The ESO and I were sitting in Quiznos tonight when I heard something on the radio.  It was Hall & Oates’ Private Eyes, which got me thinking - what other songs almost scream “psychotic control freak stalker”?

So far, I’ve made it to two. I’m disappointed.  Here’s what I have so far:

1. Private Eyes, Hall & Oates
2. Every Breath You Take, The Police

Of course, the fact that they both came out during the ’80s is definitely worth noting.  If we felt like stretching a little, we could throw in The Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) in the mix, which does have a “I’m going to follow you until the ends of the Earth” vibe.  That said, it doesn’t have anywhere near the level of creepiness that the other two songs had, and that’s what I’m looking for - I want at least a solid 60 minutes of pure, unadulterated pop music creepiness.

Help me out.  Point me in the direction of more stalker music.  You’ll thank me later.

That’s right - another one thrown into the hopper.  Enjoy!

Contrary to what Linux Hater might think, Linux is democracy.

That’s the problem.

Let’s get some background going before I dig into this:

Even though their numbers are small, they’re all on the internets! And like 23 hrs a day! They could all unite behind a common cause, organize, work together, and …. oh wait. Ha ha. I get it now. They can’t even do that to produce a working operating system. What makes anyone think they can do it in real life?

Yes that’s right folks. Lets not kid ourselves. Linux is not a democracy. Linux is anarchy. Everyone going in their own damn directions. It’s not about working together. It’s about works for me! It’s not Yes We Can, it’s Yes I Can.

For better or worse, Linux is a working operating system in much the same way that the American government is a working, functioning governing body - for the most part, just barely. Like most government that American citizens endure, Linux consists of a loose hodgepodge of various components designed to, at least on paper, do one thing and one thing well.  Of course, just like in real, democratic government, few of those components really do anything well, and even fewer are actually designed to talk to each other.  The end result is an operating system that is as easy to use as a standard-issue democratic government bureaucracy.

But, look on the bright side - it’s free!

American civil government is, at its very core, designed to fail.  The Founding Fathers wanted the American government to do as little as possible while making sure that it could still defend the borders and keep the states from killing each other.  Consequently, the Founding Fathers gave the government some very specific powers, telling it to do a few things and do them well, which it largely does - run the military (best in the world, no matter how you look at it), keep interstate commerce functioning (reasonably successful, even if it uses the Commerce Clause to do things it shouldn’t - then again, tell me there isn’t a Luser out there who doesn’t abuse sed), and… well, that’s about it.  American government is not designed to do anything past those basic roles - consequently, what roles it’s adopted since then have been crudely bolted on to the simple and plain framework set forth over 200 years ago.  Sound familiar?  It should.  Networking, graphics, and sound were all bolted on to Unix in a similar fashion - since Linux was initially little more than another implementation of a Unix-like system, guess what it inherited?  To add insult to injury, Linux then adopted the most democratic form of software management possible.  The end result is something that should be familiar with anyone who’s bothered to deal with American government for more than about five seconds - pure, unadulterated, unmitigated mediocrity, born and raised by a series of conflicting special interest groups, each trying to make more noise than the next.

The great thing about democracy as far as politics go is that, yes, it’s mediocre, and, yes, it’s prone to failure.  However, as I’ve discussed in the past, that’s not only part of the design, that’s what makes democracy great.  The rub here, though, is that there’s a world of difference between picking an operating system and migrating to a place with a different governing style.  Migrating to another place involves making new friends, getting citizenship documentation taken care of, getting a new job or two, finding a new place to live - the process can take years.  Migrating to a new operating system, on the other hand, at least as far as a single machine goes, can take as little as a day.  Plus, the consequences of choosing a poor operating system are frequently much less dire than the consequences of being born in, say, North Korea or some other totalitarian hellhole, which changes the value proposition of “totalitarian ‘non-free’ software” vs. “democratic ‘free’ software” dramatically.

The beauty of totalitarian, dictatorial systems is that, when they’re led by small cadres with clear roles, assuming the person in charge is competent and visionary, they can achieve amazing successes, at least for a fairly short amount of time.  The reason is simple - vision. A charismatic leader can marshall resources and manpower most effectively through a totalitarian system that allows the leader to call the shots.  The smaller the system in which the leader is working in, the more successful the leader becomes - this is why Apple is considered “trendy” and “visionary” while Microsoft is considered more of a “follower” in the industry.  As Microsoft exemplifies, though, even a totalitarian system will need to delegate authority as the system grows.  Also, totalitarian systems lose power when they have to acquire necessary assets from other systems - this is why autarky (the so-called “Juche Idea“) is so popular with totalitarian systems, and also why Apple has as much power as it does compared to Microsoft, even though Apple is vastly smaller.  Consequently, a well-run totalitarian system will always out-perform even the best running democratic system - even the Founding Fathers knew this, which is why it’s legally and Constitutionally possible to suspend habeus corpus during wartime.

