Ingenio, ergo ancora imparo

Brother-in-law #1 (sister's SO): His PC is minorly hosed. Missing some dlls or pertinent windows components somewhere along the way. I'll assume it's possibly a virus/trojan that did the deed, as he hasn't upped his AV defs in quite some time. Current status: sitting on the floor in my cyoob awaiting an OS repair or reinstall. He purchased a new Dell online while I was over at his house Thursday.

My sister is about six months along in her pregnancy, and looking a little chunky now. It'll be strange being an uncle by blood relation now....but regardless, I'll probably help spoil/corrupt the little nugget.

Brother-in-law #2 (wife's eldest brother): Bought a new PC for his son for the sole purpose of being able to play Star Wars Galaxies (the new Evercrack). His old PC (HP) couldn't handle the graphics, and probably would have choked on a decent graphics card. I attempted to backup his older data files and mail files (Outlook Express sucks shit) to my USB thumbdrive, but it didn't like it. Current status: Sitting on his dining room table awaiting my return this weekend.

Brother-in-law #3 (wife's older brother) : Brought his laptop from VA. He had hooked up a video projector at some point, and also uses a docking station occasionally. Somewhere along the way it set itself up as a dual monitor configuration, and caused some funky issue where every other restart would revert the display config back to 800x600 in a shrunken bordered window. I monkeyed with the settings a bit and think I got it working. Current status: hopefully working properly back up in VA.

Father-in-law: Up until 6 months ago, my FIL was still working on a 100 MhZ Pentium I system. He opted to wait to use it until I got a chance to come down again so I could transfer his files from old to new. Lo and behold, a month before I make it down, old PC ups and croaks. Brother-in-law #2 puts his new PC together for him. I attempt to boot old PC last week...nope. After attempting to drop the drives in a different oldass PC (133Mhz Win95) BIL#2 had as secondaries....I come to find I can't even add the things as the CMOS settings are password protected and he of course has no idea what the password could be. Brought the HDs home and was able to get data off the secondary and burn to CD. Primary HD was toast.

Yeah....getting over the cold thing spreading around. I assume it was one of the rugrats at the office holiday party last weekend passing it around. In any case, about half the office got it...actually used my first sick day in two years yesterday...hacking up crap and a temp of 102 or so....a brief addiction to generic DayQuil for a few days...two beers and one shitty game of disc golf later...here I am.

Theoretically leaving for Melbourne Sunday. That's if I didn't get the wife sick. Hoping to play the Wickham Park course if I have the time while down there.

No doubt you've heard at least a blurb somewhere regarding the new CAN-SPAM (S877) bill circulating the guv'ment the last few weeks. Reports estimate that spam, more formally known as UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email), constitutes 25-60% of all email traffic today. Up until earlier this year, I'd had the same email address for over 7 years. I was receiving over 200 emails a day, of which at least 80% of was spam.

The House of Reps and the Senate overwhelmingly approved the bill Thursday (12/11/2003). Now to complete the trifecta of idiocy, our miserable failure of a president has promised he will put his crayoned 'X' on the bill before the end of the year. Unfortunately this bill overrides those states with sense that have enacted laws that are a bit harsher to the everyday spewer of UCE.

By far, the most asinine portion of this bill is the opt-out concept. The idea of opt-out UCE has long been known to be inneffective. Spammers rarely heed requests for removal. By the very act of asking for removal, you're validating your email address as real, thereby making it a premium commodity to be sold and/or traded to other spammers.

It's just like allowing anyone in the world to come to your home or office and throw dogshit at you as long as:
1) It's properly labeled as dogshit
2) The dogshit has a valid return address
3) They stop after you ask them to

And let me tell you, there are far too many unscrupulous assholes with dogshit in hand waiting for January 1st to come around.

What does this mean for you?

Simply put, you're fucked...and you're about to be covered in dogshit.

[smacked from Fark.com]

Step 1: Visit Google
Step 2:
Step 3: Type in "miserable failure"
Step 4: Click the [I'm Feeling Lucky] button, not the [Google Search] button
Step 5: Profit

So, I had another trivial milestone yesterday. Used up another can of shaving cream. I believe this one was the second of a two for one Edge Gel special I purchased over 5 years ago.

Now mind you, I only shave with a razor about twice a week, and I've had a beard of sorts for the past two years, so I don't use it often. But even before then, the cans still seemed to last forever.

If only beer had that kind of staying power.

So...I bakes me first Thanksgiving turkey last Thursday for my wife and a few friends. Turned out pretty good.

Friday morning, day after Thanksgiving...I've got the day off, so I decide to do as little productively as possible. I'm doing something insanely stoopid online and nursing my second cup of coffee round about 11ish. A bit of rain has just subsided, and the wind is picking up a bit.

Outside: Crrrackkk....smash

(Now I see new foliage right beside the office window that wasn't there before. And knowing the approximate location of the only other tree that may have been ready to give as well as the angle of descent given the location of the branches outside...)

That's right boy's and girls, car number 2 got skwooshed by another tree. Finally get ahold of the slumlord two hours later, and she at first expects me to pay for the goddamn tree removal.

Luckily, it only banged the hell out of the hood, cracked the windshield, and de-aligned the front right side panel. At least this one was fully insured, although I'm still out my $250 deductible and whatever I've gotta fucking pay for the rental until the damn thing is repaired.

Current slumlord-bendover total for 2003: $5600 (and change)

I will buy a house within six months if it kills me. I just hope there are no more sequels until then.

Yeah, so...back in Feb. of this year (2003) , a fun little wind left a present in my yard one afternoon.

Being that she was an older model Accord (1988), we were paying the basic coverage on it. Unfortunately, I come to find out that my insurance wouldn't cover it (somewhat expectedly), as well as the ~~landlady's~~ slumlord's homeowners insurance. Yeah...totalled...and we're out one functional car. The slumlord, who by the way had just raised our rent another $100 a few months before, <sarc>was soooo sympathetic</sarc> that she gave us, and I quote, a "special discount" of $25 off our rent for 6 months. Let's see...$150 for what was a perfectly functional vehicle with a Blue Book value of $5200 at the time of its demise? My ass still hurts from that reaming.

And to boot (unless I misread the damn 3000 page user-friendly IR$ manual), I can only claim about $200 as a capital loss on the coming years taxes.

Current slumlord-bendover total for 2003: $5050 (plus whatever beer I drank to quell the rage)

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