Dipstick Democratic Congresslady from New York introduces legislation shockingly similar to the Assault Weapons Ban…doesn’t have the first clue what a barrel shroud is. Please, please, please — scold me some more.*

I don’t know what a barrel shroud is, either, and I’m a scary Texas gun nut. But I’m not trying to tell people that they should or should not have the GDMFSOBs.

* That heartfelt plea for compassion from the same man who excoriated a Q&O guy for interjecting a personal dislike of the broadcast suits who fired that Imus blowhard on the eve of his childrens’ charity drive. Ox, goring, kettles, pots, whatever…I’m sure Henley’s got his reasons. Might even be some of the same as Franks’.

InstantMan links to some National Review thing that says the portion of the internet tubes that are more progressive than me are not, repeat, NOT rolling out the usual expected gun control crap. I’ll take their word for it. Once again, though,the mediots are completely stepping on their toes as they do their perfectly predictable dance.

I just paid $50 to get the NHL Center Ice dealio so I could watch my beloved Stars. My beloved Stars who are down 2-1 to the Canucks.

Gotta tell you I don’t mind getting the CBC broadcast — frostbacks demand better announcers, and whoever these guys are, they’re good.

UPDATE: FREAKING NAILBITER!!! Turco needs some help from the offense. He’s making some superiour stops, and Vancouver seems to be playing a stronger attacking game. Lots of odd-man rushes, too.

DO OR DIE IN CANADA: Another 2-1 loss. I hate sports. I’m practically 50 years old…I need to stop caring what happens with guys two decades younger than me. It’s just stupid.

High capacity ammo clips became widely available for sale when Congress failed to renew a law that banned assault weapons.

Clips (magazines, actually, but why quibble with mediots?) of any capacity whatsoever were banned by the pussified panjandrums pushing political correctness at VA Tech. I don’t see Brian effing Ross of ABC effing News reporting that as if it’s something to take into consideration while pondering this horror.

I detest the media, in all forms and all fashions. You can expect more and more and more of this — this kind of incident is what led to the AWB in the first place. If you’re reading this decrepit intertube clogger, you’re likely to agree with me, so I’m preaching to the choir. So…

Choir, go and buy lots more guns and ammunition and magazines, carry them, and interdict these murderous fucks.

James Rummel:

I know that every advocate of armed self defense feels the same way I do at this moment. We have the greatest sympathy for the victims, their families, and the injured. We also wish we had been able to do something to stop the rampage before innocent people lost their lives.

Amen.

FWIW, Steve Graham points out that this happened at a school which, somewhat prominently, was declared, by fiat, a gun-free zone. Draw your own conclusions about gun bans and gun control. I pray it’s the correct, logical one. Over and out.

OVER AND OUT NOT: The more I read about this, the more angry I become. In practically every direction, save one. That’s the “gun nuts” fringe, of which I’m a member. The murderer had two whole handguns. One person with one gun could have stopped this whole thing.

Craig Henry:

KC’s work on the Duke lacrosse case should end the “opinionated guys in pajamas” argument once and for all. He went head to head with the New York Times on the story. A lone blogger ran circles around out national paper of record. I wonder how many members of the MSM will take the lesson to heart.

OTOH, i doubt that the real dinosaurs knew what to make of it the first time a pack of small furry critters wiped out their nests.

I love that last line.

I’m still somewhat in a bother over last week’s foiled “identity theft.”* So I’d kinda sorta decided to make the switch to a Macbook. But then I started looking at the things I’m expected to do on a regular basis, like demo my new day-job’s software, and I’m realizing that I’m kind of stuck. Everything is written for Windows, since the entire world runs on Windows (mostly.) This is deep systems-level software, too — not your basic Win32 application. Which means that I’d have to run (stupid name alert!) Boot Camp to do an important part of my job. And I’d have to pay for a Win XP Pro license in the bargain. And I’d probably have to go get that Parallels software, too, to handle the light-load WinXP stuff. All of which makes for what would be, roughly, a $3000 investment, minimum. More when I go to get the extra power supplies for travel, Mac gadgets to replace all my Windows gadgets, and an upgrade to my warbrobe to match my newly-attained super-cool status.

Frankly, I cannot convince myself that it’s worth it. And I’ve tried, because I’m a gearhead, and I want to play with it, but…c’mon. I’d really rather spend that money on one of these:

Mid-life crisis - catalyst or symptom?

* Stolen credit card number.

High-stakes for me, that is. I slipped into one of the very few 9-handed 5/10NL tables last night on Full Tilt, and within the first orbit, I turned my first nut flush in two weeks. Fortunately for me, it was well concealed, as much as these things can be, and my opponent had a pair of cowboys that he was defending to the death. Which happened quite shortly, this poker being electronic and all.

This is the hard part of poker for me: I never know if I’m actually playing well & making good reads with good bets on good hands, or if I’m just getting lucky. I swear to you, 99% of the time I’m playing as tight as bark on a tree. And when I catch a hand, I play the hell out of it. Textbook baby poker. But it seems to work, part of the time, at least for me. I mean, I’m sure I’m missing some bets and I’m most likely folding some winners, too. But this is where that philosophy of “Poker is just one lifelong session” comes into play. I seriously believe that’s the only to look at the game. It takes a while to get into your blood, but whatever you can do to hasten it, I recommend it.

It makes no sense at all, since this corner of the internet is pretty weedy, and not much cared for. I’m looking for reasons why that might be, but can’t find any. Still, it’s killing my database pretty regularly — like, 5 or 6 times a day. It’s getting to be an imposition on me, too. Seriously, I’d rather be weeding the front yard or (horrors) exercising (shudder) than fixing a database. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Probably just muddle on through. But if things go goofy here, that there’s your reason.

