Or on the other hand, maybe I'll just discover I'VE BEEN FUCKED HARD WITH NO LUBRICANT.

This has not been a good week.  >_<

So this suit walks into my office... (Jimbo)

The business I work for employs salesmen - lots of salesmen.  The kind of salesmen, all too often, with impeccable suits and... er... less-than-impeccable knowledge of, well, much of anything.  In this era of aggressive marketing, you're probably all too familiar with the type.  Point being, a sales trainee wandered into my office the other day, wanting to "borrow my computer" and use the company internet access to check his email.

First of all, if there's one employee of a company who's the least likely to be happy about the idea of some random tool wandering up and "borrowing" his computer, it's gonna be the fucking MIS director / network administrator.  Hello?

But it gets better - being the innately helpful soul I am, I swallowed my immediate urge toward resentment and bodily injury.   Instead, I logged myself off, and logged him on with a guest account.  With a practiced eye, I noted his blank, panicked expression at the sight of the desktop, and reached by him to tap the taskbar shortcut to Internet Explorer.  Unfortunately, his expression of bewilderment only deepened... and, with an awful feeling welling up from the pit of my stomach, I suddenly realized what was coming:

"But where's AOL?"

Believe it or not, there was still room for the situation to continue going downhill.  Upon my explanation that we had a T-1 connection directly to the internet, he exclaimed in a scornful tone of voice:

"You call yourself a computer guy, and you don't even have AOL?!"

Amazingly, I still managed to restrain my natural desire to demonstrate the effectiveness of aikido wristlocks by propelling this guy bodily from my office.  Patiently, though visibly growing more exasperated, I simply explained that no, I did not have AOL - leaving it technically unspoken but painfully obvious that I did not consider this a shortcoming in any way whatsoever.   This was a mistake on my part, as he immediately demonstrated by irritatedly asking me:

"Well then, if I go get an AOL CD, can I install it?"

At that point, I threw him the fuck out and went to lunch.  (Happily enough, he flunked right the fuck out of training a few days later.)

It's been awhile since I've posted to the main page, and I'm not entirely proud that this is what inspired me to do so:

There's a new ad banner making the rounds at Jimbo's World. "Pass any drug test... with the world's best urine additive!" Okay, sure, I'm down with that. Don't know if it works or not, but it's a noble cause. The name, however, is "Urine Luck". That sucks. Bad. They've got a lot of information and statistics but I didn't bother to read any of it, 'cause hell, you don't need proof! "Urine Luck"! Fuck...

A few of you have known for a while that I was effectively single.  As of tonight, it's official - my girlfriend of just-over-a-year and I are no longer a unit.  While it's certainly not pleasant, I must admit it's far less crushing a blow than it would have been if it weren't for that whole "I've had a couple of months of being "effectively" broken up in which to get used to it.

We're still friends, though, which is good - particularly given the fact that we work with one another.  I've had to deal with a really messy breakup with a co-worker before, and I do not want to ever have to go through with that again.

I guess this is the part where I insert something flippant.  Maybe some sort of "all your base" joke - god knows there are plenty that could be made about breakups, right?

Right.

On a completely unrelated note, www.dgnr8.com apparently decided to crash and burn immediately after I linked them - sigh.  Oh well, I discovered Halo64 today, and wanted to give him a link... so I guess I've got (had) a vacancy available. G'bye dgnr8, hello Halo64.

I've seen some seriously cool webpages this week.

Finally--we all might win a free taco.

For those of you less ol'skool than myself, "On-Line Systems" is what modern-day gaming giant Sierra On-Line used to call itself, until it got big enough that it attracted the attention of the real On-Line Systems - a business software company which has since faded into merciful obscurity... and "SOFTPORN ADVENTURE" was the original, all-text, painfully clumsy version of what would eventually become reincarnated as the much better-known (not to mention higher quality) Leisure Suit Larry.

note the strategically placed airbrush strokes on Roberta (far right) and the girl on the left. enjoy this little oddity, folks - you wouldn't believe how fucking hard it was to find!

Entertainingly, the girl on the far right is none other than Roberta Williams - wife to Ken Williams, co-owner of Sierra On-Line, and author of the King's Quest series as well as lots of other cutesy little adventures.

The other two girls are random office secretaries grabbed and dunked in a hot tub at the last moment - and given how obvious the crudely airbrushed out nip-shots must have been to Ken (or whoever took the picture), I can only assume that the decision to go "PG" with the cover art was a last-minute thing as well.

Ah, the halcyon days of gaming...

The Good
My good friend Dave sent me a link that really made my day a little while ago - it turns out that German auto giant BMW is the one to finally take the step I've been loudly proclaiming needed doing for more than 15 years now: they've made a (serious) program promoting hydrogen internal combustion for automotive power.

No electric crap, no bullshit hydrogen fuel cells - which generate electric current to power the same anemic damned electric motors - no, the new BMW 750hL is the real deal: a car with a genuine internal combustion engine... but one powered by hydrogen.

For those of you not up on your chemistry and mechanical engineering, here's the lowdown: electric motors just do not have the characteristics required for automotive applications.  Cars and trucks require a motor with a very broad torque range - for example, most modern cars produce a usable amount of power between approximately 1500 RPM and 5500 RPM.  Most electric motors, however, have an incredibly narrow torque range - they are only usable within a few hundred RPMs worth of range.  This is a problem in automotive applications because a car has to be able to respond with smooth power at a wide range of speeds - no matter whether you're cruising through a neighborhood at 15MPH or the interstate at 65MPH, you expect your car to go when you press on the pedal.

