Fun Stuff

Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, are cool.



I've got 2 job interviews tomorrow, so I'm going to bed now.

First lizard genome sequenced: Green anole lizard's genome sheds light on vertebrate evolution

First lizard genome sequenced: Green anole lizard's genome sheds light on vertebrate evolution

REPORT: 25 Corporations Paid More To Their CEO Last Year Than They Paid In Taxes

REPORT: 25 Corporations Paid More To Their CEO Last Year Than They Paid In Taxes: pLast year, as Americans across the country grappled with the widespread effects of the Great Recession, tax dodging by corporations and the wealthy cost the average U.S. taxpayer $434, even as corporate profits soared 81 percent. In fact, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “corporate tax dodging has gone so [...]/p

Things my government never told me 2

Before we start talking about Who.
Let's look at a little more of the What...



You are being watched.  You should be aware of that fact.  Everything you do online, every site you visit, is logged, somewhere.  Unless you are a moderately advanced hacker, there's nothing you can do about it.
And I suspect, that to go totally unobserved you have to be a pretty advanced hacker.
With the advent of the computer, just about everything people do is tracked in some manner.
So, you have to wonder....



This is a segment from a Nova special called 'The Spy Factory'.  It's a fascinating little look into the halls of power.  You really should check it out.  You can get the whole thing, broken into nice, manageable little bits over on YouTube, or you can stream the whole program from Netflix or Amazon.



Now, let's think rationally, as difficult as that might be, cuz it seems to have escaped our government, but let's give it a try...
If you need to monitor the digital info from Asia, and the sheer volume is a problem, why do you wait till that traffic merges with domestic traffic before you tap it?  The most logical place to tap it would be one of the two stations before this.
And if all you are interested in is foreign traffic, how come there are 15-30 of these stations around the country?
And what good does all this data collection do if you don't use the information properly?
Mark Rossini was a FBI liaison to the CIA who was ordered not to pass along the information that 2 of Osama bin Laden's associates were in the U.S., months before the 9/11 attacks.  He also points out, that reasonably, there was more than enough evidence to get a warrant for surveillance of these 2 men.  FISA would not have been a problem.  If they had even bothered to try for a warrant.
If you put the information from 'The Spy Factory' together with the following....



You get enough evidence to raise some serious questions.
Follow the timeline of what happened after 9/11 and watch where the money went, and is still going, and you get more than enough motive to just ignore something that serves a disturbing agenda.
This isn't the only information that I have gathered that points to that disturbing agenda.  This is just some of the stuff that raises red flags for me.
Here I will point you to another bit of info. that keeps those flags flying:
Dick Cheney: What is the Price of Failure?  By The Pardu,  one of my fellow posters on Left Take.
We all know that the government lied about WMD in Iraq.  Why we continue to ignore that fact baffles me.
Why hasn't George W. Bush and/or Dick Cheney not been charged with perjury?
Why did we have to have civilian contractors involved in the war?
Why wasn't anybody regulating the bad business practices of the housing and finical markets?
I have lot's of questions.
And I don't really like the answers that I'm finding.
With this evidence of deceit and omission, I really have to wonder just what else are they lying about?
And what else aren't they telling us?

Sunrise

It was impressive this morning!

Tonight's the night...

Well, actually, last night was the night, but I still haven't been to bed yet....
Doctor Who returned for the second part of the 6th season of the new show.  I've been looking forward to this all summer.



For those who don't know, Doctor Who is one of the longest running shows in TV.  It is the longest running Science Fiction show.  It's one of the few things to be successfully remade.



Late one Sunday night, back in the 70's, I tuned to the local PBS station and caught an episode of a new show they were running.  I've been hooked ever since.



