My dad had a wonderful idea to take a trip out to the east coast. Then he decided that he wanted me to go as well. So I’ve been stuck out east since Tuesday. I’ve been in
Sunday, September 17, 2006
I'm stuck out east (again)
Monday, September 11, 2006
My Token 9/11 Post
Five years ago a bunch of idiots hijacked planes and used them as weapons. If you’ve been living in a hole since then, even you have probably heard of it. It was supposedly a grand plan involving great terrorist masterminds, I disagree. I don’t believe it takes that much coordination to take over four planes and smash them into stuff. A couple of smart guys and a handful of big, strong guys are all it would take. They also have to be dumb enough to want to commit suicide during this attack as well.
The passengers on the planes are the most responsible for letting this attack go through. They outnumbered the hijackers dozens to one and couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything to prevent the hijacking. One group of passengers took charge and got their plane smashed into the ground. They died, but they didn’t have anything to lose in the first place; so they probably saved the lives of many more people. The other groups on the other three planes could have done something similar and maybe survived. Maybe not.
Thanks to these people I can no longer carry a water bottle onto a commercial airplane. I still bring my knife with me everywhere I go since it won’t set off any metal detectors, but I get a little paranoid having it now. I’ll still smuggle water bottles onto planes and toothpaste but I really don’t care if those get confiscated. I can no longer go to the terminal gates without a boarding pass, although I’ve found no evidence that someone has ever hijacked a plane in the
The terrorists have won. They have made life difficult to millions of people without directly affecting more than a few thousand. They have made millions of idiots very paranoid and afraid to conduct their daily business. Also, they managed to destroy one of the few things I actually liked in
I’ve never liked NYC. I think that people there are rude and arrogant and have no right to be either. I recall a little old lady pushing me on the sidewalk and yelling, “EXCUSE ME. WILL YOU PLEASE GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!” It was rather humorous though. I dislike
Am I an insensitive jerk for thinking that way? Yes I am. Do I care? Nope. Are people going to be flaming me for this post? I doubt it, no one even reads my blog. If you agree with any of my views, wonderful. If you don’t, there are thousands of other blogs out there that probably say something you like and you should read some of them. I bow to no one; I respect no one’s opinion unless they give me a good reason to do so. The next time we get attacked by Islamic extremists, I want to see their holy sites glassed by 20 megaton nukes with “Suck it Allah” written on the casings.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Goodbye Steve
Last night marked the death of Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. He was fatally injured while scuba diving for a documentary on stingrays. He took a stingray barb to the chest and was pronounced dead less than an hour later by responding EMTs. Ironically, his documentary was supposed to show how most of the dangers associated with stingrays were groundless and should not be feared. Steve also inspired me to make two separate quests into
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Sick, Tired, Want to Come Home Now
Where is Neemund right now? I’m in
More has now come...
We had a goal of a really fast, really cheap
Friday, August 18, 2006
SoaP Review
Samuel L. Jackson will kill you if you don’t see this movie.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Skyrocketing Gas Prices?
People are afraid of gas prices rising thanks to the news that BP has neglected one of their main pipelines in
Gas has dropped ten cents since that announcement. And if history is any indicator gas will slowly drop in price until around February, which is generally when gas is the cheapest in
Monday, July 24, 2006
It's Getting Hot in Here
I'm not used to warm temperatures anymore; I've been back in the Northwest for too long. I've been keeping a thermometer just for kicks in my truck to see how warm it is. Mine won’t show temperatures over 50 C and this has been exceeded every day inside my cab. It’s weeks like this that make me wish I had air conditioning in my vehicle.
Facts on Global Warming that no credible scientist can deny:
Fact: Parts of the world have average temperatures that have been rising over the years.
Fact: Other parts of the world have average temperatures that have been falling over the years.
Fact: Some coastal areas have measured slightly higher sea levels than in the past.
Fact: Other coastal areas have seen slight decreases in sea levels over the years.
Fact: As an average, our planet is slightly warmer and the oceans slightly higher than they were 50 years ago.
