Yeah, that's it.

I only need an ankle. An ankle. Just one ankle. Nnngh. I need to get back on the fucking bike. I've got my transmission figured out; that's the hard part, I can handle the rear brake just fine. And it would get me to and from the office – as well as out to the "remote" offices – and I wouldn't have to beg a ride every time. Sadface.

Want. Bike.

What did you say?

People don't even realise the television is on anymore. They'll walk into a room, turn it on, proceed to ignore it or leave the room, vegetate for an hour or two, any combination of the above, and just leave, as though the normal state of the television is not merely "on," but rather "default."

Sick.

The new ZR-1 vs the "old" Z06?

With this monster in showrooms, and people waiting for it like people once waited for the Z06, maybe those Z06's will come down in price (the C6's are already dropping deeeeeep in KBB) to where I won't have some salesworm trying to squeeze 20k over its value on me. And, nnnngh, top-mount intercooler.

Side note:

We can, however, share some photos of the cars we drove today around the Lutz-ring at General Motors' Milford Proving Ground.

Bob. Robert, baby. Why do you have your own lutz-ring and I don't have my own asphalte du mort to rip ass around on? What gives? You get to have your cake, and you get to eat it? And get paid to eat it?

Check please!

More dislocation goodness

My knee "fell out" again last night. The pain is excruciating. I can't stop working because if I stop working I no longer get paid, or I burn through sick hours (of which I have something like twelve remaining due to this whole fucking injury process) or whatever. And I can't take drugs at work because then my coworkers will say, "are you on drugs?"

No, friends, pain is my reward for dedication to work.

Ouch. It fucking hurts. It really fucking hurts. It hurts in a cast that immobilizes the entire fucking leg, and there's no more I can do to make it stop hurting except pound my skull in with opiates. I can't help but think the surgeon who wants to "wait it out" and "see if we can't make that stronger" is a sadist. The pain I went through last night is only going to happen again and again until I have no longer acl or whatever soft tissue I have left is destryoed. And each time, it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt a lot. Enough that I'll be yelling and pushing Sandy away and irritable with my friends and coworkers.

And why? To avoid surgery that's fucking inevitable?

How your company is run

Frank once quoted me, so I don't feel bad quoting him, and besides, I'm linking him. And I'm entirely serious (and friendly) when I say, can we have this man frozen in carbonite and put on display somewhere as a reminder to HR drones everywhere, this is what you should try to be. Have him beatified. Knighted. Promoted to, hell, President. Let him hire a Secretary of War, and let him run the rest of the country.

Here's Frank, freestyling, just like a Zach de la Rocha or a Travis Pastrana, in his own special way:

• Why do you do performance reviews?
  
• Do you really need a vacation policy?
  
• How’s using email to “communicate” working out?
  
• Think a training class can infuse culture into your company?
  
• Do you ever listen to yourself when you say “employee engagement”?
  

Christ, this is a smart man. You'd think that this was all simple, duhhh stuff, but nobody is frickin doing it!. He must be so agitated that an entire industry (his!) is doing so many stupid things and doing them so willfully, thinking they're the way out, when all they do is perpetuate the same stupid things that got them where they are! I can imagine this is a lot like me screeching about how programmers and IT staff in general are in it for the wrong reasons, are doing the wrong things with the wrong people at the wrong time and other wrongisms.

I wish I could buy Frank a beer, or offer to give him some of my homegrown habaneros or something... because the man can even grow his own, fabulous, tomatoes.

I'm just in awe. I've always despised HR organisations, and here is Frank, making me think that there is hope out there for corporate Earth (note I did not say Corporate America – it aaaaalll needs changing), and that one day work won't kill people like me or drive us insane.

I respect a man with a brain. I respect a revolutionary. I respect a gardener and a man who values – no, cherishes – plant life. And I can't help but be heartened by a man who, were his cause taken up by those he tries to reach, would make the world a better place for me and hundreds of thousands (millions perhaps today, but certainly soon) of others. Frank, thank you. Thank you so much. May your words reach the ears they need to and your tomatoes always be as beautiful.