So we know we really need an internal combustion engine of some sort - it can be a Wankel rotary, or a turbine (Chrysler made a limited production run of diesel turbine sedan in the 60's - they only dropped the program because gas station attendants adamantly refused to put diesel fuel in passenger cars driven by housewives), or a standard piston-and-crank type motor... but dammit, it needs to use chemical fuel.  Nothing else provides the torque characteristics necessary.

But what do we burn?  Gasoline, obviously, is out.  Natural gas burns (relatively) cleanly, but it's expensive as hell and a limited resource.  You could burn alcohol - but even though it burns cleanly and can be manufactured, it's typically generated from vegetable sources... and frankly, I'd be kinda worried about the environmental impact of "growing" that much power.

Finally, we have hydrogen - you run an electric current through plain ol' tap water to get it, and release the free oxygen back into the atmosphere - and when you burn your fuel, it recombines with that same oxygen you released earlier to make steam.  Net environmental impact?  You generated some heat - unavoidable until somebody repeals the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  Other than that, no environmental impact whatsoever.  Perhaps just as importantly, since you make the fuel using electrical energy, you can use whatever you're currently using as your source of industrial power to make your fuel - and you can put a lot more efficient and effective environmental controls on an industrial power generation facility than you can on a car.

Now all we've got to do is lick the fusion reactor containment problem, and we'll have all of our power completely clean... and until then, dammit, will any Greenpeace freaks reading this quit bitching about fission power?  It's quite literally the least environmentally harmful power source available to current technology.  Bar none.

The Bad
Cops still suck ass.  What the fuck is it with provincial-ass small town cops wanting to hassle me?

I went to drop a check off at the water company's night deposit box tonight.  The drop box is on a quiet little street in the "business" section of what the suburb I live in laughingly calls "downtown".  There are plenty of streetlights, but far enough apart - and with enough trees in between them - to still have plenty of "dark" areas.

While I was leaning against the wall and writing out my check, I noticed a K-9 cruiser come gliding "stealthily" up behind me with all its lights - headlights and running lights included - turned out.   When he got about twenty yards away, I heard his radio crackle, and heard him mutter something to his "partner" in the back seat.  This is the conversation that followed:
      

You know, I realize that I'm a rather large young male in my late twenties, and that, once again, I was wearing a black leather bomber.  But for crying out loud, my hair is cut short in a strictly-business style, I'm not sporting any body jewelry, no combat boots, no torn clothes, no wallet chain... do I have to wear a fucking three-piece suit everywhere I go just to keep from getting hassled by some fucking cop with nothing better to do?

I hope part of Dubya's downsizing plan is getting some of Mr. William Jefferson Clinton's beloved cops back off the fucking streets - this shit is ridiculous.

I hate that flea-bitten little motherfucker, and I would frankly prefer AOL banners.  And we all know how I feel about AOL...

But at least AOL banners don't suck down ALL OF MY FUCKING MACHINE'S RESOURCES JUST TO DISPLAY THE GOD DAMNED MONKEY, BECAUSE THE PROGRAMMERS WHO WROTE THE SCRIPT WERE WORTHLESS NO-TALENT MOTHERFUCKERS WHO DIDN'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS ABOUT EITHER DOING THEIR JOB WELL OR ABOUT THE WELL-BEING OF THEIR CLIENT'S POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS.

To my gracious hosts: I am well aware the terms of my "revised" contract no longer allow me any discretion whatsoever in what banners you choose to put in my rotation.  But hear this: if you don't exercise a LITTLE bit better judgment than to allow your advertisers to abuse readers' machines with unthrottled Javascript animations, I will eventually get pissed off enough to start PAYING for hosting elsewhere again.

Thank you, that is all.

when I grow up I want to be Li Mu Bai

For the love of God, if you haven't seen this movie yet, go see it now.

This is the most incredible movie I've seen since American Beauty... it's sort of a kung fu love story, but... well, it's a lot more than that.  Words really can't describe it.  For one thing, it gives you a feel of Mandarin culture that is overwhelming - and does so without the grainy film and poor cinematography in general of the typical Asian flick.

Not only is this a better-looking - and better acted, and better choreographed, and better everything else - movie than any I've ever seen come out of Asia before, the technical quality of this movie beats the bejesus out of 99.9% of anything America's ever produced.  Simply put, you just aren't going to find your immersion in this movie damaged by any cinematographic flaws... period.

Of course, there's a lot more to a movie than cinematography... and so it is with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  In some ways, the theme and plot are incredibly hackneyed - you have all the old ideals of the cheaply made flicks we grew up seeing on Kung Fu Theatre on Sunday afternoons.   But Crouching Tiger makes something incredible of itself by treating all of those old kung fu superhero plot devices, and themes, and ideals in a serious fashion... investing subtlety, elegance, and pure art into a genre that has, in the past, always been treated with ham-fisted crudity.

However, as a Taoist would say, the description of Crouching Tiger that can be put into words is not a true description.

Go.  Seriously.  Now.

Rather than write a normal annotation, I decided to post an extended conversation with Laural.  It details the philosophy behind TCB, the symbolism behind the names of the animals, and some details in the plot that you may have missed.

<yellowjournalism>Also, Laural gets naked!</yellowjournalism>