Random Link Things

September 11th, 2018

https://twitter.com/catsu/status/893911476616007682 https://ffffidget.com/ http://www.thelittledollhousecompany.com/dollhouses-miniatures-furniture-kits/ https://twitter.com/BelovedShirts/status/877334956867022848 https://www.belovedshirts.com/collections/swimsuits/products/buscemi-one-piece-swimsuit-high-legged https://www.facebook.com/YourChildhoodRuined/photos/a.1179687468742352/1557299944314434/?type=3&theater https://www.boredpanda.com/artists-work-for-free-ryan-estrada-emmie-tsumura/ "Enki: He Brings Good Things To Life! (tm)" https://www.redbubble.com/people/PlatypusRanch/shop http://www.fallingfalling.com/ https://stacksocial.com/sales/ultrabright-500-lumen-tactical-military-flashlight-and-military-storage-case-2-pack?utm_source=inverse.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ultrabright-500-lumen-tactical-military-flashlight-and-military-storage-case-2-pack&utm_term=scsf-267085&utm_content=a0x1a000003apBs&scsonar=1&aid=a-fnhhk526

I done did it, I broke the site again!

June 4th, 2021!

Hello! You're looking at my internet home of chicanery, the Obnoxious Jerk! For those of you who know me, that being Denny, you're probably thinking the name is apt. I try not to be one, but what can I say - people do their darndest to encourage it. At any rate, the site is currently 'under construction', as it were, as I rebuild all the inane rambling I've committed here since 2003-ish.

For those of you who I worked with at GE Aviation until just a little bit ago, I'll be placing updates about my magnificent new home, our Skoolie known as Shai-Hulud, here as I write them. And document me and my wife's progress in transforming it from a mild-mannered school bus to a thundering engine of capitalism and living-wherever-we-want to. But, as you can see, there isn't a whole lot here yet.

I mean there is, but I have to rebuild all of the writings to make them fit into the site's new format. As time passes, I'll be repairing old entries and making new ones, so feel free to drop in at your leisure, and maybe you'll see something you haven't before! Or, at the very least, can find my e mail to nudge me towards letting you know the score. Until then, thanks for stopping in to... the Obnoxious Jerk!

Peach?

October 21st, 2022

Accurate?

So I was minding my own business recently, preparing to get to work on the bus what I've been slowly building into a home for the family, when I caught sight of something weird. I usually don't manage that in the morning, what with me being catastrophically bad at noticing anything that isn't going on inside my head until at least noon, but there she was, just foraging in a leisurely way.

I don't know everything about rabbits, by far, but I do know that what I saw wasn't a wild rabbit. No, this was a domestic bunny, one which I optimistically thought at first was probably an escape, but most likely was turned loose by a bunch of monsters who didn't want her any longer. I made sure I told Brenda about this right away, and she sprang into action immediately.

Helping her out as best as I could, I assisted in wrangling this poor bunny as peacefully as was possible, using our x-pen barriers and a borrowed net that a neighbor up the street inexplicably had in his truck. Pulling her into the bus, we let the poor thing calm down as much as possible, though she was so distressed that she didn't want to eat anything from us. And hey, that was no shocker.

After a bit of poking around on the internets, we found that there isn't any bunny rescue facilities here in Nebraska, the closest being in Des Moines. The Humane Society here in town is capable of housing rabbits, though, and they didn't do the whole 'euthanization' thing just to make room for more critters. So, though we would have loved to just keep her, we did what we had to and took her there.

As for why we couldn't just adopt this sweet little bunny, who was obviously well-socialized and even communicated well with Brenda once things calmed down, is that our own rabbit hates other rabbits with a white-hot fury. This is probably one reason Crawford was at the Ohio House Rabbit Society himself for so long. Well, that and his generally standoffish nature, which doesn't bug us but probably bothered others.

Anyway, after reluctantly dropping this wonderful pet off in the hope that she could find a proper home, we headed back home, only to see a moving truck just around the corner. Which answered the question of just what happened and how, and luckily the former owners were long gone or else something horrible might have happened to them. Who horrible human being does that to a member of their household?

When we turned that sweet little baby in to the Society, they told us to keep an eye on their 'critters' page to see how she's doing, and whether or not she was adopted. Sure enough, three days later, she appeared in the list of hamsters, rabbits, and other assorted wee creatures. And though it took a few more days, they ultimately decided to name her Peach, which was fine. We didn't know her original name, after all.

And, sure enough, she was adopted just a few days after that. A lot of the other bunnies that were showcased on that particular portion of the Nebraska Humane Society are still there even now, but Peach seems to have found herself a new home, preferably a Forever one. I just checked, and while folks like 'Rabbert' are still there, poor guy, at least Peach seems to have found herself the happiest possible ending.

