Ramirez Is Good Today

Buh-bye, Barney.  Don't let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out... coz it certainly wouldn't be a come on.  Don't want ya to get the wrong ideer, yanno?

Yup

That really is how it is, no?   Mitt looks pretty good when one looks at the resumés and the "whole man" aspect of the available candidates, especially when it comes to intangibles like character.  So just what IS it about Romney that's so damned off-putting?  I'll freely admit to leaning more towards Newt of late but that doesn't mean I'll actually vote for him when the primary rolls around.  I just might come to my senses and vote for Romney, given the "electability" thang.  The MAIN objective is to send the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue packing and conventional wisdom sez Romney's our best bet.  But sometimes conventional wisdom isn't either one... conventional or wisdom.

Plus Ça Change...

... plus c'est la même chose (link for the non-Francophones).  I made lotsa plans before going to bed last night or... more accurately... early this morning.  I even set my alarm phone for 0830 hrs to ensure I rolled out in sufficient time to get an early start to The Big(ger) City™ and then to Cannon Airplane Patch for to run the Usual, Customary, and Reasonable errands.  So... the alarm goes off at the appointed time and I did the entirely predictable thang: shut it off and rolled over for two more hours of beauty sleep, which always fails in its intended purpose.  Which is to say I'm not getting any more beautiful but I am most certainly well-rested.

So here we sit with one more cup o' morning coffee left to drink and the prospect of completing our errands vanishing into the ether.  I suppose there's always tomorrow and this seems to be the way my life of sloth and indolence works.  It takes me a day to think of what must be done, another day to plan for it, a day to put it off, and yet another day before I actually get around to the doing.  Or mebbe two.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: I'm in dire need of some serious nagging.  I don't miss that sorta "incentive" 95% of the time but when I need it, I REALLY need it.  Or mebbe I just need to get that maid I've been on about.

Make Cuts, But Don't Cut MY Stuff!

It never fails...

Wait a Minute, Man: Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) called on Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to ensure that the Minuteman III ICBM force is not eliminated as one of the moves that Pentagon officials might feel compelled to make to deal with potential budget cuts up to $100 billion annually over the next 10 years. Conrad wrote Panetta after Panetta told lawmakers earlier this month that such steep budget reductions might force DOD to "eliminate [the] ICBM leg of triad," among the many drastic actions that might be unavoidable. Getting rid of the ICBMs would provide an estimated $8 billion in savings, said Panetta. But such thinking is alarming, asserted Conrad. "It's a shock to hear the Pentagon say that the ICBM is a good place to find short-term savings," he wrote in his Nov. 18 letter to Panetta. "This total reversal of our long-held and successful nuclear deterrent strategy would create unnecessary strategic danger; moreover, it does not make fiscal sense," stated Conrad. Accordingly, "I ask that you protect the 420-missile and 450-silo ICBM force from cuts outside the arms control process, and refrain from considering our nation's most cost-effective and stabilizing nuclear deterrent," he underscored.

That's from the Usual USAF Source, of course.  I agree with Senator Conrad in principle but his credibility is somewhat diminished by the fact the majority of the nation's ICBMs are based in NoDak.  When I was stationed up that way we used to joke that if NoDak seceded from the union they'd be the world's third largest nuclear power.  That wasn't a joke, actually... it's entirely true if one considers the nuclear-armed B-52s at Minot along with the 150 Minuteman silos scattered all over North Dakota.

Today's SECOND GOML Moment

I'm in the process of shutting down my mail forwarding service in Texas, which requires me to contact everyone and anyone who mails me at that address.  All that's pretty much been done but there are a few cats and dogs I forgot... one of them being Sprint.  When I first switched my cell service over to Sprint these many years ago I still entertained notions of getting back on the road at some point so I gave the Sprint folks my Texas address.  They're still billing me at that address, so we placed a call to their customer service center in Bangalore.

That was the first irritant, given the guy on the other end of the line was nearly unintelligible due to (a) his accent and (b) the poor quality of the connection, which is to say cross-talk and background noise.  Sprint is a fucking PHONE company, so the connection quality is inexcusable.  And Sprint is a US company, so outsourcing/offshoring their call center is also inexcusable.  More so on the second rather than the first, actually.

The second irritant... not counting the 20-plus minute wait to get to a live human... was the rep telling me he was unable to verify my address as it didn't show up in his reference, what ever the Hell THAT was.  We went back and forth for a few moments, him telling me "this is a problem" and me responding with "but it's not MY problem, it's YOUR problem" and variations on that theme.  I finally asked to speak to a supervisor and three minutes later the guy... same guy... came back on-line to tell me everything was cool.

