Painting the Moon

It was the height of the cold war and mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union was at its peak. Fear of Communism was prevalent.

The president's top aide burst into the oval office one day.

"Mr. President," he said, urgently, "We've just received a report that the Russians have landed on the moon and are painting it red!"

"Really?" the president replied.

"Yes," the aide returned. "And if they succeed in painting it entirely red, it will be a communist symbol that will hang over the heads of the entire world population!"

The president thought for a moment. "Okay, thanks for the briefing," he said.

Two days later, the aide stormed into the president's office again. "Mr. President," he said. "The Russians are still painting the moon red and now they're half done!"

"Not to worry," the president assured. "We have everything under control."

Three days later, the same aide reported to the president once more. "I thought you said you had everything under control!" he said. "The Russians have finished and the moon is now completely red!"

"Yes, I know," the president replied. "We are taking appropriate measures. We are getting ready to launch a rocket with 100,000 gallons of white paint to remedy the situation."

"But 100,000 gallons won't be enough to repaint the entire moon!" the aide pointed out.

"No," the president replied, "But it will be enough to paint 'Coca-Cola' across the middle!"

---

Forgive Me, Father

A young woman goes to church to confess her sins to the priest.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," she said.

"Confess your sins, my daughter," the priest replied.

"Oh, Father, last night my boyfriend made love to me seven times," she said.

The priest thought about this long and hard. He eventually said, "Take seven lemons, squeeze the juice into a tall glass and drink it."

"Will this cleanse my soul of my sins?" the young woman asked.

"No," the priest answered, "But it will wipe that smile off your face!"

---

This was from a non-commercial mailing list I'm on. (Pretty low-volume.)

If you would like to subscribe to this list, send a subscribe-request to hahafunnies [at] juno.com.

More cross-site complaints

Sorry, seems I have to bitch some more about Social Media and sites merging.
I have problems sending the couple of Yahoo groups I'm using. So I log into groups.yahoo.com, and look at my profile: guess what... when I do, I'm suddenly no longer at Yahoo Groups, now I am at "Yahoo UK", and they have lost my email addresses, the only one they have is eolake@yahoo.co.uk, which I'm pretty durned sure I never signed up for. Well, I guess I must have for some reason. But it seems they are sending me to the UK site but have not coordinated the data from the int. site.

Not only that, but clearly Yahoo has FaceBook envy, for it's sudden another friggin social site where on your main page you suddenly have to deal with your "contacts" and whatnot.
Common guys (Yahoo and so on), you don't have to emulate *everything* that's been in the media a lot.

Mysterious tracks

The water spirit animals are invading my home. Very tiny ones too, this track is like an inch only. I wonder if it's just a baby yet, and how big it grows?

"Hormonal Disaster", digital records of a Dirty Old Man

As I've said (though oddly I can't find the post), all my time I've named my hard disks to keep them apart. And just for fun, generally I name them with the the initials HD.

Hell Dish
Hound Dog
... were my first two.

From recent years:

Hillbilly Deluxe
Heavy Duty
Home Delight
Honey Delicious
Heavy Density (my first 1TB disk)

New ones:

Happy Domicile 
(Main internal one, 2TB)


Humble Device
Hysterical Damsel
(External backups)


(I don't yet have one named Hormonal Disaster, but maybe the next one.)

From today's quotes

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
           -- Henry David Thoreau

If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.
           -- Hugh Macleod, How To Be Creative: 6, 08-22-04

Anything you could ever want or be you already have and are.
           -- David Russell, I Heart Huckabee's

Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
           -- Peter McWilliams, Life 101

I am sure that is true, and very often. The question is (and I wonder if McWilliams meant this), is it wrong?
If something is taboo, or illegal, does that make it wrong? Or merely risky?

Need supervising

"Frisky Dingo"

The title is insane, but the show is insanely funny.
It looks a bit low-budget due to very little actual animation, but then the drawings are gorgeous and sexy and funny. And it's just brutally strange and original.

A follow-up

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
- A A Milne

Photo contest: Children In Color

I'm awarding three prizes of $100 for what I judge to be the best color photograph of a child or children sent to me before 15 July 2010.
Judging is entirely subjective!

You may use imaging software for the usual refining of contrast and so on, but otherwise, "straight" photos have better chances than much-manipulated ones (such as putting an object in different surroundings or changing colors dramatically).

• Each author may send three (3) pictures.
• The picture may not previously have won prizes or have been published in a professional publication, on- or offline. New photos are encouraged.
• The author's name must be in the file name. (Example: joe-smith-13.jpg)
• No text on the picture.
• Shortest edge more than 1200 pixels, longest edge less than 3000 pixels.
• JPGs only. Maximum file size: 1500 kb.
• I acquire the rights to publish for free all entries here. Entrants keep all other rights.
• I plan that in the last half of July, I will post several of the best entries, and the winners. 
• I require a paypal address to pay to.

Send entries to my googlemail.com address, which is eolake. Or use the address here.

Have fun! - Eolake

-----
Note: this contest is unrelated to my commercial site.

Customizing

I think customizing is something one has to learn over the years. Simply because in the beginning you're full up busy just trying to deal with the basics of anything new.
But when you have those locked down, it's a really good idea to look through the ways to customize the apps and utilities you use, to optimize your effectiveness and pleasure of using them. You can read tips on the web, or a book, or just browse through menus and settings/preferences.

Just for example, I've now gotten Mail.app to work very well for me. Love that. But then today I noticed that I missed one thing yet from Eudora: the very simply little window I could have at a corner of the big screen to show me if there's new mail, while impinging as little as possible on my zen-simplicity of screens. The Mail.app main window is simple more complex and graphic.

But suddenly today I had the insight that I could slide the mailbox sidebar out of the way. Most of the time I only look at the Inbox anyway. So done. Much simpler. And it also solved a small issue of fitting all the info from mail headers into the window without making it so long that it covered for vital parts of wallpaper pictures. (No, I'm not detail-oriented!)
And more, the icons on top could be reduced to just small text links. And more-more, I could customize that toolbar, removing those I don't use, and adding several very useful ones, including one which calls forth the mail boxes when I do want them, etcetera.

I usually hide the Dock, since all the mixed color icons are ugly. So that prohibits Mail.app's fine feature of showing the number of new messages in the Dock icon. I wonder if anybody makes a menu item for that?
Update: Sometimes you just have to get the thought, and look! They do indeed.  Yipee. So now I don't even need the app on the screen to keep an eye on new mail.
Ahh. Clarity and simplicity, gotta love it. 
Here's a new screenshot (with a different pic from my photo contest last month). Notice a totally clean desktop, no windows or icons. And the little menu bar icon with mail count, which turns from black to red when it goes above zero. Nice touch.

blutooth issues

I have two bluetooth devices which simply don't see each other. Individually they do work with other devices. Once you have booted and such, what the heck can you do?

Sirens, and not the charming ones

I've been hearing sirens all day. And it suddenly struck me: it's this verdamte fuzball  caca! And I think I saw a tweet to the effect that England just performed badly somehow (I think there's a ball and a point system involved). There must be blood in the streets tonight. Well, we used to have highwaymen, I think this is a step up.