I See What You Did There, Google

So all of a sudden, all the controls for this blog that you don't ever see, changed.  Half of them disappeared.  I clicked around and didn't find what I wanted so I clicked on the Blogger+ link on one page.  It took me through creating a Google+ profile* and then SHAZAM all my settings and controls were accessible again.

*for which I have absolutely no use, and which I largely skipped.  Google+ can go straight to hell as far as I care.  The more they change stuff here, the more I start thinking about jumping to a self-hosted blog site.  Sure traffic would take a hit, but I don't blog for you anyway so

...oh, and it's so nice that they decided to change the way it works when I search through my old posts.  What a pain in the [deleted] Blogger is being just now.

edit: nevermind, it's MORE useless crap.  Still looking for the control that used to be where it used to be. :(

Keep It To Yourself!

Note to this guy and everybody like him: You don't want your nasty stanky smoke in your car, what makes you think I want it in my air? Roll up your window or stop smoking you nasty [deleted]!




And, to the guy in the nice new Mercedes in front of me on the way home: If you don't want your nasty butts in your ashtray, what makes you think I want them on my Texas?! Don't throw your trash on my ground, just  stop smoking already!

WHY Do People...

I sell stuff on eBay for walking-around money.  I sold three things in the last couple of weeks, worth around $400 total.  NONE of those winning bidders has paid.

• You bid on an auction and click a dialog agreeing that this is a commitment to pay
• You get an e-mail telling you you have won
• You even got an invoice from the seller
• And you don't pay?  

WTHPPL?

HDR Photograps Suck

Sorry, they do.  I just scrolled through several pages of the website of a wedding photographer who does HDR apparently as a matter of course.  It looks like crap, all of it.  HDR is a gimmick that looks cool the first time you see it.  Life isn't a cartoon, people, let's not have it colored like one!

Why Do People Say Wikipedia is Unreliable/Not Reliable/Not Trustworthy etc.?

The analogy finally came to me!  I realized this morning that wikipedia is exactly as reliable and authoritative as going down the street and asking a random person what they know about some subject.  This is not exactly the same as an article in The World Book Encyclopedia for trustworthiness.

So: if you use Wikipedia as a reference in a college paper and your professor rejects it, it's because your instructor knows that a source edited by random people without any sort of credentials is as only almost as good as the paper it's written on.

Everybody Caught A Case of the Stupid?

First Blogger went and cocked up their interface, now Photobucket?  Well, Blogger at least saved all my old posts.  Photobucket decided to just flush a thousand photos - with links all over the internet going back to my album - straight down the crapper.  AND the interface sucks.

Thanks guys.  I think I'll find my own image server.

Update a couple days later: Well it turns out I was looking in the wrong account. I have TWO photobucket accounts and I only ever use ONE of them. The other, apparently, I had totally forgotten about. I sent a complaining e-mail to their tech support and they got right back to me trying to be helpful, at which point I wish I had done a little-harder looking before I sent the e-mail. The interface now is less great than it was, but at least my pictures are still there.

P.S. The New Blogger Interface Sucks

To use. I'm pretty sure to the reader it looks the same but trust me on this end of the keyboard it is stupid.

Mitt Robmoney is a MOIDERAH!!

This election season is going to be pretty ugly, I'm afraid. Three months out, and we have an ad that all but points the finger of blame at Romney for the death of a woman he may never have known was alive in the first place.

Follow the bouncing ball:

• Mitt Romney worked at Bain Capital
• Bain Capital closed the plant where sumdood in the ad worked
• Sumdood lost health insurance, and his family lost the family coverage
• Sumdood's wife got sick
• She died
• Ergo, Mitt Romney KILLED HER WITH HIS OWN TWO HANDS zOMG@!!!!

Except that:

• Romney wasn't running the company any longer when the plant was closed down
• The guy's wife came up sick THREE YEARS after the closure
• Somehow he can't get a job with insurance, and neither can she, in three years?
• P.S. nobody owes this guy a job, and the company couldn't be saved or Bain would have saved it like they did all the profitable companies Bain DID save.

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They think you're stupid. My daughter asked who we were voting for, this last election. I told her Ted Cruz. She said oh, no - she saw something on TV that he was a stealer! I told her it was the guy running against Cruz that said it, and we're voting for Cruz. The ads you will see later this year are designed to appeal to either your hatred of all things not-Obama, or your sheer uneducated idiocy. Let's just hope Romney can keep his PACs off the same tactic.

Hoooooooooooly shit.

My next-door neighbor has two pit bull terriers. They are a year old, and largely untrained. They live outside. They have broken THROUGH our common fence at least three times, finally stopped by hog wire lining on their side.

Say hello to Mimi and Skittles, at my back door last week.



These dogs are stereotypically sweet, gentle animals. If they were any other breed, you would think they were perfect family dogs. Wouldn't hurt a fly, come when called, etc. But they are pit bulls. Click that picture and zoom in. See how the "top" ear of the dog on the right is a little bloody-looking inside? It was almost bitten off by the dog on the left, in a fight over who got to sit on the couch.

