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’.
We rode the tandem to work today because it was the first day this week that the afternoon rain chance was less than 50%. I mounted the camera on the Photojojo BikeCam and off we went.
It was still dark when we started, so the first couple of shots were nothing more than a lot of dark with a vague yellow headlight “shadow” in the middle of the frame. The ones at the finish were lit well enough, but uninteresting. The best of the bunch, at least I think so, was the photo above from the middle of the journey where was just enough light to tell it is morning, but not enough to set a fast shutter speed.
Kind of an impressionist view of our commute.
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Mom and Dad took their six-year-old son to the doctor. With some hesitation, they explained that although their little angel was in good health, they were concerned about his rather small penis.
After examining the child, the doctor confidently declared, “Just feed him pancakes. That should solve the problem.”
The next morning at breakfast, there was a large stack of warm pancakes in the middle of the table.
“Gee, Mom,” the boy exclaimed. “Are those all for me?”
“Take two,” Brenda replied, “The rest are for your dad.”
Donna decided to mow the lawn yesterday evening around dusk, because it was as cool as it was going to be until about 3:00 AM this morning (and the neighbors might not appreciate it happening then), but she never did get it done. Never even started.
Because I never got the lawn mower started. After about 30 pushes of the little red button and 80 pulls on the cord thingie with no luck, I started to think there might be something wrong. The gas tank had plenty of fluid. I knocked a thin layer of dirt of the foam air cleaner filter. I removed the spark plug. AHA! The end of the plug that is stuck inside the engine was covered in an awful lot of black powder, sort of looked like a Wooly Willy face toy. I sprayed it with some brake cleaner and that got rid of the fuzz, but it was still so black that no light could escape it’s surface. I tried to small file I had and managed to turn it light gray, so I tried it in the mower again. After a half dozen pulls, I knew I wasn’t going to get the thing started.
Today, on the way home from work, we stopped in the little hardware store downtown and bought a Champion CJ8 spark plug. The lawn is now several inches shorter.
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Today our summer intern was lamenting the cost of going to college. Not so much just the tuition, but all the fees that get tacked on top, from a $400 lab fee, a $300 engineering fee, down to a parking sticker that is required, but doesn’t guarantee a spot and the 50¢ fee to print a piece of paper in the library. It put me in mind of the 1980 movie Popeye.
The Tax Man: You just docked? Popeye: I has. The Tax Man: Ah ha, let’s see here, that’ll be 25¢ docking tax. Popeye: What for? The Tax Man: Where’s your sea craft? Popeye: It ain’t no sea craft, it’s me dinghy and it’s under the wharf. The Tax Man: Ah ha. ahh-ha. This your goods? Popeye: They is. The Tax Man: Yeah. You’re new in town right? Popeye: If you call this a town, yes. The Tax Man: Well, first of all, there’s 17¢ new-in-town tax, and there’s 45¢ rowboat-under-the-wharf tax, and one dollar leaving-your-junk-lying-around-the-wharf tax, so all together, you owe the Commodore $1.87. Popeye: Uh, who’s this Commodore? The Tax Man: Is that the nature of question? There’s a nickel question tax.
… Popeye: How come carrots is a dollar? Geezil: $1.50. You buy what I don’t feel like selling will cost you $2.00. Popeye: [Takes the carrots and tosses Geezil a nickel] Geezil: Ah ah. Nope, this is a nickel. Popeye: I’m payin’ what I feels like payin’. The Tax Man: You’re not up to no good are you? Because if you are there’s a 25¢ up to no good tax.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 281
Sometime in the last month or so my 5 month old monitor at work has started to lose it’s focus. At first I thought it was my eyes (hey, I’m getting old), but other stuff that far away was clear. It was slight at first, but a couple weeks ago it got so bad that now the first thing I have to do in the morning after logging on is to right click the desktop, select Properties, hit the Settings tab and change the color quality from 32 bit to 16 bit. I then change it back to 32 bit and everything becomes crisp and clear. What’s really weird is, I can drag that properties dialog box from one side of the monitor to the other, and on the left side it is fuzzy, on the right, crystal clear.
