TheDogKiller

run run run

2009-12-13T23:22:00.000-08:00

I really like the Fall, it is a good time to run, it is nice to get off the bike every once in a while, I ran a marathon last weekend, and about a half marathon yesterday and today, I made today's harder with some nice hills. I'm not doing too bad for an old man!
No dogs to kill lately, my garbage can is untouched! Somebody left a headless deer for me at the end of the driveway, that was funny, I left it there for a couple of weeks, I'm sure some dogs gnawed on it. I finally got tired of the smell and pushed what was left into the weeds with my tractor.
My Mk23 suppressor will be here soon, I can't wait!! And I'll be running off to Russia again to visit the wife and remember how the other half lives. I got back from China a few weeks ago. I ran a half-marathon in Shanghai, that was good.
I'm enjoying watching that commie asshole Obama crash in the polls. All the lying he did to get elected is coming home to roost, it's great! I get to tell my liberal friend "all politicians want to screw you, the difference between you and me is I want to get screwed by Sarah Palin, you want to get screwed by some dude with ashtray breath, yuk!"
Speaking of liberal friends, since the election I've had several un-friend me on facebook, while I've not un-friended everyone. I guess it is true, conservatives are nicer than liberals!

summer

2009-07-24T16:40:00.000-07:00

It's warm now, and soon will be hot.
I'm getting up at 5 every morning to watch the Tour, work in the garden, and drink coffee. The Tour is a great excuse to not study Russian in in the morning, in fact, I do nothing but ride and watch the tour (and lift weights and go to work and write to my girlfriend). Tomorrow is Mt Ventoux. I will watch it then go ride up some hills.

2008-10-28T16:05:00.001-07:00

OBEY!

2008-09-27T23:44:00.000-07:00

fuck Obama

2008-09-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

Hey commie Obamy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH--o

FUCK YOU
sue this!

Help the Democrats vote for McCain

2008-09-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

Sign up here
http://my.barackobama.com/modules/votercontact/login_signup.php
call up some Democrats and get out the vote for McCain!

Whatever happened to...

2008-09-07T23:11:00.000-07:00

... that guy in the movie "Deliverance"?
You know the guy, the one who was squealing like a pig while getting ass-raped by some hillbillies?
I found him!!
http://www.wegoted.com/
"Grunt like a pig, boy, grunt like a pig!"
Seriously, after hearing some of the shit that came out of his mouth about Sarah Palin, I think we need to go canoeing.

Oprah sucks

2008-09-05T13:24:00.001-07:00

Oprah won't interview Sarah Palin on her show.
We won't be watching her show in our house, and we'll cancel our Oprah magazine subscription.

Joe Biden political ad...

2008-09-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1740031393/bctid1743102194

Narrator: The White House isn't the place to learn how to deal with

international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the

economic future of the next generation. A President has got to know

the territory, but that's not enough. To win the White House, the Democratic

nominee had better have a crystal clear vision of what the Democratic Party

stands for. Of what the dream is and how we keep it alive.

Joe Biden sees the Presidency as a pulpit from which America sets an

example for the world. He believes that developing nations once saw America

as more than a place; They saw us as an idea; A goal to reach for.

He knows that they've lost confidence in us; that they see us losing our way;

our resolve; our ideals. Joe Biden thinks it's time to remind the world

of what America stands for. Freedom. Equality. Justice. Opportunity.

He thinks it's time to put courage over compromise. Time to express

America's outrage once again towards repression, brutality, violence,

the abuse of human dignity around the world,

and if the sparks fly, so be it...

Joe Biden a drunk racist...

2008-08-31T20:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, good job picking and vetting Joe Biden!
drunk, drunk, racist,
drunk, drunk, racist
(sing to 'ice, ice, baby')

Not his brother's keeper

2008-08-20T15:36:00.001-07:00

this is pretty cool
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/us election2008/barackobama/2590614/Barack-Obama s-lost-brother-found-in-Kenya.html

Speaking of dipsticks

2008-08-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

check these guys out. Their premise seems to be that we ought to hire second rate American programmers instead of first rate ones from other countries.
http://programmersguild.org/
Fuck that!!
Give your poor, your tired, your weak, your best and brightest!
Can we trade them for the guys we don't want to hire?