What are the exact causes of these changes? There’s where the debate falls. Does the earth heat up and cool down on its own? Yes, we’ve had ice ages begin and end in the past. Do humans have any part in all of this current state of warming? Probably, but we would have a very hard time quantifying the affect. Do greenhouse gasses help warm things up? Most likely, everything from buses and power plants to volcanoes and cow farts all play their part. Would massively cutting human output of such gases do any good? Possibly, but I’d venture a guess that the planet is doing whatever it’s doing regardless of what we do, we may just be speeding up the process a little. Are we all going to die horrible deaths as a result of the planet getting warmer? That ozone hole thing hasn’t fried us yet, so I’d put my money on surviving this one too.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
New Keyboard
After over 20 years of use, I’m putting away the qwerty keyboard and trying the Dvorak keyboard. Most typing experts say that it is much faster once you get the hang of it. I’m starting to agree. More to come soon. Although my typing speed has decreased a lot, it is speeding up.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
I Think We All Survived
For those of you who didn’t know, today’s date was 06-06-06, which everyone knows to be National Emo Kid Beatdown Day, which is held on 6 June every year (unless that is a weekend, then it is held on the preceding Friday). I am not, nor do I generally associate with anything that would be considered Emo, hence I didn’t do anything different today than any other typical Tuesday. I didn’t even get around to beating down the first Emo kid I saw, possibly because I didn’t see any Emo kids today. As no one confused me with being Emo, I didn’t have to beat anyone down at all today, rather boring if you ask me.
For those of you have no clue what Emo is, it’s apparently the new Goth. Generally classified as being overly dramatic with their emotions and are often thought to be chronically depressed. Many consider them to be attention whores. Both guys and girls share similar looks including, wardrobes, haircuts, and makeup. Often considered to be homosexual because many are or give the impression of being so.
For the few who may be deeply offended by what you consider to be a horrible stereotyped definition of Emo, get over it. Go cry to your mommy and whine about me to all of your other Emo friends.
Monday, May 01, 2006
May Day, May Day
If I received a serious injury on this fine Monday, today would be the most convenient day to do so. Most of the hospitals around here are plagued by illegal immigrants (from many countries, not just Mexico) who use the emergency rooms as a general clinic for any random ailment since they cannot be legally turned away. These people usually add an hour or two or more to the wait times at the emergency room. Since all illegal immigrants are being urged by other illegal immigrants to boycott all things American, the emergency rooms should be nearly empty. If I screwed up while using some of my random power tools and needed emergency room care, tomorrow would be the day to do it.
If I was one of the 4.7%* of Americans currently looking for a job, Monday is the day to search. The unemployment offices will be emptier than usual as many illegal immigrants are boycotting all things American. It would potentially be easier to get a job as many people will potentially fired for walking off their jobs to attend demonstrations. If I needed another job, this would be the time to look.
If I was of the criminal mind and took pleasure from harming people, May Day would be the day to do so. If these illegal immigrants are boycotting all things American, they would not call the authorities to report a crime committed against them because that would be a break in their boycott by getting assistance from American authorities.
My solution for the illegal immigration problem:
1) Build a giant wall along the US-Mexican border. Most of our illegal immigrants are coming into the US via this route and it must be capped. This wall would include seismic monitors to monitor underground tunneling that would probably take place.
2) Build an equally impressive wall along the US-Canadian border. Most illegal immigrants coming through our Southern border are of Latino origin. Most non-Latino, illegal immigrants come across our Northern border. Although these numbers are substantially smaller, they are probably very impressive none the less, and these people are equally guilty of breaking our laws.
3) Increase border patrols. We have millions of active soldiers and millions of National Guard troops. I don’t see why we can’t put them on our borders. If they need funding, we should get them more funding. If they need training, we should get them more training. Our congress seems to have no problem earmarking billions of dollars for their pet, pork projects; why not put some of that money to good use.
4) Monitor those immigrants we have in our country already, those here both legally and illegally. If someone is here legally on a work visa, they will usually be deported immediately if they lose their job, so why not let the same be true for the illegal immigrants too? If a Socialist Security number comes up repeatedly in the IRS databases, they should inform the other governmental agencies to investigate (and these agencies should have the resources needed to do so).
5) Heavily penalize businesses for using illegal labor. A fine of a few thousand dollars per labor hour should be sufficient to deter the hiring of an ineligible employee. Also make it easier for business owners to run background checks on their potential employees.
