Diary of a Wolfeman

Because I will rampantly advertise my blog anywhere I can, here’s the Carnival of Sin, a bunch of blog articles from all over hosted by Alexa over at A New York escorts Confessions.

Happy reading!

“Many people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do.”
– Bertrand Russel

Too bloody right.

Today was one of those days when you simply cannot get up the enthusiasm to do anything. For instance, I noticed we were low on kool-aid mix and out of lighter flints, so Pookie and I walked down to the store. We walked because it would take longer, not for any desire to get outside and enjoy the fact that it wasn’t raining.

(Note: Safeway does not carry flints.)

With nothing else to do, we wandered over to the video store and cruised through the stacks for another half-hour or so, and came up with a Batman and a Scooby-Doo. (For me and her, respectively.)

Dinner? That was popcorn. Yeah – that kinda no-enthusiasm. I’ve got leftover steaks, fer chrissakes, and I made popcorn because it was easier. Open nuker. Toss in bag. Close nuker. Hit ‘popcorn’. Watch it spin…

Major accomplishment for the day? Convincing the Linux version of Firefox that yes indeed, I do have java installed, now load up that damn jewel-matching game, ya tosser! Thank DOC that Firefox finally went 1.0, now I can stop upgrading the damn thing.

I did manage to catch my mother online, and set up the preliminary bits of going down to GP for Thanksgiving. She is hyped about that – it’s been over a year I think since she’s seen the kids, and with any luck my little brother will be home on leave. Quite the reunion – she said she’ll try to con Grampa into coming up, too.

I suppose it’s time to burn a disc of updated drivers and whatnot for mom now. What I really need to remember to do is take some damn pictures of the kids for mom. My roomie even has a digicam, and I can just never remember to grab pix…

Like Grau over at Frizzen Sparks, I too am a member of a re-creationist group: The Society for Creative Anachronism. While he’s into the early American stuff, we go back to the middle ages for our fun. Here’s what happens when I get into armor…

So there I am at Briaroak Bash, one of the early years, and there’s a long battle coming up – the King’s men are supposed to hunt down a band of rogues in the forest. I’d love to play, but have yet to complete a suit of armor. I’m kvetching with Sir Paul of Sommerton when I notice the limp he’s nursing.

“Aye – I took a shot in the ankle yesterday, and the chiurgeon’s banned me from the field until it heals.” he says. We both look at each other for a moment, and realize that we’re damn near the same size. “Y’know,” he continues, “if we wrapped an Ace bandage around your ankle, it might scare folks off long enough for you to get a shot or two in…”

I grin back at him, and we scurry back to his camp to stuff me into his armor. I had to turn his white Knight’s belt inside-out since I’m a lowly commoner, but we skipped the bandage. I was young and cocky, figured I’d get at least one good swing in…

Yeah, right. Thankfully, it was a resurrection battle, so I still got some good play in. The part that sticks in my head the best is my death during the siege of Castle Dunlop.

Somewhere in the past, some soul saw fit to dump some 3000 old tires in the woods at a State park. Don’t know how he got away with it, but we couldn’t let them all go to waste. We stacked ’em up Lego style and built some rough castle walls to play around.

So here we are, the King’s men sieging this pile of discarded tires. I’m fighting sword-and-shield, so I have a couple of pikemen in front of me trying to bust through the defences so that I might jump into the fray and wreak havoc for the 0.2 seconds or so that I expect to live. Off to the right of us, a rogue javelineer is tossing some pretty accurate spears, so I’m keeping one eye on him and the other on the battle before me. He’s not pating me much attention, though, so I’m not worried.

The pikemen are stabbing furiously trying to bring down a defender or two, and it looks like we are getting close to a way in. I check Sinkyu the javeleineer – he’s still not looking. One of my pikemen manages to take down a defender – Sinkyu is still not looking. The pikeman jumps the three-tire-tall ‘wall’ and forces a man back, making room for me – Sinkyu is…

WHAP!