Rock fever

This is Ben Martinek, a friend of ours, leaned way over on his Ninja 250 (just like ours!) at Laguna Seca. It should be mentioned that the "other bike" is a Hypermotard. Jealous. Jeeeeealous.

People in Hawaii talk about "rock fever" and "island fever" – there's nothing to do so they go crazy on the islands. Duane Johnson, "The Rock" himself, said that there was only one thing to do, growing up in Hilo: fight. I can't describe how antsy being in this stupid cast makes me. I read and I watch my documentaries, I dream about guns and motorcycles, and all I want to do is go downstairs and get on the fucking ninja.

I know I can ride it. I know I can. It's just that if something should happen to me to make it worse, or hurt the bike, I could never forgive myself for hurting Sandy's bike or betraying her trust like that (she expects me to use better judgment than to hop on a motorcycle when I need surgery on one of my knees). But I really, really want to. It's a beautiful day, the swelling has gone down, it looks like all hell is going to break loose at work tomorrow... what more perfect time could there be to get one good ride in on the bike? Just roll that right wrist back and let the bike do the rest.

Let the bike do the rest.

Let the bike do the rest.



Let the bike do the rest.

Wood refinishing on the marlin

I used some 220-grit sandpaper to take off a lot of the sealant and varnish from the Marlin's stock yesterday. It turns out this is a much more productive task than I thought. Productive, in the sense that I had a pile of varnish and other nastiness in front of me afterwards, and no doubt some of it down my throat.

It was also a lot more work than I thought. I think what I'm going to do is just break down and get one of those black-and-decker "mouse" things, let it do the heavy lifting, and do it with a respirator. For the fine details, I can just do it manually. I'm going to have to anyways.

The parts where I seem to have gotten all the way down to the wood are appearing much lighter than I expected. Like Birch, maybe. I can't imagine it would be Birch, but I also don't think it's Walnut. So it may turn out to be pretty flexible as wood goes. I guess a firm lacquering would help that, but I haven't done enough woodwork to know.

There's a tiny bit of water damage to the butt of the stock, which makes me think it was even left outside for a rain or something. It's not bad, but it's clearly there.

At any rate, with a glass bedding and pillar bedding, it should be a fairly stable 100-200yd platform, especially with the requisite barrel (starting to wonder if anyone will make a chrome-lined octagonal barrel for me).

book happenings

Any of you following shelfari (it's on the right...) will notice a slight, uh, change. I'm not prepared to get in to why and how because I haven't yet digested it (and it's giving me a lot of indigestion, believe me), but for the moment I'm at almost 100% work-related.

HR 5483

short: grass!!!!!!

I've actually emailed Jim Moran (with whom I vigorously disagree on gun control – his stance on DC v Heller is indefensible) in respect to HR 5483. I don't do this often, as I both see it as a waste of time (are they actually listening to the people they represent, or are they "representing" their interests, e.g., the PACs and SIGs – boy, isn't that a cynical way of looking at things – are there no good public servants?) for the representative and a waste of time for myself. I see little positive – or negative – actually coming out of it. Rather, I've just clogged up the interwebs a little more, as I do here, and there's no reason to if nothing's to be done about it.

But when it comes to decriminalisation of marijuana, I have a soft spot in my heart. I see it as the classic state versus federal power struggle. The states, California in particular, have decided that it is their right to regulate the use of marijuana in their states. The federal government disagrees. Why is really unclear, although California's Proposition 215 did make it all the way to SCOTUS and the federal government won. Somehow, since I moved to Virginia from California, and I can walk the streets of Alexandria, and I can visit Mount Vernon, I feel what this country was when it was just "thirteen sisters" and that they never were one united state with homogenous laws. We had a federation, and it became a republic. There has always been tension between provincial and federal (although this is not the right word, provincial does not seem to have an appropriate antonym) governance. I guess maybe I just feel it more here. Marijuana is a real civil rights issue, and it's also a real state vs federal issue, and as such, I can't help but want to see it changed to favor people first, the state second, and the country third.

