shooters and not observers.

...to watch the whole full-length movie, here's a 30 second version of It's A Wonderful Life. Bonus: it's re-enacted by bunnies.

If you buy an expensive piece of electronics (or an expensive anything, really), you should be happy with that choice. Like everything else, it should function as you'd expect, without the artificial limits or constraints that companies sometimes apply in order to keep people safe from themselves. If you happen to believe that making concessions to the lowest common demonimator is putting artificial barriers between you and satisfaction with your purchase, then you have one of two options:

1. Find another product without the limitations
2. Figure out how to get around the limitations endemic to the product of your choice

I don't know about anyone else, but I tend to go on features, and figure work-arounds as need be. I recently came across such a situation when I bought a Pioneer AVIC-Z1. It has almost every single feature I want in an in-dash nav system (I wish it would show you raw GPS info). Except that lawyers have obviously gotten to the designers before the product got out the door, and so some of those features don't always work when you'd expect them to. This annoys me.

Tracy and I take road trips occasionally. Wouldn't you know, the Z1 plays DVDs -- in Dolby/DTS stereo no less. And even though the screen is only like 7 inches, it looks pretty good. Except for that little issue of how the DVD function only works if the car is in park and the parking brake is on. Uh... if I want to watch a DVD while my car is in "park", I'll go inside and look at my TV. What? Am I supposed to want to watch DVDs at rest stops or something? I figure that Tess might like to watch a movie while we're on the road. And I figure that I'm responsible enough not to be saying "Durrr... that's a good movie..." right before we crash.

Likewise, I'd like to be able to set a new destination while underway. Say that you think you need to go to a certain Point-of-Interest (POI in Z1-speak) but on the way there realize that your needs have changed, or that you'd like to go somewhere else. Well, you need to find a place to park, stop the car, put it in park, set the e-brake, then change your route to include the new POI. Why can't my passenger do that for me if one is available? The seat has a pressure sensor in it. Why isn't it smart enough to know that if I have a passenger, some features aren't at all dangerous and are in fact very desireable? The thing already understands natural human speech, why can't it figure that simple thing out? It's a binary decision!

Well, the Z1 has many nice features. And you get access to all of them. When parked. I would ike to access them maybe while not in park. Not competing product has the same featureset or interface, and many have similar restrictions anyway. So I'm faced with choice #2 above.

Lo and behold, other folks felt as I did. Someone discovered that before starting the car, you can disengage the e-brake and then flash the headlights three times right after the car is started. The Z1 thinks it's in some demo/diagnostic mode and every menu option works. And while this is a handy feature, it's just a little too Rain Man for me.

Luckily, someone with more electronics skill than I has developed a tiny electronics package that simulates this flashing by oscillating the power to the wire which senses if the headlights are on. And they sell this circuit to folks willing to cut and crimp a few wires in order to get more convenience out of their purchasing decision. How cool is that!?

I'm in the process of ordering my flasher circuit now. I've already got the crimpers and heatshrink tubing, so all is well. Soon, I will not have to be faced with decisions spawned by fears of litigious idiots. Huzzah!

And here's today's bonus image:

Just thought I'd share:

Hey! It's Sunday, isn't it? Hows about that?

There are some pretty cool images on the Pictures That Could Be Superheroes Machines page. The ?berschwerer Kampfschreitpanzer is a particular favorite. I dig the MG42 up on top...

My new favorite band is Ok Go. A couple years ago, that song "Get Over It" was big on the radio, and I figured I'd look into getting the rest of that album, but forgot. So I'm sitting home today with a cold, and that song pops into my head. I head over to the Ruskies and three bucks later I have two CD's worth of mpeggery stored away.

I'm giving the latest album a listen, and I like it. Their music reminds me of The Stranglers a little. It's sort of low-tech in a way that I like. Has an infectous beat, which is always good. It sounds like music that could have been made 25 years ago.

Tracy pointed out that for the song "Here It Goes Again" is worth a look, and indeed it is. Those treadmills look fun.

Anyway, I wound up going to their web site and buying a t-shirt. They'll get more off that sale than if I bought their CDs in the store. If they end up playing locally, I'll go see them for sure.

Tracy and I picked up a Series3 Tivo Saturday. I'm not normally given to high-tech gadget lust, but this was a compelling buy. When I was in Phoenix, I went to Fry's with my mom and brother, and they had the new Tivos there. It sure looked nice, but it was too expensive. My mon's been pining for one. She's saddled with the Cox DVRs now, and hates them. But they can record one channel while you're watching another. Well now, here's a Tivo that can do that as well -- and it has all the regular features like wishlists, upcoming episode searchin, season passes and such that the Cox DVR lacks.

After I got back home, I started thinking about it some more. We've had our current Tivo for 4 years, and we got the lifetime subscription on it. I like that I don't have to pay every month, and that $250 lifetime fee would have cost $600 if we were paying monthly. The Tivo only cost $300, so we're fifty bucks into the black. If I could get the same lifetime subscription on the new Tivo, the price goes down if we have it for a few years. (Of course, the older Tivo's price goes farther into the negative cost end of the scale over those same years, but that's beside the point.)

Our Tivo has been making some odd noises; I think a fan is going. And it has a nasty habit of thinking that it's out of space, when there are plenty of yellow-flagged shows to get rid of (Tracy's lost a few episodes of Lost that way). The menus are slow, and the little IR emotters that shine into the cable box's front are constantly getting knocked around. And another nail in the Series2 coffin: Not only did we pay a little extra for an HD-capable TV, we pay extra every month for an HD cable box -- and we never watch HD channels since the Tivo can't record them! That's kind of a waste.

So I'm at Fry's looking at the new box and it seems like a good deal. It has two HD tuners in it, and so all you need to do is get Comcast to come over and bring the decoder cards that slide into the back. Then we can stop paying $18/month for an HD cable box. Being able to record one channel and watch another is a big plus. But the biggest thing is that it occurs to me that if we want to watch an HD program, we just change the channel! There's no more need to find the TV remote, change the source, find the cable box remote, change the channel to an HD one, turn on the stereo, adjust the volume, and settle in... only to have Tivo change the channel halfway through on the other input, since it think it wants to record something for us.

Being able to ditch the cable box and its fee, plus being able to watch a set of channels that we pay extra for is a big plus. I've heard rumors that there might be a Comcast-branded Tivo coming out soon, and that was sort of what I was angling for. But will the interface be the same? Will it have two tuners? What will it cost per month? I'm pretty certain that there won't be any way to transfer the lifetime subscription over to that box. And what if we move to a place that doesn't have Comcast? We've already taken our Tivo to a different cable company, and it's a couple minute's setup to change it over. No way will Comcast let us take the cobranded box with us, even if it would work someplace else. Why pay rent on something when owning something else means that it gets free-er the longer you have it?

So we bought the new Tivo and called it Christmas.

I have it all hooked up, and I'm waiting on the Comcast guy now. It works as is, but only gets the non-digital channels (up to like channel 70 or something). We already got to see the dual-tuner feature in action, too. It's going to come in very handy. We were watching a channel, and had paused a little, so we were into the buffer. I was fiddling with the remote and accidentally changed the channel. Normally, that means the buffer is lost on the old channel and you have to pick it back up in real-time; anything you missed is gone. But this time, I clicked the last channel button, and there was our buffered show. Cool!

Something I like but hadn't thought about before seeing it is that the whole interface is bigger. The channel guide stretches out so that you can see more on the menus. This is because you can set the Tivo such that it will always show stuff at 1080p (ie, 16:9). This means more area for menus. But for normal viewing, it will draw letterbox bars where it needs to. Changing a channel to an HD one means those bars go away and suddenly your watching HD. Flip back to normal TV channels and it's 4:3 with bars again. It's very nice. (And snappy! No more IR emitter lag!)

Another bonus was that it supports HDMI. So I can lose the five AV cables coming out of the old Tivo. I wish my amp had HDMI inputs. Then I could lose another 8 cables. I really like not having that rat's nest back there. Birthday might come early this year...

I ran across this today and had to share:

I wish I could find the wall-sized prints. Awesome indeed.

Google had a halloween party yesterday. It was a big event. I vaguely recall it being a large to-do last year. I went down to see what the fuss was all about, but then went back upstairs and got back to work. We worked a lot last fall. Most of October and all of November, in fact.

I only got a few photos, but coworkers snapped more than a couple. One in particular got a large set. She put them up on . They even got some with people I recognize.

She got . Last time I saw her she was a couple weeks old.

Nobody managed to get my coworker Scott, even though he had lots of people take his pic. He and his wife Dana had . (Dana was "a grandmother", by the way.)

There were kids all over. The looked happy. Some pretty darn good costumes all around. The iPod guy was good. was a favorite. was very nice -- and he stayed in character! The guy who had a real, live bird was good. My favorite has to be . Just... wow. I don't think anyone but him could carry that off.

And finally is the 82nd representing in the background, yo.

It was a pretty good time. I had a few folks take my photo, and only one negative comment (which I didn't expect at all). A lady came up to me and said "You've got the scariest costume here". "How so?", I asked. She explained that there were "too many of you soldiers in the world today". I replied that there was almost not enough running around during WWII, and that without them and the sacrifices they made a lot of the people in this world would be leading fairly unhappy lives right now. The Dutch in particular, I said, didn't seem to think there was a shortage of soldiers in Fall of 1944. In fact, they're still happy there were so many back then. And then I went on to explain that my grandfather was in the 82nd Airborne and wore a uniform identical to what I had on. I said that I wanted to wear it to get a connection with what those folks went through, and that I'd like to think that there's some small part of me that has a little of what those guys had, to do what they did. She paused for a bit and then said "Well, ok I guess. So how does it feel to wear your grandfather's uniform?" And I told her that it was constricting and hot, but I was really happy I was wearing it.

Why do some people feel like they need to go up to complete strangers and be nasty like that? She was dressed as a witch. Would she be open to J. Random Holy Roller running some "You're setting a bad example for the kids here, with that witchcraft thing" nonsense past her, completely unsolicited like? I'm sure she'd have an open mind about that person's viewpoints and they would engage in meaningful dialog.

Lastly, I would like to comment on the ban on "weapons or weapon-like objects" as part of costumes. didn't get that memo. I even took my leg knife off. Hmmph

Man, I'm dying laughing at this chat log of a 13 year old kid trying to steal someone's online game account.

"Mow some yards" indeed.

It's the smell of .45ACP cartridges being disassembled at the rate of 600 per minute. To wit:

That is me shooting the Thompson M1928 at the Big Sandy Machine Gun shoot. It would be a bargain at twice the price of $20 per magazine. I could have spent all day there. Did pretty well, too; I hit many a barrel and even single shots were pretty easy once I got the hang of it.

And note the finger that came out of the trigger guard when I thought the mag was empty. That's some style there, if I do say so myself. Remember, kids: If you aren't shooting it, don't be fingering it.

I was just sitting here thinking: I love the smell of newly tanned leather. I'm not sure why, but it's a comfort smell. That's weird.

For soem reason, I don't like artificial materials in clothing. The only thing I ever wear that isn't natural is probably the elastic in my socks and underwear and the occasional fleece. Aside from that, I just don't like nylon and such.

This is why I tend to gravitate to leather and canvas and wool and wood over plastic and nylon and gore-tex and polycarbonate. It's all heavier, I know. And it smells after some use, I know. Part of me likes that smell.

I just bought a newly-made M3 shoulder holster for my 1911 (it's made slightly longer than the original WWII version; my original version is somewhat constraining) and the smell is just... lovely. Saddle leather, I guess it is. I can smell it across the room, and so I had to start huffing it. I guess I should go buy an old surplus army tent and then just get it over with and go catatonic in the backyard.

Really, I'm not sure what it is about the smell of old canvas and such that I like, but I suspect it's what keeps me buying various articles of duffel. Better than gambling, I guess.

Tracy and I learned how to captain a 34-foot trawler in SF Bay over the weekend. She has on her flickr account.

We've had our eye towards buying a used boat for a while now, but wanted some education on the basics of powerboating. I hooked up with Club Nautique and we signed up for their basic Powerboating Course. It was really everything I was looking for. We covered rules of the road, safety, engine systems and chart reading.

It was a two-day course, and Day 1 had us on the boat right away. We all climbed about the Lucky G, our trawler, and immediately when through the pre-launch inspection checklist. We checked that the seacocks were open, no water in the bilge (and the pumps worked), went over the electrical system and Tracy even got to do the radio check.

I was in charge of securing the starboard lines. And so I was at the stern line, having untied it but with the rope still lopped once around the cleat ready to free it, when Captain Richard, our instructor, shouted for me to release the stern line. I did, tied the line up to the railing and we were off.

We powered out to a quietish spot in the bay and Rich told me to take the helm. I drove around in circles for a little while, and we all got a chance to get a feel for the throttle and steering.

While we were out in the open water, Rich taught us how to do a pivot turn. Which is no mean feat in a boat that can't steer in reverse. The trick is to turn the left all the way to port, go forward at idle a little, then put it in neutral. After a couple seconds, you put it in idle reverse, keeping the wheel to port. Even though it can't steer, the prop walk takes over and helps out a little -- if the wind cooperates.

The Lucky G has a left-handed prop. That means the propeller rotates counter-clockwise in forward gear and, obviously, clockwise in reverse. That means that when in reverse, the stern will swing to starboard and the bow to port. This is because the propeller doesn't just move water forward and backward, but it also shoves it to the side as it's turning. In forward, the shape of the hull, the rudder, wind and such are more powerful than this weak force. But in reverse, it's that sideways pushing of the water which swings the stern around. Lucky G made a decent counter-clockwise pivot turn when the wind wasn't too fast. Pivots in the other direction are impossible.

Once we all got the pivot turn down, we headed back to the slip. Jason was the guy who got to put it in and he did really well (he'd been on ski boats and such before).

As soon as we had it in, I asked if I should secure the stern line. Rich smiled and said, "No, you should back the boat out, head down two rows, turn right, do a 180, and then put it back into the slip". And so I did. The first time I put it into the slip went off without a hitch. The wind was just right and I somehow managed to line up exactly where I needed to be. And so Rich made me do it once more.

I completely missed the entrance on the second try. I was over as far as I had been before, but the wind had died. So we all got to see firsthand how much even a little wind can push around a ship with that much freeboard. So I had to do a pivot turn and try again. Trouble is, now there was a ship coming out of a slip in front of us, a ship which had pulled up to the fuel dock (which was two slips away from us) and another large boat of some type heading into the marina. So that was another good lesson for us, and I managed to get the boat into the slip OK.

Tracy's turn at the helm had her a little nervous, I think. Rich was impressing on us that everything is slow and deliberate. "This boat's pretty big, and takes a little while to respond to changes", he explained. But after the first docking, Tracy was a natural. Once you get a feel for the controls it's a lot easier. She did her two dockings with no problem.

After lunch, we went back onto the boat to learn about docking. And then we got to practice putting the boat into a slip the opposite direction from our normal one.

We didn't leave the marina all day except for that once, but both Tracy and I has sea legs pretty bad. So we decided to watch Jaws on Saturday night. It was funny watching it and saying things like "Hey, isn't Quint leaving the dock a little too fast? That's a no-wake zone..."

Sunday started out with about 3 hours in the classroom. We learned about the buoy system, "person in water" (man overboard) situations, some safety stuff and concluded with a navigation exercise.

Rich split us into two teams. Tracy and Ron were together as Team A and me and Jason paired up as Team B. Team A had to get us out of the marina, under the Bay Bridge and into Clipper Cove. Team B's job was to get us back, and we had to go around the other side of Treasure Island.

Rich gave us about a half hour with the charts, dividers and parallel rulers. We had to draw each leg that made up the route, and then mark bearing and distance. Then we had to think about speed, and that gave us our travel time. Oh yeah, we also had to avoid obstacles. My first route has us going through a portion of the Bay Bridge.

We quickly figured out that you have to plot a course that runs fairly close to a buoy or other marker. There are a lot of red and green buoys (as well as orange sqares, daymarkers with stacked green and red, etc), and if you're looking for "red #2", then you have to make sure it's #2 and not #4. I wish we would have brought binocs with us.

I also wish we would have brought a calculator as it would have made things a little faster when plotting the route. You have to travel 1.13 nautical miles at 9 knots. How long will that take? Well, you figure it out with a little basic algebra. Travel time for that particular 1.13NM leg was a about 7 1/2 minutes. I can't recall the last time I did long division by hand, but it's good to know that I still could.

After class, we picked up lunch to go and set out. Team A had Ron at the helm and Tracy navigating. The first leg terminated at a buoy which wasn't there. Since the third leg of my journey used that same buoy on the way back, I was interested in finding it as well. Turns out that it was just missing. So they had to break out the pencil and re-plot the route on the fly.

While Tracy was at the helm, she got to experience what would be one of four "PIW Drills". That's where Rich would throw overboard a couple fenders tied together and yell "Crew overboard!". Tracy handled it right, first designating a spotter and then simulating a call to the Coast Guard. Ron was on the pole and hooked the "person" no trouble.

We pulled into Clipper Cover and found a quiet spot, then Team A got to learn about the anchoring and how to set and retrieve it. We ate lunch "on the hook" and then it was time for our tests. The test wasn't very hard. It was 35 questions, and some of them were very similar to the California Boating Safety Course (though jet skis weren't on it).

I'm happy to say that everyone passed. Tracy and I both got one wrong answer. The question I missed was: "What knot would you use to join two lines of differing sizes?" I answered a bowline, even though I knew the answer was a sheet bend. I was doing the little "rabbit goes out the hole, around the tree..." thing in my head when I was trying to recall the answer and I think that screwed me up.

After the test, it was time for Team B to take over and get us back. I started out operating the windlass for the anchor recovery exercise, with Jason at the helm. I don't think he saw my hand signals. Rich dinged us pretty hard on the lack of communication (or, I should say "the lack of effectiveness of cimmunication"). But we got it hauled up and washed, and were on our way.

The fun part came when we left the leeward side of Clipper Cove (it's an anchorage protected from the wind, which is why the airplanes used it) and into The Slot. Calms seas became 4 foot waves. We had water washing up over the boat at one point. Turns out it's also one of the best sailing areas in the world. The ocean wind gets funneled under the Gold Gate and then howls down in one direction towards Oakland. All the tidal action floods and ebbs though this narrow gap as well. So currents are fierce.

We managed to avoid all the boats, big tankers, the waves, etc and started out on our third leg with about a 90 degreee turn to port, headed roughly south. San Francisco was on our starboard and Tracy got some nice photos. We managed to find our alternate buoy easily since we recognized it, and so Rich said that we should learn about the GPS navigation system.

We set in a new course and were gazing at the autopilot when Jason said to me "Hey, you should drive now". Why? As soon as my hand hit the wheel, Tracy screams "Crew overboard!". I made Tracy the spotter and put Ron on the hook. I somehow remembered to turn off the autopilot and get us downwind of the fenders floating in the water. But I came in too fast and had to make another pass. The second time was slower, but the wind pushed us off course and Ron couldn't hook it. I got right up against them the third time, and even though Ron got the fenders aboard, I was still going too fast. Rich explained that if Ron were trying to yank a 200 pound man out of the water, he'd have been pulled overboard as well.

So we headed back in, me humming the "red, right, return" mantra in my head and Jason got us into the slip. We tied up, washed everything off, went through the checklist and were done.

I'm definitely going to take another course or three. And the owner of the club had a good point: Charter the Lucky G a couple times in the coming months. Every time we go out, we learn new things and reinforce what we already learned. And it'd be a fun weekend excursion. Rich says there are some really nice anchorages up by Sausalito suitable for overnight stays.

Anyway, there's the novelized version of 16 hours of boating instruction. Now if I can just stop looking at the boat section of craigslist all will be well...

I think this would kill me. But it looks like a hellaciously fun way to go.

...plus a million things I still don't know. That's what I learned last night.

See, I stayed up until 4:30 last night reading every article on this page and this page. I'm serious; I read them all.

My head (no pun intended) is awash (err...) with tales of woe and doom. But I found it very informative. Knowing what not to do was, I think, what was putting me off. It's not very hard to spend $50,000 and through omission of action wind up with exactly $0. Hearing about what's bad enables you to think about what needs to be good. It's a lot of work, too, keeping everything in order. Except now it's not mysterious, what needs to be done.

Plus, I know more about galvanism and electrolysis and pumping and amp-hours and hull-throughs than I ever thought I would. So that was a cool brain-load last night. Made for a tired day, though.

I still think that I'm going to start slow, renting bare charters for a while, until I get the basics down. It pays to hang around the marina, listening to folks who aren't selling things. Besides it'll still get me out on the water and exploring so that's cool.

After reading all that last night, I was sort of thinking way back to that VW Squareback I built right after high school. If I didn't turn a wrench at least once every 3,000 miles, I'd break down somewhere for certain (including one time on the Goldan Gate Bridge at 4:30 on a Friday; that was a fun time). The car would just get mad at me for my inattentive ways and would not put up with me anymore until I gave it the care it desired. After a while I found myself getting bored and gapping valves and replacing points or fuel filters just because it was "Sunday".

I get the feeling that the same sorts of things are involved in boating. There's lots of putzing around with various maintenance-style tasks, it seems. About as much time is spent fiddling and maintaining as actual on-the-water boating, it looks like. But being a handy guy who likes to tinker, that's fine by me. I still think it'll be fun. Better use of time than video games, anyway...

Boy, they sure did produce some swell comics back in the 40's. If only that one came with a secret decoder ring, too! That would be nifty!

So this was somewhat unexpected. And more than a little bizarre. I mean, appreciate the thanks and all that, but at first it sorta seemed like candy from strangers, you know? "Geeks bearing gifts", you might say.

And I was forced to wonder what sort of thinking was behind your giving free food to people who get free breakfast, lunch and dinner (and snacks)? I'm not complaining, mind you; I got my slice. I just found it curious and somewhat odd, in a cool way. I bet who have to pay for lunch every day were jealous, and that's cool too.

Anyway, thank you for the pizza, you're welcome. Pizza is good, schwag is even better. Wink, wink.

With the utmost gratitude (and a full stomach),

? ? ? ? wee

P.S. If you ever want to stage another event to thank Google for everything that it's done for your company, you might want to think about hosting the video of that event on Google Video instead of YouTube. Just a friendly hint...

Check it out: .

One more:

Another good one:

When I was walking in the parking lot at work I saw a bumper sticker on a car that said "Churches Eat Souls". I stopped and reflected on that for a moment, and realized that one little sticker said volumes about what blind faith can do to people. It made me think about my soul, and if I have one.

Of course, this was coming after my previous post about radical Islam, and an email thread started by Greg about patriotism, so it might have been my mood at the time which made me so introspective. But the way I saw it, and how I stopped afterwards, made a lasting impression on me.

Amazing what a bumper sticker can do sometimes.

Islam is an alien society to me. I have a hard time getting my head around how a large group of people can be so fundamentally religious that every part of their society -- including its leaders and its laws -- is based solely on religious ideas. I reckon that it takes either absolutely deep conviction or blind ignorance to throw everything you have (including your very life) to the will of some intangible notion of a god and its supposed will as interpreted by its devoted (yet mortal) followers. I'll never be that pious. I'm not sure if that's necessarily a good thing or not, but deep down I just can't get past the power grab that always seems to come from being the incarnate arbiter of god's will. Though at some level, you have to respect devotion of such magnitude. They have nothing if not a sense of devotion.

I figured that I knew as much as any Westerner about the what makes Islam seem so... angry. I know what the difference is between Sunnis and Shi'ites, and I know why they will never really get along with one another. (Shi'ites lost their true religious leader way back in 931 AD. Osama the Sunni is freshly pissed off about the outcome of the World War I and the demise of the Ottoman Empire.) What I didn't know was why pretty much all Muslim groups seem to be singularly united in that they are looking forward to the demise of Western Civilization.

That's doubtless a very blanket statement, and I feel a little unwilling to paint an entire religion (or, ah, culture) with such a fanitcal brush. Maybe it's Western media, but it's hard to escape the notion that there are large numbers of Muslims who would like to see Europe, and the U.S. in particular, gone.

So I found this story, Islam's Imperial Dreams, very engrossing reading.

Turns out that it's not just because we're heathens (well, that does play a part in it, I guess). It's because they're upset that they still don't have a caliph in Spain. They're upset that their conquer of Europe was stopped by the Franks. They're mad that their dream of a worldwide, theistic hegemony was finally put out of its ailing misery not long after Ferdinand got shot.

Put short: There's a fairly significantly vocal group of Muslims who want to rule the world, and we're standing in their way.

It's not religious conviction, desire for god's glory, land for their people, or any other altruism that's feeding this desire. It's greed. Pure, unabashed greed. These vocal few hate us because they want what we have, and want to kill us to get it. They want to do this under a religious banner of "Convert Or Die". And given that under their religion (which effectively means "in their society") one can be put to death for apostasy, I'm glad we're in their way; I'd be the first to die. I don't even really believe Mohammed existed (beyond a metaphor), much less that he was a prophet of any sort (you can't be a prophet without a god, right?).

I'll respect anyone right to practice a religion -- until I have to face the prospect of death because of it. That goes solidly against the grain of one of my most important convictions: Do whatever you want, just leave me out of it. So life as a subjugate in a fundamentalist Muslim world would not go well for me, and I'm happy that I live in a society that is somewhat more tolerant (though I suspect that this wouldn't be the case if some fundamentalist Christian types here in the U.S. had their way; these clowns are merely the other side of this same fanatical coin).

At any rate, part of me thought that they hated the Western world because we offended their religious sensibilities or were simply amoral in their eyes. Now I realize that I was giving them too much credit. They're merely hiding behind religion, and using it as a tool to further their greedy ambitions -- just like everyone else has been doing for thousands of years. That really doesn't elevate them much beyond the level of common thuggery. Or televangelism.

I kind of feel sad for the jihadists now. I mean, it's a land grab, nothing more.

I'm sure not every Muslim in the world is wringing their hands in anticipation of watching hordes of Westerners being put to the sword in the town square, but those guys burning American restaurants because of a few Danish cartoons haven't really got everything screwed down tight upstairs, if you get my drift. And I'm pretty sure that Ahmadinejad's wanting Israel to be "wiped off the map" isn't exactly a fringe notion. Iran elected the man president, after all, so he has to have popular support. Whether that's tacit approval for a plan to nuke Israel might be too much of a stretch, but I have to believe that the people knew who they were electing -- and what direction his geopolitical ideas ran towards.

So it could be a few vocal (and/or violent) bad apples spoiling the barrel. But it's interesting to know where they're coming from when they do stuff like blow up a bus or crash a couple planes into a few buildings or kill over 100 people because of an off-hand comment about Mohammed and women in bikinis. You have to try to get your head around to that way of thinking to even begin to understand anything as alien as dying and wanting to kill because of a cartoon or a disparaging remark.

I'm just having a lot of trouble coming to grips with people who have that much religious conviction. Their way of thinking is completely inconceivable to me.

You know that you're bound for a happy day when the drive into work features the asshole in the beamer who cut you off 5 minutes earlier parked on the side of the road with a cop behind him. I just love seeing BMWs getting pulled over. And if you get to respond to their prior shenanigans by flipping them off as you drive by, so much the better.

I got plenty done today (mostly due to my upbeat mood), including finishing an XML-based thing I was doing. More internal tools leveraged, so that ups my score a little come review time. Plus it'll save a few folks some time and effort down the road, so it's a nice thing to have behind me. Later in the day, I bailed out on TGIF, happened to meet Tess as I was driving back from the hardware store and we went shopping for groceries. Got home before 6:30!

And the best part is that I was doing it all in my new boots:

These are the handmade orthopedic work boots of which I've enthused about on a previous occasion. They really fit my feet extremely well, but they were so stiff at first that it felt as though I had strapped bricks to my feet. But they're loosening up nicely. I went and ordered some Pecards shoe butter for them. It's supposed to lube all the fibers up and help them start conforming (waterproofs the leather, too).

Now, I'm going to install Windows on a tiny PC hooked up to my TV, and have a strong drink or two. I have one more small cigar left for after dinner, too. All in all, a happy day.

I went to drop off my lunch tray and happened to notice that the two fellows playing pool on the billiards table next to the mini-kitchen were Tibetan monks. Maroon robes, shaved heads, beads on the belts, the works. The one guy was pretty good, but for some reason the visual anacronism was enough that I just couldn't stop chuckling and so had to get out of there.

Every year Google rents a ski resort and takes the entire company on a trip. I didn't know if I was looking forward to it or not.

Both my knees are pretty well shot. One from a raquet ball accident and the other from falling off a mountain. They aren't too bad for hiking and whatnot, but aren't terribly amenable to any sideways-type motion. So I wasn't sure how into skiiing I'd be. Besides, I don't know how to ski, and I didn't want to spend the entire day listening to someone tell me how to get back up once I'd managed to fall. I mean, is there really anything to do at a ski resort besides, well, ski? Apparently there is.

