Free the Animal

Sucker Bait

Will you take it?

It Works

My mail began arriving at Earth Class Mail, today.

Here's how it works. As new mail arrives, it goes through a machine that scans front & back of the envelope. It can read the address, so knows to which account to upload the images (I can view the back of each envelope as well). You should normally be able to tell if it's something you wish to open and simply mark it to be scanned and/or shipped to you. If not, you can have them trash (recycle, of course) or shred. I just marked those three to be scanned and they promise to have it done by tomorrow morning.

Then I'll deal with it, delete the scanned images, and I'm done. Paperless. No stacks of mail, and I can deal with everything anywhere in the world. I hear they're working on being able to deposit checks you receive in the mail for you. That'll be nice if they can swing it.

The only trouble, so far, is that it's a bit arduous to get started. The USPS requires that you fill out a form appointing them as your agent, and to add insult, you must have it notarized. As if I'm not competent to manage my own affairs. I don't need the USPS's protection. I'll take my own chances.

Automatic Liars

I've know it about both her and Bill from that 60-Minutes interview way back when that really launched them. I am astounded at the ignorance or plain dishonesty in anyone who still refuses to acknowledge it.

Pots, Kettles, and Split Hairs

The really funny thing about something like this is you could tell it at your average church picnic and people would laugh at what morons those people must be.

Word

Gary Vaynerchuk. I hope he's right. Since the dawn of civilization, the advantage typically goes to the most dishonest, i.e., politicians, clergy, lawyers, academia, activists, large corporations. Even when progress is made (i.e., Enlightenment), those truths too get co-opted by the manipulative and dishonest in order to perpetuate illusions and parasitically generate a dishonest livelihood. Take a look.

What he's saying is that the future is going to be owned by the truly honest. Why do you suppose I post in the very direct, devil-may-care, fuck you if you don't like it manner I do? Simple: fuck you if you don't like it. I don't care. I'm not lying about anything and the manner in which I conduct myself here pretty much proves it, as in the sarcastic "why not tell us what you really think."

I'm not interested in popularity, but in fully integrated honesty. Everything, at all times, no matter how brutal.

Fuck anyone who can't take it. That's the future. Get used to it.

(link: Greg, again)

Searchme

Absolutely. Check out the video intro.

(via: Greg)

Nukes

I had no real intention to blog about this; just something that automatically came to mind at the time. But what the hell. I'm on an afternoon roll.

I'll make it short. I would not expect you to be aware, but as a young and fresh Navy ensign, one of my collateral duties was the security over eight nuclear weapons on the USS REEVES (CG-24). If you don't know how the security over nukes works, here's a brief primer: two-man control. In the U.S., there is never less than two people in the presence of a nuclear weapon at any time.

Both have loaded and un-safed sidearms in readily accessible holsters at all times. Had I ever wanted, I could have created one hell of an international shit storm. So could and can to this very day thousands of others. In a sense, your life hangs on their whim.

Analogy: commercial airliners: two-man control.

An elegant slice of evolution

Stephan, in a comment on his own post:

Vitamin D is an essential nutrient for development, as supported by the fact that it's in eggs (fish, reptile and bird) and milk.

Do you understand?

"I'm almost smug"

Last phrase of the article, and it rang a bell. See, Billy? Only "almost." {with a laf}

(my own Time Machine / Time Capsule post)

Fat Extravaganza

On the heals of my breakfast post, I've got more about fat. Here, Peter digs up an article about Dr. Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet that makes some of my escapades seem tame.

On the other hand, we're only talking about now lean and healthful 70 and 80 year olds curing their diabetes, arthritis and other chronic ailments by consuming 250 grams of fat from animal sources per day, which is like five times higher than "recommended" in total fat, ten times higher in saturated fat.

