BunkBlog

Parties like this are the ones I say nobody ever has invited me to. Thanks, Marina for the most surreal video I’ve seen since Erotic Trance’s Sexual Fantasy.

This is yet another reason that I continue to plan on building a non-commercial PVR(Personal Video Recorder) – nobody will control what it does but me.

Hey, you’re skipping commercials with a button designed to skip commercials? Well, we’ll put a stop to that! Tada, we have reduced your functions and keep charging you for the favor.

I recently ordered a Rio Karma, which the nice young Airman at the Security Office said would be just fine to bring into work, so long as I stopped off in his office and got a little orange sticker that said just that first.

So, the marvelous device arrived last night, I put about 8 gigs of music on it, and brought it to work this morning. The civilian leader of the Physical Security Office said he saw no reason it wouldn’t be allowed in. But, just to be careful, he asked a Master Sergeant that works down the hall from him, who said it’s not on his list so I can’t have it.

Well, it has no recording ability, which is prohibited in the building. It has no wireless communications ability, so that’s ok. What’s wrong with it, I ask…

It has a communications port to hook up to a computer, he replies.

I won’t.

How do I know that?

The same way you know that my coworker with the Palm Tungsten E won’t – have me sign a sworn statement and assume I’m not a shit.

Sorry.

Thank you so much for allowing me to waste 180 dollars and thanks for ensuring that everyone is working from the same set of standards. I appreciate all that you do here. Have a great day.

Everyone has prejudices. We all have certain groups of people we don’t like to interact with. My particular bias is against stupid people. Sadly, the association with military personnel affords me too many opportunities to interact with stupid people.

It’s so very frustrating living in the middle of nowhere in the digital age. I can order things online and they get delivered to my door – good thing. I can watch their movements via the UPS and Fedex website – good thing. UPS routes everything through Dallas – weird thing.

I’ve ordered a new MP3 player for work. I cannot have a device at work that records or that broadcasts, so my lust-worthy players are out. However, Rio recently discontinued the 20Gig Karma and it’s on sale at Buy and other places for under $200. The Karma has no recording ability, no FM receiver or transmitter, none of the bells and whistles that people are demanding from digital audio devices today. But, it is legal in the SCIF(Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility) so I snapped it up. It was shipped from Phoenix, to me here in West Texas. Because of the hub-and-spoke system that UPS uses, it has already passed by me once. It went from Phoenix to El Paso (West of me) to Dallas (East of me) before it gets to me hopefully tomorrow. Bizarre and frustrating.

Now I’ve got to figure out which 30% of my music I want to put on it first.

Drivers in San Angelo seem to be especially bad, although I’ve noticed a trend toward increasingly rude behavior on the roads the past two decades nationally.

This morning added evidence to the growing pile of “SUV drivers are assholes” reports. As I was driving east, a woman who was parked on the wrong side of the road to my right pulled out and made a right-hand turn in front of me without turn signals into the oncoming lane of the road. It was another block before she had moved to only straddling the middle of the road instead. By the time we got to the stop sign she didn’t even slow down for, she had finally found her way to the right side of the road.

Then, a few minutes later, I almost got my rear bumper removed by a guy in an SUV who decided he needed to change lanes at the same time I was. The difference being, I had a turn signal and he didn’t. Somehow, this seemed to infuriate him and he drove off in a huff, just to make a right-hand turn not one block later.

As Bill Hicks said, “The People Who Hate People Party” is a good idea some days.

Because Kit got me interested in it, I ended up buying new sheets (440 threadcount Egyptian cotton) and pillows from Overstock this month. Ooh, are they nice. And not expensive (bonus!).

Must. keep. away. from. overstock.

Thanks to Guav for the proof of bizarre hypocrisy in the GOP today.
Congress is about to pass legislation to “save” the life of the permanent vegetable Terry Schiavo. Every doctor who has ever examined her in the past decade came to the conclusion that she, as a functioning human being, is gone. She is not alive except in a strictly mechanical definition. Yet Congress is going to pass a law that addresses her specifically. Bizarre enough.
The President cut off his vacation (one of thousands he seems to take since becoming the most overpaid chief executive in the history of this country) in order to be sure to be in Washington to sign this critical piece of legislation.
Just this past week, because of legislation that Governor Bush signed into law in Texas years ago, a baby died after being taken off life support. Unlike the Schiavo case, there is no family member begging for the baby to be allowed to die and other members begging for the baby to be kept alive. Now, this baby was born with a fatal disease, but even so – the doctors got to override the family’s wishes period. Nobody in Washington wanted to take up any special legislation for this child. What’s the difference? Are they still concerned with looking good in the swing state of Florida, but Texas will vote for the GOP even if they fielded Beelzebub for office?

