Doing major housecleaning today. Time to make the joint more easily maneuvered, collect all the loose ends and books that I’ve just let lay around for the last span. After getting at least a little accomplished, I’m going to swap seating spaces between big brain and really big brain. I think that big brain can be kept as a sidebar machine…After cannibalizing it, it still has a DVD reader, decent on-board video (The 7500), and a 40 gig drive. If I trip over a cheapo modem to toss in there (or if I get an Ethernet one for my DSL service), it wouldn’t be a bad surf/programming machine to make use of in a pinch. Might not even be bad for being a slave device / server should I decide to set up some head-to-head gaming or a newtcam video broadcast station. In any event, I have to find a place to put the old tower, because it’s taking up valuable desk-area real estate now that I have a replacement.

In other news.. it’s Christmas Eve, not that you could tell in this part of the neighborhood. No Christmas Lights, warm weather, and the guy I waved to when I took some cardboard boxes out to the dumpster gave me the hairy eyeball. Maybe he wasn’t happy to be out on a holiday. (It looks like he’s picking up a bunch of trash from out back created when they tore out the innards of the two adjoining apartments. It looks like he’s just loading up his rusty white dump truck with all the metal from the old sinks and such. Either the new landlord is going all out and making the place nice, or he had to do it because the mooch wrecked the joint. I wonder if it’s some combination of the two.

Ah, speak of the devil… The new landlord, Dennis just swung by. We had a talk, it looks like the place has termites, that they want to tent the place, and put me in the house out front for a few days while that takes place and they tear up my apartment, repaint the bathroom, etc. Not sure when that’s going to happen, but I guess it’ll give me a chance to pack up everything and rearrange things properly. (He also wants me to break down those boxes I tossed into the dumpster.)What I’d like to do is find another place before that happens, so I only have pack and move once. It’d be a royal hassle if I did it once, and then just had to turn around and do it again a month later. I do have to make sure that I have phone access / Internet from the house, so I can do the ACIM thing, if needed.

Again, synchroniciy… Big Kahuna just called, and offered to take call for the next couple of hours. I’ll take that opportunity to do some much needed out of the house chores. Be Back later, dear journal!

Rush Limbaugh blames continued investigation into his substance abuse as a political persecution.

“The Democrats in this country still cannot defeat me in the arena of political ideas, and so now they are trying to do so in the court of public opinion and the legal system. I guess it’s payback time.”

He also compared his legal situation to the 2000 election recount.

Sheesh, you’d think that prescription drug abuse was some kind of crime or something.

CS is going on vacation starting tomorrow…. good thing, as he was getting on my last nerve by end of day. Though on call, I’ll take comfort in being home for the next couple of days. He just pisses me off, because he seems unable to comply with any request I put to him. Today, I just asked that he copy files to the network, so we have some sort of back up, and he gave me annoying sass and crap over it. I seriously doubt that he’ll last very long, at this point. If he cops the same stupid attitude too many times with the kahuna, he’ll get bounced out of there. He just can’t seem to get it through his skull that there is a time and place for innovation, and another for grunt work, and yet another for fun.

Friday, I get to Train MM some more, and put the Georgia and Florida Newsletters on the site… that should be fairly peaceful. I think I’ll increase the size of the 51, too.

I’m going to try playing a little FFXI with the PGM crew tonight, if I can. Sammy & D will be good guides there. I’m going to be connecting to the Bismarck server, if anyone wants to look for a Galkan warrior. I’m going to shoot for a name similar to Scotto, but not sure what to go with, as yet. I’m sort of fond of the Tarutaru, too. You can tell this game has it’s origins in Japan… cat girls and all pseudo babeage. I managed to avoid everquest, but FFXI has the allure of people I know playing.

[update] – If I didn’t have friends there, I might not give it a second chance. I think you need some sort of degree in game dynamics to leap into it immediately… it’s the first game I’ve ever *needed* someone to show me how to move, talk and act. I’m sort of annoyed that I will probably have to actually read the manual, because the interface is not Scotto-intuitive at all. The short time I was there, it was fun, and very pretty. I will continue to fiddle with it and see if I get better at the interface. If you’re on the Bismarck Server, and you see a big galkan named Scottobear, say hi! Meanwhile, I think I’ll play some more in There. (New client for there at – downloads.there.com/download/there_tla5.exe ) a mere snip at 101 megs. Maybe my bad attitude was influenced by my end of day mindset with ACIM. I’m a little tired of things defying me.

Random thought as I get ready this morn… Moss-man is really cool on the new He-man cartoon. He’s like a juiced up post Khund-apocalypse (Giffen Legion) Chlorophyll Kid. If anyone knows what I’m talking about, they’re a big geek like me, too. Transformed from sort of a joke (a green, leafy spy and master of camo, basically) to a really useful and powerful person. Biggest bonus? Maybe this means there’ll be fuzzy, green action figures again?

Dan got me the Hulk game for Christmas… pretty fun smash-’em-up. The graphics are interesting, strangely posterized or something, but the game play is pretty keen.

I’m happy to say that I don’t have to report to ACIM tomorrow morning… it was looking like a half-day there for a bit.

Thinking about my beloved, wondering where she’s at, and what she’s up to this morn… good stuff, I like to hope.

PLAY-DOH George Foreman Grill uh, wha?

Harold von Braunhut, The Inventor of Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Spex died… and was a neo-nazi? Continue reading 6369 – Green Guys, Racists, Sea monkeys and my Sweetheart. →

Saw RotK last night with Danny… his second time of probably many, many viewings, and my first. I liked it a lot, and figure it’s the benchmark for nerd trilogies, now that Star Wars turned to poop with the sequels this century. After, we went for a little Mexican meal, which was nice, where we gabbed about it a bit. Nerdy observations, all, but nice that things worked well. I’m just happy that I got to catch it on the big screen, but am looknig forward to the dvd director’s cut.

The sharpened computer is looking good… big brain kept tossing his HD, win2k repairs regularly to limp it through. “Really Big Brain” has a 240 gig drive now, a nicer graphic card, and a sharp dvd writer. I’ll be experimenting with burning this week.

We’re up to 51 at work now… I think that some of the new search procedures may be helping find kids.

Had a nice gab with sedef, good thing because I was getting worried about those guys.

Since the other day, there’s now more than a million active Atom 0.3 feeds at
http://www.livejournal.com/users/[username]/data/atom .

Atom is an XML-based file format intended to allow lists of information, known as “feeds”, to be synchronised between publishers and consumers. Feeds are composed of a number of items, each with an extensible set of attached metadata. (For example, items each have a title.) I don’t know what the advantages of Atom are over RSS… they’re very similar, and the changes don’t *appear* to be too significant. I’m sure someone will correct me on that in due time, however. I did see that Google (who owns blogger) is supporting Atom, while Microsoft is plugging with RSS. I’m just happy that LJ supports both… it’s all about compatability and choices now, I imagine.

More at the Wiki – http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/FrontPage

Random Scotto Factoid – I confused Apollo Creed and the prayer “Apostle’s Creed” when I was little.

Interesting that I’m syndicated in Fort Lauderdale News. I suspect it’s more in part to my geourl or local feeds than any actual Ft. Laud News content.

The guy next door has been running what sounds like an concerto for hammer, chainsaw and pickaxes in apt#2 for days now. I have to wonder what the devil they’re doing in there. How long do cabinets take to put in?

Today I Must –

• Get Socks/ boxers/Belt
• CompUSA
• Toys R US

Today I *should, but probably won’t*

• Do Laundry

The cool weather lately has Newt hanging on my neck like an orange mink stole. He likes my body heat, and touring the house at six feet up.

Johnny Cash’s Desperado, But With Monkeys

Five-film Narnia series to be filmed in New Zealand (with effects by Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop)

Thanks latraviata for the spiffy card!!

Monkeys live up in trees! Monkeys have furry knees! Monkeys don’t wear shoes. Monkeys don’t lose….. their wallets, because they don’t have any!

Cool again this morning.. I’d say that “winter” has already lasted longer than memory tells me of last year. Yesterday, I was actually obliged to wear a top with long sleeves after dark.

