Why My Life Sucks

Even if it is a BMW ad, it still pretty cool.

This is will be selling for 13,000 or so.

You know that cool effect you get when you drive through a puddle just a little to deep. Water every where? Now imagine a train doing it.

Or you may find your self with a face full of air bag. Snort.

But very good at what he does.

We got about 6 inches on top of the 1/2 inch of ice. Generic photos of snow around the house and car to follow, once the sun is up enough so that I don’t have to use flash. The good news is we still have power and interwebs, plus it’s Saturday with nothing to do, so were good. There is a QT with in walking distance if all else fails. Plus a Pizza Hut, a Sonic and an Atwoods, so it’s all good. I’ll get some not so drab and depressing once the over cast goes away.

Literally it seems.

This is going to make snowmobiles a lot better item to have in my modern game. Or at least better to have if you have 10+ ranks in drive (snowmoblies)

And I don’t use that lightly.    You have got to watch this.   BEST AIRSHOW SHOW EVAR

Hat tip to Mr. McKnob

Brandy, my Min-Pen seems to think that if I am in the room, she needs to be there as well. Because I’m not using the pillows she might as well.

Mother, Ashley and Buddy.

So I added a 5th group, and will most likely add a 6th “real soon now”

Like all of these the links are over there on the right On the blog for you Facebook folk and straight text listing in the post.

Daily Blogs part 5
* Atomic Nerds
* Bayou Renaissance Man
* Beer-Bait-n-Ammo Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money. The Shit Has Hit the Fan.
* Drug Pusher
* Gingerjar
* Home on the Range
* Mr. McKnob
* Oleg Volk
* PawPaw’s House
* Phlegm Fatale
* Pirate with a Permission Slip
* Squeaky Wheel Seeks Grease
* The AnarchAngel
* The Breda Fallacy
* The Fixit Shop
* The Panday’s Gazette
* Tole’s Place
* Tractor Tracks
* Trauma Queen
* View From The Porch
* Wandering Thoughts

Just a random snow photo of the back yard.

Brandy is a nest builder. She’s not really happy unless she can move around a bunch of bedding and make her a nice little nest to sleep in. She also doesn’t under stand “get off the bed, it’s time to make it.” It’s a bit of a pain to deal with because she freaks out and runs around UNDER the covers trying to find an edge.

Once it gets dark out, and assuming the humans aren’t doing something with a food stuff she likes, you will find Keenii right here. Until morning, unless she is mice hunting. This makes making the bed a bit tricky at times, plus limits what I can do in the bed as well. I really am not complaining, just stating facts. Plus she purrs and lays on my chest a lot, which does help with the dark times. It’s quite possible she why I made it through some of them.

Yesterday, while we attempted to get the car out of durance vile, my brother “Random Dafydd” and I started a conversation about what blogs we read. I told him I was going to post a list of ones that I read.

So, over there on the right hand side is the part one of 4 of daily blogs:
And here they are with out linky bits.
* A Day in the Life of Ambulance Driver
* A Gentleman’s C
* Adventures of GuitarGirl RN
* Ambulances, Boomsticks, Coffee
* Boobs Injuries and Dr Pepper
* Cranky Epistles
* Crass Pollination, an ER Blog
* Drug-Induced Hallucinations
* Emergiblog: The life and times of an ER Nures
* ER Stories – Shocking, Hilarious, Bizarre, and Sad Tales from the Emergency Room
* Expert Witness
* Guidons, Guidons, Guidons!
* i can has cheezburger
* Junior General
* Life In The ER a Nurse’s Perspective: ER Nurse Blog
* Lucrative Pain
* M.D.O.D.
* Mad Dog Medic
* madness: tales of an emergency room nurse
* March of the Platypi
* Meat in the Seat
* Musings of a Dinosaur
* Musings of a Highly Trained Monkey
* Scalpel or Sword?
* Second Shift: Stories from the ER
* Ten out of Ten
* The Dissident Frog Man
* The Law Dog
* The Lawdog Files
* WhiteCoats’s Call Room
* William The Coroner’s Forensic Files

Either later today or in the morning I’ll post part 2 of 4, or 2 of 5 if you count the comix I read each morning as blogs….

