August 31, 2004
There is nothing that means more to me than the joys of life you've helped me see. With your openness and honesty... YOU will always have me and my love.
(CAUTION: Romantics beware - comments may contain naughtiness)
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06:51 PM
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Handy map for New Yorkers looking to avoid protestor-induced traffic congestion.
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06:48 PM
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I've heard that John Kerry has a secret plan for dealing with the war in Iraq. Claims that it's better, faster, easier, and bloodlessier than anything Bush is doing.
Details are sketchy.
But I did find the plan's main outlines at www.immakingthisup.org so I thought I'd share it with you:
Allow American soldiers to come home early if they have three Purple Hearts. To get the troops home faster, the definition of "being wounded by enemy fire" will now include sunburn, since Kerry will declare the sun to be an enemy combatant.
Pass stringent gun control laws in Iraq. Look at what it's done for the crime rate in Washington DC.
Drop Nair bombs on the insurgents. Without their thick, wooly beards, they'll have no will to fight.
Send in France's legendary Surrender Armada and give those insurgents a surrendering they'll never forget.
Have the UN pass a resolution requiring the insurgents to lay down their arms.
Repeat 16 times.
Rename Iraq to "Irack", thus technically ending the "War in Iraq".
Declare the war "a tie" so as not to hurt anyone's self-esteem. Surely the fighting will stop once everyone feels good about themselves.
Banish all terrorists to The Phantom Zone where they will KNEEL BEFORE ZOD for all of eternity.
Kerry will personally fly over enemy positions in a helicopter dripping deadly Botox from his forehead.
There's no need to fear! Underdog is... oops... sucked into a jet intake.
Fly around the earth really fast, thus turning back time so he can prevent the 9/11 attacks.
No more screwing around... it's time to send in both Moose AND Squirrel.
Might even have to bring SpongeBob in from Afghanistan.
These are all excellent plans, but I do have one question:
If Kerry gets elected, will he resign after his third paper cut?
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06:42 PM
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View from the church tower. Something is WRONG in this little village.
The woods are even worse.
All this anticipation is making me shift from one foot to the other like a kid who needs to go to the bathroom really bad.
If you need to start this excellent series from the beginning, start here, take the link at the bottom, read that part, then navigate by the calendar starting with August 21st.
By the way, Alex submitted this to the Showcase, so I'm raising my glass in his general direction and hoping it gets this thing at least a LITTLE more of the readership it deserves.
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06:33 PM
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Well, we had this assignment where we got five little slips of paper, and we had to write down our values on them. And then, those who volunteered, could read what their values are.I was going to read mine until I heard other lists.
I guess I did mine wrong, because most people listed things like "God," "humility," "nobility," etc. While I listed things like "making it to the bathroom on time," and "keeping my limbs."
Wonder if he's been hanging out too much with Mike the Marine?
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06:49 AM
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August 30, 2004
It's not being in love that makes me happy, it's being in love with YOU that makes me happy.
(CAUTION: Romantics beware - comments may contain naughtiness)
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11:12 PM
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In HTML, the "Washington" tag is used to prevent the British from accessing your web page.
Posted by: Harvey at
11:11 PM
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Just thought I'd share this...
This was an old network box that got thrown out at work. It wasn't really constructed to be a stand-alone home computer, so I had to do some... modifications.
What it came with: A 300 MHz CPU, a bad 4 Gig hard drive, one 64 Meg stick of memory, 1 IDE controller on the board, 2 empty PCI slots, and a power supply with only one power plug.
On the bright side, it has USB, on-board video, and on-board sound. There's also an on-board network connection that I couldn't make work.
What I've done: Unplugged the old power supply, and plugged in one that had multiple power plugs. For the sake of convenience, I just left it sitting on the floor, rather than try to swap it into the case.
Replaced the 64 Meg of memory with 2 sticks of 256 Meg. I'm running programs at a tolerable speed now.
