Jericho: Cerebellum Evacuation

I love this, I really do. Loretta Sanchez is so the name of a Islamic Terrorist!

Here we are, it's Halloween. But, more importantly, it's October 31st. Whether you have realized it or not, we here at IWDC have met a milestone, hit a high point. For the first time in our long history (long as blogs or anything on the Internet goes) we have finally had daily content. For one solid month, everyday, there was at least one entry. Often there was more than one, we have over 50 entries for the month. On top of that, because of the writing bug that has bitten both Max and myself, these have been some of the longest and probably best entries ever. Just hoping you all appreciate the efforts of this month.

Having said that, it's no secret I hope to make this site into a hub of money making goodness. To do that, I need a regular readership, a readership about 100 times larger than current. I had hoped that daily content would get us there. I think with all the blogs out there, for the most part, people are reading just their own blogs and maybe a few friends. So, with all our additional effort this month, we've seen almost no raise in readership. I know I'm being a jerk. I know I need to do this for a very long time and appeal to others out there who are like thinkers. I had just imagined a larger reaction than this. Oh well, I'm still having fun reading Max and writing what little I do.

Speaking of writing, I'm excited! The NaNoWriMo begins at Midnight. I probably won't be writing much out here, but I will be socking away the wordage on my novella. I may put up the odd chapter here and there, or give y'all a link to the document online. We'll see what I can come up with. Wish me luck, it's just 2k words a day for a month - no big!

The house thing is still moving along. Our buyer has an inspection scheduled for tomorrow. We have the possibility for a third offer, nothing in concrete yet, but we'll see. For whatever reason, the house popped back up on the MLS. The number is:

MLS# 26169772

The pictures are hilarious. The first picture is the picture that was on the MLS from when we bought it three years ago, you can still see the fence we ripped down. That bus stop, a significant feature to me, has been gone for more than a year, so that dates all the pictures. Two of the same picture have shown up on several sites. Most of the pictures are of the flowers outside, with the house as backdrop. Those pics were scraped up in a hurry when our agent couldn't get to his email and all the internal pics I took just for this listing.

I hate the house selling and buying dance, but I guess it has to be done.

Well, that's about it. Steph and I will be hiding out tonight. Halloween is something we fear in our neighborhood, so we probably won't even be in the area of the house. But, you all have fun with it!

It was a great month, don't you think?

Max: Brain Dump 10011

More than once in my life I have been called "paranoid." On this blog I was called "paranoid" because I saw through Shrub's lies about Iraq's supposed WMD. I saw through the lies when few people did, so I was "paranoid". However, I don't just buy into conspiracy theories. I am a big fan of proof. A lot of my friends buy into the "Bush was behind 9/11" thing. I say, "Show me the proof." By the way, "Oh come on! Open your eyes!" is not proof. It's only because I have a near pathological level of skepticism that I didn't buy them Shrub's lies. In the past, lack of skepticism led me into making more than a few bad judgments. Now I apply it quite rigorously to any idea presented to me. Shrub had no proof of WMD. My friends have no proof that Shrub caused 9/11. That said, I am now going to engage in rank paranoid ranting. I have no reason to believe what I am about to say. In fact, if I believed it I would be heading to Canada right now.

It's Wednesday, November 8, 2006. You wake up to find your internet connection is dead, your phone is dead and the only thing on radio or TV is a looped message stating that a state of emergency has been declared and that anyone on the streets without authorization will be shot on sight. Overnight, you have gone from living in a democracy to an autocracy. How has this happened?

It started in 1992. Bill Clinton was elected President and from that day on, everything he had ever done was put under scrutiny. The Republicans didn't care what impropriety was found, as long as it was found. The R's used these investigations to swing the 1994 election their way. They then set about destroying the President. They dug up the most unpleasant details about the President's personal life and put them on display. They forced the President's penis on the public and made a mockery of the Presidency, insuring that the American were more than fed up with having to hear about the President's personal life.

Then along came Shrub. The neocons and the Bush family used their money, power and influence to insure that Shrub was installed in the White House after a tainted election. Why would they want a tainted election? Because voters want clean elections. The US is the greatest Democracy on the planet and the 2000 elections made us look like a banana republic. The entire country would be ready for election "reform". This so-called reform came in the form of unsecure, buggy electronic voting machines put out by a company with obvious Republican ties. Instead of building the public's confidence in our elections, they ever so slowly undermined it.

While that was going on, the neocons were working behind the scenes to find a way to sell a war in Iraq. Saddam was a dangerous, violent, evil dictator. All that was needed was to make him out to be a threat. At this point, some might be thinking that this is why we should believe that Shrub was behind 9/11. There is plenty of evidence of plans to sell the war being put together prior to 9/11, but no proof of involvement in 9/11. One would think they would be inextricably linked if both were true. 9/11 certainly made selling the war in Iraq easier, but that there is no proof that this was anything but cynical opportunism by the Shrub administration.

There is nothing like good war unite the people behind the President, insuring that his administration went unscrutinized and that he got reelected. People who would have never voted for Shrub under any other circumstance voted to reelect him. War is always a good excuse to undermine liberties. Shrub was hardly the first. Add some panic resulting from 9/11 and the majority of the American people were willing to sacrifice some liberty for promises of security. At first the intrusions were minor, not likely to upset the average American. These were merely the start. Other steps needed to be taken before it would be put into the next gear.

First, the President and Congress had to lose the support of the American people. With the help of plainly idiotic legislation, rising gas prices (thanks to the House of Saud) and a rising tide that was swamping more boats than it was lifting, voters were guaranteed to call for a change. Looking at the polls it seemed clear that the Dems were destined to take over Congress and Shrub was to be sidelined, his power shrunk to the power of the veto. Or so it would seem.

You have heard about the Military Commisions Act. It was one of two essential pieces of legislation passed just before the 2006 "elections". It gave the President the power to imprison anyone for any reason and deny that person any legal recourse. What you did'nt hear about was The John Warner Defense Authorization Act. A few blogs and news sites tried to call people's attention to it. The San Francisco Indy Media website said that "Public Law 109-364, or the 'John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007' (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a 'public emergency' and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to 'suppress public disorder.'"

It would seem that Yesterday's elections caused some disorder. "Voting" machine were screwing-up throughout the country. Millions of frustrated Americans left polling stations not knowing whom they had voted for or if they had even voted at all. Small pockets of protest and rioting popped up here and there. But Americans on the whole are not given to rioting and protest. At the end of the day, we went home and went to sleep not knowing what could be done about a deeply flawed "election".

We woke up today to find we are all prisoners in our own homes. We are cut off from the world, from neighbors, friends and family. The only thing we know is that people with guns are patrolling the streets with orders to shoot on sight. Do we dare venture out? Can we rise up? Is there already an uprising? We know nothing except that the USA we knew is dead and that what comes now is out of our hands.

Max: Brain Dump 10010

I got my ass handed to me today. It was violent and it was bloody.

Okay, the violence was perpetrated by me on a garbage can turned into a practice drum. The blood is in a blister about 5 millimeters diameter.

This was the first Taiko class in which I found myself genuinely struggling. I was getting fatigued a lot more quickly that in previous classes and I was not bouncing back as quickly. I wasn't getting the new patterns down. I could picture them in my head, but my arms refused to work with me. This was the first time I got coached more than once or twice. In the past, I would have felt like a schmuck getting schooled in drumming by a girl who is half my age - and looks about a quarter of my age. It used to be that I was not comfortable when I was not the smartest, most well informed person in the room. But lately I don't mind humbling myself in front of someone of superior skills. It is one of many things that has gotten easier since I got the depression under control.

Yesterday's Brain Dump seems to have made even less of an impression than previous ones. This is not a place to be polite. If I am stinking up the joint, let me know. I would rather someone honestly tell me why they think I suck than remain politely quiet. It won't hurt my feelings. And I won't stop putting them up no matter how much you beg. But I would like to know what people think.

Yesterday's Brain Dump almost didn't get written. I would have written something, but I almost didn't write that odd little story. When the opening lines of my odd little tale first occurred to me, I rejected them out of hand. I let myself fall back ever so slightly into excessive self censorship. I realized what I was doing and I told myself I had to write my ideas down and at least give them a chance to develop. The next think I know, I was taking a trip through someones odd little brain. I mean other than than my own.

Outside of that, I am pretty well tapped out at the moment. I think I am going to cut it short today and go lie down.

Max: Brain Dump 10001

It was quiet.

so quiet

It was dark.

no light

It was cold dark oh so alone.

He wished.

He hated parties. He hated the mandatory joviality, the empty conversation.

If he showed any sign of not enjoying himself, they would destroy him.

Not really.

They would try to gently enforce the happiness requirement. They would politely ask what they needed to do to force him to act as happy as they acted. Otherwise known as trying to cheer him up.

For his own protection he smiled, pretended to sip whatever vile concoction was handed him by the self appointed bartender and said the most inane thing that came into his head when someone spoke to him.

He wished.

He was having a good time. He liked these people, enjoyed their company. And Mike could mix one hell of a... whatever he called it.

The fact that somewhere in the back of his brain he was roaring down the highway at 90 mph on his Harley - a Harley, he didn't actually own one - just made him more happy.

Damn it.

He had always been cursed by happiness. He was raised by loving parents who always had time for him. Mom and Dad never fought. It's not that they always agreed with each other. Rather, instead of fighting it out, they had high school style debates in which each presented a reasoned argument and rebuttal until agreement was reached. He was even invited to join in.

"After all, these decisions affect you and it's never too early to develop your powers of reason," they would say.

He was far from spoiled, but hardly ever punished. Instead, when he did something wrong, his parents would sit him down and explain at length why what he did was not the best choice he could make. If he did it again, they would have him write an essay defending his actions and then they would analyze his argument and explain where it was flawed. As far as he could remember, he never did anything a third time.

Damn them and their love of reason and knowledge.

Actually, he thought, I need to call them before it gets too late. He needed to reschedule his weekly chess match with his father.

Serial killers have all the fun. They get to do horrible things to people for absolutely no reason and did not feel even slightly guilty about it. And suicide bombers. The strongest action he ever took was writing a carefully considered letter to the editor.

It's not that he could never be a suicide bomber. Everybody has their breaking point. He could see himself wrapping himself in explosives, walking into a government building then pushing the dead man's switch. Of course he would probably feel guilty about killing people, so he would warn them and give them a chance to evacuate to a safe radius before letting go of the switch. He felt that would be more effective. Instead of angering people by killing innocent bystanders he would be a genuine martyr. From a publicity perspective that would have more street appeal.

College was almost as bad as home. He could not find a single class to hate. Even if the professor was a little dull the subject always piqued his interest. He had friends, tried a few drugs. He even had Sue, a friend with whom he shared mutually satisfying, no strings attached sex. He kept in touch with all of his friends, who also doubled as a great business contacts. He kept in touch with Sue, too.

Dammit. He even had a great sex life. It wasn't even dirty or sleazy or selfish or soul crushing. How many people on this earth have a friend they can call almost anytime to get together, have a fun night out and cap it off with great sex?

Fuck.

Somewhere deep inside him there was a lonely, angry, heroin addicted poet screaming to be set free.

He wished.

His job is great. He wouldn't be having so much goddamn fun at this party if he didn't like his coworkers. His boss was more more like an assistant than a boss, constantly there to make sure everything was just right, that not one single annoyance interfered with his work. He loved his work. He happily works 50 hours a week. He'd happily work 80. Mark Twain said something like, "Make a living at something you love and you'll never work a day in your life."

The asshole was right. He was getting paid a ton of cash to do a job he would do for free.

His life outside of work was great too. Besides his parents and Sue, he had friends constantly taking him out to dinner or having him over to see their new home theater or swim in their new pool. And they always let him know that they knew people who would get him insider deals if he ever decided to buy a house so he could have his own home theater and pool.

But why buy a house? His condo was great. The walls were practically soundproof. His neighbors were friendly. Everybody got along so well that Condo Association meetings were more like parties.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

What did he do to deserve this fate? Sure he studied hard, worked his butt off and got along great with people. But still. What does a guy need to do to lose once in a while?

He could taste it. Wandering the streets in 7 layers of filthy clothes, swilling 195 proof rotgut from a bottle in a paper bag. He would talk to himself and beg for spare change that people would give him just to make him go away.

That would be the life. Outside the bounds of normal society, a canker on the face of ordinary. But it wasn't to be.

But a guy's got to have dreams.

Sweet, sweet dreams.

Max: Brain Dump 10000

They say the the clothes make the man. I didn't realize how true that was until I stumbled into my closet and found my clothes working on actually building a man. He was definitely a man. They had gotten that far.

"Why not build a woman?" I asked.

"We're men's clothes."

"So?"

"If you wanted a woman, you should have bought women's clothes."

With a flash, I ran down to the basement to my secret closet. There I found, almost completed, a nun, a severe looking businesswoman and stripper. Not liking my odds, I decided to take a long vacation. I just hope that I don't come back to find the dude being built upstairs was having freaky foursomes with the women being built downstairs. I never get invited to the good parties.

*****
As I sat in my cell awaiting execution I realized I should have said, "Give me liberty or exile me to a country that will give me liberty." Talk about esprit d'escalier.

*****
After getting pick pocketed I started putting mouse traps in my pockets. I haven't gotten pick pocketed since, but I have no idea what to do with all of the dead mice.

*****
Adventure Man: The Baja 1000 is one hard drive.

Geek Man: How many gigs?

*****
Chess is a game of strategy. My strategy involves slipping my opponent some LSD just before the game.

*****
Manly Man: Are you still a virgin?

Geek Man: Does pirated hentai count?

*****
I wasn't afraid when the computers first took over the Earth. I was certain their superior intelligence would lead us to a golden age. It turns out that computers are uber-Christian and are pissed off about all the downloaded porn. I don't mind the daily flagellation, but learning the Bible in binary is a pain in the ass.

*****
Coffee Man: I love coffee.
TooMuchCoffeeMan: YEAHMETOOINFACTITHINKIMGOINGTOGO GETANOTHEREIGHTORNINECUPS.

*****
People think that the fact the I talk to myself means I'm crazy. Untrue. The pile of rotting corpses in my basement, those mean I'm crazy.

*****
I'm not lazy. I just think it is good for everything I own to have a protective layer of dust.

*****
Everybody says I'm paranoid. I know they're just doing it for my own good.

*****
I stopped taking the medication when I realized that the voices in my head are better conversationalists than my friends.

*****
Is my interest in neurology just a sign that my brain is narcissitic?

*****
Today the meteorological community was stunned when it was discovered that thunder is in fact caused by angels bowling.

*****
If it wasn't for caffeine I would not get any caffeine at all. But that is beside the point. What I am trying to tell you is that there is no time like the present. Except possibly the future. At least I hope it is. If the future is not like the present it will really suck when it knocks the present on its ass and takes over as the new present. The problem is entropy. Particles don't like to hang out with other particles if they can avoid it. You can't reason with them, either. I've been talking to the shards of my broken window for over a month, but I just can't convince them to put together a reunion. Sometimes I think I am wasting my time. But then I realize that I don't own time, the Universe does. And the Universe has all the time in the Universe. It can hardly begrudge me a little one-on-one time with my window.

Another problem is gravity. I love the Earth. It doesn't need to be so clingy. I try talking to it. I tell it that I would die without it. Sure other people have left it, but they always came back. We're still working on a few issues, me and the Earth. But love will win out.

*****
I find I am not very attracted to magnates. They're okay, I can hang with them. But they are too bipolar.

*****
It's not that life is too short or that death is too long. It's just, what if I forget something when I pack?

*****
I only have eyes for you. But I'm not done with them, so you'll need to wait.

*****
Type A: Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Type B: As long as it isn't the only day of the rest of my life.

*****
It turns out you can take it with you when you die. But the import duties are huge.

*****
As time goes on, we will find that dogs have stopped evolving. Once you can lick your own genitals, what else do you need?

*****
Hallucinogens are the only drugs that offer a movie with your flight.

*****
1: I have heard of places called "libraries" where they have "books". In these books are language represented by printed characters of various shapes.

2: How did you learn of these "libraries"?

1: I read about them.

*****
If it weren't for the masses of women who throw themselves at me, willing to let me do with them as I please, I wouldn't have any sex life at all.

*****
Snot is just nature's way of saying it couldn't think of a better way to keep shit out of your nose.

*****
If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening. But most of all I'll knock the asshole who lives upstairs upside his head.

*****
When I was in high school, the guidance counselor asked me what I would do if I had a million dollars. The point of the exercise was to find a way to make a living doing whatever I came up with. Unfortunately, it turns out that having sex with prostitutes is not considered a valid career.

