Up, Up, Down, Down (Left, Right, Etc.)

Site Outage

2004-12-26T17:55:00.000-05:00

I don't know what happened up in PA (I'm guessing a power outtage of some type), so for the moment, Literal Barrage will be redirecting over here. I'm going to restore service as soon as I return from TX. Thanks for your patience.

GMail Invites

2004-04-25T13:21:00.000-04:00

Supposedly Google is giving "active" Blogger users invites to use the new GMail system.Figured I'd make a post and see if I get an invite. *grin*

2004-03-09T13:59:00.000-05:00

Moving! If you've come here looking for new content at any time in the last month or so, I'm sorry to disappoint. I plum forgot to update this page with my new & improved stomping grounds. Presenting: Literal Barrage! Head over there for my up-to-date bloggings. Where does the name come from? During the invasion of Iraq, BBC reporters near-daily referred to "literal barrage"s of American

2004-02-10T11:17:00.000-05:00

Uh Oh A call to Brad: You wouldn't still have those X-COM install floppies from all those years back, wouldja? 'Cause they would come in mighty handy in being able to play MULTIPLAYER X-COM. Otherwise, it's off to Gnutella to see what I can find...

2004-02-10T10:54:00.000-05:00

New Firefox aka Firebird aka Phoenix aka Mozilla Browser Released You may have noticed the new button to your left touting Firefox. If you're looking for a great, standards-compliant, full-featured browser, give it a look. If you'd just like to point more people to it, consider putting one of the new Firefox buttons on your site. And remember: Friends don't let friends use IE.

2004-02-09T23:58:00.000-05:00

LinuxWorld Expo 2004 Arrrrgh! Blogger ate my post! Well, here goes another try. I originally wrote up an email recap of Linux World 2004 in NYC for my teammates at work. What follows is a slightly-edited reprint of said email: LinuxWorld proved interesting yesterday. This is purely my impression, but it seemed to be better attended than the past two years. There were definitely more

2004-02-05T09:24:00.000-05:00

It's No Wonder I Don't Donate Money This story has me fuming. As a Lehigh alumnus, I've already lamented at length about the idiotic trend established by the past two presidents, namely wreaking havoc upon the engineering college in order to fund the Arts and Crafts, errrm, Sciences and Business schools. First, they changed the mascot from the "Engineers" to the "Mountain Hawks". Seems no one

2004-01-22T16:42:00.000-05:00

Assorted Reviews [Originally created a week ago and just completed/posted today] I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I would run down some of the excellent media experiences I've encountered recently. Jak II. Extremely entertaining. Mix the first J&D game with some Grand Theft Auto and you have a compelling gameplay experience. It was so engaging, in fact, that my wife refused to let

2004-01-22T16:34:00.000-05:00

Knock Me Over With A Feather I came across this one on the Corner today and I have to say I have a completely new view on Patricia Heaton. I loaded up Ms. Lopez's link to Feminists for Life and was greeted by the smiling visage of Ms. Heaton, credited as honorary chair. I was blown away. How refreshing to see an actress taking a strong stance on an issue where little deviance from the "party

2004-01-21T10:45:00.000-05:00

Blogging from LinuxWorld I'm sitting here in the email garden at the Javitz center in NYC having just come from RedHat's booth. They're pushing RHEL v3 (no surprise) but I did manage to get a set of 3 Fedora CDs off them. I'll try to grab a cap from them ~12pm today. Will blog more on this later.

2003-12-29T01:25:00.000-05:00

Blogging From The In-Laws A few quick words, if I may. Bubba Ho-Tep rocked. Saw it at the Angelika in Dallas with my Father and Brother-in-law. Will definitely be looking forward to the DVD. The Vikes suck. Losing to the Cardinals to get bounced from the playoffs? I can't even explain the disappointment. Sunday's Pearls Before Swine was extremely rare (for a mainstream comic) in that it

2003-12-18T11:04:00.000-05:00

Return of the King My wife, 5 friends and I viewed RotK at the local cinema house last night 'twixt the hours of 7 and 11 in the evening. I must say that my feelings on the movie are decidedly mixed. As Jonah Goldberg noted in his review of the film, it does stay true to the overarching themes of the book. However, I was apparently bothered far more by the differences that Peter Jackson

2003-11-07T10:40:00.000-05:00

DC 0.5 Is Out Maybe I'll finally be able to get my hands on the Fedora ISOs since Desert Combat 0.5 is out and all those bandwidth hogs'll go from /.'ing Ibiblio to FilePlanet instead.

