It should not be but it is

I want - need - for a shell script [1] to modify an xml file. 

It's ASCII so I thought 'awk'.  Got into it a bit  and thought 'this is nuts',  Then 'well poop I can't be the first guy to hit this pain point' so I went looking and would up here and holy jeezum crow I gotta learn an entire new language just to modify a stinkin' file?

Well, why not?  It's how I learned the very modest amount of awk that I have in my skull.

Still.  It's ASCII.  I can cat that bitch and everything. 

To slightly misquote my very first boss [2] in the LAN business 'It shouldn't be this hard'.  But it is.

Improvise, adapt, overcome.


[1] Or PERL.  Or Ruby, Python, Racket, something.  Hell it can come wrapped up in a box with a pretty pink bow, whistling 'Dixie', I don't care.  Long as my hell-spawned legacy linux liability can launch it.

[2] SSgt Lingle, 3D FSSG, Okinawa.  Wonder where he is today?  I actually learned more from my 2nd boss in the LAN business, MSgt Tim Martin but oh well.

The Not-So Grand Old Party

The Czar

Neither Romney nor Gingrich seem to understand that they represent a GOP the country frankly doesn’t think much of, anymore.

That would be the GOP whose members ignore their oath to the Constitution, want to keep us peasants unarmed and spend tax money like drunken sailors with a hefty re-enlistment bonus.

I don't know about the rest of y'all but I am so taken with those guys.

Taxes and Gunfire

A newly rich person, on paying taxes in the UK

"Trains are always late, most state schools are s**t and I've gotta give you, like, four million quid? Are you having a laugh?  When I got my tax bill in from 19 I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."

Quit your complaining, get back to work and make another few million 'quid': people on the dole are depending on you.

Tab Clearing

Meghan Daum: Obama inserts a lot of 'ah' noises into his speech because he's got a big brain.  Like Woody Allen.  And university professors.  He's too smart to mentally insert a pause, and would rather open his pie hole and make inarticulate noise.


Deadline came, deadline went.  Laws are for little people.


New Normal: The President Can Bomb Anyone Anywhere for as long as he wants.  It's good to be the king, baby.


And what did Our Representatives do in the face of law-breaking and Constitution Ignoring and oath-breaking?  Issued a non-binding resolution in favor of blowing up Libya to make it safe for Libyans.  Thanks for nothing.


Stagnation Explained at 30,000 feet.  See also the comments where at least one guy writes like a Looter from 'Atlas Shrugged'.


How is the government interpreting the Patriot Act?  They won't tell us.


Country Behind a Mask.  Daphne is on a tear.


Different ways to take thread dumps in WebLogic Server.  Oh, Java, without you to make life complicated what would I do?


Standard streams.  Having them around seems so natural it's difficult to imagine life without them.


BareMetal OS.  Looks interesting. I'd have to learn Assembly to even begin fooling around with it.


"The Best of edw519" is now free. Reverse Happy Birthday!


When you spend US$1.8 million to identify the causes of a crisis, you expect more for your money than, “well, you know, it’s really, really complicated."  Church, pedophiles, number crunching.

English is the only major language to capitalize its first-person singular pronoun.  English speaking areas are the cradle of Freedom, Liberty, and uppity peasantry.  I'm sure there is no connection.

Everything you know about fitness is a lie.

Har

Being a terrorist is like being a Chinook salmon.

Your longevity depends on keeping away from seals.

From.

Influence

Dinner Time.

Youngest Monkey holds up a steak knife: Is this for 'shanking'?

How do you know about shanking?

The two most reliable sources in the universe: video games and my big brother.


Gonna have a talk with that boy.

Everything you know is wrong: Newt Gingrich edition

Everyone Knows this story about Newt Gingrich.  Like this:

His wife had cancer.  He visited the hospital, where she lay abed sick as a dog, served her divorce papers, left.  Golly, what a cad, a bounder, pond scum.

The story Everyone Knows is wrong.

Avast me booty yar

Her dream, related to me via IM

Anyway, you and I were pirates on different ships. You overtook mine and captured me.
I tried to get away, but you found me anyway. Your ship left without you.
So, we decided to go to the movies.

Angry, drunk and violent is no way to go through life son

What is one to do when one finds oneself at loose ends in Augusta by the mall on a week night? The non-obvious answer is to replicate a scene from the Blues Brothers.

The SUV zoomed down the length of the mall and rammed through the west entrance by the food court.

Police say 47-year old StephenLowe was behind the wheel of a Mitsubishi that suddenly crashed through the American Cafe entrance on the second floor.

Brilliant!

The report described him as angry, drunk and violent.

This goes without saying.

Catchy anti-abortion slogan here

The Czar sez . . .

The Czar is curious that members of San Francisco lefty lefts think that surgical and safe removal of the foreskin is detrimental to the child, but that cutting out the rest of the baby before birth is perfectly acceptable.

Catchy anti-war slogan here

‘1, 2, 3, 4, We Don’t Want Your Illegal Kinetic Military Action!’

“This week, the War Powers Act confronts its moment of truth. Friday will mark the 60th day since President Obama told Congress of his Libyan campaign. According to the act, that declaration started a 60-day clock: If Obama fails to obtain congressional support for his decision within this time limit, he has only one option — end American involvement within the following 30 days."

I, for one, look forward to our representatives doing the Right Thing and Bringing Our Boys Home. Or if not home then at least stopping our desultory campaign to blow stuff up in Libya to support some guys - whoever they are - as they fart around and pretend to be an army.

Any day now.  I won't hold my breath.

Annulment

I've done harder things than filling out the paperwork the Church wants for an annulment.  But not many, and not recently.

It's almost like they want you to take this marriage jazz seriously.

I was born too soon

The Army is sending a brand-new weapon to the field. But check this out: it is awesome, effective, the troops love them some bad-guy killing computerized Buck Rodgers grenade launchers.

It was obvious that the XM-25 was a success after only 55 of the 25mm rounds were fired in combat. The users protested having to give them up after the few months of field testing. All this because the XM-25s work as advertised, firing "smart rounds" that explode over the heads of Taliban hiding behind rocks or walls, or hiding in a cave or room. Enemy machine-guns have been quickly knocked out of action and ambushes quickly disrupted with a few 25mm shells. Encounters that might go on for 15 minutes or longer, as U.S. troops exchange fire with hidden Taliban, end in minutes after a few 25mm, computer controlled, rounds were fired.

Twelve pounds of computerized 'can't hide behind walls or inside buildings or caves' mayhem.

Is this a great country, or what?

Hey, ORACLE

So I'm in 'My Oracle Support', that flash-driven monstrosity that I loathe, and I'm cranking away, and I'm SRing and updating and clicking and them BAM I get a message saying 'Dude, you logged in 8 hours ago, you need to login again'. And I'm like 'You kick me out after eight hours of use, while I'm in the middle of working on stuff? Who does this?' And Oracle is all like 'phhtt whatever you dance the tune we play, fool.'

I hear that in the Big City people pay good money to specialists to be treated badly with unkind words and paddles. We get the same sort of thing but without having to leave Wisconsin, and my company foots the bill.

