Running Commentary on Not Much

Tactless: Misdirected advertising

2011-02-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

It seems to have gotten to the point where a combination of social network information harvesters, data banks of search history, and unfettered access to my email and medical records have made it so that internet advertisers can (presumably for a fee) know my age, sex, address, occupation, hobbies, GPA, credit score, renal health, and TP preference (minimum 2-ply, hung overhand), so why the hell can they not *ahem* leave me the fuck alone with all the emails about this valentine's day shit? It's about as tactful as going up to homeless guy and trying to sell him vinyl siding. Ok, maybe not as bad as vinyl siding, clearly my emotions got the better of me there.

"Double-edged Sword"

2011-02-07T10:14:00.001-08:00

This has always bugged me. Aren't most swords double edged? More to the point, does it really matter unless we're planning on holding it by the pointy end for some reason? I think what we actually mean is handle-less sword, which to be fair sounds dumb. Of course we could always say "yeah but Paula Abdul's music is really a klingon sword-thing with many edges and dubious handles." Yes, I vote for that.

The latest craze

2010-11-19T10:58:00.001-08:00

So you know how once upon a time you could tell somebody was a little nutty if they walked around talking to themselves? Then the bluetooth headset happened and cell-phone users started to own this little bit of oddity, to the point where everybody just assumes that people having a lively conversation with nobody else around is just a bit of a yuppy. OK, I think we're all accustomed to this. What still gets me is when people yapping at themselves (or presumably to a small microphone somewhere) are using emphatic hand signals. Whether they don't actually have a phone and are gesturing at an invisible man, or do have a phone and are...still gesturing at an invisible man. Either way I'm classifying it as some sort of clueless.

Enter the iphone 4 and the forward facing camera. How long until this becomes normal? At least for now you have to actually hold your arm out and have the phone in front of you, but it's only a matter of time before that goes away. Progress, yo

just write some stuff, we'll take care of it in post

2010-07-16T00:27:00.000-07:00

Stupid lyrics aren't new to pop music, but I think we have a new champion, and it's been difficult to escape hearing it. If you can look past that I'm evidently listening to top40 radio, please set your jaw and digest this masterpiece. The chorus is particularly poignant, and rhymes to boot, provided you count rhyming "ooh" with "oohooooohooh."

Now, if we can somehow get Katy Perry and Ke$ha to battle to the death, we will be relieved of at least one of these blights, and we can autotune the death rattle. They would have wanted it that way.
------

[Stupid Verse 1]
I know a place
Where the grass is really greener
Warm, wet and wild
There must be somethin' in the water
Sippin' gin and juice
Layin' underneath the palm trees (Undone)
The boys
Break their necks
Try'na creep a little sneak peek (At us)

You could travel the world
But nothing comes close
To the Golden Coast
Once you party with us
You'll be falling in love
Oooooh oh oooooh

[Stupid Chorus]
California girls
We're unforgettable
Daisy Dukes
Bikinis on top
Sun-kissed skin
So hot
We'll melt your Popsicle
Oooooh oh oooooh

California girls
We're undeniable
Fine, fresh, fierce
We got it on lock
Westcoast represent
Now put your hands up
Oooooh oh oooooh

Ironying

2010-05-21T22:20:00.000-07:00

At the ripe old age of 28, there are still several life skills I haven't mastered, among them tying a tie, driving stick, and ironing a shirt in under 3o minutes. All of these deficiencies owe directly to a lack of necessity to practice. I've learned to tie a tie and drive stick several times each now, but I don't really ever have occasion to do either, so in a few months it gets tossed when I defrag my brain.

I'm fortunate enough to have a job that doesn't require me to wear a tie or nice clothes or even much beyond shorts, a shirt, and sometimes closed-toe shoes. This is nice, to put it plainly. There are a few downsides though. One is that I wear through my gym socks a lot faster through daily use. The other is that when it comes time to iron something, I'm useless.

Holy guacamole I hate ironing. Specifically, I hate ironing boards. They tip, they don't fit anywhere, they have that stupid string hanging off the end that gets in the way of everything, and I can never find an edge in the shape that I actually need. What do the professionals use, maybe I need one of those. No, strike that - what do other incompetent men-children looking to buy gadgets to relieve them of tedious tasks use? I need one of those. Seriously though, why aren't ironing boards 5-sided with shapes to fit each part of the shirt? Somebody hurry up and invent me a swiss army board, or I'll be forced to do it myself. No. I will invent a steam suit, put it on, put my to-be-ironed clothes on over it, activate the steam, remove both suits, don the freshly ironed suit (fitted to my very dimensions, plus the thickness of the steam suit) and do the hokey pokey. I can't believe you're still reading this

One of those days

2010-04-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

Today was one of those days that started out fine, but by around 10pm I was ready to club somebody to death with their own stupid fucking no good dismembered leg. However, I was also hungry. So, Safeway trip first, then limb-tearing and severe beating.

