Soooooooo freakin cool - A windmill

Check out this video and then try this for yourself here.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

More proof!

The two pills

*** Notice! Explicit Language Ahead! ***

I visited the doctor a few weeks ago. I wasn't feeling bad when I walked in his door. No sir. I was feeling like crap a week earlier but I was fine when they actually got around to seeing me. I explained how I somehow threw out my back doing NOTHING. The pain was so bad I took some pain killers my wife got for dental surgery. This deadened the pain but I suddenly developed a screaming headache and a dull but persistent testicular pain. That's right, it was like a little man had taken up residence in my underwear and decided that he needed to squeeze one of testicles constantly to punnish it for some perceived wrong it had commited.

It was a fun 7 days.

The doctor listened to my symptoms and then, I kid you not, said "Well, you're feeling better now aren't you? SO I guess it wasn't serious."

Really? I spent a week freaked out, sleepless and panicked about taking pain killers that caused a four day headache and wondering why the hell one of my fracking BALLS was turning EVIL. This is your wizened medical opinion? Awesome.

Since there was nothing for him to look at he decided to check my blood pressure and schedule a physical. I got my blood tested and a chest x-ray. Then I got poked and prodded, and yes, that included our favorite the D.R.E. (Moooooooooon Riveeeeeeerr....) Too obscure?

The doctor reviews the various numbers and tells me that many things are just fine. Great. I like things being fine. But one number isn't fine. My blood pressure. He's taken readings like 20 times and seems confident that it's "Slightly high". Hmmm. He goes on to explain that HBP is "The Silent Killer".

I thought that Ninja's were the silent killers. But tests have shown that HBP kills significantly more people than Ninja's (these days). Then he writes a prescription and hands it to me. That was a slap. I have rarely been prescribed anything. And now there are not one but two pills that I am supposed to take every morning. I guess 'Slightly High' was high enough to warrant drugs.

I hit wikipedia and the side effects scare me. Having a heart attack scares me more. I take the pills and really don't feel them doing anything even after 2 weeks. The doctor has said that I have to cut down on the sodium as well as the shitty foods. Get more exercise etc etc blahblahblah no more fun...

Then we go on the road to Florida. To work. To do what we do for a living. Let me tell you that the road is not kind to someone looking to "cut back". There is almost nothing available in a gas station or fast food restaurant that isn't packed to the gills with evil. Real evil. Do they really need to use babies slathered in lard to make a Wendy's double? It's bad food. I've always known this. I am not naive. But once you start reading those packages, desperate for something to eat, you cannot help but get discouraged. That's why I used to ignore those labels. So that I may live in blissful ignorance. I tried ordering off IHOP's 'Healthy Menu'. and even without bacon or sausage or anythin obviously bad it STILL had 1,100 mg of sodium. Just so you know, a low sodium diet should be under 2,000mg per DAY. In the end we found a grocery store and bought some tuna, bread and sugar free cookies. Can't use lunchmeat, too much frickin sodium.

That actually worked out pretty well. Convention food is brutally expensive as well as super evil. I'm happy to save some money, it's just hard to find time to make a sandwich. When we got back home we went shopping at WalMart. I found plain chicken breast was filled with more sodium than I could have imagined. I had to get the "Super Healthy Cuts" . These didn't have the extra crap and yet they cost more. That is a swell racket.

I know that making these changes will improve my health. I also know that I have very little willpower. Give up wings forever? Ha! But I suppose I can cut back. It's strange but I think I can actually taste the extra salt now in regular foods now when I eat them. Am I crazy?

And another thing? Rossana's blood pressure is actually too LOW. She needs more salt dammit! I'm thinking of getting her a salt lick.

I hope I can stick with this. Our work schedule and travel has meant that we've slipped in our eating habits. Rossana has always been good, but even she has slipped and it's my fault. I have stuck with one healthier choice so far. A couple months ago I cut way back on diet cola (caffine). I switched to water or diet 7 up and I'm actually less twitchy. Maybe if I stick with this I'll loose a few pounds and feel better as a result. We shall see...

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.

Remember this guy?

Joe the plumber. I first heard about him during the Presidential debates. A seeming everyman. A hardworking average American just trying to get ahead is a tough world. Both sides tripped over themselves to garner his vote. To show who would help Joe out more. In the end, Joe ignored the fact the Obama's tax plan would save him more money and he sided with McCain.

I can understand that. Ones choice of President isn't always motivated my self interest. Joe might have supported McCain's foreign policy plans, or worried that Obama lacked executive experience. But then we started to learn who Joe was. And Joe turned out to be A) A bit dim and B) A bit of a dick.

