When I was a young teenager, one day my father took me to visit the then-new San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. I recall quite clearly that the basic atomic pile control system was a series of control rods that would drop into the Uranium core in the event of a power or steam pressure loss and automatically shut down the reaction. WTF is up with reactors built since those early-generation Westinghouse ones that don't have this simple and obvious safety shutdown feature? Crazy.

From roblimo.com

Rick Scott was elected governor of Florida by a narrow margin, propelled into office by a campaign he financed with $78 million of his own money that was aimed at mentally handicapped citizens and Alzheimerâ(TM)s sufferers. Since we have plenty of these people in Florida, Scott won. And now heâ(TM)s letting us down. Heâ(TM)s supposed to be the tea-est of tea partiers, but Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is getting so much tea party glory that thereâ(TM)s hardly any left over for Rick Scott. The thing is, on the surface Scott is just about as loonie a tea partier as you can find outside of a mental hospital. He claimed he was going to bring 700,000 new job to Florida, then made it clear in his first budget proposal that he was going to lay off a whole bunch of state employees â" except in his own office, which he wants to grow by 91 employees and $343 million in funding.

Read the rest at Roblimo.com

So there you are, liberaling away, maybe doing a little protest over Wisconsin's Koch-sponsored Governor's attempt to impoverish state employees. And then an assistant attorney general in Indianapolis advocates using live rounds on people like you. Folks, it's time to buy guns -- and to get good at using them, too.

Read the rest at Roblimo.com.

The other day my family was playing Candyland. Our daughter was getting into it so I started playing some classic Star Trek fight music.
The music ends just as she advances to GLORIOUS VICTORY!

YouTube video here

It's awesome, not that I'm biased... :)

Finally I got every gadget I wanted. Good PC with Win7 for editing multimedia (mainly AVCHD). Well, actually I didn't know I wanted a Windows 7 PC - used linux for a decade. Than I got the Asus 1201n netbook, running Windows 7. Planned on installing linux, but what the hell, I tried it first. Actually it was pretty pleasant to use. The more I used it, the more I liked Windows 7. So when it came to buying a PC, decided to go with it. I even bought Windows - the first OS I ever payed for.

Replaced my aging HTC Touch HD with a Nexus One three weeks ago. It's amazing that this phone, released close to 10 months ago, is still pretty competitive both against the iPhone 4 or recently released Android handsets. Korean version btw, came with an SLCD instead of AMOLED - which is cool. I didn't like the somewhat blurry letters on my friend's desire, and the extra brightness (albeit small) comes in handy in daylight. Don't watch movies on the thing (where AMOLED is better), I have a 37" LCD TV for that, or my netbook. Everything is cool about this phone, the only missing feature was Skype, but that problem went away a week ago.

Syncronizing files through dropbox between phone and PC, Netbook. Backups through WIFI using SyncToy on Windows 7 (Home Network is a very cool feature). I have all my important data in three places - Documents, Pictures, Books, etc. are synced between the netbook and my PC, and I have an external HDD (shock resistant, hardened) for offline storage.

The 1201n still runs strong, can't find a better netbook at a similar price, even almost a year after its release. Yeah, it has a somewhat shorter battery life than the newer iterations, but it has a dual core desktop CPU, and battery is still good for 4-5 hours.

And finally, I sold my TZ7 and bought the new TZ10 - we are talking compact, ultrazoom cameras. Panasonic, Leica lens, pocketable with a 12x optical zoom and really powerful optical image stabilizer. For a long time (3 years!) Panasonic had no competition in this nieche. Well, Canon tried, as well as Nikon and the rest of the big guys, but failed miserable until this year. Well, this year too actually, the TZ10 still bests all of them in every review I've read, but at least now Canon is somewhat competitive.

Can't think of any toy I need in the foreseeable future. I'm a gadget addict, and for the first time, I have everything I need. COOL!

I was watching a few episodes of MST3k recently, one of which was Hercules Against the Moon Men. This is the episode which introduced the concept of DEEP HURTING . I have had that soundbite stuck in my head since then.

Enter the farcical massive patent dump by Mr. Allen. It is but the newest example of stupid patent litigation over concepts of information systems and algorithms. News of these patent suits is becoming more burdensome on (at the very least) my sanity. And these patent problems are relentless. So when I was attempting to think of some phrase which best embodied my perception of this endless stream of patent stupidity, DEEP HURTING is what came to mind.

