Diary of a Wolfeman

Remember how my backpack got stolen back in June? Well, my old roomate found a message on his voicemail from a Troutdale cop trying to get ahold of me. Apparently someone has been masquerading as me somehow or something.

Now I’m waiting for the cops to call me back. I hate waiting.

MSNBC has a review of the new BlackBerry phone, which looks to be a sweet bit of geekery. The reviewer could only find one thing to complain about in the beta model he tested – the screen is hard to read in sunlight.

The real surprise about the whole thing is the price – T-Mobile is offering the thing for a mere $199.99 US, with a decently-priced access plan as well.

Y’know, it just so happens that I already have a T-M account…

For those of you with access to a cable feed, Spike TV is having a CSI marathon this week, so all of us here at chez Wolfie are in hog heaven. I threw a Labor Day barbecue yesterday, and we all sat around watching tv and snarking where appropriate.

Greyduck, however, has once again proved that his Geek-Fu is strong, since we are also recording as many episodes as we can on one of the upstairs workstations. We’ll be able to burn them onto a VCD for watching in the DVD players for those days when there’s nothing on.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough episodes to cover all of them. TV sucks.

I picked up another contract gig for this Thursday, and thought it would be a good idea to drag along a laptop just in case something goes wrong, and Greyduck was kind enough to loan me the laptop he’s had lying around the house. This one doesn’t have a battery, so nobody has been using it.

I had to dump Windoze2k back into it, since the stuff I’ll be using it for requires it, but other than that it ain’t so bad – provided I don’t need to do any serious number-crunching with it. This thing is slow. I spent about 3 hours installing the OS, patching the OS and getting the video drivers to work. (A slight hiccup in the ATI mobility drivers thought it was supposed to be using the TV out connector instead of the panel display.)

So, what was one of the first tests I ran with it? Seeing how much signal I have down in the garage at my smoking table. 64% strength, 73% quality if you must know the details.

I just got this in my inbox:

GLORIOUS LOTTERY AGENCY
Ref. Number: XXXXX
Batch Number: XXXXX

Sir/Madam,
We are pleased to inform you of the result of the Lottery Winners International programs held on the 4th of September 2004, your e-mail address attached to ticket number XX-XXX with serial Number XX-XXXXXX drew lucky numbers x-xx-x-xx-x-x which consequently won in the 1st category, you have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of One Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000) CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Due to some numbers and names, we ask that you keep your winning information confidential until you file for your claim. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program by some participants.

This is, of course, a scam of the first order.

Chances are they will ask for some sort of money up front or tell me I have to purchse something in order to be elligible yadda yadda yadda. A quick Google search came up with many hits on scam-debunking websites across the globe.

Move it straight to the round-file, folks.

I’ve said before that I’m not much of a writer. I get a couple of great ideas, but have a helluva time stringing them together. Well, just because I got nuttin’ better to do, here are a couple of the scenes that have popped into my head in the past couple weeks.

Follow the dancing bear… Read the rest of this entry »

TheIowaChannel.com reports that there is a PUBLIC school in Marshalltown, Iowa that is part of a ‘pilot program’ that teaches children in English for half the day and Spanish the other half. They recently rejected the application of a second-grade girl because she doesn’t speak any Spanish.

That’s right, boys and girls, this is a public school, supposed to be open to all citizens of the appropriate age.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of the way this country has been stomping all over itself in the mad rush to coddle immigrants. I’m tired of seeing official mail from my son’s school and government offices written in languages other than English.. I nearly blew my freaking top when I heard the government officially recognize “ebonics” as a language. (If you listen closely folks, it’s badly pronounced and mongrelized English. Mangled to hell, but English. Kinda like that crap they speak up in the Ozarks and New England.)

I’m tired of seeing skilled jobsets outsourced overseas because it’s cheaper. Like mine. I’m tired of going to the unemployment office because of this and seeing a line of folks who barely speak English collecting checks. And I am REALLY tired of listening to immigrants say how things were so much better in the Old Country. If it was so much better, then why are you still fucking here?

You know why it’s cheaper to outsource? Because the rest of the world doesn’t have to pay six times to print all of it’s documentation in six different languages. Because the rest of the world doesn’t fall all over itself to put immigrants on welfare within ten minutes of them crossing the border. Because the rest of the world requires their immigrants to actually work for a fucking living. And you can be damn sure that you will not find employment overseas unless you speak the fucking language – and I mean more than just “where’s the bathroom.” Yeah, many of them speak English as a second language, but you still won’t get a job unless you can speak their language like your first.

