Sturgeon’s Law Ninety percent of everything is crap.
Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90% of everything is crud.” Oddly, when Sturgeon’s Law is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to ‘crap’.
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Book: What are we up to, sweetheart?
River Tam: Fixing your Bible.
Book: I, um…
[alarmed]
Book: What?
River Tam: Bible’s broken. Contradictions, false logistics — doesn’t make sense.
[she’s marked up the bible, crossed out passages and torn out pages]
Book: No, no. You-you-you can’t…
River Tam: So we’ll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God’s creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah’s ark is a problem.
Book: Really?
River Tam: We’ll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat.
[rips out page]
Video
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 Donna and I rode the tandem to work today. We were not the only ones to Get to ASCO By Bike either, two other folks did as well. One was of course Mr. Bike Commuter Numero Uno, Willie, and an engineer from the front office, Gerry. While at an office function this morning, cake and insults for a co-worker who is leaving, Donna and I asked Gerry how far he rode and which way he came. His commute is almost twice as long as ours and he comes a direct route that takes him up busy US1 for the last mile and a half. We tried to explain our route that avoids that section of road, but couldn’t really get it across.
I got back to my desk to print out a Google map, but then realized I had something already drawn up showing our route from way back in the 90’s when we used to do a bike ride to work for other company employees during May (National Bike Month.) I got the company to sponsor the event and they bought doughnuts, bagels and coffee for the first year. The second year I talked them into T-shirts for the riders as well as breakfast. The first ride attracted 5 riders with Donna and I included to a peak at year 5 with over 30 riders on 2 different morning rides and an afternoon one for second shift. One year we even had a small group ride in at 11:00PM for 3rd shift.
Every year I would try and entice folks to ride starting in the beginning of May with flyers and what not stuck in their mailboxes. For the third year I did a mock David Letterman Top Ten Reasons to Ride to ASCO (keep in mind that it was 1994, so some of them are time sensitive.)
From the Home Office in Sioux City, Iowa.…
David Letterman’s Top Ten Reasons for Doing GABB 3
10. Guaranteed not to get a speeding ticket like a certain talk show host.
9. To train for 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
8. Really cool noise that baseball cards make when hitting the spokes.
7. Lots safer than next month’s Get to ASCO By Skydiving.
6. After the ride, posterior will still feel better than Michael Fay’s.
5. Never really appreciate the beauty of the Taj Mahal when speeding by in a car.
4. More thrilling than Space Mountain at Disney World when cars pass by real close going 55 M.P.H.
3. Sharon Stone and Tone Loc will be at the post ride party.
2. Daylight Doughnuts are a lot more nutritional than the usual Hardee’s Sausage Biscuit.
and the #1 reason for doing GABB 3…
This year’s T-shirt will be ISO 9002 certified.
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John was a salesman’s delight when it came to any kind of unusual gimmick. His wife Marsha had long ago given up trying to get him to change. One day John came home with another one of his unusual purchases. It was a robot that John claimed was actually a lie detector.
It was about 5:30 that afternoon when Tommy, their 11-year-old son, returned home from school. Tommy was over two hours late.
“Where have you been? Why are you over two hours late getting home?” asked John.
“Several of us went to the library to work on an extra credit project,” said Tommy. The robot then walked around the table and slapped Tommy, knocking him completely out of his chair.
“Son,” said John, “this robot is a lie detector. Now tell us where you really were after school.”
“We went to Bobby’s house and watched a movie,” said Tommy.
“What did you watch?” asked Marsha.
“The Ten Commandments,” answered Tommy. The robot went around to Tommy and slapped him again, knocking him off his chair once more. With his lip quivering, Tommy got up from the floor, sat down, and said, “I am sorry I lied. We really watched an R-rated movie.”
“I am ashamed of you, son,” said John. “When I was your age, I never lied to my parents.” The robot then walked around to John and delivered a whack that nearly knocked him out of his chair.
Marsha doubled over in laughter, almost in tears, and said, “Boy, did you ever ask for that one! You can’t be too mad with Tommy. After all, he is your son!”
With that the robot immediately walked around to Marsha and knocked her out of her chair.
 Another thing I stuffed in people’s mailboxes was my version of the Get to ASCO By Bike FAQ in the model of a Dear Abby column:
Gabby: When is this GABB thing?
Dear Inquiring Mind: This year it is Friday, May 19th, for the 8 o’clock people and Friday, June 23rd, for the 7 o’clock crowd. As in the past, we will leave from the driveway of Brian & Donna Bogardus’s home one hour subsequent to work starting.
Gabby: I live a long way from the there. Do I have to ride my bike all the way there, and then turn around and ride 6–1/2 more miles to work?
