I'm not sure how many of you were paying attention to the whole "OMG! We found a Bigfoot!" media orgy that happened last week, but it's something that you should have been watching, and here's why.
It was being portrayed as news.
Here's what happened. A couple of redneck morons claimed that they found a Bigfoot carcass so they tossed that son-of-a-bitch in a freezer trunk and started calling Bigfoot enthusiasts and news agencies. Now, if you're thinking that this is where the story ends, you're sadly mistaken. Some company - I think it's called Search For Bigfoot Inc. - bought the rights to show the body to the media sight unseen and started all sorts of noise that resulted in a press conference where photos were shown, and alleged hair samples from the rotting meat in the freezer were to be DNA tested.
CNN covered this. Days before the press conference, it was mentioned all over their web site and cable news channels. The day of the press conference, they were there. Live.
Here's where it get's interesting.
It was, of course, a fake. It was a bigfoot costume that these guys tossed in the freezer, and the DNA from the samples provided were human and opossum (not mixed... there were two hairs submitted: one was human, the other was a 96% match for opossum). The guys that sold the rights to We're A Bunch Of Fucking Morons With Too Much Time and Money Inc. vanished with the money.
And CNN covered that, too. On their front page. As the front page headline.
Let me say that again.
CNN's top fucking story - a story that they thought was more important than anything else going on in the world - was that the bigfoot "discovery" was fake.
OF COURSE IT WAS FUCKING FAKE YOU COLLECTIVE HEADS OF KNUCKLE!
WHY the fuck is that news? Isn't there anything else important you could have spent time telling us about? The war going on in Russia? The one in Iraq? The on in Afganistan? The one we're starting with Iran? Some Olympics crap? How Bush is a fucking nazi and how John McCain is an elderly elitist fuckwad who can't remember how many houses he owns, what kind of car he drives, or how much gasoline costs?
No, of course not. It's much more important to tell people what they should already fucking know.
CNN - you're worthless. I knew it before, but you just took time out of your busy schedule of lying to the American people to call us all raging idiots. And it seems like most of us are. I haven't seen any of the sort of backlash that should have ensued.
So, let me say this: If I ever run across anyone from CNN who decided that this was an actual story, I will kick you in the face as hard as I can for insulting my intelligence. And I mean it. It would just make me feel better to cause you physical pain.
You've earned it.
Quick!
I need a word that combines "Creepy" and "Hot" to describe this.
I've been dogfooding Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 for a long time, now.
For those of you who aren't aware, it's basically a service pack for Home Server that adds a few features and fixes some bugs (like the data corruption issue). Now that PP1 is released, I figured it was time to update to the RTM build. But I couldn't because I was stupid a while ago.
I was running low on space, so I delete all of the backup files for applied hotfixes because I never uninstall them.
Except, you know, I need to uninstall the beta PP1 before I can install the RTM version.
So I'm boned.
Not to worry, I thought. I'll just back up all of my files to my workstation (like I've done many, many times before) and reinstall the server. So I started the backup. And about half way through, I realized that I didn't have enough disk space - in fact, I was short by about 720GB. I've been ripping a lot of movies and archiving some TV shows lately, so it makes sense.
I added the necessary disk space to my workstation and restarted the backup. A day later, the data was transferred. So I started the recovery procedure. For those of you who haven't done it, or don't know, HP's MediaSmart Home Server doesn't have a video card or any way to plug in a mouse or keyboard. The recovery is done from a separate workstation that finds the home server over the network (somehow) and then reinstalls Windows remotely.
So, my main workstation is Vista x86 SP1. I loaded up the recovery software, and it abruptly failed. Again, and again it failed. I rebooted the server and the workstation, and it made no difference. It just failed.
So I tried my Vista x64 SP1 laptop, and it worked on the first try... sort of.
The software found the server and uploaded the Windows image. The server rebooted, and then some more software launched on my laptop to help me configure the server. Of course, that software doesn't work on x64, and I couldn't figure out how to launch it on x86 without doing another restore... so I tried... and it failed again.
Eventually I got pissed off enough to install Vista x86 RTM in Virtual PC, and I'm restoring the server from a VM as we speak. This is such an amazing pain in the ass. I have been working on this sonovabitch since noon. That's six fucking hours. I've installed Linux twice in that time (I'll blog about that piece of shit later). I thought that it would be a good idea to get the HP server because it would be a simple appliance as opposed to a computer.
