Western Thought Wednesday: Berkeley and That Other Guy

That Other Guy said, "I refute Berkeley thus." He then kicked a rock. Berkeley has yet to be impressed by this comment. I wonder what he would think of today's XKCD.

That Thing Where You Do That Thing?

Do you ever do that thing where you laugh or hurt quickly while reading something and look up suddenly wanting to share the moment with someone who you totally know will appreciate it but then you realize that you can't share that with them because you did something that totally changed the nature of your relationship and you are not allowed to share things like this with them anymore?

Yeah, A Softer World does that to me on a regular basis, but none so much as this one.

Now I feel kinda bummed out.

And Now For Something Less Political Than Yesterday

Also, with disapointingly less pornography. Let's all talk about computers and how they can drive a person mad, both the angry kind and the new jacket kind. My computer started working randomly on Monday night. The circumstances under which it died were odd enough but this is just damn peculiar. The day it died, I had booted it up, checked my email, and logged onto World of Warcraft. Two minutes later, it seized in mid-flight and would not respond to keyboard commands or reboot. I turned it off with the hard switch on the back, waited a few minutes, and tried to boot it. It would get about 2 seconds into the sequence after I hit the power button and then stall out. I blew out the dust and tried again.

After conversations with friends, I suspected that the power source might have died and the hard drives didn't have enough juice to spin up. When I tried again, they hummed like they were spinning and had the right kind of vibrations, so no dice on that idea. I then figured that it was good and broke and it was probably the chip and just left it to sit and not-think about what it did. Over the next week, I tried once or twice to get it to work, to no avail.

This past Monday night, I tried again and it booted up fine and has worked for the last two days. One of the Brothers of Indeterminate Number thinks I may have had a bit of dust that caused a jump between two capacitors or resistors, possibly even a mis-aligned samoflange, causing the computer to stop startup. By not turning it on for five days, I let the power drain out of the electro-flimflam and the sparking-wangdoodle and the computer was able to boot properly gain. This sounds more like magic then the way computers usually behave. I suspect witchcraft and I now who to blame.

Daily Reads

Despite being a WoW addicted cobag-son-of-a-bitch, I do find time to read. In the last three weeks, I have read Gun, With Occasional Music by Johnathan Lethem and Cauldron by Jack McDevitt. I thoroughly enjoyed them both and recommend them to the same crowd. I started She Climbed Across the Table by Lethem and have read almost all of McDevitt's books already, so he better get cracking on feeding my hard science fiction jones.

I heard only recently that Robert Jordan had died in September, so all of you who bet that he would kick it before finishing the Wheel of Time series won that round.

In other not-so-light reading, check out PAPERCUT by Michael Cho.

Meant to Post This on Monday

But I'm in a time vortex.

Anyway, Kathleen should check out the alt text or clouds or whatever you call it.

Y'all.

Questionable Content Apparently Heard About the Cookie Contest

And my wang. I know consider all references to enormous schlongs to be homages to me.

Or Perhaps the Pepper Steak Variety

They are indeed good and mighty.

Totally unrelated: Get Your War On is celebrating six years of enduring our motherfucking freedom to totally point out all kinds of fucked up shit through clip art comics and has posted all the comics on one page. SUX2BU Dialuppers!