Electric Mayhem

One Hundred Twenty-Five

2010-10-17T17:18:00.004-05:00

My plan was to do the Door County Century and then do the 100 mile route for Maywood right after that the next Saturday. The only problem was the weather didn't cooperate. I watched the forecast pretty closely the week running up to Maywood. It didn't turn out as bad as the forecast had predicted. It was supposed to rain all morning with thunderstorms in the afternoon. It turned out to be just cloudy with some spots of sun here and there from 9:00 onward. I probably could have done more than the 25 mile route but the weather being so uncertain I didn't. If I do either the 70 or 100 mile routes I have to get up to Sheboygan to start by 7:30 which means I have to get on the road a little after 6AM. I decided to skip that and I slept a little extra instead. The 25 mile route was sort of anti-climactic after doing the Door County Century. Somehow I was rider number 1 according to my wristband, so there's that.
Normally Maywood is the highlight of the year, but instead Door County was. There was much better weather and I completed the whole thing. I was real windy on the route back. I can't recall riding in wind like that all year. Usually if it's that strong I just do something else besides riding my bike out in it. They repaved Lake Forest Park Road since I was last on it which I was pleased about. Toward the end my knee started hurting but other than that I felt pretty good. I have that same pain in my left knee when I hike mountains. It usually starts hurting on the way back down the mountain...not sure why that is. I have never had the knee pain while bike riding until this year. I'm hoping that doesn't become a problem in the future. That could put a dent in my plans to reach enough miles to where I can say, that when added together, I've ridden a bike as many miles as it is around the earth at the equator.

Netflix Update # 5

2010-10-03T17:54:00.004-05:00

This is a longer list since I barely post here much. This starts with December 2009 at the bottom. Recently I intended to add The Fog to my queue but I guess I put in The Mist by accident. It's close to the same thing, but not really at all the same. I remember once a long time ago as a family we had rented Working Girls instead of Working Girl. We didn't get very far into it when we figured out it was about prostitutes and wasn't the one we wanted.

Clash of the Titans (2010)
Who's Your Monkey
The Mist
Defendor
The Ruins
Edge of Darkness
The Maiden Heist
Crazy Heart
Brothers
Sherlock Holmes
Blade Runner (Directors Cut)
Trucker
Paranormal Activity
The Last House on the Left (2009)
Open Water 2: Adrift
Juno
The Road
Alien vs Predator
Alien Resurrection: Collector's Edition
Alien 3: Collector's Edition
Aliens: Collector's Edition
Alien: Collector's Edition
Breaking Bad Season 2 (Discs 1-4)
Idiocracy
Breaking Bad Season 1 (Disc 1-3)
Robot Chicken Season 1 (Disc 1)
Zombieland
Wristcutters: A Love Story
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Orphan
Rise: The Bloodhunter
Amistad
Million Dollar Baby
Cinderella Man
Run Lola Run
The Proposition
Terminator Salvation

Previous Netflix Update here.

Surprise!

2010-10-03T17:26:00.002-05:00

I've seen something like this somewhere before too.

This is an undated handout photo issued Tuesday Sept. 28, 2010 by Cherwell District Council, near Oxford England of a mouse in a loaf of Hovis bread bought by Stephen Forse, from Kidlington, England purchased online from Tesco supermarkets, through a store in Bicester, in January 2009. Forse was sickened when he found a dead mouse in his loaf of bread while making sandwiches for his children. The father-of-two thought the bread was just discoloured but on closer inspection saw the object was covered in fur. Following an investigation by council health officers, Premier Foods was ordered to pay 16,821 pounds, US$26,625, euro19,781, at Oxford Crown Court on Friday Sept. 24, 2010.(AP Photo/Cherwell District Council/PA)

Eagle

2010-06-27T23:38:00.004-05:00

The tornado last week in Eagle destoyed among many other things, a new car belonging to one of my co-workers. It was Jeep Compass with not quite 2000 miles on it. She was pet sitting at her sisters house which is in these photos. These are all photos from the FOX6 website. The black car that's upside-down was her brother-in-law's Trans Am. The Compass is the one on its' side. She said it was all smashed in and all the windows were broken. The photos don't really do justice to the actual damage that happened to the vehicle. It was just totally destroyed she said.

Fewer and fewer every day

2010-06-27T23:30:00.002-05:00

Kill (the) Bill

2010-03-21T17:04:00.009-05:00

I like to have an image to go along with my blog posts. Google image search for "kill the bill" gives me a series of Kill Bill images for results. So that's why the title and the movie poster.

They're going to vote on the health care bill in a couple hours and it looks like, by most accounts that it will pass despite overwhelming opposition. That's depressing as hell. The President is promoting socialist ideals and a vote for this bill is a vote for socialism. The Democrats should rename themselves the Socialist party after this. Health care whether we're talking about providers or the insurance industry is run in our county by the people and if this gets passed that will no longer be the case. This bill will lead to the government taking over health care....from the people. The government will eventually control essentially every part of it. Health care provider compensation to insurance coverage mandates to cost controls and the list goes on and on.

Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

The above is the definition of the word socialism from the American Heritage dictionary.

You would have to be a fool to believe that improving health care quality and reducing its' cost are the goals of this legislation. This is all about a power grab. If the Democrats...err socialists that currently are in control of our government put the healthcare feather in their cap, it's a game changer for sure. Get ready for taxes and more taxes along with reduced quality and availability of health care. And I should not neglect to mention the effects of this legislation on our economy. Caterpillar calculates that this will cost them 100 million in the first year alone. The weak economic climate we already have certainly won't strengthen if this legislation is enacted.

Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'". I could not agree more.

Denied

2010-02-09T19:35:00.003-06:00

Deshtroyed?

2010-02-05T14:24:00.005-06:00

The Obamas sure do talk funny. Michelle says "deshtroyed" in this Red Cross commercial and it drives me nuts every time I hear it. And now this video is all over the place with Barrack saying "corpse-man" 3 times during a speech. George Bush always says "nucular" instead of nuclear but that seems to be pretty common. I remember my 6th grade science teacher used to say it that way too.

Jack Bauer on 24 says "nucular" too. It must a hard habit to break.

Music Video of the Year 2009

2009-12-27T21:55:00.004-06:00

Winner:

First runner up:

Gingerbread House

2009-12-14T21:14:00.010-06:00

I'm not sure I understand what gingerbread homes have to do with Christmas. Whatever the connection here is a video of iJustine building gingerbread house.

I made a gingerbread house once. It was in 6th grade if I remember correctly. I think it was Graham crackers we used instead. I dropped it taking it out of my locker after school the day I was going to take it home. I remember being really mad at myself when I did that too. I was much more upset about it that than I should have been.

I'm not so sure about the Apple logo. Personally I'm not even close to giving up my PC. Maybe someday I'll try an Apple as a spare computer or something, but that probably won't be any time soon.

"If I could move that fast, I'd never leave the house." I'm pretty sure Butthead said that while commenting on the Tool video below for Sober.

I like the part of the video at the end where what looks like meat is going thru the plumbing. There's lot of wierd and interesting going on in this video.

Massive Head Wound

2009-12-14T19:52:00.006-06:00

Well not exactly massive, but I did cut myself shaving. I took a pretty good chunk of skin off somehow. I tried to take a photo, but it turns out to be pretty difficult to take a good quality photo of the back of ones' own head.

After I cut myself and I was bleeding I was reminded of "Massive Headwound Harry", which is an SNL skit from season 17 (1991-1992). All I could remember was the name until I looked it up on the Internet. And here it is...

The Internet can be a wonderful resource. Recently I was able to prove to some family members who doubted that what I was saying was ever true, that on "Wheel of Fortune" contestants used to buy items with their winnings instead of taking home cash. I remembered this format clearly but they insisted that I was confused. A little web searching and I was vindicated thanks to Wikipedia and YouTube (and Google).

Wheel of Fortune Gameplay...Retired Gameplay elements...Shopping (Wikipedia)

And if you doubt the reliability of Wikipedia (another topic entirely), you simply cannot dispute this video clip I found on YouTube. And there are a few more clips like it that show the same "shopping" format which they had used from 1983-1987.

Random Video of the Day

2009-11-25T19:56:00.001-06:00

Monster Trail Mix

2009-11-21T13:33:00.001-06:00

I don't know what to say about this stuff other than it's addictive. I picked up some trail mix at one of the rest stations on one of my rides this year. I think the RMHC ride. I don't remember the brand but since then I've been trying to find something like it. I wanted something with M&M's in it so I tried Archer Farms "Monster" trail mix. I know this isn't the same stuff I had had, but it looked good. I eat it like an after meal desert or a quick snack. The problem is I have a hard time stopping once I start eating it. I close the lid only to reopen it again and I usually repeat that process several times before I finally quit it. One serving is supposed to be 1/4 cup, but that rarely happens. I think I ate a whole container inside of a week. That can't be good for me.

I'd estimate that it's 75% peanuts and raisins and the rest are the chips and M&M's. Whatever the ratios are, this is good stuff. Archer Farms is a brand of Target from what I read, so you can only get it there.

Five stars!

One Seven Two Five

2009-11-14T14:55:00.005-06:00

These are my stats for the biking year 2009. I'm OK with calling the year complete even though there's a day here and there that is nice enough to go out for a spin. I have transitioned into my routine indoors at the gym now and I prefer to stick with that until next year.

I pretty much blew away any previous years stats. Partly because I got a new bike after my first 400 miles.

I kept ahead of my stats from 2007 which was the year I was comparing myself to from the beginning. When I got my new bike on July 9, I left 2007 in the dust. There's a nice little climb there at the end of September which was my Door County trip. The day we left Door County it rained and got abruptly cooler. Into the early part of October this year it stayed much cooler outside than normal so I don't have many miles after that trip.

May: 93.6 miles
June: 206.4 miles
July: 512.9 miles
August: 382.3 miles
September: 471.5 miles
October: 58.7 miles

I had 57 outings this year. My average distance was 30.27 miles. My shortest ride was 9.33 and my longest was 80.2 miles.

0-9 miles: 3
10-19 miles: 22
20-29 miles: 10
30-39 miles: 7
40-49 miles: 6
50-59 miles: 5
60-69 miles: 0
70-79 miles: 2
80+ miles: 2

My weekday evening rides after work were typically 18.5 miles so that's why the concentration of outings in the 10-19 range. I've calculated my total time at 109 hours 54 minutes which is 4 days 14 hours and 54 minutes of time on my bike with wheels in motion.

Since I have kept track with various cyclocomputers since late in 2004 I've traveled a total of roughly 5116 miles.

2004: 101.5
2005: 716.0
2006: 434.0
2007: 1236.9
2008: 902.3
2009: 1725.4

This distance is about equivalent to a round trip from Los Angeles to Honolulu (answers.com). My ultimate goal is to reach enough miles to say that cumulatively speaking I have ridden a bicycle a distance that is equal to the circumference of the earth at the equator. I'm roughly 20% of the way there now. I don't know how to figure it out, but I think it would be interesting to find out where on the earth closer to the north pole a circle of 5100 miles is. I think I'd need to know how far apart the lines of longitude are at different degrees of latitude and figure from there with my distance figure and come up with the degrees south of the pole. If I knew how to figure that out I'd probably be a member of Mensa.

Edit: I found 2 figures on the Internet for the circumference of the earth at the arctic circle. One says 10,975 miles and the other 9,945 miles. The arctic circle cuts Alaska in half north/south and runs through Siberia and the northern parts of Scandinavia. I could say I've ridden a distance equal to halfway around the world.......but at the arctic circle!

Stop, Look, and Listen

2009-10-20T23:45:00.002-05:00

Brookers / Quiet Riot

2009-10-03T20:32:00.001-05:00

I've been watching these rather strange videos on YouTube lately. I was searching one day for an example of an x-ray of an S curved spine and came across Brooke Brodack's Quiet Riot YouTube channel. Apparently making videos and video blogging is what the kids are doing these days and I've been completely ignorant about the whole thing. I've watched the entire lot of videos on the Quiet Riot channel and I can't figure out why I did it. I was drawn to watch them for some reason I can't figure out. They are a good break from studying I guess. Probably Brookers most viewed video is the crazed numa fan spoof video which currently has over 8 million views.

This video here is Brooke and iJustine. iJustine is a viral video star according to Wikipedia. She's known for her 300 page iphone bill video (2 million views and counting). I just post this vid because it has the 2 of them in it. It' s complete nonsense. The head pinching/crushing part at the end was something I remember from Kids in the Hall. I don't know if that's where these 2 know it from or not.

The title of this video on YouTube is poop.mov and the sort of joke at the beginning is about 2 girls 1 cup. If you haven't seen "2 girls 1 cup" I suggest you keep it that way. I've seen some disturbing things before on the internet...bones breaking etc...but that video nearly tops them all. There's a lot of reaction videos on YouTube of people watching it. It's far too graphic for YouTube so the vid itself isn't on there. I'd say I handled it better than most. I didn't wretch like some people did.

I'd say that this is a video that happens because your trapped inside all day due to a snowstorm except that the video was posted in the middle of summer so I would be wrong to say that.

Is Brookers certifiably insane? I say no.

Why do I do this? Because I can. [iieeiieauiiieeihhrreurrr] This is what the internet does to your kids! Aaaaghh!

One Three Zero

2009-10-03T18:36:00.008-05:00

I went up to Door County last weekend for a weekend of bike riding. I stayed at a lodge in Fish Creek along Hwy 42 across from Peninsula State Park. This turned out to be a pretty nice central location to start my bike rides from. My parents were planning on going up to Door County for a weekend and they decided to invite me along so I could do some biking up there. After breakfast I did my bike rides and they went off and did their activities and we met up again for dinner is pretty much how it worked out. On the way up we drove separate so I could take my bikes. On the way up Friday I had them drop me off in Sturgeon Bay near a ship yard and I rode my bike the rest of the way to Fish Creek via (mainly) Bayshore Drive along the bay side. That was a pretty nice ride. There was about as much bike traffic as there were cars until I got to Hwy 42. It was a nice warm-up ride of approx 28 miles.

