February 2006 Archives

I finally figured out why some of my friends can't get to my site from their places of employment, and why my friend Arvind, the brilliant young developer of MtBlogRoll, can't get to my site at all from the United Arab Emirates.

Moronosphere.com is on the SmartFilter blacklist. I'm listed as a "Pornography" site and a "Sex" site; which means that any company or nation that's decided to babysit users like nursery-school kids find we're too evil for tender little eyes. This includes all the sites I host under moronosphere.com, but not sites with their own domains.

You can read about the utter stupidity that is SmartFilter on BoingBoing, who are likewise blocked.

You can check your own sites here:

securecomputing.com/sfwhere/index.cfm

I'm not yet sure if there's any way to get that listing corrected. I'm working on it and I'll post here if I find out.

This in the nature of a Stupid Quiz or a meme. But it's a question I asked someone the other day and I thought it'd be good BlogFodder.

What is you there song?

Visualize yourself walking into a room. What's playing in the movie? Are you Shaft (One Bad Mutha - Shut Yo Mouth!)? Are you Only a Girl? are you Too sexy for your pants?

You get one choice. Not for moods, one for your slinky sexy entrance, one for your dramatic entrance, one for your 'nobody notice me now' mood. I want the one; the one that you think tells your story or the one you want to tell you story.

Here's mine:

Funkadelic, I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing, Everybody's Got A Thing.

Lyrics here, mp3 yonder.

That's the one. That's the one I wanna hear when I walk into the room. That's the one I wanna hear when I'm walkin down the street in my leather kilt and combat boots.

That's me, baby.

So tell me - here or in your own blog - what's your theme song? What rocks you into a room in the movie in your head?

And what's mine? What movie rocks me into the room, in the movie in your head?

lying in the cherry tree.
Savage bed foot-warmer of purest feline ancestry.
Look out, little furry folk!
He's the all-night working cat.
Eats but one in every ten
leaves the others on the mat.
...And the mouse police never sleeps

     Jethro Tull, '...And The Mouse Police Never Sleeps'

I was going to tell this story as part of an entry or a series of entries about my Disneyland trip this week, but I don't feel like writing about all that and sorting pictures today. I should be outside doing something with my last vacation day bit I'm more in the angry, sit and brood sort of mood, sort of like when you feed a kid too much sugar and red food coloring; bouncing-off-the-wall wired and then a steep slope down to crash-and-burn.

So we'll start with my last day (lastday I wanted to say, which is the sorta geeky sci-fi reference spcknght will get).

Let's start with what I looked like, but imagine it angry. Big and angry. I'm not that tall, but I tend to look a lot bigger when I'm pissed off. Black kilt, black combat boots. And yeah, that's a mohawk.

Now a little background. Post 9/11, Disney started security checkpoints. Used to be inside the park after you pass the gates, and it included a pat down and a wanding, I think. Which was fine, we were all a little spooked just after 9/11.

Later, they moved it outside the gates; you'd get a check-over if you had a bag. But no wanding and no pat down, and no check at all of pockets. Even cargo pockets like on my kilt, which could easily hide a hand grenade or a .45 on each side. And certainly not on the pockets on my army BDU's which could hold a human head on each side. Yet bum bags and purses get a check. So - fine. You pass by if you have nothing to check.

Now though, they've moved the checkpoint to a bottleneck point between d-land and the new California Adventure park, so there's a queue you get into - along with everyone else, strollers, backpacks, and everything. So you wait with nothing to check behind people with hummer-wide strollers and packs big enough to tour Europe with.

To put it simply, it's a terrible system. And for a company that's so goddamn good at queue management, it's a fucking disgrace. It's a mass, a mob, not a line.

Now let's state the obvious; the check is pointless. I could walk in with a jacket made of c5 and they'd never stop me as long as I'm not wearing a bum bag. They're not looking for anything. They're making a show. It costs the visitor time, and the people doing the checks are not security people, they're just standard park employees ('cast members'), the same people who run the monorail and work the gift shops by the gate.

So I'm stuck in line behind a big Suburban of a stroller, and in front of a big Suburban of a stroller. With only a water bottle in my hands. I know what happens when I get up to the head of the line, I walk by the geezer doing the checks and he doesn't even look at me when I don't present a bag. So I slide around the stroller in front, lift my heavily tattooed arms to show I'm not carrying anything, and off I go.

