Max: How to Recognize Despotism

At theInternet Movie Archive.

Umm....hmmm

Jericho: Ballyhoo!

Advertising one's blog is never easy. Long time readers, or those who have slogged through our archives, know some of the battles we have fought to get readership for this blog. What's the point of putting up a blog if no one reads it? If no one comments on your posts? If no one clicks on your ads? Bloging is just writing notes to yourself if no one else is reading it.

So, today, a new day begins for blogists everywhere. I am proud to announce that I and my business partner have launched a new service. Please have a look at BlogBallyhoo.com.

BlogBallyhoo.com is a new and different form of advertising. The buzz around this new type of advertising is huge! We are channeling this buzz and excitement into the blogosphere.

BlogBallyhoo.com is simple, it's inexpensive and it's a lot of fun. Join us!

Jericho: If you sit in the hot tub long enough, a Klingon will walk by.

This happened to me yesterday. Yesterday was a fun and odd day.

No, I wasn't at a Sci-Fi con.

That's all I have to say about that.

Max: Government in Action

FBI agents paid to surf for deviant Internet porn

"Last month, the FBI began implementation of an anti-obscenity initiative designed to crack down on those that produce and distribute deviant pornography. According to FBI headquarters, the war against smut is 'one of the top priorities' of Attorney General Gonazalez and FBI Director Robert Meuller. Although law enforcement agencies have always been aggressive when it comes to prosecuting exploitative child pornographers, this new initiative is unique in that it targets Internet pornography featuring consenting adults." (Emphasis added)

I have to think that with several gulf coast states still crippled and Osama Bin Laden still walking around with his head attached that this is not the best use of federal resources.

Jericho: My Mum, The Hacker

My mom worked for The Junior League of St. Louis for 30+ years. They had a banquet facility, she was a line cook. The last few years the facility had been cutting my Mom's hours. Inevitably, they closed a few months ago. My Mom is unemployed - that's a very strange concept to me. At 53 she isn't ready to retire, but after three decades of food service, her skills are lacking.

My mother has never owned a computer. Okay, when I was in high school, she bought me a Franklin Apple II clone. But, nothing more modern than that. I begged for a more modern machine while I lived with her. We were broke. I begged her to buy a machine after I moved out, just so we could keep up via email. No go. She didn't see a need to shell out the extra cash when she could just call me.

Now that she is unemployed, she has a problem. She was in a unique situation at The League. She was working in a kitchen that treated it's employees as professionals. Sure, they treated her like shit and she should have quit there a decade ago IMHO, but at least she had benefits. As she is looking around now, most food service jobs don't come with much pay or any benefits. Any job she goes to has to provide benefits, she needs them. Considering what my Mom considers "good" pay and the lack of benefits, this is a sad comment on the state of the food service industry.

She has begun looking outside the food service world for work. There are jobs out there, but most of them require basic computer skills. My mom, a smart lady, just doesn't have these skills. Total lack of exposure. She recently passed two phone interviews for a call center job. She passed an in-person interview. However, when they sat her down at the computer, she was totally lost. As you might expect, she didn't get the job. That job would have paid her more than her last job, she would have been off her feet (her knees are nearly gone from 30+ years of standing) and there was a benefits package. I know my Mom could do better than 99% of the *unprintable* idiots at most call centers.

She qualifies for displaced worker benefits from the government. So, she is getting some basic computer and job search training. This is good, but I doubt it will be enough. I knew she would have some spare time on her hands, so, I thought I would try to help.

Steph and I hit the local used pc place and looked for a computer. I wanted a laptop. I wanted something that was all ready to go and I didn't want to have to pay to ship a monitor half way across the country. We found a Toshiba laptop. Get this: a P166, 4 GB HD and 80 MB of RAM. It had a CD-ROM and a 28.8 modem. This thing probably steamed up the glass around the office when it was new - now, it was a step above a paper weight. However, at $79 bucks, the price was right. We added a new $12 mouse and called it a good night. I went home and installed my copy of Win98, probably about the most this machine could handle, but there you are. I installed my copy of Office 2000. I used Office 2000 with Virtual PC on my Mac. At this point, I was feeling pretty good about all of this.

I had bought an old Toshiba laptop for a friend a while back when she was desperate. The machine had some impact trauma a little later and worked only in the technical sense. (I tried to fix this poor device - made it worse. Oy!) Our friend was kind enough to donate the remains to our cause. I harvested two batteries, an external floppy drive and a nice bag and added them to the new system. I looked at this clean machine and realized, this was a pretty cool set up! I almost didn't want to let it go!

We shipped it out as cheaply as we could. All told, we spent just over a $100 bucks. Not bad. My Mom is worth way more than that, but that's what I could sacrifice. Took forever for that thing to arrive! She was grateful and a little shocked, in a good way. Made me feel better than any $100 bucks I've spent in the last decade.