Poor little bunny.

It's finally over.

January 1st, 2021

Accurate?

If you're reading this, you made it. That's right, you, along with everyone else you see shambling about today, has survived absolute the worst year of ever: 2020. Well, I suppose that doesn't apply to any zombies you see shambling around you, fervently attempting to eat your brains, but you can't cover every edge case, am I right?

Anyway, this year, what felt like ten years, is now over... and I am developing the gray hairs to show for it. After everything that's gone horribly wrong since the beginning of 2020, I've just been wanting it all to end. Oh, sure, the rolling over of the calendar is an arbitrary temporal construct that doesn't mean anything in the long run, but in my head at least it feels a bit better.

As it stands, I'm still digging my way out of the detritus of the last year, both that which affected me personally on top of the common garbage we've all been having to work our way through. And it's not all that easy, for I went from having no prescriptions to about a dozen, and some of them are supposed to be helping my head, but the jury's out there.

Which is probably why I've taken to self-medication a lot. And I mean a lot. But one of the things I'm going to try and do this year is get my act back together, for I have been riding a downward spiral for oh, about six months now. And that's not going to help me finish up all the odds and ends I'd like to sort out before I drop dead, uh, again. So here's to us taking better care of ourselves!

Satisfaction

May 5th, 2019

For close to four decades, I've been working on various projects related to my nerdy hobby, the culmination of which you can find on my principal nerd site, Technohol 13. Through thick and thin, double overtime and unemployment, being married or single, health and near-death, I've kept at it, chugging away at the things I intend to wrap up before I die from old age, falling space junk, or whatever.

This has involved me primarily engaging in two distinct arms of the same project. The first is a rewrite, from the ground up, of a couple different game systems that are no longer supported. The second is a vast array of character references, each a comprehensive look at an incredibly obscure or criminally uncovered group of folks that are related, directly or tangentially, to the character of those game systems.

During this time, I have racked up a rogue's gallery of nerd foes that would do the Flash proud. A lot of them don't like the fact that I refuse to hew precisely to a bunch of books that have been out of print for over twenty-five years. Others feel the need to tell me what I should be working on, that what I'm currently doing (at any given moment in time) is utter crap, and that I ought to do something more to their liking.

Of course, the worst of my nerd foes are those nerds that like to drag down the entire community, however small it is, so desperate to bolster their self-esteem that they're literally willing to ruin it for everybody so they can feel... I don't know, something inside. Aside from the usual bout of overwhelming ineptitude that they experience when they aren't playing keyboard cowboy.

The latest batch of such characters have banded together to pool their resources, but have made a very specific point of informing me that my efforts are not needed, thank you very much. Yet, at the same time, they kept adding me to their nerd gang on Facebook, which continued incessantly until I vowed to post hardcore pornography all over their feed until they cut it out.

You may scoff, but it worked. For a good long while, at any rate.

While the people running this group ostensibly despise me and my efforts, they sure are perfectly okay with lifting my material wholesale - all while claiming it as their own work. One example of this deplorable bunch is the thieving loser I railed about last time, is a part of this bunch. He's just one of many such losers, though, so you can see why I'd not want anything to do with the lot of them.

I do hate that a lot of gamers I'm on generally good terms with have been swept up in their mess, though. Many of these are quick to point out when one of these hacks blatantly steals something I've written and plugs it into their own projects. Still more are happy to indicate when they've stolen my work, but given credit for it to someone who's previously stolen it from me, and never took it down.

And now, now a bunch of them have been quietly asking me for permission to use bits of my nerd research and products in their own efforts. All of them have promised to give full attribution, of course, with the last adding a page-long spread extolling the virtues of Technohol 13. While I initially was about to tell them where they could go, the thought of poisoning their well was too satisfying to resist.

You see, the brains (and I use that term loosely) behind this weird effort opposed to me loves my character work, but hates my original rules work. But, as it turns out, all of my character work utilizes my rules work. So, to use the former, they have to accept the latter - or rewrite just about every man, woman, child, robot, and miscellaneous implement I've described from the ground up.

Thus, no matter what happens, I win. They're forced to host links to my work, suffer the taint of my accursed name being plastered all over their precious group, and they can't avoid the the 'taint' of my crunchy rules revisions seeping into their 'sacrosanct' realm. And that's why, given everything else going on in my life lately, I'm willing to indulge in just a little bit of satisfaction.

And the eventual snackenfreude. (I'll fix that link eventually)

The Most Villainous Villain That Ever Villained Am I

February 2nd, 2019

I guess wanting credit for what I've written makes me MONSTROUS.

I have apparently dispensed the butthurt today.

