the kat and mous

I am on a boat. There has been some sort of previous tragedy, specifically regarding me and I want to say that the boat trip is primarily for myself. There’s another guy and a girl present, (both unknown?) and together we’re helping each other feel better. I hug the guy and the girl halfway through the boat trip, and we all cry. Next we begin to prepare lunch and everyone seperates into our own areas of the boat. I go into the girl’s section and we eat sushi and cheese.

Our boat lands on a small island. For some reason we all begin to physically fight/roughhouse. The island is no larger than a city block. Facing lengthwise down the island, looking to the RIGHT there are three “ports”, with smaller boats taking on passengers all seperated by chain link fences. I have a suspicion, but no proof that there’s armed guards. One port says, “Jamacia”, the next one down has a red and green flag, but I’m not sure of the country. The third is exotic, but not middle-eastern.

I look over to the LEFT, and the island is not that far from the shoreline of what looks like a “docks” or wharf area of a city. If I turn my vision 20 degrees to the left, I can see a barnacle-encrusted “hill” leading out of the water and there’s a blue-painted F4 phantom fighter jet perched on the hill, (as though it was discarded as a toy) with a handmade advertisement, consisting of a black sheet and some white painted lettering hanging and blowing in the breeze, on the rear of the aircraft.

I remember thinking that there was no bridge to the wharf from the island, but all I had to do was look harder and I’d see that there really was one. I looked harder and sure enough, there was a footbridge. I remember thinking that I was sad we wouldn’t be able to bring a vehicle from the boat to the shore, because the width of the bridge wasn’t that great.

I run ahead of the girl and guy and take the bridge. They yell after me and want me to wait for them and be careful, but I go anyway because of the excitement of exploring a new place. I walk past many shops with neon signs in them, (places to eat, bars, etc.) Finally I come to a raggedy entryway with a sign that says something like, “military surplus”. I look down at that point and see that I’m wearing a full BDU set, green tiger-stripe camoflage, and a boonie hat. I’m uncomfortable, wearing this outfit in public, but decide that it’s ok to wear on the wharf.

I go back and meet the guy and the girl at the base of the bridge, and lead them to the military surplus shop, it’s not open yet, but we see the owner getting it ready. I’m very excited and the girl is as well. We finally look at our watches and go in, it’s 9:03, three minutes after the store opened so we figure it’s opened.

There’s a vietnam-era vet and an older lady running the store. The lady is wearing some sort of feathered boa. The store almost entirely consists of various kinds of Asian weapons, swords, etc. In addition to this, there’s a lot of Asian knick-knacks, small ornate boxes, a few scattered Asian outfits/costumes. Everything has an `old’ feel to it, there’s dust everywhere. I am looking for something in particular, but I don’t know what it is and I’m not finding it. I go outside, around the back where there is a large clothing rack and cardboard boxes of things. These items are located under what looks like a freeway exit ramp, but closer to the ground, smaller.

I find a rack of olive-drab green army overcoats and some other assorted, (unremembered) items that were `interesting’ but not enough to buy.

I go back inside and turn left, enter the larger room of the store. The girl hasn’t found anything, the boy has found a small ornately hand-painted plate along with a box that goes on top of it. Both are in excellent condition and the guy says, `I’m getting this for their anniversary’, and somehow I know that “they” will love it. The girl becomes shadowy, out of focus. Right before we leave and the boy is paying for the plate/box, I am rummaging around in a cardboard box in the main area of the store and I come across a small Od-green cordura bag that has what appears to be tent stakes, or some sort of tent system. Once the boy has paid for the box, he turns to me and says, `what did you get, it looks like a tent?’ and I reply, `No’. It’s a military emergency system, a very, very long pole that you assemble and it telescopes up into the air and lights itself up, like a vertical string of fluro light tubes. I figure this will be a good survival thing to have.

Everything gets fuzzy, at this point but we all find ourselves back at the wharf, where we see Natalie Portman, surrounded by cameras and people. She has pink hair, she’s wearing a pair of pink plastic overalls, she’s getting into a large pink humvee. She’s upset and being interviewed by the media. She has installed a large dual-tubed tissue dispenser on the side of her humvee. She says, “the reason I installed this is so I can (and she gestures by removing a few pieces of tissue from one tube and cramming them into the bottom of the second tube) …tell them to shove it up their ass.” I know that she’s upset and speaking of a street racer who’s died.

