Took my family to see Guardians of the Galaxy last night. I had only heard good stuff about it and it was a fun movie. What's funny is I thought it was pretty good while my wife and kids thought it was amazing. My son kept going on about it and my wife said she wanted to go watch it again. Usually with a film like this it would be the other way around and I'd be the one who was more enthusiastic. Funny.

Got my main machine running with the Nvidia card again. I crack myself up. It seems to be working o.k. so far. We'll see how long it lasts.
 
Being in Arizona this summer was nice. It was crazy hot of course. That's the norm. But it has been a while since I'd been able to really enjoy the desert. I did miss it. I love the big sky, the cactus, the beautiful sunsets and the smell. We had some storms and there is a very unique odor that is a wet Sonoran desert. I love it. It brought back a lot of memories from my childhood.
 
Our family got to go to a Diamondback's game and timed it very well as they won, which is something they aren't doing a lot this season. It was a lot of fun for my son, who is a big baseball fan. In fact, a friend let him be a part of time with a batting coach once a week while we were home. That was very generous and was great for my boy as well. There is little league in Hungary but not the same level of resources as in the US.
 
We went out shooting one day. What could be more American than that? It was a lot of fun for my kids. A very strange thing has happened while we were away. It is pretty much impossible to buy .22 ammunition near where we lived. I don't know the causes but it was crazy. I have a couple .22 rifles and a .22 pistol that I thought would be great for the kids to shoot. I couldn't find ammunition for them anywhere. Fortunately I had friends who were able to give me some.
 
I have a lot of friends who are gun enthusiasts and I don't know if my kids appreciated the variety of weapons they got to try out. They did have fun - though I couldn't afford to do that too often, even if we did still live there. I always enjoyed archery a bit more. No need for hearing protection, less expensive over time and no cleaning when you are done. But still the fun challenge of hitting a target from a distance.
 
We spent a week up in the mountains. I took the family to Woods Canyon Lake, up on the rim. It was super, super busy. The campgrounds were all full and the lake was pretty crowded. We were driving out and my son says, "It would be cool to see an elk." I said, "You wont see any around here today. Way too many people around for that." Not two minutes later here comes an elk with a big beautiful rack just wandering on through. We pulled over and watched it for a while. I'm guessing it's become accustomed to people. That's not good - but it was cool to see.
 
I think next time we visit Arizona (probably in 2 or 3 years) we'll hike Havasupai and the Grand Canyon. The kids will be old enough and it will be a good chance for us to do something like that together before the kids start leaving the nest.It is hard for me to think that we've come that far.
 
Oh - back to the gun thing quickly - my kids were worried about getting shot at all the time. It's funny how crazy that aspect of American life is when you've stepped outside of it for a while. I had to keep reassuring them that they were not in constant danger of being gunned down. They hear about shootings in the US so much, and it's something that pretty much never happens in Hungary. I didn't realize how much they'd thought about it though or how it worried them until we got home. I used to be a big pro gun ownership guy but not so much any more.
 
That said - I don't plan on getting rid of the guns I do own there. If we moved back I would teach my kids to be more proficient with them. As long as the laws are the way they are I think it's better to take that approach. And it was nice for the times we were in areas where I was concerned about animals. I didn't normally carry but I did in a few situations where I knew we might run across javelina and some other critters.
 
I don't think there's much else of note. It was great to see friends and family but I don't need to record any of those details here. Oh - movies. We say Edge of Tomorrow. Pretty good. Also went and saw the latest Transformers. Not the best but still delivered what I want most out of that kind of movie - giant robots fighting. I watched Pacific Rim on the flight over. That movie really delivered. What else did I watch on planes? Grand Budapest Hotel. Rather charming I thought. Fiennes is an amazing actor. The new Captain America which I thought was pretty week. I can't remember what else I watched. I know at least one other movie. You know what else? Americans love to talk about movies. We really do. Not necessarily to any depth but more recommending them to one another, recounting favorite scenes, etc. It's funny how often we do that. I wish I could remember the other one I watched on the plane. My kids watched Mr. Peabody and Sherman. I was napping then but caught a bit of it on their screens. OH - when we saw Transformers they had a trailer for The Giver. I just read that a couple months ago. Judging by the trailer they are pulling a Running Man. The movie will vaguely resemble the book - sort of. But all amped up hollywood style.
 
All right - back to work.

I had one package that caused some warning but it was really out of date so I just removed it. It was VLMC and I'm not going to be using it on that machine anyway.
 
I finally got my taxes done. Life was so crazy this year that I just kept not getting around to it. Which is stupid on my part as I'm just leaving money sitting with the government that I could be using. I had a really odd thing this year, my Foreign Earned Income Exclusion was smaller than it has been in the past. I don't know why- but I doubt it's worth the time and cost to find someone who would know. With 3 kids and our income not too high, my tax liability is very, very low. And so it's all pretty small amounts involved.
 
We've been back a couple weeks now and I'm back to the weight I was before we went to the US. For that 6.5 weeks we visited we ate out a lot. There were a lot of places we missed that we wanted to eat at. And of course lots of good Mexican. That's pretty much impossible to get here. And in general we just consumed more. I think the first time we went out, they gave me my huge glass of diet coke that they would refill the moment it was empty and I must have gone through like 6 of those before we had even finished the appetizer. So funny.
 
Anyway, if we lived back home we wouldn't eat like we did when just visiting. The one thing that really struck me is how much more expensive fast food has become in the 3 years since we left. It used to be around 20 bucks for our family to go to McDonalds/Burger King. Now it's more like 30.
 
