July 2004 Archives

I joined the Army after my first year of college. I didn't feel like I was learning anything there, even though I had bright professors and a stimulating environment in which to learn. Looking back, it perhaps was foolish not to continue, but I felt that I could always come back after doing something else. In short, I was bored.

Lazy, too. I wouldn't do work, instead spending lots of time in the computer science and electrical engineering labs learning things that were above my freshman status. I learned assembly and Pascal programming, even a bit of C, but I didn't have full access to everything, limited to some IBM XT hardware and dumb terminals hooked into a HP mainframe that's probably still there. I wasn't a good programmer, hell, I'm still not a good programmer, but I can follow code, read things from a hex dump as needed, do some debugging or craft small programs to do my bidding for larger applications. But that's all I did, I pursued few other academic interests. The work wasn't hard, just boring. I felt totally unchallenged, especially in my more technical courses where I sat though mind numbingly droll lectures on the PRINT statement in BASIC.

So with my first year out, with a C average and potential academic suspension, I decided not to continue and find something else to do, which was join the Army.

My reasons were somewhat hazy. It wasn't for any lust for combat. It wasn't because I would be paid a lot. The military seemed like something I could, well, do. Maybe I'll see the world. Maybe I'll learn something new. Who the hell knows? I was a directionless 19 year old with a job record of mowing lawns and sacking groceries, and I'd just dropped out of college. Suffice to say my family wasn't happy with this decision, and even I wasn't after a while because I'd realized I'd signed up to join the goddamned ARMY, and I hate authority! But I couldn't get out of it. I signed, I gave an oath, and there was nothing I could do about it but go. Ah well. It was little consolation that I learned later that quite a few others joined in a similarly ambiguous manner.

But it turned out okay. Basic was easy, and I did well, even making squad leader in my platoon (Screamin' Eagles!) I got that position becaue I was smart enough to know my left from my right consistently, and could march under direction and explain to others how to do so as well, so merit was recognized. It was taken away just as easily when I learned that it is also hard to lead others, and I blew it one day by coming completely apart under the stress of responsibility. It was a small thing, really, but it had been eating at me for some time.

As a squad leader, I didn't have to do KP and I didn't have CQ duties on any roster. Instead, I would direct my squad to do minor chores, and in my case it was maintenance of the PX parking lot, which was just across the street, but woe, WOE betide the recruit that sneaked over there and was caught. It was a simple task...pick up the garbage (there hardly was any) and sweep up the dirt and leaves that collected there. Problem was, nobody in the squad wanted to do that, and I had no experience in how to get people to do it, and I didn't want to whine about it to Drill Sergeant West because...hmm...I thought I could handle it. What I ended up doing was all the work myself, and I knew that wasn't the best solution, but I was being held responsible for the quality of the PX parking lot, I just couldn't delegate that responsibility properly...I had no authority. Correction: I was perceived in having no authority.That was the problem...I had it, just didn't know how to exercise it. Call that a lesson learned.

Anyway, after some weeks of this, the strain of doing not just my job but everyone else started to take it's toll. I became forgetful and disorganized, both mortal sins. I was tired and distracted in the field, and the drill sergeants didn't let up. The thing that just broke me down was a stupid, stupid mistake, and it's somewhat embarassing to relate, but here it is:

We come back from a long "nature hike", which is a euphamism for long distance running in the woods. I was exhausted, not thinking clearly at all, trying to get my squad squared away and myself at the same time, and I just...stopped thinking clearly. I was getting my uniform ready and I had pulled off only one white sock, and I though to myself "ah, fuck it, I'll just put on a green sock and be done with it, who is gonna notice?" And that's what I did. And on any other day, I would have gotten away with it. But not today.

We all went out to formation and sounded off with the usual stuff, then marched off down post to some supply warehouse. We all filed inside, and were all instructed to...take off our boots. "OH SHIT" was a constant refrain inside my head, because we were there for new uniform measurements...we'd been in long enough that we all needed new uniforms because we were all now much more fit than when we started. Even I had lost some poundage and had a smaller waistline. And new boots were needed by some, and we all took off our boots.

And there I am, dumbass extraordinaire, with one white sock and one green one. Christ, I felt more stupid than any other time in my life, and that was saying something. I knew I was screwed. I tried to hide it...mostly by standing with my green socked foot covering the white one, and i made it about 2/3rds of the way through the line before another drill sergeant noticed...and ordered me to stand at attention. Which I did.

He calls over every drill sergeant in shouting distance to examine the brain damage of Private Mathews. The stood around me in a half circle, speculating aloud over the number of neurons I had remaining in my skull. With dread, I watched them determine how much time I would have to spend doing pushups to atone for my crime. DS West and DS Wheat stared at me for a long time, told me to sit my silly ass down and I would be dealt with later.

When we got back, I was called into the little office the drill sergeants used to bullshit and smoke and was read the riot act. When forced to provide an explanation, I couldn't really do so, and just stated that I didn't know what got into me, it was stupid, and alluded that perhaps I wasn't thinking clearly because of my duties as squad leader were just too much for me to handle. Easy fix, relieve me as squad leader. Later that night, I felt a load lifted from my shoulders. The rest of Basic and AIT was easy.

I learned from that, though. The chain of command exists for a reason, it's not there to just provide orders, but also as a backup to my own decisions and responsibilities. Now I know better, but it didn't help me back then...I guess that's why we call it experience. I learned that I can't always do things myself, especially if I was going to be in the Army..after all, we are all in it together. Postscript: The drill sergeants knew perfectly well what was going on, but its not their job to coddle me, they were curious to see how I would eventually handle things. I handled it wrong, so I was replaced. After graduation, I asked DS Wheat about it. He gave a typically evasive response: "Did you learn from it?" I replied with a yeah, and he shook my hand and told me to hurry the hell up, there's a bus to take me to Airborne school and it would be highly amusing if I missed it and had to run all the way across post.

More to come: What I saw on TV about Panama, the day the Soviet Union came apart, and what we all thought on August 2, 1990

It was about 15 years ago when I saw my first Soviet Rifle Regiment up close.

I was stationed in Vilseck, Germany with 1-6 Infantry, 1st Armored division when I got there. I moved around that little post for the duration of my stay, from 4th platoon Delta company to headquarters 1-6, back to supply in my old Delta company then a lateral transfer to HHC 1-37 Armor across the street. All these moves were caused by my superior skills in dealing with electronic hardware...I was THE man in the entire brigade for computer hardware and software problems. Operating system and architecture were irrelevant to me, I felt at home with our company clerk's monochrome Wang POS as I was with my roomate's Commodore 128 and my IBM PC. (I left my own Commie 64 at home, picking up the PC so I could play a wonderful game called Tank Platoon, which made me a hit when I moved to the armor battalion.)

