Coloring inside the lines.

This is rather toothless in terms of action.  Reeks planning to pour oil into an engine with a cracked block every time you fill up.

While President Obama is focused on getting money to friendly-ish Syrian rebels, Congress is increasingly demanding he take more steps to stop militant fighters from coming to the U.S. by stripping Americans of their passports if they join the fight and by suspending countries that have large contingents of foreign fighters from the Visa Waiver Program.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/15/congress-demands-obama-act-to-keep-islamic-terrori

What about stopping the porous borders?  Perhaps opting for security takes a back seat to ensuring an easy voting bloc.  That’s sad.

But counterterrorism officials say they are far more concerned that an ISIS militant will enter the United States the same way millions of people do each year: legally, on a commercial flight. Their efforts have focused on the more than 2,000 Europeans and 100 Americans who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside extremist groups, nearly all of them crossing over its unprotected borders. Without markings in their passports to show that they traveled to Syria, American border authorities have few ways of determining where they were and stopping them from entering the country.

And if they come here across the Mexican border authorities will have nearly 100% certainty of checking those visas to see if terrorists went to Syria.  Good call, guys.  Good call.

That’s all I can write, this whole scenario is making me nauseous.

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A day late.

Well, it was MESSENGER’s ten year anniversary yesterday.  The world is not a safer place, no lives have been saved, and milk still goes sour after a spell.  Kittens still die, killers still live, and Obama is still president.

But MESSENGER is one thing that seems to be working mostly as it was intended, so I am content, at least until Ebola or the wave of the world’s illegal immigrants swamp us under.

Two weeks ago as the wife and kids were still in the PNW visiting family, I was shopping for myself and muttering.  Muttering is something I forgot that single people do (or at least I did) and it came back surprisingly quickly.

Mid-mutter I saw a display sign that said simply:

Food Alternatives

Wow.  If I had checked it out I could have found an alternative to food, but I had a house to go clean and a MineCraft mine that needed digging.

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According to Thomas Sowell, thinking may now be obsolete.  I think he is right.

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About damn time already

Netanyahu finally says FU to Beloved Leader Obama.

Following the quick collapse of the cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the White House not to force a truce with Palestinian militants on Israel.

 

Sources familiar with conversations between Netanyahu and senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, say the Israeli leader advised the Obama administration “not to ever second guess me again” on the matter. The officials also said Netanyahu said he should be “trusted” on the issue and about the unwillingness of Hamas to enter into and follow through on cease-fire talks.

 

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_MIDEAST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-02-05-10-33

 

I hope our next president repairs our relations with just about every once-ally we had that Obama has shat upon, but no one more so than Israel.  The Euro-Snobs realize we’re about the only thing keeping Russia from taking over Europe, if he so chose.  But Israel, how could he have pissed on Israel?

Go Bibi.

Want to stop attacks on Gaza?  That’s easy – tell the terrorists to stop firing rockets at Israel.  The fact that the disparity in lethality exists is irrelevant.  A scrappy little dog keeps biting an even scrappier bigger dog with sharp teeth – when the big one finally leans over and kicks the little dog’s ass, no one ought to be getting pissed at the bigger dog.  Especially when there is a pack of little dogs going after the patient one.

But that is what we are seeing in Gaza.

“But LEMUR…!”  you say… “These are CHILDREN who are dying!”  

Yep, sure are.   Who are also being trained to do as their fathers are doing, which is always attack from behind the skirts of women and children, like cowardly dogs.

But no, it is easier to attack Israel, isn’t it?

 

****

Wow, they whisked away to safety pro-Israel demonstrators from outside the White House after being surrounded by menacing Hamas supporters.

Why not deal with the menacing folks?

They had to be rescued by the police from the radical pro-Hamas protesters.

So we are now supporting pro-terrorist organizations who threaten others?

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Getting a grip.

Oh for f*ck’s sake.  Will you people please get a grip?  Put your hands on your shoulders, take a deep breath, and pull your heads out of your ass.

I mean, geez, have a little pride, why don’t you?

