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From the Fortress of Meme-itude
Posted: Tue 6 Jan 2009 1:13 pm
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Stumbled upon at Dustbury, the following:
Go into your archives and post the first sentence from the first post you made each month last year.
And we’re off to an auspicious start:
January: “It’s 2008.”
February: “In the past I’ve said that I would rather not cast a vote for president in November if John McCain were the Republican nominee.”
March: “Back in the days before the Civil War (according to James Michener), people emigrating to Texas would sometimes paint the letters ‘GTT’ on their wagons: ‘Gone to Texas.’”
April: “These damn animal-rights wackos are really getting on my nerves.”
May: “I really don’t think the cartoonist who drew this meant for the guy to look just like Al Gore.”
June: “We have been doing scenic things—and taking pictures—but now the battery in Chris’ camera is dead and she didn’t bring the cable she normally uses to recharge it.”
July: “San Francisco Mayor Gavin Nuisance wants to run for Governor in 2010.”
August: “I got curious tonight about an event I remembered from my childhood in Sacramento, the ‘Pig Bowl,’ an annual benefit event in which sheriff’s deputies, playing as the Razorbacks, squared off against Sacramento police officers (Bacon Bombers) at Hughes Stadium at Sacramento City College.”
September: “This could be getting out of hand.”
October: “It would be impossible to refrain entirely from blogging through the month of October in a presidential election year, but the activity here is almost certainly going to be light between now and Halloween.”
November: “Suicide jumper’s note begs 0bama: ‘Take care of my family.’”
December: “Up first, a snappy re-imagining of ‘The Carol of the Bells.’”
That was the first opinion entry of December 2008, but the non-opinion one containing this sentence was posted a couple of days earlier so I’ll include it too:
December: “When you’re wanted in eight states and by three federal agencies, the best-case scenario is a chump’s bet.”
Once upon a time I tended to start my opinion posts with excerpts from news articles, but more recently I’ve been trying to come up with something—anything—to say before the excerpt.
Whether or not that effort has paid off, I leave to your judgment.
Updated: Day 6 Jan 2009 7:41 p.m.
And just for the heck of it, some first sentences of the first post of new years past since I began blogging, as such, in 2002:
2003: “For no particular reason, except that some people remain obsessed with it even in a new century, I have been thinking this morning about race.”
2004: “Now go to bed.”
2005: “So Happy New Year, already. “
2006: “Okay, so it’s not exactly current events…”
2007: “Thanks to Wifey-Ki-Yay’s work schedule, we spent Christmas Day pretending it was Dec. 19 because we were coming to Chattanooga for ‘Christmas.’”
I guess the ones from 2004 and 2005 mark the zenith of my enjoyment of not merely blogging but of being a part of the so-called “blogosphere.”
Memo to the BlackHat SEO Idiot Who Spammed My Referrer Log
Posted: Sun 4 Jan 2009 6:43 pm
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“Black Hat SEO is about business, not morality,” but bad morality is bad for business—especially when it involves your lame attempts to advertise your business for free on my website.
That goes for everybody else who engages in referrer spamming, forum spamming, comment spamming, trackback spamming and cold-call telemarketing. Pissing people off isn’t going to make them buy what you’re selling.
Someday the Establishment Media and the two major political parties will figure this out too.
Somebody’s Gonna Pay
Posted: Sun 4 Jan 2009 6:07 pm
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Every goddamn time I need a USB cable for some gizmo I only use once in a while, the only cables I can find have one of the two out of three connectors that won’t fit my gizmo.
Whose bright idea was it to develop three different kinds of connectors for USB cables? I want a name and a home address. A schedule and map of his daily movements would be helpful too.
An adapter that will let me use one of the cables I can find on the gizmo they won’t fit, might just save this guy from a dreadful beating. As far as I know they don’t exist.
The Duck Makes the Predictions So I Don’t Have To
Posted: Sun 4 Jan 2009 11:25 am
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Ask Me About My Linux Partition
Posted: Sat 3 Jan 2009 2:41 pm
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I’ll bet it’s not as boring as your grandchildren or your honor student.
I’ve not only succeeded in setting up Bugbox5 to dual-boot as either Windows or Ubuntu (you can too—find Wubi, a Windows program, believe it or not, that will do all the heavy lifting for you), I’ve even used Wine (hic) to install and run one of my preferred Windows games on the Linux side. The games that come with Ubuntu are boring and look like they were designed by and for children, and the only solitaire variations seem to be Klondike, FreeCell and Spider. I like FreeCell well enough, but the only other solitaire I really like is Double Klondike. More challenging. So guess what I was playing?
Yeah, I know—but I’ll bet your grandchildren’s favorite Christmas present isn’t a thumb in the eye of Bill Gates.
‘May They Rot’
Posted: Fri 2 Jan 2009 8:36 pm
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The 419-style scammers -- also known as "Nigerian" scammers -- have hit a new low.
An e-mail my wife found in her Gmail spam folder:
Dear Pal,
I do hope my email meet you in good health. I am LTC. Paul Wallace a U.S. helicopter maintenance supervisor in the 3rd Infantry Division, in Iraq. I am writing to solicit your allegiance as the custodian to an asset value of 10 Million dollars that we are transferring out of this country. My partner and I are in need of a good partner someone we can trust to actualize this venture.