That's a clip from the Robot, the first Dr Who episode I ever saw.  This is well into the episode, but it has my favorite bit, the scene of the new Doctor finding himself, and the introduction of the famous scarf.
It may not seem like much now, but, back in the day this was impressive for television Science Fiction.  From that night, every Sunday night, for over 10 years, I tuned into the local PBS station to watch a new episode of The Doctor.  Quite often a group of us would get together to watch.
The original run of Doctor Who ended in 1989.  It had faltered a bit in the ratings, and then, according to rumor, Stephen Spielberg bought the rights.  I'm not sure exactly how all the maneuvering went, but The Doctor was officially dead at that time.  In 1996 there was a made for TV movie released in this country.
Thankfully, that never went any further.
At the time I was bummed, but the movie wasn't all that great.  I'm glad there wasn't an American version of the show.  I don't think we would have done as well with it.  I didn't really like the 8th Doctor all that much.
In 2005 The Doctor was revived, with Christopher Eccleston as the 9th Doctor.
I waited for that first episode with pessimistic thoughts.
And I was pleasantly surprised.










I've been consistently pleasantly surprised since then.
Doctor Who, 47 years, soon to be 48, and still going strong. Can't wait to see the new episode.



Check it out.

TGIF!!

Although, for me, it don't really mean much.  But I'm with all you wage slaves in spirit.

I did get a response from a place I applied to almost a month ago.  They regretted to inform me that the position had been filled.  But, hey, at least it's something.  Was beginning to think that all the apps were going off into the ether twilight zone.

It's been a long month.  A long couple of months, what with the swapping of operating systems, loading and unloading programs, messing with the Office stuff, switching of internet providers and such.

Yeah, last week I switched from Charter to Clear.  Clear's set up is way easier than Charter.  They sent me the modem and I set everything up.  Didn't need a technician to come out.  Which was cool.  It's gonna save me about $20 bucks a month.

I've been having trouble with Charter.  I was losing signal anywhere from 1 to 5 hours every week.  It was happening most often during the work day, so before I got laid off I probably just never noticed it.  But, since the internet is now a very large part of my day, which I'm happy with, not having it was a problem.

I am happy that most of the application process has moved online.  I don't have to drive to the various places to apply.  Saves a lot of gas and time.

2 weeks back from Friday to Saturday my internet was down more than it was up.  Call Charter and they give you a message about a problem in the area.  Get through to a person and they say there's no problem, lets reset the modem...

Go through all that and still no improvement.  Monday and Tuesday it was in and out all day.  I couldn't get anything done.  So I called and signed up with Clear.

The switch went fairly well.  I had signal problems Tuesday morning, though.  The verdict is still out.  That, and I can't get Netflix to work. consistently.  I think it might help to move the router, but I don't have a long enough cable right now.

So last week I spent time tearing the office apart and moving cables and wires and installing a new modem.  I reorganized the desk while I was at it.  It's not all totally back together, I still want to move the router, but I have to get a cable for that.  I cleaned out a lot of old files and threw a lot more stuff away.  Then I redid the living room.

Then, last Sunday, I lazed around all day, enjoying my new living room.

My girls, enjoying the couch

We all like the living room.  Oz has discovered that there's enough room for comfortable snuggling, and takes every opportunity.

Unfortunately, the advent of the couch has strengthened Dusty's lap dog delusions.  She's getting used to the idea of snuggling next to me, but she doesn't like it.  She really wants to drape herself across my lap.  Still can't convince her that she's just too big.

And, of all things, Stupid Dog figured out that she can bark out the window now.

And then she introduced Dusty to the pleasures of barking out the window.  We've been having conversations about that for the last couple of days.

Being a bed there's no back or arms, and that is a slight problem.  I've got ideas on how to fix that problem.  But, that will have to wait until I have some sort of income.

I'm working on that.  I'm gonna start trying some more active internet marketing.  I'm checking into merchandising and demo jobs.  Next week I start applying to the temp companies.  I don't really want to go there, but there's not much choice.  I'm moving into the panic zone.  I need to turn up something soon.

But I can still pay the bills for next month and there will be money left for food and gas.  So not all bad.

This weekend I think I'm gonna do some sewing.  I want to make curtains for the shelves in the kitchen and the cloak is all cut and ready to sew.  Next I start cutting for my Archon costume.

I've got some plants to plant, I'm gonna do that tomorrow morning.  I think I've decided where to put them.

Right now, I'm gonna go work on an entry for the garden blog.  I've been neglecting that all month.

Hope everybody has a great weekend.