sudo apt-get install blogentry

First things first. I've been busy installing the new version of Ubuntu (Jaundiced Jackalope) and getting it to run juuuuust the way I like. For the most part, I've found it ridiculously simple. The things I was most afraid of not working properly was wireless internet and, more importantly, my EVDO (mobile broadband) card. Interestingly enough, both of them worked flawlessly. There's always the difficulties with odd things that not everyone uses, but I now have my Truecrypt volume running and a decent password manager. The strangest thing is that I had issues getting VLC to play DVDs properly. This is odd because VLC will play most anything. It turns out I just needed to do a restart. I got Miro for my video podcasts and Hulu, and am only missing iTunes because while it's possible (albeit difficult) to use something else with an iPod, you sort of need it for an iPhone. Maybe I'll eventually need to learn how to use WINE. GRRR.

Despite the difficulties, I've totally been geeking out with it and loving every minute of it. The only thing I'm missing is my old Muncie Star Press money bag from when I was a paperboy. I use that as my dice bag. Yeah, I've been craving pen and paper gaming as of late, mostly because of WOTC's recent D&D podcast featuring a 4E campaign with Gabe & Tycho of Penny Arcade, Scott Kurtz of PVP Online, and TV's Wil Wheaton. I miss that kind of comaraderie in a gaming session. It's a damn shame that I've never had a gaming group last more than a couple months. :( Stupid real world concerns.

Now the joyousness. I've discovered that for the second year in a row, I and two others got screwed out of a merit raise this year. My promotion last year was their reason for denying me a raise last year, and that very same promotion is the very same reason they're using to justify. No. Not justify. There's nothing just about it. It's the very same excuse they're using to deny me yet another merit raise. The plant jackass that backstabs and lies and got caught screwing up? His measly 1% merit raise compared to my 0% merit raise indicates to me that even though the management (and everyone else) can't stand him, he is a better employee than I and more meritorious than I am.

Okay, so denying me a raise last year isn't entirely accurate. What they did was that they pushed the raises from January to April. I got my promotion at the end of March, so I had half a paycheck of that raise until my promotion put me at the bottom rate at a higher pay grade. So, basically, what happened is that I got a promotion raise, but I've been denied a merit raise two years in a row. This from the same bureaucracy that took nearly two years to get me uniforms. Maybe they're telling me something.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

This is why I'm not allowed to have sharp things

I was coming back from getting the mail and I saw a dirty coin on the ground. It was so grimy that I couldn't tell if it was a penny or a dime. I picked it up and It turned out to be a penny. Yes, I know, BORING.

However, from seeing that penny, I started thinking about Dr. Horrible. And then I was thinking how Dr. Horrible, being an evil genius, might go about trying to resurrect Penny, The Man With Two Brains or The Brain That Wouldn't Die-style. Of course, this would make for a horrible story (pun intended), but I just would love to see more of Felicia Day. As an actor. Not in any sort of pervy way.

Pondering this more, instead of a typical Bride of Frankenstein look, I was thinking a resurrected Penny would become a super villain. Do gooders would find her at all kinds of bad times. You know, turning up like a Bad Penny. Not only would Felicia Day still be in the Dr. Horrible universe, but it also fits in with Whedon's style. Yes, Billy was able to resurrect the body of the person he loves, but in the process he ends up killing everything he loved about her.

All that from seeing a penny on the ground. And THAT is why I'm not allowed out of the house.

Good thing I had savings

So, I've taken the cat to the vet, I've given him a name, and I've spent a buttload on all the things you need when you first get a pet, such as litter box, nail clippers, pet carrier, etc.

Unfortunately the name I had given the cat in my head was pretty lame, but it's stuck. The cat is a neutered male and named Mango. I totally wasn't thinking of Chris Kataan's character when I came up with that. I thought of it because I initially thought the thin hair on his back side was due to mange instead of excessive cleaning.

So far, Mango seems pretty laid back, other than getting him into a carrier to get him to the vet. That proved to be difficult. But other than that? Pretty great news from the vet. He'd already been neutered, he wasn't microchipped by a previous owner, and he doesn't have FIV. He seems to have been taken care of before I got him because he stops eating when he's full instead of gorging himself and throwing up on the carpet. I'm going to have to get those nails trimmed, however, because getting a gentle pat, pat, pat on my eyes as an alarm clock isn't my idea of a good time.

I've been talking too much of my cat as of late, so I give you a technology C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!

There are a couple programs/add-ons I think people might like.

From Steve Gibson, I've found one of those programs you don't realize you've been missing until you try it. Katmouse is a nifty little mousewheel utility program. What it does is relatively minor but insanely useful. It allows you to scroll on windows that aren't on the top. For example, you can be watching something on part of the screen on VLC or Quicktime or whatever, but you can also scroll through the website that's underneath without having to click on the browser first and thus hide the video window. I can't believe something like this isn't part of generic mouse software it's so simple.

