Scalpel....forceps...duct tape...

Last weekend my minion Lindsey learned the painful lesson that laptop computers do not like to drink mead. She quickly drained said laptop and let it dry and suprise of suprises, it worked long enough to pull most of her files off it before the screen went blank.

She came over to the house tonight, and having nothing to loose, she let me take it apart to see if I could possibly make things worse.

Thanks to the internets I discovered a step by step guide to disassembling a Toshiba A15. Of course, this guide did not take into account stickiness and its detrimental side effects. I cleaned all the surfaces I could. Just as in High School biology I pointed out the various guts, indicating their function and condition and how they were most likely being damaged by my large, paw-like hands. There was a bit of bother when we removed the keyboard and the cable connecting it to the computer simply popped off without the piece of plastic that should have come with it. But really, she's in art school. What use does she have for a keyboard anyway? We live in a point and click world. Words just get in the way.

When I was done I re-assembled the device with only one mystery screw left over and a slight gap in one of the corners where I am sure ants will be moving in over the next few weeks to enjoy the sweet goodness we couldn't reach. We could not test my efforts as the entire system needs to completely dry out again for a day or two. Lindsey has kindly released me from any liability if my actions somehow let the magic smoke escape from her computer. I personally blame evil laptop pixies, but that just me.

Have we won yet?

The 'War on Abstract Concepts (tm)' is making great strides. Thanks to better international cooperation Canada was able to quickly deliver wrong information about one of its citizens to the U.S. The U.S., in turn handed him over to our friends, the Syrians who tortured him for a year before informing us that "Uh, this guy doesn't know anything dude. I mean, we broke him and guess what, nothing".

And for those of you in the 'Well this is just an isolated case' crowd, its seems we did it with three other Canadians as well. Hell, Bush doesn't even deny the secret prisons any more. How far does this insanity have to go?

Have you had enough yet? Don't forget to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. I beg you.

Remember Wierd Al?

I do, and he's got mad rap skillz... or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

Super cool...The Shire housing development

Many people have stated how they hate me because I live at Bag End, which they seem to think is a very cool place. They are right to hate me, it is cool. But if you're willing to relocate a little West I have JUST the place for you. It's so cool even I want to go see it when its done. I give you The Shire!

Sometimes I don't want to think

Driving up to Michigan Ren this weekend I had my ipod on random play. Given my obscure tastes the music covered a fairly wide spectrum from Thomas Dolby to Mozart. But somewhere south of Detroit Moby's "God moved on the surface of the water" came up.

I had used this music for the video slideshow of our volunteer work in Biloxi and New Orleans last year. I realized that it was just over a year ago that Katrina hit and things went terribly wrong down there on so many levels. Due to work, I didn't see any of the tv retrospectives, but I also turned off the radio, and avoided the paper. In short, I subconsciously blocked the date out.

Why?

My brother has sent me several articles about New Orleans but I haven't read them. I haven't visited the websites for Common Ground and Hands on USA, the groups we worked with in quite a while.

Why not?

Didn't I care anymore?

But as I drove down the road I found myself crying almost uncontrollably. The same feelings I had when I sat watching the Gulf coast be destroyed were bubbling up. The same sense of powerlessness. The same anger, the same frustration I felt at being unable to figure out some way ANY way to fix it somehow. To make it better. It's those feelings that I had been trying to avoid, because they utterly destroy me every time.

I pulled myself together to handle the Mad Max rush that is Detroit traffic and by the time I got to the Michigan Renfair site I was feeling better. I still had the heavy feeling in my chest. If I hadn't heard that song I would have felt a lot better, but sometimes we need to remind ourselves of life's tragedies. They define us, they drive us. They slap us across the face and yell at us to wake up and pay attention to the bigger world around us, to do something. Even if it makes you feel like you got kicked in the chest.

In my happy place

Last weekend was a big one. The opening of Ohio Ren and of course, labor day weekend. With three days to sell we had to pick up some sales and I'm happy to say that we did very well. Both Ohio and Michigan beat last years sales. But not all was well in Corset Land, oh no.

On Sunday my brand new sexy credit card maching refused to work. It wasn't just my machine though, my neighbor at Angus Harvey Kilts was also down. A call was made to tech support and we were informed that due to a power surge the server controlling our machines "blew up". There was no ETA for its return. What followed was six hours of me stressing as I tried to make sure I could still take cards. This is the second weekend I've had this thing and it cocks up. This is not what I want.

It came back online late in the day and worked fine Monday, but this shit will not stand. I'm going to try and get some answers as to why there was no backup system in place.

By Monday end of day my blood pressure was back to normal and the great sales really helped. I had help from a new minion named Sam since Heather and Diane were unavailable. She did a great job and worked her ass off.

I did manage to help my friend Alex get some sales and production help. His hats have been selling like hotcakes and his stock was pretty well decimated by Sunday. He needs to stay home and focus on making new stock. It's gotta be tough working a 40+ hour work week and then going home to make stuff.

Internets

I just got an email from a friend who lives even further in the boonies than me. Apparently he just got DSL and is giddy with joy:

"It's like Santa got the Easter Bunny to bring Halloween candy to the kids in the boondocks too..."

Congratulations my friend. Drink deep from the well of the internets. And to insure you waste ALL your free time, point your browser over to youtube.com

Ahhhhhh...Can't you just feel the productivity leaving your body?