In the real world, when a well-run totalitarian system stops being well-run, the end result is the collapse of that totalitarian system, frequently with dire consequences for everyone living within it.  This, more often than not, leads to significant loss of money, manpower, and intellectual capital.  In the case of computer technology, however, something entirely different happens - other competing systems will step in and take customers (i.e. money and manpower) away from the poorly run totalitarian system.  Thus, each system learns from all of the previous ones, learning new technologies while also learning from the mistakes of old, all without loss of life or, usually, data.  Consequently, democracy’s greatest strength - the ability to be consistently mediocre - is eliminated since there’s no need for consistent mediocrity; consistent greatness can be achieved by simply hopping from one visionary system to the next.  Worst yet, since democratic systems tend to dilute vision as much as humanly possible (vision has the nasty habit of being unpopular at first, after all), it’s impossible for democratic systems to produce visionary, industry-leading software, except in areas that totalitarian systems have found to be uneconomically viable.

In short, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Democracy simply doesn’t work.

First, a moment of self-disclosure:  I am not a morning person.  Not even remotely.  Getting me awake under the best of circumstances involves an Act of Congress, a 21-gun salute, and enough coffee to fund a small South American insurrection.  This made college interesting; my freshman year was a near-disaster due to me discovering that “not a morning person” and “Calculus at 8 in the morning” simply do not mix. After that year, I quickly adjusted my schedule to make sure no class started before 10 a.m.  Since then, however, I’ve recognized that, though I may naturally wake up around 9 or so in the morning, the rest of the world doesn’t, and, until I get high enough in my field to work at a place with flextime or that at least allows telecommuting, I better learn to find some way to adjust against this particular weakness.

This journey has led to something of a small war between myself and my subconscious.  At first, I started with something simple - I turned up the volume of my alarm.  My subconscious adapted by learning how to turn off my alarm in my sleep.  I then asked my former roommate, who woke up a little before I did, to wake me up in the morning.  My subconscious adapted first by talking in my sleep, then following it up with grabbing limbs in my sleep, which ultimately led to me starting to hit people in my sleep - this sufficiently discouraged that roommate enough to nix that idea.  Talking to others like me, I picked up another trick - I moved the alarm clock to the other side of the bedroom from my bed.  That was the most successful measure, for, by the time I got out of bed and walked to the alarm clock to turn it off, my mind was usually awake enough for me to stay awake once I killed the alarm.

The key word in that last sentence, of course, was usually, which brings me to where I am today.  At this point, I literally sleepwalk to the alarm, turn it off, then sleepwalk back to bed and go to sleep.  This, needless to say, has done absolutely wonderful things to my work schedule.  Consequently, I need to come up with another countermeasure.  The catch, though, is that the ESO, though also difficult to wake up in the mornings, hasn’t quite reached the level of sheer and utter malevolence between herself and her sleepy subconscious; if I get too creative, I risk turning her into collateral damage.  That would not bode well for my ability to continue sleeping next to her.

Here are my thoughts:

• I could get another baby monitor, place it next to the alarm clock, which would be relocated to the opposite end of the apartment, and put the other side of it in the bedroom.  This would make it necessary for me to walk all the way to the other end of the apartment in order to turn it off.  Of course, this could be countered by my subconscious simply turning off the baby monitor.  Until that point, of course, the ESO would probably be rather miffed that it took the better part of five minutes for me to wander over to the alarm clock.
• I could do what I did during finals week in college - plug in a set of computer speakers into the alarm clock and turn the volume to maximum.  Thus, when the alarm went off, I’d wake up due to about 90 dB of morning talk radio blasting through my ears.  Of course, when I did this in college, my entire dorm floor was ready to kill me, and, in fact, had begun to organize a small posse to find out whose alarm clock was going off - it didn’t help I had a final at 7 in the morning and that it took me about 15 minutes to realize that was my alarm clock going off like a jet engine, so I should probably turn it off.  Yeah… I wasn’t very popular in college.
• Put the alarm clock in the kid’s room.  This would wake the kid up, waking me up, and waking everyone else in the house up.  Of course, this would result in the instant loss of genitalia as soon as the ESO discovered what I did.

So, I’m submitting to all of you - how do you wake up in the morning?  What tricks do you have up your sleeve to make sure that, when that alarm goes off, you get out and start your day?

Thank you, Fark.  Thank you.

Then: America must embrace wind power to save the planet. Now: Big Wind is despoiling nature, ruining America’s farms, splitting up families. Soon to come: America must embrace moonbeams and unicorn farts to save the planet

Naturally, the first comment under this thread goes a little something like this:

voltOhm

2008-08-17 01:39:05 PM

Heh.  I’m not sure what more there is to say.  I could insert a rant about how generating electricity and energy is going to require more than simply waiting for the stuff to fall from the sky - I mean, you have to have something to, I don’t know, collect it with, right?  But, that would be incredibly redundant and pointless, so there you go.