*****
Smoking pot will not solve your problems. On the plus side, you won't care about them as much.

Max: Brain Dump 1111

I slept late today and have been somewhat lacking in the Type A level of motivation I have had these past few weeks. Rather than do a brain dump first thing, I have waited until late afternoon. I did manage to get in my one hour each of network security, Cisco, and Linux studying. Beyond that I have spent most of the day doing some leisurely web surfing.

One thing that recently has changed about me is that I am not as into watching TV as I used to be. When I was a kid, I was convinced that TV was the meaning of life and everything else was a distraction. Up until recently, it has still been my main source of recreation. Now, unless I have already written, read and studied some, I can't sit long enough to watch anything. I still enjoy Lost and Heroes as well as most anything on the History Channel or the Science Channel. But since I got the depression under control and found the motivation that I have lacked for most of my life, I have seen TV as a way to wind down at the end of the day. Even today I haven't spent more than a few minutes watching TV and that was while eating. I don't work on my computer while eating. I get it nasty enough with my own natural slime. It doesn't need a coat of chicken grease on top of that.

Not having done much of interest to anyone but me today, I find it difficult to come up with anything to write.

I just glanced through my news feeds and saw that Novell is partnering up with some white box PC manufacturers to sell PC's with SUSE Linux preinstalled. It hope that at least some of those manufacturers will have laptops in their lineup. Right now I am on a Windows PC, but I can run Linux in a virtual machine. My goal is to switch that. As a tech, I need to keep in touch with Windows. But from what I am reading, Window's Vista is the mos locked down, least tweak friendly OS ever to come out of Redmond. I don't hate Windows as much as the hardcore Mac and Linux fans out there. But I really want an OS that does think I am an idiot, or that I am going to somehow destroy civilization by taking too many liberties with the CDs and DVDs I've purchased. I just want a computer that realizes that I am in charge and that I, not the people who made my OS, should get to define my computing experience.

I understand that Lenovo will install Linux on their laptops if one requests it. But their laptops have an out of date feel to them. They still have the tiny rubber joystick in the middle of the keyboard to control the pointer. I hate those, so unless that changes, Lenovo is out of the running.

One of the goals of my Linux studies is to be prepared in case more Linux laptops options aren't coming out. I am hoping to understand enough about Linux to easily setup the many workarounds one often has to put in place when installing Linux to a laptop. My ultimate goal in my Linux studies is to understand Linux well enough to be able to put my own personalized distro together as some hardcore geeks out there do. In that way I will truly be the master of my [Linux] domain.

Here you will find a series of six word long stories by various authors. It is an interesting idea, so...

1. Groupies all taken. Bass player masturbates.

2. Stupidity rampant, Congressional Republicans are implicated.

3. Congressional Democrats form circular firing squad.

4. Libertarian elected. Didn't go. Hates government.

5. Antidepressant abuse devastates death metal community.

6. Atheist finds God then shoots him.

7. Pothead convention disrupted by shiny object.

8. Jesus returns. Admits it was scam.

9. Goth girl smiles. Banished for life.

10. Time machine malfunctions. Robots battle dinosaurs.

11. Bush speech interrupted by shiny object.

12. Accountant disemboweled after billionaire pays taxes.

13. Conspiracy theorist calls hemroids government plot.

14. RIAA copyrights the brain users sued.

Well, that was a bit of fun.


Honestly, I can't think of one more damn thing to write about. For many reasons I need to go chill out. So, this brain dump will be a little short.

15. Brain Dump too short. Max apologizes.

16. Brain dump not proofread. Sue me.

Jericho: Failure is the usual option.

I was pretty tired and cranky on my last post. It came out a lot more angry and frustrated sounding than I had intended. I missed a ton of question marks! I thought the Alphabet thing was hilarious, but then again, I stole the idea from another blog and I am probably one of the few people that thinks that blog is hilarious, so, there you go.

Steph made it back from Maine in one piece. Darned happy to have her home. The cats can go bother her now!

My shoulder has been bothering me. It's my mousing shoulder, ya know, the one connected to my right arm. When it bothers me, the last thing I want to do is sit at the computer and aggrivate it.

Our buyer pulled out at the 11th hour. We had a second offer on the house and we're now trying to get that deal up and running again. Looks like it might happen. Keeping the house clean for a month has been a pain in the ass! We have switched to plastic plates, glasses and utensils so we can throw them away and aren't tempted to build up dirty dishes. I want to leave the bed unmade now and then!

My job has decided that since I took the day off on Monday to allow my shoulder to heal, that I need to work several hours of after five work. I stayed late Tuesday night and I'll be here late tonight. Joy.

So, Monday I didn't want to be near the computer. I worked late Tuesday, cleaned up the house so Steph didn't come home to a bachelor pad, showered and picked her up at the airport at 10 PM after tons of fun navigating highway and airport construction. Last night was the 7 PM to 9 PM meeting with our realtor. It's been a busy week.

I'm still going to take a shot at the NaNoWriMo. I need to know I can complete a long form project in a short timeline. It's going to happen right at the time we're trying to move, most likely, but that's life, isn't it? The point of the exercise is to overcome life's bullshit and still have something to show for it.

I started thinking about how hard I am on myself about this site. I contribute a lot more out here than I give myself credit for, and you all might have missed it. If you are a returning reader and you just read the articles and not the comments, you are missing half the show! As we have gone along, the commenting fields have allowed for longer and longer comments - quite often I do what could be full posts in the comments. Max frequently dives in with long comments. Recently some of our readers have begun to add longer and more thoughtful comments. Feel feel to read and add to the comments - it's the reason IWDC is here!

Max: Doubleplusgood

And chocolate rations have been increased to 25 ounces.

Max: Brain Dump 1110

No fiction and probably no coherence today. I came up with several interesting premises, but I couldn't figure out where to go with them. I want to write something with characters who develop and change. I am proud of yesterday's brain dump, but we really didn't get to know the narrator. He was a one dimensional character who, with one exception, only reported on the action. I need to write more about characters who are active participants in the story, not merely reporters reacting to what others are doing.

I failed to do that in each and every idea I started today. Each main character was being pushed along by circumstance, but not really changed by it. They were frustrated or angry or confused, but nothing came of it. I am keeping notes on these ideas so I can revisit them when I find a more interesting character to torture.

And torture him I must. "Kill your pretties," sayeth Stephen King. "Farce is your worst day," sayeth John Cleese. There is nothing interesting about a character who has a happy family life, a job where he is respected and valued and is a decent person who is okay with with his place in the universe. What's interesting is ripping that character open, revealing his flaws and then fucking with him. One needs a healthy sadomasochistic streak to be a decent fiction writer.

I did torture my pretty yesterday. But what did that show us about him? We know he went from being an outcast to a member of a clique to a necessary evil in the corporate machine. But how did that affect him as person? We know he envied those who got powers when he didn't. But was that what led him to the delusion that putting together a utility belt made him Batman? We saw as he was quickly robbed of that delusion, but did I show you just how that destroyed him spiritually? Did I show you that he was so devastated by Devastator that the collapse of civilization was a mild insult added to a spiritually fatal injury? No. Had I done so the story would have been a lot more interesting. Instead it was just a snapshot of what I think would happen to the world if we actually had superheros and supervillains throwing buildings at each other. That is something I need to work on. It is yet another intriguing challenge along the path to becoming a decent writer.

It would seem that Jer has given up on our pissing contest. That's a shame. I was hoping that writing every day would make him feel like it makes me feel. It's intimidating, but exciting and it just feels good. But I feel that way because I made a choice to do this for myself. He was doing it for me. I can see how that would make it an annoying burden, an assignment that had to be completed rather than a welcome challenge. I just hope he soon finds the headspace and time to assault us on a daily basis.

The White House is once again showing its Orwellian colors. After months of trumpeting the importance of "staying the course" in Iraq, they are now denying that they ever said it. They have to know that there are taped press conferences and speeches that show them saying it. The only thing I can think is that they are counting on people to decide that all those times they heard "stay the course" from Shrub and his lackeys was some sort of mass hallucination.

"I coulda swore they said that."

"Well they say they didn't. It was probably just the damn liberal media spreadin' more lies."

"Yeah. Fuckin' liberal media. If it wasn't for Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh we'd never get the truth."

And so forth.

It's a damn shame that "The Daily Show" is on hiatus this week. It seems like they are the only ones capable of going back through the video archives and calling bullshit when it needs to be called. It is also a damn shame that a fake news show is more informative than actual "news" shows.

It is also confusing that there is a plural form of the word "one".

I was just looking at the BBC website and it would seem that Shrub just came out saying that Iraq is the only thing standing between us and the formation of a terrorist empire stretching "from Spain to Indonesia". I guess we should rethink voting against the corrupt, morally bankrupt Republicans in Congress as the Dem will interfere with Shrub's mission from God.

Two more weeks and we can geld him. Two more years and he is gone. I just have to keep telling myself that. That thought is the only thing that keeps me from stripping naked and running through the streets screaming at the top of my lungs.

People just don't seem to get that before we invaded, the only terrorist in Iraq was Saddam Hussein. There are those who think that Saddam was mere minutes from launching his campaign for global domination before we invaded when in reality he couldn't even manage to invade the 2/3 of Iraq we turned into no-fly zones at the end of the first Gulf War. Now we have created a terrorist paradise. We kicked the terrorists out of Afganistan just to turn around and give them a brand new base in Iraq where they are more firmly entrenched than they ever were anywhere else. They must thank Allah every day for Shrub and hope that we manage to elect someone equally incompetent two years from now.

Two weeks until we can geld him and two weeks until we are rid of him for good. Then he can stop interrupting his true calling as a clearer of brush with his occasional attempts to be President.

If anyone sees me running naked down the street while screaming, I apologize in advance.

Max: And The Poor Get Poorer

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer

ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION, the federal minimum wage has fallen 42% since its peak in 1968.

IF THE $5.15 HOURLY minimum wage had risen at the same rate as CEO compensation since 1990, it would now stand at $23.03.

A MINIMUM WAGE employee who works 40 hours a week for 51 weeks a year goes home with $10,506 before taxes.

SUCH A WORKER would take 7,000 years to earn Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s yearly compensation.

Max: Starve To Live, Don't Live To Starve

The Extreme Calorie Restricted Diet

I’ve been starving for the past two months, actually, and that’s precisely what the party is about: My dinner guests—five successful urban professionals who for years have subsisted on a caloric intake the average sub-Saharan African would find austere—have been at it much, much longer, and I’ve invited them here to show me how it’s done. They are master practitioners of Calorie Restriction, a diet whose central, radical premise is that the less you eat, the longer you’ll live. Having taken this diet for a nine-week test drive, I’m hoping now for an up-close glimpse of what it means to go all the way. I want to find out what it looks, feels, and tastes like to commit to the ultimate in dietary trade-offs: a lifetime lived as close to the brink of starvation as your body can stand, in exchange for the promise of a life span longer than any human has ever known.

Max: Brain Dump 1101

One of them flew overhead a little while ago. I didn't get a good look at him so I don't know whether he was off to fight for justice or evil. Like it makes a difference. Another one ran by at an inhuman speed. The wind he created in his wake knocked me over and scattered some of the wood from my fire. I wonder what would have happened if I had tried to trip him. I guess I would have probably lost my leg. But I laughed to myself at the thought of him hitting the ground face first.

People got all kinds of excited when the first news reports started to trickle in. I wasn't any different. I sat and stared at the TV for hours on end as the news readers kept updating us on how little information they had. There were videos that may or may not have been faked. There were eyewitness reports that may or may not have been mass hysteria. The videos were real and any mass hysteria was brought when people started seeing other people doing things that people weren't supposed to be able to do.

I was excited, but not as shocked as most people. Part of me had been ready for this for years.

I was a bit unbalanced as a teenager. Being a social outcast who spends 90% of his time reading comic books and sci fi novels can make you a little odd. From about age 12 to age 15 I was certain that I was destined to acquire super powers. Every now and then I would jump off a step to see if I could fly yet. I was 15 when I finally found my "super power". It wasn't flying or x-ray vision. It was sitting at a keyboard and making computers do what I wanted them to do. Back then computers were considered to be fancy typewriters or adding machines by most of the few people who used them. To me, it was a loyal and obedient servant. Mostly obedient. Sometimes it put up a fight. But I always won. I almost pissed myself when I found out that you could actually study computers in college.

For four years it was geek heaven. I went from being the only freak who liked what I liked to being the member of a small society of fellow freaks. For four years it was gaming, computers, math, amphetamines and laughing to ourselves at the meatheads on the football team. Sure it was a sausage fest and I left college a virgin. But I wouldn't trade one night of it for all the frat beer parties in the world.

I graduated just in time for computers to become the can't-live-without tool every business needed, even if they didn't know what for. I was the shaman at work. Or a witch. I controlled the mysterious technical forces that none of the other villagers could even begin to understand. I knew they hated me. They would have probably burned me at the stake and buried me in unhallowed ground if they could. But they knew they were screwed without me. I had money, I had my apartment, and I had every toy - computer or otherwise - a geek could want. Things were looking good.

Then someone saw someone flying. I don't mean in an airplane. I mean up, up and away. Out of nowhere people where turning green or growing wings or getting strong enough to juggle tanks. The remnants of that strange little freak I had been was certain my powers would be showing up before too long. They never did. No flying. No super strength. No laser blasts. Not even x-ray vision. The kid who was certain he was destined to be super was watching from a distance as other fuckers got powers.

Then I realized that I may not have had physical powers, but I had a brain that was well beyond that of mere mortals. In comics there were more than a few non-super superheroes who still managed to kick ass. It didn't take me long to put together a costume and a utility belt loaded with a stun gun, my hot-rotted PDA and other "super" toys. I went out to fight for justice. At first, there was little injustice where I lived for me to battle. I mean, there was plenty of typical injustice. Poverty and all that. But I wanted to be a hero, not a social worker. Finally the day came. Some ass who called himself "Devastator" was ripping downtown apart. I rushed into battle. I don't remember what happened next, but according to the news reports he sent my flying down the street with a flick of his finger. I spent a couple of months in a hospital room with five other survivors of Devastator's attack.

After that, like most of everybody, I was on the sidelines. I watched as some of them rescued people from burning buildings and stopped crime while others knocked buildings down and took whatever they wanted from us puny humans.

Like some sort of super arms race, the battles between the heroes and the villains kept getting bigger. They would have epic battles of good versus evil. Of course, "good versus evil" didn't mean much to the people who kept getting in the way. Huge chunks of cities where knocked down in the space of few minutes. The corpses of those who were to stupid to run where scattered everywhere. The broken bodies and minds of those who didn't run quite fast enough flooded the hospitals. When the hero supers won, they would always apologize and explain that the destruction of life and property was what they were fighting to stop.

They promised to beat back the villains and make the world safe for good and decent people.

Soon, most cities looked like the war zones we used to see on the news. Utilities that weren't completely destroyed where usually in bad shape. Without moving I went from living in a 21st century geek paradise to a dark room without running water, much less internet. Like most people I eventually found it was best to stay away from large buildings. So I moved here, with my fire, my ground and all the grass and rats I can eat.

Most people tune out the explosions and sonic booms off the the distance. They're just happy that it was off in the distance rather than right on top of them. Me, I listen. For every one of them who gets killed in battle, whether "hero" or "villain" - it hardly makes a difference which called themselves which - I treat myself to a little extra rat.

Max: Brain Dump 1100

I am writing this because I want to write it. I feel no commitment to it beyond that.

Just shy of two weeks ago, I decided that it was time to start writing. I was watching an episode of CrankyGeeks.com that had Neil Gaiman as the guest. He said something that I have heard many writers say many times before. He said that if you want to write, you should write. Write every day. Most of what you write will be useless, but write and keep writing until you write something good. Genius is the small flash that comes in the middle of the daily slog. One has to have that daily slog to get those flashes. Unlike most authors, I decided to put that slog up for people to read.

It's not always easy. Sometimes I stare at the screen for a half hour or more, my brain in a perfect zen state of emptiness. Other times, I pound at the keyboard as ideas come faster than I can type. Sometimes, like today, it's the first thing I do. Sometimes, like last night, it's my final struggle before going to bed. Once I even skipped it because my wife is more important to me. But I do it because at the end of 1000 words I feel good. It's not so much a sense of accomplishment as a sense of well-being, a sense that my world is a little more right that it had been 1000 words ago. I am well aware that most of what I write is crap and in dire need of proofreading, but still I feel good.

