So, I was sitting at the trainstop tonight, on my way home from work, listening to a podcast of Nightline on my iPod, in which they covered the spreading avian flu epidemic and, jumpin' jehosephat, we all gonna die. But I knew that. However, they had sound bites of Chimpy McHitler doing a couple of press conferences, and I'll be damned if he doesn't butcher this one even worse than nuclear. Did you know we're sitting on a pandemic of Èvian Flu? If you've ever wondered what the French were doing to contribute to the end of mankind as we know it, aside from accordion music, now you know.

I swear, the boy's sounding more like a cross between John Wayne and Emily Litella with every passing sentence. In a matter of months, he'll be giving the State of the Union address, and will sign off $200 billion to preserve our natural racehorses.

People, I'd soon shit as look at ya, as my dear departed grandfather was fond of saying to us grandchillens. There's just nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a good ol' blue funk at the beginning of the week. Today, despite being Tuesday, was Monday here in Germany, for all intents and purpose. The long weekend was over, and I enjoyed three days of true sloth, the likes of which I've not enjoyed for quite some time here. Yesterday was the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Re-unification Day, and therefore a holiday. I don't have a television at the moment, so I'm not quite sure how the yokels down in dogpatch celebrated, or if they celebrated. The closest I've heard to someone marking the occasion was a documentary on the Columbine massacre that was on one of the state-run television channels last night; I guess replaying the awe-inspiring "Tear down this wall" speech would've been regarded as sycophantic. They could've maybe just shown the thousands of Pershing II protesters instead of Reagan, just to be fair. I mean, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, there wasn't just bottomless love and gratitude for Reagan here in the 80s; there were also some nay-sayers.

So, 15 years later, what have we got here? The Wessies (West Germans) hate the Ossies (East Germans), the Ossies are all Nazis, the country's being run into the ground by Greens and Socialists, and Rube's got a headache to complement his weird-ass earache. And the beer? Color me unimpressed. Sell me on it, people, it takes more than beer to offset an 80% tax burden. This isn't really blowing my skirt up. Maybe it's time for an "OK, Mr. Gorbatchev, you can put that wall back up" speech, and a new Cold War to stir the drink. Gorby's going to be here in Augsburg on Saturday, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

I'll soldier on. Europe's OK, despite my visceral hatred of cold weather and accordions.

Who do you want to be? I'm pretty happy with who I am, all things considered. I mean, the joints are getting a little too creaky to be right where I want to be. I get earaches a lot. Earaches? When the hell did that start. I seem to recall something about an earache the last time when I was 10 years old, in Washington, watching a Caps game. During a raucous pre-game pillowfight in the hotel, I was blindsided viciously by one of the other running-men, and fell ear-first into the corner of the nightstand. Screaming children, dancing lights before my eyes, and an eardrum gushing blood onto the bed, from what I can remember. But there's a groove for you; I didn't even need alcohol back then to pull the ol', "Hey y'all, watch this!" It just happens naturally to children, without the need for finely-aged and/or -brewed refreshments, like, say, your run-of-the-mill blog meet, with bullwhips and such.

But somehow the earache lain in wait for two-and-a-half decades, ready to pounce. I've been sick for about 3 weeks now, which really isn't like me. Normally, I've got an iron constitution, seeing as over the years I've built up an environment of toxins in my body that's inhospitable to your average germ varmint. To all life, really. The soupy buildup of nicotine, alcohol, and stress toxins in my blood would put the post-Katrina sludge in New Orleans to shame, just wait until the Rube-Tsunami hits, then let's see Curious George wriggle out of the media storm that follows. "Rube: What Went Wrong?"

Yeah, well, enough about that shit. On with the show. I'm not getting any younger, despite the wash of childhood diseases and injuries that may yet wait around the corner on my walk home tonight.

What? The Braves won the division? It's like baseball season is on fast-forward every year. I didn't see a single game since April. Damn.

Man o man, I can't believe they actually did that this year, with that bunch o' bums they were fielding in April. But then, ever since Cox started beating his wife when the team loses, the Bravos seemed to have stepped it up a notch. For Ms. Cox' sake.

More and more, it seems to me that there's nothing new or innovative in life. I think the more you understand something, the less you enjoy it. Take computers, for example. I understand computers. I've been working on them now almost thirty years, ever since my first home job, the risible Texas Instruments TI 994/A. My second computer was the much more suitable Mattel Aquarius, replete with 16K expansion board. 16K? I remember thinking it was the shit, something I could never even dream of filling up. Consider the following BASIC program:

10 ? "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

That's about 25 bytes, and also about the extent of my BASIC programming abilities at the age of 11. I remember there was this other kid in my sixth grade class who also had an Aquarius. I remember him bitching because he only had the 4K expansion, and he didn't have any room left in memory for the data sets that he used in the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG he'd programmed on it. I would have loaned him mine, but I was humiliated into lying that my flight simulator was almost finished, so sorry, no dice.

In the eighth grade, I took my first computer-oriented course at school, which was called "Business Computing on the Apple ][". I'm not exactly sure what eight-graders are supposed to understand about business computing, or what we were supposed to think of the cleverly hackerish use of square brackets for the roman numerals in the Apple ]['s name, but I was nonetheless intimidated into swearing that I would never buy a computer, much less one that had the colors of the international homosexual conspiracy brazenly embedded in a fruit. Subtle it ain't, the old Apple logo. Instead, I would live my life in buckskin trousers and shoot at revenuers with my kentucky windage, wishing for simpler times when men were men, and night was dark. Which of course is why I'm now a UNIX system administrator, and write blog entries in bars on my Apple laptop.

So nowadays, I understand that every laptop is basically a remix of different off-the-shelf parts, with a selection of the available software, as money allows, nothing special. There's only the capacity of hard drives, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM installed that make any dent. It's all the same shit. There are many computer companies, but only a few huge factories that pump out the shit that they all build into their computers. There is no wonder, no joy, mystery to any of it.

This principle applies to everything in life. At least, it applies to anything built after the second world war. German engineers are no better than the Americans anymore, they all use the same CAD software to get their shit done, and, with the Internet, there are no magical metallurgical formulas, no secret underground laboratories, no oil fields in the Balkans that make a difference, only Google results. Nowadays, there's only the price of commodities on the global market, the intricacies of international currency markets, and the sewing together of the same, tired old components by some poor saps in Taiwan for each and every manufacturer in each and every field of business, be it shoes or MP3 players.

Depressing.

[22:20]
I'm giving the New Worst Bar in the World a second chance tonight. For about the eighth time now, I guess. These guys are the worst of the worst. They're even worse than I remembered, and that was bad enough. I've been sitting here now for about 10 minutes, and they haven't even acknowledged my presence. There's 4 chicks behind the bar, just a-wiping them counters, a-polishing them glasses, and a-wasting my fucking time. I guess I keep coming back out of morbid curiosity, of the literal kind. I've got to see how long it takes for this place to die off.

Atrocious service. There's an entire floor of guests here where I'm sitting, and we all came in about the same time. Probably about 10 people. There's no way they could've missed us, and anyway, I'm sitting on the railing, with my sizeable noggin in plain view of God and everybody. Let's watch...

[22:30]
Welp, still high and dry here. The staff have, in the meantime, made a perfunctory round of the lower floor down there. They didn't bother to put out their cigarettes to do it though, just left them burning in the ashtrays. Never a good sign. I'll light a cigarette and see what happens.

[22:35]
Cigarette's out. Somebody's coming up the stairs, oh wait! She's got a notepad with her! She's either a waitress or a reporter, and either one would suit my purposes at this point. Meanwhile, more customers are grousing around and looking nervously over their shoulders, the silence of the taps a deafening presence in the room. My hatred hangs over this place like a cloud. Thalia Bar and Grill, I am your own personal Simon Wiesenthal, you worthless, arrogant bunch of fucks.

[22:39]
The reporter took my drink order. I ordered a beer, and I'm anxious to see if she fucks it up. That would be just like the AFP to do something like that. Arrogant Cowboy American Orders Mai Thai, Asks Twice for 'Cute Little Umbrella'. It's a sting, I fucking knew it. I will bring this place down around their ears. The Duke would.

[22:41]
After leaving something on my table that most certainly looked like a beer, the waitress was unresponsive to my admittedly lukewarm thank-you. Fucking narc.

[23:30]
This fucking bitch. She only came up one more time, and that was to clear off another table, and then she went back down without asking if I needed another beer. I guess I don't, seeing as I've gotten attached to this one, as spending an hour with a beer brings you closer to it. I shall shit upon this bar, its name will be stricken from every card, from every column, and every positive blog entry I ever wrote about it, should there actually be any. The Thalia Movie Bar and Grill is, without a doubt, the worst bar in the world.

I'm in a chatty mood tonight. That may very well be because it's Sunday, and Sunday in Augsburg means Biscuits à la Rube, and Grits au Fromage. Such breakfasts are good starts to any day, even when served at 4:30 in the afternoon, in filthy pajamas.

So, what shall we talk about? Let's talk about the weather. In a cruel turn of fate, the weather finally got warm the week after the kids went back to school. Fuck 'em. Treats them right for living in the arctic circle. Move back to the world, kids, there's sunshine and hurricanes.

Ok, that's the weather. Let's talk shop. I got a steady gig now, which doesn't take much time, and doesn't pay all that badly. I'm self-employed, so whenever a steady source of income shows up, it's always welcome. It doesn't quite make up for the 2 and half months of project work that I just did for which I didn't get paid, but it makes telling certain customers to go fuck themselves that much easier.

I actually worked for one customer for up to 60 hours a week for the last two months. Even though I relaxed my normally-exorbitant hourly rates for the sake of customer relations, the bills are running up into the tens of thousands. Thing is, I haven't seen a dime of that money yet, and the way things are looking further upstream, I don't think I'll ever see any of the money. The other party, who's basically doing sales for the project while I do the work, has decided that almost all of the customers we've been servicing like overworked whores lately are 'Reference Customers', who will be useful down the road for bringing in other customers, and therefore won't get billed. Which means I won't see any money from them at all. Which means I'm pretty much figuring out whether or not spending time in the big house is worth the ass-whipping I'd like to lay on my salesman. Still too close to call.

The press might want to stop trying to milk this one.

Mama Moonbat and Her Multitudes

30 people? I've had orgies bigger than that, and I don't recall getting phone calls from Murdoch over it, either. In fact, through most of the "summer" here, there was some sad-assed march against the Hartz IV welfare reforms, which involved somehow making people actually fill out more forms to keep getting unemployment checks. Every Monday night, the teeming masses of about 20 or 30 people would march through the town square to the train station, with some buffoon up front shouting rhyming missives about Schröder or something through a megaphone. And I always wondered to myself, usually through a beery haze, if he really saw himself as some sort of revolutionary figure, with the streaming red banners of the International Communist Conspiracy waving all about, black confetti falling from the medieval buildings around them, as the oppressed volk breathe a sigh of relief that they finally have a voice. Instead, I mean, of the 20 or 30 bongo-playing dopeheads who were shouting, incoherently, his dumbass rhymes back at him, to the derisive hootin' and hollerin' of the Monday-night Maximilian-Strasse promenaders, with the intention of getting their $2000.00 a month benefits extended past the 3-year limit.

What a bunch of fucking parasites.

Just in case y'all missed it, the photos from the wedding are up. The bachelor party photos have yet to clear customs, ahem.

And speaking of Herr Doktor Probst, he's got his own blog now. Check it out. I'm sure we'll be seeing more from him, as soon as the monkey-in-the-mirror 'Test' posts scroll out of the way.

Mutual friend Martin Bruch also has an interesting blog, as long as you're a Mac weenie like me.

This is perhaps the most beautiful, romantic thing I've ever read (NSFW):

Ladies, find the ugliest man you know (and my e-mail address is linked on the right) and I'll assure you that you'll soon forget where your clitoris ends and his tongue begins. Within hours, you'll be thinking that you breeched birthed and adut male.

From skippystalin, of course.

Hope their sites can stay online after the vicious Bitchdotting they're getting here.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that open-xchange is worth the trouble, kick them in the nuts. Hard.

Upon describing me as "mature":

That wasn't really the word I was looking for, but I couldn't find any nicer synonyms for "old" in the thesaurus.

Man, I'm tired, but I can finally relax a little, now that I'm down to my one or two nightly cocktails, instead of the caligulan excesses I've been subjected to of late. The preceding week was a grueling, besotted blur that I strongly believe will make me rethink my entire position on alcohol. Ok. Yep. Good point, Mr. Oblongata. Ok, I continued, nodding thoughtfully while clamping the unlit pipe between my well-formed incisors, I do believe you've got a point after all.

Alcohol is a funny thing, as long as your definition of funny has a lot in common with Hermann Goering's. For us drunkards, it's an almost unbearable hit parade of mortifying moments that accompanies even the most insincere, shallow attempts at soul-searching. Again and again, it makes you pose the question to yourself that we've all had to try and wrestle at one point or another, namely: What the fuck was I thinking? I lost my goddamn cell phone in the drunken haze last week. I loved that cell phone, sort of. I realize now that I'm in the market fer one a em's sexy iTunes phones, but, honestly, I'd rather have a Nano. In fact, I'd rather have even a fool's hope that I'll have enough money to buy smokes for another glorious month o' puffin', but I don't, so I guess I'm not so much in the market fer as I am up shit creek without a paddle in the absence of.

I lost my phone during a 300-yard long, meandering stumble home from the bachelor party. I know that I didn't leave it in the night club, because I remember making a phone call or two on my way home. I'd called my lusty companions, asking them if they'd check around the club and see if they could find my digital camera, which was missing, and bring it to safety. I then called my baby, and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be home within an hour, 300 yards being what they are at 5:30 in the morning, and that hopefully she hadn't forgotten the earplugs I'd recommended she buy, lest my easily-foreseen yet completely unavoidable sawing and clearing of the rainforest disturb her for the 2 or 3 hours that I would actually be allowed to remain in bed, owing to the 9 o'clock meeting I'd cleverly scheduled for the next morning. When I was wrenched from my snoring paradise by Satan's Alarm Clock, I was sadly without a phone, yet, remarkably, with my digital camera in my pocket. Had I actually been talking to my friends and loved ones on the camera? How very, very David Lynch.

But let's not forget the human costs. I almost punched out some rummy hobo in a bar for hitting on my sweet baby Saturday night, after a boozy pub crawl. He was drunk, and my sweet baby was looking very sweet indeed, but there ain't more than one rummy hobo who's laying on hands around here, and that rummy hobo is me, buddy. I don't suppose the late hour or the gigantic bar-tab had anything at all to do with my rush to visit justice on this poor, lonely sap.

Alcohol has cost me plenty, but I guess there's no point in stopping now.

In every industry, there are the kickbacks, the skimmings, the tricks of the trade that allow the core products to be competitively priced, and accessible to Joe Consumer. In some cases, it even allows the core products to be given away for free. In the late 90's, for example, we used to actually sell computers for below cost, knowing that, within six months, we could charge thousands of dollars to check these same computers for Y2K-compliancy. I ran the (mostly ceremonial) test procedures at least a thousand times during the last six months of 1999, and not once did a customer ask me why we didn't check the things before we rolled them out, sometimes mere days before returning to certify them. I must have gained 40 pounds in 1999.

Another great example of this particular business model is Microsoft's XBox. Every XBox in the world is sold at a horrifying loss. The hardware costs alone are something like 90% of the price tag, and the other 10% couldn't even put a dent in the massive R&D, marketing, and licensing costs The Beast poured into this fine piece of machinery. Nevertheless, Microsoft made (and still makes) a killing off this thing. The secret is the game licensing. GatesCo. basically gives away the hardware, so that they can make money off of the games that are sold to run on it. The XBox's anti-"piracy" technology ensures that only those games which have been blessed with The Key can run on it, and The Key, my friends, costs the pudenda for those who wish to use it.

Which brings us to my fucking haircut. Throug whispered confessions in nervous, back-alley meetings, it came to my attention that there exists here in Germany a reasonably-priced barber shop, hidden within the steamy bowels of a department store. Department stores are, in Germany at least, the Grand Mufti of Commerce, because they are often open until the ungodly hour of 8:00 PM, instead of closing at 4 in the afternoon like every other shop on the continent. People who do not belong to unions, and therefore do not enjoy the 11-hour work week and 45-hour lunches which seem to be commonplace here, might, in such an establishment, actually be able to buy an overpriced pair of Italian shoes after work that will turn into shredded leather foot wrappings during the first snow like something out of a grainy, black and white Operation Barbarossa documentary which will only lead to cannibaliism at some point, God help us all.

So, armed with the forbidden knowledge and secret pass-phrase, I walked casually into said cut-easy at 6 in the afternoon, curious as to what awaited me. I walked confidently to the counter, where the tell-tale scent of Barbicide betrayed the establishment's true purpose, and announced that I was there for a...haircut! I was promptly greeted by an attractive young nymph, probably fresh out of art-school, in need of funds, in a lowly state, ready for every degradation I could muster from my addled id.

I can't really recall much about the haircut. It was alright, the barbress turned out to be not that attractive after all, which is gang und gebe, a little pudgy, actually, though she did have magic hands at the hair-washing sink, though the fact that she didn't ask if I wanted the "special treatment" was not lost on me, and therefore was likely to affect her tip, negatively. The wrong kind of rub was in coming, though. She did a bad job on the head. Now, I know I've got a difficult head to cut, and I'm usually very understanding when newbies have difficulty with it. After the damage was done, the nymphette looked askance, and inquired as to whether I would like some gel on my hair. In a moment of weakness, I said, well, maybe just a little dab to hold back the humiliation when I walked out the door. So, she being responsive, and subject to my every whim, she took out a tube of hair gel, squeezed out a miniscule drop of the sticky, sensous fluid, and rubbed it on my battered skull. I looked in the mirror, and, swallowing my distaste, mussed a bit till I looked like something other than a month-old jack-o-lantern. I thanked her, and proceeded to the cash register. I paid my due, and realized she'd tacked €1.50 onto the price for the fucking hair gel!

I realize the people have to earn their money. I realize that the price for the haircut was suspiciously reasonable for these dark post-Deutschmark days, but a fucking €1.50 for a fucking cum-dab of hair gel!!!!!1

At this point, I was confronted with the decision, do I scream, at the top of my lungs, YOU FUCKING BACKSTABBING CUNT I'LL FUCKING DO YOU IN YOU GODDAMN BITCH FOR THAT FUCKING HAIRCUT YOU GONNA FUCKING PAY MOMMY MOMMY, or do I just meekly pay the €13.50, thank the nice lady, and walk out the door like someone actually did me a favor? People who know me will have no trouble believing that, not only did I pay the full tab, I also dropped a Euro into the tip jar. What a twat I am.

At two points in this story, as with so many cases in life, I could have been saved with one simple question: What would the Duke do? First off, John Wayne probably would have declined the hair gel, I'm guessing. Failing that, he most certainly would have shot every fucking customer in the department store amid myriad shoulder-rolls and hat-tips, which, honestly, is exactly what this pussified gay-bar of a country needs a bit more of.

Where's my fucking big-airn?

is a Bavarian wedding. I'm not really sure which is more important in such a regional affair, the unbridled alcohol abuse by everyone over the age of 16, or the abject humiliation of the bridal pair.

The intentional self-poisoning began on Thursday, with the Bachelor party. Pubs were crawled, bottoms were pinched, and, in the end, Rube showed that he could still run with the young dogs.

There's Rube, passed out in a chair in some nightclub he doesn't even know the name of, at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And yes, the next morning's 9 o'clock meeting was a rousing, unqualified disaster, thanks for asking. By some weird twist of fate, Friday night was the birthday party of a family of immigrants out of somewhere over in Vampireland, which is anything east of Czechoslovakia. That was good for yet another night of binge drinking, though I must admit the heart, she was not really in it.

Which brings us to Saturday, the aforementioned wedding. Apparently, it's traditional in Bavaria to steal and make a copy of the Groom's house key while he's not paying attention. On the day of the wedding, while he's preparing to feed and bedrink his guests, they break into his apartment and trash the place. I heard stories of dismantled furniture, toilets stuffed with chocolate, pulled circuit breakers, and something about 150 gallons of mashed potatoes. With friends like these...

The entire evening of the Wedding was an endless stream of humiliation for the groom, the pinnacle of which must have been when we, in the tradition of the region, kidnapped his bride, took her out drinking, and he had to come search for us. I'm not exactly sure what the point of that particular ritual is, but she seemed to enjoy it just a little too much.

At any rate, congratulations to Herr Doktor Probst and his lovely new bride Martina for a beautiful wedding, and my heartfelt sympathies for the fact that some asshole went through his cd collection and swapped all the cases.

CNN.com - Inventor denies dead cat fuel story - Sep 15, 2005:

The underlying truth is, of course, that should you ever have to even deny such a thing, you've already lost.

Hallo, Hans

I vanted to assk you vhy ze american und british tourists, ze are alvays giggling vhen zey come here for skiing.

Danke,

Fritz Weber
Wank-Lifte Ski Lift

Jottings from yesterday's bar napkin, from the daily evening meeting-of-one:

I'm the chair of your misfortune, 4 legs of strength compared to your two. I loathe your cushions.
There are 3 people you should never lie to: Your lawyer, your doctor, and your accountant.
Your bits of SuSE architecture, you will not get in there. You will stare in amazement, at the amount of trust there.

Unvollständig.
Speth was eyeing my unit.
With Windows,you've got a whole other set of problems. I am the leader of the technik. Keep your fucking hands off of them. Dicknose.
There's no denying it: Things have been better.
Rsync software: No network access. How many revolutions? (backup rev's)(under normal usage)?
Why do I busy myself with such nonsense?
I'm surrounded by freaks and losers, traitors, liars, bitchy little people I'm supposed to give a fuck about.
Perfect coif, unimpeachable ascot. Saaaaah-weeeeet.
Wearing a green ascot on St. Patrick's day is probably not the best way to keep from getting pinched, I fear.
In a few years, I'll look back on these days and think, "What the fuck was that all about?"
Jeepers, I'm tired.
I'm tired of being tired. But I'm more tired of being broke.
Man, I guess TCP/IP, in retrospect, scales pretty well.
I can't believe I actually used to be an IPX bigot.
I also can't believe I used to own a class C subnet, namely 38.221.9.0/24. Merc, Fred, Medusa, Thor, Zeus, NS, man oh man, those were some days!
Here's some helpful advice for the ladies out there: If you're ugly, show some tit! C'mon, it's a date!
People sit around and compare their tools...
Tomorrow, I'm going to have a blister under my fingernail. Damn.

Well, I guess it's about time to stop smoking. I found a brown spot under my tongue today. I've probably got jaw cancer. Which probably means they'll need to cut off the lower half of my face, and reduce me to a freak whose tongue just hangs out of a jagged hole under his nose, wagging impotently with every attempt to speak, unable to articulate a sound, just emmitting some sort of excited whistle of gratitude when it's time for my mush.

Fuck, how did it come to this? I'm only thirty-five. My grandfather smoked for 60 years and only quit because he died. Otherwise, he'd be right here next to me, hooting appreciatively through a tube sticking out of his chest, then we'd go outside and pick up some hookers. Sleep well, Grandpa Arry, you deserved everything you got.

You know, that moment when you start typing, when you start groooooovin', not working at it, let the blog do the work for a change. This thing's been buggin' me, beggin' me, asking me please feed the hole, your publikum is waiting on you, Rube. But you know what, Blog? I'm fucking busy, whiny ass. I've got things to do, people to meet, bills to pay and letters to send. T'aint room here for two jefes, so one of us needs to get a-buggin, and I do believe that would be me. So, now, as long as I'm the one doing the buggin', you be the one doing the list'nin'. Now you listen to me, Blog, and you listen good. Velociman has a boil on his choad, Acidman's got a bug up his ass, and Lousiana ain't feeling so good his damn self. But me? I'm doing jes fine. Rube done took his blood pressure yesterday, after speed-snorting a liter of coffee, and it was 106 over fucking 60. I was on my way to work on a fuckin' Sunday, hands shaking like Katherine Hepburn's favorite vibrator, and you just sat here like a bump on a log waiting for it to find you.

Write yourself, you ungrateful little fuck. What's that? Oh, yeah, anytime, pussy, anytime.

Since I'm too busy at the moment to keep this rickety jalopy running, I've decided to post anything which the dregs of society decide to throw my inbox's way. I need a spam filter...

Case in point:

Chapter 1: A Viking Funeral
Author Unknown

He's gone, I heard the good doctor tell my wife and sister who apparently were somewhere in the near vicinity. No I wanted to scream out but couldn't. What the hell is going on? My eyes were shut tight and try as I might they would not open or even flutter. My entire body was frozen and refused to respond to any mental commands that I issued. Darkness held me captive.

"He wished to be cremated and have his ashes strewn over the homes of all his exes and meaningful lovers etc., the meaningless to receive condolences thru the mail or whatever", my beloved wife Andy relayed the info to the Doc or someone.

Then my beloved, somewhat frugal Sister, chimed in "My God stamps alone will cost a small fortune". "Just put a notice in a few fish-wrappers". As for scattering ashes, forget the former wives as they would make every attempt to bring the aircraft down before the payload could be delivered. The meaningfuls would be more receptive but squirm with discomfort while trying to explain the gesture to their current meaningfuls. We were only friends won't wash".

"Well, his 2nd wish was for a "Viking funeral", Andy offered. Maybe we could get some of his old drinking buddies to heave "Molotov" cocktails at a small vessel as it floats near the "Lil' " River Bridge that spans the infamous Alatoona Lake. Henry Bryan and Jackie Dempsey will gladly secure an old fishing boat I'm sure".

The 2nd wish prevailed. Somehow my wife and sister pulled it off. It was near dusk on a late August day when the much publicized event began. Bells Ferry road was closed to traffic in both directions, so the bridge would be open to the throngs of expected onlookers. Twenty cocktail hurlers waited in formation for the funeral barge to pass beneath, carrying yours truly to Valhalla. All at once the small boat came into view in tow behind a larger ski boat. When it neared the bridge, someone severed the tow line. Now the vessel was drifting under the L.R.B. Finally it emerged on the other side as the cocktails were lit, awaiting the Hurl command. Then it came, Ready! Hurl! All at once 20 arms obeyed the order! A few struck the small craft, causing it to ignite. The burlap wrapped corpse was now slowly engulfed in smoke and flame.

"My God it moved" a horrified deputy sheriff screamed!"Saw it thru my field glasses". Henry Bryan snatched the glasses from the grasp of the now hysterical lawman. "Let me have a look see"! Naw, must've been your eyes doin' tricks, what with it being nearly dark and all.

Only small remnants of the remained by now, floating on the surface near a large patch of ashes, surrounded by a mysterious ring of grease, all floating away toward a distant beach. Show was over and the crowd began to thin out. Some were puzzled by the behavior of Henry B. and Jackie D. however. Both were giggling and high-fiving anyone nearby. Eventually they were joined by the widow and sister of the deceased. Both ladies suppressed their own laughter all were aboard the Merc convertible belonging to J.D.. Now as the white Mercedes sped south on Bells Ferry Road, Henry B. broke the silence! There must be a God, what an unexpected bonus!He was refering to the fact that one of the hurlers was none other than George Tweedy.

It seemed that "Old Pruneface" (George) inadvertantly dropped his flaming cocktail all over himself! J.D. quickly pushed the "Human Torch" over the bridge railing and downward toward the murky water some 50 feet below. As luck would have it, George missed the water and upon the rocky shore. "Close but no cigar" would be this poor old wretches final epitath.

All 4 occupants wiped tears caused by derisive laughter from their eyes as the speeding vehichle reached it's destination. Now all entered the Villas of Kennesaw clubhouse bar, which had been previously reserved for the evening. "Did he suffer"? I asked. "Which one?", my wife asked. "Huh"!

Finally H.B. was able to speak and relay the tale of "Old Lonesome George's demise". Loud guffaws filled the room, it was gonna be a great night!!!

Stay tuned for Chapter Two:
Where in the world Is Gary ASSitelli?

Didja ever sit and wonder, just how horrendous X1-X10 must have been? I mean, network transparency is admirable, but it's all in the impelementation, folks.

At these sorts of cabbage-patch spectacles that crop up every now and then, it's important to remember the training. Macs are special. Macs are different. Macs are premium consumer items not meant for every 300 lb. frizzy-haired slushee-sucker who buys her computers at the grocery store.

Remember the training. Steve? Are you there? Have you forsaken us? SAY SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE A JESUS!

But Steve's probably just cackling like Renfield in some white marble penthouse, calling Gates on the phone; "Bill, you couldn't buy this kind of publicity!"

"Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner" (Stephan Schacher)

A trip across America is the dream of many Europeans. At the tender age of nineteen, photographer Stephan Schacher undertook a typical sightseeing tour of the United States, from coast to coast on the Kerouac trail, visiting the cities and monuments, both natural and man-made, along the legendary Route 66. Almost 20 years later, Schacher decided to take a second trip across North America. This time, however, things would be done a little differently: Driving from upstate New York to Northern Alaska, almost 11,000 kilometers across Canada and the United States, Schacher decided photograph every meal along the way, as well as every waitress who served it.

What may sound like a goofy, drunken college idea dreamed up at three o'clock in the morning became a serious undertaking for Schacher. Eating exclusively in roadside diners, the author blazes a low-brow culinary trail across the continent, braving greasy hamburgers and questionable seafood platters. The book itself is handsomely crafted. After turning page after page of greasy diner cuisine, one begins to wonder just how many t-bone steaks and onion rings a man can eat before his heart explodes.

Using specialty paper, muted colors, and creative typography, it sits well on the nightstand or coffee table for the casual reading session. Making meticulous records of his mileage, food expenditures, and the times of arrival and departure, Schacher is able to painstakingly recreate his entire journey in facts and figures to complement the irresistibly personal experience of the solitary roadside meal.

This is a good sign...

[root@freak1 chkrootkit-0.45]# ls -al
bash: /bin/ls: Input/output error

On my poor little Linux box, who just sits in the corner and never hurts anybody. When he was in the kitchen, next to my refrigerator, he once had 700 days of uptime, damn near 2 years without a reboot. He even spent the better part of an afternoon in a half-inch of standing water, when I accidentally left my freezer door open.

Brave little man, go gently into that great /dev/null in the sky. And take my fucking django projects with you, you weak little twat. Jesus, why do I only do backups for other people?!

That's what I'll be. Sitting in the server room, surrounded by untold generations of in-bred housecats, all playing little banjos and admiring my pouty lips. Crazy ol' Cat-Rube, wondering where all my friends have gone, why my children never call, and why, way back when, in aught-five, nobody wished me a happy System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Fuck you guys. I'm deleting all your mail.

As I was googling around, debating whether or not to install the copy of Office XP I've recently come into, in order to upgrade my slowly rotting-yet-beloved copy of Office 2000 Pro, I came across 1) enough evidence to deter me, and b) what has to be the best screenshot caption I've ever seen:

Some may have noticed that in the last 6 months, YouBitch.org has skyrocketed in popularity, owing to various influences viz bribery and dirty, dirty tricks.

It's grown so popular, in fact, that you'll find YouBitch.org in the Truth Laid Bear ecology sandwiched between ROFASix and "Test Page for Apache Installation".

How the hell do you come in behind a Test Page for Apache Installation?

Sometimes it's the little things that make it worthwhile. Today, for example, I spent 2 hours working on a network firewall whose brand name, Ben Hur, is eerily close to the Bavarian phrase, bin a hur, which means, roughly, I am a prostitute. This is why I giggle to myself when I think there's no one watching.

Also, I get to swear a lot a work, since none of these cretins speak English well enough to know what "oh you cocksucking piece of fucking shit" actually means, in the book sense.

In a related train of thought, I was in Kissing, Bavaria yesterday. Streams of consciousness being what they are, I immediately thought of Henry Kissinger, whose name means someone who comes from Kissing, and then I thought to myself, jeez, I haven't come from Kissing since high school, which then dead-ended into a search for a half-joke that cratered into a mixed-metaphore here at the usually-reliable youbitch.

Indeed, the little things can make an otherwise dreary, grey, and cloudy day all smily.

Oh, and there was a bug.

I never thought I'd see these words written by an adult:

why do I get the feeling you guys are yanking my chain? I guess I'll have to ask Sandy, she will be straight with me!

I would suggest that Lippy Livey prepare herself for amazing new levels of betrayal, shaming, and a chain-yanking most people only read about in Penthouse Forum. Sandy?!

I had all kindsa Sandy riffin' on Zonker links to pan out here, but sandy moved :-(

Sandy's new home is here. By the time Longhorn/Vista comes out, or Duke Nukem Forever, whichever comes first, I'll even update my sidebar template!

Hugs,
Rube

Check out the smoke on slashdot. There are a few very important reasons for a company to switch over to Macs. Viruses, Spyware, and Solitaire, to name just three. I just installed Windows XP on a fairly run-of-the-mill mini-PC, the ASUS Pundit-R. It took me two day to get all the drivers sorted out. I've still got an entry in the device manager for a mysterious "USB Controller" with a yellow exclamation point next to it which doesn't seem to be covered by the ASUS or ATI driver downloads. You can re-install a Mac in about an hour, all drivers and applications included, no matter what model. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even tell the install program to leave your home directory alone, and all your application settings will remain.

On the other hand, I've had a lot of customer contact lately. Most of my customers have irresolvable reasons to stay on the platform they're on, almost invariably Win32. Whether it's a Tax-Consulting program that makes extensive use of COM and the Windows version of Microsoft Office and Outlook, or an embedded controlling program for an industrial baking machine that only runs on Win98 SE, these people are locked in, and generally at ease with that fact. But with that, the 'vendor lock-in' argument against Apple Computer goes right out the window.

Companies shouldn't switch platforms just because somebody on Slashdot can provide an overpowering argument. Switching is expensive, no matter which direction. If you switch to Mac, you have to know that you can't realistically have more that one choice for an office productivity package, ironically MS Office. On Windows, you've got native versions of OpenOffice, Hansa Office, Corel WordPerfect Office (my personal choice at the moment), and just about anything else you can think of, none of which exist on Mac. Mac does have Pages, which beats rings around Word for 99% of what you're going to want to do, as long as what you want to do doesn't involve other companies being able to interact directly with your documents.

There are many arguments against Macification, and many more in favor. It all comes down to whether or not the boss wants to pony up the money for some sexy-ass hardware.

[are you there?]
yes

There's a lot to be said for good work habits. At least that's what I've heard, mostly from people who have good work habits, and also have, perhaps not coincidentally, fairly recent iPods. It's hard to balance abject sloth and material greed, I've found, so at some point you just try to find the path of least suffering. Just give a smile on the sidewalk to some girl who's trying so hard to make an impression. You don't have to express your loathing each and every minute to the untermenschen that you are forced by God and man to walk past when all you really want is to get from point A to point B to take the money from party C. Party C understands that you're not there to talk about the weather, but it's protocol, so just fuckin' do it.

Good work habits are more than just Knowing Your Shit. Good work habits include getting out of bed before noon, whether you have to or not [glance at Andy]; not masturbating in front of customers [glance at Thomas]; coming within 4 significant digits of your proposed budget [glance in mirror]; using your spellchecker when norms will be reading; and, last but not least, not fucking the co-ops [no glance necessary].

Good work habits involving knowing your product, and know when not to bend your customer over a barrel, which does occasionally make sense. Call your mother every now and then; do your paperwork; and for God sakes, stop using the fucking copier to make visuals of your goddam buttocks. I know this is all very difficult for you scrubs, but please, do make an effort: We're in this game to win. Now get out there and kick some ASS!

So, I was sitting at the trainstop tonight, on my way home from work, listening to a podcast of Nightline on my iPod, in which they covered the spreading avian flu epidemic and, jumpin' jehosephat, we all gonna die. But I knew that. However, they had sound bites of Chimpy McHitler doing a couple of press conferences, and I'll be damned if he doesn't butcher this one even worse than nuclear. Did you know we're sitting on a pandemic of Èvian Flu? If you've ever wondered what the French were doing to contribute to the end of mankind as we know it, aside from accordion music, now you know.

I swear, the boy's sounding more like a cross between John Wayne and Emily Litella with every passing sentence. In a matter of months, he'll be giving the State of the Union address, and will sign off $200 billion to preserve our natural racehorses.

People, I'd soon shit as look at ya, as my dear departed grandfather was fond of saying to us grandchillens. There's just nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a good ol' blue funk at the beginning of the week. Today, despite being Tuesday, was Monday here in Germany, for all intents and purpose. The long weekend was over, and I enjoyed three days of true sloth, the likes of which I've not enjoyed for quite some time here. Yesterday was the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Re-unification Day, and therefore a holiday. I don't have a television at the moment, so I'm not quite sure how the yokels down in dogpatch celebrated, or if they celebrated. The closest I've heard to someone marking the occasion was a documentary on the Columbine massacre that was on one of the state-run television channels last night; I guess replaying the awe-inspiring "Tear down this wall" speech would've been regarded as sycophantic. They could've maybe just shown the thousands of Pershing II protesters instead of Reagan, just to be fair. I mean, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, there wasn't just bottomless love and gratitude for Reagan here in the 80s; there were also some nay-sayers.

So, 15 years later, what have we got here? The Wessies (West Germans) hate the Ossies (East Germans), the Ossies are all Nazis, the country's being run into the ground by Greens and Socialists, and Rube's got a headache to complement his weird-ass earache. And the beer? Color me unimpressed. Sell me on it, people, it takes more than beer to offset an 80% tax burden. This isn't really blowing my skirt up. Maybe it's time for an "OK, Mr. Gorbatchev, you can put that wall back up" speech, and a new Cold War to stir the drink. Gorby's going to be here in Augsburg on Saturday, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

I'll soldier on. Europe's OK, despite my visceral hatred of cold weather and accordions.

Who do you want to be? I'm pretty happy with who I am, all things considered. I mean, the joints are getting a little too creaky to be right where I want to be. I get earaches a lot. Earaches? When the hell did that start. I seem to recall something about an earache the last time when I was 10 years old, in Washington, watching a Caps game. During a raucous pre-game pillowfight in the hotel, I was blindsided viciously by one of the other running-men, and fell ear-first into the corner of the nightstand. Screaming children, dancing lights before my eyes, and an eardrum gushing blood onto the bed, from what I can remember. But there's a groove for you; I didn't even need alcohol back then to pull the ol', "Hey y'all, watch this!" It just happens naturally to children, without the need for finely-aged and/or -brewed refreshments, like, say, your run-of-the-mill blog meet, with bullwhips and such.

But somehow the earache lain in wait for two-and-a-half decades, ready to pounce. I've been sick for about 3 weeks now, which really isn't like me. Normally, I've got an iron constitution, seeing as over the years I've built up an environment of toxins in my body that's inhospitable to your average germ varmint. To all life, really. The soupy buildup of nicotine, alcohol, and stress toxins in my blood would put the post-Katrina sludge in New Orleans to shame, just wait until the Rube-Tsunami hits, then let's see Curious George wriggle out of the media storm that follows. "Rube: What Went Wrong?"

Yeah, well, enough about that shit. On with the show. I'm not getting any younger, despite the wash of childhood diseases and injuries that may yet wait around the corner on my walk home tonight.

What? The Braves won the division? It's like baseball season is on fast-forward every year. I didn't see a single game since April. Damn.

Man o man, I can't believe they actually did that this year, with that bunch o' bums they were fielding in April. But then, ever since Cox started beating his wife when the team loses, the Bravos seemed to have stepped it up a notch. For Ms. Cox' sake.

More and more, it seems to me that there's nothing new or innovative in life. I think the more you understand something, the less you enjoy it. Take computers, for example. I understand computers. I've been working on them now almost thirty years, ever since my first home job, the risible Texas Instruments TI 994/A. My second computer was the much more suitable Mattel Aquarius, replete with 16K expansion board. 16K? I remember thinking it was the shit, something I could never even dream of filling up. Consider the following BASIC program:

10 ? "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

That's about 25 bytes, and also about the extent of my BASIC programming abilities at the age of 11. I remember there was this other kid in my sixth grade class who also had an Aquarius. I remember him bitching because he only had the 4K expansion, and he didn't have any room left in memory for the data sets that he used in the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG he'd programmed on it. I would have loaned him mine, but I was humiliated into lying that my flight simulator was almost finished, so sorry, no dice.

In the eighth grade, I took my first computer-oriented course at school, which was called "Business Computing on the Apple ][". I'm not exactly sure what eight-graders are supposed to understand about business computing, or what we were supposed to think of the cleverly hackerish use of square brackets for the roman numerals in the Apple ]['s name, but I was nonetheless intimidated into swearing that I would never buy a computer, much less one that had the colors of the international homosexual conspiracy brazenly embedded in a fruit. Subtle it ain't, the old Apple logo. Instead, I would live my life in buckskin trousers and shoot at revenuers with my kentucky windage, wishing for simpler times when men were men, and night was dark. Which of course is why I'm now a UNIX system administrator, and write blog entries in bars on my Apple laptop.

So nowadays, I understand that every laptop is basically a remix of different off-the-shelf parts, with a selection of the available software, as money allows, nothing special. There's only the capacity of hard drives, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM installed that make any dent. It's all the same shit. There are many computer companies, but only a few huge factories that pump out the shit that they all build into their computers. There is no wonder, no joy, mystery to any of it.

This principle applies to everything in life. At least, it applies to anything built after the second world war. German engineers are no better than the Americans anymore, they all use the same CAD software to get their shit done, and, with the Internet, there are no magical metallurgical formulas, no secret underground laboratories, no oil fields in the Balkans that make a difference, only Google results. Nowadays, there's only the price of commodities on the global market, the intricacies of international currency markets, and the sewing together of the same, tired old components by some poor saps in Taiwan for each and every manufacturer in each and every field of business, be it shoes or MP3 players.

Depressing.

[22:20]
I'm giving the New Worst Bar in the World a second chance tonight. For about the eighth time now, I guess. These guys are the worst of the worst. They're even worse than I remembered, and that was bad enough. I've been sitting here now for about 10 minutes, and they haven't even acknowledged my presence. There's 4 chicks behind the bar, just a-wiping them counters, a-polishing them glasses, and a-wasting my fucking time. I guess I keep coming back out of morbid curiosity, of the literal kind. I've got to see how long it takes for this place to die off.

Atrocious service. There's an entire floor of guests here where I'm sitting, and we all came in about the same time. Probably about 10 people. There's no way they could've missed us, and anyway, I'm sitting on the railing, with my sizeable noggin in plain view of God and everybody. Let's watch...

[22:30]
Welp, still high and dry here. The staff have, in the meantime, made a perfunctory round of the lower floor down there. They didn't bother to put out their cigarettes to do it though, just left them burning in the ashtrays. Never a good sign. I'll light a cigarette and see what happens.

[22:35]
Cigarette's out. Somebody's coming up the stairs, oh wait! She's got a notepad with her! She's either a waitress or a reporter, and either one would suit my purposes at this point. Meanwhile, more customers are grousing around and looking nervously over their shoulders, the silence of the taps a deafening presence in the room. My hatred hangs over this place like a cloud. Thalia Bar and Grill, I am your own personal Simon Wiesenthal, you worthless, arrogant bunch of fucks.

[22:39]
The reporter took my drink order. I ordered a beer, and I'm anxious to see if she fucks it up. That would be just like the AFP to do something like that. Arrogant Cowboy American Orders Mai Thai, Asks Twice for 'Cute Little Umbrella'. It's a sting, I fucking knew it. I will bring this place down around their ears. The Duke would.

[22:41]
After leaving something on my table that most certainly looked like a beer, the waitress was unresponsive to my admittedly lukewarm thank-you. Fucking narc.

[23:30]
This fucking bitch. She only came up one more time, and that was to clear off another table, and then she went back down without asking if I needed another beer. I guess I don't, seeing as I've gotten attached to this one, as spending an hour with a beer brings you closer to it. I shall shit upon this bar, its name will be stricken from every card, from every column, and every positive blog entry I ever wrote about it, should there actually be any. The Thalia Movie Bar and Grill is, without a doubt, the worst bar in the world.

I'm in a chatty mood tonight. That may very well be because it's Sunday, and Sunday in Augsburg means Biscuits à la Rube, and Grits au Fromage. Such breakfasts are good starts to any day, even when served at 4:30 in the afternoon, in filthy pajamas.

So, what shall we talk about? Let's talk about the weather. In a cruel turn of fate, the weather finally got warm the week after the kids went back to school. Fuck 'em. Treats them right for living in the arctic circle. Move back to the world, kids, there's sunshine and hurricanes.

Ok, that's the weather. Let's talk shop. I got a steady gig now, which doesn't take much time, and doesn't pay all that badly. I'm self-employed, so whenever a steady source of income shows up, it's always welcome. It doesn't quite make up for the 2 and half months of project work that I just did for which I didn't get paid, but it makes telling certain customers to go fuck themselves that much easier.

I actually worked for one customer for up to 60 hours a week for the last two months. Even though I relaxed my normally-exorbitant hourly rates for the sake of customer relations, the bills are running up into the tens of thousands. Thing is, I haven't seen a dime of that money yet, and the way things are looking further upstream, I don't think I'll ever see any of the money. The other party, who's basically doing sales for the project while I do the work, has decided that almost all of the customers we've been servicing like overworked whores lately are 'Reference Customers', who will be useful down the road for bringing in other customers, and therefore won't get billed. Which means I won't see any money from them at all. Which means I'm pretty much figuring out whether or not spending time in the big house is worth the ass-whipping I'd like to lay on my salesman. Still too close to call.

The press might want to stop trying to milk this one.

Mama Moonbat and Her Multitudes

30 people? I've had orgies bigger than that, and I don't recall getting phone calls from Murdoch over it, either. In fact, through most of the "summer" here, there was some sad-assed march against the Hartz IV welfare reforms, which involved somehow making people actually fill out more forms to keep getting unemployment checks. Every Monday night, the teeming masses of about 20 or 30 people would march through the town square to the train station, with some buffoon up front shouting rhyming missives about Schröder or something through a megaphone. And I always wondered to myself, usually through a beery haze, if he really saw himself as some sort of revolutionary figure, with the streaming red banners of the International Communist Conspiracy waving all about, black confetti falling from the medieval buildings around them, as the oppressed volk breathe a sigh of relief that they finally have a voice. Instead, I mean, of the 20 or 30 bongo-playing dopeheads who were shouting, incoherently, his dumbass rhymes back at him, to the derisive hootin' and hollerin' of the Monday-night Maximilian-Strasse promenaders, with the intention of getting their $2000.00 a month benefits extended past the 3-year limit.

What a bunch of fucking parasites.

Just in case y'all missed it, the photos from the wedding are up. The bachelor party photos have yet to clear customs, ahem.

And speaking of Herr Doktor Probst, he's got his own blog now. Check it out. I'm sure we'll be seeing more from him, as soon as the monkey-in-the-mirror 'Test' posts scroll out of the way.

Mutual friend Martin Bruch also has an interesting blog, as long as you're a Mac weenie like me.

This is perhaps the most beautiful, romantic thing I've ever read (NSFW):

Ladies, find the ugliest man you know (and my e-mail address is linked on the right) and I'll assure you that you'll soon forget where your clitoris ends and his tongue begins. Within hours, you'll be thinking that you breeched birthed and adut male.

From skippystalin, of course.

Hope their sites can stay online after the vicious Bitchdotting they're getting here.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that open-xchange is worth the trouble, kick them in the nuts. Hard.

Upon describing me as "mature":

That wasn't really the word I was looking for, but I couldn't find any nicer synonyms for "old" in the thesaurus.

Man, I'm tired, but I can finally relax a little, now that I'm down to my one or two nightly cocktails, instead of the caligulan excesses I've been subjected to of late. The preceding week was a grueling, besotted blur that I strongly believe will make me rethink my entire position on alcohol. Ok. Yep. Good point, Mr. Oblongata. Ok, I continued, nodding thoughtfully while clamping the unlit pipe between my well-formed incisors, I do believe you've got a point after all.

Alcohol is a funny thing, as long as your definition of funny has a lot in common with Hermann Goering's. For us drunkards, it's an almost unbearable hit parade of mortifying moments that accompanies even the most insincere, shallow attempts at soul-searching. Again and again, it makes you pose the question to yourself that we've all had to try and wrestle at one point or another, namely: What the fuck was I thinking? I lost my goddamn cell phone in the drunken haze last week. I loved that cell phone, sort of. I realize now that I'm in the market fer one a em's sexy iTunes phones, but, honestly, I'd rather have a Nano. In fact, I'd rather have even a fool's hope that I'll have enough money to buy smokes for another glorious month o' puffin', but I don't, so I guess I'm not so much in the market fer as I am up shit creek without a paddle in the absence of.

I lost my phone during a 300-yard long, meandering stumble home from the bachelor party. I know that I didn't leave it in the night club, because I remember making a phone call or two on my way home. I'd called my lusty companions, asking them if they'd check around the club and see if they could find my digital camera, which was missing, and bring it to safety. I then called my baby, and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be home within an hour, 300 yards being what they are at 5:30 in the morning, and that hopefully she hadn't forgotten the earplugs I'd recommended she buy, lest my easily-foreseen yet completely unavoidable sawing and clearing of the rainforest disturb her for the 2 or 3 hours that I would actually be allowed to remain in bed, owing to the 9 o'clock meeting I'd cleverly scheduled for the next morning. When I was wrenched from my snoring paradise by Satan's Alarm Clock, I was sadly without a phone, yet, remarkably, with my digital camera in my pocket. Had I actually been talking to my friends and loved ones on the camera? How very, very David Lynch.

But let's not forget the human costs. I almost punched out some rummy hobo in a bar for hitting on my sweet baby Saturday night, after a boozy pub crawl. He was drunk, and my sweet baby was looking very sweet indeed, but there ain't more than one rummy hobo who's laying on hands around here, and that rummy hobo is me, buddy. I don't suppose the late hour or the gigantic bar-tab had anything at all to do with my rush to visit justice on this poor, lonely sap.

Alcohol has cost me plenty, but I guess there's no point in stopping now.

In every industry, there are the kickbacks, the skimmings, the tricks of the trade that allow the core products to be competitively priced, and accessible to Joe Consumer. In some cases, it even allows the core products to be given away for free. In the late 90's, for example, we used to actually sell computers for below cost, knowing that, within six months, we could charge thousands of dollars to check these same computers for Y2K-compliancy. I ran the (mostly ceremonial) test procedures at least a thousand times during the last six months of 1999, and not once did a customer ask me why we didn't check the things before we rolled them out, sometimes mere days before returning to certify them. I must have gained 40 pounds in 1999.

Another great example of this particular business model is Microsoft's XBox. Every XBox in the world is sold at a horrifying loss. The hardware costs alone are something like 90% of the price tag, and the other 10% couldn't even put a dent in the massive R&D, marketing, and licensing costs The Beast poured into this fine piece of machinery. Nevertheless, Microsoft made (and still makes) a killing off this thing. The secret is the game licensing. GatesCo. basically gives away the hardware, so that they can make money off of the games that are sold to run on it. The XBox's anti-"piracy" technology ensures that only those games which have been blessed with The Key can run on it, and The Key, my friends, costs the pudenda for those who wish to use it.

Which brings us to my fucking haircut. Throug whispered confessions in nervous, back-alley meetings, it came to my attention that there exists here in Germany a reasonably-priced barber shop, hidden within the steamy bowels of a department store. Department stores are, in Germany at least, the Grand Mufti of Commerce, because they are often open until the ungodly hour of 8:00 PM, instead of closing at 4 in the afternoon like every other shop on the continent. People who do not belong to unions, and therefore do not enjoy the 11-hour work week and 45-hour lunches which seem to be commonplace here, might, in such an establishment, actually be able to buy an overpriced pair of Italian shoes after work that will turn into shredded leather foot wrappings during the first snow like something out of a grainy, black and white Operation Barbarossa documentary which will only lead to cannibaliism at some point, God help us all.

So, armed with the forbidden knowledge and secret pass-phrase, I walked casually into said cut-easy at 6 in the afternoon, curious as to what awaited me. I walked confidently to the counter, where the tell-tale scent of Barbicide betrayed the establishment's true purpose, and announced that I was there for a...haircut! I was promptly greeted by an attractive young nymph, probably fresh out of art-school, in need of funds, in a lowly state, ready for every degradation I could muster from my addled id.

I can't really recall much about the haircut. It was alright, the barbress turned out to be not that attractive after all, which is gang und gebe, a little pudgy, actually, though she did have magic hands at the hair-washing sink, though the fact that she didn't ask if I wanted the "special treatment" was not lost on me, and therefore was likely to affect her tip, negatively. The wrong kind of rub was in coming, though. She did a bad job on the head. Now, I know I've got a difficult head to cut, and I'm usually very understanding when newbies have difficulty with it. After the damage was done, the nymphette looked askance, and inquired as to whether I would like some gel on my hair. In a moment of weakness, I said, well, maybe just a little dab to hold back the humiliation when I walked out the door. So, she being responsive, and subject to my every whim, she took out a tube of hair gel, squeezed out a miniscule drop of the sticky, sensous fluid, and rubbed it on my battered skull. I looked in the mirror, and, swallowing my distaste, mussed a bit till I looked like something other than a month-old jack-o-lantern. I thanked her, and proceeded to the cash register. I paid my due, and realized she'd tacked €1.50 onto the price for the fucking hair gel!

I realize the people have to earn their money. I realize that the price for the haircut was suspiciously reasonable for these dark post-Deutschmark days, but a fucking €1.50 for a fucking cum-dab of hair gel!!!!!1

At this point, I was confronted with the decision, do I scream, at the top of my lungs, YOU FUCKING BACKSTABBING CUNT I'LL FUCKING DO YOU IN YOU GODDAMN BITCH FOR THAT FUCKING HAIRCUT YOU GONNA FUCKING PAY MOMMY MOMMY, or do I just meekly pay the €13.50, thank the nice lady, and walk out the door like someone actually did me a favor? People who know me will have no trouble believing that, not only did I pay the full tab, I also dropped a Euro into the tip jar. What a twat I am.

At two points in this story, as with so many cases in life, I could have been saved with one simple question: What would the Duke do? First off, John Wayne probably would have declined the hair gel, I'm guessing. Failing that, he most certainly would have shot every fucking customer in the department store amid myriad shoulder-rolls and hat-tips, which, honestly, is exactly what this pussified gay-bar of a country needs a bit more of.

Where's my fucking big-airn?

is a Bavarian wedding. I'm not really sure which is more important in such a regional affair, the unbridled alcohol abuse by everyone over the age of 16, or the abject humiliation of the bridal pair.

The intentional self-poisoning began on Thursday, with the Bachelor party. Pubs were crawled, bottoms were pinched, and, in the end, Rube showed that he could still run with the young dogs.

There's Rube, passed out in a chair in some nightclub he doesn't even know the name of, at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And yes, the next morning's 9 o'clock meeting was a rousing, unqualified disaster, thanks for asking. By some weird twist of fate, Friday night was the birthday party of a family of immigrants out of somewhere over in Vampireland, which is anything east of Czechoslovakia. That was good for yet another night of binge drinking, though I must admit the heart, she was not really in it.

Which brings us to Saturday, the aforementioned wedding. Apparently, it's traditional in Bavaria to steal and make a copy of the Groom's house key while he's not paying attention. On the day of the wedding, while he's preparing to feed and bedrink his guests, they break into his apartment and trash the place. I heard stories of dismantled furniture, toilets stuffed with chocolate, pulled circuit breakers, and something about 150 gallons of mashed potatoes. With friends like these...

The entire evening of the Wedding was an endless stream of humiliation for the groom, the pinnacle of which must have been when we, in the tradition of the region, kidnapped his bride, took her out drinking, and he had to come search for us. I'm not exactly sure what the point of that particular ritual is, but she seemed to enjoy it just a little too much.

At any rate, congratulations to Herr Doktor Probst and his lovely new bride Martina for a beautiful wedding, and my heartfelt sympathies for the fact that some asshole went through his cd collection and swapped all the cases.

CNN.com - Inventor denies dead cat fuel story - Sep 15, 2005:

The underlying truth is, of course, that should you ever have to even deny such a thing, you've already lost.

Hallo, Hans

I vanted to assk you vhy ze american und british tourists, ze are alvays giggling vhen zey come here for skiing.

Danke,

Fritz Weber
Wank-Lifte Ski Lift

Jottings from yesterday's bar napkin, from the daily evening meeting-of-one:

I'm the chair of your misfortune, 4 legs of strength compared to your two. I loathe your cushions.
There are 3 people you should never lie to: Your lawyer, your doctor, and your accountant.
Your bits of SuSE architecture, you will not get in there. You will stare in amazement, at the amount of trust there.

Unvollständig.
Speth was eyeing my unit.
With Windows,you've got a whole other set of problems. I am the leader of the technik. Keep your fucking hands off of them. Dicknose.
There's no denying it: Things have been better.
Rsync software: No network access. How many revolutions? (backup rev's)(under normal usage)?
Why do I busy myself with such nonsense?
I'm surrounded by freaks and losers, traitors, liars, bitchy little people I'm supposed to give a fuck about.
Perfect coif, unimpeachable ascot. Saaaaah-weeeeet.
Wearing a green ascot on St. Patrick's day is probably not the best way to keep from getting pinched, I fear.
In a few years, I'll look back on these days and think, "What the fuck was that all about?"
Jeepers, I'm tired.
I'm tired of being tired. But I'm more tired of being broke.
Man, I guess TCP/IP, in retrospect, scales pretty well.
I can't believe I actually used to be an IPX bigot.
I also can't believe I used to own a class C subnet, namely 38.221.9.0/24. Merc, Fred, Medusa, Thor, Zeus, NS, man oh man, those were some days!
Here's some helpful advice for the ladies out there: If you're ugly, show some tit! C'mon, it's a date!
People sit around and compare their tools...
Tomorrow, I'm going to have a blister under my fingernail. Damn.

Well, I guess it's about time to stop smoking. I found a brown spot under my tongue today. I've probably got jaw cancer. Which probably means they'll need to cut off the lower half of my face, and reduce me to a freak whose tongue just hangs out of a jagged hole under his nose, wagging impotently with every attempt to speak, unable to articulate a sound, just emmitting some sort of excited whistle of gratitude when it's time for my mush.

Fuck, how did it come to this? I'm only thirty-five. My grandfather smoked for 60 years and only quit because he died. Otherwise, he'd be right here next to me, hooting appreciatively through a tube sticking out of his chest, then we'd go outside and pick up some hookers. Sleep well, Grandpa Arry, you deserved everything you got.

You know, that moment when you start typing, when you start groooooovin', not working at it, let the blog do the work for a change. This thing's been buggin' me, beggin' me, asking me please feed the hole, your publikum is waiting on you, Rube. But you know what, Blog? I'm fucking busy, whiny ass. I've got things to do, people to meet, bills to pay and letters to send. T'aint room here for two jefes, so one of us needs to get a-buggin, and I do believe that would be me. So, now, as long as I'm the one doing the buggin', you be the one doing the list'nin'. Now you listen to me, Blog, and you listen good. Velociman has a boil on his choad, Acidman's got a bug up his ass, and Lousiana ain't feeling so good his damn self. But me? I'm doing jes fine. Rube done took his blood pressure yesterday, after speed-snorting a liter of coffee, and it was 106 over fucking 60. I was on my way to work on a fuckin' Sunday, hands shaking like Katherine Hepburn's favorite vibrator, and you just sat here like a bump on a log waiting for it to find you.

Write yourself, you ungrateful little fuck. What's that? Oh, yeah, anytime, pussy, anytime.

Since I'm too busy at the moment to keep this rickety jalopy running, I've decided to post anything which the dregs of society decide to throw my inbox's way. I need a spam filter...

Case in point:

Chapter 1: A Viking Funeral
Author Unknown

He's gone, I heard the good doctor tell my wife and sister who apparently were somewhere in the near vicinity. No I wanted to scream out but couldn't. What the hell is going on? My eyes were shut tight and try as I might they would not open or even flutter. My entire body was frozen and refused to respond to any mental commands that I issued. Darkness held me captive.

"He wished to be cremated and have his ashes strewn over the homes of all his exes and meaningful lovers etc., the meaningless to receive condolences thru the mail or whatever", my beloved wife Andy relayed the info to the Doc or someone.

Then my beloved, somewhat frugal Sister, chimed in "My God stamps alone will cost a small fortune". "Just put a notice in a few fish-wrappers". As for scattering ashes, forget the former wives as they would make every attempt to bring the aircraft down before the payload could be delivered. The meaningfuls would be more receptive but squirm with discomfort while trying to explain the gesture to their current meaningfuls. We were only friends won't wash".

"Well, his 2nd wish was for a "Viking funeral", Andy offered. Maybe we could get some of his old drinking buddies to heave "Molotov" cocktails at a small vessel as it floats near the "Lil' " River Bridge that spans the infamous Alatoona Lake. Henry Bryan and Jackie Dempsey will gladly secure an old fishing boat I'm sure".

The 2nd wish prevailed. Somehow my wife and sister pulled it off. It was near dusk on a late August day when the much publicized event began. Bells Ferry road was closed to traffic in both directions, so the bridge would be open to the throngs of expected onlookers. Twenty cocktail hurlers waited in formation for the funeral barge to pass beneath, carrying yours truly to Valhalla. All at once the small boat came into view in tow behind a larger ski boat. When it neared the bridge, someone severed the tow line. Now the vessel was drifting under the L.R.B. Finally it emerged on the other side as the cocktails were lit, awaiting the Hurl command. Then it came, Ready! Hurl! All at once 20 arms obeyed the order! A few struck the small craft, causing it to ignite. The burlap wrapped corpse was now slowly engulfed in smoke and flame.

"My God it moved" a horrified deputy sheriff screamed!"Saw it thru my field glasses". Henry Bryan snatched the glasses from the grasp of the now hysterical lawman. "Let me have a look see"! Naw, must've been your eyes doin' tricks, what with it being nearly dark and all.

Only small remnants of the remained by now, floating on the surface near a large patch of ashes, surrounded by a mysterious ring of grease, all floating away toward a distant beach. Show was over and the crowd began to thin out. Some were puzzled by the behavior of Henry B. and Jackie D. however. Both were giggling and high-fiving anyone nearby. Eventually they were joined by the widow and sister of the deceased. Both ladies suppressed their own laughter all were aboard the Merc convertible belonging to J.D.. Now as the white Mercedes sped south on Bells Ferry Road, Henry B. broke the silence! There must be a God, what an unexpected bonus!He was refering to the fact that one of the hurlers was none other than George Tweedy.

It seemed that "Old Pruneface" (George) inadvertantly dropped his flaming cocktail all over himself! J.D. quickly pushed the "Human Torch" over the bridge railing and downward toward the murky water some 50 feet below. As luck would have it, George missed the water and upon the rocky shore. "Close but no cigar" would be this poor old wretches final epitath.

All 4 occupants wiped tears caused by derisive laughter from their eyes as the speeding vehichle reached it's destination. Now all entered the Villas of Kennesaw clubhouse bar, which had been previously reserved for the evening. "Did he suffer"? I asked. "Which one?", my wife asked. "Huh"!

Finally H.B. was able to speak and relay the tale of "Old Lonesome George's demise". Loud guffaws filled the room, it was gonna be a great night!!!

Stay tuned for Chapter Two:
Where in the world Is Gary ASSitelli?

Didja ever sit and wonder, just how horrendous X1-X10 must have been? I mean, network transparency is admirable, but it's all in the impelementation, folks.

At these sorts of cabbage-patch spectacles that crop up every now and then, it's important to remember the training. Macs are special. Macs are different. Macs are premium consumer items not meant for every 300 lb. frizzy-haired slushee-sucker who buys her computers at the grocery store.

Remember the training. Steve? Are you there? Have you forsaken us? SAY SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE A JESUS!

But Steve's probably just cackling like Renfield in some white marble penthouse, calling Gates on the phone; "Bill, you couldn't buy this kind of publicity!"

"Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner" (Stephan Schacher)

A trip across America is the dream of many Europeans. At the tender age of nineteen, photographer Stephan Schacher undertook a typical sightseeing tour of the United States, from coast to coast on the Kerouac trail, visiting the cities and monuments, both natural and man-made, along the legendary Route 66. Almost 20 years later, Schacher decided to take a second trip across North America. This time, however, things would be done a little differently: Driving from upstate New York to Northern Alaska, almost 11,000 kilometers across Canada and the United States, Schacher decided photograph every meal along the way, as well as every waitress who served it.

What may sound like a goofy, drunken college idea dreamed up at three o'clock in the morning became a serious undertaking for Schacher. Eating exclusively in roadside diners, the author blazes a low-brow culinary trail across the continent, braving greasy hamburgers and questionable seafood platters. The book itself is handsomely crafted. After turning page after page of greasy diner cuisine, one begins to wonder just how many t-bone steaks and onion rings a man can eat before his heart explodes.

Using specialty paper, muted colors, and creative typography, it sits well on the nightstand or coffee table for the casual reading session. Making meticulous records of his mileage, food expenditures, and the times of arrival and departure, Schacher is able to painstakingly recreate his entire journey in facts and figures to complement the irresistibly personal experience of the solitary roadside meal.

This is a good sign...

[root@freak1 chkrootkit-0.45]# ls -al
bash: /bin/ls: Input/output error

On my poor little Linux box, who just sits in the corner and never hurts anybody. When he was in the kitchen, next to my refrigerator, he once had 700 days of uptime, damn near 2 years without a reboot. He even spent the better part of an afternoon in a half-inch of standing water, when I accidentally left my freezer door open.

Brave little man, go gently into that great /dev/null in the sky. And take my fucking django projects with you, you weak little twat. Jesus, why do I only do backups for other people?!

That's what I'll be. Sitting in the server room, surrounded by untold generations of in-bred housecats, all playing little banjos and admiring my pouty lips. Crazy ol' Cat-Rube, wondering where all my friends have gone, why my children never call, and why, way back when, in aught-five, nobody wished me a happy System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Fuck you guys. I'm deleting all your mail.

As I was googling around, debating whether or not to install the copy of Office XP I've recently come into, in order to upgrade my slowly rotting-yet-beloved copy of Office 2000 Pro, I came across 1) enough evidence to deter me, and b) what has to be the best screenshot caption I've ever seen:

Some may have noticed that in the last 6 months, YouBitch.org has skyrocketed in popularity, owing to various influences viz bribery and dirty, dirty tricks.

It's grown so popular, in fact, that you'll find YouBitch.org in the Truth Laid Bear ecology sandwiched between ROFASix and "Test Page for Apache Installation".

How the hell do you come in behind a Test Page for Apache Installation?

Sometimes it's the little things that make it worthwhile. Today, for example, I spent 2 hours working on a network firewall whose brand name, Ben Hur, is eerily close to the Bavarian phrase, bin a hur, which means, roughly, I am a prostitute. This is why I giggle to myself when I think there's no one watching.

Also, I get to swear a lot a work, since none of these cretins speak English well enough to know what "oh you cocksucking piece of fucking shit" actually means, in the book sense.

In a related train of thought, I was in Kissing, Bavaria yesterday. Streams of consciousness being what they are, I immediately thought of Henry Kissinger, whose name means someone who comes from Kissing, and then I thought to myself, jeez, I haven't come from Kissing since high school, which then dead-ended into a search for a half-joke that cratered into a mixed-metaphore here at the usually-reliable youbitch.

Indeed, the little things can make an otherwise dreary, grey, and cloudy day all smily.

Oh, and there was a bug.

I never thought I'd see these words written by an adult:

why do I get the feeling you guys are yanking my chain? I guess I'll have to ask Sandy, she will be straight with me!

I would suggest that Lippy Livey prepare herself for amazing new levels of betrayal, shaming, and a chain-yanking most people only read about in Penthouse Forum. Sandy?!

I had all kindsa Sandy riffin' on Zonker links to pan out here, but sandy moved :-(

Sandy's new home is here. By the time Longhorn/Vista comes out, or Duke Nukem Forever, whichever comes first, I'll even update my sidebar template!

Hugs,
Rube

Check out the smoke on slashdot. There are a few very important reasons for a company to switch over to Macs. Viruses, Spyware, and Solitaire, to name just three. I just installed Windows XP on a fairly run-of-the-mill mini-PC, the ASUS Pundit-R. It took me two day to get all the drivers sorted out. I've still got an entry in the device manager for a mysterious "USB Controller" with a yellow exclamation point next to it which doesn't seem to be covered by the ASUS or ATI driver downloads. You can re-install a Mac in about an hour, all drivers and applications included, no matter what model. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even tell the install program to leave your home directory alone, and all your application settings will remain.

On the other hand, I've had a lot of customer contact lately. Most of my customers have irresolvable reasons to stay on the platform they're on, almost invariably Win32. Whether it's a Tax-Consulting program that makes extensive use of COM and the Windows version of Microsoft Office and Outlook, or an embedded controlling program for an industrial baking machine that only runs on Win98 SE, these people are locked in, and generally at ease with that fact. But with that, the 'vendor lock-in' argument against Apple Computer goes right out the window.

Companies shouldn't switch platforms just because somebody on Slashdot can provide an overpowering argument. Switching is expensive, no matter which direction. If you switch to Mac, you have to know that you can't realistically have more that one choice for an office productivity package, ironically MS Office. On Windows, you've got native versions of OpenOffice, Hansa Office, Corel WordPerfect Office (my personal choice at the moment), and just about anything else you can think of, none of which exist on Mac. Mac does have Pages, which beats rings around Word for 99% of what you're going to want to do, as long as what you want to do doesn't involve other companies being able to interact directly with your documents.

There are many arguments against Macification, and many more in favor. It all comes down to whether or not the boss wants to pony up the money for some sexy-ass hardware.

