Gather your limbs, shake the earth from your flesh!

- I'm finally out of the Peoples' Republik of Kalifornia; although the shine is starting to wear off of the Pacific Northwest (incessant rain wears down just about everything), it doesn't take much to remind me how much more I like it here, despite the weather's personality.

- I'm looking for property; there isn't much that can persuade me to buy land in any county touching the ocean, as Dagon worshippers seem to have the run of the territory, and the edicts issuing from their seats of power are both strange and onerous, reminiscent of the vague, undirected frustration of my previous haunts. (And I am reminded of the upper levels of the Inferno.) At any rate, the American Redoubt is lookin' good.

- On a positive note, the toy selection is much better up here, and private-party transactions aren't the subject of breathless, arm-flailing hissies.

- Regular posting is back, but no promises to frequency.

Also for "veracity"

Winter is Coming

Happy dance!

HBO has greenlighted highly anticipated fantasy series "Game of Thrones."

The premium network has picked up the project for a first season debut next spring (below is the first released photo from the series). Nine episodes plus the pilot have been ordered. Production will begin in Belfast this June.

Let's hope that this doesn't go the way of Legend of the Seeker, and takes more of a tack consistent with HBO's previous works, but without turning off the tap early, a la Rome.

A clove of prevention is worth a bulb of cure

The stinking rose more closely resembles its namesake as of late:

If you want to get rich in China, the way to do it this year is to buy and sell garlic. The Chinese have always had a taste for the bulb vegetable that makes your breath smell but now there has been an incredible surge in its price, which makes the property boom look static by comparison. Garlic has been a better investment this year than gold or silver.

Of course, I fully expect doubt to be cast upon any preventative measures (other than properly shielding one's sneeze, or the compulsive washing of hands, as advised by the High Priestess of HHS) that are of non-pharmaceutical origins, and doubly so if they're just "weeds". (Unless it's actual weed, in which case, you'll need to get a "green card" and live on the West Coast.)

"Those wacky Chinese! Don't they know that commodities are dead, and plants are only meant to be potential cures for cancer in obscure equatorial countries?"

Now, I'm not advocating that you should sell your house and buy rural real-estate for the purposes of growing vast tracts of garlic (typically, you should have at least a few more reasons, just for the sake of argument), since domestic consumption is likely to remain low. Come what may, I'll be planting everything available to me in January.

Pharmaceutical companies do very little of their own research, and have a long history of copying over the shoulder from folk medicine. My suggestion: cut out the middle-man. I'm already supplementing my diet with garlic, Vitamin D3, Vitamin C, St. John's Wort and green tea; I suggest you do the same. (Associated article here; if the strains that are currently active are indeed causing a severe cytokine response, one would ideally avoid foods that boost that response... This is for informational purposes only, your mileage may vary, I'm not responsible for your lack of personal research, etc.)

(Via SurvivalBlog.)

Ursatile thinkers

It came to my attention recently that Project Grizzly is now available online through the National Film Board of Canada.

Enjoy.

Evidently, that sign didn't work

Caturday Night Special, Episode 0x3C

I harvested the heirloom potatoes last weekend, all grown in containers from ten to twenty gallons:

Purple Viking: Starting weight: 1.25lbs Harvest weight: 9.00lbs Return: 720%

Carola: Starting weight: 1.25lbs Harvest weight: 7.25lbs Return: 580%

Average return: 650%

My best performing investment so far, and I have plenty of seed potatoes for the next round. I'll be putting up the Fall garden in the next few weeks here (between assignments), and Seed Savers Exchange has starting shipping their garlic, for those so interested.

I'm interested to know if this works

Wish-List Addendum

Really, it warrants no explanation beyond "DO WANT".

How to chafe a perfectionist

Overall, Liberal Fascism was not as easy to read as I hoped it would be (which echoes Elusive Wapiti's review of the book some months ago). Goldberg seems to have trouble with the idea of a strong central thesis, and this is reflected in his writing-style; while the text is rich in references and information that are unequivocally damning to the Left's ancestry in America, it has more tangents than a analytic-geometry textbook.

Nevertheless, a patient reader with unflagging interest in history should enjoy the fruit of Goldberg's efforts. As a repository of easily-available ammunition in the Kulturkampf, this text is second-to-none.

Caturday Night Special, Episode 0x39

What a week. Fences, driving, fires, cats, shelves, code-wrangling, commodities, tourists, class preparations, a gun-show, and a lovely young lady.

Regular posting may resume... Whenever. Likely this week.

They say he's crazy, but he has a good time

We Have Nothing To Say

I'm mildly surprised that this wasn't posted (mysteriously) until just recently, but then again, considering it's a Canadian broadcast and wholesome-yet-funny entertainment, perhaps it isn't so surprising after all.

This rant has been a trail-marker for my posting and commenting habits for many years, and it is past due to be shared.

Sublimity

Now, this might be coming from a biased position, as I already love Corelli, but this particular concerto stirs something deep within my soul.

Incidentally, in comparison to other cultures, this is merely one of the areas where Western Civilization shines brighter than a thousand suns. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Corelli, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Debussy, Handel, Strauss, Liszt, Vivaldi, Verdi...

Bring it.

I love a happy ending

I'd change the name to "Wolverine Motors"

My hat is off to this man, and his excellent model of salesmanship:

Mark Muller, owner of Max Motors, is upgrading an earlier sales gimmick in which he offered new truck buyers to choose between a $250 gas voucher or a gun voucher. The website says the dealer is giving away guns again "due to popular demand."

"Muller calls the initial deal an overwhelming success," Business Insider reports. "He also says it generates a lot of publicity and really angers 'liberals.'"