You see tenderness I see a chance to use my flamethrower

Monsters (2010 film) Spoiler Ahoy!

Andrew and Samantha phone their families. As they finish their calls, an alien appears at the gas station, but it turns out there are in fact  two aliens who are communicating with each other - rather than being monstrous, the giant creatures display tenderness, even beauty.

I didn't see beauty.  I saw a perfect chance to napalm critters who are groping tentacles.

Just call me a xenophobe.  Humanity uber alles!

Tab Clearing

10 Top Photography Composition Rules.

Still in the Fight: Art and Music Supporting Our Wounded Warriors.

Will China's rise eclipse the United States?  My answer - and theirs - is nope.  The 21st Century is going to be an American one.

Why the US Can Beat China: The Facts About SPACEX costs.

GM's profits are still a huge net loss for taxpayers.

Cumulative Index of Parameters Articles and Review Essays.  Everything from 1971 on up is online.  In pdf format, but you can't have everything.  And search is broken.  One step at a time in government IT-land.

Remy: Why They Fought.

Phytelephas.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead, Vader says.

bin Laden Evil incorporated

A lengthy, over-wrought, explanation of how bin Laden used email. Short version: text to thumb drive. Couriered elsewhere. Emailed. Replies come back the same way.

Navy SEALs hauled away roughly 100 flash memory drives

What kind of a criminal mastermind doesn't think to destroy flash drives after use? These guys are savages using tools they can't make, don't understand, and utterly lack the mental head-space to effectively utilize.

For all that they got lucky and won big on 9/11, these guys are less 'SMERSH' and more 'Doofenshmirtz'.

"Ah Navy SEALs, how unexpected. By which of course I mean, 'Completely expected'!"

Things I did not know this morning

At Issue with Ben Merens had a spokesperson on from the Brady Campaign on today.

I learned that the Second Amendment now reads "The right of the People to keep and bear arms in their homes shall not be infringed and if you're outside your home only police get to have guns because they are the only people in the room professional enough to carry a weapon."

I am Arthur, Organizer of the Community

I Literally Laughed Out Loud [1]

TJIC:
Look, a bunch of lefty Com-Symps writing sheepskins ... that's no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power is inherent in each individual, it doesn't come from some farcical academic ceremony.

Progressive Elitist:
Be quiet!

TJIC:
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power over a bunch of individuals just 'cause some aged Hippy  threw a degree at you!

[1] Your laugh might vary. Limit three guffaws per customer. Void where prohibited.

It is a mystery

JoAnne Kloppenburg on election night: "An unofficial 204 vote lead is a clear victory: I win!"

JoAnne Kloppenburg after the official tally: "My opponent leads by 7,316 votes, too close to count: I demand a recall."


Do politicians wonder why they are held in low esteem by the rest of us?

Sarcasm motherf***er - do you speak it?

Owen links to ugly news: Concealed Carry on the Way.

I, for one, look forward to mayhem, a sharp, nasty, spike in the murder rate, carnage at stores as frustrated lumpen gun down surly clerks, road rage fueled shootouts, husbands shooting wives by accident, wives shooting husbands 'by accident', children carrying assault rifles to school, cats and dogs living together.  All the stuff that has happened in the rest of the country.

Welcome, Wisconsin, to the Wild, Wild West.

Y'all behave like you got some sense

What He Said

As overjoyed as I am at the death of Osama, I am somewhat disconcerted at the partying around the country. What does it remind me of? Ah, yes: the Palestinian celebrations after 9/11.

Don't get me wrong: I understand we are the Good Guys. But this ain't the World Series. Killing people is an ugly business. The SEAL who busted the cap on OBL (new handle: Hottest Stud in the World) probably isn't dancing in the streets. Although he probably IS smoking a fine cigar or two.

Just seems unseemly to me. Kill the fucker, bow your heads, savor the moment with Grace.

They can school them on field days

This is one scene that will greet British, French and Italian military advisers dispatched to Benghazi in the latest show of support for those seeking the end of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi's 42 years in power. British and French officials have made it clear that while some of the military experts have combat experience, their mission will not include weapons, combat training or operational advice.

Can't teach 'em how to shoot, who to shoot, how to herd people around.  I guess this leaves, what.  IG inspections?  How to properly conduct Mess Night?

Can we have constitutional rights in this modern era?

From Breaking Things and Killing People by J.E. Pournelle
March, 1998 [1]

We can hope that this whole performance was mere incompetence (and casual disregard for long disregarded constitutional rights to decent treatment), and not a media circus designed to distract our attention from the latest tricks with White House interns. It was farce, except of course to the people involved, and we note the curious similarity between the statements of Leavitt and the performance of POW's praising their captors while admitting to anything their jailers demand of them. I kept watching for Morse or POW tap code messages.

The farce does raise a serious question: Can we have constitutional rights in this modern era?

But surely, it will be protested, this is different: Harris and Leavitt may not have had "military grade" anthrax, but might not the authorities have believed they did? And doesn't the potential damage that might do justify almost any action, just in case?

If so, we surely must give up the whole notion of individual rights, and return to some more ancient system. Bring back lords, who will know and protect their subjects. Revive the ancient Norman cry of Haro! Have ways to earn status, and thus be exempt from suspicion: because the simple truth is that as of this afternoon, everyone in this forum has access to means of causing as much damage as Harris and Leavitt could have caused had they possessed "military grade" anthrax.

[1] Could be ripped from the headlines, today, hmm?

No one cares about this

I have been using the same keyboard at work since 2003. I've rubbed the ink off, or partially off, on the following keys;

r, t, u, i, a, s, f, h, j, k, l, c, v, n, m, ., 'delete'

Days not weeks

When the United States and its allies went to war in Libya five and a half weeks ago, it wasn't supposed to be much of a war at all. U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to intervene was based on the assumption that nearby states more directly impacted by the state of affairs in Libya, such as Britain and France, would lead the charge. The United States, according to Obama, would lead with "days, not weeks" of military action, thus "shaping the conditions for the international community to act together."

I see the Current Occupant [1] did not have this excellent book on his required reading list before he took took office:

Still clouded by obscurity and confused by myths, the process of warfare is misunderstood by most of us. The mass media helps create and perpetuate many myths. Often the appointed experts are equally ill-informed.

When a war breaks out, these myths gradually become apparent as distortions. Operating on these misunderstandings, leaders and citizens are much more likely to get involved in wars, or make the ones they have forced on them even more expensive. One of the constraints of history is that a nation rarely goes to war until it has convinced itself that victory is attainable and worth the cost. In reality, warfare is never worth the cost for those who start them. Instigators of wars invariably come to regret it. Real warfare is ugly, destructive, and remembered fondly only by those who survived it without getting too close.

'How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare in the Twenty-First Century' by James F. Dunnigan.

[1] I don't keep up: is Garrison Keillor still calling the President this?

Racket Bleg - anyone in the house speak LISPish?

Herself is in Chicago visiting friends.  After doing laundry, raking winter trash from the yard, baking bread, washing rugs, watching Groundhog Day (again) ... I ran out of things to do.  So I picked up the tutorial for Racket.