The city of Aiken must have a very strong tennis lobby. Five years ago there were six tennis courts and four basketball courts at the main recreation center. Three years ago they built 7 more tennis courts, including one really nice clay court. Two years ago they converted half of the basketball courts into a skate park with 8 or 10 aluminum half pipes, ramp, jumps and railings. Tonight on our way out to get an ice cream cone we passed by the rec center and I noticed they are resurfacing the skate park. Where do you think they moved all the aluminum apparatuses? On to a couple of the old tennis courts? Nope, they put them on one of the two remaining basketball courts…
I wish Mark had a blog, because he had a perfect post for tonight. He told me a little story this morning about buying a 12 pack of sodas on the way to work. I’d try and tell you about it, but I know I wouldn’t do it justice, let’s just say it involved a torn cardboard box and corralling errant cans in the parking lot of a quickie mart. Not just once, not twice, but three times, with it culminating with a pinhole in one can causing it to do what firemen call a wild hose.
Tomorrow — Racing A Doughnut Truck (and losing.)
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A woman was in a coma. She had been in it for months. Nurses were in her room giving her a sponge bath. One of them was washing her private area and noticed that there was a slight response on the monitor whenever she touched her there. They tried it again and sure enough, there was definite movement.
They went to her husband and explained what happened, telling him, “As crazy as this sounds, maybe a little ‘Oral Sex’ will do the trick & bring her out of the coma.”
The husband was skeptical, but they assured him that they would close the curtains for privacy. The husband finally agreed and went into his wife’s room.
After a few minutes the woman’s monitor flat lined, no pulse, no heart rate.
The nurses ran back into the room. “What happened!?” they cried.
The husband said, “I’m not sure; maybe she choked.”
And it’s Aiken Time too! Beijing is exactly 12 hours different, so all you have to do is change the A to P or vice versa to make it right for here on the east coast. Or in the case of this clock, do nothing:
Its ten o’clock at night and you and a friend are out driving. On a 4 lane lane road you come to a red light. You’re in the left lane, and in the right, already stopped when you arrive, is a Krispy Kreme delivery van.
Your friend is is starring out his window at the van, probably trying (and failing) to do the math in his head of finding the difference between between the gross vehicle weight and the curb weight to determine how many doughnuts constitute a full load. Because you are driving an older car, say a 1987 Camaro, the throttle linkage is a little loose or something and if you idle too long at a light it will stall. To prevent this, the gas pedal needs to be blipped at regular intervals. While this probably reduces your gas mileage a bit, you don’t really mind as the V-8 sounds pretty cool when you do this.
The light turns green and the next thing you hear is the roar of an engine and you see the tail lights of a doughnut truck shrinking in front of you. Your pony car is being dusted by a large bread box on wheels. Your friend looks back over at you and says, “You’re not gonna let him get away with that are you?” So you floor it and take off in hot pursuit.
About a 1/4 mile later, just as you are catching the van, you notice that you are traveling at around 75 MPH (in a 45 zone) so discretion being the better part of valor you back off the gas and let him go. You rationalize the defeat; it was a misunderstanding on his part, he jumped you unawares and his truck was empty. Besides, if you got pulled over, whose story would the cop believe, yours or a guy driving a doughnut truck?
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I really didn’t have anything I wanted to write about tonight. It was a Friday off from work, and besides from some everyday heroics, fixing a toilet & helping a neighbor trim a tree, nothing blogworthy happened. I was going to cop out, scan a picture from the past and use just it as my thousand words. But this comes from one of my stints in a detachment aboard the U.S.S. Midway during my Navy days and needs a little explaining.
All the spaces assigned to the squadrons of the air wing were on the two levels just below the flight deck. Along the passageways there, you passed the doors belonging to the numerous work centers required for the upkeep the aircraft, all painted with the squadron insignia and colors.
Wanting to show our squadron pride we decided to paint our door too. We didn’t have “official” colors, but we did have several spray cans of blue paint laying around that we used to identify our tie down chains. Someone scrounged a can of yellow from another squadron and we were in business. We taped up 1″ metal letter stencils of all our work centers, airframe, hydraulics, avionics, etc. and pretty soon we looked just like the rest of the air wing. Almost. While all the other squadrons had a different space for each different work center, all of ours were behind this one door. Look inside!
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Tonight was the annual Bug Splat Rally for the MMC. Our slightly early start and the two brief rain showers we ran through on the loop conspired to make bugs scarce. Prize awarding was sketchy at best and as a matter of fact the Cleanest Car and Most Bugs Awards were given out based on pre-rally car conditions.