At which point, the checkpoint guy starts yelling at me. Yelling, not the usual Disney politeness. Yelling at me to get back in line. So I stop, and turn around. And we have this conversation:

     Gate-geezer: : Sir, get back in line!

     Me: I've got nothing to be checked.

     Gate-geezer: : Everyone waits. Get back in line. Now.

     Me: Why? (Starting to get a little irritated. This is rude, for Disney)

     Gate-geezer: Sir, you must get back in line, and you much get back in line NOW!

     Me: Why? What for? (Now getting really irritated)

     Gate-geezer: : Now. Right now! EVERYONE WAITS IN LINE!

     Me: WHY? I've got nothing to be check for. I'm stepping out of the way. (Losing my temper and starting to show it)

     Gate-geezer: : EVERYONE waits in line!

     Me: WHY AM I WAITING IN LINE WHEN I DON'T NEED TO BE CHECKED? (my hands are now in fists. I'm starting to feel the man's teeth breaking when my fist connects with his face)

     Gate-geezer: Security! Security! Someone get security!

At this point, in my head, I'm taking him down, putting a combat-booted foot on his chest and explaining exactly how stupid this pretend security is, real as the gunfire on the Jungle Cruise. I'm ready for security to show up, and I'm ready to tell the motherfuckers, yeah, bring it. I'm ready to point out that this asshole pretending to inspect bags is doing nothing other than irritate guests.

I'm ready to get hauled the fuck off to mouse jail. No problem. This fucker is NOT going to tell me what to do, and if I have to take down two or three d-land guards, I'm ok with that.

It was a near thing. I was ready to go. And then I had one of those grown-up moments. I pictured the actual cops showing up, and my last vacation day spent in the Anaheim city jail. I pictured getting barred from Disneyland. And I was ok with that, until I pictured my kids having to bail Daddy outta jail instead of riding Pirates of the Caribbean and Indiana Jones.

And I'm tellin' you, it was fucking close. I could taste blood and had a moment of tunnel vision.

Good sense won out. God dammit, sometimes it sucks being a grownup.

Later, it occurred to me that the man may have reacted to my appearance. Mohawk, tattoos, skull rings, skull t-shirt, black and silver kilt that has a leather/biker look to it, combat boots. Everything about me says 'Fuck The World', and I forget that. Still, it was the single rudest person I've ever encountered in all the years I've been at Disneyland. My one regret is that I didn't manage to store the asshole's name in memory for a later report to management. It took me a good hour to stop wanting to do someone bad harm, and pretty much the rest of the day before I stopped needing to do someone good harm. Though I managed to not get any actual fights the whole rest of the day.

...Actually come to think of it, I still pretty much need to do someone good harm.

No.

More.

Stupid.

Quizzes.

Captain Beefheart... you are one of the first

modern fucked-up geniuses. When it comes to

creating, you rank right up there with the

likes of James Mangan, John Wilmot and Edvard

Munch.


Which fucked-up genius composer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I can pretty much hang with being Captain Beefheart though)

Quit it, Fredlet.

I had this whole plan for daily blog entries while I was down here, only I always forget how whipped I am when we get back from the park each day. I didn't have the juice to even think about writing.

Still, I had pictures I wanted to post, so last night, after a couple martinis, I sat down while the kids were winding down and got set to upload pictures from the camera.

And of course, the cable that I'd so carefully packed turned out to not be packed.

I am still somewhat puzzled over this, but it kneecapped my plan to post. So, you know, nevermind.

Heading home today - we had a vague plan to stay another night in SoCal and do something post-mouse but none of us really feel like it, so I'll be home and back on line tonight, maybe in time for an HNT post and everything.

Plus, I can tell a little story of almost popping a disney security guy in the mouth, and almost spending my last day in Mouse Jail.

But that little story can wait.

Grumble.

I picked a hotel partly based on free high-speed wireless in room.

Which is great. High signal, rippin' speed. Only I can't get VPN in to work. And that's where my email is. All of it sucked off of the apple corporate mail server, and off of the engineering mail server, onto my own private, secure disk space on my own server in my office.

Which is behind a firewall. The castle walls are high and I'm outside, portcullis down, drawbridge up. Moat fulla piranha.

I don't care about, you know, work-related mail. But me own personal mail, THAT I want.

Did I mention, grumble?

