Craig's Blog

Merry Christmas

I'll start out on a good note. Merry Christmas to the handful of people who like to read this blog. It's been a fun year ranting and everyone putting up with it, especially you Chris :) I hope you all get laid a lot this Christmas and have a great 2005!

<rant>
Here we go. I am so sick and tired of this bullshit about the word Christmas. Every year the political correctness gets worse. Singing Christmas songs in grade schools is not going to corrupt some kid's belief system. Hell he doesn't have one! And if he does then he needs to get out and play more and his parents need to get some counseling. As for those fuckwads at the grocery store who don't want to hurt customers and decided to make the big switch this year and now tell us “happy holidays“. Well Merry Fucking Christmas to the whole lot of you. The 1% of customers who would be offended, well fuck them, let them go shop at Rubensteins or Zeus's. Have some balls and stand up for tradition. Those are the same customers who complain that you don't carry enough ethnic food or get pissed that you won't double their 50 cent coupons. Now I'm not in anyway religous, I don't believe in any supernatural make believe father figures or follow the writings of sand soaked Bronze Age nomads. I'm also fully aware that Jesus Christ was not born on December 25th, he was born in the spring time. The last Roman emperor Constanine decided to blend pagan and Christian beliefs and celebrations together to make Christianity a better “sell“, he wanted to market this new religion to help tie his dying empire together. So he basically put the celebration of Christ on the same day as the major pagan holiday of yuletide, which celebrates the first day of the sun returning. It's not an accident that winter solitice (Dec.22) and Christmas (Dec.25) are so close together. Fast forward 1500 years. A small minority of people have decided to end the public tradition of Christmas. What the fuck?! Sorry folks but this is the big one for Christians everywhere, they fucking own Christmas, December 25th, regardless of your creed, religion or race. Now put up with their bullshit for one fucking day out of the year. There's something to be said for tradition and this is a good one that expresses all the good things in the Christian religion. Must we live in a world where everything is homogenous and nobody gets offended? Shit we need that push and pull to keep things interesting.
</rant>

Mary and aliens

Here's something that came floating into my brain last night while watching the Catholic channel. I sometimes get a kick out of watching propaganda, let's leave it at that ok ;-)

It seems the Virgin Mary always makes her appearances in grottos. Now a grotto is pretty much a garbage dump, place of refuse. More than likely she also shows herself to young women or girls who are dirt poor (who else would be found wondering around garbage dumps?). There is definitely a pattern here.

It seems that most UFO encounters are made by rednecks far out in the woods. Its not a suburban thing or city craze, it's something that happens out in the open spaces away from lights and at night time.

I'm not sure if there's a connection here or not but there is definitely a pattern for these supernatural events. When humans recognize patterns they start to lend more believability to them. It's a natural response really. What if somebody claimed they got probed by aliens while coming home from the mall? Or some rich slob like Donald Trump saw the Virgin Mary sitting next to him in his limo? Nobody would believe the claim. What does that say about the “real” claims then?

British newsreel archive online

It amazes me how much stuff is getting online. All the newsreel footage in Britain starting in the 1890's up to the 1970's has been made publicly available. Found this on one of my favorite sites kuro5hin.org. Article says the site is slow but I didn't run into any problems. Thankfully they spared us from the evil Real media format. Anyway check it out --

http://www.britishpathe.com/

Adobe Acrobat Reader simplified

I don't know what other people think, but with every release of the Adobe's pdf reader, they add more plugins so that it takes just that much longer to load it just to view a pdf document. In the splash screen you see all of the zillions of apis getting loaded. I found a workaround! Take all of the files and folders in your C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader\plug_ins and move them somewhere else. Just empty out that plug_ins folder. Voila! Adobe reader comes up instantly now. Seems to me I remember seeing a program with a nice UI out there that let you individually choose what plugins you wanted to keep and disable with information on each one. All I need is ability to print and search documents. Like 95% of the users out there.

Androgyny hits home

Simple ideas

Ok here's a couple of ideas that would sell very well and shouldn't really be all that hard to accomplish.

1. Be able to change the snooze time on an alarm clock. How hard can it be to include this? It's all on a chip. My alarm clock has a 7 minute snooze time and therefore have my alarm set to 6:39 am. Seems to be the more standard snooze time is 9 minutes according to this article --
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a991126.html

2. Allow cell phone to have more than 4 rings before an incoming call goes to voice mail. 4 rings is sometimes not long enough when your cell is in a hidden part of the house, frantically search for your cell in your purse, or trying to dig it out of your pocket while driving. I'd even pay extra to have that service. Wake up Cingular/Sprint/T-Mobile!

Mr. Trashman

So I brought my trashcan in yesterday and noticed an envelope on it. In fact there was an envelope on everyone else's trashcan. I thought, crap this must be their way of informing us they will no longer take recyclables or something. No it was a xmas card from the trashman. Not one of those automatically stamped, Merry Xmas, Happy Holidays, Meremac Trash Hauling. It was written out in pen, Merry Xmas.. blah blah.... Your Trashman. I'm in a conundrum now. How does one handle a social interchange with one's trashman? Do I give him a card too? Should I double bag my trash? Do I have to talk to him? Not that I think I'm any better than him, I'd rather leave our relationship the way it was before. I throw the cat poop in the trash and you haul it away, total seperation of duties and lives. And if I do find myself face to face with “My Trashman” I'll have to talk to him, at least say hello, how's the trash today? I'm afraid I'll have to fight the urge that all of us have wanted to ask a trashman, how it the world did you end up with one of the worst jobs ever. What did you do wrong? What other jobs did you have before that you left to become a trashman? Did anyone see the movie Men At Work with Charlie Sheen? Very funny movie about him and his cohort as trashmen who find a dead body in the trash. Well if anyone has any ideas, please submit them here.

Walter Cronkite series

I recently discovered that NPR has been airing a weekly series with Walter Cronkite, recounting his memory of covering the news in the 50's, 60's and 70's. Very good collection that has a free audio feed (Windows Media or Real Audio). Enjoyable listening to one of the world's last true journalist talk about past events. Unfortunately the audio in the first few shows were only RA. No way will I be installing that bitch on any computer I use.

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/cronkite/