Category Archives: Uncategorized

There is something to be said for wishy-washy people.

My conquest of the real estate market has begun. I now own almost a quarter of an acre of prime Idaho property.

You didn’t think I could say “prime Idaho property” with a straight face, and you were right.

Taking out the trash.

The assessment won’t leave a stone unturned, even “sending it to the sun on a rocket ship,” said Angelos Bacopoulos, the city’s manager of garbage.

That’s a good idea.

via Fark

Using cows as billboards. I wonder how many people see the average cow?

See, the US is giving the country back to Iraq. So, you don’t like the US. Fine. You don’t like the new Iraqi government. Fine. If you don’t like the leaders, you vote them out. Get it? Blowing things up is no way to make friends and influence people.

Why does the International Criminal Court have any jurisdiction (or whatever the legal term is) over US soldiers in the first place? Who signed that agreement (or whatever the political term is)?

I guess people do still watch TV news, because this seems to be a big deal.

Apparently we won the little Al-Sadr battle. Weird, I hadn’t really heard anything about it.

Drudge’s little thing on Clinton’s book is hilarious.

For those playing the home game, the drive is dead, long live the drive. I did manage to get a lot of the important stuff off though, so that’s good news. And the better news is that there will be more blogging.

Enterprise’s price is going to be cut in half. Of course, there’s always the point of throwing good money after bad.

Ten bucks says they never collect.

And you’re supposed to say, “I’m not intimidated by you or your freakish talking money”.

Okay, there’s a audio file that goes with the title, but you can’t hear it because it’s on that low-downdirty-rottenrassenfrassen hard drive. And, by the way, Ivory soap is supposed to float.

We are experiencing temporary technical difficulties. The computer is still really messed up. Or actually, it’s just that XP doesn’t want to recognize the other drive. I wish they’d just play nicely with each other. Didn’t they learn anthing in hard-drive preschool?

UPDATE: In related news, this is a nice little admin password recovery tool.

FURTHER UPDATE: That’s it, I’m going to take the thing home and work on it on a computer that isn’t schizo. Also, my pecs are hurting a bit from the frisbee golf I played Sunday night. Clearly I need to do more bench pressing at the gym.

So, I just had a hard drive go kaput. Or at least windows thinks it went kaput. The BIOS thinks everything is dandy. Luckily it is just the drive where I store my files. Unfortunately, all my work from the last two weeks is on there. I’ll be working on that for the rest of the evening and possibly tomorrow. Talk amoungst yourselves.

Make sure you read the comments. At least down to where the guy from WSJ is posting.

And the In My World isn’t too shabby either.

JMS has a new idea for a Star Trek series. I don’t know what to think.

via Slashdot

I’ve got some Gmail invites to spare, if anyone needs one. Just email me (kristin at kristinhoppe dot com) your address.

The first private astronaut.

I wanna live on Mars! All the books I have read said it could be done. Sure, they were all science fiction books, but they were still books.

I don’t think we can terraform Mars, if terraforming is, as it was originally defined, making Mars suitable for human beings. But what we could do is make Mars suitable for life.

Human beings are a particular subset of life that require particular conditions. And it turns out oxygen in particular is very hard to make on Mars. That is, I think, beyond our technological horizons – it’s a long time in the future.

Okay, sure we don’t have rocketpacks yet, but that’s just impractical. People can barely drive cars, and you want them to fly? But given the right imputous, we’ll figure out how to make Mars suitable for humans soon enough. Maybe to save us from impending global disaster.

As I was reminded recently, a year ago today I started this blog. It’s rather painful for me to read my own entries, but you can, if you want. I would recommend against it though.

So Car d’Alene is this weekend. That’s swell. Except Sherman was blocked off so they could do their cruise tonight and I was too tired to remember to stay on the freeway and come home the back way. Naturally I ended up behind some person that had no idea where they were or where they were going. It was a fun 5 minutes going those seven blocks. I know it may not be immediately obvious, but when there are hundreds of people attending an event, you aren’t going to get a parking spot one block away. Please proceed at something approaching the speed limit to where there are spaces between the cars and park there.

Tomorrow, though, there will be cheesecake on a stick. Mmm. And one of those Peruvian bands, no doubt. They rock.

Interesting timing.

This is great stuff. I saw the I heart Haliburton shirt on a Right Wing Stuff blog ad earlier today too. My birthday is only in 5 months, so take this as a hint.

via Pete.

On why what you believe in matters.

