Why My Life Sucks

I have no idea why I do well on this sort of test. My medical training, if you want to call it that is limited to being well read and having taken a few first aid courses back when I wore green a lot.

This wasn’t a perfect score, mainly because the site doesn’t seem to show images correctly with Firefox, so I need a 2nd clue on a couple of them, but I didn’t miss any diseases. A perfect score is “Doogie Howser, just BTW.

It doesn’t exist. At all. So I’m going to rant a a bit here.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve walked into one of the high profile high schools in town, and wandered around, with out any one saying squat. Yes, I had a reason to be there, but any one that knows what I look like, and knows my “I’m in a bad mood” walk, facial expression and stare is like would think that some adult would ask who the hell I am. Yes, I’m saying that a long haired, more than slightly freaked out looking 48 year old male should be asked what the hell he is doing in a public high school during lunch. If anybody needed to be profiled at a high school it would be me.

Not in Tulsa it seems.

The massively over weight “security” guards that my property tax money is paying for are a waste.

If your supposed to check people at the door, check them at the door. Don’t go wandering off. Check people at the door. Check ID. Ask what the hell that gun sized object in their cargo pants pockets is. Do the fucking job you were hired to do. At least they are armed, so if a shooting does happen, they have a chance of stopping it. Of course given they fact they they are so freaking over weight, I suspect that it would take them way to long to get to the other end of the school, if they needed to. If you need armed guards, you need fit armed guards. Fat fucks that aren’t where they are supposed to be aren’t worth having. In the US Army, that’s deserting you post and you can be shot for it in time of war. It damn sure should be at least noticed by the people that parents trust their children to.

Grrr.

For the two or three of you out there that might be reading my archive, yes, there are duplicate entries in the first 50 so odd posts. Get over it. I’ve relaunched a blogger blog and the timestamps got stepped on. Which means that there are some dup messages. Don’t care, much. I working on cleaning it.

[update: Should be fixed. Plus I removed a few odd posts as well. Like any one cares]

For the record, once I do get all the messages posted from here to there, (here being defined as my own domain and there as blogger) they will get posted here first, then imported there.

Cool geek toy of the week. If you have a dual boot system you need this. This lets you mount your EXT2 or EXT3 partition as a read/write disk under XP. Don’t ask me if it works under Vista, don’t know, don’t care.

I read the National Review Online’s mass blog “The Corner”

This morning, I read this.. Andrew is one of their writers I’m least likely to have issues with.

Then, one of the writers I’m most likely to have issue with, “Klo” wrote this in reply. Kathryn, for what it’s worth, is everything I don’t like about some type of conservative women. Just for the record, she is rather violently opposed to both women in combat and gays in the military, plus seems a bit weird about parents in the military in general.

Lady, you can’t have it both ways. You seem to want young single straight male to be the US military.
Clue the first, young straight males think about sex a lot. Really a lot. You have no more chance of getting Playboy and such like out of the Military than you do getting any one under the rank of Lt. General to stop saying “Fuck”. It’s not going to happen.

Next clue. I know what they sell in the PX. What they sell is not porn. Also, at least in Germany and Ft. Bliss, where they sell Playboy’s isn’t where under age folk are going to find it. It’s not in the main PX, it’s in the ‘barracks’ PX’s I will grant that my info is a few years (few defined as roughly 20) out of date, but if your going to tell me that the 1970’s and 1980’s was less porn friendly than now, I don’t think we really live in the same world. If any thing, it’s harder to get “porn” in main stream America than it was in 1986 when I got out. It’s much harder to find real honest by gosh naked women photos in a random store than it was in the 80’s. The internet has a lot to do with that, of course.

Next clue: Playboy isn’t porn. It’s naked women, yeah, but it’s at best R rated. There have been PG movies with as much nudity as your average issue of Playboy. You can show images that would fit in a copy of Playboy without needing to jump through most of the 2257 hoops.

