the old com port from Herschel...

Wasted domain no more... the new location for the blog...

Wed, 14 May 2008 02:17:39 GMT

Sinc I have not done with this domain name what I originally intended, it was being wasted. For this reason, I have decided to host my blog here at: blog.obnoxium.org.

I am not sure if I have mentioned it before but the Obnoxium is a strange land which I visit now and then. The only visual documentation of this land has been destroyed by my old web host' sysop... The bastard.

Communications from Mimas have been diverted...

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:01:01 GMT

    Due to the simplicty of setting up a wordpress blog on any web server worth using I have decided to start a new blog. I know I do not update often but I want it to look nice when I do. Livejournal has never really done anyone well in the way of asthetics.

    I know this blog was simple to browse using text based browsers. If anyone has conflicts with the new blog let me know. I can easily add a lynx friendly portal.

    The new blog is located at: flipjarg.blinkenshell.org/blog/

    I will update here now and then but the new blog will be my main one.

SDF.Lonestar.org = Terrible shell host

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:01:31 GMT

Super Dimension Fortress - SDF.Lonestar.org Review

    For about eight years I have been using UNIX and Linux systems. For most of that time I have used the services of SDF's (Super Dimension Fortress) "free" UNIX shell account. As soon as I signed up I donated $38 to activate my user account and bring it up to an ARPA account. That donation granted me a "life time" membership. These accounts are made available for students and anyone else who wants to use a UNIX shell account for educational purposes so it is made to be inexpensive. About two months ago my account was deleted with no explanation and only answered one of my emails after contacting them several times. I never broke any of the rules in the time I had my shell account there.

    Because of this I lost everything I had saved on that server. This includes pretty much every picture I posted on this blog. Most of these photos I did not have saved anywhere else.

    Do not donate money to SDF.lonestar.org. I have found a new, completely free, shell host who provides more and the sysop is actually involved with the users. Take a look at BlinkenShell.org if you are interested in learning Unix or want free web hosting that offers PHP/CGI and as many MySQL databases as you want. Along with that, since this is a free UNIX shell account you can login with SSH and SFTP access... So you can upload web pages via FTP and setup cPanel (if that's what you want) and manage your website. Or you can use it for hosting pictures and videos like I do.

USPS Testing

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:50:59 GMT

Recently an idea struck me. Because I am curious whether or not they would send certain packages or envelopes under certain conditions, the United States Postal Service (USPS) needs some testing . My first test was this: Send an envelope with insufficient postage accompanied by a coin to make up for it.

I decided to start out small and work up to more outrageous tests. If you have any ideas on testing the USPS let me know, I will probably try it as long as it's not harmful or illegal, obviously.

I place insufficient postage accompanied by a quarter. I taped the quarter in place of where the other stamp should have gone. I did not use a return address so that they could not send it back, even though they really are sending it back to me, they just don't know it! Then I wrote a note on the side explaining my circumstances.

The note under the postage says (after I took this photo I added "-thanks" at the end):
Sorry, I didn't have another stamp but had to send this before the mail was picked up. Here is the change for it.
Just to be sure they did not grow suspicious, open the envelope and find nothing, I placed a piece of important documentation.
I then sent the envelope off in one of those big blue mailboxes. To avoid any extra suspicion I sent it from another city, Fargo.
Usually an envelope arrives at its destination within about three days, however, I did not expect to find this one. But I did. Here's the proof!

When I sent this envelope to myself I did not think it would succeed. In the case of it succeeding I pictured the quarter removed by a postal worker and a stamp in place of it. As you can see in this photo the quarter was left the envelope throughout its travels. The printing over the postage was scattered into a bunch of little specks because there was too much space between the paper and the printer.

Why I Called Fox News "Propoganda" Live on Fox News

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:28:12 GMT

I posted a video of, comedian, Lee Camp ripping on Fox News on one of their live broadcasts. Here's a follow up on a little of what happened after it and what he has to say about it.

I ripped into Fox "News" while on a Fox "News" morning show last week. I thought I'd answer a bunch of questions people had about the incident... (read more | digg story)

Comedian's Anti-Fox News Rant During Live Broadcast

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:21:40 GMT

I wish there were more people like this able to work their way onto networks like this one. They fortified what he said even more with their next topic of news, you won't believe it.

Watch the video

digg story

If only it were a joke...

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:54:11 GMT

JOHN TAYLOR BOWLES FOR PRESIDENT 2008

"The White People's Candidate"

The Ugly Mugs strike a chord with me once again!!!

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:19:48 GMT

Across the vast expanses of the internet one of the members of The Ugly Mugs has come upon this blog! I received an email from one of the members with a link to the crunches and slave meat that I remember fondly. The good ol' Ugly Mugs music!

I'm A Hacker Cuz I maxxors techsno 4 beta chazzum

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 04:45:29 GMT

Max the gig pusherz wit'da ampz bitkhes! DJ Dieselboy buztin 'n th3 jungle!

Prafeszr Wizurd and Hatezyer mama are blaztin the max wattij comin' B-hind, tozzin ^ yor mi9d lIke a Kaezar Sal4d.

The Uglymugs

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:25:33 GMT

    If you are Steve Grice, Jeffery Paterson (founder of IUMA), Pualy Husky or Danny Johnson and were in the band The Uglymugs (or Ugly Mugs) please contact me. I've been in search of your music for years since it has been unavailable on the internet.

    Some nine years ago I became a fan of your music. Once I had it all but lost it all to the ones and zeros of the hyper cruel technological age. Please contact me here if you can. Otherwise email me at flipjargendy [adt] hotmail.com

    Hopefully a search engine will pick this page up.... I need that music. William Shat is getting boring.

...?php subject= "i'm learning a new language!" ?>

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 02:42:11 GMT

    Not much new news (sounds like a "noonoos". It could be a word a small child uses) to share today. Just bored and feel like writing something. Neal Young is up right now on Rach's (sounds like "Roks" if you're using German dialect) mix CD (sounds like "say day" if you're still using the German dialect).

    I've begun my transition to proper typing. I used to read quite a bit about serial killers. There was one in particular that wrote his letters to police and press in all lower case letters except for the word in reference to ones self: the word "I". They figured he had an ego problem... too big of an ego. There were a number of other things they looked at in the way he wrote his letters. One of the other things they thought was a good possibility was that he had a speech impediment. They were right about both.

    I've been reading a book on Nikola Tesla called Tesla: Man Out of Time and have become somewhat obsessed with electricity and Nikola Tesla. Thanks Noraa! This man was an amazing inventor. He was using wireless technology (that he created) in the 1890's. He had a number of very important inventions that have major application in our day. Some reading on this fella will turn up quite a bit of surprising information. As for Thomas Edison, he was quite a sleazy guy. I would list the things he did to disirve this title but I suggest some reading on him to find out what I'm talking about. It's too much to list. Basically he did a lot of patenting of other peoples inventions... but under his name.

