BunkBlog

First, thanks to all who wished me happy birthday this past Saturday.  I appreciate it.

The lovely Kat put together an unusual method of gift-giving – a scavenger hunt. I wandered around the nature center, following her rhyming clues, hoping not to be told to put my hand in the viper cage. It was a very cool haul of presents, including a few pans to be used for various stir fry and baking needs, as well as a few books I’ve been looking at. Of course, the cocktail shaker got a good workout this weekend, making a few batches of raspberry margaritas to accompany the Serrano ham-wrapped figs.

Sunday morning we hit the lake, after applying what appears in retrospect to be insufficient amounts of sunscreen. Kayaking across 3 miles of placid water, watching for critters, and watching The Boy splash around in the water – good times.  The eventual “seen animal” list included a bevy of turtles, a flock of birds, a swarm of dragonflies, a school of jumping fish (none near the fishermen, though), and a couple water snakes. The first snake was a cottonmouth (aka water mocassin), which was swimming away from the crazy humans at a good clip. It must have been at least 4 feet long. The second slithery critter was a diamond-backed water snake of much smaller size.  It popped up and then slipped beneath the surface, never to be seen again.

We also discovered that paddling a tube is not very efficient (no bow or stern, so you tend to paddle clockwise and counter-clockwise rather than forward).  Well, The Boy discovered this, after much instruction on the proper angle of attack for the paddle.  Then, we discovered that The Boy likes to paddle the kayak.  Come back here, you little monkey!

Overall, a great birthday and good weekend. Now, if my coworkers would just stop saying, “Got some sun this weekend, eh?”  SO original.

Kat’s kayak arrived via big truck last week, and then sat on the love seat for two days due to lack of time. Here it is.

When Kat arrived home Friday afternoon, she chanted “It’s kayak time” repeatedly until I changed into swim trunks and slathered on some sun screen. I took my inflatable kayak, which is (in contrast) a big pig of an overgrown pool toy.  But, still got us around the lake for a couple hours, during which we saw critters. There were many turtles poking just above the surface, a nutria putting on a diving show for us, a swan, and a water snake. Maybe that water snake, who knows?

The only problem with taking the kayak out, other than sunburn? The cat no longer has a giant bed.

Kat is working as a naturalist at the local nature center, and gets to spend much time with the critters. She’s owned snakes and lizards and all manner of furry, finned, and scaled critters over the years. She minored in biology. She’s not generally squeamish.

Saturday, I’m finally getting the 2007 DVDs ready to ship to far-flung relatives, when I get a call. “There’s an emergency, I can’t get in touch with [Snake Guy] (her boss at the nature center), and I need you to come out here.”  So, I hit the road for the lake, pop in and she’s standing in the middle of the main room, with the door to the reptile room blocked, while she madly dials anyone who can help with the unidentified snake in the room. Last seen heading for a dark corner, the reptile has decided to enliven the morning and cancel a child’s birthday party.

After a couple hours of searching, a snake wrangler in flip flops (!) pulling apart the reptile room, and general panic trying to identify which snakes might be missing (without going into the “venomous” room if avoidable), the little bugger finally decides to reveal himself. It turns out to be a fairly dehydrated water snake. One of the enclosures appeared to be missing a water snake, except that snake died three weeks ago. This one is the same species, albeit much younger and smaller. He broke into the nature center. While we’re trying to figure out which snake had escaped, it turns out this one was a burglar. What are the odds?

Ron Moore, you sonofabitch. You evil, twisted, sick muthafracker.

Anyone who has read anything of the British crypto effort during WW2, especially regarding the Enigma machine, should be familiar with the name Bletchley Park.  It was the home of the UK equivalent to our NSA, and also housed Alan Turing during the war.  You’d think preserving such an important location would be completely uncontroversial.  Apparently everyone agrees that the site is a wonderful historical locale and its museum of computing is also a great resource.  But, they’re not too willing to pay for it.

The curator says they may be able to keep running for two more years, unless some generous folks step up.  That would be a shame.

