This is why we buy the extended warranty on laptops

AppleCare is sending me a box which I will use to send my laptop to the repair facility. Should arrive tomorrow, even.

Of course, now I have to figure out how to back up data on a machine that I can't really see. Wait. What am I thinking?

I work in a room full of monitors and projectors. I have another monitor. And network cables. Zoidberg is the winner! Hooray!

Character, in full force

The GOP convention is showing their true colors, sort of like when Pat Buchanan scared the shit out of everybody in 1996.

They're fucking the dead of 9/11 to score political points. The entire GOP platform consists of:

• Terror
• Terror
• Terror
• Smearing opponents
• Terror
• 9/11
• Freedom-haters

That, and wearing band-aids with purple hearts on them.

Tell me, how is insulting everybody who serves in the military and comes back wounded a good idea? Visit Walter Reed hospital wearing one of those, why don't you? Steve Gilliard's blog has pictures, and the kicker is that the guy passing them out is a chickenhawk himself. What a bunch of classy, classy people.

Bush hasn't made anyone safer--terrorism has gone up on his watch, not down. He has nothing to run on, other than his personality. And quite frankly, if you find a miserable failure compelling, I think it says more about you than it does about him.

Very cranky this morning, what with the news and the laptop and my inability to remember the serial number for it, so now I have to wait until I get home to get AppleCare to fix it. Fuck.

GDMFSOB

When we got home this evening, I set up the laptop in the bedroom. When I opened the lid, there was a strange cracking/popping noise and nothing appeared on the screen.

Looks like the lid of our PowerBook broke. It's an older TiBook, back from when they painted the case instead of brushed metal. (A lot of that paint has chipped off through use.) But the hinges looked fine until today--this machine worked fine last night and nothing has happened to it lately. Looks like a stress fracture or something. Grrrr.

This is why we buy AppleCare, I guess. I really hope this gets fixed.

When they finally upload, pictures will be on my T-Mobile gallery.

The Sedna Scenarios

Scientists are still trying to figure out just what Sedna is and how it got there. Sedna is slightly smaller than Pluto and appears to be red.

Now they're speculating that it might be a capture from another solar system entirely, which makes it very interesting indeed. Given what we're learning from Spirit and Opportunity, Sedna might be a treasure trove of information.

Hesiod returns

Counterspin Central is back, at least momentarily. And there was much rejoicing.

I wholeheartedly agree with him, by the way:

One final thought.

Whatever you have to do to help Kerry win, you have to do. If that means donating money -- do it. It it means volunteering -- do it. If it means writing letters to your local papers -- do it.

You can't afford not to.

Good-bye. And let's win this thing.

My stylist asked me if I thought Bush was going to win in November. I said that I didn't think so, that we need Kerry as we cannot survive another four years with the current batch of clowns in office.

She responded, "I don't trust the government anymore. I don't think either of them can fix it."

I understand where she's coming from, but we have to try.

Fire in the disco

With all the Swift Boat Liars for Lying crap going on, the inquisitive folks responsible for How Much is Inside are on the case. An exhaustive search into the medals of George W. Bush shows some suprising things. I did not know he had a medal for ninjadom!

(There's also a more serious look if you're curious. Hell, I have more medals than he does, and all I did was compete in speech contests and be a Webelo in Cub Scouts.)

The bus ride goes much faster with music. Electric Six are getting it done.

Uniter, not a divider

There's a great thread on DailyKos today about the 250,000-400,000 protestors in NYC today. Good pictures, too.



The above picture is especially funny when you compare it to the dozen or so folks who showed up to watch Cheney blather.



I am beginning to feel optimistic that we are going to vote this fucker out of office in November. It's weird. But I would not put anything past these bastards at this point.

Went out for breakfast this morning. Had the acai, which I've been meaning to try for a while and it is quite good. I was expecting something with more of a taro feel to it, but it's just fantastic with granola, soy milk, and sliced bananas.

Picked up the Patton Oswalt CD, finally. You should, too. He's more than just that guy on King of Queens.

The horrors of Wookie-Ookie

The infamous Star Wars Christmas Special came up in our gaming session today. I only vaguely remember watching it when I was a kid, though maybe I just dreamed it. But obviously there is documentation, so it did really happen.

There's a new NetHack dungeon in Kingdom of Loathing. This is making me interested in the game again. I love Nethack, even if I suck at it. How can you not love a game which allows you to steal from shops with pets, transmute yourself, and tin meat for future consumption. Good stuff. I play NetHack every couple of months, get far enough to either starve to death or die from reckless sink-kicking.

Friends don't let friends kick sinks.

Intermittent page loads

Hrm. Either Haloscan or Blogger is screwing up my page loading. I can get it about 3 out of every 5 tries at work. Maybe lots of people are blogging today. Or commenting. Yeah.

Played a bit more of Beyond Good and Evil last night. It's one of those games that makes me look at my watch and finally notice what time it is. "Crap, I should go to bed."

Found out that there will be a GBA port of Guardian Heroes. The original Guardian Heroes on the Saturn was fun stuff, and we used to play as Nando the rabbit in multiplayer with great results. (Who doesn't like a rabbit that turns into a fireball and has a battlecry of "Feed the bunny?" A big jerk, that's who.) Great game, even if it had a lousy cover.

The Peacekeeper Wars

Trailer for the new Farscape movie up on Apple's site.

Lots of explosions, not a lot of humor to be seen. Looks like a continuation of the last couple of seasons rather than the first one. Which is weird. I like the early stuff in the show much better than the later soap opera it turned into. Multiple Crichtons, who is or is not Aeyrn's child's father, the spooky gramma Plot Device with the fakey third eye, etc.

And not Talyn or Zhaan. (Granted, both those characters are... not with the show anymore but dumber things have already happened, like the animated episode.)