2003-11-02T07:28:00.000-05:00

May God Have Mercy on Their Souls Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and loved ones of the 13 soldiers killed by jihadi vermin this morning. They were on their way to Baghdad Int'l Airport to come back to the states for R and R. As my mother once put it: "All the bad words I know." May we find the culprits of this inhumanity and may our justice be swift and terrible.

2003-10-23T18:14:00.000-04:00

The Onion: Forgot to Bring Tha Funny I guess there was considerable mourning in The Onion's offices when news of Schwarzenegger's electoral victory reached their ears. What else could explain their thinly-veiled character assasination piece of the Governator? I guess the staff needed to be given a break from the long, arduous task of being funny and instead granted an opportunity for some

2003-10-23T18:06:00.000-04:00

Note: I don't think it's physically possible for the new Fedora Beta to kick any more butt than it does. RedHat 8.0 was a step in the right direction, RH9 was almost there. Fedora 1.0 is going to rock.

2003-10-23T18:02:00.000-04:00

Useful Advice of the Day If you plan on attending a premier of Mel Gibson's Passion of Jesus Christ, I would avoid standing next to Jim Caviezel. Just a tip.

2003-10-23T17:53:00.000-04:00

Take Your Blood Pressure Meds First This makes me physically ill: Did I Violate the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban? The smugness, the clinical "precision" of this article and the barely contained excitement that this monster uses to describe the taking of a human life is beyond contemptible. It is vile beyond description. Perhaps Mr. Hern would have liked working for the Nazi eugenics program?

2003-10-22T15:48:00.000-04:00

Note to McDonald's: you sell food, not image. I'm sorry to say, but carrying a Mickey D's bag down the street just doesn't sport the caché of, say, wearing Air Jordans. In other words, fire your ad man, cause "I'm [hatin'] it."

2003-10-20T10:47:00.000-04:00

I Bet It Was... Don't know if I should be finding this as humorous as I do, but here goes: A convicted child molestor (Kevin Kinder) was beaten into an uncoscious state by a former victim of his when he was placed in a holding cell with the former victim. And here's the best quote from the story: The former victim's mother called the encounter a "fluke" but added that it was very "

2003-10-17T09:43:00.000-04:00

Then again, maybe not... Perhaps all of this John Street business really is just about wanton corruption. Hey, either way, if Street goes down, in court or on Election Day, I'll be extremely happy.

2003-10-10T14:59:00.000-04:00

Yowsers Just heard Rush Limbaugh cop to being addicted to painkillers live, on-air. Checked Drudge and he had it posted w/quotes within 30 seconds. Now that's wickedly efficient. Of course, since Drudge has the butt-ugliest website I've ever seen, I'll have to dock him half a point for it.

2003-10-10T11:56:00.000-04:00

Street Investigation Tied To DHS Activity? I was reading this story on the wiretapping/bugging of Philadelphia mayor John Street's office and happened across this paragraph: One of the FBI raids focused on Keystone Information & Financial Services, a Mount Airy business that was awarded a contract in 2002 that netted $60,600 from the city for collection of taxes. The FBI also searched the

2003-09-26T15:20:00.000-04:00

Oh Waiter, Three SitComs, Hold The Comedy, Please How, oh how can an entire network jump the shark? If last night's "Must" See TV (combined with lackluster debuts of Law and Order and The West Wing) serve(s) as any indication, NBC is firmly astride Fonzie's bike, glancing triumphantly downward towards Jaws' long-lost cousin. How has the network of Seinfeld fame been reduced to "dreadlock

2003-09-17T17:06:00.000-04:00

Real Heroes It seems there are some real heroes left in this world. 9/11 showed the heroism of NYC firefighters, EMS workers, policemen and even regular citizens. This story also gives me the same warm feeling, the same "Hooray for humanity!" vibe that I've felt every time someone has related a post-9/11 Good Samaritan story. My favorite quote of the story? The three young men said they

