Posted 6/08/2002 11:56:00 PM by Bigwig link


Falwell vs. Falwell

Posted 6/08/2002 11:56:00 PM by Bigwig link


"Amy, you do an end around, Janice, go long. Tiffany, kick the nose tackle's ass!

Posted 6/08/2002 11:01:00 PM by Bigwig link



Annoying the Wife - Chapter 3 - Keeper of the Turtles

Since only the newly arrived Yankees take the highway anywhere in the Triangle, we're taking a back road on our way to Target this morning. As is my wont, I'm not actually paying attention to anything on the road as mudane as other vehicles, cyclists or pedestrians. I spend my time scanning the treeline for birds, identifying roadkill, giving color commentary and pointing out the occasional plane to....to....

Okay, here's my problem. I'm talking about a trip to Target with my Toddler, yet I am not Lileks, Master of the Taking Toddlers to Target genre, and presumably jealous creator of the memes thereof. I could just go the straight plagiarism route and call my Toddler "Gnat", but even I am not quite that lazy. So I will refer to MY toddler as "Not Gnat", or Ngnat for short. It's pronounced "nat". Along for the ride, well, really the impetus for the ride, is the Sainted Wife and Mother, hereinafter known as SWAM.

Apparently we need kitchen curtains. I suggested a nice corn-print, but the SWAM dismissed that idea with a "not even Hilda would do that."

So there we are on the way to Target. "Possum......Possum.....Plane! Ngnat, Plane! ..............Poor Kitty.....Oooooo Hawk!......Possum........Possum.....Turtle?..TURTLE!!" Sudden deceleration. Gear shift. Reversal of previous vector of travel, which naturally enough brings a query from the Swam.

"What are you doing?"

"There's a turtle in the road!"

"I didn't see a turtle."

"Honey, you weren't looking for turtles, now were you?"

"I don't see why we have to do this all the time."

"We don't do it all the time. I can't just leave him there to get run over."

"We haven't seen a car since we turned onto to Alexander!"

"You think those possums squashed themselves?"

"Who died and made you keeper of the turtles.?"

"Keeper of the Turtles?"

"Keeper of the Turtles!"

"............I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

"You're the most annoying man on the planet."

I can't leave turtles on the road. She knows this. She's known this for 7 years, since we started dating. In that time, I have pulled turtles big and small off of neighborhood streets, main throughfares, and once, off I-40 during morning rush hour. (She (the turtle, rather than the wife) was on the side median, heading in. I didn't have to dodge 18 wheelers or anything. In answer to your question, you can tell the sex of a turtle by looking at the plastron.) I'll also rescue snakes, and once I stopped the car to save a mouse. Turtles are a lot easier to catch, though.

So, leaving a mildly irritated spouse to talk to Ngnat about her bothersome father, I got out of the truck to walk the 20 yards or so back to the turtle. Except, when I got there, it wasn't a turtle. It was a croissant. It had chocolate on it, which I mistaken for a shell. It was still warm. Crap. After a couple of indecisive seconds, I picked up the pastry, walked it across the road, and gently placed it in the tall grass at the verge of the woods. Then I walked back to the truck.

"Well, what kind was it?"

"Eastern Box."

Posted 6/07/2002 04:30:00 PM by woundwort link


Join me in a crusade to stop the occurrence of stupid names for professional teams. My God, am I the only person who notices the hilarity involved in the name of the Utah Jazz? Has jazz ever been played in Utah? Please tell me that at least one person in the history of this organization has suggested a name change. Why wouldn't they change it? Hey man, you uprooted a team from one city and moved it into Mormon land, do you really think it would hurt your fan base to change their name?

Here's a suggestion. The Hornets are moving from Charlotte to New Orleans. Please, for the love of God, allow New Orleans to use the name Jazz again and call the team in Utah the Utah Hornets. What difference does it make? Utah has as much to do with hornets as it does with Jazz.

Don't even get me started on the Los Angeles Lakers. Have you seen a lake anywhere near L.A.? Dammit, people, look around you. If the name doesn't mean anything, change it!!!!!! My God, let's wake up before we are in the seats pulling for the Mississippi Yankees or The Vermont Cowboys. If you are with me then let's all unite and.............well, we could............or maybe.......hell, screw it.