Speaking of Evil...

2008-08-09T00:59:00.000-07:00

... the new Slipknot album will be out soon!!!
check out some tracks
http://www.slipknot1.com/site
it's going to be rocking!!

P.S. John Edwards is a demented turdburglar! hahahaha, more proof that the only people worse than republicans are democrats!!! I'll be voting for McCain

P.P.S. Obama is not eligible to be President. Will Clinton out him at the convention?
check it out:
http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/divided-loyalites-obamas-eligibility-problem-part-1/

Google's anti-competitive sidebar

2008-08-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

Google is back up to old tricks again! they will no longer run their sidebar if the Vista sidebar is running. Tsk, Tsk. Microsoft will let you run both!
So who is the teh 3vil suk now?
That would be Google!
And whose sidebar am I going to run now?
That would be Microsoft's.

I liked this "there is something not right about Obama"

2008-07-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

unrepentantly stolen from another blog

1. In his 1995 book, “Dreams of My Father” Obama writes approvingly and admiringly of his biological father’s ideas and ideals. Who is Obama Sr.? A member of Kenya’s Communist Party, whose education in the United States was paid for, through intermediaries, by the Soviet Union. When his patron became, briefly, the President of Kenya he appointed Obama Sr. as the chief economist for the nation. The position paper he published outlining how he would organize Kenya’s economy elaborated on the principles of expropriation of foreign firms, 100% taxation and then redistribution from the State, and collectivization of agriculture. This is the Leninist and Stalinist regime. And did I mention that this man who was also a polygamist, boozer, and woman abuser also abandoned young Barack and his mother?2. Obama Jr.’s mother was a Marxist anthropologist, whose ideas young Obama approves of, with modifications (what those are we do not know).3. Soetero, young Obama’s stepfather was an Indonesian Communist, whose scholarship and passport were pulled in the 1965 Suharto event. When he returned to Indonesia he got rid of his Communist identity and got with the Islamic practices. He was nominally a Muslim, and on the side was a womanizer and drinker. Young Obama’s mother nagged him and fought with him when he took a job with oil firms doing public relations work.4. In Hawai’i, years later young Obama’s mentor, selected by his fellow-traveling grandparents, was none other than Frank Marshall Davis, member of the Communist Party USA. Frank Davis made quite an impression on young Obama and influenced his ideological direction and career choices.5. At Occidental College and at Columbia University Obama states clearly in his autobiography that he would seek out Marxist/Socialist professors and take classes with them and seek their advice.6. At Columbia University he befriends an ally of Edward Said’s, Prof. Rashid Khalidi, a member of the terrorist organization the PLO.7. His essential matriculation into Chicago political culture involves being acquainted with two Communists who were unrepentant terrorists who engaged in bombing and murder: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Check out the Nazis on DailyKos

2008-04-03T14:22:00.001-07:00

My friend Tuco posted a few choice words about the national and local races, check out the Nazis at DailyKos reacted. If Obama told them to wear brownshirts and jackboots they'd be down with that. Another fine example of how open minded and inclusive liberals are. Anyone with the time should troll DailyKos and we can make a site with their amusing and predictable actions.
http://www.dailykos.com/user/Tuco%20Ramirez
Thos lefties are going to be so mad when their man loses in November!

gmail on high-latency connections fixed

2008-03-20T22:55:00.000-07:00

Google finally got around to making gmail work on high-latency connections, like my satellite, I checked my account and it actually worked tonight, which is a good thing, because I needed my penis enlarged and I was not sure where to look, now I have dozens and dozens of good suggestions on how to accomplish this!

Spitzer

2008-03-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

"Spitzer? I hardly knew her!"

I don't like that guy, part of how he made a name for himself was screwing my company over, so I'm quite happy he's getting his.

Java, with extra added evilness

2008-02-27T23:33:00.000-08:00

I have one JAVA (Just Another Virtual Architecture) based application I want to run, so I have Java installed on this machine. Aside from being a pathetically slow runtime environment, and suitable only for pluggers (all Java programmers are pluggers. Face it, if you can't manage your own memory, YOU ARE A PLUGGER) it also seems to require frequent updates. I accepted an update today, and behold, wonder of wonders, the Google toolbar is installed on my machine without asking me, or maybe I did not see some notice that it would be installed in the fine print when I accepted the update. Microsoft doesn't pull this kind of shit.
I uninstalled it.
Google is now officially more evil than Microsoft.

