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01:32 pm
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FOE
Fred On Everything: angry and frustrated gringas
During the lead-up to the fall of Saigon, I went to the embassy for some reason (being then the Southeast Asian stringer for Army Times). The NVA was rapidly coming south and the city obviously was going to fall. Thousands of American men were still in Saigon with Vietnamese wives, legal or not, and often with families. State was puzzled that these men hadn't flown out, not understanding that men do not leave their wives and children in toppling Asian cities. Of Vietnamese women, I heard one of the embassy gals say, "I don't see how anybody could marry one of them." "Let's see," I thought. "The Viet women are smart, instinctively classy, feminine (consult your dictionary), don't bitch constantly, are beautiful, sexy, endlessly self-reliant, and tough without being masculine. Uh...what was the question, lady?"
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12:08 am
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In Which I Have Words With Myself
Dear Dream Central,
The dream that ended with the alarm blaring in my ear was not a nice one at all. No sir!
Opening the dream with a phone call from a nurse stating "Your wife's leukemia is in terminal stage four: she only has a few hours left" was a nasty bit of work and I do not thank you for that.
You keep that up and I'm going to have words with the management you can be sure of that.
I will allow that the reveal at the end that it was set aboard a 2001ish space station was slick - but shiny SF toys only go so far.
r/s
Me
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12:33 am
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Close Enough for Governmenet Work!
It's only a mistake in pronunciation.
English is a tricky bitch that way. Core, corps, corpse - they're all derived from the Latin corpus. It's all the same difference, really. We knew what he meant.
It was a good try. And that is what counts.
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10:07 am
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Peanut-butter sandwiches with a side of nacho cheese
Daddy, I'm hungry.
I'm making dinner in a little bit.
But you're sick!
So is your Mom. But she was up while I napped so now I'll make dinner while she rests.
No - you should both rest. I'll make dinner!
Which, aw, that is so sweet and I love him for being so tender.
But no way am I letting that ten-year old make dinner: we'll be eating peanut-butter sandwiches with a side of nacho cheese.
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09:09 pm
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iPad McRanty Pants
Six months ago, I warned of the dystopian future that could be kicked off by the then rumored Apple tablet, and now my biggest fears are being realized. Please don’t underestimate the gravity of the situation. The unveiling of the Apple iPad could be the opening phase in a transition that could change the face of personal computing as we know it.
Well oh-my-god someone alert the authorities - we got us a situation here.
Oh wait, don't. The thesis is a load of krep.
Somehow - by means unspecified - Apple selling a sort-of-tablet sort-of-iPhone-but-bigger will lead to a future of nothing but devices displaying content approved by the Evil Dark Lord of Cupertino. I guess these will be teevees but .. smarter? Sort of?
What is it about Apple [1] that makes some people completely loose their shit?
The wholesale abandonment of desktops will never-ever fly in the environment they were designed for and where they were born: work. The micro that yesterday was running a BOM application on the floor can run accounting software tomorrow can crank out letters the day after. We don't just like that kind of flexibility in the office, we require it.
If you can buy a micro-computer for the office you'll be able to buy one for the house [2]. Can you really picture a Michael Dell saying 'Welp, there is all this demand but, golly, we're only gonna sell to bidness. Sorry!'
What there is a demand for - and I suspect the iPad will handily fill - is the Mom computer. All those Moms and Dads and Joes and Janes who need to watch video or do Facebook or send email but get endlessly frustrated dealing the kazillion problems a Windows PC has and have no interest in playing system administrator in their own house and get deservedly upset for having to pay some mope a few hundred bucks a shot to clean up malware and run defrag.
The cost of owning a computer is - for the average person - a huge time sink of money and time. The face of personal computing not a friendly avuncular bloke but a friggin' John Wayne Gacy clown.
Change the face of personal computing? Jam the noise. Bring it on.
[1] And other topics. And oh shit oh dear don't even bring up the vi vs. emacs thing. Jeepers.
[2] And the Linux Jihad is safe. Hooray.
Via.
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09:04 pm
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In Which I am Comfortable with my weirdness
"You're getting silver in your hair," she said, brushing my temple with a loving caress.
"Just like Reed Richards," I exclaimed without thinking.
I love the way my brain works.
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04:36 pm
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Wispy - Pixie
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09:27 am
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iPad
I see a lot of guys slagging on the iPad: lack of single-threading, it's a big iPhone, it's a lame tablet, wonk-wonk-wonk.
None of those guys have made a fortune selling stuff that people want. I'll bet on the guy in the black turtle-neck over nattering naysayers anyday.
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08:06 pm
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Truth
Torg is such a dork.
Lovable. But a dork.
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09:50 pm
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If you have to ask why the answer is because the lege said so
I don't know about where you live. Where I live the city publishes a lot of content in the classified section of the newspaper. Public, legal notices, and so on and so forth.
It's annoying to have data managed on a computer at city hall only to see it slapped on to paper where you can't do anything but read it, and the local paper charges them by the line. So it's both expensive and awkward to manipulate. Gads.
I asked the city clerk why.[1] She heaved a great sigh and said 1) people have asked her before about this and 2) it's a state law.
