It's not the Having, it's the Getting

Apparently it's not bad enough that I don't get enough sick time; now I also face a greater heart attack risk just by coming in. It's apparent that I'm risking my life here; I need a huge raise and some danger pay.

ArdorNY.com-New York City's Best Value Apartment Sales & Rentals.

These guys are the Biggest bunch of unrepentant spammers I've ever seen.

The bastards don't stop. I don't even live in Manhattan, nor do I feel the need to move there at this time; why the hell would I even be a candidate for their spamming program? Of course, I've reported it to SpamCop, but they seem to be unable to even list these cheeseballs in the spammer database.

I've been receiving their weekly spam for 4 years.

What do I do next?

Can I have more Sick Time, then?

So, boss, apparently if I don't take sick time, I risk heart disease. If my job is only slightly less stressful than an air traffic controller, do you think they'll be able to tell for sure if I died early because of my job, or because I couldn't get enough time off it?

Some workers who do not take time off when ill had twice the rate of heart disease, the 10-year study of 10,000 civil servants showed.

The University College London team found that even working with a common cold can be harmful.

The study said it was the stress from working when ill which caused the risk of heart disease.

-- BBC News

Either way, I wish I could sue. Unfortunately, I'm a somewhat responsible and accountable bastard, as bastards go, and I neither subscribe to nor even claim to understand the wholly American penchant for suing people for our own bad decisions.

Why do I want to sue? Forcing us to make anything at all, let alone a deadline, with our reduced staffing, vacations, and under the repressive policies we're under, is both cruel and inhumane.

Regime change, indeed, may begin at home

This great piece via metafilter:

Canadian authorities have arrested US President George W. Bush and charged him with offences under Canada's War Crimes Act. Says (Canadian Prime Minister) Paul Martin: “This decision was not made lightly. But, it was also a decision that was impossible not to make. The United States is not outside the rule of law, and cannot expect to get an unlimited “free pass”. This decision puts a grave strain upon both our nations, and I urge calm and restraint from our American neighbours, as well as from Canadians. I have met with the cabinet, and with our colleagues in the House. This is a time of great crisis for us as a nation. But as people, we will survive this test. Earlier I enacted the Emergency War Powers Act. This is necessary to guarantee our domestic security. This is not a time for panic, for lawlessness, for anything other than a responsible and sobre focus on what lies immediately ahead.”

Oh, the humanity!

I say Challenge His Beliefs

No man should be permitted to finely judge the course of another honest man's existence.

Apparently, through the use of satanic stem-cell research, a woman can now walk again.

Some people should walk a mile in her shoes before decreeing that stem-cell research should not be followed.

Considering that this kind of advance may have been possible sooner if research was allowed earlier by government, I truly believe that Christopher Reeve was murdered through negligent inaction or depraved indifference.

Just as long as I don't have to play the Violin

It's in the news today.

Apparently, one man forcing another to play his violin at gunpoint - and then mocking him as he did so - is the most offensive event to date in a long line of mishaps. Apparently there've been remorseless but accidental shootings of children, but forced violin playing is the most atrocious. See why:

"If we allow Jewish soldiers to put an Arab violinist at a roadblock and laugh at him, we have succeeded in arriving at the lowest moral point possible. Our entire existence in this Arab region was justified, and is still justified, by our suffering; by Jewish violinists in the camps."

The Guardian

A few points come to mind.

When did the remorseless killing of people become anything other than despicable? Isn't the message we need to learn from the atrocities of the holocaust that all life is sacred? What do we learn if the people who were so persecuted show no remorse about the accidental death of someone else? Wouldn't blatant disregard for other human life cheapen the 'all life is sacred' message? And forcing a man to play a violin is worse than killing him?

Also, why is this only important when taken in context of one's own (parents') suffering? I should hope that no event, no matter how tragic, can overshadow the accumulated wisdom of a people who have been united for hundreds of years, and that we can learn more from our elders than retribution.

When Rat Brains Attack

This is some funky-ass science. It's almost a Dr Evil quote:

All I want is some frickin' fighter jets controlled by evil rat brains; is that so much to ask?

Rat Brains. It all sounds so deliciously evil.

I Broke my Wookie!

Grid Logic is amazing. Play it a lot and laught at my pitiful 184 score.

Into the Ignore file, net.cop!

You net.cops think you're so cool.