• I don’t care what this commercial says, Soyjoy does not cause spontaneity, nor is it fortified with optimism.  It’s a bar of soy. A bar of Vicoden, on the other hand, could very well cause spontaneity.  Outside of that, though, do they really expect people to believe that, if they happen to eat something one step away from fruit-filled tofu, they’ll suddenly want to jump rope and spread herpes and mono to strangers?  Ugh.
• I showed the ESO Firefly last night - plowed through the first three episodes.  Her view, at least thus far, is that it would be a perfectly tolerable show if it wasn’t for the constant twang in the background.  She likes the dialog and thinks the “space cannibals” (Reavers) are an interesting twist; unfortunately, she’s having some serious troubles getting past the “western” part.  Can’t entirely say I blame her - it took me a bit to warm up to that myself.  Then again, I had Kaylee around to encourage me; for whatever reason, neither Mal nor Jayne are doing it for her.  Weird.
• I like bullet points.  They’re fun!
• The Dakota has been successfully repaired.  This makes me incredibly happy, in no small part since it means I can actually drive it again.  Ah, good times.
• It is said that, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Russia invaded Georgia - that’s an action.  Georgia, by the looks of things, seems to be largely destined towards becoming a slightly rebellious vassal state of Russia; this was probably expected within minutes of Russia declaring they were invading Georgia.  On the other hand, Russia has successfully freaked out the rest of its neighbors enough that the Ukraine is offering the services of its early warning system, Poland is volunteering to host our missile defense system, and Estonia is providing IT support against Russian hackers.  Of course, each of these actions have equal and opposite reactions, as well - for example, the reaction from Russia regarding Poland’s enthusiasm towards our missile defense shield was to threaten Poland with nuclear assault.

I’ve got another Car Lust up, folks.  Behold - my words are being read by thousands!

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Above is a picture that says, more than anything else tonight, how my efforts to fix my truck are going.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

A couple of weeks ago, I took my truck in to get the alignment checked and taken care of.  I purchased the “Lifetime Alignment” for it a couple of years ago, which I like to take advantage of fairly frequently.  This last time, however, my mechanic told me something rather troubling - due to some serious issues with some of the hardware, they weren’t able to align it this time around.  They wanted to replace the upper and lower ball joints, a tie rod end, the Pitman arm, and the idler arm.  They also wanted to charge $800 for this laundry list.

I thanked them for bringing this list of problems to my attention, then mentally flipped them the bird.  I also hit up RockAuto and got the parts I needed to do the job myself.  Total tally:  $170.  So far, so good.  About a week later, since I cheaped out on shipping, I received the parts that I needed and a couple of extras - why replace one tie rod end, after all, when you can replace both of them?  And, why not replace the tie rod adjustment sleeve while I’m at it?  They’re right there!

And thus, it began…

In fairly short order, I realized I was going to need some tools.  For starters, I needed a ball joint press.  Since I figured I would be doing this sort of thing roughly once, maybe twice in my lifetime, I figured I’d go cheap - the tools didn’t have to last forever, after all.  They just needed to last long enough for me to replace a few ball joints in my truck.  No big deal, right?  So, I went to the Harbor Freight here in Reno and went shopping.

On the off chance that some of my readers might have no idea what a Harbor Freight is, it’s probably best to describe it via simile:  Harbor Freight is to tools what Walmart is to clothes.  Harbor Freight sells very inexpensive tools, which, at least on paper, sounds like the perfect place to go when you’re just a sporadic home mechanic.  You don’t go to Harbor Freight for tools that your livelihood depends on, of course, but, at least for me, tools are a cost center, not a profit center, so anything that minimizes that cost sounds like a perfectly brilliant idea.  So, I got myself a ball joint press, a pickle fork, and the pictured Pitman arm puller.

I still have the pickle fork.  It’s a little bent and dented, but it still works.  That’s one for three.

During use of the ball joint press, the C-clamp bent.  Keep in mind that, in a ball joint press, the C-clamp is basically a gigantic, twenty pound C-shaped piece of solid metal. The trouble, of course, is the “metal” part - see, most tools are made out of steel.  Not Harbor Freight tools, though - no, they use a little thing called “ductile iron“.  Now, why somebody would make something that needs to hold its shape under extreme pressure out of a substance whose sole redeeming quality is that it bends easily, well, I can only guess, and my guess would involve lots and lots of Yuan and Renminbi.  Or, to put it another way, it’s all about the BenjaMaos.

So, I returned the ball joint press and used AutoZone’s loan-a-tool program to get a better one for a day or two.  It turned out to be cheaper than getting my own, anyways.  Thus, after two days, my coworker and mechanically minded friend (who shall be referred to as “D-Prime” from here on out) and I successfully changed the ball joints in the truck.

