Are you, your employer or someone you know looking for someone with a well-rounded information technology background, who is highly organized, very personable, who finds solution to every problem, able to train people in a classroom setting and with the ability to adapt to changing situations? If so, I'd like to hear from them.

I will not claim to be an uber-geek nor will I pretend to know more than I do. I have a very simple mantra: When I know, I'll tell you. When I don't, I'll find out.

I am currently employed but completely bored and have advanced as far as I can in my current position. I can feel my brain cells dying every day.

Looking for something along the lines of Junior PM or hands-on work. A variety of tasks would be optimum.

Neither programming nor Linux are in my repetoire though I have fiddled with both.

You know that person who people ask for long after they left because things ran so smoothly when they were around? That's me.

Ok, I'll admit it. NOT having sex is the only surefire way of not getting a woman pregnant (unless of course you're Mary Magdalene in which case you're, um, screwed). It's absolutely, 100% guaranteed to prevent pregnancies as well as contracting unwanted critters and afflictions.

However (you knew that was coming, didn't you?), to say that abstinence is the ONLY thing kids (and hell, let's throw in supposed adults as well) should be taught is right up there with claiming psychics work (they don't. If they did, why would they need your money?).

What makes this subject so delightful to me is once again I get to show the hypocrisy of my own party and its supposed "Family Values" campaign. I mean, there was Ronald Reagan and his divorce (nice way of sticking it out big guy), Newt Gingrich (way to show class by handing your wife divorce papers while she lay in bed recovering from surgery), and of course the king of family values, Rush Limbaugh and his two (soon to be three) divorces.

Beyond all that, we have this gem from an interview from this morning:

"It's kind of a fine line that we're walking on,"... "sharing [name deleted]'s experience with other teenagers -- sharing the mistake she made a year ago," and helping other girls to learn from it."

In case you haven't guessed, the person in question is none other than teenage babe of the moment, Bristol Palin. The above quote from her father raises so many questions, this text field isn't long enough to list and answer them all.

My only two comments will be these: Bristol now has the pleasure of telling her son when he's old enough that his grandfather considers him a mistake and can we finally, once and for all, get off this nonsense of abstinence-only education? It doesn't work! Period. Every study done on schools who have an abstinence-only sex ed program shows the teen pregnancy rate has risen since implementation of the program.

Enough of the hypocrisy! Show a woman giving birth. Hear the screams of pain. Show the purple, slime-covered alien popping forth. Or, as the character Rachel from 'Friends' so classically put it: Why is that baby torturing that woman?

How hard is it NOT to fuck things up? I'm looking at a story and wondering why I can't see all the threads as I used to be able to when I realize there's some shitass option on the left side of the page telling me how many full and partial threads there.

There's no explanation for how to see the threads the way you've been seeing them for the last SIX YEARS and if you dare to click on the Comments header, POOF!, everything collapses.

This constant screwing around with what amounts to a simple interface is exactly why you don't let programmers anywhere near the development process. I can't tell you how many times I had to deal with problems created as a direct result of programmers who think they know what they're doing.

It's bad enough one can't easily see if they have any new moderations from comments or get to said comments without having to jump through hoops. Now this ball of shit comes up.

QUIT FUCKING WITH THE CODE!!!

To those who kept harping on George Bush for his occupation of Iraq, see now the fruits of his labors. This is what the nearly 4300 men and women of the armed forces were fighting for: spreading the American way.

It's so heartening to see other countries following our lead. After all, Christianity is a peaceful religion so our occupation has shown the way to this muslim country .

Let us celebrate the crowning achievement of our occupation. Rejoice in knowing that in Iraq, just like the U.S., being born gay can get you killed.

This isn't really about Mozilla but the icon is the closest thing I could find for this story.

Before I give you the link, I want it known and on the record that someday I will hug one of these cuddly, wuddly descendants of dinosaurs. The trick is in the timing.

CNN link

And now you know, the rest of the story.

I am just so bummed. All the planning, all the arrangements for airfare, transportation, hotel room, all the gifts I were going to bring are now a crumpled mass of paper in the wastebin of life. I can't believe it actually happened.

I just want to curl into a ball and rock myself to sleep, my life now a shell of its former self. I was so sure things would work out. How could I have been so wrong?

For those that have ever watched Dragonball Z, the Hollywood version will be released in less than 2 months in the U.S. though asian fans will get to see it next month.

This article from Mainichi Daily News talks about some of the changes the producer made as well as comments from three of the actors playing characters.

Sometimes, the wisdom of the ages comes to roost in the most unsuspecting places. Who would have thought that a teenage mother with a dropout father/boyfriend would come out with the following inciteful comment:

"Like, your whole priorities change after having a baby."

I guess they need to push that idea a bit more in those abstinence-only classes.

BTW, did I mention that the author of such wisdom is Bristol Palin?

She also couldn't let it go with how badly the "evil" media treated her and her mother during the campaign after the news of her pregnancy broke.

Four years after losing their court case to have a religious precept be taught as a scientific principle, the folks of Dover, PA now get to have their noses rubbed in the dirt a bit more thanks to a sign posted a mile from their border on Darwin's birthday.

To emphasize how much these folks are sore losers that they couldn't push their religious views down other people's throats, here is a quote from William Buckingham, a former school board member who voted to have an Intelligent Design book used in a science class:

"It would be nice if free speech applied to Christians, too. This wasn't a trial; it was a fix. We didn't lose it. It was taken from us. And that judge is still a jackass."

It should be noted that the judge in question, John E. Jones, III, was appointed by Bush senior and is a Catholic (I think).

The full text of the article from my local paper may be found here.

And nizo, it's not about wanting an argument. It's about having the people who think an unknown, omnipotent being created everything to provide some evidence for their idea. NOT ask science to show its evidence, which is abundant, but for those who think Evolution is flawed to present their evidence to support their side. That's all.

To date, no one, not even the Discovery Institute, has ever presented any evidence to support their claim.

Apparently technology which changes ads based on who you are isn't geeky enough, but showing your art when the Google van comes by is.

Reminiscent of scenes from Minority Report, advertisers are starting to use technology which identifies who is looking at ads on video screens and change the ads accordingly.

Using small cameras embedded in the screens or along the edge, software determines who is looking at ads, for how long, what gender they are, approximate age and in some cases, your ethnicity. If the software identifies you as a young male, they might show ads for video games. For a young woman, cosmetics.

The manufacturers say their systems can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 percent of the time, while accuracy for the other measures continues to be refined.

here I am, stuck in the middle.

I think we can all remember a time when we were much younger and would surreptitiously put a note on a person's back saying 'Kick me'. Maybe some of you still do this.

Apparently I have such a sign on the back of my car which everyone else but me can see which says, "Hit me."

For the third time time since owning my car, and twice in the last month, I was rear-ended. The damage itself wasn't significant but there was paint transfer and my bumper cover is scratched about a yard wide.

This time it was a taxi and the guy admitted he didn't see me. Which is funny because a) I was the last person in the line of cars and had my foot on the brake, b) there were two lines of cars with their brake lights on, and c) it was at a red light.

Now, here's where it gets fun. Because every car I have driven someone has hit me, I've gotten to the point where I both know the routine and get ticked off more and more each time it happens. The other night was no exception.

I teed off on the guy who told me it wasn't a big deal, he didn't hit me that hard and it would buff out easily. Which completely misses the point that his incompetence caused damage, however slight, to my car.

Granted, my being angry got him angry but it was fun writing down his license plate and other information and watching his tune change. Especially when I told him I was getting a police report.

While we were waiting, I refrained from teeing off more on him and he asked if there was some way we could work it out, that he didn't want to go through his insurance because he already had points and one more claim would probably make him lose his insurance and thus his job.

Sob stories such as this don't work on me but I agreed to let him pay for the damages after the police report was filed. The cop came, wrote everything up and away we went.

Today I got all the information, estimate plus car rental, and the total will come to just under $500. I called his home phone number and left a message giving him the details and said I would front the deposit the rental company would want (obviously I would get it back so there's no loss to me). How much money do you folks want to wager he'll actually cough up the money?

I look at it this way: if he doesn't want to pay or can't, I'll go to the insurance company anyway. If it means he loses his job, I guess he shouldn't be running into people.

Listen up audiophiles, have I got a product for you. For only $64,000, you can get a four-arm, handcrafted turntable. Made from aluminum, bronze and stainless steel, a technician will come to your location to assemble, install and calibrate your new toy. It will even have your name engraved on it!

But act quickly. This is a limited time offer. There is a $27,000 one arm model for the cheap asses among you.

Those wacky Japanese. Can't live with them, can't live without them (and their oodles of tentacle sex, bukkake and other sex-related endeavors). Now you can add to the list, manhole cover art.

Ok, so it's been around for at least twenty years, but apparently, in typical Japanese style, now that the "fame" of manhole cover art is spreading, the various municipalities are trying to outdo each other.

Web site is only in Japanese but navigation is straight forward.

To show you the brilliance of our IT security team, and why blondes have a reputation for stupidity, it has been decided that instead of having one password to sign on to SafeBoot and one to sign on to the network, we're now going with single sign-on.

For those not familiar with SafeBoot, it's a program that sits between the boot up and the OS load. We have the program loaded on our laptops as a security measure. It encrypts the drive and prevents unauthorized access. If you fail to provide the correct username and password, it starts to progressively lock the machine for longer periods of time before you can try again. First one minute, then 2, then 8 and so on. And yes, we've had people that have input the wrong information so many times, they have to wait an hour to try again.

Part of this came about because one of the PHBs wants it that way and another is because our security officer, a blonde, doesn't want to restart her laptop every day and have to sign on to SafeBoot because she can't remember two different passwords. But hey, she is attractive and perky so she has one of the key requirements to getting ahead in life.

And by the way, we've also moved to single sign-on for VPN.

So now, thanks to the brilliance of our security officer and the inability of our fearless leaders to remember 2 different passwords (the usernames are the same), we now have a huge, gaping security hole just waiting to be exploited.

Anyone interested in a few bucks to test our security?

more sex means less stress.

As a side note, and tangentially related, is it bad form if, when having your hair cut, you mention you saw a story about the business of high priced call girls and during the discussion, the cute, female cutter mentions she wouldn't accept payment for sex but will (and has) slept with people on the first night AND that she doesn't have a problem with two women kissing but does with two men even though it's still two people of the same sex kissing?

Is it also bad form to question why she won't accept payment from a stranger for sex and as you're paying your bill, ask her if she didn't know you, if she would sleep with your for X dollars and she says yes?