Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
Posted on

About That “99%” Thingy

I was slumming on the NPR (National Propaganda Radio) site and saw a bunch of “99%” photo-posts. One was humorous, but the rest were pathetic, and not in a sympathetic way. This guy was typical:

Anyone with a family making 80K/year who just can’t make ends meet and has to get help paying his bills deserves to go under for being so stupid as to live beyond his means.

Dumbass. Ooo, poor baby. A “modest home,” used cars and less than “expensive” vacations (by what standard?). Where is his savings? Where in the world did that $80K/year go? Why didn’t he at least buy that frickin’ ugly tie at Goodwill or something?

If this guy were to put that lame crap out in front of me, I’d be tempted to plaster his whiny mug. His parents ought to–at most–have told him, “Leave your children with us, sell that house you can’t afford to pay for–or even just hand it back to the folks who really own it–and go live under a rock. We disown you, you stupid bag of vomit,” instead of enabling his profligate lifestyle.

No, $80K/year isn’t enough to finance a lifestyle that would get Robin Leach interested in profiling you, dumbass. Learn to live within your means.

Further commentary on the so-called “99%” from Matt Welch @Reason:

Adult human beings have agency, the ability (even responsibility!) to run their own cost/benefit analyses and choose accordingly. You could go to a state school (or community college) instead of an over-inflated prestige mill. You could pay for a 10-year-old car in cash, instead of a new one on installments. You could try to make it in Minneapolis before living the dream in Williamsburg. You could stare into the face of a no-money-down, adjustable rate 30-year mortgage at the tail end of a housing-price run-up and conclude “Maybe that one’s not for me.” You could even choose to turn down a bad if high-paying job when you’re living below the poverty line. If we indeed live in a “candid world,” let us state bluntly that offloading 100% of the blame for your own mountain of debt on a group of Greedy McBanksters who “forced” you to “play by the rules” is more than a little pathetic.

Posted on

Trick or Treat?

We stopped giving candy to kids who came by several years ago when the normative behavior seemed to have become, “Gimme!” instead of a more polite and appreciative behavior. I’d consider dispensing candy again if I had a couple of these filled with “penny candy” and set to dispense a couple of lil pieces of candy for a quarter.

“Gimme,” indeed. Little monsters. (And I include the parents of those little monsters who went around demanding their candy when I say “little monsters”. At the very least, they have tiny, withered ethics and little positive influence on their children, the front line monsters.)

Posted on

Puppy, Slacking Off

Readers (all both of you) here may recall my fondness for Puppy Linux. The new “standard” Puppy, version 5.2.8 is Ubuntu-compatible, but still the same lean Puppy that loads from a CD or flash drive and runs in RAM. Very slick. The ONLY thing to hold against it is that it doesn’t do palm check on my touchpad on this lil lappy when I have a mouse plugged in. But seriously, that’s the only negative I can think of. Update: *sigh* I feel like such an idiot. It was right in front of my face… just in a different place than where I was looking. Turned the touchpad off. No complaints whatsoever, now. 🙂

Newer? Puppy 5.3, “Slack Puppy” based on Slackware. Notalotadiff, really, except for repositories and a couple of cool utilities (the Frisbee network setup applet is no better or worse than the usual Puppy network setup utility, but it’s as easy, which is to say, super easy-peasy). One thing I just noticed that I might end up down-checking 5.3 for is strangely lower volume levels. I may just have to fiddle with something. (Yep. Adjusted things via the Alsa setup wizard. All fine, now.)

Very nice is the simplest Flash setup of any ‘nix distro I’ve used to date. When I specified I wanted to install Opera, Puppy offered to install Flash, installed it and… that’s all.

Anywho, ‘s’cool. I think I’ll put this version on a flash drive like I have with Puppy 5.2.8 so I can carry a “computer” around in my shirt pocket. Any computer that will boot from a flash drive can then have a customized Puppy, with my saved files, needed apps, etc., right there. Yeh, yeh, I have a bunch of stuff “in the cloud,” but sometimes, it’s really, really handy to be able to have another OS to boot someone’s computer to, and keeping all MY files (and activities) segregated–and back in my pocket when I leave–can be a very, very Good Thing.

BTW, here’s a screenshot from my flashdrive Puppy 5.2.8:

Further Update: Another neat version: Puppy “Racy” 5.1.111. Pretty cool initial setup wizard making the already simple Puppy setup even easier. I do NOT like the absence of some repositories (particularly the Ubuntu repositories) in the default installation menu. Notaproblem, really, but just a lil flaw in an otherwise superb build.

Posted on

Sick, Just Sick

Seriously. You can search for Warehouse Deals on Amazon for yourself:

What? Is Amazon parting Jobs out? *heh*

Oh, and Jobs rates just above disposable diapers? That’s sooo uncool…

Posted on

Notahotpocket

Yep.That’s the name of this notarecipe: Notahotpocket. It’s not a grilled cheese “sandwish” either, since it’s not grilled in any way, but when I’m rushed for time, it does OK.

Need:

Bread
Cheese
Toaster
Microwave
Paper towel

Pop a coupla pieces of bread in the toaster.
Slice some cheese (or unwrap a piece of pre-sliced, if that’s the way you roll).
Place toast, buttered if you wish, on paper towel
Place cheese between pieces of toast
Microwave for ~20-30 seconds, more or less depending on your microwave.

Quick, no clean-up. If you have the time and want to clean-up something, pan poach an egg beforehand. Add some precooked bacon (please, the less cooking the better when this shortcut “sandwish” is necessary) and you have a quick breakfast “sandwish”. But better to skip cooking the egg and just slap on some precooked bacon (again: saves cleaning time). It’ll warm up nicely in the microwave oven while the cheese is melting.

Other variations are easy, of course. Cleaning a knife’s not all that time-consuming, so slicing some onion and peppers while the bread is toasting wouldn’t really cost any time. A hair more time in the microwave, maybe.

There: Notahotpocket.