Almost ten years ago I decided I would sit down and write every day. At the end of two months, I had the first draft of a short, crappy novel. When I finished, I let myself take a break. With rare exception, that break has lasted until two weeks ago. Part of that was depression robbing me of motivation. But it was also fear. I feared the blank page. I feared I was not worthy to fill it. Most of the time when I sat down to write, I psyched myself out. Every word would get censored before I had the chance to type it. So I began to tell myself that I didn't have the time to write, that I would write later. It took until two weeks ago for "later" to come.

At first my only goal was to get words on the screen. I wanted to put my head-meat on notice that I am going to write every day and that it needed to step up. It didn't matter what I wrote about. I didn't even think about proofreading. I just wrote and what came out got written down. I did manage one piece of fiction. Bitter satire of the corporate world is a specialty of mine. It's not that I think all corporations are inherently evil. My mother runs a corporation. It's a small one, but it's still a corporation. However, I have been screwed by some corporations and am often baffled by the mentality of some people within certain corporations I have dealt with. It's good fodder.

Today I will be taking it up to the next level. It's a little after 0800 CDT as I write this. But I am not going to post it until later. I can never proofread something I have just written. When it's fresh in my mind, I can't see the flaws. So I am going to wait at least a few hours then read this over and try to spiff it up. I would like to get into the habit of proofreading as I go so I intend to slowly cut back on the time between writing and proofreading until they occur at the same time. For now, it will have to wait.

I also will try to make these brain dumps more internally incoherent. I want to sustain an idea through a full 1000 words. Perhaps I will even write longer pieces that take more than one Brain Dump to get out. Some will be fiction. Some will be opinion. And some, as a matter of course, will be random meanderings because that's all I could manage to get together that day. But the goal is to keep writing and keep getting better.

I think I was ten years old when it first occurred to me that I would like to write. I though that it would be an ego boost to see my name on a book in a store. A few years later my eighth-grade teacher told me I should write. She was an old-school Irish Catholic nun who did not hand out compliments lightly. In fact, coming from her it was almost as much an order as it was a compliment. Back then, and for some time after, I felt that I should not bother writing anything that was not instant genius. The few projects I started were crap, as one would expect. But back then it didn't occur to me that a writer could rewrite and revise. Much less did it occur that a writer writes more crap than not. But I didn't know that, so I gave up and figured that as I got older and more educated that my writing would magically become good.

Now, I know you have to move a lot of dirt to get to the gold. Sometimes you move that dirt and don't find any gold at all. But if you want that gold, you need to grab a shovel and you dig until you find it. That is what I am doing here. So far I have managed to dig more of a ditch than a mine. But if I keep digging, I just might find a vein. Even if I don't, I enjoy the digging.

I mean, I don't really enjoy digging. It's back-breaking, filthy work and those who do it have my respect. I was using digging as a metaphor for writing. I wanted you to know that in case you thought I was offering to dig a ditch for you or something. I respect ditch diggers, but I really don't want to be one. Except metaphorically.

Jericho: I need to type 500 words.

Damn Max and his little bets.

My rebuttal to his rebuttal of my rebuttal was 500+ words. I knew I should have just posted that! Dammit!

I have nothing to say. It's getting late, I just did a lot of driving. Probably not much driving for others, but a lot for me since I don't drive. I'm beat. I need to get to bed, I have a long week ahead.

But, here I am, tip-typing away. I'm writing about nothing. If you are reading this, feel free to stop at any time. I'm only writing 500 words to not lose the bet with Max and maybe, MAYBE get him to do the NaNoWriMo. This is a freaking scam! I can't believe I got bullied me into this. "Write 500 words a day and maybe I'll do the NaNoWriMo." It's for his own freakin' good. Here I am, busting my hump, and there he is, tinkin' 'bout it - when he should be jumping at the chance to jump up and do something cool.

One hundred and seventy two words, that's it? Holy freakin' cow!

I can't see a reason to not write the first word that comes into my head for every letter in the alphabet, it's 26 more words, right?

Aardvark, bark, cat, dog, elevator, fart, gator, hairy, italic, jasmine, kelp, lemur, mobile, nocturnal, orgasm, portal, query, stimulation, transvestite, uvula, vector, whisper, xray, yellow, zoological.

Two hundred thirty seven. This is going no where fast.

This is freakin' annoying. I can't believe I'm still doing this. It would be so much easier to just give up. Let Max win, as I always eventually do. Max always wins. He's smarter and better than me. He's usually right and I am rarely right. Why do I always let him win? Why am I still writing this? I could be in bed by now. I could be sawing logs. I could be watching an episode of M*A*S*H and heading off to sleep. Yet, I keep typing. I want to stop every three words and do a word count. I know it's only three more words, but some part of my brain still thinks magic sometimes happens. The other part of my brain knows I have Swiss cheese for brains, so while I might think I have only typed in three more words, I might have typed in three hundred, or none. It's always a shock.

Four hundred four. Is this not the most excruciating thing you have every read. Why are you still reading this? There isn't going to be anything here that's worth reading. I think you are a words in a line addict. You just have to read everything you see, don't you. No cereal box is safe. You even try to make out what they are saying in the Spanish and French version of the instructions, don't you? All because there is a live of words. You must read them because they are there. Well, there is nothing here. Keep reading if you must. I promise you, disappointment is coming your way. No way to stop it now.

Five hundred twenty four.

Max: Brain Dump 1011

I am writing this at docs.google.com. I am accessing docs.google.com through Firefox. I am running Firefox on Fedora Linux.

Thanks to VMWare's virtual machine software, I now can run just about any flavor of Linux. So far I have loaded up both Ubuntu and Fedora. Fedora is proving to be the better distro. Ubunutu is supposed to be your mom's Linux, the Linux for the non-geek masses. Perhaps it is, but I prefer a more obedient OS. Fedora may be the bastard child of Red Hat, but it seems more inclined to do what it is told. I will likely try other distros, but for now it is Fedora for me.

A few millenia ago, when I was just starting as a support tech at a small dialup ISP, 90% of the tools I used in the course of my job were Linux CLI based. By the time I moved on to another ISP, I had become something a Linux power user. I was able to keep my skills sharp despite working mainly in Windows at my new job because, back then, telnet access to a Linux CLI was a standard part of dialup service. Most people didn't use it, but I loved it.

As time went on, Linux access became harder to come by. I made a few attempts to load it onto one of my computers. I had SUSE loaded onto one of my desktops a few years ago, but that got lost in in the course of system restoration and other repairs. A little later I loaded it on to Starbug's predecessor. The only problem was that I could only load the CLI. Xwindows did not like my laptop. I would have eventually tried again on Starbug, but either time was short or I was too depressed to move. Just in time for me to get my depression under control, I found the free version of VMWare Player and a little fiddling later, I am back in Linux world. As a bonus, as it is running in a virtual machine so no matter how badly I hose my Linux install, I won't hurt my computer or XP. I am free to hack at will.

Sadly, most of my mad Linux skillz have dulled over the past few year, I am going to have to hunt up a Linux primer so I can get back in shape. Once I become a Linux guru, I am going to build my own custom distro and kiss Windows goodbye.

Of course, I am not there yet. In fact, I have shut down Player and am now writing this from Firefox on XP.

I started my day at Taiko. Based on the fact that others in the class tend to get more coaching than I do, I must conclude that I am either doing remarkably well or am just plain hopeless. Do you want to know something cool? I don't care which it is. I am having so much fun that genius or hopeless doesn't matter. When I feel like I am getting something, like then practice routines we are starting to go through, I am in a state of bliss banging away on my gomi-bako taiko. When feel like I am struggling, I laugh at my mistakes and keep on banging on my drum.

After Taiko my day was dedicated to playing with Linux. I didn't do any math or bass geeking so I shall have to make up for that tomorrow. Outside of that, I have not done much today.

I have been staring at the screen for 20 minutes and this thing still isn't writing itself.

I am in the living room as I write this. Adi is sleeping on the other couch. Whenever she is sleeping, the tip of her tongue sticks out of her mouth just a little. Sometimes it will stay stuck out for a few seconds after she wakes up, making her look even more goofy that usual. As Minzy isn't in here barking at me to get my attention, I am guessing she is sleeping in one of the kennels. I should go look. She almost always contorts herself into the weirdest positions when she is sleeping in a kennel.

Until yesterday, I have not had a ready supply of Coke Zero for a few weeks. In desperation I turned to water. I drink at least 1.5 litres of water a day and I learning that I don't give water enough credit. Sometimes I get a little run down and light headed during the day. In the past I turned to caffeine to chase it away. Without Coke or Red Bull, all I had was water. Even though it was caffeine free, I found that water is at least as effective at re-energizing me. It would seem that insufficient hydration can cause energy to drop and rehydrating can clear it up.

Now I have Coke in the house again, but now I just take the occasional sip for flavor. The rest of the time I am guzzling H2O. Not only do I find myself feeling less rundown, but I am less flatulent as well and my lips don't get anywhere near as chapped. Drink water my brothers and sisters. It is good and good for you.

It is late and my brain is getting ever foggier. I am listening to King's X's Live All Over The Place. I was hoping dUg - that's not a typo - and the boys would power me up with their Beatles meet Slayer rocking. But even that isn't keeping me awake.

I do have one question, though. This is as much for Jericho as anyone. I called and still call the war in Iraq needless. Jericho disagrees with me and we are both quite convinced that the other is being blindly irrational. But one thing that bugs me is that in a comment to is post, he indicated that I was calling for the complete disbanding of the US military. It was my intention to speak against the war in Iraq, not against the military in general. I would like for Jer and anyone else who cares to offer comment, what exactly did I say that would confuse someone into thinking I was calling for the us military to be disbanded?

With that, I am going to bed.

Max: Don't Be A Douche

Max: Fuck You, Bitch!

Max: They Banned What?

US bans Vegemite

United States has slapped a ban on Vegemite, outraging Australian expatriates there.
The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite contains folate, which in the US can be added only to breads and cereals.

Expatriates say that enforcement of the ban has been stepped up recently and is ruining lifelong traditions of having Vegemite on toast for breakfast.

The worst thing about Vegemite is you have to get your tastebuds amputated before you can eat it. Why are we spending money and resources on this?

Max: Funny Dem Ads

On AMERICAblog

Jericho: The Rebuttal

I just have to voice something here. A point I have long argued with Max has been raised again and I must object.

On just about every point below I agree with Max. I'm sick of the lies, I'm sick of the fear mongering. We are the last country on the planet to experience terrorism and we had better get used to it. We need far more courage and few fewer "no Gatoraid on airlines", knee jerk reactions. On all those points, good on ya, Max.

But, there was one little sentence that needs to be discussed, a fragment of a sentence actually. The war in Iraq is not a "needless war". I would argue just the opposite. Saddam Hussein and his entire regime needed to be removed from Iraq. When Desert Storm ended, Hussein had agreed to several terms. He fulfilled none of his promises and he blatantly violated most of them. For a decade, Iraq was actively firing weapons on US and British planes patrolling the No Fly Zone. True, none of them ever struck home, if one had, there would have been no question of whether to go to war or not. In my opinion, the first missile fired restarted the war. We were fighting an undeclared war for a decade.

Now, I hear you already. Right, there is no proof of connection to Al Qaeda. We have no proof of weapons of mass destruction - even though plenty of chemical weapons were found in Desrt Storm and Hussein is currently on trial for using chemical weapons on his own people. Yes, there was plenty of bad intel, and probably plenty of good intel - we civilians will never get the whole story on that, by design, and I'm okay with that, nature of the intel beast. The first Gulf War was fought over oil, this one was fought for political reasons, I agree. Maybe we should have finished the job the first time around, but hindsight is always 20/20. All of these are valid points. People should be punished for lying to us. We could have found a better way to do this.

But, the War in Iraq, the Gulf War, the War against Hussein, whatever you want to call it, is not needless. Were we lied to? Sure. Governments lie all the time. So do parents. They both lie because they think they know better than those they protect. Is it right? No. Is there another way to do it? Not really. We elect our officials and we hope they tell us lies that won't hurt us. Or, we hope they tell us the lies we want to hear.

For example, we went to war the first time in Iraq over oil, as in, who controls the oil. Many people object to that. Our leaders told us we were freeing an oppressed nation, and maybe we were. In truth, we were protecting the oil in Saudi Arabia and taking a petty tyrant down several dozen notches before he became the new Hitler, where Kuwait equals Sudetenland. Why? The ugly truth, the truth our leaders obfuscate, all of our leaders, so we all feel safe in our beds, is that without that oil, that portable energy source, our standard of living is unsustainable. Unless you are Amish or are living in a similar environment, without oil our standard of living would grind to a halt. All of the things we take for granted would vanish. We don't have alternate energy sources in place. Should we have them? Without question we should. But we don't, so we need the oil. If Hussein had gotten away with annexing Kuwait, he would have taken Saudi, then he would have taken over the rest of OPEC and the Mideast. We would have been paying $5 a gallon for gas in 1995. Who knows what we would be paying now. If Hussein had gotten that additional inflow of power and money, the war would have eventually happened and it would have been bigger and bloodier.

We may not "win" in Iraq. We may fail to set up a stable, self governing body in Iraq. It's too bad that so many people there are willing to kill or die for their political and religious ideals. It's sad that people there don't want to live in peace. Once we do have alternative fuels and infrastructure in place, we won't care any more - they can blow each other to hell all they want. We could have found a better way to start the war, but the war had to be fought, or more precisely, it had to be finished.

Max: The Late, Great USA

Former delegate gets purported Diebold code - baltimoresun.com

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.

Max: Brain Dump 1010

I slept late. I could have gotten up a little before 7:00 as I have been doing. But I told myself that I was going to be up late so I should sleep late. The problem is that it only takes one day to mess up my schedule and it can take several to get back on track. I have Taiko tomorrow. I could get up at the same time tomorrow as today and make my class on time. Or I could get up a bit before 7 and let Taiko be my pseudo-caffiene. I think that is what I will do.


I wonder if I succeeded in giving my last Brain Dump an illusion of coherance. It bounced from subject to subject as all but one of my Brain Dumps have. But I tried to give all the bits and pieces a common theme, a study in my geekness. It was an easy theme as I am an incurable geek. I have the ability to lend even the ungeekest of activites an air of geek, even manual labor. My father-in-law and I tore down the attached garage to make room for the addition we are putting on. Whenever I knocked down something big that made a loud, pretty crashing sound as it hit the ground, I would yell out, "Yeah, bitch! Ph34r //y 1337 skillz!" Okay, I didn't always yell it out. But I thought it.


Writing this is pretty much the first thing I am doing today aside from showering, peeing and taking the various pills that keep me from melting into a pile of goo. The only thing that I have done between the last Brain Dump and this is sleep. I didn't even have any particularly interesting dreams, so this one is slow going. I keep hitting my various news feed in the hope of finding something to rant about.

One item that sticks out is how the Republicans now have Osama bin Laden campaigning for them. The R's have found a new best friend in the enemy of all infidels. The Beeb have coverage and the new ad here. The last time I checked, the basic definition of terrorism is scaring people into giving in to your ideas whether they agree with them or not. The last time I checked the polls, Shrub had an approval rate of about 33% and Congressional Republicans were at an unheard of low of %16. Based on that, I would say most Americans do not agree with current R policy. My sense of this ad, which features well-known terrorists and quotes about how much they want to attack us is that it is intended to indicate that we are in danger, that we should be scared. So, Shrub and the R's are trying to scare voters into voting for the R's despite voters' disagreement with the R's policies. I will leave it to you to notice the obvious.

The R's have gotten us into a needless war. They have shit on the Constitution, burning our freedoms to save them. All they have left is fear. Vote for us or everybody dies. I am sick of all the fear mongering. I am sick of the fucking seige mentallity when there is no one actually outside of the walls. Terrorism will happen. It could be from an Islamist, it could come from an ultra-right freak like Timoty McViegh. I am all for trying to prevent it by all legal and Constitutional means. But it will happen. Our greatest defense is courage. We need to have the courage to not be terrorized by the attacks and we need to courage to retaliate against only those responsible rather than raging and stomping around like a blind, enraged giant. We need to make it clear to every would-be terrorist out there that nothing will make us abandon our Constitution or our freedoms, that no attack will ever bring this nation to its knees. They can't destroy us on their own so it is their hope that they can terrorize us into self-destruction. We must make it clear that there is not enough terror in the world to make us do that. There is no doubt in my mind that the first step in this is to repudiate the R's and their fear-mongering while making it clear to the Dems that if they don't do better they too will be kicked out come 2008.