Here's what I know: the more animal fat I eat, to the exclusion of carbs and the reduction of protein to moderate levels, the better I feel. I can easily stay up into the the wee hours without being tired, but I can also go to bed without being tired at 9 pm, go right to sleep, and sleep soundly for ten hours. I haven't slept for ten hours since I was a teenager. And when I rise, a noticeable leanness and firmness all over, as though the very last bits of generalized inflammation have been drained out of me overnight. When I'm not sleeping, it's high and steady energy continuously. No more afternoon malaise. It's a wonderful feeling.

Here's Peter's post. A commenter added this link to a video. Commenter Stephan pointed out this funny bit from the article:

Of course, high-fat diets will give you the benefits of energy and weight loss, but they are just not good for you.

Go figure. You're seeing this sort of thing more and more. The evidence of success in reaching some goal or point can no longer be dismissed or ignored. But we "just know" that fat is bad.

Chili Verde

This morning's breakfast.

Chili Verde, which I made last night, eggs fried over easy in unsalted butter, a bit of potato fried in lard, and a half of a tortilla heated directly on the flame of the gas stove. Not strictly in keeping with my no-to-low carb regime, but I keep it to a real minimum and am still well on my path to regaining control of my own body form.

The recipe for the chili verde is one of the very few that's not of my own creation. It's my 2nd-generation Mexican father-in-law's recipe and I've been cooking it for nearly ten years. It differs from the traditional recipe in that rather than using tomatillos, we use tomatoes. One day I'll try it with the former, but I'm in no rush because this way is so damn good. I have yet to ever prepare it for a single person in all these years who didn't love it.

The recipe:

• 3-4 lbs. of cheap fatty pork chops with the bones
• 4-5 large tomatoes; alternatively, a couple cans stewed or diced tomatoes, with or without the spices some of them contain, and one or two fresh tomatoes
• 1 small can tomato sauce
• 5-6 cloves of fresh garlic, crushed
• 2 medium yellow onions, chopped finely
• 6-10 medium jalapeño peppers, depending on the level of heat desired, chopped finely with or without seeds; again, depending on the heat.

The preparation is quite simple. Cut up the pork chops and brown them in a pan. Then take the garlic, onion, and peppers and lightly saute, just a few minutes and certainly not enough for the onion to become translucent (I've made it without this step and I don't know it makes a lot of difference). Place all this in your cooking pot, add in the tomatoes, tomato sauce, salt & pepper if you like, a little water if you need (I never do), bring to a boil and then cover and simmer for a couple of hours or so, until the pork falls off the bones and will easily fall apart.

That's the recipe as it was. I do a couple of things different. I drain a couple of cans of medium black olives and add those. I also cook it low and slow in a crock pot. I prepare in the evening and turn on the pot (low) when I go to bed. Even turning it on at 12 a.m., it should be ready by 6 or 7. If there's any rubbery feel to the pork, it's not done yet.

I took this photo on a plate; however, my favorite way to eat it is in a bowl with two over easy eggs on top, and I eat it with a spoon (normally I'm not having potatoes, tortilla, or beans).

I like to make it pretty hot. This particular one has eight peppers, with seeds. I could stand it a lot hotter, but since we'll consume it over a few days it looses spiciness as it sits in the fridge. So, I like to start out hot. I made a batch over the Christmas holidays up here and I made it seedless. The heat was very substantially reduced, far below my preferences. However, we had family guests and I wanted to take it easy on them. One other note is that when it's done the fat from the pork will make its way to the top and you can easily skim it. I leave it in. It's easy enough for those who don't want to work around it, which simply leaves more very healthful, highly saturated pork fat (lard) for me and the Okinawans.

Try it out. It's really a fantastic recipe and you'll probably end up using it for as long as you cook. Simple. Delicious. Wonderful.

I'm Interested

I've had the luxury of a company for some years where I have employees at my disposal to essentially take care of anything and everything having to do with the company. But I've never felt comfortable using them to handle personal affairs, for a number of reasons.