Why didn’t I think of this?

In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen’s “Turk” was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinet’s doors to reveal the intricate set of gears, cogs and springs that powered his invention. He convinced them that he had built a machine that made decisions using artificial intelligence. What they did not know was the secret behind the Mechanical Turk: a human chess master cleverly concealed inside.

Today, we build complex software applications based on the things computers do well, such as storing and retrieving large amounts of information or rapidly performing calculations. However, humans still significantly outperform the most powerful computers at completing such simple tasks as identifying objects in photographs—something children can do even before they learn to speak.

When we think of interfaces between human beings and computers, we usually assume that the human being is the one requesting that a task be completed, and the computer is completing the task and providing the results. What if this process were reversed and a computer program could ask a human being to perform a task and return the results? What if it could coordinate many human beings to perform a task?

Well, I did — a thousand years ago, when we were all still agog over 56K modems, and my lawyer buddies laughed at my plying of the internet tubes (which were really, really tiny & expensive back then.) For the record, I seriously doubt that I was the first one to think of it, and claim no special genius here. And I never would have thought of naming it “The Mechanical Turk”, which is purely perfect.

Let me, though, be the first one to point out that it won’t be long before there are really, really good Turks who can command higher rates than those offered by the buyers. Get in on this early, if you’re of a bent to that sort of task.

Via Guy Kawasaki…

8:12 WHEEEE! Twenty-four seconds to score. A good omen?

9:06 WHEEEE! Forty-five seconds into the second to score. Another good omen?

DIGRESSION: My office now looks like a leprachaun’s game room. Quite unnecessarily and certainly unplanned for. The completely fake paint chip from the HD is much darker than this. Oh, well…if I take to exclaiming “faith and begorrah” and go Catholic, that there’s the reason why. I sure do hate paint. But right now, I want a Guinness and to write wholly unreadable, nihilistic prose.

10:39 Shutout for Marty Turco — first of his career — great time to do it.

Evened up and heading to Texas. Color me happy. Happier, anyway.

DIGRESSION: I’m playing online poker while watching the game, high on latex paint fumes, and after of course, and I very slowly realize that I’ve got some guy, the same guy, at the two tables, once on my left and once on my right, named BGsomethingorother. I immediately suspect that I’m being profitably stalked by this one. I think I drink too much. And I don’t need anyone checking my durn trash can to confirm that, either, thank you very much. The sad thing is we’re just swapping chips, but he’s playing better than me and having two really nice runs. I hope it’s my little blogger buddy cleaning out the hayseeds. At least he might buy me a cool one some day.

CBS has tapped conservative MSNBC pundit and famed bow-tie aficionado Tucker Carlson to host its game show pilot “Who Do You Trust?”

One step closer to Howard Beale’s vision…

An important part of my enormous Wednesday night win is the bounty on Mookie. I get either $11, or a banner ad plus the Mookie Snack Pack:

MMMMMMMM - Quaker Oatmeal Express! Me, I’m all about the hits & the charity, so I’ll take a banner and I’d like Mr. Mook to donate that Horn of Plenty to his favorite local homeless nutcase. This is known as “paying it forward”, since I have every expectation of being a homeless nut-case at some point in my future.

I’m still ass-dragging after that staggeringly heartbreaking loss by the Dallas Stars last night. Was it really after two in the aye-emm when the Canucks snuck one past Turco? Jeez, but that’s late for an old guy. To remedy my discomfort, Razor wants to bring the Shooutout to the playoffs. Why might that be?

I’m a traditionalist to the core but consider this — three TV outlets and three radio rights holders were broadcasting almost revenue free from the end of regulation on last night because of the rule that time allotted for commercial breaks ends in regulation. Add to that the actual TV window that execs would like even the longest of games to fit in and you have a bit of a broadcast fat sow.

Piss on them. Seriously. I’m a free-booting lazy-fair capitalist with the best of them, but part of the deal with broadcasting a sport (i.e., selling adverts around the sports part) is that you BROADCAST THE DAMN SPORT. I’m disgusted with sports that change their rules so that teevee might have an easier time of it. I understand why they do it, but it still disgusts me. Here’s the way I see it, though — we had sports long before we had teevee, and we’ll have sports long after teevee is something you tell your grandkids about. The rules should be designed to make the sport as cut-throat competitive as possible…that’s why we watch sports (and it’s why we hate the NFL’s overtime.)

Or we can just say to hell with all sports, give everybody a Stanley Cup of their own, and call it a day after a season where everyone ends up with 82 ties. That way, everyone can get back to their X-Box, and Razor’s parent company can get back to broadcasting commercial-filled Bloviating Bullshitter talk-radio, rather than musty old hockey.

OK, you kids get off my rink…lawn.

That’s nice…I actually won a tournament. Shocking to me, and probably only I know how much freaking luck was involved. Unless you’ve played a tournament, then you probably have an inkling, too. I love that my little poker buddies put these things on, or I’d never play another tournament again. I mean, I like playing them, but my tight-weak play doesn’t translate real well. I really want to be a better tournament player, but I’m not so sure I got what it takes. I should play more, but online tournaments? They kind of suck.

FWIW, I’ve now got a five hour window to finish up this hockey game*, and get in some sleeping…damn morning meetings. Aaaaaaand here we go — Overtime #2.

Can I say that I’m not happy with the Versus guys? Outside of missing friends and family, I want my Ralph and Razor. Having Ken Hitchcock on is good, but thin. So to speak.

OK—3 overtimes. Jeez Louise.

4 overtimes. This is amazing.

GDMFSOB

* An admission — I went out and bought a 37″ flat-panel for this Stanley Cup run. I bought it at Sam’s, though. Don’t worry, honey, I’ll get you one, too.