drewmckinney.net

The Scott Adams Blog

I’ve had a number of corporate jobs in my life but I never really got into Dilbert. Sure, I’ve read the strip every now and again and laughed at it as well but I’ve never been a true *fan* of Dilbert. I’ve never gone out and purchased Dilbert books like I did Far Side books when I was younger.

My memory tells me that I was working for Crown Books (RIP) when Dilbert really hit his stride, and when I say hit his stride I mean that you couldn’t walk down a single aisle in that store (it was a Super Crown that was located in an old grocery store that had large,wonderful, cavernous aisles) without seeing a Dilbert book or seeing Dilbert himself hanging from the shelves. He was even on the business aisle and the only thing that we usually had on the business aisle was a freaky Amway salesman that thought he could drum up some business by lurking around the business aisle. So after all of this Dilbert sensation that was sweeping the nation I was perfectly content to play Earthworm Jim on the Super NES (16-bit, aw yeah) and I pretty much forgot about Scott Adams until now.

There are some Dilbert-y things on it but I have to say that I will now be a regular reader. What can I say, I find his blogging to be entertaining. From grammar to bird flu, Scott has something to say and he says it with a gleam in his eye (imagined on my part) that invites us to look over his shoulder and share the joke with him. Add his site to your daily blog-capades. via [PariveshaNa]

Halloween has never been that big of a deal for me. I love free candy as much as anybody else but honestly, I never really got that much into the holiday. I’ve never had a really great costume and most of the parties I’ve been to over the years have been pretty lame.

One year my mom did my makeup for me and I went out as a girl. My costume was so on the money that people thought I was a girl without a costume. That was an okay halloween I guess. The best one I can think of would be the time I got a pair of opera glasses in my bag. Getting something other than cruddy candy is always a treat and if it’s opera glasses it’s even better. I seem to recall that I got a GoBot in my bag that year as well. GoBots (for those that don’t know) were a lame knock-off of the Transformers and just thinking about getting that lousy robot in my bag still chaps my hide. C’mon, you’re not supposed to use halloween as an excuse to clean out your garage.

Halloween came to mean less and less to me as I got older and by the time I had moved out of my parents house I was totally over it. I was employed and working very hard for not much money and I didn’t like the idea of having to buy candy for a bunch of panhandlers in costumes. Usually I would go to someone’s party and drink a bunch of beer and wonder why I just hadn’t stayed at home and watched a video. One year one of my house mates decided to throw a party and we stocked up on candy for the kids. The candy lasted about twenty minutes and the next thing I know my idiot roommate is handing out cans of Coors Light to anyone that looks like they’re over the age of ten.

I’ve been to Chico, California for halloween. That’s okay I guess. You really have to want to be there though and you have to be willing to deal with hundreds of thousands of drunk people. I use d to have some friends in Chico and would visit every now and again but I never really liked the town itself. Too hot and too many frat boys. Halloween in San Francisco is a pretty big deal. The Castro district closes the streets and suddenly you are surrounded by half a million people that have been hitting the booze all weekend. It’s ugly and I refuse to go there anymore during this time.

This year will be much like previous years, I plan on staying home and not answering the door if any young beggars happen to show up. My lady and I will probably watch a video or two and I’ll hunt around for the Charlie Brown Special and not find it because I don’t have cable. The air right now is just chilly enough for me to make one of my special hot chocolate drinks, so that’s what I’m going to do.

For some reason, the recent ixnay on a minimum wage increase doesn’t seem to be getting much coverage and I haven’t heard anybody discussing it in public like they do for, oh I don’t know, the latest episode of Desperate Housewives. It’s a truly sad state of affairs when the public is more interested in what happens to fictional characters then in what’s happening in their own streets and town and cities. The same Senators that begrudge a lousy buck an hour increase for the toiling masses are the same Senators that have given themselves eight pay increases since the last minimum wage increase. This is voting season, get out there and vote these chumps out of office.

More links about this issue here and here.

In order to be a successful writer one must be a successful submitter. I have, for the first time in my life, sent a manuscript off for possible publication. A magazine is having a short fiction contest and my submission is now in the mail. I won’t even know if they’re considering my piece for publication until sometime in December so now I sit and wait for awhile, working on other pieces for other submissions, isn’t that how it’s supposed to go? That’s what I’m doing.

Forget the hounds, you can now train wasps to detect drugs and bombs. The thing I find most disturbing about this is how the wasps are just turned loose after forty-eight hours. I don’t mind worrying about things sometimes but asking me to worry about thousands of trained wasps that wander around the neighborhood is just too much.