The other thing I've found to be pretty awesome is a Firefox add-on called XMarks. It used to be called Foxmarks, but now that it's also available on Internet Explorer and Safari, the name wasn't entirely accurate. Get an Xmarks account and install the add-on, and XMarks will sync up your bookmarks to their server. This is great if you surf the internet on multiple computers because your bookmarks will be the same on all the computers that you have (that are running XMarks, of course). This can also be useful if, like me, you wipe and re-install your operating system fairly often. That's just one fewer thing I have to worry about backing up when I wipe everything.

Now Old Mr Johnson had troubles of his own

Ever since last night, off and on, I've had a stray cat mewing at my back porch and occasionally my front door. I was mostly able to ignore it (I respect its privacy and don't wish to look to see if it's a boy or a girl), though I did go out onto the porch to pet it last night. I thought it'd get bored and wander off after I went to go to sleep. WRONG. Just as with the camping song, the cat came back the very next day.

I went to the grocery store today, and when I came back, there it was. In the light, I could see better, and it looks like the poor thing has got mange or some other kind of thing. Well, I don't know if it's mange. There's still hair everywhere, it's just not as thick in certain places on its back half. A kid coulda taken an electric razor to it a couple weeks ago to give it that same look.

After I put my groceries away, I went back outside to pet it for a few minutes. It's very friendly. My next door neighbor pulled up then, so I decided to go to the mailbox, as I don't want to get reported to management. I can see where someone else would get annoyed. After all, if its mewing was distracting to me actually being awake at 3AM, think of how much more annoying it is if it's 3AM and you're asleep.

When I came back from checking my mail, the cat was no where to be seen. I didn't think anything of it until I went inside and about 15 minutes later I smelled rain. Sure enough, it had started to rain, and shortly thereafter I heard the thunderclap. I suppose the cat heard the thunder before I did and that's why it went to find some place to stay dry. At this point, I feel bad, because while I'm hesitant about keeping a stray considering my 12 hour shifts, there's no way in hell I was going to make it stay outside in a Texas thunderstorm (even if Texas thunderstorms are the premature ejaculation of weather patterns: noisy and powerful and over all too quickly).

Here are a couple pics of the cat so you can see how much of a heartless bastard I am for not relenting soon enough. Forgive the quality of the photos; the thing seems to never stop moving, so there's a bit of blur in the first one.

EXTERMINATE!

So I've recently started watching the new Doctor Who, and I have to admit that I've grown rather fond of it. Sure, some of the plots leave a lot to be desired, but at least the effects are tolerable. The glut of rubber monsters were pretty much the reason I couldn't get into the old one before (that and the only time you can get British shows on PBS is late nights on the weekends), but the new one is actually pretty damn compelling. Even when you take something as hackneyed as introducing The Devil as an antagonist for a couple of episodes, it's still pretty damned awesome.

One of the things I noticed when I was looking some stuff up is that some people seem to be noticing a trend with Doctor Who in the baddies' use of automatons/zombies/golems as henchmen. Of course, the baddies who use these are inevitably evil geniuses. While I can definitely see the trend as well (and noted it independently before I looked it up), one thing I can't believe no one's noticed yet was in the Satan Pit episode.

The Devil or whatever name you choose to use was able to control people by having letters of an ancient language marked on their bodies. Helloooo!! That's pretty much right out of the Jewish golem myth.

Okay, enough. My only reason for making this post was to share some awesome Dalek cosplay that was recently seen at Supanova, an Australian sci-fi/anime/comic convention. Seriously, it's downright adorable, even moreso when you think of them saying "EXTERMINATE" in Aussie accents.



You can see the rest of the pictures over here.

D-U-M-B Everyone's accusing me

If there is one thing that defines me more than being a complete technology slut, it's that I'm a cheapskate. So when one of my co-workers mentioned that he was getting rid of his iPhone because it didn't support MMS (which is what Picture Mail uses), I jumped at the chance. Sure, I wasn't going to switch to AT&T, but I'd been eyeing the iPod Touch as something to watch video on when the laptop is just too bulky. Not only that, but there are the applications.

Of course, getting the thing to work was an exercise in patience because of all the crappy things AT&T does to lock things down. First I had to restore the phone. Once it did that, it wouldn't work without a SIM card. Of course, not only any SIM card would do. Not only did it have to be an activated SIM card, but Jose (my co-worker) had to fill out a lot of crap in my iTunes so that AT&T could verify his identity. Fortunately, once that was all said and done and once the SIM card was removed, this time it worked just fine. Now I effectively have an iPod Touch that has a camera and GPS on it, and I got it for less than half what Apple would charge.

While I've been sort of gluttonous with the free apps (lots of radio apps and other music stuff), there was one app I've actually paid for: Oregon Trail. Awwwww yeah. Dysentery is back, baby!

I've recently been thinking of a way to write with a little bit more frequency. One of the things I was thinking was having a list of things that identify someone as a geek. Not really a, "You might be a geek" thing, but something more substantial than that. I think it'd be fun, but I'd like to have a huge list (Yes, a "You might be a geek" list of sorts) before I started so that I could do it regularly for quite some time. That said, I'm pretty sure if I was to wait until I felt I had sufficient material, I'd never get started.