Dear Farout: No, your best bet is to toss the bike in the trunk and drive over to 778 Boardman Road. If you ride the extra miles you will burn enough calories to eat an extra doughnut guilt free upon arrival at ASCO, but you will probably be the subject of scorn and ridicule from the other riders. Jealousy is an ugly thing.
Gabby: What if I get to work and decide that 6–1/2 miles of bike riding is all any sane person should attempt in one day? How do I get home?
Dear One-way: We will have a Star Trek style tranporter available to beam you and your bike back to Boardman Road. Technology is not cheap though. Even with the company subsidizing 50% of the cost, you will still need a cool half-a-million bucks to take advantage of this service. There is a cheaper solution though, bum a ride after work with a co-worker to Boardman Road where you get in your car, drive back to ASCO and get your bike. Or find someone with a pickup truck to take you and your bike back to the start. Or get to work and sell the bike to some sucker and use the money for cab fare.
Gabby: What clothes should I wear when riding the bike?
Dear Fashionable: Skin tight shiny lycra stuff is not needed, but the padding that comes with bike specific shorts will be entirely welcome on the ride home. Comfortable shorts and a T-shirt are just fine. The usual shoes, socks and skivvies are optional but would be a nice touch. I would love to see everyone wearing a bicycle helmet. But if you don’t have one and want one, no big deal, we’ve got a couple of extra 2 quart saucepans that can be duct taped to your noggin.
Gabby: Will I get all sweaty and stinky?
Dear Dainty: Yes, you will probably perspire a small amount. As for being stinky… Not really, unless you subscribe to the bathing once a month is enough theory and normal shower day is the 20th. Wait at least 15 minutes after you have arrived at work, this gives the body a chance to stop sweating, then wet one half of a hand towel and take it into a stall in the appropriate gender’s rest room and wipe down with the wet end and dry off with the other.
Gabby: Combining the above 2 questions I have concluded that I will have to spend my workday attired in sweaty shorts ensemble. Ewwww!
Dear Fashionably Dainty: You could buy a $35 rack for your bike and spend another $50 on fancy bike bags so that you could carry a change of clothing. Or you could tie your work pants and shirt to the seat tube and tape your tie and belt to the ends of the handlebars . Just bring your work clothes and/or lunch in a bag because we will have a vehicle to carry your stuff to the plant.
Gabby: You ride your bike to work all the time and I hear it takes you less than a half an hour to get there. With me being a novice at this cycling thing it will probably take me a lot longer. You’re not going to take off at the halfway mark and leave me cycling alone in an unfamiliar part of town are you?
Dear Neophyte: No, this is only an exhibition, not a competition, so please no wagering. We are doing this for the fun of it, so we will ride as slow as the slowest rider. But if you are so slow that it jeopardizes our arrival to ASCO on time you will be asked to grab hold of the bumper of a passing vehicle to help speed things along.
Gabby: As Templeton the Rat from Charlotte’s Web would say, “What’s in it for me?”
Dear Curious: Aside from the camaraderie of huffing and puffing up a hill with your fellow cyclists? For one the there is the 2 course breakfast (1. coffee 2. doughnuts.) For another you will get a spiffy T-shirt that can be worn with pride and not too much embarrassment. Most importantly you can recapture your long lost youth, the joy of traveling under your own power, the wind in your thinning hair, and the sound of baseball cards hitting the spokes.
Gabby: When will I get my GABB T-shirt?
Dear Anxious: The shirts will be passed out the morning of the ride. You can wear it while you bike ride to ASCO, or you could save it and wear it at work, or you could just hide it your closet if you don’t like the color purple.
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 G.A.B.B. 7 in 1998 was the last time we did it. What started as a fun thing to do for a few fellow co-workers had turned into a chore. What was one day a year turned into 4 different days for the four different start times. There was all the arranging for t-shirts and breakfast, finding someone to ferry in the goodies and other people’s clothing, arranging to borrow bikes for people who didn’t have one of their own, etc. so I was looking for an excuse to stop doing it when the perfect one dropped in my lap.
Willie worked in the back of the plant and on a slightly earlier start and end time because of his job, so at quitting time for him, the rest of the plant was still hard at work. Maybe someone took exception to Willie rolling his bicycle through the plant on his way home and complained to HR. Or maybe it was an office person from up front complained about Donna and my bicycles parked in our respective cubicles, we never got the full story, but in the fall of 1998 a bike rack was placed outside near the entrance and bicycles were no longer allowed in the building. Having had my fair share of bicycles stolen from racks in my lifetime I refused to ride to work and take a chance on it happening again.