It was at this point that I discovered something: It's impossible to stay pissed off about your day while browsing through the produce aisle. You can only go around muttering "goddam baby carrots, what the fuck did you ever do for anybody? And you, arugula, what are you looking at? That's what I thought" for about 20 seconds before some sort of absurdity switch flips and you end up quietly picking out 4 ripe looking fuji's and a hand of bananas and moving on.

However, screw onions still. blegh

Trickery: picking on CL

2010-03-10T09:16:00.000-08:00

http://sacramento.craigslist.org/bik/1637023952.html

Provided that you broke your leg doing the Macarena in 1996, this is probably a true statement.

brand new novara that was originally purchased for 600 dollars before i broke my leg. So its gatta go, and please serious callers only.(916)583-****

Not helping

2010-02-01T17:38:00.000-08:00

What total bastard decided to print the directions for how many excedrin migraine to take in 1 point font? The whole bottle should be a picture of 2 pills and then a pillow. Possibly raised lettering, if my eyes have quit completely. It should also be packaged with earplugs and those disposable sunglasses they give you at the optometrist.

Costume Ideas

2009-10-30T16:12:00.001-07:00

OK, so I already have my costume picked out for the year, but maybe you don't. I offer you these suggestions, some of which I'm kicking myself for not thinking of earlier.

1. Dress up in a cardboard box. When you walk into the party, release a balloon somewhere and ignore it for the rest of the evening. When people ask what you are: Balloon boy!

2. Dress as a possibly-pregnant-but can't-really-tell woman. like, extra 2 layers right above the belt. Have fun watching people puzzle over whether to ask or not.

more TBD as I think of them. suggestions welcome.

What happened?

2009-10-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

It's been 2 months since I posted, and 3 since I really actually posted. Here's sort of why.

As the more eagle-eyed among you might have noticed, I spend a lot of time picking on other people's bike choices. Like, a lot of time. Too much time, even. It was starting to progress from good natured observation of goofy shit toward being immediately critical of anything set up differently than how I would've done it. No idea why, but no good.

So, as shock therapy to myself, I decided to build a bike that made very little practical sense. I came across a nice aluminum/carbon road frame on ebay, bought a singlespeed kit and some bars for it, and built it up with things I had lying around. Behold: The fastest cruiser on the 2300 block!

It was good times, but short lived. Those who haven't managed to glaze over by now may notice that one of the crank arms, uh, fell off. That was a problem. Too bad really, because if it had lived the next step was to add some clip on TT bars. The bike is currently being stripped to make way for something else, but tolerance regained. Or, if stupid people start pissing me off again, I have a cheap crank-arm to huck at them.

Stuck in the Loop - Reruns!

2009-08-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

It's time for another posting, although that's never really consistently meant that another posting was forthcoming. However, my phone is broken and I lost my camera so I have no way to relieve the tedium of my musings with pretty pictures of mildly stupid decisions. So instead I link again to my earlier postings on how to navigate traffic circles and other intersections, which to my dismay remain overly topical and under-utilized. Dang.

Hemmet?

2009-07-29T20:13:00.001-07:00

Bike helmets are supposed to save your dome in the event of a crash. They give you a crush layer to lessen the sharp impact to your dome when everything goes fruit-shaped and you don't have time to sort out which way is up on your way down. Ask around and you'll soon find somebody who owes their present walking, talking status to their brain bucket. I'm for helmets. Ok enough positive preaching, now on to the hellfire and brimstone...

On the other hand, they're a bit of a hassle. You have to remember to have it with you, it's one more thing to manage when you get off the bike, they restrict air flow on a warm day, they mess up your ironic perm on the way to the show, and most of all they screw up your whole cool thing you got going on there. So yea, there are some downsides to helmets. I can see why maybe you don't want to wear one. Fine. I'm not your mother, and unless you happen to be one of the people I'm willing to nag about helmets because it would be a real drag to hang out with you as a vegetable, do what you want. Random internet people: This means you!

Doing what you want, however, should not include making up bullshit misinformation because you don't want to admit you don't wear a helmet for vanity reasons or whatever they may be. Instead we're getting things like this - people citing a one-man study claiming that motorists might give you more space if you don't wear a helmet.

You know that kid in elementary school that insisted that seatbelts were a stupid idea because without one you could be thrown free of the wreckage and land in a grassy field, presumably one populated by magical fairies distributing lollipops to lucky-ass car crash survivors? The helmet excuse guys are that kid. Same shit, post-puberty. What happened here was somebody decided first that they wanted (or didn't want) to do something, then went looking for ways to justify it. When the revolution comes, science will crush you.
If you don't want to wear one just say you don't want to wear one. Don't fill the internet with bullshit reasons and bad logic. Believe me, I can recognize that mess a mile away, I have a blog.

amoosing

2009-07-22T12:20:00.001-07:00

Heeheehee!

It's funny. You don't know anything.