So far so good, right?  Well…

The tie rods were easy enough to contend with using the tools we had - the pickle fork dealt with them appropriately.  There was still the idler arm and the Pitman arm to contend with, however, and all the pickle fork pounding in the world wasn’t going to remove those things.  Anticipating this, I picked up the pictured Pitman Arm puller at Harbor Freight while I was over there returning the ball joint press, thus proving that, no, I most certainly do not learn from my mistakes if it can at all be helped.

Today, I used the Pitman Arm puller.  The Pitman Arm, I’m sad to say, is still attached to the truck, firmly stuck to the steering gear, taunting me, laughing at me. It has successfully proved, beyond a shadow of any doubt, the folly of using ductile iron tools against quality Chrysler Engineering.

(Coincidentally - Dodge Dakotas are easy to work on, assuming you don’t get tools that are cheaper than the truck.  Fortunately, you have to get some really cheap tools to pull that off…)

The task for tomorrow?  Buy a Pitman Arm puller from someone that can actually import tools from the post-Cultural Revolution part of China.  Remove the Pitman Arm.  Then, use that tie rod remover pictured next to it to deal with the idler arm.  That one I’m not concerned about - I know the tie rod remover works well enough to dislodge that sucker from the tie rod.  No worries there.

With that, here’s another, equally crumulent picture of the cheaply made Pitman Arm “puller”:

Today, I’m going in a slightly different direction. Instead of writing about something that nerds like, I’m going to touch on something nerds hate. Today’s lesson in hate:

Social Networking Sites

You meet someone. You’re not sure if they’re cool or not - they seem a little quirky, but, at first, that seems kind of interesting. They’re able to talk intelligently about just about every topic you throw at them. You decide you must keep in touch with this person, so you ask them if they have a Facebook account.

They say no.

Hmm, you think to yourself, that’s strange. All of you other friends have Facebook accounts. Maybe this person is just a Myspace holdover and hasn’t bothered to migrate yet. It’s been a while since you’ve signed in, of course, but now you might have an excuse to check in again. So, you ask them what their Myspace user name is.

They don’t have one.

Twitter? Denied. Now this person is starting to look pained and a little annoyed. Well, okay, you think to yourself, let’s ask this person how they keep track of their friends. Surely they have some mechanism available to them to let 1,247 of their closest friends know what’s going on in their lives. Maybe this person just uses Livejournal or something.

“Livejournal?” he snorts. “You’re kidding, right?”

Now you’re getting pissed. He’s starting to sound awfully condescending, and you’re not appreciating it much. Plus, you’re discovering that this new, interesting person you met seems to not care how their friends find about them. However, as a last ditch effort, you decide you’ll ask this new person how they keep track of their friends and vice-versa. What site does this person use?

The new person relaxes for a second. You can tell that they are very relieved you asked that question, though you don’t understand why just yet. Then, they give you their answers, and you’ve never heard of any of them. They start talking about Usenet. They mention that they have a blog on a web server that’s operating out of their closet. At about the point that they begin to explain what patches they made to Apache in order to get their customized installation of Wordpress going, you realize something:

You’ve met a nerd.

Nerds despise social networking sites for a variety of reasons. This much is fairly well documented. Most nerds have issues with how it makes “advanced” technology like web pages accessible, and how that will lead to the end of all civilization.  This has been the mantra of nerds for at least as long as AOL has been a household name, and there’s a very good reason for this:  Whenever somebody gets on to something like Myspace, Facebook, AOL, Geocities, or whatever and it breaks/doesn’t do what they think it should/they can’t get it to do what they want it to do/etc., who do they call to fix it?  That’s right - the nerd. After a while of this, the nerd gets rather tired of dealing with these issues, most of which would have been prevented if, in their mind, the person would’ve just used some basic common sense and did “simple” things like finding the checksum of that program they downloaded and seeing if it matches the number the manufacturer provides, or setting up SSH tunnels to key sites, or checked to see if their HTML syntax conformed to the latest W3C standards.  That the person they’re trying to help has no idea what a checksum is or what an SSH tunnel is just reinforces their belief that (insert social networking site here) is a haven of illiterate, drooling morons who are not fit for breeding stock.

When dealing with a nerd, it’s important to remember that, if you require them to be remotely helpful, it’s important to not come off as a drooling moron.  Consequently, avoid mentioning social networking sites around one.  If you must, try to couch it with rationalizes such as, “Well, I wouldn’t be on there, but my family is on there and it’s the only way I can keep track of them.”  Be sure to declare any feature that allows someone to talk or interact with you as “annoying” and “frustrating”.  This will tell the nerd that you’re in it to make your friends and family happy, and not because you’re a drooling moron - this will cause a feeling of minor sympathy to well up in the nerd, which can be used to extract favors and tech support.

Plus, I’m Finally Remembering To Use Capital Letters With My Subject Titles Again!

For those not in the know, or haven’t been paying attention around here, I’m not a big fan of using Windows on a personal basis.  I have no problems recommending it in corporate environments or for friends; I just don’t like having to stare at it on my own machines after working on it 40+ hours a week.  So, a couple of years ago, I threw in an Ubuntu CD and never looked back.

