Go big or go home

A long, long time ago, I can still remember,
How WorldCom used to make me smile.
I knew if they had a chance,
They would make their numbers dance,
To keep investors happy … for a while.

The Ebbers scandal made me shiver,
With every margin call delivered.
Bad news on the doorstep,
The stock price took a wrong step.

I can’t remember if I cried,
When I read about that market slide.
Something touched me deep inside.
The day.. WorldCom died.

Bye, bye, WorldCom / MCI.
My portfolio was heavy, when the stock was still high.
Now Wall Street boys got a poke in the eye,
Saying: This is what you get when you buy.

This is what you get when you buy.

Did you cook your books with fluff,
And do you believe it’s good enough
If accountants tell you so.

Now, do you believe in bought and sold,
Can audits save your corporate soul
And can I teach you how to count… real slow.

Well, I know your profit’s pretty thin,
Now we all must take it on the chin.
We’ll all now have to choose…
Who’ll be the first who sues.

I was a working guy who had a buck.
With some shares of stock, but who gives a fuck
But I knew I was out of luck

The day that WorldCom died.

We were singing…
Bye, bye, WorldCom / MCI.
My portfolio was heavy, when the stock was still high.
Now Wall Street boys got a poke in the eye,
Saying: This is what you get when you buy
This could make the company die.

Bye, bye, WorldCom / MCI.
My portfolio was heavy, when the stock was still high.
Now Wall Street boys got a poke in the eye,
Saying: This just made the company die.

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Frodo Baggins Charged With War Crimes

Frodo Baggins of Bagshot Row, Hobbiton, The Shire, Middle Earth, has been called before the International Criminal Court to answer charges of war crimes brought by Sauron the Dark Lord and Saruman the White in a joint filing.

Baggins refused comment on the matter from his home at Bag End, simply moaning and holding his head. But his former valet and gardener (now mayor of Hobbiton) Samwise Gamgee spoke with reporters from his “bit of garden,” saying that “you people ought to know better, coming here bothering my master and trampling my taters and all. This is just about the dumbest thing I’ve heard of since Master Merry and Master Pippin started up that Broadway show of theirs. That didn’t work out so well, either, but all’s well as ends better, as my Gaffer used to say.” Gamgee was referring to the spectacular failure of “Mount Doom – the Musical,” which debuted on Broadway last year and closed the same night, bankrupting its producers and principal investors Meriadoc Brandybuck of Buckland and Peregrine Took of the Tookland, both in the Shire.

The charges brought by Sauron and Saruman are serious and were commented on at length by the Dark Lord himself at a press conference held after he delivered the formal papers to the Court. As a full signatory to the Court’s original charter, Sauron is legally entitled to bring charges before the Court, and the Court’s decision will be binding on Mr. Baggins, per the charter establishing the authority of the Court over the entire world, whether the particular defendant lives in a member country or not. The Shire has repeatedly refused to ratify a proposal to join the Court; the proposal has languished in the legislature, bogged down by stalling tactics employed by right-wing and unilateralist legislators intent on blocking it. Gondor and Rohan have likewise not joined the ICC, for similar obstructionist reasons.

“Mr.Baggins is guilty of some of the most egregious violations of International Law as expressed in the Court’s founding documents and must be brought to answer for his inhumane actions,” Sauron said from the cardboard box behind the Emyn Muil 7-11 he’s been living in since the scandalous and irresponsible destruction of Sauron’s Ruling Ring brought about the downfall of his Empire several years ago. “He’s obviously guilty of violating several provisions of Article 8, Section 2, especially the ‘outrage against personal dignity’ clause and the ‘excessive incidental death, injury or damage’ clause. When the armies of the Western Alliance marched up to the Black Gate, they were guilty of making illegal aggressive war against a sovereign nation. Our legal team plans to bring separate suits against Aragorn son of Arathorn, the Elfstone King Elessar of Gondor. Also King Eomer of the Riddermark and Elrond Halfelven of Rivendell. But we chose to pursue the suit against Baggins first, since his was the most damaging and egregious crime.”

Baggins was responsible for casting the Ring of Power (otherwise known as the One Ring or simply the One) into the fires of Mount Orodruin in Mordor (“Where The Shadows Lie!” according to the Mordor Tourism Board), thereby destroying both the Ring and Sauron’s long-standing hope to bring heretofore fractious and inefficient Middle Earth under the central political control of the Dark Tower. Without the Ring, Sauron’s legions (defensive in nature and made necessary by the Lords of the West’s aggression, according to Barad-Dur spokesmen) of orcs, wolves, trolls, and “evil” Men lost the will to fight and became helpless in the face of the armies of the West. Millions were slaughtered as a direct and immediate consequence of the destruction of the Ring.

