BunkBlog

Played with Broderbund’s 3D Home Architect this weekend. Considering how limited the number of pieces of furniture are to choose from, this does look quite a bit like the view from the den into the living room and kitchen, if I were sitting in the PapaSan chair. Which I do, when I’m waiting for the dog to finish sniffing every single plant in the back yard.

In my email today:

————

hi dear,
how are you and how is your work going ?hopr its going smoothly?you know i promised to email you from our chat and right now i just wanna try to describe myself .
i think im gonna start from here cuz i dont really know how to do this ok but ill try .

Here goes my story ok.im 26/yrs old and im carol simson im white,guess you saw that in my profile huh.im 5″7 feets tall and i love guyz who are willing to show me care and love.hope you are the one im looking for?im kinda shy at first to talk to guyz and i have a set of good eyes a dark hair too.
im not an upgraed member of the yahoo personals ok.cuz ive been kinde busy with some stuffs which i believe are more important .
im a christian and i love kids alot .my parents area aloso christians and thay also love kids ,but it took them over 10 yrsbefore they had me as their only child .when i was about 5 years old ,my father died cuz he had asthma and i could remember i wept in that day .it was a tragic day i guess .
actually, my father is an american and mty mom is an african ,precisely a nigerian .after my fathers death, my mom took up the responsibility and she fedme ,cloth me and also paid my school fees .as time went on ,my mom had some problems with the US government and this made my mom leave the US for her country ,which made my mom laeve me with my paps sister in illinois.she caredabout me and really loved me soo much which was about 10 years ago .theni moved to texas about 5 months ago and i tried to get a home of my own which i got the money from my aunty and ive not finishedpaying the bills .
Some weeks later ,i got a message that my aunt was dead .then i felt it was over.
Recently i got a call from nigeria that my mom fell from the staircase and also broke her spinal cord.i had to rush down to nigeria with the little money i had left to get a ticket and flew down to africa.ok
when i got to nigeria .i gotto know that my mom had already been rushedto the hospitasl ok.i got to the doctor he explained everything to me and told me that my mom needed the attention of an orthopedist.which will cost about $500 and right now ive spent the only $200 i had to get some medication for her an dthe doctor says if shes not operated she will soon have to be on a wheelchair .and i felt it was over and not until i met you ,youve given my world a turnaround ,youve given me hope .thanks for this ok.]
i really would appreciate it if you could get me out of this mess so that we could start a new life together and live as man and wifeok cuz shes the only one i have left .im leaning on you for refuge ok. please dont let me dowm.
I wish to know more about you and would have preffered it if we could chat together but im kinda trying to treat my mom with the little i have left.
i really hope to hear from you soon and hope you are for real.
Must confess you are cool and i think we could work things out .bye love.
carol cares and will always love you

—————

Gotta love it. I’ve never chatted with you, and I don’t think I’m ready to “live as man and wifeok” right now, but thanks for the offer.

What’s up with the GOP? The formerly solid wall of “Bush can do no wrong” is crumbling lately. Not only has Bill Frist gone against the White House by following his medical experience instead of faith-based science and supporting stem cell research, now he’s calling for hearings on the federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina. Damn. They haven’t even counted the dead yet, there are hundreds still to rescue from rooftops around New Orleans, and Frist is hacking at the Prez? Where was your spine when you could have prevented something, Mr. Majority Leader? Did you have to wait for Maxine Waters to pull her Jesse Jackson-assisted publicity stunt at England AFB before you could start questioning some of the bizarre decisions the administration has made?

I watched the Video Music Awards (OK, they were on while I was blasting aliens nearby) the other day. Several times during the broadcast, MTV played commercials which claimed that the recurring meme that “MTV Doesn’t Play Music” is actually a falsehood, an urban legend. Glancing at their schedule on Zap2It this morning, I find that MTV does play music videos. At 5 am. Twice per week. For an hour. That can’t be right, I thought. Maybe some of these other shows with hip and happenin’ names are actually music videos.

Turns out, MTV After Hours plays videos, from 2am to 5am each weekday. And MTV Video Wakeup plays videos from 5am to 8am each weekday. And we can’t forget TRL, which plays about one video per 15 minutes of mindless yammering, and only one hour per day anyway.

So, what do we end up with? On weekdays, there are music videos from 2 to 8 in the morning, which is convenient if you’re a vampire. And then there are videos interspersed with screaming teenaged girls at 4 each afternoon. Being as generous as humanly possible, that gives a grand total of 40 hours of music during a seven-day period that has 168 hours broadcast. Less than 25% music on Music Television.

During those hours when I could watch television, the schedule is filled with endless hours of reality shows and Laguna Beach. Yay.

For those of us who have jobs that require we work and sleep normal hours, this is very entertaining. I guess you could Tivo the videos on some sort of low priority, so if there’s nothing you want to watch on, you could zone out to videos. Otherwise, the “urban legend” is true, at least insofar as it applies to normal people who sleep when it’s dark and work during the week – MTV really doesn’t play music.

Y’all know I don’t often link to anything right-wing except to mock it, but this post is dead-on. The emergency response plan for New Orleans included everyone who had a car driving away. Full stop.

Meanwhile, the 100,000 residents (20% of the population) who did not actually possess cars were unadressed by the plan. And the school buses which were owned and operated by the city were left in their lot, now filled with water and unusable. How many buses? Enough to evacuate all 100,000 carless citizens in something under 3 days, if they went all the way to Houston.

As Michael says, this isn’t a political issue. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian – doesn’t matter. If you have hundreds of buses and you don’t plan to use them to evacuate the city, you’re just a dumb ass.

