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Badtux the Snarky PenguinIn a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin. Religious fundamentalists are motivated by the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having fun -- and that this must be stopped. |
Friday, July 06, 2007Penguin don't feel goodSore throat, all blah... gah.Too blah to even haul out a cat picture. Though not too blah to pet a cat. Mencken is resting quietly beside me, purring happily, while the Mighty Fang earlier did his catly duty of providing furry softness. -- Badtux the Ill Penguin Labels: life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 7/06/2007 10:35:00 PM 5 commentsThursday, July 05, 2007About a girl I am thinking about a girl. On the cusp of woman-hood, staring out upon a cold sea with goose-bumps showing on her arms and legs, I am wondering, what is she thinking? There has been a war on ever since she was old enough to be aware, a war that is increasingly a disaster and that her generation and the generations after her will be paying for, a war that has resulted in tens of thousands of crippled soldiers coming back from Iraq-nam to be dumped on the streets like so much garbage. Maybe her brother is in the Army. Maybe a boyfriend. Like so many of her generation, perhaps possessed of a cynicism and world-weariness beyond her years, as it becomes increasingly clear that her generation will be cleaning up this nightmare for the rest of her life. Is this cynicism hiding anger at the situation in which she will find herself in when she becomes an adult?
I wonder, what does she think of my generation? What does she think about how we have dealt with things? What about the baby boomers, what does she think of them? I fear that it is not going to be positive. What happens next, I wonder? Will the anger simply simmer, simmer, simmer, turning into self-hate and self-disgust as the years go by? Will she become as "bought" as my generation, leashed to our endless cycle of debt and work? Or will the destruction of the American dream by the Busheviks and their ilk result in something more explosive, more violent, more... revolutionary? If the last, I fear for my own life and safety, for I have certainly done nothing to help make this young lady's life easier. Oh sure, I donated a few bucks to John Kerry and voted for both President Gore and for Kerry, but really, is that all that I could have done? I doubt it. I doubt it. And I doubt she thinks so, either. And really, who can blame her? -- Badtux the Pensive Penguin Labels: life, navel-gazing, the human condition Posted by: BadTux / 7/05/2007 07:48:00 PM 3 commentsThursday, May 31, 2007Oops!If you've been getting "host not found" errors, mia culpa. Finally just outright exploded my server, and had to do the migration before the DNS got redirected to the new site. Not everything is working yet. In particular, everything that needs MySQL is AWOL at the moment (that's all my Drupal-based sites, which you probably don't know about but if you try to connect to a site and get a 'cannot connect to database' that is what's happening). Hopefully soon!-- Badtux the Tired Penguin Labels: navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/31/2007 11:23:00 PM 0 commentsOut of memory, sighSorry about the site being down, spammers have really been beating me up. I'm in the process of migrating to a different server, so please have patience if you try to connect and get nothing, or if you post and it doesn't seem to show up on the site. It'll get there eventually.Thanks, Badtux the Patient Penguin Labels: navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/31/2007 11:07:00 PM 1 commentsTuesday, May 22, 2007Still swamped...At some point in the past I mentioned the deer-in-the-headlights look that our programmers in China got when expected to do anything involving original design or creative thinking. Well, two things happened. First of all, our long-time engineering manager in China abruptly resigned and fled the country (indeed, he now is somewhere in Europe). Secondly, our VP of engineering went over and kicked some butt and told the senior Chinese engineers that they needed to step up to the plate and take ownership of the codebase that respective teams were assigned, or else why were we paying them senior engineer salaries?And, oddly enough, they listened. Oh, they still can't design their way out of a paper bag. Their objects know intimate details of the internals of other objects in much the same way that half the males on earth knew intimate details of the internals of Anna Nicole Smith. But that isn't stopping them. They got the directive "Design!", and, by jove, that is exactly what they are doing, crap or no! Anyhow, I'm currently overflowed with architecture and design proposals from China along with significant chunks of code supposedly implementing prior design documents that I'd signed off on, and am in the process of editing/re-writing/re-designing so that they aren't