Poor Gmail, Broken again .... Loading...

2008-01-31T22:09:00.000-08:00

Once again Google is proving that it really can't do more than 1 thing right (and judging from earnings....maybe they forgot how to do that right as well).
Somehow they managed to break gmail when running over high-latency connections, like satellite connections, you try to open you mail, and you will hang forever...
Any they think they are a real internet company?
my Live mail account works great :)
Loading...

I love politics

2008-01-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season

favorite things to write in the mud on the back of my jeep:

"Just Say NObama"
"Bill likes Monica better"
"Darcy for Dogcatcher" (Darcy Burner is a local congressional candidate. She's an idiot. We don't need another idiot representing our state, we already have Patty Murray, so the idiots have plenty of representation)

So far, I've only been flipped off once, by some ugly chick driving a white Prius in West Seattle.

In other news, I tried out my BNS-3 on my DSR No. 1 the other night at the range. I frickin' own the night!! it was fun. Not the tightest groups in the world, but it was a little foggy and I used very small targets, I just need to fiddle with the adjustments some more...

Blogger polluted by payday loans

2007-11-15T15:21:00.001-08:00

It looks like blogger has been hacked and polluted by some kind of weird payday loan content
a sample:
http://faxlesspaydayadvancecashfaxles.blogspot.com/search?q=payday+loans
the funny thing is that I also saw this content on another blog, or at least on a blog that I thought was killed, then it came back with a few old posts, and finally a payday loan post, which was very strange.
Has blogger been infected?
Is it changing search results or something?
Can I have a payday loan?

Tokyoverload

2007-09-21T00:19:00.001-07:00

Tokyoverload : 12 hours of non-stop sight-seeing on foot and by subway in Tokyo in 90 degree weather
Imperial gardens/palace area
Fish market and 120 year old sushi joint
temple and market and ice cream with beans and agar in it joint
Tokyo tower
Roppongi
Top of Roppongi tower looking out over Tokyo at night and taking in the La Corbusier exhibit.

now I'll have to find that DWR catalog when I get home...

Hillary's Cleavage

2007-07-30T23:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I could not let the celebration of Hillary's tits pass without comment. I'm not sure what the big deal was, given there was practically no cleavage, and with that neckline plunging nearly to her navel, no doubt in homage to her 70's fashion sense, or perhaps in tribute to the way she likes to see men dress, the vestigial remnants of her never-plump, deflated, old milk sacks utterly failed to arouse me. Perhaps Ted Kennedy could do a better job, his meaty man breasts would probably provoke a response in my lizard brain before the rest of my brain revolted (you know, like when you see a sexy head of hair and then the bearded guy turns around and OMG it's a dude! Dude looks like a lady!(hey, I resemble that remark, I may need a haircut!)).
Vote for Giuliani. He may not have a lot of hair, but he doesn't have any cleavage, either.