She gets into her humvee and her door handle is malleable, from the inside, at the door handle she slides her fingers into shaped glove-finger like pockets that you can see outside the humvee. They’re pink, black and look high-tech. she says out loud, `Lock!’ and some liquid-type metal changes, or hardens on the door handlxe, and I see a comically expressed word appear over her glove-door-handle that’s yellow and says, “LOK!”

I wake up.

My advice for buying a bicycle helmet used to be: go to a store with a big selection, and try a lot of them on, until one seems obviously more comfortable than the others, and buy that one. My reasoning: Helmets, in general, are uncomfortable and annoying. Therefore, the most important criteria should be comfort.

Unfortunately, the other important criteria is cost…which brings me to the story of my last helmet purchase. It was in the fall of 2003, and I’d just gotten my student loan check. I went to Performance, and tried on a bunch of helmets. And there was one in particular, that made me feel like…”if I was a super hero, this would be part of my costume”…seriously, it felt like it was *made* for my head. It was low-profile, super light, and really really comfortable. It was also $159, the most expensive one in the store that day. Considering I had to make the student loan money last 4 or 5 months, and I am rather cheap, I was having a hard time rationalizing the purchase. And then I found a “last year’s model” Giro Atmos that fit me decently on the clearance rack for $80, marked down from $120. So I ended up deciding $80 was about all I could spend, and I left the awesome $159 helmet there.

I never wrote down what company made the awesome $159 helmet, and I always regretted not getting it. When I got my last job, in January 2007, I started finally thinking about replacing my helmet, but I could never get the memory of the awesome one out of my head. And I could not find one like it anywhere. For the last year and a half, I have been trying on helmets in every bike shop I’ve gone in.

Another interesting thing: in the time since 2003, the price point for top of the line helmets at local shops has gone up, to $225-$250 for the most expensive ones. Which reminds me of this recent post from Bike Snob NYC, where he points out (in his typical hilarious fashion) that top of the line Trek and Specialized bikes have both doubled in price since, coincidentally, 2003.

And what I found, by trying on a bunch of them, is the $200+ helmets currently available in local stores, are unimpressive. The adjustment-thingy at the back of the Giro Atmos I had been using broke a few years ago, and I got it to work again, but it was much less comfortable after. So I had been “putting up with it”, but swearing I’d never get one that uses the same thing in the back again. And the current “nice” Giro helmets, while costing 100 dollars more, still use the same crappy adjuster thing in the back. You’d think, for that much more money, they could at least invent something more comfortable or durable. And then there was a $225 helmet from Specialized, and when I went to fully extend the adjuster-thingy before trying it on, it fell apart in my hands (and then I very quietly put it back in the box on the shelf). So much for the fancy Specialized helmets.

I’m normally a bit squeamish about buying things that need to be tried on, online. I’ve had a few big mistakes that way, and they have been a pain. But, after 4 years of being annoyed with the Giro Atmos, and thinking about how cheap it felt every time I put it on, I wanted a helmet that felt great. Not just “ok”. Especially, when I was contemplating stuff up in the $200 range…more than twice what I paid for the last one. A few weeks ago, I made my last trip around to local shops, getting all annoyed at the same old crappy helmets. And I came home and started looking on the internet. I found this sweet link to the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, and while I don’t follow a lot of their advice (I figure, as long as I’m wearing a helmet, I’m doing a lot better than most), I appreciated their list of manufacturers. Because it led me to Rudy Project helmets.

After finding a few positive reviews online, I bought the Rudy Project Actyum helmet for $86, including shipping. And it kicks the ass of all the $200+ helmets available locally. The normal retail price is $160, but they offer it for half off on the website. I’m not sure if they always sell them half off, but I’d even say it is worth the money if you had to pay $160. It’s amazing how much detail went into the thing. And also, how it manages to feel more expensive than the other helmets.

There are no photos of the inside or back-size-adjustment-thingy on the Rudy Project website, so I thought I’d put a few here:

Some of the features:

• Extra padding EVERYWHERE, like the back between the adjustment thing and your head, and the chin strap.
• Mesh “bug liner”
• The padding is the softest I’ve ever felt in a helmet.
• The bug liner/padding is removable, and it comes with an extra, non-mesh padding set, in case you don’t want a full liner.
• Another online reviewer mentioned the matte finish, and I didn’t think it would matter, but it does look and feel really nice.

