your favorite thing that goes bleep.

Jay asks for input on how to properly spend some gift cash. I shared my opinion, and told him that the iPod touch (which is on his list of possible buys) is my most indispensable electronic gadget.  I used to be a faithful Palm PDA user, but the iPod touch is so far superior as a pocket computer that it’s no contest.

As a tech hound, I like to acquire shiny things, but there’s a natural limit to that tendency that is fiscal in nature.  I don’t generally buy bleeding-edge gear, since you have to pay a hefty premium to have the newest, fastest, and bestest device in a category–there’s a huge cost jump from “fast and competent” to “fastest on the block”, and you can save a lot of cash if you buy tech that was at the technological spearhead last year.

Here’s your audience participation question of the week: what’s your one electronic gadget that is indispensable to you–the one piece of tech most dear to you?

a new difference engine.

My new Mac mini arrived yesterday, and I promptly wasted half the day setting it up and downloading a few multi-gigabyte World of Warcraft patches to it.  (With all the other gaming-capable computers in the house being Windows PCs, I couldn’t just copy my WoW folder from the old machine.  Instead, I had to reinstall from the DVD, and then let the game patch itself.)

Here’s what the desk looks like now:

So much more space.  It’s shocking how much smaller the mini is than even the little ION shoebox.  It’s no bigger than five CD cases stacked on top of each other, yet it has more processing grunt than my old Core 2 Duo system.  The wireless keyboard stows out of the way quickly and easily whenever I break out the pen & paper, and the whole setup is very shiny.  So far, I’m very impressed with the mini.  It’s zippy, and it plain works.

Did I mention that my wife rocks?  Well, she does.  Since I had just put the ION box together a few months ago, I wasn’t planning to upgrade again for at least another year, but I guess she got tired of my constant little whining noises whenever I looked at the mini at the Apple Store.

Nothing takes the edge off a Monday than the delivery truck trundling up the driveway with a shiny new toy…

monday search term safari LXXXVIII.

what caliber is bigger 357mag. or 44mag.

Let’s see if we can puzzle that one out.  American caliber designations are in fractions of an inch, so a .357 is 357/1000 of an inch in diameter.  Which number is the higher fraction, 357/1000 or 44/100?

(Actually, the .44 Magnum is a case of marketing exaggeration.  While the .357 has a true bullet diameter of .357”, the mighty .44 has a bullet diameter of .429”.  The .38 Special is mislabeled as well—it shares the .357” bullet diameter of the .357 Magnum.)

do kittens kick

Kittens, like adult cats, occasionally employ the maneuver I call the Kitty Raptor, where they hold on to something with their front paws, bite it, and then kick at it with the back paws.  When a kitten does it to your hand, it’s kind of adorable.  When a fully grown adult cat does it, it’s not so adorable anymore, unless you find puncture wounds and bleeding gouges in your hand cute.

favourite eighties movies

All GenX kids have their favorite Eighties flick, and there’s a 75% chance it was directed by John Hughes.  My favorite Eighties flick is Better Off Dead, which was directed by Savage Steve Holland.  (You can tell a lot about a person by their choice of “best Eighties movie.”)

marko learns languages

What can I say…it’s a hobby of mine.  My native language is German, and I’m reasonably fluent in English.  I also speak some Dutch, and have a basic vocabulary of French and Italian—enough to order stuff, ask directions, and find my way to the potty.  I’d like to become proficient in more languages, and I’m currently waffling between learning Spanish, Japanese, or Farsi.

netbook for writing novel

Pick one with a decent keyboard.  The Asus Eee series is very common in the wild, but the keyboards on almost all the Eee models suck for long typing sessions…the keys are either way too small, arranged awkwardly (“bad Asus! No abbreviated right Shift key!”), or the keyboard is clattery and has too much flex in the middle.  For decent netbook keyboards, check out the Samsung NC-10 and NC-20, the Toshiba NB-205 and –305, and (surprisingly) the new Dell IM-1012.

kel-tec .32, hidden in a wallet holster

A pocket holster is the ideal way to carry the little KelTec and Ruger .32s and .380s.  It looks just like a wallet bulge in the back pocket, and it’s easy to access except when seated.  Wallet holsters that let you fire the gun while in the holster are a big no-no according to the BATFEIEIO,  but those aren’t readily available for the KelTec anyway.

