Changing my Religion

From being a Gatesholder to Jobsism.  I have been ripping my hair out with Windows machines for years now.  I use them at work.  I use them at home.  With Windows Vista I was yanking my hair out at record paces.  It's a buggy, crappy OS that caused more problems than it solved.  When my computer decided to uninstall it's wireless card, there was a little switch that flipped in my brain.  And that switch plainly said "Dave, fuck this noise."

So I am now typing this from my brand new MacBook.

"But Dave, Windows 7 is gonna be so much better!  They promise!"  And that's what they said about Windows Vista.  XP wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as Windows 98.  Actually, Windows 98 was about the pinnacle of that platform, and it's been a slow and steady decline from there.  Windows ME was flat out painful to use.  But Vista took the cake.  "Oh, but it's a new type of OS, you need to give it time!"  Horseshit.  If it wasn't ready to release, then don't release it.  Don't use my cash to fund your beta testing.  Vista was slower than XP, took up more memory, made my hard drive run like gangbusters, and froze up on a regular basis from trying to do common average functions.  I don't run massive games.  I don't run ten programs at once.  And I don't download gigabytes of programs and expect them all to run perfectly.  I do basic wordprocessing, some photo editing, and web browsing.  That's it.

And don't even get my started on my work computer.  I was fed the hell up.  So now I have a Mac.  It's going to take some time to get used to the different commands and functions.  So long as it does the basic things I want done, I'll be happy.

Anyways, I'll report on it later.

Portland Auto Show

So my 7 year-old is obsessed with cars and as a treat the Mrs & I took him to the Portland Auto Show on Thursday. It was unsurprisingly compact given the state of the economy and lacked any show-case concept cars so the show was a complete bust for me but it was still a pleasant walk-through.

I can tell you Chrysler is doomed... GM is still clueless showing up with dozens of Cameros without really featuring their offerings. Kia, Hyundai and Ford showed up to sell and drew my attention, but I have a confession about a bit of misbehavior on my part when I wandered through the Toyota section.

You know those bling wielding faux-tan stock-broker looking salesmen that seem to dominate Toyota dealerships? Well one particularly stereo-typical bombast was pontificating about how he's 'never taken a counter offer on a Toyota in all his years of sales because Toyota just doesn't have to'...

No one projects their voice like that unless they are intending to 'share' their wisdom with the rest of us.

And I couldn't help myself. I piped up, in my loudest syrupiest voice, "you don't RECALL ever taking a counter offer ever? Ever? I'm surprised you can't RECALL taking a counter as I myself can RECALL making a counter on a Toyota."

And every time I said "RECALL" I squawked it out...

My wife accelerated out of there like... well like a Toyota with a sticking gas pedal.

When it rains, it pours

I woke up Wednesday morning, set to go TDY.  I logged on to my computer to check email, and discovered that my wireless card had died.  Gone.  Poof.  I had disconnected from the web the night before, and inbetween then and eight hours later, no more wireless card.  So I left without my computer.  Ain't gonna take it if I can't use it.

Got home tonight, and the Ragin' Mrs. told me that her hard drive had gone kaput sometime around four this morning.

What next?

I give up

BlogSnot wins.  Comments lose.  I can't get this gigantic fucking piece of shit do so anything simple, like. oh, show the comments on the front page.  You click the button that says "Show comments" and it's a fail.  You double check everything, you make sure everything is installed correctly, you do exactly what you're supposed to do, and it's a fail.  You try three different comment engines, and it's a fail.  Try a different template, and it's a fail.  Try going back to the old template, and it's a fail.  BlogSpot is a fail.  Blogger is one giant fucking fail.

Fuck this shit.  I've got better things to do than fuck around with a worthless platform that doesn't do a damn thing it's supposed to do.  I'm going to be looking for some other way to blog, because I am fed up with this crap.

The End Result

Of the Feminist Revolution.  Enjoy!

I might expound on this tomorrow.  Then again, if I can't get the comments to show up on the front page, I might just delete this fucking blog.  I don't know for sure.  We'll see how I feel after I shovel snow in the morning.

I think I hate Blogsnot

I have now wasted more time than I can count trying to get comments working correctly on this site, and every time I think I have it nothing happens.  At this point, I'm about to just delete the entire fucking piece of shit blog and start over, preferably on a different blog engine.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..............................

Oh, and by the way, I'd like to say that the Blogsnot comments suck ten different kinds of dead donkey dick, but since I can't get THOSE to work either, I really wouldn't know.  What the fuck was wrong with the original settings?  No, I couldn't just keep those, this worthless fucking piece of shit demands that I change to a new fucking template, and new fucking settings, only all that spiffy new fucking shit DOES NOT FUCKING WORK!  IT IS A GIANT CRAPTASTIC PIECE OF SHIT THAT DOES NOT FUCKING WORK!  FUCK YOU, BLOG SPOT!  FUCK YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL!

Another busy day

We had a good day yesterday.  The Ragin' Mrs. and I went to a ferret rescue place near Madison (The Ferret Nook) and picked out a pair that we'll be taking home with us next Saturday.  So you'll have ferret pictures in a week or so.  The lady who runs the place is a person after my own heart, with all the animals she's got there.  There was an old greyhound that just loved to be pet, and cats that would have lived on my shoulders if they had the chance.

