Sometimes in life you open doors that look pretty innocuous, but lead places you definitely don't want to go.

-I can't transfer files from my phone to my computer and vice versa anymore.  Weird, I think.
-Hardware Properties says the device has no drive letter.  Well, there's your problem.
-System Event Log says the Logical Disk Manager Service, a service that tells Windows what storage devices exist, what letters to use for them, how full they are, etc. couldn't interface with the device.  That's why it has no letter.  But why is LDMS failing? Also, Drive C is not present in the disk manager.  Only the DVD drive is.  Weird.
-Windows System Restore is an anti-virus/spyware/user error tool that reverts your system to an earlier state.
-Windows System Restore checks Drive C for 10% free space before it runs.  If that check goes wrong, it doesn't throw an error - it just hangs.  (Thanks MS). 
-It checks Drive C using the Logical Disk Manager.  Drive C is not present in my Logical Disk Manager.
-Lately I've been clicking links to things a lot and being sent to www.buycoolhouses.com or whatever.
-So, A fucking Trojan on my computer has sabotaged LDMS in an attempt to protect itself by making System Restore inoperable in an inconspicuous way!!  Fucking genius.
-I cannot find the trojan using antispyware tools even though it is a common, known type.
-The trojan is therefore hiding behind a rootkit and this computer will never be able to self-diagnose.  I will need to put this hard drive into another computer (or get a boot disc MAYBE, which I do not have) in order to even see the files comprising this motherfucker.
-I am owned.  All this because I couldn't put a fucking rap song on my cellular telephone.

Long story short, hackers are fucking geniuses who should get jobs and solve the world's problems please.  We could use you.

Someone at my workplace has dared to tell me that I CANNOT RAP!  I am thinking that the second part of "Gimme Some More" [Busta], after the intro but before the chorus, will be sufficiently incontrovertible proof to the contrary.  I am not sure how I can do it without being fired for racism, though.  Even just that one portion contains "nigga" seven times.

Yo Spliff, where the weed at?

Whenever an American starts a sentence with "It's a free country...", I always get really disappointed.  I keep expecting "It's a free country, so I'm going to express my views reasonably and amiably in a public forum regardless of what they are" or "It's a free country, so I'm going to quit my job and marry my true love who is well above my station and become a freelance masseur" or "It's a free country, so if I want to make the world's tallest structure composed entirely of quail eggs, dammit, I can!" 

It's never anything like that, though.  It's always "It's a free country, [so I'm going to continue being a dick to you]."

Let's play pretend.

Say you are the commander of a fleet in a modern Western nation's navy (pick any one you like).  You're given a directive from your government to combat African piracy.  Your priorities are as follows, in order:

1) Preserve the safety of any innocents captured at sea or held hostage at sea by pirates.
2) Keep the costs of your operations down.
3) Preserve the safety of your servicemen (and women, depending on who you are).
4) Inflict lasting damage on pirates' ability or desire to prey on Western merchant shipping passing near their operational areas.
5) Prevent loss or capture of ships and cargo.

It is OK if you're a little upside-down financially (that is, if your operations cost your government more annually than the pirates ever have);  you have a mandate to protect the innocent and demonstrate to the world that France/Britain/The US/whoever is not to be fucked with.

Assume you have access to all the usual toys a modernized command would - submarines, destroyers (with helicopters), unmanned drones, guided missiles, special forces teams, even satellite reconnaissance if you give enough notice - but not exactly a surplus of manpower.  (While it is unlikely that this will matter, your closest land base can be imagined to be Gibraltar).

You have the cooperation of your nation's Marines or an amphibious unit of the Army, but your government is unwilling to authorize actually landing on Somalian soil unless you are 100% sure (and can prove) the operation will bag them a huge PR coup.  You will get absolutely no help from your government's civilian intelligence agency (ie MI6, CIA) - they can be imagined to either be inept or uncooperative.

Your superiors recognize that a "textbook approach" is not much good in this situation and will be understanding of the fact that some unorthodoxy may be required to get the job done.

What do you do?

Month of vegetarianism is over!  I kept a logbook of what I ate, mostly to convince myself that I actually managed not to eat meat for a month.  The actual result however has been to make me realize that holy shit, I eat nothing but junk food unless someone more cultured (ie Anna's family) is around.