Arafat agrees that Israel should exist as a Jewish state? What? Quick, does Spock have a beard in this universe? I mean, good news and all, but is this for real?

Okay, I hate, hate, hate websites with talking ads on them. I’m recording a program out on to tape, checking to see exactly how hard the wind is blowing, and all of a sudden there’s someone selling the little purple pill talking over my program. There’s 10 minutes wasted. Thank you, and I’ll never visit your site again.

P.S. The wind is blowing at about 20mph

The Japanese get all the good games.

All told, Yoshinoya is quite possibly one of the greatest beef-bowl simulators on the current generation of game consoles. Bold words, we know, but the simple gameplay mechanics, the tight pacing, and the wacky assortment of bosses give it an undeniable charm.

Having put up a big fence, Israel is now going to build a moat. They need a fire-breathing dragon that likes muffins to live under the bridge .

Scotty is getting a star on the walk of fame. Finally, I can sleep at night.

I’m picturing link guns from Unreal Tournament.

Maybe it’s good to keep the legislators from legislating.

Time for my favorite Will Rogers quote: This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

It’s the motherlode of Star Trek quizzes. Some of those are tough.

If only they could get a foot in the door in the Islamic countries.

“How can we let our women drive or lift their veils or mix with men? What is next? Shall we see them one day sitting in a cafe and drinking tea together?”

Great Space Coaster. I saw it about three times, but they always talked about the gnus. At the time I thought it was such a clever pun that I still haven’t gotten over it.

Anyway, the reason for this post is News is dumb.

Finally, Star Trek: TOS is coming out in a boxed set. And there was much rejoicing.

Ah, yes, here’s what I remember the news saying back in the 80’s. Of course, this is an opinion piece, but the difference is slight.

weblogs.com just stopped hosting blogs.

Ack! They’re coming back. I knew it. Already I’m seeing them zipping about downtown on their bikes. Soon I’ll be frustrated by them anywhere I try to drive.

Won’t someone think of the tree octupi?

via A Family Runs Through It, who has all your Pacific-Northwest-outdoor family-fun-type news.

This doesn’t exactly sound like a ringing endorsement.

The FTC recognizes that a do-not-spam list wouldn’t work. And here’s the kicker, they aren’t going to do it!

Whatever will happen to the world if Iran refuses to cooperate even more with the UN atomic energy watchdog thingy.

If I didn’t go to a Calvary Chapel I’d probably end up being a Southern Baptist. We disagree on a couple minor points, but at least they stand for something.

The December report complained that some in the alliance had questioned “the truthfulness of Holy Scripture,” refused to affirm the necessity of conscious faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, promoted women preachers, criticized the SBC and its foreign mission board and adopted an “anti-American” tone.

Luke sent me a gmail invite. Thank you Luke!

Now I’m one of the cool kids. And I’m not stuck with an address like: fho32uf98uf@gmail.com. Neener-neener.

There may not be quite as many uninsured Americans as the numbers indicate.

Testing gmail spam filters.

And by the way, anyone wanting to send me a gmail invite, I would be most appreciative.

Boy, Frank has a way with the women.

Here we go, continuing on our quest for moose. The first one is an interesting one. The artist put another moose on its back. I’m not sure of the artistic signifigance of that.

Then, right down the street is this one:

Really, rather dull in the panoply of moose. So we quickly continue on to:

A camouflaged moose. Or it would be camouflaged if it were in the woods. But it’s not, it’s in a parking lot. So, it’s not really camouflaged at all.

And now the piece d’resistance, the impressionist moose:

A closer look:

Really, very nice. Odd to do it on a moose, but still, very nice.

Coming soon: moose from the northern side of town. Assuming the moronic hooligans don’t get to them first.

I’m Fred Randall, a 35 year old male from Houston, Texas that works as an engineer for NASA and makes over $100,000 a year. My zip code is 77007, and I live on Alston St. Well, that’s what the newspapers that have worn me down to registering think.

And unless you are the New York Times or the Washington Post or of similar stature, you aren’t going to get me to register, *cough*spokesman-review*cough*.

via i am always right

Yeah, but does it makes you look fat?

I don’t understand why they aren’t calling me for quotes. Cest la vie.

When Rehnquist, O’Conner, and Thomas all agree you know your case is going down in flames.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist agreed with the outcome of the case, but still wrote separately to say that the Pledge as recited by schoolchildren does not violate the Constitution. Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Clarence Thomas agreed with him.

