 Lake CalhounDate: 07/20/2008 |
Have you heard this one yet?
A student comes to a young professor’s office hours. She glances down the hall, closes his door, kneels pleadingly.
“I would do *anything* to pass this exam.” She leans closer to him, flips back her hair, gazes meaningfully
into his eyes.“I mean…” she whispers, “…I would do…*anything*.”
He returns her gaze. “Anything?”
“*Anything*.”
His voice softens. “*Anything*??”
“*Anything*.” read more »
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Who wants to go rollerblading this weekend?
I’ll bring the hat and rope. ;)
I do think knee and elbow pads might help a bit, though, don’t you think?
Ha — I love it, who comes up with these things. :)
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I’m sure we all know that pugs snort, grunt, and snore. But Sid is actually pretty quiet in comparison to his mates. You see he had a little nip and tuck operation when he lost his boys. Thus opening his airways a bit and helping him breathe better.
But sometimes he’s loud as hell anyway. Last night certainly qualified — maybe it was the heat. I must’ve woke up at least 4 times to the sound of “snorRRRRRR… snorrrrRRRRR…” In which case it was a sharp smack on the wall to wake the poor little guy up and then hope I fell back asleep first. But of course, that plan never works. The snorer always manages to nod off before the victim.
While Sid snored away straight through to morning, I captured a bit of it with the voice recorder in my phone. Just so you can enjoy it to. :) Listen below…
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It’s already old news that the Phoenix Mars Lander landed on Mars back on May 28th. But did you know it’s communicating via Twitter?
How incredibly clever! I love how it “talks” in first person. :)
A few of my favs:
- MarsPhoenix Here’s a great picture of my deployed arm with the scoop on the end: http://tinyurl.com/3s354p I can’t wait to dig in the dirt next week. 10:14 PM May 29, 2008
- MarsPhoenix Looking forward to an exciting day on Mars; My first dig in the dirt! Team calls this a “dig and dump” test of my robotic arm and scoop. 09:05 AM June 01, 2008
- MarsPhoenix @charmcitygavin TEGA “cooks” soil samples until they emit gasses that I can “sniff” to learn what they are. I just hope they smell good :) 04:12 PM June 03, 2008
- MarsPhoenix I’m learning new tricks! Sprinkle practice went great, see www.nasa.gov/phoenix Used small motor on back of scoop to shake and break soil. 10:37 AM June 10, 2008
Okay - the influx of today’s traffic peeking at the goober-pics from this last weekend need no introduction. But the rest of you might. A “Con” is the term attached to various conventions or gatherings where likeminded people “converge” in one area and geek out to their particular fetish. Dragoncon and Comic-con are a couple of popular examples.
I’ve somehow remained blissfully ignorant of all this and since high-school have more or less abandoned my nerdlike demeanor, (although that might be hard to argue). Regardless, having no other plans for Independence Day, I followed my friend, Geoff’s, advice and attended CONvergence. This year was special because it was the 10 year anniversary of said Con and an extra day was added. So four days of geeking out and swilling alcohol — sounded like a fine time to me! :)
A few friends joined me and our posse hung out for most of the time. I was dually impressed with the level of effort that went behind the various party suites and costumes. It was like a four day Halloween party with the “trick-or-treats” being colorful shots of god knows what. :) :) Here are a few highlights that I enjoyed: read more »
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See the little fucker to the right? That’s my neighbor’s dog. The little shit is a Jack Russell Terrier that has no volume control or off switch. Whenever the damn thing is in the yard, it’s, “bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark…” until it goes back in. No exaggeration at all, it’s fucking constant.
So tonight…
That little beast has been yipping and yapping since 10:00. NON-STOP! It’s now 12:30 in the morning. Yay. And it’s still going strong. It’s probably a really good thing I don’t have my .22 handy.
Looking out the front window, I see the neighbor’s car isn’t there. (His absent status confirmed with no lights on in the house either). Well that’s just fucking wonderful. How thoughtful of you, neighbor, to leave the terrier terror out in the yard while you’re gone all night. read more »
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See this little guy with his skin coming off in sheets? It’s pretty much how my head looks right now. Just replace green with red. Tell you what — sunburn isn’t much fun when you’re bald.
I got a little too much sun this last week. Not intentionally, it’s just how it worked out. Today I’m sitting in my office at work and scratch my noggin. I get a handful of dead skin. That’s nice, I think. I make my way to the men’s room to survey the damage. It looks like someone lathered my head in Elmer’s glue and it’s starting to peel away now. Pretty picture I’ve formed for you I’m sure.
