Hmm... Big brain is giving me all sorts of stop errors. I guess the time has finally come to give it the long-overdue overhaul. I had a power spike on Friday that knocked it out for a sec (apparently my ups is kaput now, too), and it was working fine until I check it out today when I hopped over to my desk and discovered the power off, and that it loads the OS (win 2k pro) about halfway before freezing up. Even safe mode causes it to reboot or freeze up.

Looks like little brain lappie is going to be my connection until I can pick up a few essentials (Namely a hard drive, a new power supply, a UPS, and a good drill with a Phillips attachment.) The main reason I hadn't attacked it to put in my sound card was that the blasted screws were pneumatically drilled in last time, and I can’t get 'em open again. I tried, but stopped when I realized I'd almost stripped one with my manual screwdriver.

Maybe while I'm at it, I'll pick up a speedier processor and a DVD writer while I'm at it. prices are good. This also gives me a good incentive to update all my laptop drivers, too.

Hmm. My web server is down. I wonder what's happening there. I'll give it an hour and they start to rattle some chains. [update: it's up again! yay! but I can't ftp for some reason! Boo! the scribble of my dreamself holding a squirming, plucked tentacle eye will have to wait.]

{Update to the update...FTP is back!}

I'm on call this week... and need to find another person or two we can hire to help take up the slack when the Kahuna's out of town.

Doc agreed with the specialist... I called to start the wheels in motion for a time for my surgery. I've also been discussing the idea seriously about buying a condo. I figure that even if I don't keep it, I'm all for putting my rent toward equity rather than just in some other person's pocket. The consultant I talked to said that I can comfortably work out a regional one at about $125k on my income and credit. If I decide to turn it around and sell it later, I should make a tidy profit, too.

---

Random mental wandering.

I've almost always dwelled near a large body of water, usually the shore of Atlantic Ocean. Between growing up near Cape Cod (note to self, write about the cranberry bogs sometime) and the summering in Florida Keys, I'd say that the furthest I've lived from the ocean was when we were in Alexandria, Virginia. (Even then, we were right on the Potomac, a *DANG COLD* river, even in the summer, if memory isn't exaggerating over time.) Contrary to popular belief, I've never had a residence under a bridge, in order to eat passing goats or unwary travelers unwilling to pay a toll.

I remember folks being really afraid of the beach when Jaws came out. I was only about six years old, but the killer-shark hysteria was amazingly high. All of those shore-bound places where I've lived naturally had a significant amount of tourism by the beach, and the year that movie was released, the visitors began acting even more irrational than usual. Lots of folks were too frightened to even walk along the water... somehow, some way, a ravenous, blood-lustful, twenty-foot man-eating fish with triple rows of pearly white and razor sharp teeth was going to leap onto shore, grab them, emit a long, deep, haunting laugh of pure aquatic evil, and finally bite 'em in half, twelve feet away from where the water stops and the sand begins. The real telling element was how you could see people scanning the surface of the water, looking for that one dorsal fin that spelled total carnage for the poor victim splashing, flailing and generally having fun fooling in the "deep end."

I figured they were *looking* for a monster to get them. Having spent enough time by the water, I was pretty aware of sharks, and knew something about their behaviors and mannerisms. I knew there was the merest likelihood of being attacked by a shark, even smaller by a colossal great white. Even in recent years, when there's been a notable increase in the number of attacks along the East coast, the amount of them is still tiny. I had no fear of being attacked by a shark when I went into the water. Sure, if I saw them, I'd get out, but it's not something that gave me pause. I had more immediate things to worry about: man-o-war stings, and mean ol' crabs that pinched your toes if you stepped on them by accident Most worrisome was the undertow.. my brother's surfing drove that point home one time when I was about sixteen, and he got pulled out really fast. I'm glad that my dad was a strong swimmer and was able to recover him quickly. I didn't even realize he'd gone that far until dad was out there calling to him.

That said, I can't remember the last time I went diving, surfing, or swimming in water more than chest deep. Perhaps that's overdue. I'd like to float out and around Red Reef Park for a bit. I'd like to see some stuff from the snorkel perspective.

