No, not body language. If you email cholterhoff01 -at- sprintpcs -dot- com, I'll get a message. It's one of those things that's pointless but kinda cool.

I still want to set up Orb on my PC and start streaming vids to my phone... because that's even more pointless, and way more "hawt," "tubular," or possibly even "righteous."

It looks like Sony is getting (as we say) WTFPWNED.

One prediction has them having to sell 30 games per console sold just to break even.

"But it's really fast!"

There's an almost impossibly great article written by the dad of a Down-Syndrome baby at the Times Online: LINK.

Ostensibly it's about what it's like being the father of a Down Syndrome child, but I think it's really more about being a father to any child. I especially liked the way he framed the imagination of the horrors that would come if they kept the kiddo and the way he contrasts that with his actual reality and experience.

Just remembered my dream last night, it was pretty awesome. I was being chased by two guys, one of whom had a shotgun. My first thought when I woke up was, "Wow, what a good dream." Total-immersion entertainment.

Don't call yourself Rosa Parks when your behavior more closely resembles Louis Farrakhan.

As actual truth would have it, it wasn't just a case of "Islamaphobia" that lead to those six Imams delaying and being yanked from a flight last week: they were being stupid assholes. No doubt a calculated attempt to be removed from the flight and then decry the move as racist/ignorant. Well, sadly enough, it worked since they made national headlines last week, and this week now that the truth is out it doesn't seem to be making a splash.

And because Islam is associated only with highly peaceful people, isn't it interesting how so many people who were interviewed for this story refused to give their names? Why's that?

From another story:

But Rabiah Ahmed, spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Muslims "have to walk around on eggshells in public just because we don't want to be misconstrued as suspicious. You have to strike a balance between legitimate fears which people may have, but not allow passengers to have so much discretion that they can trigger a process that would violate a traveler's basic civil rights."

Not really. Just avoid yelling ALLAH AKHBAR! and purposefully sitting with other men who just got done yelling ALLAH AKHBAR! with you in a pattern typically used by terrorists to hijack planes while stowing the seat-belt extensions (pieces of fabric with metal clips at the end, swung as a weapon or used as a garrote by other terrorists in the past).

1.) Level up some World of Warcraft toons and win at the internets.
2.) Own some n00bs.
3.) ???
4.) Profit.

(I have no idea if it will sell.)

One of my old elementary/middle/high-school friends shot himself in Kansas last night.

Robert O'Conner was an Iraq War veteran, working in Kansas for Army recruiting. He had told one of my other friends that he was feeling a bit down a couple of weeks ago, but talking to his mom on Thanksgiving he said he was feeling better. A lot of his stress was induced from the higher-up brass pushing the grunt-level recruiters to get higher numbers enlisted. He had previously served a tour in Iraq and although he did see some combat, as far as I know, his depression wasn't caused by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but the pressure to recruit.

Pretty sad all the way around. Never really understood how hollow and empty and pointless suicide is until now.

Robert used to be known as the group outsider... always had this dark side. He was very smart, and ended up making up a lot of stories and tall-tales, to which we always rolled our eyes and laughed at his stories. (During one late night IHOP outing, he once said that Fort Knox had at least a dozen nuclear warheads - he used the term 'thermonuclear' which only added more drama - set to blow up if someone were to try to steal the gold... to this day nobody is sure if he was bullshitting us or trying to deliver the joke deadpan. We still laugh about it.)

So yeah, don't hurt yourselves, guys. Life's already hard enough and short enough.

Bless his soul, and may he find his way to you, God.








(Pictures are from MySpace since I'm having problems getting my FTP working to host those pictures.)

Back from Carrollton.

I bought and am enjoying Nirvana's "Unplugged" album.

After starting Friday with, shall we say, not feeling very well, the weekend turns out pretty good.

I found out about a ridiculously sweet deal through Sprint where I'll get pretty much the same plan as with Cingular (although now I'll be able to use my phone anywhere in the US instead of just the tri-state area), a sweet new phone, and unlimited data use, all for about $14 less than my plan with Cingular now.

I'm paying $80 for the phone out-of-pocket, but there are $250 in rebates to mail off, and a $25 referral bonus (thanks to Matt) meaning eventually I'll get a big chunk of money, enough to pay for about a half-year of the phone service. :)

The downer is that it's a two-year contract, but I probably won't be making any big life decisions in the next two years anyhow.

Can't wait to watch streaming video on my phone. Ha.

That's right. I laid down $11.40 + tax to get a double corona Ashton VSG cigar from the Briar Shoppe in the Village. The other two VSG's I've had really delivered.

Well, relatively.

It's a well-known cigar law that any money you spend over $6.00 sees diminishing returns. Which is to say a $4 cigar isn't very good, a $6 cigar is almost always very good, and a $10 cigar is almost always better than the $6 one, but not enough of an improvement to justify paying extra for it.

Oh well, when you're rich like I am, you can afford to spend a little bit extra for luxury items.

