Ow.

I think today is pretty much a write-off.

Fortunately, my only Must Do chore for the day can be done in my pyjamas.

BRAAIIINNS!

Supernaut's CMOS battery was deader than Elvis, and somehow the settings all got zorched. Maybe I hit F10 when I should have hit ESC...

Anyhow, with a new battery and some tinkering around at the repair counter at Fry's, we're up and shambling, hopefully long enough to get a new bare-bones desktop screwed together early next month. I'm taking this as a hint that it's time to put the old machine out to pasture.

It's been an adventuresome day, to say the least...

XVIIIth Century Brain in a 10101st Century Head

So, my dead desktop has my only running copy of Acrobat on it, which I kind of need to do some, you know, work-type work over the weekend. So I'm going to drag its mortal remains to the 'puter store and see if the drive is salvageable, and which would be cheaper (or even feasible): A bare-bones XP system into which I could drop the old drive, or just getting a Winders 7 version of Acrobat for this machine.

Anyhow, I was sitting here, fretting, and not wanting to go anywhere until I'd heard back from various bosses and coworkers and whatnot via email... all while the Portable Magic Elf Box* is sitting there all charged up next to me. Derp. I guess I can just unplug the dead box and go, then...


*That would be the Android phone, for new readers. Which, you know, can get email anyplace, even in line at the 'puter store.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today...

...to mourn the loss of Supernaut, the valiant old 2.2GHz Pentium 4 box on which the vast majority of this blog has been written. (Better known on this blog by his alias "VFTP Command Central".)

Although twice replaced already, both proved temporary and both times the old XP box was dragged back out to soldier on, remaining powered on for the better part of nine years*.

Last night, during an electrical storm intense enough that I bid a hasty adieu to my posse in World of Warcrack after questioning the wisdom of having a copper wire running essentially straight from the wall socket, through the laptop I was using, and to my head**, the nearby power lines took a hit that staggered the wireless router, knocking me offline, and also caused poor little Supernaut in the next room to reboot.

When I went in to check on him, the Winders drive scan was hung up at 80%, so I powered him off and went to bed. This morning, despite futzing around in the BIOS, not a flicker came from the HDD light. Hopefully it's on the board and his hard drive can be rescued, but I fear that it's essentially Game Over for old Supernaut himself. :(


*As you can tell by me using the same G3 iBook from '01-'12 and driving the same car for the last eleven years, too, I tend to stay loyal to hardware, often past the point of good sense.

**Bobbi pointed out to me that, since I was playing WoW on a laptop, all I really needed to do was unplug the thing from the wall and I could have kept playing. Derp.

Same planet, different worlds...

From the alternate universe where Spock has a beard (also known as the comments section of an article at npr.org):

- Here's the thing: Americans have got to make up their minds. Either they want to follow the model of the modern Western world, which is Leftist or they want to return to the short brutish lives under Rightwing regimes.

We've chosen to dismantle our democracy, and we are removing the last of our social safety nets. The Koch brothers have actually started challenging bike paths and parks in courts all over the country, and, in many areas, they are buying up public parks for pennies, as we transfer all of our public domain to corporate hands.

When Americans chose to embrace old pre-Enlightenment forms of govt over our democracy, it left us to pay the price of the stability of those Rightwing govts. Our life expectancies will fall, and, typically, people will have no real value beyond the age of 30-35. So, dying early and being replaced by the next poor generation (like kleenex) will be the natural course of things.

Left and Right are opposites. The policies of one destroys the other. They're incompatible.

Wow. Just wow. I wonder what color the sky is in that world?

I read her words and I am not sure that there can be peace between our weltanschauungen. This runs into a comment I left at Joel's place regarding that "government is the only thing we all belong to" sound bite that the more disingenuous on the right have been making hay with, despite the word "belong" being used in the sense of "I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church":

These people do not have the worldview that you and I do. The government, to them, is not a separate entity, but rather is composed of all of us enfranchised citizens. Remember: They’re down there in Charlotte engaging in a veritable orgy of democracy, proving to themselves that we all belong to this wonderful organization called the American Government, which is made up of We The People, and that ‘the system works’.

It is hard to reach a compromise with someone when, not only do you not share a worldview, but you in fact use the same words to mean completely different concepts. Where does one hire an English-to-English cislator?

Tamara's blog has two blogdaddies.

...and one of them just turned ten, which is a long time to be coming up with something to type every day, let me tell you. (Or at least I assume it is, since that's three years longer than I've done it.)

