Anger...rising...

I just finished watching a trainwreck called "Chasing Mummies". It is supposed to be a full spectrum documentary following Zahi Hawass, three interns and a camera crew as they solve the mysteries of blah blah blah...it doesn't matter what they say its all bullshit.

Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush here. This show was terrible on every level. It angered me. I have a headache from watching this travesty.  The biggest problem is that it isn't a documentary. It's a "reality" show. That should set off some alarms. Egypt is just a set piece and a theme.  The show is about Zahi, the head honcho of the Supreme Council of Antiquities who for some reason is channeling Simon Cowell from American Idol. I've spoken with Egyptologists and archeologists and they politely dance around the fact that he has a rep as a prima donna. and a petty tyrant. This show isn't going to help that image. Zahi yells at everyone. He browbeats the 3 interns (who don't even warrant last names) and everyone else. I'm sure some of this is for the cameras. But it's annoying as hell. This guy is supposed to represent the best of the best. He's the guy in charge of EVERYTHING and he's acting like a dick. A dick that loves Egypt, but a dick.

Where do I start? At two points "Derek" blurts out that the pyramids must have been built by aliens. He is yelled at for this by Zahi, as well he should be. No student of Egyptology would EVER say something so god-damned stupid. Who is this idiot? Why is he being given the chance of a lifetime to visit an area of the pyramid off limits to everyone? Where the fuck did they find these interns? There are real students who would give their left nut to work dig sites in Egypt.

Later, the group explores the upper 5 chambers inside the great  pyramids of Khufu. One of the interns, unable to hold her bladder, wets herself and goes on a crying jag. Ok, it takes several hours to work your way up through these 5 chambers. It's hot, cramped and humid.  I accept than an accident might occur. But if you're going to be trapped in an enclosed space for 8 hours you might want to PEE FIRST. Why didn't she climb down  to the Grand Gallery and find something to pee in there? Think! Have someone pass up a tshirt or a plastic bag. Hell, I would wear depends if there was even a chance of this happening. Was this just a "bit" for the show? I don't know, but it doesn't matter because everyone looked like an idiot for letting it happen.

At one point a cameraman hurts his back For some reason the fat producer/narrator is called into the pyramid. We watch as he hauls his fat, sweaty carcass up through the chambers, only to freak out, fumble back down to the grand gallery and collapse, receiving oxygen as he recounts he harrowing tale. What happened to the cameraman? Who knows, he isn't mentioned.

And why exactly is Zahi going into this area? Supposedly to show the interns crude graffiti that demonstrates that the builders of the pyramids were well organized gangs and not slaves. But this graffiti has already been documented. Here's a quick google search. At one point Zahi, sweating profusely, takes humidity readings. He explains how he closed the pyramid for a year because of high humidity. So why in gods name is he dragging 20 people, along with cameras into this sensitive, enclosed environment??? At this point in the show Rossana and I were actually yelling at the TV. I can imagine archeologists around the world throwing heavy objects at their tv's in anger and frustration.

I pray that this travesty gets shut down quick. It hurts to watch. It is an insult to those who work so hard in the field.  Egypt is interesting enough without the bullshit of "reality tv" crapping all over it.

Zeus has been angered

I don't think anything needs to be said about this little incident.

What the hell???

Why the !@#$ have I just learned about this NOW???

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/synthful/post-apocalyptic-party-road-wa/index.php

http://www.laweekly.com/slideshow/view/28836900

I could have RULED Bartertown.

Goddammit.

Horaay for fixing

Hey, I like buying shiny new tools as much as (or more) than the next guy. So when the rechargeable air mattress inflater started pooping out halfway through the job of giving me a place to sleep this season I had to take action. I took a trip to Home Depot where I found a cool Ryobi inflater that would use my 18v cordless drill batteries. Sweet! But at thirty something bucks...

I decided I had nothing to loose so I cracked open the old unit and found a battery. If course, it wasn't any kind of normal battery. That would be too easy. Fierce googling ensued and eventually I found something as close as I could and trusted to fate.

The battery arrived today and damn if it wasn't a perfect fit. I even managed to find all the screws to put it back together again. Total cost? $19. There is indeed something deeply satisfying about fixing something yourself. It would have been easier to just buy the new inflater or a new computer system but this was I saved a few bucks and learned a little bit in the process.

