So, as you know, I love trains. I have a nice collection of train things. Well, all of my stuff is in what is known as HO-Scale. But, I've spent much of my life belonging to a club that has a large O-Scale railroad. Several years ago a fellow member of this club built from scratch four models of my favorite steam locomotive.

These aren't imported wonders or high production things. These were made from a labor of love. This is the train equivalent of getting a custom hot rod or chopper. Hundreds of hours of work, specialized casting things were made, and meticulous attention to detail makes these 4 engines highly valued. Additionally, the sentimental value for someone in my position is out of this world.

Well, this builder passed on several years ago. I actually helped clean out his basement of all the in-progress works, as there were some people who hoped to finish the engines. Well, the leader of that group has also passed away and the two remaining ones are in their eighties.

So, the builder only finished the 4 engines. However, 2 of the engines were sold to some club in the southern US and they sent them back asking if he could re-work them to masquerade as some other steam engine. He did the work and sent them back.

So, we're down to two engines now remaining in the style that is my favorite steam engine.

One of these engines was sold to a club member, who after several years, had to move away due to job issues. We believe he moved to Tennessee but no one knows for sure. We have obviously lost contact with the owner and we have no idea the condition or location of this engine. Someone out there probably has this work of art and has no idea what they have. Of note, I am versed in the unique identifiers of this builder, should an engine surface, I can authenticate it.

The fourth engine belongs to my one friend Bob (I have three friends named, Bob, this is the "train Bob"). He lives near me and I have been over to his house several times. He is a great guy, but we don't go back years and years or anything, at best 4 or 5 years.

Bob is a great guy, and seems to like me. When our mutual club has an open house he insists that I be there to ensure his stuff is run well (he can't handle the control panel, and not many others can without running trains into each other). He calls me entirely paranoid every year.

Well, obviously my favorite engine of his would have to be the scratch built one. I worry what would happen to Bob's engine when he passes to the great railroad in the sky. He's no spring chicken, I'm not quite sure of his exact age, but he's been a Mason for 50 years (recently received some award for his service, that's how I know).

Other companies have made engines of this style, but they don't carry that level of personal interest. Some of the engines are quite detailed, perhaps more so than this particular one, but they don't have that nostalgia.

So, how do I get Bob to realize how important this is to me and how does one pop the question, "When you die, can I have your engine?"

I just feel entirely uncomfortable about it.

For a while I thought Bob saw me a non O-Scale person. So I bought one of the non-nostalgic engines from another maker, but this engine requires much conversion and machining work to convert it to the style desired (it needs to be converted from AC to DC and 3-rail to 2-rail to be just like this important engine of Bob's).

Since I got this other engine Bob knows I'm serious about this type of engine in this scale. This engine purchase was highly political and seemed to be working quite well. I could just sit on my engine acting like I want to convert to be like Bob and all the while he hears about my desire for his.

Well, now someone has thrown a wrench in the works. A company is producing a brand new highly detailed (and not requiring conversion) engine. The price is very freaking high, but it meets all of the requirements, except the nostalgic one.

I don't need an engine of this type. I can only run it at the club, and so long as Bob has his engine and enjoys me enjoying his stuff I couldn't possibly get any more out of owning my own stuff. My worry is more along the lines of what will happen to Bob's engine in the coming years. I know the guy has kids, but I don't know them or what interest they have in the hobby, or if how much they know about his stuff. Sometimes kids want "one of daddy's engines" to remember him. Often they would be just as happy with a $100 engine as they would be with a $50,000 engine.

Now, Bob has lots of other interesting things and there are other things I would love to see saved from a life on a shelf or fall into hands that Bob doesn't like at the club, but I'd sacrifice all of that to ensure this one handmade specialty doesn't slip away.

First, the good stuff. I'm going to be at the TCF computer show on saturday. If any of you are going and want to meet up, let me know.

Second, the bad stuff. Stop reading now if you don't like hearing sad tales about pets. This will go progressively worse as you read on.

First, my cat, Cheeise. He has a terrible eye infection/ulcer thing. He had surgery early last week and has his third eye-lid sewn shut, along with a rubber band. Looked really sad initially, but he plays really well and seems of good spirits. I'll post pictures one of these days. Maybe tonight. We'll know Tuesday how things went. At best the ulcer will leave a cloud on his cornea, at worst he could lose the eye.