I did not find this particularly hard to do, which is not what I was expecting.  It was actually very easy to resist eating meat the few times the temptation struck me.  I guess it's not something I particularly miss when I don't have it, although I am always very conscious of my enjoyment when I DO have it.  One thing I did learn is that soup pretty much sucks without meat stock of any variety unless it is some sort of chowder or other thicker suspension.

Full log is behind the cut.

( Daily food log )

Today on the T I saw a woman reading a book entitled "How to Prosper in the Current Financial Crisis" and thought nothing of it, except perhaps for feeling some pity.  Then later I saw someone else reading the same book.  I thought it was one of the most meta things I had ever experienced.  Judging from the fact that it looked too new to be a library book, how to prosper in the current financial crisis is apparently to write books about how to prosper in the current financial crisis.

So, it's January 5 and I still haven't made a new year's resolution.  (Perhaps worse yet, I also haven't gotten some folks their Christmas presents yet, but that I think I have under control.)  I really like the tradition of new year's resolutions, so I feel it's important I get on this ASAP.

I have considered quite a few things, from "cook more/eat out less" to "make fewer misogynistic comments" to "clean up living areas more" to "don't avoid doing laundry like the plague" to "write more emails to old friends" to "stop forgetting German", but it's hard to decide.  All of these options seem good to me, and there are a number of other good ones I don't mention besides.  Nothing I've thought of is... I dunno...outstanding?

Note that there are much bigger things in my life than these that need fixing (indeed, to some of you the above might seem trivial), but with resolutions I tend to stick to things where the only variable is myself/my actions, so that I can't possibly justify to myself any lapse in keeping them.  (For instance, "Get a raise at work" or "Make more friends" would be less than ideal because those largely depend on someone else's opinion of me, which is not always something I can affect.)

Of course, I could resolve to do everything I can think of, but it's a lot to ask to become the person I want to be in the span of a single year.  I'd much rather make one resolution I fully keep than two I mostly keep.  So far, I am leaning towards 'cook more and eat out less", since, while but one resolution, it is not only a resolution to improve my skill at a useful art, but also tacitly a resolution to save money and improve my health.

So, gentle readers, what do you think would an attainable but significant goal for me would be this year? Any input on the above, or suggestions of things I haven't mentioned?

Zwei freunde sind auf noch einen Abenteuer gegangen; geh ins Hoelle.

More details when I have pictures available to me, because I know we've got at least 20, and I ain't writin' y'all no 20,000 words.

So, I've come up with an idea for a short film.  If I ever decide that I don't need to be a part of normal society any more or I don't want friends, I will make it.

The basic premise is that the movie chronicles the adventures of a self-loathing Jewish homosexual in a concentration camp in 1944.  The main character is young, conflicted, emotionally immature, and totally broken by the horror of his surroundings.  As a result, he wants to die!  However, he is a coward and is unwilling to off himself.  Luckily, death is all around him, busily taking even people who are looking to avoid it...so how hard could it be for him to die, when he really wants to?

The answer: Very hard.  Everything the main character does to get himself killed is a hilarious failure.  He skips in line for the "showers"...and actually gets a shower.  He misbehaves and is taken aside to be shot...and the MG42 jams.   He starts a fight with a camp guard and is almost split in half by the guard's entrenching tool, but a girl who secretly loves him jumps between them at the last minute and "saves" him at the cost of her own life.  And when he plans an escape along with several other prisoners, thinking that they will *have* to kill him once they catch him then,  he actually manages to escape. 

In the end, he mans up, realizes that if you want something from the world you've got to take it yourself, and jumps off of a bridge and lands on General Rommel's car driving through a valley far below, injuring all occupants, killing himself, and greatly aiding the Allied war effort by removing Rommel from the picture in time for D-day.  (The Germans just said it was an aircraft that wounded him because they were embarrassed, the pre-credit scroll will insist). 

The end!