Never, that is, until Hardy Heron, the latest version.  Suddenly, I was tripped in “Evolution of an Ubuntu User” mode, and I wanted out.  Unfortunately, most of the problems I was experiencing dealt with products that other distributions were starting to include, so, at least as far as Linux was concerned, I was feeling a little stuck.  Some of the problems I had included:

• Copy/Paste didn’t work on the Terminal Server Client.  Guess what?  It’s a known bug.
• If I closed my laptop and opened the lid while the power was on, the screen would remain blank.  Guess what?  It’s also a known bug.
• VMWare won’t install due to an incompatible kernel version.  Great. Thank goodness Linus can change the API between kernel 2.6.19 and 2.6.24.  I’d hate to think that a product with incremental minor version numbers actually has, y’know, a stable API. Hell, let’s change function names on the fly!  It’ll be fun!

This state of affairs continued for the better part of three months.  I was getting frustrated, tired, and just generally sick of it.  I was even flirting with trying a BSD… heck, I still might.  At least their upgrade process is almost sane, in that they actually have a semi-stable kernel API, among other things.  Besides, the more I read the Linux Hater’s Blog, the more I agree with it - there some profoundly stupid things going on with Linux, and most of that is by design.

The good news, though, is that I did find some fixes to two out of my three problems:

1. I fixed Copy/Paste by turning off Compiz.  I didn’t like the eye candy anyways.  Of course, why Ubuntu felt it was necessary to turn on, by default, something that is at version 0.5.2, I don’t know.  But, it stopped mucking about with my X server, which meant that rdesktop had access to my clipboad again.  Huzzah!

   (For those of you keeping track at home, you can turn off Compiz by going to System->Preferences->Appearance->Visual Effects->None.  Then, restart; it’ll turn off the effects but Compiz still kind of runs in the background unless you restart your computer.)

2. Sadly, Compiz was not the cause of my laptop’s malfeasance whenever I closed it.  So, I looked around and discovered that Ubuntu’s hardware manager was giving me old Nvidia drivers (169.something).  Maybe that has something to do with it?  With a little searching, I discovered EnvyNG, which allows me to install Nvidia drivers in a halfway sane manner (i.e. without having to recompile the stupid thing whenever Ubuntu decides my kernel needs to be updated - this happens frequently).  It updated my drivers, I restarted… and now I have my laptop back!  It closes!  It opens!  I’m happy!  Even CTRL-ALT-F1 through F6 work!  Happy days!

Of course, VMWare still doesn’t work, which means I can’t even manage VMWare machines with my laptop unless I start learning about remoting into applications via X.  That said, anything with instructions like these should probably be shunned without prejudice…

Our computer is known to the outside as light, and we’re in domain uni.verse. If we’re running a normal X server, the display is known as light.uni.verse:0. We want to run the drawing program xfig on a remote computer, called dark.matt.er, and display its output here on light.

Suppose you have already telnetted into the remote computer, dark.matt.er.

If you have csh running on the remote computer:

dark% setenv DISPLAY light.uni.verse:0
dark% xfig &

or alternatively:

dark% xfig -display light.uni.verse:0 &

If you have sh running on the remote computer:

dark$ DISPLAY=light.uni.verse:0
dark$ export DISPLAY
dark$ xfig &

or, alternatively:

dark$ DISPLAY=light.uni.verse:0 xfig &

or, of course, also:

dark$ xfig -display light.uni.verse:0 &

It seems that some versions of telnet automatically transport the DISPLAY variable to the remote host. If you have one of those, you’re lucky, and you don’t have to set it by hand. If not, most versions of telnet do transport the TERM environment variable; with some judicious hacking it is possible to piggyback the DISPLAY variable on to the TERM variable.

You have got to be kidding me.  Ugh.  Of course, that writeup was written in 2001, so things have certainly improved since then (NOTE:  Don’t think about what Citrix was doing with Windows 2000, nor that Microsoft had a working Terminal Server implementation by then!).  I’ll have to look at that later.

Oh, and, no, VNC is not a solution.  Stop that.

One of the fascinating aspects of living with an infant that people rarely nail down is what an infant does to the time you have during a day.  Most people will tell you that infants require tons of time and tons of attention - believe it or not, this really isn’t true.  Always remember that, when dealing with infants, they behave very similarly to dogs; they’ll sleep through most of the day, being awake at various random parts to eat, poop, and occasionally snuggle.  That’s all an infant does.  In many ways, you can treat an infant similarly to a dog - if you feed it, talk to it, occasionally take it outside, and bathe it from time to time, you’re meeting its needs for the next few months.

There’s one hitch, though.

A seldom-discussed fact of infant life is that, strange as it might sound, they actually sleep more than adults.  A lot more.  Infants will actually sleep up to 14 hours each day.  What they won’t do, at least not for a few months, is actually do enough of that in a single block to be remotely useful for an adult sleep cycle.  This wrecks complete and total havoc on the sanity of the parents.

