At the moment, I'm hard at work transforming a 15-pound paperweight into a healthy, productive workstation. It's a Sony VAIO PCG-F190 laptop, with a big, fat "Made for Windows 98" sticker on it. Unfortunately, it's completely incapable of running that operating system, at least if the requisite accessories are running, like firewalls and antivirii.

So now, I've got 6 GB of disk space, 640KB of low memory and, God help us, another 63MB of XMS/LIM-EMS distinction to deal with. It'll be interesting to see if my suppositions are correct, namely that modern computing environments destroy productivity through user-attention overloading.

Basic Setup
Getting the computer up and running was easier than I thought it would be. DOS installation was breeze, as awas Windows for Workgroups 3.11, fine piece of sofware that it is. The only problem I had was getting the PCMCIA network card going. The card itself wasn't the problem, per se. The problem was getting the PCMCIA subsystem going. Card Services under DOS is handled by software from SystemSoft, which incidentally forbids redistribution and doesn't offer it themselves. Fuck 'em, that's why God made restore CDs from other manufacturers. My real-mode memory management chops were also a little rusty, seeing as I couldn't get all the hardware drivers loaded along with DOSKEY, MSCDEX, and the rest loaded without sacrificing 50K of low memory

So, let's take a look at the tools I've assembled for the job, out of the distant past, are up to the task.

DOS 6.22
The Cadillac of real-mode operating systems. It contains as much cruft as will actually fit into 640KB of memory, plus or minus a few UMBs. With DOS 6, Microsoft also introduced their very first overtly user-hostile application: MEMMAKER. It was a utility that purportedly harvested unused blocks of upper memory, meaning those bytes between 640K and 1MB, for use by memory-resident programs and drivers. What it actually did was assign addresses in use by network cards and SCSI adapters to SMARTDRV, the disk-cache program, to use as scratch-paper. Hilarity ensued.

WordPerfect 5.1
Now we're talking pro-duct-ivity, buddy. You can crank out more pages per hour when you can only get 80 characters on a line, you know. And I always thought that kerning was for pussies.

Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus is a gimme. It was the standard that defined what "standard" came to mean in the computer industry: A soulless monopoly that crushes innovation, while fixing prices to the point where buying a software title that amounted to a modern TableView widget for $495.00 actually seemed reasonable. Choice only entered the conversation when deciding whether to pay 500 smackers for the agile 2.2 version, or 500 clams for the flashy 16-vibrant-color VGA-goodness, not to mention ginormous 156MB memory addressing capability of version 3. At UPS, we couldn't believe our embarrassment of riches, and installed both on all machines.

I've been trying out Release 2.2 for a day or so now. It's a great product, lean and mean, but keeps giving me EMM386 errors. I'll have to see what I can do about that. It also tends to take a dump when I view a graph in VGA mode. That's probably the cheesy NeoMagic graphic chip in the VAIO. I'll set it to CGA and see what happens.

PageMaker
Believe it or not, my first real job was typesetting business cards at a small printing shop in Norcross, Georgia. My workplace consisted of a 20-lb. Kaypro laptop running Windows 2.0, with PageMaker 2.0 (still made by Aldus back then, not Adobe).

(Picture thanks to this awesome site, that also has a picture of Arthur C. Clarke using the exact same computer: Rube have geek boner!)

I did my designs on the 9-inch screen, then I'd ship the PageMaker files to our service bureau, which was all Mac and actually had a laser printer, over a 2400 baud modem. Let me just reiterate my gratitude at this point for the fines folk at Procomm for including ZMODEM in the Test-Drive version of their software. Transfer-resume was an absolute necessity for files over 100K.

Games
Of course, nobody can be productive without a nice set of games to play. At the moment, I've got (all from original disks, no less):
Syndicate
Warcraft 1
F-19 Stealth Fighter

That's it. I've got Civilization, Mechwarrior 2, and a few others, but I won't install them until I've found the original disks. Trying to be legal here.

What I'm really looking forward to trying out are the programs that I didn't get a chance to hit back in the day. So, if anybody's got a copy of Lotus Improv or dBase III or IV, let me know, and I'll try to integrate into my new workplace. And I'll let you know how it went, as soon as I find a 16-bit email program that supports IMAP.

I'm humbled as a blogger when I read absolutely devastating shit like this, from some Microsoft employees. Absolutely scathing critique of their own company, which means they'll be disposed of in pieces in Ballmer's trash over the next few weeks. The delay by Micros~1 to get Vista out the door seems to have had a perturbing effect among its employees.

