So very rude that I will masticate it.

Angerface was accusatory and wanted me to feel guilty for modifying a device I personally own and am not using for commercial purposes.

I grew bored of his company, though it amused me at first. So I sought to replace him with a batch of videos that I intended to chop into small pieces. You probably already know, but if you don’t, there’s a moving images collection at The Internet Archive where you can obtain legal copies of public domain video of various sorts.

So I looked at a handful of selections and soon found Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop short, “Minnie the Moocher,” complete with live intro of Cab Calloway and his Orchestra. Not only an amazing performance of a really great piece of music, not only a great work of animation by Fleischer studios, but we get to meet her parents who are apparently immigrants prone to transforming into Victrolas. Into the grinder it went.

a newsreel of Eleanor Roosevelt telling a joke at some function
an out-of-context public access green-screen fashion show where they never drew in the background and which was hosted by an awkward looking teenage girl
a speech by former President George W. Bush.
and a Lego mini-fig stop-motion zombie movie.

After downloading, converting, chopping them to peices, I am somewhat, though not completely, pleased. The videos cycle through at about one every two to three seconds; it’s quite dizzying to have George Bush barely begin to make one of his stupid faces before being replaced by an image of a flower trying to force-feed Betty Boop some vile crap on a spoon. Dizzying, but amusing.
Anyhow, probably, Angerface still doesn’t approve.

I only use Linux for recreational purposes in the privacy of my own home, officer.

If you give a man a Linux kernel….
Of course, this is all educational and has rendered the entire device non-functional and I’ll have to restore from backup because this officially Does/Did Not Work. Really.

OK, so it turns out that it was my Linksys WRT310nV2 router all along. Not really sure why, but it was preventing my Buffalo Linkstation LS-XHL from performing DNS resolutions, and Akismet was therefore unable to consult with the mothership.
I upgraded the Cisco (Linksys) WRT310n to the DD-WRT, which I’d been meaning to do for a long time anyway, and the problem is magically solved.

DD-WRT is pretty damn amazing, really. With this free, open-source, upgrade, the Linksys is now much more capable and with a more powerful and modern web interface.
Strange that the commercial administrative interface was so poor in comparison.

Is it me or is my web site faster? Could the default router image on the WRT310n really have nerfed my entire operation?

WHAT? And now the BitTorrent engine in the Linkstation is functioning? Really, I just assumed it was broke for reasons of being crap; apparently it was the router all along. So my Buffalo can obtain on my behalf now. GO FORTH AND GET ME THINGS!

Anyway, with Akismet back in charge of moderating my comments, I’ve turned the comment feature back on. All two of you who are likely to post such a thing may do so now.

Because nothing is more romantic than a Cisco CCIE proctored exam, am I right ladies?

Tom’s home was foreclosed: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of its vacancy was signed by the bank, the property management company, and the Utica police.

For a week or more we noticed there was a large dumpster in the driveway of our neighbor’s home and he was nowhere to be seen. Its a tough time in the Detroit area and these things happen. A property management sticker, the housing equivalent of a cadaver’s toe-tag, hung from the front door and the lights started turning on and off with the precision that only a collection of timed switches can provide*.     Shortly thereafter Heather began noticing a cat. It was jet black, and was normally laying under the tree in the front yard or sitting on the porch. In the days that followed we speculated that, perhaps, this was just a neighborhood cat that Tom had been feeding and it was visiting the home from habit and hope**. The days turned into a week and still the cat watched us coming and going, a black silhouette with moon eyes shining from the porch every evening; the cat had been abandoned.

You want to read the rest of ‘(Bob) Xavier Cat’ so CLICK HERE!