Dell’s fiscal year ends Feb 2nd. If you want the best deal on servers negotiate with a Dell sales person at the end of a quarter. This one ends in a few days so you’d better hurry if you’re going to place an order. If you want slightly cheaper prices and same day shipping (Dell takes 2 weeks to ship) then email me – I’m trying out a guy who resells “previously ordered new” 2950’s in Florida.
Blog
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Oh Wesley!
Even if Wesley Snipes is right about not having to pay his taxes, he’s missing the point. If you’re enjoying the fruits of government infrastructure then you’re morally obligated to pay your taxes. My guess is he’s really not that naive. He’s just fell in with the wrong crowd and dug himself a hole so deep that he has no choice but to go to court.
Of course if he wins and we’re all not obligated to pay income tax… now that would make for interesting times what with a recession looming and all that.
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Fly tying
I started tying flies yesterday just for fun. here are my first few. The small dry fly is an Adams with a body who’s dubbing could have been a lot more even and with wings that are too narrow (I used 16 hackle on a 12 hook). The furry black one is a woolly bugger and the big fluffy dayglo one is my own invention called a Ziggy Special (named after my cat).
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Memo to Bear Hunters
I turned on VS today to check if there was anything on fly fishing showing. I watched a father and son harvest a bear. They were dressed in hunting camo gear. Dad had the tripod and video camera set up and son had a high powered rifle with high powered scope.
A big black bear came sauntering out of the forest to take a drink at the waters edge about 200 ft away. After much giggling anticipation son took the shot and the bear took the hit, ran off and died a short way away.
I have a few questions about the whole affair and maybe a few bear hunters can help me out:
Is this sporting? Taking a shot at 200 ft from a high powered scoped rifle doesn’t seem like much of a challenge. The world record sniper shot is almost 4000 ft (and it killed an armed human enemy combatant). There’s no stalking involved in bear hunting – especially when you consider there’s son and dad standing in the open 200 ft away with the bear ignoring them complete with VS channel film crew standing next to them with broadcast quality film gear.
Is it a right of passage? I’m not sure what son learned from the whole experience. To take the easy shots? That bears don’t really give a shit about you until you shoot them?
Is it an impressive feat that will give son the street cred to start life? When your guests come over and sit in your family room next to your bear rug to watch your home video of an easy shot and the death of a beautiful piece of American landscape that was trying to get a drink of water, I doubt they’re going to be impressed.
Does bear meat taste particularly good? No, it tastes like greasy beef and it tastes like crap if the bear has been eating dead fish. And I doubt you’ll be eating 300 to 500 pounds of greasy bear meat.
And why call it “harvesting” when it has nothing to do with subsistence and all you’re really doing is getting kitted out in the latest Cabela’s catalog gear and playing cowboy in the forest with your video camera.
So really this looks to me like a fashion statement. Look tough with gun, shoot big bear on TV, pose with big bear for closing shot. Skin and decapitate bear for bear rug and trophy to show girls how manly you are and leave carcass to rot.
I guess I’m a little confused about why this is on the ‘sports’ channel.
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The Denver Fly Fishing Expo
I spent the day in Denver at the AFFTA fly fishing trade expo. It was awesome. I spent most of my time stalking Lefty Kreh (fly casting god in case you don’t know). He’s about to turn 85 and the guy still casts like a champ. He gave a talk on general fly fishing tips including how to stop snapping your 7x leader on big fish and how to cast with a knot in your fly line. He also did a casting demo where at one point just to prove how effective it is to use your whole body, he split a rod in half and used the top 4 ft to cast a line 70 ft.
I bought myself a little birthday present – a set of Cloudveil waders and Simms wading boots – so I’m all set for winter steelhead.
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3.5 hours chatting to customer service and the iPhone works
We totaled it all up and 3.5 hours spent on the phone to both t-mobile and AT&T and the iPhone works. Strangely enough she actually seems to think it’s worth it. Whatever. I’m sticking with my Blackberry for now. Who needs an interface that’s good enough to lick and those sweet animation effects and that beautiful touch screen and super-bright display anyway.
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An iPhone? Thanks but I'd rather get punched in the face.
I gave a loved one an Apple iPhone as a gift this afternoon. The happiness lasted until she started trying to transfer her cellphone number from T-Mobile (who we love) to AT&T (the only network with iPhones).
After spending 40 minutes on the phone with an AT&T customer service rep she had to call T-Mobile and when she called AT&T back they had lost all her data – which meant another 40 minutes. It also meant they had to do another credit check which dings her credit a second time.
She asked the AT&T rep if she could speak to a manager, got a deep sigh and the rep hung up on her. Of course she didn’t get a name.
…she’s sitting across the way from me right now singing “…every rose has it’s thorn” And amazingly she’s about to try a third time to activate her phone.
She’s not alone. Googling for AT&T iPhone Nightmare yields thousands of miserable customer stories.
People are quick to blame AT&T but in my humble opinion Apple are complete bastards for partnering with the crappiest network in the USA – and for turning my gift into a curse.
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Live Caucus Map – courtesy Google
Google has a Live Caucus Map in case you’re watching the Iowa caucuses this evening.