What this means, at least in my experience, is that you still have nearly as much time as you ever had to get things done, but a lot less energy to do them with.  Everything just kind of feels like you’re pushing through molasses, making everything take longer than it used to in order to get things done.  It’s not that the kid has really affected your time schedule much - he’s barely awake half the day, after all, and it’s not like children aren’t portable - he’s just completely nuked your ability to actually use your time with any efficiency.

This, coincidentally, is my cop-out on why my blog has suffered a minor meltdown.  The good news is that work has been increasingly quiet as of late, which tends to help my energy levels a little.  The bad news is that my ability to maintain a coherent thought worth writing about is directly proportional to the amount of sleep I’m able to get during the night, and, at this point, we’re in “How the hell am I not babbling random Broadway showtunes?” territory.  I’m not kidding.  During a work meeting tonight, I caught myself humming the Canadian National Anthem. No idea why.  Not sure what the point of it was, or what its relevance was.  My brain just decided it was time to hum it, so I did.  Thankfully, I did it quietly, so I doubt it was noticed, but, even so, it’s a little disconcerting.

Things on the list for the near future:

• I haven’t given up on the “Stuff Nerds Like” feature around here.  I have a few posts started, believe it or not.  The trouble is actually coming up with something interesting to say about them - I mean, you can only write, “Nerds really like X.  It helps them escape the cold, harsh nature of reality,” so many times before you feel you’re not only repeating yourself but not really providing anything useful to the conversation.  Yeah, I get it - Science Fiction, LARPing, etc. is all an attempt to escape reality.  So is Burning Man.  Surely, in the wild, twisted maze that is my brain at this point, is some insight that digs just a wee bit deeper than that.  I mean, if you need me to state the obvious, well, I can do that, but c’mon…
• At some point this week, I will find a way to check out some Hot August Nights action.  Then, I shall blog about it… but not here.  I shall blog about it there.

When Aiden was born, my traffic numbers, according to Sitemeter, went into the toilet.  I couldn’t understand why, or what had happened.  Then, I noticed I was getting no referrals, except for a couple from Google - what was going on, I wondered?  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and decided it was high time to find out what happened.

The answer?  I’m an idiot.  That’s what happened.  Apparently, sometime close to when Aiden was born, I wiped out the Sitemeter code.  Brilliant. What I was getting was my hit counter on the old Blogspot blog.

Oy.  Sleep deprivation is a bitch, people.  I’m not kidding.

Today’s special:  The Suzuki Samurai.

I’m hoping that my schedule becomes more sane next week, which will help alleviate the dearth of decent posts around here.  It took effort to throw together a Car Lust post for the week, and it’s not like they need to be terribly long or frequent.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here.  There is, unfortunately, a reason for that:

I have an infant at home.

For reasons that clearly only make sense in the female mind, the ESO would much rather I focus my energies when I’m home on helping her with the kid than with more important pursuits, such as furthering my campaign for global domination through blog.  Consequently, things are going to be a little lean around here for a little while.  That’s not to say I’ve given up blogging entirely, mind you, though, with the hit numbers I’m getting lately, I would not be insane to do so.  I mean, at this point, shutting this thing down would disappoint a whopping five people.  Why on God’s green earth would I dare to do that?

I will guarantee that, unless something truly catastrophic happens, I should be able to pull out at least one posting a week out of my ass.  Since I don’t get any revenue from people visiting here, if you only visit once a week, it won’t hurt my feelings.

In the meantime, here are some fun thoughts to pass the time:

• Linux Hater’s Blog is now my new favorite blog.  I’ve been using Ubuntu for almost two years now, and the Evolution of an Ubuntu User article nailed my experiences better than none other.
• Don’t work for people who think this sort of thing is a good idea.
• It’s official:  Obama has become the douche.  Waiting for confirmation on McCain becoming the turd sandwich.
• This is still the funniest and strangest music video I have ever seen.  Ever.

I’ve been putting this off just about long enough…

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed,
the lips acquire stains.
The stains become a warning.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
- Piter De Vries, Dune (Movie)

There are some things in life that are just meant to go together.  Peanut butter and jelly, prime rib and horseradish, Twinkies and bacon drippings - individually, each item is good, but when you put them together, the result is far greater than the sum of their parts.  No combination is this more true than nerds and caffeine.

Caffeine, of course, is a mild stimulant.  If the world was forced to make a choice between running without caffeine or running without oil, it would undoubtedly mean the end of human civilization as we know it.  The group that would suffer the most, though, would be the nerd.  Without caffeine, nerds are intelligent humans that have to go to bed at decent times.  With caffeine, nerds can engage in superhuman feats of brilliance, designing the structures that make modern civilization possible by day, then playing video games that allow them to pretend they’re breaking them apart at night.  Without caffeine, a weekend-long level grind becomes nearly impossible.

