Yeah, I own an iPhone, but this Samsung ad poking fun at iPhone hipsters is hilarious:
dispatch from castle frostbite.
(looks up from breakfast)
Oh, hi there, imaginary Intertubes pals!
I’ve been kind of sparse on the Twitters and the Interblogs for the last week or two. To those who got concerned enough to check up on me via email: NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. I AM FINE. Just a little busy with Real Life, that’s all. I was most emphatically NOT kidnapped by a gang of rogue Girl Scouts and locked in the basement dungeon in their troop’s secret HQ, fed a diet of Twizzlers and flat Mountain Dew, and forced to crank out reams of Twilight fanfic. NO, SIR.
The Munchkin Wrangler wordsmithy has a new primary computational device—a store-bought Gateway box running Windows 7. When I put Robin’s machine together a few months back, I ordered a parts kit from TigerDirect and put together a really fast budget rig with a quad-core processor for under $400. I wanted to repeat the process for my new machine, but our Windows and Office family pack licenses have been distributed among the existing computers in the house, and the added cost for even an OEM license of Windows 7 Home Premium would have made a parts kit system just as expensive as (or only very slightly less so than) an off-the-shelf store computer. So I went out and bought the ready-made solution, which means that the Nerd Club will be by very shortly to collect my club card. (“You bought a STORE BOX? And it’s not even running LINUX? FOR SHAME.”) The new box is a Core i3, one of the new Sandy Bridge processors, and much faster than anything else I’ve owned so far. I took it home, replaced the wimpy 300W PSU with a 500W Antec unit I had in the parts bin, and stuck a GeForce GTX 460 into the PCI-E slot. It runs like a Geiger counter near Fukushima, and it’s so quiet that you have to actually put your ear against the case to hear that it’s on.
(Plus, it has running lights along the front of the case, and the Gateway logo lights up. That’s how you know it’s a fast rig, you see.)
(TL;DR: New computer, yay!)
Things at the Castle are hectic and in a permanent state of low-level stress with occasional spikes of OMGWTFBBQ—in other words, business as usual. But hey! Next month the winter will start full throttle, and then I get to put “Snow Removal” on my daily plate of chores as well. Grown-ups have SO MUCH FUN. They get to do WHATEVER THEY WANT. It’s not fair!
(Lyra and Quinn have discovered that delightful phrase despite only a very nebulous grasp of its meaning. To them, “It’s not fair” means “I don’t agree with it”, which—come to think about it—is also how a lot of grown-ups understand it.)
Anyway: the state of affairs here at Castle Frostbite. Not captured by girl scouts—busy as fuck—new computer—looking forward to shoveling snow (“New England Home Gym: FREE HOME DELIVERY”)—life’s not fair. That’s all for right now. Carry on, then.
11/11.
zombie borders, risen from the grave.
There’s a Books-A-Million in the location where our local Borders closed doors a while back. I went in there today for the first time—they opened a week or two ago—and the experience was a little eerie.
The place looks almost exactly like the dead Borders. I’m fairly sure they even recycled most of the signage in the store, because it has that familiar dark red Borders color. Everything is in the spot where it was in the old Borders—the kid books, the YA section, the magazines, the paper-and-pen stuff. They even reused the old cafe furniture for the new Joe Muggs cafe that’s now in place of the old Seattle’s Best Coffee. I swear, it was like stepping back in time a few months. The only difference I noticed was the Christian Fiction section, which is about four times the size of the one Borders used to have. Oh, and there’s now a two-aisle assortment of Bibles. Other than that, the assortment mirrors that of the old Borders…with the exception that the shelves of the Books-A-Million are fully stocked.
On the way out, I bumped into one of the managers, and I was surprised to see that the recycling of Borders stuff even extends to the managerial staff—she was one of the managers at Borders.
So it looks like we have our Borders back in West Lebanon. In a fashion, anyway.
well, as long as your intentions are pure.