Installed my old Network Interface Card in one of the PCI slots, so I have internet access.
Installed my old C: drive properly in the case in place of the original C: drive that didn't work.
Hooked up my USB hub (floor, lower left), giving me printer, scanner, and access to my PDA via its charging cradle (not shown).
Installed a PCI IDE controller card and attached my old D: drive (on floor, bottom right of picture) to it, thus giving me access to ALL of my old files.
Unfortunately, the case wasn't designed to hold all this stuff, so I'm currently running everything in the "gutted fish" layout that you see in the picture. It seems to run ok this way, except when the cat starts walking on the components.
I hope to have a picture of something happier within a week.
As a final note, the 16 color thing isn't SO bad, even though it makes my vast pr0n collection nigh unviewable. The big problem is that I can't adjust my screen setting above 480x600, which makes viewing blogs without left sidebars a little tricky, since a little of the text gets cut off on the left side. My current work-around for that is to copy the block of text I can't read, and paste it into a text editor. Even the cut-off parts get copied, so I'm able to read what I'm missing.
Meanwhile, I just keep repeating "it's only temporary".
Oh, and drinking heavily helps, too.
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10:58 PM
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Unlike certain other candidates.
Peter (who you will remember from these 2 posts) has given me permission to post some more material from one of his recent e-mails to me. Before I read it, I had a detached, impersonal distaste for John Kerry. Afterwards, what I had was a seething urge to see that man's eyeballs on the ends of my thumbs.
But maybe that's just a "me" thing. Tell you what, YOU read it and decide for yourself:
I'm pretty angry right now. I'm no hero. I went where I was sent and did what I was told. I had a lot of fairly safe duty and a couple of tough assignments, that's the way things happen when a small town kid signs up in the Big Green Machine for a ticket out.I spent some years with some awfully good guys, though, as well as the usual assortment of pricks, far outnumbered by the good guys. Oh, and a few, just a few, genuine heroes. My war had far more to do with being tired, bored, lonely and homesick and sometimes terrified, sometimes heartbroken at the loss of a friend than anything to do with a John Wayne epic.
I saw a whole lot of frightened young men suck it up for fear of letting down their buddies.
What I didn't see was rape and murder. I saw a sergeant, oh late twenties, early thirties, married with a couple of kids, we used to eat the broken cookies they sent, buy the farm trying to herd some Viet kids out of the line of fire in an ambush in a ville that I never knew the name of. That man's kids heard that 'testimony'. He was one of John Kerry's baby-killers. His children, and mine, grew up hearing that crap. My daughter, yes, daughter asked me about the rape over there. My teenaged daughter was taught in school that her daddy was a rapist. There's a conversation I never thought I'd have.
The other week I got a call from a veteran's wife, she was distraught because, for the first time in years, her husband was having Those Dreams, waking up pouring sweat and tears.
All I could think of to do was to go get him drunk enough to talk, and to cry while he was awake. Hope it's enough.
It's bad enough, that crap from almost thirty-five years ago. He's putting us through it again.
Harvey, I don't have a Blog, being computer illiterate and all. I depend on the kindness of strangers to lend me their soapboxes. I'm not fit to speak for veterans, just this one. There are so many that did far more than I did, there are so many that sacrificed far more than I did.
All I can do is tell my little story and to scream my outrage that so many men, from the ordinary to the finest I've ever been privileged to stand besides, were slimed as a political gambit. I want this to be over. I want those men to have their honor back. Then I want to go back to being just a guy writing witty comments on funny Blogs. I want to be Gramps again, plotting visits to the kids so as to teach my grandkids the words their mamas don't want them to know.
Until that day, the fight is on.
I read that, and I get quiet and still, and parts of my soul that I rarely hear from start to ache.
I just keep going back to that one section:
"My daughter, yes, daughter asked me about the rape over there. My teenaged daughter was taught in school that her daddy was a rapist. There's a conversation I never thought I'd have."
and my bones start to throb with rage.
