Monday, March 27, 2006

Behold, a post!

I haven't had much time to post of late and in the spare moments I have my mind goes blank and I stare at the screen. My thoughts aren't even cohesive enough to make a brain dump post. I have read the news to get angry at stuff but it is all passe. Making fun of George Bush is so last week. I know there are important issues I should scream about, stupid things I should satirize, or personal stories I should tell but I am just too tired to come up with any of that. I wish I was on a deserted beach with a never-ending pitcher of Margaritas, the shade of a tree, and the cool spray of a crystal blue sea. At this point I would take a Miller lite and a lawn chair set up in front of Oso Bay (for those not from Corpus Christi, Oso is a shallow pond that passes for a bay). I am not sick or depressed, just tired and unmotivated.

Question for the peanut gallery, what do you do when you feel lethargic?

I guess while I am here I should put my 2 bits in about the Nine Inch Nails show here last week. NIN puts on one hell of a show. The opening act sucked balls but once NIN got onstage it more than made up for the opening jackass. Big John and I went to the pit for a while and unleashed our inner metalheads. The light show was masterfully done. Had they found a better opening band it would have been great.

Something was missing though. My pit minion is broken. I won't go into gory details other than to say she needs all the good mojo anyone can send her way. She is recovering from a bad case of modern medicine and the pit won't be the same till she is back in it with me. Love ya D.

I still love my job which I can honestly say amazes me. I have never loved any job more than a week and I have been here over a month. It takes a lot to get a lazy jackass like me out of bed at 6:00 am every day.

Wow...and here I thought my mind was blank...

Monday, March 20, 2006

Road Rage

I drive down some two lane roads to get to work every day. They are farm roads with a posted speed limit of 70 and no place for cops to hide. This cuts my time to get to work in half. Normally. Then we have days like today. As I was driving someone pulled out that should have waited and took forever to accelerate to the exciting top speed of 50. Traffic was spaced on the other side just close enough to make passing unsafe. Once I finally got around that bozo I was approaching a curve. Coming the other way was an 18-wheeler. As we turned he crossed the line almost sending me into either the ditch or his over sized trailer. Had I been in a car less nimble than my Honda Accord I would be in the E.R., not my office.

Drivers like these make me wish they would allow the use of car mounted tactical explosives. If you travel more than five miles per hour under the speed limit *BOOM*. Turn out of your lane into mine *BOOM*. If I could drive the M1 tank I would. I wouldn't even need the gun turret. Just roll right over the fuckers. With the governor removed they are capable of 90 mph.

I know these measures are too extreme to be allowed by the government (the same bastards who keep putting in speed bumps) but you can't blame a guy for wishful thinking.

I do think people should actually be pulled over for going too slow though. I also think everyone over the age of 60 everyone should be forced to take a driving test yearly. Older people's driving skills can deteriorate rapidly until one day they drive through a crowd of people. I have personally been hit twice by old ladies who thought they were hitting the brake. Every time I get the urge to get out and beat the shit out of someone who cuts me off and drives 20 mph under the limit they are invariably old. I remember following one that ran 3 lights at 5 mph.

Then you have truckers who get 3 weeks of training and suddenly they are worthy of a CDL. Forget taking the time to teach them proper turning on two lane farm roads. We have products to move. We have insurance to pay for the damage these uneducated dolts do. Fuckers.

These people need to get off of the road.

Ok, I am not saying pull them all off the road. Just the ones who drive in front of me...

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

For the geek with everything

A wearable Linux computer.

You may commence drooling now. I have...

"Counting Blue Cars"

Today's post is more philosophical than funny. Just giving you the heads up now.

I drove by a sign this morning that said, "Jesus is still our only hope." Immediately my inner stand up comic commented, "Really? Our only hope is a two thousand year old dead guy?" I laughed about that one most of the way to work. It got me thinking about religion though. I think few people have much argument that Jesus Christ, the man who walked through Israel preaching peace and love, was a good man who taught people how to live in harmony with each other. If you grab a Bible with the words of Christ in red not one of them teaches anything but love, forgiveness, and peace. He even specifically commands us not to judge others and to care for each other as brothers and sisters. Beyond the recorded words of his we have only the words of his devout followers to know his teachings.

Fast forward to modern Christianity and we have a litany of religions ready to lay judgment on any who do not share their beliefs. People teach their children God loves everyone. Then they all go to a protest of gay marriage holding a "God hates gays" sign. Others teach their kids the (insert religion of choice here) are going to hell because of some minor difference in interpretation of some scripture.

So which is it? God loves everyone or only those who believe as you do? Go back to those words in red and find me one passage that gives any man the authority to tell another he is going to hell. While you are at it, find one in the words of Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, or Lao Tzu.

