June 2, 2007

Ranger Tuff

So, the other half is home and doing well. So well, in fact, that she decided to go to the Toyota dealership yesterday because they had a used Tacoma come on the lot and she wanted to go look at it. Seeing as how her lease is up on the piece of junk Ranger that she has now, she wanted to go ahead and look at trucks despite the fact that she was released from the hospital THURSDAY afternoon. Yeah, major surgery on Tuesday, released Thursday ... and Friday she makes me drive her out to the dealership to look at trucks that she cannot test drive.

The Tacoma turned out to be a very unimpressive 1998 model. Not a bad truck, but we wanted to do better than that.

It was parked next to an '02 Ranger. A year newer than the beloved blue Ranger she'd had before this previous one ... and more importantly, before they made all the changes to the Ranger model that we hated.

So, we test drove that one. Loved it.

Yeah ... 3 hours later, I'm driving her home in my Civic ... and the salesman is following us home in her "new" Ranger. Now we gotta go clean out that other Ranger and take it back to the leasing/dealership Monday or Tuesday. And get the insurance temp card picked up ... and and and.

I can't believe she did this the day after being released from the hospital.

Of course, I drove home from Indy (about 3+ hours) after being released from the hospital after a bone marrow transplant. Apparently, we're a LOT alike!

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:45 PM | Comments (2) | Blog | Stumble

May 24, 2007

Introducing ....

... the debut of http://www.mud-walker.com/

Followers of the Wooden Iguana have noticed (all three of you) that ComicSpace has been down for the last week. Not knowing exactly when they'd be back, and after some thinking about where I want the comic book to go (especially after chatting with Augie, I decided that in addition to publishing at ComicSpace, I really wanted my own site for the comic as well.

So ... there's no new page up today. I spent too much time dinking around with getting the site set up. It's still not exactly as I would like it, but those folks who wanted to leave comments over at ComicSpace but who weren't registered users over there, now have their chance to comment.

The Tuesday/Thursday publication schedule should resume next week ... however, my other half is going in Tuesday for surgery, so I don't guarantee that I'll stick tightly to that schedule just yet.

Oh, and ComicSpace? They should be back up in another day or so. Happily, they chose to use the host I use, Dreamhost. As Josh says about the delay ... hey, you try moving some "17,000 user folders and 90,000 comic pages"!!!

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:59 AM | Comments (1) | Blog | Sketches | Stumble

May 21, 2007

Damn Meme

Damn Meme comes from Jodi, from Beyond the Cracked Window:

The Rules:

1. I will write 10 interesting things about myself.
2. Then tag 10 people.
3. If you’ve been tagged, you do your own list and tag 10 more people. (”No tag backs.”)

1. I hate memes. I think they are the hideousness that is the chain letter from back in the day. Nevertheless, some of them can be interesting. If I think it'll be interesting, sometimes I'll do them. But I'll bitch about it. Cuz I hate them.

2. I own 2 electric guitars, an acoustic and a banjo.

3. I owned about 5 harmonicas until the upstairs toliet incident. I will NEVER put any of those harmonicas in my mouth again. And I damn near cried as I threw them away.

4. I haven't cried since I was about 11.

5. I have nearly every single Fisher Price Little People toy made between about 1950something and 1980 when the line turned into the big fat things.

6. The FBI has my fingerprints.

7. I have never been arrested or gotten a ticket (not even a parking ticket ... and oh good lord, is writing this down asking for trouble!)

8. I do not work in the field in which I got my degrees ... and I'm loving it!

9. We have four cats and two cat-sized dogs.

10. I have written two novels ... and then never bothered to send them to agents or publishers.

The ten people I tag? Ummm, let's be different. I tag Bob, Sarah, Amber, Martha, Sherry, Zach, Rae, Vicki, Annette S. and Jennifer.
Ooops. None of those people have blogs (that I know of, anyway). Darn. I guess this chain letter, I mean meme, ends with them. Oops.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:39 AM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble

April 27, 2007

Say What?

So ... my dah-link buddy Jodi allowed herself to be "interviewed" by another blogger ... and then asked anyone who also wanted to be interviewed by her to leave her a comment. The questions Jodi chose to ask me are:

1. If you were to run for President: Who would you want as your VP? And what would your platform be?
2. One place you want to be right now!
3. Why a monkey?
4. Tell me the most important change in your life, that still holds truth for you...and you believe always will.
5. You have an wonderful personality(all good)...What is it about your philosophies that, YOU think, would make a difference if more people would adopt?

So ... let the answering being:

1) If you were to run for President: Who would you want as your VP? And what would your platform be?
You're so kidding me, right? When would the U.S. ever let some poor schmuck like me run? I mean, female and gay? But okay, let's play pretend. And since we're playing pretend, why stop at president? I mean, I wanna rule the world!
So ... my platform for being leader of the U.S. (screw a running mate, I'm just taking everything over myself ... I'm a freaking dictator):
First thing I will do ... tax the crap out of the CEOs whose "take home pay" (in all its various forms) are more than 100K per annum. Teachers, cops, fire fighters will no longer have an income tax on their income from those jobs (up to 100k per annum ... which will leave out those few high-paid so-called "star" professors and possibly a few folk here and there).
Next thing ... anyone who makes $70k or over is required to spend one month living with a family who lives below the poverty line ... and I'll be redefining poverty line as well.
Additionally, everyone will be required to work six months in retail and six months in food service. If you so choose, this may be an evening or weekend job whilst you work your "real" job ... but you must work 24 hours a week during this time. This should be accomplished by the time each person is 20 ... obviously in the beginning of the program, those under twenty will comply ... those over twenty have one year to make arrangements to comply with this compulsory program and either submit proof that they have already met both requirements or that they are in the process of arranging their lives in order to attain this necessary experience.
Most importantly, I'll be completely scrapping the current education system and completely re-building it. Gone will be the coddling. Yes, we should be cognizant of our students and our children's self-esteem ... however, they should know that they can and will fail. But we also need to teach them that failure is okay. It means they didn't get it *yet*. It doesn't mean they are stupid or bad ... or even necessarily mean that they're not trying. This, of course, will be a tremendous undertaking. One in which I will have to re-educate not only all of the teachers ... but parents as well. School needs to be less boring, more challenging. Schools MUST be smaller so that students don't feel lost. Students must be made to feel less like they have no control over their lives.
And, lastly ... I'm gonna sterilize the whole freaking population and build a set of exams that anyone MUST pass in order to have kids. If you're too busy to deal with your kids, you shouldn't have them. Gay adoption? fine. Pagans who have kids? fine. Assholes who don't have the time to spend with their kids to find out how angry and helpless they feel? No kids for you.

