RAZR HAXOR REX

So I had to flip a few bits and edit a config file to transfer MY photos from MY phone to MY computer. I dream of world where people don't intentionally cripple their products to exploit bogus revenue streams. I dream of worlds with free ice cream too. And sprinkles. Lots of sprinkles.

this is a spiffy test document to post to my blog

I like it!

I can post directly from google docs to my blog. Bichin!

(The above image brought to you by Tom's UltraCorps combat simulator, which may just be out in time for the holidays! By "holidays" I mean Elvis's birthday.

Halleluja! Thank You Jesus! Praise the Lord! I'm Still Here!

So, how was your summer?

Good. Mine was good too. Moved into the new office. Went to the beach. Harvested the crops. Got a Hybrid (avg 48 mpg without ac, 45 with). Saw Paul Thorn in Charlotte. Grilled foodstuffs. A friend loaned me the Firefly DVD set. Hawsome. If TV was that good more often, I'd watch it.

Why did I not blog for five months? Mostly because I don't have it together enough to keep a camera with me for those all important illustrations. I've been too busy/lame to hack my cell phone so I can get MY pictures off of MY phone without paying extra for THEIR BS data service. It's not the money that bothers me, it's the principle that I own the content that I create, and I own the phone that I created with it. I didn't buy a license to use their phone to take pictures that they can sell back to me. I bought the damn phone. It's mine. Period.

So until I violate some firmware you'll just have to close your eyes and imagine a pleasing juxtaposition of items from my odd, but mostly benign existence. Or check out the spiffy NANOWRIMO icon, as I'm giving it another shot this year. Be patient if you click it for their servers walk not the path of the Jedi.

You can stop sending those petitions

North Carolina can rest easy now; because, finally, Fried Balogna has come back to Burlington!

Everybody knows hot food is better and more nutritious than cold food. So it stands to reason that a traditionally cold food (bologna, which lives way way down at the bottom of the cold-cut food chain) is better, and better for you, when it's hot. And what better way to heat something than to fry it? For it's the patented frying process that allows all those savory bologna juices to emerge and claim their rightful place in the Alamance County Pantheon of Foods. Meat, and uh... stuff, deemed substandard by the hot dog industry (holy crap!), is reground to a finer paste, then extruded as big rubbery cylinder that rises above it's humble, no... meager? no... wretched? Yes, Wretched! beginnings upon contact with the frying pan and earns a spot in the biscuits of discriminating epicureans of the North Carolina highways.

Now that they accept credit cards, one can even finance fried bologna. Hmm, how would you list that in the monthly budget?

There's Something Out There

I'm one of those people who often falls into a rut and doesn't realize it for a long time. When things don't change, my perceptions get lazy and I am less likely to notice what little there is going on around me, which makes the my rut deeper and harder to snap out of.

It's a self-reinforcing cycle.

The upside is that when I do finally drag myself out of it the world is made all the more glorious for its sometimes tiny swirls of order and chaos.

You don't see what I see.

Rain Maker 3000

Expect unprecedented rain and clouds over central North Carolina for the next few months. I've just completed my new solar oven, a more durable version of this guy . Made of plywood and acrylic mirrors, the Rain Maker 3000 is sure to bring down soggy gloom on all your outdoor cooking efforts. The fact that I was able to set it up for a few minutes this afternoon only shows how nature loves to taunt us.

I still need to insulate the oven box, and find a good seal for the glass top, so all those precious BTUs I've worked so hard to collect will stay in the oven and actually cook something. Further updates as events warrant.

To go boldly where no man has gone before...

They'll split my infinitive when they pry it from my cold dead larynx.

Back when the solar system was young, there was life in my back yard. That was thousands of dollars ago. Now that the trees are gone and the long, dark, brutal North Carolina winter is coming to an end, it's time to grow grass.

Yeah, right.

I could step out there right now, put a shovel in the ground, and come up with a big scoop of clay that you could throw, fire, glaze, and would last a thousand years. There are no organic components to that "soil", unless you count the two crickets and 40-odd ants that have freakin' starved to death trying to cross that vast, barren, unforgiving wasteland.

Back in Auburn all I needed was a few bags of composted cow manure.

This time I'll need a cow. Maybe a bison.

Sweet Success

Back when I was a young single guy living under a rock, Feb 15th was Half Price Valentine's Day Candy Day, and I'd reward my restraint by snarfing down double rations of the chocolate covered goodness. I thought it was pretty clever to get twice the goodies just by waiting one extra day.

