Corcoran Brothers

I love me some rss. Seriously. Google Reader is the shiznit. I love server side rss grabbin. Sure sometimes I wish the refresh was a bit quicker on smaller sites, but big site, small site, and tv torrents piped through some yahoo tubes, I am golden. I think thats why I never actually post comments on the awesome BlahStuff… I read it on rss, and have too much time to think about what a horrible comment it would be by the time I browse to the actual post.

I saw this  link from rss from lifehacker.com and actually used it. <ramble>Now this is surprising as I have become a security-o-phobe lately. The Wife calls me on the cell phone cause the orthodontist wants my social security # in addition to the membership ID on my plan card. I tell said orthodontist office to go screw, Blue Cross can call me directly if they think there is fraud, built they do not need my soc. Like the time the mail order specialty pharmacy asked for my diagnosis  when ordering a prescription I am forced to order with them. Fuck you. My awesome doctor tells me side effects and how to use. Shit, people ordering shots in needles are long term users and don’t “need” the extra instruction. That’s for pussy first time shooters. What’s you bra size anonymous drug pusher rep? Oh, is that an inappropriate question? So is you asking what fucking skin deformities I have needing this medication. My doc told me what I needed to know. No data mining on me mother-fucker. I digress. </ramble>

So I surprising uploaded my bill and it showed that when I added Mom to the plan, yes Kin-Mom, they signed her up for text messaging. WTF? Kin-Mom was still in Nextel/sprint about 4 years out of contract. She was paying about $60 a month for cell service. I added her to my Cingular/New AT&T as an extra line. Costs me abou, oh, $10 a month. Firstly, she keeps incisting she pay each month for her portion of the bill. That is ridiculous. I wipe my nose with $10 a month. Secondly, we did not ask for text messgaing on her account, as she never sends nor receives text messages.

Hell, I don’t use text messaging. The most I used it was Edo coming to town trying to pick him up at the airport.  Even at $.15 a text it only cost me $3.75. I asked the AT&T to take it off and he did, all the way back to February when we signed her up. That’s $40 dollars son, that is almost ass-wiping money.

I kept a personal line because one, I like to keep work cell phone and personal separate  and two, when I carry the blackberry from work, I <ocd /> HAVE to check my work email. If I ditch the BB at home and go out, I am much calmer, and have no excuse/tool to avoid my awkward social interactions. This is a mixed bag, but fuck it, I am trying. Double carrying most times is a pain, but it is worth the extra effort such as it is for the time when it comes in required.

Where was I? Oh yes. So I reviewed  my contacts/address book list on my personal cell phone tonight. I have heard about this ICE concept - listing someone in your phone book as In Case of Emergency. I tried it before, but the caller id kept fucking up between Kin-Wife and Several Kin-Bruthahs (I had more than one listed.)

On this phone (synced to the Mac) I listed instead of ICE as by relationship. Brother - Kin Yah Dude, Wife - Rachel, Brother - Hawaiin Douchie, etc… As I went through the contacts tonight, I saw I have only 16 persons on my list. 16 - Doctor, Lawyer, Boss, Mom, and Brothers = 9 persons. Of those 9 persons, I may actually call 3 of them every few months. WTF up with that?

I think Men and Women are different. If I needed bail money, I have few people I could call. But of those I would call, I know I would not have to worry about being blown off.  I could count on them for the big stuff.

Who’s in your contact list. Would they help hide a body? Sure, I may sit home on Sunday watching that Pat’s rather than go to the Stoughton Cinema Pub alone, but I know if Bri needed a marrow transplant, everyone in that phone book would be a donor if they could.

I may have few friends, but those I have are the best you could ever hope for. They, along with my blood, are my brothers.

Built in Firefox spell-checking has helped me correct 32 typos and misspelling’s for this post. Love me some Firefox.

P.S. Jesus Christ, can I get more fucking maudlin and sentimental? WTF? Y’all lucky I chose Ketel One over Xanax. Xanax is some shitty posting.

P.P.S. Tivo is offering me a transfer my lifetime subscription for $200 if I buy a new TiVo hd. While I don’t have an HD tv, this would allow for future growth with probable less cost, but I have no need for it now, only want. And as Da Kine will tell you, desire is the root of all suffering. What’s a bruthah with a Q3 bonus check to do?

P.P.P.S I added these postscripts just to piss off da kine, who rightfully pointed out before that the post script has no rightful place in the email/electronic age. Pen to inkl  you can not easily add to or change your written words. The post script is an obvious addendum to what was already permanently written. Modern times had a backspace button. Still, causing the art major grief over the dichotomy of using an antiquated writing tool unnecessarily for someone who supposedly appreciated the style and tools of the ancients brings me much joy.