Second. The cat I grew up with for like half my life is near death. She weighs about 1 pound, 2 at most. You can feel her bones and hear her walk. I think she may have weeks at most, days at least. She eats and drinks. She does her duty in the box. But can't hop up or down and the crack of her front legs when she tries to hug me is quite upsetting.

I'm with my parents for the weekend and I'm taking tons of digital pictures. I know this is going to be really tough when I leave. I hate goodbyes.

She doesn't act like she is in pain. She has always wanted to be held and loved and I'm going to be sure to help her, but it still isn't fun at all.

UPDATE

Here is a picture of Chessie post-op with his eye funky-ness.

Here is a picture of me soon after I got to my parents house today and found the cat couldn't get up and walk over and greet me. She always runs to me as soon as she sees me and begs to be held. Here she is again on my lap looking at me. Sort of has a sad blank stare now. Pretty blue eyes are still the same.

Warning, this JE contains some painful descriptions. While this is partly to share what I do it is also to solicit input on some of my questions I pose. It is also NOT a recommendation to anyone and I do not encourage anyone to attempt what I do. I didn't just sit down one day and decide to electrocute myself; it has taken me years to get to this point. Oh, and sorry it is long.

First a little history. When I was a kid my hands, mostly my left, began to hurt. I saw a few doctors and it was thought I had mild carpel tunnel syndrome. Later it was found that I am missing all cartilage from my left wrist and some of the bone from the arm and the hand portions are wearing away. I also have no synovial fluid in that joint.

As you can imagine, this is quite painful, but luckily my pain comes and goes. I may be in terrible pain for three days and fine again for a week or two. I've gone as long as a month or so I think between bad times.

Also, my hand is hardly attached at the wrist. If I lift a gallon of paint my hand separates. Depending on the weight/force I can separate by as much as a quarter of an inch. This makes it easy to dislocate, which is VERY painful. A few times I've had to pull my hand off of my arm and set it again. Sometimes I'm fortunate to have others present to pull my hand, as the gesture of my arm across my body to pull my hand isn't conducive to setting it straight.

Following are the treatments I do, roughly starting from weakest to most severe.

Medication.

First off, Tylenol and anything over the counter doesn't do a thing for me. I have some celebrex, and this can work for mild pain, but it often takes a while to kick in and it is expensive and hard to judge when to take more. It also conflicts with other pain meds and I have to be off of it for a while if I'm going to take other things to avoid interaction issues.

Then there are the strong meds, such as oxycontin. I take enough to make Rush Limbaugh's horse giddy, and this obviously isn't a good idea if I'm going to drive. But it is fun to post a JE.

I hate medication as I fear addiction, and it isn't cheap, especially when medical insurance is flaky.

Pressure (low).

To me constricting pressure on my wrist is comfortable. I enjoy someone with a good grip to squeeze it and gently let go when they tire. I once blew up a blood pressure cuff applying pressure. I mean blew up as in I exceeded the recommended pressure limit and it exploded.

Brace.

I have a wrist brace that I wear, often to bed. This holds my hand in place. I tie it on tightly and this provides some constant pressure. This is good for minor aches in the joint. It is also used in conjunction with other means listed below.

Cream.

The normal pain creams don't do a thing. The only thing that does anything, and even then only slightly, is the capsicum cream. I use the HP kind (High Potency) as it contains the highest concentration available over the counter. However, I have to abuse the directions. They say to not wrap the area and to not get it wet. I wrap my wrist in the brace and when it wears off I wash the area for another cheap high. This is the sort of stuff people write about actually burning their skin.

First question - It is my understanding that mace and other pepper sprays use very highly concentrated capsicum. I'm wondering if there is an efficient way of applying this so I don't get overspray (like in my eyes, or on surrounding food, etc...). Thoughts?

Electrocution.

One time I was doing one of those high school hand crank generators hooked up to some copper pipes to show how people conduct electricity, and strangely this relieved the pain in my wrist. I went out and obtained a TENS unit and I'm in love. This relives pain while in use, and it gets that deep itch that I just can't explain. It is like someone cut my hand off and I have an itch on the end of my stump... but I can't reach it. Sort of like phantom pain that amputees talk about, but in reverse.