Crasch pointed me to this, and I’m intrigued by GlobalFreeloaders, as anyone who’s ever romanticized the notion of backpacking across Europe would be. What a concept – a network of people who all volunteer to let other folks crash at their place when they’re in town. Not that anyone would want to visit San Angelo, but if so – I’ve got a futon.

Firefox Eats More Microsoft Market Share

Microsoft is taking steps to stanch defections.

I don’t understand Microsoft’s pathological need to be the only game in town. Since they don’t charge for IE, what do they get out of market domination in the browser market, besides the network effects that lead people to associate all things computerized with Redmond?

CNN story confirming earlier studies that kids in “abstinence only” programs do not have lower rates of STDs than the norm. On the plus side, 88 percent of kids in “abstinence only” programs have premarital sex, compared to 99 percent of the rest.

“Kids who pledge abstinence are taught that any word that has ‘sex’ in it is considered a sexual activity,” said the president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse. “Therefore oral sex is sex, and they are staying away.”

Yeah, you ask a teenager if he’s getting laid, and he’ll tell you the truth every time. Just like when you ask if he’s ever had beer or weed.

Rented Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle last night. That’s one hilarious movie. Who knew Neil Patrick Harris could be such a deviant? Extreme!

bold the states you’ve been to, underline the states you’ve lived in and italicize the state you’re in now…

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

From the Daily Kos, a little information about the REAL ID Act (HR 418), which is a law that includes provisions for building roads and barriers around the San Ysidro border crossing into Tijuana.

SEC. 102. WAIVER OF LAWS NECESSARY FOR IMPROVEMENT OF BARRIERS AT BORDERS.
Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. 1103 note) is amended to read as follows:
`(c) Waiver-
`(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.
`(2) NO JUDICIAL REVIEW- Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court shall have jurisdiction–
`(A) to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or
`(B) to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.’.

Suspend ANY law and there is NO judicial review? Exactly why is it that we would wish to give the Secretary of Homeland Security more powers than the President? Even the leader of the executive branch has some oversight of his actions, yet this is proposing to give the DHS secretary carte blanche to do whatever he feels is necessary? Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

Went to go see Robots today, with Alex the monkey boy. It was pretty good, recommended for any kids. Might not be a big hit with serious folks, but it was entertaining fluff, and (most importantly) the Boy liked it.

So, my secondary hard drive went tits up (SMART monitor on the motherboard says it’s hosed, and Windows says, “you have a D drive?”) Saturday, with no warning. Now, Windows won’t boot at all, even with the D drive disconnected. I have used the Ultimate Boot CD to do what I can, and copied some files from the NTFS-formatted D drive to an old FAT32-formatted drive with Knoppix (good thing I keep weird shit around, eh?).

Now, I’ve got a 20-foot ethernet cable strung across the living room to my computer so I can use Knoppix (which doesn’t recognize my POS WiFi card), so I can attempt to do some homework (darned online classes have pitfalls after all).

This is fun. And not at all paranthetical.

For some reason, my times are wonky on here, for syndication. The last post, at 20:19, was listed as 12:19 in the RSS feed. Hmm…

You may notice a difference in the site. I’ve upgraded to WordPress 1.5, which has a very different theming engine than WP 1.2 (which relied on an external tool called styleswitcher). Have fun, feel free to tell me what’s wrong, etc.

From Boing Boing, Prehistoric sex gadgets from China – the photo shown on BB’s page looks like a doubleheader. Ancient Chinese had lesbian toys!

This is an interesting piece about the origins of the neocons, which points to a disconnection (in my opinion) between the original neocons of the 70s and the group often labeled with that epithet today. Notice the folks generally called neocons in this administration never label themselves at all or align themselves publicly with any other group.

The President’s nominee to head the United Nations kind of hates international cooperation.

In an interview in 2000 on National Public Radio, Mr. Bolton told Juan Williams, “If I were redoing the Security Council today, I’d have one permanent member because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world.”

Yeah, great way to regain any sort of reasonable approach to foreign relations there.