London Olympics can Bite My Shiny Metal Ass.

Not a fan of the Olympic$ a$ it i$, e$pecially $ince I reali$ed it wa$ all about corporate money and not about excellence in $port$.


I hadn't paid attention to previou$ citie$' behavior in their attempt$ to attract the Olympic$ to their town--tax break$, $pecial new building$ being con$tructed, inconvenient local people being bru$hed out of view, but the $tupid $tuff London ha$ pulled thi$ time around ju$t pi$$e$ me off.

Fir$t there wa$ the announcement of criminal $anction$ to protect the corporate $pon$or$ from competition. Thi$ would allow "brand police" to roam the area and $hake down pub$ adverti$ing the wrong beer (take the $ign down or cover it up, Citizen) or other non-$pon$ored product$ and order YouTube and Facebook to take down video$ and picture$ po$ted by attendee$. You're re$i$tricted in how you may u$e combination$ of certain word$, like London and 2012 and probably LOCOG WANKER$. Then ju$t a few day$ ago, I learned that McDonald'$ ha$ a pretty cu$hy gig at the Olympic$, with a huge-a$$ exclu$ive re$taurant planted like a fat American right in the middle of everything--and a monopoly on french fry $ale$. A$ long a$ you call them "chip$" and $ell them with fi$h, you're okay, but Olympu$ help you if you're $elling burger$.

Then we learned that Team U$A'$ going to be wearing Ralph Lauren'$ reimagining of Mitt Romney'$ family uniform (which they $tole from Thur$ton Howell III)--and al$o borrowing from hi$ bu$ine$$ model of out$ourcing the work to China. Wait, didn't use the word "London" in this paragraph. Took care of that. So anyway, $2,000 per Romney $uit and American labor wa$ $till too expen$ive. $hould have charged $2012 each.

Now, tho$e $niffy corporate a$$-ki$$er$ at the London Organi$ing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Game$ don't want anyone linking to them unle$$ they're $aying nice thing$:

"a. Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner."

 (no dollar $ign$ in their copy).

Don't mind me, just $tirring the pot.


Update: Bonu$ Commentary from a Corporate Wea$el: Donald Trump weighed in via Twitter, opining that Team U$A'$ Chine$e-made uniform$ $hould be burned. Hi$ outrage ha$ obviou$ly made him forget that hi$ own clothing line i$...made in China. Becau$e it's cheaper.

Anniversary Time Again...

Made it to another July 12, my second since the big Aorta Meltdown of 2010.

I started out with a 40% chance of making it 10 years with the dissection; wonder what the numbers are for the next 8 years?

I do feel a lot better than I did in the months after it happened. Still have the mobility issues, high blood pressure, swollen feet and lower legs, sensitivity to heat, and fatigue. Still got some memory and cognitive stuff that makes me wonder whether the high BP did some damage.

I'm 14 months past having a carcinogenic kidney removed--the culprit in most of my problems, since it was driving the high blood pressure that popped my artery.


Good thing I'm not dependent on Republican scum like Dave Dreier and his buddies in the house who voted for the 33rd useless time to "repeal" the Affordable Care Act. Dreier the Death-Panel Dirtbag apparently thinks "let them die" is a good approach to health care:

“While I don’t think that someone who is diagnosed with a massive tumor should the next day be able to have millions and millions and millions of dollars of health care provided, I do believe there can be a structure to deal with the issue of pre-existing conditions.”

All my treatments have totaled much less than millions of dollars. Maybe $200,000, maybe a little more. Maybe I should apologize to Dreier for the imposition; it took a lot of nerve for me to grow that tumor in my kidney without thinking of people like him and their desire to save medical expenses at any cost, even that of a life. I fed the damn thing, cultivated it. Should have named it David.

I've made it two years IN SPITE of fucking Republicans and their psychotic desire to kill off any sort of health assistance for people who can't afford it. The hospital was a huge help, with its Compensated Care program that handled most of my bills for the first 7 or 8 months. I made it into Florida's  Medically Needy Medicaid program only to have it jerked out from under me within 3 months (Governor Scumbag doesn't think kidney cancer and a torn aorta make me sick enough; but then, he doesn't think a huge tuberculosis outbreak rates keeping the state's only TB hospital open). For the last year, I've been on MediPass, going to a county clinic as needed.

Not much of a believer in karma, but I sincerely hope that every one of those useless, evil wingnuts has their fortunes reversed and they end up worse off than I am right now. They need to learn some humanity and some humility.

All in all, I'm doing well enough. I won't be running (or walking) marathons or much of anything physical (no lifting more than 30 pounds, no stress, and like that), but I've got busy stuff I can do. I'm surprised that I haven't spent much time being depressed (those few times have been when my knees or feet keep me trapped in bed...very dark thoughts, then). I can still pay my own bills and (most importantly) I can drive the X-11. I'd be in a really bad place, for lack of that one bright spot to focus on when shit gets dark.

