What got me going.

An excerpt from
Microserfs

Todd called me “decadent” today –
this, after he discussed protein windows! I couldn’t believe it. He said
I was decadent because I was eating Lucky Charms. He said they were
“symptomatic of a culture in decline – sucrose hysteria, you know.”

I said “But Todd, Lucky Charms were
invented during the Johnson Administration. Society couldn’t have been
more anti-decline than it was then. Guns and butter…I can’t believe I’m even
talking to you seriously about this. This is silly beyond belief.”

Anyway, that was the seed notion.
Karla and I wrote a big list of “decadent cereals” on the office dry-erase
wall:

Cap’n Crunch: A)
Colonialist exploiter pursues naive Crunchberry cultures to plunder. B)
Drunkenness, torture, and debauchery implicit in long ocean
journeys.
Sugar Frosted Flakes:
Silky throated military-industrial complex spokes-toad “Tony the Tiger”
exploits the need of the undereducated underclass for the paternalistic,
Reagan-like figures. A cautionary tale of the perils of not indoctrinating at
the creche level.
Trix: Well-meaning
rabbit, “Trix,” kept in continual state of malnutrition/subservience by
dominant children of the parasitic bourgeoisie. “Silly rabbit, Trix are for
kids” can only be construed as a call to class warfare.
Lucky Charms: Man
with no known adult friends lures children into forest for purpose of
nutritional (ideological) seduction. Sprightly twinkle motif on packaging
(putatively an allusion to “flavor”) are, in fact, metaphors for soul-deadening
sucrose.
Rice Krispies:
Snap, Krackle, and Pop thinly veiled emblems for the Trilateral
Commission.
Cocoa Puffs:
I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” the demented cackle of Sonny the Cocoa
Puffs bird/spokesmuppet, is resonant with the insanity inherent in the needless
enslavement of the proletariat.
Count Chocula –
Frankenberry
:
Gay relationship offers an excellent role model for this
new era of diversity. Witty vampire motif plays on never-ending struggle of the
oppressed to topple the ruling class.

-Douglas
Coupland

Buy
Microserfs

temperature woes, TMI alert, poll of the day.

I’m running very hot today. I’m going to have to check to see if I’m running a fever tonight, I think. Hot hot hot, sweaty hot.

“I feel moisture on my upper lip” hot, my hair is wet with sweat. I don’t think the room is hot, because touching the formica desk is cooling to me, and the air isn’t thick.

I just hit the potty, and I started feeling this way after having done my business.

As a way of taking my mind off of it, here’s a poll. Not sure if I’ve done this one before.

forgive any typos on the poll, they’re uneditable after posting, and I’m too lazy to retype.

not so evil news

World Wide Who

After being off the air for over ten years, the good doctor (No. 7) and his trusty sidekick Ace are getting the less than royal treatment from the BBC.

Rather than kick-starting Dr. Who the TV series up where it left off in 1989, the Beeb will broadcast an all-new radio version of the show starring the last official Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, as well as a handful of celebrity guest voices including Stephen Fry and John Sessions. But this is hardly the resurrection of a legend.

This particular audio extravaganza, hitting the Webwaves July 13th, has been sitting on a shelf gathering dust because the Daleks don’t seem to be in favor in the hallowed halls of British television any longer. However, if fans make enough noise, the network might make more Internet programming in future.

Or, in *the* future, as we Yanks put it.

Size Matters

Intel has succeeded in reducing the size of transistors yet again, extending Moore’s Law out until 2007 at least.

The company announced that their research lab in Oregon has managed to produce a handful of transistors 0.02 microns in size. The 42 million transistors in use on current Pentium4 chips are a massive 0.18 microns by comparison, meaning you could cram 9 times the amount of transistors in the same space, assuming you didn’t sneeze and accidentally inhale them into your brain, making you some mutant cyborg bent on world destruction.

Which would be so cool!

. . .

Battle of the Giants

Here’s a new one: A group of record labels (Sony, EMI and BMG among them) is suing MTVi because they’re streaming personal radio service is a little *too* personal for their liking. The companies argue that because SonicNet allows to program their own radio shows, they could be violating copyright laws which normally prevent radio stations from broadcasting the same artist too close together or an entire album without permission.

It can be said without qualification that MTV has probably done more to increase the overall financial success for these companies than anything else in the last 20 years, so why would they want to bite the hand that feeds them?

Stupidity comes to mind.

. . .
Ad Per View

TV advertisers seem to be fighting a losing battle. We get up from our seats when they appear, we mute their sound, we TiVo past them and do pretty much anything we can to ignore what pays for our free TV programming (and people wonder why the Web ad sphere collapsed?). What can they do to get us to pay attention?

