Susskins Central Dispatch

Oh, great

Sigh. Blogrolling has been bought up by Tucows. I hate when that happens.

Important things first - Tucows is planning to run Blogrolling.com *as
is* for the foreseeable future. We will continue to evolve the service
and ensure that it gets the care and feeding our subscribers deserve.
We will *not* limit or disable the service in any way or prevent users
of specific weblog/website management tools from continuing to use or
access the service.

Prove me wrong. Do what you say you're going to do. But for now, my pessimism is at Category Three.

I HATE mergers and acquisitions.

Your Backfence Ad Watch

Backfence: And the Oscar for longest fan letter goes to. . .

Nutshell: James responds to lengthy letters about the length of Return of the King, discusses how handy a Taser would be in Middle Earth, compares the film to Titanic, and notes the quantity of hand-to-hand combat in current movies.

Context-based Ads at the bottom of the page:
1. Air Tasers - Free Gift
Advanced Air Tasers for less Free Self Defense Weapon w/purchase

2. Evenstar Pendant
The only Official Evenstar Pendant Made In Middle Earth New Zealand

Yeah. Right. "Made in Middle Earth" indeed.

Monday summarized

Got up late. Caught the bus anyway. Worked on stuff. Watched coworkers go batshit. (This is nothing new.)

Came home. Kissed husband. Shoveled some of the melting snow and ice off the driveway. Did a load of laundry. Had chicken and mashed potatoes. Cleaned up dishes. Abused cats to the point of purring. Watched most of Sunday night's Adult Swim. Played Roller Coaster Tycoon. Did this entry.

Fine, thanks. How are you?

Your Backfence Ad Watch

Sunday's Backfence: James Lileks: Upset at being short? Maybe a little

In a nutshell: James is short, the world is tall. Clothing is hard to find. Dating is difficult. It's hard to punch your friend in the bicep without a ladder.

And the context-driven ads at the bottom:
1. "A Boy Ten Feet Tall" available on VHS and DVD
2. Bed Risers. Need to raise your bed frame?

I am completely amused.

Steath Ninjas!

I love this. I frickin' LOVE this! Just wait until you see Condoleeza Rice with a pair of machine guns.

Via the ever-reliable Frank at IMAO.

Today's wrapup

1. Snow. It snowed big fat flakes this afternoon. Okay, not flakes, but big clots of flakes. Big clots of snakes that melted as soon as they hit the street, because it was also 35 degrees out. Winter, while it will still whack us a few times, is now pretty much broken. No more deep-freeze until next Winter.

2. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. What a shambles. So much promise, and so much waste. Characters that just seemed flat and cardboardy. Muddy dialog. Preposterous plot points. Not-quite-there effects. Lousy camera work. Lousy editing.

None of it worked. None. A damn shame, because they had so much to work with, and no apparent control or restraint. "Okay, now throw in the buildings collapsing like dominos! Okay, now lots of bats! More suits of armor that look like bad robots! More sneering! More gunfire! More shaking cameras!"

It could have been grand. It ended up below average.

3. Rutger. Coming together nicely, thank you. I'm currently streaming music from Ophelia upstairs to Rutger downstairs. iTunes is a great application. All my music is sitting on Ophelia's hard drive, and Rutger just effortlessly taps into it.

4. Home network. Can't get 100Mb running down here. For some reason, I can't run thirty feet of cable and sustain anything higher than 10Mb. I don't know why. It's really weird. Maybe we're built on an Indian burial mound, and the spirits are incompatible with ethernet. I've done test runs through other areas of the house, added and removed hubs, and physically moved Rutger upstairs to tap directly off the DSL router. Upstairs he's fine. Down here, he's troubled.

It's not a super big deal. I can certainly work at 10Mb. But I would like a faster connection to the other machines in the house. And eventually my Linux box (Norman) is going to be down here as well. A fast connection would be nice.

5. Dinner. Last night was our monthly "Dinner with the Boys". Boys being a euphemism for "Keith's the youngest one there." Jim and Stuart are good friends, and good dinner companions. This time we ate at W.A. Frost in St. Paul. A neat restaurant that took over an old building on Selby. They started in one storefront and over time bought the building and broke through into all the other storefronts. The effect is a series of interesting dining rooms with big windows, tin ceilings, fireplaces and old decor. Lovely.