The problem I have here is that my TENS unit is my life. I live in total fear of breaking it, and it already looks like it was in a war. The lead wires are unique to this model and I can't find a replacement, and I think they have a conductive problem near the unit and this requires the wires to be in a certain position to work.

Also, I use the re-usable pads. They are made of conductive rubber and are getting quite old. Sometimes the leads fall out. Also, I need some means to hold them on, namely the brace from above. This limits my ability to do things when I'm TENS'ing. I'm looking into the stick-on type, available cheaply from eBay. Question - are they any good? What should I look for?

The other small issue is I shave my wrist to enhance conductivity. This looks kind of silly, but who cares. An issue is that I had to stop using it when I sleep. Last time I did that I burned myself. Electric burns are bad, especially when you can't put cream or pressure there any more to help the underlying pain. Not fun.

And, my TENS is a portable unit. This means it works via a battery instead of being plugged in. I use the TENS on the highest settings (there are three knobs) and in time the juice runs low. Things can get expensive when I have really bad pain. I think about hooking a power supply up to it, but I know I'd use one of those adjustable kinds and the thoughts of upping the power would be too great. Something about exceeding the intended voltage/amperage limits of safety scares me (when I'm lucid without pain) and I worry about ruining the TENS.

Pressure (medium)

Sometimes I'll put some rubber bands around my wrist, pull the hand off, and let the bands hold it off. This is enjoyable, but I don't like cutting off circulation to my hand for too long.

I've also been known to take the leg of a chair (preferably a sofa) and while I lay on the floor I will lift up the chair with my legs and rest the chair leg on my wrist. I often then press down with my legs on the chair to apply more pressure.

Pressure (high)

This is the ultimate. The scariest. I put my hand in the brace, often with cream on, typically just after a TENS zap that didn't cut it, and I may even be hopped up on meds. I then take two C-clamps and I put one in the vertical and one on the horizontal axis and I successively tighten them down. I've even gone so far as to do all of the above AND put some rubber bands on (under the brace) and clamp away.

I have the clamps on as long as I can stand it. Typically this is about 5 minutes. I then take them off and enjoy the high of absolutely no pain. This high lasts for a few minutes (about 10) and then I clamp again. After a few sessions the pain remains overall low enough that the other treatments can work and I can stop clamping.

Dream

Remember the scene in Robo-Cop when the dad from That 70's Show goes "Ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne" and blows Alex J. Murphy's hand off? Yeah, that's a dream for me. I have honestly had thoughts about what life would be like with a prosthetic hand; the trade-offs to no pain versus lack of mobility and dexterity. Yeah, often the pain is that depressingly mind controlling-ly horrendous. I'd buy that for a dollar.

Suggestions?

You guys got any ideas for (relatively) safe ways of applying pressure, enhancing my electrocutions, or enhancing my drug use? Herbal or magnetic hucksters need not apply.

Update

Here are two pictures of the clamping.

So, the other evening I get a craving for a snack. I eye up some of the ice cream and decide to blend it up for my beverage and fix myself a burger. A lovely combo IMHO.

So, I put the ice cream in the blender, add some milk and some chocolate syrup and as I begin to blend it I notice there's all these people filling up the lawn.

It seems that not a single one was Jewish (possibly because of my combining of meat and dairy).

Thus I feel I should point out that:

My milkshake brings all the goys to yard
And they're like, "It's better than yours"
Darn right, it's better than yours
I could teach you
But I have to charge

As you may recall there was a weird woman that came to my door a few weeks ago.

Well, I suspect she has attempted to make further contact. I'm sure it was my charming sense of humor and dashing looks.

Someone has mailed us a post card, "Subject: Your Gift." This alone makes me think of her. The author then goes on about attempting to contact us about "a gift waiting for you." It is either her or my drug dealer has gotten high again and is celebrating another made up holiday.

She signs the card, "Please hurry and give me a call. Thanks, Ms Ream 717-509-0688."

The card is postmarked "Southeastern, PA [zip is too faint to read]." I'm confused since to me "Southeastern, PA" is simply a region, not a specific location.

The best I can figure the phone number listed is a cell phone number. As such I'm assuming she will have caller ID so I'm hesitant to call and ask if she has Prince Albert in a can, but maybe someone out there will have suggestions. I'm thinking perhaps a payphone run with some found pocket change.