The rain was obviously my fault as I washed the car this morning to make the Emperor look pretty for tonight’s Club gathering. In mid Bug Splat loop His Highness crossed the Savannah River and crossed the 80K mile mark at about the same time.
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Sunday nights from 6 PM until whenever, Bravo runs a Law & Order: Criminal Intent mini-marathon and I like to watch the repeats of older shows until 9 PM when USA runs a new episode. The original L & O is still the best (although sometimes their twists at the end stretch credibility), occasionally L & O:SVU leaves me feeling like a voyeuristic pervert, but L & O:CI is a guilty pleasure with Goren, it’s quirky lead detective and Eames his sneaky hot partner poking and prying until they get to the bottom of the crime.
I’m sure because of contractual obligations Bravo only gets to show certain seasons of the show, so nearly all the time I will recognize the episode as one I’ve seen and watch it again anyway. Sometimes I get real lucky and I won’t have seen it for a while, meaning I have forgotten who the killer is, so the show is a real treat. Rarely, I will stumble on an episode I haven’t ever seen at all before. Tonight at 7 o’clock that happened and it was exciting.
At ten minutes after seven my wife came into the living room and asked if she could have the TV, the Olympics were on and there was going to be swimming, diving and gymnastics tonight. I said, “Sure, go ahead.” That my friends is love.
When it turns out they were showing synchronized diving right then I didn’t make her turn it back to L & O:CI. That my friends is true love.
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We went for a bike ride Saturday morning and although the temperature and humidity were lower than they have been on Sunday, we still could not bring ourselves to go for a walk in Hitchcock Woods, so we took a walk around the horse district yesterday morning. It is not far enough along on the calendar for any of the thoroughbreds to be back in town, so the training track was deserted, but there was some action around a few of the stables.
The midpoint of our trek was Hopeland Gardens and we did a bit of wandering around those beautiful grounds. We made a point of checking out the newest addition to the gardens, a brick octagonal labyrinth. The last time we saw it, admittedly, quite a while ago, it was only 1/3 done, but now it was complete. Donna decided to walk it while I sat on a bench and took a photo or two. She got about halfway through and started to mutter to herself, “I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.” Not long after, she took a shortcut to the center. I suggested we start from the end and work our way out. That was fun for about 3 minutes and we both walked away shaking our heads.
On the way home, we made a detour to a quick stop to buy the Sunday paper and finished up with a little more than 4 miles on our feet. Probably a bit more if you count the steps traveled in our aborted enlightenment journeys.
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A man is at work one day when he notices that his co-worker is wearing an earring. The guy knows his co-worker to be a normally conservative fellow, and is curious about his sudden change in ‘fashion sense.’
He walks up to him and says, “I didn’t know you were into earrings.”
“Don’t make such a big deal, it’s only an earring,” he replies sheepishly.
His friend falls silent for a few minutes, but then his curiosity prods him to ask, “So, how long have you been wearing one?”
I’ve mentioned here before that our company plays a little something called Safety Bingo, everyday we go without a lost time accident, a number is “called” & added to the big Bingo board in the main hall.
Up until last Friday we were playing a game entitled Window which consists of having to fill the squares all around the card and then both the middle vertical and horizontal rows so that your card looks like, well, a window. With each square worth $20 the winner of this game will be four hundred and twenty dollars (minus Federal & State Taxes) richer. When B14 was called on Friday we got that winner.
The nurse posted an 8–1/2 x 11 piece of paper over the Bingo board saying “Congratulations. John Doe — Maintenance. Winner.” Somewhere in between the middle of yesterday and the middle of this morning someone hand wrote after the name “- Looser.”
I’m not sure which is worse, someone upset enough at not winning to write that or that they couldn’t even spell the word.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 292
A young guy from Minnesota moves to Florida and goes to a big ‘everything under one roof’ department store looking for a job.
The manager says, “Do you have any sales experience?”
The kid says, “Yeah. I was a salesman back in Minnesota.”
Well, the boss liked the kid and gave him the job. “You start tomorrow. I’ll come down after we close and see how you did.”
His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it. After the store was locked up, the boss came to see him. “How many customers bought something from you today?”
The kid says, “One.”
The boss says “Just one? Our sales people average 20 to 30 customers a day. How much was the sale for?”
The kid says, “$101,237.65.”
The boss says, “$101,237.65? What the heck did you sell him?”