If the harshest thing in your life is the loss of a soccer match, then you aren’t dead but you surely aren’t living.

That’s it for now.  Busy enough at work that I have little good to say so I’ll keep it short.

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Oddity.

I can’t resist this one because CW says I have to blog it.

A Zonkey.

Zonkey. Of course it is.

Yes.

OK.  So Minecraft.  A life size 1:1 scale of the St. Louis Arch.  Life size.

I give you… St. Lemur’s Arch.

St. Lemur’s Arch.

Under the arch.  Lava lights it up at night.

That was built to the real arch.  I started with the equations for a catenary arch and built a table for elevation, displacement, centroid at each 1m interval.  Took about a week to make sure I translated it all correctly to MC analogue units.  It is 190-ish units high (base elevation 63) and 192 wide at the legs.  The triangular cross section is 14 wide at the base and 6 wide at the top.

The server-master did challenge us to build something that could be seen from space…

Took about 2 days.  Survival mode.  Zero deaths.  More cobblestone than I can count.

They say insanity and creativity suck face.  Well, I say that, anyway.

H/t to The Dude…

Paint job, awesome.

Another blackly humorous one… Wrap your normal garbage like this.

How to make garbage day more interesting.

 

 Why?   Beats the hell out of me.  I like Aliens.

Ok. Whatever.

 

 

 

Edited with BlogPad Pro

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Hats.

I’m a hat, jacket, and boots fan.  I could be the analogue of Bill Cosby except he has more class.

But anyhow, Mitchell has offered up one of his hats and hilljohnny wanted to know where the hats can be gotten.

Nice bonch of hats, hyez?  (Head’n Home Handmade Hats)

Here are the plug images… 

So assuming the hat size works and Mitchell still wants to give me a hat … wahoo!  Thanks Mitchell, even if it doesn’t work out.

Hats and swords (or knives) are two things you can never go wrong with giving me.  (hint hint hint, CW)

I would normally have something to say right now but this is proposal/report week, a perfect storm, and I’ve got enough hours in that my brain actually hurts.  Figuring out how to open and work with a Zemax file I made just last night was… strenuous.  Much more effort was required to generate enough brainpower to change an optic out and swap in an asphere (which should be like adding 2+3).

So I have nothing to say.

Other than:  Obama and Democrats… choke on it!  Suck it!  Ha ha ha you scheming bastards.  I hope your next election cycle is the equivalent of being covered with boils.

In fact, I hope you get all you want with that Filibuster-proof bargain you just did, and that Obamacare really sinks in, and I hope you try really hard for immigration reform even as you pull QE back and the stock market has to live without huffing paint fumes for a while.

Then we’ll see what 2014 elections bring.

A co-worker – a total libtard – sent me this today (let’s call him Komrade Greeny-Weeny):

While leaders are elected (or they steal elections like Bush), no one sees the future.  Did you know that Bush was going to sleep thru 911, start and not finish two wars, destroy the economy, create Homeland Security/NSA (with Republican support), …  I suppose you voted for him so it is truly your fault, not mine.  Still, we both paid the price of his idiocy.

So I replied:

Nice talking points on Bush.  Let’s rack up Obama’s sometime and then we’ll talk.  If Bush’s mistakes are on me, I’m thinking Obama’s mistakes are truly yours, which kind of puts you in a bad spot.  Ouch.   I mean, Obama was voted in with what you say was essentially a mandate and yet his ratings are at or below Bush’s – look how much more he had to do wrong in order to fall so much further.

****

This just in… a glowing hole filled with water has stopped glowing.  It’s probably because of something Bush, or even I, did.

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“In a shock to the system, the older staff in my office (folks over 59) have now found out their personal health insurance costs (even with the government contribution) have gone up 3-4 times what they were paying before,” Minh Ta, chief of staff to Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), wrote to fellow Democratic chiefs of staff in an email message obtained by POLITICO. “Simply unacceptable.”