2003-09-11T08:18:00.000-04:00

No Words Strong Enough I thought I was over this. I thought that I had moved on, that I had made peace with 9/11. I can't believe how wrong I was. I turned on Fox & Friends this morning and witnessed firefighters' families talking about their lost mothers and fathers and the tears just overcame me. I fought them, but it was too much for me. I don't know if I'll make it through the day

2003-09-03T11:29:00.000-04:00

Shouting At The Radio I did it again. I always ask myself "Why do you subject yourself to this?" and then I go and do it again. What is "it", you may ask? Why, "it" is listening to NPR. Why is it such a big deal? Because I tend to get a bit, ahem, exercised when listening to NPR for extended periods of time. This morning, I was listening to Juan Williams interview FBI director Robert Mueller

2003-09-01T02:07:00.000-04:00

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid I find myself sitting here, wondering why I sat up until 2am EST watching Spawn, a movie so terrible even Martin Sheen seemed ashamed to be associated with it. But then, the fact that John Leguizamo was playing a short, 400 lb. villain should have tipped me off from the start. I don't know what was worse: the barely comprehensible plot, the nails-on-a-chalkboard dialogue,

2003-08-28T14:29:00.000-04:00

IAEA? Ptui!, Says I First we've got al Baradei shooting his mouth off about unilateral disarmament by the U.S.. Now, we've got the IAEA placing Israeli nuclear capabilities on its next agenda at the behest of Islamic and Arabic nations! To quote Marty (of "Marrrteee!" fame on Sean Hannity's show): "U.S. out of U.N., U.N. out of U.S.". (Stumbled across this one on Drudge)

2003-08-27T16:32:00.000-04:00

The Arafish Speaks Again! Remember to speak precisely when you are speaking to The General! Arafat was quoted on Wednesday in an interview with Reuters news agency as saying he was ready to take action against the militant groups on the condition that Israel stop its strikes against them. Riiiiighhhht. International monitors, Arafat said, should come to

2003-08-27T16:26:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lag time between posts. The wife and I were on a lovely Southern swing, in which we hit Virginia and South Carolina. I have to say, after all this vacationing, I need a vacation! Thank goodness for Labor Day...

2003-08-27T16:21:00.000-04:00

Uhhmm, Ohhhhkayy... So, apparently, American soldiers are now cannibals, at least according to our "allies" media in Egypt...

2003-08-12T18:13:00.000-04:00

Come To Think Of It... I had an epiphany last night. Bravo has begun running reruns of The West Wing at 11pm. I've never particularly cared for the show's politics. nor its sense of smug self-satisfaction. (As one of my coworkers tells it, TWW is akin to "liberal political porn". I don't think I've ever heard a more accurate description of the show.) Above and beyond all that, though,

2003-08-07T08:12:00.000-04:00

And So It Begins... Oy. With Arnold Schwarzenegger's announcement last night, the Day of the Living Puns has begun. Fox & Friends ran a segment on him titled "The Running Man". He has terminated months of speculation as to whether he'll run and terminated the suspense. Mancow (on F&F) said that Larry Flynt is planning on "rolling" for the governor's position in opposition to Arnold. LGF

2003-08-06T16:53:00.000-04:00

Gay Episcopal Bishop I've seen this issue debated many, many times (coming from a Presbyterian Church U.S.A. background as I do) and I still feel as strongly as ever: in no way, shape, or form should a practicing homosexual person be put in a position of ministry in a Christian church. If the church insists on ordaining such people, they ought to quit labeling themselves as Christians. That

2003-08-06T16:31:00.000-04:00

Known Thy Enemy Concerned about your airliner being hijacked? Here's a handy guide for what to do in just such an event, featuring such advice as " If the guy seated next to you is named Al, watch him with suspicion; that's halfway to Al Qaeda" and "As in Die Hard and Passenger 57, the best way to avoid the initial terrorist attack is to be in the bathroom. If someone complains about you being

2003-08-06T16:29:00.000-04:00

Eco-terrorism I don't know why domestic eco-terrorism doesn't get more press, but if you're at all concerned about it, I'd reccommend adding stopecoviolence.com to your bookmarks.