My abilities in bending hardware and software to my own will got me into some trouble, but also proved my salvation for the last year of my tour. It became apparent that my skills were known by various people when the 1-37 battalion sergeant major picked me out of a roomfull of grunts to see him after a meeting...a meeting everyone present was viewing with dread, because we had all "volunteered" for the task of transporting all the crap 1-37 was needing for Desert Storm to and from Germany, and that meant weeks of driving, heavy lifting, and zero fun for all involved. So when a sergeant major points at you and says "come with me", you feel a sense of panic.

I hadnd't raised my hand to volunteer for this work, I had been selected by my first sergeant, and individual who never liked me from the beginning and didn't like me at the end. Which was fair, I didn't exactly conform to the ideal soldier ethic, I found I had a flair for making the Army's byzantine supply system work for me, and I enjoyed dealing with matters of supply, but I was an infantryman foremost and I couldn't play both roles at the same time. For a fuller disclosure, I happened to mention to 1Sgt Gengalo that I found working in supply a more immediately rewarding endevour, whereas being a line grunt at the bottom of the food chain limited personal initiative somewhat. I saw it as a simple problem of rank and responsibility...working as a supply clerk, while not providing a great deal of authority, gave me immediate returns in responsibility...while carrying about the SAW or the '60 didn't tax my mental abilities quite so much.

Objectively, these are true and simple facts. Top didn't see it that way, he interpreted this as a diatribe against the entire concept of the infantry soldier. Since he had more stripes than I did, his opinion is what mattered. He was, simply an asshole, but an effective asshole, and assholes appear in any career you undertake...it's just that in the Army an asshole can make life a living hell. He made me3 a supply clerk all right, putting me under the supply sergeant (SSgt jackson, if I recall correctly) so that I wouldn't contaminate an infantry platoon. (His words.) Fair enough.

I suppose the prospect of having me play truck driver and supply hauler for a bunch of tankers amused him. Lots of things amused him, (from my young snot viewpoint, why else would he be raggin' on me?) like telling me to have the company truck ready to go to deliver chow to troops in the field, when I just told him that the damned thing is down with a major fuel leak at the fuel filter, and we need new tires but I can't get anyone to sign off on that particular request, and the otehr truck is still down with a bad front differential and the new one is still on order, yes first sergeant, I'll get right on it. Naturally I did the impossible, bending rules here and there and outright breaking others because, after all, I can't let my old platoon go unfed. The XO thought that Gengalo ran me a little too hard from time to time, but I assured him that really, this was a conflict of personalities, I'm the private, he's the first sergeant, and besides...i did ask for what he gave me. Plus, it was a challenge...how in the hell can I get the deuce up and running before the chow line closes tonight, how can I get these tires past inspection, and can I steal the new differential that just came in over the weekend?

I'm an infantry soldier. I improvise.

Anyway, Gengalo thought he had a master way of making me miserable by turning me over for a hellish job, but the sergeant major of 1-37 knew who I was, which was frightening at the time, and determined that I would be best person available to drive Major Vinson's HUMMV. Vinson was the battalion S-3, operations staff, and that was the most slack job I ever had in the Army. On paper, I was to make the HUMMV ready in all respects for the Major when he needed to go places, and unofficially, my task was to make all the computers in the battalion function! What a blast!

And to top it off, we get this huge...THING, six armored boxes containing a puny system running a base operating system of HP-UX on, wow, a 286! I was told that this was to be my baby, me, Private Mathews, and I would grok the workings of this Maneauver Control System, or MCS, some new tech that the battalion level operations would carry with them all the time. I have no idea if such a beast is still in service...I doubt it, since the hardware has long since left this ugly beast in the dirt, but who the hell cared at the time? Two boxes were for storage, another box held the shielded power supply, one housed the CPU, another held the huge tape drive, and another housed this monster array of communication ports. It had EVERYTHING, from attachments that plugged right in to our PRC-11 (is that it? can't remember) radios, with hardware encryption! There were two posts to plug the damn thing into field telephone wires if we had to, plugs for this and that, plugs for stuff I never recognized or figured out what the hell they talked to, but the idea was quite obvious...it was meant to communicate by whatever means to the rest of the net.

Oh yes, these machines were networked. Primitive networking, and I'm not going to describe that in too much detail, quite simply because I cracked root in no time to see what was going on, and realized..well, this wasn't a very secure system. So it would be unfortunate to send out email on the thing to the rest of USAEUR, proclaiming that 2-37 Armor has lost a nuclear artillery shell somewhere in the Grafenwohr training area and needs help finding it. There were templates for all sorts of messages, and a nice and friendly menu system would help you classify each message. Is this FLASH traffic? Would you like to use the BROKEN ARROW message template? All manner of fun. (No, I never sent any such message. I would still be craving daylight today if I had done such a thing)

But other than keeping the various battalions in touch, which was what the messaging system was for, it also kept track of your units, and the S-2 intelligence folk had tapes for all over the world, and we could load them into this thing and it would present a detailed map of the theater on the monitor, and that was REAL FRIGGIN COOL. I could zoom in and out of topographic maps, and it would keep track of forces from other units that their MCS would upload across the net, and as the S-2 learned of threat units, those would appear in red (of course) on the monitor and the CO could see everything. Clunky, slow, prone to overheating and a cast iron bitch to move around, but it fit in the TOC track and we took that bastard everywhere. We got that thing up and running in no time, and when the folks came by to train us on it, I was showing everyone in the S-3 office how to use it already, and the S-2 was having a ball with his topographic tapes. We'd plug it into the divisional radio net and chat with other units that had their's online. Like I said, slack job.

Which brings me to a traffic investigation incident.

Some fool had driven his HUMMV over a German national's BMW on the highway to Berlin, squashing it really well. Injuries were involved, and taht made it an investigation. Such jobs are left for various lower ranking officers, and HHC 1-37 had to pick a couple to join the accident investigation team and drive deep into the former DDR (the wall had come down not all that long ago) to see the wreck and take statements and stuff. We'd take a day out there, spend the night in Berlin, then return the next day. I think we took three vans, little Volkswagen vans painted baby shit green for our purposes, and I drove the lead van because, well, I guess cos I was that cool.

I didn't know anyone for this trip, but that was okay, and everyone was laid back, even though I was the only private in this mass of officers. We drove down the huge highway that once was the only road that connected Berlin (West Berlin!) to the FRG, and I did a lot of looking at the countryside. All of the old DDR looked crappy and poorly constructed. In the distance you could see the smudge belching forth from giant factories, the housing was pathetically substandard for Germans...but there were lots of satellite dishes.

The highway to Berlin is very wide and very well kept. The LT in the passenger seat remarked on this, and I told him (truthfully, I think) that it was so Soviet Aviation could land cargo planes there. I noted that the center divider wasn't made of concrete, but instead appeard to be thick metal posts. I sumrised that these posts could be removed from some sections of the highway in case of conflict, and the posts would also serve as a deterrent from anyone trying to land their own stuff. Nice.