    Also, I have to share a list of Cyborgs that must be shared:

Justin Timberlake - Currently at the end of his electronic brain's life expectancy he's slowly declining into a terrible stupor. This is a report I have received from my sources,"Cyborg Justing Timerlake has been malfunctioning terribly. The owner of this cyborg has become quite annoyed and given up on maintaining him. His latest album, with it's simple drum loops gives Def Leppard's drummer the comfort of knowing loosing his other arm will not ruin his career.

George Lucas - He was created for high commercial income and was programmed very well. Yet, he's also at the end of his life span and has also not been maintained in many years. Thus, the newest Star Wars movies were in theaters prefacing his previous movies.

more of this report to come...

More on Hans Reiser...

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:12:53 GMT

This is an update on the strange software engineer, Hans Reiser. This is actually a recent interview of the man. This is a very interesting story.

Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder
Thursday, June 26, 2007
Wired.com

Arraigned for murder in October 2006, Reiser is being held in Santa Rita Jail near San Francisco.

Hans Reiser is waiting for me, standing on the other side of an imitation-wood table. The room is small, the concrete walls bare. A guard locks the steel door from the outside. There is no sound. Reiser is wearing the red jumpsuit of a prisoner in solitary confinement, though he has been allowed to meet with me in this chilly visiting room. There was a time when he was known as a cantankerous but visionary open source programmer. His work was funded by the government; he was widely credited (and sometimes reviled) for rethinking the structure of the Linux operating system. Now he is known as prisoner BFP563.

I stick out my hand. It's an awkward moment — his wrists are chained to his waist. It's mid-December now, and he's been in this jail 40 miles east of San Francisco for two months, ever since the Alameda County District Attorney's office accused him of murdering Nina Reiser, his estranged wife. The police found drops of her blood in Reiser's house and car, and, when they picked him up on an Oakland street to swab his mouth for DNA, he was carrying his passport and $8,960 in cash in a fanny pack. At the police station, they photographed his body for signs of scratches or bruises. None were found. By this time, though, he had been under surveillance for three weeks. The police had followed him on foot, tailed his car, and even tracked him by airplane. On October 10, he was arrested, locked up, and, days later, charged with murder. (His trial is set to begin in July.) His only visitors have been his lawyers and his parents. I'm the first new face he's seen from the outside world.

I'm here because his defense lawyer thinks I will understand Reiser. The accused is a 43-year-old geek — he lives in his own world of computer code, videogames, and science fiction books. He spent his early twenties developing a role-playing game to compete with Dungeons & Dragons while writing a novel about aliens invading Earth. By age 30, he'd decided that his talents would be better applied to recrafting overlooked aspects of the Linux operating system. As a technology writer, I frequently meet people like this. Just because he doesn't behave like the rest of us — and just because he evaded police surveillance and bought a book titled Masterpieces of Murder shortly after his wife's disappearance — doesn't mean he's guilty. I have been asked to try to understand this, to try to understand the man.

And so I shake his shackled hand and ask my first question.

"Tell me about your file system."

+ /* initialize transaction manager */
+ init_txnmgr(&sbinfo->tmgr); †

A file system organizes data on a computer. When you double-click a Microsoft Word document on your desktop, for instance, the file system tells the processor where to find the data. When you upload a picture from your camera, the file system decides how to place the information on your hard drive. Every bit and byte — including the operating system itself — has its place in the layers upon layers of branching directories. "A file system represents the roads and waterways of the OS," Reiser tells me.

For the past two decades, he has struggled to create a different method of organizing data. His approach, known as ReiserFS, is a file system unlike any other. Rather than assign data a fixed location on a hard drive, it uses algorithms to frequently reposition information, including the code that makes up the file system itself. It elegantly maximizes storage space, but it can also complicate data recovery when a computer crashes. If the algorithms are corrupted, the file system will be unable to locate its own position. All the data it organizes disappears into an indistinguishable mass of 0s and 1s. The contents of that hard drive will be irretrievably lost.

In Reiser's case, a critical piece of data — the location of Nina Reiser — has gone missing. Alameda County prosecutors think there's an explanation for her disappearance; they blame Reiser, a computer expert with a penchant for violent videogames. Reiser denies killing his wife. The two had been separated for 27 months when she disappeared, and her body has not been found. Reiser has so far relied on the Geek Defense. It boils down to this: I may be awkward, a little weird, and prone to convoluted theories about nearly everything. But I am not a killer.

+ txn_mgr *mgr = &get_super_private
+ (reiser4_get_current_sb())->tmgr;

On the overcast Sunday of Labor Day weekend 2006, Nina Reiser goes shopping at a crowded Berkeley, California, grocery store. Although she has been living in the US for nearly eight years, she was born and raised in Russia at a time when stores like this didn't exist. The place is stocked with heirloom tomatoes and vegan burgers, and Nina loads up her cart. She brings along her son, Rory, 6, and daughter, Niorline, 5. After depositing the groceries in her minivan, she drives to the quiet neighborhood where her husband now lives with his mother. Reiser will have the kids for the rest of the weekend. Rory tells two versions of what happened next:

+ znode *left_child;
+ znode *right_child;

Version 00
When questioned by police, Rory says he and his sister went down to the basement as soon as they arrived at his grandmother's house, leaving his parents upstairs. A few minutes later, he heard them raising their voices and using "not nice words." He went back upstairs, but his father told him to go back to the basement. Rory turned and walked back downstairs. This was the last time he ever saw his mother. Version 01
On the witness stand during the December hearing to determine whether his father should be tried for murder, Rory tells the court that he came back upstairs and stayed in the entryway with his mother and father. They were not arguing. His mother gave him a hug good-bye. Then she walked out the door and got in the van. He watched her drive away. This was the last time he ever saw his mother.

+ if (!JF_ISSET(node, JNODE_HEARD_BANSHEE))
+ warning("nikita-3177", "Parent not found");

Reiser is crying. He is pale, unshaven, and his stubble is flecked with white. His nose is running. It's hard for him to wipe it with his hands shackled. This is my second visit to the jail, and he has deteriorated in the past six weeks. He tells me that he's tormented by what's happened to his two children. After Nina disappeared, the Alameda County social services agency put Rory and Niorline in a foster home at the urging of police. Two weeks later, the county family court released them to Nina's mother, who took them to Russia for the holidays. It's now late January. They were supposed to return weeks ago. Instead, a letter arrived from a lawyer in Russia, explaining that the kids were terrified of the US and would not return.
Nina Reiser, an obstetrician and mother of two, has not been seen since September 2006. Police believe she was murdered, but her body has not been found.

Reiser is facing other losses as well. Novell, one of the largest Linux distributors to include his software, dropped his file system from its future offerings two days after his arrest. The process of preparing Reiser4, his next-generation code, for inclusion in the Linux kernel has all but stopped as his time and cash have been redirected toward his defense. He can't make payroll for Namesys, his file system company.