Posted 6/07/2002 03:30:00 PM by woundwort link


If you were to turn an upside down cake, upside down, would it then look rightside up?

Posted 6/07/2002 03:20:00 PM by woundwort link


I think, therefore I am.......yet I don't think as much as Bigwig, so maybe I am not as much as he is. Not to mention the fact that with the internet I don't have to think as much...........technology is making me less of who I am.....or who I was.............my head hurts.

Posted 6/07/2002 01:42:00 PM by woundwort link


In the spirit of Celebrity Death Match, wouldn’t it be great if cartoon characters could fight each other to the death? I would much rather watch Betty Rubble and Jessica Rabbit get it on than to have to watch Tanya Harding beat the hell out of the woman who used to play Pinky Tuscadero. Imagine if cartoon canines could fight to the death. Snoopy would be the first to die because he would rather dance than fight (although he did shoot down the Red Baron, a grateful nation remembers). I wouldn’t mind partying with him, but I refuse to bet on him.

The next two contestants are too close to call. Even with his size, Marmaduke just doesn’t seem to have the killer instinct needed to win this type of match. While the ball eating idea is a bit disturbing, he doesn’t have his own set of rocks big enough to seal the deal. Also, the cartoon sucks so I can’t bring myself to pick him. Next is Scooby Doo, and while he appears to be about as smart as lint, he has a dirty little secret that makes him quite a formidable opponent. Let’s face it, Scooby is high as a kite and is most likely “kissing the sky” during all of his adventures, most of which may just be figments of his imagination. He downs those scooby snacks like M & M’s and most likely wouldn’t even feel it if Marmaduke did eat his gems.

However, I believe the winner of this match would be Clifford the Big Ass Dog. His size alone will cause him to win. Sure, he’s cuddly, but wouldn’t have to work hard with these opponents. He would simply step on Snoopy doing the happy dance, and Marmaduke would most likely be crushed by Clifford’s sack as he tried to eat it. Finally, Clifford would down Scooby like a Quaalude as Scooby danced with the Care Bears in loopy land. I wonder if Clifford would get high off of eating Scooby like people get drunk eating the fruit out of pj?

The possibilities are endless. Spiderman could fight Batman, Hong Kong Phooey could fight Underdog and Barney could finally get his punk ass kicked by Dino. I’m sure the show would be picked up by Fox and would get better ratings than When Barnyard Animals Attack…………….I smell an Emmy.

Posted 6/07/2002 01:27:00 PM by Bigwig link


This one's for you, Nichole

Posted 6/07/2002 12:45:00 PM by Bigwig link



BATE #2
One of the more onerous projects I've had to deal with lately has been the installation of a trouble ticketing system called Arweb on one of our Sun 3000 boxes. Trouble ticketing systems are very popular, since filling out and passing them around to various departments looks a great deal like actual work. The work does get done, somehow, but the realization that the ticket onscreen is not actually your responsibility carries with it a surprisingly potent sense of victory. A few arcane gestures, a "Begone, troublesome electronic sprite, and trouble me no more!", and away goes your temporary responsibility into the aether.

Like Sisyphus after a few centuries, I've forgotten why I have to install this application. I just know I have to get the damn thing to the top of the hill. This is the second machine I've tried to install it on. On the initial install to a Sun Netra, it looked like the New Atlanta Servletexec servlet engine wasn't going to play nicely with the Tomcat engines already running there. I don't know for sure that this was the case, but I'd seen it before with the Resin engine, and anyway the bloody thing wasn't working. My first reaction when something like this happens it to find a less crowded environment to play in, since the fewer applications there are running on a machine, the less chance one of those apps is going to reach out and make me its bitch.