Oh sure, it looks nice, but if it still tastes like cauliflower, what’s the point. Couldn’t they get it artifically cheese flavored since they were tinkering with it?

That is not the way to strike fear into the hearts of Americans. His other ideas were much better.

Sometime today there should be more moose of Coeur d’Alene. Assuming no more emergency radioendectmies happen.

In case you were wondering here is the music from Reagan’s funeral.

Remind me not to complain about how long the funerals around here take. Oy, that’s a lot of music.

I need one of these rooms. Not that I have trouble sleeping. Just reading the article almost put me to sleep. I mean that in the nicest possible way, of course. Man, I could use a nap.

One of the better known VRWC member, the United Nations, says Saddam was shipping WMDs out of the country before and during the invasion in 2003.

Aww, we’re all one happy world family now.

“We accommodated them; they accommodated us,” a senior administration official said. “We had a very happy outcome. This is known as diplomacy, an art so forgotten as to be exotic and even radical.”

Apparently fit enough to survive. There will be governmental panels on the subject though.

A massive sinkhole empties a lake. Lakeshore property values plummet.

“These things happen,” Powers said.

They do? Are you sure?

Scientists to test space-time fabric. What if it’s like nylon and just keeps unraveling?

Here’s how not to win people to your side.

First of all, you’re disadvantaged because you are racist Nazi scum. But then using a virus to mass mail spam is like a trifecta of things people hate. But I’m sure everyone is against you because you’re misunderstood.

North Korea has missles capable of hitting Alaska. If I were Kim Jung-il I’d just give up now. Take the money in the Swiss bank accounts and retire to a tropical island. But I’m rather risk adverse.

This is teh funney. I really did laugh aloud. You may now think less of me.

Qaddafi denies he planned to assasinate the crown prince of Saudi Arabia last year. Here’s the original NY Times article (reg.req).

Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful always brings a tear to my eye.

Coming soon to a license plate near you (if you live in Britian).

How computer-generated people become more odd-looking the more human-like they become. I think they should keep trying though. Sooner or later someone will nail it and they will be indistinguishable from humans and therefore video games will be better, or something like that.

Roomba, one of those Frisbee-shaped vacuum robots, and it doesn’t look even vaguely human. Yet as it zips around my living room, it seems amazingly alive, and I can’t help but feel warmly toward it.

I love my little roomba. He does all that work for me.

via Slashdot

Orson Scott Card and Evangelical Outpost

People are getting ruder in Britian.

Of course, just as a seasoned air-rager will have a plausible excuse for their behaviour, so does the office lout. The reason office workers are rude and bad-mannered, ignore their colleagues and swear their heads off is because of the pressure of work, say two-thirds of those surveyed by Office Angels.

Keep a weather eye out though. The next Ice Age is coming.

Federal employees get a tax-payer paid vacation because of Reagan’s death. Reagan should have shut down those departments he wanted to when he had the chance.

via Joyful Christian

Running through my bookmarks, here’s some stuff you should go look at.

Cheese Racing

The Twinkie Project

Make Enterprise out of a floppy disk

Satirewire

The Book of Ratings

Zombo

Evangelical Outpost is right.

But the most infuriating part — my hands are shaking with rage just typing this — is that the Iraqis are getting gas at five cents a gallon! Five cents! You can’t buy raw sewage in America for five cents a gallon! And why do the Iraqis need such cheap gas anyway? For heaven’s sakes, they don’t even drive SUVs! What, is it for the long daily commute to Fallujah where their job is to fight the infidels?

Check out Slashdot’s poll, that’s just funny.

The white bread recipe in this book makes amazing bread. I’ll try the bread again tomorrow after it’s had time to sit, just to double check.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, it’s amazing.

So the recipe is (shh! don’t tell anyone I told you. And I’m doing it off the top of my head, you might want to wait until I double check this):

1 package yeast
1/4 cup of warm water

2 cups whole milk
2 TBSP butter
2 TBSP sugar
1 TBSP salt

5 or so cups of flour

activate the yeast in the warm water

warm the milk and butter till the butter melts, add the sugar, stir. Let the mixture cool down to lukewarm.

add the yeast water, stir.

add 2 cups of flour, stir.

add the salt, stir.

add more flour until you have a soft dough, knead 10 minutes or so.

let it rise, covered, in a greased bowl till doubled in volume.

gently punch down, cut in half, let it rest 10 minutes.

roll each half out, roll it up, and put it in the bread pan.

let it rise again, till doubled in volume or it’s oozing out of the pan.

bake in preheated oven at 400. Watch out that the top doesn’t burn.