---

Again, this year, It's October, and I've heard nothing about Oktoberfest (which generally starts in the last half of September). On researching, it looks like I missed it this past weekend. Ah well, there's always Bavarian Village.

---

Handy dandy Admin tools recently discovered -

F.I.R.E. is the Forensic & Incident Response Environment Bootable CD. Its a downloadable ISO that allows you to gathers tons of information on dead and alive machines.

Offline NT Password & Reg Editor Bootdisk is a very simple bootable CD that lets you change passwords on a machine you have physical access to. The bootable CD version includes support for some SCSI cards.

Other handy ones -

Free IP Subnet Calculator from solarwinds.net

Free TFTP Server from solarwinds.net

Free GFI LANguard NS Scanner 3 (non-commercial)

Ethereal Protocol Analyzer

Free SSH Client

Free SSH/Terminal Client (Nags)

Free Angry IP Scanner

Awful plastic surgery.

*snerk* - "Starting from: Bag End, Hobbiton, The Shire / Arriving at: The Cracks of Doom, Mordor"

Here's the Return of the King Trailer, while I'm at it. Christmas isn't very far away, at all, at all.

Aqua Teen Hunger force soundboard - Carl.

( Revenge of the Nerds Quiz )

Monkey Heaven is a tribute to the cult classic live action Japanese TV series Monkey (sometimes known as Monkey Magic), made by NTV in the late 1970s, and starring Masaaki Sakai, Toshiyuki Nishida, Shiro Kishibe, Masako Natsume, Tonpei Hidari, Shunji Fujimura, Mieko Takamine.

Private William D. Huff enlisted with the Confederate army in June 1861 in the 13th Louisiana Infantry and was captured at the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia on September 20, 1863. He began his diary as he entered Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois, and ended it when he was paroled and returned to his Louisiana home in May 1865.

Hmm.. the musician I was going to do a website for has reworked her act to being a medium.

Don't forget, Friday September 19 is Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Ah, wonderful! "You are sire to 72 other vampires, including: LdySaphyre (7040 pints), MissV (2613 pints), Liliana (2570 pints), gilbella (1266 pints), mixedresults (1246 pints), Morgoth (564 pints), Nathanael (302 pints), night_flyer (300 pints), wchmum (281 pints), King of Ice (222 pints)." Well on my way to having a gang of 100 by Halloween. Care to be a part of my gang of vampires?

I can tell every time the lemmiwinks episode of South Park comes on, because I get massive hits looking for the lyrics.

Via mskaren911 - Any Photo on Playing cards Deal yourself in for fun with this pack of photo playing cards in a tin! Your favorite photo is featured on the back of every card in this standard, 52 card deck (plus 2 jokers). You also get a matching tin to hold your cards in! Makes a uniquely personal gift for card playing friends or family members. That's a pretty cool idea, although a wee bit pricey for what you get.

I took an hour nap this afternoon, and I feel pretty good, even after yesterday's poor night's sleep. Only

Ok, I worked out what was partly fubar with my system...MSIE had a lot of damaged items. If your system is being naughty, feel free to try the following. (I take no responsibility for your system, so go at your own risk.) I still need to replace my power supply and add, confirm the rest of my hardware. Yanking out and reinstalling Java runtimes seems to have helped a lot.

( RESOLUTION )

Something that may dismay ol' Danny when I tell him... or maybe not - MOND - (Modified Newtonian Dynamics)

Mordehai Milgrom started looking at dark matter and galactic revolutions. The dark matter/energy thing has some flaws and problems. He starts doing math, discovers a relatively simple mathematical adjustment to gravity that fits all known galactic weirdness.

There are several esthetic problems, the major one of which is there is no theoretical basis for MOND. It's observational. This has most other astronomers leery or dismissive about it. But, well... it works.

MOND works as follows... gravity is not always the same, and behaves differently under low accelerations. Essentially, gravity at low accelerations is stronger than would be determined by regular gravity laws.

Below this acceleration, called a0, acceleration becomes the square root of gravitational force. A0 x age of the universe (as far as people guess) happens to be around the speed of light. There is apparently something relating a0 and the cosmological constant.

