Was in tears over this. Running for Governor Have fun.

Europe was a blast! I'll write another JE in a few days with details, oh so tired it's 2:23 AM [technically, in reality it's 5:23 PST] for me right now, man is jet lag a pain. I've managed to catch up on various projects and tasks, but not all, and two weeks of unread e-mail. Ugh! Now I log in to /. and see I have 58 unread messages... I think some were deleted by a message cap, becuase I'm sure there should be more and the oldest is Sept 9th. What the heck happened to Aug 31- Sept 8th ?!? Nuts! Now I've gotta search around for them...

Going to Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Mainly going over for the SOVE conference in Switzerland. The 'ol lady is in that line of work. Hitting Germany for fun and our friends originally come from there and it's free room and board while playing ugly Americans! Italy for a certain liquor only found in a small region in northern Italy and , of course, Venice...ahhhh Venice. I am not looking forward to catching up on all my /. messages, and uhhh oh yeah and work :P I'm leaving Friday on a big old jet airliner [sorry] so if you don't hear anything else from me till Sept. 15 you know why. Toodles.

At about 12:00 pm pacific my roommates dog [a Husky] got inside and killed one of my cats. What follows is just inane rambling 'cause I am really bummed and can't start swaering and punching things while at work. Husky breeds are notorious for killing small animals and it seems Eve is no exception. Sometimes when the Husky is raised with the cat(s) they won't harm those cats, but will still kill others and that's sometimes. Our two cats were kept indoors and still have their claws [to the dismay of the furniture] and our dog is outside by day and sleeps with us and the cats at night. I don't have all the details, but I hope The Bebes [yep that was her name] got some licks in. I adopted her and bottle fed her [runt of the litter] when she was only a few weeks old, back in April '99. She was the coolest cat I've ever had and I could lug her around like a sack of potatos, carry her over my shoulder, tuck her inside my robe in the morning like a joey while I got my coffee, rub her belly, hold her upside down strech her out on and correct we don't have kids. Ever see that cartoon strip[farside?non sequitur?] the world if there were no kids or pets? There are two couples standing in a park with their bikes, bragging about their bikes. Amazing how attached you can get to a little ball of teeth and claws with a tiny little purr motor inside. In case you are still reading, does anyone know how to train or "fix" her from this behaviour? I still have one cat and I'd like to prevent [yeah I don't blame Eve for her nature, but I can hold a grudge for a while, so she'll get to stay] this from happening again. My current plan is to buy a shock collar and zap her everytime she tries to get in the house and everytime she scratches the sliding glass door [and just those times] trying to get to the other cat. She doesn't do that when the slider is open [screen closed] she just lays there acting calm, even if the cats were two inches away on the other side. The only other solution is my Grandfathers; he raised chickens and when one of his dogs would kill one, he would tie it around the dogs neck for a week and that would be the last time the dog would have anything to do with chickens. Hmmmm... not in this case i don't think. So the shock collar seems the only alternative.

Funeral services will be held at 7:00 PM PST in my front yard next to the rose bushes, after I've had a few shots of a single malt in memorium. Sorry... I'm usually not so hippy, but I miss my cat.

Did you read the disclaimer?