Vista may be wheezing into its final development stages, but Xgl is working now. I got it running on my Ubuntu box over the weekend, and lemme tell ya, them thar's some eye-candy. Nicely done, guys, now let's see if you can make Linux do something useful.

Click for full size. IF YOU DARE!!1

There's another one. I'll only say 3 things: It belongs to my girlfriend, it smells like rum and almonds, and you can see what it looks like after it's been eaten on for an hour in the extended entry.

I swear to God, "CBT" used to stand for "Computer-Based Training". Google can be such a minefield these days.

I'm not sure what to think about this. I was on the road all day, trying to bring home the bacon, so that the lovely lady and I can live in the luxurious lifestyle we've become accustomed to. I walked into my apartment, and knew immediately that all was not well. The smell of another man's aftershave greeted me at the door.

I looked with suspicion behind the doors, with uncertainty around the shower curtain, and with some difficulty under the bed (no mean feat, that: it's a futon). What greeted me in the kitchen destroyed my faith in humanity. The reality I feared came crashing down upon me like a truckload of cinder blocks.

They ate the PIE! All my goddam PIE is gone! What sort of rapacious fucking Huns ravaged my kitchen and ATE ALL MY FUCKING PIE! Ok, maybe it's time for a little context here. Last night, I made a Georgia Peach Pie for me and my lovely lady. And THEY FUCKING ATE THE PIE! I was really looking forward to eating some pie when I came home. But now, I guess I'll have to go sit in a bar, drink hard liquor, and listen to sad songs about life, longing, and the loss of beloved pastries.

UPDATE:

frank say:

It’s quarter to three,
There’s no one in the place ’cept you and me
So set ’em’ up joe
I got a little story I think you oughtta know

We’re drinking my friend
To the end of a brief episode
So make it one for my [Georgia Peach Pie]
And one more for the road

I've got a new favorite podcast, Philosophy Talk. It's a radio show out of Stanford University, as far as I know, and it's basically a bunch of professional philosophers, wastrels all, sitting around talking about thinking about stuff. It sounds like a good gig, and the highbrow-ness of the whole operation makes me feel better about my general intellectual decay.

This last weekend, they were discussing the morality of charity in general, and foreign aid in particular. Now, these are your typical college boys. The discussion they led in this particular episode was pretty rarified, and abstracted to the point that it was just a question of, is it right to give money to starving savages in distant lands, so they can build a well or something. They also had a professor of bioethics, Peter Singer, who was arguing the one-world, it takes a village, kumbaya side of things. I got the distinct impression that he didn't really like people, most of his arguments being that the U.S. destroys the world, so it's citizens need to give til it hurts so that other people can stay as primitive as possible while dragging Americans down into the swamp with them.

I detected a distinctly dour tone to Mr. Singer, a mixture of White Guilt and pie-eyed transnationalism. Of course, a moment's googling unearthed this interview at The Nation, where he is described as

author of The President of Good and Evil: Questioning the Ethics of George W. Bush... A leader in the animal rights movement, Singer advocates the moral equality of humans and animals. His previous books, including Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics, have been translated into fifteen languages, earning him critics around the world. He has also written about the permissibility of euthanasia and infanticide.

Wow, what a dickhead. And what a ridiculous goober to have on a show about the morality of charity. And what an absolute cocksucker to employ as a professor of bioethics! And just what the hell is bioethics about, anyway? Ethics is not a biological function, it's an intellectual function. Didn't this dude go to Sunday school?

Anyways, the guys talked about whether or not we're our brothers' keepers, and about whether or not it's an ethical obligation of Americans to help these people, etc. But I just had that feeling that the conversation wasn't about the morality of anybody, or the ethical obligations of anything. As this discussion always is, it was about politics. Nobody's trying to convince anyone that they should do more, morally and ethically speaking. They're trying to force people to do it through the government's use of tax money. They brought out the old, tired statistics about how the U.S. proportionally gives less money in foreign aid than any other country. I don't believe even that much, but there's also the factor of private contributions, where you'll surely find that the U.S. is a world leader in throwing money out the window by way of lining the pockets of NGO ne'er-do-wells. But that's obvious and not really worth belaboring.

They should have a discussion on the ethics of legislating morality. It would start out well, with everyone agreeing that morality is a series of personal choices. Then, ask whether or not the practicing of charity with other people's money through force of law is moral or immoral. The answer to that question will be good for a few paragraphs of bullshitting. Suspecting that an intellectual is bullshitting is usually a pretty safe bet. You know when an intellectual is bullshitting when his answers are longer than two sentences.

