I may not be participating in National Novel Writing Month this year. The problem? Same as my previous attempts, I lack a storyline. I have some decent ideas for characters and their backgrounds, but nothing that really ties them together, and certainly nothing that would result in anything reminicient of an epic conclusion. I could easily crank out some character sketches, but that’s as far as my ideas take me.

I’m going to put it up here as a poll, so you can give me the thumbs up or thumbs down before I begin my 50,000 word oddessey. For some reason I’m more nervous about putting my idea up than talking about nearly failing my motorcycle safety course or the dorkiness associated with running a roleplaying game about zombies.

OK, here goes:

$nameUndecided is a highly respected and skilled guard for an old king. His primary duty is to safeguard the king’s young queen. He follows her everywhere, and in Lancelot fashion falls in love with her and they have copius amounts of knight-on-queen humpy near babbling brooks with wildflowers gently blowing in the spring breeze. Of course, they are found out — by the king’s somewhat spooky advisor — and the queen is locked in a tower for the rest of her life. The king’s advisor has other plans for $nameUndecided, however. To make amends for breaking his vow of servitude, $nameUndecided is cursed to become a gargoyle, crouching motionless and silent until bidden to do the wishes of the king and the rest of his line, forever. As war and time march on, $nameUndecided is made to do some fairly unscrupulous things under the command of the king and his decendants.

Fast forward to modern era. $nameUndecided is brought to America as an exhibit on European architecture. He has been dormant for some time, but tingles to life as he feels one of the king’s decendants near: a young woman named Clara who is completely unaware of her heritage and her hold over the cursed knight.

This is where I sorta fall apart. Shit happens, $nameUndecided comes to the rescue, ancient Christian watchgroup starts to hunt down the “demon” gargoyle and its evil mistress, and soon there’s lots of shooting, crashing through buildings, the Spear of Longinus, and copius amounts of gargoyle-on-woman humpy near babbling brooks with wildflowers gently blowing in the spring breeze.

What say ye?

Note: despite the title, this entry is not about masturbation.

I need to take Cylon down to Charlottesville for his 600 mile tune up this upcoming week, and I figured that riding him at highway speeds might make me a little chilly. I have had previous experience with being chilled on the bike, and I didn’t want to be uncomfortable on a 160 mile round trip if I could help it. My plan: test out my Held Ninja gloves as well as the rest of my brrrr weather gear on a short 20 mile each way jaunt on a nearby freeway.

Equipment:

• 100% poly moisture wicking tshirt
• Thin performance fleece jacket
• Perforated Teknic Chicane leather jacket
• ICON Milspec reflective nylon vest
• Held Ninja Gloves
• CoolMAX skullcap
• Regular jeans (Old Navy)
• Nitro sport armored boots
• HJC Symax composite helmet
• Oakley Juliette sunglasses

This is what I typically wear whenever I’m cruising about town, except for the tshirt (I am normally wearing one of my cotton ha-ha funny shirts) and the skullcap.

The temperature was about 58 degrees when I left the house. Motoring around on the surface streets was quite comfortable; with the sun out I venture to say I got a little warm on my back. So far so good.

When I hit the highway, everything seemed fine — at first. I was cruising along at 75MPH. The turbulence from the air running off my windscreen was annoying. The wind rushed right down the front of my jacket and up the front of my helmet. This was a source of a minor, but annoying chill. Much worse, I found out, were my legs — the jeans did jack shit to keep my manly quads warm. The all-metal gas tank was cold like the embrace of a jilted woman. One benefit to having extremely cold legs? In the event of an accident, my balls were so contracted that they would have survived even the most violent impact. I almost became a eunuch somewhere around mile 10.

Speaking of mile 10, at about this point my hands began to turn cold. Like you stuck them in ice water. Cold like the kind that makes Lady Jaye shrill when I touch her bare behind. You know, fucking cold. I wasn’t about to stop. My mitts were just uncomfortable, but so far weren’t numb enough to keep me from reaching either the brake lever or the clutch lever. But compounded with my cold legs, the wind rushing about my body, and my fingers, I got uncomfortable. And I didn’t want to be uncomfortable on the freeway.