We turned off onto a crappy road, which led through the hills to our eventual destination, when I saw It, the entire reason for my being in Germany in the first place, a Soviet Rifle Regiment, sitting in it's laager. WOW.

We drove slowly past that. I later learned that we had to alert the Russians of our coming, and they had the gates closed, but I could see over them into a HUGE motor pool filled with tanks. Tanks, tanks, tanks, and a bunch of BMPs. There were four guards present, all in overcoats and brandishing AK-47's. I saw two officers walking along outside the perimeter, maybe going home, who the hell knows.

I was told to keep the windows rolled up, but we drove slowly by in any case, while our resident intelligence officer wrote down numbers and whatever it is he saw. I waved to the guards and drove on. I wanted to roll down the window and shout something, but I'm sure that too would have landed me in the stockade.

A few miles down the road we found the old DDR police station, a rather disreputable looking building with a bunker nearby. Inside, it was all one big room, kinda like a barn, with wood flooring and cheap furnishings. The lockers for policement were all along one wall, and there was a rack of Ak-47s on the wall for ready use. I was told to stay nearby and not wander around, which was hard for me to do. I saw that the East German officer uniforms were of low quality, and the officers I did see seemed to resent us being there. Tough shit to that.

We were led to a shed behind the building where the wrecked Beemer was, and it indeed was a wreck. I supposed the HUMMV drove over it with the passenger side wheels, crushing the car on the driver's side. It was a mess. Notes were written, pictures were taken, and then we drove the rest of the way to Berlin.

Berlin is a busy, busy city. We stayed at some hotel and I was allowed to take off after dinner, and I did, exploring what I could of Berlin before I had to leave. I rode the subway. I stood at Checkpoint Charlie, walked along the small mounds left behind where there was once a wall not a few months before. I straddled that wall, thinking of history, amazed that I got to see it after all.

I've been thinking a lot about my service recently, some bad, some good. I suppose in the end I really wasn't suited to be a good, ideal soldier. I don't play well with others, preferring instead to do things myself. Nonetheless I did serve, did my job as best I could, and I feel pretty proud about that. I still have my uniform istting in my closet, and from time to time I'll take it out and buff up the brass, align the ribbons properly and center the rank and other insignia, and making damn sure the blue infantry cord is clean. (That's important...that blue cord to me seperates the real workers from the playground supervisors, if you know what I mean..and I've been both) I wonder sometimes what it would be like if I were enlisted now, and what I would be doing. I try to eat healthier and get my blood pressure under control so that maybe, if I can do it, I'll go find out, because for some reason I still want to go there and eat the same crappy food all grunts eat (with lots of Tabasco) and breathe the same dust. I can't do the same things I used to, I'm 15 years older now, but still...I want to do something.

More on that later.

Had a pretty decent weekend.

It got off to a good start, a night out for a movie and light dinner with my partner in crime, notDeskmerc. Saw «I»I, Robot«/I«, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, it exceeded some of my expectations, certainly in the CG arena. I don't think I spotted a single motion control error in any of the robots, and I was looking.

Saturday was spent doing very little in the manner of productive things. I became disgruntled at my rendering software...still images come out fine, but all sorts of errors pop up when I try to render a series of images in .AVI or MPEG. Even the Quicktime MOV format won't work. I'm not going to spit out several hundred PNG files and thn run 'em together in a movie. That would suck.

Reinstalled Bridge Commander with a zillion new 3rd party mods. I am the Borg.

Maybe I'll have some new renders later on. Evidently I can do better, according to some persnickity family members.

On Sunday, I...I entered a church. A Methodist church. I didn't burst into flame as I had feared, but I took the risk for my grandmother who wanted to perform a reaffirmation of faith, a sort of karmic recharge you can get under the Methodist faith if you feel the need. (Methodists don't believe that baptisms clear out your permanent record, it's a symbolic gesture. Likewise, the sacrament presented isn't the actual transubstantiated body of Christ either, HERESY!) So the whole clan was there, minus the Jehovah Witnesses of course, because they would surely burst into flame upon entry into the chapel, but not for the same reasons I was concerned about.

Present as well were about 25 Tongans, all of which were joining the local church direct from their island paradise. In honor of their attendance, the entire service was performed in the Tongan tradition, with the pastor (priest? I dinno what the proper title is, minister) dressed in a grass skirt and sandals. The altar was covered in hand woven cloth with bright colors, and straw mats were everywhere. All of the Tongans sang Tongan hymns, and in the great Christian traditions, their present and past kings had written the words. The went something like this (translated into English):«BLOCKQUOTE»«I»There's a man
covered in blood
at your door
he wants to talk
and bring love«/I»«/BLOCKQUOTE»Or something like that. I was fascinated by the visual imagery, after all we just had this movie where you get to see God beat up by cheerful Romans and it caused quite a stir, but when the quaint island savages do the same thing with their limited means it becomes charming.

At the end of the service, there was a feast. However, I didn't attend. I left early with my Dad, because I had tickets to the ball game, where we watched the Astros savage the Brewers 9 to 1.

This week promises to be dull and insipid. I'll try to do something to brighten it.

Offered without comment.

«TT»
13:20 Jenn: did some of you take asshole pills today or what?
13:25 deskmerc: NHAHAHAHHA
13:25 deskmerc: no
13:26 Jenn: =P
13:26 deskmerc: That's going on my blog, right now
«/TT»

I see that Cynthia McKinney is going back to Congress.

I don't see why citizens continue to elect such utter retards into office. I guess the Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy was caught looking the other way and didn't get her booted out of the state in time to prevent her return to D.C.

My only consolation is that at least there someone in Congress that is stupider than Sheila Jackson Bitch.

Haven't been feeling so spiffy these past couple of days, but I've got a handle on it now so tomorow I should be all filled with piss and vinegar...whatever that means.

I did some playing around and came up with this:

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/wed0721-01.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/wed0721-01.php','popup','width=267,height=531,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/wed0721-01-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="397" border="0" /»«/a»

Meh. Standard V3 model with some morphs and a texture. The clothes fabric does seem quite right, too much specular (the glistening, shiny white reflection) and the bump map I created seemed inferior to the task. A close up revealed:

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/wed0721-02.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/wed0721-02.php','popup','width=559,height=525,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/wed0721-02-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="187" border="0" /»«/a»

Crap. Transparency errors. Look at that eyebrow! Awful, and the texturing isn't applied properly over the face, there seems to be some bleeding with the lips...just not what I was hoping for. Try some fixes...

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/wed0721-03.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/wed0721-03.php','popup','width=559,height=525,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/wed0721-03-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="187" border="0" /»«/a»

Feh. Same trouble as before. I must be missing something, or am I just trying to be a perfectionist?

Not that it matters.

