On Vonnegut

I just read a brief review of Kurt's biography, written by Charles Shields.  The selling point of the article (possibly the book) is that Kurt was not particularly nice or happy.

My bud-in-blogging, Eric (the Noctornal Slacker) recently did a book report on Kurt's Timequake.  We seem to share a love of Kurt's writing, as did many people.

Let's ruminate on this a second.......

1. Does it really matter what kind of person Kurt was?
2. After reading the review, it's pretty obvious why Kurt might have been a bit off.
3. I submit to you that being a bit off is almost a requirement in the arts.

Quite frankly I never put together much of an opinion on what kind of person Kurt was.  I was happy to enjoy his output. 

I do admit to wondering what might be wrong with Kurt, specifically concerning the time-hopping exercises in his books.  My wife and I wonder if he had multiple personality disorder; it would certainly explain the time-hopping.  She loved his writing and said it made perfect sense to her.

If nothing else, the man certainly had a right to a bit of post-traumatic stress disorder.

As for being a bit off, I spent many years in comedy and rock and roll.  My observation was that comics, as a rule, were among the more miserable human beings I had ever met.  Pain transforms into comedy; both the performer and the audience win.

As a guitar player, performing in front of people is the cheapest and most effective therapy I can imagine.  It has the added benefit of not requiring precertification, copays, or an hour in the waiting room.

And what do we have left?  The legacy of Kurt's writing.

Put That Blowdart Gun DOWN

That's what she said.

No, really, that's what she said when she walked through the door.  It was a lot more funny because she walked back with someone from a remote office.

Anywhere else it would not have made a lot of sense or not been funny at very least. But here in the Twilight Zone, where the Yellow Brick Road meets the Duck Pond, it was just another day.

We just got done getting blamed for all sorts of issues that weren't ours and were a bit edgy.  Someone had the foresight to charge up the radio-controlled helicopters so they were first in the air; the regular one followed by the dual rotor model.

After watching them crash a few times, as they tend to do, it became time to find objects that would interfere with their flight.  A long blue back-scratcher found its way into the flight path of helo one.  It was like the rocket-propelled grenade from hell.  The next flight got picked off by a clever shot of a pencil.

The guy with the blowdart gun (the longer one) was getting warmed up and ready to fire when in walked the lady....

"Put that blowdart gun DOWN!" she said, shielding the visitor from the remote office.


At this point, you're probably asking yourself where the department head is while all this tomfoolery is happening.....

He's the guy flying the first chopper.

Thanks

This would be my first Thanksgiving post here on Blogger.  So I'm sitting here, waiting for some words to start appearing and arranging themselves on the screen.  Much like asking the cat to cook dinner, I'm starting to realize that perhaps this is not going to go exactly as requested.

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I'd like to lead with heartwarming.  A coworker spent a Thanksgiving at a hospital, where his daughter was undergoing treatment for leukemia.  Tragically, she slipped away.  They noticed that Thanksgiving was pretty bleak for those concerned so every year since, they deliver dinner to families undergoing treatment.  Others at work are getting involved.  Bravo and happy day to you all.

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Next up, I'd like to thank my readers here (both of you).  The tranistion from my former home to Blogger was not without complications and I'd like to thank the folks who followed me as well as the new people.  Lots of folks have been stopping by from countries where I don't speak the language.  Welcome.  Whatever happy accident brought you here is my gain.  Yours too, I hope.

Now I have to stop typing because, once again, Mr. Loud from the Loud Family (across the street) is using power tools after 10:30pm.  I am having (even more) trouble concentrating.  I think the poor guy just needs a girlfriend.  You see, he's married, yet he spends all this time working on the house.  Using power tools early in the morning and late at night is a classic spousal-avoidance move.  If not a girlfriend, maybe a booty call now and then.  The guy's wife has a bumper sticker that says `My Other Car is a Broom' and she's not kidding.

I was just about the be thankful for the apparent cessation of the power tools when another member of the Loud Family took off on his Honda Davidson V8 bike with no muffler.  The houses on both sides of the street are still shaking.

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Today was our Thanksgiving party at work.  Everybody on the team came prepared.  I haven't seen so much homemade food at one place in years.  I noticed there was a lot of red food and a coworker clued me in that this was because we work with a lot of `eyetalians'.  Being one herself, she should probably know.  I hear we were in pretty good shape for those with OCD, because they could put all the red food on one plate and go back for other colors later.

The super-abundance of food did nothing to trump the rather large amount of alcohol amassed for the event.  Up until today I had not heard of anything called Birthday Cake Vodka.  I don't generally drink but one whiff of this stuff and I was no longer a Vodka Virgin.  What did it taste like?  Cake.  I'm not kidding.  I wonder if there's a chocolate vodka...

