I could have used these folks in a handbell choir (pretty much the same skill set).
Found at TF Stern’s Rantings. Thanks, TF.
I Like It When My Directions Are Followed to the Letter…
Saw this at “etsy” (off a reference from Lovely Daughter’s blog, A Dash of Nutmeg),
It attracted my eye because of a lil schtick I pull from time to time: shopping in a store, set something down (perhaps in a cart or basket or even at the checkout), point at it and glare sternly saying, “Stay!” It almost invariably gets a decent reaction from whatever audience I have.
“Tis a small thing but my own.
Lesson Learned
OK, so I kinda knew that one set of bottles I’d put away a little over a week ago had been slightly “over-charged” since, besides the same amount of sugar “charge” as all the other bottles, they also contained a goodly amount of trub that was likely to contain a bit more yeast the sugar could reactivate.
Oh, “lesson learned”? Don’t open one of “those” bottles while sitting at a computer. Screen, keyboard drawer, keyboard: all liberally sprayed by some hyper-carbonation. *heh*
Cleanup was delicious, though.
I Hope They Don’t Think They Can Dance…
…but I appreciate the joi de vivre
Best part, IMO, is where the shopper (looks to be in his over-weight, outa condition late 40s second glance, mid-fifties, but all these kids look about the same to me *heh*) joins in and looks better “on the floor” than the store employees. *heh* As I said, I appreciate the spirit, but a little over the top for my own shopping taste.
h.t. to Josh on FB
Note the post where this video originated. A guy who claims to have been “hardcore Mac” for the past five years,
“I was absolutely floored by this experience, Microsoft has made a bold move to capture new market share. I ordered a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate edition…”
Well, I like Windows 7 well enough to have transitioned my own Wonder Woman to it (she’s “hard core’ Windows ;-)) and to have freely recommended it to folks who’ve had their gripes with Vista, but it’s not the bees’ knees. *heh* Still, nice to see some folks enjoying their work.
One of These Is Not Like The Other
No, Washington’s horse is not smoking. It was cold at Valley Forge…
An Inspiring (or Perhaps Not) Post
As I was contemplating the Meaning of the Universe (yeh, I was “on the throne”), it occurred to me that I have read very, very few scenes in the (literally) tens of thousands of books–about 2/3 fiction–I’ve read that deal explicitly with the elimination of feces. Protagonists can go through days, weeks, months, years without once taking a dump.
This is weird. I mean, take a man who loves his wife and enjoys the marriage bed with her greatly. Lock him away from his wife for a week. Plug him up so he can NOT void his bowels for the same week. Now, when released, which is going to be the greater biological imperative? Sex or dumping?
See? It’s easy to trump Freud, the weenie. *heh*
Now, back to fictional representations of the act. There are LOTS (loads, tons, an abundant redundant superfluous excess *heh*) of sex scenes in fictional representation, but a paucity of number 2s. Strange, that. The only fictional representation of dumping that springs readily to mind is from the Michael Douglas (Michael and Douglas Crichton writing as Michael Douglas) book, Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues. Now, admittedly, this ain’t “grate litterchure” but it’s well written and a cracking good, very amusing story–especially for some of us who lived through the 70s mostly conscious (in contrast to many of our acquaintances).
Gotta hand it to “Michael Douglas”. Sure knew how to place things in perspective.
So, if there are any aspiring authors of fiction out there who happen to read this post, please consider including some number 2s in your work. Verisimilitude, dontcha know.
News of the Weird–Compgeeky Version
Well, not so much “news” as just a weird lil collection of personal compgeeky events. You have been warned.
ISP sent someone by to check my service outages/slowdowns. I offered to hand the guy a script, since he was new to the area (the regular tech who lives in the area was also in the neighborhood and I visited with him earlier). He gave me a “Huh-what?!?” kind of look. I then explained to him exactly what he would find with his test equipment. What he would find the current state of my connection to be–if it hadn’t already taken one of its sporadic nosedives–and what he would tell me when he was finished.
He gave me another look, then proceeded to directly verify everything I had already told him. He even did as others have done and escalated the situation to his supervisor and was told what I already knew he would be told.
“We’re working on it.”
Yeh. Since July.
