Intellectual Poison

The Freakonomics Blog says...The next time your daughter brings home a new boyfriend, be sure to ask his middle name because circumstantial evidence indicates that having "Wayne" as a middle name may make him more prone to the commision of violent crimes.

And he probably drives a Camaro or a Trans-Am. Cars we grew up calling wifebeaters which isn't especially funny in retrospect but it made us feel cool at the time.

Republican Rep. Foley Resigns because of some really creepy emails and IMs he sent an underage male page working for another congressman.

Which has given rise to a new word that could have gotten lots of use in the last couple of years, GOPerv - pronounced Gop-erv or, possibly, Go-Perv as that rolls off the tongue much more easily. Easy to figure out what this one means, eh?

And Mr. Foley? You need to really sit and think about your entire career being shitcanned because you got a boner for a 16 year old boy. Nice work. I'm glad I never voted for you.

or....Were You Just Holding Your Junk? Then Go Wash Your Freakin' Hands!

Ever since my post detailing the crap habits of the office building I work in, I've been noticing more tendencies and trends.

Among them are that there's a decent population of people in my building that don't wash their hands after using the bathroom.

I don't think I'm going to ever shake hands with anyone ever again because that's just gross to think about. I don't understand how someone could be holding their cock to take a piss and then just put 'er away and get back to working without bothering to, you know, wash up some.

But its all good, I've got a tube of hand sanitizer from Purell (now with moisture therapy!) that will kill off the poo and pee microbes that are teaming on their hands. Eww, it gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. I'm glad I don't share an office with any of them (that I know of thus far) because I'd be wiping down my keyboard every five minutes.

Tags: handwashing, bathroom, nasty

The good news is that I finally ordered an upgrade hard drive for my Tivo from Weaknees. I noticed a week or two ago that I have, at best, one show saved on the Tivo. The majority of our hours are spent on kid's shows and my wife's shows.

And that's not right.

So I ordered an upgrade drive to add 180 hours of storage to the unit. That should help quite a bit. Now I just need to figure out why the damned thing is running so slowly these days.

Anyone got any insight into that?

And if you're considering a Tivo I would just recommend getting one. It makes television so much better. The replay is good, the pausing is good and it just works without hassles (unlike other PVR's I've read about). The only bummer I know of now is that there are no lifetime licenses for sale anymore, they want a monthly residual payment. I knew that was never going to last so I bought the lifetime subscription and it is paying for itself now!

Tags: Tivo, upgrade, hard drive

I found out today that inhaling secondhand smoke can exacerbate allergic symptoms for up to 4 days afterwards.

Secondhand smoke causes a shift in the immune system that results in higher levels of antibodies that trigger an allergic reaction.

So, aside from lung cancer, you can use allergic reactions as a reason to ask the stink stick smokers to take it elsewhere.

I'm always amazed when we travel to just to see how many people smoke. Everywhere. Its awful and sad. When we were up in Reno a few weeks ago, it felt like I was the only one who wasn't smoking. Casino's with bad HVAC systems stink too.

And, oh yeah, people who smoke just outside the door to my building, the smoke drifts right into the building and down the hallway which makes people have to walk through an entire hallway filled with your second hand smoke. And that look I give you on the way? That's the look of someone who'd like an excuse to kick you in the nuts.

I understand the desire to be famous for something but being famous for the longest fingernails on record is just gross and tells me that you don't have to work, you don't have to actually do anything with your life except grow your disgusting fingernails.

And, truthfully, you have churned my stomach.

And it raises lots of questions. How do you go to the bathroom? How do you eat? How do you dress yourself? What in the hell compelled you to stop clipping your fingernails? What in the hell compelled you to permanently stop clipping them? What does your family have to say about this? I'm guessing the majority are saying "Nobody cares, now cut your disgusting fingernails, they're totally creeping everyone out, you crazy leather-pant wearing old lady!"

Just nasty.

HP executives are in Washington right now "testifying" about the spying in the boardroom scandal that's already knocked several high-fliers out of the skies, including Patricia Hurd (who was just inducted into the Silicon Valley Hall of Fame which makes for an interesting contrast to this current idiocy).

And the coverage has been positively awful. What interest is it to hear these folks exercise their 5th amendment rights against self-incrimination? That's not hot and sexy and bad.

We want to hear the dirt. We want to hear who told who to do what. We want to know who authorized the pretexting and under what grounds they did so.

Or, actually, not really. The HP scandal is interesting stuff but there are plenty of other more interesting and farther reaching stories going on right now.

The continued attempt to dismantle the US's adherence to the Geneva Conventions on the torture of POWs is a big one. The Clinton getting all pissed off at the Fox News reporter who asked Clinton questions about 9/11 he wouldn't even ask the sitting president. And I think that was a brilliant response by Bill Clinton, why haven't you asked President Bush these same questions?

There is news that the number of US deaths in Iraq recently surpassed the total number of dead from 9/11 which has a sort of somber signifigance.

There is the news that my brother and his family are moving to Texas as he accepted a new position. But since he doesn't respond to email anymore its hard to offer congratulations.

There is the big bummer news that my cousin's converted barn burned down under some suspicious circumstances (or at least it seems suspicious but will likely end up being a shorted wire).

There is the unsurprising but still annoying news that my unemployment appeal was denied and the bitch I used to work for has, for all intents and purposes, won. That sucks and it rankles me but I do believe in karmic payback and I'm certain I'll read about her getting run over by a bus anyday now. (No, not really but its a nice thought for a moment. I don't wish her any real harm.)

Oh yes, and there is the news that Barry Bonds will not sign any contract for what will likely be his final major league season if the contract contains any incentive-based payouts. I.e. he wants a huge paycheck no matter how gimpy and useless he is next year. Which means that he'll likely go and play in the American League to run out his career as a DH since he's a liability in the field now.

And I can understand his perspective but I don't think he's being fair. He's a huge salary and if he's not producing or even playing (which brings in bigger crowds and larger gate revenues) then he shouldn't be getting full-sized paychecks. Look at what an incentive-based contract has done for Frank Thomas this season. He's a leading candidate for comeback player of the year with his monster numbers in September. And he's having fun playing.

Anyway, that's my news wrap for this morning. Time to get cranking on my tasklist.

Tags: HP, 5th amendment, news, Barry Bonds

How many cups of coffee do you have on an average morning?

I usually have one when I get up and watch Sesame Street with Graydon. And then I bring a thermos full of coffee with me to work which gives me another cup and a half to two cups.

So I generally have about three cups of coffee everyday during the week (I try to cut back to just a single cup on the weekends as its much harder to loaf and nap with a bunch of caffeine coursing through one's system).

Last night, as I was stirring my glass of malt Ovaltine, I had a thought of switching out the coffee and switching in Ovaltine. Coffee has no nutritional value and the creamer is generally sugar, fat and cream so no help there. Ovaltine has a whole crapload of vitamins and nutrients and comes slathered in milk, which has its own host of nutritional goodness.

And Ovaltine is really good warm too.