Exercise 2.2.1.  
Define the program Fahrenheit->Celsius, which consumes a temperature measured in Fahrenheit and produces the Celsius equivalent. Use a chemistry or physics book to look up the conversion formula.

'Deduct 32, multiply by 5, divide by 9.'   The code I came up with works but is unsatisfying - I wanted to cram everything into one expression but can't figure out how.  Or if I can.

(define (fah-celd r)
  (* 5( - r 32)))

(define (fah-celf r)
  ( / (fah-celd r) 9))

> (fah-celf 32)
0
> (fah-celf 40)
4.4

Anyone on my short list of internet friends speak LISPish?

Yes it is a retarded way to run a country

For Vishnu's sake, people! Royalty? Hereditary nobility? In the 21st Century? Seriously?!? Can there be any belief more retarded (and I mean that in the most literal sense of the term: the opposite of "advanced") than that someone is an extra-special snowflake because they won the Mommy and Daddy lottery? Have you looked at, say, the Habsburg family photo album?

Well, I dunno Tam. We've got a Secretary of State whose husband was President. A President whose daddy was President. We've got sons of Important People all but appointed to office.

We're doing the hereditary nobility thing. We're just doing it half-assed.

Play Along With This

A long time ago some raggedy-ass terrorists stepped out of the fourth dimension turned passenger jets into ad-hoc cruise missiles and killed a whole lot of people. It was so damned improbable it was like living in the back pages of a Tom Clancy novel.

Because, I think, of that improbability, a lot of people got their backs up and decided on the flimsiest of evidence that there was more to it.  And they invented all kinds of alternate explanations like alien death rays [1] melting the targets, or the Jews [1], or a government conspiracy that plotted to detonate the building and flew remote-controlled jet airplanes into the targets to cover up the controlled demo [2] and all kinds of foolishness and hooraw.

These people are so weird and clearly addle-pated and yet so very, very, dedicated that ten years later we all steer clear of them and their ideas, as if they were the weird guy downtown shouting at monsters.

I swear, if George Bush stood up in court and said 'Yeah, I planned the whole dad-gum thing.' and he had documentation and a probe of Gray Aliens in the courthouse to back him up all right-thinking people would nod knowingly and say 'Yeah, right.  Isn't 'Dancing With the Stars' on tonight?'


President Obama released his actual birth certificate today.  And sure as Grey Aliens have a fondness for pointy things, people have pounced on the thing, alleging all kinds of irregularities and muttering 'cover up' and generally turning into the monster shouting guy downtown.

It's a master stroke.  All right-thinking people are steering clear - even more than they used to - of those guys and their funny ideas.  Give the cultural soup a few weeks to simmer and if the public is presented with incontrovertible evidence of funny business surrounding the man's birth, all right-thinking people are going to say 'Yeah, right.  Isn't 'Dancing With the Stars' on tonight?'

Not - I need to add - that there is actually more to Barack Obama than what we see.  It's just funny (funny ha-ha) how these things can work.



[1] No, I am not kidding.
[2] And how much of this is the work of Operation MF, I wonder.

Shameless Commerce Division

Bottle caps decorated with skulls, turned into necklaces.

If these words fill you with delight, and even if they do not, hie thee to The Feisty Monkey.

And don't go just because this is my daughter and I'd like to see her venture in micro-business succeed. Do it because they're super-keen.

Tab Clearing

Nancy Pelosi: 'Elections shouldn't matter'.


Congress: Online poker for me not for thee.


John 'Autodesk' Walker

Most libertarians and conservatives have great respect for the rule of law and civil discourse. They're inclined to assume their opponents are well-intentioned adversaries with a different vision of how to better the general welfare. This is an error: they are not “liberals” or “progressives”, as they call themselves, but rather enemies of liberty and progress. Enemies explores why champions of liberty must defeat them and how that might be accomplished.

I don't see a contradiction here: Bee Stung

This is the theory that endemic poverty comes about because people are laboring under so many other crushing, egregious burdens, that they can't handle one more thing.  Say, they're discriminated against and illiterate and not allowed to own land.  Even the most trivial of bad luck will make them desperately poor.

This of course is in complete contradiction to Thomas Sowell theory that the way to avoid poverty is to finish highschool, get married and stay married.

JEP

Obama's political speech made the issues very clear. According to Obama, Americans are entitled to health care, pensions, unemployment compensation, negative income taxes, and permanent civil service jobs. It is up to us to provide the wherewithal to pay for this. We do not have spending problems, we have income problems, and the solution is to raise taxes on the rich until all the entitlements are paid for.  This is a brutal summary of Obama's speech, but if you boil down what he said, that's pretty well it.

Soy tejano

They also noticed a Hispanic family with three girls ages 8 to 12. The father, a CPA with a Wharton degree, photographed his family in front of the limestone walls of the chapel and told them briefly about the Alamo, telling the girls that “it stood for courage and integrity, virtues they needed to cultivate in their own lives.”

At that point, the Anglo graduate student arrived at the chapel door. He asked, “Why are you even here today? Don’t you know what this place stands for? It represents the rape and destruction of your people.”

The Hispanic man replied politely at first, but the graduate student was persisten

“You don’t understand, you just don’t understand,” he continued. “You shouldn’t be teaching your kids this stuff.”

…at which point the CPA replied with understandable irritation:

“Soy tejano (I’m a Texan]. Mind your own goddamned business. It’s my Alamo too.

iPad Bad iPod Good

... seeing that a congressman can give a speech
that says that the iPad is bad because it creates unemployment by
allowing people to do things and gather information more efficiently.

Guh-wuh?  But .. but .. this is the same guy who wants Uncle Sugar to buy every student an iPod and a laptop.

iPad bad, iPod, laptop good?  Computers are good if the government pays for them?  Goofball politician?  What is going on here?

Viking Wake-Up Call

My grand-daughter in full cry. (YouTube Ahoy) 

And now I know how to say scream 'wake up' in Swedish.

Tab Clearing

TSA looks hardest at people who bitch aloud about the TSA.  Cast your eyes down, keep the mutter to yourself, smile at The Man and say 'yessir', speak only when spoken to.


There’s a strong argument that says if you insist that people pay at least something for a service, even if it’s not much, then they will value it a lot more in the long run.  Parents know this: kids never value something until they pay for it with cash they earned themselves.


Review: WHERE'S WALLIS? Behind Closed Doors: The Tragic, Untold Story of the Duchess of Windsor.


Guy makes a joke, cops get irate, bust his ass for harassment, disorderly, resisting arrest.  Cast your eyes down, keep the mutter to yourself, smile at The Man and say 'yessir', speak only when spoken to.


Daphne has a video of cello rockers.  That is awesome.

What Soldiers Talk About

The Allies bugged conversations of German POWs. Predictably with a bunch of young guys  . . .

The record of a bugged conversation from June 1944 reveals the importance of womanizing among the men. The transcriber decided to summarize the discussion instead of noting the men's exact words:

"18:45 Women

19:15 Women

19:45 Women

20:00 Women."

Also, predictably, the soldiers talked about a krep load of unsavory topics that you would expect, and any right-minded person would be horrified at.

Nature

Red in tooth and claw.

Or something like that.

