Tatoos

For the longest time I was a firm believer in the "Modifications may void the manufacturers warranty" school of thought. Piercings and tattoos were out for me. Time has certainly mellowed this view. I know some people with ink and they are pretty cool. I don't let it color my impressions of them. Piercing still make me flinch a little. But then again, I have seen a lot of piercings that are waaaaay past the earlobes or eyebrow. Then there's this guy:

The Enigma

Looks kinda....strange? But I met him a few years ago at a show and he was extremely well spoken, pleasant and polite. A bit of a nerd. Married too. Nice guy.

While ink has gained pretty widespread acceptance big piercings still get stares. So drilling a hole through my nose or shoving a spike through my ear isn't likely in my future.

But what about a tattoo? I sometimes wonder what I would get permanently inked onto my skin if I weren't descended from Yetti's. Picture? Text? Alchemical formula? The options are limitless. Because I wear no jewelry I once gave serious thought to getting a tattoo of my wedding ring on my ring finger. But in the end it really wasn't needed was it? I know I'm married and committed to my wife and I don't need a piece of jewelry to remind me of that.

I guess its unlikely I'll ever get any ink. Unless maybe... pirate map on my skull?? Hmmmm...

Simple pleasures

I was a sign maker for years, which is why watching protesters these days both amuses and horrifies me. Here is a fine collection. Enjoy.

I'm gonna a write me a letter...

Inspired by this story of a young and unknown David Bowie writing a personal letter to a fan.

Have you ever written a letter to a famous person and gotten a response?

God saves the day!

Or not..

A woman lets gets kids starve for 11 days, making no effort to get help because "God would help them".

God was apparently busy doing something else. Luckily none of the kids died. Look, if you you're going to believe in an invisible sky wizard (and you have every right to) Understand that he/she/it gave you a BRAIN. If you look at all recorded history God shows up in person very very infrequently. His creations are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. He supposedly made us that way. So stop sponging off of God(tm)!

You learn something new every day..

Today I learned that the Roman vomitorium isn't what what I thought it was. Go check out wikipedia and then read this.

Pure Awesome...

I don't know who was responsible for this. But they are my hero. This isn't the product of some one being lazy. This took work and a lot of love. If you don't know the inspiration for this, you are likely under 30. And that's a shame.

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.

Magnificent and stupid

You should view this amazing young man as he flourishes cards is ways that simply seem mystical.

The music for this piece way also quite pleasing to my ears and thanks to the Internets you can listen to the original piece here.

The modified version used in the video above is called Opéra from "Métropolitain" by DJ Emmanuel Santarromana.

The stupid part comes when you look up the music on iTunes. The full name of the piece is

"Vivaldi - Nisi Dominus - Cum dederit - Mingardo" but thanks to words being able to kill people the "Cum" is censored to "C*m".

Really?

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.

It's okay to lie to us...

So it seems one of the secret C.IA. black sites was set up near Vilnius in Lithuania in what was once a fancy horseback riding academy. This is one of those places we were told didn't exist that did things we said we wouldn't do.

Remember, Lithuania isn't exactly the desolate back woods of Afghanistan. They are our ally. And they are understandably pissed. Imagine Lithuania used a shell company to rent the old Higbees department store building in Cleveland. Then they build a torture facility in it and lie to you and the world about it. You might be upset with Lithuania for doing something like that. After all, this is our country. If you want to hold and torture terrorism suspects, you should do it in your own goddamn country.

But for some reason we are scared shitless of these guys. It's like they have some kind of superpowers. Conservatives are shaking in their boots at the thought of bringing any of these suspects to the U.S. for trial. Whether they should be tried by the military or the civilian courts is a worthy debate. I feels the military option had been pretty much tainted at this point. After all, look how the military (with the Whitehouse's direct permission) handled capturing, holding and interrogating them.

Actions have consequences. We will be cleaning up GW's shit for years to come.

iphone > Droid

I went to the mall the other day (shiver) to put my meaty paws on the new Droid smartphone from Verizon. Like any iphone owner, I would gladly pay a hefty fine and/or take hit to the nuts if I could switch from AT&T's craptastic network to Verizon's land of milk and honey.

And with the coming of Droid I thought that I might have found a reason to undergo the painful process of migration. After all, the phone is getting rave reviews. It uses the Android OS from Google which is far more open that Apple's. New apps appearing every day, free GPS navigation using google maps. What's not to love?

Well, the Droid IS good, but it's not awesome, at least in my opinion based on limited hands on experience.

It is well made. Solid. Nice looking. The screen is very sharp. But what they put on it is not nearly as polished as the iphone. It's cluttered. I know it can be configured however you want it but using it wasn't the simple process I'd hoped it would be.

The biggest drawback is the physical keyboard. It just isn't isn't made for my fingers. Period. They sit on a flat plain and one has to depress the center to activate them. The Sidekick had a much better keyboard for us big folk. The on-screen keyboard was okay, but not great. I am sure with practice I could be proficient with it. People have said the camera, while 5 MP, isn't all that great.

But for me, the biggest stumbling black was tapping on some kind of news bubble app and having it crash. Then I launched another app, and it crashed. Two crashes? Really? The Droid can run several programs at once, unlike the iphone. But it's rare that I'm listening to Pandora while IM'ing and uploading pics to my facebook account. And if I do try to do several things at once, the delay in starting an iphone app up is about a second. (Games do tend to take longer to launch). I was impressed, I just wasn't wow'ed.