The kid says, “First, I sold him a small fish hook. Then I sold him a medium fishhook. Then I sold him a larger fishhook. Then I sold him a new fishing rod. Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him a twin engine Chris Craft. Then he said he didn’t think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4x4 Expedition.”
The boss said, “A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a BOAT and a TRUCK? Is that right?”
The kid answered, “No, the guy came in here to buy Tampons for his wife, and I said, ‘Dude, your weekend’s shot; you should go fishing.’ ”
I’m not watching much of the Olympics on TV. It is not that I’m anti-Olympics as much as I’m anti-TV. But I have been keeping track photographically and through that way, I have found out that the Chinese have hired cheerleaders to ensure that there are someone cheering for everyone, not just the home crowd. I have found a couple of interesting photographer’s blogs, Rod Mar of The Seattle Times, Vincent Laforet of Newsweek and three guys from the Toronto Star.
Right now a lot of coverage is centered on swimmer Michael Phelps, and correctly so, as he goes for a record 8 gold medals, but you would think he walks on water. He can’t, but it looks like Aaron Piersol can. I just love these images gathered by the German magazine Stern that capture those moments you won’t see in the mainstream press. When you are a swimmer awaiting to compete what do you do with your goggles and swim cap? Those bathing suits don’t have pockets, here is Amanda Beard’s answer. And Janet Jackson’s equipment malfunction has nothing on this poor water polo player’s problem.
Least you think that from those last two photos my interest in photos from the Olympics is primarily to ogle the female form, here is a great gallery of shots of the opening ceremony from the Boston Globe. OK, so not primarily, but it is right up there. Here (thanks again to Stern) are some photos of four German athletes from their edition of Playboy.
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Through the magic of a Paint Shop Pro I can paint in watercolor. This is from last Sunday’s visit to Hopeland Gardens home of the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame & Museum.
Having spent the last two nights in separate rooms, me with baseball in one and her with the Olympics in another, tonight we decided to be in the same room at the same time. I’m listening to the FRS on the internet via laptop on one end of the couch and Donna is watching the Olympics on the other end. Right now there is two women beach volleyball on that I keep noticing in my peripheral. All I have to say is with all those players on the sand at one time, it is a good thing they have numbers on their suits, so we can keep track of who is who.
On another Olympics related note, I happened to catch the Nike commercial for the Redeem Team while watching sports center (should that be capitalized? one word?) on ESPN this morning. We have been subjected to many renditions of our national anthem over the years, some very good — Whitney Huston prior to the Super Bowl and some very bad — Rosanne Barr before a San Diego Padres baseball game, but I really like this non-traditional version of Marvin Gaye’s that is the basis for this commercial.
For some entertaining reading, try the online version of “Seattle’s Only Newspaper”, The Stranger.
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It may be old news to those of you who live in the big city, but to us here in small town South Carolina it is a big deal. I don’t know when Street View went live for Aiken, but the local paper noticed last night and the story was the lead, above the fold in today’s edition. It looks like the Googlemobile drove by our house sometime last winter because all the leaves are off the trees. It was on a Thursday for sure, because the trash & recycle bins are in the street. It was probably in late January, early February because all the oak and hickory leave are of the lawn (are last raking of the season usually happens on New Years Day.)
Because, for some odd reason, the streets in our neighborhood are numbered in the opposite direction from every other part of town, you have to put in the wrong street address to find our house using Google. Home Sweet Home.
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The MMC’s August monthly breakfast gathering was at Sweet Lou’s on Broad St. in downtown Augusta. The coffee shop normally opens around 9 AM, but our Rally Masters had convinced Lou to open up at 7 just for us. He arrived at quarter after to find a dozen or so Miata types jonesin’ for some coffee. After he opened the shop and starting making coffee, we made ourselves at home and dragged his four “outside tables” onto the sidewalk.
Pictures, with more words are in this Flickr Set.
The food was good, but on the way home Donna asked if we would ever eat there again, to which I replied, “Nope.” But I qualified my answer by saying that it was only because it would be a long drive to Augusta just for breakfast, if it was in Aiken we probably would add Sweet Lou’s to our rotation.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 296
Athleticism, power, grace, joyous victory and heartbreaking defeat. No, not the Olympics, but the Most Best of MXC 2 was on Spike TV from 1 to 2 PM today. It was a lot more entertaining than Men’s Field Hockey, Women’s Handball or the Mixed Double’s Badminton from Beijing.
