Abstract of Reason

So I've decided to stop posting anything here except personal stuff, jokes, or funny things that happen to be on my mind. I wasn't exactly expecting to spout out on so many non-personal and non-humorous issues when I started this thing.

So I present to you: Abstract of Reason

This will be the new home for any posts of mine that do not happen to fit within the personal nature of this blog. This includes all politics, society and anything else I deem worth of writing about that does not involve me personally. There might be a little overlap here and there, but I'm going to give this a shot and hopefully it will work out better than this blog alone has. At least I'll be able to stay on topic more often...

-Josh

Pirate Jokes!

Shamelessly stolen Pirate Jokes in honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

They say, "Once a pirate, always a pirate!" So why is it that these scurvy dogs never return to the straight and narrow?

Once you lose your first hand, yer HOOKED!

Why did the pirate wear a paper towel for a bandanna?
He heard that all good pirates have a bounty on their head!

Where would they send a Pirate Ship with a broken rib?
To the dock, in the sick bay.

Why couldn't the pirates play cards?
The captain was standing on the deck!

How do pirates know that they are pirates?
They know, because they ARRRR!!!!!

What does a bleached blonde and a pirate have in common?
A little black patch.

Did you hear about the pirate who took up boxing?
He had a killer left hook!

What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
A nervous wreck!

What's really a pirate's favorite letter?
P! Because it's an R, but it's missing a leg!

What's a horny pirate's worst nightmare?
A sunken chest with no booty!

What be a pirate's favorite vegetable?
ARRRRtichokes!

Have you heard about the new pirate movie?
It's rated AARRRRGGH! And you know why? Because of all the booty!

what do you call a pirate that skips class?
captain hooky!

What has 12 hands, 12 feet and 12 eyes?
A dozen Pirates!

What was Bluebeard's wife's name? Peg.

How does a pirate greet a prostitute? Yo Ho

What's a pirate's least favorite animal? Beaver.

Question: What did Captain Hook die from?
Answer: Jock Itch.

How did the pirate stop smoking?
He used the patch!

Would it change your mind about McCain if you knew he called his wife a ...?

So one of the latest stories to hit the intertubes is a report that there is a company out there push-polling Jewish voters that are linking Obama with Palestinian Terrorist groups. If you aren't familiar with the idea of a push poll, it's the act of asking a question in such a way that implants ideas into the answerer's mind, even if they are not true. The questions in a push poll often start with "Would it change your mind about if" and then follows with a fabrication that is designed to leave a negative feeling. By the way, the headline for this post is no fabrication and based on a true story. Just google the last five words and leave McCains name out to find all the evidence you need.

However, this is the exact same kind of tactic that Karl Rove used against McCain in 2000 where the legitimacy of McCain's adopted black daughter was called into question. It was used at a point that could have had McCain prevailing over Bush in the South Carolina primary and possibly going on to take the Republican nomination that year. If McCain had won, the last 8 years would have been quite a bit different. Instead the tactic worked, he lost, and it changed him, but not for the better. Almost everything I've read about John McCain prior to the 2000 SC primary has made me admire him, but everything he's done since then has made me despise him. If it comes out that the Republican party is behind the push poll story I linked to above it will be a sad day indeed.

Labor Day Weekend

So this last weekend was a blast.

Technically my weekend began Thursday evening with the Gaelic Storm show at the Slowdown. This was the 2nd time they've been through this year and I must say the performance was phenomenal! I've got a good slew of my videos up on Youtube that shows just how close we were to the stage. Needless to say there was a fair amount of drinking involved (completely according to plan I might add!) so I took a day of vacation on Friday and got to sleep in.

Friday I went to the zoo with Angie for a few hours since she hasn't been there in quite a while and my zoo membership gets 2 in free. So I spent that afternoon taking pictures of the various animals and such. Sometimes I feel like I take our zoo for granted because I can just up and go whenever I want, it's hard to remember that it's actually a world class zoo with some of the largest exhibits in the world. Anyone who's watched a CWS game has most likely seen a shot of Rosenblatt stadium from atop the Desert Dome (Worlds Largest Indoor Desert). The walk-through aquarium is also must to experience, and these are only two of the big exhibits they have to offer

Saturday was the Husker game, which went quite a bit better than I had expected. Our running defense appeared to do very well while the passing d could still use a bit more work. Offense looked like it was on the right track as well, so I'm cautiously optimistic about the coming season...

Sunday was relatively quiet, didn't do much other than catch Tropic Thunder that evening, it was a lot funnier than I had expected it to be. I went in expecting "meh" and ended up laughing my ass off on more than one occasion.

After resting up and relaxing on Sunday we had a full day of... resting and relaxing at the lake! It was most likely going to be my last outing to the lake this year as the weather will unfortunately be taking a turn to the colder side soon (and that's already started today as it's 62F and rainy outside as I type). Luckily we had temps in the mid 90's, and just a little wind to contest with.