Microsoft has been busy the past few months. They've obviously spent thousands of man-hours working on the next version of Windows, Vista, in order to make it the gaudiest user experience possible.

(click for full-size)

Ugh, just look at that thing. I always thought the Playskool-inspired appearance of Windows XP was a horrible idea, but Microsoft's focus groups apparently think otherwise. And they're still shipping that ugly-ass, over-saturated landscape background, albeit from a different vantage point. It always reminds me of a close-up of Shrek's scrotum, for some reason. Luckily, I'm not Microsoft's target customer, seeing as I spend more time tossing Steve Jobs' salad than thinking about upgrading Windows. Which is probably why I still use Windows 2000*.

For incorrigible updaters, there's also a new version of Office coming out early next year, with a re-"thought" user interface. Windows applications in general, and Microsoft products in particular, have suffered interface creep since Windows 3.0 came out. That's the first version of the environment that included the toolbar widgets, unless I'm not mistaken. I remember opening up Samna's Ami, the first truly graphical word processor for Windows, and gasping with delight at the little buttons that bolded or underlined text with the click of a mouse. Such decadence, especially when coming off of WordStar.

Slowly, though, those little icons became the baffling swarm of obscure symbology we're all confronted with every day. The Office 2007 toolbar in this screenshot, for example, takes up one sixth of the overall screen real estate. That's a pretty big waste of pixels, but it's nothing new for Microsoft. The default install of Microsoft Word 2000, for example, has at least 40 toolbar buttons on it, and came out at a time when SVGA (800x600 in Windows-speak) was still mostly for power users. There's a button for Print Preview, which really should be exclusively a menu item, and there's one for Spell Check, even though it spell-checks on the fly. There are also icons for Cut, Copy & Paste, even though I've never actually seen anybody use them; who the hell does that with a mouse? There are also some baffling buttons, including a globe with a chain on it, which I have to assume is the "Enslave World" function that was so popular in Microsoft's internal builds.

I never installed Office 2003 on my own computers: I refused. I still use Office 2000, because it's the only legal copy that I have, for one. The other reason I still use it is that Office 97, which was the last good version, doesn't include the Euro symbol. I got stuck using Excel 97 on a customer's computer a few months ago, and it amazes me how good it really was. It loaded in a snap, it didn't pepper you with suggestions or constructive criticism while you were trying to work, and the shortcut keys are right where I remembered them. Excel, up through the Office 2000 version and most definitely excluding Office XP and 2003, is the only Microsoft product that is worth a damn at doing what it is designed to do**. Being a smug Mac fanboy, I usually justify this by saying that Excel was originally designed for the Macintosh platform.

The main area where Office has really hurt the consumer is where it matters most: Overall productivity. In the end, the reason you buy an office suite is to help you run your office. That means document creation, management, and retrieval, as well as functional uses such as spreadsheets and databases. The first thing most users do when they sit down to create a document is not the creation of a document, per se. They muck around with the fonts, or try to figure out why certain words get underlined and turn blue, and where they can turn off that setting, or why they're suddenly getting the third degree from some stupid little paper clip. What they most definitely do not do, is start typing. If you're old enough, you'll remember the Cadillac of word processors, WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. When you started the program, there wasn't anything you could do but start typing. I can't get WordPerfect for DOS to run on my Mac, so here's my WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS Simulator™, based on God's Own Text Editor, Joe.

Clean as a whistle, visually, and lousy with vicious, finger-breaking keyboard shortcuts.

I've been supporting users since 1989, and to this day I have never seen a customer actually use Access to keep track of stuff. I would also estimate that the Office users I've supported who are actually proficient in Excel to be around 5%. Word is probably at the bottom of the heap, as far as used functionality goes. Very few of the documents I've seen are actually created with good word processing principles, such as structured style use, proper tabs and such. 90% of all word users could do everything they need to do with Wordpad, and save themselves a wad of cash in the process.

Probably the biggest omission in the evolution of the Office package is in document management. Users are still creating their own folder structures, naming conventions, and so forth, and nobody has any clue what they're doing. Using the Windows filesystem to organize information is a recipe for pain and suffering. What users really need is iTunes for Documents. With iTunes, you don't have to come up with some goofy folder hierarchy to organize your MP3s; you never actually touch your files, you just search or browse their descriptions, genres, or what not. You also synchronize that with your iPod, and you always have it with you, without even really trying. Imagine if it were like that with all your documents, spreadsheets, emails, and presentations!