I crouched down close to the tank, and noticed a few things immediately. My chest didn’t get buffeted by the wind as much, and my speed increased by about 2 or 3 MPH without adjusting the throttle, and there was enough low-level noise that I couldn’t hear a DAMN thing. I would have happily rode the rest of the way crouched over like that, but I couldn’t see with my side mirrors and in the event of a traffic stop I wanted to be able to see the po po behind me. I did a 60/40 mix of riding upright and crouched the rest of the way.

By mile 16 or so my right hand moreso than my left really began to get cold. I was still able to manipulate the levers, but I figured that if I had to go all the way to Charlottesville I’d either be in trouble or would have to stop a few times each direction. I finished the first leg of my trip and stopped off for some coffee and went by Dick’s sporting goods to see what they had to offer in the way of glove liners.

I expected to find some thin cotton liners and some silk liners. Silk liners are sought after by motorcyclists because it’s a very thin, but warm material. Dick’s had cotton liners, but they were too bulky once I put my gloves over them. I opted for some nylon ultrathin weatherproof liners. I put them on underneath my gloves and they seemed okay. Anything was better than numb fingers, right?

I also bought a fleece and neoprene crazy mugger mask with a cutout for my nose and vents over the mouth. Most importantly, the mask had a fleece cowl that I could tuck into my jacket. So much for the draftiness!

Stocked up, I headed back out on the highway to come home. I was proud of myself for beating mother nature when I noticed my right hand started to tingle a little bit. Odd, I thought, my hands don’t feel cold. Those new liners I bought? For some reason, they were just a little too tight on my right hand and it cut off my circulation. I freaked out just a little bit, but at 80MPH I couldn’t afford to wave my hand around to get blood back into it. I extended and contracted my forefingers for most of the way home. And while the mask I bought kept the wind from going up my helmet and down my vest, it fogged my Oakleys up when I wasn’t cruising at highway speeds.

So what’s a boy to do? I guess it’s time to break out my armored winter gloves, at least when the ambient temperature is 55 or less. That in itself is kind of a pain, since I’ll have to juggle what gloves to take Tuesday when I go to Charlottesville. Do I take my too-hot-during-the-afternoon armored winter gloves, or try to endure the 80 mile trip back with my vented Ninja gloves, sans blood flow constricting liners? I’ll let you know Tuesday night or Wednesday. :)

At long last Lady Jaye and I saw George Romero’s Land of the Dead last night. I was looking forward to seeing it in the the theater, and I think it came out around the time of the big layoff at work among other lifechanges, so we didn’t get a chance to see it.

I wish that we didn’t.

My biggest complaint with the movie is that it absolutely failed to engage me. Mostly because the film is a even less-thinly-guised social commentary than the previous three films, and the 1st grader approach at selling its message made us roll our eyes. The gas attendant black zombie who remembers how to reason and leads a rebellion against a white real estate developer tycoon who rules one of the remaining human outposts; the “mercy killing” the gas attendant enacts on a zombie caught on fire during an attack; the all-white occupants of the upper-class high rise fortress in the center of the outpost — all of these things and more were so cliche that they failed to make me give a shit about any of the characters. John Leguizamo’s character “Cholo,” which is a slang term for a Mexican gangster, tries to buy his way into the white kingdom of Fiddler’s Green by doing the city’s dirtywork and is of course told there is no room for his kind, as the membership committee is “very selective.” The ultimate eye-roller? The disaffected leaving for Canada, the real-life rallying cry of every whiny ass hyper lefty who shed crocodile tears after George W. Bush was re-elected. Give me a fucking break.