As goofy as this sounds, there are several points that support the idea... one, it fits galactic observations better than dark matter. Two... Pioneer 10 and 11.

Both left the solar system and, before shutting down, mysteriously showed deceleration that did not fit what people were expecting. Engineers frantically looked for gas leaks, possible other bodies, etc... nothing. It is still a mystery why this happened. However... it fits MOND. Farther than about .1 light year from the sun you hit a0 levels.

It also explains why we never observe it here... everything in the solar system is under acceleration of the sun, well above a0.

If MOND is true, it means inertial and gravitational mass are not tied strictly. Which is f-ing weird.

But there are a lot of puzzles right now... perhaps MOND will uncover why the expansion of the universe is accelerating (which makes no sense).

For more fun physics, try - Amusement park physics: Design your own roller coaster online and see why you design succeed or failed.

Zombie City in 3-D (The Zombie simulation is now an exe, and you can get a better feel of how the city looks at an isometric tilt. C++ Source in the Zip)

I just had some seriously tasty beans and veggies for din din... lemon-salad is soooo good.

Good day today, and managed to recover a lost document for PR, and scrubbed a lot of the adware off of all the poor browsing computers, worked on setting up the reporting software for the quarterly and annual totals for the missing kids / Alzheimer’s / sexual predators database. I'm looking forward to getting the amber alert system down, too. I'm feeling really good about this gig...it's nice to think that I'm able to make a contribution, daily. My work ethic is high... It sort of feels like the library up vibe so many years ago. I only hope to avoid the Farace effect.

Brother came by at about 4:30, and we discussed a few things.. I'm glad I got to see him, as he was incommunicado for the last day or two. September 4 can't come quickly enough... speaking of which, I've got a final appt with the doc in a week to verify that I'm all in one piece and doin' Jim dandy, back / leg / knee-wise.

More free paper craft models.

Museum of the mind

Themed fonts from games, bands, TV/movies and misc.

Misc palm-cam pics from this morning between the church, the courthouse and jail.

( Three mildly blurry and poorly captured angles from the corner of Broward & Third )

also some cool blackout pics by John Wehr

Today's Eats -
Point Range: 31-36
Water: 5 Veg/Fruit: 2 Milk: 0
Points: 31.2 Adj: 0 Act: 3.8 Rem: 8.6
Bank: 10.0 Adj: 0
Bank Max: 10 Point: 5 Act: 4
Bank Method: Rolling 7 days
Vitamins: Yes

Breakfast: 8.0 points
8.0: Croissan'wich w/ Egg & Cheese

Lunch: 7.2 points
5.5: BK Veggie Burger w/o Reduced Fat Mayo
0.0: Side salad
1.0: Kraft Fat Free Ranch dressing
0.0: Soda; Low calorie; other than cola or pepper; w/aspartame
0.7: Olives

Dinner: 8.4 points
2.8: Baked beans in veggie sauce-1 cup
2.8: Baked beans in veggie sauce-1 cup
2.8: Baked beans in veggie sauce-1 cup
0.0: Side salad
0.0: Lemons; raw; w/o peel

Snack: 7.6 points
6.6: ice cream ; fudge ripple - 1 cup
1.0: Dove dark chocolate promise

Activity Log: (Min:Int: Points Desc)
20:L: 1.6 Morning- stretches
20:M: 2.2 Evening- stretches

I received a lovely, sweet sound card in the mail yesterday, and when I went to open the case on big brain, I discovered that my dinky little phillips-head driver isn't up to opening up the pneumatically drilled in screws from last upgrade… sort of like having an Easter basket wrapped in titanium cellophane. Sometime this weekend I'll see what I can do about rectifying that situation. For now, it's just taunting me, though. I'll have to ask Sappho if I should expect any special songs and dances I need to do for this motherboard, too... she's dealt with a bunch of these systems.

Mid-90s expression I don't miss hearing... "Don't go there"

Wasting a little time between coding and writing some letters… always fun to putter a bit.

Some of us find old sofas by the side of the road and refurbish our apartments with them. The Disposal Services Agency in the United Kingdom is a lot like that except they sell the stuff they pick up. If you're in the market for an old warship or a helicopter, they want to hear from you.

