ripp.net

I'm on Flickr

(admin) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:34:25 -0500

You can find me here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rippc/

I'll be working on getting all of my/our pictures up in there (pro account ftw!!)

If you know me or Sabrina, drop me a line and if I/she remember you and you have a flickr account also I can let you in to see the hidden stuff. No, nothing like that. I just don't plan on sharing *everything*.

Frozen Octopus

(admin) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:09:43 -0500

Frozen Octopus

Originally uploaded by RippC

蛸 or tako, is quite possibly the world's perfect food. So lo and behold while perusing for Japanese goodies at the local (well sort of) Asian grocer I found this 2lb bag of octopus for $5. Not bad if you ask me. For octopus. Yum. And yeah, I know its actually from Korea.

But its octopus dammit. Yum yum yum. Time to learn to make takoyaki. Tako tempura. Tako on a stick. Tako tacos!! Taco sandwiches.

delicious.com?? WTF?

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:05:09 -0500

Are you bonehead corporate types over at Y!ahoo so f-ing clueless? Its not delicious.com, as the new "Delicious 2.0" now sends us to. Its del.icio.us. Why? Why ruin such a perfect domain name and branding with this .com crap?! Forward the .com to the .us fer chrissakes, not the other way around!!!

This is just lame corporate bullshit at work. "Gee, uh, shouldn't we be a dot-com, Bob?" "Um, Yeah, I think you're right, Bob!" "We should just change it, nobody's going to notice." (together) "Hahahaha!"

Geez, what a bonehead move.

The Problem With DVR's

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:47:19 -0500

And the schedules they acquire. I set up my MythTV box Saturday night to record 'Dial M For Murder.' I'd not seen it before, but have been waiting for the opportunity. Great! I set it up, and let it run.

I go to watch it and notice that the movie didn't start until about 5-6 minutes after it was supposed to. Hm, I thought. This could be bad at the end, but maybe its close enough it won't matter.

WRONG!!

Hitchcock's ghost comes back from the grave, and just as the inspector is about to tell the lovely Margot how he's figured out she's innocent and the conniving Tony is guilty, in a moment of sheer spiteful irony.... Right at that moment....

END. FIN. The recording stops!! ARGH. If ever there was a moment I wanted to put a brick through that TV, that was it!

Randomness Begins

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:06:54 -0500

So I figure, since I've got this blog with (counts on fingers) four domains pointing at it (I will dominate the ripp-dots someday!!) I should start doing something with it. Yeah sure I post some garbage (french pronunciation, if you don't mind) from time to time, usually when I realize, "Oh, sh*t, I have a website!" or something really ticks me off. Usually I forget about it. How messed up is that? Or I try to pimp some latest project or other to get some of that much-coveted google link-juice.

To wit, The 4th of July was just 3 days ago (counts on fingers again to confirm) yeah three. Independence Day. For those of you not in the US, lets just say it involves waving the flag around, setting off explosives and celebrating our insurgency, er I mean, rebellion from the British oppressors some two-hundred-and-thirty odd years ago.

I was sitting in the living room, and started hearing this rumbling sound. Now, a bit of background is necessary. I live somewhere between civilization and BFE (look it up) in Oklahoma. I say between because the main highway is just a quarter-mile down the road, and any unusual rumblings can usually be attributed to some truck driver air-braking on his way into the truck stop at the corner.

Not so tonight. The sound didn't stop. I went out the front door and was treated to a most peculiar display of sound and light. It seems that this year, everyone within five miles of my front door was setting off fireworks. A full 180-degree view of random airbursts could be seen, and the flashes from the ones that didn't make it over the trees.

But the sound. Normally, the wind is blowing a constant 20 mph. All. The time. With gusts to thirty. Its a rare occasion to have no wind, and tonight was one of those. The sound of these fireworks was only as I'd imagine it would sound like in a war zone. The low, distant, thumpthump concussions that you can feel in the ground, and in the air, posing as artillery or air-dropped ordnance. Random rat-a-tat-tats of firecrackers posing as machine gun fire. Medium-sized shells making a solid bang sounding like light mortars.

The flashes just over the trees became villages just over the horizon, being annihilated by squadrons of B-17s somewhere in Germany sixty years ago. It was surreal in the sheer amount of it. I sat there for a solid hour-and-a-half, listening and watching the battle unfold.

Then I realized I was being assaulted in my own by the local mosquito contigent. Back inside. Ten years I've been in this house, and this is the first time I've ever witnessed an apocalypse of that magnitude. In years past I've either been somewhere else, or a combination of high winds and dry, ultra-flammable prairie grassland have kept the missions at bay.

It was one of those "moments of clarity" that you get on a rare occasion.

Sabotage? Or "Modern Business Principles(tm)" at Work?

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:05:05 -0500

It's funny because its true. You know it. I always wish things were more like they were then. People just got shit done. Christ we went to war in '42 and were done in two separate theatres in three and a half years. Stuff just got done, dammit. And it was because this kind of stuff didn't go on.