Of course, it has been nothing but problems for her since! I set her up with a free account on NetZero. Mostly, I wanted a way to test the modem and download some patches and updates since this device didn't have a LAN port. NetZero worked for me just fine. My poor Mom can't make a connection to save her life. Sometimes she can get to NetZero's page, but any pages beyond are not available. Sometimes it just sits there, dialing. She was finally able to look at email on Yahoo! and send me an email. But, it's been a pain. She is considering absorbing the cost of better internet service just so she can connect!

The best thing that has come out of this is that she is getting some exposure to skills that will get her a better job. I hated The League! I hated how they treated her. My Mom is better than every one of those rich, lazy, dim witted women who were more interested in displaying their wealth than charity. I hate to say this, but I'm glad she's unemployed. Her life can only get better from here!

Jericho: Four Five Six

About fourteen months ago, I started a diet. I went on Adkins to counteract the effects of Insulin Intolerance and I started on hormone therapy because I have low testosterone levels.

About a year ago, I was at 446. I had lost nearly thirty pounds and I was pretty excited about the results.

Toward the end of October of last year, I was down about fifty pounds. I was pretty excited about this. It was the most weight I had ever lost and the longest I had ever stayed on a diet.

The problem was that I still had so far to go. At 425, I wanted to get to 200. The task seemed beyond possible. Sometime in November, I hit my wall. I took a business trip to Phoenix that was the beginning of the end of my diet. Between the huge amount of weight I had to lose and the stress of my job in the last year, I gave up and began self medicating with whatever food was at hand. I tried again and again to get serious about the diet, but I kept falling off the wagon.

As of last week, Steph and I got serious again. We're back on Adkins, back to Induction. I went back to the doctor on Thursday and got examined. All my numbers look fine. Other than my weight and my low hormone levels, I'm a healthy guy. My friend Angi and I went and weighed in, I came up at 456. So, it's not the 425 I was down to, nor is it the 475 of when I started. I've lost thirty pounds of ground. That's almost a pound a week.

Anyway, I'm back in the saddle. It's week two. I'm not as excited as I was last time. Last time I had answers to long nagging questions. This time, I have a long road of self denial ahead of me, I've fallen off the wagon in a big way and I still have a load of stress at work. I'm not looking forward to the journey.

Food is my only vice. I have joked with Steph that I should stop eating and start smoking, then break that addiction by switching to drinking, then move to pot. Addiction sucks, no matter what the addiction is.

My name is Jericho and I'm a food addict. I have been on my diet for seven days.

Jericho: Healing Factor - My Favorite Superpower!

Wow. Check this out!

Okay, I've been excited about things I've read before and then heard nothing more about it for decades, Cold Fusion anyone?

And, I know when scientists and journalists start talking, much gets lost in translation. But, this doesn't have that feel. "We made mice who can regrow their tails when we cut them off." That's pretty clear. Not much wiggle room there.

This, taken to an extreme, is limited immortality. If you can regrow all new organs, they won't ever wear out. If you are a 90 year old man walking around with organs that were regrown 17 years ago, you are biologically 17 years old.

This makes me happy. I bet there are some war vets who would be willing to test this technology. I know that's not entirely ethical, but neither are land mines.

Max: Flabulous

I want to be fat.

Not just the cardiac arrestingly sort of fat I am now.

I want to be too fat to fit through my bedroom door. I want gigantic, sweaty manboobs. I want Richard Simmons to come to my house and put me and my manboobs on TV.

The world will be hypnotized by my gigantic, sweaty manboobs. And I will get my own talk show, which I and my manboobs will host from my bedroom. For one hour a day, the world will watch as celebrities and incestuous, polygamous gibbons lay their heads upon my gigantic, sweaty manboobs and reveal their secrets.

The other twenty three hours a day, my servants will lick the sweat from between my massive, furry rolls of fat.

Max: Gore airlifts Katrina victims

Via CNN.com

" Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son."

And why didn't we elect this guy President?

Oh. Yeah. We did.

Max: NEP - Animated YYZ video

Animated YYZ video on NeilPeart.net

Max: 4G prototypes reach blistering speeds

via New Scientist:

"In experiments, prototype phones were used to view 32 high definition video streams, while travelling in an automobile at 20 kilometres per hour. Officials from NTT DoCoMo say the phones could receive data at 100 megabits per second on the move and at up to a gigabit per second while static. At this rate, an entire DVD could be downloaded within a minute. DoCoMo's current 3G (third generation) phone network offers download speeds of 384 kilobits per second and upload speeds of 129 kilobits per second."

Max want.

Jericho: Bwah! Haha! Eat that, Kansas!

I am a big fan of Irregular Webcomic. This is one of the best things that David Morgan-Mar has done.

Hey, Kansas! Even the Aussies are laughing at you!