How fucking wrong was I?
I still haven't gotten the redirection working correctly, and I've found a few things about Live Spaces that I don't really like (namely, you have to have a Live ID to comment on my blog).
So, in the mean time, I'll port the few posts I made on bbg.live over to bbg.com and crosspost all new posts.
I just saw
this over at Gizmodo. I've loved Calvin and Hobbes since I was a kid, and I think this is a fabulous extension of it.
Emmi and I are at a wedding for one of her best friends this weekend. We're staying in this awesome bed and breakfast (aside: I've never stayed in a "BnB", as I've heard them called, before. I have no idea what the protocols are. Also, ".com" looks like ".corn" when I don't have my glasses on).
Earlier tonight we were at the rehearsal dinner, along with copious amounts of people I don't know. When it was time to get some food, I crippled my way up to the end of the line after most of the traffic had dispersed. There was a lady in front of me, who I think was an Aunt of the groom or something like that. It should be noted that I was actually aware of this woman's story, since I'd overheard her telling it from a distance. She's like a long lost relative who hasn't seen the groom/bride/whatever in about 14 years, which I extrapolated to mean that she likely hadn't seem a lot of the family in that block of time. I would imagine if you find yourself in a situation such as that combined with a situation such as a wedding, you're bound to be a bit nervous. Let's see how this all played out, shall we?
So I hobble my way up to the end of the line. As I approach, she looks me up and down, and looks at my cane.
"Now, that's not just a trick to get to the front of the line, is it?" She says. I just sort of look at her, half expecting her to whip out a hammer and start beating herself about the head with it.
"No." I manage to say.
"Oh. So what did you do to your knee, or is there something else wrong with you?"
I just look away. Ashton's gotta be around here somewhere, and I'm gonna find the little fucker. I mean, really. It's none of your business what my ailments are in the first place, but do you really think that I'm going to respond in a positive manner to that specific phrasing? Apparently, yeah.
"Oh look. Here comes Betty Steve (I didn't catch the actual name). She drove today. I'm going to let her cut in line. Come on in, Betty!"
"uh..."
"Oh, you don't mind, do you? Oh! And here's Diamond Pete Patty Marie. He was in the car, too. You guys can all get in front of me."
Diamond Pete Patty Marie looks at me and looks at her, and then starts having some sort of strained internal dialog that was taking a really long time. He finally spoke, saying to me, "Heh heh - yeah, you don't mind, do you?" I think he was just trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I don't actually think he was a shitfucker.
So there I was. (Brain the size of a planet...) Standing there, trying to ignore a woman with the apparent brain power of parsley, leaning on my cane with the entire county cutting in line in front of Veggie Jammie Tom Sue.
"Just... go." I said, rolling my eyes and shaking my head.
Veggie kept trying to talk to me as we worked our way through the line, but I ignored her. I didn't want to say what was really on my mind because I didn't want to start a whole "thing" at our friends' wedding. I probably should have said something, but I knew she must have been nervous and feeling out of place.
That doesn't excuse what she said or did, mind you. How rude and/or stupid do you have to be to [even jokingly] accuse a cripple - a stranger - of faking it for sympathy, and then once you've established that they're not faking it, making them *stand* there for a while until you've let everyone with a vowel in their name cut in front of you in line? That's a trick question by the way.
As I was finally walking away, she said something else to me. I don't remember what it was; I wasn't paying attention, but I do remember that the tone was akin to "We're buddies now!"
I glared at her. If my eyes could have burst into flame, they surely would have.
She apparently got that message.
After Blogging Mint:
The rest of the night was a lot of fun. Emmi looked beautiful and her friends are really fantastic people who are fun to hang out with. I overheard some sort of plan about shaving a goat, but couldn't surface any exact details. I'll keep you posted as the story develops.
My previous host for BBG was actually pretty cool. There was program through work that allowed me to host a website for free, as long as it used pre-release technology. Long story short, BBG was being hosted for free but was experiencing a lot of downtime.
I was really OK with that up until a few weeks ago when I tried to post a blog entry and was told that the database was full. It's still full now. The management tools for the site just plain suck, and honestly, I don't feel like fucking around with it. Aside from that, BBG ran a very old copy of Community Server, and I also didn't feel like upgrading it.