When I informed HR in the spring of 1999 that I wouldn’t be doing the ride that year because their rack wasn’t big enough to hold the 12–15 bicycles of the riders and I didn’t want to have to round up that many bicycle locks, they offered an exception for the event. I declined the offer.
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Except for an early morning bike ride & two trips out for dinner, I watched a lot of TV today.
Three hours of bicycle racing, 2 hours of orphaned sci-fi, three and a half hours of baseball, plus one and a half hours of orphaned English police comedy.
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 We got up at 5:00 AM and headed southeast, destinations: Dorchester, Ridgeville, Summerville, Summerville, Ravenel, Hollywood, Edisto Island, Adams Runs, Jacksonboro, Cottageville and Round O.
Just before crossing the bridge over the intercoastal waterway in the South Carolina Low Country at the intersection of No and Where, the Emperor ticked past the seventy-nine thousand mile mark. Somewhere within 25 miles either way of that event a young male bluejay tufted titmouse committed suicide by flying right in front of us. He was given an un-proper burial (i.e. dumped) under a bush along the side of the Adams Run, SC Post Office.
I didn’t listen to the ballgame on Thursday or Friday and the FRS beat the MFY. I watched the game yesterday afternoon and they lost. Tonight they are playing on ESPN and I figured that if I didn’t watch they might win like Thursday or Friday. I’m listening on the internet and that might be the wrong thing to do too, as the Yankees are up 1 to 0 in the second. Maybe I should quit listening… Nine o’clock on USA are new episodes of Law & Oder: Criminal Intent, followed by In Plain Sight.
Oh, word of advice, if you live on a hill and your neighbor has a pool, don’t forget to set your parking brake.
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The Pavilion Restaurant Pier, Edisto Island, SC
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A little old lady is walking down the street, dragging two large plastic garbage bags with her, one in each hand. Unfortunately, there is a rip in one of the bags, and every once in a while a $20 bill falls out onto the pavement.
Noticing this, a policeman stops her. “Ma’am, there are $20 bills falling out of your bag.”
“Oh, really? Damn!” says the little old lady. “I’d better go back and see if I can collect them. Thanks for the warning.”
“Well, now, not so fast,” says the cop. “How did you get all that money? You didn’t steal it, did you?”
“Oh no,” says the little old lady. “You see, my back yard is right next to the parking lot of the football stadium. Each time there is a game; a lot of the fans come and pee through the bushes, right into my flower beds! So, I go and stand behind the bushes with a big hedge clipper, and each time someone sticks his little thingie through the bushes, I say, ‘$20 or off it comes!’ ”
“Well, that seems only fair,” laughs the cop. “Ok, good luck! By the way, what’s in the other bag?”
“Well,” says the little old lady, “not everybody pays.”
With last Sunday’s trip I now have photographed 401 of South Carolina’s 461 Post Offices. Flickr and Old School Galleries have been updated. The new fangled flash gallery hasn’t been updated because it is kind of a pain and I’m thinking of just dumping it until I’ve finished the whole project.
Bought a Logitech EX110 Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo last Thursday to replace the aging and increasingly stiff OEM Dell. It was sort of an impulse buy, so it wasn’t until I got home and hooked it up that I read some reviews. XP had no problem working with the combo right from the get go and that was a good thing because I wanted to avoid loading the Logitech software as I suspected it might be bloatware. The reviews were correct in that the mouse was a little cheap feeling and noisy, but I liked the keyboard feel. One thing that was mentioned frequently was that the mouse went through batteries quickly (sometimes in as little as 3 weeks.) Hmmm.
When Donna tried it out and the first thing she noticed was there were no lights (Num, Caps or Scroll.) Turns out you can get some indication of those statuses on the monitor, if you install their software. That coupled with the battery issue makes me box it back up for return. We are back to stiff keys until my new Dell wired keyboard shows up in a couple days.
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Both it and the B & W printer cartridge were tucked inside the front door tonight. Now home looks almost like work, all I need is a 22″ wide screen monitor and both places will seamlessly meld into one thrilling computing experience.
Monday at work there was a giant pile of new Aiken phone books in the mail room and everyone had a shiny new edition in their mail slot. Of course, as I am compelled to do each July, I screamed inside my head, whilst imagining myself self jumping up and down and running along the hall like Navin R. Johnson.
Navin R. Johnson: The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!
Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.
Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 — Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity — your name in print — that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.
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Literally.
I went out and took off the cockpit cover, so I could put the top up around 2:00 PM. I had checked the radar and it looked like we might get passing thunderstorm in the next half hour. I was right about the storm, but wrong about the time, it took about an hour and a quarter to get to us. I was also wrong about the passing part, that sucker stopped over us. It was still raining hard at our 4 o’clock quitting time. We decided to wait a while, the way it was pouring we would have gotten soaked getting to the car, even with the umbrella.