They got a new chef last year, and he turned the place around from culinary disaster. It was one of the best meals we've ever had. Fred had grilled salmon, and I had maple glazed chicken. It was perfectly done. The dessert was amazing. Chocolate Brioche bread pudding with Rocky Road ice cream and peanut brittle for me. Fred had the Citrus Variation, which was a warm poppy seed cake, orange panna cotta, citrus salad, grapefruit sorbet and blood orange sauce.

I don't care for frou-frou food. This neatly balanced itself between frou-frou and simple. It was amazingly good. A little on the pricey side, but nothing we couldn't handle.

And that's enough of an update. I'm going to turn off Jamiroquai and go to bed. See you all tomorrow.

Unless it starts to blizzard, in which I'll stay in bed and you can all hang.

Your Evil Microsoft Moment

Personalized menus. An act of Satan himself.

I have Windows XP. I have Microsoft Office 2000. Both feature Personalized Menus. Personalized Menus can also be called "A Minor Irritant that can't be removed, much like a tiny little pebble in your shoe that you just can't find."

Good lord. Who's stupid idea was this? When I access the menu, I want the whole menu, not some busybody computer's guess as to which commands I will probably want. I don't want perpetually changing menus. I want consistency. I understand the concept of "show him his most commonly used commands", but it just doesn't work. Fifty percent of the time I have to expand the menu, which pretty much destroys the usefulness of the personalization. Well fuck that. It's gone.

And why is it so hard to disable? There's one setting for the Start Menu, and another setting for the Office suite. And good luck finding the instructions if you don't know about the "personalized" term.

I hate that. I really fucking hate that.

Sorry. But I just hate that.

Sunset

Hey! I just noticed that the sky background on my Weatherpixie turns purple during sundown. Small but cool.

Aarrrr Matey

Look, a vegetarian Pirate. No animals were harmed in the making of this eyepatch.

Michele, a coworker, has a sty in her eye. At the suggestion of her doctor, and much to the hilarity of us all, she heats up a potato in the microwave and holds it against her eye for short periods. It sounds like a totally Arkie kind of home remedy, but she's willing to try it.

Potato jokes have been flying for the past two days, and have culminated in the Potato Eyepatch that was presented to her today.

Here's your prescription. Do you want fries with that?

Ed the Suck

Okay, so I watched an episode of Ed the Sock, as ordered by Jim Treacher. Some have been complaining that Triumph the Insult Dog Comic is a ripoff of Ed the Sock, a sock puppet with a cigar who has/had his own show on Canadian television.

Ed the Sock isn't fit to be pooped on. Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame. Triumph saying "pink thing" is funnier than the entirety of Ed's (ahem) career.

Ripoff? Maybe. Do I care? Not in the least.

And the name is...

Rutger. As of today, Rutger lives. Final analysis; it was the RAM.

Yep, all that fuss, and it turns out to be the memory. I got a spare video card and a spare SIMM, and tried them out. Lo and behold, swapping the memory led to booting.

So now I have to send back the RAM I bought, and do a little hunting for some RAM for Rutger.

Win XP is installed, and running fine. The nice new Radeon 9600 SE card is purring along, the 120GB hard drive is spinning nicely, and the floppy has some sort of issue, so it's unplugged. And the Gigabit Ethernet connection isn't connecting to the DSL router, so I've got some troubleshooting. Fred is convinced that he did something wrong when he ran the cable from upstairs to downstairs. I don't know about that. I suspect the LAN card. We'll see.

But Rutger is on his way to becoming my main Windows machine. Let the surfing for porn commence!

Echo! Echo! Echo!

Stupid web server.

Triumph

A quick link to Triumph insulting the folks in Quebec. Pretty sure you'll need DIVX for this one.

Triumph

A quick link to Triumph insulting the folks in Quebec. Pretty sure you'll need DIVX for this one.

Triumph

A quick link to Triumph insulting the folks in Quebec. Pretty sure you'll need DIVX for this one.