I think the number is a Lancaster, PA based phone number and the registered carrier is Ctsi. I emailed Ctsi but they didn't seem to want to give out customer information and could neither confirm nor deny that this number is in use by one of their customers.

Maybe I should get luvsbway to call her and setup an appointment for her visit. I can be ready with cameras to capture the visitor should she be my favorite door-to-door dweeb. We could setup people to quickly park her minivan in. Then, when I give the GO sign and we can give her a selection of our own gifts.

Maybe if this turns out to be her I could make an enema addict website with her contact information ("Ream" just conjured images of enemas, I don't know why). I'd hate to run an ad. in the paper since my friend Zerocool isn't in trouble right now. Perhaps I should go see Razor and Blade. Nah, they're flakes. Lord Nikon, you got any ideas?

[Update]

Luvsbway has called the number twice today and has been able to learn that it is Vicki Ream. Sometimes if you call a man will answer. His name is Scott Brown.

I don't know about in your neck of the woods, but around my place the several local TV stations like to compete for viewers. They like to use different lures and quote different statistics about themselves.

There are several fronts, with a few winners in my mind, but the battle of interest here is for traffic. I will post my breakdown of the other battles following this discussion.

So, the one channel has in its arsenal a traffic helicopter. This seems to be their claim to fame. With it they can show you an aerial view of how an accident has impacted our already overcrowded roads. This is mostly useful.

All channels seem to have the ability to report with maps, showing accidents with glowing stars and alternate routes. The only difference among them is who they have reporting the traffic. Some stations have hotties, others have really boring ugly people that read from the teleprompters very s-l-o-w-ly. One station even hired away another station's traffic reporter and they feature him on their commercials as being the, "Best person in the region when it comes to traffic." Like only he can listen to the police scanner.

But the new tool is here, have no fear! The local CBS affiliate has now put into motion an in-car traffic camera called "Live Eye." No longer must you settle for maps with alternate routes on them, now you can see what someone who is stuck in the traffic sees. Now you can live the traffic. Why put up with possibly good-looking reporters when you can pretend to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

None of the mobility of a helicopter without the hassle of information like a map, all rolled into one easy to watch package. What more do you want?

For a sample of the "Live Eye" check out this demo. Well, good to know that the one particular road you happened to drive down at that time isn't backed up. Guess everything out there is just peachy.

Am I to understand that the greatest tool man has yet created to learn about traffic problems is some sap driving around with a camera? Why are they even bothering to advertise this? Are they honestly proud?

******

Ok, the other wars, and my take on winners and losers.

Weather:
NBC has had their own "Super Doppler Radar" for what feels like years now. They do a fine job over estimating snowfall just like everyone else, but they have prettier pictures and their people aren't terrible. Winner.
CBS just now got their own radar. They are an also-ran as they are merely lagging behind NBC in this ammo intensive war. First loser.
ABC has things... but their weather guy is so old and boring I fall asleep before I hear anything. Last place.

Reporter Hotness:
ABC has a lipstick lesbian. Winner.
NBC is a crew of decent people, but the one has a bent nose, sort of like she's sniffing around the corner. Their one traffic chick is a hottie, but is rarely on (I think she may have even left, I'm not sure). Second place.
CBS fills their anchor desks with trolls that have speech impediments. Loser.

Times and length of broadcast:
NBC does a 1 hour show at noon and all the usual other things. Winner.
ABC does a half-hour show at noon and all the usual other things. Second Place.
CBS has heard of doing the news and will figure out a time to run it around episodes of Becker. Loser.

Sports:
For hockey and football I either watch the game or I know the score via online sources before it is reported locally. Thus, I find no need to watch local sports as they just cloud things up with talk of baseball and basketball.
No decision provided, except to pass a message along to the sports guy on NBC, "The Smothers Brothers called, quit impersonating Tommy."

Content:
Well, this category is so hard to judge what with the liberal media and all ;-). Seriously, I find news to be difficult to deal with as any time they have a story where I know a lot about the subject (computers, trains, Thermonuclear Exploding Grelbin Device, ete) they always seem to report something kinda wrong. If this is how they report trains, I can only imagine their level of competency regarding politics, house fires, domestic disturbances, and hazardous spills. And if the weather guys are any indication of their nose for news I'm again not impressed.

