“That’s one big Twinkie…”

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The Taxman Cometh…Finally
I literally just finished my taxes about twenty minutes ago and didn’t end up making out too bad this year. I’ll have to write a check for just over three hundred bucks, but that’s really not too bad when you figure that I didn’t pay any estimated taxes on my writing income throughout the year. I was a little disappointed that my charity donations didn’t even show up – I thought that the deduction was better than that, so I guess I’ll have to do some more research before I do it this year (not that it’s a bad thing to donate to charity or anything, but in all honestly, I did do it to help offset my expenses). Anyways, I’m not quite ready to mail them just yet – I’m going to go over them again tomorrow night when I get home to make sure everything looks ok, then hike on down to the post office to stand in line with the other half a million idiots who put this off ’til the last minute!

Next year I’ll do it on time, but at least maybe I can get an entertaining column out of it or something…

Fixin’ the Compruder
So I tore my server apart today and it’s now officially dead, as in it won’t even boot anymore and I really don’t care. Now that my taxes are done and I know that I’m not getting killed by Uncle Sam, I’m going to see if I can piece together something new as long as it doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg. I figure I can do it for a few hundred easily, plus a little more if I want to add another hard drive because the ones that I’m using now are gettng pretty old. I pulled the My Documents drive and plugged it into my desktop PC in the meantime and I can’t believe how loud the thing is – I can’t wait to have it back in the closet again! Of course, for about $80 I can replace all three of the 80GB drives with a 300GB and have room to spare – I might just buy two and RAID them together to make future drive crashes a little easier to deal with … we’ll see tomorrow after I run some numbers.

The Art of Deception
I got the book by Kevin Mitnick earlier this week and this is literally one that I just can’t put down! Talk about intriguing – dozens of simply brilliant cons are analyzed as Kevin explains the finer details of social engineering and how even the most secure of protocols can be broken down when people aren’t thinking clearly. I know there a lot of skepticism about the hacking community and some people probably think that Kevin should still be locked away, but like it or not, the man is a genius and that really shines clear in this book. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s looking for an interesting read with a bit of a geeky flare.

random funnies

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Here’s Your Sign…
As I was purchasing some new fish from PetCo this evening, the lady behind me tried to make a little small talk – “Oh – you’re buying fish. I see people buying fish in here all the time … do you have a fish tank at home?”

Lord of Pop Culture
Has anyone else seen the new ads for the Lord of the Rings movies on TBS??? They’re all pop-culture-ey and just plain bizarre. The first one I saw made Frodo and Sam out to be gay lovers; the next was showing Gandalf the White as some sort of hip-hoppin’ pimp. Were they afraid that the billion dollar franchise just wasn’t going to appeal to enough people as an epic adventure trilogy?

One Step Away from the Bro
During the aforementioned trip to PetCo, I saw a dude carrying a purse, or technically a clutch, as Lori later clarified. At first I thought it was just a chick with really short hair…and no boobs…and by the time I finally ran out of excuses, he’d ducked into Shoe Carnival and my analysis came to a close.

Does being against wiretapping mean that you support terrorism???

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It seems like a stretch to me! I’m reading up on some of the efforts of the newly-formed IPac (Intellectual Property Action Committee) after hearing about it on TWiT and I just can’t believe some of the comments that I’m hearing from people about how these types of efforts (along with the EFF’s) shouldn’t be supported because they encourage terrorism. Apparently because I don’t think that our government has the right to eavesdrop on its citizens without due cause, that means that I’m for terrorism because wiretapping was allegedly put into place only to protect us from bad people.

Seriously, how ignorant are people these days? I’m for terrorism because I believe in privacy, the resident pothead is for terrorism because obviously all drug money eventually gets back to dirty countries, and as circular reasoning would support, anyone who drives an SUV or Hummer is for terrorism because oil is the only damn reason we’re over in Iraq in the first place. Jeesh…

Five Things for a Happier and More Productive Scott

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Call it an addendum to my New Years Resolutions, call it just a little list of things that I think will help me overall if I start doing them everyday, but I came up with these over the course of the weekend and told myself that I would put them to work for the greater benefit of, well, me! Hopefully this list will be a little simpler than most, and thus I’ll be able to actually follow it once in a while. Any other helpful ideas for a happier well-being???

