my absence

Sorry for being gone so long, but things have gotten insane. I spent a week in Chicago teaching some Sun field engineers how to use SMF (the project I've worked on for the last few years), then I got back and Half Life 2 was released, and it's seriously the most amazing game I've ever played in my life, and now I'm leaving at 7am tomorrow to go see family in Illinois for Thanksgiving. I'm going to need about a week of sleep when I get back.

Have a good break, everyone.

Chicago

I'm coming in to Chicago for a few days to give some lectures for Sun. Needless to say I'm a bit nervous, but I think it's gonna be a blast.

Anyway, if any of you who read this live in the Chicago area and want to show me around the Windy City, or just take me to a bar so I won't be horribly bored at night, drop me a note in email or comments here on the blog.

I'm in town Sunday-Friday, and I'm free most nights, as far as I know. It looks like my most wide-open day is Wednesday, but I'm sure I can slip away for other things.

hotmail

Interesting. Apparently hotmail is scared of Gmail. I logged in today, and my mail storage limit has gone from 2 megs to 250 megs. This after they hounded me every few weeks when the spam built up in my junk account, and demanded that I get a pay account.

Thanks again, Google, for forcing the world to be a better place.

something I just thought of

I think this is an original quote, but let me know if it isn't.

A conservative is someone who thinks he's smarter than the rest of the world. A liberal is someone who thinks he's smarter than the rest of his country.

Streeetmemes

What a cool idea for a website. You take pictures of any street memes that you see, and send them in. I wish I had taken some shots in Venice of the weird memes I saw there, it was a strange numbered graffiti set with people's faces with a four digit number below them.

Streeetmemes

I've seen this one around before, I always liked it:



I like this one too:



This one is wonderful, and it's a nod to Warren Ellis:



It inspires me to make my own.

looking for an online comic

I remember a few years back reading this horribly wonderful and offensive online comic about a guy who lived out in LA, and was a goth, and this his friend from Texas came to visit him, and they decided to move out to Texas.

There was lots of sex and violence and lack of political correctness. And one of them worked as a waiter.

Does anyone know what this comic was?

MC Hawking in da hizzle

the networks won't call it...

So I will.

Four more years, it appears.

The big shakeup for the evening, for me, is Daschle getting tossed out on his ass. As the Democratic leader of the Senate!

Matters of disgust this evening:

Every single one of the Constitutional amendments against gay marriage passed. By a LOT. You stupid bastards.

California passed laws allowing collecting DNA samples from convicted felons, and some people not even convicted of crimes. In a democratic state, no less.

Also, California dropped another 1% tax on rich people, just because they can. More bastards.

But yeah, the networks won't call the race for some unknown reason, even with Bush ahead by over 3 million votes. It's over. By a HUGE margin. I don't have much of an opinion on it, since both parties are so similiar now. My only point of joy right now is how pissed off Michael Moore must be.

I hate the radio

I listen to radio interviews every day on the way to work, and they drive me crazy.

All these interviewers let people say things like "George Bush turned a surplus into a deficit". Now you all know that I'm not a Bush fan, I hate both parties equally, but this is just insane. I wish I could interview these people. You can't let them get away with insane shit like that. The correct follow on question for that statement is:

"Oh really? Bush ended the dot com boom? Wasn't it already crashing by the time he took office? And aren't the costs of the war just a fraction of the half a trillion dollar deficit that we're running?"

The real answer here is that Congress is completely unable to adjust their spending to the amount of money we pull in, so when we do well, spending increases, but when we start to do poorly, we rack up huge debt. Bush didn't do shit.

It's almost as stupid as the phrase "Tax cut for the rich." You might as well say, "I'm an asshole who doesn't look at the facts, and just parrots whatever the liberals tell me." Jesus, people. Look at the numbers. If I hear that phrase one more time I'm going to start bashing heads through walls. Percentage-wise, the middle and lower class actually got a larger cut, but a large percentage of the dollars of the cut went to the rich because they PAY MORE TAXES. It wasn't a freaking tax cut for the rich.

I hate you people sometimes.