Well, more like my 6th reaction. My first five reactions were to;

1. stop the program, start the program, check the program, mutter
2. stop the program, start the program, check the program, bitch.
3. stop the program, surf the net in the hope that a random cosmic ray would free up some stuck electrons, start the program, check the program, curse.
4. stop the program, delete all the files, install the program, configure the program, start the program, check the program, moan like the damned.
5. stop the program, think about composing a vicious hate letter to the developer, try to delete the files, hit the enter key, hit the enter key, pound on the enter key, realize there's a network outage, try to check my email, realize AGAIN that there's a network outage, talk to the flash crowd out in the hall about the network outage, decide to go to lunch early, realize the network has been back up for 15 minutes, delete the program, install the program, configure the program in a subtly different way, try to start the program, fix the broken configuration, start the program, check the program, feel sorry for myself and wish I never had given up smoking.

At this point I decide that the changes I might need to make to fix this thing will probably start breaking other things, and I don't need that grief. In addition, the Sun3000 at least has a cdrom drive, (Netras don't, at least our Netras don't). In spite of my ever-decreasing faith in software, I hope that the automatic install from the cdrom will remove a source of error. So in the disc goes. I cd to /cdrom...

ksh: /cdrom: not found

Dammit. There's always something to do first. My entire career as a sysadmin is xeno's paradox, filmed in Technicolor for the amusement of the masses. Normally something as integral as the cdrom drive is automatically mounted by the OS. It obviously wasn't, and I hadn't spent a lot of time on it before, so I never noticed. So I have to mount it by hand. By hand, as if I'm going to actually going to reach into the box and re-arrange things to my satisfaction instead of just typing a mount command. Which mount command? I dunno. Never said I was a GOOD sysadmin.

After about 18 thousand false starts, I finally settle on this command "mount -o ro -F hsfs /dev/dsk/c0t6d0s0 /cdrom"

"Mount -o ro" means "add the cd-rom with the "read only option(-o)" I can see specifying read-only being useful in some cases, but here it's just redundant. It's a cd-rom. The system couldn't write to it no matter what. I suppose that it is useful to keep the system from trying to write to it, however.
"-F hsfs" means "using the hsfs File system" This tells Solaris what format the data on the disk is.
"/dev/dsk/c0t6d0s0" This is the shorthand Solaris uses for the physical location of the device
"cdrom" this is the directory to pretend that the information on the disk is. Solaris doesn't actually copy any information into this directory. Essentially I told the machine "There's some data here that I want you to pretend is here, so I can play with it" This is nice because you can do it with a whole other machine, not just a cd-rom. The mount command would be different, though.

Did I know what all that stuff meant before I started? No, which is one of the reasons I write what kehaar calls "those boring-ass tech essays". Writing it up in any sort of explanatory manner will hopefully cause the knowledge to stick there, making me an incrementally better sysadmin, which will give me more money, which will allow me to buy a bigger worm farm.

So, does running the install from the cd-rom solve my problems?

Oh, hell no.

Posted 6/07/2002 11:32:00 AM by woundwort link


I never knew that Marmaduke likes to eat balls.

Posted 6/07/2002 10:22:00 AM by Bigwig link


China's getting its news stories from the Onion

Posted 6/07/2002 12:45:00 AM by Bigwig link


Not that I believe a word of it, mind you...

Yasser Arafat's Horoscope

I especially like the prediction for June 8th "Rather than hear what you want to hear, listen for the facts."

The there's the special extra reading available here

SuperPower Report for Yasser Arafat
AdZe MiXXeTM presents
A SuperPower Report for Yasser Arafat Born 8/01/1929 12:00
In Cairo, EGYPT (30N03 31E15 zone: -2 hrs)
...
TIP: Yasser, you are playing the game of life stakes higher than you may realize.
...
Romantically speaking: clarify your desires, speak from the heart, send out clear signals, and enjoy more well-placed kisses....
TIP: Leave behind something that will survive your name, Yasser.
...
You like to talk about sex and are interested in the kind of letters written in Nancy Friday's books.
Travel can be encouraging and a short trip is usually welcome.

Those are the highlights. If you'd like to see the full letter, drop us a line.