Jack Black is a blowhard idiot. I present this without supporting data, the mere mention of his name and the visualization of his face should be sufficient for any who have seen his films or other "work". His best role was having his innards splattered across a station wagon in «i»The Jackal«/i».

This time, I'm playing with lighting, texturing and export/importing between applications. This is a posed raptor from Poser, exported as a Wavefront obj file which was then imported into Max. Textures then followed, with some time to create a small bump map (you can see this really well, makes for good closeups when done properly) and then properly slap the texture over the model parts. Poser can export any given model with as a single objec tor as a collection of such...I haven't figured out the best way to do this. (Ideally, I'd like GestureMax, so I can pose direct in Poser and render directly with 3DS Max.)

Anyway, here's Deinonychus again.

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/raptor.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/raptor.php','popup','width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/raptor-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="150" border="0" /»«/a»

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/raptor2.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/raptor2.php','popup','width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/raptor2-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="150" border="0" /»«/a»

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/raptor3.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/raptor3.php','popup','width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/raptor3-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="150" border="0" /»«/a»

The first two are just changes in camera angle. The third is just some video post processing, electric raptor, I guess you could call it.

I used this model because it was simple to pose and simple to export...I didn't want to concern myself with hair or anything else, just skin.

«b»{{{Guest Blogging by NotDeskmerc}}}«/b»

Glenn Reynolds cited «a href="http://166.70.44.66/2004/Jul/07122004/utah/182851.asp"»this article«/a» written about the gay marriage amendment ban thing, published in the Salt Lake Tribune. «a href="http://instapundit.com/archives/016525.php"»Glenn asks«/a»:

«blockquote»«I» ... I wonder if people are thinking this through. If the amendment fails, as expected, isn't that going to be read as a defeat for the anti-gay-marriage folks, and as implicit permission for states to go ahead? It seems to me that it will be (which is fine with me, since I'm okay on gay marriage), but that makes me wonder why anti-gay-marriage folks are doing this. Am I missing something, or are they being played for suckers? «/blockquote»«/I»

Bearing in mind this a newspaper from a Mormon city, the obviousness of the truth may just have slipped by the author. However, I think this is just what it seems to be, sans any refined political guile. There is a loud minority constituency of people who honestly feel so strongly opposed to gay marriage that they are willing to see it banned in a constitutional amendment, without any regard for how Jim Crow that seems.

It will not be passed, because most reasonably intelligent people recognize how profoundly stupid this whole issue is. This is one of the costs of the Republican strategy: appealing to the great white unwashed. Just like the Democrats inexplicably have the poor racial minority vote (depsite the fact that Democrats were responsible for Jim Crow), the Republicans have their own rabble. The Born-Agains.

You know who I'm talking about. Everybody's got at least one in their family. The uncle you hate visiting because he and his wife expect you to pray for everything, including the dog's food. The mother you can't convince that the world is more than 5000 years old and took longer than a week to make, geology be damned. The sister who used to be a coke addict, but now festoons her car with Christian radio station bumper stickers. These people cling so closely to their Bible that reality has little opportunity to intervene. These are the same idiots who rabble-roused against stem cell research «a href="http://deskmerc.com/archives/000073.php"»(see the chat transcript below«/a»), without having the faintest idea how the science works. They call into talk radio and ramble incoherently about how gay people are a threat to family values, but they can't give any specific reason why. They just are, because Jesus said so. Besides, it's unnatural.

The Republicans aligned themselves with these people because they are numerous enough to substantiate a meaningful constituency, they are relatively safe (after all, they're godly...), and they are not terribly troubled by environmental or geopolitical issues. They don't really mind that we are at war with Iraq, not because they have a particular interest in the energy market over there (like so many leftists believe Republicans universally do), but because those are evil, wicked Muslims. They are definitely going to hell, and they don't even believe in God.

Born Agains and Republicans agree more often than not, and what interests they don't explicitly share, they will at least tacitly acknowledge - though I tend to think that lately the mainstream Republicans have been giving in more than makes sense... but, it's their tree, they have to sit in it now.

I don't think that the real free-market/small government Republican necessarily gives a rat fart about gay marriage, but since they don't really care, they'll go along with whatever the born agains are asking for, at least in gesture. When it gets smacked down, they won't care either.

The political strategist Republicans don't argue because they don't want to alienate that constituency. But, I think the average conservative Republican Joe just doesn't understand the whole "gay thing" anyway, and the idea of two guys nancing around playing house together just doesn't sit well. Pressured to give a reason, they'll cite some vague insurance-fraud-related issue, but really - «i»really«/i» - it's the butt fucking.

It's unfortunate that gayness has become such a public issue. I guess sex sells and all, but if the media wouldn't have tried to appease the gays by making gay relationships into entertainment on primetime television, I don't think the born-agains would have gotten so twisted off. Now both parties are stuck having to appease these loud minority groups (the radical gays on the left and the born-against on the right), and consequently something that ought to be a non-issue - and is, in fact, one big shrug in most households - is being bandied about in the newspapers and court.

As an aside, I really don't understand why gays are so quick to align themselves with the media left. I guess the limelight is fun, but one would think they'd recognize that this is just another form of amusement for the leftist elitism. The bourgeois left just loves a freak to condescend toward. It makes them feel so very magnanimous and cosmopolitan.

«blockquote»«i»Oh, look at the homosexual couple, dear! Don't they look just like the little men on those scandalous Greek plates we saw at Sotheby's last Tuesday? Let's invite them over for dinner - I hear they have wonderful taste in wine. That's so sweet that they feel comfortable holding hands in public.«/i»«/blockquote»

But, I guess any port in a storm, and the gay constituency is willing to tolerate that kind of backhanded patting of the cheek, because it's better than being lynched by the born-agains in a frenzy of salvation.

Just my $0.02.

Via «a href="http://www.whotendsthefires.us/mt/archives/000747.html"»Denita«/a», I come across this game, «a href="http://personal.baker.edu/web2/cdavis09/roses.html#background"»Petals Around the Rose«/a». Natually, being an intelligent person, I set to discover the secret of the game.

Five minutes later, I'm frustrated. I'm tired, thinking of sleep, but no, this game is too stupid, there's some trick involved. And just like in Wargames, I went to learn more about those who had created the game for a secret. Found this «a href="http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm"»interesting article«/a» where apparently Bill Gates was stymied for some time by the problem, but eventually figured it out. Also, it has been hypothesized that the more intelligent you are, the longer it takes to figure out.

Nutuh, not me. I am genius! If Bill Gates can figure it out, so can I. But what is the trick? I've conjured up five separate theorems only to have them blasted out by trial and error in as many minutes, and was about to launch into an attack using matrices when I remembered you didn't need to use such...only basic math is required. It's a trap, said Admiral Ackbar. Intelligent people take longer to discover the method. Should I act stupid? How can I act stupid? Wait, even better, what do I tell stupid people to do, all the time, day in, day out?

