Via Google News:

Huge polio vaccination program underway in Indonesia
Medical News Today - 3 hours ago
In the Indonesian island of Java, a huge polio vaccination campaign has begun - nearly six and a half children under the age of five will be vaccinated in an attempt to stop the current polio outbreak that has hit the area. …

Now, I’m not saying that this is a typo or anything. But if you’re the seventh child, do you pick if you want the 1/2 vaccination to go on your right or left side, or do the doctors do it for you?

OMG!  OMG!  OMG!!!

After decades of cover-up and denial… the former associate director of the FBI, W. Mark Felt, has stepped forward to admit that he was Deep Throat!

Tonight… I’m going straight home and re-watching All the President’s Men.    
      

Two Words to damn fine eating… Cheese Grits

<Drooooooool!!!>

If the media really truly cared about objectivity, you would NEVER see the author’s byline on a story in the paper. But reporters think of themselves as heroes and their egos make them want to have their name on the “Big story!”

Via Foxnews:

CHARLOTTE, N.C.  An 86-year-old woman was jailed after police said she called 911 dispatchers 20 times in a little more than a half-hour  all to complain that a pizza parlor wouldn’t deliver.

Dorothy Densmore was charged with misusing the 911 system, a jail spokeswoman said.

She told dispatchers Sunday that a local pizza shop refused to deliver a pie to her south Charlotte apartment, said Officer Mandy Giannini. She also complained that someone at the shop called her a “crazy old coot,” Giannini said.

Densmore wanted them arrested. Instead, police came to arrest her, and she resisted, Giannini said.

Can you imagine how she would have freaked out had they forgotten her extra anchovies? They’d have to call in the SWAT team, or maybe even pull a MOVE attack on the place.

So I am mostly moved in to the house. The old place is cleaned up and ready to go, but I will say this. If I never see another card board box, I will be a happy man.
So far the only damage is that my server won’t stay online more than 60 seconds before rebooting. Not bad, but still annoying. I need either a new CPU or motherboard.
Internet should be installed today hopefully. Will be nice to be back online, even if I don’t have the server working.

And most importantly. My brother flew out from the east coast to help us move. And we went out the other night for dinner and had southern style deep fried pickles. Oh yeah… now that’s good eating!

I usually don’t care for “personality tests”… I found this one a bit entertaining.

And it must be accurate… here’s my results:

Well, while I am getting ready to move (which is why things have been a bit slow around here!) other bloggers are out doing things.
Kami from Incoherant Ramblings took time out from Kosovo to visit Greece, and has lots of great pictures.
Take a look while I wrap up around here…

Technically, FDISK can be used as a virus removal tool.

I know, I know… Haven’t posted in a while. I admit it. It gets pretty bad when other bloggers start pointing out my negligence!
I have an excuse though. I’m moving on Friday out of the rental and into my nice new home. So I am repacking everything, including the computer equipment, and it may be a few days before I get internet back and such. Plus, I’m working as much as I can at the same time, since I’m a contractor again on an hourly job…
So that is what’s going on in my world. I haven’t missed the Newsweek scandal, just haven’t had time to post about it. I know all the predictions are online about it being more journalists with imaginary facts at their disposal, I just haven’t had time to read other blogs lately either!

A pretzel is nothing more than a mustard delivery system.

And I’m talking real mustard, not the "stone ground with truffle" stuff.  Growing up a treat for me would be just a packet of the yellow stuff.  I prefer Plochman’s, because it is in that great yellow barrel, and it just tastes better.

For dinner, I made Eddie Murphy/Alton Brown burgers.  Half pound blobs of 80/20 ground beef.  Cooked on a grill.  Medium rare.

The AB part comes from his show on cooking burgers.  He taught burger zen.  Whatever you do, you must coat both sides of the bun with a thin coat of mayo.  I like to mix in a bit of mustard with it, and it is almost sublime.  Though the past dozen or so times I’ve felt something was missing. 
Pickles, check.
Tomato, check.
Cheese, check.

Oh yeah, I kept forgetting to buy some onions.  The other week I picked up a small bag of red onions.