The invitation came out and we had to pick what activity we wanted. I guess they rent all your gear for you and everything and snowboarding is popular. I was preparing to sit in a lodge near a fire and smoke cigars, read a book and drink myself silly on brandy. But then I saw they had inner tubing! I can do that, dodgy knees and all! I needed gear, however.

Along comes this email on the misc list at work telling us that The Sports Basement was holding special hours for Googlers -- and we'd get 20% off anything we bought during the special sale. Coincidence, or clever marketing? Hmmmm....

So I wound up getting some decent waterproof boots, waterproof pants with far too many zippers, a fleece liner, a decent jacket (also with excess zipperage), waterproof gloves, and a fleece beenie. I am very eXtreme, let me tell you. I may in fact, if the situation warrants, "Do the Dew". And how.

Now we'll see what this ski resort thing is all about. In style.

Ever wondered what they eat in "worsh up" country? Stuff like Tator [sic] Tot Hotdish.

Yeah, you heard that right: "Hotdish". That's what it's called. It's, uh, hot. In a dish. Get it? Double points for creativity!

And it's NOT a casserole! Because it has soup in it, see. Lots of soup. Beef, an onion, tater tots and soup. No additional salt needed. The tots and soup have all the salt you'd want. Though I'd add cheese or heavy cream in there somewhere. And gravy. Got to have gravy. Might as well make the circle complete. Since you're using tater tots as a FUCKING INGREDIENT and all...

Anyway, that's a hotdish. Just thinking about it makes me want to eat a salad and jog 3 miles.

I finally got to go to a Trader Vic's! Last week, Tess was driving back from Stanford and spied a little tiki-ish sign on the side of the road. Trader Vic's! Right there on El Camino Real! We had to go.

We got together with coworker Jim and his wife and had dinner there last night. I was expecting kitschy (and would have been perfectly happy with that; in fact I wore a nice aloha shirt, just to hedge that bet) but the place was very swanky. And the food was amazing. I had this Chilean sea bass in a wasabi buerre blanc sauce... oh baby. That was probably the best fish I've ever eaten. It was one of the best dinners I've ever had, actually. That was a shock.

When the waiter asked if we'd like drinks, I had to say yes. You're there in Trader Vic's! Drinks? The order of the day is a Mai Tai, natch! It was predictably tasty. I've had many versions of the beverage, but it was important to taste the original.

I've found my new favorite restaurant. Any out of town guests better bring something tropical and semi-fancy to wear...

If anything ever fit the category of "Random Stuff" that would be this video called .

They subject this young japanese pop group to a giant lizard. By making them wear meat helmets. I guess the winner is whomever keeps their head in the lizard tank the longest.

That's just... wow.

Also be sure to check out . I'm no entirely sure what the point of that game is. I think he wants to cook and eat those tiny women, but it might just be about ballons.

Well, more accurately, it would be "Austria by September". Tracy and I are going to Europe. Much as I hate the general concept, we're taking a tour package. But I think this one will be different.

We certainly would get to see a lot: seven countries in 14 days. And frankly, I'm kind of glad that I don't have to worry about hotels and transportation and such. I'm sure getting around is easy enough, but at least with this one, they take you right to where you need to be so you can spend more time walking around the place instead of trying to figure out what turn you should have taken at that last roundabout, where the nearest rental car place is in Belgium, how to get over that fence to that certain spot in the woods, etc.

This all came about because I decided last summer that I wanted to go to Europe again -- the continent this time. And I happened across this book. I read it cover to cover. That sealed it for me. I bought a Michelin map of France and Holland, and sat down and started to see what a good 10 day trip would look like.

I wanted to see Pont-du-hoc, Omaha Beach, Carentan, Foy, Bastogne, Nijmegen, Eindhoven, and a couple other places. I didn't want to specifically see all the "Band of Brothers" battle sites, just a couple of them along with some other spots listed in the book. So Tracy and I were thinking that we'd get a rail pass, book a few hotels and sort of play it by ear once we got over there. We did that in London, and it worked out pretty well.

But then I saw the tour and figured that it's probably the only chance I'd have to get such a unique first-hand perspective of the war. And getting that perspective while standing on the exact places where the events occurred is just too good to pass up. (How else could you go see the grounds at Brecourt Manor? It's private property...) My goal was to actually be where everything went down. I wanted to see if that would impart a sense of gravity to the history, to make it somehow more visceral and get a feeling from the place. I don't know how much more visceral you can get with two actual vets telling you how it was -- while pointing at where it was!

So my reasoning is to do this tour this year, and if I want to go back and see Monte Cassino or Nuremberg then I can do that next year. But I might not be able to do the Easy Co. tour next year. Or, more correctly, Bill and Babe might not be able to. They aren't entirely young. (In fact, I saw this tour last year, for the 60th anniversary of WWII. I thought it was a one-time deal, and was surprised that they're doing it again.)

The only possible downside I could see is if tour is be "overly commemorative". There's one part where the vets review soem British WWII re-enactors. I don't have much interest in that. I just wonder if after a bit the tribute might get a little old or contrived. But probably not; I'm sure the spirit of the thing will be suitable for the occasion. Now that I think about it, even if it does get a tad maudlin at times, it'll still be worth it. And I also like that they provide airfare and meals. It's pretty much all included for you, so there's less to worry about and more to see.

It also occurred to me that my brother Shawn might like to go. I was thinking about talking to my folks and seeing if they want to pitch in on his ticket with me. He doesn't have the resources to go on a trip like this, but it would be something he'd remember for the rest of his life. He's a good traveler as well, so that'd be fun. Now if only I can convice Andy and UJ to go...

I've been working more than not the past couple weeks, and it's been frustrating. I can say that C++ blows. I like to get stuff done, not have to think about how to get stuff done. I never thought I'd say this, but... I miss Java.

Yeesh.

So after a particularly long and frustrating day, I was grabbing a Naked Juice out of the fridge in the lobby (Tess needs her googly dividend, you know) and I saw the following on the little search term crawl screen they have in all the lobbies:

matrix mpeg bill gates steve ballmer
how do I kill myself

There I was holding my juice, thinking about what a crappy day it's been (more to come!) and for no reason happened to look up at the search terms scrolling by as I was walking out. I just focused on those two by random chance. The two lines were one after each other, right like that up there.

I laughed loud enough that the guy playing the piano on the break room broke cadence.

All is well.

That's it, folks. I'm cashing out:

So yesterday MC Hammer was at work. I think he was speaking about The Jesus or something. I'm not sure; I didn't really get close enough. A few guys got pictures with him, though.

I also grabbed a copy of the new cookbook from Boulevard Restaurant. The recipes sound tasty, but they're, ah, "overly French". I have no clue where to get white truffle sauce, and I'm not sure if I really need Bosc pears as opposed to the hoi polloi variety. I might try their steak though. I had it at lunch. The sauce was tasty, and looks relatively easy to make.

Oh yeah, I also saw the other guy from Wham. Nobody could figure out what his name was. How sad would it be going through life as the least-famous half of a really bad 80's pop band whose members are known more for public restroom hijinks than their music? Better to have rocked and lost then to never have rocked at all, I guess.

Hey, if you're ever in the mood to self-diagnose, try the Worst Case Scenario site. No more wondering about whether you're gonna die... Have the worst conclusion jumped to for you! To wit:

The Worst Case Scenario system cuts out the leg work by immediately jumping to the most paranoically horrifying disease closely matching your symptoms. There may not be an exact match, but there's always something relatively close and totally panic inducing.

Can't get much clearer than that. After all, why waste all that time with doctors when you're going to be dead soon anyway?

Who knew Alton Brown was an inventor? True! He helped invent a new oven. And they make a black model, too.

Very nice...

Having nothing much to do this morning, I decided to load up the Russians with 50 bucks (from a $100 credit card I got for finding my apartment via rent.com) and see how many MP3s it could get me. I found some nice stuff:

Albert King: Born Under a Bad Sign - Really super good blues.

Beck: Guero - His newest. Some good songs, and it was only like a buck-oh-five. Or maybe a buck-fiddy. I forget.

Billie Holiday: All Or Nothing At All - We already have a lot, but one can never have too much Billie.

The Blue Hawaiians: Live At The Lava Lounge - Hello, my name is Bill and I am a tikiholic.

Bo Diddley: His Best - The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection - I've always dug on Bo, but until now never managed to get one of his records. Nobody does slide guitar like him.

Cake: Pressure Chief - This was an automatic choice. I'll listen to anything by Cake. I have all their albums, and every song on every one of them is listenable.

Calexico: In the Black Light - A coworker turned me on to these guys. They're from Tucson, too, but I think they formed after I had already left there for San Diego. They sound pretty much like you'd expect: a kind of tex-mex/rock & roll combo.

Cheap Trick: The Essential Cheap Trick - I actually owned "Live at Budokan" on cassette, and of course it's long gone now. Kind of a guilty pleasure, I've always liked Cheap Trick and I have no idea why.

The Chemical Brothers: Singles 93-03 - I'm pretty sure that Tracy won't like this one but I found it strangely compelling.

Deadly Avenger: Deep Red - I found these guys in the "Funky Breaks" section. And, um, I like bongos.

Duke Ellington: Take the "A" Train - Reminds me of being on liberty, and the USO on a Saturday night. Oh all right, I'll fess up: it has "Caravan" on it.

Echo & the Bunnymen: Ocean Rain - Retro emo. They were one of my favorite bands in high school. They're one of those 80s bands you never hear about on those "I love the 80s" shows or in movies with 80s soundtracks, for some odd reason. I sure listened to the heck out of them, but I guess nobody else did. Still good, though...

ELO: The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestra (CDs 1 & 2) - The disco compilation down below got me started down this track. Why not download a couple hours of ELO?

Frank Sinatra: On The Sunny Side Of The Street - "I got chunks of guys like you in my stool..."

Foo Fighters: In Your Honor - I've never owned one of their albums, and only ever heard them on the radio. Thought I'd pick some up...

Funkadelic: The Electric Spanking Of War Babies - Not too bad. I think I remember them from way back when. Some of the songs sound oddly familiar.

Goldfrapp: Supernature - A band I'd never even heard of before today. But after a quick listen, this is a decent album with a mesmerizing kind of beat.

Joe Walsh: But Seriously Folks - I heard a Joe Walsh song on the jukebox in this shitty dive bar a bunch of us went to after work last night. So I figured I'd load up. You never know when Mike The Mullet will come over for a Pabst...

Junior Brown: 12 Shade of Brown - I was amazed that I had not one single Junior Brown album anywhere. So I had to rectify that situation.

Kasabian: Kasabian - One of my new favorite bands I think. I've been listening to the album while everythign else downloads, and have yet to hear a song I dislike. I wish this album had more songs on it.

KC & the Sunshine Band: Best of KC & the Sunshine Band - Because you have to. Really.

Kool and the Gang: Collection - Where goes KC, so goes Kool.

Kula Shakur: Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts - They remind me of The Verve. Some mellowish eletronica stuff, some faster stuff, some world beat sounding stuff. Good background music. And there's the odd bagpipe in there, too.

Miles Davis: Essential Miles Davis - Miles Davis' music is sitting in a chair by the window, reading a book, on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine - Somehow I never got this when it came out back in 1989. Heard it enough. Same thing happen to Red Hot Chili Peppers. Anyhow, I got it for a dollar, so it was like going back in time and telling myself to save $14.

Planet Funk: Non Zero Sumness - Spacey electronica music. I got it for work listening. Might grab another one of the albums as well.

Rage Against the Machine: Renegades - Another odd, guilty pleasure. I always dug RAtM. I think it's that beat thing. This was the only album from them I didn't have.

Red Elvises: Surfing in Siberia - These guys are hilarious. Everything they do is great. Russian Elvis rockabilly surf music. Love it!

The Stranglers: Rattus Norvegicus - Old punk kinda-sorta, and still a good listen.

T-Bone Walker: T-Bone Blues - The Essential Recordings - Man, that's some great stuff there...

Ursula 1000: Ursadelica - I found this album by accident, and it's great! It's hard to describe (it's a remix compilation), but it has elctronica/bossa nova/lounge/tiki sort of music on it. I especially liked "gaijin a go go" by Temura Mental and "Chick A Boom" by Joe Bataan. Can't spend two bucks any better than this.

Ursula 1000: Kinda Kinky - After I found the compilation above, I went looking for more. The genre for this one was listed as "Club/Dance, Funky Breaks" so I had to give it a try. Reminds me of Propellerheads.

Various: Pure Disco, CDs 1996 & 1997 - Sometimes, and not very often, this movement overcomes you. And then you have to listen to Alicia Bridges.

The Verve: A Northern Soul - I found them from a compilation I got a while ago, and for some odd reason recalled their name today. Very atmospheric music, good for doing concentration work.

Violent Femmes: Violent Femmes - I think I must have owned five copies of this back in high school, and got a kick out of listening to it again.

Wild Sammy: Speed Crazy - These guys are hard to describe (being from Japan makes that axiomatic) but they have an infectous beat (to which I am always the sucker).

Not bad for 48 dollars and change, eh?

So I'm in this high-level meeting today, and during a bit of a lull the Director across the table from me says, "So what does your shirt say, anyway?"

"Uh... it says 'I am a strange foreigner...'" is about all I could manage. Apparently the (caucasian) Director can read a little Japanese. "Ah... yes, that one means 'Gaijin'... Heh heh". So after that it was class clown time. Might as well; the damage was done. And the meeting was mostly over anyway.

I didn't know that the meeting this afternoon was going to be filled with brass. This was the third in a series about this one particular project, and without looking at the meeting details, there was nothing special to set it apart from the others -- which only had four people attending. There were a dozen of us in there today.

Point is, I wasn't thinking about my work-wear, any more than usual. I don't really care if what I'm wearing meets someone's definition of fashionable. That's not how get I dressed -- unless some non-normal occassion warrants extra thought in the clothes department. I mean to say that I merely used my semi-autonomic, base criteria method for selecting clothing this morning:

• No obvious bleach/grease/bodily fluid stains
• Not too many holes or tears
• Odors not detectable from more than two feet away
• On the top of the pile

Had I known, I would have worn something less skater-dude. I mean, I like the shirt. It's comfortable and roomy, and hardly anyone can tell what it means. So if it's handy when I'm coming out of the shower, I'll put it on without worrying about what it looks like, per se. It's not that I wasn't thinking this morning, it was that I just didn't know to bother with it.

But that's second time I've gotten a reaction from the shirt. The first was when Kumiko (the really cool Japanese translation lady who is working with officemate Jim) came by the office. She was in there talking to us for a full 15 minutes before she even noticed that I was wearing something with Kanji on it. And she thought it was hilarious. "Well, yes. Every foreigner is weird. To Japanese. But it is funny to see you wearing it."

Not sure how to take that.

So we had to do this corporate ethics online training thing a while back. I ignored it since it's utter bullshit. "Beth decides to award the big contract to her husband's company. Would this be against the code of ethics?" Ugh.

I got a nag email today telling me to do it or else. So I logged on to the third-party training website, went through all the steps, read the examples (I opted out of the audio-enhanced version without even having heard it first) and took their quiz. I almost just did the quiz first without reading anything, but I had a sneaky suspicion that they log what pages you see. It was banal. "Kim Wong has joined the sale force. Ted says Kim should come over to his place after work, as he 'likes to eat Asian...'". I couldn't make stuff like that up. One page was so comical I printed it out.

Jim walks over to my desk as I'm reading this nonsense and I mention that I'm doing the online ethics training. He says that he has it scheduled for later in the day, and asks about it. And I unwittingly violate the code of ethics, right there in the middle of the test. Our conversation went like:

"Is that it? The website we have to go to?"

"Yeah. Annoying, too. Resizes the window for you, uses Flash, opens new pop-ups all over the place, real basic common sense busy-work."

"Huh. Looks really boring."

"Yeah, but you know, the Beth chick in the tutorials is actually kinda hot..."

But I passed the quiz, in spite of myself!

This is an interesting article on how names affect a person's life. I read a long time ago that what you name your child determines, in some very small way, what their life will be like. And coming on the heels of Penn naming his daughter "Moxie CrimeFighter", the subject had been in my head. I think I need to go pick up a copy of Freakonomics. Come to think of it, Steven Levett was at Google the other day and I missed it. Nuts. Damn work always getting in the way...

And I've always wondered about this:

For the study on black names, he analyzed birth records of all children born in Florida between 1989 and 1996. Names with apostrophes and unusual letter combinations were more likely given by mothers who dropped out of school, he found.

He also applied what he calls the Scrabble test: Names that would earn high scores in Scrabble - with z's, x's and q's - were most likely given by poorer, uneducated mothers.

I could never figure out why someone would name their kid "Da'Quan" or "Shaquasia". I always thought it was something cultural that I wasn't privvy to, when in reality it's because the mothers are uneducated simpletons. Ockham wins another round.

And dig the sociology experiment that guy at the end of the article is running on his kids. That's cruel and unusual.

I had this song in my head all day, from when I woke up until about 5 minutes ago. Everyone gets a song in their head once in a while I guess, but this one wouldn't go back to where ever it came from. I just kept humming it all day long, not knowing how it got there.

And that part is more disturbing than the fact that I must have hummed it like 450 times today: I didn't hear on the radio in the car, it wasn't in a movie I watched the night before, it wasn't playing on the clock radio when my alarm went off, nothing. As far as I know, I hadn't heard the song for years. In fact, I didn't even know what song it was! It was driving me crazy! All I knew was the general tune and a few words from some chorus, which was what was looping in my head all day: .

Now, I think, if you're at or above the age of 40, you know the full gravity of my predicament. The song that just would not leave my skull all day was in fact Do You Feel Like We Do by Peter Mothergrabbin' Frampton.

I needed it out but bad. I was having flashbacks of Big Surf circa 1976. What to do? I tried listening to other music, but that hadn't worked all day so a little more would be similarly ineffectual. Reading a book was straight out. My foot kept tapping out tiny autonomic beats, completely of it's own accord. Can't use a drill. All my bits are in San Diego.

For lack of anything else to try, I wound up buying the the whole album off the Russians for $2.20. Forty-two minutes and forty-five seconds worth of listening later, it's finally gone.

Some demons need to be exorcised just so.

I wish I could propose legislation. I would offer a bill which states that if anyone within the United States wishes to adapt a comic book character into a movie, they must first consult with Christopher Nolan and David Goyer, or they won't be allowed to make their movie.

Backing up, I was casting about for something to do today and decided to go out, get a hamburger and read a book. And then for lack of anything better to do after I'd exhausted those fine mid-day activities, I walked into the theater to catch the next showing of Batman. It's kind of nice to be able to walk into a theater and not really have to care about making plans or anything. You just look up at the marquee, look at your watch, and pick a showing. I got lucky and only had to wait like 20 minutes. There's a silver lining everywhere, even in bored loneliness. But I digress...

Batman Begins absofuckinglutely rocks. It kicks all manner of ass.

The best part was that it focused more on the psychological origins than anything else; the battle between the bad guys and Batman is actually a sort of side story. I can't be the only one that always wonders things like "Where'd he come up with the cape, anyway?" when they see a comic book movie. This movie really did a great job of explaining those sorts of origins. Belief needed little suspension.

Another really cool part is that there aren't any super powers in the movie at all. Refreshing. And that extends to the last few lines in the movie. More twisted minds are to come, I hope. I'd say more but I'd spoil the surprise.

But the best part was that there were no nipples to be found anywhere, unlike some other incredibly lame Batman movie I will not name. Well, no nipples unless you count Katie Holmes, I guess.

Who was the only not-so-great part of the movie, incidentally. There's something about her lop-sided facial expression (yes, she just has the one) that really annoys me. Did she have, like, a left cheek accident as a child which left it paralyzed or something? Because a smirk does not acting make. She uses that one single half-grin like Julia Roberts uses a weepy eye, and it gets old after the first 20 minutes.

'Course, what do I know? They're both rich and famous, so they must be doing something right, one-trick ponies or not. Maybe Xenu will help even poor Katie out. Julia, I think, is too far gone. People have come to expect the tearing up from her.

Google was serving something called Hanger Steak in the cafe the other day. I'm used to seeing fish I've never heard of before, but I thought I knew all the cuts of beef. I was guessing the hanger steak was near the skirt. Turns out that I was pretty close. Meat porn!

Penn Jillette and his wife named their new baby daughter Moxie CrimeFighter. Penn is just too cool...

If you haven't seen The Brick Testament yet, go over and have a look. It's time well spent.

So I was driving home and KFOG was on the radio. I'm still finding my "station niche". There's no one really good radio station up here like there is in San Diego, but there are a lot more stations that play decent music and so a lot more to choose from. But no one "clear channel". Ahem.

Anyway, I heard this song on the radio and found myself tapping along. Great tune. I memorized some of the lyrics and then googled them when I got home. Turns out I was listening to Zebra by the John Butler Trio.

I'm heading over to Fry's tomorrow to buy the CD (if they have it). Then I'm going to rip the entire album into MP3s and stream it from my temp home to work. And put it on my ipod. And do whatever I want with it. Play it via my Audiotron maybe. I won't be sharing it, but it's great to have options with the things you purchase.

The RIAA and ITMS can suck my starfish.

I had an interesting day at work yesterday. First, Mario Batali was a guest chef at the cafe. One of the stations was serving out his dishes. The line was huge, but I had to get some famous grub, right? Here's what I had:

Pollo alla Cacciatora

Free range chicken thigh meat, organic Portobello mushroom, onion, celery, roma tomatoes, red chili flakes, rosemary, bay leaf, extra virgin olive oil, white wine and pancetta.

Pappardelle with Boar Ragu

Pappardelle pasta cooked al dente, organic onion, celery, carrot, rosemary, red chili flakes, wild boar, red wine and extra virgin olive oil.

Gnocchi with Fresh Tomatoes

Potato pasta, fresh organic tomatoes, garlic, smoked mozzarella cheese, green olive and extra virgin olive oil.

I'd never eaten wild boar before, and it was all really tasty. Would have been better with a glass of red, though.

When I was heading out to try to find a place to eat (there were more people walking around with visitor badges on than I've ever seen; I'd say there were just as many as folks with Google badges) I noticed that there was another line formed up. At the head of it was Mario himself, signing copies of his new book Molto Italiano. I was about to head over to the cash machine when I heard someone say that they were giving away the book. Super cool! So I went up and got a copy. Even had it autographed.

Mario is a hoot in person. He was really hoarse, and looked pretty tired out (this was at like 1:30pm, and lunch starts at 11:30) but he seemed like he was genuinely having a blast. He was cracking jokes and such the whole time. When I got up to the signing table I said "Wow, I never met an Iron Chef before. You're really holding up well!" He chuckled then puffed up a little, turned up his chin, stuck his hands on his hips faux-Superman style and said "I'm a finely oiled and well-tuned macccchhhhhiiiiinnnne..." After we both cracked up, he said that he never gets tired at signings, and that the funnest part of being a well-known chef is meeting people and getting he recipes out there so people can try them. So I said I'd definitely be trying some of his food, and he said thanks. Looking back at that, it sounds smarmy and contrived, but I think he really feels that way. Anyway, as best as I can tell from a 20 second conversation, he seems like a super cool guy.

I was thumbing through it a little and it looks like it's got some great recipes in it. Some really easy stuff, too. I wanted to find the recipes for the lunch I was eating and read along as I chewed, but I didn't get a chance. (I didn't get to read much of it at lunch because an engineer I've never met before named Johnny sat down in front of me and wanted to chat. That "Hey, I don't know you... let's chat!" thing is going to take some getting used to, but Johnny really cool -- and he and I work on similar projects, so we're going to hook up next week some time.)

After lunch, I was coming back from the mini-kitchen and a co-worker was telling someone that he got his picture taken with Robin Williams, who happened to be in the building for who-knows-what reason. So I went down to take a gander. Sure enough, there he was along with his entourage and the founders. I didn't talk to him or anything, I just sort of hung back and listened along with the rest of the crowd. He was cracking jokes and taking a keen interest in the way things work. He's not a very tall person. IMDb says he's 5' 8", but I think he may have been wearing boots when they measured him.

And then at the end of the day, I heard that NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman was speaking in the cafe, and signing copies of his new book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. I arrived too late to get a signed copy, but I did hear him speak. Very interesting stuff, mostly in a "wake-up call for America" sort of way. The thing he said that sticks out most was when he was talking about how opportunity is now at everyone's doorstep. He said "25 years ago, if you had a choice, you'd much rather be born a B student in Northern California than a genius in Bangalore. Now that B student has got no chance at all because the genius in India can plug in directly with his talent." The Internet has made the world a pretty small place, and smart is going to get used no matter where it is. I started reading some of his book but haven't gotten very far. I'll definitely finish it. I bet my dad would like it, too.

Anyway, I actually managed to get a little work done yesterday in between famous people. But it was a fun day.

For no real reason at all, Tracy and I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark last night during dinner. And also for no real reason at all, I remarked, "Indiana Jones had some really cool boots. I've always wanted a pair..." Did you ever notice Indy's boots? I did. I have a thing for practical footwear, and have always liked plain leather boots, sans space-age materials. Just... boots. Indy had good boots, and so I noticed.

Now thanks to the wonders of the Internets, finding the company that made Indy's boots is about as easy as falling off a log. An added bonus? They aren't props. They're real, working, high-quality boots.

Another bonus is that Alden has a store in San Francisco. And I'm going to be living near San Francisco. That means I can actually drive up there and try a pair on if I want, and see if they'll fit my dual-sized, strangely shaped feet. (I can never buy footwear via mail-order or through the Web, since I'll never know if they'll fit comfortably. Hasn't stopped me from trying, though...)

Yeah, they're a little on the pricey side, but my dad always said "Never buy cheap boots". And father knows best, right?

Good tattoo material here:

Of course now that HST is dead I'm not so sure. It's either that or the Boba Fett Mandalorian shoulder thing. But since George Lucas started butt-raping my childhood memories, that Boba Fett thing is likely out as well. Good thing it wasn't tattooed on my arm, eh? I'd have to get Lucas to come back a couple years later and digitally re-enhance it for me.

Bah... there aren't any good tattoo ideas. Not that I really want one, even. Just saying, is all...

...then let me assure you that I am. Proof? Ha! Got yer proof right here: I'm very close to buying a pair of . Why? Red wine? An enlightened fashion sense? An unusual predilection for the sub-normal, combined with a certain lightness of being? Hell, I don't know...

They look like cool shoes, though! Everyone needs cool shoes! Almost as much as a personal soundtrack.

I don't have a soundtrack yet. Shoes first, then.

In honor of the Beef and Guinness Stew I made (from scratch, I add) on St. Pat's Day, I give you a webpage that has all the information you would ever want or need on the topic of flatulence.

It was darn tasty stew. Just a little... unsociable.

Life is strange. Very strange. You expect and then don't get. You don't expect, you get. Or maybe not. Or maybe you do.

Be happy with what you have? Try to make what you've got better, so you'll have something else later on? What, really, do you control which determines what direction your life takes you?

I'm just sort of feeling like a passenger on a train. It's a good train, I think. We'll see.

Tracy and I saw Sideways the other night. It's a really great movie, but not terribly realistic. The characters spend about 3/4 of the movie drinking red wine, and not a single person winds up with purple teeth. Not once. Kinda runined it for me...

Set the wayback machine and point it towards Eric's Head.

I only wish I could find out what Eric's Head was up to lately...

Have you ever wondered why some English speakers do mysterious things with the letter 'R'? Some people add extra R's, some people hardly use them at all. Turns out that this is a main division between English dialects, and it's called Rhotic Speech. It was something I was always curious about, and I knew it was a regional (as opposed to national) thing, but it so happens that it's part of a quantified and well understood pattern.

Now, suitably forearmed with knowledge of non-rhotic speech, I'm able to instantly understand my mum in-law! Ah, but will my newfound insight allow me to pass the test of the non-rhotic/wine amalgamation? That remains to be seen...

What do you get when you cross a nursing student taking an internet marketing class and a filtration engineer? A fart-sucking chair pillow is what. And the Japanese love it, which ought to tell you something.

Although to be a super-mega-hit in Japan, they'd probably have to make a version that talked back to you or giggled or vibrated or something when you let one rip. Or maybe converted the odors into the smell of shellfish. "Hiroyuki, your office is strong of shrimp-smell. Have have you been snacking on the edamame again?" That sort of thing.

Well, I may be a little harsh on the Japanese. But they are, after all, the country that developed computerized toilet seats that warm your bottom, make fake flushing noises, and provide automatic toothbrush-shaped squirt guns to spare you from wiping. Anyway, Santa and his reindeer love the thing so it's got to be good.

I got an email from the guys doing the screenprinting for that t-shirt I idea I had. They said that they were going to send me an email that had a sample of what it would look like, etc. Here's what it will look like in case you're curious. Their email had a subject of: "Bill Rhodes firepower proof". I almost deleted it as spam without even reading it. I did a little double take and realized what it was.

I thought that was an amusing subject line in a "Describe yourself as an anime superhero" sort of way. If I was feeling more creative, I'd make a little "What kind of _____ are you?" type of script. Then you'd get people who would become "John Doe inflatable pants" and "Tracy Rhodes aluminum bender" and so forth.

