The Mothballing of the U.S.S. Clueless

I found out about blogs on September 11, 2001. I was watching the news on TV and quickly became disgusted with the major network news coverage. It seemed that the big 3 networks didn’t want to bring up Arab terrorism as a possibility and I didn’t have access to any of the cable news networks, as I have only basic cable service.

I went online to look for information but found out that most of the major news sites were inaccessible to due the demand. Fortunately, I stumbled on to some of the blogs which were covering events. I figure I must have hit at least 30 websites that day, but I can only recall two clearly: Instapundit and U.S.S. Clueless. I got addicted to reading weblogs from those two, and the U.S.S. Clueless has long been my favorite blog to read.

Recently, Steven den Beste, the Captain of the U.S.S. Clueless, has basically announced his decision to mothball the blog. This doesn’t surprise me, as he has been showing symptoms of blogger burnout for some time, but it is very saddening. Captain Steve provided what I think are some of the best written posts and essays I have ever seen. They were exhaustive in detail with almost Vulcan levels of logic.

I understand the Captain’s reasoning and wouldn’t dream of trying to talk him out of it. This post is just to say “thank you” for his effort and toil for all the years he kept up his blog. I am sure the blogosphere is the lesser without his presence – I definitelywill miss him.

Thank you, Captain. It has been a joy and priviledge to ride aboard the U.S.S. Clueless these past three years.

P.S. And I was just about to send him an e-mail on how to extract free energy from the Primal Mainstream using mayonnaise…. 😉

Tonight’s Chat Transcript

Well, the final airing of the Succubus Club may have been postponed until Wednesday, September 1, but a fair number of people showed up in the IRC chat room anyway. A vigorous discussion followed, covering a variety of topics.

The transcript may be found here.

A Weird Computer Screen Problem

I had an unusual computer-problem Thursday night. The left 40% of my desktop was unusable – all of my desktop icons were shifted to the right. If I tried moving an icon left past a certain margin, it disappeared as if sliding off the left side of the screen. If I maximized windows they only took the right 60% of my screen, but some unmaximized windows could be enlarged over the left side of the screen (this wasn’t true for Windows Explorer, though). The strange thing was that my desktop background was just fine.

Here is a redacted screen shot I took of my computer. Notice the partly cut off My Computer icon

I spent an at least an hour and a half fighting with this:

• If I logged in as a different user, my screen would be normal. Apparently, it was just my main account that had this problem.
• I tried deleting the ShellIconCache file – no dice. After deleting the file and rebooting, everything seemed normal until the load process was complete. Then, whoomp, everything got shifted to the right.
• I used Iconoid to attempt to save icon positions. Didn’t work.
• I installed TweakUI 2000 and repaired the icon file. Still no luck.
• I changed my screen resolution. Problem still remained.
• I rebooted into safe mode. The problem didn’t exist then, but returned when I rebooted normally.
• I finally called my GE Service Contract. Turns out that they “only do hardware”. The gentleman I spoke to was very polite, but had no idea what the problem was.

Just after I got off the phone to the Service Center, totally frustrated, I realized that the left 40% of the screen looked like it had an invisible window docked to it. Realization hit me: I had accidentally docked Trillian to the left side of the screen in Wednesday night’s chat. This blank area was exactly the same size. I realized that Trillian must not have closed down properly and every time it restarted it was creating a hidden window docked to the left side of the screen.

I restored Trillian – it was docked on the left side – exactly over the area where I had been having the problem. I undocked it and I could then move all of my icons back to their normal positions. I shut off docking in Trillian and my computer is now back to what passes for normal.

Sometimes, I just love computers. 😉

The Search For Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

Sometime over the last few days, my SetiAtHome screensaver just completed its 2500th work unit. Still no luck in finding E.T.

Wednesday’s Chat Transcript

I have posted the August 18, 2004 Succubus Club Chat Transcript.

Limited Posting

Posting will be extremely limited for me for a while…I am having unusual computer problems.

Update: My problem has been fixed. After fighting with the machine for over and hour and a half, I had a brainflash and fixed it in about 10 seconds.

I may or may not do a more complete post on it.

Update: More here.

