BunkBlog

Poppy Brite posted about O.S. Card’s anti-gay marriage article yesterday. This is another perfect example of someone’s opinions being elevated based on their success in a completely different realm. Much as I don’t automatically believe Margaret Cho about politics just because I find her hilarious, I don’t agree with things Orson Card says just because I like some of his books. He should really stick to writing advice columns on how to get published. That, at least, he doesn’t sound like an asshole while doing.

Here’s the deal: Orson Card is a Mormon. Orson Card is a writer. Orson Card has named his children after authors (pretentious much?). Orson Card is not a military veteran, yet takes it upon himself to speak for us.

Who do you think is volunteering for the military to defend America against our enemies? Those who believe in the teachings of politically correct college professors? Or those who believe in the traditional values that the politically correct elite has been so successful in destroying?

Speaking as a veteran with 12 years experience defending the nation, in this all-volunteer military we have, I think I’ll pick apart his paragraph here. Those who are volunteering for the military include those who believe in the teachings of Ayn Rand as well as those who believe in the teachings of Tom McClancy. They include a surprisingly heterogenous group, not the bloc of mindless Neoconservatives that Card and (apparently) Dubya believe are in the service. Besides which, using the military majority as a basis for social laws is stupid. If we did that, we’d still have segregation by race and gender. Both of those integrations were forced on the military by the wiser and cooler heads of state.

Foremost, I have to say, “Stick with writing about writing” to Mr. Card. When he writes about what marriage is supposed to mean to me, he sounds like an asshat.

Things break down.

This is an eternal truth, and certainly rings true today. The universal remote, bought to replace the DVD remote which broke after having soda poured on it (thanks kid), has recently decided to stop operating the television. It worked for months, and then – poof. Fine, just use two remotes. Big deal.

More fun in entropy-land – the router. Our wifi router decided to give us 10% instead of 100% ever since we moved. No amount of reconfiguring and rejiggering would make it behave. So, I finally got the tech support guys at DLink to RMA it. Get the new one on Friday, hook it up… woohoo! Full speed ahead. Let’s download a DVD image! Fast forward to Sunday.

Sunday, we get back from the carnival (much cotton candy and funnel cakes and spinning rides), and the wifi connection begins to crap out. Looks like the router is randomly rebooting. Then, it begins a cycle of reboots every 15-20 seconds. WTF? Am I getting a DDOS attack, or is it just a piece of shit? Who can tell? Reset the router. Works. Whew. 30 minutes later, stops working to reboot. And reboot. And reboot.

So far, it’s been 90 minutes since it reset itself. I immediately assumed the router was faulty, but now I wonder if it’s possible that there is a DDOS crashing it. Why would someone target me, though? Seems absurd. Also unlikely, considering I have reset the modem and been issued two different IPs during this ordeal, and both of them have had reboot problems. Sigh. Besides, if it’s an attack, wouldn’t it take down the modem, not the router? The modem is first, after all. Anyone have any insight there?

You’re Hyde!

Which That 70’s Show Character are You?
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Is there a wood-based equivalent to silicosis? I wouldn’t want to develop Carpenter’s Lung from sanding the floor…

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Good. You know your music. You should be able to
work at Championship Vinyl with Rob, Dick and
Barry

Do You Know Your Music (Sorry MTV Generation I Doubt You Can Handle This One)
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I don’t think anyone can say it better or more succinctly than Illiad:

While sitting at home, wishing my stomach would settle down so I could eat something, I had to play the meme of the day…

I am Hannibal

Which A-Team member are you???

Autumn in West Texas is unlike autumn in the northern regions. Autumn here consists of one or two days of summer alternated with a day or two of winter. It’s as if Mother Nature decided that Texas in the fall should be an average instead of a steady-state.

I have to agree with Catherine on the futility of snooze alarms. I’ve never understood how someone could lull themselves into sleeping 7 minutes longer, but then I also don’t understand people who set their clocks ahead in order to be not late. I’m not capable of fooling myself like that.

As for snooze alarms in particular, if you can get up later and still make it where you need to go on time, just set the clock later. If you happen to awaken before the alarm, there’s no harm done. If you sleep until the alarm goes off, you know you need to move it, like right now. Maybe if I were someone who required 45 minutes and two cups of coffee in the morning before I could leave my door, the snooze alarm concept would make more sense to me…

Hypothetically, say you build a web page as a quick one-off. When you look at it and test it every which way, it works just fine. When others look at it, many of them tell you it doesn’t work completely and even tell you specifically what is broken and why.

Do you:
a. Believe that 5 different people getting the same result are a statistically valid sample and change your page to be bulletproof, or
b. Assume that since you can see it, everyone else is a fucking moron and begin to insult them for trying to help you fix your page.

Just thinking. Hypothetically.

Gourmet Cat Food is remarkably similar to MREs.

Stolen from PartyWhipple, who stole it from Janke…
More »

You’re a Cardassian! Intelligent and devious,
you’re a bit of an enigma to those around you
and scientific to the core.

What Star Trek Race Are You?
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“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

Why does “stainless steel” not mean “rustproof” or even “rust-resistant”? Tell me.

“Loyalty to the country always, loyalty to the government when it deserves it.” – Mark Twain