In other news, Enron's deeds are still with us. Maria Cantwell had a press conference where she played tapes of Enron execs gouging California for power, all the while killing fish and joking about it. Then there's Iraq. Last night, Gillespie, the head of the RNC was on the Daily Show and I really wish Jon Stewart had followed up on the statement that Iraq was going well--there was a moment on his face where he asked, "Do you really want to go there?" and you could see him waiting to pounce.

Pikmin 2 is out Real Soon Now and I cannot wait. I loved the first game. Absolutely loved it, even if the final creature is completely impossible to kill. The only problem is that the Pikmin are so cute that I feel terrible any time anything bad happens to any of them--a poor Pikmin aflame is a sad sight, indeed.

A belated congratulations...

To my friend Josh and his new bride Julie!

It's times like these that I wish we had teleporters and stuff.

Trip photos

One can find them at my futurephone weblog.

Behold the power of Murphy!

Trip report

Our trip to San Francisco went something like this:

Thursday

Left work early to head to the MAX line to the airport. Got on the flight to OAK, which wasn't bad and they had complimentary beer. Getting from OAK to our hotel was a bit of a logistical nightmare, since neither of us really knew where it was in relation to the BART station. The folks we were down to see were off to karaoke, which sounded like fun but we were too tired to make it to the hotel and back to the train and then into the city and then back to the train and then back to the hotel. Particularly after no food. So we checked in after stumbling around University Ave., then hit a little college bar for dinner. Cafe Au Coquelet would become a common stop on our trip. I am not sure I recommend stumbling around in a strange city at night while carrying a suitcase.

Friday

Woke up late since many people were at work. The guide in the hotel led us to believe that one of the nearby restaurants had extensive breakfast options, so we tried it out. I think it had recently changed hands so it was OK, if a bit limited. Headed into the city to goof around, walking around various shops before hitting the Apple Store. They actually had iPods on hand, something we cannot get in Portland for love nor money. Decided to check out whether we could cancel our incoming order, since it hadn't shipped (we couldn't), so we left for Maxfield's.

Mrs. GFR visited that bar on her first trip to SF, and so we always make it a point to visit there and have a lovely beverage. That Maxfield Parrish painting above the bar is magnificent, though I am a little surprised that it's just sitting there above a big group of bottles. I'm imagining the spillage, I guess.

Anyway, after the bar we went back to the Apple Store to get a new iPod. Instant gratification is good. I ended up picking the green one, mostly since green has always been one of my favorite colors. As a kid, I ate my M&Ms in a specific order, light brown-dark brown-orange-yellow-green. (This was before red and blue came in to replace one of the browns, obviously.)

After the iPod, we visited Binder and Laws at Stacey's Books, then headed to Oyaji for sushi with the other Junkies. A wonderful time was had by all. For a restaurant that is sorta not open yet, they do a pretty great job.



Tasha is blurry in my hat!

Sushi was followed by more drinks and eating at Casa Pimptastico (home of the world's scariest bathroom wallpaper, which really is The Yellow Wallpaper). Then we eventually stumbled back to BART and to the hotel, where we plugged in the iPod for charging. (I ended up naming it Mini Oa, which may be the geekiest thing I've done in a lifetime of geeking.)

Saturday

Woke up and went to Cafe Au Coquelet for breakfast, then down University Ave to Out of the Closet for warmer clothing. My friend La and her husband Sander picked us up in La Stang (a red, convertible '66 Mustang--a car I've wanted to ride in ever since I first saw a picture of it nearly ten years ago) and we went off to Napa and Sonoma for wine tasting. We hit Trefethen, Andretti, and a couple of other places which I have written down somewhere but cannot remember at the moment. There are few things better than driving in a convertible through fields of growing grapes, except tasting fine wines and cheeses overlooking said fields.

Following a trip to San Rafael to meet Murphy, cat of great reknown, Sander drove us downtown so we could meet Athenais for drinks at the Tonga Room.



Tiki drinks rock.

Once we'd seen the thunderstorm twice, we left the hotel to visit to the Grace Cathedral Labyrinth followed by a quest for dim sum. We had a wonderful time walking through Chinatown and talking. I think I have learned my lesson on Chinatown dim sum, in that I must never ever listen to the people who try to lure me into their restaurant for food. It's never been what it could have been. We were supposed to visit Reveritas for a party, but we were exhausted from our day and turned into pumpkins.

Sunday

Another BART trip to El Cerrito Plaza to meet Junkies for breakfast, which was great. Eggs Benedict at the Cafe Royale. I like a restaurant done in lunch boxes from my childhood. Then we crashed back at Casa Pimptastico as folks moved to their separate parties. Eventually we hit Telegraph Hill in Berkeley, which was a shopping bonanza. Great record stores, some good bookstores, interesting shops on the street. Laws served as an excellent native guide, showing us the good places to get stuff.

After some retail therapy, we went back to Albany to listen to the Patton Oswalt CD that Laws had purchased. It was perhaps the funniest comedy routine that I have ever heard--when I woke up later, I couldn't figure out why I was in so much pain until I realized my abdominal muscles were aching from all the laughing. Had some dinner and generally hung out with folks before heading back to the hotel.

Monday

Woke up, checked out of the hotel, and took the BART to El Cerrito Plaza. Talked for a bit with Mike and Busta, and then off to downtown. Had lunch with Laws, missed meeting Binder, and then had another drink at Maxfield's. (Many of my SF memories involve drinking. I believe I left my liver behind in San Francisco.) Back to Albany, where Mike and I played a lot of Vice City. Eventually we hit BART during rush hour and an Oakland ballgame. OAK is a very weird airport in that none of the gates are that separate, so it ends up being quite loud.

