new poster to this blog,old poster to places long forgotten on the dirt cyberroads before there was an information superhighway. Trying out a new toy here,more meaningful (or meaningless)Rambling later…

OK… those who know me understand that I’m usually a pretty laid back individual. I don’t let things get to me very often. I have been described on a few occassions as the most relaxed person on the face of this planet.  I tell you this so you’ll realize just how upset I really am when I tell you about this morning’s commute.

On the way into work today, I was traveling up Interstate 95… and I had to pass SEVEN… yes, SEVEN other cars on the right!  (… and I never broke 65mph.)

I can’t stand people who drive slow in the fast lane.  And for those of you who don’t know… the FAST LANE is the FAR LEFT LANE… ALWAYS!  If you are in the fast lane, and you see someone pass you on the right… then guess what?!  YOU’RE GOING TOO DAMN SLOW!!!

Merge to the right!  Get out of our way!

You may not be in a hurry… you may be enjoying a casual, languorous journey into work.  That’s fine… beautiful!  I wish I could do that more often.  HOWEVER… DON’T DO IT IN THE FAST LANE!!!  The rest of us have agendas!!!  Get out of our way!!!

Thank you for listening.

Thanks to the Flea for this one, who always has such great stuff, even though he hasn’t blogrolled me…
Here is a LiveJournal page that explains the outcome of the Bush v. Kerry presidential election in pictures, so everyone understands.
The author found matching pics of Bush and Kerry doing roughly the same thing… throwing a baseball or football, saluting, kissing the wife, etc.
It really illustrates the difference between the two men.

Upgraded the blog to Wordpress 1.5. All new upgrade, really slick, etc… Seems to be pretty nice. So if you were one of the few people to hit the site in the last few hours and it looked like crap, well, uhh… sorry.
I also updated some of the graphics and the styles. If anything annoys the hell outta ya, let me know.
Everything *should* be working nicely. And in the 2 minutes that I had the comments open without having to type in the magic code, I got comment spam. Wonderful… But the magic codes for comments system has changed. It seems to work in testing, just remember its case senstive.
So, have a nice day!

This explains the most pressing thing that women need to know about men.

A long time ago… when Chad and I were young… we always seemed to have money… and we didn’t have too many responsibilities… so needless to say, we were drunk alot. If only we had been able to find jobs as professional drinkers, then life would have been perfect.

Anyway… we were sitting around his house and making a few administrative changes to his old BBS, The Castle Talamasca. Boredom soon overcame us, so he threw in his old VHS copy of “The Unnameable”. (If you enjoy H.P. Lovecraft’s work, then I recommend checking it out. Most people find it difficult to watch, but we always enjoyed it.) Anyway, the movie was playing… and I was getting thirsty. So we fetched some beers. Then, we had a couple more. Next thing you know, we’ve lost track of the movie and we’re just doing whatever we can to get drunk. (Like I said before, we were young and had no real responsibilities to think of… so we could get away with this on a Tuesday night.)

Well… we hadn’t made a trip to the liquor store recently, so we were stuck with stealing his Dad’s beer. So the entire process was taking a while… and being young, lazy bastards… we weren’t about to get up and go in the middle of our movie.

Then… Chad had an idea of how we could make the evening more entertaining. Opening up his cabinet, he pulled out a nitrous canister and a box full of N2O cartridges. It was whip-its time. After the first hit, and in a deep, gas-induced, baritone voice; he declares, “First one to drop thier beer… Loses.”

Well… the next hour went by with the speed of Barry Allen… and the box of N2O cartridges was almost empty.

My turn came up… and I took a nice long draw. Held it… exhaled… and watched the world spin. Then, I woke up. Having fallen backwards off my chair, I was laying on the floor… arm frozen in mid-drink position… with beer pouring out onto my forehead.

Chad was looking down at me, and said “I’m impressed.”

“Why?”, I asked. “I lost consciousness and hit the floor.” I started struggling to my feet.

“Yes,” he smiled, “but you didn’t drop your beer!”

