There is hope for him yet

I left the TV playing The History Channel.  Because I'm that kind of a dork.  Attended to laundry.  Cruised back through the living room.

Younger Monkey is muttering 'Aw ... yeah - aw right'.  They're playing a recreation of Chamberlain and the 20th Maine at Little Round Top.  A glow of happiness - he's getting into history.

Wait a minute: he's nine.  He's playing a game on a handheld.

Are you 'aw righting' the 20th Maine or 'Epic Dragon' on my IPod?

Duh - 'Epic Dragon'.

Feed me - please

When the laser eyes are activated she means business

Darn Chilly

The little dog is warming up her nose.



Fall has been chilly. Darn chilly.

t-time

Today I found myself utterly incapable of any task requiring thought.



But I was able to practice my Zombie Time skills. So there is that.

Flu Shot

I'm scheduled for a flu shot next week.

The flu got me last night.

Alanis Morissette would call that ironic.

broken

ZaphodM2: Let me just say that in my mind Sluggy Freelance has evolved and is no longer just a strip for a quick laugh, but instead it has become a full feature event without a end in sight. It is truly become more than just a web comic but more of a epic novel series with the added bonus of pictures. It has its up points, its down points and a liberal splash of high adventure, and all with a undercurrent of an amazing love story that spans the dimensions of the multi-verse.

It is simply beautiful, a true work of art.

Time and tide wait for no man

Dear Software Company whom I will not name but whose initials are 'Data Systems International'.



It is 2009.  Time to update your ticket submission form. 

Monastic Dedication

Home schooled: Sunlight angling through the window, dappling the work table. Scholars bent over their lessons in monastic dedication. The quiet hum and thrill of self-directed youngsters devouring knowledge ...

PastyD Sent the 9 y/o for his math notebook and a pencil. He comes back with the dog. Logic might dictate that toy fox terriers cause amnesia.

PastyD "Cold. Cold. Cold," he says as he walks through the door wearing shorts and a sleeveless tee.

PastyD Third times the charm, right? No. Still no math notebook, but I've seen the dog twice now and the third time I get a white board. Yet I hope.

PastyD Woo hoo! We now have a math notebook, math workbook, pencil, white board, and a toy fox terrier. We're all set. We just need a valium now.

PastyD ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PastyD That last tweet was sent by the toy fox terrier...and they say dogs aren't smart. Pishaw.

In Which I Confess that I am a Dumbass

I've known you could use source to hide your variables in a second file

% foo.conf
BASE=/opt/app/

% foo.sh
#!/bin/sh
source foo.conf
cat "$BASE"/file.txt

But I did not know until today you could also park functions there.

% foo.conf
BASE=/opt/app/

function type_file (){
     cat "$BASE"/file.txt
}

% foo.sh
#!/bin/sh
source foo.conf
type_file


How I make a living in IT I sometimes do not know.

Detonation

Folks, the Czar will explain two things here: first, that (Kirk) Cameron represents a very small percentage of conservatives—mostly centered in the South—who reject the reality of Evolution, and frankly, a whole bunch of other things. It is possible to be conservative and evangelical—it is also possible to be conservative and not evangelical, which seems create a Does Not Compute klaxon in liberal brains.

You want to see a mental disconnect watch someone talk to my wife.  The plethora of Tibetan knick-knacks, the non-standard animals, the religious angle ... and they dive into politics and their heads go all explodey from detonating preconceptions.

Roman Polanski raped a child

It happened again.  Someone wrote on a topical matter far, far better than I could.  On Roman Polanski's recent arrest ....

Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let's take a moment to recall that according to the victim's grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, "No," then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

Roman Polanski raped a child.  I do not think one could repeat that often enough.

Hippie

Woodstock

Abbie Hoffman was the source of the one amusing Woodstock anecdote. You'd think you'd get a lot of funny stories from filling a cow pasture with half-a-million adolescents. But no. The Who were playing. After "Pinball Wizard," Pete Townshend turned away to adjust his amplifier. Abbie rushed onstage, grabbed the microphone and began a political rant. Townshend "whacked him in the head with his guitar."

It was one of Pete's best licks. And here's another: "The people at Woodstock," the book quotes Townshend as saying, "really were a bunch of hypocrites claiming a cosmic revolution simply because they took over a field, broke down some fences, imbibed bad acid, and then tried to run out without paying the bands."