So, I'm moving everything over to Live Spaces. It's still free (unless I pay to get rid of the adverts), and I still don't have to manage anything. I've migrated all of the posts (actually, I skipped a few posts because they either had to do with the old BBG and weren't relevant at all anymore, or because they were just pictures and the pictures didn't come with during the transfer), but the comments didn't come along.
I'm working on getting the domain to auto-forward here, but it'll be a week or so, I think.
Moving to Live Spaces.
http://bigblackglasses.spaces.live.com. Will redirect soon.
Emmi is out of town for the latter part of this week, so once again, I am temporarily a bachelor of sorts.
Now, you might ask yourself "Mike - how do you spend your time now that you're temporarily a bachelor of sorts?", but that would be stupid of you. You should be asking me, because I know the answer to that question. If you're asking yourself, you'll either already know the answer, or you'll never get an answer. Idiot.
So, I spent last night hiring and killing prostitutes, and then stealing cash from their limp, lifeless, and broken bodies.
No, really. In GTA4, if you hire a prostitute and then kill her when she's done, you can get your money back, and occasionally a little bit more.
So, remember kids: Need money? Kill a whore and get some more!
Fuzzy sent me a link to this video:
I really don't even know what to say about it. I actually watched the whole thing.
I've long been of the opinion that, if you took all of the time that people have used to create things like this, and devoted it to other things like, you know, cancer or AIDS or space travel, the human race would be in a much better place than it is right now...
And I think I'm still right.
So Apple announced their new 3G iPhone today, and I was seriously considering purchasing one. That is until I read these two articles.
This article posits that AT&T and Apple are making it so that one will need to activate the iPhone in the store, not at home, just like every other cell phone out there. That’s sort of the pain in the ass, but not as much as a small footnote at the bottom indicating that they’re trying to come up with some way to penalize people who don’t officially activate their iPhone within 30 days of purchase.
Just like all security features on the 1st-generation iPhone, I’m sure this will be broken in due time, but it’s still shitty.
The second article cuts through the reality distortion field that Steve and Apple tend to generate, and talks about how the new cheaper prices are a complete ruse. The new phones are more expensive, plain and simple.
Looks like Apple and AT&T are becoming less and less interesting in disguising how they’re trying to fuck their customers. Which, you know, is nice. For them.
I’m sure I’ll still end up with one at some point, but I refuse to play by their rules.
I've been sober for a year.
Wel, not totally sober - I've had a beer every now and then, but compared to the amount that I used to drink it's hardly worth mentioning. In all honestly, I could probably count the number of beers I've had in the last year on one hand (using base-2).
I say that I've been sober for a year because I haven't been drunk for a year. And compared to how often I used to be drunk, that's something worth mentioning.
Our first week in Vietnam has come and gone, and it's still great. We just got back into Saigon from a trip to Nha Trang, which is an ocean-side city about 45 minutes (flying) from Saigon. It was fantastic. We spent two whole days sitting in front of the ocean on beach-chairs drinking cheap drinks and eating fresh seafood. The first night, we swam in the ocean just as the stars were coming out.
The second day, the ocean was angry. There's a tropical storm (neoguri) off the coast that's making its way towards Vietnam, and the ocean was pretty choppy as a result.
Of course, the trip ended with a splash, too.
Most of us got sick last night (Emmi was the only one who didn't).
Pictures (of the ocean, not of the sick) coming soon.
For those of you playing along at home, that's a reference to a series of blog entries I did in a past life about a trip I took to China. It has nothing to do with this post.
Emmi and I have landed in South Korea, and we're sitting outside of an internet cafe that has apparently forgotten to secure their wireless internet connection. We haven't slept yet, and we're probably bio-hazards after having been on an airplane for 12 hours... and we have another 5 hours flight later tonight.
I'll post more soon, but for the people who I didn't think were important enough to e-mail about my arrival, I wanted to let you all know that I'm not dead (Marc...).
but that seems like an awful lot of work.
I have nothing immediately new to report. I've been working far, far too much. Though, I'm on the brink of an exciting vacation. Emmi and I are leaving for three weeks in Vietnam next Monday.
I'm sure I'll have some good things to talk about once we're there.