Your tax dollars at work! Or mostly at play!

There were a few news items about the mortgage catastrophe today. Instead of saying “hey everyone the so-called subprime market was usury and fraud and soon it will all collapse and we will pay and pay and pay,” they said that there was “increasing concern” about the “dip” in the “subprime market” and that foreclosures were occurring. Also, big time Democratic Senator Dodd was intoning that we must save the American homeowner and punish “predatory lending” since he had just discovered the other day that the mortgage business was being run by actual burglar-type criminals.

I assume that this will result in a huge S&L style bailout eventually. The homeowners will be “saved” by a “public/private partnership solution” in which taxpayers foot the bill for yet more mortgage bros to refi everything. Five or six egregious offenders will be convicted of fraud because of “predatory lending,” and everyone else will refi their rap sheet and continue.

Get out your checkbooks everyone. You’re about to pay out for the last fifteen years of appletinis, Humvees, shiny shirts, big watches, square-toed Italian shoes, blowjobs, cocaine, Harleys, Las Vegas, more cocaine, Mexican resorts, Dave Matthews Band tickets, still more cocaine, and one more appletini for the road.

sweet home tendinitis

Got a call from Trout. He’s going to be here visiting soon, probably, because a mutual friend is ill. Bad news but it will be good to see him.

I wish to entirely blame the visiting eyeteeth for the fact that John Parr’s horrible “St. Elmo’s Fire/Man in Motion” is stuck in my head. Won’t you just strap a mullet on me and shoot me.

lasagnese always wins

folks i haven’t read my lj friends list in more than a week because every time i get loose of work my shoulder goes out on me but frankly it’s not that bad and will probably be fixed unlike many of mine or my friends’ problems but anyway i thought i should let you know that i am preparing spaghettic rigate with tomato sauce and a romaine lettuce salad with parmesan both of which look pretty good despite the fact that I am under the influence of POWERFUL PRESCRIPTION MUSCLE RELAXANTS. Hi!

Two bizarre events which require explanation

  1. A few weeks ago, I reported a software bug to Bank of America. Their alert system was properly notifying me when my credit card was used overseas, but the amounts in the alert email were multiplied by 100. This caused a seizure the first time, but after I got it, I called them. A nice smart person said she’d forward it to Engineering. Last week the bug was fixed.
  2. Today, my T-Mobile Sidekick decided it was a brick instead of a phone, and refused either to see my SIM card or to see the network. I called up T-Mobile. “Joe” answered on the second ring and told me I needed Sidekick Tech Support. I punched in my phone number and hung up. Five minutes later they called, and the nice smart tech walked me through resetting my radio firmware. In a total of 15 minutes the phone was totally fixed.

Dear Lazyweb: My new Macbook Pro…

…is beautiful, and fast, and useful. However, it has a tiresome bug. Frequently the Airport wireless connection will drop, and on reconnecting it will fail to hand out an IP address. This is true whether my base station is set to act as a dhcp server itself or whether it is bridging to my linux box for dhcp. The Macbook just sit there with its dhcp default address asking for an IP.

When the server side is the Linux box, i can see it trying to hand out an address without any success, showing that the request is being heard. Somehow the response back to the Macbook falls on deaf ears.

This is especially true if the machine has been sitting for a while or comes back from sleep. It will work for a few minutes and then the wireless connection will totally drop, down to zero, and nothing works on reconnection.

The only fix is to power down the Macbook and come back up. This is suboptimal.

I am going to scour the usual help sites and the apple message boards, but anything the Group Mind has to contribute would be great.

In Soviet Orange County, Raoul Eat You

I was premature in my whining about Apple. The next day my shiny new Macbook Pro arrived, courtesy of my new job. I now have a new girlfriend and all the past one’s sins are forgotten.

However, my shoulder fell off again. MRI on Tuesday. Wish me luck, or a broken leg if that’s traditional, or at least some opiates from the god-damned doctors.

I rediscovered tonight that good pasta with just a couple spoons of sauce and some parmesan is one of life’s great cheap pleasures.

Today’s quote is from eyeteeth: “Who’s down with D.S.T.? Everyone with S.A.D.!”

And this just in…

From our “Christ, what an asshole” desk here’s the promo copy for 24K Entertainment, who are inexplicably arriving here in Costa Mesa.

This is what a club DJ sounds like when he gets big, big dreams. He sounds like J&H Productions:

Today, 24K emphasizes an energetic, upscale, social nightlife environment for people who enjoy lavish extravagance. With its marketing debut as a nightlife promotion, 24k offers décor and ambience touched with golden accents, elite dancers and a socially exclusive environment. The 24k nightclub is currently in negotiations to expand its nightlife marketing promotion into major metropolitan cities domestically and internationally in select established venues. This expansion will lead into the premiere of branded 24K product lines including bottled water, energy drink, liquor, monthly magazine, calendars TV & radio productions and a 24K sportswear line for men & women.

AND IN THE STADIUMS AND COLISEUMS PERTAINING TO THE LABEL INDUSTRY AND MAJOR PERFORMING ARTISTS SUCH AS