Okay, what's wrong with this picture?

Person #1: Classmate of mine. Male. Single. Late 20s. Native of Malaysia. Cantonese ancestry (grandparents left China for Malaysia). Speaks/reads Malay, Hokkien, English - in that order.
Person #2: Me. Female. Single. Late 20s. Native of New York City. Western European ancestry, Celts/Germans on one side, Italians/Etruscans on the other. Speaks English, reads English, Italian.

Person #1 and person #2 have both acquired Entertainment on DVD or video recently. Both are thrilled with their choices and happily inform each other of what they bought.

Person #1 has acquired the third season of Sex and the City.
Person #2 has acquired The Storm Riders.

I've always kind of wondered whether I wasn't born in the wrong place by mistake, but I never thought I'd get PROOF.

Today's pulp survival tip is #22: Be nice to old people, especially if they had useful skills once. It's amazing how many of them jump at the chance to relive their former glories.

Go Reuters.

How is it possible to see a headline like this and NOT feel that world has become, in some small way, a brighter and more interesting place?

Robot Army Heads to Arctic Grave of "Spy Ship"

Robot armies! They're almost as good as pirates! Or monkeys! And everything's better with pirates, and just about everything's better with monkeys... I mean, robot armies! Sunken ships! Potential espionage! Huzzah!

An actual REAL LIVE GENUINE RESPECTABLE NEWS AGENCY used the words 'robot army' in a headline and wasn't laughing their ass off at a movie!

This explains so much.

As I am currently trying to figure out why the fsck one of my users can't print (stupid Netware 4.1), I am rampaging through the manual, making changes, and waiting for them to take effect. During one of these pauses, I tried the currently popular "(my name) is" search meme at Google.

Apparently I am actually a massively parallel Java computing project. I can run under Unix or Red Hat 6.2. "Java-Enabled Single-System Image Computing Architecture", that's me. . .

Did I mention I was being developed in Hong Kong?

Damn, this explains so very, very much.

Oi!

Guess who's goin' to COLORADO!

Yup yup. NHQ emailed me, said my name was going on recruiting list, said I should expect phone call this afternoon to officially ask for me to fly out, tonight best tomorrow OK. I think tomorrow - no other choice really, too much stuff to do today to get out there immediately - but unless something is ver' ver' wrong I'm going to the FIRES!

I will be serving as a disaster computer officer. Most likely this means sitting in a room somewhere powered by a generator, doing tech support while everyone else deals with actual fire victims. I don't think I'll get to the front lines or the actual disaster, but if I do, I'll let you know. I'm not sure of email status or Web status while I'm gone, but if I can I will locate an email-capable machine and contact ppl to let them know where I am, how I am, etc... We'll see.

But unless I'm very much mistaken, I'm gonna spend the next three weeks with my skin cracking and my nose blowing black.

HuzZAH!