Author: dale

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Oh, how wonderful our new regime is!

So now we have our freshly appointed Attorney General telling the entire world that the United States is a “nation of cowards”.  How wonderful! It’s always nice to hear top government officials disparaging the entire country.

According to Holder, since the average American — in his estimation — doesn’t hang out with a racially mixed crown on weekends, we’re all just a bunch of cowards for candidly discussing racial issues.  Excuse me?  The last time I was tempted candidly discuss a racial issue, I was reminded that it would probably result in my being labeled (by people like Holder and his soulmates, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Ernie Chambers) a racist, right-wing thug just trying to keep my brother down.

Could Saint Barack have possibly chosen a more unrealistic jackass for this job?  It’s bad enough that this guy apparently wants to completely disarm the entire civilian population.  Now he apparently thinks forced integration of our weekends would be a good idea as well.  What would he like to see?  Government mandated EEOC oversight of family picnics and golf outings?

How ironic that Holder seems to have borrowed his comment from the title of a book written by someone who seems to be from as far as possible from him in the political spectrum.  It’s interesting to see the Ministry of Truth in full swing.  Orwell seems to have been a couple of decades off the mark, but we’re getting there.

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We’re paying for what??

As I suspected, it turns out that the cute little octuplets born in the People’s Republic of Kalifornia will be largely supported by tax money.

A lot has already been said, and will continue to be said.  I won’t beat it to death.  I will say this: The federal government and the state should both sue the doctors who agreed to do the in vitro fertilization to recover the entire cost of the delivery, neonatal care and tax dollar support until those kids turn 21.

I call this the “Michael Jackson Syndrome”.  Some people desperately need to have someone around them to say, “Look, this is a really bad idea.  You’re obviously not thinking straight — you just can’t do this.  It’s wrong, and it will also make you look like a nut case”.  Jackson has never had this, which is why he’s in the state he is.  Apparently neither has this woman.  You’d think a bunch of doctors would have the common sense, not to mention the social and medical responsibility, to do it for her — but, hey, this is Kali we’re talking about.

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I win!

I moderate every comment posted to this blog. All one of them, so far. I don’t do that to censor viewpoints with which I don’t agree (though I could). I do it to keep the spammers and other jackasses from polluting the pond here. Every once in a while I get a dozen or so bogus comments posted by lame-ass criminals trying to spread viruses, Trojan programs or porno ads. I just delete their sorry crap and go on with my life.

The Internet as we know it is under constant siege. Unfortunately most of the attacks come from outside the US, places where the local governments are unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Even more disturbing, I suspect the majority of these attacks are perpetrated by US residents, using crappy computers in crappy, backwards or unfriendly countries to avoid prosecution in the US.

The answer to this problem as it stands today is not more laws. The laws we have are easily (and universally) circumvented or ignored. The only answer I can offer up is frontier justice. In the mean time, I just play Whack-A-Mole with the spammers, thieves and other low-life scum. So far I win.

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Bonefish Grill

We had dinner at Bonefish Grill in Regency last night for the first time. The food was quite good. I believe the calamari may have been the best I’ve ever had. We also had the Bang bang Shrimp appetizer (spicy and not bad).

The menu is varies, with plenty of seafood entrees (of course) in addition to steaks, salads, etc.  I had a Caesar salad with dinner, but next time I’ll try the house salad, which looked excellent. My fish was perfectly cooked, stuffed with crab and shrimp with vegetable and jasmine rice sides.  The sauce was a creamy lemon caper sauce that worked well with the fish.

Service was a little off, but not bad — they forgot the occasional drink, but overall it was a good experience. A word of warning: the desserts are more than enough for four people. They’re enormous.

We’ll probably be back.

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The way to perfect rice

I’m surprised by the number of people who don’t eat rice because they have no idea how to cook it properly.  And let me tell you, folks, if Uncle Ben’s or Minute Rice is your idea of what rice tastes like, you have no idea what you’re missing.