Energy Bill

2009-06-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

The energy bill is out there floating around, attempting to institute cap and trade on the ability to emit the bad stuff and require higher efficiency and more renewable energy sources. From what I hear the big argument against it is that industry and energy companies will shift the costs on to the consumer. I'm no political kingpin, but....fucking duh? Did this surprise people? I feel like fools are just being combative because they feel they have to oppose something. Next stop, Limp Bizkit fandom.

It has to be paid for somehow. Doesn't it make the most sense to put a price on emissions and let the market do what the market does to work out what still makes sense? Pollute more, pay for it. Suddenly the cheapest way to do things becomes not the cheapest way to do things. Bam, cheap dirty industry is priced out by cleaner industry that was once more expensive. And fittingly, those end users who use the most power or those who use dirty energy will be the ones to pay more for it. Yes, it will cost more than it does currently, but y'all sure as heck weren't going to approve something bankrolled entirely by Uncle Sam, were you?

de-train

2009-06-09T08:47:00.000-07:00

From time to time I labor under the idea that people from far away locales are reading this. I don't labor very hard, to be sure, which is just as well since I'm fairly certain my 3 readers (down 40%!) are all locals. Anyhow, its worth saying that our rail system in Northern California and the Bay area is fairly linear. Multi-linear, perhaps, but certainly falling well short of being a web or a network. If the New York area rail system resembles a box of uncooked noodles poured out on the counter, the Bay's rail is the crayola 12-crayon box lying in a heap. Odds are you can find something heading from vaguely your direction to vaguely the place you want to be, but unfortunately the difference between 'vague' and where you're actually going seems to be a minimum of 4 miles.

We do, on the other hand, have a growing traffic problem. San Francisco isn't NYC, but I've had the pleasure of commuting through the bay before and I don't know what to call it aside from a phrase involving a cluster. For both infrastructure logistics and green reasons, the train starts to look like an attractive alternative.

Here's what we expect the train to be: It should be a little slower than a fast car ride in no traffic, since it keeps stopping, but should be consistent, without worry of a traffic jam. You should be able to relax while you're riding the train, since you don't have to worry about steering the thing. And, of course, it should at least link up with something that can get you where you need to be.

The grossest failing of the train is it's lack of consistency. It weighs 500 tons, rides on a set of rails, and has a published schedule, and yet is still somehow subject to traffic. Amtrak, it seems, is not only burdened with the usual set of mechanical issues but also takes a back seat to freight traffic and track work on a routine basis. Some sort of delay occurs every second day or so, and several times a month the delays stretch into the hours, sometimes to the point of asking the passengers to switch to another train. And at that point the comfort of riding the train becomes the hope that you can make it 80 miles in under 3 hours, and that you won't be stuck standing on the platform for too long at 11pm waiting for the delayed replacement train.

West coast rail is nowhere near the East in scope, and it doesn't make sense to expand it unless more people are going to ride. The way things are looking though, I'll be keeping it out of my own plans.

6/29 Edit: Numbers are in, train ridership is down 13% this year. Bam. They responded by raising ticket prices. Bam?

Leverage

2009-05-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

So if you are reading this odds are you know me, and if you know me you know I have a bit of a germ thing. It's not debilitating, it's just a thing. It has largely to do with people being gross. Not you necessarily, but people. I've seen them digging for green gold on the freeway, and don't even get me started on the bathroom etiquette in my building. Anyhow..

To open a door you should push (or pull) on the side opposite the hinges. This provides you the greatest leverage so that the least amount of force is required at any point, although you have to push over a greater distance. Who cares, you were walking through the door anyway. From a bioergonomic point of view (yeah I made up that word) you should push probably between shoulder and hip height, otherwise you'll be using all sorts of weird muscles just to be stable and not pushing like you otherwise could. So basically, push where the handle or brass plate is.

Now if you have this thing about doorknobs that get so used that they're actually worn out, you do what you can to avoid the greasiest parts of the door. This usually results in me picking a spot about 6 feet in the air right in the center of the door. It may not be completely unused, and I'm pushing twice as hard as I need to, but it makes me feel better or something. I haven't swapped hand crud with the entire building, just maybe one or two people.

But wait! One or two people indeed. There are often some handprints in random stupid places on the door, like my 6ft center spot. Who else is doing this? Is it other germy fearin' folks who happened to pick the same random spot, or am I being contaminated by....morons? And it's back to the decision board.

Swiss Made

2009-05-14T15:40:00.001-07:00

We ordered up some new equipment the other day and it turns out it’s Swiss Made. You can tell because it says it right on the front. Despite what the underdeveloped logical part of my mind is saying, this knowledge really goes a long way to assuring me that what I’m holding here is a quality product made with great care and precision. Why? There are plenty of fine Swiss watchmaking companies, to be sure, but there is no reason to believe that the companies who craft these famous watches have anything at all to do with my swiss made lab instruments. Ferrarri and Lamborghini are both Italian brands, but that doesn't mean that Fiat is built to the same standard. So why so much faith in the Swiss attention to detail? Because for some reason I can’t explain I am certain that Switzerland is populated mostly by people who could be described as an elderly Hans Christian Anderson/Geppetto fellow with thin rimmed glasses and a jewelers loup working diligently in a shop filled with pocket watches and springs. I think this exposes me as both an ignoramus and a racist or xenophobe (an inaccurate one at that – HC Anderson and Geppetto were Danish and Italian, respectively) at the same time. But hey, at least I can pick out the Swiss from the Swedes…with these new Swiss Made forceps we just got in.