I didn’t mind that the previous Romero zombie movies had social commentary or political messages because they were zombie movies first, and commentaries second. Not so with Land of the Dead, which beats its chest so soundly that the traditional zombie gore and feast scenes seem out of place. Why not just film a Michael Moore’s style mockumentary that states simply, “all but the highest caste of American society lives like feral zombies?” It would have been a lot easier and we could have gotten our latest zombie chronicle from someone much more qualified to treat the genre, such as Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) orJames Gunn (Dawn of the Dead remake).

Well, at least according to this guestimation by Tristan Louis, who analyzed the value of the recent WeblogsInc buyout by AOL for between $20 million and $40 million.

Thanks to Stilts for the linkity-link.

Nothing spurs a new hardware build like games. Alexa, Father, Bond, Cleopatra and I are all either playing, or have played, Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. Wanting to see what the fuss was all about, Lady Jaye innocently asked, “can I see what the game is like?” Muha. MUHA. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHA. Of course, dear. The first one is always free. She toyed around with character creation on my computer, moved around for a bit, finished some first level quests, and wanted to try the game for reals.

There was a problem with her trying the game out at a more in-depth level. Her current desktop was antiquated. There’s no way it would run WoW sufficiently (at least, by my standards) to play. And baby can’t have a low-rent gaming machine.

Lady Jaye needs a new machine? No problem. But hey, my current workstation could use a revision as well. Besides, it is a dual processor rig and is better suited at file serving than hammering goblins into paste. While we’re at it, why not buy two machines?

So here was my goal:

• New processor
• New motherboard
• New video
• New ram
• New case and power supply

That’s it, we already had hard drives and optical drives — one CDR and one DVD drive.

I wanted to escape for less than $800 shipped out the door, for both systems. A tall order, given that the absolutely cutting-edge Intel and AMD processor product lines aren’t as cheap as they were the last time I built a machine.

Processor
The most important decision, and from which all other questions — motherboard type and size, ram type and capacity, and video interface type — would all be answered. Like I said, the AMD 939 chips were expensive, the least being $145 at NewEgg, and that would blow almost half of my budget already. So I had to look at the older, but still alive, 754 processor line from AMD. I purchased the Sempron 2600+ chip, a 64-bit processor running at 1.6GHz out of the box. I got the retail version, which provided a heat sink and fan that I would have to buy separately otherwise. Since I wasn’t overclocking, the stock HSF combo was fine for me. Cost: $64.

Motherboard
The motherboard is where all the other computer components get together to party. By themselves they may be impressive dancers, but they are ineffectual without the blinking lights and fog machines of the motherboard dance floor. These days, you can get a pretty damn fancy motherboard, with onboard 7.1 sound, networking, RAID, USB, and most importantly for my purchase — onboard video. I knew that buying an external video card would compromise my low-cost objective. The middle of the road current gen cards are between $130 and $250. The motherboard I selected had an advanced onboard video chipset made by major manufacturer NVIDIA. The 6100 is the first onboard video chipset that is DirectX 9 compatible and offers advanced texture rendering and vertex shaders. The 6100 shared system memory, which I knew would suck, but if I could escape without buying an external graphics card I would be set. I made sure my motherboard choice had the option to add an external video card just in case. I chose the ASRock K8NF4G-SATA2 motherboard, made by longtime mobo maker ASUS. Cost: $62

Ram
Next step: RAM. The K8NF4G-SATA2 took 168-pin DDR RAM. Very run of the mill. Because the Sempron runs an 800MHz dual channel RAM bus, I purchased the least expensive pair of 400MHz RAM I could find. Buffalo, a Japanese chip manufacturer, came through with a 2-pack of 512MB sticks for a total of 1GB of onboard memory. Cost: $80

Motherboard, RAM, and processor in their retail packaging.

Case and power supply
I have to admit, I’d been wanting to try out the ASPIRE X-QPACK miniATX case ever since bought her badass 939-based system earlier this year. She went with a full sized ATX case and motherboard, but I could afford to go tiny. The X-QPACK comes in a variety of colors, features a 420W BTX power supply for today’s modern boards, and is 9″ x 10.2″ x 14″ — much smaller than my current server case, which is almost two feet high. I bought an all black one for myself, and Lady Jaye got a silver faceplate. Cost: $80

Here’s a product shot from newegg.com:

Total cost per system (thus far), including shipping: $311.24 Not fucking bad.