Somebody needs to get on this.
--
* - Actually, I upgraded to XP last week, seeing as EA decided that Battle for Middle-Earth II doesn't run under Windows 2000. Dicks.
** - Well, I do have to admit that I'm impressed what people do with Microsoft Outlook when they use it properly.

In case you hadn't heard, Microsoft is going to tear Google a new one with their innovative new Windows Live service. The revolutionary new service, which opened up its Beta program today, actually allows users to search the web by keywords! Amazing. I think I've got a new startpage!

UPDATE:

Sucks. Back to Google.

For about 4 weeks now, the garbage collectors in Stuttgart have been on strike. They're protesting the lengthening of the work week, which, they argue, will cost jobs. It might, I guess, if garbage collection were a zero-sum game. But they completely ignore Zonker's beloved Parkinson's Law:

work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

So, since the strike began, the garbage piled up in Stuttgart, a city of 590,000 people. Last week, the municipal authorities lost patience and hired private sanitation firms to swoop in and clean up the place. According to a report I watched on German news channel N24, the private workers get paid about 25% less than their civil servant counterparts, and work longer hours. But they were happy to get the work, as was obvious from the good-natured interviews they gave to the N24 crew.

Of course, the garbage has to go somewhere once it's picked up. The striking workers physically blocked the private drivers from reaching the city's landfills and trash incinerators, which is dangerous, not to mention illegal. It amounts to thuggery, though I expected nothing less of union workers. Germany has a 12.5% unemployment rate, and if there's any justice, that number will get a sizable bump by the firing of the entire municipal garbage-collection work force of Stuttgart, and the dismantling of the ecology of union bosses, financial supporters, and strike organizers that could let such idiocy thrive.

An interesting development to keep an eye on is the proposal of the FDP, which passes for a conservative party in Germany, to tax the supplemental payments that unions pay their workers during strikes as normal income. Why this isn't already done is beyond me, but I guess that's life in the Worker's Paradise. This would definitely take a bit of the piss out of the risible organzisation ver.di, that profits by blackmailing some of Germany's largest employers, local city governments, with threats of strike.

And they wonder why German industry is slowly draining away to Eastern Europe.

As I was scanning the dailies this morning, I came across this paragraph in the Washington Post:

"North Country," as well as "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Syriana," were financed by Jeffrey Skoll, a Canadian and the billionaire co-founder of eBay...

Now, aside from the fact that all three of these movies are shameless Oscar-bait, and that at least two of them are seen as being not-so-subtly anti-American, they were all financed by the same Canuck?

At least when the Jews controlled Hollywood, they made movies like Citizen Kane and Casablanca. I guess once those scheming Canadians took over, they figured it was time to turn every single movie into to a sort of wild-eyed Clooneyed-up version of Being John Malkovich. Damn snow-backs.

Just in case anyone was wondering, we got 20 inches of snow today.

The birds are singing, and the buds are just popping out, aren't they?

Well, the Steve killed another of my predictions last night. I was expecting the next Intel-based Mac to be the iBook. It looked like this: Who the hell is going to buy one of the Power Macs, which will stick with the IBM G5 probably until late fall, when a desktop computer with more ass is available for about a third of the price? So, you stick with the mobile branch, starting with the Powerbooks, then the iBooks. The you upgrade the desktop offerings, starting with Power Macs, then the iMacs, and, last but not least, the Mini. I was exactly wrong about pretty much everything.

This upgrade is a bit puzzling, marketing-wise. Power Macs have expandability, but the Intel-based Mac Mini is breathing down their necks, processor-wise. And they're adorable, quiet little boxes. I mean, just look at it:

link

It's a fine desktop computer, as long as you're not planning on running Quake 4 on it.

I'd love to replace my aging Windows desktop. About the only things holding me back at this point are abject poverty and the lack of a German version of Quickbooks for the Macintosh.

For some reason, they call the first of March the first day of 'Meteorological Spring'. I'm not sure why meteorologists need their own calendar, unless it's because they need to justify why they're always wrong. 'Why, yes I did say it would be sunny and warm on Wednesday. On meteorological Wednesday, you cretin!'

Well, fuck meteorologists, and they can take their meteorological spring and shove it up their meteorological cornholes. I'm tired of seeing this:

That would be my smoking balcony about 5 minutes ago. Meh. Looks like another six weeks of 30-second cigarettes. I could use a thawing.