I think I'm going to give it a try next week and see how it goes. Of course, I will report in here. But this means I will have to seriously work on not pounding the entire glass or mug of Ovaltine in one prolonged chug as I usually end up doing. The stuff is tasty!

Tags: coffee, Ovaltine, health

You didn't know you could be all green and still have your tech widgets, did you?

Well, be the envy of the coffee shop when you plug the wooden memory stick into your solar-powered TreeHugger 5000 notebook.

But I think I prefer these sushi-styled USB drives.

Really, all I need in a flash drive is high speed and to make sure the connector is protected. That's why I really like my SanDisk Cruzer Titanium, the USB connection retracts into the cool Liquidmetal case. Now I just need a much, much larger drive as the 512 MB gets filled up right quick.

And then there is the incredibly lame Office Espionage Kit that includes a listening device, an invisible ink pen and two mirrors to peek around corners. Whoop-de-friggin'-do. How about some real tools? Like a pen scanner, proximity alarm, bombs disguised as CD's and a Dictaphone that converts into a bar? Now we're talking!
Tags: USB drive, SanDisk, wooden USB, sushi, form over function

The Internet’s Biggest Google Whores.

Here's another installment from the Cheddar X, another lifted post but its better than a kick in the teeth, I think.

11. Last Christmas: doesn't count anymore.
12. When I turn my head left: I see my in-box piled high with papers.
13. I should be: sitting out by the pond having lunch and not looking at a computer screen.
14. When I look down I see: a blue carpet with chair wheel marks all over it.
15. The craziest recent event was: probably on the morning commute but I've already moved on.
16. If I were a character on "Friends" I'd be: the one who killed himself out of shame.
17. By this time next year: we will have moved alot closer to my work.
18. My favorite aunt is: way away on the east coast with the rest of my family.
19. I have a hard time understanding: why non-rich people support George Bush, he's not your pal.
20. One time at a family gathering: I saw my uncle use a ladle to corral his nuts (yes, it did scar me for life).

It is now possible to send someone a springloaded ass.

I'll let that sink in for a second. Yes, an ass in a box, on springs that sproings out at the recepient.

I can think of one person who deserves one for good reason and another who deserves one for a bad reason. Is it possible that the same thing can mean opposite things to two different people? Sure.

Anyway, here is Ass in the Box (um, maybe nsfw, ya think). Who would you send one to?

Tags: assinthebox, springloaded, ass

Americans Skeptical About Gas Price Drop and, in my mind, rightfully, correlate the sudden and substantial drop in the price of gas to fears of the upcoming elections that will see some of those record oil company profits eaten up by pissed off consumers.

How much did the oil companies make last year in profit? Try $78 billion.

To answer Tony Snow's quote "'It also raises the question, if we're dropping gas prices now, why on earth did we raise them to $3.50 before?' Snow said."

Um yeah, Tony, how about I give you 78 billion reasons.

Stay the course, folks. Kick these crooked fucking bums out in November, restore the natural checks and balances on our government and eventually this Bush-era will seem like a bad dream that happened a long time ago instead of the never-ending nightmare it has been.

My neighbor had a visitor over who said we shouldn't ever question the president and we should just get behind him. Which I ably refuted by asking him how long he would work for a moron who continually screwed up the company. It astonishes me that people are still not willing to call a moron a moron and cast Bush into the gutter like the trash he is.

And then I explained to him about Bush's latest attempt to remove the US from subscribing to the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of POWs and the use of torture upon them. It sickens me to think of Bush and his cronies dismantling everything our nation stands for and then trying to cast the Democrats as the louts who have screwed everything all to hell.

I love the morning after a good workout the night before. I feel stronger, tell myself I look better and am just all around more suited to hit the ground running (or rolling as the case may be).

I'm not as "built" as I used to be but then I've got two kids, a wife, a dog and a full time job so you'll excuse me if I don't have the six pack in effect.

But I am riding my bike at work during lunch again and have continued to stay away from fast food (nearly two months now) and I do feel better. Though I am still struggling with getting enough sleep. If I go to bed early then one of the kids will wake up screaming at 4 in the morning. Or something else will impact my desire to get a good night of sleep.

But the new mattress is helping and, though the steps are small, we are making steps to get back into a positive and healthy lifestyle.

Now if I can only find a house that doesn't cost $600,000 and needs about a $100,000 worth of repair work. Another few months of a softening market ought to get us there though, I hope.

Tags: workout, effect, exercise,

Blasphemy you say? Blasphemy to not worship at the Temple of Google? Especially when they host the engine to run this blog?

Bah. Google is not God, yet.

And I've been trying to use GMail for months now and I have pretty much concluded that I need folders to store my email in, I need a way to look at all of my unread email easily and at once and to mark it as read if I so choose.

As is it, I have an in-box with a couple hundred messages in it, about 60 that are unread and sprinkled throughout the in-box. There's no simple way to view just those and deal with them. Its stupid and annoying.

The labels are a waste of time to me. Give me folders to stash my email in, labels just add clutter and don't actually move things out of the in-box, they just add crap.

And yes, I do think I've posted about this before, I'm getting a distinct deja vu going on.

Take a look at the MLB - New York Yankees/Tampa Bay Devil Rays Box Score Monday September 25, 2006 and witness a team with a payroll above $200 million walloping the piss out of a team with a payroll of around $40 million (if that).

Now is the time, yet again, to suggest and support a way to level out the playing field in baseball without the affrontery of a salary cap. Its called, payroll weighted scoring.

What it means is that, in today's game, the Yankees would have to score five times as many runs as the Devil Rays to actually win the game. Thier payroll is more than 5 times higher, that's the divider to arrive at the final score.

Which would mean that an asshat like Steinbrenner would actually have to build a baseball team instead of just blank-checking his way into the playoffs.

[Update: So yeah, the Yankees won the game 16-1 so they'd have won this one pretty much hands down either way. But still, the concept has merit, if only to piss off King George.]

Did you know that upwards of 80% of the "dust" in your home isn't dirt at all? Nope, its dead skin cells.

Nice, eh?

Of course, in my house, 90% of what the vaccuum sucks up is dog hair.

Or whichever foot you want to get hit by a freakin' javelin! Look carefully and you can see the tip of the javelin sticking out the bottom of her shoe.

Isocyanide - smells that are so bad they can leave mental scars. Yep, that's them.

And that's just what they'll do.

Wiretap Case: 'Drop It,' Say Feds

One of these days these laws are gonna break all over you (you meaning Shrubya, Ducky Dicky and Big Al the Torture King, and of course, the rest of the band of hooligans).

Tags: breaking the law, wiretap, Bush

You don't want either of them to know what your home address is. In Scientology's case, they'll bombard you with really creepy hand written letters from people who think you've gone "astray". In Ann's case, she might just camp outside your house to wait until you go out so she can sneak in a boil your rabbit alive.

Seriously, could she look any creepier and more deranged (ala Glenn Close just before she hurls into the hedges in Fatal Attraction)? Maybe if she had some excrement across her forehead but the look pretty much says it all. "If I could get away with killing you and everyone you know, I'd do it, in a New York minute."