6) We need a better system for allowing legal immigration into the US. Unfortunately Americans are generally lazy bums who don’t like hard work for low pay. Americans are used to getting others to do hard work for close to minimum wage. We should take all of these jobs and offer them first to all those who collect welfare and unemployment handouts. Unfortunately many of these people have been sucking the tits of big government for so long that they cannot be weaned overnight. They should have their benefits slashed if they are offered a job they are capable of and they refuse. If there are jobs left over that won’t be filled, we should consider raising the pay for these jobs. Since most people don’t want to pay several dollars for a pound of produce from the store, that may be unrealistic for the time being. Thus we must offer these jobs to those who are willing to take them for a low price. These are usually the people who would be coming here illegally. Essentially we would have to allow many hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers to apply for these positions.
I’ve worked construction, I’ve worked in a kitchen, I’ve roofed houses, I’ve cleaned fish, I’ve emptied garbages, I’ve mopped floors, I’ve cut wood, I’ve picked apples, I’ve shoveled manure, I’ve done many of the jobs that illegal immigrants do. I personally don’t like many of them and would go out of my way to avoid doing them again, but my dislike is from my own experience. If I really needed the money I would consider doing some of these jobs again, but they’re not my first choice of work. I’m a little fed up that I constantly hear that these are jobs that Americans won’t do. No, they generally won’t do them for minimum wage. Anyone who tells me otherwise is now in jeopardy of losing their head, in any sense of the word you chose.
Happy Socialist New Year to you all.
*Number provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Sunday, April 30, 2006
We're all going to die!
Thursday, April 13, 2006
WTF!?!
Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300 -foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second. The height of the watermelon above the ground t seconds later is given by formula h= -16t2 + 20t + 300
Only one usable word went through my mind when I heard this: “HUH?” Apparently this simple algebra problem offended a black student who in turn complained about this question and the teachers was reprimanded. Maybe this student was just upset that they couldn’t answer this pre-algebra problem. I’ve read two differing conclusions from various commentaries on said math problem.
The first is that this algebra teacher is obviously racist and must be fired at once. If this teacher had substituted the name Condoleezza with the name Jessie, Al, or Martin there would be massive riots on campus and it would have to be shut down. Any reference involving a black person and a watermelon is obviously racist and must be punished immediately.
The second opinion given is that this teacher is obviously getting a free swipe at Bush. By using the name Condoleezza in a simple math problem, this teacher is subliminally telling the students that Bush is bad. Because there is obviously only one Condoleezza in the world, this problem is apparent exists for the sole purpose of demeaning Dr. Rice.
I set out to discover a little more about this. First I wanted to know how common of a name Condoleezza is. So I took out my three volume set of “Neemund’s Index of Weird Names Black People Give Their Children,” commonly referred to as my high school yearbooks, in search of the name Condoleezza. I flipped through the index of the first book, got bored, and gave up my search. I didn’t see a Condoleezza, but I found a Condolisha. I looked up Condoleezza online and learned that con dolcezza is an Italian musical term referring to a piece being played “with sweetness”.
Apparently any reference involving both a black person and a watermelon cannot be anything but racist. At one time, it is believed that slaves had to pick watermelons on watermelon farms. Most of these slaves were also black. It is so blatantly obvious of its rampant racism that heads must roll for this, in the literal sense. Personally I’ve never heard such associations as being racist before. I really don’t think a watermelon cares who eats it, or who picks it, or who throws it off of a federal building. I’ve heard associations of black people picking cotton used in a racist sense; but a problem involving Condoleezza throwing a cotton ball off of a federal building would be something you’d find in a physics class since it requires a few more variables and calculations than most algebra students could handle.
So is this teacher a racist? Or is this teacher a Bush hater? You decide.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Update
I’m still playing my same game of Defend Your Castle. I am now on level 375 with 447,875,200 points. I have 125 wizards, and 690 craftsmen. I have 365,350,596 points available to me which is still short of my goal of 90% total points available. It takes almost an hour to complete a level at this point so progress is slow, and I don’t have time to sit at my computer and play all day.