I haven't washed my car in a while. 3 months and two weeks, to be precise. Been kinda busy. Other people are busy too. But not everyone gets a message like this about their car. Most often, I get a "wash me" written in dust on my window. No nipple piercing scratches or sweaty lust-prints so far. Dammit. Like to catch that action in situ, if you get my drift.

So my Aliens rifle thing (I'm building one; don't ask) led me to this prop-makers message board. It's basically for people who make, sell, and/or buy movie props, but it also features folks who dress up as Yoda and go out in public for no good reason at all. People who think they're elves. People who write fan fiction. That sort. You know the types.

Now, I'm not bagging on people who dress up and go to sci-fi or comic conventions. It takes all kinds. It's just that there's a big difference between owning a halloween costume from one of your favorite movies and making a lifestyle choice out of a fantasy, you know? I've gone to more than a few conventions in my time, and more than a couple of those with a costume. I might go again one day. Still, I couldn't stifle a chuckle at the plight expressed in this poor fellow's post. All he wants is to be Spider-Man. Is that too much to ask? I feel bad for the kid...

The nadir of the geek experience, to be sure.

Devo's version of "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" beats the shit out of the Rolling Stones' original version, hands down.

That is all.

These altered Spider-man comics are some of the funniest things I've read in a while. Slightly homophobic, sure, but Peter Parker was always slightly ambiguously gay.

And bonus points to anyone who can find the Tess-ism in one of them.

I just willingly entered my credit card number on a Russian web site. Yeah, you heard right: they have my number and everything. I'm livin' on the edge, man. I paid them 145.32 Rubles. Five bucks. Now I can download 500 megabytes of MP3s. First up, the soundtrack to The Big Lebowski, in MP3 format at a 192kbps bitrate. Total cost? 72.7 cents. They have a lot of old stuff there too. Why go to all the trouble of digitizing your vinyl when you can get the stuff from a questionably-legal Russian web site for a penny a minute?

I'm pretty sure that I won't be using emusic.com or the iTunes Music Store very much anymore.

I got an email from a headhunter this morning. Like, an actual person (and not an automated troll-bot or anything) with an actual position to fill. I'm not going to send her a resume or anything; I'm happy where I'm at. But you know the sad part? My initial thought on seeing her first email was "So there's this company looking for a dude that can do perl/database stuff, and they haven't been able to fill the position by word of mouth? I wonder what's wrong with/about that company that they can't find anyone to work there..." It's like they have to resort to using a headhunter in order to hire someone. Seems like everyone these days is getting/keeping jobs based on who they've worked with, people they know, etc. as opposed to sending out resumes.

So Todd jabbers me out of the blue. And the following conversation ensues:

Message from toddler@darphbobo at 12:57:08 pm
? ? ?happy hookie pookie yo
Message to toddler@darphbobo at 12:57:59 pm
? ? ?floopy yappy mopey, Mo!
Message from toddler@darphbobo at 12:58:15 pm
? ? ?hoopy doopy, young and stupie!
Message to toddler@darphbobo at 12:59:33 pm
? ? ?Limey limpey trippy, Ren and Stimpy.
Message from toddler@darphbobo at 01:00:02 pm
? ? ?Flippy fluppy, eat that Guppie!
Message to toddler@darphbobo at 01:00:51 pm
? ? ?Tiny droopy, cuff my poopy!
Message from toddler@darphbobo at 01:01:47 pm
? ? ?Fart and fizzle, Fo Shizzle my Nizzle!
Message to toddler@darphbobo at 01:03:17 pm
? ? ?Spackle thy pickle, yet lactate doth drizzle.
Message from toddler@darphbobo at 01:04:53 pm
? ? ?how's things?
Message to toddler@darphbobo at 01:05:08 pm
? ? ?Tiny dancer, man-boy romancer.

And then we started talking about csh programming. I'm not sure which one of us needs to start taking his vitamins. I suspect we both do.

I've been trying to stay out of the whole Iraq/Afganistan/bin Laden thing. No matter what you think, it's a mess.

Having said that, I don't think it'll get better before it gets worse. Also, I think we should hand over Iraq to the Iraqis and butt out of the Middle East unless invited by a sovereign government to help. Then, oh, I don't know, maybe we should concentrate on finding the people who planned 9/11 and ensure that they do no further harm -- and do so swiftly and be done with it. Something like that sounds like a good course of action. Then moving forward, we as a nation should try to mind our own damn business. Whining about a problem without offering an alternative is pissing in the wind, but that's about all I can constructively think of to sort this mess out.

But will the aggression towards Western nations ever really stop? Even if we were to leave the Middle East completely? Even if Israel was somehow magically turned into Palestine? Even if another non-Muslim never again sets so much as a single foot in any Arab nation? Would that help? I don't think anything would change. It just seems to me that the average Arab "community" (for lack of a better word) holds a grudge for a long, long time. Seriously, the U.S. as a nation could bugger off and leave the Middle East completely alone and in 50 years we won't be thinking aggressively towards Muslims. But they'll still hate us.

I just recently came across a very interesting editorial about this topic. If you don't agree with the article's point, at least you're thinking about it. It got me thinking. Thinking in a more "equal opportunity" sort of way.

I can't stand any religious intolerance, regardless of who it's coming from. Mormons don't condone coffee, Catholics have a thing about birth control, Jews won't eat shelfish, Muslims would kill me for my apostasy, yada yada yada. I find it all vaguely annoying. It's not religion, per se, that offends some sensible part of me. Being a fairly staunch Apatheist, I really shouldn't care which way one bends religiously -- and I don't. I don't think less of my mother or my in-laws or my brother or anyone else for their religious beliefs.

No, it's that sense of exclusivity that most religions foster which bugs me; it's what "religion" does to a group of people more than what it does to just one person. It's too easy to manipulate people with religion. It's too easy to create religious fanatics, so altered by a warped sense of superiority and self-righteousness that they can be bent to cause unspeakable acts towards their fellow man. I'm not saying that all religion is bad. Honestly, I think belief in a supreme being does a lot of positive things for some people. I just think that religion, while possibly being good for the individual, is horrible for the society.

Most religions seem to create this powerful notion of us vs. them. Everone thinks their way is the only right way, and everyone else who doesn't believe what you believe is not going to heaven, a heathen, soulless, an infidel, whatever. Taken to its logical extreme, that notion sometimes leads to Christains persecuting Jews. Sometimes it means Catholics questioning heretics on the rack. Sometimes it leads to Puritans burning suspected witches at the stake. And sometimes it causes Muslims to shout "god is great" while . It's all the same thing. Really.

Every once in a while it seems like religion hasn't done the world as a whole all that much good.

Did you know that the AK-47 has an official web site? Now you do. They even have nice little link-back graphics that you can use:

They were so nice, I used them all.

Take a look at this map. That's a map of all the wireless access points in my neighborhood. See that blueish circle in the middle? That's my neighbor. Heh heh... I gotta tell him to lock that down...

This week contains a few coincidental milestones:

• It's my fourth anniversary of being a homeowner with Tess
• It's also the fourth anniversary since I last had a pay raise (or bonus, or review, or etc.)
• I've had my current job for two years this week
• Red Hat Linux will be officially dead
• My 38th 37th birthday is this week
• My nephew's 8th birthday is this week as well

Seems like there was more when I was thinking about it on the way home. Huh. Anyway, it's way more stuff than last week...

It had to be done:

In order to capitalize on my Henry Earl page's newfound popularity, Trey has brand spanking new Henry Earl t-shirts for sale. I'm ordering one right now...

(Also be sure to check out some of T's other items. The other t-shirt he sells makes a touching and poignant statement about the selflessness and generosity of your fellow man, and is just the thing anytime you might find yourself forced to be involved with large crowds. His lovely teddy bear is "a great companion for those cold winter mornings". And if you're Tess, it's also a perfect parting gift for your sycophantic pussy of a boss. Nothing says "Two weeks notice?!? Get bent..." like a cute little stuffed bear.)

I was wrong when I said that the Northridge Inc. web site was the most expensive on the planet. That honor belongs to the site run by WWII Impressions. I have no idea why, but there's a lot there I want. And I have no idea what I'd do with it all once I got it. Although now that I think about it...

I did manage to pick up five 20 round Thompson magazines for dirt cheap (about 1/4 of what everyone else is selling them at; we'll have to see what their quaility is like) at The Sportsman's Guide, so I may pick up one of those five-cell magazine pouches. And maybe a mussette bag. And a strap for it. And the M42 Army Airborne jump suit would be awfully nice for no real reason at all. 'Course, I'd need boots and web gear, too.

And while we're at it, there's the Short-Barrelled Rifle (SBR) permit I'd need for the shorter barrel I'd have to get for my Thompson (the original Thompsons had 10.5" barrels; BATF regulations say that you need a permit for a rifle with any barrel less than 16", which is why my newly-produce semi auto gun has a 16" barrel). I just couldn't go walking around in down-to-the-stitch authentic WWII Airborne gear carrying a Thompson M1 with a 16 inch barrel. That'd be silly! That would mean I'd have to stoop to owning an airsoft Thompson -- while there's a perfectly good "real" Thompson pining away in the closet! There's just something terribly wrong with that. The sad fact is that not only can you not own a Thompson SMG in California, you most especially cannot own one that has a really short barrel. There are, like, laws and stuff against that. We couldn't have another Bonnie and Clyde running around now, could we?

Speaking of dumbass gun laws that only serve to restrict the rights of collectors and history buffs, who knew that according to California law, the only way I could possibly possess a SBR permit is if I can prove the following:

12095. (a) If it finds that it does not endanger the public safety, the Department of Justice may issue permits initially valid for a period of one year, and renewable annually thereafter, for the manufacture, possession, transportation, or sale of short-barreled shotguns or short-barreled rifles upon a showing that good cause exists for the issuance thereof to the applicant for the permit. No permit shall be issued to a person who is under 18 years of age. (b) Good cause, for the purposes of this section, shall be limited to only the following: (1) The permit is sought for the manufacture, possession, or use with blank cartridges, of a short-barreled rifle or short-barreled shotgun, solely as props for a motion picture, television, or video production or entertainment event.

For those not paying attention to this long-winded wool-gathering, let me sum up: I'm allowed to own a Thompson with a real barrel in the state of California if I can prove that it would be possessed "solely as props for a motion picture, television, or video production or entertainment event".

You with me?

If I get all that other reproduction WWII gear and once per year either a) attend one re-enactment event, or b) video tape myself in said gear using said gun with blanks and put the movies online as "artistic shorts" or some such, I can legally own not only my Thompson but my Thompson with a short barrel. That sounds like a pretty nice deal to me.

The rub here is that I'd have to wear WWII gear while shooting the gun in CA, and bring a video camera with me while I shoot it. I suppose that since I don't shoot in CA anyway, I could get by with just packing a duffel bag with all the WWII stuff and a crappy video camera in order to transport the thing in and out of the state. I might be attending an "entertainment event" in Arizona for all anyone knows, right?

So that's a pretty expensive web site, no?

I'm a slut for duffel. Bags, backpacks, pouches, straps, belts, web gear, whatever you call it... I love things that hold other things -- especially if they're made of OD canvas. It's like Tess' obsession with tiny little drawers/cubby holes: unexplainable. I just like duffel. Old duffel even more.

The worst online place for my wallet to be is Northridge International's magazina and pouch page. I'm drawn to that page. It's teasing me, with those tiny little pictures.

I recently got an order from them (five Thompson magazines packed in foil and cosmoline before I was even born, along with a five mag pouch I've never even heard of) and I'm back for more. It doesn't help that they have the best prices on Thompson magazines. Hell, the ones they sell are even real Seymour mags. Wrapped 60 years ago. Other guys online are selling those mags for $30 each, and you have zero idea what you are actually getting. I got 5 along with a $35 pouch for $110. So I'm ordering some more of that.

And yes, when I opened my find I huffed the packaging for a good five minutes. One gets many China huffs in his day, but very precious few U.S. WWII-era huffs. The China ones are stinkier.

Tomorrow is April Fool's Day. (I never knew whether that should get the possessive comma or not, but tonight it's got it. Heh heh.) So that means every geek web site on the planet has to feature lots and lots of loony, zany, madcap content. Microsoft releases a Linux distribution... unplug your computer because the Internet needs to be cleaned... that sort of thing.

Oy.

We should just be done with this holiday.

Todd sent me this link to the The Cyborg Name Generator, and it's pretty amusing. Here's my cyborg name:

The temptation to enter somewhat prurient acronyms has not yet escaped me.

I somehow came across this Russian motorcycle for sale.

That looks like a hell of a lot of fun.

Yet another timewaster personality test, as I wind down my absurdly long and otherwise bizarre day:

The Seven Intelligence Areas

Linguistic: 7
Logical-Mathematical: 10
Spatial: 7
Bodily-Kinesthetic: 2
Musical: 2
Interpersonal: 3
Intrapersonal: 6

A Short Definition of your Highest Score

Logical-Mathematical - the ability to use numbers to compute and describe, to use mathematical concepts to make conjectures, to apply mathematics in personal daily life, to apply mathematics to data and construct arguments, to be sensitive to the patterns, symmetry, logic, and aesthetics of mathematics, and to solve problems in design and modeling. Possible vocations that use the logical-mathematics intelligence include accountant, bookkeeper, statistician, tradesperson, homemaker, computer programmer, scientist, composer, engineer, inventor, or designer.

For those not able to read between the lines, that all boils down to one word: nerd. As in pocket protector wearing, guys hang you over the railing, high water pants-style nerd. If it featured a "Bathing-Personal Grooming" category I'd get a 2 in there as well. And the assessment seems about right. Yet how can I use this new information about me to make the convincing argument that what I'm really cut out for sitting around doing nothing but thinking about stuff? Can you get a government grant to do nothing?

Oh, and I almost forgot: What pisses me off? People too stupid to properly use HTML comments in their completely unnecessary JavaScript code. Or those ignorant enough to use a browser so broken that it would show them anything on that page but a blue background. Friends, as they say, don't let friends use IE.

So what does it mean when you get really bad headaches centered about an inch behind your left eyeball possibly accompanied by random nosebleeds? Tumor? Sinus infection? Nostril cancer? Really big pollen?

I'm hoping for the Gojira-sized pollen...

I do, I do!

My brother Shawn tipped me off to this company that makes a half-scale, working replica 1919A4 machine gun. It takes .22LR ammo (which runs about $12 for a box of 500), and comes in full or semi-auto models. That's just amazingly cool. You could shoot all day for like fifty bucks. And all night for a hundred! They even offer scaled-down ammo cans, and it feeds ammo via a reusable cloth belt so that you don't have to worry about half-scale links or whatever.

The only way to truly appreciate the thing is to see it in action.

That looks like about as much fun as you can have while still wearing pants. The only thing I'd want more than that is a .22LR M-134 Minigun. And I'd also need a backpack that held 10,000 rounds or so. And a spare battery. And a free weekend with a lot of watermelons.

This is just getting silly. God, as in the guy upstairs, the dude with the white beard, jahweh, etc., has an IMDb entry. God, among his/her/its many other talents, is apparently a writer, and works with Mel Gibson and Benedict Fitzgerald on movie screenplays based on his/her/its novelizations. And here I thought God didn't exist...

So if the movie gets an Oscar, Golden Globe, whatever nomination and God wins, who gives the acceptance speech? Where do they send the gift basket? Do they have to give statuettes to Jesus and the Holy Ghost as well? Will it lead to God's becoming a highly sought-after A-list Hollywood celebrity? And since he/she/it is supposedly omnipotent, how would anyone really know if God were to cheat and make the presenter say his/her/its name when they open the envelope to reveal the winner? Couldn't God just make his own Oscar anyway? Does he/she/it really need an award in the first place? Or even a writing credit? If he/she/it created everything, shouldn't God have a credit on every movie?

. Tired of being underappreciated and manipulated by powerful "others," you fight back. Though possesssing a cold, violent outside, you have a soft, scentimental inside. You love your partner, you cherish family heirlooms, and you want nothing more than to be geniunely happy -- but you don't mind having to kill a couple of nimrods who happen to clutter your path. Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz.

Seems about right I guess. It was either him or maybe Jimmie.

I'm a member of Orkut now. Why? Not a clue. I was curious I guess. I pretty much have all the friends I need.

If you want to join, let me know and I'll send you an invite.

I put the shooting videos from this last Thanksgiving online. There are some good ones of Tess and Wy shooting Uncle John's BFG9000. Watch that milk crate fly!

Update: If you're trying to use any sort of streaming software with the above videos, you might need to right click (command-click, whatever) and pick "Save As...", save them, and then open them locally. You can also try open them directly -- by clicking one of the links. The clicking of a link on a page on theis site is the key here.

See, we've had a little problem with people linking directly to files here from within their own pages (typically on message boards and such), and that was using almost as much bandwidth as the legitimate site. So I had to get slightly restrictive. You should be able to watch them fine as long as you click one of the links on the videos page to open it. I just tried it and opened them with IE and Opera on Windows and Opera, Mozilla and Konqueror on Linux.

If anything deserves the "Random Stuff" category, it's this Henry Earl real-time stats page that I did this weekend.

Don't bother asking why. Some things just need doing.

Been popular, too: 4,121 visitors since Saturday morning. About what this site would get all month. As you can see, the traffic's near constant and in a predictable pattern for North America. The guys who do the first Henry Earl Site (and do it with considerable elan, I would add) linked back here, and that's probably what's doing it.

Heh heh... I just looked at the stats page to make sure that the link worked and I noticed that according to the automatically updated stats, Henry got busted today. Rock on, Henry.

I'm not one to navel-gaze. Particularly, I don't spend time thinking about what went on in high school. Or college. I therefore don't spend time thinking about people in either high school or college -- unless I still know them. Put another way: I have no plans to go to any reunions. The people I'd want to see are already one phone call (or email) away. Sleeping dogs lie. And, honestly, high school is about the most unimportant 4 years anyone can waste their life on. Socially, I mean. As soon as you leave high school, the people you knew there no longer matter. Unless some bond beyond "we went to high school together" applies, that is.

High school is meant to turn a gawky adolescent who knows nothing about anything into a less gawky adolescent with middling knowledge in the basics. In other words: The people you knew in high school aren't the people they are now. Unless you're in high school now. Mathematically: important in high school != important in real life.

College is different. If the people you met and knew in college can benefit you in the here-and-now, then you should not write them off. This is why people pay for built-in friends when they join a fraternity or sorority. But the high school dudes have got to go. Unless they went to a college and came out with a degree that can benefit you, of course. Then keep them around.

I hear you saying the word "insensitive". I laugh.

We're on the same page then. Good. Forward thinking... it'll serve you well.

So I was listening to P.I.L. just now and thought of high school. I thought of all the people that I knew there. The guy that stole my Men At Work LP, the fuckers who popped out from behind the bushes to sucker-punch me in the back of the head so they could steal my friend's walkman, the two guys I beat up outside a mall during the Christmas holiday buying season because they wouldn't leave my friends alone (and because one of them hit me first), and so on. I remembered surfing on cars, inhabiting pre-built houses, finding new places for roaming parties (what you kids call "raves"), making hot dogs for the principal, meeting new people and influencing new friends. There are exactly three of those people who matter now. One of whom I wish I knew how to get a hold of...

I recalled a number of tapes I made for people, and one P.I.L. song in particular. That's what bought it back. Old times are good, but they keep you from experiencing new times. So I wasted some new time writing about the old time. And you know what? Every time I hear "Smash it Up Pt. 1" by The Damned, I'm going to get a tiny bit nostalgic. But I know that none of that wool-gathering matters in the real world.

According to the Star Wars Villain Name Generator, my villainous Star Wars name is "Barbeque Fett".

Yeah, you heard right. Barbeque-mothergrabbin-Fett.

You got some kind a problem with that?

When a circuit interrupter at a utility substation fails, what happens to the 2000 amps of 500KV AC current running through it? Why, a big-assed electrical arc 3 stories tall is what happens.

If I had any musical talent whatsoever, I'd probably try to play music like The Black Keys. Two white guys from Cleveland. And they rock. I'm doing some work-stuff, listening to 'thickfreakness' and just digging the hell out of them. In fact, I'll throw them the virtual goat: \../,

Go and give their stuff a listen.

It's crunchy.

It's no secret that the Japanese people, when taken as a whole, can be slightly odd. That might be understating it a little. Sometimes the entire damn island looks to be completely off their nut. But I could be wrong. I've yet to go there, so I can only paraphrase them sociologically, as with any culture one comes across mostly anecdotally.

You say to yourself, "I might only be looking at Japan through the lens of the Internet, and that might distort the picture a bit. I'm sure they're just like you or me, with few minor little differences here and there." Then you see something normal, everyday and benign, such as an advertisement for soy sauce which leads you to believe that the entirety of the Japanese people are, in fact, from space.

Trey, no stranger to the strange (or the Japanese), sent me the above Flash movie. He even got me to install Flash in order to see it. "It's worth it," he said. Boy, is it ever. Jumpin' Jesus on a bento box, it's friggin' weird. And it's for kids! This is an advertisement to get kids to use soy over other condiments. And watch the white cat! Now you're eating your soy sauce, aren't you? It's like the Brothers Grimm were born in the anime age. And were Japanese. And drug abusers. And from space.

Kikkoman's the cigarette-smoking superhero who can beat up ketchup and maybe salt. He needs a Shaft-esque theme song even. "Who's the number 1 motocycle-riding soy sauce superhero who's a hit with all the chicks? Kikkoman! Right on..."

Watch it a couple times. I really want a t-shirt with Kikkoman riding the "#1 Soy Sauce" motocycle. Or a shirt with the white cat. Or one of Kikkoman getting a little horizontal soy-based refreshment.

Did you ever click on a link and even before the page loads, you have a certain sense of "impending uncleanliness" dread? Ever wish you could selectively remove memories?

In the truest spirit of sharing and amity, present to you Pedal Pumper38's Male Pedal Pumping Site.

I just got done from a long day (two weeks, it seems) of working on a side project, and thought I'd finish the glass of wine that had been neglected since dinner 7 hours ago. While clicking around, I came across the venerable Meyers-Briggs Personality Test. I had to take that one again. My mom has always been a nut for pop psychology stuff, and I'd taken the MBTI test once before. I wondered if I've changed much in the last 22 years. Here's my score:

INTJ
Introverted ??? Intuitive ??? Thinking ??? Judging
Strength of the preferences %
100 ?????? 33 ?????? 56 ?????? 67

You are:
very expressed introvert
moderately expressed intuitive personality
moderately expressed thinking personality
distinctively expressed judging personality

Sounds nice and nebulous -- and exactly what I was when I first took the test.

They provide links to some analyses for the INTJ type. I didn't mind the touchy-feely one so much (I'm in there with Dan Akroyd and Donald Rumsfeld, after all), but the other one sounded pretty harsh. The last paragraph is dead-on, but they label they give that personality type annoys me. It does make it easy to see why nobody wants to play Scrabble with me. It can drag on there towards the end...

If you have the time, go take the test (it's a really short version) and lemme know what you are. Now, bedtime.

Two things I have a hard time dealing with:

? ? 1. The smell of a fully-loaded commercial airplane
? ? 2. The smell of a hospital

Taken together, they don't make for a overly merry holiday season. I hope things don't become exceptionally un-merry.

The department chair for the school at the university where I work just came by my office. Dressed as Santa. With a gift in an envelope. On the back of the envelope were two checkboxes, apparently reflecting the recipient's status on Santa's List. It would seem that I've been "naughty". Heh heh. Yeah. Naughty like a fox...

I got a $60 AmEx gift card for anything at UTC (a local mall). Not too shabby. Ain't no turkey, though. :-)

What is the sound of one hand clapping? Action and dialogue, of course.

If you happen to be needing a new font, my brother Trey sends this nice cartoon font. Comes in both "smooth" and "corny".

Enjoy.

It was vaguely surprising to me that the most balanced, level-headed discussion on what to do with Saddam Hussein now that we've nabbed him comes from Arab News. The article makes a lot of sense. That really shouldn't have surprised me. There's no love lost on Saddam in just about any part of the world; hardly anyone is afraid of a bully after he's been beaten. I suppose I'm just not used to expecting rational thought out of any sort of fanatically religious people. (Lest anyone come to the conclusion that I have some sort of bias against Arabs, I don't. I'm making that statement irrespective of the brand of religion in question. It's axiomatic, and non-judgmental: faith denies reason, regardless of whether it's faith in Jesus, Allah, the lottery, rabbit's feet or the Great Pumpkin.)

What to do with him? The answer is pretty clear: Let Iraq have him. If they want to kill him, let them. If they want to imprison him forever, that should be fine as well. If they want to let him go, then so be it (as unimaginable as that outcome might be, for this whole justice-and-peace thing to work we'd have to respect their decision no matter what it turns out to be). They had to live with him for the past generation, so they should get the final say-so as to what happens to him now that his rule is over. It's only right. They paid the price for his leadership.

I don't see the Iraqi being terribly just in meting out their justice. I'd certainly find it difficult to be an impartial juror at his trial, and I was never subject to his tyrannical rule. You'd kind of understand if the Iraqis went a little hard on Saddam. Regardless of whether or not the verdict would be fair, a trial in Iraq by Iraqis seems like the only reasonable thing to do. And it's probably the only way to ensure that we don't have Arab conspiracy theorists stirring up trouble for years to come. Can you imagine what sort of fantastical stories could be invented if we tried Saddam here? Or in Europe? They might as well try Saddam in Israel if they want to try him in the U.S. I'm no expert on Arab relations by any stretch, but it seems to me that there might be a lot of traction in the notion of "He is and has been an Arab problem, to be dealt with -- finally -- by Arabs."

I was no fan of the war to be sure (I think you better have some pretty damn good reasons for attacking a sovereign nation), but letting the Iraqis take care of Saddam will have made our efforts there more like we've done them a service in their interests (as well as ours).

My brother Trey found this cool site called Wee News...

There's this song I really like called "Caravan". It was written by Duke Ellington way back when and it's just a great tune. It's a great song in the same way that the theme to Johnny Quest was a great song. It sounds good on the guitar, piano, harp, mandolin, or the trumpet, with bongos in the background or with a vibraphone accompaniment. It just sounds good no matter what style it's played in, who's playing it, or what it's being played on (even the normally ass-tastic solo flute!). And that's a good thing because it's been recorded by a lot or people over the years. I've got 44 versions of the song so far and I've been meaning to get them all for a while now. As many as I can, at least, without resorting to buying Caravan compilation CDs. (Ha! There's an actual market for variations on the Caravan theme, so I'm not the only one, Tess!) EMusic.com has been very helpful in my searches.

