KGB Report

Phrases never heard in our household. >Cough<

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:51:00 +0000

And since we're on a roll...

Muphry's Law...

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:01:00 +0000

...also known as Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation: "any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror."

Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe

Zing!

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:01:00 +0000

Yep. Reality must have a liberal slant.

Don't it always seem to go...

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:01:00 +0000

...that things change, and 40 years later, it's different, but still superb...

(Thanks to the Covert Comic for triggering my ADD.)

Mea culpa

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:23:00 +0000

You're an engineer if:

All your sentences begin with "what if".

The only jokes you receive are through e-mail.

You can name the titles of at least six Star Trek episodes from four different series in five different decades.

You have no life and can prove it mathematically.

You can type 70 words a minute but can't read your own handwriting.

You drive a Saturn with a "Beam me up Scotty" bumper sticker.

You have Dilbert comics displayed anywhere in your work area.

You have a habit of destroying things in order to see how they work.

You see nothing odd in spending five hours optimizing your code to produce a one second improvement in program execution time.

You watch ice dancing and you say, "Wow, the physics of that is amazing!"

Each pocket on your person contains a device which emits sounds.

You've spent a lunch hour wondering how a Heisenberg compensator would be calibrated.

You save the power cords from broken appliances.

You find the t-shirt "2b || !2b = ?" hysterical.

You have used coat hangers and duct tape for something other than hanging coats and taping ducts.

You envy your boss' cubicle because his desk has more room under it for sleeping.

You remember the passwords to three dozen systems on five different platforms but don't recall what you had for breakfast.

Turning on your television requires at least five steps which must be performed in a specific sequence in less than three seconds.

You spent an afternoon designing a schema for your shopping list, which is both well-formed and parsable.

You know the word "spool" is an acronym.

You've spent a weekend and $79 in Radio Shack parts to repair a $5 radio.

Your four basic food groups are caffeine, fat, salt, and chocolate.

Your favorite James Bond character is Q, and your childhood heroes were Montgomery Scott and Barney Collier.

You have a monotone wardrobe purchased via mail order catalogs since your appearance only bothers other people and therefore is not worth optimizing.

Just saying-

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:01:00 +0000

The "V" remake on ABC last night was extremely well done, with better acting and production values than the original.

That said, doesn't anyone find it ludicrous that one of the reasons the Visitors came to Earth was to obtain water? Really? They can eradicate 65 incurable human diseases, propel themselves across interstellar space with an anti-gravity drive, have ships whose interiors look like Mall of America on steroids, and yet haven't figured out how to bang two hydrogen and one oxygen atom together? Good lord, we've been producing water in space since the Apollo era.

And if the need for water is a ruse, it's a pretty lame one. It reminds me of Paul Simm's marvelous piece from The New Yorker.

Geek humor

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:01:00 +0000

Oxymorons of the day

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:52:00 +0000

From Elayne Boosler:

Honor killing
Jobless recovery
Palin book
Democratic leadership
Republican values
Financial stability
Trusted investment
Home values
Retirement savings
Health care
Pretty ugly

Signs of the Apocalypse, #832

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:47:00 +0000

Professional sports is such a character-building activity...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Clash of the Cretins

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Dark Confession

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:33:00 +0000

I like Windows 7.

The day after its official release I did a clean install on a relatively new Toshiba laptop, and I've been pleasantly surprised.

I downloaded the installation files from Microsoft. Unlike some published reports, the process was smooth and without incident. Running the install procedure took under an hour, but bear in mind I chose the easy path, wiping out the existing Vista system and data files. That figure doesn't include the time required to run Windows Update and obtain the updates that have already been released for the new OS, but overall, it was painless.

My impressions on 7's performance may be due more to the hardware configuration of the new machine. It has an Intel P8600 dual cpu processor running at 2.4 GHz and with four gigabytes of memory, which is double the cpus, processing speed and memory of my five year old Acer Travelmate laptop.

The machine goes from power off to the login screen in 72 seconds, and is usable in under two minutes. I haven't played with hibernation and sleep modes yet, but the under two minute boot-to-usability makes me happy. The old laptop running XP Pro took a good six minutes to get up to speed. Even given the extra muscle of the new machine, it looks as if Microsoft did improve the boot process significantly.

