Pollywogs!

Greetings from Seneca Lake!

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Been a while since I blogged, huh? Not that I don’t have a lot to say, mostly that I am too pussy to say it. The act of putting thought to word takes balls, and I feel like I’ve been short of ball recently…

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So Kelley has been pressing me hard for some time off lately. You know, how married folks “get along”. Lots of bruising and whatnot. So, I finally gave in.

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March 26th, 2008
Here I am, in a Budget Inn in Watkins Glen. We took the scenic route up, 287 to the NY border, a nice drive. After driving through town a couple times, we decided to stay at the Budget Inn, as all of the places looked identical. Generic but unoffensive.

We had dinner at a micro-brew that Kell had researched called the Wildflower Cafe. The beer is by Rooster Fish Brewery. The food and the beer were excellent. I had a delicious burger, charbroiled and seasoned with Cajun spices and sautéed onion and pepper. I had a dunklewiesen by Rooster Fish Brewery, and then then a Avery White Devil and finished the bar experience off with an INCREDIBLE Ithaca Apricot Wheat. The Apricot beer was so fucking good I can’t…I can’t…I can’t do it justice. It was sweeter than beer ought to be, I’m not sure what to call it!

So now I’m laying on this jizz and disease covered comforter, pleasantly buzzed by the locally crafted beer, typing on my laptop. A Flying Dog InHeat Wheat open before me, and the words suddenly catch up to my “in the moment”. How awkward, meeting you here all of a sudden. I feel so naked like this! Where do I go from here, with you staring at me like that? How about: Constant Reader, until we meet again tomorrow night?

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March 27th, 2008

Mmm… ate a gigantic breakfast at a local diner, at the recommendation of the person manning the visitor center in Watkins Glen. Grabbed some documentation and hit the pike!

First stop was Lakewood Winery, very nice first stop. As with the rest of the wineries today, we had the place to ourselves. Very nice interior, lots of delicious wine and a very nice hostess. I mentioned “I hope the rest of the wineries are this nice!” because they had set a very high bar!

Next up was Fulkerson. New and fancy looking facility, nice hostess. A decent selection of wines. Forgot to take a picture of this place…

Torrey Ridge next, probably my least favorite. I didn’t care for the aroma of these wines, even though the taste was decent. One cool thing here were the hand-painted wine and beer glasses,which we didn’t purchase

Wine Update: The ‘Torrey Ridge Red’ which we brought home was a 5/10 wine, just average.  It was a little harsh the first day, much smoother and more mild mannered after sitting half-empty for 24 hours on the counter.  I’m not sure I’d get it again, but there was nothing really wrong with it.

Fox Run Winery was next, loved this place. The facility was beautiful, the view was beautiful, the wines were dry but decent, and the hostess was right up our alley, really cool older lady. They also had a cafe on-site. Lots of nice pictures of this place because it is a very nice location!

White Springs Winery was the next destination. The exterior wasn’t much to look at, but the interior was fucking pimp, very classy (like how i use fucking pimp and classy in the same sentence?). The wine was just OK, but not bad either.

Finally we ended up at the Three Brothers Estates, basically four different wineries on the same premise. Stony Lonesome seemed a bit stuffy for us, and Nagy was closed for the season, so we went to Passion Feet and were unimpressed. Rogue’s Hollow, however wasn’t bad. If you like Red Cat, imagine that in about 10 different variations and, well, that’s that! We had fun trying these wines…

We decided to fucking pimp ourselves out (versus the Budget Inn of last night) and stayed at this old fucking castle, The Belhurst. Walked by a coat of arms on the way up the stairs. A fucking 120 year old fireplace in the room, pretty damn neat. And a wine spigot outside our door!!! Free wine laughing out loud, oh my god, what the fuck…barbecue!!!!!!