Muller tells CNN he is won't be handing out the free weapons personally but will give buyers a voucher to use at a gun store.

The AK-47 isn't typically a "precision" rifle, but the name has universal recognition, and the ZOMG-factor of getting one (via voucher) with one's new truck should not be discounted. To the contrary, it seems to be working out for Mr. Muller just fine.

Personally, I'd rather have the extra cash from buying a used truck (a depreciating asset of flexible value), then use the surplus to buy several quality firearms and corresponding ammunition by the case, but that's just me.

Waiting

While at a birthday party last weekend, some time after we had declined to give a snort about fireworks that may or may not be seen from the roof (we pondered, drinks in hand, of questionable ability to do so, had we the desire), but sometime before the inevitable close of the evening (sometime the next morning), we sat at the fire-pit, conversing. We, meaning one of the more elderly men (young in spirit, though, and try convincing him otherwise) and myself.

We quibbled about our gardens at length, and about everything else that had passed since we last spoke. Inevitably, the discussion shifted to the state of my personal life. Specifically, the notable lack of a better-looking, better-dressed, better-behaved complement to my shambling mess (to complete that tired old Victorian stigma), complete with lady-parts and parasol.

I shrugged. "The last one didn't work out", I offered. "I owed her better than wasting her time with something that wasn't about to work."

He nodded, and swirled the quasi-alchemical mixture in his Mason jar, as if attempting to read it like so many tea leaves.

At length he said, "You need to find yourself a cute little waitress somewhere and settle down."

I was immediately taken with the image, and had nothing further to say beyond, "Yep."

Odds and Ends

I noticed that it's been about a year since I started this virtual-soapbox, and I wanted to take a moment to thank those of you that continue to stop by to read and comment and/or continue to suffer my musings on your respective blogs. Suffice to say, it feeds my ego to know that others do read this drivel, but (and more importantly) I do edify myself in the process. So, for this and anything else I missed, a profound and heartfelt thank-you, dear readers.

Also, a few random folk have been asking about the whereabouts of the bloggers in "Deep Hibernation" (see sidebar); the recurring theme is that blogging is subordinate to the goings-on of their lives, which is both good and proper. We hate to see them go, but the truth is that they are never really gone, but with us in spirit when we post. (Much like Obi-Wan Kenobi's ghost, but with less cryptic advice.)

To conclude, I realize that someday, perhaps sooner rather than later (but not by choice), I will give this up; not today, not tomorrow, but inevitably, for whatever reason will serve, by my will or no. Regardless of how or when, I do hope that it was entertaining, instructional, or in some other way valuable to you all, and serving perhaps some greater purpose in the designs of the Almighty.

May you all be richly blessed in the days to come, shielded from machinations of the vain and the snares of the foolish; keep your heads down, and your powder dry!

One Man's Trash

Last night, after working on the MythTV box for a while, my long-time friend and I plug in a hard-drive that I had sitting on my desk for an indeterminate amount of time, as I really couldn't remember where it came from (this happens when there's more than ten floating around at any given time). New, SATA, 200+GB drive. I had figured that it belonged to the system I built for Elle a while back (who, as a budding Linux acolyte, I am very proud of).

My friend (we will name him Sisco) fires up the tower and prepares to format, but notices that there happens to be an NTFS partition already on the drive. After some discussion, I figured that I had tried to install XP from Elle's HP laptop (another story of frustration and woe), but being unsure of its nature we decide to investigate further, as the partition size isn't consistent with standard operating procedure. Sisco reboots the tower, this time with Archlinux on a USB-drive, and we start scanning the contents of the directories on the drive: Firefox history, cookies, Documents, Firefox bookmarks, etc; nothing matches up with any expectations that we had for our prospective users.

Curiouser and curiouser; we attempt to boot the drive by itself. Nothing. XP is completely borked.

Sisco ups the ante, and starts a Ubuntu Live CD to examine the contents of the drive previously unviewable from the command-line.

The user, who shall remain safely anonymous, had copies of the user's passport (scanned), résumé, and his William D. Ford Direct-Loan disbursement information (which is to say, everything) on the Desktop. Needless to say, there was enough information here to cause all sorts of mayhem with his life, and probably the lives of his references with a little additional phishing.

Finally, a beautiful display of irony: the résumé lists "advanced computer skills" as one of the user's talents.

It turns out that the drive had been given to me some years ago by a roommate that inherited it from another roommate previous to my occupation of the house; I imagine that since XP was shot, they assumed that the drive itself was trashed and subsequently ditched it. Luckily for him, Sisco and I ended up with the drive (the sensitive data will be destroyed, and likely irreplaceable data will be emailed/mailed to him), but not everyone is so fortunate.

Folks, please, if you value your privacy, take some time to either fix or destroy this sort of sensitive information on your hardware when upgrading or tossing your desktops or laptops. It's an easy mistake, but that doesn't make it any less costly in the end; this means using something stronger than Mickeysoft at some point (see here: dd (command)), or physically destroying the drive. Encryption is not only highly recommended, but borderline mandatory. (I'll have some links up in a later post, as this is a rather broad topic.)

Lastly, if you are not joined at the hip to a Windows-only application for work, I would suggest scrolling to the top of the page and giving Ubuntu a try; it runs in memory for those trying it without an install, it's intuitive, clean, infinitely more secure than Windows or Apple, and it's free. FREE. As in, "free beer".

Join us.

Flask, and ye shall receive

Finally, a welcome respite from a week that was sorely lacking in my recommended daily intake of awesome.

Smithers, release the booze-hounds!

jeffrey Published: June 6, 2009 9:57 PM

Well, after the big reaction here, we went ahead and ordered them and I think they will be in next week!

How awesome? This awesome.