I will tell you this - no more "fair and balanced" for THIS Sailor. No more "benefit of the doubt", no more "maybe we should at least hear what he has to say". From here on out, you can put me into the "frothing-psycho-moonbat right-wing fanatical Kerry-hater" column. This doesn't mean that I'm turning my entire blog into the Republican version of the Democratic Underground, and I'm not going to go around hijacking comment threads screeching about how Kerry should be strung up & flayed.
I'm just saying don't expect me to show my usual level of tact & diplomacy on matters Kerry. If you want to say something nice about the guy, say it on your own damn blog, because there's no room for it here anymore.
Final note: I'm of the opinion that the blogosphere would be a better place if Peter had a blog where he could post regularly, and the rest of us could stop by, read, comment, and link to.
What say you?
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08:48 PM
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Beyond words, it is my pleasure:
My outfit was pulled back into a big base camp for some rest, resupply and refit. Which one doesn't matter. I was a corporal at the time, a squad leader. The senior squad leader of my platoon so I had a few extra responsibilities to go with my exalted status. We scrounged a truck to go to supply to get a bunch of stuff we needed, the Helo LZ for the mail and our Corpsman, Doc Steve wanted to beg, borrow or steal some gear that he wasn't supposed to know how to use from the tent hospital they had. I was going along to either help carry the stuff or create a diversion if talking wouldn't work.Anyway while we were getting the mail, next stop the hospital, a Helo came in with a brand new nurse on board. Since we were going to the body and fender shop anyway we gave her a ride. She was so brand new her butter bar was still shiny and her utilities not only hadn't faded but the red dust hadn't even ground into the fabric. As luck would have it the admin. tent where she had to check in was right next to the supply shack where Doc Steve was working his nefarious plot. Oh, did I mention that the nurse was no bigger than a minute and cute as a bug? Impossibly young, too, though as a college graduate probably a little older than me, chronologically.
While we were there the bad guys launched a rocket attack, a big one. Since Doc and I had no assignment there we followed all the clerks, I thought we were running for a bunker. That cute little nurse was running right alongside of us. Her helmet and vest were way too big. Well, if I'd known where we were running I'd have followed some other crowd, we didn't go to a bunker, instead to the surgical tent. Most everybody in the crowd started taking wounded to the bunkers but there was some fairly major surgery going on, I think the docs were working on a sucking chest wound but I wasn't looking that close. Anyway, the surgeon couldn't stop, there was no way to move to a bunker. This crowd of supply clerks, admin clerks, that cute little nurse and mama's idiot son and Doc Steve, all of us in helmets and vests just crowded around that operating table and surgical team so as to stop any flying scrap metal, hopefully with our vests.
The rockets were coming down all over, I was as scared as I'd ever been but too damned scared of what folks would say if I left Doc Steve to do anything sensible like find a hole and I looked over at that little nurse. She didn't know anyone there, she'd never heard a shot fired in anger, nobody would tell her what was going on, just to stand there wearing a helmet and vest so the surgeons could work.
A rocket hit fairly close, close enough to have some shrapnel come through the tent and she lost it. Sort of. She stood there. She didn't say a word, she just started crying, quietly. Another rocket hit, closer. A piece of scrap metal clanged off her helmet. Proving she was smart enough to have graduated she did what anyone else would do, she peed. I would have too except I just had.
The bravest person I ever saw, that tiny little girl. She stood there, tears running down her face and urine running down her legs, standing there to stop shrapnel meant for someone she'd never met. She stood there until it was all over. Then she cleaned up and reported in.
It wasn't just her standing there, EVERY ONE of those clerks, the ones we all called REMFs, stood there, shoulder to shoulder, three deep. They did it for a stranger on an operating table. They stood there, holding extra flak vests, with nothing to shoot back at, or with. They. Just. Stood. There. For a stranger.
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01:00 AM
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August 29, 2004
If you stood in front of a mirror and held up 11 roses, you would see 12 of the most beautiful things in the world.