Oklahoma = Fun

I almost forgot that I shot this short bit of video while we hunkered down during the great dust storm that was the Norman Oklahoma show. We were assaulted by this piece of trash for literally 10 minutes. Then the wind kicked up again and blew it, and a small child, to god only knows where.

Ouch

With regards to Oklahoma one COULD use the term "The less said about this the better" but that would be a cop out. The show was brutal. Cold, hot, dust, wind, wind, wind, more dust,tent damage...Ask me about it someday and I'll lay out some of the fun details in epic style.

But we made money. Not as much as I'd like to be frank, but its only a three day event. I'd go back. Rossana? I don't think I'll broach the subject for good 8 months.

The cherry on this cake was our return drive. After tear down and pack up we could only drive about 4-5 hours. We stayed at a motel that usually exists only in movies. Our room was entirely Elvis themed with posters, faux platinum records and purple satin sheets. Breakfast was at a diner that time forgot. Good food served by people who still believe Eisenhower is President.

But the charm of that bubble in time had worn off 13 hours later as we trudged up I-71. Somewhere south of Rt 250 Rossana hit a patch of black ice. I was asleep in the back but you wake up pretty fucking fast when the swerving and screaming starts. Three violent swerves in as many seconds and we struck the guard rail sending me across the van along with assorted luggage. There were two things that kept us from getting seriously messed up. Luck was one. There was an off ramp to the right of us when we started to loose traction. 20 feet more and we would have rolled over, Rossana's great driving was the other. By the time we hit the guard rail we were almost perfectly paralell to it. The impact mashed up the side of the van but didn't harm the wheels, doors or any windows. After making sure we were still cabable of driving we crawled home, getting in at about 4am. I seem to be the only one who took damage when I hit the door of the van. My right forearm hurts like hell. We also broke a mirror.

All in all, not the best weekend ever.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

From here:

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

I have a lot of projects that I am constantly thinking about or working on. But I sometimes get stuck because I don't have the right part, or the right tool or the right materials. I need to stop procrastinating on these things. The list above is a good set of guidelines. Although I disagree with abandoning a project if you haven't started on a project in a week.

Bread and Circuses

I've just heard that Rome intends to bring back the Gladiatorial games at the Colosseum (or more correctly at the Flavian Amphitheater) next year. Sure, they will be watered down. But still. Gladiator combat IN THE COLOSSEUM! If the Romans were smart they would contract with the UFC and turn this into a money making machine for the city.

I would truly dig getting to fight here even if it's a demo or with non-lethal weapons. To stand where so many stood before you, being cheered by the crazed citizens of a bloodthirsty expansionist empire. Of wait, we have that already with Monday night football. And for real violence catch a Manchester United game in Spain.

As an aside, there are some Christian fundies that I'd love to toss in for authenticity purposes...

Zombies!!!

I want to see this film. I MUST see this film. Zombie Nazi's? Squeeee!

I like em big...

So the're a GIANT BALLISTA for sale on ebay. 

I could link to the story about how this was built for the discovery chanel for education blah blah baaaaaah. I think what we need to do is focus on the fact that there is a

GIANT BALLISTA for SALE on EBAY.

Yes, it's in England.

Yes, it's 'As is' and will need alittle work.

Yes it's $35,000

But ASIDE from all that its the perfect gift.

For me.

Update: Oh look, here's a wee little one for only $10,00 here in the US.

I'm off to check my couch cushions  for change.

p.s. Make sure you check out the questions to buyer section on the UK site. Hilarious.

Freakin' EPIC

I learned to day that the following piece of AWESOME weaponry is now available. What could make this thing more cool? Putting it to use in an all out office war. This is one of the few things we didn't do back when I was working for 'the man', but I wish we had.

Have a look.

Sooooo coooooool

Optimus Prime made from scrap metal....

I've been hacked.

And to be honest, I am honored that some kid in Saudi Arabia thought enough of my site to deface it. While doing some clean up on the site I went to take a look at some OLD pics I took in Italy a few years back and found this.

I don't know how they got in and it doesn't appear that they have done any other damage. The page is safe to view, I've checked all the HTML. As a precaution I'll be changing some passwords etc.

A game with only one rule...

No Murder.

This is no joke. The small town of Ashbourn in England plays a game called Shrovetide Football. It is not like any game you have ever seen before.

In the small English town of Ashbourne during 2 days a year the people divide to play a sport with the purpose of scoring the “toughest goal”. Sure kicking a ball into the net takes some skill, but even these people would say scoring in a sport such as rugby is only for the weak. Imagine thousands of people, divided by a river, with 2 days to get a ball across town with one simple rule: no murder. That is only the beginning in Royal Shrovetide Football.

Go and check out the details here. There are two videos but they don't seem to work on the site, but you can fine one here and a longer one here.

Dangerocity + Tools

I think that it is necessary to come up with a new scale for measuring projects. I humbly suggest this new scale be called something like "TheTool/Dangerocity Scale" or simply the TDS

You see, it doesn't matter how complex a project is. It's how many tools you use to complete it, how much danger was involved and how badly you hurt yourself doing it. Changing your oil is fairly simple. You only need a new tools and the risks aren't that high. And yet many people still manage to injure themselves or break parts of the car. But you still did it yourself and you deserve credit for it. It was far harder and more dangerous than you had guessed and there should be some way to quantify that.

Yesterdays project seemed simple. In preparation for Spring I wanted to sharpen the blades on my lawn mover. Of course I called up Grimm, because he's done this before.

Or not.

After staring at the mower for a bit and poking it with a stick we decided to jack up the front end rather than figure out how to disconnect the deck.

Tools used: Jack, board, bricks

Once the front of the mower was precariously balanced atop some bricks we crawled under the deck with a grinder to get at the blades.

Tools used: Body grinder, carpet, scraper, extension cord, safety glasses.

We set to work but after the first blade we could see that one of the blades was pretty chewed up from being used as an impromptu mulcher during regular mowing operations. After some more grunting we thought we'd try to take the blades off the deck so we could work on them without constantly being remonded that we were old and fat.

Tools used: Compressor, air wrench, socket.

Indeed one of the blades was gouged pretty bad. One might consider simply getting a new blade but Grimm is well known for his 'frugalocity'.

"Why drive into town and spend money. You've got a welder! Weld a new bead along the edge and then grind it down." This seemed like an almost sane idea at first. We pulled off the blades and set up the welding rig.

Tools used: Stick welder (gloves, mask, hammer, rods), 2 saw horses, slab of marble to weld on

With new material added to the edge of the blade we then ground it to shape and generally cleaned up our previous work. We reinstalled the blades and I decided to grease the fittings.

Tools used: Grease gun, needle nosed pliers to remove old grease tube, paper towels and gunk remover to clean up the grease which went everywhere.

In the end I used a crapload of tools to achieve a pretty simple task. I would give this job a 7 out of 10. It would have been a 8 but neither of us injured ourselves during the proceedings.

Next week I may dig a hole. It will take some work but I'm sure I can jack that TDS up to 9 somehow.

Like clockwork...

Tomorrow we head out on the road for Florida and MEGACON. The house is clean, Cat Nanny, Lindsey and our neighbor are looking after our hyperactive Cats. Van is loaded. Audio books procured.

And then the phone rings...

At this point you'd like I would have learned not to answer the damned thing. But I, like Pavlov's dog, am well trained.

It's my friend Rupp.

He's early. His site shouldn't crap out until I'm at least 500 miles from home. Preferably in another country. Surrounded by headhunters.

I fire off some emails to determine what's up with his website. Then another client calls. He's been dragging his feet for MONTHS on a project and now he has an overwhelming urge to get the thing done TODAY. I spend several hours on the phone with the client, more in a chat session with support people, another hour on hold before talking to a real human. All culminating with the certain knowledge that the pinhead at my clients bank ignored all the instruction we gave him months ago.

A developer call me back. We've been talking about trying to find out what makes my friend Rupps site crash. We settle on doing a pretty serious upgrade. Settle on a price.

Call Bank, bark at moron.
Call Rupp, get approval for project.
Call Developer, green light upgrades.