As great a party as it was, I was kinda disappointed that no one wore a lampshade, swung from the chandelier, or did something highly embarrassing that they would not remember until I showed them (and everyone else) the video.  In hindsight, perhaps it was a good idea to avoid Drunken Blowdarts after all.

But it's ok - we're in the early planning stages of the Xmas party.  Not sure how we're going to top this party, but we are a very strong, creative group that never fails.

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My brother is in for the holidays.  My relatives would cackle madly if they heard me saying this (and if you repeat it, I will deny it) but it's nice to have the family together.  Having a sibling across the country makes it difficult to get together.

I noticed that every time he comes in, the weather is more gloomy than the previous time.  I'd hate for him to think it's gloomy here in PA every single day (as opposed to every other day).  We're already well past the all time record for yearly rainfall.

At work I mentioned the brother coming in and someone asked me if he was as sarcastic as me.  After thinking about it and much giggling, I realized you don't want to be a fly on the wall when the three of us get going.  Mostly you don't want to be the object of our conversation.   Poor Mom.

There will be food.   Oof, will there be food.  In a fairly new tradition, cooking is getting split up and everyone is doing what they do best.  Nobody loses.

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Happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving to you and yours, from all of us here at ThermionicEmissions.

Moron of the Month Award

This is my first Moron of the Month award and I'd like to proudly present it to the city of Springfield, IL, for getting the city's water supply hacked from outside.

As usual, I have questions:

• Why is something so important as a city's water supply accessible via the internet?
• Why do people who should already know better continue to make these idiotic mistakes?
• Why did it take up to two months to investigate this as a hack?

Unimpressed by the Springfield fiasco, a hacker called "pr0f" got into the Houston, TX, water supply, drew a diagram, then cracked the three-character password used to `protect' their water supply.  He caused no damage while inside.

But do not panic, good people.  The Department of Homeland Security stepped right up to let us know that "At this time, there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety."

Feel better now?  Someone hacked into Springfield's water system and burned out a pump.  Then someone hacked into Houston's water system and drew a network diagram, complete with three-character password.  But there is no threat to public safety here, folks.  Nothing to see here - just go home.

These people must be related to the ones who watched ufo's fly over the White House in 1952 and declared that there was no threat to national security.

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Let me see if I understand this correctly:  we have lost many of our constitutional rights to Homeland Security, yet Homeland Security can't secure the knot tied in a child's shoe?  We have to take off our shoes and carry less than three ounces of liquids when we fly, yet important infrastructure is wide open on the public internet?

Are you mad yet?

P.S.  Your medical records are next.

Topic:  Homeland Security  ISN'T.  Discuss.

Work Stories: Quantum Food

One of my colleagues was out of the office for a week for training.  This caused a problem for the rest of us at lunch.  You see, Smedley (almost his real name but not quite) has the rather annoying habit of commenting on lunches that belong to other people.  We have no idea why.

"Hey lefty ... spaghetti today?"

You're mighty observant, Smedley.

Now I don't claim to understand quantum physics but I suspect we have a case here that puts it all in perspective.  Things exist as a wave and/or a particle until observed.

This means that my lunch remains a wave until Smedley comments on it, rendering it a particle.  The problem was noticed while Smedley was out of the office last week.  I posed the question to my coworkers: does my lunch exist without Smedley here to comment on it?  Then what do I eat when my lunch is a wave?

These questions are way above my level.

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Apparently Asia is getting into the coffee business.  This is my guess, based upon the packet of coffee I received with an order recently:

HOGOOD COFFEE

My taste You know

My Dog is Smarter than Your Honor Student

Other folks at work brag about their kids.  I bring in pictures of Marshall the cocker.  He has his own fan club.  I can't get work to put him on my health plan, though...

Marshall is the third rescue cocker.  He's also the smartest by far.  Between three dogs and two cats, every one has managed to figure out how to open bi-fold doors.  Amusing as this may be, the bathroom has a bi-fold door.  The dog opens it to be with his mommy.  The cat seems to have something against doors being closed so he'll open it while you're in the bathroom, then walk out.

We also have louvered doors going into the kitchen.  The cats have made short work of them.   The dogs, not so much.  Marshall can open them if they're already open a bit.

Every now and then, the cat will jump on the table and knock something yummy off for the dog.  We have no explanation for that.  They can both knock each other out of their food bowls, which is odd.