'Cos there's something in a Sunday, makes a body feel alone

Tam on pundit-television and politics and I don't know what-all

When I was little, I thought that part of growing up involved a magical transformation whereby things you previously thought were icky now seemed exciting and thrilling: Things like staying inside of a perfect, sunny weekend morning and watching a bunch of people on the television sit in chairs and talk about politics. Alas, that transformation never happened, and I still find it icky, albeit for different reasons.

Back then, it was icky because it was boring and I couldn't understand half of what they were talking about. Now it's icky because it's boring and I realize that they're a pack of self-important jackanapes and poltroons without the brains God gave a turnip and all the finely honed grasp of ethics and consequences exhibited by your average neighborhood crackhead, but with better clothes.

Related: herself has never heard 'Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down'. And now, thanks to YouTube, she has.  Don't tell me the 21st century isn't a great place.

Nature: it is awesome

Plants with burs have evolved a very efficient method of reproduction.

The hooks catch the fur of my dog.

I comb them out of her fur, throw them in the trash.

Men come along whose sole purpose in life is to carry the seed, neatly cushioned with refuse, to the dump.

Nature: it is awesome.

Root Cause

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration warned Wednesday that a federal government shutdown would undermine the economic recovery, delay pay to U.S. troops fighting in three wars, slow the processing of tax returns and limit small business loans and government-guaranteed mortgages during peak home buying season.

If shutting down some functions of the government is such a massive problem for the economy, perhaps the solution is to make it smaller so it isn't so much of a threat to the rest of us.

Hold my beer watch me do this

The United States may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, according to the general who led the military mission until NATO took over.

Army Gen. Carter Ham also told lawmakers Thursday that added American participation would not be ideal, and ground troops could erode the international coalition and make it more difficult to get Arab support for operations in Libya.

It is as if the Democrats looked at how we got into the mess in Iraq and said 'You call that a quagmire?  Now watch how an expert does it."

Sophisticated Europe

A long time ago we had a president who was doing a chubby intern.

And some Americans got uptight about it.

And we were told by Europeans everywhere 'Relax, it's just sex. He's the leader of the country, they have mistresses, it happens get over it you uptight prudes.'

So now with Silvio Berlusconi having sex with underage prostitutes and orgies and I don't know what-all I guess that makes Europe - and Italy in particular - about eighteen times more sophisticated [1] than us hicks in the United States and so-on and so-forth.

Y'all must be so proud.

[1] Sarcasm.

Mattie Ross

Picked up 'True Grit' a few days ago on a whim.  I liked the movie well enough, but novel is simply outstanding and I am better for having read it.

Donna Tartt explains Mattie Ross, in the afterword to the movie tie-in novel thus;

.. this deadpan flatness serves a double purpose in the novel, for if Mattie is humorless, she is also completely lacking in qualities like pity and self-doubt, and her implacable stoniness - while very, very funny - is formidable, too, in a manner reminiscent of old tintypes and cartes des visites of Confederate soldier boys: dead-eye killers with rumpled hair and serious angel faces.  Mattie ... is the perfect soldier, despite her sex.  She is as tireless as a gun dog; and while we laugh at her single-mindedness, we also stand in awe of it.  In her Old Testament morality, in her legalistic and exacting turn of mind, in the thunderous blackness of her wrath "What a waste! ... I would not rest easy until that Louisiana cur was roasting  and screaming in hell!" she is less Huck Finn's little sister than Captain Ahab's.

Anyone who is being pushed around, who needs to accomplish much at long odds, who has miles to travel before dark, would do well to look to Mattie Ross.

Display Some Adaptability

Libyan government forces continued attempts to advance against Brega and Misrata while NATO was reorganizing and re-thinking its effort. NATO leadership attempted to reduce the number of “cooks in the kitchen” while attempting to adapt to the Duck’s new “human shield” strategems. By deploying their heavy weapons in civilian areas and advancing in light vehicles similar to those used by the rebels, the Khadaffi forces had created new tactical problems for NATO air forces, which managed 14 strikes on Monday.

Improvise, adapt, overcome.  The big brains at the Pentagon and NATO High Command are being out-generalled by a bunch of desert hillbillies in Toyota pick-em-trucks with machine-guns mounted in the bed.

So lets' see ...

We declared war on a country that ain't done nothing to us.  We had no good idea of how to fight the war, or end it.  Our one Big Idea is to deliver humanitarian aid by F-15.  Our back-up Big Idea is to shrug our shoulders and go 'dur'.

It's like our Betters have never played a board game more complicated than Monopoly.

Judgement

But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his  judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he  and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any
doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the  consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him  because I trust his judgment, and I still do.

Just admit you're a serf and call it a day. Tug your forelock, bend a knee, stand aside when Your Betters come down the lane: go whole hawg on that thing, buddy.

Fuck that nonsense sideways and silly.

Tab Clearing Mini-Edition

A senior member of the Executive tells the Legislature they're going to ignore the Legislature and do whatever it is they want to do.  Big yawn, whatever.  I am continually amazed that more is not made of this in the news.   You'd think tearing holes in what remains of the Constitution would be newsworthy.

Better living through chemicals.  Oh hell yes I'd take NZT.  Once the prove it's safe.  And I won't pull a Charlie  if I get off the junk.

Wake up, sleepyhead

Lesson from the 4th Sunday of Lent, Ephesians 5:18-14

 ⁸ For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light ⁹ (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) ¹⁰ and find out what pleases the Lord. ¹¹ Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. ¹² It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. ¹³ But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. ¹⁴ This is why it is said:

   “Wake up, sleeper,
   rise from the dead,
   and Christ will shine on you.”

Mission Miracle Mile Trilogy

 I am no kind of appreciator of the fine arts.  I drink beer now and again and think 'Hee-Haw' was and is pretty darn funny.  So I sure am not the target audience for an art book with a run of 12 and that sells for more than I paid for my fourth or fifth-hand used car.

The Mission Miracle Mile Trilogy
is a solo effort in which Dana F. Smith’s digitally enhanced
photography takes center stage. The large version of the trilogy
features thirty-two-inch page spreads that are printed full-bleed with
saturated images of sidewalks, bus transfers, crushed pills, street
vendors, tattoos, transients, and schoolchildren. The effect is
dramatic, each page turn evoking the atmosphere of San Franciso's
Mission street.

View the MISSION MIRACLE MILE TRILOGY books online.

Also, I've never been to Mission Street. 

For all that, the pictures are very good and Max Valerio's scrawled poetry on them works real well. 

Libya. Is that still in the news?

In which I rail and rant and am not amusing or even very readable and I do not care.

The plan [1] seems to be this: bomb the snot out of the Libyan Army.  The hard part done, rebels advance.  Then we declare victory and go home.

Now, bombing the snot out of an entire country didn't work from 1943 - 1945: German industrial output increased right up until the Allies captured the actual buildings and put them out of business.   Didn't work in 1950 when the mighty Air Force flew over millions of Chinese and flat out failed to see them.  And so on.  But it will be different this time.  Wishing will make it so.