David "Everything is Miscellaneous" Weinberger sez, "Here's a PDF of a 1944 'Simple Sabotage Field Manual' from the US Strategic Services, explaining how to train people to sabotage their workplace. Full of useful suggestions, from the practical to the, um, less so (e.g., bring a bag of mo[n]ths into a theater showing propaganda films). It also recommends doing things through channels, making speeches, and referring matters to committee as techniques of sabotage (cf. page 28). I got this link from a presentation by two CIA folks at the Enterprise 2.0 conference."

(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic”
comments.
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
PDF Link

Link: Sabotage manual from 1944 advises acting like an average 2008 manager - Boing Boing

I especially like the bit about the moths. Bob and Doug McKenzie's playbook, eh?

More Catching Up

(admin) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:47:50 -0500

Yeah OK so it's been another month since my last post. Argh.

A rat or some other nasty rodent type creature destroyed the main engine wiring harness on my Magnum. Pissed doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm not even going to tell you what a new harness costs, but suffice it to say that my comp. insurance deductible is all I'm paying. Five hours later and a couple days of stiff- and sore-ness, its nearly all fixed. At least it runs and drives like normal now! Just have one O2 sensor wire to repair and it'll be good as new.

But WTF is up with Dodge and these dopey little safety clip things on each connector? I'd have had it done a lot sooner if not for fighting those things. Imagine a little tiny tab you have to move just right to get the clip to unlock, and most of them are in hard to reach places. Yeah, it's kind of like that.

Gotta say I'm not liking the electronic throttle on this thing though. Had the car had a conventional accelerator cable, I'd probably at least have been able to drive it. But getting in, stomping the gas, and nothing happening... its a little disconcerting.

So I had to get the Pontiac out of storage for the year a bit early, and risk the thing getting hailed on. Not a fun thought after the last time, and the money and time that went into getting it back to show condition. Then the wiper switch craps out on me, so yay for me having to find a working 27-year old part. Whoo. Sigh.

What else? Not much really. Launched ScifiReview.com. Yeah its an Amazon affiliate site. Hopefully it gets some page views. I had the domain, and no time (or cash) to put into what I'd like to see from it, so there it is.

Also redesigned The Youth's Companion Project site. I've got a lot more issues to get scanned and uploaded, so I figured putting the whole thing into a blog (yay for serendipity!) engine and a coppermine gallery was the way to go.

Stay tuned for another post, sometime this year. snicker.

Catching Up, Part. I

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 08:00:36 -0600

Well, Let's see....

We finally ditched DISH Network. Now we're on OTA channels (HD of course) and good old NetFlix! Why'd we do this?

It just wasn't worth it anymore. Sure the news channels would come in handy from time to time. I will miss TCM and the occasional SciFi Channel show.

But honestly apart from those few things, it just wasn't worth the $50/mo. anymore. Most of the channels no longer have any relevance to what they started off as. Dish also screwed me when they moved HDNet Movies from the base HD-Pack to a new "tier" that cost twice as much. No longer worth it.

I mean, look at some of the channels out there, and look at what's actually on them. Crap like "Ice Road Truckers" on the History Channel, WRESTLING on the SciFi Channel, TLC is now the crappy makeover network, A&E? No longer Arts and Entertainment, Bravo? Used to be somewhat interesting. Now I can't remember the last time I turned there. Even AMC went downhill, first adding ads, then dropping letterboxing, now even they've got crappy "original series" on there.

And most of it is all re-runs of the same crappy shows. I'll use Law and Order as an example. TNT especially. I just started calling it the "L&O" channel, because that's about all thats on there during prime-time anymore. It's on USA, its on other channels. Get it away from me!

So, much as I hate to admit it, the internet will have to provide me with my dose of BSG, SG-A, and a couple of others....

And now we've got two NetFlix accounts at 3 movies out a piece, and its still cheaper than the satellite. That's about all we've got time for in a given week anyway, so I think its for the best.

Oh, and check out part II for the other time-eating device we've acquired.

Voice Response Systems

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:00:12 -0600

Who was the idiot who came up with this idea? If there's anything I hate more than talking on the phone, its trying to talk to a freakin machine. "One. ONE!!! No. NO! Yes. YES. YES! GODAMMIT!" I mean really. These things don't work. Just let me push the damn buttons. Beep beep beep. There I'm done. Why anyone would think people actually like these stupid systems over just giving a damn menu and letting me just get there just blows my mind.

Rant over. Carry on.

Dead Drummers....

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:17:15 -0500

Keith Moon or John Bonham?

And why?

Discuss.

I SAID DISCUSS!!!!

Technorati Tags: dead drummers, john bonham, keith moon, led zeppelin, the who

Architectural History, Around Here Anyway

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 07:38:44 -0500

Well at least they're not going to tear the thing down. Man that just ticks me off. Forget about the whole Bell's incident. Yeah we'll just screw 50 years of Tulsa's history and part of its identity in favor of a parking lot. Man. Funny though that they'd scrap $300 G's worth of work after the Bell's fiasco. "But its about the money!" Yeah, right. What's next, tear down the Pavilion, too? I'm sure that'd be the last straw.