Okay, so we have all the necessary pieces! I had the parts delivered while I was away on business. I tracked the packages from their respective warehouses, and is typical for newegg, they arrived early. Two days early, in fact. I flew back on the red eye, picked up Rosie, and then went to work building the new systems.

It was Lady Jaye’s first time building a new box, so here she is setting up the majority of her system:

Processor and HSF already installed, Lady Jaye puts in the two memory sticks.

With the necessary stuff installed on the motherboard, it was time to install it into the X-QPACK case.

Three thumbscrews hold on the U-shaped case shell:

Let me tell you, working in that fucking case is a pain in the ass if you have big hands. I put the second system together myself, and Lady Jaye did a far better job at navigating the inside of this case than I did. Here’s how cramped it is:

Running cables in that monster is TOUGH.

Plugging in the front-mounted USB and audio cables

Okay, so we put her all together without incident, and she ran just fine. But how did she perform for a $311 box?

The real world (of Warcraft)
I’m not going to mince words here. The performance of the onboard video FUCKING SUCKED. I logged into the orc capital city, and my framerate was in the single digits. It was like a flip book, and I was only able to navigate around town because I’d played the game for so long I knew where everything was. I thought something was wrong, so I updated the video drivers and all of the motherboard drivers from the manufacturers. My old comp, Janus, was much better than this machine, and she was filled with four year old technology. I turned down all the visual goodies, and still nothing.

I ran the Futuremark 3DMark 2001 SE suite, which is a free program that allows you to measure how good your computer is at handling 3D graphics. I chose the 2001 SE over more recent revisions because the 2001 is the last one to feature DirectX 8 tests — and Janus’ old-timey vid card was DirectX 8 only.

Higher numbers are better. In Janus’ case, much much better. Janus scored an 8241, while the new box scored a 3068. I couldn’t believe it. I knew the 754 processor wasn’t exactly cutting edge technology, but surely it wouldn’t result in over a 50% loss of 3D performance??

There was only one thing to do. Order video cards.

External Video Cards
I’d long been pricing NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT cards. They were in the sweet spot as far as NVIDIA’s 6xxx product line goes. They have since released a 7xxx series, but those cards are all $350+. The 6600GT was available for about $130 apiece through newegg.com. You may notice that I have now gone over my budget. We’ll get to that in a second. I paid for the cards to arrive overnight and crossed my fingers that the limitation was with the onboard video, and I hadn’t just screwed myself with $900 in hardware.

I put the cards in — which was such a pain in the ass due to the cramped case that I forgot to take pictures — and ran 3DMark again.

I was relieved. 13,410. Much better, especially considering that Janus cost me about $2000 to build four years ago. My WoW framerate went from 9 frames per second to up to 35 - 60 in some places, with every option turned on.

But there was another nagging problem. The front bezel of the cases were black, and my optical drives were WHITE. Blech! Also, Lady Jaye and I wanted to be able to easily get photos off of our two cameras, which use compact flash and SD cards. Plus there’s the whole memory stick format thanks to our PSPs. I put in another order at newegg.com (before the vid cards, actually) for two memory stick readers ($14 each) and a black BenQ dual layer DVD burner $37.99 plus 10 dual layer blanks $29.99. These incremental acquisitions were killing my budget.

So, let’s recap:
Would you like to play a game of chess?

• Awesome case, it has an LED readout on the front for hard drive and CPU temperature, is smallish, and very quiet.
• Once we worked the kinks/weak points out, good performance for the budget — especially if you don’t do any 3D gaming.
• Solid upgrade to my aging dual processor machine and Lady Jaye’s ancient budget box.

How about tic-tac-toe?

