Tyranny Of Small Minds

Somebody in or around my neighborhood has no life.

This is the notice planted in our front yard last Friday. I admit that we are not of the Genus Suburbus Lawnus Nazius, but we do try and keep it from being our own little African Grassland. Thing is, in Oklahoma, you have to be careful of over cutting your grass, unless you are willing to waste a lot of water to keep it green. Another option for the long stretches without rain is to let it grow a bit so it doesn't simply burn up.

So it got a little ragged after it finally rained, but if you read the text of that notice it sounds as if we presided over a yard choked by giant mutant weeds issuing noxious odors and sheltering post-radioactive rats. This is comical in a perverse sort of way, since our yard is a pathetic mixture of dry dirt, tenacious flowering weeds, and scraggly grass struggling to survive.

I was really fucking pissed off when my wife discovered the notice planted in the yard, for all the neighbors to see. I felt like we were bad people, blighting our entire block with our sorry little lawn. I couldn't help wondering who exactly decided to call the Lawn Police and plotted ways to retaliate. Since the notice allows ten days to remedy the situation, I figured we could erect a sign easily visible from the street, advising the informant how tall the grass was and how many more days we had before we absolutely, positively had to cut it.

Fortunately my wife's cool head prevailed, and I gave up my devious plans to inflict similar humiliation upon the nosy culprit. Instead, we got the damn grass cut.

Today I called the inspector who placed the red badge of nonconformity upon my meager lawn, to ask her to come out and inspect, lest we still be out of compliance. She asked which lawn was ours. It runs out she placed somewhere close to fifteen such signs for various alleged infractions in and around our neighborhood. I asked her if someone simply called in, and she said that was exactly the case.

"I call them the get-a-life people."

I almost fell on the floor laughing. Some time later today she'll be by to reinspect, lest we again give the UberLawnVolk reason to call down the dogs of grass on our heads.

Fold it!

Distributed computing isn't a new concept, but it is becoming more widely known and used as a means to apply massive processing power otherwise unavailable to specific scientific and mathematical problems. One such project, called Folding@Home, uses distributed computing to investigate how complex proteins are folded, or created. A small program is downloaded and installed, running in the background, working on a tiny portion of a project, which in turn is part of the larger endeavor.

While it does ratchet the computer's processor up to 100% usage, it retains such a low priority that it doesn't interfere with normal computing tasks. If you're a rabid gamer, you'll want to pause its work in order to squeeze every last ounce of performance from your machine in order to prevail in the latest death match. Points are assigned to each work unit based on how complicated it is andf how loing it will take to complete.

Folding@Home is also a friendly competition, with multiple users joining teams to combine their processors and Work Units into one score. Keeps it interesting, granting bragging rights to those who can fold the most. I've only managed to rope two people into a team, but I'm working on a few others. :)

Lenin And The Airtight Coffin

Reaganolotry now ended, we can move on to more current matters.

Well, we can, once I have my say about it.

I don't miss him. Nor do I feel an obligation to engage in compulsory "respect" for his passing. Reagan was a bastard, a liar, and a war criminal. The Republican slow motion coup still in progress was begun during his administration, which eviscerated labor unions, worker protections, and kicked the long simmering class war in this country into high gear.

The Republican leadership in Congress and the White House, most of whom served under Reagan, engineered a Soviet-style event of "national mourning" replete with the body lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. It was sickening, just another method to enshrine Reagan as some sort of American saint.

Just ask this simple question: In the current political atmosphere, had Bill Clinton died, would his body lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

Nope. Bet your life on it.