The Calendar Says It's Saturday?

So I'm Taking The Day Off


I'm just mentally worn out after living through the week I just went through.

If it could go wrong it went wrong, and as fast as I had one fire put out or a given problem fixed another half dozen things seemed to pop up and need doing.

That's when it really sucks being a one man company...you have to delegate everything to the same person...

and here at the international headquarters of Plastics Engineering Technologies, Inc. that person would be ME.

So right now I have my bathing suit on and a bandanna wrapped around my ever greying, ever balding head in anticipation of going outside and smoking a cigar and doing the past couple of days worth of newspaper crossword puzzles on the deck while little Missy the Turbo Pup floats around in her swimming pool.

And then I have about ten pounds of Beef Tenderloin to butcher down to steaks and puppy sized tid-bits before putting a couple of the aforementioned steaks on the grill along side of some bacon wrapped giant Sea Scallops. There will also probably be some asparagus spears and possibly a few new potatoes on the side for dinner.

And other than that I'm not going to do a darned thing between now and midnight.

Unless the world blows up or something, I'll talk to y'all tomorrow.

Living In Computer Hell

Where's My Really Big Hammer?


Have I mentioned that I live in a household with two adult humans, one tiny little long haired miniature Dachshund going by the alias of "Missy...the Turbo Pup", and...

FOUR COMPUTERS?

ok...six computers if you count the back up scraps laying around in various stages of construction, and EIGHT computers if you count the two PLC's (Programmable Logic Controllers) sitting in my shop right now.

Any way...

Only one of the machines is acting completely sane right now--Pat's corporate machine--on which I only handle the Internet and networking operations there of because her company does the security and VPN work remotely.

Then there is my old HP 17" laptop which has been relegated to the workshop and that's served me well over the past four or five years before I bought the "server PC" which currently occupies space in my office upstairs.

Since the "Server PC" has lost it's mind over the past couple of days and I've been wrestling with getting it converted backwards from Windows Vista to Windows XP Professional, a little Dell laptop that I rebuilt has served my needs in working a few feet from the sofa and my bedroom when I'm too lazy to walk down stairs to the shop.

So any way...with my menagerie of machines sitting around here I have more problems with computers farting and belching and barfing right now than any single human should have to put up with, and in my old age and chronological incompetence having lost the urge to stay on top of every single detail and development in the computer business (I let my subscriptions to Byte Magazine and PC World expire long ago) I'm not sure if I can weather the storm before me.

Right now I'm about ready to gather everything up, put it in a pile in my wheelbarrow, and haul it all outside to the compost heap.

I guess if it was easy everyone would be doing it, but managing a real network of computers designed to do something besides blog and goof around on Facebook and Twitter is a damn hard proposition from my perspective.

WhuaaaaaatttT?

"If Thy Right Hand Offend Thee..."


OK, Now I have Windows 2000 professional on a computer (formerly a Vista robot) that won't recognize the internal sound card to make beeping and burping sounds, and even more aggravating is that it doesn't have an Ethernet connection or any other network connections because it wants to go to the Internet to download the drivers but it needs the drivers to go to the Internet.

Or in layman's terms...

"now I can't get to the Internet without going to the Internet to get the stuff I need to go to the Internet."

Somebody better come collect my sharp knives...

...and it's a good thing I don't own a bridge or the Eiffel tower else I'd be considering jumping off of something right now.

Dangit...

"Out Damned Spot...Out I Say"

I Gave Myself A "Digital Enema?"


As my regular (and irregular) readers know by now, I've been suffering with the Cancer known as "Windows Vista" on what I laughingly call our "Server PC" since I let HP build us a custom machine in late 2007 and ship it down to our little Island on the Georgia Coast.

Giant hard drives and 22" monitors aside, the so-called Vista "operating system" delivered by Bill Gates et. al. at Microsoft, in my considered Redneck opinion...

TOTALLY SUCKS.