Riff of the Day: Tom Sawyer synth "growl" (Rush)

I'd been wondering for a few days how Geddy Lee got what he calls the "growl" in Tom Sawyer--the first thing you hear after the drum hit:



Andy Skuse has a writeup of his attempts to figure out the growl, a set of .WAV files of his results, and a demo of the Digital Men playing "Tom Sawyer" with the resulting growl:



Not too shabby. Singer sounds more like Rik Emmett of Triumph than he does Geddy Lee--but Geddy Lee doesn't even sound like his 1981 self anymore.

As a bonus sound, Keyboard Magazine has the info for programming the "lead synth" sound for the song using a MiniMoog.

Song of the Day: Tom Sawyer (Rush)

It's been SOTD before, but not like this. I stumbled on vids a few days ago of the song with the synth, guitar, bass and drums isolated. Just rips from Rock Band or Guitar Hero's tracks, but still pretty cool to be able to hear the song like this.

Synth:
 

Guitar:


Drums:


Bass:


There are some other isolated tracks--I've found a guitar-only "2112," guitar and bass for "Limelight" and "YYZ," and a guitar track for "Subdivisions" so far.

CANCER CURED!!!!

...so says one Chris Collins, a noted medical expert genius moron running for Congress in New York.

Indeed, he says that because of all the amazing and expensive medical  breakthroughs in the last 10 years, "People now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things."

Because of implantable defibrillators! Stents! Neural stimulators! Tricorders!

So he wants to kill off Obamacare. No one needs it, you see. Like me, 2 years ago this month. I had no idea that there was a bad-type carcinoma growing in my kidney, just waiting to metastasize and infect the rest of me with killer cancers.

If I'd had an implantable defibrillator, I NEVER WOULD HAVE CAUGHT CANCER! It's all my fault for not thinking ahead, you know.

So...why do I hate Republicans?

Pic of the Day: 24 Views of Fort Pickens

You need to hit this link. Jeff Waldorff's showcasing a set of 24 eye-popping photos of Fort Pickens on his site.

These are impressive enough, but the site also features his other work in nature, landscape and people. He's got an excellent eye for the perfect shot and brings colors alive whether he's shooting 200 year old brick or a tiny frog. Well worth spending an evening clicking through and drooling.

For every musician there's a player who makes them want to either give up or try harder. It works that way with photography, too.

Pic of the Day: Fort Pickens CAD pt. 4

I'm mostly finished with the horizontal section view (see Pt. 2); just a lot of little detail work. I got tired of looking at this part of the project (had to go back and re-do some sections several times because something was off) and started doing the top plan instead.

QCAD has turned out to be a pleasant bit of code. It doesn't have all the features of AutoCAD, but the price is much friendlier ($40 vs. $1500 or more) and I don't really need more than what it offers. There are some annoying issues, though:

--Architectural measurements could allow for American-style measurement (feet, inch, fraction). At the very least the manual should explain that QCAD is expecting everything to be in inches. Working in feet and inches this way requires you to type "12*" first (converting feet to inches), so 12' 6 1/2" is typed as "12*12+6 1/2". I had to hunt online for this piece of information. (RibbonSoft is in Switzerland, so it's understandable that they don't normally work in feet and inches like us Stateside dinosaurs)
--The manual should be fleshed out with examples of each command and better descriptions. As written, the description for the command to draw a line at a given angle wasn't very clear. Another online search for that.
--Some of the more frequently-used tools on the Modify menu could be echoed in the Lines menu to make work flow a little quicker.
--No support for graphics tablet input (at least in version 2.2.2.1). Mouse only.
 
None of these is a deal-killer. I survived the learning curve.

Features:
--Main tools are Point, Line, Arc, Circle, Ellipse, Text, Dimensioning, Edit (Modify), Measure, Hatch, Insert Image, Selection, Blocks, Isometric Projection. Each tool button has its own set of sub-buttons.
--You can enter commands from a command line, from the Menus toolbar, or from the button bar.
--Layers. Parts of a drawing can be drawn on different layers, each with its own color, line weight, and line style.
--Absolute and Relative angles and coordinates.
--Works in DXF format (supposedly also works in AutoCAD's DWG format, but I haven't found how to make that happen).
--Export Bitmap, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), PDF.
--Support for a parts library for frequently-used items like doors, fasteners, bathroom fixtures, and such. None are included with the program, but a small set of parts can be downloaded from the RibbonSoft website.

There's a slight learning curve, mostly because of the too-sparse manual, but once I figured out the worst issues everything else came easily. Installation is as simple as unzipping the files into a convenient folder. QCAD runs right from there.