• Onboard video is an embarrassment. Why even bother with DirectX 9 support if the rendering power is so weak it can’t even play modern 3D games?
• Final cost per unit was higher than I hoped: $455 for Lady Jaye’s machine and $523 for mine. However, it was still about half the price of a newer 939 system with almost identical specs.
• The case’s small size was also it’s drawback: cramped working conditions, even with the slide-out motherboard tray. I dropped a screw during the install and thought I was going to HULK SMASH the thing into a billion pieces.
• Flimsy U-shell on the cases — UPS jacked one of the shipping boxes pretty good and bent the top left corner of my case. I didn’t want to wait for a replacement, so I hammered the ding out (mostly) with a rubber mallet and called it a day.

New system upgrade, it’s hard to judge ye as a sum of your parts, but all in all I award thee:

Three and a half out of five STFU mugs!

If you want to ball on a budget, check this system out, although buying a new hard drive would bump this system up close to the 939 processor range. If you just need an upgrade to your emailer/Web/photo editing machine, then the onboard video version is a total steal for you at less than $350 shipped.

You know, Lady Jaye thought I was batshit insane when I spent $90 on a waffle maker. We bought it when her family was coming to visit us in Rockville. I wasn’t sure myself if I would use the waffle maker past their trip, but I was enthralled by the stainless steel pseudo industrial grade badassness that was the Waring Pro WMK300:

Yeah, this isn’t your punk college dorm clamshell style waffle maker. We’re talking stainless steel. We’re talking rotating cooking surfaces to ensure a uniform waffle. We’re talking traditional circular waffle goodness.

Using the WMK300 is super easy. You flip the single toggle on the unit to turn it on. The red power light will go on. Adjust the black dial to your desired crispiness — we have it almost all the way on at five out of six. After warming up, the unit will beep and the green ready light will turn on. Pour your batter in. I use one cup of Krusteaz’ add-water-only pancake batter. Make sure you pour the batter uniformly over the bottom grill surface. If you leave any of the black non-stick surface exposed you will have holes in your waffle. Close the lid, and rotate it. Wait until the WMK300 beeps again and then extract your hella yummy waffle.

Really, what much more is there to say? It’s as simple as it can get.

And all that concern about getting our money’s worth? I’ve made fifteen pounds of pancake mix worth of waffles. Here’s my analysis of the WMK300:

Don’t waffle on buying this unit:

• Handsome, well-constructed unit. This thing is durable and made to crank out tons of waffles.
• Rotating cooking surface makes sure your waffles are uniformly cooked and the batter spreads evenly to both grilling sides.
• Adjustable timer if you like your waffles more gooey, or more crispy like a waffle ice cream cone.
• Makes incredible waffles. They taste just like ones you’d get at a diner or breakfast joint.

Burnt offerings:

• Until you get the hang of the timer, expect to undercook and overcook some waffles. I found that adjusting the timer to the “5″ position isn’t long enough, but “5.5″ is too long. I let the unit beep and then count to fifteen before extracting the waffle. It probably took me three pounds of mix to figure that out.
• Long heat-up time. I guess it’s a small issue, but I was eating one waffle a day for awhile. Waiting for the irons to heat up can be tedious.
• It’s a big unit. Not only do you have to have the countertop footprint for it, but you have to account for the space necessary to open the unit. This wasn’t a problem in Rockville, but here in Richmond our house doesn’t have a whole lot of counterspace. Whereas I left the WMK300 out in Maryland, I now have to store it. It’s a drag, and I definitely use the unit less now that it’s out of sight.
• Expensive. If you don’t want to be Conan of waffle making, you might be more satisfied with a wimpier $20 clamshell style unit.

Waring Pro WMK300 Waffle Maker, I cook up:

Four out of five STFU mugs!