Marshall, as I've mentioned, loves cat food in an unnatural way.  We feed the cat and close the door so Marshall can't get in.  As soon as the cat is done, he opens the door and Marshall rushes in to lick out the bowl.  Sometimes the cat eats dog food too (neither is good for the other, btw).  We call this Cat Food Ballet.  When he's done, Marshall makes a stop at his bowl, as if to say he was there the whole time.  It's hysterical to watch.

I came home from practice today and my wife couldn't wait to let me know what my special child did while I was gone.  When we feed the cat, we take a spoonful of food and put it in his bowl, then put the cat food can back on the counter.  The cat will spend all day bothering us to feed him but doesn't have any issues with leaping up and eating our food.

Marshall figured out there was cat food on the counter and set about getting it.  My wife heard noise in the kitchen, which is never a good thing.  Marshall was leaping up and knocking the cat food cat off the counter with a paw.

I'd say I'm proud of him but this is getting tiresome.

Marshall also has a fondness for trash, like most dogs.  His main hobby is shredding the tissues he pulls out of the trash.  Sometimes he makes tissues appear from nowhere (usually after I'm done vacuuming).  To combat this, we purchased a can that has a lid that snaps down.  Virtually dog-proof, right?

Not so much.

Marshall figured out that if he leaps up and hits the can the right way with a paw, the Magic Trash Lid opens up, allowing full access to the trash he loves so much.

If we could just get them to do some cleaning or taking out the trash, they'd be worth their weight in gold.  Tonight, tired from practice, I asked Marshall if he'd make me some dinner - nothing fancy, just something small.  He just sat there on my lap, pretending not to understand me.

It's hard to get mad at a creature with such magnificent brown eyes.  It drives my wife crazy when he sits on my lap and stares up at me.

I have to go now.  I think Marshall is on the computer in the next room.  No telling what he's up to now....

SIR Jimmy?

Coming to us from the Daily Telegraph is an article about Jimmy Page being mentioned for knighthood.

Sir James Page would join luminaries such as Sir Elton and Sir Paul.

I'm voting for this, in spite of the fact that I'm an American.  Over here, we vote wisely, vote often.

If you've read this far and still have that scrunched up quizzical face, Jimmy Page would be the guitarist/writer/producer of Led Zeppelin fame.  Prior to Zeppelin, Page was an in-demand session musician.  That's Jimmy on Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual" and Joe Cocker's version of "With a Little Help from my Friends".

Celebrate American Censorship Day

Americancensorship.org is the go-to destination today.  Help celebrate(?) the day.

Congress is working on creating the Great Firewall of America.  Pretty soon clicking on a link will make you a criminal.



Contact your congresscritter today.

The E-Word

I didn't realize it at first but I've lived my life in a certain way.  Now that I'm more or less middle-aged, I think it's safe to come out of the closet and speak on this topic a bit.  I didn't have far to go out of said closet, as anyone who knows me will attest.

As I tell people who expect me to lift boxes, "I'm a knowledge worker.  Lift it yourself."

You see, my enemy is out there in plain sight: it's exercise.  I don't believe in it.  It's foul and evil and all the rest of that kind of stuff that brings people out into the streets to violate the rights of others.

Let's face it: if you run, you get a heart attack and die.  If you swim, you get a heart attack, drown and die.  Do you really want that for yourself?  I sure as hell don't.

It all happened at the doctor last week.  Before I had a chance to lecture him on keeping patients (specifically this one) waiting for close to an hour, he said I needed to exercise.  I told him I lift one hundred ninety pounds every morning: I get out of bed.  Not flustered at all, he said that was insufficient.

I told him I walk all day at work.   No good.

He suggested I walk the dog.  I suggested that's what fenced yards are for.

Undaunted, he told me to walk inside the fence with the dog.

You have to admire the inventiveness and sheer tenacity of the learned doctor, not to mention his willingness to screw with me.

Then he pulled out the Big Guns<tm>: if I didn't exercise, he would prescribe additional medicine.  I reminded him that the last time he tried that, I learned a new word [akathisia - technical term for ants in your pants or skin crawling], which required two additional medicines to quiet down.

I only had one card left.... the last physician who suggested I exercise had to deal with the description of what happened when I tried.  How I watched the seconds portion of the display until my time was done.  How I sweated, groaned, then took a nap afterward.  He told me that it didn't seem worth it and I should stop exercising, if it caused me that much grief.

New Doc remained unimpressed.



So now I have to farking exercise.

He said all I had to do was ten or fifteen minutes of walking daily.  It was no big deal; he does it.  I reminded him that he was not morally opposed to exercise, as was I.  He sat there and continued to stare at me as if I had sprouted a third head.

