Monday
04 July 05

In 1776… (Fireworks!)
There were fireworks too. (Red, white and blue!)
The original colonists,
You know their tempers blew. (They really blew!)
Like Thomas Paine once wrote,
It’s only common sense (Only common sense!)
That if a government won’t give you
Your basic rights,
You’d better get another government.
      – “Fireworks,” performed by Grady Tate (From Schoolhouse Rock!)

For those of you in the United States and it’s territories, I hope that you had a pleasant and safe Fourth of July.

While looking through my webcomic bookmarks last night, I found this (“The Fourth of July…” image at the top and the “Burn, Baby, Burn” blog at the bottom) on Squidi.net. I used it as the opening salvo in a discussion group post. And, it didn’t seem to open the can of worms that I was concerned about. While I don’t support everything that Mr. Howard had to say, I do admire him taking a stand and defending his position.

That’s what freedom and liberty (“…and justice for all”) is all about.

Tonight, we watched three fireworks displays (Rice-Eccles Stadium, Murray Park and what we think was Sugar House Park) from our back window, while some of our neighbors set of pyrotechnics of their own. The cats didn’t seem too fond of the nearby noise and hullabaloo. I’m sure that they will be equally thrilled when the 24th rolls around and many of our neighbors light fireworks in honor of Utah’s own holiday: Pioneer Day. The Colony kid in me still looks a bit askance at the fanfare that Pioneer Day generates (mainly because it would make more sense to me if it celebrated the day that Utah became a state… which was in January), but I understand the significance the day holds for the local population.

Stray Toasters

  • For reasons that I have yet to fully comprehend, ‘Nine‘s OS partition flipped me off this afternoon… and then wouldn’t reboot. This was more than “a little” aggravating. But, after thinking it over for a bit, I decided to simply wipe the partition and start over. And tomorrow: I image the drive. This whole “take hours out of your day to rebuild a partition” crap is for the birds.

    However… this did afford my inner Star Trek geek to do something that I’ve been considering for a while: I set my “Start Windows” sound from that st00pid “Microsoft Sound” to a .wav of one Captain Benjamin Sisko welcoming someone to Deep Space Nine. And that makes my inner (and outer) geek smile.

  • By way of Backwash: Apropos of Something
  • Once again, I held both my video card-to-be and City of Heroes in my hands.
    Once again, I put them both back on their respective shelves.
    Until the end of next week.

  • I finally read the three issues of Battlehymn (as I previously mentioned here) that I picked up on Friday. I’m impressed. It’s a very well-crafted story. And, it seems that while the government is trying to put a good public face on the Watchguard team, the beauty is only skin deep. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
  • How big is your ecological footprint?
    I didn’t know how large my footprint was; I was surprised by the result:

  • As if I needed yet another thing to add to the “Covet List,” Rykodisc has put out a DVD set that I must own: Spenser: The Movie Collection. I like what A&E has done with the new movies in the series, but for me… Robert Urich will always be the face of Spenser. Not to mention the fact that Avery Brooks’ Hawk was one bad mother… (Shut yo’ mouth!) …and is also featured in the movies, too.
  • A man has been convicted… for modding an Xbox.
  • Over the past three years, I have gone on and on about how highly I regard Cartoon Network’s Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. So, I won’t do it again. This time. Instead, I’ll let someone else do it. By way of Cinescape, I give you this week’s “TV Wasteland” column, by David Michael Wharton: Who Watches the Justice League?
  • I’ve been generally happy with the Internet service that Comcast provides. However, I had a major bone to pick with them yesterday: I wasn’t aware that they cap their subscribers’ newsgroup downloads to 2 GiB… PER MONTH. *braincramp* This notion doesn’t exactly thrill me.
  • By way of (and SciFi.com): Warp 11
  • These people spent 10 hours building a LEGO® Star Destroyer. You can watch a 4-minute .avi of the construction.

Namaste.