Kiss my grits!

Being the discriminating connoisseur of psychedelic rock that I am, I have some 19 albums of Pink Floyd, and absolutely none of Kiss. There's a big difference between real rock and a travelling freak show. If Kiss is miffed by the Rock Hall, they could easily afford to buy it and turn it into a parking lot.
And they probably should.

Earth Hour in Moscow....

Russians want Alaska back....

I admire their balls, if not their good judgement! It's Siberia, but with a foreign language. Why would you want more of that? Read all about it here.

Like father, like son....

First, his old man, Painful Pierre, gave us all the finger. Now, this little snot is giving us the F-bomb, as if we've never heard it before. I was inventing original cuss-words for decades before this little snot was even born, and there's no new cuss-words that he can teach me. I thought his old man was completely insufferable, and I feel exactly the same about this foul-mouthed little turd.
I wouldn't vote for him even if he kissed my ass until I barked like a fox.

Why Spring is a little late this year...

Good Idea -

Good idea, but they can never make these things totally idiot-proof, and for those potato heads who insist on fiddling with an iPad or an iPhone, or putting on lipstick, or picking their noses in the fast lane, there will always be more problems. And that's good. We hate to see unemployed engineers. The other unmentioned part of all this is that a $5,000 car now costs $30,000 and it doesn't get your cute little posterior there any faster than my 1958 Chevy could in 1958, when men were men, gals were naturally double-breasted, and gas was two bits a gallon, and none of us had ever heard of Kuwait.

Why is the Solar System flat?

I love visuals, and we're never too old to learn something... and as for this question of 'why is the solar system flat?' I have yet another theory: it's because flat disks pack together better than round balls do. And that 3-D image of the atom is therefore obviously wrong. 3-D is probably only 2.5-D and only if you hurry. Got the picture? Lots of people are only two-dimensional. Look around you if you don't believe me. Start with politicians. 

"She Didn't Say "Yes" "

From Moscow....

For the complete article, please click here.

Adios, Amigo...

Generally speaking, I've a strong dislike for authoritarian, opinionated Brits who think they're God's gift to the unwashed masses, thanks in no small part to my paternal grandfather, an Orangeman, a Mason and a complete arsehole.

But I wholeheartedly and unequivocally agree with everything Piers says about the NRA and those idiotic gun laws down there in the U.S.A. - we all know that guns don't kill people; people kill people. But that's the problem - not everyone is mentally stable and capable of good judgement, including the NRA.

The Midnight Astronaut asks:-

Tonight's 'Question Everything' is -

"What's the story on these old healed-over cracks in the crust, as if large sheets of ice split apart and then re-froze together later?" Does this or did this once have a fluid core? What's its surface made of? What's the greenish tinting near the terminator? Is it an oxide of copper?"

Finally, from Pascal, in Lebanon......

Phew. Finally half-over with the intense sleepiness of the anti-histaminics. Plagued be those processionary caterpillars! They sure took advantage of the non-winters we're having more and more. If they were carnivorous on top, they'd make one fantastic (and icky) horror flick.
Note to self: try to get back on the blog some day. I've got a draft about the caterpillars. One of my 50+ awaiting drafts!!!
On to our business.

Chekhov? Puh-leeze. His gun wasn't even automatic. Check ovt Pascal's Gaitling Cannon™ for a REAL man's weapon. ("Take advantage of our limited-time special deals before we ship everything to Syria.")
OK, so I'll read his bio on Wikipedia if my juice doesn't get prematurely thunderstruck. For one thing he looks like a rather handsome fella. We already have this in common.

Daily life is essentially about going to work (my own practice), and now that I've got my driver's license plus proper training, I've started driving there and back on my own. Never really had need to drive before that. But I must admit, my days have gotten rather lonely as a result. And the first 6-16 months are always slow.

OK, that'll have to be all for now. There's a surprise storm tonight (Mother Nature sour at DST?...), and I'd rather not leave my modem plugged to the land line for too long. Sometimes, lightning can strike the wires, surge protectors or not.
I'm having trouble connecting my Netbook at work (slightly incompatible modem), but Facebook on my tablet works just fine. Only downside is the slightly unpractical virtual keyboard. So, I suggest you "friend" me on FB if you want to miss me less.

I've heard of a dusty sound (invented it myself) and a red smell (ditto, more in my 3rd novel), but what's a nosy color? Is that close to booger green?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogerman

"It was a dark and snotty night, when, like a flick out of nosewhere, Professor Stinkbaum felt a most ill-timed urge to sneeze during his reading of a fine Bulwer-Lytton novel, chapter one, paragraph one. An appropriate time this was snot."