RAMROD

2007-07-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

I rode the RAMROD again this year, it was fun as usual, and the course was different due to roads around Mt. Rainier being destroyed by the terrible weather last winter. Basically it was a straight climb to Sunrise from Enumclaw, then a descent down the same road to the road to Crystal Mountain ski area and an ascent to the ski area. I had not been up there since I was a kid, it was nice to see it, I had blown off a few team morale events up there, and I will actually go on one of these things sometime :) so I can be team player. Then we descended to the main road again and rode a little farther back towards Enumclaw and took one more side trip, this on Forest Road 70, this was a nice gentle ascent until the 12.5% grade parts, they were evil!!!
Between Crystal Mountain and Forest Road 70 a really nice lady riding a nice red Trek Madone (I was riding an earlier model Trek 5500) rode up beside me and asked me how my legs felt. We chatted a bit and then rode up Forest Road 70 together, I had to take a pit stop at the bottom, I caught up to her at the top, talked to her a little more, then left a little before she did, I wanted to see if she would catch me, and she did, she asked how I go this far ahead of her, I asked what took her so long to catch up :) I rode slowly to make sure she had a chance to catch up. Then we rode together back to Enumclaw. She clearly was an excellent rider and took great care of herself, I hope I run into her again (hey cute red Madone girl if you read this leave a comment and I'll be able to contact you if you like). I told her she was awesome before we finished, she said I was awesome too, shucks, that's sweet, she's really awesome and too kind!
My wattage for the ride was a little low, and I could not get my heart rate up, I think I was slightly overtrained, I did the STP in 11:31 on the 14th, then I did some short time trials last Saturday, got notice that I was going to be able to ride the RAMROD on Sunday since I was on the wait list, did a hard trainer session on Monday and a recovery ride on Tuesday, but I think I did not rest enough. Plus I'm having some domestic problems, they are not helping, so I did not get the killer ride, but it was pretty solid and I recovered quickly. I'd like about 20 more watts and my heart rate up maybe 5 beats on average, next year I'll rest a little more.
Maybe I'll even see that nice lady again ;-)

wow

2007-07-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

wow, whoever maintains the code for blogger finally fixed their broken "remember that I'm logged in" code. It's a miracle!
I rode to Portland over the weekend, my annual STP ride, it went well, I beat last year's time by 20 minutes, finished in 11:31. The challenege now is getting below 11 hours, it may take a couple years to do that. Maybe I'll post a pretty picture of my ride data after I download it from my bike computer. I was hauling ass. Someone at the finish line said I was somewhere around the first 25 people in. I would have been a little faster but we all took a wrong turn at the beginning, and the lights were not timed well in Portland, so I stood around waiting for a few traffic lights. I had no flats and no mechanical issues except my frame is creaking, maybe it's finally wearing out, or maybe the headset needs to be greased where it touches the frame, it's hard to tell where the noise is coming from. I want an excuse to buy a new Cervelo frame...
I didn't post about my trip to Dresden. There is a reason for that ;-)

nice legs in West Seattle

2007-06-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

I was on my 3rd lap around West Seattle, doing clockwise laps, Harbor to 35th to Marine View to Fauntleroy to Lincoln Park to Beach Drive to Alki. She passed me on going down the little hill on the north end of Beach Drive. I accelerated to match her pace. She was riding a gold mountain bike. I kept a couple of bike lengths behind her, she was keeping a great pace. We blew by another guy on the road, pretty much left him standing still. She had a bag slung over her shoulder, and black shorts with white stripes, and the nicest, muscular legs I have seen in a long time. She peeled off at 63rd, she may have been headed up the hill. I hope I run into her again! I need an Amazonian training partner!

It's worse than I thought...

2007-06-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

OK, Maybe Google is not evil, just incompetent. So if you click "No, Thanks" the Google Sidebar just kills itself. The you restart it, then you restart the Windows Vista sidebar. If you click "yes" it murders the Windows Vista sidebar. If you try to close the window or hit ESC it does not go away.
Doesn't Microsoft get sued whenever they do stuff like this?
I guess their Test Manager is a fatboy who used to work for MSN. So I'm not surprised their Windows software is so pathetic.
And 'remember me' still does not seem to work on Blogger.
Hmmm, all that goop works fine on MSN Spaces.
They are destined to be the next Netscape. Or Novell. All those smart people grinding away on selling ads, none of their other stuff seems to work that well.
Looks like Google is just another Eric Schmidt 1-hit wonder company.

Google is starting to be evil

2007-05-31T11:31:00.001-07:00

I like running the Windows sidebar and the Google sidebar at the same time. Now I'm getting popups from the Google sidebar asking me if I want them to replace the previous sidebar. When you click 'yes' they blow away the Windows Vista sidebar. So much for 'don't be evil'. They are just as evil as anyone else.

