Assimilate this!

Ultrasonic bug repellents?

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:13:14 GMT

I was tempted to buy one of these things, but I was skeptical of their efficacy, so I looked it up, and I’m glad I did.

Black & Decker has some for about $10, but it’s still $10 that would have been wasted.

I have a confession to make

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:01:23 GMT

Firstly, I want to preface that I despise G. W. Bush for bringing us into Iraq. For as evil as a man that Hussein was, it was for the wrong reasons, the wrong time, and, by not listening to his generals, he didn’t even do it correctly.

However, I’m of the philosophy, “we broke it, we fix it,” unless, of course, we’re so incompetent, that we’ll make things worse. Iraq is in shambles because of our idiotic actions.

We shouldn’t stay until we’re “victorious,” whatever the hell that means. It’s such a vacuous notion with regards to the current situation. We should leave when either the region is reasonably peaceful and stable, or when the Iraqi people just don’t want us there any more.

I don’t know if the currently plan to leave was put into place by us, or by the Iraqi government. There’s too many variables to try to figure that out, and, since I won’t speculate on that, I’m not going to be upset at any particular person or entity for the current plan. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if someone was whispering in Obama’s ear during the campaign about the Iraqi government’s possible desire for us to leave, but it may also have been pressure from our side to implement a plan to leave. I certainly hope it was the former (of course, it may also be some mixture of those two possibilities or something else I may have not fathomed.)

I do hope that Iraq is stable and peaceful at the end of it all, though.

This more or less applies to Afghanistan as well, but at least we had some legitimate reasons for going there.

I'm upset at you Mr. President

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:31:52 GMT

Mr. Obama,

You’ve made it very difficulty for me to dislike you. I usually have a certain distaste for political figures, but not with you. If you keep on doing things like this, you’ll become the first President during my lifetime that I will think is okay.

This isn’t to say that I take exception with many things you’ve done or plan to do. I am, after all, a minarchist (at the Federal level, anyway, and the only thing keeping me from being an anarchist is the realization that there’s still too many idiots out there).

And if you continue to carry forward with some of these promises that are actually in your capacity to keep, I may actually have to say that you did well.

--

Pareidolia!!!!

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:59:46 GMT

Movies to see

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:10:22 GMT

Transformers 2: yep, it’s a Michael Bay movie, but it was fun! Nice popcorn movie.

Year One: Utter...ly hilarious. Go see it, unless you’re the easily-offended-by-religious-jokes kind of person.

Hangover: I saw this because NPR did a show on this interviewing one of the actors about the movie. Fucking NPR did a show on this movie!!! I thought, “How weird.” It’s not usually my kind of movie, but it was pretty funny, and I could somewhat see why they did a show on this.

PS Sorry about the ad, but it seemed apropos.

A plea to Obama about Iran

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:17:19 GMT

I know, Obama doesn’t read this blog, but I feel like writing this anyway.

Dear Mr. President,

I like you, I really do--in spite of my skepticism about some of your plans.

I really, really hope that you support the Iranian opposition, and possible revolution, even if it’s not openly done so. The Iranian people deserve this. A government that lies to its citizens so often, and blatently, seems to have little more than contempt for them, and gladly jails suspected dissidents and spies deserves to be kicked out.

Rene

--

From inside Iran:

Tweets

Pics

Police attack and beat protesters

Iran election. Riot in tehran streets after election day - 13/06/09

More amazing photos from Tehran

Need to find things to do next weekend

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 06:15:51 GMT

I’ve taken off of work for June 20th, and I’d really like to find something to do with people that day, and possible the day previous since I don’t work that day either. I do, however, already have plans with the Oshkosh Freethinkers for the 21st--that Sunday (contact Hope at that website if you’d like to join). Yeah, that also does mean that I might not attend D&D that day.

Anyone have anything they want to do next weekend?

I’m even open to camping for Friday night.

More, please!

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:08:45 GMT

Congrats New Hampshire! It was silly little language, and is really superfluous because of the First Amendment, but if it gives comfort to religious groups, then play the silly politics that are harmless, and get it passed.

