What do Chtorrans call Oregon?

Natural food.

Duke Nukem Forever went gold.

Can the next installment of The War Against The Chtorr series be far behind?

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?