So - predictably - some stuff was blown up at great expense and a lot of soldiers were fried up like a a pig at roast.  But we don't care about them because they're in the service of evil.  Or maybe they just wanted to get out of Flyspeck, Libya, get a steady paycheck, wear a nice uniform and get laid.  Whatever.

And so - because soldiers are tricky bastards - they adapted and improvised.  They got their shit together.  And because they're an army and the rebels are just some guys with high motivation but not much organization or discipline or logistics they're beating the rebels (aka Our Guys) like kettle drums.

So now what?  The King done bought us a war.  We're losing [2]. 

We got to either go big, send arms, send the cavalry, something.  And we better do it in a pretty big hurry before Our Guys are flattened like bugs on a windshield. 

Or we need to declare ourselves the winner and get out.

Neither choice is palatable.

Now what?

[1] As much as there could be said to be a plan worthy of the name, which there isn't.
[2] This is not a current-events blog so this might be overtaken by events not long after being published.

Tab Clearing

Up Against The Wall, Motherf*cker!, by James Dunnigan.  Recreate 1969 on your dining room table: play as radicals or The Man.


Dunnigan's 'How To Make War' is only $13.45 at Amazon.  Think they'll ship to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C?


Bowling for Bitcoins - Meet the Trader 04.


Dana F. Smith and Max Wolf Valerio - Mission Miracle Mile Trilogy (+1)


J.E. Pournelle: The President has abandoned the principles of the Laws of War and Peace that began with Hugo Grotius publishing his book of that title in 1625.


Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France:

When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a distinct object and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition becomes low and base. Does not something like this now appear in France? Does it not produce something ignoble and inglorious — a kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy, a tendency in all that is done to lower along with individuals all the dignity and importance of the state? Other revolutions have been conducted by persons who, whilst they attempted or affected changes in the commonwealth, sanctified their ambition by advancing the dignity of the people whose peace they troubled. They had long views. They aimed at the rule, not at the destruction, of their country. They were men of great civil and great military talents, and if the terror, the ornament of their age. They were not like Jew brokers, contending with each other who could best remedy with fraudulent circulation and depreciated paper the wretchedness and ruin brought on their country by their degenerate councils. The compliment made to one of the great bad men of the old stamp (Cromwell) by his kinsman, a favorite poet of that time, shows what it was he proposed, and what indeed to a great degree he accomplished, in the success of his ambition:

Still as you rise, the state exalted too,
Finds no distemper whilst 'tis changed by you;
Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys.

Things I Did Not Know This Morning But My Wife Did

Most late model cars have an arrow in the gas gauge pointing to the side of the car with the gas cap.

Quart is short for quart-er.  As in 'four'.  As in 'four quarts to a gallon'.  Dunh.

Libya Again

Travis hit on two reasons I might think more kindly of the current shenanigans in Libya.

(a) there is pragmatic argument for someone to play Imperial Power of the World...especially if they can do it on the cheap, (b) there is a moral argument to support most anyone against a genocidal dictator.

There is no denying that in the long run places where the United States goes to war up do really well.  And you can't argue with the moral side of things: getting rid of genocidal dictators is a good thing. 

Seemingly the best thing a Third Word fella can do for his descendents is to get his country invaded by Americans.  Surviving to have descendants is not assured . . .

We get back in the car and move on, south toward Ajdabiyah. Every five minutes or so, we pass more wreckage. Some of the tanks are pancaked. We also see minivans and SUVs that are charred and smashed, as if they were stomped by a giant flaming robot. Some lie on their sides. I think I even see a BMW 3-series burned out on the side of a hill.

BMW, BMP, whatever: they all look pretty much the same on the screen while cranking along at 500 em-pee-aitch.  Shit happens and it's a good idea not to be close to a tank in the middle of the war.  Granted civilian 'close' and military 'close' are not remotely the same thing but there you go.


As personally sympathetic as I am to the Imperial Power / moral argument jazz the unpleasant fact remains: we live in a Republic.  The Constitution lays out certain roles and responsibilities for the three branches of government.  The executive [1] can't just go to war for humanitarian reasons, or to ensure Europe has cheap gas, or whatever the latest excuse is.

There must to be authorization by Congress.  Or the United States must be under threat of attack, or have been attacked.

The Current Occupant didn't get the authorization, didn't even ask for it.  Libya hasn't attacked the United States, wasn't going to attack the United States.  The President - the fellow sworn to uphold the laws of these United States - just pretty much blew off the whole thing.  Too much bother, I suppose.

Morality don't enter into it.  We've got a Constitution: we should use it.  This war against Libya is just plain illegal and wrong as anything the government has done. 

And it's being done in your name, and mine.

[1] Not even getting into the legality of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 - which I don't think it is, much.

Tax the bumwad

I remember a lesson from school. People in the Bad Olde Days in Europe in one country has dark, smelly houses.  Because they had very few windows.  Because the government there laid a tax on the number of windows a house had: the more windows, the more tax. So people, not being completely dumb, built houses with few windows, people could not throw the non-existent windows open to admit fresh air and sunshine, their house were dark and smelly.

The subtext I took away was that the people in charge Back Then were egregious butt-heads, we were much more enlightened in the modern age.

Recalling the lesson that you get less of what you tax ... maybe not so much.

(Omaha) Mayor Jim Suttle went to Washington Tuesday flush with ideas for how federal officials could help cities like Omaha pay for multibillion-dollar sewer projects.

Among the items on his brainstorming list: a proposal for a 10-cent federal tax on every roll of toilet paper you buy.

Based on the four-pack price for Charmin double rolls Tuesday at a midtown Hy-Vee, such a tax would add more than 10 percent to the per-roll price, pushing it over a buck.

Adding 10% to the price of anything is a pretty steep tax, nu? Makes baby wipes, and 'soap on a washcloth' look like a better and better deal.

Tip

A useful tip from my days in the Marines: when firing a machine-gun you depress the trigger while chanting 'Fire a six to eight round burst'. This is to prevent the barrel from melting.

Now, yes, the only place I've found this to be actually useful is playing 'Call of Duty' but there you go.

Good gravy what next - patchouli?

We're now suddenly in the middle of a civil war in a country of no strategic import. Supporting one group of people whom you don't know and probably wouldn't like if you did, opposing another group of people you don't know and wouldn't like if you did. Who have not done nothing to this country in over a decade. This doesn't square with Just War doctrine or even common sense.

Representative Democracy: you're doing it wrong.

Aw for the love of Pete

Mar 18, 2011 — President Obama has directed the U.S. Department of Defense to coordinate planning with international partners for possible international military action if Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi does not comply with the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, the president said in a televised address March 18, 2011.

Is it too much to ask that we finish the two wars we're already got before we launch another one?

 

Also: Libya?  F**king A** End of Nowhere Libya?  Whathisface is a carbuncle, sure, but why the f**k should we give a rat's ass about who is shooting whom in that god-forsaken patch of nowhere?

They told me if I voted for McCain we'd have X (where X is a value that Right Wing War Hawk McChimpy BusHitler types are for and right-thinking peace loving Americans are against).  And they were right.

 

 

Tactical Kitty

You got my back?
Dude. I got your back.

Slow on the switch

There I was, dandling the grandchild.  Fed, burped, rocking slightly.  Little Monkey reached for the nearly empty bottle, intention clearly etched on his face . . .