Next, Congress critter Broun, don’t you have any thing else better to do? I went to your taxpayer paid for page web page and your own page, which I assume is paid for by your campaign

Here are the top parts of the tax payer paid for page:

“I am committed to protecting the constitutional rights and pocketbooks of every American. I will apply the following four-way test to every piece of legislation that comes before the House for a vote:

1) Is it Moral / Right? 3) Is it Necessary?
2) Is it Constitutional? 4) Is it Affordable? “

And the news photo caption:”On a visit to the University of Georgia, Congressman Broun
talks with head football coach Mark Richt and discusses legislative issues facing the university.”

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
I don’t want you, or any other Congress critter to decide what is Moral, much less make it your number one test. Morality is not the government’s job. I’d also be MUCH more impressed if you spoke with, oh I don’t know, Michael F. Adams , the president of the UoG or Steve Wrigley the Vice President for Government Relations of the UoG instead of the fucking football coach. Maybe you did, but that didn’t make it to your web site.

Don’t even get me started about your own flash encrusted, audio playing (with no off button) piece of crap personal page. Let’s just start with who is INTERSCAPE, INC and why are they listed as both the administrative and technical contact in your WHOIS database entry?

While I don’t live in Georgia, I can’t vote for or against you, you just made it to my watch and rant list.

Well, not really.

Just a random photo of the violets in my back yard.

Just an important safety note for all you retro-computing people out there. Don’t use the Ubuntu 7.10 network install CD to do any thing more than the CLI version. It will fail when it attempts to start down loading what ever desktop version you tell it to do. I know this, I don’t know why I keep trying.

To install Ubuntu 8.04 with a desktop worth using on an older machine do the following
1) download the xubuntu iso, burn it to CD and install from that or

2) do what I did.
Down load and burn the 7.10 (gutsy) mini iso and burn it.
Install the CLI version of unbutu
Log in.
edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file changing all gutsy to hardy
issue
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
take a break
Once you get a command line back issue
apt-get install xorg xubuntu-desktop synaptic
Take longer break.
reboot
Should be in X window with xfc4 running when you get done.

I have, at this time, 3 Intel based computers. None of them are any where near cutting edge. In general the “best” of them is the laptop, but the small foot print desktop machine (smallbox) isn’t bad. The touch screen machine (tekbox) was literally thrown away by a place I had a contract with. Vista isn’t going to run on any of them, ever.

Know what will? Ubuntu 8.04. Or at least that’s the theory. Unfortunately I have Cox Cable. Cox throttles if you do a lot do largish down loads, as to stop the dreaded MP3 peer to peer people. So, doing a double upgrade (7.04 to 7.10 to 8.04 on ’smallbox’ and a network install on ‘tekbox’ has dropped my net speed to damn near dial up. Well, OK, better than dial up, but I’m not used to getting a speed of under 60 kb/s. I normally get 300 plus.

Any rate, more about how wonderful Ubuntu is later today, once I have it on all the boxen.

When I first started the “Music to scare normals by” I wasn’t going to use ‘joke’ versions of songs.

Then I found this.

I give you “The Heavy Metal Angel of the Morning” 3:52

Why I was looking for a Juice Newton song is a bit odd in it’s own right, but not that weird.
Total running time 26:24

Leningrad Cowboys cover of Sweet Home Alabama : 2:17
The band’s hair alone would make this.

Having the Red Army Choir act as back ground singers for “Sweet Home” was the kicker.

Total running time 22:32

And Dafydd, Yes, I knew about this from The Teen Age Half Orc’s corner posting

So, in today’s rant we talk about the people that sell computers and computer upgrades at a box store. Not just any box store, but one that is the ideal or best place to purchase or buy something, if you know what I’m saying. In other words, if you were to Buy this place is suppose to be Best. Or something like that.