Oh, and if you’re not a crypto geek, at least read Between Silk and Cyanide – it’s a fantastic read and a very interesting look at the difficulties of covert agents and how they tie in with the crypto geek culture as well.  Crypto geeks have all read Cryptonomicon, so I won’t bother to link to that one.  🙂

Yeah, Weezer is totally the band of geeks everywhere.

Remember when the MSN Music Store shut down over a year ago? Remember that Microsoft said that songs you “bought” from the MSN Music Store were going to be yours to keep forever? Guess what, sucker? After August, you can’t upgrade your computer without losing your music.

Yet another in a long series of “DRM Hates Customers” stories. You’d think the computer industry ditching copy protection years ago, coupled with the complete meltdown of DRM in music over the past couple years, would make the movie industry wake up and kill their copy protection plans. You’d be wrong. Not that their DRM will hold up either… Oh, yeah – it didn’t! HAH!

The movie Expelled is coming out in just over a week. According to every reviewer who isn’t an right-wing fundamentalist, it sucks. Of course, I assume it will play here in San Angelo (as seen on “FLDS Watch”!), because we always get that stuff. Have fun with the reviews on Expelled Exposed – the reviews are pretty entertaining. Heck, even Fox News didn’t like it; I’m pretty sure that’s the target demo.

Picture this: Kat’s in the kitchen, making herself some pasta. I hear a shout, and go in to see boiling water pouring down the counter and the front of the dishwasher.

Um… What happened?

“I was holding the colander to strain the pasta.”

Did you know it was recently boiling?

So, I now know someone who literally can’t be trusted to boil water. I suspect she does this sort of thing just to ensure I won’t allow her to cook.

A great look at upgrading from Vista to XP.  Amusing and yet very informative as a primer to the various issues Vista users encounter far too frequently.  Except Wayne, who thinks Vista is wonderful.  Cuz he’s insane.

Review: Windows XP – Coding Sanity

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.

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.

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.

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.  😉

Karl Schroeder has released Ventus as a free ebook download.  It’s very good.  If you’re interested in nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, post-apocalyptic fiction (not strictly speaking, but a reversion to more primitive life yada yada), or just good speculative fiction about the future of humanity, give it a read.

Now to add a bunch of Schroeder books to my Amazon wishlist…

Is this normal?

Every so often, Ted Nugent shows up on Faux News or in a print publication, and he gets to hold the unenviable position of the Cool Republican. After all, according to conventional wisdom, most of the entertainment industry is filled with crazy lefties, but Nugent is the edgy guy in the GOP.

He’s so edgy, he brought a couple of weapons on stage (they appear to be M16s, so they are probably AR-15s) , and waved them around. Ooh, edgy. And then, he screamed obscenities about a variety of Democratic politicians. Edgy. He told Senator Obama (who he respectfully calls a piece of shit) to suck on his machine gun. Um, edgy? Senator Clinton, lovingly called a worthless bitch, is told to ride a gun into the sunset. WTF?

In an interview with Sean Hannity, Nugent spoke of Democrats (in response to a former Hustler writer saying he had dibs on Rush Limbaugh for conservative hunting season), “I find it just reprehensible that they would recommend violence, not to mention murder and shooting people and assassinating people. This is bizarre.”

You’re right, Nuge. It is bizarre.
You can find the video if you search online. I’m not linking to that crap.

One of my cow-orkers delights in learning things that are relatively old news and then acting as if he’s sharing something of earth-shattering importance.  Among his recent discoveries: Agile Development, AJAX, Six Sigma, and Ruby on Rails.

It’s always cute to hear him espouse the way something from 3 years ago will change everything. And it’s always buzzword-compliant too.  For good or ill, he is on to the next old new thing often enough that he rarely implements much.  Well, there was that Agile Scrum thing, but I avoided it.  Meanwhile, I just put together a database documenting the capabilities of all the disparate simulations the programmers have built this year.  Not a word of appreciation from the boss-types.  *sigh*