Insignifica

School Mistakes Huge Burrito for a Weapon

This is probably the best story I've read all year. Seriously - School Mistakes Huge Burrito for a Weapon.

My day is complete.

HHGTTG and renfaire weekend

Friday!

I love Fridays, for obvious reasons. Even though I love my job, it's nice having days off.

Lots of plans this weekend. Strato tomorrow in the morning, then an afternoon of laundry (and probably poker and DVDs), then we're going to see the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This is one of those movies I've been looking forward to for many, many years. Should be a good time.

Sunday we're making our annual trip to the Renaissance Faire, held this year at the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area. It's a little closer than last year's location (Glen Helen), but it's a better venue from what I've heard. Always a good time.

great comment on revenge

I found the following great comment about revenge on slashdot by spun, just thought I'd share:

I'm not a Christian, but I still believe in turning the other cheek. Two wrongs don't make a right, and increasing the net suffering in the world isn't a good thing. What goes around comes around: I piss off someone that "done me wrong" and either they try to get their revenge on me, then me on them, and so forth, or they take it out on someone else who doesn't deserve it.

Revenge is bad for me, poison for my mind, it causes me to look at the world in unhealthy ways. It comes from taking things personally. Could I get revenge on a hurricane that destroyed my home and killed my family? Could I take revenge on an animal? (Hint:read Moby Dick if you think you can...) Why then do I think I can really take revenge on a person?

Will it cause them to reform? No, it will just justify the cycle of taking things personally and using violence to solve problems in their eyes and the eyes of others. Not through violence can violence be ended, only through love and forgivness.

I'm not just talking out my ass here. I lost my left eye in a mugging some years ago and never once have I wished for revenge. I could be bitter about it, constantly thinking about the evil of my attacker and hoping for some kind of karmic retribution. But the world is one thing, on consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no need for karma or creator-gods to balance the scales. There are no scales but those we make ourselves.

Very well put, all of it. I can't find any part I disagree with.

secret poker blog

Shhh, don't tell anyone. But I've got a new poker blog at insignifica.org/poker. It's new, but coming along nicely.

Spam

Perhaps it's because I have HTML and images turned off, but the following spam seems weird to me, mosty because it's not selling anything except the saving power of Christ:

A eternity of torment is forever.
If you or someone you care about to you has not accepted God please do today.
As he is real and alive you need to realize this.
The following prayer can save you or someone that you love.

Say,"Oh God,save my soul. I'm so sorry that I have
sinned against you, but I have come home. I will
serve you, Lord, the rest of my life. Deliver me
from all my sinful habits. Set me free! I do believe
Jesus died on Calvary for me, and I believe in His
blood, that there is power in His blood to wash away
all my sins, all my sins!" Say,"Come into my heart,
Jesus; come on in,Jesus.Come on in!"

If you meant it, He has come. If you meant it,
Jesus is yours. Start reading your Bible, pray daily
for all those you care about,including your dead loved ones,
and believe that somebody's listening; His name is Jesus,
and you are now saved.

That's bad enough, but the fact that's it's followed by the standard "random words to get by your filter" just makes me think Jesus wouldn't much care for this method of communication:

erich at tift oreven cartilaginous as in stressful.
Tracey was at declination when that happened weatherproof.
We met at askance and went to cricket wher we had lunch at
monologist.It was decatur and a coquina was had puritanic by all.

not much to say.

Just another Tuesday, but the site's feeling a little stale, so I wanted to post to all my loyal readers.

Hello loyal readers!

If you type "michael doss" into Google and Yahoo, my site comes up either at, or right near, the top of the search rankings. I'm proud of this; even with all the people named Michael Doss out there (and there are many more than I thought there were), people looking for me can find me easily.

This has often made me wonder who's reading who doesn't post comments. I know many friends read and rarely post, but there must to be some co-workers out there who've wondered who in the office has a web presence. There have got to be some people who've checked out the site, and I'm betting one or two who are regular readers but haven't ever said anything to me. That's both weird and cool.

pop quiz - frys

Pop quiz!

I received just over $100 in gift certificates to Frys Electronics for my birthday. How should I spend them? Some notes:

- I recently purchased a new computer and monitor, so I don't need either of those.
- I'm not particularly interested in an MP3 player of any sort.
- I play very few computer games, but am willing to consider good ones.
- I love gadgets.

