It's getting to be that time...a bit less than 2 weeks.
Very excited and looking forward to a fabulous day.
In the last couple weeks this has gotten real to D and all of a sudden she's a flurry of activity. This week we nailed down the canopy and DJ - so I think we are done. Except where everyone will sit. We anticipated 60 RSVPs. Last count was 90. Oh My. Donna's friend of many decades Charles will officiate. He came down recently to meet with us and chat things over - and he asked if we are writing our own vows. No, done that, I want the traditional ones. And add Cherish and Adore. Women like and - in almost all cases - deserve to be adored.
Donna enjoyed her shower. The groom and groomsmen are planning a little shooting party before the rehearsal dinner. Nothing like a little manly bonding!
Why does her ring cost 10x mine?
My garden did well - considering I did nothing more than throw some good dirt into smart pots, and let them grow. Need to be better about trimming the plants - the tomatoes went completely nuts.
Next grow is more restrained and better planned with succession planning a priority, as well as gathering fresh seed.
Good read on growing your own food.
How long would it take you waking up in a computer simulation, before you forgot you were in a simulation? Answer that and you're more than 1/2 way to understanding enlightenment and consciousness.
The San Diego Fair is in town and D and I went early.
Theme was Alice in Wonderland - which was cool. Lots of dress-up. My body art fit right in.
We just went for a short time and found some fun chotckes, including a veggie peeler that can peel tomatoes and pineapple and butternut squash.
I also got tickets to go see Brian Wilson, live, performing his Pet Sounds album. Seems like quite the opportunity.
Who's this Paul Mclartney you speak of?
Hey Brian, are those your backup singers?
Which reminds me: I happened on this display of Dreamworks animated Characters.
What do you notice? Every f***ing face has the same snarky expression. It actually has a name.
Now I love Shrek, And the Penguins. But this shit is sheer laziness.
And it doesn't stop there. Here's a great post about all the shit in movies that is exactly the same, from ageless actors to characters and plots. A good post.
I recently decided to switch my iPad to an Android tablet. After going through several lower end models, I settled on a Samsung tablet and I'm very happy. Also replaced the macbook pro + apple tv with an android tv box to watch kodi: stream movies, music and surf for free. Great choice.
While I do think the Mac experience was noticeably superior to the Android one for years, I think Android has caught up - at least.
And since Johnny Ive' s phone, ipad and computer were basically forced on us, my interest has waned. I *liked* the little throbbing buttons and 3d looking icons. sigh. Oh well. And, as cliche as it sounds, I handed in my Apple Fanboi card when Steve died.
Have you heard about Kodi?
Kodi is a free peer to peer sharing service. Kodi provides the user interface and regular folks post links to hosted movies and such like TV, live sports and music. It gets live tv and sports feeds from satellites.
I use “wookie” that sets up all the channels and such.
All free and runs on most everything and easy to setup. To get server feeds with less contention, I use Real-Debrid. I pay 16 Euros for 6 months and it makes streaming easier and faster.
Speaking of computer companies sliding, I recently tried to order a new laptop for work. The company we have to use, which starts with "L" and rhymes with "enovo" did a truly piss-poor job of communication. The Global Account mgr was so mortally embarrassed - since this is not the first time this has happened - it's chronic - she gave me a "Permanent Evaluation Unit for Life." At first from our conversation i thought she was going to let me go shopping in the online catalog for my choice - I had a nice laptop all picked out.
$4,000 and might not have to buy another laptop for a while.
Well, no, it wasn't that, but I still did ok and it was very nice of her to do. Not the first time I am sure.
If it had been that laptop above, I might have considered replacing my MBP. My only complaint with the MBP is max 16GB RAM. I run a lot of VMs and 16GB is simply not enough. All other major vendors have 32GB laptops - but not Apple! And I couldn't upgrade it anyway, b/c all the components are attached to the chassis! Which brings us back to my desire to leave the apple eco-$ystem, above. I gave up my iPad. But for now I'm sticking with my iPhone. We'll see.
One interesting find is the ability to buy direct from Chinese wholesalers. One can get a state of the art android phone, competitive with Samsung, for like 1/3 the price. And you can easily use it on US phone systems using their BYOD plans.
Today's news about the massive shooting in the club in Orlando led me to this. Noam Chomsky discusses what is terrorism and who the #1 Terrorist nation is by almost any definition.
On the global war on terror:
Yeah, Reagan started it. It’s pretty interesting. I mean terror became a big issue when the Reagan Administration came in. They immediately announced [their plans] and kind of disparaged Carter’s alleged human rights programs. The main issue is state-directed international terrorism. Right at that time that big industry developed. That’s when you start getting the academic departments on terrorism. You get UN conferences trying to define terrorism. Journals, you know, big explosion of interest in terrorism. I started writing about it more at that time as did Ed Herman. But we actually had been writing about it before and we picked up after that.
But the stuff that we write can’t enter the canon for a very simple reason. We use the official definitions of terrorism. The definitions in the U.S. code, in British law, in U.S. Army manuals and so on. And if you use those definitions it follows instantly that the United States is the leading terrorist state in the world. So since you can’t have that conclusion you have to do something else. And if you look at all this academic work in the conferences and so on there’s a constant theme that terrorism is extremely hard to define and we therefore have to have a deep thinking about it. And the reason it’s hard to define is quite simple. It’s hard to find a definition that includes what they do to us but excludes what we do to them. That’s quite difficult. So it takes a global war on terrorism.
The worst terrorist crimes going on right now are the drone campaigns. But you can’t include that obviously. So you have to try to define it. I mean if Iran was carrying out an assassination campaign killing anyone around the world who Iran thought might harm them someday we’d go crazy. But that’s the drone campaign.
If you are looking for something to send me as a present for the wedding or birthday or Christmas, it's hard to go wrong with this:
The 40 lb case, obviously!
I am JUST KIDDING!
All for now - off for dance lessons so I don't do the middle school two-step-shuffle at the wedding and D and I look elegantly fabulous in our first dance. To this song, I hope.
