• Daemon Dancing in the Dark : My FreeBSD and Linux blog. I started it May 2003 in order to keep track of the mountain of information needed to keep one of these alternative operating systems going. I love working with FreeBSD and I keep lots of notes. It gets plenty of hits and is reflected in a few different spots. I go through spurts of effort on it, depending on how much I use my BSD boxes. I have a big backlog of posts I should get to for it, and plenty of other things I want to try. It's a nice, focused, personally useful site, where I keep all my BSD notes.
• The Game Chair : a group effort, sort of a high end amateur web site where I write video game reviews and other musings. We specialize in what we call "Progressive Reviews", where you write up three or four reviews as you play through a game. I contribute bits and pieces and am due to dive into a new game. I might be getting Lego Star Wars II for review, which should be fun. My girls and I have have a great time playing Lego Star Wars.
• Wanderings of a lost [game] mind : This is my video game diary blog, hosted on Gamespot.com. I use it to keep track of my video game playing habits, just to track what I play for how long, as I don't usually play to the end of anything. It too has sunk into disuse.
• Incredible Brightness of Seeing : My movie blog, where I used to put up lengthy reviews and log my movie viewing habits. I still watch plenty of movies, but I haven't been keeping up with it, either.
• In Absinthia : My drinking buddy and I have started up a new blog about all things absinthe. It's a fascinating subject, and a fascinating drink to boot. Again, I have a big backlog of articles I have to put up for it.
• A Trifle One-Sided : a new blog I started in order to play with Six Apart's new community blogging site, Vox.com. I was experimenting using it as my culture commenting spot, talking about movies, books and music. There's some pretty nice Web 2.0 features on it, like dropping in thumbnails of movies, and book covers from Amazon, and the like. It's got some shortcomings, not surprising in a beta product. It will only list like the first 10 hits of a search string, so you have to play around to find your stuff sometimes. And you can't use HTML, and there's only a few schemes available. By the way, if anyone is interested in trying it out too, drop me an email as I have two invitations I can hand out. I'm not exactly sure how far I'll go with this, but it has been fun dabbling in it.

So, as you can see, I don't lack for creative writing outlets. So Jiggle's purpose in life has come into question. I could continue to use it for posts that don't naturally fit into these other places, like my cocktail postings. I have always felt that a blog should be useful to someone, even if just the author (like my FreeBSD blog). If others find it useful, so much the better. And a personal diary blog like Jiggle just doesn't offer that. So, while Jiggle will remain online, I'm not exactly sure if I'll be posting much here in the future.

Unicorn Golf Course

This was played a couple of weeks ago, and I never got around to posting it. Started off great - a par on the first hole is pretty amazing. Then it went downhill fast and I struggled for most of the rest of the round. I've been hitting my drives off the tee pretty well, but my irons were shaky at best.

Probably my best round of the season so far. My drives continued to be solid, ever since I decided to cut way down on my back swing, keeping my left arm as straight as I can. Sometimes, I slice it off to the right, if I don't follow through. But I generally get it out there, which makes things much more easy. Michael has been having problems off the tee, so his score is actually pretty damn good, especially if you take away one or two disasteruous holes. As for me, my putting was abysmal. I three putted the first 4 holes and missed plenty of other short ones. With even an average putter going today, I could have had a round for the ages, easily cutting off 5 strokes. My short game was glorious, especially on the par 5 6th hole. I even mis-hit that one but it skipped off the fringe and came to rest about a foot from the cup.

