Pollywogs!

…I decided to do it. One of the things I liked most about our early year diet revision was knowing exactly how much I was eating, and how much I ought to be eating. I liked the control that knowledge brought. Which is why I decided to commit to Weight Watchers for three months.

Tonight, I have 0.5 points left. I had a slice of toast with peanut butter, tea with 2 tablespoons of liquid creamer, and a package of yogurt for breakfast, which was 9 points. Lunch was a fiber bar and a banana at 4 points, and dinner was salad and soup with a glass of fruit juice at 16 points (salad dressing and croutons are pretty point heavy items!). For ’snacks’ I had a second cup of tea with creamer when I got home and two beers while shooting bitches in the evening. 35.5 points total out of 36, and I actually feel quite full. This is going very well!

The website isn’t bad, but sometimes is a bit slow, they gotta take some of my fucking fee and upgrade their servers…

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Etsy is a place to buy and sell handmade goods. It is actually really, really cool. Really cool.

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HitMeLater is basically email from yourself to yourself in the future.  Ever think “I need to deal with this tomorrow”?  Send it to 24@hitmelater.com and they’ll mail it back to you exactly 24 hours later.  Pretty good idea!

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I wear a double-layered tinfoil hat, but in some ways I am incredibly risky and throw caution to the wind, taunting the people tasked with illegally monitoring me with my disregard of the knowledge that they can (and probably do) monitor and observe every packet in and out of our LAN.  These tools can help if you decide (unlike me) to be a little more cautious and careful in your jaunts through cyberspace.

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Let me answer this question: computer gaming is the only reason anyone sane would choose Microsoft over Linux.

So after her success I was back to the question that perpetually plagues me: Why would anyone choose Windows over Linux?

• There’s far less risk for viruses and malware.
• It’s free.
• Applications are free.
• It’s far more flexible.
• It has multiple routes for support.
• It is improving at a far faster rate than Windows.
• Bugs and security holes are patched much quicker.

I realize the pat answers will appear:

• No games.
• No Linux version of application X.

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I want to be a juror.  I’m pretty sure I’d get screened out, but man the fucking havoc I could wreck:

The jury sent a note to the trial judge with the following query: Since the Constitution needed to be amended in 1919 to authorize federal criminal prosecutions for manufacturing and smuggling alcohol, a juror wanted to know from the judge where “is the constitutional grant of authority to ban mere possession of cocaine today?”

That’s a fair question.

Did you know you have the power to question law as a juror?  I bet you didn’t, because the government does not want you to realize that a jury is one of the last bastions of our power against tyranny.  A judge will likely try to have you removed if you are the lone dissenter, but if you can convince your fellow jurors into at least a deadlock, you’re golden.  Which is the entire idea of a trial by jury:

Like so many of America’s early leaders, John Adams was a strong proponent of jury nullification.  Here’s Adams: “It is not only the juror’s right, but his duty, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”

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UPDATE: 5 online ‘health’ calculators, I actually used the BMI one (which says I’m overweight) and the body fat one (which lied to me and said I’m only 12.5% body fat, but apparently it’s easy to get wrong).

…what an interesting concept.  I like the original Greek meaning a bit better, it resonates with the sound of the word better, I believe.   I found it after reading the entry ‘book curse‘, which I found on reddit.  My how easily I am distracted…

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I didn’t realize that an iPhone with contract costs (at a minimum) $1,320 for the first year…that is madness!  Makes me really glad I’ve grandfathered my Immix contract for as long as I have, the ‘feature set’ for the price is really sweet…

Hopefully I won’t drop or break this expensive little thing, and can sell it for what I bought it for on eBay if the Android phones reach their potential.

