Thu, 01 Mar 2007
15:43
Hey look, everyone! It's Jimmy Wales! The Objectivists value truth and integrity above all else, right?
So, Jimmy Wales thinks that using a pseudonym is the exact same thing as claiming credentials one does not have?
WHAT A COMPLETE FUCKING FOOL.
Talk all you want. Don't mean a thing.
Best get walkin', son.
Apples and Oranges
Tue, 29 Mar 2005
16:09
Risk Management Alternatives base themselves in Canada in order to avoid
military strikes by outraged Americans. They claim that American federal law
prohibits them from disclosing their physical mailing address. They claim not
to have Caller ID installed at their place of business (a simple and affordable
technology which very few private residences are without), and so demand that
YOU give them your telephone number before they will even bother to check and
see if it belongs in their databases. They block display of their own telephone
number at its origin, removing the option to have one's telephone company block
their calls.
I conclude that Risk Management Alternatives is not a legitimate organization in
terms of offering value or conducting business. To the contrary, I conclude that
Risk Management Alternatives is in fact a group of illegal immigrants chained
to their telephones in a boiler-room basement who engage in harassment and fraud,
and that any associated website was constructed by delinquent pubescents, likely
from former Soviet bloc countries, for the purpose of furthering that fraud.
(Also, there is no such thing as a "personal business matter". A matter is either
personal, or it is business. It cannot be two contradictory things simultaneously
unless one redefines the words in complete defiance of their commonly accepted meanings.)
The truth about Risk Management Alternatives
Wed, 11 Aug 2004
18:33
Hat tip to The Agitator for the
mention, despite the lack of link, since it led me to a
lengthy and informative rant from the woman herself.
I've had customers send back the roasted beet salad of red and gold beets roasted with garlic and parsley because it didn't taste like tin-flavored canned beets they loved growing up. Or how about the young man that substituted an extra helping of mashed potatoes for the buttery green beans I put with my roasted chicken because they tasted "too fresh". One of my best customers "loved my cooking," he said. At the time we featured a sirloin coated with a savory crumb cake like topping of bleu cheese. He'd order the steak extra well, scrape off the topping, pour A-1 all over the steak and everything else on the plate then after taking a bite and chewing with great gusto and pleasure gave me enthusiastic thumbs up. I said to him through my open kitchen view, "Sir, the applause is all yours. I had nothing to do with that piece of meat you're eating."
UPDATE: Colorado Kitchen also hosts
"Zwei Nights", for the homosexual crowd seeking a non-bar atmosphere:
Presenting Gillian Clark of the Colorado Kitchen
There are such a large variety of restaurants in this town that one needn't go hungry if my menu doesn't satisfy. If I am constantly changing my menu to suit every taste but my own good taste and culinary sensibility, then I am certain my food would be lousy. I can only cook what is me and what is in my heart and head and palate. When Colorado Kitchen first opened we got complaints from many about not doing carry-out -- its just not that kind of food, I would explain. One woman accused me of not serving the black community to the extent that a black chef should. "Black people need carry-out." She insisted. She also criticized my food for not being "black enough." I assured her that my food was as black as I was. There are countless black kitchens in DC and even more carryouts. And just as they don't fill every niche, neither will Colorado Kitchen.
[...]
The servers often hate to say no to the customer that insists that I broil the crab cakes or deep fry their flounder. I explain to them that they are in my restaurant. And they must have the flounder the way I make it. Personally, I prefer the way Herbert von Karajan conducts Beethoven's Third Symphony. But I would never ask Zubin Mehta to finish the Adagio with the hesitant 3/8 that Herb finishes with. Nor would I stop a production of Hamlet and ask them to insert a couple of lines from Macbeth because I think they go well in there.
"Colorado Kitchen is very family-oriented, very G-rated," Clark says. "It's patterned after a grandmother-style place. There's no alcohol, but there are 25 different choices in sodas."
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Sat, 27 Mar 2004
05:06
Realizing that in the end, I can do nothing do for those I love.
But the reverse -- that there's really nothing they can do for me
either -- doesn't seem to depress me as much.
Either way, it makes every moment more precious.
An unpleasant thought
Tue, 16 Mar 2004
17:08
Or so said the sign on one of the local churches, recently. Had to send a picture
of that to the bossman; maybe I'll put it up here.
