Home


Main Menu

  • Journal, of sorts
  • Amateur radio
  • Audio endeavors
  • Camera musings
  • Comics, web-
  • Geek gear
  • Guitar stuff
  • Musical interests
  • Photos
  • Quotes
  • Written by me
  • Linkfest!
  • Fear The Empire...


    Identities

  • My LiveJournal
  • My facebook profile
  • email scotsman@afn.org
  • ICQ 115329488
  • AIM lefthandedframis
  • google bhmcintosh
  • radio WA4UF
  • grid EL89tp


  • Bruce H. McIntosh
    scotsman@afn.org
    Visit my work homepage
    Last revised Jan 08, 2010

    What are words for?
    When no one listens any more
    What are words for?
    When no one's listening there's no use
    Talking at all

    Quotes


    There are some ideas so ridiculous that only an intellectual could believe them.
    George Orwell
    Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like.
    Will Smith
    I came out for exercise,gentle exercise,and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than I go off hammer and tongs.
    H.G. Wells,about the bicycle
    You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
    C.S. Lewis
    Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
    random sigfile quote nicked from a marriage forum I frequent
    I can guarantee there will be no new taxes... What we're doing is doubling the old taxes.
    Senator Batson D. Belfry,in "Shoe"
    I would rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard University.
    William F. Buckley Jr.
    Always vote for principle,though you may vote alone,and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
    John Quincy Adams
    No man's life,liberty,or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
    Gideon J. Tucker,in Final Accounting in The Estate of A. B. (1866)
    In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame,two is a law firm,and three or more is a congress.
    John Adams
    ...the generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
    Robert Coveyou,mathematician at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
    Suffice it to say that when the lid is left off a box of entropy this large,there is money to be made for the soldier of fortune.
    Howard Taylor,delightfully twisted mentality behind Schlock Merceneary, discoursing on warfare and civil disorder on a galactic scale
    The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.
    Margaret Thatcher
    Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,well meaning but without understanding.
    Louis Brandeis,in Olmstead v. United States (1928)
    I am not a vegetarian because I love animals. I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
    A. Whitney Brown
    If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency,first by inflation and then by deflation,the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
    Thomas Jefferson
    ...banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity,under the name of funding,is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
    Thomas Jefferson
    Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind,none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money.
    Daniel Webster
    Paper money has had the effect in your State [Rhode Island] that it ever will have,to ruin commerce--oppress the honest,and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.
    George Washington
    Gentlemen,I have had men watching you for a long time,and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won,you divided the profits amongst you,and when you lost,you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter,I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true,gentlemen,but that is your sin! Should I let you go on,you will ruin fifty thousand families,and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out,and by the eternal God,I will rout you out.
    Andrew Jackson,meeting with bankers about the Bank Renewal Bill of 1832
    So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause...
    Padme Amidala,as Palpatine declares the Empire,Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith
    Build a man a fire,and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire,and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
    Terry Pratchett
    The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
    Sir Edward Grey,English Foreign Minister,on the eve of World War One
    An open mind is all very well in its way,but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes',or it may be found a little drafty.
    Samuel Butler
    Hurry up and put that code into production; we need to test it!
    An applications programmer at UF,to a CICS systems programmer
    You see,wire telegraph is a kind of a very,very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here,they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
    Albert Einstein,explaining radio
    There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies,and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.
    C.A.R. Hoare
    Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in the mud; after a while you realize you are muddy and the pig is enjoying it.
    yet another cool random .sig quote
    When we are planning for posterity,we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
    Thomas Paine
    It's true... your speakers sound a whole lot better with a really big TV.
    My ever-quotable co-cubicle-rat Eli Bothe,shortly after acquiring a 56" TV
    I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion,and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake,or an eternal fever. Besides,who would ever shave themselves in such a state?
    Lord Byron,in a letter to Thomas Moore,5 July 1821
    Americans hate music. But they love entertainment.
    Frank Zappa
    He is a Frenchman,and I do not say how far one should trust him.
    Henry VIII of England,on Francis I of France
