Category: Wottever

Cheated again!

Yes, again. I paid for a good night’s sleep and all I got was a 2-hour nap. This is worse than usual; four hours is more typical. All you normals out there, please don’t bombard me with suggestions for how to overcome insomnia. NONE OF IT IS RELEVANT. Most of it is old wives’ tales, AFAIC, and the best of it comes off as horribly patronizing. I am not mentally impaired, not inexperienced, not ignorant. I am very aware of what is going on in my own mind and body, accustomed to finding my own solutions to problems, and my success record tops anythig medical professionals have tried to perpetrate on me.

My sleep irregularity has roots unfathomable. It is an irregular irregularity, a chaotic cycle that has no truly predictable pattern. I can often tiptoe around it and achieve some apparent success by timing and regulating my food intake — but there are no guarantees. A day filled with healthy outdoor activity, ending with a light snack at the proper time, and no big worries, may result in too-short sleep, while a good night of 6+ hours may follow a low-down day with a heavy afternoon nap. It’s my body and it’s fucked up. Always has been, always will be. You don’t have my genes or my background, so shut TF up. BS me no BS.

In my early years, my sleep was often disrupted or delayed by my immature parents’ screaming battles. That certainly had its effect on establishing a pattern, or lack of it. However, it’s been a long time since then. 3am is a peaceful time here and now. I am in control of my own life — as much as anyone can be.

Yesterday I could understand the short night. Although I worked hard and could, by “normal” standards, expect to sleep soundly, I anticipated an unusual schedule, and that left a back door open for unconscious sabotage. It was no surprise to suffer what I call the four-hour curse. Today, with no fixed appointments ahead of me, no restraints, a good feeling following a pleasant conversation, I expected something better than a two-hour nap after staying up until after midnight (going to bed earlier is a guarantee of short sleep for me). Yesterday was productive, too. I earned a good sleep. I didn’t get it.

So here I am, having a beer or two and blogging before dawn. There’s a good morning’s sleep ahead, with my head buried under a pillow. If you love your life, don’t call me.

For your irrelevant amusement, here’s my latest desktop screenshot, featuring a bit of my own front yard:

Granny Geek Potato Salad

Potato salad

Boil up a bunch of russet potatoes with the skin on, enough water to cover.. Don’t bother to wash them, the dirt will boil off and sink to the bottom.

Take spuds out to cool. Save the water for soup (settle and pour off) or use it to water plants after it cools.

Mix dressing in bowl big enough for all. Couple of big blobs of mayo, 1/4tsp or so of stevia extract, a good slosh of raw cider vinegar. Add fresh chopped chives and stir well. It should be on the soupy side. Optional: salt, pepper, paprika, finely chopped pepperoncini peppers, (your favorite thing here).

Chop the still-warm potatoes in. Discard ugly spots, but keep the peels. Good for ya. Stir it up. If you were very clever, the proportion of dressing to spud is perfect. Let it rest as long as you can bear to before digging in.

This is high-acid stuff, little fear of food poisoning if it’s handled sensibly.

Oh, yeah, you can toss in hard-boiled eggs too. Doesn’t keep as well then, though.

My MSE Security Flaw (not?)

I’ve been using Microsoft Security Essentials for a couple of weeks. It has not buggered up my resources (mind you, SilentBob has 4GB RAM and a decent processor) nor destroyed anything essential (unlike McAfee). I can heartily reccommend it for normal lusers users.

With one reservation.

I am using a third-party software firewall. Comodo Internet Security is the only option I had for x64 that was free. It’s quite effective — just DON’T install the antivirus! DON’T! The firewall is great; the antivirus is a millstone. Normally I use ClamWin, a modest scan-on-demand open source AV. My scans are always boring. They’ve been less boring with MSE, which has picked on a number of things that weren’t causing any trouble…souvenirs that I kept quarantined in my own way…but as I said, it hasn’t really hurt anything. The pickiness is very good for the normally unaware user.