Sinkyu had apparently been waiting for me to move. As soon as I did, he slung one of those dastardly spears of his my way, and I just happened to turn and look just in time to catch one straight in the face. I swear the man never even looked in my direction…

Since a friend over at Intellectual Orgy recently got a ticket, and it reminded me of a few past indiscretions involving my lead-lined sneakers.

About a year after I moved to ‘Vegas, my dutiful little motorcycle started giving me some grief and electrical issues, so I opted to buy a car to get me through the winter months. Since I was working a crummy job at the time, I had to get something cheap. ‘Cheap’ ended up being a 1974 Plymouth Grand Fury Brougham. This translates into a car 18 feet long, 8 feet wide, weighing in at 6,200 pounds. That’s right, three point one TONS of good ol’ American steel automobile – wearing classic 70’s Dodge Bronze paint, a vinyl top and opera windows.

When she rolled off the line, she was a classy ride – power steering, power brakes, AC, AM / FM 8-track cassette, the space to sleep 8 comfortably and ability to double as a landing strip. Oh, one more thing: a giganamous 400 cubic inch Mopar powerplant. It seems that in the year she was made, all the cops were driving Furys, so the ‘stock’ motor was a bit overpowered to begin with, even before the police mods that turned them into chase cars. The speedo stopped at 120mph, and I pegged the needle at least once.

Of course, it took me a full mile to get it up to that speed, and I didn’t stay there long because of the corner a couple miles down the road…

Anyway, one night the EMC and I are over at her parent’s house watching tv with her sister when we decide it’s time for me to make a burger run – during my favorite show, of course. Being a dutiful husband, I jump behind the wheel and plant a foot on the ‘GO’ pedal and tear-ass down to BK.

Ten seconds later, I realize I’m going the wrong way. Whoops! Pull a quick U-turn (well, quick for anything smaller than the Titanic, anyway…) and I’m headed North again. Two blocks down, the light turns yellow, and I have enough room to stop so I take my foot off the accelerator – when I notice the car next to me lunge forward to make the light.

“Well hell, if he can do it, so can I…” and I stomp the pedal same as he did. I sure loved to hear that motor roar and watch the front end lift from the massive torque that thing produced.

That’s when my mind rewinds, and I remember seeing the car next to me do the same thing. The car with the white hood. And black fender. With numbers on it…fuck, that was a cop.

Sure enough, he drops back and lights ’em up, so I meander on over to the curb. He saw me signal to pull over before he hit the lights, so he just let me off with a warning, but I think it was also in surprise that I beat him through the light :)

There’s been a lot of talk flying around lately about Americans wanting to emmigrate to other countries because Bush got another four years.

Who the fuck said you could quit? Where in the Constitution does it say “run away when things get tough”?

*For those who did not realize it, the Secession post I wrote earlier was sarcasm.*

Like it or not, this is still the only nation in the world where you truly have the right to an opinion and the right to voice it. For over TWO HUNDRED YEARS this nation has been a bastion of democracy and human rights, and you want to leave just because some nitwit managed to get control for eight years? Eight measly years? When people have been fleeing the likes of Castro and other REAL assholes for decades, you want to run away because you have to put up with Dubya until ’08.

Since the founding of this nation, millions of your fellow Americans have fought, bled and died for your rights, for your freedom, and you want to leave because you lost two elections, and the man who won will be gone in four years.

Pansies.

You don’t like the way the country is being run? Well, sit your ass back down, get informed, and for fuck’s sake DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT other than just voting on election day. Call or write your government and bitch-slap them for not doing their job. Run for an office you believe in. Get in touch with the leaders of whatever political party you follow and ask them what you can do to make this a better place.

Like the man said: “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you: Ask what you can do for your country!”

And do it quick, before JFK drills a hole to China by spinning in his grave.

