Shafe Shifter Just another guy on the internet.

15Feb/110

Help Mom, There are liberals under the bed!

Kids Book???

In case you missed this monstrosity, I present to you Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! Kill me now....

From the description on Amazon.com:

This full-color illustrated book is a fun way for parents to teach young children the valuable lessons of conservatism. Written in simple text, readers can follow along with Tommy and Lou as they open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland.

From the Publisher

Would you let your child read blatantly liberal stories with titles such as "King & King;" "No, George, No;" or "It's Just a Plant?" Unless you live in Haight-Ashbury or write for the New York Times, probably not. But with the nation's libraries and classrooms filled with overtly liberal children's books advocating everything from gay marriage to marijuana use, kids everywhere are being deluged with left-wing propaganda. "Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed" is the book conservative parents have been seeking. This illustrated book -- the first in the "Help! Mom!" series from Kids Ahead -- is perfect for parents who seek to share their traditional values with their children, as well as adults who wish to give a humorous gift to a friend. Praised by Rush Limbaugh and hailed as "the answer to a baseball mom's prayers" by talk radio host Melanie Morgan, this book has already been the subject of coverage in The Wall Street Journal and Harper's magazine. Written by a self-proclaimed "Security Mom for Bush" and featuring hilarious full-color illustrations by a Reuben Award winning artist, it is certain to be one of the most talked about children's books of the year.

--- UnSnip ---

Be sure to click to have a look inside the cover and read a few pages. Anyone else think this is supposed to be a joke, or seriously for kids?

Katherine Debrecht has more recently graced us with another fine literary work called Help Mom, Radicals Are Ruining My Country..   The description reads:

"A hilarious and entertaining way for parents to sit down with their children and teach them the origins of the new Tea Party movement and the importance of standing up for liberty and the American Dream.Follow Tommy and Lou as they struggle to keep their swing set business afloat despite 246 czars, onerous regulations and sky-high taxes in these troubling times. Will Tommy and Lou finally decide to join the other kids on the corner in standing up for freedom or will they continue to fear being vilified by the press and demeaned by Marxus Obundus (“the One”)? "

Unfortunately even the publisher has pulled this one from their website making it difficult to make fun of.

26Jan/110

Yahoo Branding Fail

yahoo

The brand managers at Yahoo are genius... (sarcasm). I just got an email from Yahoo that started out like this:

Dear Yahoo! Calendar and Yahoo! Notepad Customer,
Yahoo! Calendar Beta will soon be renamed "All-New Yahoo! Calendar," and Yahoo! Notepad Beta will soon be renamed "All-New Yahoo! Notepad."....

Seems worthy of a mass email, don't ya think?

26Jan/110

Quick Debian Server Provisioning Script

Here is a quick little bash script that I use to initially provision Debian LAMP servers from a fresh install. This should setup PHP with all the whistles and bells, a whole handful of utilities as well as install webmin for you.

Nothing to complicated here, just a quick little script to speed up your life.

clear
clear
echo 'Debian Provisioning Script'
echo '01-12-2011 TNL Total Solutions'
echo 'http://www.tnlsoft.com'
echo ''
read -p "Press any key to begin provisioning"
clear
echo 'Preparing server for provisioning...'
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade
echo ''
echo 'All existing packaged updated'
echo ''
read -p "Press any key to begin installing NEW packages"
clear
echo 'Installing Required Packagesn'
apt-get install apache2 apache2-utils apache2.2-common bind9 bind9-host bind9utils curl gawk denyhosts sendmail ftp proftpd gzip iptables lftp libapache2-mod-perl2	libapache2-mod-php5 libapache2-reload-perl libcurl3 libxml2 lynx mysql-client mysql-common mysql-server ntp ntpdate openssh-client openssh-server openssl perl perl-base perl-modules php-pear php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-dev php5-gd php5-geoip php5-imagick php5-imap php5-ldap php5-mcrypt php5-mhash php5-mysql php5-odbc php5-xmlrpc proftpd python rdate samba samba-common sendmail sendmail-base sendmail-bin sendmail-cf sensible-mda subversion tar unzip wget makeself zip libghc6-openal-dev libsage2 libsdl-gfx1.2-4 mingw32 mingw32-binutils mingw32-runtime
echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Creating Skel'
mkdir /etc/skel/www
mkdir /etc/skel/logs
mkdir /etc/skel/www/cgi-bin

cd /var/www
rm index.html
wget http://www.tnlsoft.com/debian/index.txt
mv index.txt index.php
chmod 0777 index.php
cp index.php /etc/skel/www

echo ''
echo ''

echo 'Reconfiguring PHP 5'
cd /etc/php5/apache2
mv php.ini php.ini.old
wget http://www.tnlsoft.com/debian/php.ini

echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Installing PEAR Packages'
pear install Mail
pear install Net_SMTP

echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Enabling Apache Mods'
a2enmod dav_fs
a2enmod dav
a2enmod rewrite

echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Restarting Apache'
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

echo ''
echo ''
echo 'Installing Webminn'
cd /root
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/webadmin/webmin/1.530/webmin-1.530.tar.gz
tar -xvf webmin-1.530.tar.gz
cd webmin-1.530
./setup.sh
echo 'Done!'

Grab it here: http://dev.tnlsoft.com/download/debian_provision.zip

17Jan/111

Signs Of The Times?

I was going through my phone and noticed I have a tendency to take pictures of things that just strike me as a "WTF Moment"... here are some of those pics...


The first in the roll, was a sign at a bank. It seems that someone could have worded this better. This one really makes you feel like your money is safe... and you are safe as well...


When I buy my dog treats it's always good to note that they are non-toxic.


Open - TELL 8! Because 8 needs to know!


This gem was sighted in a pub in Newport, OR during a weekend vacation.



I had never considered the risk of drowning in an elevator until this...


Recession-proof haircuts?


This has obviously been such a problem that a sign was required.....


from another local pub....


You gotta love free stuff.. but what are they saying about the back of the brig?  And have people been taking their free couches and "briging" them back to the point where it has become problematic enough to require a sign?


When you are in Winco buying dog treats... No Sampling PLEASE!


This just confused me.. to the point where wikipedia was required...

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3Jan/110

Top 10 Best Of 2010

Here is a short compilation of the top 10 favorite posts here.  These are based on a combined rating of the most shared posts here as well as my favorites:

20/20 Piece About Heavy Metal From The 80s.
This is hilarious.  A real piece of investigative reporting from 20/20.

Top 5 Flash Mobs
A great collection of the best flash mob videos found on the net.

New Puppy
This is a video of the puppy I had just aquired, I've had her for just about a year now.  A stray that no one would claim... Awesome!

Top Offbeat Vacation Spots
A collection of places I'd like to visit that aren't quite on the beaten path.
Part 1 | Part 2

Bad Tranlations

A friend of mine bought one of those ipod knockoffs from China.  This is a scan of the instructions.  <sarcasm>The english is amazing</sarcasm>

My Summer Working On A Web Series
A cool little writeup with a video about working on a pretty hardcore video production

Bohemia Ghost Town
A little low-down on the local ghost town, along with a video exploring the ruins.

E-Cigarettes
The video attached to this post has become quite popular.  This is a full review of an E-Cigarette.

Advice on Brewing Your Own Beer
This guide explains what style of music must be played based on what style beer you are brewing.  This is a very important post.

My Battle With The Local FOX Affiliate
This post explains a little hack war I had with the local FOX affiliate when they dropped my favorite star trek show.  It's a re-post that is over a decade old, but still makes me laugh.

There you have it.  My picks from here from 2010.
Have a great new year!

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