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Saturday, July 11th, 2009
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12:33 pm
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We've been bitching about this for years.
While Obama's Presidency seems nice and safe, just remember how Bush made you feel about your personal liberty and privacy, and remember that a Republican administration is only a few years away. With the tools already in place (thanks to the Bush administration) it will be just like the intervening years never even happened, and we'll be right at the door to 1984 again.
ETA: BTW, I plan on building or buying a lead-lined passport wallet. Maybe a CC holder as well.
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11:45 am - Don't be radicchio!
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Kim Jong Il is suspected of annoying several government IT workers recently.
In response, he has been delisted from their LJ Friends list, and their Facebook feeds.
Says one disgruntled IT specialist; "I was right in the middle of a raid when the DDOS hit and my boss made me go take care of it right away, which really irked me. We'd been planning that raid for a week. I'm going to blacklist Il's email address from my hotmail acct for this. Asshole."
The linked report indicates that N Korea has an army of between 500 - 1000 script kiddies highly skilled hackers available to pass zombie clients out through IRC and torrent sites.
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| Friday, July 10th, 2009
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2:32 pm
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| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
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5:55 pm - Shut up you stupid neocon morons because listening to you makes me angry.
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Quitting your job halfway through your commitment is not a 'brilliant' political move, nor does it show 'savvy'. It is not part of a cunning political plan, and it is not being done for the 'good of the constituents'. Unless, of course, you think you are incapable of performing your job because of your celebrity, in which case, it might be considered an altruistic move.
And if she's quitting for personal reasons, because the press or the public or the comics are too hard on her, and the pressure is too much, PLEASE remember that when running for President, the heat will be 50 times worse, and don't embarass yourself further.
Quitting your job early makes you a quitter. It is self-evident and undeniable. There may be legitimate reasons for doing so, but you idiots who claim she isn't a quitter should examine the facts a little more carefully. She quit. Ergo, she is a quitter. In similar circumstances, she will repeat this performance. Why wouldn't she? What would be different if she were running for President? Would it be the "Department of Law" protecting her? Hah!
To those morons who think she should run for President, because she'd do such a wonderful job, consider her statement that she simply didn't want to be a lame duck governor. Being a lame duck is PART of being President at some point. Do we really want someone who will walk away halfway through her last term, and leave the VP in charge?
I agree with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ms_issicran who wants her to run in 2012, and win the Republican nomination. I'd be ok with another 4 years of Barry, too.
While I'm slamming idiots; You stupid neocon fucks who think Obama is ruining our country and trampling the Constitution should take a good hard look at the last eight years, and pour yourselves a nice big cup of STFU.
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| Sunday, June 28th, 2009
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2:27 pm
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Hi from the wild country!
Life is good, if a little boring. There is ONE chain fast food joint here; Subway. They have $8 subs, which are $5 subs Outside. I've posted a few pictures of the flight in at Flickr, and I will upload a couple shots of my room there as well. OK, it's actually a cabin. I think the original idea was to rent these out for fishing cabins, as they have runners on them to drag them across the snow and ice, but the economy has crumbled, and now they're motel rooms. Mine is the nicest of the bunch, fortunately, and includes a set of outstanding cookware- better than I have at home, actually. If it had internets I'd be happy as a bug.
Speaking of which, mosquitos are killer up here. They're huge, compared to anything I've seen Outside, and they swarm by the dozens as soon as you get near a batch (which is anywhere the wind isn't howling through.) I use Deet at 100% concentration, which I think they perceive as seasoning. I have had to dose myself twice in five minutes in bad areas. Deet is nasty stuff, but it's the only thing I've found which helps at all.
Restaurants in Bethel are numerous, but generally a little scary. I have breakfast at a place called VIP restaurant, which is apparently run by a Korean (I think) family, and which offers, along with breakfast, traditional "American" food, like burgers and BLTs, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Japanese (including a sushi bar) and of course, Korean meals. The place is clean, and the cook is fast and efficient. There's another place called Sho Gun which also offers a wide avriety of styles, but gets spendy. They offer several Surf and Turf style meals at prices ranging up to $70.
The view from my room is excellent. It includes a little shack overlooking a pond (it's on the Flickr group) and there's a picture included of the sun. Those three photos were taken last week at 11:30 pm from my room. You can see the sun has a way to go before it hits the horizon. Last night at 12:30 am, the sun was 'down', but the sky was still lit, as it had barely set an hour or so before, and it was nowhere near dark out. I could still easily distinguish colors.