Keywords that hit my website today via Google - ( cut to stop later indexing )

A year ago I was burning a copy of Runteldat for Dale. Now neither of us works there. He, curiously enough, is at Nordis... the place that ran afoul of me in February. I see him on AIM every now again, and he's working with Tuan over there. I'll have to make a point of pinging him soon and saying hi.

Slow day today... Biggest event was switching some data over to stronger servers... Thoughts for the ZIS development in processing is rolling along nicely, though, all maintained on one server to stop conflicts. The designer has it in his site now, and I'm just home-brewing locally. Next ideas are potentially for semi-slowing terrain, flame, water, and maybe weapons for the humans.

Difficult eating up to my point level today. I've revised the WWcalc to use tenths of a point, instead of rounding up or down. I actually had to resort to adding a drink to dinner to account for my overly light lunch.

Today's eats (haven't had the snack yet)

Point Range: 31-36
Water: 8 Veg/Fruit: 0 Milk: 0
Points: 33.2 Adj: 0 Act: 0 Rem: 2.8
Bank: 10.0 Adj: 0
Bank Max: 10 Point: 5 Act: 4
Bank Method: Rolling 7 days
Vitamins: Yes

Breakfast: 8.8 points
3.2: Cranberry-apple juice drink; bottled
2.8: Cereals; REESE'S PUFFS
2.8: Cereals; REESE'S PUFFS

Lunch: 4.1 points
3.5: Goldfish
0.3: Egg; whole; hard-boiled
0.3: Egg; whole; hard-boiled

Dinner: 11.7 points
5.3: Amy's Enchilada dinner
3.2: Cranberry-apple juice drink; bottled
3.2: Cranberry-apple juice drink; bottled

Snack: 8.6 points
4.3: Toaster Pastries; POP TARTS; Frosted chocolate fudge
4.3: Toaster Pastries; POP TARTS; Frosted chocolate fudge

Water which is too pure has no fish.
-Ts'ai Ken T'an

I had a dream that there were bats in the closet of my old Boca apartment... An exterminator brought a trained monkey to run through the house with a net to collect them for release into the wild. Well, as we are standing there looking at the closet door covered with bats we hear something odd behind us. I turn around slowly to see a monkey with red eyes and long vampire fangs standing behind us. A vampire monkey, in full glory. The exterminator ran away but I just stood out front, holding Newt and watched as the monkey went after his former master. I went back inside, and was very confident that the bats were gone.

Here are some differences in the PHP/MySQL installation on UNIX vs. PHP/MySQL on windows:

1. Mysql passwords: On Win2k you can't just say 'localhost' you have to explicitly state the ip address of the server

2. Include_path() they are written very differently. On Win2k you have to explicitly state the drive that you want to look for the include paths on, or else it will look in the drive where PHP is installed

3. On Win2k you have to explicitly declare variables (I think...it's a good idea, anyway.)

Newest Google trick... Become a Google voyeur, a neat little programming trick that looks for online images still bearing the filename automatically generated by the digital camera that took them. and here I was, naming my images something that would make it easy to know what they were!

Thanks to tarpo (introduced me to it) and egofood (reminded me that I'd created an account) , I've been fiddling a little with Puzzle Pirates much of this morning. I'm already really good at running a bilge and carpentry (glorified bejeweled and tetris, with some clever changes), but my sword fighting skill is in need of some polish. It's still in beta, but that's part of what makes it fun! (Also, something to do when There is down... which is losing some of its shine with all the lag, and tech troubles lately... they let too many people in this last go-round, I think) If you do decide to play, look for user Scottobear, based out of Winter Solstice, working at the Cloth of Clothos, or aboard the Unique Grunion ... or Newtie on Guava Island. (When not aboard the Electric Eel) you can't go far wrong with Lego-looking pirates, chat, and puzzle games. Plus, my Scottobear avatar looks a lot like me (albeit in Lego-format) It's in need of some sounds, being mysteriously silent… but that's nothing a little background music here can't fix. Something I think would be fun to play with my sweetie, and maybe even a bigger group of pals.

