Patrick's Rants

Now that I have Thunderbird updated and gpg updated to the latest version I realise that I had some additional issues with loading gpg keys. First importing the key from a keyserver caused my install to complain about not having cygwin1.dll. Hmm… I know I have that installed. I used Windows find to locate the file and copy it to c:\windows\system. That let me get to another error another missing file cygwin-minires.dll (or something like that) and an additional error. This one an ominous kernel32 error. Oops, that kind of error locks up my machine. Only the power switch makes it respond again. After a few more cycles of this I decided that the thing causing kernel32 errors was to have the search window open at the same time that I was trying to download public keys from keyservers. These kernel32 errors are nasty and cause the machine to completely stop responding.

I did a couple of other goofy things like trying to make symbolic links to the cygwin dlls into the windows\system folder… eh… who was I kidding? Windows doesn’t do symbolic links. The last step was to add my cygwin directory path to autoexec.bat¹. Well that’s all working just fine now. Of course in the fray I managed to fry my GAIM install. It loads into the background just fine… nothing on my desktop and I can’t chat with my friends. Next!

1. Add the line “SET PATH=%PATH%;d:\cygwin\bin”

And the snow is falling. There’s something like 1-2 or 4-8 inches of the white stuff to actually fall depending upon who you listen to. In the meantime, a company I was hoping to work for over the summer doesn’t have any positions here in Flagstaff this year. Things could change, but I need to get something lined up.

Well I get to spend the day with my girls. No school means no work for me… well at least none driving a bus
Time to change the lock on the door – I lost my house keys over the weekend and being the somewhat paranoid that I am worry that they are in the snow somewhere close enough to the door that someone will try to come inside. I also get to try a new kernel on the firewall machine, the iptables modules go defunct after inserting and removing a few times which happens due to scripts which bring down the connection throughout the day.

If there were ever a time to use the word “wow” when referring to a movie, this is it. When we popped this movie in I thought it was going to be about Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, et al and how they brought a great company to its knees and finally to bankruptcy leaving 401(k)s raped of all value and thousands out of work. What this movie is about is far worse, far more sinister than I could have imagined and is just plain stunning in its depth of corruption. (more…)

If you want a senselessly funny movie with an actual plot this just might be it. Deuce travels to Amsterdam, home of legal drugs and the infamous “Red Light District” to help out his friend and one-time pimp TJ to investigate the murder of some of the world’s best gigalos. TJ is named as a suspect after a series of photos and bad timing put him on the scene of at least one of the dead “prostidudes”. Unfortunatly, he is also suspected of being gay – which bothers him far more than being a murderer.
The 83 minutes go by quickly as the film is well done, flowing from one scene to the next never missing a chance to poke fun at homosexuality, racial tension and the more human side of relationships.

I don’t eat anything with a face

Top ten three comebacks:

• Neither do I – I use a knife and fork
• Neither do I – I use my mouth to eat
• Your wife doesn’t know what she’s missing

There are a couple of different commercials out there for an online ad agency (I think it’s careerbuilder.com) that has some poor schlub trying to get work done while all his coworkers are juvenile chimps. In one he tries to tell them that “investing” 60% in lottery tickets isn’t a good business plan. He uses a red laser pointer to highlight the graphic that he has up. Of course all his coworkers have the same pointers and there are twenty to thirty red dots dancing around his presentation, on his butt and on his crotch when he turns around. The chimps are jumping up and down howling like a bunch of teenage boys.
In another commercial the aforementioned schlub goes into a board meeting where a wild party is taking place. He turns the chart, which shows rising profits, 45° over on its side so that sales chart shows rapidly declining sales. The room falls silent as his monkey coworkers ponder the new state of business. He is shortly ordered to turn it back and the party ensues as he is ordered to dance.

My friend Steve lives in Chicago (for now) and sent this on to me. Yeah, I’m a little slow getting it up here, it was a couple of days ago:

Steve: Oh, I saw a good bumper sticker today “The Christian Right is neither”

Either that or they only changed it this morning. Yep Crazy Bill’s again. This time it’s the sign on the other side:

The Best Way to get over someone is to get under someone.

Allright then.

It’s been three or four days now and I think that I might have WordPress up to the latest and greatest. Of course I had to redo all my customizations. I redid the theme a little (if you don’t like it, I’m the only one to blame ), I added the beautiful Google ads and the feeds are all mine.
In the few minutes that I had my comment spam filters off, I ended up with three comment spams – how’s that for efficient spamming? Anyway, the front end doesn’t look too different. The backend though I had to redo to make it look like the previous version – there were all these buttons instead of the plain editing that I am used to.
So far it looks like all is well.