But that didn't stop him . No sir. He went on the campaign trail with McCain, even though he eventually said he didn't like McCain at all. He did like Palin. A LOT. And that right there pretty much ruined ANY shred of credibility the man had. He was no longer an everyman. He was a moron. He railed against the government and how it could do nothing right, despite the fact that he has enjoyed protections provided by immunizations, fire departments, police and our national army. He drives on safe roads, eats (mostly) untainted foods can go to public libraries and enjoy the benefits of Social Security when he gets old and yet this tax delinquent squeels about how our country is going Socialist.

Undaunted by reality, he worked hard to extend his 15 minutes. He went to the Middle East and bemoaned the fact that we can't outright censor the media. Whines how he would punch out other elected officials if he himself were elected to office. And then....he wrote a book.

Here's picture of his signing:


He sold, I believe, 5 copies. Your 15 minutes sir, are up. But if you want to experience a little more schadenfreude check out the reviews over at Amazon.com. Priceless:

RINO spinmeisters, aided and abetted by the liberal media, have promoted Joe the Plumber as being an everyman, the archetypical "average American." This book shatters that image.

Joe the Plumber is not the "average American." He's the "average conservative," and I thank God for that.

Last year, the "average American" elected an Harvard educated constitutional law professor to the presidency. Average conservatives knew better. They rallied behind Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin, people like ourselves; people I proudly call "mediocre Americans."

And that's why Joe is still so immensely popular. He's angry, vicious, ignorant, and intellectually incurious. He's one of us, and like us, he didn't learn about public policy and international relations at a university or from books or journals; he learned everything he needed to know by tuning into Rush, Hannity, Savage, and Ingraham.

This is a great book, one every true conservative should buy, and more importantly, read. Yes, I know that sounds like a tall order, but it's an easy read. Joe uses one and two syllable words (many of them, written forms of various grunts) almost exclusively. If I have one complaint, it's that the publisher, Pearlgate, printed it in ink rather than crayon like the original manuscript. Other than that, I think it truly is the perfect book for the average conservative.

Chicago...Chicago...

Capricon was this weekend. A new one for us and a chance to try out our new Garmin Nuvi 760 GPS. We've had a GPS for several years (we call it "The Oracle") and it has some nice features like a huge touchscreen. But the girl was showing her age. So we handed it over to our new Minion and made the plunge on a new one. The 760 was on sale and had most of the features I wanted.

First and most uselessly- it has several different voices. We have settled on "Daniel". I was perfectly happy with the default "Helen" since men are by nature trained to obey a commanding female voices, but Rossana likes "Daniel" even though he uses the work "Slip road" instead of "Exit".

The unit took us to Chicago and then promptly told us to get off the highway and travel through Chinatown. It apparently receives traffic updates from a spirit guide and was trying to keep us out of danger. All in all I give it a B+ for the trip out.

For some reason setup took forever. What made it worse was the total lack of any moisture in the hotel or its environs. It was seriously uncomfortable. Our throats were parched despite glass after glass of water, our lips started to chap, the skin on our hands peeled. I've spent time in the actual Sahara and this was by far more uncomfortable. We did okay sales but Rossana was saddled with a lerger than normal number of annoying people. I mean REALLY annoying people. We deal with people all the time, so imagine what it takes to get under our skin. But there were some cool people as well. People who were getting into steampunk. Enthusiastic people. We were begged to come to WindyCon in November and we agreed.

We had to stay an extra day in the windy (and sub-zero) city so that we could stop by the Turkish consulate to get our travel visas. There is a company that does this for you for a fee, but it involves mailing your passwort to them, and Rossana just could not let her passport go somewhere without her. Daniel got us to the area and we quickly learned that Chicago was raped and beaten by a white van as a child. That's the only explanation I can think of for the way our vehicle was treated at the local parking garages. $35 an HOUR??? We found parking on the street and entered the consular offices, which look very much like any other office except you have to go through a metal detector first. This search wasn't quite a thorough as it could have been. They checked my messerger bag and Rossana's purse but they did not search my large jacket, whoch could have held and UZI and a vest bomb for all they knew.

We handed over our passports and application along with $45 each and were told to come back after 2:30. With nothing else to do I consulted Daniel (who can operate on battery power) and found the Chicago Art Institute not far away. After a bit of culture we picked up our passports and tried to go home. Alas, Daniel seemed to have suffered some kind of annyurism and couldn't find satalite signal for a while, then told us to get off 90 only to have us get right back on again. I hive Daniel a C for the trip home.

Today was errands and paperwork. We leave for Florida tomorrow where I pray there is some moisture. So.... dry...

Very cool...

I would totally do this if i were a crazy rich person.

Beating a dead horse?

I promise to move back to some lighter stuff, but I highly encourage you to read this first hard report of the first days of Guantanamo. It's told by the most clean-cut American youth you can imagine. It's a window into a world we never saw and many wish had never happened.