It was still coming down in buckets at around 4:30 and there must have been a dozen or so front office types hanging out by the door waiting for the break in the rain that seemingly might never come. Not being able to take it any longer, one of the QC engineers shouted, “I’ll show you how it is done!” and sprinted into the rain, disappearing front sight within 25 yards. Next a woman from HR removed her shoes and walked out under her umbrella. The exodus began.
At the end of the sidewalk at the the edge of the parking lot there are the storm drains, but they were not keeping up and causing a section that was under 4–6 inches of water between everyone and their cars. Our feet got soaked right from the start. Because of where the Emperor is always parked we had a long walk across wind swept pavement while some extremely large, unseen, being sprayed us with his garden hose.
I don’t even want to talk abut the drive home, there were several places that we almost floated.…
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And apparently mine is pretty small.
I didn’t vote for players for the baseball All-Star Game this year. Matter of fact I have never voted in all the years they have let fans do it. I don’t think it should be a fan based popularity contest, the players should be chosen by the league managers. They can vote for anyone they like except their own players.
The last couple of years they have even allowed the fans to vote on an extra player for the bench, pretty soon the fans will get to vote on what kind of pitch the pitcher will be throwing.
Anyway, I broke down and voted for the extra player this year because they were giving away a week’s worth of MLB.TV. Which is kind of a smart move on their part, because with the All-Star break in the middle of the giveaway week you only get to see like 4 games.
So right now I’m watching Baltimore put the hurt on the FRS in a small window while I blog. The video quality is not bad in a tiny window, but full screen it is very pixelated. Not something I want to pay $80 a year for. Besides I like the whole listening thing much better, it is easier to multitask.
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 Along with our Netflix membership, we are also members of a couple Movie Gallery video stores here in town, due mostly to our TDTVS addiction. Every once in a while one of them will call us and leave a message on our phone answering machine to say they haven’t seen us in a while and to bring us back we are entitled to a free movie rental. We got one of those calls on Thursday. A while? Ha! The last time we were in any of their stores was when Season 3 of Lost was released or the last time they offered a free rental.
Having just finished re watching the Firefly DVDs on Friday we decided to see if we could get the Firefly based movie Serenity as our freebie. Luck was with us as Movie Gallery had a copy on the shelf, so today we had “Lunch and a Movie.”
Well, both the Mrs and I love Firefly, but were disappointed with the movie — there goes our nominations for the Browncoat Hall of Fame… Part of the appeal of the show was the character interaction among the crew with the plot of each episode serving as a vehicle to move the developing relationships along. The movie, as I explained to someone (Hi Rae), was too movie-ish. Everything had to be bigger, faster, more and it was jarring. On TV they used what they called the mule, basically a tarted up ATV, to get around planetside. For the movie they had some sort of hovercraft with giant jet engines and seated four comfortably. Why? During the run of the show when ever there was encounter with another spaceship it was always just one, for the movie they pulled a George Lucas — Industrial Light & Magic with a final battle consisting of hundreds of vessels crisscrossing and dodging and weaving. Why, when a dozen would have done the trick? There were several other instances with over the top gun battles, hero vs bad guy one on one epic hand to hand battle on the edge of a precipitous drop and and some sappy feel good Hollywood romancing.
Fortunately the movie, when it was released in 2005, didn’t make a lot of money (according to IMDB it almost made back it’s $40 million budget), so they didn’t make any sequels. Unfortunately, it didn’t make enough at the box office to revive the TV series.
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I am slowly (and somewhat reluctantly if you ask my wife) painting the middle bedroom. We have painted the walls in there a couple of times before, but never the ceiling. I decided to change that this time and give the ceiling a nice fresh coat of pink paint. But first, I had to prepare the surface, and that meant scraping off the seemingly thousands of glow in the dark stars we had stuck up there several years ago.
* Bowman actually says, “The thing’s hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God! — It’s full of stars!”, but not in the movie 2001, its in the novel by Arthur C. Clarke and does make it into 2010, the sequel.
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A lawyer runs a stop sign and gets pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. He thinks that he is smarter than the deputy because he is a lawyer from a big city and is certain that he has a better education then any cop from this small town. He decides to prove this to himself and have some fun at the deputy’s expense.
The deputy says,” License and registration, please.”
“What for?” says the lawyer.
The deputy says, “You didn’t come to a complete stop at the stop sign.”
Then the lawyer says, “I slowed down, and no one was coming.”
“You still didn’t come to a complete stop.” says the deputy, “License and registration, please.”