Just put on the finishing touches and released version 1.3 of my world famous software, WiSSH!
And since this is my blog, I’m going to talk about it a little bit!
WiSSH stands for Windows over SSH. What it does is give you a very secure way for you to remotely access Windows XP desktops and servers. Windows has what is called RDP, for Remote Desktop Protocol. It is a way to remotely control a system, quickly and easily. It is built in to Windows 2000 and 2003 Servers, and XP desktops.
WiSSH takes that protocol and tunnels it within SSH, which provides a high level of encryption security. Most people know that you do not ever allow a Windows system to actually touch the Internet without a firewall in place. Which would include the RDP port. Theoretically, hackers/crackers can keep connecting and guessing passwords to RDP until they get it. SSH lets you keep Windows off the Internet, and only allow access over the SSH port (port 22). Once you successfully connect and authenticate via SSH, you can connect to any internal system safely and easily. With WiSSH, all this is integrated into one easy to use client. The security can go as high as requiring you to have a private key file, that is password protected, that must exactly match the other half of the key, the public key, which is stored on the server. And then you would still need to know internal system names to connect to, and then still need to know the Windows name and password, just to gain access! So many layers of security can be difficult, but WiSSH ties it all together nicely. Need to know more? Take a look at the WiSSH website and most of your questions should be answered…

NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars.
Not past life, not maybe life, but present, current living life on Mars.

A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.
The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed.

Peer reviewed, that’s a good thing…

What Stoker and Lemke have found, according to several attendees of the private meeting, is not direct proof of life on Mars, but methane signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth.

Not “Direct proof”… that’s kind of a bummer…
But it is a start. Main line scientists are starting to proclaim life on Mars. Not quacks or nutcases. So this is progress, huh?

Well… Chad has requested I tell more stories. Reporting news of one kind or another is kewl, but we need to put a more human interest spin on the blog. So… here it goes…

I’m one of the System Admin’s for a company resident in Delaware. Our small IT department is a close knit group of individuals. We like each other… we like working with each other… and will usually stick up for each other. (What I’m trying to say is… we take care of our own.)

On Friday of last week, my supervisor and a few other individuals were on vacation. This effectively left the IT department with myself and 2 of the desktop technicians. No big… we can handle the volume.

On this day, a user (we’ll call her Jane Bitch) called in a ticket with our Help Desk stating that her Outlook wasn’t sychronizing with her Mailbox. OK. She dropped her laptop off and requested that we escalate the ticket to urgent since she had a plane to catch at 9pm that evening. It was only 10am. No problem… lots of time. Our head desktop dude (whom I’ll call Kevin) was called. He jumped to… and snatched up the laptop.

After about an hour, I decided to check in with Kevin to see how it was going. He informed me that he’d barely had any time to work on the problem since Ms. Bitch kept calling him every 10 minutes to get status updates. I instructed him to focus on the problem and let his voice mail deal with her.

Well… Jane was not to be denied. Since no one was answering her calls, she decided that she’d need to go face-to-face to get the answers she needs. She started her visits around 11:30am. The visits occured every 15 minutes, and soon became quite annoying. Kevin was doing his best to keep his patience with Jane, but it was obvious that it was getting harder with each passing visit. One Office reinstall, 1 registry tweak, 2 reboots, and 4 or 5 Bitch-visits later… she was apparently starting to get annoyed at Kevin’s lack of progress. She started yelling… and I mean LOUD!!! However, what got to me was that she used the word “incompetent”.

Now, as I said, we take care of our own. Having been a desktop technician myself in the past, I feel that I have earned the privledge to verbally abuse the desktop tech’s is my department. I rose from the ranks… so I earned the razz’ing privledge. When I do it, it’s just in fun teasing. However… users like this have absolutely no right to inflict this brand of verbal / mental cruelty on our Techs. Something had to be done.

Once she departed, I pulled Kevin aside and told him to let me see her laptop. I browsed around for about 10 minutes and found what I was looking for. Jane Bitch was going down! I pulled her hard drive out of her laptop, replaced it with a blank, and told Kevin to start pulling a clean image to her box. Then, I locked her original hard disk in one of my cabinets. The stage was set… and players soon to enter.

At 1:45pm, Jane returned… in full on Bitch-mode. She nagged at Kevin a little and had a conniption when she discovered that her laptop was being reimaged!!! The horror!!! As instructed, Kevin told her to come speak with me.