Tomorrow, I have to do a lot of chores and last minute shopping. (I’m also ogling an upgrade to something comparable to the X09 tower.) I will be getting a lovely Christmas card from D…Her old (yet still far superior to my current) video card. A GeForce4 Ti 4600 to be specific, as she got herself a GeForce 5950 for a holiday treat. Hooray for upgrades! I wonder who I could give my Radeon 7500 to? Maybe Dan would like it as a stocking stuffer for for his poor dinosaur-pooter. I know that it can’t run most games these days, and this way, I could hook him up with Freedom Force and NOLF2 for a good time. I’d like to get back to having direct video inputs on the PC so I can watch TV in a little window as I work, and record VCR stuff to burn DVDs. I think it’d be nice to “diskify” all my random access VCR tape, for better archive survival, and tightness of space. (Plus, I like playing with video editing.)

I won’t be able to get together with the Momster for Christmas, as I’m on call and can’t do a lot of traveling around, and it sounds like Bro’s got plans with a gal he met. (I suspect that he’s just bailing, but you never know.)

I’m in a happy, though quiet mood today. I’m busing myself playing with a little algorithm that walks my vampire through the game, and drinks blood in the most profitable way. I’ve got it to detect if it’s drunk from another player since it was last run, but the auto-movement is a little skewed still. Basically, it will reads a page, looks at the links, and drinks people not drunk before that are in my same “square” so far. I have to add an if-then about humans, who are all named the same way, and fiddle out movement logic to the next most densely-populated (but not full) square, after reading the square to see that there is someone there that is “drinkable”. (Any vampire I haven’t hit since the day prior, and has more than 3 pints of blood in them.) I think it’d be cool to later add a sublist of my “children” and maybe give them a treat as my vampire flies past. 1/3 of my gold on hand, maybe? I’m still thinking of hosting some text-based multi-player game on my toybox page, too, but am not quite sure of what to do, theme-wise, yet.

If you haven’t visited nomi‘s journal, check it out. Great photography and travelogues, plus other nifty goodies regarding an USA-woman living in the UK with her hubby, atlaz.

Charlotte wishes you a Merry Christmas (Vendetta may have something to say later.)

Xombi – Chapter One / Chapter Two

Nigerian herbalist shot dead as anti-bullet charm fails Continue reading 6366 Weather, Tech, monkey song →

I’ve been having some weird trouble with my Y!im Today and yesterday…I wonder if they’re planning an upgrade soon? I hate missing messages. The ‘net seems a little slower, too.. I wonder if it’s some drag from all the kids being on holiday break?

Most excellent news. ACIM just had it’s 50th successful recovery and Full membership in AMECO.

Dreams of insects under the covers with me last night…. not creepy or dirty ones, but lightning bugs and other either bio-lit or otherwise glowy made my bed look like the underside of a tacky neon car cruising the ‘hood at 2am. I like the cool weather lately…the mid-40s is a nice range to dip into. I only wish that I could spend more of it snuggling with my beloved. I hope that weather and health are maintained by as many as possible this season.. it seems that so many folks are getting the flu or strep.

All of the RotK reviews are rolling in… I’m guessing that it’ll be a week or two before I get a chance to see it. I know Danny’s going with his students tomorrow night. Not many poor reviews, except for folks complaining a bit about the flow at the end… I’m looking for ward to seeing it in the “directors cut” version.. it seems like they always leave a lot out, but at least they try to put a goodly does back in afterward.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – “This science fiction adventure set in the 1930s starts as New York City reporter Polly Perkins (Gwynneth Paltrow) starts to investigate why so many famous scientists are starting to be reported missing. Soon, she starts to get clues, as strange flying machines and giant robots threaten the city. Luckily, her old flame, aviator Captain Joseph Sullivan (Jude Law), AKA Sky Captain, is there to battle the bad guys with his friends, the Flying Legion, in his Warhawk P-40. Soon, Polly is flying away with Sky Captain to Nepal to find a crazy scientist, Dr. Totenkopf, who apparently wants to destroy the world…”

Exploring Dystopia

Interactive Hieronymous Bosch Gallery

Antiquarian Supernatural Literature

The Illustrated Complete Summary of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (A tome I was insanely fond of for about 10 years. I still dig it, but the fanaticism is gone. I still harbor a great fondness for the Illuminatus! books, too.)