– Source:  Politico

Now, what do you want to bet that Minh Ta either disappears or is found pounding pavement looking for exciting new careers in the field of culinary drive through swabbing, while being unburdened by those high costs of the Obamacare Act because he cannot get enough hours to qualify?

****

Oh, no, that isn’t weird at all.  Compared to “Tentacle Pr0n”, no it isn’t.  But all by itself it is stark batshit crazy.  A gameshow to not have an org@sm on… on public TV.  Those wacky Japanese.

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Where there is smoke…

Cruel Wife came out to show me what she has done and helped me in the shop with moving the bigger stuff around to get ready for the contractor. She’s not very big, but she’s strong. Her first baby come out sideways – she didn’t scream or nuttin. **snorrrrrt-snort-snttt**

15 points if you can guess the movie reference.

Anyway…

About 30-40 min later HackerBoy came running out to the shop hollering “There is something on fire on the stove!”

So we ran back to the house to find it filled with thick heavy smoke. You have NO IDEA how much smoke can come from burning rice. File that away for future reference next time relatives outstay their welcome.

Oh boy oh wow, it is hours later and the house still reeks of it.

Don’t worry, the cats are ok.

I told CW that I am not as fond as all that of brown rice. Used to be white. Now, not so much.

She was all embarrassed but as I pointed out, the boy did the exact right thing and nothing was hurt. All good. Exceptin’ maybe the smoke.

No idea where the goat came from… Might have stolen it from Laura but I put less than 5 percent on that possibility.

I have had that happen with other ruminants. And it is embarrassing every time.

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Woo-woo.

A week ago I went with a friend to “be there” while she got a real diagnosis on some skin cancer that has, uh… gone beyond.

It wasn’t pleasant but the news that there is a 70-80% chance that it hasn’t gone on a jaunt through her body is better than we envisioned prior to going in there.  It seemed quite grim before.  So there is a chance.

Add to that the shoulder MRI and cortisone shot and lots of work hours and I’ve been a bit waterlogged.

But I could be worse!

I have a stark bat-crap crazy co-worker who is such an illogical emotional flaming liberal that he actually annoys me.  I found this somewhere – I’ll dig it up first chance I get – and it just FITS…  He does this almost daily, sometimes baiting me just so he can pull what we now at work refer to as a Papa Foxtrot (Poo Flinging).

Alert reader The Dude has kept me fed with lots of images gathered from God only knows where.

My favorite because it has attitude.

This snail has ambition. Hard to knock snails with ambition.

This is why fathers protect their daughters.

Yeah.

This dispenser would be empty far more than the regular scotch tape and that only lasts hours.

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Enter the Lemur.

Fists of fury and tails o’ death.

Have a ridiculously touching pic of a lemur or two.

(h/t to Black Lab on Methamphetamines)

****

Hypothetically speaking, let us say that your father-in-law offered to take your pole barn garage and turn it into a fully wired, insulated concrete floor, walled and ceilinged, new windowed, and new doored state.  Hypothetically speaking, if you told him bluntly “I’m not worth it.” and he said “Yes, you are.”…

… What would you say?

I’m thinking, hypothetically, of course, that if it were me, I’d probably get mind-locked on “Do you realize how insane this sounds?”

Even if he were to say “Because then my daughter would be happier with you around less”, I’d still think it sounded insane.  Hypothetically speaking.

****

The Treyvon/Zimmerman trial goes on.

I am still saddened that at end, what will have happened is that in the very least a kid died and a guy has lost most of the rest of his life, and if it goes south like I think it will, several things will happen:

1) Race relations just got much worse

2) Good people on both sides are going to die

3) The only winners will be the gun grabbers and the reporters

4) Lots of bad people are going to get badder

It is going to get epically ugly.

Lots of losers because of two losers.

****

Most transparently manipulative administration ever, is more like it.

And he’ll get away with it, too.  Man, is this a Charlie Fox of a time to live in.

Republican former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin called the move “deviously brilliant,” by removing a potential electoral impediment from in front of congressional Democrats before the midterms.

