The Daily Diversion Archive For September, 2003

Friday September 5, 2003

First up, big thanks to The Elder over at fraterslibertas for the link and the quote. Low-flow water restrictors do suck bags of ass.

That's pretty much the only cool news of late. It's been a creepy couple of days. Monday found us wondering why a zillion bluebottle flies decided to infest our basement. Most of Monday evening was spent looking for poop or rotting flesh in hopes of getting rid of the source of the flies. No luck, Chuck. There were no doggy prizes to be found and there wasn't any thing else that flies might find appealing. I went in late to work Tuesday so that I could pick up some fly strips.

So now the basement and back hall stairway look like a farm house with all these fly strips hanging around. The damn things work pretty well, too. Although my skin crawls every time I think of it, a quick count of dead flies on the strips puts us right around 200 flies caught.

And no source to be found.

And there are still flies left to be caught. Not many, mind you, so there's hope that we will soon be free of these little pests.

Last night I went around the house with a flashlight and rake to see if I could find the source of our troubles outside the house. After about an hour, I turned up a dead bird in one of our basement egress window wells. I also saw a wooly caterpillar. Could the bird have been the source? It was pretty dry and it looked as if it had been there for quite some time. I thought I smelled a little rot around the window where I found the bird. We had also determined from before that this egress window was likely the source of the flies. I'm not going to consider the case closed yet, but I'm hoping that the bird was it. It had better be, because I'm out of ideas.

And patience.

So to add to a perfectly creepy mood, we went and toured the hospital where Sarah will be having our baby. I'll say it up front. I do not like hospitals. I walk in and pretty much every cell in my body wants to walk right back out again. I guess that's a healthy instinct, eh?

So we get to the hospital and the first thing we have to do is drive through this construction landscape. I almost missed the entrance due to the huge amount of construction going on. We drove a bit through the site and ended up in front of the main door to the hospital. It was a bit unsettling. We parked the car and went and waited at the spot for the tour to start. We found out about all the cool things on offer to a woman who's going to have a baby and about all the cool things happening behind the scenes to make sure everything goes smoothly. We found out that we'll be moving from room to room as labor progresses, the baby is born and we all recover. Dandy. Nope, there won't be any putting down roots stuff going on. We'll be hitting no less than three different places in our stay, but it may be as many as five. Wow. How do they keep track?

We were both happy as hell to get out of there. Sarah's been feeling much better lately and that's a fine thing, indeed. She's had a pretty hard go of it throughout the pregnancy, so it would be nice if she finishes easy.

I went out for yet another cruise on the Suzuki and had a bunch of fun. I think I'm going to have to get the radiator looked at during the off season, but that's for later on down the line. If it stays cool, then I'm not going to touch it until I am certain that there are no more riding days left this year.

So I'm going to have to replace my TV card. Anyone out there have one that they like? I'm pretty sure I'll be buying Creative's card, but I'd much rather have a really good card and software to to the PVR thing with than rush the decision.

Monday September 8, 2003

It's going to be a good football season. If the Vikes don't win another game for the rest of the year, I'd still consider this season a success. They beat the Packers at Lambeau. There's really nothing better. Farve looked bad and I only saw the second half. The Vikes didn't look all the great, but they certainly were the better team there. They certainly had the best defense.

You might think that's the only news of the day, but it's not. On Sunday, Sarah and I went to the Minnesota Historical Society's private pre-Grand Opening show at the Mill City Museum. It was good. I got to tour the ruins just before my stint as a Trolley driver and I must say they've done wonderful things with the place. The main museum is on the ground floor, level with the outdoor courtyard down inside the back side of the ruin. It has an amazing collection of interactive exhibits including 3 water tables to show how water power works, a test kitchen where they bake stuff to taste test, the elevator show and tons of smaller features.

The elevator show and the observation deck are the must-sees of the place. The day was nice and clear and I got some great shots of the river area. The elevator show is a multi-media show where the audience moves and the sets are in place. You get to see power belts break, milling machines work, shakers shake, movers move and all kinds of other stuff. I've not seen anything quite like it.

It was a very good time.

Thursday September 11, 2003

I was going to give some grand homily today to memorialize the dead of 11 September, 2001. I didn't have time to prepare anything due to an abundance of work and othersuch stuff. What I write now will have to do.

To those who died on the airliners that crashed into the World Trade Center towers, the field in Pennsylvania and The Pentagon, you will not be forgotten. Your fate will not be repeated willingly. No-one will ever be able to do that again. Your deaths have seen to that.