I knew the political conventions were coming up and a quick check of Wikipedia reveals that the Democratic Convention is next weekend from August 25 to August 27 at Pepsi Center and on August 28 at INVESCO Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado. The Republican Convention will take place at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota from September 1 until September 4, 2008. Maybe if you just said Denver and Saint Paul, leaving off the corporate named venues, it would sound more presidential to me.
The best game the FRS have played so far in this weekend series with the Toronto Blue Jays was the game they didn’t take the field in. They were rained out on Friday. Yesterday they lost 4 to 1 and today after just 3 innings they are losing 8 to nothing. Should have banked some of those runs they scored last week against Texas.
This morning at about the halfway point of our 16 mile bike ride, we took a water break at a stop sign. While we waited for a car to go by we took a quick drink and snagged a quick kiss before taking off again. Cyclists are still a fairly odd sight on the back roads of South Carolina, so we are used to strange looks from motorists, but the one we got from this driver was really odd — his was giving us a kissy face, perhaps asking for a smooch of his own.
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An elderly couple, Margaret and Bert, moved to Texas.
Bert always wanted a pair of authentic cowboy boots, so, seeing some on sale, he bought them and wore them home.
Walking proudly, he sauntered into the kitchen and said to his wife, Notice anything different about me?”
Margaret looked him over. “Nope.”
Frustrated, Bert stormed off into the bathroom, undressed and walked back into the kitchen completely naked except for the boots. Again he asked Margaret, a little louder this time, “Notice anything different NOW?”
Margaret looked up and exclaimed, “Bert, what’s different? It’s hanging down today, it was hanging down yesterday, it’ll be hanging down again tomorrow!”
Furious, Bert yelled, “AND DO YOU KNOW WHY IT’S HANGING DOWN, MARGARET?”
“Nope”, she replied.
“IT’S HANGING DOWN, BECAUSE IT’S LOOKING AT MY NEW BOOTS!!!”
Without changing her expression, Margaret replied, “Shoulda bought a hat, Bert. Shoulda bought a hat.”
Charlie was fixing a door and found that he needed a new hinge, so he sent his wife Mary to Home Depot.
At Home Depot, Mary saw a beautiful bathroom faucet while she was waiting for Walt the manager to finish waiting on a customer. When Walt was finished with the customer, Mary asked “How much for that faucet?”
Walt replied, “That’s pewter and it costs $300.”
“My goodness that sure is a lot of money!” Mary exclaimed. Then she proceeded to describe the hinge that Charlie had sent her to buy, and Walt went to the back room to find it.
From the back room Walt yelled, “Mary, you wanna screw for that hinge?”
Mary replied, “No, but I will for the faucet.”
And this is why you can’t send a woman to Home Depot.
When we waiting for our breakfast on Saturday I wandered the block looking for photo ops, pickings were slim. I parked my butt in the median to get a low angle shot of the line of Miatas. I was there a while trying out differing compositions trying for the just the right shot. One of the members noticed my sitting there and broke out her camera to take a picture of me taking pictures (she thought it looked like I was sulking.) Of course by the time she got out her camera I had stood up and was heading back. By now everyone else was in on the scenario and waved me back to the middle of the road, so I sat down and smiled, thereby ruining the moment. That smile reminds me of Jack Nicholson’s Joker look from the 1989 Batman movie.
I got her back by taking her picture as she took mine.…
For breakfast on Sunday we ended up at our old favorite place, the New Moon Cafe. This was our planned destination, in spite of the last couple of negative experiences, so Donna had brought 4 quarters so we could read the local paper while enjoying our Cranberry Pecan Muffins. Luck was with us and we hit the place at just the right time, after the initial opening rush and before the pre-church crowd. We dined alfresco and enjoyed the people watching people. Along with the people we also got to watch a high strung Golden Retriever match power & wits with it’s owner and the dog was winning. As we usually do, to avoid carrying it back we leave the Sunday paper behind after Donna has culled out the usable coupons, including this week, one from McDonald’s for a free chicken sandwich.