I have picture of me in the city of Aniak to share below the cut.
( Cut for saving your eyeballs! Muahahaha! )
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| Friday, June 26th, 2009
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3:04 pm
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Stealing time from work to post, just because I've been missing in action for so long;
I'm in Bethel, AK, with no internets or phone service. I'm flying over the tundra in little bush planes daily, fighting mosquitos the size of huskies, riding atvs through the mud, and generally having a wonderful time.
Um.. yeah.
Food isn't bad, as I have most of a full kitchen, and while iceberg lettuce is $1.29 a lb, other foodstuffs are not so reasonable(Hah!) such as bottled water at $5 for 1.5 liters, or milk at $9 a gallon.
Talk to you all soon. Hopefully.
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| Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
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7:38 pm
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I seem to recall visiting an aviary once, probably at a zoo. I remember all the birds flying around, making bird noises of all kinds, and generally loved it.
Our back yard, while not as diverse, is almost as much fun as that aviary. We have juncos, swallows, robins and starlings, hummingbirds and little yellow songbirds, the occasional red-winged blackbird, and of course, the rare hawk. Also a couple pigeons that come by once in a while and bats at night. There are no less than six birdhouses in the back yard, and if I mistakenly leave the tool shed doors unlatched for a week or so, blackbirds will nest in there, getting in through the gap at the top.
The birds perch and fly around the back yard, between the two large maples, and the little curly willow, hang out in the butterfly bush and the trumpet vine, or perch on the fence, or the roof of the neighbor's house, from whence they broadcast the neighborhood news at dawn, noon, afternoon and dusk. The juncos will fly across in front of us as we sit under the porch roof of the back yard 'shed', while the swallows will actually circle the yard repeatedly, both of these types of birds flying within about 6 feet of us as they pass, with the swallows being the braver of the two. The starlings don't spend a lot of time here, but fly across the yard, stopping for breath in one of the maples, before taking flight in flocks of 5 to twenty birds as they head out looking for someone's garden to ravage. Surprisingly, they have a beautiful song.
We have babies in at least a couple of the houses, and mom and dad junco spend all day feeding them. You can almost hear them as they sit on the fence above, repeating that old line from the Far Side cartoon with the birds on the baby carriage; "I've been stuffing worms in there all day and he still won't shut up!"
The weather is beautiful these last few days, and I love sitting out there watching the birds in the back yard, and listening to them yammer at each other, or their warning chatter when cats come prowling, looking for the buffet.
I'm officially old, but you know what? I don't care.
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| Sunday, June 7th, 2009
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7:55 am
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It's Sunday morning (when all you LJ'ers are either sleeping in, working in your yards, going to church or whatever it is that you do on Sundays instead of surfing LJ) and I'm looking forward to a busy day. I have dishes and laundry to do, boxes to unpack (and repack for AK), a new garbage system to arrange and prep, and .. um.. some other things. It's good I made a list.
We've cancelled our garbage service, and will be moving from light duty recycling to full bore hippie recycling. We have yet to do some composting research (and a composter to buy, or a wooden bin to make- I'm not sure which yet) and I have to buy about a half dozen garbage cans to handle plastics, glass, tin, paper and magazines, and the remainder of our garbage, which will make a trip to the landfill about 4 times a year, I think.
Actually, we'll still be a bit shy of full-bore hippie-dom, as we'll be burning weeds rather than composting, and some of the garbage will actually still go to landfill, but it will be a significant improvement.
I have a half a truck bed of 1/4- rock to spread where the cans will go, and then I'll need to sweep out the truck bed, maybe hose it out a bit.
I have to cut down some saplings which have grown up in the arbor vitae hedge, and weeds and bindweed to pull, two plants to transplant from the back yard to the new bed under the magnolia tree in the front yard, and all before we leave tomorrow morning to retrieve Son-icran from Everett and transplant HIM back here. That's a whole other story which I won't be yakking about much, but the old homestead is going to feel a little cramped for a while.
Saw my step-brother yesterday, and while I feel slightly less antagonistic towards him than in the past, he's a long way from 'welcome' and likely won't ever make it. We talked about the most innocuous things possible (old tv shows, movies and actors) as much as possible, but he still managed to get a self-righteous "Hmph!" in when finding out I had drank up 3 cases of wine. When he found out it was over the last 8 years, (never mind how many people I might have shared them with, or under what circumstances I might have drank them,) he never even acknowledged his error in assumption. What an ass. Still a hypocrite, too, as he spouted off about what he'd never done as a religious zealot,(sponging off of others) even though he was absolutely wrong about that. (His whole life has been about sponging. He's got it down to an art form.) I'm glad I only saw him for less than an hour. If I can keep it down to that much time every 5 or 10 years, he may live a little longer.
ms_issicran is making a wonderful breakfast for us. I think perhaps I'd better go get some, and get to work. Later, y'all.
