Vehemently Vitriolic

DELL rhymes with HELL

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:00:25 +0000

You know what’s awesome about DELL? No really, I’m asking because I have no goddamn idea.

They sent a flyer around back in August. My beloved laptop had died, and I was in the market for a replacement.

“Heck” I thought “DELL can’t be THAT bad. They must certainly better than a steaming pile of poop left on my door by a rabid wombat with leprosy. Surely, even they could come through and shine next to something like that”

And yet, I was wrong. So very very wrong. A pile of shit actually EXISTS on your doorstep, unlike my laptop which appears to be made from solid Uranium and includes the flux capacitor which enables it to go back in time (I admit, I paid extra for the time machine-like abilities). (more…)

Uncle Ben Touched Me In The Bad Place

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 05:38:49 +0000

Its odd. Good cooking generally misses one or two members of a family. I bet almost no one has a grandma that wasn’t a completely kick-ass cook. Mine was (well, one of them anyway. Sorry other grandma. I love you to death, but those boulder cookies you made when I was 8 are STILL making their way through my colon). She baked bread and cookies and cakes, and there was nothing that she touched that didn’t become a piece of artwork. And yet, somehow, there is a relative who completely missed the lessons on how to make food properly. Not even properly…..but to not decide to “think outside the box” (pun intended) and start adding wacky food to other wacky food and then prance around and display it and lourde over it waiting for unsuspecting minions to accidentally try some. (more…)

Time of death: 4:24pm

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:30:01 +0000

My trusty laptop. My old friend. We have parted ways. Though no nuptials were involved, I took a quiet vow until death-do-us-part, and I took it seriously. You were there for me those long 4-years (5 maybe? Good times pass so much quicker than bad) as I moved from Windows to Gentoo, and then to Ubuntu. You were my constant companion, always by my side, or on my lap, grinning back at me, your face allight making me think. In fact, it is these moments of you gently warming my crotch that I will miss most.

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Fickle Mistress

Tue, 20 May 2008 06:30:36 +0000

Spitz are a fickle mistress. They stare at you from the store shelves on every trip you make for sustinence. You’ve overcome her before and been clean for months. You haven’t even had the urges. The ugly, ugly urges. You’ve beat it before and shunned her…and this is a one-time only thing. You certainly won’t call her in the morning. Plus they’re like 2 for $5, so really, you’re SAVING money, and getting them this way rather than on the street where who knows what the Hot-N-Spicy might be cut with is way safer. Rationalization is the addicts only true friend.
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Flip That Stolen House

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:01:43 +0000

I spent last Easter weekend doing very traditional Easter things. Such as stuffing pieces of spun-glass fibre in between pieces of wood on a wall, then covering that with plastic. And drywalling. Not traditional you say? Well, historians now believe that Jesus (being a carpenter and all) was actually brought in to install some cabinets and a granite counter top into a residence on a pilot for a show called “Flip This Yurt”. He was helping “resurect” it, and the whole thing about him coming back from the dead was a mis-translation. (more…)

Joys of Dentistry

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:00:56 +0000

It is with a certain amount of pride that I have never had a cavity. In my whole life, not a single one. I’m also proud I have all my vestigial pieces (well, okay, not the tail as thats only during embryonic development. But how cool would THAT be) as well, but that may soon come to an end. Lousy mother nature and her wisdom-tooth money.

This also means I’ve never had ~~to be mutilated~~ any fillings done, nor had to see my friendly neighbourhood DDS for anything worse than a cleaning. So, it came as a bit of a shock when I found out I had the dreaded cavity. Oh sure, tartar and I were bussom friends for a long time, but I never thought my teeth would cheat on me with decay. (more…)

Wanna see MY watchtower?

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:26:33 +0000

Last evening around dinner time, I was visited by the perennial pain-in-ass people known as the the Jehovahs Witnesses. They usually come on Saturday afternoons, but I guess conversion have been falling in this 3rd quarter, so the outreach program has been ramped up. “Goal oriented” are words I would use to describe the Witness breathren.
I’ll admit to being a godless heathen. I don’t believe or have faith, or whatever. I live in front of computer screens, so if there was a god, I’m pretty sure he would have given me some form of cancer (though, I use LCD’s now, so I guess I’ll have to find out what form of cancer they give off. Damn CRTs….such an easy stereotype) so I don’t sweat it.

However, I also have no problem with what people believe in. Whatever you believe in the privacy of your home is fine with me. Christ, Yaweh, Beezlebub, Welsh Rarebit, I really don’t care. I am quite aware that faith can be a huge thing to people, so I will even listen to their opening monologue before politely telling them I am not interested and to not bother us again. I don’t engage people in biblical inaccuracies or pretend I worship the devil. (more…)

The real guitar hero is eBay

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:47:12 +0000

So I bought Guitar Hero II a couple months back. Once I learned it, it didn’t take long to finish it off. It was ultra-addictive, but after finishing it on Hard, I needed…..more. Sure, theres Expert level, but after playing non-stop for a month, the same songs get a little tiresome. So, I bought Guitar Hero I. And finished that on Hard in two days. Ho hum.

Then a friend of mine showed me Frets On Fire and I instantly thought it was awesome. It’s essentially a FLOSS version of the Guitar Hero franchise, with the ability to add songs on your own (or from others at the great forum site) which really is the reason I bought GHI. Not to finish another game, but becuase playing the songs is fun (though, it must be said, if you know how to play even a little bit of real guitar, starting with the controller is a little cumbersome and just, well, wrong).

The big problem with FoF is that you need either to play on a keyboard, or get one of the mods (I like the RF-Mod, which seems to be about the only one compiled for Linux). You can also use a joystick using joy2key to emulate keystrokes. But, the holy grail, obviously, is to play on the guitar. I already had one for my PS2, so I went about finding an adapter to USB. (more…)

Sadness

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 05:14:39 +0000

My wife is gone again for another tour to the Alaskan wilderness. This time she’ll be gone for a whole month, about the time of her previous stay. This is her third time leaving me for an extended period, and this time was profoundly different from the other two. I never like to see her go, it is literally losing your best friend in the whole world, but it never seems to have struck me as hard as it did this time.

It made me remember a truism I was told by a Canadian armed forces parachute instructor. He was explaining how the third jump with a military parachute (substantially smaller than a recreational one) is the worst you will ever do. It went like this: [WARNING: The rest of this is basically a sorrowful, self-indulgent introspection and is likely pretty damn boring if you’re not me or my wife. You have been warned] (more…)

Aloha — Part I

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:04:32 +0000

I needed a holiday. Everyone says they do, and in my case, it happened to be true, so I did something about it. The name’s Johnny Rocket, and I’m a PI. At least, thats what it says on the door I rent.

I sat in my office, looking over the days racing form. Nothing to write home about. I had a T-bill to play and it was burning a hole in my suit. File Put Contents in the first to show maybe. I put my Camel down long enough to grab for the phone to let my bookie know, when my door opened, and she walked in. A short drink of water with blond hair. The kind of dame that will lead you to nothing but problems, and I couldn’t wait to follow.

“Whats the deal, sweetheart?” I said drinking her in. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. No matter. I was having whatever she was selling.
“Um….are you ready to go to the airport?”

So that was her game. The Airport was a two-bit gin-joint about an hour out of town. I had been there before. Nothing good ever came out of it. I couldn’t figure out why a bird like this needed to go such places, but I played along. (more…)