Fresh from the shower, and ready for action!

Well, once I finish dressing for the day, anyhow. I generally leave the most outer-layer of clothes off until I have to get going.

Penis explodes during sex.

Ambulance Chasers with style Hee… I like the map to the office. (has some sound)

Newt’s a chatterbox today… I can say something, and he’ll MoW! or MeR! back with gusto. Looks like the little boy wants another chase around the place.

Now that that’s been done, it’s time to water the plants! Hey! Sprouts!

First appearance of basil. 🙂

The catgrass has sprung up overnight!

and an obligatory newtie pic, dexter from last thursday, and the interior of chupacabra’s computer (warning, fuzzy-legged dead bug picture)

from the pig book, a guide to governement waste online. (or why I think more people should vote, and pay attention to what their representatives support)

$273,000 added in conference in the state of Senate appropriator Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-Mo.) for the Blue Springs Youth Outreach Unit for educational training in combating Goth culture.

$50,000 added by the House in the district of Lois Capps (D-Calif.) for a tattoo removal program in San Luis Obispo.

$260,000 for asparagus technology and production in the state of Senate Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and House Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee member George Nethercutt (R-Wash.). According to USDA officials, “This research will enable Washington asparagus producers to remain domestically and internationally competitive.” Since 2001, $484,000 has been appropriated for this research.

$12,800,000 for the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP); Initially designed to capture energy from the aurora borealis (northern lights), HAARP is now being configured to heat up the ionosphere to improve military communications. Since 1995, CAGW has identified $82.8 million appropriated for HAARP. (I’ve loooooong hated the HAARP project…. bad tech, weak plans…, it’s the Sgt York of Star Wars Tech.)

in the defense budget – $1,500,000 for a large millimeter wave telescope. In fiscal 2001, appropriators added $4 million for this same project. This telescope, a joint project between the United States and Mexico, will help researchers study the formation of stars and galaxies billions of years ago and how stars are forming in our galaxy right now. (That’s cool, and all… but defense?)

$500,000 added by the Senate in the state of Senate Appropriations committee member Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) for bus and bus facilities in the ski resort, Village of Taos. (instead of more money to bussing the elderly, or infirm)

I don’t think all of the things listed are bad ideas, but many are far overpriced for what they are.

in other news – Researchers have discovered that the Argentine ants in colonies stretching over an area 3,600 miles long, are effectively one supercolony. In other words, ants from the Italian Riviera can be carried 3,600 miles and dropped into a hill there, and will get along just fine. Read the CNN story However, you won’t find a hint of speculation there about what sort of chemical or other cues might be operating across that distance to keep all those anthills “in synch” . . . or a guess about the sheer number of ants involved.

Could be a neat communications puzzle to work out.

I may not know much about art…but I know what I like. Here’s some concept art that’s just amazing. I can’t read Japanese, but the pictures are great.

one that I bet will bookmark – TextArc is a freaky little applet that will analyse the words in a text and process them occording to frequency, relevence to other words, and context. The app will then proceed to “read” the text and draw connections between the words in non-linear fashions. It’s hard to describe, but cool to look at. It’s sort of like watching your lexical field neurons firing… sort of an offshoot of good ol’ visual thesaurus

If you’re really looking for some conceptual network-building fun, you’ve got to check out DIRK. What’s the secret connection between Scottobear and Frank Oz?

weird search keywords to my site today –

Google pics of baby chimpanzees
Yahoo alligator scarification

quote of the day –

Odin: The gods cannot abide a doofus.

(said with a Norwegian accent… Dyoofiss.)

Find your emotion! [?]

Thought that the video process was all worked out, but it’s kicking good records into a reject state. Getting a good error report from the users is like pulling teeth… “It’s broken.. fix it” No information as to how or where it’s broken though.

Imagine going into a doctor and saying “I’m hurt or sick… heal me” and not giving any symptoms. They don’t need to know any of the technical terms, but mentioning a limp, or pain someplace specifically can help someone trace theproblem.

Speaking of Which, I went to the doctor’s today… Blood work came back wonderful, though my cholesterol is up from my wonderfully low of 114 to 136. (still good) I’ve been redirected to a nerve specialist and some physical therapy. I’m feeling pretty positive about this because it means I’ll be getting into some serious shape. When I first hurt my back, recovery-wise, I was in the best fitness-level of my life… I plan on trying to stay to whatever workout plan is given me this go ’round. The trick is to just make it a habit, like taking care of Newt or making a point
of reading a little bit every day. My only worry is making sure that there’s enough time in the day for everything I want to budget in.