For those of you who don't know the Iron Chef: Battle of the Masters series is coming soon to FoodTV (starting April 23). Well, the thing is there appear to be three "challengers" (I can't exactly say "Americans" since Puck at least didn't start that way) going against two Iron Chefs. That seems to be one extra "challenger." The commercials also tout a "surprise twist" of some sorts.

Could this mean my dream is finally coming true???

I can see it now. The chairman introduces the main ingredient; he pulls back the cover and up rises... BOBBY FLAY!

I can't decide if he should be presented alive to the chefs and let them tear into him during battle, or if Flay should be properly butchered before the match with equal body portions divided up for the chefs. Live would certainly be interesting, but if he isn't sedated then that means he could stand on someone's cutting board again. We can't have that. But, if he's served sedated, then why bother? Thus, I've mostly settled on butchered but perhaps leave his head intact.

Now, if we can cut up Emeril Legasse to make a true "Essence of Emeril" we can complete the ultimate pruning of FoodTV self loving idiots.

We are all probably aware of the fight by one Michael Newdow to have the phrase "Under God" removed from the defined pledge of allegiance (as I understand it, those who wish to add the phrase are welcomed, at least that is my feeling on the matter).

I can personally claim to never have stated the phrase when I was in school. I happened to use the similar sounding phrase "underpants" to make it look less like I was skipping said phrase. Unfortunately, this doesn't have the same lip movements as "under God," but no one noticed (for more information move your lips to the words "Olive Juice" when next you see your mother-in-law).

Well, skip "Under God" no more! Apparently this isn't an optional part in some locations.

Perhaps the pledge should end with, "With liberty and justice for those under God."

PS. When I said I used "underpants" that was only part of the story. This was the pledge I used:

I plead alignment
To the flakes
Of the united snakes of a merry cow
And to the Republicans
For which they scam
One nacho
Underpants
Invisible
With licorice
And jugs of wine
For owls

This is something I have been pondering for some time. I thought about submitting it as an actual "Ask Slashdot," but the stuff I need to write up is a tad lengthy, and any answer to my "questions" would be so esoteric at best it would be useless.

Question: Why don't people "home-brew" their own chocolate?

People brew beer through an interesting process of carbonation, timing, flavoring, boiling, bottling, sterilizing, and other 'ings I wouldn't care to mention (well, drinking being a good one, too). To me this seems like an enjoyable process that is a labor of love.

Well, why don't we make our own chocolate?

Now, let me be open here. I did work for a chocolate company, but no, I wasn't an Umpa lumpa. Things were made on a LARGE scale, but it was not rocket science.

If you go to Hershey Park in Hershey, PA you can take the Chocolate World tour where you are told how chocolate is made. This sure seems a lot easier than making oh say, semiconductors and a whole wafer-fab thing. I'm certainly not going to start doing that in my basement anytime soon.

First, one would need beans. Beans, beans, magic beans! Cacao beans. But even major chocolate makers don't start with just the beans themselves. They get them already fermented and dried. Sure, us home-Umpas could do that, but for the sake of discussion let us pretend there is a usable dried bean market already. This is very much like coffee beans - they are sold easily on the trading market. Maybe not available at your local mega-mart, but then most beer brewers things aren't either.

So, we get our beans. We need to clean them up and roast them. This takes from 30 minutes to two hours. Sounds like something I can do at home, but I would suspect that much like coffee beans we can find ready roasted. Especially if this becomes as popular as home-brewing.

A lot of the flavor of the chocolate (like coffee) is decided in the bean selection, and chocolate companies take great pride in their mixes of different beans. A lot of this pride is for making a consistent chocolate product (for the larger companies) but we can concern ourselves with varried flavors and new experiences over the consistent products on the shelves.

Then we break the beans and take the nib, discarding the rest. Sounds doable. Maybe painstaking until we get the knack, but using big sieves and such should help the process. This might also become a product, just nibs.

Now we enter into possible dark territory. We need to crush the nibs ever so gently. The big companies do this by large granite rollers. This process also takes a long time. I don't know of such a tool available to the home consumer, nor do I know how such a thing would work so as to not make the neighbors think we took up the hobby of rolling bowling balls down the steps. But we're nerds, I'm sure we can think up something. [This is the ask Slashdot part of the story]

A mortar and pestle would work for small batches, but home-brew beer makes get to make carboys at a time. I want to make a few pounds at a time of chocolate.

