RAIN!

First actual rainstorm(ish... thing...) of 2012! YAY!

Too bad it's not going to last long and we're back to unseasonably-warm spring-like weather come the weekend.

The unseasonably-warm weather freaks me out. That it contributes to my allergies actually bumps my emotional state into hatred and fury.

Ugh.

...so tired...

Excellent Advice

Apropos of Nothing

Apparently yesterday was the Oscars.

Yep. Still don't care.

Just checking.

---

In other news, a binge of decongestant and antihistime cocktails makes for some really awesome dreams. And exhaustion. And dehydration. And lost time.

That combo makes a Chipotle fajita burrito taste INCREDIBLE!

Just sayin'.

---

i'm so tired...

Sharp Stuff

I have a problem.

I like things.

This isn't an uncommon problem among people in the world. Unless you're Buddah (or in that vein), we all generally like things. [Edit: Erik correctly pointed out to me that it's "Buddha" not "Buddah". I blame the pollen in the air and am now going to sneeze away what's left of my brains. Die in fire, plants! Die in fire!]

I have a number of things I quite like. I've mentioned several before and I won't bother repeating overly much.

Except for knives. I will repeat about knives. Because I got a new knife.

CountyComm posted their Titanium Framelock Knife the other day. I think I pondered the purchase for a grand total of ninety seconds before submitting the order.

I'm improving in terms of self restraint.

It arrived today.

So... Boker knives... it's a Boker knife. Meaning it's produced and packaged by Boker. My previous experience with Boker was a Boker Cop Tool, which has proven surprisingly-handy as a pry tool and box-cutter.

I followed up later by getting a Boker Credit Card Knife, mostly to compare it with my far superior Kubasek Creditor Carbon Fiber Money Clip Knife obtained sometime last year. (Spoiler: the cheaper Boker Credit Card knife? Nowhere near as good. Moving on...)

Anyway, I got the Titanium Framelock Knife.

It's PURDY!

It's a stout little bastard. It has a short, squat, tough little 2.5 inch (6.35 cm for you metric folks) blade that is surprisingly sharp.

I'm not bleeding yet, but that's because I'm at work and can't play with the damn thing without getting fired or arrested (or both).

It was ABSOLUTELY worth the price! Less than a hundred before taxes and shipping demanded their due.

I have a problem and it's a sharp one.

*sigh*

blooming things

I hate Springtime.

Everything blooms. Pollen is everywhere. My sinuses wage endless war on me.

With the unusually-warm weather California's been experiencing, we're having an early Spring.

And with that, an early dose of sinus fun

Hate this. Hate this a lot.

Three Days

Three days of sleeping in.

Thee days of vegging out.

Three days of DVDs, loud music, websurfing, and alcohol.

Three days of eating just over that line that's marked "excess".

Three delightful days off.

Back to the salt mines! *whip crack!*

Valentiny

This is a little late, I guess. A Valentine's poem forwarded via Erik.

Feeling happy?

Just in case things are going too well for you in life, here's a bit of news: apparently four in every thousand public keys protecting stuff like your online banking, email, and all that fun stuff is utter crap and provides no security.

Go to ARS Technica if you're curious about some of the depressing details.

Too bright and cheery for you? How about an offshore boot camp to indoctorinate kids into some kind of extreme Christianity?

I wonder what the original Jesus would have thought of that?

Good times!

I need to build a bunker...

News

Apparently it's a bad thing to pay cash for coffee.

This news brought to you by the geniuses of the FBI. The same idi... um... folks who think using TOR equates to being a criminal.

Keep in mind these geniuses also failed to catch the 9-11 criminals, so their crime-fighting tactics might not be up to snuff. Just sayin'.

---
In other news, a chart:

Now, I don't really give a rat's ass about who marries whom and all that stuff. Seems to me this is pretty clear. People just need to shut the fuck up and let folks get married.

Grass of Mardi

It's Mardi Gras in a week. It's halfway through February today. It's pretty crazy how time is flying.

It's winter-ish again in the Bay Area, but I expect it to shift back to faux-Spring by lunchtime.

My office software is inspiring thoughts of softwarecide in me.

Yes, I made that word up. Unless someone else beat me to it and I didn't know. The Google did not find an example.

If I'm the first, it's mine. All mine. You must pay me to use it.

You can pay me in happy thoughts. Or gold. Or beer.

Though only good beer.

Actually, money is probably best.

Howl, baby, howl!

Apparently it's Werewolf Orgy Day or somesuch.

There might be some Hallmark interpretation of it going on today under a different name.

Don't really know. I try to avoid that kind of crazy stuff.

If you're into this sort of thing, I won't judge. Really.

DANGER 5

HITLER'S DOG!!!

Can this get more awesome?

Going Solo

Han shot first.