crap. So that's why you haven't heard much except the occasional snark snack or stream of consciousness navel gazing blog. Sin, redemption, salvation, and B.F. Skinner are still waiting for the significant amount of time needed to do the appropriate research for the "history of evangelicalism" part of the essay. The only good news is that they can't keep this pace up forever. Sooner or later, their well of crappiness is going to run dry. On the other hand, that's what we thought about Danielle Steele too. That was 70 crap novels ago. The final solution, though, is the usual one: Penguin cloning. Or at least hiring another penguin to help oversee the overseas. Now I expect to hear from the "cloning is immoral!" crowd, who tend to be either tighty righties or loonie lefties... sigh! -- Badtux the Design Penguin Reminder: Anything you read here about my personal life may be fictional. Heck, you don't even know the real names of my cats -- yep, even my cats blog under pseudonyms! So if you're looking for clues as to who I work for in the above message, be aware I may have set some red herrings for you and that things may not have gone down exactly as I said. Herring. Yum. URRP! Labels: life, navel-gazing, technology Posted by: BadTux / 5/22/2007 12:23:00 AM 4 commentsMonday, May 21, 2007Cleaning houseIt takes exactly four hours to clean this 1 bedroom apartment. And in the 1 1/2 weeks since the carpet people shampooed my carpet, my cats have shed a vacuum cleaner container full of hair. And some people say my cats are lazy and don't do anything? Hey, if there was an Olympic contest for shedding, they'd win the short-hair category paws down!Went to Wally World because they have a 30 day supply of my allergy medicine for $6. Near the medicine area there was a small skinny Asian girl, around 9 - 10 years old, wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed "Give me chocolate". Now that is a sentiment I can agree with. So after I got my medicines I headed over to the chocolate area to stock up on some Ghiardelli's. She was already there, of course, enthusiastically educating her bemused parents about the various chocolates. This old penguin can appreciate folks who know the important things in life, of which chocolate decidedly is. Downstairs trailer trash continues being trailer trash. The (illegal) daycare kids she is paid under the table to watch are leaving trash all over the place and she never budges from in front of her television where she is watching the telenovelas at high volume in order to police the tykes. She treats her patio like a redneck treats the front porch of his trailer house, complete with sofa with stuffing poking out of the cushions. AGH! The only good news is that the "Affordable Housing" voucher people don't last long here, so I'll get another trailer trash neighbor downstairs soon enough. In case you're wondering, landlords are required to set aside a certain percentage of apartments for "affordable housing" here in order to get a building permit, it's a deed restriction that goes with the deed forever even though my apartment complex is on its third owner, and there's a whole mini-industry built around certificating and vouchering the lower-income folks who qualify for the "affordable housing" apartments. Oh well, at least it's just one apartment being trashed, not the whole complex. But now I understand why low-income housing projects always look so trashed. I'm sure she's a perfectly nice human being, but pride? Nope, she ain't got none of that. One of the things I've figured out about The Mighty Fang is that he has no fear. None. Nada. Whatever I'm doing, he's underfoot (or worse) trying to "help". He just "helped" me make my bed, to the point where I had to pick hi up bodily, put him out in the hall, and shut the door. WHich brings up an other issue. My grandmother sewed quilts. She must have sewn over a hundred quilts between age 55 and 70 which she slowly gave away over her last 15 years of life. If you remember the photo of the cats on my bed, you may have noticed the colorful quilt. That is not one of her quilts. I have a couple of her quilts, but they are carefully stored in my closet because they are irreplaceable and cats tend to be hard on quilts. Still, I want a quilt on my bed because, well, because. Even if it isn't one of hers, it's right. So anyhow, I need another quilt. The cats have pretty much shredded the one on my bed. But I checked out a few places where you might expect to find a quilt, and nada. Does anybody know where to get a reasonable-priced quilt somewhere in the San Jose area? And now I lay me down to sleep... -- Badtux the Meandering Penguin Labels: life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/21/2007 12:29:00 AM 7 commentsMonday, May 14, 2007Random picture blogging
This guy was buzzing the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday. I don't know why, they have security cameras all over the bloody bridge. Training mission? Joy ride? Hmm.