So all in all it was a good time, my sunburn is already more than tolerable (and here I was dreading it would be worse, hah! Take that sun!) Had a good time with the friends and now looking forward to more football, a few more concerts, and maybe some not so muggy weather, though I think the snow should definitely stay away for a good 3 months (or more!)

Beer Olympics - 8/16/2008

Hey there, it's time for 2008's Beer Olympics!

The festivities will begin around 2:30PM on August 16th (8/13) at my house and then continue on through late that night. If you need directions let me know. We will have burgers & hot dogs on the grill, though if you want to bring something else to cook up that's cool too. Feel free to invite whomever, standard rules on shady characters apply (nothing better get stolen this year!)

Games to be played (but not limited to):
Polish Horseshoes
Hill-Billy Horseshoes (Shitball)
Bags (Cornhole)
Beer Die
Beer Pong
Quarters
Tippy Cup
Caps
The Long Pour

Keg(s) will be available, $5/cup.
B.Y.O.L. (This is the BEER olympics!)

Hope to see you there!

ml_ipod & Last.FM are happy again!

For the last few months I've had problems with syncing my Ipod up with my Last.FM account. Last.FM is a social networking site similar in concept to myspace, but it is primarily for sharing and exploring new music. Now you don't share the actual songs with anyone, just the fact that you listened to it. It's a fun, easy way to see what your friends are listening to and many of the bands listed have samples of their songs for you to check out.

Also, I refuse to use Itunes in Windows because it's a bloated piece of crap and lacks many of the features I think should be standard in a media player (why oh why can't it just rescan my library?!?), as such it's only installed to get the iPod up and running and then I never run it again if I can help it.

What I do use is the ml_ipod plugin for Winamp. This allows me to use my favorite desktop mp3 player and have it manage all my ipod songs/playlists/etc. One of the cool extras that comes with the last couple versions is the Last.FM/Audioscrobbler support. This allows you to have whatever you play on the iPod automatically sync with your Last.FM account so people can see what you listen to throughout the day while out and about.

Now I mentioned that for a few months I was having problems, and it appeared to be quite sporadic. Last.FM was ignoring the tracks that I'd listened to throughout the day, though was not giving any errors so as to indicate what might be the problem. However, if I played a track straight from Winamp, it properly showed up on Last.FM. Nothing played on the iPod while it was undocked would ever make it to the site. This didn't use to happen and I can't exactly pinpoint when it started, I'd just lived with the problem for a while now.

I finally got fed up and began some serious troubleshooting. After uninstalling/reinstalling Winamp and the ml_ipod plugin (after manually deleting gen_audioscrobbler.dll and making sure I was getting the right one) various iPod database cleanup tools, changing settings in both Winamp and ml_ipod all to no avail. I came across this page that detailed some of the workings of the Last.FM plugin.

More precisely, these criteria for when submitting a track.

1. Any submissions caught by the spam filter will be silently dropped (you will receive an OK response). In such cases, an error message is usually placed on the user page for a few hours.
2. Chronological Order Rule - Songs must be submitted in chronological order. This means that if you were listening offline, and the plugin has cached some tracks waiting to submit when you reconnect to the internet, the plugin needs to send the cached tracks in the order they were played BEFORE it sends the track you are now listening to. Once you submit a track, anything with an earlier date is rejected.
3. UTC Only Rule - Your plugin must submit the time in UTC. Any submissions with a date too far ahead or behind UTC will be rejected.
4. Realtime Listening Rule - The server will ignore subsequent submissions if you claim to have played more tracks in one time period that you could fit in, if you listened to all of them most of the way through.

After working my way through this list and checking things off it became quite obvious what was happening. At some point my iPod's date/time was reset and when I went to check it, it was something like Apr 4, 2000. Now since this date was in the past, it conflicted with item #2 up there. A quick changing of the date on the iPod, and viola! It started working beautifully again.

Heads Up: Roger Clyne at the Waiting Room!

For those of you not aware, Roger Clyne and the
Peacemakers (formerly The Refreshments) will be at the Waiting
Room this Thursday at 9PM. Tickets are $15 in advance/$17 day of show.

If you've never heard them before they would best be described by "Southwestern Rock". It's the perfect music for a bar environment because of the many references to alcohol consumption and time well pent with friends. It's the kind of music that gets stuck in your head and you don't really care. Then when you put their album on to "scratch the itch" a different song of theirs gets pleasantly stuck instead.

I've been a fan of RCPM going on 7 years so far. Some friends of mine convinced me to go to one of their shows back at the Ranch Bowl. Before the show the only songs I knew were Banditos & Down Together from their days as the Refreshments. After the show I went out and got as many of their albums that I could find. I was hooked. I still am.

Since then I've seen them 6 (maybe 7) more times throughout the years and have only missed one show when they were in the Omaha/Lincoln area. Last time I saw them was at the Waiting Room last fall and it was definitely one of the best I've been to yet. I was told that the one show I missed back in March was even better and am looking forward to this weeks topping even that.

For anyone that's interested we will be hanging out at my house before/after the show. I live just down the street from the venue so we'll gather and grill, drink & play some yard games (weather permitting) and just generally have a good time with some great music. Here's to Life!