That, and other people talking about what a mess Detroit is, reminded me of the
weeks I spent there a couple years back. I was involved in a project to remove
pipe organ components from the inside of a church, which had suffered the most
severe water damage I'd seen to that point in my half-assed career. It was a
primarily black folks' church, Baptist, and one of the most beautiful old stone
and stained glass buildings I've ever seen without being overly big and pretentious
to the point of unseemliness; it was also just one of many churches all along that
main drag on the left as you head toward downtown. But on the right, every other
home was burned-out or demolished, the neighborhoods full of grand old houses
surrounded by dilapidation and filth, and though I wasn't nervous while on the job
or staying at the temporary apartment, I was still glad to leave and come home.
The absolute best moment was early one morning in the middle of the week; as usual
I was the first one up, and had settled down to my coffee when the phone rang. I
politely took a message from the church lady, to the effect that the normal organ
guy had been called out of state due to a death in the family and that there would
be a replacement that morning. When the boss got up a bit later, he had no more
chewed me out and given me orders to immediately wake him in the future instead of
taking messages, than the phone rang. The ensuing conversation on his end was more
or less akin to this:
"Hello."
(beat)
"Uh huh."
(beat) (beat)
"Oh no."
(beat)
"You didn't!"
(by this time he's reached the gleeful cackling and howling stage)
"OH NOOO! (beat) Oh my lord...no, I give you my word we would never
make your hair *any* grayer than it already is..."
When he was finally off, he was able to relay in between coughing fits
and snorting tears the following anecdote: The substitute organist who
had come in that morning, ready to play, had for some reason failed to
notice the heavy dropcloth draped over the console (keyboard), or the
collection of removed parts assembled in the gallery and surrounded by
ropes with warning signs that YOUR ORGAN IS BEING WORKED ON, or
even the enormous metal ladder leading from the floor by the console up,
up into the organ chamber itself; and oblivious to their meaning, had pulled
off the dropcloth, sat down at the console and hit the big red ON switch...the
spectacular result being that all the plaster which had fallen off the
walls during the rain and settled inside the pipes to dry was blasted
by high pressure air, out of those pipes and into the entire church as
one vast cloud which then settled upon the baffled organist, making him
appear to the startled church secretary when he knocked on her office
door like nothing so much as a victim of a full-scale anthrax attack.
So instead of going to work, we went and had a leisurely breakfast.
(By the time we got there less than two hours later, the place was
immaculate. That secretary must have really put the fear of the
insurance people into them.)
I don't have pictures from that job scanned in, but I do have others from
when we worked on
a different
Baptist church. Moving a wooden pipe more than 20 feet long and weighing
more than 250 pounds is already an interesting enough experience; factor in
doing it by hand, with the knowledge that even the slightest ding on the
wood will cause agonized screams from the boss and possible severe deductions
from your pay, and you've got a recipe for sheer fun.
But it was fun, and I'd love to do it again.
It's Not About the Organ
Sun, 14 Mar 2004
01:10
Another pre-blog repost, with an update. (March 6 2001)
Previously mentioned
here.
I Am An Addict
Fri, 12 Mar 2004
14:45
Another repost of pre-blog material. (May 16 2001)
Better Things To Do
04:36
With a postscriptum of modesty.
Betrayal, and Perception
Thu, 26 Feb 2004
13:38
Following up on Kim's
"Zero Tolerance holiday".
Post Traumatic Stress
Fri, 09 Jan 2004
18:04
Want to read about a cat with at least three lives? Nothing too gross
or unbelievable, just your average heartstring-tugging story. Unless
you don't like cats.
True Stories of Courageous Animals
Thu, 01 Jan 2004
23:13
I think I found my
long lost
twin. (No, not 'cuteasiandudepdx'. The guy at the bottom, 'Tattooed Indian Dude'.)
OMFG
Thu, 25 Dec 2003
04:58
Kim may have lost her job but she doesn't know yet. She's also been out
of work for the past three weeks while these people try to make some
kind of decision (after more than one supervisor told her they wanted
this "resolved as soon as possible").
Title Of the Song
Tue, 02 Dec 2003
21:13
Bloody hell, you'd think I'd seen the worst of it? Remember those UNRESIZABLE FUCKING
WINDOWS? I actually found a site whose popup comment windows
DON'T EVEN HAVE SCROLL BARS, in my Windows
browser OR Linux. I could fit a few comments in the window by making the font smaller than
lawyer-print, but that was all. But astonishingly enough, one's "Page Up" and "Page Down"
keys still function normally, if not one's arrow keys. No idea what combination of silliness
conspired to cause this; don't particularly care. Just one more example of "web designers"
having TOO MUCH CONTROL OVER STUFF THAT SHOULD BE NONE OF THEIR CONCERN. Here endeth the
rant.