[are you there?]
yes

There's a lot to be said for good work habits. At least that's what I've heard, mostly from people who have good work habits, and also have, perhaps not coincidentally, fairly recent iPods. It's hard to balance abject sloth and material greed, I've found, so at some point you just try to find the path of least suffering. Just give a smile on the sidewalk to some girl who's trying so hard to make an impression. You don't have to express your loathing each and every minute to the untermenschen that you are forced by God and man to walk past when all you really want is to get from point A to point B to take the money from party C. Party C understands that you're not there to talk about the weather, but it's protocol, so just fuckin' do it.

Good work habits are more than just Knowing Your Shit. Good work habits include getting out of bed before noon, whether you have to or not [glance at Andy]; not masturbating in front of customers [glance at Thomas]; coming within 4 significant digits of your proposed budget [glance in mirror]; using your spellchecker when norms will be reading; and, last but not least, not fucking the co-ops [no glance necessary].

Good work habits involving knowing your product, and know when not to bend your customer over a barrel, which does occasionally make sense. Call your mother every now and then; do your paperwork; and for God sakes, stop using the fucking copier to make visuals of your goddam buttocks. I know this is all very difficult for you scrubs, but please, do make an effort: We're in this game to win. Now get out there and kick some ASS!

So, I was sitting at the trainstop tonight, on my way home from work, listening to a podcast of Nightline on my iPod, in which they covered the spreading avian flu epidemic and, jumpin' jehosephat, we all gonna die. But I knew that. However, they had sound bites of Chimpy McHitler doing a couple of press conferences, and I'll be damned if he doesn't butcher this one even worse than nuclear. Did you know we're sitting on a pandemic of Èvian Flu? If you've ever wondered what the French were doing to contribute to the end of mankind as we know it, aside from accordion music, now you know.

I swear, the boy's sounding more like a cross between John Wayne and Emily Litella with every passing sentence. In a matter of months, he'll be giving the State of the Union address, and will sign off $200 billion to preserve our natural racehorses.

People, I'd soon shit as look at ya, as my dear departed grandfather was fond of saying to us grandchillens. There's just nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a good ol' blue funk at the beginning of the week. Today, despite being Tuesday, was Monday here in Germany, for all intents and purpose. The long weekend was over, and I enjoyed three days of true sloth, the likes of which I've not enjoyed for quite some time here. Yesterday was the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Re-unification Day, and therefore a holiday. I don't have a television at the moment, so I'm not quite sure how the yokels down in dogpatch celebrated, or if they celebrated. The closest I've heard to someone marking the occasion was a documentary on the Columbine massacre that was on one of the state-run television channels last night; I guess replaying the awe-inspiring "Tear down this wall" speech would've been regarded as sycophantic. They could've maybe just shown the thousands of Pershing II protesters instead of Reagan, just to be fair. I mean, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, there wasn't just bottomless love and gratitude for Reagan here in the 80s; there were also some nay-sayers.

So, 15 years later, what have we got here? The Wessies (West Germans) hate the Ossies (East Germans), the Ossies are all Nazis, the country's being run into the ground by Greens and Socialists, and Rube's got a headache to complement his weird-ass earache. And the beer? Color me unimpressed. Sell me on it, people, it takes more than beer to offset an 80% tax burden. This isn't really blowing my skirt up. Maybe it's time for an "OK, Mr. Gorbatchev, you can put that wall back up" speech, and a new Cold War to stir the drink. Gorby's going to be here in Augsburg on Saturday, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

I'll soldier on. Europe's OK, despite my visceral hatred of cold weather and accordions.

Who do you want to be? I'm pretty happy with who I am, all things considered. I mean, the joints are getting a little too creaky to be right where I want to be. I get earaches a lot. Earaches? When the hell did that start. I seem to recall something about an earache the last time when I was 10 years old, in Washington, watching a Caps game. During a raucous pre-game pillowfight in the hotel, I was blindsided viciously by one of the other running-men, and fell ear-first into the corner of the nightstand. Screaming children, dancing lights before my eyes, and an eardrum gushing blood onto the bed, from what I can remember. But there's a groove for you; I didn't even need alcohol back then to pull the ol', "Hey y'all, watch this!" It just happens naturally to children, without the need for finely-aged and/or -brewed refreshments, like, say, your run-of-the-mill blog meet, with bullwhips and such.

But somehow the earache lain in wait for two-and-a-half decades, ready to pounce. I've been sick for about 3 weeks now, which really isn't like me. Normally, I've got an iron constitution, seeing as over the years I've built up an environment of toxins in my body that's inhospitable to your average germ varmint. To all life, really. The soupy buildup of nicotine, alcohol, and stress toxins in my blood would put the post-Katrina sludge in New Orleans to shame, just wait until the Rube-Tsunami hits, then let's see Curious George wriggle out of the media storm that follows. "Rube: What Went Wrong?"

Yeah, well, enough about that shit. On with the show. I'm not getting any younger, despite the wash of childhood diseases and injuries that may yet wait around the corner on my walk home tonight.

What? The Braves won the division? It's like baseball season is on fast-forward every year. I didn't see a single game since April. Damn.

Man o man, I can't believe they actually did that this year, with that bunch o' bums they were fielding in April. But then, ever since Cox started beating his wife when the team loses, the Bravos seemed to have stepped it up a notch. For Ms. Cox' sake.

More and more, it seems to me that there's nothing new or innovative in life. I think the more you understand something, the less you enjoy it. Take computers, for example. I understand computers. I've been working on them now almost thirty years, ever since my first home job, the risible Texas Instruments TI 994/A. My second computer was the much more suitable Mattel Aquarius, replete with 16K expansion board. 16K? I remember thinking it was the shit, something I could never even dream of filling up. Consider the following BASIC program:

10 ? "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

That's about 25 bytes, and also about the extent of my BASIC programming abilities at the age of 11. I remember there was this other kid in my sixth grade class who also had an Aquarius. I remember him bitching because he only had the 4K expansion, and he didn't have any room left in memory for the data sets that he used in the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG he'd programmed on it. I would have loaned him mine, but I was humiliated into lying that my flight simulator was almost finished, so sorry, no dice.

In the eighth grade, I took my first computer-oriented course at school, which was called "Business Computing on the Apple ][". I'm not exactly sure what eight-graders are supposed to understand about business computing, or what we were supposed to think of the cleverly hackerish use of square brackets for the roman numerals in the Apple ]['s name, but I was nonetheless intimidated into swearing that I would never buy a computer, much less one that had the colors of the international homosexual conspiracy brazenly embedded in a fruit. Subtle it ain't, the old Apple logo. Instead, I would live my life in buckskin trousers and shoot at revenuers with my kentucky windage, wishing for simpler times when men were men, and night was dark. Which of course is why I'm now a UNIX system administrator, and write blog entries in bars on my Apple laptop.

So nowadays, I understand that every laptop is basically a remix of different off-the-shelf parts, with a selection of the available software, as money allows, nothing special. There's only the capacity of hard drives, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM installed that make any dent. It's all the same shit. There are many computer companies, but only a few huge factories that pump out the shit that they all build into their computers. There is no wonder, no joy, mystery to any of it.

This principle applies to everything in life. At least, it applies to anything built after the second world war. German engineers are no better than the Americans anymore, they all use the same CAD software to get their shit done, and, with the Internet, there are no magical metallurgical formulas, no secret underground laboratories, no oil fields in the Balkans that make a difference, only Google results. Nowadays, there's only the price of commodities on the global market, the intricacies of international currency markets, and the sewing together of the same, tired old components by some poor saps in Taiwan for each and every manufacturer in each and every field of business, be it shoes or MP3 players.

Depressing.

[22:20]
I'm giving the New Worst Bar in the World a second chance tonight. For about the eighth time now, I guess. These guys are the worst of the worst. They're even worse than I remembered, and that was bad enough. I've been sitting here now for about 10 minutes, and they haven't even acknowledged my presence. There's 4 chicks behind the bar, just a-wiping them counters, a-polishing them glasses, and a-wasting my fucking time. I guess I keep coming back out of morbid curiosity, of the literal kind. I've got to see how long it takes for this place to die off.

Atrocious service. There's an entire floor of guests here where I'm sitting, and we all came in about the same time. Probably about 10 people. There's no way they could've missed us, and anyway, I'm sitting on the railing, with my sizeable noggin in plain view of God and everybody. Let's watch...

[22:30]
Welp, still high and dry here. The staff have, in the meantime, made a perfunctory round of the lower floor down there. They didn't bother to put out their cigarettes to do it though, just left them burning in the ashtrays. Never a good sign. I'll light a cigarette and see what happens.

[22:35]
Cigarette's out. Somebody's coming up the stairs, oh wait! She's got a notepad with her! She's either a waitress or a reporter, and either one would suit my purposes at this point. Meanwhile, more customers are grousing around and looking nervously over their shoulders, the silence of the taps a deafening presence in the room. My hatred hangs over this place like a cloud. Thalia Bar and Grill, I am your own personal Simon Wiesenthal, you worthless, arrogant bunch of fucks.

[22:39]
The reporter took my drink order. I ordered a beer, and I'm anxious to see if she fucks it up. That would be just like the AFP to do something like that. Arrogant Cowboy American Orders Mai Thai, Asks Twice for 'Cute Little Umbrella'. It's a sting, I fucking knew it. I will bring this place down around their ears. The Duke would.

[22:41]
After leaving something on my table that most certainly looked like a beer, the waitress was unresponsive to my admittedly lukewarm thank-you. Fucking narc.

[23:30]
This fucking bitch. She only came up one more time, and that was to clear off another table, and then she went back down without asking if I needed another beer. I guess I don't, seeing as I've gotten attached to this one, as spending an hour with a beer brings you closer to it. I shall shit upon this bar, its name will be stricken from every card, from every column, and every positive blog entry I ever wrote about it, should there actually be any. The Thalia Movie Bar and Grill is, without a doubt, the worst bar in the world.

I'm in a chatty mood tonight. That may very well be because it's Sunday, and Sunday in Augsburg means Biscuits à la Rube, and Grits au Fromage. Such breakfasts are good starts to any day, even when served at 4:30 in the afternoon, in filthy pajamas.

So, what shall we talk about? Let's talk about the weather. In a cruel turn of fate, the weather finally got warm the week after the kids went back to school. Fuck 'em. Treats them right for living in the arctic circle. Move back to the world, kids, there's sunshine and hurricanes.

Ok, that's the weather. Let's talk shop. I got a steady gig now, which doesn't take much time, and doesn't pay all that badly. I'm self-employed, so whenever a steady source of income shows up, it's always welcome. It doesn't quite make up for the 2 and half months of project work that I just did for which I didn't get paid, but it makes telling certain customers to go fuck themselves that much easier.

I actually worked for one customer for up to 60 hours a week for the last two months. Even though I relaxed my normally-exorbitant hourly rates for the sake of customer relations, the bills are running up into the tens of thousands. Thing is, I haven't seen a dime of that money yet, and the way things are looking further upstream, I don't think I'll ever see any of the money. The other party, who's basically doing sales for the project while I do the work, has decided that almost all of the customers we've been servicing like overworked whores lately are 'Reference Customers', who will be useful down the road for bringing in other customers, and therefore won't get billed. Which means I won't see any money from them at all. Which means I'm pretty much figuring out whether or not spending time in the big house is worth the ass-whipping I'd like to lay on my salesman. Still too close to call.

The press might want to stop trying to milk this one.

Mama Moonbat and Her Multitudes

30 people? I've had orgies bigger than that, and I don't recall getting phone calls from Murdoch over it, either. In fact, through most of the "summer" here, there was some sad-assed march against the Hartz IV welfare reforms, which involved somehow making people actually fill out more forms to keep getting unemployment checks. Every Monday night, the teeming masses of about 20 or 30 people would march through the town square to the train station, with some buffoon up front shouting rhyming missives about Schröder or something through a megaphone. And I always wondered to myself, usually through a beery haze, if he really saw himself as some sort of revolutionary figure, with the streaming red banners of the International Communist Conspiracy waving all about, black confetti falling from the medieval buildings around them, as the oppressed volk breathe a sigh of relief that they finally have a voice. Instead, I mean, of the 20 or 30 bongo-playing dopeheads who were shouting, incoherently, his dumbass rhymes back at him, to the derisive hootin' and hollerin' of the Monday-night Maximilian-Strasse promenaders, with the intention of getting their $2000.00 a month benefits extended past the 3-year limit.

What a bunch of fucking parasites.

Just in case y'all missed it, the photos from the wedding are up. The bachelor party photos have yet to clear customs, ahem.

And speaking of Herr Doktor Probst, he's got his own blog now. Check it out. I'm sure we'll be seeing more from him, as soon as the monkey-in-the-mirror 'Test' posts scroll out of the way.

Mutual friend Martin Bruch also has an interesting blog, as long as you're a Mac weenie like me.

This is perhaps the most beautiful, romantic thing I've ever read (NSFW):

Ladies, find the ugliest man you know (and my e-mail address is linked on the right) and I'll assure you that you'll soon forget where your clitoris ends and his tongue begins. Within hours, you'll be thinking that you breeched birthed and adut male.

From skippystalin, of course.

Hope their sites can stay online after the vicious Bitchdotting they're getting here.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that open-xchange is worth the trouble, kick them in the nuts. Hard.

Upon describing me as "mature":

That wasn't really the word I was looking for, but I couldn't find any nicer synonyms for "old" in the thesaurus.

Man, I'm tired, but I can finally relax a little, now that I'm down to my one or two nightly cocktails, instead of the caligulan excesses I've been subjected to of late. The preceding week was a grueling, besotted blur that I strongly believe will make me rethink my entire position on alcohol. Ok. Yep. Good point, Mr. Oblongata. Ok, I continued, nodding thoughtfully while clamping the unlit pipe between my well-formed incisors, I do believe you've got a point after all.

Alcohol is a funny thing, as long as your definition of funny has a lot in common with Hermann Goering's. For us drunkards, it's an almost unbearable hit parade of mortifying moments that accompanies even the most insincere, shallow attempts at soul-searching. Again and again, it makes you pose the question to yourself that we've all had to try and wrestle at one point or another, namely: What the fuck was I thinking? I lost my goddamn cell phone in the drunken haze last week. I loved that cell phone, sort of. I realize now that I'm in the market fer one a em's sexy iTunes phones, but, honestly, I'd rather have a Nano. In fact, I'd rather have even a fool's hope that I'll have enough money to buy smokes for another glorious month o' puffin', but I don't, so I guess I'm not so much in the market fer as I am up shit creek without a paddle in the absence of.

I lost my phone during a 300-yard long, meandering stumble home from the bachelor party. I know that I didn't leave it in the night club, because I remember making a phone call or two on my way home. I'd called my lusty companions, asking them if they'd check around the club and see if they could find my digital camera, which was missing, and bring it to safety. I then called my baby, and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be home within an hour, 300 yards being what they are at 5:30 in the morning, and that hopefully she hadn't forgotten the earplugs I'd recommended she buy, lest my easily-foreseen yet completely unavoidable sawing and clearing of the rainforest disturb her for the 2 or 3 hours that I would actually be allowed to remain in bed, owing to the 9 o'clock meeting I'd cleverly scheduled for the next morning. When I was wrenched from my snoring paradise by Satan's Alarm Clock, I was sadly without a phone, yet, remarkably, with my digital camera in my pocket. Had I actually been talking to my friends and loved ones on the camera? How very, very David Lynch.

But let's not forget the human costs. I almost punched out some rummy hobo in a bar for hitting on my sweet baby Saturday night, after a boozy pub crawl. He was drunk, and my sweet baby was looking very sweet indeed, but there ain't more than one rummy hobo who's laying on hands around here, and that rummy hobo is me, buddy. I don't suppose the late hour or the gigantic bar-tab had anything at all to do with my rush to visit justice on this poor, lonely sap.

Alcohol has cost me plenty, but I guess there's no point in stopping now.

In every industry, there are the kickbacks, the skimmings, the tricks of the trade that allow the core products to be competitively priced, and accessible to Joe Consumer. In some cases, it even allows the core products to be given away for free. In the late 90's, for example, we used to actually sell computers for below cost, knowing that, within six months, we could charge thousands of dollars to check these same computers for Y2K-compliancy. I ran the (mostly ceremonial) test procedures at least a thousand times during the last six months of 1999, and not once did a customer ask me why we didn't check the things before we rolled them out, sometimes mere days before returning to certify them. I must have gained 40 pounds in 1999.

Another great example of this particular business model is Microsoft's XBox. Every XBox in the world is sold at a horrifying loss. The hardware costs alone are something like 90% of the price tag, and the other 10% couldn't even put a dent in the massive R&D, marketing, and licensing costs The Beast poured into this fine piece of machinery. Nevertheless, Microsoft made (and still makes) a killing off this thing. The secret is the game licensing. GatesCo. basically gives away the hardware, so that they can make money off of the games that are sold to run on it. The XBox's anti-"piracy" technology ensures that only those games which have been blessed with The Key can run on it, and The Key, my friends, costs the pudenda for those who wish to use it.

Which brings us to my fucking haircut. Throug whispered confessions in nervous, back-alley meetings, it came to my attention that there exists here in Germany a reasonably-priced barber shop, hidden within the steamy bowels of a department store. Department stores are, in Germany at least, the Grand Mufti of Commerce, because they are often open until the ungodly hour of 8:00 PM, instead of closing at 4 in the afternoon like every other shop on the continent. People who do not belong to unions, and therefore do not enjoy the 11-hour work week and 45-hour lunches which seem to be commonplace here, might, in such an establishment, actually be able to buy an overpriced pair of Italian shoes after work that will turn into shredded leather foot wrappings during the first snow like something out of a grainy, black and white Operation Barbarossa documentary which will only lead to cannibaliism at some point, God help us all.

So, armed with the forbidden knowledge and secret pass-phrase, I walked casually into said cut-easy at 6 in the afternoon, curious as to what awaited me. I walked confidently to the counter, where the tell-tale scent of Barbicide betrayed the establishment's true purpose, and announced that I was there for a...haircut! I was promptly greeted by an attractive young nymph, probably fresh out of art-school, in need of funds, in a lowly state, ready for every degradation I could muster from my addled id.

I can't really recall much about the haircut. It was alright, the barbress turned out to be not that attractive after all, which is gang und gebe, a little pudgy, actually, though she did have magic hands at the hair-washing sink, though the fact that she didn't ask if I wanted the "special treatment" was not lost on me, and therefore was likely to affect her tip, negatively. The wrong kind of rub was in coming, though. She did a bad job on the head. Now, I know I've got a difficult head to cut, and I'm usually very understanding when newbies have difficulty with it. After the damage was done, the nymphette looked askance, and inquired as to whether I would like some gel on my hair. In a moment of weakness, I said, well, maybe just a little dab to hold back the humiliation when I walked out the door. So, she being responsive, and subject to my every whim, she took out a tube of hair gel, squeezed out a miniscule drop of the sticky, sensous fluid, and rubbed it on my battered skull. I looked in the mirror, and, swallowing my distaste, mussed a bit till I looked like something other than a month-old jack-o-lantern. I thanked her, and proceeded to the cash register. I paid my due, and realized she'd tacked €1.50 onto the price for the fucking hair gel!

I realize the people have to earn their money. I realize that the price for the haircut was suspiciously reasonable for these dark post-Deutschmark days, but a fucking €1.50 for a fucking cum-dab of hair gel!!!!!1

At this point, I was confronted with the decision, do I scream, at the top of my lungs, YOU FUCKING BACKSTABBING CUNT I'LL FUCKING DO YOU IN YOU GODDAMN BITCH FOR THAT FUCKING HAIRCUT YOU GONNA FUCKING PAY MOMMY MOMMY, or do I just meekly pay the €13.50, thank the nice lady, and walk out the door like someone actually did me a favor? People who know me will have no trouble believing that, not only did I pay the full tab, I also dropped a Euro into the tip jar. What a twat I am.

At two points in this story, as with so many cases in life, I could have been saved with one simple question: What would the Duke do? First off, John Wayne probably would have declined the hair gel, I'm guessing. Failing that, he most certainly would have shot every fucking customer in the department store amid myriad shoulder-rolls and hat-tips, which, honestly, is exactly what this pussified gay-bar of a country needs a bit more of.

Where's my fucking big-airn?

is a Bavarian wedding. I'm not really sure which is more important in such a regional affair, the unbridled alcohol abuse by everyone over the age of 16, or the abject humiliation of the bridal pair.

The intentional self-poisoning began on Thursday, with the Bachelor party. Pubs were crawled, bottoms were pinched, and, in the end, Rube showed that he could still run with the young dogs.

There's Rube, passed out in a chair in some nightclub he doesn't even know the name of, at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And yes, the next morning's 9 o'clock meeting was a rousing, unqualified disaster, thanks for asking. By some weird twist of fate, Friday night was the birthday party of a family of immigrants out of somewhere over in Vampireland, which is anything east of Czechoslovakia. That was good for yet another night of binge drinking, though I must admit the heart, she was not really in it.

Which brings us to Saturday, the aforementioned wedding. Apparently, it's traditional in Bavaria to steal and make a copy of the Groom's house key while he's not paying attention. On the day of the wedding, while he's preparing to feed and bedrink his guests, they break into his apartment and trash the place. I heard stories of dismantled furniture, toilets stuffed with chocolate, pulled circuit breakers, and something about 150 gallons of mashed potatoes. With friends like these...

The entire evening of the Wedding was an endless stream of humiliation for the groom, the pinnacle of which must have been when we, in the tradition of the region, kidnapped his bride, took her out drinking, and he had to come search for us. I'm not exactly sure what the point of that particular ritual is, but she seemed to enjoy it just a little too much.

At any rate, congratulations to Herr Doktor Probst and his lovely new bride Martina for a beautiful wedding, and my heartfelt sympathies for the fact that some asshole went through his cd collection and swapped all the cases.

CNN.com - Inventor denies dead cat fuel story - Sep 15, 2005:

The underlying truth is, of course, that should you ever have to even deny such a thing, you've already lost.

Hallo, Hans

I vanted to assk you vhy ze american und british tourists, ze are alvays giggling vhen zey come here for skiing.

Danke,

Fritz Weber
Wank-Lifte Ski Lift

Jottings from yesterday's bar napkin, from the daily evening meeting-of-one:

I'm the chair of your misfortune, 4 legs of strength compared to your two. I loathe your cushions.
There are 3 people you should never lie to: Your lawyer, your doctor, and your accountant.
Your bits of SuSE architecture, you will not get in there. You will stare in amazement, at the amount of trust there.

Unvollständig.
Speth was eyeing my unit.
With Windows,you've got a whole other set of problems. I am the leader of the technik. Keep your fucking hands off of them. Dicknose.
There's no denying it: Things have been better.
Rsync software: No network access. How many revolutions? (backup rev's)(under normal usage)?
Why do I busy myself with such nonsense?
I'm surrounded by freaks and losers, traitors, liars, bitchy little people I'm supposed to give a fuck about.
Perfect coif, unimpeachable ascot. Saaaaah-weeeeet.
Wearing a green ascot on St. Patrick's day is probably not the best way to keep from getting pinched, I fear.
In a few years, I'll look back on these days and think, "What the fuck was that all about?"
Jeepers, I'm tired.
I'm tired of being tired. But I'm more tired of being broke.
Man, I guess TCP/IP, in retrospect, scales pretty well.
I can't believe I actually used to be an IPX bigot.
I also can't believe I used to own a class C subnet, namely 38.221.9.0/24. Merc, Fred, Medusa, Thor, Zeus, NS, man oh man, those were some days!
Here's some helpful advice for the ladies out there: If you're ugly, show some tit! C'mon, it's a date!
People sit around and compare their tools...
Tomorrow, I'm going to have a blister under my fingernail. Damn.

Well, I guess it's about time to stop smoking. I found a brown spot under my tongue today. I've probably got jaw cancer. Which probably means they'll need to cut off the lower half of my face, and reduce me to a freak whose tongue just hangs out of a jagged hole under his nose, wagging impotently with every attempt to speak, unable to articulate a sound, just emmitting some sort of excited whistle of gratitude when it's time for my mush.

Fuck, how did it come to this? I'm only thirty-five. My grandfather smoked for 60 years and only quit because he died. Otherwise, he'd be right here next to me, hooting appreciatively through a tube sticking out of his chest, then we'd go outside and pick up some hookers. Sleep well, Grandpa Arry, you deserved everything you got.

You know, that moment when you start typing, when you start groooooovin', not working at it, let the blog do the work for a change. This thing's been buggin' me, beggin' me, asking me please feed the hole, your publikum is waiting on you, Rube. But you know what, Blog? I'm fucking busy, whiny ass. I've got things to do, people to meet, bills to pay and letters to send. T'aint room here for two jefes, so one of us needs to get a-buggin, and I do believe that would be me. So, now, as long as I'm the one doing the buggin', you be the one doing the list'nin'. Now you listen to me, Blog, and you listen good. Velociman has a boil on his choad, Acidman's got a bug up his ass, and Lousiana ain't feeling so good his damn self. But me? I'm doing jes fine. Rube done took his blood pressure yesterday, after speed-snorting a liter of coffee, and it was 106 over fucking 60. I was on my way to work on a fuckin' Sunday, hands shaking like Katherine Hepburn's favorite vibrator, and you just sat here like a bump on a log waiting for it to find you.

Write yourself, you ungrateful little fuck. What's that? Oh, yeah, anytime, pussy, anytime.

Since I'm too busy at the moment to keep this rickety jalopy running, I've decided to post anything which the dregs of society decide to throw my inbox's way. I need a spam filter...

Case in point:

Chapter 1: A Viking Funeral
Author Unknown

He's gone, I heard the good doctor tell my wife and sister who apparently were somewhere in the near vicinity. No I wanted to scream out but couldn't. What the hell is going on? My eyes were shut tight and try as I might they would not open or even flutter. My entire body was frozen and refused to respond to any mental commands that I issued. Darkness held me captive.

"He wished to be cremated and have his ashes strewn over the homes of all his exes and meaningful lovers etc., the meaningless to receive condolences thru the mail or whatever", my beloved wife Andy relayed the info to the Doc or someone.

Then my beloved, somewhat frugal Sister, chimed in "My God stamps alone will cost a small fortune". "Just put a notice in a few fish-wrappers". As for scattering ashes, forget the former wives as they would make every attempt to bring the aircraft down before the payload could be delivered. The meaningfuls would be more receptive but squirm with discomfort while trying to explain the gesture to their current meaningfuls. We were only friends won't wash".

"Well, his 2nd wish was for a "Viking funeral", Andy offered. Maybe we could get some of his old drinking buddies to heave "Molotov" cocktails at a small vessel as it floats near the "Lil' " River Bridge that spans the infamous Alatoona Lake. Henry Bryan and Jackie Dempsey will gladly secure an old fishing boat I'm sure".

The 2nd wish prevailed. Somehow my wife and sister pulled it off. It was near dusk on a late August day when the much publicized event began. Bells Ferry road was closed to traffic in both directions, so the bridge would be open to the throngs of expected onlookers. Twenty cocktail hurlers waited in formation for the funeral barge to pass beneath, carrying yours truly to Valhalla. All at once the small boat came into view in tow behind a larger ski boat. When it neared the bridge, someone severed the tow line. Now the vessel was drifting under the L.R.B. Finally it emerged on the other side as the cocktails were lit, awaiting the Hurl command. Then it came, Ready! Hurl! All at once 20 arms obeyed the order! A few struck the small craft, causing it to ignite. The burlap wrapped corpse was now slowly engulfed in smoke and flame.

"My God it moved" a horrified deputy sheriff screamed!"Saw it thru my field glasses". Henry Bryan snatched the glasses from the grasp of the now hysterical lawman. "Let me have a look see"! Naw, must've been your eyes doin' tricks, what with it being nearly dark and all.

Only small remnants of the remained by now, floating on the surface near a large patch of ashes, surrounded by a mysterious ring of grease, all floating away toward a distant beach. Show was over and the crowd began to thin out. Some were puzzled by the behavior of Henry B. and Jackie D. however. Both were giggling and high-fiving anyone nearby. Eventually they were joined by the widow and sister of the deceased. Both ladies suppressed their own laughter all were aboard the Merc convertible belonging to J.D.. Now as the white Mercedes sped south on Bells Ferry Road, Henry B. broke the silence! There must be a God, what an unexpected bonus!He was refering to the fact that one of the hurlers was none other than George Tweedy.

It seemed that "Old Pruneface" (George) inadvertantly dropped his flaming cocktail all over himself! J.D. quickly pushed the "Human Torch" over the bridge railing and downward toward the murky water some 50 feet below. As luck would have it, George missed the water and upon the rocky shore. "Close but no cigar" would be this poor old wretches final epitath.

All 4 occupants wiped tears caused by derisive laughter from their eyes as the speeding vehichle reached it's destination. Now all entered the Villas of Kennesaw clubhouse bar, which had been previously reserved for the evening. "Did he suffer"? I asked. "Which one?", my wife asked. "Huh"!

Finally H.B. was able to speak and relay the tale of "Old Lonesome George's demise". Loud guffaws filled the room, it was gonna be a great night!!!

Stay tuned for Chapter Two:
Where in the world Is Gary ASSitelli?

Didja ever sit and wonder, just how horrendous X1-X10 must have been? I mean, network transparency is admirable, but it's all in the impelementation, folks.

At these sorts of cabbage-patch spectacles that crop up every now and then, it's important to remember the training. Macs are special. Macs are different. Macs are premium consumer items not meant for every 300 lb. frizzy-haired slushee-sucker who buys her computers at the grocery store.

Remember the training. Steve? Are you there? Have you forsaken us? SAY SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE A JESUS!

But Steve's probably just cackling like Renfield in some white marble penthouse, calling Gates on the phone; "Bill, you couldn't buy this kind of publicity!"

"Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner" (Stephan Schacher)

A trip across America is the dream of many Europeans. At the tender age of nineteen, photographer Stephan Schacher undertook a typical sightseeing tour of the United States, from coast to coast on the Kerouac trail, visiting the cities and monuments, both natural and man-made, along the legendary Route 66. Almost 20 years later, Schacher decided to take a second trip across North America. This time, however, things would be done a little differently: Driving from upstate New York to Northern Alaska, almost 11,000 kilometers across Canada and the United States, Schacher decided photograph every meal along the way, as well as every waitress who served it.

What may sound like a goofy, drunken college idea dreamed up at three o'clock in the morning became a serious undertaking for Schacher. Eating exclusively in roadside diners, the author blazes a low-brow culinary trail across the continent, braving greasy hamburgers and questionable seafood platters. The book itself is handsomely crafted. After turning page after page of greasy diner cuisine, one begins to wonder just how many t-bone steaks and onion rings a man can eat before his heart explodes.

Using specialty paper, muted colors, and creative typography, it sits well on the nightstand or coffee table for the casual reading session. Making meticulous records of his mileage, food expenditures, and the times of arrival and departure, Schacher is able to painstakingly recreate his entire journey in facts and figures to complement the irresistibly personal experience of the solitary roadside meal.

This is a good sign...

[root@freak1 chkrootkit-0.45]# ls -al
bash: /bin/ls: Input/output error

On my poor little Linux box, who just sits in the corner and never hurts anybody. When he was in the kitchen, next to my refrigerator, he once had 700 days of uptime, damn near 2 years without a reboot. He even spent the better part of an afternoon in a half-inch of standing water, when I accidentally left my freezer door open.

Brave little man, go gently into that great /dev/null in the sky. And take my fucking django projects with you, you weak little twat. Jesus, why do I only do backups for other people?!

That's what I'll be. Sitting in the server room, surrounded by untold generations of in-bred housecats, all playing little banjos and admiring my pouty lips. Crazy ol' Cat-Rube, wondering where all my friends have gone, why my children never call, and why, way back when, in aught-five, nobody wished me a happy System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Fuck you guys. I'm deleting all your mail.

As I was googling around, debating whether or not to install the copy of Office XP I've recently come into, in order to upgrade my slowly rotting-yet-beloved copy of Office 2000 Pro, I came across 1) enough evidence to deter me, and b) what has to be the best screenshot caption I've ever seen:

Some may have noticed that in the last 6 months, YouBitch.org has skyrocketed in popularity, owing to various influences viz bribery and dirty, dirty tricks.

It's grown so popular, in fact, that you'll find YouBitch.org in the Truth Laid Bear ecology sandwiched between ROFASix and "Test Page for Apache Installation".

How the hell do you come in behind a Test Page for Apache Installation?

Sometimes it's the little things that make it worthwhile. Today, for example, I spent 2 hours working on a network firewall whose brand name, Ben Hur, is eerily close to the Bavarian phrase, bin a hur, which means, roughly, I am a prostitute. This is why I giggle to myself when I think there's no one watching.

Also, I get to swear a lot a work, since none of these cretins speak English well enough to know what "oh you cocksucking piece of fucking shit" actually means, in the book sense.

In a related train of thought, I was in Kissing, Bavaria yesterday. Streams of consciousness being what they are, I immediately thought of Henry Kissinger, whose name means someone who comes from Kissing, and then I thought to myself, jeez, I haven't come from Kissing since high school, which then dead-ended into a search for a half-joke that cratered into a mixed-metaphore here at the usually-reliable youbitch.

Indeed, the little things can make an otherwise dreary, grey, and cloudy day all smily.

Oh, and there was a bug.

I never thought I'd see these words written by an adult:

why do I get the feeling you guys are yanking my chain? I guess I'll have to ask Sandy, she will be straight with me!

I would suggest that Lippy Livey prepare herself for amazing new levels of betrayal, shaming, and a chain-yanking most people only read about in Penthouse Forum. Sandy?!

I had all kindsa Sandy riffin' on Zonker links to pan out here, but sandy moved :-(

Sandy's new home is here. By the time Longhorn/Vista comes out, or Duke Nukem Forever, whichever comes first, I'll even update my sidebar template!

Hugs,
Rube

Check out the smoke on slashdot. There are a few very important reasons for a company to switch over to Macs. Viruses, Spyware, and Solitaire, to name just three. I just installed Windows XP on a fairly run-of-the-mill mini-PC, the ASUS Pundit-R. It took me two day to get all the drivers sorted out. I've still got an entry in the device manager for a mysterious "USB Controller" with a yellow exclamation point next to it which doesn't seem to be covered by the ASUS or ATI driver downloads. You can re-install a Mac in about an hour, all drivers and applications included, no matter what model. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even tell the install program to leave your home directory alone, and all your application settings will remain.

On the other hand, I've had a lot of customer contact lately. Most of my customers have irresolvable reasons to stay on the platform they're on, almost invariably Win32. Whether it's a Tax-Consulting program that makes extensive use of COM and the Windows version of Microsoft Office and Outlook, or an embedded controlling program for an industrial baking machine that only runs on Win98 SE, these people are locked in, and generally at ease with that fact. But with that, the 'vendor lock-in' argument against Apple Computer goes right out the window.