The bridge is showing distressing signs of age and poor maintenance. Bare rusty rebars have popped out of a lot of the concrete on the pillars and such too. I wouldn't say that Golden Gate Bridge is falling down. But it's showing the same signs of distress as the rest of America's infrastructure.
Note: As usual, clicky on the pictures to embiggen them... but that photo of the chopper don't get that much bigger. I tried, but that's the best photo I got, he was moving *fast* and by the time I zoomed further he was gone. -- Badtux the Golden Gate Penguin Labels: navel-gazing, photo-blogging Posted by: BadTux / 5/14/2007 09:34:00 PM 10 commentsYes, back in the traces againThe Employer(tm) is paying the penguin an obscene amount of money to hack Linux. So the penguin is back in the traces again. Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho! No no, not the ten dollah type, penguins have a different way of doing things.Will be back home tonight. The results probably will not be posted until tomorrow though. Meanwhile, consider the Canadian Quarters of Mass Destruction, which is surely as evil a story as the cowboys of mass destruction one. It's surprising that Canada's dollar coins are called "loonies" when that should more properly apply to our politicians in Washington. We are truly ruled by idiots. Insane idiots, at that. That is all. -- Badtux the Working Penguin Labels: life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/14/2007 01:29:00 PM 2 commentsSaturday, May 12, 2007ReminderI'm out of here. I'll discuss a couple of things religion-related when I get back. Don't tear up the place while I'm gone, and Grumpy? Can you please not be mean to children while I'm gone? It's wrong and you know it. Sigh.-- Badtux the Gone Penguin Labels: navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/12/2007 08:55:00 AM 3 commentsThursday, May 10, 2007On the other hand...there is this beast. PLANAR PL2010M Black 20" 16ms DVI LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 1000:1 Built in Speakers. This is what is on my desk at the office. It does 1600x1200 resolution, which is a *bunch* of open Emacs windows or browser or EMAIL windows. Of course, the slow refresh rate would make it suck for games, and I'm not even sure it would *fit* on my desk at home (due to the shelf over the monitor area) whereas the widescreen definitely would... would also not be as good for watching DVD movies.Choices, choices... -- Badtux the Consumer Penguin Labels: navel-gazing, technology Posted by: BadTux / 5/10/2007 04:48:00 PM 2 commentsWednesday, May 09, 2007Flowers for AlgernonFor some reason, I am thinking of that oft-banned book. I wonder why.-- Badtux the Connections Penguin Labels: life, literature, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/09/2007 11:58:00 PM 2 commentsMortalityI have another birthday in a few days. This birthday will be special. I will be the exact same age that my father was when he first displayed symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer's.Within two years he was unable to work. Within five years he was in a nursing home. Within ten years he was dead. He was 54 years old when he died. Not much older than a cousin of his who similarly died of early-onset Alzheimer's. I might hope to have inherited my mother's genes here. All of my mother's relatives remain clear-headed until within a year of death. But I don't know about that. I inherited my father's quick mind -- my mother and her relatives have heads of wood. Did I inherit the defective gene that makes the brain suddenly disintegrate in an otherwise healthy man? I don't know, and that gives me yet another selfish reason to wish for a national health care system that actually works. The only reason my father got the care he got, which was as good as was possible with the knowledge and technology of the day, was because he was a Korean War veteran and thus could use the VA system. If it happens to me... Louisiana's public health care system is a shambles due to the loss of 20% of its beds in the Great Katrina Flood, Medi-Cal is a disgrace, and besides it would be a year before I received any care due to disability and might very well be dead in that time. Perhaps that would be better. I don't know. It certainly would not be very dignified, in any event. Of course, the right wing's answer to this is, "if you're no longer capable of working, you should just shut up and die." The notion of We the People getting together and in a spirit of Christian charity taxing ourselves in order to provide care for the least amongst us does not appeal to them at all, because the only moral value they truly hold, in their tiny little bitter hearts, is "I got mine." The spirit of Jesus Christ, who once famously said that a rich man could no more enter Heaven than a camel go through the eye of a needle, does not live in their hearts. Their other answer is that you should join a church and receive care from your church. That is just another way of saying "I got mine", since these people rarely join a church themselves, and if they do, never donate much of their income