The annoying thing is that this happens whenever I change something, so I have to keep restarting my Windows Vista sidebar. So Google has become annoying and evil. If only they had a good traffic widget....

another one

2007-05-31T09:57:00.000-07:00

this week's installement of mystery iTunes...
Kickapoo
Classico
Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown)
Master Exploder

playlists from the ether

2007-05-29T14:21:00.001-07:00

I've been getting receipts from itunes. I don't buy iTunes, they are from someone else, somehow iTunes has my email address, which is kind of strange. I only buy real music that I can posess... anyway, here’s is a list of the songs from the last 4 receipts I have received:

I Only Want You
Speaking In Tongues
Roundabout
Holy Wars... The Punishment Due
Out of Control
Big Gun
Through the Fire and Flames
*****
The Jokes With Guitar
Sames and Opposites
Demetri Martin
Dane Cook
*****
Everlong
Break
Dashboard
Makes Me Wonder
The Joke's On Me
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
*****
A Strange Education
Your Guts (I Hate 'Em)

I guess this is sonic voyeurism...I have not listened to any of these, are they any good?

Favorite shows

2007-04-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to adopting the digital lifestyle. I have HughesNet satellite internet access, 52 inch LCD TV, xbox360, wireless, and tomorrow will have a HDTV signal coming over DirecTV. But hey, I'm still the same guy! I'll just watch my favorite shows in HD. You should watch them too!

#1 - Deadliest Catch
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/deadliestcatch/deadliestcatch.html
This is the best show on TV, now I'll be able to see it in HD, it should be even better!

#2 - FutureWeapons
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/future-weapons/future-weapons.html?dcitc=w99-502-ah-1012
the best part of this show is when I see something I have in my collection and say "I have one of those!". This has happened a few times, it is kind of funny. The host is great, and after I see an episode I want to go try some of these things out on Iran and North Korea. Kill them all!

I am a gun geek.

Everything else on TV is boring.

me 4, dog 0

2007-03-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

I have eliminated the dog threat to my trash through creative engineering. Using nothing but a 6 foot long piece of steel pipe, and a piece of wire I have eliminated the problems of dogs in my trash, at least for the past month. No, the dogs were not roasted on a spit and fed to guests, they were not skewered and hung out for the turkey vultures (I only feed them deer), nor were they impaled in the Turkish tradition, although the thought did cross my mind. A lot.
I drove the pipe into the ground with my tractor. leaving about 3 feet sticking out. Then I bent the wire into a shaft and a couple of hooks, kind of like a big W (there is nothing under the big W, don't dig it up). I hang the trash cans from the hooks. when you push on the cans they move, in fact they will swivel all the way around, it is very difficult to do much but push them in circles. Unless you have hands. So hopefully my trash is safe until dogs grow hands. If that happens we have bigger problems.

Children of Men, the flu, and bad shrimp heads

2007-03-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

It was Parent's Night Out the other night, a service occasionally provided by daycare so that parents can go out for 4 hours. It used to be 5 hours and cost less, but I guess times are changing! So we dumped the kid and headed out to see "Children of Men". I wanted to see "Smokin' Aces", but sadly there was not a showing we could make. Luckily "Children of Men" was violent enough to satisfy me. I won't bore you with the story line, the whole thing was pretty campy, Michael Caine was funny as an old stoner, and apparently the future sucks. There was a lot of shooting, killing, and blowing shit up. I like that stuff. I was coming down with the flu at the time, we had been warned by daycare that kids were spontaneously projectile vomiting throughout the week, so I was not surprised that I was feeling bad. It started off with some sore skin near my left kidney. My skin just kind of hurt and was ultra-sensitive, kind of like those rubbers that really aren't. The next day the left side of my head felt like that. Just the left side. Touching my scalp hurt on the that side, felt fine on the other. It was strange. I was resisting the urge to puke while watching the movie, I think the flu made it more affective. After the film we went to eat sushi at a new joint next door to the theater. Upscale mall sushi, joys. Supposedly it was Really Good. I ordered what I always order, Chirashi, and some green tea. The green team came in a little French-press, that was kind of cute, it also had some other junk mixed in with it, some kind of grain. I don't like that, but I drank it anyway and even ordered a refill. So now half my head was sore and I was coming down from the violence rush of the movie, then dinner arrived.
My wife ordered the sashimi dinner. It had a raw shrimp, which she gave me, as she does not like them. It seemed OK, it did not taste ripe. She also gave me the head since she does not eat things with eyes. I laid the head to the side and continued to choke down my fish. It was adequate, not too good, not too bad, I like my other sushi places better. After I finished my fish I ate half the shrimp head to gross out my wife. I have eaten whole ones before, they are not bad done tempura style, but raw is another matter. It took forever to chew the crunchy shell, and it did not taste very good. Even now my flu-ravaged bowels tremble at the thought of this, and I can feel the greasy ache in my stomach. We paid, left, collected the kid and headed home.
I could not sleep. the tea was keeping me up, the fish was churning in my stomach. The eyes of the half-eaten shrimp head were staring back at me, I could still taste it. Remind me to not eat the garnish, when I was a kid it was harmless, just some parsley, now it stares back with dead black eyes as you eat its tail.