Companies shouldn't switch platforms just because somebody on Slashdot can provide an overpowering argument. Switching is expensive, no matter which direction. If you switch to Mac, you have to know that you can't realistically have more that one choice for an office productivity package, ironically MS Office. On Windows, you've got native versions of OpenOffice, Hansa Office, Corel WordPerfect Office (my personal choice at the moment), and just about anything else you can think of, none of which exist on Mac. Mac does have Pages, which beats rings around Word for 99% of what you're going to want to do, as long as what you want to do doesn't involve other companies being able to interact directly with your documents.

There are many arguments against Macification, and many more in favor. It all comes down to whether or not the boss wants to pony up the money for some sexy-ass hardware.

[are you there?]
yes

There's a lot to be said for good work habits. At least that's what I've heard, mostly from people who have good work habits, and also have, perhaps not coincidentally, fairly recent iPods. It's hard to balance abject sloth and material greed, I've found, so at some point you just try to find the path of least suffering. Just give a smile on the sidewalk to some girl who's trying so hard to make an impression. You don't have to express your loathing each and every minute to the untermenschen that you are forced by God and man to walk past when all you really want is to get from point A to point B to take the money from party C. Party C understands that you're not there to talk about the weather, but it's protocol, so just fuckin' do it.

Good work habits are more than just Knowing Your Shit. Good work habits include getting out of bed before noon, whether you have to or not [glance at Andy]; not masturbating in front of customers [glance at Thomas]; coming within 4 significant digits of your proposed budget [glance in mirror]; using your spellchecker when norms will be reading; and, last but not least, not fucking the co-ops [no glance necessary].

Good work habits involving knowing your product, and know when not to bend your customer over a barrel, which does occasionally make sense. Call your mother every now and then; do your paperwork; and for God sakes, stop using the fucking copier to make visuals of your goddam buttocks. I know this is all very difficult for you scrubs, but please, do make an effort: We're in this game to win. Now get out there and kick some ASS!

So, I was sitting at the trainstop tonight, on my way home from work, listening to a podcast of Nightline on my iPod, in which they covered the spreading avian flu epidemic and, jumpin' jehosephat, we all gonna die. But I knew that. However, they had sound bites of Chimpy McHitler doing a couple of press conferences, and I'll be damned if he doesn't butcher this one even worse than nuclear. Did you know we're sitting on a pandemic of Èvian Flu? If you've ever wondered what the French were doing to contribute to the end of mankind as we know it, aside from accordion music, now you know.

I swear, the boy's sounding more like a cross between John Wayne and Emily Litella with every passing sentence. In a matter of months, he'll be giving the State of the Union address, and will sign off $200 billion to preserve our natural racehorses.

People, I'd soon shit as look at ya, as my dear departed grandfather was fond of saying to us grandchillens. There's just nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a good ol' blue funk at the beginning of the week. Today, despite being Tuesday, was Monday here in Germany, for all intents and purpose. The long weekend was over, and I enjoyed three days of true sloth, the likes of which I've not enjoyed for quite some time here. Yesterday was the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Re-unification Day, and therefore a holiday. I don't have a television at the moment, so I'm not quite sure how the yokels down in dogpatch celebrated, or if they celebrated. The closest I've heard to someone marking the occasion was a documentary on the Columbine massacre that was on one of the state-run television channels last night; I guess replaying the awe-inspiring "Tear down this wall" speech would've been regarded as sycophantic. They could've maybe just shown the thousands of Pershing II protesters instead of Reagan, just to be fair. I mean, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, there wasn't just bottomless love and gratitude for Reagan here in the 80s; there were also some nay-sayers.

So, 15 years later, what have we got here? The Wessies (West Germans) hate the Ossies (East Germans), the Ossies are all Nazis, the country's being run into the ground by Greens and Socialists, and Rube's got a headache to complement his weird-ass earache. And the beer? Color me unimpressed. Sell me on it, people, it takes more than beer to offset an 80% tax burden. This isn't really blowing my skirt up. Maybe it's time for an "OK, Mr. Gorbatchev, you can put that wall back up" speech, and a new Cold War to stir the drink. Gorby's going to be here in Augsburg on Saturday, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

I'll soldier on. Europe's OK, despite my visceral hatred of cold weather and accordions.

Who do you want to be? I'm pretty happy with who I am, all things considered. I mean, the joints are getting a little too creaky to be right where I want to be. I get earaches a lot. Earaches? When the hell did that start. I seem to recall something about an earache the last time when I was 10 years old, in Washington, watching a Caps game. During a raucous pre-game pillowfight in the hotel, I was blindsided viciously by one of the other running-men, and fell ear-first into the corner of the nightstand. Screaming children, dancing lights before my eyes, and an eardrum gushing blood onto the bed, from what I can remember. But there's a groove for you; I didn't even need alcohol back then to pull the ol', "Hey y'all, watch this!" It just happens naturally to children, without the need for finely-aged and/or -brewed refreshments, like, say, your run-of-the-mill blog meet, with bullwhips and such.

But somehow the earache lain in wait for two-and-a-half decades, ready to pounce. I've been sick for about 3 weeks now, which really isn't like me. Normally, I've got an iron constitution, seeing as over the years I've built up an environment of toxins in my body that's inhospitable to your average germ varmint. To all life, really. The soupy buildup of nicotine, alcohol, and stress toxins in my blood would put the post-Katrina sludge in New Orleans to shame, just wait until the Rube-Tsunami hits, then let's see Curious George wriggle out of the media storm that follows. "Rube: What Went Wrong?"

Yeah, well, enough about that shit. On with the show. I'm not getting any younger, despite the wash of childhood diseases and injuries that may yet wait around the corner on my walk home tonight.

What? The Braves won the division? It's like baseball season is on fast-forward every year. I didn't see a single game since April. Damn.

Man o man, I can't believe they actually did that this year, with that bunch o' bums they were fielding in April. But then, ever since Cox started beating his wife when the team loses, the Bravos seemed to have stepped it up a notch. For Ms. Cox' sake.

More and more, it seems to me that there's nothing new or innovative in life. I think the more you understand something, the less you enjoy it. Take computers, for example. I understand computers. I've been working on them now almost thirty years, ever since my first home job, the risible Texas Instruments TI 994/A. My second computer was the much more suitable Mattel Aquarius, replete with 16K expansion board. 16K? I remember thinking it was the shit, something I could never even dream of filling up. Consider the following BASIC program:

10 ? "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

That's about 25 bytes, and also about the extent of my BASIC programming abilities at the age of 11. I remember there was this other kid in my sixth grade class who also had an Aquarius. I remember him bitching because he only had the 4K expansion, and he didn't have any room left in memory for the data sets that he used in the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG he'd programmed on it. I would have loaned him mine, but I was humiliated into lying that my flight simulator was almost finished, so sorry, no dice.

In the eighth grade, I took my first computer-oriented course at school, which was called "Business Computing on the Apple ][". I'm not exactly sure what eight-graders are supposed to understand about business computing, or what we were supposed to think of the cleverly hackerish use of square brackets for the roman numerals in the Apple ]['s name, but I was nonetheless intimidated into swearing that I would never buy a computer, much less one that had the colors of the international homosexual conspiracy brazenly embedded in a fruit. Subtle it ain't, the old Apple logo. Instead, I would live my life in buckskin trousers and shoot at revenuers with my kentucky windage, wishing for simpler times when men were men, and night was dark. Which of course is why I'm now a UNIX system administrator, and write blog entries in bars on my Apple laptop.

So nowadays, I understand that every laptop is basically a remix of different off-the-shelf parts, with a selection of the available software, as money allows, nothing special. There's only the capacity of hard drives, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM installed that make any dent. It's all the same shit. There are many computer companies, but only a few huge factories that pump out the shit that they all build into their computers. There is no wonder, no joy, mystery to any of it.

This principle applies to everything in life. At least, it applies to anything built after the second world war. German engineers are no better than the Americans anymore, they all use the same CAD software to get their shit done, and, with the Internet, there are no magical metallurgical formulas, no secret underground laboratories, no oil fields in the Balkans that make a difference, only Google results. Nowadays, there's only the price of commodities on the global market, the intricacies of international currency markets, and the sewing together of the same, tired old components by some poor saps in Taiwan for each and every manufacturer in each and every field of business, be it shoes or MP3 players.

Depressing.

[22:20]
I'm giving the New Worst Bar in the World a second chance tonight. For about the eighth time now, I guess. These guys are the worst of the worst. They're even worse than I remembered, and that was bad enough. I've been sitting here now for about 10 minutes, and they haven't even acknowledged my presence. There's 4 chicks behind the bar, just a-wiping them counters, a-polishing them glasses, and a-wasting my fucking time. I guess I keep coming back out of morbid curiosity, of the literal kind. I've got to see how long it takes for this place to die off.

Atrocious service. There's an entire floor of guests here where I'm sitting, and we all came in about the same time. Probably about 10 people. There's no way they could've missed us, and anyway, I'm sitting on the railing, with my sizeable noggin in plain view of God and everybody. Let's watch...

[22:30]
Welp, still high and dry here. The staff have, in the meantime, made a perfunctory round of the lower floor down there. They didn't bother to put out their cigarettes to do it though, just left them burning in the ashtrays. Never a good sign. I'll light a cigarette and see what happens.

[22:35]
Cigarette's out. Somebody's coming up the stairs, oh wait! She's got a notepad with her! She's either a waitress or a reporter, and either one would suit my purposes at this point. Meanwhile, more customers are grousing around and looking nervously over their shoulders, the silence of the taps a deafening presence in the room. My hatred hangs over this place like a cloud. Thalia Bar and Grill, I am your own personal Simon Wiesenthal, you worthless, arrogant bunch of fucks.

[22:39]
The reporter took my drink order. I ordered a beer, and I'm anxious to see if she fucks it up. That would be just like the AFP to do something like that. Arrogant Cowboy American Orders Mai Thai, Asks Twice for 'Cute Little Umbrella'. It's a sting, I fucking knew it. I will bring this place down around their ears. The Duke would.

[22:41]
After leaving something on my table that most certainly looked like a beer, the waitress was unresponsive to my admittedly lukewarm thank-you. Fucking narc.

[23:30]
This fucking bitch. She only came up one more time, and that was to clear off another table, and then she went back down without asking if I needed another beer. I guess I don't, seeing as I've gotten attached to this one, as spending an hour with a beer brings you closer to it. I shall shit upon this bar, its name will be stricken from every card, from every column, and every positive blog entry I ever wrote about it, should there actually be any. The Thalia Movie Bar and Grill is, without a doubt, the worst bar in the world.

I'm in a chatty mood tonight. That may very well be because it's Sunday, and Sunday in Augsburg means Biscuits à la Rube, and Grits au Fromage. Such breakfasts are good starts to any day, even when served at 4:30 in the afternoon, in filthy pajamas.

So, what shall we talk about? Let's talk about the weather. In a cruel turn of fate, the weather finally got warm the week after the kids went back to school. Fuck 'em. Treats them right for living in the arctic circle. Move back to the world, kids, there's sunshine and hurricanes.

Ok, that's the weather. Let's talk shop. I got a steady gig now, which doesn't take much time, and doesn't pay all that badly. I'm self-employed, so whenever a steady source of income shows up, it's always welcome. It doesn't quite make up for the 2 and half months of project work that I just did for which I didn't get paid, but it makes telling certain customers to go fuck themselves that much easier.

I actually worked for one customer for up to 60 hours a week for the last two months. Even though I relaxed my normally-exorbitant hourly rates for the sake of customer relations, the bills are running up into the tens of thousands. Thing is, I haven't seen a dime of that money yet, and the way things are looking further upstream, I don't think I'll ever see any of the money. The other party, who's basically doing sales for the project while I do the work, has decided that almost all of the customers we've been servicing like overworked whores lately are 'Reference Customers', who will be useful down the road for bringing in other customers, and therefore won't get billed. Which means I won't see any money from them at all. Which means I'm pretty much figuring out whether or not spending time in the big house is worth the ass-whipping I'd like to lay on my salesman. Still too close to call.

The press might want to stop trying to milk this one.

Mama Moonbat and Her Multitudes

30 people? I've had orgies bigger than that, and I don't recall getting phone calls from Murdoch over it, either. In fact, through most of the "summer" here, there was some sad-assed march against the Hartz IV welfare reforms, which involved somehow making people actually fill out more forms to keep getting unemployment checks. Every Monday night, the teeming masses of about 20 or 30 people would march through the town square to the train station, with some buffoon up front shouting rhyming missives about Schröder or something through a megaphone. And I always wondered to myself, usually through a beery haze, if he really saw himself as some sort of revolutionary figure, with the streaming red banners of the International Communist Conspiracy waving all about, black confetti falling from the medieval buildings around them, as the oppressed volk breathe a sigh of relief that they finally have a voice. Instead, I mean, of the 20 or 30 bongo-playing dopeheads who were shouting, incoherently, his dumbass rhymes back at him, to the derisive hootin' and hollerin' of the Monday-night Maximilian-Strasse promenaders, with the intention of getting their $2000.00 a month benefits extended past the 3-year limit.

What a bunch of fucking parasites.

Just in case y'all missed it, the photos from the wedding are up. The bachelor party photos have yet to clear customs, ahem.

And speaking of Herr Doktor Probst, he's got his own blog now. Check it out. I'm sure we'll be seeing more from him, as soon as the monkey-in-the-mirror 'Test' posts scroll out of the way.

Mutual friend Martin Bruch also has an interesting blog, as long as you're a Mac weenie like me.

This is perhaps the most beautiful, romantic thing I've ever read (NSFW):

Ladies, find the ugliest man you know (and my e-mail address is linked on the right) and I'll assure you that you'll soon forget where your clitoris ends and his tongue begins. Within hours, you'll be thinking that you breeched birthed and adut male.

From skippystalin, of course.

Hope their sites can stay online after the vicious Bitchdotting they're getting here.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that open-xchange is worth the trouble, kick them in the nuts. Hard.

Upon describing me as "mature":

That wasn't really the word I was looking for, but I couldn't find any nicer synonyms for "old" in the thesaurus.

Man, I'm tired, but I can finally relax a little, now that I'm down to my one or two nightly cocktails, instead of the caligulan excesses I've been subjected to of late. The preceding week was a grueling, besotted blur that I strongly believe will make me rethink my entire position on alcohol. Ok. Yep. Good point, Mr. Oblongata. Ok, I continued, nodding thoughtfully while clamping the unlit pipe between my well-formed incisors, I do believe you've got a point after all.

Alcohol is a funny thing, as long as your definition of funny has a lot in common with Hermann Goering's. For us drunkards, it's an almost unbearable hit parade of mortifying moments that accompanies even the most insincere, shallow attempts at soul-searching. Again and again, it makes you pose the question to yourself that we've all had to try and wrestle at one point or another, namely: What the fuck was I thinking? I lost my goddamn cell phone in the drunken haze last week. I loved that cell phone, sort of. I realize now that I'm in the market fer one a em's sexy iTunes phones, but, honestly, I'd rather have a Nano. In fact, I'd rather have even a fool's hope that I'll have enough money to buy smokes for another glorious month o' puffin', but I don't, so I guess I'm not so much in the market fer as I am up shit creek without a paddle in the absence of.

I lost my phone during a 300-yard long, meandering stumble home from the bachelor party. I know that I didn't leave it in the night club, because I remember making a phone call or two on my way home. I'd called my lusty companions, asking them if they'd check around the club and see if they could find my digital camera, which was missing, and bring it to safety. I then called my baby, and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be home within an hour, 300 yards being what they are at 5:30 in the morning, and that hopefully she hadn't forgotten the earplugs I'd recommended she buy, lest my easily-foreseen yet completely unavoidable sawing and clearing of the rainforest disturb her for the 2 or 3 hours that I would actually be allowed to remain in bed, owing to the 9 o'clock meeting I'd cleverly scheduled for the next morning. When I was wrenched from my snoring paradise by Satan's Alarm Clock, I was sadly without a phone, yet, remarkably, with my digital camera in my pocket. Had I actually been talking to my friends and loved ones on the camera? How very, very David Lynch.

But let's not forget the human costs. I almost punched out some rummy hobo in a bar for hitting on my sweet baby Saturday night, after a boozy pub crawl. He was drunk, and my sweet baby was looking very sweet indeed, but there ain't more than one rummy hobo who's laying on hands around here, and that rummy hobo is me, buddy. I don't suppose the late hour or the gigantic bar-tab had anything at all to do with my rush to visit justice on this poor, lonely sap.

Alcohol has cost me plenty, but I guess there's no point in stopping now.

In every industry, there are the kickbacks, the skimmings, the tricks of the trade that allow the core products to be competitively priced, and accessible to Joe Consumer. In some cases, it even allows the core products to be given away for free. In the late 90's, for example, we used to actually sell computers for below cost, knowing that, within six months, we could charge thousands of dollars to check these same computers for Y2K-compliancy. I ran the (mostly ceremonial) test procedures at least a thousand times during the last six months of 1999, and not once did a customer ask me why we didn't check the things before we rolled them out, sometimes mere days before returning to certify them. I must have gained 40 pounds in 1999.

Another great example of this particular business model is Microsoft's XBox. Every XBox in the world is sold at a horrifying loss. The hardware costs alone are something like 90% of the price tag, and the other 10% couldn't even put a dent in the massive R&D, marketing, and licensing costs The Beast poured into this fine piece of machinery. Nevertheless, Microsoft made (and still makes) a killing off this thing. The secret is the game licensing. GatesCo. basically gives away the hardware, so that they can make money off of the games that are sold to run on it. The XBox's anti-"piracy" technology ensures that only those games which have been blessed with The Key can run on it, and The Key, my friends, costs the pudenda for those who wish to use it.

Which brings us to my fucking haircut. Throug whispered confessions in nervous, back-alley meetings, it came to my attention that there exists here in Germany a reasonably-priced barber shop, hidden within the steamy bowels of a department store. Department stores are, in Germany at least, the Grand Mufti of Commerce, because they are often open until the ungodly hour of 8:00 PM, instead of closing at 4 in the afternoon like every other shop on the continent. People who do not belong to unions, and therefore do not enjoy the 11-hour work week and 45-hour lunches which seem to be commonplace here, might, in such an establishment, actually be able to buy an overpriced pair of Italian shoes after work that will turn into shredded leather foot wrappings during the first snow like something out of a grainy, black and white Operation Barbarossa documentary which will only lead to cannibaliism at some point, God help us all.

So, armed with the forbidden knowledge and secret pass-phrase, I walked casually into said cut-easy at 6 in the afternoon, curious as to what awaited me. I walked confidently to the counter, where the tell-tale scent of Barbicide betrayed the establishment's true purpose, and announced that I was there for a...haircut! I was promptly greeted by an attractive young nymph, probably fresh out of art-school, in need of funds, in a lowly state, ready for every degradation I could muster from my addled id.

I can't really recall much about the haircut. It was alright, the barbress turned out to be not that attractive after all, which is gang und gebe, a little pudgy, actually, though she did have magic hands at the hair-washing sink, though the fact that she didn't ask if I wanted the "special treatment" was not lost on me, and therefore was likely to affect her tip, negatively. The wrong kind of rub was in coming, though. She did a bad job on the head. Now, I know I've got a difficult head to cut, and I'm usually very understanding when newbies have difficulty with it. After the damage was done, the nymphette looked askance, and inquired as to whether I would like some gel on my hair. In a moment of weakness, I said, well, maybe just a little dab to hold back the humiliation when I walked out the door. So, she being responsive, and subject to my every whim, she took out a tube of hair gel, squeezed out a miniscule drop of the sticky, sensous fluid, and rubbed it on my battered skull. I looked in the mirror, and, swallowing my distaste, mussed a bit till I looked like something other than a month-old jack-o-lantern. I thanked her, and proceeded to the cash register. I paid my due, and realized she'd tacked €1.50 onto the price for the fucking hair gel!

I realize the people have to earn their money. I realize that the price for the haircut was suspiciously reasonable for these dark post-Deutschmark days, but a fucking €1.50 for a fucking cum-dab of hair gel!!!!!1

At this point, I was confronted with the decision, do I scream, at the top of my lungs, YOU FUCKING BACKSTABBING CUNT I'LL FUCKING DO YOU IN YOU GODDAMN BITCH FOR THAT FUCKING HAIRCUT YOU GONNA FUCKING PAY MOMMY MOMMY, or do I just meekly pay the €13.50, thank the nice lady, and walk out the door like someone actually did me a favor? People who know me will have no trouble believing that, not only did I pay the full tab, I also dropped a Euro into the tip jar. What a twat I am.

At two points in this story, as with so many cases in life, I could have been saved with one simple question: What would the Duke do? First off, John Wayne probably would have declined the hair gel, I'm guessing. Failing that, he most certainly would have shot every fucking customer in the department store amid myriad shoulder-rolls and hat-tips, which, honestly, is exactly what this pussified gay-bar of a country needs a bit more of.

Where's my fucking big-airn?

is a Bavarian wedding. I'm not really sure which is more important in such a regional affair, the unbridled alcohol abuse by everyone over the age of 16, or the abject humiliation of the bridal pair.

The intentional self-poisoning began on Thursday, with the Bachelor party. Pubs were crawled, bottoms were pinched, and, in the end, Rube showed that he could still run with the young dogs.

There's Rube, passed out in a chair in some nightclub he doesn't even know the name of, at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And yes, the next morning's 9 o'clock meeting was a rousing, unqualified disaster, thanks for asking. By some weird twist of fate, Friday night was the birthday party of a family of immigrants out of somewhere over in Vampireland, which is anything east of Czechoslovakia. That was good for yet another night of binge drinking, though I must admit the heart, she was not really in it.

Which brings us to Saturday, the aforementioned wedding. Apparently, it's traditional in Bavaria to steal and make a copy of the Groom's house key while he's not paying attention. On the day of the wedding, while he's preparing to feed and bedrink his guests, they break into his apartment and trash the place. I heard stories of dismantled furniture, toilets stuffed with chocolate, pulled circuit breakers, and something about 150 gallons of mashed potatoes. With friends like these...

The entire evening of the Wedding was an endless stream of humiliation for the groom, the pinnacle of which must have been when we, in the tradition of the region, kidnapped his bride, took her out drinking, and he had to come search for us. I'm not exactly sure what the point of that particular ritual is, but she seemed to enjoy it just a little too much.

At any rate, congratulations to Herr Doktor Probst and his lovely new bride Martina for a beautiful wedding, and my heartfelt sympathies for the fact that some asshole went through his cd collection and swapped all the cases.

CNN.com - Inventor denies dead cat fuel story - Sep 15, 2005:

The underlying truth is, of course, that should you ever have to even deny such a thing, you've already lost.

Hallo, Hans

I vanted to assk you vhy ze american und british tourists, ze are alvays giggling vhen zey come here for skiing.

Danke,

Fritz Weber
Wank-Lifte Ski Lift

Jottings from yesterday's bar napkin, from the daily evening meeting-of-one:

I'm the chair of your misfortune, 4 legs of strength compared to your two. I loathe your cushions.
There are 3 people you should never lie to: Your lawyer, your doctor, and your accountant.
Your bits of SuSE architecture, you will not get in there. You will stare in amazement, at the amount of trust there.

Unvollständig.
Speth was eyeing my unit.
With Windows,you've got a whole other set of problems. I am the leader of the technik. Keep your fucking hands off of them. Dicknose.
There's no denying it: Things have been better.
Rsync software: No network access. How many revolutions? (backup rev's)(under normal usage)?
Why do I busy myself with such nonsense?
I'm surrounded by freaks and losers, traitors, liars, bitchy little people I'm supposed to give a fuck about.
Perfect coif, unimpeachable ascot. Saaaaah-weeeeet.
Wearing a green ascot on St. Patrick's day is probably not the best way to keep from getting pinched, I fear.
In a few years, I'll look back on these days and think, "What the fuck was that all about?"
Jeepers, I'm tired.
I'm tired of being tired. But I'm more tired of being broke.
Man, I guess TCP/IP, in retrospect, scales pretty well.
I can't believe I actually used to be an IPX bigot.
I also can't believe I used to own a class C subnet, namely 38.221.9.0/24. Merc, Fred, Medusa, Thor, Zeus, NS, man oh man, those were some days!
Here's some helpful advice for the ladies out there: If you're ugly, show some tit! C'mon, it's a date!
People sit around and compare their tools...
Tomorrow, I'm going to have a blister under my fingernail. Damn.

Well, I guess it's about time to stop smoking. I found a brown spot under my tongue today. I've probably got jaw cancer. Which probably means they'll need to cut off the lower half of my face, and reduce me to a freak whose tongue just hangs out of a jagged hole under his nose, wagging impotently with every attempt to speak, unable to articulate a sound, just emmitting some sort of excited whistle of gratitude when it's time for my mush.

Fuck, how did it come to this? I'm only thirty-five. My grandfather smoked for 60 years and only quit because he died. Otherwise, he'd be right here next to me, hooting appreciatively through a tube sticking out of his chest, then we'd go outside and pick up some hookers. Sleep well, Grandpa Arry, you deserved everything you got.

You know, that moment when you start typing, when you start groooooovin', not working at it, let the blog do the work for a change. This thing's been buggin' me, beggin' me, asking me please feed the hole, your publikum is waiting on you, Rube. But you know what, Blog? I'm fucking busy, whiny ass. I've got things to do, people to meet, bills to pay and letters to send. T'aint room here for two jefes, so one of us needs to get a-buggin, and I do believe that would be me. So, now, as long as I'm the one doing the buggin', you be the one doing the list'nin'. Now you listen to me, Blog, and you listen good. Velociman has a boil on his choad, Acidman's got a bug up his ass, and Lousiana ain't feeling so good his damn self. But me? I'm doing jes fine. Rube done took his blood pressure yesterday, after speed-snorting a liter of coffee, and it was 106 over fucking 60. I was on my way to work on a fuckin' Sunday, hands shaking like Katherine Hepburn's favorite vibrator, and you just sat here like a bump on a log waiting for it to find you.

Write yourself, you ungrateful little fuck. What's that? Oh, yeah, anytime, pussy, anytime.

Since I'm too busy at the moment to keep this rickety jalopy running, I've decided to post anything which the dregs of society decide to throw my inbox's way. I need a spam filter...

Case in point:

Chapter 1: A Viking Funeral
Author Unknown

He's gone, I heard the good doctor tell my wife and sister who apparently were somewhere in the near vicinity. No I wanted to scream out but couldn't. What the hell is going on? My eyes were shut tight and try as I might they would not open or even flutter. My entire body was frozen and refused to respond to any mental commands that I issued. Darkness held me captive.

"He wished to be cremated and have his ashes strewn over the homes of all his exes and meaningful lovers etc., the meaningless to receive condolences thru the mail or whatever", my beloved wife Andy relayed the info to the Doc or someone.

Then my beloved, somewhat frugal Sister, chimed in "My God stamps alone will cost a small fortune". "Just put a notice in a few fish-wrappers". As for scattering ashes, forget the former wives as they would make every attempt to bring the aircraft down before the payload could be delivered. The meaningfuls would be more receptive but squirm with discomfort while trying to explain the gesture to their current meaningfuls. We were only friends won't wash".

"Well, his 2nd wish was for a "Viking funeral", Andy offered. Maybe we could get some of his old drinking buddies to heave "Molotov" cocktails at a small vessel as it floats near the "Lil' " River Bridge that spans the infamous Alatoona Lake. Henry Bryan and Jackie Dempsey will gladly secure an old fishing boat I'm sure".

The 2nd wish prevailed. Somehow my wife and sister pulled it off. It was near dusk on a late August day when the much publicized event began. Bells Ferry road was closed to traffic in both directions, so the bridge would be open to the throngs of expected onlookers. Twenty cocktail hurlers waited in formation for the funeral barge to pass beneath, carrying yours truly to Valhalla. All at once the small boat came into view in tow behind a larger ski boat. When it neared the bridge, someone severed the tow line. Now the vessel was drifting under the L.R.B. Finally it emerged on the other side as the cocktails were lit, awaiting the Hurl command. Then it came, Ready! Hurl! All at once 20 arms obeyed the order! A few struck the small craft, causing it to ignite. The burlap wrapped corpse was now slowly engulfed in smoke and flame.

"My God it moved" a horrified deputy sheriff screamed!"Saw it thru my field glasses". Henry Bryan snatched the glasses from the grasp of the now hysterical lawman. "Let me have a look see"! Naw, must've been your eyes doin' tricks, what with it being nearly dark and all.

Only small remnants of the remained by now, floating on the surface near a large patch of ashes, surrounded by a mysterious ring of grease, all floating away toward a distant beach. Show was over and the crowd began to thin out. Some were puzzled by the behavior of Henry B. and Jackie D. however. Both were giggling and high-fiving anyone nearby. Eventually they were joined by the widow and sister of the deceased. Both ladies suppressed their own laughter all were aboard the Merc convertible belonging to J.D.. Now as the white Mercedes sped south on Bells Ferry Road, Henry B. broke the silence! There must be a God, what an unexpected bonus!He was refering to the fact that one of the hurlers was none other than George Tweedy.

It seemed that "Old Pruneface" (George) inadvertantly dropped his flaming cocktail all over himself! J.D. quickly pushed the "Human Torch" over the bridge railing and downward toward the murky water some 50 feet below. As luck would have it, George missed the water and upon the rocky shore. "Close but no cigar" would be this poor old wretches final epitath.

All 4 occupants wiped tears caused by derisive laughter from their eyes as the speeding vehichle reached it's destination. Now all entered the Villas of Kennesaw clubhouse bar, which had been previously reserved for the evening. "Did he suffer"? I asked. "Which one?", my wife asked. "Huh"!

Finally H.B. was able to speak and relay the tale of "Old Lonesome George's demise". Loud guffaws filled the room, it was gonna be a great night!!!

Stay tuned for Chapter Two:
Where in the world Is Gary ASSitelli?

Didja ever sit and wonder, just how horrendous X1-X10 must have been? I mean, network transparency is admirable, but it's all in the impelementation, folks.

At these sorts of cabbage-patch spectacles that crop up every now and then, it's important to remember the training. Macs are special. Macs are different. Macs are premium consumer items not meant for every 300 lb. frizzy-haired slushee-sucker who buys her computers at the grocery store.

Remember the training. Steve? Are you there? Have you forsaken us? SAY SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE A JESUS!

But Steve's probably just cackling like Renfield in some white marble penthouse, calling Gates on the phone; "Bill, you couldn't buy this kind of publicity!"

"Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner" (Stephan Schacher)

A trip across America is the dream of many Europeans. At the tender age of nineteen, photographer Stephan Schacher undertook a typical sightseeing tour of the United States, from coast to coast on the Kerouac trail, visiting the cities and monuments, both natural and man-made, along the legendary Route 66. Almost 20 years later, Schacher decided to take a second trip across North America. This time, however, things would be done a little differently: Driving from upstate New York to Northern Alaska, almost 11,000 kilometers across Canada and the United States, Schacher decided photograph every meal along the way, as well as every waitress who served it.

What may sound like a goofy, drunken college idea dreamed up at three o'clock in the morning became a serious undertaking for Schacher. Eating exclusively in roadside diners, the author blazes a low-brow culinary trail across the continent, braving greasy hamburgers and questionable seafood platters. The book itself is handsomely crafted. After turning page after page of greasy diner cuisine, one begins to wonder just how many t-bone steaks and onion rings a man can eat before his heart explodes.

Using specialty paper, muted colors, and creative typography, it sits well on the nightstand or coffee table for the casual reading session. Making meticulous records of his mileage, food expenditures, and the times of arrival and departure, Schacher is able to painstakingly recreate his entire journey in facts and figures to complement the irresistibly personal experience of the solitary roadside meal.

This is a good sign...

[root@freak1 chkrootkit-0.45]# ls -al
bash: /bin/ls: Input/output error

On my poor little Linux box, who just sits in the corner and never hurts anybody. When he was in the kitchen, next to my refrigerator, he once had 700 days of uptime, damn near 2 years without a reboot. He even spent the better part of an afternoon in a half-inch of standing water, when I accidentally left my freezer door open.

Brave little man, go gently into that great /dev/null in the sky. And take my fucking django projects with you, you weak little twat. Jesus, why do I only do backups for other people?!

That's what I'll be. Sitting in the server room, surrounded by untold generations of in-bred housecats, all playing little banjos and admiring my pouty lips. Crazy ol' Cat-Rube, wondering where all my friends have gone, why my children never call, and why, way back when, in aught-five, nobody wished me a happy System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Fuck you guys. I'm deleting all your mail.

As I was googling around, debating whether or not to install the copy of Office XP I've recently come into, in order to upgrade my slowly rotting-yet-beloved copy of Office 2000 Pro, I came across 1) enough evidence to deter me, and b) what has to be the best screenshot caption I've ever seen:

Some may have noticed that in the last 6 months, YouBitch.org has skyrocketed in popularity, owing to various influences viz bribery and dirty, dirty tricks.

It's grown so popular, in fact, that you'll find YouBitch.org in the Truth Laid Bear ecology sandwiched between ROFASix and "Test Page for Apache Installation".

How the hell do you come in behind a Test Page for Apache Installation?

Sometimes it's the little things that make it worthwhile. Today, for example, I spent 2 hours working on a network firewall whose brand name, Ben Hur, is eerily close to the Bavarian phrase, bin a hur, which means, roughly, I am a prostitute. This is why I giggle to myself when I think there's no one watching.

Also, I get to swear a lot a work, since none of these cretins speak English well enough to know what "oh you cocksucking piece of fucking shit" actually means, in the book sense.

In a related train of thought, I was in Kissing, Bavaria yesterday. Streams of consciousness being what they are, I immediately thought of Henry Kissinger, whose name means someone who comes from Kissing, and then I thought to myself, jeez, I haven't come from Kissing since high school, which then dead-ended into a search for a half-joke that cratered into a mixed-metaphore here at the usually-reliable youbitch.

Indeed, the little things can make an otherwise dreary, grey, and cloudy day all smily.

Oh, and there was a bug.

I never thought I'd see these words written by an adult:

why do I get the feeling you guys are yanking my chain? I guess I'll have to ask Sandy, she will be straight with me!

I would suggest that Lippy Livey prepare herself for amazing new levels of betrayal, shaming, and a chain-yanking most people only read about in Penthouse Forum. Sandy?!

I had all kindsa Sandy riffin' on Zonker links to pan out here, but sandy moved :-(

Sandy's new home is here. By the time Longhorn/Vista comes out, or Duke Nukem Forever, whichever comes first, I'll even update my sidebar template!

Hugs,
Rube

Check out the smoke on slashdot. There are a few very important reasons for a company to switch over to Macs. Viruses, Spyware, and Solitaire, to name just three. I just installed Windows XP on a fairly run-of-the-mill mini-PC, the ASUS Pundit-R. It took me two day to get all the drivers sorted out. I've still got an entry in the device manager for a mysterious "USB Controller" with a yellow exclamation point next to it which doesn't seem to be covered by the ASUS or ATI driver downloads. You can re-install a Mac in about an hour, all drivers and applications included, no matter what model. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even tell the install program to leave your home directory alone, and all your application settings will remain.