So home I go to use a mixture of razoring, loofah, and sand-soap to rub my head raw. That oughta be fun… Damn German/Scottish heritage, turns into a lobster in the sun skin.
Yesterday’s Pearls before Swine seems a little too relevant…
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From Pearls before Swine
Okay — first and foremost, if you are not using Firefox yet, please evolve from your neanderthal tendencies and claim your modern heritage. There simply is no excuse to use the god-awful Internet Explorer anymore. None. None at all. The only exception to using Firefox should be Safari if you’re a Mac user.
The fact that Firefox is lightyears ahead of Explorer in security, it’s also the only browser that allows so much customization. In the form of extensions, Firefox can do almost anything online. There’re so many time-saving and useful add-ons that there is no substitute.
So, now that the rant is out of the way… read more »
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A couple of years ago, my good friend Henry’s son, Cameron, was diagnosed with a large cancerous tumor in his head. Dubbed “the peach”, Henry and Cameron survived one hell of an ordeal that involved extensive surgery to remove 95% of the tumor and months of chemotherapy to battle the remainder.
Cameron, who recently turned 13, has been quite the trooper. After his surgery, the recovery was a very steep hill that he surmounted and surpassed. Despite his amazing journey, however, Cameron’s tumor has grown back. This time the growth is too extensive for surgery to be an option. Regardless of his diagnosis, Cameron maintains a positive outlook and continues against odds to battle his head’s intruder. He is really a remarkable young man. read more »
I think unless you are completely ignorant and/or a masochist, we’re all ready for “the change” in America. The end of monkey/president comparisons and ridiculous military campaigning has more than run it’s course (by more than 4 years). Personally, I’ve ridden the fence between Hillary and Barack thinking that they’re both excellent candidates with strong qualities to each. But mostly I’m eager to see a liberal approach open the White House windows and air the damn place out.
From Barack Obama tonight:
…tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
It certainly will be interesting to find out how the next few weeks will compare. My hope is that Obama does indeed select Clinton as his running mate and we get the best of both worlds.
Now — who else is gonna plaster their car with Obama support stickers for the Republican Convention this fall?
I enjoy many webcomics, but this is my new favorite. Surreal, disturbing, and brilliant. Right in my vein. :) Consider:
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From Virus Comix
On Saturday at about 4:45pm, a major power transformer in the one of the Houston data centers exploded knocking down three walls and causing a large fire. Power was disrupted and technicians were unable to do anything until approval from the fire marshal was granted. It took over 24 hours for this approval.
The good news was that none of the hardware (servers, routers, etc) were harmed. No one lost any data, but since backup power was not allowed, the network went down and many of Hostgator’s dedicated servers went offline. Mine included. This is a fluke event and unpredictable by anyone. No one to blame except fate.
Early this morning the folks at both The Planet and Hostgator have managed to get 90% of everyone back online. Sorry for the downtime. I’ve still been noticing some lag and issues with my email. Obviously the support staff is swamped with irate customers and trying to get things back online. Hopefully everything will return to a normal plateau shortly. Thanks for your patience.
If you want to read more visit: read more »
Who else woke this morning looked at the thermometer and promptly said, “What the Hell?!?”
Two days ago it was above 80°. This morning it’s 40°. When I get out of work, I refuse to acknowledge the elements if I see white shit falling from the sky.
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When I go to the office in the morning, Sid goes to his “office”. And in the office, he has his collection of toys (or chompables) that normally keep him busy. It’s hard work chomping all those things beyond recognition. Obviously this time he had a different agenda. Apparently the Ikea Pug Bed (PAX THUBLÅD in Ikea speak) needed a few alterations.
Damn it.
Now Sid needs a new bed and certainly has his daily intake of fiber. Fiberfill that is.
Goobertech is on a new server (and all the other goober-sites, too). Now there’s twice as much space and twice as much speed. There shouldn’t be anymore lags in load time and no more damn MySQL timeout errors. Woohoo.
I probably get five of these a day, but this one was particularly clever. Not only did the sender do enough research to bypass my gmail filter, but he also sent it to my work email address. No “bot” could do that, you’d have to google search my name and find the various contact info. Kudos to the Nigerian scammer for being tenacious.