Ok, once we are all ground up we can press our mush (this mush is actually called chocolate liquor). This releases the cocoa butter. This cocoa butter has tons of uses. My ex liked it as some sort of fancy skin cream. It is also what you need if you are going to make that simulated chocolate by-product-like substance called "White Chocolate." The dry stuff left over from your pressing would be cocoa powder. This is useful for things that the name implies already - cooking, baking, and making drinks. Remember, this is the pure stuff, not the Quik mix you find in the store, so I don't think we can just skip to this step from the beginning. But oh what savory chocolate cakes we could make! However, we could use some extra cocoa butter for the next step.

Take some chocolate liquor and mix in some condensed milk, sugar, and some of your extra cocoa butter. Combine well until you have what is called "crumb." You must then crush this (granite rollers again) to as fine as is humanly possible. The finer the crumb the smoother the chocolate in the end. Again, if we can solve our earlier crushing problem we can just use the same technique here.

Once crushed we sort of need to knead the chocolate. This is going to be the biggest obstacle to the home-Umpa. This process, called "conching," takes forever. 6-8 days for just your average $ershey's bar.

The big companies have huge conching rooms with large machines that go back and forth with granite rollers on granite slabs rolling the chocolate and folding it on itself. A very impressive sight. But, home-brewers get to let their beasts ferment for a while, we can conch. However, when we conch we have to have an active appliance running... this will take some thought.

Also, Hershey, PA smells of chocolate. Your house and, depending on the scale of your production, your neighborhood will also smell of chocolate for a long time.

You can tell when chocolate is done being conched. It just looks like liquid chocolate at this point. I don't know how to describe it, it just looks... well... "done" I guess I have to say.

The next step would be to temper the chocolate. We don't want maltempered candies, do we? To accomplish this we slowly heat and cool the chocolate several times. Sounds like something I can do on my stove with a simple double boiler. No worries here.

After it is tempered to our content (tempering gives it a shine and helps keep it stable at room temperature) we can just pour it from our double boiler into molds or dip strawberries or even body parts in it. I've found you can even dip Swedish fish and gummy bears in for a truly sugary combination.

For some reason this doesn't sound too daunting to me as compared to home-brewing. Sure, I would need some specialized tools, some unusual ingredients, and I know I'm not going to make Godiva-rival on the first batch. Yes, there are some instrument problems. But maybe we can find a solution.

Q: I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?
A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it. Don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass, a green leafy vegetable. And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable slop.

Q: Is beer or wine bad for me?
A: Look, it goes to the earlier point about fruits and vegetables. As we all know, scientists divide everything in the world into three categories: animal, mineral, and vegetable. We all know that beer and wine are not animal or mineral, so that only leaves one thing, right? My advice: Have a burger and a beer and enjoy your vegetables.

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have a body, and you have body fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good.

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: You're not listening. Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?
A: Are you crazy? HELLO.... Cocoa beans. Another vegetable!!! "It's the best feel-good food around!"

***************************

Now, with that out of the way. Let me give you a warning. I'm not in a good mood lately.

I will not go into things to save us all a flame filled rant (which I did type up, and did provide stress relief, but I also did close without saving it). I think I'm going to go into my own personal "Blackout" of sorts. A little seclusion, if you will.

Flip it, stick it, see you lata, bye.

So, the April Fools edition on homestarrunner.com was a "site under construction" page that lead to some fighting. It is a well-done web-toon from the authors of a site full of such a level of work.

But, there was a slight Easter egg on there that I thought I would share as I found its level of work amazing.

The thoaxcorp.com site is a well-written pseudo-business page that is nearly 100% Content Free (TM). Of note, the domain is owned by one of the brothers Chapman (the people who bring you homestarrunner.com)

Obviously from the name this is The Hoax Corporation, but it is done to a level I have never seen before, and this is a topic I have personally dealt with several times. In college, a professor and I developed a system we called "Weasel Wrangling" where we would lure "weasels" (web users) to our sites that had to contain nothing of value*. We had awards for longest weasel session, most repeat weasel, etc... This of course started us on writing our own web traffic analyzers (before there was a plethora on the market).

