MMMmm! Linky goodness saved for later.
I really ought to think about adding a sideblog just for links, since adding short ones to the blog for later perusal at home chops the main “flow” up so.
Oh, good. Another half-assed project idea!
Monthly Archives: April 2004
Illuminati Shmoominati
***Dave Does the Blog passed along a virus meme, so I decided to play.
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions
Then I’ll show you the Eclipse Workbench User Guide, an in-depth guide to the features of the workbench.
Not that I understand what this book is about – just that it was physically closest to me on the right hand side.
In fact, Joe’s a friend of ours, and we’re having dinner with him on Wednesday. So what’s the hey.
In retrospect, I might have gotten something cooler out of Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. But it’ll be fun to kid Joe about his entrance into memeland.
Oh, No! There Goes Tokyo!
Once again, Neil Gaiman finds a clever gizmo when he’s supposed to be looking for his lost notebook: Firewire Dino!
Here comes Firewire Dino!
The coolest 4-port Firewire Hub on the planet!
Firewire Dino is stomping through town and he means business. With piercing red eyes and an open mouth that lights up when plugged in to the Firewire bus, Firewire Dino is as menacing as he is useful. When he’s not destroying your desk* he’s helping you with your Firewire connectivity problems.
Among its many essential Key Features…
- 4 ports to expand your computers Firewire capabilities
- Menacingly fast 400 Mbps data transfers
- 100% 1394/Firewire compliant
- Eyes light red and mouth lights blue when Firewire Dino is plugged into the Firewire port on your computer
- No drivers required
- Optional Power Adapter allows Firewire Dino to be externally powered (Sold Separately)
- Per-port over current protection
- Supports Mac OS, Win 98/SE/ME/2000/XP
- Stands roughly 8″ tall
- Doesn’t bite
- Rarely eats**
Disclaimers:
*Charismac claims no responsibility for broken personal or business related property should Firewire Dino go on a rampage. As always, a clean and fed Firewire Dino results in a happy Firewire Dino.**Please keep small children away from Firewire Dino, just in case.
Oy, I know just the person that needs this product.
Magnetize This
From the entertaining George Says website – your very own custom political photo-cartoon. For $5 + shipping, they’ll make the image you create into a refrigerator magnet. Imagine this one showing up in the White House kitchens, eh?
Via Pale Blue Dot.
Oy, My Back
Well, it was a fairly productive weekend.
- I did somehow manage to get up early-ish and dig the bed along the side of the garage. All the daylilies are packed in black plastic bags and will become compost.
- Most of the plants my TL gave me are planted in one of the front “hell beds.” Need to decide what to do/where to stick the lilies-of-the-valley tomorrow after work. Probably the shadier bed on the other side.
- All the tools and trash and things were put away just before the lawn guys came to mow.
- Napped most of afternoon and evening. Back sore. Naps important.
- Met with Sue of The Rain Garden Network and Gary of the Village of Hoffman Estates engineering deparment to discuss rain garden in the low spot in the back yard. Got tentative go-ahead from “the Village.” Got somewhat reluctant go-ahead from “the Hubby” at least to investigate cost.
- Passed along bad news from “the Village” to “the Hubby” that we’ve got drainage issues all around the foundation. Most of the solutions involve dirt and angling it away and down from the foundation. One solution (rather urgent) may involve re-grading the front yart. Joy.
- Found out that my inept digging on Saturday results in some of the minor drainage problems pointed out by Gary as an extra bonus to his consultation about the rain garden. Have to fix the slope on the bed I just dug (and rake the dirt out of the lawn that Gary kicked over to show the slope needed).
- Bought a Neil Gaiman book Friday night, finished it Saturday morning – need more very soon, but not too soon. Had several disturbing nightmares.
I spent way, way too long in bed yesterday – I was tired, then felt the need to just lie there and mope. My back was killing me this morning as a consequence. It’s loosened up and is no longer very painful, but making sudden moves forces me to make those middle-aged groaning sounds (which lead inevitably to the kind of groaning sounds truly elderly people make when getting up, but don’t rush me). It was too cold and windy to do much outside other than stand around and talk to people about elevation and drainage. Fascinating subject, drainage. The next time I buy a house, it won’t be at the bottom of a 1% slope.
Oh, and there’s evidently something not quite right with the way our sump-pump discharges, according to the Village. He handed me a schematic showing me the way it ought to have been done. Very confusing. Probably very expensive. The rain garden project won’t get going until at least late June or July… depending on costs and whatnot. I’m ready to go for it but have to rein in and be wary of busting the budget.
And all because I wanted to put a rain garden in the low spot in the back yard that gets all puddly and squelchy after a couple of rainy days.
Great weekend. Oy. However, we leave for vacation next Saturday and will be on the road for 2 weeks.
I’m hoping to blog some from the road, but David warns me it might not be feasible. We’ll see.
Nicknames
Kuri, aka Kristen at mediatinker.com, wondered about nicknames.
What nicknames have you collected?
“Collected” is right. Once someone’s given you a nickname, it tends to attach itself to you forever.
For example, my given name is Virginia, and my hair is red. Those two facts generated a dizzying array of not-very-original nicknames (with one or two startling exceptions).
