The Real Story, not propaganda!
(click for full-size)

Man, check out the list of Amazon's top-selling computers.

This list gets updated hourly, so I'll just tell you what I saw: 8 of the 10 top-selling computers are Macs, and 12 of the top 25. I really wouldn't think the PowerPC-based computers would be selling all that well, but they're up there, too. In fact, PowerPC-based Macintoshes alone occupy 4 of the top 10 slots.

I'm not sure how many people buy their computers from Amazon, but I imagine it's quite a few, seeing as they're usually very competetive, owing to sales taxes and generally scurrilous, violent business practices aux Teamsters. I'm thinking by the end of the year, the whole market-share thing might start becoming interesting again.

Who knew that a company called "InDigEnt" would have trouble making money? That has to be one of the lousiest company names I've ever heard.

Top 5 Rejected Names For InDigEnt Studios

1. Po'House Productions
2. Abject Poverty Studios
3. Filthy, Depressed Hobos With Cameras
4. Black Friday Film-Works
5. Fuck the Investors, This is Art, Inc.

In Bad Journalism, a columnist lets their personal views completely distort the news they're trying to report. One example is in today's Wired online thingamapage:

Wired News: Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?:
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.

In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

I suppose the author is trying to show us how big an asshole Steve Jobs is, in that he doesn't abuse his position of prominence (and his shareholders' trust)to espouse the Cause du Jour, be it global warming or Third World debt. I guess it's too much to ask of journalists that they at least try and assume that their points of view aren't universally accepted as Truth. Does donating lots of money make someone praise-worthy, despite his potentially RICO-liable business practices? Is being a 'single-minded capitalist' actually a bad thing for an ultra-successful American industrialist? Actually, I had always avoided looking into Jobs' background with the apprehension that he was another Bono. Color me relieved! Knowing that Al Gore has some shady connection with Apple, and that Jobs actually tried to work for the Kerry Presidential campaign, I had feared the worst.

The fact of the matter is that if Jobs was more vocal about his political beliefs, and Apple was more tightly associated with American Progressivism, I wouldn't buy an Apple computer, period. I have no desire to put my dollars into the pockets of thuggish busybodies like Greenpeace. And I doubt it's in the CEO of Apple's job description to alienate customers politically. Both Jobs and Gates have enriched the lives of millions more people through their respective corporations than if they both had thrown their fortunes into the NGO-money machine.

I do find it interesting that the Author makes no note of the fact that Apple offered OS X as the platform for the hand-cranked $100 computer, which is specifically designed for underprivileged, color-blind children. They were turned down, because it's not open source. No pleasing some people, I suppose. I guess it's more politically acceptable to funnel cash-money through relief organizations than it is to offer valuable products or services; at least with cash, it can be funneled by those organizations into Democrat campaign coffers.

UPDATE: Theoacao says it better.

I have no idea why this is so funny, but it's good for chuckles.

(click to play)

This little movie makes me strangely happy.

Via the Unstoppable Moron

When you live in Georgia, you keep an eye on the weather in Alabama, cause you know it's heading your way. In Germany, you watch Moscow. I think Georgia got the better deal in that one. It's cold outside, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

From left to right: That's the temperature outside on my balcony. And then, that's the bottles of coke that exploded. And then, that's the cokesicles that formed on the bench, and were still there in the middle of the next day. On my balcony. Where I smoke. Where I'm about to go right now, and light a cigarette. -15°C. I haven't even bothered converting that to fahrenheit yet; I don't want to know.

On the other hand, it's supposed to get even colder tonight, so I should just go ahead and smoke a lot now, and get it out of the way. At any rate, it might be time to get me one of these: * SLANKET : THE BEST BLANKET EVER *. It's a blanket, you can smoke under!

Slanket link via Rui "infamous port 0 bug" Carmo.

In the process of trying out the new iPhoto, I've put up a one of them thar PhotoCasting thingamabobs too enhance my already-ominous web ubiquity. Some of the big brains in the blogosphere are having conniptions about Apple not using proper RSS-semantics or filtering newsreaders. but they're probably just too smart to actually read the error messages they're getting, and to realize therewith they're typing in the wrong URLs. But, as in the old mathematician-and-engineer-meet-the-devil joke, Rube's already drunk: Enjoy! (if you have an RSS-reader). If you've got iPhoto 6, use the full-fledged photocast URL instead.

Schweet!

Well, mom's been here for a good 3 weeks now. Well, ok, 24 days and 12 hours, but who's counting? She's been an ideal guest up to this point: She slept 12 hours a day, she washed the dishes, and, as expected, is always the lady. We had a fine time, visiting beautiful Innsbruck, Austria for a weekend; we also took a gander at the Kaufering Nazi concentration camp, just for giggles; and tonight we went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which was great fun.

After the movie, we participated in the tradition German custom of going through some dead guy's stuff, as you can read about in my mom's new Blog, Cowboys Aren't Sheepherders. Go over and say howdy to the ol' cowgirl, but remember to be nice, it is my mom, after all.

Just a couple more things: First off, she said she would start a blog if, and only if I posted a humiliating picture of myself. Well, mom, here ya go:

We loved having her here, and I'm already looking forward to her next visit. Until then, I just hope she posts a bit on her blog, to let us know how she's doing, and what the cat's up to.

I might actually send this one off to the printers:

via the Mad Mulleteer.

Every now and then, you're just cruising along, reading posts and drinking your beer, and the you come across something so foul, so hideous, so dizzyingly revolting you have to read it twice.

Quite often, that something has sentences like this in it:

She had about 8 inches of calf tongue hanging out of her...crotch

At Stevie's place, you never know what you're gonna get. And no, it's not a guest post by Velociman, I already checked.

That means new hotness, currently being announced at the Expo in San Francisco, and which will shortly be available in the Apple online store. No matter what you hear, don't let me near a credit card 'til the storm blows over, and the Keynote is but a mem'ry.

(Click to play)
Autobahn Fun!

The little lady and I watched the last 20 minutes of The Peacemaker last night. I'm aghast at the temerity involved, the balls you would have to have, to resolve a movie's climax with two people sweating over a timebomb as it counts down to zero, debating which wire to pull, and defusing it just in time. I would personally fund a university study, up to about 8 bucks and change, to determine how many movies include this tired old plot device; which movie was the first that used it; and what sort of dried-up, talentless hack dared put it into a multi-million dollar movie in the 1990s. They were using that crap weekly on CHiPs, for the love of Pete.

I also see on IMDb that the two writing credits, both somewhat appropriately named Cockburn (1,2), have exactly one (1) writing credit each, that being this film. Here's a tip fellows: Write every movie as if it were your last, because if you write this kind of bullshit despite having the kind of budget this film obviously had (they blew up a church!), it will be your last. How about letting the bomb go off and destroying New York? Too challenging for the average soccer mom? It worked for Somersby.

With the state of Hollywood being what it is, you can ignore the first and last 30 minutes of any movie you pick, and use that time to go take a dump, or smoke a cigarette, or, at least here in Germany, go back to the concession and buy yourself a well-earned beer. You're going to need it with shit like this to wade through. For shame.

I'll be taking my mom to see King Kong tonight, the English version of which is running at the local mall cinema tonight. At least here I know what I'm getting, and expectations are low. And there hero dies at the end, which isn't too much to ask for.

Let's take a look at the resolutions I made last year:

1. I did in fact make a half-assed attempt to stop smoking in early July. Check.
2. I called my mom once or twice. And anyway, she's over here now, so what the hell.
3. I visited Europe this year, for basically the whole year.
4. I think Jeckyll took care of this one for me.
5. I don't want to think about number 5. I had to throw that spoon away.
6. Number 6, oh, yeah, that was fun. I need to do that more often.
7. Too much.
8. Not enough.
9. Juussssst right.
10. Didn't come up, unfortunately, but I was prepared.

So so, 9 out of 10 ain't bad for a list of New Year's Broken Promises. Let's see what kind of softballs I throw myself for 2006!

shot00106

Originally uploaded by skben2003.

For some reason I just uploaded all my Doom 3 screenshots to fckrl, or fckler, or however it is you say that.

Share and Enjoy!

I'll have to be trying this out: QuickSynergy.

I walked down to the store today, to pick up sundries for the festivities tonight. As my mom's in town visiting us, I'll be making some of hometown favorites: Southern cornbread, green beans, a little bit o' Rube's nearly-famous homemade honey-mustard slathering for the salad, and a case of König Ludwig Dunkel, one of Germany's best dark beers.

As my lovely lady and I are walking down the street with a case of said beer in hand, an old man, dressed like a scruffy lumberjack and with a nose like an unpeeled artichoke, teeters up to us and breathes "Hey, there, mate, howzabout a nice Christmas beer for an old man!" in my stony, emotionless face. Of course, I told him to go fuck himself, seeing as Christmas is over and even if it weren't I'd rather stomp his face with my ice skates on than give him a beer that I'm going to use on New Year's Eve to pamper my guests, you COCK. SUCKER. What's up with these rotten sons of bitches? As if their desire to get 'faced was all the inspiration I'd need to suddenly renounce all property rights and give whatever I was carrying to whomever came up and asked for it first. What the fuck do I look like, asshole, Gandhi? Get your own goddam beer.

Man, I've got to stop reading all those Ayn Rand books.

I've been trying to read this post for the last 30 minutes now, but I just can't seem to get past the words, "a more aggressive form of all-out ass-probing", at which point my mind seems to wander. Can someone summarize that for me?

In the early days of computer gaming, most all games had a feature called the 'Boss Key'. This was actually a stroke of genius for whoever it was that came up with it. Basically what it did was whenever you pressed a certain key, usually escape, it would instantly pause the game, turn off the sound, and replace the screen with a picture of productive work, for example a spreadsheet with generic figures and headings.

The purpose of this, of course, was for that moment when you realized the boss was coming, you could quickly hit escape, start looking thoughtfully back and forth between a piece of paper and the faux spreadsheet and saying things like, 'looks good, looks good' and the boss would be none the wiser that not only were you stealing the bread from his mouth so you could play F19 instead of doing the job you were getting paid to do, but you were smugly, intentionally playing him for the fool while doing it.

The Boss Key is just a fond memory, nowadays. I guess it's because back then, computers capable of playing games were too expensive to be found in the home, so people just played games at work while the boss wasn't looking. But nowadays, everybody's got a honker of a computer at home, file-sharing software, and a broadband connection. What we need is a Wife Key. It would have the same function as the boss key, ideally. You could hit a keystroke combination, ctrl-alt-escape, for example, and that would instantly replace a screen full of midget porn and video sex-chats with, I don't know, the sports page or whatever it is that's also available on the web.

Or maybe it would be better the other way around. It would replace the 25 tabs of political blogs and stock quotes you constantly stare at with a full-screen video of Sylvia Saint (NOT safe for work, Kim) getting banged in every hole but the left nostril. At least then, your wife wouldn't suspect you of being the sad, sexless husk of a man the Internet has made you. Just a thought.

It's snowin', snowin', snowin' outside, and the Mom's coming over to visit us for Christmas. There'll probably be some dead animals on the table in a day or two, as well as some sort of songs about...something or other. It'll be just like in the old days.

And we've got a kickass tree, and little gingerbread people in the title bar. It's all about the yule here that the palatial new youbitch secret headquarters.

That's the Jakober Gate, right outside here, and it's a manly gate, as the sisters are writing in their blog whence this picture was stolen. St. Jakob, I think, discovered it on his way to find the holy grail in pamplona in the 1930s, unless I'm not mistaken.

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (85% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

via Zealot, who is a simpering, bed-wetting communist.

How the hell can anyone bring a child into a world where you can't even buy a fucking coffee pot that doesn't dribble all over the goddam counter?!

Dammit.

I realize this is like asking Albert Einstein for a game of checkers, but would y'all mind going over to the UW Daily Cardinal and reading this article?

And, friends, don't forget to click on "Respond to Article" down at the bottom. This is the future of journalism, folks.

We got our first real dusting of the year last night. The cold grey coffin-lid of winter has officially closed down on Europe, and it looks like we'll be getting plenty of snow this year. And I'm working at home now, tap-tapping away at the keyboard, sleeping at my desk, looking balefully at the phone when it rings, and the rest of the time at the depressing, watery light outside. It makes me wish I had a son to chase around the hedgemaze with an axe.

Oh, and the white trucks are back.

before moving to Europe.

Two words: Dog Tax.

Hi there, people of Rubonia. I'm sorry I haven't written in a while, but you know how it is, with things piling up on the desk of life, as the secretary of life bitches you out for not calling your mother and forgetting little Timmy's birthday, and why don't you get off your ass of life and call some customers instead of sitting around in your underwear, downloading porn and listening to Nine Inch Nails and Devo mash-ups with that stupid vacant grin on your gob. Well, you know what, secretary of life? Clean out your desk, you're fired, I'm sick of lookin' at ya.

So, now it's just me, here in the palatial new YouBitch offices, wondering what my next move is going to be. There is that certain tingly excitement you feel in your gut at such times. There's opportunity behind every loss, surely, you have the chance to take it, all of it, as much as your greedy, ambitious little hands can grab. There's nothing holding you back. But there's also nothing pushing you forward, at least, nothing from outside. You're on your own, little Rube; you can flap your arms all you want to in space, but it won't move you an inch; that shit don't work in a vacuum. Up there, you can fly faster by breaking wind than spreading your wings. It's why rockets will get you to the moon, but airplanes won't. It's the ugly side of Zen.

