Again, just something to track:

Bissell 9200 T floor cleaner part list. The little latch plastic bit broke, and now it's $20 to replace the entire assembly. Not too bad really, assuming the stupid thing can't be plastic-glued back together.

http://www.bissell.com/parts/?id=9143&sc=product&productid=2786&fp=1

I was watching the Up w/ Chris Hayes from last Saturday, finally. They were talking about the scariness of the social media avalanche of outrage that hit over the Komen Foundation and the Blunt Amendment and such. Chris made the statement that this might be overstating the realities of political 'will' based on the novelty/newness of this new type of activism and information being sent around. But I have to disagree with him, actually. It has been well-documented for decades that people are incredibly short-sighted, that we have such short attention spans regarding actual political changes and such. And one of the things cited, the ERA, took such a MASSIVE awareness campaign to alert people. And yet, now, we still don't have the ERA.

I think social media provides a more immediate solution to a lot of the enduring problems with the political infrastructure with this country. Shows such as Chris' and Rachel's and Ed's and Lawrence's also contribute to the 'reality' awareness in the field. It all helps to pull back the covers on various bills in Congress, exposing the truths about their titles that are actually exactly the opposite when you get into the nuts and bolts of the legislation.

At least now, with social media intervention we can get a decent amount of awareness out there BEFORE nightmare bits of legislation like the vaginal probe prior to any abortion bullshit happens. The OH/IN games played highlighted that there is already passed legislation like this in TX. No idea about that for just about anyone, prior to the social media driven awareness of the current push to get these things passed with the majorities won 2 years ago.

This is what ALEC is afraid of. This is where the Founders, in my mind, really envisioned us as being. With broader information and understanding, even if it's not necessarily 100% factual, of our current political situation and the antics of at least one party that LOVES to overreach and then eat their own dead, we can all truly start making informed decisions about how we'd like to be governed in this country.

Seems that the FBI and DOJ seizure of MegaUpload and other such sites have sparked many other, ancillary sites to close down. One of my long-term favorites is dead now, not because of the MU stuff directly, but at least because the owner and coder of it was in touch with some of those folk. And now, those emails may well be in the hands of the Feds. Thank you media companies for cracking down on sites that host 'illegal' downloads of movies that you don't have available at all anymore. Yet again, you're stunning vision and corporate business practices leave us all flabbergasted at your acumen and quality.

So I finally got off my ass and watched this movie. First, it's exceedingly fucked up, so I liked it a lot. ;) Second, I was stunned to see the killer (not revealed here for those that haven't yet seen it) give the little talk he did about kindness. It REALLY reminded me of the Retardican higher-ups. Just one small act of humanity, and a small hope kindles that they'll treat you with mercy and kindness, when they really do just want to filet and skin you and watch you die.

It really is how I view their actions against their 'base' of lower income and lower middle income Americans.

It's now fully official. I'm ancient. I just applied the new Icy Hot Naturals to my knees and my knuckles, and suddenly all my pain went away for a while. At least this version of Icy Hot covers the stench of menthol with other fragrant oils.

I just realized there are a heap of 2's today. Quite interesting.

From Scott Thompson (of Kids in the Hall fame) on IMDB:

"What? I won the lymphoma? I had no idea I was even nominated. There are so many other people that are more deserving."

Oddly, I can think of dozens and dozens right off hand. ;)

Ok, so it's not 'that' simple, but making the bread is nice. Anyway, to this point, I've been having issues with the loaves coming up .... uneven in the pans. It was put in unevenly dense on one side, because the dough can't be 'worked' in a traditional sense. (Without gluten, bread becomes a much different experience, unfortunately.) Consequently, even with shaking and spatula attempts to correct it, it's almost always coming out Leaning Tower of Pisa like. Until today.

Today I used the paddle attachment (yes, yes, snicker-snicker from the Peanut Gallery, I know) and it was a much smoother mix. Then, after pouring the bread into the pan, I used a second pan, with a non-stick spray coated layer of plastic wrap to press the bread more evenly into the loaf pan. It is coming up substantially more evenly this time. It's an extra step, and all, but it seems to be much, much better this way.

So I've been amusing myself, in my spare moments, with tagging my tens of thousands of pictures. My collection has grown to the point where even the rigorous folder structure I use has become a detriment in many cases. So, I know that most photo formats support tagging, and Windows and other search tools support searching against the tags as well, so it makes sense. If I want to see some Brian Steele pics, I'd rather they were aggregated for me from the various suits I have pics of him in. ;)

However, one of the only handy ways I've found to tag multiple pics at once has been WLPG. And for a basic, free program, it's actually pretty good. It has some facial recognition built in, and so forth; pretty handy all around. Except when it's dealing with 10's of thousands of pics. It seems to be decidedly not-happy in that circumstance. And I'm quite sure I'm making it even less happy with things like my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pics. I've been doing facial recognition tagging on the various turtle heads. Yes, I'm doing it 'accurately', but I have to wonder if my antics are causing the gallery to break more often. After all, those suits look amazingly similar facially. Yes, yes, I know the suits were made individually and have slight variations and whatnot. But I somehow doubt that simplistic facial recognition tools will handle that correctly, and having 4 faces that look quite similar but are all tagged differently probably gives the software a minor stroke every time it gets to those directories. ;)