But when it updates…. Now I realize that the weird and sneaky way it updates is a good security measure. The problem is, every time it creates its new updater file in a directory with a new name, the firewall sends up a warning. Do I want to let this new EXE run? Both proggies are just doing their job, and I just click the button.

This is where the problem bites. Today, I caught myself clicking the button without reading the message. BAD! Any warning related to an action that I did not initiate must be examined. However, MSE’s daily update makes the “Okay, let it do its thing” reaction habitual for a warning that occurs soon after startup. What if it was something MSE missed? It could. Nothing’s perfect. I don’t trust anything.

There is no way I can tell Comodo to lay off MPMiniSigStub.exe because it is never the same. Names don’t count in the security game, and even if they did, it’s a different folder name each time. I am stuck with this daily warning about something that is there to do good; and if I’m busy, groggy, on the phone — no kidding, the first time, it interrupted a long-distance phone call — I either stop everything and squint hard at the tiny message font or take a chance. I may be fearless, but I’m not much of a gambler.

To flaw is human. *rolls eyes*

May 16 — the daily warning has stopped. Perhaps my firewall has “learned” that the daily odd file is OK. Or maybe it reads my blog.

BTW, MSE is a right beyotch when it comes to irregularities in Windwoes registration. It may pass your Winderz as legal when it installs only to nail you on the first scan. It also likes to turn on automatic updates, apparently. I had some fun recently when I installed it in a more experienced computer. Rolled back to the previous AV and retweaked Windwoes. But as long as your OS is legal and up to date, it is still one of the better free alternatives. Probably the best ever to replace the foistware you get stuck with in a new machine.

Speaking of Twitter….

I’ve been in it for over a month now. I like it. Finding new friends, renewing old aquaintance, following interesting links and learning about things I would have overlooked — tons of redeeming social value.

But then there is the Dark Side of Twitter. Individuals whose main objective is self-promotion for profit at the expense of others. MLM whores who will randomly follow anyone in the hope of building their downline. I have one thing to say to these bloodsuckers — Fuck off. Following me will only get you one good slap in the face and a lifetime of being blocked.

Because my tweets are varied, I expect to collect a lot of short-term followers who latch onto some keyword in a search. I check out all followers. If I like what I see, I follow back. If I don’t…see previous paragraph.

Wupz

I changed my site password but was too loopy to edit blog and forum configs. Until just now. So, no blog or forum for over a day. *rolls eyes* @ self.

Nice password, anyhowl. It was one of those bright ideas that are sitting there in my head when I get up in the morning. After thinking about it off and on all day, I put it to use. 18 characters, alphanumeric plus, and I have a great mnemonic for it. Never-you-mind what that is 😀

ohai — the weekly twitterings thing is finally working! Maybe it did some good to leave the blog in a dark corner fo meditate on its sins. But it did it double – lol – have to delete one instance.

10,000 Big Codwallops

omfg maize
Corn and beans -- who needs Columbus?

As Tweeted:
Library, DVD, 10,000BC stupidest mammoth hunt ever, bamfsckingboo spearshafts, fscking MAIZE, GMAB OMFG ROFLUIH

I haven’t been much of a moviegoer/watcher for a long time. No TV, no money, no car. However, I do have a computer, so once in a while I do get hold of something. Lately it’s been happening more often. DSL helps, LOL. So does having a regular job and my property taxes paid up. Last year I bought the Lord of the Rings. This spring, I’m feeling a bit livelier, so I can walk to the library. That means even more movies.

Yesterday, I had returned Apocalypto and was browsing the shelves. Couldn’t find anything that jumped out and said “Watch me!” so I decided to take 10,000 BC home and see how bad it was.

It surprised me — it was better than I expected. It could have been better yet, had it been called Godslayer, or Legacy of Atlantis, or some such thing befitting the (sadly abbreviated) epic fantasy that it wants to be. Because it is certainly not a story about what might have occurred anywhere, anywhen, around 10,000 years BCE.

Consider the fact that it apparently covers at least three continents, on both hemispheres. Points lost there, big time.