(CAUTION: Romantics beware - comments may contain naughtiness)
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11:55 PM
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Even more than ever, I'm confused as to whether the Witch Hunter is some evil Torquemada-like crusader, or a helping-the-hopeless Buffy wanna-be.
I can't wait to find out.
If you need to start this excellent series from the beginning, start here, take the link at the bottom, read that part, then navigate by the calendar starting with August 21st.
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11:51 PM
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1) Information found on blogs is at least as accurate as information found in the mainstream media2) It's morally wrong to hijack someone else's blog.
The second one is fairly easy to agree with, but the first one requires a little nerve to assert.
In my recent surfing, however, I've come across several posts in praise of the excellent job the blogosphere does of getting its facts straight. To honor these intrepid souls, I present:
THE FIRST OCCASIONAL JERKY AWARDS
The Little Right Wing Circle Jerk Award of Merit (or "Jerky") is given to those who defend the honor of blogger credibility vs. the so-called "journalistic integrity " of the mainstream media. I hereby award Jerkies to the following fine folks:
James Lileks of The Bleat:
"Christmas in Cambodia was finally mentioned Monday on Fox news, which may be the tipping point. The other channels are now free to discuss the issue by discussing the controversy, which is the standard excuse. For Fox to break a story – well, it’s like Paris Hilton hiking up her skirt to show a new tattoo that depicts details of a planned Al Qaeda attack. Consider the source! But the tattoo seems unusually detailed, and coincides with reports from other sources. Perhaps that’s the food chain of the future: Drudge > blogs > Fox > CNN > New York Times > Maureen Dowd. A relay race with a lit stick of dynamite as the baton. Can she bury it in a pail of sand in time? Stay tuned!"
Matty O'Blackfive, who quotes the Chicago Sun-Times thusly:
"Even if the major media decided to bury this story, they would probably not succeed -- and they know as much. The "blogosphere" -- that voluntary society of unpaid free-lance journalists -- is following the story avidly, correcting errors, producing original documents, sifting through different accounts. Some bloggers are for Kerry, some against, but all are together advancing the story by winnowing truth from falsehood. Unless the bloggers conclusively acquit Kerry before the story migrates outwards, the mainstream media will eventually be forced to devote serious resources to it."
Tammi of Road Warrior Survival:
"When Smash posts something, I pay attention. Same with Blackfive. Why? For several reasons, but high on the list is the fact that they talk about what they KNOW. They have established credability with me. Time and time again, they've said it and they've been right. Not only that, but if something is mistaken, or misspoken - THEY ISSUE A CORRECTION. Right there, in front of everyone. They say it. That matters. A lot."
Lynn of Reflections in d minor:
"It has always annoyed and often amused me that many people feel that what they read in books is necessarily more trustworthy than anything found on the Internet. There is, without a doubt, a lot of garbage on the Internet but there's also a lot of garbage in books, newspapers and on TV. I think the difference is that with traditional sources we always felt that there was someone looking out for us, sorting through the garbage and providing us with "reliable information." Never mind that those trusted gatekeepers might be mis-informed, biased and self-serving."
Jeremy of iRi:
if you want to compare bloggers to journalism fairly, you must measure the best of the bloggers against the best of formal journalism.Because if you insist on defining blogging as "millions of people doodling in their journals, with rare people who sometimes make an interesting point", then I'm going to define journalism as "hundreds of thousands of parochial local rags designed to get as many local names as possible in print, and the rare international journalist that has something moderately interesting to say".[...]If you want to compare Pulitzer Prize journalism to some schmoe on LiveJournal, don't bitch when I choose a cliche-ridden sports story as indicative of Jouralism as a whole.