I should probably start on my taxes pretty soon. I should have done that a while ago since the government owes me a ton of money, but I keep putting it off. I guess that’s about it for the update category. I’ll post again shortly if I get inspired.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Spring is Almost Here
I have also been killing my stress by killing anything that moves in the game, CrimsonLand; and obliterating stick figures in Defend Your Castle, where I currently have the highest score I've ever seen anyone have. I am on level 289 at the moment and gaining swiftly. Many people think that this game gets more boring the higher in level you get, because you can just hire thousands of archers to kill anything on the screen. I'm taking a different approach to the game, I'm hiring as few people as I can get away with so that I can keep most of my points to spend later. I am currently employing 925 archers, 125 wizards, and 525 craftsmen. This leaves me with a castle of 3.5 million hitpoints. I have currently earned 264,871,700 points with 203,973,552 available to spend on castle wall improvement or hiring more units. My goal is to reach the point where 90% of my earned points are spendable. Right now I can only save 87% of the points I earn each level as the rest goes into unit upkeep. After reaching 90% usable points, my next goal will be to increase my castle wall from 3.5 million hitpoints to 1 billion hitpoints. This will probably take a few weeks, but not a problem since I have just enough units to keep my castle alive when I'm not sitting at my computer playing the game. This is definately made possibly by the 'save' feature in the game as I can't feasably do more than 50 levels before my computer needs a reboot.
Friday, March 10, 2006
My Other post Disappeared
And the important daily advice from last month: If you can avoid having a computer monitor land on your head, you'd be wise to do such. It really hurts, believe me.
I'm Still Here
News for the last month:
Congress thinks is has power to grant or deny permission for a Middle Eastern company to buy a British company. It doesn’t. But congress tries to do quite a few things it doesn’t really have power to do.
Intel is previewing their newest generation of CPU, Conroe, which should be out Q3. The engineering test they performed showed it to be about 20% faster than an overclocked Athlon FX60. Since Intel pieced the rigs together I’d be hesitant to take those benchmarks as 100% unbiased, but I wish Intel well in their quest to regain the top seat that was so violently snatched away from them many moons ago. If they can deliver a product to match power with AMD’s finest, I smell a price war coming. Which directly benefits me because computer components get cheaper. ATI and Nvidia are also in such a predicament, with ATI keeping their high throne at the same time as trying to undercut Nvidia in pricing.
I still haven’t seen snow in my proximity this year and am getting bummed. Yesterday I did see snow falling, but nothing stuck to the ground.
The US is beginning to pull troops from around the world. Since occupying Germany in 1945, we’re beginning to move a large number of our troops back home since the new German government appears to have everything under control. We’re also considering pulling troops out of Iceland as they’re not being threatened by the Commies anymore. Those troops would be better used threatening Commies and illegal immigrants here in the US. At the rate we’re going we should have a total troop withdrawal from Germany and Japan by 2095; we’ll probably have most of our troops out of Iraq by 2010. How’s that for efficiency?
Piece of advice for today: If you have a 4-5 page essay due in a class, it is advisable that you don’t wait until 45 minutes before that class begins to actually start writing that essay.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
I been tagged
Past real jobs: (Emphasis on REAL)
Walt Disney World: I did tons of random crap and hated most of it.
Print shop: The same one as Rabenstrange, doing pretty much the same stuff. It doesn’t disagree with me the same way Disney World did.
School: I’ve worked for a school for a number of years doing their computer work, and even taught a computer class on a few occasions. (Teaching 2nd graders how to use a computer is much easier than teaching their teacher how to use a computer)
Microsoft: I test games for them, mostly Xbox and Xbox360 games. My job is usually to break them in a controlled test so that you don’t do it at home.
Movies I’ll see over and over again:
Serenity
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Punisher
Gladiator
Are we supposed to stop at 4 items?
Batman Begins
Underworld (I guess now I’ll always have to watch both of them back to back as soon as I get the second one)
Love Actually
Out Cold
Places I’ve lived:
For this definition I define living at a place at residing there long enough to get mail and stuff sent to me.
Seattle, WA: The house I live in at the moment is also the first house I’ve ever lived in.
Seabeck, WA: Technically a second home to me, but I’ve spent more days/nights there than any other place I’ve ever been with the exception of my original house in Seattle.
Lake Buena Vista, FL: My most recent expedition out of Washington brought me here for 5 months. This was purely for work related activities and I have no intention moving back there.
Oradea, Romania: Lived there for a little under 2 months. Liked it, would have no qualms with going back for a few more months.
Currently playing TV shows I watch regularly:
Red Green
Myth Busters
One Piece
Beyond Tomorrow
How It’s Made
Futurama
Simpsons
Ended TV shows I watch regularly:
Almost Live
Babylon 5
Firefly
SeaQuest
Most frequented family vacation spots by me outside of Western Washington:
Vancouver, BC: It’s about an hour from my condo so we’ve been there many times.
Disneyland: I think we’ve been there 5 times. I like it but Disneyworld had much more stuff. Disneyland is a better weekend destination because of this, and is much cheaper.