Back in college—meaning “a few years ago” for me—my English teacher was a pleasant older woman who was married to an Iranian national. I had many discussions with her on politics, education, and the general state of affairs in this country.
Once, we were talking about the different mindsets in the Middle East, and the American tendency to go into a place and expect the folks there to think like we do. She told me of a student from an Arab country she once had. One time he didn’t show up for an exam. When she later marked his grade down for the absence, he protested.
“You weren’t there, so I had to mark down your grade,” she told him.
“I was at the library and I was running late. I meant to come to class.”
“Well, you still weren’t there, so I really have no choice. You missed the exam.”
“But I meant to come,” he insisted, quite upset that the teacher wouldn’t change her decision.
When she later discussed the incident with her husband, he explained that it’s a cultural thing. He explained that in the student’s native culture, intent is as important as–and sometimes more important than–results. He missed the exam, but his intentions had been good, so to him, the teacher marking down his grade was profoundly unfair.
I find that this explanation helps me understand the ability of so many people to dismiss the negative effects of certain policy decisions. In some ways, they have adopted the same sort of mindset that intent trumps results. That’s how we end up with rising food prices because so much of the country’s farmers are now growing government-subsidized corn to turn into fuel ethanol, for example. The intent was to help the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The results are the aforementioned rising global food prices because of all the crop acreage that is now re-purposed for fuel. (The net result for the environment has been negative in the end, because the agricultural runoff from the nitrogen fertilizers needed for all the corn has a bad impact on the Gulf of Mexico.)
That’s how we ended up with egregious systematic abuses of power like RICO and asset forfeiture excess–because the intent of the law was good (reducing or eliminating the negative effects of drugs on society), the people who voted that kind of stuff into place can hold fast to it because the actual results of the policy are not as important as its intent. Conversely, measures specifically designed to eliminate the negative results of the War on Drugs don’t stand a chance of success with the same crowd if the intent of the measure is perceived wrongly. (“You want to make cannabis legal to stop stuffing the jails with non-violent drug offenders? Are you insane? What kind of message does that send?”)
How many public policy measures have been kept in place even though they have achieved the opposite results of those desired because they were well-intended? The list is a long one, and it’s not limited to only liberal or only conservative hobby horses. Gun control, welfare, drug policy, defense policy, education, health care…it seems that too many politicians (and voters) of either party are more interested in doing what sounds right than what’s actually effective. The system is set up to favor the sound bite and the “common sense solution” because it gets more votes—and is more defensible in a campaign debate—than the ideas that are focused on producing results without giving a handy “perceived intent” adapter for the proponent.
That’s how voters can re-elect a guy accused of taking bribes or diddling interns—because his public policy efforts have the proper intent, his private transgressions are irrelevant. And that’s why they can dismiss the good results achieved by the Other Guy’s public policy efforts—because those policies don’t have the proper intent, their results are irrelevant.
lunch at wendy’s, 1976.
Playing with the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone.
a handy opinion table for both the occupy and tea party protests.
iMessage: like texting for grown-ups.
So Robin has an iPhone 4S, I got her iPhone 4 as a hand-me-down, and I updated the iPad to iOS5, so all three devices can bounce iMessages between each other.
iMessage, for those not familiar with it, is the new Instant Messenger feature built into iOS5. It’s designed to be an alternative to SMS, and while it works only between devices that run iOS5, it’s a no-cost alternative to SMS. If all the people you routinely message are on iOS5, you can drop the SMS package from your cell phone’s price plan altogether and save a chunk of change every month.
iMessage is my favorite iOS5 feature by far. When I roomed with Tamara, we used to joke around about the pointlessness of SMS. (“Why, I can communicate with another cell phone user via text! It’s almost as efficient as MAKING A CALL! Revolutionary!”) And prior to iMessage, I’ve never sent a single SMS to anyone. (This is mainly due to the fact that all my phones thus far had keypads, and tapping out a sentence with the number keys is an exercise in swear word generation for me.) But now with the iPhone? Holy cow, does this ever work well.