How would the world be if we took only the actual words of the teachers like Christ, Moses, Buddha, and Lao Tzu and tried to live them? What if we ignored the words of all who preach hate and prejudice as the "Word of God" and only lived the real doctrine? Would we find God? Would we find the God within ourselves? Who would God be? If there was no God, would life at least be better by living those words? Is it even possible for we as humans to comprehend a world where peace and love are a way of life, not just ideals we pretend to strive for?

For those who don't get the reference in the title, look up the song of that name by Dishwalla. Then, tell me all your thoughts on God. The comment lines are now open. And the answer might just come faster than a prayer...

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Quotes to ponder

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
-Ben Franklin

"Taking offence is the last bastion of the ill prepared."
-Michael J. Clarkson, Jr.
(after hearing a debate where being offended was considered an argument)

"You say tomato, I say be quiet. You say potato, I say shut up. You say banana, I bash your head open."
-Ministry of Idiots

Random thoughts

I flew to Houston yesterday on Continental Express. They loaded us on to a pack of gum with wings and thirty minutes later almost needed the jaws of life to extricate my ass from the seat. The time in Houston was productive though. I set up some systems for a company recently purchased by my new employer and was home in time for dinner.

I found this quiz on MySpace and thought the results were funny.
Destruction_Demon
Which Angel Or Demon Are You?


How evil are you?

Am I really that bad? Don't answer that...

Monday, March 06, 2006

Male bonding

Angel (a.k.a. RevSapphire) and her fiance Nick came to town from Austin for the weekend and we hung out last night. The gang got together which usually means "the girls" and I but this time we had Nick.

Ye Gods it is nice to talk to a guy every once in a while. Nick is a fellow Sys Admin geek which made it awesome. It has been ages since I could talk to a male intellectual equal in person. Not that chilling with the girls isn't great. I love hanging out with them. Every once in a while though I like talking to someone whose eyes don't glaze over when I mention VOIP, routers, power supplies, quantum physics, or Spike TV. I am a guy's guy. I like electronics, science, and building things with my own two hands. At the end of a hard day I want what most guys want. I want a beer and I want to see something naked. While the ladies in my life get that, I am not sure they entirely grasp it.

When two women get together after not seeing each other in years they sit and chat, talking about each other's lives and getting caught up. Two guys get together and discuss the Cowboys' last season, new gadgets/electronics, and for the science guys, the nature of the universe. One guy could have lost his right leg and unless he took off the prosthetic, the other would have no idea. Even then, they would spend more time discussing the technology involved in the fake leg than the actual loss of the real one (unless it was lost while doing something manly like shark fishing or chainsaw juggling).

In any case I finished the night feeling intellectually stimulated with observations like, "You know, people are dying every minute that have never died before" and "I wonder if they spray the 3M adhesive on the pizza box to attach the coupons after they put the pizza in. You think they might get out of order? Put the pizza in. Close the box. Spray the glue. Put the pizza in. Close the box. Spray the glue. Spray the glue. Put the pizza in. Close the box...wait..." The whole time going through that routine I'm picturing the guy who gets the pizza that is glued to the box.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Captain Obvious and the Masters of the Conspicuous

A resounding DUH went over the crowd...

On Reuters today there was the headline, "Most U.S. high school dropouts regretful - study". You mean saying, "Would you like to supersize that" 400 times a day isn't fulfilling? Well I'll be damned. Who'd have thunk it.

Who is behind these studies? Being paid almost $10,000 less per year than high school graduates really sucks. Do we need a study to show us people would regret that? Who would fund that study? The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Of course, people who make more money in two seconds than I make in 20 years. Hey Bill, could you commission a study on what happens when you give an egomaniacal sys admin $10,000,000? I volunteer my services should you ever decide to take me up on that. You know, for the good of society and all...

Americans are dumb

Case in point. Can you name one of the five freedoms listed in the first amendment? Hint: none of the answers are, "the right to own and raise pets", an error made by one in five respondents to a survey of over 1000 Americans. Only 8% could name three First Amendment rights and only 28% could name more than one. Two-thirds of respondents did remember freedom of speech as one of five rights in the First Amendment, but just one person accurately named all five.

Now, can you name one of the five members of the Simpson family from Fox's "the Simpsons?" Half of the 1,000 Americans surveyed could name at least two of the five members of Fox Television's Simpson family.

Now is it just me or didn't Jay Leno already do that one on Jay Walking...

(For the record, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, speech, the press, the right to assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. I had to look that last one up.)

If you need any further proof I leave you with this, pulled straight from News of the Weird, "Police arrested David Kennedy, 33, in January near Murfreesboro, Tenn., after he accidentally ran other drivers off the road, perhaps from being distracted by the open pornographic magazines that were in his front seat."