Nothing to see here… just a test of audio player plugin. Will change colors later… goodnight cruel world!
[audio:Run_For_Cover.mp3]What Willy Does Like the Cold?
I love many things about the British: their accents, their humour, the Aston Martin, those sexy-eyed women… They’re a different lot they are. OK, you get the picture; I’m an Anglophile. But it’s nice to see that for all our differences, we have some things in common.
Bye Bye! So Long! Farewell!
Today, Mitt Romney withdrew his name from the decreasing field of Republican Presidential hopefuls. Signaling his party’s intent to use terror to maintain its death grip on the American psyche, Romney’s last dying gasps were something like:
Any other time in history, I would stand my ground and fight. But this isn’t any other time. This is a time of war, and I’m all for this war. I’ve shown myself to be perhaps the biggest Bush apologist in this campaign. But we all know that a war began by alleged Christians is best fought by someone who at least looks like Jerry Falwell. With my chiseled, clean-cut Mormon good looks, that man is not me.
Besides, when I see the eight years of pent-up rage and frustration in John McCain’s eyes… frankly, I’m terrified. If I stand between him, his war, and his illegal immigrants, I might end up with the Mighty Right’s boner lodged squarely between my cheeks, a position ole Maverick McCain has been in since 2000.
So, as much as I hate to lose, I can’t in good conscience stand in the way of an administration Hell bent on retaining its reign of religious abuse and fraudulent lies over a happily deluded public.
By the way, liberals suck, etc., etc.
Oh, and this just in… Fox, CNN, NPR (shame!), AP, and Other Fake Ass News Outlets Suspend Critical Journalism… as opposed to quitting it altogether.
Why I Love the South: Reason #1
I’m starting an ongoing feature today; photos and short essays that show why I love the South. For bookkeeping’s sake, I’ll place these entries under their own category called… wait for it… The South.
I can think of no better way to begin than with an item we’re especially known for. P-O-R-K, that spells hawg. Giganormous $3 pork chop sandwiches can be bought from the gas station next door. Behold!
Putting Hip Hop on Full Blast
People who know me more than a minute discover I’m not a big fan of corporate Hip Hop. The “bling”, objectification of women, and drugs offered by mainstream rappers paints a too thin veneer on a culturally rich, ethnically diverse people. As larger and better known recording companies continue to rake in the money, I’ve had to redouble my efforts to find palatable music (and people) within this vast genre. Crawling the TMZ and Perez Hilton wannabes in the Black blogoshpere offered little help. I’m simply not interested in the “Black Folk Behaving Badly” version of celebrity websites.
But a chance encounter led to me having lunch with Clyde Smith, the owner of ProHipHop, a blog focusing on the marketing and business of Hip Hop.
Happy Anniversary Baby
Twenty years ago I was tasked with cataloging a warehouse of carburetors. It was my first photography job and involved taking clearly identifiable carburetor portraits, matching them with their respective part numbers, and assembling the lot into a homemade scrapbook. Picture a family photo album, Monster Garage style. Like any novice, my results were mixed but generally just shy of acceptable. My employers very grudgingly agreed to pay for a couple of hours of training from a local professional photographer. An already weary, but still impressionable 18 year old, I didn’t know that my life and perception of the world was about to change.
One Last Request
The most honest communications we encounter in daily life are often not meant for us. Exhibit “A” below is an example. Found in a bin of car parts at a dealership, the unassuming tag traveled all the way from Delaware to bring its message of hope. Against the backdrop of a flailing economy, fraudulent and mismanaged war, and outrageous gas prices, it seems a simple request. I hope the writer got his wish.
Wake up and smell the Java… Again
As I was growing up, Mom often told me that life is a constant repeat. How often she told me was usually a factor of how much I complained about doing some routine chore. As usual Mom was right. However, not all that comes back around is necessarily bad. My love of writing is one example. Now, I’ve rekindled my interest in learning a "real" computer programming language.
Sticks and Stones
When George Bush predicted Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee for President, he wasn’t just tipping his hat to her campaign prowess, or her unassailable plans to fix healthcare, Iraq, and any other number of societal ills. He was voicing the hopes of Republicans who share the vision of retaining the executive seat in the White House. One might even say he was trying to conjure her nomination into being. After all, no matter how many lies this administration tells, nor how dangerous the lies are, the sheeple still assemble to graze on the fetid crumbs that lead straight to Bush. If he predicted Mickey Mouse would be the nominee, shares in Disney stock would skyrocket. When most early polls predicted an eventual Clinton smackdown of Obama, many Republicans were ecstatic. Watching the current inter-Democratic bickering must have them buying new underwear by the case.
Didn’t Even Know Anything Was Wrong
I’m finally prepping the Vista lappie for a clean OS install. A Vista disk and 2 Gb stick of RAM are on the way — Woo! Hoo! I’m also trying to optimize and speed the machine up even more. I’ve once again left the Aero interface behind in favor of Vista Basic. Upward of 60 Meg of RAM was immediately released! Let’s see… modified index settings to minimize number of indexed locations, hacked registry to allow more than two simultaneous downloads, turned off Remote Differential Compression, disabled games I don’t play, and I ran disk cleanup.
The screencap below is from Disk Cleanup of my system drive. Notice the amount of space consumed by user and system error reports! This is a first for me. I never considered what happens to error reports, you know… the cryptic messages accompanying those annoying “This program has crashed would you like to send info to Microsoft?” screens. I assumed (incorrectly) that event reports might also be included in that ~ 6 Gb of space so I opened the event log (under “Performance Information and Tools–>Advanced Tools).
Let me say my hat’s off to MS for providing the mother of all information gathering tools. Every electron that moves inside your Windows machine is tagged, tracked, and described here. There’s some really useful information under the Microsoft/Windows section of Applications and Services Logs, including logs that track how long it takes your system to boot and shutdown to the millisecond. You can also learn what applications are slowing those processes down. I’ll continue to clean, strip, and tweak until RAM and Vista disc arrive.