The mildly disturbing pc/fat da kine: (ed - I am a fat-American, hence biased)

9NEWS - Article - School sends home obesity notices with students, parent upset
Her daughter Isabel was sent home from the Centennial K-8 School on Monday with the health notice. It listed her height, weight and body mass index – a measure of body fat. Underneath the listing it had a marking next to the status “overweight.”

And the truly disturbing, shake to my libertarian core:

The Denver Post - Search of kids’ calls rings false
But what happens if officials confiscated phones and then read all the internal phone messages - many of them sent outside of school hours - to unearth “incriminating” evidence? Where do we draw the line when it comes to the privacy of students?The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado contends that officials at Monarch High in Louisville stepped over the line and committed felonies when they commandeered cellphones, perused text messages, took notes and placed so-called incriminating evidence in the students’ permanent files.

Goddamn. Colorado is making side with the ACLU. I fucking hate that! Transcribing private text messages? Lying about cause, denying parental access? I would throw a fucking fit like you would not not believe if someone tried to pull this shit with/kin-step-kid. Children in private schools surrender certain rights for the ability to attend, however by law these children have to be in school. How is it you force someone to attend, then deny them their most basic right of privacy.

You can yammer on about abortion and prayer in school and all the other bullshit never gonna change 50,000 foot view issues, but this is real time about constitutional rights. Children may have less “rights” as they are protected  more under laws, but that does not strip them of all rights. Activities outside of school do can not affect the performance and judgment of those within the school.

This calls to mind the “Jesus for Bong hits” case that went to the supreme court. If it was a school function, then yes, they can control the speech to an extent. However, outside of school activities, there is no right to suspend, expel, or otherwise punish a student for expressing, however dumbass, their own words.

Lying to parents and students about the nature of cell phone confiscation and transcribing personal messages is an affront unforgivable. I will monitor and judge my child’s messaging.

I Love mah job, but sometimes it really sux….

NOTE - not real drunken posting, but done with pharmaceutical assistance. Shay is typing and thinking in slo-mo.

So I bought Rachel a new Dell inspiron 531 minitower. It friggin rocks. Dual core 64 bit athlon, 2 Gig of RAM, Vitsa home premium. It is pretty sweet. I was going to wait to score me a new one, but having all that power in teh room made me jealous, so like a pouting child, I had to get my own. I went with the 256 graphic card, the dual core 64 athlon 5800, and Windows Vista. I skipped on the 2 gig of RAM ($100 more) and bought 2 gig from Crucial, for $100. So I has 3 gig. This shit fucking flies. (I had to build my system up  to over $999 to use a $350 coupon found online. Was worth it for sure.)

I was one of the Fuck Vista, OS X, Linux punks. I have to say, while not ready for full on work release, I am pleasantly  suprised at how much I enjoy it. The flash is not too much, enough to keep me interested. And while there is lotsa shit moved to new places, I am getting the hang of it. There is just a lot of shock when you are first setting up. While most people hate the needs permission popups, which are so prevalent the first few days, one I began thinking of them as popup “sudo” commands, they seemed easy and useful to me.

My only disappointments, I ordered 2 64 bit systems. and they come with Vista 32 bit. WTF? Also I had to open a ticket as SATA ports 2 and 3 on the motherboard don’t work, so I get either C:\ and either my CDROM or extra 500 Gig SATA drive. They’ll be shipping out a new motherboard this week. I am so using the Gparted/ImagePart rescue CD as found on Lifehacker. The 320 gig C:\ is getting chopped to 60 gig OS partition, 6 Gig swap partiton, 40 Gig linux (64 bit Feisty Fawn) with the rest as SCRATCH for video and such. All data stays on Truecrypt volumes on the 500 gig drive, with offsite backups to Mozy. I highly suggest using it for offsite backups. Moving the /users/Shay special folders (Pictures, Music, etc) to be on the second drive was way easy.

So in two days I got my system, RAM, new nic (Gige), soundcard (not pilfered from work), speakers, and on the side a woot special XM radio alarm clock. As I need to fall asleep listening to something, this beats watching the same old Forensics Files or Dirty Jobs.

We are also going to try doing a job like this one, as cable management really sucks in the office. Instead of BBQ grill we’ll use black painted pegboard cut to side.