READ THE FUCKING MANUAL.

Okay, the instructions are: «BLOCKQUOTE»I can tell you only three things: the name of the game, the fact that the answer is always even, and the answer for any particular throw.«/BLOCKQUOTE»

I roll the dice. Hmm. AHA! Eureka! It's true, RTFM works.

If you can't figure it out, if you are stumped, don't sit and theorize, the problem may be stupider than you think. RTFM. Here endith the lesson.

And no, you go figure it out.

Well, «a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/200407070035.html" target="_blank"»this is a story«/a» you don't see every day:«blockquote»Primary school in Kiboga district was closed in May after parents reported that their children were being attacked by demons.

Bisika Primary School, located in Butemba sub-county, was later re-opened but the pupils continued to live in fear. Another demon attack was reported on June 29, in the same school.«/blockquote»
Sounds serious. Fortunately, the local government sprang into action.«blockquote»The parents accused Isma Sserunkuuma, a man, who lives near the school, of bringing the demons locally known as mayembe. They said Sserunkuma wanted the demons from a witchdoctor to help him acquire wealth.

Acting on the parents' report, the Kiboga resident district commissioner (rdc), Margaret Kasaija, ordered for the arrest of Sserunkuuma and the closure of the school until the demons would be driven out of the school. Sserunkuuma is still in detention.«/blockquote»
This is serious! It's terrible that demons are being unleashed by greedy men in the pursuit of material wealth. I'm sure there's a leftie metaphor in all of this, but the possibilities are just too great to be ignored. What if demons really existed, along with other destructive spiritual based phenomena? What would the headlines of our local papers look like? "Four homeless found undead under I45 overpass", "Zombie causes road closure along Milam and Rusk", "Vampires staked out at Wheeler MetroRail station".

It would be a lowlevel constant threat, one that could be lived with, like the common cold or flu. Kids could still play in parks, and would be taught not to trust smelly strangers. The vampires would integrate very well, even here in Houston, where they could feed with the rest of the goth wannabees at #'s. Civilization would carry on, and mayors could run on a platform of undead extermination, assuming of course that there aren't any liberal (or rightwing) organizations that would protest such acts. PETZ, People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies.

Alas, such a world does not exist, only in movies. The dead do not come back to life to feast on the living. Demons do not actually stalk young girls, here or in Africa. Such superstitions are for the past, and I always think that our advanced civilization has failed in some way, in an age where these reports of demonic infestation appear on my desk, on my monitor, almost as it happens. On one end of the link, there's me, the pinnacle of human evolution and master of the technological, and at the other end, a bunch of people ignorant of the real world, tormented by hysteria and superstition.

Of course it is selfish of me to think that way. The diversity of beliefs and cultures must be maintained, and I would hate to oppress anyone with air conditioning and the drudgery of a nine to five job.

«b»{{{Guest Blogging by NotDeskmerc}}}«/b»

You can tell that I’m starting to relax and get back into writing when I browse chat rooms. The only one I ever really got into was the Physics chat back in the day when I used to run a science education organization. But then I met this physicist in there who I ended up having a three year disaster of an affair with, so I’m a little keyboard shy when it comes to chat. If life is like a box of chocolates, then chat is like a bag of dogshit: you know exactly what you’re going to get, and it’s messy.

But, I occasionally will lurk in a chatroom, amusing myself with the bizarre nature of the conversations. As a writer, I get a somewhat narcissistic kick out of knowing that I am so much more literate than the average canaille (see?), but then it starts to get depressing and motivates me to get back to my writing. Today I popped into one of the political chat rooms on Yahoo. What scares me is that these people might be registered voters:

cemmmyasar: no Islam means peace, and in their rules there is no compulsion but arabic culture is very different
socialism_is_the_solution: they have a very low crime rate
cant4get: What do you know about Islam socialism?
cant4get: And a very high execution rate socialism...
smitty387: Cant4get : You Americans along with every Brit and Aussie should feel deeply ashamed for supporting and protect the Saudi Royal family
American_Warrior: The actions of individuals can't be the representatives of groups of people
nitwit: =))
cant4get: Maybe there's a connection?
American_Warrior: Al Salam Alkiem Amal
vote_4_bush04: sorry, wew're fighting islamic rash-ists
nitwit: Go USADBA
socialism_is_the_solution: i am a muslim. i know islam alot better than you do
vote_4_bush04: ad i agree with green
cant4get: Smitty...you know that the Saudi Royal family's only ally is basically the AMericans?
taha822003: ???
American_Warrior: Al Salam Alkiem Socialism
c: now im going to tell you what i believe i am pro life and am against stem cell and same sex marriage now knowing that why would i vote for kerry
socialism_is_the_solution: alekiem al salam
American_Warrior: Same for the UAE and etc. can't
lauraingrahamisok joined the room
c: i am none too happy with bush either
jay: iraq had a dictator who executed and tortured people. saudia arabia has an autocratic king, and the government beheads people. iraq was such of a threat, we had to invade and kill lots of people. saudia arabia isn't a threat, and is a friend of the united states. sounds like a double standard

It amuses me to think that in these chatrooms, there might actually be some campaign volunteers who monitor what’s being said about the candidates. It makes me want to start typing random cryptic things that make it sound like I Know Important Things, just to fuck with them. But I can’t imagine anything I do could be worse than trying to make heads or tails of this splattered conversation. It’s like watching the thoughts of a schizophrenic scroll across the screen.

My incision itches. It's driving me nuts. Before it properly healed, it itched with that internal healing sensation, and the stitches didn't help either. The nerve endings ate all gone about two thirds of the distance between my collarbones in a shallow arc, so I shouldn't be feeling anything. Nonetheless, it itches. Argh. Scratching does no good, I can't even tell that I'm scratching anything.

I also did nothing on my birthday, which is light years better than previous ones. Last year, well, bleh, I was rendered homeless two years in a row on the week of my birthday, which is always a nice present, but things worked out in a manner of speaking. Before that, well, still not really a round of fun, but this one was okay...I stayed put, planned nothing, drank some really good tequila, and cooked myself some nice stir fry that really, really stank up the place, but tasted wonderful.

I also went and saw Spiderman 2, which I enjoyed for the most part. My experience was marred by several ill mannered children of dubious descent, being sheparded by uncaring adults who did nothing but jabber and talk on cellphones. One bright spark saw fit to kick my seat all thoughout the movie, and each time I would turn around ready to snarl and commit murder, and the mom would lean over and slap the little shit, but it had no effect. Little bastard was probably numb to the trauma from repeated acts of feeble discipline, 'cos he still kicked my seat and would squeal "ESO ES SPIDERMAN!" for every scene he appeared.