Saturday I did a tour of Peninsula State Park (map here). I went mainly from the East entrance of the park up to Eagle Tower and then west thru the park on the roads and bike trials and then finished on some of the mountain bike trails. I haven't been on mountain bike trails for a while and it rather made me want to do it some more. These were simple trails as mountain bike trails go. I also found out how crappy the brakes are on my old bike...lots of sliding and squeaking. I'd forgotten about that since I've been riding my new bike. Riding my old bike just made me want to go out on my new bike later in the day so I did that. There's a lot I skipped at the park so I'd like to go back someday. This little park tour clocked in at about 13 miles.

Saturday afternoon I took a trip up to the north end of the county. I stopped about 2 miles west of the car ferry to Washington Island. Somewhere about where the "people ferry" is which I think is Gill's Rock. I took roads the whole way that were marked on a bike map they had in the office lobby of our lodge. (It looked something like this.) It was an enjoyable route. It may have been more enjoyable except for it rained on me for about 45 minutes of it. The roads were wet for other stretches and it sprinkled here and there for a while even after it stopped raining. It didn't bother me much, but I was glad when the sun came back and I was able to dry up some. This outing came in at about 49 miles.

Saturday night for dinner we went to Ephraim and ate at Wilson's. It's sort of a burger/ice cream parlor type restaurant. It looks like the 50's or something inside and they have coin operated jukeboxes right at the table to pick out songs to play from. It says "Coca-Cola" on the outside of the building so right away you know it should be good.

Sunday after breakfast I had to get going pretty quick. Scattered thunderstorms were forecast for later in the afternoon about 3PM so I wanted to get out before that. I drove to Jacksonport and parked at Lakeside Park at about 57 and V. I had my picnic lunch there after I got back and the park sign said it used to be a big shipyard where they loaded up lumber destined for Milwaukee and Chicago. I followed the "bike route" signs south on N. Cavepoint Drive and then through Whitefish Dunes State Park to Glidden Drive. I continued south after that. I wasn't sure exactly how far south I went until I got back and looked at the map. I followed Lake Forest State road all the way to where the Sturgeon Bay ship canal is. I walked out onto a concrete pier and watched a big yacht come in. It was super windy. You can see the pier on Google Maps on the satellite view. Glidden Drive was about the coolest part of the whole ride. It's forested the entire way and the only thing separating you from the lake is lakefront homes which are mostly in the forest also. Glidden Drive was all nice rolling hills and curves and none of them tough to climb really. On the way back I was really hauling tail. I made it back in probably 2/3 the time it took to get out in the first place. The 15 mph wind at my back didn't hurt either. I battled that the whole way down. I saw some dark clouds rolling in just as I was north of my turnaround point. I got rained on a little, but nothing like I did Saturday afternoon. It passed and cleared up again. This outing came in at just over 40 miles.
This is N. Cavepoint Drive. It wasn't this colorful just yet.

Google Satellite view.

A picture I found on the web of the pier. I didn't take my camera on this particular outing.

All weekend I kept seeing letters and numbers painted on the road. I didn't realize until my route on Sunday that the "DCC" I kept seeing stood for Door County Century and the numbers were the mile marks. I might do that ride next year. The only thing is it might conflict with Maywood. If not it might only be a week apart. That would be interesting doing 2 century rides in back to back weeks.

Sunday night we ate at PC Junction (YouTube Video here). They deliver your drinks and food on a model train. As it turned out we were the only people in the whole place, but I understand it's often mobbed during tourist season and you have to wait just to get in. I had a Baumeister Cream soda which was pretty good. I think it was bettter than Sprecher's Cream soda which I like a lot too.

Monday morning after we checked out we ate breakfast in Sister Bay at Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant. It has a grass roof but the goats weren't grazing up there because it was raining. I had Swedish pancakes which I found out are flat. I had no idea Swedish pancakes were flat until I had these, so I learned something that morning. They were square too and they looked exactly like in this picture.

Seven Zero

2009-10-03T17:15:00.005-05:00

Maywood 2009 I decided to take the 70 mile route. I thought it would be tougher than it turned out to be. I think I'm in better shape than other years when I've only done the 50 mile route. The big hills I remember from other years didn't seem as big this year. Plus I finally got a new bike like I've been planning on for several years. I did the second annual Ronald McDonald House Charity Ride a month before and that was only 40 miles but more hilly and I thought much more difficult. I even walked up part of a hill on that ride. It was kind of embarrassing. This hill was steep and long and partway up it turned and went up some more that you couldn't see until you made the turn. It didn't help that I clicked into the larger chainring instead of the smaller one partway up and had to work my way through that and get back to the low ring. I got to a point where I couldn't breath any harder and I had to stop. It was such a steep hill where I stopped I didn't think I could click back into my pedals and so I just walked up the rest of it. I haven't walked my bike up a hill probably since I was 12. I've got that hill in my mind and next year assuming it's on the route I'll beat that hill. It's on Peerless Road just north of Ridge Road in Dane County. The whole route was hilly and there didn't seem to be very many flatter portions to recover in before the next hill. I stopped a bunch of times just to get my breath before moving on. Not a lot of rides I go on make me feel out of shape, but this one did.

In the first part of July I picked up a Trek 7.3FX in red just like the picture above. It's a hybrid bike. If you consider all of the hybrids on the market as falling on a spectrum with "practically a mountain bike" on one end and "practically a road bike" on one the other end, I think this falls closer to the road bike end. For me it was as big of a jump as I wanted to make right now after having ridden a hardtail mountain bike for so many years. I couldn't see myself moving all the way to a road bike yet. I swapped the saddle out for one of those anatomic relief saddles after my first 70 miles, but other than that I haven't changed a thing. I got used to riding this bike pretty quick and I've been on my old bike just once and I can hardly believe I used to ride that thing so much. My new bike is so much better, and better suited to the type of riding I do anyway. It's not all that much lighter, but the roll is better on these tires than the fat mountain bike tires I had been riding on. Plus I use a larger range of gears instead of just 4 or 5. This was definitely the best money I've spent in a while. I got it at Emery's of course.
Maywood 2009 was one of the best I've done so far. I consider the Maywood Earth Ride the highlight of my riding season every year by far. It's more about the ride than the cause...which I'm not exactly sure what that is. The earth??? They changed the 65 mile route to a different area this year and made it a 70 mile route instead. As I was doing it I considered just taking the turn and going on the 100 mile loop, but I didn't. Maybe next year. I had a ton of energy left at the end. That might have had something to do with eating 3 Powerbars and a couple gel packs along the way. At the end I had some really great soup, "Chicken Tortilla" or something like that. I hung out for a while and watched the Beef Tea String Band which was pretty cool.

Netflix Update #?

2009-10-03T16:37:00.002-05:00

In order of most recent at the top of the list. I linked each one this time with the IMDB. I've suspended my Netflix account as of a couple weeks ago. I'm too busy lately to be taking the time out every week to watch another movie. There's still a long list of things on my queue I'd like to get. They let you suspend your account for up to 90 days before it reactivates. That'll be about right.

Eastern Promises
Æon Flux
Ultraviolet
Push
Burn After Reading
Gran Torino
Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon
Taken
Valkyrie
The Quiet
In The Shadow of the Moon
Killshot

Photo Dump

2009-10-02T20:59:00.000-05:00

This is a collection of dumb, hilarious, outrageous, or odd stuff I've found on the internet.

Ask your daddy why he's hooked on killing!

Bruno Kammerl`s Punktlandung

2009-08-07T17:41:00.001-05:00

Moon Landings Confirmed

2009-07-26T09:25:00.004-05:00

I saw part of a TV show recently that was heavily weighted with evidence for conspiracy theories that we never landed on the moon but light on rebuttal. While skepticism is largely a good thing, conspiracy theories are another. In any case with the 40 anniversary of Apollo 11 landing I'm sure this was why this program was on. If you think that we never landed on the moon, or even if you are inclined to believe we did, but are given pause by some of the conspiracy theories, give this site a read.

Clavius.org

Pretty much every point made by the conspiracy nuts is debunked from the claims of moving flags to faked photos to to moon rocks.

I recently saw the documentary "In the Shadow of the Moon". I'd recommend it if your even slightly interested in the Apollo missions to the moon. I centers a bit on Apollo 11, but it has many of the living astronauts that were involved in the missions with the exception of Neil giving first hand accounts and describing their experiences and the surrounding events of that time period. Interesting stuff. For some reason it had not occurred to me until I was watching this that John F. Kennedy never lived to see the day man landed on the moon.

Tempur-Pedic Mattress

2009-06-28T22:30:00.006-05:00

I picked up one of these Tempur-Pedic beds maybe about 2 months ago. I've been wanting a new mattress for a long time and an opportunity came about to get one of these second hand that was about a year old. It's basically like the photo, but without the fancy wood frame and without the pillows. Brand new for just a metal frame, box, and the mattress in queen size these are about $2000 before tax and delivery. You can't use an ordinary frame and box spring though, because these mattresses weigh a lot more than a normal mattress. With my dad's help we hauled it away for 500 bucks.
It's the best $500 I've spent in a while. It's real comfortable. You sort of sink in and are enveloped a bit when you lay on it. I sleep on either side now all night where I used to roll from one side to the other a lot more. I have an "S" shape in my spine, so I could always only stay on one side until it got uncomfortable and then I'd switch. Now either side is comfortable indefinitely and occasionally I'll even sleep on my back.

I saw a video of the steamroller demonstration once, but all I can find at the moment is a photo. If I remember correctly they rolled over it once out and once back and it came right back to shape.

Dream Dates continued

2009-06-28T21:45:00.005-05:00

Jill Wagner from the Mercury commercials.

She's on Wipeout too, but I didn't know that until the Superbowl this year when they had a special edition of Wipeout on after the game.

Here's an nice compilation video of the "Big Balls" part of the obstacle course on Wipeout.

Another Netflix Update

2009-06-28T16:44:00.006-05:00

My second blog post of this whole year! Even Jonathan posts more often and he retired from regular blogging last Dec 31. Here's a rundown of how I have entertained myself in terms of the moving picture shows I've seen since my last Netflix update. Beginning with the most recent and going back to late last year sometime.

Arrested Development Season 1-3 (8 DVD's total)
I Am Legend
Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach
Pineapple Express
Next
The Pursuit of Happyness
Snakes on a Plane
He Was a Quiet Man
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
Balls of Fury
88 Minutes
Role Models
Cloverfield
Resident Evil: Degeneration
21
Lakeview Terrace
The Killpoint (2 DVD)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
All the Pretty Horses
Trade
Borderland
10,000 BC
Vantage Point
Into the Blue
The Dark Knight
Hancock
Reno 911 Season 2 (3 DVD)
25th Hour
8 Mile
Jumper
Reno 911 Season 1 (3 DVD)

In addition to this I also have seen Wall.E, The House Bunny, and something else I can't remember on New Years.

I'm disappointed by a lot of movies I've seen lately. I shouldn't be surprised really. I see most stuff to satisfy my curiosity more than it is that I think I'm going to be seeing a great movie. I thought 10,000 BC was pretty good even though that movie gets bashed by most reviewers. I thought Cloverfield was pretty good too. Arrested Development is hilarious. I like that I can whip through an entire TV series in a matter of weeks and without commercials. I'm doing the same thing right now with the V TV series. I managed to find a way to download it off the Internet and I'm working my way through 19 episodes. The events in that show are about as unlikely as anything seen on The Dukes of Hazzard, only this has lizard aliens disguised as people for enemies. ABC is going to have a new "V" TV series this fall. Juliet from Lost is in it. I wonder if they will eat hamsters. Kia hamsters (see post below).

Kia Hamsters

2009-05-07T21:15:00.004-05:00

The greatest commercial on TV right now. That Goldfish song is infectious.

Ants Part 2

2008-12-28T13:05:00.003-06:00

I had to "take care" of some ants again. This time they don't have a clear reason for being there or a clear source. There's no trail to the door or anywhere. They seem to come right out from under the carpet there by the border between carpet and kitchen floor. There's about enough space to slide an index card underneath the edging but it's enough for the ants. There were only about 2 or 3 at a time coming out there until I put out the poison. I put a old jelly jar on top of the ant bait packet and then covered that with a shoebox so my cat wouldn't bother it. I took all that off about 3 hours later and found what's in these pictures. That was 2 days ago, now all the ants are gone. They probably all went underneath the carpet and died.

These images are 1024x768 wallpaper sized for your desktop. Enjoy!

Roomba Driver

2008-12-19T15:33:00.003-06:00

Not my cat. Not my vacuum. Just something crazy I found on the internet.

Dream Dates

2008-12-19T14:06:00.015-06:00

I started this list of dream dates right here on my blog quite a while ago but I've never expanded on it. These are in no particular order.

1. Mary Katherine Ham

This must be an old screen cap. She's no longer blogging on townhall.com. She's been replaced by Amanda Carpenter as the internet cop from townhall.com on the O'Reilly Factor. You can still find Mary Katherine Ham on the Factor quite a bit though. Usually paired up in the same segment with Juan Williams for some reason. Youtube video here also.

2. Barbara Bush
I don't know anything about Barbara other than she's beautiful and the President's daughter. I just think those 2 things would make it an interesting evening.

3. Claire LittletonClaire Littleton is actually a character on Lost. Emilie de Ravin is married but technically it would be OK to go out with Claire from Lost since Charlie is out of the picture now. It might be difficult to find her though, I think she went missing again near the end of last season.

4. Jessica Kiper AKA Sugar

I grabbed the first 2 images from the CBS site mostly because they show the record adapter necklace she wore. I was going to put them in an earlier post but I didn't. She didn't get a single vote from the jury at the end but I don't think she much expected to. She should be on the next fans vs favorites for sure if they do that again. On the Survivor website it says she named her dog Major P. Pants. That's hilarious. It said she was a pin-up model so I googled it one time and found those Thanksgiving photos. I have photos of a topless female survivor contestant on my blog now. That sounds a lot worse that it really is.

5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?
10. ?

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T18:41:00.001-06:00

My Civic Literacy Score

2008-11-23T09:30:00.009-06:00

The quiz can be found here.