Ashton VSGs and Nat Sherman Metropolitans are probably the only two cigars that I would consider worth the extra money. There's nothing like taking a delightful selection home from the 5th Avenue Nat Sherman storefront in Manhattan.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few more things I need to do before burning away my hard-earned $12 up in smoke...

Just like you imagined...

Late night/early morning. The chess break at 2am only lasted 30 minutes, and stopped after I let some total newbie capture my queen. Now, for 5 hours of sleep and PROGRESS TOMORROW.

Well, now it turns out that it wasn't the photographer that was lying about his pictures, it was the editors of Time and US News and World Report that changed the captions of photographs of the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict from a few months ago to not only smear the Israeli army, but also not report on clear evidence of Hezbollah collusion with the Lebanese army (the link has a photo of a civilian-disguized "medium range missile" that was the target of the attack in question.)

Link.

Pretty amazing. Why would Time and USN&WR decide to do this?

As predicted, they didn't post my comment on their blog. Equality, indeed.

Oh, I also posted a response in the latest entry in the FAIR Wisconsin blog, but since the post didn't show up immediately, it seems like they probably have the comment approval feature turned on, meaning they'll have to read it and approve it for being posted, so I don't have high hopes that it will ever actually make it into their comments section.

I heard the day before the election that Republican "robocallers" had been making somewhat sketchy calls to people in highly contested areas...

But what I just read about how the pro-homosexual marriage folks were lying and utterly deceiving the people of Wisconsin in order to attempt to trick them into voting down an amendment banning homosexual marriage is absolutely repugnant, and went (so far as I'm aware) completely unreported in the media.

The proposed amendment was to ban gay marriage - therefore a YES vote was a vote for the ban, and a NO vote was to reject it. The message tells people to protect their children and families by voting NO to the gay marriage amendment...

Go figure: they lost...

That makes me a sad panda.

This article makes me pretty sick.

"What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it OK to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not the other?"

What is truly amazing is that this line, typically used by anti-abortion advocates such as myself, is actually being used by a doctor who advocates that born children need to be killed in some cases.

I fail to see the medicinal value of infanticide. I fail to see how the doctor helps the health of the newborn by killing it. (I wonder how they do it, actually. Once it's born, it would be pretty grizzly to shove a vacuum hose up it's neck into the cranium and rip it apart, so I imagine they go with some sort of stiff injection.)

Either way, the quote serves its purpose to point out the obvious: that nothing changes before during or after a baby is born that should make it illegal to kill it in one place and not the other.

But you see now how allowing one thing leads to another. You allow partial birth abortion and think that's about as worse as it'll get I know a lot of my friends that think, "well, I think that's really a tough and bad thing, but I can't enforce my opinion on someone else, and really, they aren't that common." But now 20 years have passed, partial birth abortion "just happens," and is accepted, and now the new frontier is actually killing the born kids. And now you have "medical professionals" quoting how late-term abortion actually isn't any different from killing newborns.

Can you fucking imagine them saying that during the national debates that went on in the UK in the 70s to legalize late term abortion? You'd never, ever see an advocate get up there and say, "Hey, we need to legalize this late term abortion because it's just like killing a newborn - afterall, nothing changes before during or after passage through the birth canal!" No, that would horrify people. But you introduce things nice and slow, and sure enough, a half-century later, you can offer them some seriously horrifying shit that flies in the face of all natural law and logic... and they've got virtually no ground to stand on to refuse you.

And to see all the misery and suffering that retarded and non-physically or mentally children cause their parents, you should ask the parent of a retarded child. Chances are really good that they're glad their kid wasn't killed before during or after it's birth and that they love them just as if they were an actual person!

Anybody remember the last time a society started killing off lots of their retarded and physically- and mentally-deficient children?

I've woken up between 7am and 7:20am without an alarm clock for the last 4 days. This is fantastic.

Christmas lights are up. Dishes are done. Laundry is done, but not folded.

Christmas lights have a way of turning any room into a magical wonderland.

Blasting some ORION here in the lab to get me through this last ligation reaction, then I'm home for some quality time.

I bought some flannal pajamas as I ran through Sam's Club yesterday. I can't wait to put them on and go to sleep here in a little bit. Screw this whole "being awake" thing... the Holterhoff needs rest.

I was so tired last night, I think I fell asleep sometime around 8pm. It's so nice and cozy when it gets dark, and it's nice to wake up early and plan to start getting things done.

It made me happy to see all the families and children out gathering candy from their neighbors. The neighborhoods just south of campus (and to the west, in the West University borough) are already very ideal and pretty, and to see the kids and families out walking in the nice weather just after sunset reminded me of how much fun I used to have on Halloween.

Fact: one year I went dressed as a Three Musketeers candy bar, complete with a full-body length fabric candybar costume. I'll bet mom's still got it packed in a box somewhere here in Texas. :)

I also went one year dressed as Ms Piggy.