I was sitting here minding my own business just now, and I heard the neighbordude holering like he meant it. I killed the TV and went and cracked the back door to listen. He was splitting his attention between Mimi and his daughter, who is like 4-5 years old. The dog probably outmasses the girl by 10 or 20 pounds. She had tried to take something from the dog. She did not sound greatly reassured that "it's only a scratch."

Jesus H. Christ! You can't just TELL a four year-old to leave the sweet lovable doggy alone, and to remember to never try to take something away from the dog! If a chihuahua nips at a child's hand, it stings. If a pit nips at a kid's hand it's like an iron bear trap.

Now don't get me wrong: I think it is stupid for government to ban ownership of pit bulls. Pit bulls are just dogs, after all. Big, strong dogs, but just dogs. Dogs ALL nip, especially when they are young, especially when they are untrained - pits are no exception. But they also have this little feature where, every once in a great while, they get a little crazy over not-much. Having small children and pit bulls in company is a nasty way to play russian roulette.

Just a scratch. This time.

Chutzpa: But Yer Honor, My Client Is An Orphan!

Of all the jackhole moves, this is one of the lowest I have ever seen in politics. President Obama, with the eager participation of his surrogates in the press, is calling Mitt Romney a closed book. Says if he doesn't have anything to hide, he'll publish his tax returns & bank records & whatnot.

Hello? Does nobody remember how the Obama team scrubbed Barry right off the face of the planet? What were his grades like in school? We don't know, they are sealed. How about his application to the bar? Sealed. Why can't his wife practice law anymore? Can't tell, that's sealed too. What did he write while leading the Law Review? Not telling. Don't even get me STARTED on his fakeass mothafukkin FAKE birth certificate they produced after spending ONE-POINT-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS to prevent it being published. President Obama, having promised one of the most open and honest administrations EVAR has had one of the least-open most-shady administratiosn EVAR. Chicago-style back room deals all over the place. Meetings at the coffee shop across the street so visitors wouldn't be on visitor logs. Refusals to answer FOIA requests, and using Executive Privilege to block congressional inquiries into MURDER . . . and they have the GALL to accuse ROMNEY of hiding stuff?

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The title, by the way, is a reference to lawyer for the twins who killed their parents in california, begging for mercy on the grounds they were orphans. There is a special kind of divine Justice for people who try to pull stuff like this. Too bad the country has to be destroyed due to the droves of Low-Informed Voters out there, before the Judgement comes.

If You Say This You Sound Stupid: Deprecate vs. Depreciate

Deprecate: talking bad about something

Depreciate: making something into something of lesser value

That one little "i" makes a great big difference. It is the difference between knowing what you are trash-talking about and sounding like you don't know what the language is worth. Sad but true.

If You Say This You Sound Stupid: Decimate vs. Decimate

Decimate: 1/10th destroyed or killed. This word came from the Roman military punishment of killing off 10% of a military unit for bad behavior or performance. Decimation is bad.

Destroy and/or Obliterate: decimate plus the other 90%. If something is destroyed it is broken beyond repair or injured byeond recovery. If something is obliterated, all traces of it are gone.

English user pro tip: DEStroy and obliterATE do NOT combine into the compound word "Decimate." You are a jerk if you use decimate when you mean destroy or obliterate. Sad but true.

Give One Example of Passive Aggressive Behavior

Your bum-ass grown "man" son who only has a job because he works with your husband, lives with you. You resent it deep down on the inside, but you would never say so or even admit it to your self. You are "happy to be helping him out" as far as anybody knows, including you.

But

Your daughter has a little girl, and she sometimes comes and visits. You like your visiting grandbaby to be happy, right? She wants a pet, but your daughter's apartment won't allow it. So you got a hamster in a little pink wire cage. It has a wheel for the hamster to exercise in there. A loudass squeakin-ass mothereffing LOUD squeaky wheel. That the hamster runs on for HOURS every night sounding like the end of the world.

The cage has to go somewhere, right? Well, your son's room is next door to somewhere. The door to his room is about as soundproof as a sheet of paper, but he probably won't mind a little squeaking now and again. So probably it will be no problem at all, if you don't cover the cage so the little darling hamster will sleep all night in the dark.

Passive aggressive behavior example number two:

Your son won't cover the cage, either.

The Echo Chamber

Sounds like a gunshot in the desert. Read this and be amused for 10 minutes.

Hat tip: Borepatch

You People Suck At This.

Austin is a city with over three-quarters of a million people. They just had an election a couple days ago. It was a Saturday, even, so no excuses that they had to work instead of voting. There is nearly a 100% voter registration rate, so that leaves only one possible conclusion to be drawn.

45,000 people voted. Out of nearly 800,000**. That's not even 6% of the people giving enough of a damn about their own local government to spend an hour and go vote, much less actually pay attention to the candidates and where they stand on The Issues. The mayor was re-elected with fewer than 21,000 votes.

Fail. Total fail. The population skyrockets over the decades, and the number of actual voters goes down. It's almost enough for me to wish that California AND Austin would just break off and fall into the ocean*. Preferably on a day when they are having a marathon for RUNNERS on the public STREET.

Oh, but your vote doesn't make a difference. Don't bother. Besides, there's a game to go to . . . .