To those who died in The Pentagon. You died doing America's work. Well done. Your loss is our loss.

To those who died in the Twin Towers, you will be avenged. We're not done yet. Two governments have been toppled in your name and more will follow until we can be sure that the envy, failure and hatred that spawned those 19 mass-murdering monsters is blotted out with success, happiness and introspection.

To the Police and Fire departments of NYC. Your dead will be remembered forever. Your good people died trying to save lives.

And finally, to the 19 inhuman scumbags who hijacked the 4 airliners I have this to say. I hope that there's a Hell only because I'd like to imagine you in it. I should hope that wherever you are now, it's mightily uncomfortable. I'm hoping what you got instead of a close-up view of Allah, Paradise and 72 virgins is yards an miles of nothing. An absolutely infinite stretch of nothing. No light, no sound, no touch, nothing. I hope your thoughts have turned on you, you've gone insane and you've become a gibbering pile of slime fully and completely ready to become anything other than what you are. I hope you spend eternity that way. I hope you've experienced the anguish of each widow and widower you created that day. I hope you feel personally the soul crushing sadness of each and every child you left parentless that day. I hope you feel the anxeity of each and every New Yorker, airline traveler and Pentagon worker that has had to deal with the aftermath of the hateful and stupid thing you've done.

I also hope you know that your particular brand of faith will be stomped out of existance sooner rather than later due to your selfish and nihilistic acts. We're in the Middle East for good now. There will be no turning back. 50 years from now, Iraq will be a trading partner of ours, just like Japan and Germany are today. The end of your life has helped this project along. Hopefully this is exactly the opposite of what you intended.

There's no forgive and forget about 9/11. There will be no deniers of this event. There's no way to make nice after pictures of falling bodies make their way to the heartland. You may have thought America was soft and weak. You mistook our apathy to your loser condition for these traits. Your survivors are now finding that, although we may be killed in ambushes, most of the ambushers are not long for this world in any theater. As Admiral Yamamoto said a few years before we found him and killed him, "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." That's us. We're the giant. Nobody picks a fight with Uncle Sam and lives to see the end. Nobody sucker-punches America and gets away with it.

Our revenge will be sublime. Wherever you hijackers are, I hope you see your progeny buying American goods in the near future. I hope you hear your progeny wondering where they'll go to school in the U.S. or if they're successful, where in the U.S. they're going to live. That will be the sweetest revenge of all.

Monday September 15, 2003

Today's post can be found here.

Tuesday September 29, 2003

Holy cow it's been a while.

Nick and I are playing with formats and systems for our respective blogs. This means practically nothing to those of you who read this drivel. The only thing that might change is that you'll be able to leave comments here rather than only via email.

The Twins have clinched the AL Central and are going to be facing the evil Yankees. On paper, it looks bad for the Twins. You all know that it just ain't so. The Twins in 4. You heard it here first.

I just stuck a new processor in our new server. I bought a slot to socket adapter. I bought the SLOT T slotket or slocket from Upgradeware. For about $25 bucks including shipping I turned a slot 1 machine with a Pentium III 450 to an FCPGA2 Celeron 1.2 GHz. PIII Celeron FCPGA2 processors are cheap cheap. I paid $10 more for the processor than I did for the slotket. I'm using an ASUS P3V133 motherboard so I could go all the way up to the fastest PIII processor with this board and slotket, but PIII FCPGA2 processors are a bit pricey still.

By the way, it RIPS.

As soon as we work out all the kinks, the new server will take the place of the old one. Hopefully it will be as stable as this one here.

5 more weeks until our baby comes. Give or take, that is.

Wednesday September 30, 2003

One down, two to go. The Twins beat The Yankees today. It was a tight fought game and The Twins really gutted it out. Eddie nearly gave us all heart attacks there at the end, but he got the outs he needed. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.

I was even impressed with that blaze in the making J. C. Romero. He got the guys he was supposed to and almost made us trust him again.

The real heros are the fielders. The pitchers did an excellent job keeping the mighty Yankee bats quiet, but the fielding was stellar. The Twins fielded circles around the Yankees. They played small ball and excecuted well and that's more than can be said for The Yankees.

It was tense. Too tense. I was hardly able to leave my desk, but I got through it. I sure hope there aren't too many more day games this year.

Thursday it's Radke vs. Pettitte. Twins by two. Look for a dinger or two from the good guys.