Didn't get that memo eh?

2009-03-23T09:58:00.001-07:00

Here we are, year 2009 a mere 3 years shy of the predicted apocalypse and living in the age of information. Somehow, between email, google, wikipedia, spellcheck, and other lightning fast info sources, we still have people living in caves. Undisciplined, yes-men filled caves.

Think back to the last time you went to the airport. Guaranteed that somebody in line tried to bring an economy sized bottle of shampoo and 8 gatorades through the security point, and was completely flabbergasted when they were told by the dude in the homeland security getup that it was not allowed. Regardless of how absurd you think the rules are, they've been the rules for years now. It's right up there with no smoking on the plane. Google it. Ask somebody. Turn on the news. something.

In 2006 the FCC announced plans to terminate analog television broadcast in 2009, meaning that people with old TV's still relying on rabbit-ears to get their signal would have to get a digital converter box, which is free with a government subsidized program. Easiest thing in the world to target this audience - just play the above information once in a while on the six and a half channels that you still get on broadcast. Bam, done. And yet somehow, 3 years wasn't enough time for people to call the hotline and do something about it, and now 5.8 million unprepared households want an extension. And here I was assuming it was old people, but from the sound of things it includes a fair number of slacker college kids.

Then you have your suspiciously plentiful pile of sub-average internet users who insist on typing everything in all caps. This is the most painfully confusing demographic I've ever discovered, and I suspect that it was created by a government think tank to hurt my head. One would assume that a member of the 'internet' who is well informed enough to use a 'computer' and construct a craigslist/ebay/forum post would get a clue about the all caps thing. One would be wrong, and go to bed early dreaming of variations on the Geico cavemen commercial.

Not My Problem

2009-03-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

The following is a list of things that are piled up outside the stairway to my office building. None of them are mine.

-Two 40 gallon drums of 95% and 100% Ethylene. It ranks just south of "hella flammable" on the burn-o-meter.
-An ever changing tidal line of leakage from said drums.
-Approximately 50 cigarette butts.
-Some leaves.
-A 1950's era refrigerator door.
-A plastic tampon applicator device thingy.
-A pile of inside out (presumably used) latex gloves.

why would you ever do this?

2009-03-02T11:14:00.001-08:00

If you were to ask me, the man on the blog street, what I love to hate most, you might surmise from pretty much any of these posts that it's stupidity. And, while that does get my undies in quite an untidy bunch, general stupidity is usually pretty aimless. The rub is that it's so damn general. Anyhow, there are worse offenses: aggressive stupidity, such as trying to run me over with your pickup truck while a-hootin and a-hollerin, and professional stupidity, where you're just being plain negligent at the thing you supposedly do well.

For today's example we turn yet again to the traffic circle. They're all the rage these days, everybody who's anybody is installing them. A quick hint though: If you build a bike specific traffic circle, and make it a really small radius one for whatever reason, it'd probably be best not to put super slippery metal utility covers right in the middle of the path.

Bikewatching Guide - Saddles

2009-02-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

While observing bikes, keep an eye out for seat/saddle choices. The saddle is a very intimate decision, as it ends up shoved firmly into your junk, and saddle decisions can tell you a great deal about the rider.

The Freebie
Made of plastic. You plant your butt on it and move your legs around. What?

The Vintage
Primarily leather and springs, vintage saddle users are a mix of those who are willing to break in a stiff leather surface to fit their butts and those who can't be bothered to upgrade the heap that their bike came with.

The Minimalist
I've taken to sewing a chamois into all my pants for comfort on and off the bike.

The Sofa
Elephantiasis of the saddle is a serious affliction wherein the seat dwarfs the vehicle. Distant cousin of the seagoing barge.

The Hackeroo
Somewhere between innovative and a duct-tape-residue-on-your-ass-all-the-time-could-be-difficult-to-bail-out bad idea.

The Eunuch
Seriously, go buy a new seat.

The Banana
Science has so far only identified 'nostalgia' as a good reason to have one of these.

The Tractor Seat
A mere backrest away from being a lounge chair. Often seen as a fine idea until one realizes that bicycling involves use of the legs.

The Probe
Careful how you sit down on this one.

The Reverse Butt
What could be more comfortable than sitting on a mirror image of your butt?

The Sponge
Not much of a seat but great for absorbing rain, bird poo, and personal accidents.

The Neglected Bike
'Neath all that poo it's weeping quietly. I'm laughing outwardly, so I figure it's a wash.

The Cover
Often seen in cases of rain or sponge. 99.5% Effective as a form of birth control.

The Critter
Richard Gere joke!