On the other hand, I've had a lot of customer contact lately. Most of my customers have irresolvable reasons to stay on the platform they're on, almost invariably Win32. Whether it's a Tax-Consulting program that makes extensive use of COM and the Windows version of Microsoft Office and Outlook, or an embedded controlling program for an industrial baking machine that only runs on Win98 SE, these people are locked in, and generally at ease with that fact. But with that, the 'vendor lock-in' argument against Apple Computer goes right out the window.

Companies shouldn't switch platforms just because somebody on Slashdot can provide an overpowering argument. Switching is expensive, no matter which direction. If you switch to Mac, you have to know that you can't realistically have more that one choice for an office productivity package, ironically MS Office. On Windows, you've got native versions of OpenOffice, Hansa Office, Corel WordPerfect Office (my personal choice at the moment), and just about anything else you can think of, none of which exist on Mac. Mac does have Pages, which beats rings around Word for 99% of what you're going to want to do, as long as what you want to do doesn't involve other companies being able to interact directly with your documents.

There are many arguments against Macification, and many more in favor. It all comes down to whether or not the boss wants to pony up the money for some sexy-ass hardware.

[are you there?]
yes

There's a lot to be said for good work habits. At least that's what I've heard, mostly from people who have good work habits, and also have, perhaps not coincidentally, fairly recent iPods. It's hard to balance abject sloth and material greed, I've found, so at some point you just try to find the path of least suffering. Just give a smile on the sidewalk to some girl who's trying so hard to make an impression. You don't have to express your loathing each and every minute to the untermenschen that you are forced by God and man to walk past when all you really want is to get from point A to point B to take the money from party C. Party C understands that you're not there to talk about the weather, but it's protocol, so just fuckin' do it.

Good work habits are more than just Knowing Your Shit. Good work habits include getting out of bed before noon, whether you have to or not [glance at Andy]; not masturbating in front of customers [glance at Thomas]; coming within 4 significant digits of your proposed budget [glance in mirror]; using your spellchecker when norms will be reading; and, last but not least, not fucking the co-ops [no glance necessary].

Good work habits involving knowing your product, and know when not to bend your customer over a barrel, which does occasionally make sense. Call your mother every now and then; do your paperwork; and for God sakes, stop using the fucking copier to make visuals of your goddam buttocks. I know this is all very difficult for you scrubs, but please, do make an effort: We're in this game to win. Now get out there and kick some ASS!

So, I was sitting at the trainstop tonight, on my way home from work, listening to a podcast of Nightline on my iPod, in which they covered the spreading avian flu epidemic and, jumpin' jehosephat, we all gonna die. But I knew that. However, they had sound bites of Chimpy McHitler doing a couple of press conferences, and I'll be damned if he doesn't butcher this one even worse than nuclear. Did you know we're sitting on a pandemic of Èvian Flu? If you've ever wondered what the French were doing to contribute to the end of mankind as we know it, aside from accordion music, now you know.

I swear, the boy's sounding more like a cross between John Wayne and Emily Litella with every passing sentence. In a matter of months, he'll be giving the State of the Union address, and will sign off $200 billion to preserve our natural racehorses.

People, I'd soon shit as look at ya, as my dear departed grandfather was fond of saying to us grandchillens. There's just nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a good ol' blue funk at the beginning of the week. Today, despite being Tuesday, was Monday here in Germany, for all intents and purpose. The long weekend was over, and I enjoyed three days of true sloth, the likes of which I've not enjoyed for quite some time here. Yesterday was the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Re-unification Day, and therefore a holiday. I don't have a television at the moment, so I'm not quite sure how the yokels down in dogpatch celebrated, or if they celebrated. The closest I've heard to someone marking the occasion was a documentary on the Columbine massacre that was on one of the state-run television channels last night; I guess replaying the awe-inspiring "Tear down this wall" speech would've been regarded as sycophantic. They could've maybe just shown the thousands of Pershing II protesters instead of Reagan, just to be fair. I mean, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, there wasn't just bottomless love and gratitude for Reagan here in the 80s; there were also some nay-sayers.

So, 15 years later, what have we got here? The Wessies (West Germans) hate the Ossies (East Germans), the Ossies are all Nazis, the country's being run into the ground by Greens and Socialists, and Rube's got a headache to complement his weird-ass earache. And the beer? Color me unimpressed. Sell me on it, people, it takes more than beer to offset an 80% tax burden. This isn't really blowing my skirt up. Maybe it's time for an "OK, Mr. Gorbatchev, you can put that wall back up" speech, and a new Cold War to stir the drink. Gorby's going to be here in Augsburg on Saturday, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

I'll soldier on. Europe's OK, despite my visceral hatred of cold weather and accordions.

Who do you want to be? I'm pretty happy with who I am, all things considered. I mean, the joints are getting a little too creaky to be right where I want to be. I get earaches a lot. Earaches? When the hell did that start. I seem to recall something about an earache the last time when I was 10 years old, in Washington, watching a Caps game. During a raucous pre-game pillowfight in the hotel, I was blindsided viciously by one of the other running-men, and fell ear-first into the corner of the nightstand. Screaming children, dancing lights before my eyes, and an eardrum gushing blood onto the bed, from what I can remember. But there's a groove for you; I didn't even need alcohol back then to pull the ol', "Hey y'all, watch this!" It just happens naturally to children, without the need for finely-aged and/or -brewed refreshments, like, say, your run-of-the-mill blog meet, with bullwhips and such.

But somehow the earache lain in wait for two-and-a-half decades, ready to pounce. I've been sick for about 3 weeks now, which really isn't like me. Normally, I've got an iron constitution, seeing as over the years I've built up an environment of toxins in my body that's inhospitable to your average germ varmint. To all life, really. The soupy buildup of nicotine, alcohol, and stress toxins in my blood would put the post-Katrina sludge in New Orleans to shame, just wait until the Rube-Tsunami hits, then let's see Curious George wriggle out of the media storm that follows. "Rube: What Went Wrong?"

Yeah, well, enough about that shit. On with the show. I'm not getting any younger, despite the wash of childhood diseases and injuries that may yet wait around the corner on my walk home tonight.

What? The Braves won the division? It's like baseball season is on fast-forward every year. I didn't see a single game since April. Damn.

Man o man, I can't believe they actually did that this year, with that bunch o' bums they were fielding in April. But then, ever since Cox started beating his wife when the team loses, the Bravos seemed to have stepped it up a notch. For Ms. Cox' sake.

More and more, it seems to me that there's nothing new or innovative in life. I think the more you understand something, the less you enjoy it. Take computers, for example. I understand computers. I've been working on them now almost thirty years, ever since my first home job, the risible Texas Instruments TI 994/A. My second computer was the much more suitable Mattel Aquarius, replete with 16K expansion board. 16K? I remember thinking it was the shit, something I could never even dream of filling up. Consider the following BASIC program:

10 ? "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

That's about 25 bytes, and also about the extent of my BASIC programming abilities at the age of 11. I remember there was this other kid in my sixth grade class who also had an Aquarius. I remember him bitching because he only had the 4K expansion, and he didn't have any room left in memory for the data sets that he used in the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG he'd programmed on it. I would have loaned him mine, but I was humiliated into lying that my flight simulator was almost finished, so sorry, no dice.

In the eighth grade, I took my first computer-oriented course at school, which was called "Business Computing on the Apple ][". I'm not exactly sure what eight-graders are supposed to understand about business computing, or what we were supposed to think of the cleverly hackerish use of square brackets for the roman numerals in the Apple ]['s name, but I was nonetheless intimidated into swearing that I would never buy a computer, much less one that had the colors of the international homosexual conspiracy brazenly embedded in a fruit. Subtle it ain't, the old Apple logo. Instead, I would live my life in buckskin trousers and shoot at revenuers with my kentucky windage, wishing for simpler times when men were men, and night was dark. Which of course is why I'm now a UNIX system administrator, and write blog entries in bars on my Apple laptop.

So nowadays, I understand that every laptop is basically a remix of different off-the-shelf parts, with a selection of the available software, as money allows, nothing special. There's only the capacity of hard drives, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM installed that make any dent. It's all the same shit. There are many computer companies, but only a few huge factories that pump out the shit that they all build into their computers. There is no wonder, no joy, mystery to any of it.

This principle applies to everything in life. At least, it applies to anything built after the second world war. German engineers are no better than the Americans anymore, they all use the same CAD software to get their shit done, and, with the Internet, there are no magical metallurgical formulas, no secret underground laboratories, no oil fields in the Balkans that make a difference, only Google results. Nowadays, there's only the price of commodities on the global market, the intricacies of international currency markets, and the sewing together of the same, tired old components by some poor saps in Taiwan for each and every manufacturer in each and every field of business, be it shoes or MP3 players.

Depressing.

[22:20]
I'm giving the New Worst Bar in the World a second chance tonight. For about the eighth time now, I guess. These guys are the worst of the worst. They're even worse than I remembered, and that was bad enough. I've been sitting here now for about 10 minutes, and they haven't even acknowledged my presence. There's 4 chicks behind the bar, just a-wiping them counters, a-polishing them glasses, and a-wasting my fucking time. I guess I keep coming back out of morbid curiosity, of the literal kind. I've got to see how long it takes for this place to die off.

Atrocious service. There's an entire floor of guests here where I'm sitting, and we all came in about the same time. Probably about 10 people. There's no way they could've missed us, and anyway, I'm sitting on the railing, with my sizeable noggin in plain view of God and everybody. Let's watch...

[22:30]
Welp, still high and dry here. The staff have, in the meantime, made a perfunctory round of the lower floor down there. They didn't bother to put out their cigarettes to do it though, just left them burning in the ashtrays. Never a good sign. I'll light a cigarette and see what happens.

[22:35]
Cigarette's out. Somebody's coming up the stairs, oh wait! She's got a notepad with her! She's either a waitress or a reporter, and either one would suit my purposes at this point. Meanwhile, more customers are grousing around and looking nervously over their shoulders, the silence of the taps a deafening presence in the room. My hatred hangs over this place like a cloud. Thalia Bar and Grill, I am your own personal Simon Wiesenthal, you worthless, arrogant bunch of fucks.

[22:39]
The reporter took my drink order. I ordered a beer, and I'm anxious to see if she fucks it up. That would be just like the AFP to do something like that. Arrogant Cowboy American Orders Mai Thai, Asks Twice for 'Cute Little Umbrella'. It's a sting, I fucking knew it. I will bring this place down around their ears. The Duke would.

[22:41]
After leaving something on my table that most certainly looked like a beer, the waitress was unresponsive to my admittedly lukewarm thank-you. Fucking narc.

[23:30]
This fucking bitch. She only came up one more time, and that was to clear off another table, and then she went back down without asking if I needed another beer. I guess I don't, seeing as I've gotten attached to this one, as spending an hour with a beer brings you closer to it. I shall shit upon this bar, its name will be stricken from every card, from every column, and every positive blog entry I ever wrote about it, should there actually be any. The Thalia Movie Bar and Grill is, without a doubt, the worst bar in the world.

I'm in a chatty mood tonight. That may very well be because it's Sunday, and Sunday in Augsburg means Biscuits à la Rube, and Grits au Fromage. Such breakfasts are good starts to any day, even when served at 4:30 in the afternoon, in filthy pajamas.

So, what shall we talk about? Let's talk about the weather. In a cruel turn of fate, the weather finally got warm the week after the kids went back to school. Fuck 'em. Treats them right for living in the arctic circle. Move back to the world, kids, there's sunshine and hurricanes.

Ok, that's the weather. Let's talk shop. I got a steady gig now, which doesn't take much time, and doesn't pay all that badly. I'm self-employed, so whenever a steady source of income shows up, it's always welcome. It doesn't quite make up for the 2 and half months of project work that I just did for which I didn't get paid, but it makes telling certain customers to go fuck themselves that much easier.

I actually worked for one customer for up to 60 hours a week for the last two months. Even though I relaxed my normally-exorbitant hourly rates for the sake of customer relations, the bills are running up into the tens of thousands. Thing is, I haven't seen a dime of that money yet, and the way things are looking further upstream, I don't think I'll ever see any of the money. The other party, who's basically doing sales for the project while I do the work, has decided that almost all of the customers we've been servicing like overworked whores lately are 'Reference Customers', who will be useful down the road for bringing in other customers, and therefore won't get billed. Which means I won't see any money from them at all. Which means I'm pretty much figuring out whether or not spending time in the big house is worth the ass-whipping I'd like to lay on my salesman. Still too close to call.

The press might want to stop trying to milk this one.

Mama Moonbat and Her Multitudes

30 people? I've had orgies bigger than that, and I don't recall getting phone calls from Murdoch over it, either. In fact, through most of the "summer" here, there was some sad-assed march against the Hartz IV welfare reforms, which involved somehow making people actually fill out more forms to keep getting unemployment checks. Every Monday night, the teeming masses of about 20 or 30 people would march through the town square to the train station, with some buffoon up front shouting rhyming missives about Schröder or something through a megaphone. And I always wondered to myself, usually through a beery haze, if he really saw himself as some sort of revolutionary figure, with the streaming red banners of the International Communist Conspiracy waving all about, black confetti falling from the medieval buildings around them, as the oppressed volk breathe a sigh of relief that they finally have a voice. Instead, I mean, of the 20 or 30 bongo-playing dopeheads who were shouting, incoherently, his dumbass rhymes back at him, to the derisive hootin' and hollerin' of the Monday-night Maximilian-Strasse promenaders, with the intention of getting their $2000.00 a month benefits extended past the 3-year limit.

What a bunch of fucking parasites.

Just in case y'all missed it, the photos from the wedding are up. The bachelor party photos have yet to clear customs, ahem.

And speaking of Herr Doktor Probst, he's got his own blog now. Check it out. I'm sure we'll be seeing more from him, as soon as the monkey-in-the-mirror 'Test' posts scroll out of the way.

Mutual friend Martin Bruch also has an interesting blog, as long as you're a Mac weenie like me.

This is perhaps the most beautiful, romantic thing I've ever read (NSFW):

Ladies, find the ugliest man you know (and my e-mail address is linked on the right) and I'll assure you that you'll soon forget where your clitoris ends and his tongue begins. Within hours, you'll be thinking that you breeched birthed and adut male.

From skippystalin, of course.

Hope their sites can stay online after the vicious Bitchdotting they're getting here.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that open-xchange is worth the trouble, kick them in the nuts. Hard.

Upon describing me as "mature":

That wasn't really the word I was looking for, but I couldn't find any nicer synonyms for "old" in the thesaurus.

Man, I'm tired, but I can finally relax a little, now that I'm down to my one or two nightly cocktails, instead of the caligulan excesses I've been subjected to of late. The preceding week was a grueling, besotted blur that I strongly believe will make me rethink my entire position on alcohol. Ok. Yep. Good point, Mr. Oblongata. Ok, I continued, nodding thoughtfully while clamping the unlit pipe between my well-formed incisors, I do believe you've got a point after all.

Alcohol is a funny thing, as long as your definition of funny has a lot in common with Hermann Goering's. For us drunkards, it's an almost unbearable hit parade of mortifying moments that accompanies even the most insincere, shallow attempts at soul-searching. Again and again, it makes you pose the question to yourself that we've all had to try and wrestle at one point or another, namely: What the fuck was I thinking? I lost my goddamn cell phone in the drunken haze last week. I loved that cell phone, sort of. I realize now that I'm in the market fer one a em's sexy iTunes phones, but, honestly, I'd rather have a Nano. In fact, I'd rather have even a fool's hope that I'll have enough money to buy smokes for another glorious month o' puffin', but I don't, so I guess I'm not so much in the market fer as I am up shit creek without a paddle in the absence of.

I lost my phone during a 300-yard long, meandering stumble home from the bachelor party. I know that I didn't leave it in the night club, because I remember making a phone call or two on my way home. I'd called my lusty companions, asking them if they'd check around the club and see if they could find my digital camera, which was missing, and bring it to safety. I then called my baby, and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be home within an hour, 300 yards being what they are at 5:30 in the morning, and that hopefully she hadn't forgotten the earplugs I'd recommended she buy, lest my easily-foreseen yet completely unavoidable sawing and clearing of the rainforest disturb her for the 2 or 3 hours that I would actually be allowed to remain in bed, owing to the 9 o'clock meeting I'd cleverly scheduled for the next morning. When I was wrenched from my snoring paradise by Satan's Alarm Clock, I was sadly without a phone, yet, remarkably, with my digital camera in my pocket. Had I actually been talking to my friends and loved ones on the camera? How very, very David Lynch.

But let's not forget the human costs. I almost punched out some rummy hobo in a bar for hitting on my sweet baby Saturday night, after a boozy pub crawl. He was drunk, and my sweet baby was looking very sweet indeed, but there ain't more than one rummy hobo who's laying on hands around here, and that rummy hobo is me, buddy. I don't suppose the late hour or the gigantic bar-tab had anything at all to do with my rush to visit justice on this poor, lonely sap.

Alcohol has cost me plenty, but I guess there's no point in stopping now.

In every industry, there are the kickbacks, the skimmings, the tricks of the trade that allow the core products to be competitively priced, and accessible to Joe Consumer. In some cases, it even allows the core products to be given away for free. In the late 90's, for example, we used to actually sell computers for below cost, knowing that, within six months, we could charge thousands of dollars to check these same computers for Y2K-compliancy. I ran the (mostly ceremonial) test procedures at least a thousand times during the last six months of 1999, and not once did a customer ask me why we didn't check the things before we rolled them out, sometimes mere days before returning to certify them. I must have gained 40 pounds in 1999.

Another great example of this particular business model is Microsoft's XBox. Every XBox in the world is sold at a horrifying loss. The hardware costs alone are something like 90% of the price tag, and the other 10% couldn't even put a dent in the massive R&D, marketing, and licensing costs The Beast poured into this fine piece of machinery. Nevertheless, Microsoft made (and still makes) a killing off this thing. The secret is the game licensing. GatesCo. basically gives away the hardware, so that they can make money off of the games that are sold to run on it. The XBox's anti-"piracy" technology ensures that only those games which have been blessed with The Key can run on it, and The Key, my friends, costs the pudenda for those who wish to use it.

Which brings us to my fucking haircut. Throug whispered confessions in nervous, back-alley meetings, it came to my attention that there exists here in Germany a reasonably-priced barber shop, hidden within the steamy bowels of a department store. Department stores are, in Germany at least, the Grand Mufti of Commerce, because they are often open until the ungodly hour of 8:00 PM, instead of closing at 4 in the afternoon like every other shop on the continent. People who do not belong to unions, and therefore do not enjoy the 11-hour work week and 45-hour lunches which seem to be commonplace here, might, in such an establishment, actually be able to buy an overpriced pair of Italian shoes after work that will turn into shredded leather foot wrappings during the first snow like something out of a grainy, black and white Operation Barbarossa documentary which will only lead to cannibaliism at some point, God help us all.

So, armed with the forbidden knowledge and secret pass-phrase, I walked casually into said cut-easy at 6 in the afternoon, curious as to what awaited me. I walked confidently to the counter, where the tell-tale scent of Barbicide betrayed the establishment's true purpose, and announced that I was there for a...haircut! I was promptly greeted by an attractive young nymph, probably fresh out of art-school, in need of funds, in a lowly state, ready for every degradation I could muster from my addled id.

I can't really recall much about the haircut. It was alright, the barbress turned out to be not that attractive after all, which is gang und gebe, a little pudgy, actually, though she did have magic hands at the hair-washing sink, though the fact that she didn't ask if I wanted the "special treatment" was not lost on me, and therefore was likely to affect her tip, negatively. The wrong kind of rub was in coming, though. She did a bad job on the head. Now, I know I've got a difficult head to cut, and I'm usually very understanding when newbies have difficulty with it. After the damage was done, the nymphette looked askance, and inquired as to whether I would like some gel on my hair. In a moment of weakness, I said, well, maybe just a little dab to hold back the humiliation when I walked out the door. So, she being responsive, and subject to my every whim, she took out a tube of hair gel, squeezed out a miniscule drop of the sticky, sensous fluid, and rubbed it on my battered skull. I looked in the mirror, and, swallowing my distaste, mussed a bit till I looked like something other than a month-old jack-o-lantern. I thanked her, and proceeded to the cash register. I paid my due, and realized she'd tacked €1.50 onto the price for the fucking hair gel!

I realize the people have to earn their money. I realize that the price for the haircut was suspiciously reasonable for these dark post-Deutschmark days, but a fucking €1.50 for a fucking cum-dab of hair gel!!!!!1

At this point, I was confronted with the decision, do I scream, at the top of my lungs, YOU FUCKING BACKSTABBING CUNT I'LL FUCKING DO YOU IN YOU GODDAMN BITCH FOR THAT FUCKING HAIRCUT YOU GONNA FUCKING PAY MOMMY MOMMY, or do I just meekly pay the €13.50, thank the nice lady, and walk out the door like someone actually did me a favor? People who know me will have no trouble believing that, not only did I pay the full tab, I also dropped a Euro into the tip jar. What a twat I am.

At two points in this story, as with so many cases in life, I could have been saved with one simple question: What would the Duke do? First off, John Wayne probably would have declined the hair gel, I'm guessing. Failing that, he most certainly would have shot every fucking customer in the department store amid myriad shoulder-rolls and hat-tips, which, honestly, is exactly what this pussified gay-bar of a country needs a bit more of.

Where's my fucking big-airn?

is a Bavarian wedding. I'm not really sure which is more important in such a regional affair, the unbridled alcohol abuse by everyone over the age of 16, or the abject humiliation of the bridal pair.

The intentional self-poisoning began on Thursday, with the Bachelor party. Pubs were crawled, bottoms were pinched, and, in the end, Rube showed that he could still run with the young dogs.

There's Rube, passed out in a chair in some nightclub he doesn't even know the name of, at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And yes, the next morning's 9 o'clock meeting was a rousing, unqualified disaster, thanks for asking. By some weird twist of fate, Friday night was the birthday party of a family of immigrants out of somewhere over in Vampireland, which is anything east of Czechoslovakia. That was good for yet another night of binge drinking, though I must admit the heart, she was not really in it.

Which brings us to Saturday, the aforementioned wedding. Apparently, it's traditional in Bavaria to steal and make a copy of the Groom's house key while he's not paying attention. On the day of the wedding, while he's preparing to feed and bedrink his guests, they break into his apartment and trash the place. I heard stories of dismantled furniture, toilets stuffed with chocolate, pulled circuit breakers, and something about 150 gallons of mashed potatoes. With friends like these...

The entire evening of the Wedding was an endless stream of humiliation for the groom, the pinnacle of which must have been when we, in the tradition of the region, kidnapped his bride, took her out drinking, and he had to come search for us. I'm not exactly sure what the point of that particular ritual is, but she seemed to enjoy it just a little too much.

At any rate, congratulations to Herr Doktor Probst and his lovely new bride Martina for a beautiful wedding, and my heartfelt sympathies for the fact that some asshole went through his cd collection and swapped all the cases.

CNN.com - Inventor denies dead cat fuel story - Sep 15, 2005:

The underlying truth is, of course, that should you ever have to even deny such a thing, you've already lost.

Hallo, Hans

I vanted to assk you vhy ze american und british tourists, ze are alvays giggling vhen zey come here for skiing.

Danke,

Fritz Weber
Wank-Lifte Ski Lift

Jottings from yesterday's bar napkin, from the daily evening meeting-of-one:

I'm the chair of your misfortune, 4 legs of strength compared to your two. I loathe your cushions.
There are 3 people you should never lie to: Your lawyer, your doctor, and your accountant.
Your bits of SuSE architecture, you will not get in there. You will stare in amazement, at the amount of trust there.

Unvollständig.
Speth was eyeing my unit.
With Windows,you've got a whole other set of problems. I am the leader of the technik. Keep your fucking hands off of them. Dicknose.
There's no denying it: Things have been better.
Rsync software: No network access. How many revolutions? (backup rev's)(under normal usage)?
Why do I busy myself with such nonsense?
I'm surrounded by freaks and losers, traitors, liars, bitchy little people I'm supposed to give a fuck about.
Perfect coif, unimpeachable ascot. Saaaaah-weeeeet.
Wearing a green ascot on St. Patrick's day is probably not the best way to keep from getting pinched, I fear.
In a few years, I'll look back on these days and think, "What the fuck was that all about?"
Jeepers, I'm tired.
I'm tired of being tired. But I'm more tired of being broke.
Man, I guess TCP/IP, in retrospect, scales pretty well.
I can't believe I actually used to be an IPX bigot.
I also can't believe I used to own a class C subnet, namely 38.221.9.0/24. Merc, Fred, Medusa, Thor, Zeus, NS, man oh man, those were some days!
Here's some helpful advice for the ladies out there: If you're ugly, show some tit! C'mon, it's a date!
People sit around and compare their tools...
Tomorrow, I'm going to have a blister under my fingernail. Damn.

Well, I guess it's about time to stop smoking. I found a brown spot under my tongue today. I've probably got jaw cancer. Which probably means they'll need to cut off the lower half of my face, and reduce me to a freak whose tongue just hangs out of a jagged hole under his nose, wagging impotently with every attempt to speak, unable to articulate a sound, just emmitting some sort of excited whistle of gratitude when it's time for my mush.

Fuck, how did it come to this? I'm only thirty-five. My grandfather smoked for 60 years and only quit because he died. Otherwise, he'd be right here next to me, hooting appreciatively through a tube sticking out of his chest, then we'd go outside and pick up some hookers. Sleep well, Grandpa Arry, you deserved everything you got.

You know, that moment when you start typing, when you start groooooovin', not working at it, let the blog do the work for a change. This thing's been buggin' me, beggin' me, asking me please feed the hole, your publikum is waiting on you, Rube. But you know what, Blog? I'm fucking busy, whiny ass. I've got things to do, people to meet, bills to pay and letters to send. T'aint room here for two jefes, so one of us needs to get a-buggin, and I do believe that would be me. So, now, as long as I'm the one doing the buggin', you be the one doing the list'nin'. Now you listen to me, Blog, and you listen good. Velociman has a boil on his choad, Acidman's got a bug up his ass, and Lousiana ain't feeling so good his damn self. But me? I'm doing jes fine. Rube done took his blood pressure yesterday, after speed-snorting a liter of coffee, and it was 106 over fucking 60. I was on my way to work on a fuckin' Sunday, hands shaking like Katherine Hepburn's favorite vibrator, and you just sat here like a bump on a log waiting for it to find you.

Write yourself, you ungrateful little fuck. What's that? Oh, yeah, anytime, pussy, anytime.

Since I'm too busy at the moment to keep this rickety jalopy running, I've decided to post anything which the dregs of society decide to throw my inbox's way. I need a spam filter...

Case in point:

Chapter 1: A Viking Funeral
Author Unknown

He's gone, I heard the good doctor tell my wife and sister who apparently were somewhere in the near vicinity. No I wanted to scream out but couldn't. What the hell is going on? My eyes were shut tight and try as I might they would not open or even flutter. My entire body was frozen and refused to respond to any mental commands that I issued. Darkness held me captive.

"He wished to be cremated and have his ashes strewn over the homes of all his exes and meaningful lovers etc., the meaningless to receive condolences thru the mail or whatever", my beloved wife Andy relayed the info to the Doc or someone.

Then my beloved, somewhat frugal Sister, chimed in "My God stamps alone will cost a small fortune". "Just put a notice in a few fish-wrappers". As for scattering ashes, forget the former wives as they would make every attempt to bring the aircraft down before the payload could be delivered. The meaningfuls would be more receptive but squirm with discomfort while trying to explain the gesture to their current meaningfuls. We were only friends won't wash".

"Well, his 2nd wish was for a "Viking funeral", Andy offered. Maybe we could get some of his old drinking buddies to heave "Molotov" cocktails at a small vessel as it floats near the "Lil' " River Bridge that spans the infamous Alatoona Lake. Henry Bryan and Jackie Dempsey will gladly secure an old fishing boat I'm sure".

The 2nd wish prevailed. Somehow my wife and sister pulled it off. It was near dusk on a late August day when the much publicized event began. Bells Ferry road was closed to traffic in both directions, so the bridge would be open to the throngs of expected onlookers. Twenty cocktail hurlers waited in formation for the funeral barge to pass beneath, carrying yours truly to Valhalla. All at once the small boat came into view in tow behind a larger ski boat. When it neared the bridge, someone severed the tow line. Now the vessel was drifting under the L.R.B. Finally it emerged on the other side as the cocktails were lit, awaiting the Hurl command. Then it came, Ready! Hurl! All at once 20 arms obeyed the order! A few struck the small craft, causing it to ignite. The burlap wrapped corpse was now slowly engulfed in smoke and flame.

"My God it moved" a horrified deputy sheriff screamed!"Saw it thru my field glasses". Henry Bryan snatched the glasses from the grasp of the now hysterical lawman. "Let me have a look see"! Naw, must've been your eyes doin' tricks, what with it being nearly dark and all.

Only small remnants of the remained by now, floating on the surface near a large patch of ashes, surrounded by a mysterious ring of grease, all floating away toward a distant beach. Show was over and the crowd began to thin out. Some were puzzled by the behavior of Henry B. and Jackie D. however. Both were giggling and high-fiving anyone nearby. Eventually they were joined by the widow and sister of the deceased. Both ladies suppressed their own laughter all were aboard the Merc convertible belonging to J.D.. Now as the white Mercedes sped south on Bells Ferry Road, Henry B. broke the silence! There must be a God, what an unexpected bonus!He was refering to the fact that one of the hurlers was none other than George Tweedy.

It seemed that "Old Pruneface" (George) inadvertantly dropped his flaming cocktail all over himself! J.D. quickly pushed the "Human Torch" over the bridge railing and downward toward the murky water some 50 feet below. As luck would have it, George missed the water and upon the rocky shore. "Close but no cigar" would be this poor old wretches final epitath.

All 4 occupants wiped tears caused by derisive laughter from their eyes as the speeding vehichle reached it's destination. Now all entered the Villas of Kennesaw clubhouse bar, which had been previously reserved for the evening. "Did he suffer"? I asked. "Which one?", my wife asked. "Huh"!

Finally H.B. was able to speak and relay the tale of "Old Lonesome George's demise". Loud guffaws filled the room, it was gonna be a great night!!!

Stay tuned for Chapter Two:
Where in the world Is Gary ASSitelli?

Didja ever sit and wonder, just how horrendous X1-X10 must have been? I mean, network transparency is admirable, but it's all in the impelementation, folks.

At these sorts of cabbage-patch spectacles that crop up every now and then, it's important to remember the training. Macs are special. Macs are different. Macs are premium consumer items not meant for every 300 lb. frizzy-haired slushee-sucker who buys her computers at the grocery store.

Remember the training. Steve? Are you there? Have you forsaken us? SAY SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE A JESUS!

But Steve's probably just cackling like Renfield in some white marble penthouse, calling Gates on the phone; "Bill, you couldn't buy this kind of publicity!"

"Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner" (Stephan Schacher)

A trip across America is the dream of many Europeans. At the tender age of nineteen, photographer Stephan Schacher undertook a typical sightseeing tour of the United States, from coast to coast on the Kerouac trail, visiting the cities and monuments, both natural and man-made, along the legendary Route 66. Almost 20 years later, Schacher decided to take a second trip across North America. This time, however, things would be done a little differently: Driving from upstate New York to Northern Alaska, almost 11,000 kilometers across Canada and the United States, Schacher decided photograph every meal along the way, as well as every waitress who served it.

What may sound like a goofy, drunken college idea dreamed up at three o'clock in the morning became a serious undertaking for Schacher. Eating exclusively in roadside diners, the author blazes a low-brow culinary trail across the continent, braving greasy hamburgers and questionable seafood platters. The book itself is handsomely crafted. After turning page after page of greasy diner cuisine, one begins to wonder just how many t-bone steaks and onion rings a man can eat before his heart explodes.

Using specialty paper, muted colors, and creative typography, it sits well on the nightstand or coffee table for the casual reading session. Making meticulous records of his mileage, food expenditures, and the times of arrival and departure, Schacher is able to painstakingly recreate his entire journey in facts and figures to complement the irresistibly personal experience of the solitary roadside meal.

This is a good sign...

[root@freak1 chkrootkit-0.45]# ls -al
bash: /bin/ls: Input/output error

On my poor little Linux box, who just sits in the corner and never hurts anybody. When he was in the kitchen, next to my refrigerator, he once had 700 days of uptime, damn near 2 years without a reboot. He even spent the better part of an afternoon in a half-inch of standing water, when I accidentally left my freezer door open.

Brave little man, go gently into that great /dev/null in the sky. And take my fucking django projects with you, you weak little twat. Jesus, why do I only do backups for other people?!

That's what I'll be. Sitting in the server room, surrounded by untold generations of in-bred housecats, all playing little banjos and admiring my pouty lips. Crazy ol' Cat-Rube, wondering where all my friends have gone, why my children never call, and why, way back when, in aught-five, nobody wished me a happy System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Fuck you guys. I'm deleting all your mail.

As I was googling around, debating whether or not to install the copy of Office XP I've recently come into, in order to upgrade my slowly rotting-yet-beloved copy of Office 2000 Pro, I came across 1) enough evidence to deter me, and b) what has to be the best screenshot caption I've ever seen:

Some may have noticed that in the last 6 months, YouBitch.org has skyrocketed in popularity, owing to various influences viz bribery and dirty, dirty tricks.

It's grown so popular, in fact, that you'll find YouBitch.org in the Truth Laid Bear ecology sandwiched between ROFASix and "Test Page for Apache Installation".

How the hell do you come in behind a Test Page for Apache Installation?

Sometimes it's the little things that make it worthwhile. Today, for example, I spent 2 hours working on a network firewall whose brand name, Ben Hur, is eerily close to the Bavarian phrase, bin a hur, which means, roughly, I am a prostitute. This is why I giggle to myself when I think there's no one watching.

Also, I get to swear a lot a work, since none of these cretins speak English well enough to know what "oh you cocksucking piece of fucking shit" actually means, in the book sense.

In a related train of thought, I was in Kissing, Bavaria yesterday. Streams of consciousness being what they are, I immediately thought of Henry Kissinger, whose name means someone who comes from Kissing, and then I thought to myself, jeez, I haven't come from Kissing since high school, which then dead-ended into a search for a half-joke that cratered into a mixed-metaphore here at the usually-reliable youbitch.

Indeed, the little things can make an otherwise dreary, grey, and cloudy day all smily.

Oh, and there was a bug.

I never thought I'd see these words written by an adult:

why do I get the feeling you guys are yanking my chain? I guess I'll have to ask Sandy, she will be straight with me!

I would suggest that Lippy Livey prepare herself for amazing new levels of betrayal, shaming, and a chain-yanking most people only read about in Penthouse Forum. Sandy?!

