Must watch Penguins of Madagascar fight Dr. Blowhole.
Category: 40yrs
Quote of the Day
Heh.
In related news, Evan Bayh has decided to retire. He said he wants to spend more time scolding his family for moving too far to the left.
Snowpocalypse: Aftermath
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About 6 feet
Well, I ain’t cleaning the sidewalks for a while.
Thy finally cleared the street on Friday, and they were very thorough.
All the snow, except immediately around some parked cars, was put on the curb by front loaders, and our little road is completely clear.
The resulting berms of snow are vary between 4 and 6 feet.
Damn, It Feels Good to be a Banksta
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Not clear of the provenance. It showed up on DU
What I Did Today
I shoveled the f%$#ing driveway, for the 2nd time in a f%$#ing week.
At least the snow was lighter than the last time, and between the powdery nature of the snow, and the wind we got some of those wind-sculpted funny snow shapes.
I’ve never seen this phenomenon this far south before.
Well, At least the snow plows found their way our tertiary road, finally, today.
After I was done, and to be fair the kids shoveled a path to the mailbox for us and the mail man, I thought that I deserved a beer, so I drove to the liquor store, and picked up a 6 pack, because, dammit, I deserved a beer.
Took the wife and kids to Java Mama’s for hot chocolate and sweets,
As to my beer, I bought Victory Brewing Company‘s Hop Devil, which is a nice, and inexpensive, brew from a small Pennsylvania brewery/brew pub.
It’s a bit over-hopped, but that’s kind of obvious from the name, but it’s from near by and fresh.
On my 2nd bottle.
Snowed In
At least 14 inches so far, on top of the 24+ inches last week, and school has been canceled for the whole week.
What to do?
I make soup. I just put the blending stick to split pea soup.
I got a soup/pea packet at the grocery store, and followed the recipe, adding onions, celery, carrots, and (my Sharon’s* suggestion) a parsnip.
I also added cubed pastrami,† which I cooked in cheese cloth, so that the meat flavored the soup, but II could pull the meat out when I blended it, and then I add the meat back to the soup.
Off to a late lunch.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
†I know that ham and a ham bone is traditional for split pea soup, but if I were to use ham in my house, on my wife’s dishes, my continued ability to breath would be in doubt, so no thank you, I like breathing.
Remember the Furious Fuchsia Dodge Challenger?
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Oh My God it’s the Barney Car!
It’s the Barney car!I knew that it was wrong and evil, and I posted such, though I think that at tht time I focused more on stupid than evil.
Well, now now I have proof that it’s not just stupid, it’s Evil (beginning with a capital “e” and ending with a sputter).
Tekeli li!! Tekeli li!! Tekeli li!! Tekeli li!!
H/t Oggie at the Shortskoolbus BBS for the Photoshop.
If On the Jury, I Would Vote to Acquit
A group of German pensioners are on trial for abducting and imprisoning their investment adviser:
A retired architect and four other pensioners took their financial adviser hostage and held him in a purpose-built prison in Bavaria after their stock market investments failed, a court has heard.
The 74-year-old architect, identified only as Roland K, told a court in Traunstein, southern Germany, that he and his accomplices thought their financial adviser had “cheated and taken the piss” out of them after their investments in the US property market evaporated. As a result, he told the court, they had “decided to invite him for a few days’ holiday in Upper Bavaria”.
Roland K denied kidnapping but admitted the group, including his seventh wife, 79-year-old Sieglinde, Willi D, 60, and Iris F, 64, a retired doctor, abducted James Amburn at his home in Speyer, southern Germany, in June before transporting him in the boot of a car to Roland K’s house at the lakeside resort of Chiemsee, where he had built a prison for him in the cellar.
I don’t approve of such behavior, and I would not do so myself, but if these sorts of vigilante justice are nullified by juries on a regular basis, bankers will start looking to preserving their skins, and not their bonuses and tax dodges.
If they don’t get the message soon, we will see the people with guns shooting bank presidents.
I hope that the bankers get the message before we start seeing widespread murders.
The Iranians are Selling Someone the Brooklyn Bridge
No, I am not talking about their nuclear program.
I am talking about their claim that they have flown a prototype stealth aircraft, or it may be a subscale drone demonstrator
The source is Fars News, and the aircraft is called the ‘Sofreh Mahi'(flatfish):
“The research model of this plane which staged a successful flight passed all radar-evading tests that we desired,” Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Army Air Force General Aziz Nasirzadeh told FNA.
The General said that the flatfish-inspired shape of the aircraft as well as the materials used in its structure have provided the aircraft with the radar-evading capability.
Ummm….Flatfish? You are calling your aircraft a Flounder?!?!?!
I need a screen wipe.
Oh, For Pete’s Sake!!!!
It’s snowing again …………… Hard.
They are predicting another 18-24 inches over the next 24 hours.
Please make it stop!
Ok, Maybe Not “Meh”
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That mound with the wiper blades is a 1996 Honda Odyssey
The lump in the center left is a trash can
Back Yard
When I wrote about the Snowpocalypse, I said, “meh”.