My gmail is reachable if you wanna get me (fan mail from some flounder, dirty notes and filthy jokes), but I can't respond to anything at my usual addresses until I 1) figure out what in the local network is fucking me, or 2) get home later this week.

At least I can still blog.

Now that my boss owns the Mouse, I figure I better check up on that little rodent.

Which is to say, I'm headed south to visit Disneyland.

I'm gonna try n' blog from down there - I'm taking the cable to upload pictures and everything. We'll see if that actually happens, I didn't do any blogging on my last Disney trip; but that was Florida. This is back to the original in Anaheim.

It's been a long three weeks work-wise, though a good three weeks. I'm re-engaged with what my team does, and back to making a significant contribution. I'm ragged, and so very ready for a vacation.

I had planned to get tattooed while I was down there but I just never got around to making the arrangements; but I'm gonna try to hook up with Jack Rudy to plan a tattoo, anyway. It'll give me an excuse to get back down there again in a few weeks. It's not that far, after all.

Anyway if updates are few, it's because I'm busy feeling up Minnie and tryin' to get a little tail from Ariel.

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.
We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, and loot,
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho.
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot,
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho.

We're rascals, scoundrels, villans, and knaves,
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho.
We're devils and black sheep, really bad eggs,
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho.

Sometimes it's gotta be Gurus.

You can't take me anywhere, I'll strip down to my underwear
If you give me half a chance.
Hippy-freelove, outtasight! I'm gonna turn off every light
And hold a private dance.
It started out one afternoon, hot sake in my living room
Among some special friends.
Soon some others dropped around and we all started gaffing down, well,
You know how these things end!

Miss Freelove, Come back sometime-
Miss Freelove of '69.

Torches flashing sweaty passion, each made love in their own fashion-
We had quite a ball!
Do the monkey, feeling funky, I'm just like any disco junkie
And I don't care at all.
Maybe I'm not thinking straight, I only know that it feels great
And I'm glad you do too.
It could be just a passing fad but think about the fun we had
The last time you decided to pass through.

Miss Freelove, come back sometime
Miss Freelove of '69.

And everything is gone and far away
And everything is gone and that's o.k.
And everything is groovy, would you say?
Would you say?

Someone called the cops on us. They didn't have the heart to bust
The kinky scene they found.
They checked their badges at the door and joined the action on the floor
(When they laid their nightsticks down!)
Miss Freelove .......
La-la-la-la love
La-la-la-la love, Freelove!

I'm playing with last.fm, which is kind of cool. I got a plugin for itunes that reports my listening habits (spyware I installed on purpose - really that's a wrong idea but it's still kinda cool).

I'm working on a good way to do dynamic updates on my blog but haven't found a good way to do it yet. But then I haven't tried very hard.

Still it's cool to see the charts when I have iTunes shuffling at random all day.

One more day, then it's vacation time. I'd be counting hours if I had enough time.

I expected Pirates. But you know, this is cooler.

What movie Do you Belong in?
brought to you by Stupid Fucking Quizilla

I blame DN

Oh my god I love this site.

fuckvday.com. They get it. Love hurts.

(Thanks to the lovely chelseagirl for hippin' me to this)

This is sort of interesting.

The Johari Window.

Kind of an Ingram personality whatsis, it's interesting because I pick six words from the window that describe me, then you-all get to do the same, again, for me. I guess I am supposed to see how my view and the world's view differ. For some reason. Like any of you know anything about me.

I was tempted to fuck with it but for once I tried o be honest. Only problem is I could only pick six and at least half the words on there fit. Six? Come on.

(Found of Wolfe's site)

Here's the flip side - negative traits.

nohari window

A lot of these apply but I don't think they're negative so I didn't choose them. Interestingly 'arrogant' isn't on either list.

For full coverage of this story, click here.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a companion during a weekend pussy hunting trip in Texas, spraying the fellow hunter in the face and chest with shotgun pellets.

Thank you BoingBoing and Charles.

(People keep telling me these links are broken, but they work for me - trust me though if they worked it would be REALLY REALLY FUNNY!)

