Monthly Archives: December 2006

This new phenylephrine stuff that they are using to replace the psuedoephedrine in various cold medicines is distinctly underwhelming at relieving my symptoms.

I also miss my Sudafed high. Getting a cold used to be so much fun.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2006 Darwin Award winners.

Britian doesn’t owe us anymore for World War II.

You British and African-American types, respectively.

You wonderful old internet people.

To you Seinfeldians. It’s a Festivus Miracle.

The airing of grievances begins in the comments section.

Improve your grammar. I’ll study the comma section.

Wall Street Journal’s Best and Worst Ads of 2006.

Blogger is no longer in beta. Does this mean they’ll start charging for it?

To all the pagans and wiccans out there.

Roombas caroling.

If you have a lot of time to kill you can watch the 50 greatest cartoons of all time.

Scott Adam’s theory of everything. It involves doughnuts and ants. I like doughnuts.

Want an out-of-print book? Just print one up.

The $50,000 vending machine is about to debut in somewhere between 10 and 25 libraries and bookstores in 2007, including the New York Public Library in February. The machine can produce two books simultaneously in seven minutes, a time which includes all the printing, binding and cutting involved.

Top 10 stories we didn’t hear about in 2006 according to Foreign Policy.

Village? They have villages? What is New York state stuck in the Middle Ages?

A discussion of A Christmas Carol. You should read it this week.

Alright, if you must watch the movie, the Muppet’s Christmas Carol is best.

Colbert mocks you and Time magazine.

A tempting woot. And robot uprising songs are always gold.

Sylvester Stallone knows Christianity sells.

This whole robot’s rights thing has been covered. If this scientist had read more science fiction he would know this has all been hashed out, repeatedly.

I recommend Bicentennial Man. Not the movie. DO NOT see the movie. I think it’s safe to say never watch any Asimov story made into a movie.

10 Weirdest People on Earth. Even weirder than that one guy that hangs out in front of the grocery store.

via EO

Okay, I’m not a huge fan of the whole Simon & Garfunkel sound so I don’t know why I like this, but this is a great Christmas album. Really. Inexplicable.

Plus it’s 42 songs for 20 bucks. It’s a steal! Even if a bunch of them are really short. Hmm, maybe that’s why I like it.

If only the US would sign on to Kyoto Swedish gingerbread houses would be saved.

Just in time for the holidays, outdoor survival tips. Seems to be: carry a first aid kit and duct tape, think, and think positively.

Mark Steyn.

Seattle Airport could certainly put up a menorah. And maybe a commemoration of Eid, and Kwanzaa, and something for solstice worshippers, and perhaps something for litigious atheists. But to do that is to turn society into a kind of greater airport departure lounge — to say it’s no more than an assemblage of whoever happens to be in it at any particular time. Successful societies (unlike plastic trees) have deep roots: Nobody should be obliged to believe Jesus is the son of God, but likewise nobody should take such umbrage at trees and tinsel and instrumental versions of “Silent Night” that he would deny the reality of the land he lives in to the vast majority of his fellow citizens.

Top 40 obnoxious quotes of 2006 as compiled by RWN.

I am Time’s Person of the Year. That’s going to look good on my resume.

/you are too
//you unique snowflake,you

To those so inclined that way.

XM has your Hanukkah music needs covered.

The normal free trial of XM Radio Online lasts only 3 days, but miraculously we have been able to extend it to cover all eight days of Radio Hanukkah.

Everyone blames Israel.

Heumann: Do you mean to say that if Israel did not exist, there would suddenly be democracy in Egypt, that the schools in Morocco would be better, that the public clinics in Jordan would function better?

Sheikh: I think so.

Ooookay.

Oh please, oh please, oh please!

This is the problem with fighting global warming. It’s going to impact my tasty beef products.

As a greenhouse gas methane is about 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide by weight. Rising world affluence translates into rising demand for meat and that means more cows, sheep, and other methane producers.

So we should all eat vegetarian, except then they’ll be too many plants which will again somehow upset the delicate balance because everything upsets the delicate balance. Polar bears or ribeye, hmmm.

Upcoming cool stuff. No mention of rocket packs or flying cars.

Most of the time living in a small town irks me, but occasionally it is amusing. Like when I keep hearing sirens so I go outside to see whose house is on fire but it’s the Fire Department with a Santa float cruising the neighborhood.

I swear to you that somewhere I have read a similar story. A big old tall guy reaches down an animal’s throat to grab something to save it’s life. I’m pretty sure it was even a dolphin. Probably one of those animal anthology books.

Or, my doppleganger is going through life backwards and I get brief glimpses of the future from it.

UPDATE: I’m pretty sure it was a basketball player.

For my own future reference: I-90 driving conditions info.

Magnetic storm coming tonight. Have these things ever done anything? Doesn’t everyone just adapt and everything is fine?

It’s nice that the next UN chief is going to be personally involved in whatever the UN is going to do in Dafur.

Perhaps they can send more vehicles.

Free Mozart if you want it.