“Democrats no longer face the immediate specter of running against the fallout from a heavy regulatory imposition on employers across the land,” Holtz-Eakin wrote. “Explaining away the mandate was going to be a big political lift; having the White House airbrush it from the landscape is way better.”

The administration will publish formal guidance on the rule change within the next week.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/07/02/obama-administration-delays-healthcare-law-employer-penalty-until-2015

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Daily Smarts.

I got to see my first movie in a theater where I understood it all instead of 10-30% for the first time in my life.

CW and I went to see Star Trek before it left the theaters.  Kids were with Grandpa.  We got there and they had personal captioning devices that you could plug into your cup holder and watch honest-to-God captions that were readable, well synced, complete sentences – everything.  It seems like a simple thing to those that can hear but to me it was like being a little kid and given a Red Ryder BB gun.   It was that cool.

Halfway through, a migraine hit, and I could not leave for some Imitrex.  By the end of the movie I was a turnip with no nervous system other than a set of nerves all cranked to 11.  Today was rough but now I have migraine hangover.  It was bad today.  I was pretty close to banging my head on the doorframe and was nauseous.  Went to work anyway, had CW drive me to and from.  I may be able to sort of work like that but driving like that puts innocent people at risk and I won’t do it.

But seeing Benedict Cumberbatch play his part in it as he did, after playing Sherlock as well as he did… he ranks up with Bryan Cranston in my book.

The movie was so-so.  Predictable.  Still fun even as it slowly killed me.

I definitely want to see more movies like that.  Where I have captions to enjoy them.

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DailyMail.co.UK seems to have more on the ball than newspapers in the US.

Pill you take can remember your passwords.  Tablets can transmit personal details to devices as they pass through your body.  Then what?  The future will be full of scat salvagers who reclaim important poo for $5 a pound.

I have heard of people rooting through my shit but this seems… excessive.

****

Higher levels of air pollution reduced the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes and other tropical storms for most of the 20th century, a study said Sunday.   –  Researchers from the UK Met Office created weather simulations covering the period 1860 to 2050

Well, when things haven’t been warming up as per the dire predictions it was said to be an unexpected slowdown but the situation is just as dire.

When cold weather hit during the massive lurch to global warming that wasn’t really, it was explained that pockets of intense cold and snow are predicted by runaway AGW.

When hurricanes and tornadoes were thought to be getting stronger it was considered as being caused by AGW.

Now the reduced frequency is predicted to be signs of higher levels of air pollution.

So whether it is drought, flooding, hurricanes or no, bad hurricanes or lesser hurricanes, warmer or no, colder winters or no…. someone somewhere can run a model that shows that it is due to AGW.

And if we engaged in zero carbon footprint – all of us – killed off 90% of the humans on earth, killed off all our cows, buried our vehicles, lived in caves, and ate nothing but algae engineered to be the new green tofu.

Why, we could bring back the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (GECK) and it would work flawlessly.

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Kwik-e thought of the day.

I have followed this NSA thing this last week and a number of things keep circulating in my head.

One, is anyone really surprised? Was anyone surprised that this capability existed?

Two, the guy did us a favor by showing real proof.

Three, the guy broke an oath, or at the very least a binding sworn contract that he would not blab. That is really totally uncool. I am not fond of whistleblowers.

Four, he wasn’t in an enviable situation. What he was seeing was wrong and there should be a lot of folks embarrassed that they played a part in this mess. This guy is in the grey area of no right solution, no fair solution, but cold hard facts. Life sucks.

Five, Obama owns this. Bush owns this, too, but Obama has no higher moral ground.

Six, I heard some wanker from higher up actually say “We can’t read all those emails.” … as if that makes it ok. It doesn’t matter! If you cannot read them, why do you need them? This leads to the logic of “if you aren’t doing anything wrong you won’t mind us searching your stuff.”

Seven, Obama said:

America is “going to have to make some choices” balancing privacy and security

… I ask… WHY? At the expense of my online privacy, my telephone calls, tracking my movements via cellphones, and at some point my vehicles as well?

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Eight, short of a figurative nuclear smoking gun, Obama is political Teflon(tm).