Only got a passing brush with my sweetie-monkey yesterday… she and I were working like devils today, too. Hopefully tomorrow will allow for more contact. (or at least a rest!)

Tomorrow is Dexter-puppy Thursday…that’ll make things a little nicer.

I was late to the doc’s, by about 20 minutes, and was chastised for it. my reply was. “You’re right… people should be on time for scheduled meetings, and I apologise for my misdeed. Tell me again why you’ve had me wait multiple hours the last few times?”

The Wendy’s garden salad is *good*, especially with a baked potato. Yum! what a tasty supper! My beloved would be proud of me, I even ate the cherry tomatoes.

Brother Went to a pre-court hearing, and it looks good… that silly cop is bonus-screwed… bro is mending slowly, but is repairing. He lost his job, as season has pretty much ended. He’s got a gig working for a bakery though, to see him through, plus another potential other on the horizon.

Scanning the LJ… looks like a lot of people are having bad days. Sorry, gang… I hope that the good stuff hits the fan, and sprays you all as liberally as the poo.

I’ve found a lot of great government-hosted sites, and my favorite of those from the past few weeks has been the Freedom of Information Act stuff from the files of the F.B.I. – lots of huge (and I do mean huge – hope you’ve got a fast connection) PDF files filled with scans of old newspaper clippings, office memos and other good stuff on subjects ranging from the death of John Dillinger to cattle mutilations. The truth is out there, and it’s in slow-downloading bitmap form.

Overslept!

I’m late! see you tonight, dear journal!

typing as fast as my bear-mitts will allow…

Got the foreign video distribution program worked out, after about maybe two or three years of dancing around the bugs, fixing manually what the original programmer never managed to automate. Finally, with Dale being out a few days, it became a priority… mainly because neither MsK or I want to do any more menial work than is absolutely necessary. Before this weekend there really was no priority put on making it work… Dale is a unobtrusive guy, and would rather do an extra hour or so of work a week than complain. Not me…I’m all about automating anything that doesn’t require creative thought. (There are a lot of programs built now that have the “push a button, wait 20 minutes while it chews on the problem, and then validate a report” rather than the old way of “spend an hour or five going over the data with a fine-tooth comb, and hope that human error doesn’t rear it’s ugly head today”).

Recent completed internal projects – Laser room status tracking, Setup Department Tracking, Finish Automating the Video process, reconfigure backups to get everyone’s new machines covered nightly (gah… if a person renames their system, the backup will no longer know how to find it. New players on the network are Voyager Trek-based, via MsK. Sort of a wacky combo, now… machines named for the user in question; Dale, Kevin, Paul, 2001 ASO; Hal & Sal, Newton (self-explanatory), utility ;spool, setup, solimar, American Lit ; Emerson, Twain, Poe, Stevenson… now we have 7of9, Torres, and a plethora of others. I prefer a single theme, but there is something to be said for variety. )

On the burner, currently – Updated Setup reports, Updated Laser Room Reports, Clean up security on the master database, automate processes for West Palm, Fort Lauderdale, and Canadian offices.

I’m pretty pleased with the golem story, thus far…maybe a little more revision, and it might be worth shopping around. I really have to get on my mail-junk… it’s been an age, and I have a few manuscripts that have been waiting patiently to mail since the top of march or so.

Heading into the Doc’s tomorrow morn… hopefully this will be the last checkup for a while. I scheduled early enough that I should get to work on time… we’ll see.

Hitting the sack early tonight… put in a lot of juice-draining thought. nighty night, dear journal.

I used contraption and boondoggle in a sentence today (referring to one as the other), regarding why I don’t drive a car. Nice walk this morning, and my seeds look mostly unmolested. no sprouts yet, but it’s really only day 3. I woke up this morning to Newt sleeping by my side, curled with his back to me from armpit to my elbow.

This was my day at work yesterday. warning, sound. It was a thick day, as the ol’ Dale was out with pinkeye and we were suffereing from electrical trouble again.

I don’t know how he gets in my dreams, though. Lunch today might be oatmeal and a banana, if I can wrangle a nanner from the roach coach.