The THIRD irritant is me going to Sprint's web site to try... repeat TRY... to validate the address change took effect.  I finally gave up on their web site after 15 minutes of abortive tries to access my account (fail), set up a new account (fail), and go through their registration process, which Sprint assured me was successful via a text message to my phone.  Well, it fucking WASN'T successful because I still CANNOT ACCESS MY ACCOUNT.

It's no damned wonder Sprint is about to go under because they suck mightily at the IT bid'niz.  I must not be alone in my thinking, as you get about 1,270,000 results for this Google image search.  No surprises there.

Today's GOML Moment

I don't do Black Friday or Cyber Monday but that doesn't stop the mercenary sons o' bitches in this fine land from doin' ME.  Witness:

It seems like EVERY organization I've ever bought anything from, no matter HOW long ago it was, remembers me and is inundating me with offers I can't refuse.  Except that I CAN... refuse.  You'll note that only two of those messages were read before being deleted, and both were read out o' curiosity more than anything else.  Except for Cigar.com's message, given we hardly ever refuse a deal from those guys.

Bottom line:  Get the HELL Off My Lawn and outta my in-box!

Heh

From the Usual Source.

What's For Dinner, Buck?

BLTs!  Some assembly required...

In the beginning

Building the perfect beast

Dinner is served

Yum.  Our beer was a Santa Fe Nut Brown Ale.  Or two.

A Meme

There's no accounting for how these things start...

... but Fenton is sweeping the inner-tubes, especially in the UK.  From the Guardian:

Somewhere – probably in south-west London – lies a dog that this week took its rightful place in the Unofficial List of Famous Labradors.

The 47-second video of Fenton (Benton?) chasing deer across Richmond Park has now been viewed more than 1.5m times – And here's the man who shot the original video talking to Absolute Radio's Christian O'Connell. And then there are the mashups. Oh, the mashups!

From Alan Partridge to Alien, countless YouTube creations keep coming. 

And here's one such: 

There's more at the Guardian's PDA page.

The Weekend Continues

I almost always title my blog posts before I write them... it's the very first thing I do.  And then I write, keeping the post title in mind and trying not to venture too far afield from the thought contained in the title.  That usually works for me except for those times when I'm more scattered than normal, and be kind, Gentle Reader, as you read that last bit.  When I'm scattered I'll choose some sort of post title like "Potpourri" or "Miscellaneous Ramblings" or "A Few Things" or something of that ilk.  Today is such a day, so forgive me my trespasses and I'll forgive you yours. 

I spent pretty much the entire day yesterday listing hard to port and taking on water.  It all began Thanksgiving night when I settled down in the early evening to watch the end of a one-hundred-plus game college ball rivalry, which is to say Texas-Texas A&M.  The game was magnificent and I'll say that as a disinterested party with no affiliation whatsoever with either school.  But I loves me some rivalry games, they're always intense and usually result in hard-played football, which is the finest kind.  It saddens me to see the end of a tradition and I watched one end Thursday evening.  But we digress.

I fell asleep on the couch almost immediately after the game was over and slept for well over six hours, awakening just after 0300 hrs.  Six hours of sleep falls within the Usual, Customary, and Reasonable range for me of late and I was faced with a dilemma: do I go back to bed, in my real bed, with every expectation of tossing and turning fitfully for a couple o' hours until it gets light or do I make the coffee and stay up?  I opted for "make the coffee."  That was my first mistake and the rest of the day was pretty much downhill from there.  I managed to stay awake for a lil over six hours and then took a two hour nap.

I said my day was downhill but it wasn't all downhill.  The Beloved Wings played an afternoon game in Bawston yesterday, the broadcast start time being 1100 hrs MST, which was right around the time I awoke from my nap.  The game was a good one, except for the fact the Bruins' only two goals both came as a result of Dee-troit turnovers.  They have to stop that stuff, to be kind.  The Wings also scored two goals and we went into OT as a result and then to a shootout where Dee-troit won, snapping Bawston's ten-game win streak.  Both the game and the final result were VERY satisfying.

We then switched over to yet another rivalry game... already in progress... and watched what was left of the first half of LSU-Arkansas, followed by the remainder of the game.  I had hopes for Moogie's Hawgs when I switched over and saw the score was 14-0 in their favor, but Andy's Tiggers regained their composure and blew the Hawgs out in the second half, which was never close.  So:  Andy glad, Moogie sad.  Me?  Asleep on the couch, again.  Blowouts just aren't that entertaining, unless it's YOUR blowout.

I woke up sometime after dark and hied my old ass off to Mickey Dee's, where I suffered a major disappointment (see below).  I should have known better and that's all I'll say about that.