It came to my attention that someone was blatantly stealing my nerd work and plugging it into their own project. Now, I'm not hyper-possessive about the things I write for the nerd community, to which I belong. On various occasions in the past, I've been asked by others if they can use some or all of a given text I've written about something nerdy, and I'm more happy to oblige.

Usually all I ask in return is that the person involved link to my site, where they found the text originally, or simply credit me for some or all of what they're lifting. That's it. However, one of the things that pushes my buttons is when someone uses something or other that I've written, and doesn't bother to credit me for doing so. That's when I start calling douchebags out.

Upon investigating the project that I'd been pointed to, I found that this guy had stolen a lot of my material. He was taking screenshots of my site, one for each bit that he liked, and pouring them directly into pdf files for download on his own. He'd even lifted one of my documents that was specifically mocking other people for stealing its previous incarnation without crediting me!

So I called him out for doing so, and he came unglued. This winner claims he had attempted to e mail me when I told him doing so to ask me for permission to swipe my texts would've taken like thirty seconds of his life, but neither my inbox or my spam filter saw anything to that effect. He says he's only archiving dying sites, but mine has been updated as recently as, well, an hour ago.

He claims he was crediting those he had stolen material from, but neither my real name nor my internet name appeared anywhere in either the the file name or on the documents he was offering for download. He'd credited a few folks, sure, but not me - which didn't improve my disposition any. And calling the thief a thief apparently makes me the bad guy, for interrupting his work of, uh, thievery.

I can live with that. And with his righteous Facebook indignation. Cry more, thief.

What's weird is that this is only the latest incident of such blatant burglary of my writing. I've been ripped off by wikipedia, comicsvine, and some of those horrible wikia sites. And that's just my nerd text! I once had to reconfigure biographical text describing myself on my main nerd site because some dude running a GI Joe fan site lifted mine lock, stock, and barrel. Talk about creepy.

Get your own life, nerd. This one is mine!

I am the most professional person ever.

January 9th, 2019

Seriously. The most professional professional that ever professionaled.

Yesterday, I regaled you with a tale about my laptop, how it had inexplicably gone missing from where it was perched, and how it was ultimately recovered thanks to decals I had placed on it. Decals that, naturally, were of my own face. Sure, I could have probably fired it up and logged into the thing, thus proving it was my device, but the stickers seemed much more effective to me.

Anyway, the reason I have these decals, these Sticker Selfies ™, is that we recently purchased a vinyl cutter at home. This is an object that Brenda is going to use to produce, well, stickers. She's selling these online, and has already made several sales. I indicated a few days ago where you can acquire her home-made, Made in America products, but if you've forgotten, here it is again.

While the first product produced with this tool is no longer available, some of its art is. You can check it out here. Neat, eh? And more are theoretically coming soon!

Mind you, there are no Denny stickers featured in Brenda's store. For one thing, the idea is to get people to hand over their money, not chase them away in disgust. Secondly, I don't think there's that much of a market for Denny stickers anywhere, except perhaps on the Jerk. Because you're here, after all, you must like something about me. Or just exult in my flailing listlessly through life. Either/or.

The Denny stickers ultimately came about because when we first set up the vinyl cutter, I thought we should test it out, to see if it even worked / how it worked / etc. etc. etc. Having no actual stickers ready, Brenda took a quick snapshot of my disheveled, half-asleep mug, did a few seconds of Photoshop magic on it, and before we knew it I had like twenty Denny decals ready to vandalize things with.

The point of all this is that, for some reason, the idea of Sticker Selfies ™ stuck in my head. Seems like that'd be a great product. Expensive, since you'd have to customize a photo in Photoshop ™, run off the sticker blanks, cut the stickers on the vinyl cutter, then ship them out - all without them looking like butt. Unless you're a butt, that is - then, I suppose that'd be right on the money. But still.

Sticker Selfies ™!

Can you see the resemblance?

January 8th, 2019

While I prepared to leave work today, I noticed a conspicuous void where my laptop normally rests. You know, sitting right behind me, with my lunch box and the bag I use to transport both between work and home. This instantly cranked up the intensity of my headache, which had appeared out of nowhere at 1 PM, and was already attempting to evolve from its current, lowly state into a truly epic migraine.

As it so happens, I had just read my e mail on the janky work computer that has been bequeathed to me, which is sort of strange. Not that I was checking my work e mail before I left for the day, so much as because I checked it at all. It's as if I'd managed to tune out all of the smarmy feel-good propaganda messages from the new CEO, whose lifespan in the company can be measured in months.

Anyway, one of the electronic mail messages, from the Human Resources department, indicated that someone had 'turned in' an 'electronic device'. That was conspicuously vague, and after canvasing everywhere I had traveled over the course of my work day, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask them if that 'electronic device' was 'my laptop'. And ask why someone 'turned in' the device sitting behind me.