Tab Clearing...

• Just finished No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden. Can't figure out what the DoD had its knickers all in a twist about.


• Sometimes the news one discovers via one's sitemeter isn't happy news at all. I only got by Popgun's Place once a month or so, and now there won't be any more. :(


• "The 8,000 Mile Sniper Shot"

No, seriously, stop touching it.

A poster at INGO relates the following story:

The other day at Bare Arms in Noblesville, I was asked to unholster and show an empty chamber even though I had no magazine in my gun.

That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of in a gun store, and believe you me, I've heard of some dumb things in gun stores. I mean, that is dumber than a Taurus Judge with mother-of-toilet-seat grips and gold controls, and that's pretty dumb, let me tell you.


The gun is just sitting there in the guy's holster not bothering anybody, and in the alleged name of safety, you want him to skin his smokewagon and coonfinger it right there on the showroom floor? That right there is just dumber than an acre of fungus. I would have looked at Cletus like he'd just sprouted an extra head and walked right out of his store, never to darken its door again.


Seriously, a gun that isn't being messed with is a gun that isn't going to go off; sitting in a holster, it's an inert object. If it's safety you're concerned about, Mr. Gun Store Man, why don't we just leave it there?



(I went to check out the store's web page. Oh, look, another little gun store open from 10-6 on Tuesday through Friday and 8-4 on Saturday. What is it with these little hobby businesses and their "Catering to the Unemployed" hours? If you are in the retail business, you need to be open when the people who can afford to purchase your wares are not at work. Notice how most national retail chains are open 'til 9PM? They didn't pull that number out of a hat, Cletus. And hire you a Shabbat Goy from 1-5 on Sundays.)
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Overheard in the Office...

All I knew about Fifty Shades of Grey was what I'd heard over lunch with friends one day, and my ignorance was blissful, but the sight of that magazine in the store and Bobbi's subsequent post made me go look up the Wikipedia article on the alleged books, which led to the following outburst:

Me: "Oh, lawd, there's a whole wing of Wikipedia dedicated to BDSM!"

RX: "Oh, of course..."

Me: "I had a roommate who was way into that once. Her bedroom had all this playground equipment crap in it... I remember it was, like, nerdy sex for LARPers? Her little friends'd call normal sex 'vanilla' in the same tone of voice that Comic Book Guy at DragonCon refers to the normal people outside the convention as 'mundanes'."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

In retrospect, I was happier when I didn't know anything about Fifty Shades of Grey. I had no idea that America had such a pent-up longing for nerd sex.

I wanna kick him in the junk with my carbon footprint.

There is no smug like the smug you get as you come to a complete stop on your bicycle, groceries in the basket, and yell "Hey, there was a stop sign there, you polluter!" at the guy in the Smart ForTwo as he makes a left turn through the intersection with only the feeblest of attempts at a "rolling stop".

You'd have to become a Lifetime Patron Platinum Endowment Supporter of your local NPR station or invest in a Fair Trade sustainable organic hemp farm while going door-to-door collecting signatures for "Write-In Ralph Nader 2012" or something like that to feel more smug than I did just then.
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Do want!

Via email, a fan-forced camper's-sized rocket stove that uses a thermoelectric thingummy to power its fan and charge your handheld electronics.

That thing sets me all a-quiver right at some weird harmonic of prepper, hippie, outdoorsy, and gadget freak, like USB-powered recycled carbon fiber chopsticks or something.

Given the fact that we average one good power outage a year here at Roseholme Cottage, whether from ice storms or the thunder variety, plus a nearly inexhaustible supply of sticks and twigs, and I have a USB rechargeable LED Lenser M7R flashlight, I'm well down the road to rationalizing one of these things.

Plus, how cool would it be to make computer electricity with fire?
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Overheard in the Kitchen...

I'm walking back from the office with the kibble sacks, having fed Rannie and Huck...

Me: "Gawd, he hits that bowl like a shark taking a surfer!"

RX: "That is one of nature's eating machines. If he was an outside cat, I don't think we'd have much of a squirrel problem."

I'm cheating...

...by using a comment from another post as a post in itself.

Anyhow, a commenter noted "Since you apparently don't like populists..." and I replied that there are two probable reasons for that:

1. The word "populist" is so often followed by "demagogue" that it's hard not to mentally think of the latter when hearing the former. I have come to associate it with rabble just waiting for their rouser.

