The Blog with No Name

Two my friends got to spend a week in Osaka, Japan, for only $2.50/ night at the Hilton due to an advertising snafu. I’m super jealous envious. Here’s the blog post of how it happened.

We showed up, and had a panicky moment when the guy who was checking us in seemed a little confused and went to speak with his manager for a moment. But then he came back and checked us in, and sent us up to the 34th floor (top floor!) and told us we were on the executive level, which had free breakfast in a private lounge that had a staff of like 15 hyper-enthusiastic people that wanted to do everything for us all the time. To quote Ben as we entered our palatial room “This feels wrong!”

The hotel was so fancy we felt pretty uncomfortable even just walking through the lounge, which had a dress code (business casual) and was always full of suits, models, and even a rapper and his entourage. One night we even saw two geisha and a maiko. Not bad for $20 a week!

Luckeeeee.

“In the United States of America, you have a right to be stupid.” — Sen. John Kerry, speaking against the recent attempt to pass a flag burning amendment.

Some of you may be confused where the Freedom of Stupidity clause is found in the US Constitution. It can be found in the Eleventeenth Amendment, which reads in part, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom to be stupid nor prevent the free exercise thereof.”

(via Best of the Web)

This is why I’m a skeptic of the whole global warming deal (I know the article made the rounds a couple of weeks ago, but I just got around to reading it). Here’s a snippet and the conclusion:

Karlén explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. “For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years,” says Karlén

. . .

In April sixty of the world’s leading experts in the field [climatology] asked Prime Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Considering what’s at stake - either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents - it seems like a reasonable request.

I’m definitely not one who thinks we should rape the planet and move on to the next one — who really is? — but I think there’s good reason to be skeptical of this neo-Earth-First religion that might have some scientific authenticity. At any rate, the minority view on such things should be considered, right?

/flex.

Last Saturday a bunch of my friends and I went to a gun range and shot a bunch of guns in celebration of a friend’s birthday. We had several guns we rented, but I made a point of renting the Smith and Wesson 500 Magnum as a little birthday present for myself. It looked like this:

It doesn’t look that intimidating in the picture, but believe me when you held that four-and-a-half pounds of finely crafted steel in your hands and loaded the .50 caliber 400 grain cartridge, you knew you had something extermely scary in your hands. I’ve shot quite a few guns in my lifetime. Heck, in Alaska we had Kids Gun Fair day or something like that where parents dropped the kids off at the local firing range to shoot guns all day. With all the guns I’ve fired, this by far was the scariest gun I’ve ever held in my hands. Of course, the first shot is always the best and easiest because you have no idea what to expect. My first shot was dead on target, and the gun almost propelled itself out of my hands. The gun range became comparatively quiet after that first boom, and I felt a lot of eyes on my back. They knew somebody wasn’t shooting a dinky 9mm. The rest of my shots were fired with fear and trembling. By the second shot, I felt exhausted and shaken — literally! — to the core.

After the gun range, we went to the Tap House, a place in Bellevue with 160 beers on tap, and I found my new favorite beer: the Great Divide Oak Aged Imperial Stout. Motor oil dark, molasses thick, and a taste that puts hair on one’s chest (assuming the drinker is a male, I’m not sure what the side effects are for female drinkers).

I don’t hide the fact that I was a very difficult child and even more difficult teenager. I was stupid, disrespectful, arrogant, and deceitful. Perhaps most teenagers are these things, but a vice multiplied by the world over doesn’t make it any less a vice. During that time my relationship with my parents was stormy at best. My relationship with my dad was probably rockier due to no fault of his own, but the fact that he was the disciplinarian and I was the rebellious son. I am afraid to ask how much frustration and anguish I caused him every time he came home from a long day of work and discovered once again I was disrespecting his wife all the while sucking up the fruits of his labor. I know I would have been deeply frustrated. After I left for college, my relationship with my parents improved, significantly. Though the relationship was still damaged, and I still had a lot of growing to do. I still remember the night when I fully realized what a horrible son I had been. Out of the house as a mostly independent young man trying to find his course in life, my respect and love for my dad has grown signficantly. I am deeply thankful that I have a father like him in my life. In a time when too many father-son relationships are broken beyond repair or simply non-existent, I am truly blessed to have what I have. I count my blessings.

Dad taught my brothers and me many things and led us by an example we probably didn’t appreciate until we got out on our own. It may sound hackneyed to say it — but it is very true — Dad taught us discipline, the value of hard work, and the value of a good education. That list seems so dull and trite, but they are such necessary virtues to do well in society and be able to support a family of my own some day. Those were the virtues he pounded into our thick little skulls. Those were the easy ones to identify and learn. However, there are many sublter ones that I did not appreciate until much later. One of them I think is the lesson to enjoy life and it’s okay to enjoy the fruits of my labor. There’s no shame in earning a comfortable living and spending some of that to enjoy what has been given to me. Of course, this should be done in moderation . . . a lesson I’m still learning. Another virtue I have learned from my father is charity and generosity. Dad gives to others freely and gives to his family freely as well. He could be miserly and manipulative with what he has, but he isn’t. I know that I and many many others have had a much richer life because of that. Probably the most important lesson I’ve learned from my father is his love for his wife. He cherishes his wife, and it shows, sometimes embarrassingly so. He constantly reminded us boys about the virtues of our mom, most notably her cooking, something I appreciate a lot as a non-cooking, poorly fed bachelor. If I am ever married, I hope I can be the kind of husband my dad is.