I can assume the larva acted tat way by example and genetics, because whoever was herding them were equally rude. Talk, talk talk, loudly, and in multiple languages, which hurts for some reason. This is how it would sound: "Nyeadaestandomosesolibrosconquesotodossantavidaerratamonquienpureto! Yes, that's what I told her. But anyway, avinatonosotroscomidarinotosatadanachomaspequino and it was blue!"

So on and so forth, all the way through the previews. I made a bet with myself that if I killed the entire extended family behind me, no jury in the world would convict. I can tune out spurious conversation easily, but when it changes from one language to another, whatever is monitoring inside my brain thows the switch that says "pay attention!".

But the movie itself, great. I liked it better than the first one, but somoene needs to fix Kirsten Dunst. I do think she's cute, but she's also, well, she acts brain damaged, and MJ isn't brain damaged in the comic.

I do see why people didn't like some of the CG based combat scenes. It's a real bitch to get that sort of thing right, and to be frank, nobody really has yet. There's always small problems with computer generated figures and motion control, especially when they are organic. The human eye is also trained to notice patterns, and when something doesn't appear "real", it stands out immediately and isn't accepted. The closer you get to "real", the more jarring it is.

A good example would be the basketball court sequence in Matrix Reloaded. Four shots are of an animated Keanu Reeves and a bunch of Agent Smithii duking it out, and when I wa watching it on the big screen, it was instant;y bvious what was done. The face became rigid, the trechcoat stopped flowing properly and small details went out of sync, such as the texture of clothing. I'm not saying it was a bad job, far from it...I couldn't do any better if I had the hardware and resources, I'm just saying it was obvious.

It's one thing to model an airplane, or spacecraft and move it around. Rolling a ball downhill is also a relatively trivial task. But a complex organic shape, like a person, has many moving parts that must be moved in sync. Skin moves over bones, it is not helld rigidly in place, and that must be modeled. Look at the difference between dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park films. Each succeeding generation of software has more tweaks built into it, more control over surface textures, programs to control muscles and virtual tendons that will flex other parts of the body during movement. Imagine your foot playing a bass drum, it would look okay if the foot just tapped the pedal, but when you do that, the calf muscles contract and relax, the subcutaneous fat vibrates, cloes move a certain way, all that moust be considered. If any of it is missing, it's immediately noticable.

Which is why I make still pictures. I'm pretty good at motion control with static objects, like an Enterprise or a car. Moving them around is easy, few moving parts and I can automate all that. But a person is something else, and I'm generally not up to it. Maybe later I'll demonstrate.

«b»{{{ Guest Blogging by NotDeskmerc }}}«/b»

If I had a concealed carry permit, and owned a gun, tonight's ride home from fetching dinner would have transpired very differently.

As it was, I now live in the suburbs. It's a quaint little "master planned community" here in Houston called The Woodlands. I moved here from uptown Houston where you could be fairly assured that: Generally, normal working people and their children will not approach you in a hostile fashion. If you are approached, you have a reasonable chance that they might either be drunk, insane, and/or possibly armed. As one great author said, an armed society is a polite one, and urban centers do tend to promote a certain silent civility amongst the middle-classes.

But in the suburbs, people lack that kind of awareness. Perhaps it is because they have yards and fences. Maybe it’s all the trees, or the fact that they name their streets things like “Wilted Orchardberry Ct.” and “Thrusted Chippingdale Lane”.

I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I know that teenagers in the suburbs are turning out incredibly stupid. So stupid that I wonder «a href="http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/ArticleView.asp?P_Article=12713"»how any of them ever survive«/a». But they do, and that means that more stupid adults are coming to voting age all the time. There ought to be some kind of charitable foundation for that.

Now that I’ve become a somewhat parent-like figure for a teenager (I’m marrying someone with a teen), I am coming to realize that I did some very, very dumb things as a teen. For instance, I look back on things like taking LSD with a kind of astonishment that I would have done something that dangerous. Before you start looking back in rose-colored reverie at your own drug experimentation days, let’s just consider the actual train of thought:

«BLOCKQUOTE»Here now, let’s take this chemical that I don’t understand at all (though I think I’m clever for knowing what LSD stands for), ingest it into my body where it will cause a reaction I can’t predict, and it will produce psychotropic effects that I don’t begin to grasp, and this will go on for many hours. Plenty of time to get myself into extreme amounts of trouble, including but not limited to death, insanity and murder, all the while completely lacking the proper psychological capacity to deal with it. I will do this thing partly out of curiosity since it is so taboo, but mostly because I think it will make me socially acceptable, and that this is far more important than my education, because I cannot conceive of ever being thirty.«/BLOCKQUOTE»

Now, that was me. And I was one of the smart ones. I was considered «I»gifted«/I». The teenager in my household is not gifted. He’s utterly average, and I can only wonder at what his thought processes are behind why he does what he does. I don’t think that I can actually contemplate anything so stupid. I can barely fathom my own stupidity at that age. You parents of teenagers know what I’m saying. If you don’t, then that probably explains why I almost hit your child tonight.

I don’t quite understand this natural proclivity for teenagers to be so profoundly stupid. Children aren’t that dumb. I have two younger children, and they are ignorant, but not stupid. They will come to me for information and heed the vast majority of my advice, particularly when it is framed in such a way that makes them believe that defying it will cause them bodily harm. This is as in, “Connor, do not play next to the street. These cars are fast and they can squish you flat, and you could die. Splat!” He will look at the street and nod solemnly, then scamper away to play in a more secure area. He stopped darting into the street the very first time he asked me how that frog got squished.

But tonight, I ran into a pack of teen spawn that apparently never learned about the circle of life on Cantersquirrel Street. Perhaps their parents never paused to stoop over that flattened frog carcass and explain things. But somehow I think it is more devious than that. These children obviously believe that they are so far above a mere frog that the rules of survival no longer apply to them. They must, because otherwise there is no logical reason for them to wander in front of my car, on their way back from swimmeet, dressed in little more than bathing attire, stop and make obscene gestures at me. Verily, baiting me “Come on!”

So, naturally, I put the car in neutral and revved the engine. They moved, but continued to shout things at me, and one even hit the side of my car. I stopped my car really suddenly, tires squealing and all, and they sort of faded away into deciduous forest. Secure in the knowledge that they are above reproach, much less horrible death.

But the thing is, there was absolutely no reason for them to think that I wasn’t perhaps a murderous psychotic. A prison escapee. A soccer mom too busy yapping on my cellphone and turning around to smack my own ignorant brood who are throwing Cheerios at each other in the backseat. Or perhaps a drunken husband who has just been served divorce papers after his third wife discovered his fourth affair and he’s running late for his flight to San Antonio. Any of these things are not only possible, but entirely reasonable to expect in the suburbs, and they all represent threats to belligerent teenagers who wander around on streets at night.

If I’d had a gun, I could have fixed that problem. I would have simply put my car in park, retrieved my gun, got out and pointed it at them. After I had their attention, I would explain the lesson that their parents evidently did not or cannot make them grasp.