Why did Fanta make a Quinine Water flavored drink? Did they think the malaria-conscious consumer was a big, untapped market?

The Patriot Act has its pluses and its minuses, but it’s nice to see local government checking the power of the central government.

The current president, Reagan’s vice president, and various world leaders are speaking, but Clinton feels partisanly shunned because he doesn’t get to speak at Reagan’s funeral. What sort of relationship did Clinton and Reagan have?

“It is a state funeral, using tax dollars,” the top Clinton insider explained.

So what? Does that mean no crosses can be displayed or the ACLU will have a fit?

Clearly, Gatorade’s new Chinese spokesman has been chosen.

How Reagan affects the election. Sure, the Democratic Underground was all over this yesterday, but I expected it to take a while longer to hit the mainstream. And Bush is going to “capture” Osama in October too, you know.

Letter to the Editor. (scroll down)

You got to skip school for the inaguration? No fair.

I do remember that carpet.

I’m sure customers are going to be lining the blocks to get these players.

Coeur d’Alene makes it onto Slashdot. And there’s a surprising number of /.ers from CdA, three, by my count.

Tough times in Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda attacking, and you can’t crack down too hard, after all the general populace tends to agree with them. What to do, what to do?

If you care what I think about Iraq and WMD, I wrote more than usual in these comments. Not much more, but hey.

Mark Twain is the only American “literature” I can stand. And great literature stands the test of time.

Would it be such a bad thing if Europe had to provide for its own defense? I thought they didn’t like us anyway. Shouldn’t they be glad to see us go?

Wanna see 3D Transformers breakdancing? I knew you would.

Kerryopoly. Of course I suck at Monopoly, but maybe I’ll do better at this.

Food myths debunked by Pravda.

via Fark

PS. I never could get the hang of those “In Soviet Russia” jokes. But did you hear the one where a priest, a rabbi, and a minister all walk into a bar and the bartender looks up and says, “What is this, a joke?”

Is that legal? Cause it certainly isn’t right.

CNN narrows down the likely choices of the Democratic VP to nearly every democrat whose name is known by the general public.

Quotes:

Precisely because it was costly, idealistic, and dangerous, we should expect a lot of killing and bombing in the next few months as an array of opponents tries to derail the upcoming transition and elections. Anyone who thinks thousands of Islamic fascists and out-of-work Baathists won’t want to stop the region’s first consensual government is unhinged.

…

If this caring world is worried about the injustice of a fence or Islamaphobia, then start slurring nuclear India for its $1 billion fence, which shuts off the entire (impoverished Muslim) country of Bangladesh — a far harsher blow to far more millions than Israel’s so-called “Wall” aimed at stopping suicide killing.

…

Our Real Dilemma. We do have a grave problem in this country, but it is not the plan for Iraq, the neoconservatives, or targeting Saddam. Face it: This present generation of leaders at home would never have made it to Normandy Beach. They would instead have called off the advance to hold hearings on Pearl Harbor, cast around blame for the Japanese internment, sued over the light armor and guns of Sherman tanks, apologized for bombing German civilians, and recalled General Eisenhower to Washington to explain the rough treatment of Axis prisoners.

Something or other happened over in Washington. Or maybe not.

Sorry kids, work is interfering with the blogging. Hopefully this afternoon will be calmer.

I particularly like the shade of blue crack.

David Hasselhoff is putting out a rap album. Iced-T is producing it. I’m speechless.

An article on blogging, but I really liked this quote:

Last weekend I organized and moderated an evening of double panels here in L.A. for the American Cinema Foundation, which promotes free speech and liberal democracy around the world through filmmaking. These days that means the ACF is a right-of-center organization; or, as many on the left would see it, a far-right fascist entity filled with neocon crazies.

Heh.

An long article on how Microsoft is missing the boat.

Except Microsoft has always been slow to adapt to the internet. When they do, however, they come in, smash everything in the way, and take over.

As you turn onto Sherman and look to your left this is the first moose you see:

In this group is my favorite of the moose I have found so far.

So, there we are on 2nd and Sherman and just across the street is this thing.

This one was the first I saw. It was late at night, I was tired, a cop with his lights flashing had someone pulled over, and I thought, “Is that a moose? How long has that been there? And why is it so weird looking?” I thought it was due to the circumstances, but no, it’s just as weird looking during the day.