Clicky-clicky on computer. Set up everything.

And now, I leave. Tadaa!

I'm sure that nothing at all will go wrong.

Cake and Anarchy

I was geeked to have about 15 people come out to Dave and Busters to celebrate my Day of Birthening. This place is packed on Saturdays and it was looking like we would be waiting until breakfast to get served. But a few well placed bribes and we got a private room to ourselves.

Some of the games were a blast. The boxing game where you actually punch, well, that was too much like exercise. I mean really. The last thing I should be doing after eating a mess of food and cake is taking wild swings at a virtual opponent.

I did get some nice schwag. Thanks guys. It was good to see you all.


The weather started to turn, even as we drove home. By the time we hit 480 it was almost a white out. The temperature plummeted.

This morning it was 7 degrees with 45 mile an hour winds. You would have to be a fool to go out in weather like that to attend a Scientology protest. So I didn't.

But I do have 'friend' who did go. A guy named Erik. He hauled his fat ass out of bed and hit a WalMart for posterboard and a large sharpie. Then he drove to Parma. He got there a little early so he took the opportunity to make his sign "$cientology is a $cam - www.xenu.net" The other side said "Ask Questions" www.xenu.net.

By the time he stashed his car several blocks away so the COS people couldn't get his license plate number there were people out in front of the unmarked building. More people showed up and spirits were high. There were flyers but this area had zero foot traffic. What it did have was a lot of car traffic. People sounded their horns and gave us thumbs up (or looked on confused). At about noon a few cars pulled into the COS lot. We waved to them and held our signs. They all looked like seniors. I beleieve we outnumbered them 3 to 1. Someone inside kept looking out at us furtively. No direct picture taking.

Chanel 5 showed up, shot some footage and asked some questions. We stamped our feet to keep warm and tried to keep out signs from blowing away. This was a mostly young crowd. But smart and motivated. They knew about Scientology. Most wore masks, not just to keep the COS people from snapping their photos but because it was required to stay alive in the blizzard. If Anonymous can get 20 people out in the dead of winter, what will it be like in the Spring?

Most protest pics I have seen online have sucked, but there is a great collection here by someone who knows how to use a damn camera. Some great shots, like this:



There are a lot of important causes in the world. There are a lot of evil deeds that go unpunished. But today was a start. A small step.

Suddenly, spontaneously, a movement has arisen. It has no leaders. It has no authorities. This movement is self directed by each member's own moral compass, and every individual walks in the same direction because that compass points to what is right.

Take 2...

So two and a half days of reinstalls and XP still isn't working right. IE 7, windows update and other things just aren't working. The deal breaker is when I can't get any anti virus or Quicken to load.

I make some calls. I talk to some people who assure me that indeed I have to push the Big Red Button. They told me to do this originally but I though I could do this half-assed. Several friends admit that they do a re-install twice a year. I back up 72 GIGs of info onto a portable hard drive. I scan it with an online virus scan. I triple check for info I need to have. And then, I wipe the drive.

While the system formats I take a shower. It's a spiritual as well as physical cleansing. I have lost almost an entire week because of my mistake. And there is NO guarantee that my work, pictures, music or anything will still work when I restore it.

When it's done I start the reload. This time it goes much faster and workes much better. I get a LOT of hard drive space back. I download 82 security updates to XP. I restore my documents and so far (knock on wood) it all looks good. One of the most annoying things is trying to remember user names and passwords from various sites.

It is done. This system is clean.

Epic Fail

All it took was one second to click on the wrong file. And then... it was a slow decent into FAIL. Despite antivirus I contacted a host of evils and was forced in the end to reinstall Windows XP. On the plus side, my internet connection and other parts of the system are running nice and fast again. On the down side, it's been two solid days of reinstalls and patching. Joy.

Outlook is back but my account settings are AWOL.

Unrelated but good news, my friend Grimm seems to have found a buyer for his house. It looks like he'll get a good price tool.

Also unrelated but important is the arrival of a new addition to the family. Feel;ing that Little One could use some company we went to the local vet and picked up a young cat who had yet to be named. I'll post pics soon and maybe even solicit name suggestions.

Awesome Disclaimer...

Really, you need to read it for yourself.