OK, not so much.
I managed to get the back door open by about a foot, and then had to shovel the stoop to get the door open the rest of the way, and it’s still snowing.
Also: this is not the light and fluffy snow. This is heavy and sticky.
Maybe the kids will do a snow man, but I’d give less than 50-50 that there will be school on Monday.
Again, apologies for the crappy cell phone camera pix.
We have plenty of food, and if it stretches on for weeks, a very fat cat who looks good for stewing.
(Not really, the cats are family, and besides, they are not kosher)
Snowpocalypse
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Just starting at about 3:00pm
At about 5:00pm
We’re getting somewhere between 12 and 28 inches of snow, probably more than 20 inches.
People around here are freaking, but having spent 6 years in Alaska, and about 12 years in New England during and after college, so for me, it’s just, “Meh.”
No driving for at least the first half of tomorrow, but it’s really not that big a deal.
It will be a mess for a day or so, it ain’t the end of the world
It’s Been a Weird Year for the Auto Industry
Play them off, Jon Stewart
With the recall of more than 6½ million to repair a sticky accelerator pedal, Toyota’s sales fell by 47% from December, and 16% year over year, which was enough for both Ford and GM outsell to outsell the Japanese car firm.
Of course, we now know that it’s not just accelerator pedals, but also the brakes on its Prius hybrid, where it appears to be a software issue that creates unsteady breaking in the interplay between regenerative and mechanical braking.
It may not be any consolation to the Toyoda family, but Ford just rolled out a software update for its hybrid vehicles:
Ford Motor Co. announced Thursday that it will ask owners of its Ford Fusion Hybrid and Mercury Milan Hybrids sedan to bring their car into their Ford dealer to replace software that operates the car’s braking system.
While the cars maintain full braking ability, Ford said, drivers may occasionally experience a strange feeling in the brakes under certain circumstances.
So the latest problems may be an artifact of the move to “drive by wire” technologies for hybrid vehicles, you pretty much have to, because managing the battery/engine balance cannot be done manually by the driver.
In any case, the juxtaposxition of glitches in software and automotive hardware, it seems appropriate to invoke the proven to be false by Snopes joke:
At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: “If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release (by
Mr. Welch himself) stating:
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
- For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.
- Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
- Occasionally, executing a manoeuver such as a left-turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, and you would have to reinstall the engine.
- When your car died on the freeway for no reason, you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
- Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought ‘Car95’ or ‘CarNT’, and then added more seats.
- Apple would make a car powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five per cent of the roads.
- Oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single ‘general car default’ warning light.
- New seats would force every-one to have the same size butt.
- The airbag would say ‘Are you sure?’ before going off.
- Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.
- GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of road maps from Rand-McNally (a subsidiary of GM), even though they neither need them nor want them. Trying to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by
50 per cent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.- Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
- You would press the ‘start’ button to shut off the engine.
Everything old is weird again.
Like Bukakke* with Knives
Only $1.59, and I get a whole new definition of “facial”
Ok, so about the only plus to my being unemployed is that I make it to the gym 3-4 times a week, and do the stationary bicycle, get told by Fox News that we’re all going to die, and then I shower.
Well, I shave 2-3 times a week, I have a beard, so hitting my neck and the sparsely hairy parts my cheeks† does not have to be a daily thing.
I like to shave in the shower, and to do any fine work in the mirror afterward. I know my face well enough, and the hot water softens the hair and makes the shaver work better.
So, I got a new disposable razor, a Bic® Comfort 3® Pivot, because it was what what was on the shelf.
Well, one of the features is a, “Twin lubricating strip with Aloe vera and Vitamin E for sensitive skin. Improves shaver glide over the skin and reduces irritation.”
I kind of figured that it didn’t mean much, you see this crap all the time on consumer products.
I was wrong. There I was, in the shower, and this razor is oozing this clear stuff onto my face.
Ewwwwww!!!!
*If you don’t know, you can always check out the Wiki, but it’s NSFW.
†The upper ones cheeks, I don’t shave my ass. Sharon ‡ likes my hairy ass, thank you very much.
‡Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Deep Thought
Why is it that washer fluid reservoirs in your car always hold something like 2-3 quarts, which means that when you refill it with a new bottle, you have a more than half empty bottle to bang around in your trunk?
These things are blow molded, and can easily be made in to irregular shapes, so that they could hold, for example, 5 qt, and then you could toss the bottle after you filled the tank.
It’s kind of like hot dogs coming in packages of 10, and hot dog buns coming in packages of 8.
Dances With TSA
I’m sitting in Philadelphia waiting for the flight to Boston, and I thought that I would relate my experience with airport security.
It was a surprisingly smooth experience, despite the fact that they pulled my bag for further inspection.
The 7 day yartzheit (memorial candle) is a 3″ x 14″cylinder, so I can see how the X-ray machine operator flagged it for further scrutiny.