Portland has been raining since our return. SF felt like were sick all the time--hot and cold in succession with no real pattern to it. Dressing in layers helps some but we found we were almost always a little bit out of synch. So far I have not dreamt about work since I've returned, so that's always a good thing.

1-6-3-0-9

(Kevin will know what that means. I am a little surprised that Khan wasn't smart enough to change a mere 5-digit code, though.)

Watching the Star Trek II DVD we bought in SF at Rasputin Music on Sunday. Thinking a bit about an old friend who used to quote this movie with me. From what I hear he's still in Iowa, but none of us have heard from him in eight years. Dropped off the map, alas.

This edition has a bunch of scenes that were cut from the original release. There's a lot more stuff with Midshipman Peter Preston (Scotty's nephew--he's sort of the Biggs Darklighter of this film--a guy who dies with much fanfare that's unexplained since certain scenes were cut) and a laugh-out-loud bit with Spock that I really wish had been in the original.

Working on a trip report but I must do laundry and stuff. Perhaps tomorrow.

System monitoring made easy

Binder pointed me to this Flash app that monitors network traffic, complete with graphics and on-the-fly sound. It strikes me that this is a better way of looking at data than a graphic or load monitor. (And our laptop has both MenuMeter and a Konfabulator widget for doing just that.)

I am too tired to talk about my trip in any detail, but I will list my purchases:

• iPod mini
• Mitch Hedberg CD
• Star Trek II: Director's Cut
• many, many drinks

Oh, and my brother sent me this message from White House West, which you should view right now. If you ever saw the iPod ads with Santa, you might have some idea what to expect. (Apple appears to have taken the ads off their site. Grrr.)

Back from SF

OK, so I am back from San Francisco, the city by the Bay, the city that rocks, the city that never sleeps.

Only it kinda does when BART closes down at 12:20. :)

Had a good time. I am sure I will have a more coherent report later. Mostly I did a lot of thinking and I've noticed that I'm a lot different in person than I am online.

There are reasons for this and hopefully they will be rectified at some point.

Off for vacation

Last night I dreamt about work again. Big surprise there. Woke up feeling like crap, though my leg seems better this morning. Off for vacation mid-afternoon, not terribly sure I'm going to be much fun on it.

Kerry gave the following speech yesterday. (As seen on Atrios.)

Over the last week or so, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been attacking me. Of course, this group isn’t interested in the truth – and they’re not telling the truth. They didn’t even exist until I won the nomination for president.

But here’s what you really need to know about them. They’re funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They’re a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won’t denounce what they’re up to tells you everything you need to know—he wants them to do his dirty work.

Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam.

As firefighters you risk your lives everyday. You know what it’s like to see the truth in the moment. You’re proud of what you’ve done—and so am I.

Of course, the President keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: “Bring it on.”

I’m not going to let anyone question my commitment to defending America—then, now, or ever. And I’m not going to let anyone attack the sacrifice and courage of the men who saw battle with me.

And let me make this commitment today: their lies about my record will not stop me from fighting for jobs, health care, and our security – the issues that really matter to the American people.

The situation in Iraq is a mess. That is the President’s responsibility and he owes the American people an answer.

America is on track to lose more jobs than it’s gained under George Bush and he supports a tax code that rewards companies for shipping jobs overseas. He owes the American people an answer.

Health care costs have exploded out of control. The President has done nothing and he owes the American people an answer.

The middle class is paying a bigger share of America’s tax burden. The President needs to answer to the American people why that is fair.

Unfortunately, those in the White House are coming from a different place than you and I. They see things a little differently than you and I. They tell us that today, when it comes to the issues that matter most, we’re getting the job done.

I'm sure the so-called liberal media will be trumpeting this all day. Ha.

Behaving like adults

I had... five meetings today.

One was in direct response to my second meeting, in which people with higher degrees behaved less like adults and more like the four-year-old I know who urinates in the street and can't quite get toilet-training right.

No, scratch that. He's better-behaved than they were.

Here's a tip: if you leave a meeting wanting to throw up or punch something, there's a problem. Doubly so if you doubt that anything will seriously be done about it.

So checklist:

• shitty meeting
• limping around with a bum knee
• lunch that felt like it was going to come back up at any moment
• so much time spent in meetings and meeting fallout I didn't get anything done
• being annoyed that I let somebody bother me like that

Yeah. It's been a great fucking day.

I have a vacation starting tomorrow, but it sure doesn't feel like it. At this point, maybe I would be better off trying to rebuild my knee out of deck screws and scraps of wood.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the meeting...

It's very difficult to meet and work on things when several of your coworkers live in a fantasy world where things work how they want to instead of how they actually work.

I would leave for vacation right now, except that would leave work with no single systems person on staff.

Right now, I am not sure I care. (Hello, coworkers! This is me not caring.)

Horse. Charley Horse

Few things are as unpleasant as waking up in the middle of the night with your calf muscle trying to tear your leg apart. The weird thing is I went back to sleep right after.

Woke up this morning and I still have a bit of a limp, which is annoying. Woke up to Susan Stanberg interviewing Mel Brooks. I guess he's now making a musical of Young Frankenstein, which should be awesome.

What is not awesome is the plan to attack Najaf in an attempt to make al-Sadr a martyr. I assume there's some other reason for doing this, but if the end goal is to incite open rebellion and civil war as quickly as possible, I am going to predict Mission Accomplished. No flight suit required.

Not much wheat, whole lotta chaff

Blogger has a new navbar thingie up at the top of a lot of their blogs.

It's weird. Some of the blogs it takes you to (seemingly at random--if there's an order to it I have yet to figure it out) are interesting, but the vast majority of them are about Jebus or slack-jawed conservatives, or both.