The money is from oil proceeds and legal. And we are transferring it through a diplomatic pouch to your house directly or a safe and secured location of your choice, via the safe passage of a diplomatic courier. If you're agreeable get yourself a deal by replying to: [Yahoo.cn e-mail address redacted]
Once you receive the funds, you are to take an awesome reward of 15% and custody our part for onward instruction on whether you're shrewd enough in our assessment to invest the money. Your part of the deal is being the trustful custodian to this funds, our part is sending it to you. We seek your utmost rationality and confidenciality in this.
I wish to furnish you with more details and await your response.
Your buddy,
LTC. Paul Wallace.
Chris' reaction:
May they rot.
I couldn't agree more -- though having a real U.S. Army lieutenant colonel named Paul Wallace find these scammers and bring a little justice raining down on them, would appeal to my Old Testament side.
Why Not? They’re in Bed with the Big-Government Party Already [updated]
Posted: Thu 1 Jan 2009 8:54 am
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I can’t remember the last time I saw even a nominally “Republican” newspaper with an allegedly “conservative” editorial page that ever met a government program or tax hike it couldn’t support to the point of chucking all pretense of “journalistic objectivity” out the window. So I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see this go through:
Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press. »
Government aid could save U.S. newspapers, spark debate
Precedent? Precedent??? What year is this, 2009 or 1909?
Nicastro represents Connecticut’s 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.
That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.
Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.
To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.
To some. Lordy.
Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them.
Any of you ever see the third Star Wars prequel? Remember the scene where Anakin Skywalker kneels before Palpatine and declares himself for the Dark Side, and is finally given the name Darth Vader?
A government bailout of the Establishment News Media would be like that scene—finally an open declaration of what most of us have known from the start of the whole franchise.
Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.
Nah, go for it. Open, honest evil may not be good, exactly, but it would be a refreshing change from how you’ve been doing business.
Updated: Thu 1 Jan 2009 9:58
I cross-posted this to the PW Pub, where commenter Steve Collins demurs and points to this post on his blog, BristolToday.com. It appears what Nicastro is doing is trying to help Journal Register find a buyer for the troubled newspapers.
Wouldn’t be the first time Reuters got something wrong.
Quiet, Please
Posted: Wed 31 Dec 2008 2:04 pm
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After being up 23 hours straight yesterday, and having gotten just five hours of sleep (or so) since then, I’d like to ask that everyone kindly keep it down tonight.
I hope nobody has plans or anything.
A True Laptop
Posted: Tue 30 Dec 2008 5:45 pm
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It looks like a toy, and has a screen smaller than nine inches—but it runs Linux, surfs the web via WiFi, and as small as the screen is it’s still better than a Palm or smart-phone—plus a full QWERTY keyboard that I can use without a stylus. And it’s a damn sight lighter than a “laptop.”
It won’t make phone calls (actually, it might—if I activate Skype and attach the proper hardware…) but that’s what my cell phone is for.
Updated: Tue 30 Dec 2008 22:58
And now it’s already run out of disk space on the 4GB solid-state drive it came with. So, I’m downloading “Ubuntu EEE”—soon to be rechristened due to trademark issues—to set it up so I’ll be able to have only the stuff on this thing that I want. As pre-configured, it has a whole bunch of shit (and I’m not speaking figuratively, I promise you) nobody needs, that can’t be uninstalled. And with just one anti-virus update the remaining space on the drive has been filled up and it will no longer boot.
But I knew this might be an issue before I got it, so I knew I might need to do this.
Updated: Wed 31 Dec 2008 00:47
If only I’d known how many false starts it would take me to get the installation of this new OS going. It’s underway now though—finally. And hopefully I’ll have better luck managing the drive space now.
Updated: Wed 31 Dec 2008 01:47
Finally!
Updated: Wed 31 Dec 2008 05:16
Of all the ridiculous problems to have with a new operating system, being unable suddenly to use the flash drive Chris gave me to augment the tiny SSD pretty much takes the cake. The new flavor of Linux I installed had some kind of stupid error in one of its basic files that made the system think I don’t have the necessary permissions to use that drive. Internet searches for how to deal with this provided me with good info on what to do, but no hints on how.
God help the Linux n00b, because experienced users sure as fuck won’t. I stumbled on the fix by accident.
I’ve been up 23 hours now. I’ve finally got the toy laptop working again, and able to read and write to the flash drive. I need sleep.
‘Twas the Day After Christmas…
Posted: Fri 26 Dec 2008 11:01 am
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Today I need to try to ship a laptop to a friend, and then see about getting a flat tire fixed on my Bronco.
Fortunately I found out about this flat the day before Christmas (on a previous attempt to ship the laptop—the UPS Store in question was closed that day), rather than the day Chris and I plan to drive home.
Updated: Fri 26 Dec 2008 12:11
Laptop shipped.
Updated: Fri 26 Dec 2008 14:42
Tire errand aborted. The spare seems to be fine, and nobody around here has the right size tire in stock. Finding that out succeeded only in giving me a bad attitude.
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