I then retired to the study where I dragged the Emergency Desktop out of the closet and set to getting it running.  Eighty-five Microsnot updates (85!  Eighty-freakin'-five!), numerous anti-virus updates, and one Firefox upgrade later (from 3.0.19 to 8.0.1) we were done, sorta.  I still have to restore my financial software to its current state before end-of-month close out, but that's no biggie.  The laptop is current in that space, as is the outboard hard drive.

I find it interesting that this is the second time my spiffy desktop has failed in its sweet short life and it's the second time I've had to fall back on the obsolescent box I replaced three years ago.  Both 'puters are Gateways, but the old one is so much more reliable than the newer one... even if it's slower than molasses on a January day.  The old box runs XP, which takes forever to boot up, but at least the thing runs once it's finished gnashing and thrashing its way through the boot sequence.  It has a much slower processor, too, but once again: it's adequate for the tasks at hand.  I'm simply glad I have a fall-back position other than the laptop.

And the weekend continues...

Yuck

You've prolly seen the ads on yer teevee announcing with varying degrees of faux excitement that the "McRib is back!"  Well, I'd never had one before so I tried one today.  I'm of the opinion that the McRib should have stayed wherever the hell it went; it had no bid'niz comin' back.  I'm told (by reputable sources recommended by Mr. Google) that the "meat" in the McRib is genuine pork and not some sorta mystery meat but ya coulda fooled me.  The "meat" has a rubbery consistency and such a complete lack of meat flavor that it reminded me of the canned substance found in C-rations long ago and far away.  That stuff was allegedly meat, too.  

My bottom line:  I couldn't finish the McRib; one third of it went down the garbage disposal.  What's worse yet is I bought TWO of those abominable thangs; the second sandwich followed the remnants of the first into the disposal.

I agree with this guy:

McDonald's would be much wiser to serve actual smoked rib meat pulled off the bone with a better tasting and spicier BBQ sauce. Short of that, they could easily offer a REAL pulled pork sandwich made from one of the popular brands like Curly's or Lloyd's.

What he said.

So I went lookin' for a suitable image for this post and found a truckload of Mickey Dee's adverhype.  And this lil thang:

I simply can't think of ANYTHING snarky enough for a caption or comment.  All y'all gotta help me out.

I'm Thankful For...

... my DVR.  Because I can do stuff like this:

That would be PAB, paused.  Yowza.

Happy Thanksgiving

For the fifth year in a row...  If the Wall Street Journal has been running the same piece since 1961 I figure I can get by with re-runs, too. I'm not quite as good as they are, though. But seriously: Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, Gentle Reader. I’m going to be lazy today and re-run what I said last year (in part...there was more), mainly coz (a) it’s all true and (b) I’m fresh out of original i-deers. So…from Turkey-Day-2006:

Of all the things I’m thankful for on this day…family, friends, reasonable health… I thank God most of all for making me an American. Most all of the good things in my life begin and end with that one single fact.

You could do much worse today than read the editorial the WSJ has published every Thanksgiving since 1961.  An excerpt:

We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.

And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.

As true today as it was back in 1961.

The images come from Thanksgiving Corner, which has a great collection of Thanksgiving wallpaper. Normally I'd only post a single topical image, but I was so taken with the second image that I had to post it. Shades of Ben Franklin, and all that.

Bad Day

Didja ever have one of those pains in the neck that made even breathing hurt?  That would be me today and it doesn't do my usually bright and cheery self any good at ALL.  The worst part?  Aleve doesn't seem to be much help.  I took two of those things this morning and went back to bed but the pain hasn't gone away.  Oh, well... this, too, shall pass.

I got nuthin' (else) so you get Mimi:

Don't worry, Mimi.  I won't leave ya.

It's Always SUMTHIN' XV

An Occasional Correspondent sends this along...

I can only WISH I'd seen an error message like that last night when my desktop went belly up.  There I was... installing Microsnot updates on the box when it froze.  I waited about five minutes to make sure it wasn't going to unfreeze and proceed with the task at hand... nothing.  So I did a hard shut-down and rebooted.  The result?  Blue screen o' death.  Bill Gates has a macabre sense of humor, since this particular iteration of the BSOD told me to check my computer for viruses and run CHKDSK/F if all else fails.  Three times, even.  Enquiring Minds™ REALLY wanna know how the f*ck I can do that when the OS won't load...

It's always sumthin'...

Your Hockey Red Wings Update...