"Programs are in some sense our children," Reiser tells me. He explains that programs can be discriminated against just like people. That's why he wanted to raise his file system in the open source community, where people and programs are encouraged to interact free of corporate barriers to communication. The point wasn't to make a lot of money. It was to make the world a better place.

Reiser4 is built on this principle. It contains a single registry — known as a balanced tree — to organize every piece of data in the operating system. All programs can employ the same nomenclature to access information. In the traditional Windows or Unix file system, each application uses different terminology to track data. As a result, programs don't communicate efficiently with one another, which creates walls between data. In Reiser's idealized vision, a simple search for the word "Nina," for instance, will turn up emails in Outlook, images stored in MyPictures, and credit card charges in Quicken. Google's desktop search and Apple's Spotlight feature can do this, but they're afterthoughts: The ability of Reiser4 to scour every document is embedded in the operating system itself. It lays the foundation for a digital universe where there is no discrimination — nothing is walled off. In this unified space, all things can be known.

+ context->super = super;
+ context->magic = context_magic;

St. Petersburg, Russia. Winter 1999. An American walks into a warm café looking for a woman he's supposed to meet. He's got piercing dark eyes and a muscular build. He used to think of himself as a wimp. Now he studies judo and already boasts a brown belt. He owns a software company and employs a fleet of Russian programmers. One sign of his newfound confidence: He sports a cowboy hat.

Then he spots her. She's beautiful, with dark hair and a smile that makes you hold your breath. But it's her voice that captures him. He finds the Russian inflection in her perfect English enchanting. Plus, she's a doctor, an obstetrician. Her parents, too, are physicians. The other women he met through the Russian bride service on his regular trips here didn't impress him. They weren't like her. He can talk to her. And there's something else, something magical about her. On their first night together, Reiser later tells his father, they conceive a child. Five months later, they are married.

+ "Wrong magic in tree node: want %x, got %x",
+ REISER4_NODE_MAGIC, nh40_get_magic(header));

In 2001, the Pentagon's R&D agency awards Namesys a $600,000 grant to build the file system of the future — a hunk of code that will make everything on a computer hard drive searchable, transparent, accessible. Reiser spends long stretches in Moscow working with his team of programmers while Nina stays in the Bay Area to help oversee the company's books.

Reiser's father, Ramon, takes a break from teaching high school science and pitches in. Though Reiser's parents are long divorced and Ramon was not around for much of Reiser's childhood, he has made an effort to reconnect with his son. But Ramon soon becomes suspicious of his new daughter-in-law, who has taken the title of CFO at Namesys. Ramon was trained in military interviewing techniques before going to Vietnam and says he knows when he's being lied to. He thinks the cash reserves are shrinking inexplicably fast. Within a year, a check bounces, and Ramon warns his son that Nina may be to blame. Reiser doesn't believe him. To help make payroll, he accepts a loan from Sean Sturgeon, a childhood friend.

+ #define wrong_return_value( label, function )
+ impossible( label, "wrong return value from " function )

Sturgeon drove a recycling truck for years and owns a condo in Oakland's Lake Merritt district. He isn't rich, but the condo has appreciated. After surgery in 2002 for a torn rotator cuff, he was forced into early retirement. He gets by on disability payments, Social Security, some retirement benefits, and the proceeds from a lawsuit he filed after being in a car accident. His friendship with Reiser is a bright spot. They grew up together in Oakland, and Sturgeon wants to help his friend. He's happy to lend the money, which he obtains by taking a loan on the equity in his condo. He writes Reiser a check for $84,000 at the beginning of 2004.

Reiser thinks of Sturgeon as a brother but is concerned about his friend's taste for bondage and sadomasochism. Reiser once watched Sturgeon carve the letters R-A-G-E into his arm, and was alarmed when his friend told him he went to the ER after an S&M experience led to a burst blood vessel in his chest. Reiser is worried that Sturgeon is trying to teach Rory and Niorline that pain can be fun and is furious when Sturgeon gives them what Reiser refers to in a sworn court filing as "gender confused alternative sexuality dolls."

Reiser is also upset that Sturgeon has introduced Nina to the drug ecstasy. When she asks Reiser if he wants to try it, he says no but senses she thinks less of him for refusing. "Nina and Sean both seem to be searching for more and more excitement, and going farther and farther to find it," Reiser writes in the court papers.

Sturgeon doesn't understand why Reiser is upset. It's true that he was involved in the "leather" community and that he's bisexual. But Sturgeon has started going to church, and by the beginning of 2002 he had sworn off kinky sex parties. He's left that life behind. Either way, Reiser stayed friends with him all those years and didn't seem to mind it at the time. Reiser even watched him carve those letters into his arm — it happened back in 1996. It was just body art — Sturgeon saw a lot of people doing it at the time. It was no big deal.

Over the course of 2004, Sturgeon feels he is growing apart from his friend. At the same time, he feels a deep connection with Nina. "She told me that wolves mate once for life and asked me if I was her wolf," he says. "I said yes."

Reiser fears that Nina is sleeping with Sturgeon and that the two are mixing sex with sadomasochism. Nina confirms his suspicion that they are having an affair when she files for divorce. In court filings, Reiser accuses her of being seduced by a "lewd tattooed drug addicted BDSM pimp/whore" with multiple personality disorder.

Sturgeon admits to the affair — he's fallen in love with Nina — but denies that S&M is a part of the relationship. He also thinks Reiser has mismanaged Namesys and squandered its financial resources. He asks for his $84,000 back.

Reiser refuses to return the money. Sturgeon files suit in December, and Reiser lodges a cross-complaint claiming that Sturgeon intentionally seduced Nina in an effort to "show that he was a better man than I and to convince my wife, Nina, to conspire with him to steal the Namesys, Inc. company assets."

Sturgeon feels that Reiser has cast aside their friendship because of greed. "You find out who your true friends are when you stop giving them money," he says. Sturgeon believes that Reiser's judgment has become clouded by megalomania and the belief that he is the world's greatest programmer. The friendship is over.

Reiser agrees that the friendship is finished. He tells the divorce court that Sturgeon "has many wonderful qualities, but as he has gotten older the dark side has triumphed in him." And as for Nina, he thinks the children need to be "protected from what appears to be a mother spiraling downwards in mental stability."

+ request = &owner->request;
+ node = request->node;

Reiser wants me to do something. It's late March, and this is my third visit to the locked meeting room inside the jail. It's raining today; a bucket collects water in the hallway. Reiser is out of solitary, so his hands are no longer cuffed. He puts them on the table and leans toward me.