So, make sure to check the pictures (first link on this page (oh hell here you go again)) because I’m feeling buzzed and beat from a hard day of drinking and driving, and a picture will say the other thousands of words my fingers are failing to type…although I may update with some dinner report if I feel froggy later…

Post Dinner: We went to Ports Cafe, just down the road from Belhurst. A small restaurant with an amazing kitchen. The menu was concise but the list of specials the waitress read off was amazing. I started out with a mixed greens salad which had a house ranch, flavored with a bit of lemon (an excellent combination, oddly enough!). I decided on the duck special: they also had lamb and sashimi-grade Yellowfin tuna, it was a very hard decision! The duck reminded me of Filet Mignon, but richer. It was interesting, worth trying once. I finished off the decadence with amazing vanilla cheesecake for dessert, the experience was almost literally like having an orgasm in my mouth. My diet lies about me in shambles, a wreckage that I’m peering out from, but it is nice to go on vacation from yourself occasionally…

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March 28th, 2008

I write this from home, with a very marked lack of motivation…

Snow in the morning. And, breakfast at Belhurst.

First up, Wagner Vineyards. Very nice wine, and a microbrewery too. Very nice place, excellent first stop. Tuned before noon…

Rasta Ranch was the next stop, felt comfortable and lived in. Familiar. Doubly-tuned at this point.

At this point I realize I have a video camera in the car, and begin taking movie clips. They really impart a feel for the trip that these words simply cannot convey, so I highly suggest you watch this:

(turn down your volume first, I’m a loud, obnoxious and vulgar motherfucker)

Tickle Hill was closed (and we almost broke into someone’s house heh), so we swung by Hazlitt Vineyards. Everyone at the place was from Pennsylvania. The couple next to us was from Williamsport. Small world, nice drinks.

Atwater was our final destination, interesting place. Small, but nice.

Drunk driving back to Watkins Glen, and lunch at Wildflower Cafe again. Oh my…amazing fucking pizza: Rooster Pie. Seriously, I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur, and this shit is for real.

Drunk driving back to home, on the way I have the good idea to call up John. “Yo, what you doin?” We had a good time hanging out there. Poor Kelley, those 9.5% micro-brews caught up to her fast. And, I have no game (as you previously saw)…

Then, home and a shower. A half-hearted attempt at unpacking. Relaxing. This half-hearted attempt at writing a blog post of the days happenings…

Perhaps you’ll read this at a later point in time and it won’t be a bunch of short declarations, it will be a full description of the days events. Or maybe not.

I have no game:

So I’ve been thinking a lot recently. I guess that is normal, but instead of water off a ducks back it seems I feel pretty disturbed. I’ve also tried specifically not thinking, but that is surprisingly difficult to do. So, to help me more than for your own enjoyment or elucidation, here are a couple things that have been bothering me lately…

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On the distribution of wealth. Or, George Bush is a fucking dickhead and not only needs impeached, but he needs tried for his crimes.

“In his State of the Union, the President asked Congress for $300 million for poor kids in the inner city. As there are, officially, 15 million children in America living in poverty, how much is that per child? Correct! $20.

Here’s your second question. The President also demanded that Congress extend his tax cuts. The cost: $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are millionaires. And the number of millionaires happens, not coincidentally, to equal the number of poor kids, roughly 15 million of them. OK class: what is the cost of the tax cut per millionaire? That’s right, Richie, $287,000 apiece.”

Perhaps the idea behind this is that the wealth will trickle down. We’ve seen how well this works. Wealth trickles down to us, and then the rich take it right back to bail out investment banks who were specifically separated by law from consumer banks due to a gigantic fuck up in the past to prevent their failures from impacting the public. A tidy arraignment.

The disconnect is so severe, and the need for a change in attitude so pressing, it makes me just want to leave the fucking country behind and let it burn.

“Four of the biggest U.S. investment banks — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. — will pay out about $49.6 billion US in compensation this year. Of that, bonuses are traditionally estimated to represent 60 per cent, or almost $30 billion US.

But that might not sit well with investors who held onto investment bank stocks this year — and watched them plunge by as much as 45 per cent. Investment houses have been slammed by the credit crisis and top executives this last week said they’ve yet to see a bottom.”

Yes. That is right, the executive compensation for a company where the stock dived from $160 a share to $2 a share is avery healthy quarter billion over the past decade, thank you. Coincidentally not much less than the entire company was sold for just after he got out.

