Happy Monday! Have some evil news... it's what's for breakfast!

Sacred Nose Job
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A Hindu woman has won £4,000 in damages after surgeons used "sacred" cow cartilage in her operation. The educational administrator said she would have never consented to the operation if she had known doctors were going to use parts of the cow, which is sacred to her religion.

Jerry Springer Guest Born
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A 51-year-old lesbian has given birth to her brother's baby after IVF treatment in America.
The revelation has provoked new fears that artificial insemination techniques are being misused.
It comes just weeks after a 62-year-old woman became France's oldest mother by using her brother's sperm to father a child.

Coon Bashing
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Several Sparta teen-agers appeared in Monroe County Circuit Court this week for their part in a game they call "coon bashing."
In the past two years, hundreds of animals including raccoons, deer and opossums have been killed in the game, said Department of Natural Resources officials.
Teens play the game by driving on rural roads in pickup trucks with anywhere from one to eight people in the back shinning spotlights on animals, said DNR Warden Rich Thole.
Shining is intended to cause the animal to stand still. When a group spots an animal, one person continues shining the animal while the others try to catch it.
The first to catch the animal steps on it. Then someone might beat it with a baseball bat or shoot it to death.

Man Tosses Puppies Into Shredding Machine
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A man accused of killing four puppies by dumping them into an agricultural shredding machine because he was tired of them making a mess could face felony charges of cruelty to animals.

Convict Wins $300,000 For Unlawful Entry
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James Stephens, a convicted burglar serving a 57-year sentence, took Marion County sheriff's deputies to federal court. His mother wound up winning more than $300,000 in a lawsuit over the way they entered her apartment to arrest him.

Brushing Your Butt
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A 69-year-old man who tried to relieve a painful bout of haemorrhoids with a toothbrush was forced to have the offending item surgically removed after it was lost "where the sun does not shine".
"In some instances, the incidents appear to be rather more recreational than accidental in nature."

Stupid joke of the day -

You know what they found in the potty, after Kirk left?
( Read more... )

word of the day - crux

crux \KRUHKS\, noun;
plural cruxes, also cruces \KROO-seez\:
1. The basic, central, or critical point or feature.
2. Anything that is very puzzling or difficult to explain or solve.

Crux is from Latin crux, "cross, torment, trouble."

The crux of why I just made a poo joke isn't as confusing as it might appear. :)

sweetalyssm got me thinking about random journals.

I long for customized random search buttons. The random journal as it is now doesn't do a lot for me, as my interests are usually a bit different than the average LJ-er, (according to statistics, the average LJ-er is a 16 year old girl... I'm Double that age and a male (worse, I'm a pod-person)). What I'd like to see is the user search engine return soon, so you can type in parameters. (and I'd like to add a parameter... "no foul language or l33t" text in a post. That way I could bypass the folks on a rant, or talking smack pseudo script-kiddy code. (and folks could find the same, if they wanted to read that stuff.) Heck, in the theme of Chris's recent post, I wonder if there's a clean way to implement a message size one, too.. "must contain at least 10 words" or whatever. I bet there is. (that'd snip out my Cap'n Kirk Joke...) Or, for example, have it cut out journals that use phrases or people you don't like... (For example, don't use anyone already on my friends list, or my blocked list, or anyone who uses too many ellipses (...'s, a guilty pleasure I partake in myself.)

The random feature hasn't helped me find any journals I like to read in a long time. However, the interests list, and mutual communities are a great idea for mining for new folks. Stef's latest idea of describing a friend and having you guess about them is another great idea.

random thoughts, as usual.

What happens during a full moon when a werewolf has bitten another wolf?

Is it piracy music when you're copying someone who samples other music?

Today's bonus word of the day: coulrophobia: fear of clowns. This particular phobia seems to be pretty wide spread for some reason. The majority of the people I know dislike clowns, the level of distaste ranging from the merely "icky" to the very direct "if you come any closer, I'm gonna shove that joy buzzer right up your oversized clown trousers".

http://phobialist.com/ there's a lot of 'em.

(no subject)

[Poll #2178]

the designer's lament. grr! Poor Mike, me, and everyone else that makes things webly.

Author: So, you've had a chance to look over the changes I want made to the online article, yes? When can I expect to see them?
Mike: Well, I had a couple of questions about that.
Author: Yes?
Mike: Uh... I've been looking at the changes, and it seems... I just wanted to make sure I understood...
Author: Yes?
Mike: ...that you want your tables to, uh, look like ass.
Author: Yes. The tables are unsatisfactory as they currently appear.
Mike: So you want us to change them, so that they look like ass.
Author: Correct.
Mike: Total ass.
Author: That's right.
Mike: You want us to take these perfectly clear and well-formatted tables... and turn them, basically you want us to turn them into an ass-cream sundae.
Author: Exactly.
Mike: With extra ass-sauce on top.
Author: You are exactly right.
Mike: ...
Author: ...
Mike: ...
Author: So when can I expect to see those changes?