to the church. Most church-goers that I know are solidly working class, just poor schmucks going through life thinking they're middle class even though they aren't. It is sad, but true, that the lower one's income, the larger the percentage you donate to charity. A person with $10 is more likely to donate $1 to charity than a person with $1,000,000 is to donate $100,000, even though he can afford it least. But the working class schmuck knows, "there but for the grace of God goes I", and gives what he can. The person with $1,000,000 says, "suckers! I got mine, I'll never be a charity case!", and gives $1 just to say he gave. In other words, I do not think you can be rich and truly a Christian. Because if you were truly a Christian, you would have given it away to those in need, as Jesus counselled doing. A week ago someone nominated me as a "Thinking Blogger". I am flattered. I am also supposed to nominate other bloggers as "Thinking Bloggers". That will require some thinking on my part. There is the Quaker Agitator, of course, who is always thoughtful. But he has already been nominated by so many different people that he must be tired of it. There is the warrior bard Minstrel Boy who is thoughtful in a different way, the thoughtful of a man who has seen and done many things in his life, learned many things about himself over his lifetime that he perhaps does not necessarily want to know and acquired wisdom the hard way one scar at a time, and spends his time trying to do the right thing despite his uncertainties about the existence of a Creator. Beyond that... I am not, tonight, doing too much thinking I guess. Too much thinking about mortality, and the transcience of human existence. There is a place Minstrel Boy went for his own birthday. I have been there, a place where there is water in a desert wilderness, the remnants of old orchards, a few relics of an old ranch hidden beneath the brush slowly decaying into nothing. It is the perfect place to ponder the transcience of human existence while alone with nothing more than your own thoughts. This weekend, though, I think I will take a different trip. I will drive to the Caltrain station and catch a train to San Francisco. I will walk the streets and watch the people. And in the end, I will be no less alone. - Badtux the Older Penguin Labels: life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/09/2007 10:43:00 PM 5 commentsMore light bloggingThe carpet people didn't show yesterday. GRRR! In retaliation I pulled out my little Hoover Steamvac V and gave the worst spots a quick shampoo. Better. But not as good as those big truck-mounted machines can do, my little Steamvac does a lot better than the Bissel I once had (it better, as much as it cost me!) but simply cannot heat the water up as hot, shoot it as deep into the carpet, or suck it up as well as one of those big mothers. Not to mention it's a PITA, one tank of water will basically do a 6' by 6' square which was six tanks of water for my living and dining area.For those wondering what key my whistles are in, they're all in the key of D. That's pretty much the "standard" key that all the whistle tutorials and songbooks are written for, though of course you can play the songs in any key if you're just playing for yourself. Minstrel Boy mentions a tiny high G whistle. Looking at the Clarke web site they just sell D and C. Walton's made one once, but looks like they just make D and C too. Generation makes a high G as well as a bunch of others, and a lot of professionals used them for some time, but finding a "good" Generation is a chore. So anyhow, I'll probably get a C and a Bb just to round out my whistle collection, but looks like a high G isn't going to be in there.
Finally, regarding why I ended up nose-to-nose with Mencken when my furry alarm clock woke me up yesterday, you may have had trouble figuring out how that could be. But this photo should make it a bit more clear. This is the scene I wake up to every morning, except with me under the covers, of course... clicky clicky to embiggen:
-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin Labels: cat blogging, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/09/2007 08:27:00 AM 3 commentsMonday, May 07, 2007No blogging tomorrowMy computer will be on the kitchen counter, because the carpet people are coming to clean my carpets, and I need to move my computer desk out onto the patio because, well, this penguin has managed to knock a soda or two off the side of his computer desk (oh no!)... not to mention that Mencken keeps his hairball collection under my computer desk. *ICK!*.- Badtux the Carpeted Iceberg Penguin Labels: navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/07/2007 02:56:00 PM 1 commentsSaturday, May 05, 2007I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned
Yeah right, cat. You aren't big boned. Look at those spindly little rear paws on ya. You're fat. And me saying that doesn't make me some mysogonist anti-feminist penguin either, since you're male, so you can just quit whining about how I'm being mean... you're sixteen pounds of fat cat, cat!