New York, I think you’re next, right? Come on, hurry up!

And how did we frak up?

If a church doesn’t want to recognize same-sex marriage, then it shouldn’t. It’s that simple.

An interesting read...

Fri, 29 May 2009 09:03:26 GMT

Former Catholic priest turned atheist

I like scouring the Internet for oddities like that. I wondered what it would be like to turn one’s back not only on simply this life-encompassing vocation (that requires lots of training and education), but on its very foundational concepts.

I do wonder how many former Catholic priests turned atheists there are in the world. I’ve heard rumours from various sources that I won’t name that there are numerous priests in the closet with their atheism and stay there simply because they don’t know any other life, and wouldn’t be sure about what to do if they left the “profession.” This seems especially true of priests in orders that take oaths of poverty, or are higher up in the church hierarchy.

I might be a jerk for this

Fri, 29 May 2009 07:32:27 GMT

Sometimes, after quite a number of drinks, I think to myself, “So this is what normal people feel like ALL THE TIME!!!! How weird.”

(If I ever get to tell this to an audience as part of a stand-up gig, I would add, “Does anyone else ever feel like this? No, wait, why would you? You already feel like that.” I’m not so sure that second part would go over so well, but I thought it was funny.)

Suicide

Thu, 28 May 2009 05:49:53 GMT

No, not me--a former co-worker of mine.

I didn’t really know him that well, but it was still really sad to learn about.

I have such a hard time fathoming what it’s like to go that far. Merely having suicidal thoughts is one thing, and many people have, but most end up rationalizing it away before they actually do anything to themselves.

I hope more people learn about this. ------->

Internet culture rocks

Wed, 27 May 2009 07:25:05 GMT

This is good too.

Vader Went Down to Georgia?!?!?!!!!!

I want to hear someone put that to music. Make sure you check out the picture at the top.

Non-belief? All too natural for me

Wed, 27 May 2009 05:58:22 GMT

I have to admit that non-belief was something that came rather naturally. Even when I did “believe,” it was a lot of struggle. Praying just felt like talking to myself.

I was more inclined to believe in New Agey woo, or some form of godless Buddhism, but even those things felt like bullshit to me.

I could at least “believe” in science since it was easily backed up by evidence, and “belief” was never set in stone (a new set of “beliefs” could easily supersede another with enough evidence), but it wasn’t a religion, so it seemed pointless to carry on with such a notion.

Desktop eye candy is useful (or addictive)

Sun, 24 May 2009 07:07:56 GMT

I’m not sure which.

Anyway, I mention that because a while ago, after upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04, I turned on Compiz for all the pretty transformations like wobbly windows, desktop cube, and burning windows. In doing so, I made my machine rather unstable. There were some issues with the graphics drivers for Intel graphics chips.

I had tried originally to work without all the pretty eye candy because I knew it was superfluous, but I found it very painful. I had gotten so used to all the little context clues that it provided, especially transparency, and the magic genie effect. The effects were very useful in giving very unambiguous clues as to what was happening to the windows, and ways to manipulate them. The desktop cube allows for spatial thinking and placement of windows. Allowing windows to burn in or burn out upon opening or closing gives a somewhat unambiguous clue that a process may have died. Window shading when a process is being slow is also very useful. Shadows behind windows give hints about the order of a stack of windows (small, and seemingly useless, but it’s noticeable when they’re suddenly not there). And transparency sprinkled here and there allows for seeing something behind another.

But, for now, the trade off to get all of that is instability. There are graphical glitches every so often, and it gets worse if an X session is left on for too long, especially for fonts, which then requires a restart of X (really, a log out and log back in for Ubuntu).

I’m sure it’s not quite as bad for other video chipsets, but I have to wait until Intel is finished with the code for the new graphics software architecture.

I didn't even know this was humanly possible

Thu, 21 May 2009 15:26:52 GMT

The trifecta of sexiness!

Tue, 19 May 2009 14:02:51 GMT

Re : If Atheists Ruled the World

Yes, it’s pure sarcasm.