So, any thoughts?

Earth day

It's April 21st, and everybody knows tomorrow's Earth Day.

Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday to whoever's being born.

New atheist website

With Meetup.com deciding to start charging organizers, all sorts of people are leaving their site and moving toward other solutions. The main reason I liked Meetup was because of the high levels of traffic that came with it, now that it's gone, I'm thinking it's best to begin my own Orange County Atheists group. To this end, I just purchased ocatheists.com (not currently up, but on it's way), and this will be where I'll run this new group.

Without Meetup's traffic, the group will have to spread by word of mouth, but between insignifica, Atheistweb and the OC Metblog, I've got a lot of mouths to get this out there with. More news as the site goes live, etc. Any interested atheists should feel free to join us at the final Meetup.com meeting for the Orange County Atheists, tomorrow (April 20) at the Red Robin in Tustin, at 7:00PM. More information is available here.

Birthday weekend wrapup!

What a great weekend! Probably the busiest I've had in a long time, too. Saturday was spent preparing for the Birthday Mikestravaganza; Gary came over to help with moving all the party goods to the neighborhood's clubhouse, where the party was to be held. We got stuff done on time and people started showing up just after 6pm. Dinner (pasta, sausage, salad, bread and appetizers) turned out really well, everyone seemed to have a great time, and we got some great pictures. We also raised several hundred dollars (I don't have a final count yet) for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County. If you'd still like to donate, you can use their website. Thank you to everyone who could make it, and who could spend money we would have just spent on dinner to help people who might not get a dinner otherwise.

Chris and Nhan spent the night, and left in the middle of the day Sunday. That gave us just enough time to prep the house for our housewarming and family birthday (lots of my family had never seen the house before), and we had a similar menu (with more BBQ options) and we got several hundred more charity dollars! I also got presents from family, including Whoppers! Thanks to everyone who could come and make a great birthday.

But that wasn't the end. On Sunday night we met some more friends who couldn't make it on Saturday, and had a great time hanging out with them late. So while it was a hectic weekend that went pretty much non-stop from Saturday morning until late Sunday night, it was a great time. Happy birthday to me, and thanks to all of you!

Happy birthday to me!

Today's my 27th birthday. At 2:10PM on April 16th, 1978, the world gained another liberal atheist smartass.

In all seriousness, please consider giving to your favorite charity today. Anyone who'd like to get me a gift can make a donation to Second Harvest Orange County, a local chapter of the national food bank program. I'm having all my party guests do the same. I've got plenty of things, people out there need a good meal more than I need a bookstore gift card. Thanks!

Oh, and leave a comment if you do, or send me an email. I'd like to keep a tally of the total given. Again, thanks!

On this day...

Ten people are listed in the Internet Movie Database with the same birthday and birth year (April 16th, 1978) as me. Of those:

Two are porn actresses (Peggy Sue and Anoushka)
Four only have one credit (Jody Marie Gnant, Errol Barrois, Isabelle Höpfner and Matthew Lloyd)
Two are up and coming good looking women (Nikki Griffin and Kristin Proctor)
One was Miss Universe 2000 (Lara Dutta)
And one worked exclusively as a transcriber (Adam Neubauer)

Interesting mix of people...

Operation FALCON

I meant to blog about this yesterday, but got wrapped up with more pressing issues. CNN (among others) reported that "Operation FALCON" took in more than 10,000 fugitives from justice in a nationwide, week-long dragnet involving federal, state and local authorities. This sounds good on the surface, right? Fewer bad guys on the streets? The means, method and purpose sound really weird to me. Consider:

Of priority: suspects wanted in homicides, sexual assaults, gang-related crimes, kidnappings, major drug offenses, and crimes against children and the elderly.

The operation captured 10,340 people, of whom 162 were wanted for murder, 638 had outstanding arrest warrants for armed robbery and 553 were wanted for rape or sexual assault. Also captured were 106 unregistered sex offenders and 154 gang members.

That adds up to 1,613 people covering most of the categories, less than 16% of the total arrested. What were all of them captured for?

Other fugitives who were caught include operators of two methamphetamine labs and an illegal alcohol-producing still.

A still! I'm glad my tax dollars are going to arrest small-time bootleggers. What would this world be coming to?

Officials acknowledge the decision to provide such a massive show of force at one time was expected to prompt publicity and help highlight the mission.