Sorry about missing my cat blogging yesterday. Work intervened, and I didn't get home until around 9pm because I needed to get some test cases working over the weekend. As I noted earlier, I recently got a gigantic pay increase and new responsibilities at work and while it's not the sort of environment where I'll be working more than 45 hours a week in a typical week, when stuff needs doing it needs doing. Hmm, you can see two of my colorful new throw rugs/runners that I found, one at Target and one at Ikea (evil! evil! evil! went in for one thing, came out with $100 of other things including the most luxurious set of sheets that was $45 all by itself!). Hairball season is pretty much over, and the carpet cleaners are coming next week to shampoo my carpets to get the cat yakk out, then I am going to place these things in all the most popular places for my cats to yakk so that hopefully they'll catch the yakk during the fall hairball season when they shed their summer coats and put on their winter coats. I wish I could train them to yakk into their litter box. Sigh. Anyhow, my iceberg is getting more colorful, you'll need sunglasses if it gets any brighter! -- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin Labels: cat blogging, life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/05/2007 08:52:00 AM 5 commentsFriday, May 04, 2007ReminderI also post at the Mockingbird's Medley. And not everything I post there is posted here. Sometimes it's just a few words difference. Sometimes, as with the linked article, it's a much-expanded posting based on a small section of a posting here. But anyhow, you might want to take a spin by the Medley from time to time after you're finished up here...Labels: blogging, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 5/04/2007 02:02:00 PM 0 commentsMonday, April 30, 2007Well, so much for the "moving" thingyAfter Crazy Anti-Cat Lady's house, there's nothing on the market for a decent price. So guess I'll just fork over the $150 rent increase. Woe is me, except...My boss called me in to his office with a look of concern on his face. I go "uh-oh." Well, sort of. Bottom line -- I'm not fired. In fact, I'm not only not fired, but I'm being given a significant pay increase and significant new responsibilities. Which means less blogging on my part, but (shrug). Anyhow, bottom line is that a) I'm not going to have time to do any moving, and b) money isn't any reason to move anymore. So tomorrow I'll go over to the office and sign a new lease and get my concessions for early lease renewal (a $100 Safeway gift certificate, a "free" storage locker or storage room, and a "free" carpet shampoo). In other news, my recorder practice is coming along. I still have problem holding the low C, and I can't move up the whistle to the higher octave past a certain point without squeaking between octaves, but I'm starting to get a bit of breath control. I ordered several penny whistles today (different brands, they're so cheap there's no reason not to just go ahead and get a collection), I suspect my breath control practice on the recorder will translate well to the penny whistle. I also have a bunch of penny whistle tutorial material and song material transcribed for the penny whistle on the way. I just don't like the sound of my recorder. It sounds... plastic. Which it is. It's a Yamaha that has good reviews in a number of places, but I guess reviewers of recorders don't have very high standards. Or maybe I just don't play the right kind of music for this sound. Who knows. Anyhow, more whistles on the way, so one of them is certain to have the kind of sound I'm looking for... - Badtux the Subdued Penguin Labels: life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 4/30/2007 07:57:00 PM 5 commentsThursday, April 26, 2007Trying to master a new instrumentThe recorder. No, no, not the tape recorder. The musical instrument.C'mon, how hard can it be, the 4th grade kids at the last elementary school that I taught at mastered it, right? Piece of cake! Except I can't seem to make the stupid thing behave. It wants to SQUAWK and squeak and squeal. Sometimes I can get the right sound out of it. Other times it sounds like fingernails scratching down a chalk board. Sigh. Back to harmonica. At least with the harmonica the only way to make it sound bad is to clog it with your spit... -- Badtux the not-woodwind-playin' Penguin Labels: life, music, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 4/26/2007 11:10:00 PM 8 commentsGrrr crazy