The Accidental Weblog

So some of you may have come by to discover the domain temporarily missing again this am…

Looks like it’s fixed… For now. But I’m starting to get mildly annoyed about this. My host got bought out by another some months back, and things have been a mite more flakey than they had been, since then.

ETA: Anyway, it looks like whatever happened to the captcha stuff, it’s fixed now… So captcha’s back, and moderation’s off, again.

The audacity of despair, at McSweeney’s.

Okay, that much snow on October 28, it does happen… I mean, it did happen… In a distant time and place we called the normal climate around here.

But I’m not sure I’m ready for this, this year. I mean, I haven’t even brought in all the grapes from the vineyards… Nor picked up all the coconuts from around the palm trees I just planted…

Geez. And for that matter, how do you shroud a coconut palm in burlap? I guess I’m gonna need some really, really long stakes…

That’s the trouble with this whole climate change thing. It’s disorienting. Might be better if the weather could just make up its mind about this whole mess. Instead of going all McCain on us: I’m suspending winter! Psyche! Just kidding… I’m moderate, this year… Erm… By ‘this year’ I actually meant ‘this morning’…

In the forecast: cloudy, with a 50 percent chance of rain, 50 percent chance of hail, 50 percent chance of hurricanes, 50 percent chance you could go golfing nude (if you’re into that sort of thing), and a 50 percent chance of random outbursts of invective and too-hurriedly recorded robocalls about those damned socialist kids who won’t get off our lawn… Yes, we know this adds up to slightly more than 100 percent. So sue us. Our meteorologists are pretty much losing it, this year.

It’s temporarily on… I’ll probably be setting captcha back up, but it seems to be broken for some reason. I’m not sure quite what’s going on over there in ISP-land, but somethin’, apparently, is up… I figure it’s either a server swapout gone real wrong (if certain PHP libs go missing, captcha breaks), or an actually halfway competent (for a change) spammer/hacker fucking with templates through some kinda DB injection hack… Anyway, point is: moderation on, with my apologies, while I work this out.

Note: apologies to feed readers if you get a duplicate entry… Seems there’s some weird DB @#$% going on at my ISP, and the last two entries disappeared… presumably due to the DB being backed up from an old copy or somesuch rot… Anyway…

Eleven score and twelve years ago (give or take), them fathers did start making shit up about their political opponents.

(Via Respectful Insolence).

Note: apologies to feed readers if you get a duplicate entry… Seems there’s some weird DB @#$% going on at my ISP, and the last two entries disappeared… presumably due to the DB being backed up from an old copy or somesuch rot… Anyway…

Yeah, another of these. What can I say. Busy, these days. I made a business trip this last week (to AZ, again… and the climate of Phoenix, mercifully, is vastly less insane in October, I can report), came back a bit sick, a bit tired, and with yardwork to catch up to… And then there’s work, kids, housework, anyway…

• I’ve been building planes. Old-style balsa-and-tissue flying models. I think it was the little guy got me started—asked a question about a picture of one, and I got to thinking: I’ve always wanted to try building one of these… But I wound up building several. They’ve been basic precut Guillow’s models powered by rubber, so far; I’ve got a couple scratch-built plans sitting ‘round, thinking they might be next, someday (hell, some of the Guillow’s kits are so spindly you wind up cutting half the parts from stock yourself anyway). Little guy likes watching, seems to find something about the intricate architecture of the frames fascinating, and the little girl is now building one of her own… It’s been fun, but slow, what with everything else going on around here. But we have got one very pretty (but not very functional) Fokker triplane model built, and a very functional thing with a polyhedral wing design done…flies like a dream, taxis in (usually) to these lovely wheeled landings… I’ve learned, in the meanwhile, that flying model technology has moved along pretty seriously in the last thirty-odd years, and you can now power ‘em with electric motors, build ‘em from carbon fibre and foam, cover ‘em with this heat-shrinkable plastic stuff, instead, and the transmitter/receiver systems for r/c are incredible, now… programmable thingies that can move several acuators in sequence for banked turns, so on. Balsa and tissue is, apparently, the hard way, and rubber power is getting to be a bit bronze age… Dunno, however, if I’ll be moving onto that. It’s been fun, so far, but my life’s a bit busy for this stuff.
• I did get ‘round to watching the Khadr thing, did a bit more research, will probably comment eventually, but, again, that’s an essay, and those take time. Let’s just say it’s coming, but not especially scheduled.
• The deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas look a lot like Mars from the air.