The nice thing about iMessage is that it fits exactly the brief kind of status update or information I share with my wife throughout the day–stuff like “I’m on the way home”, or “Stop and pick up milk”. It’s the sort of data for which email is too clunky and voice-calling is overkill. iMessage fits the niche perfectly. It’s instant, fuss-free, and provides discrete notifications. Email does that too, but you have to start the email program, address the message, type it out, and send it through the respective mail systems, which is a bit more involved than just tapping the message out and hitting “send” for instant direct delivery.
Yeah, SMS has done that for a long time, but SMS plans cost money. If we had phones on different platforms, we’d have no choice but to buy an SMS package for each phone for the same convenience. With iMessage, we get the capability thrown in with the device and OS, without any monthly fees, and we have the ability to send pictures and videos the same way as well.
(The saleswoman at the Verizon counter was a little crimped that Robin knew about the iMessage feature and turned down the offer of adding a $30/month “Family Unlimited” texting package to each account.)
So yeah, I’m probaby sounding like a breathless Apple fanboi, but iMessage is really turning out to be a “how did we live without this?” sort of feature for us. It has all the convenience of instant messaging without the cost of SMS or the need for setting up and maintaining separate IM clients on the phones, and it has made it much more convenient and easy for us to stay in touch during the day, when phone calls are not a option much of the time.
(Yes, I’m aware of Google Talk/Chat which lets you do the exact same thing on Android ZOMG!, but platform war debates make me feel all stabby. It’s a phone, not a religion, and there is no One True Way. We just happen to have–and like–our iPhones, and with a huge chunk of change invested in a lot of specialized apps–we’re not likely to switch to Android any time soon. If your Android phone does the same thing as iMessage, wonderful.)
that zombie squirrel story.
Because today is Halloween and all, I thought I’d repost the little Zombie Squirrel short story I wrote in March for one of Herr Doktor Wendig’s writing challenges.
(Yes, I’m recycling my own content today. Shameful! The nerve!)
Anyway, here it is, for those of you who may have missed it back in March. For Christmas, I’ll write an all-new, seasonally appropriate short story. Maybe zombie reindeer?
Seeds
by Marko Kloos
I killed that damn squirrel for the first time right after breakfast.
I knew it was a killing shot the moment I pulled the trigger. I’ve shot a thousand of the little bastards, and when you shoot one in the head with a .22, it’s usually dead on the spot.
I say “usually”, because this one was a statistical aberration. I saw him fall off the bird feeder in that uncoordinated head-over-tail manner of a squirrel that’s already dead before it hits the ground. I put the rifle back into its corner by the kitchen window, got on my working gloves, and went out to retrieve the carcass for a trash can burial. But when I got out to the bird feeder, the squirrel was gone. All I found in the snow was a tiny spot of blood and a little crater where the body had landed.
Sometimes I miss a shot, even though it’s only twenty yards from the kitchen window to the bird feeder, and Dad’s old .22 has a scope that lets you track wildlife in the next area code. I was pretty sure I had hit that little seed thief’s head right below his tufted ear, but I chalked it up to a bad shot. I had probably just nicked his skull and stunned him briefly. I shrugged and walked back to the warm house.
#
An hour later, he was back.
I had no doubt that it was the same squirrel. He had a bullet wound below his left ear, and the fur on the side of his head was black with dried blood. He stood at the bottom of the bird feeder again, swaying like a punch-drunk boxer, and started eating the seeds the birds had dropped.
I felt bad for winging him and leaving the poor guy in that state for an hour. I aimed for the center of his body to give myself the biggest margin for a miss, and resolved to get the scope’s zero checked as soon as possible. Then I pulled the trigger.
This one was a clean hit without question. The bullet bowled him over in a flurry of bushy fur and spilled bird seed. He twitched once and lay still beside the feeder. Pop, smack, good night.
Except when I walked out to get the carcass, he was gone. Again.