homosexual moped riders

Thanks for providing the name of my next band, “Homosexual Moped Riders”.  We’ll do Queen covers, or Country & Western…or maybe both.

pny unmatched ram macbook

You can use mismatched pairs in a MacBook, but it’ll hobble performance a bit.  On Core 2 Duo systems, RAM likes to run in dual-channel mode, which requires two equally-sized RAM modules.  In addition, the MacBook has integrated GeForce 9400M graphics, which perform much better when the RAM runs in dual-channel mode.  My ION box has the same graphics chip, and I recently had to replace the dual-channel modules I was using, and use a single module instead.  Despite the fact that the amount of RAM remained the same, graphics performance in games has dropped noticeably.  In World of Warcraft, I get half the framerate I had before.

ruger lcp vs. "j-frame"

Understand that I’m a huge fan of the little J-frame, but after toting around an LCP for a few months, I think the little Ruger has it all over the J-frame as a deep-cover concealment and pocket pistol.  It’s much flatter, lighter, and offers two more rounds of comparable power level (unless you’re talking .357 Magnum snubbies, which kill on one end and maim on the other.) 

neil gaiman word processor

I don’t know what Neil Gaiman uses to type up his writings these days, but I know he writes his first drafts with a fountain pen.

ibm model m space saver

That’s the relatively uncommon Model M variant that’s missing the numeric keypad.  They still go for outright indecent prices on eBay—whenever one surfaces there, they routinely fetch $100 or more.

spike strips for deer

Do you have a problem with deer dashing through your residential area at speeds exceeding the posted limits?

s&w model 10 tyler t grip

Smith & Wesson K-frames (of which your Model 10 is the classic example) require the Tyler T-grip size #3.

katana fanboy

You know the kind.  That’s the youthful martial arts enthusiast who recently scored a stainless steel “katana” from the late-night sales special on the Knife Network, and who now scours the Internet for primers on “how to conceal a sword”.  This demographic is also prone to hopping on martial arts- or gun-related discussion venues, offering up opinions on why the sword is a better weapon than the gun, and sharing tall tales about his brother’s cousin’s friend, who has this katana made in Japan in 1200AD, with blade steel that’s been folded a hundred thousand times, and last week, he sparred against this dude armed with a claymore, and totally sliced that claymore in half on the first parry.

 

See what happens when you give me decent search terms to work with, Internets?  Not a single one this week about hobos and their library habits.  I’m proud of you—keep up the good work!

“50,000 volts of adorable electricity.”

Do want:

Hello Kitty taser!

Yeah, it’s Photoshopped, but someone should totally make a custom version.  I’d buy three.

(H/T to Steven Gould, via Twitter.)

hope you all picked out a favorite cat food.

Here’s how Social Security has worked for the last few decades:

Every year, the Social Security tax receipts are used to pay out that year’s Social Security benefits.  Because of the positive ratio of contributors to beneficiaries so far, the system takes in more money every year than it pays out.  The excess is then borrowed by the Fed.gov for other purposes, in exchange for a shiny IOU that goes into the “trust fund”, a big-ass filing cabinet full of IOUs.  This has been going on for decades now with monotonous regularity—the government has been treating the SS surplus as a consequence-free loan, kicking that particular debt-laden can down the alley for future administrations to worry about.

Well, the good times have come to an end.  This year, the Social Security payouts will exceed receipts, an event that the Congressional Budget Office predicted for the year 2016 at the earliest.  From now on, the SS administration has to start cashing in all those IOUs to make up for the difference (which is only going to grow in the future.)  The government, in turn, has to pay back those IOUS out of the general fund as needed.

The really fun event is going to be that day when even those IOUs in the trust fund are going to run out.  The CBO estimates that blessed event to occur sometime around 2030, although the economic downturn has no doubt brought that date closer to maturity as well.  At that point, Social Security will be hopelessly upside down, with obligations (checks to be written) vastly exceeding receipts (collected SS taxes), and no more IOUs to make up the gap.

Anyone with more than rudimentary math skills can see that the entitlement payouts are going to cause a fiscal meltdown at some point not too awfully far into the future.  Almost half our budget already goes into Medicare and Medicaid—and that’s not even counting the new health care reform expenditures or Social Security payouts (which don’t count against the general budget at present, because they carried themselves until this year.)  Unless the government raises taxes and drastically cuts back on entitlements, the Fed is going to be slap-ass broke by 2030 at the latest.  This is not wookie-suit alarmism, it’s simple math.