Need a ctrl-alt-delete within a Windows Remote Desktop Connection? Hit ctrl-alt-end. I wish I'd known that sooner.

Need to reboot a Linux machine that's lost it's hard drives, giving you the unenviable error message:
"I/O Error: /sbin/reboot"?

type the following two commands into the terminal:

echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo "b" > /proc/sysrq-trigger

And I'll be damned, it reboots.

Also good for giggles on fileservers and such; but really only during peak times.

The Real Story, not propaganda!
(click for full-size)

Man, check out the list of Amazon's top-selling computers.

This list gets updated hourly, so I'll just tell you what I saw: 8 of the 10 top-selling computers are Macs, and 12 of the top 25. I really wouldn't think the PowerPC-based computers would be selling all that well, but they're up there, too. In fact, PowerPC-based Macintoshes alone occupy 4 of the top 10 slots.

I'm not sure how many people buy their computers from Amazon, but I imagine it's quite a few, seeing as they're usually very competetive, owing to sales taxes and generally scurrilous, violent business practices aux Teamsters. I'm thinking by the end of the year, the whole market-share thing might start becoming interesting again.

Who knew that a company called "InDigEnt" would have trouble making money? That has to be one of the lousiest company names I've ever heard.

Top 5 Rejected Names For InDigEnt Studios

1. Po'House Productions
2. Abject Poverty Studios
3. Filthy, Depressed Hobos With Cameras
4. Black Friday Film-Works
5. Fuck the Investors, This is Art, Inc.

In Bad Journalism, a columnist lets their personal views completely distort the news they're trying to report. One example is in today's Wired online thingamapage:

Wired News: Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?:
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.

In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

I suppose the author is trying to show us how big an asshole Steve Jobs is, in that he doesn't abuse his position of prominence (and his shareholders' trust)to espouse the Cause du Jour, be it global warming or Third World debt. I guess it's too much to ask of journalists that they at least try and assume that their points of view aren't universally accepted as Truth. Does donating lots of money make someone praise-worthy, despite his potentially RICO-liable business practices? Is being a 'single-minded capitalist' actually a bad thing for an ultra-successful American industrialist? Actually, I had always avoided looking into Jobs' background with the apprehension that he was another Bono. Color me relieved! Knowing that Al Gore has some shady connection with Apple, and that Jobs actually tried to work for the Kerry Presidential campaign, I had feared the worst.

The fact of the matter is that if Jobs was more vocal about his political beliefs, and Apple was more tightly associated with American Progressivism, I wouldn't buy an Apple computer, period. I have no desire to put my dollars into the pockets of thuggish busybodies like Greenpeace. And I doubt it's in the CEO of Apple's job description to alienate customers politically. Both Jobs and Gates have enriched the lives of millions more people through their respective corporations than if they both had thrown their fortunes into the NGO-money machine.

I do find it interesting that the Author makes no note of the fact that Apple offered OS X as the platform for the hand-cranked $100 computer, which is specifically designed for underprivileged, color-blind children. They were turned down, because it's not open source. No pleasing some people, I suppose. I guess it's more politically acceptable to funnel cash-money through relief organizations than it is to offer valuable products or services; at least with cash, it can be funneled by those organizations into Democrat campaign coffers.

UPDATE: Theoacao says it better.

I have no idea why this is so funny, but it's good for chuckles.

(click to play)

This little movie makes me strangely happy.

Via the Unstoppable Moron

When you live in Georgia, you keep an eye on the weather in Alabama, cause you know it's heading your way. In Germany, you watch Moscow. I think Georgia got the better deal in that one. It's cold outside, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

From left to right: That's the temperature outside on my balcony. And then, that's the bottles of coke that exploded. And then, that's the cokesicles that formed on the bench, and were still there in the middle of the next day. On my balcony. Where I smoke. Where I'm about to go right now, and light a cigarette. -15°C. I haven't even bothered converting that to fahrenheit yet; I don't want to know.

On the other hand, it's supposed to get even colder tonight, so I should just go ahead and smoke a lot now, and get it out of the way. At any rate, it might be time to get me one of these: * SLANKET : THE BEST BLANKET EVER *. It's a blanket, you can smoke under!

Slanket link via Rui "infamous port 0 bug" Carmo.

In the process of trying out the new iPhoto, I've put up a one of them thar PhotoCasting thingamabobs too enhance my already-ominous web ubiquity. Some of the big brains in the blogosphere are having conniptions about Apple not using proper RSS-semantics or filtering newsreaders. but they're probably just too smart to actually read the error messages they're getting, and to realize therewith they're typing in the wrong URLs. But, as in the old mathematician-and-engineer-meet-the-devil joke, Rube's already drunk: Enjoy! (if you have an RSS-reader). If you've got iPhoto 6, use the full-fledged photocast URL instead.

Schweet!

Well, mom's been here for a good 3 weeks now. Well, ok, 24 days and 12 hours, but who's counting? She's been an ideal guest up to this point: She slept 12 hours a day, she washed the dishes, and, as expected, is always the lady. We had a fine time, visiting beautiful Innsbruck, Austria for a weekend; we also took a gander at the Kaufering Nazi concentration camp, just for giggles; and tonight we went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which was great fun.

After the movie, we participated in the tradition German custom of going through some dead guy's stuff, as you can read about in my mom's new Blog, Cowboys Aren't Sheepherders. Go over and say howdy to the ol' cowgirl, but remember to be nice, it is my mom, after all.

Just a couple more things: First off, she said she would start a blog if, and only if I posted a humiliating picture of myself. Well, mom, here ya go:

We loved having her here, and I'm already looking forward to her next visit. Until then, I just hope she posts a bit on her blog, to let us know how she's doing, and what the cat's up to.

I might actually send this one off to the printers:

via the Mad Mulleteer.

Every now and then, you're just cruising along, reading posts and drinking your beer, and the you come across something so foul, so hideous, so dizzyingly revolting you have to read it twice.

Quite often, that something has sentences like this in it:

She had about 8 inches of calf tongue hanging out of her...crotch

At Stevie's place, you never know what you're gonna get. And no, it's not a guest post by Velociman, I already checked.

That means new hotness, currently being announced at the Expo in San Francisco, and which will shortly be available in the Apple online store. No matter what you hear, don't let me near a credit card 'til the storm blows over, and the Keynote is but a mem'ry.

(Click to play)
Autobahn Fun!

The little lady and I watched the last 20 minutes of The Peacemaker last night. I'm aghast at the temerity involved, the balls you would have to have, to resolve a movie's climax with two people sweating over a timebomb as it counts down to zero, debating which wire to pull, and defusing it just in time. I would personally fund a university study, up to about 8 bucks and change, to determine how many movies include this tired old plot device; which movie was the first that used it; and what sort of dried-up, talentless hack dared put it into a multi-million dollar movie in the 1990s. They were using that crap weekly on CHiPs, for the love of Pete.

I also see on IMDb that the two writing credits, both somewhat appropriately named Cockburn (1,2), have exactly one (1) writing credit each, that being this film. Here's a tip fellows: Write every movie as if it were your last, because if you write this kind of bullshit despite having the kind of budget this film obviously had (they blew up a church!), it will be your last. How about letting the bomb go off and destroying New York? Too challenging for the average soccer mom? It worked for Somersby.

With the state of Hollywood being what it is, you can ignore the first and last 30 minutes of any movie you pick, and use that time to go take a dump, or smoke a cigarette, or, at least here in Germany, go back to the concession and buy yourself a well-earned beer. You're going to need it with shit like this to wade through. For shame.

I'll be taking my mom to see King Kong tonight, the English version of which is running at the local mall cinema tonight. At least here I know what I'm getting, and expectations are low. And there hero dies at the end, which isn't too much to ask for.

Let's take a look at the resolutions I made last year:

1. I did in fact make a half-assed attempt to stop smoking in early July. Check.
2. I called my mom once or twice. And anyway, she's over here now, so what the hell.
3. I visited Europe this year, for basically the whole year.
4. I think Jeckyll took care of this one for me.
5. I don't want to think about number 5. I had to throw that spoon away.
6. Number 6, oh, yeah, that was fun. I need to do that more often.
7. Too much.
8. Not enough.
9. Juussssst right.
10. Didn't come up, unfortunately, but I was prepared.

So so, 9 out of 10 ain't bad for a list of New Year's Broken Promises. Let's see what kind of softballs I throw myself for 2006!

shot00106

Originally uploaded by skben2003.

For some reason I just uploaded all my Doom 3 screenshots to fckrl, or fckler, or however it is you say that.

Share and Enjoy!

I'll have to be trying this out: QuickSynergy.

I walked down to the store today, to pick up sundries for the festivities tonight. As my mom's in town visiting us, I'll be making some of hometown favorites: Southern cornbread, green beans, a little bit o' Rube's nearly-famous homemade honey-mustard slathering for the salad, and a case of König Ludwig Dunkel, one of Germany's best dark beers.

As my lovely lady and I are walking down the street with a case of said beer in hand, an old man, dressed like a scruffy lumberjack and with a nose like an unpeeled artichoke, teeters up to us and breathes "Hey, there, mate, howzabout a nice Christmas beer for an old man!" in my stony, emotionless face. Of course, I told him to go fuck himself, seeing as Christmas is over and even if it weren't I'd rather stomp his face with my ice skates on than give him a beer that I'm going to use on New Year's Eve to pamper my guests, you COCK. SUCKER. What's up with these rotten sons of bitches? As if their desire to get 'faced was all the inspiration I'd need to suddenly renounce all property rights and give whatever I was carrying to whomever came up and asked for it first. What the fuck do I look like, asshole, Gandhi? Get your own goddam beer.

Man, I've got to stop reading all those Ayn Rand books.

I've been trying to read this post for the last 30 minutes now, but I just can't seem to get past the words, "a more aggressive form of all-out ass-probing", at which point my mind seems to wander. Can someone summarize that for me?

In the early days of computer gaming, most all games had a feature called the 'Boss Key'. This was actually a stroke of genius for whoever it was that came up with it. Basically what it did was whenever you pressed a certain key, usually escape, it would instantly pause the game, turn off the sound, and replace the screen with a picture of productive work, for example a spreadsheet with generic figures and headings.

The purpose of this, of course, was for that moment when you realized the boss was coming, you could quickly hit escape, start looking thoughtfully back and forth between a piece of paper and the faux spreadsheet and saying things like, 'looks good, looks good' and the boss would be none the wiser that not only were you stealing the bread from his mouth so you could play F19 instead of doing the job you were getting paid to do, but you were smugly, intentionally playing him for the fool while doing it.

The Boss Key is just a fond memory, nowadays. I guess it's because back then, computers capable of playing games were too expensive to be found in the home, so people just played games at work while the boss wasn't looking. But nowadays, everybody's got a honker of a computer at home, file-sharing software, and a broadband connection. What we need is a Wife Key. It would have the same function as the boss key, ideally. You could hit a keystroke combination, ctrl-alt-escape, for example, and that would instantly replace a screen full of midget porn and video sex-chats with, I don't know, the sports page or whatever it is that's also available on the web.

Or maybe it would be better the other way around. It would replace the 25 tabs of political blogs and stock quotes you constantly stare at with a full-screen video of Sylvia Saint (NOT safe for work, Kim) getting banged in every hole but the left nostril. At least then, your wife wouldn't suspect you of being the sad, sexless husk of a man the Internet has made you. Just a thought.

It's snowin', snowin', snowin' outside, and the Mom's coming over to visit us for Christmas. There'll probably be some dead animals on the table in a day or two, as well as some sort of songs about...something or other. It'll be just like in the old days.

And we've got a kickass tree, and little gingerbread people in the title bar. It's all about the yule here that the palatial new youbitch secret headquarters.

That's the Jakober Gate, right outside here, and it's a manly gate, as the sisters are writing in their blog whence this picture was stolen. St. Jakob, I think, discovered it on his way to find the holy grail in pamplona in the 1930s, unless I'm not mistaken.

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (85% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

via Zealot, who is a simpering, bed-wetting communist.

How the hell can anyone bring a child into a world where you can't even buy a fucking coffee pot that doesn't dribble all over the goddam counter?!

Dammit.

I realize this is like asking Albert Einstein for a game of checkers, but would y'all mind going over to the UW Daily Cardinal and reading this article?

And, friends, don't forget to click on "Respond to Article" down at the bottom. This is the future of journalism, folks.

We got our first real dusting of the year last night. The cold grey coffin-lid of winter has officially closed down on Europe, and it looks like we'll be getting plenty of snow this year. And I'm working at home now, tap-tapping away at the keyboard, sleeping at my desk, looking balefully at the phone when it rings, and the rest of the time at the depressing, watery light outside. It makes me wish I had a son to chase around the hedgemaze with an axe.

Oh, and the white trucks are back.

before moving to Europe.

Two words: Dog Tax.

Hi there, people of Rubonia. I'm sorry I haven't written in a while, but you know how it is, with things piling up on the desk of life, as the secretary of life bitches you out for not calling your mother and forgetting little Timmy's birthday, and why don't you get off your ass of life and call some customers instead of sitting around in your underwear, downloading porn and listening to Nine Inch Nails and Devo mash-ups with that stupid vacant grin on your gob. Well, you know what, secretary of life? Clean out your desk, you're fired, I'm sick of lookin' at ya.