«blockquote»“This is a gun, and I have a concealed carry permit. I’m old enough to do that. Now don’t go running off; you were perfectly willing to stand there a moment ago. Heh. I bet you wished you’d listened to your mothers when she told you not to play in traffic, huh?…. Well now, I want you all to go home quietly, do something nice for whoever is responsible for your pig ignorance, and devote yourself to your education… «I»especially«/I» physics… then you will understand that Newton’s First Law dictates that I ought to have hit you with my car. «b»But I have a gun«/b». And this is a slightly more social concept. I am more powerful than you, and you, being but young, inexperienced git, should from now on recognize where you are on the food chain. Very much farther down than I am. Get me? Good. [cocking gun] Now, run along. And for godssakes wash that crap out of your hair, you sell-out whitebread parasitic little fags.”«/blockquote»

As they ran for their lives through the dark, dense forest that now seems somehow much more appropriately foreboding, their little hearts would pound in their chests furiously, making them realize just how close they came to ending all that, but for the grace of God, and that God was me.

That would fix so much that is wrong with the suburbs.

It's my birfday! I turn a ripe 34.

I'm gonna go do something stupid now.

Creatures of light and shadow, women.

Some more fartin' around with poser again. This one here (click to enlarge, blah blah blah) started out quite differently than as she appears here. She had a sort of lizard skin, a texture I obtained from a free mage site, and she was wielding the M4 you see here...or perhaps don't see here, it is somewhat obscured.

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-01.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-01.php','popup','width=421,height=511,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-01-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="242" border="0" /»«/a»

This next one, I just liked the pose. The light is too dark, yeah, but sometimes I just don't care, I got a good pose and moving lights around would just futz it up. I suppose I could give it some post processing and bring out more details, but so what.

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-02.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-02.php','popup','width=644,height=524,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-02-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="162" border="0" /»«/a»

Same female, same hair, different lighting and body textures. Right out of kabuki theater.

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-03.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-03.php','popup','width=452,height=539,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-03-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="238" border="0" /»«/a»

And topping it off, two women together. A reputable source once told me about female female dynamics, in particular a dominant with a somewhat submissive female...not overly so, but one being immature, or slightly irresponsible, and the other more controlling, take charge mentality. I tried to provide that impression this time, in a subtle way. This particular render used so many polygons, textures and raytraced lights that my poor machine just crapped out...so I know what I want for my birthday...more memory. This image comes from a much lower quality render, one that I don't like as much, because the full raytracing would provide greater detail. Ah well.

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-04.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-04.php','popup','width=392,height=518,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/mon0705-04-thumb.jpg" width="200" height="264" border="0" /»«/a»

{{Guest blogging by NotDeskmerc}}

Everybody RAVE to the muthafuckin JAY!

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/archives/hyperdermicneedles.mp3"»Download Hyperdermic Needles.«/a»

«center»HEAR the Genuine Deskmerc in every song!

GASP as you realize you have no idea what he's going on about!«/center»

I feel like I'm about four inches from losing it.

Why only four inches? I don't know. it seemed like a short distance, and my temper fuse is far shorter than that, I can tell you. All day it has been the same thing:

«I»plz hlp sory engis bahd servant is down why?«/I»

I can count the number of proper English speakers I've dealt with today on one finger. The rest have all been outside the country, all struggling to understand technology that by default does not come in their native language and our hardware folks are by no means inclined to offer true multinational support. So we deal with the language barriers as best we can, mostly with me running off to translate via Babelfish or the customer telling me that his server is in the air and would I kindly tell him why?

I'm just tired of it today. Normally I don't have a problem. Perhaps it was the frantic calls of "pls pls pls fix my server", and the iterations of shortand SMS-speak for "please" and "help" serve nothing but to grate on my already raw and exposed nerves.

Then I get a slew of people who have, to put it mildly, broke things on their own. When this happens, I'll give it the ol' college try...after all, I am technical support for dedicated servers and it may be in my power to reverse the damage. Sometimes I can do it. Other times, well, when you delete vast portions of the filesystem and change ownership of /var and /home to uucp, RECURSIVELY, I am not so inclined to assist and will recommend the entire filesystem be wiped and replaced with a fresh copy. Alas, this is akin to saying "let me take your grandparents and feed them to bears and wolves" for some, because their data was so precious and important to the continued spinning of the Earth that no backups were ever made.

Why is that? I've got some stuff on this here blog that would irk me if it suddenly went away, but I've got copies of it and my annoyance would extend only to the time needed to recreate things and upload the visuals. If it's important, I have a copy. if it's really important, I make two copies. If my life depends on it, I sure as hell don't leave it sitting on a computer five thousand miles away.

One time, I got this guy calling in a complete snit, ready to litigate. He tells me his boss is a MAJOR MEDIA PRODUCER and that the past year of his life has been spent making this server ready for a MAJOR MEDIA PRODUCTION. And now, something has gone wrong, something has spiralled off into tnto hyperspace and the server does not work anymore...and what's worse, the thing that has got his ire, is that someone had the temerity to login as root on that system to troubleshoot the problem and fix it. Yes, his major objection was that superuser corrected the problem, which is called normal behavior to some, but to him was a major security breach. On top of that, in making the webserver function again, the original tech had the moxie to just leave the webserver running...which was intolerable.

Intolerable! And he let me know it! Oh, he wanted my name, the name of the tech, the name of the pet goat we no doubt tortured in the morning before coming in to work to further ruin people's lives in such a cavalier fashion. I let him rant like this for some minutes, and politely told him that if he felt the need to litigate, then I'm not going to be able to help him further, and he can go fly a kite or something. After all, I'm not the one who has staked his career on a machine a thousand miles away he's never touched or seen.

He calmed down after that. I explained to him in no uncertain terms that loggin in as root is a common occurance to troubleshoot problems. Yes, when you are the superuser, all data is available to you for viewing, but please, we do this all the time, NONE of us give a rat fuck about your data. Two thirds of our customers are in the web pornography business, and the resulting ennui for what might be in /var/www/html/membersonly/hotpr0nstars has rendered us apathetic to what stupid bytes might reside on your drive platters. None. Of. Us. Care. So, I assure you that when we examine an issue, we aren't smuggling data off your server for corporate espionage.

AND EVEN IF WE WERE...what kind of idiot stakes his company's future on some rented crap in a datacenter five states away? If you've sunk millions into a project, what's the harm in colocating, or even better, getting a dedicated line of some sort and running your own server in your own shop? I find it hard to believe that somoene would drop wads of cash in to a project and yet balk at spending a few hundred a month on services to put it online. Is the CEO going to see all this money spent and then bitch that you didn't spend $89 a month for unmanaged dedicated rack service? Please.