I don't feel to great about my score. I got an 81.81% (or 27/33). After looking at the average scores though, I'm not too embarrassed to post it here for the whole world to see. I didn't remember what a Puritan was and I guessed incorrectly. I scored in the top 3% which I think says less about me and more about how ignorant the sample subjects were with regard to civic matters.

Seems to me that our media obsessed culture will be part of Americas undoing. The media has too much influence over the uninformed and the ignorant. Everyone over 18 (minus felons) gets one vote. Even people who get their news (exclusively?) from SNL, John Stewart, and the Colbert Report.

Video from How Obama Got Elected.com.

Items From My Past (Part 4)

2008-11-15T13:52:00.001-06:00

Some Industrial Arts projects from 7th or 8th grade. I remember I shot my rocket off before the countdown was finished. It wasn't even close. I wasn't listening closely enough when Mr.Boettcher gave instructions for the launcher. I remember there was a switch and a red button on it. I misunderstood and thought that the switch was supposed to be turned first at anytime during the countdown from 10 and then we pressed the red button to launch at the finish of the countdown. I don't know how I got that idea, but I flipped the switch halfway through the count of nine, then it went dead silent as my rocket shot up into the sky. I was as shocked as everyone else was.
Impressions of my teeth before I had braces. Some of the teeth are broken out but I think they were always like that. I wonder if dentists still give these away when they're done with them.

Strong Funds compressed t-shirt. I don't know why I've kept this. My grandma gave it to me a long time ago. It's sort of a novelty item I guess. It's fairly small. Without measuring I'd say maybe 4" x 2.5" x 1.5". Strong Funds doesn't exist anymore.

I don't know when I started buying 45 RPM records, but without counting I'd guess that I have about 40 of them. I think I probably bought them from sometime around 6th grade up until about the time they stopped selling them outside of music shops. The centers of a 7" record are bigger so you have to use one of these center adapters. If this shape looks familiar it's because Jessica, AKA "Sugar" on Survivor Gabon wears a necklace that's shaped like this.
A photo strip from what I believe was my first photo booth experience. If you saw me walking down the street today you'd have a hard time matching me up with the guy in these photos. I saw my girlfriend that's in these photos about 2 years ago and she looks pretty much the same. I found another photo of us with the Easter Bunny but that never needs to see the light of day as far as I'm concerned. I didn't want to do it in the first place but it was early on in the relationship and I got pressured into it by her and her friend. We were at the mall looking around at prom dresses as I recall. Seems odd that I was even along for that.

My Wendy's uniform. I have the apron, pants, shirt, hat, name tag and everything. Some of the local Wendy's franchises were owned by Junior Bridgeman the former Milwaukee Bucks player. That's why it says Bridgeman Foods on the uniform sleeve. I met him a time or two when he came out to our Wendy's. I don't remember how I ended up with the wall plaque with the Wendy's Creed on it. It think it was just laying around in the back office or something and I took it home. I found some old pay stubs too. My first Wendy's stubs say that I made $3.40/hour. I've come a ways since I was 16. I don't think I've ever thrown out a single pay stub from any job I've ever had. I have envelopes labeled for each year full of pay stubs from any job I had going back to when I was 16. I'd probably have them from before that but my paper route didn't pay me by check. I had to go out and collect the money myself straight from my customers. I keep a lot of strange items. I probably wouldn't have all this stuff if I moved more frequently. Plus I've always had the space to keep everything.

My last item is a brochure from my visit to the World Trade Center. We were vacationing in the Poconos and took a bus trip to New York City for a day. We went to the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, and some kind of shopping place near a marina or something. At the World Trade Center we went to the observation floor at the top but for reasons I can't remember nobody was going out on the roof. When I found my box of old vacation brochures I dug around in it right away hoping to find a WTC one considering what's happened to these building since then. I was real happy to find this.

After seeing this aerial photo I was curious so I looked it up which towers got hit when and on what sides with relation to this photo. It breaks down like this:

The photo on the brochure is facing about north so 1WTC (north tower) is the more distant one on the left and 2WTC (south tower) is on the right.
1WTC (north tower) got hit at 8:46AM impacting floors 93-99 on the north side (the side opposite of what we can see in the brochure photo). It was hit first but collapsed last at about 10:28AM.
2WTC (south tower) got hit 9:02AM impacting floors 77-85 on the south side. It collapsed at about 9:59AM, a few minutes short of an hour after impact.

Items From My Past (Part 3)

2008-11-14T18:15:00.013-06:00

My root beer bottle cap collection. One summer sometime in the early 80's probably, I endeavored to drink a bottle of root beer every single night. I saved all the bottle caps for some reason. In the box with all the caps I found a paper ripped from a notebook that breaks down how may caps I had from each brand and the number of ounces and pints of root beer that it equated to. Most people would probably have thrown this type of thing out long ago. I'm not most people. The Grandpa Graf's brand was a distant second to Dad's.
Small 6-1/2 oz bottle of Coke. I don't remember anything about this. I'm going to keep it and not drink it. Coca-Cola beats Pepsi hands down in my book.
I found a couple of VHS tapes with some Tyson fights. I taped them from HBO. I had Tyson vs. Spinks, Tyson vs. Bruno and a Tyson vs Ruddock. There was a lot of commentary and other garbage along with it about the goings on at the time with Robin Givens and different trainers and all that. These fights were all before Tyson bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield's ear. What a disgrace to humanity that guy was (is?).

Somewhere around the time I was nine I had a Rubik's Cube. After that for birthdays or Christmas I kept getting other similar puzzles. Left to right these are: Alexander's Star, Pyraminx, Rubik's Revenge, The Missing Link, the snake, and Rubik's Magic. I don't think I ever messed up the Alexander's Star. It looks difficult and it's just as stiff as I remember it was when I first got it. I had to use a book to finish the Rubik's Revenge. Some of the same moves applied to it as to the regular cube but the four center pieces instead of the the one was the thing that made it more challenging. I have a newer Rubik's cube now, so when I found my original I threw it out. It was all loose and rickety anyway. I found my Chex cereal cube. I never tried it but there's something called supercubing and you have to line up the center cube correctly in order to have the cube solved completely. My Chex cube has the bananas and blueberries oriented incorrectly by that standard. I remember too the Rubik's Revenge I got from my Aunt and Uncle at Christmas. The first one I had fell completely into pieces as soon as I started moving it around. There were some counterfeit ones going around so they returned it and got me another one.
An art project from 5th grade Miss Hanrahan's class. It was layers of colored construction paper cut out and glued together. After that we folded sand paper in half and sanded whatever we wanted to, to reveal the layers. For the last step we painted over it with something clear to seal the whole thing up. I opted for the my last initial instead of a simple shape or a letter J. It was more challenging because it required a certain amount of accuracy cutting out all of the holes for the all the layers of B's that I glued together.

Items From My Past (Part 2: Brewers Items)

2008-11-14T16:51:00.010-06:00

My 1982 Brewers Baseball. The year they were American Leauge Champions. My photography skills aren't the greatest but I swear that I did not move when I took this. Maybe the focus is on plastic covering outside the ball and that puts the signatures out of focus???
I have the entire set of 6 1982 Brewer McDonald's placemats. Purchasing them at McDonald's benefited the Ronald McDonald House. This one is of infielders Jim Gantner (2B) and Robin Yount (SS). I also found the Robin Yount "3000" book they gave out at a game my Dad went to with my Grandfather. The book lists every one of his first 3000 hits. I'm keeping all this in one storage box with along with some local newspapers from various events or significant dates...Yount 3000, Paul Molitor's 39 game hitting streak, "Allied Jets Pound Iraq" (1991), my birth date in 1972 and so on.

My Brewer hat and a helmet I had. I don't know where the helmet came from but it says RC Cola on the back.

We got this plastic Brewers home plate by collecting and sending in Brewer points. I think we collected them primarily from frozen pizza labels. It has the Milwaukee Brewers logo of that time, the m & b that looks like a glove but without enough fingers.

Items From My Past (Part 1: The Early Years)

2008-11-09T19:08:00.013-06:00

I've had this ongoing project sorting through boxes I took from my parents attic when they moved recently. The project got rolled into a closet organizing project I started earlier in the year and together it's taking me a lot longer than it should to get everything sorted through and into new storage bins and put away. I'm getting accustomed to all the clutter but I'm nearly finished. I'll be able to vacuum again soon!

These are some items from my past I found.
I remember having this belt buckle in 3rd grade. I maybe had it for some years before or after, but 3rd grade sticks with me for some reason. At some point in my life I began to prefer Jim to Jimmy. I stopped wearing it for other reasons than that I'm sure, but that could have been one of them.
This is Super Grover. I got him as an Easter gift. I remember my parents put him riding on a horse we had as a door stop and I found him while we were searching for eggs. I remember going to church and all I could think about was my new Super Grover. Hard to believe I thought it was that cool. Maybe that's why I never got rid of him. I also found an Oscar the Grouch I had.

I was never particularly attached to this tiger in any way. I'm not sure why I kept it. I'm pretty sure it was on a birthday cake of mine one year but that seems odd since it's fabric. You can't see in the photo but it's head is nearly ripped off. I think from a real life cat attacking it.
This sad little boy is me. The suit was green and I absolutely hated wearing it. The backside of the photo says "November 1976". My mom says I wouldn't wear any new clothes at that time because they weren't "mine". I don't know if that's true exactly but that's what she says. It probably had more to do with hating to wear turtle neck shirts and uncomfortable green suits.

I used to have these around my room when I was little. I never knew where they came from. I'm now able to identify these as Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The carved wooden one broke at the ankles one time when it fell but I got him back together.
My half done latch hook Santa. I remember my mother doing several latch hooks around the time that she had cancer. I used to help her on some of them so she got me one of my own. Hers were always much bigger. You could accuse me of being a person that "starts projects but doesn't finish them", and not be incorrect. That's still somewhat true of me today.

My Jesus night lamp. I had this in my room probably around the same time as the Canadian mounted policemen. I don't know when this got put away, but I suppose eventually I wasn't bothered by total darkness at night when I went to sleep. I'd put this in my room now but the cord is a bit dry looking...could be a fire hazard. I can't bring myself to throw it away unless I can get a new one first. The cord is rolled into the metal somehow so the cord couldn't be replaced easily.

Death Star Rebuilt!

2008-11-09T18:52:00.003-06:00

Picture of the Day November 6, from a Glenn Beck Insider. Humor like this and the return of Glenn Beck to TV next year (on Fox) will make the next 4 years a little easier to stomach.

Change

2008-11-09T17:59:00.004-06:00

We'll all find out soon enough. I don't believe in his recipe for change. I voted McCain-Palin in case it wasn't already obvious.

I believe I said in an earlier post that I believed the cost of energy in America was going to go way, way up. Nothing anyone that isn't living under a rock couldn't tell you. I think the election of Obama is only going to exacerbate the situation we already face.

If Obama is such an environmentalist, then why doesn't he want us to be able to build clean coal plants? Are all of our old "dirty" coal plants any better? What good do you expect to come from taxing an industry that provides nearly 50% our energy? What effects does he think that will have on the economy in general? He does understand that taxing the energy providers is actually a tax on the business (producers) and consumers of of this nation right? How do we compete in a global market when our products cost more because of our "skyrocketing" energy costs? Won't such a punitive tax on energy be more incentive for manufacturing companies to "ship jobs overseas"? I'm not seeing the upside to this plan.

Newt Gingrich makes a lot of sense here. He usually does. I'm with him on this one all the way.

Biden?

2008-11-09T17:28:00.005-06:00

Rumored to be an inebriated Joe Biden. I get this stuck in my head sometimes lately. I've seen it a few too many times probably. I think the guy that this really is should step forward. It sure looks and sounds like Jod Biden to me and now he is our VP Elect. People just don't know what they are voting for I guess. I'm not saying that singing talent is a required qualification nor that prior lapses of judgment with regards to alcohol use are necessarily a disqualifier, but this video assuming it is Joe Biden, catches him at acting very unVice-Presidential like.

Palin

2008-11-09T16:19:00.005-06:00

What a cool office. Is that a crab?

Too bad she's headed back to it.

Upper Deck's Palin card.

Campaign Carl reporting after the election. I caught this live on FNC. Imagine that. Me watching the news? I was distracted somewhat by the cacti behind him. Turns out the information he was reporting on...Palin didn't know Africa was a continent and not a country etc...was all distortions. Just like most any other attack on Palin throughout the campain this was merely more of the same. Those cacti are awesome.

Dawn of the Democrats

2008-11-03T18:16:00.005-06:00

Watch out for these guys when your driving home or to the polls tomorrow night. Since daylight savings time ended this weekend it's lot darker during the evening commute.

It doesn't take ACORN to register dead people in Wisconsin although there is little doubt that they have done it here too. Anyone can do it since there is no requirement for a photo ID to register or more importantly to vote and there are no checks in place to validate the address provided at the time of registration.

We know it's the Democrats and left leaning organizations that participate in this type of election fraud because it is always those organizations that object to it and the Democrats that vote against the sort of legislation that would put an end to it. They have no interest in making the elections fair because they are the benefactors of voter fraud.

Nice move

2008-10-05T19:55:00.005-05:00

From most emailed photos on Yahoo.

In this undated photo released by the South Central Regional Jail, Jose A. Cruz is shown. Cruz, 34, who police said passed gas and fanned it toward a patrolman has been charged with battery on a police officer. Cruz, of Clarksburg, W.Va., was pulled over early Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008, for driving without headlights, police said.

Edit: To clarify, the title of this post is sarcasm. Seriously. Policemen and women out there bust their behinds everyday, sometimes putting their own safety on the line for our benefit. They don't deserve jerks waving their farts at them. On the other hand, battery of a police officer sounds like a bit of an over-reaction. He must've been on thin ice already with the officer or something.

Knight Rider

2008-10-05T19:27:00.004-05:00

Wow does the new Knight Rider show suck. I happened upon it last Wednesday and was curious enough to watch some of it. I was a kid when the original Knight Rider was on TV. It replaced the Dukes of Hazzard as my favorite show at the time. I suppose as TV shows go the original was pretty stupid too but this new version is bad beyond words. I wouldn't even say this is a show meant for kids as there was even some innuendo in there. It's definitely not for adults who watched the original as kids that's for sure. If this show isn't cancelled soon I'll be surprised. Then again it's on NBC so what does that say? If you like poop, then you'll probably like this show too.

