walls of the city » me, myself, and i

ahh, sick days

Linoge — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:08:00 +0000

… How you tantalize me so, with your promise of all the time in the world to write whatever I want… and none of the willpower or mental faculties to do so.

Maybe I will work on some pictures instead. That is fairly mindless.

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patience of a saint

Linoge — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 12:45:00 +0000

Well, Better Half has managed to put up with me, at least legally speaking, for the past six years… Here is to hoping she continues to do so.

Happy anniversary, babe!

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i sympathize

Linoge — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:46:00 +0000

Seems to have been one of those Mondays for everyone…

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quote of the day – tango

Linoge — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:52:00 +0000

As regular readers are aware, I abide by the Say Uncle school of blogging: I do this to entertain me, not you. I figure the hosting charges are cheaper than a shrink would be, and venting my frustrations about how our country is slowly collapsing in on itself here is better than bottling it all up inside and eventually turning into that crazy guy with the political slogans plastered all over his camper-module-bedecked pickup-truck. ‘Cause that seems likely…

Anywise, while I sincerely appreciate the interactions I have with you, my readers, the honest truth is that I would continue scribbling away here because I enjoy it, because I like helping the spread of truths and realities that some people are actively trying to bury, and because taking a stand for freedom and liberty is the right thing to do.

Love me, hate me, say what you want about me; I will still be here plugging away, regardless. However, every once in a while, one of you all says something about me worthy of note, which brings us to this statement by Tango:

Linoge covers topics better than Rosie O’Donnell on a Twinkie. He studies them in-depth and researches the details behind it. He’s got an exceptional memory and archive of past stories with an uncanny ability to link the stories together.

I will admit it – I giggled. Thanks (I think)!

(Though, in all seriousness, I am nothing without Google and my site’s search function. When writing a post, I generally remember penning something vaguely similar at some point in the past, and I will sit there and comb through key words and phrases until I dig up what I am looking for. In other words, this is something you can try at home, kids.)

a decade later

Linoge — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Ten years ago this past night, Better Half and I started dating.

Fair to say we have come a pretty long way since then, in some directions neither of us probably planned on… But I think the ride has been worth it, and the company certainly cannot be beat. Thanks for sticking it out with me!

urg

Linoge — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:42:00 +0000

I spent all of last night alternating between fever/chills and wanting to barf my guts up. If you honestly expect meaningful content to be posted here today, you might want to check your meds.

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can you remember the last time you were this enthused?

Linoge — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:15:00 +0000

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in-action lolz

Linoge — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 01:31:00 +0000

These guys are serious about their work.

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you are telling me

Linoge — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 01:21:00 +0000

Also, just for Breda, notice the little peek of a tongue hanging out…

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you knew it was coming

Linoge — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 01:03:00 +0000

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when kittens attack

Linoge — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 15:08:00 +0000

… Because this world needs more kitten photos (both below were captured by Better Half, with the video being mine):

Blue:

Pixel:

And this is what they do in their spare time (of which they have copious quantities):

posting will be light

Linoge — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 02:37:00 +0000

… for the foreseeable future on account of these guys:

Blue:

Pixel:

Both being “cooperative”:

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the quicker sender-awayer

Linoge — Mon, 30 May 2011 21:44:28 +0000

It probably goes without saying that I inherited a fair amount of my perverse sense of humor from my parents; for example, when the Jehovah’s Witnesses / Church of Latter-Day Saints / etc. would come knocking at our door, my parents would listen very politely to the folks’ opening spiel, and then inform them that we were druidic fire-worshipers, and we were not sure that the Eternal Flame would be particularly understanding if we were to turn our backs on it.

The looks on those poor evangelicals’ faces were… well… you can imagine.

A couple weekends back, we had a young man and lady from one Christian sect or another (they never had the chance to identify which, but the male was carrying what appeared to be a Bible) come knocking on our door at about 1000 on Saturday morning – a perfectly respectable time of the day, I will grant, but we had slept in that day, and were in no particular rush to get dressed and get on with whatever pressing matters we had.

So I answered the door in my bathrobe.

I have to admit, the reaction was nowhere near as funny as the whole “druidic fire-worshiper” thing, but it certainly got rid of them faster…

(Note: I have no particular animus against door-to-door evangelicals, I just have no real desire to listen to them.)

off for the long weekend

Linoge — Wed, 25 May 2011 18:47:00 +0000

Well, my parents are about half an hour out, and we are taking off a few days on either side of the weekend to spend some time with them… So, basically, have a happy and safe Memorial Day, and enjoy whatever posts I was able to scrounge together and schedule to pop up randomly.