Now every molecule in my body is screaming at me (and I haven't started exercising yet).  It goes against everything for which I stand: you know; land yachts, chocolate cream pie, and the sedentary lifestyle.

Wish me luck.

lefty Weighs in on Joe Paterno

I know you're probably saying to yourself:

Hey, why in the world would leftystrat have a single thing to say about anything having to do with sports?

And a very good question, that.

I spent a very minimal amount of time getting some background on this from my esteemed coworkers; the first place I go when I need answers about sports stuff.

As best I understand it, Joe Paterno allowed this to happen on his watch by not doing to the coach what the coach was doing to the little boys.

And Joe Paterno leaps to inaction and resigns immediately (at the end of this season).

Do I have it right?

Do I really need to comment?

In the end, this adds to my assertion that Penn State and the Eagles be sent to Albania on a permanent basis.

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Paterno stated that he wished to leave with dignity.   My wife, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, asked what about the dignity of the poor children - they got none.

UPDATE:


Penn State has terminated Joe Paterno, as well as the president of the university.  Well done, folks.

With an Armadillo?

Protesters in Pakistan burn Hillary...

Alas, it was only in effigy....


[forwarded from work] If an older woman chasing younger men is a cougar, does that make an older man chasing young boys a nittany lion?


Woman beaten with frozen armadillo...

How to put a positive spin on this... at least it wasn't alive?

'JERSEY SHORE' finale ratings drop for first time...

Every now and then there's hope for humanity....


Christo-terrorists besiege play.


Heaven help us from people helping us into heaven.


Maryland Considering Flush Fee Hike

So close to D.C.


SHOCK CLAIM: Bieber Sued for Paternity?


Simple: either a paternity test or just grasp reality: he has no penis.


OBAMA: God Wants To See Us Put People Back To Work...


This is the second occupant of the White House in a row who God Consults.


WASHINGTON - Four years after Congress imposed restrictions on travel funded by outside groups, federal lawmakers are frequent fliers again, taking 415 privately funded trips between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 - a nearly 75% jump in the number of trips they took during the same period in 2010, records show.


The best congress money can buy!


Insane Clown Posse 'Juggalos' classified as a gang in FBI report...


Why not just cite them for violations against taste and be done with it?


Hookers for Jesus!


In spite of my a-reglious bent, I'm in there (so to speak).

Bah Mallbug - Retail Therapy

I have established that I don't get out much.  Here is yet another amusing casualty of my in-ness.

Back before we owned a house, we used to dash here and there on the weekends, on Manic Mall Trips.  After a while we realized we were spending way too much money and had little to show for it.  This was dubbed Retail Therapy<tm>.

One definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.  We realized that Retail Therapy was a failed therapy.  This didn't get a chance to become a problem of momentous proportions, as we purchased a house, thus taking every single cent of disposable income and sending it into some sort of black hole, never to be seen again.

So yeah, I don't get out much these days.

However, I also noticed that working a pair of jobs and never going anywhere was not exactly a recipe for a an interesting life.  So every now and then we leave the house.  Surprisingly enough, we generally wind up regretting it almost immediately, throwing us right back into Stupid.

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We decided on a mall thirty minutes away, as it had the magnet store which required visiting.  My wife is one of those people stores love; they send her something close to her weight in coupons.

We managed to park in the same county as the store, which I'm told is a good thing.  In we went, to the store I won't name but rhymes with KC Denneys.  BANG, we hit a store full of Christmas Cheer<tm>.  I like to say we celebrate Christmas, but only in the most crassly commercial sense of the holiday.   And there we were, in the most crassly commercial sense of retail.  Holiday jingles, decorations, and outfits.  Santa.  And lines almost as long as unemployment lines.

All this as I'm still finishing up my Halloween candy.  I'm told the decorations were up before Halloween this year.

I loudly observed that I was completely full of holiday cheer (or something), which pleased my wife to no end.  I further suggested that they start putting up Valentine's Day decorations, since they were already doing Christmas.  It pays to be prepared, you know.  The wife shot me one of those concrete cracking looks.

There were lines everywhere, presumably including the rest rooms.  I was informed that this was about normal for a Sunday.  I certainly don't remember the mall like this on any Sunday during which I had left the house.  I suggested turning around immediately but unfortunately there were things we had to purchase.

After six lines and two floors, we somehow managed to procure our things.  In spite of the lines, I have to give credit to the lady behind the counter, who went all out to make our coupons apply all over the place.  It seemed we wound up getting things for free.

