[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
duckhunter's LiveJournal:
| Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 | |
| 9:45 am | Part I: SALLY FORmmf! SALLY FORmmmf! Oh. My. So much fits, so much doesn't. And... 12% success is about right. Screw you, Hancock! We suck worse! -DH |
| Monday, May 5th, 2008 | |
| 1:25 pm | Part I: I had this urge, see.... Well, this weekend, rather than work (which I really should have done), I went to see Iron Man. Saw lots of trailers. I'm really starting to love The Dark Knight. As soon as I saw Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent... Eyup, it's going to be one of those summers. I can remember 1989 - The last time Indiana Jones went head-to-head with Bruce Wayne. And that was pretty good. I still think Indy will be the overall winner. Anywho... Movie was pretty good. A bit predictable, but well done. However... The bit after the credits that have given me a cinematic erection that has lasted for well over four hours... If the next movie doesn't live up to the promise of that two minutes... son of a bitch WILL pay.... -DH |
| Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 | |
| 1:28 pm | A moral quandry Last Wednesday, I chipped a tooth on some bacon. So... Does that make it good bacon, or bad bacon. Discuss. Well, anyone who EATS bacon can discuss. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} points can go piss up a rope.-DH |
| Thursday, May 1st, 2008 | |
| 10:20 am | Part I: Just another day in Colorado weather...  Happy MayDay, everyone. -DH |
| Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 | |
| 8:41 pm | Reality Train Wreck - Hell's Kitchen I love Hell's Kitchen. Watching it now. And, I now have a theory. Since we're now on Season Four of the show, I think that the producers are intentionally picking the biggest whack-jobs in the culinary world. Seriously. Best line (so far) tonight: "I don't think Chef wanted me to go. I think he wants to beat on my ass for a little longer." If you want a reality show that showcases real cooks doing some pretty amazing things - Just switch over to Bravo's Top Chef. If you want to see people with huge egos with mediocre skills get their asses handed to them by a trained professional, go with Hell's Kitchen. It's been... whoa... about 13 years since I've been in a real kitchen. Nearly 20 years since I was in the kitchen with the word 'cook' in my title (However, I've done more prep work and plating as a dishwasher than most people fresh out of culinary school.) And let me tell you this - Hell's Kitchen menu is set up with simplicity in mind. Gordon Ramsay's cooking is geared toward simple flavors, the best ingredients and quick cooking. While I certainly couldn't compete at this level, I guarantee you I'd be in the final 5. I would take a sabbatical from work to be a dishwasher on that show. I'd have so much fun. :D -DH |
| 8:21 pm | It's always something... First, a quick lawsuit from a PLAYER saying that 'gold farmers are ruining his World Of Warcraft game. First response: Bwuh? Now, I play WoW. And, oddly enough, I buy gold from the company that is the defendant in the lawsuit. And, franky, I use as much of my 'ill-gotten' booty to help out folks in my guild as much as myself. I just want to run quests and play - I don't have enough time to grind. What really pisses me off so much about this is the fact that Blizzard could kill the gold trade in a single patch. All you have to do is completely stop player-to-player gold transfers. Because, frankly, if it's wrong to buy gold from a crazy Chinese farm, it's wrong to give gold to friends. After all, it offers an unfair advantage to anyone who gets gold. And while we're at it, all item transfers should go through the Auction House. Because it's the only way to be fair. -DH |
| Monday, April 14th, 2008 | |
| 1:22 pm | Part I: The Statute of Limitations on my patience... Just got an e-mail from a member of our crack legal team. Basically, he had some personal items shipped to work (which is fine - happens all the time), and he was having problems locating them. The packages in question, according to the tracking number, arrived 3/10/2008. No, that's not a typo. March 10th, 2008. And he can't find them. Asked me if I have any idea where they could be. My reply - "They could be in Tiera Del Fuego. 35 days is long enough to get that far." Now, he found out that he got his packages mixed up, and the packages he was looking for haven't been delivered yet (I'm assuming that is also a month late). He even apologized very nicely for wasting our time. So he lives. For now... -DH |
| Sunday, April 13th, 2008 | |
| 7:54 pm |  Well, it's official. Connie the Caddy (on the left in the picture) is now in the hands of a teenager in Wyoming. The Dorry J (The land-yacht Chrysler on the right) is the new transportation. It's verra, verra nice. Besides, when I realized that I parked the cars right next to each other, I had to take a picture. Also, I thought of a phrase this weekend. A phrase that I truly love, but I can never use in conversation because, frankly, I don't think I'd want to be a part of conversation that this phrase is uttered. But, dammit, I like the phrase.... ( Behind a cut because it actually is pretty damn offensive... ) -DH |
| Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 | |
