Offsite Comments

Life online and off has been busy. Also took a few hours off and discovered, wow, I'm still married! Enjoying the blog, though. Just finished buzzing through a bunch of pages, getting caught up, setting some linked stuff aside to read tomorrow... or the next day. Thanks for the great graphics, links, and videos. Keep it up!

I was just talking with my cousin's neighbor on Sunday about her chihuahua. (My little sister had one when we were kids, and he was a loyal, tough little guy, too.) I recommended to her the movie "Beverly Hills Chihuahua." I was surprised it was so much fun. Pampered pooch gets turned out in the wild and finds his inner rottweiler.

Frank, it's not exactly in the same vein, but the photo to which you linked reminded me of this classic street sign.

This is not the first I've seen of those electronic highway signs being cracked. As a programmer, I wonder how they crack into it. Just curious. As Nixon famously said, "That would be wrong." Oh! Top item on Google search answered that one, with another example. Requires breaking a literal lock (very bad form) and, as I assumed, the road folks leaving the default password. Duuhhhh.

Here’s the image to which Frank was attempting to link. Images are not allowed on most comments, Frank, but you can post them as a regular link.

"Seriously, who is this Hawkins guy? never heard of him. Literally." -flyoverpilgrim

Me neither! I saw this obituary mentioned on several other blogs, thought it was a silly thing to say, and only finally stopped to read about it in the friendly confines of ZotR, thanks. So, presumably, he increased his hits by knocking those who don't get as many hits? Nice way to self-promote!

Time is preciously limited. I wasn't really reading blogs until my wife kept directing me to posts on HillBuzz. I got absorbed in that for a while. One blog led to another and I find I am currently subscribed to (checking my feeds list) Ace of Spades, Althouse, Big Gov, Conservative Commune, HillBuzz, Legal Insurrection, Melanie Philips, Patterico, PoliNation, Reason Mag, Sister Toldjah, and some little pink blog called Zilla of the Resistance. Also regularly check Ann Barnhardt. I frequently wander elsewhere when linked to sites. That's just the politics. Oh, and a frequent glance at Drudge, which used to be a main resource but now I'm not as dependent upon it. I also have a half-dozen fun feeds, a couple from sites by family, and a home-town news feed via Google. Used to have other Google News feeds, but with all those sites, and the links by commenters, I think I'm getting the news I need. Well, there's a weather site, but it seems to be stuck on HOT! CLEAR! DRY!

Each additional blog means more competition for my time. In the past week, I started reading everything at Ace of Spades, a fascinating but very busy place. I soon found I was bogging on bloggining (reading blogs should have a word). Then there was an Ace post that got >1300 comments. I think I'm cured. I've been ramping up my speed-reading, scanning for interesting links in articles & comments rather than reading closely, and becoming more discriminating in what I spend time reading. I'm in constant flux rather than in settled habits, and trying to get the technology to help me save as much time as possible. (Oops. The news feeds just updated.) Also, I still have Real Life to deal with. Lawn needs mowing. Pets need feeding. The family business... is a shambles, really, but I keep pounding on its chest. :) And the other night, Mrs Webworker & I actually took time to relax and watch a movie (The Iron Giant, great flick)! So, various sites are competitive in terms of time-demand, but not head-to-head. Each site has its own attractions. Some sites are overwhelming while others are quiet and friendly, but it hardly seems t'me like the merry blogiverse is in decay.

My own humble vanity site (secondary slogan: "The Internet's best-kept secret since 1996"℠!) is not a blog, exactly. Since March, I've been slowly converting it to modern web format -- a project that looks like it will take maybe a year, and at some point soon plan to add a sidebar with "favorite sites" like I've seen so many good sites have. Because, as I've commented on both HillBuzz and PoliNation (aaand now on here), linkage is the revolution against the LaughingStock Media tyranny.

Late again to a yesterthread. Oh, but I have to.

See, the old family ranch was really rural when I first moved there in '73. One red light on a tower far on the horizon, that was it. Sure was nice for the Mrs & me in the early years, but we had to leave for reasons too dumb to go into here, and lived in her native Chicago, where the orange phosphor glow blots out everything.

Seventeen years ago when Mrs Webworker and the kids and I moved back, the county had put up ugly double street lights at the curves east and west of us and there were more neighbors with porch lights on. Still, it was rural.

Then, just like #274 CAC said, the family across the road put up a streetlight-style light. Then they sold half their property and on top of the new big two-story house was a searchlight that beams across our place. Since we get some tree cover from the North and our home mostly faces South, it was still almost tolerable until, just in the last year, the neighbors in that direction built a new barn and put up yet one more dam' streetlight, and their kids leave all the rest of the place ablaze much of the night.

Oh, how I would love to just use all those streetlights for target practice, but as Mr. Nixon once famously recorded himself saying, "We could do that.... But it would be wrong."

Nor will I enrich lawyers by attempting to sue anybody to recover my darkness. That battle is lost. Three-quarters of a mile away, one of the old ranches suddenly turned into a housing addition practically overnight, and is still growing. The big city 50 miles (and shrinking) South looks like a great orange nuclear glow most nights, and the smaller local town North keeps blazing toward us, getting broader, longer, and brighter and brighter.

So the ranch moved from gray to green-yellow in forty years without changing places. Can't leave. It's home. Must endure. Siiiiigh! Maybe after the Yellowstone Volcano, or the Mexican Holocaust, or the Obamageddon, or whatever the big doom is, we will see God's universe again as it was surely meant to be seen. Harsh, that.

Somebody mentioned Korea. Here's the picture. Easy to spot the DMZ. And that only dot of light North of it is Kim Il Jong's big-screen TV.

Yet another late, dead-thread footnote from me.

Dropped by Mom's yesterday and she had the game on. Went from 1-0 to 2-2 while I wasn't paying attention. Had to read this thread to find out what happened.

Mom watches golf, too, but then she's 91, so maybe this action is fast for her. (Ha ha, sorry Mom.) I told Mom, golf and soccer exist to make baseball seem more interesting.

Hardly even knew what soccer was when they dropped me in a prep high school in '67. After three years of mandatory sports and hard labor summer jobs, I quit being a pasty chubbo and learned how to work and endure. Still do. Wasn't by choice, but I'm still grateful. (Thanks, Mom!)

I played soccer hard for 3 years, got good at it, and had fun when I wasn't hurting. Halfback was good for me, as I can't dribble and I wasn't heavy enough to be a fullback, plus I got a couple nice assists in now and then, and was co-captain of the B team. More than I ever expected to be.

Final HS tournament, our team wasn't the best, but we had great defense, so we held the line and beat "better" teams -- sort-of.

First game, we were still tied after double overtime, and won on corner kicks. The other team was happy about that, you bet.

Second game, we were still tied after double overtime, also tied on corner kicks, and won on coin toss. Now we had several other "better" teams po'd at us.

Third and final game, we were still tied in the second overtime, but absolutely lead-footed, gasping, our fantastic goalie dragging, one fullback playing with (as we later found) a concussion, and we were finally overrun. (I think our coach made a few mistakes, not putting some of the lesser members in at the end in his desperation to win, but I was just a kid what do I know.) That was exciting. Yay, team! and all that.

Still, watch a soccer game on TV? Oh, look! paint drying!

Digital ipad shoe cameras available now!

Wow! No way am I going to read the (currently) >1300 messages. Here's my belated 2¢ worth after reading just the first 100.

Cain is out, period, anyway, for many reasons. I was interested in him for about a minute. Then he lost me. Never mind Cain. I want to address the bigger issue.

The real problem is, does a tax-exempt have open books? IIRC, "religious" groups do not. Let's see the full financial disclosure. Can we see clearly what they're doing? Too often, "religions" of all kinds are just cover for something else. Is a mosque a front for Islamonazi subversion of Constitutional America? Does some Christian Fundamentalist group secretly or semi-openly promote political agendas or candidates? Does a Pastafarian promote mayhem and violence? Then, they're not engaged in tax-exempt qualifying activities, and should be re-categorized, or arrested, whatever is called for by just standards.

Just as America determined, the hard way between the 18th & 21st Amendments, that we ought not criminalize all who bend the elbow just because Carrie Nation's husband was a drunk, so we dare not ban all who claim to be Muslim, Fundamentalist, or even Nazi, individually or collectively. There are Biblical Christians who freely suffer "witches" to live despite Exodus. I presume there are Muslims who liberally ignore the Koranic exhortation to kill all non-believers. We cannot prejudicially declare of others, "they believe this way, so ban them" — that would, in fact, be violating the 1st Amendment. We can rightly say, "if they do this, they are criminal."

If an individual or organization is guilty of transgressing the rights of others, and that includes (just in my 2¢ opinion) by throwing up your booze on my shoes, blowing your smoke where my children play, your ringing loud churchbells or braying bullhorn prayers where I live and sleep, and your putting up those dam' streetlights that now shine across my property when we used to be a nice dark rural area, and lots of other violations implicitly protected by the Constitution. All of these with case-by-case possible exceptions and pro and con arguments, I know, but you get the idea.

A mosque is a mosque. Terrorists are terrorists. If there are terrorists in the mosque, take it out, by whatever means the People must. If they are all sweetness and silliness like Little Mosque on the Prairie, despite what their scriptures say, then we must live and let live.

We don't need to get jumpy and impose rules which twist the law to ban what we dislike today but which will be used to ban what we like tomorrow when the Other Party is in power — we see that often enough, right? The law of the land is the Golden Rule. It is not add ban cell phone driving, and then ban drinking a soda or eating a burrito while driving, and then ban wearing the wrong shade of sunglasses while driving, and so on to every niggling detailed regulation, but enforce the prohibition of reckless endangerment when it's apparent.

(Fine points exist. That woman we saw on the highway the other day, with a cellphone to one ear and her hand over the other so she could hear; her speed varied oddly, but she was staying in one lane. Should she get a warning or be jailed? I leave that to our trained law enforcement officers and courts, imperfect though they may be.)

The balance of law and liberty may require careful scrutiny in individual cases, but the principle is still simple: your right to swing your fist ends when it threatens my nose. Want to build something called a mosque? Fine. Want to have an exception so you can practice the evil aspects of Sharia law? Go away. Go far, far away. And never come back.

You know, like that.

The problem with commenting is, post in haste, repent at leisure. I reserve the right to reconsider anything I wrote here. tl;dr? meh. Who reads this far down a thread, anyway? Carry on, good people!

Zilla! As I write this, Mrs Webworker is packing gifts for my cousin, as it's her birthday, too, yeah, gonna have a good time. We're about to head down to my 91yo Mom's for a swim, and take the edge off this 100-every-day, won't-go-below-80 weather. Jul 17, the only day of the year that my calendar has 4 relatives'-or-in-laws' birthdays, 2 on her side, 2 on mine. (No room in the little box to add yours, so be sure to remind us again next year.) Have a Slappy Flappy Snappy Cra... uh.. Happy Birthday! And enjoy the moods. You've earned every one of 'em! :Don

Sure like that crybaby dem logo!

The classic Obama Crybaby picture has been (photo)shopped around on many sites. This high-res one I found on this PolitiFake page.

For other versions, with other captions, and other images, search images.google.com for "obama crybaby"

I tried to webwork O'Bluffy with Blazing Saddles, in my own way, but someone else did it better. I did a quick Eat Your Peas collage for the wafflesnarfer in chief (term not original with me, but I like it).

For your enjoyment.

Having many things better to do this scorching Saturday morning, instead I have been reading the overnight. And killed most of a pot of coffee. Ready for the day.