Any rate, with my 70 year old mother, go into $BigBoxStore where she had bought her Orbiting Object model M35X-S114 from. After the sales dude, (and I do mean dude, not man) gets through talking to ‘customer’ dude and their party plans. I tell him “Hello, we have an Japan Electronic Orbiting Object M35X-S114 Laptop and would like to upgrade the memory. “

“How old is it?”

“I just gave you the exact model number. Can you look it up.”

Much bad Google fu and some weird site (not $BigBoxStore.com) poking about later, he can’t find any info on a M35X-S114. He does ask me if we had the laptop in the car. I tell him no, but that should have been a hint. After having speaks with his boss, Sales Dude tells me that he’s sure it’s DDR2 and gives me a gig stick.

We make payment and go off to see doctors and other such like. After a long doctor visit we return to my mother’s home.

In fairly short order I remove battery and the cover over the memory slots, install the one gig stick, close the cover, install battery. I then open the laptops cover and Push The Magic Blue Button.

Button Lights. Button Goes Out.

Re-seat the battery. Push button.

Button Lights. Button Goes Out.

Plug in AC power cord (thinking battery had been drained. This has happened before.)

Push button.

Button Lights. Button Goes Out.

Unplug, remove battery, remove cover, remove old stick of memory, move new stick to old slot, replace cover, replace battery, plug in.

Push button.

Button Lights. Button Goes Out.

Unplug, remove battery, remove cover, remove new stick of memory, put move old stick in old slot, replace cover, replace battery, plug in.

Push button.

Button Lights. Button stays on. Windows starts to boot. Turn off computer, gather package parts, and sales slip. Off to see $BigBoxStore, this time with laptop. Mother stays home, given that she is, in fact, sick and just took medication. I have her debit card on me, and I am on that account’s signature page, for just this sort of thing.

Arrive at $BigBoxStore. Get tag on open memory chip package and on laptop as I tell the nice people at the front desk the basic issue. I assume they will direct me to the correct place. You know what they say about assuming.

Score now: Desk 1, people spoken to 1

I am directed to the Customer service desk, where I explain the issue again.

Score: Desk 2, People 2.

I am told that I should have gone to the Offensive Term for Computer People – Sub Unit of Platoon (OTCP-SUP) Desk

I arrive at the OTCP-SUP desk, where a nice OTCP dude in a white shirt and black tie ask me if he can help me. I explain issue.

Score: Desk 3, people 3

He directs me to another part of the the OTCP-SUP desk, where “He will do a fast hardware diagnostic to find the root cause of your issue”.

You will note, that at this time, no one, other than the front desk lady, had as much as looked at the computer.

I go see this person.

Score: Desk 3, People 4. Am told that I will have to wait a few minutes, because he has a few customers in front of me. I sit and wait.

Side note.

I listen to him talking to the one other customer at the OTCP-SUP desk. By just hearing what he is saying, I know that the other customer’s hard drive is cratered, most likely with a corrupted MBR, or scrambled boot.ini file. There are ways to fix this, but it’s non-trivial. OTCP dude states “I have never seen any thing like this in all my time working on computers”. Gives laptop back to other customer. I, because I’m not in a good mood, don’t say any thing to either the OTCP or customer about what I think it might be. I, however, do not have high hopes at this time for an easy resolution of my issue due to over hearing this exchange.

“Never Seen This” OTCP dude wander off. Other OTCP person wander up. “Have you been check in yet?”

“Nope.”

“Oh”. Wanders off.

Score: Desk 3, People 5.

4th OTCP person walks up. “Have you been helped?”
Score: Desk 3, People 6.
“Nope.”

“I can help.”

I explain problem. He asks, can I look at your current chip?

I nod, he flips over lap top and then does that “where is my screwdriver” look around the work bench”

I hand him my Phillips. “Thanks, That will work.”

Pops off cover. “Oh, this needs DDR not DDR2, and I think it can only take a 512 chip. Get a new chip at the computer desk then exchange it at the customer service desk.”

Off to the computer desk.

Score: Desk 4, people still 6, because I don’t want to talk to those people again.