That mammoth hunt. Cheese and tripes, it is amazingly bad. These are experienced, profesional mammoth hunters? They expect to eat tomorrow? The lead bull — ROFLUIH! Just that alone is so sad.

Proportions — yes, mammoths were big, but really. And the pussycat. Not to mention it looked kind of silly bouncing away in its last scene. I rather liked the Androcles-and-the-lion bit, though.

D’leh — how can you say it without thinking “delay”? He wasn’t such a bad character, just needed a little common sense behind him. I’d like to have seen the whole storyline fleshed out a bit instead of glossed over with see next paragraph

The sporadic narration. I’m on the edge of writing a flaming rant about movies that tell instead of showing. Talk about pitiful. There is no place in the body of a film for that sort of thing unless it is autobiographical. While 10K is not as bad in this respect as the Clan of the Cave Bear superfail, it’s bad enough. For God(dess) sake, look at Quest for Fire. Please. It’s an amazing masterpiece, or at least tour-de-force, of paleo-fantasy. QfF is a rare phenomenon. With no understandable dialog, it hasn’t even the slimmest chance for an as-you-know-bob, and there is not one word of intrusive narration.

And speaking of dialog — fscking Tribalspeak! With an accent, yet, and oodles of rolled R’s. Don’t get me started.

Army marching through desert with no visible means of support. Numbnuts who can’t follow the stars until another numbnuts points out something stupidly impossible. Mammoths working their big hairy butts off in a desert with no mile-high haystacks in sight. People, listen to me, if an army marches on its stomach, a mammoth sees their rations and raises them a hundredfold. Pachyderms are eating machines.

And then, after all that, one of the African types hands over a baggie of corn. Zea maiz, primo cultivar of the New World. Where T. F. are we? Kansas?

I could take 10K, I could love it, as a Conanoid fantasy. But I’d like to clean it up a lot even for that.

Going to have to watch Apocalypto again to take the taste of stale joke out of my mouth. Except for certain little details of the moon, that one is everything I could want in prehistorical film.

E.T.A.: I forgot to mention the galloping mammoths in the climactic scenes. ZOMG. Galloping . Mammoths . *groan*

A Word with a View

I just ran into this: Poll : does anyone use Microsoft Word’s outline view simultaneously with another view ? on a Twitter side-trail. It made me think for a few seconds, always a good thing to do, gets a little circulation to the gray cells.

It appears to me that most MS Word users don’t even know that there are differrent views. If they do, many probably don’t have the sense to use a decent reading font in Draft View, so it doesn’t do them any good to have it.

I do. Use it, and use a sensible sans-serif font for it. Makes writing (and reading) chores in Word halfway bearable. But why use two separate views? I don’t know about the older versions, but in the 2007/2010 I am using, I find Draft plus navigation pane the best way to go for getting around quickly in a complex doc.

That said, how many of those poor, ignorant Word users use any outline formatting anyway? Not a lot, if the examples I’ve seen are typical. Or it’s not used consistently.

I don’t write in Word! But when I put my manuscript into word, my chapter titles are proper headings, and make a very tidy showing in the navigation pane or outline view. If I have to do any post-insertion editing in Word, it’s not that hard to get where I’m going.

If you don’t work in draft view, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to see your work with new eyes. Get into the options and change the draft font to whatever you like and enable line wrapping. Zoom in as much as you want or need, the lines will wrap to the window and be totally readable. No eyestrain, no horrorzontal scrollbar.

Re: Wisconsin Assembly Bill 554

I sent the following as e-mail to committee members:

If you, or a loved one, suffered needlessly because a simple remedy was just out of reach beyond an iron wall of law, what would you do?

Among the most specious arguments against the use of medical cannabis is that there has not been enough research. Why has there not been enough? Because there can be no research! What little has been done is outmoded and biased; the results are irrelevant to today’s issues. This catch-22 born of ignorance and prejudice must be eliminated.

