Another Brick in the Wall - Google Blogger

Ok, it's still a couple of minutes to midnight.

But if y'all think I'm gonna be on the intertubes with you freaks at
midnight when I can be upstairs with my sexy wife instead you're all
smoking a great deal of crack!

Lotsa love anyhoo :)

Best of 2007 to each and everyone of ya.

For quite some time I've been swearing to myself, usually while looking
around the basement in horror, that I'd go through this stuff and clean
it up. Today, the last day of the year, both glassapples and myself
went on a virtual cleaning frenzy.

I threw out 3 boxes of sketchy cables, power cords, cat5, ide cables,
floppy cables...

2 office chairs that had more than done their time serving my ass.

1 HP Laserjet 4

1 Compaz slim client with no cdrom

and a mess of old scratched cd's.

I still can't quite bring myself to throw out the three spare monitors.
That's 3 spare in addition to the 3 sun monitors I'm not really using on
my desks.

Also discovered I'm the proud owner of 3 3com manageable hubs, and a 16
port dlink hub.

I've still got that weird Nortel Protege CTX, and the Cisco 2503.

Slowly getting there. My little ghetto NASA is at least a *tidier*
ghetto NASA. After this current break to blog, and maybe some toodling
about on the intertubes, I'm going to haul out another pile of trash and
then perhaps tackle my actual desk. Time to get some of this paper
ordered away and reclaim the wood underneath it!

Speaking of cute attractive lasses, I would like to dedicate the
following track to a lass on her way back to town *grin*

<a href="http://blog.ddiction.com/music/02-DevilBunnies.ogg">Thrill Kill
Kult - Devil Bunnies</a>

I just had a rather unusual experience.

As some of you know, I have a profile on OKCupid. I came across the
profile of a rather attractive lady here in Calgary, and despite her
rather brief profile, sent her a message.

Much to my surprise, she responded and said she liked what she read in
my profile. My profile is fairly up front about the fact I'm married
and poly, but apparently not as much as it could or should be.

She seemed to think in our brief conversation that she'd have the
opportunity to have me to herself. Which was rather surprising in
itself because this was the first time we'd ever spoken. I move pretty
quick when I like someone, but not *that* quick. It also told me
however that she really hadn't read my profile... at least not past a
quick glance.

Ah well, when I let her know very clearly that I had no intention of
getting out my quite happy marriage she took the news well and simply
said goodnight.

Odd conversation. Very odd.

Using US and Canadian satellite images, as well as seismic data - the
event registered on earthquake monitors more than 150 miles away -
Professor Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early
afternoon of 13 August 2005. Scientists were surprised at the speed of
the event, Professor Copland said - it took less than an hour.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2112609.ece

The Ayles ice shelf, more than 40 square miles in extent - over five
times the size of central London - has broken clear from the coast of
Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the
Canadian Arctic, it emerged yesterday.

As much attention as environmentalists pay to the Arctic as a harbinger
of doom about human induced global warming, it is surprising this event
went relatively unnoticed. It seems they have only 'discovered' it well
over a year after the fact.

And why scientists would be surprised at the speed of the event is
beyond me. It's ice, not stone. When that stuff shears, it doesn't do
it slowly. Perhaps having lived in Northern Canada gives me a unique
perspective on the bahviour of ice, but these are supposed to be experts
in the field. Anyone who has watched a spring thaw of a major river
knows how fast that happens. It's a heck of a lot quicker when the ice
pack in question isn't bounded on all sides.

It'd be interesting to go back to the beginning of the Ice Age and see
what kind of fear mongering we'd see about Global Freezing and how it's
all our fault.

This has been a hell of a year, with some good changes.

Probably the two high points of the year are the two most recent ones.
I switched jobs to something that was very challenging and rewarding,
that was *much* better pay and for roughly half the hours. I still can
barely begin to describe what this has meant to me.

The other huge event is Kim's permanent residency. This was something
that had been hanging over our head since 2000. That's a hell of a long
time to live in fear and uncertainty.

I've also made some great new friends this year. While I still don't
get out to socialize as much as I'd like, I am hoping to change that
significantly this coming year. It's only been the past month or so
that I've even started having the freedom to do more of what I want, and
I hope to continue that trend.

Also lining up with the new job is the fact it's going to allow me to
haul myself out of debt a lot sooner. I'll have the lawyer paid off
within the next week. I'll have Credit Counselling complete in the next
week.

I'll have the registration for my car straightened out in the next week.
These are all stressors I get to kill off because I took a leap of faith
in my own skills and landed a phenomenal job.

There's more, and I could probably sift through my entire years worth of
posts... but honestly? I'm a chatty post-whore and the idea of dredging
through some of it just seems like far too much work. I think most
people who know me are pretty up to speed on all the changes in my life
this year.

For those that aren't, dig back through <a
href="http://blog.ddiction.com/">my blog</a> which has the years and
months neatly archived *grin*

Cheers everyone, and I look forward to another year with all y'all!

--
Be in pursuit of equality, but not at the expense of excellence.

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originally posted to my main blog

Graphic content. The video itself is somewhat grainy as it was taken with a cell phone, but unlike the other video I've come across of this event, it's complete.

The video records the moments from Saddam Hussein being led up the stairs until the actual hanging. This is not for the weak of heart folks. I felt I had to watch it though. To advocate for the death of this man and then not be able to stomach watching it would, to me, be a failure of my convictions.

Rather than link to Google where I found the footage, I've elected to share it directly from my blog. You can either click the link, or right click and download the video to your own computer.

Again, this link contains graphic video footage of the hanging of Saddam Hussein that was carried out. He is led to the gallows without a hood on.

Full video