|
Today's Fortune: |
   
|
Saturday, March 01, 2003
I think I oppose just about any law with the word Patriot in it's title.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 3/1/2003
Thursday, February 27, 2003
You should oppose the New Patriot Act. We have a Bill of Rights to protect us from goverment procedures like these. Specifically to protect us against this. I imagine that these are exactly the circumstances the framers of the Constitution had in mind.
.: posted by andy 2/27/2003
Iraq is building trenches around Baghdad. It will then fill the trenches with oil and light it on fire. Crazy Saddam stuff, right? I was surprised at how clever this is. Apparently smoke from the fires is intended to prevent us from using laser-guided munitions. I guess we'll find out pretty soon whether or not this works.
.: posted by andy 2/27/2003
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Somebody went and replaced this last Monday with a Friday! What a neat trick. And the coolest part of it all was they timed it to coincide with a huge ice storm that left 3 inches of sleet(Texas snow) covering everything. Good thing I saw it coming and had the foresight to go to the bar straight from work Monday afternoon, coz by 7PM everything was covered with ice and I'd never have made it. Tuesday morning I met a bunch of friends at McKenna park and we skied and sledded for a few hours, then retired to the Loophole since the only thing open because of the weather was bars. McKenna was a blast. A few friends of mine had a competition of who could make the best contraption to hit the slopes with, and they were:
A lawn chair ziptied to two skis; pros: very low friction, very straight shooting, comfy chair, good brakes; cons: no steering, no bailing out, cheap lawn chair eventually bent.
A hood off a 240Z; pros: multi seat arrangement, decent speed(better speed with two riders), very structurally sound; cons: poor steering, poor braking, heaviest to drag back up the hill. Steering and braking were facilitated by two garden hand cultivators.
A dumpster lid; pros: fastest ride, room for two, long enough rope that you could stand on it if you were brave; cons: no steering and a tendency to cut left, no brakes, fastest ride. Did I mention that Bonnie Brae is at the bottom of the hill?
Today I met up with some friends in Sanger who had found another dumpster lid, and we tied it behind Bruce's 1982 Ford Fairmont Futura and pulled it through the new Sanger High parking lot. On the straightaway we could get up to 30MPH pretty consistently. The slush did us in after an hour though. Between what was thrown up by the leading edge of the lid and the spray from the tires, we were all soaked to the skin.
This all brings me to my current life crisis. I have two fundamental forces acting on me in most of my life scale decision making.
First is a desire for something greater. Grandiose, ambitious, driven ideas, like moving to a foreign country, or leaving what I have for some adventure.
Second is simple comfort. Full belly, wrapped in a blanket with a good book, or watching a good movie kind of comfort. This also includes hanging out with friends, drinking a beer at a bar where you know everyone.
You don't get very far in life on the second path, but it's a lot more pleasant than the first. I am basically wasting my life where I sit now, but it's a very warm, cozy ride. I want more, but I don't want to give up what I have. I'd love to just get up and go somewhere, or tackle some huge challenge, but I'd be giving up time with my family and friends, and I was really miserable for the first three years after I left Denton. I finally built a circle of friends in Austin, and ended up moving back here. Now I have a good circle of friends, but I want more adventure, and am paralyzed by the thought of losing what I lived without for so long.
The inverse is also true. I want to be a firefighter in Denton because I'd love the life, the work, the community, and the town. But it's a career, a permanent commitment, and it ties me down, prevents me from leaving or just quiting because some opportunity comes along.
Along those same lines, I wanted the position at Peterbilt because I needed a job, and it pays well with benefits, but it had an exit, the layoff date. Now that I've been there twice as long as I was supposed to, and the layoff is indefinitely postponed, I want it to happen every day, but I also can't bring myself to quit because of the stability provided by the job.
I guess if I had to choose between accomplishment and contentment, contentment wins by a nose right now. Shakespeare taught us that ambition is bad, right? Such is the life of Devin.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/26/2003
2.1 million dollars were taken when a robber took a Dunbar armored transport at JFK International Airport.
.: posted by andy 2/26/2003
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
.: posted by Jeremy 2/25/2003
Seriously kids, all the good places are being let by gay folk. Is there some gay custom that I need to be aware of? Coz I'm already feeling like they're pressuring me to have sex with them when I just look at their ads.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/25/2003
Monday, February 24, 2003
Finally got Myst 3 Exile, which is a blast. Only problem I have is the original CD from Ubi Soft required 2 patches from their website, which they specified required either Communicator or Explorer. So I tried Communicator which froze my computer, necessitating a forced quit. Being stubborn, I then used Opera, which took 3 hours to create .sit files on my desktop with zero bytes in them (Where did all the data go?). Finally got the downloads with Explorer that worked. I hate being forced to use a browser I don't particularly like. Gotta be a conspiracy. The download times show the pathetic state of dialup connections, but I don't have cable on my road (just got electricity). and the advanced state-of-the-art phone company I use doesn't even support 56K v90 modems, I have to use v34. I even took my notebook to school and downloaded both files in 14 minutes, but when I used file sharing to transfer the files to my tower, I couldn't open the files (locked). I thought computers made life easier. Rant, rant, rant.
[edit]
.: posted by George 2/24/2003
In case anyone is interested, there's a web job open in Greensboro, working for the state. The deadline for application is tomorrow, so you'd pretty much have to haul ass to get done in time. But it's prolly about as easy a job as you can get.
.: posted by andy 2/24/2003
There seems to be a disproportionate number of homosexuals searching for roommates in houston. Some of them have really nice places they are renting. It looks like there are more people looking to rent out extra bedrooms, or even whole top floors, than there are people looking for apartment roommates. I think that's a good thing.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/24/2003
Sunday, February 23, 2003
It would be an exciting turn of events if these three ships really are found to be carrying Iraq's arsenals. I put it to you, however, that the United States floated these three ships as an ace in the hole in anticipation of fruitless UN inspections. Now they can seize the ships at their leisure and produce irrefutable proof of Iraq's programs.
You have to get up pretty early in the morning to slip a conspiracy past me...
.: posted by andy 2/23/2003
15 years is like 105 in dog years, right?
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/23/2003
Google
DrinkBoy
Modern Drunkard
DMOZ.org
The Agonist
Metafilter.com
Fark.com
RobotWisdom.com
Memepool.com
Plastic.com
news.google.com