| 1:09 pm | Part One: It technically is one question... Kinda.... My Step-Nephew has, for whatever reason, expressed an interest in having me give him e-mail lessons about computer stuff. So, I sent him an e-mail... As for the computer lessons - It's going to be a bit unstructured. What I want from you is what you want to learn about. That way, you learn about what you want, not a bunch of stuff you may not use or don't want to learn. For now, just ask me one question. If you would rather, I'll put my answers in a Word or Text document. And I warn you, you may not always like the answer. :) I worded it this way to make sure I don't bore him prattling on about command-line commands when he doesn't really want to know. I just got the response. I would like to learn more about windows XP,windows 98, windows 95,windows NT, windows 2000, windows 3.11, window Vista basic, viruses, error reports, video cards, sound cards, hard drive, tape drives, and external drives. Holy hell. He doesn't want much, do he? -DH |
| Friday, March 21st, 2008 | |
| 4:23 pm | Part I: LJ Blackout and Link-Fu I had a huge rant semi-prepped for this day. The Day The Lights Went Out In LJ. But it basically boils down to - "Their playground. Their rules. Don't like it? Don't let the door hit you on the way out." And to the people who used the whole "... there was no one left to speak for me" as an excuse to fight The Man, you really need to pull your head out of your ass. This is an online diary and social networking site. You are not required to use this site. You will not be persecuted and/or killed if you don't use this site. DO NOT COMPARE THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE TO LIVE WITH ADS OR PAY FOR THE SERVICE YOU WANT WITH THE HOLOCAUST AND/OR GENERAL HATED AND PERSECUTION. Back in 2003, when the household I lived in was breaking up to the four winds, I had all my e-mail services done through the server that was in the house. Now, the owner of the domain and equipment wasn't going to be able to set anything else up in short order because of his housing situation. Rather than whine about how unfair it was that his life was taking precidence over my e-mail, I took the bull by the balls. I bought a $500 cheapo Dell, and we both bought enough extra equipment (extra HD for RAID backup, video card that worked with the most recent flavor or Linux, etc) to make it a passable server. I then made sure that I had a business class bidirectional DSL line in my new place. Got some static IP addys, and we were set to rock and roll. When using the DSL as my house bandwidth cause the server to choke, I picked up a cable modem and ran both services in my house. I coughed up the dough (as did the owner/sysadmin) and had a near seamless switchover. And, just last year, we had a seamless switchover to a far superior server with far superior bandwith. All because I didn't want to change my e-mail. Don't like LJ? Shut up and go somewhere else. Don't like the way that Comcast kills your bandwith? Tell Comcast to kiss your ass and get your own bandwith (and if the local DSL isn't 'fast enough' or not available - you CAN get a T1 anywhere you can get a phone - it just may be very expensive) So, to the whiners... Put up or shut up. Now, for the fun Link-Fu. I admire the effort, but the machine isn't worth it. This is whacked. Sure, I understand the artistic side, but TV isn't a charity - You got to pay the piper. If I were them, I just wouldn't show their movies. -DH |
| Sunday, March 16th, 2008 | |
| 12:17 am | Adventures In Grieving: Ashes to Ashes Conversation earlier this week... "At least my mother is in a higher place." Higher Place? I thought you were an athist or something." "Pretty much, yeah." "So you believe in Heaven?" "Oh, no. She's in a higher place. Top shelf, next to the pancake mix." "Ewww. Don't want to get that mixed up. "Well... It might work out if it's the morning after Mardi Gras." "Ewwww again." And, in the interest of full disclosure, I would like to correct myself. She's right next to the Twinkies. I thought it was a pancake mix box at first glance. -DH |
| Saturday, March 15th, 2008 | |
| 10:16 pm | Adventures in Grieving: Who's your Daddy? I went with my father (along with Good Sister) over to DFS (Department of Family Services), as my parents had custody of my great-niece (Age:30 months) and great-nephew (20 months), and were trying to adopt my step-nephew (14 years) who is in a group home in the sprawling cultural focii of Thermopolis, Wyoming. During the discussion with the kids' case workers, they pushed for Good Sister to be valiant and take the younger kids. That didn't fly. When they looked at me, I just flat said, "Uh, I'm a bachalor in Colorado. I don't think that's the best idea." "Oh, kids have a way of leveling a person out." "Hey. I can't take the toddlers unless you want them removed from the gene pool. If I had to take a kid, the teenager would be better for me." Well, those words may come back to haunt me. It seems that they took that as an offer. Now, the kid is a mostly good kid, and it would only be a few years. However, I really don't see me getting the kid. While I'm all for jumping through a few hoops (I did take high-risk foster parent training in the 90's in order to help my parents do foster care), I honestly don't feel they they really want to get rid of the kid. My parents have been trying to adopt him for about 3 years, but the group