Because pain is hi-larious. Even emotional pain.

via Manolo for the Brides 

It’s odd to look up and see stars at 5pm. It’s really odd that there weren’t clouds in the way.

Well, now I’m off to watch Miracle on 34th Street (originally released in May—odd no?) and eat some (hopefully) yummy crockpot stroganoff.

Enjoy your evening.

Evangelical Outpost’s top 10 6 videos of 2006. The first 4 are must see.

No more white dolphins. I blame Bush. If he had signed Kyoto this never would have happened.

Time’s top photos of 2006. I’m whelmed by it. Too much black and white. It’s not dramatic anymore.

Wacky dictators and their wacky past times. Given absolute power and tremendous wealth I shudder to think of what weird things I would end up doing.

I learned there was a country called the Republic of Kalmykia. I miss the good old days when it was all USSR. Cartographically speaking, not in a “yay communism” way.

via Tim Blair 

By Tom DeLay. Whom I would trust to the end of…well, no I don’t trust him at all. Doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong though.

I just can’t get excited about an election that’s 1.75 years away. They always end up picking some governor I’ve never heard of anyway.

I can’t watch.

I’m just not feeling the news. If there were some best of 2006 articles out there, I might be into that. Instead, here’s a pic that I just photoshopped as a little pick-me-up for the aid workers in Dafur cause their vehicles got stolen by some faction or another.

Yes, it’s an appallingly bad extraction, I was going for time, not accuracy.

So the road trip:

Leave my house at 7AM, debate calling in to work to remind them I won’t be there. Decide against it. Pick up the rest of the bunch. We all squeeze into the rented minivan. We’re on our way!

Continue reading →

I’m not really into the MMORGs, I prefer my time to be devoured by other things, but a game in the Firefly universe? Awesome.

Come back two days. I’ll be en route to and from beautiful Portland, OR, in order to see Trans Siberian Orchestra.

UPDATE: 12th row center. It’s good knowing people that know people. It was a great show, as always.

Presents, presents.

25 most important questions of the universe answered.

NASA says they have evidence of water on Mars.

Bonus Rocketman quote:

“He’s the key to discovering life on Mars. Ohohohahhahhahh! I’m training him using calls that he’s familiar with to retrieve specific rock samples from the underground fissures.”
“Of course. There’s still moisture under the surface. And where there’s water there could be life.”
“That’s right. Good Boy.”
“Or death. Death to anyone who dare to disturb the Martian Crust Devils with their venomous feed and their wet-sucking lips.”

Celebrate the “no environmental footprint” weekend by living like those in war-torn, third-world, poverty-stricken countries. Woohoo. Makes me want to save the environment.

My plans for the weekend include a gas-guzzling trip to Portland and back (TSO! w00t!), using several computers, heating my house as much as I dare, a crockpot cooking some beef for hours and hours, and leaving light on in rooms I am not planning on going back into. You know, the usual.

It’s not your imagination, spam has been getting worse lately. Mine seems to be stock tips and fake watches. I don’t understand how they make money off of that. Of course, between whatever Gmail uses, Spam Assassin, Spam Karma and Bad Behavior, all I notice is large numbers on the Spam folder. Spam away, you cretinous, low-life, scum of the earth.

Three years ago, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, made an audacious prediction: the problem of junk e-mail, he said, “will be solved by 2006.”

And 640k ought to be enough for anyone.

No doubt letters from Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe are on the way to these guys.

Microsoft wants to compete with Adobe in the graphics suite arena.

And by cool I mean “really nerdy”.

Senators Rockefeller and Snowe feeling their oats.

NASA plans to have a moon base by 2024.

No one wants the dried out nasty brownie edges. They want the luscious, soft, slightly gooey brownie middles.

With a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

And some hot fudge.

Maybe a little whipped cream.

What is with the Europeans and their blind faith in GPS units? And why are their GPS units always the ones misdirecting them? They’ve had cartographers since at least 1492, according to my elementary school teachers, they should have some darn accurate maps by now.

The United Federation of Planets.

So the install of the wifi card didn’t go quite as smoothly as the rest of the Ubuntu install. Partially that would be my fault since I bought the “one dollar after rebate” card as opposed to finding out what was known to work. On the other hand, I’m still not quite sure why it started working when it did.
None of it matters now as I can surf teh intarwebs from the comfort of anywhere in my house. And probably outside my house, but it’s too cold to go outside now. You’ll have to wait for spring to find out that part.

I finally, finally nailed down the whole path to file in a command line thing. I never quite got it before, despite using DOS and Linux on occasion. Hurray!

I also found out how to force OpenCalc to comma-delimit files, and even harder, how to make the date format MySQL wants stick to the delimited files.

I need a nap.

Aren’t most thing that end with -ium deadly when ingested?

UPDATE: New and improved coherent sentence structure.

Still butterflies though.

Early Beatles and Stones recordings are falling out of copyright. They need to get Disney on the case.

Politics are different in Mexico.

If you need a better interest rate on your savings, INGDirect. Let me know if you want a referral. They’ll give you 25 bucks for starting an account and me 10 for referring you. I make more interest in a month than my bank gives me in a year.