So, my new bicycle helmet buying advice is: go to a store, and try enough helmets on so that you’re confident in the size to order. Then go to e-rudy.com and pick one out.

User: “OK, I’m at my starlet screen, on the initial.”
Mous: “You’re.. Oh! you mean your `start up’ screen, your initial, or rather your log-on screen, with the control-alt-delete-to-begin”
User: “No, I’m at the starlet screen, on the INITIAL!”
Mous: “You mean, your START-UP scre..”
User: “NO! you’re not listening, I’m at the starlet screen, S-T-A-R-L-E-T and I have the initial in front of me. Sheesh, don’t you know anything?”

The above is a true conversation. She works in HR.

What I wouldn’t give for a starlet screen.

..

User: “I want you to go ahead and flush my cache.”
Mous: “Uhhh.. You.. Uhh.. what?”
User: “if you flush the cache, that’ll make my run faster!”

(Yeah, he actually forgot a noun in there. That’s literally what he said.)

Mous: “Make what? Ahh. Sure. Whatever. Absolutely. Give me about ten minutes and you should notice an improvement.”
User: “Well, that’s more like it.”

(ten minutes later.)

User: “Mous, great work! Everything is running MUCH faster now!”
Mous: “Yep, flushin’ that cache, that’s what it’s all about. Gets you every time. Flush, flush, flush is what I always say.”

There is no cache. No flush. Hell, there is no spoon. I went outside and smoked with my boss.

..

User: “So, I try and connect to the server, but my mails won’t flow. I mean, I’m connected to the server, but the flow won’t, you know, go, and in the end I just want to get the new emails.”

(I’m still stymied over this one, was he describing symptoms of an enlarged prostrate, or email issues? In addition, every answer this user gave to a a question was, `Yes, of course.’)

Mous:“”So, you’re telling me that your VPN is currently connected, right?”
User: “Yes of course.”
Mous: “So, you’ve got the little yellow lock down in the bottom right of the..”
User: “No.”
Mous: “Ok then, your mail can’t possibly be replicating because you do not have a VPN connection established with our office, if you’ll just double-click on the icon..”
User: “No, I don’t need to click anything, my email is replicating just fine.”
Mous: “Really? What?”
User: “Absolutely. I can see it here, i’ll read you what I’ve got, `a connection could not be established with the SMTP server’, but I’m replicating just fine, I’m not getting any emails flowing though.. You know, going.”
Mous: “Right, let’s get your VPN connection started..”
User: “But it’s already running, I’m connected.”
Mous: “So there’s a little yellow locked lock icon in the corner?”
User: “Yes, of course.”

This continued, over and over and over.

..

User: “I can’t get this computer to connect to my home wireless.”
Mous: “Well, I’m sorry but we don’t fix issues like this, we don’t support connecting our devices to home networks.”
User: “But it was working before.”

(user had just been issued a new laptop.)

Mous: “I realize that, so you’re just going to have to do whatever it was that you did before, to connect to your home network to get it working again.”
User: “Well, I can’t, because my son’s left for vacation. He’s the one who got it connected in the first place, and he’s the one who set up the network.”
Mous: “Yeahhhhh.. We’re not really able to work on that, because we don’t know what he did or what he set up, or what your WPA key is, or anything.”
User: “Well, it’s computer stuff, this stuff is easy, isn’t it?”

Yes. It sure is.

..

One of my absolute favorites is the self-absorbed people who walk directly into my office and just start talking to me, minus any sort of context.

Usually whatever they’re going on about has been discussed extensively within their own heads, prior to coming to me. I usually listen for a second and then with a straight face answer with, “The chair is against the wall and John has a long mustache.”

A second favorite is this newer user who I like to call the, “In my old company..” guy.

“In my old company, this little engineering firm, we could do whatever we wanted to on the servers..”

“In my old company, it was a little engineering firm, you know, we had a REALLY fast connection to Colorado Springs, not like this connection.”

“In my old company, you know, a little engineering firm, we were allowed to install whatever we wanted like Google Talk and stuff..”

My response was, `Hey, you know what? In my old company, in Iraq? Yeah, we were allowed to have guns.”

..

Another favorite user is `The Russian’.