Well, looks like Fitzgerald got his man, at least one of them. Scooter Libby has been indicted by a grand jury on five counts: obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and two counts of making false statements. In other words, business as usual for the current administration of thugs and warmongers, the leader of which who promised “to restore honor and integrity to the White House.” [Then-Governor George Bush on CNN's "Burden of Proof," 9/15/00]

In other news, Tom Noe has been indicted on a charge of illegally funneling forty-five grand to President Bush’s re-election bid. Honor and integrity, indeed.

I just found via the interwebs (I think it may have been lifehacker.com but I can’t be sure) this cool little organizer called PocketMod. While the Hipster PDA is pretty cool I find that the PocketMod is more suited to what I need, basically an analog PDA that is customizable and fits on one sheet of paper. I hate having things in my pockets and my Moleskine takes up a lot of room as it is so it’s nice to have something so small and sexy.

Back in 2001 I bought a Sony Clie (PEG T-415) for about thirty-thousand dollars. It was thin and sexy and it held phone numbers and had a calendar and some other things that the Palm OS had but it was basically a glorified phone/address book. I still have it and it still works but I don’t think I’ve used it since about, er, 2001. It’s actually kind of useless to me because the native software doesn’t sync with my ibook and I’m not about to shell out for a third-party app. The nice thing about the PocketMod is that it is not OS-specific and if I drop it in a puddle it will only cost about three cents to replace it. Go forth and organize your life.

CNN.com is reporting that George Takei, aka “Sulu” has come out of the closet. The picture they use isn’t very flattering and of course he looks very gay in it. As a Star Trek fan of many years (most of those without sex mind you) I can whole-heartedly say “Dude, I knew he was gay since at least The Voyage Home, c’mon, didn’t you see that leather jacket he was wearing?” Yeah, he was totally gay. So what.

The Voyage Home (aka “Star Trek IV” for those out there that did not make up their own Star Fleet Entrance Exam in high school) is the Star Trek movie where the crew has to travel back in time to save the humpback whales in order to save their own asses in the future. The movie placed them in what was modern-day earth at the time, 1986, in San Francisco (aka The Big Gay). I was twelve when this movie came out (unintended, I swear) and totally hated it for too many years to count. I guess I was some sort of Star Trek Snob at the time but this movie seemed like a horrible joke after dealing with the tension of The Search for Spock (aka “Star Trek III). In The Search for Spock, Bones went completely bat-shit, the Enterprise was going to be tossed into the scrap heap, Captain Kirk was mourning the loss of his best friend Spock (best? hard to say but I don’t feel like getting into it) and Kirstie Alley was no longer Saavik. We’re talkin’ tough times folks. Oh yeah, Kirk’s son dies or something as well. My point was, The Voyage Home was too comical for my tastes at the time, twelve year olds of course being THE authority when it comes to what is or isn’t comical. I think the movie is okay now but it’s still not one of my favorites out of all the movies. I’m not sure who told me the secret to watching Star Trek movies but I think it’s okay to pass the information along to everyone else: don’t bother with the even-numbered movies, stick with the odd-numbered ones and you won’t get that oily, bad taste in the back of your throat. Since there are about twenty movies to the franchise that still gives you a solid 10 or so to watch. Enjoy.

The sky is metallic-gray and the air has a slight chill to it. It is not currently raining right now but the rain comes and goes in little waves, the rain falling so softly that it feels more like the tickle of a butterfly’s wings than the chemical-ridden precipitation that it really is. The neighborhood is eerily quiet which means that the local junkies have sought shelter elsewhere, their shaking hands thrust into thin pockets to keep them warm and supple so that they’ll be limber for when the sun comes out and it is time to shoot up again. The sound of passing cars on wet tarmac is a gentle lullaby that I don’t notice until it stops. It’s a good day for hot chocolate* and soup and fire.

*My own personal recipe for hot chocolate is as follows:
2 shots espresso
1 shot Kahlua
1 shot Jameson’s Irish Whiskey
2 or 3 ounces of vanilla soy milk
1 tsp. sugar
refill as necessary

But they’ll never know that I said that thanks to the city council that has awarded a no-bid contract to the Newark Weekly News to report only the “good news.” That’s right, taxpayers of Newark, NJ can see their hard-earned money in action as they read about the positive aspects of the city in which they slave in while not having to worry about pesky things such as “real news” or “the truth” or other such quaint notions. Since they’re only going to be printing “good” stuff” I’m guessing that it will be a standard letter-size piece of paper with (maybe) double-sided printing. Way to go Newark!