Halloween!

Quite possibly one of my favorite holidays. It's all about being neighborly. There is nothing profitable about buying costumes for kids, or giving candy to them...or decorating your yard. Yet still.. you get to meet new neighbors, teach kids that every stranger isn't bad, and see a bunch of little Munchkins dressed up (then covered with coats).

As I was decorating this year (the 20 minute setup version) I was putting out the tube lights along the driveway so people could find their way to the door (my driveway is still torn up and sort of rough so I raked it out and made sure it was well lighted wouldn't do to have a princess fall and rip her dress, or a little spider man break one of his 8 legs. As I was sitting on the ground attaching sections and pushing them away I immediately thought of one of my former co-workers from Unitech. See setting up these lights is a lot like deploying a M1A1 Bangalore Torpedo, which will I think forever remind me of The Big Red One, and well Pat and I were talking about that movie one afternoon and the bangalore torpedo scene came up. He is now forever burned in my mind with the torpedo. While that movie remains stuck in my head from childhood. Tulsa 23, an independent UHF channel when I was a kid (fox affiliate last I heard) used to show that movie, and Dad would let Mark and I stay up late to watch it, when mom was out teaching sewing classes.

Well it is 6:30 and we are up to 25 trick or treaters already. Better cut back to one candy bar each.

Yippeee!

The garage door painting is done! Now all I have left is the crawl space and the new door in the kitchen.

Warning: the first person who tries to use the sniper as an argument to ban guns with me is gonna get a reaming... mostly cause he shouldn't have had it in the first place, the gun was illegally owned, gun laws from this stop HERE.

Most people have friends with differing political views and experiences, I think I might be in a place where my friends are more divergent than most.

Socially I can be pretty liberal, I don't mind funding the arts. I think that some government programs are valuable. I am all about letting people have their personal freedoms to live as they like. I think the government should stay out of my personal life. I don't think national health care is a good idea. I am fond if import taxes. I don't think the government has any business regulating how children are raised or punished (within the bounds of assault, and doing physical harm). I am pro gun ownership. I think all states should have shall issue concealed carry weapons permit laws. I don't think we need new gun laws, the ones we have are squirrelly enough and too hard to enforce. I am pro-choice on a legislative level, but personally pro-life.

Everyone should be able to do what they feel they need to do provided it doesn't infringe the ability of others to be happy, safe and free.

As the sniper shootings have been going on over the past month or so it has been interesting to listen to the difference of reactions of my friends, from critiques of his choice of weapon and sniping technique, to lets ban gun barrels or even all metal round things?!?! My reaction is why a .223 isn't a good rifle for killing people it is good for coyotes, and small varmints, it isn't even considered a good deer rifle because such accuracy is required, I figured it was an ex-military person using an AR-15 for familiarity's sake...guess I was right.

This morning I was running through some of my friends weblogs and found two so disparate it was funny. The first..a why do we need assault rifles?

These next two...from the same guy..I am very sympathetic to. The term "Assault Rifle" is a legal term defined by certain criteria, collapsible stock, bayonet mount, fully automatic...there are more.. but those are the big ones. If it meets those criteria it is now illegal for most people to buy or sell such a thing, because it is an assault rifle. Assault rifle means nothing to a gun person, it is a media/political/legal term. It has nothing to do with functionality, or use. Other loaded words with the media "semi-automatic" "automatic" yet more that get me so frothing at the mouth I can hardly speak let alone type.

Here Scot talks about the media and their inaccuracies about the reports of the sniper and his rifle. Largely I am sure these stem from ignorance, but one would think that a newspaper or major broadcasting firm would want to have SOMEONE on staff to read over the article for technical correctness, I am sure they do it for science articles. Providing bad technical facts is worse than providing none. Then never appear in the errata of a paper either, I have looked.