At least the armory will remain. (See the link.)

I wish the US had the same, I dunno, attitude towards architectural history thats present in say Europe. Around here anything that's a little old is looked upon as trash in need of destruction to be replaced by some crappy metal building, parking lot, or cookie-cutter franchise store.

I think people are finally starting to realize that once these monuments are gone, they're never coming back. Yes it costs more money to maintain and restore them, but dammit that's not the point.

Link: "Armory Restoration Costing More Money" - KOTV.com - The News On 6

And yeah, I haven't been posting. Busybusybusy.

Technorati Tags: tulsa, national guard, armory, architecture, history, money

Phishers Are Annoying

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 07:36:05 -0500

God is anyone else getting mildly (or grossly) annoyed by the next latest greatest fad in phishing e-mails? The 'welcome to my site' ones that want you to click on some link to verify your signup info that you supposedly submitted? Man, if I could find one of these boneheads and lock myself in a room with them....

...only one of us would be coming out, and you only get one guess as to who it is. I'm getting dozens if not hundreds of these things, and I guess spamassassin isn't able to flag them... bah.

The Youth's Companion Project

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:24:52 -0500

Hey, yeah I'm still here. Remember back when I said I'd come into possession of some old papers and such? Well, I've gone and started an entire project around some of them. Enter: The Youth's Companion Project.

The Youth's Companion was a magazine that was published from the 1820's up through the 1920's. I came into a few partial issues, and two complete ones. Since they (should be) are in the public domain by now, and from what I have read the original archives no longer exist... this will be an attempt to recreate the archives. Ambitious? I dunno. Depends on how much support I can get to carry the thing out.

So if you're interested in reading what kids of the 20's and before were reading instead of watching Pokemon and playing video games... check it out. There's lots of cool and some just weird ads in there as well.... Like 'get your own steam engine!' and 'every boy should learn to shoot!'

And if you happen to have some issues of this lying around, and you can get them scanned in, send em my way... contact info is on the site.

The Youth's Companion

Technorati Tags: youths companion, vintage, history, project, public domain, advertising, literature

ripp.us

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:36:03 -0500

Woo! I was able to snag ripp.us from the drop list thanks to GoDaddy's backordering.

So what? Well, nothing really, just thought I'd brag about that for a sec. So if you enter ripp.us into a browser you'll just get redirected back to here

Review: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

chris@ripp.net (Chris) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:14:15 -0500

Bruce Willis returns for the fourth installment of the Die Hard series! Rock!

Or Not.

Man what a let down. Sure there's lots of hokey gunplay and explosion and dodging flying cars and completely outrageous situations... but its DIE HARD! The franchise invented this sort of film, and for that you have to give them a wide berth to continue this sort of thing...

...but at least act like it matters! This movie is just, well, uninteresting on so many planes it isn't funny. And that's the other knife to the gut for this film. Unlike its predecessors, it just isn't funny. The humor that is there is just lame and contrived.

The plot can be summarized like this: A group of cyber terrorists led by a disgruntled ex-government agent cripples the network infrastructure of the US, and thereby cripples most of the country in an attempt to steal billions in electronic assets from the Treasury department. Our hero, John McClane goes to arrest one of the unknowing accomplices in this global hack, and gets caught up in it all, eventually having to save his daughter from the terrorist leader.

And that's the real problem here. The plot of the film has little if any personal connection to McClane. In each of the previous three Die Hards there was an urgent and immediate personal threat to McClane or his family. Yeah sure eventually his daughter is kidnapped and he has to rescue her, but you spend most of the film wondering WTF any of this has to do with him!! Until finally she re-appears near the end.

Back to the humor. Part of the charm of the Die Hard franchise is the wit and humor, most notably in parts one and three, which is sorely lacking here. Not until near the end does it start to get remotely funny, but by that time you're just tired of watching.

And as for Willis, dude, could you at least pretend to be interested in this role? I got the feeling he was just there to pay the rent on this one. A flat performance would be an understatement. And as for the wayward hacker Matt Farrell (Justin "I'm a Mac" Long) his shtick gets tired equally fast.

And as for the action that made Die Hard famous? Yeah its there, in droves. Lots of gunplay and bullet-dodging, high-speed car vs. semi vs. delivery truck chases, a bit of helicopter crashing action. But the death knell for the film comes as McClane jumps on the back of an impossibly maneuverable F-22, and jumps off just before it crashes. That entire sequence was entirely over the top, even for Die Hard.

I wouldn't recommend dropping the coin to visit a theater for this one. Save your pennies and go see Transformers or Harry Potter instead. I was sorely disappointed, and hopefully they either retire the franchise after this or are able to resurrect its former glory!

Links: Live Free or Die Hard at IMDB. Live Free or Die Hard at Amazon.com

Technorati Tags: live free or die hard, 2007, bruce willis, john mcclane, matt farrell, justin long, movie review