This testimony does not relate to how detainees were interrogated. This is just the story of a kid who was put in charge of guarding "the most dangerous men in the world" who mostly turned out to be undernourished and frail foreigners sold to the Americans for $1000 a pop. He is very detailed in what he personally witnessed and what he did not witness.

Some of what you will read may not seem, on the surface, to be all that bad. If you don't think stress positions, beatings, degradation, intimidation and anal penetration are all that bad then I suggest you try them for yourself. You will likely change your mind. This story is just a small piece of the overall system put in place by the Bush administration. A system that disregarded the Geneva conventions and many of the standard operating procedures of our own military for treating detainees. What this kid witnessed was Guantanamo-Lite and it's a fascinating read.

Lovely...

It's been a while since I had to make a flowchart. I made quite a few in my Corporate days. Some I did in Corel Draw, others in Microsoft Powerpoint. But the process was always ugly and required a lot of work.

Well no more! There a FREE online flowchart program online called Lovely Charts. I used it to diagram the convoluted system I had to develop to get internet and VOIP phone working in my home. It takes no time to pick up how the system works and it has a lot of pre-made objects (like networking icons). I only wish they had more objects to work with, but hey, it's free.

And if you're curious what the network looks like that makes Bag End function you can see my kick-ass diagram here (click to embiggen):

And now for something completely different...

Free at last...free at last...

A few weeks ago I hooked up the new Ooma equipment and tested it out. When I was satisfied that it could workI disconnected it and went forward with porting my number (which takes 7-10 days) so that I could cancel my Verizon (local) and AT&T (long distance) services which have been like a repetitive series of kicks to my groin over the years.

When the email came through I hooked up the equipment again, bought a new cordless phone set and crossed my fingers. While the system worked I wanted to report to you on how well it works. So far its been pretty good. The only difference from the old system is that when you pick up the phone there is a brief chime. Also, calling numbers in another area code required you to push 1 first. Once you are talking, there is a short delay between when something is spoken and when the other party hears it. About a half second. Call sound quality has been mixed. Yesterday my brother called and some of his words were garbled or washed out, but he was on his cell phone, which may have had an effect. When I spoke to my Dad in Massachusetts on his land line it was crystal clear.

The system comes with caller I.D. and my new cordless phones can actually tell you who is calling using this information. Very cool. Both the cordless handset and Ooma have a blacklist feature so you can block calls from certain numbers. This is an AWESOME feature. I used to get three calls a day from satellite tv companies and 4 or 5 from call warrantee companies. This has gone waaaaay down. The Ooma works like a regular answering machine except I can get my messages on line when I am traveling. Nice. To call internationally you have to buy credits, but I don't call internationally very often so I haven't tested this out yet. There are extra features available, like a second line and other goodies if you want to pay about $14 a month.

The old cordless phones, which were showing their age, will be put in the garage and the shop respectively so I can finally get calls there.

The best part? No more local or long distance charges EVAR. Ooma is a one time cost. Do you hear that Verizon?? Huh? Do you know how good if felt to tell AT&T to die in a fire? It felt AWESOME.

Standard Operating Proceedure

The previous post "I'd give the Devil the benefit of law" generated some strong opinions about how we should treat 'the bad guys'.

I appreciate strong opinions. I have a few myself. Some of which were reinforced when I watched the film Standard Operating Procedure which dealt with Abu Gihraib. It was hard to watch at times. The matter was not a simple black and white case. We put 18-21 year old kids in charge of a prison. Kids who are trained to follow orders. Kids who were told what was being done was okay, even if the regs said it wasn't. After all, we're in a war, right? I'm not sure what excuse the older personnel had. They knew better.

It gave context and detail to the infamous photographs. It showed the mindset of some of these people. Their reasoning and rationale. And what was seen in the pictures was not the worst of it. It never is.

Is it okay to torture a suspect if you believe he is guilty of being an insurgent or a terrorist?
After all, we didn't hang them, or beat their feet with metal rods or shock their genitalia.
THAT'S torture. Saddam did that shit. We didn't (Although we sent people to countries that did it for us).

Lets talk about what our guys did.
Tying someone in one position naked for 5 hours naked isn't torture, is it?
Depriving someone of sleep for days isn't torture, is it?
Forcing prisoners to masturbate and simulate sex acts in front of women isn't torture is it?
Waterboarding and punching prisoners isn't torture, is it?
Keeping high profile detainees from the eyes of the Red Cross isn't illegal, is it?
Our guys just 'softened them up' for the pro's (CIA, FBI, DIA etc).

After all, these guys were the Bag Guys. Except the ones that weren't. And it seems that the vast majority of these people were just dumb SOB's. Drunks & thieves... oh yeah and most of the fighting age males in an area. Fathers and sons. We took them from their homes because they could POTENTIALLY join the insurgency, not because there was any suspicion they were.