McAfee warns us about this new MyDoom variant that is making the rounds. From the site:

This W32/Mydoom@MM variant makes use of a zero day attack targeting a Microsoft Internet Explorer IFRAME buffer overflow vulnerability . It is very similar to W32/Mydoom.ag@MM .

The virus spreads by sending email messages to addresses found on the local system, as well as addresses constructed by the virus.
———–
Like other Mydoom variants, this virus harvests email addresses from the local system, creates addresses by combining common names carried within the virus body with harvested domain names, and spams those addresses with email messages. It also avoids addresses containing specific letters or words. Unlike earlier variants, the infectious messages do not contain an attachment, but rather a hyperlink directing people to an infected machine. Following the hyperlink results in an infection occurring on the target victim’s system, if they are running a vulnerable Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser.

Today is a good day to switch to Mozilla Firefox which went to version 1.0 today.

I want one of those has found the ultimate in geek toys: The Room Defender

This marvelous toy fires a stream of soft foam projectiles at anything that trips it’s motion sensors and can be used to gaurd any small area or entryway, with several modes of fire including “warning shot”, “1/4 clip”, “1/2 clip” and “waste ’em” for continous fire. It also comes equiped with a remote control for manual fire, and cool ‘Robocop’ startup and shutdown noises.

Very cool on a toy level, but I’m thinking the control system could probably be adapted to something with som real firepower pretty easily – to hell with the soft foam darts, I’m thinking high-capacity Super Soaker.

“Here, kitty-kitty-kitty…” :)

Ran across this post tonight over at The Register. Damn amusing read.

At one point, the author talks (tongue-in-cheekily) about the Blue States secceeding from the Red States, and that got me thinking: what if we did? How well would we do? For us, it would be California, Oregon Washington and Hawai’i, and we’re all pretty well set-up. Here’s my thoughts.

Trade: We’ve got that wrapped up. We border on Canada and Mexico, plus we’ve got the whole Pacific coast and all the ports therein. Trade should not be a problem.

Tourism: Duh. California and Hawai’i, Disneyland and Paradise. Heck, if we worked it right, we might even grab Reno and ‘Vegas in the initial swoop giving us a huge chunk of capital to work with.

Agriculture: We can grow anything, including some of the best canibis available anywhere in the world, which we would turn into an immediate cash crop. Vast tracks of sustainable forest for lumber products, and the ocean harvest.

Industry: We own the computing world. Most of the major chipmakers of the world already have manufacturing plants in Oregon and California, and Washington has Microsoft. Not to mention the whole Tinseltown deal. Heck, Scaled Composites is based in California, giving us space trade as well.

Military: We have a number of bases from all branches of the service, and there has to be a way we can press the L.A. gangs into service. (Hell, they’re already armed…) Not to mention the gun-toting survivalists camped out in the forest. Remember that Mexican border? We offer Mexican immigrants citizenship in exchange for two years of military service and put them to work fortifying the borders.

Science and Education: We’re covered with some of the best universities in the Nation already, plus the JPL.

So, whaddya say? Pacific States of America? Or maybe just Pacifica?

Since Greyduck beat me to the short version, I’ll have to be windier to justify dragging you here.

In short, this is the best movie I have seen this year, and you bet your bunny I will be buying the DVD as soon as the widescreen version hits the shelves.

The animation on this film is absolutely spectacular. Pixar just keeps getting better. Every character is an individual, clothing has wrinkles, hair moves and gets mussed, and the characters actually move correctly across the background – a footstep travels the expected distance, something alot of animation studios miss.

Writing and Directing: There is simply not a bad line anywhere in this movie. The characters have depth and emotion, and the plot ticks right along without moving too quickly or glossing over chances to develop the characters. The jokes span all ages, and there’s a couple spots where you might be reaching for a tissue. These parts don’t drag on though, so your kids won’t get bored with it.

Spoilers ahead… Read the rest of this entry »