Not only does Vista TOTALLY SUCK, but it TOTALLY SUCKS harder than the gravitational forces of the largest black hole in the entire freaking universe/solar system/infinity.

All of that blithering aside, our so-called "server PC" finally coughed up a liver and a spleen and possibly a couple of kidneys yesterday afternoon and evening, and I ended up having to sit through doing a "restore your PC to Factory conditions" ritual complete with incense and sitting cross legged naked in the floor on the skins of a Bear and Cougar bowing down in front of a human skull with a burning candle sticking out of the top....

and when I got done with the process a week a couple of hours later I realized that AutoCAD and PhotoShop and my Microsoft Office Suite and my TV receiver card software and my Cannon Digital Camera software and EVERY F**KING THING I had installed since buying the computer was...

G O N E.

Fortunately I have an external back up copy of all of the data files, but it is a few weeks old because I was intending to move the 500 GB drive down to the laptop in the shop and never got around to it so Norton is a little behind on my archiving.

But any way...

As I set there looking at the then "restored" computer that was now dumb as a brick and asking to connect to the Internet with America On Line's free trial services, a little tiny light bulb lit up in my ever greying, ever balding head.

What began as a little trickle of thought rapidly surged to a torrent of emotion, verily a tidal wave of sparks and lightning bolts of mental electrical currents, as I had the liberating experience of realizing that I was now free to break the shackles, rend the bonds, and struggle free from the slimy mucous dripping grasp of the Microsoft Vista Home "Premium Edition" and crawl on my knees back to my beloved Windows XP Professional haven of safety and digital security.

I owned a legal copy of the Windows XP Professional 2002 edition which I had bought in my efforts to restore the little Dell laptop Pat's company abandoned in our posession when the hard drive failed back in 2006 (and on which I'm blogging right now beside the sick former Vista machine), and when I purchased a new hard drive I also bought an OEM copy of XP on E-Bay for something like $99 and I still had one legal install available.

So you know what I did?

I flushed Vista down the toilet without a second thought and within the next day or two, after a few dozen hours of work and a littany of curse words, I will hopefully have a squeeky clean Server PC running XP Professional, with AutoCAD and Photo Shop and my other programs all residing comfortably in a new and improved directory structure.

Companies producing crap like "Vista" which is so obviously flawed that they have to deliver the next generation of software and change the name (Windows 7) in hopes of keeping idiots from knowing it's the same thing slightly modified would be stoned to death in Iran/Iraq or Afghanistan, but here in the By-God United States of 'Merica their biggest fear is being called up before the Senate for a "hearing."

And on that note, I'm "hearing" my Server PC calling wanting me to push the "next" button and keep on installing software.

Regards Y'all...

Ebonics Translator Jobs?

Channeling Your Inner Negro...

This story is really too much by it's self, so I'll withhold any commentary and just let is stand here on its own.

Click on the link and see the news about the US Justice Department wanting to hire people to translate the language used in surveillance tapes:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/justice-department-seeks-ebonics-experts


I first saw the story last night on Drudge and somehow avoided writing about it, but then my blog Buddy Rodger over at Curmudgeonly & Skeptical picked up the item and went a step further, finding this on-line "Ebonics Translator" which could save the government idiots a few taxpayer dollars in the process.

Type in some phrases and sit back and laugh at the results...





I like the conversion of the phrases "Where is my calculator?" and "I forget how the toilet flushes"


Heh...

Why I Didn't They Apparently Vote Democrat

Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself...


10. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.

9. I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

8. I voted Democrat because Freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

7. I voted Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

6. I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

5. I voted Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies through abortion so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

4. I voted Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits.

3. I voted Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the democrats see fit.

2. I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

1. I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my ass that it is unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view.


Thanks Rodge

My Attention Deficit Disorder

Like I Don't Already Have Enough To Do...


So we were sitting around at dinner a couple of weeks ago and my neighbor told me that they wanted to add a sun room addition on the back of their house.