Of course gas and milk still felt ridiculously cheap compared to here in Hungary. I know why gas costs so much here, not sure why milk is so much. Probably due to the same reasons though - government choices. Just not sure which government, in which direction. Are Hungarian dairy prices inflated or does the USDA (or whoever manages dairy in the US) keep US milk prices artificially low? It was also fun to be able to buy milk in a gallon container. Buying it a liter at a time is a pain. Our kids go through them quickly.
 
That's all for today, more tomorrow.

I haven't written a journal in a while. We spent a good chunk of this summer in the U.S.A. It was a pretty full/busy time. We came back and then left again for a couple days hiking in Austria. Now we are home for a bit. I don't plan on going anywhere until next month.

I'm upgrading my Dell to Fedora 20 right now and trying to clean up my office. It's funny. It's a Latitude D620 and when I got it in 2006 it was the most powerful computer I had ever owned. It's got a dual core processor and has 2 gig of ram. At the time that blew me away and now I just use it for stuff where I don't mind how slow it is.

It is nice and sunny out. I brought a hammock back from Arizona - now I need to figure out how I'm going to put it up. Today would be a perfect day to take a nap in the sun.

I'm going to open up a small restaurant that specializes in finger foods -- ham and cheese crackers, small BLTs, etc. with an extensive wine and liquor list.

I'm going to call it the Allahu Snack Bar.

It's a happening place. There are upwards of 3, maybe 4 posts a day!
You should join us, if you like.

http://www.reddit.com/r/CircularRefuge
(message mods to join; can't let the riffraff on reddit in! Just our very own special riffraff.)

Barack Obama is a fascist who is authorizing the use of the US Military against US Citizens ON US SOIL.

Link this story with the militarization of Federal Agencies (such as the Post Office, the DHS Hollowpoint ammo buy, and others, and you can see HOW he's doing this.

If you aren't concerned about this... you aren't paying attention. And if you're not paying attention, when the shit hits the fan, you'll deserve what you get.

Link

Congrats to Axl Rose.

Apparently Michael Sweet, Bruce Dickinson, Rob Halford, Tarja Turunen, Geoff Tate, Rey Parra, James LaBrie, Ronnie Dio, Dave Mustaine, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, James Hetfield, Trevor McNevan, Jon Sumrall, Mark Slaughter, Jani Lane, Joe Elliott, Brendan Small, Bon Scott, Steven Tyler, Jeff Scott Soto, Eric Bloom, Robert Plant, David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, Brad Delp, Robin Zander, Tom Keifer, Jack Blades, Tommy Shaw, Dennis DeYoung, Paul Stanley, Daniel McMaster, Jason McMaster, Ian Gillian, Ryan Clark, Amy Lee, Chris Jericho, Andi Deris, James Paul Luna, Jesse James, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Perry, Steve Augheri, Joan Jett, Lenny Kravitz, Lita Ford, Cristina Scabbia, Kevin Dubrow, Klaus Meine, Vince Neil, David Coverdale, Phil Anselmo, Ralf Scheepers, Bret Michaels, Freddy Mercury, Steven Pearcy, Rob Zombie, Tommy Christ, Sebastian Bach, Ted Nugent, Justin Hawkins, Ian Astbury, Jim Morrison, Roy Orbison, Maynard Keenan, Rik Emmet, Dee Snider, Peter Steele, Weird Al Yankovic and George Fischer were all unavailable for the "contest".

20-9, 8 game winning streak, the best record in Baseball, and a 5 game lead in the AL Central.

HOW BOUT DEM TIGERS!

And for the record, Brad Ausmus is a far superior manager to Jim Leyland.

Pretty good. I'd have handled this a little differently. Reminds me a little of Reagan's "I paid for this microphone" moment.

And for my buddy smitty -- it's just another example if liberals and their perpetual pre-pubescence.

"Global Warming, Fact or Myth"
"Myth" -- Correct answer, by the way

And note how the thin-skinned liberal asshole (but I repeat myself) then asks him what he thinks of the Easter Bunny... Callahan points out the asshole nature of the liberal reporter and ends up getting thrown out of the meeting.

My response would have been that there's more credible evidence to support the existence of the Easter Bunny than there is for Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Video

Also can be used for aching symptoms from trying to defend the Imperial Preznit from the following scandals:

Fast and Furious
IRS Targeting
Benghazi

Or even from overplaying the race card. Buy it by the crate!

http://i60.tinypic.com/10ommip.jpg

Speech: Mark Levin at the NRA

Link to i-Programmer

Wow, talk about a trollbait article.

The author attempts to make a case for managed code because of the "saving graces" of the runtime, but what, pray tell, was the runtime written in?

If a bug similar to Heartbleed was found in .NET or the JVM, for example, it arguably would have had an even greater impact.

To be 100% clear Heartbleed happened not because a programmer screwed up, but because the language was too primitive to know better.

Wow, that's a money quote for trolling.

This statement is ludicrous. It was because a developer screwed up. When a person gets shot, do we blame the gun or the shooter? Exactly, we blame the shooter. The fault never lies with the tool, it lies with the user of the tool. If you don't know how to use the tool correctly, don't fucking use the tool.

For example: Let's say there's an idiot -- there's enough around here to pick from -- who improperly uses a table saw and slices off a finger. Do we blame the table saw or the sloppy idiot?

Blaming C/C++ for Heartbleed is just as stupid.

Quite frankly, I'm surprised i-programmer posted such a trolling, flamebait rant and called it an article. I'd expect that sort of lame-ass shit from Slashdot...

Harvest Day (Nazi Germany)
Beer Hall Putsch Day (Nazi Germany)
Red Army Day (Soviet Union)
USSR Constitution Day (Soviet Union)
Earth Day (United States)

C'mon, admit it.