Way back when, this was cool.

New version definitely not cool.

Maywood 2008

2008-09-22T19:59:00.001-05:00

I did the 50 mile route again this year. They changed the route around quite a bit this year. I think it was a bit more challenging than before, but more scenic. I liked the change. I think I'm in about the same shape as I was last year, but maybe not quite. I'm about the same weight at 180, but 300 miles behind in cumulative miles compared with 2007. Some of the new hills this year really had me sucking wind. It seemed like I was out on my own a lot more this year rather than amongst other riders. There were exceptions and I chit-chatted with some riders along the way, but for the most part the route seemed rather empty. A couple of the hills I climbed entirely by myself, but a few of them I got to blow past other people which was gratifying. I think of biking as an individual sport that I only compete against myself in from one ride to the next, but it's sort of fun when I do rides like this to have others to compare myself with. I never did get a new bike this year and even on my mountain bike I was blowing by people on lighter bikes with thinner tires.

Next year I'm definitely getting that new bike I've wanted and I'm going to do the 65 mile route. When I'm out riding I have time to think about all sort of things. I've it in my head now that I'm going to attempt to reach 1500 miles next summer. I think that's pretty reasonable as long as I start out early enough and in well enough shape, which hasn't been the case these last 2 years. I Googled it and the earth is about 25,000 miles around at the equator. I've gone around 3200 miles in the last 4 summers that I've been keeping records, so I've got a very long way to go before I can say that over time I've ridden my bike a distance that is the equivalent to one trip around the earth. I could maybe say that I've ridden the equivalent of circling the globe, but nearer to the Arctic, but who can't say that? There's some mathematical way to figure out now far south of the pole a circle of 3200 miles would be, but I don't know what it is. It's probably not even as far south as Alaska or even Greenland at this point so it's probably better to say for now that I've gone far enough to cross the continental US.

9/11 Truth

2008-09-11T18:39:00.002-05:00

I found these pages an interesting read a few months back. I may as well post them today. If you have any doubts at all about what happened to the World Trade Center or the Pentagon and that it was indeed done by terrorists with airplanes you shouldn't after reading this stuff.

NIST and the the World Trade Center FAQ

Loose Change Viewer Guide 2nd Edition

Popular Mechanics Debunking 9/11 Myths

If nothing else these are a window into the minds of how conspiracy theorists think. That is they ignore a mountain of evidence and the opinions of people who know what they are talking about in order to believe whatever it is they believe about the 9/11 attacks...though that constantly changes and evolves as each of their theories are debunked.

Patriot Day

2008-09-11T17:34:00.003-05:00

Today is Patriot Day. I had the day off from work for completely unrelated reasons. I'd call it R & R, but it wasn't that exactly unless 45 miles of biking with half of that into a stiff 16mph wind is your idea of relaxing. I relaxed some in the morning and then took off around noon. Earlier in the morning I was listening to Vicki McKenna which I normally never do since I'm always working those hours of the day. Among other topics (Obama/Biden gaffes etc) she derided the Madison radio stations and Milwaukee stations who did not observe any of the moments of silence associated with today. In addition she was having listeners phone or email in the names of companies which were or were not appropriately flying the flag at half staff. I did my own survey of this on my bike ride today. I lost count of the residences that had the flag all the way up. I only can recall one that was correctly at half. I could give one of these a pass because there was vegetation nearly all the way up the pole. Getting this wrong today is not really something I can get myself all worked up about, but there is something to be said for those that got it correct. Vicki's list of companies flying the flag correctly at half staff here. From memory this is my list.

Correctly at half staff:

Innoware in Menomonee Falls, WI

Desert Aire in Germantown, WI

D & G Transportation in Germantown

Alto-Shaam in MF

Steinhafels in MF

Germantown High School

Ben Franklin Elementary MF

Shady Lane Elementary MF

A fire station in Germantown

Germantown Police station

Sentry Foods in MF

M&I Bank in MF

Davians in MF

The Odyssey Family Restaurant in MF

Flying a flag, but incorrectly:

Kohls (not the store but the company headquarters in Menomonee Falls)

Wacker Corporation in Germantown industrial park

Menomonee Falls High School (neither the flag at the football field or the one at front of the school)
American Legion Post in Germantown

Where have I been?

2008-09-07T20:10:00.003-05:00

So what have I been doing lately instead of blogging? Blogging doesn't takes up a lot of my time, but obviously my posts are irregular at best. That's just the way it is.

Other than watching cable news on TV, usually Fox or Glenn Beck, my Netflix subscription is the only reason for the TV to be on. Well, that and Modern Marvels, reruns of Future Weapons, or maybe Man vs Wild. I've been getting about 2 rentals a week on my one rental at a time plan. I get one Wednesday then watch it and mail it Thursday to get another back by Saturday, then mail that Monday to start the whole routine over on Wednesday. I usually get a throwaway on Wednesday. Something that I don't have great expectations for, or lately a series disk from a TV show. Anyhow picking up from my last update. Newest at the top again...

Ladron Que Roba a Ladron
Ocean's Thirteen
Dream On Season 1&2 (Discs 3, 4 & 5)
3:10 to Yuma
Dream On Season 1 &2 (Disc 2)
The Transporter 2
Dream On Season 1 &2 (Disc 1)
The White Stripes: Under Blackpool Lights
Guess Who
Casino Royale
Batman Begins
11:14
La Haine
The Breed
The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford
Batman Returns

Some of these movies I see on TV flipping channels around during commercials. They have them on FX or something and I get interested that way. I have a pet peeve about watching movies when they're all cut up on TV and with commercials wasting my time in-between so instead I just rent them. Two of these above have Bernie Mac in them. He just died not that long after I saw Guess Who. That was kind of a throw away that I got interested in, in the aforementioned manner.

A while back now after I finished reading The Road, I read Lone Survivor. I don't usually finish books in a couple days or a week. Usually I read a bit at time over a month or so and this book was no different. When I'm done with a book, I go to Amazon and read some of the reviews to see what other people think or what they got from a book. With this book you can tell who all the liberal reviewers are. Many of them couldn't bring themselves to finish the book. The book is about Marcus Luttrell, a Navy Seal. The better part of the last half of the book he details the events of a particular mission (Operation Redwing) where he along with 3 other Seals set out over some very unfavorable terrain to capture a Taliban leader. The title of the book should give you some indication how that mission turned out. The first part of the book is Marcus describing his background and a description of his experiences in training to become a Navy Seal. That sort of thing is probably in a lot of books written by a lot of Navy Seals, but I never read anything like it so that was interesting to me anyway. This is a book I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone.

Another project of mine this summer turned my condo living space into a big mess. I started with the intention of organizing a closet in my second bedroom that I just threw everything into when I moved in (4 years ago). This closet was a bit out of hand to begin with and only got worse, so I pulled everything out and started going thru stuff. Then I got the brilliant idea that, "well this stuff goes with that stuff in the hall closet, which goes with that other stuff in that dresser drawer in my bedroom" and the project just expanded like that. It was getting better but then I moved about 6 boxes out of my parents attic that had a lot of old stuff in them. My parents are moving from my childhood home so I'm getting some boxes back which I'm going through now. I've got some new storage bins from Target and slowly it's all going back together or out to the trash, the used bookstore, or elsewhere. In the meantime my place isn't totally safe for guests and all this stuff everywhere makes it difficult to move a vacuum cleaner around. I'm too ashamed to include photos of this. I should've done this in the winter time. I probably would have gotten it all done quicker. Instead...

I've been back on my bike as usual. I started late this year around the 4th of July. I had spent May and June at Snap Fitness mostly. I'm on about the same pace as last year now going about 250 miles/month. I'm never going to be able to catch up with 2007, I just passed up '05 over Labor day weekend despite my late start. My chart below has the years mixed up a bit but if they're in order they obscure one another too much. I put all my stats into an Excel file after each ride. Excel is supposed to be for spreadsheets but I abuse it in other ways when it suits me. Besides the basic stats (time, distance, ave speed, etc.) I usually put some description of my route into one cell and then whatever thoughts I have about the ride in another. I have cells with entire paragraphs in them. I have my stats calculate in this spreadsheet and create a chart form that so I don't know what other program I'd use for this purpose.

On Labor Day I went up to the Interurban trail again. I was up there a couple weeks ago but didn't have the daylight or the water/food to continue any further North than I had already gone. I had already gone further North than I was aware that the trail existed. It seems to end on Demaster Road in Oostburg. On that first trip up, I started in Grafton. My map indicated that the trail ended at "K" somewhere north of Belgium, WI. K wasn't really marked but I did notice the pavement take on a different look at one point. When I went up there this time I started further to the north in Port Washington and where the trail ended last time turns out to actually be the end of the trail. There are points where you have to take streets, and I figured last time this was just one of those points. This trip I headed further north following the "bike route" signs but I never saw the trail again. The last sign was at the north end of Oostburg. It directs you East on KK which I then followed North. I was rather hoping for a park or something for my halfway point rest stop, but I ended up taking a break at a graveyard instead that was just off Sauk Trail Road Near V. There was a stone bench like fixture that suited quite well. It had the name Bemis carved into stone just in front of it. No dates on it, but I figured by the size of the area that the Bemis family will be buried there someday and this stone footing and bench fixture would be at the rear of that area. It was all very magnificent looking. Next time I go up I think I'll follow these directions.

On my rest days I've been spending some time brushing up on my web design skills. I'm working on re-coding the website I put together for the company I work for. I did most of the work in the early part of this decade and only used a cascading style sheet for a few things. Now that web browsers (IE7, Firefox, Opera, etc) have better support for style sheets I'm re-coding my pages using CSS layout and styling rather than a tabular layout. In the process I'm saving on a ton of HTML code and reducing the download size of my pages by as much as 66%. I'm validating all my recoded pages to HTML 4.01 strict as well. It's hard to believe what a mess they were before. This is one of those projects that for the casual observer, there won't be much change to the site at all other than a font here and a heading size there. BUT behind the scenes the page code is a lot more efficient and the pages will render more accurately and consistently across platforms and devices. I'm doing some of this work at home partly because, like I said I'm "brushing up" on my skills using style sheets. It's a learning experience for me to some extent, and I don't like to do my learing at work where I have all sorts of interruptions. I have this belief, rational or not, that I should spend my time making progress on things while at work and that I should do my learning on my own time. Sometimes this learning process involves spinning my wheels trying to figure something out. Sometimes it means starting down one path, then deleting that and starting over on a different path.

A Couple Interesting Columns

2008-06-22T21:11:00.003-05:00

I meant to post this first one a while back. I've heard over and over about how polls are saying people think America is heading in the wrong direction. Which I should think is obvious. I totally agree with that. But what frustrates me is that it always seems to be liberals that refer to these polls and use them as evidence that we need "change".

My beef is that there's never the obvious follow-up question. What is wrong and what is the right direction for change? What changes are favorable to most Americans and what will turn us back in the "right" direction? Starting with this column I've seen more attention to this obvious follow-up question. I read this a while back and thought that it said everything I was thinking.

If On the Wrong Track, Why Go Left? By Denis Prager

Column #2.
I see the cost of energy going way, WAY up in the not so distant future if things don't change and FAST. We haven't seen high gas prices yet. It will be much worse if Obama wins in the fall. We're sitting on all this oil but we don't drill for it. We not building more refineries or coal plants or nuclear plants. AND we're using a large percentage of our corn to make ethanol which is a net loss in terms of fuel consumption. How stupid is all this? And Congress wants to tax the oil companies? Sue OPEC? Put a tax on carbon emissions? That's all just incredibly dumb. Our Democrat controlled Congress has no clue.

Critical Thinking on Energy By Charles Krauthammer

And lastly a 2 parter about Liberal myths spread by the media.

Tackling Five Modern Myths Created by Liberals By John Hawkins
and
Tackling Five Modern Myths Created By Liberals Part 2

...for a total of 10 myths.

Vista

2008-06-22T19:57:00.004-05:00

I just replaced each workstation computer we have in our network at work with a new Dell Optiplex that has Vista Business Edition on it. I've spent the last 2 weeks or so plugging in each new machine in turn and adjusting network settings, setting up admin and user accounts, setting up programs, transfering email archives and running updates and all of that stuff. Then Saturday with some help from a co-worker we took the old monitors and towers away and setup the new ones. Everyone will have a nice new 22" flat screen and fresh, brand spanking new computer on Monday. And a dust free desk and fresh vacuumed floor under their desk on top of that. I spent nearly my entire Saturday day doing all this moving around and cleaning up. After I finished my final checklist on each workstation I was ready to go home. I was exhausted and I felt like I didn't want to look at a computer for a long while.

I hadn't seen Vista until we got these computers. It took some getting used to at first. Finding where all the settings are took some getting used to. They seem to have renamed some of the control panel items and I've found I still need to switch from category view to classic few to find everthing. I've found all the stuff I need to in Vista and I'm adjusting to Office 2007. I don't see why Vista is criticized so much. I suppose now that it has been out for more than a year and SP1 is out all the kinks are worked out. I planned ahead to be sure all the software we use can run on Vista and aside from updating a few programs of mine we were good all around. I was due for a couple updated programs anyhow.

Now that I've seen Vista and worked on it, those Apple commercials that I hate that always bash PC's seem even stupider. I think the folks bashing Vista probably need to take a closer look in the mirror or look at who is behind the keyboard before blaming Microsoft or Vista for all their problems. Personal responsibility isn't popular these days.

Photo Dump

2008-06-15T21:22:00.009-05:00

On my Yahoo portal they have this section of "Most emailed photos" and "Most Viewed photos".

They must have had a dog show or something a while back and I grabbed these and all the rest.

This one is like the cover of that Beck CD. I always thought that was fake. I didn't know dogs like this actually existed.
The Beck album cover for "Odelay". This dog is ready to dive.
Here's a cat and a mouse together. Looks a lot like my cat except for the black paws. I don't think my cat has ever seen a mouse but I think he definitely would have the sense not to bathe it if he met one. Maybe that's a gerbil or a hamster. I don't know. It's a rodent and cats and rodents aren't supposed to get along like these two are.

