Useless Information, Vol. 4

Shit, it’s been too long since I posted some useless shit.  With no shitting aside, here’s the history of shit.

Scholars trace the word “shit” back to Old Norse origin (skīta, to defecate), and it is virtually certain that “shit” was used in some form by preliterate Germanic tribes at the time of the Roman Empire. “Shit” was originally adopted into Old English as the nouns scite (dung, attested only in place names) and scitte (diarrhoea), and the verb scītan (to defecate, attested only in bescītan, to cover with excrement); eventually it morphed into Middle English schītte (excrement), schyt (diarrhoea) and shiten (to defecate). The word may be further traced to Proto-Germanic *skit-, and ultimately to Proto-Indo-European *skheid-. Ancient Greek language had ’skor’ (root ’skat-’ from which modern Greek ’skatá’). The words ’skítur’ (noun) and ’skíta’ (verb), still exist in the Icelandic language today, and in other Scandinavian languages variations of ’skit’ are also often used.

Even shit has quite some history behind it.

I have to admit, when my wife asked me where “shit” came from, I sorely misunderstood the question.  Once she clarified the shit question, I thought to myself, “shit, I have no idea!”, so I got my shit together and found this piece of shit on Wikipedia.  Other shit found on there covered the usage of shit, which I found to be some pretty entertaining shit.

With no further ado, here are some of the shitty highlights regarding usage:

Shit as a vague noun:

• This show is funny shit
• This test is hard shit
• That was stupid shit
• Shoot the shit

Surprise

• To shit oneself
• To shit bricks
• Flip some shit

Trouble

• In a lot of shit
• Deep shit
• Shit hits the fan
• Tough shit
• The shit is rollin’ down the hill

Displeasure

• Look like shit
• Tastes like shit
• Little shit

Dominance

• Eat shit
• Eat shit and die

Positive attitude

• You are the shit

Sarcasm

• No shit!
• No shit Sherlock!
• Full of shit

Emphasis

• I was so shit-scared of that shithead that I shit-talked him into dropping out of the karate match!

Drug/alcohol use

• I am so shit-faced!
• Shitshow

Verb usage

• Shit
• Shat
• Shitty

Well, I think all this shit just put my site in some shit, and now some shitty companies like AT&T who block websites with swear words just put a block on my site.  Well, ain’t that some shit?

Shit counter: 53 including “shit counter”…. shit! now it’s 54.

Trojans and Viruses

i·ro·ny1 [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]  a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.

I got a pretty bad virus on my work computer yesterday.  In fact, I’m pretty good at handling this stuff, but this one ended being beyond me, and quite possibly my IT guy as well.  He’s been trying to fix it since 8:00 AM this morning.  It is now 1:00 PM. 

This virus hit, and very quickly found that my entire computer was hijacked: My control panel disabled, All Programs folder gone, disabled task manager, desktop taken over by Active Desktop that covered my whole screen as a link to a malicious site, and endless fake security warnings that were trying to “scan” my computer – which, after searching Google, I found that it is scanning for passwords and financial information to pass over to Mr. Hacker.

Awesome!

So, I disabled all internet connection immediately, rebooted in SAFE mode, and ran a full system scan with Spybot Search & Destroy.  Spybot found 15 trojans.  The viruses caused by these trojans were too powerful and deep in the system for Spybot to kill them. 

This leaves me now waiting on tech support, who is starting to get grimmer about the results.  We may need to completely re-image the laptop.  Even more AWESOME!

Now you are probably wondering why I wrote the definition of irony at the top of this post.  You are probably thinking to yourself “this has nothing to do with irony!”.  Well, yes it does.

This whole situation has got me thinking about real world versus computer world scenarios:

• In computer world, trojans cause viruses. 
• In the real world, trojans prevent viruses.

That gets me thinking… someone is really misusing the term “trojan” here, and by definition, I don’t think it’s the computer world…

2 left feet? What about 6 right feet?

If you pay any attention to the news, you have most likely heard about the 6 right feet that have floated ashore in the past 4-5 months. One turned out to be a “hoax” being a dog foot, but the other 5 have been verified to be human feet.

No one knows exactly where these feet are coming from, and the media says “we don’t think these occurances are connected”.  I call B.S. on that.  Too coincidental.

Anyway, I’d like to see this issue resolved.  Ironically, no one has stepped forward.

