The Cantina

Here’s a question that I thought I’d never ask. What do you get when you cross a children’s video full of puppets and an innocent looking little girl with a gangsta rapper like Lil Jon?

Answer: Quite possibly one of the funniest videos on youtube.

A few words came to mind right away after viewing it. Disturbing, depraved, bizarre, hilarious, genius…. I’ve watched it several times now and I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. One thing is for certain. It took a lot of creativity and talent to put this video together with the quality that it is. It makes me wonder who would have even thought to do this. Anyway, this is what you get when two extremes collide.

Love it or hate it? You decide. Just watch it. You may even find yourself going…..

WHAT!!!!!

Tags: Entertainment by Ron
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Man that’s the best advice I’ve ever heard. I used to live like that. I honestly did, and I wish I still did. I wonder what happened.

From the time I was 18 till I was about 30 it was all about the moment. Living in the moment. Screw tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come. White water kayaking, ultralight airplanes, living spur of the moment, and doing a hundred miles an hour on the wrong side of the road.

There’s nothing better than a warm summer night full of stars, a good running harley, a few good friends and some neon. I lived a good part of my life like that. Not caring what would happen tomorrow or if there was a tomorrow. I sit here now and I wonder what happend to that feeling. What happend to that lifestyle and what happened to that dream.

I’m responsible now. That’s what it is. I have a career instead of a job. I own a house. I want my parents to be proud of me. I wonder why they weren’t proud of me while I was living my dream. While I was living every moment and while I was sucking the life out of life, instead of life sucking the life out of me.

I long for those days and I remember them well. I have so many great memories that I forget many of them until someone reminds me of them. If I live long enough, I’ll go back to that mindset and I’ll re-kindle that dream. I’ll dream like I’ll live forever and live like I’ll die tomorrow.

The picture is me and my friend Dave Conrad doing about 80 miles an hour on the Kangamangus Highway in New Hamsphire during bike week sometime in the 90’s. We were having fun. Dave is up front. That’s me in the background.

Tags: General by Ron
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Okay, so Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed while delivering the oath to Obama yesterday. And Obama flubbed back. Is there really any question as to whether or not he’s really our president? I don’t think so. You can read the whole story here. It bothers me though that he took a mulligan on his first day in office. He asked for a “do-over” and did it today.

He’ll find out very soon that there are very few “do-overs” as president. For instance. When the CIA and secretary of defense tell you that an enemy country has weapons of mass destruction and you better act on it now or suffer the consequences, and you act on it only to find out they were wrong, you find out very quickly that there are no “do-overs”. There are no mulligans as president of the United States of America. There is no “on the job training”.

Settle in Obama and do it right. We’re counting on you. We have no choice but to count on you now. The people have spoken and they want ice cream.

Tags: Edgy, Politics by Ron
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Tomorrow is the big day for Obama’s $173 million dollar party. Nice to have a $173,000,000 party especially in these trying times I would guess, but that’s not what the focus of this post is about. This post is about poo.

No one knows for sure how many people are really going to show up, but everyone thinks it will be between 1million and 2 million dedicated democrats.

You have to be a dedicated democrat to attend a party where, if it’s only one million, you will have the square footage of a sheet of unfolded newspaper to stand on. If there are two million, you will have the space of the front page of a newspaper to stand on. I’m talking about being packed in like sardines folks.

Now some more perspective. All those people are going to have to pee and poo. That is going to require porta potties. According to the people who rent them, you should have 1250 porta potties for every 100,000 people for a 10 hour event.

So let’s do the math. For one million people, there will have to be 12,510 porta potties. For two million people, there should be 25,020 porta potties. After viewing countless media events involving Nancy Pelossi, Barney Frank, Ed Rendell and any Kennedy that’s ever served any office in my lifetime, I personally feel that most democrats are full of poo so those numbers should probably be expanded exponentially, but we’ll go with the hard numbers for now.

Here’s a pleasant fact from wikipedia on porta potties.

“A major disadvantage of portable toilets is that the odor that builds up within the enclosure can quickly reach an unbearable level, especially in tropical climates, where users’ behavior (as well as aiming capabilities) can quickly soil a newly disinfected unit. This is probably due to the fact that the ventilation units are too weak to oust foul-smelling air fast enough, and have a open air duct (without compromising privacy) to allow fresh air in. Consequently, use is akin to a self-imprisonment with one’s excrement – especially if one has a habit of taking a long time to defecate.”

Granted, it’s not going to be a tropical climate tomorrow but it’s not going to be a stroll in a flower garden either, I assure you.

I’m no expert, but I’d estimate that a porta pottie holds roughly 50 gallons of human waste. I’d venture to say that those units will be full and foul by the end of the day tomorrow, so what you will have is 625,500 gallons of democratic poo at the end of the day tomorrow, which is probably comparable to the amount of shit we’ve been fed throughout the campaign.