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The netbook market is really expanding, this one looks like a lot of quality equipment for $400.  The Acer Aspire One looks pretty interesting as well.  I don’t know what it is about small electronic devices, but I’m hopelessly hooked…

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This is an excellent idea for subsidising the cost of a solar electric system for your house.  If electric companies were smart, they’d be doing this themselves: allowing customers (at no up front cost of their own) to choose to have renewable installed.  The system would be owned by the power company (say PPL or Southern Company) but the energy would be (mostly) used by the customer’s household.  The bill of course stays the same, just the source of the energy would change.  The customer gets the satisfaction of knowing that their TV and lights aren’t radically changing the environment, and the electric company gets to keep their customer and increases their generation capacity without building additional, massive plants.  As with all things that I think “if it is that simple and necessary, it should simply be DONE”: when I’m dictator, things are going to be different…

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Taxes.  We pay them, and what do we get back?  Bombs, guns and spilled blood. The average individual pays at about a 40% rate, pretty similar to what you see in European countries, and yet we have none of the benifits that your average European country has…because we’re blowing so much money on ‘defense spending’.  How the hell can we justify this war machine that is draining our treasuries like a damn cancer.  But even suggest trimming the military budget and suddenly your a fucking terrorist, soft on defense, aren’t a patriot, or some other mindless drivel.  Oh, and let’s cut taxes on the wealthy while we’re at it.  Fucking baby jesus, what is wrong with this country?  Moronic imbiciles, so easily controlled.  Just turn the TV on and read the corporate message…

…when I’m dictator, things are going to be different…

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Energy.  We need it.  We’re doing it wrong.  Denmark is doing it right.

“Denmark is the model that the United States should be following,” said Steve Pullins, executive director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Modern Grid Initiative.

How’d they do it? Distributed energy.

Unlike traditional “centralized” systems, distributed energy relies on small power-generating technologies like solar panels or ultra-efficient natural-gas turbines built near the point of energy consumption to supplement or displace grid-distributed electricity.

Consumers can not only draw power from the grid, but can feed power into it as well. For instance, homes equipped with solar-power panels could feed unused electricity back into the grid, adding to the total available supply.

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Peru has an energy problem too, as in a lot of rural villages don’t have it!  They also went with the obvious answer, decentralized local generation.  This story made me smile, the entire article restored a little faith in humanity.  The project is just getting started, but it…well, it is just freaking awesome!

To say that this experimental project has been a success so far would be an understatement. Last year 21 homes in Alumbre were equipped with 100-watt wind turbines that power their homes, and the village’s school was powered with a 500-watt turbine. The wind turbines store energy into what are known as “deep cycle” batteries, and the batteries when fully charged can potentially provide energy to homes for up to three days. The batteries need to be replaced every 3-4 years, and for this reason each family with a turbine must contribute to a battery replacement fund on a monthly basis. They pay about 10 nuevo soles each (~ $3 American), a sum that’s less than what most families were previously spending each month on candles and kerosene for lamps.

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I want to try Weight Watchers now:

As I watched her poke around on the screen, managing inventory, calculating points, staying within her range, it hit me:

Weight Watchers is an RPG.

Think about it. As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your inventory and resources, and try to achieve a goal. Weight Watchers’ points function precisely like hit points; each bite of food does damage until you’ve used up your daily amount, so you sleep and start all over again. Play well and you level up — by losing weight! And the more you play it, the more you discover interesting combinations of the rules that aren’t apparent at first. Hey, if I eat a fruit-granola breakfast and an egg-and-romaine lunch, I’ll have enough points to survive a greasy hamburger dinner for a treat!

Even the Weight Watchers web tool is amazingly gamelike. It has the poke-around-and-see-what-happens elegance you see in really good RPG game screens. Accidentally snack on a candy bar and ruin your meal plan for the day? No worries: Just go into the database and see what spells — whoops, I mean foods — you can still use with your remaining points.

The alternative pretty much sucks:

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Found that article on Provigil that I had misplaced.  I may have found and posted it before, but I can’t remember.  Have I ever mentioned I have a terrible memory?  There was this smart drug I had bookmarked a really cool article about, but I can’t find it now.  Or maybe I had posted it before.  What was it called, pro-something?