"It tastes like a cross between vodka and chewing tobacco," said Fort Lauderdale resident Jonathan Cook after trying his first nicotini. "That's not necessarily a bad thing." Spoken like a man who's been on the business end of the impromptu beer bottle spittoon more than once. The Cathode Ray is a gay bar just up the street from here.... I'll refrain from making the blatant "cocktail" joke, and just say that it sounds like a disgusting drink. I'd think that a patch or nicotine gum would be a more appropriate alternative to sucking on a ragged, booze-soaked tobacco leaf. I'd much prefer a tropical froufrou drink.


Kama Sutra guide to safe sex ( archived article )

( big honkin' pile of quizzes )

a year ago - istockphoto, emergency day at work early-arrive (I wonder what'd happen if Sappho and Kev were out at the same time, now?), escape form alcatraz w/bro, misc meter quizzes, looking for cave/sea piccies

2 years ago - scud, agon, evil news, Wally out of the loop (he's still awaiting trial for some of his crimes), Thai din din, colon contents, just finding out about bubba-Ho tep

3 years ago - geophagy

( First/last meme )

Vampire game clue - Silver Apothecary between Silver & 33rd and Sycamore and 34th. Holy water available for 2000. I've also got 2 new baby vampires, hg & D... so I'm up again to having 7 active children. (not counting grandchildren, or great-grands... I wonder if I have any beyond that?) Just passed to Peacekeepers Mission 2 (Unicorn and 33rd) and got the message - Welcome, friend, to Peacekeepers Mission 2. Very sorry, but we can't do anything for you - you need one of our more advanced missions. Well, Where are those?

Can you tell a coder from a cannibal? try to work out which of the following spent time hacking computers and which preferred hacking away at corpses instead. From the fine people that brought you the best tribute to ray harryhausen ever.

( What you'd hear if you put a stethoscope up to the lower left corner of my anterior lobe )

How to make perfect miniature oranges for use in modeling and design. I may well be the one person that this was written for.

Police accuse Jean Lampron of stabbing Paul Vicnaire several times, but the woman insists the deed was done by Vicnaire's dead ex-wife, who was glowing and dressed "in a beautiful white robe."

Man jailed for linking to bomb sites ( Full article )

Was he posting the content himself, or was he just linking to it? What does that mean for Google? How about librarians for pointing me towards the bomb-making books in public libraries?

A new, nice, peaceful Orisinal game, Summer Walk. I love that designer's stuff. Fire Dragon is also new to me.

Tom Arnold is the Arby's oven mitt.

a year ago Newt Wakies, Croc bite brings beer, scotto-man, overtired, funions

2 years ago - vcr tape, gaming, militate, warren, scientific independence for researchers, Frontier Psychiatrist, evil SUV,

3 years ago - many folks join my Friendy-list (probably due to interests) , grover, graves museum

Fooling around with colors and design on my website, primarily text and link colors. I get the feeling of "Better Like This...or Like This?" from the eye doctor. I buzzed my self back and forth that I'm not sure right now.

A lot of fun talk about santorum, owl pellets and today. I surely held onto my crown of crap. This afternoon was just delightful, and I really mean that.

Speaking of dung...

Monday's audience burst into laughter during the seduction scene, when J.Lo spreads her legs for Ben and says, "It's turkey time. Gobble-gobble."

You couldn't make stuff like that up. From the new Ben and J-Lo debacle "Gigli".

And now some non-dung-

ROTK trailer

Duct tape superheroes.

Stereo ani-gifs. Neat effect, not work safe for artistic nudes.

Cool commercial fonts. I'm especially fond of fruitopia and cherry coke.

Got a call from the bro at the emergency room.. I swear, he's the most accident-prone person I know. I guess he cut his finger and needed a few stiches...The connection was bad, and I'm wainting for him to call me back.

a year ago - broken links, spamdemic map, floppy poll, dinner sick, new semagic client

2 years ago - hinterland, kickshaw, I like cooking, planet of ??? poll, Champions Spectre, my gal wants to leave me for the asian prince, shaking hands (not a real issue these days), treat pack,

3 years ago - idiot, the good and bad of the day, Good chinese food, bad April.