There. I said it. I saw "Star Wars IV: A New Hope" back in 1977 when it was just "Star Wars". As an eager-eyed child, I saw spaceships, robots, lightsabers, and this badass rogue in a black vest who took no shit from anyone (except some brassy woman in a white dress with a cinnamon-bun hairdo...) blasted the crap out of some pucker-faced alien who sought to do him wrong.

Apparently that was never George Lucas's intention. I find that hard to believe.

No. Wait. I do believe that. I want to not believe it.

George Lucas did a marvellous thing by creating the "Star Wars" universe. He had an inestimable impact on American culture. Oh hell, world-culture. Who would have thought "Jedi" would become a religion?

Since then he's sort of gotten obsessive over his navel-gazing and continually polishes stuff that doesn't need polish and fixing things that, frankly speaking, 'ain't broke.

He seems to find a strangely-overwhelming need to make all of his characters, hero or villain, exceptionally stupid.

Luke Skywalker was kind of a whiny dork. Sure, he was a naive farmboy and all that, but he just never seemed all that bright. The poor dude was kind of doomed. I mean he grew up raised by his "uncle" and "aunt" on a desert planet. A couple of people, I might add, who were not all that savvy about the dangers of raising a kid who has the last name of a famous Jedi. You know, the same famous Jedi who helped slaghter the rest.

Good times there.

At least Princess Leia's parents had the good sense to change her last name. Too bad they didn't think to fortify their planet with a battlefleet in case of giant killer space stations. Oh well.

But this is about Han Solo.

So poor Han is a smuggler. He's an every-man kinda fellow. Walks the fine line of the law (okay, he breaks the law... whatever). He doesn't have the Force. He doesn't play with laser swords. He's got a blaster and he owes money to giant space slugs.

Thanks to his choice of drinking establishments, Han gets cornered by Greedo, an alien thug working for space slug Jabba the Hutt. Greedo's going to blast a hole in Han from across a table.

Unless you're an Imperial Stormtrooper, let's face it. You really can't miss from across a table. If the shooter can miss, then really you're in no danger.

So, in the original, Han sneaks his blaster out of its holster while chatting up Greedo. When it's clear in conversation that Greedo's going to kill him, Han gets the drop on the scrawny thug and blasts him in the nethers.

Self-defense. Case closed. This was obvious even to my eyes as a child.

Fast forward to the "updated" trilogy. Lucas has Lucasfilm and ILM update all the special effects. And for some incomprehensible reason, has Greedo shoot first.

And Greedo, of course, misses. Having him hit Han would sort of remove a hero pretty quickly.

Han then goes forward and blasts Greedo under the table as we remember.

What comes out of this? Well, Lucas feels this vindicates Han and doesn't make him a murderer. Lucas apparently is a bit autistic and doesn't seem to understand situational violence and threats.

Scenario: I have a gun. A thug is holding a gun of his own on me. My gun is tucked in my waistband or whatever. The guy with the drawn and aimed gun is going to win 99.99999% of the time. I'm in mortal jeopardy here. If I somehow manage to get the drop on the thug and shoot him first, alone or with witnesses, it's a pretty clear-cut case of self-defense.

It's not like Han waved his blaster around after greasing Greedo and hosed the rest of the room. He surgically and carefully offed the one guy who presented a life-threat to him.

If Han had waited until Greedo had fired a freakin' laser beam at him, well... how smart would that make Han? About as smart as a prequel Jedi. That is to say, pretty freakin' stupid.

Tweaks like this lessen the intelligence and capability of the heroes in Star Wars. And this is why there's such a "Han shot first" outcry. The fans don't want their childhood heroes to be punk'd and made into fools.

It's bad enough Han accidentally took down Boba Fett by spearing Fett's rocket packe. It's bad enough Fett went down like a punk. It's ridiculous that Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker was somehow forgiven for murdering children by tossing the Emperor down a hole.

There's no need to make Han more of a moron. And that's why Han shot first.

Wow. What an incoherent ramble on my part! I blame Nyquil. Oh, and George Lucas.

[Edit]Proof that Lucas is full of shit.[/Edit]

Observation

Those who say that drugs are not the answer have not tried the proper combination.

Oh, don't get your knickers in a twist. I'm talking about legal stuff. Sheesh.

Last night's Nyquil dose did not do what it should have done against this vile cold against which I struggle.

Breakfast therefore included Black Blood of the Earth for my coffee supplemented with some Dayquil and a couple of Advil for good measure.

Now I feel almost human. Almost.

Nerd Power

Saw this on rpg.net and had to repost.

Glorious. Simply glorious.

oy

Yeah. Full-blown cold has set in.

So far it feels reasonably-mild. After 9+ hours of Nyquil-supported slumber (not including naps yesterday afternoon) I feel... crappy but not as bad as yesterday.