Here’s how conversation went…

Jane: Kevin said you told him to reimage my laptop!
Me: Yes. That’s correct.
Jane: You had no right! It’ll never be read in time for my trip!
Me: Yes. That’s correct.
Jane: But I need my laptop! What am I supposed to do in the meantime?!
Me: I’d suggest that you start with appologizing to Kevin for your rude behavior.
Jane: WHAT?! How dare you…

< She kicks into high gear and really starts to lay it on. By know, you can see the penis-envy ailment known as "management" starting to kick in. 2 or 3 minutes pass... then she finally starts to calm down. >

Me: Are you done?
Jane: What?
Me: Are you done? Do you feel better now that you’ve vented on someone?
Jane: How dare you…

< more of the same... finally >

Jane: HR will be hearing about this. I can’t believe someone like you managed to get hired.
Me: I was just thinking the same thing.
Jane: That’s it… I’m calling HR! You’re gone!
Me: GREAT! I’ll dial for you!
Jane: What?!
Me: Well… I’d like to speak with HR as well. If you’re going to call them, then let’s do it now. That way I can make sure that they have all the facts straight.

< She looks a little confused now... which means that I'm starting to have fun now! >

Jane: What facts?
Me: Well… I’m sure HR would like to hear about THE 2 GIG OF PORN YOU HAD ON YOUR LAPTOP!!!
Jane: Oh… well… you can’t prove that. Kevin is reimaging my laptop. It’s gone. So… HA!
Me: No… he’s reimaging a different hard disk. I have your hard disk (porn and all) hidden away in a nice safe place.
Jane: What?! You have no right… I…
Me: Actually, catching people like you who abuse the company’s equipment with your personal fetishes is part of my job description. I’m perfectly justified.
Jane: But… I… ummm… Wait… I…
Me: As I said… you were just on your way to appologize.

She didn’t quite appologize to Kevin. However, she was alot more docile… and the words “Please” and “Thank You” were suddenly added into her vocabulary. She left early that day… but we didn’t tell her that we were almost done her laptop. Kevin finished her laptop, we moved her files (the business related ones anyway) to the new laptop, and handed it off to FedEx… and didn’t tell her. She flew home to California that night… stressed and wondering how she would ever get her laptop back.

She was amazed to find that her laptop beat her home. Inside the box was a little note that read…
— See what happens when you say “Please”… now call 1-302-xxx-xxxx and say “Thank You”. Signed, Me –

Kevin got a call that morning from a very grateful Bitch.

As many of you probably already know, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis have been picked up for another season. Well… they’re obviously looking to pump up the cast with some big-name talent during 2005.

Rumor has it that Brig General Jack O’Neill is getting promoted again, and will be moved to oversee the secret department of Homeworld Security. Beau Bridges (The Fabulous Baker Boys) has apparently been selected to be his successor. I’m guessing that this means that Richard Dean Anderson will be leaving the show. If so, he will be missed.

I have also read that Ben Browder (Farscape) is coming to the show as well. I have no information as to what his role will be. Perhaps he’ll be a new addition to the SG1 unit.

Louis Gossett, Jr. (An Officer and a Gentleman, Enemy Mine) is coming on-board as one of the major leaders within the new Jaffa nation. I’m betting he’s destined to be a thorn in Teal’c ’s side.

Finally, Mitch Pileggi (The X-Files) is joining Stargate: Atlantis as a new Colonel (which apparently means reinforcements are going to be sent from Earth). Destined to be the new ranking military officer of the offworld outpost, he’s probably going to stir up all kinds of conflict with Dr. Weir and Major Sheppard.

So… what’s my take on all this?

I’m all for the additions of Gossett, Browder, and Pileggi. However, the character of Jack O’Neill is the best part of SG1. It is my considered opinion that replacing Richard Dean Anderson with Beau Bridges has a distinctive “jump the shark” kind of feel to it. What are they thinking???

The big news out today is the new nuclear fast attack submarine, the USS Jimmy Carter…
Ummm… heh… hehh… hahhahhahhahh… oh man, that’s a riot… wait a minute, they’re serious! It can’t be?!?
Lots of sites making good proper fun of this one, including NRO the Corner.
Now, this picture is not of the USS Jimmy Carter. This is instead it’s arch-nemesis, the Killer Wabbit, a FW (Fuzzy Wuzzy) Class fast attack rodent, with the pellet fed reactor. Led by Captain I.M.A. Bunny, this scourge of the seas has been after the Carter for over 20 years. At first the ship could be fought off with nothing more than a rowboat paddle, recent intelligence reports that after spending several years in middle eastern drydocks, and then a brief trip to North Korea, it has been re-armed and upgraded with several new capabilities. Big-E.A.R. II sonar arrays on the front of the ship, along with new PINKEYE optical sensors point to highly advanced tracking systems. What weapon systems it now possesses are currently unknown.