So we continue on our merry way up to 3rd Street.

That’s nice, children dancing in a field. Colors aren’t too obnoxious, it’s one of the better ones.

But then, we come to 5th Street

The infamous Tolouse-LauMoose. A moose, with a beard, dressed in clothes and decorated like a walking billboard for Moulin Rouge. Yes, brought to you buy the art teachers of the Coeur d’Alene School District. I fear for the future of arts in Coeur d’Alene.

Just halfway up the block is this one:

“Sacred Walk,” which apparently should be taken in your Old Skool Vans or possibly Converse to blend in with the background.

That concludes the Shermon Avenue moose walk. Not to worry though, there’s more.

Scrappleface is back.

Due to temporary technical difficulties the moose of Sherman will not be seen until tomorrow.

Sorry kids.

In unrelated news, my first run of Tubbs hill this year was 6 minutes faster than my first run last year. Which says more about my poor running skills last year, but still, it’s improvement. Yay me.

New concerns about childhood obesity. It causes health problems. No kidding, Sherlock.

“I’ve been in the field for 20 years. What I’m seeing now, I’ve never seen before,” said Caprio, adding that it is not uncommon for a teen to weigh 200 or 300 pounds.

Losing weight through diet and increased activity should help reverse or reduce the conditions and ward off complications, she said.

This is tacky.

“If these people were able to read and write with a simplified spelling system, they would be able to fill out a job application, stay employed, and stay out of prison,” said Sanford Silverman, 86. The retired accountant from Cleveland was handing out copies of his book, “Spelling for the 21st Century: The case for spelling reform.”

And if you got the job without being able to read, how would being illiterate keep you from staying employed? Also, why would illiteracy cause you to go to jail? “Back when I couldn’t spell I was forced to rob 7-11s”?

I don’t know what they have to say, it doesn’t matter anyway, whatever it is, I’m against it.

A guy recorded his trip from L.A. to Beaverton and compressed it into 6 minutes. Ah, the beauty of the 5. Not for the faint of bandwidth.

When, oh when will this stupidity stop?

Sure the idea is old and tired, but so is Kerry. Die hippies, die.

Back in my day the Berlin Wall coming down was current events, but we still only spent a week on everything after World War I too.

Coming tomorrow. The mooses of Sherman Ave. And as a teaser I have one, er, two, uh, one hyphenated word for you: Toulouse-LauMoose.

UPDATE: I’m trying to figure out a way I can qualify for part of this. I definitely need to improve my skills as an art critic. Maybe the moose could be considered theatre.

I didn’t know anyone in the US knew how to play cricket. Now I find out they are trying to form a professional league.

You too can download part of the second Star Trek pilot. Which would be the first one with Kirk and Spock.

via Trekweb

From Frank J.

* When helping the Iraqis with elections, make sure the ballots are clear so they don’t come under rule of Pat Buchanan.

* Remember to take your car keys off the key ring before handing the keys to government buildings over.

* Though security should mainly be handled by the Iraqis now, do leave a few Marines to help out… and maybe Aquaman.

Yeah, you go ahead and snooze.

Some of the more radical French thinkers describe sleep as a revolutionary activity that should be used as a weapon against the evils of capitalism.

…

Paradoxically, the French have more opportunities to sleep than almost any other nation. With a maximum 35-hour working week imposed by law, they have time to spare.

Alton Brown has a Wired article. They are shockingly behind the times here. More links are here.

I broke the brush coupler on my roomba, through my own fault. I didn’t clean it out enough. I contacted customer support to buy a new one, but they are sending me one for free. See, that’s all it takes to build customer loyalty.

I’m willing to bet money that their ancestors would give them a swift kick in the butt and tell them to get on with their lives.

DeGruy-Leary testified this month in Washington County Circuit Court that African Americans today are affected by past centuries of U.S. slavery because the original slaves were never treated for the trauma of losing their homes; seeing relatives whipped, raped and killed; and being subjugated by whites.

Also,

“He had a traditional, Southern, small-town, working-class upbringing where ‘whuppin’ was accepted,” Vogt said. “Whether that was abusive or not, that is in the eye of the beholder. He was raised differently than your typical kid in Beaverton.”

A “whuppin'” does not kill children. Regardless of whether they are in Mississipi or Beaverton. Otherwise there would be scores of cases of traditional, Southern, small-town, working-class kids being killed by their parents. This guy is whacked.