On to North Korea. I am not a military expert by any means, but I have an idea on how to deal with them. I say we enourage China, with the tacit approval of the UN security council, to annex North Korea. There is no doubt that China is a major military power and that NK is a shambles. China should simply send in a few hundred thousand "peace keepers" with orders to maintain the security of their good friends in NK. The current NK government will stay ostensibly in place but China would run the show and Kim would be left with no doubt that from then on he doesn't take a shit without permission from Bejing. The main problem with this plan is likely to be South Korea. They would still like to make Korea whole again. But I think this might be gotten around by simply opening the borders. Anyone who is Korean will be free to move between the North and South. It may not be exactly what the South wants, but it will be a major improvement over what they have now.

Damn. Now I want Chinese. That General Tso (Cho, Goa, whatever) made some damn fine chicken. It was Jericho who introduced me to the good General. When he first told me about this wonderful dish, and for some time after, he refered to it as "general chicken". We both found this name to be amusing and puzzling. How exactly was it general? Did the recipe call for non-specific chicken parts? "We don't care what you put in as long as it used to be part of a chicken." Eventually I learned the proper name. Or I should say I started learning the many proper names. They really need to settle on one name. The last few times Laura got us Chinese, she ended up calling me.

"They don't have General Cho's chicken," she would say.

"They have it."

"It's not on the menu."

"Look at the menu. Does it have a dish with "General" and "chicken" in the name?"

"Yes, but it isn't General Cho's, it is General [Tso's, Goa's, etc]."

"That's it."

"Are you sure? You asked for General Cho's. I don't want you to be mad at me if it is the wrong thing."

"Trust me."

Etc.

Maybe Jericho had it right. Just call it "General Chicken".

Max: Japanese Ninja Pole Vaulting

Max: Time Waster

Line Rider

Max: Brain Dump 1001

I am a geek. I like learning things that not everybody is interested in. I like challenges many would find annoying. Today I had geek day.

I started today wearing my music hat. I mentioned previously that the focus right now for my bass guitar practice was getting more familiar with scales and modes. To that end I have started writing out the scales and modes for each note of the western 12-note octave. I could easily look this up on a website or in a book. But it is more challenging and therefore more interesting to do it myself. The main challenge for me is that some notes can be "spelled" differently. D-sharp and E-flat are different ways of writing the same note. When writing out a scale or mode - or any music - one spelling will usually make more sense than the other. But it is not always apparent which makes more sense until one writes out the whole scale/mode/piece and looks at it as a whole. In the end, I am certain that going to this trouble will make it easier to internalize and have on hand when I need them. This project will take a few days to complete. Theoretically there is a scale for every combination of some or all of the notes in the octave. As a practical matter, there are a few dozen such combinations that come into play in most music. But it still will take a while.

After that, I turned to math. I can't imagine most people I know having any interest in sitting at a computer watching dry math videos they downloaded from the 'net. I can't even imagine them taking the trouble to download them. But I spent 2 hours today watching such videos. I like math because it is a puzzle. For instance, in one of the videos, the host was graphing two equations. For the life of me, the graph made no sense. It was maddening. I wanted to scream, "Explain yourself!" But after going back and watching it three or four times, it hit me. Suddenly random lines on a graph made complete sense to me and my brain was kind enough to release some endorphins. And with a subject such as mathematics, one can study for one's whole life and still have more to learn. So I can look forward to a lifetime of endorphins perking up my system.

I read. Admittedly reading has not been a challenge since since about the second grade. And I do know more people who read than who watch math videos or write out scales. But I don't know anybody whose tastes are quite a eclectic I know people who love fiction.. I know people who love sci fi. I know people who love comic books. I know people who read history or science or political books. Me, I will read almost anything. When a clerk in a bookstore asks me if they can find anything, I want to say, "Enough money to buy one of every book you have and enough time to read them." I am not bragging. If anything this is a cry for help. At least help buying books. There is nothing that I don't want to read about. This is especially true for non-fiction. I love a good story, but when I am looking through the non-fiction section, it takes all my will to not grab every book I see.

Then there are computers, the ultimate geek toy. I found out today that VMWare offers a free version of their Player virtual machine software. For those who don't know, a virtual machine a piece of software that fools another piece of software into thinking it is running on different hardware than it is. What is the value of this? I have long been a Windows user. I know my way around XP and while it keeps my computer running well enough, I want to learn something new. Specifically, I want to learn about Linux. The problem is I don't have ready access to a Linux machine and I am not confident enough to blank out Starbug so I can replace XP completely. With Player on my computer, I will be able to run Linux on top of Windows. I will have the chance to learn it backwards and forwards until I come to the conclusion that I am ready to leave Windows behind. For most of the day, I have been downloading Ubuntu, which is a popular new Debian based Linux distro. If the last part of the last sentence is gibberish too you, I apologize but it will take too long to explain. It has been downloading for about ten hours and still has twelve percent left to go. In the days of dialup, I would have to lock up my phone line for days to download a file this size. But now it takes mere hours and tomorrow I will be loading it up for some hardcore Linux geeking in addition to my music and math geeking.

Of course, I won't have quite as much geek time tomorrow as I normally do. Laura has this thing where she thinks I need to actually interact with people on occasion, so she is making me go to The Funny Bone with her and some friends. I am sure I will have a good time. As of late, anything that is not one of my geek activities is initially seen as a highly suspect eater of my finite time. But eventually I realize that one can have fun away from the computer. Perhaps is will not be the sublime fun that comes from my geek activities.

The one thing I will need to do for sure tomorrow is to work on my next Brain Dump earlier in the day. At this time tomorrow I will be away from Starbug and by the time I get home I will likely be too tired to write.

Until tomorrow remember, the geek shall inherit the Earth.

Jericho: I nearly did it again!

It's a freakin' disease with me! I don't know how to control it, pretty sure there isn't a drug for it - maybe I can get some therapy.

I nearly started a new project and dropped a couple of current ones.

Do you believe it? I can't believe it.

Granted, it's a kinda neat idea – a simple, free, possibly lucrative idea. People for years have told me I should write porn, er, um, "erotica" – I'm not Penthouse Forum quality, but I can hold my own. The porn industry is huge and growing more by the day – lots of money to be made out there. I found a site that hosts free porn blogs. There are thousands of porn sites with affiliate programs – it's pennies per click but pennies add up.

So, I could put up a porn blog, load up daily content, say the fictional exploits of a sexually adventurous stud. This host even allows you to set up posts for the future so you could write a few posts before hand. Add in a ton of affiliate programs and let the pennies trickle in.

Good idea, yeah? I mean, I want to be a freelance writer. This could provide some income to supplement my writing, especially if it gets a real readership. If I can put up five hundred words a day, that's a nice chunk of content that people will come back for. I'll only have to cut into a few of my other projects, maybe ditch the NaNoWriMo. But it's for money, right? That's gotta be a good thing, right??

Dammit!

This is how my diseased brain functions. I have already mentally written the outline of half a dozen entries. I have the title picked out, the main character's name and a good bunch of affiliate programs I want to look into. I had all of that before breakfast. I've spent the rest of the day trying to NOT think about it more. I don't need another project, I don't need another hobby and I don't need a FOURTH (fifth?) blog that I'm ignoring!

As I sit here writing this, my brain is trying to figure out ways to make this work! I'm obsessed! Why can't I have a little focus, a little discipline? Why can't I find and finish a project, then move onto another one? Why must I always leap frog around from project to project never finishing the ones I've started? Why? I like finishing projects. I like feeling like I've achieved something. Why must I constantly fight this battle? WHY?!?!?

WARGH!!!

If I could punch my own brain, I would. I'm so frustrated by this. As I sit here and type I'm thinking about this new project and thinking of all the other projects I've got left sitting around and how much of a freakin' failure I am. Everytime I come up with a good idea that I don't pursue or that I table for later, my brain starts in on me. "That could be THE project. That could be your 'pet rock', your 'Rubik's cube'. Nothing you are doing right now is doing anything for you. Screw this stuff and try the new thing!" So, I feel guilty and I feel like a failure for not completing the projects currently on my plate and I feel like a coward for not trying the new thing.

What is WRONG with me??

Max: Brain Dump 1000

I took one day off and now I am back to rambling about random things. Oh well.

Right now I am listening to Pandora.com. Pandora is an interesting service. One puts in a song, band or musician one is interested in, and based on various characteristics it creates a "station" that will find and play similar music. The downside is you can't tell it to play a particular song, but you can listen to an array of music you may not have otherwise heard.

Right now I am listening to artists similar to Mayhem, a Norwegien black metal band. Yesterday I stumbled across a documentary called Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. The director is an anthropology professor and metalhead named Sam Dunn. If you saw him, you would think "metalhead" before you would think "anthro prof". The documentary is about an anthropological study he did on his fellow metalheads. He provided a detailed list of the various subgenre's in metal, one of which is Norwegien black metal. What makes Norwegien black metal an entity unto itself is as much the musicians themselves as the style they play. While many metal bands play at Satanism and other "anti-social" themes, most members of Norwegien black metal bands are hardcore Satanists who are anti-social buy most standards. Among their activities are burning churches, murder and in the case of Mayhem making jewelry out of the remains of their lead singer's skull after he ate a shotgun.

So far the bands that have played strikes me as being like most hardcore metal bands, a lot of pretty, aggressive noise and nowhere near enough bass.

Today I tried Google's Google Reader service, an RSS agregator. So far it is pretty cool. All my favorite blogs can be read on one page. It even has a feature that will search a site for you if you don't know the RSS URL. I just read on the Digg.com that OJ Simpson just got $3.5 million to write a "fictional" book about his wife's murder. It is going to be titled If I Did It. Oy!

I have switched to a different station on Pandora. This one is based on bassist Brian Bromberg. I find it captures his maintstream acoustic jazz work while ignoring his wilder electric work. It is good for a more mellow mood.

I noticed when I changed the station that there was a blurb at the bottom of the page that promised information on how to listen to Pandora on my stereo. The first words out of my mouth - yes I talk to myself - were, "I'm already listening to Pandora on my stereo. My stereo just happens to also be my computer." If am listening to music, there is a 90% chance I am doing it on Starbug. It's where I have iTunes, access to sites like Pandora.com and it has some decent speakers. Outside of Starbug, the only other places I listen to music are the idiot box - VH1 Classic, The Tube, BET J - or in my car with my iPod and iTrip. Via la convergence.

It is only 8:15 and I am yawning. That means I can either get some caffiene in me and stay up until midnight, or try to keep going until I drop. As the only caffiene in the house is Dr. Pepper and that is technically Laura's, I will be going for the latter option.

I am a bit annoyed that I can't practice proper touch-typing right now. I managed to mash the tip of my right pinky finger and it hurts too much to type with it. Laura and I hired two of her cousins to, under the supervision of Laura's father, build the addition we are putting on the house. Lately one of them has taken to not showing up. As we pay them by the hour, we aren't losing money, but it is slowing the work down. Today I got drafted to help carry pressboard sheeting up to where they were putting the roof on the porch that is on top of the new addition. It is a two man job, but two men were not always available. Lately I have no interest in standing around doing nothing, but I found myself doing a lot of that. After a half hour or so, I decided that I was going to bring the sheeting up myself. At one point I was starting up the steps when I needed to put the sheet down so I could get a better grip. I wasn't paying enough attention and my pinky ended up between the sheet and one of the steps. Right now my pinky is more of a purpley.

Workaholics used to confuse me. I could not understand why someone would willing choose work over recreation when it was not absolutely necessary. Now that my brain is unclouded by depression I can see that one person's work is another's recreation. My wife does not understand the appeal of spending my day on the computer or learning math or comp sci. For me, these aren't work. They are recreation. Just need to figure out how to get paid doing it.

Writing is s different critter. It is both work and recreation. When I am staring at a [virtual] page with absolutely no idea what to write, it is incomprehensibly frustrating. But when the words come, even when they are just lame ramblings such as this, it is a buzz like no other. The only other thing in my life like that is my bass. When I am struggling to develop a new skill, technique, understanding, etc., the only thing that keeps me from going Pete Townsend on my bass is the realization that Laura would never let me buy a bass again. But when I start to get it, when it starts to flow and I don't even really have to think about it, it is like unto a drug.

The wife is home and I am over 1000 words. Hopefully more words and greater coherance will come tomorrow.

Jericho: Driving Myself Crazy

I'm a terrible driver. I hate driving. I hate cars. I think they are wasteful, needlessly expensive, dirty, polluting death machines. We have a love affair with these devices; we have built our cities and lives around them. A lot of what is wrong with this country can be tied to the automobile.

I didn't get my driver's license until I was 24. Not out of some hatred of cars, just happened that way. As I've gotten older, the hatred has manifested and grown. Probably one of the largest reasons I left STL was the automobile. I went to work at 15 to help pay for my HIGH SCHOOL education and to buy a car. I was willing to work, but I was bad at saving. My Grandfather found a car for me, my mother felt it was a death trap and wouldn't let me have it – or she felt I wasn't capable of handling it. (Do all the women in my life assume I'm a moron? Maybe everyone assumes I'm incompetent.) Either way, I never did buy a car and since I didn't have a car, I put off getting my license. If you live in STL, you need a car, or else you had better work at home. With the scarcity of jobs, you have to be prepared to drive to a job for up to an hour, even more. Don't expect the public transport system to make up the difference, either. Without a car, I was less likely to get a job. Without a job, I could not be a full fledged adult.

Either way, even after I got the license, I still didn't drive much. When I was a kid, my mom and all my friends had cars and liked to drive. These days, all my friends have cars and are willing to pick me up and drive me around. In all these cases, I get to sit in the passenger seat and either pretend to be a dog with my head out the window or at least try to be entertaining. Final result is that I don't have to drive. I have less time behind the wheel than the average 19 year old.

So, this week Steph has been all over the place; a business trip in California and then vacation in Maine. She is my driver. It sounds demeaning, and I don't intend it to be. But every day she drives us to the park and ride or all the way to work. At night she drives us home. She drives to all of our errands. She drives to all of our recreational events. She frequently drops me off when I'm hanging with other friends and not her. I keep saying that I need to take over some of the driving duties, but somewhere between her control issues and my laziness, we're coming up on a decade where she has been in the passenger seat few enough times I could count it on one hand. There is little doubt, she is my driver.

With her gone all week, I'm without my driver. I have had to cart my ass to and from the park and ride. This weekend I'm hanging out with friends and I will need to traverse quite a bit of highway and suburban Celtic road knotting to get there. You'll notice I said park and ride, there's no way I'm driving all the way Downtown to work on a weekday! I would call in sick first!

While I realize I'm not a great driver, it's not my driving that scares me – it's the rest of you people! Do you people not think? Are ALL of your blinkers broken? When was the last time any of you looked at a speed limit sign? Must all of you crawl up my ass? If I can't see your head lights in my mirror, and you're driving a truck, you're too close! At a stop light is one thing, but that shit on the highway is insane!!

I white knuckle it all the way to the park and ride. If there is an open spot at the lot, I take it. This week, apparently everyone is taking the bus because the park and ride has been full all week. I then have to white knuckle it to a further away park and ride. What the fuck is the point of driving twenty minutes to a park and ride when on a no traffic day I'm fifteen minutes from work? Then, when the day is done, when all I want to do is relax, the horror show repeats itself. You people may not value your lives, none of you may realize you're in a coffin on wheels, but I do value my hide and I know what a car can do to a body, even at fifteen miles per hour!

Well, it's a quarter after five. I can't avoid it any longer. I hate driving!

Jericho: The Past Few Weeks

It has been a bit of a whirlwind here at the Brown residence the last few weeks. Here’s something of a 500+ word recap.

We got rid of Monica. Just over a year ago, we bought two kittens. The grey and white one, Monica, took to peeing on things, pretty much any soft surface. I used to have other adjectives to describe what surfaces she peed on, however, I now know that Steph wasn’t sharing with me even half the times she discovered Monica’s urine. If she had told me how non-discerning and out of control Monica was, I would have killed the cat and solved our problem.

I might be joking – this was disgusting!

To battle this, we had to change our lifestyles pretty dramatically. The biggest change was closing our bedroom door to keep out the cats. I’m not a fan of a kitty pee soaked bed. Of course, Monica insisted on sleeping directly in front of the door, making her a navigation hazard. In the dark, all kitties lying on the floor directly in your path that refuse to get out of the way are throw rugs!

We arranged to give her to a shelter. I did like the cat. I’ve tried to not “love” her since we’ve been talking about getting rid of her for a while, all along trying various things to make her quit and hoping she would grow out of it. The good news is that now all the rest of the cats seem happier that they can come and go as they please, most especially our other kitten, Phoebe. She has really blossomed in only a few weeks. She’s becoming quite the charming pet.

We’re selling our house. We’ve been here three years. The house is old and the projects to upkeep her are mounting. I don’t have the time, tools, talent or money to upkeep this shack. Our fear is that if we don’t get rid of her soon, something will happen that will keep us from selling the house and cost us a large chunk of money we don’t have. If we can sell the house, the profits from her will pay off a good deal of our debt. That’s exciting to us, and our plan when we bought the place was that this was a starter home and we would only be here three to five years. Our plan has worked up to this point; it’s time to sell.

We contacted our real estate agent who helped us buy the house. He was happy to help us sell it. We filled out paper work and turned it in. We set to work on starting the cleaning up process, we cleaned until 11 PM or so. The sign arrived at 11:30 PM. Things were moving pretty quick. By the next night, we had two offers on the house. That was last week. As it stands now, we’re waiting on several factors. The house has even managed to fall off the MLS listings for some unexplained reason, so I can’t point you to it. We’ll be fine, the house will sell, I’m quite confident.

Just in time for all of this, our kitchen sink fell in. You read that right. The City of Tukwila has been working on the main street through our neighborhood for about three months. They ripped out the street, installed new, larger sewers and storm drains, and they are now in the process of installing sidewalks and then they will repave. They plan to be done by the middle of November. So, for the last few months, our poor little house, right in the middle of this mess, has been shaken by large machinery every weekday from 7 to 4. Just as we were about to list, Steph noticed that there was a gap above our kitchen sink. It was mounted to the underside of the kitchen counter. Several of the fittings had fallen off – shaken off if you ask me. We tried for a homeowner’s insurance claim, the insurance company immediately hid behind every clause they could find, so much for the “Home” part of Farmers Insurance’s slogan. We contacted the City and the contractors building the street. Instead of fighting an insurance claim, the contractors sent out a guy to just fix the sink. He did a great job and we’re pleased as can be!

We will then be moving into an apartment. We’re doing this at the wrong time of year. People don’t like to move in the fall and winter, so there isn’t much churn in the apartment market. Add to that the “fact” that the housing market is supposed to be tanking and the housing bubble is supposed to be bursting (I don’t believe any of this) people are ditching their houses and grabbing apartments. So, we may get the house sold and then have nowhere to move – or at least no place decent.

Funny, now that this is written out, it doesn’t look as big as it felt.

Max: Break Dump

Today I decided that spending time with my wife was more important than making a Brain Dump. Rants will resume tomorrow.

Jericho: Da Projects

Why comment when I can just post my reply?

Several years back, Max proposed his theory that I always chase the new project and forget the current project I am working on. I probably rejected his theory, most likely just because it was his theory. A few years later, he pointed out this trend yet again. This time, I saw the wisdom of it.

It’s true, oh so very true. I am great at starting a project. I come up with a killer idea and I get all excited about it. I’ve got half of it planned out in my head in minutes – seriously. My brain is a quick thing; I can map out a project in a snap. I live for the start of a project. About the time I get about a quarter of the way into a project, the point where ideas must become plans for action if the project is to go on is about the point where I lose interest, or maybe I just lose focus. Either way, my brain is ever active and I will come up with some other, new, greater, cooler, better, shinier idea and off I go – leaving the just begun project on the pile with all the rest. And that pile is getting pretty big!

Want an example? You’re looking at it. Max challenged me to produce five hundred words a day until the end of the month. We’ve had a (farcical) pissing contest via email, we’ve both “laid our thing down” here on the blog – all in good fun. And, yet, it’s twenty to eleven and I am just now sitting down, attempting to bash out nearly two thousand words. I’ll be lucky to get five hundred. (269!)

Yet, we can also look at IWDC as a whole. We’re coming up on five years and I haven’t let this project go. There’s a lesson for me to learn here and it says a lot about me. IWDC is a project with no dead line, no set expectations. I don’t have to provide content on a daily basis, although I’d like to. I don’t have to do anything. If I don’t post, Max often does. If the site goes for weeks, heck, months without a post, we’ll see a complaint from Laura and maybe I’ll get a question from my wife. But, that’s it. So, when I get around to it, I post. I try to write something good, I put real effort, brain sweat, into my posts. But the longest posts out here are pretty short compared to stuff I do at work or to a full novel. I keep doing it because it’s fun and it gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Short. Reasonable timeline. Rewarding. My last boss, he saw this in me. He saw that if he could give me an unusual project with a quick return and it would draw a pat on the head, I’d dive right into it, no matter how weird. Case in point: one of our offices wanted to record a big meeting. The meeting was going to be in three offices, with a teleconference. They wanted cameras in at least two offices, a recording of the call and all of it edited together in one professional package that could be a training tool for those who missed the meeting and for future employees. First word out of my mouth was “pricey”. I was told something very unusual – price was no object.

I knew not how to proceed. What did I know about major video production? I’ll tell you what I know – zilch! The best part was that the person who requested this was out of our Los Angeles office. I’m in Seattle – why is someone that close to Hollywood asking me to do this?!?!

But, my boss was right: give me a quick, strange project and I’m all over it. I was out on Google looking up anything that looked good. I was on the phone. I made dozens of calls. I spoke to everyone from PBS to the Milwaukee Archdiocese – not kidding! Before I knew it, I had three producers sending me proposals. This was quick, too, I was told I didn’t have a ton of time. One of these producers happened to know one of the firm’s partners! So, I had a partner on the phone – guess what he wanted! If there was money, why shouldn’t it go to his old college buddy?

In the end, I told them the price and suddenly price was an object. They objected quite loudly and decided to drop the whole thing. But that’s not the point. The point is that if I can start and keep momentum, I can do some pretty awesome things.

Right now at work, my new boss has his whole team reading a book: Getting Things Done by David Allen. Interesting book. He has a rather simple set of ideas on how to organize things in order to achieve “stress-free productivity”. I’ll be honest; I’m liking his theories. I’ve started implementing them. Not just at work – one of his main arguments is that stress free productivity should be practiced in one’s personal life as well as in one’s career. If your home life is out of control, it will cause stress for you everywhere, not just at home.

Some of my recent stuff has come out of implementing his ideas. The album reviews, the writer’s resume, entering the NaNoWriMo – every one of these have been a “next action” on the project “Become a Freelance Writer”. I seriously have that listed as a project on my list, right next to “organize the California tickets” and “sell my house”. I’ve kinda hoped that my recent writing advances have been noticeable, but I guess a part of me would be happy if I were considered an overnight success because no one noticed how furiously I was working behind the scenes.

In all seriousness, this Allen guy’s stuff is simple and it works. I am freeing up some parts of my brain. And I really do see some paths forward. Before it was just a whole jumble of things in my head that I wanted to do, and I would pick the most interesting at the moment. Now, it’s a big list of things to do on paper and I have a free brain. I can pick and choose what gets done and when and know that I’m not ignoring another project, just that I’m choosing to do the one I’m doing. It’s liberating. If you get the chance, grab the book; I’m sure there are copies at the local used bookstore.

I just don’t want “Great Guy, Never Finished a Project” to be my epitaph. I have folders and folders of unfinished stories. The bad news is that I’m a failure as a writer; the good news is that I have plenty of useable ideas if I ever need them. I have started two on-line comic strips. Both of those died for the exact same reason – delivering daily content, no matter what it might be, is hard. I have life and I have work. I loved doing those strips, the creativity of it all. I wish I could find a way to do it everyday. The guys who can produce daily comic content go on to be guys making a living from doing that and that alone. Heck, I even started a webzine once; never saw it’s first issue. I allowed my own self-doubt to cloud my judgment. It died before it was born.

One of my favorite projects that I have never finished, heck, that I’ve barely started, is my army. As you all know, I’m a gamer. Eight or so years ago, I bought a box set for a game called Warhammer 40,000, a.k.a. 40k. If you don’t know what it is and would like to know, go Google it, I won’t bore you with the details. In short, the game involves a bunch of small figures that one assembles and paints. Then, one challenges someone else to a war game. The box came with two starter armies, I talked a friend into painting up the second army and we would play when we were both ready. He went right to it, I didn’t. We played once, his figures were painted and mine had only a black basecoat. We played a second time and then mine went on a shelf. This friend went on to become something of a local big deal with the company that produces this game; he got other friends of mine interested in the game. My “army” sat on the shelf, unpainted and unplayed.

But the story, and my shame, only grows. These figures and the paint and the books are not cheap. I had already invested $150 or so dollars in this game. About six months ago, I got the urge to break these figures out again. Mind you, this is the third or forth time I’ve gotten this urge. But this time, I did it with gusto. I bought paint, the latest set of books and, you guessed it, more figures. All told, I’m about $300 into this game. Have I done any painting? Nope. Have I played the game? Nope. I’m sure Steph thinks I’m insane. She hasn’t given me any grief, but I bet she thinks this is a total waste of perfectly good money. The only hope for this “army” of mine is that it is currently listed as a “Someday” project on my new list of projects.

My hope is that as I age and as I try to improve myself, I will find ways to become better at starting, managing and finishing projects. As I read this book, I’m seeing a very simple truth: life is a project. We’re all project managers. We have resources and talent pools and dead lines. I want my projects to go smooth and produce great things that benefit you, me, heck, everyone! I want my friends to feel that they can rely on me. When I say I’m going to do something, it will get done. I want my wife to feel she can trust me with a simple task list – I’m pretty sure she doesn’t at this stage, with good reason. I’m tired of stuff not getting done. I feel better when stuff gets done.

I want to finish the NaNoWriMo. I want to write a real novel. I want to do all of the certifications I’ve been promising my employers I would pursue. I want to sell my house. I want to finish my degree. I want to write something publishable with Max. I want to paint my freakin’ army! I want to be a freelance writer. I want to be the guy that gets things done.

As a first step, I’m the guy that just laid down 1800+ words before midnight!

Max: Brain Dump 111

Ethokinsynthesis: A New Paradigm For The Modern Goal Achievment Environment

First, let me welcome you to Ethokinsynthesis, or EKS. You will find the techniques we discuss to be indispensable in the modern goal achievement environment. EKS will give your organization the edge it needs to take it to the next level. A manager at an EKS workstation will have the ability to supervise a large number of employees over a wide geographic area, providing them with the guidance the need to meet organizational goals.

The employee will at the time of hire and/or implementation will have the EKS client chip inserted into the medulla oblongata. In testing less than ten percent of recipients of the EKS client chip suffered infection and/or brain damage and most of those incidents were non-fatal. If liability is a concern, we recommend that prior to implementation an Entrance License Agreement be printed in micro font on all entrances to all organizational facilities. The ELA should state that by entering the facility, the person entering agrees to receive the EKS client chip and to release the organization from any responsibility for any side-effects of chip insertion. This will also be useful for any future implementation of EKS chipping in your customers and clients as a condition for receiving your product or service.

An employee fitted with an EKS client chip can be remotely monitored and guided from the EKS workstation through manipulation of the pain and pleasure centers of the brain. By proper application of varying degrees of pain and pleasure varying from pure torture to pure ecstasy, managers will be able to train employees to avoid misconduct and to value goal achievement. The advantage of the pain implementation is that it causes little in the way of physical harm, while the pleasure implementation can insure that goal achievement activities are the center of of the employee's attention at all times as he seeks to receive as much reward as possible. In testing the reward, and therefore the goal achievement associated with the reward, surpassed all other motivational vectors, including salary. Further, test subjects expressed no interest in anything not directly associated with goal achievement, including time away from goal achievement activities, paid or otherwise.

We will now cover the post-insertion orientation process.

The period immediately following insertion is perhaps the most crucial time in the EKS process. This is the time when employees are made aware of the impact the EKS client chip will have on them in their goal achievement environment.

First, mild pleasure should be implemented immediately post insertion. The purpose this is to eliminate any lingering doubts the employee may have concerning insertion. An employee leaving the insertion facility should have a sense of well-being that exceeds any sense of well-being, if any, felt prior to insertion. This will show the employee that the EKS client chip is an upgrade that is implemented to their benefit. It is crucial that this pleasure be mild. You may be tempted to provide too much pleasure, but this can actually backfire if the employee realizes that the pleasure is an illusion provided by the chip. If so, this can increase employee doubts about insertion and can even lead to resignation and removal.

Next, insure that the employee reports for goal achievement activities within 24 hours of insertion. The mild pleasure setting should be left in place during the time from insertion to goal achievement activities commencement. When the employee enters the facility, the pleasure sensation should be increased slightly. This of course will teach the employee that goal achievement activities are more pleasurable than non-goal achievement activities. During training/orientation, the pleasure should again be increased as employees are introduced to company culture and expectations. During any breaks or at any time when employees are shown break facilities, it is time to change from pleasure to mild discomfort. By giving employees an unpleasant sensation of light-headedness, dizziness and mild nausea, the employee begins to understand that breaks are best avoided. Of course, pleasure should then be reintroduced at any time when being shown goal achievement activities areas.

At the end of the first day, as employees leave the facility, mild discomfort should be reintroduced. It is important that the discomfort be mild. It should be enough to rob employees of any sense of well-being, but not providing too much of a distraction. This is because you will want employees to feel well enough to engage in non-goal achievement activities and interact with non-goal achievement activities personnel such as friends and family. It is during these non-goal achievement activities that discomfort should be increased. This will teach the employee that non-goal achievement activities are not welcome. This procedure should be repeated for the following five days. This will allow employees to become accustomed and for their attitudes to begin to adjust to a goal achievement activities orientation.

It is at this time that it is crucial to begin stage two. Although this process may seem counter-intuitive to those familiar with the work of Pavlov, our testing indicated that this is indeed the appropriate next step.

During this time, it is crucial that the employee be exposed to the full range of sensations that the EKS client provides. The obvious benefit of this is the employee is left with no doubt as to the value of conformity and the hazard of misconduct. But this also serves and important secondary function of disorienting the newly inserted employee which will make the transition to goal achievement activities post-insertion much more quickly than otherwise. Although this will appear arbitrary to the employee, it is actually a well developed process.

On the first day of stage two, employees should be given exactly 64 minutes to get comfortable and to begin goal achievement activities. At minute 64, it is time to introduce employees to the extreme ends of the sensation range. It is crucial that the setting be adjusted to extreme pain then to extreme pleasure and then finally to standard levels of goal achievement activities well-being as quickly as possible. Employees will feel an immediate sense of disorientation that will leave them doubting what they just experienced. This should be repeated at the following intervals, 76 minutes, 31 minutes, 83 minutes, 8 minutes. After this, leave employees at standard goal achievement activities and non-goal achievement activities settings.

For the next four days, the same procedure will be followed, with just a few exceptions.

On day two, when employees express concern about the EKS client chip, the manager should state firmly that the diagnostic found no problems with the chip. This will further disorient employees and lead them to doubt themselves.

On day three, when employees express concern, the manager must again firmly state that there is no issue with the EKS client chip and at that point, a strong but not extreme pain setting should be implemented for 18 seconds. During this time, the manager should explain that he is implementing the pain as a correction measure.

On day four, when employees make contact with the manager, the manager should immediately implement a strong pleasure sensation. The manager not indicate that he is implementing the pleasure and if employees ask, it should be denied.

On day five, the manager should be prepared with a list of any successful goal achievements. When employees make contact, the manager should immediately disregard anything employees say concerning the chip. Instead, the manager should read the list of successful goal achievement, increasing pleasure as each item is mention. By the time the last goal achievement, employees should be in a state of ecstasy. The only exception to the day five procedure should be if employees do not show sufficient goal achievement. In that case, the manager will need to list unsatisfactory goal achievement behaviors followed by an explanation of what employees will need to do to provide satisfactory goal achievement. During the explanation of unsatisfactory behaviors, pain should be implemented and the manager will need to explain that the pain is being implemented as a corrective measure. When the manager explains what employees will need to do to provided satisfactory goal achievement, pleasure should be implemented. The manager should not tell employees that he is implementing pleasure and if employees ask, it should be denied.

Finally, it will be time for the last and permanent stage. From this point on, the manager will need to constantly monitor employees both during goal achievement activities and non-goal achievement activities. The manager should implement pain or pleasure as needed to reinforce satisfactory behavior.

Through implementation of EKS, your organization will see an exponential increase in productivity and a precipitous drop in unsatisfactory employee behavior both when engaged in goal achievement activities and when engaged in non-goal achievement "private" activities.

We thank you for implementing EKS in your organization and welcome you the the EKS paradigm.

Max: Brain Dump 110

Spyro Gyro is providing the smooth jazz as I type this.

It is late on a chilly, rainy fall evening. I am sitting in my living room. My computer is sitting on top of a This End Up coffee table. The table looks like a crate with hinges. I have a big screen TV that my parents didn't need any more. It's about a decade old, so no high-def, just an extra-large screen. There is a hint of cigarette smoke in the air because my roommate Jim came in to make fun of some upcoming Disney movie. He then headed outside to renew his cigarette odor.

I am a nerd. I am a geek. My wife insists that "nerd" and "geek" are not synonymous. To her, a "geek" is someone interested in or knowledgeable about things such as math, computers, etc. A "nerd" is someone who is mostly inoffensive but lacking in social skills. I disagree. "Nerd" and "geek" mean the same thing.

I spent most of this evening watching math related videos on my computer. I am constantly changing the settings on my computer and on my network. Sometimes I make the changes because they suit my needs at the time. Sometimes I just want to see what happens. Computers are toys and toys must be played with.

Of course, sometime the toys can be infuriating. I had a bitch of a time trying to get Jim's computer hooked up to the network. After much struggle, I was finally victorious. It was hooked up and surfing. Then just a few minutes ago, the wireless bridge I am using to connect his computer to the network decided it wasn't getting a wireless signal, even though Starbug is currently in the same room, a few feet further away from the router than the bridge is, and is surfing fine. I think the bridge may be getting wonky. If so,my life got just got harder because if Jim can't webcam with internet studs on his computer, he will be doing it on Laura's and she will bitch at me about not getting to use her computer when she wants.

Being a geek can also be a bit lonely. For instance, let's say I am in the mood to watch math related videos and my non-geek wife would rather chew her own foot off. A mixed marriage can be a difficult balancing act and I am only getting geekier.

I am finally getting effective treatment for my depression. Depression is like a lead weight wrapped around my brain. I want desperately to write or play my bass or read or write learn something new, but it all would seem like an insurmountable burden. At the moment I am on meds that work, so when my brain cries out for knowledge or challenge I can actually get up and do it. Lately I have been going a little crazy, making up for lost time. I spend most of my day either with my nose in a book or on Starbug Laura is feeling a little neglected. So I have to find a way to keep up my writing, of feeding my brain with new info and new challenges, while still giving Laura the time and attention she deserves.

By the way, I just figured out that the bridge hooked up to Jim's computer can only see my router if I have the SSID broadcast on. I have a fair bit of security in place even with the SSID broadcast on, but on the whole I would rather have it off. But Jim is only living here temporarily so when he moves I can turn it back off, change the SSID and fade into the the wireless night.

Acid Mother's Temple And The Cosmic Inferno is now bringing the jazz metal.

It is likely you have heard the old chestnut that nobody lies on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time at the office. With the exception of a few inveterate workaholics that is true. But in my case I would add that I will not wish I had spent more time asleep. Life would be so much easier if I didn't have to sleep. I could be a geek while Laura is sleeping and be a good husband when she is awake. The fact that I have to spend a third of my life in a non-functioning state so that I can function for the remaining two-thirds is a compelling argument against "intelligent design". The challenge to keep things in balance will only increase when (if?) I manage to find a job. That is why I am hoping to get into the machinist apprentice program. What could be better than the have my job be learning how to build big, shiny things? Only actually building the big shiny things could surpass it.

I am unemployed and on the dole. Every so often, I have to report in at one of the state career centers if I want to keep getting my tiny governmental allowance. Today I put in the first of those appearances. As interaction with government agencies go, it was relatively painless. I had to fill out a form explaining the sort of work I am looking for, then sit around while someone enters the information I put on the form into "the system", then log into a website and click on a button that says I reported in.

The state medicare/medicaid office is in the same building as the career center. In fact, there was naught but a huge window segregating the respective waiting rooms. While waiting for my information to be entered into "the system", I noticed a balding gentleman in the other waiting room who had a sizable fleshy lump on top of his head. It was just about the size and shape of a Cadbury egg that had been cut in half. It was quite spectacular.

I don't get why we are so obsessed with acting liked everyone is normal. Normal is a statistical construct, not a moral state. It would be so much healthier if we were comfortable, even proud, of our freakish qualities. I can imagine that in a less uptight world, that fleshy lump could be quite the conversation starter. I would have loved to ask that guy about it. Did he always have it? Before he was balding, did it have hair growing out of it? Did his hair manage to keep it camouflaged? Or did his hair stick up around the lump? Instead of staring at the wall waiting for our respective apparatchiks, we could have had a friendly chat. He could tell me about his lump and I could tell him about the skin tags in my armpits. Instead, we all just glance at each other's proverbial fleshy lumps before glancing away and pretending they aren't there.

I'm getting drowsy. Damn sleep! I now have Gov't Mule kicking it at high volume. Bad Little Doggie indeed.

I read an article today about how some Jesus-freak suits are turning to the bible for management advice. They interviewed a manager at some company about how he looked to the bible for advice on how to go about downsizing. He decided that the admonition to do unto others as he would have them do unto him led him to fire people before Christmas rather than after because he would rather know right away. It's nice to know that we have the bible to offer us guidance on the most moral way to screw people. How Would Jesus Downsize?

If I stare at the screen long enough, will the words magically appear? Nope. Or at least it takes more than a half hour of staring.

Bass. I love the bass. It appeals to my geek nature. It is always a challenge. There is always something more to learn. Lately I have been working on mapping out modes on the fretboard. If that doesn't mean anything to you, don't worry about it. Most music is made from scales/modes and by mapping them out in the fretboard, I will know where the notes I need are located. This is particularly important in extemporaneous (improvised) music. With a solid feel for modes, musicians can pick a mode and a mood and just jam the night away. That is something I hope to be doing soon if my ostensible bandmates can ever find time to get together.

How many topics have I hit on? One thing I need to work - aside from proofreading - is picking a subject and staying with it for an entire 1000+ words. Stream-of-consciousness is all well and good, but I need to narrow that stream, channel it, rather than spray it in every direction.

Wow. I just figured out that my writing isn't housebroken.

Unless I housebreak my writing it will be a bit difficult to write a novel. Even a short, mediocre novel needs some sort of focus. But now it is a pissing contest between me and Jericho. No doubt I will be receiving daily email taunts between now and the end of November. Of course, Jericho's focus is rather like the laser in Real Genius. It is bright, high powered and deadly, but it doesnt last long. Jericho write a novel just about all the projects he started just to find something else more appealling.

That lack of focus on his part is a shame. I have always said that when we put our heads together we can be downright dangerous. We have started many a promising collaboration, but he always manages to drift away to something else. There is nothing more appealling than the project you could be working on. The project I am doing right now is work. It's demanding. The project I just thought up, however, is new and shiny and so very, very not what I am working on now. I know those thoughts well. Just like I need to focus on one subject when writing, he needs to focus on one project and see it through.

Click on the comments if you are interested in the excuses Jer will come up with to explain why I am being unkind and unfair. But the whole point of us getting into the NaNoWriMo is to egg each other on to break free of our past bad habits and dive into the wonderful world of writing.

1744 words, bitch. Beat that.

Jericho: Are you asking for a CHALLENGE?!?!

I have thrown down the gauntlet!

Ever heard of the NaNoWriMo? It's a neat idea. Write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. On November 1, come up with a new idea and then begin hacking words for the next 30 days, 1666+ words a day. If you have 50k words by midnight, November 30th, you win.

What do you win? An icon for your website and the sense of achievement that you actually completed a longish project in a short amount of time. I want to say a completed novel, but this contest emphasizes quantity over quality, there isn't much time for editing and at 50k words, many would say you have a novella, not a novel. But, it's a lot of words in a short time. Most writers look at the blank page and nearly freeze. Even long time, veteran writers.

Max has been making an effort to put up a thousand words a day, his Brain Dumps. I need a jump start to my writing and I've wanted to do the NaNoWriMo since I heard about it a few years ago. So, I have challenged Max to do this. I have even bet him $10 bucks. He told me he might as well just send me the ten spot. Lucky for us, Max isn't really a quitter ...

In return, he has challenged me to put up 500 words a day here on IWDC until 11/1 - if I can do that, he will consider doing the NaNoWriMo. We're at nearly two hundred fifty words here - looks like I have no choice. I'm doing this for my benefit and that of my friend. I'll promise to make the following words as entertaining as my writing usually is - yes, that bad!

I would really like to be a freelance writer. I've wanted that for quite a while, coming up on a couple of decades. I love writing, it's one of the reasons I've stuck out IWDC for this long. I love the fact that when I think a word, my fingers push a bunch of seemingly random buttons and up on my screen come words and phrases and sentences - they make sense and they mean something. String enough of this together and the pages of paragraphs tell a story - then, someone pays you for it and someone else reads it and they are entertained by it. What a great job!

The best part is that fiction is not the only path to make money for the freelancer. I read a book a while back, Secrets of a Freelance Writer: How to make $85,000 a Year. There's a third edition of this book out now, where the writer, Robert Bly, claims you can make $100,000 salary. This book's most impressive aspect was that the writer insisted that a writer run his career as a business. A business finds a product to deliver better, cheaper and faster than the competition. If you can deliver fiction, great, but that's just the beginning. There's speeches, ads, brochures, grants, etc. All need the hand of a good writer.

That's why I have been throwing together my writer's resume. I want something for prospective employers to look at to see my work. What I can and do write. I don't know if I will ever produce much in the way of ad copy or speeches. But, I do like writing gaming materials. I have had a blast with these recent album reviews. I think I could make a living reviewing movies - people do that, ya know!

The great thing about the Internet is that everyone thinks it's a goldmine. Sure, the dot.com bubble burst, but that just means it washed out the suckers. The big players are still there. They moved in the heavy machines and they are looking to make a buck. They still need quick minds with quicker fingers to produce content. So, now we have books, newspapers, magazines and the Internet. There are more writing jobs than ever before. I don't care if a company is fly by night and they want me to produce site content for their product that only exists in a CAD drawing, I don't care about any of that, just as long as they pay me up front.

I want to get up in the morning, shower, sit at my desk and go to work. I am so sick of the morning commute. What a waste of my time! Spending an hour in traffic, then spending fifteen minutes to get my drink and get my computer up and rolling and whatever else I need to do. I just want to work. Then repeat that at the end of the day. That's ten hours a week out of my time that I don't get paid for. Wish I did, that's a good chunk of change! But, no, that time is just gone and I get to like it or lump it.

I hear people out there right now "That's part of the work world!" - that's true. But why is that so? Look back. Two hundred years ago, most people lived on farms. Food production was hard. The people living in cities probably lived a few blocks from where they worked. As the industrial revolution set in, and as we pushed urbanisation out further, then we became automobile based lifeforms. This is a new thing. Maybe it's time for a revolution - power to the tele-commuters!

If I can make a name for myself as a writer, I can take that with me anywhere. I can be a writer wherever I have minimal supplies. I mean, I think of modern writing as a computer with a word processing program and a connection to the Internet. Nice to have, but I can scribble the same words on a legal pad with a $.69 Bic pen. Although, at this stage, I think I can type somewhat faster than I can write. When I was in college I had very fast note taking skillz. These days it takes me ten minutes to write my name.

One of the things I hate most about being a normal, average everyday cog in a large office based corporate machine is just how replaceable I am. Tomorrow morning my corporate masters could decide they are sick of my face. They could replace me with two temps who together make half of what I make. They could replace me with a kid who is hungrier and stupider who would work for less. They can replace me with some older guy who tells them he can do my job and three others. Whatever, I'm just a cog, replaced when worn. I don't want to be throw away. I don't want to be so much obsolete refuse. I want to mean something to my employer. My current employers don't have a clue what my name is, they have their secretaries call when there is a problem with their voicemail. Just a cog.

There's more to it than that. I want to be able to guarantee my income. I want to know there are checks coming in next month. From month to month, I just never know. I can work hard or barely work at all and it doesn't seem to matter. As long as I seem to serve a purpose, they keep me around. When I stop serving my purpose, whatever that might be, I'm sure I'll be showed the door.

If I go out and make the contacts and do the work and make more contacts and do more work and the old contacts come back for repeat work and I make new contacts and I do more work, eventually I'll become so invaluable to all these people I will never not have incoming money! There are even services out there you can sign up for and they will feed you freelance jobs. Actually, you have to pay to use these sites and you have to bid on the jobs, but whatever! It's a great way to make contact who might have future work.

I just want the independence. I want to determine my own fate. If I do well I want to take the credit and if I do poorly I will accept the blame. I am sick and tired of cleaning up messes left by other people who get paid more than I do because they don't know how to do their freaking jobs! I spent hours here the other night because someone hadn't done their job right and didn't test a system before they sent it to site. What? Is this kindergarten? Test before you send. Make it work before it leaves the building. Everything I did was for naught since nothing I have access to would have cured the issue. What a waste of my life. I could have been watching Law & Order reruns!

I'm not saying life as a freelancer would be perfect, far from it. But if I miss a dead line, it's because I screwed up. Not because some snot-nosed kid didn't stop counting his money long enough to do his job. And, just think, if this Bly character is right, I could make a heck of a lot more cash than I make right now. The only way to get a raise in my current industry is to find someone to hire you for more money. I so hate that. Once you are working, the tech industry doesn't care to retain you. You are as replaceable as a keyboard. My wife gets regular raises, I would have to change jobs to get a real raise. Pointless. I don't need the struggle.

Alright, we're at just over 1600 words. Three times what Max wanted for today. We'll hit right about 1666 words by the time I finish up. This was a lot of writing. But, I think I could produce twice this a night if I put my mind to it. We'll see. I think a NaNoWriMo icon on my resume would look great!

See y'all tomorrow!

Max: Is There Anything Pot Can't Do?

Pot Goes To War

General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

Max: Brain Dump 101

Almost two decades ago George Peach, the then Circuit Attorney for the City of St. Louis, made it known that he would like the power to wiretap any phone at any time without a warrant. He explained that he would be able to catch criminals more easily, while the good and true law abiding people of St. Louis need fear nothing. This was the same man who gave the Blockbuster video chain a virtual monopoly in St. Louis by arresting every mom-and-pop video store owner because they dared to rent porn videos to adults. This is the same man who later had to resign after it was found put that he was fond of using city funds to hire prostitutes. In the name of partisan fairness, I should point out that Peach was, like 99.99% of all elected officials in St. Louis City, a Democrat. Saint Louis offers a clear lesson that Republicans don't have a monopoly on moralizing hypocrites who take bribes with one hand while jerking off to donkey porn with the other.

Now Shrub has the NSA eavesdropping on us. Ostensibly the NSA is interested in finding people who want to kill other people in the name of some religious or political cause. One wonders if aspiring terrorists where actually speaking openly on the phone about their plans. Is it really a useful source of intelligence? If it is, I propose a special blanket warrant on all phone calls in the United States to listen for only and exclusively for people seeking to kill people. That means if they hear a druggie calling his source, a someone admitting they stole a car or anything else, the record of the call is destroyed and the agent who heard it is sworn to secrecy under pain of imprisonment. Otherwise, the hell with them.

I started this morning at my Taiko class. The consensus seems to be that I am too tall. I have to adopt a particularly low stance. Beyond that, I love Taiko. It is great exercise. I always leave class sweating and sore. It is also a great musical experience. Rhythm is the core of music. Notes without rhythm make for meaningless noise. However, a Neil Peart drum solo will show you that rhythm without notes can be crafted into beautiful music. I don't know that I will ever be brilliant at it. I will never be Neil Peart material. But I see myself happily beating my gomi-bako taiko long after the class is over. I really need to remember to thank my friend Heather. It was her idea to go to the Japanese festival at Shaw's Garden. That is where I saw St. Louis Osuwa Taiko and learned that they were offering a free Taiko class. The only qualifications needed were to be 17 or older and to be able to send an email asking to join the class. The only expenses have been a large garbage can, some padding and duct tape to serve as the drum head, a dowel to make bachi (Taiko drum sticks) and the gas to get to and from UMSL every Sunday.

The universe has knocked me upside the head more than once this life. In fact, it has knocked me upside the head more than a few times just this past year. But sometimes I do get lucky, and finding a free Taiko class is one of the luckiest things to have happened to me recently. If I get into the machinist apprenticeship program, I think I may just have to give up my persecution complex.

Tonight I finished War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. I have never been a fan of war. I have never seen it as anything but a waste of life. It turns out it is even uglier than I thought. There are never winners in a war, just a side that loses less. There are no good guys in was, just sometimes there is a side that is less immoral than the other. But whenever one supports war, one is supporting murder. One is supporting rape. One is supporting brutality against victims who have nothing to do with the war. The author is by no means a pacifist. Compared to an ascendant Hitler, murder, rape and blind brutality comprise the lesser evil. The author wants to make sure that when war is the lesser evil, we should never forget that it is still evil.

Next I am going to read a book that looks at how untruths, such as urban legends and anything ever said by a politician, come to be taken as truth.