And it's started to settle into a light chest cough.

I'd be home in bed right now if I didn't have training today. Argh.

bleah

I think I jinxed myself. Feeling rapidly crappy. I'll have to see if coffee can revive. Otherwise, it's a half-day for this little worker-bee.

Ugh.

Guilty pleasure

I saw G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra on TV the other day.

After I wiped the blood out of my eyes and forced my brain back into my skull, I pondered how someone could make such a horrible movie. I mean, c'mon! It's G.I. Joe! What kind of dumbass do you have to be to screw that up? I mean, lips on Snake Eyes' mask? WHAT. THE. HELL????

They made Scarlett a whiny wimp and kind of watered down the evil of the Baroness. Made me sad.

That said, I loved the rest of the Cobra villains. They made the movie almost watchable.

I chalked that up to more of my life that I'll never recover.

Then I saw:



I've had this on loop for a while. The "7 Nation Army" remix they're using as the music is freakin' AWESOME!

Plus, ninjas fighting on a mountainside? Sold.

I don't give a rat's ass about the rest of the movie. I will watch this for that scene alone.

Make no mistake here. This film will suck ass. I expect the acting, dialog, and plot to be ridiculous and ludicrous.

It'll still be worth it if they do two things:

1) Give Snake Eyes a proper baklava mask WITHOUT LIPS
2) Have a lot of ninja fights

Hopefully they'll have the "7 Nation Army" remix in the soundtrack, too.

Nerdy but awesome

I'm going to indulge in a bit of nerdy. Feel free to go get a coffee or something.

I was sent a site with an RFC of updated HTTP status codes.

These are brilliant and awesome. I am currently suffering from code 763.

Yeah, these probably don't apply exactly the way I'm using them, but being adaptable is an essential part of being human.

Hump Day

I'm feeling cautiously-optimistic that I'm keeping illness at bay.

I think that phrasing should help me dodge a jinx.

In other news, want carbon fiber mini-pen! WANT! (via The Gadgeteer) However, for $75 I think I will stick to what I've got.

Pictures of Stuff

Word has it that a picture is worth a thousand words.

As a professional writer, I get a wee-bit defensive that these damn photographers can upstage me. That said, there's some truth to the saying.

Anyway... stuff!

I talked about the Iain Sinclair CardSharp before (and got mention on Apocalypse Equipped! Woot!). I wanted to share pics of the CardSharp 1.0 and 2.0.

Below you'll see a pic of the two knives all folded up. The one on the right with the little bit of green is the 2.0. It's got a better locking mechanism that actually has to rotate to free the blade.

Here they are folded and "ready for action". They're essentially the same folded open. Sharp little buggers.

If you opt to purchase one of these beauties, I highly recommend going for the package deal and getting an Eon Classic with it.

It's gonna take about a month before it ships. You may as well get it with an extra shiny thing. And my whining aside, it's worth the wait.

Here's a photo of both the CardSharp 2.0 and the Eon Classic. Sorry for the funny angle. The flash was necessary in the dark confines of my man-cave and it caught the metal of the Eon flashlight oddly.

As a segue to another thing I've mentioned, I keep a CardSharp (or sometimes an Eon light) in my TMT Wallet.

Isn't it purdy?

I'm not much of a photographer (unlike some people) but this isn't a bad pic. I tried to get some close-ups of parts, like the glass-breaker, but my skills are lacking and I had trouble getting a non-blurry pic.

The only other photo that looks even halfway good, is a shot of the opened TMT wallet with a CardSharp in one of the sections.

The two inserts have been removed in this pic. They'd normally hold credit cards, ID, and the like. Maybe cash as well, though I tend to keep my cash separate from my cards. Gotta have a use for the money clip after all.

I think I like sharp things a little too much.

For irony, I'm typing this post with a bandage on one finger. Got a paper cut from a cardboard box, of all things, after I'd cut it open with a knife and safely put the knife away.

Yeah. I'm macho.

Hmm....

Honestly, I don't see the point to a reboot of the Spider Man franchise.

It's too soon. It's too much. It's too...



...oooh... Spider Man has mechanical web-shooters? Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy?

Okay, sold. You win this round, people-who-do-Marvel Comics-movies.

blargh...

It's been an open question as to whether I've been suffering an attack of allergies due to the unseasonably warm and dry weather California's been experiencing or if I've managed to catch the cold that various friends and family have enjoyed in my presence.

Or both. Could be both.

Yesterday I was really feeling something creep up on me. Constant headache (magnified by the fluorescent hell-bringers that pass for lighting in my building), mild-but-increasing congestion, light-headedness, and a general feeling of fatigue.

I tried a P90-X workout that didn't help an awful lot after work.

I decided to bite the Nyquil bullet. After a shot of the unnatural green sludge, I was done and out like a light.