Now that I'm, uh, wiser, I've come to realize the benefits that come with marriage and family. Specifically, that one can score seriously more sucrose-based nodules by being the only guy in a house full of chicks. All you have to do is establish the tradition that everyone gives everyone else Valentine's Day Candy, and the box count increases exponentially with the size of the family. As the only male in the household, it's my right, nay, my solemn duty, to save them from eating too much chocolate. I expect the violent involuntary shaking of my hands and limbs is burning off most of the calories anyway.

Old Mexico never tasted like this

Maybe really, really Old Mexico...

Just a reminder that anything still in your refrigerator from before Christmas, Kwanza and definately Channukah is now officially OLD. Even if you're Agnostic, Pagan, Believin' Atheist, or just too freakin' lazy to comptemplate your place in the world, contemplate this: Gazillions of those hairy, squishy, greenish grey bacterial buggers have been camping out for more than a month on what used to be your food. Eating, growing, multiplying, expanding in such a way as to... Well, you know what happens to food *after* it's been eaten, right? Right.

Now the more frugal of you may be tempted to scarf down the borderline items right before they cross the finish line. This can lead to Dangerous Combinations of things that, individually, may be food, but when combined undergo a nauseous metamorphosis that transcends culinary description and ventures into That Which Man Was Not Meant To Taste. Please, act responsibly. You only have one set of tastebuds, and they have to last your whole life.

Art is where you find it

...and sometimes art finds you. I could have taken a better picture, but I was too busy Rocking Out. Maybe one day, if you're really good, eat your Wheaties, and say your prayers, Paul Thorn will come to your town.

Snow Day!

Ah, Snow Days. Those precious gifts bestowed upon us by a fickle Mother Nature, perhaps in atonement for rainy days at the beach, that spooky calm outside that starts when you tie the line to your new kite, or the dark looming clouds racing over the horizon when you just want to test out this really cool idea in your new solar oven, BUT NOOOOO!!!! That old hag has nothing better to do with her freakin' air pressure gradients than billow huge, grim, Old Testament, impenetrable clouds all ---

Ahem.

When you're a kid, a Snow Day is a free pass. Maybe you haven't finished your mobile for Ancient Greece Week, or Rudy Gimleson is going to pound you after 4th period because somebody told him you looked at his car wrong. Whatever's ailing you, a Snow Day is the cure.

Unless, of course, you work at home. In which case you have to sneak out early so you can be back at your desk by 9am.

I'm just saying is all.

Marketing 101

I majored in Mathematics, not Marketing, which means that I didn't wear Ray Bans, drink all weekend, or hang out with guys named "Ralston Q Parkersmith III, but everybody calls me Spaulding". I'm not exactly a people-person. I'm more of a person-person. This is a good thing, because I'm uncomfortable with (ie annoyed by) those who refer to themselves in the plural. It also should serve as an indication that if you need to unload 457 metric tons of second-hand snow on Nanook's Home and Garden Supply, I'm not the one to consult. But even one as socially and sociologically unaware as I, has no trouble recognizing why the New Hampshire segment of the Chinese Food Industry is struggling. (Photo taken through the car window while on Christmas vacation.)

This quiz has one question and counts for 100% of your grade for this course. I hope you didn't stay up all night studying when you could have been shotgunning Goebels with Ralston Q and The Buds.

Obey Giant

Even in New Hampshire, Andre has a posse. I snapped this shot of the side of an abandoned light industrial building. The intertubes snake their way around the world and into the New England zeitgeist*. If this were a wider angle photo you might be surprised by the lack of snow.


*Sorry. I just wanted to be one of those guys who can casually toss a really pretentious word like "zeitgeist" into his blog once in awhile.

Melvin goes shopping

Melvin found an open shop on level 4, even though it's Christmas! They didn't have much, 2 lamps that when rubbed turned out to not be magic, and an extra food ration. The shop was a nice place to read a scroll (enchant weapon) and try on the dwarven cloak which turned out to be +1.

Now he's on dungeon level 6, as a level 6 Bachelor with armor class -1 and a +3 long sword. With only apples and carrots for sustanence, Melvin remains optimistic though a bit peckish.

Further updates as events warrant.

Melvin of the Apes

So...