Lock them all up and DO NOT let ANYONE out. That was the order. We did not deny them due process, we denied than ANY process. When they finally got out, I wonder how many of those average Iraqi's were willing to let bygones be bygones?
The end result of not following the rules and the law was an increased insurgency and a deep unifying hatred of Americans in that entire region.

Take a look at this list of Memo's. Look at the titles. Some of the details of these memo's are just now coming to light though we likely will never know the full details of them all. Look at the titles: Convention Against Torture has limited application in the U.S., Torture can be prosecuted only if there was 'specific intent' to harm Is this America at it's finest? Is this the beacon of freedom spoken in hymn and song? It this the best we could do? America has the brawn to do these things, but does it have the brains to do something better? To fight smarter?

I highly recommend you check this movie out through Netflix. It's thought provoking. Here's the trailer:

I would give the Devil the benefit of Law

In response to this McClatchy article about the Captain of the U.S.S. Cole saying "We shouldn't make policy decisions based on human rights and legal advocacy groups,'' a spirited debate sprung up on FARK.com regarding whether we should give suspected terrorists the benefit of Habeus Corpus or other rights.

I will confess that as I am not a Constitutional scholar, a lawyer or an expert in military law I am ill equipped to speak with any great authority. It is not any easy situation to rectify, made worse by the previous administration that simply had no strategy whatsoever and simply did "whatever was necessarily" to "keep us safe". But since we aren't operating in the shadows anymore we must take the bull by the horns.

There are criminals in Guantanamo. By various accounts 70 of the 270 are really bad guys. This is down from the over 600 who used to reside there. We let the rest of those people go because we really didn't have anything on them. With all the resources and the with the full and intimidating threats of the US of A pressed upon them we simply had nothing. I am sure they forgive us though.

Rumor, innuendo, suspicion. On that evidence we abducted people, held them in secret prisons, and tortured them.

On the flimsiest of connection to 9/11 and on dubious intel we waged a war on Iraq that has killed tens of thousands.

But we had to, you know, to keep us safe.

Look, thinking is hard. But maybe if we did it more we wouldn't be in this shit. I don't want to give any religious whack job with a desire to kill people a pass. But to ignore the law? To just go all Jack Bauer? Is that the answer? Will ignoring US law, international law and treaties work? Will that find and punish the guilty? George Bush thought so. He thought these men were evil.

But I would give the Devil himself the benefit of Law.

I offer this short clip from A man for All Seasons:

New Minion!

After about a week of deliberation I am happy to introduce our new minion Wendi Williams. She had sold our product before, knows the setup/teardown process (a big part of the job) and looks like this:

Do YOU want to tell her she can't have the job? Anyway, thanks to those who applied. I appreciate the help. I am hoping that getting into more shows will help our bottom line and grow our business. And if the economy collapses and America falls into Chaos at least all my female employee's/minions will be well dressed and we drive around on motorcycles killing each other for spam and gas.

Looking for a job?

We just finished ChattaCon, which wasn't gangbusters but it did make a profit and get us into the selling mood. While driving home Rossana and I discussed an idea we've kicked around before of bringing in another sales person to handle shows that we can't get to for whatever reason.

So here it is, do you want COOLEST JOB in the WORLD? We're looking for someone to travel to shows in the Midwest to tie up hot chicks in corsets. (Sounds great, right? Well there are some caveats. Read on)

• We want someone who has some experience with one or all of the following type of events: Renaissance Fairs, the SCA, Science Fiction conventions or fetish shows.

• Must be able to travel. Some shows will be one day, others a weekend and some will require being gone from Thursday till Monday with driving time. We will cover travel expenses.

• Must be friendly, personable, and able to interact with a WIDE range of people.

• Must be able to schlep (carry) our stock and all sales equipment. Corsets can be heavy.

• Non Smoker. Clean driving record. Non-drinker preferred.
  

• Must be able to do simple bookkeeping.
  

• Must have reliable transportation. (And must not be a sub-compact)

• Computer literate (can email, IM etc. Photoshop and others skills a plus)

• Sewing skills a double bonus
  

• If female, must be willing to wear our product for duration of event

• An Ohio resident would be nice, but isn't required
  

If you're still reading, I am impressed. We will train you to the best of our ability, but you need to have some innate salesmanship skills. Above all you need to be honest and trustworthy. Our company has a very good reputation. We pride ourselves on good customer service.

What does this dream job pay? I can't give you a definite answer. I can say that there is a base pay with a bonus for meeting certain sales numbers. Also, you get to make money for attending events you have paid to attend in the past, which is pretty cool. We're hoping line up at least 2 shows a month, but more are possible in the summer months


If you think you'd like this job send me an email at steve.pack@gmail.com with your experience, and a photo if possible. I'll get back to you with more details. If you know someone who you think might be right for this job, please forward them this message.