It’s true that there are other stimulants in the world.  The beauty of caffeine, though, is that, compared to other stimulants, it’s much less harmful in large quantities, it’s much easier to control and maintain dosage, and it is both cheap and plentiful.  For nerds, who are frequently both cheap and control-hungry, caffeine is the perfect stimulant, providing the control they need at a price they’re willing to afford.

When offering caffeine to a nerd, be sure to check with the nerd to find out how they prefer to have it administered.  Younger nerds will frequently gravitate towards energy drinks and soda to meet their needs.  Older nerds will lean towards coffee.  Generally speaking, the older the nerd, the more reactionary they will behave regarding the level of sugar with their caffeine.  This UserFriendly strip illustrates this point perfectly.

My first Car Lust posting has finally been approved and published.  Enjoy it - Chris Hafner didn’t edit much of it.

No, this one doesn’t have to do with the kid.

I’ve been accepted as a guest blogger for Amazon’s Car Lust Blog.  This means that the readership for my writings will go from a dozen or so people a day to more like thousands upon thousands of people a day.  Needless to say, I’m absolutely thrilled.

For today, and hopefully today only, this blog is going to suffer as a result.  No post beyond this for today, for I have to go cut my teeth on my new home.  I’m still going to have regular new content here, though, so don’t panic… and, yes, as my posts get approved and submitted at Car Lust, I’ll have links to them here, too.

Victory is mine!

Yep, I know - it’s been a while since I’ve put anything up here.  Much of that stems to the new child in the house; for some reason, having an infant in the house is not conducive towards any sort of coherent thought.  To help drive that point home, today’s blog is going to be about why I shouldn’t be allowed within a nautical mile of a kitchen.

Due to financial and logistical constraints, we’re eating out a lot less these days in the Colborne house.  This, of course, means we have to cook our meals; unfortunately, the ESO is mildly fearful of the kitchen, so I’m the one that does the bulk of the cooking.  Throw in that she’s technically supposed to be resting (something about pushing out a seven pound object through a 12 centimeter opening, and the process of that opening growing to be 12 centimeters in the first place), and you’ve got a set of circumstances that just about guarantees that I’m manning the kitchen, for better or worse.  This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing.  I’m not a bad cook, as long as I stay within myself.  When I start getting desperately creative, though…

One of the gifts we received from the ESO’s parents was a giant bag of frozen teriyaki chicken.  On paper, this sound great - it’s a good excuse to engage in a little Hawaiian-style cuisine, which eventually must lead to the use of Spam in something.  I like Spam.  I even wrote an ill-advised poem about it when I was 13.  Unfortunately, the ESO neither enjoys teriyaki nor Spam, to say nothing of my spiced ham-themed poetry, so my dreams of homemade Spam musubi are dashed against the rocks like so many other ill-fated dreams.  Even so, though, there is a giant bag of teriyaki chicken sitting in the freezer, taking up valuable space.  So, I decided I would try to counter the teriyaki flavor with something else and thus salvage the free protein source.

At first, my experiments went fairly well.  I used Thai peanut sauce in one dish, which went well.  Putting it in curry in another dish was also non-objectionable; the coconut milk did a wonderful job of drowning out the worst of the teriyaki flavor.  Then I thought I would step it up a notch - I was going to use eggplant.  Just one problem:  The ESO doesn’t like eggplant.  It’s too squishy.

Strrrrrrrrrrike one!

No problem, I thought to myself.  I’ll just cut the eggplant into slices and fry it with the chicken - it’ll work out some of the teriyaki flavor and, with a little time, crispify the eggplant.  Of course, to make a crispy fried product, it frequently helps to have a batter around, which I didn’t…

Strrrrrrrrrrike two!

No worries.  It’s frying, it’s browning a little, things are going well.  Then, I get the idea that the frying process won’t get enough of the teriyaki out.  It’ll just make the eggplant taste like teriyaki.  That’s not a good thing.  I need to throw something else in there to counter the taste… something like… fish sauce.

Strrrrrrrrrrike three!  You’re outta here!

After about five minutes of letting the eggplant and teriyaki chicken stew in a brew of a 1/4 cup of fish sauce and a non-inconsequential amount of olive oil, I opened the lid to see what I had.  What I had possessed a rather familiar odor - an odor so familiar that, upon smelling it, the ESO remarked, “Huh… it smells like when I’m on the rag.”  Being the wonderful, kind man that I am, I agreed wholeheartedly.

Somehow, I still have functional reproductive organs.

I’d tell you how it tasted, but I wasn’t that brave - we just chucked the whole thing in the trash can, threw it out as fast as possible, then I ran down to Jack ‘N The Box and got some drive-thru.  It smelled better than what I was cooking.  Naturally, I remarked that we were going to have to “eat out” after that cooking fiasco.

Again, somehow, I still have functional reproductive organs.