I look over their selection of memory. They have no DDR chips, only DDR2 chips. There is a tag for DDR chips, however. Crap.

Score: Desk 4, people 7
Ask computer sales desk dude (not the same one as before) if they have any DDR memory in the back.
I am told that I should use DDR2, because it’s faster and newer.

I count to ten in German, to my self.

“Ah, no. DDR2 doesn’t work with this lap top”

“Maybe you should think about upgrading it then”.

OK, it’s 2 years old. Not cutting edge, I’ll grant, but all it need to be able to do is load $MotherHobbySite.com in Firefox with out going into swap file hell. No need to do that.

“Can you check please?”

He goes off. He and another Sales Person return with a hand full of DDR chips. They only have 512M DDR, I am informed by the other sales dude.

Desk 4, people 8.

I take 2 from him and go to the customer service desk.

I wait in line. While I’m waiting the person that I saw before on this issue leaves. Granted he is with an other customer, but still. His black/blond/white/blue and a touch of pink haired co-workers says she can help me.

Desk 4, people 9
I explain about the wrong chip, and that these two are the right ones. She nodes, takes the receipt, fires the raygun at it and the UCP thing on the old chip and starts ringing up the new chips. Ends up being 74 some odd bucks. I swipe mother’s debit card. She asks to see the card and some ID. I give her the card and my ID. I explain that it’s my mother card, and that she is home, ill. She blinks and says she can’t take this card.

Crap. I think about it. “Can you just ring up one of the 512M Chips, so that there is a 13 dollar refund instead of a charge?”

She turns to the original customer service dude, who just nodes, and does something to his keyboard. The on the charge machine changes to “canceled by clerk”, she does the raygun thing a couple of times and all is good. She staples the new printed receipt to the old receipt and off I go.

You will note, she did not deactivate the anti-shoplifting RFID tag on the new chip.

I find this out as I hit the door, and the alarm thing goes off.

Desk 5, person 10.

I show the anti-shop lift dude the red tag (put on by desk 1/person 1) on the lap top, and the two receipts and the chip. He marks something on a clip board and off I go.

After getting home, I put the 512M chip in, and lo and behold! It boots and sees more memory. I launch Firefox, and load up mother’s normal load of stuff. I also load up Acrobat Reader 7 and a second copy of fire fox. No swap file hell, snappy response. All is good with the world.

For now. Tomorrow, I’m sure, will have it’s own issues.

For a 150 some odd dollars you can be cured of Kolpophobia

Blink.

OK, fine. What ever.

Kolpophoba

They work, and work well, as this terrorist asshat finds out.

Have a good time with 72 Virginians there dude.

I am a Nerd Ghod. I really am. I just spent 10 minutes getting the HTML right on this damn post so that the damn images would line up right. This theme does weird things some times. Of course I could have just done a table, but I’m trying to avoid those nowadays.

Hell is other people.

I have long made a distinction between between rock bands who happen to be made up of Christians, and Christian Rock Bands. I like the first, not so much on the second.

Over the course of the last couple of days it hit me. There is a difference between a blog by a conservative person and a Conservative Blog. It’s starting to be like rock bands here as well.

I’ve also come to the conclusion, that with the possible exception of NRO’s John Derbyshire and Jay Nordlinger, there isn’t a political blogger out there that I don’t have at least one major issue with. More on this later, with full rant attached, got to polish it up a bit.

Around 2:00 AM this morning, the storm sirens went off. I turned the TV on and checked channel 6. Tornado or something about to become one is in west Tulsa. It’s spring, of course we get this sort of thing. Then they mention $NEIGHBORHOOD as being one of the places that needs to take shelter NOW. OH SHIT. Redheaded Girl and Art Dude live there. I, knowing that they are most likely not watching TV at that moment and that they can’t hear the sirens, call them up. Home phone number goes to voice mail. I know better than to leave a ‘time critical’ message. About 2 minutes later I get a call back. Art Dude, and he sounds pissed. I understand why, it is 2:30 in the morning more or less, and even for them that’s not a good time to call. I tell him to turn on the TV and that a possible tornado is coming his way. He doesn’t sound so pissed after that.