Just to add a trifle more surrealism to your websurfing experience, I’ve added a little code to my site that displays the lyrics to the most recently played song from Winamp on the sidebar (bottom of the right side). Yes, I am a geek, thanks for asking.

In case there’s anyone who isn’t watching The Interdictor journal – you should. I’ve known this guy for a few years now, and his no-nonsense views from the heart of the New Orleans business district are enlightening.

Take care, Michael.

Live television has a way of producing unexpected comments.

I’m amazed that Mike Myers attempted to stick with the script while Kanye West is ranting about the Administration ignoring the refugees in New Orleans because they’re black. Amazing.

There are some truly messed up people in the world. This guy, supposedly a man of God, preacher of the Gospels of forgiveness and love, has this to say about why Katrina was a blessing to New Orleans:

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”

I have no words.
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Saw a fellow this afternoon, filling up his RV at the local gas station, with a boat on a trailer following. I can just imagine the dedication to his vacation he must have, to be paying (at that station) $3.01 per gallon for regular.

One of my cow-orkers today referred to the 89-octane fuel as “high test” gas. I offered to help him knead the yellow coloring into his oleo if his arthritic senior citizen hands could use the break. So he said he wasn’t being anachronistic – it’s a Californian thing. “Hey, I am from California, I think I’d know, buddy.”

Blame Me – I voted for the moron (not really, but that’s the design)

Sarcasm 3 is my latest attempt at graphical humor. If you are humorless, don’t bother going there – you’ll just get mad.

Despite the things I’ve been hearing from my cow-orkers and family members, the FCC has proposed 2009 as the deadline to change from analog to digital television, and it looks like Congress is going to sign that into law. So, all of you who thought your television was going to stop working soon – don’t worry.

Here in San Angelo, the local cable company (sure, there’s theoretically more than one, but get real) has been in a pissing contest with the local CBS affiliate since the beginning of the year. This has resulted in no CBS channel available on the cable system, free rabbit-ears antennas for cable subscribers that ask for them, and a striking rise in the use of satellite television receivers.

I don’t get the satellite thing. Of course, I don’t get the fascination with digital cable either. Both of them force something on the consumer that is, in my mind, unacceptable – the adapter. This is nothing less than an external tuner, rendering the tuners in my television and VCR useless. Many people wonder why I think this is a bad thing. This can be summed up in one of the marketing points for the local Dish Network folks – they brag about allowing you to have televisions in up to five rooms in your house. Allowing you to have them, you see? Because, unlike television as broadcast over the airwaves of old, the satellite provider now controls your usage of the signal.

No longer can you watch one thing and record another – oh no, your VCR has to be connected to a second external tuner to record something that you are not watching in that room at that moment. Ah, but then the Dish folks point out they are offering a free DVR upgrade, so you can record the full digital signal of other shows directly on this magical box. Ah, but can you? When the television industry is trying to get legislation passed to allow the Broadcast Flag to rise from the dead, when Tivo now puts commercials on you recorder while you’re trying to skip commercials, when the broadcasters are coercing the DVR manufacturers to disallow permanent archiving of shows… Well, I don’t trust a DVR that I don’t control 100%, and the DVR from Dish network would be a DRMed, MPAA-friendly, unexpandable, unchangeable piece of junk to me.

I don’t understand why so many people find it acceptable to cede control of the airwaves to the content providers. There is a balance in copyright law; the citizens are assumed to have some rights too, not just the people in Hollywood.

So, until I can use a standard tuner in a standard television or DVR or computer tuner card, I’ll stick with analog, thanks.

I just saw an ad for the Fritos Chili Cheese Hungr Buster burger, from Dairy Queen. It’s a local Texas-only promotion, of course. What a great idea for a country that is already averaging about double “holy shit you’re fat” obesity levels…

While perusing the Something Positive Archive (great web comic), I came across a recommendation to listen to The Kimberly Trip. For those who aren’t up on things, The Kimberly Trip is a band which includes Sierra, who is one of my oldest LJ friends. She started her LJ about 4 weeks before I started mine, but she is an “Early Adopter” and I’m just some jonny-come-lately. 🙂

Anyway, this is a pretty weird web-centric small world moment. Carry on with your day.

The article LPO: Caring for Your Introvert isn’t new, but I just bumped into it via Neal Stephenson’s page. Here’s a short excerpt:

Are introverts arrogant?

Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours.

Just a quick test to see if the latest Live Press update fixes what ails me.

Update – Sure looks like it.

Alex began kindergarten this week. On the first day, his teacher told us about the Gifted and Talented screening in the spring, and how he’d probably go to the GT program next year. See? I told you all he was the smartest boy in the world!

University of Texas, in Austin, has decided to remove the books from their undergraduate library. Now, it’s filled with computers and chairs and barstools. It’ll have some kickass wifi, too.

Here’s an entertaining new publication that I saw in Utne – $pread Magazine. It’s for sex workers, by sex workers. That is to say, it’s a pro-stripper, pro-prostitute magazine.

Just making your day a tad more surreal.

A strange thing about the Amazon recommendation system – it’s retarded.

It may make sense, in the context of books or music, to suggest you might be interested in something similar to a previously purchased item. But, in the context of technology, it’s just bizarre. “Hey, we noticed you own a wifi card, so you might be interested in another wifi card.” Um, yeah. Thanks, got one. “You purchased a couple books on Microsoft Access, maybe you’d like all the other books on Access ever published.” Why would I?

And don’t even get me started on the way that different editions of the same book or CD get hawked, after I purchased one already. “You bought Depeche Mode’s Songs of Faith and Devotion, maybe you’d like Songs of Faith and Devotion [Enhanced]?” Seems unlikely, doesn’t it?