Corporate fucking welfare. Let us change the dialog. Put the good of the people first, not the good of the elite few. Fuck corporate welfare…

“The current financial crisis may determine much more than which political party occupies the White House in 2009 — it could (and may already have) remake the zeitgeist. The Great Depression of the 1930s spawned the New Deal. Will the Great Credit Crunch of today potentially restructure how government, the financial markets and the general welfare intersect?

Only if we really want it to. New York Times Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has been telling us for years that the policy pendulum is finally swinging in the other direction. Liberalism is no longer a dirty word, he thunders; it’s high time for government to get back in the business of governing. He might be right. As we review the wreckage created by Wall Street’s finest minds, it is tempting to entertain the possibility that the impulse to deregulate and privatize and “trust” markets to be their own best guardian — that epochal re-imagining of government launched by Ronald Reagan — has finally run its course.”

This is probably the article I would have written about this mess if I had talent and ability.

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Do you remember when the cocksuckers in the Bush Administration said “No one could have predicted the strength of the insurgency” when trying to excuse away their supremely criminal and intentional negligence when it came to Iraq (and 9/11 incidentally)? Guess what. No only did someone predict it (besides the millions and millions of people around the world who protested before the Iraq war), that someone was THE FUCKING ARMY THEMSELVES.

“Iraq presents far from ideal conditions for achieving strategic goals. Saddam Hussein is the culmination of a violent political culture that is rooted in a tortured history. Ethnic, tribal, and religious schisms could produce civil war or fracture the state after Saddam is deposed. The Iraqi Army may be useful as a symbol of national unity, but it will take extensive reeducation and reorganization to operate in a more democratic state. Years of sanctions have debilitated the economy and created a society dependent on the UN Oil for Food Program. Rebuilding Iraq will require a considerable commitment of American resources, but the longer U.S. presence is maintained, the more likely violent resistance will develop.

The monograph concludes by developing and describing a phased array of tasks that must be accomplished to create and sustain a viable state. The 135 tasks are organized into 21 categories, and rated as “essential,” “critical,” or “important” for the commander of coalition military forces. They are then projected across four phases of transition— Security, Stabilize, Build Institutions, and Handover/ Redeploy—to reflect which governmental, nongovernmental, and international organizations will be involved in execution during each phase.”

Just like the Bush Administration listens to the generals on the ground (until they disagree and are fired/resign), the Bush Administration listens to intelligence until the point that it says something they do not want to hear. At which point they lie and continue doing what they were planning on doing the whole time.

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Jack who? Oh, that happened more than two days ago, right down the memory hole…

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The FCC, a tool of the Bush administration and the elite, just like everything else they have touched, corrupted and putrescent.

“It appears that a critical mass of FCC grunts are sick of what they experience as a super-politicized work life in which just about anything that they want to do has to get the go-ahead from the top, that being Kevin Martin. “Nothing happens in the Commission without the approval of the Chairman’s office,” my source told me. “It is incredible. We have become so political.”

Do you have any sense of the logic of these directives from the Chair? I asked. “Nope,” came the reply. “It seems as random as he got up this morning and ate his breakfast and just decided to do it.”

Why are FCC employees upset about this? Not because they disagree with Kevin Martin’s perspective on this or that FCC issue, but because, according to my source, he and his top subordinates demand that staff skip proper procedures and leapfrog various rules, even Congressional mandated rules, on a day-to-day level.

…The most formidable whistle blower I’ve encountered is former FCC attorney and now law professor Adam Candeub. Two years ago Candeub straight out told the press that a report arguing that locally owned TV stations broadcast more local news “was stopped in its tracks because it was not the way the agency wanted to go.” The study’s conclusions obviously implied that retaining some of the FCC’s media ownership caps might help those local TV stations survive.”

What happens when all of the decent and honest people are forced out of the government? Oh wait, I’ve read that book before…

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You could say I’m feeling a little discouraged. I’m feeling a little disappointed. I’m feeling the same rage and hatred against ignorance, willful negligence and reckless greed and avarice that I felt as a young child, tempered with the adults knowledge that all I am directly opposed by a titanic inertia. Hope, broken. Dreams, smashed. Yes, what they sing is true: despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage.