I wouldn't drink that.

Why?

It's breast milk.

I wasn't going to drink that. I wanted you to think I was. Ha ha!

 

Too late I realized that I should have said that after he'd chugged; a great moment in Dad history that wil never be.

... and if you're not careful you may learn something before it's done

Hey, hey, hey!

This isn’t a daily gag strip like Penny Arcade, the writing, composition and rendering are all very involved. To use ecological terminology, Dresden Codak is the K-selection strategist of webcomics.

A what?  Oh.  Oh.  Ohhhh.  Fascinating.

 

 

Have a Coke and a smile

Q: How much coke did Charlie Sheen do?

A:  Enough to kill Two and a Half Men

 

 

Man's Search for Meaning

Don't aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

From 'Man's Search for Meaning'

Via.

Screenshot Fun

Oh, Linux: you're not OS X but you are pretty darn nifty.

I am amused that Linux makes a better platform to run multiple terminal sessions of Windows hosts than Windows does.

Dear JPMorgan Chase

Bite me.

JPMorgan Chase, one of the nation's largest banks, is considering capping debit card transactions at either $50 or $100, according to a source with knowledge of the proposal.

Wells Fargo,  you too.  Yeah, I understand your stated reasons.  I understand they're a fine grade of bullshit.

If a cap like this does make its way into accounts across the board, consumers would be forced to write checks, withdraw cash from ATMs, or put their spending on credit cards.

Oh the horror:  being forced to manage a checkbook.  To handle actual cash.  To - dare I say it - take my business to an organization that actually values me as a customer?

Oh wait: already done that.

 

Love Is

Love is the singular thing that can not be measured.  It can only be felt, experienced, lived. 

And I do live it, swim in it, glory in it as much as I do the air around me.

* Politicians

Jesse Jackson Jr. 'Change the Constitution to provide every kid with an iPod and a laptop.'


J.J. Jr's intellectual twin, Donald Trump, is thinking about running for president, may God have mercy on the Republic.  He's either an idiot, or he thinks we are.


John Kerry wants to do a no-fly zone and only crater enemy runways.   Because you can do that without going to war.  I guess?  I don't know how blowing up parts of another country don't count as 'war', but I'm just a dumb grunt.  Also: that won't work: it takes about a heartbeat to fill in craters.  Also: if you think the Libyans are just going to let our sky warriors fly around and blow up runways without shooting back, you're dreaming.



That thing about fighting the last war, Senator?  You're supposed to do that with wars you won.

Fred on Everything: Screw the Troops

Fred Reed

The vets that the reading classes have heard about are the highly intelligent and talented who return and write books. I know perhaps a dozen of these. Some seem sane, others are eaten by secret demons. They are the ninety-ninth percentile. The great mass of damaged vets are inarticulate and unseen. A lot are of intelligence below the average and few are educated. They don’t read columns on the web, or most likely anything else, and since you do, you probably wouldn’t be comfortable around them. I’m not. But the military made them what they are. Washington made them what they are. We made them what they are, by tolerating Washington and the military.

Emphasis mine.

Terminal Lance #110 "Bootcamp: The Swarm"

Terminal Lance #110 "Bootcamp: The Swarm"

I LLOLd.  Boot camp, nailed, in three panels.

Like, maaan, Staff Sergeant King was going off on me, I mean like completely gonzo [1].  I'm locked at attention in his office, he's behind me, yelling about this and that and it's second phase and I'm used to this then ka-WHAM a frigging file cabinet full of paperwork and lead weights slams to the ground next to me.


[1] When the PMI is giving after-hours instruction - out of the goodness of his heart, because he cares - it is bad form to just nod off during class.

Read while out and about on the town

"There is no placebo for sex."

No, I don't know what it means.  But it keeps chasing around my head, so onto the blog.

Tab Clearing

Original content?  Phah - too much going on in real life.

Figures: They Speak For Themselves. From Aaron 'Dresden Codak' Diaz. NSFW.


Using a water gun to sprinkle holy water at Mass?  Not only no, but hey-all no.


Is Your Job an Endangered Species? Technology is eating jobs—and not just obvious ones like toll takers and phone operators. Lawyers and doctors are at risk as well.


How the West became so dominant.


Moral Combat: Why do liberals play computer games like conservatives?

I'm leaning to very cleverly stupid

In which I asked a very intelligent - or very cleverly stupid - question on the F5 Advanced Design and Configuration Forum and it sparked a new 'Post of the Week'.

Thanks, Joe and Colin.

Where, Sirrah, is this Utopia you speak of?

Republicans Want Wisconsin To Become Just Like the South.

Aw man - really?  Like .. a Waffle House on every corner, waitresses that call people 'hun', down-home girls that say 'bless your heart', sensible gun laws, children that say 'yes ma'am' and 'yes sir', ... with a Wisconsin climate?

Sign me up.

Soldier Athlete

The Army has instituted a diet system in boot camp.  It's called 'Soldier Athlete' instead of something plebeian like 'common sense'.



Oh yes!  And - being the Army - they've got color codes.

Since some high-in-fat items are still on offer, the better-for-you fare is supposed to be reinforced through a new "Go for Green" labeling system wherein the foods that should be consumed sparingly, moderately, and daily are indicated by red, yellow, and green placards, respectively.

Because nothing says 'we think the enlisted are dumb as a bag of hammers' like officers putting up color coded placards to tell them stuff they already know.

Not to get all 'old man get off my grass' but what in the world are they doing in boot camp that they have a problem with people getting fat?  They're recruits.  A messman slops food on their tray.  If they're fat bodies, you slop less food.  You turn off the soda and the ice cream machines.  Give them about ten minutes to eat.

Then you run their ass from the mess hall to whatever is the next activity.  If Robert Recruit has managed to sneak extra portions in while at lunch, trotting to the next class on a full belly will take care of that real quick.

Via the Man from Arlington.

Tab Clearing

Why Your Grocery Bill Will Double this Year and What You Can Do About It (VIDEO).


Uniform Resource Identifier.


URL Redirection.


Niall Ferguson: 'Westerners don't understand how vulnerable freedom is'


The White Butterfly by Pasty Dunbar


The end of the IT Department.


Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector


Moral Combat: Why do liberals play computer games like conservatives?

Snowy Day in Wisconsin

What did we do before we had the internet?

Reply to SB7

SB7 quoted a commenter on his blog. I'm putting it here because, for some odd reason I don't see his captcha or something.

Discounting the opinions of ~20k folks and telling them to go home,

Something I have noticed in video clips, but not much commented on - a not insignificant number of those at the capitol in Madison are kids from UW.

Now, some of them might be there on principle, or because they believe in the cause, but not a few of them appear to be there because it's exciting, it's a show, it beats sitting around the dorm.

I'd be there if I had copious amounts of free time and lived a short walk away: looks like fun.

But it's not that we should discount the 20k people but that their advocates appear to be saying "Look at all the people who showed up - you should bow to our will because the mobbe has spoken and be damned for the recent election: it's putting bodies in the street that counts."

What happens in Marriage Encounter stays in Marriage Encounter

A brief interlude for God and relationship stuff.  Herself wrote . . .