It was raining this morning, (still) so I didn’t go to see my mother. The lack of windshield wipers on the car is starting to be a problem.

Did see the shrink this after noon. Found out that, yes, taking pseudoephedrine and amphetamines at the same time is a bad idea. Found out that antihistamines and Lexapro at the same time isn’t a good idea. And yeah, Lunesta and beer, with in 8 hours of each other is a bad idea. On the other hand, if did find out that beer isn’t a problem with the other meds, just the Lunesta. He put me back on my original antidepressant, cause it seem to be working fine, with fewer possible side effects than the Lexapro. Also cheaper, which is good.

The cool thing I found out is that he’s a beer snob as well. He gave me what amounts to a prescription for his favorite beer. He doesn’t think that my current beer drinking level (i.e. less than a six pack per week) is related to any of my current issues. As long as I don’t take the Lunesta after drinking! And really, all that means is I sleep until noon or so.

On the software side of life, I got the latest version of Ubuntu (8.04 beta) loaded on the crap top. I still having some issues with the wireless working, so I’m making a custom kernel to see if that fixes it. Secondlife (Dazzle release) with default X drivers gets about 9 fps, which is still really too slow, but I’ve still got to install the faster drivers.

She’s a Miniature Pinscher…

Together they fight Crime!

Assuming you define crime as being squirrel based.

My dogs. Keeping the US safe from the squirrel threat for all their lives.

This shot just amuse me to no end. To me it looks like a poster for a doggie version of those 1980’s cop buddy movies. Could just be me. I’m quite aware that I’m not a normal person at the best of times.

It’s spring. That means I’m taking pictures of flowers. This particular tulip grows in a rather awkward spot in my back yard. Makes mowing a bit tricky. This weekend was weird. Found out that not taking my “blue pills” (no, not those, my 10mg Amphetamine pills) and trying to DM a longish high level (15th plus) D&D 3.5 game isn’t really a good idea. This really isn’t new, just I didn’t really understand what a difference they made. Previous games were (after I started taking the speed) 5-6 hours or more. This one ran about 3 and half hours, and I was wiped out.

I’ve got an appointment with Dr. McClure tomorrow, will talk about weird sleep patterns, hope to go get that taken care of. Still not sure how much is the new anti-depressants, how much was the antihistamines and how much of it was I was in a pretty bad funk for the last 10 days.

On the headache front, I am aware this is not real data, but I can give a single data point on this. Despite what you may read, say here I’ve had one, count it, one, migraine after I changed out the CFL bulbs in my house for normal glowing wire sort of light bulbs. I was having them near daily. This was not helping my mental state. yes, I know, not a real scientific study and the plural of anecdote is not datum, but I do know what has happened to me. Trust me, the other stress factors and migraine triggers in my life right around the time I made that change got worse, not better. I really hope the statements that they have new designs fix this issue or that Ms. Bachmann gets her bill passed.

I was going to post a long rant about my last 3 days.

I can’t do it. To change the details enough to make it not a violation of 3 to 7 peoples privacy would ruin the effect.

Any rate this is how I came out on the Misanthropic test. I’m surprised it was this low.

You Are 80% Misanthropic

Here’s the truth: Most people suck. You are just lucky enough to know it. You’re not ready to go live alone in a cave – but you’re getting there.

This is taken with my 50mm lens, opened all the way up, at just right on the edge of it’s minimal focal distance. I took a bunch yesterday, during the hour or so I was 1) awake and 2) not sneezing my fool head off. More later.

Oak trees. They are in flower and I think that is what is doing it to me. Antihistamines and my “don’t make me want to off my self” medications seem to have a synergistic effect of making me very freaking sleepy. It is, as the cool kids say, teh suck.