2003-08-05T14:41:00.000-04:00

It Is To Laugh Episcopal Church Appoints First Openly-Muslim Bishop. Too funny.

2003-07-30T11:30:00.000-04:00

Miscellaneous /etc Looks like Bruce Campbell will be all right. Now if only they'd bring Bubb Ho-Tep to Philly... A view (that I agree with) as to why canceling the "Terror Futures market" was a dumb idea. What part of DARPA's mission don't congresscritters understand? J.R.R. Tolkein - the anti-Wagner? Stories like this almost convince me that I'd be at home in Texas. (Shhhh, don't tell my

2003-07-07T16:39:00.000-04:00

It's Already Been "Brought-en" I admire Pres. Bush's chutzpah with regard to the Iraq situation. Heck, I even think that he and his administration have the right idea with the flypaper methodology. There's just one potentially fatal flaw to all of this that I haven't heard anyone mention: from now on, Bush's opponents could conceivably blame him for every future casualty we incur in Iraq. It

2003-06-17T11:06:00.000-04:00

What The...? Just noticed this over on the Corner: Bushenstein. What in the bloody blue blazes are the Dems thinking? It's not witty, it's not original, it doesn't even scratch the surface of "insightful". What it is is extremely enlightening. It reinforces (for me, at least) the utter obsession that the Dems have with Bush. They just can't stand the fact that he won in 2000. I'm

2003-06-12T14:20:00.000-04:00

Has The World Gone Mad? Oh...my...gosh. I can't believe what I just witnessed on CNN/HN. Dr. Sanjay Gupta (CNN's medical correspondent) did a mini-piece on a recent study showing that only 11% of "backpack-related injuries" actually affect the back itself. The majority are actually head injuries. Now, this might seem innocuous enough, but he concluded with a statment that ran thus: (I'm

2003-06-12T09:37:00.000-04:00

CNN Mixed Messages While watching the CNN Headline News feed here at work, I was struck by how they're starting to get some thing right, and yet are so far off base in many other ways. A CNN reporter was giving a rundown of the events in Israel in the past two days and referred to two Hamas "militants" killed in Apache missile strikes as "victims" of the Israeli action. It almost made me vomit.

2003-06-09T15:23:00.000-04:00

Wachowski Brothers: Pali-Sympathizers? Today's bleat by James Lileks noted something very, very interesting. Note the screenshot from The Animatrix. Remind you of anything? Bueller? (Hint: Mohammed al-Dura) Okay, so that's not a hint, it's bleedin' giving away the keys to the story. Sue me. But here's the question: was the imagery intentional? Did the Wachowski brothers ask their

2003-06-05T00:11:00.000-04:00

Stoners' Paradise My wife and I were out late tonight, having just come from a trip to Sam's Wee, Not-So-Wee, and Friccin' Huuuge Club and a brief(!) stop at my parents' house. We hadn't bothered to stop for dinner in all the craziness, so it was with growling stomachs that we pulled up to a McDonald's Drive-Thru. The clock in the Blazer read 10:56. We ordered two quarter pounder w/cheese

2003-05-21T11:54:00.000-04:00

Beg-a-thons A note to all NPR execs that may be reading this blog: I really, really, really detest your Beg-a-Thons. Yesterday, I actually listened to five minutes of static on the AM dial in order to avoid listening to lame jokes, phones ringing, barely concealed desperation and the "Bing!" that accompanies all online donations. If there were a station that played audio from car wrecks 24/7,

2003-05-16T08:04:00.000-04:00

Matrix Musings Saw The Matrix Reloaded yesterday afternoon. Now, this may be heresey, but, with the notable exception of the excruciatingly-long Brown People Rave In The Cave/Let's See How Many Times We Can Show Keanu and Carrie Ann's Nasty Subdermal Implants In A Single Sex Scene portion, I actually enjoyed TMR better than the first. I found it to be more philosophically challenging than the

2003-05-09T10:25:00.000-04:00

Wild Win! 'Nuff said.

2003-04-08T10:30:00.000-04:00

New Baghdad Hotness Did you hear the newest joke going around Baghdad these days? It goes something like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? JDAM. JDAM w... BOOOM!

