A Note to Google.

I’ll keep it short, Google.

SCREW YOU.

You think by bundling all your stuff up in one where I cannot cancel my account without losing youtube is going to coerce me into keeping you and your heavy-handed snooping?  No, really, screw you.  I’ll gladly do without you and anything to do with you.  Spent most of my life without you, and I’ll cheerily toss you in the trash for the rest of it.

You’re going the way of Netflix in my mind and in my dealings.  I’m voting with my feet.

I just hadn’t gotten around to the official act until now but I’ve already been using Bing for some time now.  And I’ll switch when they get abusive, too.

By the way, folks… Read this on How Target Figured Out a Teen Girl was Pregnant Before Her Father Did.

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A new graphic in the works.  It’ll be Doctor Lemur poster featuring a rendering of a product, which is a raytraced bottle made using the Dr. Lemur logo and stuff.  It is stuff wrapped in stuff wrapped in more stuff but I think it will look cool.

Here’s the newer one with more glassy glass.

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Well this sucks.

Update syringe image… this has no antialiasing, radiosity is turned off, and it is a smaller-than-real-size render, all of which are designed to allow quick checking.  Not bad.  Let’s hope the emittance value isn’t set too high for the goo in the bottle and it doesn’t saturate the final render.

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By the way, LC Aggie Sith from over at Hookers and Booze passed this link on when commenting at Soylent Green… bias, in Google?  Getoutofherenowayman.

Actually, their censorship here in the free world is as insidious as the Chinese censorship.  At least they are up front about it in China.

Time to start using Bing, people.

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I know… “the cost of living is dying – everybody pays”.  The founder of Taco Bell, Glen W. Bell Jr, died.

It’s hardly authentic, but I love Taco Bell.  I grew up in the NW and I know and love authentic mexican food.  I even make it.

But Taco Bell is comfort food.

When I had my wisdom teeth out I asked to stop by TB and got a burrito.  Took it home and put it in a blender.

We drove from Tillamook to Eugene one evening and dad refused to stop until we got to Eugene.  We then went to a Taco Bell.  I was so hungry I opened up my taco and while my folks happened to both look over at the same instant, I literally drooled all over my food.  Still can’t live that one down.

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Nipple biting.  Talk about getting too close to your work.

Some situations are nail-biters. This one’s a nipple-biter.

An off-duty cop was allegedly bitten in the chest outside a Gold Coast bar Sunday night, police said.

At about 9:30 p.m., Fernando Cooper, 31, and an off-duty officer got into a physical confrontation outside Gibson’s Bar and Steakhouse, the Sun-Times reports.

Police who witnessed the event say the officer identified himself, but the other man didn’t back down and continued to assault the cop.

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Update:

What IS it with people anyway?  Why do people assume an invasion, as in “to occupy for gain” when it costs us far more than any monetary gain?

France accuses US of Haitian Invasion.

Our military serves two purposes, neither of which I approve of… disaster relief for other countries and security detail for other countries.

I’m not saying that I don’t think Haiti needs aid – I’m just saying I don’t think our military should be providing it.

Chavez… the simpleton.

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez on Sunday accused the United States of using the earthquake in Haiti as a pretext to occupy the devastated Caribbean country and offered to send fuel from his OPEC nation.

This is like saying “My neighbor covets the living space in my septic tank.”  What POSSIBLE use could we put Haiti to besides a tourist resort?

Note:  I am not likening Haiti to a septic tank.  I’m illustrating the idiocy of Chavez.

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Important Safety Tip for Today.

Do it for the Squirrels…!

Tequila Squirrel returns in another installment.

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Once the brain goes into “art mode” it doesn’t turn off easily.  It actually won’t, barring death, dismemberment, fire,  job loss, or doing Google searches using the wrong words (see below).

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US AG Holder defends choice to try terrorists in US Courts as “a tough call”

The prospect of these dirtbags getting free on technicalities when they are not US citizens but terrorists who have attacked the US on it’s own soil does not make for a tough call.  Trying to figure out how to spin it so your liberal whacked out thought processes are internally consistent, not that is a tough call.

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Obama didn’t have a very tall pole tox leap in order to give “his sternest warning yet” on deficit spending.  Crap, the idiot has been piling fuel on top of the fire since the first day.  He’s been spraying diesel on it and dumping magnesium powder on the flames.

I’d venture to say that it is his first “stern warning” and if not, it’s not far behind.

President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession.

This sounds too much to me like he knows a double-dip recession is already looming (which many of us already knew) and he’s trying to “groom the witness” (himself).

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If you are looking for wheel bearing grease…

For the love of all that is good and holy and innocent, do not… and I repeat – DO NOT use in Google the search term “Lube”.

JUST DON’T DO IT.

As soon as I hit enter, I knew I had made a fatal error.  I’m pretty sure with that one keystroke a thousand kittens died.

Even with a long hot shower and a steel bristle brush, you will never feel clean again.