Then one thing lead to another and I got my tape measure out and fired up AutoCAD and the next thing you know he's going down to the Knox County building permit office later this morning with SEVEN SHEETS of drawings including these two elevations I produced...





I love doing Architecture almost as much I enjoy Injuneering, but now it's time to get back to some paying work I guess...

Y'all have a LOVELY Monday...

Cats

Good Intentions...Gone Bad...






(Thanks for the link Rodge)

Trash Talking On Sunday Morning

Read My Lips...


I've pretty much had it up to here, Ladies and Gentlemen (pointing to the top of my ever greying, ever balding head), with BS news stories about " waist waste recycling."

For instance...consider this news story about the idiots in government up in Cleveland, Ohio putting in "high tech" trash cans.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It would be a stretch to say that Big Brother will hang out in Clevelanders' trash cans, but the city plans to sort through curbside trash to make sure residents are recycling -- and fine them $100 if they don't.

The move is part of a high-tech collection system the city will roll out next year with new trash and recycling carts embedded with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes.

The chips will allow city workers to monitor how often residents roll carts to the curb for collection. If a chip show a recyclable cart hasn't been brought to the curb in weeks, a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables.

Yeah, I can't wait to turn in my two weeks notice to quit my job as a professional Prison Guard, Tollbooth Fee Collector, or Interstate Rest Area Toilet Maintenance Technician and apply for the position of "Trash Supervisor" in Cleveland so I can spend my days sorting around in batches of used feminine hygiene products intermixed with poopie baby diapers and banana peels looking for un-recycled plastic water bottles and diet soda cans.

Boys and Girls, shit stories like this (excuse the pun) are a PERFECT example of not only the stupidity of government "officials", but also the inability of the so-called professionals in the lamestream media to do an accurate, serious, analytical analysis (heavy on the anal) of any given story.

Therefore the task of breaking this story down to understandable terms is left up to I (as in Me and Myself), your lovely and talented Internet Blogger, to tell you how much sense this whole program makes and how the government of Cleveland ill-advisedly spends their hard earned taxpayer's money in their quest to appear to be a "Green City."

First let's look at the cost of the "high tech" garbage cans they call "carts."

Doing the math, $2,500,000.00 for 25,000 carts equals $100 per cart.

OK? So good so far.

Next, they say that the city pays $30 per ton to put trash in the landfill, where they "earn" $26 per ton for "recyclables" they collect and deposit somewhere.

They also say that the 15,000 "smart carts" last year saved 5,800 tons of material from going to the landfill.

That's 0.387 tons of recyclables per household every 12 months, yielding a savings of $10.05 per cart PER YEAR ($21.65 per year if you include the total avoided landfill costs.)

And nowhere does anyone mention the administrative costs of of managing and operating the tracking and enforcement arm of the system on a day to day basis.

I guarandamntee you that there will be at least 30 Government employees making an average of $50,000 per year involved in issuing "tickets" and "citations" and running around digging through fetid piles of used Tampons and empty beer cans...

so you have to include the $1,500,000 per year administrative costs to the program and...

Anyone else see where I'm going here?

This system is NEVER, ever, EVER going to yield a realistic return on the investment.

And by adding 25,000 new "smart carts" to the system each year it will take them until 2015 to get everybody into the program, and if Herbie Curbies "Smart Carts" follow the path of abuse that local grocer shopping carts have to live through the replacement of lost and stolen carts will further drive the program's value into the basement.

But Owl Gore and all of his sniveling, booger eating, tree hugging, tie died, patchoouli stinking, eco-friendly, Mother earth loving, Global Warming fearing commie socialistic progressive democrats will smile and nod knowingly because we're all just a little bit better off than we were yesterday as a result of the City of Clevelands good faith efforts at "going Green."

Now you will have to excuse me while I go dunk my head in a cooler full of ice water before it explodes....