I know, I know, big tough Ragin' Dave likes da widdle animals.  So sue me.  Some days I'd prefer the company of a dog to the company of anyone else.  "If you take in a dog, feed him, and treat him well he will not bite you.  That is the principal difference between a dog and a man" - Mark Twain.  Given that our life makes it difficult to have a dog right now, we're getting ferrets.  We've had ferrets before, and I actually love the little buggers.  If you ever want to see just a pure expression of joy, watch ferrets as they're dancing around and playing.  Kind of like a dog rolling in the grass on a summer day.  Just simple joy.

Dinner at a Mongolian BBQ joint that we had friends recommend to us - Hu Hot.  Good food, and the staff there rocks.  For those who don't know, the Ragin' Mrs. has some pretty severe food allergies that make it difficult for us to go out to eat at most places.  This place, when we say "Hey, she's got some food allergies, could you please make sure her food doesn't touch anyone else's?", they actually scrape the grill clean (as in down to the bare metal clean), pull out new spatulas, and cook her food as separately as they can.

Out-friggin'-standing!  Needless to say, we'll be going back.  Multiple times.

As for today, we're going over to a friend's place to watch some football in the company of good people.  So with that, I leave you with a winter photo:

Horefrost on a pinetree.  It's about 3.9MB if you want to download it. 

Another Modern Miracle

And one of the best pieces of equipment the military has ever come up with, period.

The poncho liner.

The Army issued me a sleeping bag system that includes three different bags that you can mix and match depending on the climate and weather.  It's a wonderful system.  But I put it in it's stuff sack and left it in the duffel bag, because I had the poncho liner.  I would just lay it out, put my neck pillow down, lay a picture of my wife next to the pillow, and that would be all I needed.  They gave me an actual mattress when we were in Camp Phoenix, so I just laid it out on that.

The poncho liner can be rolled into a ball roughly the size of my two fists if you really crank down on it, and it'll unroll to it's full size without a problem.  It'll keep you warm in anything above freezing temperatures, and if you throw on a layer or two it'll keep you warm when it's colder than that.  I can't count the number of times I've left my sleeping back behind and just carried my poncho and poncho liner in my ruck.  Lay out the poncho, lay the poncho liner on top, lay yourself in the middle and then wrap up like one big Soldier burrito.  You stay warm and dry all night long.

The picture of my wife is something that she came up with years ago.  You can buy iron-on transfers that you run through your home printer (another modern miracle!  Anyone remember those old mimeograph machines?), and then you slap 'em on a shirt, or on whatever.  Well, she printed out a picture of herself and ironed it onto a white hankerchief, and gave it to me for Operation Brightstar.  If it gets crinkled you just smooth it out, you can wash it and it doesn't die, and there's no glass to break.  It goes everywhere with me so that I always have my wife no matter where I go.

Speaking of Camp Phoenix, this is a picture of Patriot Square at night.

It's about 3.5MB if you want to download it.  The DFAC at Phoenix has the flags of our coalition partners up in front of it.  The plaques on the wall behind the flags are the unit crests of the various US Army units that have been in charge of Camp Phoenix.  You can't see them in this picture, but further down the wall are plaques for the various other countries that have served with us at Phoenix.  When I was there it was the Bulgarians and Romanians.

And I made sure that nobody could recognize the guy walking by the flags. 

So there you are.  Two photos from my mission, and another modern miracle.  The Ragin' Mrs. and I are headed down to Mad Town today to see if we can't rescue a few ferrets.  Updates on that later.  See you tomorrow!

Modern Miracles

Over at Cold Fury, Mike links to an auto blog that talks about the modern miracle of the internal combustion engine.  I think that there are a lot of modern miracles that people take for granted, and I believe part of it has to do with the fact that technology is changing so quickly that the newer generations don't even know that there was a more primitive form of whatever they're using.  Hell, just think about cameras.

I remember my first camera.  It was an old Kodak 110 film using brick.  Hell, even my first Nikon SLR would be archaic by today's standards.  Nowadays if you can't download the picture instantly onto a computer then it's just not worth having.  Hell, I used to use an old digital camera for my job in Seattle, and it was a snazzy, high-speed (for the time) 3.5 megapixel behemoth.  These days you can get a cell phone with a 4 mp camera in it.  Hell, these days a cell phone with any camera LESS than 4 mexapixels doesn't sell.

You push a button.  The image is transferred into a bunch of ones and zeros.  Those ones and zeros fly through the air to a box thousands of miles away, where they reassemble themselves into the very same image you just saw.  I can take a picture in Afghanistan, email it to my family, and they can see what I see in less than five minutes.

People, that's a fucking miracle right there.

What modern miracles can you think of?

How do you know when you've "made" it in the Blogosphere?

When Chris Muir does a strip about your blog.

I gotta find a way to get Day by Day up on this'un here.

The Government. Is there anything they can't screw up?

Can we finally tell these fuckers to go suck-start a shotgun?  Pretty please?