User: “Hey, I send plot and no plot comes.”
Mous: “Right, no worries, I need to check the spooler service on it, if you could just stop sending plots to the plotter for a sec, that’d be great.”
User: “I send more plot. Now my program is freeze.”
Mous: “Yeah, I just brought the plotters offline. Hold up a second, while I get this restarted, ok? Just stop sending stuff for a minute.”
User: “Oops. I send more plot.”
Mous: “Please stop, you’re spamming the queue with your artillery of plots.”
User: “Wait, program unstuck, I send more plot.”
Mous: “NO PLOT! STOP SEND PLOT!”
User: “OK! It no work anyway.”

..

I was dealing with a user who was working remote in the Inland Empire of California. High-end guy, doctorate and all that. Namely we were trying to fix a bug in a recent software update and get his remote laptop to connected back into our network.

Previously, outside this problem, I’d traded emails back and forth with him over the course of a year, as I administered two of the Linux servers he used, but never had actually spoken to him directly.

I called his office number at the University and got his voicemail. In stunted and far, far, far beyond.. `Bad’ english, I hear, `I no here no call mail, ok? Message for me and I will call, ok?” It was seriously the thickest middle-eastern accent I’d ever heard, crossed with Yoda dialog from Star Wars.

I was, in essence, dealing with a jedi-knight-master of the atmospheric modeling world, who didn’t speak english.

Steeling myself up for what I figured was going to be the most broken, frustrating and time-consuming conversation I’d ever had, I reviewed my language options. I could get by with passable “talkee-pointee” French, maybe some Russian, (if he’d by chance studied in Eastern Europe, somewhere) and my street Arabic, what little I’d picked up in Iraq. We settled on a time for me to call and I did, clearing my schedule for the rest of the day.

Mous: “HE-LLO! I AM CALLING YOU NOW. TO WORK WITH YOU NOW. OK? I CALL TO FIX CONNECT.”
User: “Oh, fucking shit man, thank god you called. would you believe the thing still won’t connect?”

(It was accented, but almost perfect slang English. He sounded no different from people I’d met in the `burbs, in anytown, USA.)

Mous: “uhhhh.. Wait, what?”
User: “Yeah, goddamn it. Bitch is fucked. And you know what? My daughter just called me, she’s sick at school. I gotta take the fucking 215 there and you know how that shit’s backed up in the afternoons? Fucking christ. I’ll be stuck on it all day.”
Mous: “Wow.. Uhh, hey, no offense or nothing but when I got your voicemail earlier, I figured we’d have.. Problems with communicating..”
User: “Hahaha, yeah, one of my shithead grad students was pestering me when I was trying to set it a few months back. I get that a lot.”

All in all, he was a pretty nice guy.

..

Colorado being home to quite a few born-again, bible-thumpin’ christian fundie types, there are a goodly amount I happen to work with. One day, while enjoying my hedonistic music in the comfort of my own office, one of these godly types stops in to ask me if I knew why her music player wasn’t working, (on her workstation, we’d secretly redirected her two favorite internet radio stations to 127.0.0.1, after sending out repeated emails to the office warning that streaming media through the network resulted in a slower network for everyone.) Before I could explain, she walked around to face my monitor and as a look of horror creeped across her face, I realized that I was listening to Jane’s Addiction’s `Nothing Shocking’, with my itunes coverflow on full-screen. In essence, this is what she saw:

It never really got back to me, personally, but for a while I would hear rumors of the hedonistic and borderline satanic IT department who enjoyed looking at porn.

..

User: “No matter what I do, I can’t connect to the Starbucks network on my laptop.”
Mous: “Ahh. Ok, well. Wait. Mash the `bat-button’. Make sure your bat-button is blue.”

(This is because we had so many users who would try to connect to wireless networks, and not have their wireless card turned on, some users would mis-recognize the little icon of a post with radiating parentheses as a winged creature and they began referring to it as, `the bat button’. if you hit the
bat-button and it turned blue, (i.e. `on’) then your wireless would work. Sure enough.)

User: “Oh, one sec, OK! Oh! That worked.”
Mous: “Yep, glad to hear it. Gotta make sure your bat-button is blue, you know?’

The user eventually went on to talk about how she was glad that `All McDonald’s have free wifi now’ and to switch it up a bit, she’d be frequenting metro

fast-food locations to work out of. Is it just me, or is that shit low-brow?

..