    If USENET is anarchy,IRC is a paranoid schizophrenic after 6 days on speed
    Mlman,on IRC - slashnet channel #ufies
    You know you're doing it right when you have to install a heatsink on your credit card
    Eli Bothe,fellow cuberat
    You have an amazing capacity for self-deception. How do you do that?
    Number Six,to Gaius Baltar,in the Battlestar Galactica miniseries
    Trust your brain; it knows more than you do.
    The Midnight Skulker,in Johnny Hart's "BC"
    We live in an era where your office computer and your living room television have exactly the same capacity to entertain,with only differences in production values.
    Eric,the meister of Websnark
    The moment you buy into the idea you're above anyone else is the moment you need to be slapped in the face.
    Natalie Portman
    We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing,which is one reason why they write so little.
    Anne Lamott - snagged from a .sig file online somewhere
    That conversation made sense right up to when I started talking.
    Eli Bothe,fellow cuberat
    Under capitalism,man exploits man. Under communism,it's just the opposite.
    J.K. Galbraith
    All nervous fliers well know that when a pilot signals "moderate turbulence," he is implying,"If you have any religious beliefs,it is time to start expressing them."
    Ravi Zacharias
    I'm not going to make a standard anything I'm willing to break at the drop of a hat.
    Sheard Goodwin,our infrastructure top dog,on walljack labelling
    Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
    Henry Kissenger
    Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself being silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.
    George Orwell
    If only there were a way to negotiate with cats.
    coworker Eli Bothe,while discussing bathing housecats
    Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
    random sigfile quote,attributed to Ben Franklin
    Love is like riding a snowmobile on the tundra. Suddenly,it flips over! You are trapped underneath it! At night,the ice weasels come.
    Matt Groening,Love is Hell
    Our inability to alter what is actual frustrates our grandiose delusions of being sovereign over everything.
    Ravi Zacharias
    Of all the dispositions and teachings of thinkers and ethicists,the one doctrine that I have no sufficient counter for is Jesus on that Cross.
    Mohandas Gandhi
    America will always do the right thing,once it has exhausted all the alternatives.
    Winston Churchill
    I'm improving myself by shooting aliens. So tell me...how has watching sitcoms made YOU a better person?
    Canine,on undernet.org IRC channel #userfriendly
    People never lie so much as after a hunt,during a war or before an election....
    Otto von Bismarck
    Software QA is like cleaning my cat's litter box: Sift out the big chunks. Stir in the rest. Hope it doesn't stink.
    Random /. quote
    It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
    Charles A. Beard
    ... a Christian's decision should never be based upon the potential outcome of his decision,but upon the rightness of his decision. As John Quincy Adams succinctly stated,"Duty is ours; results are God's."
    Chuck Baldwin,Constitution Party Vice Presidential nominee
    Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor,200 megabytes of RAM,1500 megabytes of disk storage,a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels,relies entirely on voice recognition for input,fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's the first question that the computer community asks? "Is it PC compatible?"
    /usr/games/fortune (circa 1989)
    Make God laugh; plan for the future
    Anonymous
    Today was a good Monday. I actually felt like I knew almost everything I was behind on."
    Dan Miller,my boss,on this Monday
    A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history - with the possible exception of handguns and Tequila.
    Mitch Radcliffe
    I once spoke with a Harvard professor who told me that it is quite easy to get a Harvard undergraduate degree without ever once encountering a tenured member of the faculty inside a classroom; I don't know if this is actually true but it's a delightful piece of slander regardless
    Chip Morningstar,"How to Deconstruct Almost Anything -- My Postmodern Adventure"
    Genius may have its limitations,but stupidity is not thus handicapped."
    Elbert Hubbard
    I was captivated by how ambitiously bad it was.
    Flewellyn,on #userfriendly, about the Logan's Run tv series
    The Seven P Theorem: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance
    unknown,it's been on my whiteboard for weeks now
    The Apathy Party should not have a majority.
    mitrian,on #userfriendly
    I used to say that the state of programming was medieval,but that's unfair to the middle ages - they knew a lot about learning craft skills.
    Tim Bradshaw
    When the anthropologists look back on the 1980s and 1990s and do the archaeological digs,and get their callipers and brooms and microscopes out,they will blame the massive reduction in productivity during the 1980s and 1990s entirely on Microsoft Office.
    Scott McNeally,in a Press Club presentation in Australia
    It's not important until it fails when you need it.
    Dan Miller (my boss),on network hardware
    IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
    martin__ on irc #userfriendly
    Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
    Leonard Brandwein
    We don't think that the popularity of an error makes it the truth.
    Richard Stallman
    EMACS: It's a nice OS,but to compete with Linux or Windows it needs a better text editor.
    Alexander Duscheleit
    They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
    Benjamin Franklin
    Especially apropos now that the Homeland Security Act has been passed

