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The Social Security Administration just pointed out to me that I have a little over seven thousand dollars in a 401k retirement account. I had totally spaced that. It's just like me to do stuff like that.

I am very chagrined to say that while I fixed the busted taillight that I got a fix-it ticket for back in 2010, I never got it signed off. California wants $900 out of me for that. Then there's insurance, and ~$56.00 for an Oregon driver's license (or something like that) plus when i buy the van I'm going to immediately replace at least some of the parts that are likely to go bad.

A used cargo van from craigslist is about $3000 so I'll have some left.

It's just as well I didn't find out about it until now, I would have blown it all on hats.

Canadian Liquor Stores Want You to Be Able to Buy Weed with Your Six Pack

Liquor stores in British Columbia and Ontario want to start selling weed once it becomes legal in Canada.

The two unions representing BC's public and private liquor stores announced a partnership this week—the Responsible Marijuana Retail Alliance of BC—through which they're advocating to sell recreational pot at retail locations by next Christmas.

Their logic seems to be that liquor stores already sell a controlled substance that gets people fucked up, so adding weed to their mix just makes sense.

"Just as with alcohol, there are legitimate concerns about access to marijuana by youths. Our stores are an over-19, age-controlled environment and our industry has demonstrated the strongest compliance with identification checks," said Stephanie Smith, president of the BC Government and Service Employees' Union, which represents the province's 200 public liquor stores.

It would also be cost effective. Because liquor stores already have a warehousing and retail system in place "there is no need to reinvent the wheel," she said.

Last month, Warren "Smokey" Thomas, head of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents LCBO employees, said LCBO outlets would be ideal weed retailers because they already have "social responsibility" covered.

"They do age checks, they do refusals if somebody's intoxicated."

[...]

I'm sleeping too much. If I sleep too much I get depressed, if I get depressed I sleep too much. It can be a vicious spiral.

Today I got up at 3:30 in the afternoon. I wasn't up particularly late last night.

It's not just the sleep by I find myself uninterested in the things that usually interest me. I haven't been singing because the weather has been bad. I haven't been practicing guitar because I just don't have the gumption. Really there is no excuse.

If it continues I'll go to my p-doc and ask for some Happy Pills.

Ever wonder who the top trolls are around these parts? Yeah, me too. So I wrote up a quick script to find out. Now keep in mind our moderatorlog table only goes back so far; it gets the tail end trimmed off every so often by one of our slashd jobs. Without further ado, here are our top ten finalists, excluding Anonymous Coward and counting only Troll moderations:

1. Ethanol-fueled: 430
2. Runaway1956: 187
3. The Mighty Buzzard: 157
4. Hairyfeet: 129
5. jmorris: 114
6. frojack: 105
7. aristarchus: 98
8. zugedneb: 60
9. MichaelDavidCrawford: 59
10. VLM: 55

If you didn't make it this time, keep trying! If you want to have a gander at the whole list to see how close you got, here it is.

Union Gospel Mission served Sushi for lunch the other day. I Am Absolutely Serious. See, someone who distributes trays of sushi to grocery stores had too much of it, it would otherwise have exceeded its shelf life so they gave it to the homeless.

Two nights ago I stopped by Right 2 Dream Too, more commonly known as The Tent Camp, at 4th Avenue and Burnside in Oldtown Portland. They often have food set out for passersby to take with them. All they had was bread but what bread! What I took with me was a loaf of rye with caraway seed. There are vast quantities of bread made available to the homeless here even so much of it goes to waste.

One fellow saw me foraging for the bread and gave me two packaged sandwiches and a can of Dr. Pepper. One of the sandwiches was from Dave's Killer Bread. Dave was a felon who did fifteen years in prison until his brother took him into the family bakery business. Now 1/3 of Dave's Killer Bread's staff consists of people with criminal record; there are always fresh loaves on every table at the Portland Rescue Mission.

The problem here in Portland is not food but shelter many people sleep out in the cold, often in the driving rain. I myself have a tent and a warm sleeping bag, these because of the kindness of an old friend, also a propane campstove. Rod buys more propane when I run out.

When I had a short contract about a year ago - making good money but not for long - I bought a real wool sweater, wool thermal underwear and wool socks. I have a good coat that was given to me by my employer when I was an industrial control systems engineer.

A side effect of the startup boom, primarily mobile applications here in Portland, is that engineers are moving in from out of state, rents are skyrocketing and people are being forced out on the street. Making the problem worse is that Oregon has no-fault eviction - that is your landlord can evict you any time they please, for no reason at all. This is why I'm planning to buy a van to live in, were I to rent an apartment I would just be contributing to the problem while enriching a Portland landlord.

I have about 60-90 days left before my SSI starts. This is SSI just to start with, I expect to qualify for SSDI but there is a problem with my tax records from 2003 that I need to straighten out with the IRS. I have all the records I just haven't dealt with it yet. But with the SSI, possibly not when I first get it but if I can somehow save that money for a month or two I'll have the cash for a van.

A fellow I met on the train argued that I should buy a sailboat; he lives in one and it works well for him. A boat would cost more than a van but he argues that it is cheaper to live in. "Isn't the maintenance expensive?" "Not if you live in it, and stay on top of the maintenance," he told me.

When I get my SSDI I might buy two or three acres of unimproved land then build a house on it, also plant a vegetable garden and keep chickens. Maybe I'll keep goats as well I'm heavily into drinking milk. The SSDI is retroactive to the earlier of when one became disabled, to a maximum of twelve months. In rural oregon or washington one can buy two acres of land for $5,000.

