Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

I finished The Butcher’s Boy by Thomas Perry today. The book is out of print and I had to order it used. He wrote a book called Metzger’s Dog, also out of print that I read several years ago.

Butcher’s Boy is about a professional hitman and a government crime analyst as they are involved in a series of events that occur. You get to see things from two angles. I recommend it.

BTW, Metzger’s Dog is a fantastic book about a group of grifters that stumble across some special CIA paperwork and how they go about blackmailing the CIA. Good stuff. Not your traditional crime thriller. Much humor and ‘hard-crime’ details.

On the gaming front, I am having tons of trouble getting Dark Age of Camelot to work. Damn connection problems. To top that off my old UO guild, BLD appears to have finally completely disinegrated, tempting me to return and set things right… Must resist UO… Must level up in DaoC…

This may be old hate to many, but for those that have never heard of Craig’s List, you should check it out. It’s quite a nice online community, even useful. It is location based so be sure to check the appropriate area. Los Angeles peeps go here.

I was outside puttering around the deck in the backyard. I noticed a few of the bolts holding the railing to the deck were rusty so I started to replace them. I reached up to steady myself on the knob on the edge of the railing. The weld broke and I gashed my hand on the metal.

What you see is my bandaged hand holding the agressive bits of metal.

It hurt, but what really hurt was prying the gash open to get the bits of paint and rust out with tweezers. Yeow-za!

East Coast folk, please note the green grass and leaves on trees. Muah-ha-ha-ha! How’s the snow? 🙂

I’m playing way too much Serious Sam II. Someone, please, please stop me…

WTF am I doing up at this hour?

Damn video games.

In the last week, I finished two books. I read All Tommorrow’s Parties and Fallen Angels while I was in New York and finished them up this week.

All Tommorrow’s Parties is by William Gibson, the seminal cyberpunk author. All Tommorrow’s Parties is the third book in a series GIbosn began with Virtual Light and Idoru. The series is not a tight trilogy, but the same characters do run through all novels. ATP was a fun read, but I’m not so sure of Gibson’s message. Is it “Wealthy bad guys fail in plans” or “Big changes coming that will surprise us”? In any case, current readers of the cyberpunk genre will enjoy the novel.

Fallen Angels appears to be written as a thank you science fiction fans. I like the work that Niven & Pournelle did in Mote in God’s Eye and The Gripping Hand, but this book falls a bit short.

It’s a more a story about wouldn’t it be great if sci-fi fans were important and more that just people who liked books. Toss in a plea for simple resuable spacecraft, a hatred of radical environmentalists, and imagined culture of space society and you have Fallen Angels. The book is not earth shaking in any way, but will kill a few hours.

Ok, I have to go play with the kids now….

I am in New York for business meetings. As a result, I have time in the hotel room with the TV on. Much more time than I usually spend with TV on these days. I was mainly watching MTV and VH1. As a result, I have come to several conclusions:

1) The show Behind the Music could be condensed from 1 hour to about 15 minutes. They use the same clips about 20 times in the show.
2) The Toxicity video airs once every 15 minutes on MTV.
3) Ted Nugent has a grenade launcher.
4) Car chases are bad and invariably involve lots of sparks.
5) On the MTV show “Kidnapped”, the kidnap victim always chooses to ‘screw his friends’ in the third section of the show.
6) You get two Girls Gone Wild DVDs for only $9.95.
7) Many women take off their clothes for Howard Stern.
8) Puff Daddy still loves Jennifer Lopez.
9) There is an entire show about ‘being Britney Spears’.

In other news, New York is still a busy chaotic place with good food. Last nights meal of antipasto, risotto and coconut sorbet was spectacular. On the other hand, the general anxiety level on the street was much higher than home. Everyone has a cell phone and the dogs have winter jackets here. I don’t remember my brother’s dog Abbie wearing a jacket out in the winter.

Link of the Day: The Pusateri Funeral Home

Some guy said that I made my haiku wrong. He said:

Haiku: Three-line poem.
Line two: seven syllables;
First and third have five.

My brother then told me that a haiku is not a haiku if it does not talk about nature. Supposedly they have another name for haikus that are not haikus.

Damn, I liked my haiku…

Woot! The Patriots won. The unfaithful Rams lost!

On my drive home from work, I started making haikus about the office. I need a break…

My Enterprise Portal PAR
Why won’t they sign it?
I must drink more Scotch tonight

I know I should update more, but alas, I am a slacker.

My wife gave me a bottle of compressed Orange Juice tablets. They are kinda like a lozenge that you suck on. Supposedly by eating one tablet, it is like drinking two big glasses of orange juice.

When I opened the bottle, I was shocked to see the amount of cotton packed inside.

That is an eighteen inch ruler shown.

What the hell is the idea of stuffing almost a yard of cotton into my bottle of orange juice tablets?

I had a cup of coffee and a slice of pecan pie for breakfast.

I am bouncing off the walls. Sugar and caffiene levels are maxxed. I fear a crash coming…

What you want more substanitive updates? STFU…