this is cool

2007-03-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

go here and look at these videos.
I did not know that 1 million frames per second was this easy to do:
http://www.kurzzeit.com/videos.htm
the first one is awesome. The bullet from a .308 goes about 2600 feet per second. watch it travel 2 inches...

fakeipedia

2007-03-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

this is funny:
http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Essjay
http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Jimbo_Wales
http://www.wikitruth.info

web content is of little value.

some people should die

2007-02-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

Perry Farrell/Jane's Addiction once said in a song "some people should die, that's just unconscious knowledge"
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07055/764682-56.stm
I think that applies here.
I love stories on Rotten.com, you can find plenty of people who really, really suck.

so much for...

2007-02-23T11:47:00.000-08:00

... the myth of peaceful primates living happily together!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/22/AR2007022201007.html
1.) female chimps making weapons!
2.) to kill bush babies!
3.) and eat them!
I don't know what wrong with human females to make them less aggressive and inventive than human males, evolution I guess. But I won't feel bad for working on weapons, killing stuff, and eating it. It's my genetic destiny! Now we just have to give the monkeys fire and the wheel and they will be set to inherit the earth from us.

Chipper Chipper

2007-02-22T23:11:00.000-08:00

Winter passes, spring is on the horizon. I needed to chip some of the wood I had collected from fallen trees over the last month, it is time to grow some mushrooms. I have around 10 varieties I’m going to work on this year, the first of which is Reishi, Ganoderma Lucidum, a polypore. I’m going to inoculate several of the large logs I have and grow some in bags of sterilized sawdust as well, so I needed to get the chipper out and chip some wood.
The first time you try and start a gas-powered device in the spring can be challenging. I try to run all my equipment from time to time during the winter to prevent the gas from turning into lacquer and gumming things up, but I don’t always get around to it. I hauled the chipper out of the garage (getting the garage open was a story in itself, which I’ll spare you), filled it with fresh gas, and dragged it out onto the lawn. This is a pretty large small chipper, 15 horsepower, it can chip wood up to 4 inches thick. Probably works well on cats as well, but luckily I like cats. I pulled the starter cord, nothing. Again, and again nothing. I did this about 20 times before giving up and looking for some starter fluid in the garage. I don’t usually like to cheat, at least not in contests, exams, or starting equipment I’m supposed to keep in good shape, but sometimes a good shot of starting fluid will save your sanity. I gave a few more pulls, and after another shot of starter fluid in the carburetor I got it running.
The engine connects to the drum-mounted chipper blades with a belt. It is operated by means of a lever which pulls a tensioning wheel onto the belt, causing it to engage with the pulley on the chipper drum and get the blades turning. I pulled the lever to engage the blades. They seemed to start up normally, so I wandered back to the garage to put the starting fluid away. I didn’t huff any of it. Honest!
A lot of smoke was gushing out of the chipper when I returned to it. Not good, not good at all! It looked like it was coming from the drive belt. I had melted one of those before, I figured I had done it again. I disengaged the blades and went into the house to get a wrench to take the cover off of the belt housing.
I removed the housing. The engine was still running. The housing was filled with grass and bits of junk from the garage, a rat had made a nest in there! Grass, chunks of ribbon from my wedding nearly 5 years ago, and fur filled the belt cavity. A big clot of stuff was jammed between the belt, a belt guide, and one of the wheels. I tugged on the belt, which was a mistake, as the engine was still running, and it jumped and tried to bite me, but I let go so I did not lose any fingers. I turned the motor off and finished cleaning out the housing. I found the rat that had been living in there; it was dried up, just a sheet of skin with a tail really. Possibly it died from the rat poison I put in the garage. Poisoned, it crawled back to its modest apartment in my chipper and died, not being found until spring, like a skier who goes off course in the mountains, is buried in the snow, only to be revealed by the spring thaw. In any case, I cleaned up the mess, put the chipper back together, started it back up and chipped up some wood, which I am now soaking in water and a little molasses for a few days until it is ready to be sterilized and inoculated, which should happen Monday night.
And that is my exciting chipper story. Soon I’ll have to start the lawn mover. I’ve been using the chain saw a lot lately, it has no trouble starting.

