Light(er) posting

I'm moving. There will be even fewer shitty posts than normal around here for a while. I know you're all terribly upset.

I guess I'll be nice awful and make sure you all know about the Cards Against Humanity's Holiday Bullshit for this year (hurry, less than 200,000 left, they'll go quick).

To tide you over until I post again, here is a mesmerizing picture of the McKenzie river I took a couple months ago:

(click to embigginate)

That is all, we now return you to your regularly scheduled blogoscape. See you on the flipside, if I survive.

Hoppy New Year, Belated Edition

Now that this new year is almost a week old and my very relaxing, almost-entirely-away-from -the-internets vacation is over I've discovered I should probably have an even longer break. I'm short on vacation time, have 17 metric shit-tonnes of work to do my "real" job, and a whole bunch of new brewery equipment (Conical! 1+ barrel per batch! Glycol cooling! Digital control! Shiny shiny!) is taking up the rest of my free time. I think I'm gonna just have to let this little mostly-unread corner of the intarwebs languish a bit for a while.

I'll be around, likely occasionally dropping ill-conceived drunken comments at the usual haunts, and continuing to delete idiotic troll comments over at Sadly, No! There will probably be some hideous photoshopped monstrosity that yearns to be created that brings me back sooner than I should be. Otherwise, drop a comment on this post if you have some silliness that won't wait.

Later, taters.

Monday The Thirteenth

This day should be the day we all fear, not the traditionally scary Friday.

Here, have a scary spider:

May viewing this blahg be the worst thing that happens to you today.

Spring?

Know how I can tell it's spring? 'Cause all of a sudden it's fucking cold out and there's more snow in the foothills than there has been since December. And it might actually snow here tonight too.

Just in time for me to take a week off for spring break. If only I were actually going someplace warm instead of just planning on being lazy for a week.

But hey, at least I get the bonus of allergy season starting up too. Yay.

Sea Quest. Or?

Once again the fucking idiots in charge of this country have managed to manufacture a completely unnecessary and imaginary crisis and freak right the fuck out about it. And then let it actually happen. Our gloriously useless press is more than happy to cheer on the debacle. They go along because this imaginary self-created crisis perfectly reflects the unfortunately very real beltway consensus that if only there were some perfect, reasonable, moderate people or party in government everybody would get together and talk about reasonable, moderate solutions to this completely imaginary and unnecessary crisis. All while ignoring the few, y'know, actual reasonable people yelling at them. 'Cause "Eew, ick, who wants to talk to a liberal they're always right about everything and so uncivil and so smug. Let's see if we can see what John McCain thinks! He's mavericky!"

Fuck. There haven't been enough fucks in this post yet. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

You may be able to tell that I'm more than a little annoyed by this. Yeah, it's personal. My livelihood relies on money from the ebil gubmint. I actually end up saving we taxpayers a pretty decent amount of money because I do the work of the equivalent of about 10 six-figure-salaried federal workers back in DC. I know this is true because they call me to do projects they can't manage to finish. And I don't mind, really -- they're good folks, generally. They mean well, they just work in a completely dysfunctional bureaucracy that values the quantity of meetings you attend over the work you produce.

Nothing has been solidified yet, but there's a pretty decent chance my project (a long running project that actually benefits the general public) will get chopped because of this. We've already been running bare-bones ever since the cuts a few years ago, and we can't absorb another one. It's too bad, I've been producing some especially good work recently -- I finished my most recent project on time and on-budget yesterday in spite of them constantly interrupting me with work on unrelated projects. It's pretty darn cool and has been well received by the folks that have heard about it and seen previews. It may all just be flushed down the shitter along with thousands and thousands of similar projects done by similar unknown wage slaves all over this country just because we're ruled by a cult of Austerity-worshiping center-right fools.

Fuck.

I can get another job, and have options lined up. I'll be fine. Fucking pissed, but fine.

Oh well, might as well see what else I can get done before we get chopped...