... which ab-so-freakin'-lute-ly requires me to post this:

That's a SportsCenter highlight-reel save... and one of the best I've ever seen, bar none.  It's just gravy that it happens to be Jimmy Howard, who emerged victorious in last night's end of a four-game road trip for the Beloved Wings.  They didn't do TOO badly, earning four out of of a possible eight points on the trip.  The end result is Dee-troit sits at sixth place in the Western Conference standings going into tonight's games, a decided improvement on the tenth place we had before the California trip.  Me likey.

Last night's game looked like a blow-out, what with the Wings leading 3-0 into the middle frame.  But those pesky (and hapless: 6-10-4 on the season) Ducks came back to make it a contest.  A real nail-biter, when ya come right down to it... until THIS happened in the final minute:

I told SN1 Stuart couldn't do that again if he tried and SN1 disagreed, opining that "those guys are PROFESSIONALS."  Well, that's true... but even the pros need a big-ass helping of luck every once in a while.  Still and even: that was freakin' PRETTY, luck or not!

Broadening Our Horizons XXXV

We were still drinkin' our morning (heh) coffee when Happy Hour time rolled around but we think we're caffeinated enough to make it through the rest of the day, even if we're leavin' a couple o' cups in the pot.  As a good friend o' mine useta say... "Sometimes it bees like that."  Today is one of those days.

But... to the bid'niz at hand.  No, make that the pleasure at hand:

That's a Linenkugel Fireside Nut Brown.  I like this brew, unlike one o' The Bros, who gave the beer a "D."  A D!  That means "avoid" in BA-speak.  I firmly disagree and I'm not the only one who doesn't share Mr. Alström's point o' view, as the consensus opinion on this tasty nut brown ale is C+ and that's based upon 347 reviews.  Personally?  I'd give it a B, mainly coz I like the smoky taste that is quite prominent in this brew.  It's definitely a seasonal sorta thang, and it goes very well with a chilly Fall kinda day.

Today's cigar is a box-pressed Ave Maria, a stick I have some small experience with and a worthy companion to the Fireside Nut Brown.  You'll note that I'm both politically and legally correct today: the cigar sits in the ashtray unlit.

And now it's time to layer up (coz it's a mere 52 degrees outside) and take this show out to the verandah.

Update, 1555 hrs:  Well, THAT didn't last long.  I could handle the 52 degrees but I couldn't handle 52 degrees along with the brisk breeze that accompanied the chill.  So we're back indoors to enjoy our beer in the coziness of El Casa Inmóvil de Pennington.  Sans cigar.  (Sigh)

Fail

Rumor had it yesterday the Supercommittee was going to announce their failure today, but mebbe not.  Negotiations always seem to go down to the wire, that's just the way life is when there are Big Thangs at stake.  I hope those asshats get it together because the consequences of failure are pretty bad in this case.  Just for starters... the DJIA is down 282 and plummeting as I type.  And then there's this:

It's Worse Than You Think: Even without the Budget Control Act's sequestration mechanism kicking in, "we know there will be much more than $450 billion in defense cuts" in the coming decade, said Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Philip Breedlove. Addressing AFA's Global Warfare Symposium in Los Angeles last week, Breedlove said the service is planning for far deeper reductions that will result "in our Total Force getting smaller" and putting the nation "at a significant level of risk." If the sequester does happen—essentially doubling that $450 billion figure—it will result in programmatic chaos, said Breedlove. "Most people don't understand" how the sequester would work, he said. Every line item "would be cut equally," meaning that virtually all contracts would be broken, resulting in stop-work fees of frightening proportions and leaving programs in the lurch, he said. Such action overall would be "onerous," and compel USAF to cut deeply in readiness and modernization, since only they can hit the "hard target" reductions and yield saving in "near years," he explained. Base closures, for example, would "take years to realize savings," said Breedlove. "We have to find near-term dollars. We can't build a slope that ramps over seven or eight years," he continued. Faced with sequester, the Air Force also would have no choice but to "look at missions" and choose some to stop doing, despite the fact that seemingly every mission USAF performs is in greater demand than ever, he said during his Nov. 18 speech.

—John A. Tirpak

That's from the Usual USAF Source, of course.

Interesting times.

Still Another Sign o' the Impending Apocalypse (An Ongoing Series)

More content than pr0n?  NO way.

OTOH... I could use more vids like this:



Coz dogs are inherently smarter than cats.  And some humans.

Didja Ever?

I'm sitting here making my shopping list in preparation for today's Grand Excursion.  I think I'm done but I have this nagging feeling I'm forgetting sumthin'... sumthin' that's pretty essential yet sumthin' I can't quite put my finger on.  Until tonight or mebbe tomorrow, that is, when it'll become all TOO clear.