Further Down the Spiral
Fri, 05 Sep 2003
18:32
I have a cold. I probably got it from
The Lone Dissenter,
since she recently recovered from one and I was visiting her blog every day
during her illness. (Don't confuse me with facts.) And only days after I'd
started my new multivitamin regimen.
Rants, just rants
Tue, 11 Feb 2003
16:13
"Orange Alert"? Who are they kidding? Someone in Bush's administration has
been watching too many
Prisoner reruns. I'm
expecting to see Rover bouncing down the street any day now.
Bathroom repair has finally begun. Words can't express how pleased I am. We had
to do some cleaning so they could get in here, which should make it easier to do
more once they're done. The cats are staying at a friend's house while the work
of construction continues. Speaking of which...
Kitty had three seizures last week, happening every other day. They still last
under a minute, affecting the right side of his body more than the left;
sometimes he's completely out of it, and sometimes he seems to maintain some
level of awareness, as well as muscle control on the left side -- I try to hold
him still when they happen so he doesn't hurt himself. One more vet visit with
blood work, and if that still doesn't show anything they can do something
about, I'm switching him to a
hypoallergenic diet with digestive enzymes.
(Tranquilizers would be just as expensive, and if he ever missed a dose the
seizures would likely return worse than ever.)
Also, my hard drive that can't be more than a year old is slowly dying. I've
managed to get everything off of it that I care about, and am limping along with
frequent crashes until an opportunity to replace it comes along. I've got a
slightly smaller drive I can throw in, and a Ghost backup of my installed OS,
so I should just need to reinstall a small handful of programs.
long time no blog
Mon, 11 Nov 2002
00:10
I quit, for the last time. I am incapable -- in every sense of the word -- of
working for that man, and on that subject, let no more be said. It's taken me
most of a day and a half to regain emotional equilibrium to the point where I
could even keep food down. Kitty had another seizure while I was gone, making
me feel sorry enough for him I gave him a piece of ham (and I don't feed cats
human food, I just don't, it's not something I do). Now time to get back into
typing reports (blegh, at least it's relaxing).
Recovering
Tue, 15 Oct 2002
03:55
Vacation went swimmingly; my grandmother thinks I'm a wonderful listener, and
the colonel thinks I have a good head on my shoulders. I even stunned him into
momentary silence twice with good old macho flash (since my current political
opinions, as I told my other relatives, make him look like a commie).
My kitty had a seizure today while we were cleaning out the refrigerator. At
least I think it was a seizure -- it had all the
classic
symptoms. His appetite
was just fine afterward, and right now he's snoozing soundly by my feet. If it
happens again, time for a vet visit.
Been helping a friend set up a dedicated firewall for his home network, getting
back into the swing of things as it's been a while since I got this down and
dirty. Luckily the tools and documentation are vastly improved from even a few
years ago.
My life is messy, but I know where mostly everything is, and I have my health.
Back in the Saddle
Fri, 16 Aug 2002
22:00
Looks like the vast majority, if not all, of my recent hardware woes have been
due to failed memory -- been running over 24 hours now without a single crash,
either in the operating system or applications.
MemTest86 is a great free tool you can use
to diagnose bad RAM. And when you buy new RAM, make sure it's REGISTERED ECC.
Your peace of mind, indeed your very sanity, are too precious to risk.
Having vanquished these particular demons, I just got The Call and hope to be
working for two days next week. Better than nothing, and understandable when
the boss has to split his time between so many projects. I just wish we were
more capable of working without his direct supervision -- we've done it twice
now, conferring with him by phone, and it went better than I expected. And
it's not like we'll be doing anything too demanding, from the sound of it.
So I still hate the world, but it's that low simmering kind of hate, not the
full-on boiling over. Not to mention that women with muscles, like the
lovely
Charlie Dimmock make life more bearable. (That's the Brits for you --
how "stuffy" can people be who begin their description with "Famed
for her lack of supportive underwear...") I just think she looks good when
she's swinging a sledgehammer, and at those times it's not her chest I'm
looking at, it's her arms.
The One You Love To Hate
Tue, 13 Aug 2002
18:05
Too many people love being online because it allows them to say things to
others that, if they said them in person instead of at a safe distance,
would earn them an instant ass-beating that made them piss blood the rest
of their life. Why yes, there are plenty of other things going wrong -- and
not all of them computer related -- but this is the straw that broke my back.
If I could push a button and kill everyone in the world, including myself,
right now I'd do it without a second thought.
But hey, with all this time I've been spending away from the computer, at
least the kitchen is clean.
Dear World: Please die. Thank you.
Sun, 11 Aug 2002
04:23
I hate computers. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em.
That is all.
Except that I am so glad I have learned the value of backing up.
All computers suck