Be careful when playing horsey on a step ladder. Around the age of three I loved my Saturday morning shows, the grand finale being The Lone Ranger. At the end of my morning ritual I wandered off to find my Mom. This particular day my Mom and Grandpa were wallpapering the master bedroom and were just about in the middle of the project. I probably pestered them for a little while before they told me to find something to do. What I came up with was playing Lone Ranger...hmmm I need a horse. Hey, there's a ladder lying on the floor! That would make excellent Silver! As I went to sit down on my proud steed, I managed to stick my thumb of my right hand in the hinge of the ladder. In the act of sitting down it closed the hinge [think scissors] and I started yowling! Maternal instinct kicked in with my Mom and she raced over to see what was wrong. Just as she was about to pick me up my Grandfather bowled her over, my thumb still being stuck in the hinge, leaned down and open the ladder. The first thing he did was to grab my hand, hold it up past my head and begin to wrap it up in his handkerchief. Man, I was feeling better! Next thing I know we were off for a car ride, wheeee. On the way to the [little did I know at the time] hospital I happened to look down and notice my Grandpa's boots were rather bloody [I was sitting in his lap]. When I went to tell him he must be hurt his grip slipped and my hand plopped down on top of my legs. I think it took a second or two to realize what I was looking at and the yowling started all over again! We finally arrived at the ER and I was taken in to get stitches, see what happened was the hinge had sliced open my thumb along the side, caused enough pressure to burst through the pad of my thumb and had crushed the nail. When I got stitched up I received no form of anesthetic [maybe I was too young?] and was screaming bloody murder according to my Mom. The doctor and nurses kept telling her I was just being a baby and it wasn't hurting me, wanna trade places Doc? I know this is really distorted, but I remember the doctor having an orange afro [white guy], lab coat and looked like the proverbial mad scientist complete with the hang wringing and mwuhahah laughter. To this day [about 30 years later] I have a scar [about an inch and a half] on the side from the slice, a scar [round and the size of a pea] on the pad from the burst and a double thumb nail [it's kinda like two nails growing on top of each other with a hollow space part way down]. That was the last time I ever played horsey on a ladder.

Following in the grand tradition of recent JE's I've read [and inspired by Em to post 'em] I am going to start a series from a home published book I did for some friends a few years back entitled "Lessons Learned The Hard Way". I know my grammar is going to be screwed up and I hope to get most of the spelling wright :P, but remember I'm just telling a story here folks and it's been a very long time since English classes. There's not any order to them and I want to mix them up a bit anyway. Some will be icky, some funny and some down right gross, so I'll give a warning at the beginning so if you're squeamish you can skip them. Now that I have you waiting breathlessly... I'll post the first one in a little while. And remember I can look back and laugh and all this [now :D], so should you [even if there is a flinch or cringe here and there] Sometimes I'll just toss an experience I thought was funny or interesting or something. Hope it keeps you amused. Feel free to comment and don't worry over doing it AC if you think I might get huffy with what you think, I enjoy conversation and debate with various points a view.

LONDON (Reuters) - Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was so outraged at the anti-communism of film star John Wayne that he plotted to have him murdered, according to a new biography of the American icon. The full story I saw is over at Yahoo

Funniest thing is I saw this in The Weekly World News, you know "The Paper" heh, a couple of weeks ago. Weird, eh?

This is the first time I've seen this and I think we're hosed. We [among many others] received a spam for a conference. In the "To:" line was the spammer, in the "Bcc:" line was the spammees. Anyone who replied back resent the spam to everyone on the list. In the space of an hour we received 40 of these things from people wanting to be removed from the list and out of office replies back to the spammer. Seems they are using a list server and anytime there is a reply it goes to the list as well as the sender. As this can defeat white/blacklists and [I'm pretty sure] anti-spam software, is there any way to kill this? Blocking the sender domain would work for the original, but it is not feasible to block coworker, industry contacts, customers, etc. I don't believe trying to get people not to reply to it will really work either, at least not for a while. We inform our users not to reply to a spam and they are pretty good about it. Lastly, before you all hammer me, do you really think that if the spammers don't know about it yet posting it on /. is really going to delay them from learning about it?

I was thinking about submitting this as an ask slashdot, but I wasn't sure if I'm missing something simple/stupid and I didn't want to make an ass of myself if it actually was posted.