Well, you know how it is. Things get sorta hectic and there's work stuff and suddenly the tree crew is hauling huge oaks out of your backyard on this awesome tracked vehicle with an hydraulic claw, and the cat kinda freaks out and darts past the dishwasher repairman and hides under the car and by the time you've grabbed her and hauled her back inside it turns out to be just a switch next to the garbage disposal so you've still got time to decorate cookies and make it to the basketball game. Which is cool because you've done most of your shopping and wrapped stuff so you can leave it in the closet when you go to Southern Pines, where it will stay (in the closet I mean) until sometime in 2007 (see Casino Royale by the way) and you can make it back down and give it to your Dad so it can rain all the way back home like it did 3 or 4 times in a row until last time, when the weather was just a little bit nicer than it was for the flight to Boston which was actually very smooth, maybe because we approached Logan from the west instead of over Boston Harbor and it wasn't as turbulent so we actually made it to NH ahead of the presents which showed up the next day for the most part thanks to UPS who's logistics rock on toast.

I totally reamed out my laptop and put on a fresh windows install and an extra 256MB of memory, so it feels like a much faster machine now. If your windows install is more than 18 months old, I highly recommend it.

I'm playing Slash-EM (Super Lots of Added Stuff Hack - Enhanced Magic) this holiday season. Let me introduce you to Melvin. He's a Lawful Male Human Knight. He has a horse, but he's around a corner right now so we can't see him. Melvin is trying to recover the Amulet of Yendor (somewhere below level 25 of the dungeon). He's not the brightest guy in the world, but what he lacks in brains he makes up for in shortness.

Gotta go wrap presents soon. Melvin says "Hey."

Pumpkin Pi

There are no holidays that cannot be enhanced by math puns.

A Lot of Good Reasons

The Wife's out of town, time for steak, egg and cheese biscuits! Uh... maybe just one.

It's Friday the 13th, and that means good luck for Tom. I found a new Jimmy Buffett album in the bookstore this morning. My head has been buried in the sand of work and obligation for so long that I didn't even know one was coming out. I just popped in to get A Prairie Home Companion and there it was on the new releases shelf. As a bonus, there was a new Neil Gaiman collection as well. Barbeque for lunch and all is right with the world.

Nothin' But the Devil

Font smoothing is the root of all evil. I spent the bulk of yesterday tracking down a bug that had to do with black and white bitmaps of text not being black and white anymore due to "font smoothing". Font Smoothing. Like that's going to solve the world's problems.

Great Scott!

Where does it end?

Note:

This entry brought to you by Mr. Grumpy-Drawers.

The Paul Thorn rock out marathon is no longer counted in hours. It is now a state of being.

National Novel Writing Month starts in three weeks. I'm gonna finish this time, or at least eclipse my paltry 6500 word effort of last year. I'm thinking I'm busier this year, so I'll get more done.

Speaking of which...

Where was I ?

Current Desk Inventory:

Two monitors (one 20" LCD with dual inputs, and an old 17" CRT), three mice, three keyboards, three thermal printers, one ink jet printer, one LCD signature pad, one signature pad without display, one laptop, two Windows XP Pro PCs, one Debian Linux PC, a wireless router, a scanner, a seven format memory card reader, and two USB memory keys.

So Tom, tell us why you only had one blog entry in September. Huh? Why?

* * *

You know what I like about libraries and bookstores? They're full of possibilities. Stories, ideas, new technology, answers to questions great and small, are all laid out before you. Of course, it takes some commitment to follow through and read the book or try the idea or build the gadget. That commitment comes at the price of the exclusion of other wonderful possibilites. But while you're there, reading titles and scanning tables of contents, the world, everything in it and beyond, is in reach.

Sure Sign

So I'm wondering around the house, trying to figure out what a "Path Error (-4)" could really mean, since it's not in the documentation and seems to have nothing to do with paths, when I step into the bedroom and see a unicorn head peeking out at me from under the covers. Light headed and dizzy, I slump to the floor, wondering which of her many offers was the one I Couldn't Refuse but did anyway.

Was it when she cheerfully volunteered to work the gas and break pedals with her hands while I steered the car? How about the time she said she'd be happy to cook strawberry cake with tofu icing and cheese for dinner? "Lawd ham mercy" I thought to myself, "I'm toast if I don't figure out what I did or didn't do."

"How's Tom?"

"Oh Tom... won't see him no more."

In a cold sweat I rack my brains, wondering which slight sent her over the edge. Kindergarteners can be so touchy sometimes. Maybe it was because I wouldn't let her watch movies all night and eat blueberries and cupcakes until the sun came up.

I gathered up my courage, walked into her room, kissed the big pink plastic gem on her Disney Princess ring, and asked her what I had done to cause her such unhappiness, and how could I make amends. With a casual wave of her hand she replies, "Oh, Mommy and I were just playing 'Unicorn Vetrinarian'".

As Vito himself used to say, "Women and children can be careless, but not men."