What they’re going to try next is addressable advertising. So if you’re watching a Gilligan’s Island in your house and your neighbor is watching the exact same program next door, you might see an ad for Pampers because the advertisers know (via your addressable cable converter) that you’re a young family maybe with some kiddles, while your 80-year-old neighbor sees Fixodent flashing on their 27″ Sony.

AT&T Cable is testing this program with 30,000 Aurora, Colorado subscribers this fall. Expect other cable companies to follow suit. So you’ll soon be able to ignore and fast-forward past commercials picked out just for you!

. . .

Only Connect

In yet another helpful invasion of privacy, new services offered by cell phone service providers and wireless device networks will extend the online Buddy List metaphor to your mobile phones, pagers and PDAs. The so-called presence technology will alert others whether your phone or pager or what-have-you is ready to take their call, whether *you’re* ready or not.

At first, presence technology in wireless devices will only extend to your closed list of friends and family, who you’ll allow to monitor your device availability (and you, theirs) by glancing at the screen and seeing if you’re “on.” Later, presence can be extended so that parents will be able to check if their children are watching TV when they should be doing homework or asleep or having sex or something.

. . .

A US judge has threatened a teenager with life in prison
if he has pre-marital sex.

Judge Manuel Banales told Robert Torres, 19, he will die in
jail if he has sex again before he marries.

Torres, in court in Corpus Christi, Texas, has convictions
for underage sex and has got two teenage girls pregnant while
on probation. Judge Banales again gave him probation – and
the no sex ban. If Torres breaks the probation order he faces
life or two times 99 years in jail.

Judge Banales said: “He is fathering too many children for
which he is not supporting. So, I told him he can father as
many children as he wants as long as he establishes a marital
relationship. I wish there was a law that said that kids
cannot have kids, but that is clearly impossible to enforce.

“But it will be enforced as conditions of supervision in your
case. And if you so much as have thoughts of getting another
girl pregnant, you will go to prison for life or 99 years two
times. You’ll not get out of there alive. I want you to know
that.”

According to the court order Torres is now prohibited from sex
with any woman until marriage.

mail fun!

Hooray!

I got all sorts of cool mail today!

got my young ones video to me! 🙂 Whee! chocolate gelt packing material! Whee!

and a keeno Las Vegas postcard from

and another postcard from Thank you for thinking of me! (sent form canada after the fact… extra nifty to be thought of)

come aboard!

for


Croons –

Love, exciting and new
Come Aboard. We’re expecting you.
Love, life’s sweetest reward.
Let it flow, it floats back to you.
The Love Boat soon will be making another run
The Love Boat promises something for everyone
Set a course for adventure,
Your mind on a new romance.
Love won’t hurt anymore
It’s an open smile on a friendly shore.
Yes LOVE! It’s LOVE!
The Love Boat soon will be making another run
The Love Boat promises something for everyone
Set a course for adventure,
Your mind on a new romance.
Love won’t hurt anymore
It’s an open smile on a friendly shore.
It’s LOVE! It’s LOVE! It’s LOVE!
It’s the Love Boat-ah! It’s the Love Boat-ah!

http://www.asb.com/usr/indtvprd/loveboat/lbtheme.mp3

big brain troubles

Woke up this morning, and discovered my system must’ve seized about 6:30 am. I rebooted when I got up and it gave me a ‘severe hardware error’ regarding xms and the driver … that tells me that RAM on big brain is faulty. so… things on this guy that are bad…. RAM, one of the video cards, possibly one of the HD.

I’m really looking forward to the new machine from stacy.

BB is up and running now, anyway… but for how long? At least I know now what to take care of.

Hopping in the shower now, and prepping for the day. I hope to see my sweetie before lunch!

evil news! Just one, but it’s a doozy.

DO NOT EAT FRITO-LAY PRODUCTS!
=================================
A bloody Band-Aid. Bullet casings. Ibuprofen. Gasoline. Cleaning fluid. Roaches, rodents, and wasps.
They’re not listed on the labels, but these are some of the ingredients snack food giant Frito-Lay found in its packaged products after receiving complaints from consumers.
The litany of contaminants detected in potato chips, cookies, and popcorn was revealed during pretrial proceedings in a lawsuit scheduled for trial today in Suffolk Superior Court.
Edye Merzer, a Jamaica Plain psychologist, alleges that she suffered a host of debilitating neurological disorders, including small brain seizures, foot and leg pain, breathing and stomach problems, chronic headaches, and exhaustion after eating four chips she says were tainted with cleaning fluid. During discovery in the seven-year-old case, Frito-Lay turned over piles of complaints filed between 1991 and 1994, involving nearly all the company’s products – Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos, Lays, Grandma’s Cookies, Rold Gold, Sunchips, Munchos, Smartfood, and assorted dips.