More extensively, following patents on concepts used with computers and information systems is enough like the "plot" of MST3k that I'm starting to think that the only way to survive this with our sanity will be to laugh and mock our way through them. Oh, sure, we'll need to take them seriously at times to work around them or invalidate them, yet that alone will not be sufficient to preserve sanity. Only, I'm not even sure how something like this could be done.

Or maybe I'm already going mad, and this is the stupidest thing you've heard in the past 24 hours.

DEEP HURTING. DEEP HURTING

derp

Every Sunday, and often on a weekday or two, millions of Americans eat Jewish flesh and drink Jewish blood. As a Jew, this scares the shit out of me.

The people doing this claim theyâ(TM)re faking it; that itâ(TM)s not real Jewish flesh and blood. Yeah, right. Thatâ(TM)s like Rush Limbaugh saying he really isnâ(TM)t a hateful bigot, heâ(TM)s just kidding, hah hah hah.

But let me tell you something: before the Army sends you off to shoot at real people and kill them, they have you practice on human-shaped targets.

CPR and first aid are the same way. You practice on a dummy before you are turned loose to do it on real people.

And kids who torture or kill pets often grow up to be serial murderers.

Do these âoeChristiansâ expect us to believe that after practicing for years, even for decades, on âoetransubstantiatedâ fake Jews, they donâ(TM)t want to sink their fangs into the real thing?

I am not a big fan of Islam, but given a choice between people who blow up a few Jews now and then and people who openly practice ritual cannibalism on Jews all the time, Iâ(TM)ll choose the Muslims any day of the week â" especially Sunday.

I just received mail notification that a fellow user has bought me a gift subscription to slashdot. I'm already friends/fans with the person but his email address isn't visible so I can't thank the person off-/. (wimp, change your privacy settings and deal with the spam! :P )
 
Not sure what I did to deserve it, but I thank you!
 

Yes, there are "terror babies" among us. But most of them were planted here many years ago by Russian Communist spymasters, not recently by demented Muslims.

One notorious Soviet-planted goon is Sarah Palinsky. Her parents and her husband's parents were secretly transported across the Bering Strait from The Motherland in the 1950s.

Note that Todd Palinsky has agitated for Alaska to secede from the United States, no doubt so that it can rejoin Russia, and Sarah Palinsky has noted, wistfully, that she can see The Motherland from her home in Alaska.

This song -- http://tinyurl.com/Sweet-Ala -- could easily be rewritten as "Sweet Home Mother Russia" and used to help Americans realize that Red states are going to become Red for real.

You see, the nefarious commie plot is subtle. Right now, in Phase One, the main objective is to impoverish the American working class while further enriching the richies. Phase Two, of course, will be the violent workers' uprising. In Phase Three, a resurgent Soviet Union will send troops "to restore order."
Newt Gingrovich, Ron Paulowsky, Rush Limbauvich, and Glenn Beckovits are also leading members of this evil conspiracy.

So, too, is GOP Chairman Michael Stalin (Stalin is "Steele" in Russian).

Please, fellow Americans. Go to the rifle range and hone your shooting skills. Make note of the tea party people, Republicans, and other traitors who live near you, and be ready to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights on them when the day comes, which won't be long now.

And remember, no matter how evil the Richies and their Republican stooges become, We are the country, we will survive!

Face it: we're going to have at least two or three more years of economic decline, and Obama is a DINO who worries more about his image on Fox News than about doing anything that might actually help working Americans, so we might as well have a Congress that agrees with him.

Here's what we'll get if we vote in a Republican Congressional Majority:

• More local and state government layoffs as federal aid to local jurisdication stops
• "Obamacare" gets repealed despite presidential veto; Blue Double Cross and other health care insurers raise rates 50% to celebrate; Columbia/HCA and other Medicare-defrauding pain profiteers rejoice
• Less Medicaid funding; reductions in other medical care for poor people; many deaths due to lack of medical care
• No taxes at all on Paris Hilton, the Walton heirs, and other useless rich parasites, lower income taxes on speculators' proceeds than American Workers pay on their salaries (if you include FICA, which *I* do)
• National parks and other government amenities we take for granted closed or their operations drastically curtailed
• More homeless people as more of the long-term unemployed stop getting any government aid at all
• More crime as more of the long-term unemployed stop getting any government aid at all
• More BS from Republicans about "the free market" and how "fiduciary reponsibilities" are the reason their asshole profiteer buddies keep laying off American workers and sending jobs overseas even as more long-term American unemployed stop getting any government aid
• This George Carlin routine becomes the most popular video on YouTube
• Formation of local Coffee Party groups that hold mass firearm training and target practice sessions at local shooting ranges
• Massive long-term unemployment leads to wave of assassinations of Republican politicians, thieving richies, and Fox News anti-American commentators by laid-off blue-collar workers who have nothing left to lose
• Assassination fear leads to mass resignations by Republican politicians, corporate thieves, lobbyists, and other traitors
• 2012: Election of a strong Democratic majority in Congress and a "for real" Democratic President with balls, possibly Hillary Clinton -- who appoints Barrack Obama to the Supreme Court the next time there's an opening.