Imagine my joy when my uncle John sent me this list he found of everyone who's recorded a version of Ellington's classic tune:

• First recording: Duke Ellington, Master Records single 131
• Winifred Atwell, The Magic Fingers of Winifred Atwell, Vol. 1, London LL 1246
• The Don Baker Trio, Cocktail Hammond, Capitol T-1099
• Vinnie Bell, Big Sixteen Guitar Favorites, Musicor MS3047
• Vincent Bell, The Best of Vinnie Bell, Musicor MS3192 (reissue of MS3047)
• Stanley Black, Exotic Percussion, London Phase 4 SP 44004
• Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Caravan, Riverside 9438
• Noel Boggs, Magic Steel Guitar, Shasta SH-LP-601
• Al Bollington, Presenting Al Bollington at the Conn Organ, Decca DL 74223
• Kenny Burrell, Ellington is Forever, vol. 1, Fantasy 79005
• John Buzon Trio, Inferno!, Liberty LRP-3108
• Billy Byers, Impressions of Duke Ellington, Mercury/Wing SRW 16397
• Al Caiola and Don Arnone, Great Pickin', Chancellor CHLS-5008
• Candido, Candido in Indigo, ABC-Paramount ABC-236
• Eddie Cano Sextet, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, and Me, BMG Tropical 3459
• Erdogan Capli, Exciting Rhythms of Piano Pasha, Time S/2074
• David Carroll, Percussion Orientale, Mercury PPS 2002
• Brothers Castro, Recorded Live at Harrah's Tahoe, Capitol T 2015
• George Cates, Take Five, Dot DLP 25400
• Chaquito and his orchestra, Hot Cha-Cha-Cha, Columbia CL 1293
• Roy Clark, The Roy Clark guitar spectacular!, Capitol T-2425
• Buddy Cole, Pipes, Pedals and Fidelity, Columbia CS 8065
• Buddy Cole, Ingenuity in Sound, Ingenuity In Sound, Warner Brothers WBS 1442
• Ray Conniff, You Make Me Feel So Young, Columbia CL 2116
• Jack Costanzo, Jack Costanzo and His Afro Cuban Band, Crescendo GNP-19
• Irv Cottler, Around The World in Percussion, Somerset P-13900
• Lenny Dee, Dee-Lirious, Decca DLP 8165
• Lenny Dee, The Lenny Dee Show, Decca DLP 8913
• Martin Denny, Exotica Vol. 3, Liberty LST-7116
• Glenn Derringer, Plays Great American Music People, Ovation OV 1707
• Ismael Diaz and his Orchestra, Honeymoon in Acapulco, Forum F9036
• Bill Doggett, A Salute to Ellington, King 533
• Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Warren Covington, The Swingin' Era, Decca DL 8914
• Kenny Drew Trio, Kenny Drew Trio, Riverside 224
• Johnny Dupont, All Stops Out!, Columbia CS 9350
• Kurt Edelhagen, Jazz from Germany, Decca DLP 8231
• El Coco, Caravan, American Variety AVI 1040
• Les and Larry Elgart, The New Elgart Touch, Columbia CS 9101
• Duke Ellington, Duke Ellington Vol. 3, Everest Records FS 266
• Duke Ellington/Max Roach/Charles Mingus, Money Jungle, Blue Note 46398
• John Elliott and his Diatonic 4, Organ Rhythms, Promenade QX1
• John Evans, Exotic Percussion and Brilliant Brass, Directional Sound DS 500
• Fabulous Jokers, The Fabulous Jokers, Monument SLP 18059
• Johnny Farina, Pure Steel, Vol. 1, Aniraf Inc. JF-17
• Ferrante and Teicher, Hi-Fireworks, Columbia CL 573
• Ella Fitzgerald, The Duke Ellington Songbook, Verve VE2-2535
• Tommy Flanagan, The Tokyo Recital, Pablo 2310-724
• Erroll Garner, Erroll Garner, Columbia CL 535
• Marty Gold, Skin Tight, RCA Victor LPM-2230
• Morton Gould, Jungle Drums, RCA Victor LM-1994
• Earl Grant, Yes Sirree!, Decca DL 74405
• Bill Haley & His Comets, Mr. Rock & Roll, Charly CDCD 1080
• Chico Hamilton Quintet, The Chico Hamilton Quintet in Stereo, World Pacific S-1005
• Alfred Hause, Hausball, Polydor 237 129
• Al Hirt, Al Hirt at Dan's Pier 600, Audio Fidelity AFSD5877
• Hollywood Pops Orchestra, Stereo Motion in Percussion, Marble Arch MALS 775
• Freddie Hubbard, The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard, Impulse LP
• Dick Hyman, A Zillion Strings, Everest ELP 1074
• Milt Jackson/Ray Brown/Joe Pass, The Duke Ellington Album, Pablo 2312-117
• Milt Jackson, Mostly Duke, Palbo 2310-944
• Illinois Jacquet, The King!, Prestige 7597
• Harry James, Still Harry After All These Years, Sheffield Labs CD-11
• Gordon Jenkins, Blue Preludes, Sunset SUS 5149
• Jackie Jocko, Like Wow, Strand SLS-1053
• Sir Julian, The Thirteen Fingers of Sir Julian, RCA Victor LSP-2372
• Bert Kaempfert, Love That Bert Kaempfert, Decca DL 74986
• Phil Kraus/Bob Rosengarden, Like Bongos, Time S/2025
• Eddie Layton, Caravan, Mercury SR 60098
• Don Lee, Crazy Rhythm, Jubilee JGM-1067
• Enoch Light, Future Sound Shock, Project 3 PR5077SD
• Enoch Light, Persuasive Percussion 1966, Command RS 895 SD
• Living Guitars, Guitar Man, RCA Camden CAS-2245
• Los Admiradores, Bongos/Flutes/Guitars, Command RS 812 SD
• Robert Lowden, Motion in Percussion, Somerset LP
• Arthur Lyman, Taboo, HiFi Record R806
• Kurt Maier, Plays Encores of Harlem, Allegro 1673
• Herbie Mann, Flautista, Verve V-8336
• Robert Maxwell, The very best of Robert Maxwell, MGM E-4246
• Ralph Marterie, Big Band Themes with 88 Strings and a Golden Horn, United Artists UAS 6177
• Buddy Merrill, The Guitar Sounds of Buddy Merrill, Accent AC 5010 SLP
• Buddy Merrill, Guitars on Fire, Accent SQBO 91997
• The Mighty Accordion Band, They Said It Couldn't Be Done, Capitol T1212
• The Mills Brothers, Swing Is the Thing, Decca MOR 535
• Thelonious Monk, Plays Duke Ellington, Riverside 201
• Hugo Montenegro, Ellington Fantasy, Vik LX-1106
• Hugo Montenegro, Others By Brothers, RCA APL1-0784
• Wes Montgomery, Movin' Wes, Verve 810 045-1
• Art Mooney, Cha-Cha-Cha, Spinorama MK 3079
• Hal Mooney/Gene Lowell Singers, Voices in Song and Percussion, Time S/2008
• Sandy Nelson, Drums Are My Beat, Imperial LP-12083
• Sandy Nelson, Manhattan Spiritual, Imperial LP-12439
• 101 Strings, 101 Strings Plus Dynamic Percussion, Alshire S-5145
• David Parker, Balalaika, World-Pacific Records ST1824
• Joe Pass, Portraits of Duke Ellington, Pablo 2310-716
• Les Paul, Les Paul NOW!, London Phase 4 SP44101
• Les Paul, The Genius of Les Paul: Multi-Trackin', London LC 50016 (reissue of London Phase 4 LP)
• Perez Prado, Our Man in Latin America, RCA Victor LSP-2610
• Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers, Tough!, Prestige 24138
• Tito Puente, Tito Puente and Friend, Tropical TRLP 5138
• Gene Rains Group, Far Across the Sea, Decca DL 74164
• Rhythm Rockers, Soul Surfin', Challenge CH 617
• Jerome Richardson, Midnight Oil, New Jazz 8205
• The River Boat Five, From Natchez to Mobile, Mercury-Wing MGW-12251-W
• David Rose, 21 Channel Sound, MGM SE4004
• Santo & Johnny, Santo & Johnny, Canadian-American SCALP-1001
• Buddy Sarkissian & his Mecca Four, Soul of the East, Cameo C-1023
• Heinz Schachtner, Trumpet in Gold Vol. 3, Polydor 543.008
• Lalo Schifrin, Piano Espanol, Tico LP-1070
• Dick Schory, Music to Break Any Mood, RCA Victor LSP-2125
• George Shearing, Shearing on Stage!, Capitol T-1187
• The Sheik's Men, The Belly Dancer, Reprise R-6056
• Tak Shindo, Brass and Bamboo, Capitol T-1345
• Felix Slatkin, Fantastic Percussion!, Liberty LST 7150
• Axel Stordahl, Jasmine Jade, Dot DLP 3282
• Art Tatum, The Best of Art Tatum, Pablo 2405-418
• Jimi Tenor, Intervision, Warp Records (UK) WARP CD48
• The Three Suns, Movin' 'n' Groovin', RCA Victor Stereo Action LSA-2532
• Tom and Jerry, Guitar's Greatest Hits, Mercury MG-20626
• Shay Torrent, Shay Torrent at the Hammond organ, Mercury MG-20415
• John Scott Trotter, Escape to the Magic Mediterranean, Warner Bros WS 1266
• The Ventures, Walk--Don't Run, Dolton BST-8003
• Ventures, Live In Japan '65, EMI 7243 8 32820 2 9
• Ventures, Live on Stage, Dolton BST 8035
• Wal-Berg and his Orchestra, Exotic Music from the Far East, Mercury SR 60601
• Walter Wanderley, Perpetual Motion Love, GNP Crescendo GNPS 2142
• Dinah Washington, The Swingin' Miss D, Emarcy 6336 714
• Ben Webster, At the Renaissance, Contemporary 7646
• Frances Wayne, The Warm Sound, Atlantic 1263
• Roger Williams, It's a Big, Wide Wonderful World, Kapp KL-1008
• George Wright, The Wright Touch, Dot DLP 3447
• Si Zentner, Si Zenter and His Orchestra Play Desafinado, Liberty LST-7273

There are some artists missing -- the list doesn't include such greats as Claw Hammer or the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble, for example -- but that should keep me busy for a while.

tess, Toddler, Wy and I all had a great trip to AZ for a Thanksgiving in PHX, plus a shooting trip at the cabin. Todd and Wy liked the shooting quite a bit, and we all had a really fun time. (Pics and movies of them shooting Uncle John's .50BMG rifle are coming soon.) The shooting trip got me to thinking about going shooting in California (which sounds oxymoronic, I know). Tracy and I only went one time, and that was back in the late 90's. I was thinking that it would be fun to go out sometime closer to home.

Well, this was certainly interesting reading. I also got a particular kick out of this page of general "Assult Weapon Characteristics". Sounds like they could also be describing some defense weapons too, but I might just be thinking too clearly.

If anyone needs a copy of Windows XP, I know where you can buy a copy.

I just realized that I almost never post an MG entry on the weekend. That got me wondering as to why, and I came to conclusion that it's because I'm always with Tracy. Me and her are always doing something together on the weekends and I'm never really bored enough to figure out a time waster to write. Even if I'm in my office and she's half done with a book downstairs, we're always sort of "together". It's hard to explain.

She's gone now, though. She's over at a friend's house celebrating the birthday of another mutual friend. Basically, all the former work chicks are getting together... and having a sleepover. So I'm Macauley Culkin tonight. Playing loud music. Doing that Tom Cruise thing in my underwear.

OK, so maybe not.

In reality, I bought a horribly expensive, 2" thick steak (strip, of course) and fired up my charcoal-based grill. I'm pairing that with sauteed onions and green beans, and I'm opening some good wine. After that I'm going to smoke an obscenely expensive cigar that Tracy gave me for my birthday.

That's dinner. But the geek in me is already toiling away -- and has been for about an hour now. I figured out the URLs that foodtv.com uses for their printable recipes. I'm grabbing all 25,000 of them, and while I'm at it I'm stripping out the JavaScript and web bug nonsense. I'm leaving the copyrights and such in, but just removing the JavaScript alone I save about 20KB per file. Once I've got all the files (or dinner is done, whichever comes first) I'm going to write a parser that adds the relevant recipe stuff to a database. Then we can use the database to search for possible dinner ideas. For instance, if we have chicken and red wine and carrots, we'd be able to get a list of all the recipes that include those ingredients. Or exclude those plus some other ingredient (like artichoke hearts or capers).

I'm toying with the idea of writing a PHP-based "recipe viewer" that the DB search app uses. It would basically spit out the recipe pages, but would also prompt you to put the recipe in a certain category. So when you come across a good squid recipe, you'd be able to add it to the "Italian" and/or "Thai" categories. Or something. I'm not sure yet how to work it. Every once in a while I get the urge to make a certain type of food. And this would help greatly. I want to be able to tell some software what major ingredients I have, and what kind of food I'm in the mood for, and then have if give me a bunch of options -- with shopping lists based on each one. And it'll be able to print the shopping list on my receipt printer upstairs. So when I have crab, ginger and honey, I'll wind up with not only a cuisine-based recipe for those ingredients, but a shopping list of what I may not have. I've been wanting that sort of thing for a long time now.

So the wife is gone all night, and I'm writing software that will make shopping lists and print out recipes. Am I getting old, or just embracing my inner geek? That's sort of disturbing...

I went and paid for Opera recently. I've bought the previous two versions but I've resisted paying for version seven. Then I went looking to see if they had any updates available and I noticd that they had a special where you could register Opera for one operating system and then get a reg code for another OS for ten bucks. Since I have Linux and Windows floating about the house, I thought it was a pretty good deal and so I paid up.

When I got my registration email, another email came along with it. It was a gift certificate that I could "send to a friend" for a free registration of Opera. Uhhh... how come I couldn't just use it to get the WIndows version for free? I don't know, but it was mildly annoying. Ten bucks ain't too much to spend anyway, I guess. I use the software all day every day.

Since I don't know any friends who use Opera, I didn't know what to do with the free registration and it seemed a shame to waste it. So I decided to submit it to Fark, saying that the best joke gets a free registration for Opera. (I can hear you asking "What, pray tell, did your B.S. fark submission link to?" My answer is obvious: the world's largest rodent.) I got a bunch of responses (over 30, actually) but the best one was this:

Tony Blair is at his weekly meeting with The Queen, when he turns round and says: "As I'm the PM, I'm thinking of changing how the Country is referred to, and I'm thinking that it should be a Kingdom". To which the Queen replies, "I'm sorry Mr Blair, but to be a Kingdom, you have to have a King in charge - and you're not a King."

Tony Blair thought a while and then said: "How about a Principality then?", To which the Queen replied "Sorry again, but to be a Principality, you have to be a Prince - and you're not a Prince, Mr Blair".

Again, Blair thought long and hard and came up with "How about an Empire then?" The Queen, getting a little pissed off by now replied "Sorry again, Mr Blair, but to be an Empire you must have an Emperor in charge - and you are not an Emperor."

Before Tony Blair could utter another word, The Queen said: "I think we're doing quite nicely as a Country".

Subtle and dry. It took me about 30 seconds to get it, and then I laughed my ass off. I thought the various Anglophilic types in the family might also enjoy that one and so awarded the author with a free registration.

An honorable mention was the following:

How do you know when it's bed time at Michael Jackson's house?

When the big hand touches the little hand.

That Jackson weirdo is comedy gold, I tell you...

Tracy and I saw the re-release of Alien last night (digital cinema, with only one other person in the theater -- it was amazingly cool and I'm tempted to go back before the release is over). Tracy had never seen it in the theater, so this was a nice chance to catch it on the big screen. The director's cut is much better than the original release, by the way. There's a scene where Ripley finds Dallas barely alive and cocooned, and he's begging her to kill him. Which foreshadowed the sequel vey well, I thought. I don't know why they cut that out.

But what got me the most enthused wasn't the movie itself. One of the trailers in the previews had me giggling like a schoolgirl. Go to the movie's website to see what I mean. Now download the trailer and imagine hearing it coming out of the theater's monster sound system. That particular "clicking" sound was immediately recognizable. I had a strong feeling of "this couldn't possibly be what I think it is... they just don't make that kind of movie..." But it's true. Even if it's as bad as Event Horizon it'll still be orders of magnitude better than 95% of the crap Hollywood puts out.

I'm betting that a certain someone I know who claims to not like going to the movies (I know! weird, isn't it?) will be lining up for this one.

So after scoring the lowest score possible for a young person alive but not in a coma during during the 80's on the music test over on Tess' page (I got 31.85; Tess got in the 140's), I was glad to see that Mig had a test linked on his site which might allow me to bandage my wounded psyche:

How DUMB are you? Brought to you by the good folks at sacwriters.com.

I thought the test itself was pretty amusing. I got the same result as Mig (an honor). But that meant it has the picture of that nerd who kinda looks like me (not so much an honor). I need a test that lies to me.

I saw this Halloween costume idea on slashdot:

dress up like a Priest and tape 2 pairs of boys underwear to your arm....

you're a catholic priest on the patch.

It made me laugh for much longer than it should have.

So I'm off tomorrow (again; the school's been closed since Monday because of the fires in San Diego). It's like Saturday night, and I'm bored, confined to the indoors, and thinking about those albums I have in my emusic.com stash to download.

I've been downloading like a nut (I've nabbed like maybe 20+ GB from emusic.com since July) but haven't done much until lately. After a marathon session, I've come to realiiize that Eek A Mouse is like audio crack. Seriously. Now I know why we used to listen to him in high school. Listen to the 30-second sample of Assassinator if you don't believe me. It's like audio herion, I swear...

As my friend Greg pointed out: 27 is the largest number that is the sum of the digits of its cube. 27³ = 19683 and 1 + 9 + 6 + 8 + 3 = 27. See?

Hard to argue with something like that.

Tess and I went up to PHX for a four-way birthday: My dad's, my uncle John's, my brother Shawn's, and my sister in-law Lauren's (Shawn's wife). The party was on Saturday, and we all had a great time. There were zero shenanigans and much fun, which is always welcome. Uncle John recently bought a .50 caliber bolt action rifle, and so we planned a small, impromptu shooting trip for Sunday afternoon. Not having smelled burnt gunpowder in quite a long time, I was eager to go. I was doubly eager when I learned that my friend of 20 years Andy was going to meet us for the party and then go shooting that next day. Hanging out with Andy at night and shooting in the morning is just about my idea of a perfect weekend.

Tess unfortunately started getting sick Sunday morning, and opted to stay at my parents' house. That meant that I could drive my 4Runner, and then leave the shooting thing early, getting us both home sooner than expected. I was originally going to fly out Sunday night, and Tess was going to drive (with the dog) back to San Diego, but we figured that we we could save some cash by me driving us all back after the shooting trip. That way, Tess could nap all day. And I really didn't want her driving, and us driving together saved us a hundred bucks, so it worked out fairly well (as well as it can with one person feeling like ass, I suppose). And for the record, I'd like to say that Tess is an A-1 trooper for bearing up while I went off with the boys. A luckier fella you will not find.

We went to a place off I-17's Bloody Basin exit. It's about halfway between Phoenix and Prescott (where Andy lives), so it worked out well for all of us. After driving a while, we found a flat spot with a big, mountainous backstop not too far away. We set about placing 1 gallon recycleable plastic water jugs up on the far hill (about 200-250 yards away) and broke out the guns, cameras and tables.

Uncle John made a terrible discovery while unpacking: he brought the wrong scope for the 50BMG and so couldn't mount the optics -- there were no rings. Since his new rifle had no iron sights (which would be useless on a rifle than can hit targets out to a mile), this was somewhat of a let-down. We decided that we should at least see if the thing could fire, even if we couldn't see how accurately we could fire it. After all, it's not every day that you get to shoot a .50 caliber rifle, and there we were with it and a few hundred rounds of ammo. And we all wanted to shoot it pretty badly (even -- and especially -- uncle John; he had fired a lot of different weapons during his tours in Viet Nam, but never an M2 ). So we shot it by sighting down the barrel, which was accurate to within about 30 feet at 200 yards. We called it a "break-in" period.

We took a bunch of pictures with the aforementioned cannon. This is one of me (complete with a really goofy look on my face) trying to hold it up. Yes, the gun is as absurd as it looks, and it weighs a ton. But it can shoot a really, really long way. I was badly wanting to try it with a scope, but happy to shoot it anyway (I did get pretty close to my intended water jug target: about 10 feet or so).

Andy brought a few guns with him as well, including a few "special" ones: a select-fire M16 and a select-fire Mac-11 with a silencer (picture the gun Bruce Willis used in his apartment to shoot John Travolta in the movie Pulp Fiction; it's the same exact weapon, and fires just as fast as it did in the movie). They are both hellaciously fun. I had never shot the M11 before so for the first magazine, I set it to semi-auto and picked a far-away rock at which to plink. At around 100 yards, I had to put the tip of the front site just a little bit over the top of the rear peep site to hit the beach-ball sized rock (meaning I didn't look through the hole of the rear site).

Single-shot was nice, but that's like driving a Ferrari 55 MPH. You only get so many chances to open one of those up, and so it is with a fully-automatic, silcened submachine gun. Besides, the M11 isn't exactly known for its accuracy (when I told Andy where I had to sight the weapon to hit that far-away rock, he was surprised; he had never tried to shoot it at a target that far away). So the next magazine I had with it went pretty fast, although I shot in groups of two or three. I was very impressed with how accurate it was in that mode. You hold it at your hip or with the wire stock tucked under your arm, and you "guess" where it's going to shoot without sighting it. Then you very carefully squeeze off two or three rounds, and note where they hit. Adjust accordingly, shoot again, and when you get where you want to be, you just hold the trigger down. I covered a decent-sized area out by the water jugs, and while I didn't hit any of them, a human-sized target would have had a hard time being there.

The M16A2 on full auto is just as nice. I do confess to one small problem with M16s in general (and those firing fully automatically in particular): the noise the spring in the rear stock makes goes right through my head. I find M16s/AR15s very hard to shoot comfortably. So I off-handed the M16 in a way similar to the M11. It's easy to get close when you've got 30 or so rounds coming out that fast.

Since we got there at about 3:30 pm, we didn't have a lot of time to shoot (even less when the Yavapai county sheriff who heard the full-auto fire came by wanting to see Andy's Class3 paperwork -- which he had and which she was happy to see). We started packing up well before dark (we save all our brass), but Andy had a couple magazines loaded that he wanted to blow off. There was a cattle pond a little ways away from where we set up, so he went there to shoot (we had all taken off and packed up our hearing protection at this point, so he had to go somewhere else to shoot). Andy went out there and laid down what can best be called a "suppressing fire". He just swept 30 rounds of .223 from side to side into the small pond, and the water plumes made everyone think of the fountains at the Bellagio.

Of course, nobody had a camera pointed at the event, so we had to recreate it. I figured twice the plumage was twice the Kodak moment, so I got 32 rounds of 9mm from Shawn, loaded Andy's M11, and then met Andy by the pond. On the count of 3, we shot our guns. That's me on the left. I swept left to right, Andy right to left. You can see some of the impacts of his rounds on the right while mine were gone by the time the pic was taken. The M11 fires at a higher rate than the M16. I wanted to shoot a .50 caliber round into the pond for comparitive spray purposes, but the rifle was packed by that point.

I'm looking forward to a trip where we can use the ATVs at the cabin to drive targets out to a mile. I seriously want to put money down on "closest to the black" on a one mile target. I just don't want to wait while we walk all the way out to the target.

Aside from Tess being ill, it was a good trip.

I've found the perfect application: NaDa 0.5.

It does nothing. It does it very well. I have installed on every machine I own, and it's not doing anything incredibly efficiently, and exactly as they said it would. Perfection.

I can't wait for NaDa 0.0.

Big election in California today. I'm not telling who I'm voting for (but I will say that the candidate's name rhymes with "pants-in-agar"). If you live in CA, whatever you do, don't vote for Gary Coleman. He's violent.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Call this number: 310-228-3665.

Then go here to find out what the hell Elvis is talking about.

"Must be some kinda Bubba Ho-Tep..." Heh heh.

Last year I wote an entry here which talked about how William Shatner was set to participate in the "world's largest paintball game". Well, the event happened, and was apparently suitable for filiming.

Am I the only one who wants to see this? Am I the only one who wants to see Shatner get lit up? Am I the only one who wants to see if he does that sideways running/rolling thing while Alexander Courage music plays in the background? I mean, if you can't actually set your paintball marker to kill and tag TJ yourself, the next best thing is living vicariously, right? Although, I admit that it would have been hard to not make hissing Gorn type noises if I had actually gone to the paintball match, and that would have screwed up their audio.

Oh, one more thing: Nice goggles, Kirk.

AT&T can help you make your own Middle Earth movie, right in your own home! Just go to their Text-to-Speech Interactive Multi-Lingual Demo page. Now enter something appropriate in the text box. I thought this sounded pretty good:

The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost, for none now live who remember it.

Next, select the voice to use. You want 'Audrey .... UK English'. She's by far the most elfish. Push the "SPEAK" button and record your dialog. Presto! Instant dialog with a fake english accent. And you don't have to encounter even the fainest whiff of patchouli to get the sound bytes. That's an extra bonus, IMO.

While I admit that the concept of impersonating an elf (or your average sexually ambiguous non-bather from Seattle with a British affectation) is fascinating, I had a much better time having 'Reiner .... German' say stuff like "Vee want zeh money Lay-bow-skee! Give uss zeh money, or we'll cut off your johnson." (Yes, even though Reiner is supposedly German, you have to spell out the dialog in "Hun fashion" like a Sherwood Schwartz script.) Hey, at least I kept it rated PG. I mean, I didn't completely devolve into base humor...

And 'Alain .... French'? Don't even get me started. I didn't even make it to opening Google in a new window before I realized George Bush's State of the Union address was just too obvious. But working within their 36 word limit was just too much of a constraint to keep my interest from waning, and so I leave the TTS system for another day.

Living examples of this tree called a Wollemi Pine, which was though to have been extinct for about two million years, were found a few years ago in Australia. Well, according to this BBC article, botanists have figured out a way to best cultivate the plant in a commercial setting. In other words, in 2005 you can have a 200 million year old tree on your porch. Which is the coolest thing I've heard in a long, long time. I'm getting one of these for certain.

There's this image making the email rounds which is supposedly an oil tanker heading into Hurricane Isabel. I got it in email yesterday, and proceeded to email it out to some friends. It's a cool pic. The problem is that it's not Hurricane Isabel. It's not recent either. It's not even from the Atlantic. According to the National Weather Service it's Cyclone Graham, which hit the Pacific in 2002.

Thanks to Pete, who gave me the straight dope (and the above link) in a reply to my email, I was able to contact everyone's favorite urban legend authority Snopes, who has a "research in progress" page on the image.

I'm all about keyboards. I've belabored the point enough to prove that. But some people take a keyboard fetish a little too far.

Oh yeah, one more keyboard update, and then I'm done forever: Index Computer apparently got wise to the fact that they were sitting on a keyboard goldmine. They're for those $20 keyboards I bought last week. Supply and demand, or referrer logs? Your guess is as good as mine.

You have t' talk like a pirate tomorrow, or else thar'll be some swabbin'o't'poopdeck in your future.

And just so that you can practice for the big day, you might try running some of H-Dawg's fine prose through the English-to-Pirate Translator:

Ay yo, wassup, Gs? If y'all aksed me what paradise wuz to tha H-Dog, I'd say it be three things: customas payin' they accountz on time without me having to go all Walkin' Tall on they ass, a endless supply o' Nutrageous barz in tha break-room vendin' machine, an' last but not least, a seven-day work week wit' no muthafukkin' dayz off to fuck wit' mah flow.

Feast your eyes on this. Some good desktop wallpaper in there...

So when you find that you can't print a document, you mosey on over to your wife's Windows XP mcahine (to which the printer is attached), and you turn on the monitor to discover that it's BSOD'ed, what do you do? I don't know what you do. I'll tell you what I do. I take a picture of it. Then I transcribe the text (weird capitalization and all). Then I go grab the lastest version of xscreensaver, find the source to the BSOD hack, add in the WinXP crash. Then I make a patch and submit it to the author so everyone can see the XP goodness without actually having to put up with using Windows.

No better way to spend a lunch hour, lemme tell ya.

It's not often that I can cross something off my project list, so when I can it's a happy day. I finally have a cooling solution for my office, something which I've been planning to do for over three years. Here's a picture of the item in question. I've had it running for about 25 minutes and my office is at least 10 degrees cooler than it used to be. I think for the first time since I moved in, my office is the same temperature as the rest of the house.

Originally I was going to install a fan in the ceiling, which would have an added benefit of venting the attic as well. But after thinking about it, I decided that since I only need cooling in the summer, cutting a hole in my roof wasn't totally necessary. Besides, I couldn't find all the ducting and such that I would have needed (and the largest fan I could find only moved 300 CFM of air, which wouldn't do very much for me). So I decided to replace the box fan that was sitting in my window with something a little more potent. The box fan was on its last legs as well. It made a noise like a rat with a hot nail through its eye on any speed but low, and that provided very little ventilation. Home Depot sells fans for venting attics, and I bought one of those.

The first incarnation of the window unit had a plywood insert which the window would close to. I figured that this would help keep down on the noise from outside. After thinking about that idea in conjunction with my monster fan, it looked like vibration would be a factor, and so I had to figure out something else. Then it occurred to me that I could literally replace my window fan.

It's ugly as hell, but it was easy to build and the parts were cheap (the fan itself was $49.00; everything else came to like twenty bucks). It's just a couple two-by-four frames held together with some angle bracket. The fan bolts onto the front frame, and the rear frame holds the power switch and thermostat. The wire mesh on the front and back keeps fingers out of harm's way. It even has features too: there's a carrying hadle on the top of the front frame and cord storage on the left side of the rear. It gets power from a repurposed extension cord. And because it was made to mount in attics, the motor has built in thermal protection.

The one drawback is that it's a little loud. But since fan noise has never bugged me much, it's not that big of a deal. Besides, I have the thermostat tweaked so that it'll shut off at night. During the day car noise is drowned out by the white noise of the fan, so that's actually a bonus. Frankly, I'll put up with a little noise if it means my office is cooler than the average suana.

Having an office mate that listens to house/dance music, of course.

He's not a bad guy, really. Kinda acts/looks like someone you might see in the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, though. Hair gel, very clean shaven, tan, and a predilection for jeans that have bleached-out, "worn" areas on the thighs. That sort of thing. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Update: In case I wasn't totally clear, my new office mate is completely straight. He's quite a hit with the ladies at work apparently. I was only trying to describe him, not relate anything about his sexual preferences. He's not gay, just stylish. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Yesterday I came home to find that the plates had come for my new car. Today I came home and found a weirdly-shaped envelope for me from Toyota Financial Services. It's a banner week for the USPS and my 4Runner.

The envelope was very fancy. It had a couple different layers of nice-feeling paper in a "take one pocket out of the other" sort of arrangement. Like a DVD case inside a sleeve. Sorta. Inside the smallest pocket of nice paper was a leather folder about 8" x 4". Apparently since I financed my second Toyota through TFS, I got a holder for my registration, insurance card, parking permit, etc. Which is terribly cool.

