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05:59 pm
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Shattuck Park - Neenah, Wisconsin
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02:22 am
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Shotgun Friday Night
Twitter Chat.
bdunbar: Daughter's bf will be at dinner. She said, 'Be nice". That means 'Don't clean the pistol at the kitchen table and glare.' Dang.
joe:boyfriend?! How old is your daughter?
bdunbar: I quote the girl herself "Sixteen. And a half."
joe: I vote for the shotgun
Haw. Also ...
PastyD: Daughter's boy toy came for dinner and family game night. He survived. He said, "My family isn't like this." They don't play chrononauts? Man.
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06:24 pm
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Nixie at the door
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06:23 pm
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That Ain't Workng
And today?
I spent the day working on a Habitat for Humanity house. Hanging drywall - ceiling and wall.
If guys hanging drywall designed houses rooms would be entirely square without any funny short walls or odd corners.
But .. I like to think I work hard. Guys who build stuff work hard: I just sit on my ass all day and watch stuff on a computer monitor.
Also - while I do not think I would like building for a living ... there are worse ways to make a living, ya know?
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06:22 pm
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Demon begone from my brains
Heard on the TV:
"Tomorrow on Blah, the ladies love LL Cool J."
Which entered my head as 'Tomorrow on Blah, the ladies love Ladies Love Cool James'
Which is darn silly. But it would not stop chasing it's tail in my head until I wrote it down, here.
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09:43 pm
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Buh-Bye MetaLink
Oracle is doing away with Classic MetaLink.
Some reasons why making everyone use 'My Oracle Support' is sub-optimal.
- The name is retarded. [1]
- I can't use the scroll button on my mouse.
- I can't use the space bar to page down.
- Except .. in places I can use the space bar. And the scroll wheel.
This isn't about customer service or or lowering TCO or any of that whitewash and I wish they would cut the bullshit.
It's about making something that worked, but looked old, into something that looks new and shiny but does not work so well as the old version. Because new and shiny looks good on the ol' internal resume and Oracle is about five years past caring about the poor bastards who have to deal with their ever increasing product line. [2]
And they are not gonna be able to do much about that because Flash is a horrible, horrible thing for this purpose and they are stuck with it.
Anyway. I might as well stop picking on Oracle because it's not going to get any better and no matter what a dozen low-level PMs out there might say on the phone they don't care what I think and they won't care what anyone thinks as long as the stock price keeps perking along.
[1] It is barely okay for a consumer kinda deal. My Pretty Pony. My Sony Support Center; like that. It's ludicrous for a support site used by working professionals only when they must and who don't want a Personalized Oracle Experience - we just want to get stuff done, get systems back on line, and get back to work.
And I darn sure don't want to think about how much money we have paid Oracle for stuff and how much is going into this abomination instead of putting more people to work at the Help Desk.
[2] Take a look at the list of Oracle's Cavalcade of Crap - it looks like GM's product line before they lost their shit. And that list does not include all of the stuff that Sun brings to the party.
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09:39 pm
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You don’t win friends with salad! You don’t win friends with salad!
Role Reversal
General Grrlpower sat down with my group of friends. She monopolized the conversation. It wasn’t long before she steered the subject to hosannahs for Obama and snarky Daily Show-style jeers for his putative enemies. Zeets, who was wearing mirrored aviator glasses, forgot to check himself.
“Fuck that. Obama is putting this country in debt. We’re going straight down the toilet.”
You could've heard an asparagus sprig drop.
Roissy in DC is funny. Joe Bob would say 'check him out' but from the number of comments on his blog, you probably already are.
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11:22 pm
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Shave and a Haircut
You know how they picked the patient to use these tools on? He was the one too weak to fight off the doctors.
From.
Via.
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11:19 pm
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Josh Deets
You meet these guys in books. And in serving the story they meet a tragic end - and you wish it weren't so.
Josh Deets should have lived a long life and died by a warm fire, surrounded by friends and family.
After the company enters Montana, Deets notices that several horses have been stolen, most likely by Indians. When Deets tracks them down, he finds they only needed them for meat. Gus and Woodrow decide to let the Indians keep some of them, so rather than start an engagement, Call fires his gun to scare off the Indians. As planned, the Indians scatter, but they leave behind a blind toddler. Empathizing with the child, Deets picks him up to comfort him. Behind him, however, a young warrior from the tribe is hiding, and believe that Deets is trying to steal the baby. Gus and Woodrow warn him to drop the baby. Deets simply holds out the baby to the young man to no avail. The young warrior impales Deets with a spear. Deets dies within a few seconds. Gus and Woodrow bring his body back to the camp and bury him. Woodrow, despite having seen much death and not reacting very emotionally to it, is this time moved to carve a sign for Deets: JOSH DEETS
SERVED WITH ME 30 YEARS. FOUGHT IN 21 ENGAGEMENTS WITH THE COMMANCHE AND KIOWA. CHERFUL IN ALL WEATHERS, NEVER SHERKED A TASK. SPLENDID BEHAVIOUR.
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08:46 pm
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Ocean City Boardwalk at Night
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08:44 pm
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Extreme Times Call For Extreme Measures
From The Huffington Post: Is Sarah Palin the First Post-Modern Politician?