I had all kindsa Sandy riffin' on Zonker links to pan out here, but sandy moved :-(

Sandy's new home is here. By the time Longhorn/Vista comes out, or Duke Nukem Forever, whichever comes first, I'll even update my sidebar template!

Hugs,
Rube

Check out the smoke on slashdot. There are a few very important reasons for a company to switch over to Macs. Viruses, Spyware, and Solitaire, to name just three. I just installed Windows XP on a fairly run-of-the-mill mini-PC, the ASUS Pundit-R. It took me two day to get all the drivers sorted out. I've still got an entry in the device manager for a mysterious "USB Controller" with a yellow exclamation point next to it which doesn't seem to be covered by the ASUS or ATI driver downloads. You can re-install a Mac in about an hour, all drivers and applications included, no matter what model. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even tell the install program to leave your home directory alone, and all your application settings will remain.

On the other hand, I've had a lot of customer contact lately. Most of my customers have irresolvable reasons to stay on the platform they're on, almost invariably Win32. Whether it's a Tax-Consulting program that makes extensive use of COM and the Windows version of Microsoft Office and Outlook, or an embedded controlling program for an industrial baking machine that only runs on Win98 SE, these people are locked in, and generally at ease with that fact. But with that, the 'vendor lock-in' argument against Apple Computer goes right out the window.

Companies shouldn't switch platforms just because somebody on Slashdot can provide an overpowering argument. Switching is expensive, no matter which direction. If you switch to Mac, you have to know that you can't realistically have more that one choice for an office productivity package, ironically MS Office. On Windows, you've got native versions of OpenOffice, Hansa Office, Corel WordPerfect Office (my personal choice at the moment), and just about anything else you can think of, none of which exist on Mac. Mac does have Pages, which beats rings around Word for 99% of what you're going to want to do, as long as what you want to do doesn't involve other companies being able to interact directly with your documents.

There are many arguments against Macification, and many more in favor. It all comes down to whether or not the boss wants to pony up the money for some sexy-ass hardware.

[are you there?]
yes

There's a lot to be said for good work habits. At least that's what I've heard, mostly from people who have good work habits, and also have, perhaps not coincidentally, fairly recent iPods. It's hard to balance abject sloth and material greed, I've found, so at some point you just try to find the path of least suffering. Just give a smile on the sidewalk to some girl who's trying so hard to make an impression. You don't have to express your loathing each and every minute to the untermenschen that you are forced by God and man to walk past when all you really want is to get from point A to point B to take the money from party C. Party C understands that you're not there to talk about the weather, but it's protocol, so just fuckin' do it.

Good work habits are more than just Knowing Your Shit. Good work habits include getting out of bed before noon, whether you have to or not [glance at Andy]; not masturbating in front of customers [glance at Thomas]; coming within 4 significant digits of your proposed budget [glance in mirror]; using your spellchecker when norms will be reading; and, last but not least, not fucking the co-ops [no glance necessary].

Good work habits involving knowing your product, and know when not to bend your customer over a barrel, which does occasionally make sense. Call your mother every now and then; do your paperwork; and for God sakes, stop using the fucking copier to make visuals of your goddam buttocks. I know this is all very difficult for you scrubs, but please, do make an effort: We're in this game to win. Now get out there and kick some ASS!

So, I was sitting at the trainstop tonight, on my way home from work, listening to a podcast of Nightline on my iPod, in which they covered the spreading avian flu epidemic and, jumpin' jehosephat, we all gonna die. But I knew that. However, they had sound bites of Chimpy McHitler doing a couple of press conferences, and I'll be damned if he doesn't butcher this one even worse than nuclear. Did you know we're sitting on a pandemic of Èvian Flu? If you've ever wondered what the French were doing to contribute to the end of mankind as we know it, aside from accordion music, now you know.

I swear, the boy's sounding more like a cross between John Wayne and Emily Litella with every passing sentence. In a matter of months, he'll be giving the State of the Union address, and will sign off $200 billion to preserve our natural racehorses.

People, I'd soon shit as look at ya, as my dear departed grandfather was fond of saying to us grandchillens. There's just nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a good ol' blue funk at the beginning of the week. Today, despite being Tuesday, was Monday here in Germany, for all intents and purpose. The long weekend was over, and I enjoyed three days of true sloth, the likes of which I've not enjoyed for quite some time here. Yesterday was the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Re-unification Day, and therefore a holiday. I don't have a television at the moment, so I'm not quite sure how the yokels down in dogpatch celebrated, or if they celebrated. The closest I've heard to someone marking the occasion was a documentary on the Columbine massacre that was on one of the state-run television channels last night; I guess replaying the awe-inspiring "Tear down this wall" speech would've been regarded as sycophantic. They could've maybe just shown the thousands of Pershing II protesters instead of Reagan, just to be fair. I mean, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, there wasn't just bottomless love and gratitude for Reagan here in the 80s; there were also some nay-sayers.

So, 15 years later, what have we got here? The Wessies (West Germans) hate the Ossies (East Germans), the Ossies are all Nazis, the country's being run into the ground by Greens and Socialists, and Rube's got a headache to complement his weird-ass earache. And the beer? Color me unimpressed. Sell me on it, people, it takes more than beer to offset an 80% tax burden. This isn't really blowing my skirt up. Maybe it's time for an "OK, Mr. Gorbatchev, you can put that wall back up" speech, and a new Cold War to stir the drink. Gorby's going to be here in Augsburg on Saturday, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

I'll soldier on. Europe's OK, despite my visceral hatred of cold weather and accordions.

Who do you want to be? I'm pretty happy with who I am, all things considered. I mean, the joints are getting a little too creaky to be right where I want to be. I get earaches a lot. Earaches? When the hell did that start. I seem to recall something about an earache the last time when I was 10 years old, in Washington, watching a Caps game. During a raucous pre-game pillowfight in the hotel, I was blindsided viciously by one of the other running-men, and fell ear-first into the corner of the nightstand. Screaming children, dancing lights before my eyes, and an eardrum gushing blood onto the bed, from what I can remember. But there's a groove for you; I didn't even need alcohol back then to pull the ol', "Hey y'all, watch this!" It just happens naturally to children, without the need for finely-aged and/or -brewed refreshments, like, say, your run-of-the-mill blog meet, with bullwhips and such.

But somehow the earache lain in wait for two-and-a-half decades, ready to pounce. I've been sick for about 3 weeks now, which really isn't like me. Normally, I've got an iron constitution, seeing as over the years I've built up an environment of toxins in my body that's inhospitable to your average germ varmint. To all life, really. The soupy buildup of nicotine, alcohol, and stress toxins in my blood would put the post-Katrina sludge in New Orleans to shame, just wait until the Rube-Tsunami hits, then let's see Curious George wriggle out of the media storm that follows. "Rube: What Went Wrong?"

Yeah, well, enough about that shit. On with the show. I'm not getting any younger, despite the wash of childhood diseases and injuries that may yet wait around the corner on my walk home tonight.

What? The Braves won the division? It's like baseball season is on fast-forward every year. I didn't see a single game since April. Damn.

Man o man, I can't believe they actually did that this year, with that bunch o' bums they were fielding in April. But then, ever since Cox started beating his wife when the team loses, the Bravos seemed to have stepped it up a notch. For Ms. Cox' sake.

More and more, it seems to me that there's nothing new or innovative in life. I think the more you understand something, the less you enjoy it. Take computers, for example. I understand computers. I've been working on them now almost thirty years, ever since my first home job, the risible Texas Instruments TI 994/A. My second computer was the much more suitable Mattel Aquarius, replete with 16K expansion board. 16K? I remember thinking it was the shit, something I could never even dream of filling up. Consider the following BASIC program:

10 ? "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

That's about 25 bytes, and also about the extent of my BASIC programming abilities at the age of 11. I remember there was this other kid in my sixth grade class who also had an Aquarius. I remember him bitching because he only had the 4K expansion, and he didn't have any room left in memory for the data sets that he used in the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG he'd programmed on it. I would have loaned him mine, but I was humiliated into lying that my flight simulator was almost finished, so sorry, no dice.

In the eighth grade, I took my first computer-oriented course at school, which was called "Business Computing on the Apple ][". I'm not exactly sure what eight-graders are supposed to understand about business computing, or what we were supposed to think of the cleverly hackerish use of square brackets for the roman numerals in the Apple ]['s name, but I was nonetheless intimidated into swearing that I would never buy a computer, much less one that had the colors of the international homosexual conspiracy brazenly embedded in a fruit. Subtle it ain't, the old Apple logo. Instead, I would live my life in buckskin trousers and shoot at revenuers with my kentucky windage, wishing for simpler times when men were men, and night was dark. Which of course is why I'm now a UNIX system administrator, and write blog entries in bars on my Apple laptop.

So nowadays, I understand that every laptop is basically a remix of different off-the-shelf parts, with a selection of the available software, as money allows, nothing special. There's only the capacity of hard drives, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM installed that make any dent. It's all the same shit. There are many computer companies, but only a few huge factories that pump out the shit that they all build into their computers. There is no wonder, no joy, mystery to any of it.

This principle applies to everything in life. At least, it applies to anything built after the second world war. German engineers are no better than the Americans anymore, they all use the same CAD software to get their shit done, and, with the Internet, there are no magical metallurgical formulas, no secret underground laboratories, no oil fields in the Balkans that make a difference, only Google results. Nowadays, there's only the price of commodities on the global market, the intricacies of international currency markets, and the sewing together of the same, tired old components by some poor saps in Taiwan for each and every manufacturer in each and every field of business, be it shoes or MP3 players.

Depressing.

[22:20]
I'm giving the New Worst Bar in the World a second chance tonight. For about the eighth time now, I guess. These guys are the worst of the worst. They're even worse than I remembered, and that was bad enough. I've been sitting here now for about 10 minutes, and they haven't even acknowledged my presence. There's 4 chicks behind the bar, just a-wiping them counters, a-polishing them glasses, and a-wasting my fucking time. I guess I keep coming back out of morbid curiosity, of the literal kind. I've got to see how long it takes for this place to die off.

Atrocious service. There's an entire floor of guests here where I'm sitting, and we all came in about the same time. Probably about 10 people. There's no way they could've missed us, and anyway, I'm sitting on the railing, with my sizeable noggin in plain view of God and everybody. Let's watch...

[22:30]
Welp, still high and dry here. The staff have, in the meantime, made a perfunctory round of the lower floor down there. They didn't bother to put out their cigarettes to do it though, just left them burning in the ashtrays. Never a good sign. I'll light a cigarette and see what happens.

[22:35]
Cigarette's out. Somebody's coming up the stairs, oh wait! She's got a notepad with her! She's either a waitress or a reporter, and either one would suit my purposes at this point. Meanwhile, more customers are grousing around and looking nervously over their shoulders, the silence of the taps a deafening presence in the room. My hatred hangs over this place like a cloud. Thalia Bar and Grill, I am your own personal Simon Wiesenthal, you worthless, arrogant bunch of fucks.

[22:39]
The reporter took my drink order. I ordered a beer, and I'm anxious to see if she fucks it up. That would be just like the AFP to do something like that. Arrogant Cowboy American Orders Mai Thai, Asks Twice for 'Cute Little Umbrella'. It's a sting, I fucking knew it. I will bring this place down around their ears. The Duke would.

[22:41]
After leaving something on my table that most certainly looked like a beer, the waitress was unresponsive to my admittedly lukewarm thank-you. Fucking narc.

[23:30]
This fucking bitch. She only came up one more time, and that was to clear off another table, and then she went back down without asking if I needed another beer. I guess I don't, seeing as I've gotten attached to this one, as spending an hour with a beer brings you closer to it. I shall shit upon this bar, its name will be stricken from every card, from every column, and every positive blog entry I ever wrote about it, should there actually be any. The Thalia Movie Bar and Grill is, without a doubt, the worst bar in the world.

I'm in a chatty mood tonight. That may very well be because it's Sunday, and Sunday in Augsburg means Biscuits à la Rube, and Grits au Fromage. Such breakfasts are good starts to any day, even when served at 4:30 in the afternoon, in filthy pajamas.

So, what shall we talk about? Let's talk about the weather. In a cruel turn of fate, the weather finally got warm the week after the kids went back to school. Fuck 'em. Treats them right for living in the arctic circle. Move back to the world, kids, there's sunshine and hurricanes.

Ok, that's the weather. Let's talk shop. I got a steady gig now, which doesn't take much time, and doesn't pay all that badly. I'm self-employed, so whenever a steady source of income shows up, it's always welcome. It doesn't quite make up for the 2 and half months of project work that I just did for which I didn't get paid, but it makes telling certain customers to go fuck themselves that much easier.

I actually worked for one customer for up to 60 hours a week for the last two months. Even though I relaxed my normally-exorbitant hourly rates for the sake of customer relations, the bills are running up into the tens of thousands. Thing is, I haven't seen a dime of that money yet, and the way things are looking further upstream, I don't think I'll ever see any of the money. The other party, who's basically doing sales for the project while I do the work, has decided that almost all of the customers we've been servicing like overworked whores lately are 'Reference Customers', who will be useful down the road for bringing in other customers, and therefore won't get billed. Which means I won't see any money from them at all. Which means I'm pretty much figuring out whether or not spending time in the big house is worth the ass-whipping I'd like to lay on my salesman. Still too close to call.

The press might want to stop trying to milk this one.

Mama Moonbat and Her Multitudes

30 people? I've had orgies bigger than that, and I don't recall getting phone calls from Murdoch over it, either. In fact, through most of the "summer" here, there was some sad-assed march against the Hartz IV welfare reforms, which involved somehow making people actually fill out more forms to keep getting unemployment checks. Every Monday night, the teeming masses of about 20 or 30 people would march through the town square to the train station, with some buffoon up front shouting rhyming missives about Schröder or something through a megaphone. And I always wondered to myself, usually through a beery haze, if he really saw himself as some sort of revolutionary figure, with the streaming red banners of the International Communist Conspiracy waving all about, black confetti falling from the medieval buildings around them, as the oppressed volk breathe a sigh of relief that they finally have a voice. Instead, I mean, of the 20 or 30 bongo-playing dopeheads who were shouting, incoherently, his dumbass rhymes back at him, to the derisive hootin' and hollerin' of the Monday-night Maximilian-Strasse promenaders, with the intention of getting their $2000.00 a month benefits extended past the 3-year limit.

What a bunch of fucking parasites.

Just in case y'all missed it, the photos from the wedding are up. The bachelor party photos have yet to clear customs, ahem.

And speaking of Herr Doktor Probst, he's got his own blog now. Check it out. I'm sure we'll be seeing more from him, as soon as the monkey-in-the-mirror 'Test' posts scroll out of the way.

Mutual friend Martin Bruch also has an interesting blog, as long as you're a Mac weenie like me.

This is perhaps the most beautiful, romantic thing I've ever read (NSFW):

Ladies, find the ugliest man you know (and my e-mail address is linked on the right) and I'll assure you that you'll soon forget where your clitoris ends and his tongue begins. Within hours, you'll be thinking that you breeched birthed and adut male.

From skippystalin, of course.

Hope their sites can stay online after the vicious Bitchdotting they're getting here.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that open-xchange is worth the trouble, kick them in the nuts. Hard.

Upon describing me as "mature":

That wasn't really the word I was looking for, but I couldn't find any nicer synonyms for "old" in the thesaurus.

Man, I'm tired, but I can finally relax a little, now that I'm down to my one or two nightly cocktails, instead of the caligulan excesses I've been subjected to of late. The preceding week was a grueling, besotted blur that I strongly believe will make me rethink my entire position on alcohol. Ok. Yep. Good point, Mr. Oblongata. Ok, I continued, nodding thoughtfully while clamping the unlit pipe between my well-formed incisors, I do believe you've got a point after all.

Alcohol is a funny thing, as long as your definition of funny has a lot in common with Hermann Goering's. For us drunkards, it's an almost unbearable hit parade of mortifying moments that accompanies even the most insincere, shallow attempts at soul-searching. Again and again, it makes you pose the question to yourself that we've all had to try and wrestle at one point or another, namely: What the fuck was I thinking? I lost my goddamn cell phone in the drunken haze last week. I loved that cell phone, sort of. I realize now that I'm in the market fer one a em's sexy iTunes phones, but, honestly, I'd rather have a Nano. In fact, I'd rather have even a fool's hope that I'll have enough money to buy smokes for another glorious month o' puffin', but I don't, so I guess I'm not so much in the market fer as I am up shit creek without a paddle in the absence of.

I lost my phone during a 300-yard long, meandering stumble home from the bachelor party. I know that I didn't leave it in the night club, because I remember making a phone call or two on my way home. I'd called my lusty companions, asking them if they'd check around the club and see if they could find my digital camera, which was missing, and bring it to safety. I then called my baby, and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be home within an hour, 300 yards being what they are at 5:30 in the morning, and that hopefully she hadn't forgotten the earplugs I'd recommended she buy, lest my easily-foreseen yet completely unavoidable sawing and clearing of the rainforest disturb her for the 2 or 3 hours that I would actually be allowed to remain in bed, owing to the 9 o'clock meeting I'd cleverly scheduled for the next morning. When I was wrenched from my snoring paradise by Satan's Alarm Clock, I was sadly without a phone, yet, remarkably, with my digital camera in my pocket. Had I actually been talking to my friends and loved ones on the camera? How very, very David Lynch.

But let's not forget the human costs. I almost punched out some rummy hobo in a bar for hitting on my sweet baby Saturday night, after a boozy pub crawl. He was drunk, and my sweet baby was looking very sweet indeed, but there ain't more than one rummy hobo who's laying on hands around here, and that rummy hobo is me, buddy. I don't suppose the late hour or the gigantic bar-tab had anything at all to do with my rush to visit justice on this poor, lonely sap.

Alcohol has cost me plenty, but I guess there's no point in stopping now.

In every industry, there are the kickbacks, the skimmings, the tricks of the trade that allow the core products to be competitively priced, and accessible to Joe Consumer. In some cases, it even allows the core products to be given away for free. In the late 90's, for example, we used to actually sell computers for below cost, knowing that, within six months, we could charge thousands of dollars to check these same computers for Y2K-compliancy. I ran the (mostly ceremonial) test procedures at least a thousand times during the last six months of 1999, and not once did a customer ask me why we didn't check the things before we rolled them out, sometimes mere days before returning to certify them. I must have gained 40 pounds in 1999.

Another great example of this particular business model is Microsoft's XBox. Every XBox in the world is sold at a horrifying loss. The hardware costs alone are something like 90% of the price tag, and the other 10% couldn't even put a dent in the massive R&D, marketing, and licensing costs The Beast poured into this fine piece of machinery. Nevertheless, Microsoft made (and still makes) a killing off this thing. The secret is the game licensing. GatesCo. basically gives away the hardware, so that they can make money off of the games that are sold to run on it. The XBox's anti-"piracy" technology ensures that only those games which have been blessed with The Key can run on it, and The Key, my friends, costs the pudenda for those who wish to use it.

Which brings us to my fucking haircut. Throug whispered confessions in nervous, back-alley meetings, it came to my attention that there exists here in Germany a reasonably-priced barber shop, hidden within the steamy bowels of a department store. Department stores are, in Germany at least, the Grand Mufti of Commerce, because they are often open until the ungodly hour of 8:00 PM, instead of closing at 4 in the afternoon like every other shop on the continent. People who do not belong to unions, and therefore do not enjoy the 11-hour work week and 45-hour lunches which seem to be commonplace here, might, in such an establishment, actually be able to buy an overpriced pair of Italian shoes after work that will turn into shredded leather foot wrappings during the first snow like something out of a grainy, black and white Operation Barbarossa documentary which will only lead to cannibaliism at some point, God help us all.

So, armed with the forbidden knowledge and secret pass-phrase, I walked casually into said cut-easy at 6 in the afternoon, curious as to what awaited me. I walked confidently to the counter, where the tell-tale scent of Barbicide betrayed the establishment's true purpose, and announced that I was there for a...haircut! I was promptly greeted by an attractive young nymph, probably fresh out of art-school, in need of funds, in a lowly state, ready for every degradation I could muster from my addled id.

I can't really recall much about the haircut. It was alright, the barbress turned out to be not that attractive after all, which is gang und gebe, a little pudgy, actually, though she did have magic hands at the hair-washing sink, though the fact that she didn't ask if I wanted the "special treatment" was not lost on me, and therefore was likely to affect her tip, negatively. The wrong kind of rub was in coming, though. She did a bad job on the head. Now, I know I've got a difficult head to cut, and I'm usually very understanding when newbies have difficulty with it. After the damage was done, the nymphette looked askance, and inquired as to whether I would like some gel on my hair. In a moment of weakness, I said, well, maybe just a little dab to hold back the humiliation when I walked out the door. So, she being responsive, and subject to my every whim, she took out a tube of hair gel, squeezed out a miniscule drop of the sticky, sensous fluid, and rubbed it on my battered skull. I looked in the mirror, and, swallowing my distaste, mussed a bit till I looked like something other than a month-old jack-o-lantern. I thanked her, and proceeded to the cash register. I paid my due, and realized she'd tacked €1.50 onto the price for the fucking hair gel!

I realize the people have to earn their money. I realize that the price for the haircut was suspiciously reasonable for these dark post-Deutschmark days, but a fucking €1.50 for a fucking cum-dab of hair gel!!!!!1

At this point, I was confronted with the decision, do I scream, at the top of my lungs, YOU FUCKING BACKSTABBING CUNT I'LL FUCKING DO YOU IN YOU GODDAMN BITCH FOR THAT FUCKING HAIRCUT YOU GONNA FUCKING PAY MOMMY MOMMY, or do I just meekly pay the €13.50, thank the nice lady, and walk out the door like someone actually did me a favor? People who know me will have no trouble believing that, not only did I pay the full tab, I also dropped a Euro into the tip jar. What a twat I am.

At two points in this story, as with so many cases in life, I could have been saved with one simple question: What would the Duke do? First off, John Wayne probably would have declined the hair gel, I'm guessing. Failing that, he most certainly would have shot every fucking customer in the department store amid myriad shoulder-rolls and hat-tips, which, honestly, is exactly what this pussified gay-bar of a country needs a bit more of.

Where's my fucking big-airn?

is a Bavarian wedding. I'm not really sure which is more important in such a regional affair, the unbridled alcohol abuse by everyone over the age of 16, or the abject humiliation of the bridal pair.

The intentional self-poisoning began on Thursday, with the Bachelor party. Pubs were crawled, bottoms were pinched, and, in the end, Rube showed that he could still run with the young dogs.

There's Rube, passed out in a chair in some nightclub he doesn't even know the name of, at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And yes, the next morning's 9 o'clock meeting was a rousing, unqualified disaster, thanks for asking. By some weird twist of fate, Friday night was the birthday party of a family of immigrants out of somewhere over in Vampireland, which is anything east of Czechoslovakia. That was good for yet another night of binge drinking, though I must admit the heart, she was not really in it.

Which brings us to Saturday, the aforementioned wedding. Apparently, it's traditional in Bavaria to steal and make a copy of the Groom's house key while he's not paying attention. On the day of the wedding, while he's preparing to feed and bedrink his guests, they break into his apartment and trash the place. I heard stories of dismantled furniture, toilets stuffed with chocolate, pulled circuit breakers, and something about 150 gallons of mashed potatoes. With friends like these...

The entire evening of the Wedding was an endless stream of humiliation for the groom, the pinnacle of which must have been when we, in the tradition of the region, kidnapped his bride, took her out drinking, and he had to come search for us. I'm not exactly sure what the point of that particular ritual is, but she seemed to enjoy it just a little too much.

At any rate, congratulations to Herr Doktor Probst and his lovely new bride Martina for a beautiful wedding, and my heartfelt sympathies for the fact that some asshole went through his cd collection and swapped all the cases.

CNN.com - Inventor denies dead cat fuel story - Sep 15, 2005:

The underlying truth is, of course, that should you ever have to even deny such a thing, you've already lost.

Hallo, Hans

I vanted to assk you vhy ze american und british tourists, ze are alvays giggling vhen zey come here for skiing.

Danke,

Fritz Weber
Wank-Lifte Ski Lift

Jottings from yesterday's bar napkin, from the daily evening meeting-of-one:

I'm the chair of your misfortune, 4 legs of strength compared to your two. I loathe your cushions.
There are 3 people you should never lie to: Your lawyer, your doctor, and your accountant.
Your bits of SuSE architecture, you will not get in there. You will stare in amazement, at the amount of trust there.

Unvollständig.
Speth was eyeing my unit.
With Windows,you've got a whole other set of problems. I am the leader of the technik. Keep your fucking hands off of them. Dicknose.
There's no denying it: Things have been better.
Rsync software: No network access. How many revolutions? (backup rev's)(under normal usage)?
Why do I busy myself with such nonsense?
I'm surrounded by freaks and losers, traitors, liars, bitchy little people I'm supposed to give a fuck about.
Perfect coif, unimpeachable ascot. Saaaaah-weeeeet.
Wearing a green ascot on St. Patrick's day is probably not the best way to keep from getting pinched, I fear.
In a few years, I'll look back on these days and think, "What the fuck was that all about?"
Jeepers, I'm tired.
I'm tired of being tired. But I'm more tired of being broke.
Man, I guess TCP/IP, in retrospect, scales pretty well.
I can't believe I actually used to be an IPX bigot.
I also can't believe I used to own a class C subnet, namely 38.221.9.0/24. Merc, Fred, Medusa, Thor, Zeus, NS, man oh man, those were some days!
Here's some helpful advice for the ladies out there: If you're ugly, show some tit! C'mon, it's a date!
People sit around and compare their tools...
Tomorrow, I'm going to have a blister under my fingernail. Damn.

Well, I guess it's about time to stop smoking. I found a brown spot under my tongue today. I've probably got jaw cancer. Which probably means they'll need to cut off the lower half of my face, and reduce me to a freak whose tongue just hangs out of a jagged hole under his nose, wagging impotently with every attempt to speak, unable to articulate a sound, just emmitting some sort of excited whistle of gratitude when it's time for my mush.

Fuck, how did it come to this? I'm only thirty-five. My grandfather smoked for 60 years and only quit because he died. Otherwise, he'd be right here next to me, hooting appreciatively through a tube sticking out of his chest, then we'd go outside and pick up some hookers. Sleep well, Grandpa Arry, you deserved everything you got.

You know, that moment when you start typing, when you start groooooovin', not working at it, let the blog do the work for a change. This thing's been buggin' me, beggin' me, asking me please feed the hole, your publikum is waiting on you, Rube. But you know what, Blog? I'm fucking busy, whiny ass. I've got things to do, people to meet, bills to pay and letters to send. T'aint room here for two jefes, so one of us needs to get a-buggin, and I do believe that would be me. So, now, as long as I'm the one doing the buggin', you be the one doing the list'nin'. Now you listen to me, Blog, and you listen good. Velociman has a boil on his choad, Acidman's got a bug up his ass, and Lousiana ain't feeling so good his damn self. But me? I'm doing jes fine. Rube done took his blood pressure yesterday, after speed-snorting a liter of coffee, and it was 106 over fucking 60. I was on my way to work on a fuckin' Sunday, hands shaking like Katherine Hepburn's favorite vibrator, and you just sat here like a bump on a log waiting for it to find you.

Write yourself, you ungrateful little fuck. What's that? Oh, yeah, anytime, pussy, anytime.

Since I'm too busy at the moment to keep this rickety jalopy running, I've decided to post anything which the dregs of society decide to throw my inbox's way. I need a spam filter...

Case in point:

Chapter 1: A Viking Funeral
Author Unknown

He's gone, I heard the good doctor tell my wife and sister who apparently were somewhere in the near vicinity. No I wanted to scream out but couldn't. What the hell is going on? My eyes were shut tight and try as I might they would not open or even flutter. My entire body was frozen and refused to respond to any mental commands that I issued. Darkness held me captive.

"He wished to be cremated and have his ashes strewn over the homes of all his exes and meaningful lovers etc., the meaningless to receive condolences thru the mail or whatever", my beloved wife Andy relayed the info to the Doc or someone.

Then my beloved, somewhat frugal Sister, chimed in "My God stamps alone will cost a small fortune". "Just put a notice in a few fish-wrappers". As for scattering ashes, forget the former wives as they would make every attempt to bring the aircraft down before the payload could be delivered. The meaningfuls would be more receptive but squirm with discomfort while trying to explain the gesture to their current meaningfuls. We were only friends won't wash".

"Well, his 2nd wish was for a "Viking funeral", Andy offered. Maybe we could get some of his old drinking buddies to heave "Molotov" cocktails at a small vessel as it floats near the "Lil' " River Bridge that spans the infamous Alatoona Lake. Henry Bryan and Jackie Dempsey will gladly secure an old fishing boat I'm sure".

The 2nd wish prevailed. Somehow my wife and sister pulled it off. It was near dusk on a late August day when the much publicized event began. Bells Ferry road was closed to traffic in both directions, so the bridge would be open to the throngs of expected onlookers. Twenty cocktail hurlers waited in formation for the funeral barge to pass beneath, carrying yours truly to Valhalla. All at once the small boat came into view in tow behind a larger ski boat. When it neared the bridge, someone severed the tow line. Now the vessel was drifting under the L.R.B. Finally it emerged on the other side as the cocktails were lit, awaiting the Hurl command. Then it came, Ready! Hurl! All at once 20 arms obeyed the order! A few struck the small craft, causing it to ignite. The burlap wrapped corpse was now slowly engulfed in smoke and flame.

"My God it moved" a horrified deputy sheriff screamed!"Saw it thru my field glasses". Henry Bryan snatched the glasses from the grasp of the now hysterical lawman. "Let me have a look see"! Naw, must've been your eyes doin' tricks, what with it being nearly dark and all.

Only small remnants of the remained by now, floating on the surface near a large patch of ashes, surrounded by a mysterious ring of grease, all floating away toward a distant beach. Show was over and the crowd began to thin out. Some were puzzled by the behavior of Henry B. and Jackie D. however. Both were giggling and high-fiving anyone nearby. Eventually they were joined by the widow and sister of the deceased. Both ladies suppressed their own laughter all were aboard the Merc convertible belonging to J.D.. Now as the white Mercedes sped south on Bells Ferry Road, Henry B. broke the silence! There must be a God, what an unexpected bonus!He was refering to the fact that one of the hurlers was none other than George Tweedy.

It seemed that "Old Pruneface" (George) inadvertantly dropped his flaming cocktail all over himself! J.D. quickly pushed the "Human Torch" over the bridge railing and downward toward the murky water some 50 feet below. As luck would have it, George missed the water and upon the rocky shore. "Close but no cigar" would be this poor old wretches final epitath.

All 4 occupants wiped tears caused by derisive laughter from their eyes as the speeding vehichle reached it's destination. Now all entered the Villas of Kennesaw clubhouse bar, which had been previously reserved for the evening. "Did he suffer"? I asked. "Which one?", my wife asked. "Huh"!

Finally H.B. was able to speak and relay the tale of "Old Lonesome George's demise". Loud guffaws filled the room, it was gonna be a great night!!!

Stay tuned for Chapter Two:
Where in the world Is Gary ASSitelli?

Didja ever sit and wonder, just how horrendous X1-X10 must have been? I mean, network transparency is admirable, but it's all in the impelementation, folks.

At these sorts of cabbage-patch spectacles that crop up every now and then, it's important to remember the training. Macs are special. Macs are different. Macs are premium consumer items not meant for every 300 lb. frizzy-haired slushee-sucker who buys her computers at the grocery store.

Remember the training. Steve? Are you there? Have you forsaken us? SAY SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE A JESUS!

But Steve's probably just cackling like Renfield in some white marble penthouse, calling Gates on the phone; "Bill, you couldn't buy this kind of publicity!"

"Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner" (Stephan Schacher)

A trip across America is the dream of many Europeans. At the tender age of nineteen, photographer Stephan Schacher undertook a typical sightseeing tour of the United States, from coast to coast on the Kerouac trail, visiting the cities and monuments, both natural and man-made, along the legendary Route 66. Almost 20 years later, Schacher decided to take a second trip across North America. This time, however, things would be done a little differently: Driving from upstate New York to Northern Alaska, almost 11,000 kilometers across Canada and the United States, Schacher decided photograph every meal along the way, as well as every waitress who served it.

What may sound like a goofy, drunken college idea dreamed up at three o'clock in the morning became a serious undertaking for Schacher. Eating exclusively in roadside diners, the author blazes a low-brow culinary trail across the continent, braving greasy hamburgers and questionable seafood platters. The book itself is handsomely crafted. After turning page after page of greasy diner cuisine, one begins to wonder just how many t-bone steaks and onion rings a man can eat before his heart explodes.

Using specialty paper, muted colors, and creative typography, it sits well on the nightstand or coffee table for the casual reading session. Making meticulous records of his mileage, food expenditures, and the times of arrival and departure, Schacher is able to painstakingly recreate his entire journey in facts and figures to complement the irresistibly personal experience of the solitary roadside meal.

This is a good sign...

[root@freak1 chkrootkit-0.45]# ls -al
bash: /bin/ls: Input/output error

On my poor little Linux box, who just sits in the corner and never hurts anybody. When he was in the kitchen, next to my refrigerator, he once had 700 days of uptime, damn near 2 years without a reboot. He even spent the better part of an afternoon in a half-inch of standing water, when I accidentally left my freezer door open.

Brave little man, go gently into that great /dev/null in the sky. And take my fucking django projects with you, you weak little twat. Jesus, why do I only do backups for other people?!

That's what I'll be. Sitting in the server room, surrounded by untold generations of in-bred housecats, all playing little banjos and admiring my pouty lips. Crazy ol' Cat-Rube, wondering where all my friends have gone, why my children never call, and why, way back when, in aught-five, nobody wished me a happy System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Fuck you guys. I'm deleting all your mail.

As I was googling around, debating whether or not to install the copy of Office XP I've recently come into, in order to upgrade my slowly rotting-yet-beloved copy of Office 2000 Pro, I came across 1) enough evidence to deter me, and b) what has to be the best screenshot caption I've ever seen:

Some may have noticed that in the last 6 months, YouBitch.org has skyrocketed in popularity, owing to various influences viz bribery and dirty, dirty tricks.

It's grown so popular, in fact, that you'll find YouBitch.org in the Truth Laid Bear ecology sandwiched between ROFASix and "Test Page for Apache Installation".

How the hell do you come in behind a Test Page for Apache Installation?

Sometimes it's the little things that make it worthwhile. Today, for example, I spent 2 hours working on a network firewall whose brand name, Ben Hur, is eerily close to the Bavarian phrase, bin a hur, which means, roughly, I am a prostitute. This is why I giggle to myself when I think there's no one watching.

Also, I get to swear a lot a work, since none of these cretins speak English well enough to know what "oh you cocksucking piece of fucking shit" actually means, in the book sense.

In a related train of thought, I was in Kissing, Bavaria yesterday. Streams of consciousness being what they are, I immediately thought of Henry Kissinger, whose name means someone who comes from Kissing, and then I thought to myself, jeez, I haven't come from Kissing since high school, which then dead-ended into a search for a half-joke that cratered into a mixed-metaphore here at the usually-reliable youbitch.