"I would like to talk you into doing something that will involve a lot of work on your part," he says. He pauses and stares intently at me before explaining that he feels he has been discriminated against because he's a computer geek. He wants me to investigate his custody fight and, among other things, validate his belief that violent videogames are not bad for kids. I agree to look into it and obtain a sheaf of custody filings from the case. I pore through the pages and discover that the issue of videogame violence has taken up a lot of his time over the past few years.

+ done_load_count(&left_parent_load);
+ done_load_count(&right_parent_load);

At the end of 2004, as the divorce and custody proceedings get under way, Nina asks Reiser to stop playing violent videogames like Battlefield Vietnam with young Rory. In that game, napalm explosions envelop villages in fire, bodies are hurled through the air, and, when shot, characters collapse to the ground and choke on their own blood, realistic sound effects included. "Hans has a deeply held unreasonable belief that it is good to show children, no matter how young, violent videos and movies," Nina writes to the court. She wants him to stop.

For Reiser, this is not about videogames; it's about life and death. "Little boys take to violent computer games like monkeys take to trees," he says in a court filing. "[They] do not have instincts that favor combat rehearsal activities for no reason, they have them because they affect whether they live or die a significant amount of the time." Violent videogames are an ideal way to hone these survival skills, for several reasons, he says. A kid is clearly not going to become battle-hardened in the quiet, idyllic neighborhoods of the Oakland hills. Reiser believes that history — in, for instance, an Electronic Arts videogame set in Vietnam — is the best teacher, though he is quick to point out that the learning process will not necessarily be easy. "Becoming a man normally is psychologically traumatic for boys," he says. What matters most, he says, is that the exercise "allows him to achieve results in defending family and country."

Rory has nightmares. When he's awake, he spends time drawing monsters and soldiers, and he tells his mother that he and his father have a secret. Nina thinks that Reiser is still playing videogames with their son and worries that Rory is developing a condition called sensory integration dysfunction, which can make the smallest sound or touch overwhelming.

In the coming months, Rory is frequently sick with a high fever and a sore throat. A year earlier, he was diagnosed with fluid in his ear and treated with five courses of antibiotics, but his condition persists. Nina uses a low-voltage portable laser — a device commonly used in Russia — to zap his inflamed tissue. Rory's health does not improve.

Reiser claims that Nina may be consulting with "memory creation specialists" in order to implant memories in Rory's mind. He insists that he never told Rory to hide the fact that they play Battlefield Vietnam together and is convinced that the specialist created this memory. "I am just lucky these memories only involve a computer game so far," Reiser writes to the court. "I don't want to find out that my child remembers being satanically sacrificed by me in a past life."

On December 22, 2004, the dispute intensifies. Reiser arrives to pick up the kids at the house Nina is renting, and, according to Nina, he shoves her to the ground. The next day, she files a request for a restraining order against Reiser — quickly granted — and reports that he threatened to "make me hurt for the rest of my life."

Reiser is amused by the implication that he is violent. "In reality I am just a computer gamer, and when someone says I have been demented as a result of [videogame] combat the laughter comes easily," he writes. He believes mental health professionals scorn people who "teach the culture of manhood to little boys, with all of its inherent opposition to wallowing in wimpiness."

Reiser delves into this "culture of manhood" in a 32-page filing he submits to the court after Nina accuses him of hurting her. In it, he explains the difference between appropriate and inappropriate violence. Grand Theft Auto, for instance, demonstrates inappropriate violence because players can get away with killing innocent people. "Many other computer games heavily penalize shooting the wrong person, and I prefer those," Reiser says.

He also has a simple solution for Rory's nightmares: magical dynamite. "I explained to him that he could learn to fight the monsters in his dreams and blow them up with the magical dynamite," Reiser recounts. "I did this in terms that expressed a quiet confidence that he could handle the job.

"Note the similarities between how an effective army sergeant would rally frightened men to learn to attack the enemy and the technique I used to teach a small boy to deal with monsters in his dreams," Reiser adds. "One of the sad facts of dream life is that monsters who are lots of joy to blow up will start to leave one's dreams and not want to return."

Reiser says he has a right to blow up monsters, whether in dreams or videogames. The government — in the guise of family court — should have no place prohibiting him or his son from playing Battlefield Vietnam or Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, a fantasy strategy game featuring elves, dwarves, zombies, and wizards. "Should the government be keeping me from showing my son how to direct brave goblin suicide bombers against their elven oppressors?" he asks.

To Reiser, a fundamental bias is at work. "Male geeks, such as myself, are one of America's most hated cultural minorities," he writes. "Unlike racial hatred, it is considered socially acceptable to indulge in such hatred."

Nina, he feels, has exploited this bias. "I am tired of being the punching bag," he concludes. "I could forgive the fighting, and even the mental instability and unfaithfulness, but not the scamming and the lying. Let the children and I leave this all behind. Leave them to me, and let Nina go her way."

In December 2005, the court awards full legal custody to Nina.

+ reiser4_status_write(REISER4_STATUS_DAMAGED, 0,
+ "Filesystem error occured");

Six days after Nina's disappearance, Oakland police find her minivan parked 3 miles from the house where Reiser lives with his mother. The groceries are still in it, tipped over and rotting. Her purse sits on the front passenger seat and contains $94.07 in cash and her cell phone, though the battery has been removed and sits loose in the purse. The van's console holds another $24.60 and one euro. There are no fingerprints other than Nina's.

Reiser's Honda Civic CRX has also disappeared. Beverly, Reiser's mother, reports that her son took her car, a Honda hybrid, the weekend Nina disappeared. At the time, Beverly, 64, was in the Nevada desert at the Burning Man festival. She's a conceptual artist and had gone there to show her Hopeandfearometer, a video kiosk that asks two questions: "What makes you glow?" and "What dangers do you delight in?" The device records responses and then, according to an online description, plays them back in "a cacophonous medley of random hopes and fears."

On her return to Oakland, Beverly is confronted with her own set of hopes and fears. She asks for her car back, but her son refuses, saying that his isn't working. Reiser also tells her that Nina has gone missing. Her ex-husband, Ramon, has warned their son to be careful; he thinks Nina might have gotten involved with the Russian mafia.

The Oakland police think otherwise and unleash a surveillance team to track Reiser. Unmarked cars trail him as he drives his mother's hybrid. They follow him to his children's school, as he gets coffee, and along the winding roads in the Oakland hills. An airplane is dispatched to track him, and his phone is tapped. Still, police cannot locate the missing CRX. There are two explanations for Reiser's reaction to the surveillance:

+ if (in_panic == 0) {
+ in_panic = 1;

Version 00
Though the police believe Reiser is unaware that they are following him, they observe him taking countersurveillance measures. He accelerates slowly on the freeway that skirts the edge of Oakland and then floors it, only to take the next exit at the last possible moment. He drives in circles through a residential neighborhood. He acts like someone who has something to hide. Version 01
Reiser calls his dad and explains that unmarked cars and maybe an airplane are tracking him. In Ramon's opinion, it's an operation beyond the scope of local police. It sounds like the Russian mafia, Ramon says, or maybe the Russian spy agency, the FSB. He tells his son to take evasive action: Exit freeways without warning, drive in circles. "Do anything you can to lose them and protect yourself."

