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I swear. I’ll shut up about global warming. That rant has been made, more than once by me if memory serves, you can find the rant and comment there. Here’s what’s pissing me off today: the phrase “long overdue”. Can you use a colon and then quote something? Is that appropriate from a literary perspective? Can I deviate from the topic like this? I need an independent editor, not like redshift who feels the need to make up rules about parantheses. I honestly think he’s just lying. Why can’t (I) d(o) this()()((((()((()(()()))())()()))))?()

Anyway. The phrase “long overdue”. Here’s my problem. While radiological dating is pretty reliable, it’s not exceedingly accurate. I also believe, and please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, that the error increases as you go out. Such that the predictions that something happened 400,000,000,000 years ago, and the prediction that something happened 30,000 years ago, do not have the same error. I’m guessing that 400 googly years ago number has a error of oh, say, 30 brews of coffee (a widely accepted unit of time), whereas the 30,000 year number has an error of maybe 0.5 batches of chocolate chip cookies. I’m sorry, I’m using two different units, and you canadian readers (assuming I didn’t piss all of you off with my asian rant) are confused what with your metric thing. 0.5 batches of chocolate chip cookies = 3 brews of coffee = 8 minutes. That should clear things up.

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Who else has been waiting for the day? It’s finally here, my friends. Congressman Nick Ranhall, Senator Jay Rockefeller, and West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin are all calling for greater mine safety. Holy crap! Mines are dangerous! Everyone! I promise that as your elected leader I will make mines safer!

Sigh. I typed into google “ranking of dangerous occupations” and came across an article that listed mining as the fifth most dangerous occupation in the US. First is logging, second is fishermen, third is airline pilots, and fourth is structural metal workers. I’m assuming the whole thing is based on number of deaths per person in that occupation. Not even cops and firemen made the top five… and cops and firemen are heroes… who wants to place bets that miners will be labeled heroes by at least one TV commentator or politician in the upcoming elections this year? Maybe someone can say something fun like, “if we don’t take care of our brave miners, the terrorists win.”

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Most of what I say that’s offensive is for shock value. Well… most of the stuff that’s just offensive for offensiveness’s sake. I stand by my rant “The Victim Game.” But the stuff about ethnicities and um… hell, let’s just say I enjoy shock humor and leave it at that. I make generalities about groups that aren’t mine and then disparage those groups based on those generalities. I don’t honestly have anything against them. Lying is fun! Ok, I try not to have anything against them. I do not explicitly judge people based on their ethnicity. That being said, I am nowhere near naive enough to walk down Main Street at 1 AM.

I have this racial intolerance, though, that I can’t even begin to understand. I notice it when I’m out in public. My blood pressure rises whenever I see a certain type of couple. I mean, I understand some racial/ethnic intolerances. By “understand”, I mean I understand why it happens, not that I condone it or agree with its basis. I understand why rednecks think the Jews are behind everything. Or why the Muslims think the Jews are behind everything. Or why the Europeans… damn. Does anyone like the Jews? I mean, come on people, don’t we have respect for a group of people who can hold their own, politically and militarily, against a world that absolutely hates them? Maybe the Canuckistanis (Canadians) like the Jews. I can only hope, ’cause I kinda feel bad for them. They’re so cute, with their big noses, and piles of mon… ahem. Seriously, I have enormous respect for Israel and the fact that it can kick some serious dictatorial ass and still have the guts to say, hey, maybe the Palestinians can have some land too. It takes strength to cede land to a group that bombs your buses and wants every last one of you dead.

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I recently convinced myself to purchase a laptop. As blue midget will attest to, this took considerable mental effort on my part. (don’t call me cheap!) I knew it’d be nice to have for attending techie user groups, for travel, and for just-plain-being-better-than-my-old-computer, but the kicker was the possibility of having to travel for work.

The Dell Inspiron 6000 intrigued me - it’s fast, attractive, has mostly good reviews, and is as cheap as day-old doughnuts for what you get, but it’s Dell. Their support is difficult, to put it nicely. I’ve personally seen them ship computers with no expansion ports and the CD-ROM drive not screwed in. It’s truly a sad state what they’ve slipped to from their original high. (Unless you’re willing to shell out several thousand for an XPS model, of course.

However, I’m impressed with my Inspiron 6000 so far. It seems sturdy, powerful, compatible, and value-concious.

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