The lawyer says, “What’s the difference?”
“The difference is you have to come to complete stop, that’s the law. License and registration, please!” the Deputy says.
The lawyer says, “If you can show me the legal difference between slow down and stop, I’ll give you my license and registration; and you give me the ticket. If not, you let me go and don’t give me the ticket.”
“That sounds fair. Please exit your vehicle, sir,” the deputy says.
The deputy takes out his nightstick and starts beating the ever-loving crap out of the lawyer and says, “Do you want me to stop, or just slow down?”
I would join the ASWOA and spend a substantial portion of my disposable income HERE.
While searching the web on how to say Happy Bastille Day I stumbled on this site, Uncertain Times, that is a web spelinkers delight. Oh, by the way, it is Joyeux Quatorze Juillet.
This guy is brilliant or certifiably insane: Ironic Sans. Which segues into one of my favorite TDPM quotes:
Will Turner: This is either madness… or brilliance.
Jack Sparrow: It’s remarkable how often those two traits coincide.
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Every once and a while the local Mazda dealer will send me a mailing that is supposed to get me to come in and let them service my car. The one I got today offered a free oil change using a new filter and topping off of vital fluids.
Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Until you get to the fine print, then things get strange. “Plus applicable taxes.” Seven percent of nothing is…ahhh, let’s see, zero times zero point zero seven…carry the zero…is Nothing. Oh, wait a minute, I see how it is applicable, the next bit of fine print says, “Some vehicles may be slightly higher.” How much higher? Define slightly?
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Today we rode the tandem into work and our arrival time was around 15 minutes before the opening bell, so to speak, for most of the hourly employees, so quite a few of them were sitting under the break area awning getting in one last smoke before going to work. Unfortunately the bike rack where we are supposed to park is like 15 feet from the awning, so Donna and I have to unload our lunches and change of clothes right in front of the crowd.
Now a person on a bicycle is a rare enough sight as it is, but put two people on a long ass bike and we are talking parade level attention. One of the engineers was arriving at the same time and as he walked up to the building he noticed us unloading, but what he found most eye-catching was not us, but the looks of all the other employees openly gawking at Donna and I. He said nearly everyone was looking in our direction with sort of an incredulous look, as if they were thinking to themselves that no sane person would ride that thing.
Yesterday we had a very busy day, so instead of coming home and cooking something we dined out at what used to be one of our favorite southside eateries, Wing Place (why it “used to be” is the subject of another post.) When we were finished eating and heading for the door there was also a mom leaving with her daughter just in front of us. The girl was somewhere between to ages of seven and ten, very cute, with long curly light colored hair, a big ol’ smile and the largeest eyes you ever saw. I really noticed the eyes because they were aimed directly at me. This girl was staring at me like I was a movie star or a pony.
As it turned out, mom and daughter were parked next to us in the parking lot, so we were more or less following them. About half way towards the cars I got another look from the little girl. Donna wondered if I dripped a bunch of ranch dipping sauce down the front of my shirt and she hadn’t noticed. Mom loaded the little girl in the back of their Jeep Wrangler as we got into the Miata. The girl was looking over at me, with an almost wistful expression, like maybe she was wishing it was her getting into the Miata instead of Donna. As the mom was going around to the driver’s side of their vehicle we put the top down. The girl was still looking our way with her big eyes and her chin in her hands with her elbows on the side of the Jeep and I could swear she let out a sigh of regret, it was almost creepy.
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Our second disc of the TV show Due South came from Netflix the other day and tomorrow I’ll ship it back — unwatched.
We have such fond memories of the show, but we struggled to get through the first disc. Wanting to give it another chance, we kept it in the rental queue. Now faced with watching more episodes we just can’t do it. It is amazing how much TV has changed in a dozen years since it first aired.
The main detraction from our enjoyment of the show is the caliber of the transfer. The focus is soft, the colors muted and the contrast is muddy, it looks like you are watching 12 year old VHS tapes.
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 My first attempt with Version 1.0 my new Photojojo BikeCam. They advertise it as all it takes is $10 + 10 minutes to make a camera mount for your bike. The cost was free because I actually had all the bits and pieces laying around, but it took about 15 minutes to find all the bits in my *20-year draw.
Half way through the ride I found a bug that I will have to fix for Version 1.1, the camera started to rotate because the vibration of the ride had loosened the nut on the clamp. The fix should be a simple matter of swapping out of the plain washer for a locking kind.
I want to take a sort of strobe movie of our commute to work, you know take a picture every couple of minutes and make a little animation out of it. May have to do it on the way home though because the ride in is on the ragged edge of dawn.
Changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Emperor tonight about 800 miles past my usual maintenance point (oh well, better late than never) in preparation for a possible trip to Charleston. We were going to leave in the morning right after the MMC July breakfast, but we are now going to wait to make a decision until after the Tour de France coverage around lunchtime. It is going to depend on what happens with a storm that is just off the coast.
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 This morning after a not so special breakfast at IHOP, Donna got lukewarm water with not so mixed in powder instead of the hot chocolate she requested, we had a very interesting visit to the North Augusta Post Office. And I think I figured out why Postal employees “Go Postal”, it is not so much their working conditions, but more like having to deal with surly customers all day.
They aimed for camp, but fell short. There were some clever lines that will probably be seen as signature quotes on internet message boards and I actually sort of liked the musical numbers. See it for free before its gone (Sunday, July 20th @ midnight.)
Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
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I get nearly all my reading material from a local used book store. An eight dollar paperback costs four bucks and then because I have store credit from returning books there, they take another half off, so for a couple dollars I get several hours of escapism. I mostly read mysteries, from the hard boiled private eye kind to the comic female bounty hunter kind.
Because I read a lot of the same type books and my memory is addled due to age and the hundreds of acid trips in my younger days, all the back cover blurbs about the book are starting to sound the same, so that has become an unreliable way to choose a book. I have more than once brought home a book and about half way through it realized I have read it before. To increase my odds of bringing home a book I haven’t read is to open to a random page and read a bit, but for the reasons mentioned above this is not much more effective. My latest solution to this dilemma is to take a black Sharpie and fill in the zero on page 101 in every book I bring home. This works for me. But.
The mark is not that noticeable, I don’t think, but does it bother the next person who picks up the book? It is surely not as bad as some markings I’ve come across. In the latest book I’m reading some kindly Christian has tried to prevent readers from inadvertent blasphemy by crossing out the word goddamn. It happened once early on in the book and then twice later. I’m curious as to why a person of those moral standards was reading a book featuring murder, adultery, gambling, drugs and prostitution in the first place. And I wonder why they just didn’t stop reading after the first mention of goddamn, but plowed ahead to find more.
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Or has mr-miata.net been really slow lately? I can’t even load cpanel to back up my database in case of some sort of imminent failure.
Current plan for Friday is to go see the X-Files movie. I hope that Scully and Mulder don’t kiss, contrary some of the images I have seen on the net, because it will ruin something for me. Someone I talked to today wishes that they would just go ahead and do it, as the sexual tension is killing him (Hi Mark.) I know in real life that eventually they we would end up together because as the great philosopher Harry Burns once said:
…no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
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 Tried out Version 1.1 my Photojojo BikeCam tonight. The lock washer helped because the clamp around the handlebar didn’t come loose at all during our nearly 12 mile neighborhood jaunt. But, you just knew a but was coming didn’t ya, the camera still had a tendency to rotate from facing straight forward. My guess is because this doesn’t work like a real tripod, i.e. the screw doesn’t bottom out in the camera’s tripod socket, no matter how much you tighten it, it is still going to rotate.
Because the camera is off center on the handlebars, the tripod mount is off center, the camera is sticking up at the end of a 2″ long screw, the tires have 90p.s.i. in them and the roads are not real smooth, 90% of the images I’ve taken so far have been blurry. Even the un-blurry ones aren’t what you’d call photographs (snapshots maybe), so what is going to let the world know you are taking these pictures on a moving bicycle and are not just snapped by someone from another planet who has never even heard of photography?
 You include the bicycle. If you look at the very bottom of the first picture you can see a shadow of my helmeted head. Not real obvious. When life hands you lemons, you should make some Mike’s Hard Lemonade. When the camera kept rotating bit by bit, an idea popped into my head, why not rotate it nearly 90° and include some of my hand/arm. I think ideally I should figure out how mount the camera in a vertical manner and using the widest angle available include just a bit of the front tire. Maybe I can work that out with my Gorilla Pod.
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The FRS had an afternoon game in Seattle which started here on the east coast at 4:40 PM. Perfect timing for me as I could listen to the game while I put another coat of gloss white on the trim in the middle bedroom.
I fired up Gameday Audio, selected the Boston radio station that broadcasts the games and I was greeted by some inane sports talk show. At first I thought they might be in a rain delay, knowing the pacific northwest, but then remembered that the Mariners field had a retractable roof, so a little liquid sunshine wouldn’t halt play. I clicked on the link for the Seattle radio station’s broadcast and sure enough they were nearly through the top half of the first inning.