The Entrepreneur Special
Somebody paid money for this.

The Backwards Idiot Seat
Hey guys check it out! Bikes have been developing for 150 years, but look at what an innovator I am! Hurr hurr hurr. These seats hold the distinction of being both very rare and waay too common. While I've never actually seen anybody actually riding one, the only way I can figure it works is as abdominal support while supermanning the whip:

*Also acceptable in cases of backwards ass.

The Not-so-subtle Gel Padding Placement
Because you obviously decided you needed a soft spot just there, and are going to make sure everybody knows it. You also make obnoxious comments in movie theaters and have something printed on the butt of your pants.

The X-rated
Will support your undercarriage to feed its coke addiction

The Complete Lack of Seat
At least has the decency to plug up the hole in the bike.

ho hum

2009-02-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

Thoughts of the moment:

I forgot that yesterday was Ash Wednesday and it wasn't until the 4th sighting that I realized that no, there aren't just a lot of people with weird forehead birthmarks out today.

No matter you stand on wearing intentionally torn jeans, can we all just agree that wearing pants with a tear in the crotch and a pile of loose threads hanging down is either stupid or an attempt at being provocative which resulted in being stupid?

How is it that so many people on craigslist can own a computer and a digital camera and yet be unable to spell basic words like "dollar?"

real post coming soon, hopefully before Feb is out. Hope you're a fan of bike observations.

Why do I....

2009-02-13T11:55:00.000-08:00

ah, it's been a while. I'm once again resorting to linking out, but methinks this one is worth it:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5152141/google-proves-humanity-is-sick-and-sad-yet-absolutely-hilarious

Has anyone made this joke yet?

2009-01-20T14:46:00.001-08:00

As we all heard a passenger jet taking off from LaGuardia on Thursday lost power and ditched in the Hudson. The running theory at the moment is that the plane hit a flock of Canada Geese which fouled the engines like only bowling ball of a bird can do. The question on my mind - why wasn't President Bush's last act in office to declare it an act of terror and invade Canada?

Hurrrrrrr. Go Obama.

Winter at last

2008-12-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

The Good News: It's so cold in our house that we can pretty much just leave food out with no ill effect. Which is actually doubly good, since we were doing that sort of thing before anyway.

The Bad News: see 'The Good News.'

PSA: Traffic Circles, Revisited

2008-12-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

A while back I published the rule s to bicycle traffic circles. I'm sure somebody else has published them too, like maybe DMV or the California Penal Code, but I figured as a public service I would bring the guidelines to my own enormous readership. It seems, however, that my instructions may have been a bit vague, and people keep nearly running over me from unexpected directions. Therefore, I offer the following, more specific advice:

If you are hellbent on demonstrating your free spirit through the use of some sort of non-bike transportation (razor scooter, skateboard, lawn mower, golf cart, bizarre snakeboard thing, UPS truck...) you are actually not exempt from the rules that govern bikes. Maybe technically you are, I haven't looked it up, but going backwards through the circle will still result in a pileup and subsequent beatdown at the hands of angry kickstand-having mofos. In fact, you should probably be more inclined to obey, since of the forms of transportation listed only the razor scooter and golf cart are known to have brakes. I make no apologies to the UPS truck here.

The pack attitude has its advantages, namely safety around predators and aerodynamics. Neither would hopefully apply on the way to grab a tofurkey burger after class. In this context, packs tend to result in congestion and domino crashes. They do, however, allow for excellent networking before the crash and something to talk about later.

Pedestrians: You can almost do whatever the hell you please. I'm going to step down to a slightly lower soapbox and give you some reign here. All I ask is that when you're walking through a busy intersection, you at least act like you're in a busy intersection. I know that you think it looks mega chic to ignore your surroundings, but it's gonna bang up your cool real bad when I deliver you this flying head-butt I've been working on.

VOTE or.....else?

2008-11-04T18:41:00.001-08:00

As of right now the polls are still open in most of the country, and we have yet to see who the big winners are. But I can already tell you who lost big this election day: P. Diddy. Four years ago he lead the pathetic charge to get people to the polls, and tonight people are voting in record numbers in spite of his absence. Apparently all we needed were an additional battlefront, a failing economy, a candidate with some personality, and to lose the words "or die" from the slogan.

Story Time

2008-10-31T12:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, it is seldom that anything that happens to me gets directly retold on this here internet. But this one is too much to keep to myself.

Monday night my roommates came home late from a bar where they'd been celebrating somebody's birthday. They brought back a friend, let's call him "Archie." Archie was going to crash on our awesome denim couch. Fair enough. G'night guys.

By 1:30am everybody was sacked out in their respective sacks, and I wandered into the bathroom to take out my contacts. While I was doing this I heard somebody rustling around in the kitchen, and what sounded like the oven door being opened and then water running. Ok, I know everybody is already down for the night. Who is baking?