So, now it's just me, here in the palatial new YouBitch offices, wondering what my next move is going to be. There is that certain tingly excitement you feel in your gut at such times. There's opportunity behind every loss, surely, you have the chance to take it, all of it, as much as your greedy, ambitious little hands can grab. There's nothing holding you back. But there's also nothing pushing you forward, at least, nothing from outside. You're on your own, little Rube; you can flap your arms all you want to in space, but it won't move you an inch; that shit don't work in a vacuum. Up there, you can fly faster by breaking wind than spreading your wings. It's why rockets will get you to the moon, but airplanes won't. It's the ugly side of Zen.

Need a ctrl-alt-delete within a Windows Remote Desktop Connection? Hit ctrl-alt-end. I wish I'd known that sooner.

Need to reboot a Linux machine that's lost it's hard drives, giving you the unenviable error message:
"I/O Error: /sbin/reboot"?

type the following two commands into the terminal:

echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo "b" > /proc/sysrq-trigger

And I'll be damned, it reboots.

Also good for giggles on fileservers and such; but really only during peak times.

The Real Story, not propaganda!
(click for full-size)

Man, check out the list of Amazon's top-selling computers.

This list gets updated hourly, so I'll just tell you what I saw: 8 of the 10 top-selling computers are Macs, and 12 of the top 25. I really wouldn't think the PowerPC-based computers would be selling all that well, but they're up there, too. In fact, PowerPC-based Macintoshes alone occupy 4 of the top 10 slots.

I'm not sure how many people buy their computers from Amazon, but I imagine it's quite a few, seeing as they're usually very competetive, owing to sales taxes and generally scurrilous, violent business practices aux Teamsters. I'm thinking by the end of the year, the whole market-share thing might start becoming interesting again.

Who knew that a company called "InDigEnt" would have trouble making money? That has to be one of the lousiest company names I've ever heard.

Top 5 Rejected Names For InDigEnt Studios

1. Po'House Productions
2. Abject Poverty Studios
3. Filthy, Depressed Hobos With Cameras
4. Black Friday Film-Works
5. Fuck the Investors, This is Art, Inc.

In Bad Journalism, a columnist lets their personal views completely distort the news they're trying to report. One example is in today's Wired online thingamapage:

Wired News: Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?:
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.

In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

I suppose the author is trying to show us how big an asshole Steve Jobs is, in that he doesn't abuse his position of prominence (and his shareholders' trust)to espouse the Cause du Jour, be it global warming or Third World debt. I guess it's too much to ask of journalists that they at least try and assume that their points of view aren't universally accepted as Truth. Does donating lots of money make someone praise-worthy, despite his potentially RICO-liable business practices? Is being a 'single-minded capitalist' actually a bad thing for an ultra-successful American industrialist? Actually, I had always avoided looking into Jobs' background with the apprehension that he was another Bono. Color me relieved! Knowing that Al Gore has some shady connection with Apple, and that Jobs actually tried to work for the Kerry Presidential campaign, I had feared the worst.

The fact of the matter is that if Jobs was more vocal about his political beliefs, and Apple was more tightly associated with American Progressivism, I wouldn't buy an Apple computer, period. I have no desire to put my dollars into the pockets of thuggish busybodies like Greenpeace. And I doubt it's in the CEO of Apple's job description to alienate customers politically. Both Jobs and Gates have enriched the lives of millions more people through their respective corporations than if they both had thrown their fortunes into the NGO-money machine.

I do find it interesting that the Author makes no note of the fact that Apple offered OS X as the platform for the hand-cranked $100 computer, which is specifically designed for underprivileged, color-blind children. They were turned down, because it's not open source. No pleasing some people, I suppose. I guess it's more politically acceptable to funnel cash-money through relief organizations than it is to offer valuable products or services; at least with cash, it can be funneled by those organizations into Democrat campaign coffers.

UPDATE: Theoacao says it better.

I have no idea why this is so funny, but it's good for chuckles.

(click to play)

This little movie makes me strangely happy.

Via the Unstoppable Moron

When you live in Georgia, you keep an eye on the weather in Alabama, cause you know it's heading your way. In Germany, you watch Moscow. I think Georgia got the better deal in that one. It's cold outside, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

From left to right: That's the temperature outside on my balcony. And then, that's the bottles of coke that exploded. And then, that's the cokesicles that formed on the bench, and were still there in the middle of the next day. On my balcony. Where I smoke. Where I'm about to go right now, and light a cigarette. -15°C. I haven't even bothered converting that to fahrenheit yet; I don't want to know.

On the other hand, it's supposed to get even colder tonight, so I should just go ahead and smoke a lot now, and get it out of the way. At any rate, it might be time to get me one of these: * SLANKET : THE BEST BLANKET EVER *. It's a blanket, you can smoke under!

Slanket link via Rui "infamous port 0 bug" Carmo.

In the process of trying out the new iPhoto, I've put up a one of them thar PhotoCasting thingamabobs too enhance my already-ominous web ubiquity. Some of the big brains in the blogosphere are having conniptions about Apple not using proper RSS-semantics or filtering newsreaders. but they're probably just too smart to actually read the error messages they're getting, and to realize therewith they're typing in the wrong URLs. But, as in the old mathematician-and-engineer-meet-the-devil joke, Rube's already drunk: Enjoy! (if you have an RSS-reader). If you've got iPhoto 6, use the full-fledged photocast URL instead.

Schweet!

Well, mom's been here for a good 3 weeks now. Well, ok, 24 days and 12 hours, but who's counting? She's been an ideal guest up to this point: She slept 12 hours a day, she washed the dishes, and, as expected, is always the lady. We had a fine time, visiting beautiful Innsbruck, Austria for a weekend; we also took a gander at the Kaufering Nazi concentration camp, just for giggles; and tonight we went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which was great fun.

After the movie, we participated in the tradition German custom of going through some dead guy's stuff, as you can read about in my mom's new Blog, Cowboys Aren't Sheepherders. Go over and say howdy to the ol' cowgirl, but remember to be nice, it is my mom, after all.

Just a couple more things: First off, she said she would start a blog if, and only if I posted a humiliating picture of myself. Well, mom, here ya go:

We loved having her here, and I'm already looking forward to her next visit. Until then, I just hope she posts a bit on her blog, to let us know how she's doing, and what the cat's up to.

I might actually send this one off to the printers:

via the Mad Mulleteer.

Every now and then, you're just cruising along, reading posts and drinking your beer, and the you come across something so foul, so hideous, so dizzyingly revolting you have to read it twice.

Quite often, that something has sentences like this in it:

She had about 8 inches of calf tongue hanging out of her...crotch

At Stevie's place, you never know what you're gonna get. And no, it's not a guest post by Velociman, I already checked.

That means new hotness, currently being announced at the Expo in San Francisco, and which will shortly be available in the Apple online store. No matter what you hear, don't let me near a credit card 'til the storm blows over, and the Keynote is but a mem'ry.

(Click to play)
Autobahn Fun!

The little lady and I watched the last 20 minutes of The Peacemaker last night. I'm aghast at the temerity involved, the balls you would have to have, to resolve a movie's climax with two people sweating over a timebomb as it counts down to zero, debating which wire to pull, and defusing it just in time. I would personally fund a university study, up to about 8 bucks and change, to determine how many movies include this tired old plot device; which movie was the first that used it; and what sort of dried-up, talentless hack dared put it into a multi-million dollar movie in the 1990s. They were using that crap weekly on CHiPs, for the love of Pete.

I also see on IMDb that the two writing credits, both somewhat appropriately named Cockburn (1,2), have exactly one (1) writing credit each, that being this film. Here's a tip fellows: Write every movie as if it were your last, because if you write this kind of bullshit despite having the kind of budget this film obviously had (they blew up a church!), it will be your last. How about letting the bomb go off and destroying New York? Too challenging for the average soccer mom? It worked for Somersby.

With the state of Hollywood being what it is, you can ignore the first and last 30 minutes of any movie you pick, and use that time to go take a dump, or smoke a cigarette, or, at least here in Germany, go back to the concession and buy yourself a well-earned beer. You're going to need it with shit like this to wade through. For shame.

I'll be taking my mom to see King Kong tonight, the English version of which is running at the local mall cinema tonight. At least here I know what I'm getting, and expectations are low. And there hero dies at the end, which isn't too much to ask for.

Let's take a look at the resolutions I made last year:

1. I did in fact make a half-assed attempt to stop smoking in early July. Check.
2. I called my mom once or twice. And anyway, she's over here now, so what the hell.
3. I visited Europe this year, for basically the whole year.
4. I think Jeckyll took care of this one for me.
5. I don't want to think about number 5. I had to throw that spoon away.
6. Number 6, oh, yeah, that was fun. I need to do that more often.
7. Too much.
8. Not enough.
9. Juussssst right.
10. Didn't come up, unfortunately, but I was prepared.

So so, 9 out of 10 ain't bad for a list of New Year's Broken Promises. Let's see what kind of softballs I throw myself for 2006!

shot00106

Originally uploaded by skben2003.

For some reason I just uploaded all my Doom 3 screenshots to fckrl, or fckler, or however it is you say that.

Share and Enjoy!

I'll have to be trying this out: QuickSynergy.

I walked down to the store today, to pick up sundries for the festivities tonight. As my mom's in town visiting us, I'll be making some of hometown favorites: Southern cornbread, green beans, a little bit o' Rube's nearly-famous homemade honey-mustard slathering for the salad, and a case of König Ludwig Dunkel, one of Germany's best dark beers.

As my lovely lady and I are walking down the street with a case of said beer in hand, an old man, dressed like a scruffy lumberjack and with a nose like an unpeeled artichoke, teeters up to us and breathes "Hey, there, mate, howzabout a nice Christmas beer for an old man!" in my stony, emotionless face. Of course, I told him to go fuck himself, seeing as Christmas is over and even if it weren't I'd rather stomp his face with my ice skates on than give him a beer that I'm going to use on New Year's Eve to pamper my guests, you COCK. SUCKER. What's up with these rotten sons of bitches? As if their desire to get 'faced was all the inspiration I'd need to suddenly renounce all property rights and give whatever I was carrying to whomever came up and asked for it first. What the fuck do I look like, asshole, Gandhi? Get your own goddam beer.

Man, I've got to stop reading all those Ayn Rand books.

I've been trying to read this post for the last 30 minutes now, but I just can't seem to get past the words, "a more aggressive form of all-out ass-probing", at which point my mind seems to wander. Can someone summarize that for me?

In the early days of computer gaming, most all games had a feature called the 'Boss Key'. This was actually a stroke of genius for whoever it was that came up with it. Basically what it did was whenever you pressed a certain key, usually escape, it would instantly pause the game, turn off the sound, and replace the screen with a picture of productive work, for example a spreadsheet with generic figures and headings.

The purpose of this, of course, was for that moment when you realized the boss was coming, you could quickly hit escape, start looking thoughtfully back and forth between a piece of paper and the faux spreadsheet and saying things like, 'looks good, looks good' and the boss would be none the wiser that not only were you stealing the bread from his mouth so you could play F19 instead of doing the job you were getting paid to do, but you were smugly, intentionally playing him for the fool while doing it.

The Boss Key is just a fond memory, nowadays. I guess it's because back then, computers capable of playing games were too expensive to be found in the home, so people just played games at work while the boss wasn't looking. But nowadays, everybody's got a honker of a computer at home, file-sharing software, and a broadband connection. What we need is a Wife Key. It would have the same function as the boss key, ideally. You could hit a keystroke combination, ctrl-alt-escape, for example, and that would instantly replace a screen full of midget porn and video sex-chats with, I don't know, the sports page or whatever it is that's also available on the web.

Or maybe it would be better the other way around. It would replace the 25 tabs of political blogs and stock quotes you constantly stare at with a full-screen video of Sylvia Saint (NOT safe for work, Kim) getting banged in every hole but the left nostril. At least then, your wife wouldn't suspect you of being the sad, sexless husk of a man the Internet has made you. Just a thought.

It's snowin', snowin', snowin' outside, and the Mom's coming over to visit us for Christmas. There'll probably be some dead animals on the table in a day or two, as well as some sort of songs about...something or other. It'll be just like in the old days.

And we've got a kickass tree, and little gingerbread people in the title bar. It's all about the yule here that the palatial new youbitch secret headquarters.

That's the Jakober Gate, right outside here, and it's a manly gate, as the sisters are writing in their blog whence this picture was stolen. St. Jakob, I think, discovered it on his way to find the holy grail in pamplona in the 1930s, unless I'm not mistaken.

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (85% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

via Zealot, who is a simpering, bed-wetting communist.

How the hell can anyone bring a child into a world where you can't even buy a fucking coffee pot that doesn't dribble all over the goddam counter?!

Dammit.

I realize this is like asking Albert Einstein for a game of checkers, but would y'all mind going over to the UW Daily Cardinal and reading this article?

And, friends, don't forget to click on "Respond to Article" down at the bottom. This is the future of journalism, folks.

We got our first real dusting of the year last night. The cold grey coffin-lid of winter has officially closed down on Europe, and it looks like we'll be getting plenty of snow this year. And I'm working at home now, tap-tapping away at the keyboard, sleeping at my desk, looking balefully at the phone when it rings, and the rest of the time at the depressing, watery light outside. It makes me wish I had a son to chase around the hedgemaze with an axe.

Oh, and the white trucks are back.

before moving to Europe.

Two words: Dog Tax.

Hi there, people of Rubonia. I'm sorry I haven't written in a while, but you know how it is, with things piling up on the desk of life, as the secretary of life bitches you out for not calling your mother and forgetting little Timmy's birthday, and why don't you get off your ass of life and call some customers instead of sitting around in your underwear, downloading porn and listening to Nine Inch Nails and Devo mash-ups with that stupid vacant grin on your gob. Well, you know what, secretary of life? Clean out your desk, you're fired, I'm sick of lookin' at ya.