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| Saturday, May 16th, 2009
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8:09 am
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Finally, who is really surprised by this?
You embrace a far-right conservative mindset that devalues and marginalizes women, and you wonder why it is that women are underrepresented in your party? Really? Let me get the clue-by-four for you.
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8:03 am
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I read this recently, and my first thought was "Really? People in Portland flock to lunch trucks based on twitter feeds from them?"
I remember a sandwich truck in NW Portland that was simply awesome, but if I knew where it was, I don't know if I'd have driven more than an a couple extra blocks to hit it for lunch. Portland is not exactly 'starving' for good places to eat. I don't know that I'd be checking my twitter feed to see where the nearest roach coach was parked.
And what the hell is that reference to a 'secret' menu at In-N-Out Burgers? What, they have a secret recipe for greasebombs which makes them actually edible, but only if you know the cook? C'mon.
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7:33 am - Hard Boiled Eggs
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First, just a quick rant about tags, and the inherent conflict in having two operations running which only require a CR to operate.
Example; you start typing a tag in, it anticipates your tag, you hit enter to select the anticipated option, and LJ tries to post the currently empty entry.
This is just stupid.
Moving on.
Hard-boiled eggs. You wouldn't think it would be difficult to achieve a hard-boiled egg, consistently, especially when it's part of your job. (But then, if they never eat the eggs, and no one complains, how do they know they don't have it right?)
Here is a quick and easy way to guarantee you never serve soft-boiled eggs by mistake.
Place a pan of raw eggs, covered in cold water, on the stove. Bring to a boil. Let it boil for one minute (or just make sure it reaches a reasonably good boil, whichever is first) and then take it off the burner, and let it sit for twenty minutes.
Rinse your new hard-boiled eggs, shell them under running water, (It's so much easier that way,) and enjoy.
ETA: I posted this;(Current hygiene guidelines say you should rinse them first, to wash off any potential salmonella toxins.) and a moments' reflection tells me I'm wrong. Guidelines say not to crack an egg on a sharp edge, like the side of a skillet or with a knife, because you'll push toxins/bacteria into the egg. It is self-evident that boiling the eggs in water, and then rinsing them would accomplish what I suggested. Need more coffee.
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| Friday, May 15th, 2009
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6:43 pm
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Man,I ignore you people for just a day or so, and what do I get? Like, 4 whole pages of postings to wade through!
Well, ok, a lot of it was whinging losers from FML, but there was still a lot of stuff in there.
And no, I'm not dead. Yet. Just busy.
I'll try to post something of substance soon. No, really!
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| Monday, May 11th, 2009
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1:58 pm
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For those of you who are living in the dark, Platinum Grit has episode 19 out.
eep.
Egads. I thought everyone on my flist knew about this comic already, although, to be fair, it's been a couple years since episode 18 aired.
Platinum Grit
Start from the beginning, it'll be less.... confusing.
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| Thursday, May 7th, 2009
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6:59 pm
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1 down, 27 to go.
It wasn't Alice's Unfinished Sweet,although it felt like it later.
He only took one, and said the rest could stay.
Next Tuesday I get the stitches out, and start the rest of the torture; cleaning. It won't be anything like this though.
I had some wacky things I was going to say, and they just flew out of my head. Did I mention the vicodin? Oh yeah.
Shaggy dog stories and bad puns another time then. :)
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| Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
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2:22 pm
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Abcess.
And no time to deal with it until next week at least.
It's discomfort right now. Next week will be a whole new hell, I'm sure.
current mood:  grumpy
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1:25 pm
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| Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
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9:55 pm
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OK, I'm a big old emo softy, or maybe I'm just starting a 'down' cycle, but this story made me tear up a bit.
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9:28 am
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This is a shame.
Dom Deluise was a funny, funny man, and seemed like one of the nicest guys in the industry. I'm glad it was peaceful, but sorry he's gone. The world is a poorer place without him.
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6:42 am
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Bah. Coffee first. Then post.
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| Monday, May 4th, 2009
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9:20 pm
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