I don't want to hear shit from ANYBODY in Austin about their government. You people don't care. Shut up.
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*Yes, I know.

**Okay, so only half of you are registered to vote. Whoopy-doo, you got 9% instead of 6% turnout. You still suck.

Seriously, Facebook?

I guess when you get away from Facebook for a few months, it is normal for them to add more crap. Now there are a half-dozen different little windowpanes full of nothing, instead of just a couple. Great. That totally makes me want to be on there even more, now.

*ahem*

How Some People Get To Be As Old As They Are, I SWEAR!

I like to think, for the sake of humanity, that I am not so very outstanding. But then stuff happens. Somebody is looking FOR something while looking AT what they are looking FOR, and they miss it. They read something and fail to comprehend, when the answer is laid out in plain American*. They walk in front of traffic, they bypass safety measures in dangerous ways and then use equipment and lose parts of themselves. Every once in a while, I ask myself (and sometimes I ask an eavesdropping co-worker) how these people managed to survive to adulthood.

Case in point (the thing that set me off just a little, just now): I told you something was dangerous, and then told you how to work around the danger to an effective (i.e., known-effective) solution. Then sumdood mentioned that a counterpoint to my article is another article pointing out that the government recommends not working around the dangers, because nobody ever did a taxpayer funded study to prove what millions of Americans already found out first-hand.

People, look, I know some of you mean well, but PLEASE either read more critically or chose your examples better.

********

American. Not English. Deal with it.

Madness at Work

VFD: Hey, when is the drawing for this thing?
Guido: Tonight.
VFD: Thanks, WHEN is the drawing.
NJ: Why, are you having second thoughts?
VFD: No, I just want to know what time I need to call everybody to make fun.

********

There were only a handful of intelligent souls where I work today (who didn't buy lottery tickets). Last night I said I'd bet my life at a billion to one odds and today I'm proving I won't bet a dollar at 170whatever million to one odds. Sure it's a half billion dollars, but you're as likely to win if you play as if you don't, all the way out to a half dozen decimal places.

That said, if I can't get in to work tomorrow because everybody with a key called in rich, I probably won't be too happy about the $4 in gas I burned to get there and back home!

And no, to counter an often-repeated argument, nobody HAS TO win. This is what, 18 or 19 times they've drawn for this jackpot. The payout keeps going up with NOBODY winning.

*******

At least 10% of the people employed at my company bought into the office pool for one reason: they would suffer severe psychological trauma if the pool hit the jackpot and they weren't in on it. I wholeheartedly endorse this as a low dollar insurance plan for future mental stability. If you think you might be kicking yourself tomorrow, by all means go buy a ticket or ten. Just remember you wouldn't have won anyway, so don't feel too bad when you don't win.

Captions For The Win

This is timely, in light of the current lawsuit. The people who grow corn would like you to believe their commercials telling you that High Fructose Corn Syrup is the perzact same thing as table sugar. Your body can't tell the difference, they say. You know who can tell the difference? The researchers who did this study at Princeton University.

Well, it turns out HFCS makes lab rats fat. It also makes you fat, somehow even though the corn industry says it metabolizes the exact same as cane sugar. Riiiight. Anyhow, I showed this picture around the office, and I was NOT the only one who was thinking this. You are not supposed to laugh.

Google does horrible things to image quality to make the picture fit. Click the picture to see it full size.

If You Drive Like This, You STINK!

~or~ Austin Tailgaters: It's Like an Extreme Sport or Something

I have a Bad Drivers category on this blog because they stink at it around here. As we were driving back from San Antonio, my Darling Wife took a turn at the wheel and I was freed up to show you how you know you are in Austin. These sons of guns have no clue or else they don't care that they are taking EVERYBODY's lives in their hands, then holding on with just two fingers and running around in circles shaking their hands. We have lots of fatal collisions on the roads in Central Texas. It's a wonder we don't have more. Chalk it up to Grace and good crumple zone engineering, I guess.



The stripes are four feet long, ten feet apart. You do the math.



All of these were taken while we were going full highway speed. 70MPH speed limit and, in most cases, plus as much as they think they can get away with and not get stopped by the Police.



This lot passed us by. I took pictures of the truck tailgating the car in front, then the car behind the truck tailgating the truck, then the car behind tailgating the car behind. You don't need to see the stop-motion cartoon, so here' s the last in the sequence.









Seriously, they almost all do this on a regular basis



It's not NASCAR, people - drafting on the highways is a bad idea!



Do you have any idea what happens in a crash at 75MPH? Neither do these people. Yes, seriously they follow this close.



This is how they avoid collisions. Speed up behind and then jam the brakes.



At full speed and then some.



Tailgating leads to another type of typical Austin dick move: If they don't leave space, you HAVE to get in where you fit in. Then, because you wanted to be going slower than the person you cut off, you JAM THE BRAKES right after you CUT THEM OFF



I think the Department of Public Safety intends this as a sick joke or something. The driving public sure as [deleted] don't seem to pay it any mind.



The typical following distance at highway speed is from 20 to 40 feet. The safe following distance is several hundred feet.