Fear Factor - Anti-Coulter Writers Write Anonymously

Actually, it makes good sense to not have your name attached to something that will infuriate the Coulter-corps by slinging reality and truth and ethics at the shrill harpy. How dare people expect this toxic butterfly to subscribe to yours and my reality. Maybe she's really colorblind and there really is only black and white in the world?

You know what I learned? I learned that if you use a set of lenses that invert all the images you see, eventually, your brain will just disregard the inversion and you'll see things right side up as normal. Until you remove the lenses again and your eyes have to readjust to the un-inverted world. Why is this interesting? Because people that view the world through such brutally ugly lenses as harpies like Coulter and Michael Savage (though he's just a freakin' dingbat for all I can tell) is that, eventually, their world view becomes standardized for them. They think its how things really are. In other words, they start to really buy into the mockery of the universe that they "see". And that's kind of sad. Except when you remember that they've gotten quite rich by substituting their own reality for the one the rest of us more commonly share.

But maybe I'm wrong, maybe my reality is nothing at all like hers. Or yours. Maybe every reality is its own private universe?

Arizona Diamondbacks/Los Angeles Dodgers Recap Saturday which shows Eric Byrnes getting four hits and the Dodgers dropping thier 12th in 20 games. Even if they limped into the playoffs now, they're low-hanging fruit.

Not that the Giants did any better this season and seem to have quit a bit early in this last series against the Brewers.

Seven games left, they're a half out in the wild card and a game and a half out in the NL West (which shows how weak the west is and has been for a while). But its nice to know that the Dodgers will be watching again soon too.

So will the Red Sox who flamed out a week or two ago.

One of the best stories from this season is the Phillie's Ryan Howard who's brushing up against 60 homers in his first season in the game. That's pretty cool.

And Frank Thomas, of course. Putting up monster numbers in September is always a way to endear yourself to your fans. And being on a team that's 27 games over 500 doesn't hurt either.

And its Sunday morning football time now so that's all good.

Porn sites exploit new IE flaw.

Yes folks, this is exactly what it looks like. A mouse pad that lets you rest your wrist right between Alyssa Milano's boobs. And who says there's nothing good about the internets these days?
Tags: Alyssa Milano, boobs, mousepad

This November you must cast your vote for Elmer Fud or the terrorists will have won. Elmer Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. That's pretty much who is running against the Democrats. Why? Because the only message they have is the same tired bleating we've been hearing for years.

Here's some more...Bush on Democrats: 'They will raise your taxes'

Bush warned Democrats will say they have to raise taxes to balance the budget. "They will raise your taxes and figure out new ways to spend your money," he said. "The best way to balance the budget is to keep pro-growth policies in place."
Which makes me ask a pretty simple question. Just what in the fuck would this fool know about balancing a budget? He took a budget surplus from Clinton and turned it into the biggest deficit in the history of the freakin' world!

The best way to balance the budget is to not engage in a pointless and unwinnable war in Iraq (hmm, like your daddy knew and all your military advisors told you). The best way to balance the budget is to not rubber stamp nearly every proposal that crosses your desk (except for stem cell research, we've gotta to think about the pre-babies!). I don't think Bush has ever had to balance his checkbook let alone create or live within a budget.

Get out the vote and vote for Elmer "Osama Who?" Fud.

Tags: Bush, FUD, economy,

What's your favorite new word?

The one I keep repeating to myself alot is secrutiny, its got a nice flow to it once you get your head and mouth around saying. Seh-crew-tinny. No, its not a real word. Yet.

Secrutiny - scrutinizing your security or securing your scrutiny but that makes less sense.

So it seems that I'm coming up with five or six new words a day lately. Some I lose because I come up with them while lane splitting traffic on my motorcycle on the way into work and its somewhat inconvenient to take notes. But most come to when I'm working and have pen and paper handy to scrawl them down. Have I mentioned that my handwriting varies from reasonably legible to scratches in nice patterns?

Anyway, back to the point at hand. I've got a bunch new words and I don't feel like slow doling them out since my days have shifted so much with this whole working thing. So I'm going to blast out some invented words.

Glerrors - glaring errors. Also could be spelled glarrers but that makes the root words a bit more obtuse.

Circurse - cursed to be stuck in the circus forever. Or a cursed circus. Or a circus for cursing.

Cursious - curious about curses.

Delivious - so delicious that you become oblivious to the rest of the universe.

Internity - the length of your (unpaid or really low paid) internship

Externity - presumably the time after your internity but I'm not sure that makes sense.

Simvility - simulated civility, feigned niceness or the frenemy act.

Tags: secrutiny,glerrors,circurse,cursious,externity,delivious,internity, simvility,fictionarium, new words, inventing language, NWotD

A site called Moo has teamed up with Flickr to create sweet, beautiful minicards that can be personalized into business cards or many other cool uses.

The neat part is that you can select a whole bunch of photos to be converted, not just one or two. And the best part? The first ten are free for Flickr Pro users! Oh yeah, not even shipping!

My batch is on their way now and I can't wait to see them. Got a Flickr Pro account? Go and get started on making your free batch of cards!

Tags: flickr, moo, minicards,

Today is my father's birthday, he would be 69 years old today. Except he passed away several years ago. Some days I miss him more than others but I always miss him. And I really wish he'd been able to see me get married and to see my two wonderful little boys that both remind me so much of him.

I'm not much for heaven and hell thoughts but there are times when I'd like to think that he's somewhere watching and enjoying the continuation of the cycle. That and I imagine part of him is enjoying watching my little boy push my buttons to drive me crazy, just like I did with him when I was a sprout.

I miss you, Dad, everyday. But you are here, in so many ways, I see you in both of my children and often catch myself thinking how much you would enjoy something I'm doing or seeing.

I've got a note taped to my monitor that contains nine guidelines that my step-mom sent to me after he passed away. Yes, I've posted them before. But I'm going to post them again because they're excellent guidelines and a good reminder of the kind of man my father was.

Things to Try to Bear in Mind
1. If you don't like something (situation/policy/etc), don't complain; do something positive to change it.
2. Compartmentalize if needed to get through a tough time.
3. Always remember to ask the basic question, "What is it we are trying to accomplish?"
4. Respect and try to understand different perspectives.
5. Find a way for everyone to save face.
6. Gather as much information as possible before making a decision, and base decisions on facts or the best information available.
7. Laugh and encourage others to laugh with you. It's okay-even desirable-to play and be a little silly as an adult.
8. Gain the respect of people you admire.
9. Make a contribution to the world/community/neighborhood using the skills you have.

Not bad advice at all. Somedays I'd really like to be able to ask him what he would do in whatever situation is vexing me but I suppose I can use these guidelines and figure out what he'd do. But it would be nice to hear his voice again.

Tags: happy birthday, dad, guidelines,

Wednesday is Bagel Day at my office. Though maybe it should be Bagel and Odwalla Day since there's always a nice assortment of Odwalla juices as well as excellent bagels from Noah's.

And I admit that I'm all about the Everything Bagel though I've had some before that also had coarse salt on them and that adds a whole 'nother level of flavor to them.

It does make Wednesdays that much better to know we'll have the office equivalent of juice and cookies one day a week. Its part of the reason that I really like my new office environment.