+ ->trace_flags
+ ->debug_flags

On September 13, the Oakland police get a search warrant to scour the Reiser household. They find a drop of blood on a support post in the entry. Oakland's crime lab identifies the sample as a mix of Nina's and Reiser's, though it can't determine how old the blood is. Five days later, the police follow Reiser to the CRX, which is parked on a quiet street in nearby Berkeley. He moves it to a secluded, wooded area of Oakland and dashes uphill toward his mother's house 3 miles away.

Police search the CRX and find that the front passenger seat has recently been removed. The floor is soaked, as if it had been washed. There are heavy-duty garbage bags, cloth towels, masking tape, and two books: Masterpieces of Murder and Homicide. Police also find another drop of blood and match it to Nina.

+ warning("Target found unexpectedly");
+ result = RETERR(-EIO);

It's a warm Sunday morning in May, and I'm in the last pew at All Nations Presbyterian Church in an Oakland suburb. Light streams through stained glass and illuminates floating motes of dust. A smattering of congregants stand and recite prayers. I've come here because Sean Sturgeon — Reiser's childhood friend and Nina's ex-lover — has invited me, though I've yet to spot him. He wants me to understand that he is a Christian now. He is eager for me to know this because last week, on the phone, he told me he had killed eight people.

"The taste of death will not defile us," the congregation chants. I think back to the previous Sunday. My phone rang late at night. The caller ID read prison. It was Reiser. His defense team had just gotten a call from a deputy district attorney, who told them that Sturgeon had confessed to a number of killings but denied any connection to Nina's case. The confession had come months ago, early in the investigation of Nina's disappearance. Reiser sounded giddy. Surely this would raise reasonable doubt in jurors' minds.

The next afternoon, Sturgeon called me. I had been trying to reach him for two months. Now he was breathing into my ear. If I knew all the details of his friendship with Reiser, he said, I "would weep piss and blood."

I didn't know where to begin. If he'd actually killed eight people, the police would have arrested him, right? Why hadn't this come out before? Was he fantasizing? When I called the DA, he refused to comment, citing a gag order issued three days earlier by the judge in the Reiser case. Oakland police also refuse to comment, citing the gag order.

"We are the raisers of the dead," intones a woman standing in the chancel. "The power of death will not defy us."

I sense Sturgeon before I see him. He has appeared to my left, staring at me with pale blue eyes. He is unshaven, and the skin around his right eye twitches.

"Hello," he says and then turns his attention to the service.

"The spirit of death will not destroy us," the crowd mutters in a monotone.

We sit silently, side by side for the hour-long liturgy and, when it is over, stand in the lobby and talk about the people Sturgeon says he killed; the rest of the congregation sips coffee and chats.

He explains that he was abused as a child. As an adult, he targeted those who had hurt him. "If you aren't one of those people," he says, "you have nothing to fear." And now that he's a Christian, he is no longer violent. He says he stopped killing in 1995 and made a full confession to the police investigating Nina's disappearance. He did it without a lawyer because he wanted to prove that he had nothing to hide. Even so, he won't tell me anything that might help confirm the killings, like the names of his victims, claiming that the information would draw attention away from the facts in Reiser's case. But he continues to cooperate with the police, even inviting them to check his gun collection and test whether the weapons had recently been fired. "Give me some sodium pentothal or any truth serum, put a little ecstasy in there and ask me if I killed Nina," he says. "I have never been a threat to her."

The last time he called Nina was the Friday before she disappeared. He wanted to find a good time to drop off some money. He hadn't seen her for four months — as part of the court-approved divorce agreement, Sturgeon was barred from visiting the kids, who stayed mostly with Nina. The enforced separation strained their relationship, until they finally broke up. Still, Sturgeon wanted to help her financially. Reiser was often late with child-support payments, and Nina didn't have a full-time job. "I was her ‚maid of honor' when she married Hans; I wasn't going to let her down," Sturgeon says, explaining that he dressed up as a woman for the wedding and stood beside Nina for the service. After their friendship turned romantic, Sturgeon felt even more compelled to chip in. "I don't just sleep with a woman and say, ‚See you later, I had my fun.'" He wouldn't abandon her. Nina, he explains, thought of him as her mate for life, her wolf.

The coffee hour ends, and we file out into the sun with the other congregants. We talk for a few more minutes, and then I watch Sturgeon get into his Subaru and drive away. The car has two large images of wolves stuck on the hatchback.

+ "Looking for page %lu of file %llu (size %lli). "
+ "No file items found (%d). File is corrupted?\n",

Reiser's lips are chapped, cracked, and peeling. It is my fourth and final visit, and I have asked him to tell me where he thinks Nina is. He doesn't answer. He wants to talk about his file system again.

While he launches into the intricacies of database science, I'm thinking, "Where is the front passenger seat of your car?" He has never explained this. It seems a fundamental hole in his defense. But he won't stop talking. When I try to interrupt, he insists I let him finish. It's as if the file system holds all the answers.

So I take the hint, and that night, in my office, I start scouring the 80,496 lines of the Reiser4 source code. Eventually I stumble across a passage that starts at line 78,077. It's not part of the program itself — it's an annotation, a piece of non-executable text in plain English. It's there for the benefit of someone who has chosen to read this far into the code. The passage explains how memory structures are born, grow, and eventually die. It concludes: "Death is a complex process."

†All computer code excerpted verbatim from Reiser4.

A lttiel, ietrnestnig fcat!!!

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:37:56 GMT

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

A weekend i will not forget... and scam artists...

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:41:09 GMT

    Starting with the good: Rach and i stayed at Aaron and Miranda's place. It was a great time. I wish we didn't have to go to the wedding though... at least Ad and Al were there... otherwise i would have used the toilette the whole time (#2) and possibly more. There were some good aspects of the wedding but we stayed too long, i just wanted to hang out with Aaron and Miranda. The weekend was quite a frenzy of odd occurrences. The first night we were there we went out to eat and got some drinks at an interesting little place in Fargo. Then on the way home Aaron and i came upon a rolled over truck in the middle of his road. We thought there would be a bludgeoned man inside but there was instead a mess of drunk people who were friends of the driver. It was interesting watching them, i felt like i was in Run Ronnie Run. At one point these four guys, probably not too much older then me, were trying to flip the large pick-up truck (full length bed) by hand. It did not budge.

    Aaron and i found out how to make the terrorists next best friend. It's extremely simple to make a tazer out of a regular camera. It produces a very bright flash of light and enough energy to bond the wires to metal. We put quite a few pits in those coins that were trying to take us out. Any terrorist or paranoid traveler could get this through security without a problem. i'll prove it next time i take a flight.