Keep in mind, that’s assuming that only one million democrats show up. If two million show up, double it. That’s 1,251,000 gallons of poo for one democratic Obamapalooza. Where will they put all that poo? I’m hoping they keep it in DC.

Me? I’ll be going to work like the rest of the hard working republican people who actually keep the economy going, and I’ll be upwind for sure.

Tags: Edgy, Politics by Ron
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This is bubblehead. It’s an AMD Easy Now PC that was sold in the mid to late 90’s. It’s maxed out with an AMD K6 processor and 256mb of RAM. I really like this little collector peice so I decided to make it as useful as possible. I was inspired by a small linux distro named INX. I like INX but it is geared towards being instructional, or as a tutorial and I wanted a more useable and functional box. So I stole a bunch of scripts and ideas from INX and built this box. I loaded a basic installation of debian etch on it and a bunch of useful console apps like mplayer-nogui, calcurse, links2, sc, mutt, and a bunch of other stuff. The drab black background on a linux console was annoying me so I went out and swiped the latest Morphix kernel and installed it and bootsplash. Now my linux console has a nifty wallpaper (that I also snargled from the web). Oh sure, I could have compiled a kernel and enabled splash image support, but why go to all that trouble when you can just download and install one and change the graphic. 🙂

I installed screen and dvtm so I could run virtual terminals. I always like to keep my IM client going when I’m online so I installed naim. BTW, you can click on any of these thumbnails to get a bigger picture. Here’s a screenshot of dvtm running 3 virtual terminals. In the upper left I’m streaming nasa tv, in the upper right is the IM client and in the bottom terminal is links2 with titan tv loaded so I can check out what’s on tv.

Contrary to popular belief, you can watch movies and display graphics in the linux console without x windows. you can see in the screenshot above, I’m streaming nasa tv using mplayer-nogui. Here’s a shot of links2 doing a google search for sailboat sunsets.

I wouldn’t want to have to use this box as my main PC. Links2 is a good console browser, but I need flash and all that other good stuff to make my websurfing experience more enjoyable. This is a great little box for what I use it for though. I have a cron job set up on it so that it fires up a playlist of some good salsa music at full volume every weekday morning at 6:45, so it’s my alarm clock too. It also opens a “good morning” script that I wrote that opens a few virtual terminals in screen with my IM client, stock quotes, the dow futures, alsa mixer, a radio script that I stole and modified from INX to stream different radio stations, and my mail (via mutt). The screenshot below is that “good morning” screen that opens. You can see that it is a split screen with my IM on the bottom and my stock quotes in the top screen. The other terminals that are open are listed at the very bottom of the screen and can be accessed by typing crtl+a and the number of the terminal. Whatever I choose is then displayed in the top section.

All in all, I am happy with bubblehead. It’s a very capable box, and pretty speedy since it’s not having to labor under x windows. I like the transparancy with the background image showing through in all of my applications and it does everything that I need that computer to do. I’ll leave you with a few more screenshots of Mutt (mail), calcurse (a calendar/appointment application) and a shot of the bootup/login screen.

Tags: Techie Stuff by Ron
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That’s what it was outside when I woke up this morning. 5 below zero. There was a thick layer of ice on the inside of all my windows from the condensation forming, then freezing overnight. The doggie door was wedged open about an inch from Sky going in and out on patrol. Frigid air was just pouring in. I turned on all the heaters to the low setting last night before I went to bed. It was about 50 degrees throughout the house this morning despite that fact. I blocked off Sky’s door with some cardbaord and cranked up the heat.

I made a cup of tea and started some home fries. I had to drink the tea quickly because within about 4 minutes, it was luke warm. It took about an hour of serious heat crankage to get the house to a balmy 66 degrees and we’re nearing 70 now. Outside, it just crested 6 degrees.

I like living in Pennsylvania but this part of winter is honestly one thing I could do without.

Tags: General by Ron
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I got this in email today and thought I’d like to share it with you. I suspect that this is closer to the truth than most of us would like to believe. It’s supposed to be from a teacher in the Nashville area.
———————–
The most eye-opening civics lesson I ever had was while teaching third grade this year. The presidential election was heating up and some of the children showed an interest. I decided we would have an election for a class president. We would choose our nominees. They would make a campaign speech and the class would vote. To simplify the process, candidates were nominated by other class members. We discussed what kinds of characteristics these students should have. We got many nominations and from those, Jamie and Olivia were picked to run for the top spot.

The class had done a great job in their selections. Both candidates were good kids. I thought Jamie might have an advantage because he got lots of parental support. I had never seen Olivia’s mother.

