As with everything they do, there's a chip on the shoulder about the content matter. Also given the content (emotional/psychological) everything is subject to a grain of salt, but I think (as usual) they've hit it on the head with the foul mouthed hammer.

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBtxB_PnCTo
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN7uE-CoFW0
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERyc5NH5VZQ

Just wish the show were longer - apparently new season is only 30 minutes and not the former hour.

And on that note, I'm going to go blow stuff up because it helps me stay awake and I've had very little sleep.

Current Mood: amused

I wake up this morning to panicked messages from work about how things are broken and OMG WE EXHAUSTED ALL RESOURCES AND DON'T KNOW WHAT'S WRONG!! What's WRONG is that the problem was caused by the fact that the people doing the panicking had demanded that the machines get setup in a certain way; they didn't want ANY automation to be built into the system so that when it died everything had to be done by hand.

That's all well and good, I can understand this lack of trust (or whatever the hell reason they have for it) in automation and wanting to be involved directly in it. But when shit breaks, it really pisses me off that they never remember their demands for design and freak out because it doesn't 'just work' when it comes up after a reboot. That's right... .... because you said everything had to be done by hand.

Then while I'm writing this I get a message from my OTHER work with piercedmarionet's office about how everything was broken there. I built them a new server to run their services because the one they are currently going through is painfully slow. This appears to be a two part problem. First off is that their EMR software (electronic medical records) is really one giant ass MS Access form (as in 200mb single file that acts as the 'client' software hooking into an MS SQL server). Second is that from what I can tell the host that said access form points to is actually a public realm IP - which is stupid because it would require a data connection to go out to the real world and then back in to the sql server. Even if it goes to just the edge of public space (their border router) and comes back, it's hitting a 10mb cable modem spot to get routed back internally to 100mb copper.

Even with that nonsense going on, things work - although slow, as mentioned, so we are trying to transition them over to the server I built (a nice quad core, 8gb memory, redundant disks, external backup storage, battery support, the works - all for 1700). I get all the software installed, all the updates in place, etc during the week. Friday comes and we start copying data over in order to get the bulk of it out of the way so that at the actual switch time we can just do a sync of the tidbits and then flop it over. Discussed on the phone with 'dr bob' while this is going on that the transition will NOT happen right now, and we talk about how it WILL happen next week, gradually, carefully, and with me there to test it out. What happened? He jumped the gun, did it all this weekend without any sort of input from anybody, and left everything broken and non-functional.

THEN I see an article about how they're trying to put forward a cut down Real ID bill in the federal government, which the states rejected because it would 'make a national ID' and rip all the identity/power/privacy/WTF-ever away from the states. It makes me want to shake them by the shoulders and scream at them about how they've already gutted their power and identity and they can either fight to get it back or just give up and let themselves dissolve and have the state borders just mean rough location concepts from now on.

This is something that's slowly happened over the years. I don't recall when it happened or when it struck me, but it's already come to be. The United States (plural) are no more. The United States (singular) is. We are no longer a union made up of states that make a governing body by the will of the people, we are a country with districts ruled over by a government that makes law by the will of the political figureheads. The federal government was meant to be a minimal structure, a roof over the states head in time of need/disaster for organizing resources such as the military. What it's turned into is so far beyond that concept that I can't even think of an analogy.

Nanny? Big Brother? Gestapo? Friend Computer (two points if someone gets the reference)? The more we build up the federal government, the the more we shift away from what the United States began as. The federal government SHOULD only be a unifying binder, the constants that everyone actually agrees on (murder is bad) and not what you can inflict/enforce on the whole because you feel threatened (gay marriage is bad). It should be the enforcer of liberty and pursuit of happiness (gay couples are NOT bad, and should be protected). It should be the settler of arguments via the Supreme Court (make 'marriage' a matter of faith/religious acceptance and make lady liberty properly blind by having all filings with the government be 'civil unions' whether hetero or homosexual).

THAT'S IT. After that it should be up to the states to determine the rest, as it was from the beginning and as it should be to the end - unless everyone willfully decides that we should all end up being one big country and the state borders get dissolved to mean nothing more than conceptual geographic neighborhood boundaries instead the legislators trying to walk this razor edge of lack of responsibility by (giving it all to the federal government) but personal power (proclaiming loudly that they don't want a 'national ID').

[/rant]

No that's not a mistake.. I hadn't meant to go off on a tangent and rant like I did, but oh well. There you have it - some real content from me.

Current Mood: aggravated

Please take it as it is intended: humor/tongue in cheek.

( No undue drama please. )

Current Mood: tired

In looking around the web, I run across http://opengov.ideascale.com/

Cool concept, and it looks like it got off the ground decently enough. But after the initial few interesting and appropriate entries is a slurry of crap; post upon post upon post upon post about demanding to see Obama's birth certificate.