I'm sure they say the same thing about me, though. "WHo dares questoin great leadar Bush! He is keeping us safe from terroristism!"

There's probably a sociological experiment in there somewhere, though figuring out a way to downplay the self-selection of blogosphere would be challenging.

It is a great day for science

Cassini has discovered two new moons. Now that's pretty cool. OK, so maybe discovered one new moon and rediscovered an old one.

With eyes sharper than any that have peered at Saturn before, the Cassini spacecraft has uncovered two moons, which may be the smallest bodies so far seen around the ringed planet.

The moons are approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) and 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across -- smaller than the city of Boulder, Colorado. The moons, located 194,000 kilometers (120,000 miles) and 211,000 kilometers (131,000 miles) from the planet's center, are between the orbits of two other saturnian moons, Mimas and Enceladus. They are provisionally named S/2004 S1 and S/2004 S2. One of them, S/2004 S1, may be an object spotted in a single image taken by NASA's Voyager spacecraft 23 years ago, called at that time S/1981 S14.

Small or not, if something 3 miles across smacks into you at orbital velocity, it's gonna leave a pretty big hole.

300 to 4, er, 10

Via this DKos story, one learns that Bush has spoken of Saddam Hussein 300 times since January 2003, but only 10 times of Osama Bin Laden. And six of those ten times were answers to direct questions, so you figure 300 to 4 voluntary mentions is pretty sad. It does explain, perhaps, why more Fox viewers think that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 than people who pay attention.

Perhaps he'll start mentioning Bin Laden more, as research has shown that people thinking of their own mortality have an improved image of Bush. I saw some nutbag walking around campus the other day with a t-shirt saying 10 out of 10 terrorists favor anybody but Bush.

I had problems with this shirt for multiple reasons.

1. First of all, if anything, terrorists want four more years of Bush. Attacking Iraq has made us less safe, not more. Terrorist recruiting is through the roof since we started our quagmire in Iraq.
2. There's an al-Queda sect that openly endorsed Bush for precisely this reason. So it's not unanimous even without terrorists in favor of stem-cell research.
3. Saying terrorists endorse "anybody but Bush" implies that anyone sharing this view is also a terrorist. Thanks!
4. Running on Bush's record is always a bad idea. I mean, how successful is the guy when he ignores a memo titled Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside United States?

People are running scared, I guess.

I clearly need more coffee as I am giving this idiot more time than he'd ever give me or my views.

Insomnia

I don't think I had too much coffee today, but I could be wrong. Something is keeping me up.

I'm making a mountain out of a molehill about something in my personal life, and I cannot figure out why. I really hope I don't make yet another vacation into a nightmare. Perhaps I should just stop taking time off if this is how I react to it.

Currently playing a lot of Mario Golf: Advance Tour. It plays a lot like Golden Sun, only with golf. If that makes sense. (Golden Sun was a really great RPG that had an actual sequel that made sense and everything.) However, this is not totally crazy, since the same developer did both.

I dunno--perhaps I'm wracked with guilt that I never actually liked real golf, but golf on the GBA is OK with me. Or not.

Did I leave the gas on?

Watched the Eddie Izzard Dress to Kill DVD before going to bed. It's still funnier than hell on the umpteenth viewing.

Feel a bit groggy today, so I have no idea what to make of the news that they're withdrawing troops from Europe to move elsewhere. I suspect, however, that it will not be what it seems. An attack on Iran with even less forces than Iraq, I suspect. Which is a fucking disaster waiting to happen. The Rumsfeld plan of war-on-the-cheap doesn't work. It didn't work last time. It won't work in the future. It's a bad idea by bad people and the sickening thing is our soldiers have to lose life and limb to prove it.

Kerry was well-received in Portland. Not only did he draw like 50-60 thousand people, he got a ton of coverage from the usually-insane Oregonian. The Saturday edition (didn't have a chance to look at the Sunday edition) had a bunch of pages devoted to pictures. Pity the wind died down so he couldn't do any windsurfing, but people here like him.

I have yet to watch a single moment of the Olympics so far. If it's not on the ice with a puck involved, I really don't give a shit. OK, I'd like to see the soccer, but good luck getting that on NBC. Not enough human interest bullshit. If only we got the Canadian coverage. That might be worth watching.

Longshot comics

One of my favorite comics is Longshot comics, the long and intricate series from Shane Simmons.

The last time I started looking for him, there was not much, but this evening I found his personal site, which also includes adaptations of famous movies in the Longshot style.

Citizen Kane
Bridge on the River Kwai
The Lethal Weapon series
Every Bond film ever

This makes me incredibly happy. I love this guy's work.

Objects in Space

For some reason, I was craving pancakes almost all weekend. I suppose one could blame Hellboy, after the two-page genius that was "Hellboy Eats Pancakes." I am easily suggestible, why do you ask?

So we went to the hippie-fuck cafe that serves vegan and vegetarian food, yet will give you bacon (made from the flesh of living pigs!) on your grilled cheese sammich, for breakfast. I had the lemon-blueberry-poppyseed pancakes, and they were good. They also played Johnny Cash's album Live In Folsom Prison, and that was pretty damn cool.

After that we went to Music Millennium, where we found a bunch of music that we've been looking for. New Orbital, new Modest Mouse, a copy of Let's Get Small, and some other things. I had a copy of the Triumph DVD in my hands but I thought I'd see what other people thought of it before I plunked down my money for it.

Also watched quite a bit of Firefly this afternoon. Now eagerly awaiting the movie that will (hopefully) wrap up some of the threads from the show. I'm not the biggest Joss Whedon fan--I never liked Angel nor could I sit through a single episode of Buffy--but I really liked Firefly. Mrs. GFR, not so much.