Oh, and speaking of low-brow, I promised more words of wisdom from my crap-ass auto-brew coffee maker at work, here you go:

-Le_mous
(Posting longer, for a bolder blog flavor.)

Some of my absolute favorite full-album music blogs;

(Of course, these albums are there so that you can TRY it and if you like it, well then, it’s off to the DRM-free music shoppe of your choice, where you can certainly buy the album and support the artist, moreso by catching them in a show in your local area.)

Allegory of Allergies - “Folk, drone, ambient, improv and soundtracks.” - Man, I love this guy. Lots of interesting and hard to get stuff. Ranges from field recordings to traditional Irish folk. Really obscure and fantastic stuff on here.

Independent World- A little bit of everything, but mostly focuses on the indie world. I like how he does a little “If you like this, you will like..” thing. Old and new, very worth subscribing.

Cagedream - Beautiful array of different things, from Eno to Will Oldham, Jim O’Rourke to Zoviet France. Usually includes artist info.

deleted scenes forgotten dreams - Experiments, electronic, drone, ambient, noise, dark, field.. He gives a great breakdown of the artist and album, as well as the style. He’s been spot-on almost every time since I’ve subscribed and he remains a stock favorite in my rss feeds.

Experimental, etc.- Awesome content. Cabaret Voltaire, Chilean folk and experimental classical.. All over the place. If I’m looking for something different, but not necessarily new, this is where I go.

FM Shades - Oldies, branching into the experimental and rock-type stuff. Nothing mainstream, unless you travel in the circles that consider this sort of stuff, `mainstream’, (sure, that’s kinda me, I guess.) Or a collector of the genre.

Glowing Raw - A celebration of the sublime experimental and cutting-edge stuff, not stuff that’s gonna go nowhere, but it’s the stuff that bubbles up from the usual sources, (college radio, high schools, local bars) that will actually make it. If nothing else, his write ups are worth it alone.

High Fidelity Records - An excellent focus on indie/alternative/acoustic and even some hip-hop tossed in there, every once in a while.

Killedincars- Anarchistic insanity, (mainly due to the multitude of contributors,) but oh, how that works out for the best. This is one that I simply can’t put a label or classify into a genre. What can I say, these are the fwllows that turned me onto Leonid Federov.

Messineto - Excellent, excellent content. Minimalist format and a wide variety to chose from. Great posts.

No Longer Forgotten Music - A connoisseurs blog, focusing on extremely rare cassette stuff from the 80’s or whatnot. Great blog, if you’re looking for something specific.. Or maybe, if you’re in the mood to listen to that one tape, made by that art student in Frankfurt am Main in 1989.

Ongakubaka - All sorts of nifty stuff, rock-oriented mainly. Jagged and rough, with sweet nougaty centers at times, coming in the form of electronic or psychedelic. He’s certainly turned me onto a few new ones that I wouldn’t have otherwise heard of, were it not for him.

dot, dot, dot - Ahhhhhhh. Saving the best for last. Another multiple-contributors, but for some reason I seem to resonate with these folks. Wide, wide variety of stuff posted here.

I wasn’t joking in the about page. Come the (zombie revolution, nuclear holocaust, breakdown of all laws and civilization) [insert reason here]  and when all hell breaks loose, by gum, we’ll be PREPARED.

(Ok, so maybe it’s a little more like, we go camping up in the mountains, get lost and suffer a car accident or get stuck in the snow on a mountain road, etc.)

Included:

5x - emergency candles
4x - heating pads/handwarmers
1x - 12″ strong cord
1x - 100′ paracord
2x - sm. packs of gum
1x - pack assorted fishing hooks
1x - spool 110yd, 20lb test line
4x - sharpened pencils
1x - sm. maglight
50x - waterproof matches
1x - match striker
8x - assorted cloth tinder
1x - sm. pocketknife
1x - field wire woodsaw
1x - sm. locking carabiner
1x - pair sharpened-end tweezers
1x - field can opener
1x - lg. adhesive sticker

compressable bagged medical portion:

8x - assorted large gauze pads
1x - flesh colored medical wrap
10x - alcohol swabs
5x - antiseptic swabs
1x - sm. neosporin cream
1x - lg. cortizone cream
1x - mercury thermometer
1x - pair blue medical gloves
20x - advil/NSAID
30x - Phenylephrine (decongestant)
12x - Antacid
50x - Meclizine Hydrochloride (Anti-emetic)
3x - medical lubricating jelly
1x - sm. antibiotic ointment
1x - md. bottle neosporin
1x - sm. Miconazole nitrate cream (anti-fungal)
1x - bot artifical tears
1x - md. bottle cortizone
1x - sm. roll medical tape.
1x - lg. bottle aloe/solarcane
1x - sm. lipbalm

tinned medical portion: (2-person emergency treatment)

10x - individual antibiotic ointment
4x - aloe ointment
4x - anti-itch ointment
40x - assorted small to large bandaids

Mous, prepared for anything.