The day arrived when they were to make their speeches. Jamie went first. He had specific ideas about how to make our class a better place. He ended by promising to do his very best. Every one applauded. He sat down and Olivia came to the podium.

Her speech was concise. She said, “If you will vote for me, I will give you ice cream.” She sat down. The class went wild.

“Yes! Yes! We want ice cream.”

She surely would say more. She did not have to. A discussion followed. How did she plan to pay for the ice cream? She wasn’t sure. Would her parents buy it or would the class pay for it. She didn’t know. The class really didn’t care. All they were thinking about was ice cream.

Jamie was forgotten. Olivia won by a landslide.

Tags: General by Ron
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Okay, I’m full of venom. I just got my RV insurance bill from Progressive and tried to pay it online like I always do. I plug in my policy number. Next page. It asks for the last 4 digits of my social security number to verify who I am, so I plug that in. Keep in mind, I’m going to pay them money, not withdraw anything. Now I’m directed to a login screen that tells me some obsucre 10 digit login and asks for my password, which of course I don’t know. It’s been a year since I paid my last goddamn RV insurance bill and I don’t remember having to log in then, and I certainly don’t remember the password, if I was ever given one.

Yer killing me.

When I go to Geico.com to pay my auto insurance bill it askes my policy number, then verifies who I am by my SS number, then takes me to a screen that displays and verifies my policy, and my bill, and lets me actually pay it. Imagine that.

Is the asshole that wrote Progressive’s website so security paranoid that he thinks that some rogue websurfer or hacker is going to pay my bill? Or is it some director that directed the pointy headed PERL guy to write it that way? Either way I don’t care, but this isn’t the first time that the multi-step form filling out process has driven me to the fantasy of perching myself on a high rooftop with a loaded rifle.

Job applications are another source of this phenomenon. There are many companies that put together online job application forms and then have the webmaster parse the forms for certain phrases to either qualify or disqualify the application for the applied position.

I’m a 16 year IT professional and have held positions as a field sevice technician, a technical support technician (windows and unix), a tech support supervisor, *NIX system administrator, NOC technician, NOC engineer, NOC manager, and senior manager of NOC operations.

I’ve filled out job applications in the recent past for Unisys, Raytheon and the state of Pennsylvania, and found out that according to their application process, I’m not even qualified to be interviewed for an entry level computer operator.

Everytime I come across one of these moronic processes I just shake my head in deep chagrin and wonder what kind of webtard is in charge of it and what in the world are they thinking.

Tags: General by Ron
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I don’t know why but I’ve had this song stuck in my head for weeks now. Johnny Cash was a true american legend. I don’t know if he intended it this way but it seems like he recorded this song as a last goodbye. He died shortly after it’s release as if he’d written the last chapter of his life and then closed the book. Very powerful stuff.

The mark of a true musician is when they can make you feel their emotion through their song. It happens when the song is playing them, instead of them playing the song, and it goes right through their soul into yours. Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you one of the greatest entertainers that ever lived.

Johnny Cash singing – Hurt

The song was originally written and recorded by Trent Reznor, best known from his Nine Inch Nails fame. I have no idea how it wound up in Johnny’s hands but I’m glad it did.

Tags: Entertainment by Ron
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What kind of guy goes out on the back patio and fills a bucket of water, mixes some 2 cycle 50:1 gas and runs his outboard boat motor in January….in the snow? Well look no further. You found him.

If you read my previous post on the boat motor I just bought on Ebay, you’ll prolly know that I had some doubts as to whether or not I was going to have problems with the throttle linkage on this motor since it looked like it was packed by the drunken cousin of a backwoods Kentucky family affair, and it suffered some damage in shipping.

I was pleasantly surprised. I set the bucket up and filled it with water. I mixed up some 2 cycle gas and poured it into the bone dry tank. I thought about saying a few Hail Marys but decided to just go for it. I cranked the lever up to the start position and gave a good tug on the rope to prime it. Pulled the choke out all the way and gave a second tug and she sputtered and ran for about a half a second. I pushed the choke back in and gave a third and final tug on the starter rope and it sprang right to life. A quick check down on the lower shaft showed just the right amout of water being sprayed out of the cooling exit holes. Looks good so far…..

I left it run for about 5 minutes to get to an even running temperature, backed it down to an idle and turned the slow speed enrichment adjustment all the way to “lean”, and left it sit out there and just idle for about 15 glorious minutes. It was a little louder than I’d like it to be but that’s prolly because it was running in a bucket instead of a lake. I think once it’s fastened securely to the boat and in the water like it’s supposed to be, that it’ll be just dandy. A “one pull speed machine” if you will.

Tags: Sailing and boating by Ron
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