December 8, 2023

2023.12.08
Survey Time!
I love slippery socks, and the little scoopy slides you can do. Melissa on the other hand hates the idea of risking a fall and even prefers those ones with rubber traction

What's your view?

A. Yay! Slippery Socks! Wheeeeee!
B. Boo! Lets get without risking breaking our necks...

December 8, 2022

2022.12.08
And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
2 Corinthians 11:14-15
Seems like a useful bible verse to have around.
The difference between what you want and what you need is what you can carry on a horse.
Hugo Blick

December 8, 2021

2021.12.08
Online feline, relatable feeling.

December 8, 2020

2020.12.08
Cool, cool. Report COVID numbers in Florida, get raided by State Police.

December 8, 2019

2019.12.08
Hello from NOLA! Hearing Nutcracker Suite and Rudolph drift into the hotel room is a little odd given the general climate and newness of the city to us, sort of a "Die Hard is a Christmas Movie!" situation.

December 8, 2018

2018.12.08
I "won" my group's "Ugly Sweater Contest", but mostly because I sang the Imperial March as I took the runway. #cargurus

December 8, 2017

2017.12.08
So I volunteered as a helper at my local elementary school "Hour of Code" day. Kids K-2 ran little programming games (generally "give step by step instructions to this little robot-y thing to make it to the goal") on iPads, and the 3-5 kids did similar on netbooks.

Some random thoughts:

December 8, 2016

2016.12.08


advent day 8

December 8, 2015

2015.12.08

advent day 8

http://toyland.gizmodo.com/a-music-box-is-secretly-an-engineering-marvel-1746834514 here's why I keep giving music boxes to Cora
School of Honk fundraiser - look for me around 2:49. I need to look less casual sometimes!

The Power of Books! Man, I remember reading the most random stuff from my folks shelves. Of course later I was especially interested in anything that hinted like it could be prurient content...
Also, I love this portrait of the tired King:

But life is not invented for happiness, I do believe. It is made for something else.
King Arthur, T.H.White's "The Book of Merlyn"

animal advent ala emberley day 8

2014.12.08

December 8, 2013

(1 comment)
2013.12.08

advent day 8

December 8, 2012

2012.12.08

advent day 8

GTA:Vice City is out for IOS. Big open world games with missions, guns, and helicopters make me happy.

from this Star Trek: The Animated Series episode

javadvent day 8

2011.12.08



Everything you can imagine is real.
Pablo Picasso

Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil -- might he be the most dangerous Dark Lord of Middle Earth? (Personally I don't think that's how Tolkien rolls, but hey.)
(Oh the Tom Bombadil thing is the same guy who came up with that brilliant R2D2 and Chewbacca as the movers and shakers of the Rebellion.)

umbrellaellaella

2010.12.08

javadvent calendar day 8

2009.12.08



Working at Ambers, I get hopeful she's returned when I hear the garage door opener, then I remember- no garage, must be the furnace. Sigh! (The weird thing is I don't think I've lived in a place with a garage since high school.)
http://www.zefrank.com/zesblog/archives/2009/12/brief_history_o.html - good simplification of the history of us in Afghanistan.
Just voted in the MA senator special primary. Guess it's good there's not been many "(acting) Senator Kirk" headlines, giggles for me aside.

boston is not very warm right now

(5 comments)
2008.12.08
No snow actually in Boston, but SO FRICKIN' COLD.

I so threw myself at that game last week. Sometimes I wish I could selectively apply that kind of single-minded dedication and grind-ability for other things in my life.

I suppose in videogames, there's a certain kind of spoon-feeding that goes on. They're generally pretty good at putting new challenges just at the edge of your abilities, sometimes switching that with something that's pretty actually easy, so you feel nothing but egoboost.

Just like how in school it was the teacher's responsibility to ensure a project or test was feasible, a good game designer keeps the player engaged with tweaking the difficulty and reward structure.

Life in general lacks that kind of ego safety net, and I miss it.


Link of the Moment
This Old House presents Home Inspection Nightmares. I think what scares me most are the situations I wouldn't know enough to avoid myself.


Quote of the Moment
Not every story has explosions and car chases. That's why they have nudity and espionage.
Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, Unshelved, 09-14-08.
Lately my backlog has been filling with more of these Quote of the Day service quotes...


Thinking about EB's idea that we sexually imprint in our early romances; is that where we get our "types" or is that mixing cause & effect?
masukomi You know, how a lot of people have their "types", that the people they date/are attracted to seem to fall in a set of categories.
I browse Drudge Report first, figuring if I can handle the current news at its most lurid and sensationalistically negative, I'll be ok
We went for an Indian lunch Buffet, they had some Bollywood going - possibly just clips - all singing and dancing and bright colors. Great!
Man it's cold. It's like Antarctica cold. Superman at the Fortress of Solitude couldn't take this kind of cold. --not Biloxi Blues, Boston

turkey day photo roundup

(1 comment)
2007.12.08

darn you alarm clock, darn you to heck!

2006.12.08
Ugh, ever have one of those mornings where your primary reaction to the alarm clock is one of disbelief? I think the first words out of my mouth this morning might well have been "No F'in Way"... I thought I'd been sleeping ok this trip, but I don't know what was going on this morning. Maybe it's a "no quite as far West in the timezone" thing, so it's darker than I expected? I dunno.