Gonzales wants Internet records saved in case they are needed to pursue traffickers in child pornography.

And anytime Alberto "Me Likee Torture" Gonzales says he respects civil liberties, I wonder if he pauses to see if he's going to be struck by a bolt of lightning and incinerated on the spot because there's never been a more blatant lie.

Now, don't misunderstand me, I am all for vigourous prosecution of people who traffic in child pornography, they ruin lives by exploiting the defenseless and I thoroughly detest scumbags who prey on kids.

But Alberto Gonzales is blowing smoke up an entire nation's ass if he wants me to believe that he wants records saved for child porn crackdowns. These are the same flipping people who want more torture in the world. These are the same people that have basically told the president that he can legally do almost anything he pleases. These are the same people that want to amend the freakin' Constitution because they're so scared of two men or two women being married to each other.

Child porn? You're using that as your smokescreen, Al? You're a slimy turd, aren't ya? Just like ol' Scottie Mac was a slimer. You know, the kind of scum you want to go wash off your hand after shaking their hand. Like the acidic slime on Dick and the smarmy charmy slime on Dubya, you know, the one where he looks shockingly like Alfred E. Neuman from Mad Magazine.

Of course, now the new spin is to look as horrendous as possible so that, when it comes time to try and put someone else from the Grand Old Party in the Oval Office again once the Bush era is thankfully over, its easier to step away from Bush and his politics of lunacy and Bible thump/humping while behaving in the most decidedly un-Christian ways possible.

Who knows what their real reason is for wanting all internet records, maybe to root out depravity and libruls? Probably. Or maybe more nefarious things like less easily recognizable vote rigging (hmm, why are there all these same numbers of votes from all these places in Ohio? must be the damnedest coincidence). And hey, did you know its superduper easy to not only unlock and open a Diebold voting machine but its also just as easy to pull a memory card, replace it with another completely control the vote? Ain't technology grand? Kind of like the Grand Old Party, a bunch of sad fucks bent on looting our nation in the midst of a false war and real problems.

Child porn? What, did the spinsters say the Terrorists and 9/11 drum was off being reskinned again because it had been worn out?

Is it almost time to get the big calendar and start marking off the days until Bush II is over and we can get to the massive indictments against these crooked fucks?

In effort to balance out my introduction of new words into the language, I am planning on trying to revive old words that should not be allowed to disappear.

And with that goal in mind, the new old word of the day is: malarkey - exaggerated or foolish talk (and don't we all know there's plenty of malarkey being flung around these days)

Here is a more complete definition of malarkey.

Graydon and I watched JoJo's Circus together this morning and I am having some trouble getting the theme song out of my brain now.

Its not a show I really like either because they tend to pander to the kids watching it though its not anywhere near as bad as the pap that is Mickey's Clubhouse. That show annoys the hell out of me. But even that irritation is a mere shadow of how much I dislike Barney and the Teletubbies. And the kid's stoner show, Its A Big, Big World where the main character is a tree sloth who sounds like he fell in a vat of slowdown juice as a baby.

Anyway, I've got the earworm going this morning so I think I'm gonna pop on my headphones and crank out a little real music to see if I can displace the crap with some good stuff.

I mhad drinks with some of the people from my old office last night. One that I knew well and one new person that's had the misfortune to get hired since I left back in February.

Not much has changed in the office, the power struggle between the CEW (that's chief executive witch) and the president, who's a real businessman. There's been no infrastructure upgrades, no improvements to the working conditions and no, obviously, improvement in morale.

Which is pretty much exactly what I expected. I let them know what the company's reputation in the business world is (hint, it ain't good) and shared some wonderful stories that'll hopefully make their workdays a little more bearable. And I offered advice on how to break away and move on to better employment that doesn't make you dread going into the office everyday and dread having to deal with the wicked witch.

Oh yeah, and the margaritas were pretty darned tasty!

The other nice part was that there was not a hint of traffic until I got nearly home where they were doing roadwork and two cars had stacked and mashed themselves up pretty good.

Last bit before I roll out, I've added an About Me to the site, its not done but its close enough to go up for now and I'll update it with photos and more info as time goes on.

Tags: work, sordid, stories

This morning marked the start of a new trend that I hope to continue as I do think it helped me get up and out of bed a little faster.

Though it did force me to make a pit stop on the way into the office that added a good ten minutes to my already late commute.

The idea is to wake up and pound a pint of water first thing in the morning. To help lubricate your body, rehydrate your muscles and brain and to just give your body a decent start to the day. And, so far, it seems to be working reasonably well but the results are slightly skewed as Sullivan had a short screaming fit at about 6 this morning that sort of made further rest tough.

But I'm going to try and do this for a few weeks to see if it really can help to start my days a little more easily than without it. Its all about making adjustments in the routine to be a little faster, a little better and a little more efficient.

Now if they'll only finish all that work on Highway 1 so traffic doesn't bog down and a 20 mile commute takes nearly an hour. Or they could, at the very least, finish resurfacing the highway so there isn't a four inch "shoulder" between the new asphalt and the old highway right between the lanes (i.e. exactly where us bikers have to ride during jams).

Here's some help on How to Drink More Water Everyday.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and flush out some toxins.

Tags: water, routine, hydrate

Security firm: Samsung site hosts Trojan. Note, this isn't a phishing attack or misdirect, this is some trojan writer figuring out a way to put their malware hosted on a big company's public (and ostensibly trusted) site. It used to be that you could trust the big sites but this latest exploit says that now you can't even trust them.

This is a very bad sign of things to come.

Tags: Samsung, trojan, host,

Couple admit sexually abusing their two kids starting with the daughter at the age of six and then sodomizing his son at the age of 10, Robert Mason and his wife, Megan, have, in my mind, completely and irrevocably forfeited their right to exist.

How could someone possibly do this to their own children or any children?

You sad, sick fucks. I expect you will not last very long in prison and not a single soul will shed a tear at your passing because you are both thoroughly disgusting scumbags who deserve every bit of pain and agony coming your way.

And, not quite as depraved or sickening but pretty stupid nonetheless. Here's a story about a couple of parents who kidnap their 19 year old pregnant daughter to take her and try to force her to get an abortion. Yeah.

Yeah, welcome to happyland.

K-Fed Giving Fans the Boot by bestowing a used pair of his shoes on some "lucky" fan.

Reality has never rained on K-Fed's parade, has it? This coattail riding buffoon actually wants to give away a used pair of shoes to the person who buys his new album off his website. Odds are good the first person gets them because no one else wants to listen to him or his really bad music.

Buy a bad album? Get a bad pair of shoes or a lame replica medallion or signed photograph. Wooohoo. Or, you know, maybe just make music that's actually worth listening to.

Tags: K-Fed, loser, giveaway

Well, that was annoying. My machine at work upgraded FireFox to version 1.5.0.6 and the only "upgrade" I could find was that, anytime I tried to log into Google or Yahoo, the browser folded on itself.

Again and again and again. Kind of annoying really.

But they addressed the problem and an upgrade to 1.5.0.7 this morning seems to have righted the ship again. Because it really is annoying to not be able to secretly check your personal email during the day.