I need to synch some palm sketches at photos in, but I’ve got to fly for now… maybe tonight, dear journal.

before I go, a cool snail for my beloved.

The Cube.. my results came out pretty accurately. I won’t share them here, as I don’t want to pollute anyone else’s taking it with my viewpoint. I’d really like to see a collection of responses to it…some fun creative visual images, at least.

Beware those comments about the boss

Dangerous Labs –

, there’s a whole section on distilling moonshine!

, there’s a jet powered go-cart!

, there’s the mysteries of radiation, including the tale of the radioactive boy scout!

, this is an article on squirrel fishing. that’s not on the science-site, but it’s fun!

nighty night, dear journal. I’m up too late!

Just spent a half hour chasing Newt around the house bellowing “Newwwwwton is a Goooooolem” in a haunted, insane, basso-profundo.

He started it. I was writing a nice story, and he climbed up, and sat on my keyboard, and nose-butted my right tear duct, until I was obliged to wrestle him to the floor and spin him like a tiny orange top, and roar a gutteral growl. He leapt to his feet, tail in the air, and we ran around the apartment after that… he’s good at the peek and dash at doorjams, and is willing to chase me, if I stop chasing him.

He is now worn out, and lapping up a big gulp ‘o water.

I win! I wore out the baby!

A person with the occassional ability to read minds gets dosed with some high power amphetimine-riddled drug. He can’t sleep, but he finds himself experiencing the thoughts of others who *are* sleeping.

add noir, horror maybe, and season to taste.

also – side note / backstory plot

A conspiracy of Golems. Detectives intercept some strange mail. Written in a deliberate, simple style, the letter smells of clay and earth. The language is 15th century Spanish. It seems to be communication between conspirators. A meeting is being arranged, or perhaps an exchange of some sort. It hints at a spread-out network of men, possibly all members of one estranged family. This should be made to seem more sinister than it actually is…

new fabric softener… I usually use snuggle… but I got “fresh rain scent” instead of the regular scent… I really like it. I first noticed it on my sheets, but didn’t think it’d be this distinct on my clothes! It seems to mesh well with the other hippie element… a patchouli daub.

The weather outside is lovely, if a trifle more humid than it was, earlier.

It looks like someone has been at my seeds… it looks like the wrap over the basil has been accosted in some way. I wonder if it’s an animal, or the little girls next door. I had to put them outside, against the house to protect them from Newton… I hope that I made the right decision.

got a line on an information brokering gig, possibly. I think that’d be the bee’s knees… I actively enjoy at finding information on the net and at libraries, and could use the money, too.

welp, off to work. Note to self, pick up scrip on the way home tonight.

Dreamt of falling from a low height… about fifteen or twenty feet, after being struck on the right side by something moving very fast while I was cleaning the gutters of a small house. I remember the jarring of hitting the ground, and my shoulder taking the brunt of it. I wasn’t able to get back up there to finish the job, because the ladder vanished (maybe it disintegrated on impact?) Since I couldn’t finish the job, I hopped in a little tractor and mowed the lawn instead.

Walkies was nice, if uneventful… lots of traffic at the airport… many small jets taking off, going to who knows where. I was reflecting on where they were heading… work? a funeral in another state? a wedding? a new life? I daydreamed about a big number painted on the side of the airplane…telling how many people were happy to be going to where they were headed, how many indifferent, and how many unhappy.

Thermasilk has the niftiest commercials. twig hair running in mazes, the man who throws flaming knives at the woman, Medusa dancing with the flaming gladiator, one is of an ice-princess and balls of light that seem to be faeries, and the redhaired woman with the fire breathing dragon. I’m *really* impressed with the whole series. No dice on a search for the videos online… just the regular stuff… sadly, adcritic.com has been snapped up by another company.

Well, off to water the plants and do last minute prep work before I head out. sayonara, dear journal.

Spam radio. Strangely soothing.

What’s better than reversing the effects of aging with human growth hormones, investing in stocks that will skyrocket, and getting millions of dollars from the Bank of Nigeria? Why, putting it all to music. Spamradio takes all the Internet’s greatest hits and makes beautiful music. Unlike recording outfits, they even parse the sexy ones into their own section, which is good. You know these kids today; the sensational stuff always hits the top of the charts.

nighty night, dear journal.