I've experienced no hangs or crashes. The only time the CPUs hit 100% is when Mozy Backup does one if its intensive file system scans. Embedded Flash videos- which used to leave a pool of molten silicon under my old machine- run perfectly, impeded only by local network bottlenecks.

I've had no application compatibility problems of which to speak. I was able to get stuff transferred quickly to the new machine by transferring files from the old system's external USB backup drive.

Watch the Windows 7 videos that come with the machine, and/or go online and review the new features. There've been some nifty user interface changes. You need to become accustomed to the new taskbar. The automatic windows resizing features are nifty, and the interface is more or less the same as Vista, only faster. The frequency of those annoying security checks is far less; compared to Vista, you'll hardly notice them.

I really like the new "library" feature, which allows you to aggregate different folders into a single folder. For example, my Pictures folder includes a half dozen directories from two different machines, all in one convenient location.

So, I give a qualified thumbs up to switching to Windows 7. Check your computer manufacturer's website for compatibility information. If your machine's more than two years old, there's a distinct possibility it won't run Windows 7 very well.

If you've been putting off buying a new machine until Windows 7's arrival- you're good to go. I generally buy laptops at new Windows releases. XP was tolerable, Vista was a nightmare- Windows 7 is the least troublesome transition I've experienced.

They really do work well together...

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:01:00 +0000

Try JibJab Sendables� eCards today!

Ancient history

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:08:00 +0000

The only photograph of me as a reporter for The Daily Messenger in Homestead, PA. My guess it's from early 1972. The late Earle Wittpenn hired me in November, 1971, shortly after I turned 17. Note the manual typewriter and the ancient telephone. Also note the sideburns and the thickness of the glasses. Glasses were actually made of glass- no composites back then. In 1973, I became city editor of the Messenger and two weeklies, the Squirrel Hill News and the East End Tribune. I think I still probably hold the distinction of being the youngest city editor of a daily newspaper. It helped that I was willing to edit eight newspapers for $125 a week. Which also explains why I didn't stay in journalism.

From the 1971 Homestead Senior High School yearbook. I was editor of the Hi-Steader; Ira Handelsman was the sponsor. Ira taught me sophomore English, Russian I & II, introduced me to the wonders of James Thurber, E.B. White, Saki (H.H. Munro), O. Henry (William Syndney Porter) and Jack Finney, among many others, and suggested that since the first drafts of my assignments needed no editing, I should consider newspaper writing.

Top Ten Northwest Airlines Pilot Excuses

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:29:00 +0000

From The Late Show with David Letterman:

10. Bunch of fat guys seated on the right side of the plane made us vector east.

9. We get paid by the hour.

8. Mapquest always takes you the long way, am I right, people?

7. Tired of that show-off Sullenberger getting all the attention.

6. You try steering one of those airplanes after eight or nine cocktails.

5. Wanted to catch the end of the in-flight movie.

4. Activating autopilot and making occasional P.A. announcements is exhausting.

3. According to our map, we only missed our target by half an inch.

2. For a change, we decided to send luggage to the right city and lose the passengers.

1. Thought we saw balloon boy.

Hee hee

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:30:00 +0000

Try JibJab Sendables� eCards today!

Anniversary

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:01:00 +0000

I've written a half-dozen eulogies for pets and friends over the years. It's the first anniversary of Beanie's death, and I find I still can't write one for her.

Perhaps it's because she's still here. There are three pictures of her on the wall in front of my desk. A box with her vet records sits next to the filing cabinet. Her ashes are in a drawer less than two feet from me.

Ours wasn't a verbal relationship, anyway. We spent hours walking the paths in South Park. We'd share a white pizza with bacon on the living room floor and listen to 70s music. I'd fall asleep on the floor and wake up with her beside me, the thump of her tail welcoming me to consciousness before my eyes had focused.

