Weird Weekend

I have an awesome little dog. A pekingese. I didn't actually kill him,
but I gave it a couple good tries. While I was taking him out he ran
full tilt head first into a trailer hitch. Knocked him right on his
fuzzy but. Then a much larger dog tried to eat him. Picked him up by the
scruff of the neck and shook him like a rag doll.

Oh... and tonight I stepped on him. With shoes on.

Poor little guy. He may be a poofy little girly dog, but he's the toughest little bugger I ever met. He never so much as let out a yelp.

Oh, and tonight I doped my wife up with a heavily spiked peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Yup. Weird weekend.

Nothing Like a Three Ring Election for a Great Show!

I'm loving this election.

I'm kinda enjoying watching the Democrats wading around in all the wild promises they couldn't keep, and the smug feeling of superiority that comes with knowing full well that it takes a heck of a lot longer than two years to turn around an economic disaster like the one we're crawling out of; A disaster brought about, by the way, by eight years of faux conservatism. It's also kinda fun watching full grown men running around screaming like a bunch of school girls in a pantie raid. Here's a news flash for you, ladies. The stimulus package worked. The recession is over. Businesses are growing again. They're just not sharing the money with you. If this surprises you go stand in the "stupid corner" and face the wall.

Here's another news flash for you Panicky Nancys out there: unemployment is always the last metric to improve after a recession. Deal with it. What the hell do you want the government to do about it? It's not the governments place to create jobs. That's what the private sector is for. The private sector has stabilized. In fact they're sitting on HUGE surpluses. They're just not hiring. In fact they're still firing. That's the way this game goes. Am I the only person alive old enough to remember that last time this happened? When all our manufacturing and engineering jobs got shipped to Mexico back in the 90's and we all wound up in the service industry? What can I say. It sucks to be us. But crying and voting in a bunch of corporate whores isn't going to change the situation.

And this brings me to the best part of this whole cluster %$#@: Watching the Grand Ol' Party implode.

That's right... The real clown show has come from the Republicans this session. They've strayed so far from real conservatism in the name of sucking big-money corporate ding-dong that they got their asses handed to them by a bunch of idiots running around screaming "CONSTITUTION! CONSTITUTION!"

Now this might have been a good thing if any of them had bothered to actually read the Constitution. Kinda makes a guy wonder what the heck were these clowns studied in high school instead.

Anyway... Congratulations, GOP. You chased away all the "RINOs" just in time for a party split to scoop up the radicals and sully the entire parties reputation by forcing the you to field illiterate nut-cases like Paladino and O'Donnell. Real smooth. "Republican Strategist" has officially become a contradiction in terms. Of course the lobbyists are adapting nicely. They know full well these upstarts will be all too eager to wrap their lips around their cash engorged hot corporate willies when re-election time rolls around. ;)

Now I'd like to make a comment about conservatism that's going to piss off a lot of people, but it needs to be said... If you haven't read the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution all the way through at least twice YOU'RE NOT A REAL CONSERVATIVE! You're just a chest thumping drone, and very likely a chump for the same special interests you're waving your fists and railing against.

The Conservative's Required Reading List:
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html

There. That wasn't so hard was it? By the way... If you're really serious about understanding the conservative principles of our founding fathers a quick look at the Articles of Confederation wouldn't kill you either.

Two-Faced Bastard Brigade Strikes Again: Congress Smacks Down Small Business

For all their talk about how important we are to the economic recovery congress has once again smacked small business owners across the face, especially in regards to hiring/retaining employees. The new law, appended quietly into the health care reform bill and having abso-frigging-lutely nothing to do with health care, requires small business owners to declare all purchases over $600 to the IRS on a separate form called a 1099 MISC. The idea is that they can use this information to bust your vendors for shorting their taxes by under-reporting sales. Everything a small business buys costs more than $600 a year. This is going to make our already ridiculously long tax packages into damned novels.

Did I join the IRS at some point and miss it? What the hell good is a tax cut if you're just going to take it out of my hide in administrative costs twice over? And did I mention that I have a business to run? I can't do that when I'm filling out bloody paperwork for the IR bloody S all freakin' day long. The greedy bastards are already taking up too much of my workday with their incessant money grubbing.

If the IRS really wants me to function as a tax enforcement officer they can just give me a badge and pay me to do it, otherwise would somebody remind these lazy schmucks that it's their job to catch tax cheats, not mine. 

Betrayed by my Beloved Bioware

Bioware still hasn't come out with a demo for Dragon Age Origins. Well this gamer, for one, is done waiting.

My concern about Bioware not offering a demo has nothing to do with the game quality. I have no doubt about that. Bioware makes the best cRPG's on the market, bar none. This is the company that brought us Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. My concern is more practical. How can I know for sure it will run on my machine without testing it first with a Demo? My video card exceeds the recommended requirements in every category, but it's simply not on the list of supported cards, so it's a crap shoot. The only way to know for sure is to try it out by using a demo or a pirated copy.

Oh well. I guess it's off to the high seas. Arghh ye maties. At least you got a few organic links.

:-/

The Grubby Paws Gang (AKA the IRS) Strikes Again

A couple of stories in my favorite trade mag have me REALLY pissed off.

The first is about the IRS trying to squeeze more money out of schools.

HEY! PAWS OFF! I mean seriously, the cost of higher education isn't enough for you already? You can't find a better source of revenue than this?

The other is about the IRS saber rattling about individuals failing to report IRAs properly.

Really? Is that the way it's gonna be under the Obama administration? Our IRA's tanked when the economy did. Our retirements have been pretty much lost, and now the tax man is going to come sniffing around looking for more money.

You can't find a better place to concentrate you enforcement efforts than this? REALLY?

As usually the king hunts down the peasants while our lords and masters rob the treasury blind.

"Change" my ass.

Review: Cannon DC320 Camcorder

Utter fail. Discs don't initialize properly, can't be titled or finalized. "Playback Software" for PC isn't available in the download library.

If you're content to be able to playback your videos on the camera, and on the camera only, go for it. You can always buy an AV cable and preserve your memories on tape by VCR. But if you live in the 21st century you might want to find a camera that doesn't try to lock your files away in a proprietary format that your PC or DVD player can't read.

If you do buy this piece of garbage, or God help you, if you already have...

READ THE ENTIRE MANUAL BEFORE RECORDING ANYTHING THAT MATTERS TO YOU OR YOUR BABY VIDEOS WILL BE LOCKED UP IN THE STUPID CAMERA.

USE ONLY RECOMMENDED DISCS.

If it's too late, and you've already stored a years worth of baby pictures on discs that didn't initialize properly, well... it sucks to be you.

There's no excuse for storing data in this fashion. Data is a string of 1's and 0's. It SHOULD be recordable on any DVD-RW disc. But for some reason this isn't the case with this camera.

F. Do not buy.