Lake Tahoe, NV: I think we’ve been there 4 times, but I’m not really sure why. Just hanging out by the lake and hiking in the mountains is about it unless you like slot machines. To date I’ve lost $2 in slot machines in my entire life; I’ve almost broke even but they’re addicting so I’ve never played one higher than a nickel.
Hattiesburg, MS: Got tons of family there, been there 3 times I believe. I’d have no problems living there, except that there are 2 computer stores within 50km and that’s a little low for my taste.
Disneyworld: Family’s been there 3 times, I like it better than Disneyland but it’s proportionally more expensive and far away so we don’t go very often.
My most frequented websites:
Overclockers.com
Pimprig.com
theInquirer.net
Orbusmax.com
fark.com
Slashdot.com
Sluggy.com
Xbitlabs.com
Food I love:
Teriyaki Chicken (real stuff not that fake crap they try to pass off east of the Mississippi river)
Chicken Katsu
Chimichangas
Most foods involving barbecued slabs of cow
Fresh Corndogs
Lean Bacon Steak (not those regular steaks wrapped in bacon, I’m talking about an 8oz slab of bacon, hard to find in stores though)
People I’ll tag:
ShadowWalker
EJB
Gerhalt
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
The New Coke
Dr. Pepper came out with their Cherry Vanilla drink some time ago and apparently it was popular. I tried it once and didn't really like it. In fact I really don't like anything that has artificial cherry flavor in it. I've send several letters to Coca-Cola to express my dissatisfaction with their choice to remove Vanilla Coke from shelves but they probably don't care. In the meantime I have a stash of Vanilla Coke that will take years to deplete.
Happy Birthday Ben!
Monday, January 16, 2006
Home is Home
A) I think it's the first time in my life I've lived more than 2 miles from a Starbucks. Even when I was in England and Romania there was a Starbucks within 2 blocks of me.
B) I had to search long and hard to find a computer store. They're really rare as far as I could see. The only one I actually found and visited on my expedition out east was in Hattisburg, Mississippi; unfortunately it got leveled by Katrina only days after my last purchase there. What's even more unfortunate was the fact that I still needed more stuff from there.
3) No big electronics stores. There was a Best Buy about 10 miles from my apartment in Orlando, but that's the closest they have to a big electronics store. The one there was also the smallest one I'd ever seen, about half the size of the one around here. Which makes it maybe 1/10 the size of our Fry's Electronics.
D) No Tillamook dairy products. Nothing that even tasted close to their ice cream.
E) The time change was a pain to deal with. People calling me at 3 in the morning since it was only midnight at home. Not being able to call people in the morning because there was no chance that they'd actually be awake enough to answer their phone.
F) It's not my home and never will be.
g) They have hurricanes. I had to go through 2 of them, both Katrina and Wilma. They're annoying and not good for much except getting extra time off of work. I think Congress should outlaw them or something like that.
I'm currently in school again, I'm tired of it already but I need good grades in my class to get my GPA as high as possible. I plan on taking one more quarter which will consist of English, Vector Graphics, and Photoshop class, and then I'll be able to graduate with 2 separate AA degrees. Don't ask me what I'm doing after that point because I don't have any idea. I might transfer to a different school and work on a degree in Business Psychology; I might quit school and get a job that I pays enough to live on and doesn't suck too much, or I might stay at BCC for another quarter or two as an excuse not to do either of the previous options. I got plenty of time to figure it out.
In important news: Seattle didn't break its 53 year old record for most consecutive days of rain. We went 27 of the 34 days required to break the record. Now I'm a little disappointed. I don't remember ever getting close to the record and we only needed one more week. This does make up for last year when we had the driest February on record when I was walking at school in shorts and a Tshirt in 20C weather in the middle of winter. AMD released their Athlon FX60 processor last week, which is really fast and even more expensive There's a rumour flying around that Fox may bring back Futurama. I just threw my Christmas tree off of my back deck last night and it landed on the fence and is still hanging there at this moment; I might put up a picture later if I remember to take one while it's light outside. I have joined TBQelite's rank and, for various reasons, have withdrawn my membership from ShadowWalker's He-Man-Woman-Haters Club. And for the next 16 hours my basement will be relatively clean since I moved all of the random crap out of there and into my bedroom. After school tomorrow I'm probably going to take all of the junk that isn't mine and put it back in the basement so that my room will once again be semi-clean.