I realize this is supposed to start me seething and looking for a Chinaman to bash, but this is one of the awesomest videos I've ever seen.

Via Tian.

I was perusing my usual dailies just now, and noticed that Zonker, brave man that he is, has taken on the subject of censorship. He's noted a few Internet pages that the elites at a particular coffee shop* have chosen to keep people from reading, along with screenshots of the error messages.

Now, anyone who reads Sandy's page knows that Zonker is a pretty sensitive guy, and can get pretty worked up about things. It's why we love him so much. One thing you may not know about Zonker, though, is that also tends to censor himself. Every now and then, I guess he has a little too much to drink, and comes home and really opens up. Sometimes, maybe a little too much. Usually, he just deletes it off his blog the next morning, or bowdlerizes it after-the-fact, so he won't lose his tough-guy image. For example, a week or so ago, he wrote a weepy post about the injustice of Aaron and Marcy not winning the Pairs Figure Skating Gold in Turin, despite running a "fabulous" (his word) routine. The next morning, however, it was nowhere to be found.

I guess the same thing happened with Zonker's post about the firewalled blogs. Although his post is still there, for the most part, a lot of the screenshots he posted last night at 3:30 AM have disappeared! Luckily, I'm in a timezone that's 6 hours ahead, so I was able to save a few of the screenshots that Zonker made in the coffee shop, but aren't on his page anymore for some reason. Let's take a look:

Ouch, that must sting. Er...sorry to hear about that Zonk-man.

I'm not even sure what that means, but it sounds like a nature site. What could be the problem there?

OK, but that could've been any of the other computers in the place, too.

Now, that's just unfair. It's all about context.

Information is crucial to a democracy. I don't think a few people should decide what pages are 'suitable' to be viewed by whom, or how many times in a 30 minute period. That's just wrong.

UPDATE:
* - Note to selff: Don't forget to write funny footnote

I just noticed that Sam started posting again at sammoore.org; he only came up for air long enough to tag me, and then, like Keyser Sose, poof, he'll probably disappear again, to whatever musty dungeon he haunts to hatch his plans for world domination and rope-play.

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.

So, I'm still on my first pot of coffee, and abstraction is not one of my strengths at this unlikely hour. Luckily, I have iTunes tracking my every move, compiling ungodly amounts of data for Apple's Syndicate-like marketing department. I'll just post the screenshot of my Top 7 played songs in iTunes and my iPod.

I've been using iTunes for almost three years now, and I have to assume it's been tracking my music usage for all that time. I didn't realize I listened to that much NIN.

I'm not gonna tag anybody. Well, anybody except A-Heldin, E-Heldin, The Other Sam, John C. Dvorak, and John K., the creator of Ren & Stimpy.

(click to play)

The little lady and I were in the Cologne-Düsseldorf-Neuss metroplex this week, where the annual pilgrimage Karneval was in full swing. It's a solemn time for Christians in Northern Germany, as they contemplate the coming Ash Wednesday, and the 40 days of Lent, costuming themselves in the symbols of their faith: The Angel, The Devil, and the Slutty Fishnet-Wearing Nurse.

In Cologne, one of Chrisitanity's holiest cities, the final resting place of the three wise men, the people are so drunk and rowdy during Karneval, that the police just sort of mill around, watching the show in groups of five or more. It's the epicenter of stupidity in the world until Tuesday, when it moves to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

Got a big fish to start off the Hillbilly Jihad with: one Mr. Scott Adams, author of Dilbert.

I suppose he thinks this caricature of our people is funny:

But one of our (unfortunately rather sour, humorless) operatives set him straight:

Your cartoon “killed” an inebriated hillbilly. He was lying on a log with a jug at his side (probably moonshine?) and wearing bib overalls. He was booted off the log into a chasm and a certain fate. Now, let me ask you a question. Would you have drawn that cartoon of a drunk Irishman, a Jew, a black person, an Hispanic person?

It's not quite the beheading I was hoping for, but, you know, baby steps.

From the official Handelsblatt page on the Düsseldorf Blog Reading:

Julius Endert, Managing Editor of Handelsblatt.com, demonstrates with barrier-tape what a 'Trackback' is.

At which point, a member of the crowd walks on stage and kicks Endert in the groin, demonstrating what 'comment spam' is.