The NYT had an article about the shooters and the rifle and the fact it was illegally owned. I felt it a pretty fair article, the facts were correct, it explained exactly how the rifle was within the law, and how it wasn't really a sniper rifle at all. It was a Bushmaster XM15 A3 M4, which is sort of like an M-16A2 with modifications to make it fit within the laws. I don't hunt varmints so I have no use for such a thing.. but it is a nice enough rifle. What cracked me up was the bit from Kristen Rand... where she says "It complies with the letter of the law, but it is still an assault rifle" clearly it is NOT, it can't be... she and her crackpot gun control friends made up a scary term "assault rifle" and set the requirements for what made something an assault rifle, this isn't it. Pushing her agenda..sure..but that's her job she is the the legislative director for the Violence Policy Center in Washington. Scot apparently felt much the same as me. Here was his reaction.

Senator Wellstone is dead. Lots of people here are pretty upset. Having just moved here I am not that attached to MN politics..but apparently he was very well liked.

might have to try making cheese

Cheese making: If you put buttermilk and regular milk on the stove so it warms up to room temp but actually accidentally put it on a hot burner it will start to separate.. I sloshed gently and realized I was forming curds and whey... I had read enough about cheesemaking to figure out what I had done. so I strained it in a paper towel. The resultant cheese was a lot like really fresh mozzerella. mind you I didn't let it cool I ate it still warm.

Hmm.. I had a busy afternoon..got my dish installed. Not exactly where I wanted it but it was the only place he could get LOS of the trees. THen I made CHEESE. yep.. didn't mean to but I did. It was tasty too. Then I made Mac-n-cheese buy guess and check.. boil noodles add cheese and a bit of leftover cream from the fridge... salt to taste.

I am up way too late. Tomorrow is gonna suck.

cat are largely non helpful when it comes to typing. Laying one my arms does not really do much to increase my accuracy.

This evening Mark came over and we had leonardo's pizza which my mom brought me from Chicago (you buy it frozen and cook it yourself). Then we went to the Mall of America. We had ice cream, and went to Camp Snoopy and rode the mine ride and the roller coaster, oh and we did the little shooting range thingy.

Heh...once in a while people suprize you when you confront them, they actually admit you might have a point, occasionally they even agree they were wrong. This doesn't really change my quest for isolation nor my distrust of humans in general. Occasionally I wish I felt more like I was part of humanity rather than some strange throwback.

Random Blog Quotes has been found! http://www.googlies.net/rbq/ She had moved her site a few times and I got lost in the shuffle. Shortly the link will be returning to the left sidebar.. or if it is still there it will work again.

Some days I wish people could act their age. I am really tried of one of my friends and his near constant tattle tale behavior. Damn it if I have a problem with him I go to him. Why can't he be man enough to do the same? Due to the unending punishment of me because of his tattle tail nature I am giving up something I rather enjoy. I doubt he will even notice. Oh and if you notice I am quieter than usual it probably has to do with the fact I am apparently unable to speak without offending and therefore am giving up unnecessary communication with people.

If you suspect you are the offender you are probably wrong. I wish I had an alternative that wasn't so much like throwing a temper tantrum and sulking. Not many options left from where I sit.

I feel rather mopey today, actually the past few days I have felt sort of like my life was futile and very lonely. I am not quite sure why, possibly job stress.

What is it with people not dating anymore? I just learned that four people I know and feel are friendly, nice, and even moderately attractive have never been on dates. What is this...we skip the dating and go straight to sex now? Bleh. Exert some effort people, lest you have to tell your children things like... well we never had a first date I followed your Daddy home from a bar, we had raucous sex, the next morning we kissed, a day after that I learned his last name and two weeks later he moved into my apartment.

Qwest is too efficent. THere is a techician at my house who wants inside...the problem being I had no idea he would be there.... so I was not. Why did I have no idea? Well see I called their little repair line thingy punched a bunch of numbers in my phone and tada, supposedly a trouble ticket was issued. Clearly it was. Unfortunately nobody told me there would be repair guy out today.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html

This is brilliant... I think that when the telemarkteters find me at my new phone number I must print a copy of this and put it next to every phone in the house. Then.. I can torment them instead of the other way round.