Indeed, the little things can make an otherwise dreary, grey, and cloudy day all smily.

Oh, and there was a bug.

I never thought I'd see these words written by an adult:

why do I get the feeling you guys are yanking my chain? I guess I'll have to ask Sandy, she will be straight with me!

I would suggest that Lippy Livey prepare herself for amazing new levels of betrayal, shaming, and a chain-yanking most people only read about in Penthouse Forum. Sandy?!

I had all kindsa Sandy riffin' on Zonker links to pan out here, but sandy moved :-(

Sandy's new home is here. By the time Longhorn/Vista comes out, or Duke Nukem Forever, whichever comes first, I'll even update my sidebar template!

Hugs,
Rube

Check out the smoke on slashdot. There are a few very important reasons for a company to switch over to Macs. Viruses, Spyware, and Solitaire, to name just three. I just installed Windows XP on a fairly run-of-the-mill mini-PC, the ASUS Pundit-R. It took me two day to get all the drivers sorted out. I've still got an entry in the device manager for a mysterious "USB Controller" with a yellow exclamation point next to it which doesn't seem to be covered by the ASUS or ATI driver downloads. You can re-install a Mac in about an hour, all drivers and applications included, no matter what model. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even tell the install program to leave your home directory alone, and all your application settings will remain.

On the other hand, I've had a lot of customer contact lately. Most of my customers have irresolvable reasons to stay on the platform they're on, almost invariably Win32. Whether it's a Tax-Consulting program that makes extensive use of COM and the Windows version of Microsoft Office and Outlook, or an embedded controlling program for an industrial baking machine that only runs on Win98 SE, these people are locked in, and generally at ease with that fact. But with that, the 'vendor lock-in' argument against Apple Computer goes right out the window.

Companies shouldn't switch platforms just because somebody on Slashdot can provide an overpowering argument. Switching is expensive, no matter which direction. If you switch to Mac, you have to know that you can't realistically have more that one choice for an office productivity package, ironically MS Office. On Windows, you've got native versions of OpenOffice, Hansa Office, Corel WordPerfect Office (my personal choice at the moment), and just about anything else you can think of, none of which exist on Mac. Mac does have Pages, which beats rings around Word for 99% of what you're going to want to do, as long as what you want to do doesn't involve other companies being able to interact directly with your documents.

There are many arguments against Macification, and many more in favor. It all comes down to whether or not the boss wants to pony up the money for some sexy-ass hardware.

[are you there?]
yes

There's a lot to be said for good work habits. At least that's what I've heard, mostly from people who have good work habits, and also have, perhaps not coincidentally, fairly recent iPods. It's hard to balance abject sloth and material greed, I've found, so at some point you just try to find the path of least suffering. Just give a smile on the sidewalk to some girl who's trying so hard to make an impression. You don't have to express your loathing each and every minute to the untermenschen that you are forced by God and man to walk past when all you really want is to get from point A to point B to take the money from party C. Party C understands that you're not there to talk about the weather, but it's protocol, so just fuckin' do it.

Good work habits are more than just Knowing Your Shit. Good work habits include getting out of bed before noon, whether you have to or not [glance at Andy]; not masturbating in front of customers [glance at Thomas]; coming within 4 significant digits of your proposed budget [glance in mirror]; using your spellchecker when norms will be reading; and, last but not least, not fucking the co-ops [no glance necessary].

Good work habits involving knowing your product, and know when not to bend your customer over a barrel, which does occasionally make sense. Call your mother every now and then; do your paperwork; and for God sakes, stop using the fucking copier to make visuals of your goddam buttocks. I know this is all very difficult for you scrubs, but please, do make an effort: We're in this game to win. Now get out there and kick some ASS!

So, I was sitting at the trainstop tonight, on my way home from work, listening to a podcast of Nightline on my iPod, in which they covered the spreading avian flu epidemic and, jumpin' jehosephat, we all gonna die. But I knew that. However, they had sound bites of Chimpy McHitler doing a couple of press conferences, and I'll be damned if he doesn't butcher this one even worse than nuclear. Did you know we're sitting on a pandemic of Èvian Flu? If you've ever wondered what the French were doing to contribute to the end of mankind as we know it, aside from accordion music, now you know.

I swear, the boy's sounding more like a cross between John Wayne and Emily Litella with every passing sentence. In a matter of months, he'll be giving the State of the Union address, and will sign off $200 billion to preserve our natural racehorses.

People, I'd soon shit as look at ya, as my dear departed grandfather was fond of saying to us grandchillens. There's just nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a good ol' blue funk at the beginning of the week. Today, despite being Tuesday, was Monday here in Germany, for all intents and purpose. The long weekend was over, and I enjoyed three days of true sloth, the likes of which I've not enjoyed for quite some time here. Yesterday was the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Re-unification Day, and therefore a holiday. I don't have a television at the moment, so I'm not quite sure how the yokels down in dogpatch celebrated, or if they celebrated. The closest I've heard to someone marking the occasion was a documentary on the Columbine massacre that was on one of the state-run television channels last night; I guess replaying the awe-inspiring "Tear down this wall" speech would've been regarded as sycophantic. They could've maybe just shown the thousands of Pershing II protesters instead of Reagan, just to be fair. I mean, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, there wasn't just bottomless love and gratitude for Reagan here in the 80s; there were also some nay-sayers.

So, 15 years later, what have we got here? The Wessies (West Germans) hate the Ossies (East Germans), the Ossies are all Nazis, the country's being run into the ground by Greens and Socialists, and Rube's got a headache to complement his weird-ass earache. And the beer? Color me unimpressed. Sell me on it, people, it takes more than beer to offset an 80% tax burden. This isn't really blowing my skirt up. Maybe it's time for an "OK, Mr. Gorbatchev, you can put that wall back up" speech, and a new Cold War to stir the drink. Gorby's going to be here in Augsburg on Saturday, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

I'll soldier on. Europe's OK, despite my visceral hatred of cold weather and accordions.

Who do you want to be? I'm pretty happy with who I am, all things considered. I mean, the joints are getting a little too creaky to be right where I want to be. I get earaches a lot. Earaches? When the hell did that start. I seem to recall something about an earache the last time when I was 10 years old, in Washington, watching a Caps game. During a raucous pre-game pillowfight in the hotel, I was blindsided viciously by one of the other running-men, and fell ear-first into the corner of the nightstand. Screaming children, dancing lights before my eyes, and an eardrum gushing blood onto the bed, from what I can remember. But there's a groove for you; I didn't even need alcohol back then to pull the ol', "Hey y'all, watch this!" It just happens naturally to children, without the need for finely-aged and/or -brewed refreshments, like, say, your run-of-the-mill blog meet, with bullwhips and such.

But somehow the earache lain in wait for two-and-a-half decades, ready to pounce. I've been sick for about 3 weeks now, which really isn't like me. Normally, I've got an iron constitution, seeing as over the years I've built up an environment of toxins in my body that's inhospitable to your average germ varmint. To all life, really. The soupy buildup of nicotine, alcohol, and stress toxins in my blood would put the post-Katrina sludge in New Orleans to shame, just wait until the Rube-Tsunami hits, then let's see Curious George wriggle out of the media storm that follows. "Rube: What Went Wrong?"

Yeah, well, enough about that shit. On with the show. I'm not getting any younger, despite the wash of childhood diseases and injuries that may yet wait around the corner on my walk home tonight.

What? The Braves won the division? It's like baseball season is on fast-forward every year. I didn't see a single game since April. Damn.

Man o man, I can't believe they actually did that this year, with that bunch o' bums they were fielding in April. But then, ever since Cox started beating his wife when the team loses, the Bravos seemed to have stepped it up a notch. For Ms. Cox' sake.

More and more, it seems to me that there's nothing new or innovative in life. I think the more you understand something, the less you enjoy it. Take computers, for example. I understand computers. I've been working on them now almost thirty years, ever since my first home job, the risible Texas Instruments TI 994/A. My second computer was the much more suitable Mattel Aquarius, replete with 16K expansion board. 16K? I remember thinking it was the shit, something I could never even dream of filling up. Consider the following BASIC program:

10 ? "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

That's about 25 bytes, and also about the extent of my BASIC programming abilities at the age of 11. I remember there was this other kid in my sixth grade class who also had an Aquarius. I remember him bitching because he only had the 4K expansion, and he didn't have any room left in memory for the data sets that he used in the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG he'd programmed on it. I would have loaned him mine, but I was humiliated into lying that my flight simulator was almost finished, so sorry, no dice.

In the eighth grade, I took my first computer-oriented course at school, which was called "Business Computing on the Apple ][". I'm not exactly sure what eight-graders are supposed to understand about business computing, or what we were supposed to think of the cleverly hackerish use of square brackets for the roman numerals in the Apple ]['s name, but I was nonetheless intimidated into swearing that I would never buy a computer, much less one that had the colors of the international homosexual conspiracy brazenly embedded in a fruit. Subtle it ain't, the old Apple logo. Instead, I would live my life in buckskin trousers and shoot at revenuers with my kentucky windage, wishing for simpler times when men were men, and night was dark. Which of course is why I'm now a UNIX system administrator, and write blog entries in bars on my Apple laptop.

So nowadays, I understand that every laptop is basically a remix of different off-the-shelf parts, with a selection of the available software, as money allows, nothing special. There's only the capacity of hard drives, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM installed that make any dent. It's all the same shit. There are many computer companies, but only a few huge factories that pump out the shit that they all build into their computers. There is no wonder, no joy, mystery to any of it.

This principle applies to everything in life. At least, it applies to anything built after the second world war. German engineers are no better than the Americans anymore, they all use the same CAD software to get their shit done, and, with the Internet, there are no magical metallurgical formulas, no secret underground laboratories, no oil fields in the Balkans that make a difference, only Google results. Nowadays, there's only the price of commodities on the global market, the intricacies of international currency markets, and the sewing together of the same, tired old components by some poor saps in Taiwan for each and every manufacturer in each and every field of business, be it shoes or MP3 players.

Depressing.

[22:20]
I'm giving the New Worst Bar in the World a second chance tonight. For about the eighth time now, I guess. These guys are the worst of the worst. They're even worse than I remembered, and that was bad enough. I've been sitting here now for about 10 minutes, and they haven't even acknowledged my presence. There's 4 chicks behind the bar, just a-wiping them counters, a-polishing them glasses, and a-wasting my fucking time. I guess I keep coming back out of morbid curiosity, of the literal kind. I've got to see how long it takes for this place to die off.

Atrocious service. There's an entire floor of guests here where I'm sitting, and we all came in about the same time. Probably about 10 people. There's no way they could've missed us, and anyway, I'm sitting on the railing, with my sizeable noggin in plain view of God and everybody. Let's watch...

[22:30]
Welp, still high and dry here. The staff have, in the meantime, made a perfunctory round of the lower floor down there. They didn't bother to put out their cigarettes to do it though, just left them burning in the ashtrays. Never a good sign. I'll light a cigarette and see what happens.

[22:35]
Cigarette's out. Somebody's coming up the stairs, oh wait! She's got a notepad with her! She's either a waitress or a reporter, and either one would suit my purposes at this point. Meanwhile, more customers are grousing around and looking nervously over their shoulders, the silence of the taps a deafening presence in the room. My hatred hangs over this place like a cloud. Thalia Bar and Grill, I am your own personal Simon Wiesenthal, you worthless, arrogant bunch of fucks.

[22:39]
The reporter took my drink order. I ordered a beer, and I'm anxious to see if she fucks it up. That would be just like the AFP to do something like that. Arrogant Cowboy American Orders Mai Thai, Asks Twice for 'Cute Little Umbrella'. It's a sting, I fucking knew it. I will bring this place down around their ears. The Duke would.

[22:41]
After leaving something on my table that most certainly looked like a beer, the waitress was unresponsive to my admittedly lukewarm thank-you. Fucking narc.

[23:30]
This fucking bitch. She only came up one more time, and that was to clear off another table, and then she went back down without asking if I needed another beer. I guess I don't, seeing as I've gotten attached to this one, as spending an hour with a beer brings you closer to it. I shall shit upon this bar, its name will be stricken from every card, from every column, and every positive blog entry I ever wrote about it, should there actually be any. The Thalia Movie Bar and Grill is, without a doubt, the worst bar in the world.

I'm in a chatty mood tonight. That may very well be because it's Sunday, and Sunday in Augsburg means Biscuits à la Rube, and Grits au Fromage. Such breakfasts are good starts to any day, even when served at 4:30 in the afternoon, in filthy pajamas.

So, what shall we talk about? Let's talk about the weather. In a cruel turn of fate, the weather finally got warm the week after the kids went back to school. Fuck 'em. Treats them right for living in the arctic circle. Move back to the world, kids, there's sunshine and hurricanes.

Ok, that's the weather. Let's talk shop. I got a steady gig now, which doesn't take much time, and doesn't pay all that badly. I'm self-employed, so whenever a steady source of income shows up, it's always welcome. It doesn't quite make up for the 2 and half months of project work that I just did for which I didn't get paid, but it makes telling certain customers to go fuck themselves that much easier.

I actually worked for one customer for up to 60 hours a week for the last two months. Even though I relaxed my normally-exorbitant hourly rates for the sake of customer relations, the bills are running up into the tens of thousands. Thing is, I haven't seen a dime of that money yet, and the way things are looking further upstream, I don't think I'll ever see any of the money. The other party, who's basically doing sales for the project while I do the work, has decided that almost all of the customers we've been servicing like overworked whores lately are 'Reference Customers', who will be useful down the road for bringing in other customers, and therefore won't get billed. Which means I won't see any money from them at all. Which means I'm pretty much figuring out whether or not spending time in the big house is worth the ass-whipping I'd like to lay on my salesman. Still too close to call.

The press might want to stop trying to milk this one.

Mama Moonbat and Her Multitudes

30 people? I've had orgies bigger than that, and I don't recall getting phone calls from Murdoch over it, either. In fact, through most of the "summer" here, there was some sad-assed march against the Hartz IV welfare reforms, which involved somehow making people actually fill out more forms to keep getting unemployment checks. Every Monday night, the teeming masses of about 20 or 30 people would march through the town square to the train station, with some buffoon up front shouting rhyming missives about Schröder or something through a megaphone. And I always wondered to myself, usually through a beery haze, if he really saw himself as some sort of revolutionary figure, with the streaming red banners of the International Communist Conspiracy waving all about, black confetti falling from the medieval buildings around them, as the oppressed volk breathe a sigh of relief that they finally have a voice. Instead, I mean, of the 20 or 30 bongo-playing dopeheads who were shouting, incoherently, his dumbass rhymes back at him, to the derisive hootin' and hollerin' of the Monday-night Maximilian-Strasse promenaders, with the intention of getting their $2000.00 a month benefits extended past the 3-year limit.

What a bunch of fucking parasites.

Just in case y'all missed it, the photos from the wedding are up. The bachelor party photos have yet to clear customs, ahem.

And speaking of Herr Doktor Probst, he's got his own blog now. Check it out. I'm sure we'll be seeing more from him, as soon as the monkey-in-the-mirror 'Test' posts scroll out of the way.

Mutual friend Martin Bruch also has an interesting blog, as long as you're a Mac weenie like me.

This is perhaps the most beautiful, romantic thing I've ever read (NSFW):

Ladies, find the ugliest man you know (and my e-mail address is linked on the right) and I'll assure you that you'll soon forget where your clitoris ends and his tongue begins. Within hours, you'll be thinking that you breeched birthed and adut male.

From skippystalin, of course.

Hope their sites can stay online after the vicious Bitchdotting they're getting here.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that open-xchange is worth the trouble, kick them in the nuts. Hard.

Upon describing me as "mature":

That wasn't really the word I was looking for, but I couldn't find any nicer synonyms for "old" in the thesaurus.

Man, I'm tired, but I can finally relax a little, now that I'm down to my one or two nightly cocktails, instead of the caligulan excesses I've been subjected to of late. The preceding week was a grueling, besotted blur that I strongly believe will make me rethink my entire position on alcohol. Ok. Yep. Good point, Mr. Oblongata. Ok, I continued, nodding thoughtfully while clamping the unlit pipe between my well-formed incisors, I do believe you've got a point after all.

Alcohol is a funny thing, as long as your definition of funny has a lot in common with Hermann Goering's. For us drunkards, it's an almost unbearable hit parade of mortifying moments that accompanies even the most insincere, shallow attempts at soul-searching. Again and again, it makes you pose the question to yourself that we've all had to try and wrestle at one point or another, namely: What the fuck was I thinking? I lost my goddamn cell phone in the drunken haze last week. I loved that cell phone, sort of. I realize now that I'm in the market fer one a em's sexy iTunes phones, but, honestly, I'd rather have a Nano. In fact, I'd rather have even a fool's hope that I'll have enough money to buy smokes for another glorious month o' puffin', but I don't, so I guess I'm not so much in the market fer as I am up shit creek without a paddle in the absence of.

I lost my phone during a 300-yard long, meandering stumble home from the bachelor party. I know that I didn't leave it in the night club, because I remember making a phone call or two on my way home. I'd called my lusty companions, asking them if they'd check around the club and see if they could find my digital camera, which was missing, and bring it to safety. I then called my baby, and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be home within an hour, 300 yards being what they are at 5:30 in the morning, and that hopefully she hadn't forgotten the earplugs I'd recommended she buy, lest my easily-foreseen yet completely unavoidable sawing and clearing of the rainforest disturb her for the 2 or 3 hours that I would actually be allowed to remain in bed, owing to the 9 o'clock meeting I'd cleverly scheduled for the next morning. When I was wrenched from my snoring paradise by Satan's Alarm Clock, I was sadly without a phone, yet, remarkably, with my digital camera in my pocket. Had I actually been talking to my friends and loved ones on the camera? How very, very David Lynch.

But let's not forget the human costs. I almost punched out some rummy hobo in a bar for hitting on my sweet baby Saturday night, after a boozy pub crawl. He was drunk, and my sweet baby was looking very sweet indeed, but there ain't more than one rummy hobo who's laying on hands around here, and that rummy hobo is me, buddy. I don't suppose the late hour or the gigantic bar-tab had anything at all to do with my rush to visit justice on this poor, lonely sap.

Alcohol has cost me plenty, but I guess there's no point in stopping now.

In every industry, there are the kickbacks, the skimmings, the tricks of the trade that allow the core products to be competitively priced, and accessible to Joe Consumer. In some cases, it even allows the core products to be given away for free. In the late 90's, for example, we used to actually sell computers for below cost, knowing that, within six months, we could charge thousands of dollars to check these same computers for Y2K-compliancy. I ran the (mostly ceremonial) test procedures at least a thousand times during the last six months of 1999, and not once did a customer ask me why we didn't check the things before we rolled them out, sometimes mere days before returning to certify them. I must have gained 40 pounds in 1999.

Another great example of this particular business model is Microsoft's XBox. Every XBox in the world is sold at a horrifying loss. The hardware costs alone are something like 90% of the price tag, and the other 10% couldn't even put a dent in the massive R&D, marketing, and licensing costs The Beast poured into this fine piece of machinery. Nevertheless, Microsoft made (and still makes) a killing off this thing. The secret is the game licensing. GatesCo. basically gives away the hardware, so that they can make money off of the games that are sold to run on it. The XBox's anti-"piracy" technology ensures that only those games which have been blessed with The Key can run on it, and The Key, my friends, costs the pudenda for those who wish to use it.

Which brings us to my fucking haircut. Throug whispered confessions in nervous, back-alley meetings, it came to my attention that there exists here in Germany a reasonably-priced barber shop, hidden within the steamy bowels of a department store. Department stores are, in Germany at least, the Grand Mufti of Commerce, because they are often open until the ungodly hour of 8:00 PM, instead of closing at 4 in the afternoon like every other shop on the continent. People who do not belong to unions, and therefore do not enjoy the 11-hour work week and 45-hour lunches which seem to be commonplace here, might, in such an establishment, actually be able to buy an overpriced pair of Italian shoes after work that will turn into shredded leather foot wrappings during the first snow like something out of a grainy, black and white Operation Barbarossa documentary which will only lead to cannibaliism at some point, God help us all.

So, armed with the forbidden knowledge and secret pass-phrase, I walked casually into said cut-easy at 6 in the afternoon, curious as to what awaited me. I walked confidently to the counter, where the tell-tale scent of Barbicide betrayed the establishment's true purpose, and announced that I was there for a...haircut! I was promptly greeted by an attractive young nymph, probably fresh out of art-school, in need of funds, in a lowly state, ready for every degradation I could muster from my addled id.

I can't really recall much about the haircut. It was alright, the barbress turned out to be not that attractive after all, which is gang und gebe, a little pudgy, actually, though she did have magic hands at the hair-washing sink, though the fact that she didn't ask if I wanted the "special treatment" was not lost on me, and therefore was likely to affect her tip, negatively. The wrong kind of rub was in coming, though. She did a bad job on the head. Now, I know I've got a difficult head to cut, and I'm usually very understanding when newbies have difficulty with it. After the damage was done, the nymphette looked askance, and inquired as to whether I would like some gel on my hair. In a moment of weakness, I said, well, maybe just a little dab to hold back the humiliation when I walked out the door. So, she being responsive, and subject to my every whim, she took out a tube of hair gel, squeezed out a miniscule drop of the sticky, sensous fluid, and rubbed it on my battered skull. I looked in the mirror, and, swallowing my distaste, mussed a bit till I looked like something other than a month-old jack-o-lantern. I thanked her, and proceeded to the cash register. I paid my due, and realized she'd tacked €1.50 onto the price for the fucking hair gel!

I realize the people have to earn their money. I realize that the price for the haircut was suspiciously reasonable for these dark post-Deutschmark days, but a fucking €1.50 for a fucking cum-dab of hair gel!!!!!1

At this point, I was confronted with the decision, do I scream, at the top of my lungs, YOU FUCKING BACKSTABBING CUNT I'LL FUCKING DO YOU IN YOU GODDAMN BITCH FOR THAT FUCKING HAIRCUT YOU GONNA FUCKING PAY MOMMY MOMMY, or do I just meekly pay the €13.50, thank the nice lady, and walk out the door like someone actually did me a favor? People who know me will have no trouble believing that, not only did I pay the full tab, I also dropped a Euro into the tip jar. What a twat I am.

At two points in this story, as with so many cases in life, I could have been saved with one simple question: What would the Duke do? First off, John Wayne probably would have declined the hair gel, I'm guessing. Failing that, he most certainly would have shot every fucking customer in the department store amid myriad shoulder-rolls and hat-tips, which, honestly, is exactly what this pussified gay-bar of a country needs a bit more of.

Where's my fucking big-airn?

is a Bavarian wedding. I'm not really sure which is more important in such a regional affair, the unbridled alcohol abuse by everyone over the age of 16, or the abject humiliation of the bridal pair.

The intentional self-poisoning began on Thursday, with the Bachelor party. Pubs were crawled, bottoms were pinched, and, in the end, Rube showed that he could still run with the young dogs.

There's Rube, passed out in a chair in some nightclub he doesn't even know the name of, at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And yes, the next morning's 9 o'clock meeting was a rousing, unqualified disaster, thanks for asking. By some weird twist of fate, Friday night was the birthday party of a family of immigrants out of somewhere over in Vampireland, which is anything east of Czechoslovakia. That was good for yet another night of binge drinking, though I must admit the heart, she was not really in it.

Which brings us to Saturday, the aforementioned wedding. Apparently, it's traditional in Bavaria to steal and make a copy of the Groom's house key while he's not paying attention. On the day of the wedding, while he's preparing to feed and bedrink his guests, they break into his apartment and trash the place. I heard stories of dismantled furniture, toilets stuffed with chocolate, pulled circuit breakers, and something about 150 gallons of mashed potatoes. With friends like these...

The entire evening of the Wedding was an endless stream of humiliation for the groom, the pinnacle of which must have been when we, in the tradition of the region, kidnapped his bride, took her out drinking, and he had to come search for us. I'm not exactly sure what the point of that particular ritual is, but she seemed to enjoy it just a little too much.

At any rate, congratulations to Herr Doktor Probst and his lovely new bride Martina for a beautiful wedding, and my heartfelt sympathies for the fact that some asshole went through his cd collection and swapped all the cases.

CNN.com - Inventor denies dead cat fuel story - Sep 15, 2005:

The underlying truth is, of course, that should you ever have to even deny such a thing, you've already lost.

Hallo, Hans

I vanted to assk you vhy ze american und british tourists, ze are alvays giggling vhen zey come here for skiing.

Danke,

Fritz Weber
Wank-Lifte Ski Lift

Jottings from yesterday's bar napkin, from the daily evening meeting-of-one:

I'm the chair of your misfortune, 4 legs of strength compared to your two. I loathe your cushions.
There are 3 people you should never lie to: Your lawyer, your doctor, and your accountant.
Your bits of SuSE architecture, you will not get in there. You will stare in amazement, at the amount of trust there.

Unvollständig.
Speth was eyeing my unit.
With Windows,you've got a whole other set of problems. I am the leader of the technik. Keep your fucking hands off of them. Dicknose.
There's no denying it: Things have been better.
Rsync software: No network access. How many revolutions? (backup rev's)(under normal usage)?
Why do I busy myself with such nonsense?
I'm surrounded by freaks and losers, traitors, liars, bitchy little people I'm supposed to give a fuck about.
Perfect coif, unimpeachable ascot. Saaaaah-weeeeet.
Wearing a green ascot on St. Patrick's day is probably not the best way to keep from getting pinched, I fear.
In a few years, I'll look back on these days and think, "What the fuck was that all about?"
Jeepers, I'm tired.
I'm tired of being tired. But I'm more tired of being broke.
Man, I guess TCP/IP, in retrospect, scales pretty well.
I can't believe I actually used to be an IPX bigot.
I also can't believe I used to own a class C subnet, namely 38.221.9.0/24. Merc, Fred, Medusa, Thor, Zeus, NS, man oh man, those were some days!
Here's some helpful advice for the ladies out there: If you're ugly, show some tit! C'mon, it's a date!
People sit around and compare their tools...
Tomorrow, I'm going to have a blister under my fingernail. Damn.

Well, I guess it's about time to stop smoking. I found a brown spot under my tongue today. I've probably got jaw cancer. Which probably means they'll need to cut off the lower half of my face, and reduce me to a freak whose tongue just hangs out of a jagged hole under his nose, wagging impotently with every attempt to speak, unable to articulate a sound, just emmitting some sort of excited whistle of gratitude when it's time for my mush.

Fuck, how did it come to this? I'm only thirty-five. My grandfather smoked for 60 years and only quit because he died. Otherwise, he'd be right here next to me, hooting appreciatively through a tube sticking out of his chest, then we'd go outside and pick up some hookers. Sleep well, Grandpa Arry, you deserved everything you got.

You know, that moment when you start typing, when you start groooooovin', not working at it, let the blog do the work for a change. This thing's been buggin' me, beggin' me, asking me please feed the hole, your publikum is waiting on you, Rube. But you know what, Blog? I'm fucking busy, whiny ass. I've got things to do, people to meet, bills to pay and letters to send. T'aint room here for two jefes, so one of us needs to get a-buggin, and I do believe that would be me. So, now, as long as I'm the one doing the buggin', you be the one doing the list'nin'. Now you listen to me, Blog, and you listen good. Velociman has a boil on his choad, Acidman's got a bug up his ass, and Lousiana ain't feeling so good his damn self. But me? I'm doing jes fine. Rube done took his blood pressure yesterday, after speed-snorting a liter of coffee, and it was 106 over fucking 60. I was on my way to work on a fuckin' Sunday, hands shaking like Katherine Hepburn's favorite vibrator, and you just sat here like a bump on a log waiting for it to find you.

Write yourself, you ungrateful little fuck. What's that? Oh, yeah, anytime, pussy, anytime.

Since I'm too busy at the moment to keep this rickety jalopy running, I've decided to post anything which the dregs of society decide to throw my inbox's way. I need a spam filter...

Case in point:

Chapter 1: A Viking Funeral
Author Unknown

He's gone, I heard the good doctor tell my wife and sister who apparently were somewhere in the near vicinity. No I wanted to scream out but couldn't. What the hell is going on? My eyes were shut tight and try as I might they would not open or even flutter. My entire body was frozen and refused to respond to any mental commands that I issued. Darkness held me captive.

"He wished to be cremated and have his ashes strewn over the homes of all his exes and meaningful lovers etc., the meaningless to receive condolences thru the mail or whatever", my beloved wife Andy relayed the info to the Doc or someone.

Then my beloved, somewhat frugal Sister, chimed in "My God stamps alone will cost a small fortune". "Just put a notice in a few fish-wrappers". As for scattering ashes, forget the former wives as they would make every attempt to bring the aircraft down before the payload could be delivered. The meaningfuls would be more receptive but squirm with discomfort while trying to explain the gesture to their current meaningfuls. We were only friends won't wash".

"Well, his 2nd wish was for a "Viking funeral", Andy offered. Maybe we could get some of his old drinking buddies to heave "Molotov" cocktails at a small vessel as it floats near the "Lil' " River Bridge that spans the infamous Alatoona Lake. Henry Bryan and Jackie Dempsey will gladly secure an old fishing boat I'm sure".

The 2nd wish prevailed. Somehow my wife and sister pulled it off. It was near dusk on a late August day when the much publicized event began. Bells Ferry road was closed to traffic in both directions, so the bridge would be open to the throngs of expected onlookers. Twenty cocktail hurlers waited in formation for the funeral barge to pass beneath, carrying yours truly to Valhalla. All at once the small boat came into view in tow behind a larger ski boat. When it neared the bridge, someone severed the tow line. Now the vessel was drifting under the L.R.B. Finally it emerged on the other side as the cocktails were lit, awaiting the Hurl command. Then it came, Ready! Hurl! All at once 20 arms obeyed the order! A few struck the small craft, causing it to ignite. The burlap wrapped corpse was now slowly engulfed in smoke and flame.

"My God it moved" a horrified deputy sheriff screamed!"Saw it thru my field glasses". Henry Bryan snatched the glasses from the grasp of the now hysterical lawman. "Let me have a look see"! Naw, must've been your eyes doin' tricks, what with it being nearly dark and all.

Only small remnants of the remained by now, floating on the surface near a large patch of ashes, surrounded by a mysterious ring of grease, all floating away toward a distant beach. Show was over and the crowd began to thin out. Some were puzzled by the behavior of Henry B. and Jackie D. however. Both were giggling and high-fiving anyone nearby. Eventually they were joined by the widow and sister of the deceased. Both ladies suppressed their own laughter all were aboard the Merc convertible belonging to J.D.. Now as the white Mercedes sped south on Bells Ferry Road, Henry B. broke the silence! There must be a God, what an unexpected bonus!He was refering to the fact that one of the hurlers was none other than George Tweedy.

It seemed that "Old Pruneface" (George) inadvertantly dropped his flaming cocktail all over himself! J.D. quickly pushed the "Human Torch" over the bridge railing and downward toward the murky water some 50 feet below. As luck would have it, George missed the water and upon the rocky shore. "Close but no cigar" would be this poor old wretches final epitath.

All 4 occupants wiped tears caused by derisive laughter from their eyes as the speeding vehichle reached it's destination. Now all entered the Villas of Kennesaw clubhouse bar, which had been previously reserved for the evening. "Did he suffer"? I asked. "Which one?", my wife asked. "Huh"!

Finally H.B. was able to speak and relay the tale of "Old Lonesome George's demise". Loud guffaws filled the room, it was gonna be a great night!!!

Stay tuned for Chapter Two:
Where in the world Is Gary ASSitelli?

Didja ever sit and wonder, just how horrendous X1-X10 must have been? I mean, network transparency is admirable, but it's all in the impelementation, folks.

At these sorts of cabbage-patch spectacles that crop up every now and then, it's important to remember the training. Macs are special. Macs are different. Macs are premium consumer items not meant for every 300 lb. frizzy-haired slushee-sucker who buys her computers at the grocery store.

Remember the training. Steve? Are you there? Have you forsaken us? SAY SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE A JESUS!

But Steve's probably just cackling like Renfield in some white marble penthouse, calling Gates on the phone; "Bill, you couldn't buy this kind of publicity!"

"Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner" (Stephan Schacher)

A trip across America is the dream of many Europeans. At the tender age of nineteen, photographer Stephan Schacher undertook a typical sightseeing tour of the United States, from coast to coast on the Kerouac trail, visiting the cities and monuments, both natural and man-made, along the legendary Route 66. Almost 20 years later, Schacher decided to take a second trip across North America. This time, however, things would be done a little differently: Driving from upstate New York to Northern Alaska, almost 11,000 kilometers across Canada and the United States, Schacher decided photograph every meal along the way, as well as every waitress who served it.

What may sound like a goofy, drunken college idea dreamed up at three o'clock in the morning became a serious undertaking for Schacher. Eating exclusively in roadside diners, the author blazes a low-brow culinary trail across the continent, braving greasy hamburgers and questionable seafood platters. The book itself is handsomely crafted. After turning page after page of greasy diner cuisine, one begins to wonder just how many t-bone steaks and onion rings a man can eat before his heart explodes.

Using specialty paper, muted colors, and creative typography, it sits well on the nightstand or coffee table for the casual reading session. Making meticulous records of his mileage, food expenditures, and the times of arrival and departure, Schacher is able to painstakingly recreate his entire journey in facts and figures to complement the irresistibly personal experience of the solitary roadside meal.

This is a good sign...

[root@freak1 chkrootkit-0.45]# ls -al
bash: /bin/ls: Input/output error

On my poor little Linux box, who just sits in the corner and never hurts anybody. When he was in the kitchen, next to my refrigerator, he once had 700 days of uptime, damn near 2 years without a reboot. He even spent the better part of an afternoon in a half-inch of standing water, when I accidentally left my freezer door open.

Brave little man, go gently into that great /dev/null in the sky. And take my fucking django projects with you, you weak little twat. Jesus, why do I only do backups for other people?!

That's what I'll be. Sitting in the server room, surrounded by untold generations of in-bred housecats, all playing little banjos and admiring my pouty lips. Crazy ol' Cat-Rube, wondering where all my friends have gone, why my children never call, and why, way back when, in aught-five, nobody wished me a happy System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Fuck you guys. I'm deleting all your mail.

As I was googling around, debating whether or not to install the copy of Office XP I've recently come into, in order to upgrade my slowly rotting-yet-beloved copy of Office 2000 Pro, I came across 1) enough evidence to deter me, and b) what has to be the best screenshot caption I've ever seen:

Some may have noticed that in the last 6 months, YouBitch.org has skyrocketed in popularity, owing to various influences viz bribery and dirty, dirty tricks.

It's grown so popular, in fact, that you'll find YouBitch.org in the Truth Laid Bear ecology sandwiched between ROFASix and "Test Page for Apache Installation".

How the hell do you come in behind a Test Page for Apache Installation?