I’ll just hand the script to the next guy. *heh*
Now, if that weren’t weird enough (it sure was for the poor tech. He seemed to wonder if perhaps I were psychic or something. *heh*), how about the little issue I had the other day patching MS XML 4.0 (needed because I–reluctantly–installed M$Office 2003). M$ Updates couldn’t see that I needed it, although Belarc Advisor and Secunia PSI both flagged the version that came with the software–and the version that was in place after ALL M$ Update patches to M$Office had been applied–as needing a specific patch. So, I tracked down the file that was necessary to effect the patch and downloaded it.
It refused to install. Bogged down unpacking the compressed install file.
*feh* M$.
Used 7Zip to unpack the thing and it installed just fine. Why the M$ exe couldn’t unpack–completely bogged–makes no sense, but having 7Zip around sure proves handy. (BTW, I never use Windows 7’s built-in compressed file viewer. Too inelegant and missing too many features. YMMV)
And then Thunderbird refused to start. Now, I run Thunderbird Portable off a flash drive. All my archived email in one handy folder, easy to back up by simply dragging the folder from the flash drive to an external hard drive. Can carry it around with me and access my email–with full archives–from any computer with USB ports enabled, which includes our local library.
Nice.
But after a reboot (following the M$ XML 4.0 install, but that likely had no connection), invoking thunderbird.exe wouldn’t start the app.
Weird.
Oh, me oh, my. What to do?
Simple. Reinstall the lil Thunderbird Portable app. The installation routine is very well-mannered and retained all my mail archives and customizations.
Then there was that strange little graphic artifact that appeared in the smack dab middle of my Win7 desktop the other day. Nothing I did seemed to affect it. All running processes were known to me. Multi-scans of the computer by installed and web services found no issues. Yet the artifact remained… until I rebooted. Computer was operating normally throughout. Logs on the router firewall noted no unusual traffic during the time it was present. Just a lil green box that went away on reboot. Sort of reminded me of,
Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man who was not there
I saw him there again today
Oh my, I wish he’d go away
Gotta love Windows. *heh*
ISP Meddlers, Bumblers and Cretins, Oh My!
WARNING: This may be too geeky and “inside baseball” about connectivity for some. If so, move along. These are not the ‘droids you are seeking. The geeky voices in my head are just all jabbering too loudly for me to ignore them completely.
Continue reading “ISP Meddlers, Bumblers and Cretins, Oh My!”
Paper Plate Breakfast
This is a drive-by post, cos today’s scheduled up.
Breakfast today: toaster oven pizza served up on a “paper plate” quickly manufactured with 9 staples and the box the pizza-like “food” came in. Could have done w/o the staples, but at least this way it was sturdy. and eminently tossable.
Well, at least it was semi-tasty and filling. And fast.
Question for the Weak
Joe Sobran:
I’ve never understood… why Darwinians are so militant about spreading their faith — wanting it taught to children in public schools, for example, with competing theories banned. Isn’t this the one idea, of all ideas, that ought to be able to take care of itself, without official support and coercion?
Hmmm, Darwinianism is anti-darwinian: can’t survive competition? Apparently that’s what contemporary Darwinians believe. Strange, that.
“Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.” –Milton, “Areopagitica,” 1644
Or, as that 19th century proponent of Classical Liberalism, John Stuart Mill put it in his famous essay, On Liberty,
“[T]he peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
So, why then do Darwinians get their panties in a twist about Intelligent Design (not to be confused or conflated with so-called “Creation Science”–as both disingenuous Darwinians and disingenuous Fundamnmentalists are wont to do–and no, I did not misspell “Fun-damn-mentalists”)? If it’s the bunkum Darwinians say it is, then a lively debate on the merits of both Darwinianism and Intelligent Design would be good for classrooms, since, IF the arguments of Darwinianism hold water, then ID shouldn’t have a chance in a fair fight.
But, as the Sobran quote illustrates, apparently Darwinians’ faith in their theory is not really all that strong…
Just an obseervation: much more often than not, when one voice in an argument seeks to exclude another voice from arguing at all, the one seeking to censor speech often has a weak argument. See: The Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming or the Obama White Cafe-au-lait (Grande, with a twist!) House.
As for me, I’ve always found such hand-waving and shouting down of opponents to be an incentive to dig into their opponents’ arguments to learn WHY such unfair or disingenuous actions are being taken against them.
And as form Darwinianism, that chief exponent of survival of the fittest, “Isn’t this the one idea, of all ideas, that ought to be able to take care of itself, without official support and coercion?”
Hmm, must have a weak argument.
BTW, for some of the “weak links” in Darwinian arguments, see chapter three in “Kicking the Sacred Cow” by James Hogan.