I won't recount the details of those instances in the past year when I felt something warm at my feet and looked down to see an empty floor. Or felt a wet nose and warm breath on my ear as I drove past the paths we walked in the park, despite the car's empty back seat. Or the dreams her walking on a leaf-covered trail, not looking back, pausing occasionally to allow me to catch up.

When it's time for me to join her, our ashes will be commingled and scattered in the woods next to that trail. Then it will be someone else's chore to produce the appropriate words.

We'll have other things to occupy us, and all the time we didn't have here.

It's a crime.

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:06:00 +0000

If you don't understand why those of us who work in IT get irritated by the unrealistic computer displays in television dramas, just imagine your reaction if a character in CSI were to pompously announce the victim's blood type was "chocolate chip, with a hint of vanilla." Which is the hematological equivalent of the "Reversed Internet Protocol Process" above. From that point on, you've lost me. If you can't take the time to learn the format and range of valid IP addresses, I'm not going to buy your exotic forensic frippery, so save the condescending smiles and knowing nods, you imbeciles.

And we won't even mention routinely enlarging low-resolution security videos to determine the brand of wristwatch the suspect is wearing or count the number of freckles on his face. Know what you get when you enlarge a low-res picture?

"Oh, but they enhance it," the apologists cry. As my grandfather used to say, you can't polish a turd. In this context, "enhance" means "fabricate," and it has no place in a drama that is supposed to demonstrate the realistic application of science and police procedures. It's only a television show? Tell it to the prosecutors who have seen hung juries and the guilty acquitted because of the very real "CSI Effect."

One of the producers of the show used to work on Star Trek, which explains a great deal. But this isn't the 24th century. There are no Heisenberg Compensators in 2009, and reversing the polarity doesn't do anything except fry the power supply.

So sit on your tachyon beam emitter and spin, Skippy.

Photo of the day

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:54:00 +0000

I suspect most couples would prefer Viagra, just for tactical considerations.

Wow- it's Whit Bissell's birthday again!

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:01:00 +0000

Michael Landon and Whit Bissell in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957),
and Bissell as Mr. Lurry, manager of tribble-infested Deep Space Station K-7
in the original Star Trek episode The Trouble With Tribbles (1967).

Whit Bissell (October 25, 1909-March 6, 1996) was an alumnus of the Carolina Playmakers, the prestigious amateur-theatrical arm of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He entered films with 1943's Holy Matrimony, instantly establishing his standard screen characterization of fussy officiousness. Twice as busy on TV as he was in theatrical films, Bissell was starred as Woodrow Wilson on a 1965 episode of the Profiles in Courage anthology and was co-starred on the futuristic adventure series Time Tunnel. Lovers of low-budget 1950s horror films have a special place in their hearts for Whit Bissell's brace of "mad scientist" portrayals in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957); it was in the latter film that the admirably straight-faced Bissell uttered the immortal line: "Answer me! I know you have a civil tongue in your mouth-I sewed it there myself!" For his contributions to science fiction films, Bissell received a life career award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films in 1994. He served on the Screen Actors Guild board of directors for nearly two decades. - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lost in translation

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:01:00 +0000

I dunno. The broadcast television redub kinda ruins it.

See ya, Soupy...

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:05:00 +0000

The ineffable Soupy Sales passed away last night. The 83-year-old entertainer's 50s and 60s programs were ostensibly kiddie shows, but just listen to the crew in this clip. It also explains why people my age have an affinity for Craig Ferguson.

Goodbye, Vic Mizzy and Dr. No

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:02:00 +0000

Composer Vic Mizzy, who wrote the distinctive, memorable theme songs for the classic 1960s absurdist comedies The Addams Family and Green Acres, died last Saturday.

Joseph Wiseman, the first Dr. No and the prototype for Dr. Evil.

Happy birthday, Annette!

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:43:00 +0000

Annette is 67 today.

Definition of the day

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:29:00 +0000

Expert- from the adjective pert, meaning "lively" or "effective," and the prefix ex-, meaning "not."
-The Covert Comic

You don't want to know...

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Fall morning

kgbarkes@gmail.com (Kevin) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:10:00 +0000

Looking out from my office window: Fayette City, the Monongahela River, and Allenport.