Snippet Of Text From The Half-Blood Prince

Apparently, the door on J.K. Rowling’s site opened and there was a snippet of text behind it:

"He looked rather like an old lion. There were streaks of grey in his mane of tawny hair and his bushy eyebrows; he had keen yellowish eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and a certain rangy, loping grace even though he walked with a slight limp."

I don’t know what the quote means – it raises many questions and answers none. Some things that pop immediately to mind when reading it:

• Is this the Half-Blood Prince, or someone unrelated? Perhaps this is the new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher?
• The symbol of house Gryffindor is a lion. Could this be a description of Godric Gryffindor? The wire-rimmed spectacles would be very anachronistic in the Muggle world, but perhaps the Wizarding world came-up with them first.
• The wire-rimmed spectacles, tawny hair and bushy eyebrows are similar to Dumbledore’s appearance when younger (auburn hair, half-moon spectacles). Is this referring to Aberforth Dumbledore, practioner of inappropriate charms on goats? Or perhaps another relative of Dumblerdore’s?
• The yellowish eyes – maybe this person has some non-human ancestry?

Special thanks to Arya who posted a a link to a screenshot of the snippet on her Yahoo Group.

Just my two Knuts worth…

Referrer Logs

I’ve been looking through my referrer logs for the past few months to see what is bringing people to LaunchPad Zero.

Some of the referrer strings (edited for length and clarity), followed by my comments:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=word+document+images+extract
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=alternate+background+shading+in+excel
I have gotten a lot hits from people who want to know how to extract images from word or highlight every other row in Excel.

http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Edwards+slash+fic
According to Google, my site is #13 “John Edwards slash fic”, to which I say “ewwwww…”.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=swahili+chats
When I first checked this, LaunchPad Zero was the number 6 or 7 result for “swahili chats”. Now it isn’t even in the top 30. Google is so fickle.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22John+Vasconcellos%22+AND+Nudity
I don’t want to know…

http://web.ask.com/redir?q=pics+of+michelle+trachtenberg+nose
http://web.ask.com/redir?q=michelle+trachtenberg+big+nose
Michelle Trachtenberg does not have a big nose. Her nose is appropriately sized for her face and is quite beautiful! So there! 😉

http://web.ask.com/redir?q=what+song+did+the+dozers+in+fraggle+rock+sing
Gads! How would I know – I never watched Fraggle Rock.

http://web.ask.com/q=Feed+My+Bearded+Dragon+Goldfish
Turns out that LaunchPad Zero is the #4 answer for Ask Jeeves – “Feed My Bearded Dragon Goldfish”. My life is now complete.

http://web.ask.com/web?q=Do+I+have+to+pay+off+a+credit+card+if+my+mom+dies%3F&o=0&qsrc=0
I don’t know…is it your credit card?

http://web.ask.com/web?q=Power+Rangers+Lesbian+Fanfiction&o
Not any here…although I admit I used to be a Power Rangers fan.

http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=nc-17+j.k.rowling+fanfic
Please tell me you weren’t looking for fanfiction about J.K. Rowling, as opposed to characters in her books.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22lucky+charms+marshmallows%22+calories
Turns out that LaunchPad Zero is number 2 for ‘ “lucky charms marshmallows” calories’ – who knew? Who cares? Certainly not I.

http://www.google.com/search?q=is+being+a+temp+an+excuse+to+get+off+of+Jury+Duty&btnG=Search
I can tell you from personal experience – not in California it isn’t.

http://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=xander+giles+enema+fanfic
Not going there…

Thus ends this excurision into the depths of LaunchPad Zero’s referrer logs. Hope you enjoyed the trip.

This Means War!

Fic Title: This Means War!
Author: Jeconais
Links: This Means War on PhoenixSong.Net and on Fanfiction.Net
Content: R
Status: In Progress (8 chapters/105,000+ words so far)
Rating: G-Good

Jeconais’ This Means War is a humor-fic similar to The Naked Quidditch Match. Ginny Weasley gets tired of her brothers ruining her love life, so she implements a plan to snag Harry.

I really didn’t notice much about the characterization in this fic, as I was laughing too hard. Ginny’s revenge on Malfoy alone was incredibly funny and made this fic worth while.

Pairing is Harry/Ginny, but worth it.

Fanfiction Recommendation Summary Page

I have created a page summarizing the various fanfiction reviews/recommendations I have done. It is linked on the navbar as Fanfic Recs.