As you might have noticed, I, along with A-Heldin, live-blogged the Handelsblatt event in Düsseldorf on Wednesday. I was a little disappointed in the general direction of the event. It was a blog-reading, and, as such, was more about little stories people have written on their blogs than about the uniquely dynamic nature that makes blogs what they are.

Although I managed to get all the names wrong while live-blogging, here are some of the writers that were showcased:

• 'ix' from Wirres.net; worst punctuation ever. Why do thousands per day visit a website without capital letters, all written in an undersized monospaced font? Because the German blogosphere is a ripe apple, waiting to be picked, that's why. his account
• "Melancholie Modeste", who I wrongly accused of eyeing my unit. In retrospect, it may well have been 'ix'. She really doesn't get that many hits, so I'm kind of wondering why she was chosen to represent the biggies. It must have been her perkiness.
• Don Dahlmann, from "Irgendwas ist ja immer". Didn't catch it, as I was busy pinching the bottoms of unsuspecting bar wenches.
• Frau 'Nuf' from 'dem Nuf'. I cannot actually recall her being on the stage, as this was during my 'blackout period'. No telling how many hits she gets, either; she has 4 counters on her page, and all of them are closed to the public.

In retrospect, I didn't do a very good job of covering the event. I'm not even sure who won, although it looked like Dahlmann was a shoo-in owing to a strong showing in the swimsuit competition.

So, enough readin', let's see some pictures!

click the pics for bigger versions

Rube Liveblogging

The bar, she was open

Free tucker

The madding throngs

Ok, they just announced the actual bloggers. But I'm already on beer number 4, so I'm not sure I've got all the names right. Just scroll for updates or, more likely corrections.

UPDATE 8:27 PM:
First speakerette, Modeste, from Melancholie Modeste! All she's doing at the moment, is reading a favorite post for the crowd. What she is not doing, however, is telling the crowd how, about 30 minutes ago, she was eyeing my unit at the bar. Which she was, I caught her. Once my honey-baby came back from the bathroom, though, Modeste saw she had not a chance, as my honey-baby is looking mighty fine indeed this evening.

UPDATE 8:31 PM:
The next guy is up, and I have no idea who he is. He's from Cologne, apparently. He speaks an irritating mixture of English and German, because it's cool, and there's a sign behind him that says "Rebels without a Market". The Modeste is gone, and didn't even bother to mention me. Lesbian.

UPDATE 8:46 PM:
Another dude has token over the mike, a guy named 'ix', apparently in refence to the home planet of the Harkonnens in Dune, because he's fat and hairy. I'm starting to get the hang of this presentation. For the last 10 minutes, he's been reading his blog for the people, in an uninteresting, droning voice that's slowly lulling me into the "y'now, maybe I will have that 5th beer" frame of mind. Blah...blah... Blah! Outside of the open bar, the whole event to this point could have been taken care of with a couple of emails.

UPDATE 8:55 PM:
Veterans of Georgia blog-meets might want to sit down for this update. It's a blogger meet here, with an open bar, that means free German beer and French wine, and I, Rube, am the only one who's drunk! I can't imagine the carnage of an open bar at the Wreckyll, for example.

Some chick just spoke for the crowd, but I missed her name, and, frankly, never really got into her presentation.

UPDAET 9:02 PM:
Honey-baby says she's also drunk, and expressed displeasure that they don't serve whiskey here at the open bar. I'm inclined to agree, but am reluctant to raise a stink about it.

UPDATE 9:08 PM:
I may have forgotten to mention that the peanuts here on the bar are excellent!

UPDATE 9:13 PM:
Some little cableknit sweater-wearin' bald-headed love-parader just bummed a cigarette from me, with the explanation, "whew! after a beer, I just haaaaaave to smoke a cigarette!" A beer? Don't wear yourself out, Moby! But then I saw his girlfriend who, in stark contrast to him, is a bald-headed, sweater-wearin' love-parader. I guess beer and ecstasy don't mix.

UPATE 9:15 PM:
I sense a certain restlessness among the service personnel. The little blondie who brought me a beer earlier just offered to replace my current one with a fresh one. As I just received it about 4 minutes ago, I must assume 'a fresh beer' is a clumsy euphemism for cheap, filthy, back-alley sex.

UPDATE 9:20 PM:
The buffet will be opening shortly. I'll have to remember to keep the elbows up.

UPDATE 9:25 PM:
The little lady and I are now sloppy with drink, and the buffet is not yet open. The management will be hearing of this.