Tags: FireFox, upgrade, broken

It took alot longer than I'd expected but the upgrade went without any hitches that I've found so far.

What I have noticed is that the new OS keeps the hard drive spinning more than the old one. I also did the software update so I'm running the most shiny new Apple OS going right now.

It looks alot like what I had running yesterday so far.

In other good weekend news, I'm well positioned to win Week #2 of the local football pool. Of course, I've got no idea if someone else has run the table but I've got a good total going now so we'll have to see. And I won both of my fantasy league matchups before the Monday night game, that's always nice.

Tags: upgrade, OS X, fantasy, football

I'm installing Tiger tonight, wish me luck. And yes, I will back up everything before proceeding. I really like having a 250 gig drive on hand for things like this.

Tags: Apple, OS X, upgrade,

Zune’s Big Innovation: Viral DRM which is to say, the innovation isn't customer-facing, its an innovation for the recording companies. Which is to say, screw you some more Microsoft.

I wouldn't mind an iPod with some of the features of the Zune, I like the file sharing aspect but the three day or three use expiration is annoying and will cripple adoption of the device.

And that's fine. I'm sure they'll sell enough to call it a success. Oh yeah, the device also doesn't play PlaysForSure media from what I've heard. Which is just asinine of Microsoft.

Nah, I'll go right back to lusting over the new Nano's, even though I think I kind of like the first gen. Nanos better, lookswise.

Spain ban on skinny models shocks fashion world and scares drug-addled nimrod princesses to their icy cores.

So yes, you can be too thin, its called scrawny and its not appealling or realistic at all. Not everyone can subscribe to the cigarettes, coke and popcorn diet like supermodels.

And yeah, the photo with the story is pretty clear reasoning behind this "revolution". Yoiks, girl, eat a sandwich (and keep it down). And maybe, just maybe, this is the turning point in the battle to raise children with healthy body images instead of the skeleton in a sack look.

So yes, you can be too thin, the jury is still out on whether or not you can be too rich.

[Update: /J adds this horrific series of pictures ably demonstrating just how nasty the scrawny can look. Nicole Richie's recent bikini photos. Not sexy. At. All. Just nasty.]

Tags: skinny, model, ban,

Lots of pretty, pretty boys and girls on the new Survivor that debuted last night from the Cook Islands. They are broken into four racy teams, Whiteys, Blackies, Ornamentals and Wetbacks (is that a nasty term to use? It seems like it probably is).

Each team is comprised of five people, two or three women and two or three guys. Most are fairly young and buff and pretty but some are older, wilier and crazy looking but wise.

I have no idea what their names are but that’s okay, I usually don’t recognize anyone but the cute girls until the third or fourth week. And there are plenty of cute girls on this season.

I did find it interesting how the black group realized very quickly that they were going to have to REPRESENT for their people. It didn’t seem like any of the other groups gave a damn that they were representing their people with the exception of the Asians who were split between giving a damn and trying to not succumb to stereotypes.

The first challenge was a tough one with a lot of teamwork required to get to the win. And it was interesting to watch the dynamics of the teams come out. Mostly it was the men stepping forward and taking charge. Sometimes to their own detriment. Like when the black team lost the challenge and got to select someone to send to Exile Island, the two men decided themselves and didn’t even consult the three women. Which pretty well doomed one of the men to elimination. That was just dumb of them to not discuss it with the whole team and I was glad they dumped Sekou for it. I wonder if the other “brutha” will get it through his head that he’s on a team and not the guy in charge because he’s the only guy.

Probably not but that’s alright, its part of what makes the show so much fun to watch. At least this time around I was totally happy with the first person voted off. Unlike the last season where the older women tribe got rid of their strongest member right off the bat.. That was asinine.

Tags: Survivor, Cook Islands, race, voted off, white, black, asian, latin

Among the many things I search for online, one is housing information, houses to buy, site comparisons and the like. One of the nicer mashups I've come across lately has been HousingMaps that combines Google Maps with Craigslist housing posts.

It works quite well if you're near a major city but its not so useful if you're in the middle of nowhere. I'm not quite in nowhere but we're really far, far south bay so its marginally useful.

But hey, they've got for sales, for rent, rooms and sublets listed. Its pretty cool.


Tags: housing maps, google, craiglist, mashup

Jason Fortuny subscribes to the fundamental (and thoroughly misguided) belief that everyone should be famous for 15 minutes. Therefore, he's helping people get famous. By posting their names and other personal information he collected by pretending to be a girl looking for no-strings sex on Craigslist.

Scandal grows over fake Craigslist sex ad. As well it should.

What Fortuny (remind me to make fun of his name later) has done is to post false ads on Craigslist's Casual Encounters section, to bait men into contacting him for some sex. He's collected all their data and published it online to embarrass and humiliate and destroy some (admittedly shaky to begin with) marriages.

To defend his actions as doing nothing more than turning over rocks and snapping pics of worms underneath is misguided and wrong. What he is doing is wrong and he may just learn the hard way that vigilantes often end up sharing cells with their "prey". Which would be just fine. The men he's outing are not great people, that's for sure, who would rationalize sending their private info to someone based on a free craigslist posting for sex? Maybe these are the same people that click spam and keep wondering why they aren't rich yet?

As for making fun of the guy's name, I'll pass this time. It just ended up not being especially funny when it was spelled out.
Tags: craigslist, scam, uncool,

Ther internets are all abuzz about the latest marketing machine outing, that of lonelygirl15 from YouTube fame. Lonelygirl15's revelation: It's all just part of the show which is to say, you have been suckered.

Not me because I've not even seen any of her videos, though I definitely admit that she's quite cute. But some of you may recall another faked creation in the form of Plain Layne, a blog ostensibly written by a 20something lesbian just coming to terms with her sexuality and her innate dorkiness. But it turns out that "Layne" was an aging lawyer with a warped sense of ethics (he was, from some accounts, unable to understand why people felt so betrayed by his dishonesty).

I've been duped before, I don't expect I'll get duped again. At least not in the same way, although Bree (lonelygirl15) wasn't, from my quite spotty information, wrestling with her sexuality, just her religion and being lonely in her perfectly decorated studioroom.

Anyway, I don't really care that lonelygirl15 is a marketing construct because I had nothing invested in her. But I can understand why so many people are so thoroughly pissed off at the whole thing.

But the other thing this episode does bring to light is that Creative Artists Agency, the place that invented lonelygirl15, and was undone by IP sleuthing to trace comments back to their site, could have and should have done a better job of covering its tracks.

In today's day and age of internets sleuthing, it should be in the first class taught on viral marketing online. Do Not Post on your campaign from an IP that can be traced back to your agency or company. Duh! If the CAA commenters had just walked down the street to the library before posting, the mystery would still be going and there'd be even more interest.

But I understand that its hard to keep all of these marketing things straight. And the next time an agency does one of these campaigns, they'll very likely incorporate better IP trail covering. Of course, the public will be that much more jaded now in the light of this latest "exploit" by marketers.