Trundling downstairs, I entered the dilapidated offices of the People Processing portion of the building, and waited ten minutes for one of the salaried douchebags to stop hogging the entire office's time with his exploits about recent jet ski hijinks. "Nobody cares," my inner monologue shouted into the universe. "Don't you have a job or something? You know, anywhere else?"

Glad that I hadn't clocked off before entering the Underling Slaugherhouse department, I rolled my eyes in a spot that everyone present could clearly see, sighed loudly in a fashion that everyone couldn't help but hear, and started fooling around with my Pixel. This was enough to grab the attention of the lady who sent the electronic mail about the electronic device, who shrugged.

The jet skiing dirtbag finally drifted off, my having disrupted his posturing and preening before the women of the Minion Disassembly department, and my wait was over. Stepping into her sub-office, I told her that I had lost an 'electronic device'. She looked at her desk, where I could plainly see my laptop, and foolishly asked me whether or not I could prove that my laptop was, in fact, mine.

"I think so, yeah."

I pulled the laptop out of its protective sleeve, and opened it up.

Though it won't be easy.

I looked at the laptop, with those decals of me facing her, then at her, then at the laptop, and then at her. "Looks like me, doesn't it?"

I mean, kinda sorta?

The Human Resources creature then chuckled, and handed over my laptop. Stuffing it in my bag, I then left for the day and began my journey home, still wondering why someone would have removed my laptop from the shelf right behind me, the one with all my other things on it, and turned it in to the Hall Monitors as if it were 'lost'. I suppose that's going to be one of those mysteries for the ages.

Dumber Than Even I Thought Possible

January 7th, 2019

Redundant signage. Which bonuses as a trip hazard.

I didn't sleep well last night, so I was generally stumbling around bleary-eyed at work this morning. Well, all day, if I'm being entirely honest with you, but you get the idea. Thus, it required that I walk past something a couple times before it registered what it was, in fact, that I was looking at. What I saw was the sign that you see here, to your right.

In the event that you also need to look at it a few times to determine what it is that I'm going on about, this is a warning sign about the alcohol waste cabinet. Sitting in front of the alcohol waste cabinet. Which is already covered with a plethora of warning stickers, decals, and indications stating that it's an alcohol waste cabinet. Let that sink in for a moment.

Where I work, people are so staggeringly dim that they need redundant layers of warnings in front of a thing to ensure they know what it is. This thing being a thing that everyone in the building has to utilize daily at some point, because everyone has to dump their dirty alcohol at least once. Since, you know, we make ostensibly clean parts in a filthy death trap.

Asking around, I determined that this redundant signage was added by overpaid salary pukes while us mere hourly plebians were out on our holiday break at the end of the year. What I want to know is whose idea it was to spend money on such inanity, instead of apparently giving the guy who doesn't know how to read in our building a gentle talking to.

I imagine they got a raise for that sign. Which is another reason the company is doing so poorly.

I Had A Weird Dream 5

January 6th, 2019

I know I said I was done going on about my digital super-goons from the City, but something odd happened to me last night. You see, typically when I find myself dreaming, I don't recall what actually happens during my brain's ad-lib sessions, save for after a few particularly strange occasions. Though maybe they're simply par for the course, I don't know. Brains are weird.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that I had a weird dream last night.

Dash Apostrophe: after exiting an elevator, just like in that inexplicable dream of mine. Minus the Hollywood-grade special effects.

Unlike most of my dreams, it didn't actually star me, as is usually the case. Furthermore, this dream did not come with the benefit of a first person perspective. No, this dream presented like I were watching a film, and an action-packed one, at that! For, you see, I was seeing what seemed like a live-action story starring no less than Dash Apostrophe, face-stabber for justice!

It had all the hallmarks of one of those hyper-polished Marvel ™ movies, with their semi-realistic special effects, complete disregard for the abject ridiculousness of the character's premise, and full-on committment to inexplicably making the whole thing somehow work. As it unfortunately happened, I tuned in partway through the movie, at which point he was the villains' captive.

The bad guys held him in some strange, high-tech bondage thing to keep him from hacking the lot of them up, but somehow he managed to get his hands on his sword, which one of his captors was fooling around with, and he cut himself loose and disassembled everyone in the elevator with him. They were trying to shuttle him to their lair, but that simply wasn't happening!

I have no idea where this scene came from, and it's not in the plot for the Dash Apostrophe book I have in mind, and have written somewhat. But I may have to add it, either to this one or one of the sequels (I have at least two in mind, because Dash lends himself to ridiculous misadventure), because it was just so darn vivid in my head. And reminded me of all the fun I had with Dash in the City.

Note to self: fix those 'dream' links sometime!

Installments in this series (City of Heroes):
01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

The fourth installment in this series. (I'll fix all these links at some point)