landlady...Well, the house rental fell through. Turns out the landlady is nuts. First she tried to insert an illegal clause into the lease regarding non-refundable fees because she didn't like cats yet advertised she accepted cats. Then she refused to put any kind of reasonable early termination clause in the lease, which was not acceptable to me because I've had to exercise such a clause twice in the past twenty years, once for the move from Houston TX to Lafayette LA, and once for the move from Wilmington NC to Phoenix AZ.So this penguin is once more looking for a new dock for his iceberg somewhere in the South San Francisco Bay area (South Bay or Peninsula only, thank you!). -- Badtux the Dock-less Penguin Labels: life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 4/26/2007 04:40:00 PM 11 commentsWednesday, April 25, 2007Touchy, touchy!Apparently Pat Lang gets rather touchy when you mention the Dolchstosslegende promulgated by the neo-conservatives rewriting history regarding why the U.S. lost in Vietnam (i.e., it was all those lefty's fault, it wasn't Vietnamese communists who killed tens of thousands of our soldiers, it was Jane Fonda!) or why the U.S. is losing in Iraq (we were stabbed in the back by those lefties again!). Pity. And thus I am banned from yet another forum. This one, alas, I shall not treasure as much as my bannings from places like Corrente and Red State, since despite his blind spots Pat is a good source of information regarding happenings in Iraq and their military significance, but so it goes.Lesson learned: Do not use the word "Dolchstosslegende" to describe stab-in-the-back rewritings of history when you submit to a blog whose proprietor in part subscribes to said Dolchstosslegende. It's rude and he will merely discard your comment and be offended. - Badtux the Rude Penguin Labels: dolchstosslegende, iraq, navel-gazing, vietnam Posted by: BadTux / 4/25/2007 05:47:00 PM 0 commentsThursday, April 19, 2007Yay! I got the house!The property manager for the house I looked at yesterday called me back this morning and said I was the winner in the rental sweepstakes. My lease starts on May 1. So if I don't post much for the next couple of weeks, it's because I'm packing everything up so I can weigh anchor and move my iceberg over to the new digs, yippee, moving is SUCH fun! Anyhow, I'm going to be 1 mile from Santana Row, 3/4 mile from Safeway in the other direction, 1 1/2 mile from downtown Willow Glen, and 2 1/2 miles from the Pruneyard and downtown Campbell, and 3 blocks from Stevens Creek Blvd and tons of shops and stores and restaurants. It's 1 mile from the Los Gatos Creek bikeway, 2 blocks from a great Korean restaurant, 1 mile from the light rail station, one BLOCK from one bus line that goes to the downtown San Jose bus station, two blocks from two other bus lines that go to downtown San Jose, one block from the I280 freeway, 3/4 mile from the CA17/I880 freeway, 3/4 mile from a local motorcycle accessory shop, ... location, location, location, baybee!I hope she didn't think I was laughing at her when she called me this morning. She's a late-middle-aged Asian grandmother, and she was giving me advice. Like, "You should buy a house! I saw your credit and income, you can afford one, why rent?" And "You need to advertise your lease at your current apartment on Craigslist, you will rent it right away! Why pay money for the rest of that lease when you can get someone to take it over? You're wasting money!" The reason I was laughing was because late-middle-aged Asian grandmothers are always giving me advice, all the way back to my college sweetie, a Chinese girl whose grandmother was always giving me advice, and even the waitress at the Chinese restaurant down the street and the haircutter who cuts my hair are always giving me advice. Maybe they just think penguin-Americans are such cute and befuddled-looking beings that they will just wander out in traffic and get killed if they do not have a Chinese grandmother to watch out for them. Whatever it is, I find it hilarious that, even in my advanced age, they're still giving me well-meaning and sincere advice, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with why they're interacting with me or even if it's not necessarily in their own financial best interest (hmm, if I bought a house, I couldn't be renting one from her, could I?). -- Badtux the Well-housed Penguin PS - I've been checking out the restaurants near my new place. YUMMM!!! This penguin shall have no problem at all