I opened the doc holder to find a translucent, wedding invitation-like sheet that said I should go to this certain web address and pick out a free gift, as a token of their thanks. That's awfully nice of them. I mean, I don't need a present. I'd actually rather they lower the finance charge a little. And honestly, part of me badly wanted to dissect the URLs in order to see what other "prizes" one can get. Presumeably they have better gifts for people buying their 13th Toyota, right? My "offer code" was a not-very-long decimal number. What other numbers are there? What else did my purchase subsidize? Inquiring minds want to know!

After about 2 minutes of rational thought I shelved all that nonsense and went to the site. After all, I only paid a couple hundred over dealer invoice, and I was happy with my deal. Who cares about the stuff paid for by the guy who pays what the sticker says?

They have some pretty nice gifts I must admit, even without the hax0ring. What to get? I like the rechargeable hand vac. The wheeling duffel would be nice. I don't need tools. The radios are something I've wanted for a long time, however. I'll get them.

Every once in a while I see something that makes me want to move to Australia. Or New Zealand maybe. Somewhere.

Ever wondered what goes on in the cockpit (and between the pilots and the tower) before an airliner crashes? I always have. Well, wonder no longer.

It's pretty sad stuff...

PorkNozzle is a Giant Squid that can Regenerate, controls the Weather, spits Ice, and has a Terrible Roar and a Massively Swollen Skull. Strength: 8 Agility: 3 Intelligence: 13 To see if your Giant Battle Monster can defeat PorkNozzle, enter your name and choose an attack: fights PorkNozzle using Strength Agility Intelligence

This one's much better. Not as agile, but that intelligence combined with three special attacks??? Nobody can stand up against my mighty PorkNozzle!

SuperSquelchy is a Giant Dragon that lives Underwater, leaves a Trail of Goo, and has Heavy Metal Armour. Strength: 8 Agility: 7 Intelligence: 8 To see if your Giant Battle Monster can defeat SuperSquelchy, enter your name and choose an attack: fights SuperSquelchy using Strength Agility Intelligence

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.

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 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.

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.

There's only one possible cure for a day like yesterday. One sure way to turn blah into hurrah.

Every have a day (or weekend) where nothing went right? Where nothing you did worked out? Where everything had a certain taint about it? I couldn't even get "sleep" done correctly. Blah.

Double blah.

I took the Queer Quiz. Here are my results:

You scored a 12. You are 16.4% queer. Unfortunately you are not very queer. You scored in the bottom 25th percentile in queerness. You are destined to be stuck in a life of bitchy girlfriends, child rearing, and cunnilingus. Enjoy!

Others in your queerness category: Hulk Hogan, Rosie O'Donnell, Mr. T.

From what I could tell from the guy's quiz, a person's "queerness" involves mostly a fashion sense. Which I don't have. So I'm not sure about the validity of the test, but anything that puts me in the company of Mr. T can't be all that bad (Rosie's presence notwithstanding). The girl's quiz seems like it'd be a pretty good barometer of queerness, however.

The last couple weeks, I've been thinking about getting a new vehicle. I love my Tacoma, and it runs like a champ. Sixty thousand miles and the only thing I've had to do to it is normal preventative maintenance. It's just getting a little old is all. And I honestly don't need a truck all that much. It's been handy to haul things, but I'd like to have an enclosed space instead of an open truck bed. I was going to get a shell for the truck, but they're pretty expensive. That got me thinking about my old Jeep Cherokee. I could fit a lot of stuff in it -- probably as much as I could in my truck if it had a shell.

I happened to see a Toyota 4Runner on the way to work one morning. Then that got me thinking about my old Jeep. I figure I can haul nearly as much in a 4Runner. And it's already enclosed. Plus, I can haul two more people if I need to. I won't be able to haul weird-sized stuff or stuff headed for the dump, but that's a trade-off I can live with. Leaves and junk I can put out with the trash and they recycle it. I have a Sawzall for anything else that won't fit into the dumpster.

I shelved the thought until I got a letter from a dealership here in town who wants late 90's Tacomas with six cylinder engines and four wheel drive. Which I have. I'm nearly positive that letter is nothing more than an enticement to get me into the dealership to buy (or lease) a new truck, but if they'll give me good cash, then I'm game.

So I went on the web and started looking around at Toyotas, just window shopping. I've been convincing myself that I don't really need a new car, but it never hurts to look. And then I saw one of the options the 4Runner comes with. Yeah: touch-screen GPS navigation. In the dash. It's K.I.T.T. fer cryin' out loud. How can you not like that?! I'm completely and totally hooked now.

I'm a bad, bad consumer. But I'm trying very hard to resist. But that isn't working too well. I'm conflicted. "It's only two throusand extra. You can swing that," says the little red guy on the left shoulder. "But you already have a nice Garmin GPS with a cig plug adapter (which also has a serial cable so you can plug it into your Thinkpad). And you have a portable dash mount for it. It works perfectly well," says the white guy on the right shoulder. To which the red guy replies, "That's a handheld model; it's a different animal altogether." "And what the hell do animals have to do with anything?!?" "You know, you little white angel dudes aren't supposed to swear. The Big Guy frowns on that shit. Knock it off or I'm telling." "Bah! Get bent..."

They've been at it for two days now:

Red: Lookee here, nizzle: the touch screen is undoubtably the shizzle. Yo.
White: Ok there, DJ Jazzy Wee. The handheld GPS unit you already own works just fine for what you need to do.
Red: My 'Nilla...
White: Ok, stop that.
Red: Bling bling.
White: Quit! You're far too white nerd for that gangsta business. Stop it before you embarass us any further.
Red: Uh huh, whatevah. So the handheld model you have. Does it by chance have a touch screen? Is it easy to see in the daylight? Is it voice-activated? Does it jiggle on that hinky dash mount or is it in-dash? Surrounded by buttons to fiddle with?
White: Well, no. But does it really need to be?
Red: It does if you want to be cool. Eric would think it's cool.
White: Cool?!? Eric's a medical doctor, he can afford cool! You're just a computer geek, and only want the touch screen because it's a gadget.
Red: Well no shit, Captain Obvious. Of course I want it because it's a gadget! Eric would get the DVD screen for sure.
White: I think you'd be a lot cooler if you were 2 large richer and dependant on a very fine handheld model GPS.
Red: But you make payments on that 2 grand. It's not like you have to walk down and buy it with cash from the ATM.
White: So you pay interest on it, huh? Smart...
Red: Sell some of that QCOM that's been laying around doing nothing.
White: You don't sell something that will likely appreciate over time for something that will depreciate immediately! That's dumb.
Red: What a wack-job. That stock was rainy-day money. It's non-necessary for daily living. It's play money. Put it to work. It's not like to have to sell all of your stock.
White: But it's peace of mind money, too. When you need a few thousand, it's there.
Red: It's stock. There's no guarantees that it'll be worth squat in two years. Sell it.
White: You'll regret it. You're already feeling small bits o' guilt about buying a new car when you don't really need one...
Red: Do the right thing: get the Limited. You're already spending a lot, why not a little more for that much more value? You'll get a better resale too.
White: You know the Sport model has that X-REAS suspension.
Red: Doh!
White: Heh heh. And you know you'll get use out of that.
Red: And if you check Toyota's options page you'll see that the kicking undercarriage is an option on the Limited, too.
White: Stop! Enough of this nonsense. You're talking about a $37,000 vehicle at this point. Get real, man! That's waaaay too much and you know it. Yeah, you could buy the car, and you could pay it off just fine, but do you really want $600 a month car payments on a 72 month loan? Nix the touch screen and Limited options, and as a concession get the Sport with a couple other toys. That's reasonable. And you also get built-in justifcation for Tess on the entire purchase.
Red: Damn you. Damn you straight to Hades you do-goody, no-account blankety-blank white shoulder dude.
White: Boo-yah. Who's your daddy? Punk-ass bitch...

So I'm thinking now that the Sport model would be fine. With the 10-way surround sound audio system and the retracting moonroof. And maybe the double-decker cargo deal that slides up out of the floor.

Well, from Japan, anyway. Same difference. This company called J-List sells "wacky" stuff (their term) from Japan, including t-shirts they concocted from various Japanese slogans and signs and whatnot. Some of them are pretty damn funny. I think I'm going to have to order one. I'm conflicted as to which one to get. There's an appealing concept behind the enjoy smoking and drinking after age 20, the no grab-ass on the subway one has a nice "conversation-starting" graphic, but the I'm a strange foreigner one is pretty accurate (and the shirt is a nice color, which would match my decidedly gaijinly eye color).

After thinking about it, however, I'd have to get the heno heno mo heji shirt I think, if only for the purely non-sequiturish value of it. You think I'm kidding? I've got my order placed and credit card out of my wallet, buster.

Oh, and I wouldn't go poking around on that site too awful much if you're browsing the web from like church or anything. There are some interesting items for sale.

A former co-worker named Chipman sent me a couple links in email just now. And if it's from Chippy, you know it's not run-of-the-mill nastiness. He always has the best nasty. I don't know where he finds some of his stuff. He makes Fark look pedestrian sometimes.

He sent me two links about Balut, a Filipino delicacy I had thankfully never heard about. The second link included eating directions (scroll down to the last paragraph).

Ahem.

I think that actually writing down any of the dozens of thoughts floating around in my head right now could, at very best, be considered an uncharitable commentary of the culture of our citizens from South Seas. Didn't mom always tell you, "If you don't have anything nice to say..."? She said that to me more than once. So instead of indicting myself further by prattling on about the weirdness other people of the world ingest, I'll leave you with just two words: "Balut Farts".

A long time ago my mom went to England and asked us all what sort of souvenirs we wanted. I asked for a dictionary. I thought it would be fun to be able to look up "English" words. This was before the interweb, after all, and looking something up meant using what was on your shelf or a trip to the library. So don't nobody give me no grief about asking my mom to haul dead trees around the globe. It was an analog world then.

Anyway, she did indeed nab me a dictionary, and I did indeed use it. But she also got me another reference book called "The Dictionary Of Slang". I still have it, in fact. It was published by Penguin Press, and was a couple hundred pages of British, Australian and American slang. I seriously doubt that my mom read through it at all before she bought it since there was no way she would have purchased it (much less actually held it in her hands or put it in her suitcase) if she had given the book even more than a couple minute's attention. It had some pretty raunchy stuff in it. The cover was rather benign, however.

The American slang entries were the funniest part, believe it or not. If I ever went back in time to, say, 1972 and found myself in, say, downtown Detroit, I'd have had the lingo down cold. I found myself using more than a prudent amount of those entries for a nerdy white kid in the 80s. But at the time, calling someone a wanker or a wally or whatever wasn't nearly as cool or useful as some of the other American slang terms (which people were more likely to know -- or at least have heard in popular American entertainment). I admit now, however, that I have actually gained more practical use out of recalling the British entries. For example, I've had several dodgy creations bollocks up my plans through the years. What am I'm on about, you ask?

That lack of dub-dub-dub I mentioned before? Predictably, technology has solved problems that weren't really in much need of a solution. You can get pretty much the same slang dictionary without having to ask your mother to tote it back from the Old Country for you. Sadly, it doesn't seem to include any of the U.S. enthnic or prison slang, but a couple strolls through there and you'll be an expert in the British language in no time. Just remember to always put a question at the end of every statement and you'll do fine.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go crimp off a length.

Oh no, there goes Tokyo, go go Godzilla!

Everyone has to have an opinion about the new Matrix movie. I'm all carpal-tunneled out from typing all day, so in the interests of brevity I'm going to borrow one.

Having "said" that, I will say that I liked it and I do want to see it again. But it isn't the pinnacle of modern cinema people are making it out to be. It's a live-action anime kung fu movie, nothing more. It's entertainment, and it served its purpose.

Sometimes a stray thought comes into my head and I don't know how it got there or why I bother thinking about it at all. Just now I found myself correcting a couple small grammatical errors in the comments of the source to a program I'm writing at work and I paused for a moment while wondering, "Are comments to source code considered literature?" Then I caught myself staring off into space and went back to work.

Sometimes I find myself giving up far too much mental power to these kinds of inane questions, and very often I can't remember what went on while I was off woolgathering in la-la land. Yesterday, for example, on the drive home from work I lost about 10 minutes when I caught myself pondering "If the Cylons were made of metal which was polished to a mirror finish, how could they be affected by Starbuck's and Apollo's laser pistols? Wouldn't the beams just reflect off them harmlessly?"

I took the Dante's Inferno Hell Test. Did so-so. Middle of the road. I'm a moderate, I guess. Here's my score:

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Fifth Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Extreme
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very High

In addition to National Spank-Out Day, my birthday is also free cone day at Baskin-Robbins. That's hardly surprising, as many wonderous and exciting things not involving ice cream or beating your child have happened on April 30^th. To wit:

1789 - The First Presidential Inauguration
1803 - The Louisiana Purchase
1864 - Civil War battle of Jenkin's Ferry in Arkansas
1927 - First federal prison for women opens
1945 - Hitler Commits Suicide
1948 - Land Rover introduced at the Amsterdam Auto Show
1964 - DEC unveils PDP-7
1967 - Wee
1975 - Saigon Falls
1992 - CERN declares WWW open to all without fees
1997 - Ellen comes out

See all the good stuff? We got presidents, a bunch of land meant to go to the French, the death of Hitler (far too late, IMHO), Ellen, the commies finally taking Viet Nam back, the coolest 4WD vehicles ever made, and the dub dub dub. What more could anyone possibly want?

Some people who were also born on 4/30 include:

1898 - Cornelius Vanderbilt (tycoon)
1912 - Eve Arden (actress)
1914 - Vermont Royster (writer)
1916 - Robert Shaw (conductor)
1923 - Percy Heath (jazz musician)
1930 - Cloris Leachman (actress)
1933 - Willie Nelson (singer and tax-dodging dope addict)
1938 - Gary Collins (actor)
1941 - Johnny Farina (musician)
1943 - Bobby Vee (singer)
1944 - Jill Clayburgh (actress)
1944 - Richard Schoff (singer)
1946 - Don Schollander (Olympic Hall of Famer)
1948 - Perry King (actor)

Now that's company to be proud of! Time for a cone...

I joined the International Registry of Large Congenital Melanocytic Nevi and Neurocutaneous Melanosis. Something with a name that incomprehensible just has to be joined. I put my info in, hit submit. Maybe they can get some use out of it.

That's a pretty scary form, though. I've never seen an oncologist, and I never want to. Apparently lots of people have complications so I guess I've been lucky. I'm especially glad I probably dodged that whole "mutant brain tissue" thing. And I'm really glad I didn't need rectal nevus surgery. That's gotta suck. Still, this is something which is more than a little depressing. Poor kids. They won't be smiling when they grow up...

Guess which conference I'll never be attending? Yeesh.

What is with my unintentional fascination about medical disorders lately? Maybe I'm feeling my mortality, what with a birthday approaching.

I think I'm mostly all better. I didn't do squat all weekend, and I went to work today. My average temp is somewhere in the 99 and a half degrees area, I can feel my jaw (which doesn't hurt all that badly anymore), I'm less weary/achy than before, my headache is down to a manageable thumping sensation, and I can almost always breathe out of one nostril. All I have left is phlegm. Lots and lots of thick, off-color phlegm. Nasally, I mean.

Yes, life is good.

I asked my doctor about that black crap and he seemed to think it was an unlikely culprit. If I inhaled it on Tuesday I should have been sicker sooner than Monday. Maybe. He really didn't want to hear about black dust mystery powder, and I maybe belabored the point with him somewhat. He thinks instead that it caused me to have a severe allergic reaction which then left me overly susceptible to something I came in contact with in San Jose the next couple days. And Todd started getting ill right around Saturday, while I felt bad Sunday and went into full bloom Wednesday. So there's more evidence against the mystery powder.

The good news is that three horse pill-sized Amoxicillin capsules each day work wonders in combating the infestation which has been giving me so much grief. I'm not overly keen on taking antibiotics, but one must do what one must. I also have some nifty cortisone nasal spray that I can try to inhale in order to reduce congestion. It doesn't work that well, but I like the noise so I keep trying.

I'm going to inquire as to how I go about getting my office cleansed of black residue. Doctor's orders.

I didn't really sleep well last Saturday night. That was the last night we were in San Jose. I had a low-level headache and some bad nasal irritation, but I chalked it up to staying on the smoking floor, mold in the carpet, running around all week in an unfamiliar place, whatever.

I slept maybe 4 hours Sunday night. I woke up with a scratchy throat and a runny nose. Monday night I woke up at four am and couldn't get back to sleep, same stuff. During the daytime, I'm drag ass tired, my neck hurts, and I've been unusually stuffed up (unusual for me anyway -- I'm almost always stuffed up because I'm allergic to so many things). Been stuffed up for a week, come to think of it.

Last night I woke up at 5 am and couldn't breathe at all through my right nostril and my head was pounding. I felt really hot, too. My upper right teeth all hurt, and my cheekbone felt exactly like it does the day after you've been hit by someone's fist -- a dull throb. I feel like someone went a half inch behind and one inch below my right eye and cracked a bone inside my head.

I woke up, emailed in sick to work (which probably made my supervisor really happy; he's not yet mailed me back) and took a Dayquil. I'm running a low grade fever (it's around 100 after Dayquil and aspirin; my normal body temperature is about 97 and a half) and I can't feel my upper right teeth. My whole palate is numb. I have a microheadache just behind my right eye. My cheek is swollen. My left nostril is clear as a bell, but when I blow my right one, thick yellow pasty stuff comes out. Nasal spray doesn't clear it up.

Tess went looking online and did some self-diagnosis. I think I have chronic sinusitis. Let's see what that page says:

What are the symptoms of sinusitis? The location of your sinus pain depends on which sinus is affected.

Ok. Everything on the right side of my nose between my scalp and lower jaw is killing me. Real helpful. Let's examine the symptoms.

Headache when you wake up in the morning is typical of a sinus problem.

Head still hurts. Check.

Pain when your forehead over the frontal sinuses is touched may indicate that your frontal sinuses are inflammed.

Nope, no forehead pain. One symptom down...

Infection in the maxillary sinuses can cause your upper jaw and teeth to ache and your cheeks to become tender to the touch.

Every tooth I own in my upper right jaw is killing me. I can't touch my right cheek.

Check.

Since the ethmoid sinuses are near the tear ducts in the corner of the eyes, inflammation of these cavities often causes swelling of the eyelids and tissues around your eyes, and pain between your eyes. Ethmoid inflammation also can cause tenderness when the sides of your nose are touched, a loss of smell, and a stuffy nose.

Sweeling of eyelids and pain near eyes? Vision in my right eye is blurry and when I push gently on my right eyelid (with my eyes closed) I can hear a squishing sound inside my cheekbone. So check and check for those symptoms. Tenderness in nose, check. Loss of smell? Check. Stuffy nose: double check.

Although the sphenoid sinuses are less frequently affected, infection in this area can cause earaches, neck pain, and deep aching at the top of your head.

Nope, no earaches. I have a ringing in my ears, though, and a very deep ache in my head. Half check.

Most people with sinusitis, however, have pain or tenderness in several locations, and their symptoms usually do not clearly indicate which sinuses are inflamed.

So all my sinus cavities are infected with something? Well, that's just fucking great. What else can I look for?

Other symptoms of sinusitis can include:

Fever
Weakness
Tiredness
A cough that may be more severe at night
Runny nose (rhinitis) or nasal congestion

Check.
Check.
Check.
Check.
Check.

Super.

Now that I look back on it, I think I know what started it. I recently moved to a new office, and it has windows which open. I think that's really cool. The guy who was there before me (he's been in that office since at least '91) did a lot of handyman-type work with tools and whatnot, and along the walls had really high workbenches which had a backing to them. These backings covered the bottom half of the windows, which don't close quite all the way. Some moisture gets in. I think you can see where this is going.

There's a strange black junk/powder/weird stuff all along the bottom of the windows which had benches in front of them. I guessed it was mold or mildew or something. After all, at least thirteen years of sawdust and normal dust and airborne particulates had fallen behind those benches, where it couldn't be cleaned and where the barely open window has let moist air in. Perfect aerobic breeding ground. So now I have my desk sitting under those windows. That didn't bug me since I'm actually not allergic to mold or mildew.

Last Tuesday I was feeling fine. Right after lunch, I picked up a napkin from the stack that I keep on my side desk (which directly under a window; my regular desk is perpendicular to the wall). I put that stack of napkins there the previous Friday after lunch. When I picked it up, I noticed that it had a fine layer of that black dust on it. I remember all this because at the time I thought it was odd that four days was enough to cause such a large amount of dust, and wondereed about the health effects of the stuff; I wondered if it was getting into my keyboard, should I be washing my hands more, that sort of thing. Anyway, I brushed the dust off and blew my nose.

After I blew my nose, I went into a 20 minute sneezing session. I figured my allergies started acting up so I grabbed the nasal spray I keep with me for times when my allergies get really bad (I can't take antihistamines unless I have the time to sleep it off, so I have to go with a topical cure for my near-constant allergies). So I gave myself a bunch of really deep squirts with the spray. That was dumb. Whatever black junk that was only just inside my nostril had now been sprayed and forcefully inhaled way up into my sinuses.

What followed that afternoon was an eight hour bout of some of the worst congestion and runniness I've ever experienced. Those of you who know me will recognize the gravity of that observation. It ended only when I took a benadryl that night, although then it continued on into the next morning. During the time I was at work, I used up a 5 inch stack of napkins (they're the dense brown paper kind you see in cafeterias) by the time I left early at 4:00. That's three hours. Toward the end when I was running low on paper, I resorted to stuffing the last napkin up my nose in order to staunch the constant dripping. I figured I had enough napkins on hand for a month. At least.

I think what happened is that I got that mildew or mold or whatever it is up into my sinus cavities and it started breeding. Now it's inflamed my sinus membranes and it's festering in there causing pressure to build up. I want it out, like pronto. My doctor can't see me until next Tuesday and said that if I can't hack the pain that I was to call there and ask for the nurse. I can't stand thinking that there's colony of decades old god-knows-what infecting my freakin' head. That mysterious black gunk is reproducing in a dark, moist, warm environment -- which just so happens to be an inch away from my brain. That thought weirds me out something fierce.

I'm going in to work tomorrow no matter how I feel. I'm going to take pictures of the windows, and then take samples from each one. If I had a petri dish and some agar I'd culture whatever that black stuff is, just to see what's infesting my head and causing me pain.

This shit sucks.

The war in Iraq just got very serious. From :

In a deeply insulting Arab gesture, people hurled shoes at a giant statue of Saddam outside the hotel.

They've started throwing shoes. The horror... The horror.

I love reading through Ebay feedback.

No breaks! Death in the family. Please have more patients. Poor members. I'm cloudy.

This guy has great auctions (mirror). Read that description. I expected him to say say "I kiss you!"

That waterhead wants $75.50 to ship what will more than likely wind up being just a friggin' keyboard and mouse. And the picture of said "Sun Ultra 10 keyboard and mouse" is deceptive at best because they are sitting on top of an Ultra 10. Is the keyboard/mouse all he's selling? No clue.

That dude is a shyster. Maybe he just doesn't have "knowledge of all of these technologies". Could be why his spelling and grammar are so bad. Maybe I feel like kicking a guy when he is down. But then again, maybe I don't understand what being bitten by UPS rates means to a person who's being kicked.

Ten bucks says this guy smells like sweat and stale cigarettes and cheap cologne and gets 4 inches from people's faces when he talks to them.

I don't know why, but I went looking for a WAV file of that buzzing phone in the movie Brazil. I know this might sound shocking, but I couldn't find one. That's a tragedy what needs rectifying.

I popped in the DVD and recorded the phone noise on the downstairs laptop. It's right here. It's only about 4 seconds long, but you could loop it easy enough. I bet it'd work swell on a cell phone. Better than, say Sir Mix-A-Lot not lying about big butts.

On a somewhat related note, I recently installed Eudora. I guess I wanted to see what it was like two years later. Not that different, but I wound up using it for a couple days. During that time, I changed my incoming mail alert sound to Morse code. I got the morse from a site called WWW Morse Code Generator. That particular snippet of Morse means "new mail". Clever, I know.

Why couldn't I ever be truly successful in business? Because this kind of nonsense makes my head hurt:

"BPM is a new programming paradigm for the enterprise that leverages browser-based applications, e-mail, global connectivity and enterprise application integration (EAI) infrastructure to deliver a powerful, business-focused programming solution."

Bingo!

I got the quote from this story on news.com.com.com.com. The story is chock full of similarly incomprehensible business babble. I think he's saying that you need a plan in order to succeed. Or you need software. Or cars have brakes like businesses have problems. Or something. I'm sure it's revolutionary whatever it is. I wonder if it involves group calisthenics?

My sis-in-law Suzi sent me this via email. I thought it was hilarious. I'm a sucker for the "members of disparate groups get on a plane together..." jokes. Anyway, here's the joke:

Two Arabs boarded a flight out of Boston. One took a window seat and the other sat next to him in the middle seat. Just before takeoff, an American sat down in the aisle seat. After takeoff, the American kicked his shoes off, wiggled his toes and was settling in when the Arab in the window seat said, "I need to get up and get a beer."

"Don't get up," said the American, "I'm in the aisle seat. I'll get it for you." As soon as he left, one of the Arabs picked up the American's shoe and spat in it.

When he returned with the beer, the other Arab said, "That looks good, I'd really like one, too." Again, the American obligingly went to fetch it. While he was gone the other Arab picked up his other shoe and spat in it. When the American returned, they all sat back and enjoyed the flight.

As the plane was landing, the American slipped his feet into his shoes and knew immediately what had happened. "Why does it have to be this way?" he asked. "How long must this go on? This fighting between our nations? This hatred? This animosity? This spitting in shoes... pissing in beers?"

And now I know.

In other news, it turns out that dhows have a raised poop.

Two more mysteries put to rest.

So makes me immoderately pleased. When I saw that it was listed on libpng.org I actually chuckled. And then I was amazed.

Some little (and probably marginally useful, given the plethora of similar tools out there) thing I wrote one day to help get images off Tess' SmartMedia cards has found its way around the world. People (about 12, I figure) have gotten use out of it and used it to do some stuff for them.

The Internet is cool.

If you want to buy duck meat from Trader Joe's, you had better hurry. They've apparently got this policy thing going on. Once it's gone, it's gone. Until it's certified to be dolphin-safe, that is.

I saw an article on Fark about a guy getting flak from some idiot at Taco Bell who thought there was no such thing as a $2 bill. That's fairly amusing. It reminded me of a story.

My first work-study job in college was working at the print shop. We had offset presses, mimeo machines, big copies, a humungous paper cutter (which was my favorite; it took both hands to operate), everything. It was a good job, and I got to see all the tests before they came out. This was in the mid-late 80's, well before our money had anything real fancy in it to discourage counterfeiting. It was just a couple years after To Live and Die in L.A. came out.

One day I asked my boss, in a very offhanded way, what sort of paper was used for money. My boss (a big swarthy Italian guy who swore like a sailor) said "Oh, shit, it's special and everything. But it feels just like that 80# invitation parchment we have over there -- after it's been all crumbled up." I maybe looked a little more than amused, and he said, "Heh heh.... yeah. I knew the question was coming. Everybody asks sooner or later. And every printer in the whole world history of printers has made fake money at one point or another. And those that say they haven't are lying." Hmmm. Tacit approval. Interesting. He then added a couple minutes later, his finger stabbing out at me with each comma, "You are, in no way, allowed to print any money, of any kind, of any size, in any way, with any supplies here, and if you do your ass is fired and kicked out of school and I'll make sure of it and that you talk to the Secret Service, too. Or else. Got it?"

Naturally, the first time my boss left early I made a $20 bill.

It was brutally easy. The only problem: the ink we had already loaded in the press was red, like a scarlet color. And the press was a nightmare to clean, and I hated cleaning it. I was not up for cleaning the red ink out, then putting in green, and then printing one piece of money and then cleaning it again. I also didn't take a picture of both sides of the money. So I wound up with a one-sided, red $20 bill.

I never tried to spend it or anything. How could I? It was red for cryin' out loud. And it only had one side. I actually kept it for a while, but eventually tore it up. The ink was coming off and fading anyway.

Oh yeah: If any government types are reading this, I plead "Not Guilty by Reason of Being a Dumbass Teenager".

...the mice figure out what to do.

Tess is off on some wine-and-women-only thing (no clue), and I'm Macaulay Culkin. I'm home alone. I decided to play rock and roll music extremely loudly. I had "Anarchy Burger" by The Vandals going. There was some X being played and I heard Sisters of Mercy. I played 'Jocko Homo' by Devo even. I'm a rebel. An aging rebel. w00t.

I never turned up all the way the $400 sound system on my PC. It gets pretty fuggin loud. I also never expected that kind of fidelity at such loud a volume. I'm impressed. I mean, I can't hear the keyboard clicking as I type this. Anyone that knows me knows of my predilection for the loudest and heaviest keyboards possible. (I currently use a circa 1991 Keytronics, although I have an IBM keyboard from 1981 that is louder). So that's saying something. It sounds like a party in here. A party of one, at least.

