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Welcome to The New Chainik Hocker. I am your host, the eponymous Chainik Hocker, here to share news, reviews, pretty pictures, and silly opinions with you. Contact me at chainik DOT hocker AT gmail DOT com

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Gooooooooooooal!

A British jihadist website has warned Muslims against being drawn in to what they described as "the new religion of soccer."

Claiming that soccer plants the seeds of nationalism, and is therefore part of a "colonial crusader scheme" to divide Muslims and cause them to stray from the vision of a unified Islamic identity, the website told readers: "The sad fact of the matter is that many Muslims have fallen for this new religion and they too carry the national flag.


In other news, John Paintsil, the Ghanan soccer player who plays for Hapoel Tel Aviv when he isn't in the world cup and caused enormous controversy among hate mongering xenophobic whackadoo Islamofascists when he waved an Israeli flag to celebrate a goal, has been outed as a Mossad agent by Egyptian national media.

"The ignorant and stupid Pantsil, who spent 20 days in Egypt during the last African Nations Cup, plays for Hapoel," sports commentator Alaa Sadek wrote in the daily Al-Akhbar, explaining to baffled Egyptian audiences Panstil's link to Israel. Some papers described Pantsil as a "Mossad agent", others said "an Israeli had paid him to do it" but the most elaborate theory was offered by the top-selling state-owned daily Al-Ahram.

"The real reason," sports analyst Hassan el-Mestekawi wrote,
stems from the fact that many Ghanaian players go through football training camps set up by an Israeli coach who "discovered the treasure of African talent, and abused the poverty of the continent's children" with the ultimate goal of selling them off to European clubs."The training program for these children starts every morning with a salute to the Israeli flag," Mestekawi claimed.

Valery Plame was last seen snorking coffee all over her keyboard while reading this blogpost.

I ran into a British friend of mine on Thursday, who immediately (and good heartedly, I should add) offered his sincere condolences on the American team's elimination from the playoffs, followed by a close and detailed analysis of the game, followed by a complicated and involved monologue on the subject of the probable outcome of the World Cup.

Sometimes I'm too nice for my own good. I could have told him to shut the hell up any time in the twenty minutes this conversation took place, or I could have just changed the subject, but he was obviously having too much fun. So, whatev.

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Friday, June 23, 2006

Friday Trivia

Which popular entertainer's real name is Albert Einstein?

Answer here, a list of celebrities and thier real names.

Fascinating.

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Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Why I don't have as much time to blog as I used to.

It's Just Like the Old Days

Man #1: Man, all these stabbings and killings, man.
Man #2: Yeah.
Man #1: But you know, that's every summer.

--Myrtle & Marcy, Bed-Stuy


via Overheard in New York, Jun 20, 2006

Boy howdy, I am as busy as a busy guy during the busy season. I am busier than a person running a booth at a busy person's convention in Busytown, USA.

I am so busy I am unable to come up with good metaphors.

Also, I find myself unable to hire good help. I hire some kid for $8.50 an hour who proceeds to quit without giving notice before the end of the week, telling me the job is "too hard".

WTF?

Also, someone broke into the house across the street from my parents' last Friday night. Scumbags!

And then the people across the street go and hire someone else to install the alarm.

The price of wire has gone up 115% lately, and we are doing our best to convince people to pay our new prices.

Sometimes I feel like I'm running in circles. Like this guy.
Still, the only thing worse than work is: no work.

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Friday, June 16, 2006

Proof Positive That Some People Have Too Much Damn Time on Thier Hands.

Here it is.

Scientific evidence, that. Admisable in court, no doubt.

I wonder what people like that did before the Interwebs was invented by Al Gore?

Back in the day, it took a team of six men, three mules, and a dozens of slaves plucking ducks for quills and stomping blueberries to make ink to create even a single blog, which had to be printed on parchment and distributed outside bars, or "ale-houses", which were the forums of the day.

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Medieval Bloggers hard at work. Source: British Museum.

As old school blogger Thomas Paine, who blogged at 7h3 4g3 0f R3450n, once put it:

It taketh Men a Fortnight for to blog a Single Post, which that jerk His Majesty King George then Censores. Thank Ye, Messrs. Google, for Lending your powers of Technomancy to subjugate Men, for they may no Longer be assured of Posting freely without Fear of IP Scanninge. "Do no evil" my ass.

Heh. Indeed.
Of course, then came Blogger, giving people like me the power to link to random crap. So, yay Blogger!

Oh, by the way, I got a new computer.

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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Bye Bye Lappy.

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My laptop died an honorable and glorious death in battle last night.

I've been having trouble with it for a while, I must admit. For the past year and a half I have had it on life support, downloading CCleaner, Adaware, and Webroot, and vigilantly deleting this and rationalizing that and defragmenting the other thing.

Yesterday was Lappy's Last Stand.

I use this laptop for work, mainly. I can plug in and program alarm panels, PA amps, and PBXs with the thing- ever so much more efficient than programming the things manualy, which takes forever. I do paperwork. I do demos at onsite for customers. I draw up plans. And I blog.

Blogging is not a work related funcion, of course, but in the interest of fairness it must be included.

Sunday, I plugged the powerpack in and the light flickered on and off. The thing refused to charge.

Last night, I tried plugging in the powerpack again.

At first, I just heard a little grinding sound, as of someone stepping on ground glass.

I thought that there was some dirt in the plug. I blew it out and reseated the cord again firmly.

Zap. Snap.

Pop.

Sizzzzzzzzle.

Sob.

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As the smoke cleared, I considered my options. Sure, everything was backed up, and I'd known this was coming for some time now. Still, the loss of a loved one is never easy. This was my first computer all my own... the first time I had ever used Firefox... the first time I had ever blogged... the first time I ever edited music... the first time I had ever programmed an alarm panel... the first time I had ever put a DVR online...

Anyway, blogging will be light till I get a new one.

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