As an observer in the battle against the poor and suffering (A.K.A. the “War on Drugs”), I can’t help but wonder how much of the money generated by illegal sales of marijuana has been laundered “clean” enough to pass through the floodgates of campaign funding. How much blood money do you want to spend?

And the other side of that coin: It’s not the drug lords who rot in prison. Only hapless users and small dealers spend time in the expensive barred suites. Far too much of the taxpayers’ money is spent on persecuting the taxpayers and locking up the sick.

Please consider those who are in need, who are in pain or slowly dying of starvation because they are denied a harmless medication that could save their lives. Before you condemn them, walk a mile in their moccasins. Many of them can barely take one step.

Another small drop in a bottomless bucket

Gone to the movies

I suffer the consequences when I overdo. It doesn’t take much to put me down, and it takes a lot of time to get me back up. So I have to find entertainment to at least keep me sitting down while I pull what health I can together.

Since I haven’t had DSL very long, I’m a bit behind some folks in the art of movie-hunting. Catching up is a nice sit-down occupation, and entertaining in itself. Many episodes of Doctor Who (with Chinese subtitles) and other fun things later, I’m getting the hang of it.

Believe it or not, the first big one I went for was Avatar. The perfectly good reason — I wouldn’t get upset if I encountered problems acquiring it. Why practice on something I cared about?

Anyway, now I have seen the whole thing. Not in 3D, of course. I have never seen anything in 3D. My eyes don’t work together. I have lived my whole life without the illusion of 3D in the real world. Oh, I have depth perception, of a sort. It relies on focus, and it works very well under most circumstances. I’m a dead shot.

Heading back toward the subject: With one less illusion to veil the wizard, I see what is really there more easily than the average moviegoer. What I see pisses me off. All that technology wasted on a craptacular concatenation of clichés! Sure, there are a few nice moments, a couple of characters I could care about (if they could stop spitting out stale platitudes). None of it is enough to make up for the constant pain. Avatar, how do I despise thee? Let me count the ways.

The plot — well, it’s possible to do good things with the worst of plots, but that sure as hell wasn’t done with this Dancing With Wolves Meets Dune on the Forbidden Planet mess for the masses.

Noble Savages are bad enough; but nobsavs that yammer like sixth graders playing cowboys and indians, zomg. Not only are the aliens far too human, they are so dumbed-down-human as to be nauseating . What do you mean, we’re not in Kansas? I can see Topeka from here.

Reef lifeforms transplanted into forests. Come ooooon. It’s so obvious. There is nothing alien about the flora, it’s just scrambled habitat with a touch of exaggeration. Well, except for:

That godawful Tree of LED ropes! Cheeses freeakin’ tripes, did a manufacturer of non-essential lighting widgets underwrite the film?

Six legged animals vs. quadripedal humanoids. All sense and reason left behind. Besides, having two sets of front limbs is advantageous only to centaurs and dragons.

People doing the usual stupid things to get the plot along. Jake was supposedly a well-trained Marine. First he walks off to sniff the flowers in a deadly jungle, then he fails to find a place where he can cover his back when night is falling. Assbuttfucking stupid.

I can’t go on. Gah. Why couldn’t millions of dollars and thousands of hours, not to mention some pretty decent camera work, go into a good Dragonriders of Pern movie? Cripes, I’d pay to see that!

More nostalgia

Today I unearthed a memo that is over twenty years old — a note from my employer, left for me to find when I opened the shop. Old, but unforgettable.

It was a pet shop, operating on a frayed shoestring. I was in charge for most of the day on weekdays. While the boss worked his day job, emptying septic tanks, I cleaned fish tanks and bird cages, hand-tamed parakeets, waited on customers, fed everything, answered the phone, labeled and priced, made excuses….

The note was short and to the point. Three neatly bulleted points, in fact:

  • Label fish double + mark up
  • Catch all ten keets
  • Yes its going to be one of those days

It was summer, no air conditioning, and I couldn’t open the door for a breath of air until I had caught all ten escaped parakeets. Of course someone came in before I was finished.

Peninsula Pets memo
The note