Do Not Want!

Yesterday, I mentioned that I tried to use Netscape 4.04 on the modern web. This was less than good.

Well, I’ve been using FireFox 2.0.0.x for while. I’ve got a few add on that I think are pretty close to required. Google Toolbar, DownThemAll, Adblock, Web Developer. I also loaded FireFox 3.0.4 beta and tried using it on and off. I could live, sort of, with the fact that I had to use AdBlock Plus instead of AdBlock. Grumble about it, but in general, I could deal. Today, FireFox Beta 3.0.5 came out. What the fuck you mean Adblock Plus doesn’t work??? Fuck that and the horse it rode in on. No freaking way on God’s green earth, or under the Invisible Pink Unicorn’s holy hooves am I going to web surf with out Adblock, even of a day or so while they fix it to work with the latest beta. I can live with out the other tools, but given the amount of time I spend in ad heavy parts of the web, there is no freaking way I’m going to not have AdBlock, or it’s mutant older brother AdBlock Plus.

I think I’ll wait until it comes out of Beta and a week or so has gone by so that the add on folk have had a chance to fix their toys first.

Today is Dafydd’s birthday.

To bad I can’t find a version with my favorite verse:

May the candles on your cake
Burn like cities in your wake!

Have a good day Dafydd.

My brother, Dafydd (and happy birthday!) has this on going project to take a picture of every commercial building inside the inner dispersal loop of down town Tulsa. OK, every one needs a hobby. At least he’s not trying to see a home football game of every high school in the state, like a former co-worker of mine. Any rate, last week we went down town together to do some photos. I took the photos, he just pointed me where. This one is one of my favorites. It was taking by laying flat on my back and pointing up at the ceiling in the lobby of the Philtower.

I need to go back there and take some photos for the express purpose of using them as textures in second life. More about second life later.

1. Just because it seems like a spiffy new feature, you don’t have to convert from categories to tags. In fact, don’t do that if you use categories and don’t use tags in your theme.
2. The US Army Digital Library is back open to the public. Has been for a while, but in cleaning up above I noticed I said something about it being closed. In a rare case of the DoD noticing what random members of the public thought, they opened it up rather quickly, actually.
3. Not sure I like my new anti-depressants. They seem to work, but side effects are a bit odd. Of course that could be the antihistimes talking. Either way I can deal with them until I see the shrink in 5 or 6 days.
4. More I read about the up coming 4th ed of Dungeon and Dragons, the more I think I’m going to like it. It’s coming out at about the right time also. The party should be hitting 20th level and ‘ending’ the Poltus campaign right about then. Be a great time to start over, so to speak.

Or it might be the antihistamines. Any rate I opened up my normal right wing blog RSS blog list this morning, opened a tab on all the new stories. About half way down the first I sighed and closed all tabs.

I just didn’t feel like dealing with it all. This also may be a side effect of the fact that I changed my anti-depressants a couple of days ago. More on the new drugs once I can tell what is the AD vs the antihistamines.

Right now I have the some what bizarre combination of speedy feeling, like I get for the first 30 min after taking amphetamines (it’s not that big of rush, sort of like drinking 2 or 3 cups of coffee) and sleepy. Add in stuffy nose and I’m just sort of a hair shy of useless this morning.

For reason’s I can’t fully explain, I went here, then, of my own free will and choice downloaded Netscape 4.04, installed it, then pointed at a modern web page.

Gah. To say the least. If nothing else, I need to turn off the JavaScript error console. When you get 4 error pop ups going to Google classic, something is not right.

And to think, not all that long ago, I ranted about Netscape 4 being my browser of choice. (I’ll grant that was now 6 years ago)

I’ve come to the conclusion that ACDSee ‘Classic’ (or version 2.43 for are looking) is really the only tool from that era I still daily. I’ve moved on on editors, browsers, image editors, damn near every thing else. Still go out of my way to install ACDSee Classic on Windows boxes under my control.