A contrasting viewpoint.  I already have the creativity of a ’special needs’ toddler, so I don’t really see this as a downside…

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Hulu: TV without the TV.  Between this and Comedy Central having TDS and the Colbert Report online, I wouldn’t be sad one bit to get rid of my fucking $70 a month pile-of-crap cable TV bill…

No, seriously, you should watch Arrested Development.  This is the pilot, it is hilarious but doesn’t have the production values of the rest of the series.  Hopefully it gets you hooked:

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And while I’m sharing things I find awesome, check out Liam Finn:

This is a bit shorter than the version they played in the live show, but it gives you a small taste. These guys were just fucking awesome…

I mentioned this in passing here, figured I ought to follow up properly…

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For the following, you will need:

Phones (various costs, corded, wireless, whatever)
1 unlocked Linksys PAP2-NA for each separate (like -5799 vs -8179) phone line you’d like connected to a phone (about $40 each on eBay).
1 Gizmo account for each separate phone line you’d like connected to a phone (a CallIn number is $35 per year per phone line, unlimited incoming calls).
Gizmo software (free, install on each computer you’d like to use as a phone).
CallOut Minutes ($0.019 per minute nationwide, complete list here: http://gizmo5.com/pc/network/callout-credit/).

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First, you need the PAP2 and a Gizmo account.  If each person wants their own phone line, I suggest separate Gizmo accounts, one for each of person.  They are free to set up, download the software, and use like an Instant Messenger.  Then you add 1) a Gizmo CallIn number and 2) Gizmo CallOut minutes to that account.  You then configure the PAP2 to work with each Gizmo account, and presto-insto you have cheap phone that you can take anywhere with you.  If you travel, just throw the PAP2 with a little corded phone in your briefcase and you have the same number anywhere you go that has an Ethernet connection.  Same if you move, always the same number, always the same rate.

You also get free voicemail, where your messages you don’t get are emailed to you. Then, you can listen and save them forever at your lesiure (I suggest GMail due to its large storage size and anywhere availability).

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The cost:

$35 per phone line per year
$0.019 per minute.

So lets do a sample month.  Say you’re currently paying $70 for one phone line per month, with unlimited nationwide long distance, local services, voicemail, taxes, service charges, blah blah blah.  $35/12 = $2.91 per month for unlimited incoming calls.

That leaves $67.09 left over for talk time per line, or 3,531 minutes of free talking each month at $0.019 per minute.  58 hours a month.  2.45 days of being constantly on the phone per month.

And, since CallOut minutes roll over (and are controlled by you) you know exactly how much your phone bill will be.  If you don’t want it over $20 a month, just make sure you only add $20 a month to the account.  If you use less, those minutes roll over to the next month, and you pocket the difference between $67.09 and what you actually used!

Now all we need is a big company like Vonage to make this a simple plug-n-play affair for grandma, and goodbye landlines…

Always something else to do, some excuse.  Hell, with this heat insouciance combined with sloth sounds like a grand idea…

Just finished Oryx and Crake, a very good book.  However, I think after reading two post-apocolypse Margaret Atwood books, and the delicate state of current affairs, I’m beginning to feel seriously pessimistic about our future as human beings…

Man is it hot.  We had summer in springtime, but that was a nice pleasant dry heat.  This is deep July in early June.  Went swimming in Pine Creek today and the water felt like mid July as well.

“This neck of the woods” seems to have had its cicada population emerge.  We aren’t part of the large, well known cicada cycles, but whatever cycle we are on (Brood XIV?), it came up fierce here.  Our’s aren’t making any noise, however, and when they emerge they just sorta hang out.  Apparently down the road a bit they’re making an impressive racket, but here the trees are silent.  It is sad and spooky, I feel bad for the little alien fuckers.

What is wrong with the Sycamore trees?  They’re all wilted and blighted. Hell, even one out in the Nippenose Valley is blighted, so whatever is wrong is very wide spread.  Strange and stranger…

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Here are my bookmarks:

The unkindest cut | Salon Life

I went to the usual source for village elders who are trying to solve a tough ethical problem: An article in Mothering magazine. Regina had helpfully supplied the link for me. It said that Western cultures, until the nineteenth century, had no tradition of circumcision. The Greeks and the Romans passed laws forbidding “sexual mutilation” after coming into contact with the cultures of the Middle East. It became more common during the anti-masturbation hysteria of the Victorian era. Doctors claimed that circumcision cured everything from epilepsy and tuberculosis to headaches, eczema, and bed-wetting. At this point, the article became truly interesting and relevant, if a bit didactic and terrifying. It called circumcision a “radical practice” that didn’t begin until the cold war era, “part of the same movement that pathologized and medicalized birth and actively discouraged breastfeeding.” Until the 1970s, hospitals didn’t even have to seek parental permission to perform the surgery.