Hrm. Is it too early to put We3 on my pull list at the shop? Grant Morrison doing The Incredible Journey, only with machine guns and exoskeletons. I have a suspicion all the cute animals will die horribly at the end, but that's just a Grant thing to do.

Kerry in Portland

Just got back from the John Kerry rally.

I'm guessing at least 40,000 people, maybe more. Everywhere I looked, people wanting to see him, people clapping, cops looking bored. There were a few crazy conservatives looking for a fight, but we mostly ignored them.

Photos from my futurephone

DailyKos thread with some really nice photos

Amazing stuff.

Update: Looks like the offical count is 50,000 at the rally. 25K in the main crowd, another 25K surrounding.

Go check out the DailyKos thread. Lots of photos, though I'm not sure they capture what it was like to be there. This wasn't a hand-picked crowd. This was a great cross-section of America. I saw old couples, young couples, small families, black, white, Asian, straight, gay: all of us Americans. People had their kids, their dogs, American flags, cellphones. The cops were there, armed for some sort of insurrection that never happened. They mostly looked really hot in their Robocop outfits. (The bike patrols got the better deal, they got to wear shorts.)

Saw a couple of friends on my way back to work, which is weird since it was a big, big crowd. Talked with total strangers about the crowd and how sad we were that we didn't have any signs from the rally--we don't have physical proof we were there.

There is one group of people that didn't get counted--the people on Naito Parkway rolling their windows down to listen to the speech and honk their horns. I saw that quite a bit, as well as people driving by after the rally, screaming "Go Kerry!"

The trip back to work was also somewhat amusing--a mass of people with Help is on the Way and Veterans for Kerry signs got on. As the bus pulled into traffic, the driver got on the microphone, "As good lefties, you should all be ashamed since not one of you had a bus pass." In their defense, a lot of them said they were from out of town. But still, heckling from the busdriver. :)

Black and tan Labs

My stepfather-in-law's new guide dog is a black-and-tan Labrador. I had no idea such a thing even existed, and I've been around labs since I was in kindergarten.

So I did a little web searching, and this breeder has some fantastic pictures of these dogs. How do you make a Lab cuter? By having EYEBROWS. Also, look down the page for the Mosaic dogs--the one looks like he's got a little sweater on.

Genetics are weird. These are all purebred dogs.

PACHINKO!

Kevin and I were talking today about Nicolas Cage and I was thinking of this series of ads on Japander.

Speaking of Japan, I totally want this on on a t-shirt.

OK, off to set up some stuff and then fix the holes Binder, et al., found in my PHP form.

Test case

I'm trying to troubleshoot a form I wrote a while back, which is much much easier to do when you can actually, you know, access the drives and the webserver.

I was hoping to have this done yesterday, but instead I had to run a bunch of errands.

Still exhausted--not much sleep again last night and I can barely comprehend the news as I read it at the moment. Watched an episode of Firefly last night, though it was a bit dark and probably not was I was looking for.

Rumor has it there will be 40,000 people at the Kerry rally tomorrow. Bush is speaking at an undisclosed location. Who does he think he is? Cheney?

Throw baby in lake

You can earn bonus points in Peasant's Quest by doing this. All I'm saying.

So far today I've had sore legs from last night, I think I had a charley horse in my calf at one point, and even a very large coffee was not enough to wake me up.

I think I have an engagement at the Horse Brass this evening but I may pass on it on account of exhaustion.

There is a lot of news going on lately, but may of the folks in the sidebar are more up on it than I could be. I would be editing some web pages but our webserver appears to be down right now.

Clean Air Action Day

So this is what global warming looks like. I can't wait to see what happens when it really kicks in.

I slept... poorly. I give myself a C, C- for sleeping, being outshone by C+ Augustus. My legs were tense, and then I had the following dream: My grandmother had died, so we were going through my grandparents' cabin on the lake. Each family member had a truck and they were grabbing everything they wanted, first-come, first-served. I went to their liquor cabinet, which in the dream was stocked with a lot of brandy and liqueurs.

People in the cabin were a mixture of my actual family and many of my local friends. Some of the family members were out on the lake zooming around, and then a bunch of people were drinking to celebrate and remember the lives of my grandparents. My cousin Angie started throwing up, then she went into cardiac arrest and died in front of us. We had a pocket fusion-powered defibrilator, but it had been mostly depleted by the kids using it as a party trick. So they are attempting to get it to work, and there's a ten-minute gap between shocks since the power is so low. I'm on the cellphone to 911, only the operator is my dad and neither of us can remember the address of this place clearly. (At some point it had become my mom's new house.)

The paramedics never arrive, but the second jolt from the pocket defibrilator does the job. Only know my cousin (who had six or seven kids in the dream) isn't terribly bright after all the brain damage she's had. So we go back to the Motel 6 they're staying at and drop her off.

Then it's off to some sort of farmer's market, where the psychic at the entryway asks if one in our party has been orphaned recently. "This morning," we say. She lets us in for free. The guy in front of us had just gotten off a plane after another sad story, so free vegetables for all.

The farmer's market devolves into some sort of game of musical chairs, where family members who dislike each other are forced to compete to sit next to one another. The last thing I clearly remember is the announcer talking about my grandmother. I woke up and my hands were clenched into fists.

Today is going to be an outstanding day. I can just tell.

Tickets

Well, that was easy enough.

If you're interested in attending the Kerry rally in Portland on Friday, go to their website and register for tickets. Took me all of two minutes. Of course, that day is going to be complicated, but still.