Bear of The Truth Laid Bear:
"That kind of carelessness might have cut it a few years ago, when somnolent Big Media hacks were satisfied to define reporting as getting quotes from both party's spokesmen. But times have changed, friends: there isn't just one new sheriff in town, there's thousands of us. We will fact-check your ass, and we will do it thoroughly and properly, with links and primary sources that let our readers decide where the truth lies. So straighten up and fly right, because we are watching --- and we do this crap for fun."
As long as they promise not to hijack any blogs, the above-linked people are cordially invited to display either the Jerky Award image or the Little Right Wing Circle Jerk logo, or both.
[Credit: Jerky Award and LRWCJ logos created by Pam of Pamibe, the queen of graphic design - she's the one to see for all your blog-related image needs]
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11:14 PM
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[GEORGE SAYS - "WEED IS GOOD FOR YOU!"]
George also said, "Slavery is peachy", and "Women's sufferage is evil".
Two out of three ain't bad.
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10:24 PM
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Not only does it have 50 tips, ranging from handy to amusing, but it's also chock full of links to other blogging guides. If you've just started blogging recently [looks pointedly at list of Bad Example Family Members] you should give this list a once-over, and probably bookmark it for future reference.
Posted by: Harvey at
09:52 PM
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This is something that has been chafing my underwear every time I open an issue of Computer Shopper. I keep seeing ads for faster and faster "business computers"... O.K.... Now how fast do we really need to open that spreadsheet,database, or e-mail? Is there really ANY business software that will take advantage of that 64-bit cpu?I've done some checking around the office where I work, the bulk of the systems are older Compaq Deskpros, sub-1 GHz systems. I even found an AMD k6-2/400MHz.
However, I've also seen Dell systems sportin' 2.7 GHz. Now, I won't deny the marketing/sales dept their toys and we do run CAD, but most of what you see are older systems, some still running windows 95.Oh and yes, I've seen the Dell commercial with the retarded IT guy ducktaping 20 year old computers together. My point is that there IS a middle ground. Most of us don't need to outfit the whole office with top-of-the-line Dells or Gateways... unless you've found a way to write the whole thing off, then go for it.
I'm not Dell or Gateway bashing here. If you need or want that kind of service and warranty they are your best bet. But for Pete's sake, don't buy the hype - save some money. Office and home systems are two different animals. Treat them as such.
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind if my bank's tight-assed board of directors would let us buy a couple sticks of used SDRAM so that we could have enough on-board memory to open up more than one window at a time.
Posted by: Harvey at
09:40 PM
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Way off.
This is personal.
Paul of Wizbang has a post with a link to the third Swift Boat Vets ad, this one debunking Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" claim. In the comments, a Viet Nam vet named Peter explains to a troll named Randy what REALLY motivates the vets. I'm leaving in the salty language out of courtesy to a man who has earned the right to use it:
Yes, go ahead and vote for a man that took an oath, then took the extra pay and privileges of a commissioned officer. Then after whatever exploits were actually real, came back and ran for office as a war hero and lost. Got his enlistment cut short, too.Having failed to attain office that route he changed directions, surrounded himself with 'veterans' many of whom never spent one single day in uniform, others of whom had not ever set foot in a combat zone, all of whom refused to testify under oath, even when offered full immunity (that pesky perjury exception to immunity, you know) and slimed the names of every swinging dick that ever wore Uncle's suit. Slimed the good name of every man who came home in a shiny aluminum box with lies. Lies about alleged crimes that were never committed. For as long as that long black wall in Washington, DC has stood, John Kerry has been rubbing human feces on to those names.
I don't know what that cocksucker did in Viet Nam, I was thirty fucking months in another AO, Randy, one without movie cameras, hell, instamatics were too heavy to carry on a hump through the bush after one's first patrol. I don't know what the sonofabitch did over there, I only know what he did here. And what he did here was lie about men whose sweaty jockstraps he is not fit to carry. What he did here was to deliberately slander 58,000 men who aren't around to answer because the medals they got were posthumus.
Assholes like you, Randy, think this is about George Bush because you don't know any of those names on the Wall. It's not about George Bush, it's about an overpriveliged Yankee blueblood who may as well have walked into 58,000 American homes and pissed on every one of those neatly folded flags.