Songs about Sex and Candy. To suit a sweet new look for the Moronosphere:

     Hangin' round downtown by myself
     And I had too much caffeine
     And I was thinkin' 'bout myself
     And then there she was
     In double platform suede
     Yeah there she was
     Like disco lemonade
     I smell sex and candy here

Or we could try:

     The Candy Man can
     'Cause he mixes it with love
     And makes the world taste good

Or a little different feel:

     Candy asked me if she died
     if I could go on
     of course I said I couldn't
     and of course we knew that's wrong
     but candy, I said, candy no you can't do that to me
     because you love me way too much
     for you to ever leave

Or we could add a little chili pepper spice:

     Step into a heaven
     Where I keep it on the soulside
     Girl please me
     Be my soul bride
     Every woman
     Has a piece of Aphrodite
     Copulate to create
     A state of sexual light
     Kissing her virginity
     My affinity
     I mingle with the gods
     I mingle with devinity

     Blood sugar baby
     She's magik
     Sex magik sex magik

And we dare not forget:

     When you need a friend through thick and thin
     Don't look to those above you.
     When you're down and out, ain't no doubt
     Nobody wants you.

     But you're rock candy baby
     Hard, sweet and sticky.
     Rock candy baby
     Hard, sweet and sticky.

Sugar and Sex. Celebrate the the rites of love, my friends. Feed your love on sugar candy, and fuck him/her half to death.

Ok I meant to take a new picture for this. Given that last week was an ancient pic of me with long hair, I was gonna follow it up with a current hair pic. I'm in one of those rare non-shaving phases. I've got about a month of hair going, and a full beard not the usual goatee.

But I can't quite manage to get camera and battery together this eve. So you get the next best thing, a pic from last summer with a similar hair growth. I get this way only about once a year. As usual, click for full size.

I promise, current half nekkidness next time. Really.

Happy HNT.

Harvester of eyes, that's me
And I see all there is to see
When I look inside your head
Right up front to the back of your skull

Well that's my sign that you are dead
And my list for you checks off as null
I'm the harvester of eyes

Here's the start to my day yesterday.

I had an eye appointment scheduled. And of course good eye doctors usually book weeks in advance; otherwise I'd have cancelled given that I'm way too busy right now for any damned thing like this. But I need new glasses and it's been seven years since I had a real eye exam (we're not counting the eye-check-o-mat guys at the one-hour perscription place).

So I take the morning off to go get the peepers poked at.

Of course, I get the time wrong. So I show up a half-hour late and wind up having to wait an hour for my appointment. Of course I didn't bring my book, or my laptop, and I. DON'T. WAIT. WELL.

Finally, my doctor - who I think would be santa claus if he let his beard grow a little more and put on a red hat - gets to me and does the usual is this better/is that better thing, puts drops in my eyes, shines blue laser beams into the back of my brain, and generally pokes and prods my eyeballs 'til my head wants to 'splode.

Then he writes me a 'scrip, tells me I can go another year or two before I have to think about the dreaded B word (*cough*bifocal*cough*). Which is good because how punk-rock are bifocals, man?

So I pay up and am outta there.

But wait. Where are my car keys?

Well, where else? In the fucking ignition.

Now a couple data points.

First, I drive a jeep wrangler, which means that half the year the top and doors are off. So generally I can't lock the can't lock it. I have a lock box in the back for this reason, but I generally don't leave anything in the car I would mind having stolen. Yet, for some reason, I decided to lock the door when I hopped out.

Second - and if you've had an eye check you know this - when you get your eyes checked, they do some sort of test that requires your pupils be ten-hits-acid-trip dilated. The result of this is that your vision gets all kinds of fucked up for several hours after.

Yesterday was an incredibly sunny, blue-sky warm spring day here in northern cali. Bright, bright, bright. And dilated pupils means light sensitive. Hangover/migraine sensitive has nuthin' on this, think hangover plus migraine. My sun-glasses? In the car. With the keys.

So the first thing I think when I look in and see my keys, dangling, mocking me from the ignition (after I momentarily consider putting a fist through the window, which I know from experience fucking hurts), is, Call someone to bring the spare keys. And I think for a moment about where my spare Jeep key is.

You know where this is going. Admit it.

My spare key is in the center console, in the Jeep.

So what to do? I hear in Beatle voices from Yellow Saubmarine:

John: Maybe we should call a road service?

Ringo: And we’re not sub... scribers.

Now another data point about the dilated pupils; the ability to focus in close goes to near zero. This isn't so much an issue when you're driving (though the bight light and the vague blurring makes driving a bit complicated). But it makes reading impossible. Which means that working my cell phone was complicated, and reading the numbers off my AAA card was almost impossible.