Posted 6/06/2002 09:47:00 PM by Bigwig link


Never forget that time of month again.
Link via the Feces Flinging Monkey

Posted 6/06/2002 09:33:00 PM by Bigwig link


Mantis adolescents

R: Wazzup!
G: Wazzup! Whatcha doing?
R: Nothing, watching for game, having a bug. Wazzup with you?
G: Nothing, watching for game, having a bug. You hear about Archie?
R: Naw. Where is old Archie?
G: Gone. Got his head it bit off last week.
R: Bit off? That lucky bastard!
G: True. True. You know that Ophelia who lives in the Azalea?
R: Oh, yes. She's got a thorax that just won't stop. I was talking to her while back, she's
hungry for me man
G: It was her.
R: Ophelia? Ophelia bit Archie's head off? Dammit, I thought he was my friend!
G: Shit, man. When it comes to giving head it's the law of the jungle out there.
R: I know, I know. You gotta 'nuther bug?
G: Yea man, here you go. Watch out, they got kinda shook up
R: (pops top on bug) Shit! (hurriedly sucks up foaming hemolymph)
G: Be cool man, here comes Janice.
R: Oh, man, look at the ovipositor on her. I heard she just shed on Monday. That shit is as smooth as the day she was born
G: Yea, the brazilian look is good on her. I've always been a Jaw man, myself.
R: Hey baby, you looking for a tangy snack?
J: No baby, I'm looking for a meal. Tough luck for you, huh? (saunters off)
G: Oooooooooooooooooooooo!
R: She wants me, I can tell.
G: You are five times a fool, my man. She dissed you from here to Sunday. Anyway she was wiggling that 'positer at me.
R: Baby do got back, that is for sure.
G: Still, I got my eyes on something better'n that.
R: What are you talking about, that girl could eat me till the cowbugs came home.
G: You don't want her man. She took Dave back to her house yesterday.
R: Yea, so?
G: I found most of him 'round back this morning.
R: NO!
G: Oh yea.
R: Bitch don't swallow?!
G: No man, she spits.
R: Now that, is just a lack of respect, pure and simple.
G: True, True.

Posted 6/06/2002 03:16:00 PM by woundwort link


Sticking with the insect theme, wouldn't it be weird if people were more like praying mantises? Guys would no longer ask each other if they were "getting any", instead they would already know the answer by the number of their friends whose heads were still in tact.

But then, what would we talk about?

Posted 6/06/2002 02:56:00 PM by Kehaar link


Ramones Tributary Links

Joey Ramone
Dee Dee Ramone
Official Ramones
CBGB

Posted 6/06/2002 02:45:00 PM by Kehaar link


The Ramones are dead. Long Live the Ramones

Dee Dee Ramone is dead at age 50 of a probable drug overdose.

Posted 6/06/2002 02:04:00 PM by woundwort link


Wouldn't it suck to be a male ladybug? Can you imagine the mean things other insects must say to them?

Posted 6/06/2002 11:31:00 AM by Kehaar link


North and South Dakota to the French?

I sent an email to Coyote at the Dog Show regarding my proposal to give North and South Dakota back to the Sioux. The man is obviously more knowledgeable about the current Native American situation in the U.S. than I am. Of course, I never pretended to be all that knowledgeable. I just took the first idea that came to my head and ran with it.

Coyote pointed out that there were plenty more tribes living in the territory that we now refer to as the Dakotas, as well as in Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, etc. (For more Native American population statistics, go here.) I chose the Sioux because they've been romanticized more frequently in books in film.

It was a simplistic solution to a complicated problem, and was never really meant to be a comprehensive solution. It was meant to be more of a talking point, and I guess it served it's purpose well. I assume it has also been a good parallel to the Palestinian-Israeli situation, because it drew ready fire from all sides, some angry, some speculative. (See Bob, self-described NoDak, in the comments after the original article for the angry bits. Sorry 'bout the ire in my own response, Bob. I gotta' learn to take criticism with a grain of salt.) It just goes to show you that there has to be a lot of patience, understanding on all sides, and it shows just how quickly things can break down into name-calling and other juvenile behaviors.

Anyway, Coyote suggested that the original Europeans in the Dakotas were the French. He suggested that we should return the land to them.

Well, Coyote, we tried. The French surrendered immediately.

Posted 6/06/2002 12:03:00 AM by Bigwig link



Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!

