BunkBlog

It’s amazing to me how many people will deny reality in order to defend their prejudices and pre-existing notions. And there isn’t just one area of life that is vulnerable to this sort of reality denial; it can be everything from computers to cosmogony to theology.

Linux users have, for years, said it’s not the OS that is causing usability and productivity problems – it’s the lack of drivers. Of course, the average user doesn’t care why their printer doesn’t work, and is not going to blame HP for not supporting Linux, because their printer works just fine in Windows so it must be Linux’s fault that it doesn’t print.

Although the vast majority of the technology industry has come to the conclusion that Windows Vista is more trouble than it’s worth, some people defend it to the most ridiculous lengths. The driver defense comes up, just as with the Linux geeks from years past. “Vista is great, it just needs some drivers and people need to understand how to manage it. And the User Access Control dialog boxes aren’t very intrusive after you get used to clicking them every single session once per program or operation; people just need to get used to it. Of course, you can’t expect to run Vista on a machine with only one gigabyte of memory, no matter that the big box retailers sell 1GB machines with Vista Premium installed on them.”  And so on.

No, people won’t learn the OS in order to work their applications; they just want to click a file and make it work. To assert otherwise is to deny the reality of how the vast majority of people approach computing, in favor of some ideal world where everyone takes a three-week course in Vista before they operate it, and never go to skeezy websites and always keep their virus software updated… Well, you know.

Oh, you thought I was going to talk about theology? Nah. PZ Myers can do that for me.

The final count of animals wanting to use my car as part of their assisted suicide pact tonight: 9.  That’s three cats, five deer, and one skunk.  Something in the air, I guess.

It seems I learn of something new every day, and most of the time I’d just as soon never have known. Today’s example: BeastTube, the YouTube for bestiality fans. I thought BMEZine was twisted, but this is seriously messed up. I’m not going there and looking at anything, but just knowing that such a thing exists is enough to make me wonder about our long-term viability as a species.

In case you’re wondering how I came across this specimen, it’s all Joe Rogan‘s fault.

In case there are people who still don’t understand how screwed up the USA is, in regards to medical care, I present to you Steven K. Brust.  Mr. Brust is a successful science fiction author.  He’s published around 20 novels, been on the NYTimes bestseller list, and is considered a decent fellow.  He’s also in danger of losing his house because he got sick this year.   Commenters on his blog who are not from the United States are aghast that someone could have to declare bankruptcy due to illness.  No other developed nation allows citizens to go broke getting sick.  It seems deeply immoral and inhumane to me.

Fortunately for Brust, he has a dedicated following of fans (personally, I’ve only read Cowboy Feng – it was amusing) who are helping him out financially.  How many less well-known people are declaring bankruptcy today because of a hospital bill from last year?

The Foo Fighters have a new video. Since you can’t find music on MTV, here ya go:

So, um…soap star turns rock star, star drives car over cliff…is this a Rick Springfield-meets-James Dean reference? Naturally, the Foos remain unique in their video excursions.

As I watched Mark Klein on the news this morning, it occurred to me that none of the major internet peers care about their customers.  In a world where one of the peers was more concerned with the safety of their data and less concerned with sucking up to the government, AT&T would have been routed around via a DNS poisoning. Any organization which cannot be trusted to keep the data on the internet safe and secure should simply not be trusted with that data.

Yet, none of the peers dropped AT&T as a peer. They continued to route data through AT&T’s routers, even as it became perfectly clear that AT&T was copying all the data as it went by for analysis by the government.

The comfort food party went very well. Mashed potatoes and pot roast disappeared like they weren’t even there. Plenty of ham soup for leftovers this week. Yum.

And, the secret dessert can now be revealed. It’s an orange chiffon cake, with mocha butter cream frosting, garnished with sugared rosemary, cranberries, and meringue mushrooms. It was supposed to have one more sawed-off branch on top, but it was unbalanced and so it went to Alex’s other house with him, along with some meringue mushrooms. He was very happy.

And everyone liked Kat.

From the AltFriday5:

1. What’s in your medicine cabinet? Toothpaste, pepto

2. What’s in your wallet? A tiny amount of cash, ATM card, Driver’s license, 3×5 cards

3. What’s in your bag/briefcase/backpack/purse? The only bag I have is my gear bag, which I only take on trips, so it’s got a video camera, spare batteries, spare tape, digital camera, and epi-pen for the boy.

4. What’s in your glove box? Maintenance records, insurance card, auto documents

5. What’s in your imagination? Can’t wait for work to be over, weekend to start, Kat to arrive, Boy to carve clay at the Chicken Farm, party on Sunday…yeah, active imagination today.

My son, saving the galaxy.  Or something.

Planning a comfort food dinner party for this weekend, when the lovely and captivating Kat is finally introduced to the majority of the people I talk to her about. I try to have a theme for my parties. The last party (way back in January) had a theme of “cheese and crackers” (plus chocolate souffle) and the one before that had a fancy-pants theme. That one had half Cornish hens, individual baked Alaskas, and so on. This party, I decided to avoid the chaos and go with a simpler theme: comfort foods.