A quick investigation was met with Archie, peeing into our oven. I checked that sentence, it came out like it was supposed to. He was peeing into our oven. The only words I could find were "What the hell?" and I haven't come up with anything better in the days since. The rest of the evening was spent barricaded in my room with my toothbrush and other valuables. When there's a drunk guy in your house who can still walk but can't differentiate between a toilet and major appliances, you don't take that sort of chance.

Hooligans

2008-10-21T18:05:00.000-07:00

Dear sir, who stomped down my Obama '08 lawn sign on Saturday night:

Well done. The result of your actions is that I will go get another lawn sign and my candidate's campaign will have another $5 in its treasury. Thbthbthb.

Love,
Not redneck enough to pull that sort of shit, but redneck enough to consider booby trapping lawn sign v2.

PSA: Traffic Circles

2008-10-20T12:13:00.000-07:00

It appears that people are once again in need of my services. Unfortunately, those people are probably not the ones reading this. Oh well, the better to amuse me during the coffee break, I suppose.

--

Egads, man, a traffic circle of +4 confusion doth approach! What to do?
There are basically two states of being regarding traffic circles: In the circle and not in the circle. Whenever you change from one state to the other, you are merging. Merge, fool. Do not plunge. Do not dart. Do not bisect. Neither shalt thou count two whilst chatting with your friend, excepting that thou then proceedeth your arse out of the intersection.

Simple? Done.

Return of the List: Things Not to Cheap Out On

2008-10-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

Pretty self-explanatory. Don't cut corners on the following items, since if you need them you'd really like them to *work*

Parachutes
Bullet-proof vests
Condoms
Survival knives/blankets/kits
Airbags
Flashback Arrestors
5-second fuses
Fire extinguishers
Deadbolts
Various Self-defense items
Blessed Folders

---
list in progress! help!

Filler. Creepy Filler.

2008-09-24T07:23:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's been a while. Here, watch this and wonder what the hell with me. Also, I just lost the game.

Suck Electricity!

2008-09-03T23:19:00.000-07:00

No, not like running the a/c with the window open kind of suck electricity. Think "eat lead, sucka!"

We have a fly problem at the new place. We have dogs, but we're pretty good about scooping the poop, and that doesn't seem to be the root of the problem in any case. There are just a ton of those bastards on the lawn, windows, walls, lights, and anything else handy at any given moment. The options for dealing with this are limited, partly due to having dogs and not wanting to poison them. So, I opted for a fly trap, the kind that's sort of like a wasp trap where they fly in and can't fly out. Florida, I think they call it. badum ching!

The fly trap had some pretty surprising results, and also made me realize just how big this fly problem is. I'll spare you the detailed images (partly because my mom said I would be labeled 'terminally weird' if I put said images on the internet. Yes, I still hang out with my mom. Get over it.) but here is the trap:
Now, imagine that filled top to bottom with fly bodies. I'm guessing there are a couple thousand in there, and it took about a week and a half to fill. I don't even know what to do with the trap, I think I might burn it or send it into space. Currently there are maggots making their way to the top, and I don't care to speculate too deeply about if they were laid or just busted out. Anyway, you should come visit my bag of flies, and probably take it home with you.

Clearly the fly trap is way goddam effective. yeesh. But there are some downsides...is it attracting the neighbor's flies too? And more importantly, the 'bait' in the trap has a smell to it that reminds me of a rotting animal. Well, at this point it could actually be that, since there are thousands of fly bodies in there. But the point is that it smelled that way from day one.

Yesterday I got paid, and today I bought an electric bug-zapper lamp thing. So far there have been a few gratifying pops, and possibly some of me flinging insect insults at, um, bugs. Hey, you'd join me if you had 20 bites on you right now and some damn thing buzzing around your ears.

Filler

2008-07-28T15:44:00.001-07:00

While I gather my thoughts, I give you: this guy.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Double Click

2008-07-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

When you think about it, it's no wonder my grandparents can't get the hang of this. Here are the rules to double clicking vs single clicking, as near as I can explain them.

If it's a program on the start menu, single click.
If it's a file or folder, such as something in the my computer display, single click to get basic information, but double click to open the file or folder.
If it's a program but you got to it through my computer or explorer, double click to open/run.
If it's a file that you got to using the Internet, including Internet Explorer, single click to run, save, or open.
If it's an icon on the desktop, double click to run.
If it's a button within a program, single click.
If it's an option within a program (file, edit, view, etc...) single click and keep the mouse in the right neighborhood or all hell will break loose. Single clicks from here on out.

As if it weren't confusing enough, sometimes programs take a while to start. If you click twice when a single click was required, it will start twice. If you click once and double click was the ticket, odds are you'll end up sitting there like a doof waiting for your idle computer to "finish thinking." If you try to drag and drop a single click item, you may suffer actual physical harm.

NY: Second First Impressions.

2008-07-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm here, and I am reminded of many things. Here are some of them.