So, now it's just me, here in the palatial new YouBitch offices, wondering what my next move is going to be. There is that certain tingly excitement you feel in your gut at such times. There's opportunity behind every loss, surely, you have the chance to take it, all of it, as much as your greedy, ambitious little hands can grab. There's nothing holding you back. But there's also nothing pushing you forward, at least, nothing from outside. You're on your own, little Rube; you can flap your arms all you want to in space, but it won't move you an inch; that shit don't work in a vacuum. Up there, you can fly faster by breaking wind than spreading your wings. It's why rockets will get you to the moon, but airplanes won't. It's the ugly side of Zen.

Need a ctrl-alt-delete within a Windows Remote Desktop Connection? Hit ctrl-alt-end. I wish I'd known that sooner.

Need to reboot a Linux machine that's lost it's hard drives, giving you the unenviable error message:
"I/O Error: /sbin/reboot"?

type the following two commands into the terminal:

echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo "b" > /proc/sysrq-trigger

And I'll be damned, it reboots.

Also good for giggles on fileservers and such; but really only during peak times.

The Real Story, not propaganda!
(click for full-size)

Man, check out the list of Amazon's top-selling computers.

This list gets updated hourly, so I'll just tell you what I saw: 8 of the 10 top-selling computers are Macs, and 12 of the top 25. I really wouldn't think the PowerPC-based computers would be selling all that well, but they're up there, too. In fact, PowerPC-based Macintoshes alone occupy 4 of the top 10 slots.

I'm not sure how many people buy their computers from Amazon, but I imagine it's quite a few, seeing as they're usually very competetive, owing to sales taxes and generally scurrilous, violent business practices aux Teamsters. I'm thinking by the end of the year, the whole market-share thing might start becoming interesting again.

Who knew that a company called "InDigEnt" would have trouble making money? That has to be one of the lousiest company names I've ever heard.

Top 5 Rejected Names For InDigEnt Studios

1. Po'House Productions
2. Abject Poverty Studios
3. Filthy, Depressed Hobos With Cameras
4. Black Friday Film-Works
5. Fuck the Investors, This is Art, Inc.

In Bad Journalism, a columnist lets their personal views completely distort the news they're trying to report. One example is in today's Wired online thingamapage:

Wired News: Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?:
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.

In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

I suppose the author is trying to show us how big an asshole Steve Jobs is, in that he doesn't abuse his position of prominence (and his shareholders' trust)to espouse the Cause du Jour, be it global warming or Third World debt. I guess it's too much to ask of journalists that they at least try and assume that their points of view aren't universally accepted as Truth. Does donating lots of money make someone praise-worthy, despite his potentially RICO-liable business practices? Is being a 'single-minded capitalist' actually a bad thing for an ultra-successful American industrialist? Actually, I had always avoided looking into Jobs' background with the apprehension that he was another Bono. Color me relieved! Knowing that Al Gore has some shady connection with Apple, and that Jobs actually tried to work for the Kerry Presidential campaign, I had feared the worst.

The fact of the matter is that if Jobs was more vocal about his political beliefs, and Apple was more tightly associated with American Progressivism, I wouldn't buy an Apple computer, period. I have no desire to put my dollars into the pockets of thuggish busybodies like Greenpeace. And I doubt it's in the CEO of Apple's job description to alienate customers politically. Both Jobs and Gates have enriched the lives of millions more people through their respective corporations than if they both had thrown their fortunes into the NGO-money machine.

I do find it interesting that the Author makes no note of the fact that Apple offered OS X as the platform for the hand-cranked $100 computer, which is specifically designed for underprivileged, color-blind children. They were turned down, because it's not open source. No pleasing some people, I suppose. I guess it's more politically acceptable to funnel cash-money through relief organizations than it is to offer valuable products or services; at least with cash, it can be funneled by those organizations into Democrat campaign coffers.

UPDATE: Theoacao says it better.

I have no idea why this is so funny, but it's good for chuckles.

(click to play)

This little movie makes me strangely happy.

Via the Unstoppable Moron

When you live in Georgia, you keep an eye on the weather in Alabama, cause you know it's heading your way. In Germany, you watch Moscow. I think Georgia got the better deal in that one. It's cold outside, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

From left to right: That's the temperature outside on my balcony. And then, that's the bottles of coke that exploded. And then, that's the cokesicles that formed on the bench, and were still there in the middle of the next day. On my balcony. Where I smoke. Where I'm about to go right now, and light a cigarette. -15°C. I haven't even bothered converting that to fahrenheit yet; I don't want to know.

On the other hand, it's supposed to get even colder tonight, so I should just go ahead and smoke a lot now, and get it out of the way. At any rate, it might be time to get me one of these: * SLANKET : THE BEST BLANKET EVER *. It's a blanket, you can smoke under!

Slanket link via Rui "infamous port 0 bug" Carmo.

In the process of trying out the new iPhoto, I've put up a one of them thar PhotoCasting thingamabobs too enhance my already-ominous web ubiquity. Some of the big brains in the blogosphere are having conniptions about Apple not using proper RSS-semantics or filtering newsreaders. but they're probably just too smart to actually read the error messages they're getting, and to realize therewith they're typing in the wrong URLs. But, as in the old mathematician-and-engineer-meet-the-devil joke, Rube's already drunk: Enjoy! (if you have an RSS-reader). If you've got iPhoto 6, use the full-fledged photocast URL instead.

Schweet!

Well, mom's been here for a good 3 weeks now. Well, ok, 24 days and 12 hours, but who's counting? She's been an ideal guest up to this point: She slept 12 hours a day, she washed the dishes, and, as expected, is always the lady. We had a fine time, visiting beautiful Innsbruck, Austria for a weekend; we also took a gander at the Kaufering Nazi concentration camp, just for giggles; and tonight we went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which was great fun.

After the movie, we participated in the tradition German custom of going through some dead guy's stuff, as you can read about in my mom's new Blog, Cowboys Aren't Sheepherders. Go over and say howdy to the ol' cowgirl, but remember to be nice, it is my mom, after all.

Just a couple more things: First off, she said she would start a blog if, and only if I posted a humiliating picture of myself. Well, mom, here ya go:

We loved having her here, and I'm already looking forward to her next visit. Until then, I just hope she posts a bit on her blog, to let us know how she's doing, and what the cat's up to.

I might actually send this one off to the printers:

via the Mad Mulleteer.

Every now and then, you're just cruising along, reading posts and drinking your beer, and the you come across something so foul, so hideous, so dizzyingly revolting you have to read it twice.

Quite often, that something has sentences like this in it:

She had about 8 inches of calf tongue hanging out of her...crotch

At Stevie's place, you never know what you're gonna get. And no, it's not a guest post by Velociman, I already checked.

That means new hotness, currently being announced at the Expo in San Francisco, and which will shortly be available in the Apple online store. No matter what you hear, don't let me near a credit card 'til the storm blows over, and the Keynote is but a mem'ry.

(Click to play)
Autobahn Fun!

The little lady and I watched the last 20 minutes of The Peacemaker last night. I'm aghast at the temerity involved, the balls you would have to have, to resolve a movie's climax with two people sweating over a timebomb as it counts down to zero, debating which wire to pull, and defusing it just in time. I would personally fund a university study, up to about 8 bucks and change, to determine how many movies include this tired old plot device; which movie was the first that used it; and what sort of dried-up, talentless hack dared put it into a multi-million dollar movie in the 1990s. They were using that crap weekly on CHiPs, for the love of Pete.

I also see on IMDb that the two writing credits, both somewhat appropriately named Cockburn (1,2), have exactly one (1) writing credit each, that being this film. Here's a tip fellows: Write every movie as if it were your last, because if you write this kind of bullshit despite having the kind of budget this film obviously had (they blew up a church!), it will be your last. How about letting the bomb go off and destroying New York? Too challenging for the average soccer mom? It worked for Somersby.

With the state of Hollywood being what it is, you can ignore the first and last 30 minutes of any movie you pick, and use that time to go take a dump, or smoke a cigarette, or, at least here in Germany, go back to the concession and buy yourself a well-earned beer. You're going to need it with shit like this to wade through. For shame.

I'll be taking my mom to see King Kong tonight, the English version of which is running at the local mall cinema tonight. At least here I know what I'm getting, and expectations are low. And there hero dies at the end, which isn't too much to ask for.

Let's take a look at the resolutions I made last year:

1. I did in fact make a half-assed attempt to stop smoking in early July. Check.
2. I called my mom once or twice. And anyway, she's over here now, so what the hell.
3. I visited Europe this year, for basically the whole year.
4. I think Jeckyll took care of this one for me.
5. I don't want to think about number 5. I had to throw that spoon away.
6. Number 6, oh, yeah, that was fun. I need to do that more often.
7. Too much.
8. Not enough.
9. Juussssst right.
10. Didn't come up, unfortunately, but I was prepared.

So so, 9 out of 10 ain't bad for a list of New Year's Broken Promises. Let's see what kind of softballs I throw myself for 2006!

shot00106

Originally uploaded by skben2003.

For some reason I just uploaded all my Doom 3 screenshots to fckrl, or fckler, or however it is you say that.

Share and Enjoy!

I'll have to be trying this out: QuickSynergy.

I walked down to the store today, to pick up sundries for the festivities tonight. As my mom's in town visiting us, I'll be making some of hometown favorites: Southern cornbread, green beans, a little bit o' Rube's nearly-famous homemade honey-mustard slathering for the salad, and a case of König Ludwig Dunkel, one of Germany's best dark beers.

As my lovely lady and I are walking down the street with a case of said beer in hand, an old man, dressed like a scruffy lumberjack and with a nose like an unpeeled artichoke, teeters up to us and breathes "Hey, there, mate, howzabout a nice Christmas beer for an old man!" in my stony, emotionless face. Of course, I told him to go fuck himself, seeing as Christmas is over and even if it weren't I'd rather stomp his face with my ice skates on than give him a beer that I'm going to use on New Year's Eve to pamper my guests, you COCK. SUCKER. What's up with these rotten sons of bitches? As if their desire to get 'faced was all the inspiration I'd need to suddenly renounce all property rights and give whatever I was carrying to whomever came up and asked for it first. What the fuck do I look like, asshole, Gandhi? Get your own goddam beer.

Man, I've got to stop reading all those Ayn Rand books.

I've been trying to read this post for the last 30 minutes now, but I just can't seem to get past the words, "a more aggressive form of all-out ass-probing", at which point my mind seems to wander. Can someone summarize that for me?

In the early days of computer gaming, most all games had a feature called the 'Boss Key'. This was actually a stroke of genius for whoever it was that came up with it. Basically what it did was whenever you pressed a certain key, usually escape, it would instantly pause the game, turn off the sound, and replace the screen with a picture of productive work, for example a spreadsheet with generic figures and headings.

The purpose of this, of course, was for that moment when you realized the boss was coming, you could quickly hit escape, start looking thoughtfully back and forth between a piece of paper and the faux spreadsheet and saying things like, 'looks good, looks good' and the boss would be none the wiser that not only were you stealing the bread from his mouth so you could play F19 instead of doing the job you were getting paid to do, but you were smugly, intentionally playing him for the fool while doing it.

The Boss Key is just a fond memory, nowadays. I guess it's because back then, computers capable of playing games were too expensive to be found in the home, so people just played games at work while the boss wasn't looking. But nowadays, everybody's got a honker of a computer at home, file-sharing software, and a broadband connection. What we need is a Wife Key. It would have the same function as the boss key, ideally. You could hit a keystroke combination, ctrl-alt-escape, for example, and that would instantly replace a screen full of midget porn and video sex-chats with, I don't know, the sports page or whatever it is that's also available on the web.

Or maybe it would be better the other way around. It would replace the 25 tabs of political blogs and stock quotes you constantly stare at with a full-screen video of Sylvia Saint (NOT safe for work, Kim) getting banged in every hole but the left nostril. At least then, your wife wouldn't suspect you of being the sad, sexless husk of a man the Internet has made you. Just a thought.

It's snowin', snowin', snowin' outside, and the Mom's coming over to visit us for Christmas. There'll probably be some dead animals on the table in a day or two, as well as some sort of songs about...something or other. It'll be just like in the old days.

And we've got a kickass tree, and little gingerbread people in the title bar. It's all about the yule here that the palatial new youbitch secret headquarters.

That's the Jakober Gate, right outside here, and it's a manly gate, as the sisters are writing in their blog whence this picture was stolen. St. Jakob, I think, discovered it on his way to find the holy grail in pamplona in the 1930s, unless I'm not mistaken.

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (85% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

via Zealot, who is a simpering, bed-wetting communist.

How the hell can anyone bring a child into a world where you can't even buy a fucking coffee pot that doesn't dribble all over the goddam counter?!

Dammit.

I realize this is like asking Albert Einstein for a game of checkers, but would y'all mind going over to the UW Daily Cardinal and reading this article?

And, friends, don't forget to click on "Respond to Article" down at the bottom. This is the future of journalism, folks.

We got our first real dusting of the year last night. The cold grey coffin-lid of winter has officially closed down on Europe, and it looks like we'll be getting plenty of snow this year. And I'm working at home now, tap-tapping away at the keyboard, sleeping at my desk, looking balefully at the phone when it rings, and the rest of the time at the depressing, watery light outside. It makes me wish I had a son to chase around the hedgemaze with an axe.

Oh, and the white trucks are back.

before moving to Europe.

Two words: Dog Tax.

