General Musings

Quite a bit actually…

Starship Series by Mike Resnick is one of the most entertaining Sci-Fi reads you’ll ever have the pleasure of listening to on Audible. What makes this a great series in my opinion is the fact that Resnick writes in the occasional bathroom scene or repeatedly writes scenes around the mess decks. People have to eat and go to the bathroom and it’s usually always missing from other great series. Stupid? Yes. I think these things add realism to the series and again, Mike Resnick did one hell of a job on this. Highly recommended.

This is a drive by blog entry. I’ll add links to where you can find both the book and audio download later…

Ok. Maybe not “the man” but possibly the IP Police.

Yesterday, I tried to log into one of my websites and failed at least 5 times in a row. I couldn’t remember the password or something like that.

Right after that, I could help but notice that I couldn’t get into any of my own websites. Everything else was fine. YouTube, CNN, and theonion all worked but my sites didn’t. I didn’t really go to the CNN website. I put that on the list for dramatic effect.

Turns out that I suspect that after multiple log in failures, the server farm blacklisted me or blocked my IP or whatever.

So, “the man” isn’t really keeping me down he just kicked me out.

***Update*** The “Man” is really not impressed with me. He gave a bunch of sh** for changing the website that I signed up with and proceeded to yell at me because the domain name was no longer registered. I personally don’t think it’s any of their business anyway. I pay them for a working server farm not a broken one that blocks the owners IP address. The war continues…

*** Resolution *** My IP provider apologized for blocking my IP and restored my access. The reason I was blocked was because I tried to log in unsuccessfully too many times in a short amount of time.

/vent mode on

So, I am working on a short story and I am a big fan of the “snowflake” method. Really I am.

This is one of those mornings where the “snowflake” method is too constraining. I NEED just a touch more than one sentence for an opening synopsis but if I wish to remain true to the method, I must relent and re-write until I can get my idea down to one sentence.

A one sentence synopsis is very similar to the limit placed on Twitter users. Tweets are limited in size and thereby, force you to change the way you would normally write or try to convey an idea. It can be very tough.

My latest short story is called Bystander. If I can get by these limitations placed on me by the “snowflake” method I just may prevail this day.

/vent mode off

*** In unrelated news, Barrack Obama’s healthcare plan still sucks. ***

…my own quote section. Every once in a while, I say something interesting. Who knew?

On daughters…

“Father’s really only require the AM Radio version of any story and not the HD version that the daughter usually wants to offer.” – Mike Williams

The following story is a sad one for any number of reasons.

The couple own their house and their land. It stands to reason that they should be able to do anything they want with it. Ah, not so much.

As long as you own something that can be taken away from you by the government, then it isn’t really yours.

“I own my home.” No. No you do not.

The moment you violate some petty law or ordinance or forget to pay your taxes to the government they can step in and take it from you.

There is no sense in crying about it. You gave the government the authority to do so. How? Because, you didn’t say no. It is the law of unintended consequences. The law was probably meant for some other purpose originally. “We don’t want an eye sore in our community.”

Hence, the story of the day.

Some Southern California cities fine residents for watering their lawns too much during droughts.

But in Orange, officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for removing their lawn in an attempt to save water.

The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their frontyard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple said, the lush grass had been soaking up tens of thousands of gallons of water — and hundreds of dollars — each year.

They said they were trying to do something good for the environment.

Wow California what is more important to you?

Hippies.

This is why California is green but not really.

Sad but true story via PC World.

If you haven’t changed the default password on your home router, you may be in for an unwanted visit from Chuck Norris — the Chuck Norris botnet, that is.

Discovered by Czech researchers, the botnet has been spreading by taking advantage of poorly configured routers and DSL modems, according to Jan Vykopal, the head of the network security department with Masaryk University’s Institute of Computer Science in Brno, Czech Republic.

Unlike most viruses which attack Windows based machines, this one affects most all of us.

Well, state’s rights got trumped by the federal government a long time ago.

This we know. From now on, I think I’ll refer to the individual states simply as a “franchise” of the federal government because for all intents and purposes, thats precisely what they are.

This story was sent to me by a co-writer via CBS News.

It seems that South Carolina would rather use “real” money rather than federal reserve notes. South Carolina Rep. Mike Pitts is leading the charge and introduced legislation this month to ban the “illegal” notes and also goes on to call the federal reserve note system “unconstitutional.”

The Germans felt their system wouldn’t collapse, but it took a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread in the 1930s,” he said. “The Soviet Union didn’t think their system would collapse, but it did. Ours is capable of collapsing also.

I have to give Rep. Pitts credit. He’s doing what he feels is right.

Looking at the federal government and its hold over individual states much like Domino Pizza’s headquarters and its franchise stores would show us that when the corporate office tells you to use a certain type of cheese, you’ll do what they say if you want to keep your franchise.

Imagine if you were sitting in on a conversation taking place in the 1700s. I could see the person bringing up the idea of a federal reserve system being laughed out of the room. He would also probably be the butt of many jokes to come.

Today. That joke has become a reality.

I woke up this morning to some terrible news.

The oldest cat here at “mini-Google” is an older cat named Cinder. He’s dark gray in color hence the name.

Cinder began to breathe irratically this past week. So much so that we all took notice to it.

Cinder’s owner took him to the vet yesterday where they initially found a torn thorax “something or other” and needed to drain fluid out of him. They drained about 350 cc which seems a bit much. Cinder stayed over last night for observation and so that further testing could be done.

Cinder passed away last night.

He will be sorely missed.

Drive by commentary.

Internet Connectivity has become an official oxymoron in this establishment.

When our internet works it works very well.

When it doesn’t it’s ass.

Thank you to the Verizon mobile internet hotspot thingie for allowing me to post about the internet being down.

Quote of the Issue: “Well, when you first noticed that the internet was down, you should have sent me an email.”

Right.