I actually admire Robert Gates

Sun, 17 May 2009 23:22:09 GMT

The Secretary of Defence. He actually says that he’s the Secretary of War. It’s obvious that he makes his decisions not for political reasons, but to accomplish the mission he’s been given, and to keep the soldier safe.

He’s not even afraid to take flack for his decisions--of course he doesn’t really have to worry since he’s appointed.

Jenny who?

Sun, 17 May 2009 07:10:55 GMT

The Jenny McCarthy Song

Americans are satisfied with "average" governance?

Sat, 16 May 2009 07:36:04 GMT

There’s a certain mentality within American politics that annoys me greatly. It’s that idea that President X (e.g. Bush or Obama) isn’t like the foreign leader Y (e.g. Putin or Ahmadinejad). “You’re not being hauled off secretly to prison, so why are you complaining?”

And I think, “Okay, so we should just be happy with our average government that only does some heinous things, but not too much?”

It’s as though those people will be happy as long as we haven’t hit the bottom of the barrel. As long as shit hasn’t hit the fan yet, everything is A-Okay.

I'm going to have to find DVDs of Outnumbered

Tue, 12 May 2009 06:13:18 GMT

She’s not necessarily wrong:

And her question isn’t even really answered, and it’s a good one too. Also, Satanists don’t actually believe in Satan, so she could be.

Hemant Mehta has a good clip embedded in a recent post of his as well.

What to do after work...

Tue, 12 May 2009 05:05:12 GMT

A while ago, I tried to find something to do after work, but it’s hard because I get out of work so late, and most places are closed by that time.

For a while, I tried going out to the bars, and having a few drinks because those places are open that late, but I never really found anything I liked about them. I didn’t know anyone, and all drinking really does for me is get me all depressed and mopey. Blech. No thanks.

Thankfully, someone over at Snap Fitness figured this out (no one paid me, really!) I’ve been going there after work to work off a little stress. It’s awesome! It’s the perfect remedy to stress.

The only problem is that there’s sometimes some young kids there (okay, maybe not kids, but they don’t look much older than 18), and I sometimes feel like this:

I'm going to talk about something else...

Mon, 11 May 2009 02:28:52 GMT

Avenue Q and the new Star Trek movie are really, really good.

Kids, Avenue Q is adults only. If you’re old enough, GO SEE IT!!!!!!! It’s awesome.

And the new Star Trek movie...EVERYONE SEE IT!!!!!

That’s all I need to say about them.

Anyway, what do you get when you put this equation together:

Bad 80s movies + ninjas + MST3k + Bad camera angles (this could theoretically be classified under Bad 80s movies) + a pinch of Garth Marengi + bad acting + B-movie chic and over-the-topness?

You get this: SHINOBI: THE LAW OF SHINOBI

This is definitely a show to watch while drunk. It’s so hilariously bad, and fun to MST3k. To make it even more fun while drunk, watch it with the English dub. The subtitles are funny enough, but the dubbing is like all of the worst 80s clichés put together.

Memorable quote from the second episode:

Ginsei’s crazy, like a frog

How did I come across this?

Well, lately, I’ve gotten into the habit of wandering into the Animé section of Best Buy, and picking up something random. And this DVD set was the one that got picked this last round.

Last night was fun...

Sat, 09 May 2009 18:51:19 GMT

Though not for those. I wish it was.

I saw both Avenue Q, and the new Star Trek movie!!

Both were really good.

I’ll talk about them later.

The Internet is for pr0n!!!!!1111oneoneoneexclamationpoint

These places are awesome this week!

Fri, 08 May 2009 19:34:01 GMT

Both New Orleans, and Maine rock this week.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to partake in any National Day of Reason celebrations yesterday. :p

And, I looked through the list of yes votes in the second article about voting for gay marriage in Maine, and I noticed that there’s a few Republicans that voted yes! That’s awesome! Kudos to Mills and Rector!

Yeah, basically

Fri, 08 May 2009 06:36:19 GMT