Holy carnage at a bike race. Bodies and bikes flying everywhere. I think it said somebody died in the description too. That driver better be in the slammer somewhere for good long time.

If I recall the description it said this beetle was seized from a package coming over the border. I find gigantic beetles interesting and disgusting at the same time. See my Insectaculture link over in my links section.

Snap Fitness

2008-06-15T19:35:00.000-05:00

I joined Snap Fitness and I'm going to dump my YMCA membership. A Snap Fitness just opened not long ago that's less then 2 minutes drive from where I live. I even walked there the other day. It's cheaper than the Y even if I pay only month by month. If choose to make the longer commitment I can average down my monthly cost even further, plus I can suspend my membership for up to 3 months of the year if I want to. They're open 24 hours a day so if I feel like it, I can go jump on an elliptical at 3:00 in the morning. I don't know why I would do that but it's good that it's an option. Maybe I'll do it sometime just so I can say that I did.

I've been there for about a month now but before that I probably hadn't been to the Y since sometime in March I think. Those 2 or 3 months time off or whatever weren't real good to me but I'm feeling back on track now. I'm able to do a full hour on the elliptical and then cool off on a stationary bike for 20 minutes after that. I'm working off some weight too. It's not so much the weight as it is my composition really. I could be less soft in the middle and more lean for sure.

Netflix activity update

2008-06-15T19:33:00.004-05:00

Updated list of movies I've seen this year or since this post. Most recent at the top of the list this time around.

Jeremiah Johnson
Batman Forever
This is War: Memories of Iraq
Sexy Beast
Before the Devil Knows Your Dead
Batman
Tool: Vicarious
The Punisher
The Brave One
The Cave
Dr Katz: Professional Therapist (Season 2)
American Gangster
No Country for Old Men
Hostel: Part II
V: The Final Battle
V: The Original Miniseries
28 Weeks Later
28 Days Later
Hot Fuzz
Four Rooms
Hills Have Eyes 2
Shooter
Black Sheep (mutant sheep, not the Chris Farley movie)
Sin City
Transformers
The Grudge
A History of Violence
Black Snake Moan
Live Free or Die Hard
Fantastic Four:Rise of the Silver Surfer
Fantastic Four
Stranger than Fiction
1408
Bourne Ultimatum

Right now I'm working my way through some of the old Batman movies. I remember the first one being real big when I was in High School. They even had a Batman ride at Great America which I have been on at least once and probably a few times. I never saw the movie until now and I'm wasn't all that impressed with it. I'm watching the rest of them and I feel like I'm sort of forcing my way through them. I messed up the order though somehow I've seen "Forever" before "Returns". Sometime next I'll make my way through all the Spiderman movies. Maybe those will be better but I doubt it. That newer Ed Norton Incredible Hulk movie they have commercials on TV now looks much better than the last one. I don't know why I'm watching all these comic book to movie, movies but I am.

I remember watching V when it was on TV when I was in 4th grade. This was before we had a VCR. I remember missing the beginning of one of them because I was at school for some sort of sex ed. thing they had. I remember a film of a birth which pretty much grossed us out as kids. We had to rush home when it was over so we could watch part 2 of the final battle I think it was. It's kind of corny to watch it now but it brought back some memories. I was surprised how many of the scenes I remembered as well as I did for not having seen it in 25 years. The special effects weren't as bad as I might've thought. Diana eating a guinea pig was pretty fake looking but other than that it wasn't bad. I'll probably get the TV series sometime but it's spread over 6 DVD's so it'll take some time to get through. Or I might skip it altogether. I have lot of other stuff in my queue I'd rather see before that.

The Road

2008-06-12T20:59:00.005-05:00

Just got done reading this last Sunday while it was storming outside. It was a good read I thought, but I'd say it's not the kind of book everyone would enjoy. A friend of mine from work lent it to me after we had an in-depth discussion about "No Country for Old Men" which was based on another Cormac McCarthy book. This book is about a man and his son who are travelling down a road trying to survive in a world that is dark and gray and cold and destroyed by an unspecified event. The ground is covered in ash, the sun has been blocked out for years, and the air they breath is polluted with ash. Plant and animal life is non-existent. The two of them live off of any canned food they can find. It's pretty grim. They frequently came across dead bodies along their travels and have to be careful to avoid other people for fear they would be killed to be eaten. The event that lead to this grim state of the world is never specified in the book but as I read along I thought it sounded like the aftermath of a big asteroid. There's no mention of radiation anywhere but reading the forums at Amazon there are some folks that are absolutely certain it was a nuclear holocaust. Anyone that says that didn't read very closely I think. The book says, "A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions", and that's as specific as it ever gets. The ash everywhere and the fact that forests and cities are burned seems to match this. How the world came to be how it was in the book is of minor importance, but it seems to be the first thing that everyone says about the book to describe it. It was either a man-made disaster or one brought on by outside forces. It doesn't much matter, but what makes the book interesting is the journey the two of them have.

I just read now that this is being made into a movie. I'll check that out for sure. I wonder how that will turn out. NY Times article on the move here.

Victory!

2008-05-11T17:07:00.004-05:00

I'm declaring victory over the ants that invaded my kitchen. This last Monday the invasion got a lot worse after I dumped a can of pears into a container to take to work and then left the empty can on my counter all day. I was in for a big surprise when I got home. The can and a dirty butter knife I left out were crowded with ants. I sucked up a whole trail of them through the extension on the vacuum but more of them appeared soon after. I've seen a few ants here and there leading up to this week so I've been leaving out some of this old poison I had. You dump a bit on some foil and the ants are supposed to be attracted to it. Instead the pretty much ignored it. After the escalation in ants brought on by my empty pear can, it was time to get serious. I went out and got some brand new, fresh Terro liquid ant baits at Walmart. I put one on the counter and one next to the fridge where the ants seemed to be gathering and they worked pretty good. The traps took care of most of them in less than 48 hours. I still have a few stragglers but I'm sure they'll die soon too. This Jones stuff must be some pretty serious poison. The label says to bury the container when it's empty. My bottle is over half full so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to with this old bottle now that I have new traps that actually work. Burying it in my backyard doesn't seem any safer than tossing it in the trash. Aren't they just going to bury it at the garbage dump anyway?

Tech TV

2008-05-01T18:31:00.005-05:00

"So this is a one of a kind piece. There's no other one like this particular one in the world."

Guess what happens next.

This guy must be high on drugs. The leafy green kind most likely.

Economic Stimulus Check

2008-04-30T21:49:00.003-05:00

CORRECTION: Government redistribution of wealth checks are going out this week. I'm thinking about using my check toward funding a new bike. While conceptually I'm opposed to this "economic stimulus" package it's not as if I'm not going to cash my check. Actually I'll get my share deposited directly to my bank account since that's how I got my tax refund this year. I'll spend it either way. My new bike might come in handy when gas is $4/gallon this summer.

Mike's Lemonade

2008-04-30T19:23:00.000-05:00

This sign seems to be missing the key work "hard", in-between "Mike's" and "Lemonade". Dude bought one for his 7 year old son at a baseball game not realizing that it's an alcoholic beverage. Oops!

Mike's is a favorite alcoholic beverage of mine. If I have anything alcoholic in my fridge besides wine it's most likely going to be Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Pennsylvania Debate

2008-04-30T18:58:00.008-05:00

This happened maybe 2 weeks ago now. Old news now, but watching it reminded me of how wrong for our country either of these candidates is. A couple of items struck me.

1. Lack of questions about real issues. Considering I could only stomach about the first half of the debate things may have changed later into it but the first half hour to an hour seemed to revolve around either Obama/Rev. Wright or Hillary/Bosnia. I didn't have a problem with that line of questioning. It serves a purpose when the candidates differ so little on issues. Questions that directly pertain to integrity and honesty are entirely appropriate. Sadly neither candidate has much in either department. This is the best Democrats have to offer? And why is it that each campaign had been attacking the other on these very same issues tit for tat in the days leading up to the debate yet when they are raised in the debate they are appalled at their mention?

2. Withdrawal from Iraq. I knew both of their positions on the issue was immediate withdrawal, but to watch and to hear each of them lay it out on television was more disturbing than I expected it to be. Each of them proclaiming they would withdraw no matter what advice to the contrary they may get from military leaders.

First from Hillary

MR GIBSON: So if the military commanders in Iraq came to you on day one and said this kind of withdrawal would destabilize Iraq, it would set back all of the gains that we have made, no matter what, you're going to order those troops to come home?

SENATOR CLINTON: Yes, I am, Charlie. And here's why...

And then this answer from Obama...

MR GIBSON: So you'd give the same rock-hard pledge, that no matter what the military commanders said, you would give the order: Bring them home.

SENATOR OBAMA: Because the commander in chief sets the mission, Charlie. That's not the role of the generals. And one of the things that's been interesting about the president's approach lately has been to say, well, I'm just taking cues from General Petraeus.

Well, the president sets the mission. The general and our troops carry out that mission. And unfortunately we have had a bad mission, set by our civilian leadership, which our military has performed brilliantly. But it is time for us to set a strategy that is going to make the American people safer.

Now, I will always listen to our commanders on the ground with respect to tactics. Once I've given them a new mission, that we are going to proceed deliberately in an orderly fashion out of Iraq and we are going to have our combat troops out, we will not have permanent bases there, once I've provided that mission, if they come to me and want to adjust tactics, then I will certainly take their recommendations into consideration; but ultimately the buck stops with me as the commander in chief.

Obama's answer is a little more crafty. It's wrapped up inside an explanation of the roles of commander in chief and military generals. The answer is essentially the same. Call it withdrawal if you wish but I call it what it is, cutting and running. Whatever name you put on it, it's weak and most definitely does not make us safer at home. Iran anyone? Iran is our real enemy in Iraq and if you don't understand that then you don't understand much.

3. Obama on Capital Gains taxes. I'll start with the excerpt...

MR. GIBSON: You have however said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton, which was 28 percent." It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling if you went to 28 percent. But actually Bill Clinton in 1997 signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
SENATOR OBAMA: Right.
MR. GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.
SENATOR OBAMA: Right.
MR. GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
SENATOR OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

So let me see if I have this right. "For the purposes of fairness" Obama is willing to raise taxes on the investment gains of hard working Americans who wisely chose to invest a portion of their income, even if it means the government will take in less revenue as a result. Put in another way it would appear Obama is willing to sacrifice the prosperity of Americans for some perceived notion of "fairness".

Obama continued...

...for purposes of fairness. We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year -- $29 billion for 50 individuals. And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That's not fair. And what I want is not oppressive taxation. I want businesses to thrive and I want people to be rewarded for their success. But what I also want to make sure is that our tax system is fair and that we are able to finance health care for Americans who currently don't have it and that we're able to invest in our infrastructure and invest in our schools. And you can't do that for free, and you can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children and our grandchildren and then say that you're cutting taxes, which is essentially what John McCain has been talking about. And that is irresponsible. You know, I believe in the principle that you pay as you go, and you don't propose tax cuts unless you are closing other tax breaks for individuals. And you don't increase spending unless you're eliminating some spending or you're finding some new revenue. That's how we got an additional $4 trillion worth of debt under George Bush. That is helping to undermine our economy, and it's going to change when I'm president of the United States.
MR. GIBSON: But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up.

SENATOR OBAMA: Well, that might happen or it might not. It depends on what's happening on Wall Street and how business is going. I think the biggest problem that we've got on Wall Street right now is the fact that we've got a housing crisis that this president has not been attentive to and that it took John McCain three tries before he got it right. And if we can stabilize that market and we can get credit flowing again, then I think we'll see stocks do well, and once again I think we can generate the revenue that we need to run this government and hopefully to pay down some of this debt.

It might happen or it might not? History has shown this again and again, yet you somehow think it will be different this time just because of market conditions. What an incredible display of economic ignorance. I rest my case.

Transcript of the entire debate here at RealClearPolitics.

White Jeans

2008-04-28T22:34:00.003-05:00

I was on the internet searching for where I could get a pair of white Levi's and found this disturbing little piece of video. After viewing the entire thing a couple times now I'm still left dumbfounded by it. If I can help it, I'm never watching it again.

I have a pair of white jeans and they got stained so I'm trying to find a new pair.

Zoomquilt II

2008-04-28T22:30:00.002-05:00

Man vs Wild redo

2008-04-20T09:09:00.004-05:00

A bunch of the clips in my post a while back disappeared from YouTube. These are a few of the more interesting clips that I found again.

Elephant Dung

(dead) Zebra

Crucifix Spider

Tree Frog

Tiger Scorpion

The earlier video I had showed Bear drinking fluid from the camels stomach. That's not in this video but this looks to be same camel...different clip from the same episode.

Here's a quick review.

Stovecat

2008-04-08T21:19:00.000-05:00

Slo-Mo Slap

2008-04-07T22:45:00.002-05:00

A compilation of slow things.

Man vs Wild

2008-01-14T21:32:00.000-06:00

Bear Grylls is the man in Man vs. Wild. I watched this episode not long ago that was a series of clips of him eating different things. The episode was called "Bear Eats".

Palm Weevil Grubs 1:00
Crucifix Spider 2:00
Long Horn Beetle 3:00
Sand Beetle 4:40
Camel Spider 5:25
(Dead) sheep eyeball (boiled in thermal pool) 6:45

Freshwater trout
Land Crab 2:30
Water Snake 3:30
Urine drinking 4:15
Fluid from Elephant dung 5:30
Everglades swamp water 6:00
(Unspecified) lizard 7:45
Everglades tree frog 8:20

Sand Fish
Fat tail scorpion 1:55
(Dead) Zebra 3:15
Goat testicles 4:50
(Dead) Camel fat 5:35

Termites
Snails 0:30
Grasshopper 1:15
Cooter turtle 3:15
Piranha 5:00
Horned Viper Snake 7:20

Fluid from camel stomach
Palm tree dates 2:45
Sugar pine cone nuts 4:00
Eskimo Potato 5:00
Berries 6:00

Skins a deer carcase and sleeps in it.