You weild selective parts of the self-contradicting and highly subjective (2.1.1-4 vs 3.1.1-16) RFC 1855, and you think you're so cool because a 20-year-old recommendation, one that really needs some editing, upholds your personal preference.

To top it off, you're so controlling that you want to enforce your personal preference on those who've objectively sampled alternatives and found something that works better for them.

Whole organizations have grown up, buddy, and they've chosen something better; why can't you respect their choice?

That's Mr Smith, to you

Our newspapers are increasingly becoming Americanized, and it's unfortunate to form an opinion about another country based on how it's dragging yours down. The newspapers are merely another mineshaft canary, and not important in and of themselves for this change, but the constant reminder is annoying.

I read the Beeb. The BBC news at BBC.co.uk is informative, mostly timely, and, importantly as well, respectful. Papers in my own country, which is itself a former colony, are losing that respect.

I may be a bastard, I may be an ignoramus, but I'm still a human being, and you will address me as Mr Smith, John Smith or 'Sir' if you're speaking directly to me -- unless and until you and I are friends, when you may additionally use my first name. You rudely call me by my last name outside the military, and you should expect to be treated like the disrespectful urchin you are.

You will not rob me of the last bit of respect I deserve.

Didn't you guys have an amendment on that?

Yeah, so apparently the Press isn't Free:

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Nov. 18 [2004] - A local television reporter was convicted of criminal contempt on Thursday for refusing to identify the person who leaked him an F.B.I. videotape in 2001 related to an investigation of government corruption in Providence.

Wasn't there something about congress not abridging the right of the press to freely report? Hmm?

Net Result

Yeah, us humans are so smart, so good. Some of us believe the best way to save another nation by bombing the fuck out of it repeatedly, with impunity. Some of us believe that some deity gave us express permission to rape the planet of its resources.

Apparently, dolphins are one up on us on the evolutionary scale. It must be a self-esteem thing as to why the morons in our culture do not believe in evolution.

Dolphins believe in personal risk to help the people who can't seem to reciprocate without fucking up. Yeah, for 40 minutes, members of a 'less intelligent species' which we trap in our nets accidentally or on purpose (dolphin meat sells well), wild animals by our definition, risked their own lives to defend humans from a natural predator of theirs, because they were able to assess the situation, understand the consequences of inaction and corrdinate to execute a plan they communicated to themselves and apparently decided on implementing.

So far, I think we have a shitload of a way to go to match that.

I'm rather embarrased to be a mere human.

You guys need to learn to spell

A dozen different colonies in diverse parts of the world, and one of the ones closest to the homeland in terms of cultural access can't seem to keep the same spelling of words. Everywhere else in the world spells words Normally, but you folks seem to want to be different. You're so special that, soon you'll be invading countries for their oil. Sure. GO. Make your own language, but stop fucking calling it English, for English is what they speak in England, and their language includes words like:

• neighbour
• labour
• honour
• drive-through
• there, their
• too, two, to

Learn to distinguish and spell it all correctly, and maybe pick up some grammar, and maybe in a generation or so your president won't sound so much like a complete moron.

And what the fuck is a ZIP, anyway, and why do you need codes for it?

My Buddy's Famous

Okay, maybe he's not famous, but he's running for office. It's totally
cool!

http://results.electionsalberta.ab.ca/21.htm

Now, while John has, at times, done things on a lark or just to mess
with people's heads - he's a genius with a sense of humour - Orin says
that he's really into this one for real, and that's excellent. I think
he'd do well, and it's too bad that the one guy's already got 48% of the
vote because I would've liked to've seen John make it in.

Jitters

Oh man, am I stressed.

I've got this work thing, and the EA Games-like pressure and overtime, and so I really can't afford to quit Karate: it's the only opportunity I have for leaving the house on a regular schedule, since I work at home and largely don't leave my office otherwise. Also, it's the only thing keeping me sane, and the desire to just walk into traffic gets pretty high at times.

The thing is, since achieving a new study level, I've been tossed into a more leadership role in class, and I'm not a front-of-the-class type of guy. I want to just do my work, work through this massive funk I'm in, and then move on.

Yeah, the funk: I hit a wall about 4 months ago, where everything feels wrong. Even a Front Punch feels like I'm doing it incorrectly, and that's the first thing that new students learn on their first day. I'm 6 years in and I am sure I'm blowing it. I'm over-thinking things, consequently, and that causes me to lose the flow and flub my katas and doubt myself more in this nasty-ass spiral of doubt and fucking up.