I have a number of issues with this but after writing a bunch of them it all condenses back down to this one:

If he didn't fit the requirements to take the job don't you think he wouldn't have been able to even get involved in it, or that he would have been shut out from the very beginning by his opponents as a non-legit runner in the race (let alone his own party who would be damaged by promoting someone who couldn't legitimately run)?

Good grief people, if there was a whisper of a chance that Obama was somehow beating the game or cheating to get in don't you think it'd be all over the damn place and the talking heads would have torn him apart.

Well? Do you honestly have the balls to say you have more resources behind you than they do when it comes to dirt digging and being all up in someone's business?

So for goodness sake STFU about his birth certificate (or rather 'certificate of live birth') being inadequate to prove he's eligible to run for and be elected President! If you want to chalk it up to a conspiracy where everyone from the ground up is involved and Obama is a usurper to our 'throne', fine - you're entitled to your opinion but stop trashing things that could potentially do some good and actually improve the way things work. It's morons like that who undermine improvement and keep the status quo.

Tags: politics
Current Mood: aggravated

An eyebrow raiser no matter what ending you choose to put on the sentence.

"You could prosper in the field of entertainment"


Oh really now.....

And now I want to go see it first hand...

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_guidestones

and smack the people who defaced it - ignorant fear mongering idiots.

Thanks to nyx_hemsut for finding it :]

Current Mood: fascinated

http://www.popsci.com/bacon

http://www.fictioncircus.com/news.php?id=346&mode=one

I'm still sortof in 'late april fools' mode, but if this really is true then Amazon deserves a nice hard slap in the face.

I'm dumb when it comes to intense detailed financial workings, but the large picture parts I understand.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/

6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon bacon feast

See? you really should live here in Austin... admittedly, it looks sorta tempting to go to.

Done using old newspaper/syndicated comic characters.

Start here and read forward: http://www.pvponline.com/2009/03/02/ombudsmen/

It's quite good and nicely blends characters.

http://www.stonemakerargument.com/2.html

( Cut for irritations and WoW growlings, skip if you don't play or care. )

Current Mood: angry, depressed, determined

And I'm not really putting up much content with this, I know. But whatever..

For my friend ravnos_ravenous

This is an interesting image to put up. It's either unintentional profiling by CNN, it could possibly reflect a change in political alignment (anyone thinking that a news agency these days DOESN'T have one is pretty naive), or could even be just be a clueless gaffe by someone trying to get a dramatic looking picture.

Whatever it is... I'll tell you the first thing that came to MY mind wasn't the Republican National Convention of 2008.

Current Mood: cynical

Current Mood: more amused than I can articulate

I have no puns for something like this. It's wireless power - Intel has achieved 75% efficiency in transmission and can power a 60w light bulb. Now just think of a few years down the road - wirelessly powered/recharged phones, laptops, lamps, etc.

This is a new game coming out on the xbox 360 - Left 4 Dead. *twitches at the '4'* It's a coop horror game that I would really love to get and play with some friends in. Me? Coop nut? NOooooooo.

Yesterday started off with a forboding mood, but by the evening things had taken off to high ground and I was in much better spirits. Today, the good mood continues and I'm happy for it.

In going about my daily mental foraging through the net I found a couple interestign things. First is one that will likely make people who take their exercise and diet as seriously as drleo cranky. Not because it makes their hard work and self discipline irrelevant (it doesn't), but because it looks like there may be a way for lazy/casual/obnoxiously-busy people (such as myself) to get our exercise in, increase our endurance, and promote muscle growth - well at least that's what your body would think.

There are two new drugs that work on specific proteins in your cells and effectively make them think that you've been exercising - causing them to burn energy reserves and grow more type 1 fiber (long endurance muscle) tissue. The benefit here is twofold.

First off is that you're not fucking around with your metabolism (if I understand the article right) like people do with fen phen and other drugs. It works on the cells directly, triggering pathways that would normally have been hit when you work out - only you're not actually working out, you could be sitting on the couch. What this means is that people with fragile conditions (elderly for example) could get the benefits of exercising without the risk of high stress/impact workouts.

Second is the weight loss aspect - as the drugs would trigge the cells to burn energy to make more muscle tissue. This burns calories in and of itself, but then (as every body builder and athlete knows) a body with more muscle mass burns more calories to keep that tissue going. This is why a fat person can STAY fat on a 1500 calorie diet, while an athlete can chow down 3000+ calories a day and stay trim - the extra muscle is burning energy just by existing, and when you exercise that muscle it burns even more.