Aside from rock and roll music (AC/DC is playing now; 'Back in Black' has to be loud), I'm trying to find a free virus scanner for Windows. It's been so long since I used Windows at home that I find myself wanting to scan things I download. It sucks. The download in question is Masters of Orion. I don't know if I want to play it. It involves thinking and strategy and learning a new interface and new rules. I'd rather just do mindless stuff. I put in over 55 hours this week. I have a government job, mind you. Time to zone out and barbeque some chicken.

By the way, Rage Against the Machine sounds really good at full volume. Even if I don't agree with their politics, they make damn good music.

I need to find a mindless, non-constructive activity. Besides TV.

I got an email today from my old friend Andy from Arizona. Apparently, I must soon visit. He tells me that I have to go camping with him, because he has "this thing he'd like to show me". He sent me a picture of it.

That, my friends, is a picture of a Browning 1919-A4 .308 caliber belt fed machine gun. 400 to 600 rounds per minute of pure joy (when properly adapted). All you'd need for a full day of fun and excitement is a truck full of pumpkins and watermelons (and maybe a few bowling balls). That's just so completely porno. I think I'm in love. Or at least lust.

Andy is my hero.

Last month, it was found that MS had decided to give users of the Opera browser who visit MSN a different stylesheet than everyone else. The stylesheet (which decides the web page layout) was intentionally broken, and the MSN site looked bad when viewed with the Opera browser. Opera complained to Microsoft, they didn't do anything substantive, so Opera took matters into their own hands.

I haven't been able to stop laughing. I went and downloaded the bork version and it's hilarious. I'm don't normally visit MSN, but I might start now since it looks so useful.

I actually bought a real, honest-to-some-goddess, shrink wrapped CD copy of the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bullocks. Yes, I've heard it before. I've even bought the album before, twice in fact. I owned it on cassette at one point and somewhere in my brother's garage floats a circa 1983 vinyl copy hand carried from England (used to be you couldn't get such subversive music outside of LA and New York unless you knew a guy who was going to England). But I bought it again.

My friend Andy gave me a Barnes & Noble gift certificate for my birthday and it arrived via email last year. It got tagged as spam by an over zealous filter and wound up languishing until recently when I cleared out all my 27.org mailboxes and, as a side project, went on a hunt for it to see if I really received the email. I did and it was a very sweet gift.

I bought a William C. Dietz (my favorite author outside of John Steakley) book, a computer geek book, and... I had nothing. I honestly drew a blank when it came to filling the remaining $15, so I left my browser window open on the bn.com shopping cart page for a couple days. Something or other around that time reminded me of high school, and then the song "Pretty Vacant" popped into my head for no reason at all (it happens to me a lot -- not-so-much ironically when the title in question this time is considered). I went and added the Sex Pistols to my order and hit submit.

So that's how I bought a brand new copy of a 27 year-old record at full price instead of finding it used somewhere.

I'm listening to it now. It sounds very pet rock in here. Makes me want to smoke a clove and hide shit in a trench coat and ditch class and cause trouble and run away from The Authorities. Except now half my life has past since I had anything to rebel against. I live in darkest suburbia and am generally happy with how things turned out, although back then I used to wonder if I'd ever make it this far and I'd try to imagine what my life would be like if I did. I didn't think I'd be not only listening to but also buying the same old records. Heh... life is strange sometimes.

I created a new law during lunch today. Well, that's not totally true; I didn't first think of it today, I thought it it a long time ago when I read Ivan Stang's book High Weirdness by Mail. But today was when I first applied some head grease to the idea and "codified" it (so to speak). Like I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure if anyone has come up with this before I did (these physics guys notwithstanding), so I'll put a flag in it right now and call it Wee's Law of Tinfoil Hats. It's very simple. My law states:

"The chances that a written work was authored by a crackpot increase with the percentage of completely capitalized words in the work."

Not a novel idea, I know, but then neither was the notion that things fell downward. Until they had a law about it, that information wasn't as useful as it could be. Not being one to bitch about something for which I cannot offer a solution, I decided to make a law so that this information could be applied to things such that answers can be seen and solutions derived.

Anyway, it was pointed out to me today by a nice fellow named Joel Parker that my law works just as nicely for software as it does for manifestoes (I originally got started on the idea today when I saw mention of the Unabomber's manifesto). Figuring that a concrete application of an idea can lead to definitive conclusions, I set out to see if this was true. I think I've succeeded in rigorously demonstrating that my theories are law.

I propose that I can produce, without too much effort, Wee's Tinfoil Hat Law (TFH) ratios for the GPL, the FreeBSD license, and a Microsoft license which will substantiate my law as it applies to software, and therefore any other written work. Here is my method:

• Grab the GPL. Save it to to a file called 'gpl.lic'.
• Grab the FreeBSD license, saving it to a file called 'bsd.lic'.
• Grab the Windows 98 update license and save it as 'win98_up.lic'. (I couldn't find a copy of any Microsoft OS license online. I thought that was telling. Anyway, everything my cursory search says points me to look at %WINDIR%\system32\eula.txt. Since I don't have a Windows machine at my disposal, I can't check an actual "operating system" license. Checking the license for an OS update is as close as I can get for now, and should be fine for purely illustrative purposes.)

Once we have all of our licenses, we can use this tiny Perl script to calcuate the TFH ratio for each one. Here's the script we need:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my ($count, $total, $file, $word);

unless ($file = $ARGV[0]) {
???print "Which file would you like check for TFH Ratio? ";
???print "(Enter filename the ctrl+d.)\n";
???chomp($file = $_) while();
}

open(FILE, "./$file") || die $!;
while () {
????chomp;
????foreach my $word (split(/\b/, $_)) {
? ? ? ? $total++;
? ? ? ? $count++ if ($word =~ /\b[A-Z]+\b/);
????}
}
close(FILE);

print "Checking '$file':\n";
print " Total number of words.... $total\n";
print " Number of ALL CAP words.. $count\n\n";
printf("TFH Ratio: %.2f\n\n", ($count / $total) * 100);

Save it as 'tfh.pl'. Now we run it on all the files that we saved:

[wee@hostname tfh]$ ./tfh.pl gpl.lic
Checking 'gpl.lic':
Total number of words.... 4993
Number of ALL CAP words.. 217

TFH Ratio: 4.35

[wee@hostname tfh]$ ./tfh.pl bsd.lic
Checking 'bsd.lic':
Total number of words.... 450
Number of ALL CAP words.. 114

TFH Ratio: 25.33

[wee@hostname tfh]$ ./tfh.pl win98_up.lic
Checking 'win98_up.lic':
Total number of words.... 1875
Number of ALL CAP words.. 585

TFH Ratio: 31.20

So it would seem, based on this admittedly simplistic test, that Mr. Parker was completely justified in wanting to apply my law to software. Without getting overly empirical, I believe I have shown that GPL'ed software is about one eighth as crackpot-ish as "typical" MS software, and around one-fifth as wacky as BSD licensed software. I further belive that by extension, and with applying popular opinion and common knowledge, my law adequately describes those individuals who author non-sensical or purposefully obfuscated documents in order to pass them off as rational thought. I welcome any comments.

I recently came across a game that should do for politics what Iron Chef did for food. I expect that any normal Merkin would be more than totally sloshed just from the word "nukular" alone. This is far more hardcore than watching Star Wars and playing "Luke". Could even be worse than making a pitcher of White Russians, watching The Big Lebowski and playing "Dude" -- or a much less savory four-letter word (scroll down a bit).

Don't forget to watch tomorrow night!

I've been thinking about the economy lately, especially the economy of the world and how it relates to the U.S. I read that Germany, in particular, is currently experiencing a 10% unemployment rate. I was wondering how much higher it has to go before we get Hitler 2: Electric Bugaloo.

I had a dream the other night that the U.S. went tits up and we were invaded by the Chinese. What's worse: another Hitler or the Chinese invading the U.S.? How much do we owe China anyway? They make about everything we use, so we must owe them something (or we will before too long). What do they do with all the money we send them? Does anyone care about our trade deficits with China? Hmmm. I don't... and I speak way better German than Mandarin.

I'm pretty sure I have no solutions whatsoever for either situation. But if I had to pick, I'd relate more to the Germans than the Chinese. And so therefore, really still for no reason at all, I present the Circle Jerks' smash 80's hit "When The Shit Hits The Fan", auf Deutsch:

? ? ? In einer trägen Wirtschaft.
? ? ? Inflation, Rezession,
? ? ? Schlägt das pland auf dem freien.
? ? ? Standed in den Arbeitslosigkeitslinien.
? ? ? Tadeln die Regierung für harte Zeiten.

? ? ? Wir gehen entlang,
? ? ? Jedoch können wir.
? ? ? Wir müssen ducken,
? ? ? Wann die Schei?Ÿe den Ventilator schlägt.

? ? ? Zehn Kinder in einem Cadillac.
? ? ? Standplatz in den Linien für Wohlfahrtsservice-Geld.
? ? ? Lassen Sie uns alle auf der Regierung saugen.
? ? ? Ach! Des Geldes wirklich gro?Ÿ!

? ? ? Wir gehen entlang,
? ? ? Jedoch können wir.
? ? ? Wir müssen ducken,
? ? ? Wann die Schei?Ÿe den Ventilator schlägt.

? ? ? Suppelinien.
? ? ? Freie Laibe des Brotes.
? ? ? Fünf Pfundblöcke Käse!
? ? ? Beutel des Lebensmittelgeschäfts!
? ? ? Sozialversicherung...
? ? ? Hat für Sie und mich weggegangen.
? ? ? Wir tun, was auch immer wir können,
? ? ? Wir müssen ducken, wann die Schei?Ÿe den Ventilator schlägt.

? ? ? Wir gehen entlang,
? ? ? Jedoch können wir.
? ? ? Wir müssen ducken,
? ? ? Wann die Schei?Ÿe den Ventilator schlägt.

? ? ? Suppelinien.
? ? ? Freie Laibe des Brotes.
? ? ? Fünf Pfundblöcke Käse!
? ? ? Beutel des Lebensmittelgeschäfts!
? ? ? Sozialversicherung...
? ? ? Hat für Sie und mich weggegangen.
? ? ? Wir tun, was auch immer wir können,
? ? ? Wir müssen ducken, wann die Schei?Ÿe den Ventilator schlägt.

It loses something in the translation (and not just because of my crappy German). It doesn't rhyme too well, for example, and the words don't match the music. But I'm pretty sure that you can't find this info anywhere else even if you had wanted to -- economic hard times be damned. Further proof that I'm just one of Wilensky's monkeys I guess.

When my get-up-and-go has got up and went, or when my ten gallon hat is feeling 5 gallons flat, I hanker for a hunk o' ramen.

I hanker for a hunka, a slab or slice or chunka. A snack that is a winner, and yet won?’t spoil my dinner. I hanker for a hunka ramen. Yahoo!

I found the buzzing which has been plaguing my A/V receiver ever since I hooked up a TiVo the other night. If I turn my amp kinda up a lot (at a level which would not be too loud for a party, let's say) I can hear the buzzing really badly. If I unlug the coax going into the cable decoder, it goes immediately away. I watched the last episode of Band of Brothers last night in glorious "silence".

I'm going to head to Radio Shack tonight to see what they got. After I take back a router that went bad. Heh heh...

Thanks to Eric and Todd, I now know what a ground loop is. After a little googling, I know how to get rid of them as well. I'm going to try changing the signal cables to Monster brand ones (which have better sheilding) and then I'll re-route the power and signal cables away from one another, making sure everything is plugged into the same outlet. The hum only started when I hooked up the TiVo, so that has to be related somehow. I did a little plug-switching when I threw everything together so maybe it's just that.

Eric mentioned a new power strip deal that can get rid of the hum as well. I'm going to try and spend less than $200 if I can (although I could probably use the power conditioning). If moving cables and whatever doesn't work, I'll build a capacitor-based isolator from Radio Shack parts since it's the next-cheapest solution. The F-61A connectors are a $1.49 each and the 500WVDC rating .01Uf ceramic disc capacitors are $1.29 for a packet of two. About 5 minutes with a soldering iron and it's done. I don't have a multimeter to test with, although I think there's little room for error -- and hardly any risk of fire!

Tess and I spent pretty much all day (what I saw of it, anyway) on the couch, being tubers. VH1 had an all-day 80's flashback thing on that was mildly captivating (or, depending on how you look at it, not annoying enough to make me want to grab the remote or move).

Anyway, they had the same 7 commercials in rotation all day, and one of them was for some program they are going to show later. I don't recall the name, but the ad had a catchy song playing in the background which I'd never heard before. I wound up searching for the song lyrics to see if I could find out who it was made by and I now have Paul Oakenfold's "Starry Eyed Suprise" stuck in my head pretty much for good.

The song is on a CD called "Bunkka", which apparently also has a song called "Nixon?’s Spirit" which features vocals by none other than Hunter S. Thompson. Other tunes have Ice Cube and Perry Farrell doing vocals. Sounds pretty diverse. I might have to buy a copy.

I'm nearly totally positive that I have created the very first Mary Lou Retton online gymnast clock. I'm, like, 99.999% sure that I made the first and only one. Me.

Although it's odd... I can't stand Mary Lou Retton. Never could. That squeaky little bitch annoyed me to no end with that smug grin of hers. Put me off Wheaties for life. Even her name "Mary Lou" bugged me. I mean, pick one goddam name and use that one, already! Jeez! I'd even prefer Spuds MacKenzie over Mary Lou if I had to pick. But I think she's just funny as all get out as an online clock. I dunno how to explain it, but I find myself cracking up uncontrollably every time I check the time. Maybe I need to start taking vitamins.

This was mercilessly stolen from a Slashdot post I saw recently. I thought it was another "funny things about Star Wars" repost/spam email thing I'd surely seen, but I'd never heard it.

I had to wipe my monitor off after reading some of them. To think I went 25 years living and breathing everything Star Wars and I never thought to slip the word "pants" in there every once in a while. I'm not nearly as clever as I thought I was. Anyway, I present:

25 Lines From Star Wars that can be improved if you substitute the word "Pants"

1. A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master.
   
2. You are unwise to lower your pants.
   
3. We've got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.
   
4. She must have hidden the plans in her pants. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally Commander.
   
5. These pants may not look like much, kid, but they've got it where it counts.
   
6. I find your lack of pants disturbing.
   
7. These pants contain the ultimate power in the Universe. I suggest we use it.
   
8. Han will have those pants down. We've got to give him more time!
   
9. General Veers, prepare your pants for a surface assault.
   
10. I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants back home.
    
11. TK-421. . . Why aren't you in your pants?
    
12. Lock the door. And hope they don't have pants.
    
13. Governor Tarkin. I recognized your foul pants when I was brought on board.
    
14. You look strong enough to pull the pants off of a Gundark.
    
15. Luke. . . Help me take...these pants off.
    
16. Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your pants.
    
17. That blast came from those pants. That thing's operational!
    
18. Don't worry. Chewie and I have gotten into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
    
19. Maybe you'd like it back in your pants, your highness.
    
20. Your pants betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for your sister!
    
21. Jabba doesn't have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.
    
22. Yeah, well short pants is better than no pants at all, Chewie.
    
23. Attention. This is Lando Calrissean. The Empire has taken control of my pants, I advise everyone to leave before more troops arrive.
    
24. I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
    
25. You came in those pants? You're braver than I thought.

This is taking things too far. This guy overclocked his Christmas tree lights. Some people just can't leave well enough alone.

If I had any musical talent at all, I would want to play guitar. I would want to play guitar like Johnny Ramone. I think that's shooting low, yes, but for some reason it's damn infectious music (although that could be my Asperger's talking). The barrier to entry is certainly low, with satisfiying results achieved after minimal effort.

I'm all over it.

I got this email this morning at work. This is one of the funniest things I've read in a while. (BTW, AP&M is the computer science building at UCSD). I think they should give that art student free financial aid or something.

Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 07:13:02 -0800
From: Wayne Frater <>
To: , , ,
, , ,

Subject: Signs on water fountains

All APM,

I called EH&S re: the 'posted notices'. Here is their response. I,
and they, are also talking to Vis Arts to determine if this was a
'finals project' and to express our opinions about stepping over the
line.

Wayne

EH&S Response:
As some of you may have noticed, a number of signs have been posted
over campus drinking fountains warning that the water has been tested
and contains "dihydrogen monoxide". The sign goes on to list all of
the dire health consequences of consumption (bladder discomfort,
etc.) and at the bottom of the sign is a UCSD logo and the words
"UCSD Environmental Health and Safety". A sample is on the door to
my office.

Of course "dihydrogen monoxide" is just water. The signs appear to
be the work of a rogue visual arts student, but several people around
campus didn't get the joke and were very alarmed. Signs have been
removed from the VA building and AP&M, if anyone sees any more
around, please remove them.

The most significant issue is that the logo and our office were used
to give the signs a semi-official appearance. I am trying to reach
the professor for the VA class that most likely produced the signs to
discuss this and other issues. In the meantime, if anyone gets any
calls, please reassure people that normal safety precautions are more
than adequate for handling this material - Jim

Jim Kapin
Chemical Safety Officer, UC San Diego
nnn-nnn-nnnn, fax nnn-nnn-nnnn
9500 Gilman Drive, MC 0920
La Jolla, CA 92093-0920
mailto:

--
Wayne K. Frater Academic Computing Services Univ. of Calif @ San Diego

I was getting gas after work today at the overpriced station on La Jolla Village drive and I noticed something weird: a wallet laying on top of the gas pump. It was just sitting there, open and everything with the credit cards and driver's license showing. It was like one of those hidden camera shows where they leave a $100 bill on the sidewalk and film what people do when they find it. I looked around and couldn't see a camera. I wound up just staring at it while I stood there filling up.

I ended up looking inside it. The guy's license said his name was Carlos. He had a couple credit cards, a debit card, a UCSD student ID and $64 in cash. When I got done filling the tank, I grabbed the wallet and headed towards the cashier office/minimart thing to turn it in. The clerk was a liitle taken aback when I gave it to him. He opened it up first thing when I handed it over and got this incredulous look on his face when he saw cash still inside. He looked at me like I was wearing a dress or something. I contemplated making a note of Carlos' address so I could let him know how much cash and cards were in it when I turned it in, but I didn't.

I still don't know how someone could leave their wallet at a gas station. You take a wallet out, pay, and then put it back. That's how it goes; that's habit. I should have checked to see if Carlos was shorter than 5' 10", which is about how high the tops of the pumps are. Maybe Carlos set the thing up there while he filled up and forgot it because he couldn't see it up there.

Anyway, I did the right thing and hopefully Carlos won't be out any money. More karma points in the bank. If I ever forget my wallet somewhere, I'm expecting it back in one piece, with its contents intact.

In case anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas, I can think of one thing I wouldn't mind having...

James Coburn died today. That's too bad; I liked his work a lot. I suppose everyone has to go at some point, although there are worse ways. He was just sitting there, happily listening to music. That'd be my preferred way I think.

The National Fire Prevention Association and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have more than a lot of info about Christmas tree safety. I especially liked the videos of a dry tree going up in flames. It was insanely, mind-bogglingly fast. I knew dry trees were flammable, but this was amazing to watch:

"Within three seconds of ignition, the dry Scotch pine is completely ablaze. At five seconds, the fire extends up the tree and black smoke with searing gases streaks across the ceiling. Fresh air near the floor feeds the fire. The sofa, coffee table and the carpet ignite prior to any flame contact. Within 40 seconds "flashover" occurs -- that's when an entire room erupts into flames, oxygen is depleted and dense, deadly toxic smoke engulfs the scene."

Nothing says "Merry Christmas!" like flashover and deadly toxic smoke. Definitely have to make sure the tree is watered real well this year.

is a tiny pc case, a tiny pc case, a tiny pc case...

I'm sick at home (again: two days in a row, although I worked from home yesterday; today I'm far to looped (get it?) to write code). I have some throat ailment that prevents me from speaking until I croak for a couple hours. Then I just have this raspy voice and annoying phlegm/cough problem associated with that tickle in the back of your throat which causes a non-productive cough. You know the one: that cough you get when you breathe in too much and some reflex gets triggered. That one. This morning I finally got a fever. I was wondering when I'd get sick all the way.

Anyway, I decided to medicate with Dayquil. About an hour after I did so, I realized that I was sitting in front of my PC staring at nothing who knows how long. I was in some weird trance-like state, and all I could think about was this game called Scorched Earth I used to play a lot on my 25 MHz 386SX. It's a simple shooting-across-the-hill game, were you have tiny guns and you take turns setting the barrel angle and powder charge. It has computer players and different weapons you can by and physics models and weather and such. My old roommate in Tucson once made hot toddies when we were both at home sick, and we played Scorch for about 18 hours straight. I think that was what reminded me of it.

I decided I really wanted to play again. Instead of go online and find a copy (duh), I went hunting through my 10-year-old collection of about 500 floppies for it. I finally found it after about 100 tries. Sadly, floppies aren't the most robust storage medium; I couldn't copy all the files I needed off the disk. Oddly enough my interest in playing Scorch waned right about that time, and I started digging through more floppies in sort of unspecified treasure hunt. I suppose if you're not looking for anything in particular, you're bound to find something.

I came across a couple disks (that I could actually read; I'd estimate about 1/2 of the ones I tried were defective in some way) that had old web stuff. One had the very first web site I ever made, circa summer 1994. Another had Tucson BBS info. One had various winsock utilities (Windows 3.1 didn't have a TCP/IP stack, and you had to install one to get on the Net). Another had a copy of the first graphical web browser I ever used: Mosiac Netscape 0.9 beta. Let me tell ya, when you're coming off using Lynx on a dial-up through a SLIP account from the university library, seeing online pictures and marked-up text was quite the spectacle. No more saving geological images off gopher, no sir. You get your pics right there. I wish I had saved the browser cache. I'd love to see if those sites are still up and what they looked like back then.

So I've been browsing around with Mosaic Netscape version 0.9 beta for a while now. I even took a screen grab of it. Most sites don't even render, and the directory buttons (the ones that go to certain hard-coded web sites when you clicked the button) don't go anywhere but 404-land. Pages with JavaScript show up with the code up at the top of the page; this version of Netscape didn't even know about HTML comments. I tried to post this entry with it, actually, until I remembered: Netscape didn't even do forms until version 2.0. I'm going to go see if I can find my old copy of Eudora 2.1.2.

I got a jabber message from Tess just now, and it's one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time:

[15:20] Oh, now k3yboa__ is toast. gonna hav 2 shut_own..

It's like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when they find that cave where the dead guy had time to chisel into the wall "Aaaarrrrrggghhh..." before he died. Dammit. Now I have to go google for a transcript.

Here it is:

MAYNARD: It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of aaarrrrggh'.
ARTHUR: What?
MAYNARD: '...The Castle of aaarrrrggh'.
BEDEVERE: What is that?
MAYNARD: He must have died while carving it.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, come on!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what it says.
ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aarrggh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what's carved in the rock!
GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up.

That's the one I was thinking of.

Tess has a post titled Every Umbrella Is Yours. She says to ask me about the title if you're curious. People were, so I'm answering here.

The quote is not mine; it's from a book I once had called Life's Little Destruction Book. It's meant to be a play on those sappy, Jack Handy-esque "Life's Little Instruction Book" things which were going around a few years back. They were pretty silly. The destruction one was extremely funny.

I was writing to Tracy shortly after we first met, and I sent her some of those quotes along with some of my own random thoughts (I'm not sure why; I think we were talking about a fortune cookie program or something). She seemed to like the umbrella one in particular. I thought it was funny for completely different reasons than Tracy's. Growing up in AZ, I never owned an umbrella, and thought it was just something of a non-sequitur: you see an umbrella gathering dust some place, you grab it since nobody would need it. Or something.

Anyway, when I went to Oregon to see Tracy for the first time, we went to a Mexican restaurant. Right inside by the front door they had a 4x6 foot area with a bunch of wet, open umbrellas sitting there all jumbled together. Instead of benches to wait on, they had an umbrella waiting area. When I walked in and saw it I started laughing uncontrollably, remembering the email I had sent months ago. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd seen in a while. Oddly, Tracy wasn't scared off by this and married me anyway. More evidence that we'll be together forever.

Just in case people want to see the other quotes from that book (and because they are still pretty funny), I added a random destruction quote printer to the nav bar on the right side of the main page.

...while we're on the topic of music: AC/DC's "Back in Black" is one of the best albums ever made. It has a level of "so bad it's good" which transcends the whole notion of being so bad as to be good. I'm not at all ashamed to say it's still one of my favorite albums of all time (I've owned it on vinyl and/or CD since I can remember).

And every song on it has a snappin' beat....

I think I could listen to Benny Goodman all night long. And all day. And twice on Sunday. For some reason, I love clarinet music. It's as enjoyable as flute music isn't.

On a related note, I just discovered Glen Gray & His Casa Loma Orchestra. They do a song called "Smoke Rings" which is probably the best big band song I've ever heard (and likely one of the best songs of any variety I've ever heard; I've been listening to it over and over for like 45 minutes). It's got that metronomic beat that really appeals to my autistic inner child (I'm not kidding, by the way -- I swear I'm at least one-quarter autistic).

This might sound weird, but I like most Rage Against The Machine songs for just this reason. And Rev. Horton Heat, too. All their songs have that rhythmic "ticking" beat. Same thing applies to R.A.T.M's "Voice Of The Voiceless" and Led Zeppelin's "Ten Years Gone" and "The Ocean". Count Ween's "Voodoo Lady", Los Fabulosos Cadillacs' "El Matador", The Breeders' "Saints", and Veruca Salt's "Twinstar" in that list as well. All those songs have a thing in them which makes it virtually impossible for me to not tap something in time to the beat. Revho's "I Can't Surf", "Lie Detector" and "Now, Right Now" are songs I could listen to over and over. And have. Most of eudora.com got built that way.

I just made a playlist with all of them, and I'm going to go listen to it.

I'm compiling a new kernel. And I'm finding out how slow a 233MHz processor really is under "normal" use:

[root@register tmp]# cat /proc/loadavg
2.67 1.56 0.75 1/57 6101

That's with some RPM use, some compiling, some tar'ing things over NFS, some downloading new packages, etc. The cash register is really bogging down pretty badly. Everything is plenty usable, though, and I'm surprised at its responsiveness. I kinda want to start a news reader or a gopher client just for old time's sake. :-)

But I bet I'm doing more at once than I could if I had been running Windows. In fact, I don't even think the newest version of Windows will run on a Pentium 233 with 48MB of RAM, much less allow me to be doing five I/O and CPU-intensive tasks at once while running a web server that's streaming MP3s.

I guess some people just need to pay for more hardware than they need...

I finally found a use for my cash register: a web server. Yeah, why not? It's really small, takes up hardly any juice, has a big enough drive for an OS (I'm doing the web server's docroot as a read-only NFS mount from my main shared fileserver), and has a strong enough CPU (233MHz) to serve plain (or slightly PHP'ed/Perl'ed) web pages. And its most important feature of all is its LED-on-a-stick.

I'm putting Linux on it. It's Red Hat 8.0 for now (just because I think think it's hilarious, and I want to get in shape for Red Hat's appearance at SD Tech Books on Sunday), but I'll eventually wind up with one of the tiny linux distributions (like the ones that boot off a write-protected floppy). I may even do it diskless. It depends on how much work I want to put into it. Gentoo would be super cool...

Why the new install? Well, the LED-on-a-stick simply demands use. It's been languishing for a long time for wont of a good purpose. I also need to separate my main fileserver from the outside world. I have port 80 open to it now, and that isn't good. I want a little separation. I can harden the web server system fairly tightly without inconveniencing anyone overly much if it is its own entity. I also have the hardware available; the cash register has just been sitting there doing nothing. And I've been wanting to write stuff that gets displayed on the stick real bad.

What goes on the stick? Well, I have stock quotes, weather, and system load already written. I need to add the currently streaming MP3, the last login name and time, uptime, free memory, disk use, and the date/time. I'm also going to make it flash "12:00". I have to. And before you laugh at me, you must first admit that if you had an LED-on-a-stick, you would make it flash "12:00" too. Check your own self. That's all I'm saying.

As an aside, the fine folks at LCDproc are making this all possible. They wrote me when my cash register page somehow got posted to Slashdot. (BTW, I'm still wondering why it made Slashdot; it really wasn't all that interesting. I must admit that it was worth it just for this comment, however. I searched the Slashdot story page for 'tracy' and just got another 3 minutes worth of chcukle. Tess really does r0x0r.) They said they'd be happy to have their software write to vacuum flourescent displays, and I wrote them back saying I'd be happy to help them get the drivers working. After the story was posted, I also got a lot of email from people saying that they'd love to have drivers for their VFDs, so it's for a good cause.