Well, anything but a chipmunk invasion, I guess.

The first thing you do, when learning any new programming language, is to write a “Hello, World” program. The program doesn’t do anything except write “Hello, World” on the screen, but it lets you know that you have your development environment configured correctly, and things should work as expected when you’re writing a program that is actually doing something. I always thought it would be a funny title for my first blog post.

The mous and I have talked about blogging together since a few weeks after we met (in July of 2007!). I always agonized over what domain name to buy for myself…I had a few of them over the years, but nothing ever really felt right. But, for the very first time, thekatandmous.com just seemed perfect right away: I tend to use the username “katjones” on websites, and mous uses “le_mous”.

I read a lot of blogs, but I am not much of a writer myself. Which is ironic, because I actually bought my very first computer in the spring of 2002 with the intention of becoming a writer. I have always known a lot of writers, artists, and musicians…which led me to a fair amount of pretentious dabbling in different art forms. I was thinking that I would focus on writing back then, and I was still thinking that when I went back to school for spring semester 2003. It wasn’t until about halfway through that semester, agonizing over finishing some papers, that I actually realized that I’m not much of a writer. That isn’t to say that I *can’t* write, it’s more that I agonize over everything being perfect, drive myself nuts, hate everything I write, and never finish anything. It’s a lot of work for me to write.

What I figured out for the first time, that semester, is that my true love is mucking about with computers. I had installed SUSE Linux about 6 months after buying my first computer (a $400 desktop refurb from the Dell website), because I had no money to buy Windows software, my hardware was crap and not good for much, and that was the most interesting thing I could figure out to do with my computer. So I took a two credit “Introduction to Unix” course, and it was by far my favorite course that semester. No stupid papers: homework assignments were things like shell scripts. That was when things started clicking for me…”why am I banging my head against a wall, doing things I hate? why don’t I just major in something interesting?”. So I took Computer Science I in the summer semester, loved it, and changed my major. I ended up burning out on the required math and physics courses, and dropping out about 3/4 of the way through, but I’d love to go back and finish someday.

…ok, that was a bit of a ramble…

I do know that the only way to get better at writing, especially online writing, is to just do a lot more of it. So, that is what I will be trying to do here. I’ll be fighting my natural tendency to just put the blog up, and spend all my time fiddling with the template and plugins, instead of actually posting anything (plenty of fiddling can still be expected, but there will be posts to go along with it this time ;)

Speaking of fiddling, the minimalism theme will soon be replaced with something more custom….and my next goal is to get some kind of RSS aggregation thing going, for all the “social networking” and “web 2.0″ sites that we use, so the information will be posted here…a sort of “one feed to rule them all!” thing…and if you read this far, I’m really impressed. I will keep the posts shorter in the future!

(The mous leans over and kisses the kat’s neck.)

Mous: mumph, mumble, mumble. Come on, when do you want to start the movie?  (Tonight, we’re watching Kurosawa’s `Seven Samurai‘)

Kat: What do I gotta do, to get you to kiss the back of my neck like that again?

Mous: You have to watch the movie.

Kat: But then it’ll be movie watchin’ time and not neck kissin’ time.

Mous: Hmm.

So, I’ll start with an update. I’m two-down in the electronics category so far, meaning, my GPS was stolen out of my car (and driver’s side window smashed, thank-you-middle-schoolers-leaving-your-dance) and my laptop recently died.  The laptop debacle has been solved, (in the process of purching what could be described as not just an update to the old boy, (120Gb HD, 1Ghz proc, 1Gb RAM, Windows Vista Business Ed.) who’s now dead, but an INSANE update to that, (320Gb HD, dual 2.6Ghz procs, 4Gb RAM, Windows Vista 64-bit, business Ed.) however linux will be replacing that shortly. Probably a 64-bit version of Ubuntu or something. Maybe I’ll really tweak the kat and install BSD or something. Here’s a picture of the little guy, (can’t wait until he arrives!):

Unfortunately, no such luck/quick solution for the “jeepies”, (click on the link to get the joke) other than actually (GASP!) learning manual navigation of Denver. Both the kat and I are looking to pick up a three-mode one that’s good for hiking, biking and driving, however we’re not going to pay $600 for one, no matter now cool it is, or voice-recognition, etc.

