BunkBlog

One of the highest-traffic clients hitting my site is WestPac Bank in Australia. Um, do the banks in Oz provide internet access, or are there lots of bored tellers there?
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An enjoyable solitary evening for a geek:
Enterprise season premiere.
Twilight Zone series premiere
Renaming Gutenberg files from 1994 to be user-friendly, while listening to MIDI files of Beethoven’s Fifth.

Not at all unusual. 🙂
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The army has patches for every major unit, but the clipart collections that are out in the retail market only have some of them. Shoot, the 1st Cav patch in Corel Gallery is in greyscale! Like it would have taken any extra effort to slap in some yellow? Anyway, in my efforts to do many things in the army, including an awful lot of off-duty graphic design work, I’ve made a few patches and scrounged others together. So, click on a patch below to get the WMF file for it, or click here for the ZIP file containing all of them. The big image, by the way, is painted on my office door. No, I didn’t paint anything myself. I’m more a computer geek. 🙂

And, of course, there’s the Army seal, since the one that gets passed around the most has some Yen symbols in the middle of the words!

I’m currently 50cents shy of getting a second commission check from Cafepress. So, anyone who needs some smart-ass clothing or drinkware, head on over and see if you want something!
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Cary Tennis has lots of folks writing him letters this week. A few highlights so far:

Avoid musicians and artists at all costs unless it’s solely a one-night stand.

I fell in love with someone who balances me and makes me happy, not someone that sets me afire because I know that kind of passion is part delusion and always temporary.

Stop calling severe psychological disorders “charming personality quirks.”

If you are a 45-year-old woman and you are dressing like Shakira in public and it is not Halloween, please stop.

Divorce – Parents longing for the freedom of their youth came and left like so many callers at a child’s wake. Some talked to my friends about it, some didn’t. None stayed for very long. All claimed needing to “experience life.” The effects are still being shown to this day — all of my friends either stay in relationships no matter what the cost or leave them no matter what the benefits.

To youth today, everything is a bloody drama.
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Some stories you just have to read yourself. <Chuckle>
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Cthuugle, a parody of Google, contains all the sites you want about the Old Ones…
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Off to a housewarming this afternoon, with a third batch of the brownies everyone loves. I can’t believe nobody asked for the recipe for baklava or black forest cake, but 3 people asked for the recipe for these brownies.

Take boxed brownie mix, prepare as directed and add a half-cup of chopped pecans. Don’t bake yet.
For the topping, take 1 pkg (8 oz) softened cream cheese, 1 lb of powdered sugar, 2 eggs, and 1 tsp vanilla. Beat until smooth, then spread on top of brownie mix. Bake 45 minutes at 350F or until top is golden brown. Tada!

From Smattering.

1. What was your favorite subject in school? Why? Math, because it made sense.
2. Who was your favorite teacher? Why? Mr. H, whose full name escapes me. He gave me a box of electronics and said, “See what you can make of this” in 7th grade.
3. What is your favorite memory of school? In 7th grade, winning a blue ribbon in science fair (for that box of electronics that became a Jacob’s Ladder and Tesla Coil) and a blue ribbon in an art competition (for a sketch of an elephant).
4. What was your favorite recess game? Can’t think of any besides four-square.
5. What did you hate most about school? Being invisible to the “cool kids.”

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Just playing with new skills on Macromedia Fireworks…



Give you any ideas?
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Thursday –

I’m a pretty patriotic person (12 years of army service, honorable discharge and all that), and I’m completely tired of the memorialization of last year. I do believe it should be remembered, much as Pearl Harbor is remembered every December 7th. But, let’s not make a holiday out of it – that just cheapens the whole thing, adding a celebratory aspect that shouldn’t be involved.

Meanwhile, the media have been memorializing September 11th ever since September 12th, so I think we’re all a bit numb from the onslaught. If they’d have let it rest for a few months, maybe I could get up some energy to give a shit about anything other than, “This is gonna foul up traffic on Wednesday.”

There are obviously serious deepseated root causes for the anger toward the US felt by many people. That’s something for politicians to deal with by changing our rather arrogant approach to other countries. The amazing intolerance of some cultures, though, is not our fault and I refuse to believe that we are at fault for the muslim extremists being extremist.

The proximate cause of the attack, though, is certainly knowable. I spent 12 years in the intelligence community, and I trust that the information the country is using to justify Bin Laden as the main bad guy is correct. His own statements and actions have more than removed any lingering doubts. Since the root causes are primarily cultural, and since the President is unwilling to change our unilateral approach to foreign policy, the only thing left to deal with is the proximate cause.