    The next night i was awakened by tiny little fists coming bolting against me. Rachel was doing her waking ritual. i'm a heavy sleeper. Apparently the severe weather sirens had been going off. i thought it was nothing... just a little windy. Besides, the sirens weren't going off by the time i became fully conscious. i looked out the window and the trees were swishing around. Suddenly i heard what really sounded like a train wheels humming, whistle and all. The tree out the back window stopped swishing, instead all of it's branches were being pulled straight across like a gelled hair-do. No damage was done to their home.

         One last note
    i'm going to say that 96.9% of insurance agents are scam artists. i am pretty sure every insurance agent will die at Armageddon.

Kay & Gee Bruthas' Store..

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:32:50 GMT

   Yesterday, Rachel and i went shopping for two new suites for me. K&G Men's Store has a sale: purchase two suites and get them for $150.00. We payed a little more though since almost all the suites that are on that sale are on one 3x3 large rack.
   i did end up finding some suites that looked good on me. My favorite one was not for me... i tried it on and the bald black guy, Kermit, who looked like he should have been a taxi driver in Florida, said it's a Magic Johnson suite. Apparently Magic has a clothing line? Either way i assumed he was saying is for black people and not a nerdy white guy like some people (not me). When i returned to the dressing room i couldn't help but wonder if everyone sewing up the suites had AIDS or HIV. i figure Magic would hire people he felt an affinity too. Then i thought,"They must have a pretty heavy employee turn over.
   Kermit helped quite a bit in choosing a suite. i thought i was a size 36 but he said i'm a 40. So i got a suite that fits! He went out to the floor because i was having trouble finding one. He came back with a couple that he thought would suite me well (hehe). Rachel wanted me to get a dark grey suite... yuck! i can't stand shopping for suites they're all so plain.

Linux Programmer Accused of Murdering Wife

Mon, 07 May 2007 16:22:38 GMT

This is an interesting case. The man who created the ReiserFS Journaling System has been accused of murdering his wife. His friend, a witness on the case has just confessed to killing nine people. However, those murders are not connected to the trial. This is a very strange case, take a look at the article below. The oddest thing to me is that i thought programmers did not have wives.

Reiser Prosecution Jolt: Victim's Ex-Lover Confesses to Eight Killings
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Wired.com

A former lover of the missing wife of Linux programmer and accused spouse killer Hans Reiser has confessed to killing eight people unrelated to the case, prosecutors informed the defense last week.

Sean Sturgeon, a one-time friend of Reiser's, had already been a focus of the defense team's efforts to shift suspicion off Reiser in the disappearance of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser. Sturgeon's alleged confession to a series of unrelated murders will likely complicate the trial, which is set to begin Monday.

"(Deputy District Attorney) Paul Hora indicated that the court was ordering him to divulge this information," defense attorney Richard Tamor said last Friday. "He also said that Sturgeon had confessed to a potential ninth murder, but that Sturgeon wasn't sure if the victim was fully dead when he left him."

"Sturgeon claims that the murders were in retaliation for his abuse as a child," said Ramon Reiser, Hans Reiser's father, who was briefed by the defense team over the weekend and spoke to Wired News on Sunday.

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Don Clay issued a gag order barring attorneys on both sides from discussing Sturgeon.

Prosecutor Hora declined to comment on the confession Thursday, or on any law enforcement investigation of Sturgeon, citing the gag order. "In fact, I can't even comment on the gag order because the order is sealed," Hora said.

Reached by phone Wednesday night, Sturgeon did not deny that he had made the confession.

Sturgeon's answers in the 40-minute interview were frequently evasive, and he declined to answer specific questions about the alleged killings. "I have offered to be judged for my crimes," he said at one point. "I take responsibility for what I have done."

Nonetheless, he vigorously denied killing Nina Reiser. "I've never been a threat to Nina Reiser," Sturgeon said. "I will take a lie-detector test. I will take whatever passes for truth serum these days." He also indicated that the evidence pointed to Hans Reiser's guilt. "I will not take credit for what another has done," he said. "Let Hans take a lie-detector test about Nina."

It's unclear when Sturgeon made the confession -- he would say only, "I have cooperated since day one." Asked why he had confessed at all, he responded with this question: "In a murder case, if somebody has killed, who is a witness, is it relevant? Yes or no?"

When this reporter responded that it was relevant, Sturgeon said, "Then you have the answer to your question."

Sturgeon added that confessing was one of the most difficult decisions of his life. He also regrets being a source of distraction in the case, joking that he is not so much a red herring as a "red Sturgeon."

Nina Reiser was last seen Sept. 3 at the home Hans Reiser shared with his mother in the Montclair area of Oakland, California. Her van turned up five days later, abandoned on a quiet residential street two miles from Reiser's home. Though no body has been found, Reiser was arrested Oct. 10 after the Oakland Police Department found small drops of blood in his house and in his Honda CRX. DNA testing tied the blood to Nina Reiser.

According to testimony in preliminary hearings in the case, Nina Reiser had once dated Sturgeon, but broke off their relationship in January 2006 because she was unhappy with his lifestyle and taste for sadomasochism.

Premium bike riding!

Thu, 03 May 2007 02:44:33 GMT

    Today was my first day commuting by bicycle since 1999. My dad and i were tearing up a concrete slab at our fist job of the year. i forgot how heavy a 2x2 piece of concrete can be. It was great though! On my bike ride i went about 17 miles all together. i took the long way home and did some premium trail riding on some off-road biking trails. A Doberman came tearing at me, i didn't think he was fenced in, but he was.

    That Ukrainian guy in Everything is Illuminated (a crappy movie) sounded groovy in the way he blabbed. i like how he said that things were "premium" when he thought something was very good. i just wish i could pull of using it... he sounded premium.

    i think i'm going to start video taping myself riding my bike down trails. i bet i could add some groovy music like in this video. In fact, my video would look a lot like this one.

A cat from the sewers...

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:18:38 GMT

    Yesterday, Rachel and i were walking around our apartment complex when i noticed a cat in one of the sewer drains. It was sitting on the metal drain right underneath the curb. Probably for a little shade. Just as soon as i saw the little hobo he had jumped down into the sewer system! We could still see the little hobo just peaking up at us. It was sitting on a ledge crying.
    "Oh no." Rachel said sadly,"something is wrong with him."
    "No worries," i said,"i will save his life!"

    i lifted the enormous manhole off the drain and threw it a at least thirty feet away. i told Rachel not to worry and jumped feet first into the manhole, disregarding the ladder. When i landed below i crouched so that the cat would not be startled. There was a family of Hell's Angels living down there! They claimed the cat was theirs. i knew the cat was hurt so i said,"It is quite obvious that you are not taking into account the well being of this cat. i am going to rescue it from the greasy likes of you people!"