So, this is for my father. Thanks, Dad, for helping me, sometimes forcing me, to become the man I am today. Thank you for being generous, kind, tough, hard-working, a loving father, and a devoted husband. Thank you for sticking around and seeing us through adulthood. I know I have not been the best son, and I hope you will forgive me for that. I also hope I can be a source of pride for you now and for many years to come.

Remember soccer is the most popular sport in the world. I believe an estimated 30 billion people will watch the World Cup matches over the next few weeks. Now feel sorry for these klutzes.

Al Zarqawi was killed today. 2 500 pound bombs obliterated his safe house.

You’d think after some explosions like that every body in that building would be crushed or blown to bits. However, seeing pictures of Zarqawi’s corpse, it looks like it’s in pretty good shape. Of course I’ve only seen the head, maybe the rest of the body is in a much worse state.

Sixty-two years ago on this day, the Allied Forces launched Operation Overlord: the invasion of Normady. The operation succeeded but at heavy cost. The Allies suffered 200,000 casualties, including over 50,000 deaths, in the next three months. I cannot imagine having the bravery of those men who risked their lives on that horrible morning. I can be grateful and remember their sacrifice for our country and the rest of the world.

Here’s a brief, interesting article talking about possible “what if’s” surrounding D-Day including what if it occurred a year earlier and what if it had failed.

Here is General Patton’s D-Day speech to the troops before the invasion. You certainly won’t hear generals talking like him anymore. One of the better lines:

“Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we’ll have a nation of brave men.”

Indeed.

I decided previously not to make any post commenting on the supposed numerological significance of today. I’m going to stay true to that decision, but let Iron Maiden sing a song about it:

(via The Tangent Universe!)

The third installment in the X-Men franchise is easily the worst of the three, but did anybody really expect it to get any better? Both of the previous installments were probably significantly better than most expectations. I know the second was definitely better than what I expected it to be. However, even though it is the worst, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. It’s just not that great. It’s a pretty forgettable but entertaining movie.

I don’t have too much to say about it. There are some startling new developments in Mutant Land, and I’m guessing this movie had better really be the true last stand because the X Men are almost made into the X Man. I’m guessing there was a conversation like the following during the planning stages:

[Movie exec 1]: The first two movies rocked. The movies were good, the fans were happy, and we made money hand over fist. I think we should kill the franchise off with this one. Go out on a high note, you know? That whole Seinfeld thing. Leave a good taste in people’s mouth.
[Movie exec 2]: Sounds good. Let’s do that. Make it so, Mr. Scriptwriter.
[Mr. Scriptwriter]: Okay.

Later, when the movie was wrapping up there was another conversation that went like this:
[Movie exec 2]: Hrrrmmm. . .I’m not so sure if we should end the franchise yet. We could probably milk this for 10 more installments. We could go to made for TV even.
[Movie exec 1]: Yeah, I’m getting cold feet about this. Let’s keep it going, you know, just in case.
[Mr. Scriptwriter]: But everybody is dead or powerless.
[Movie exec 2]: So?
[Mr. Scriptwriter]: Should we at least change the title to something like “The Last Stand. . .Maybe”?
[Movie exec 1]: No. “The Last Stand” will make people think we are going to end the franchise and come see how it ends. A brilliant marketing movie I must say!
[Movie exec 2]: Yeah! And X Men 4 can be “The End of the Mutants” or something equally apocolyptic.
[Movie exec 1]: Brilliant!
[Mr. Scriptwriter]: Whatever.

What results is a hint at the very end of the movie that the X Men will be back much to our dismay.

If you like action movies and the previous X Men, I’d say this is at least worth a matinee. It’s got a lot of fun mutant action and fights. Though it is pretty creepy with a hot woman goes berzerk and destroys everything. Women. . .

Pros: Mutant action, Wolverine, Ian McKellen, Halle Barry, destruction
Cons: Not as good as the first two, bad script

So, when I broke comments the other day in a last ditch effort to stem the tide of comment spams I was getting, it didn’t work. Somehow the spammers were exploiting a flaw or weakness in Wordpress to put comments straight into my databases, bypassing any obvious php mechanism. At least that’s my somewhat informed analysis is. At the very least, they still were able to spam me to hell and back even with all my comments related php files removed. In laymen’s terms: I managed to make my comments available only to spammers. I can’t tell you how frustrating this was and is. It’s frustrating not only because I have deal with deleting all the spams, but I can’t bear the fact that these spammers are sucking up bandwidth and server horsepower to post their crap. And believe me, it’s crap. Some of the comment spam is extremely sick. Want proof that man is evil by nature? Exhibit A is my comment spam. Case closed. Anyway, the good news is that it seems the Wordpress update plugged the holes because comment spam has dropped from hundreds a day to less than 10 a day. I can handle that.

Recently, I seem to be flooded with technologically related problems. I commisserate with Jeremiah and his recent torments. I know that feeling caused by the corruption of a key file or the sudden death of hard drive. It’s a sick feeling, spawning deep in the stomach. Unrepeatable oaths are often muttered, muted as the astonishment sucks the breath out of you. For me it’s not just that my laptop’s hard drive gave up the ghost without even a death rattle, but a bunch of other issues. I won’t bore you by listing out all the technical problems in my life right now, so suffice it to say I’m in no technological Garden of Eden.

Last night I had this horrible dream that President Bush resigned. I almost started crying and had the beginnings of a panic attack. All I could think was that the country was doomed and would certainly be destroyed by terrorists. Apparently, I was a little behind the times because Bush had already had his first choice for a successor turn down the offer. Who was his first choice? Lance Armstrong. Then I really started panicing.

Then I woke up to a much less frightening reality.