According to Verizon, they’re installing their fiber to the home on one of the major roads near my house. It’s very possible that I’ll be able to get them to run fiber from the main road to my house, but I don’t know how close I have to be to the main line in order to get a technician out. The online qualification tool isn’t very helpful, either; I also don’t trust the “We’ll notify you when FIOS is available,” as several of my friends with DSL reported that they were not notified once their neighborhoods went online.

I’d try calling, but the last time I did I spoke to a hillbilly and god knows I hate talking with hillbillies.

Keep your fingers crossed, it’d be nice to pay the cable company $50 less a month for broadband that craps out at the first touch of rain.

My father taught me some very important things during my childhood: hold doors open for ladies, say “please” and “thank you,” the rules of gun safety, and always have a pocket knife. Thanks to the incredibly stupid security laws enacted after 9-11 I can’t always take Dad’s advice, but for the rest of the time I’m in meatspace I carry a pocket knife with me.

I’ve gone through a lot of them, starting off with a knife very similar to this one when I was 10 years old:

Good luck giving a 10 year old kid a knife these days, they’d put them in the electric chair. But I digress.

I carried your traditional thick red Swiss Army knife for a very long time. I never used anything other than the tweezers and the big blade. Although sometimes during my ISP tech support days I would imagine taking out the leather punch and jacking stupid users in the neck with it. Or maybe the corkscrew.

While working at Eddie Bauer I found a rebranded Spyderco Ladybug in the return bin. We got all kinds of cool stuff that way — customers would return things from the catalog that we would never stock in our retail store. I picked it up for like $5 after my employee discount, and thus began my love affair with Spyderco.

At the time I got the knife, one-hand openers were pretty new on the market. Spyderco featured a large hole atop their specially shaped blades. You put your thumb in the hole at a 90 degree angle and make a reverse “C” motion. The blade opens in a snikt! and you’re ready to open a new package from ThinkGeek or fend off a gaggle of terrorists. The Ladybug featured the infamous Zytel plastic handle, which has little nubs in it so that you don’t fumble with the knife if your hands are cold or wet.

The Ladybug did its job well — mostly opening boxes in the stockroom — but you can’t be manly packing a knife called the Ladybug. Some of my friends with Cold Steel brand knives had clips on the sides and were hanging their knives inside their pockets. This was particularly attractive to me, as I hated digging around in my pockets for my blade.

I started looking for another Spyderco model to replace my Ladybug, and I discovered a bit about the company’s history.

Spyderco is a Japanese company who rose to notoriety in the law enforcement and rescue industries. Their most famous knife to date is their Police model, which is insanely huge. It’s over nine inches long open. Here’s an all stainless one next to some other knives, what appears to be a Glock 19 9mm pistol, and probably the ass-end of a shotgun or AR-15 stock. Credit to gunblast.com for the picture.

Spyderco is also well known for their EMT/medical knives, most notably their Rescue. Note that the Rescue doesn’t have a traditional knife point: this is so that EMTs and the like can cut seat belts and clothes without having to worry (too much) about jabbing their patients.

Anyway, Spyderco knives are backed by a lifetime warranty and are made with three different types of blades: plain, serrated (called the SpyderEdge) and a mix of the two. If you’re looking to buy a knife, I heartily recommend the plain edge. Sharpening the serrated blade is a bitch. They are often found in all stainless or plastic Zytel grips, although sometimes the grips employ interesting materials. My first Cricket featured a now discontinued grip that was sort of a rough, non-slip metal finish.

Speaking of my Cricket, it was the first Spyderco knife that I bought at full price. And at the time, what a full price it was. Making $6.25 an hour at Eddie Bauer meant that I had to cough up over a day’s pay for my Cricket. I am pretty sure I was down a renter in my house in college, and money was tight.

Like I said earlier, the original Cricket I had featured a discontinued grip, but this picture is fairly close:

I loved that knife. Mine was a plain edge. It was perfectly sized, and the clip seemed even more revolutionary to me than the one handed opening mechanism. It made the knife a lot more accessible than putting it in your pocket or having to wear a belt pouch. The leaf-shaped blade was attention getting, and everyone liked it. The Cricket transitioned with me to Timberland, where I eventually gave it away as a parting gift when I graduated from college. The Cricket was great, but I was interested in something a little bit more … aggressive.