What I won't be doing is printing from it. I finally found out why the thermal printer stopped working. Something happened to the parallel port and the printer shuts off as soon as I connect it to the main unit. It works fine on any other system. I'm going to have to dig around inside the cash register's main unit and find out what the story is. I checked the BIOS and nothing was amiss. If worst comes to worst, I might be able to get Trey to swap out a new motherboard. I could put my NIC and disk in a new case and it should work. Although Trey wouldn't be able to use a unit that can't print, so I don't think he'll be too amenable to that solution. Still, it'll server web pages fine.

Install is done. Time to configure stuff...

I thought this was a pretty funny take on Todd's site, zoomer.net. My favorite quote:

"Millions of chitlins throughout da US gots to be beggin' muthas fo' junk food. Couldn't ax fo' a mo' appropriate birthdizzay."

You have to imagine Toddler saying it for maximum effect.

I decided, for no reason at all, to get with the California lifestyle 100%. I've got a hot tub on a redwood deck, I eat semi-soft cheeses, I wear a coat when the temperature drops below 65 degrees, I figured I might as well go all the way and get a personalized license plate. I originally wanted to get '11011', but that was taken. So I chose the next best thing. And when anyone askes me what it means I can say, with a completely straight face, "27". As it turned out, the lady at the DMV window brought out the envelope with the plates and the first thing she said when she pulled them out was "So what is 3 cubed?". I replied, with a not so straight a face, "27". You had to be there I guess. Or maybe not, even. It was funny to me anyway...

The DMV here is great in that you can make an appointment instead of go down there and wait. I was in and out in about 45 minutes, including a trip to the ATM to get cash (they take cash, checks, money orders and I've been living la vida debit card for so long I don't even know what color our checks are). You can call them and arrange a time over the phone through their automated system, or you can do it online. The problem with both systems is that you can make an apointment for either vehicle registration things or driver's license things, but not both -- even though the windows for each type of transaction are right next to each other. I found out recently that my license was expired and wanted to get it renewed, but I had to make a new appointment. (Although now that I think about it, I believe I wanted to get the custom plates because I knew I had to get a license, which involved a trip there anyway. I think.) I tried to sneak over to the driver's license window and sign in, but they are obviously accustomed to dealing with my sort of not-so-clever subterfuge and they sent me packing. I didn't mind so much, since it would have meant another trip to the ATM to get cash. And I didn't really comb my hair that much before I left the house.

From now on, I think I'm going to do as much as I can at the AAA office. They do almost everything (as long as it doesn't involve a new picture).

With all this talk of snipers, I thought it might be nice to know more about military bullet wound patterns and just how a .223 compares to a .308.

BTW, I think my dog would look mighty fetching sporting one of these.

I've already written far too much about Clippy (that annoying, banal paperclip thing from MS Office). It turned up on Slashdot again tonight, in a poll this time. I came across a couple things I had to share.

The first is Vigor. This is probably the coolest app I've seen for Unix in a long, long time. I love this sort of thing. Probably the next spiffiest thing in this category would be Moaning Goat Meter, or maybe even Amusing Misuse of Resources. I'm going to start running Vigor instead of normal vi now I think.

I also happened upon an image of clippy helping President Bush which just about perfectly encapsulates what I imagine a real clippy would need to say in order to be helpful to our poor President.

I just found proof that the Web is one of man's greatest innovations. Out of the blue and without actually searching, I came across both a site which has more information about Starsky and Hutch than you ever wanted to know, and a site which has instructions on building your very own Zebra3. What could be cooler than owning a bright red '75 Gran Torino with a white rally stripe running down it? Only one thing: owning The Batmobile.

Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows XP on my wife's PC. I told him how happy she was with this operating system and I showed him the Windows XP CD. To my surprise he threw it into my microwave oven and turned it on. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.' After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, an inscription finer than anything I had ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE820945092OF923A40EElOE5 I OCC98D444AA08EI

'I cannot understand the fiery letters,' I said in a timid voice. 'No but I can,' he said. 'The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:

One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

It is only two lines from a verse long known in System-lore:

"Three OS's from corporate-kings in their towers of glass,
? ? ? Seven from valley-lords where orchards used to grow,
Nine from dotcoms doomed to die,
? ? ? One from the Dark Lord Gates on his dark throne
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.
? ? ? One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
? ? ? One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie."'

For the last few months, my game machine has been intermittently stable. It'll run forever as long as I don't play any games, but as soon as anything 3D starts, I have a 50/50 shot of crashing within about an hour. It always sounded like a heat issue (which I've posted about before), but my case, PCU and mainboard temps have always been good. I've looked around inside and can see anything amiss.

Well, I finally the cause of my instability. When I came into my office this morning, I was greeted by a bad smell: burning electronics. You know the odor. Hot circuit boards. In a room full of computers, that's an alarming smell to say the least. So I got the flash light and started taking covers off PCs and sniffing. I found it on the first try: my game machine.

My video card (a Leadtek 64MB Geforce2 GTS Pro -- a nice card which I like a lot) was nearly smoking and the fan was making noises like a tiny rodent was being tortured inside it. I remembered seeing a utility that Leadtek bundles with their Windows drivers which had some sort of hardware monitor, so I found it and fired that up. The core temperature of my GPU was 91 degrees and the edge temp was 60-something degrees. As in degrees Celcius. The fan had crapped out, getting slower and slower over time.

I shut down and yanked my card out to see what was what. I'd never noticed the fan slowing because it's really hard to see. The AGP card is upside down, and with my tower case on the floor, you have to rest your head on the carpet and peer into the case to see that it was slow/stopped. The tiny fan barely turned when rotated manually.

I took the bad fan off and tried to find a replacement among all my junk. I gave up after about 5 minutes; there's too many boxes to go through. This is my lunch hour as well as my video card I'm burning, so a compromise had to be struck. I remembered where an old fan/heatsink from a K6-266 was, so I took the fan off that. The screw holes didn't even come close to matching up, so I attached the fan onto the card with a complex system of zip ties. It blows air down onto the heatsink (which is all the other fan did), and I figured that since it's a bigger fan, it'll cool better even if the marriage between heatsink and fan wasn't exactly a match made in heaven.

I reinstalled the card and booted Windows. After a couple minutes of non-3D activity, the core temp was 79 degrees C and the edge temp was 54 degrees C, which was not that great of an improvement in my opinion. So the only thing I could do after that was use the Leadtek overclocking utility to underclock my card. I dropped the "Graphic Clock" to 150MHz (from 200, I think) and the "Memory Clock" to 315MHz (from 350). After a couple minutes, the temps are 73 core and 49 edge. That's looks to be about as good as I'm gonna get.

I need to get a new fan. The old and busted one is a T&T brand, model MW-410H2S which is a little 40mm, 12v fan with a three-conductor cable and the tiniest Molex connector I've ever seen. I could only find one page for it so the new hotness might be A Sunon fan since other similar 40mm fans are easy to find. I might have to do a little cutting; the old fan has no "sides" and fits snugly into a socket-ish thing on the heatsink. I'd better buy two then.

I could also get a new video card but honestly I like the one I have as long as it doesn't get hot enough to boil water.

I recently found myself with a need for project tracking software of certain and specific proportions. It's a metaproject I'm working on this time. I'm going to be doing some work for one person (honestly, one guy, that's it, and just the one thing since I'm always running out of time) and need to be able to keep track of what I did, when I did it, how long it took, and notes about it. At some interval, I need to total up the time I spent and then make some descriptive text to that effect, which I can copy and paste into email or print. Having something which automatically summarizes the above in email would be very nice indeed. Icing on the cake...

Sounds easy, eh? Easy enough that a fruitless freshmeat.net search for such a software package didn't dishearten me into not trying to build something myself at around midnight on a Friday. I really am trying not to roll my own all the time, I swear. (As proof, I even bought a book on x86 assembly programming yesterday, which virtually guarantees that I won't do anything but learn something new and obscure and partially useless for at least six months.) I just couldn't help myself this time, and there really was nothing out there that does what I want. So I had to build something myself.

Well, I got the database designed for this project task tracker. It only has five tables. It could have had 100, easy. It's the sort of project that lends itself to easy and unthinkingly instant blossoming. You might have more than one project, users that have tasks associated with more than one project, tasks that span projects, projects which span customers, estimates (not only billing) reports combining any of the aformentioned, ad infinitum. It can get really silly. I even put in some user authentication stuff, with crypto. Ultimate silliness!

So after getting the database "done" I rabbittrailed my way into a couple hundred lines of PHP code which, while nice and dandy and a good starting point, doesn't run. It has bits which, when fleshed out, will do all sorts neat of things. Assuming it gets completed. It may not. At this point, I'm happy enough entering info using plain SQL. But it feels like an interesting project, and one that I think I'd be very good at. The trouble is I'm tired now, and tomorrow I won't be bored. I'm rarely bored, so the odds of this being what occupies my next period of non-boredom is slim. I know this from personal experience.

Which leads me to a concluding thought: The art of not being bored is in finding things to do which are only just complicated and time consuming enough such that they can be completed in the time it takes for something else more interesting to come along.

I work at a university. I normally go to lunch with my boss. It's a good time to get out and talk about non-work things, or sometimes even work things we shouldn't talk about. When we head out together, I don't usually pay too much attention to my surroundings since we're talking to each other. He was occupied and so I went alone yesterday. In the 20 minutes it took me to walk to the student union, wait in line and order, and walk back, I heard (in conversation, not just students doing homework or anything) American English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, some form of Chinese, some kind of Filipino, and Australian English.

The American I heard all over -- nothing new here. Spanish, same deal, except the older gent and young woman speaking it looked like they were from Spain, not Mexico like you'd expect in Southern California. It was like dad and daughter from Barcelona were seeing the school.

The Italian I heard was from two very well-dressed middle aged ladies. They reminded me of the kind of people you'd see in Vegas. One had on a cream-colored blouse that reminded me of something my mom would wear. It had sparkly stuff on it up at the left shoulder area and she had on some large jewelry.

The French came mostly from a young woman in an elevator. She had on a geek t-shirt, and was talking with a young man who, I guessed, was not a native speaker.

The German was in the lobby of my building. A group of three young men (and one woman who said nothing) were standing around talking. Even though I speak a little German, I didn't catch anything recognizable. I was a little far away. Oddly, I pegged them as Germans by how they looked before I heard them talk. Young Germans have a certain look about them that you can spot from up to three miles away (and that's without a track suit). I came out of the elevator and they were across the lobby, and I remember thinking to myself "Heh heh... those guys look like they're trying to be Germans..." and then I heard them.

The Russian was from a very old woman and a slightly younger woman and man. They looked "professor-ish". They were in front of me at Subway. They spoke English with almost no accent whatsoever. I remember being impressed.

The Chinese and Filipino both came from two separate groups of young girls carrying books. At least I think the one set were Chinese. I'm no expert at Asian languages, but they looked to be Chinese (as much as any Westerner can guess at such a thing) and it sounded like they were speaking in a language I'd heard before as being Chinese. They were getting salsa at Rubios when I heard them. They didn't giggle at all and were very somber. I don't know why it struck me that they didn't giggle, it just did. Usually when you see a group of young Asian women, they are pretty happy. The Filipinas were walking out the door to the student union at the same time I was. They headed into the bookstore and I only heard a little bit of their conversation. They mixed English into their conversation.

The two Autralian dudes were jabbering on about quantum foam and getting pretty animated about it. I was walking behind them, as they were also headed back to the Applied Physics and Math building where I work. I got to hear more of their conversation than anyone elses (it also helped that I could actually understand it). One of them was carrying a new iBook, the other had really wiry hair.

It's cheesy, but I think it's pretty cool to be able to work in such a place.

I ordered some junk from Gary Olen's web site sportsmansguide.com last week. The order came today. I had to tear into the box as soon as I got home. There's always a good antique, surplusy smell in his boxes. Among the items I got was a pair of German Mil. Fleck Camo Shorts. They're probably the most comfortable item of clothing I've ever worn. I'm not kidding. Tess tried to steal them from me.

I wish I had bought more of them, though; my size is out of stock. I should have known to order more when I had the chance. The German "moleskin" clothing is exceedingly comfortable, and I own like maybe 2 dozen pairs of shorts and pants. I've been wearing that stuff for years and years (having a mother that can get bulk surplus at wholesale prices is a bonus when you're a starving student). Any surplus German item rules. I've never been disappointed. Next time I'm ordering multiple pairs. If the size is wrong, I'll ebay it or something. See, by the time you get the German surplus item, they are out of the "medium" sizes. So when you see an item that might be your size, you have to order a lot of them since you only get one chance.

Tess and I just went online. I got her and me a pair of the fleck pants, and a shirt for just her (my shirt is on backorder). Just the thing for paintball in the eucalyptus. And I can take hem the pants into shorts no sweat! w00t!

I'm doing a lot of web-based stuff at work lately. (In case you cared: I'm making read-only event calendars from CorporateTime via an app I wrote which produces XML; various XSLT sheets and a Java servlet produce HTML and printable PDFs and such from that output and this is what people see and what they see is what I'm talking about). So I'm back into the whole game of meeting with people who decide feature sets and the "look-and-feel" of things. It's oddly surreal, since I've been doing that off and on for the past 8 years in one form or another. This time is different, though. Maybe since I was pretty much on the server end of things for so long, I see the presentation end as being somewhat whimsical. I dunno.

Anyway, I've been meeting with people who could be considered the "Marketing Department" of the school where I work. I've noticed that no matter where you go, you see the same thing happen over and over: Most people would rather add to an existing widget than make a new one (or attempt to create even part of one).

If you ask 100 people to come up with how they all want a design to look, you either get no responses or your get a 1000 ideas. But if you go and make your best guess, you always get those 1000 ideas. It must be easier to create a thing when a framework for it is already built than to create the framework as well as the guts of the thing. Maybe that's why so few people are painters, or why so many painters paint things they can already see. But for what I do, things usually go like this:

"How do you want it to look?"

"Oh, you know... with a thing here and a thing at the bottom is fine."

"That's it?"

"Yeah, we just want something basic. You know what we want."

"OK..."

... after the whole deal is completed ...

"Well, what do you think?"

"I like it, but can I have an extra thing here, and wouldn't a side thing look nice, and I'd like that thing at the top to also be blue, but except if they are upper management, when it should be red... and oh yeah, the one guy said that the thing on the bottom has to be smaller so that needs to change..."

It's always the same no matter where you go.

Lately, everything has been on a list. Seriously, since my dad went into the hospital (for what we thought was the last time), I've been thinking that there's a lot of things that I want to do. And so I thought that maybe I should make and then keep a list.

Trouble is, just one list won't do. I need one list which has as its members pointers to other lists. I want to have one list which has things like "Work - Do by Tomorrow" and "Work - Learn" and "Tracy" and "Home - Outside" and "Home - Immediate" and "Learning" and "Garage Projects" and "DVDs to Buy" and any other item on it. Then I want each of those items to be either a single bullet point, action item, to-do type thing, or I want it to open up a sub-list.

I only want to go one list deep, and I don't care if the list items tie into a calendar or whatever. I don't care about dependancy trees or action items. I just want to sort items in each sub-list, not in the master list. Basically, I want a way to group my lists. And I want to have any number of lists, with any number of items. I want to recurse one level deep. Oh yeah, I want it on my desktop (via the web is preferrable) and on my Palm.

So I'm going to have to write something. Every Palm list app I can find is geared towards sales people. Screw those guys. "Close two deals this week" and "Get tee time for some asinine golf thing" and "Buy hair gel" and "Go to sports bar" and "Cheat on bleach-blond lap-monkey of a girlfriend with another superficial trollop at work" aren't real high on my list since each app I've seen demands that these items be ordered via a Windows GUI which ties into Outlook. For a one-dimensional sales/marketing type, that would be fine. But I need at least one level of depth. I need steak, not sizzle (I stole that phrase from a sales guy who was trying to get me to promise, and then do, the impossible so he could whore the company out for more cash -- and therefore secure his retirement).

So I have to write a Palm app that makes the lists I want. And I'm going to put that on my list.

Hardy har har. You're pretty farking funny, man.

I was trying to decide whether to go to the O'Reilly Open Source Software Conference here in town or that Linux cruise out of Miami. Cost was an issue, but I've always wanted to meet Linux Torvalds. Well, this decided it for me. How cool is that?

Although I really want to blow my savings on the cruise...

I realized that I never write about work. I'm not sure why. I suppose that it just never occurrs to me that anyone would find it interesting. Work stuff certainly doesn't fit the mandate or purpose of this site, which essentially is to save thoughts I've had at various times so that I can go back and re-read them later. I was even supposed to have a code snippet repository and an online scratchpad (in addition to other things) here as well, but I never got around to doing that. Bottom line: Anyone reading this but me does so for their own reasons. (So if you aren't me and you want smarmy personal weblogs written for an audience, go look at WWDN or The Gus.)

OK, so I have some work stuff to report on. It's not interesting work stuff. You have been warned.

I'm writing an app that sucks data out of a popular groupware calendaring/messaging server and turns it into XML so that an XSLT processor can pick it up and do magical things to it. It ought to be very fancy once done.

I had the app "done" in a couple days. I was making XML just fine. But it wasn't actually done. My app had inconsistencies because the data it parses can vary much more than I previously thought. I had to account for that. My simple data structure of an array of hashes of arrays would no longer suffice. So I went looking for someone that had invented a similar wheel. I came up with nothing.

I discovered why there are so very few XML generators as compared to the large number of XML parsers out there: it's incredibly hard to actually make XML from highly variable or unstructured data. There's typically nothing about the data that tells you what the data means to the last element of data you just read. Or the next 8 elements you're going to read next. Or the stuff you already read and fired off an event for. Unstructured data has no meta data, which is must have for XML to be made. XML implies and demands structure. Everyone wants to write nifty parsers for going through, extracting, or doing whatever to structured data, but nobody wants to write libraries which help people make that data. And I can't blame them.

I was sorely hoping for my app to be super-abstract: give it a set of name/value pairs, nested arbitrarily deep, in any order, and you'd get structured XML based on how the data was named. I thought that was a pretty decent result for a few days coding. As a proof-of-concept, I even used the functions I'd written to create XML representations of directory listings (I've got a big ass XML doc which represents the /usr heirarchy on my Linux workstation for instance). But then the bubble burst: One condition I have to account for is repeating namepsaces at the same "level". Oy! It can't be! It's like having two files with the same name in the same directory! The world is ending!

So I've spent the last two days working my way down the Perl data structure rabbit hole(s). My solution is going to be either brutally simple, or utterly unmaintainable. And I would normally opt for code which is "simple and stupid, but easy to read an it works" over "very slick and buzzword-compliant but nobody can tell what the hell's happening". The wrinkle here is that I'm a temp still, and they are just now hiring for my job. It's a juicy job description, too, one most geeks would jump at. So there's more than a little inkling to impress the professors with a ninja master-quality solution even they can't figure out. Except that won't help anyone; if nobody can maintain it but me, then I'll never get rid of the albatross.

Ahem... so here is what I have so far when making XML. I currently have an array of hashes which can contain arrays of hashes or hashes, each of which can contain arrays, references to hashes, or hashes. Those hashes can contain any of the parent elements I just mentioned. The "top level" arrays of hashes can similarly have hashes of arrays, arrays of hashes, arrays of arrays, hashes of hashes, hashes of rerefences to arrays/hashes, ad infinitum. About the only thing I don't have are plain, bare scalars (aside from all the list context and reference stuff, that is). I also have functions which unwind these data structures. They are what makes XML. I descend through and make attribute, check parent elements, check element level, add new PCDATA, etc.

I think my solution is unworkable, even though it works. Even code which accesses a simple array of hashes can have a lot of punctuation in it. If the keys to a hash are references to something, then you just doubled the number of times your fingers hit the '{' or '}' keys. I'm serious: you can write something, banging away for 45 minutes, switch over to a term window, run it, get slightly off results, go back to your code... and get completely lost. From coding 45 minutes straight to completely lost, in the space of 90 seconds. You'll have foreach loops five deep, each of which look like line noise. You'll run out of descriptive temp variable names. You'll make spaghetti.

I love Perl, I really do, but I don't think I have a head for the brutally complex stuff. I've been getting down on myself lately because I think maybe I'm an idiot for not looking at my problem and saying "Ah ha!, Here's what we need...." Although now I think the problem is actually kinda complex. Any time you take free-form user input you have to account for "variances", but to build well-formed XML on the fly while doing it is very hard. I might not be cut out for the real propeller-head low-level stuff. Or maybe I need to finally break down and take a data structures class of something. Things will be better when my future (at least the immediate one) is secured.

For some reason I can't explain, I find discussions about numbers fascinating. I already knew all that yet I still read the entire thing, and even made some number doodles of the examples on my notepad.

In other news, my right wrist hurts badly and I can't feel either the pinkie or ring fingers on my right hand; they are tingly and numb. If I can't type, I'm going to be in a serious world of hurt, both literally and figuratively. There's a reason I gave up rock climbing and other physical activities involving hands: all my future and present wealth and vitality is predicated on the notion that I will have at least passing dexterity in at least four fingers and one thumb. I've broken every digit I have (that includes toes), and most (all but two, I think) on my hands more than once. My left thumb has been broken three times, for example, once with protruding bone. If I had known how much I'd rely on my hands (as opposed/in addition to my mind) when I was younger, I'd have likely done safer things, or forgone the occasional physical experiment.

Anyway, I decided to write about it. Now that's funny...

I totally forgot to post this: I met Sheriff Joe when I was in Phoenix. He was at that fundraiser at my parents' house that I wrote about. I even got him to autograph one of his posters for me. I had to spell out my name for him: Me: Could you make it out to Wee? The Sheriff: Who? Lee? Me: No... Wee. As in "Wee are the world, wee are the chiiiillllldren... Wee are the ones who make a brighter day..." The Sheriff: Huh? Who do you want it made out to? Me: My name is Wee. W-E-E... Wee. The Sheriff: Huh. Ok. (The Sheriff signs.) Here you go, Wee. Me: Thanks, Sheriff Joe! Anyway, I hung the poster up on my wall. The picture's at right. It's my reminder not to sell tobacco to minors. Which is probably a very lucrative business model... He was a pretty outspoken guy and if the crowd there was any indication, a real hit with the older Republican demographic. I felt kind of bad for the guy whose fundraiser it was because Sheriff Joe was stealing all the attention. But He gave a little speech while he was there in which he said that he wouldn't run for Governor of Arizona. That was the prevailing rumor, and everyone wanted him to. But during the speech, he said that even "the liberals" wanted him to run because (he felt) that would mean he'd be mired in politics instead of reducing crime. And I guess I see his point. The sheriff's office is publicly elected, and the sheriff answers only to the voters. So he has the freedom to do what he wants to do and doesn't have to waste all his time arguing with committees. The funniest thing he said was that instead of run for Governor, he's going to instute the first juvenile chain gangs in the the history of the world. Yep, violent kids wearing striped uniforms over pink underwear chained together picking up trash on the side of the highway. I don't know what it says about society or civil liberties, but if you've ever been to Arizona in the summer, the last thing you'd want to have to pick up trash on some desert highway all day wearing a thick jumpsuit. I could see it being a deterrent for sure. I never committed any crimes, but if I was so inclined, the thought of a chain gang would surely de-incline me. Of course, I saw Cool Hand Luke when I was a kid, too, so I know all about chain gangs. I bet none of the kids in Maricopa County's jails have seen Cool Hand Luke.

I went to Phoenix last weekend for three reasons:

• to see my parents and brothers
• to get a haircut
• to go to a political fundraiser dinner being held at my folks' house.

I love seeing my parents. I could easily go to PHX for a week and do nothing but stay at their house and have the best time imaginable. My brothers... well, let's say that we're closer than "normal" brothers. I feel safe saying that. We were/are a close family. Maybe too close, as far as SO's are concerned. Maybe. Life is best when tempered with moderation. A little of everything certainly sounds fine by me. Anyway, back to the point: I wanted to see my family, I needed a haircut, badly (I'm the guy on the right), and I wanted to see Sheriff Joe and The Candidate.

An aside: I also heard that Joe Foss was to be there, and I've always wanted to meet him. I was a big Marine warplane fan as a kid. Seriously. I was an avid Baa Baa Black Sheep fan (I even have -- somewhere -- an autographed picture of Dirk Blocker), and built every warplane model I could find. I once got to sit in a Corsair, a Zero, a Hellcat, a Helldiver, a P-38, a P-51, and many other WWII aircraft at an airshow when I was 14. My grandfather (himself a Korean War 82^nd Airborne veteran) got all of us kids "backstage passes". I even met Maj. Boyington and the man who shot him down (whose name I have very regrettably forgotten). They had a little airshow mock battle going on. I liked those planes more than girls, you know? But anyway, Gen. Foss and my dad are bird hunting buddies, yet I've never met the man. Bummer for me. I wanted to ask him things. Politely, of course. But I also wanted to see everyone, including The Candidate.

The Candidate is an unnamed person who is running for an unnamed office. A big office, though. If he wins, he'll be the kind of guy who could seriously reduce the sentence of a grand theft verdict, you know? Good to at least have met. And my parents had all these Republican bigwigs at their house. And I'm generally unkempt. I was the Libertarian in the Midst. It was fun. I ought to make a movie.

So I've made the short story very long. Brevity is not my strong point. So then the issue at hand:

[wee@lazlo wee]$ sudo nmap -P0 -O XX.XX.XXX.XX

Password:


Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA22 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )

Interesting ports on  (XX.XXX.XXX.XX):

(The 1527 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)

Port       State       Service

21/tcp     open        ftp

80/tcp     open        http

135/tcp    filtered    loc-srv

137/tcp    filtered    netbios-ns

138/tcp    filtered    netbios-dgm

139/tcp    filtered    netbios-ssn

161/tcp    open        snmp

162/tcp    open        snmptrap

443/tcp    open        https

1025/tcp   open        listen

1026/tcp   open        nterm

1032/tcp   open        iad3

5631/tcp   open        pcanywheredata

5800/tcp   open        vnc

5900/tcp   open        vnc


Remote OS guesses: Windows Me or Windows 2000 RC1


Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 19 seconds

That's what I found about 90 seconds after The Candidate announce what his web site's URL was and I ran in and booted Colin off my mom's PC. Why so soon? Well, one of the people there was a guy who did John McCain's website for the presidential thing. The Candidate announced that this guy "invented political campaign websites" and was "a genius". I thought he was fairly snobby. I mean, candidates have had web sites before this smug arsehole, right? Sure! Then it dawned on me that this guy was basking in the limelight of a guy who does artwork for a living, not network/host security. He should no more be worried about the physical server his web-art is on than Rafael would have been worried that someone might steal his paints. He deals with the content -- not the medium, not the transport layer.

But the fact remains: someone, somewhere set up a Windows 2000 HTTP server. They downloaded no patches nor close any holes. They installed VNC. They installed PCAnywhere. (I wonder if maybe one doesn't work and why?) They have other stuff running. They plugged in a CAT5 cable. It's all bad.

(For the laypeople in the audience: The Candidate's web server is the kind of box that 14 year old script kiddies cream their pants over. Left alone, that machine will eventually -- and very shortly -- be cracked into. Automatic scanning tools will find it and the kiddie will get admin privileges. It is an eventuality.)

So I bring this up while everyone is leaving my parent's house. I do it quietly. See, that web dude they love is on loan. And if he leaves because I say that his site sucks and is going to get hacked, then he'll leave. The Candidate knows that he only does content, but he's worried about embarrassment. I say "Well, someone should worry about security. It's very common for teenaged (and other) crackers to take over a machine and use it for hosting pornography downloads. Would The Candidate like it if the papers ran a story that started: "While graphically and contextually appealing, the real draw to The Candidate's website is the illegal pornography downloads placed there by crackers of every nationality..."?

Safe to say that The Candidate freaked. Badly. I was seriously trying to play it down, too. It's not like I can make money off him by claiming he'll get hacked or anything. Shit, if I thought there was money to be made, I'd send him to The Grout. I don't need the headache. Nor the support issue. I don't like people calling me at all hours asking for work help. There's a reason I never became an admin.

I mailed off the results to the campaign manager. I actually told him to install Tiny Personal Firewall. I first mentioned a Cisco-based hardware solution, but then realized that I would always have to support it (and couldn't). Not good. Anyone can work with a software firewall, right? It works, right? Point and click: "deny all except web". It works enough, anyway. I did my part to save The Candidate some money and hassle. Likely he won't get hacked.

Although I really wanted to tell Grout what The Candidate's IP address was. It would have been funny to show The Candidate a directory listing of C: before he left my parents' house... :-)

Not even the Pipes and Drums of the Royal 48^th Highlanders of Canada turned up to 11 wakes up recalcitrant, sluggabed houseguests.

Hope you had a good night's sleep, Todd and Wy... :-)

This sticker made me laugh. I have no idea why, it just did. I don't even like Marxists all that much. Oh, OK, I know why. As soon as I read it, I had this woodcuttish, Giant-esque, cartoony image of Che, ah, "gettin' down wid da indigenous ladies", if you know what I mean. Little beret flopping around and everything. I thought it might be good fodder for a flash animator.