UPDATE 21:32:
You know, I tell Ihnen what: Zee problem wizz zee Event right now eez: the buffet isn't open yet. I'm gettin hungry. And Rube's eating all me peenuts (no euphemism, i swear). --ann

UPDATE 21:35:
Rube's hitting his head... 'v gotta look after his laptop... wonder why all the hutchy men in here're wearing a suit and ties... but Hut ab: their baldy heads are so shiny you wouldn't dare asking what they've used to scrub'em... --ann

UPDATE 21:38:
I mean: they serve free beer!! Sounds like a bestechung to me, huh? --ann

UPDATE 21:39:
But the beer is served in tiny little mustache-glasses... don't think I hit the proper word with mustache... but: the beer... the glasses it's served in... is way toooo small.... --ann

UPDATE 9:55 PM:
The E-Heldin just showed up with her dude, and of course, the buffet is immediately opened.

Ok, cheesy music comes up, in preparation for the first speaker. Sounds like a German version of Justin Timberlake, only now with 25% more gay!

He starts of course with the whole "what is a blog?" thing. Wrong audience. He should've got this out of his system with the investors, before they signed off on the whole Open Bar thing. Then, of course, the important question is not "What is a blog?", instead, "Do all bloggers drink like Rube?"

Goodness, the guy just said that Martin Luther was the first blogger. I don't know how many hits this dork gets, but I'm aching to call shenanigans.

Nevertheless, a cute little Aryan blondie just brought me a beer, so all is right with the world, at least here on the Rhein.

UPDATE: Upon further inspection, the first speaker is in fact named "Thomas Krüwer", and not "Thomas Gruber". My bad.

UPDATE II: That would be Thomas Knüwer. Names is hard.

hey there, folks I'm in a swanky Gucci-infested hotel restaurant in Düsseldorf, attending a blog-meet. The place is pretty swanky, if I'm any kind of judge, and the German version of Forbes, Handelsblatt, is picking up the tab.

If I can offer any kind of advice to the emerging blogger scene here in Germany it would be this: No open bar, kids. It'll bust you. This isn't little league we're talking about here.

I'm on the road today, in beautiful Düsseldorf, visiting a blog-reading for the largest five or six blogs in Germany. For some reason, they won't be reading from mine, probably because I tend to use the word 'twat' too much for German society.

No matter, as with a little ingenuity one can ruin any gathering. My baby and I will be sure to load up on Altbier and curry-wurst before loping into the seminar dressed as suicided bombers. It is Karneval, after all.

I'll be filing a report from the Düsseldorf hoosegow tomorry.

While traveling abroad with my broad last spring, we headed down to south Georgia, in preparation for the Wreckyll in Jeckyll. We made a stop in the beautiful city of Savannah, so I could show my baby one of the South's true highlights, the River St. Saloon District.

At the end of the evening, we found ourselves in a sports bar, eating excellent pizza and enjoying our last drinks for the evening. When we were through eating, and getting ready to head back to the hotel, I happened to see a few familiar faces on the wall. Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be photographs of my old ice hockey team at Georgia Tech.

Luckily, there weren't any pictures from the years I'd played: It would have been a little too weird to take my German girlfriend to the States, into a bar that I'd never been in, one that's about a 6 hour drive from my hometown, and find a picture of myself on the wall. Nevertheless, a bit of googlin' brought me to the Georgia Tech Hockey Club's alumni pages, where the legend of Rube lives on, if only in mockery and contempt.

1990-1991

FRONT ROW (L to R): Jim Clay, Rob McConnel, Mark Goggans, Scott Anderson, Rick Norwood, Eric Williams [me], Steve Kessler 2nd ROW (L to R): Chris Ciovacco, Craig Leduc, Jim McConville, Mark Liebold, Fredrik Nilson, Joeseph Slater, Van Oleson, McAvoy Not Pictured: Chuck Shendl, Jim Meehan, Sean Wallace

1993-1994



FRONT ROW (L to R): Mark Stone, Steve Fischer, Dan Cnarich, Scott Anderson 2nd ROW (L to R): Coach Greg Stathis, A.J. Josyln, Victor Martinez, Albee Stein, Jim Meehan, Jonathan Su, Rob McConnell 3rd ROW Troy Jamison, James Scheider, John Krueger, Niclas Arvberger, Kevin Lemke, Eric Williams [me], Timo Lumikko, Fredrik Nilsson, Brian Holcombe, Dean Stahman, Dan Carlin 4TH ROW (L to R): Harrel Blatt, Edward Gallant, Jim Cowee, Mark Leibold, Van Oleson, Chuck Schendl. Not Pictured: Chris McConnel, Phil Stewart

Man, I sucked.