Saruman had his own comments on the charges. “The swaggering little cock-a-whoops cast me out, forcing me to live as a beggar wandering through the wilderness of Middle Earth. They brought their own house to ruin when they destroyed mine, and someone has to pay for it,” said Saruman, formerly known for his sartorial finesse but now dressed only in torn, filthy rags. Saruman is demanding the right of return to his former home at Orthanc in Isengard, which has been occupied since the so-called “War of the Ring” by Ents, Elves, and other folk.

Both Sauron and Saruman claim that their persecution by Baggins and the Lords of the West is based on their religious beliefs, also clearly in violation of Article 8. With the wanton destruction of the One Ring, Baggins also directly and callously murdered every one of the high priests of the Dark Lord’s religious order, known collectively as the Nazgul. Saruman said that the destruction of the pits and forges of Isengard, where he had genetically-engineered his Fighting Uruk-Hai breed of half-orcs, half-men, was done in blatant disregard for the religious rights of an indigenous people. “All my Uruks wanted was the basic human right to practice their religion and to live with their neighbors in peace,” said Saruman. “But they were forcibly removed from their homes and slaughtered like cattle by the Riders of Rohan. It was, well, completely inhuman.” Saruman then broke down in a touching display of emotion and was tended to by his servant Wormtongue. He refused any further comment.

Baggins was defended in a public statement released by Gandalf the Grey, a well-known right-wing wizard and co-conspirator of Baggins himself. “Frodo made Middle-Earth safe for democracy and now this is how he’s repaid – by facing imprisonment because of a suit brought by the very enemies of freedom! The world’s press is only humiliating themselves by siding with the Servants of the Lidless Eye on this. They have left the path of wisdom.” Gandalf’s statement was published in the National Review and certain fascist online journals, known as “warblogs” to their purveyors and media watchdog groups. The New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and most other mainstream newspapers refused to publish the statement, calling it “biased and self-serving propaganda from a known cohort of Mr. Baggins.”

The suit was hailed as a major step forward in the re-establishment of the authority of international law by progressives throughout the world. Trillions of supporters of the suit gathered on the White House lawn in the United States this week to express their approval for the suit, and to protest the American cowboy government’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of any international deliberative body in even the most weakend and watered-down form. Several American lawyers, including Johnny Cochran, Alan Dershowitz, and Bob Bennett, immediately expressed their intention to assist the Lord of Barad-Dur in his attempt to bring Baggins and the others to justice.

Elrond Halfelven, when asked to comment on the matter, said merely, “Fuck this, I’m outta here,” apparently declaring his intention to seek political refuge in the Uttermost West beyond the Sundering Seas.

Baggins will be taken into custody sometime this week to await trial.
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damn.
if you ever, ever, *really* hate someone, wish a herniated disk on them. this is the mother of all painful things i swear to the goddess. it’s been 4 months, something like 2500 bucks to the bone cruncher, and while it’s a *lot* better than it was, it’s still got to be one of the most physically painful things i have *ever* experienced. it’s not even that it hurts so much, as it just won’t quit. :/

still losing weight, i’m down to 210 now. this whole atkins diet thing is working pretty well.
by the way, any of you geeks decide to try it, you’ll find that the hardest thing is finding something to drink you like. the answer is crystal lite (basically tastes like koolaid) and diet mt dew, diet dr pepper or diet coke.

i always thought people who dieted were kinda weird. now i have to so my back will heal faster :/

almost done with the astrology section of paganality, and the purchase order processing engine is almost finished. (yay!) nightmares in perl continue, but it’s a small price to pay for a project of this magnitude. it’s neat. i’ve always really liked the feeling of accomplishment i get when i watch something i envisioned taking shape before my very eyes…

chaneecat told me what you said the other day re: tony and rachel, you and i, and the manor.
thanks gothkittyn, it’s nice to hear

so may crown was fun, but the trip there was a nightmare. threw a rotor in the rx-7, so i had to hustle up a truck to tow my trailer with, and it, being a ’60′s ford pickup, beat the crap out of my back :/ but we made it there… flint, amphipteres, myself, azrayel, jenygirl, and the lovely chaneecat, all went and set up the grotto. the look on chaneecat‘s face was wonderful. earlier in the week she had suggested we wash the parachute in the front yard. heh. (it’s bigger than my lot, and the lot next door) t12 cargo parachute. 100 ft across, 7500 square ft of nylon, 400 lbs dry, 1400 wet. and it makes one hell of a pavilion