What is important is I have control over what I do know now. I know that I am deeply in love with my husband. I know that I have some great friends and a wonderful life. I have been blessed and instead of sweating the small stuff I just need to trust that I'm not alone when I face them. I am at peace at this moment with the decisions I have made in my life. I have a renewal in the relationship with my husband and with my family. Life really is good.

Last weekend we had our marriage in for it's long-overdue checkup.  We have had our rough patches, we'll have them again but now I have Joy.  Peace.  I'm happy and while I am generally 'ok' I have not felt actually happy for a while.

A few years ago, I almost lost her: she came this close to slipping away in the operating room.  The feeling of relief I felt then, for her still being with me, is comparable to feeling I have, now, for our marriage.  It's alive!  Hallelujah!  What a terrifically grand feeling.

To our new friends, thank you!  It was not just her, it was not just I, it was your prayers and intercession with God, that made it all possible.

A relationship, a marriage is an entity that needs care, loving, regular maintenance, and God.  If you have not done so, go get yourself some God, get your marriage fixed up: invite Him into your marriage and rejoice.

Agile PLM 9.3.0.1 Hot Fix 38

If you run Oracle Agile PLM 9.3.0.1 and you applied Hot Fix 38 downloaded before October 13, 2010 it is broken. It is bad.  Rotten like week old tomatoes in the July sun.


It is important, I'm told, to stay away from so-called pony-tail software because it's not supported.  You buy software for the support, because the vendor will fix things when they break because you're paying them for that and they will deliver really good support because you're paying them for that.

This is fine until the model fails. Then you're dodging shrapnel and angry users.  And you're all 'What the hey?' because you've been spending a metric ton of money for support precisely so the thing does not blow up on you.

I spent - no joke - eleven days running this particular problem to the ground.  Spent hours and hours on the phone with a really nice German lady [1] from Montreal, poking at this and that.  We finally uncovered the specific .jar file that was the problem, then detected it went bad right after installing Hot Fix 38.  Then we realized that - shazam - the copy of HF38 she was using to install in her test system was different than the version of HF38 I had.

Then another Oracle support guy, in a forum, with respect to an unrelated problem, said  'Why, you must have HF38 installed!  We found out that was bad, like, months ago, and reissued it.  Golly.' They didn't actually tell anyone about this because it's more fun that way, figuring out things on your own? I guess?


[1] It is just a little bizarre to work your way through a voice mail system that speaks Quebecois French only to end up speaking to a lady wit a pronounced German accent, ya.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Fourteen (Democrat) state senators remain absent, preventing debate on legislation.  I'm torn.

You can't just leave because things aren't going your way: what is this, third grade?

On the other hand, if the lege can’t pass laws, then the lege can’t screw up our lives worse than they already are.

Maybe we can convince the Republicans to join their brother legislators in Illinois and leave the rest of us alone

The weekend

I was mistaken.  Was not a convent, was an abbey.  Norbertines of Abbey of Saint Norbert Abbey.  For a marriage retreat weekend.

I highly recommend this kind of thing for all married couples.  But that's not what I came here to talk about.

We left an eleven year-old, and two sixteen year old, boys in the house.  Laid in bread, milk, cereal, and so on for them to consume.  They know how to cook.  We have stuff in the deep freeze.  What did they eat for two nights and three days?

From inventory in the pantry and freezer they drank Sunny-D, ate freezer waffles and peanut butter.

The Power of Christ compels thee!

Me: Should we take the arsenal?

Her: We're going to a convent.

Me: And if bad guys break in?

Her: They have priests.

Me: Who have guns?  The power of Christ and John Moses Browning compels thee!

The Power of Christ compels thee!

Me: Should we take the arsenal?

Her: We're going to a convent.

Me: And if bad guys break in?

Her: They have priests.

Me: Who have guns?  The power of Christ and John Moses Browning compels thee!

 

Civility is for the little people

Big doin's down in Capitol City this week.

Dear Wisconsin Voters: We're better than you.  Now go pick up our trash.

Wisconsin state capitol is in full lock down.

School closing lists: Madison Area. La Crosse Area. Eau Claire Area. Racine Unified. Wausau Area. NE Wisconsin. 

Democrats flee state to avoid doing their job.

Angry Andy Sez

. . . he sez f*ck the client server model, he sez.


'Hey, nerd boy: get ma picture outta this here attachment server!'

Check it: In order to deliver Really Important Files to a user desktop I've got to support java clients (that can't be updated (past a version now two years old) or the whole mess breaks) a service that is only supported by the vendor on Windows [1] which in turn talks to an application framework, talking about six or seven disparate components that are supposed to just snap together like lego blocks.

As if. 

[1] For a core application that requires x9s of uptime, and delivers bits to users 24x7 in six countries.  It's like opening the hood on a semi-truck to find the fan belt is made of partially digested gummi bears.

Cats and dogs living together

According to the teevee and radio people last night Scott Walker wants to

• Impoverish state employees! 
• Outlaw unions! 
• Bring in the national guard to beat up striking workers! 
• Disband the Green Bay Packers!

Before we get all het up about this .. maybe some of those bussed in protesters and their fellow travelers in the news should read the bill they are protesting.  Nary a word in there about the Packers.

Tab Clearing

Everything you wanted to know about the Oregon & Northwestern Railroad.


What happens when mundanes try to write about the future?  Lame articles like this: Raising babies in space in aluminum tin-cans is real hard.  It's like these people have never read any hard SF.   Or put much thinking behind what they write.


Beyond Intellectualism: On becoming an anti-intellectual intellectual


61th International Astronautical Congress Space Elevator Papers Available.

Take Me Home, Country Roads

Take Me Home, Counrty Roads: my favorite-song-that-I-cannot-sing.  When I try, the dogs aroo, the cockatoo screeches.  Which is fun for them, less fun for the primates in the house.

Olivia Newton-John.  Awesome version.  Too bad it's inflicted with a 70's era breathy white people chorus.  What were you people thinking?

Toots & The Maytals.  Yes, reggae. Shut up, it works.

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole.  Hawaiian. Big guy, big voice.

Hermes House Band.  The set, the costumes ...  forget that: they rock the song, the lead singer fills out that dress real well. Rowr.

From Whisper Of The Heart - English.   There is, as Mr. Fungus noted, a killer Renaissance-y riff at the end that is just not long enough.

From Whisper Of the Heart - Japanese.   I'm not any kind of a sub snob, but this one works best: the girl is good, but not too good, it really sounds like an impromptu jam in a workshop.

As long as he stays away from the killer robot field we're good

Valentine's Day: dinner at Texas Roadhouse, with my sweetie.  The decor is faux-Texas Yee-Haw, the wait staff wear t-shirts and jeans.

So what: nearly every instance of so-called fine dining in the Fox Cities has turned into a horrible experience of one kind or another.  Pox on them.

Give me good food, good company: I can make my own romance.

***

My wife (I'm along for the ride and to claim credit) is raising independent-minded well-adjusted young men.