Every day, I find myself getting the giggles a little bit sooner, and a little bit longer. I'm with Ace on this one. I'm just going to start watching videos of Muslim Outrage™ with the sound turned down, and Benny Hill music playing.

The awesomest part will be when the hot Islamamama's skirt blows up in the air, revealing long legs, fishnet stockings, and a very surprised-looking Jackie Wright.

Beer doesn't make you fat. It's the pretzels. Give it a rest already, fatboy.

The Warsteiner slogan, "eine Königin unter den Bieren" means, "a Queen among beers", implying a non-flattering relationship to Budweiser.

When trying to sound debonair, please don't say that Warsteiner is the best german beer. It's not even the best german beer in America. Löwenbräu is actually very good in Germany, but I don't remember ever drinking it in the States.

Germans in Rhineland drink beer in little 0.2-liter glasses, which is less than a coffee cup. Further calling their masculinity into question, if you get a Pils in a Rhineland, they put a little paper skirt on it.

In Austria, you get a long pint(0.5-liter), which is called "a half-beer".

A "Radler" is a 1:1 mixture of Helles Bier with Limo, which is pretty much Sprite. A Radler is also German slang for a cyclist.

The best German beers come from Bavaria. Warsteiner is a german Pils, which is a Czech type of beer.

In Europe, the Czechs have a better reputation as beer-brewers than the Germans.

Indeed, not all german beers are good. Altbier, favored in Düsseldorf and the surrounding areas, tastes like rancid pus. Astra, the favored brand in Hamburg, tastes like Miller Lite from a can. Horrible stuff.

PBR has more alcohol than most german beers; about the same as Pils. But it has no taste at all, that I can discern.

The best Pils is Pilsner Urquell, so I am told, and it is mighty tasty. Pilsner Urquell on tap in a Czech back-alley pivnice is the quintessential beer-drinking experience.

For a real treat, try Kaltenberger Helles, if you can find it. This is, indeed, the Best German Beer.

Other good German beers are Schwarzbräu Exquisit, Augusta Bräu, and Burgerbräu.

Beer snobbery is stupid and unoriginal. Not all American beers are bad. Budweiser, for example, is a very good beer for hot weather, or after athletics. For the price, it's probably the best American beer going. It's got its own ricy flavor, and no bad aftertaste. And it'll get you drunk. Good 'n' drunk. Blotto.

Absinthe tastes like Ben-Gay smells.

Whiskey is a good alternative to beer.

Jack Daniels is not bad, and it's also not bourbon.

Wild Turkey is a good bourbon.

Getting drunk on expensive scotch makes you look like an ignorant prole who just got paid and wants to impress people. Get drunk on Wild Turkey to show you have real class.

When you're drunk on whiskey, you're not as clumsy and incoherent as with beer.

Whiskey-dick, however, is no myth.

If you're a fast drinker like I am, mix whiskey 1:3 with water. But make sure it's tap water, as whiskey doesn't mix well with mineral water.

cribbed from my Fark profile

[This is a book review I've written for next month's Die Neue Szene, the local independent monthly, in case anyone feels like reading it.]


"Roboter Geschichte - Technik - Entwicklung" (Daniel Ichbiah)

The world of robotics is an expansive theme, and one that obviously fascinates Daniel Ichbiah, the author of this volume. Covering the technological development of robots, from the automatons of the Renaissance to the Mars Rovers of today, “Robots” takes a very detailed look at the history of robots, and how they have come play such an important role in modern society.

Modern consumer-oriented experiments like Honda’s humanoid Asimo, or Sony’s beloved mechanical canine, the Aibo, are covered in detail, and placed in their proper historical context. Fleshing out the author’s own experience, interviews with technological luminaries such as the creators of the phenomenal hit game “The Sims”, are sprinkled throughout the text.

Though impressive, this book is not without its faults. The lack of an index leaves the reader flipping through more than 500 pages when looking for a specific piece of information, and disqualifies its use for doing serious research. Additionally, the graphic design and layout add to the overall feel of disorganization.

Despite these shortcomings, Ichbiah’s “Roboter” is an entertaining and informative volume that will please the techno-geek in everyone. His informed vision of the future of robotics is exciting, and his enthusiasm for the subject is well-expressed and contagious. Anyone with an interest in technology, and the fusion of artificial intelligence with household appliances, could find a worse way to spend 35€.