LOL

Globe-spanning worries, domestic crises, economy in the tank, wars going off here and there, potential wars smoldering in the forest and ... Smiley Jim has the time and energy for this.

Today, the White House announced that President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to support Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games at the 121st International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session.

We departed reality a few years ago.  We are living in a satire.

Via.

Checklist for Battle

Sword? Check.
Foot Powder? Check.

Can't go to battle with smelly feet.  It just wouldn't be right.

How To Build A Dynasty

Step One: Indoctrinate The Children



Little Baby Ted is soooo cute.  Too bad he won big in the 'My Father Sucks' contest.

From the Always Awesome Kate Beaton.

Conversation with a Monkey

The Monkeys are at their sister's house.  I call her up.

Me: Are you feeding them or am I?
Sarah: Let me ask - am I making dinner for you or is your dad?
Little Monkey: What are you making, Dad?
Me: I don't know yet.
Little Monkey: What are you making, Sarah?
Sarah: I don't know yet.
Little Monkey: I'll take my chances with you, Sarah.

I am feeling the love.

The Dawg Ate My Data, Miss ...

Climate researchers request original data for surface temperatures. Original researchers claim they only have the laundered data, not original data because [1]...

Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources … only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.

Bullshit.

Were they storing the data on floppy disk? People have been making backups of massive amounts of data across multiple tapes for decades.

This is not a big deal.   We solved this back in the 1960s.  You grab an IT guy, throw him at the problem and presto - multiple tapes, multiple copies. Store in a cool dry place. Good for decades.

Via

[1] Which (duh) is a problem.  Without the original data you're pretty much taking their word for things. Which ain't how I learned that Science was Done.

They say it was the liquor made him crazy

All that said, I have a hard time agreeing with the argument that adult father-daughter incest is always, without exception, rape.

Well, golly, Tracy Clark-Flory: in CandyLand were unicorns shit rainbows and little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks this would be a reasonable position to take.  In the real world we actually live in it's a foolish, contemptuous notion.

But I could not articulate this nearly well enough to justify the pixels sleeting into your eyes.  Happily, Steve Barnes did it so I do not have to.

The hideous McKenzie Phillips incest revelation started a debate in the blogosphere about whether or not parent-child incest is always rape. My thought is that it is always just about the sickest thing in the world, a violation of every imaginable social rule in 99.9% of the world's societies through most of time. Children enter the world so damned helpless, and need desperately to bond to their parents, the source of love, food, shelter, education, and so much more. There is just no way that that bond, once formed, could possibly be expected to magically transform into a mature, non-abusive sexual relationship. And what if the parent didn't raise the child? And neither of them wish to have children? Separate from the genetic component (tribes encourage exogamy to provide genetic variation) there is the question of social good. In other words, I wouldn't doubt that there might be some extraordinary circumstances in which such relationships are not evil. But creating a context in which they are accepted opens the door to an abuse potential in other relationships that is simply not worth even considering changing our social attitudes.

Can an adult woman make the decision to have sex with her father? Well, obviously. And what should we think about it? The only safe conclusion, if we wish to protect the little girls who are looking at their Daddies as god-creatures and wish desperately to please them...is no. Can an adult man make the decision to have sex with his mother? Well, obviously. But again, in whatever grotesquely rarified atmosphere such unions would be considered "healthy", the door has opened to an horrific violation of the basic protections of children. I see no way that it could ever be in a society's interests to do other than look upon such relationships as ghastly.

There is a reason he makes a good living slapping words onto paper.  See also the Hangdogs' Flatlands

She held her tongue about the other women
She held her tongue when he drank all the rent
She shot em when she caught him with her daughter
Told the sheriff that's one sin I won't repent

Via TJIC who has strong words of his own for this nonsense.

LOL

I think one stimulus package will lead to the next stimulus package ...

Marc Faber

I think one stimulus package will lead to the next stimulus package, to the next one and more money printing. And so in five to ten years time the real crisis will break out when the whole system collapses. That will be the end.

...[this time] the government was in a position to bail out, but the next time around, the government will go bust.

Video 9m

Nine minutes of video. Worth your time.