The Native 2 was my first all stainless steel knife. It seemed cool to have an all shiny knife, and I kept with that thought process for two more Spydercos. Sure, it was hard as hell to keep ahold of it when your hands were wet, but an all steel knife puts out a pretty wicked glint in low light.

The Native 2 had a blade just a touch over 3″ long and was 7″ long when opened. It was almost twice as big as my Cricket, and was easily three times heavier.

The Native was a great knife and I still have it to this day. In fact, with the exception of my Ladybug and my original Cricket I still have all my knives.

As you can surmise, the Native was a borderline stabbity-stab type knife, and by then I had acquired my Virginia concealed carry permit. I was worried about carrying an illegal weapon more so than ever, and while Virginia would allow me to carry two handguns and fifty rounds of ammunition between them I couldn’t keep a knife with a blade longer than 3″ on my person. The Native 2 gave way to the smaller Dragonfly, which was my first Spyderco with a serrated edge.

I thought the serrated edge would be great for opening and cutting boxes. It sure was. It was also hard as fuck to sharpen, and I have to admit that I became frustrated with my attempts to sharpen the individual teeth. I carried the Dragonfly for about a year or so. The size was much better, and even though I disliked the serrated blade I found myself buying another one with my next knife — the Dragonfly was a little boring, coming from the big ass Native 2.

I bought the Harpy because I had my eyes on it and its smaller sibling, the Merlin, for quite some time. It was quite wicked with its curved hawkbill blade. The Harpy was also another “big knife,” about the size of the Native 2. The Dragonfly didn’t have the tactile satisfaction of the bigger Native, either in heft or in the audible “click” when the blade locked. It also didn’t have the smooth opening action of my Cricket. The problem with the Harpy I could never find it for less than $100. That is, until I found them on closeout at an online knife store, where I picked it up for around $55.

I carried the Harpy until about a year ago. It was thinner and lighter than the Native 2, although I’m so used to my 2nd Cricket so much now that the Harpy seems very heavy. The Harpy was indeed a wicked blade. It has gotten, by far, the most reactions out of bystanders. Some negative, some positive, all exclamations.

Fast forward to my most recent acquisition. I guess I wanted something lighter and less audacious than the Harpy. However, Spyderco’s newer knives didn’t really interest me. I went back to the Cricket, this time with the plastic Zytel handle.

And so we come around full circle. It’s still the same great knife I had almost nine years ago. Very lightweight, compact shape, and while it does raise eyebrows it’s because people think it’s unique, not because it’s scary. The action on the Cricket is the smoothest and easiest out of any Spyderco I’ve ever owned, and by this summary you know that’s a decent amount. Lady Jaye liked mine so much during our move that I bought her a stainless steel one that she carries with her. There are fewer things sexier than seeing a woman with a knife clip on her back pocket ;)

If you’re looking for a dependable, easy to operate and high quality pocket knife, you can’t go wrong with the Spyderco Cricket. In fact, I’m going to make it my first recommended product for the gift giving season. If you know someone who could use a pocket knife — and Pop says that’s everyone with a heartbeat — then check it out. I recommend Knifecenter.com, although to get the plain edge Cricket you may have to buy from somewhere else. I bought my Zytel plain edge from them, but they seem to be out of stock right now.

We were aiming high.

And thus the ends Mel Gibson’s narrative in Payback. Gibson plays the part of Porter, a small-time criminal turned avenger to claim $70,000 owed to him. He gets his money and rides off into the sunset with his former prostitute mistress, Rosie.

We’ve had our beagle-hound mix Porter for a year and probably a week, and he’s been a real joy for us. Especially now that he doesn’t do stupid things, but that’s for another post. But like in the movie, what’s an avenger without his mistress? In order to follow the storyline, a Porter needs a Rosie.