Silent Running wonders, “Does it have a built in anti-Rabbit defense system?”
Our sources indicate that since all anti-rabbit systems yet developed do in fact harm the bunny, the namesake of the ship has prevented selection of a proper anti-Rabbit system.

I remember my first political activity… in 5th grade, 1977, us Krelboynes had to pick political parties and go stumping for our candidates. Out of 15 people, 12 went with Carter or the independent, while 3 of us went with Reagan. I don’t remember much about it except I was a horrible public speaker. All I know now, is that only 3 of us from that class that aren’t either in looney bins, convicted drug dealers, divorced 3 times with 4 kids by different fathers, and all in all general l0serz. And of course, those three are the Reagan students.

Thanks to Candy Universe for being the first blog I read this morning about this!

So anyways, I’m looking for a new job. Just sitting here at the PC listening to japanaradio, and doing the normal suite of job sites. Dice, monster, all the tech ones. I actually am in the interview process on two different jobs, one is working for the county, the other is working on Fort Carson. Fort Carson would be nice, it would reactivate my security clearance, but pay won’t be as good. But working for the county, well, thats a gummint job. ’nuff said.
But if anyone who works for Dice.com happens to read this, please give me a way to filter out all the damn IBM “nationwide” jobs. when I am looking for local jobs, I don’t want over half of the search results to be 100% commute IBM jobs. Give me a checkbox or something to filter it out, please!!!

Veteran Democrat bails out on party

My family has voted Democrat since before the Great Depression. I grew up believing that FDR and JFK were American saints since both were spoken about in hushed tones and given the same reverence as those I learned about in Catholic school.

However, I now realize that I no longer subscribe to the ideals held by the party, as evidenced by Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter’s prominent place in the Kerry campaign, and Howard Dean’s takeover of the DNC. The party of FDR and JFK no longer exists. The Democratic Party has become a party afraid of change, afraid of fighting injustice in the world, and afraid of standing up to its corporate benefactors that profit from its stances on illegal immigration and tort reform.

While I do not agree with 100% of the Republican platform, I do see it as a progressive party that is willing to consider my opinions and is not beholden to reactionary ideologues like Carter, Moore and Dean. The party has a fetishistic devotion to the United Nations - an organization where the majority of members are non-democratic. It reveres people like Moore - who compared the murderers in Iraq, the ones who behead civilians and force retarded children to be suicide bombers, to America’s Minutemen, and Jeanine Garofalo - who compared the “thumbs-up” sign of the Iraqi voters to Nazi “Heil Hitlers.” Now it is about to elevate Dean to head its National Committee - a man who once said that Osama Bin Laden was innocent until proven guilty of the 9-11 attacks.

I hope to someday return to the party, but it will only be once it has come to its senses which it has obviously lost.

James Scott Kirwin, Wilmington

That’s Scott’s letter to the editor in the Delaware News Journal. You can read Scott’s blog over at the Razor

Slashdot is running an article based on a blog whose sole focus is keyword matching with Google ads.

Michael Buffington chose to build a weblog using highly automated content aggregation tools around a single keyword, asbestos, because of the high click through rate associated with the ad. ‘The subject matter, while weighty and all that, is of little importance to me. It’s not that I don’t have opinions on asbestos and asbestos reform, because I do. The whole point of the site is to experiment with an idea. I built a tool that helps me aggregate topical news with the help of Google’s Alert system. So far it works wonderfully. But there’s a second motive as well. Right now asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire. Lawyers are paying anywhere from $15-100 per click through on Google ads. The second part of this big experiment is to see if I can capture some of that click through revenue while still providing a somewhat valid service to people who might arrive by search results.’

So, if I was to do a lot of posts about Asbestos, and asbestosis, and asbestos poisoning, and lung cancer, Vermiculite, magnesium silicate, and then had a Google ad…
Please click here to make sure you are getting the right ads. If you are reading this on the main page, the google ads may not be based on this post but based on the entire page’s content.

That is the “technical” term of what happens after your first shot of Irish whiskey. Personally, I prefer Bushmills. The first shot just kinda knocks you around. After that, its sweet sweet water…

So, in honor of Skull-pop, I think everyone should go on one of these Irish Whiskey Tours. Ahhhh… good stuff.