home has cancelled the court date for final dispoistion on at least two occasions that I'm aware of. The reason - "THe child isn't ready yet." Example: I was talking with his worker, and he wanted to make sure I knew about his 'Issues' - violent behavior and authority issues. The 'violent behavior' is yelling threats at most of the staff at the group home (y'know, the group of people who tell him that he can do things if certain conditions are met, and then change the conditions), and beating children up who are larger than him because the bigger kids were picking on the smaller kids, but that's not the point. To help him 'deal' with his violence issues, they give him video games where violent activity is the only way to succeed. While beating up things on a video game is an appropriate outlet, it doesn't do much for dealing with the core issues. Redirecting is fine, but there also has to be training to understand and deal with the 'urges' as well. I've already had sunshine blown up my ass (although at this point, I'm not sure if it was intentional or poor intra-departmental communications), and that always worries me. But who knows... Maybe in a few months, I'll be the guardian of a strapping 14-year-old. -DH |
| Thursday, March 6th, 2008 | |
| 8:56 pm | Adventures In Grieving: The Funeral Home I figure I'm going to put the more 'entertaining' moments in my LJ. Starting with the funeral home. As per my last post, we basically had to go though the funeral home because of those silly 'health' laws and stuff. So we get charged $1500 to toss what's left of my mom (after the organ banks take their pound of flesh) into a cardboard box with a plywood bottom and put into and extremely high oven for 10-15 minutes. Feh. While my mother did quite a bit of planning (Note: Planning is good. It may feel a bit morbid, but pre-planning is one of the best things you can do for the people you've left behind. [/soapbox]), but the final disposal of her ashes was kinda up in the air. She changed her mind a lot on that. My brother offered, "Well, she wanted to be put in a rose bed." I offered, "I thought she wanted to be spread out over all 23 counties in Wyoming." The Bad Sister said, "Well, a couple of weeks ago, she mentioned that she wanted her ashes spread over Brad Pitt." "Hmmm," I said. "Well, Angelina is a crazy freak. If we ask her, I bet she'd help us out. Probably make her all hot and bothered." The look on the funeral director's face was truly priceless. Also, another memory. One of my mother's doctors was named Higginbottom. And, according to her, he has a truly world class ass. My mom was always a sucker for a firm ass. So, I know when she went under for (what would be her last) time, she had at least one good thought. I don't know if the other things are going to be as funny as this one - Right now, all the Fantastic Family Drama is happening. As well as some 'fun' financial stuff. But if has any entertainment value, you can be sure I'll post it here. -DH |
| Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 | |
| 5:13 pm | DATELINE - East of Cheyenne, WY: Getting myself together Well, been making and fielding calls all day. Rapture. I would also like to thank all the well-wishers who have given me their sympathies. I just never coped well with it because of a couple of things. A) people I don't know/people who don't know the situation have been, nearly universially, people who wanted to something. That's always made me feel a bit uncomfortable. B) People who I know/People who know the situation... well... I don't feel comfortable ruining their day with my problems. I mean, most of the people on my friends list haven't ever *met* my mother, but they may still come down with some sort of vague downer because of it. I never said it was logicial - It's just the way I feel about this. For example: My mother's standing last requests were 1) Give what you can to donor services, 2) Creamate and 3) No memorial service. God, trying to explain to people that she didn't want a service. The funeral home asked me three times, as if I wasn't sure. Then trying to explain to other people as well... My mother was... usually pretty pragmatic. She always hated funerals and memorial services, because she felt that it kept salt in wounds that should be healing and life moves on. She didn't fear dying at all. She had a near-death experience when she was quite young, and she was always calm about the certainty that she was going to die. I miss her terribly right now. But I'm more sad for myself than I am for her. So, especially with my upbringing of Sarcasm-Fu, I will be making several off-color comments. Today when talking with the nurse and the hospital chaplin, they mentioned that they might have to store her 'in a cool place' until my dad arrived (the weather was pretty bad this morning). My response - "Yeah, we both worked food service - you have to get the meat in the walk-in before it spoils." They were taken a bit aback from this statement. Especially only after an hour after ToD. But I'm sure my Mom appriciates it. -DH (Comments are back on - I may not repsond if all I'm going to do is say 'Thanks') |
| 7:36 am | DATELINE - CRMC: They said it would be fast. At 7:25AM Mountain time this morning, Wilma Louraine Taylor Wilde passed away. She was not awake or in any pain. Can't type much more - Trying to get myself together for phone calls and such... -DH |