Today, I *almost* forgot to slice some up.  I am so glad I didn’t, because that made the burger a model of perfection.

So go make something delicious.  Doesn’t have to be complicated, or make a mess.  Just something you enjoy to eat.

Many years ago, my crew and I were very into LARP’ing.  (For those of you uneducated in our ways… that stands for Live-Action Role-Playing.)

We were very regular players of the popular RPG known as "Vampire: The Masquerade".  So whenever a Masquerade LARP would come up, we’d all pack our bags and break out the artificial fangs and denture adhesive.

One game that we attented (a moderately sized game of about 100-120 people)… was held in a quiet, unsuspecting hotel up in Pennsylvania.  (Ever wonder how a room full of goth’s can tell each other apart when they’re all dressed in black… well… got me… it just takes a little conditioning.)

Anyway… the game started off very slow.  NO ONE from my coterie ever showed up.  However, not wanting to waste an 18th century, 6th generation, Ravnos Elder… I took character sheet in hand and started dealing.  (With a HUGE PILE of Social traits… and every level of Chimerstry available… I was not to be denied.)  However, this soon got a little boring.

This boredom was soon vanquished when I was lured into one of the rooms by one of my contacts, and found myself surrounded by the city’s 5 Sabbat members… a small, but formatable band of kindred.  (They started out as a pack of 3 members… and wanted me to be thier 6th.)  Needless to say… I could have fought my way out.  With my traits and powers, I could have probably buried them… but boredom won out over my desire to stay in character… so I let them turn me.

After being smacked on the head with a shovel and buried… and the traditioanl clawing my way out of the ground… I pulled the LEADER OF THE PACK <vroom vroom> aside, and gave him some insight into my character.  With a gleam of surprise in his eyes… he started making plans.  We were definitely going to take over this city.

I know… I know… "you should have stayed in character"… "you’re tipping the balance of power to greatly in favor of the antagonists"… "you suck"… yeah, yeah, yeah.  To those of you feeling the need to comment at this point… let me say this.  (1) This was a one-shot game with no chance for a sequel… so we didn’t care too much… and (2) it’s a game… lighten up.

Moving on… with the same rhythm as Rick Allen, our head-smacking shovel set out to turn or waste any undead in our path.  After securing the Prince’s seat for one of our operatives… we had a meeting.  There were about 30+ chain-smoking Sabbat in a single hotel room… when the sherriff knocked on the door to have an audience with the Prince.  THANK GOD FOR "CLOAK THE GATHERING".  The Sherriff and his minions entered… one of them laughed outright and commented that this was "the most crowded empty room he’d ever been in!"

To conclude… when the game ended, we all attended the Wrap-Up meeting at the end.  Mike and Ian (from Nightowl Productions) reminded us that this was a one-shot… so we were going to "reveal all of our secrets" during the meeting.  (FUN TIME!)  They went around the room… asking individuals to stand up and reveal certain details… found out who the Prince was, asked the Sherriff about the city.

Finally, Mike asked for the original 3 members of the Sabbat pack to stand up.  They did… then Mike asked for the first few people that were turned to the Sabbat to stand up… a few people stood up, myself included.  Then, Ian asked for "everyone else who was turned to the Sabbat over the course of the weeked to stand up".  The room shook… and about 100 more people stood up.

There were 6 people left sitting… and they knew that had the game continued that they would have been next.  I’m not 100% sure who it was… but I think one of the Sherriff’s minions let loose with a very audible "Holy Sh|t".

The city was ours.

About 3 months ago, I posted a little IT tale on this blog about an annoying employee in my company whom I affectionately refer to as "Jane Bitch".

You can find the original story here… http://www.pirate-king.com/episode/553

Well… about 2 weeks ago, Jane returned.

Her laptop wasn’t working… and she insisted on knowing what we were going to do about it.  After much debate with her, we finally convinced her that the best way to get our attention was to open a F’ing help desk ticket.  (This is an important lesson for ANYONE… DON’T JUST WALK UP TO YOUR IT PERSONNEL WITH A PROBLEM… we don’t like it when that happens.  If you want results… OPEN A TICKET FIRST.)

Now, keep in mind that I managed to put Jane in her place during our last encounter.  She straightened up when the thought of being reported to HR for the porn on her hard disk was brought up.  I probably still have the HDD around here somewhere.  However, she probably figures that enough time has passed that I wouldn’t use it against her since so many months have passed.  If I report her now, then HR will question me on why I hadn’t reported this violation of corporate policy months ago.  So she figures she’s in the clear… and now feels free to go back into full-on b|tch mode.

She called our boss… and our boss’ boss.  Insisting on instant service.  She yelled at everyone she could find and insisted that we drop everything to handle her issue.  When she finally handed off her laptop, she rudely shoved it at Kevin and had the nerve to tell him to tell me that "the laptop is clean, and you won’t find anything".

Normally, I’d dismiss stuff like this, but she’s acting too big for her own good.  I was going to write it off… then she almost issued this challenge.  Something had to be done to remove this woman.

<< ATTENTION TO ANYONE THAT THINKS THAT YELLING IS THE WAY TO GET YOUR WAY… READ CAREFULLY… THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU. >>

I took a search over her laptop.  Just as she’d said… it was clean.  Not an adult oriented JPG or AVI in sight.  Then, I checked her domain account’s home folder… OMG!  There was about 1.2 GB’s of the stuff… man on woman, woman on woman, man on man, toon on toon, dog on woman… she had it all.

She backed up her hard disk to the file server.  Is she stupid?  Just who does she think manages these things?  However… not wanting to do a half-a$$ed job on this, I kept my mouth shut.

Then, I went to our web filter server… and pulled a report of all of the web activity that Jane Bitch had been doing over the past 2 months from work.  (We block most adult-oriented-type stuff… but there are alot of domains that slip through the cracks… and it looked like Jane found most of them.)  On an average day, Jane would visit 8 or 10 adult oriented sites from her work desk.  On one special day in April, I counted a total of 37 sites she visited.  (HOW DOES SHE GET ANY WORK DONE?)

Picking up the phone… I called HR.

To sum up… this morning, Jane left the building with a box of her personal belongings.  After disabling her domain account, Kevin and I retired to the outside smoking area to have a cigar.  As she drove past us (and out of our lives)… we gave her a little golf-clap.

Pike Speak has a photo essay on motherhood…

Anarchangel is one of my favorite blogs to read. His latest post covers rules that should be branded into every manager in every company. And by branded, I do mean with a hot searing iron into naked flesh.

My management philosophy has a few very basic, but very important tenets:

• You are adults, I will treat you as such
• You are professionals, I will treat you as such
• I am your advocate; I do my best for you
• In return, you do your best for me
• I trust you completely – ONCE
• Trust your team completely – with all others; trust, but verify
• Life Comes First
• K.I.S.S.
• The P”s
• Planning (SMESCS)
• Mission focus
• Be prepared
• Be creative
• No idea is a bad idea (but it may not be the RIGHT idea)
• Never say “That’s impossible” to the guy who’s actually doing it
• Take risks – but understand and MANAGE them
• Good is Enough; Good Enough Isn’t
• Unintended consequences
• Good intentions matter, but good results matter more
• Sometimes you have to make the least bad” decision
• The Perfect is the enemy of the good

Please read the rest of the article. It is good stuff!

OMG OMG OMG a freely suspended 2D image that can display from any standard video source… in 16 million colors!  I’m starting to hyperventilate… You can even use your FINGER to touch it and control a cursor!  Heart… palpitations!  It’s only $18,400… I’ll start putting my pennies and nickels aside…

The other day was my wife’s birthday.
So where does she want to go this weekend to celebrate?

First stop, the gun show at the local expo center.

And for dinner? Front Range Barbeque, which was not just good, but incredibly good! Good to the point where the bbq meats served were not covered in any sauce, just a dry rub, the sauce was on the side. A true mark of good bbq. Even the sauce was more vinegar based than sticky syrup.

I’m sorry, but I do have the best wife in the world…