Tonight I got to be a hero for one of my dogs. They were just back in from despoiling my back yard when Minzy freaked out and started pawing at her mouth. My first thought was that she was choking and I was springing from the couch prepared to perform the doggie Heimlich maneuver when she stopped, sat down and looked up at me, panting. Obviously she was breathing, so I assumed the was just being a freak and sat back down. Then she started pawing at her mouth again. At this point, I didn't know what she was up to, but I was worried. I called her over to me and started feeling around in her mouth. I found a small piece of a stick had gotten lodged between her upper back teeth. It was like a rafter for the roof of her mouth. I pulled it out without much ceremony. She drooled in gratitude before wandering off to find more trouble to get into.

Laura is spending the night at her brother's house, halfway between St. Joe and St. Louis. Tomorrow she will be coming home, putting and end to my sweet isolation. It will be nice to get her back. But it has been nice to hide out with my computer and my TV. Tomorrow free time will once again be defined as time when Laura can't think of something she would rather I do.

Max: Proposed Japanese Arcology

Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid - Wikipedia

I want to live there!

Max: Brain Dump 100

As mentioned yesterday, Laura is out of town. Today I allowed myself to be a complete hermit. I haven't even showered yet. For the duration I have moved my laptop to the living room. I have spent the entire day alternating between watching the tube and playing on the computer, Starbug.

I gave Starbug some much needed maintanence. A recent update to the security software I had gotten from my ISP turned it into a resource hog. My computer was safe not only from external attack, but also from any use whatsoever. So, I trashed it and put the free versions of AVG and Zone Alarm. Things are ticking over quite nicely, now.

I miss my Mrs. but it has been nice having the day completely to myself.

I am drawing a blank. It has been a pleasant, quiet day and I don't have much on my mind.

So...

One thousand years ago, I was quite a bit older than I am now. The world was quite a different place one thousand years ago. For instance, it wasn't called "the world." It was called "the flaccid flemtilox." Actually, the term "the world" is a corruption of "the flaccid flemtilox." But there was more than the titular difference. For instance, 99% of the population was fabulously wealthy, while a mere 1% lived in abject poverty. We didn't call it "poverty" back then. We called it "creme brulee." It was when those trapped in the grips of creme brulee invented their eponymous desert that wealth began to flow in their direction. The Atkins Diet is just one of many guerrilla attacks on the now wealthy creme brulee and their sugary oppression. Generalissimo Richard Simmons and his mighty army will one day claim victory. But that victory will not be sweet, but savory.

Sorry about that. The previous paragraph was an attempt to stop thinking about what to write and just write as thoughts passed through my head. As you have guessed, it is very weird in my head.

I need more hard disk space. My goal is to have about a petabyte or so of server storage. I will store everything in there, including my music, DVR recordings and backups of my DVD's. Every TV in my house will be connected to a computer networked to that server, allowing anyone in my house to access any movie, TV show or music in my possession. I will also set up VPN access to allow me to access my stuff when Starbug and I are on the road.

Of course, the DVR function may not be necessary. I predict - hope - that in the not too distant future, TV will be almost completely on-demand. Instead of subscribing to linear feeds like we do now, we will subscribe to services that give us access to on-demand content. Instead of recording House or Lost, we will simply be able to watch them at our leisure after each episode is released. There could be different tiers of service. On the cheap end we will have to watch commercials that we will not be able to fast-forward through. At the higher end, TV will be commercial free. For a premium, we will get early access to certain shows and/or the ability to watch shows on our laptops/PDA's where and whenever a decent internet connection is available.

Like all good and decent people, I despise DRM. I hate the idea of paying for something that I can't use as I wish because some corporation is worried I might use it in a way they would not wish. Not only is it pain for me, it is stupid for them. If I got a commission for every CD or album download that came as a direct result of me sharing some music with someone, I could buy a new amp. From this day forward, I refuse to knowingly purchase content that comes pre-broken - defective-by-design as Cory Doctorow puts it. iTunes is a great media client, but a shitty record store. I will either buy unlocked CD's or download from eMusic.com. I will either buy paper books or buy ebooks from authors who, like Cory Doctorow, value rather than mistrust readers. And as a creative person, no content that I produce on my own will ever be released in a DRM infected version. And I will lobby hard for any collaborative work I am involved in to not be broken by DRM.

Anyone who knows me, and anyone who has looked at my profile picture, knows I am bald. Unlike many Rogaine-heads, I am bald by design. I agree with those who have told me that I look better with long hair. And sometimes I miss my long hair. But I enjoy how low maintenance being bald is. I shave my head twice a week. Outside of that, my showers take about a quarter of the time they did when I had hippy-locks. That said I would like it to be even lower maintenance. Last night I tried a depilatory on my head. For the most part it was a success. The hair came right off. Unfortunately, the skin on the back of my neck did not like it, so I have a rash instead of hair. Once the rash goes away, it will be back to the razor.

After I post this, I think I will spend the rest of the evening vegetating in front of the TV. I am a bit behind in my DVR'd shows. If only we lived in an on-demand world, I could watch whenever without my DVR complaining about its disk getting full.

Tomorrow I have Taiko in the morning, then the rest of the day is mine to do with as I please. Likely, it will be spent much as today was. Except I will shower tomorrow so my feet won't stink as much. When your own foot odor kills your appetite, you need to bathe. Or at least get a gas mask.

Max: Science Is A Hallucinogen

In this talk, titled, 'Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science,' he suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved to understand the 'middle-sized' world we can observe.

Max: Brain Dump 11

Laura just left on a weekend trip to visit her friend in St. Joseph, MO - where Abbott met Costello. I love Laura and will miss her, but I am excited about having, with the exception of occasional cameo appearances by our roommate Jim, the place to myself. Since I lost my job, Laura and I have been together almost non-stop. It is good to get a breather, knowing that the only demands that will be placed on my time will be those I choose. I predict a weekend of non-stop DVD's, geeky TV shows, surfing and loud music. Right now I am listening to "Tequila", off of Tony Levin's Double Esspresso. It is interesting to hear Pee Wee Herman's theme song turned into hypno-trance music.

I love to be taken by surprise by music. Whether it is a piece that zigs when I expect it to zag, or a cover of a familiar tune that takes it to another place, nothing makes me pay attention so much as something I didn't expect to hear.

Caffeine is my favorite drug. Left to my own devices, I will consume four or five sugarfree Red Bull's and perhaps a half dozen cans of Coke Zero in a given day. That has been reduced severely these past few days as our dwindling funds don't allow for such delights. I have been considering reducing my fluid caffeine input a bit and replacing it with caffeine pills. I heard on a recent podcast that for the body to get its required 60 ounces of fluid each day, one can consumes either 60 ounces of water or 600 ounces of caffeinated beverages. Something about caffeinated or sugary beverages prevents the body from absorbing 90% of the fluid in the beverage. So, I figured perhaps it would be better to enjoy Coke Zero and Sugarfree Red Bull occasionally for their taste, catch my buzz from No-Doz and drink a lot of water. Of course, lack of money for my favorite bevies means lack of money for caffeine pills. So, for now I must live on a meager intake of caffeine and a healthy intake of H2O.

Then there is the granola side of me that looks at my daily pill intake - pills for blood pressure, pills for depression, vitamins - and wishes to chuck the lot. I am not as against take pills as Laura is. Rather than suffer discomfort, I will happily take a pill to make me feel better. But part of me is disturbed that in my own way, I am a drug addict. If I stop taken my blood pressure pills, my blood pressure will sky rocket. If I stop taking my happy-brain pills, I will be too depressed to function. Hippy earthchilde Max would rather I could function without "the man's" chemicals. If I get fit, I will think, then the I won't need the pills. A healthy cardiovascular system doesn't to pills to regulate blood pressure. A brain swimming with exercise induced endorphins doesn't need pills to be happy. A healthy energetic body will not need caffeine for energy.

Of course, I need to get fit whether it eliminates the need for the pills or not. Disregarding the overall health benefits, it would be nice to be able to go up the stairs without losing my breath. I am taking a Taiko class, and I can certainly feel that it is helping. After two hours of beating on my gomi-bako taiko (garbage can drum), I feel tired but good. I feel the warm achiness that says I did something good for myself. I don't do it every day which is damn stupid. I enjoy and it just so happens to be good exercise, so there is no reason I should not practice more often. I need to get warmed up for Sunday, so maybe I will practice some today and tomorrow.

My mother used to drink Herculean amounts of coffee. I have no memory of it, but she says that when I and my siblings were young, she would sometimes stay up all night reading. I am guessing that she was around my age when she started realizing that sleep is actually necesary. It was only recently that I discovered that staying up all night is harder than it was a decade ago. It was after many a sleepless night that she decided to switch to decaf after noon.

I guess I am turning into my parents. At least I never played chicken at high speeds on narrow city streets like a certain parent of mine did in his youth. Though I have gotten into minivan drag races with people who pissed me off in traffic.

Jesus, my parents are hellions. Remind me to ground them when they get back in town.

Since writing that last line I have spent several minutes looking around my room, trying to figure out what to write next.

On the topic of caffeine, when I was in London I discovered that Mountain Dew in the UK has almost no caffeine. I remember reading on a message board that in Canada Mountain Dew has no caffeine at all. And today, I read on Wikipedia that in Canada and Europe Red Bull is reformulated to make it less potent. In that regard, at least, I am a true American. Caffeine is our drug of choice.

Of course, that may be due to the fact that all the other fun drugs are illegal.

I don't know that I would like anything more potent than caffeine. I tried dexedrine once and spent an hour lying on my bed as my heart beat at a mellow 120 beats per minute. The entire time I kept thinking, This is fucking stupid way to die.

I refuse to go out like that. In one of Henry Rollins's books he responded to a fan who sent him a letter asking his advice on the best way to commit suicide. His answer was, "old age."

Me, I plan to live to be 1000 before falling in battle against the horrible lard monsters of Viri 7.

Max: Brain Dump 10

My last two brain dumps were done in the morning. This one is being done in the late evening and almost was not done at all. Today was a busyish day.

But this isn't a journal. At least not a journal errands ran. It is exercise. It is an attempt to flex my writing muscles, such as they are.

I think I need to make sure I write as early in the day as I can. My brain is in the process of shutting down.

Lately I have been trying to learn more about math and science. I have always been interested in them. I was a pretty good science student when I tried. Biology was one of the few classes I did well in when in high school. Math is a different story. When I took math classes, I always struggled. I could never seem to get the concepts down. I assumed I was a mathematical lightweight and left math behind when after three attempt I finally passed college algebra.

Recently, I started working my way through Algebra Workbook For Dummies. So far, I am doing rather well. I find myself wondering just what it was I had so much trouble with. The more I work through the workbook, the more excited I get. I am finding math more fascinating that I ever had. This a great. For one thing, this is something I can share with my mother. We have long shared an interest in computers, but I could never match her interest in math. Now, I we have yet another geeky thing to talk about.

Another reason it is a good thing is because I am not out of the running to get into the machinist apprentice program. I so desperately want to get into the program that yesterday I actually called the HR department to beg them to let me in. It turns out they haven't made their decisions yet. I was so happy I almost giggled with glee. What I did do was tell them I want into the program badly and that I hoped they would take close look at my application when the time came. If I get into this program, algebra will be a daily part of my routine and if feels good knowing that if I get in, I will be at least that prepared.

I apologize. This should be at least 1000 words, but I am too tired to soldier on. A pathetic 411 words as of the last sentence. I guess I will need to do 1500 words tomorrow to make up for it.

Max: The Death of the Constitution

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald:

It is worthwhile to note that all of the treatment described by Padilla has been described by numerous other detainees, and from what I can tell, all of the treatment he describes are part of the 'interrogation and detention techniques' which the President now has the legal authority to invoke pursuant to the so-called Military Commissions Act of 2006 -- enacted by our Congress just ten days ago. Thus, everything Padilla describes is now perfectly legal in the United States -- even when applied against individuals charged with no crimes of any kind.

...

Mr. Padilla’s dehumanization at the hands of his captors also took more sinister forms. Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr. Padilla was denied even the smallest, and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors.

Max: Brain Dump 1

Since yesterday Writely.com has become Docs.Google.com. It is now in Google blue and looks more like Gmail. Instead of titles for documents, there are tags. This is neither a bad thing nor unexpected. Google is becoming the new center of the computing universe. I start my daily surfing at my Google page. I use my Gmail for a significant portion of my communications. I blog in Blogger. And now I am using their word processor. Perhaps the prophesy of the Microsoft killer has come to pass.

I was playing with Allpeers yesterday and am now disappointed. For the moment, it only lets one share one directory and that directory can contain no more than 200 files. They promise it will improve over time, but it is currently failing to meet my private file sharing needs.

I am listening to a podcast called "The Jazzology Half Hour". It is only recently that I have started listening to podcasts in earnest. When I was first setting up iTunes to grab podcasts for me, I loaded only jazz and tech themed podcasts. I have since added, and removed, several political podcasts. I have only so much time to listen to podcasts and the political podcasts offered the least new information. I have also added, but continue to listen to, a couple of math and Japanese oriented podcasts.

The sun is finally coming out. We had rain last night and it was a gloomy morning. Now the clouds are finally started to go away.

Today's writing session is going more slowly than yesterday's. I am determined to get to at least 1000 words before I break for the day.

It is a bit sad how Republicans are so desperate to push the blame for the Mark Foley mess on the Dems. ABC has said that their source is a Republican. But still they try. I saw a clip from CNN's "The Situation Room" in which a Republican Member of Congress was toeing the party line that the whole affair was a plot by the Dems. Uncharacteristically, Wolf Blitzer called him on it, asking for proof. The Republican hemmed and hawed before blurting out, "Do you have any proof it isn't [a Democrat plot]?" Sad.

If there is a plot, and I am not saying there is one, it is much more likely to be a Republican. Consider three facts. First, much of the House Republican leadership has admitted to knowing about Foley's activities as much as 6 years ago. Second, ABC has refused to name their source, but has stated that the source is a Republican. And finally, the information was leaked the same night that Congress passed the Military Comissions Act. As a result, we have been hearing about Foley non-stop, while so far only Keith Olberman has bothered to cover the Act and he didn't get around to it until last night. Why is is a big deal that this act is not being covered? Because the act gives the President the power to imprison any one at any time for any reason, hold them completely incommunicado, and deny them any legal recourse to the courts. It is claimed that the President will only use the power on those who seek to harm the USA. But considering that he has clearly stated that he believes his critics are harming the USA, that is little comfort. So, instead of hearing about the disembowelment of the Constitution, we are hearing instead about a comparatively small abuse of power. I am not saying the Republicans in fact released the information to distract us, but it makes much more sense as conspiracy theories go.


My browser just crashed. The good news is I didn't lose a word of this document. Thank you, Google. My browser has been a bit buggy since I installed the Allpeers extension. I just uninstalled it and will keep watch for the next version. I like the Allpeers idea and hope its execution improves.

"Improves" was the 666th word in this document. Hail Satan!

North Korea has a sub-kiloton nuke. Or at least they had one before they tested it. Of course, it is all Bill Clinton's fault. Despite the fact that NK didn't develop nukes until Shrub and his belligerent talk about the "axis of evil", despite the fact that Donald Rumsfeld was on the Board of Directors of the company that sold NK its nuclear reactors, it is all Bill Clinton's fault because... because... well, just because.

The podcast has ended and I am now listening to Charles Mingus's Mingus at the Bohemia. Mingus is one of the greatest jazz bass players and composers. Part of me wants to learn upright bass. But I really should learn the bass guitar first. I have been futzing around on bass guitar for close to 20 years now and really need to start figuring out how to play it.

Laura and I had a rough night last night. She was depressed, more so than usual. There was nothing I could say to convince her that she is not a complete waste of carbon or that not everything she touches turns to rot. It kills me to see her suffering. What makes it worse is that she could have the help she needs if I had a job. I was first introduced to the idea of health benefits at the age of 18. At the time I was invulnerable so it seemed like a needless drain on my paycheck. Now, each day we go without them fills me with terror. Even though my premiums had doubled since 2000, even though copay's went from $5 to anywhere from $10-$50, it was a comfort knowing we could seek the medical attention when we needed it. Now, we just have to hope for good health and deal with not having all the meds we need.

But at least we don't have Universal Health Care cutting into the profits of medical corporations. What kind of nation would we be if we put people before profits? That is just so Canadian.

Max: Brain Dump 0

I am writing. That is what writers do. Two writers I respect, Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, have both said that the vast majority of what they write is crap. But it is by writing every day that they increase their chances of being ready when that rare diamond in the rough comes along. I am trying to touch type. I recently read a book by one of the people who pioneered infomercials. I was interested in the book because before he started his own business, he had a job history similar to mine. He had a series of hateful jobs that lasted for a few months to a few years before he quit or was fired, rather like myself. As I am considering starting my own business, I thought maybe he would have some useful insight. The only thing I took frm the book was the importance of being able to type well. If one can type quickly and accurately, one can type at the speed of thought and get one's thoughts on the page as one has them. Since then, I have been struggling to touch type. I am slowly getting better. But I still sometimes switch to hunt-and-peck when I am not paying attention.