Item.  Youngest Monkey woke me up at 03:43 complaining of a hurt ear.  But first he apologized for waking me up, said he tried to take care of it himself with q-tips and hot water but it just was not working.  Broke my heart to see him hurting, happy to see that, at the age of 11, he's trying to take care of things for himself.

Item.  His older brother came to me much earlier, holding his Dremel.  He'd ripped the rechargeable battery pack out of the handle.

"The batteries are flat."

That has a recharging station?  It's in ..

"Don't need it."

??

'They're rechargeable AAs in a cradle.  I wired up regular AAs with copper wire and tape.'

And he jazzed the motor several times to show this was so.


Improvise, adapt, overcome: he now has a hacked tool that works better for him.  I am so proud.

A New Day Dawns

Governor Walker wants to cut state worker benefits, take away bargaining rights.

"I don't have anything to negotiate," Walker said. "We are broke in this state. We have been broke for years. People have ignored that for years, and it's about time somebody stood up and told the truth. The truth is: We don't have money to offer. We don't have finances to offer. This is what we have to offer."

The usual suspects in Madison can march, and bitch, and act all butt-hurt if they want, and the news can act like they're the tits and the bees knees.  Whatever.

A majority voted this guy in, voted his party into power in the lege.  We're tired of irresponsible spending and government that ignores reality.

Commentary would be superfluous

From the wiki

... the deadline for income tax form submissions has been extended three days for celebrations in Washington, D.C. of Emancipation Day.

I don't know why the grandchild does this with his lips

But it's cute.  Darn cute.



So far, being a grandfather has met or exceeded expectations. I hold him. He coos, he gurgles. When it's time to eat, I hand him back.

The Sunset Limited

Tommy Lee Jones, on filming 'The Sunset Limited' in Santa Fe, where Cormac McCarthy lives . . .

NPR: Did you choose Santa Fe for the production so that McCarthy could be there?
Jones: No, they have very attractive tax incentives.

Sittin' in the dark, living all by themselves / You don't have to hide anymore!

And who came visiting to S4C tonight?  A snipppet from my referrer logs ...

10 Feb 19:22:13 www.google.com sandra bullock zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:22:11 www.google.com Zombies and sandra bullock 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:22:10 www.google.com Sandra bullock zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:22:00 www.google.ca sandra bullock zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:22:00 www.google.com zombie Sandra bullock 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:21:57 www.google.com sandra bullock and zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:21:55 www.google.com bullock sandra zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html

You guys really had to look up the BBT Sandra Bullock zombie reference right then and couldn't wait for the show to be over?

Title tip o' the hat.

Gunpowder propelled arrow

These kits easily convert a Ruger 10/22 rifle into an archery rifle that can fire five arrows within a one-inch group at 50 yards.

Ruger 10-22 Arrow Conversion Kit

There is a video of this in action.  The video makes me laugh delightedly (literally) out loud.

Via.

Clearing Tabs

Tater wrote: Insane pretty girls, giant sized samurai battlemechs, steampunk dirigibles, powered armor, wrist mounted Gatling guns, rocket jetpacks, fire breathing dragons, did i miss anything?

Nope.  Sucker Punch (YouTube ahoy) looks like a movie filled with awesome.  Job Bob is gonna check it out.


Five years of very serious episodic adventure, myth and character development ensue: Visual timeline of the Battlestar Galactica universe.


Media Matters sez Fox News: Stuff Is Just Made Up.  So it's a real news organization like CNN, CBS News, Washington Post ...


“Talk, talk, talk. Fine. But if’n you need any bullets for punctuation, jes’ say the word.  'Rejiggering the Thingamajig' by Eric James Stone.


'Going Outside the Wire' by Kris Battles.  I am a Philistine, don't know Renoir from Rockwell.  But dadgum there is some really fine work done by the Marine Corps Combat Artist.  Y'all taxpayers getting your money's worth out that guy.

Stay away from my house, you freak!

The group giving away the free tanks [1] only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"

In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson.

Needed an operating system for a laptop.  Grabbed the latest Ubuntu, installed and ...

I had me a working computer without a lot of fussing around, no screwing around with drivers, or software .. it just works.  Wireless, power management, all functional.  I was expecting a bit of a tussle, a minor headache: the only thing I did 'after market' was to install SSH, Ruby, Rails, SQLite.  Copied some scripts over from my Mac that I use to launch SSH and RDP connections at work.

I continue to be amazed that people put up with having to pay big bucks for an operating system. 

Apart from parting with cash, paying for anti-malware and anti-virus software, BSODs: what are they getting for that?

[1] In this metaphor, the Linux operating system is a tank.

Coordination

The grandchild's coordination is coming along.  He's progressed from smashing his hands on his face

 


To getting fingers in his mouth





Yummy, yummy, baby fingers.

Ugly joke, free speech

Here is the thing;

A guy I know cracked an ugly joke, after Gabrielle Giffords was shot. Various people in the small pond of the comic book world turned that mole-hill into a mountain, the cops were called in, a boycott was called, it was - and remains - a huge pile of higgidly-piggidly.

Check this out: the cops suspended his firearms license, confiscated his guns. Smeared his name in the news. Trampled all kinds of civil rights. Over a joke.

I don't hold with what he said. I support to death his right to say it.

You are a high-maintenance money pit with feathers

From McSweeney's 'Dear Amazon Parrot I Have Been Supporting for Over 15 Years Who Still Tries to Bite Me for No Apparent Reason'

For an embarrassing number of years, I carefully repeated the same simple words and phrases, always hoping that someday you might repeat them back to me. One morning I would be preparing your usual gigantic breakfast assortment of tropical fruits, whole-grain toast points, and pricey organic cereals, when a wee voice would issue from your little feathered head and you would finally say to me, "You're such a pretty bird! I love you, pretty bird!" That was my dream.

Instead, over a decade later, you have apparently learned only three vocalizations: the cackling laugh of an evil hag (a sarcastic parody of my own innocent laughter?); a tuneless steam-whistle sound rising in pitch like an engine about to explode; and your favorite, the sudden, high-decibel bloodcurdling scream.

There is a hole in the bucket, dear Liza

My main computer has developed an annoying "bzz grind bbzzzzzz grind bzzzzz" noise under the keyboard. Bad fan? Failing hard drive? I only ride 'em, I don't know what makes 'em work. [1]

Just in case it's a worst-case scenario [2] I'm watching gigabytes of data slowly filter to an external hard drive and thinking a) I really should be in bed and b) I should have backed up more often.

[1] I work in IT, you'd think I would know. But, it's true: last time I touched a the inside of a laptop was 1999 and I didn't like dealing with the fiddly damned things when I was being paid to do it.

Take it to the shop? This booger is long out of warranty, it's depreciated, the cost of fixing it would not be economical.

[2] I've got options. At my left elbow is a laptop running a kissing cousin of OS X, FreeBSD. The Mac goes phht, I cuss a little, crank up the Thinkpad and I'm back in business.

Connor Meet Dog - Bella

I am biased.  But I know my grandchildren are adorable.


Connor you've met.  And now, so has Gunther the Dachshund.

 


And this is Bella.  She's not official family, yet.  And so what?  She's a grandchild in my heart, where it counts.

Family is who loves you, not a function of DNA.