Another instance is one that I have wanted to work on (but the web server is still DOA). I own rot26.org I would love to set this up as a fake security company (that looks legit) offering a plethora of tools based on the ultra-secure ROT-26 encryption algorithm. (One could also claim that it uses steganography since output closely resembles natural language.)

* - The thing that worked best was to hint there was some sort of illicit content on the page, but not actually say this. Say things with a sort of textual ::wink wink:: that if you found the right page you could get to a certain area that people aren't supposed to go. Give them encouragement that they are getting closer at good times helps keep interest. Also, enough pages so they haven't seen all you have, ever, kept them for a while as well. My trick? Dynamic links and prolific use of fortune output. I only had about 10 pages, each having links (like "Don't click here") or a random letter on the page, each having some degree of dynamic content, and each linking to $rand_other_page_generated_on_load. Ahh, CGI. You're just one click away, can you find it?

I'm still in total amazement, but a recent submission of mine made it to the front page. Not to keep myself feeling good I just sent in another, but I doubt this will make it. Thus, I am posting it here to get it some audience.

heliocentric writes "Well, with the latest release from the GAIM group it seems they are a little hard up for money. But, they aren't accepting just donations. Instead they are offering up some items on eBay to raise some more money, and perhaps some interest."

Update: Yup, this one was rejected. That is why I shared it here.

The introduction that follows is simply a means to explain the how and why for my testing this product. If this is of no use to you then skip ahead to the section on installation.

Introduction
So, a while ago a friend of mine was to bring over an old computer of his so I could upgrade my Linux computer. I love having a windows PC and a separate Linux computer. Typically the lesser of my two best computers is the Linux computer since IMHO Linux runs faster on older stuff than windows does. Plus, I'm still honestly (lately) a windows predominate user.

I hope to buy a new main computer soon and shift hardware around, but until money grows on trees this concept may remain only as a dream.

Well, said friend didn't show up for the big computer building fest in my basement, so the show had to go on. RecursiveGreen was over and he's my gentoo master. I wanted to play with gentoo and after I've tried it a billion times trying to get it and X running on an ultra sparc I figured I'd have all my friends over to play with a gentoo install.

Yes, my grand some total of friends would be RecursiveGreen. Shutupaboutit.

So, without this computer we made do on an old old 300 mhz Compaq piece of junk (pending donated computer is only a 500 mhz, other hardware donations are gladly accepted). I decided that said box would be a chew toy for all the various OSes I could find, but we'd start with gentoo. Gentoo install was moving along well (taking days to compile) until luvsbway came downstairs to visit me and she sat on the corner of the keyboard. Right where control and x are. Right as it was compiling the compiler. Thus ends that install.

Frustrated with not wanting to start over on gentoo I decided I'd test different OSes. To get a base line I installed Red Hat 9.0. I'll admit I'm a Red Hat fan and thus I've been using this distribution on my other dual processor Linux box. Being familiar with it already I was merely installing this for comparison purposes. I only kept it on for an entire day before I popped in the Fedora Core 1.0 disc to start the process.

Installation
Installation flowed just like a typically redhat system does. If you are familiar with how the installation has looked since like 8.0 then you will be right at home. Only thing of interest that I noted being changed is that now the system detects my wheel mouse prior to the installation software starting up. This is handy after I have grown so accustomed to the wheel in so many other applications. However, there is little need to scroll too much so this isn't like a life saving feature - just a nice touch that was needed for a while.

Another nice feature is after I select what packages I want to install the software tells me which of the three CDs I will need (I needed all three). This was nice for me since I only burned the first disc and was planning to wait and see what it needed. Now, while the first disc was installing I could happily burn the others.

Use
Hey, it works. Things are a tad slow, but that's because of the slow CPU I have in this box. I'm using fedora for web browsing and konsol'ing my way around updating things. I haven't tried any office products on it, but those should be the same regardless of OS that it runs on. Besides, I'm a weird coot and I only like a particular old version of StarOffice, so I won't even get into the new OpenOffice tools or whatever else is bundled.

X works fine on the hardware, but sound seems dead. This isn't of great concern at this point since I'm not planning to keep this system either with this OS or in general (read above about donated hardware). Thus, I won't be trying to track down anything special to kernel mod fix anything for sound. I'll burn that bridge when I get the More Better Hardward (TM).