Also, nicknames tend to be context-sensitive – family-childhood nicknames often don’t survive your childhood, but occasionally they do. Sometimes you find yourself saddled with (or stuck with) a new nickname when something about you changes, or when you make a change from living at home to living on your own.
I decided to make a list of all the nicknames I know in my immediate family – these are all on my side of the family, because David’s family has almost no nicknames).
Continue reading
I’ve Got A Loverly Box O’ Dirt
My team leader heard me blabbering yesterday about digging in the yard and sticking some new perennials in, and she realized she had a chance to foist some plants off on me rather than toss them in the compost (her yard is probably overgrown and in need of thinning). So I have a loverly box o’ dirt which happens to include one or two columbine plants, some dwarf hollyhock, and some lily of the valley (happy birthday, Timmy!). These will go in the front “hell beds,” which will get dug over and composted and mulched tomorrow. It’s not supposed to be very hot tomorrow, and with any luck and gumption, I might be able to get outside tomorrow early enough to get the heavy digging done before the sun gets too high. I conk out if it gets too hot and I’m exercising or doing heavy work.
Well, an early start on a Saturday seems unlikely, but with actual living plants to stick in the ground, I have a higher incentive than usual. We’ll see.
Rubber Ducky, I’m Awfully Fond of Your 256MB
It’s really bassackward of me, but I’ve never read Neil Gaiman’s fiction. I’ve only read his blog. I keep thinking that I need to rectify this sad lapse on my part, based on how he writes about his activities and the little things that make modern life bearable.
Such as glow-in-the-dark 256MB rubber ducky USB storage devices. They exist; they are described as “somewhat less sinister ducks” in Mr. Gaiman’s blog entry. Somewhat less sinister than what? Mergansers? Canada geese? Hawaiian nene? There are always Canada geese lurking on the corporate parklands that dot my part of the Chicago suburbs. Occasionally, they move from one side of the roadway to another, very slowly. Some of the geese seem to act as crossing guards for the rest. Apparently, the reason they cross the road is because the grass is always greener on the other side. This may explain the previously inexplicable behavior of chickens.
As for these somewhat less sinister ducks of prodigious memory, they come in 6 colors, and glow only when plugged in to a USB port. The “Army” color scheme will probably never catch on with the real military, but wannabe soldiers of fortune, pro-warbloggers and neoconpundits might be all over it like ducks on worms. They can store their swaggering tales of political derring-do on them, unplug, then take a nice hot bath!
Ooopsie, probably not safe for data storage AND bathtime fun. Pity.
The Memory Hole
Last night, I got a weird comment on the post about the woman who was fired for taking a picture of coffins in a cargo hold. The comment consisted of a link to a site called “thememoryhole.” I couldn’t figure out what it was about, because the site wouldn’t load (there was probably too much traffic on his site already. Anyway, it looked like a spam link, so I deleted it. Turns out The Memory Hole broke open a big story. Apparently, he or someone else posted links to a lot of blogs that had copies of the picture of coffins that got 2 people fired, and probably also sent links to all the news organizations that picked up on the story. So they followed up on the Memory Hole site, and suddenly the story shows up on the New York Times and other major news sites.
Update: The Pentagon is not happy with the Air Force, and is not happy that so many news organizations found the images and reprinted them. Pentagon lawyers are now reported to be looking into the matter, according to BBC News. The article includes the famous “War President” mosaic image, made up of images of Iraq war dead.
The Memory Hole had filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year, seeking any pictures of coffins arriving from Iraq at the Dover base in Delaware, the destination for most of the bodies. The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility Command’s decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department photographers.
The release of the photographs came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. Her husband, a co-worker, was also fired after the pictures appeared in The Seattle Times on Sunday. The contractor, Maytag Aircraft, said the woman, Tami Silicio of Seattle, and her husband, David Landry, had “violated Department of Defense and company policies.”
So now there are more images out there – these were taken by the Air Force. No one knew they were documenting this until one person decided to ask for the images under the Freedom of Information Act. It pays to question authority – sometimes you get an unexpected answer.
“The Memory Hole” is a reference to Orwell’s 1984, where forbidden history was destroyed and rewritten.
The Glob and Male Communiss!
Via Boing Boing: Bill O’Reilly mistakes Globe and Mail for Socialist Worker
Oopsie!1! Oh, I hope I’m the first Majority Reporter to post this in the comment thread.
The Glob and Male as a communiss rag… this particular columnist, too. Oh, that’s rich. Al will get such a kick out of it, too.
Better send it to his blog as well.
I’ve never been called “a douche-nozzle” before. At least, not that I know about anyway. The insult came from one supporter of the Fox News Channel.
But then I don’t think The Globe and Mail has ever been called “the far-left Toronto Globe and Mail” before. That’s what this great newspaper was called by Bill O’Reilly on the Fox News Channel on Monday night.
Reacting to my column, which cheerfully suggested that the proposal to bring the Fox News Channel to Canada should be acted upon promptly, so that we can all take a look, and get a laugh, O’Reilly gave us a Fox-style whacking. In his segment The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day, he quoted from my column (which called him “pompous”), dismissed The Globe as a lefty outfit and said, “Hey you pinheads up there, I may be pompous, but at least I’m honest.”
“Douche-nozzle.” Heh. He was called that and much, much more by a number of products of the American educational system whose primary news source is Fox.