Need a ctrl-alt-delete within a Windows Remote Desktop Connection? Hit ctrl-alt-end. I wish I'd known that sooner.

Need to reboot a Linux machine that's lost it's hard drives, giving you the unenviable error message:
"I/O Error: /sbin/reboot"?

type the following two commands into the terminal:

echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo "b" > /proc/sysrq-trigger

And I'll be damned, it reboots.

Also good for giggles on fileservers and such; but really only during peak times.

So, I was sitting at the trainstop tonight, on my way home from work, listening to a podcast of Nightline on my iPod, in which they covered the spreading avian flu epidemic and, jumpin' jehosephat, we all gonna die. But I knew that. However, they had sound bites of Chimpy McHitler doing a couple of press conferences, and I'll be damned if he doesn't butcher this one even worse than nuclear. Did you know we're sitting on a pandemic of Èvian Flu? If you've ever wondered what the French were doing to contribute to the end of mankind as we know it, aside from accordion music, now you know.

I swear, the boy's sounding more like a cross between John Wayne and Emily Litella with every passing sentence. In a matter of months, he'll be giving the State of the Union address, and will sign off $200 billion to preserve our natural racehorses.

People, I'd soon shit as look at ya, as my dear departed grandfather was fond of saying to us grandchillens. There's just nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a good ol' blue funk at the beginning of the week. Today, despite being Tuesday, was Monday here in Germany, for all intents and purpose. The long weekend was over, and I enjoyed three days of true sloth, the likes of which I've not enjoyed for quite some time here. Yesterday was the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Re-unification Day, and therefore a holiday. I don't have a television at the moment, so I'm not quite sure how the yokels down in dogpatch celebrated, or if they celebrated. The closest I've heard to someone marking the occasion was a documentary on the Columbine massacre that was on one of the state-run television channels last night; I guess replaying the awe-inspiring "Tear down this wall" speech would've been regarded as sycophantic. They could've maybe just shown the thousands of Pershing II protesters instead of Reagan, just to be fair. I mean, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, there wasn't just bottomless love and gratitude for Reagan here in the 80s; there were also some nay-sayers.

So, 15 years later, what have we got here? The Wessies (West Germans) hate the Ossies (East Germans), the Ossies are all Nazis, the country's being run into the ground by Greens and Socialists, and Rube's got a headache to complement his weird-ass earache. And the beer? Color me unimpressed. Sell me on it, people, it takes more than beer to offset an 80% tax burden. This isn't really blowing my skirt up. Maybe it's time for an "OK, Mr. Gorbatchev, you can put that wall back up" speech, and a new Cold War to stir the drink. Gorby's going to be here in Augsburg on Saturday, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

I'll soldier on. Europe's OK, despite my visceral hatred of cold weather and accordions.

Who do you want to be? I'm pretty happy with who I am, all things considered. I mean, the joints are getting a little too creaky to be right where I want to be. I get earaches a lot. Earaches? When the hell did that start. I seem to recall something about an earache the last time when I was 10 years old, in Washington, watching a Caps game. During a raucous pre-game pillowfight in the hotel, I was blindsided viciously by one of the other running-men, and fell ear-first into the corner of the nightstand. Screaming children, dancing lights before my eyes, and an eardrum gushing blood onto the bed, from what I can remember. But there's a groove for you; I didn't even need alcohol back then to pull the ol', "Hey y'all, watch this!" It just happens naturally to children, without the need for finely-aged and/or -brewed refreshments, like, say, your run-of-the-mill blog meet, with bullwhips and such.

But somehow the earache lain in wait for two-and-a-half decades, ready to pounce. I've been sick for about 3 weeks now, which really isn't like me. Normally, I've got an iron constitution, seeing as over the years I've built up an environment of toxins in my body that's inhospitable to your average germ varmint. To all life, really. The soupy buildup of nicotine, alcohol, and stress toxins in my blood would put the post-Katrina sludge in New Orleans to shame, just wait until the Rube-Tsunami hits, then let's see Curious George wriggle out of the media storm that follows. "Rube: What Went Wrong?"

Yeah, well, enough about that shit. On with the show. I'm not getting any younger, despite the wash of childhood diseases and injuries that may yet wait around the corner on my walk home tonight.

What? The Braves won the division? It's like baseball season is on fast-forward every year. I didn't see a single game since April. Damn.

Man o man, I can't believe they actually did that this year, with that bunch o' bums they were fielding in April. But then, ever since Cox started beating his wife when the team loses, the Bravos seemed to have stepped it up a notch. For Ms. Cox' sake.