BunkBlog

I know, it’s shocking, but I’ve actually added a Random Meandering Thought to my site, the first this year.

I guess I’ve not felt the need to add too much to that portion of my site, with LJ embedded in my homepage. 🙂
current_music: Shaggy – Wasn’t Me

So, here’s my thoughts on maturity and sexuality. Anyone who has let their children grow up to be teenagers, let me know if I’m in the right ballpark here.

When kids are little, they don’t understand sex and it is a non-issue to them.
As pre-teens, they know it’s something icky and don’t want to get involved, hiding their eyes during kissing scenes on TV and such.
As pubescents and throughout high school, sex is something they know is supposed to be the biggest deal in the world, but it’s all supposed to be secret knowledge. Anyone trying to be less than 100% reverent of all things regarding nudity and sexuality is automatically icky. Reverting back to being eight years old.
Between (varies by person) 17 and 24, sex is a great toy and one yearns for quantity and variety over quality. Relationships are secondary to physicality.
Around 25 or 30 (some of my friends ain’t there yet), human behavior is realized to be much greater than one particular facet, and then truly adult attitudes form about things in life, to include but not limited to sex and nudity etc.

So, how’s that? Seems to match my observations of people through life, and just a little inspired by the children populating the adult sections of LJ this week…
current_music: Uncle Kracker – Follow Me
current_mood: tired

OK, I try to have a little fun (on a dare from my SO) on the NP community, and some jackass has to spend the greater part of her day harassing me for what she perceives as my physical defects. Why join a group that you think is (in her creative words) lame? Further, why bother engaging in a battle of wits when you are obviously unarmed? I just checked her LJ page, and it’s friends-only. Probably tired of the people she harangues jumping back on her. True cowardice…

This is just my first entree into the constantly waging battle between mean-spirited losers and the (thankfully much more numerous) loving free spirits seen on LJ way too frequently. Apparently there are a large number of people, all of them about 15 years old it seems, who don’t feel as if their day is complete unless they can abuse a random human that crosses their path. I’m astounded at the level of immaturity that people have, and yet they are just barely smart enough to run a computer. Amazing.

Anyway, I’m not gonna play over there anymore. I don’t want to stop getting email notifications of post responses in my journal and others, but I’m not going to subject myself to some little kid’s hyperactive attacks against me either. Maybe this little girl will find something else to amuse herself with soon, like illegal drugs or something. Ah, the idea of some snotnosed brat getting arrested and hauled off to prison sure does brighten up one’s day, doesn’t it?
current_mood: angry

Just found out about the Naked Parts community. I guess Lianna doesn’t need to coordinate an XXXMas 2001 celebration, eh?
current_music: Shaggy – Wasn’t Me
current_mood: horny

What’s the good of having a significant other if they’re 800 miles away? Grrr…

I really do plan to update my website someday soon, as soon as I can get my brand-new, not-even-paid-for, computer to WORK reliably for more than 10 minutes at a time. (At that point, I will get around to re-installing my programs for web wonderment. I actually have a RIAA piece I’ve been planning, composed primarily of old LJ posts rearranged in a coherent narrative.) Gee, wonder why Micron is getting out of the computer business? Windows ME blows chunks.

Speaking of unreliable, I really miss my broadband internet connection. Dialup blows almost as much as WinME.

New job is interesting, but could we cut down on the acronyms, please? Hell, there are acronyms composed of other acronyms, some of which are in turn acronym-laden. WTF?

Tomorrow morning, chai at work. Only way to make it through those regulations and powerpoint presentations. Powerpoint is evil.

Why do so many people have webcams to show off their home life, including copious nekkidness, to thousands of strangers? MAJOR exhibitionist tendencies. Calling Dr. Jung, calling Dr. Freud…

I really need to stop drinking Mountain Dew at 10 pm.

I like horizontal rules.
current_music: CNN Headline News
current_mood: tired

So, on the way home today, going about 10 mph over the speed limit, some moron Marine roars up behind me in his ricey Acura, and before I can change lanes (duh wonder what that blinker means), he speeds around me, passing on the right. Second guy (soldier type) does the same thing right on his tail.

Twenty seconds later, I’m right behind them at a stoplight. Yeah, the extra wear and tear sure is helping you get home faster, putz boy.
current_mood: amused

Just found a cool site, that apparently has been around for years. Anyone who has been to Asia has undoubtedly seen examples of nonsensical English phrases plastered on buildings, packages, and advertisements. Someone has built a website to hold examples: Engrish. Here’s one to enrishes everyone and take the everyday time to thirst level!!! (or something)

current_mood: amused

Finally, the corporate bureaucracy I’m voluntarily joining has deigned to give me official notice of the job offer. I can resume a relatively normal existence, soonish.

Of course, by normal I mean living in an apartment much too large for my stuff while waiting for my lovely partner and monster munchkin to join me a couple months down the line, with more stuff. At least I can have my computer on a desk again, although I will sadly be sans broadband internet for a while longer.

