Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • In the interest of fairness,

    In the interest of fairness, David Coursey has posted part two of his Linux Journey. This article is much better than his first, and I actually agree with a lot of his points. I love Linux because of it’s power, customization options, and its overall geek-appeal, the same things that make it a bad choice for people who want “ease-of-use” right out of the box. Linux is fun. It’s a tinkerers world, full of more options than anyone will ever have the time to tweak, and that’s the joy. It can be and do anything if you have the time to figure it out. You can take the core of Linux and put it in a phone, a toaster, a PDA, a satellite, a settop box, a PC, a Mac, an e-mail server, a dual-processor web server up to the largest virtual multi-processor super-machine at the NSA. Linux is great, but not great at everything, and that’s part of its charm.

  • My post about the whole

    My post about the whole CIA thing yesterday was a little disjointed, mostly because I was upset about work, and just couldn’t handle any more bad news. I need to go back and read 1984, but doesn’t this all strike you as being vaguely familiar? Jen and I went and saw Sum of All Fears on Saturday. The movie made me angry. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough to think that a president would fold under the pressure so quickly and go nuclear (or as GW says, nucular) without at least first getting communication with the folks on the ground and figuring out what was going on.

    And then, I read that George W. Bush has signed an executive order making it clear he wants to “remove” a head of state. I didn’t think you needed an executive order for that sort of thing, especially if the CIA is going to be carrying it out. It just seems like a plot point in a bad Tom Clancy book, or even worse, a bad Tom Clancy movie.

  • I like OS X. Why?

    I like OS X. Why? I like my bad news anti-aliased.

  • New Blogs I needed new

    New Blogs\
    I needed new material. My old friends and their blogs were still good, but it was time to find new people. I haven’t gone through all of these blogs’ archives, but right now, they look like worthy bookmark additions.

  • This made me feel so

    This made me feel so much better: You can lead a cat to fiber…

  • Isn’t this a declaration of

    Isn’t this a declaration of war? If it’s true, and we really don’t have any reason to believe otherwise, haven’t we just said that heads of state are fair game, and the Iraqi government should understand we’ve just declared war on them by George W signing the order to assassinate him (which we all know is what it means by “remove”)?

    I’m not a supporter of Iraq. I don’t like Saddam. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad idea to get rid of him. I think it’s a really bad move to announce, “Hey, we’re going to come kill your president.” before we’ve actually done it. Professionals don’t let things like this get out. You don’t announce a secret CIA mission to assassinate a head of state until it’s over and done with, and even then, you probably shouldn’t tell anyone. It’s bad form.

    The more I see and hear from the Administration, the less faith I have in them.

    I’d talk about this more, but Big Johnnie’s watching, and I wouldn’t want to be held without being able to see a lawyer, speak to anyone or expect my civil rights to be respected.

  • Just when you think your

    Just when you think your day will be one thing, it takes a 180 and becomes something completely different, darker, unpleasant, full of disappointment and frustration. I was ready for a heady adrenaline charged day of madness, not a crappy day of disillusionment. I need some ice cream.

  • And if you just can’t

    And if you just can’t get enough Max, my sister posted her funny little experience with my boy today, which reveals the other bit of news I was going to reveal. Yes, I shaved off my goatee. Aaaaa-aaaaall gone.

  • The Daring Young Man This

    The Daring Young Man

    This morning, after waking me up by crawling into bed with us and proceeding to kick me in the calves for about twenty minutes as he tried to use my legs as a blanket and dragging me downstairs, I was sitting on the couch, and Max was doing his Max thing. Max‘s “thing” includes drawing, spelling one or more of the thirty words he knows how to spell, jumping off the couch, singing, asking lots of questions about what just happened and making up songs that usually contain just two syllables repeated over and over and over to a tune he makes up as he goes.

    Hopefully, I’ve set the scene properly for you. So, I’m watching something on TV, and Max is running around. Suddenly, he stops in front of the couch, puts his arms half-cocked at his sides, elbows in, hands out and begins grunting. He’s straining his shoulders down, chin out and making a lot of noise. Now, I’ve never seen Max do this before. Max does some funny stuff, but this took the cake. So, I asked him what he was doing. Max stopped grunting, turned to me with a look of indignation that I didn’t know what he was doing and said, “I’m trying to fly, daddy,” and went back to grunting.

    He gave up on the grunting after a few seconds, and decided that the best way to get airborne was to jump off the couch, which he did several dozen times, flapping his arms madly between the couch and the ground. The couch is not a great height off the ground, so he got maybe two flaps in before he landed loudly on the floor, slapped the ground with his hands and started all over again.

    He’s gonna fly some day, I swear.

  • I accidentally edited a post

    I accidentally edited a post from yesterday and posted new content to it instead of just doing a new post. So, I post-dated a post. Postariffic.