maintaining his pleasing rotundity! Labels: life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 4/19/2007 01:18:00 PM 7 commentsWednesday, April 18, 2007Maybe a place...Located: A funky 1940's cottage with an added-on garage on the side. It has a garage for my motorcycle. It has a driveway for my Jeep. It has hardwood floors for my allergies. It has a fireplace for my romantic interludes (if I ever find a female penguin around here). It is located two blocks from a great Korean restaurant, one block from a bus line that serves the hospital and community college and two blocks from two bus lines that run down the main drag of the area, 3/4 mile from a large new plaza with a Safeway, 3/4 mile from Santana Row and the mall and another Safeway, and in the middle of a lot of newly-restored homes similar in age. It does not, however, have a refrigerator, washer, or dryer (though it has washer and dryer connections in the garage and a place for a refrigerator), and the dining nook is too small for my current dining room table (oh boy, I get to buy a new table from Ikea!). It also lacks a garbage disposal, central air or heat (still has the old gas furnace in the wall between the hallway and the living room), or a dishwasher (still has the old 1940's kitchen, except with a modern oven).All in all, it looks like a reasonable place to park my iceberg for a few years. Only question is whether I, of the half dozen or so folks who put in an application, get it. Sigh. Sorry, Mixter, penguin-Americans are not a protected class under discrimination laws... -- Badtux the Applying Penguin Labels: navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 4/18/2007 07:16:00 PM 2 commentsTuesday, April 17, 2007No pizza review tonightI just got home from looking at new places to park my iceberg. The rent on my current place is going up yet again, and frankly it's just not worth it. So I'm looking at a couple of places, one in Willow Glen (San Jose) and one in Redwood City. I like the location of the Willow Glen place, it all depends on a) whether the place is halfway reasonable inside, and b) whether I can convince the landlord to rent to a penguin.Anyhow, since penguins need regular infusions of food to retain their pleasing rotundity, I ate a sandwich while I was on the road, and thus will not be eating a pizza tonight. -- Badtux the Disappointed Penguin Labels: navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 4/17/2007 08:55:00 PM 7 commentsMonday, April 09, 2007Where's today's political post?!
I just took a double dose of the above medicine and am quietly reading a novel while cuddled with my kitties. Sorry, the snark is taking a couple days break.
-- Badtux the FIA Penguin Labels: life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 4/09/2007 06:25:00 PM 5 commentsSunday, April 08, 2007Service outage resolved...Sorry about the outage. My web host rebooted the server while there was still some open files, and then ext2fs barfed on the next boot. I had to manually run ext2fs from the console to get things cleaned up and working again. Sigh. Linux sucks. It just sucks less than the alternatives...-- Badtux the Linux Geek Penguin Labels: navel-gazing, technology Posted by: BadTux / 4/08/2007 11:01:00 AM 0 commentsMonday, March 12, 2007Spring forwardThis is the time of year where it is always a PITA to reset the clocks on the VCR, microwave, stove, stereo, etc. However, last fall I had a nifty idea: Why bother resetting those clocks? Since most of the year is spent on DST nowdays, why not just leave them set to DST? Just remember when I looked at them that they were an hour ahead!So now all the clocks in my house all say the correct time again, and I didn't have to do a thing! No digging for the microwave manual and the stove manual and the stereo manual and etc. to figure out how to reset those clocks, just leave'em alone and presto! Am I a genius, or what? -- Badtux the Practical Penguin Labels: humor, life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 3/12/2007 02:42:00 PM 8 commentsSaturday, February 17, 2007Offline till Monday eveningCheck back then.-Badtux the Travelin' Penguin Labels: navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 2/17/2007 08:21:00 AM 2 commentsTuesday, February 13, 2007Technorati hates meThey refuse to index my blog. Indeed, they refuse to admit that my blog exists. WTF?!