2003-04-04T09:31:00.000-05:00

Bias, Thy Name Is "Passive Voice" My wife noted this morning that there's something wrong when CNN and Al Jazeera correspondents have been kicked out of Iraq and Newsday journalists have been thrown into prison, yet NPR remains in Baghdad. Today's disgraceful report on the suicide/homicide car bombing in N-central Iraq very nearly pushed me over the edge. NPR is truly disgusting. Their use of

2003-04-03T17:37:00.000-05:00

U.S. Troops Reach Baghdad Airport, forced to wait in line because they forgot to print their e-ticket boarding pass.

2003-04-03T16:40:00.000-05:00

Monitor Coffee Spit-take Today's Bleat by James Lileks just about made me spit my coffee out, particularly this line: [H]ow do you know a Ba'athist is lying? His mustache is moving. And we curse it! Also laughable was Across the street is a gigantic assembly building of some kind, perhaps the National House of Enthusiastic Rubber Stamping. It's untouched. I'd wager a five-spot that they left

2003-04-03T15:32:00.000-05:00

Priceless I don't mean to rip this directly from The Corner, but it's too good not to repost here in its entirety: THE MINISTER OF INFORMATION [Jonah Goldberg] I don't want to risk any US soldiers lives for a photo-op, but wouldn't it be awesome if we could get troops inside that briefing room during one of this joker's tirades. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraqi Minister of Information: We have

2003-04-03T11:52:00.000-05:00

Kettle, This Is Pot, Do You Read Me? I'm listening in on an al Jazeera interview (being rebroadcast on CNN) with Iraq's information minister. He just referred to the Coalition forces currently knocking at his doorstep as "racists, Nazis and fascists". Wow. I'm laughing. Are you?

2003-03-29T23:22:00.000-05:00

Less is Moore I just caught an interview that Bill Maher conducted with Michael Moore. The sheer audacity of the man left me speechless. He said (and I paraphrase): there were only a few initial boo-ers at his Oscar speech. According to Moore, it started in the wings of the stage and the upper tiers of the auditorium, then, the general Hollywood personas began booing the booers. He also stated

2003-03-26T17:08:00.000-05:00

Singularity of Suck Is it me, or does anyone else think that the upcoming Celine Dion concert being broadcast on CBS live from Caesar's Palace in Sin City, hosted by Justin Timberlake could potentially be a scientific experiment designed to test the effects of gathering that much Suckage into a single room? Perhaps it will be beneficial. A Singularity of Suck could well be established, which

2003-03-26T17:02:00.000-05:00

Eartha Kitt: Hollywood anti-Idiotarian As per my weekday routine, I had my radio tuned to the "Curtis and Kuby Show" this morning (Ron Kuby's on vacation; Mark Simone is filling in more-than-adequately). In the 9:30 timeframe, Eartha Kitt(!) decided to give the NYC morning show a call. After a bit of sweet-talking Curtis, she said that she fully supports "our boys, my country and my president."

2003-03-24T17:45:00.000-05:00

The "Ficticious" of Oscar Night As my wife and I flipped between the Oscars and BBC America last night, I was struck by just how inconsequential the entire Hollywood community has rendered itself and how desperately they want to disbelieve this fact. In the two post-9/11 Oscar ceremonies, I've noticed that the Hollywood elite have been clamoring about just how relevant they are. They've

2003-03-24T15:36:00.000-05:00

"Fictition"? This, from an Oscar "winner"? Perhaps Michael Moore and Fred Durst have the same speechification coachenator.

2003-03-22T20:04:00.000-05:00

If Islam is the Ansar, I don't wanna know the question Fox News has been reporting that up to 250 out of the 700 Ansar al Islam fighters encamped near Halabja have been KIA in heavy bombing today. This WaPo story holds the casualties at about half that, but it's still a significant blow against an organization with extremely tight ties to al Qaeda. Who says we can't fight the War on Terror in

2003-03-21T17:44:00.000-05:00

*SHUDDER* Saw this over at Andrewsullivan.com. We now have photographic evidence suggesting that the Head Mustache (thanks, Lileks!) is actually... Helen Thomas! Yowsa.