It is on the network I crave. And with a little polish I am sure the usability will improve. But for now I am still happy with my iphone. It does what I need it to do without any fiddling or crashing. That's my 2 cents. Anyone got one out there who cares to share their experience?

In praise of beer...

No, not that kind. Most beer tastes awful to me. But Ginger Beer? Heaven! And the best maker of this nectar of the gods is an Australian company called Bundaberg. You can find this stuff at many World Market stores. While it doesn't have any alcohol, it is quite tasty. Give it a try.

I can be bribed with this

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse...

Truly I am not. Especially since the horse really isn't dead here. Although Gitmo will likely be closed conditions at Bahgram Airbase in Afghanistan are said to be business as usual (i.e. brutal).

But it is very important to look at the faces of those we unlawfully detained and tortured. It's important to listen to these guys. It is important to learn from this mistake. I am all for getting terrorists. But somewhere along the line here we monumentally fucked up and picked up these guys. And we KEPT them. For YEARS. We also tortured them. Now, one could argue that our torture wasn't as bad as other countries torture. Perhaps so. But it's still torture. And of course, there are those who died while in our custody. Those who committed suicide when they lost all hope of ever being free.

One could argue that there are always innocent casualties in war. One might argue that the ends justified the means. That through this treatment, we managed to keep America safe. But most reports I have read seem to indicate that this isn't the case. Most seasoned interrogators have stated that torture is not effective. So why did we do it? Did we, as a nation, go mad? I think so. And in this blind rage, in this quest to punish we ignored the core of what makes this country truly great. As always, I appreciate your thoughts.

I'm gonna write more than a letter...

Like many people I've been keen to upgrade my computer to the shiny new Windows 7 OS. I ran the beta on my laptop for a while at it really is how Vista SHOULD have been. Lot of fixes. Better usability. Clean. I did the install on the laptop without incident, going from Vista to Windows 7 allows for an 'in place' upgrade that keeps programs and files intact. While a clear slate is always best, my laptop wasn't loaded with crap and the results were good.

My desktop however, runs XP. You cannot upgrade XP to Vista. You have to do a clean install and then re-install ALL your programs. For me, thats a LOT of programs. But I was resigned to it. My system has been running slow, giving me plug and play errors. Nothing game stopping, but annoying. But just as I was getting ready to do the deed I came across a program from Laplink that promissed it could actually backup and move my XP programs to Windows 7. I did some research and it looked like a good deal. The software is about $20 or $9 if you download it from Amazon.com. I did the backup. Installed Windows 7 (which went quite fast) and then started the unpacking process. Bam! Sorry mate, you don't have enough room. But I'm just moving files around, why do I need gobs of space?

No answer from their website.

Actually, no website.

It seems that my wireless card wasn't working. No internet. Luckily I have my trusty laptop. I won't bore you with the gory research details. Suffice it to say I wasted about 4 hours downloading drivers, updates, software, more drivers. At one point I got my onboard soundcard working. Great! I didn't know it wasn't woking, but okay. (I use USB wireless headphones that bypass the sound card).

Eventually, out of desperation I went back to the Linksys support site. I did searched for Windows 7 info. I looked up my card again and carefully read the FAQ's. Funny thing, there's no info on Windows 7, but there IS info on Vista drivers. I click a link, download a 500k file, use a thumb drive to move it to the desktop system, clicky clicky and guess what... internets.

Really Linksys?

You've known about this OS for about a year, just like everyone else. It's not like it just sprung forth from the sea like Venus on the Half Shell. It's not like this hardware is old or from an obscure maker. It's f*cking Linksys! And you can't bother to build a driver for your product? Or ever put up a LINK to a blurd that sayd 'Hey, Windows 7 users, use there Vista drivers, they're just peachy" ???

This is the sort of thing that makes me want to buy a place ticket, fly to California to their corporate headquarters, wait patiently in the waiting roon and then, upon meeting the person responsible for not getting this driver in place, punch them squarely in the balls.

Repetitively.

Now that I've got my internets back I will call the Laplink people tomorrow to see if indeed I can do this in place upgrade. Computers... indestinguishable from evil pixies.

Happy Halloween all!

Le Commedia ist fini

Yesterday was the last day of the Ohio Renaissance faire, and in effect, the end of the 2009 sales season. Today,we packed up in weather so nice it seemed criminal not to just stand there and admire it, soak it in. A far cry from years when we pulled out as snowflakes began drifting from leaden skies.

I say this is the end of the season but in truth there never really IS an end. Just a lull. Ground work needs to be laid for the winter shows, contracts must be filled out etc etc...

But I feel compelled to draw a line, imaginary as it may be, in the sand and say "This is where this season ended." If only for my mental health. Early on I knew this was going to be a rough one and I created a mantra to deal with it "Just survive". This worked pretty well in keeping me from loosing my shit when the numbers started coming in. I knew that if I started to stress out I would not make it through the season. Although it would have saved me money I didn't get rid of my sales help at Michigan or Ohio. To do so would have put more pressure on me, more stress, worn me out much quicker. And it might not have generated significantly higher profits. My minions were a big help and I appreciate the work they did this year under tough circumstances. They helped keep me sane. Michele, Kendra, Dan, Lindsey, Jesse and Shy. Thanks for all your help.

I'm going to take a little time to catch my breath. Not too long. There's work to do. But while there are still a few nice days left I'd like to pay some much needed attention to the house and grounds. Get crap organized and put away a little. Maybe read a book in the hammock. Ohhh that's be nice....