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Secrets of the Dinosaur Mummy

Update: Shades of Cryptonomicon!  Cryptonomicon is Neal Stephenson’s awesome book addressing cryptology and control of information flow.

So while the idea is not new (it’s been done in distributed systems for a while), it is the first I’ve seen it done by a major entity.  Google is making quite a statement here.

Update #2: As you might know, I have an interest in seeing MESSENGER succeed (it’s one of those things that looks great on your resume if an instrument on the mission package that you worked on succeeds… or if not… you just let it die quietly and a year of your life disappears).  Here’s a really really cool 3D pic from the MDIS instrument.  Click to enlargify it.   Instructions on making the 3D glasses are here.

Here is the info behind that image:

Date Acquired: January 14, 2008
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): NAC image from 108830230 resampled on a topographic map made from more than 80 NAC and WAC images.
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) and Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Scale: Sveinsdóttir crater is about 120 kilometers by 220 kilometers (75 miles by 140 miles).

Of Interest: This graphic shows a portion of the fault scarp Beagle Rupes cutting through the highly elliptical crater Sveinsdóttir in a three-dimensional (3D) representation. Standard 3D glasses (which can be assembled at home), with a red filter in front of the left eye and a blue filter in front of the right one, can be used to view this picture. By combining information from multiple images of the same portion of Mercury’s surface taken under different viewing angles, the topography of the surface was determined. A high-resolution image was then overlaid on the topography map, resulting in this 3D image. In total, over 80 MESSENGER images were used to create this 3D view of Mercury’s surface. As the MESSENGER mission continues, many more images will be acquired, and these additional images will provide views of Mercury’s surface from a variety of illumination conditions and viewing geometries. These myriad views, anchored by topographic profiles to be acquired by MESSENGER’s laser altimeter, will enable large portions of the surface of Mercury to be studied in 3D.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/Planetary Science Institute

Update #3:  Greenspan talking again.  He makes mention of banking institutions failing and whether it is a bad thing.

“It depends on how it is handled and how the liquidations take place. And indeed we shouldn’t try to protect every single institution.”

But here’s the part that bothers me:  Who should we protect and why?  Is it Capitalism if we aim to protect certain institutions?  Fannie and Freddie kind of made sense but you need to answer those questions still.  Given the serious nature of the problem if those two were to default on their secured loans, yes, it was imperative (would have made the Wall Street Crash look like a church picnic and the global economy would come to a screeching halt).  But does this mean we have given up on market forces and capitalism favoring the strongest?  Are we socialist already or are we taking that long downhill slide?  Do we stop protecting additional companies?  If so, why, and if not, why?

Update #4:  Who says education cures “stupid”?  Wall Street Journal is finding out that it doesn’t, when it allows reporters to attack Palin out of emotion rather than fact.

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Secrets of the Dinosaur Mummy.

That’s the name of the show, I think.

So, plague-carrier #2 (the boy) decided to share his disease – The Plague™ – with the rest of the family.  Nice.

When you are sitting up late at night, can’t sleep because you feel unwell, and your ears are ringing perhaps because of massive infusions of Nyquil (or perhaps not) you notice that the world has sort of a surreal timeless quality to it.  Part of it is because you are watching old Star Trek re-runs and thinking “Gosh, that Mariette Hartley sure was hot” and then you’re exposed to old grainy commercials with Lindsay Wagner selling mattresses from a company you don’t recognize.  Another part is because there are ads for singles and you realize that they all look like they are twelve years old.  And they keep showing ads for those damn three-pound roto-tillers, nose-hair trimmers, insulin and diabetes ads, oxy-clean ads, super-putty ads, bad credit ads, and term-life insurance ads.

And the Nyquil.  I mentioned the NyQuil, right?  The corners of the room appear wispy and there’s a light haze in the room, which softens the fact that it all looks like it is tilted somewhat.

Oh, did I forget to mention that the in-laws are here?

So anyway, there’s this totally bitchin’ serving of whacked-out surrealness going on, and then comes an ad for a show that you just aren’t prepared for:

Secrets of the Dinosaur Mummy.

Used to be when we were kids, we were interested in mummies (Go… Tut!), we were interested in dinos… who wasn’t, right?   Well now we have to stack them to get anyone to even so much as twitch.   In the not-to-distant future…

Hot PIck-up Secrets of the Rabid Schizophrenic Joan-Crawford-Channeling Fossilized-Bigfoot-Snarfin’ Leisure-Suit Dinosaur Shark Mummy on the Love Boat (guest starring Adrienne Barbeau, David Hasselhoff, and Ricardo Montalban)

That almost sounded normal and pretty good.  Where’s my damn Nyquil…?

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Drudge posted a pic right above a caption “Obama supporters ready for a fight”.  The pic:

Shown here is the CNN Headline News story room, apparently.

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I like it when crazy people have the grace to know it and embrace it.  Man rides out hurricane on his porch.

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