Still, the whole process, show my ID (honest, officer, I look better in person) and bording pass, take off shoes, put shoes, keys, etc. in bin, put bin and bag through the X-ray machine, grab my stuff, put on my shoes, open my case, show the candle, let the TSA guy wipe my stuff with a “sniffer”, and repacking my case only took about 15 minutes.
I can’t complain.
Received via Email
Specifically, this was received by Dutchie on the Short Skool Buss BBS:
So after landing my new job as a Wal-Mart greeter, a good find for many retirees, I lasted less than a day……
About two hours into my first day on the job a very loud, unattractive, mean-acting woman walked into the store with her two kids, yelling obscenities at them all the way through the entrance. As I had been instructed, I said pleasantly, ‘Good morning and welcome to Wal-Mart. Nice children you have there. Are they twins?’
The ugly woman stopped yelling long enough to say, ‘Hell no, they ain’t twins. The oldest one’s 9, and the other one’s 7. Why the hell would you think they’re twins? Are you blind, or just stupid?’ So I replied, ‘I’m neither blind nor stupid, Ma’am, It’s just hard to believe that you got laid twice. Have a good day and thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.’
My supervisor said I probably wasn’t cut out for this line of work.
Brilliant.
Holy Crap! I’m Not in Boston Today!
Note: I’m post dating this to keep it on the top of the post for the weekend. Scroll down for new posts.
In February 1985, I went to my first science fiction convention. In October, I ran a fiction convention, NotJustAnother1 Con (NJAC). I did it again in 1986, and then started Arisia, Inc. and ran the first two conventions 1990 and 1991.
About 4 years ago, I realized something important: I don’t like science fiction conventions.
When I go to a con, I don’t go to program items, I either work the con, or I self medicate.*
What’s more, my involvement with running a con completely subsumes my life, and I have a family now, and, quite honestly, it’s a destructive addiction thing to me, and no one wants to work with a self-destructive addict, and I don’t want to be one.
It only took me 20 years to realize that I hated my hobby/obsession, and, honestly, I’ve always found the community rather unremarkable.†
So I cut my losses, and following a remarkably unpleasant exchange with Arisia, Incorporated and the for-profit database vendor to whom they have outsourced their attendance and mailing list management, I had my information, and that of my wife and children, expunged from the Arisia database.‡
Maybe, the next time I think about calling someone “#@&ing stupid”, perhaps this experience will make me a bit kinder.§
In any case, I was driving to pick up my Son, and his drum kit, from school today, and there was an announcement for a Martin Luther King day symposium, and I realised, “MLK’s Birthday? Is it Arisia again?”
So I called up their web page, and yes, it is this weekend …… Though it’s technically in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston.
The first few years after I severed ties with the con, and the 501(c)3 corporation, I worried about it sucking me back in, but I hadn’t thought about the con in months, and only made the connection because the MLK birthday announcement triggered a connection.
I find this amazing, because just a year ago, I was contacted regarding a potential dispute with an artist, whose graphic art work is the official artist, and I found that it left me pissed off for a week.
If anyone from Arisia is reading this, I will paraphrase what I said about the time:
Please note that this is NOT intended to prohibit or discourage any individual to contact me personally in a purely social context, I just don’t want to discuss, or be involved with Arisia.
I would sooner give Dick Cheney a sponge bath than get sucked back in.
*Mammoth, some would say legendary, drunken binges.
†Which anyone who has ever discussed SF Fans with me knows.
‡What part of “remove me from the list” is so hard to understand? Needless to say, this Further justified my sense of ambivalence toward science fiction fans.
§NoT!!!. I’ll still judge them harshly. Let’s be honest here. I’m going to be calling people who do stupid things while I still have two brain cells left to rub together.
Weird
I was going through the job boards, and came across an opening for an engineer for a non-line of sight weapons system to go on the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) outside of DC.
Since it’s rather similar to work that I have done on the Future Combat Systems (FCS), I clicked through to apply, and it takes me to the jobs page of Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation.
So, I’m looking at the name, and saying, “Gee, it sounds like Inuit,” so after I fill out the application, I click the “about us” page, and get:
Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation (UIC) is headquartered out of Barrow, Alaska – the northernmost point of North America. Barrow is home to more than 4500 people, a majority of which are Iñupiat Eskimos.
As an Alaska Native Corporation, UIC provides social and economic resources to its 2,100 shareholders, and their descendents, who primarily reside in Barrow, Alaska. UIC is ranked 8th among Alaska Business Monthly’s 2008 survey of Alaskan-owned companies. UIC employs over 1,400 people worldwide, with over 750 in Alaska.
My first thought was, “How Odd.”
My 2nd thought was, “Was dad involved in some level in the early days of this corporation,” as he was on Governor Bill Egan’s cabinet as director of planning, but he said that the native corporations were created with the money from the oil revenues, which started to flow in after we left the state.
Still it’s kind of strange how these things tie together.
I Want Those MuthaF%$#in’ Snakes off This MuthaF%$#in’ bus!
You have to love the Dutch.