Silly Governer, bars are for adults

Our Governor of Washington state, the thief known as Chris Gregoire, attempted to go into a bar the other day.

Gregoire, as Governor, should know the law.  Why then, did she attempt to go in a bar without ID?

I say ‘YAHOO’ for the bouncer for denying her!

All of Gregoire’s cohorts were trying to get the bouncer to budge, but he wouldn’t do it.  Whether or not he had any political reason behind it, he was smart and held true to the requirements of which previous violations in Seattle led to Operation Sobering Thought.

The fact is with our government being as slimy as they are, this bouncer, regardless of ridicule by the Governor Groupies and his own boss, followed the law.  If someone can’t be identified, they can’t be let in!

So, Gregoire was sent home, and her husband still went into the bar.

I’m willing to bet Mr. Gregoire, after ditching his wife, bought the bouncer a shot and said “Thanks, dude.”

The infinite wisdom of tech support…

I got this email a couple minutes ago (12:45 PM to be exact) from my company’s tech support team:

We are currently experiencing server issues resulting in our Exchange servers being down.  This means email will not work until further notice.  We will notify you when this is resolved.

The time stamp on this email was 9:23 AM.  Maybe you didn’t pay attention to the parenthetical statement above, so I will reiterate: I received the email at 12:45 PM.

Someone please explain to me why some jackass, that is supposed to be intelligent, sends an email to let people know the email system is down?

Maybe if our ticketing system went down, they’d get the hint faster:

“Hey, the ticket system is down!”  “File a ticket!”

Wait, what?

It’s kind of like that time when the power went out and a certain family member said “Hey, let’s just put in a movie to pass the time!”

Beerfest

i·ro·ny [ahy-ruh-nee] – noun, def. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.

This weekend I went to Beerfest at St. Edwards park. The irony of this is that St. Edwards park used to be a monastery and even more importantly, it was Milam’s Alcohol and Drug Recovery center.

Now it hosts Beerfest. Two thoughts immediately come to mind:

• Between alcohol and recovery, we see who won this battle…
• Beerfest was a guaranteed success knowing that they had an immediate client base already on site!

Proof that men have better friends

I thought this was funny. Thanks Jrod!

Friendship among women . . .

A woman didn’t come home one night. The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend’s house. The husband called his wife’s 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it.

Friendship among men . . .

A man didn’t come home one night. The next morning he told his wife that he slept over at a friend’s house. The woman called her husband’s 10 best friends. Eight confirmed that he had slept over, and the other two said he was still there.

Nueve de Mayo?

OK, so it’s May 9th now, but I’m going to talk about Cinco de Mayo. 

Cinco de Mayo, even though technically it’s not an independence holiday, it really is.  The history is here.

So, independence holiday… pretty much any independent country has a holiday representing such an awesome anniversary.  Meaning, they get the day off and party like rockstars. 

So why is it that on Cinco de Mayo we all herd ourselves into overcrowded Mexican restaurants, forcing the servers, cooks, and bussers to work their hardest they do all year long?  Have you ever been to a Mexican restaurant on Cinco de Mayo where you haven’t seen this?

Take the 4th of July for example.  America’s Independence Day.  We shut down.  It’s like Christmas.  Everyone’s partying, but all major functions are closed for the day.  Yet, Cinco de Mayo – not  the case.

This just goes to show how lazy we Americans are compared to our friends down south. 

Not like it would ever fly, but I think that we need to give these guys a break.  Do like I do – go to a Chinese restaurant on Cinco de Mayo next year.  Let Mexicans have their day dammit!

- Brought to you by your Seattlite White Guy.

Did you hear?

Gas stations are going to start showing porn at the gas pump so you that you can watch someone else getting screwed at the same time you are!

(thanks G for the awesome quote)

Global Warming

Ya, we’ve all heard it.  “The world is warming”, “We are causing irreversible damage”, and “I can’t spell potato”.

It really is too bad that the media won’t admit their own fault or provide alternate views, or in this case, fact checking which suggests they (and our good friend Al Gore the Moron) are causing pointless scandals just to get attention.  Global warming is one of those.

Read this:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/04/do0405.xml

I must leave my caveat that I do believe we should take care of this world, but not because some idiots say we are well on our way to destroying Earth, rather we should take care of this world because it is our home.  We like fresh air.  We shouldn’t piss off God.  Wouldn’t you get pissed off if people overpopulated your property and trashed it?  Yes, you would, so let us try and leave a little less of a footprint.