I submitted the story, it will probably be accepted tomorrow by someone else. Who needs a subscriber bonus when ... wait a second, all the stories are on other sites!

CNN is running a story about a man, Jesse Sullivan, who lost both of his arms in an electrical accident. He has recently been fitted with a bionic arm, by grafting the remaining nerve endings into his pectoral muscles. Sensors then read and perform the equivalent actions. I, for one, welcome our new bionic overlords.

2003-09-25 22:44:03 The start of bionic limbs (articles,science) (rejected)

sebi and I were supposed to play some Halo. Then he disappeared. I'm guessing his internet connection went down again, or maybe he just decided that he doesn't like Halo. I can understand that, because there is only like 2 levels and you just play those over and over again. Multiplayer is better.

Anybody out their with an XBox and broadband who wants to get some Halo action on? I'm thinking cooperative play.

Stupid bitch backs into GFs car while she is at school. She gets out, surveys that her license plate posts did in fact do some unorthodox things to the bumper. One might say that they knew each other, in the biblical fashion. To ensure that she was in fact a stupid bitch, she hops back in her car and drives off. Thankfully there are 2 witnesses that have a thing against stupid bitches and non-consentual vehicular bumping.

Filed a police report, waiting...

Or, How I learned to stop worrying and love backups.

Except it's important to keep track of what exactly is backed up. MySQL databases are not backed up, no matter how hard I try to pretend that they are. This presents a problem for me, as the stable mail system I have in production on nerdfarm was only available in... MySQL.

I have the dump files for the unstable (read: not working) branch in the dev directory. This directory is backed up. I don't backup mysql databases because I keep the schema for whichever project I am working on. Any project that is on this server is not in production, and can be whiped out and I don't mind. Oops, not email.

I am running email off of this damned server. And the nerdfarm.org website, which is mostly static at the moment.

I'm an idiot. I'm rebuilding the nerdfarm server. It's coming along nicely...

We've just returned to the land of the wired and powered. We had about 20 minutes of brownouts. For those not familiar with the expression, walk to your light switch and flick it on and off as fast as you possibly can. If you do it right, the circuits will never actually gain full power before they drop in power. It fucks up electronics like nothing else. Even with surge protectors.

So, soon as that started happening I frantically sprint through the house unplugging everything I can see. Luckily, virtually everything (except the bedroom clock and lamp) is plugged in via a surge protector so it was easy to unhook 3-4 devices in one go.

We then decided to go walk to the mailbox and just putter around until the power came back on. So, we come back and decide that we'll walk to a Starbucks about a mile away. This was short-sighted, because I was thinking it was just my grid. I'm very possessive of that grid. It was my grid, and it was down. I was unhappy about this, but I assumed it would get up quickly.

So, we get across the freeway and I notice their lights are also not behaving as they should. At this point I'm thinking it isn't isolated ot my grid. There is a strip of restaurants along the road we are currently walking on, and inside we see the silhouette of interrupted patrons. That was a good giggle right there, I assure you.

As we get to the Starbucks, we realize that their power is out. The chance of getting a corporate America-unstirred-premade mocha was slim. We had some fun watching people try to navigate one of the major intersections in Vancouver without lights. Let me assure you of the hilarity. People, for whatever reason, were hellbent on waiting until they had a clear shot then not going. Soon as the other cars decided this game got old, and they wanted to go, the other cars would gun forward with their horns blazing.

Amazingly, we saw not one accident. I am rather disappointed. So, we walked back to the apartment, got the video camera, and walked back out to the intersection and puttered around. At which point we encountered a blind woman walking around. I informed her of the power situation, and said for her to be extremely careful because the stoplights were out. She wanted to get some batteries because there wasn't much to do at her apartment with the power out.

I'm thinking that is even more aggrivating if you are blind. Do they have cards in brail? That just has to be a tough situation. She asked a Washington State worker to take her to Walmart to buy some batteries. Nice woman, and very brave. I'm thinking if I were blind, my ass would be planted firmly in a seat and I would be masturbating or something. I really wouldn't be out where people with full sight can't manage without almost slamming into each other.

So, two hours later, the lights come on in a very majestic way. The hum of electricity cascading through the neighborhoods as we strolled back home was quite comforting. Now, my feet are a touch sore from walking around 5 miles in worn out Ecco's. It really is time for new shoes.

Because I'm a whore, I think you all should check out sebi's journal and friend him. It's usually a pretty good read, anyway.

"With your help, these lonely slashdotters can have fans, too. All you need to do is just donate a few clicks a day, and help save a life."

Sally Struthers, eat your heart out. Please.

I think I need to let it loose.
Let her looose
She only wants me for my pimp juice.

Not, my pimp juice!

I think I need to cut her loose.

Now I'm clean as a whistle, sharp as a razor.

This song never ceases to make me chuckle.