STAR TREK for Communists shows that when the Soviets weren’t busy stealing our nuclear secrets, they were stealing our TV shows.

“Cosmos Patrol” is “Star Trek” in Marxist-Leninist drag. Consider the similarities: “Cosmos Patrol” takes place in the 23rd century aboard a large galaxy-cruising spaceship called the Red Adventurer (Krasny Avantyurist). Like the Starship Enterprise, the Red Adventurer is on a long-term mission of exploration on behalf of the Commonwealth of Independent Star Systems. Both ships are manned by some 400 brave and able crewmen and -women. Both ships encounter strange alien beings and bizarre celestial phenomena week after week. Both ships boast a dashing commander at their helm, with an overly intellectual first officer by his side. And both shows feature cheap special effects and odd velour uniforms.

The hero of “Cosmos Patrol” is the handsome yet avuncular Commander Vasily Dobraydushev; Comrade Commanderto his crew. His surname translates literally as Kind Soul. Consequently, fans of the show call themselves dushki, which means, approximately, dear little souls. Like much of Russian pop culture, the show oozes with sentimentality, up to and including tearful folk songs and lengthy toasts to the Intergalactic Brotherhood of life forms. And when Comrade Commander faces a difficult decision, he sometimes asks for guidance from the bust of Lenin in the ship’s ward room.

My favorite part: they even had their own Chekhov. How did they ever come up with a name like that? Sheesh.
I wonder if their Captain talked the same was as ours…

Most of the friends and family have been complaining about how nice it always is out here compared to back east. Well, this might make your day. The high today is supposed to get about 36, but I doubt it made it above freezing.

This picture was taken at 3 in the afternoon, and it has been like this all day. A strange frozen fog is outside everywhere. The snow on the ground is maybe 1/2 inch, if that, but it provides a really great effect.

At least Streak is having fun, doing what he does best, herding basketballs all over the yard. His leg is doing much better so far also.
Honestly, it is still *nice* outside relatively. I throw on a medium jacket, and I can stay outside for an hour. So I guess it really is still nicer out here!

Friday, February 4th, 2005.
JD Bell leaves a comment on this posting.
About a webcomic that I needed to look at. Called Sluggy.
…
I look.
And start at the beginning.
…
It is now Sunday, February 6th, 2005.
I have read 7 1/2 years of daily comics.
…
And I want more.

I can imagine what this “counseling session” would have been like. In this Yahoo news piece, Marine General Counseled for Comments,

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, an infantry officer who has commanded Marines in both Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq (news - web sites), made the comments Tuesday while speaking to a forum in San Diego about strategies for the war on terror. Mattis is the commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va.

According to an audio recording of Mattis’ remarks, he said, “Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. … It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling.”

He added, “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” Mattis continued. “You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”

Lets see, the session should have gone something like this:
Commander: Look, you know there are a bunch of wussy journalists out there who think their idea of manliness is to catch the military doing or saying something, well, military like. These pansies can’t handle it, with their brains all muddled-up by their college professors post traumatic stress syndrome from a bad LSD trip while protesting VietNam.
General Mattis: But sir, we do enjoy shooting the enemy, thats our job.
Commander: I know that it is our job, and we do it better than anyone. And we are going to continue doing it. But if you see a camera, a tape recorder, or even someone with a notepad, you must make the frowny face and talk about regret and all that B.S., got it soldier?
General Mattis: Yes Sir!
Commander: Now go out and kill more people, and make the world safe for democracy, and even make it safe for the wussy Democrats even. Because thats what we do as United States Marines!

Update!!
It is losers like this that cause the problem.
First off, the title: Lt. Gen. James Mattis gets fun in shooting some people!
Well, that is accurate. Because it is fun to shoot some people. I’m sure the author meant to put it in a bad light though.

This part is particularly funny: He owns a Bronze Star with a combat distinguishing device and a combat action ribbon, awarded for close-quarters fighting.
Sorry, but you don’t *own* any military decorations. This is even worse than the idiot reporters who talk about veterans who *won* an award. You didn’t win, and you don’t own. You are awarded them.

I know, what do you expect from a site called EarthTimes.org. But as they say, “Waaaaah, my pussy hurts!”

“I shovel my driveway, mow my lawn, and crimp my own RJ45’s”
Thanks Derb!