It’s banned books week almost every book on there is worth reading, and worth sharing with your children, people are dumb. via barrelhouse

So I often have really general questions about stuff ranging from where can I find recomendations on rock quarries? How to seal an asphalt driveway? To, what are some good books to read? And what is the best way to calculate the best fit line in some programming language?

The question I have today is where to ask these? Is there any really good clearing house of knowledge ranging from very general to very specific? I know about ask metafilter, and google answers both of which seem like the best option out there, but are there any other communities where it is accepted that people will ask questions on wildly differing topics?

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This is one of the funniest clips I ever heard, I don’t remember how I got my hands on it. I think one of my co-workers at ASPRE sent it to me, or maybe a former co-worker from Northrop Grumman. I have no idea who the caller is, or what company they are calling, but every time I listen to it I really crack up.

Now this is not worksafe, well I guess that depends on where you work, but it’s basically a guy screaming language that is not commonly acceptable.

IrateCustomer.wav

It’s so much better to actually try and figure out what your problem is instead of assuming and then blaming it on solar flares. Turns out I corrupted some data which wasted about a half a day of my time.

Like sports and rhyming?

Then write a limerick for my brother’s contest. I have yet to grace the pages with my entries, but I do plan to enter the contest. And if you don’t want to enter you can at least see the entries so far.

Amazing how some technology left out Friday after confirming it works, heck it had been working the same way since July. Seems to grow fungus or mold, or simply atrophy and no longer work after the weekend is over.

Like making JBoss talk to MySQL luckily trial and error correction is made nearly impossible because it takes a good 10 minutes for each round trip on the cycle.

Got in to work around 6, haven’t eaten lunch. That means it’s been 9 straight hours of work, and it’s nice out. That also means it’s time for a break and to collect on that 800 - 1000 calories I am owed today*. So I am walking to get a sandwich. I’ll also probably pay the idiot tax while I’m out.

*: I had a small banana and 6 bread & butter pickle chips. I estimate that to be around 100 calories.

Ted Rall wrote Charities are for suckers, with the basic argument that the federal government is shirking it’s duty in disaster relief because charities exist, and people are giving to the charities. He goes on to say that when you give to a charity you are casting a vote for the government to go on being irresponsible. I think all of this is pretty stupid, and ordinarily wouldn’t comment, however it gets interesting when he torpedoes his own argument in the middle.

In the final analysis, after the floodwaters have receded and the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans have been razed under eminent domain, major charities will be lucky if they’ve managed to raise one percent of the total cost of Katrina. Congress, recognizing the reality that only the federal government possesses the means to deal with the calamity, has already allocated $58 billion–over 70 times the amount raised by charities–to flood relief along the Gulf of Mexico. As Bush says, that’s only a “down payment.”

Cutting a check to the Red Cross isn’t just a vote for irresponsible government. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to what you’ll end up paying for Katrina in increased taxes.

So, to clarify, he thinks the federal government should foot the bill for fixing Katrina. He also thinks giving to charities allows the government to abdicate this duty. Then somehow he also thinks that the fact that the federal government has earmarked 7000% the amount private charities have raised to help recover from Katrina is also bad because it’ll raise taxes.

He could have saved everyone a lot of trouble if he just wrote “Everything Republicans do is bad.” Okay, Ted, let me appologize to you on behalf of everyone else that you have to pay taxes, and people are going to ask you to donate to charity also. Any other inconveniences you would like me to atone for? Doesn’t it suck that sugar tastes so good, but has so many calories. It would be awesome if the federal government would fix that for free too.

This is me, drawing a line in the sand. Starting today I begin my quest to drop about 45 pounds. Last I looked (a few days ago) I was about 230 lbs. I should be around 185, and that is my goal.

How will I acheive such a lofty ideal, you ask? Well it won’t be the first time that I shrunk myself a bit. So I plan to follow a similar tract.

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“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

-Charles Darwin