Yes.  Sexual mutilation.  You’d be disgusted and outraged to hear of some barbaric tribe cutting the clits off of young girls?  As I recently wrote on reddit, “people are too crazy for you to point out just how crazy they are, the truth has to be revealed slowly and gently…”

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Read this and this.

Now, read this and this.

What do you think?  I think it is time to throw Bush and Cheney in fucking Guantanamo until they spill the beans.

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This is out of date considering the recent and happy turn of events, but still relevant in the way it forces you to view “news” in the correct perspective: a bunch of clueless dick-wads spouting garbage diarrhea:

Here’s a rule I would like every political reporter, campaign official, TV talking head, and politician in the United States to follow. Go ahead and say, if you like, that Hillary Clinton retains a serious chance of winning the Democratic nomination. If you say this, however, you must describe a set of circumstances whereby this could happen. Try not to make it sound like a fairy tale.

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You know that lady who had all the dirt on the politicians in Washington who were utilizing her services?  You know she ‘turned up dead‘ one day?  This is one of those little things that gets swept under the rug and everyone expects you to just forget and keep going about your day-to-day.  You know, sorta like the Anthrax fun after 9/11 and the reason we went to war with Iraq…

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Oh propaganda, how difficult it would be for the Bush Administration without you:

Michael Gordon, the military writer for The New York Times who contributed several false stories about Iraqi WMD in the runup to the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2002, has written several articles in the past year about Iran’s alleged training of Iraqi insurgents — or supplying them with weapons to kill Americans. He produced another major report on this subject for today’s Times – based solely on unnamed sources — which is at odds with an account from McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau…

Truth dies cold and lonely…

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I love The Daily Show.   You already know that, don’t you?  Best thing I’ve seen on TV lately (the two or three hours I’ve seen in the past couple weeks) was Jon Stewart grilling Scott McClellan over exactly what goes on inside the Bush Administration, basically arguing our case that Bush and Cheney are intentionally doing evil and harm, impeachable and prosecutiable offenses.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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California is the new Amsterdam:

Finding a medical marijuana distributor is shockingly easy, as Times columnist Sandy Banks noted in her recent columns on getting pot to treat arthritis. Sprinkled innocuously around L.A. County are more than 200 dispensaries that look like health food stores or pharmacies — including three just at the intersection of Fairfax and Santa Monica. To shop at these places, though, you need a doctor’s recommendation on an official form. Once you have that, no California cop can arrest you for holding up to eight ounces. That amount, I’m guessing, was based on conservative medical estimates of how much Snoop Dogg would need if he came down with glaucoma at the same time Animal Planet aired a “Meerkat Manor” marathon.

The horror, having the war on drugs emasculated like that.  What is next, legalizing prostitution?  DAMN YOU NEVADA!

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Alright.  I’m tired, and I still have a fucking shit ton of bookmarks left…maybe I’ll still be here tomorrow, I’ll try then.

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Alright.

Submitted via his campaign website…

RE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/08/obama-camp-faces-major-ob_n_100928.html

As a small, repeat donor, I just want to say that I absolutely DO NOT support having the money I donated to BARACK OBAMA being used to pay back Hillary Clinton money that she should have never loaned her own campaign.

Absolutely.

Unequivocally.

Entirely.

Wholly.

NO.

It was a bad decision: it was her decision.  Now that her campaign has effectively ended, she gambled AND LOST.  She did not lose MY money, she lost HER money.

I donated to support Barack Obama.  Not the Democratic National Committee, not the Democrats in general, and most certainly not Hillary Clinton.

I SUPPORT BARACK OBAMA.

Sincerely,
Garrett Socling