Petty marijuana crime prosecution puts a ridiculous strain on our resources as an entire country. We have judicial, military, treasury, and police forces involved in the interdiction, location, and prosecution of marijuana-related cases. I understand there are the huge cases involving many tons of marijuana (and still think that could be legalised and taxed...), but we are also putting people away for their "third strike" after finding them in possession of an ounce of marijuana. Granted, an ounce is a lot of marijuana, but it doesn't exactly make one a dealer. I would think you'd need at least a kilogram before you had a self-sustaning marijuana distribution business.

If we can incrementally decriminalise marijuana, and move towards a more sensible "drug war" policy, we can free up tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars used in prosecuting this "war" which is both ludicrous and unwinnable (less so, in fact, than this so-called "Iraq War"). One cannot win the hearts-and-minds of a people with laws and force (that is, in fact, how this country was founded). It is possible to tax them, however, and provided the taxes do not go so far that your Sam Adams and John Hancock sorts get uppity about it, you should do okay.

My guess is it will go nowhere, and Moran will either not respond or will respond with some canned reason why a man who believes in state healthcare, welfare, gun confiscation, more leave for federal employees, and posts the smarmiest bullshit he can on his congress website would be against decriminalisation of marijuana. I can hear it now: "for the children!"

What a country.

sudo aptitude install SIGSEGV

Aug  4 07:36:51 rancor kernel: [329757.122807] aptitude[8549]: segfault at 2020202028 rip 7f9a54f491fa rsp 7fff5e03dbc8 error 6


While attempting to put together some smb servitude for a busted Dell this morning (normally Rancor does not serve up much in the way of Windows files), I happened across JM's own "samba setup" deal. While it's mostly just a "which tools are where" thing for me, having set up samba on a bunch of different platforms, I feel I have enough in common with Moeller that I am actually quite comforted by knowing that he and I are using roughly the same operating system.

I'm not sure why aptitude feels the need to keep segfaulting (it does this almost every single time it's run...). It also doesn't really hurt anything, as it seems to segfault when it's freeing up whatever lockfile it keeps around, as the actual install works, and the operation is successful. I'm actually not even very curious, since it Seems To Work, but it seems kinda, I dunno, amateurish. (although I did have Apple's Software Update totally esplode on me over the weekend; had to go digging in /Library and manually install it and reboot!)



Anyhow, hello and cheers, JM.

ethernet over power

I know we've done TCP over power lines before (hi, Pablo), but I heard recently that HP is doing ethernet through their power adapters. This might make Life With an Air more do-able. I work in an environment where wireless is frowned upon, and keeping an Air tethered to an ethernet port is kind of a pain in the ass.

I am sure, like Magsafe, there are patents obstructing other people from doing it. But a magsafe power/ether device would be awesome. Kinda would suck to trip over your ethernet cord and lose your connection, but then, it's a whole lot better than losing your motherboard.

x86_64

ERROR: Your architecture, \'x86_64\', is not supported by the
       Adobe Flash Player installer.

 C'mon, folks, Core chips have been around for a long time. Not supporting 64 bit is shameful.

two notes:

The pre-amp out on the Macbook Air is even worse than the one on the Macbook. Oh Holy Cow, they found more dollars to strip.

Drinking whisky straight from the bottle, while a wicked affair, is indeed way more manly from drinking it from glasses. I may have to try this with bourbon and move to kentucky.

Medical diagnoses with Blackberry and Macintosh

The following is gross and you may not want to read any further.

I recently began coughing. Somebody I talk to about coughing is something of a "cough chauvanist" despite my more than adequate history with "coughs." Oh, I cough up that kind of shit all the time, I hear. Well, I decide to send an email with the following points:

It might well be yeast again. It is at least a small amount of "fluid" in the lungs. The first still is blood and mucus that came out of my lungs onto a napkin on my desk. this is stuff that was propelled from my lungs, not oh, cough, cough, into my mouth, splat onto the napkin. The second still is perhaps gross, but it is important. It shows that this is a globby yellow piece of phlegm (I provide it here so you don't think I'm being a hypochondriac, but take somebody curious like [censored] and ask him to show you the individual pieces of badness in that globule with contrast/exposure/saturation) with blood and other unhappiness in it. The other thing this shows you is we're not talking about some runny nose drippy gooey stuff, we're talking about a globule bigger than a 5/32 screwdriver, and that can just hang there because it's so sticky and gross.