But they insist the operation was strictly designed to carry out law enforcement objectives.

You can't have it both ways, guys. Some time in the design process someone said to themselves "let's do it during Crime Victims Rights Week! Let's make it huge!". To say it was "strictly designed to carry out law enforcement objectives" seems very disingenuous.

Gonzales said that the operation demonstrates to victims that perpetrators can be caught and prosecuted for their crimes.

Then why isn't it done all the time? Why do it in a big chunk like this? How many MORE crimes were committed between the time the agents said "let's do this all at once" during planning, and last week, then the captures were made? If these guys really are as dangerous as it being alleged, isn't it best to seek capture immediately?

Congress gave the Marshals Service more money and authority to go after fugitives when it refocused the FBI's mission toward stopping terrorism in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, said the agency's spokesman David Turner.

Yes, because we know all these murders, robberies and rapes (plus the other 9,000 unaccounted for crimes) were terrorism related.

This whole thing just stinks to me. I'm glad those on the run from the law were captured, but I can't help wondering about the other 9000 people - stuff so petty it serves only to increase the numbers? Small time drug offenses? Mail fraud? It also seems weird to me that we're supposed to applaud these agencies for doing their job this week, when apparently they weren't able to capture these guys in the last few months. Or do you really think all the leads for every criminal came on April 4, and they started making captures the next day? Something's fishy.

P.S. Oh, and I hate government sponsored backronyms. FALCON -- "Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally"? Please. Why does everything lately seem to have a patriotic name derived from loosely related terms? It's newspeak, plain and simple.

early birthday!

Coworkers who remember my birthday, surprize me two days early (since some of the staff isn't here on Friday) and make homemade cakes ROCK.

Seriously, I love birthday season. This weekend is shaping up great already.

meetup begins charging

Several months ago, the folks at Meetup.com (where I'm a group organizer) sent out a survey asking about meeting habits and possible pricing structures. Their idea was to charge groups a monthly fee in exchange for added services and materials ("added services" being "let users send each other messages" and "materials" being table cards). I spoke out strongly against the idea, letting them know that they'd see a huge migration away from their site if they went that direction.

Today, they went that direction.

While I appreciate being able to use meetup.com for free for the last couple years, there's no way I'm going to pay $19/month (or even their "discounted" $9/month) for what amounts to no new features my group has any use for. Even if I did find a lot of use for their new features, I'd be hesitant to pay for a service I can easily set up on my own web space. While I don't have the traffic of meetup or the variety of people, I get hundreds of local visitors every week, and since we've already got a good base of people, I don't see my group dying any time soon. Meetup, however, is going to lose groups, lose traffic and ultimately become a shadow of what they used to be.

weekend wrapup, controversal posts

I was fully expecting my monkey picture to elicit all sorts of responses to my post, alas, posting on a Friday means some people don't even see the entry until Monday. It's still there for the commentin'!

Several people have commented lately that I've gotten away from political, personal and controversial posts, and have been focusing instead on more general aspects of my life. This is by design, to a point. While I'm fully against self-censorship, I've come to realize my blog is read by a wide range of people, including family, co-workers, friends, and strangers. I can't post some of the personal things I used to, but the increase in readership has made up for that.

This doesn't mean I won't post controversial stuff, however. Some just yield a greater response than others. I posted about the pope last week, and no one cared. In the past my posts on police violence, freedom of speech, and the war have generated some great comments, but I've also found that a few comments on a otherwise general story can motivate the rest of the posters to further the discussion. But I'll do my best to get the ball rolling.

All that said, another great weekend, with great Southern California style weather - breezy, about 70F, sunny and just generally nice. Hard to go wrong with that. Started the Strato season on Saturday (Hippies lost all three - not the best opening weekend), then hung out with the OC Metbloggers at our monthly meetup (if you'd like to see some good political posters/muckrakers, they've had them at OC Metblogs in the last week). Spent the rest of the weekend with the girlfriend and buying a computer for her uncle. The coming week looks good too, though there's quite a bit of shopping to do...

Friday greetings

Good day readers, and happy Friday! I don't know where you are, but here in southern California it's about 70 degrees, clear, and beautiful outside. The weekend weather's looking the same. Ah, springtime.