    "Avoid any company that uses the word 'challenge' in the first few sentences of an annual report.
    from an ad on The Motley Fool's website about their Stocks 2003 book
    One likes to believe in the freedom of music
    But glittering prizes and endless compromises
    Shatter the illusion of integrity
    Rush,"Spirit of The Radio"
    With so many knees jerking...
    It's a wonder our walk of faith gets anywhere at all.
    Bryan,aka Llostcause@aol.com,from a Kerry Livgren mailing list discussion
    If the Bible doesn't back it then it seems quite clear
    Perhaps it was the devil who whispered in your ear!
    Steve Taylor,"Guilty by Association"
    "I dwell in darkness without you," and it went away???
    Sorsha,to Madmardigan,Willow
    Why don't you install linux so I can fix your problems from downstairs?
    Steve Ulmer,head NERDC unix geek,to my boss
    Fixing it's gonna break it.
    Matt Grover,network engineer extraordinaire,on tweaking a misconfigured switch during prime time
    Truth is. Belief is not required.
    Gerry Roston
    I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense,reason,and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
    Galileo
    The Internet is so big,so powerful and so pointless that for some people it's a complete substitute for life.
    Andrew Brown,from a usenet post .sig
    One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
    A. A. Milne
    ...we are all both good and evil,and if you think you have no evil in you,you're not looking hard enough.
    Anya Kubrick
    I've abandoned all hopes of commerciality,and whenever I do that,I make the most interesting music I can make.
    Kerry Livgren
    Though we as Christians have a mandate to be skillful and creative,and Scripture affirms that we should sing unto the Lord a new song,we rarely hear anything truly new. The atmosphere of Christian radio is so limited as to be almost stifling. Not only is it as highly formatted as its secular counterpart,but in most cases,the artist must conform to some sort of spiritual criteria--someone's definition of what makes his or her music acceptable Christian music. It's a strange irony indeed that finds lyrics with the most profound truth coupled with the most unchallenging sort of muzak.
    Kerry Livgren,Seeds of Change
    Some people's idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like,but if anyone says anything back,that is an outrage.
    Winston Churchill
    We laugh at honor,and are shocked to find traitors in our midst . . . We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
    C. S. Lewis
    Of all tyrannies,a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep,his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
    C.S. Lewis
    Republicans who want Clinton impeached for perjury are "dirty,old white men," while Clinton,who orally copulated with a woman close to his daughter's age,is an "excellent president who has helped further women's rights."
    The Misanthropic Bitch,"What I Learned in 1998",quoted in a .sig file by Jason Steiner
    Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
    Albert Einstein
    Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; If you don't believe in the resurrection,you're not a believer.
    John Irving,A Prayer for Owen Meany
    I am not a traitor to Edward,as Edward is not my king.
    William Wallace,Scotland's one true patriot
    Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars.
    John Christian Falkenberg,Jerry Pournelle's The Mercenary
    Evil is from within,not without. That which is in our environment merely activates the evil that is within our hearts.
    Matt Laswell,from a .sig file
    People who read tabloids deserve to be lied to.
    Jerry Seinfeld
    Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams,goals,and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate,debauchery,and self-annihilation.
    Johnny Hart
    A cat looks down on man; a dog looks up to man; but a pig,he looks man straight in the eye.
    Winston Churchill
    Usenet is a rabid,screaming mob pounding a greasy spot on the pavement where a dead horse used to lie.
    Allen S. Rout,relating that which he heard from someone but can't remember from whom
    Cool people will never use Usenet because they can't hide how stupid they are.
    L. Shelton Bumgarner
    Your best teacher is your last mistake. No tuition required.
    Ralph Nader,quoting his father
    My greatest fear has always been that I would be ordinary.
    Dr. Paulette Kiem - St. Elsewhere
    The big risk to business today is what I call destructive agreement. That's where everybody goes along with the plan,but not far enough to make it work.
    Scott Adams
    The Dilbert Principle: The most ineffective workers will be systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage - management.
    Scott Adams
    You save the whales / You save the seals / You save whatever's cute and squeals
    But you kill that thing that's in the womb / Would not want no baby boom
    Steve Taylor,"Bad Rap"
    The Slinky of Destiny is returning to the top of the stairs.
    H. M. Murdock,"The A-Team"
    Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule.
    David Guaspari
    If you didn't ask five minutes ago,you don't know.
    Jack Worley
    Christianity has not been tried and found to fail. It has been found to be difficult and left untried.
    GK Chesterton
    Involvement and committment are much like ham and eggs: the chicken is involved - the pig is committed.
    unknown,from a .sig file
    You know how it feels when you are sitting in a chair and you lean back on two legs and you lean back so far that you almost fall over and just at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time...
    Stephen Wright
    Engineers believe the equations are an approximation of reality. Physicists believe reality is an approximation of the equations. Mathematicians never make the connection.
    unknown,from a .sig file
    All men are intrinsical rascals,and I am only sorry that not being a dog I can't bite them.
    Lord Byron