Enter this little monster, whom we interviewed at the end of last month. We chose to adopt her, and had to wait for her to age a bit and get spayed before we could bring her home yesterday.

You want to see pictures, you say? Very well, I guess I have just a few. Here are some of my favorites:

Hi, my name is Rosie, and I’ll be hiding under this chair for most of the day!

What? I’m supposed to play around, you say? okay!

Raaaawr! Attack mode!

Rosie and Porter are getting along so far, although their interactions have been interesting. Porter hasn’t been possessive about what I expected. Rosie can eat right out of Porter’s food dish with no problems, for example. But Porter wants to play PLAY PLAY!! and Rosie is pretty tuckered out from the whole adoption process and moving to a new home. When Rosie doesn’t want to play, Porter goes along anyway, and sometimes will play too aggressively. He bowled her over pretty hard last night and bit her hard on the scruff today. Rosie has taken to hiding from Porter, just so she can catch some winks.

Zonked!

So far Rosie has been an excellent puppy. She already knows to go outside to use the bathroom, something I was worried about because she was an outdoor-crated puppy with her littermates. But her foster mom did a lot of great things, including acclimating her to larger, adult dogs, so she hasn’t taken any shit from Porter. We’re a little reluctant to let them duke it out due to her stitches, but soon she’ll be ready to fight back. She already growls at him and bit his upper lip when he pestered her too much.

She’s a real sweetheart. I can pick her up and she puts her head right on my shoulder and goes to sleep. She snoozed for about 20 minutes today while I uploaded the pictures for this entry and built my new computer. She’s curled up like a little donut under my desk right now, dreaming little puppy dreams.

Warning! A rant will follow.

I fly from Virginia to California once a month as part of my job. It’s a long flight, and being that RIC is not that large of an airport I have to take a connecting flight each direction. In order to work a full day on Friday, I take the redeye back to Virginia — I leave California at 10:45PM and arrive in my connection on the east coast between 6AM and 7AM.

I count on getting sleep on the flight over. After all, it’s late at night, no matter what time zone you’re used to living in. The lights are off inside the plane, and they don’t show in-flight movies on the red eye.

However, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend my last two trips out to California. Since the red eye is cheap, a lot of dumbfucks with their infants are taking the late-night flights. If your child is over two years old, you have to buy it its own seat. At around $300 or $400 a pop, I can understand wanting to save a few bucks. But for fuck’s sake, keep a piece of duct tape handy and slap it over your kid’s mouth.

The last trip I had out to California featured a plague-ridden toddler who alternated between coughing, snarfling snot, and crying the entire five hour leg to my east-coast connection. I thought that was bad, and joked with my colleagues in California that it couldn’t possibly be worse.

Of course, this wouldn’t even be a goddamn journal entry if things went better. This time, instead of one sickly bastard, I was treated to three ankle biters engaged in what can only be described as a crying contest. All of the contestants were under the age of four, and they competed admirably for longest wail, highest shrill, and most pitiful muh-huh-muh-huh-muh-waahahhh. Two of the kids were adoptees from China, flying in with their bigheaded American adoptive parents, too busy patting themselves on the back to anyone who would listen to realize their nits were crying for five consecutive hours. The third contestant, a little blonde headed boy, sniveled and cried so much that when his father would walk him up and down the aisle to shut him up, a fellow passenger clapped.

I know kids are expensive. I know flying is expensive. If the difference between you flying your illegitimate loinspawn and staying at home comes down to the $80 savings on a late night airfare, then perhaps you shouldn’t be having or adopting children. Shut them up. Your kids aren’t going to amount to shit if they don’t have any discipline in their lives, and being allowed to cry for five hours so that no one else on board can sleep is not the golden path to structured living.

Gotta say this, this might be the last red eye I take back. Being unable to get more than an hour of sleep for two consecutive flights is a real pain in the ass, especially when all I want to do when I get home is play with Lady Jaye and Porter.