Sopranos Series Finale

2008-01-13T21:24:00.001-06:00

This is what the end looks like.
I know it just looks like a black empty screen and it is. That's how it ends. The screen just goes black in the middle of a scene where Tony, Carmela, and Anthony Jr. are eating onion rings at a restaurant. The last scene is the topic of much debate as I found once I was finally free to venture out on the Internet without fear of reading or seeing something I didn't want to know prior to seeing it myself.

I'd have to say at first I was bit disappointed but after some thought and after watching it again a few times I've decided I'm fine with it. It's ambiguous what happens to Tony in the end. I went back and forth in my mind for days after I saw it and I read all sorts of things on the web. I think I've decided that Tony is definitely dead. That was my first reaction and I think it's correct. Here's a brief recap of the final scene as I see it.

Tony picks out "Don't Stop Believing" from the Jukebox on the table. This plays quite loudly throughout the entire final scene. I'll never be able to hear this song again without thinking of this scene. The song itself I think means nothing.

Suspicious looking guy in members only jacket walks into the restaurant ahead of Anthony Jr. and sits down at the counter. There are many cut shots over to other people in the restaurant as Tony converses with Carmela and then later Anthony when he arrives. Meadow is outside struggling to parallel park.Shots of other people in the restaurant continue but the most suspicious looking guy other than the trucker is this guy in the jacket at the counter who looks over at Tony's table a couple of times. I think this is the guy. The only reason I could think of that he wouldn't be the guy is that when he arrives at the restaurant he walks in before Anthony Jr. and not behind him. Maybe that's nothing but it seems unnatural to me if he's there to do what I think he did.
Members only jacket guy walks to the restroom just off to Tony's right.

Meadow finally gets parked and the shot below is the 2nd to last thing we see before the screen goes blank and everything goes silent. This I think is key. This shot is looking at Tony's table from the short hall to the restroom where members only jacket guy would be coming from.
After this shot you see Tony glance up to see (presumably) Meadow coming in the restaurant door, then suddenly NOTHING! Completely black screen and total silence.

I think what we witnessed was Tony's death. What we did was experience it as the final scene. The members only jacket guy shot him in the head. I don't suspect if you were shot in the head you'd hear it. You'd be dead instantly and it would be sudden.

Huh?

2008-01-13T18:49:00.001-06:00

Reminds me of Stuart Little or that book The Mouse and the Motorcyle that I read when I was little. Only this is a frog and not a mouse. The caption says this:

Oui the frog sits on a miniature motorcycle in the eastern beach town of Pattaya January 10, 2008. Oui's owner says Oui loves playing with human toys and posing for photographs.REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang (THAILAND)

Netflix

2008-01-13T17:52:00.000-06:00

I joined Netflix last November. So far I like it a lot. I've been through a ton of movies in a real short time. I get about one DVD per week now. It's super easy. I just set up online in my Netflix account a list of DVDs I want to see, they mail the top one on my list to me, and I mail it back in the postpaid envelope whenever I want the next one. Blockbuster will probably never see me again. Sweet! I should have done this a long time ago
This is what I've seen since last November in chronological order.

Sopranos Season Six: Part 2 (Discs 1-4)
The Prestige
Blood Diamond
The Illusionist
True Romance
Gangs of New York
The Bourne Ultimatum
Stranger Than Fiction
Fantastic 4

Fantastic 4 was pretty bad. I expected it to be. Ever since I signed on to this, even though my credit card gets charged every month it sort of feels like it's free somehow. I feel more liberty to rent some items that I never would have considered before. Some throw-aways. Best on my list above is probably Blood Diamond. I had to start with the Sopranos when Ifirst joined since the series ended and I haven't purchased the DVD set yet.

I'm Omnivorous

2008-01-07T19:38:00.000-06:00

This Hamnation is from 6 months ago or so maybe. I haven't had any venison in a long time but I used to eat it all the time when I was growing up.

Chelsea

2008-01-05T22:14:00.000-06:00

This photo of Chelsea is begging for a caption but I'm just not thinking of one at the moment. The Clintons seem to be out of favor with the press lately. Posting these unflattering photos on my blog is really a terrible thing to do. I don't agree with the Clintons politically but that shouldn't give me any reason to go doing this. Except that it's fun. Just to be fair I tried to find some photos of the Bush twins. I can't find anything terrible. It's not really very easy to find many photos of them at all for some reason. I think I like Barbara. In fact I think I'm going to start a list of dream dates.

Mary Katherine Ham
Barbara Bush
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?

Hillary

2007-12-20T20:46:00.000-06:00

Paperless

2007-11-30T08:53:00.000-06:00

Citi planted a tree on my behalf. How special. I didn't know that was part of the deal until after I signed up. My motivation was to eliminate my credit card number from my mailbox. I get a copy of my statements online anyway and I pay by bank transfer so there was no function that the paper copy served anyway.

Video of the Year

2007-11-12T18:42:00.001-06:00

Video of the Year
Hamnation: Sopranos DC Edition

If you've never seen the Sopranos this won't make a lot of sense. I've seen every episode on DVD through season 5 twice over. I'm currently watching the final season and I have just 5 episodes left. I figure I've seen the intro about a hundred times. The recreation in the hamnation video is excellent. I found the real Sopranos intro on YouTube for comparison's sake.

McRib is back!

2007-11-08T20:35:00.000-06:00

I just had 2 of these McRib sandwiches for dinner tonight. I got the combo meal and an extra sandwich. I thought I remembered McRibs being better than the ones I ate tonight. I thought these were rather bland. I got them plain without the onions and pickles which is the way I've always had them. Maybe if I wouldn't have skipped the onions that would have given them more of a flavor.

My cashier at McDonald's wasn't too bright. My total was $6.39 so I handed over a 20 dollar bill and 2 singles. She looked at it for a moment and then gave me the 2 singles back as if I had made some mistake. Then she gave me $13.61 in change.

Hillary "Exhibit A" Follow Up

2007-11-04T22:18:00.000-06:00

It's looking like this is getting a good amount of attention. It's campaign advertisement material already. This ad is from John Edwards. I love the split screens. Nicely done.

I saw Dick Morris on Fox the other night and he put it well when he said something to the effect that, "Hillary can't say what she really believes because if she does then no one would ever vote for her". I'm paraphrasing that.
I saw this clip from MSNBC on townhall.com (5 minutes)

A couple of outrageous moments...

1:35 - "Digging into the far right playbook..." Huh?

2:00 - Huffington Post loony Taylor Marsh claims it wasn't a "yes/no" question

Is this the whole segment? Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter gets to speak for all of about 10 seconds and she had to interrupt just to get that much in. At least the host challenges the position Taylor Marsh takes. If you break it down her position is basically that the problem was the questions and not Hillary. The debate moderators' questions were sexist and out of line and it's not fair. Cry me a river. You don't get to pick your own questions at a debate. Deal with it. I think that when your positions are dictated by the polls any question where your response will reveal an unpopular position is going to be a difficult question to answer directly.

In the days following the debate Hillary should have been out there clarifying her position instead of taking issue with the debate questions. In my view she shows that she doesn't have any respect for the debate platform or the American people who follow the process. The American people deserve to know who their candidates are and where they stand. I do think it's legitimate to make certain judgments about the performance of the moderators but I also think any clear thinking individual could see that the question she got was fair. I hope that after this fiasco people will start to see exactly who Hillary Clinton is. Her popularity is mind boggling.

More directly with regard to the issue of giving licenses to illegal immigrants, an idea which Hillary apparently supports. Democrats will never admit to this but they support this idea primarily because many places require an ID to register to vote and all it takes is a drivers license. If illegals can register to vote Democrats stand to gain the most votes. Democrats seem to have no limit to what they'll do to obtain power. Even if it is supporting a hair brained idea like this that puts America's security at risk.

But now back to the topic of debate questions...

Is there life in outer space? That sounds like a good idea for a future post for me on this blog. Here's Guliani fielding a similar question from a youngster. He clearly wasn't prepared to be asked about this.

Wolff-Parkinson White

2007-11-04T21:25:00.001-06:00

I happened to see this news article today. It's about a guy who collapsed 5 1/2 miles into a marathon race for the Olympic trials and then later died at the hospital. I suppose it's true that there are different ways to push your body to it's limits. Some people eat a lot like this guy while other people exercise. I imagine collapsing and dieing of heart failure during exercise is pretty rare for someone his age. This is an example of, "anything can happen". Everyone should realize by now that one of the risks of leading a sedentary lifestyle and having a poor diet is heart failure. What this story reminds me of is that even if you eat right and exercise you can still die of heart failure. We're all gonna eventually die no matter what we do.

I don't worry about it because it's not a serious heart condition but I found out when I was still in high school that I have Wolff-Parkinson White Syndrome. It sounds serious when you put "syndrome" at the end but it's not, and it's not all that uncommon. It's easily under control in my instance with a 50mg tablet of a beta blocker every day. The iVillage site and Wikipedia have pretty in-depth descriptions of WPW but basically it's this...there is an extra electrical pathway in my heart which at times can bypass the normal one and can cause my heart to beat at an abnormally high rate. A high rate for me would be maybe 120 or so but it's noticeable because it occurs in the absence of any physical activity. It has never happened to me, but heart rates can go up much higher and people can even pass out or get dizzy spells from this.

I can pretty much take a pill everyday for the rest of my life or they can open up my chest and go in there and fry out this extra electrical pathway. My doc says it's not really worth all that trouble as long as the medication keeps my heart rate under control, which it has.

I found this video showing the electrical pathway of the heart. The extra pathway I have they call the bundles of Kent which I think has a nice ring to it.
According to Wikipedia Meat Loaf, Marilyn Manson, LaMarcus Aldridge from the NBA (article here) and some other WWE wrestler I never heard of also have this WPW Syndrome.

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-31T23:57:00.000-05:00

Tonight I went to the book store at the mall. After that I went over to the food court. My treat to myself was Rocky Rococco's pizza and a cinnabun. My cashier at Cinnabun was wearing a bee costume. I think I saw a spider too but spiders don't have wings so I'm really not sure what I saw.

Yes or No

2007-10-31T22:19:00.000-05:00

This is all over the blogs aready but I just couldn't pass up posting about this myself anyway.

I didn't watch the entire debate but just by chance I happened to tune it in just at this was happening. I thought that was awesome that Tim Russert threw her a tough question. As you can see here she simply would not answer it directly, instead choosing to throw in a slam on the current administration and dance around the issue on both sides. The last 45 seconds are golden. I was yelling at my TV, "It's a yes or no question!"

I can't help but smile inside when I see stuff like this. Hillary's out of her element if she's not taking softball questions from those that don't or won't ever challenge her answers. Put her on her heals and you end up with results like these. If a candidate can't answer tough questions and take a clear position how are we to support that candidate? Tim Russert tried to pin her down to a position. She clearly resisted being pinned down.

I've often thought that too much is made of candidates who change their positions. The so called flip-flop. Certainly I agree that a person can change their opinions and positions over time. I know I have held to positions in the past which I no longer agree with. What I can't understand is taking opposing positions within weeks or months of each other or expressing different opinions depending upon who the audience is or what the polls are saying. That either means your pandering or it means you don't have a core value system with which you base your beliefs upon. In either instance it's not a characteristic of a leader. While some issues can be nuanced, this issue of giving licenses to illegal aliens is anything but. The answer to the question as it was presented was "yes or no", not "yes and no".

Hotair calls this Exhibit A in the case against Hillary for President.

Can I Afford It?

2007-10-28T22:35:00.000-05:00

A while back I was surfing channels and I got sucked into watching part of a Suze Orman show. Ordinarily I cruise right on by when I see her annoying presence on television but I stopped anyway. In the same way I can't stand Keith Olberman on MSNBC I still can't help but stop at it now and then. Maybe to remind myself how repugnant he is I don't know. Anyhow as annoying as Suze Orman can be (and mind you it's not anywhere near being in the same league or flavor as Olberman) I got sucked into it watching this segment called "Can I Afford it?". It was actually rather interesting because people call in with all these ideas in mind for things that they want to buy. Then they say what their income is, what their savings are, and how much debt they have if any. Suze then reviews the situation and gives them her approval or a denial. Most of the time she denies people and most of the time it's pretty obvious why. I felt better about my financial position in life after I watched this. A lot of people out there have a lot of debt and not enough savings. This one guy wanted to buy a horse for 6 grand I think and she denied him. If I remember all this right I think he was 58, he had 7K/mos income and debt-wise I think a mortgage. Then he says that he has $2000 in stocks and didn't mention any retirement savings. What the heck? Your 58 dude! Your in serious trouble if you want to retire anytime soon and now you want to buy a horse that cost more money than you have saved?

In don't need Suze Orman to tell me if I can afford stuff or not. I could buy everything on my wish list tomorrow if I wanted to but it wouldn't be a very responsible thing to do. I labeled it "materialistic" for a reason. I'm going to buy the stuff I can afford and save for the rest or maybe just forget about buying those items altogether in the short term. It's called priorities and thankfully I have mine straight.

Materialistic wish list

2007-10-27T19:35:00.000-05:00

#1 Cell phone - I sometimes think I'm the last person in America that doesn't own a cell phone. My plan right now is to get rid of my land line and use only a cell phone with hopefully an inexpensive service plan.

#2 Bike - I don't really NEED a new bike but I can easily see that the bike I have isn't particularly suited to the longer distance rides I've been doing. This one and #1 will be knocked off the wish list first as they are both long overdue purchases.