Hi there, people of Rubonia. I'm sorry I haven't written in a while, but you know how it is, with things piling up on the desk of life, as the secretary of life bitches you out for not calling your mother and forgetting little Timmy's birthday, and why don't you get off your ass of life and call some customers instead of sitting around in your underwear, downloading porn and listening to Nine Inch Nails and Devo mash-ups with that stupid vacant grin on your gob. Well, you know what, secretary of life? Clean out your desk, you're fired, I'm sick of lookin' at ya.

So, now it's just me, here in the palatial new YouBitch offices, wondering what my next move is going to be. There is that certain tingly excitement you feel in your gut at such times. There's opportunity behind every loss, surely, you have the chance to take it, all of it, as much as your greedy, ambitious little hands can grab. There's nothing holding you back. But there's also nothing pushing you forward, at least, nothing from outside. You're on your own, little Rube; you can flap your arms all you want to in space, but it won't move you an inch; that shit don't work in a vacuum. Up there, you can fly faster by breaking wind than spreading your wings. It's why rockets will get you to the moon, but airplanes won't. It's the ugly side of Zen.

Need a ctrl-alt-delete within a Windows Remote Desktop Connection? Hit ctrl-alt-end. I wish I'd known that sooner.

Need to reboot a Linux machine that's lost it's hard drives, giving you the unenviable error message:
"I/O Error: /sbin/reboot"?

type the following two commands into the terminal:

echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo "b" > /proc/sysrq-trigger

And I'll be damned, it reboots.

Also good for giggles on fileservers and such; but really only during peak times.

The Real Story, not propaganda!
(click for full-size)

Man, check out the list of Amazon's top-selling computers.

This list gets updated hourly, so I'll just tell you what I saw: 8 of the 10 top-selling computers are Macs, and 12 of the top 25. I really wouldn't think the PowerPC-based computers would be selling all that well, but they're up there, too. In fact, PowerPC-based Macintoshes alone occupy 4 of the top 10 slots.

I'm not sure how many people buy their computers from Amazon, but I imagine it's quite a few, seeing as they're usually very competetive, owing to sales taxes and generally scurrilous, violent business practices aux Teamsters. I'm thinking by the end of the year, the whole market-share thing might start becoming interesting again.

Who knew that a company called "InDigEnt" would have trouble making money? That has to be one of the lousiest company names I've ever heard.

Top 5 Rejected Names For InDigEnt Studios

1. Po'House Productions
2. Abject Poverty Studios
3. Filthy, Depressed Hobos With Cameras
4. Black Friday Film-Works
5. Fuck the Investors, This is Art, Inc.

In Bad Journalism, a columnist lets their personal views completely distort the news they're trying to report. One example is in today's Wired online thingamapage:

Wired News: Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?:
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.

In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

I suppose the author is trying to show us how big an asshole Steve Jobs is, in that he doesn't abuse his position of prominence (and his shareholders' trust)to espouse the Cause du Jour, be it global warming or Third World debt. I guess it's too much to ask of journalists that they at least try and assume that their points of view aren't universally accepted as Truth. Does donating lots of money make someone praise-worthy, despite his potentially RICO-liable business practices? Is being a 'single-minded capitalist' actually a bad thing for an ultra-successful American industrialist? Actually, I had always avoided looking into Jobs' background with the apprehension that he was another Bono. Color me relieved! Knowing that Al Gore has some shady connection with Apple, and that Jobs actually tried to work for the Kerry Presidential campaign, I had feared the worst.

The fact of the matter is that if Jobs was more vocal about his political beliefs, and Apple was more tightly associated with American Progressivism, I wouldn't buy an Apple computer, period. I have no desire to put my dollars into the pockets of thuggish busybodies like Greenpeace. And I doubt it's in the CEO of Apple's job description to alienate customers politically. Both Jobs and Gates have enriched the lives of millions more people through their respective corporations than if they both had thrown their fortunes into the NGO-money machine.

I do find it interesting that the Author makes no note of the fact that Apple offered OS X as the platform for the hand-cranked $100 computer, which is specifically designed for underprivileged, color-blind children. They were turned down, because it's not open source. No pleasing some people, I suppose. I guess it's more politically acceptable to funnel cash-money through relief organizations than it is to offer valuable products or services; at least with cash, it can be funneled by those organizations into Democrat campaign coffers.

UPDATE: Theoacao says it better.

I have no idea why this is so funny, but it's good for chuckles.

(click to play)

This little movie makes me strangely happy.

Via the Unstoppable Moron

When you live in Georgia, you keep an eye on the weather in Alabama, cause you know it's heading your way. In Germany, you watch Moscow. I think Georgia got the better deal in that one. It's cold outside, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

From left to right: That's the temperature outside on my balcony. And then, that's the bottles of coke that exploded. And then, that's the cokesicles that formed on the bench, and were still there in the middle of the next day. On my balcony. Where I smoke. Where I'm about to go right now, and light a cigarette. -15°C. I haven't even bothered converting that to fahrenheit yet; I don't want to know.

On the other hand, it's supposed to get even colder tonight, so I should just go ahead and smoke a lot now, and get it out of the way. At any rate, it might be time to get me one of these: * SLANKET : THE BEST BLANKET EVER *. It's a blanket, you can smoke under!

Slanket link via Rui "infamous port 0 bug" Carmo.

In the process of trying out the new iPhoto, I've put up a one of them thar PhotoCasting thingamabobs too enhance my already-ominous web ubiquity. Some of the big brains in the blogosphere are having conniptions about Apple not using proper RSS-semantics or filtering newsreaders. but they're probably just too smart to actually read the error messages they're getting, and to realize therewith they're typing in the wrong URLs. But, as in the old mathematician-and-engineer-meet-the-devil joke, Rube's already drunk: Enjoy! (if you have an RSS-reader). If you've got iPhoto 6, use the full-fledged photocast URL instead.

Schweet!

Well, mom's been here for a good 3 weeks now. Well, ok, 24 days and 12 hours, but who's counting? She's been an ideal guest up to this point: She slept 12 hours a day, she washed the dishes, and, as expected, is always the lady. We had a fine time, visiting beautiful Innsbruck, Austria for a weekend; we also took a gander at the Kaufering Nazi concentration camp, just for giggles; and tonight we went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which was great fun.

After the movie, we participated in the tradition German custom of going through some dead guy's stuff, as you can read about in my mom's new Blog, Cowboys Aren't Sheepherders. Go over and say howdy to the ol' cowgirl, but remember to be nice, it is my mom, after all.

Just a couple more things: First off, she said she would start a blog if, and only if I posted a humiliating picture of myself. Well, mom, here ya go:

We loved having her here, and I'm already looking forward to her next visit. Until then, I just hope she posts a bit on her blog, to let us know how she's doing, and what the cat's up to.

I might actually send this one off to the printers:

via the Mad Mulleteer.

Every now and then, you're just cruising along, reading posts and drinking your beer, and the you come across something so foul, so hideous, so dizzyingly revolting you have to read it twice.

Quite often, that something has sentences like this in it:

She had about 8 inches of calf tongue hanging out of her...crotch

At Stevie's place, you never know what you're gonna get. And no, it's not a guest post by Velociman, I already checked.

That means new hotness, currently being announced at the Expo in San Francisco, and which will shortly be available in the Apple online store. No matter what you hear, don't let me near a credit card 'til the storm blows over, and the Keynote is but a mem'ry.

(Click to play)
Autobahn Fun!

The little lady and I watched the last 20 minutes of The Peacemaker last night. I'm aghast at the temerity involved, the balls you would have to have, to resolve a movie's climax with two people sweating over a timebomb as it counts down to zero, debating which wire to pull, and defusing it just in time. I would personally fund a university study, up to about 8 bucks and change, to determine how many movies include this tired old plot device; which movie was the first that used it; and what sort of dried-up, talentless hack dared put it into a multi-million dollar movie in the 1990s. They were using that crap weekly on CHiPs, for the love of Pete.

I also see on IMDb that the two writing credits, both somewhat appropriately named Cockburn (1,2), have exactly one (1) writing credit each, that being this film. Here's a tip fellows: Write every movie as if it were your last, because if you write this kind of bullshit despite having the kind of budget this film obviously had (they blew up a church!), it will be your last. How about letting the bomb go off and destroying New York? Too challenging for the average soccer mom? It worked for Somersby.

With the state of Hollywood being what it is, you can ignore the first and last 30 minutes of any movie you pick, and use that time to go take a dump, or smoke a cigarette, or, at least here in Germany, go back to the concession and buy yourself a well-earned beer. You're going to need it with shit like this to wade through. For shame.

I'll be taking my mom to see King Kong tonight, the English version of which is running at the local mall cinema tonight. At least here I know what I'm getting, and expectations are low. And there hero dies at the end, which isn't too much to ask for.

Let's take a look at the resolutions I made last year:

1. I did in fact make a half-assed attempt to stop smoking in early July. Check.
2. I called my mom once or twice. And anyway, she's over here now, so what the hell.
3. I visited Europe this year, for basically the whole year.
4. I think Jeckyll took care of this one for me.
5. I don't want to think about number 5. I had to throw that spoon away.
6. Number 6, oh, yeah, that was fun. I need to do that more often.
7. Too much.
8. Not enough.
9. Juussssst right.
10. Didn't come up, unfortunately, but I was prepared.

So so, 9 out of 10 ain't bad for a list of New Year's Broken Promises. Let's see what kind of softballs I throw myself for 2006!

shot00106

Originally uploaded by skben2003.

For some reason I just uploaded all my Doom 3 screenshots to fckrl, or fckler, or however it is you say that.

Share and Enjoy!

I'll have to be trying this out: QuickSynergy.

I walked down to the store today, to pick up sundries for the festivities tonight. As my mom's in town visiting us, I'll be making some of hometown favorites: Southern cornbread, green beans, a little bit o' Rube's nearly-famous homemade honey-mustard slathering for the salad, and a case of König Ludwig Dunkel, one of Germany's best dark beers.

As my lovely lady and I are walking down the street with a case of said beer in hand, an old man, dressed like a scruffy lumberjack and with a nose like an unpeeled artichoke, teeters up to us and breathes "Hey, there, mate, howzabout a nice Christmas beer for an old man!" in my stony, emotionless face. Of course, I told him to go fuck himself, seeing as Christmas is over and even if it weren't I'd rather stomp his face with my ice skates on than give him a beer that I'm going to use on New Year's Eve to pamper my guests, you COCK. SUCKER. What's up with these rotten sons of bitches? As if their desire to get 'faced was all the inspiration I'd need to suddenly renounce all property rights and give whatever I was carrying to whomever came up and asked for it first. What the fuck do I look like, asshole, Gandhi? Get your own goddam beer.

Man, I've got to stop reading all those Ayn Rand books.

I've been trying to read this post for the last 30 minutes now, but I just can't seem to get past the words, "a more aggressive form of all-out ass-probing", at which point my mind seems to wander. Can someone summarize that for me?

In the early days of computer gaming, most all games had a feature called the 'Boss Key'. This was actually a stroke of genius for whoever it was that came up with it. Basically what it did was whenever you pressed a certain key, usually escape, it would instantly pause the game, turn off the sound, and replace the screen with a picture of productive work, for example a spreadsheet with generic figures and headings.

The purpose of this, of course, was for that moment when you realized the boss was coming, you could quickly hit escape, start looking thoughtfully back and forth between a piece of paper and the faux spreadsheet and saying things like, 'looks good, looks good' and the boss would be none the wiser that not only were you stealing the bread from his mouth so you could play F19 instead of doing the job you were getting paid to do, but you were smugly, intentionally playing him for the fool while doing it.

The Boss Key is just a fond memory, nowadays. I guess it's because back then, computers capable of playing games were too expensive to be found in the home, so people just played games at work while the boss wasn't looking. But nowadays, everybody's got a honker of a computer at home, file-sharing software, and a broadband connection. What we need is a Wife Key. It would have the same function as the boss key, ideally. You could hit a keystroke combination, ctrl-alt-escape, for example, and that would instantly replace a screen full of midget porn and video sex-chats with, I don't know, the sports page or whatever it is that's also available on the web.

Or maybe it would be better the other way around. It would replace the 25 tabs of political blogs and stock quotes you constantly stare at with a full-screen video of Sylvia Saint (NOT safe for work, Kim) getting banged in every hole but the left nostril. At least then, your wife wouldn't suspect you of being the sad, sexless husk of a man the Internet has made you. Just a thought.

It's snowin', snowin', snowin' outside, and the Mom's coming over to visit us for Christmas. There'll probably be some dead animals on the table in a day or two, as well as some sort of songs about...something or other. It'll be just like in the old days.

And we've got a kickass tree, and little gingerbread people in the title bar. It's all about the yule here that the palatial new youbitch secret headquarters.

That's the Jakober Gate, right outside here, and it's a manly gate, as the sisters are writing in their blog whence this picture was stolen. St. Jakob, I think, discovered it on his way to find the holy grail in pamplona in the 1930s, unless I'm not mistaken.

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (85% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

via Zealot, who is a simpering, bed-wetting communist.

How the hell can anyone bring a child into a world where you can't even buy a fucking coffee pot that doesn't dribble all over the goddam counter?!

Dammit.

I realize this is like asking Albert Einstein for a game of checkers, but would y'all mind going over to the UW Daily Cardinal and reading this article?

And, friends, don't forget to click on "Respond to Article" down at the bottom. This is the future of journalism, folks.

