BunkBlog

So, riddle me this: Why do some folks start a second (or more) journal on LJ, and cease using their old one? Would it not be easier to delete old entries or make posts friends-only, depending on what you’re attempting to accomplish?

For that matter, why do so many people monitor their “Friend of” list and get offended when someone they’ve never met has stopped reading their journal for reasons not stated?

Just random rants. Please continue with what you were doing.

A great big hug goes out to , my best friend and least loquacious LJ user. I’d like to reiterate, “We’re not old, dammit!”
current_mood: chipper

OK, all you Wesley Crusher fans, the “Ask Wil Wheaton Anything” answers are up at SlashDot. Go nuts, you silly girls.

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Favorite quote:

I think he used the money to buy rugs. Not drugs, rugs. My brother has had a rug habit for years. Persians, throws, areas, even Berber carpets. Sad thing is, he can’t admit he has a problem. He’s probably at Carpeteria right now.

I must evangelize for a band that has not yet attained the level of critical acclaim they deserve: Cracker. That’s not Uncle Kracker, mind you, but a cool bluesy band with a new album, Forever, coming out in January. It is, of course, available on the newsgroups. They are fronted by David Lowery, from Camper Van Beethoven.

Here’s a great lyric:

You are so beautiful, you should be guarded by monkeys.

Now, where else can you get something like that, outside a Barenaked Ladies album perhaps? And, they sell their records at the wonderfully named Pitch a Tent. Gotta love it. Dandy Warhols meet John Lee Hooker…
current_music: Cracker - What You’re Missing
current_mood: giddy

_Thursday_

Ah, the big day has arrived. Yes, boys and girls, Microsoft is finally releasing their new OS, almost on schedule for a change even. This is unlike their X-Box, the great hope of MS for achieving dominance in the game console arena. The X-Box shipped in limited quantities two weeks after its original launch date, and has been underwhelming to all who have seen it. Imagine, if you will, a game console with the stability of Windows ME. Yeah, that’s great. About half the demos that MS has held didn’t work, and the reports from retailers are that about 25% of the X-Box consoles are operational, straight out of the box. heh.

But, back to Windows XP. There are plenty of reasons to avoid this beastie. For starters, the upgrade price has actually gone up while implementing “anti-piracy” measures that should reduce the price. And, those anti-piracy measures are entertaining as hell also. If you’re a business, you just install the OS as usual, although there has been some controversy about “imaging” drives (standard practice in large organizations but apparently prohibited now). If you’re a home user, not only do you pay more per machine than a business does (about 3 times more on average), you have to deal with the dreaded Windows Product Activation system. This thing has been the focus of more hostility than anything in recent memory, and the crackers and warez d00dz have already posted the corporate version on Usenet. So, if you don’t want to deal with WPA, you can grab the pirated corporate version and avoid it. Yep, great anti-piracy measure, Bill.

Then, there’s the push towards .Net… The whole concept behind .Net is vague at best, but it centers around some internet-centric view of computing. When Sun and Oracle attempted such things (Network Computer sound familiar?), they were rightly mocked. When Microsoft restarts a bad idea like this, the media start clamoring that it is the best idea ever and will revitalize the industry. No wonder paranoids think tech journalists are MS hacks. Regardless, if you’re thinking of running programs across the internet, you’re smoking crack. Seriously, have you noticed the lack of broadband access across the nation? If you have broadband, would you consider running MS Word across a network connection? Of course not, that would be stupid. A 100 gigabyte hard drive costs less than $300 nowadays, and memory is less than 50 cents per meg. The computer sitting on the shelf at your local Office Max can look for ET while downloading music and editing photos, and you’d consider giving up control of your machine to Microsoft, of all organizations? Ha!

<rant>
As I peruse random LJ users, often linked from another of my “friends”, I notice something. Those who tend to espouse highly extreme viewpoints do so with very poor English skills. I’m willing to give a lot of slack to folks for whom English is not their primary language, of course, but a frightening number of Americans seem incapable of remembering something as simple as, “I before E except after C.”

Honestly, if you’re going to try to convince others (or the world at large) of the correctness of your views, doing so in language that would make a sixth-grade teacher cry is not a good way to do it. I have a very difficult time believing that you are capable of forming an informed opinion on a subject if you can’t spell “which” for example. Since so few of these people will listen to opposing views, no matter how simply and logically explicated, I assume this rant will fall on deaf ears. So be it.
</rant>
current_mood: bored

OK, so here are some of the ways in which San Angelo is better than Sierra Vista. If I’ve missed any, let me know.

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There are more restaurants, more and better parks, more people and thus the concomittant increase in other options.
The housing is cheaper, by an astounding amount.
We’ll have a whole mess of babysitting options.

Most importantly, they have two broadband internet options for reasonable prices, while Sierra Vista has none.
Gotta have priorities.

According to my stats page, the 4th most popular place to go is the store. In fact, if you add up the 3 different entries, that area gets bumped up to second place in my list of popular pages. YET, nobody buys anything. Oh, well, nobody has bought any books from Amazon via my Books page in the past couple years, either.

Maybe I should be a camwhore and start auctioning off my underwear or bed or something on eBay. hehe

Oh, very damned funny, T Shirt Countdown weasel! Because of the unprecedented (and therefore highly suspicious) jump to 3rd place, I’ve been unceremoniously dropped to like 1000th place, stripping me of all my legally gained votes and leaving me with a measly 28 votes. I had over 300 legitimate votes, darnit! Grr…

Oh, well, silly things to do. What else shall I do to be completely random?
current_mood: amused

OK, this is totally bizarre.

According to T Shirt Countdown, my store got 589 votes in one day, vaulting it from 12th place to 3rd. I’m sure someone must have run a bot or something to generate those votes, since I know nobody is buying my shirts and mousepads and such. Oh, well, maybe I’ll sell a bunch to the 102nd folks and veteran types. current_mood: amused

Darn! I’ve dropped from my high of #11 back to #12 on T Shirt Countdown. I’m never gonna make the top 10.
No new designs in the store, but I’m thinking of some Christmas designs.
current_mood: thirsty

OK, I’m #11 on the T-shirt Countdown. That’s pretty cool, but the Top 10 are the ones who show up on the front page of the site. Anyone want to help push me over the top? Hit my store to vote me into the top 10. You know you want a new shirt…

OK, so not only is the 19th the boy’s birthday, and my sister’s birthday, it turns out to be ’s birthday as well!

Just stacking up the birthday wishes, here. Well, Kit, happy birthday, and we’re having a dinner party for the boy, if you’d like to stop by for some lasagne. Might be a bit of a drive, but I offered anyway. current_mood: chipper

The award system at work resembles the military way too closely. I realize, with an organization that supports the military and with the vast majority of the employees (and more importantly, the management) being veterans, such things are inevitable. This is absurd.

My Boss (B1) works for B2. B1 recently (under duress) recommended everyone on his team for awards, which have to be sent through B2. B2 now feels that it is imperative that B1 get a comparable award when we peons get ours. So, every award that I get is another award for my boss, as well as each award that he gets personally.

This is like Amway. He gets an award for any work he does, and anyone he can recruit under him as well. I thought Ponzi schemes were illegal.

Perusing my webstats page (Yep I’m bored), I noticed that the most frequent visitor so far in October is from Compaq.com. Following that address are the proxy servers for three large military sites. Glad to know my friends still in uniform have plenty of time on their hands…

Exactly why is NL the most common non-US domain this month, anyway? I got used to AU being up there all the time. Maybe my inlaws are spending lots of time looking at cute pictures of the boy.