Triumph

A quick link to Triumph insulting the folks in Quebec. Pretty sure you'll need DIVX for this one.

Triumph

A quick link to Triumph insulting the folks in Quebec. Pretty sure you'll need DIVX for this one.

Tshirts galore

AI's CWoB: YellowText

See, as you get older, Society keeps raising the Slob Bar on you. And it's a bar that I historically have had little success in navigating. Casual? I've got it covered. Actually, because I write about technology, I have enough tee shirts that I could take this year's entire West Point graduating class and make them look like the first twelve rows at a Phish concert. I acknowledge that all of my tee shirts sport OpenDoc and CodeWarrior logos and stuff, and Phish fans aren't interested in any technology more complicated than what's necessary to turn any given object into a bong, but I stand by my claim nonetheless.

Why does Andy have such insight into my wardrobe?

Cankle defined

For those of you that don't know, a cankle is a really thick ankle. Generally female, because no one cares about a guy's ankle. Think of a calf that just keeps going down to the heel.

For an example, see Hillary Clinton. Gak.

Now. Does anyone need me to explain what a Moose Knuckle is?

The Brando Brouhaha

Okay, everyone settle down. No nude pictures of Brando's weiner have been released to the net. And those of you who have never heard the term "gunt", here's an entry in the Urban Dictionary.

Gunt:
the roll of fat underneath the stomach roll. . . can be male or female over top of/ in place of genitalia
the man is fat- look at his gunt

Or in other words, "the big flap over Marlon Brando's weiner" is his gunt.

Incidentally, some people use "gunt" to refer to a female pooch. Not quite gut, not quite cunt. Myself, I prefer the unisex definition.

Cankles, however, are strictly female, along with Camel Toes.

Seven Big Flaps

1. The big flap over boobs. Everyone shut up now.
2. The big flap over Paris Hilton. Everyone shut up now.
3. The big flap over Marlon Brando's weiner. It's called a gunt. Really fat guys have it. Get over it and shut up now.
4. The big flap over Weapons of Mass Destruction. Saddam is a genocidal maniac, and you guys are arguing over political bullshit. Everyone shut up now.
5. The big flap over Helen Thomas' face. That's her lower lip, trying to devour her head. Avert your eyes and shut up now.
6. The big flap over Atkins. See point three, get over it and shut up now.
7. The big flap over the missing seventh point. It's here. Everybody shut up now.

Technopoop

My new motherboard is dead out of the box. Sigh. I can't even get it to POST, which is highly annoying. The fans spin up, but that's it. No video signal at all.

The video card (Radeon 9600se) is okay; it works fine in Fred's machine. It's possible that I have a dead processor or a wonky power supply. But my money's on the MoBo. Sigh.

So I'll pack it up, and we'll run back to Microcenter and swap it for a new one. And if that one doesn't work, I'll punt. I'll probably also buy an extra power supply and a cheap-ass PCI video card, just to have around for testing/spares.

Incidentally, I'm toying with the name Roderick, though the Python connection is awful strong there. I'm not sure I want my machine openly mocked by bad Palin impressions.

Still, it's better than Biggus Dickus.

Project

I found something that has actually woken up my soggy brain. I'm building a PC.

I love my Mac. But I also love the Wintel world. Sure, it makes me crazy. But I love it anyway. Okay, I just plain love computers.

All that aside, I'm on the quest right now. I've got my basic system designed on paper, and now I'm fine-tuning it and trying to bring the price down without compromising the specs too much. I've decided on a P4 2.8 Ghz processor and an ASUS P4C800-E motherboard. I've already got a 120 gb drive, and I'm looking at a Samsung 19 inch monitor. (No, no flat screen. I want control over the resolution without the icky interpolation problem.)

The part that really sucks? Three hundred dollars for Windows XP Professional. And no, I'm not going to pirate it. I'll buy it fair and square. I was going to go with 2000 Professional, but it's the same price. And I think that it's important for me to learn as much as I can with XP. Fred's machine has XP Home, but that's his machine; it's not really a good idea for me to play with it to the point of breaking it. That's one of the reasons for me building this machine. I need to challenge my brain.