-- Badtux the Hated Penguin Labels: navel-gazing, technology Posted by: BadTux / 2/13/2007 12:56:00 PM 14 commentsMonday, February 12, 2007Debian Etch vs. Ubuntu Dapper DrakeI'm thinking of moving over to Slicehost. One problem is that, because they are running Xen in native mode on 64-bit dual-core dual-processor AMD boxes, you're pretty much limited to 64-bit distributions, of which Debian Sarge is not. Thus only Debian Etch, currently in "testing", is available there.The other Debian-based distribution that they have available is Ubuntu Dapper Drake. This is what I"m running on my box at home, and it works okay, I guess. But Ubuntu doesn't have the track record of stability that Debian does. So just based on reputation, it's hard to tell which would be more stable and secure. I understand a few of you folks out there are pretty technologically nifty. Anybody have input? - Badtux the Computer Penguin Labels: navel-gazing, technology Posted by: BadTux / 2/12/2007 04:51:00 PM 3 commentsSaturday, February 10, 2007Fuckity fuck fuckJust disqualified myself from working for a political campaign. Good!I was going to go camping with my new tent. But it is raining outside. Now, I hear you saying, "No duh, it's the rainy season in Northern California. So? You're an aquatic waterfowl, what do you care about rain?" Well, granted, rain just beads up and rolls off of my fine feathered carcass (thanks to the wonders of Marmot and Outdoor Research and Gore Inc.), and the gear in my backpack is either in heavy-duty utterly waterproof kayaking drybags or doesn't care if it gets wet, but still. I am wimp. Hear me whimper. Of course, it's not *entirely* paranoia. I set the tent up in the living room of the apartment where my iceberg is currently docked and ran a line of seam sealer across the major seams, but I probably need another coat or two of seam sealer on the seams before I can really trust them not to leak. And sleeping in a leaky wet tent is just plain miserable. But it would just be miserable, not dangerous. I am such a wimp... So I curl up with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate. Hey, don't misunderestimate the danger of a cup of hot chocolate! Why, if I set it down on the futon beside me as I blog from my notebook computer and accidentally spilled it, it could soak my clothes and cause burns! Oh the dangers I put myself through for your sake... what can us say, us fowl (penguins and chickenhawks) must make sacrifices. Why, maybe I'll even put pants on sometime today! (Which of course is more than the brave cheeto-stained-finger warriors of the 101st Fighting Chickenhawks, 1st Chairborn Brigade, will do as they blog from their mommy's basements in support of a war they refuse to fight in, but still). Oh, as you may have noticed, I'm back on my old ugly template. The new one I tried out just could not be made to work across all major browser platforms. I finally got it looking good under both Firefox and Opera, but then it broke under Internet Exploder. Sigh. Back to Web 0.9 (i.e., table tags). -- Badtux the Cocooning Penguin Labels: camping, life, navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 2/10/2007 09:45:00 AM 5 commentsFriday, February 09, 2007Ah bin New BloggeredWhy don't I be geting that fancy label menu on the left like dem udder pipples? And what wid dat archive link list when de templates got one of them dere pull-down menu thangs dere? Dis here coonass be wantin' ta know dat, cher! I wan dat dere right menu farkle, boo-yah!Dat be all. -- Badtux the Bloggered Penguin Labels: navel-gazing Posted by: BadTux / 2/09/2007 03:54:00 PM 1 comments |
About Me
I am a black and white and yellow multicolored penguin making his way as best he can in a world of monochromic monkeys. ArchivesApril 2004 / December 2004 / January 2005 / February 2005 / March 2005 / April 2005 / May 2005 / June 2005 / July 2005 / August 2005 / September 2005 / October 2005 / November 2005 / December 2005 / January 2006 / February 2006 / March 2006 / April 2006 / May 2006 / June 2006 / July 2006 / August 2006 / September 2006 / October 2006 / November 2006 / December 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / March 2007 / April 2007 / May 2007 / June 2007 / July 2007 / August 2007 /
Cost of the War in Iraq
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"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce." -- Molly Ivins, 1944-2007
"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
-- Plato
Are you a spammer? Then send mail to my spamtrack mailbox to get permenantly banned! Remember, that's iamstupid@badtux.org (hehehhe!).
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