So, every day before class, even though I'm already fasting

Yeah, I gotta because I'm a bit sick and don't want An Incident during class.

I still get a massive case of stomache cramps and sometimes have to bail. I'm not sure if it's jitters about class, jitters about my new teaching role or jitters about potentially being ill in class. Either way, it rather prevents me from going sometimes. And I hate that.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.

update: I had to bail from class. Too sick.

What D&D Character are you?

I Am A: True Neutral Elf Ranger Druid


Alignment:
True Neutral characters are very rare. They believe that balance is the most important thing, and will not side with any other force. They will do whatever is necessary to preserve that balance, even if it means switching allegiances suddenly.


Race:
Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.


Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.


Secondary Class:
Druids are a special variety of Cleric who serves the Earth, and can call upon the power in the earth to accomplish their goals. They tend to be somewhat fanatical about defending natural settings.


Deity:
Silvanus is the True Neutral god of nature. He is also known as the Patron of Druids. His followers believe in the perfect balance of nature, and believe that nature's bounty is preferable to any other 'civilizing' method. They wear leather or metallic scale mail, constructed of leaf-shaped scales. Silvanus's symbol is an oak leaf.


Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan (e-mail)

How're We Doing?

I just went to extend my Zap2it Labs account for another quarter, giving me access to the XML channel feed data for another 3 months in exchange for my answers to a questionnaire. Thing is, the questionnaire offered a question that almost boiled down to

What do you need to be happy? We have This, That and The Other Thing to offer.

This, definitely.
This and That.
This, That, and The Other Thing.
Nothing. It all works perfectly.

and I ran into a problem. You see, I didn't want This or The Other Thing; I wanted just That, and things definitely aren't Perfect. This and The Other Thing seemed to be little more than more advertisement crap to toss at us. Totally lame. If they're gonna build stuff on the premise of making it better, I'd like not to have a whack of ad crap tossed at me. The cost - mroe dreck to sit through - is not worth the benefits.

So I sent mail to the guys there and Tom and I are now talking. Maybe he can fix the questionnaire, or maybe he won't.

I hope I don't lose my subscription. They probably will want me to pay after this.

Wastage

So. This morning I finally started to be able to work on a project to which I was assigned like a week ago.

The delay? We are currently working on an area of code that's stored and controlled by the most ancient and archaic policies and tools we have. It's so old that I can now answer questions like "Who the hell would still use it, and why?"

The next question is, how many weeks of coder-time have they lost because they could simply have gone to something a bit neweer instead of working on all these hacks designed specifically to work the same way on the older tools? It's like trying to emulate a wheel using only cubes.

So, this week has cost my company Thousands. On me alone. Who else has run into the same problem?

Your Papers, Please!

I got my passport back.

Let me take a moment and gloat gleefully at you Americans. Getting my passport renewed was a 10-day return after a 30-minute wait in a modestly-furnished office with no crying babies, no illiterate homeless and very polite clerks. This also required a 10-minute visit to get an entirely new birth certificate, because the one that I had went missing.

So, anyway, like everyone else I quickly open it up and look at the main page, and discover why I must never fly into the US again.

With a serial-killer picture like that, I'm bound to get the extra attention we all dread. Yes, kids, it's strip-searching fun!

What's in a name?

So, like a million years ago, maybe 4, I wrote an email message or an ICQ message to Al and used a phrase like "yeah, but that's my bag of squid to kick down the beach." It was like a cross between the phrase "like kicking dead whales down the beach" and something a bit more disgusting than rotting whale carcass.

Then I promptly forgot about it. I do that a lot.

Later on, he used the phrase, I think intentionally to quote me to me, and I thought it was hilarious.

"It's your phrase, you know," he said, or something like that.

Sure enough, after a bout of searching which I'm unable to perfectly reproduce here so an exact date-and-time is unavailable, I discovered this kernel of obscene wisdom. I can't believe I said it. It was proof that I can be funny, that I have comedic timing. It also shows that, occasionally, even the blind squirrel finds a nut.

This is My Squid

This is my bag of squid to kick down the beach, and I'll be thanking you to stand the hell back.

No. Over there. Thank you very much.

I have many blogs, but none of them that are shallow enough to actually permit me to send out the link.

Yeah, consider that: this profane, foul-ass, whiny, crap-lobbing rag is the version of myself that's sanitised enough to show people. Ha! Take that, Dr Phil.

No, I'm serious. What the hell are you still doing here?