We were, however, down one thing.  When I inquired, I was told never mind, we'd shop online.  Why, I asked, couldn't we have just shopped online, as opposed to finding ourselves in this morass of a mall?  Because you wanted to go to the mall.

You certainly can't argue with her logic.

AND THEN THE MALL

Wow.

I've heard all sorts of news about the economy, unemployment, stores closing, and malls becoming ghost towns.   Apparently the economy wasn't all that horrible, at least by the volume of people walking around.  I can't imagine them walking around because they enjoyed the place or for their general health.

So the mall appeared to be on its way to ghost town.  One anchor store had closed.  Most of the stores I remembered had gone away.  I was almost surprised to find a Starbucks.  Merchants must be worried, between the vacancies and the horrid stores that fill some of the spaces.

Even with two floors of stores, I had an incredibly difficult time finding anything of interest.  This did not seem to bother the hundreds of twelve to sixteen year old females flooding the aisles.

Good God, where will they go when the malls close?  There will be an epidemic of displaced young women, presumably with disposable income.  Perhaps we need to forestall this eventuality and open Bieber stores near all malls.

We were stunned.  That's about the only term I can pull up.  We reached immediate consensus that we were never coming back again.


Not even a trip to the adult store would console me - it was that bad.

Bizarro MP3 Player Behavior

I have been using a personal computer pretty much since there were personal computers, possibly before.

Shortly after I started using a computer, I started putting music on my computer.  Fast forward quite a few years and here I am with a number of quad-core processor boxes, running linux (like the old unix days), with [insert deity] only knows how many gigs of music storage.

I have used every media player I could find, across Windows and linux.  My favorite is VLC, hands down.  Unfortunately every one I have ever used bugs the hell out of me.  With, for sake of argument, twenty gigs of music on a hard drive, why does every player only play a tiny amount of my music when set to random?  I can hear the same songs several times during the week and most not at all.  To throw a larger raspberry at me, sometimes it will play two songs by the same artist.  What are the odds? (rhetorical question, thank you)


My wife, bless her pointy little head, decided to swap my 100+ song cd's in the car for a few single album cd's.  When I asked where she hid them, she told me they were in the glove compartment.  Surprise - she had hidden them so well even she couldn't find them.   And as much as I like (some of) her music, the same old songs are getting a bit long in the tooth.. and the radio is broken, only due to content.

So yesterday I burned a random mp3 cd for the car, picking songs from directories on the hard drive.  It was incredibly refreshing to drive home with all new songs.  The sad realization was that since I've been working for ten years, there shouldn't be all these `new' songs to play: the players should have played them all randomly.

I'm sure it isn't just me.  A guy across from me agrees, so it must be universal!

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If you are moved to suggest a player, consider that I only run linux and am not looking for a ridiculously large, heavy player to manage my music.  I do not wish to manage my music; I only want to play it.

Unity isn't Linux, Julie

Julie Bort, a writer I enjoy at Network World, just finished up two weeks using linux (Ubuntu, to be specific) and wrote a column.

Committing one's self to a new operating system fully for two weeks (she cheated a little) is a pretty brave endeavor for anyone and I applaud her.   Heaven knows I would not offer to use an operating system I have never touched before for one day, no less two weeks.

Julie's column at the end of the first week made use of the word pain.  Being a helpful linux person, I emailed some suggestions.  In the final column, she mentioned she "LOVED the way readers of these posts offered me suggestions on fixes and new stuff to try. There is so much good natured help on the 'net for anything you want to do in Linux. That's the beauty of it, and what keeps me coming back for more."


I don't think a more eloquent statement about linux has ever been uttered.  You simply don't find this sense of community among users of other operating systems.

Community aside, if you view her list of complaints, they seem to revolve around Unity, the desktop.  Unity is a rather polarizing new desktop which comes standard with Ubuntu these days (unless you download Kubuntu, Xubuntu, or other variants). You are not stuck with Unity; as with most things linux, you can go with what suits you best.  My choice is Xubuntu, which uses the XFCE desktop, a rather fast and lightweight choice.

I am one of those people who doesn't like Unity.  It first arrived in a customized Ubuntu for a netbook and I hated it immediately.  While I suspect it might be helpful for someone who has never touched linux, I simply replaced it with XFCE.

According to Julie's final column, there are apparently quite a few bugs in Unity.  Had she had used a different desktop, these issues would not have made the article, which might scare people away unnecessarily.

Not that there weren't positives expressed...

"I generally appreciated the sophisticated feel of Unity, compared to the "childish" but far more straightforward look of GNOME 2.3x"

On the other hand, this sounds like it came from a Mac user.

Good on ya', Julie, for the fair shot and interesting articles.