I am listening to Bill Laswell's Sound System. Laswell is a bass player/record producer who played on one of my favorite records, Ginger Baker's Mektoub. I have had it in the back of my mind that I should check out his own albums. Lack of money generally kept me from doing it. Yesterday I started watching DL.TV, an online video show from CNET. It features Patrick Norton from The Screensavers, one of many great show that used be on the late and lamented TechTV. In many ways, it is a scaled-back Screensavers. Aside from being a worthy use of an hour, I was reminded about emusic.com. One of DL.tv's sponser, it is a sight that offers DRM-free, legal MP3 downloads for a monthly fee. They were offering a trial program that gave away 50 free downloads. I figured I could use 50 tracks of free, legal music. So I signed up and I downloaded two of Laswell's albums, amongst some others. So far, his music is trippy, ambient and reggae based. Quite cool.

I wish I could find a job. I have a ton of reason, but amongst them is I would like to keep my emusic.com account. There is a ton of killer music there, it is legal yet free of DRM and is cheaper per track than iTunes or hard CD's.

Last night I started reading War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges, a reporter who has spent most of his his career in the heart of war zones, from South America to the Middle East, from Africa to eastern Europe. It is his premise that war is an ugly but unavoidable part of the human condition. I don't know if he will sell me on his premise, but his writing is compelling, making for a compulsive read.

Well-crafted, concise and clear writing is a delight. That is what I am striving for in my writing. How many words can I take out of a sentance and still get my meaning across? Can I express that idea more clearly? I typically fail at that. For a few years, I tried hard, and utterly failed, to copy Douglas Adams's style. The clearest indicator of failure was where he had witty insight I had bloat.

How long have I been writing today? I didn't check the time when I started, but I am sure it has been less than an hour. I am going to write until I have 500 words or my mind stops thinking, whichever comes first.

The dogs in the room with me. Minzy is trying to instigate a wrestling match with Adi. Adi seems to realize that she is at a disadvantage in my tiny room - Minzy is smaller and scrappier - and is lying on the floor, snapping at Minzy. Now they are playing tug-of-war with one of their toys. Cute.


I am writing this at writely.com, an online word-processor recently bought out by Google. I like it more than Word and Openoffice.org, my two main alternatives for word-processing. It is doesn't have most of the bloat features of the other two. It is straightforward and attractive. Documents can be saved in a variety of formats, can be saved online or on disk and can even be published straight to one's blog.

I need to get my imagination back in shape. I used to be an inveterate day-dreamer. My mind used to swim with ideas. Most of them were useless, but a few turned into stories. Most of those stories or either lost or unreadable. But a few, the ones I put up on IWDC are halfway decent.

It is weird that there is a plural form of them word "one".


I recently applied to become an apprentice machinist. I have long lamented my lack of solid, blue-collar skills. There is almost nothing that my father-in-law can't build or fix. Me, I am not entirely certain how to change my own oil. I am grateful for my white-collar background and the educational opportunities it gave me, but I wish I could be more hands-on. So far, though, I have yet to hear back. I could apply to become an apprentice carpenter, but carpenters have to climb scaffolding. I get dizzy if the soles of my shoes are too thick, so that might not be the best choice. It is back to sending out resumes in the hope of finding a tech gig.

I just did a word count and I am at nearly 1000 words. Also, my brain is getting a little numb. Let's see if I can make myself do this tomorrow.

Max: The two faces of Rumsfeld

The two faces of Rumsfeld

2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea
2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change

Max: AllPeers

AllPeers is a rather interesting site. It lets you share files, even exceedingly large files, with family and friends.

Max: MO Ballot Measures

2006 Ballot Measures

Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

Jericho: Rez

Just a quick note. Wanted to point out my latest attempt to ditch the 9 to 5 world for something better. I made a quick and simple writer's resume. I want more than a desk and a cube and retirement in 30 years.

Know anyone looking for a hard working cub-writer? Feel free to comment below ...

Max: Nietzsche Family Circus

The Nietzsche Family Circus

The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote.

Max: Hastert Sez: Outing Pedos is Wrong

House leader blames Democrats for scandal

Hastert sought to blame Democrats for leaking sexually explicit computer instant messages between Foley and former pages from 2003.

'We have a story to tell, and the Democrats have _ in my view have _ put this thing forward to try to block us from telling the story. They're trying to put us on defense,' Hastert said.

Jericho: DIY Heart Palpitations

I had a follow up with my doctor yesterday. They find nothing wrong with me. My X-rays are fine, my blood is fine, my blood pressure is fine, heck, even my blood sugar level, which had previously scared my doctor, was well low. Nothing ever showed up on the heart monitor I wore. As before, I'm pretty fit for a fat guy. My knees and back won't agree to that, and yes I still need to crack my ass on the diet and exercise tip. However, nothing is wrong with me that can't be fixed with months of treadmill walking.

None the less, something did happen. I had the heart palpitations.

I have a theory!

Two nights ago I was sitting on the couch waiting for dinner. I grabbed a snack off the table. Steph and I have made many changes to our diet. In an effort to be lower carb, lower calorie and high protein, we have began to keep peanuts in the house. They are high protein and high fiber - make you feel full so you won't eat as many. They are low carb and taste good, quite the punch for their calories. Normally, when properly dieting, I wouldn't eat them before a meal. I would eat a small portion a few hours after a meal, both as a snack and to prevent spikes and troughs in my blood sugar - which increases insulin intolerance.

However, we haven't been very good recently, and we just bought a new container and I've been snacking on that container whenever - better than candy or chips! So, I flip the container around and look at the nutritional information. Something catches my eye. Fourth item on the ingredients list is MSG. Wasn't there something about ....

Wikipedia has this to say on MSG. WebMD chimes in here. In short, the scientists say MSG does nothing but enhance the flavor of food. Yet there is years of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. They even have a term for it: Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. Of course, if you don't believe any of this, there is always the propagan-er, um, "facts" from the industry.

The point is that MSG is known to cause chest pain and heart palpitations. Now, I've never been aware of having any MSG issues or sensitivity. Heck, as a kid I would pour Accent in my hand and eat it - I was a strange kid. None of this has ever shown up before. Why now?

Steph and I have tried to reconstruct our memories. As close as we can remember, we had left-overs for dinner. Those would be take-out leftovers from a Thai place we rarely go to - my first time as a matter of fact. Later that night, I stayed up late, playing World of Warcraft and eating, you guessed it, several handfuls of Planters Dry Roasted peanuts. I went to bed late, woke up a few hours later to go potty and had the palpitations.

Most MSG issues begin before people leave the restaurant. Why did mine take so long? I don't know. I wonder if it was a matter of levels. I don't have a sensitivity issue, until you build up a ton of it in the bloodstream, maybe? This may not be the case, I might be reaching here. But, it does explain a few things. I haven't had an issue since, I also haven't had many peanuts nor much asian food. They couldn't find anything wrong with me, yet it happened. I brought this up with my doctor, she said she had seen weirder, so this may not be the issue but I'm not insane, either.

Either way, I'm going to watch my MSG intake. The thing that kills me is that I could have eaten a bag of chips and not ended up in the ER! Trying to be better, and get bitten by some random food additive! I can't win!

Max: Cory Doctorow Keynote

How corporate hacks want to 0wnz0r your digital ass.

DRM pisses me off. It pisses me off because it is a useless irritation. It is like how some webpages include some code to turn off your right-click function to prevent you from downloading pictures from their site. I didn't even need to figure out how to bypass that "feature". I knew all I needed was to view the page's source code and the pics were mine. Even if I didn't originally want to download pics from a no right-click site - I normally right-click to go back or forward in my browser - I would just because I was annoyed.

Max: 9/11 Conspiracy

Here is a great article on 9/11 Conspiracy Theories.

Jericho: VOIP Answers

I wrote this post a couple weeks ago, talking about the fact that I'm always looking around for sites that give more information on VOIP. I wasn't thrilled with the last site I found. It was good but not good enough.

I found another VOIP site that is better. It is product centric to Cisco - who just happens to be the industry leader. It is business oriented and it's heavy of the sales side. Having said that, it shows off all the best points of VOIP. It gives many of the whys and hows and is much more generic than the last site I pointed to. There is also a good white paper out there introducing some concepts on Unified Communications; the idea of bringing email, voicemail, fax, IM and presence management into one package. Cisco calls it Unified Communications, others call it Unified Messaging, either way the concept has been a huge part of my work life for the last four years.

If you are interested in the business side of converged communications or if you are trying to talk your company into ditching their TDM equipment and getting with the times, this is a great place to start.

Max: Gangsta Nerds

Warning: Naughty Language Alert. NSFW unless your boss has a sense of humor.



http://www.futuristicsexrobotz.com/

Max: Waterboarding

Jericho: IWDC@B:500

I'm probably the only person that cares about these things. I'm just a milestone kinda guy.

You are currently reading the 500th entry Irate Weirdos dot Com has placed on the Internet via Blogger. I've enjoyed my time out here, this is a lot easier than the old method we used. Better in many ways, too.

One of the fun things is that this entry is just shy of the three year anniversary with Blogger. Our first entry was October 5th, 2003. A lot has changed since then, and a lot hasn't.

We're nearing the 5th anniversary as a whole for this site, that's coming up in February. That number is kinda big in my life these days. I've been at my job five years, nearly six, offically six in January. My wife, Steph, and I will celebrate our fifth anniversary on Friday. Something happened to me after Y2K - I apparently became interested in keeping things going in a long term fashion.

I also must come clean about something. For the first time in our history, IWDC is nearly - dare I say it - profitable! That's right, you heard me. IWDC will most likely come out of the red in the next few months. How? Well, I've posted before about my encounters with Google AdWords and DotEasy affiliate programs. If you remember, those haven't produced much.

I finally found something that is producing a few dollars for us. If you see a funky little square at the end of one of my entries (it's supposed to be invisible, ha! Look at the end of my last post) - that post is (probably) making us some money. As hobbies go, IWDC hasn't cost us much money. $135 isn't too bad for five years of entertainment, is it? I promise you I won't turn this into a splog or something worse, and if you haven't noticed the ads in my entries up until now, then I'm doing my job well.

However, I'm likely to put up a couple of VERY BLATANT ads soon. I promise to make them fun.

All in all, IWDC is here to stay. I can't imagine my world without it. It will probably never make me rich, but at least it's paying for itself. This is the way I keep in touch with Max and a good portion of the rest of my friends. I live for the comments and I can't wait to comment myself. This site is a ton of fun.

Thanks for hanging out with us and I promise more good stuff in the future.

Jericho: Bored? Trivia!

My wife tells me I am a font of useless knowledge. She is most likely correct. It does seem to be a geekly pursuit; trivia. We nerds seem to like sitting around comparing what we know. When you hang out with smart people, the only way to prove that you know more is to know stuff that no one else cares about or pays attention to!

Is knowlege power? Probably. Looking to rev up your trivia engine? I found a blog that is a huge list of trivia. Kinda fun. I'm not sure of the accuracy of all the bits of trivia listed. Sure could be a stepping stone to further research if one was so inclined.

I'm a big fan of the shaving trivia and the Canada-o-centric People of Food entries.

Got a good trivia site? List it in the comments! Always excited to learn a little bit more.

Jericho: Album Reviews

I'm making an attempt to start a writing career. It's low level and very guerilla, but I like it. I'm having a good time doing it.

I figure it this way, I need to assemble a writing resume. The best way to do that is to collect a document of documents, a list of my work. That list should consist of easy to access, online work. I have a few things already, IWDC being one of them. I want more. I want an impressive list that conveys that I can write, I can write well and I can write a lot.

I started off at cragslist. I looked in the "gigs" section for writing opportunities. So far, only one has panned out. The site is an online mag called The Wig. They asked me to audition. I sent them a review of an album recommended by Max (Thanks, pal!) They liked it. So, they sent me some promotional CDs. I reviewed two out of three, I'll review the third soon. No money, just CDs and a by line. It's a start.

I haven't put together the resume yet. That won't take much. I may even buy myname.com eventually and keep it there - we'll see. When I get the document up, I'll alert everyone.

Here are the reviews:

Jennifer O'Connor
Over the Mountain, Across the Valley and Back to the Stars

Miss Violetta Beauregarde
Odi Profanum Vulgus Et Arceo

Here is my unpublished audition:

The Charlie Hunter Trio - Copperopolis

The Charlie Hunter Trio delivers a metric ton of instrumental pleasure and pure musicianship on Copperopolis. You'll find jazz here, sure, but that's just the beginning.

"Cueball Boppin'" leads us off with a very attractive groove. Hunter pounces with a guitar stroke reminiscent of Stevie Ray Vaughn. Hunter's study at the feet of Joe Satriani shows through.

"Frontman" continues this guitar-centric vibe. Don't be fooled by the kinder, gentler Wurlitzer intro. This track is joyfully restrained and builds up steam slowly. The live-in-the-studio recording of these two tracks will leave you feeling as if you are sitting in your favorite club. All that's missing is some over-priced alcohol.

"Blue Sock", track five, may alone be worth the price of the CD. Flying low and slow, this groove is like waking up on a Saturday morning. It's full of energy and has places to go but all the time in the world (8 minutes!) to do them.

Track 6, "The Pursuit Package", is the biggest disappointment on the disc. No, iTunes didn't screw up the download, it's only 2:14 on an album where no song is less than five minutes. After eight minutes of "Blue Sock", you might be ready for a rock & roll ride and that's just where this song promises to go. However, just as the party is about to start, it abruptly ends. Alas, we must seek satisfaction elsewhere, say, "Frontman".

The album is polished off with "Think of One" - a jazz exploration of epic proportions. The Trio opens up the sonic envelope and fills it to bursting. This one will have you tapping your foot, bobbing your head and wishing for a dance partner.

Jazzy noodling at the start of track one and track four, "Copperopolis", might confuse those new to acid and fusion jazz. However, drummer Derrek Phillips and Charlie Hunter's guitar wizardry bring the tracks back to center and launch them. The other three tracks on the disc; "Swamba Redux", "A Street Fight Could Break Out" and "Drop the Rock" are more typical jazz tunes. While not weak, they may be unsettling for the uninitiated. "Swamba" and "Street Fight" rely on John Ellis' Melodica, not a typically "rock" instrument. These tunes are fun and worth a listen.

In all, "Copperopolis" is worth the download. Let your friends hear you listening to it - they'll wonder what you're up to.

Max: Frustration

Right now I am in my home office, looking out into the backyard as I listen to podcasts and watch videos on Youtube, like the one I posted below. As sit here, my thoughts are a disorganized jumble. On the one hand, I am sitting at a nice computer that gives me access to just about all the information my hungry little brain could want. Being unemployed, I have time enough to access a lot of that information. I have my bass hanging on the wall, and whenever the mood strikes - usually about once or twice an hour today - I can grab it and run through some modes or just futz around. And, theoretically, I will be starting a band in the next couple of weeks.

But I can't help feeling frustrated. This week we just scrapped the Constitution. No one cares. In this country we send people to max security prisons for years for smoking a joint, doing harm to no one but themselves, while rich corporate hacks who steal millions from those who can least least afford it get a few months in Club Fed. No ones notices the sheer stupidity. We invaded Iraq to give the Iraqis the right to elect their own leaders and now we are now likely to invade Iran because the Iranians elected leaders we disapprove of. No one feels even the slightest sense of conitive dissonance.

Some people are crowing because it is looking like the Dems are going to gain a majority in one or both Houses of Congress. While I will be quite happy to finally see someone put the breaks on some of the Republicans' nuttier plans, how much is it really going to help? It is going to get us out of Iraq? It is going to convince the new generation of radical jihadists - the ones the war in Iraq has inspired - that the Great Satan isn't so bad after all?

I got my degree in Polical Science. At the time, I looked at the world with a sense of hope. Peace was being brokered the world around, the economy was growing and we had a President who prefered blow jobs to blowing people up. I looked forward to diving into politics and helping things along.

Now I look at the world with little hope. I think that is why my longtime interest in math, science and technology has lately become much more of an obsession. If I went to school today, I would major in math or physics or some sort of engineering. It seems as if they are the only things that offer me a sense of hope and progress. Not ath it matters. As it stands, I probably will only ever again see the inside of a classroom if I get another substitute teaching gig.

So, yeah, I am a bit frustrated right now.

Max: Fuck Yeah!

Max: Free Podcasts of Classes at UC Berkely

Here.