(You want to see some major social unrest?  See what happens when the government starts issuing crayon-written IOUs instead of Social Security, welfare, military and civic service payroll, and tax refund checks.  That’s what’ll get the majority of the electorate out into the streets with bricks and molotovs.)

What’s needed is for the folks in charge to get some fiscal responsibility and make some hard choices, and for the electorate to stop the “I got mine, Sonny” attitudes.  Both are about as likely to happen as a fleet of Zorbonian spaceships landing in D.C. tomorrow with their cargo holds full of money to make up the little shortfall we’re facing.  People don’t want to hear that the music may be about to stop with no more chairs for them to sit on when it does, and politicians want to keep their jobs, so everyone is going to spend all their brain power looking for ways to just kick the can down the alley again for another generation or two.

Me, I don’t expect to see a single red cent out of Social Security on that day in 2036 when I reach the eligible age, because that particular fiscal house of cards will have long collapsed by then.  I’ll just have to finance my retirement the old-fashioned way: by putting away enough cash while I can work to buy my Alpo and Fancy Feast when I can’t (or don’t want to) work anymore.  I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that all the SS contributions I have ever paid in, and all the ones I will pay in until SS goes bankrupt, have already been pilfered by the preceding generations.

Our system went down the shitter the moment the people in charge discovered they could borrow money by promising that someone else’s kids and grandkids would pay back the loan.  What we are experiencing right now is just a prolonged demise, with all the players having a vested interest in keeping the whole thing going for just a little while longer.  Après moi, le déluge, and all that.

the keyboard issue has been resolved.

Well, I don’t need to shop for one anymore, because I had exactly what I needed.  Check out what I dug out of my Big Box O’ Computer Stuff:

It’s an Apple wireless Bluetooth keyboard.  I used it with my old MacBook, and almost-but-not-quite forgot that I still had it. 

Vista may not have a shining reputation for flawless function, to put it mildly, but Bluetooth dongles work fine with it, which is more than you can say about old XP (which came out when “Bluetooth” was merely a dental condition in rural Appalachia.)  I boxed this keyboard when my BT adapter wouldn’t work with my Core 2 Duo rig under XP, but it works just fine under Vista on the Atom/ION shoebox.  It’ll be a good match for the rather minimalistic Mac mini.

Sitting on that desk mat, it kind of gives off that Zen rock garden vibe, doesn’t it?

The mouse, incidentally, is not an Apple product, but a Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 5000, which, in addition to working fine, also has a comfortable shape.  I checked out the new Apple “Magic Mouse” at Best Buy the other day, and as much as I love Apple hardware, it looks like they continue to strike out on mice.  That thing was only marginally more comfortable than the notorious “hockey puck” mouse on the original iMac.  A multi-touch shell may be cool and all, but having your hand contorted into a painful claw from trying to hold a narrow and ridiculously flat mouse would be a rather hefty price to pay for that capability.

I wasn’t sure about those keys when I remembered the Apple aluminum keyboard, but I’ve typed this entire blog entry on it without errors, so I guess it’s fine after all.  Robin uses the wired version with the number pad—I bought it for her a year or so ago, and it has held up well.  The white keys do grime up after a while, but because of the flat design, they’re very easy to clean thoroughly.

Another nice property of the Apple keyboard: it’s tiny and lightweight, which makes it easy to pick up and stow out of the way when I break out the pen and paper. 

Also: shiny.  Ooh, so very shiny.  Say what you want about Apple, but they know how to make their hardware pretty.

wednesday randomosity.