This Nation was built by people who couldn’t make it work wherever they came from. The walls at Ellis Island alone could tell stories for the next hundred years about folks who immigrated here with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and history shows us that they got off their asses and worked like hell to make it work – and they did. They built a helluva Nation.

Now, they don’t have to work for it. We put ’em on the dole. We hire bilingual people to teach their children for them. We give them discounts on their housing costs. We have entire sections of government and private sector in place to make America feel like home for them. Not a new home, rather they try to make it feel like the one they just left. One wonders how many billions of dollars in taxpayer money we could save if we simply said “you must speak English in America. If you don’t want to learn the language, hire your own fucking translator.”

My question is this: who turned off the burner under the melting pot? We’re not making stew here anymore, folks – we’re just washing vegetables.

So the job search continues on, with little sign of any interest on any of the thirteen-some-odd fronts I have been searching. There’s a job fair up at the zoo in a coupe weeks, maybe I can get a couple bites from that. The ideas keep churning though – the most recent being a shop in a recently vacated corner store down the street from me. A rather nice location for my computer business, if I could scrape together some 60 large in startup scratch.

The Ratboy is all registered for the upcoming school year, and I even managed to convince him to wear a nice shirt and the hint of a smile for pictures! This of course didn’t help any, since he neglected to bring a comb and the rain on the way to the school obliterated anything that might have resembled a hairstyle. Still, it beats the cold “I’m too cool for this shit” blah expression of last year. Of course, it might have helped that I gave all of last year’s pictures to his friends so they could give him shit about them.

The back to school season is always a bit of a trial for me, since I have this thing for office supplies. I have a helluva time getting out of the stores without an extra bag of goodies like pens, pencils and notebooks. Notebooks are the worst – at one point, I had 4 in my backpack. It got too hard to find which one I jotted stuff down in, so I had to limit myself to one. With sections, of course.

I am currently swimming in CD-R media. My best girl decided she wanted me to burn some compilation discs for her, so she thought to provide the media. As it happens, Office Max was having a 2-for-1 sale on 100 disk spindles. I guess she has some serious listening needs. Speaking of which, time for a little jazz. The “Ultra Lounge” series from Capitol Records, Volume 4: Bachellor Pad Royale. “Midnight Music for Cool Cats!” as they proclaim on the cover. Have I mentioned that my best girl works at the Library?

Ok, that’s enough documentation for one day. Time to screw off.

I realized the other day that I have a number of Gmail accounts to give away – anyone wanting one should email me. We’re talking a whole gigabyte of storage and, best of all, an account with no SPAM coming into it. (At least, until you spread the addy around.)

If response is too great, I may hold an auction :)

As you know, my backpack was stolen from my car a few weeks ago, and I’ve been travelling a bit light without it. Since the back-to-school sales are in full swing this week, I went down to get a replacement.

I wasn’t aware of this, but apparently there are two companies making “Official Swiss Army Knives” – Victorinox and Wenger. Both companies have also diversified, breaking into the general outdoor gear department. Why does this matter? Because the knife in my pocket is Victorinox, the pack I just bought is Wenger, and they both bear the Swiss Army logo. (Although Wenger is just a white cross on a red square, not the Victorinox ‘shield’ logo.)

The pack is the Soho model, and I chose it because of it’s internal laptop pocket. I don’t currently own a laptop, but I will in the future, so I figured I’d plan for the upgrade. It has quite a bit of room, with two main compartments and two smaller compartments, and all the little organizational doodads in between. Included is one of those cd pockets with a headphones pass-thru that seem to be all the rage in backpacks now, which really seems like it’s three years too late. Most of the folks I know who buy packs like this use mp3 players. (Hell, Duke University gave iPods to all the students this year.)

In any case, the pack has a nice formed and padded layer on the back, so it fits comfrtably – it even has a mesh cloth for ventilation. The straps are nicely padded, and look like they will keep it from giving me the bruises or aches I have received from lesser products. A nice touch on the straps is that the lower end of the strap connects to a sturdy panel, which then connects to the bag – this will reduce stress on the bag’s seams and prevent a tear. The zippers all have decent fobs on them for grabbing, and the zippers themselves appear to be pretty robust.

And of course, it’s all black :)