Now I just need to get the solid gold house and rocket car…

… I can’t help you with that.

At the suggestion of that reprobate pdb, here’s Valeria Golino:

… which will, of course, be completely ignored.

I wrote a little post last year about the utter insanity of our current copyright system. Now a doctoral candidate at Cambridge has done some research on the optimal term for copyrights. His conclusion: 14 years.

14 years, by the way, was exactly the duration of protection offered under the Copyright Act of 1790. So… we got it right the first time, and 217 years of further government meddling (with plenty of help from lobbyists) have only served to completely fuck things up. I, for one, am SHOCKED.

Thanks, man. I knew there was a reason why I’m still friends with you.

Bitter has some fun with a hotlinking MySpacer.

The good folks at Kiernan’s in Dearborn, Michigan really know how to serve up an outstanding extra-rare filet mignon. Highly recommended.

Light blogging for the next few days, due to upcoming nuptials (not my own, thank Jebus). On the agenda for tomorrow:

• Let the condo handyman in at 8 AM so he can try to figure out why the basement is rapidly becoming an indoor swimming pool.
• Pick up and try on my tux for The Unforgiving Cousin’s wedding on Saturday.
• Babysit The Unforgiving Grandmother so her caregiver can deal with a family emergency.
• Retrieve The Unforgiving Mother & Sister from the airport.
• Grill up lamb steaks with The Unforgiving Best Friend.
• Find out for sure if my on-again/off-again wedding date is on or off.
• Track down some kind of wedding present (there’s nothing like the last minute!).
• Drink heavily. Very heavily.

Gonna have some gun pr0n for y’all in the near future. Stay tuned.

I’m sure you’re all sick of my computer geekery by now, but I wanted to post a few details of the color NeXT, showing how it differs from the grayscale machine.

At first glance, the CPU is identical; only the case badge differs. Also, for some strange reason my machine doesn’t have a serial number.

Keyboard and mouse are the earlier, non-ADB type. This keyboard is a buckling spring design, like the IBM Model M. And like the IBM, it’s hell for stout and nicely “clacky.”

Color NeXTstations used this odd little “Sound Box” for sound-in/out and keyboard/mouse connectivity. It holds a speaker and microphone along with miniplug and RCA sound-out jacks, a mic jack, and the proprietary keyboard connector.

And yes, EVERY piece of hardware bears the little slanted-cube logo; it’s even molded into the plugs on the cables. Steve Jobs paid Paul Rand $100,000 for the design and I guess he figured he was going to get his money’s worth out of it.

The other NeXTstation is back in business.