When I started to have a panic attack I would quietly chant this:

It sometimes helped. I think I’m going to start again, even with the drugs.

The world needs many more women like this . Rock on Rukhsana Kausar

First my song for The Darling Wife
In Thee, Blue Oyster Cult

My current internal song

The more I listen to “Behind Blue Eyes” the more I identify with the POV singer.

One of my other internal songs is “Winterborn
” by “Cruxshadows”

Rounding out the list would be The Redheaded Girls song for me. At least at one time it was. When I’m Gone, by Three Doors Down

Mother, Ashley and Buddy. Ashley is the cat, Buddy is the dog.

Just some random photos I took this morning. The kitten box is a bit harder to take photos in, so I had to dink around with it first. The Darling Wife seems to have broken out in critters this morning as she tried to take her medications.   The tabby kitten has her eyes open, but the tuxedo’s eyes are still shut.

Linux From Scratch (or LFS) is for people that think Gentoo is too hand holding.

Oddly, I find it to be exactly what I’m looking for, despite the terminal lack of hand holding.   It assumes you can read, and have some Linux experience, enough to know what to do with say a general statement like “it is important to unpack each package as the lfs user and cd to the build directory.   Commands listed here assume a bash shell”.     It expect you to know when to say ‘tar xfvj’ vs ‘tar xfvz’ and to know how to clean up a whole directory in one swoop.   (rm -rfv DIRNAME).   The hand book is clean and to the point,   assuming the last few sentences parsed as something like English to you.     I, however am going to have to think real hard about doing package management of some sort once it’s up and running.   I suspect I’m going to fall back on having a tab on my iGoogle page with links the RSS feeds of my current packages so if I see one that looks like needs to be re-done I can just do it by hand.   This is more or less what they expect you to do.   I really don’t want to have to recompile glibc and/or gcc any more often than I must.   Each one of those takes about an hour, plus or minus to do.

Speaking of which, I just finished the first “live glibc” build.   No errors in the test phase wOOt! I am 1337!

Would I recommend this to say, any other member of my extended friend and family?     Other than maybe Uncle Jerry or Uncle Ron, no.   Timbert could do it, but tends to shy away from that level of bit twiddling, at least now.

Do I think it’s the coolest thing ever?   Yes.   More, of course, as it comes along.

Road Dog Porter and Dr. Pepper look exactly alike, if there is about an inch left in the bottom of largish mug. It’s important to remember which one you were drinking last when you pick up the mug and take a swig to take your morning pills.

While Road Dog is a might fine porter, and one that I will be getting more of, it’s not what I want first thing in the morning. It’s mouth feel is really less than optimal after sitting out over night. Plus I’ve just about decided that hops isn’t something you should tasted before say, 2:00 PM, assuming a normal sleep cycle.

Not sure if this is a good sign or a bad one, but here goes…

The dogs have been going nuts for the the last half hour.   The Darling Wife is out doing new years at her friends, so the first time I assumed it was her returning.   Not so.   Then they went nuts again.   Then again.   I heard a car door open and close.   I looked out the window.   Flashing red and blue lights.   Flashing red and blue lights at 5:00 AM are never a good thing, even if you are a normal person, living in a totally white bread middle class section of totally normal mid-western city, most of which applies to me. The normal person part is open to debate. The rest totally applies. So I toss on a shirt and my slippers and walk out side in my flannel PJ pants.   There is an ambulance in front of a neighbour’s house.   Not the one with kids and fire crackers that caused the dogs to go nuts at midnight, but the other one.   Yeah, that one. Item 5.

I’ve known who the problem child was for a while, just never bothered to up date that post.