    The battle began. Three burly, bearded grease giants came barreling toward me with chains and mammoth fists. i could hear the of the giants flapping around as they came hurtling toward me. However, it was dark, they were unable to see me. As they got closer and they were able to see me visibly i could sense their fear growing. i met them in their charge with a shrill scream and followed through with destructive power. The battle was mine.
    As i mounted two of their bikes at once i calmed their terrified woman saying,"i can see my work here is done. i will do no harm to you." and i roared off leaving the giants and their wives behind.
    i made my way through the sewers to an exit. i went back to Rachel and gave her one of the motorcycles. We brought the cat home to keep. He had roughed up paws so ~~we brought him to the vet~~ i nursed him back to health. i was ~~crying~~ so noble. ( See pictures... no longer hosted)

A concert last night...

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:16:07 GMT

A group of us went to a concert last night. i think the band was called Staunch Redhead. The opening band was cool! They were called something like Re-run Movies and they had a lady in a black dress dancing around. There was an Asian girl in the opening band as well. She was also in the second band and i saw her in the crowd a couple of times as well. Every time she was wearing very different clothes. The first time i saw her she was wearing black pants and a t-shirt. Then she was wearing no pants and a puffy shirt. Then when i was leaving i saw she was wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt. And this time she had a purse! Asian people change their clothes super fast!

Another strange thing. In the crowd there was this guy to my left. He had curly hair, glasses and a plaid button up shirt that was hanging open to reveal a black shirt. His wife was trying to get really close to me and dance with me and stuff. i was really uncomfortable. He kept grabbing my butt and stuff too. He looked really familiar... and then he said something to me in a sort of witty way with a touch of sarcasm,"Hey man, I like Justin Timberlake." ( Don't you see? Minneapolis is weird! )

Just an epiphany...

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:21:37 GMT

i realize that the magazine may not be the problem... it is todays popular music that i dislike. Since the magazine focuses, mostly, on the popular music of our day i am not interested in it. i do not like bands like Bright Eyes or the music of Justin Timberlake. i do enjoy Bob Dylan and The Beatles though. It seems that there is always an article on at least one of them in each issue. After looking through a bit on the website i'd say i'm about 92% disinterested in Rolling Stone Magazine. However, i did find this article pleasing.

Blogging “American Idol”: J.Lo’s Goosepimples Are Still Pimples
- 4/11/07, 12:50 pm EST -

Ay carumba. It’s the dreaded “Latin Week” on American Idol – a chance for the eight remaining contestants to prove they can suck in two different languages, aided by mentor Jennifer “I Swoon for Blake” Lopez. Unfortunately, the only one who sang en Espanol was Sanjaya Malakar, who grew his facial hair into a post-pubescent goatee that looked like Paula might if she skipped her bi-weekly trip to the aesthetician. Idol doesn’t always have an episode dedicated to Latin music, but it’s a bloodbath whenever they do. A few seasons back, they showcased the catalog of Gloria Estefan in an hour that made me want to pour boric acid into my ears. Last night’s performances weren’t quite that bad, which isn’t saying much. Even powerhouse competitors like Melinda and Lakisha – especially boobtastic in her low-cut frock — failed to wow the judges, and came off matronly and winded, respectively.

The worse half of the eight – Chris Richardson, Phil Stacey, Haley Scarnato, and Sanjaya Malakar – blew in the exact same way they blow every week. Richardson’s take on Santana and Rob Thomas’s “Smooth” got Paula to c’mon, shake her body, baby, do that conga, but he sounded like an off-pitch backing singer. Say nothing of Sanjaya, who officially became fruitier than a football bat last night when he wooed the camera with his sugar-shock-inducing rendition of “Bessame Mucho.” Remarkably, because his voice sounded stronger than usual, the most disappointing thing about Malakar’s performance was the fact that it was considerably less ridiculous than he’s been the past few weeks. And if not ridiculous or questionably coiffed, what’s the little dude got left to offer?

Still, the axe dangleth precariously over the other two members of the suck quartet: Stacey and Scarnato. Randy called Haley’s frigid version of “Turn the Beat Around” “really karaoke,” but a better description would have been to say it felt like the talent portion of a Miss America competition, minus the talent portion of the talent portion. She’s no dummy, though. Ever since she got a boost by showing some leg during the British Invasion episode, Haley’s raised her hemline each week. Though, even in satin hotpants, she’s the unsexiest hot chick this side of Nikki Hilton, Haley’s uber-quads seem to have a hypnotic power over voters. “I think you have a very good tactic at the moment,” Simon said. “Wear as least amount of clothes as possible.” Clearly, staring at the hypnotic uber-quads is degrading his command of the Queen’s English. Assuming she squeaks through this week, expect to see Haley in nothing but a bejeweled g-string leotard next Tuesday.

The millions of quad-loving hornballs watching the show won’t want to miss that sight, which is why this week’s loser will be Phil, not Haley. He’s been on the bubble for a few weeks now, and his decidedly un-spicy rendition of “Maria Maria” sounded the death knell. His rehearsal with J.Lo may have given her goosepimples, but last night’s performance gave me zzzzzzits. It was such a giant snore that even his nasal braying made me sleepy. “It was a bit lifeless, a bit flat, your voice cracked toward the end, there’s nothing I can get particularly positive or excited about,” said Simon. Phil tried to redeem himself by relating a pointless anecdote about how his daughter – nice play for the family values vote, Phil! – just got a plush cow she’s named Simon Cow-ell. If that cow could talk, it would say, “Step into my office, Phil, because you’re f***in’ fired.”

-- Jenny Eliscu

Microsoft Training Videos (Featuring Ricky Gervais)

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:30:10 GMT

Using my favorite Firefox plugin, StumbleUpon, i found some funny Microsoft Training videos. Apparently he was featured in a few. He's interviewed and also brought around the grounds and offices of Microsoft Corporation.

Training Video #1

Training Video #2

Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID)

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:26:19 GMT

If you're interested in how the planets, moons, astroids, suns and other orbital entities work try playing around with My Solar System. The website also has a bunch of other Math, Physics and Science related games. Just click on simulations.

i just read this story about a crazy woman. If you don't read it all at least read half way through. Sometimes online news articles will disappear so i've posted a link to the original story and the whole story below.

I Won't Be Happy Until I Lose My Legs

Ever since she was little, Susan Smith has felt there is something wrong with her body. Her determination to 'fix' things has twice landed her in hospital

Monday January 29, 2007
The Guardian

I was six when I first became aware of my desire to lose my legs. I don't remember what started it - there was no specific trigger. Most people want to change something about themselves, and the image I have of myself has always been one without legs.

To the general public, people like me are sick and strange, and that's where it ends. I think it is a question of fearing the unknown. I have something called body identity integrity disorder (BIID), where sufferers want to remove one or more healthy limbs. Few people who haven't experienced it themselves can understand what I am going through. It is not a sexual thing, it is certainly not a fetish, and it is nothing to do with appearances. I simply cannot relate to myself with two legs: it isn't the "me" I want to be. I have long known that if I want to get on with my life I need to remove both legs. I have been trapped in the wrong body all this time and over the years I came to hate my physical self.