1) When I die, I want to die like my grandfather--who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car." --Author Unknown

2) Advice for the day: If you have a lot of tension and you get a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: "Take two aspirin" and "Keep away from children." --Author Unknown

3) "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar." --Drew Carey

4) "The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job, but if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house." --Jeff Foxworthy

5) "If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base." --Dave Barry

6) "Relationships are hard. It's like a full time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay, the day before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp." --Bob Ettinger

7) "My Mom said she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. I said, 'Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.'" --Paula Poundstone

8) "A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: "Duh." --Conan O'Brien

9) "Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?? I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God.... I could be eating a slow learner." --Lynda Montgomery

10) "I think that's how Chicago got started. Bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.'" --Richard Jeni

11) "If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead." --Johnny Carson

12) "Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography." --Paul Rodriguez

13) "My parents didn't want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that's the law." --Jerry Seinfeld

14) "Remember in elementary school, you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from smallest to tallest. What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?" --Warren Hutcherson

15) "Bigamy is having one wife/husband too many. Monogamy is the same." --Oscar Wilde

16) "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.. But I repeat myself." --Mark Twain

17) "Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Afghanistan." --A. Whitney Brown

18) "You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'" --Dave Barry

19) Do you know why they call it "PMS"? Because "Mad Cow Disease" was taken. --Unknown, presumed deceased

20) "Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I''ll have another beer." - W. C. Fields

]]> tag:jiggle.anaze.us,2006://5.736 2006-08-10T22:24:47Z 2006-08-10T21:25:34Z

In fact, here are the little things to connect the chopsticks: Fun Chopsticks

And here are ZooSticks found at SillyGoose.com

These links all come courtesy of ParentHacks.com

DEMOCRATIC
 You have two cows.
 Your neighbor has none.
 You feel guilty for being successful.
 Barbara Streisand sings for you.
REPUBLICAN
 You have two cows.
 Your neighbor has none.
 So?
SOCIALIST
 You have two cows.
 The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
 You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
COMMUNIST
 You have two cows.
 The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
 You wait in line for hours to get it.
 It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
 You have two cows.
 You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
 You have two cows.
 Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot
 the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION
 You have two cows.
 You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
 You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are
  surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the
  analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
 Your stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION
 You have two cows.
 You go on strike because you want three cows.
 You go to lunch and drink wine.
 Life is good.
JAPANESE CORPORATION
 You have two cows.
 You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow
  and produce twenty times the milk.
 They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
 Most are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN CORPORATION
 You have two cows.
 You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give
  excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
 Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION
 You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
 While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
 You break for lunch.
 Life is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION
 You have two cows.
 You have some vodka.
 You count them and learn you have five cows.
 You have some more vodka.
 You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
 The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have. 
TALIBAN CORPORATION
 You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
 You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's parts.
 You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find
  alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.
IRAQI CORPORATION
 You have two cows.
 They go into hiding.
 They send radio tapes of their mooing.
POLISH CORPORATION
 You have two bulls.
 Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.
BELGIAN CORPORATION
 You have one cow.
 The cow is schizophrenic.
 Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
 The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
 The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
 The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
 The cow dies happy.
FLORIDA CORPORATION
 You have a black cow and a brown cow.
 Everyone votes for the best looking one.
 Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally
  vote for the black one.
 Some people vote for both.
 Some people vote for neither.
 Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
 Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you
  think is the best-looking cow.
CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
 You have millions of cows.
 They  make real California cheese.
 Only five speak English.
 Most are illegals.
 Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