Saturday night court was still going on, so we had been asked not to drum… the belly dance troup that was performing had canned music, so it was still cool…
and a huge house sylverstone huzzah! to the members of rolling thunder that picked up the drums when their bard in a box went on strike. very *very* well done my friends. any time you need wine, women and song, drop on by.

i wish my back wasn’t screwed up. one of the dancers was a guy. normally i pay like, zero attention to men of any kind, in any way… but this was .. different.
as someone who is, to put it mildly, rabidly heterosexual, i watched this guy in rapt fascination. i would *love* to be able to move like that. well, and be built like that too for that matter … but it was very cool to watch. i think i’m going to take a crack at belly dancing when my back heals up enough to make it something more than an exercise in futility…

so my room is almost done.

for those of you who have seen my office / loft, it’s almost done.
downstairs i moved the overhead equipment rack to above where my desk is going to be.
in it i installed the following:
(2) 48 port cat5e rj45 patch panels that run tot he noc / server room
(2) 1400 va apc rackmount ups’s
(2) compaq servers
(2) smc fast ethernet 24 port switches
(1) usrobotics total control modem pool
(1) livingston terminal server
(1) cisco 2924 xl en 24 port network switch

of course this prompted rewiring the network runs for half the building… 9 miles of cat5e network cable, and half a mile of fiber optic, is quite a handful, *especially* in a 900 sq ft home.

since i put in the lofts, i think it’s more like 1200 sq ft… but still

upstairs i widened the catwalk, lined it with bookshelves, and built the stairs up to the catwalk and loft area.
i reinstalled the aquariums and built my altar table… the next step is going to be moving my desk. then my machine. then my altar.
the ceiling has been done in purple tissue over white, and the lovely chaneecat spent several hours drawing magick on my ceiling with stick on glow in the dark stars… it’s very cool. i like it

the server room cooling is getting interesting. last year we had (2) 12,000 btu air conditioners running full bore all the time. costs a lot to use. .. now we have a big squirrel cage fan at the far end of the room in the floor that pulls cold air from under the house. at the other end of the room there’s a ceiling vent that ducts to outside for the summer, and inside the main hallway for the winter (no point in wasting the excess heat when we can use it). it seems to be working very well, although i may need to get a bigger fan. this one does about 100 cubic ft / min or so, but i think we’ll need more. we shall see…

and the fiat is almost roadworthy again! whoohoo! goddess i can’t wait to get it finished, it’s that time of year again. sunshine, convertible tops, some call ‘em rags, i call ‘em drops… pretty girl in the shotgun seat, whee

i need to get back to work. :/
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been an interesting morning.
my new 24″ sun monitor got deposited on my bed last night, and, well, i slept with it because i hurt too much to move it. … heh.

so this morning i pulled the 17 out of the center, and put the 24 in..

(for those of you who don’t know, i’ve got 5 monitors on my home office workstation..
set up like this: (21″)(21″)(24″)(21″)(21″)

all are sun/sony trinitron’s, i’m running multimonitor under win2k, so in essence i have a 5100×768 desktop

anyway, this thing weighs over 100 lbs, and my back is badly screwed up (still dealing with the herniated disk) so using my knees and arms and a lot of leveraging off my desk, etc. i managed to get it put where i want it, without tweaking my back.

go me

i’m strapped into my chair so i don’t move funny and tweak anything, plugged into my tens unit (electronic nerve blocker thing, works great, but since it blocks the pain i have to be really careful not to make the injury worse while using it) drinkin hot cocoa and peppermint schnapps, and basically taking it easy. burning some candles and incense, listening to music, the usual Sunday afternoon thing (yes, i know it’s Saturday)

been working on paganality and basically taking it easy since the last time i posted. i’m pretty proud of it. that’s what 3/4 of a million lines of code will get you

life is going well.
or, at least, as well as can be expected.
my bone cruncher says i’ll get better, and, unlike most people in the medical field, i believe him
(hey, i can walk now, that’s 100% better than the first time i was in his office

not much else to say really, since i’ve pretty much been working, sleeping, and going to my bone cruncher, for the past while.

kinda miss all my friends…
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hi y’all,
just got back from celtic bardic with chaneecat and had a pretty good time.
i’m beat tired and my sciatic nerve / si joint issue is taking forever to heal, but i’m feeling pretty good over all. (as well as can be expected anyway) ….

i think it’s time for a glass of hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps, and then a nice nap
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