Quote of the Moment
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Paul Valery

Video of the Moment

--A Hamster in a live action version of the old C=64 game Monty on the Run... I wasn't too familiar with it, but I have respect for the guy who wrote the music... Rob Hubbard. (I especially like his theme to Skate or Die... I should download one of those SID players...)

never underestimate the palate-exploding power of k-centric marketing

(8 comments)
2005.12.08
So yesterday was my first day at my new job. It's interesting working at a small company. Here's one difference: it's entrepenerial. People besides marketing actually think and make jokes about how what they do affects the bottom line. Which is kind of funny; you know your salary, you know what a license for the program costs. That part of the equation is pretty damn stark.


Quote of the Moment
The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes, naturally no one wants to live any other way.
Judith Martin.
Ain't it the truth? Man. I know some people look back on their college days, but to me, high school was an even better blend of some amount of freedom with a near total lack of responsibility. Classes were pre-determined and relatively easy, band provided lots of dates...(one time, at band camp, etc.)


Astute Linguistic Analysis of the Moment
And by the way, I love this new "Talk to Chuck" slogan. It's refreshing to see a little informality from a financial services firm. But more important: so percussive! "Charles Schwab" comprises two of the mushiest syllables you'll ever hear, with those soft, retreating l's and b's and ch's. It was time to add some sticky consonants, and a pair of k's does the trick. Nike, Coke, Starbucks, Kinko's ... never underestimate the palate-exploding power of k-centric marketing.
K-I-R-K...YEAH BABY!

in pursuit of dumb happiness

(9 comments)
2004.12.08
Talking Point of the Moment
(I think I might have first read this idea in Mark Kingwell's In Pursuit of Happiness: Better Living from Plato to Prozac)

Here's a question that came up last night, at the meeting of my UU church "covenant group" -- if you could take a pill or have some kind of procedure that was guaranteed to make you happy but also made you dumb, would you do it? I think that most people want to be happy, but it's almost like they want to be the "right kind" of happy, that there's a sort of meta-unhappiness that we have to deal with now that even if we believed our future self would be too happy to give a dang about makes the whole deal unacceptable. Or maybe people are concerned about how it would affect their families and loved ones, or that they might not be productive, and that makes them meta-unhappy now.

Of course, I've heard of a cynical survey result that a lot of people, especially women, would decline a pill that made them smarter but made their butts bigger.

Let me know what you think. What's more important, smarts or happiness, or do you reject the proposition and think the two are inseperable for you. (Which I think is a bit optimistic.) (Wait, I haven't asked this before, have I? Couldn't find it in the archive.)

snow day!!!

2003.12.08
Heh....Salem, MA is in a state of emergency with only emergency vehicles allowed on the streets...so I get the day off! Man, it's been a long time since I've had a bona fide snow day.

'Course I'm probably just gonna diddle it away, like I did most of this weekend. Well, I got some stuff done, pulled a loveblender edition together, a few miscelaneous online tasks...I guess it's ok being a little more self-indulgent in terms of wasting time because of what I went through this weekend, but still I feel a little guilty.


Link of the Season
Merry Kitschmas! 12 of the very tackiest religious-themed stuff on the market. "Bobble Head Virgin Mary" is my personal favorite.


Quote of the Moment
I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk
John Huston

Image and Link of the Moment
--Pike eats Trout, from this page of the best photos of the past year.

pixeltimes gone bye

2002.12.08
Dot Com Nostalgia of the Moment
Ranjit rocks so hard. If it was for certain obvious issues of gender, other relationships, and geography, I'd totally have his baby. For a Christmas gift, he unearthed some old Pixeltime stuff... including my old pixeltime userpage (javascript popup), with all 105 images I made on it. Yay! It turns out my old pixeltime tribute page had only grabbed about 1/3 of the total... I was pretty creative on that site. (The top image was for the "Your Job" gallery...I guess it was before the "Mucko" shootings in Wakefield. I like the fat guy that I drew though.) I had forgotten that the self-portrait I use at the top of kisrael was designed for use as a pixeltime image.

Ranjit also sent me news of an update to the moonmilk wallpaper gallery. The one of his dog, "Tikko in August", is pretty amazing.


Funny of the Moment
Doctor: I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. Your condition is definitely fatal.
Patient: Oh, no! Well, how long do I have left?
Doctor: 10
Patient: Ten what? Months? Weeks? Ten what?
Doctor: 9

Ad Quote of the Moment
Many of you feel bad for this [discarded] lamp. That is because you're crazy.
Though anyone who enjoyed Tom Robbins' Still Life With Woodpecker might disagree with the sentiment! Or maybe people practicing Shinto? NY Times Sunday Magazine recently had an article on Ikea in their "Design" issue, talking about the idea of disposable, DIY furniture. I wonder why there are no Ikea stores around here?

you want ice cream cone?

2001.12.08
I guess the mysterious female EHS alum (from my guestbook) with the "decent or more than decent" sense of humor gave up on me. Maybe she was upset I didn't rattle off her name in my initial guess...


Link of the Moment
This flash video isn't quite as amusing as it thinks it is, but months after I saw it I still think of it from time to time. It's the Mario Twins! ("Good god they looks so god damn like the same person. I would say to them you want ice cream cone, both of them say yes.") It's animation to go with 2 guys (with a drummer and sometimes a bass) singing the themes and sound effects from the game, it's amusingly homebrew sounding, and has a big "oh yeah...I remember that part!" factor for anyone who grew up playing Super Mario Brothers on the NES.


Quote of the Moment
Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap."
(Dennett quoted this the other night, in response to Peterman's question, I think it addresses people who would apply meme theory to everything.)

car wash on sunday, birdshit on monday.  sheesh.
97-12-8
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