Update from May

• Daggerspell by Katharine Kerr. A solid entry into the fantasy epic sweepstakes. I lost some of the backwards references, as the book revolves around some kind of reincarnation, and a main character who has to live (and relive) life until he rights a wrong he did. But once it started getting into battles, and spells, and the main storyline and stopped jumping around in time, it really jelled, and I'm looking forward to reading the followup, Darkspell.
• River of Gods by Ian McDonald. I was doing really well with this 600 page behemoth. I was about 300 pages into it and was finding it interesting reading. Set in the near future in a fractured India, it described an advanced cyber-society, and a war of some kind raging. But then I was sitting in bed with my daughter reading it while she read her book (I think it was Jenny and the Cat Club by Esther Averill, as mentioned in Laura's post) when she asked me what my book was about. And, after reading nearly 300 pages, I couldn't give her a synopsis at all, that either of us would understand! So I gave up. What a wimp.
• Pennant Race by Jim Brosnan. In the end, I don't think this book on the 1961 Reds pennant race was as good as his first, The Long Season. It felt more forced, with more long conversations recorded, rather than the personal impressions of its predecessor. And it ended before the World Series started, which I thought very odd. Maybe it was too painful to write about, as they lost to the Yankees in 5 games. There were still some laugh out loud moments though.
• I returned both The Raj Quartet and Dreaming the Eagle, making no start at all on the former and practically none on the latter. I started reading Dreaming, but, I guess not surprisingly, it had plenty of dream sequences and, as I've mentioned before, I just don't like reading about dreams. It just too easy a cop out for the author.
• Rereadings edited by Anne Fadiman. Reprints of essays found in The American Scholar where authors comment on rereading a favorite book from long ago. It was moderately interesting, although many of the writers were unknown to me, as were many of the books (and one album - David Michaels wrote about Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band) being written about.
• The untied states of America : polarization, fracturing, and our future by Juan Enriquez. Interesting book about today's political and cultural atmosphere, wondering if we as a country are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Written in a graphical style, with bold, italic and normal typefaces and strange formatting, which both works and repels. Interesting book nonetheless.
• Night Fall by Nelson DeMille. My mother-in-law is a huge fan of today's turgid thriller, whereby men (almost always) of strong will, dashing looks and witty repartee stave off certain demise of either the world or our country. She's always fobbing the latest paperback bestseller off on me. So I try to read it for a little bit, only to get put off by the bad writing, stereotypical characters and laughable premise. But this one hooked me, perhaps because I was wondering just how he was going to get himself out of the jam he created. This book posits a terrorist connection in the downing of TWA Flight 800 off of Long Island in 1996. And it is a real problem when you try to novelize a true historical action. Like Day of The Jackal (about a proposed De Gaul assassination), the audience knows how it will end, so you need to do some good writing to make it worthwhile. So, I admit it, I read it pretty much constantly for about 3 days, to see what John Corey, ex-NYPD man of steel and his anti-terrorist FBI agent wife, Kate Mayfield, would find out. My mother-in-law said the ending was stunner and kept her up at nights. Well, I have to agree with that, but only because it was stunningly inept and cheating! If you're reading this book, you should stop now. If you haven't started it, I say don't bother and I'll tell you why. And it's funny, because in the afterword he even says:

  I'd like to thank my son, Alex... It was Alex who came up with the perfect ending to this book, helping me out of the corner into which I'd painted myself.

  Yeah, I'd say it was a corner alright. And to kill off everyone involved except the main characters in the World Trade Center attack is the ultimate cop-out. And to not even offer up a single answer to any of the questions you pose throughout the book is just plain wrong. Don't bother with this one! I used to read a lot of these potboilers, but that was a long time ago, and now I know why. Speaking of rereadings, I should go back and read The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum. I was a huge fan of Ludlum, especially this book, until I read few more of them and realized they were all the same, and started to get tired of the straining prose and italics. I wonder if I would still like this book today?

Currently Reading

• Smartbomb : the quest for art, entertainment, and big bucks in the video game revolution by Heather Chaplin & Aaron Ruby. I write sporadically for a video game review site, The Game Chair and I like to include the occasional book review. I wrote up a short review on the book Game Over (about Nintendo), and so I'm reading this one with an eye towards another short review. So far, it's the typically smarmy mainstream coverage of the game industry, with this wry "aren't they cute and geeky?" tone to it.
• Two books on absinthe, because I've become fascinated by both its colorful and checkered past, as well as the emerald (usually) liquor itself. In fact, a friend and I have started an absinthe blog called In Absinthia, where we write about our absinthe discoveries. The two books are Hideous Absinthe : a history of the devil in a bottle by Jad Adams and Absinthe: History in a bottle by Barnaby Conrad. The former is a pretty solid overview of absinthe in the 19th century, albeit with a condescending tone, while the latter is more of a picture book of absinthe and its lurid past.