2003-03-21T17:41:00.000-05:00

Shock n' Awe Overload Sick and tired of the already trite phrase "shock and awe"? This thread over on Fark has some suggestions. Among the best suggestions are: Old and Busted, New Hotness campaign Shizzle and awizzle Bomb, Rinse, Repeat "Assisted Urban Renewal" Shock and awwwwww Allah why you not stop these bombs? ArabDisney: Phase One The "Jumpin' Allah on pogo stick!" phase Operation

2003-03-21T14:02:00.000-05:00

SnA Begins Well, bang goes my theory (no pun intended).

2003-03-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

Law of Unintended Consequences Pt. III Looks like we might not need to decline Frawnce's help in administering post-Saddam Iraq after all. Jacques seems to be taking care of it for us. He can't possibly be that stupid, can he?

2003-03-21T11:23:00.000-05:00

"Saddam is done." Take a peek at this account of the 1st MEF in Safwan and tell me you don't get chills (good ones, mind you). It seems to wrap so much of this conflict up into one nice package. Iraqis: cautiously optimistic. Americans: not about to let Saddam slither away again. On to Basrah, then Baghdad, boys.

2003-03-21T11:12:00.000-05:00

Law of Unintended Consequences Pt. II As I've mused on the issue further, I can forsee one other, very large advantage to a surgical strike. By not being forced to destroy Iraqi infrastructure, we will reduce the need for U.N. "asistance" in rebuilding Iraq. "No thanks, Jaques, mes "amis". We've got this one covered. We'll take it from here." We might also avoid the creation of a large

2003-03-21T11:03:00.000-05:00

Spectacles of Power Pt. III It is now clear to me why I always found that Old Navy lady (Carrie Donovan) so creepy. Who knew she had dictatorial ambitions? Some have suggested that we also watch Dame Edna very closely. I'd have to concur.

2003-03-21T10:51:00.000-05:00

Law of Unintended Consequences I've been pondering this since late last evening and coming across Jonah Goldberg's post regarding a "Rout" in The Corner has reinforced my opinions. The strike against the senior Iraqi (that's "Iraqian" for all of you Curtis Sliwa fans out there) leadership was a bold tactical move that may very well end up sparing hundreds, if not thousands of Iraqi and Allied

2003-03-20T23:53:00.000-05:00

Spectacles of Power Pt. II I seem to have forgotten some significant players. The Only "Christian" In Baghdad is not to be outdone by his fearless leader: Yasser, although not a "Socialist", seems to take a cue from our previous luminaries: Gorby's got 'em: Pol, Ho and Che must not have gotten the memo. Now, I know this theory is a little rough around the edges, but, be that as

2003-03-20T17:53:00.000-05:00

Diana Run If anyone has been reading my blog for any amount of time, you may remember my best friend's sister Diana was killed in a car accident last August. She was a wonderful young woman in all ways. In order to remember her, a 5k run called "The Diana Run" has been set up. See dianarun.org for full details. If you're from the central New Jersey area, consider participating in or

2003-03-20T17:47:00.000-05:00

Where's Frank Rizzo When You Need Him? This morning's commute was a rough one, as "peace activists" decided to stage a march from the Liberty Bell to the Federal Building. This had, how shall we say, an adverse effect on my overall commute time. It seemed to back traffic up just about everywhere, but most noticeably on Broad Street, my primary route to work. So, as I'm sitting in the car,

2003-03-20T15:49:00.000-05:00

Best Quote O' The Day This is ripped directly from The Corner over at NRO: NOT SHOCK AND AWE-ING, JUST SHELLACKING [Jonah Goldberg] Pentagon says this is merely more opportunistic target-whacking not the full tilt boogie for freedom and justice. Priceless.

2003-03-20T11:25:00.000-05:00

Spectacles of Power Here's my question: Does Pearle Vision have some sort of discount for tinhorn third world dictators? They must get the same catalog in the mail. Take a look: Maybe they have the same HMO. [UPDATE] Fidel, too? Is there some sort of International Socialist Optometrist Society I'm unaware of? [UPDATE] Papa Kim gets in on the action: Thankfully, Fidel dumped

2003-03-16T00:50:00.000-05:00

Dogs. Cats. [God's] good pleasure. I'll explain more in the morning.