Do not expect much.

any publicity is good

Linoge — Sun, 22 May 2011 22:37:00 +0000

Over the past sixish years, I have done and written a lot of things at this weblog, and I have been assisted along the way by some awesome folks. We have covered local politics from numerous states and countless angles, we have tracked and documented country-wide trends and shown their impact, we have exposed bigoted organizations, we have stood up for our rights, we have provided helpful how-tos, and we have written numerous other posts that I confess to being a little proud about.

But what is the one thing that consistently and repeatably lands “walls of the city” in the newspaper?

Wallet-blogging.

I do not want to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I certainly do not mean to sound ungrateful, but… *sigh*

(All sarcasm and “woe is me” aside, thanks, Michael, for the mention…)

little things count

Linoge — Sun, 15 May 2011 01:22:00 +0000

As regular readers probably know, I write this weblog for me, not you. I love that you all come here and comment, I love the discussions we get into, and I sincerely thank you for the information you provide along the way, but the simple truth is that I would be sitting here, scribbling away even if you were not sitting there reading (after all, that pretty much describes the first few years of this site).

But, sometimes, I get emails like this, and it makes my whole day:

On behalf of the entire community, I would like to thank you for all the great work that you and your compadres do to spread the word and keep the faith. We really do appreciate it and thanks again for doing what many of us cannot find the time to do for our fellow gunnies. Keep up the great work sir and don’t let up on those SOB’s from the CSGV. God bless.

I am, on a daily basis, through this webpage, standing up for, defending, and protecting the individual, human rights of all American citizens, regardless of race, creed, affiliation, or any other distinguishing feature. In the end, there is absolutely nothing hateful bigots like Ladd Everitt, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, or any of the other vicious anti-rights cultists out there can do to take something like that away, or even diminish it. Lord knows why they even try.

target audience fail

Linoge — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:20:00 +0000

I just thought I would give some helpful advice to the “North American Hunting Club”, since it is obvious they need it:

1. I hate spam. I do not care if it comes in my email, or my carbon mailbox. Stop sending it to me.

2. I am not a hunter. This kind of exposes the farcical nature of your claims that “only the most serious hunters are nominated”.

3. If I have to pay a “membership fee”, no matter how small it is, the stuff you are offering is not “free”. Period.

Oh, and last but not least:

4. Piss off. I do not do business with scammers and borderline mail-fraud perpetrators.

slip-slidin’ away

Linoge — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:19:00 +0000

Why am I interested in procuring actual, physical precious metals, rather than electronic “accounts”?

Because gos-se like this is really starting to worry the hell out of me:

From the source:

About this Chart

The USD Index measures the performance of the US Dollar against a basket of currencies: EUR, JPY, GBP, CAD, CHF and SEK.

Trust me. You do not want to zoom out to three years, much less ten…

hindsight is 20/45

Linoge — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:13:00 +0000

If I knew a year ago what I know now, this would hardly be a question, but I am still actively pursuing my options thanks to a lot of helpful advice in the previous thread, which brings us to this question:

Is it worth getting into silver (or any precious metal, for that matter) at the moment? Is the current price increase just a bubble bound to pop like the housing market was, or is it just going to keep climbing?

Once again, this is an area where it is hard to get a straight answer, since people are invariably interested in selling you something…

pretty shiny things

Linoge — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:38:00 +0000

So, what do you know about buying precious metals? And, no, I do not mean buying precious-metal-related mutual funds, or precious-metal-related accounts; I mean actual, honest-to-God, hold-in-your-hand metals.

I have been plowing through the information provided by the Northwest Territorial Mint and vaguely eyeing their Stagecoach Silver, simply because they are a known quantity to me and I know them through their military challenge coin minting, but I am completely new to the concept, and am still very much in the “information-gathering” stage.

So, what are good sources of information? Who are reputable dealers? What are things to keep in mind? What are “normal” premiums? Buy in bulk, or go with “monthly accumulation programs”? What materials, and in what forms?

Rest assured I am doing my own homework, but this is one topic area that is absofragginglutely flooded with shysters, creative misinformation, “get rich quick” scams, and so forth, so if anyone has been down this road before, I would certainly appreciate suggestions.