I'm writing some code that I expect will make good money. When it does I'm not just going to blow it all on hats as I did when I was able to work regular coding jobs. I would put it into that house that I'm building, donate quite a lot to the portland rescue mission, R2D2, the Union Gospel Mission, the Salvation Army and the Blanchet House of Hospitality.

Just because something is a nonprofit that doesn't imply it's a charity - but all those are real charities.

It seems to me that the point in time at which I stopped enjoying using computers came right around the time that "UI" fell out of fashion to be replaced by "UX" - User Experience.

The problem seems to be that all the UX Designers fell the need to come up with something original and unique. The result is that all but a very few applications and websites, I regard as intolerable.

We all know about Firefox but fortunately we have Pale Moon. I have very few gripes about Pale Moon.

What really drives me round the bend are javascript scrollbars. It's not that they're implemented in javascript, it's that they never work right. Perhaps if someone gave away a readymade scrollbar implemented in JS that were used widely but no every single page on the internet has to roll its own scrollbar.

I found Linux Mint unusable until I figured out how to enable scrollbar arrowhead in BOTH Gnome 2 and Gnome 3. The response of The Self-Appointed Experts is that one should grab the thumb then drag it up and down but that does not work well when I'm editing source written by someone else, which source has very long files.

At least I do have my arrowheads back. Now if I could only convince my family and my high school friends to hang somewhere other than FaceBook.

I'd wipe my drive and use only Linux if I could find a text editor I like. And yeah I'm actually quite good at GNU Emacs and at one time I enjoyed it but came to prefer the GUI text editors on the Mac. Bluefish gets me most of the way there but it works poorly with projects that have lots of source files.

I'm working on an in-house app that is built out of multiple Free Software components. Some of them are quite large; I need to modify them. I'm not going to sell my project rather the results of its computations.

My Acer Aspire E 15 mostly works OK when it's plugged in but is reluctant to start up when it's not plugged in, also it has spontaneous shutdowns when it's not plugged in. A couple days ago I "refreshed" my PC, which Windows claimed would be a system reinstall that would delete my apps but save my settings. Well it wiped my settings too.

The problem was alleviated somewhat but did not go away.

If I run memtest86 or memtest86 I have no problems. This leads me to believe it's a problem with software, such as a corrupted system file or setting.

It's still under warranty if I can't diagnose it myself I'll call tech support. I just don't want to have to send it in if I don't absolutely have to because I'd want to run a full backup first, but I've torrented vast quantities of pr0n Open Source installation ISOs.

Norman King suggested I adjust my battery power options, that would rewrite the battery settings. That didn't help.

Lobbyists, in Strategy Session, Conclude That Refugee Crisis “Helps Us” Defeat Regulations

In an audio recording of a strategy session obtained by The Intercept, major trade association lobbyists discussed how the refugee crisis has changed the political dynamics in Washington to their advantage.

In the conference call held last week, lobbyists representing a number of high-polluting industries agreed that the battle between Congress and President Obama on refugee policy will give them the cover they need to attach a legislative rider to the omnibus budget bill that rolls back newly expanded clean water regulation.

“I think that probably helps us,” one participant said, referring to the coming confrontation over refugee policy.

[...] “We’re suddenly not the big issue,” said one call participant. “I mean, this is all going to turn on refugees.”

“I think that helps us,” said another call participant. “I think it helps us with the White House being on defense,” another legislative strategist on the call said.

The remarks were made during a political strategy call hosted last week by energy utility industry lobbyists. A recording was sent to The Intercept by someone on the call.

Coal CEO Thanks Lamar Smith, Asks Him to Expand Probe of Climate Scientists

Koch "Alliance" on Criminal Justice Reform Exposed as Trojan Horse

How the Gates Foundation Reflects the Good and the Bad of "Hacker Philanthropy"

If you read the news you often read about the incredible cruelty shown towards the homeless, for example about "police sweeps" in which - just a couple weeks ago - 150 people were tossed out of their tent camp in Vancouver, Washington, followed by a bulldozer "cleaning up" what were once their possessions.

But in my actual experience the kindness shown towards homeless people such as myself is far, far more common than is the cruelty. It's just that the cruelty gets more press.

I often hang out at all-night restaurants as I prefer to sleep during the day - during the day there are day centers for the homeless but at night one must either brave the cold, or find a restaurant that will permit one to hang out all night long in return for purchasing one single coffee.

The restaurant I'm at right now gives me my coffee absolutely free of charge. I tell them they don't have to do that, they I sing on the street for tips and so have the means to pay.

"You should accept help when it is offered to you," pointed out one of the waitresses. Just now she asked me if I wanted breakfast.

This isn't the first time, a while back the manager of a Carl's Jr. bought me breakfast, also the owner of a Burger King bought me lunch.

I finally applied for Social Security Disability Insurance, as a result of my Aphasia (not my mental illness). The clerk who took my application was confident it would be approved but there is some problem with my tax records that I expect I can straighten out.

When one's SSDI is approved one's first check is backdated to the lesser of one year before one's application or the date one became disabled. For me that would be quite a lot of money.

I am not dead certain but I contemplate donating all that money to the charities that look after people like me.

So, here's the recent happenings on twitter in as few words as possible:

Kotaku: Fuck gamers

Bethesda: Fuck Kotaku

Kotaku: Help us, gamers!

Gamers: LOL

SJW: BUT ETHICS!!!