For the record, the “Stuff Nerds Like” series isn’t over.  I have another one that I’m working on and, with any luck, will post tomorrow.  You’ve been warned.  We’re getting back on that train with gusto.  Besides, as long as I keep agreeing that my cooking smells like the ESO’s reproductive organs, I’m probably not going to be seeing them for a while, so I’m going to have nothing but time on my hands.

First, an aside - things are doing well enough here where I can get into limited blogging duty, at least for now.  Don’t be surprised if things are a little intermittent around here, though - much of this depends on what time I have left between helping out with the newborn and the ESO.  Don’t count on much.

I wasn’t sure when or where to put this one.  What I do know is that, thanks to the various nooks and crannies of nerd culture, we’re going to be taking a trip down Science Fiction lane a lot.  For now, let’s just introduce the basics:

As we’ve touched on earlier, nerds like things that blow up and things that, well, blow up, if you get my drift.  Most science fiction fulfills the former with aplomb - look up the Wikipedia page on the Death Star for confirmation.  Sometimes, there’s even some eye candy, which does a reasonable enough job of satisfying the need for things that blow up.  There is, however, one additional aspect in science fiction that ropes nerds in, an aspect that taps into their role playing side - the aspect of escapism.

Good science fiction is easy to escape into for nerds for a couple of reasons:

1. Nerds are almost always the heroes.  Even when they’re not the main hero, they at least serve very important roles as support, providing much needed savvy and knowledge to the hero when it’s needed most.  Capt. Spock fits this mold perfectly.
2. The science fiction universe, whatever that universe entails, is big - really, really big.  This is perfect for a nerd, for each bit of that universe is another random esoteric bit of knowledge to sponge up and disgorge upon the unwitting masses at random, inopportune moments.  These esoteric bits of knowledge can also be used to determine who is nerdier; the person with the most bits of knowledge, of course, wins.

So, in science fiction, nerds have an expansive universe in which their superior knowledge and ability to retain as much knowledge about that universe as possible would be a serious advantage - an advantage that, if one were to play their cards right, would lead to them getting the girl, even if she would turn out to be his sister or something.  Of course, the reason this need for escapism exists is because the real universe is nowhere near as kind - more often than not, the hero is a mindless windbag who wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, but just so happens to have just enough charisma to convince everyone around him to cover for his ass and save the day for him, all while he gets the glory and the green chicks and…

In future features, we’ll dig into some of the particulars, such as some popular sci-fi franchises and conventions.

I apologize for my absence around here - yesterday (Friday), the ESO finally gave birth to little Aiden Lukas Zayac - all 7 lbs, 3 oz of him.  For various personal reasons, I generally try to avoid having blatantly public pictures of my family (trying to keep the wall between the real world and the online one, if that makes any sense), but, if you know me, you know how to get pictures from me.

I’m probably taking the rest of the weekend off from blogging.  I’ll be back in limited duty starting on Monday.

It’s a well documented fact of life that white people enjoy most things Japan.  In fact, the following is also documented there:

Many white nerds are into anime, so being too into this can be seen as a negative by white people.

What is it about anime that fascinates nerds?  If you ask a nerd, they will give many thoughtful, compelling, and complicated reasons, many of which will focus on the intricate artwork, creative story lines, and incredible character development compared to American animation.  All of these reasons, however, are a front - like most things nerd, their enjoyment of anime is much simpler and easier to understand than they like to let on.  To understand why nerds enjoy anime, you need to understand what anime is always about:

1. Robots
2. Girls

That’s pretty much it.  Anime robots bring violence, which leads to things blowing up - nerds love when things blow up.  Girls, meanwhile lead to boobs and sex, and, well, who doesn’t love boobs or sex?  Best of all, since anime isn’t restricted by physical reality or American standards of decency, the robots and girls can be drawn to exquisite standards of impossible physical perfection and do pretty much anything that Japanese people can think of… and, believe me, Japanese people think of some really, really strange things for robots and girls to do together.

When discussing anime with nerds, it’s vitally important to remember a few basic rules:

1. If it’s on Cartoon Network, it’s not “good” anime.  Many of the same rules that apply to white people and Indie Music apply to nerds and anime.  The harder it is to get, the “better” it is.  Bonus points if it’s fan dubbed and only found at conventions.
2. Since anime is rather expensive, getting a nerd some anime that fills a hole in his or her collection is a gift that will be held in high esteem.
3. Be careful about hentai!  Different nerds have different tastes, and, depending on how the nerd feels about you, a gift of hentai may send the wrong signals.  Do not give a nerd any remotely erotic anime if you are in a gender that the nerd prefers to have sexual relations with unless you are planning to have sexual relations with that nerd. Failing to remember that will anger the nerd, who will then proceed to hold a lifelong grudge against you and start doing things like “accidentally” wiping your hard drive or replacing your household fuses with highly conductive materials.  Also, if a nerd asks if you’re interested in watching hentai with them and you’re a member of their preferred gender, assume they want to sleep with you and react accordingly.

Followup: Yes, I know - La Blue Girl is more about tentacles than robots.  The point still stands.