Money, I want money. Whole lot of spending money…
current_mood: relieved

So, Salon has joined the ranks of sites that have given up on being free. Unlike many, though, Salon isn’t closing down, just offering two tiers of service. According to a recent press release, Salon will implement a $30 annual subscription to nuke ads and get more content. The “light” version of the site will continue, with larger ads than currently in use (and presumably less content than current).

So, unlike the Wall Street Journal and other sites, which require $60 annual subscriptions or more, the Salon site will cost about as much as 2 magazine subscriptions. Is the content worth it?

How much would you pay for CNN’s site, if they went to a subscription model?

I love small town mentality. For the past 3 years, I’ve lived in a city of 100 thousand people that seems to think it’s still a small town. Makes for some surreal things at times.

I want to make deposits at the ATM, much as I did in 1985 with my first bank account, and as I did in Korea and Tacoma and Boston. C’mon, I could deposit in KOREA! But, when asked about the possibility of making deposits someday in the ATM here in BFE, the response is generally vague and usually ominous. Today’s was the best:

“I wouldn’t if we ever allow it even. When I worked at the bank in Austin, they pulled an ATM out to replace it and found a deposit made 3 years earlier that had been lost all that time.”

Yeah, and ten years ago, Chicago postal workers burned mail rather than deliver it. Does that mean I shouldn’t use the postal service anymore? Mistakes happen, but I’ve never had a problem with an ATM deposit in nearly 20 years.

Another fun item: Banker’s hours. You have heard of them, but unless you are older than 40 or live in a tiny town, you think of them as quaint stories. Not here. Until Wells Fargo merged with Norwest, the local bank closed its doors at 3 pm every day, and was not open at all on Saturday. Coupled with the inability to make deposits at the ATM, people had to race around on lunchbreaks or take time off from work to deposit their paychecks. Duh?

I’m sure I’ll think of others soon enough. Where y’all from?

Following in the footsteps of so many corporate mergers online lately, the mighty Winfiles (nee Windows95.com) has ceased to be. It is an ex-site. After Cnet bought them out a long time back, they continued existing as a separate entity, but now they are gone, folded into the vast faceless, unfriendly Download.com site. Worse, the files that were indexed on Winfiles don’t seem to have migrated. I know my two tiny “desktop enhancement” products are no longer listed. Way to lose functionality.

Reminds me of the way Yahoo ate Four11 and reduced its usefulness a while back. Or when Yahoo ate Geocities and broke most of its functions for months on end. Or or or…

I’ve been online too long.
current_mood: wistful

After a conversation with an old friend today, I revisited Gnutella. There’s a program called BearShare that acts as a frontend for Gnutella, and allows searches to be performed without the pain of a few months ago. Just played with BearShare tonight, looking for common and obscure tunes, including some George Carlin and Bill Cosby tracks. Great selection, which indicates that all the publicity that CNN et al have given Napster has raised awareness of such things to the point that Gnutella is actually useful finally. They have definitely hit the critical mass needed to be a decent search tool.

Even better, the RIAA can now only sue individuals, cuz there’s no server. So, the record companies are going to take their own customers to court? hehe

It’s not completely new, but I know not everyone reads Slashdot and pays attention to the latest news from techno-geek lands like ZDNet and CNet. Anyway, there’s a new music distribution format that the RIAA (motto: we’re not an evil entity, but we play one on TV) actually likes for a change: DataPlay.

Basically, the DataPlay disks are 500 megabyte CD-R disks that are downsized to a miniscule 1-inch wide platter. BUT, what the RIAA wants to do with them is to put not 500 megabytes of actual CD-DA audio on them, but 500 megabytes of compressed audio, with most of it encrypted when you buy it. Say you buy the latest Madonna album on DataPlay disks (let’s call them DP for short :)). It may well include the Immaculate Collection on it as well as Like a Virgin. But, you can’t hear those other albums until you pay the label for them. You connect the DP to your computer, and send an electronic funds transfer to Warner Bros. In seconds, your DP has had a few more bytes written to it, and now you can listen to all three of those albums, from a disk the size of a quarter. Pretty neat, in my opinion. Obviously, with compressed music you get some lower sound quality, but not enough to hurt sales. After all, MP3 is amazingly popular, and you can fit about 8 albums in 500 megs with that format.

Here’s the deal, though: chicken and egg. When CDs replaced LPs (don’t complain, the vinyl record is as near dead as makes no difference), they had the benefit of being smaller and better-sounding, with no pops or hisses or crackles. They are also, of course, much more durable than vinyl. Although some people don’t take care of their CDs very well, if you remember to put them back in their jewel cases instead of using them like coasters, they should last much longer than vinyl would under normal usage. Where are the players for the DP disks? If you look at the DP site, it seems that all the players are portables, and most are made in Korea (whatever that means).