Yeah. Let the Republicons do their worst for the next two years. We're Americans. We're resilient. We will survive. And once we totally discredit them, we can get on with the business of moving America into the 21st Century.

 

A Reagan-appointed Republican Federal Judge who owns a bunch of oil company stock has said the government can't stop drilling in the gulf because, you know, just because one rig went blooie doesn't mean others will.

Yeah. And when I was learning to ride a motorcycle about 200 years ago, the old Calif. Motorcycle Highway Patrol guy who taught my cycling class told us that even if the last 1000 blind curves you took didn't hide oil slicks that would lay you out flat, you should still act like there might be a slick or a gravel patch around the next blind curve until you saw otherwise.

This is sort of like the flight instructor's saying, "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there no old, bold pilots."

This thought pattern used to be called "conservatism." What is currently passing for conservatism in political circles, specifically when it comes to regulating the oil industry, not to mention bankers, investment houses, health insurance companies, and other white-collar thieves, could more accurately be called "moronism."

Judge Feldman and a whole lot of Republicans and loonietarians need to learn about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, assuming they're smart enough to understand it -- which is unlikely.

Short Flash vid...
http://en.tackfilm.se/?id=1273610622233RA56

Canadian pre-orders started today.

64 GB WiFi version ordered, should be here by May 28. No need for the 3G version, I can tether with MyWi on the iPhone.

My dad picked up the similar model on a trip to the US last week. Was playing with it on the weekend, awesome device. Perhaps not magical but still most impressive.

I would just like to take a little time to vent about recruiting in the IT industry. Once upon a time, you used to actually be able to find "recruiters" that you could work with. These guys or gals would call you periodically, take you out to lunch every now and then and just keep in touch. They were honest, hard working, and if they said they had a job for you to consider - they were usually serious.

Today in 2010 I'm finding that:

1. Recruiters don't know anything about the technology they are recruiting for.
2. Bug you for resumes and even cover letters and then don't return you phone calls or respond to emails.
3. Want you to doctor your resume to fit the job.
4. Don't read or pay attention to the skills on your resume and then try to pitch a job to you that has nothing to do with your skill set.
5. Lie about the going rate or salary for a position - either tell you its going to be much higher and then lowering it about 4-5 times or trying to low-ball you.

And the recruiters wonder why they can't find good people. Maybe its because they have ticked all the decent people off and we don't want to deal with them anymore.

Unions not only destroyed many once-proud American businesses, but also promulgated such evils as a 40 hour workweek (remember that?), health and safety regulations on the job that have saved many workersâ(TM) lives, paid vacations, and the now-discredited idea of defined-benefit pensions, plus a particular horror this country used to value called âoejob security.â

And letâ(TM)s not forget that pesky minimum wage.

We need to finish rolling back all the damage unions have done to the U.S. so we can compete with China and India. American workers have been spoiled by having things like indoor plumbing, electricity, telephones, and cable TV. Once we get them to roll back their living standards to the dirt-floor hut level common in the countries that are now eating our economic lunch, we will return America to its former state of greatness, where millionaires had hordes of servants (which we need because of the stress our fortunes cause) and children started working at age 8 instead of lollygagging around in schools all day.

Another institution we may want to consider bringing back is slavery â" except that weâ(TM)re more racially enlightened now that we were in the 18th and 19th centuries, so we wonâ(TM)t deny this opportunity for lifetime employment to non-black people but will extend it to all.

Never forget: America is a Christian nation, and slavery is mentioned in the Bible but unions are not.

God bless America!

by Lazlo Toth, American

(at least, I *think* that's what the scrawled signature said.)