Bill Quick, the Daily Pundit, has discovered the meaning of our name and finds it good. Which goes to show that even powerful, talented science fiction authors like a good poop joke. I didn't really expect much attention to be paid to the blog name when I thought it up. Hell, the attention paid to the blog is far greater than I ever thought possible.

Judy Shapiro and Meryl Yourish also commented on the name, so they've heard this before.

Silflay Hraka is an rabbit epithet from the Richard Adam's novel, Watership Down. You can look up the meaning here (link via Daily Pundit). It was the first naughty phrase I ever learned in a different language, as Tolkien hadn't seen fit to have Gimli spew out a few dwarvish "elven goatlovers" in Lothlorien. So it stuck with me.

But there's a better reason. I had a rabbit for a few years, named Hazel after the main character in the book, and I learned that rabbits tend to silflay their own hraka pretty much constantly, for the same reasons cows chew their cud, to get more nutritiony goodness. It doesn't have to be their own hraka, however. It can be pretty much any rabbit's hraka. They're not choosy.

I figured the constant re-chewing of other's hraka was pretty much a spot-on metaphor for blogging. So there you have it. Now, go make me some nuggets.

Posted 6/05/2002 11:34:00 PM by Kehaar link


Logistical Problems

A response to my modest proposal re: North and South Dakota and the Great Sioux Nation via A Coyote at the Dog Show.

Posted 6/05/2002 10:25:00 PM by Bigwig link



Extradite Arafat

Israeli tanks have surrounded Arafat headquarter's again.

"In the president's eyes, Yasser Arafat has never played a role of someone who can be trusted or effective,'' presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer said.

Well, I tell you what Ari, If we can't trust him, and he's not effective, then what good is he? Let's get some use out of this evil bastard and have Israel extradite him.

It's not like we don't have anything to try him for.

There's the murder of Dave Berger in Munich by Fatah in 1972.

There's also the execution of Ambassador Cleo A. Noel Jr. and George Curtis Moore at the command of Yasser Arafat, after they were kidnapped in March of 1973 from the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum.

Lola Nunberg, 53, of New York, killed November 14, 1975 in a Jerusalem bombing claimed by Fatah.

March 11, 1978, Gail Rubin - shot by the PLO on an Israeli beach.

June 2, 1978 - Richard Fishman - killed in a PLO bus bombing in Jerusalem.

August 19, 1982 - Anne Van Zanten and Grace Cutler - killed in the PLO bombing of a Paris restaurant

December 19, 1983 - Serena Sussman - died from injuries suffered in a PLO bombing of a bus in Jerusalem bus.

October 15, 1986 - Gali Klein - killed in a Fatah grenade attack at the Western Wall.

August 9, 2001 - Shoshana Greenbaum, killed in a suicide bombing at Sbarro's.

I'll give you one reason Arabs keep resorting to terrorism. Yasser's shown them it works. 50 years ago he was just another thug and, thanks to President after American President shaking his claw, he's now the leader of his people.

Get him here, throw him in jail and try him. If the CIA doesn't have enough evidence to send him to the chair then there is no friggin' need for the CIA. The President said he wanted Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive". Fine. Yasser Arafat's hands run just as red. Do we have the guts to say the same for him?

Update: 10:35 pm. I just did a google search for "extradite Yasser Arafat" and then "extradite Arafat" and got zip, zilch, nada, nothing. Am I nuts? Surely someone has brought this up before. On the positive side, "extradite Yasser" would a Googlewhack if quotes were allowed.

Update: 11:39 pm. Steve at USS Clueless says Israel should just kill him. That's good too.

Posted 6/05/2002 09:41:00 PM by Bigwig link


Tell the Masai "Ashi naling" at Thanks for the Cattle

Like the man said "They wanted us to have cows. We should take the cows and raise them on a nice farm upstate and then send the cow puppies back to them someday.""

Posted 6/05/2002 09:36:00 PM by Bigwig link


They've lost access to all the top-secret lutefisk recipes!

Posted 6/05/2002 09:28:00 PM by Bigwig link


Changes in Altitudes, Changes in Attitudes.