Nine-ish hours of Nyquil-induced dreams later, I woke feeling very groggy, but better.

After 100 ml of Black Blood of the Earth rejuvenated me with its magical powers, I braved the wet roads (we've finally gotten a little rain) and... yeah. I'm still feeling on the cusp of something.

I hate this.

And that's it

If all goes as it should, my Facebook account has officially been staked, set on fire, and laid to rest.

I haven't missed it, so I'm convinced it was the right decision. So time to par-tay!

The Internet

(acquired from RPG.net)

We have a Hulk

I cannot express how excited I am to see this movie.

Consequences

In other news: ew.

And it's not really all that difficult.

Today's moments of weird brought to you by my Facebook account deathwatch countdown. Seems appropriate it's going to allegedly get final deletion during a full moon.

And LO! It was Friday! And it was GOOD!

Okay, I'm not very good at doing mock-Biblical-speak.

The only things I learned in Sunday School were lockpicking (a skill mostly-forgotten) and how to make paper airplanes with pins and razor blades in the wings.

Important skills to be sure.

Wait. I think I got sidetracked.

Oh! Yes. Friday! Friday is here! What does that mean?

* It means I have a new episode of "Fringe" to enjoy tonight. Hopefully I'll enjoy it. This season has been a lot of weak tea.

* Beer. I take some folks to a local, semi-famous beer place after work today. I regret I'll be the driver and must restrain myself, but such is the way of things.

* Sleeping in tomorrow. Oh yes...

Got a little lesson in humility yesterday when I tried to help a friend change out her flat tire for her spare. I couldn't un-do the bolts on the flat tire (or really figure out the bizarre jack her car comes with).

This has cast doubts in my mind on my preparedness for any crises in the future. I think I've been focusing too much on stuff (though I am still loving my so-comfortable boots) and not enough on training myself. I've gotten lazy since injury made me have to shelve martial arts.

Gotta get my lazy butt back in shape and get my learn on (as they say in Hollywood portrayals of rural America).

Important to know

(xkcd)

Gettin' the Boot(s)

It's not what you think.

A little while back, I discovered a cool blog called ApocalypseEquipped.

I think I found an idol in this guy. He sounds like a bit of a laid-back survialist-ish person, much like a few of my friends (and, I suppose, me). What drew me to his blog was his review of some really neat gear.

I loves me the gear stuff as demonstrated by the numerous posts of my own mentioning things that caught my ever-acquisitive eye.

Okay, got the intro out of the way.

Earlier in the week, I read a review on ApocalypseEquipped of the Bates Delta 8 Boots.

I was fascinated, mainly because he reviewed side-zip waterproof boots.

I've wanted good side-zip boots ever since my trips to Japan. When I travel I try to wear sturdy footwear. My Japan trips were in winter, so I went with a pair of very comfortable Ecco short boots. As footwear goes, they were (and are) unmatched in terms of comfort.

Alas, they also require lacing action to take off or put on. And in Japan, you're taking off and putting on your shoes a lot. Most folks there have simple, slip-on shoes. Logical, given the situation.

My choice of footwear caused more than a few delays (and some entertaining jokes) for my trips, making me wonder if there was a compromise out there.

I tried a few side-zip "police-style" boots. I got some Converse police boots, but the soles were crap and wore out quickly. Others I tried simply weren't comfortable.

I recently tried Blundstones (and have raved about them earlier). My first pair is mostly-comfortable, but sized a bit oddly so it gives me a blister on one toe if I wear it a long time (yes, this is TMI. Deal with it.) I tried larger sizes but the Blundstones just seem oddly-constructed and give me trouble over the course of the day.

That brings me back to the Bates Delta 8 boots. I liked the review on ApocalypseEquipped and did a little more research.

There's some love out there for the Bates boots. There's a fair amount of love. I looked on Zappos, Amazon, and other places. Some whining, but overall folks seemed to like these. Plus the boots have an interesting construction that allows the wearer to adjust the firmness of the heel padding. Read the linked review above for details. He covers it better than I ever could.

So I found a pair in the correct size on Amazon, which turned out to be the least-expensive offering Google could find for me.

The Amazon seller was ridiculously-fast. I mean it was unbelievable. I somehow got upgraded to overnight shipping, but not charged for it. And they shipped it within a couple of hours of my order.

The boots arrived yesterday. I spent the day wearing them about the office to break them in.

They don't seem to require much breaking-in. They're ridiculously-comfortable. They seem very well-constructed as well. They claim to be waterproof. Given the dry winter California's seeing, I don't expect to test that too soon, but such is life.

And they fit perfectly on my apparently-mutant feet.

I have happy mutant feet now. And happy feet are good for the sole.

Yes, I went there.

You're welcome.