Nertz to you
No, not you…them. You know. Them.
I’m sitting in the lobby of the building next door, soaking up a lovely five-bar wifi signal. I haven’t been over here for ages, but I used to work in this building. So half the people walking by are, like, “hey, Weasel! Where you been?”
“Oh, you know. Over there somewhere. I’m here to steal your wifi.”
“Great! Help yourself.”
And I might, too. I got a new laptop battery for my birthday, which untethers me considerable. O, I have slipped the surly bonds of cubicle.
Yeah. Some time in the recent past, I had a birthday. I’m not going to tell you exactly when. It’s not that I don’t trust you — gosh, you guys are the bestest minions a weasel ever had. Only, I’m one of those paranoid types. Date of birth, mother’s maiden name…brrr. Kryptonite. I believe there’s a bot out there right this minute crawling the web, one measly singularity shy of stitching it all together; sweasel.com plus alt.support.pee-shy plus the Class of ’78 High School Reunion Committee plus my recent credit card records equals…well, I don’t know, exactly. I’m not in a hurry to find out.
The battery came from a place that reconditions them on the cheap. I’m very pleased. They promise substantially longer battery life than a manufacturer’s original battery at about a third of the cost. The instructions recommend completely charging and discharging a new battery at least five times to get it up to the full charge. I’m on cycle #3 at the moment, and currently getting about three hours a go.
Have you ever opened up a laptop battery? Inside, there are…well, batteries. Like regular old rechargeable batteries, taped together in sequence. How the manufacturers have the gall to charge upwards of a Franklin for that is anybody’s guess. I suspect what these guys do is crack open the case and replace those batteries with newer ones of higher spec. You can send them your old one to refill at a very low cost, or buy the whole thing for a bit more. I opted for the latter, so I can use the new battery when I actually need battery power, and use my crappy old one as emergency backup when I’m plugged into the AC. That constant trickle charge is apparently the battery slayer.
Well, I’m babbling. Gosh, it feels grand.
May 7, 2007 — 12:52 pm
Comments: 14
Friday, May 4
Why not vote Weasel? You’re going to get one anyway.
May 4, 2007 — 3:01 pm
Comments: 28
Okay, you know what? Even I am offended
I mean, I barked out a little moronlaugh when I saw it, but jeez. This is what happens when you stifle vigilantism: people do shit like this without secretly worrying somebody’s going to burn down his nice little fence company. Somebody angry. And crippled.
Like that guy on the left, who is both, according to the caption (I can’t link directly to the picture, it’s part of a slideshow on Local6.com, Florida).
This was once an important brake on stupid speech in a country that has very few legal brakes on speech: the concept of unprotected “fighting words.” The idea was upheld by the Supremes 9-0 in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire in 1942. Per Wikipedia:
Chaplinsky, a Jehovah’s Witness, had purpotedly told a New Hampshire town marshal who was attempting to prevent him from preaching “You are a God-damned racketeer” and “a damned fascist” and was arrested. The court upheld the arrest…
Pretty strong language for a Jehovah’s Witness. My local bunch just ring the doorbell on Saturday mornings and leave copies of Watchtower.
May 3, 2007 — 4:22 pm
Comments: 18
I. Rule. The. World.
I’m bored with me and my stupid problems. I’m going to play computer games tonight.
I bought myself a copy of Civilization IV. I know, I know…it’s a two year old game now. I’m too old to pay gamers’ money for video cards these days, so it’s the geriatric lineup for me.
Actually, I bought myself two copies of Civilization IV. Because why? Because I’m a drunk, that’s why. I ordered one copy and several days later, I woke up thinking, “I bought something neat on Amazon ‘buy it used’ last night. I wonder what it was?” I didn’t check. This happens to me a lot, and I never second guess it. I walked around for days with a happy “a special surprise is in the mail” feeling. Then it came.
If I lived in Puritan times, they’d make me spend the rest of my life with the game box pinned to my hat and “Putrid Drunkarde” sewn across my pinafore in lime green cross-stitch.
Anyhoo. I was a huge fan of Civ I (and II). It was like a magic ant farm. I could explore the world and nurture my people and build a great civilization. I was far enough ahead of the AI that I never got my ass completely kicked and most always played until the time limit ran out with no clear winner. I cultivated my cities, conquered a little around the edges of my territory, enjoyed watching my nation grow from mud huts to space stations. I was a benevolent, leisurely dictator. It was the game SimCity should’ve been but somehow never was.
And every once in a while, I would draw down a happy, blessèd game, where accidents of geography and the luck of the draw handed me the ultimate prize. Where my more tech-savvy rivals spent the Dark Ages kicking each other’s asses and the only nations left standing by Victoria’s day were relics of the stone age, shaking flint spears and ululating while Mighty Exalted Weaseltanks squished them like bugs.
I. Ruled. The. World.
Good times.
When I got Civ III, I was delighted by the graphics and thoroughly pissed off by the gameplay. It was as though Sid Meier had let loose a bunch of ignorant twenty-something kindergarten teachers on his AI. Suddenly, the NPC’s were horribly aggressive about territory. No more leisurely exploration of the planet; if you didn’t plop down half-baked cities as fast as humanly possible — some time before the Iron Age — your neighbors swiftly corraled you within unsustainable borders.
And technology? Every culture in the world developed scientifically at exactly the same pace. The reviews described this as “more realistic.” Meh. Anybody at Firaxis ever heard of Papua Fucking New Guinea?
So I held off on IV. The reviews were glowing, but they glowed for that turd of a III, too.
Wish me luck. I’m…umm…screw it. I think I’ll just read a book tonight.
May 2, 2007 — 5:55 pm
Comments: 8
Several wifi technical issues and a naked transsexual porn star
It’s Mayday. The communists are communicating, the socialists are socializing.
Nope. No idea what that means. I woke up with it running through my head, thinking, “I say, Weasel! How droll!”
Today was neither as unpleasant as yesterday nor as productive as I hoped. I’m still +1 on the rodent offsets, but the night is young. I got my re-imaged machine back but, as I remembered, that external Linksys USB wifi dealie is the shits. It couldn’t get a decent signal in the stairwell looking out the window at the building next door. (When I used it at home, it couldn’t consistently hold a signal when placed directly on top of the router).
There was, however, a tantalizingly strong signal coming from right inside the building. Wide open. I emailed around to see if anybody knew what it was. Finally, I plucked up the courage and connected to it. Up came the company logo and login. Also a scary “business purposes only” warning. Huh. So they’re providing us with wifi now.
So! I’ve got a PCMCIA card I can try in the business laptop. Or I can give it another go with my ThinkPad (which I have this evening rescued from the clammy embrace of Linus Torvalds. I like Linux, but I’ve never gotten the damn thing working right). Problem with both of those options is…where does the antenna go? No smartassery from you in the back. Finally, I can try to jack into the provided wifi signal using some kind of tunneling software so they can’t see what I’m up to.
My technical problems are boring. But then, so is not being able to surf the internet.
Meanwhile, this here feller is Buck Angel, the Man with a Pussy, currently the world’s only (incomplete) female-to-male transsexual pornstar. No, I don’t remember how I got here, but it’s dark and I’m all by myself and I’m cold and scared. Can somebody come pick me up? I want to go home now.
Sometimes the internet makes me feel like crying.
May 1, 2007 — 5:05 pm
Comments: 11