Posted 6/05/2002 09:23:00 PM by Bigwig link


If everything that can go wrong, has, get some of your own back here.

Posted 6/05/2002 08:43:00 PM by Kehaar link


Design your own South Park Character. Sweeeet..

Posted 6/05/2002 05:31:00 PM by Kehaar link


I have to admit that I am developing ambiguous feelings about two sports that previously held no interest for me.

Thanks to the Hurricanes success in the NHL playoffs, hockey fever in the state has reached epidemic proportions. Before the Canes run for the Stanley Cup, I couldn't have cared less about hockey. I live in the Southeastern United States. The lack of significant snowfall in the Winter and the ability to fry an egg on any surface in the Summer doesn't really lend itself to ready adoption of what is essentially a Winter sport. Around here, attempting to emulate those movies that depict kids playing hockey on a frozen pond in the dead of Winter would only get you an honorable mention for swiftly removing yourself from the gene pool in the Darwin Awards. The decision to base a professional hockey team in the state certainly met with a lot of derision on my part. The only remotely redeeming quality that I could see about hockey was the near certainty that the opposing players would be involved in a knock-down, drag-out brawl at least once a period. (BTW, for those of you that do not live in the South and don't understand the draw of NASCAR, the same holds true. There is a high probability that one or more cars will be involved in a high-speed collision at least once during the race. It is for this 30 second period of time that most people watch the "sport".) Other than the fights, who cares about hockey? I mean, it like Soccer with sticks and skates.

And then the U.S. has to go and beat favored Portugal 3-2 in the World Cup. If I didn't care about hockey, I REALLY didn't care about soccer. I mean, it's like hockey except without sticks and skates. I'm not even sure that it has fights. It has yellow cards, and red cards, and most of the players in the U.S. have green cards, but... It's just a confusing mess of colors. I did play soccer for one season, very briefly when I was young. I played half-back, or wing-back, or wing-tip or some such position. My job was to stand in front of the goal and wait for the ball. I waited a lot. It was a lot like when I played outfield in baseball as a youth. I stood there chewing my glove and kicking dandelions most of the time. Don't get me started on baseball. (I'm actually thankful for the hockey and soccer happenings. It drives baseball off the front page of the newspaper. Except duing the playoffs, baseball has got to be the dullest sport on the planet. And it's still referred to as the National Pastime? But I wasn't going to go there...) Back to soccer...

The closest I ever came to liking soccer was when I read about that rugby player violating opponents during scrums. (Yes, I KNOW that soccer and rugby are two totally different sports. I'm just saying that's the closest I ever came to liking soccer. If you don't understand, I can't explain it to you.)

(Okay, I'll try to explain it to you. I'm an average American. As far as I am concerned, rugby and soccer are essentially the same sport to your average American. Therefore, something like one player goosing another player in one sport, which I found highly amusing, translates into some small appeal for the other sport.)

Anyway, I'm not sure what to do with the budding fandom inside. I really liked not caring about hockey or soccer. I guess I'll just ride out the wave of regional and national fervor while it lasts.

Update: Eric Olsen at Tres Producers also has thoughts on soccer

Posted 6/05/2002 03:37:00 PM by woundwort link


Annoying the Wife

(House is quiet, child is asleep, husband and wife are reading novels in den)

Husband (completely out of the blue): "You know Elizabeth Hurley?"

Wife: "Yeah, what about her?"

Husband: "She's pretty hot......" (sit quietly for at least a minute).........."and I don't understand why she was ever with that dork Hugh Grant"........(quiet again for another minute).........(say lightly under breath) "I could treat her so much better than that punk"

Posted 6/05/2002 12:25:00 PM by Kehaar link


Mmmmmmm. Fried Twinkies.

I wonder how long it will take before someone comes up with Fried Ding Dongs. Wait...I think I just came up with Fried Ding Dongs! That's it! I've finally found my ticket to riches and fame. I hearby stake my claim to the invention of Fried Ding Dongs. And Fried Ho-Hos. So back off.

Update: Ooooo...what about Fried Swiss Cake Rolls? Yuuummmmyyy...