Tags: lonelygirl15, marketing, Creative Artists Agency, YouTube

So we finally got a chance to replace our aged and bulbous mattress. We ended up opting for a CostCo Novaform Elite foam mattress for a couple of reasons. The best being that CostCo has a 100% satisfaction guarantee so that we can take the sucker back if we hate it. Which would be a colossal pain in the ass now that its opened up and unfolded into its full size. But we could if we wanted to, though I don't think we will want to at this point. The other really nice thing is that it was more thann a hundred bucks cheaper than the website said it would be, that's always a good thing.

It was a trip to haul the big box upstairs and slice it open. The mattress comes all folded up and shrunken down but it starts "inhaling" air as the bag containing it is cut. Until it expands up to 12 inches thick and a full Cal-King sized mattress. It didn't take very long and the forewarned smell was pretty easy to deal with. But we did initially unfold it upside down. The underfoam is not quite as cushy as the sleeping surface foam.

Its just the first night on it but it was nice. Comfortable without being mushy and not too warm at all. Just a supportive and comfortable surface that made it pretty easy to find a good spot to sleep in.

I'm not sure if I'm better rested today as I was woken up by Graydon using my back as a kickplate but I do feel like I slept better during the night.

Now I just need to get to bed earlier so I can get up earlier and get rolling faster. Its hard though, there's heavy morning fog and thick traffic to work through. Not much fun right now but that's alright. In the short term, it'll work and we'll soon have some new neighbors too. That'll be nice.

What I need to start doing is writing out all of my house projects again so I can start crossing them off and get this place into ready-to-sell shape. But it sure is nice to start out the day with a decent night of sleep to build on for the day.

And it's Bagel Day at the office so that helps too!

Tags: new mattress, Novaform, sleep,

To any "fan" partaking in "revenge" against the stingrays by mutilating them in Steve Irwin's memory.

I would imagine he'd kick your ass if he saw you maiming and harming the stingrays. So would I.

Irwin fans 'in revenge attacks' against stingrays. Please stop, the only thing you are accomplishing is demonstrating how truly out of touch with Irwin's reality. He loved all creatures and would have been deeply disturbed to know that some are maiming and killing rays in his name.
Tags: stingray, Steve Irwin, retaliation,

Within the Law where George and Matt stand toe to toe and put their hands in each others faces and Matt asks George the tough questions. But George doesn't want to tip off the enemy to the fact that waterboarding is being used as a torture technique. Because that allows them to adjust.

I'm no fan of Matt Lauer and I was almost as curious about the forced format. They were like Rock'em Sock'em robots just before someone's head pops off. But anyway, Matt pressed him and George squirmed. I think George is more like jello than anything else. He takes the hit and just bounces back to where ever he was before without so much as an afterthought.

He is also a deeply creepy looking guy, almost like a big version of a mall Christmas elf animatronic robot thing. With extra animated eyebrows and finger jabbing action.

Torture is, by his twisted definition, legal. And, to be fair, Bill Clinton didn't define sex as a hummer from an intern. However, blowing a load and beating POWs to death for information are two very different things. One is an affront to a marriage, the other is an affront to all of humanity.

The worst legacy of the Bush administration, hmm maybe make that one of the Bush legacies, should be that they advocated the legalization of torture. That is, they tried to make the United States of America the exact kind of country that we hate and decry as tyrants and exploiters. Torture isn't what the good guys do. Call it naive, call it simplistic, call it what you will but torture and "good" aren't on the same team.

Oh sure, I'm sure there are thousands of instances where much good has come from taking a cane to someone's feet. Or from eletric shock treatment. Or from more horrid forms of torture. But does the good offset and account for the loss of a nation's humanity?

Tags: torture, death, humanity,

Accentric - a strange person with a strange accent. Or, a weirdo with a patois.

And lots more madeup words over at the Fictionarium.

Tags: accentric, fictionarium, new words, inventing language, NWotD

You know what sucks about shaving? Missing a whisker or two and then finding them later on when you're at work and powerless to do anything about them.

That is, unless you work right near a Long's or other drug store where you can run in, buy a pack of disposables and harvest those annoying razor refugees.

Which is exactly what I did.

Well this is an interesting twist, suing to get your company's name mentioned alongside the celebs you cater to. Celebrity Boutique Sues Us Weekly, Saying Lack of Coverage Is Hurting Business because, as we all know, it is the core business of Us Weekly to support whiny little clothes boutiques who need national exposure to justify their exorbitant prices.

I wish them nothing but locked doors, disconnected phones and creditors knocking on their doors.

As an aside, I hate the word boutique. It makes me want to smash things. But I hate boutique about a tenth as much as I hate the word "zany". If I were in charge it would be a capital offense to use that damned word.

Tags: lawsuit, whiny, boutique

So here's a bunch of stuff about things that happened today throughout history.
Sept 11

And a whole bunch more Sept. 11 things.

Today in History
September 11
1297 Scots under William Wallace defeat the English at Stirling Bridge.
1695 Imperial troops under Eugene of Savoy defeat the Turks at the Battle of Zenta.
1709 John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, wins the bloodiest battle of the 18th century at great cost, against the French at Malplaquet.
1740 The first mention of an African American doctor or dentist in the colonies is made in the Pennsylvania Gazette.
1777 General George Washington and his troops are defeated by the British under General Sir William Howe at the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania.
1786 The Convention of Annapolis opens with the aim of revising the articles of confederation.
1802 Piedmont, Italy, is annexed by France.
1814 U.S. forces led by Thomas Macdonough route the British fleet on Lake Champlain.
1847 Stephen Foster's "Oh! Susanna" is first performed in a saloon in Pittsburgh.
1850 Soprano opera singer Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale," makes her American debut at New York's Castle Garden Theater.
1864 A 10-day truce is declared between generals Sherman and Hood so civilians may leave Atlanta, Georgia.
1857 Indians incited by Mormon John D. Lee kill 120 California-bound settlers in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
1904 The battleship Connecticut, launched in New York, introduces a new era in naval construction.
1916 The "Star Spangled Banner" is sung at the beginning of a baseball game for the first time in Cooperstown, New York.
1944 American troops enter Luxembourg.
1962 Thurgood Marshall is appointed a judge of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
1965 The 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) arrives in South Vietnam and is stationed at An Khe.
1974 Haile Selassie I is deposed from the Ethiopian throne.
2001 In an unprecedented, highly coordinated attack, terrorists hijack four U.S. passenger airliners, flying two into the World Trade Center towers in New York and one into the Pentagon, killing thousands. The fourth airliner, headed toward Washington likely to strike the White House or Capitol, is crashed just over 100 miles away in Pennsylvania after passengers storm the cockpit and overtake the hijackers.


Born on September 11
1700 James Thomson, Scottish poet.
1862 O. Henry, (William Sydney Porter), short story writer who wrote "The Gift of the Magi," and "The Last Leaf."
1877 James Jeans, physicist.
1885 D.H. Lawrence, English novelist (Lady Chatterley's Lover, Sons and Lovers).
1917 Jessica Mitford, investigative journalist (The American Way of Death).
1924 Tom Landry, coach of the Dallas Cowboys, winning two Super Bowls.