I don't buy into the "Random Acts of Kindness" bit. Have you ever noticed the people who have those bumper stickers on their cars are usually the dumbest sons of bitches (or bitches, as it usually turns out) on the road? Why is that? What is it that causes correlation between not being able to drive and putting happy bumper stickers illustrating your stance on being nice to people.

I went to a comedy club before going under the knife, and this comedian who absolutely sucked except for this bit, had a great idea. Urban Assault bumper stickers. Don't get me wrong though, I didn't like this guy. Most of his act was him screaming in a very angry way things that don't need to be said in an angry way. Things like, well, I don't remember because it was all so abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous.

I need some of these bumper stickers. The next time I see some overly happy and chearful asshole driving the wrong direction down a major 3-4 lane one way street I'm going to plaster their cars with "I can't drive for shit" bumper stickers.

The next time I see someone weaving through rush hour traffic in a very exaggerated attempt to gain about 25 feet per fucking hour, I'm going to put a bumper sticker that says, "Honk if you want to see my tits."

Or when you see these cock-mongers in their brand new Saturns, made for college students, taking up 3 and a half parking spaces because they don't want their paint dinged, "I can't park for shit."

That last one just amuses me to no end. I see this type of idiocy all the time. I very rarely see it with a car that warrants that type of attention, because those people park away from other cars. That's because they are obviously smarter than these smacktards with their first-brand-new-economy cars. I've had a high end luxory car. I parked that shit the furthest I could from other people. I still got a fucking door ding. It happens. Taking up more than one parking space is just a sign that you are obviously not mature enough to own whatever car it is you think is so fucking hot. It's not. And everybody is laughing at you. Seriously, after you get out, they all laugh at you. They go, "What a dumbass, thinking his $15,695 car is worthy of two parking spots. I remember when I was that young and retarded."

Same thing with you ricecapade "racers." You aren't cool. You are a joke. Your $12,000 used civic isn't ever going to be a sports car. Your SI doesn't stand for "Sport I-can't think of something funny that starts with I." Especially when it's an aftermarket sticker plastered next to your "Roush Racing" stickers. Maybe in your little gaggle of friends you get mad props for having your plethora of stickers and a wing that could have inspired the Wright Brothers. Maybe your parents really are proud of you. Or maybe you really are just a touch above racing in the Special Olympics.

I think that's it. I just had to get that off my chest.

I'm back, with more force than the california governor election. Well, maybe not quite that much but I am here. I'm a lot more coherent, which is probably due to the ability to cut down my dosage of pain killers. The last week has been a blur of sleeping, dealing with work issues in a very disinterested manner, building a new server at home, and watching a lot of movies.

It's been enlightening, for some reason I'll pick that word. I got a new server up to work on a semi-secret project. Remember the news thread? Well, this is the extrapolation of it. I can assure you all, it's not what you think. I'll write up a few details when I actually have something solid. I'm still fleshing it out a lot and designing. And no, I haven't touched QShogi at all. Doing actual programming is a little bit ahead of my mental capacity at the moment.

I'm still having fun, and being very dehydrated.

I've missed a few of the JEs but lurked through most of them.

I am so incredibly hungry right now. Holy hell. I haven't eaten since 9pm last night, and I seriously am starting to think if I'm going to make it until Monday. Potato soup is my friend, but it hurts like hell to eat. Since I hate codeine, they gave me vicoden. Which doesn't really do all that much for pain, at least not with me.

Oddly enough, I feel mostly ok. It hurts like hell, but that's only secondary to starving.

I'm drugged up, so don't expect to much in the ways of wit or wisdom. Well, less than you normally do. They got yanked about 5 hours ago. I'm tired, pretty sore, but doing fairly well. I'm amazed at how different the pain is than I thought it would be.

I will probably start working on QShogi tomorrow or Sunday. I'm feeling fairly spry at the moment.

So, things are much calmer here today. I'm very grateful for this, and have since made some updates to nerdfarm.org. I released SIRE and MagicBox in a pre-release form. Just in case anybody is interested in what they do, check them out.

They are not user-land software packages, and in their current form I'll be surprised if you can actually use them. I'm going to be pushing further ahead on them, especially MagicBox in the next couple of weeks.

this is a shameless plug

Need some quick and relatively easy help. I need to code up a Win32 DLL to be imported by a Visual Basic or VBA app (I'm not sure which, because that shit is like greek to me.)

Anybody available to offer some quick tutorials on how to do this, I have no documentation for Win32 code at all.

IM me at AIM: Xerithane if you can help. Thanks.

Update: Let me go ahead and tell you what we're doing. We are using a Blowfish algorithm to encrypt/decrypt information of arbitrary lengths. I'm doing it in 8-byte chunks on the Unix side, and just working with the data raw (no encoding.) We have a Visual Basic application that needs to be able to use the same algorithm, but all Blowfish algorithms in VB are refusing to work.

Programmers do!

You miss great shit like this.