I don’t normally wish ill on elderly ladies, but I’m damn close to in this case. She’s caused at least a third of my issues this last year, one way or another.

My brother, Random Dafydd, is of course a Wikipedia admin. This gives him a more than a few geek points. While I don’t have the time to put in to it that he does, I do use it a lot.   Tons.   It’s damn near my goto source for non technical stuff, right after Google.   And they need money. Don’t we all.

However, as it happens, I   have check for a bet a made about the US election coming. The bet was that it would happen at all,not who would win.   It’s a damn good thing I won, because I would have owed him about what I made this year.   It was a 1:1000 odds.   I have faith in the US system, at least for now.

This bet was made on Bofhnet (we still don’t talk about chickens here, much less waving them).Thinking about it, I decide the geek thing to do was to support a geek cause with the money.   A.T, I hope this meets with your approval.

This is Brandy. I’ve talked about her a few times on the blog, but this is her first photo.

For reasons I do not understand, she has decided that I am her human. If I am in the house, she is in the same room with me, and normally with in 5 feet of me. Keeni is much the same way, but she will some times wander off for a bit.

Brandy was a breeder in a puppy mill and was rescued by The Redheaded Girl. Brandy, being the wise dog that she is, didn’t like The Redhead Girl’s current boyfriend, so she ended up in a dog run out side their trailer. Once we got her out of there, she stuck to me like crazy, which The Redheaded Girl thought was odd, because she was under the impression Brandy didn’t like men.

Seems it’s she (Brandy) didn’t like her(The Redhead Girl) ex and his friends. Having been exposed to this bunch of people I can understand why.

She’s more than a little nurotic and still has some trust issues with regards to being given doggie treats, for example, but she’s a sweet dog and a very freaking good “alarm” dog (vs a watch dog). A watch dog will attack some one coming into and area they are not supposed to be in.   Jack   fills that role in our house, I suspect.   An alarm dog will tell you if some one is. She still not so sure about the allowing our neibour’s kids to go between the houses (on there side of the fence) just our side our windows. She barks a couple of times then “grumbles” about them for a while. She also barks at any one that comes into the the house unless I tell her that it’s OK. The execption to this list are The Redhead Girl and Art Dude. You will not the Darling Wife is not on this list. Makes for fun time when she gets off work at 3:00 AM.

This really isn’t “the beer of the day”, because, well, It’s only 3:30 and I haven’t had a beer yet. Choc 1919 (note corrected spelling of name and warning, flash monster web site) is one of my top 10 beers from any where, and is my current favorite domestic beers. Choc has had a fairly strong effect on my life, given that I met Redheaded Girl at a club that I became a regular at because they had it on tap. Me meeting Redheaded Girl, of course, had a huge effect on both The Darling Wife, Art Dude and the sundry critters, Brandy and CoCo being hers to start with.
Enough about that, let’s talk beer.   It’s an odd duck, being a fairly   dark beer, officially an “American Wheat Ale”, made with2 row barley malt,   malted wheat with a mix of   Liberty and Cascade hops.   It’s IBU is 15, and it’s officially 3.2% by weight, which is why you can buy it at Reasors and QT stores, which are both Oklahoma based companies and a major force in “Green Country” retail markets.   I will note, for the record, that Krebs isn’t in Green Country as such, being in “Little Dixie“.   I’ll also note that it’s one of the few 3.2% beers that the better “beer” liquor stores in Tulsa carry on a regular basis.

For those of you that aren’t from Oklahoma, you can’t sell any thing stronger than 3.2% beer at any thing but a liquor store.   There is a tendency in liquor stores, at least in Tulsa,   to some what specializes as either a beer, wine or “normal” liquor place.

It’s bottle conditioned, and is unfiltered, so you do get that slight hazy effect and of course some yeast stuff in the bottom of the bottle.   It’s a damn good beer.   A soon as I can get the time and energy together, the whole of the extended family group may make a trip down to Krebs where they make it.   I’ve been told the restaurant that started it is damn good as well.

