Welcome!

And it shall be mine eventually. Seriously, you could ping away like Annie Oakley with this thing, considering the fact that you’re firing shotgun shells.

And I’m happy.

If you haven’t visited “Rifftrax”:http://rifftrax.com before, check it out!

It’s the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 doing their thing again — they’re not in space, and the two guys who did the voices of Crow and Tom Servo are just playing as themselves, now (trademarks and all that), but let me tell ya; they’re just as funny now as they ever were. They were obviously the writers and well as the actors back on MST3K, and it shows.

How their stuff works now: you get set up at Rifftrax.com, and you buy an MP3 audio track directly from them (they’re usually about 3-4 bucks). Then, you sync it up and play it along while you’re watching the movie (don’t worry, it’s easy) — just play it on anything you want: an MP3 player, your stereo system (Nina and I played it on her laptop).

And, let me tell you… they haven’t lost it, not one bit. I swear to God, I thought my sides were going to split open at times.

I don’t mind paying them the three or four bucks to download it, either — this is the world of “new” media I’ve been telling people about, and I don’t mind helping it out.

If you’re using Ubuntu on your laptop, do the following:

Go to “*System > Administration > Services*” in your menubar, and then enable “*Hard disk tuning*”.

Then (and this is just a bit more complex, but not very), type “*Alt + F2*” to bring up your “*Run Application*” dialog box, and type in “*sudo gedit /etc/hdparm.conf*”.

Then, scroll all the way to the bottom, and type in:

/dev/sda {
apm = 254
}

Save the file and then restart your computer. That is all.

[ "Source":https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695 ]

Almost 50 years ago, a man who was running for President of the US gave a speech about how he wouldn’t let his religious beliefs affect—in any way—his functioning as president:

!http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/POLITICS/12/06/romney.speech/art.kennedy.jfk.jpg!
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute–where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote–where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference–and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

“_John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1960_”:http://www.beliefnet.com/story/40/story_4080.html

!http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/POLITICS/12/06/romney.speech/art.romney.speech2.pool.jpg!
Today we have presidential candidates saying things like “Freedom requires religion” and that “Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

Yeah… and what if you’re an atheist? What if you want to have nothing to do with religion at all?

Guess there’s no place for you in this country, eh?

Sleep sleep sleep.

Drive drive drive.

…

Eat eat eat.

Do you realize that for the past year and a half I’ve had two peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches every day for lunch?

What the hell is that doing to my system? Probably nothing. It’s very bland food, so it’s probably not having an effect one way or the other — kinda like if I ate rice or jello every day for years as well.

I eat it because it’s cheap and it doesn’t go bad. (I don’t know how the people that I work with can eat out every day for like $10 a pop. That’s like $50 a week. $200 a _month_. Just on their lunches. In a month, for my lunches, I spend about $20.)

Walk walk walk.

I walk about a mile every day just walking between where I work and where I park my car.

Climb climb climb.

I climb up eight floors worth of stairs because I don’t like elevators. The people really cram into them in the morning. Also, it’s good exercise, though during the summers it can get a bit hot walking up them.

Stare stare stare.

I stare at a computer screen almost 10 hours a day. Thank god it’s an LCD screen or else my eyes would be shot by now.

Read read read.

I read a lot at work, conicidentally enough, to give my eyes a break from the screen.

Earn earn earn.

And then I get paid and it’s all worth it.

Bills bills bills.

And then I wonder where all the money went.

*the third ear*
_by curt siodmak_

A quick book — I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a translation, but it almost reads like one. In it, a psychologist/scientist searches for a chemical substance that is extruded by psychics/mind-readers in the hopes of synthesizing it.

The book is written from the first person, and the doctor’s sense of paranoia really comes through to the reader — you can’t tell if he really _is_ being hounded by government agents and rival scientists, or if he only _thinks_ that he is.

A very good book, though it doesn’t really have an ending — it’s just, event-event-rising-action-end. No conclusion or anything — just… _ending_. You’d have to read it to know.

*Binary*
_By John Lange_

Not really a SF novel, but a sort of really quick Tom Clancy-esque super-government-agent novel, where a CIA agent has to stop a terrorist from killing all of San Diego! No, really, that’s what it’s about.

But it’s not as black-and-white as that — the book really gets into the the agent’s life and the meanings behind the terrorist’s plot, really making you think.

*From this Day Forward*
_By John Brunner_

A collection of short stories — the book was printed very weirdly in that none of the short stories told who the authors were… all I could tell from the index pages was that one of them was either written by or edited by Harlan Ellison.

Had quite a few good stories in it, including one about Vietnamese terrorists striking the United States in retaliation for the horrors committed during the Vietnam War, and one story (which I take it to be one of the first in this genre) featurning, literally, “Men in Black.”

Just got finished installing my new Pentium III-S in my gaming PC using some wonderful “Arctic Silver Ceramique”:http://arcticsilver.com/ceramique.htm — more later, but I will say this: while I didn’t see much of an improvement right away in raw CPU speed (my clock speed _didn’t_ change, for what it’s worth), my 3dMark score went up by about 300 points.

Hey, not bad for $19!

*Stranger in a Strange Land*
_by Robert Heinlein_

What can I say about his book that hasn’t already been said? Just read it, if you haven’t already.

I’ve heard of people describing Heinlein as fascist, conservative, authoritarian in his writings — I am now of the conclusion that these people have never read one of this books.

_Stranger in a Strange Land_ is so far removed from those ideals as to be almost from another planet — much like the protagonist of the story! Hurr hurr!

Quick summary (if you _must_ have one): it’s about a man raised in an environment alien to Earth, and who suddenly comes to our planet as a sort of emissary. But, seriously — that’s like saying the Bible is about some people wandering around in a desert for a bit. Just read.

*Freezing Down*
_by Anders Bodelsen_

A classic SF book from the 70’s, _Freezing Down_ is a translation from the original Danish — I mention this, because the translation gives the entire thing a sort of “eerie” quality that I can’t quite put my finger on.

It’s not _badly written_—not at all—you’d just have to read it to know what I’m talking about (or if you’ve read other direct, only partly-edited translations of works before, you’ll know what I’m talking about).

I loved reading this book for several reasons, the main one being the different ideals and ways of living that were put forth by the author, who grew up in a very liberal Northern European country — the views present on sex, in particular, are very interesting. Sex is treated as just another part of life — not particularly special, but not particular forbidden either. This is doubly noteworthy, in my opinion, since a large part of the book takes place in (the author’s) present day, so there’s no “Oh, that’s just the way things are in the future” kind of thing going on.

*Nova 2*
_by Harry Harrison_

Well, _compiled_ by Harry Harrison, at least. This is a collection of about a dozen or so short stories from the early 70’s — there’s somewhat of a theme of environmentalism in a few of the stories, a theme that was just as prevalent in early 70’s society as it is today.

One story is a translation by a Brazilian author (André Carneiro), and as even Mr. Harrison describes of it in his foreword, it’s of a decidedly different nature — you’ll just have to read it and see what I’m talking about.

“Neanderthals ‘were flame-haired’ - BBC News”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7062415.stm

Anti-Ginger Propaganda! Bah! I expect no less from the BBC. Finally they’ve shown themselves for the racists they are!