Slipknot

2007-02-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

Slipknot has vastly improved their site, you can watch all their videos:
http://www.slipknot1.com/site.php
I don't really watch TV anymore, most of what is on is crap, but there are a few bands I like and it is good to be able to see their stuff without suffering through the commercials.
In other news, SOF has been publishing some great articles on the war in Iraq. If you want to see what is really happening you can subscribe.
http://www.sofmag.com/news/index.html
I started reading it as a joke, my fake liberal stepmother (I hate all kinds of fakes, when I discover a fake I mercilessly attack them) made a big deal out of wanting to see a copy, so I bought the subscription for her but she did not want to read it, so now I read it. The advertising is amusing, the articles are great, the pictures are great, you won't see this in the mainstream media.
A friend in Iraq sent a picture of him with Condi Rice, pretty cool. It's a small world!

NASA

2007-02-08T18:17:00.000-08:00

Originally:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration

After Challenger:
Need Another Seven Astronauts

After Columbia
Not Another Singed Astronaut

After stalker girl:
Need Another Sane Astronaut

Tungsten Spheres

2007-02-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

My collection of tungsten spheres is now 3 spheres larger. I had a dozen small ones, I bought 3 larger ones, including a 112mm monster. It is really heavy 31lbs or so (ok, so that's not really heavy, but it seems pretty heavy since you can't really get a grip on it), I can't pick it up from the top with one hand, I need to get under it.
Tungsten is cool, it is really dense, much denser than lead, denser than uranium, and very nearly as dense as gold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten
My tungsten spheres are formed by sintering then machining. it is fun to lift a tungsten spere and then a steel one to feel how light the steel one is.

Highway Robbers

2007-02-08T16:51:00.000-08:00

I got my guns back, but I'm missing the 2 magazines for the .338 Lapua. The cool thing about rare, high-end military rifles is that no one has them except for nuts like me. The bad thing is that no one has them except for nuts like me, so getting parts is difficult. I had to find a dealer in England, and they like getting paid by wire transfer. My bank only charges $45 for this service. the magazines are $425 each plus $40 shipping. It's highway robbery! I could almost buy a reasonable rifle for that much bread.
I just finished up some code I was working on, we'll ship it next week with any luck. It monitors compute clusters and gives you a bird's eye view of what is happening with them. I went old-school and wrote it in native win32/c/c++, only some ATL goop for some network groveling. Yes, it takes longer to write code that way. But it runs a hell of a lot faster than managed code or MFC. I'm probably the only guy left doing hand-coded MDI Win32 apps. I must be crazy or something.
I'm going to take tomorrow off, shoot guns, read books, and vacuum the rat shit out of my basement, it should be fun.

The Buzzcocks sell out to the AARP

2007-01-30T14:24:00.000-08:00

I was watching TV the other evening during the ~20% of my life I waste staying at my wife's house. TV is almost as bad as video games, slightly worse than most modern magazines, I suggest you don't let your kids look at it. A commercial came on, it was flash, hip, and had a nice soundtrack, "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" by the Buzzcocks, a British power-pop band. I was not really paying too much attention, I realize that most of the bands I used to like have sold out. Then I saw that the commercial was for the AARP.

American Association of Retired Persons

(I looked at their website, I could not find where it actually expanded their acronym. Wierd. I sense a lot of denial. I tell my dad that it stands for the 'American Association of Retarded People'.)

WTF?

I'll at least give you the lyrics...