I also went to look for the Tivo Desktop. Version 2.5 is out there, and I am installing it now. Here’s the specs:

TiVo Desktop 2.4 allows you to transfer the following types of video files to your TiVo DVR:

• Windows Media Video (.wmv)
• QuickTime Movie (.mov)
• MPEG-4/H.264 (.mp4, .m4v, .mp4v)
• MPEG-2 (.mpg, .mpeg, .mpe, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpv2)

TiVo Desktop 2.5, and later versions ,also allow the transfer of .divx and .avi files containing divx content.

I stopped using it around 2.2, so this could be badass. I always wished TiVo would switch their base encoding to Divx, it is much higher quality in a smaller package. Sure MPG2 is supposed to make it burn to DVD much quicker, but any time I tried doing it it always re-encoded the whole file anyway. Besides, whenever I try pulling or transferring shows, it is slow as dog shit. I went from trying Wireless B to Wireless G to hard wired 10/100, and my pull speed is alway 200 kps.  WTF.

Anyone using 2.5? Vista? Tips and tricks?

I’m not talking rocking out when Toni Basil comes on the radio, what’s your internet ready guilty pleasure?

I will admit, after discussion with da kine , WWTDD is in my google reader, although that pink haired freak got to be too much.

Also, I have a strange love for LOLcats. I get my fill here. Fuck, I don’t even like cats. I try to get my dog Sly

to eat our cat Blackie (who is gray, not black, which is what you wind up with when you let a 2 year old name the animal.) WTF?

What’s your shameful internet secret pleasure? If you can’t reveal that, what’s the best lolcat caption you have for the awse picture?

Some random thoughts and questions

Firstly, having signed up via wife to the Striar JCC I must say kudos to Jake for getting back into rock climbing. While Jake is far from being a fat fuck, he wants to be in good shape, and getting back into it is so very fucking hard. As some of you followed the old (way old) diet of mine from way back when, you’ll be happy to note I ballooned up to a whopping 370 pounds, just in time for my wedding. “Holy fuck!” you say. How does one get up to 370 pounds? I would like to thank my lack of self control, McDonalds, and the awse chinese take out places who kindly brought me my deep fried goodness.

Knowing how much everyone supported me before really kept me on track. That’s why Jake deserves the shout out. We believe in you, you 200 pound skinny fuck. Knowing others will care helps, tremendously. The real question is, why come when you start packing it back on does no one comment on that? Sure, it would seem rude, but come one, I don’t look in the mirror. If I heard “man you’re looking tubby” when gaining as often as often as I heard “looking good McSkinny” when dropping, life would be different. Really not fair to blame everyone else, but what?, am I supposed to hold myself accountable. Not likely.

The wife is concerned about me dropping dead of a heart attack at age 42, so I met with Paul, my personal trainer today. The JCC has the best gym intro I have ever seen. Signing up you have Four 30 minutes sessions with a trainer to go over the equipment and your goals. My goal - not to be a sedentary lump. Paul helped me set some realistic objectives (I don’t do “goals”) I can meet to change the old lifestyle.

Anyhow, I have dropped about 45 pounds going on HMR shakes and whatnot. It helps in two ways, one I have less choice, so I do not make bad choices. 3-5 shakes + 5 fuits and veggies + whatever Kin-Wife gives me for dinner. Score, I drop pounds. Second, I have a partner. Y’all may know him as Mr Mechanic, The Fixer - Charlie. Charlie is Kin-Wife’s best friend’s husband, and all around awesome guy. We weigh in each week, and if I want to stray, I have to think he may beat me in the competition. Yes, Competition. We do 30 pound sets, first one to lose 30 has to buy dinner for both couples. It works out well. He won the first 30, but it was close, and I had already started my diet 3 weeks before hand, and did not have the bonus 7 pounds water weight you piss out.

Other thought - I have turned into a complete light weight. 6 deep into a twin 6 packs of Sam Adams Black Lager and I am tits up tipsy. Thank JoeDaYuz, not only did you kill my father, you gave me introduced me to a beer that is smoother than light beer and knocks me on my ass. No worries though, post 8/19 no drinking at all, too many empty calories. If but only we could subside on microbrew - the world would be an better place. They just go down so quickly. Ms. Caitlin said it was ok to start drinking at 15:45, so if anyone take issue, bring it up with her.

Also - God Bless firefox built in spell-checker.