| 7:02 am | DATELINE - CRMC: So much for stable.... Got a call from the hospital about 90 minutes ago. Everything was going fine up until 2-3AM. They were weaning her off the blood pressure drugs, and they were actually taking her off seditives, so Mom was actually answering simple questions. Then she started crashing. As of right now, she's back where she was when she got out of surgery on Friday. Maybe a bit worse. See, they never put her back on the seditives, and she's not showing any difference. At this point, it's been determined that her DNR is going to be invoked if her heart gives out - There is nothing else to be done. So... back to the waiting game. -DH |
| Saturday, March 1st, 2008 | |
| 2:02 pm | DATELINE - CRMC: More blockages than a concrete colonic... Yeah, I'm bored, and I'm trying to save my last book for later tonight... Other strange things about the free Hospital access... No WoW or Second Life. Awwwww. No IM. This one puzzles me. Tried both Trillian and the original programs with zero luck. In fact, aim.com, icq.com and other web sites that support said IM programs also can't be accessed. I have a feeling that Skype would also be out, but I don't have it installed on the laptop. In addition, it seems like that every 5 minutes or so, there's a sweep that killed access to idle programs. So I loose puTTY and other such things during the sweep. Oh, frustration... -DH |
| 11:46 am | DATELINE - CRMC: Blockages at the hospital. Well, the unsecured public network here at the hospital had a warning page saying that the traffic was monitored, and that some sites were blocked... I'm cool with that - It's their playground, and I'm just a guest. I'll take any access I can get. However, as I was surfing, I found out that Flickr was blocked. Flickr. I found this out after I watched the "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" and "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck" videos on YouTube. This amuses me. I'm sure the reason it's blocked is because of the bandwidth of loading and showing pictures in hospital waiting rooms, but you'd figure that YouTube would be blocked for the same reason. Good thing IT isn't supposed to make any sense. :) -DH |
| 11:22 am | DATELINE: CRMC - Any improvement is good... Well, just talked with the nurse - Mom's been upgraded to 'Critical but Stable'. They're weaning her off the blood-pressure increasing meds and inclining her in bed. Her color is a hell of a lot better than last night. They're still keeping her knocked out, and the overall situation hasn't changed much, but at least it's stable enough where they're taking steps to get her own body to take over the healing process. I told you. Tough old bitch. More as events warrant. -DH |
| 8:24 am | DATELINE: CRMC - Through the night My mother got out of surgery yesterday at around 3 in the afternoon. However, they wouldn't let us go see her. At around 6, we were escorted into one of the private 'conference' room. At 7ish, the doctor finally came out an talked to us. Seems the surgery went well. Four bypasses and a pacemaker install, and she didn't even need any extra blood. The whammies hit afterwords. 1) Seems that 10 years on insulin, as well as a whole range of other medications over the years, had made her veins paper-thin. Including the veins in her legs where they usually take grafts from. While they went in okay, they have some concerns. 2) The heart attack wasn't just a heart attack. It was a full-blown cardiac rape-and-aggrivated-assault-with-intent. 3) Now, my mom is fairly obsese (I nearly sucker-punched the doctor when he tastefully said, "We had such problems with her being so gigantic.." - Yes, it's true, but you really don't need 'Yo Mama's So Fat..' jokes at this stage of the game), and they think that, during the attack and the surgery, that some of her bowel may have died. Because of the size and weight, they couldn't be certain without more surgery, and they're not hot on that option at the moment, because.... 4) Acidosis. If you don't read the linked Wikipedia article, normal acid levels are between 7.30-7.45 pH. Mom was pushing a 7.0, and only when they were using meds to up it. Normally, not a huge deal, but dealing with a condition that can result in substatial cellular damage when you've just had your chest and legs ripped apart doesn't exactly inspire hope. The doctor was pretty grim. You have to love it when a doctor says, flat out, "It's not looking good. She may not even make it thorugh the night." Then, after a 10-15 second pause, "But we're not quitting on her..." Meh. Well, I crashed out in the Surgery Waiting room overnight (Note to other hospitals - If you don't have a large, quiet waiting room with nice comfy recliners: Get one.) as the ICU waiting room was... cramped and depressing. A quick trip down to the hotel cafeteria for breakfast and a trip out to 7-Eleven for a toothbrush, comb, deodorant, and some asprin, and I'm here again. At least they got wireless, even if they're homepage doesn't come up on the net. And Mom's still here, too. She looks like shit warmed over, but she is a tough old bitch. It's still pretty grim. They're keeping her under until there are signs of improvement, so she's been out now over 24 hours. Doc said that when things change, they're going to change fast. Good or bad. So I'm here for the duration... -DH |
