Technoslave

Maybe it’s just me.  I don’t know.  I once heard ( probably in a movie ) that you can tell how long you’re going to live by what you read first in a newspaper.  Me, I’ve always been a comics sort of guy.  I still have two really big bins filled with comics from the mid to late 80s/early 90s.  I didn’t continue collecting in college, so that’s about where my stash ends.

However, with the advent of the intertubes, there has been a lot of online comics that are published, mainly peoples way to release/vent, etc, sort of like this stupid website, where I can type and type and spew it all out for bots to crawl and no one to read.

Read the rest of this entry »

In this case, check that you have excellent trigger control, otherwise there could be some really really bad things happening.

In this case, what I’m talking about is purchasing a new AR, taking it to the NRA, and blowing off a hundred or two rounds.  Unfortunately, even with safety glasses, at some point in time there’s just that small enough opening between your glasses and your skin, and it’s that small opening that at least once in three years and four or five thousand rounds of ammo being plinked off that you’re just bound to have something like this happen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Internet memes, sometimes ya gotta love em.

This is right up there with lolcats “I can haz cheesburgr“.  Although, more adult.

I’ve gone to this place multiple times…the place in particular is Prime 112 in South Beach.  This will happen from time to time when four or five of your customers are located in the Southern Florida region…that and the person I work with has this complete and utterly insane fascination with it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not that I’ve had any kitties for the past couple of years, that doesnt’ mean I can’t recall with clarity what they were like!

Got around to voting today. Ok, was actually looking forward to voting, now I look forward to watching CNN off and on for the rest I the day. All hail the goofy voting mechanism of the United States.

Oh yeah, the good thing was is I timed it just right.  10:15AM, walked in, presented ID, walked to a polling station, filled out my app, because the optic scanner is the most accurate thing out there ( do your research on electronic voting machines ), and then walked out at 10:18AM.

GeoTagged, [N39.123215, E-77.534487]

On or around September 28th of last year I replaced the tires on my car.  I currently drive a Mazda RX8, the tires needed for this car are not what one would call cheap.  My original set of tires lasted roughtly 21k miles.  You figure I had fun with the car when I first bought it, manual transmission, zippy fun little car, so I probably killed the tires a little sooner than was expected, and I had a rough idea how much things were going to cost.

A year and some weeks later, this past Saturday, I found myself driving home in the rain from a friends house.  My car had been acting “weird” since a recall notice was done on the car at my last 3750 mile oil change.  But it’s more of an inconvience for me to get back to the Mazda dealership from where I live that I decided not to bother with it.  I could live with a couple new quirks in the feel of the ride while I waited for my next oil change to arrive.  Driving home from my friends house found me in perilous straights.  To say that I was in danger, other people were in danger, and I was scared witless would have been both astute and accurate depictions of the way my car was driving.  Imagine going 55 miles per hour when suddenly you car decides to deviate towards the curb/berm and you have to over correct, you’re driving down the road like this / <- Yes, like that, if not more to the right.  I has to do with the computer in your car having control over the the power going to your two rear tires.

So as not to endanger anyone else, plus I think I had to change my drawers ( I’m the guy going over 100MPH on his bike and loving it, jumping out of planes free falling, me being scared doesn’t happen all that often, this scared me ) I found a parking lot and called a friend to pick me up.

Read the rest of this entry »

I sort of feel like this kid here.

I’m pretty sure that it’s mostly from flying to LA and back, being stuck in the huge metal tube with nearly 300 other people.  You’re just bound to pick something up.  Hopefully, with a little bit of luck from some pharmaceutical companies, as well as some kleenex/paper towels, I’ll get over it soon enough.

I was in Terminal 7 in LAX at the Red Carpet Club, and it was a 10 or 15 minutes before my flight was due to board. I didn’t get the upgrade I was hoping for My flight actually left out of Terminal 6, so I started walking there.

Sorry no pics of this one. As I’m walking in the interconnect between 7 and 6 I see this elderly gentleman standing, possibly looking at departure gates, but on his cell phone. My first thought was oh my god, Samuel Clemens! Then I realized it wasn’t him, but someone who looks a lot like him, only thing was I couldn’t remember his name. I didn’t stand and gawk, or even go up to him to talk, I guess I’m just not that kind of celebrity spotter, what with my Nina Hartly sighting and all.

I didn’t have much time to look him up on my iPhone, because I’d need to do some google searches to find out who it was. It wasn’t until I got home last night and sat down with my laptop for a few minutes that I was finally able to enter in a search term that brought up what I was looking for. In this case it was something along the lines of “Hollywood Mark Twain” or something like that, which led me to Hal Holbrook.

While the last time I was in the LA area, I don’t know if I was looking for anyone – this would have been in the last 90s, maybe 2000 last time was there, I definitely found some this time.

So, before the break, which is where the pictures will be, I just have to comment on the iPhone camera. Many people bitched and whined about it because it’s on 2 mega pixels. Just because it has only 2MP compared to some store cameras that are 5MP, or even some cell phones that might have 5MP, doesn’t mean that the higher the number the better the picture. What it comes down to with those larger numbers is how big of an aperture do you have…anyway, not to get in to the details of digital photography.

Having used the iPhone camera for a bit, I can say with serious consideration that they need a different camera in there. I don’t care if it’s 2MP or not, but whatever underlying processing they have in the camera is pretty much shit. You’ll see in the following photos what I’m talking about.

The setup, I went to this after Beer & Gear party at NANOG, at a place called “The Standard”. It was better than most after parties because talent was hired and brought in, which is something that doesn’t normally happen, they were all actresses, not to be confused with the P list celebrity I saw ( P is for porn boys and girls ). LA is full of out of work … er not currently employed … actors and actresses, so someone had the forethought to hire some actresses and ship them down to downtown LA ( bogus to begin with ) and push them in front of a bunch of nerds. So, overall better than normal. After being up on the roof for an hour or so drinking weird pineapple pina colada shots we decided to go get some dinner. There was a restaurant down below that the group I was with decided to go to…

Read the rest of this entry »