Final question for the group - Is it wrong (or more properly, how wrong is it); even though it does not fit your tastes at all; to download a porno movie/scene just because the actress looks like your sister-in-law? (or cousin or co-worker, etc…) Anyone with only one sister in law (jdy) or is a botany expert is exempt from answering, plausible deny-ability is in affect.Addendum to the final question, just out of the blue, Cut Assistant in conjunction with asfbin and portable virtualdub rocks for cutting out all all the boring dialog, etc, from your home made avi and wmv files. Which would not be porn. Downloaded from the internet. Porn is bad. This is for editing home movies and whatnot. Also for cutting commercials out of tv shows you recorded on your Media Center PC and illegally uploading as torrents to Swedish servers. Oh wait, that is bad too. Don;t do that.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this:

It will come as no surprise that the residents of a city known as “The Nation’s Watering Hole” like to have a beer or two.

But Milwaukee isn’t just your average brewing town. It’s the hardest-drinking city in America, according to Forbes.com’s ranking of America’s Drunkest Cities…

Each city was ranked in five areas: state laws, number of drinkers, number of heavy drinkers, number of binge drinkers and alcoholism…

Coming in second on our list is another chilly metro: Minneapolis-St. Paul. The twin cities ranked No. 2 for adults who reported having had a drink in the last month, No. 3 for binge drinkers and No. 12 for heavy drinkers.

Rounding out the top five drunkest cities are Columbus, Ohio; Boston; and Austin, Texas.

What the frig is going on here?  We get beaten by Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Columbus, Ohio?  Screw that shit! You all better get some Hahpoon, Sammy, or even Jinro and begin the work required to get us into the numbah 1 spot!

(I’m not drunk, but the post is about drinking, hence the title.)

Many Congrats to Matt and Jen! I was unawares the nuptials were today.

mattbrozovich.com [Matt Brozovich]
Tomorrow, after a sixteen month engagement, Jen will be ruining my life forever. And by ruin I mean making it better. Immediately following the nuptials we will be honeymooning at the Rendezvous Resort on the rum and banana rich island of St. Lucia. There will be drinking, eating, swimming, snorkeling, archery, dancing and a general malaise about life for the week. The MB will be on hiatus until I return in mid-July with a tan, a shaved head and a perpetual hangover.

btw - if I see photographic porof that MB had Jesus Chops for his wedding, I will give $20 American to his favorite charity.

Fuck it, I’m on vacation.

Kin-girl and I are heading to Maine for some boating adventures. I’ll post ppppics on it after the fact. Of course the first thing I did while on vacation was re-os my laptop. My dell Inspiron 5150 kinda sucks. They put too much power into too small a frame (a p4 3.2 when it really needs a M) and the video card blows, videos tend to skip, slow down and speed up. I thought it was windoze driver related, but that is not the case. I was playing with the new Knoppix 5 live dvd which I torrented, and decided with ssh and vpn, I need not the windows on here. So I tried doing a full Debian install, which went a bit wonky. I really like the Knoppix live, but doing it all in ram slowed things down a bit. After some searching I realizzed I could do a full knoppix install just by going to init 3 and hitting a script. Bing bang boom, I have knoppix. But the resolution still sucked. I booted again to the DVD with the display=1400×1050, copied off the /etc/XXXX11/xorg.conf to the hard drive version, and I was in business.

I am impressed with Debain packaging and how smoothly things are running. I’ve has some weirdness with smb mounting, LiSa doesn’t want to run correctly and the media:/ links don’t really work, but I can get to where I need to go with absolute paths (/mnt/sda1 will work, konquerer default media:/sda1 won’t.) Also, as you can see from the pppics above, once in a while the keyboard goes postal. That’s a bitch when typing in **** passwords. But it is stable, I can do the things I do most of my stuff from: VNC to S1W (the server), VNC to Mackey (The entertainment center), rss, browsing, torrent, mail, etc… Hell, Kin-Girl did not realize I switched OS’s until I told her.

I love to play with different Linux distros. This is my first real run at Debian/Knoppix disk install. Looks good so far.

Guess we are all different in our hearts. I drink up and talk geek, Da Kine jinros to oblivion and talks about celebrities. I may be a social retard, but at least I ain’t a sissy boy.

The Office and Punk’d had a baby, and it’s called Dog Bites Man. Jump on the train before it leaves the station.

If’n you liked DJ Dangermouse’s Grey Album then there’s a good chance you’ll like Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere. They are nothing alike, but they have the same vibe and that.

You into Ricky Gervais? If not, why? Check out the podcasts, then check out the video podcasts, you plonker.

Ortizzle in the Heezy is in full effect. Get your friends and family into the game or they’ll hate you after finding out about this sweetness from the postman.

Napoleon Dynamite is funny the second time through. Hell, I didn’t like it when I was stuck in Kuwait with nothing else to do and couldn’t even finish that mug.

I ain’t drunk, but I’m trying to write like I am. FTW!

* Now with enhanced linkitude