We got our first real dusting of the year last night. The cold grey coffin-lid of winter has officially closed down on Europe, and it looks like we'll be getting plenty of snow this year. And I'm working at home now, tap-tapping away at the keyboard, sleeping at my desk, looking balefully at the phone when it rings, and the rest of the time at the depressing, watery light outside. It makes me wish I had a son to chase around the hedgemaze with an axe.

Oh, and the white trucks are back.

before moving to Europe.

Two words: Dog Tax.

Hi there, people of Rubonia. I'm sorry I haven't written in a while, but you know how it is, with things piling up on the desk of life, as the secretary of life bitches you out for not calling your mother and forgetting little Timmy's birthday, and why don't you get off your ass of life and call some customers instead of sitting around in your underwear, downloading porn and listening to Nine Inch Nails and Devo mash-ups with that stupid vacant grin on your gob. Well, you know what, secretary of life? Clean out your desk, you're fired, I'm sick of lookin' at ya.

So, now it's just me, here in the palatial new YouBitch offices, wondering what my next move is going to be. There is that certain tingly excitement you feel in your gut at such times. There's opportunity behind every loss, surely, you have the chance to take it, all of it, as much as your greedy, ambitious little hands can grab. There's nothing holding you back. But there's also nothing pushing you forward, at least, nothing from outside. You're on your own, little Rube; you can flap your arms all you want to in space, but it won't move you an inch; that shit don't work in a vacuum. Up there, you can fly faster by breaking wind than spreading your wings. It's why rockets will get you to the moon, but airplanes won't. It's the ugly side of Zen.

Need a ctrl-alt-delete within a Windows Remote Desktop Connection? Hit ctrl-alt-end. I wish I'd known that sooner.

Need to reboot a Linux machine that's lost it's hard drives, giving you the unenviable error message:
"I/O Error: /sbin/reboot"?

type the following two commands into the terminal:

echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo "b" > /proc/sysrq-trigger

And I'll be damned, it reboots.

Also good for giggles on fileservers and such; but really only during peak times.

The Real Story, not propaganda!
(click for full-size)

Man, check out the list of Amazon's top-selling computers.

This list gets updated hourly, so I'll just tell you what I saw: 8 of the 10 top-selling computers are Macs, and 12 of the top 25. I really wouldn't think the PowerPC-based computers would be selling all that well, but they're up there, too. In fact, PowerPC-based Macintoshes alone occupy 4 of the top 10 slots.

I'm not sure how many people buy their computers from Amazon, but I imagine it's quite a few, seeing as they're usually very competetive, owing to sales taxes and generally scurrilous, violent business practices aux Teamsters. I'm thinking by the end of the year, the whole market-share thing might start becoming interesting again.

Who knew that a company called "InDigEnt" would have trouble making money? That has to be one of the lousiest company names I've ever heard.

Top 5 Rejected Names For InDigEnt Studios

1. Po'House Productions
2. Abject Poverty Studios
3. Filthy, Depressed Hobos With Cameras
4. Black Friday Film-Works
5. Fuck the Investors, This is Art, Inc.

In Bad Journalism, a columnist lets their personal views completely distort the news they're trying to report. One example is in today's Wired online thingamapage:

Wired News: Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?:
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.

In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

I suppose the author is trying to show us how big an asshole Steve Jobs is, in that he doesn't abuse his position of prominence (and his shareholders' trust)to espouse the Cause du Jour, be it global warming or Third World debt. I guess it's too much to ask of journalists that they at least try and assume that their points of view aren't universally accepted as Truth. Does donating lots of money make someone praise-worthy, despite his potentially RICO-liable business practices? Is being a 'single-minded capitalist' actually a bad thing for an ultra-successful American industrialist? Actually, I had always avoided looking into Jobs' background with the apprehension that he was another Bono. Color me relieved! Knowing that Al Gore has some shady connection with Apple, and that Jobs actually tried to work for the Kerry Presidential campaign, I had feared the worst.

The fact of the matter is that if Jobs was more vocal about his political beliefs, and Apple was more tightly associated with American Progressivism, I wouldn't buy an Apple computer, period. I have no desire to put my dollars into the pockets of thuggish busybodies like Greenpeace. And I doubt it's in the CEO of Apple's job description to alienate customers politically. Both Jobs and Gates have enriched the lives of millions more people through their respective corporations than if they both had thrown their fortunes into the NGO-money machine.

I do find it interesting that the Author makes no note of the fact that Apple offered OS X as the platform for the hand-cranked $100 computer, which is specifically designed for underprivileged, color-blind children. They were turned down, because it's not open source. No pleasing some people, I suppose. I guess it's more politically acceptable to funnel cash-money through relief organizations than it is to offer valuable products or services; at least with cash, it can be funneled by those organizations into Democrat campaign coffers.

UPDATE: Theoacao says it better.

I have no idea why this is so funny, but it's good for chuckles.

(click to play)

This little movie makes me strangely happy.

Via the Unstoppable Moron

When you live in Georgia, you keep an eye on the weather in Alabama, cause you know it's heading your way. In Germany, you watch Moscow. I think Georgia got the better deal in that one. It's cold outside, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

From left to right: That's the temperature outside on my balcony. And then, that's the bottles of coke that exploded. And then, that's the cokesicles that formed on the bench, and were still there in the middle of the next day. On my balcony. Where I smoke. Where I'm about to go right now, and light a cigarette. -15°C. I haven't even bothered converting that to fahrenheit yet; I don't want to know.

On the other hand, it's supposed to get even colder tonight, so I should just go ahead and smoke a lot now, and get it out of the way. At any rate, it might be time to get me one of these: * SLANKET : THE BEST BLANKET EVER *. It's a blanket, you can smoke under!

Slanket link via Rui "infamous port 0 bug" Carmo.

In the process of trying out the new iPhoto, I've put up a one of them thar PhotoCasting thingamabobs too enhance my already-ominous web ubiquity. Some of the big brains in the blogosphere are having conniptions about Apple not using proper RSS-semantics or filtering newsreaders. but they're probably just too smart to actually read the error messages they're getting, and to realize therewith they're typing in the wrong URLs. But, as in the old mathematician-and-engineer-meet-the-devil joke, Rube's already drunk: Enjoy! (if you have an RSS-reader). If you've got iPhoto 6, use the full-fledged photocast URL instead.

Schweet!

Well, mom's been here for a good 3 weeks now. Well, ok, 24 days and 12 hours, but who's counting? She's been an ideal guest up to this point: She slept 12 hours a day, she washed the dishes, and, as expected, is always the lady. We had a fine time, visiting beautiful Innsbruck, Austria for a weekend; we also took a gander at the Kaufering Nazi concentration camp, just for giggles; and tonight we went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which was great fun.

After the movie, we participated in the tradition German custom of going through some dead guy's stuff, as you can read about in my mom's new Blog, Cowboys Aren't Sheepherders. Go over and say howdy to the ol' cowgirl, but remember to be nice, it is my mom, after all.

Just a couple more things: First off, she said she would start a blog if, and only if I posted a humiliating picture of myself. Well, mom, here ya go:

We loved having her here, and I'm already looking forward to her next visit. Until then, I just hope she posts a bit on her blog, to let us know how she's doing, and what the cat's up to.

I might actually send this one off to the printers:

via the Mad Mulleteer.

Every now and then, you're just cruising along, reading posts and drinking your beer, and the you come across something so foul, so hideous, so dizzyingly revolting you have to read it twice.

Quite often, that something has sentences like this in it:

She had about 8 inches of calf tongue hanging out of her...crotch

At Stevie's place, you never know what you're gonna get. And no, it's not a guest post by Velociman, I already checked.

That means new hotness, currently being announced at the Expo in San Francisco, and which will shortly be available in the Apple online store. No matter what you hear, don't let me near a credit card 'til the storm blows over, and the Keynote is but a mem'ry.

(Click to play)
Autobahn Fun!

The little lady and I watched the last 20 minutes of The Peacemaker last night. I'm aghast at the temerity involved, the balls you would have to have, to resolve a movie's climax with two people sweating over a timebomb as it counts down to zero, debating which wire to pull, and defusing it just in time. I would personally fund a university study, up to about 8 bucks and change, to determine how many movies include this tired old plot device; which movie was the first that used it; and what sort of dried-up, talentless hack dared put it into a multi-million dollar movie in the 1990s. They were using that crap weekly on CHiPs, for the love of Pete.

I also see on IMDb that the two writing credits, both somewhat appropriately named Cockburn (1,2), have exactly one (1) writing credit each, that being this film. Here's a tip fellows: Write every movie as if it were your last, because if you write this kind of bullshit despite having the kind of budget this film obviously had (they blew up a church!), it will be your last. How about letting the bomb go off and destroying New York? Too challenging for the average soccer mom? It worked for Somersby.

With the state of Hollywood being what it is, you can ignore the first and last 30 minutes of any movie you pick, and use that time to go take a dump, or smoke a cigarette, or, at least here in Germany, go back to the concession and buy yourself a well-earned beer. You're going to need it with shit like this to wade through. For shame.

I'll be taking my mom to see King Kong tonight, the English version of which is running at the local mall cinema tonight. At least here I know what I'm getting, and expectations are low. And there hero dies at the end, which isn't too much to ask for.

Let's take a look at the resolutions I made last year:

1. I did in fact make a half-assed attempt to stop smoking in early July. Check.
2. I called my mom once or twice. And anyway, she's over here now, so what the hell.
3. I visited Europe this year, for basically the whole year.
4. I think Jeckyll took care of this one for me.
5. I don't want to think about number 5. I had to throw that spoon away.
6. Number 6, oh, yeah, that was fun. I need to do that more often.
7. Too much.
8. Not enough.
9. Juussssst right.
10. Didn't come up, unfortunately, but I was prepared.

So so, 9 out of 10 ain't bad for a list of New Year's Broken Promises. Let's see what kind of softballs I throw myself for 2006!

shot00106

Originally uploaded by skben2003.

For some reason I just uploaded all my Doom 3 screenshots to fckrl, or fckler, or however it is you say that.

Share and Enjoy!

I'll have to be trying this out: QuickSynergy.

I walked down to the store today, to pick up sundries for the festivities tonight. As my mom's in town visiting us, I'll be making some of hometown favorites: Southern cornbread, green beans, a little bit o' Rube's nearly-famous homemade honey-mustard slathering for the salad, and a case of König Ludwig Dunkel, one of Germany's best dark beers.

As my lovely lady and I are walking down the street with a case of said beer in hand, an old man, dressed like a scruffy lumberjack and with a nose like an unpeeled artichoke, teeters up to us and breathes "Hey, there, mate, howzabout a nice Christmas beer for an old man!" in my stony, emotionless face. Of course, I told him to go fuck himself, seeing as Christmas is over and even if it weren't I'd rather stomp his face with my ice skates on than give him a beer that I'm going to use on New Year's Eve to pamper my guests, you COCK. SUCKER. What's up with these rotten sons of bitches? As if their desire to get 'faced was all the inspiration I'd need to suddenly renounce all property rights and give whatever I was carrying to whomever came up and asked for it first. What the fuck do I look like, asshole, Gandhi? Get your own goddam beer.

Man, I've got to stop reading all those Ayn Rand books.

I've been trying to read this post for the last 30 minutes now, but I just can't seem to get past the words, "a more aggressive form of all-out ass-probing", at which point my mind seems to wander. Can someone summarize that for me?

In the early days of computer gaming, most all games had a feature called the 'Boss Key'. This was actually a stroke of genius for whoever it was that came up with it. Basically what it did was whenever you pressed a certain key, usually escape, it would instantly pause the game, turn off the sound, and replace the screen with a picture of productive work, for example a spreadsheet with generic figures and headings.

The purpose of this, of course, was for that moment when you realized the boss was coming, you could quickly hit escape, start looking thoughtfully back and forth between a piece of paper and the faux spreadsheet and saying things like, 'looks good, looks good' and the boss would be none the wiser that not only were you stealing the bread from his mouth so you could play F19 instead of doing the job you were getting paid to do, but you were smugly, intentionally playing him for the fool while doing it.

The Boss Key is just a fond memory, nowadays. I guess it's because back then, computers capable of playing games were too expensive to be found in the home, so people just played games at work while the boss wasn't looking. But nowadays, everybody's got a honker of a computer at home, file-sharing software, and a broadband connection. What we need is a Wife Key. It would have the same function as the boss key, ideally. You could hit a keystroke combination, ctrl-alt-escape, for example, and that would instantly replace a screen full of midget porn and video sex-chats with, I don't know, the sports page or whatever it is that's also available on the web.

Or maybe it would be better the other way around. It would replace the 25 tabs of political blogs and stock quotes you constantly stare at with a full-screen video of Sylvia Saint (NOT safe for work, Kim) getting banged in every hole but the left nostril. At least then, your wife wouldn't suspect you of being the sad, sexless husk of a man the Internet has made you. Just a thought.

It's snowin', snowin', snowin' outside, and the Mom's coming over to visit us for Christmas. There'll probably be some dead animals on the table in a day or two, as well as some sort of songs about...something or other. It'll be just like in the old days.

And we've got a kickass tree, and little gingerbread people in the title bar. It's all about the yule here that the palatial new youbitch secret headquarters.

That's the Jakober Gate, right outside here, and it's a manly gate, as the sisters are writing in their blog whence this picture was stolen. St. Jakob, I think, discovered it on his way to find the holy grail in pamplona in the 1930s, unless I'm not mistaken.

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (85% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

via Zealot, who is a simpering, bed-wetting communist.

How the hell can anyone bring a child into a world where you can't even buy a fucking coffee pot that doesn't dribble all over the goddam counter?!