2003-03-14T12:46:00.000-05:00

Chirac PS Best. Fark. Photoshop. Ever. View with caution, as I got some very strange looks from coworkers as I tried to stifle my guffaws. Dig it.

2003-03-14T00:06:00.000-05:00

Saddam Heisman pt. II So, I'm just wondering, how often does Saddam Hussein get to Northeast Philadelphia?

2003-03-13T21:53:00.000-05:00

Saddam Heisman(?) I saw a great bilboard on I95 North tonight. It featured a large picture of Saddam Hussein on the left side, striking an almost Heisman-worthy pose. The text read (and I'm paraphrasing here, as I can't remember the exact words): Mister Hussein: Give Peace A Chance Go Into Exile The sight so suprised me that I very nearly ran my car off the road. I'll see if I can find a

2003-03-13T21:47:00.000-05:00

Shouting At The Radio I don't know why I don't learn my lesson. Tonight, as is commonplace between the months of October and June, 770 WABC out of NYC cut The Buzz short to broadcast Devils hockey. In these circumstances, I'm faced with an awkward listening choice for my evening commute. Should I 1) listen to what passes for "modern rock" here in Philly, 2) tune in to the country music channel

2003-03-13T18:28:00.000-05:00

Praying For Those We "Hate" Had an interesting experience last night at our small group Bible study. We were discussing world events and the issue of whether we were within our bounds to hate Saddam, Osama, etc. The passage we were looking at was Luke 7:36-50, which is an account of Jesus visiting a Pharisee's house. Jesus told the following parable to Simon, the Pharisee: Two men owed

2003-03-13T17:52:00.000-05:00

Browser of Choice Mozilla 1.3 is out. See the release notes for changes. Download it here.

2003-03-12T17:11:00.000-05:00

version 2.0 U,U,D,D (R,L,etc.) version 2.0 is now working. Props go out to nix for his excellent design, which I cribbed. (Hooray Open Source Web Design!)

2003-03-11T17:46:00.000-05:00

Blog Slacking As if it weren't self evident. I haven't been utilizing the resources oh-so-generously "given" to me by Blogger. And here's why. The wife and I just completed a move, from Outer Whitelandia (thanks, Ron and Curtis) to just outside of Philly. We're in a house this time, having left apartment dwelling behind us. Work on the house proceeds apace; paint is going up on the walls,

2003-03-11T17:39:00.000-05:00

The Three Stooges, Iraq-Style It is to laugh: The Three Stooges. Came across this by way of Fark, as usual. (Props to Tom Twine.)

2003-01-16T12:51:00.000-05:00

"Jihad of Peace" Came across this story by way of Fark this afternoon. I honestly can't tell whether Mr. Al-Atraqchi is serious or not. His (by now) cliched attempt to redefine jihad as a personal struggle with one's inner demons suggests that he's not. But with a punchline like this: Peacemakers are brave. They are enlightened individuals who understand the common denominator in all mankind.

2003-01-03T13:27:00.000-05:00

Musings A thought occurred to me the other night: I don't think I could ever be a Third World dictator. The amount of discipline one must maintain in order to run a country with an iron fist is far too daunting. Plus, I'm not enough of a control freak, nor am I overly concerned with germs. And the hair! Take Kim Jung Il, for instance. Has anyone informed Lyle Lovett that someone has stolen

2003-01-03T13:22:00.000-05:00

And now for something completely different... Not that anyone's asking, but it's been a hectic 3 months. Been busy, but thought that it might be nice to start the blog entries back up again. Hopefully the frequency will be far higher than it has been inn times past.

2002-09-27T11:41:00.000-04:00

Al Gore: Upper Class Senator's Son Twit of the Year The man's gall amazes me. Yesterday, Gore went so far as to state that the Bush administration ignored 9/11 warnings and chastised the FBI for spending more time on a New Orleans brothel than on tracking al Qaeda. Wonder whose fault this is? Who had control of the Justice Dept. when the reforms were put in place? Who helped neuter our

2002-09-19T21:30:00.000-04:00

Starcraft: Ghost Announced at TGS Blizzard announced Starcraft: Ghost at the Tokyo Game Show today. A console-only action title, it marks a radical departure for Blizzard. And, they stress, it's not Starcraft 2. w00t! UPDATE: ShackNews has shots. Looks slick.