Aw, speck! Shoot a spraying fire and call me Gezundheit! Too late, I'm in the dark. Hail no, say it isn't so!
OK, I'll copy-save that draft and send it after the storm. It's not like an extra couple of days will do a big difference anymore. :-(

There's something delightful about what Pascal does with language, and I'm very pleased to hear from him again. It's also a relief to know that he's still OK over there, where being OK isn't always something we can take for granted. It's beginning to look like I'm going to have to sign up on FB.
Both Pascal and distant relatives have been urging me to do that. Maybe I'll have another look at the security concerns of it. FB isn't the most secure setup I've ever seen. But I'm digressing again - for now, I'm just happy that Pascal's still alive and well and doctoring in Lebanon. We have a mutual friend in the U.K. who keeps us tuned in, and to him, my thanks. One can never have too many friends.  

Another saying....

Козла́ бо́йся спе́реди, коня́ -- сза́ди, а лихо́го челове́ка -- со всех сторо́н.

"Beware of the cat that licks from the front but claws from behind."
Literally: - "Beware of the goat from its front side, of the horse - from its back side, and the evil man - from any side." 

The shallow end of the Talent Pool, continued....

Question Everything:
Why is this picture nine years old? Has she suffered a disfiguring attack of virulent stupidity recently, reducing her I.Q. to that of an unwashed turnip?

"What's Shakin' ?" - L.A. !

They say if you tipped the country on its side, everything loose would land in L.A. - and then along comes another 'quake and dumps it on the floor.

This is getting dangerously close to the San Pornando Valley, up near Van Nuys and Burbank. I hope the folks up there were protected by their mattresses....

New and Improved: Malwarebytes Anti-malware

The new version now includes the former beta programs for the Anti-Rootkit and Chameleon features, aimed at hidden items not usually discovered. These are both good, and I've tested them on my own computer.

The new interface.

 

All that glitters is not gold...

Ба́ры деру́тся -- у холо́пов чубы́ треща́т.

[ When the rich make war it's the poor that die. ]

Looking for a place to look...

Unfortunately, the Pacific Ocean is one of the world's largest garbage containers.
It's three weeks later, and they still don't know where to look.

Here's a better shot of this Orion of the RAAF, in case you'd like a wallpaper...

Russell Crowe, 'Noah', and criticism of the story

Bad News, Kiddies - there's no way that story could have ever happened in any way shape or form similar to its telling in the Bible, or anywhere else.  Who told you there were two of every creature on earth just happening to live within the round-up distance of the ark? And I've seen it rain for over forty days and forty nights up here along the north coast of the Pacific Northwest of North America and it didn't result in any earth-covering flood. It just got damned tiresome -
like this bullshit about Noah and his homemade houseboat. It's a fable! You probably also believe in the Tooth Fairy, don't you? Come on, now, 'fess up!

This just in, from Anton Chekhov...

This is a painting of Anton by his brother Nikolay, and because it's old, and hasn't stood the ravages of time well, I had to clean it up a little. I hope they don't mind. Reading Anton's biography, it reminds me of a sometime penpal who lives in Lebanon, and who is also a doctor by trade and a writer by choice.

'Everything Old Is New Again' ?

This picture of the birds is one of twenty chosen by Igor Tabakov from his many during 20 years as photographer for The Moscow Times. He retired Friday.

The shallow end of the talent pool....

Go ahead - talk dirty to me, you sexy thing you!

"Back To The Future" or something....

My favorite free image editing program...

Unfortunately, it hasn't yet been ported for PC-BSD, so I have to do the editing in Windows, and then move it over to PC-BSD using Gmail or a similar method,
because, as mentioned earlier, the PC-BSD and Windows cannot directly exchange files, because they are formatted differently. And I say 'unfortunately' because I'd really like to have this program in PC-BSD. It does a very nice job of editing images, and it also can do batch editing or renaming, and create slide shows from your image folders, which you can then burn to a disc if you wish.
And there are all sorts of add-ons for it. Think of it as 'the poor man's photoshop'.... Another excellent freebie image program is 'Paint.NET', and it also has a zillion add-ons for many additional effects.

Here's PC-BSD with a new theme picture...

New Win-8 Theme: WW2 Fighters

Comparing Desktops: PC-BSD 10 and Windows 8

Because these two programs can't 'talk' to each other, even though they're on the same drive, I'll have to do this in a couple of stages. First, this is a snapshot of the desktop showing PC-BSD 10.0.1 with its icons and widgets....

And, after a reboot to get into the other operating system, here's Windows 8, with its icons and gadgets...

Not such a huge difference really. A man on a galloping horse might have trouble telling them apart. My point here being that you aren't giving up anything in the way of convenience or appearance using PC-BSD 10 as compared to Windows 8. And the PC-BSD has features you can't get in Windows, such as its regular upgrades, and its several hundred programs that are made to run on its unique formatting, similar in concept to Apple's OS-X, but different enough that we can't interchange between them. They are 'kissing cousins' though. Apple's OS-X came from the same roots as this PC-BSD.

Moscow Times today....

They're not all nuts over there - just the ones at the top. Maybe it's time for another revolution. We're beginning to wish..... Is Putin the Russian version of
'Dubya' ? 'Dubya's' war-mongering almost bankrupted the country, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. It's a lot cheaper to change the leader.

New Win-8 Theme: Leslie Caron

What's new on The Windows Blog...

Tweaking Win-8 continues, with promises to make it 'smoother' for us mouse and keyboard users who aren't exclusively tactile. I've suggested they make it so that we could choose to move an App from the Start Screen onto the Desktop in the form of an icon which wouldn't take up so much real estate, but still offer the functionality. We'll have to see if they do anything like that.
Microsoft is notoriously insensitive to user input, and that may explain why they are playing 'catch-up' with their competition these days. And they've yet to invent a truly 'bisexual' operating system that is all things to all users, and I doubt they can. We're too diverse in our preferences, and whatever appeals to the young and horny and desperate doesn't necessarily appeal to the boss who has to approve purchase of a thousand units for his employees, and worry about writing off the perfectly useful hardware they presently are using. This engineered obsolescence has its problems.

Androgynism is back !

Ah, The Eighties... fast motorcycles...gay bars....kissing a cute guy under a blossoming apple tree in the moonlight...music like Karma Chameleon...those were interesting times, for sure.

USA Today, you blew it!

Danica Patrick is a race car driver, and she's not the one on DWTS - that's the former 'Winnie Cooper' of 'The Wonder Years', Danica McKellar. Doesn't anybody check these things these days? Where are those Editors who like to come down from the hills after the battle to shoot the wounded? Get one!

That mystery airliner story....and its critics

He takes a shot at CNN, and good on him. I quit watching CNN when I realized they were just a bunch of opinionated pompous asses in love with the sound of their own voices, coming from mouths in need of a sock stuffed into them. There's a difference between news and gossip or opinion or bullshit.

And that coverage of the disappearance of the airliner was a bit overdone I think, in view of the lack of any real evidence of it or its real fate. For all we know, it might still be sitting on a landing strip someplace within the circle of its flying range, where it may be getting prepared for some other mission. Without any physical evidence of its fate, it's anyone's guess what really happened. And the sightings of things in the ocean could be trash left from some previous storm or tsunami for all we know at the moment, which proves nothing. We're really no wiser now than when it first vanished.

PC-BSD 10 - Quarterly Update now released

Life, as they say, is what happens while you're busy doing something else, and so I hadn't been using my PC-BSD for a while, and it got its quarterly rebuild while I wasn't paying attention.

I decided to use it today, for what i expected to be a few minutes, and as soon as I started it, an updates notice came on screen, so I thought "this can't take too long, so I'll do it first..." and an hour later, over 800 Mb of revisions had been downloaded and installed, and my program was ready to use once more.

Unlike Windows or that fruit-flavored other one, the folks at PC-BSD don't wait for a couple of years and death by a thousand cuts before issuing upgrades to the operating system. They have a schedule, in fact, for doing it quarterly, and since it's the end of the first quarter since this version 10.0 came out, it
means it's now time for version 10.0.1, which is why it took an hour to get it all freshened up and smelling nice and working even nicer. More people ought to take a serious look at this PC-BSD. It's a hell of a nice program, and the Unix that it's based on has been around since Bill Gates was in short pants, so it's a well-developed and proven system. You should try it. Did I mention that it's a free download? So put away your credit card. This isn't Windows. This is for people who actually enjoy using their computers and don't want to spend forever twiddling with the system to keep it going. This system keeps itself going! And I love that! You will too. 

Where Neon Goes To Die...

This just in from 'Uncle Ron'

Ron Chapiesky	9:55 AM (54 minutes ago)		Reply
to me

Hi Ray...

I  lost my password to my yahoo mail...and somehow I am in it right now(by using my phone number????)...I've been in the hospital since Mar. 2...my urethra was clogged and I had to be catherized...(twice) second one was bigger and I screamed bloody murder when they inserted it... I spent over 2 weeks in the hospital and now I'm in a wellness home where they are teaching me to walk and do the ordinary things of life...

I'm tiring as I type so I will cut this short...I may go home in a week or so...My life is upside down...but I'm alive thank God...Margie has been a angel for me...She's a very good woman and I'm lucky to have her...

I'll write more later...I've looked at your blog several times...Keep it going big guy...

Cheers

Uncle Ron