Hi all,

I've uploaded (and hopefully removed the embedded track info from) 25 tracks from classic computer games. If this is the sort of thing you find amusing, see if you can guess the game and/or either the name of the track or its place of incidence in the game! Some are instantly recognizable to most nerds and some will be quite hard, so don't be discouraged if you can't get the first few.

ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE

Do you know what sort of thing breaks a video game nerd's heart?

The fact that probably a hundred times more people know about GlaDOS than about SHODAN.  It's like liking rock without listening to Elvis.  It's like watching Friday without ever having met a black person.  It's like reading a hymnal before you read the Bible.  It's like learning to fly a plane before you learn to drive a car.  It's like...it's like...

Shai Hulud has recently released an album. Here's the fucked up part:  I kind of don't like it.

What other terrible things might the future have in store?

I know that someone's birthday is June 6.  What I'm missing is the vital information of whose birthday that is.  If anyone here knows, you should reply.

I think that I will be much more able to stomach an office job that requires me to sit for 8 hours if I get a fair amount of exercise on the way to and from.

I had two dreams I last night (I remember dreams only a couple of times a year), about which I'd like to post.  No pressure to actually read them, though, because dreams are pretty much the definition of something only relevant to one person.

First one, Ben Horowitz was part of a coalition of people who were going to attack supermodern US Air Force fighter jets in old crop-dusting biplanes for some purpose or other that I didn't know, but I had dream-intuition that it was a good cause.  It was nighttime and there was a big camp of tents with a huge bonfire near the middle that I was standing at, and listening to the radio.  When they started talking to Ben, I realized he was up there and tried to tell him not to attack fighter jets in a biplane since it wouldn't do him any good, but he pretended he didn't hear me.  Damn it.  Then the dream ended.

Second one, Sarah whats-her-name that I think sat near me in AP Physics maybe, and was definitely friends with Russell and was the main character in our school's production of HONK! and I played a strange game.  We were in a small room with a bed and a fireplace (lots of fires tonight) but also a stove and counter, so it was a weird kitchen-bedroom hybrid.  At first I did not know that we were playing a game at all, and I thought she was acting very strangely.  Eventually, she asked me 'who she was' and I said, of course, that she was Sarah.  Then she explained to me (thank God) that I was supposed to guess what character from movies or other media she was acting like.  I guessed Bowser from Mario, but this was incorrect - she was trying to act like the pie in American Pie.  Now, I have never actually seen that movie, or even parts of it, but something tells me you can't very well act like a pie.  Still, though, I felt dumb for not getting it.  Then it was my turn to act like something, and I couldn't think of anything to act like/was confused by the game rules.  It was very embarrassing, as there were long silences while I tried to come up with something without success.  Eventually I settled on the Grandpa from Seven Samurai, but didn't do it terribly well, and she couldn't get it.  Luckily, something exploded outside, distracting me from my failure.  We had to go check it out, but then that dream ended too.

Phew! I'm sure weird stuff like this is par for the course for dreams, but since I remember mine SO rarely, I never cease to be amazed.

Warning: If you want to have a good day, don't watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj7N1RU8qlg&feature=related

Yep.  Almost 10 years after its demise, the Soviet Union's national anthem is still 45025493 times cooler than everyone else's.

Shame that whole 'being a nation' thing didn't work out.

I'll be in New Jersey over the weekend.  I hear plenty of dubious reports about that state, so if no one has had any contact with me by Monday at noon, you know who to call...

I'm having a really bad time lately in terms of finances.  I'm going to describe my woes in detail here on the Innernette, in the hopes that I will then do it less in real life.

-A few months ago I volunteered to give up my seat on a flight and slept in the airport overnight in NYC.  Now, I can't find the slips that entitle me to my free flights, and the airline insists that there's nothing they can do and if I lost the slips, I lose the flights.

-I require 6 dental procedures in the immediate future: 3 fillings, a cap/crown, a root canal, and gum surgery.  My dental insurance's yearly maximum will be reached by the root canal alone (even though it will also require $600 of my own money), and then I will have the other 5 to pay for on my own.  I have no idea how I am going to pay for it.

-It doesn't seem that I'll be able to significantly lower my student loans' interest rates via consolidation.

WAAAH

PS My kitty is dead.

Sometimes I am convinced that people on the Internet can read my mind.