I never said it made sense, just that it made me laugh. And I probably ought to get this one, but it seems a little pretentious.

I had to look through the port number list at IANA and found this listing:

monkeycom9898/tcp    MonkeyCom
monkeycom9898/udp    MonkeyCom
#    Yuji Kuwabara <>

And I had to know what a MonkeyCom was. So I searched Google. I found a product called MonkeyCom, but the site is only in Japanese. That and the picture of the box it comes in really makes me want to buy it.

Well, I'm not really that famous. But a couple things happened this week which are imperceptibly whittling away at my alloted 15 minutes.

Tracy emailed me a with Bob Young, Chairman of Red Hat where he says that Linux won't rule the desktop anytime soon. Tracy knows I'm a Linux weenie, and a Root Hat weenie in particular. A Red Hat weenie who uses Linux as a desktop OS. So she thought I'd like the link, and she was right. I especially liked the part where Young says that we shouldn't be wiping Winders off our PCs in favor of Linux. Kind of an odd comment from a guy in his position, you know? "Don't buy my widgets!" yelled the widget manufacturer... Anyway, I read the article with interest, and after I read it I thought maybe the Slashdot trolls might like it. So I submitted the link and it was accepted. Kinda lame, I know, but it was nice to see my nick up there on the front page.

The other semi-precious moment of the week concerned an email I got from the package maintainer for the KDE Addons package.
I was a GNOME user for a long time (you have to love E -- it's just pretty as hell), but I recently switched to KDE because GNOME just started pissing me off (isn't being able to choose your GUI great?). So getting mail from the KDE guys was sorta weird. The gist of the email was that they are going to include my stock quote grabber script (the ouput of which you see over there to the right) in the next version of Knewsticker. Which is flattering. But a couple things bother me.

First, they hacked up my script to spit out RSS. No problem there, except that they did a real bad job. Admittedly, that script wasn't the paragon of stylish Perl coding (hey, what do you want for three hours work one Sunday?), but at least it was commented. And there was a little thought behind it. And it was written to be configurable so that other people could use it easily (even if they didn't know anything about Perl). The guy who altered it (identified only as "anonymous coder" -- likely because of the hatchet job he did on it) did so not only badly, but I got to hear about it after the fact. "Hey there, yeah, we messed with your script, and we're going to put it in this KDE package, hope you don't mind." I'm a wee bit torqued over that. And maybe a little cheesed off. I'm not altogether sure I want my name anywhere near that messed up script.

When they altered it, they change it so that it links back to kde.org. (The newsticker scrolls in the taskbar, and you can link the text that scrolls by. The links in their version are all to the KDE main site.) I would have made it link to the yahoo site that has the news info. So if you saw that your stock tanked, you can click the link and see the biz.yahoo.com page that has the news about why. Why would you want to click a stock quote and go to kde.org?!? But it's not like they asked me to help them modify it for the newsticker applet...

They said they are going to use my (altered) script now, but will be re-writing parts of it, ostensibly to add features. Hope I don't mind. Thanks. "Your script sucks, but we're going to use it for now until one of us can make it better." Lame. Judging from their alterations, I wish them the best.

Which is why I wished they would have asked me to help them. I've been meaning to update it so that it spits out RSS. I have this RSS/RDF deal going on at work, conincidentally enough. And I thought my ticker script would be a perfect fit. So I'm thinking of ways to add RSS functionality in (and add it in such as way as to allow other people to use it as well, not just bury it in some package) and I get the email saying they already did it. But they did it badly. To add ticker symbols, you have to edit an array in the script itself. Well, the whole point of the script was for people to be able to not have to edit code! I made it customizable from the command line so that there'd be no need to edit any Perl. Nice and simple. After all, if people were going to edit the code, they might as well just use the Finance::Quote module directly and forget all about my wrapper script. So I was going to change it such that you can add a command line flag and get RSS output. I was also going to change it so that you can use it as a CGI script and get quotes remotely (so that a bunch of machines could query the script on one central place -- this is handy for work purposes). And I was going to give these changes away. I'd update the version on the web site and other people could get the benefit of the work. But there's no way I'm putting the altered script on the web site. For one, it means there'd be two versions of the script. Or I'd have to work their changes into the old script. Which means to add the RSS functionality, I might as well just add the changes that had already been in my head and forget their stuff.

It's just a wrapper script I'm getting worked up over, but I've had 20,000-something downloads. A lot of people have emailed me and said they liked how it encapsulated the Finance::Quote module, and how it made it easy for them to have quotes on their web site without having to write code, edit files, etc. That's nice. So maybe I'm making it out to be more than it is, but it's a little important to me. I don't mean to sound like I'm whining about it. I guess I would have liked to have been more involved is all. At least it's going to be distributed. So my tiny little script is preserved for posterity. Which is good. And it's going to get me off my ass and make some updates to it.

In the Repo Man box set DVD there's a CD with the soundtrack. Somehow this eluded me until about 45 minutes ago. And I'm listening to it and it's got all my old favorite hits.

So for no reason at all, here are the lyrics to the Circle Jerks' tune "When the Shit Hits the Fan", my favorite song of the whole movie:

in a sluggish economy
inflation, recession
hits the land of the free
standing in unemployment lines
blame the government for hard time

we just get by
however we can
we all gotta duck
when the shit hits the fan

10 kids in a cadillac
stand in lines for welfare checks
let's all leach off the state
gee!the money's really great!

we just get by
however we can
we all gotta duck
when the shit hits the fan

soup lines
free loaves of bread
5lb blocks of cheese
bags of groceries
social security
has run out on you and me
we do whatever we can
gotta duck when the shit hits the fan

we just get by
however we can
we all gotta duck
when the shit hits the fan

soup lines
free loaves of bread
5lb blocks of cheese
bags of groceries
social security
has run out on you and me
we do whatever we can
gotta duck when the shit hits the fan

I found this site which has various movie scripts. Probably my most favorite movie (by at least one measure: I've seen it far and away more than any other movie) is Aliens. I remember walking out of the the Cine Capri theater in Phoenix just completely mind-bended. I've always been into movies, and even dressed up as a few of them on dress-up occasions, but I've never felt a movie like that one. I was scared shitless throughout most of it, for one.

I saw Jaws when I was 8 years old, and that freaked me -- but seeing Aliens when you're 19 (and seeing it in a super monster theater like the Cine Capri) makes you feel it as well as think it I guess. Maybe I got more analytical as I got older. Maybe I was young enough to be dumb enough to join a branch of service when a war wasn't on, but also smart enough to analyze the hell out of everything. Show me a 19 year old who was an honor student, a sci-fi geek, a quasi gun-nut, and a fan of JFA and not able to readily internalize Aliens and I'll show you a politician that thinks he telling the truth. "Yes, we have lots of blankets for your people so you can stay warm in your new homelands up north..."

Anyway, I dug the movie. It was a movie for me and I was there at the right time and place to enjoy it. Some people have "Annie Hall" or "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or "High Noon". Or even, god forbid, "Breaking Away". And I have "Aliens". So sue me.

So anyway², I happened across a site with movie scripts. And they had the script for Aliens. And I read it. And I liked it. And I want to write a script of my own, except I don't think I'd be all that great a screenwriter. I write like I think, which is hardly ever good. But since nobody has to read this except me, then I'm happy if you're happy. There's always sed or `perl -pi -e 's/bad/good/' online_post.txt` if I don't like what I have down...

So I've been playing paintball lately. I started about three months ago when I found out that a coworker played regularly. I've always been interested in paintball. I guess it comes from having used firearms all my life. I dunno. But when I found out that I had a buddy to go with (who had a lot of experience and equipment; it's always funner to go with someone), I knew I was going to get into it.

And into it I am. I bought a gun of my own. (Range guns suck. It's axiomatic.) I felt that if I really wanted to play and enjoy myself, I should buy my own gun. I knew that if I played with those nasty rentals I wouldn't enjoy myself. And that's what it's all about: enjoyment, exercise, fun. Tangent: My dad once said that I should "never buy cheap boots". That's about a direct quote. I always thought he was being his normal weird self until I realized his point. If you spend all the time and money and whatnot to plan an outdoor trip (dad's a hunter, so I think of his advice in that context), why would you think of throwing it all down the drain by saving $100 on cheap boots? One blister is all it takes to ruin a very expensive week(end). And you don't have any fun, either. Waste money and not have fun. Hmmmmm. I think I'll buy expensive boots, thanks.

So I bought a gun right off the bat. I had quite a dilema: Which gun to get? I didn't want the $1700 high-end race gun, but I didn't want the $50 crap gun either. I wanted a good, useable, middle-of-the-road workable gun. Maybe I could upgrade a bit? Something that was reasonably accurate and sturdy, hopefully with low maintenance. After way too much online reasearch, I went with a Kingman Spyder TL+. I got a pretty good deal on it. I bought it at a local shop, although I paid a little more. I did that because I felt that if I bought it locally, then I could return it, bring it back in to ask questions, get the guys to recommend upgrades, etc. I felt that I could go in to the same shop, buy paintballs or whatever, and Chuck or Barry would remember me. I bought it locally for the same reason people go to local bookstores over Barnes & Noble. It's sometimes nice to pay for the luxury of being a customer, not a number.

(The trip to the paintball shop took three hours. I can try to recreate that moment. Pretend I pay my rent by getting you to buy extreme, colorful sports items and read on.)

But you can't just go from zero to paintballing with a $140 paintgun. No way. There are a lot more little (and not little) things you need. You need to get an elbow. It's a little plastic deal that connects the hopper to the gun. Get a clear one so you can see when the balls aren't feeding (meaning you give the gun a shake and watch 'em tumble back down in). Oh, that means you need a hopper. Yep, the Viewloader 200 is a good one. Costs like $10, holds 200 paintballs. Did you know that shots to the gun count as a shot against you? It's a fact. You get shot in the gun, you're out -- same as getting shot in head. Guess where most guns get hit at? Yep, the hopper. It's a big target which sticks up sometimes higher than your head. Well... there's a neoprene cover for hoppers that helps give you an edge because long shots, when the tricky angle of the hopper is combined with the springy material of the cover, will likely bounce right off. And balls have to break to count.

So you're gun has a hopper that can feed it. The balls have to get propelled somehow. For that you need a compressed gas. You can get a CO₂ tank for pretty cheap. But CO₂ is nasty. Much better is compressed air and if your buddy has a scuba tank with a fill station, then you esssentially get free air. No waiting in line to pay for crappy CO₂. You can fill between every match. But compressed air tanks cost a bit more. Like $70 for the PMI one. Why so much? Well, it's a little scuba tank. Even has a regulator, valve, pressure gauge and you have to get it hydrostatically tested and visually inspected just like a diving tank. And while you're at it, you might as well get a neoprene cover, nipple cover, spare o-rings and a thread cap for it. Another $30. And if you really want to make the gun's profile smaller and make it shoulder better, you need a drop forward. That lowers the tank a bit and brings it more towards the front of the gun. Smaller, in this case, is definitely better.

The best upgrade you can get on a paintball gun is a new barrel. The stock barrels fill only the most basic definition of a barrel: a tube. They aren't that great. The stock Sypder barrels are loud and inaccurate. The best aftermarket barrel for the money is a DYE Xcel. It's only $50 and works pretty well. You also need a barrel plug. Got to have that. Required. $3 for the plastic one. If you get a ball break, you'll need to clean out your barrel in a hurry. For that you need a straight shot squeegee (you better get a lanyard for it so it doesn't get lost). When you're really needing cleanliness, you need to swab out both the action and the barrel. So you should get a thing colloquially referred to as a "Wookie dick". Insert favorite joke here.

As for paintballs, you can get the real expensive stuff or the cheap, weekend warrior stuff. I recommend the el cheapo stuff unless you're pretending to play in the Olympics or something. Just make sure they fit your barrel. Buy RecSport paintballs locally, $45 for a case of 2000. No breakage during shipping. They fit the Xcel fine. You can get the black shelled ones that break pink.

(At this point, a word about why I prefer to shoot pink paint is is order. I like pink paint because nobody uses pink paint. Well, hardly nobody. I believe it's because all the kiddies think it might give them a homoerotic connotation. It's hard enough to be 16 and trying to look tough without having to suffer jibes about pink paint. Pink is very un-extreme. Which is great for me. I don't give even one twentieth of a shit what the boys think about my sexual proclivities, but I really like being able to see where my paint broke from very far away [the hot pink being much more visible than the green or blue or dull yellow favored by the Mt. Dew crowd]. And I love being able to yell to the ref during a paintcheck that the d00d with the rad anodized paint gun has a big pink spot on his head, and yes I know it for certain because I'm shooting pink paint and, you bet, I was the guy that put the pink to him in the first place. In any case, comments about my choice of paint color get fewer as the day goes on. "My pink paint is 'gay'? Really now? It's just that it looks so very fetching on you..." OK, back to the paintball store. Pardon my digression.)

So what else do we have left? Hmmm... OH! You don't want to lose an eye do you? Ok, good. That means you need to buy a mask (since rental goggles not only suck as bad as rental guns, they also let you smell the last occupant's lunch). Like everything else, you can deal with the low-end products or get something that will let you enjoy yourself. And this isn't a place you should scrimp. If you can't see (or worse, get hurt) you can't play. (Note to self: Think of dad's cheap boots and not what the tally is so far.) So that means you have to get a mask with an anti-fog lens. Which is more expensive, naturally. The mask that has the best viewing and the best protection is the V-Force Shield. It's not cheap, but not high-end either. The best part is the drop-down neck protector. It has a chin strap too, but that's dubiously useful.

I bet you don't know the worst place to get hit? Well, maybe the groin area is the most painful, but not really. There's lots of protection (clothing, being hunched over or behind something, running, etc) down there, so getting nutshot is rare. No, the worst place is in the knuckles, because the bone always gets hit (less fleshy padding == more pain) and you get hit there a lot. Why? It's simply a matter of availability. The gun, by nature, sticks out towards the enemy. You hold the gun up in front of your face, which also sticks out. Your hands are holding the gun and your first set of joints, 95% of the time, are out in front of all that. So you get it in that first set of knuckles a lot. What can you do? Why buy gloves of course! Best $10 you'll ever spend.

You might also want to think about shoes. There's the running part of paintball. So think soccer or football. Don't get normal tennis shoes unless you have to, because you'll slip and/or twist something. Don't wear big boots because it's like being tied to to the ground. You'll wear your thighs out as well. You can maybe get by with light hiking boots though. But the best is high-top football cleats. Lightweight and lots of traction. Remember, most movement in paintball is sprinting.

You also need pants. Well, you don't *need* them since jeans will work, but like I said, it's all about sprinting and crouching. So big and baggy is best if you want to have fun. "Official" paintball paints have a loose fit and pockets for all your gizmos. The JT Pro Series pants also have another great feature: the lower legs zip off, which means you don't get your car muddy and painty. Why would you get anything but dusty? You're just running around in the dirt, right? You should be able to simply dust off and get into your new Lincoln without fear of mussing the white leather. Sometimes, but not always. Think about it: paintballs are water-based. People on paintball fields all tend to hide in the same places. So they got shot in the same places, and they spill/drop/whatever their ammo in those places, and they kneel down with their painted, grimy knees in those places. And these places they hide in almost always have little depressions and divets from all the scratching about. So any amount of moisture -- atmospheric or paintball-based -- collects right where you'll put your knees, shins, and ass. And it should go without saying that since there's all that movement there's no grass down there, just dirt. Dirt + wet + paint = colored mud. Your lower half will not only be wet and painted, it'll be wet and painted with paint-based mud. Being able to zip off the lower half and then sit on a towel means less trips to the auto detailing joint. Unless, of course, you like changing your pants in public in which case you can wear anything you like as long as you bring spare drawers.

What will hurt most after you play all day for the first time? It won't be those silver dollar-sized bruises on your sides, arms and neck. Those sting at first, but they look much nastier than they feel. What will really hurt is your knees unless you buy kneepads. Like a broken record, this is. Say it with me: "The cheap stuff will be something you put up with, the good stuff won't get in your way and will let you enjoy yourself." So you can get the low-bid kind that will chafe the backs of your knees with ill-fitting velcro, or you can get the kevlar-laden kind that would make Robocop jealous. $15 for pain, $70 for bulletproof. Since you're a neophyte, I'd recommend something in the middle of those two.

Ok, all this good stuff. One more question: do you know who the pros aim at most often? Newbies. How can they tell you're a newbie? Because you're wearing your daddy's wooland camo fatigues in a paintball field that consists of brown dirt and old cable spools. Military camo doesn't hide you very well unless you are in a forest. If you're trying to hide amidst a bunch of orange obstacles or colorful blow-up bunkers while looking like a tree, then you aren't hidden very well are you? Most regular players can also tell that you aren't an expert by how you play, but at very least you don't want to advterise that fact before the match even starts. Best way around this? Get an according-to-Hoyle paintball jersey. (Nothing is a "real" sport until it has its own jersey.) Best camo in paintball is to look like everyone else. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, and wearing woodland pattern when everyone else is extreme is a good way to stick up. Just because you are a n00b doesn't mean you have to look like a n00b.

So that should be about everything you need to start off in the wonderful world of paintball. Like that sign by the front door said, "Warning: Addiction Zone Ahead". If only the first one was free...

Tally, bagging, payment went like this:

Woof, heavy. $600? :::cough cough cough:::

Well, that's about how my three hour tour was. I ended up getting almost everything I needed, and I certainly paid for that right. But I want to have a good time. That's the whole point, isn't it? Get exercise, get outdoors, have fun. I needed an hobby that didn't involve a chair and a keyboard. My ass is getting larger without me actively (get it?) trying to help it. It was all worth it. I felt like a rube buying into everything he was laying down, but I didn't get anything I didn't need and so far everything has worked pretty well. It was handy having someone there who knew what the scoop was. Online research for a couple weeks helped as well. I've had fun, too. I went out six weekends in a row, and almost my whole company is going next weekend. My wife is even into it (she's really good, too; better then me, actually). I feel like I got my money's worth, far more so than any 12 video games I've bought or occasional computer part. It's fun to be active again.

...and it's called Enfrastructure.

So I'm up here at Enfrastructure for the day. In swanky Aliso Viejo. Land of the SUV and golf buddies and goat cheese pizza and seeing and Being Seen. This place is every bit as absurd as any of those concepts. I have some down time before our meetings, so I just took a brief walk around to see what was what. I found a breakroom, if you can call it that. I'm sure I've screwed up the chi or the feng or whatever of the place by labeling it a mere breakroom. This room is to breakroom as Aeron is to beanbag. But more on the Aerons later... this place is lousy with them. I decided to get a cup of coffee and take a moment to truly appreciate the museum-quality example of "dotcom" excess typified in this one room.

They have an automatic coffee machine, with free (free as in umbrella, it would seem) ceramic mugs. It makes coffee in three strengths. It makes espresso and cappuccino. It makes tea. I only got a coffee-flavored coffee, but I'll try the other types next. The machine is black and stainless, and sits on a Corian brand counter next to a complete set of built-in SubZero fridges. Again, stainless. Embedded in this counter is a ceramic (or stone?) sink with one of those $800 German faucets I wanted to get for my house. It has the little steel squirting attachment as well. Above the counter are wall-to-wall brushed stainless steel cupboards. Below the counter are more built-in stainless cupboards and a Bosch dishwasher like my folks have. Halogens suspended on wires illuminate the whole affair.

If you walk around the breakfast bar fronting all this, you get to the waist-high Ikea stools and tables. Blonde wood and brushed aluminum on porcelain flooring. Those tables are sectioned off from the hallway by a raked sand and stones Zen garden, complete with "water stones" (I didn't make up the labeling -- that what it says) in a gentle waterfall configuration. The net effect is a tiny babbling brook type of noise which makes you want to pee. I assume it's supposed to be soothing. On one of the little tables next to the breakfast bar is a tiny little banzai tree set in some stones and a coffee table-sized book. The book's title is "Zen". In case anyone was dense enough to miss the Zen-ness the first moment they walked in, they spell it out for you. I guess marketing people use this room as well.

On the wall hangs abstract art. I think they are supposed to depict flowers, but they look like 25 square feet of random colors to me. The art is lit with halogens as well. I didn't really expect to see a price, but I looked reflexively. I also automatically wondered how they got all the art in the room (since some of them are too big for the elevator) and how someone would get one out and to their house if they happened to buy it. These thoughts surprised me. So I looked at the art closely. It's made of real paint. I suppose the artist who painted it would be one of the smartest people involved with the Internet Revolution. He made money just like Levi Strauss did, and will almost certainly outlive this silly company. There's a lesson in that, and some advice as well, I think.

This one breakroom, (one of out of five in this one building of three), is on an exterior wall. That wall is made out of glass, floor to ceiling, with brushed aluminum frames between the panes. It's supposed to look completely open, and the effect is fairly complete. Tracy wouldn't want to be anywhere near it for fear of falling. Below on the ground is a garden/park of sorts. It has tropical plants surrounding a dual walkway to a middle bit which has another Zen-ish sand thing with rocks and a couple secluded benches. There's also some more fountains there, but I don't know if they have water stones since I can't read the signage from this far up. The whole thing has a vaguely Japanese look about it. I got the feeling that if I were Japanese, I would be offended. It's hard to explain, but it's far too obvious and garish and overstated to be anything but some American's idea of what a high-tech Asian garden should be like. Imagine a Japanese thinking Disneyland Tokyo is what a cross-section of America is like and you get the idea.

Walking back to our offices I pass more art on the wall. They are smaller than the art in the breakroom, but in a similar style and similarly lit. I didn't look, but I assume that they are real paint as well. This was a smart artist. I estimate it would take me about 20 minutes to replicate that painting, or create another of the same style. Maximum profits come from minimal investments of time for this painter. Buckets of paint, stacks of canvas and I could send all the kids in my neighborhood to college. I would really love to paint myself a power boat and a summer home. The person who decorated this place is P.T. Barnum's wet dream. Maybe it's the Venture Capitalists who funded this silliness who are the real suckers, though.

I take a right and pass by the receptionist for this floor. She is sitting in a wrap-around desk thing (Ikea again). She has a 20" flat panel monitor. It's probably hooked up to a 1.4 GHz Pentium with a huge drive and lots of RAM. Makes AOL IM crash less often, I'm sure. She's on an Aeron chair, and there's another one right next to her. Guess you need a spare sometimes. She has halogen desk lamps (completing the look -- did I expect anything different?). I'm looking at like $7,500 worth of stuff, easy, not including the art (impressionist foliage) behind her on the wall. One receptionist... seven grand. One receptionist, seven grand. Seven grand to outfit one receptionist. Insanity. She looked at me funny when I started laughing.

I took the steel and glass elevator to the bottom floor, where the cafe is. You get there by taking a left out of the elevator and then a right just after the spa. Yeah, you can get naked and get in a sauna and then get a rub-down. They have appointments every 15 minutes. How can you have an RSI when you've just been freshly Rolfed? In the cafe they have the same soft-pop music playing as they do in the hallways upstairs. In fact, now that I think about it, everywhere not inside an office has this ubiquitous music. It's supposed to be hip, I think. It's like being in a Gap commercial. Anyway, I walk through the glass doors (labeled "Cafe" in the hippest looking sans-serif font you can imagine; these labels are everywhere) to find a sea of blonde wood Ikea tables and matching modern chairs. Each one has a little banzai plant on it like they had in the breakroom. I couldn't find any books laying out, so I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be Zen or not. To my left is more glass walls looking out onto the garden I saw from above. You can't see the fountains or the tables, just plants and the paths going to them. It looks like a jungle -- I'm in a little island of excess. To my right is a bar. It has beer taps and wine racks and stemware and all the normal bar type stuff you'd expect. Next to that is a Starbucks. Yep, they have an official Starbucks. Farther down on the right is the place where you get food. All steel and halogen and light wood. I didn't look at the food. Organic soy-based feta spinach wraps I'm sure. It made me want a chili cheese dog.

Also on the walls at major entry points are flat panel plasma displays. They're Sony displays, and they cost about $14,000 each. I noted the model number and looked them up. I saw about 25 of them when I was there. That's 25 of these 14K monitors from the front door to the cafe, then from the elevator to the office where I was. That's about 100 yards total. That's one thousand dollars a foot. And this from a company that's currently downsizing. All these monitors have dynamic cycling content playing on them. One time I saw a 3D exploding view of the building on one, with a red flashing "You Are Here" arrow superimposed on it. Maybe a floor plan etched into a solid gold sheet wasn't an expensive enough map so they had to go the multimedia route. Another time I saw this vaguely New Age montage of all the companies who have offices here, and why it was such a happy place of the future. I saw what looked like a music video on another. I also remember seeing a still image of a wooded scene. Sometimes you can't pay enough for paint apparently. It was Big Brother feeling, not happy feeling.

I went back upstairs just shaking my head. All this brushed metal and brand-name equipment. I even saw a Kinko's in here. No wonder there's financial trouble in the dotcom world. This place cost a mint just to build, much less outfit. How they expected to pack enough dotcoms in this building to offset the cost of the initial outlay is beyond me. Most of the offices seem empty. I walked around a little more, and saw more of the same, so I won't bother to describe it. Garish excess everywhere. I thought Qualcomm was bad, but money once flowed here like water from a burst dam. They had big plans and big dreams and somehow they got a hold of a haystack of cash. And now the dream is pretty much ending; you can see the cracks starting to show. It's like what you read about during the fall of an empire. Lots of excesses, like people feel as though they can delay the inevitable with style over substance. Put one more coat of paint on the peeling layers. Print the marketing materials on glossier paper. Pour more money down the drain and it will eventually clog up. I'm left with a bad taste in my mind, like I'm whoring and pandering to these people. These crass Southern Californians with their BMWs and Lexii and good hair and expensive chairs. Their unimaginative style over any real substance. I'm supposed to be impressed and instead I'm just appalled and embarrassed. These are the kind of people that will lay employees off with 1/20^th the thought it took to make the purchasing decisions to buy the most expensive kitchen they could find for no valid reason whatsoever. The worst sense of dread came when I realized that I might have to work here every day.

I didn't see one person in black leather the whole time I was there. The facade is not complete, and it is all just an illusion. So I decided to steal the coffee cup I got from the expensive machine. I want to get a little excess for myself while I can.

I know a lot of you were curious about what my "office" looks like, so I hacked up this quick page to show you (and give you some thoughts on the matter of my new work environment). Below is a grab from the office cam someone here set up.



That's me over in the corner, doing what I do. I've got my backpack and coffee on the right,and a sweater and a book on the left. Sitting to my right is Jim, a networking guy extraordinaire, and on his right you can see Scott Kennedy's (our fearless leader) knees. The population of the Beanbag Room in this photo is four people, which is a light load.

As you can see, I've stategically placed myself on a beanbag over in the corner, next to Beanbag Mountain. This is a simple yet essential trick to ensure that I don't have others being nosy neighbors. After all, Robert Frost was right (good fences making good neighbors, and all that), and I like to do things to keep honest people honest whenever I can. My philosophy on this matter was inherited via the Collective Unconsciousness, and I am far from being alone in this way of thinking. It's not that anyone has anything to hide, it's just a subliminal need for a little privacy (except for the gent under the cam -- you can see his laptop screen in the lower portion of the image -- who didn't know about the new office cam until about twenty minutes ago and has since moved). I think. When in Rome...

It's actually not that uncomfortable, except for four things:

1. If you want to write stuff down (using paper, even!), there's really no flat, hard surface to use except for the top of the laptop. That makes it difficult, as you could imagine, to refer to what is on your computer screen as you write.
   
2. My shoulders and wrists hurt more at the end of the day than they would otherwise. I think this is due to equal parts beanbag and laptop use.
   
3. The vinyl on a beanbag is a perfect medium for the storage of microbes, since it's fairly impervious to water and other fluids. If someone who's feeling a little less than fresh sneezes on a beanbag, the sneeze goo will remain on the beanbag for some time, unabsorbed and waiting for the tender embrace of your skin. The upshot of this is that people here don't grouse about sick time being taken. It gets taken quite a bit. This has a tertiary upshot of telecommuting being an acceptable alternative to further speading the bugs about the office.
   
4. I've noticed that prolonged periods of beanbagedness produce a certain, how does one put it delicately, "butt juice" between one's trousers and the surface of the beanbag. It occurred to me that I might not be the only person who has experienced this phenomenon. It would then follow that this residual butt juice would remain unabsorbed (see #3 above). Since one is most fresh in the morning, and has not yet produced any personal juice with which to saturate one's clothing, the first seating in a "pre-owned" beanbag would be the time at which one's trousers would best absorb the previous owner's leavings. I don't know what this means from a pharmacological standpoint,but the thought of spending the bulk of the day in a perfect vector for another's flora and fauna is unsettling nevertheless. I wash my hands quite a bit, and the undercarriage gets a good scrubbing at shower time.

As an added bonus, I've also set up a quick-and-dirty email beanbag color bounceback process. Simply send mail to and you'll get a message back stating the color of my beanbag du jour. Fun stuff, no?