In The Queue

• The miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss. Bill Harris, writer of one of my favorite blogs, Dubious Quality, has been raving about this book since the Soccer World Cup started. It's the true story of a small Italian town and its soccer team, which made the miraculous leap to the top division of Italian soccer.
• The devil's picnic : around the world in pursuit of forbidden fruit by Taras Grescoe. Continuing my absinthe obsession, this is a book by a veteran travel writer who tries out various "forbidden fruits" like unpasteurized cheese, bull testicles and, yes, absinthe.
• I got my Feast for Crows and Gardens Of The Moon books back from my sister, so I'll have to read those. I still think I'll hold off on Feast until the next one comes out. Maybe I'll reread the last one in the previous trilogy first.

• Goanna - "Solid Rock" (Spirit of Place [1982]) : Hey, it's a diggeridoo, so it must be Australian! These Aussie political rockers made a splash with this debut album and this classic 80s alt-rock hit. Lots of good songs on here, but they went on to release only one more CD (Oceana) and then folded when Shane Howard, the band's founder, bolted. Ah well, they left a great legacy of sound anyway.
• JJ Cale - "Call Me The Breeze" (Anyway The Wind Blows (Disc 1) [1997]) : Boogie rock pioneer Cale has some great songs and this 2 CD set is a pretty full collection of his "hits". Another Rhapsody Radio discovery, I'd keep hearing these little boogie woogie rock 'n' roll songs pop up and every time I'd check, it would be another Cale song. Two discs might be a little too much, as there isn't much variety, but still some good stuff here. This disc includes songs covered by other artists, most notably "Cocaine" by Eric Clapton.
• JJ Cale - "Wish I Had Me A Dollar" (Anyway The Wind Blows (Disc 2) [1997]) : Cale live, with a typically low key boogie woogie song. This disc has more favorites of mine, including "People Lie", "Devil in Disguise" and "Change Your Mind".
• The Go-Betweens - "Karen" (That Striped Sunlight Sound [2006]) : I've been able to listen a lot more to this great release of a 2005 live show in Brisbane done by the newly reconstituted Go-Betweens. It features original songwriters Robert Forster and the late, lamented, Grant McLennan in fine form. Even better, it is a double disc, with the second disc a DVD featuring a video of the very same show, as well as a very nice "songwriter's session" video featuring just Forster and McLennan playing guitar and talking about the Go-Betweens, songwriting and life. This song is a nice long concert ending 7+ minute rocker. While the group doesn't have the same lineup as 16 Lovers Lane, it's still a great CD as well as two spectacular videos. Grant, you'll be missed.
• Nick Drake - "Road" (Pink Moon [1972]) : The late, great Nick Drake came to recent attention when Volkswagen used the title track of this song in a wonderful commercial, but this is my favorite Nick Drake song. This is the only Drake CD I have and it is a haunting, acoustic album, and turned out to be his last. It is a dark, inward looking album, with lots of wistful and depressing songs, as he would soon die of an overdoes of pills. To this day, it isn't clear whether it was accidental or suicidal.
• Run On - "Road" (No Way [1997]) : Okay, I cheated here. After hearing the original, I had to go and get this CD from the case, as I actually heard this version first. It's an amazing cover from a wildly flexible band, which sadly folded after this CD, its second. Very Yo La Tengo-ish, with plenty of distortion, but the CD successfully careens all over the map, and this cover is evocative and sensitive. I can listen to this short masterpiece over and over and over again - under 2 minutes of sheer delight. I need to get their other CD.

  You can say the sun is shining if you really want to
  I can see the moon and it seems so clear
  You can take the road that takes you to the stars now
  I can take a road that'll see me through
  I can take a road that'll see me through.