So in effect, a couch potato like me could take this drug (the Aicar one that triggers both aspects of exercise) or the GW1516 (which triggers half, and you still have to exercise but it amplifies the benefits I think) and end up with a fairly nice body build and endurance. You know what? I'd be thrilled if I could get my ass kicked into gear with something like this since the biggest hurdle of starting to exercise is the initial hump of getting past the weakness/lethargy of being a couch potato trying to become an average athletic capapble person.

Now of course every drug has side effects - and the doctors investigating these are saying that too. The drugs are not newly discovered, they've been around for a while but just weren't put to this application - so side effects are unknown and will require testing and trials. I don't think we'd see anything coming from this for a few years yet but honestly I am curious and interested about using them to get me started (not permanent use) and up off my butt - IF the downsides are within what I would feel are acceptable to me.

Like I said before, people who get have the discipline to get out and do the work the hard way have my utmost respect for doing something I've never been able to buckle myself down into - but I have to admit that being able to be a casual exerciser and have a decent body is a huge draw of curiosity.

The other thing I found, and on more of a playful note, are these toys from nerf. It's a set of four nerf pistols to be used in an office elimination game. Say you have 20 people in your office, 4 names are drawn, each of those 4 is assigned to kill one of the others (though I would imagine that self defense is not prohibited if you are attacked by someone who is not your target). If you kill someone, you learn who THEIR target is. If you are killed, you give up your target's name to them. Last person 'alive' wins. It sounds like a lot of fun and I'd love to work in a setting where this was an accepted activity.

Current Mood: looking up

For those who remember such a thing from the 8bit annals of time- Bionic Commando is being remade into an xbox360 game.

A politician who games. Wow. It's nice to see my generation finally getting into politics and having some sense about it to boot. It's a damn shame though that this is coming out of australia rather than my own country - where the majority of politicians are likely to be luddites (or just damn clueless about technology and how it's properly used and protected) or geriatrics, or both.

Current Mood: impressed

Yup.. bored at work. it's friday and I'm taking a half day to get some stuff done this afternoon. So here's some stuff that I've been watching to amuse and possibly amaze you.

'Free running' is a sport that I am in awe of. This is the kind of things that stories of ninjas came out of, and I wish I had both the stamina and the enviornment to do this sort of thing - as well as a safe place to get myself off the ground with it since knowing my luck I'd go out the first time and kill myself because I couldn't balance perfectly. In any case here's some videos that people have made.

And oh yeah - white men most certainly CAN jump.

The first video I saw of free running from a long time ago and still one of my all time favorites. There's some video corruption at a couple early points but it cleans up, don't worry. Skip to 2:00 if you want to bypass it, that's where the good action starts anyway.

This guy appears to literally be part of a martial arts studio focusing on movie action sequences, who then takes to the streets for fun.

Another video from what looks to be a martial arts stunt school - I'd love to have access to someplace like this go be that kind of active in a relatively safe setting so I don't split my skull open so easily.

A montage of clips from various videos. The guy walking vertically downwards in the gap in a wall is probably the best part.

The ultimate game of tag

Hey look! Beginner free running guy! Complete with what can happen - broke his leg and came back even harder at the sport. Woot!

Edit/Note: A lot of the titles of the videos are 'parkour', and indeed I thought that 'free running' was just an english translation but that isn't true. Parkour and free running are separate in that although they are both about overcoming obstacles with your body, parkour is about efficiency/conservation of movement and free running about total freedom (usually resulting in flashy gymnastics type displays) of movement. Either way, it's fascinating and invigorating stuff.

Current Mood: bored

I am speechless.

Current Mood: horrified

The unbreakable umbrella of self defense

Current Mood: amused

I suppose it's at least a good sign that when realizing they were trying to kill the wrong person, the attackers backed off and were apologetic - but that only makes the casual willfulness to commit that kind of attack more disturbing.

Oops, I'm sorry, wrong person.

'My bad' only tends to help in online games when you stab the wrong person. I just can't put into words the wrongness of this whole thing (partly because I'm still not fully awake yet).

Current Mood: baffled

I feel like such a hick, but I don't care. I haven't posted in a while and figure I'd share in a bit of self effacing humor and general content.

Austin does a couple special trash collections every few months; these are 'large brush collection' for when people trim their own trees or have excessive yard work to do that are just impractical for the weekly lawn trimming type pickup, and 'bulk trash pickup' that covers everything from broken appliances to house remodeling to general attic cleaning. I've made numerous trips to the dump as a kid with my folks, it's just a normal thing. Imagine my surprise when the city effectively does all of that for you and all you have to do is set it out on the curb - nice!

The large brush collection is pretty uneventful, unless it's close to winter where people that burn wood in the winter to keep warm will scavenge decent size logs from around town to make their winter stash from.

( Click here to see what fun happens )

Current Mood: tired but amused