I keep coughing this shit up. It's the same colour as yesterday when I thought I had pneumonia. I have a scale here, I can start weighing how much crap is coming out of my lungs, if you like. At the moment, when I get a big icky, I've been separating it into blood and yellow. I could even weigh both. I could also provide my buddies at NOVA a nice sample.

[I have removed some unpleasant comments from this email]

Oh but wait, it gets better. Because on my Air I have not seen fit to install Photoshop or Illustrator or anything, I have become something of a pro at using Preview to do most of my image manipulation. For the rest, I hope to use Graphic Converter, but since its interface is so horrible and its set of tools so close to useless to me, I suspect I may not ever pay its $35 price (and come on, Lemke, are you going to really get angry with me for using it once or twice a year?).

So I took a picture with my blackberry, using its LED flash, of the back of my throat. I thought I might be able to see something. Well, no.

What we see is (expectedly) blown out and mostly just "ew, is that a jellyfish or a cave or the front-end of a spider, or what? Gross! But after fiddling with it, I was able to see exactly what I wanted to show my doubting thomas: pustules.

You can see some dots that really don't belong there in pictures of healthy throats. That, coupled with the grey-green-yellow-with-blood shit coming out of my lungs, convinces me that biological warfare continues in my throat and/or lungs, even as it continues in my inflamed fucking knee. It may be that the whole process of coming off fentanyl has created a cough in the DTs, and this is comorbid to that. CH may be able to comment on that. But, it's all very interesting. Especially the fact I did this with my blackberry and a toy graphics tool on my Mac.

If only every ER Resident or Nurse had half the brain I do. Then, maybe I'd be thoroughly insulted and medicated before being treated effectively.

betrayal and the sexes; betrayal and the office

Basically, one person, who knows better, put two coworkers who were incredibly hostile to eachother and not working well together at all within a few feet from them in an office they don't normally work in – against my request – because he wants to meet an arbitrary date that he feels is probably more important than the possibility of these two employees actually getting into, say, fisticuffs.

And then there's this coworker. He's definitely the "wrong" type of coworker (whereas Matt and I were both the right type of programmer and got caught in a similarly unhappy situation years ago), and decided it would be real funny to make an ass of me to my coworkers, including deliberately giving me incorrect instructions for fixing a problem with his server, then fixing it on his own via rdp, and having the fucking nerve to send me this gloating email. "strange, sweetcakes, I [fixed it] in two minutes." I asked the users in questions if I'd done anything wrong and they were all shocked at this employee's behavior. Previously, we'd been friends. Another one of these situations where I stupidly, stupidly, stupidly trust men. They're fucking useless and should just not be trusted to do anything from manage latrines to marines, software development, or even be friends. They all fucking suck.

Our third example is not such a serious problem, but is an example of the typical male, "well, I know this is important to other male, and I did make certain assertions to him, but since he is also a male, he will undertand if I fuck right off and don't do what I said I would. How this relates to the previous two is not even academic. It's really kind of sad that it relates at all, and it all happens on the same day.

Fuck people. Fuck men in particular. To think I've said to my two closest friends lately, you know, I could really use a friend right now, and I got not only the clap-on-the-shoulder, duh, we're friends, but the smile-and-nod affirmation that, duh, we're friends, and if I need something I need only call. Because we're men. And men just don't let men down.

“I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” -- Jesus (John 15:15)

Fuck. Men. All of them. Starting with my one presonal favorite hatesicle, and ending with the last fucking XY out there.

bugs and how it makes your life suck

A pile of garbage will come forth. I may push the last bits from advogato forward to blogger because there's only a little bit left, and some of it is relevant today.

But this means that people with RSS readers will see these as "new" posts, even though they date from, like I said, 2004.

You may want to ignore me for a couple days.