This weekend was busy, two birthday parties. Finished sanding the garage door. Got one section primed. New light fixture in the garage. Fence finished. A whirlwind of productivity.

Had a friend over last night, we watched enterprise, and I finished up a bunch of little chores I had been meaning to finish for a long time. Got the stools done, the sewing machine moved, the wrapping paper put away, the basement cleaned up a LOT. The house looks a lot better. Now if only it will stay dry long enough for me to mow when I get home.

Yesterday I was blindfolded placed in a cave and told to go cut the board (located somewhere in the cave) into two pieces one 4 feet 3 3/8 inches long and the other 2 feet 2 5/16 inches long armed only with the tools I have. Well I have a hammer folks.

Late yesterday afternoon a sage wandered in and took the blindfold off, whereupon I discovered I am still in the dark, with only hammer. I also found the board...it is in a locked box for which I do not have the key.

I am frustrated beyond all hope. I have tried telling my superiors that I am incapable of successfully completeing this task. I am being ignored. This is the first sucky thing about my new job.

What is it with the sniping going on on the east coast? I mean really we have all had our sniper fantasies.. but geepers get it off the street. Shoot plastic army men in your basement, take up pin shooting whatever... but stop shooting random people just for kicks. That is so wrong. Either that or this guy is seriously off his meds. Not to mention he isn't trying to hard.. sniping people in a target rich environment. I wonder what they all have in common...hair parted on the right, and they step off with thier left foot? If he is just sniping randomly where is the challenge in that?

It's gonna be a busy weekend. I have already finished stripping the garage door. I need to install cabinet hardware. I am going to a friends birthday party tomorrow afternoon/evening. In the morning I am off to meet new people car people. This may not really be prudent as I can only do the social thing for so long before I get grumpy. New people scare the heck out of me...yet I am intentionally going to meet some... very unlike me. Oh well I suspect that I will know a fair handfull of the people at the party and therefor that shouldn't be too stressful. Sunday will be lovely day of painting the garage door, installing cabinent hardware and returning the kitchen to rights. well or as close as it will get until I tile the backsplash. Maybe sand the spackle I put up in the laundry room too.. since I will already have the shopvac inside after drilling all the holes for the kitchen cabinent hardware.

I am a Windows system administrator. Yep. You got it. Sold my soul to Microsoft a long time ago. Yeah Linux is ok. I have installed 3 flavors. I get to the same point every time. Ok I can do everything on this box I can do on my Windows box except play tropico (or my game of choice at the time) and it takes me longer because the interface is unfamiliar. What's the point. Oooh I did it. Look I'm counter culture. Wait let me go pierce my eyebrow instead and go back to using Windows. Yeah it's free, Windows isn't. Yeah it's stable. So are properly administered NT based servers. Yeah I could use crappier hardware..but I can serve with NT 4 SP6a and IIS 4 or 5 on my P200Pro just the same and it will serve fast enough for what I need. Maybe remote admin is easier under Linux with Apache. Who cares I go home every night I can admin it when I get there.

Call me crazy or stupid or whatever but I just can't see the point in Linux. Yeah I could learn it. I have tried. I would like to know more..I do play with it a bit..but I just get back to what does this get me that Windows doesn't? The answer is the same "Nothing, but it's free." My time is worth money too... and enough to justify paying for my software.

This article in the NYT is pretty darned good. I also think odds are it is pretty close to correct. The closing bit is this "self-esteem is really not worth the effort, self-control is much more powerful." Self-control and self-respect are much more important than self esteem if you ask me.

Fence Update

Well I have called around nobody will take a fencing job that short. I think I am going to do it myself. it is only 4 posts, the corner posts are done....I can put in bottom and top rails.. it won't cost that much.. and if I do it now before the ground freezes it won't even be that hard. Anybody wanna learn to fence? (I have done this before so I won't be learning)