It was very postmodern of Palin to characterize her resignation - an outrageous act by any reasonable standard - as a principled refusal to "go with the flow." Her vision of politics is so profoundly radical that even performing the duties of office becomes unimportant. The job you sought is no longer the point. It's all about the performance. It's politics as Conceptual Art.
Well, maybe. It sure is unusual. Perhaps extreme times call for extreme measures?
The comments here and elsewhere grabbed my attention. The loathing and the mockery is .. a little off-putting. Like this one.
Terrye — I agree (and disagree as I close this note) it’s been a nightmare for her — but it’s not her fault it’s the people that put faith in her and give her a false confidence. Her ilk is not fit to govern — stew potatos and pluck chickens ya, have a position of governance in the USA na.
'Her ilk is not fit to govern'. That just sums up the whole enchilada right there.
You, woman, you went to the wrong school: shut up. You, boy, you eschewed college for a few years in the Marines and live in a drive-past town: let your betters do the Big Thinking. You .. poor person on the wrong side of the tracks: here are some zesty government handouts. Just .. stay on your side of town, hmn?
Imagine what people like 'nyomythus' think about guys like me? Or you?
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08:41 pm
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My NPR Name
My NPR name
You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited.
K'Brian Chatan
I don't have a firm recollection of being in Chatan per se - but I am pretty sure I ambled around there when I was on Okinawa. I sure recall the seawall.
Via.
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08:39 pm
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These guys know what news is fit to print?
Maureen Dowd cut off from sources! @romeneskoblogs NYT asks staffers 2 keep cellphone costs down: no 411 calls, keep texting to a minimum.
Egad: The New York Times does not know about Goog411?
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11:03 pm
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Whoops
We're on the boat and my favorite blond-haired daughter is steering and expressed concern that she could tip the boat over. And I said 'no way you could do that'. And five minutes later she did just that.
What used to come natural when I did things like this on purpose with my Sunfish worked like a charm with a Guppy. Swim around to the bottom, grab the keel, push down, and she pops right up. Did not even ship a lot of water.[1]
What we did manage to do was bend the pins keeping the rudder attached to the boat [2]. Forget being able to steer. But that's what we've got an outboard for.
The outboard was not happy about it's total immersion in the lake.
Thank God for the kindness and courtesy of strangers who cut short their day of sun and fun to tow us to shore.
Also thanks to the about eleven or twelve other boaters who came around to see if they could be of assistance. It is easy to be all cynical about people but at least in some situations people drop what they are doing and come around to help.
It's just what you do.
[1] One huge difference between my days of fooling around with a Sunfish and now is that hauling my 41-year old self over the stern of the Guppy is not nearly as easy as pulling my fifteen year-old self out of the water onto a board boat.
[2] And the ventilator cover on the bow was just gone when I righted the boat.
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10:48 pm
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Summer with the In-Laws
This is everyone we spent the week in Ocean City with. Minus me (I'm taking the picture) and my wife who was helping me take the picture.
From left: Kay, Robert, Aidan, Yong (my favorite mother-in-law, ever) Cian, Emily (standing) Lyndsey (giving Grampa Bert rabbit ears), Bert and Ryan.
They are an excellent family and I'm happy they let me be a part of it.
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04:04 pm
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The one holiday where we combine beer and rocketry!
I could not have put it any better.
July Fourth is my favorite holiday. I love that I don’t have to buy gifts for anyone or wear pantyhose. It’s not a fancy holiday, I’d call it a celebratory memorial more organic in nature than formal minded. Perfectly suited to picnics, swimsuits, slices of ice cold watermelon and children running gin wild, sugar high on cane fueled soda and orange popsicles.
The dissonance of what we’re celebrating and how we go about the celebrations is wonderfully American. We expect that our Declaration of Independence is the natural order of things for all men, that our founding was a providential blessing guided by a convocation of brilliant men, most of all, we know that we’re deserving of the great bounty served up by over two hundred years of tradition. It’s our birthright, taken for simple grant and too often spit out in grand ignorance beside the unseen ghosts of fierce independence and hot spilt blood who gave everything to create our freedom. Brilliant men of courage and conviction gave me this voice.
Title from here.
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03:59 pm
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Surprise
You cannot tell from this picture but he seemed quite pleased - and surprised - to have attained the garage roof.
Guess who gets his wings clipped before he's allowed outside again?
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03:54 pm
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Math?
A submarine tracks five "subjects" going down, and when they get there, one of the Decepticons is killed to give parts to Megatron. 5 -1 +1 = 5, right? No, because the sub somehow tracks "six" subjects coming up. Not only is this very basic math, this is the simplest of script errors. It could not possibly have been more than one page apart in the script. And yet Michael Bay either didn't care to notice or didn't give a fuck. "Math? Math is for pussies. My movies are about shit blowing up, man."
A fine rant on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. With profanity. And spoilers!
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05:45 pm
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In my day all we had were iron sights - and we liked it that way
Kids these days get cool toys. Case in point?
The army is replacing the M203 with the M320. The new grenade launcher can be detached and used standalone.
And it comes with a laser range finder.
I am all jealous and stuff.
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05:43 pm
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A for Accountability
The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board spent 5K on their new logo. Someone pointed out that it looks like the 'A' for anarchy symbol. The board director disagreed ...
"I think there are significant differences" between the designs, Kennedy said.
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bdunbar's journal