-People still use The Club? I did not realize this.
-It is plenty possible for words to be piercingly loud and completely unintelligible at once. Subway stop call outs, for instance.
-For some reason, "No Standing" does not refer to actual standing, and these signs are NOT there to prevent the masses from loitering in the street and gumming up the works.
-It is super muggy and sticky here. Like, the kind of sticky where I can't figure out when it would make sense to shower. I could shower in the morning, but as soon as I step out the door it's going to be all wasted anyway. I could shower at night, but I'm about to sleep and I'm just going to wake up gross. I could shower in the afternoon, but that'd be stupid. So, probably I'll just wait until somebody complains about the smell.

This Week: Nothing!

2008-07-18T23:08:00.002-07:00

Headed to NY for a vacation week, which may result in no posts or may result in a ton of posts, depending on the combination of interesting shit/busy factor. I'd call it a blog sabbatical, but that would imply regular posts that I'm taking a break from. So, business as usual, as far as the blog thing goes. If you're trying to get hold of me to hang out.....well shit, where have you been all year and why are you only trying to hang out now?

Try shaking it, does that help?

2008-07-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

I seldom just plain link out, but this made me really happy.

A Questionable Decision

2008-06-27T17:18:00.000-07:00

I'm not trying to knock on religion in general here, but it seems to me that if people are going to argue in favor of the intelligent design thing, they should have to explain why birds are unable to stop compulsively crapping every 15 minutes. Better yet they should have to explain it to my arm, which has its own counter bird-crap story to tell as of today.

The big clear thing in front

2008-06-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

of your car is for looking out of. Its really hot now and people have started using those metallic shade things in their parked cars to help keep the temperature down. Apparently it's even so hot that people are starting to think that driving around with the shade still deployed is a capital idea. Anyhow, I actually witnessed this. And lived.

"Well, you should be aware of the cars, and you should know that many of them are driven by people so stupid they can barely operate them..." -Bikesnob

Taking the Lane - a theory

2008-06-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

If you as a cyclist find yourself on a multi-lane road with no suitable shoulder or bike path to ride in, good sense and self-preservation demand that you "take the lane," which is basically to own the rightmost lane and ride in the center of it. The law backs this up, in fact. While it is tempting to ride as far to the side as you can, this risks getting doored, and more importantly, encourages slack-jawed fools to try to wedge by you in the same lane. And you don't really trust your life to the spatial judgment of slack-jawed fools, do you?

In the downtown area, essentially all of the streets without bike lanes are one-way, three lanes, 25mph posted limit. Assuming drivers keep it under thirty, the speed differential between a motorist and a cyclist (the kind with the confidence to ride in traffic) shouldn't really be all that great. If you're in a hurry, change into one of the other two lanes and go around. If there's so much traffic that it's actually a pain to change lanes, the cyclist is probably going to outpace the traffic anyhow.

So easy in practice, yet so seldom done. Why? Because driving, at least in a non grand-prix sense, is a lazy activity which seldom requires any exertion on the part of the operator. Looking left and rotating the wheel that you're already holding slightly is cake. There's no way that if you sat a test subject in a laboratory chair, put a wheel in front of them, and asked them to perform this task, they'd ever in a million years rate it as difficult. But when a person possesses some sense of entitlement that says they shouldn't be required to work at all aside from sitting in a padded chair and moving a foot once in a while, turning your head to check and see where the next gap in traffic is becomes this huge thing. It's like settling in to watch a movie and then being asked to actually get up and walk to the television to adjust the volume. Walking 8 feet is no big thing, but now you're all grumpy. Look how many people can't be bothered to use turn signals. You know I'm right.

Stripped!

2008-06-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

We've all seen the bike carcass still partly locked up to a rack somewhere but minus a wheel or the seat or something. Sure, it sucks when it happens, but it's common enough that you don't normally take a second glance when you walk by a half-stolen bike. Usually, though, you only see bikes missing parts that are easy to pull in a few seconds, often without tools. Quick release seatpost clamps and wheel skewers are great for quick adjustments, but they all but gift-wrap the parts for thieves. And as if things weren't easy enough to steal, incompetent lock usage factors in. Way too prominently, I might add.

I came across a few carcasses that gave me pause the other day. These things hadn't just been mugged for a few parts, they'd been picked completely clean. And of course, all three were located outside the engineering buildings. Beware the kids with wrenches, for they may actually know how to steal your front dérailleur and put it to use.

Exhibit A: stolen bits include the usual seatpost and rear wheel, plus the rear derailleur and brake, the chain, and the entire front end from the stem forward. AND this one had two different locks on it.

Exhibit B: We might as well count what's left of this one. Locked wheel and frame, seat and seatpost, stem, headset, fork, bottom bracket, lock holder, and a rock. Both derailleurs are gone, shifters are awol, brakes peaced out, handlebars invisible, even the chain is absent. At least somebody at the bike auction will convert this into one major eyesore of a fixed gear.

Exhibit C doesn't look quite as crud-coverd as Exhibit B, but it's just as thoroughly picked. Somebody bothered to take the stem and the rear brake as well as the seatpost and surprsingly the chain (again!). As with Exhibit B, cranks are gone too, which is no mean feat. Hah. feat. Bike.