Some random bullet and link salad to go with your coffee, tea, chai, or microwaved cup of whisky this morning:

• Matt at Blunt Object on his personal views on politics, where you’ll find significant overlap with my own political philosophies.  I don’t often say “+1” or “what he said”, but nothing I’ve ever read at Blunt Object has ever had me disagree on any major point.  Matt’s posts are the kind of stuff I read for intellectual stimulation.  He’s in the same league as LabRat and Stingray over at Atomic Nerds when it comes to well-articulated intelligence, and his stuff is always worth a read, especially the posts on economics.  ( I’ve come to believe that 99% of the electorate and 99.5% of the gang in Congress know fuck-all about economics, and don’t care to know anything about it.  Instead, they believe in a strange sort of Loot Voodoo, where the government always has money, there are such things as “free” goods and services, and you can conjure up those “free” things with the stroke of a legislative pen if desired.)
• Australian writer Damon Young wrote a piece on the appeal of writing with a fountain pen, and he, too, has me saying “+1”, “what he said”, etcetera.  The computer is an indispensable tool for writing, but I found that it’s only indispensable for the editing process, and that the slowness and single-task functionality of the fountain pen are much more of an advantage than a drawback when it comes to making up new stuff.
• The Mac mini my wife has so  graciously purchased for me is currently on a USPS truck, and winging its way to me from some warehouse in the Midwest, so I’m cleaning up my desk while squee-ing in anticipation.  Does anyone have a good suggestion for a new keyboard to go with a Mac mini?  I have plenty of wireless and wired keyboards floating around at the Castle, but I’d like to get something particular to fit the minimalist character of the Mac mini.  Specifically, I’d like to find a keyboard that is both wireless (Bluetooth or 2.4GHz), and missing the numeric keypad I never use anyway.  (Yes, I know that Apple makes a wireless BT ‘board without the numeric keypad, but I still can’t make up my mind whether those little two-dimensional keys are great or horrible, and I want to shop around for alternatives as well.)
• I know I haven’t done the Search Term Safari on Monday.  You know why that is?  It’s because I had exactly two original and snark-worthy search terms to work with.  In fact, most of the terms in the Snarkolator were either repetitive, or downright gross.  (Note to self: Must cut down on discussing the masturbatory practices of the homeless and/or disturbed members of society.)  So, I got cranky and grossed-out when I went through the stats page on Monday morning, and decided to postpone this week’s Search Term Safari until the Snarkolator has refilled with more wholesome and original fare.
• I have a deadline coming up this weekend, and between that and the daily kid maintenance stuff, I’m even busier than usual, just in case you were wondering why I’m not on Google Chat/AIM/IRC much lately. 
• In the category Small Victories, I won thirty-eight bucks in rental credit at my local video rental place in town.  They had a drawing, and my name came up, so yay me.  It’s not the Powerball, but it was a nice surprise, and it beats a swift kick in the junk, doesn’t it?  That’ll keep the kids in new movies to watch for a few weeks.
• I’ve had home-made Reubens for lunch the last three days in a row, and I don’t feel the least bit bad about that.  A competently assembled Reuben made with quality ingredients is the tastiest deli-type sandwich there is, and I will entertain no discussion on this subject.
• Fourth day of spring, and I see snow coming down out there this morning.   This winter was a mild one, though.  We went through four tons of wood pellets, two cords of firewood, and maybe $50 worth of propane.  I actually turned on the propane furnaces for a few minutes yesterday to make sure they’re still in working order, because we haven’t used them all winter.  (Our dryer runs on propane, too, so all our consumed propane was used to make our undies toasty.)
• I think I need a vacation.  One of Robin’s friends is coming for a stay next month, and I’m seriously considering just saddling up the car and going on a drive for a few days, to work off some of the mental ballast that accumulates when you’re at home with two small children day in and day out for years without a break. 

And with that, it’s back to work for me.  The kids are stirring, and I have a short story, a query letter, a synopsis, and a novel chapter to finish…in between playing referee, caterer, nurse, teacher, and A/V operator, that is.  More later, time permitting.

give ‘em the little finger, and you’ve given them both hands.

Oleg has an image up that references the new full-body scanners they have at some airports.  He ponders the dangers of incrementalism, and asks how long it will be until we see those scanners outside of airports as well.

This is one of the things that have frustrated me about the supposedly pro-liberty leaning conservative crowd since 9/11: the inability to see the inevitable consequences of granting such “limited” government power.

The problem here is not one of incrementalism, it’s one of principle.  Understand this: every time you grant the government a power that’s restricted in its scope or duration, you grant them that power indefinitely and universally.  When you give them the power to use those body scanners at airports to keep us all safe from them thar terr’ists, you have acquiesced the principle of the thing.  If it’s not an infringement of Suzy Q. Homemaker’s privacy to get a full body scan at O’Hare, it’s not an infringement of her privacy to get one at the corner of Main and State, or when walking into her local Federal building to get her passport renewed, or even when ending up in a traffic stop or midnight sobriety checkpoint.  They say it’s “only against Group XYZ”, and “only limited in duration/scope”, but the nature of the beast is that those powers always end up being used pretty much any way the authorities want to use them.