2002-09-19T11:36:00.000-04:00

Greek Gaming Idiocy Continues Just when you thought sanity had regained its hold on the gov't of Greece, a court of appeals overturned an earlier ruling that threw out charges against the operators of an internet cafe. They were on trial for letting patrons play Counterstrike and (heavens no!) online chess games. This story gets increasingly bizzare, not to mention stupid, with each passing day

2002-09-19T09:40:00.000-04:00

It's Just Art, Right? The NY Post reports that the hideous scultpure of a naked female WTC "jumper" on the moment of impact has been removed from Rockefeller Center. There has been some animosity expressed by the average New Yorker, and who can really blame them? I also wonder why I haven't seen more media coverage of this monstrosity. I've seen it mentioned on Fox News and Curtis & Kooby

2002-09-18T16:01:00.000-04:00

Scooped As alert readers over at LGF astutely pointed out, the Bowden piece mentioned below is actually a reprint of an article he wrote for The Atlantic, chopped conveniently in twain for newspaper consumption. So there. Now there's no reason for me to link to the Inq's Sunday version. *grin*

2002-09-18T15:54:00.000-04:00

Sun to Sell Linux PCs In what has to be one of the worst-disguised, highly-telegraphed moves in recent IT industry history, Sun announced today that they will be selling Linux-based PCs. These PCs will likely be beefier versions of their Sun Ray thin clients, although, who knows? Maybe they'll sell a model intended to replace their low end Sun Blade SparcII workstations. I still don't know why

2002-09-18T12:45:00.000-04:00

The Life of a Tyrant I've managed to track down Mark Bowden's piece Inside the World of a Tyrant (Part 1) that originally ran in the opinion section of this week's Philly Inquirer. For those who don't recognize the name "Mark Bowden": Mr. Bowden is the author of Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo, among other works. In fact, Black Hawk Down originally ran as a series in the Inquirer. Bowden's

2002-09-16T21:53:00.000-04:00

Willow Grove Air Show My wife, two friends and I attended the Willow Grove (PA) Air Show on Saturday (9/14) and came away highly impressed. Of note was the combined field assault demonstration put on by the military. It featured a Marines forward recon team inserted by Bell Huey in order to mark the target. Two overflights of F-18s and A-10 Warthogs served to soften the target enough to allow

2002-09-03T15:39:00.000-04:00

Greece to Ban Campers, Lamerz, n00bz What the...? Greece, in an effort to fight illegal online gambling, has banned all video games. All of them. No Playstations. No computers. No Gameboys. No bleedin' Snake games on your Nokia. All because the state apparently has no capabilities to distinguish legit games from illegal gambling machines/websites. How insane is this? If you're going to

2002-08-27T08:34:00.000-04:00

An update to yesterday's post. *sigh* Diana, we hardly knew ye.

2002-08-26T11:09:00.000-04:00

I am in shock. After spending most of last week in New Hampshire, I returned to find an email in my inbox from my best friend, the upshot of which was: his life sucks. He took some extra time to graduate and was all set to (finally) get an engineering job that was ideally placed (i.e., a couple hours' drive from his girlfriend). In interest of doing so, he took a complete physical. Turns out

2002-08-15T10:34:00.000-04:00

Verizon (*shudder*) has switched its techies to Linux workstations, saving $6 million in equipment costs alone. Nice exposure for Linux, but why did it have to be Verizon? In other news, Larry Ellison is still a jerk. A jerk with some valid points, yes, but still a jerk.

2002-08-15T10:08:00.000-04:00

Been busy here at work. Have I mentioned that I hate Oracle and Perl? Have I mentioned that the current project I'm working on employs both of those? It's so hard to go back to Perl after using php for so long and Oracle is just overkill for what I need to do. *sigh* Oh well.

2002-08-12T22:54:00.000-04:00

Why have I never watched Iron Monkey prior to tonight? Is it possible for kung fu movies to kick this much butt and go completely unnoticed by Y.T.? Apparently, yes. 'Twas funny to realize that Ronguang Yu played Po in Jet Li's The Enforcer. Anyways, highly reccommended.