Dammit.

I realize this is like asking Albert Einstein for a game of checkers, but would y'all mind going over to the UW Daily Cardinal and reading this article?

And, friends, don't forget to click on "Respond to Article" down at the bottom. This is the future of journalism, folks.

We got our first real dusting of the year last night. The cold grey coffin-lid of winter has officially closed down on Europe, and it looks like we'll be getting plenty of snow this year. And I'm working at home now, tap-tapping away at the keyboard, sleeping at my desk, looking balefully at the phone when it rings, and the rest of the time at the depressing, watery light outside. It makes me wish I had a son to chase around the hedgemaze with an axe.

Oh, and the white trucks are back.

before moving to Europe.

Two words: Dog Tax.

Hi there, people of Rubonia. I'm sorry I haven't written in a while, but you know how it is, with things piling up on the desk of life, as the secretary of life bitches you out for not calling your mother and forgetting little Timmy's birthday, and why don't you get off your ass of life and call some customers instead of sitting around in your underwear, downloading porn and listening to Nine Inch Nails and Devo mash-ups with that stupid vacant grin on your gob. Well, you know what, secretary of life? Clean out your desk, you're fired, I'm sick of lookin' at ya.

So, now it's just me, here in the palatial new YouBitch offices, wondering what my next move is going to be. There is that certain tingly excitement you feel in your gut at such times. There's opportunity behind every loss, surely, you have the chance to take it, all of it, as much as your greedy, ambitious little hands can grab. There's nothing holding you back. But there's also nothing pushing you forward, at least, nothing from outside. You're on your own, little Rube; you can flap your arms all you want to in space, but it won't move you an inch; that shit don't work in a vacuum. Up there, you can fly faster by breaking wind than spreading your wings. It's why rockets will get you to the moon, but airplanes won't. It's the ugly side of Zen.

Need a ctrl-alt-delete within a Windows Remote Desktop Connection? Hit ctrl-alt-end. I wish I'd known that sooner.

Need to reboot a Linux machine that's lost it's hard drives, giving you the unenviable error message:
"I/O Error: /sbin/reboot"?

type the following two commands into the terminal:

echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo "b" > /proc/sysrq-trigger

And I'll be damned, it reboots.

Also good for giggles on fileservers and such; but really only during peak times.

The Real Story, not propaganda!
(click for full-size)

Man, check out the list of Amazon's top-selling computers.

This list gets updated hourly, so I'll just tell you what I saw: 8 of the 10 top-selling computers are Macs, and 12 of the top 25. I really wouldn't think the PowerPC-based computers would be selling all that well, but they're up there, too. In fact, PowerPC-based Macintoshes alone occupy 4 of the top 10 slots.

I'm not sure how many people buy their computers from Amazon, but I imagine it's quite a few, seeing as they're usually very competetive, owing to sales taxes and generally scurrilous, violent business practices aux Teamsters. I'm thinking by the end of the year, the whole market-share thing might start becoming interesting again.

Who knew that a company called "InDigEnt" would have trouble making money? That has to be one of the lousiest company names I've ever heard.

Top 5 Rejected Names For InDigEnt Studios

1. Po'House Productions
2. Abject Poverty Studios
3. Filthy, Depressed Hobos With Cameras
4. Black Friday Film-Works
5. Fuck the Investors, This is Art, Inc.

In Bad Journalism, a columnist lets their personal views completely distort the news they're trying to report. One example is in today's Wired online thingamapage:

Wired News: Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?:
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.

In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

I suppose the author is trying to show us how big an asshole Steve Jobs is, in that he doesn't abuse his position of prominence (and his shareholders' trust)to espouse the Cause du Jour, be it global warming or Third World debt. I guess it's too much to ask of journalists that they at least try and assume that their points of view aren't universally accepted as Truth. Does donating lots of money make someone praise-worthy, despite his potentially RICO-liable business practices? Is being a 'single-minded capitalist' actually a bad thing for an ultra-successful American industrialist? Actually, I had always avoided looking into Jobs' background with the apprehension that he was another Bono. Color me relieved! Knowing that Al Gore has some shady connection with Apple, and that Jobs actually tried to work for the Kerry Presidential campaign, I had feared the worst.

The fact of the matter is that if Jobs was more vocal about his political beliefs, and Apple was more tightly associated with American Progressivism, I wouldn't buy an Apple computer, period. I have no desire to put my dollars into the pockets of thuggish busybodies like Greenpeace. And I doubt it's in the CEO of Apple's job description to alienate customers politically. Both Jobs and Gates have enriched the lives of millions more people through their respective corporations than if they both had thrown their fortunes into the NGO-money machine.

I do find it interesting that the Author makes no note of the fact that Apple offered OS X as the platform for the hand-cranked $100 computer, which is specifically designed for underprivileged, color-blind children. They were turned down, because it's not open source. No pleasing some people, I suppose. I guess it's more politically acceptable to funnel cash-money through relief organizations than it is to offer valuable products or services; at least with cash, it can be funneled by those organizations into Democrat campaign coffers.

UPDATE: Theoacao says it better.

I have no idea why this is so funny, but it's good for chuckles.

(click to play)

This little movie makes me strangely happy.

Via the Unstoppable Moron

When you live in Georgia, you keep an eye on the weather in Alabama, cause you know it's heading your way. In Germany, you watch Moscow. I think Georgia got the better deal in that one. It's cold outside, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

From left to right: That's the temperature outside on my balcony. And then, that's the bottles of coke that exploded. And then, that's the cokesicles that formed on the bench, and were still there in the middle of the next day. On my balcony. Where I smoke. Where I'm about to go right now, and light a cigarette. -15°C. I haven't even bothered converting that to fahrenheit yet; I don't want to know.

On the other hand, it's supposed to get even colder tonight, so I should just go ahead and smoke a lot now, and get it out of the way. At any rate, it might be time to get me one of these: * SLANKET : THE BEST BLANKET EVER *. It's a blanket, you can smoke under!

Slanket link via Rui "infamous port 0 bug" Carmo.

In the process of trying out the new iPhoto, I've put up a one of them thar PhotoCasting thingamabobs too enhance my already-ominous web ubiquity. Some of the big brains in the blogosphere are having conniptions about Apple not using proper RSS-semantics or filtering newsreaders. but they're probably just too smart to actually read the error messages they're getting, and to realize therewith they're typing in the wrong URLs. But, as in the old mathematician-and-engineer-meet-the-devil joke, Rube's already drunk: Enjoy! (if you have an RSS-reader). If you've got iPhoto 6, use the full-fledged photocast URL instead.

Schweet!

Well, mom's been here for a good 3 weeks now. Well, ok, 24 days and 12 hours, but who's counting? She's been an ideal guest up to this point: She slept 12 hours a day, she washed the dishes, and, as expected, is always the lady. We had a fine time, visiting beautiful Innsbruck, Austria for a weekend; we also took a gander at the Kaufering Nazi concentration camp, just for giggles; and tonight we went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which was great fun.

After the movie, we participated in the tradition German custom of going through some dead guy's stuff, as you can read about in my mom's new Blog, Cowboys Aren't Sheepherders. Go over and say howdy to the ol' cowgirl, but remember to be nice, it is my mom, after all.

Just a couple more things: First off, she said she would start a blog if, and only if I posted a humiliating picture of myself. Well, mom, here ya go:

We loved having her here, and I'm already looking forward to her next visit. Until then, I just hope she posts a bit on her blog, to let us know how she's doing, and what the cat's up to.

I might actually send this one off to the printers:

via the Mad Mulleteer.

Every now and then, you're just cruising along, reading posts and drinking your beer, and the you come across something so foul, so hideous, so dizzyingly revolting you have to read it twice.

Quite often, that something has sentences like this in it:

She had about 8 inches of calf tongue hanging out of her...crotch

At Stevie's place, you never know what you're gonna get. And no, it's not a guest post by Velociman, I already checked.

That means new hotness, currently being announced at the Expo in San Francisco, and which will shortly be available in the Apple online store. No matter what you hear, don't let me near a credit card 'til the storm blows over, and the Keynote is but a mem'ry.

(Click to play)
Autobahn Fun!

The little lady and I watched the last 20 minutes of The Peacemaker last night. I'm aghast at the temerity involved, the balls you would have to have, to resolve a movie's climax with two people sweating over a timebomb as it counts down to zero, debating which wire to pull, and defusing it just in time. I would personally fund a university study, up to about 8 bucks and change, to determine how many movies include this tired old plot device; which movie was the first that used it; and what sort of dried-up, talentless hack dared put it into a multi-million dollar movie in the 1990s. They were using that crap weekly on CHiPs, for the love of Pete.

I also see on IMDb that the two writing credits, both somewhat appropriately named Cockburn (1,2), have exactly one (1) writing credit each, that being this film. Here's a tip fellows: Write every movie as if it were your last, because if you write this kind of bullshit despite having the kind of budget this film obviously had (they blew up a church!), it will be your last. How about letting the bomb go off and destroying New York? Too challenging for the average soccer mom? It worked for Somersby.

With the state of Hollywood being what it is, you can ignore the first and last 30 minutes of any movie you pick, and use that time to go take a dump, or smoke a cigarette, or, at least here in Germany, go back to the concession and buy yourself a well-earned beer. You're going to need it with shit like this to wade through. For shame.

I'll be taking my mom to see King Kong tonight, the English version of which is running at the local mall cinema tonight. At least here I know what I'm getting, and expectations are low. And there hero dies at the end, which isn't too much to ask for.

Let's take a look at the resolutions I made last year:

1. I did in fact make a half-assed attempt to stop smoking in early July. Check.
2. I called my mom once or twice. And anyway, she's over here now, so what the hell.
3. I visited Europe this year, for basically the whole year.
4. I think Jeckyll took care of this one for me.
5. I don't want to think about number 5. I had to throw that spoon away.
6. Number 6, oh, yeah, that was fun. I need to do that more often.
7. Too much.
8. Not enough.
9. Juussssst right.
10. Didn't come up, unfortunately, but I was prepared.

So so, 9 out of 10 ain't bad for a list of New Year's Broken Promises. Let's see what kind of softballs I throw myself for 2006!

shot00106

Originally uploaded by skben2003.

For some reason I just uploaded all my Doom 3 screenshots to fckrl, or fckler, or however it is you say that.

Share and Enjoy!

I'll have to be trying this out: QuickSynergy.

I walked down to the store today, to pick up sundries for the festivities tonight. As my mom's in town visiting us, I'll be making some of hometown favorites: Southern cornbread, green beans, a little bit o' Rube's nearly-famous homemade honey-mustard slathering for the salad, and a case of König Ludwig Dunkel, one of Germany's best dark beers.

As my lovely lady and I are walking down the street with a case of said beer in hand, an old man, dressed like a scruffy lumberjack and with a nose like an unpeeled artichoke, teeters up to us and breathes "Hey, there, mate, howzabout a nice Christmas beer for an old man!" in my stony, emotionless face. Of course, I told him to go fuck himself, seeing as Christmas is over and even if it weren't I'd rather stomp his face with my ice skates on than give him a beer that I'm going to use on New Year's Eve to pamper my guests, you COCK. SUCKER. What's up with these rotten sons of bitches? As if their desire to get 'faced was all the inspiration I'd need to suddenly renounce all property rights and give whatever I was carrying to whomever came up and asked for it first. What the fuck do I look like, asshole, Gandhi? Get your own goddam beer.

Man, I've got to stop reading all those Ayn Rand books.

I've been trying to read this post for the last 30 minutes now, but I just can't seem to get past the words, "a more aggressive form of all-out ass-probing", at which point my mind seems to wander. Can someone summarize that for me?

In the early days of computer gaming, most all games had a feature called the 'Boss Key'. This was actually a stroke of genius for whoever it was that came up with it. Basically what it did was whenever you pressed a certain key, usually escape, it would instantly pause the game, turn off the sound, and replace the screen with a picture of productive work, for example a spreadsheet with generic figures and headings.

The purpose of this, of course, was for that moment when you realized the boss was coming, you could quickly hit escape, start looking thoughtfully back and forth between a piece of paper and the faux spreadsheet and saying things like, 'looks good, looks good' and the boss would be none the wiser that not only were you stealing the bread from his mouth so you could play F19 instead of doing the job you were getting paid to do, but you were smugly, intentionally playing him for the fool while doing it.

The Boss Key is just a fond memory, nowadays. I guess it's because back then, computers capable of playing games were too expensive to be found in the home, so people just played games at work while the boss wasn't looking. But nowadays, everybody's got a honker of a computer at home, file-sharing software, and a broadband connection. What we need is a Wife Key. It would have the same function as the boss key, ideally. You could hit a keystroke combination, ctrl-alt-escape, for example, and that would instantly replace a screen full of midget porn and video sex-chats with, I don't know, the sports page or whatever it is that's also available on the web.

Or maybe it would be better the other way around. It would replace the 25 tabs of political blogs and stock quotes you constantly stare at with a full-screen video of Sylvia Saint (NOT safe for work, Kim) getting banged in every hole but the left nostril. At least then, your wife wouldn't suspect you of being the sad, sexless husk of a man the Internet has made you. Just a thought.

It's snowin', snowin', snowin' outside, and the Mom's coming over to visit us for Christmas. There'll probably be some dead animals on the table in a day or two, as well as some sort of songs about...something or other. It'll be just like in the old days.

And we've got a kickass tree, and little gingerbread people in the title bar. It's all about the yule here that the palatial new youbitch secret headquarters.