As a teenager, in the privacy of my own home, I used to play by myself at being an amputee. I would pretend I had one leg, strapping the other one up behind me and wearing oversize trousers so there was no shape. I knew even then that it wasn't normal, that it wasn't something to share with friends or my parents. But, trussed up like that, I would be quite happy and satisfied for a while.

At 23, I met my future husband and we were very happy together - but I was leading a double life. He did not know about my BIID at first so it wasn't easy to pretend. I went through periods when having him around was very disturbing. I gradually withdrew into myself, becoming private and secretive.

There is no instruction manual for those who want to remove their own limbs, but I always knew I would do it. I had eventually, told my husband that one day I would lose my legs. It took many years for him to understand why, but he did realise it was part of me, and I suppose he accepted it.

Two years ago, I told him that now was the time and I was going to remove my left leg. My first attempt was in March 2005. Of course I was scared of dying, but I had got to a point in my life where I could no longer fight it.

First, I needed to freeze and kill the leg so that surgeons would amputate it afterwards. I ordered dry ice pellets from a company near Edinburgh (the same stuff that is used in discos for the smoke effect). Nobody asked what it was for. I bought 40kg - it evaporates very quickly, so you have to buy a great deal. I put on layers of pantyhose, because you do not want it sticking to you, spread it in the back of the car and sat with my leg immersed in it for one hour. The pain was indescribable: it hurt so much I passed out a few times. I was scared, but more so of failure. I am that kind of person - I never fail.

I had not damaged the leg enough to have it amputated in hospital, so the following September I made a second attempt, and this time I stayed in the dry ice for four hours. I was sat with my legs across the back seat of the car, the windows wide open and the footwell filled with dry ice, covering the leg and topping it up as it evaporated. When I could bear no more I called my husband, who came and pulled me out. The leg was hard as stone. I had third-degree burns and the pain was horrible. But it wasn't enough: I now know you need a minimum of six hours to kill a leg completely.

My husband drove me to hospital, but they refused to amputate. Incredibly, they said the wounds were superficial and that I would be walking within a few months. I really thought this time that the surgeon would give me the amputation I needed, but they seemed resolute. I went through all sorts of stages as they worked on my leg to save it. Sometimes I found the whole thing very funny, at other times I was crying, and sometimes I didn't think I would live through it. I reached my lowest point when they discharged me from hospital four weeks later, after eight sessions of surgery, with the leg still attached. I thought I was going to have to make a third attempt. But this time I would have to do it differently, perhaps put my leg under a train so they would have nothing more than a stump to stitch up.

I slowly recovered my strength back at home. I had dropped from 9 stone to under 7 stone during the operations and wanted to give myself time physically to recover before trying again. But the leg became so infected that there was a danger of the bacteria getting into the bloodstream and killing me. I had so much fever I was sleeping 24 hours a day. My mum sat by my bedside, waking me every hour to make sure I was still alive. She has known about my condition since I was a teenager, but I know it shocked her to see me finally make an attempt. After nine months of agony, I told my GP that if I didn't see someone fast, I would take off the leg myself. Within two days I had an appointment with a different surgeon.

The amputation, last June, went without a problem, and my left leg was removed from just above the knee. I felt better as soon as I came round. In fact, I felt so good in hospital that I was ready to go home straight away had they let me. My bag was packed and I was ready to leave. The Tuesday after the operation I drove myself home in an automatic car, and the next day I was almost back to my normal life.

I already feel more complete now that one leg is off. I have always been an outgoing kind of person, but my confidence is much higher now as my body is more like I want it to be. For the first time I feel able to move on and lead the life I have always wanted. In many ways I am starting again. I know it sounds odd, but it is incredibly exciting. Running the house, doing the gardening, going shopping - these are all things I manage easily by myself, even though now I might use a wheelchair or crutches. My husband has been supportive. He thinks I look a little strange missing a leg but says that, after all he has seen me go through, he accepts it. For now, he is just happy that I am happy, and I have promised to leave the remaining leg on for as long as possible; I know that losing that will be really difficult for him.

My youngest child is 10 and the eldest 15, and they do not know the truth about the removal of my leg yet. I told them I had a problem back in March and have had complications since. As a mother, I felt bad about not telling them the truth, especially when I was so ill I thought I might not make it. But now I feel it is better to protect them until they are old enough to understand that this was my choice. They will probably be in their 20s before I reach that point. Maybe they will figure it out for themselves before then, anyway. But I have given so much to my home and family that I feel entitled to do this for myself.

Only a handful of people know the truth about what I have done, and some of them call me crazy or mad. I suppose it is understandable. Even my sister doesn't accept me as an amputee. She lives just up the road but hasn't come to see me in months. In her eyes I am not a complete person any more. But I can't let that affect me; the problem is more hers than mine.

I think BIID will stay taboo until people get together and bring it out. A hundred years ago, it was taboo to be gay in many societies, and 50 years ago the idea of transsexuals was abhorrent to most. I have tried to make the condition more understood but it is difficult to get a case out in the open by yourself. My psychiatrist went to a meeting last year in Paris, and many doctors there told her that they had operated on people who needed an amputation under mysterious circumstances, and how happy the person was when they woke up. It led them to believe that perhaps BIID is more prevalent than people think.

Removing the next leg will not be any easier than the first; the pain will be horrendous. But I have no regrets about the path I have chosen. In fact, if I regret anything, it is that I didn't do this sooner. For the first time in my life, I can get on with being the real me.

· Susan Smith is a pseudonymn. As told to John Cantlie.

STEREO Got Some Images...

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:34:46 GMT

UPDATE: Also, the Wii isn't that hard to use. Take a loot at Wii Guy.

Well, at least NASA didn't screw this one up, no crash! The spacecraft was sent to get 3D photos of the sun. The first images from the STEREO have arrived!

STEREO Gallery

Weird!!!

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 05:25:46 GMT

    A few weeks ago our friend Ashley told us she saw AMAZING DEALS for plane tickets to Chicago. We decided to go. Then i look for shows that will be going on during our visit. It would be nice to see one i thought. i come along Deerhoof. Huh we should go.

    This Monday we find out Ryan and Mel are going to Chicago for THAT SAME SHOW! Weird!!!

    Right now we're in Chicago, taking it easy in our hotel room. i go on this website and click to the friends page. i see Aaron Clieyde is going to be there now?! Who else is going to be there? What is going on here?!

Giant Python Swallows 11 Dogs!

Microsoft Buys out Firefox, YIPPEEEEE!!!

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 03:11:10 GMT

This satirical bunch of bits is so well done, i love it!

Microsoft Firefox! i'm so hippity happy!