And an even bigger list that I could post here if I were feeling pesky.

And tomorrow, I go back to work a year old, none the wiser and probably more tired than I was a year ago when we only had one kid. But at least I'll sleep on a bed of air.

Tags: sept 11, birthday, happenings,

Happy Nine Eleven. Happy Birthday. Happy Patriots Day. Happy Monday.

I thought CNN was going to do the rebroadcast of 9/11 but it appears that MSNBC is doing it instead. And a couple of other stations are doing World Trade Center shows or other tangental 9/11 things.

Since it is both national tragedy day and my birthday, I automatically feel some sort of right to philosophize about the whole thing. As if my perspective is any more or less valid than anyone else's. But such as it is, no one else is going to write to this blog so I guess that leaves it to me.

What's happened in the five years since Nine Eleven? More than plenty in my own life. Wife, kids, dog, house, job. But what else. I don't like flying anymore. I used to enjoy the hell out of plane travel but the fun's been sucked right out of it. I don't go back to New England as often as I used to. Which is regretable as I feel like I'm very much out of touch with my family back there. But then, I've got an attention hungry family right here and they're kind of hard to ignore. Especially when the kid climbs into my lap and starts banging on the keyboard I'm typing on now.

It would be easy to get sucked into the "coverage" and drawn back into 9/11 and the deep feelings of hopelessness and despair. But its five years gone now and I'm looking at my nearly four month old baby boy on my wife's shoulder while my two year paints with finger paints.

Life is good and there's football on again tonight. That's fine too.

But we may be going out shopping for a mattres today. The old one now stands on its side halfway in our closet and we slept on the inflatable Aerobed. Which doesn't work for two plus an infant so I ended up on the couch. Yeah, I slept on the couch on my birthday. But that's alright, I went back up after Graydon got up and slept for a bit longer.

Tags: nineeleven, patriots day, birthday

This was a big weekend of packing, cleaning and throwing crap away for my neighbors who I don't like. And it has also entailed more slammed doors than could be reasonably counted. Seriously, yesterday they were slamming a door every minute or so. I'm not quite sure why but I've learned there's a fair bit of displeasure in this whole ordeal.

You see, there's history, bitterness, familial backstabbing and some good ol' fashioned stupidity.

The wife left many months ago now, caught in flagrante with a cop who's since made her Mrs. Cop. And the daughter, who looks quite alot like the wife, got quite alot of the bitterness got directed at her. She got tired of bearing the brunt of his ire and moved out. Which was fine since the oldest boy got a girl pregnant and had to move in with her three year old girl.

And the dad works all the time, all over the Bay area and the two boys are not in school and don't really have any prospects aside from work and possibly banging.

But tomorrow's the start of the workweek so hopefully the door slamming will be minimized. Tomorrow is also my birthday, which means today is my brother's anniversary. Tomorrow is also an anniversary, five years gone now. Doesn't seem like it.

But anyway, at least the doors have stopped slamming for now.

Tags: relocating, door slam, birthday,

Today's Tale of teh Stupid comes from Waxy.org, Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist Affects Hundreds. Guys bait Craigslist listings by pretending to be a horny girl looking for no-strings-sex and the results are, well, not surprising. They get inundated with emails including personal details, photos and admissions of cheating on their wives.

And then someone with a nasty streak published all of the responses, unedited, to a site called Encyclopedia Dramatica which will almost certainly result in seperations and divorces.

Not that those marriages were all that strong or healthy to begin with if the dude is off searching for sex. But still, its pretty clear that publishing things like this is a bad thing for all concerned.

I seem to be reminded of something like "Those without sin cast the first stone" or somesuch. I'm sure these paragons of internet exposure have never done anything they wouldn't want put up on a public website for all to see.

Astute observers will have noted that there have been some minor changes in the layout of IP in the last couple of days.

However, I screwed up a couple of things during the rebuild. Presently, the Daily Forays and Archives are, well, busted. The archives need some recoding to work properly again but the Daily Forays work, you just need to chop off the *_blank part of the URL.

I'll get all of this stuff fixed up this evening after the boys have gone to bed.

Tags: rebuild, screwup, broken code,

Walkman morphs into fitness-friendly MP3 player that can
detect a user's run/walk rhythm and adjust the music accordingly, count steps and calories burned and measure distance covered. Plus, it's cool if you drip sweat on it.

Shaking the player three times randomizes the playlist, and it can be "speed charged"--plug in for three minutes and it gives you three hours of playback.

Neato, and it also doubles as a dildo in a pinch.
Tags: sony, walkman, mp3, dildo,

Cell phones found inside four prisoners with a bunch of extra chips and even a phone charger stuffed up one poor guy's butt.

Why? So they could direct their criminal enterprises outside the prison from inside. Makes perfect sense, somehow.

And now I will spend the rest of the day playing the Batman theme in my head with the words - Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah eh nah eh nah eh nah, nah eh nah Buttphone! Oh yeah, I went there.

Tags: buttphone, cellphone, prison

From the Fictionarium.

Confidencial - having confidence in presumed confidentiality. That your secret is safe without having to ask if your secret is safe, even if reality may prove otherwise.

Which, of course, leads one almost instantly to

Confidensial - marked by a dense or stupid confidence, misplaced confidence.

Tags: confidencial, confidensial, fictionarium, new words, inventing language, NWotD

Introducing, the Winterfell coy panty for the lady that wants a different look. It comes complete with a tuft of bohemian pubic hair, presumably the razor and doe-in-the-headlights look do not come with it.

Is it a clever fashion yea or nay?

Go on and click the Google Search: confidential "do not distribute" and be amazed at the "confidential" corporate information that's just laying around on the internet ready to be scooped up and capitalized upon by the competition.

Or just published on a blog somewhere. Hmm, do you think something called Pre-Embargo Material is something that should be available off a site? Probably not. Or how about the codes for a class of physicists at Cornell? Nah, probably not that one either.

And Google makes it even easier by allowing you to view the files as HTML rather than download the material and look at it offline. But you can do that as well, if you like.

And hey, since we're worshipping at the temple of Google, how about a site called G2P that turns Google into an MP3 filesharer? Or books? Yeah, have fun with that.

And now I'm off to do a site rebuild. Whee!

Tags: security, suckers, confidential, do not distribute, Google

Nope, we're not moving away, they are. And that's just fine because it'll mean new neighbors that we can, hopefully, break in properly and without all the history of unpleasantness.

And I will, hopefully, not have to worry about his stupid kids having a damned egg fight around my truck because they are too freakin' stupid to realize how harmful egg whites are to a car's paint job even though their dad has an award-winning show car in his garage. And, I'm guessing, he'll be taking his old Rottie who likes to bark at nothing for hours at a time.

I'm doing a little chair dancing and triumphant arm pumping this afternoon.

My happiness is only metered by the fact that we still live there and not in a house right on the beach with alot of nice, flat and useful land around us. But we'll get there eventually.

Tags: bad neighbor, moving away, buh bye

Google developing eavesdropping software that would allow them to listen in (literally) to your environment by the use of your computer's built-in microphone, reduce that noise to marketing pap and serve you up more targeted advertisements.