Now this: personal outsourcing. I think it's a great idea and for what it's worth, I have never bought into the negative hype about customer service out of India, the Philippines, or elsewhere where "them forners" reside. The other day I called one of my mortgage companies to change a mailing address and got on the line with a nice lady in Manila who was nothing but meticulously polite and professional. Yesterday, I switched out my wireless router up here at the cabin from a Linksys to an Apple AirPort Extreme, and realized I had forgotten the PPPoE password and didn't have it written down. Within a minute or so I was on line with one of AT&T's tech service reps in India who was, again, meticulously polite and professional. This has been my general experience for some years, and I always ask if they're overseas. My suggestion to companies: have your support people be up-front about it, rather than carry on implication that you're trying to hide it. From my own substantial experience in this area, if you make sure your customers know they're dealing with someone in India or Croatia, or the P.I., or wherever, your customers will soon express a preference for foreigners because those foreigners -- again, in my experience -- are a cut above in terms of professionalism.

(via: Tim Ferris)

The People Who Dictate Your Affairs

Jay says:

Jerry Springer nation is voting your life away one hoof-marked ballot at a time.

Billy adds:

Why on earth would you submit anything remotely having to do with your rights to these peoples' opinions?

Indeed; why on earth? Whatever for do you see the necessity? Now, I'll stipulate that I care not a wit how clueless, shallow, and ignorant these morons are, or remain. I couldn't care less how they manage their peaceful affairs. What's more, I don't care that you seem to see the necessity of making these idiots the managers of your own affairs -- knock yourselves out. I can't on earth see why, but it's an inescapable logic that you indeed want them to run your lives each time you fill out a ballot.

Go ahead and deny it, but your plain actions belie your words. It's Jerry Springer nation to be sure -- a nation of morons -- and if you vote you're enthusiastically going along for the ride.

I will never, ever waste my time with voting again. Even if it were a morally valid way to "run the country" (a phrase I loath for its implications) -- which it's not -- you'd still have to contend with the reality that even if you're a smart and informed person that would generally make the "right call" on matters of "public policy," there is simply no way on earth that you will ever be able to out-compete the moronic masses. (Just look at the evidence over the last two hundred years.)

Consider the often quoted and alluded to idea: "voting empowers the people." Question: why on earth do you want to "empower" fucking idiots? Huh?

I don't know what's worse, fucking idiots who believe themselves worthy of a general opinion because they carry the moniker of "voter," or the minority of seemingly smart and informed folks who "empower" them.

Effortless Backups

Backing up becomes a breeze. I can vouch for that, and it does so wirelessly, for two separate MacBook Pros on the same Time Capsule.

So, backing up is a cinch, but how about restoring? Those of you who've ever had the experience realize that if getting stuff -- the right stuff -- backed up properly isn't always a cinch, restoring can be even worse. Which file? If it's the data or settings/preferences for an application, even if you've identified the right files to back up in the first place, how do you know for sure which incremental backup to restore?

I'm happy to report that even this is quite simple and functional in the Time Machine - Time Capsule environment. First, it backs up your entire system anyway, by default, so you don't have to wonder about identifying particular data files and making sure you get everything you might need. It manages the space on the drive automatically by deleting older backups as space is needed for new ones. Still, I've been backing up for a month, now, and the half-terabyte drive isn't yet half full, and that's with two complete systems.

But here's what's cool. In the process of moving from using Entourage as an email, contacts, calendar application that syncs with Exchange Server at the office, to Mac Mail, Address Book, and iCal, I ended up getting some of my contacts chewed up and deleted. In conventional restoration of a backup, I would need to identify the location and file that holds the address book data, then find the backups of those files, then try each one going back until I reach a state where all my contacts are present. However, with Time Machine - Time Capsule, I simply open the Address Book app, then hit the Time MAchine button. Then I simply click back in time, with the app itself open, until I get to where my missing contacts show up. Click restore and you're done. Alternatively, you can simply select individual contacts and restore those rather than the entire file. I presume it would work similarly for the calendar. Rather than moving back to a complete past data file, you can simply restore one or more appointments or events within the app itself. So, what I wonder is how widespread is this functionality. Could one, for example, use it to restore single emails that might have been deleted that, though they may be in your deleted items folder, it's quicker and easier to view past states of your inbox until you get to the particular email, and just restoring that single one.