Looking back, this will be the first President (or candidate) I've seen since Reagan. He visited my hometown in Iowa when I was a wee bot, and my parents pulled me out of school so we could watch the motorcade. I have a picture of his hand pressed against the window of the limo somewhere. I was fairly young, so this is about all I remember:

• The only people who could go meet him in person were the members of the church he was visiting
• The Secret Service guys were giving tours to the public of the kinds of security they had (snipers on every rooftop, a command post in the bank parking lot, helicopters on standby, etc.)
• My dad wanted to hold up a sign that said "Release Hinckley" as the limo went by
• We spent most of the day in the Star Hotel and Livery--one of the few buildings in town of any age, one that was on the National Register of Historic Places, which probably doesn't mean all that much, really

Actually, it looks like getting on the register makes it more likely to get certain tax breaks and an increased likelihood of grant money, if there is any. Interesting.

Some people call you the haves...

I call you my base...

Another Bush reference to his rich pals.

Bush also said high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy because "the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway."

This bastard has got to go. Kerry and Bush will be in Portland on Friday, and I know which event I want to visit.

Been working on PHP a lot this week, massaging one form for work and creating a new one. So exciting, huh? I think for fun I might be setting up a GeekLog. Also need to prepare my writing samples again in case I have another interview. Not sure.

Next week we'll be in SF. I can hardly wait.

Currently reading: War of the Flowers and Essential Daredevil: Volume 1.

Currently listening to: The Al Franken show -- Paul Krugman talking about his interview with Bill O'Lielly was difficult to listen to.

Futurephone, she works

So I set up a phone blog for the futurephone. See the majesty of my office. Whee.

The world kinda blew up while I was enjoying my weekend of Firefly and Hellboy and procuring new phones. Found a nice cafe (Cafe Destino, on NE Fremont) that I've known about for years but have never been in before--silly robot, change is good.

But yeah, Iraq is on fire and the Chalabis (Remember when the elder Chalabi was Condoleeza Rice's best buddy? And we gave him $300,000/month for bogus info? Or he was a SPECIAL GUEST at the State of the Union?) are now wanted fugitives. Oh, and Sistani is out of the country with a heart condition. Man, turn your back for a second...

Really digging Beyond Good and Evil. Why good games sell poorly is a mystery to me. I'd hate to see the sales rankings of this versus, oh, BMX XXX.

Futurephone acquired!

Yesterday being the one-year anniversary of our giving in to History and picking up cellphones, we finally qualified for the same-as-new price on a new phone.

Now we're both the owners of Samsung E715 futurephones, with cameras and picture messages and the like. These don't do AIM like the good old Samsung R225s we started out with, but I never used that anyway.

A little bit of stuttering at first, where we could take pictures but not send them, nor could we receive messages. It appears that this is fixed, but I'm not totally sure.

It is annoying that most of the sites I can find for downloadable ringtones and wallpapers kind of suck. Grrr. Any recommendations? I have a new phone--half the fun of a new phone is customizing it.

The joys of being idle

There's a fantastic article by Tom Hodgkinson in the Guardian today about being idle. I've been laughing uproariously at some of the passages, but I think I will leave you with this section.

Idleness as a waste of time is a damaging notion put about by its spiritually vacant enemies. Introspection could lead to that terrible thing: a vision of the truth, a clear image of the horror of our fractured, dissonant world. The writer Will Self, arguing that long periods of motorway driving can be a method of recapturing lost idling time, puts it like this: "This cultural taboo against thinking ... exists in England because of the Protestant work ethic which demands that people shouldn't be idle - ergo they shouldn't think."

That probably goes double for America. Don't think, citizen! Unless you want to be labeled a "freedom hater." Shut up and buy crap!

I think my plan of sitting at home all day playing Beyond Good and Evil is sounding better and better. We've had this for a while at Rachel's urgings, but this evening is the first time I've really had a chance to play with it. Reminds me a little bit of Zelda, a little bit of Jak and Daxter, and a little of Max Headroom. (Taking photos is the way you save the world.) Only it's not coming to you live and direct--the sales were not great and the two planned sequels seem to have fallen by the wayside. It's like Ico all over again, dammit. (Though I saw footage from a theoretical sequel, so I hope I am speaking too soon and there is an Ico 2 on the way.)

If you have a PS2 and haven't played Ico, go do so. That is a great game--I've never had a videogame make me cry at the end before.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

Remember that timeline of terror alerts and the Bush presidency?

Now it's available in chart form. Fascinating. Every terror alert is followed by a tiny, tiny jump in approval ratings.

Keep crying wolf, there, Mr. Ridge.

I am working towards Kerry being president, as I am tired of stuff like this:

Bush: "We've actually misnamed the 'War on Terror.' It ought to be 'The... the... the... Struggle Against Ideological Extremists Who Do Not Believe in Free Societies Who Happen to Use Terror as a Weapon... To Try to Shake the Conscience of the Free World.'"

What does that abbreviate to?

TTTSAIEWDNBIFSWHTUTAAWTTTSTCOTFW.

T'saiwendbifswhtutaawtstotfw. Gesundheit.

Fringe candidate? Think again

James L. Hart is the Republican nominee for the 8th District Representative in Tennessee.

This man is also totally batshit insane. His website says it all. His opening page is all about poverty genes (evidently if you are poor there's a genetic reason) and the role of eugenics in government.

In saner news, check out the prescient post by Billmon yesterday. This was before the announcement of jobs and the stock market taking a dive.

Holy Crap! No jobs!

Where can you find no jobs? Only in America... Jobs are harder to find than lions.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics blew all of my expectations out of the water with the new job statistics. I was thinking, maybe things are picking up, maybe, say +100K.

Nope. Today they announced the magic of the Bush administration's tireless war against everybody not them resulted in a whopping +32K. And they revised a bunch of other job reports down. Shit. I'm afraid to look at the market at this point.

But hey, he said it himself:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," Bush said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

This weekend marks the 30-year anniversary of Nixon resigning. Perhaps that means something.

When I finally did get back to sleep, I dreamt of taking my dad and stepmom to the airport to meet my brother. Only my dad lived on a farm in-between Fairfax and Norway, and I had to drive a bunch of back roads to the airport. Huh.

And hey, the asshole Swift Boat Idiots for "Truth" are being exposed as the liars they are. It's like McCain in South Carolina all over again, only this time it's not sticking. (Note to future liars about Kerry's military record: if you malign his receiving of a medal like the Bronze Star, try not to have a spokesperson who received a Bronze Star in the same engagement. It makes you look like LIARS. Which you are.)

It's 3 am. Do you know where your robot is?

Woke up about an hour ago, still not able to go back to sleep.

I cannot get the English Beat version of Tears of a Clown out of my head, either. That might have something to do with it, but I doubt it.

There are some new things in the Mt. McLargeHuge area of Kingdom of Loathing. Evidently Jick grew tired of people exploiting the poor Yetis (they used to be good for 500-1000 Meat a turn) and so their drop of meat has been drastically reduced. Instead there are mobbish penguins.

You acquire an item: support cummerbund
You acquire an item: Mob Penguin cellular phone
You acquire an item: Mafia Aria

KoL is far deeper than one would think at first glance.

I did get two recruiter calls this evening, though it looks like they're both interested in filling the same position at the same company. So that's good in that two people thought I'd be a good fit for it, but bad in that there are still not that many jobs to be had.

I had a file with some writing in it that I did a while back, but it appears I was too clever with it and now I cannot find it. I hate it when I do that. "Oh, I'll put this in this place where I will never ever forget it," and then I do. I've done that a bunch of times.

We're sending back both of the games we have out from Gamefly. Spider-Man 2 was pretty fun, but ultimately kind of repetitive. There are only so many times I can hear some kid whine about finding their balloon before I want to smack the developers for putting that sound file in. Final Fantasy X-2 was great but I don't really have time for it. And Mrs. GFR was not as fond of it as I was.

I really can't see why Square Enix doesn't remake Final Fantasy VII for the PS2 or PS3 (whenever that comes out). I was watching Filter earlier and they were listing all of fans' favorite elements from the series. Best hero? Cloud. Best Heroine? Aeris. Best bad guy? Sephiroth. Hello, I can hear the cash register from here. Guys? I would buy it in a second. Hell, tell me where it is and I'll pre-order it now.

FF7 was the reason we bought a PlayStation and sold the Saturn. (Though in retrospect I kinda wish we still had the Saturn. Or that somebody would start porting games from it to newer consoles, much the same way Nintendo is recycling their old NES stuff for the GBA and GameCube.) I still have the soundtrack and listen to it. I am a nerdy, nerdy bot.

Justify your existence

Today (in yet another meeting) I had to describe what it is that I do.

So I took about fifteen minutes to describe what it is that I do to people who already knew and probably didn't want to know. After all, you can't make changing the wireless network that exciting. Well, maybe you can if you like that sort of thing. At no point have I built a wireless antenna out of a Pringles can.

Had to explain to one of my bosses what the heck a blog was. Um. Er. Uh.

DaveP asked me about going to OryCon this year, but I have no idea who any of the Guests of Honor are. Haven't been in a few years, but judging by the descriptions, I didn't miss much.

Apropos of nothing, I need to mail off some stuff.

It's Thursday.

I'm not sure if I'm like Arthur Dent and can never get the hang of Thursdays.

On the other hand, I am clearly a lot more tired and down than I realized, because I cannot think of an Alan Keyes is Making Sense-related joke this morning for love nor money. (They're thinking of running him against Barack Obama in IL, which is just insane. Though insanity is an old chum to Alan Keyes.)

In other news, somebody is following David Cross' advice and is compiling a list of the Terrah Alert warnings and what happened just a few days before.

May 19, 2004 -- Newsweek reports that President Bush's top lawyer warned two years ago that Bush could be prosecuted for war crimes as a result of how his administration was fighting the war on terror. Source

Same day – White House stonewalls UN on papers about Halliburton’s contracts in Iraq. Source

Same day – Tom Ridge testifies before 9/11 Commission on this second day of hearings in NYC. Source

Same day - The 9/11 Commission begins another round of hearings in NYC. Source

May 19, 2004 -- Nothing but bad news about prisoner abuse in Iraq, including breaking news that the Pentagon was told about the abuses back in November. Source

Senate Armed Forces Committee holds hearings on Abu Ghraib abuses. Source

May 20, 2004 - United States goes on Orange Alert. Source

July 6, 2004 -- Kerry names Edwards as his running mate. Source

July 8, 2004 - Tom Ridge holds a press conference on terror alerts over the summer and during the conventions. Source

July 11, 2004 -- Senior White House officials discuss the possibility of delaying the elections in case of a terrorist attack. Source

In the immortal words of Teresa Nielsen-Hayden I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.

Why nothing ever happens in meetings

I just got out of a meeting. See if you can tell how it went.

The failure of meetings

Most meetings follow one or more of the following scenarios:

Too much talking

Many people have ideas. Many people want to speak. Everybody spends so much time waiting to talk that they don't listen to the words that are coming out of anyone else's mouth but their own. I have had meetings where I have made checkmarks whenever one particular person kept talking and they had nothing to say. One meeting had 27 separate checkmarks.

Not enough talking

Remember when you were in class and nobody did the reading, so everybody waits for the one person to jump in and say something? It's like that. This sometimes happens with money discussions.

An axe to grind

Somebody at the meeting is mad. So mad that nothing, and I mean nothing will get them to consider anything else. Any and all points are reinterpreted into the framework of the thing they are pissed about. This can go on for hours.