To which I say, goodbye Google, that is a day that I will never allow to happen on my machine. I don't care about more relevant ads, I care about Google invading my house to sample more of my life to try and sell more schlock to me. So, yeah, fuck you Google. No wonder people hate marketers, its because of crap like this (and because talentless assclowns like Ashlee Simpson get propelled by marketing wonks into "stars").

Tags: Google, overlord, privacy, marketing

That's right, banana chips, damn they taste good and I don't feel bad in the least for munching on them. And they're inexpensive as well.

And I've got a ziplock baggy full of banana chips in my desk right now. Life is pretty good.

From RealTechNews comes the Hipster Personal Trailer is part-joke and part-stupid with more leaning towards stupid than joke.

As Alice Hill wraps it up - "We Say: Joel keep your day job. You have officially eclipsed the fanny pack as the personal accessory guaranteed to leave you single for long, long, long time."

Tags: personal trailer, loser wagon, why?

Yeah, that's right, I finally beat that damned level on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, NO E. where you have to fly a crappy old plane across the entire map and back, below a radar level or the military scrambles two F-16's on your slow and soon to be crispy ass.

There is no way to cheat on it, there's no way to weasel through. There is just trying again and again and again. But I finally beat that sumbitch. And it is damned ass hard. I must have tried it a hundred times or more before I finally got it. But I got it and that makes me happy.

And no, I do not have the Hot Coffee mod, that's for the PC not the PS2. But I would install it if I could anyway, so whatever. The "sex" is goofy and funny, I like that you can point your machine gun at the girl in the car and she doesn't stop having sex until you start firing, now that is professionalism.

Tags: Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas, videogame, GTA:SA, PS2, NO E.

Its a Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam World, oh yes it is. Techdirt: Stock Spammers Look To Expand Service Aspect Of Their Business via spamming, of course.

You know the spams you get that say some crappy little penny stock is about to shoot through the roof? Apparently some morons actually read these spams and then go and buy the stocks. Which allows the spammers to "pump and dump" the stock based on the small rise in stock price.

Now spammers are offering this "service" to companies via another spam campaign. And, of course, someone will bite and the cycle will reinvigorate itself again because someone's making money doing it. And if someone makes any money through spam then we've all lost.

People, please stop opening, reading and acting on spam messaging. Its detrimental to the universe and you don't want to be the one that breaks the universe, do you? I didn't think so.

Banksy asks the tough questions about Paris Hilton and her debut music album.

Banksy replaced her CD with his own remix with titles like in the title line above. Which makes no sense since the ironical introspective album is supposed to come after the runaway success of the first album. Maybe Banksy realizes that Paris' first album is probably going to be her last since nobody really wants to listen to her sing, or speak for that matter.

A quick recap of the holiday weekend. On Saturday we trekked out to the beach with a friend, a long walk down from the house and out to a private beach which was really nice and Nande loved the playtime and sun and sand almost as much as Graydon.

Oh yeah, I also made apple cinnamon pancakes on Saturday morning and then again yesterday late morning for a brunch. I'd incorporated a couple of recipe changes and the pancakes were that much better than before. The secret is to mix the apples and cinnamon together before putting them both into the batter, that way the cinnamon stays close to the apples.

Sunday we bummed around the house for the morning and then headed up to Pleasanton for an afternoon at the Highland Games. After paying a fairly ridiculous and unwarranted $15 each for my wife and me to get in, we wandered around for a bit and I noticed that there's quite a few portly Scotsmen in the world. Graydon and I watched the caber tossing for a little bit and then we watched the sheep dogs for a minute, until Graydon decided he could do it and climbed through the fence in the blink of an eye.

We went from the unimpressive and overpriced Highland Games to a friend's block party where she'd rented an inflatable water slide which the kids were having a fantastic time playing on. The last couple of pics in my Flickr stream are from the waterslide. Graydon didn't want to go on it at first but he warmed up to it and went up and down the slide a few times before his diaper lost the battle and he went a few more times buck naked. To the approval and laughter of all the parents watching.

And yesterday we bummed around the house, Graydon and I went for a bike ride together and I ended up being up a little too late which will make my morning a little tougher than it has to be. But oh well, I've got that sweet sunny cube waiting for me!

And, oh yeah, StumbleOn has been hitting my Wal-Mart site all weekend, about ten times as much traffic as normal, not that I'm complaining.

Tags: weekend wrap, highland games, waterslide,

Australia's 'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin killed by stingray' barb while diving near Port Douglas in Australia.

This is a serious bummer all the way around as it was impossible not to like the Crocodile Hunter. His parody on South Park remains one of my favorite episodes and the guy, goofy as a loon, was just a genuinely good man with a big heart.

Really a kind of crappy way to end a nice day. More on that later.

But you are welcome to hate me just a little bit because I have been moved from an okay cube to the best one in the office with one entire wall a window out onto a pond with ducks.

Yeah, you can hate me just a little bit.

And there's talk about me being able to park my cruiser in the office somewhere so I can go out for rides at lunch. And that would be so flipping nice, I can't tell you.

For lunch today, we went out and had an offsite at a nice outdoor local place. My sole complaint right now is the commute which can be a drag. But it was a good week overall and a good first month back.

Tags: work, cube upgrade, bike

I fart in your general direction, current cold virus that’s beating down on my wife and two kids and has circulated through my office like sniffly wildfire. And I thumb my nose at you too because I have, thus far, successfully avoided your mucousy and rattle-hacky-cough embrace.

I have picked up your tainted tissues, I have drunk from diseased glasses, I have washed my hands more often than should be healthy but I am staying healthy. I have invested in some cool new moisturizing anti-germ goo that feels good while it murders germs and bacteria by the millions. I have been taking extra Trader Joe’s Super Immunity Booster pills, I have been drinking my Ovaltine, I have been (trying to) get more decent sleep and I

And my chest is clear, my head is clear and my nose is unstuffed.

So take that, vile virus vermin!

Tags: avoiding, cold, virus, sanitizer

Want a reality check? Plug your numbers into the Miles Per Dollar calculator and find out just how many miles you get to the dollar.

The good news? My motorcycle gets almost 15 miles to the dollar (and that's on "cheap" gas at $3.03 a gallon).

The bad news? My Ford Escape gets under 7 miles to the dollar.

Driving to work and back by the Escape costs $6.36 these days while riding the motorcycle (and saving time and having alot more fun) costs a mere $2.83. So this week I've ridden in to work three times and driven twice for a total of $21.21 this week. Not too bad.

What are your numbers?

Burns Says Terrorists Drive Taxis by Day and kill by night. That's Senator Burns, not Joe Burns, the crank down at the local bar. Senator representing Montana. I wonder how many taxis they have in the whole state of Montana?

And today's graphic comes from the People's Republic of Seabrook, Good Citizens Don't Ask Questions.

Tags: racist, Republican, idiot

Some atmospheric good news to share, Images: NASA says ozone layer is healing. Its like the world's bald spot is growing back in so it can stop doing that lame ozone comb over thing that didn't fool anyone.