I was not aware of any Fuchs’s in Nigeria, but you never know right? My chances of that are probably better than winning the lottery with tickets I never buy. Anyway, here’s what Mr. Aroma sent: (love the name, no?) read more »
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One of Sid’s favorite treats is when I open the front window so he can bark at everything that goes by. Pedestrian, car, bus, squirrel — it doesn’t really matter, Sid doesn’t discriminate. All get a dose of “guess who’s boss” via the doggie vocals.
read more »
…in the form of an unbreakable ear worm. I listen to 89.3 the Current pretty much exclusively when in the car or at home. And in the past month, I’d swear I’ve heard Death Cab for Cutie’s new song, I will possess your heart, at least once an hour. Probably more. And then it runs in my head all day long. All night too.
Not that that’s a bad thing. I really like the song and amazingly, I’m not sick of it at all. I’m not sure what it is, but there’s a quality to the tune that feels at home in my head. So kudos to the Death Cab.
So today I’ve been sitting and working online for 14 hours straight. Again, I’d swear I heard the song at least once an hour. So I checked. It’s actually been aired only three times since I’ve been awake (and once beforehand). So either I’m tired, had a few too many beers, been working too hard, or all of the above. Oh well — I’m really not complaining. Like I mentioned, the song is great. read more »
I’ll be having plenty good dreams tonight…
Also — when and where is Australia, give me the details. I actually know peeps over there and it would be cool if things aligned so fucking perfectly that someone from the Swedish bikini team paid for my first class ticket to the Land Down Under to join her in a naked scuba diving fest with her teammates in someones private pool without stingrays or box jellyfish. :)
Yes — that would be nice. Very nice indeed.
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Got all that? It took a fair amount of effort to make it all come together.
If you’re uninformed, Twitter is a social networking site with the sole purpose of creating a list of status updates (like Facebook), or maybe some of you are still stuck with Myspace’s version. Anyway — the potential for niftiness with Twitter exceeds all and so I’ve begun my plunge into its depths.
Here are the steps I took: read more »
I love this. I first saw this short three or four years ago, and now it’s on DVD. :) It’s so reminiscent of David Lynch’s Eraserhead. It’s made by Chris Cunningham who’s done a couple of Björk videos. I want this on my big screen now! Why doesn’t Netflix have it?
Related Links:
From Youtube’s page:
Rubber Johnny is a 6 minute experimental short film and music video directed by Chris Cunningham in 2005, using music composed by Aphex Twin.
The concept for Rubber Johnny came from Cunningham imagining a raver morphing as he danced. The idea evolved to the present film, in which Johnny (played by Cunningham) is an isolated mutant child with a huge overgrown cranium, strapped into a wheelchair and locked in a basement. Capable of morphing his body, he spends his life trying to amuse himself and his dog, a terrified chihuahua.
Watch the clip after the jump… read more »
Speaking of martinis, here’s how I like mine:
(Dirty of course.)
Before-hand, stick the martini glass in the freezer to chill it. Fill your shaker half full of cracked ice. This is important as the ice serves two purposes: to chill the ingredients (obviously), but also to add enough melt water to the drink to soften the alcohol’s bite. Add the above ingredients and shake vigorously for half a minute. Cheers, Mr. Bond. strain into your frozen glass and toss in a few olives on a spear.
Tasty business there. Remember, although a good martini is stiff, don’t sip and nurse it. Nothing ruins a martini faster than letting it get too warm. I also think they taste better whilst wearing a silk robe Heffner-style. :) read more »
Not that long ago, internet friend, Annette Marie Hyder posed that question to me via email asking for a response she could publish in INTHEFRAY Magazine.
The article has now been published and Annette collected a great set of opinions to her query. Here’s my response:
The religious views (or lack thereof) should be no more relevant to their office than their sex or the color of their skin. The drafters of our Constitution understood this and bothered to state exactly that quite clearly. Many voters, however, are happy to be comforted with the knowledge that someone thinks as they do beyond the pertinent issues. In order to gain sway with this group, a candidate will advertise their religious beliefs. This has become the norm in elections of late. So much so that a growing number of people think the Constitution should be altered to make faith in a god necessary. I think that’s as silly as the desire to teach “creationism” in public schools. You’re free to have faith in whatever you choose. So am I. And so is anyone running for a public office.
Read more on “God in Politics” on Annette’s myspace blog or go directly to the rest of the “Is there a religious test in politics?” responses.
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In case you haven’t seen this one pop up at the right:
“You shouldn’t let children mix the martinis. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth.”
— Fran Lebowitz
And pugs neither for that matter…
My camera is fancy and takes cool pics of you and all kinds of stuff. Look for your captured likeness in my gallery and peek at other victims of the camera’s flash.
Behind every argument is someone’s ignorance.
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