Windows Utility Boot Disk w/CD-ROM Support - for my use, but you can have a copy if you like.

Windows Utility Boot Disk w/CD-ROM Support
To create a boot disk to use to boot a system during troubleshooting, save the following file and then run it to extract the bootable image to a floppy disk.

Windows 95 Download (boot_cd.exe -- 730k) Windows 98 Download (boot98cd.exe -- 662k)
Boot Diskette File List
attrib.exe
autoexec.exe
cabs.bat
chkdsk.exe
command.com
config.sys
debug.exe
drvspace.bin
ebd.sys
edit.com
fdisk.exe
finder.dat
format.com
himem.sys
io.sys
mscdex.exe
msdos.sys
nec_ide.sys
regedit.exe
scandisk.exe
scandisk.ini
sys.com
uninstal.exe

inspired by BTILC, and Kurt Russell... Indeed!

[Poll #2180]

The Chinese Have a lot of Hells.

(no subject)

My sweeties feeling under the weather, so went to bed early....sending her loving, comforting thoughts. *kisses and loves*

In other news DSL is back! hooray! Yeah, baby! I can surf and talk again!

On Video - Monty Python/Red Dwarf

In Belly - Woo... it was a luau-a-go-go..pineapple chunks, sweet peas, veggie dogs and ukulele music abounded as I crooned tiny bubbles to Newton (Who played at my feet as I threw milk rings for him to fetch as I ate. Looking sort of bad... my laptop's spacebar is missing taps when I smack it with my right thumb. I'll have to read my insurance policy, and see about what repair involves. I don't imagine it'll be much trouble. I don't want to take it apart myself if it voids any repair warrantee.

hopefully this will clear things up.

Hatten är din - the hat is yours

you will find the flash movie at come.to/hatten

( Here's the Lyrics, translated, many of you have probably seen it before )

Ok, just for the sake of saying so...after encountering a whole mess of things today.

After blathering on in an e-mail list as to why you shouldn't send HTML to folks back and forth... I figured I'd post it here, too. most writing done in a while.


My sympathies to all e-mailing from company environments where every message gets converted to HTML. Indeed, there is nothing the individual can do as this is almost always corporate policy and will not be changed. The reason is usually to tack on a corporate message of some sort to every outgoing piece of mail, and the editors of these programs to add commercials or corporate disclaimers and disavowals all default to HTML. Since this is the bailiwick of corporate Legal or Human Resources, don't expect them to look beyond the default setup.

Just to repeat the process in another order to show the sequence:

1) You write message scrupulously formatted in plain text, the format of champions.

2) But squatting on the outbound queue is a software suite for covering corporate asses. It reads everything outbound, and depending on how much
money you spend it can:

a) Virus check. Ha, as if. Even if it costs nothing because the software is on hand and part of a corp license, only the Dalai Lama would be evolved enough to *slow the queue down* just to be civil. OK, I exaggerate... slightly.

b) Check for hot words like ECHELON and quarantine anything doubtful. Remember, as most corps phrase their E-mail Usage Policy "use of the company e-mail system implies consent to the conditions outlined in this Policy", and that means you said it's OK for them to read your mail. They promise not to unless they *really* want to.

c) Check for words related to internal projects to prevent company secrets from going out.

3) It adds some advertising or legal boilerplate to distance the company from anything this bozo might say out to the real world.

a) The message was composed in an HTML editor and is in HTML format for that extra something that HTML always adds.

b) It tries to add the HTML coda to the plain text message, only to find that plain text doesn't support color or graphics.

c) So the plain text message in converted to HTML so the HTML coda can be added. And the world takes another step towards the Endtimes.

HTML is code that is interpreted in order to display the message in the chosen font and color and so on. It has access to the abilities of macro-enabled e-mail clients. It used to be said that e-mail couldn't infect your system with a virus because it didn't run anything, it just carried it.

That is no longer true, and I can't thank Microsoft enough for making that the standard.

These "features" can be turned off, but they default to On.

I can think of plenty of Ad Prac 101 reasons for making e-mail bigger and enabling macro "viruses" that can be written by grade schoolers.

According to Steve Gibson's page - http://www.grc.com

"Windows XP's new support of the full raw socket application programming Interface (API) allows for the creation of fraudulent and damaging Internet traffic. This has never been possible under Windows without first modifying the operating system with third-party device drivers - which has never been done by malicious programs."

and

"For the first time ever, applications running under the Home Edition of Windows XP - whether deliberately executed or running as hidden "Trojan" programs - will be easily able, without modifying the operating system in any way, to generate the most damaging forms of Internet attacks."

Denial of Service attacks on corporate routers, things like that.

Security software is going to be a hot item, expect weekly updates. Home firewalls for everyone with a cable modem. Net traffic updates on the commute to work. E-mail "going down" on a regular basis due to spam traffic and macro viruses.

Those gosh darn personal computers at home are a clear and present danger to business. They need to be regulated and licensed and restricted and above all controlled. ;)