(Don’t believe me?  Look up “asset forfeiture abuses”, or the creeping expansion of RICO, a set of laws that was only supposed to be used against organized crime racketeering.  Hell, if you want to have a good example of the Fed’s tendency to fashion any even remotely vague Constitutional phrase into a universal adapter for applying Federal authority, just read up on the history of the Amazing Expanding Interstate Commerce Clause.)

When you hand the Feds a shiny new power under the condition that it only be used against “those people”, they’ll waste very little time either expanding the definition of “those people”, or taking the Supreme Court out for a beer and having them rule that the restriction on that shiny power isn’t valid, anyway.  And they’re right, of course, because when you’ve already conceded the bedrock of principle, you’re standing on the quicksand of expediency.

Never, ever consent to giving the government a power you do not want to see used against yourself—because sooner or later, it will apply to you as well.  If you’re all for full-body scanners at O’Hare and Dulles, I don’t want to hear a single fucking word out of you when they go up at State and Main, or when every cop car in the country has a portable Nude-O-Vision mounted on the front dash.

a weekend of gizmos and gadgets.

I scored some epic loot this weekend. 

On Friday, a package arrived with this in it:

That’s a Pelikan M400 fountain pen, in the White Tortoise color pattern.  Robin doesn’t care for the tortoiseshell striped celluloid barrel, but I think it’s purdy-like, so there.  It’s not the brown Torty, but it was #2 on my list, and someone had this one up for trade on the Fountain Pen Network classifieds, so I made an offer that wasn’t refused.

Then, on Friday evening, Robin ordered some stuff on Amazon, and then informed me that in addition to a Razer Naga gaming mouse for herself, she had purchased one of these for me:

That would be a Mac mini.  It’ll be my first new desktop Mac since, oh, 2001 or so, and I’m pretty stoked about it.  The ION box I put together works fine, but it’s not a Mac, and this box will handily outperform it while taking up even less space.  (Ever seen a Mac mini in person?  It’s ridiculously small , like five or six CD cases stacked on top of each other.)  The ION shoebox will go back behind the TV to serve as a media center and household file server, a job for which it is eminently well suited due to its big hard drive, low power consumption, and fanless design.  When I had it hooked up to the TV before, we were watching iTunes flicks off the hard drive and playing World of Warcraft on a 32” screen, which is good fun. 

So yeah, I made out like a bandit this weekend.  Now I just need to wait for the Big Brown Truck of Happiness to bring me my new Mac mini.  This time, I’ll try not to compulsively refresh the tracking information at UPS every three hours. 

bet he feels a little stupid tonight.

Low-life piece of trash attempts to rape, then murders a 16-year-old girl.  Then he waits for her 14-year-old sister to come home from school, rapes her, and attempts to kill her as well.

Convicted of capital murder, his sentence is overturned by the VA Supreme Court, citing lack of evidence for capital offense-eligible actions in the commission of the homicide.  He is convicted for the rape and attempted murder of the 14-year-old sister instead, and sent away to the Big House.

From prison, thinking that he’s no longer eligible for the death penalty anymore, he writes a taunting letter to the prosecutor, detailing his attempted rape of the murder victim—thereby admitting to a capital offense (the attempted rape combined with the homicide.) 

His words in the letter to the prosecuting D.A.:

Since I have already been indicted on first degree murder and the Va. Supreme Court said that I can’t be charged with capital murder again, I figured I would tell you the rest of what happened on Jan. 29, 1999, to show you how stupid all of y’all … are.

Scumbag is indicted once more, this time for murder and attempted rape of the 16-year-old girl.  Convicted, appeals denied, clemency denied…and his date with Old Sparky is tonight, at 9PM EST.

Everybody now:

<Nelson> Ha-ha! </Nelson>

Good riddance, scumbag.  It’s a shame your victims didn’t have a chance to put some buckshot through your brisket back on January 29th, 1999.  It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble, and the taxpayers a chunk of change for your room and board for ten freakin’ years.