For relative scores:
(The daily beer will show up in Bold Red)

I’m on a rather large list of medications that say “don’t drink and take this shit” more or less on the bottle. My Doctor, however is also a beer snob, and had more or less told me that one or two beers at night, as long as it it’s at least 2-3 hours after I’ve taken (or before I take) my meds, I shouldn’t have problems.

So, I’m trying new imports, more or less 2 or 3 a week. To night is “Petrus Gouden Triplel Ale” Top fermented Belgium blond. Tasty, slight fruit undertones, but with high hops, but not killer levels. Not really a winter beer however. Would make a GREAT “I just mowed the lawn and cold beer would be good right now” beer. It’s bottle conditioned, which means it’s extra “heady”, but not to bad. 7.5% by vol.

7.7 on my rating scale (1-10)   Will buy again, unless there is a bobcat or a live angry fish in the bottle.
For relative scores: (The daily beer will show up in Bold Red)

Petrus would rate higher in summer, it just didn’t quite hit me right when it’s sub freezing out.

I like it.

Got rid of a lot of the “Features” I didn’t like about Word Press 2.5 and seems to have it’s shit together on doing auto-updates.   Had a little trouble with a plug in I wasn’t using (wp-sitcky) causing fatal errors, but once that was removed, clean sailing.     I also turned off the kitchen sink WYSIWYG editor, just using the basic one now.   It will do.

Survey says “Good Upgrade, even if the did dink up the UI” .

Actually the current UI makes more sense than the old own, so it’s really is a win all around.   Thumbs up!

Only done side is that the tag feature I used a lot went away.   I’ll wait until after the full release and the massive pluggin update swarm that follows it to fix that, however the suggested work around plug in does just fine.

I spend a lot of my time either editing or reading documents made for “normal” paper lay out.   As it happens, the area of my primary machine (The Darling Wifell D600, aka DellBookPro aka Duct Tape Box [more on that later]) lcd screen is with in 10% of the area of a normal piece of paper.     Only problem, it’s freaking sideways.   Now for reading PDF files, and some other things, I can make the software rotate the data, then put it self in full screen mode, which just fine, once I turn the lap top 90 degrees, (i.e open like a book).     Down side, of course is that unless I hold my mouse sideways, it’s a real pain to deal with.

Now the basic display mode of the D600 is 1400×1050.     1050×1400 would be ideal for me.   That would make 120 dpi more or less life size for paper.     In theory, the chip set on the box has a rotate option.   Of course, like most things ported from the desktop world to lap tops, if fails.

Enter my newest toy.   Pivot ® software Fools Windows into having a 1050×1400 mode and moves every thing around, and can be easily turned on or off.     Happiness and joy is found in my life once again.   it has a 30 trial version, which I’m running now.   The second I get my next check deposited I’m buying this sucker.   40 bucks is cheap, and damn, it does EXACTLY what I want.     I’ll be damned if I’m even going to look for a crack for it.

From the Times of London on line

INS Tabar, an Indian frigate dispatched last month to the area to protect the country’s merchant fleet, sighted the pirate vessel late on Tuesday. Indian officers said they spotted pirates moving on the deck with rocket propelled grenade launchers and automatic weapons. “On repeated calls, the vessel’s threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship,” the Indian Navy said in a statement. “INS Tabar retaliated in self defence and opened fire on the mother vessel. “As a result of the firing by INS Tabar, fire broke out on the vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored on the vessel.”

First, Ethiopia, now India. Looks like the founding members of the “non-aligned” nations are going to fix the West’s biggest loss (so far) in the GWoT. Speaking of which, I need to come up with a nice punchy thing to call it, other than GWoT. The US military is leaning towards “The Long War”, but I use that for the 1917-1989 war against Russian communism. The Neo-Crusade? The 10th Crusade?   The Arab Wars?