Marc’s Mind

Well, the last two years have been…..Interesting.

This is just a quick update to give the site a recent post and start to get back into the whole blogging thing again.  Things have been extremely hectic for the last two years.  Some good things have happened, some bad, but mostly just busy.  I haven’t wanted to spend much of my “off-time” behind the computer, but things are settling down a bit and I find myself wanting to post more.

I decided to update the site with the latest version of Wordpress, give it a new look and move it to a different server.  The servers that the old site was on were no longer under my direct control.  Moving things around gives me the ability to keep it maintained a bit more than I had been.  The old site also had a few vulnerabilities that let spammers in.  I lost a few posts and a bunch of my posts had hidden link spam in them.  Its all cleaned up now, still a few lost posts.  They weren’t that important or interesting.

I’ve also decided to add a couple more categories in the near future, too.  There are some articles that I want to write about coding as well as contribute some of my code to the OSS community.

Stay tuned…

marc Ego

For various reasons, I had to get a new hand-truck for the office. Since the hand truck at the office is used for a wide variety of things such as moving servers, cases of paper, file cabinets, etc. it needed to have a good weight capacity.

Before I go any further, let me just say that I love Costco. Costco is a wonderful and magical place where you can get just about anything you need for home or office and in huge quantities. They also have a lot of stuff that you didn’t know you needed until you see it at Costco, then you wonder how you managed without it. What I especially love about Costco is their next business day delivery.

So, as I said, I needed a new hand-truck. After perusing through the 20 or so different models they had online, I decided on the RocknRoller Multi-Cart’s. It fit the bill perfectly. 8″ pneumatic tires, a 500 pound weight capacity and 8 different configurations from short funiture dolly, to two wheel hand-truck to short hi-stacker, to, well, you get the idea. It arrived in the office this morning and about 15 minutes later it was all assembled:

It also included a warning on it the tires, and I thank the FSM that it did, too. I’m sure if I hadn’t seen this warning I would have ended up seriously injured or worse. Whew! That was a close one.

marc Ego, Funny

From Wikipedia on Frivolous litigation there is a great quote from Lawyer Danial B. Evans:

[W]hen a judge calls an argument “ridiculous” or “frivolous,” it is absolutely the worst thing the judge could say. It means that the person arguing the position has absolutely no idea of what he is doing, and has completely wasted everyone’s time. It doesn’t mean that the case wasn’t well argued, or that judge simply decided for the other side, it means that there was no other side. The argument was absolutely, positively, incompetent. The judge is not telling you that you were “wrong.” The judge is telling you that you are out of your mind.

Very well put, IMO.

marc Ego

Jessica was surfing today and came across some rather amusing personality tests. Had to share my results.

Everyone should know the answer to this question. What Muppet are you?

You Are Rowlf the Dog

Mellow and serious, you enjoy time alone cultivating your talents. You’re a cool dog, and you always present a relaxed vibe. A talented pianist, you can play almost anything - especially songs by Beethoven. “My bark is worse than my bite, and my piano playing beats ‘em both.”

And of course, what kind of soul are are you?

You Are a Hunter Soul

You are driven and ambitious - totally self motiviated to succeed Actively working to acheive what you want, you are skillful in many areas. You are a natural predator with strong instincts … and more than a little demanding. You are creative, energetic, and an extremely powerful force. An outdoors person, you like animals and relate to them better than people. You tend to have an explosive personality, but also a good sense of humor. People sometimes see you as arrogant or a know it all. You tend to be a bit of a loner, though you hate to be alone. Souls you are most compatible with: Seeker Soul and Peacemaker Soul

Jessica, was, of course a Warrior Soul:

You Are a Warrior Soul

You’re a strong person and sometimes seen as intimidating.
You don’t give up. You’re committed and brave.
Truly adventuresome, you are not afraid of going to battle.
Extremely protective of loved ones, you root for the underdog.

You are picky about details and rigorous in your methods.
You also value honesty and fairness a great deal.
You can be outspoken, intimidating, headstrong, and demanding.
You’re a hardliner who demands the best from themselves and others.

All things considered, they were pretty good assessments for such simplistic tests. Good thing I don’t have anyone working with me in the office right now or they surely would have been a bit freaked out by my laughter when Jessica came back with “Hunter, meet Warrior. Don’t we make the violent pair.”

I’m sure she’ll be pissed if I shared what Muppet she was, though. I’ll leave that up to her to divulge.

marc Ego, Uncategorized

So its that time of year again. The air is crisp, the days are much shorter, and the grass in the back yard is covered in leaves from the neighbor’s trees. Tonight shivering street urchins will be knocking at the door in a variety of costumes begging for candy. My candy. Not yours. Can’t have. Okay, fine, you can have one. Damn kids. And get off my lawn!

But the best part of this time of year is of course the surgical experiments that we perform on the unwilling orange gourds. This year we had a much harder time finding very many good patterns or ideas. Lots of simple traditional ideas, the triangles for eyes, nose and the square toothed grin. No thanks. There were also a lot of “Christian Un-Halloween” patterns like Noah’s Ark and Peace Doves, wtf? That one is a whole different rant that I don’t really want to get into.

At any rate, Jessica and I both found patterns that we liked, and that would be as good or better than previous years. She decided on a werewolf and I decided on one of the Immortals from 300. Both challenging.

After a few cups of coffee (nothing like shaky hands when using exacto knives), and about an hour and a half of carving, here they are (click for bigger):

I botched mine in a couple places, but its not overly noticeable. Scraping out the insides to get mine the right thickness for carving I tore a slight hole just below the nostril. Near the mouth I also hit a soft spot with the exacto knife and cut a bit too much — twice. Can’t really tell once they’re lit, though:

Happy Halloween everyone!

marc Ego