It was kind of neat to hear a different set of voices with a different perspective of the game. The roof was open and because the stadium is near the city’s rail yard there were quite a few times when you would hear train horns blasting in the background that, for me, added to the ambiance. Half way through the game the TV and radio broadcasts swapped play-by-play guys and I got to listen to their long time announcer, Dave Niehaus. He has been doing Mariner’s games for 32 years and you can hear why he has been doing it so long and is getting inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this Sunday. A very nice listen even if his team loyalty is misguided.
During the breaks between innings there was sometimes silence and sometimes commercials. I remember when I first started to listen to the Red Sox games on the internet all I ever got was silence, but sometime in the last couple years I started hearing all of them. I wonder if it was because MLB.com blocked certain ads. That seems unlikely, because as much as baseball frowns on gambling (right Pete?) one of the sponsors I did hear from several times was the Swinomish Casino. A big sponsor of the Red Sox baseball games is Foxwoods Resort & Casino as well. The only thing I can come up with is the radio station has a two tiered sponsorship plan for advertisers, one cheaper one for local coverage and a more expensive one for the national coverage.
I stopped listening to eat dinner with the game tied at three runs apiece. When I came back I tried the Boston broadcast again and they were doing the game, so I stayed with the old familiar voices. The game was still tied, but the FRS finally won the game in the 12th inning earning a three game sweep of the Mariners (which took a little of the sting out of being swept by the Angels in the three games before.) Tomorrow is an off day before the dreaded MFY come to Fenway Friday for a weekend series which means I’ll probably get to see some of the games on TV.
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Even though it was Thursday, it was the last day of our work week, so we rode the tandem in. Because it was our nine hour day we needed to be into work an hour earlier, so the alarm went off at 4:45AM. FYI, even though the days are still quite long because of the season it is very dark at half past five in the morning, but we have a red strobing tail light and a nice bright battery powered headlight so we can see and be seen.
After work I mounted the camera in the Photojojo BikeCam Mount and documented our 6–1/2 mile ride home. I took 42 pictures and uploaded them to Flickr. You can watch a slideshow by clicking HERE. Once it opens up, click on the i in the circle so you can read along. If you are not from around here most of the comments won’t mean anything, but hey, reading them might distract you from the fact that they might be tilted or blurry. (Did I mention that they are totally unedited in any way?) Tomorrow I’ll work on placing them on a google map so you can see the route. (Can’t hardly wait, can you?)
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Of the 4 movies we have seen this summer I’d have to say that I Want To Believe notches in just ahead of Wall-E, a long way down from Iron Man, but miles ahead of Indiana Jones. The only reasons it did beat out Wall-E was because the last third of that animated flick disappointed compared to the beginning and I’m an X-Files fan from way back. When friends asked at dinner tonight how we liked it, both Donna and I said, “Go see it if you were a fan of the series.”
It was great to see the old familiar faces of Scully and Mulder together again, but it has been too long. This is the move they should have made a half a decade ago, a year after the series ended it’s TV run. It was definitely better than 1998’s Fight the Future which suffered from the same malady as the Firefly movie, Serenity, it was too movie-ish. I Want To Believe was more true to it’s television roots, it is almost quiet, there were zero explosions, nary a gunshot and the only chase sequence was on foot. But it did include lots of scary moments, a few very squeamish moments, a “paranormal” plot, some Scullyisms and Mulderisms and just enough tips of hat to the characters old familiar quirks to make it worth the matinee admission price.
There certainly wasn’t a lot of pent up demand to see this movie, like there was for Batman, because we went to the first showing ever for this theater at 11:30 in the morning and there were just 15–20 seats occupied.
The Picasa/Google map of the bike ride home wasn’t as interesting as I thought it might be, take a LOOK for yourself.
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Today was the MMC’s annual Pool Party and as always at these Miata Club functions I consumed a lot of food. And even though I participated in (and won) the Biggest Splash Competition, heavyweight division, Cannonball style, I didn’t expend as many calories diving as I took in eating.
 I didn’t even break out my camera, but someone else took a bunch and promised to email them around. If any of them captured me making big splashes in full glory, I’ll post them here for your enjoyment, until then, please enjoy this little animated gif file from the turn of the century.
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After the the last two games, I just can’t watch tonight’s game on ESPN. That it is raining in Boston and the game is going to start an hour later at 9:00 PM (so they claim), so that I won’t be able to see but a couple of innings before having to retire for the evening, makes it easier.
We watched the final stage of the Tour de France today and I will be glad not having to the see that block of commercials anymore.
So now the cable box and it’s myriad of channels with nothing interesting to watch goes back tomorrow. This year was a big disappointment as there wasn’t one movie worth watching on Starz or Encore during the whole month.