Amazon Wish-list of stupidly expensive gifts.

Thank you so much for the card and cute snowman, bohemianqueen! It’s an honor to be the first of your LJ friends.

Here’s info on redeeming your invite codes for LJ play money. I now have $25 usable for any LJ-related services like extra icons or time, etc. I’m thinking I may give the menstrualhut a paid membership, if only to fiddle a little with the style there. Come to think of it, I think that I may have a spare early adopter account that was used for a writing project, too.

I dreamt last night that I was babysitting some little child… he was maybe 4 years old, and he was holding his breath, puffing out his cheeks. I pressed on them and his head popped like a balloon. It wasn’t distressing at all… I found a replacement, and told him that if he did it again, I’d find a really ugly head for him to wear. He was good from then on… we played with capsella and build small futuristic cities until I woke up. I recall that they were special ones… you could fill them with sea monkeys, and let them live and play inside.

It’s a little chilly out this morning for Florida. When I woke up, it was about 45 outside, or about 60 inside. Not quite cold enough to lure Newt under the covers, but he certainly was happy to hang out in the steamy-shower room this morning.

I find myself wondering if there will be a gift exchange at ACIM… no mention has been made, but I suppose I could pick up little stocking stuffers for the folks there this weekend, when I pick up some gifties for my physical therapy people and the fur-kids.

Pirated Sites see folks who copy designs and logotypes… pretty interesting to compare and contrast.

Found Art – nifty items located out and about.

From The Archives…

one year ago – How to attain old age, got my epidural.

two years ago – Crime & Punishment, heterodox, evil news, HP question, pooter poop, bagpipe, egoboo, giant bee.

three years ago – met tarpo and isis, LJ sea Chantey, AOK-ing, Christmas Blues

filename: Mid([Database_Location], InStrRev([Database_Location],””) +1)

from another Query ([Server_Names]):
dl (which is the Database location full path)
Server name
Share name

SELECT [Server_Names].[Server Name], [Server_Names].[Share Name],
Mid([dl],InStrRev([dl],””)+1) AS [FN]
FROM [Server_Names]
ORDER BY [Server_Names].[Share Name];

=====

Let’s see if I can post polls via email! I meant to write this up this morning.

Launchcast reworked its interface again. I think I like the 1-10 scale better,
but I can see the 0-4 stars being more popular overall.

Want to listen to my launchcast station?
http://launch.yahoo.com/lc/?rt=0&rp1=0&rp2=1214543053

Last 10 songs-

Soul Coughing: Paint
Chris Isaak: Wicked Game
Sugar Ray: Fly – Featuring Super Cat
The Pixies: Where Is My Mind?
Led Zeppelin: In The Evening
Cake: World Of Two
Talking Heads : Once In A Lifetime
Staind: Epiphany
They Might Be Giants: Someone Keeps Moving My Chair
Natacha Atlas: Something Dangerous – Featuring Princess Julianna

current music: Dead Milkmen – Surfin’ Cow
current mood: Letting the days go by, water flowing underground.

=====

Tree seen yesterday afternoon, accidentally captured with palm cam.
It began to rain heavily about 20 minutes later.

Thank you from Newt and me to sirenity for the lovely card and turtle post-its! They’re great!

Random Question –

Aloft for a century. There are countless online tributes to the Wright Brothers. Here are just a few. Flights of fancy, a small BBC gallery celebrating the 100th anniversary of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s first flight at Kitty Hawk, on 17 December 1903. See also Photography and the Wright Brothers, and the stark abstract beauty of images like these: I, II, III. Related: Microsoft’s A Century of Flight. Even more photos.