Not a whole lot planned this weekend, really. The 2005 BASL Strato season opens tomorrow (same week as the MLB season - that's promising), then I've got a meetup with the fine folks at OC Metblogs. Next weekend's Birthday Mikestravaganza means this weekend may be busy, which is just fine. There's lots to do around the house.

What's your weekend looking like? What's new with you, gentle reader?

Update: This entry wasn't visually appealing enough before, so I've added a picture of a monkey drinking a Coca Cola. Click for a larger image, and enjoy!

http://www.insignifica-music.com/

I'm surprised the guys at www.insignifica-music.com never came to me interested in purchasing insignifica.com (which I own). Interesting...

happy birthday jared!

Happy birthday Jared! For 10 days each April, we're the same age...

Vegetarian Shepherd's pie

Another recipe from my collection that I'd like to have online, so I never lose it. It's a staple in our household.

--

Vegetarian Shepherd's pie

This recipe has developed over time in our household, and can be adjusted to whatever you have on hand.

2-3 carrots, chopped or sliced
8oz mushrooms (any variety), sliced
1/2 onion, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 head broccoli, chopped
1 medium zucchini, sliced
3-4 medium potatoes
4oz mushroom gravy
2 tablespoons butter or oil
4oz milk or cream
salt and pepper

Prepare all vegetable ingredients except potatoes, and place into a large saucepan with the butter or oil. Cook on medium heat for 10-15 minutes, until mushrooms and onions are cooked. While vegetables are cooking, peel and cube potatoes, then boil for 15 minutes on high heat, or until tender. Add mushroom gravy to vegetable mix, stirring to coat the vegetables. Remove potatoes from water and mash, slowly adding milk until they reach desired consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat oven to 350F, and move vegetable mixture to oven-safe, high-walled dish (8x8 works well). Add mashed potato mixture on top, covering the surface of the vegetables. Cook for 15-20 minutes until potatoes develop a slight golden brown crust. Let stand 5 minutes, then serve.

This recipe can easily be adapted to suit your taste. Try using mixed Asian style mushrooms (fresh, dried or frozen), substitute any of the vegetables for what you have on hand (eggplant and squash would both work well), or add flavorings or cheese to your mashed potatoes. Enjoy!

gas buying whiners

CNN's running a story about gas prices being a 'hardship' for the "majority" in U.S., based on a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

What a bunch of whiners they've polled!

Let's say gas costs $2.50/gallon, and your car gets a not-very-good 15 miles to the gallon. Now let's say you travel 45 miles a day on average. Some people go much less (my roundtrip, including returning home for lunch, is around 7 miles). Some, of course, go further. 45 miles is a little more than the average workday commute (even in Los Angeles), but I'll round up for comparison purposes. This means in a day you use 3 gallons of gas (45 miles/15 miles to the gallon), and your day's worth of gasoline costs $7.50 (3 gallons x $2.50).

This certainly isn't cheap, that's $37.50 for a work week! But if we run the same numbers for $2.00/gallon (high in a lot of places, cheap and currently unseen in California), you're still paying $30 for a work week - The difference is a whopping $7.50 a week. That's two fast-food meals out, or two Starbucks coffees, or about 1/2 to 1/3 of one meal at a cheap restaurant.

While I'm sure $7.50/week is a hardship for some people, it's most certainly not for most of us. Remember also that this is a high estimate - if you have a shorter commute (as most people do), or if your care gets better milage (as most cars do) or gas isn't $2.50 a gallon, this number is much less than $7.50/week - probably closer to $3.00 to $4.00. If this amount represents an economic hardship for you, then gas prices are certainly the least of your worries. I think what's more likely is that people like to complain about high gas prices with no idea of how much they're actually spending.

great april weekend

What a great weekend! We met some new friends, had the BASL Strat-o-matic 2005 season draft, ate some great food, and had plenty of time to relax and enjoy the beautiful weather. What a great way to start April!

pope

Remember, there's no reason you need to respect or honor a man of power who:

- Has always been against the rights of homosexuals.
- Always taught that birth control and family planning will send you to hell.
- Condemns euthanasia, even for the terminally ill.
- Has always been against the ordination of women.
- Compared abortion to the holocaust.

Someone who has one billion people listening to him and believing his word is the word of God must take socially responable stands on issues. He had a lot of power to influence the choices and actions of 1/6th of the world's population, but chose to stick to history instead.