I was so tired of being upset
Always wanting something I never could get
Life's an illusion love is a dream
But I don't know what it is

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

I was so tired of being upset
Always wanting something I never could get
Life's an illusion love is a dream
But I don't know what it is 'cos

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

Life's an illusion love is the dream
But I don't know what it is
Everyone's saying things to me
But I know it's okay okay

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

Life's an illusion love is a dream
Life's an illusion love is the dream
Life's the illusion love is a dream
Life's the illusion love is the dream

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays
Todays are good

Bet you are tired of being upset
Always wanting something you never can get
Life's no illusion love's not a dream
Now I know just what it is

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

Much ado about nothing

2007-01-29T20:34:00.000-08:00

The prosecutor’s office left me a message. The guy caught with my guns, my nice rifles, pled guilty. He’s going to spend 8 to 10 years (they give sentence lengths in months, but I’ll make it into years just for you, dear reader) in a call wishing he’d never been caught with my rifles.
When they were taken, I was pissed. I had left them out because my safe was full. He got 3 guns, but he didn’t get the other 18. The safe was full, and the doors to my house were unlocked. Other random things were taken, some nice Sinn watches, a special xbox and xbox360, some CDs. They left the 9-DVD Alien set, proof they had no taste in film. I can’t remember if my Ice-T CD was in my CD collection, or whether that was stolen when my office was robbed. I hope it was not with these CDs, the cops were really helpful, at least the ones in Lakewood, I don’t want to feel sheepish when they hand me back a Cop Killer CD and ~$25,000 worth of sniper rifles I had left out.
I had to pick which rifles to leave out, a kind of ballistic triage. The DSR-1 rifles are impossible to pawn, they stick out. And it’s nearly impossible to find ammo for the .408 CheyTac Windrunner, deadly beyond 2400m. And they are all too big for my son to play with, so those are the ones I left out. And sure enough, within hours of them being stolen, the cops knew someone was trying to get rid of them, pawn shop owners would call the police when the guy tried to pawn them. How many times can I say them in a single sentence? Kind of like the story, I think it may have been a story by Mark Twain, maybe it was called “the 1,000,000 pound note”, and it’s about possessing something worth everything yet completely useless. These guns are like that, if the wrong person has one, you know right away.
I was just mad when my house was robbed, I didn’t feel violated, just insulted. How rude! Please come back so I can shoot you! I keep wishing the robbers would come back when I was home so I could perform a public service.
I should have my rifles back shortly; the guilty plea means that the rifles are no longer needed for evidence. The cops were hoping no one would claim the rifles, and they made a big deal out of finding them. I saw them on TV. I declined interviews through 3rd parties who contacted the media on my behalf. The Internet helped spread the word. I refuse to thank Al Gore. I left a $2500 check for the cleaning lady who called the police when she found the guns in the hotel. I left the check at the hotel with the guy at the front desk. It was a skanky hotel; I knew she got the check when the check cashing place called me to make sure the check was not forged, the person I made it out to didn’t have a lot of ID.
All in all it was an amusing adventure. I lock my doors now. I know home owners insurance is a joke unless you itemize every last thing, the limits on coverage are ridiculous. I have a lot of stuff money can’t replace, like my Indian Crow skin and some other very rare feathers, so insurance is pointless. I know that some policemen are helpful, and some are indifferent. I know that druggies who have to steal to support their habits are scummier than rich ones who can afford theirs, or people ingenious to produce their own. I keep some ballistic defensive equipment locked, loaded and handy.
There is no moral to the story.

the robbers

2007-01-09T09:55:00.000-08:00

the robbers might be back. I saw someone in a truck down the street from my house, and my trash can had been moved. I went running after dark, when I got home. I ran past the truck, there was a dim light inside, maybe someone smoking, or maybe an electronic device. I did not get their plate. I heard them start up after I had run past. The lights came up behind me, they passed me. They drove by me again later. In the dark, at night, alone on the road in the middle of nowhere where I live. They were gone when I got back 6 miles later. I got my AN/PVS-7s, my maglight, my sig-sauer p220 .45 and went down and checked later, they had not come back.
I'm watching.
I'm waiting.
I'm ready.