This time, the blood spot in the snow was larger. As before, the squirrel was gone. All I found was a small tuft of fur with some clotted blood on it.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, and looked up. The squirrel was dead, no doubt, so I guessed that some opportunistic raven or owl had claimed a quick free meal. But there were no birds flying away, with or without dead squirrels in their grip.
I walked back to the house and put the rifle away again, vaguely feeling like the victim of a prank.
#
I got a lot of squirrels every winter. Once a clan of them had found the feeders, they wouldn’t rest until all the seed was gone. I had to cull two or three every week as long as the feeders were up. When I saw another bushy-tailed silhouette under the feeder shortly after lunch, I got out the .22 and opened the kitchen window, ready to increase the day’s tail count to two. Then I looked through the scope.
Head wound with dried blood: check. Bullet hole in the midsection: check, sort of. I couldn’t see his belly because he had his back turned, but there was no missing the exit wound on his back, or the grey intestines bulging out of the hole in his dirty, blood-matted fur.
I was so freaked out that I missed my shot. The bullet kicked up the snow beside him, but the little bastard didn’t run. Instead, he turned his head, still chewing, and looked at me with an eye that had the milky opaqueness of a piece of quartz.
I worked the bolt, put a new round into the chamber with shaking fingers, and aimed again.
Crack.
This one hit him in the neck. He did the same thing as before: fell over, flopped around for a second, and then lay still. I reloaded and put another bullet into his body, for insurance. This time, I kept watching his furry little carcass through the scope.
He was properly dead for about thirty seconds: limp, motionless, and very much carcass-like. Then he twitched again, got to all fours like a drunk picking himself up out of a gutter after a three-night bender, and staggered off toward the nearby tree line.
“What in the fucking fuck?” I asked nobody in particular.
#
It was dark outside when I sat down at the kitchen table with my dinner. There was something moving out by the bird feeder, so I turned on the exterior lights.
The dead-but-not-dead squirrel was back underneath the feeder. He didn’t look so good. In fact, he looked a lot like a stuffed toy mauled by an energetic Rottweiler. His fur was clumped with blood and sticking out at untidy angles, and it looked like he was wearing most of his intestines draped around his legs and lower body.
At that point, I was wishing I had kept Dad’s shotgun instead of the scoped .22.
I opened the window and took aim. He stopped chewing his seeds and looked at me with milky eyes that were as dead as a pair of pearls. Then he let out a shriek, and I dropped the rifle.
It wasn’t the high-pitched chik-chik-chik I’ve heard from squirrels a thousand times before. It was a shrill, piercing, tortured shriek that was anger, hatred, and exasperation all rolled into one. Stop that shit, or there will be trouble, the shriek said.
I closed the window and put the rifle away. Then I went to the liquor cabinet and had half a highball glass of single malt.
#
Later that evening, I called my brother.
“You still want Dad’s old .22?” I asked him. “The one with the big scope?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “Why, are you getting rid of it?”
“I need to clear out some stuff. I’m thinking about moving.”
“Oh, yeah? Where to?”
“Some place without a lot of trees. I’ve had it with the damn squirrels.”
-END-
that’s some pretty chewy rain for october.
So how much snow did we get? Apparently, more than this place has ever gotten before Halloween, and by a fair amount.
We had about six to eight inches of snow on the ground on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, it was the kind of wet, heavy snow that is very difficult to clear with the snowblower. Fortunately, the wife has a new AWD vehicle, and a neat garage tent for it. That means she had to do no scraping whatsoever, and I didn’t have to bundle up and try to clear the driveway before she left for work on Sunday morning. The Subaru does much better in this kind of mess than her old Neon did, which is to be expected.
(The Grand Marnier actually does fairly well in the snow despite only being a front wheel drive vehicle. It’s a heavy car, with a big cast-iron engine sitting right on top of the driving axle, and with my leet drivezorz skillz, I can usually make it up our driveway.)
So yeah: ominous start into the snow season here in Upper Cryogenica. But the wife got to work on time, we didn’t lose power, and all the snow will be gone by mid-week because temps are going to be in the mid-50s.