I stipulate this made a lot of sense not so very long ago. It makes only marginal sense now, with newspaper readership declining, internet users increasing and every other handheld widget has net access. What about a few years from now when or if we don't have a newspaper in town?
I wonder how hard it is to get the law amended so that 'newspaper' reads 'newspaper or electronic medium'?
[1] Tip o' the hat to Steve Erbach who sensibly suggested that I call the city clerk and ask.
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06:54 pm
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Coercion toward joy
From 'A Fire Upon the Deep' by Vernor Vinge:
Her fifth time in the garden was the prettiest yet, a coercion toward joy. The flowers had sprayed downy seeds into the air. The lowering sunlight sparkled off them as they floated by the thousands on the slow breeze, clots in the invisible syrup. She imagined what Jefri would do here: first pretend grownup dignity, then bounce from one foot to the other. Finally he would race down the hillside, trying to capture as many of the flying tufts as he could. Laughing and laughing -
"One, two, how do you do?" It was a child's voice, behind her.
' ... a coercion toward joy.' What a lovely turn of the phrase!
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08:20 pm
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Virtue
Ben is mystified about Democrat pols in Congress: they are acting all wimpy now that Massachusetts had elected a Republican to the Senate.
Megan has it right:
It's all very well to say that they should man up and pass it anyway. This is the sort of thing that sounds very well from the comfort of your living room. But are you prepared to pledge that if health care reform passes, you'll resign your job? Because that's essentially what you're asking them to do.
A rational army would run away.
Consider a simplified battle. A group of men on foot, armed with pike. Coming at them are some guys on horses.
If the men stand their ground, (YouTube, ahoy) they'll win the battle. Some of them will die. If one guys slips away he can run away while his mates fend off the cavalry.
Nobody wants to be one of the dead guys. Everyone comes to this conclusions, they all run away, everyone dies.
The guys who run armies are not dumb. They are aware of this problem and have devised many ways to encourage young men and woman to be irrational and stay on the line. Call it soldierly virtue.
If politicians has soldierly virtue, Ben's desire for them to show spine would be the default choice.
If they had soldierly virtue we would not be in this mess in the first place.
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08:17 pm
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Shorewest Resort - Shawano Wisconsin
Shorewest Resort - Shawano Wisconsin
For a reasonable price you get a room with the basic amenities: a bed, a toilet, a microwave, a fridge, internet. The rooms are clean, the owners pleasant.
Recommended if you want is a room in Shawano.
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01:27 pm
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Rewiring your brain for fun and pleasure
Day started early with an issue in production: 04:45. Later that morning I'm dragging into the break room for a cup of decaf.
D: How are you doing Brian?
Me: Meh Better than I deserve!
And it made a small but obvious improvement in my outlook and put a smallish spring in my step. Plus we had a short but interesting conversation about JDE.
Nobody wants to talk to a grump.
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11:30 pm
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He said 'finger'
Jason Irwin sent this along. Reading along I snorted and chuckled like a fiend: The Unix Guru's View of Sex.
Clearly I will never really grow up.
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09:09 pm
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Last Day
Michael Fay is writing a book about his experiences as a Marine combat artist.
Chapter One ... Last Day
Chapter Two ... Remains of the Day
Suddenly I noticed SSgt V’s own cammie trousers and boots. Though unhurt, he was drenched in blood from hip to toe. The year before he lost a testicle fighting in Fallujah and two weeks prior he received severe flash burns when his vehicle was blown up and incinerated just outside the gate of Al Qaim. Today the blood and pain were that of fellow Marines. This was the only uniform he had. Everything else he owned had been burned up in the blast and flames of the IED. Those blood soaked desert boots would be worn for the rest of this fight and well into his next deployment. The trousers would stay crisp with the blood of fellow Marines until F/2/1 retrograded to Al Asad a week later.
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09:07 pm
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A thing I did not know this morning
'Chortle' was invented by Lewis Carroll.
Coined by Lewis Carroll in his poem Jabberwocky, perhaps as a blend of chuckle and snort.
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06:50 pm
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White Dog
Rufus reviewed White Dog a few months ago: hit his link for informed criticism.
It's better than I thought it would be. A bit .. uneven. When Paul Winfield or Burl Ives are on .. man it's good. But Kristy McNichol ...
There are a few scenes where she displays actual acting. In the rest of the movie it looks like the crew had a standing order to hit her with a taser before they started filming.
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11:25 am
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Because I am lame - a samba bleg
I've got a linux host. I've got users running Windows XP who need access to about 3tb of data stashed at /opt/files. Hey, I'll bet Samba can help! [1] [2]
Getting Samba up and running from source worked ok. And I can access it anon from the host itself. But Windows does not seem to understand the concept of 'anonymous' user and when I connect it insists that I gotta supply user credentials.
What the heck?
( Read more )
[1] I fully expect to have this fixed shortly - if only because I'm giving up and admitting I need help.
[2] And now I have two problems!
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12:22 am
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UAVs can't see the color orange
. . . due to a flaw in their color processing, American UAV's cannot see the color orange.
Greg
I thought that information was classified.
Dang. Cat's out of the bag now. Don't tell the Black Hats.
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bdunbar's journal