Almost. Had a couple jokes in mind, but the modd is just different in daylight. If I'd been on last night, I might've said...

HAH! #540 GGE of the Moron Horde beat me to it: "There's no word why she touched the agent." (smashes head against desk)

Maybe the writer was just employing tongue-in-cheeky snarkasm?

"...a big blank white space between lines of type?"

Oh, good. I thought it was just me. Usually, since I run with javascript and plug-ins turned off (old paranoid habits), I see that kind of thing, but the videos or whatever appear when I turn them on. Here: nothing. Perhaps it's a comment on the inherent dangers of minimalism? Stay tuned...?

"Don't call my bluff" reminded me of this classic blooper from Marvel Comics. I would've posted this sooner but it took me seconds to search out on the Interwebs. Courtesy of this page of top 10 Marvel bloopers, but they all were originally in this comic. Which I might even still have, somewhere in the catacombs!

On the matter of moderating, I concur with #68 Adjoran: I didn't take the comment as a threat [snip] But, it's Ace's place, and you can't argue with the host about the scent of the Glade Plug-In he uses and similarly concur with #86 Janir: You [Ace] let a lot of stuff go that most other forums clamp down on, and I think that adds to the attraction of this blog and we regulars appreciate it, even if it means extra work on your part. (Also requoted by #271 NC Ref.) I learned 'way back in the pre-Internet days on CompuServe, don't cross the site owner (and back then, you could hardly be anonymous -- they had your credit card number). As the saying (secretly) goes, the customer isn't always right, we just like to give them that illusion. Ace is the place with the helpful hardass blog!

On the more serious matter, it is true as was said by #80 Dustin (who swears he had paragraph breaks): [Assassination is] a stupid plan [snip] you martyr your ideological opponent. [snip] we'd spend the next 100 years with people trying to emulate him and evoke him fondly. As was illustrated by #274 Whitehall: [snip] if Oswald gave us "Camelot" as the icon of the Kennedy Administration, what would the untimely passing of Obama give us? (Camelot myth: 48 years and counting. As with others, I'd like to see a long-lived BO... preferably rotting behind bars.) Not that this understanding would hinder some actual lunatic -- like the guy who did in Dr Tiller but did not represent 99.99999...% of the pro-lifers.

Which brings up a more sinister potential threat, namely, those who are aware of that martyr value and would desire it. (I speak of this with a touch of trepidation because I'm a relatively new commenter here, really like the place, and don't want to sully it, much less trip over a rule bump. I also point out that my mask is less clever than Clark Kent's glasses.) It was asked (indirectly) by #169 The Outlaw in the Heavenly Hall: [snip] anyway [snip] why would the left want to assasinate one of its own? There is a sad, scary, but Machiavellian answer to that, on which I commented at another site earlier this month. (Re-phrasing myself because quoting myself is too weird.) If the losing-his-halo, losing-his-cool puppet O'Bama has served his purpose and is becoming a liability, TPTB may decide to just let him get impeached, or convince him to resign, or, as vicious as TPTB seem to be, I wouldn't put it past "them" to grassy-knoll him (YKWIM) and pin it on the raaacist guns-and-religion clingers. After replacing Joe "insurance" Biden, of course. Or is my tinfoil hat too tight?

On the lighter side, my favorite comment: #319 Kensington: Posted by: Voluble at July 15, 2011 04:19 PM (JKX4x)
 
tl;dr

Yeah, like this one. :)

63 toby928™ He doesn't look well.

Don't you think he looks tired?

Oh, you all. How could you be so MEAN to our President. And while he's still talking, too!

Leave Barack ALONE!

Buuut seriously, thanks for watching, so I don't have to. Because I couldn't. Delicate stomach. :)

Read the last 20 Ace of Spades pages (including this one) today and many (too many) of the comments. For some reason it did not make my headache go away.