Sometimes it's the little things that make it worthwhile. Today, for example, I spent 2 hours working on a network firewall whose brand name, Ben Hur, is eerily close to the Bavarian phrase, bin a hur, which means, roughly, I am a prostitute. This is why I giggle to myself when I think there's no one watching.

Also, I get to swear a lot a work, since none of these cretins speak English well enough to know what "oh you cocksucking piece of fucking shit" actually means, in the book sense.

In a related train of thought, I was in Kissing, Bavaria yesterday. Streams of consciousness being what they are, I immediately thought of Henry Kissinger, whose name means someone who comes from Kissing, and then I thought to myself, jeez, I haven't come from Kissing since high school, which then dead-ended into a search for a half-joke that cratered into a mixed-metaphore here at the usually-reliable youbitch.

Indeed, the little things can make an otherwise dreary, grey, and cloudy day all smily.

Oh, and there was a bug.

I never thought I'd see these words written by an adult:

why do I get the feeling you guys are yanking my chain? I guess I'll have to ask Sandy, she will be straight with me!

I would suggest that Lippy Livey prepare herself for amazing new levels of betrayal, shaming, and a chain-yanking most people only read about in Penthouse Forum. Sandy?!

I had all kindsa Sandy riffin' on Zonker links to pan out here, but sandy moved :-(

Sandy's new home is here. By the time Longhorn/Vista comes out, or Duke Nukem Forever, whichever comes first, I'll even update my sidebar template!

Hugs,
Rube

Check out the smoke on slashdot. There are a few very important reasons for a company to switch over to Macs. Viruses, Spyware, and Solitaire, to name just three. I just installed Windows XP on a fairly run-of-the-mill mini-PC, the ASUS Pundit-R. It took me two day to get all the drivers sorted out. I've still got an entry in the device manager for a mysterious "USB Controller" with a yellow exclamation point next to it which doesn't seem to be covered by the ASUS or ATI driver downloads. You can re-install a Mac in about an hour, all drivers and applications included, no matter what model. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even tell the install program to leave your home directory alone, and all your application settings will remain.

On the other hand, I've had a lot of customer contact lately. Most of my customers have irresolvable reasons to stay on the platform they're on, almost invariably Win32. Whether it's a Tax-Consulting program that makes extensive use of COM and the Windows version of Microsoft Office and Outlook, or an embedded controlling program for an industrial baking machine that only runs on Win98 SE, these people are locked in, and generally at ease with that fact. But with that, the 'vendor lock-in' argument against Apple Computer goes right out the window.

Companies shouldn't switch platforms just because somebody on Slashdot can provide an overpowering argument. Switching is expensive, no matter which direction. If you switch to Mac, you have to know that you can't realistically have more that one choice for an office productivity package, ironically MS Office. On Windows, you've got native versions of OpenOffice, Hansa Office, Corel WordPerfect Office (my personal choice at the moment), and just about anything else you can think of, none of which exist on Mac. Mac does have Pages, which beats rings around Word for 99% of what you're going to want to do, as long as what you want to do doesn't involve other companies being able to interact directly with your documents.

There are many arguments against Macification, and many more in favor. It all comes down to whether or not the boss wants to pony up the money for some sexy-ass hardware.

[are you there?]
yes

There's a lot to be said for good work habits. At least that's what I've heard, mostly from people who have good work habits, and also have, perhaps not coincidentally, fairly recent iPods. It's hard to balance abject sloth and material greed, I've found, so at some point you just try to find the path of least suffering. Just give a smile on the sidewalk to some girl who's trying so hard to make an impression. You don't have to express your loathing each and every minute to the untermenschen that you are forced by God and man to walk past when all you really want is to get from point A to point B to take the money from party C. Party C understands that you're not there to talk about the weather, but it's protocol, so just fuckin' do it.

Good work habits are more than just Knowing Your Shit. Good work habits include getting out of bed before noon, whether you have to or not [glance at Andy]; not masturbating in front of customers [glance at Thomas]; coming within 4 significant digits of your proposed budget [glance in mirror]; using your spellchecker when norms will be reading; and, last but not least, not fucking the co-ops [no glance necessary].

Good work habits involving knowing your product, and know when not to bend your customer over a barrel, which does occasionally make sense. Call your mother every now and then; do your paperwork; and for God sakes, stop using the fucking copier to make visuals of your goddam buttocks. I know this is all very difficult for you scrubs, but please, do make an effort: We're in this game to win. Now get out there and kick some ASS!

So, I was sitting at the trainstop tonight, on my way home from work, listening to a podcast of Nightline on my iPod, in which they covered the spreading avian flu epidemic and, jumpin' jehosephat, we all gonna die. But I knew that. However, they had sound bites of Chimpy McHitler doing a couple of press conferences, and I'll be damned if he doesn't butcher this one even worse than nuclear. Did you know we're sitting on a pandemic of Èvian Flu? If you've ever wondered what the French were doing to contribute to the end of mankind as we know it, aside from accordion music, now you know.

I swear, the boy's sounding more like a cross between John Wayne and Emily Litella with every passing sentence. In a matter of months, he'll be giving the State of the Union address, and will sign off $200 billion to preserve our natural racehorses.

People, I'd soon shit as look at ya, as my dear departed grandfather was fond of saying to us grandchillens. There's just nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a good ol' blue funk at the beginning of the week. Today, despite being Tuesday, was Monday here in Germany, for all intents and purpose. The long weekend was over, and I enjoyed three days of true sloth, the likes of which I've not enjoyed for quite some time here. Yesterday was the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Re-unification Day, and therefore a holiday. I don't have a television at the moment, so I'm not quite sure how the yokels down in dogpatch celebrated, or if they celebrated. The closest I've heard to someone marking the occasion was a documentary on the Columbine massacre that was on one of the state-run television channels last night; I guess replaying the awe-inspiring "Tear down this wall" speech would've been regarded as sycophantic. They could've maybe just shown the thousands of Pershing II protesters instead of Reagan, just to be fair. I mean, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, there wasn't just bottomless love and gratitude for Reagan here in the 80s; there were also some nay-sayers.

So, 15 years later, what have we got here? The Wessies (West Germans) hate the Ossies (East Germans), the Ossies are all Nazis, the country's being run into the ground by Greens and Socialists, and Rube's got a headache to complement his weird-ass earache. And the beer? Color me unimpressed. Sell me on it, people, it takes more than beer to offset an 80% tax burden. This isn't really blowing my skirt up. Maybe it's time for an "OK, Mr. Gorbatchev, you can put that wall back up" speech, and a new Cold War to stir the drink. Gorby's going to be here in Augsburg on Saturday, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

I'll soldier on. Europe's OK, despite my visceral hatred of cold weather and accordions.

Who do you want to be? I'm pretty happy with who I am, all things considered. I mean, the joints are getting a little too creaky to be right where I want to be. I get earaches a lot. Earaches? When the hell did that start. I seem to recall something about an earache the last time when I was 10 years old, in Washington, watching a Caps game. During a raucous pre-game pillowfight in the hotel, I was blindsided viciously by one of the other running-men, and fell ear-first into the corner of the nightstand. Screaming children, dancing lights before my eyes, and an eardrum gushing blood onto the bed, from what I can remember. But there's a groove for you; I didn't even need alcohol back then to pull the ol', "Hey y'all, watch this!" It just happens naturally to children, without the need for finely-aged and/or -brewed refreshments, like, say, your run-of-the-mill blog meet, with bullwhips and such.

But somehow the earache lain in wait for two-and-a-half decades, ready to pounce. I've been sick for about 3 weeks now, which really isn't like me. Normally, I've got an iron constitution, seeing as over the years I've built up an environment of toxins in my body that's inhospitable to your average germ varmint. To all life, really. The soupy buildup of nicotine, alcohol, and stress toxins in my blood would put the post-Katrina sludge in New Orleans to shame, just wait until the Rube-Tsunami hits, then let's see Curious George wriggle out of the media storm that follows. "Rube: What Went Wrong?"

Yeah, well, enough about that shit. On with the show. I'm not getting any younger, despite the wash of childhood diseases and injuries that may yet wait around the corner on my walk home tonight.

What? The Braves won the division? It's like baseball season is on fast-forward every year. I didn't see a single game since April. Damn.

Man o man, I can't believe they actually did that this year, with that bunch o' bums they were fielding in April. But then, ever since Cox started beating his wife when the team loses, the Bravos seemed to have stepped it up a notch. For Ms. Cox' sake.

More and more, it seems to me that there's nothing new or innovative in life. I think the more you understand something, the less you enjoy it. Take computers, for example. I understand computers. I've been working on them now almost thirty years, ever since my first home job, the risible Texas Instruments TI 994/A. My second computer was the much more suitable Mattel Aquarius, replete with 16K expansion board. 16K? I remember thinking it was the shit, something I could never even dream of filling up. Consider the following BASIC program:

10 ? "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

That's about 25 bytes, and also about the extent of my BASIC programming abilities at the age of 11. I remember there was this other kid in my sixth grade class who also had an Aquarius. I remember him bitching because he only had the 4K expansion, and he didn't have any room left in memory for the data sets that he used in the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG he'd programmed on it. I would have loaned him mine, but I was humiliated into lying that my flight simulator was almost finished, so sorry, no dice.

In the eighth grade, I took my first computer-oriented course at school, which was called "Business Computing on the Apple ][". I'm not exactly sure what eight-graders are supposed to understand about business computing, or what we were supposed to think of the cleverly hackerish use of square brackets for the roman numerals in the Apple ]['s name, but I was nonetheless intimidated into swearing that I would never buy a computer, much less one that had the colors of the international homosexual conspiracy brazenly embedded in a fruit. Subtle it ain't, the old Apple logo. Instead, I would live my life in buckskin trousers and shoot at revenuers with my kentucky windage, wishing for simpler times when men were men, and night was dark. Which of course is why I'm now a UNIX system administrator, and write blog entries in bars on my Apple laptop.

So nowadays, I understand that every laptop is basically a remix of different off-the-shelf parts, with a selection of the available software, as money allows, nothing special. There's only the capacity of hard drives, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM installed that make any dent. It's all the same shit. There are many computer companies, but only a few huge factories that pump out the shit that they all build into their computers. There is no wonder, no joy, mystery to any of it.

This principle applies to everything in life. At least, it applies to anything built after the second world war. German engineers are no better than the Americans anymore, they all use the same CAD software to get their shit done, and, with the Internet, there are no magical metallurgical formulas, no secret underground laboratories, no oil fields in the Balkans that make a difference, only Google results. Nowadays, there's only the price of commodities on the global market, the intricacies of international currency markets, and the sewing together of the same, tired old components by some poor saps in Taiwan for each and every manufacturer in each and every field of business, be it shoes or MP3 players.

Depressing.

[22:20]
I'm giving the New Worst Bar in the World a second chance tonight. For about the eighth time now, I guess. These guys are the worst of the worst. They're even worse than I remembered, and that was bad enough. I've been sitting here now for about 10 minutes, and they haven't even acknowledged my presence. There's 4 chicks behind the bar, just a-wiping them counters, a-polishing them glasses, and a-wasting my fucking time. I guess I keep coming back out of morbid curiosity, of the literal kind. I've got to see how long it takes for this place to die off.

Atrocious service. There's an entire floor of guests here where I'm sitting, and we all came in about the same time. Probably about 10 people. There's no way they could've missed us, and anyway, I'm sitting on the railing, with my sizeable noggin in plain view of God and everybody. Let's watch...

[22:30]
Welp, still high and dry here. The staff have, in the meantime, made a perfunctory round of the lower floor down there. They didn't bother to put out their cigarettes to do it though, just left them burning in the ashtrays. Never a good sign. I'll light a cigarette and see what happens.

[22:35]
Cigarette's out. Somebody's coming up the stairs, oh wait! She's got a notepad with her! She's either a waitress or a reporter, and either one would suit my purposes at this point. Meanwhile, more customers are grousing around and looking nervously over their shoulders, the silence of the taps a deafening presence in the room. My hatred hangs over this place like a cloud. Thalia Bar and Grill, I am your own personal Simon Wiesenthal, you worthless, arrogant bunch of fucks.

[22:39]
The reporter took my drink order. I ordered a beer, and I'm anxious to see if she fucks it up. That would be just like the AFP to do something like that. Arrogant Cowboy American Orders Mai Thai, Asks Twice for 'Cute Little Umbrella'. It's a sting, I fucking knew it. I will bring this place down around their ears. The Duke would.

[22:41]
After leaving something on my table that most certainly looked like a beer, the waitress was unresponsive to my admittedly lukewarm thank-you. Fucking narc.

[23:30]
This fucking bitch. She only came up one more time, and that was to clear off another table, and then she went back down without asking if I needed another beer. I guess I don't, seeing as I've gotten attached to this one, as spending an hour with a beer brings you closer to it. I shall shit upon this bar, its name will be stricken from every card, from every column, and every positive blog entry I ever wrote about it, should there actually be any. The Thalia Movie Bar and Grill is, without a doubt, the worst bar in the world.

I'm in a chatty mood tonight. That may very well be because it's Sunday, and Sunday in Augsburg means Biscuits à la Rube, and Grits au Fromage. Such breakfasts are good starts to any day, even when served at 4:30 in the afternoon, in filthy pajamas.

So, what shall we talk about? Let's talk about the weather. In a cruel turn of fate, the weather finally got warm the week after the kids went back to school. Fuck 'em. Treats them right for living in the arctic circle. Move back to the world, kids, there's sunshine and hurricanes.

Ok, that's the weather. Let's talk shop. I got a steady gig now, which doesn't take much time, and doesn't pay all that badly. I'm self-employed, so whenever a steady source of income shows up, it's always welcome. It doesn't quite make up for the 2 and half months of project work that I just did for which I didn't get paid, but it makes telling certain customers to go fuck themselves that much easier.

I actually worked for one customer for up to 60 hours a week for the last two months. Even though I relaxed my normally-exorbitant hourly rates for the sake of customer relations, the bills are running up into the tens of thousands. Thing is, I haven't seen a dime of that money yet, and the way things are looking further upstream, I don't think I'll ever see any of the money. The other party, who's basically doing sales for the project while I do the work, has decided that almost all of the customers we've been servicing like overworked whores lately are 'Reference Customers', who will be useful down the road for bringing in other customers, and therefore won't get billed. Which means I won't see any money from them at all. Which means I'm pretty much figuring out whether or not spending time in the big house is worth the ass-whipping I'd like to lay on my salesman. Still too close to call.

The press might want to stop trying to milk this one.

Mama Moonbat and Her Multitudes

30 people? I've had orgies bigger than that, and I don't recall getting phone calls from Murdoch over it, either. In fact, through most of the "summer" here, there was some sad-assed march against the Hartz IV welfare reforms, which involved somehow making people actually fill out more forms to keep getting unemployment checks. Every Monday night, the teeming masses of about 20 or 30 people would march through the town square to the train station, with some buffoon up front shouting rhyming missives about Schröder or something through a megaphone. And I always wondered to myself, usually through a beery haze, if he really saw himself as some sort of revolutionary figure, with the streaming red banners of the International Communist Conspiracy waving all about, black confetti falling from the medieval buildings around them, as the oppressed volk breathe a sigh of relief that they finally have a voice. Instead, I mean, of the 20 or 30 bongo-playing dopeheads who were shouting, incoherently, his dumbass rhymes back at him, to the derisive hootin' and hollerin' of the Monday-night Maximilian-Strasse promenaders, with the intention of getting their $2000.00 a month benefits extended past the 3-year limit.

What a bunch of fucking parasites.

Just in case y'all missed it, the photos from the wedding are up. The bachelor party photos have yet to clear customs, ahem.

And speaking of Herr Doktor Probst, he's got his own blog now. Check it out. I'm sure we'll be seeing more from him, as soon as the monkey-in-the-mirror 'Test' posts scroll out of the way.

Mutual friend Martin Bruch also has an interesting blog, as long as you're a Mac weenie like me.

This is perhaps the most beautiful, romantic thing I've ever read (NSFW):

Ladies, find the ugliest man you know (and my e-mail address is linked on the right) and I'll assure you that you'll soon forget where your clitoris ends and his tongue begins. Within hours, you'll be thinking that you breeched birthed and adut male.

From skippystalin, of course.

Hope their sites can stay online after the vicious Bitchdotting they're getting here.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that open-xchange is worth the trouble, kick them in the nuts. Hard.

Upon describing me as "mature":

That wasn't really the word I was looking for, but I couldn't find any nicer synonyms for "old" in the thesaurus.

Man, I'm tired, but I can finally relax a little, now that I'm down to my one or two nightly cocktails, instead of the caligulan excesses I've been subjected to of late. The preceding week was a grueling, besotted blur that I strongly believe will make me rethink my entire position on alcohol. Ok. Yep. Good point, Mr. Oblongata. Ok, I continued, nodding thoughtfully while clamping the unlit pipe between my well-formed incisors, I do believe you've got a point after all.

Alcohol is a funny thing, as long as your definition of funny has a lot in common with Hermann Goering's. For us drunkards, it's an almost unbearable hit parade of mortifying moments that accompanies even the most insincere, shallow attempts at soul-searching. Again and again, it makes you pose the question to yourself that we've all had to try and wrestle at one point or another, namely: What the fuck was I thinking? I lost my goddamn cell phone in the drunken haze last week. I loved that cell phone, sort of. I realize now that I'm in the market fer one a em's sexy iTunes phones, but, honestly, I'd rather have a Nano. In fact, I'd rather have even a fool's hope that I'll have enough money to buy smokes for another glorious month o' puffin', but I don't, so I guess I'm not so much in the market fer as I am up shit creek without a paddle in the absence of.

I lost my phone during a 300-yard long, meandering stumble home from the bachelor party. I know that I didn't leave it in the night club, because I remember making a phone call or two on my way home. I'd called my lusty companions, asking them if they'd check around the club and see if they could find my digital camera, which was missing, and bring it to safety. I then called my baby, and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be home within an hour, 300 yards being what they are at 5:30 in the morning, and that hopefully she hadn't forgotten the earplugs I'd recommended she buy, lest my easily-foreseen yet completely unavoidable sawing and clearing of the rainforest disturb her for the 2 or 3 hours that I would actually be allowed to remain in bed, owing to the 9 o'clock meeting I'd cleverly scheduled for the next morning. When I was wrenched from my snoring paradise by Satan's Alarm Clock, I was sadly without a phone, yet, remarkably, with my digital camera in my pocket. Had I actually been talking to my friends and loved ones on the camera? How very, very David Lynch.

But let's not forget the human costs. I almost punched out some rummy hobo in a bar for hitting on my sweet baby Saturday night, after a boozy pub crawl. He was drunk, and my sweet baby was looking very sweet indeed, but there ain't more than one rummy hobo who's laying on hands around here, and that rummy hobo is me, buddy. I don't suppose the late hour or the gigantic bar-tab had anything at all to do with my rush to visit justice on this poor, lonely sap.

Alcohol has cost me plenty, but I guess there's no point in stopping now.

In every industry, there are the kickbacks, the skimmings, the tricks of the trade that allow the core products to be competitively priced, and accessible to Joe Consumer. In some cases, it even allows the core products to be given away for free. In the late 90's, for example, we used to actually sell computers for below cost, knowing that, within six months, we could charge thousands of dollars to check these same computers for Y2K-compliancy. I ran the (mostly ceremonial) test procedures at least a thousand times during the last six months of 1999, and not once did a customer ask me why we didn't check the things before we rolled them out, sometimes mere days before returning to certify them. I must have gained 40 pounds in 1999.

Another great example of this particular business model is Microsoft's XBox. Every XBox in the world is sold at a horrifying loss. The hardware costs alone are something like 90% of the price tag, and the other 10% couldn't even put a dent in the massive R&D, marketing, and licensing costs The Beast poured into this fine piece of machinery. Nevertheless, Microsoft made (and still makes) a killing off this thing. The secret is the game licensing. GatesCo. basically gives away the hardware, so that they can make money off of the games that are sold to run on it. The XBox's anti-"piracy" technology ensures that only those games which have been blessed with The Key can run on it, and The Key, my friends, costs the pudenda for those who wish to use it.

Which brings us to my fucking haircut. Throug whispered confessions in nervous, back-alley meetings, it came to my attention that there exists here in Germany a reasonably-priced barber shop, hidden within the steamy bowels of a department store. Department stores are, in Germany at least, the Grand Mufti of Commerce, because they are often open until the ungodly hour of 8:00 PM, instead of closing at 4 in the afternoon like every other shop on the continent. People who do not belong to unions, and therefore do not enjoy the 11-hour work week and 45-hour lunches which seem to be commonplace here, might, in such an establishment, actually be able to buy an overpriced pair of Italian shoes after work that will turn into shredded leather foot wrappings during the first snow like something out of a grainy, black and white Operation Barbarossa documentary which will only lead to cannibaliism at some point, God help us all.

So, armed with the forbidden knowledge and secret pass-phrase, I walked casually into said cut-easy at 6 in the afternoon, curious as to what awaited me. I walked confidently to the counter, where the tell-tale scent of Barbicide betrayed the establishment's true purpose, and announced that I was there for a...haircut! I was promptly greeted by an attractive young nymph, probably fresh out of art-school, in need of funds, in a lowly state, ready for every degradation I could muster from my addled id.

I can't really recall much about the haircut. It was alright, the barbress turned out to be not that attractive after all, which is gang und gebe, a little pudgy, actually, though she did have magic hands at the hair-washing sink, though the fact that she didn't ask if I wanted the "special treatment" was not lost on me, and therefore was likely to affect her tip, negatively. The wrong kind of rub was in coming, though. She did a bad job on the head. Now, I know I've got a difficult head to cut, and I'm usually very understanding when newbies have difficulty with it. After the damage was done, the nymphette looked askance, and inquired as to whether I would like some gel on my hair. In a moment of weakness, I said, well, maybe just a little dab to hold back the humiliation when I walked out the door. So, she being responsive, and subject to my every whim, she took out a tube of hair gel, squeezed out a miniscule drop of the sticky, sensous fluid, and rubbed it on my battered skull. I looked in the mirror, and, swallowing my distaste, mussed a bit till I looked like something other than a month-old jack-o-lantern. I thanked her, and proceeded to the cash register. I paid my due, and realized she'd tacked €1.50 onto the price for the fucking hair gel!

I realize the people have to earn their money. I realize that the price for the haircut was suspiciously reasonable for these dark post-Deutschmark days, but a fucking €1.50 for a fucking cum-dab of hair gel!!!!!1

At this point, I was confronted with the decision, do I scream, at the top of my lungs, YOU FUCKING BACKSTABBING CUNT I'LL FUCKING DO YOU IN YOU GODDAMN BITCH FOR THAT FUCKING HAIRCUT YOU GONNA FUCKING PAY MOMMY MOMMY, or do I just meekly pay the €13.50, thank the nice lady, and walk out the door like someone actually did me a favor? People who know me will have no trouble believing that, not only did I pay the full tab, I also dropped a Euro into the tip jar. What a twat I am.

At two points in this story, as with so many cases in life, I could have been saved with one simple question: What would the Duke do? First off, John Wayne probably would have declined the hair gel, I'm guessing. Failing that, he most certainly would have shot every fucking customer in the department store amid myriad shoulder-rolls and hat-tips, which, honestly, is exactly what this pussified gay-bar of a country needs a bit more of.

Where's my fucking big-airn?

is a Bavarian wedding. I'm not really sure which is more important in such a regional affair, the unbridled alcohol abuse by everyone over the age of 16, or the abject humiliation of the bridal pair.

The intentional self-poisoning began on Thursday, with the Bachelor party. Pubs were crawled, bottoms were pinched, and, in the end, Rube showed that he could still run with the young dogs.

There's Rube, passed out in a chair in some nightclub he doesn't even know the name of, at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And yes, the next morning's 9 o'clock meeting was a rousing, unqualified disaster, thanks for asking. By some weird twist of fate, Friday night was the birthday party of a family of immigrants out of somewhere over in Vampireland, which is anything east of Czechoslovakia. That was good for yet another night of binge drinking, though I must admit the heart, she was not really in it.

Which brings us to Saturday, the aforementioned wedding. Apparently, it's traditional in Bavaria to steal and make a copy of the Groom's house key while he's not paying attention. On the day of the wedding, while he's preparing to feed and bedrink his guests, they break into his apartment and trash the place. I heard stories of dismantled furniture, toilets stuffed with chocolate, pulled circuit breakers, and something about 150 gallons of mashed potatoes. With friends like these...

The entire evening of the Wedding was an endless stream of humiliation for the groom, the pinnacle of which must have been when we, in the tradition of the region, kidnapped his bride, took her out drinking, and he had to come search for us. I'm not exactly sure what the point of that particular ritual is, but she seemed to enjoy it just a little too much.

At any rate, congratulations to Herr Doktor Probst and his lovely new bride Martina for a beautiful wedding, and my heartfelt sympathies for the fact that some asshole went through his cd collection and swapped all the cases.

CNN.com - Inventor denies dead cat fuel story - Sep 15, 2005:

The underlying truth is, of course, that should you ever have to even deny such a thing, you've already lost.

Hallo, Hans

I vanted to assk you vhy ze american und british tourists, ze are alvays giggling vhen zey come here for skiing.

Danke,

Fritz Weber
Wank-Lifte Ski Lift

Jottings from yesterday's bar napkin, from the daily evening meeting-of-one:

I'm the chair of your misfortune, 4 legs of strength compared to your two. I loathe your cushions.
There are 3 people you should never lie to: Your lawyer, your doctor, and your accountant.
Your bits of SuSE architecture, you will not get in there. You will stare in amazement, at the amount of trust there.

Unvollständig.
Speth was eyeing my unit.
With Windows,you've got a whole other set of problems. I am the leader of the technik. Keep your fucking hands off of them. Dicknose.
There's no denying it: Things have been better.
Rsync software: No network access. How many revolutions? (backup rev's)(under normal usage)?
Why do I busy myself with such nonsense?
I'm surrounded by freaks and losers, traitors, liars, bitchy little people I'm supposed to give a fuck about.
Perfect coif, unimpeachable ascot. Saaaaah-weeeeet.
Wearing a green ascot on St. Patrick's day is probably not the best way to keep from getting pinched, I fear.
In a few years, I'll look back on these days and think, "What the fuck was that all about?"
Jeepers, I'm tired.
I'm tired of being tired. But I'm more tired of being broke.
Man, I guess TCP/IP, in retrospect, scales pretty well.
I can't believe I actually used to be an IPX bigot.
I also can't believe I used to own a class C subnet, namely 38.221.9.0/24. Merc, Fred, Medusa, Thor, Zeus, NS, man oh man, those were some days!
Here's some helpful advice for the ladies out there: If you're ugly, show some tit! C'mon, it's a date!
People sit around and compare their tools...
Tomorrow, I'm going to have a blister under my fingernail. Damn.

Well, I guess it's about time to stop smoking. I found a brown spot under my tongue today. I've probably got jaw cancer. Which probably means they'll need to cut off the lower half of my face, and reduce me to a freak whose tongue just hangs out of a jagged hole under his nose, wagging impotently with every attempt to speak, unable to articulate a sound, just emmitting some sort of excited whistle of gratitude when it's time for my mush.

Fuck, how did it come to this? I'm only thirty-five. My grandfather smoked for 60 years and only quit because he died. Otherwise, he'd be right here next to me, hooting appreciatively through a tube sticking out of his chest, then we'd go outside and pick up some hookers. Sleep well, Grandpa Arry, you deserved everything you got.

You know, that moment when you start typing, when you start groooooovin', not working at it, let the blog do the work for a change. This thing's been buggin' me, beggin' me, asking me please feed the hole, your publikum is waiting on you, Rube. But you know what, Blog? I'm fucking busy, whiny ass. I've got things to do, people to meet, bills to pay and letters to send. T'aint room here for two jefes, so one of us needs to get a-buggin, and I do believe that would be me. So, now, as long as I'm the one doing the buggin', you be the one doing the list'nin'. Now you listen to me, Blog, and you listen good. Velociman has a boil on his choad, Acidman's got a bug up his ass, and Lousiana ain't feeling so good his damn self. But me? I'm doing jes fine. Rube done took his blood pressure yesterday, after speed-snorting a liter of coffee, and it was 106 over fucking 60. I was on my way to work on a fuckin' Sunday, hands shaking like Katherine Hepburn's favorite vibrator, and you just sat here like a bump on a log waiting for it to find you.

Write yourself, you ungrateful little fuck. What's that? Oh, yeah, anytime, pussy, anytime.

Since I'm too busy at the moment to keep this rickety jalopy running, I've decided to post anything which the dregs of society decide to throw my inbox's way. I need a spam filter...

Case in point:

Chapter 1: A Viking Funeral
Author Unknown

He's gone, I heard the good doctor tell my wife and sister who apparently were somewhere in the near vicinity. No I wanted to scream out but couldn't. What the hell is going on? My eyes were shut tight and try as I might they would not open or even flutter. My entire body was frozen and refused to respond to any mental commands that I issued. Darkness held me captive.

"He wished to be cremated and have his ashes strewn over the homes of all his exes and meaningful lovers etc., the meaningless to receive condolences thru the mail or whatever", my beloved wife Andy relayed the info to the Doc or someone.

Then my beloved, somewhat frugal Sister, chimed in "My God stamps alone will cost a small fortune". "Just put a notice in a few fish-wrappers". As for scattering ashes, forget the former wives as they would make every attempt to bring the aircraft down before the payload could be delivered. The meaningfuls would be more receptive but squirm with discomfort while trying to explain the gesture to their current meaningfuls. We were only friends won't wash".

"Well, his 2nd wish was for a "Viking funeral", Andy offered. Maybe we could get some of his old drinking buddies to heave "Molotov" cocktails at a small vessel as it floats near the "Lil' " River Bridge that spans the infamous Alatoona Lake. Henry Bryan and Jackie Dempsey will gladly secure an old fishing boat I'm sure".

The 2nd wish prevailed. Somehow my wife and sister pulled it off. It was near dusk on a late August day when the much publicized event began. Bells Ferry road was closed to traffic in both directions, so the bridge would be open to the throngs of expected onlookers. Twenty cocktail hurlers waited in formation for the funeral barge to pass beneath, carrying yours truly to Valhalla. All at once the small boat came into view in tow behind a larger ski boat. When it neared the bridge, someone severed the tow line. Now the vessel was drifting under the L.R.B. Finally it emerged on the other side as the cocktails were lit, awaiting the Hurl command. Then it came, Ready! Hurl! All at once 20 arms obeyed the order! A few struck the small craft, causing it to ignite. The burlap wrapped corpse was now slowly engulfed in smoke and flame.

"My God it moved" a horrified deputy sheriff screamed!"Saw it thru my field glasses". Henry Bryan snatched the glasses from the grasp of the now hysterical lawman. "Let me have a look see"! Naw, must've been your eyes doin' tricks, what with it being nearly dark and all.

Only small remnants of the remained by now, floating on the surface near a large patch of ashes, surrounded by a mysterious ring of grease, all floating away toward a distant beach. Show was over and the crowd began to thin out. Some were puzzled by the behavior of Henry B. and Jackie D. however. Both were giggling and high-fiving anyone nearby. Eventually they were joined by the widow and sister of the deceased. Both ladies suppressed their own laughter all were aboard the Merc convertible belonging to J.D.. Now as the white Mercedes sped south on Bells Ferry Road, Henry B. broke the silence! There must be a God, what an unexpected bonus!He was refering to the fact that one of the hurlers was none other than George Tweedy.

It seemed that "Old Pruneface" (George) inadvertantly dropped his flaming cocktail all over himself! J.D. quickly pushed the "Human Torch" over the bridge railing and downward toward the murky water some 50 feet below. As luck would have it, George missed the water and upon the rocky shore. "Close but no cigar" would be this poor old wretches final epitath.

All 4 occupants wiped tears caused by derisive laughter from their eyes as the speeding vehichle reached it's destination. Now all entered the Villas of Kennesaw clubhouse bar, which had been previously reserved for the evening. "Did he suffer"? I asked. "Which one?", my wife asked. "Huh"!

Finally H.B. was able to speak and relay the tale of "Old Lonesome George's demise". Loud guffaws filled the room, it was gonna be a great night!!!

Stay tuned for Chapter Two:
Where in the world Is Gary ASSitelli?

Didja ever sit and wonder, just how horrendous X1-X10 must have been? I mean, network transparency is admirable, but it's all in the impelementation, folks.

At these sorts of cabbage-patch spectacles that crop up every now and then, it's important to remember the training. Macs are special. Macs are different. Macs are premium consumer items not meant for every 300 lb. frizzy-haired slushee-sucker who buys her computers at the grocery store.

Remember the training. Steve? Are you there? Have you forsaken us? SAY SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE A JESUS!

But Steve's probably just cackling like Renfield in some white marble penthouse, calling Gates on the phone; "Bill, you couldn't buy this kind of publicity!"

"Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner" (Stephan Schacher)

A trip across America is the dream of many Europeans. At the tender age of nineteen, photographer Stephan Schacher undertook a typical sightseeing tour of the United States, from coast to coast on the Kerouac trail, visiting the cities and monuments, both natural and man-made, along the legendary Route 66. Almost 20 years later, Schacher decided to take a second trip across North America. This time, however, things would be done a little differently: Driving from upstate New York to Northern Alaska, almost 11,000 kilometers across Canada and the United States, Schacher decided photograph every meal along the way, as well as every waitress who served it.

What may sound like a goofy, drunken college idea dreamed up at three o'clock in the morning became a serious undertaking for Schacher. Eating exclusively in roadside diners, the author blazes a low-brow culinary trail across the continent, braving greasy hamburgers and questionable seafood platters. The book itself is handsomely crafted. After turning page after page of greasy diner cuisine, one begins to wonder just how many t-bone steaks and onion rings a man can eat before his heart explodes.

Using specialty paper, muted colors, and creative typography, it sits well on the nightstand or coffee table for the casual reading session. Making meticulous records of his mileage, food expenditures, and the times of arrival and departure, Schacher is able to painstakingly recreate his entire journey in facts and figures to complement the irresistibly personal experience of the solitary roadside meal.

This is a good sign...

[root@freak1 chkrootkit-0.45]# ls -al
bash: /bin/ls: Input/output error

On my poor little Linux box, who just sits in the corner and never hurts anybody. When he was in the kitchen, next to my refrigerator, he once had 700 days of uptime, damn near 2 years without a reboot. He even spent the better part of an afternoon in a half-inch of standing water, when I accidentally left my freezer door open.

Brave little man, go gently into that great /dev/null in the sky. And take my fucking django projects with you, you weak little twat. Jesus, why do I only do backups for other people?!

That's what I'll be. Sitting in the server room, surrounded by untold generations of in-bred housecats, all playing little banjos and admiring my pouty lips. Crazy ol' Cat-Rube, wondering where all my friends have gone, why my children never call, and why, way back when, in aught-five, nobody wished me a happy System Administrator Appreciation Day.