I think we’ve done a good job of taking care of Al Qaeda’s near-term ability to do any harm, and hurt their power base considerably by showing that we are willing to react to force with force. Those who claim violence never solved anything should really study history in more detail. We spent many years rattling sabers without any intent to follow through; we became caricatures of a world power. We’re back to being a world power, but I don’t think our current administration has the right path.

The Kyoto Accord should be signed. The International Criminal Court is a good idea. And, for the short-term, we definitely should not ignore Afghanistan. We promised them we would rebuild their country if they didn’t object to us bombing the piss out of it. Well, I don’t see a lot of cash flowing to Afghanistan right now, and that’s just amazingly poor policy. It shows the world that we don’t keep promises to our allies.

So, we’ve now shown the world that we will react with overwhelming force once we’ve been provoked repeatedly. This contrasts with Israel’s method of overwhelming force when laughed at too loudly. And, we’ve shown that we can’t be trusted to keep promises to friends and we don’t want to play well with others.

Damn, I hope we become isolationist. At least that would be consistent with the President’s views on things. I don’t know how he can think we can be a world power but not be part of the world community. We can’t be first among equals and have anyone take us seriously. We have to actually submit to being one of equals, and that’s something that the right-wing nuts won’t stand for quietly. Meanwhile, the left-wing nuts just want us to self-destruct, since we’re so evil. To them, I say, “find another country.”

Yep, I love America, warts and all. We really need to fix some major flaws, but it’s one of the best places to live.

Back to 9-11, I avoided network TV last night, since every channel was a pandering smarmy 9-11 memorial. Too much sacharine for me. 🙂

Amazing, I have absolutely no mac&cheese in my cupboards. How did that happen?
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Anyone know if there is a Livejournal module for PHP-Nuke? I’ve not installed Nuke yet, but I’d like to use it to spice up my site, but I’m not going to change how I journal things, so I’m not going to go to PHP-Nuke instead of LJ. If I can embed LJ in the center, like the PHP-Nuke blog tool does now…
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Is a half-bottle of eiswein really worth $60? Holy cow!
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Got an obscure one for you today:

You are so beautiful
You should be hipdeep in the jungle
On some forgotten island.

Name that tune!
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This is such a complete shock. Wow, nobody saw this coming at all. Nope. Completely out of the blue.

Next revelation, OJ Did It!
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Post yours in your own journal. Questions come up every week at Friday Five

1. What is your biggest pet peeve? Why? Stupid people. Not just the ones that are dumb, more the people who refuse to remember anything or learn anything new. Why? Because they make me want to kill.
2. What irritating habits do you have? I’m sure the peanut gallery will have something to add, but let’s see:
   • I am paranoid about being late to the point of showing up everywhere at least 15 minutes early.
   • Things go in specific places. That is a rule. Food and utensils may not share cupboard space. Hot pads go back on the hooks on the wall.
   • I have been told that I can be a tad arrogant, but that’s only because I’m better than you.
3. Have you tried to change the habits, or just let them be? I don’t show up 30 minutes early, but otherwise this is it.
4. What grosses you out more than anything else? Why? I think I’m remarkably un-gross-able.
5. What one thing can you never see yourself doing that other people do? Avoiding computers or books. 🙂

C’mon, smartasses, jump in!

A restaurant run mainly by blind people, which has no lights.
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While ICANN is contemplating whether to continue allowing Verisign to be a domain registrar (which makes me think of Dominar Rigel but I digress), they are sending out renewal notices claiming absurdities.

Apparently my domain is up for renewal “soon.” By soon, Verisign means next July. What time scale does the company work on that counts any time longer than a quarter as soon? Just trying to rake in a little cash before they lose the business, I suppose.
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From Cary Tennis, a columnist with Salon:

bq. So he wants to be burning for you and feel drunk with love all the time? That’s nice. Well, he’s a musician. Musicians are children. They’re courageous children but still, only a musician — or a poet — would be nearly 30 and say he wants to feel drunk with love for you all the time.

Musicians need a lot of care. They aren’t really equipped to deal with the world. He may need to go off and feel infatuated a few more times. But face it, what this also means is that he and you are both facing adulthood, which is a kind of unconscious code word for eventual death. That’s what it’s all about. Adulthood is about dreary day after day dealing with immovable reality.