My wife has the remote and she is watching The Next Food Network Star and during commercials she hops over to E! to see Denise Richards: It’s Complicated. I think I would be happier watching the FRS getting the crapola beat out of them by the MFY. At least she has stopped checking in on Richard Gene Simmons Family Jewels…
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Well I finally got around to starting to paint the walls in the middle bedroom tonight. Got a wall and a half painted before giving up.
Donna originally wanted me to paint it the same color as the other green bedroom, but I didn’t have enough paint to do it. Trying to not buy another gallon of paint, she then suggested I used the color from the hallway. I didn’t want to do that, I barely like it in the hallway, its too light, I wanted something darker. Then I had an idea, I could take some of the other cans of paint I have and pour parts into the really light green and maybe come up with something suitable.
I added what little I had left of the other green bedroom color. I poured in a heaping dose of a forest green that was used in one of the bathrooms (prior to remodeling). Then I tossed in a few dollops of a a sort of olive green that was used on the lower kitchen cabinets. Almost there, it just needed to be a little darker. I added a pinch of some flat black I had used for the interior of the fireplace a long while back. I now a full gallon of a nice green that looked real close to what was in the existing green bedroom. Perfect.
I used a small brush to cut in all the edges and corners. When I started using the roller I was getting black dots at intervals. Ack! Somehow the black paint had coagulated into little beads of black that were invisible in the tray or can, but when rolled on the wall they left behind little black spots. I found that when they popped up I could spot them on the roller and then kind of disperse them using a small brush loaded with paint from the tray. Then with careful reapplication I could blend the paint on the wall to make them disappear (I thought.) After a dinner break I went back in to start painting again, but now that the paint had dried I could see that where I thought the black dots had vanished, they had actually been sort of spread out real good.
Tomorrow after work we are going to stop at Home Warehouse Store and pick up a gallon of paint, so I can start over.
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 Somewhere along the line today we got in a discussion on Naval ceremonies in general and crossing lines in particular. Myself being a trusty Shellback could expound on what happens when you cross the zero line of longitude, but came up empty on what happens as you cross 00 or 180 latitude.
A quick search of the net came up with Golden Dragon which is described as a sailor who has crossed the Prime Meridian or the International Date Line into the Eastern Hemisphere. If you happen to cross the International Dateline and the Equator at the same time you become a Golden Shellback. As you can see from my card I missed that honor by quite a bit.
Besides Shellback & Golden Dragon, you are a Blue Nose for crossing the Arctic Circle, a Frozen Stiff for crossing the Antarctic Circle and a Mossback for sailing around Cape Horn.
In the search I found a few places that listed Naval jargon or slang and was transported 30 years into the past. Here are a couple of my favorites (and are suitable for general audiences):
Bug Juice: Kool-Aid-like beverage in dispensers on the messdeck.
Hollywood Shower: to take a long shower that wastes water.
Snipes: Sailors assigned to the Engineering rates, i.e. Machinists Mates, Boilermen, etc.
and Rent-A-Crow: Term for a sailor advanced to E-4 because they graduated top of their “A” school class. The Navy ‘rents’ them for an extra year in return for being promoted. (I was one of these.)
There are plenty more HERE, HERE and HERE. Including a whole slew of the more “colorful” ones.
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 This used to be my Windows wallpaper, until the 6th inning of tonight’s game when the Angels scored 5 runs. The FRS dropped 2 of 3 to the MFY over the weekend and it looks like they are going to be swept by LA in this 3 game series. Both Tampa and NY won earlier today, so in just a few more minutes the Red Sox will be three games out of first and only one game ahead of the Yanks. Oh, well, at least I’m not a Braves fan (sorry Mark.)
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 The last few days have been chock full o’ fun, the FRS have lost a bunch of games and Manny Ramirez has been all over the sports pages. There has been plenty of trade talks, Boston and Florida, then Boston and Florida and Pittsburgh. I left work at 4 PM, which was the trading deadline, and there were still conflicting reports — it was going to happen, it wasn’t going to happen. I got home at 4:30 and there was still nothing new.
I was finishing up painting in the middle bedroom around 6 o’clock when Donna came in and said, “Your friend is going to Los Angeles.” At first I thought Angels? No, it had to be the Dodgers and it was. I’ll let the real sports nuts debate over which team got the best part of the deal or the worse part of it, but right now looking at FRS left fielders, new and old, if both players continue at their present production, it looks like a wash. Player to front office relationship has improved, but, more importantly, how it will effect the clubhouse, ask me in a month.
As a fan, I will definitely miss the Manny Being Manny moments, it was nice to see someone enjoy baseball as a game, but for every phone call from the wall during pitching changes there seemed to be a missed game due to “injury” or misplayed ball in left.
Have fun in LA Manny.
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