********

Spaced Diode is nearly home, sailing back from Bermuda. I have sent him the following plaintext message:

spaced diode do not come home stop zombies have us surrounded stop we have been holed up and all are safe until the beans and water run out stop it was not the manatees stop it was the squirrels stop the squirrels were ground zero stop pray for us all stop

I hope he gets the message in time.

This seems to be where he is at the moment.

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Stay tuned…

My biz has an expession… “Dog and Pony Show”. It is where we stand up in front of people we want to make things for, and they shoot holes in our stuff, we roll with it and make it work out anyway, and if we’ve convinced them we aren’t freakish geeks with zero talent, then maybe, just maybe, they will let us build things for them.

One could be excused for saying “Oh, you’re techno-whores!” We’re not actually. Mostly. We do hard things that other people won’t do. And it is fun.

Today I was given a new name that I think I will run with… “Captain Sarcasm”!

(I will wear that title with pride)

So for the next two days I may be hip deep in dog and pony poo, but when we come up to breathe, I will have some fun things to point out in the engineering world – nothing to do with anything I am working on. Other way cool stuff.

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Nuggets and beyond

I am alone with HackerBoy this weekend while Cruel Wife and Lemurita attend a weekend-long training regimen at a paramilitary youth organization outing for young women.  The boy and I have eaten pizza rolls, onion rings, Taco Bell™ (no horse meat was available when I requested it and they did not see humor in it), McDonald’s™, and spring rolls – a whole bag.

We watched a bit of Batman Begins but Hackerboy grew bored and wanted to watch “The Secret World of Arrietty“, which I gotta say was well done even if cliche.  I guess he’s just not old enough to appreciate the buildup of Christian Bale in training with Ra’s Al Ghul and the subsequent return to Gotham to stomp on the Scarecrow’s smug pretty-boy face.

Too bad Bale seems like such an asshole in real life, but who among us hasn’t given a poor showing?  American Psycho was pretty well done, I thought.  And I gotta respect his drive to do what he sets his mind to do (The Machinist).  His ideals… not so much.  But I do admire determination.

h/t to alert co-worker/Farker Black Lab on Amphetamines.  Simultaneously hilarious yet nauseating.  It’s like Popplers™.   Enjoy, veeshir, this one is for you.

I immediately thought of Aggie Sith when I saw this.  Immediately.  Darth Necklace.

****

Adding this in as an update to this post – Man Insists Girlfriend Wears Celebrity Masks When Having Sex.

Now, you could assume that the guy is a creepy perv and doesn’t deserve her.  It could be that he’s not telling the whole truth and she’s either a sheep or she’s fantastically ugly.  It could be several other things entirely.

But the question you really have to ask yourself is why The Guardian is even putting this stuff out there.  No, I know they’re doing it for the ratings and the shock factor, that’s not at issue.  They’re putting it out there because readers are eating it up, and that says a lot of sad things.

Oh, and you should ask why she’s still with him regardless, unless she really is a sheep.

****

Opinions Mixed as State Takeover Looms in Detroit

Now, you would think that if you took white man out of the equation and let the black man do all the amazing shit he’s gonna do without the oppression faced every day, that perhaps Detroit could be a shining beacon on a hill.  No, it’s a bubbling busted open sewer line spraying fecal matter into the air for whole city blocks.  It’s corrupt and run by idiots.

“All of us agree that the city has serious financial challenges which must be addressed, however I fundamentally disagree with taking measures that disenfranchise the families I represent in Detroit,” Peters said, in a statement.

Manage?  Disenfranchise?  Personally I think they ought to level the city and start fresh.  It’s just that screwed up.

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TSA says Hiring Freeze could Double Waits

Let’s be honest, okay?  We didn’t have TSA for the first 32 years of my life and we got along fine without being groped or yelled at or intimidated.

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Well, I’d surely like to believe this is a legit story that went down the way they say it did and that it isn’t a glurge story.   If he DID walk ten miles in wintry snow to get a job, he needs to be cloned because we need more people like that.

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