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Holy Sodium, Batman … and other tales of woe and whimsy…

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Sodium / High Blood Pressure / Doctor’s Visit Update
Last night I went to the grocery store, spent a whole lotta dough on lots of stuff that I can, for the most part, cook myself in an attempt to eat healthier, and I still can’t believe how much sodium is in just about everything!!! When I started to factor in that I normally take in double portions of even healthy stuff like orange juice and canned corn, I honestly don’t see how anybody can stay within the recommended limit of 2000mg per day! I’m sad to say that I’ll likely be cutting out my beloved Campbell’s Chunky soup from the easy to take to work in a hurry menu because a single can was hitting me with nearly 1800mg alone, but even a similar can ranked in at nearly half of that. I’m still gonna do my best to try and limit my intake, but damn…

So anyways, my follow-up appt. with the doc is tomorrow morning and I’ve got a feeling I already know what he’s going to say. I need to cut down on my calories, lose some more weight, watch my sodium intake, and continue to keep an eye on my blood pressure in the meantime to make sure that it doesn’t get any worse. I’m still fairly confident that if I can get down under 200 pounds, that will have a fairly significant impact on everything, and as of earlier today, that goal was only 11.8 pounds away, so at least progress is getting made. 🙂

Computer Woes
Two of ’em this weekend, although there’s not really a whole lot I can do for either of them right now. The major one is that my server PC doesn’t want to stay ON for more than five minutes in a run, which is a bit of a problem because all of My Documents is actually on a drive inside that box. I’ve got a feeling that it’s either a ventilation issue or the power supply is just done – it sits in a closet that doesn’t have any circulation anyways and above all, it was a free PC that I got from work probably five or six years ago, so it’s certainly done its time. I’ve been pricing things out online to see how cheaply I could put something together from newegg.com, if I can borrow a few hundred bucks from my bonus check, but until I finish my taxes (next weekend…ugh), I don’t dare place that order!

My cable modem has also been on the fritz again this weekend, which makes me a little angry because the technician came out last weekend and said that everything was “fine.” Line speed tested at ~6.4mbps down / 480 kbps up, which was good enough for me (I pay for 6000/512). Now I’m lucky if I can break 2.5mbps down, even after receiving a courtesy letter in the mail from Brighthouse stating that they were increasing line speeds in my area to 7mbps free of charge! I know they’re just going to want to send out another technician, which I don’t have time to work around during the week, but this needs to get fixed.

Computer Woas
I finally installed iTunes this weekend because I got tired of having to manually download all of the various podcasts that I listen to each week – man, what a difference! It’s still giving me a few problems because as long as my server is dead, it can’t save things where it wants to, but overall, not too shaby. I can’t see myself actually buying anything from the iTunes Music Store until I can figure out how to get it in the format that I want, but I really didn’t plan to use that feature anyways…

Movies, Movies, Movies…
Didn’t end up watching nearly as much as last weekend, but given the copious amount of nothing that I got done, that probably isn’t such a bad thing! One that did manage to stand out, though, was Constantine, which was apparently a comic book-based action movie that I just completely missed when it was in theaters last year. Good flick, actually, and probably one of the better Keanu Reeves movies that I’ve seen since the original Matrix. I did watch some others, but apparently they weren’t actually good enough for me to remember for the purpose of them being written about right here, right now…

That was a great Van Halen song though, don’t you think?

this is just sad and horrible.

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Mother dies after 911 call is treated as prank
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12208992/

Doesn’t say much for 911 dispatch in Detroit, especially since apparently the operator is still working through the investigation. Customer care … tech support … sales – fine, we’ll deal with sub-par representatives who are only there for a paycheck when it’s not truly a life-or-death situation, but if there was any phone-related job that required truly passionate people on staff – period – wouldn’t this be one of them? Poor kid…

Apparently the family is suing and it sucks that it’ll be a burden on tax payer money, but if that’s what it takes to force the system to re-evaluate this horribly malformed process, then so be it. I’ve only ever had to call 911 once and it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done – nobody should be faced with any kind of resistance when making a call like that. If it does turn out to be a prank, then the police can deal with that afterwards, but whatever happened to “every call is an emergency until proven otherwise”?

9-1-1 Emergency Response – it’s even in the name, for pete’s sake.

pet peeve for the drive home…

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Motorcycle riders that opt to pass between two cars going 80+ mph on the freeway
Sorry, cyclists, but between the passing on dotted lines, shoulders, and pretty much anywhere else that you think you can fit your crotch-rocket, you’ve officially trumped distracted soccer moms on my list of people who annoy the hell out of me on the road. Check your Motorcycle Owner’s Handbook – it says you have the same rights as automobiles, and that includes staying between the lines and passing only on the right of way. Whereas my worst will probably be a nasty set of cuts and bruises if I fuck-up on the highway, yours will likely result in a funeral procession and an article in next week’s paper about bike safety for any collision at 80+ mph, so what’s fucking wrong with you?!

Helmet law??? Bah! To quote Jerry Seinfeld, “The only thing dumber than the helmet is the helmet law – the point of which is to protect a brain that is functioning so poorly, it’s not even trying to stop the cracking of the head that it’s in…”