There's one other thing I need to figure out. What to name it. We currently have Norman (the LINUX box,) Lance (Fred's XP machine,) and Ophelia (my iMac.) I need to come up with a good name. I've already decided that it's a HE, but haven't hit the name yet.

Suggestions?

Anniversary

I neglected to mention this; yesterday was our sixth anniversary. Six years ago last night, I arrived on Fred's doorstep for our first date. I never left.

Six years have gone past like a top fuel dragster. And six years have been forever. I can't believe how quickly it's gone, and I can't remember life before you, Fred. You make me smile, you bring out the devil in me, you confide in me, you hold me when I'm upset, you cook for me, you let me cook for you.

You're my friend, my playmate, my passion, my muse, my irritation.

I love you, Fred, and I can't wait to see what comes in the next six years.

Russia one hundred years ago

The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated (A Library of Congress Exhibition)

This is amazing. Some absolutely beautiful color photographs from 1907-1915 in Russia. I had no idea that these existed, or that anyone had done color photography that early.

Some of the images are stunning.

I'm also fascinated by the images that show the inherent difficulty of shooting in three colors. For instance, look at this photo. Notice the color ghosts on the far left? People were walking about while the photograph was being taken. You can also see some color blurring at the bottom of the shot. The men were obviously standing on a not-quite-steady raft while being photographed.

These are amazing. Thanks to Brian at Peeve Farm for the link.

A word about nipple piercings

For those of you curious about the weird decoration on Miss Jackson's nip, you should go here for a little lesson.

I have always been attracted to nipple shields, and would have gotten one if I'd ever been able to get my nipple piercings to heal correctly. As it was, they never healed properly, acted up, and migrated. After five years of frustration, I took them out.

I still miss them. Troublesome though they were, I loved 'em. Alas, I'm too fat for them.

Somewhat better

My head still bursts into song and starts shaking it's money maker, but on the whole I'm doing better than I was yesterday. The power of Naproxen Sodium has something to do with that. Unfortunately, it doesn't get rid of the taste of flour and vinegar in my mouth.

Speaking of power, I should mention the power of the Jackson Mammary, and the amazing ability of it to bring us all together.

There. Mentioned. I'm now part of the In Crowd.

Speaking of the Mammary, did anyone else immediately think of Lil' Kim getting felt up by Diana Ross at an awards show a year or two back? Where was the outrage there? That whole incident lasted for nearly thirty seconds, whereas Miss Jackson's Mamm was only on display for about half a second.

I call Shenanigans.

Head - pounding - can't - think

I'm taking the day off. I have a headache that comes and goes. I'll be fine for a while, and then my brain suddenly decompresses and expands to fill my skull. Back and forth, back and forth. Boom, boom, boom goes the blood in my head.

This sucks.

Snow

It's been snowing lightly but steadily for the past twenty four hours. We're closing on a foot of snow.

I went out this morning. Did a quick trip downtown to start a backup job at work. Total working time from check-in to check-out: five minutes. Then a side trip to Micro Center to find a new CD writer, because Fred's has pooped out. Dammit, they're not open until noon. So the long trek back up Highway 169, with a side trip to Best Buy. Finally a stop at Super Target for groceries.

Total time away from the house: three hours fifteen minutes.

The driving sucked.

It's not like the snow was too deep, or the wind was howling. But the roads were slick as cow shit on a tile floor. I averaged thirty on the highways. A lot of people averaged higher. A lot of people also ended up in the ditch. I saw a constant chain of accidents, stuck motorists, State Troopers, and wreckers. Every fifty yards, another set of tire tracks swooping into the shoulder, or an actual vehicle waiting patiently for a wrecker to winch him or her out. Several multiple car accidents. Flares, for chrissake. How often do you see people setting up flares after an accident?

As a state, we've forgotten how to drive in bad weather. We haven't had to, because the last four years have had extremely nice winter weather. Well, now we suck at it. And when I say we, I mean "all you people who aren't me."

When I got home, I was having a blood sugar moment. I had been so hyper-alert for so long that I had drained my system of immediate reserves. I had the shakes, and I was light headed. Water, a sandwich and some rest helped dispell that.

I like Winter. I really do. But I'm ready for it to be May.