That's the Jakober Gate, right outside here, and it's a manly gate, as the sisters are writing in their blog whence this picture was stolen. St. Jakob, I think, discovered it on his way to find the holy grail in pamplona in the 1930s, unless I'm not mistaken.

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (85% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

via Zealot, who is a simpering, bed-wetting communist.

How the hell can anyone bring a child into a world where you can't even buy a fucking coffee pot that doesn't dribble all over the goddam counter?!

Dammit.

I realize this is like asking Albert Einstein for a game of checkers, but would y'all mind going over to the UW Daily Cardinal and reading this article?

And, friends, don't forget to click on "Respond to Article" down at the bottom. This is the future of journalism, folks.

We got our first real dusting of the year last night. The cold grey coffin-lid of winter has officially closed down on Europe, and it looks like we'll be getting plenty of snow this year. And I'm working at home now, tap-tapping away at the keyboard, sleeping at my desk, looking balefully at the phone when it rings, and the rest of the time at the depressing, watery light outside. It makes me wish I had a son to chase around the hedgemaze with an axe.

Oh, and the white trucks are back.

before moving to Europe.

Two words: Dog Tax.

Hi there, people of Rubonia. I'm sorry I haven't written in a while, but you know how it is, with things piling up on the desk of life, as the secretary of life bitches you out for not calling your mother and forgetting little Timmy's birthday, and why don't you get off your ass of life and call some customers instead of sitting around in your underwear, downloading porn and listening to Nine Inch Nails and Devo mash-ups with that stupid vacant grin on your gob. Well, you know what, secretary of life? Clean out your desk, you're fired, I'm sick of lookin' at ya.

So, now it's just me, here in the palatial new YouBitch offices, wondering what my next move is going to be. There is that certain tingly excitement you feel in your gut at such times. There's opportunity behind every loss, surely, you have the chance to take it, all of it, as much as your greedy, ambitious little hands can grab. There's nothing holding you back. But there's also nothing pushing you forward, at least, nothing from outside. You're on your own, little Rube; you can flap your arms all you want to in space, but it won't move you an inch; that shit don't work in a vacuum. Up there, you can fly faster by breaking wind than spreading your wings. It's why rockets will get you to the moon, but airplanes won't. It's the ugly side of Zen.

Need a ctrl-alt-delete within a Windows Remote Desktop Connection? Hit ctrl-alt-end. I wish I'd known that sooner.

Need to reboot a Linux machine that's lost it's hard drives, giving you the unenviable error message:
"I/O Error: /sbin/reboot"?

type the following two commands into the terminal:

echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo "b" > /proc/sysrq-trigger

And I'll be damned, it reboots.

Also good for giggles on fileservers and such; but really only during peak times.

The Real Story, not propaganda!
(click for full-size)

Man, check out the list of Amazon's top-selling computers.

This list gets updated hourly, so I'll just tell you what I saw: 8 of the 10 top-selling computers are Macs, and 12 of the top 25. I really wouldn't think the PowerPC-based computers would be selling all that well, but they're up there, too. In fact, PowerPC-based Macintoshes alone occupy 4 of the top 10 slots.

I'm not sure how many people buy their computers from Amazon, but I imagine it's quite a few, seeing as they're usually very competetive, owing to sales taxes and generally scurrilous, violent business practices aux Teamsters. I'm thinking by the end of the year, the whole market-share thing might start becoming interesting again.

Who knew that a company called "InDigEnt" would have trouble making money? That has to be one of the lousiest company names I've ever heard.

Top 5 Rejected Names For InDigEnt Studios

1. Po'House Productions
2. Abject Poverty Studios
3. Filthy, Depressed Hobos With Cameras
4. Black Friday Film-Works
5. Fuck the Investors, This is Art, Inc.

In Bad Journalism, a columnist lets their personal views completely distort the news they're trying to report. One example is in today's Wired online thingamapage:

Wired News: Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?:
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.

In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

I suppose the author is trying to show us how big an asshole Steve Jobs is, in that he doesn't abuse his position of prominence (and his shareholders' trust)to espouse the Cause du Jour, be it global warming or Third World debt. I guess it's too much to ask of journalists that they at least try and assume that their points of view aren't universally accepted as Truth. Does donating lots of money make someone praise-worthy, despite his potentially RICO-liable business practices? Is being a 'single-minded capitalist' actually a bad thing for an ultra-successful American industrialist? Actually, I had always avoided looking into Jobs' background with the apprehension that he was another Bono. Color me relieved! Knowing that Al Gore has some shady connection with Apple, and that Jobs actually tried to work for the Kerry Presidential campaign, I had feared the worst.

The fact of the matter is that if Jobs was more vocal about his political beliefs, and Apple was more tightly associated with American Progressivism, I wouldn't buy an Apple computer, period. I have no desire to put my dollars into the pockets of thuggish busybodies like Greenpeace. And I doubt it's in the CEO of Apple's job description to alienate customers politically. Both Jobs and Gates have enriched the lives of millions more people through their respective corporations than if they both had thrown their fortunes into the NGO-money machine.

I do find it interesting that the Author makes no note of the fact that Apple offered OS X as the platform for the hand-cranked $100 computer, which is specifically designed for underprivileged, color-blind children. They were turned down, because it's not open source. No pleasing some people, I suppose. I guess it's more politically acceptable to funnel cash-money through relief organizations than it is to offer valuable products or services; at least with cash, it can be funneled by those organizations into Democrat campaign coffers.

UPDATE: Theoacao says it better.

I have no idea why this is so funny, but it's good for chuckles.

(click to play)

This little movie makes me strangely happy.

Via the Unstoppable Moron

When you live in Georgia, you keep an eye on the weather in Alabama, cause you know it's heading your way. In Germany, you watch Moscow. I think Georgia got the better deal in that one. It's cold outside, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

From left to right: That's the temperature outside on my balcony. And then, that's the bottles of coke that exploded. And then, that's the cokesicles that formed on the bench, and were still there in the middle of the next day. On my balcony. Where I smoke. Where I'm about to go right now, and light a cigarette. -15°C. I haven't even bothered converting that to fahrenheit yet; I don't want to know.

On the other hand, it's supposed to get even colder tonight, so I should just go ahead and smoke a lot now, and get it out of the way. At any rate, it might be time to get me one of these: * SLANKET : THE BEST BLANKET EVER *. It's a blanket, you can smoke under!

Slanket link via Rui "infamous port 0 bug" Carmo.

In the process of trying out the new iPhoto, I've put up a one of them thar PhotoCasting thingamabobs too enhance my already-ominous web ubiquity. Some of the big brains in the blogosphere are having conniptions about Apple not using proper RSS-semantics or filtering newsreaders. but they're probably just too smart to actually read the error messages they're getting, and to realize therewith they're typing in the wrong URLs. But, as in the old mathematician-and-engineer-meet-the-devil joke, Rube's already drunk: Enjoy! (if you have an RSS-reader). If you've got iPhoto 6, use the full-fledged photocast URL instead.

Schweet!

Well, mom's been here for a good 3 weeks now. Well, ok, 24 days and 12 hours, but who's counting? She's been an ideal guest up to this point: She slept 12 hours a day, she washed the dishes, and, as expected, is always the lady. We had a fine time, visiting beautiful Innsbruck, Austria for a weekend; we also took a gander at the Kaufering Nazi concentration camp, just for giggles; and tonight we went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which was great fun.

After the movie, we participated in the tradition German custom of going through some dead guy's stuff, as you can read about in my mom's new Blog, Cowboys Aren't Sheepherders. Go over and say howdy to the ol' cowgirl, but remember to be nice, it is my mom, after all.

Just a couple more things: First off, she said she would start a blog if, and only if I posted a humiliating picture of myself. Well, mom, here ya go:

We loved having her here, and I'm already looking forward to her next visit. Until then, I just hope she posts a bit on her blog, to let us know how she's doing, and what the cat's up to.

I might actually send this one off to the printers:

via the Mad Mulleteer.

Every now and then, you're just cruising along, reading posts and drinking your beer, and the you come across something so foul, so hideous, so dizzyingly revolting you have to read it twice.

Quite often, that something has sentences like this in it:

She had about 8 inches of calf tongue hanging out of her...crotch

At Stevie's place, you never know what you're gonna get. And no, it's not a guest post by Velociman, I already checked.

That means new hotness, currently being announced at the Expo in San Francisco, and which will shortly be available in the Apple online store. No matter what you hear, don't let me near a credit card 'til the storm blows over, and the Keynote is but a mem'ry.

(Click to play)
Autobahn Fun!

The little lady and I watched the last 20 minutes of The Peacemaker last night. I'm aghast at the temerity involved, the balls you would have to have, to resolve a movie's climax with two people sweating over a timebomb as it counts down to zero, debating which wire to pull, and defusing it just in time. I would personally fund a university study, up to about 8 bucks and change, to determine how many movies include this tired old plot device; which movie was the first that used it; and what sort of dried-up, talentless hack dared put it into a multi-million dollar movie in the 1990s. They were using that crap weekly on CHiPs, for the love of Pete.

I also see on IMDb that the two writing credits, both somewhat appropriately named Cockburn (1,2), have exactly one (1) writing credit each, that being this film. Here's a tip fellows: Write every movie as if it were your last, because if you write this kind of bullshit despite having the kind of budget this film obviously had (they blew up a church!), it will be your last. How about letting the bomb go off and destroying New York? Too challenging for the average soccer mom? It worked for Somersby.

With the state of Hollywood being what it is, you can ignore the first and last 30 minutes of any movie you pick, and use that time to go take a dump, or smoke a cigarette, or, at least here in Germany, go back to the concession and buy yourself a well-earned beer. You're going to need it with shit like this to wade through. For shame.

I'll be taking my mom to see King Kong tonight, the English version of which is running at the local mall cinema tonight. At least here I know what I'm getting, and expectations are low. And there hero dies at the end, which isn't too much to ask for.

Let's take a look at the resolutions I made last year:

1. I did in fact make a half-assed attempt to stop smoking in early July. Check.
2. I called my mom once or twice. And anyway, she's over here now, so what the hell.
3. I visited Europe this year, for basically the whole year.
4. I think Jeckyll took care of this one for me.
5. I don't want to think about number 5. I had to throw that spoon away.
6. Number 6, oh, yeah, that was fun. I need to do that more often.
7. Too much.
8. Not enough.
9. Juussssst right.
10. Didn't come up, unfortunately, but I was prepared.

So so, 9 out of 10 ain't bad for a list of New Year's Broken Promises. Let's see what kind of softballs I throw myself for 2006!

shot00106

Originally uploaded by skben2003.

For some reason I just uploaded all my Doom 3 screenshots to fckrl, or fckler, or however it is you say that.

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I'll have to be trying this out: QuickSynergy.

I walked down to the store today, to pick up sundries for the festivities tonight. As my mom's in town visiting us, I'll be making some of hometown favorites: Southern cornbread, green beans, a little bit o' Rube's nearly-famous homemade honey-mustard slathering for the salad, and a case of König Ludwig Dunkel, one of Germany's best dark beers.

As my lovely lady and I are walking down the street with a case of said beer in hand, an old man, dressed like a scruffy lumberjack and with a nose like an unpeeled artichoke, teeters up to us and breathes "Hey, there, mate, howzabout a nice Christmas beer for an old man!" in my stony, emotionless face. Of course, I told him to go fuck himself, seeing as Christmas is over and even if it weren't I'd rather stomp his face with my ice skates on than give him a beer that I'm going to use on New Year's Eve to pamper my guests, you COCK. SUCKER. What's up with these rotten sons of bitches? As if their desire to get 'faced was all the inspiration I'd need to suddenly renounce all property rights and give whatever I was carrying to whomever came up and asked for it first. What the fuck do I look like, asshole, Gandhi? Get your own goddam beer.

Man, I've got to stop reading all those Ayn Rand books.

I've been trying to read this post for the last 30 minutes now, but I just can't seem to get past the words, "a more aggressive form of all-out ass-probing", at which point my mind seems to wander. Can someone summarize that for me?

In the early days of computer gaming, most all games had a feature called the 'Boss Key'. This was actually a stroke of genius for whoever it was that came up with it. Basically what it did was whenever you pressed a certain key, usually escape, it would instantly pause the game, turn off the sound, and replace the screen with a picture of productive work, for example a spreadsheet with generic figures and headings.

The purpose of this, of course, was for that moment when you realized the boss was coming, you could quickly hit escape, start looking thoughtfully back and forth between a piece of paper and the faux spreadsheet and saying things like, 'looks good, looks good' and the boss would be none the wiser that not only were you stealing the bread from his mouth so you could play F19 instead of doing the job you were getting paid to do, but you were smugly, intentionally playing him for the fool while doing it.

The Boss Key is just a fond memory, nowadays. I guess it's because back then, computers capable of playing games were too expensive to be found in the home, so people just played games at work while the boss wasn't looking. But nowadays, everybody's got a honker of a computer at home, file-sharing software, and a broadband connection. What we need is a Wife Key. It would have the same function as the boss key, ideally. You could hit a keystroke combination, ctrl-alt-escape, for example, and that would instantly replace a screen full of midget porn and video sex-chats with, I don't know, the sports page or whatever it is that's also available on the web.

Or maybe it would be better the other way around. It would replace the 25 tabs of political blogs and stock quotes you constantly stare at with a full-screen video of Sylvia Saint (NOT safe for work, Kim) getting banged in every hole but the left nostril. At least then, your wife wouldn't suspect you of being the sad, sexless husk of a man the Internet has made you. Just a thought.