Before we left I went inside to make a potty stop. When I came out of the Men’s room Donna was inside the restaurant too so she could use the facilities as well. She had obviously vacated our outside table as on the table by the door to the outside were our plastic baskets filled with the empty OJ bottle and crumpled napkins. As I waited for her to come out I glanced through the USA Weekend and noticed another McDonald’s free sandwich coupon. I tore it out and put it in my jersey pocket with the other one. About that time, Donna returned from the bathroom and simultaneously a woman came over from the main part of the café and started to sit down at the table. We apologized for having our “trash” on her table, grabbed the plastic baskets and went back the way the woman had come to dispose of them on a different empty table.
When we got to our bikes I told Donna that she had missed another free sandwich coupon in the paper, but not to worry because I had snagged it before leaving our paper behind for that woman. It was then that she informed me that she had left our paper outside with the people who took over our original table, so the paper I had gotten the coupon from must have belonged to that woman inside, I had stolen that second coupon. Donna asked if I thought I should go back and give her the coupon, but I declined, rationalizing that she didn’t look like the McDonald’s type, but knowing that it would be really awkward to try and explain the mix up. Especially with her in her Sunday going to church finery and me in my sweaty, skin tight lycra cycling attire.
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Looking for another quick “photo = post” again and again it needs enough explanation to make me write a post anyway. This was my workbench at AIMD at NAS Meridian (MS) around 1980. I can picture it’s location in the overall shop, but can’t for the life of me remember what piece of equipment I worked on at it. Notice the model of the Starship Enterprise NCC 1701A from the recently released Star Trek The Movie hanging from the ceiling. You can also see a black spider hanging down, so it must have been coming up on Halloween.
Less apparent are two small egg shaped airplanes hanging there as well. I haven’t thought of those in ages and now searching the internet looking for them I realize I should have held on to them because they seem impossible to find now. Called Eggocentrics, they were made by a company called IPT and they produced a whole series of them based on commercial airliners in the 70’s. I of course couldn’t leave well enough alone and modified them into military aircraft, one of which was of the EA-3B I flew in while at VQ-1. I can’t remember what the second one was, but I think it was of an A-7 from one of the attack squadrons off the Midway.
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We rode the tandem to work today and the Emperor spent the day in the air conditioned luxury of the garage at home. The ride in was great, because it is our early week we started riding at a few minutes before 5:30 AM, there was zero traffic and the temperature was 70° with a little bit of fog. The ride home wasn’t too bad, even though it was sunny and 90°.
Donna and I took our usual walks around the perimeter of the parking lot all three times today and each and every time we came to the far corner I would see that empty parking spot and for an instant wonder what happened to the car.
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If you look over in the side bar you will see a countdown to Season 5 of Lost. Right now it stands at 147 days. That is based on something I read that said the first show of the new season will air on Thursday, January 15th.
Because I can’t for the life of me remember exactly how things ended up at the end of season four, I do remember who was residing in the coffin, but most of the other stuff is hazy, I figured that maybe I should rewatch the last few episodes of season four before season five starts. Well, hell, if I’m going to watch some, why not all? So if there are 82* episodes so far, if I back up 82 days from January 15th I should start a single episode a night on Saturday, October 25th. Let’s stretch it out a bit more…how about watching one episode each weeknight? Five gazinta 82, 16 times with a remainder of 2. That gives me a start date of Tuesday, September 23rd. Let’s take a day off between finishing watching season 4 and the start of season 5, for party planning, and start watching the show on Monday the 22nd. That even has a nice symmetry because the show originally premiered on September 22, 2004.
So every weeknight from 9/22/2008 until 1/13/2009, including Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Years, I will watch an episode of Lost. I’ll use the title of that episode as the title of that night’s post and if I’m really creative I’ll relate something in that episode to something that happened that day.
*Lostpedia list 82 episodes while Wikipedia lists 83 because they count last season’s finally as two separate episodes. I think that if they aired on the same night, one after the other with no credits between them they are one episode, so I’m treating it as such. Eighty-two it is.
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Back in March of 2006 when Donna was first diagnosed with breast cancer, we did what most people do when given news that they had a serious illness, we scoured the internet looking for information. Then I went one step further and started hunting blogs of breast cancer patients/survivors. I found several, read a lot, but didn’t link any for continued reading. That is until I found My Cancer. Found is not entirely accurate, to tell the truth I think someone pointed me to it, because I probably wouldn’t have found it because it was hosted on the NPR website.