I guess in time I’ll come to accept the fact that this generation is not the generation that will change things? That this generation is not the one that is going to wake from our pacified slumber and realize that by merely deciding it will be so, we could change existence for the better?

Until we’ve made that conscious choice as a people (and by people I mean humans the world over), we’re treading water here. As much as I hesitate to sound New Age, I recognize that for mankind to continue to thrive and improve we are going to have to change the way we operate in a fundamental fashion. Until we put the thoughts into words, the words into possibility, it simply exists as a dream does, ethereal and insubstantial.

The analogy of the human people and their (rather, our) societies as an individual growing up comes back to me, over and over. We are just now shaking off the nightmare of our childhood, and yet we still have so very far to go to become mature and responsible. We show moments of greatness and then relapse into our infantile ways. We truly are at a crux, our potential paths leading down so many different roads; the future, ahead and unknown…

You grab the low fruit while considering how to get at the high fruit. We need some immediate and basic corrections. Obama will do for now (hopefully quite well) as there are so many obvious problems that need corrected he should keep quite busy grabbing that low fruit over the next four years. I hope he does very well. However, I fear that Bush has taken a chainsaw to the apple tree…as gin-stained tears run down my nose, will I learn to love Big Brother?

A public service announcement from Kell:

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If you’ve been paying attention to the news concerning the Presidential primaries…….Jesus Christ will it ever end?  This crap has been going on for weeks and weeks and weeks.  Why can’t every state just vote on one Tuesday???? Does it really need to be stretched out this long???  Anyway, if you are a resident of Pennsylvania (and you are a citizen of the US, and you’re 18 or older) and you’d like to vote…what 6 weeks from now? Fucking 6 weeks?  So you want to vote, I want to vote, Garrett wants to vote, lots of people want to and SHOULD vote…but wait there is a catch, you have to be registered as a Democrat or Republican to vote in the primaries…….Say What?  WTF??????  How absurd is that?

Well, as a registered Green party member (or Libratarian, I can’t quite remember and I don’t have my card on me) guess what I have to do in order to cast my vote 6 weeks from now?  Yep that’s right, I need to change my status…I must affiliate with the lemmings.  I am left with only one choice as I am certainly not going to register as a Republican (gag).  So I think to myself, ‘what a freakin pain in the ass’, WTF kind of bullshit is this?

Cursing under my breath (not really) I begrudgingly make my way (via reddit.com) to http://www.dos.state.pa.us/voting/cwp/view.asp?a=1192&q=442984 in order to succumb to “the man”.  Al the while thinking that this is completely whacked and that it will be such a pain in the ass.  Well, it wasn’t.  If you are a new you can actually fill out the form on line but if you are in my position, you have to print the form and mail it to your local county office (addresses are provided…YAY!).  Simple, nothing to it.  Print, fill out, slip it in an envelope (or I believe you can just fold the paper in halve and write the address on the page) and slap a stamp on it. Viola!  One more important thing:  You MUST have this completed 30 days before the election…I believe that means you must have it postmarked by MARCH 21!

What the heck was all the bitching for? Easy peasy. Oh wait, I forgot…I had to actually change my status to participate in this election.  Ridiculous!…but I’ll get over it.

If you aren’t registered, do it now!  If you are registered as something other than a Dem or Rep…change parties now!  And if you are considering voting for anyone other than Obama…you need your head examined!

I’ve mentioned this before (although this could be a false and/or implated memory).  I’ve harangued you about this.  I’ve poked and prodded.  And yet you still use the same username and password at every site you visit…including your internet banking!!!

You are doing banking online right?  It is safe to do so for complicated reasons, or at least the weak point is not the communication between your computer and their web server.  The weak point is you and the fact that you’ve used the same password for the past ten years!!! Ok, the other weak point is what a shitty job some companies do safeguarding your personal data, but Grandma can get her Visa number stolen without ever visiting the scary interwebs, so…

I can’t get you to visit online antivirus and antispyware scanners regularly.  I can’t get you to defrag often.   I can’t convince you to switch to Ubuntu.  But god damn it, I’m going to get you to use unique and secure logins!

