walls of the city

not-really masters of time

Linoge — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:01:50 +0000

Alright, Daylight Saving Time really needs to go away, if only because I am tired of spending that hour I gained/lost trying to find and correct all of the time-keeping devices in our home that did not update automatically. If you like more light in the evening, how about we just shift the entire clock back an hour, and call it done?

send it downrange:

i support starbucks

Linoge — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:13:38 +0000

Starbucks is atrociously overpriced, and I hear they run their beans through the darker parts of Hades before they grind them, but I support businesses that support my rights (or at least recognize and respect them), so without further ado, here is me putting my money where my mouth is:

And, yes, I openly carried when I picked up that tin of tea – as I always do when I go out of the house these days (at least to places other than work) – and neither the employees nor the customers seemed to give it the slightest bit of attention. I support carry, and I support Starbucks.

send it downrange:

one-line review

Linoge — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:20:05 +0000

Alice in Wonderland: Billed as something of a sequel to the original story, this actually turned out to be yet another in a long line of rehashes of much the same plot, with much the same characters and outcome (and potentially some ideas stolen from some other rehashes)… but in a delightfully mad and quite enjoyable fashion, especially thanks to the improvements of CGI over the years (though 3Dness is not nearly as required as with Avatar).

send it downrange:

like the energizer bunny

Linoge — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:46:47 +0000

Potentially in response to my immediately previous post, my parents sent me this video:

With the comment of:

There used to be a not-very-friendly acronym for FORD – found on road dead. To our knowledge, this advertisement ran exactly once.

I have no problems admitting that I giggled. Also, I have heard First On Race Day and Fix Or Replace Daily, depending on your personal inclinations.

I promise to keep my windows rolled up in the winter, though.

send it downrange:

got that rumbly feeling

Linoge — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:33:35 +0000

So I will freely admit that the video quality is sub-par (which is what happens when I take the video after the sun goes down – duh), and that the audio is not exactly terrific either (which is more a function of the hardware limitations of Better Half’s new toy), but if you want to know what Ford supposedly spent ten million dollars on, here it is (be sure to crank up your speakers, and their bass, if you can control the latter independently):

I tell you what – if Ford could consistently get things as right as they have the Mustang Bullitt, there would be absolutely no doubt as to their future security and solvency.

If I get bored, I might try again later… with light… and with the Flippy-thingy farther away from the exhaust pipe so its microphone does not get over-gained.

send it downrange:

amusing

Linoge — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:16:12 +0000

The Nissan dealership in town is running a radio ad proclaiming that they have been authorized to accept the trade-in of Toyotas covered by the recall, and to give full-market-value for those vehicles. Good for them. But then they go on to explain how a truck can actually be sent to your home to pick up your Toyota so you will not have to worry about driving your unsafe vehicle to the dealership. In fact, the terms “unsafe”, “dangerous”, and “recalled” are pretty liberally scattered throughout the entire segment.

Toyota screwed up, in a big day, but gratuitously salting the wound? That is just giggle-worthy. But, then again, I also laugh at the seemingly interminable AT&T vs. Verizon commercials.

Of course, this entertaining commercial came at the price of reminding me why I hate terrestrial radio stations – why do they all play their commercial segments at the same time?

send it downrange:

spreading it around

Linoge — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:29:39 +0000

So I started doing our taxes this past week, and it turns out that the federal government claims we owe them some money. A lot of money. A lot of money in addition to the monthly wage-garnishments we have already had to suffer from our friendly IRS.

Which leads me back to the idea I may have expressed here before, but will articulate again just for good measure: I would wholly and vocally support a law, up to and including a Constitutional Amendment, dictating that all income taxes can only be paid once a year, in a lump sum. As it is right now, our money disappears into the black hole of the IRS just a little every month, and while we may see the numbers on our 1040s or whatever when we file them, people generally have a difficult time connecting abstract numbers to concrete loss.

However, when people have to consciously and directly deal with the money coming straight out of their bank accounts, in one large lump sum, along with the associated budgeting and preparations necessary for such a transaction, the numbers become a little more real.

Which is why this little pipe dream will never happen. The government has every reason to diminish the impact of taxes on the average payer as much as possible, to the point where the IRS returning your money after you file your taxes is referred to as “getting money back from the government”. Yes, getting your money back from the government – your money that you were forced to give to the government as a zero-interest loan for the past year.

Yes, I said “forced” – if you actually try to do a single-lump-sum payment with the IRS on April 15th, or at least try to hold on to as much as you can for as long as you can, you will be penalized, and every penalty, fine, and, yes, tax from the Federal Government is backed up by the barrel of a gun.

If I sound a little annoyed at this situation, that is probably because I am. Last year, over one-third of Americans payed no taxes at all – they got every penny they had withheld from their paychecks back, and possibly even a little more – and there is every reason to believe that number will be increasing again this year. Even worse, people are proposing laws that would require firing federal employees who are delinquent on their taxes… which sounds like a great idea, except the bill is so couched in weasel-worded language, nothing will come of it, not to mention the fact that it might help if you simply did not hire lying tax cheats to begin with. But, hey, now they can say they are CRACKING DOWN on tax cheats, and that means something, right!?

I understand taxes (after all, my college education and first four years of gainful employment were paid for with them), but I do not understand a taxation system like America’s wherein success is penalized, and lack of it (for whatever reason) is rewarded.

send it downrange:

two different kinds of warnings

Linoge — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:21:28 +0000

Your daily dose of all-too-real humor.

And, from the same source, I am not sure if it is the on-paper engineer in me, the repressed artist in me, the military buff in me, or just the fact that it was designed to carry nuclear missiles, but I find things like this way too cool. It is a shame that it has been abandoned to simply waste away…

send it downrange:

showing the lie of their words

Linoge — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:57:49 +0000

Do you want to know why the phrase “guns in bars” is a pointless exercise in fearmongering?

As I write this post, I am sitting within about 25 feet of four separate loaded firearms, each with between six and 30 rounds of ammunition already inserted into them, and magazines full of about another 250 rounds within that same radius.

Within that 25-foot bubble, there are also about five gallons of various forms of alcohol, ranging from Two Buck Chuck to sake to a few other things in between.

Finally, I live in an apartment complex (at least for the time being), with the resulting thin walls, really-next-door-neighbors, and high population density.

In short, I could get up from where I am sitting, get so wasted I could hardly stand, and ruin a lot of peoples’ lives – far more than I could if I did the same at a bar. The same is true for every single other firearm-owner in Tennessee who possesses both loaded firearms and alcohol at their habitations.

And, yet, keeping a loaded 1911 and a fifth of Jack in-reach at home is perfectly and 100% legal here in the Patron State of Shooting Things – as it rightfully should be. So why are we not allowed to do the same out in public? How is allowing one, but banning the other, in any way, rational, reasonable, or logical?

Simply put, it is not. Sitting at home, we make the choice to not get smashed and go on a shooting spree – we can, and the massively-overwhelming majority of us will, make the same regardless of where we are.

Even discounting the logical disconnect of “guns and alcohol in the same room at home” is ok, but “guns and alcohol in the same room in public” is ZOMGENDOFTHEWORLD, Tennessee does not even have bars. Guns-in-what, again?

send it downrange:

stop threatening my wallet!

Linoge — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:43:42 +0000

Want.

And while we are mentioning it…

send it downrange: