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Zombie Music

While taking a short nap this afternoon, I had the strangest dream.

I was driving cross-country in my mother’s old Ford Grenada.  The AM radio in that 1970’s POS would only pick up one station, and all it played was zombie versions of popular songs.  For example:

Hooked on a Brainstem – Blue Swede
NoBrains – Eric Clapton
Stairway to Barricades – Led Zeppelin
If you like burning zombies (The Molotov Cocktail song) – Rupert Holmes
Shamblin Man – The Allman Brothers
Enter Zombie – Metallica
Bite me Baby, One more Time – Britney Spears
Can’t Bite This – MC Hammer
Shambler’s Paradise – Coolio
Dead Man’s Party – Oingo Boingo, although this one was unchanged.
The Biological Mystery Tour – The Beatles

Luckily, I only took a 30 minute nap, so I was spared the drive across Nebraska listening to this stuff.  I wonder what brought this on?

I have found my mid-life crisis

H/T to Tam on this one.  I’m going to go the geek road on the whole motorcycle thing and get one of these:

Looks like a cross between a crotch rocket and a mini-helicopter.  Who needs loud pipes on a Harley when you can swoop in on something that sounds like a small airplane?  All it needs is two holsters for double-barreled shotguns, one on each side for balance, a black leather jacket, and a pair of biker boots, and I’d be all set for that mid-life crisis that’s due any minute now.

Yeah, it’s experimental, and by the time all the bugs are worked out and they make it to market, I’ll be too old.  But a guy can dream, can’t he?

Advice to a Wayward Congressman

After admitting that he sent inappropriate messages to multiple women, Representative Anthony Weiner of New York has announced that he will be entering a treatment facility:

Congressman Weiner departed this morning to seek professional treatment to focus on becoming a better husband and healthier person….

So, following the new way to get out of something, Congressman Weiner will be entering rehab for a few weeks of ‘counseling’ so he can wait for the next scandal du jure to come out.

In order to save both time and money, I offer the following advice to help this gentleman become ‘a better husband and healthier person’:

  1. Do not show your schwanz to any woman you are not in a romantic relationship with already, or who is not your health care provider. 
  2. If you are caught showing your schwanz to a woman that isn’t your significant other or health care provider, don’t lie or attack those who question the appropriateness of your behavior.
  3. When you really poke the pooch, don’t act like you’ve got some mental health issue and hide in a treatment facility until the heat is off.  Man up, take your lumps, apologize profusely, and just stop showing women your schwanz.
  4. Don’t put any picture on-line that you wouldn’t want your grandmother and kindergarten teacher to see and know it was you.

If the good congressman will just follow these three easy steps, his life will improve.  Of course, I think it’s good advice for any man.

This is my shocked face

After the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Pakistan was a bit butt hurt over not being consulted.   Apparently, in an effort to mend a few fences with our ‘allies’ in Karachi, the U.S. government shared intelligence on a few Taliban/Al Qaeda facilities and personalities with the Pakistani intelligence service.  But when Pakistani troops raided these locations last week, they found them empty.

Now, I’m not saying that the insurgents were tipped off.  I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that between the OBL raid on May 2 and the Pakistani raid that grew out of our shared intelligence on June 4 that the bad guys all decided to move and take their bomb factories with them.  Only a paranoid racist that dislikes both the Pakistanis and President Obama on a personal level would think that someone gave the terrorists a warning.  I’m sure that our allies in the war on terror just cashed the check that came with the intelligence, spent the money on nursery schools and ice cream factories, and were very diligent about their information and operations security.

Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a Nigerian prince who wants me to send him a check in exchange for the deed to the Brooklyn bridge.  Something tells me I’m more likely to get a profit out of that than to continue our continued flushing of $100 bills in Pakistan.

Good For Him!

An Illinois man noticed a bag of money sitting on the sidewalk and did the right thing.  He went into a nearby bank with it and tried to give it back, but they disavowed any responsibility for it.  Undeterred, the gentleman called the police and turned the money in.  Turns out it was money for an ATM that got misplaced by an armored car company.  No word yet on whether the good Samaritan will be given a reward, but I hope he gets something for his honesty.

It says a lot that something like this surprises me.  A sense of honor and responsibility like this is, regrettably, rare these days.  To be honest, I half expected him to be arrested for something or other over this.

So good for you, Robert Adams.  I like being able to write about something positive for a change.

Gadget Insecurity

OK, I’m a gadget geek.  I admit it.  Give me a little machine that has blinking lights and beeps, and it will amuse me for hours.  If you really want to get my attention, give it a screen and put a video game on it. I’m weak and immature, but for the most part, it’s harmless.

A few months ago, I bought a Roku media player.  Basically, it’s a teeny little box you connect to your TV and configure on your network.  It pulls down Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, and a whole bunch of other streaming content from the Internet.  Since we got it, we use our cable TV a lot less.  The convenience of being able to just grab what we want is wonderful.

The only drawback to the Roku is the remote.  It’s fully functional, and does everything you need to do on the box, but it’s tiny.  It’s about 1/2 inch by 1 1/4 inches by about 4 inches, about the size of a double-stack 9mm pistol magazine.  It’s in a continual state of ‘lost’.

I mentioned this to a co-worker today at lunch, and he suggested that I download a free app for my phone (gadget geek alert) that emulated the remote.  I wondered how it worked since the iPhone doesn’t have an IR port, but gave it a swing, and it works like a champ.  The app goes out onto the wireless network, finds a Roku to control, and give it commands across the network.  It was easy. I didn’t even have to verify that I was indeed the owner of the box.

While that’s pretty neat, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  One of the hats I have at work is Designated Guilty Bastard for Security, and I just about had a fit over this.  I basically have a little computer on my network that will take commands from anything on my network that knows the correct magic incantation.  While I lock down my wireless network as well as I can, it’s pretty trivial for just about anyone to overcome even the best wireless security and get on a network.  Plus, the express purpose of this device is to go out on the Internet and pull down large amounts of content.  It would be exceedingly easy for someone do a man-in-the-middle attack between my Roku and Netflix and start telling my little box to start doing bad things.

If it’s got a command interface and a network interface, it can be a spambot or worse.

Something tells me this isn’t unique to the Roku.  Most of the new TV’s I lust after at Sam’s Club* come with a network port.  How much do you want to bet they don’t have much security baked into them either?  BlueRay players are the same, and I’ve heard tell that the car manufacturers are putting networked computers into their cars now.  So how long until h4x0rs and organized crime find a way to turn all of these into moneymakers as botnets?  

Excuse me while I go finish putting up that fine copper mesh around the volume of the house.

*Yes, I’m a guy, and I want a TV that I have to step on my tiptoes to look over.

Today’s Earworm

With all of the political news taken up lately by a congressman and his webcam, I thought this was appropriate:

Quote of the day

From Larry Correia, after doing a masterful fisking of an article about people who haven’t made a mortgage payment for years:

I never claimed to be perfect. I claimed to be a grown up.

I may have that translated to Latin and used on my coat of arms.

Thought for the Day

Watching a zombie movie on your laptop while having your blood pressure monitored will yield some interesting results.

Dear Nobel Committee

I’m writing in reference to the person you gave the Nobel Peace Prize to in 2009, President Barack Obama.  At the time, you all rationalized your decision based on the potential Mr. Obama had to make the world a better, more peaceful place.

Since that time, President Obama has:

  • Started an air campaign that interferes with an internal struggle between two armed factions in a sovereign country.
  • Continued fighting two other wars, with flare-ups in several other countries.
  • Violated the sovereignty of a U.N. member on multiple occasions to assassinate leadership of irregular forces.
  • Sided with one side in a dispute that has previously caused a shooting war when it would have been acceptable to express neutrality on the issue.
  • Supported deputies who actively assisted in the smuggling of weapons across an international border, weapons that have been used in the murder of soldiers, law enforcement, and innocent civilians.
  • Used his governmental bodies to terrorize his own citizens in their homes over trivial administrative matters.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I agree with two of the above actions.  The others?  Well, not so much.  But that’s beside the point.

The Nobel Peace Prize used to mean that you did something to keep or create the peace.  Teddy Roosevelt got it for facilitating peace between Russia and Japan. Lech Walesa, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ghandi got it for working peacefully for social change in their countries.  Mother Teresa got it for her works to alleviate the suffering of the lowest of the low.  There are many other examples of people who have worked to bring peace to our world.

But President Obama is not one of them.  He has committed acts that either make the international situation worse or at best continue policies that keep the balance of terror in place.

Having brought this to your attention, I expect that you will reconsider your poor choice in 2009.  While I cannot suggest an alternative, I’m sure that somewhere in our world there is a person who deserves this recognition more than President Obama.

Tusen takk,

Daddy J. Bear
Pater Ursus