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Food handouts were shut off Tuesday to thousands of people at a tent city here when the main U.S. aid agency said the Army should not be distributing the packages.

It was not known whether the action reflected a high-level policy decision at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or confusion in a city where dozens of entities are involved in aid efforts.

"We are not supposed to get rations unless approved by AID," Maj. Larry Jordan said.

Jordan said that approval was revoked; water was not included in the USAID decision, so the troops continued to hand out bottles of water. The State Department and USAID did not respond to requests for comment.

So the system that was in place and working, providing food and aid to the people of Haiti, was stopped and shut down because some worthless fucking government buttnugget didn't like the fact that it wasn't a different (read:  THEIR) government agency doing it.

Just....  wow.  I'm sure the people of Haiti feel so much better knowing that the Army will no longer be handing out food without the proper approval.  After all, starving to death isn't as horrible as being given food by the wrong bureaucracy! 

Folks, these are the same people who would be in charge of your healthcare if the American Communist Party has their way.  Think about that.

And by the way, France calling us "occupiers"?  You might want to tone that rhetoric down a bit, considering we're delivering aid to a country that speaks French due to the centuries of French occupation.  Or perhaps the French would like to show us just how much aid and help they can send to Haiti?  No?  The 82nd Airborne Division is doing just fine?  Ce magnifique!

Unreal

I'm so flabbergasted by this that I don't quite know what to say.

Earlier today Denis Blair, Director of National Intelligence testified at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing into the Christmas Day Bomb plot that the bomber should have been placed in the administration's interrogation program for high-value suspects but wasn't.

(.....)

Tonight via Keep America Safe we find out that the DNI Blair has changed his story.

Go ahead and read it all.  And then understand that the only thing protecting Americans while they fly is 20-something-year-old Dutch tourists.  It is most certainly NOT the people in the American government who are supposed to be making sure we don't have exploding planes and flaming bodyparts falling from the sky.

What a clusterfuck.  What an absolutely horrifying clusterfuck of galactic proportion. If I had an employee that was THIS FUCKING INCOMPETENT, I'd fire them as soon as possible.

A Note of Caution

Especially to the GOP, who would love nothing more than to hitch their wagon to the same force that Scott Brown has.

Forget it, Jack.

The GOP is still the Stupid Party.  It's still the party of Dede Scozzafava, and David Frum.  It's still the party of "Me Too, Only Not As Much."  It's still the same party of mouth-breathing "intellectuals" who breathlessly voted for Obama and everything he represented.  Until the RINOs are removed and the same mindset that's lifting the Tea Party gets put in charge, the GOP is still a sinking ship.  The only difference between the Stupid Party and the American Communist Party is that the GOP can still be saved.

I LOLed!

I truly did!



via Viral Footage.

Of course, if you speak German (or even understand a smattering of German) a bit of the effect is lost, but I still LOLed nontheless.

Coakley Makes Brown

Game over man... Game over...

Copenhagen to lose the Olympics? Copenhagen to lose Cap & Trade? Coakley to lose the Senate?

Now Obambi has lost Barney's Frank.

"It all started with me, my truck, and a few dedicated volunteers. It ended with Air Force One making an emergency run to Logan" -- Scott Brown(R)

But the quote that made it all worthwhile?

"This one’s for you, Mary Jo." -- Rush Limbaugh

Olbermann, Maddow, Sullivan and Josh Marshall are melting down... and Nancy Pelosi(D) is promising to double down.

It is such a good day.

DANEgerus

My Dirty Mind

I saw this post over at Big Dick's (might not be safe for work, depending on where you work), and the thought running through my mind is "You know, the Ragin' Mrs. is pretty flexible, and if that's not the perfect position for a good tongue lashing I don't know what is....."

Although I would assume that the effort it takes to hold that position might render said tongue lashing ineffective.  But the thought is still there.

Dumb blonde?

I had a thought the other day, and I want to share it - don't laugh until you've heard my explanation, m'kay?

Jessica Simpson is the smartest woman in showbusiness right now.

No, seriously, think about it!  Here is a woman who has made her entire movie career off of her boobs and butt.  And yet she's never once shown either of them in their full, bare, beautiful entirety.

That takes brains.  Prove me wrong.

Houston, we have a problem

When the report about Malik Nadal Hassan, the Ft. Hood terrorist, doesn't contain the words "Islam" or "Muslim" once, you have a disconnect from reality.  Not just a faulty supposition, but a complete and total disconnect from reality.

Togo West used to be the Secretary of the friggin' Army, people.  You want to know why political correctness is killing the military?  Because we had idiotic cumstains like Togo West in charge.

Gah.  This "report" is only fit for use as toilet paper.

Downloaded...

Saved, copied, and then emailed to about thirty different friends - Phil put up a Periodic Table of beer styles.

Oh hells yes.

Comments FUBAR

OK, so you can actually comment on a post, but you have to click on the post title, and then click on comments, and even then it doesn't show when a post has comments.

FUBAR.  That's not acceptable.

Other than paying for comments, anyone have any suggestions?  Email me.  wraithwulf-AT-yahoo-DOT-com