I got his firewall working again. I personally disable his webserver so that nobody could pull up his secret webpages, as if there was a battalion of people hitting refresh every day to see if his IP address suddenly became active. Once I had demonstrated that my personal competence exceeded his own by serveral orders of magnatude, he settled down and became almost groveling, wanting to swap horror stories, the nature of which were pathetic by my standards, the equivelent of pissing on your shoe because you were reading graffitti on the bathroom wall.

His account notes feature a somewhat unflattering description of his ancestry now, courtesy of me.

Oh, how I look forward to true corporate America again! Give me a large multinational, or a startup that could use a competent systems administrator who knows how to make things run on a shoestring budget, I don't care. I can wear the suit or the clown shoes, all I need is an office, a laptop, and the means to do my job. Release me from purgatory!

Resumes are available on request.

More playing with Terragen backgrounds. When I get ahold of a new technique, I just have to run it into the ground, hence the cheesy orbital shots.

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/sovorbit.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/sovorbit.php','popup','width=1000,height=455,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/sovorbit-thumb.jpg" width="300" height="136" border="0" /»«/a»

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/amborbit.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/amborbit.php','popup','width=1000,height=455,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/amborbit-thumb.jpg" width="300" height="136" border="0" /»«/a»

In each of these cases, I've had to composite them with Photoshop, since this is the output of two programs. The Executor pic below here is a pure composite, multiple images aligned together, in fact, the original images were of a much higher resolution. That's why the edge of the Executor itself kinda looks, well, matted. These two pics render the Terragen background with the final picture directly, and I can see the difference between the two. All that tells me is that I need to learn how to do better compositing, because I'm not always going to be able to render a background image in 3DS Max and get away with it.

A nice, bright, sunny day. The Astros are playing in the background, decked out in retro style uniforms. Meanwhile, I'm downloading models and playing with them, like this kick ass Executor mesh from «A HREF="http://scifi3d.theforce.net"»SciFi 3D«/A» by Ansel Hsiao: (click to enlarge)

«a href="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/executor.php" onclick="window.open('http://deskmerc.com/pixors/executor.php','popup','width=1000,height=455,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"»«img src="http://deskmerc.com/pixors/executor-thumb.jpg" width="300" height="136" border="0" /»«/a»

Wonderful detail. Background by Terragen. I don't remember where I got TIE interceptors from, not even sure if I should keep them in the image. I htink more Star Destroyers are on the way.

Looks like Sheila "Drive me two blocks to work" Jackson "Bitch" Lee is at it again. This time, under the guise of "minority business concerns" she voted AGAINST a bill, a nice short one, that allows the DoD to, well, here, from «A HREF="http://www.blackfive.net/main/2004/07/combat_emergenc.html"»Blackfive:«/A»«BLOCKQUOTE»HR 4323 is a bill designed to give the Department of Defense the ability to have Rapid Acquisition Authority (RAA). This ability is desired in order to speed up deployments, make them more effective and to provide adequate protection and facilities for our troops during combat emergencies.«/BLOCKQUOTE»In other words, this allows the Secretary of Defense to cut through the bullshit that keeps needed material stateside while soldiers in the field scream for it. However, Bitch Lee decided that it's more important that minority businesses be given greater consideration in the appropriations process. Never mind that when soldiers need shit, they need it NOW, not after several months of review by some faceless drone in an office a thousand miles away to see if a person with the proper skin color has manufactured the needed item.

Fortunately, the House bill passed, despite the shortsightedness of this idiot Houston/Harris County has elected to national office.

The money is already appropriated, it comes from the sum total of the Pentagon's budget. The bill would allow the Pentagon to spend up to 100 million of the money it already has on things like, well, body armor, devices that can detect roadside bombs, that sort of thing. Stuff that can save troops from being blasted to bits.

Doesn't matter to Sheila Jackson Bitch. I suppose she'd be more in favor of spending bill for body bags and caskets...as long as a minority business makes them, what the fuck's it to ya?

I thought we gerrymandered her out of existance. When are we going to boot that asshole out of office and put someone in there with a friggin' clue?

These are friends of mine over there. These are the husbands and wives of people I know over there. With a few decisions made differently, it would be ME over there. These are people doing a hard, HARD job who deserve all the breaks they can get, because fuckheads who enjoy kidnapping, rape, pilliage, carbombing and beheadings DO NOT GIVE BREAKS. If we can't win this, if we can't streamline logistics effectively to deal with rapidly changing landscapes of battle, we'll lose more soldiersr, we'll lose more support, and we will LOSE THE WAR. You think a new Caliphate will respect minority business rights? You think the Taliban will honor racial quotas or affirmative action and follow the proper Equal Opportunity guidelines? FUCK NO. These are people in the world trying very hard to kill us, and the people we have on the wall keeping them out and mowing them down deserve ALL the help they can get.

Thanks to «A HREF="http://www.blackfive.net"»Blackfive«/A» and the «A HREF="http://www.nicedoggie.net/"»Rottweiler«/A» for this info.

UPDATE: I just pounded out an email to my two senators, Coryn and Hutchison, asking them to vote yes on their version of the bill. The latter's homepage didn't seem to want to come up, but I hammered at it until it did. I feel pretty good about sending it. You should too.

When Saddam Hussein was captured last year, I opined that perhaps we should shave him bald, paint him bright pink and turn him loose in the streets of Baghdad, and film the results on pay per view. While a somewhat viscerally pleasing solution, I have been forced to change my views.

Instead, I think we should use him as the most extreme bait possible. Consider:

There are still Baathists out there who will do anything for their former dictator. Terrorists formerly on his payroll know that if they were to spring him from whatever high security facility he's stored they would have fnding for life...'cos I'm quite sure Saddam still has a lot of cash squirreled away in some offshore bank, probably a French one.

So. Let's dangle him at the end of a stick. Construct a nice fortified base, and mine the hell out of it. Make a fifty meter perimeter that no man can cross, indeed, the only way in is by helicopter, and only US military helicopters at that. All other aircraft will be warned away, or if it comes to that, shot down. That's easy enough.

The perimeter walls will be guarded by US infantry. There will be guns. There will be mortars pre-sighted to target defilades. (A defilade is a depression or other shallow land feature that prevents direct fire from a prepared position, like a ditch or culvert. Heck, why not make a couple?) On call at all times will be an AC-130 Spectre gunship. In the center of the compound will be the single celled prison holding Saddam, with a maze of twisty passages, all alike. And next to Saddam's cell will be a squad of the meanest, gnarliest Marines with one order: to shoot Saddam in the head if anyone gets through the perimeter. Period.

We'll be mowing them down like wheat for weeks.

Even better, his location can be "leaked" to various individuals who's loyalty are suspect, and see if someone tries something. Every time someone sets off a mine, you know someone talked.

He's just sitting in a cell right now, staring at a wall and someone is probably watching South Park in hearing distance. He's not going anywhere, not doing anything productive. Let's end this thing once and for all and wave the world's most expensive bait out for someone to grab, and then kill them.