The way to perfect rice is simple and doesn’t require much effort.  You can have it cooking while you work on the rest of the meal.  The method I use is Continue reading “The way to perfect rice”

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Gran Torino

We saw Gran Torino and loved it.  I was prepared for a completely different kind of movie, but Eastwood shows some pretty good character development as the story develops.

We begin by seeing Eastwood’s character at his worst, and pretty much expect to see that played throughout the movie.  We have a few surprises, however, as he gradually warms to his Hmong neighbors — and they to him.  The way the ending works out is unexpected and quite well done.  I highly recommend seeing this movie, soon and maybe more than once.  I give this a solid four stars.

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Valkyrie

We saw Valkyrie a week or so ago at the Village Pointe theater.  As we had heard, the movie was pretty good — it would have been better were it not for Tom Cruise.  The guy wasn’t terribly convincing, and the character development was somewhat lacking.  Still, it’s worth seeing the movie.  I can’t get too much more enthusiastic about it, much as I would like to.

Cruise does a pretty good job of playing Tom Cruise.  Sadly, I think Risky Business was pretty much this guy’s peak performance.  OK, maybe that’s unkind.  While checking out his other performances for those I may have forgotten, I was reminded of Collateral.  It’s perhaps the one role in which he really surprised me.  The Mission:Impossible movies were OK — as usual with a franchise like that one, it was all down hill after the first — but still, it was Tom Cruise playing a Tom Cruise-y character.

Of course it may be that I am just having more and more trouble looking past the wacko Scientology thing.  I mean, seriously.  The movie with a different lead would have been worth three and a half or four stars.  With Cruise, two and a half.  Sorry, it’s the best I can manage.

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Doobie Brothers at Stir Cove

Lisa & I saw the Doobie Brothers at Stir Cove (Harrah’s in Council Bluffs) on August 31st.  They rocked the joint!  I was a little surprised that they didn’t do a couple of songs, like Minute By Minute or What A Fool Believes, but they did spend a good hour and a half or so doing most of their really good material.  I could easily have stayed and listened another hour.

I like the venue, though now they have one of the sillier ordinances I’ve heard of lately.  You can’t smoke in this open-air venue now…  they have another area, no more than three steps outside the gate, where you can smoke.  Of course the smoke still drifts everywhere else – like I said, it’s just silly.  Further proof that professional politicians as legislators are probably not the best idea we’ve ever had.  What rational person would dream up such nonsense?

Of the four concerts we have been to there (George Thorogood, Allman Brothers, Violent Femmes and Doobie Brothers) three were outstanding shows.

Thanks, Mom!  🙂

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Lovin’ my LG Dare

So a couple of weeks ago I traded my Motorola Razr for an LG Dare (VX9700).  Suh-weet.  It’s a touch screen phone with all the toys — micro SD card memory slot, 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus, video, flash (kind of), MP3 capability, full HTML web browser, accelerometer for detecting screen orientation, you name it.  Of course the coolest part is the whole touch screen thing; it’s nice having a huge LCD that for the most part does what you want it to do.  The fact that it’s supported by BitPim makes it even more usable.

It does have a few shortcomings, but they’re minor and geeky.  I can’t send a wallpaper as a pix message, for whatever stupid reason.  Handling of MP3 playlists — well, it’s buggy as a roach motel, and basically unusable with anything I’ve tried (Windows Media Player, Rhapsody, or just transferring files in USB mode).  The web browser is a little lacking, but usable for the occasional gotta-have access.  It’s got handwriting regocnition, but like the Palm you’ve got to learn the oddball way of entering text to use it — and no, of course it’s not the same method the Palm used.  Still, though, it’s really nice to be able to turn the sucker on its side and see the QWERTY keyboard pop up on the touch sensitive LCD!  I can even type with my thumbs, making text messaging super easy.

All in all, I’m happy with it.  I’m looking for hacks to be able to change the theme and do some of the other little things that you presently can’t do, for whatever reason.  Support on the web seems to be pretty good, and there are a lot of people hacking away at it — so I’m sure things will continue to get better.