Dancing santa

There's a lot of weird shit out on the web, of course. So here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0L9ObERU_E&feature=related

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi1e2-bLl8g

It's been a cruel day

Mother nature dropped some old-school cruelty on my little corner of the world today. The news reports have been calling it crippling, with local governments pulling mass transit off-line. Apparently this is the view from space.

I call it 17 inches of snow, but whatever, right?

I must admit that it's been interesting to watch. First, before the snow came, all the stores were ransacked by locals in anticipation. Then everyone went home to wait. Parking lots emptied; the streets were silent and the only sound to be heard was the wind picking up its pace.

Then, around midnight, it started. Light at first, it was quite pretty. Reflecting off the street light on the corner, it almost looked like meteor shower. Unlike a meteor shower, though, this event didn't end. It's been nearly 24 hours now and it's still coming down.

The last report I heard was that the cities and counties around here were even pulling their plows off the roads because they can't keep up with the weather. Once again, mother nature shows us that no matter how far humans have advanced from the cave and the first fire, we are still these small, fragile creatures who only get by through what can best be described as unbalanced luck.

Maybe that's why I love big weather?

Once, when I was about 18 my father and I went on a whitewater trip in Utah. Due to a confluence of weather-related events the river was running bigger and faster than it had in nearly a century. We were told that the canyon would be closed to rafters within the hour, so we had a choice: go home or get in the water. We knew that once we pushed off, there was no going back and the only way was 50 miles down-river.

My father and I took the ride of a life. But I digress. That's a story for another day.

In the meantime I leave you with this: a reason to hate stupid people.

What's happening on the cruel web tonight?

I've been bored all evening so I've been spending my time listening to One EskimO and playing with my stumble button. Don't get excited--that wasn't a euphemism, rather an entirely under-utilized (in my opinion) browser add-on.

It's taken me all over teh internets and back again. I've read recipes for Bisque, watched videos claiming that the Pentagon was hit by a missile rather than an airplane, and an unfinished ASCII version of Star Wars. However these are all the more benign things one would expect to find.

So I kept going until I found some SFW things that were interesting, moving, or total fecking non sequitur. I found all three. I give you:

• The words of Carl Sagan and an image of Earth from 4 billion miles away.
  
• The worlds 18 strangest bathrooms.
  
• A man so angry he's swinging a cactus!

Enjoy your night!

I am Geek

Geek. Nerd. Dork. I’ve been called them all. When I was younger those names used to hurt me. It meant I was an outsider; someone who didn’t belong.

A couple decades later, lo and behold: The geek shall inherit the earth! For a long time I couldn’t figure out how it happened that most things geek/nerd/dork became, first, subversive and, then, cool/mainstream. For chrissake there’s prime time TV dedicated to geekdom! As a child, I never would have imagined it. Now I revel in it.

It makes me smile to know that so many of the meatheads who relegated people like me to corners and sidelines now have to figure out the best way to sneak into the party. But I won’t gloat. Much.

Instead I revel in the fact that geek culture has become so accessible, so wide spread and has developed its own self-deprecating humor. Take this for example. Or this.

I’m back…And there’s nothing you can do about it!

Up until a couple of years ago I had been blogging pretty consistently. Unfortunately I found myself at the intersection of too much going on and too little time in the venn diagram of my day-day life. I also had taken on some new work that required curtailing my public online presence in favor of another persona and voice. Now that that’s over I can go back to just being me.

If there’s any of my old readers checking this out today, you may be wondering why the title of the blog has changed. Simply put, it’s the truth. This is a cruel world in which we live, and the best any of us can hope for is to survive for a while with minimal permanent damage.

So, let’s try to survive together for a while.

26 things...

1. Some days I hate my job
2. Other days I hate myself
3. I believe that jealousy is illogical and a waste of energy
4. I love vocal trance music
5. I hate whiny, skinny-tie indie music played by a bunch of privileged white kids
6. Henry Rollins was kind enough to give me an interview, many years ago
7. Since then I’ve lost my taste for him and his over-the-top political tirades
8. I love a good story
9. I love a good story-teller even more
10. I have a long lasting love/hate relationship with Wil Wheaton
11. I sat next to George “The Animal” Steele on a flight from Minneapolis to Boston
12. He was reading War and Peace
13. I feel very adrift lately
14. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up
15. I believe that no ever does anything that won’t benefit them self somehow
16. I dare you to prove me wrong
17. I don’t trust people
18. My negotiating skills are top notch
19. I enjoy a good horror story for the building suspense
20. I have an inexplicable attraction to Twitter
21. I think it’s because Twitter is like a digital whisper from across a dark room
22. The above statement and all its parts are held in a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States license
23. Sometimes I think very highly of the blather that comes out of my head
24. I believe that everything is negotiable; even love and happiness
25. I think Battle Pong and RONG are the two best time-wasters on teh intertubes
26. I have to go do some work now…

Article=/Geek/sub_route_{boner [if awexome]}

Geek wetware across the globe exploded in ecstasy all over their servers and biometric readers, today.

Just a taste:
In each cluster's first year, it's typical that 1,000 individual machine failures will occur; thousands of hard drive failures will occur; one power distribution unit will fail, bringing down 500 to 1,000 machines for about 6 hours; 20 racks will fail, each time causing 40 to 80 machines to vanish from the network; 5 racks will "go wonky," with half their network packets missing in action; and the cluster will have to be rewired once, affecting 5 percent of the machines at any given moment over a 2-day span, Dean said. And there's about a 50 percent chance that the cluster will overheat, taking down most of the servers in less than 5 minutes and taking 1 to 2 days to recover.

God, that's hawt.

If you think you can handle more, follow the white rabbit.

Seven Deadly Sins

Thanks to Dooce, I've found something that I estimate to be the epitome of cool. A collection of wine glasses that represent the seven deadly sins.

You know, my birthday is just around the corner. Next February. Just so you know.