Happy Thanksgiving!

My Civic Literacy Score

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)

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)

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)

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)

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!

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.