What do you consider a comfort food? We ended up with 7-layer dip, ham soup, pot roast, and mashed potatoes. Dora seems to think that tiramisu is a comfort food, but that may be personal preference. Naturally, I can’t do anything simple 100%; there is a special dessert planned for this party, but I’m not giving anything away until I have to. Stay tuned for photos on Monday. 🙂

Now, off to frost a cake for tomorrow’s fall festival. Yay.

I’ll write more tomorrow, but I’m tired and have to go to work in (checks clock) 7.5 hours.

Yay for dinosaurs!

And, just to make Kat jealous:

The Boy and I are in Dallas for the giant robotic dinosaur show tomorrow. We got stuck on a tollroad that had a broken change machine and no attendant. If I get a ticket for dropping a dollar into the change bucket (after displaying it to the camera) for a 45 cent fare, I’m so gonna be pissed.

I’ve deleted nearly 600 pieces of comment spam in the past two days.  I’ve noticed, in the past, one or two legitimate comments being tagged as spam, but I didn’t look through this recent flood for such stragglers.  Every time a legit comment was tagged as spam, it’s because the commenter was using an obviously fake email address in their info; no email address is needed, so if you just don’t put one, it should be good. If you’ve commented recently and it didn’t post, there ya go.

Frickin’ spammers…

Last week, the Nokia N800 tablet started dropping in price at various retailers, from its MSRP of $400 to a new normal of $240.  So, it’s hardly surprising that Nokia has announced the N810 this week.  The jump in specs is pretty impressive.  Not only did they add a built-in 2GB of storage, in addition to the 128MB of RAM they had in the N800, they’ve got a GPS receiver in that bad boy now.  And, of course, the big jump – a real keyboard.

My N770 is looking pretty “first generation” now, but considering that I don’t need the thing in the first place, I still don’t regret buying it when it went on clearance this summer.

In case you’re interested in comparing the three Nokia tablets that have been released, here ya go:

Nokia also claims the screen is brighter than the N800, and there’s a built-in FM transmitter (according to one site anyway). The web browser is now Mozilla-based (instead of Opera) and handles AJAX, Flash 9, and all the rest of the Web 2.0 stuff. A Skype client is pre-installed instead of being an additional download.  The Gizmo client now handles video.

The N810 is coming out next month for $480, which is about what I could spend on a cheap laptop. As the Internet Tablet has always been a niche product, is the higher price going to kill it, or is the addition of GPS and a keyboard going to save it? If the battery really does last for four hours of use, as claimed, it’s going to beat most UMPCs for portability and battery life, so it may do well.

Apparently, not every story ends like the Pina Colada song.

My sexy friend Michele seems to think she’s old.

So, I looked up who else was born in 1970. Heather Graham, Minnie Driver, Matt Damon, Lara Flynn Boyle, Mariah Carey, Rich Schroder, Uma Thurman, Tina Fey, Naomi Campbell, Beck, Kevin Smith, M. Night Shyamalan, Claudia Schiffer, Deborah Gibson, Bridget Moynahan, Ani DiFranco, Kelly Rippa, Bai Ling, Nia Long, Ethan Hawke, Sarah Silverman, Jennifer Connelly, Michael Shanks – does anyone really consider these folks old?  I saw Nia Long on the Late Late Show this week; she’s so incredibly hot.  Not old.

Now, if you still feel you’re old, don’t hesitate to send racy photos to me so I can evaluate and give you my expert opinion.  😉

For years, the private terror-hunters at the SITE Institute have been infiltrating jihadist chat rooms, and spying on the extremists congregating online. Now, the group its digital cover has been blown — and Al-Qaeda online communications channels have gone dark — thanks to a ham-handed move by the Bush administration, it seems. “Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” SITE’s Rita Katz told the Washington Post.

More here and here. “To make the accusation that the intelligence community leaked this to the media is totally false,” intelligence office spokesman Ross Feinstein said. I’d never assume the intel community leaked anything.  That’s something politicians do.

Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following (real places, names, things).
You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

What is your name? Gary

4 letter word: grab

Vehicle: Geo

TV Show: Grey’s Anatomy

City: George, WA

Boy’s Name: Greg

Girl’s Name: Gabrielle

Alcoholic drink: Gin & Tonic

Occupation: Garbage Collector

Something you wear: gabardine

Celebrity: George Clooney

Food: Green beans

Something found in a bathroom: Gross things

Reason for being late: Gin & Tonic

Cartoon Character: George of the Jungle

Something You Shout: GAH!

I don’t know why, but the Boy decided that he wanted a seahorse piñata this year.  How’d we do?  He helped with the paper mache and with the tissue paper.  I think it looks like a penguin or a demented hummingbird, but he thinks it looks suitably aquatic.  I predict explaining the shape many times in two weeks.  🙂

  

The guy behind me at dinner tonight seemed to complain non-stop. I was thrilled when his entree arrived, but he still didn’t let up. Some folks just need to bitch, I guess.

The Boy ate a massive amount of crab legs, as usual. Oink.