Bruno Kammerl`s Punktlandung

Moon Landings Confirmed

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

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

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

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

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

Ants Part 2

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

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

Dream Dates

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!

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.