So, is the rationale here that we would use CDs at home, and then burn our own DPs with 5-6 albums on them for our portable use? The RIAA makes money on the blank DPs, I’m guessing, just as they do on blank DAT tapes (a great format that the RIAA nearly killed 15 years ago). (They must, if the disks are going to cost 5-12 bucks each for blanks. Of course, remember when CD-R disks were that expensive?) Sounds good to the RIAA, and maybe it will even work out ok for consumers, so long as we can burn whatever we want to the DPs and not need permission for each file, etc. I’d hate to be strangled by Windows Media Player (wimp) or the abominable SDMI when I just wanted to take my entire Concrete Blonde collection on one disk when I went for a bike ride.

Keep an eye on the DataPlay format, it may turn out to have better legs than MiniDisc and DCC (anyone besides me remember that one?)

—–
Update: Yeah, I was obviously way off on this one. DataPlay never really even hit the market before it died.

This isn’t all new material, and I just got it from the HumourNet Newsletter, so I’m even plagiarizing old jokes, but I just thought it was perfect:

You are 100% Texan if…

1. It doesn’t bother you to use an airport named for a man who died in an airplane crash.

2. You use the phrase “fixin’ to” almost daily.

3. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date.

4. You’ve ever been excused from school because “the cows got out.”

5. You can properly pronounce the town Mexia, Waxahachie and Mesquite.

6. You can remember the name of the last state legislator to introduce a bill involving castration and he didn’t mean farm animals.

7. You know exactly what calf fries are and eat them anyway.

8. You can recall really hot summers by the year they happened easier than you can remember your mother’s birthday.

9. You think that people who complain about the wind in their states are sissies.

10. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to the door but the availability of shade.

11. You have owned at least one belt buckle bigger than your fist.

12. A bad traffic jam involves two cars staring each other down at four-way stop, each determined to be the most polite and let the other one go first.

13. When you hear a tornado siren, you go out and look for a funnel.

14. Your “place at the lake” has wheels under it.

15. You aren’t surprised to find movie rental, ammunition, and bait all in the same store.

16. A Mercedes Benz is not a status symbol. A Ford F350 4×4 is.

17. You know that everything goes better with Ranch.

18. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned how to multiply.

19. You know that “y’all” is singular and “all y’all” is plural.

20. You are 100% Texan if you have ever had this conversation:

“You wanna Coke?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“Dr Pepper”

current_mood: amused

OK, so this week they’ve been playing The Day After on cable quite a bit. I can only assume they’ve run out of material. BUT, how many people under the age of 30 know this movie? And, how many people 30 or older do not think of it as an important and powerful film from the Cold War?

I swear, the difference in 10 years was astounding. Everyone just knew, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, that we were seconds away from nuclear conflagration. We had songs (99 Luft Ballons, Russians, etc.), we had movies (Red Dawn, etc.), we couldn’t escape it. Hell, we had air raid drills when I was in elementary school. Like hiding in the school basement would have made a damned bit of difference.

I think this is somewhat more significant a difference than my generation’s veneration of Levi’s 501s, don’t you?
current_mood: contemplative

Here’s a great quote from Survivorsucks:

I think in a few years they’ll actually start executing people who are voted off, because that will increase the drama. As is, I think people who are banished should be allowed to form their own vengeful “ghost tribe” to harass the other tribes and pull all kinds of spooky Blair Witch pranks on ‘em. That’d add greatly to the show, seriously.

current_mood: amused

Anyone have a way of making Jack of all trades, master of none sound good? Damned army has made it impossible to have job experience in anything that someone will pay me for, except to stay a spook. If I wanted to play spy, I’d have stayed in.

Meanwhile, I’m still looking for work that pays something more than “insulting” as a wage. Anyone? Anyone?
current_mood: frustrated

Here is a great sign I happened upon recently: Picacho Prison. hehe

Oh, and then there’s also Eloi (no Morlocks though).
current_mood: silly

$_=’while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$ t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=( $m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;$t^ =(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16 -2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271);if ((@a=unx”C*”,$_)[20]&48){$h =5;$_=unxb24,join””,@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[–$ h+84])}@ARGV;s/…$/1$&/;$ d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])>8^($f=$t&($d>>12^$d>>4 ^ $d^$d/8))>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8^$q>=8)+=$f+( ~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x”C*”,@a}’;s/x/pack+ /g;eval

OK, finally got around to finding something better than the old free UBB board I’ve been running. Say hello to my Ikonboard, a place for geeks to hang out and chat. Main boards are Linux, SIGINT, and Mayfair High School. Also a completely random forum, and if anyone wants a new one or wants me to host a discussion board for them on my site, let me know.

For some reason, the most popular page on my site is no longer Lianna’s XXmas, as it has been since January. Now, the most popular page is a review I did of the RioVolt. It’s a pretty cool toy, if you’ve not read it already. I didn’t realize how many folks read the MP3 forum.
current_mood: thirsty