Okay ... enough of that question.

2) One place you want to be right now!
Austin, Texas.
Or Sante Fe, New Mexico ... or the Farmington area.

The green and rocky hills of Austin. I can't even begin to describe the feeling I get when I think of the Austin hill country. Austin will always and forever be home to me.

3) Why a monkey?
Main reason ... will be posted on the blogaversary ... May 14. Stay tuned.
Secondary reason: I love monkeys. I am something of a monkey. I climbed EVERYTHING as a child ... something my poor mother did not understand (or get over) at all. Part of the climbing was simple independence ... everything is more or less out of reach to someone a kid's height. And I wanted to do things myself. Partly to prove I could. Partly so I felt like I had some control over my life.
Besides ... monkeys are kewl.

4) Tell me the most important change in your life, that still holds truth for you...and you believe always will.
Hmmmm. This is tough. I never think I've changed ... or that some external change has been important in my life. I always see me as me-now ... and me-past, well, I can always see enough elements of me-now in me-past, that I don't spot change. If that makes any sense.
I may have to come back to this question another day as I think it's an excellent one, but despite a couple of days of pondering it, I still have no real answer for it. Just a sense that I need to ponder it further.

5) You have a wonderful personality (all good)...What is it about your philosophies that, YOU think, would make a difference if more people would adopt?
More people should be able to step back and view The Big Picture.
More people should be truly intellectually curious ... not to the point of rudeness, but wanting to know how the world (mechanical, psychological, et cetera) works.
More people should be cognizant of others' feelings. Again, that doesn't mean you don't tell someone, yes, your ass looks HUGE in those pants ... but that we more carefully weigh our words and actions against the damage it might do to those around us. In other words, the golden rule, or the wiccan "do as ye will, as long as it harms none."

All right ... that's all five.

Work is insanely busy right now ... and I'm afraid I'll be quietish for a while as I work on several huge projects with short deadlines. Probably the only posts will be sketches and previews for The Wooden Iguana.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:51 PM | Comments (4) | Blog | Stumble

April 7, 2007

SBC DSL

I hate them.

No, really, I do.

I got it over two years ago, maybe three. I got it hooked up without too much grief on the first machine. Then, we added a second laptop. Again, not too much grief getting that one hooked up using the same installation disk.

September 2005 ... we added an iBook, moved the ancient and decrepit G3 Lombard over to become the "server" and hook it up to the printer. It took me a couple of days to get it off the ethernet cord and onto the wireless, but I did eventually get it.

Yesterday I got a brand spanking new 17" MacBook Pro ... I'm still somewhat shocked that I got it ... but I'm also ecstatically happy about it too. Except ... trying to get it hooked up to SBC/Yahoo/AT&T has been the biggest freaking pain in the ass I have ever undergone.

Look, I get computers. I'm something of a computer geek. A Mac power-user. Probably just short of a tech. I've run plenty of help sessions. I can do some good work on the Mac.

I can NOT seem to get the damn wireless set up on this machine. I keep comparing the settings on this one to the settings on the old one ... i don't see anything any different. I look around for other settings ... can't find anything.

So for now, I'm back to wired. Ugh.

Any Mac users who've gotten the wireless set up with SBC, leave me a comment, eh? Before I have to resort to calling their help desk and listening to them bitch that if I had a peeeeeeeeeeeeeceeeeeeeeee, it would work just fine. (Trust me, after several Google searches, I know this isn't the case, either. Apparently regardless of the machine you have, SBC's installation disk is a piece of utter freaking crap which actually screws up the settings on Windoze machines even worse than on the Mac.)

I hate SBC. Always have. Idiots.

Technorati tags:
SBC+Yahoo+ATT
SBC
Yahoo
ATT
DSL
wireless
Mac
Macintosh
OS+X
Apple
damn+SBC

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:13 PM | Comments (4) | Blog | Stumble

April 1, 2007

NEWSFLASH

WARNING
Hackers have infiltrated every major server and pipeline on the internet. The 'net is coming DOWN. The sky is FALLING, people. You have just minutes left to backup every internet file you have or risk losing it all. Most financial institutions in utter panic as they frantically attempt to re-learn the use of the abacus to prepare for the loss of the internet.

This is not a drill ... burn all data to CD or DVD and they might just survive this internet outage. Flash drives/Jump drives will be vulnerable to invasion by remote virus at this desperate time. Hard drives will be deleted. This is the worst internet disaster since Galileo claimed the Earth moved around the Sun.

Keep in mind that all satellite TV will go down, most traffic lights (unless you live in a small city) ... and most of all ... you're going to lose your blog.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled surfing. Enjoy your last few moments of free surf, tomorrow you'll have to go outside and surf waves instead.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:09 AM | Comments (4) | Blog | Stumble