So I'm standing in the parking lot in Los Gatos, California, in the brilliant sun, attempting to read a card at full arm extension and dialing my cell phone by feel. And I'm thinking, I won't ask for help, I can do this. 'Cause that's the kinda guy I am.

And then I'm waiting for tow-truck guy. And waiting, with my eyes closed because it's too fucking bright, with my knit hat pulled down over my eyes cause it's still too bright even under my eyelids. And waiting. And waiting.

Turns out, interestingly, that it isn't that easy to break into Jeep doors. No quick slim-jim pop. The tow truck guy had to fiddle with the lock for about ten minutes to get it jacked. Plus he had some cool tattoos.

Finally, off and away, and home; where I can't work because I'm still having halos and blurring and looking at the computer makes my head hurt. But at least it's dark. I try going back to bed, but of course I can't do that, I need to get to work, I'm getting calls from users who really really need help, now.

So I wind up at work, practically seeing trails and wondering what it would be like to be at work after eating six grams of mushrooms. I can see my boss wanting to ask me about the bats, but he refrains.

And that's just the beginning of my day. Let's not talk about the frustration of debugging someone else's object oriented perl code.

It's nearly midnight. I'm tired and should be sleeping, something, as usual, I'm not doing enough of.

Instead I'm working on a few things, cleaning up loose ends from my day. I'm scheduling training for a group of users (when did I become training guy? I suck at training), answering email, closing out tracking tickets for stuff I did the last couple days.

I'm doing this instead of sleeping, instead of writing. Either of which I'd like to be doing, but both of which elude me this evening.

I'm tired, in a way that isn't just hard work tired, not enough sleep tired. I'm tired deep in the core of me, my heart, soul, whatever you want to call it. I'm worn thin.

I had a line in the header for this blog recently, in the field they call 'description' but in which I usually have song lyrics. The line was from an STP song, Big Empty:

     To much walkin', shoes worn thin
     To much trippin' and my souls worn thin

It captures how I feel these days, like something's been shaved away. A protective layer, a shell, gone.

Tired. The word does not do justice. Yet it's the only word I can think of. Sometimes english is so poor in descriptive words.

Wow, I managed to get all the way through the weekend without a blog entry. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's, you know, a thing.

I also managed to put off paying bills for another weekend. I keep looking at the pile and thinking, didn't I set you all free? Go! Go! Move on! Yet it never works.

I did manage to draw blood (my own), do a mountain of laundry (not all my own), watch a football game (my team won), drink too much tequila (though not very much too much), and watch a lot of Veronica Mars (it's almost all gone).

I did not get any writing done (despite staring at the screen and trying about five times), but I also didn't do any work-work, which is good with the week I had.

Two days isn't enough to decompress. I need another two, or three. But that's one week down, two to go. Unless I go violently mad in the meantime and start to dig my teeth into someone. Which, you know, doesn't sound so bad. Actually the more i think it, the more I like it.

Meanwhile, think I'll just go off and think the wrong thing about several tasty females from Veronica Mars. Mmmm, blue hair...

God damn this is funny.

I can't find any detail behind this but BoingBoing has a link to video of british troops on LSD. I don't know when this was or what the intent of the test was, but they looks like they're having a fantastic time.

Click the image to play.

I'm still giggling.

Another Half-nekkid-thursday is here with no time for picture taking. I had something for last week of course but didn't have time to post until friday or saturday so it didn't count.

Still, I was writing something the other day on prog-rock (as yet un-finished and un-posted), so I might as well pull out the old photos again. I'll admit there's nothing nekkid about this photo other than nekkid arms (before tattoos) and nekkid face (still too young to grow a beard, I was). Take a guess as to my age here, I'm not sure.

But dig the shirt. I was such a prog-head. Bet I was stoned when this was taken. As usual, click to get the full-size version.

Here's to half-nekkid-thursday anyway.

Stop me. Will somebody please STOP ME?

Four fucking Things.

There are a few of my readers who will look at this and say oh my god yes I remember that and the rest of you are too young or not geeky enough.

But this is hysterical. A terminal emulator for OSX that acts like one of those old wyse terminals. I just downloaded this, and started having flashbacks to days in the computer lab (writing porn on flickering green terminals just like this).

(Cory just put this up on BoingBoing - Hey Cory, it's Karl Elvis not Karl! -- Props to Samsarra for finding this)