It chronicles the trials and tribulations of being a cancer patient. Leroy Sievers had successfully beat colon cancer 4 years earlier, but as the disease sometimes does, it returned. This time it had metastasized to his brain and lungs. Leroy, life long journalist and producer (most recently for Ted Koppel’s Nightline) was asked to write a blog about his life living with cancer. The doctor’s gave him a prognosis of six months to live. My Cancer was full of insights into the “cancer world” and Leroy’s way with words touched a lot of people, he had a penchant for being able to eloquently express what other citizens of that world could not. Soon the comment section became a gathering place, sort of a town hall, for people who have or had been touched by cancer.
Sadly Leroy passed away a week ago. He wrote something in the blog right up until the very end. I’m going to miss him, because for every weekday for the past two and a half years, I have looked forward reading Leroy’s posts in the morning.
For the last couple days his wife has been posting to the blog. I’m not sure if she is looking to continue doing that forever, although for a while, it would be a nice continuance of the spirit of the blog to hear the caregiver’s side of the story.
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Today was a busy day to be a member of the MMC. First up, in the morning, was bowling. Followed by lunch. A short break and then the Sno Cap Drive In’s 44th Anniversary Celebration.
I hadn’t bowled since Moses was in Middle School, so I was a bit rusty bowling a 5 in the first frame and an eight in the second, but then tossed 2 strikes in a row and manged to surpass my goal of scoring 100 by fourteen. In the second game I somehow rolled 4 strikes (including a turkey) and a spare ending up with a score of 155.
One of the TV shows in our Netflix rotation is Bones, it’s like the X-Files on valium. It’s got a handsome FBI agent, a pretty female doctor that have polar opposite personalities and they solve crimes, there is even some underlying sexual tension tossed in. But Bones involves bodies in various states of decomposition not UFOs and monsters. And it is more like the usual approved for the widest TV audience possible than the ground breaking series the X-Files was.
The one thing that always annoyed me about the show was the intro. As the theme music played (Massive Attack must have a deal with Fox) they showed a montage of the characters in scenes from the show as the actor’s names are flashed on the screen. Trouble was, they weren’t in sync, David Boreanaz’s name over the image of Emily Deschanel, etc. Annoying.
We received Disc 1 of Season 2 last week and I guess I wasn’t the only one who found that practice bothersome, the names and faces now lined up.
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Remember those photos from 3 weeks ago where I could stick your picture into different Russian scenarios? Well, I thought I’d hit the jackpot along the same lines when I read this RSS feed headline from Photojojo: Be a Socialist Hero! Your Photographed Face as Mao’s Special Helper. Trouble is that this isn’t like PhotoFunia where you upload an image and through magic you instantly get your manipulated image back for free.
With Maopost.com you send them a high resolution jpeg of your portrait and they actually paint your face into a copy of a Chinese propaganda poster. Ain’t free though, $179 for 15 x 24 or $199 for 21 x 32 (shipping extra.) At Maoart there are over 1500 posters to choose from. I kind of like this one: Work To Build A Powerful Navy.
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A funeral service is being held for a woman who has just passed away. At the end of the service, the pallbearers are carrying the casket out when they accidentally bump into a wall, jarring the casket . They hear a faint moan. They open the casket and find that the woman is actually alive!
She lives for ten more years, and then dies. Once again, a ceremony is held, and at the end of it, the pallbearers are again carrying out the casket. As they carry the casket towards the door, the husband cries out, “Watch that wall!”
Every day I get a snack for morning break, traditionally it is 4 or 5 cookies (Nutterbutters, Oreos,etc.), but every once in a while I will push the envelope. This is one of those times, this week I have Nilla Caksters, and here is why:
I wasn’t interested in Oreo Cakesters after the first commercial I saw, something to do with a boarding school lunch table and a rumor has it style wordplay. But when I first saw that little kid looking in his lunch box and shouting “Jackpot!” I was intrigued. The Nilla Cakesters are surprisingly pretty good. I have even tried the Oreo version and they are not that bad either. They will probably both get added into the normal snack rotation.
While searching for the Nilla Cakester commercial I found a post on a SFGate.com blog for parents of babies and toddlers call Poop about kids providing catchphrases for families with their malapropisms. The commercial is mentioned in one of the comments. If you have the time, give the post and the plethora of comments a read, very amusing. My favorite is “Holy Trap!” which is not funny at all until get the setup and the phrase uttered right after it.
We also use the phrase “holy trap!” because one year our youngest looked in his trick or treat bag and proclaimed, “Holy trap! There’s tons and tons of tandy torn!”