#3 ipod - I'll probably get just this basic ipod shuffle. I use headphones at the gym all the time and my current one is sooooooo 20th century. I mean I actually have to put the mp3 files onto a CD and carry the bulky thing around with me. With one of these I could just load it up and all I have to do is clip the thing onto my clothes or slip it in my pocket.
#4 Mattress - When I went to Disney this last January I slept on the most comfortable mattress I have ever slept on in my entire life. The tag said Sealy Posturpedic Encore 720 Plush. I've done some research and that specific model name is only distributed to hotels but equivalent models are sold all over the place. I'd like to get a new bed frame and a queen size mattress. I really don't need the queen size but one never knows what the future holds. #5 LCD television - along with a new entertainment center to put it in. My folks just got a new 32" Samsung and it looks great. Darn if I don't want one of those High Def TVs too. This one is a bit further out of reach when I consider what I allow myself to spend with respect to my disposable income. #6 Laptop - I really could use one when I travel. I like to write down my thoughts in a notebook whenever I travel and keep track of everything I did and where I went and all of that. I think a laptop would be more convenient and on top of that I could access the Internet and keep up with email and the news and my portfolio and so on. Plus I could also unload all of my photos onto it and look at them in full size at the end of the day rather than on that tiny screen on my camera. I take a lot of pictures when I travel. The only thing is I only travel about once a year so for 50 weeks out of the year it would probably sit around and collect dust. #7 CD player for my car - I only drive my car 5 months out of the year and during that time I have it out of storage I drive it maybe 25% of the time I go anywhere. My Trans Am is a luxury of sorts already but I only have a cassette deck in it. I put it in there when the factory stereo quit. It was at a time before CDs were something you could burn at home. I used to dub mix tapes for myself from my CDs so it was logical at the time to get a just a cassette deck. Now things are different and I'm stuck listening to tapes whenever I drive my car. I always seem to have the same couple of tapes and I'm getting real sick of them.

Easy Money

2007-10-27T18:25:00.000-05:00

Nothing like makin money without lifting a finger. A bit of research is necessary but a stock like FCX which has clearly been a winner for me wasn't that hard to find. Sunpower I can't claim as my own find, but it has been totally rockin just the same.

My cost basis in Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold is $71.82. The resistance point on this stock is around $120 now. This one's going even higher short and long term. I have no doubt about it.

My cost basis in SPWR is $38.18 and it has recently been on a breakout up over $100. It could easily pull back a bit and even when it does, the stock has still more than doubled for me since I bought last November anyway. Sweet!

So what's the plan? As long as I continue to have stocks like this...and believe me they aren't all this great...to counterbalance some of the not so hot ones I'll retire from work as early as possible. I'll do some traveling and I'll drink wine and eat steaks and shrimp, chocolate cake and ice cream until my arteries can't take it anymore and I die of heart failure.

Or maybe not exactly that but I'm sure I'll come up with something good to do. Right now I'm spending more time learing the ropes of investing than I am planning out an endgame. The name of the game now is invest, reinvest the gains, then reinvest those gains and so on.

Huh?

2007-10-27T17:48:00.000-05:00

Buckethead

2007-10-27T17:06:00.000-05:00

No comments just great music.

Mary Katherine Ham

2007-10-27T15:45:00.000-05:00

Where has this woman been all my life? She has an open invitation to dinner anytime. Smart, attractive, and conservative. I don't really know what collards are or why I should eat them on New Years but she looks great in this video making them and going on about politics the whole time. Now that's my kind of woman for sure.

I think I first saw her on Glenn Beck's show but now I see her more on the O'reilly Factor. There a segment on there maybe once a week called "Policing the Net". I don't know if it's on the same day every week or what but I should try to figure that out.

Totally free Saturday

2007-10-27T14:15:00.000-05:00

I have a totally free Saturday with absolutely no plans. I didn't go to the gym today but I did have some great sandwiches for lunch. Among other things I'm gonna catch up on some posts since I've been posting here relatively infrequently lately. Most of the things I've been thinking about lately are just trivial. Most of the other things I've been thinking about for posts are just the same political things already posted about all over the internet anyway. I think a lot more about politics than is reflected in my postings here. I highly recommend the checking out the "other blogs" listed on the right of my page. For now it's a short list but I should expand it to include other blogs I visit. There are a lot of good ones out there. Whether I need it or not my almost daily visits to them remind me how messed up liberals are. Jessica McBride's blog has a more local flavor but I like to keep track of both local and national politics.

On television I generally watch bits here and there of The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, and Glenn Beck. Mainly because the channel MSNBC is on is between Fox and Headline Prime where Beck is I sometimes run into Keith Olberman or Chris Matthews. That Olberman guy is completely unhinged. I just can't put to words how over the top that show is. It's an hour of completely unfettered and unchallenged far far left liberal views. And how may times is he going to give Bill O'Reilly his "worst person in the world" title? I think O'Reilly can be a bit of a windbag sometimes too but on balance he's a fair guy. I somewhat prefer watching Glenn Beck though. He's more entertaining. It's rather alarming sometimes to watch and learn what's going on in the world and what it is that the enemies of the US are up to and what they are saying openly. Things that aren't on your local or network news channels. A lot of it is what liberals would rather minimize, deny, cover up, or just label those that don't as fear mongers.

Here's Glenn Beck video from a while back (10 minutes).

Thankfully the universal health care package he's talking about in the last 5 minutes of the video was dropped from the WI state budget thanks to Republicans. Unfortunately I live in a blue state where this type of nonsense is proposed and would become reality if it weren't for Republicans. Gov. Doyle and state Democrats should suck rotten eggs for proposing a pork laden state budget that increased fees and taxes by 1.7 billion dollars. The one that passed isn't great either but at least it only increases taxes by a few hundred million (I don't seem to be able to find the exact number at the moment). My personal assesment is that the Republicans gave in to too many of the new taxes/fees just to get a budget passed. They were getting pretty handily slammed in the press which as usual distorted the facts. The truth of the matter is that the previous budget could have remained in effect indefinitely until a new one was passed. Nothing would've shut down (govt agencies, state schools etc) as the Democrats and the press would have had you believe. I think I would have preferred to keep the previous budget to this one.

Now on to things a little more cheery...

Stupid Stats

2007-10-27T12:04:00.000-05:00

I keep all my biking stats in an excel file on my computer. After each outing I take down all the numbers from the computer on my bike (distance, ave speed, time, max speed and cumulative miles) and enter them into a spreadsheet. At the end of the season I make up tables with relevant stats to see what I've done over the year. This year I pretty much blew away anything I've ever done before. I wasn't that far from tripling last years total mileage but I ran out of warm weather before I got that far. This chart shows my cumulative miles for each of the past 3 years.

There's a long flat, inactive period of about 2 weeks in August. I was out of town during the first week and when I got back it was raining for an entire week after that. I remember at the time I left for my trip thinking that I had already beaten my total 2005 mileage even though it was only the middle of August. After I got back and after the rain finally ended I made up for the downtime. According to my file I did about 275 miles in the 2 weeks that followed.

Additional stupid stats...

Out of 47 total outings my average ride was 26.32 miles. My shortest was 8.75 miles and my longest was 52.38 miles.

0-9 miles: 2
10-19 miles: 10
20-29 miles: 19
30-39 miles: 11
40-49 miles: 2
50+ miles: 3

My total riding time was 77 hours, 51 minutes, and 26 seconds. That's about 3.25 days. That only includes time I was actually in motion, not the time waiting at street lights or any rest stops.

Overall I think I did pretty good. I could've been in better shape to start the year. I was a bit on the heavy end of my range in the spring. I lost around 8-10 lbs over the summer but I could stand to loose another 5-10 before I'm in my ideal range. Maybe next year I'll finally get myself a new bike. My current bike is heavier and has much fatter tires than are necessary for the type of riding I'm doing. I can't remember how many times this year I thought about how much the charactaristics of my bike were holding me back.

Looking forward to next year it's hard to predict if I'll beat this or not. A lot will depend on what shape I'm in next spring, the weather, and if I get a new bike. It also turns out that 1200+ miles is a huge time commitment. I don't really have anything else planned. I enjoy the challenges and this keeps me in good shape. I don't have any regrets about having spent my time this way this year but on the other hand there are a few projects that I did not get at over the summer.

My Past DVD Rentals

2007-10-08T16:26:00.000-05:00

Since I can never seem to remember the movies I rent I started keeping my Blockbuster receipts. This is a chronological list of all the movies I've rented since July of 2005 with IMDB links. There are a lot of good movies I haven't seen yet and looking back over this list, a lot of garbage that I have. My standards for judging a movie's worth aren't very high. If it holds my attention and is at least somewhat entertaining for the 90 minute or so duration that's enough for me. That said there are a few on this list that don't meet that standard. I watched them and by the time the end credits rolled or even before I wished that I hadn't. Those movies are marked with a *.

Pathfinder
Crank *
The Hills Have Eyes
Children of Men
Smokin' Aces *
Turistas
The Descent
The Protector
Saw 3
Slither
Star Wars Ep. III
Wedding Crashers
Lucky Number Slevin
Rest Stop
Hulk
The Sentinel
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
The Matador
Super Size Me
Underworld Evolution
Running Scared *
Underworld
Blade: Trinity
Hostel
National Treasure
The Bourne Supremacy

Seems like a short list...maybe I lost some of the receipts or something. Unfortunately every one of these was rented from Blockbuster. They have a monopoly on DVD rentals where I live. As far as I know there isn't another video store within 20 miles that isn't a Blockbuster. There was one independent store for a while but the guy closed up 3 or 4 years ago now. I boycotted Blockbuster as long as it was possible. I did that because every time I went in they claimed I owed late fees which I know were bogus. I guess now that late fees are non-existent I won't have that problem anymore. I've considered using Netflix but usually renting movies is a spontaneous event. I don't know if I want to have to plan this stuff ahead of time and get my DVD's in the mail and all that. Maybe I'll try it and see if I like it. I still feel the less business I give Blockbuster the better.

Maywood 2007

2007-09-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the annual Maywood Earth Ride. I couldn't be less committed to the cause really. The earth? The Ellwood H. May Environmental Park? I don't care about that at all, I just like doing the bike ride. This year I did the 50 mile route again. They have 12, 25, 50, 65, and 100 mile routes. Some year I plan on doing the 65 but it wasn't this year. They call that 65 mile route a metric century. This year again it was windy as usual. The wind was primarily from the NNW and I'd say somewhere in the 10-15 mph range. Most of the first part of the route goes to the North and West. On top of that it was much colder this year than all 3 previous years that I've done this ride. I think I overheard someone at the start say that it was 45 degrees. I'm not usually out there biking in anything less than 60 degrees but I wasn't about to skip this just because it was cooler out. The last two weekends I've done some longer routes to test myself. Last weekend I did a 40 mile route on Saturday and a 50 mile route on Sunday just to see what it felt like. It felt pretty good. Saturday's route in Sheboygan has much more difficult hills than my 50 route but the wind was comparable. My average speed was 14.6 mph across 50 miles yesterday and a full 1.4 mph slower when compared with my 50 mile route from last Sunday. I felt at times like I was crawling along at 10 or 11 mph up some of those hills. Still I was smoking a lot of other riders. I got to one rest stop and wondered where everyone was. Then within a couple minutes the rest area was flooded with other bikers. I'm sort of left with the feeling that I could have gone further or taken a quicker pace. I could've done better. On the other hand if I compare myself with others I'm near the front of the pack. Someday when I get a lighter bike with thinner tires I'm really going to be out in front and kicking butt. Although I expect that if I move up to that 65 mile route I'll be with another class of bikers altogether.

DJ Sara

2007-09-16T20:28:00.000-05:00

Does this kid do birthday parties? I got a birthday comin up in October.

The War on Zombies

2007-08-25T13:25:00.000-05:00

Slowpoke Rodriguez

2007-08-07T19:36:00.000-05:00

Occasionally my blog will be informative. Today's bit of knowledge that I am choosing to highlight is that the popular Speedy Gonzales Loony Tunes character has a cousin known as Slowpoke Rodriguez.
If what I read is accurate Slowpoke and his cousin Speedy are not shown on the Cartoon Network because the characters were deemed to be "offensive ethnic stereotypes". Well what is Elmer Fudd then?

Here is a Slowpoke clip from YouTube.

And here is a Speedy clip from YouTube.

Bobblehead #2

2007-08-05T22:28:00.000-05:00

I got my second bobblehead of the year Friday. This time I got the more common pinstriped home uniform and not the powder blue visitor uniform like I did last time. The left fielder Ben Oglivie was the 9th of 13 bobbleheads given out throughout the year at Friday games.

We tailgated before the game and then sat in $7 nosebleed seats that were 8 rows from the very top. I thought it was actually pretty cool to be up that high. You can't exactly see the seams on the baseball or the laces on the player shoes but do you really need to to enjoy a game? I don't think so. Brewers won 2-1 and the hot dog won the sausage race. It was a good time.

Flavored Bread

2007-08-02T18:42:00.001-05:00

This better not be from the Home Pride factory.

Home Pride is my bread of choice. Butter Top Wheat just like in this image. Just one mouse and that would be it. That would be enough for me to switch brands forever. My mom found a fly at the bottom of her coffee cup at a KFC somewhere down south once. Now she won't ever go to any KFC anywhere ever again. It's irrational. I could see if it was a beak, some feet, or an entire chicken head maybe, but a fly at the bottom of a coffee cup could happen anywhere. I'm not sure even if I found a McNoggin in my McNuggets that I'd stop eating at McDonalds. I'd at least make sure I got some sort of golden pass or something that allowed me to eat free at any McDonalds worldwide for the rest of my life.

Jogger's Nipple

2007-07-29T21:35:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted my cumulative miles cycling this year yet, but without doing that now I'll just say that I'm really outdoing myself this year.

One side effect of that I'm experiencing is nipple soreness. I've noticed this before after some of my longer Saturday workouts I do during the winter at the gym on the cross trainer. I just shrugged it off and figured it was because my shirt rubbed. I never knew this had an official name until I recently looked it up on the internet. They call it jogger's nipple. It happens to marathon runners and joggers mostly but I guess anyone else really that's doing something athletic that would cause their clothes to rub. Even if the movement of my shirt across my chest is slight I can attest to the fact that it's enough after an hour and half or two on a bike that it gets to be irritating. I'm not bleeding like the dude in this picture but it's no picnic either. I'd call it relatively low intensity pain...maybe 1 or 2 on a 10 scale unless I forget about it and rub my towel across my chest after my shower. Then it's more like...I don't know...a 5 on a scale of 10.

The guy in this picture switched to NipGuards and I'll bet he's glad he did. I think I'm going to give the petroleum jelly method a try. I don't like the idea of slapping an adhesive anything to that part of my body.

Photo Dump

2007-07-26T21:44:00.000-05:00

Since my last post didn't have any photos I decided I should throw up a post with a few.