There was a long delay in testing since I just had to move all of my computers around. My windows PC is a dual monitor setup and with Ksh finding a really cool toy I just had to make it look like a triple head - but better! I have my main windows PC in regular setup with the Linux PC to the right. Once I have a decently speedy Linux box I will be so happy!

Upgrades
So, of course, out of the box the up2date is busted. After fixing the pgp key (see below for fix) I can finally run up2date. But, it seems I can't get to the latest and greatest kernel, just patches to the current kernel and updates to everything else I have. This has been my experience with up2date - lacking. With things out there like gentoo's "emerge" I see the simple command line system to keep packages "updated" only as outdated. It was a nice advancement when it was new. It can still be of help for keeping a box going along happily, but with rpm repositories out there and other information about popular packages we should not remain stagnant with merely keeping up to date with our core system packages.

I can yum as well, but this isn't getting me any further than up2date. I honestly haven't yum'd terribly much, but I will keep playing with it. This is my first experience with yum, I don't hate it, but I honestly don't see it doing much more than up2date at this point. So far, the same can be said for apt-get (which didn't come with Core 1.0 and I had to roll it on there myself).

When RecursiveGreen typed, "emerge gallery" he sat back and waited and when it was all done he had a functioning gallery system on his computer. That's what I want. I'm just a silly end user and I want to act like one.

I've been trying to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.4 by rolling it myself, but I'm hitting a few dependency issues. Things that (with my understanding) gentoo's emerge handles for me.

Pine
Argh, pine. Love it or hate it, you have to at least respect that it is a thin mail client that does what it advertises. I like using it for root to check and organize the system messages. Yes, I actually read the system messages on my computers, and you should, too.

Well, it seems Fedora Core 1.0 does not include pine out of the box. Nor can I yum or up2date it. Oh how I long for the ability to just type "emerge foo" and have product foo running on my system.

So, I had to get the code and roll it myself. Not a pain at all to me, but since when has pine been a non-standard installation piece of software?

Since noticing the absence of pine I'm going to check around for other missing things that I have just come to expect in a UNIX distribution.

How to fix up2date
Just run these two commands on your system with root privilege.

rpm --import /usr/share/doc/fedora-release-*/*GPG-KEY*
rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY

Well, Tuesday was luvsbway's birthday (she's catching up to me!) and I took her out to eat. The place was BYOB and this was the sort of event I would expect to see luvsbway getting loaded. But she was strangely not partaking in the booze.

She then made the announcement... Well, I don't really know how to "announce" these sorts of things online, but it seems there's a reason luvsbway has been late, if you catch my drift.

It seems I'm going to be a pappa, and join the many ranks of other fellow Slashdot-parents here.

Things are quite early at this stage; we don't know gender, but assuming luvsbway hasn't been strangely getting around I'm predicting the child will be human. Human is an excellent starting point for my children, IMHO.

I have tried to explain to the cat that there's a baby coming, he took it in stride and licked himself. He seems well mannered around kids (so long as they don't chase him screaming "KITTY!") so I'm not worried about the two getting along. (Cats are smarter than kids until the kids hit about 4 or so, and then this reverses when the kids hit 13.)

Before you get ahead of me: no, I'm not a hippy freak like my sister and the kid won't have terribly long names. If it's a girl my pick for a name is Cathleen, but we'd call her Cathy for short. I don't know about a boy's name. Whatever comes, I will be here to support my kid.

I guess you could say right now I am happy about the kid, but I'm not exactly happy about the money situation at the moment. I'm sure once a lot of the shock of this wears off I'll be better about things.

At least I'll finally have someone sharing similar odd cravings at all hours of the day and night.

So, I find two things here in Slashdot land that I would like to reply to. I know full well that there is the 2 minute timeout thing, but that doesn't slow me down as I wiling hit submit in two tabs of my browser figuring one will get through and the other one I'll just come back and hit reload on. No worries.

I come back to check both tabs, and they both posted fine. No warnings about posting frequently. No being talked down to. I just post. The messages are also successive message numbers, too.

Here are the two posts with the same minute timestamp to prove it. Should you choose to read either, you will see I was obviously not trying to do this and merely posting boring drivel as always.

Reading over this I see now that this JE is quite boring and is of little value. Thus, I will end it with a poll to sort of give this meaning.

Heidi Fleiss: Hot or Not?