2. Where I come from, "common" is still used as a term of insult, ranked somewhere between "poor" and "lowdown" if I remember my taxonomy aright. I believe it to be a holdover from the days when America was still fondly imagined as the land of the Natural Aristocrat, rather than the Proud (to be a) Peasant. The latter attitude no doubt came west in steerage in the baggage of many of my ancestors.

Sorry I'm late.

I stayed up late-ish playing World of Warcrack with mah peeps last night and then slept in this morning, since this is our nation's Wobbliest holiday: The day we celebrate our solidarity with the proletariat labor force of our great Rodina by acting like striking UAW members, lazing around and doing nothing. Which is more or less what I plan on doing today.

Why I hate the internet, Part MXLVI

Here in Indiana the state government issues a thing called a "License To Carry a Handgun". In light of this information, consider this hypothetical internet conversation that hypothetically occurred between two hypothetical Hoosiers on a hypothetical unnamed internet firearms forum:

A: I sent in for my conceal and carry permit 2 months ago. How long does it take?

B: It can take 3 months. You need to have patient's.

And, you know, it's not even worth gently correcting someone anymore, because if I hear "It's the internet, not a spelling contest!" one more time, somebody's getting shot.

This is what comes of the gradual shift of the word "elitist" from an aspiration to a pejorative.

Mr. Romney, have you stopped beating your wife?

You know, you expect it from MSNBC, but from the national network shows down to the local news programs, the Party Convention-related blurbs this morning have all had an air of

"Now that the Nazis in Tampa have finished their cross-burning, put women back in purdah, and shoved grandma onto an ice floe, let's see what the Real Americans are doing in Charlotte. Bob, over to you; do you have any official sense yet on how much more the Real Americans care about the little guy than the Nazis do, or are they saving that for a surprise?"

Well, Barry still hasn't lost his core constituency: The American media.

Incidentally, there was spirited debate on Chris Matthews' propaganda half-hour this morning over who would triumph in the forthcoming Veep debates. Really? Seriously?

Look, I think Ryan's just a statist tool being groomed as the Party Hack of the Future, but he's going to be debating a drooling moron. How can there even be a question? Joe Biden would lose a debate with a pail of library paste unless he could somehow arrange to lick it off a window; if he were a Republican, not a soul in this country would even remember who Dan Quayle was, so savagely would Droolin' Joe have been mauled on late-night TeeWee for the last four years.

...and a Wing Commander in the Royal Manticoran Space Marines.

These guys would be a lot harder to spot if they didn't always slather on the awards like Latin American train conductors. That guy's got a rack of fruit salad that makes Omar Bradley look like a Marine Corps PFC. Seriously, I've seen less impressive displays spread across the chests of entire Chilean juntas.

Maybe if he was trying to pass himself off as Air Force; I hear they're pretty free with the ribbons... I kid! I kid!

The Special Forces Ranger Flight Medic is a new twist, though. Usually they're Navy SEAL Delta Scout Snipers. (Believe me, working in gun stores, you get to know the breed pretty well.)

(H/T to Life in 3D.)
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I remember when they were still pre-pullets...

Marko has a picture of a $3,000 egg.

For all that time and money and effort, it should be used for nothing less than crème brûlée. (Or perhaps a celebratory Ramos gin fizz.)
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Overheard in the Hallway...

Bobbi is experimenting with making Victorian circumlocutions for common vulgar phrases...

Me: "'Yob tvoyu mat'..."

RX: "Is a Russian word."

Me: "Is three Russian words. It means... er... 'blank your mother.'"

RX: "Ah. Like 'chinga tu madre'?"

Me: "Yeah, except the Russians use it for everything, like 'aloha' in Hawaii."

Saturday morning randomosity...

• ProTip: When you go to bed on Friday night leaving your laptop downloading a multi-gigabyte WoW patch, make sure that said laptop isn't going to go to sleep twenty minutes after you do, because there's nothing like seeing "6% Completed" on the freshly-awakened screen to start your morning off with a string of colorful profanity.


• Off the shelf: After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture


• Remember how they said that the remnants of Hurricane Isaac were going to arrive yesterday evening and flood out Labor Day Weekend? Well, they meant they were going to arrive this evening. Sorry to all you people who cancelled your parades and picnics today. (We're apparently still a bit jumpy here in the Hoosier State when it comes to bad weather and outdoor festivities...) UPDATE: The weatherchick in the other room said it was moving at "three miles per hour". Since it hasn't quite crossed the Wabash into Indiana, that'll put it into the western Indy 'burbs sometime around lunch tomorrow.