I'm sure I'll find out, in time.

The Wages of Sin

I guess this is what happens when you choose to don your leathers and mount your Harley, Indian, or other V-twin on an Easter Sunday morning rather than getting all clean cut and heading out to the local place of national imaginary friend worship to invoke the blessings of your magical spirits.

I just took these 10 photos in the space of just a few minutes over on Coleman avenue, less than a mile from my place. I headed out to breakfast (ironically enough, for ham & eggs) and on my way out, the San Jose Police were even more in force, and I saw more than one peaceful looking biker in handcuffs. I didn't think to grab my iPhone and begin snapping. But even after 45-minutes or so, there were still plenty. Looks like they were having some rally in a parking lot off on a side street. There were booths and such set up, so I guess it was something the city was aware of...just a sec...Ok, here you go. Here is your imminent danger to civil society, the Ancient Iron Motorcycle Club. Ooooh, scary. What's the world coming to, when evil can get hold of and restore old motorcycles and create websites?

Side note: my favorite bike of all time is the original Chief, by Indian (I just saw two pristine specimens). Until a couple of years ago, I owned one of the new ones and it was a pleasure.

These were all quick one-handed snaps while driving, but I've cropped them all to highlight the essentials. They're below the fold and I really have but one comment: why is this called for? Who were these people hurting, or going to hurt? Alright, one more comment. Do you have any sense that it might be a bit risky for me, living here in San Jose, snapping pictures of San Jose Police, posting them on my blog, and implying they're a bunch of pigs? Yea? Then my point is made. And indeed, it is risky.

Frat Boy Blues

This is pretty funny.

We did some pretty infantile stuff in college, but I never had even the slightest desire to associate with any fraternity house. I did once get invited and go to one of their parties (kegger -- what else?) and it was perhaps the shallowest spectacle I've ever witnessed in my life -- on the part of both the "brothers" and the sorority "sisters" from various places down the street.

Actually, it all reminds me a lot of when I happen to surf into a NatGeo episode on the TV anthropologically dissecting some form of bizarre primitive tribal ritual or something. Seriously.

My dorm mate and I eventually moved out and rented an apartment together during our senior year, and it happened to be just across the street from one of the very popular frat houses at Oregon State (PKE, I think). It only ever solidified my disdain.

To this very day, if someone tells me they were a brother or sister in this or that fraternity or sorority, then they start off with a bad first impression with me. I'm willing to overcome it, but it rarely ever happens (Radley Balko being a notable exception). There's just something about it, and it seems to be fairly general. I'd say it has a lot to do with a sense of individuality, and I loath people who don't have a sense of individuality. Wait: hate and loath.

Later: Well, Jesus, that was quick. Balko has taken down the entry. No idea why and I don't recall him ever taking anything down before. Maybe a glitch? Anyway, here was the text (If asks me to take it down, I will.)

To the Person Who Keeps Editing My Wikipedia Page:

You know who you are. I know who you are. Stop adding the frat to my “education” section.

Seriously, man. It’s not that I’m ashamed of having joined our fraternity. It’s not that I’m ashamed of the particular fraternity I joined. It’s that, well, I’m 33-years-old. It’s just not a milestone event in my life anymore, ya’ know?

You are also now in your 30s. Most people let go of the frat by about their senior year in college. Don’t you have better things to do than to surf the Internet to make sure people are paying proper respect to “the brotherhood?”

Seriously, man. Put the beer funnel down, and step away from the computer. I’m sure rush will go just fine next year whether or not Radley Balko has “Theta Chi” on his Wikipedia page.