  You can take a road that takes you to the stars now
  I can take a road that'll see me through
  I can take a road that'll see me through
  I can take a road that'll see me through.

• The The - "The Beat(en) Generation" (Mind Bomb [1989]) : My last The The CD. I really enjoyed their (well, his - Matt Johnson) first (Soul Mining), liked their second (Infected) and wasn't real crazy about this one, so I stopped.
• Laurie Anderson - "Baby Doll" (Strange Angels [1989]) : Very funny and funky CD. I love Laurie Anderson, and I'm disappointed we missed her when she was performing here last fall. Next time, fer sure. This is a funny song:

  I don't know about your brain-
  but mine is really bossy
  I come home from a day on the golf course
  and I find all these messages
  scribbled on wrinkled up scraps of paper
  And they say thing like:
  Why don't you get a real job?
  Or: You and what army?
  Or: Get a horse.
  And then I hear this voice
  comin from the back of my head Uh huh
  (Whoa-ho) Yep! It's my brain again
  And when my brain talks to me, he says:

  Take me out to the ballgame
  Take me out to the park
  Take me to the movies
  Cause I love to sit in the dark
  Take me to Tahiti
  Cause I love to be hot
  And take me out on the town tonight
  Cause I know the new hot spot. He says:

  Babydoll! Ooo oo oo Babydoll Ooo He says:
  Babydoll! I love it when you come when I call
  Babydoll! You don't have to talk I know it all
  Babydoll! Ooo oo oo Babydoll Ooo

• The Jeff Healy Band - "Confidence Man" (See The Light [1988]) : Some rocking rhythm and blues by the blind Canadian Jeff Healy, who plays his guitar flat on his lap. This is a great John Hiatt song and really perks things up on this hot Friday afternoon. I'm a roots blues and boogie woogie kinda guy, and there's a couple good ones here, including the instrumental "Nice Problem To Have", which really rocks.
• Richard Thompson - "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" (Rumor & Sigh [1991]) : Quite possibly my favorite story told in song. I quoted it in my Motorcycle entry, and it still remains a favorite. There's a couple of other good songs on here too, but it's weird that this song isn't on the three disc Thompson compilation I have, "Watching The Dark".

Unicorn Golf Course

A very inconsistent day at the links yesterday. It was highlighted by both of us looking at makeable birdie putts on the par 5 sixth hole. We both then proceeded to three putt to go from a birdie to a bogey in the blink of an eye - sigh... I've started using my driver off the tee for every hole (well, save the par threes, of course) and I've started making some pretty good shots. The best drive of the year could very well have been my last one - a beautiful long drive, right down the middle of the fairway, sitting pretty about 150 yards from the hole. I proceeded to horrible muck up the next few shots, including one that Michael said had the greatest swing to divot ratio he's ever seen! A nice easy 9 iron resulted in a huge, 10" divot - yech. And I proceeded to get a triple bogey on the hole. Stupid game...

So Mark brought the box home with him on Monday and I drove on up there for an emergency power supply-pendectomy. I picked up a cheap US$30 250 watt power supply (gee, I wonder why my boxes keep dying...) at CompUSA and did my first power supply transplant operation on Mark's table. Plugged everything back in, turned the power on, it rebooted, all is good, right?

Wrong. We paid the price for being confident and when the box was actually plugged in at MV and turned on, massive numbers disk errors showed up. So many, in fact, that even fsck -y couldn't fix them. Now what...

Some Googling around found others complaining of the same error, but no help was forthcoming. The Mark wrote a little utility that performed some disk magic, re-ran fsck and I'm back in business. Well, it took a few more tweaks, of course, and I'm still not sure exactly how bad the collateral damage is, but its good to be back up and running.

By a weird bit of synchronicity, Lifehacker just posted a bit about Backing Up Your Weblog, using a new service called Backupmyblog.com. I think I may just check them out!