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The FRS are on the tube playing the Evil Empire, so I can’t pay attention enough to write a coherent post (whether anything I write here is coherent is open for interpretation), so I am going to pretend I have a Twitter account and recap the last 7 posts in twitterese.
Even though I know it is home in the garage, I can’t help thinking, “Dude, where’s my car?” several times today. — Wednesday, August 20th
To get ready for the upcoming season five of Lost, I think I’m going to watch the first four Memento Style, AKA, in reverse order. — Thursday, August 21st
From certain angles, Donna’s gynecologist looks remarkably like Emily Deschanel. — Sunday, August 24th
“In the navy, come on, protect the motherland. In the navy, come on and join your fellow man.” Chairman Mao? Nope, Village People. — Monday, August 25th
Oreo Cakesters are the greatest invention since, well, Oreos. — Tuesday, August 26th
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T3: Rise of the Machines is on FX and I’m watching it. Even though #3 was the weakest of the series so far, I can’t help myself it is just one of those movies that no matter where I come into it I have to stay and finish it. (I think somewhere here on the blog I came up with a name for these kind of movies, but seem to find it right now.)
I’m stoked because they are making #4 right now for release in May of 2009. I hope it turns out good in spite of all the naysayers who think it will suck just based of casting and leaked plot lines. I’m sure I will like it no matter what, after all, I even enjoyed Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show last season on FOX. Which by the way, the second season of starts on Monday, September 8th.
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I use AutoCAD at work and ever since they upgraded me to version 2007 a couple of months ago I routinely have to attempt starting it a half dozen times before it will load. I will invariably report that it can’t find a license sever. I hit ‘Cancel’ and instead of just shutting off it will pop up a ‘Warning’ box that informs me I’m not authorized to use that application. I have to hit an ‘OK’ button to clear the screen allowing me another attempt. I am not the only one either, every AutoCAD user has the same issue.
Turns out our licensing server resides not on a box in our computer room, but in one at our company HQ, 700 miles away in New Jersey, so AutoCAD wasn’t getting a response in a timely manner. To fix the problem and environment variable had to be added to everyone’s PC — FLEXLM_TIMEOUT=1000000.
I know the speed of light is fast, but apparently on our network it can’t routinely make a 1400 mile round trip in under a second.
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I don’t read People magazine or watch Entertainment Tonight, so I don’t know what the root of all this is. Neither am I sure if this particular story from this morning’s newspaper is being reported with breathless excitement or stunned amusement because I didn’t read it.
Headline: Lindsay Lohan lashes out at father on blog.
Pull quote: “If you have something to say to me, say it to my face — that’s what I have believed my whole life — don’t be a coward and say it to others first, let alone all the media in the world.”
WTF? Do you think Lindsay told that to dear ol’ dad before posting it on her blog?
Looks like measles, but it’s not. Memo to self — always wear long pants, not shorts, when using a string trimmer to edge your lawn. The other leg doesn’t look quite as bad because it was a little farther away from the action…
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Yesterday was Donna’s birthday, but today was our bird day.
While I snapped a photo of the Pineville, SC Post Office I noticed a large flock (a colony) of egrets in the background. I couldn’t help myself, so I walked around back hoping to snag a photo of the lot of them taking off as they saw me. And I got kind of lucky, but I don’t think National Geographic magazine will be knocking on my door with a job offer.
Earlier I didn’t have the camera at the ready because I was driving and missed a similar fly off. This one wasn’t a flock of egrets though. We could see a set of large flapping wings a little ways down the road off in the grass and knew exactly what it was, a turkey vulture. Not much is scarier when you are driving a bitty convertible with the top down than a bird with a 6 foot wing span that has trouble getting to altitude. So I slowed down to let the bird get airborne, and when he did, he took his friends with him. There must have been 2 dozen of them hidden it the tall grass. I had to slow to nearly a stop to let them clear out of my way and we still chased two of them down the road for about a eighth of a mile before they found a spot to veer off.
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We rode the tandem to work today because it was the first day this week that the afternoon rain chance was less than 50%. I mounted the camera on the Photojojo BikeCam and off we went.
Donna decided to mow the lawn yesterday evening around dusk, because it was as cool as it was going to be until about 3:00 AM this morning (and the neighbors might not appreciate it happening then), but she never did get it done. Never even started.