I trained Mohna yesterday… fascinating person, 19 year old Muslim girl, spent several years in Palestine, helping to raise her brother’s children. She’s now in BCC, and is a perfect candidate for the nighttime phone gig. I wonder how much time we can dump on her, and not stress her out? She gets another Training session Friday… I’ll throw a few curveballs at her, and see how she adapts to them, but she’s got a good head for deductive reasoning and gathering information.

Strongbad Email #92

Scrollbar racing.. now with music!

How to totally miss the point of Lamont Cranston

I briefly had the urge to get a white linen suit and a red fez, and to use that outfit as “work clothes”.

The difference between cold and flu – via the CDC

China Yung wasn’t bad. the price was right, and the food pretty decent. it turns out that they deliver sushi now too, so everyone can be happily fed.

Seasonal questions of the day… what do you think Santa’s elves look like? Uniforms, or all different outfits? Facial hair? All one Gender, or is it a mixed group? Any colors they *wouldn’t* wear? Are they Related to those Keebler guys? (feel free to answer in comments…I’m interested in hearing multiple perspectives, but am running too late to pollify the question. (this sentence added last.)

Spent some lovely time with my sweetie recently, and getting into Asian folklore, too. Tengu, Kappa, Rokurokubi, Nukekubi, and Hungry ghosts specifically. I should be about warmed up to do that Dragon’s gate review soon. It’s a long standing truism… the more that a person learns, the more they discover that is yet to be learned. It’s a tease, but one I enjoy. I really don’t understand how folks can stand being lumps, never reading, never searching for something to tickle the brain. I wonder if it happens just as a matter of falling out of the habit…. or if it’s just too easy to be entertained by television? Passive entertainment is fairly lost on me… I can’t stay locked on to most non-educational/documentary television for any extended period (though there are some exceptions that can suck me in, and hold me. Well-written drama or humor, especially.) But most books can snatch me up, and suspend time. Stories, research, hunting for information… I enjoy it, so that it doesn’t seem like the work that others seem to make of study.

Saddam Hussein pun/punchline I haven’t heard yet, but expect to: Ace in the Hole.

I’ve begun painting a bit on the miniatures again, for the first time in a little while… I’m out of practice. I get a little cockeyed doing small detail work for extended periods.

The day was mostly quiet for me with no Rhode Island…. CS has been delegated to hardware issues and doing the newsletter with Newbie. I’m doing more software / programming, and documentation. I hope MM takes to her training soon, so call can be distributed over more people, soon.

Wow… Return of the King is 3:20, in the theater… I wonder how long the home-DVD extended will be?

Here’s a pretty neat way to waste time. Nobodyhere.

found on changelog – Journal searching (still in beta?) replace scottobear with any username you like, to search another journal… it uses feedster, an engine I’m not terribly familiar with. There’s a magnifying glass on any given userinfo page that allows searching. I wonder how well indexed the menstrualhut is? The engine doesn’t seem too solid yet.

This page lists comic book characters that physically transform into either animals or the opposite sex. It’s just part of a larger site that catalogs such examples of shapeshifting in books, movies, paintings, etc. Keep in mind the elaborate list of notations as you peruse the entries. (via progressiveruin)

Cool Beans.. The deaf kid was found, as a direct result of those calls placed at 2am. I look forward to seeing what the followup report

Giant Pandas make terrible mounts. While they are about as fast as horses, they have a much livelier gait, lifting and swaying riders more than a horse would. They’d partially make up for this with the ability to swim and climb over trickier barriers, but also have to forage and feed for 12 hours a day.

The annals of Su-Ling Prefecture tell the sad story of Chao-Li, a stern young fishmonger who knowingly took a rokurokubi as a wife. “I order you to serve me!” he said to her on their wedding day. serve him she did, to herself, on a plate with seven mangoes, three dates, and a bed of fresh noodles.

I long to rest on the back of a giant turtle with my beloved, slowly being walked down the beach, as the sun goes down. There’s something about the twilight between wakefulness and sleep.. that calm, seemingly eternal soothing time when your body is both heavy and light at the same time.

I was delighted that two anonymous people (or one, in two places?) replied to the Egyptian twins question in my journal. Thanks Pete and Anonymous!

personality quiz