July 2005 - Posts

Friday, July 29, 2005 10:33 AM

Do you remember when.....

...NASA was the place that all little kids thought was filled with geniuses?

Now, they're a bunch of buffoons pissing away all our tax money.

Come on... 2 1/2 YEARS and > $1 BILLION dollars and they still don't have this crap fixed yet??  WTF?

Idiots!

posted by Tom with 0 Comments
Friday, July 29, 2005 10:29 AM

That Deaf, Dumb And Blind kid sure plays a mean... Soul Caliber 2 !

OK, he's not deaf or dumb, but the Who might still get back together and write a song about him... :)

"Brice Mellen is a whiz at video games such as Mortal Kombat.
In that regard, the 17-year-old isn't much different from so many others his age.
Except for one thing: He's blind."

One of my favorite quotes:

"I freak people out by playing facing backwards."

posted by Tom with 0 Comments
Thursday, July 21, 2005 4:29 PM

Un-Mother-F-ing Believable!

First, they want to stop using red ink while grading papers because it is so negative that it might hurt your whining little sissy of a child's feelings.

Now this:

Liz Beattie, a retired teacher, will call on the association's annual gathering in Buxton, Derbyshire, to "delete the word 'fail' from the educational vocabulary to be replaced with the concept of 'deferred success'".

DEFERRED SUCCESS?  WTF!?

Pretty soon kids will be pulled from one womb and dropped right in another womb and deprived of all contact with the outside world, because there might be something negative out there.

We need to take these little maggots out of this Nerf world we're making for them and introduce them to the world of:
  1. Pain (spank them, they deserve it)
  2. Suffering (don't give them everything they want)
  3. Ridicule (doesn't matter... everybody needs some)
  4. Derision
  5. Sharp corners on counter tops (stop running into things dumbass!)
  6. Completely accessible electrical sockets (stop sticking metal things in there dumbass!)
  7. Red ink and lots of it.
  8. Scissors with sharp edges that you have to run with in gym class.
  9. Last but not least: LAWN DARTS!

posted by Tom with 1 Comments
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 12:30 PM

scp doesn't support resuming downloads??

I was trying to remote copy some large files (CD ISOs) from my college while I was at work and had decent bandwidth.

So, I decided to "scp" the files to my laptop.  So, when I looked back at the Cygwin window, the download was stalled at 696MB (99%).

I then realized that I wasn't sure if scp does resuming of downloads (if the file is partially downloaded already, restarting where you left off).

After checking, I realize that, indeed, it does not.  This, frankly, is ridiculous.  But, google came to the rescue again and helped me find this web site which has some shell scripts that basically do the same thing.  It actually uses ssh and dd to do the job, but it works.

I only had to modify one hard-coded path at the top of scp-resume.sh to make things work.
I'm happy

posted by Tom with 2 Comments
Saturday, July 16, 2005 10:29 AM

Maybe you should plan your wardrobe for when you plan on being arrested...

Well, I'm sure he wasn't planning on being arrested, but this is one shirt this guy wishes he wasn't wearing for his mugshot.

Thanks to BoingBoing

posted by Tom with 0 Comments
Saturday, July 16, 2005 10:23 AM

Oh man... I need some real bandwidth...

I just read the following words and drool started coming out of my mouth involuntarily...

"Microsoft has signed a deal with comic book giant Marvel that will allow it to develop massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) featuring Marvel's superheroes for the Xbox 360"
The big problem with this is that my satellite internet connection, DirecWay (may they rot in hell), really sucks, but I don't have any alternatives.
Well, technically, that's not true... Comcast offered to bring cable to my house for the mere pittance of $30,000 (yes, that's the right number of zeros).  Also, I could get a T1 for $500/month.  So, the sky's the limit, apparently :)

T
posted by Tom with 0 Comments
Saturday, July 16, 2005 9:04 AM

Girls will be boys...

I have always told people that, if I had children, I would want them to be girls until they are around 10 years old.  This way, you can have the cute little girls, but not have to deal with them dating, which is every father's nightmare in my mind. 

This was always said in jest and with a smile.  That is, until recently when someone told me that, if I want to I could go to the Dominican Republic and get a child just like that!  No, this isn't a lie.  Here is a story (NSFW) from the Urological Sciences Research Foundation about the "Guevedoces" (literally "penis at 12 years").  These are people that are "female" until puberty and then, mystically, grow penises!  There are explicit pictures at this site, so don't visit this from work.

That is crazy.

T

Update: Seems like this is spreading.  Apparently some 21 year old woman from Myanmar always dreamed of being a man.  Well, she got her wish: her breasts disappeared and she grew a penis overnight.  Here's the link
posted by Tom with 0 Comments
Thursday, July 14, 2005 9:06 AM

Gee... think this guy's seen the Jackass Movie?

This just makes me say OUCH

Of course they actually inserted them, didn't just grip them...

Thanks to Dave Barry for my daily shudder...

T

posted by Tom with 0 Comments
Tuesday, July 12, 2005 9:41 AM

Honey? I'm going out with the guys to watch someone make juice...

... It's like an educational seminar or something....


(This chair is designed to hold a piece of fruit so a lapdancer can grind the juice out of it. Semi-NSFW photos of the chair in action can be seen at the link.)

posted by Tom with 0 Comments
Friday, July 01, 2005 10:14 PM

Wil Wheaton

Some of you know him as Gordie in Stand By Me or as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, or ST:TNG to us geeks.
Wil Wheaton is more that.  He is a writer, comedian, actor, apparently a heck of a poker player (he's in the WSOP hold'em tournament this year), a step-father to two boys and I find him an excellent writer.  I have read his two books and I read his blog all the time.

Many people think I'm a total geek for reading his blog all the time, but I just want those nay-sayers to read this entry.  This is the kind of writing that proves to the world that he's a good writer.  He lets you into his life, just a little.  He makes you smile.  His life, which is coincidentally 2 days shorter than mine, has been full of so much that he has lots of stories to tell.  He tells them well. 

I hope you agree.

T

posted by Tom with 0 Comments