…and that’s about it, I guess, for now.

No, no, it’s not another ‘Dow falls eleventy gajillion points; prepare to take yer last $20 and head to California to pick fruit…’

No, this one’s Bebo completes interstellar spamming mission. And, as you can see from some of the messages, the headline’s not so far off.

I’ve previously commented on the folly of transmissions like this. Exoplanet searches make good sense. Broadcasting stuff to ‘em, not so much, for a host of reasons, y’ask me… I mean, there’s playing long shots and there’s buying lottery tickets. The former, if the odds aren’t so far out that you’re more or less pissing money away, they have their place. The latter, as a certain famous wag once commented, are more a tax on the mathematically disinclined. Broadcasting stuff to specific blue balls, methinks, falls more in that latter category as well.

But amongst my concerns (so long shot it’s silly, and let’s not announce our presence quite yet, seein’ as it’s still kinda early, and we don’t know jack about what the universe is really like, yet, on the long view), this sort of development in particular didn’t quite occur to me.

Seriously, do we really want to announce our presence by spamming ‘em with this kind of silliness? I mean, that just doesn’t strike me as smart…

‘And in galactic news this week: newly-discovered civilization on small blue planet caught spamming, promptly eliminated with extreme prejudice by recipient of said spam… Turning to the financials, the Yargbfdx Index is down another 60 trillion points; prepare to take yer last 60 Faregosdfgx credits and move to Margofdddx to pick fruit…’

Notes:

1. Following two debates simultaneously isn’t actually that difficult. Or wasn’t in this case. Helped that the overall dynamic of each mostly settled into its own pattern pretty early and mostly stayed there. Mostly helped, I think, that Palin was mostly giving short stump speeches, as expected, and repeating herself a bit. Made for less material.
2. Harper actually sounds okay on audio. I think its his look gives me the creeps, more, but I hadda listen to him on audio only for most of it (putting a kid to sleep), and he came off as less repellent that way. Watching him a bit later in HD, much less pretty.
3. Of the Canadian leaders, it was really only Elizabeth May that impressed me at all… but then, the others are such known quantities, to me, now. Style and content both came off nicely. I’m not likely to vote Green (story of their life, I know), but she sounded good.
4. US post-debate reactions so far are kinda… odd. There’s some pundits liked Palin… probably the arithmetic of low expectations… but I see early polls of undecided voter panels coming in for Biden. Which is sorta the opposite of what you might expect, since Biden seemed a bit more pundit-friendly, Palin looked more like she was going for the populism thing, as expected… It’s just possible the pundits are over-thinking it, second-guessing themselves, and, just possibly, for once in history, underestimating their public, having convinced themselves nice simple talking points are gonna go over, and maybe it’s not quite that simple, this time out. Or, also, Palin’s manner was a bit off-putting after all. I found it so—she had this edgy smugness to her—but I’m probably far from the best barometer of this… as you could say I’m a bit predisposed to dislike her.
5. If you’ve got a bacterial infection in your chest, try to get the antibiotic course started something better than six hours before the debates. Stifled maniacal laughter aimed at not waking the kids is dangerous when you can’t breathe.
6. If you only notice at about 45 minutes into the blather that you burned yourself deeply enough to form a charcoal crust on your forearm feeding your woodstove while rushing around to get stuff outta the way before the debates, you’re probably a little too engaged with this stuff.

Anyway, I dunno. I should probably review ‘em again (I’m a masochist, doncha know). Actually kinda liked Biden, though, through most of it, too, and that wasn’t by any means a gimme. Guy’s got game, I’ll say that much.

Bonus content: The expectations game at McSweeney’s.

…Time fer some campaignin’. But curse that Guthrie Dylan Thomas* tunesmith guy anyway… it’s so infernally catchy that my three-year old, who was watching when I clicked on the link (sent by an old friend… Thanks Brett H.) keeps insisting he wants to see it again…

(I’m not sure if he’s getting all the references. But at the current political saturation level, I guess I can’t be sure I can rule it out.)

*Yes, this is a joke.