Personal vendettas

Often appears in conjunction with the former scenario. Two or more people who have long-standing grudges are unable to set aside their personal differences, and everybody gets both barrels of their own personal problems, funneled through the filter of whatever the meeting is supposed to be about. For more fun, sides are chosen and then proxies battle over whatever the original suppoint is supposed to be, long since a trampled, deceased equine.

No agenda

We have to have a meeting about this! Now! OK, now we're meeting. WHAT WAS THE ORIGINAL QUESTION?

Too much agenda

You will find that we are to discuss that in point XIX.a, which will be in approximately three and one-half hours, assuming our spinal cords haven't reached through our neck to choke us to death.

The hobgoblin of tiny minds

People are so concerned about the small, meaningless details that they totally miss the forest, the trees, and the enclosing state parks. If you're so smart, tough guy, you tell me what color this insignificant link should be! I have lost entire months to this factor.

Meeting fatigue

This is the fourth meeting today, so I am burned out and I want to go home and drink until the pain goes away. This happens far more often than it should. (Note: if you have to have a Committee on Committees in your organization, you've probably seen this before, and yes, you are doing something wrong.

The real work is done in the post-meeting meeting

Talking is great and all, but like the Secret Masters of Fandom, a few people actually do all the work. The post-meeting meeting is hopefully shorter than the two-hour meeting that proceeded it.

Meeting coping strategies

Doodling

This is probably the most common. I tend to draw giant robots. Big surprise, huh? Though recently I've been on a Kingdom of Loathing kick.

Checking your e-mail

This is sometimes helpful, particularly if somebody else is talking and you have a computer in front of you. I've also seen people look at cartoons all meeting.

Secret eating

Not like Marshie, but I tend to play little drinking games with myself and my coffee. Whenever I hear a technical term being used incorrectly, a buzzword, or a term in use that I know the definition of is not known by the person using said term, I take a drink.

I have run out of coffee with the last one. Be warned it is for those with Bladders of Steel. More on this subject later.

Meeting time? Just under two hours

Yesterday we broke all records in that our meeting only lasted an hour and a half instead of two hours or more. One hopes this progression continues.

I simply must stop listening to NPR. Waking up to blathering about Bush giving speeches to the Knights of Columbus is not a good way to start the day. Or an exclusive interview with the Governator... Who cares? Not I.

Blogger continues to be weird in that it insists I have only written 19 posts. Which I think is off by a factor of... eight? I dunno. I guess you get what you pay for.

Currently reading: War of the Flowers by Tad Williams.

Tolkein power

We should harness the power of JRR Tolkein as he rotates rapidly in his grave.

Arwen Navel Rings.

I have a meeting in 12 minutes. Usually this thing is two hours or more, but I am hoping for less today. This day is already TOO LONG.

The administration who cried wolf (again)

So this TERRAH ALERT from Sunday, which is costing the East Coast millions of dollars in traffic snarls, extra security, etc., is based on intelligence that is four to five years old.

Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK?

The terror alerts have always been suspiciously timed. The run-up to the Iraq invasion, Bush's poll numbers taking a dive, etc. They can deny it all they want, but this is getting insane.

In other news, the Brothers Chaps have outdone themselves with Peasant's Quest.

Wonko the Sane Redux

Where is the Asylum when we need it? There are two escaped crazies running the country. Cheney is now afraid of people with funny names--his thugs wanted to know the race of a photographer before they'd let her near him. It's like they've been asleep since 1963 or something.

In other news, Kerry got a 4-6% bump in every poll save one since the convention (such as ARG). But guess which poll the news is focusing on?

That's desperation I smell. But it's still 93 days until the election, so I guess I have to sit it out.

Twice today I have deleted whole posts before saving or publishing them. Perhaps I need another couple hours of sleep.

Can you buy back my pride, Marvel?

So Membrane points us to this magificent eBay auction, in which a child-friendly Wolverine (!?!?) attempts to cajole you into buying a magnificent Green Lantern figure. Hrm. I wonder if I need such a thing?

It's a pity Hal Jordan isn't around to watch over us now. Our administration, which is frantically retooling their message to get anything that will make people want to vote for them, is now running on results.

So, let's see...

• The economy is a shambles
• Thousands of dead in Iraq
• Personal income dropped for the second year in a row
• We're hated almost universally around the world
• A trillion-dollar surplus is now a trillion-dollar defecit
• The gap between rich and poor is now the Grand Canyon
• Etc... Etc... Etc...

Oh, and they've now upped the Terrah Alert in NY and NJ. Just because. They have information. (When did the US become The Village?)



Exercise vague caution! Wear a sweater!

I'm not sure running on results is gonna work for them. Just sayin'. I think I liked them better when they had the Wag-the-Dog-esque "Steady Leadership in Times of Change." Sounds like an ad for adult undergarments.

iPod shortage

Mrs. GFR received a bonus for an employee referral. We would have really liked the instant gratification of buying an iPod mini today, but there is not one to be had in this city for love nor money.

The Apple store rep in the mall was kinda snotty about it, too, which I was displeased with. It's not like we haven't been good customers, it's not like we didn't have cash money on hand, it's not like I made a snotty reference to market share or anything.

So now one will be delivered, but probably not in time to enjoy on our vacation. Not cool.

In other news, I finished reading the second over-sized Red Star trade. What a fantastic read--it's good that I have a duplicate of the first trade as I think I'll be lending it out a lot.

Playing the Spider-Man 2 video game, and it really is Grand Theft Auto: Spider-Man. You run around in a city freeform, picking up missions from various people, delivering pizzas, delivering folks to the hospital, and getting involved with gun-toting baddies. Only this time you're stopping them instead of being the one shooting.

I like it, though I dunno if it's a keeper. Still, that's the beauty of Gamefly. You can send it back and get another one.