I could just paste a link to an existing how-to (with pictures) like this one, but what is the fun in that when I can do it poorly myself?

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Go here.  Download either the regular install version or a USB key version.

Install it and create a new KeePass file.  DO NOT LOSE THIS FUCKING FILE!  You are using Mozy right?  Because if your shit burns to the ground and you don’t have a copy of that KeePass file, you are going to be a hurting unit.  Mozy will copy that little file to some magic place on the other side of the world.   Except that your Mozy password is also locked inside said file, which is an ‘amusing’ problem I hope you never have to deal with in such a time of personal tragedy and loss…

Secure that file with a long, elaborate password that you can remember.  I’d suggest including one or two non-alphanumeric characters like +, }, or $ in a fashion that you can remember (create a mental phrase like |3u77+$3ckz=4w3$0m3 (which is NOT my Mozy password, although I am now sorta wishing it was)).   I have a 96-bit password that is pretty easy for me to remember on my KeePass file, I’m sure you can come up with something too.  NEVER FORGET THIS FUCKING PASSWORD, as this is the one the CIA will want to torture out of you to access ALL OF YOUR OTHER PASSWORDS.  Now you think, isn’t that ‘not secure’, storing all of my passwords inside that one file?  Well, don’t give anyone you don’t trust that password.  Plus, when you are entering say your bank password into a website it is very possible you won’t even know what that password is.  I don’t know most of mine, I just generated them and always copy/paste from the software.  They are never unobscured (screenshot wouldn’t help), never typed in (keylogger wouldn’t help either) and are erased from the clipboard automatically after about 10 seconds. Here is an example of a REAL password, and example of why I don’t know any of my passwords: 55?rJkJb},2%2h”#(:2T

So, you came up with an obscene phrase which you’ll be tortured shamed into revealing during a waterboarding interview session with the Gestapo DHS at Auschwitz Guantanamo Bay.  Now what?

Go to your most important account (may I suggest your online checking account website?) and go to change your password.  If you’re allowed to change your username, I suggest you do so as well just for shits and giggles.  Now, go to the ‘Homebanking’ section of the empty KeePass file and right click in the vast white space.  Hit ‘Add New Entry’ and start filling that shit out!

You’ll come to where you are to generate a new password.  If you are lucky, the website will have suggestions on what is permissible.  If they do not, I usually make the most kick-ass password I can.  32 characters long, extended character set, all sorts of wacky shit.  If you generate a new password and it isn’t accepted, look for feedback on how to wussifiy it for the bank.  If they are really a pile of cock-gobbling shitheads they won’t provide you any feedback at all: try falling back to a 16 character alphanumeric password (and look for a new bank while you are at it!).

So, you now have a nice new entry for your bank, it has a nice new password and other cool info, and you have no idea what that password is other than seeing a glimpse once of a gigantic string of nonsense.  Next time you log into your banking website, for the love of god do not ask Firefox to remember your password…what did we just go through all of this effort for?!?!  Enter your username, and fire up KeePass.  Select the relevant entry and right-click on it.   Select “Copy Password to Clipboard” and hurry over to the webpage and paste it in.  Away you go, safe and secure!

Now repeat that about 100 times to get everything else you do secure.  I may permit you to have Firefox remember a password IF it is on a home computer AND it is for something fairly unimportant like your Facebook account (where one of the many people conspire against you behind your back could post nude photos of you experimenting with a Cucumber) or your email (where those same bastards could send emails from your account to everyone you know with a heartfelt and graphically-detailed “coming-out” story)  You know, no worries about trivial shit like that.  All of your actual important accounts, though, you gotta secure and only keep the relevant password in only one secure location.

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See, that wasn’t hard now, was it?  Took all of two minutes to download, install and create your first secure account.  Nothing to it!

I’m not suggesting you are actually safe from anything like stray meteors, rampant fascism, or 13 year olds with nothing better to do than ruin your life…but hey, a false sense of security is what we are all about these days!