Now, thirty-three years later he has the gall to return to those same homes and steal those flags to parade himself around, wrapped in the flags that covered the bodies of my friends. That's what this is about, not George Bush. John Kerry slimed the names and the honor of every young man that stood with his buddies while this Hee-row pulled strings to come home early.
There are a whole bunch of really pissed off veterans, some of us gave limbs, all of us gave our youth and we want to restore the honor to those names on the wall. For thirty-three years we've had to listen to you little fucks, Randy because we had no way to make our voices heard. It's over. This is where it stops. John Kerry has dug up the bodies of our brothers to stand on in a desperate attempt to give himself a little stature.
Pretty funny, this big brave War Hee-row with a chest full of medals has to go crying to daddy George Bush to make those mean old veterans stop picking on meeee!
Most of us stop running to mommy and daddy when we are about seven or eight. Most of us fight our own fights. Like this one. The fight is on, stay out of the way. It's not for you, Randy, this fight is for the men.
Peter is currently blogless, as far as I can tell, but I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing him start.
Posted by: Harvey at
09:01 PM
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August 7, 1928, marks the day the dollar shrank. Neither rampant inflation nor the impending stock market crash were the culprits. Rather, the Treasury unveiled a new version of the note that was one third smaller than its predecessor. The dinky dollar was part of a veritable fleet of smaller bills: the Bureau of Engraving and Printing ran the presses to the tune of one billion new bills which were printed in denominations ranging from one to ten thousand dollars. As part of the announcement of the new currency, the Treasury also promised that they would begin production on a new two-dollar note. Lest the public grow bored with their existing money, the Treasury kept on fiddling. A year later the department rolled out yet an even smaller version of the dollar. The bill had shrunk by 25 percent and was graced with the now standard set of portraits and emblems.
Notice anything missing?
Among all the statistics about size and quantity, there is not a single mention of WHY this change took place.
And this piece was from the History Channel website.
Now I realize that this is just a bit of trivia and not critically important in the grand scheme of things, but it seems to me that giving the "what" of history without giving the "why" does the reader a great disservice. Without the "why" to explain the causes, all the names, dates, and events of history become a confused and random jumble of unimportant noise, and history's lessons will remain unlearned.
For example, some people don't know why we're fighting the War on Terror. We go here and there, blowing up this and that, seemingly without purpose.
But there is a why, and history can teach it to us.
A couple centuries ago, pirates routinely attacked ships on the high seas, and most countries just lived with it. The US decided to do something about it. We attacked the pirate bases ("shores of Tripoli" ring a bell?) and eventually piracy stopped stopped being a problem.
The lesson we can take from that is that terrorism, like piracy, has bases that can be attacked and a collective will that can be broken. We don't have to just sit back and take it - we can do something about it.
That is WHY we fight. Because we CAN win if we persevere.
Oh, and as to why the bills were made smaller?
Simple.
Smaller bills means less room for graffiti on the currency ;-)
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08:54 PM
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August 28, 2004
Thoughts of you warm my heart like a moon lit summer night.
(CAUTION: Romantics beware - comments may contain naughtiness)
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11:23 PM
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The war we wage against our sinful nature is not won with a single prayer, but is fought battle by battle, with each click of the mouse, each change of the channel, each opening of the mouth, each trip down the beer aisle, each touch, each look, and each of the thousands of times we face temptation during the day. If Jesus is not close, we fall. If we remain near Him, we can stand firm.
Morally, I'm more of a nominal Objectivist than a Christian, but by noting that Marty cites Jesus here in his role of providing a foundational moral code (and making the appropriate mental substitution), I find myself agreeing with the sentiment as far as the constant need to be on guard against making choices that, while enjoyable in the near term, cause eventual harm.
Nicely said, Marty.
Posted by: Harvey at
09:26 PM
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