Tried merging Dick Milhouse O'Bluffy with Blazing Saddles here but then saw that Foole in the Rain had linked to a better version (well, the obvious Don't Call My Bluff idea struck lots of commenters) so here is the not-mine one again.

Also smashed some O'Bluffy pix together after grabbing them off the wwweb and added a caption. Cheap fun. Eat your peas!

A bit earlier, I merged Bluffy with a famous poster so y'all can enjoy Ol' Loose Lips -- more cheap fun.

Finally, those with long memories will recall a sub-thread back a few threads, something about a Pamprin Fogger? Reminded me of Moon Power -- a 1996 cartoon. Not my proudest moment, but where or when else would I ever get a chance to mention it?

Carry on, troops. I'm taking my headache home and going to bed.

776th!!

What's staler than yesterday's overnight thread? Since nobody's reading anymore... :)

My first handles were on various dialup BBSs and I have no idea what they were. Went by my given name on CompuServe forums except on Religion Forum where I read the discussions reminded of Matthew 23:24, so I took the name =gnat=strainer= -- camel-swallower just would not sound right! That was my first regular online moniker, and I contributed a fair share of petty exegesis and broad hermeneutics!

I self-published mini-comics as Little Mindless Publications but later decided to go upscale so I changed it to Little Mindful Publications. When the Web finally came along, I therefore called my website Mindful Webworks. Since I'm just one of many, hence the moniker. Boring, huh?

Plugged in my Radio Shack Model I, Spring of 1978. Thinking RS was a solid brand, I passed over various other odd-looking fly-by-night hobby computers, including some thing called an Apple. The road not taken! Saw some old machines mentioned upthread, but did anybody get a computer earlier than that and I missed it?

Wind back the clock to Beloit College 1970. My roommate let slip his password, and I played around on the teletype-based terminals. Don't know what model that machine was, but it was punchcards and paper tape memory.

Wind back further, to the NY World's Fair, 1964. My first hacking (of a sort) was on the public terminals at the IBM exhibit. After playing every lame game on the machine, I thought, what's this key do? O-oh!! Heh heh. They didn't idiot-proof (12-year-old proof) very well!

Blame whichever of my folks bought me that little plastic model binary calculator toy from some science catalog. Let's see... Yup! Good old Google Images! There's a picture of it online! Destined to calculate!

The damn things still are stupid, though. Ask Eliza.

Egad! After so many months away on another planet, having caught up on the main articles, I've now returned to wasting my life reading (well, skimming, anyway) Curmudgeonly comments! Still not reading funnies again yet, though. Except Arlo & Janis, just because of JJ's blog.

Mibbitmaker, yesterday: "Jinni... Go find yourself an unemployed astronaut to hassle!” Hey, he's not unemployed. Didn't you hear? He's back on Dallas! (Boy, is that doubly obscure!) Aw, dang! Braniff beat me to it by a day!

Okay, then, queek, source of Cuteness, I've missed the squees! (Except, sorry, the corgi overload.) Here's some video payback, in case you haven't seen it.

Appropo of absolutely nothing in A&J or any of the comments, I jumps in to exclaim from northeast Oklahoma:

RAIN! We gots RAIN! Actual precippytashun! The cricks are, well, sort-of flowing. Frogs are jumping. Sweet, sweet RAIN! Started last night and still going at 11am, and the temperature is currently in the low 70s!

Of course, the forecast for the coming days says back to >100°F again with clear skies, so that means all this rain will rise right back up and become intolerable, mind-numbing, shirt-soaking humidity, but for right now, sweet relief and RAIN! Mwah-hahh-haaahhh!

Thank you. We now return you to your bikini and BBQ fantasies.

Just checked and Rotten Tomatoes lists Undefeated as "Documentary," although two commenters critique the SF/fantasy label.

Note to all: any time you see something like this, get a screen capture (no, I can't tell you how to do it on your machine) for the record, and post it somewhere, because re-writing history is easier than ever in electronic media.