This is Manuel Uribe. I think this is a "before" photo when he weighed 1234 lbs. I've seen this guy on TV on Sunday night on The Learning Channel a couple times. There's an entire one hour show about when he went on the Zone Diet and lost 440 lbs. I wonder what effects all that fat has had on his skeletal structure. From what I've seen on TV it appears that the way he sits is like doing the splits. His exercise is rolling around on his bed. Toward the end of the show he goes outside for he first time in years. A friend gets his bed up on a flatbed with a forklift and they go cruising around in his tiny little Mexican town. It's a big party.

It's amazing to me that this guy is still alive while at the same time there are sometimes athletes out there that die from heart defects that go undiscovered until it's too late.

This photo gives new meaning to the old adage, "You mess with the bull you get the horns". You can see the horn in there clear up to his knee. Once the adrenaline wore off that must've hurt like mad. Remind me never to go running with the bulls.

This is a wet cat. I don't have much to say about this other than I think that it's hilarious. I recommend a visit to to Google's image search page and conducting a search for, "wet cat".

Dark Stain

2007-07-22T15:28:00.000-05:00

So from a post about a professor I never had, but maybe wish that I had, to a post about a professor I consider a dark stain on my experience at UW-Whitewater. I've always been a believer that your education is, in large part, what you make of it. Talented, knowledgeable, and respectable professors are good things but I think it's possible to come away with something from a course even if the professor sucked.

Doug Eamon is a dark stain on UW-Whitewater. This guy was the least objective professor I ever had. I first had him for a statistics course which I bombed. I wasn't able to overcome his crappy teaching. I later retook the course with another professor and had no problems at all with the material. I think about a year later I had professor Eamon again for a course they called "Experimental Psychology". The course was about conducting experiments, using statistical methods, and writing up papers with the results. It was a 5 credit course rather than the usual 3 credits. We had lab hours to conduct our experiments in addition to the lecture hours. During the 16 week semester we had 3 experiments to run and 3 papers to write about them. This course was essentially the "big one" that all psych majors needed to complete in order to graduate as a psych major. It must've been that he was the only professor that taught this or I'm sure I would have scheduled it some other way.

At the start of the semester he gave a real serious speech about cheating. He said he was going to do everything in his power to get anyone he perceived to be cheating expelled from the University. So this is where my story begins. About midway through the semester I got my second paper back and it didn't have a grade on it. I think it said "see me" on the second page somewhere and it had a big line on it. So I went to his office and he asked me where I got a portion of my paper from. He was accusing me of plagiarizing the entire introduction page of my paper. Since I couldn't give him an answer to his satisfaction he requested copies of all of my sources with highlighting on the areas that were pertinent.

His logic, as he explained it to me, was that my writing style was different than that of my first paper that I had turned in for his course. So my question was always this then....how did he know that I wrote my first paper? Of course neither of them were plagiarized, but I was learning first hand that logic wasn't one of professor Eamon's strengths. The fact of the matter was I had written my paper over a matter of weeks and the intro was one of the first items I had written. My writing process went from the beginning of the paper to its'end, and each day as I progressed I began by tweaking the wording around for everything I had previously written. By the time my paper was done I was very much satisfied with the beginning portions. I considered them to be very clear and concise. I had spent a great deal more time on this paper than I had my first. I agreed that they didn't have the same style. But why did that equate with being written by a different person in my professor's mind? Nevermind that he had never read any other papers of mine. Two writing samples was enough for him to come to the conclusion he had.

After I turned over all of my sources and explained how each of them did or did not relate to our experiment and what informational aspects of them ended up in my paper he still was not convinced. He continued to attempt to pressure me to confess to something I could not. At one point he said something to me like, "So I guess we've reached an impasse".

I spent some time familiarizing myself with the procedure that was undertaken when a student is accused of misconduct. I don't recall the details of it now anymore, but it involved the department head of psychology, a student representative...some sort of panel and so on. It never did get that far. Perhaps he got a second opinion and was laughed at. There was no way on earth he ever would have prevailed in such a setting. His position wasn't based on facts and since evidence simply couldn't exist, he would've had to fall back on this foggy logic about 2 papers that didn't seem to have the same writing style...and therefore must not have been written by the same person. I looked forward to the panel and to humiliating him but alas I was denied the opportunity.

Sometime before my third paper was due I requested feedback from him on my second paper so that I could proceed in proper form for my third paper. Eventually as the semester end was coming up he gave me a grade on my paper. There was something illegible written on the side near the beginning of the paper. If I had to guess what it read it may have been, "mistake". I think he said he graded my paper without regard to the portion of it he viewed as questionable. If I recall correctly he gave me a B or a B-.

I've discovered in recent years that the staff at UW-Whitewater can post webpages which I presume are hosted on University servers. The content of most of the pages relates directly to courses taught by the professors....course materials, the syllabus, etc. Some pages go further. One look at Prof. Eamon's page and it is apparent where he stands in the political spectrum. To the left would be an understatement. I shouldn't be surprised. To my recollection this was never apparent in the classroom, but then again that would have been back in 1995...smack in the middle of the Clinton era and long before Haliburton was a household name. I wonder where he stood when Ward Churchill came to speak at the Whitewater campus a few years back. Was he aware of the academic misconduct his ideological co-hort was involved in? Misconduct which ironically includes plagiarism. Only it's the real kind with evidence and everything.

Paula (P.B.) Poorman

2007-07-15T14:53:00.000-05:00

I read in the paper recently that a psychology professor from UW-Whitewater was killed in a car accident. I was immediately drawn to read on since I am a UW-Whitewater alumni and I was a psych major. Turns out I never knew this professor but that would make sense since I graduated in '96 and I think the article I read said she'd been at the University for 10 years.

She was hit by 19 year old woman who was drunk, high on cocaine, and traveling at 120 mph. Her car was hit from behind and sent spinning out of control and rolling over into the oncoming lane. That's grim for sure.

http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/8215087.html

https://guestbook.uww.edu/

http://www.legacy.com/StarTribune/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=89877312

I failed

2007-07-15T12:43:00.000-05:00

I went to my emission test last week for my truck. I passed the first part fine but I failed the gas cap test. Now I have to get a new gas cap and drive back to retake the test. Apparently my original cap doesn't form a good enough seal or whatever. I've been unknowingly allowing gas fumes to escape into our atmosphere. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's) they are according to what I read. I should send Ford the bill for putting such a crappy one on in the first place.

My car passed the test earlier this year. I got photos off of my computer again. I bring up the website on my computer before I leave and then when I get back I sort thru the cached internet files and pull out the images for the time period while I was in line. Shows here I was first in line for nearly 15 minutes while 5 other cars in the '96 or newer lane got to pass through. Maybe next time if it looks like I'm going to have to wait a while I'll get out and sit on my hood or do a little dance in that open middle lane like Napoleon in Napoleon Dynamite.

$$$ Money $$$

2007-07-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

Lately it feels like I've been spending money faster than I can make it. After my new computer, a brake job on my truck, and an auto insurance bill all at the same time, I don't seem to hear anything jingling in my pockets. I've done some re-evaluating and I've concluded that all of this is in my head. I'm good at planning out my finances and I really can't complain about my position.

My assets that I have invested in the stock market are doing better than ever even after recent market declines. I have 2 accounts, one that my broker handles and another that I handle on my own. I pretty much let my broker buy and sell whenever and whatever he recommends. My account that is more under my direct control, I have with OptionsXpress. In the past my broker has burned me on a few stocks...Worldcom comes to mind, but we've made progress on a few others. I've burned myself on a few stocks too but I've made up the difference and more. These charts show 2 of my recent successes, Sunpower and Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold. I like to stare at them sometimes. (Click on them for the full-size chart.)

Sunpower was my broker's idea. This one wasn't on my radar at all. I got in at 38.18 last November so that puts me up almost 30 points if I sell it now.

Freeport McMoran was my idea. I found this one using my online stockpicking tool. I got in at 68.51 and in again at 75.12 on a little pullback this June.

Although it is very tempting, I don't spend any of my gains I just reinvest them. Yesterday was a real sweet market day for my stocks. I made more money in my OptionsXpress portofolio than I do in 8 hours of work. I wish that happened everyday.

I've heard Jim Cramer pushing FCX which can't hurt either. I watch his show on CNBC sometimes. He's more entertaining than anything else. I get some ideas on stocks from the show. Some investments he recommends I wouldn't touch, while others are genuinely good buys. I think the intro and bumper music for the TV show sounds a lot like a riff from the Led Zeppelin song, "How Many More Times". It's not exactly the same but there's a few bars in common in there. It's not as close to the same as Queen's, "Under Pressure" and Vanilla Ice's, "Ice, Ice Baby", but it's not so dissimilar that it wouldn't be noticeable to anyone familiar with the first Led Zeppelin album. There's a good chance too that it was someone else's riff before Led Zeppelin used in on that album. At the moment, Cramer likes Haliburton. I don't own it but I've been looking at it. I'm leaning more toward XTO which I've owned in the past.

Build1

2007-07-04T09:10:00.000-05:00

This is my first post from my new computer. I built it myself. This was one item on my list of summer projects. My old computer seemed to be getting slower and slower for some reason. I didn't use a book or instructions from anywhere on how to build a computer I just figured that since I'm familiar with the various components inside a computer, how hard could it be? It wasn't really that hard at all. The only thing I did wrong was I didn't reset the bios to the defaults after I flashed to the most recent version. I just flashed the bios and then installed Windows. The only effect that it had was that my onboard audio didn't work. I was going mad trying to figure that one out. Windows just said that there was no audio device detected. I had all the bios setting correct and I checked and rechecked them. I thought at first I had gotten a defective motherboard but when I finally decided to reset the bios to the defaults and reinstall Windows everything worked out after that. Windows found the onboard audio before I got as far as the reinstall and it's been smooth sailing ever since. It doesn't say anywhere in the motherboard manual that you should reset the bios to defaults after you flash them. That seems sort of strange since I never changed any of the settings in the original bios to being with. Whatever. Rookie mistake I guess. I don't really feel bad that I didn't know that. Build #2 should be even easier now....whenever that is.

I gotta say this new computer really rocks. I don't wait for anything. Programs and documents load in an instant. Mainly I got this going because of another project I have in mind which is to transfer some videotapes to DVD. My grandfather used to shoot a lot of home movies with a film camera. This was before the days of regular VHS video cameras. When I was little we used to watch a lot of them on a projector screen when we got together on Sunday evenings. He had film of vacations my grandparents took and a lot of other family get togethers. All that sort of stuff that people take with video cameras now, only then it was film. Sometime in the early 90's he transferred a lot of what he had to VHS. Some of his films were getting old and deteriorating. He had this done at a camera shop and he did like a commentary track over it. We have 10 videos altogether of family history going back as far as 1938. I thought it would be an interesting idea to play around with transferring some of this stuff to DVD but my older computer just doesn't have the processing power to do that very efficiently. One time I authored a DVD out of a couple of movie trailers I ripped from some DVD's and it took several hours. I tried that same thing with my new computer recently and it took maybe a minute.

build1 details:
Case: Ultra Grid ATX, clear side
Motherboard: EVGA nForce 680i SLI; socket 775
Video Card: EVGA GeForce 7900 GS KO; 256MB PCIe w/Dual DVI
CPU: Intel Core2Duo E6420; 2.13Ghz
CPU fan: Zerotherm
Memory: Crucial Ballistix DDR2; 2GB
Drives: Seagate 80GB and
HP 16X SATA DVD+/-RW with LiteScribe
Power: Ultra X-finity 600W
OS: Windows XP Pro
Monitor: 22" LCD Samsung SynchMaster 226BW
Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution
Keyboard: none yet; using borrowed Dell keyboard from work.
Speakers: Altec Lansing VS4121

I shopped at Dell first to customize a computer system to see what one might cost these days. I put together a pretty decent system and noted the dollar amount. Then I went shopping for parts and did the same thing. I decided to spend around the same as I would have on the Dell only I got a lot more computer for my dollar. Yeah it took some doing, getting it all together with unboxing everything and putting it all together getting up and running and all that, but for what I spent I think I did pretty good. On top of all that, now I have a feel for what I'm doing and knowing what I know now, I probably won't buy a prebuilt computer system ever again.

TigerDirect deserves some credit. They have great pricing, fast shipping, and the product reviews on the site were helpful when I was choosing components. They are worthy of a new link on the right side of my blog.

Happy Birthday U.S.A.!

2007-07-04T08:38:00.000-05:00

Electric Mayhem

One Hundred Twenty-Five

Netflix Update # 5

Surprise!

Eagle

Fewer and fewer every day

Kill (the) Bill

Denied

Deshtroyed?

Other Videos of 2009

Music Video of the Year 2009

Gingerbread House

Massive Head Wound

Random Video of the Day

Monster Trail Mix

One Seven Two Five

Stop, Look, and Listen

Brookers / Quiet Riot

One Three Zero

Seven Zero

Netflix Update #?

Photo Dump

Bruno Kammerl`s Punktlandung

Moon Landings Confirmed

Tempur-Pedic Mattress

Dream Dates continued

Another Netflix Update

Kia Hamsters

Ants Part 2

Roomba Driver

Dream Dates

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Civic Literacy Score

Items From My Past (Part 4)

Items From My Past (Part 3)

Items From My Past (Part 2: Brewers Items)

Items From My Past (Part 1: The Early Years)

Death Star Rebuilt!

Change

Biden?

Palin

Dawn of the Democrats

Nice move

Knight Rider

Maywood 2008

9/11 Truth

Patriot Day

Where have I been?

A Couple Interesting Columns

Vista

Photo Dump

Snap Fitness

Netflix activity update

The Road

Victory!

Tech TV

Economic Stimulus Check

Mike's Lemonade

Pennsylvania Debate

White Jeans

Zoomquilt II

Man vs Wild redo

Stovecat

Slo-Mo Slap

Man vs Wild

Sopranos Series Finale

Huh?

Netflix

I'm Omnivorous

Chelsea

Hillary

Paperless

Video of the Year

McRib is back!

Hillary "Exhibit A" Follow Up

Wolff-Parkinson White

Happy Halloween!

Yes or No

Can I Afford It?

Materialistic wish list