Aaron Weber

Milestones

My RCE2 manual is now longer than 100 pages. That means I’ve done a lot of work recently.

I have driven over 100 miles on my Honda Ruckus (mine’s in black, not red). That’s pretty far, at least for a dedicated urban snob like me. It did that on a little over a gallon of gas.

If you search for evolution on Google, you’ll find two funny things: Ximian Evolution is the second-most-popular kind of Evolution. This means that my employer is successful and popular. And there’s an ad for BibleHelp.org promoting absolutist literal biblical interpretations, which means… well, I’m not sure what it means. I’m not as surprised about the literalism as I am about the incredibly narrow definitions of Christianity– they refer to everyone who has a slightly different interpretation of the bible as “Christian” in quotation marks.

Terrifying, Hilarious, Etc.

Newsskim and Ironic Times are both funny news sites. Have I linked Ironic Times before? It’s more sarcastic than ironic, to be honest, although a lot of news these days does seem to be ironic, even without any commentary. UnfOgged for example, is alternately… well, terrifying and hilarious. Like these SCARY RABBITS.

I admit it. I agree with Dubya on something. He’s done something right: signed a bill proclaiming that prison rape is bad and should be stopped. Just goes to show you, he feels your pain, as he brutally sodomizes our economy and our futures.

Disney Freaks. Cory Doctorow defends them, and he has a good point that they’re not any worse than any other sorts of fans, obsessives or generalized otaku– ski bums, say, or baseball-card collectors. They enjoy it, they’re independent adults, and why the hell not? On the other hand, it’s just a little bit icky for reasons I’m not very good at articulating.

Technical Manual

A friend of mine applied for work at a phone-sex place and sent me the employee orientation manual. Yes, a manual on how to be a phone-sex operator. This is my idea of technical writing! Sure, my Red Carpet Enterprise manual has just broken 100 pages, with no end in sight, but this is… ummm… exciting. I think.

I’ll post excerpts below and more over the next few days.
Continue reading “Technical Manual”

Spam Spam Spam Spam

I’ve gotten the time-traveler spam– apparently a spam-merchant who has gone nuts, or is pretending to have gone nuts, under the pressure of prosecution for spamming. But this one is quite amusing: Professional Relationship Termination Services
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Bridal Power

This entry is dedicated to Licketysplit at Vomitola, in the hope that she has a classy-ass wedding.

Assorted Update

I find I’ve been blogging and exercising less, and interacting with humans more, recently. Probably a good thing, despite the imperceptible loss of muscle tone. So, assorted links: Software development life cycle diagram. For anyone in software, it rings all too true.

NationMaster stats toy. Awesome power!

Now, I’d like to comment on Rasmussen’s note that many religious people do indeed object to non-Christian teachers, and that’s why they have religious schools. My reaction of course is “exactly!” If you have a particular religious agenda (No non-Christians in role-model positions, say) then you should have a religious school, not a legislative movement to impose your religious views on the secular majority.

Now, is there an empirically demonstrable danger to safety and well-being that stems from having homosexuals employed by our state school systems? I doubt it. Iain Murray looks into it further and comes to no conclusion at all.

Moral Consistency

Someone’s taken up the challenge posted by Volokh and seconded by me, to try to present a real reason that homosexuals should be second-class citizens, given that the majority of the objections to homosexuals and homosexuality are religious in nature. Something of an argument, I guess, although not by any stretch of the imagination convincing. Volokh follows up here.

I’ve got the Biggest…

The ToughMan Contest is described by the Wall Street Journal as the “martial arts version of karaoke.” It’s something like boxing, but it’s not regulated as boxing. It’s something like kick-boxing, but it’s not regulated… at all, really. In boxing matches, you get very closely matched opponents who know exactly what they’re doing. In Toughman competitions, you get uneven opponents. Toughman means uneven matches, and brutal, sometimes fatal, outcomes. It’s attracted the attention of state governments and major newsmedia. The WSJ profile of the business focuses on the regulations, the business, and the liabilities — and how something manages to slip through the regulatory cracks designed to prevent it.

Resume

I was recently sent a George W. Bush resume… Reading it, I’m reminded of the Dorothy Parker poem “Resume.” See the extended entry for the actual resume…

These are the kinds of unbalanced accusations that I like to see, despite recent discussion of the harmful effects of that trend. Let’s see the lefties quit pulling punches. I don’t mean to get untruthful– there may be a few errors in that resume, and I corrected at least one myself. I mean, let’s start talking about corruption, mistakes, class war, self-interest, ethics committees, felony records. Let’s drag the kids into this, let’s drag the cousins into it.

Oh wait, we did, and nobody cares because he looks good in a flight suit. Shitbird.
Continue reading “Resume”

Scootering

You ever wonder why people soup up their underpowered cars or bikes? Because tinkering is fun. You could buy the off-the-shelf power. But stock is boring. Much better to buy cheap and spend that much again to upgrade and modify. The modification is the whole point– not the end product, but the difference between the end product and what you started with. You could buy a faster bike or computer, but overclocking holds a special appeal, just like scooter tuning. I get annoyed when people make fun of the type-R stickers and so forth, even if I acknowledge that they’re silly at best and trashy at worst. Performance tuning (don’t call it “ricing,” a term which is racist as well as just generally insulting) is, essentially, a hack, and therefore worthwhile, even if, and often because, it has no real purpose.