I get some international hits on this blog (hi guys, saw you in the log file stats), so this one goes out as a bit of a public service announcement. Sometimes you might notice Americans can seem somewhat... how shall I put this nicely... bat shit crazy. 

So since about Sunday the news has been dominated by swine flu¹. All swine, all the time! You get TV news saying things like:

"Although there's nothing to support that this is an act of bioterrorism, there's nothing to rule it out, either."

Yep. 9/11 was perpetrated with a couple of guys who new how to fly a plane (well, half knew how to fly a plane, the landing half not so good) armed with box cutters. And if I remember my biology correctly, genetic engineering of virulent microorganisms is trivial once one has mastered the intricacies of box cutting technology.

Or:

"OK, this isn't a pandemic yet. But what would one look like?"

This isn't a marauding army of blood-thirsty grizzly bears roaming the countryside, devouring all the children they encounter. But let's simulate what that would look like.

Take Monday's xkcd. Now imagine that Twitter feed is a list of cable news reporters. It's like that.

Yeah, the people at the Centers for Disease Control are worried. That's their fucking job. They worry about diseases, and how to control them. A clever reader may have already deduced that from the name. I understand they have degrees and everything. Let's listen to what the nice folks at the CDC have to say before we start planning the final battle between good and evil, mmmmkay?

So getting back to the Americans seeming bat shit crazy sometimes. We have this expression, "garbage in, garbage out". In this case, think of it as "bat shit crazy in, bat shit crazy out."

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¹Not to make light of the 149 deaths in Mexico. Condolences there.

Here's an HTTP error code I didn't know existed before today: HTTP 406: Not Acceptable. I don't think I like my web servers being so judgemental.

Today I spent most of the day reading documentation that was out of date, trying to figure out software that doesn't work, so it can produce output that will, in all likelihood, be largely ignored. At the top of the page in 1-inch tall letters: "Center for Software Excellence".

Anybody who's lived in the Seattle area knows about the moss that invades your lawns around here. Last year was my first year I had dealt with this issue, I took it kind of easy on the moss killing. Results were less than stellar.

So this year I've declared war on moss. I'm going medieval on its ass. Or I would if it had an ass. From Hell's heart, I rake at thee; For hate's sake, I spread my last moss killer at thee!

So anyway I spent today raking out dead moss out of my front lawn. On a side note, I can't move my arms.

I just heard today of a site called Yammer. Apparently, people get together and "yammer" at each other. And, as mentioned earlier, there's Twitter, apparently where one goes to... twit?

Apparently the key to web 2.0 success is to have a name that is at least somewhat derogatory to the users.

Bought some RAM to update my imac. Mainly so I can run applications in windows in a VirtualBox window. And by applications I mean games. Mostly they're from like ten years ago so running in a VM isn't much of a stretch.

I have BootCamp for the same thing but rebooting is such a PITA. Especially since I usually just put the computer to sleep instead of turning it off. That way I can just sit down and surf for porn work on my computer right away.

I just had some snack crackers that were flavored "French Onion". Or as the French would call it, "Onion".

Today I tried to convice my mom (who hails from "Eastern Warshington"), that a certain medical condtion is not pronounced "gentle herpes".

It seems President Obama can't do anything right. I'm hearing all this talk about how he's going to take us to the socialist poorhouse. The first wave hit Friday. How much poorer am I now? I am negative 40 bucks poorer each and every month. And by "negative 40 bucks poorer", I mean I'm positive 40 bucks richer, because I'm being taxed less. Mr. President, how can we go poor at this rate? Really, it's like you're not even trying to make us a bankrupt socalist state.

Two free guitar lessons from a guitar mailing list I'm on.

First, here's former president Bush shows us his... G# maj7 #4 #9 #WTF cord?

The second one is called the "F U" cord: