Peaeater

I got me some tiles on the weekend, and drew up some plans. Cause I love space invaders!!!!

We can dance
We can dance
Everybody take off your pants.

Men Without Hats. Not actually the actual lyrics. But can't. Get it. Out. Of. My. Head.

Scientists develop pee-powered battery
Technology ushers in a new Golden Age.

Laptops spark sale stampede
"...with people being thrown to the pavement and beaten with a folding chair. One woman wet herself rather than surrender her place in line." Probably planning to power her laptop with the aforementioned. And by the way, they were 4 year old iBooks. Wtf?

What I'm reading right now. And reviews.

A New Kind of Science, Stephen Wolfram
Brain say ouch.
Smoo stars.

Farmer Giles of Ham, J.R.R. Tolkien
Haven't actually started. Due back at library soon. Probably... not going to get read.
Uh... no stars yet.

Eric, Terry Pratchett
A book I'm almost finished but am not going to finish because frankly it sucks. I've read a lot of Terry Pratchett (by which I mean all of Terry Pratchett) and this one should be avoided. Can't believe I bought it.
-1 stars. That's minus one.

The Pinball Effect, James Burke
More goodness from Mr. Burke. The best part about reading him is that he writes like he talks.
Ace stars.

Gardens of the Moon, Steven Erikson
Sigh. I tried this once already, but Dana said I should try it AGAIN, so I promised him I'd make it through 200 pages before giving up. I'm on page 50. It had better get good FAST.
50 stars. One for every page I've suffered through.

When I was of grade school age, I had a small problem controlling my temper. It was extremely short, and I would explode as easily as a Mexican cliff diver wearing a nitroglycerine bathing cap. All my enemies at school knew this, and delighted themselves in baiting me until I blew my stack. Then they danced about and sang a little tune they made up, the lyrics of which I am happy to repeat, today, just for you. (Rock aficionados will note that my schoolyard foes based their chant on The Rolling Stones' Down in the Hole.)

Tyrrell the Spaaaaazzz,
He's down in the Gutter,
Beggin' for cigarettes....

I can't remember if there was more to it than that, because right at at that point a red mist would come down and I would attempt to kill them. I never did, much to my dismay, and it probably has a lot to do with the fact that I weighed in at 60 lbs. and was built like a wire coathanger.

When I was 18, I joined the Army Reserves for one summer. I learned many things, one of them being how to stand very straight while being shouted at in the face and simultaneously having my mattress tossed out a second floor window for the heinous crime of showing a wrinkle in one corner.

I was able to apply that valuable lesson this very day. Except this time I was the shouter, and Zone Alarm Pro personal firewall software was the shoutee. And the tossing was metaphorical, though I did in fact DELETE EVERY SINGLE VESTIGE OF THAT BUGGY MOTHER from my machine.

It hasn't played nice with Visual Studio for about a year, ever since Zone Alarm 5 was released. Aggravating in the extreme. It would randomly lock up all internet traffic after a compile, and various sundry annoyances. The thing is, I had paid in advance for two years of updates, and I was going to get my money's worth.

So I just upgraded to the latest release, Zone Alarm 6. Maybe this latest would solve all the earlier problems. Maybe I could run VS and Zone Alarm and they would become the best of friends. It could happen. Updates are supposed to fix bugs, solve issues, make IMPROVEMENTS, right?

When the first Blue Screen O' Death occurred while using VS, I thought: "A random BSOD. How random. Ha ha!" When the second BSOD slapped me about the jowls with its kid leather glove, I swallowed hard and looked up the offending driver. It belonged to Zone Alarm. My jaw set. On the third BSOD, I screamed an infuriated mountain gorilla scream. And beat my chest. And then I ripped Zone Alarm out of my system, tracking down every single file and yelling "DELETED!" with every deletion.

It felt good. And I turned on the Windows firewall.

Scene at the gym this morning: two elderly men squabbling over who had sign-up rights on an exercise bike. There were other bikes free. Yahoos.

Sometimes one gets back from vacation and one just doesn't update one's blog. One says, "let me get through my email inbox first" or "one can't think of what to say at this precise moment" or "stop using 'one' as a personal pronoun before one gets one's nose bridge shattered with a buffalo-nudges-peach-tree flying forehead smash."

That's my excuse. Believe it or don't. Mum never did. She went straight for the kitchen drawer which housed the Wooden Spoon, which she then applied vigorously and with malice aforethought to my aft quarters. Until it broke once. I love my Mum. I never told her until much later that the Wooden Spoon treatment was about as deadly as a damp noodle wielded by a paralytic tree. "If only we had spanked him more" is a lament that was oft heard round the house when I had done something moronic, but was too big to suffer corporal punishment. Too true.

Some tales I always enjoyed were those of Emil, the unrepentantly high-spirited lad who would inevitably, after a caper, be caught and sent to the woodshed, there to await punishment at the hands of his father. He would always carve a wooden figure while waiting, the woodshed eventually becoming filled with row on row of these small witnesses to the many futile attempts at correction. Good old Astrid Lindgren.