In the interim, the kat’s been amused, (read as: `horrified and disgusted’) at my trolling of 4chan recently, on the lookout for new and interesting, (i.e. sick) animated gifs, desktop wallpapers and other such nonsense.  One recent find, (also exasperating because I can’t seem to find any other reference to where I might find more) are these take-offs of the marmaduke comic:

Which are great, but seems to be the only ones. My personal favorite is the one where the pizza guy’s hands turn into santa-heads and they argue in Japanese.

Let’s see, what else is new.

Ah, I bought kat the Firefly box set for her birthday and we watched the entire series from beginning to end, including the following movie and boy-howdy, I gotta admit that before watching this iteration of the series with her, I was NOT a fan, (which, is in retrospect partly due to the episodes that I watched and how I watched them) however I’m VERY MUCH a fan now of the show, except for the song, and it appears that I’m not the only one who dislikes it.

I took a funny picture of our new coffee maker at work, it’s a one-cup deal that makes flavored coffee packets in a cup for you and it, (much like the firefly song) ..sucks. I took a picture of one of the things it says to me, when it makes my coffee:

Yes. Each cup, sadly is not a `powerful kick of coffee passion.’ It says other funny things, and surely I’ll post those later as well.

Speaking of pictures, here’s a `powerful kick of white-hot-driving-rage’ picture of a guy who BLINDLY and recklessly swerved across three lanes of traffic, (while in a heated discussion, on a cellphone) and literally brought the rear end of his vehicle to within inches of a collision with my front bumper at 65mph. I was so dumbfounded and astounded that after slamming on my brakes, (and almost causing a honda to rear-end me) that I snapped a quick shot of him. No kidding, three lanes, 65mph. Based on the way that he erratically cut across those lanes, he’s either suicidal or psychotic. As he took the exit onto Colorado Blvd, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one giving him the finger and/or flashing their lights at him:

Moving onto a more positive subject, it’s time for a glimpse into the (busted and logically insane) mind of the mous, through the exercise of him purging his “instapaper” links. (I use these to save various tidbits of interesting information and branch links off of other websites I’m reading usually due to some sort of click-research-spasams. Ehh.. It’s hard to explain.) Easier to illustrate by just getting to the point and posting the links. Here you go:

Mike Giant, fine art - Saved for tattoo reasons. Probably came from Kitsune or some other creative blog.

GreatNews RSS Reader - Came from my feeds, tried it out, it’s pretty cool.

Kris Kuski’s `Imminent Utopia’ - Came across it by accident, amazing art.

“Bluebird : Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists (Paperback)” - Uhh, started out on JeffBridges.com, followed a link to `The men who stare at goats‘, then to wikipedia for `Frank Olson‘ then finally to the Amazon link. (That kat always laughs when I get into my weird wikipedia click-trances, jumping from artiticle to article, starting with `Tom Jones’, moving quickly into `Marvel Comics’, then rounding the bend into `Surgery’, then it’s off to `Peter and the wolf’, then somehow into `WWII’ and finally ending up with `CIA mind control techniques’. Surely, I am a repository of useless information by this point.

Sure SE102 sound-isolating headphones - Hardware review from The Register, they looked interesting.

Innumeracy and the U. S. Supreme Court - Excellent example from MarkCC at Google as to just how poorly some of these buffoons act in the USSC. (I love this guy’s blog, yes for the math stuff but also because he’s a great writer. Makes things human-readable and that’s something that many lack, in highly technical positions.)

Everything I learned at MIT - The random Dr. Ed Boyan, graduate MIT, decided to scan all of his notes in. Very interesting reading. Probably originally from Boingboing or something.

Anyway, that’s just a few. They get stranger and stranger as time goes on. More later. Maybe edits, maybe whole new entries.

This post, is a powerful kick of blogging passion, is it not?

- le_mous.