I think I've just been whacked in the nose with the paper by KshGoddess, but I'm not sure. This led me to write this JE. I went to the FAQ and could not find any kind of journal etiquette. So I'm asking for any and all to answer. Is there journal etiquette? If so; how/what/why? Are you supposed to friend someone before posting in there? Are people just getting short[er] tempered because of spam? I usually post when I find something that strikes my fancy or I want to provide some info. I'm basically a nice person and I try and treat others as such. So in order to try and avoid offending anyone I would like to see if there is any sort of ground rules or is it [as I have been doing] a free-for-all? Wheeee. What a predicament. I am going to just keep right on chipping in my two cents unless someone responds and asks me to bugger off :) I'll come up with a text file of people that have asked me not to post in their journals and refer to it before I post in a friend of a friend, neutral or freaks JE. I'll slap a disclaimer in my Bio also so it's more obvious once this JE gets old. I just jumped into the UID/friends/fans/journal game recently and like to hear various points of view and would wish to be heard from. I'm not really a huge attention whore, but as rkz said "it is a very nice feeling when someone replies to your journal." So come on give me a warm fuzzy!

Oh so close I can taste it. I'll be zipping down there Friday as soon as I can BS my way out of work and spending the weekend. I went to Comic-Con last year and had a blast. I'll be the geeky looking guy, carrying a back pack, wearing glasses, being a big fanboy of several webcomic artists and not carrying a deck of cards of any kind. There that ought to single me out well enough for anyone going to find me [heh]. I had to do some fast talking to _not_ get my wife to attend. Honey it'll be thousands of geeks dressing up as Star Trek characters, blathering on about comics, anime, Sci-Fi, etc. Man if she saw some of the cosplay outfits some of the girls wear that would be it for me and I don't even ogle [well not rudely and not much anyway :D ] Anybody else that can make it [ I even know of a Brit webcomic artist that is showing up courtesy of several of his fans donating to his cause] have a really bitchin' time and enjoy! Feel free to post any Cons you liked or experiances. Also... if you have simple pleasures in life, like I do, let me know if you want to know how it went. Hell... post something if you don't want to know how it went :P. Happy Merry Wednesday [good God I gotta cut down on the caffiene and sugar]

I put in a brief bio of myself in case anyone was just dying to know what I do [heh]. In part it was to also give anyone checking me out more information for them to decide if they want to friend/foe me [I try and do a little research]. I find it rather funny that I do lean to Windows and seems to have gravitated to friending Windows users so far. I also have several personal friends who use Linux in one flavor or another [that's one of the reasons I'm playing with Gentoo]. Amusingly enough I seem to have earned a freak on the sole basis of befriending the Bungi. Ah well... I figured that was going to happen as noted in a previous JE.

Well feel free to post.

Of course it got zapped down as overrated later... and even if it was only funny it was a dang 5 WOOT, WOOT. uuhhh thank you... thank you vury much. I'll shoot for 5 informatives and insightful later. for now 5 FUNNY yeah I got no life... simple pleasures, eh? Please see heruh [ala Cartman]. Update 15 minutes later: back to 5 sweet; dang down to 2.

I figured what the hay. I can no longer truthfully say I was riding the Karma roller coaster anymore. I seem to have leveled out a bit and I felt a change was in order.

I went cruising around journals today and added some "friends" as I found their posts and or journals interesting, as Slashdot is frickinâ(TM) huge, so I added them in order to keep better track of when they write something new. If this earns me enemies, ehh, it's bound to happen sooner or later.

I view at 0 [mainly to avoid goatse links and the out and out BS] and I will mod no one down. Instead I will reply if I don't think they're trolling and sometimes I'll goof and take the bait *shrug*. I welcome all courteous, funny, off topic, insightful and irrelevant comments. I have a limited tolerance for miscreants and vandals. After all cannot one expect a certain amount of decorum in one's own space [my journal that is]? I do not foresee ever setting someone as a foe, honestly if you are that kind of person it's a lot easier to ignore you than to go to all the trouble of adjusting my settings [yeah I'm really that lazy].

Well that's it for now, feel free to write to me.--S.F.

I went to the FAQ and had to study up on what went with everything entailing friends, fans, foe and freaks. Sheez, this here /. thingy gets a heck of a lot more complicated when you register and start mucking around. I am going to try allowing comments and see how well that goes. Thanks GrimReality. It's nice to be liked.