Just to check my 'engineers are the piranhas of bike theft' hypothesis, I went for a ride around campus. Checked outside the quad, the lunch place, the bookstore, both gyms, some assorted dorms, and most of the academic buildings on campus. Saw probably several thousand bikes, and the award for cleanest picked still goes to Engineering, hands down. The only semi-competition was found outside the Life Sciences building, where somebody evidently stole the tube and tire from a completely unlocked POS mountain bike but left everything else. I don't know how to interpret that at all. Whatever, my engineering guys are making me proud.

Stairs

2008-06-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

It bugs me a little bit when a staircase has an odd number of stairs, particularly when I'm taking them in twos. What really gets me, though, is having a staircase with a landing area in the middle and an even number of steps on one section and an odd number on the next. That's ankle-breaking territory. When the revolution comes houses will only be built in integer stair quanta.

Jerseys

2008-06-18T12:52:00.001-07:00

I should probably point out that mostly I mean while on an actual field

I figure it becomes funny again right around semi-pro.

I am some sort of cycling beast!

2008-06-09T18:56:00.000-07:00

...and so is anyone else, with a 14:1 mechanical advantage.

I busted my bottom bracket bearing cage yesterday. Here it is in all its semi-catastrophic failure:

The Evils of the Kickstand

2008-06-09T12:22:00.000-07:00

Ah, beautiful order.

So you have a kickstand on your fancy little bicycle, and that's cool. Lets you prop up the bike and all. The thing is, it lets your prop it up just about anywhere, free standing. Why would you want to do that? Bikes locked to just themselves get stolen, friend. The 1950's phoned up, and they sound pissed. I think they want their trust in their fellow man back.

More importantly, sometimes people don't know what's good for them. Or maybe it's that they don't know what's good for other people. Or more likely, they're just being inconsiderate. The second problem with being able to deploy a kickstand is that people tend to leave their bikes right smack in the middle of things and clog up the works. Bike racks (and I work on a biking campus, there are thousands and thousands of bike racks) are formed in nice little lines that would please the fire marshal if ever there were some sort of crazy outdoor bicycle parking fire. Even if there are no racks handy, there's nothing wrong with leaning your bike up against a wall or a tree. Not only do you eliminate 2 lbs of unnecessary metal from your ride, but leaning your bike against existing objects helps keep it out of major pathways.

This all sounds very authoritarian, I'm sure. However, people have proved to me time and again that they can't be trusted to do it right, at least not on this score. Here are a few instances, just in the space near my office:

Nice choice of location jacktard.

200 bikes, and 2 idiots blocking access to all of them.

.
This is about as thoroughly in the middle of nowhere as it gets.

My first solution to this was to disallow the use of kickstands on campus, or at least in areas where there are available bike racks. This is pretty much everywhere, as it turns out. Alternatively, we could treat the symptom rather than the ability to park stupidly by just removing bikes parked in dumb areas. This requires a lot more case-by-case enforcement, though. There's also that pesky issue of policing people's personal property when they aren't necessarily doing anything wrong, ie saying you can't have a kickstand when in fact you are one of the many responsible bike parkers around.

Fair enough, policy isn't really my style anyway. I'm much more of a vigilante justice kind of kid. And I know how to use JB-kwik. Henceforth, repeat offenders will have their kickstands welded into the 'up' position, or will be simply relocated to better commune with the local flora depending on how I am feeling and how well prepared I am.

Guilty!

Here you go, Vivas

2008-04-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

Fender Update

2008-03-25T13:27:00.000-07:00

In theory we have a few months for potential rain left, but right now skies are looking pretty damn clear and aside from kicking up the inevitable allergy-induced snot pools, it looks like bike fenders may be obsolete for the season. Since the PSA I've spotted several more bikes worthy of the stupid fender category. I guess my single-digit readership isn't helping spread the word like I'd hoped. Oh well, I tried.

No.

Wrong again. What the hell is the point of this?

Sigh...

Big Fish in the Puddle

2008-03-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

Sandbagging happens. People like to win. I don't need it explained to me, it's fun to be top dog, yada yada. What I don't understand is taking the win day after day without ever accepting a real challenge. Clearly I am getting at something here.

I play on a D league softball team. D is the lowest division, and somewhere between few and none of us know what we're doing. Remember how in T-ball there were more base advances due to overthrows than base hits? Yeah, that's us. Sometimes we hit happy hour at the pizza place before or after the game, and by and large nobody gets too down about playing poorly. Like I said, D league recreational slow-pitch softball.

Since we started playing last year, there has been a team in our league who just beats everybody, hands down. Living shit kicked out, pride stepped on, bases run. Today they beat us 30+ to 1.

Dear other team, what are you doing in D league? There are plenty of other divisions that play at the same field on the same day. C, B, and A leagues to name a few. I'm not sure exactly how competitive they are but most notably they are not the lowest possible league. Is it fun showing up and crushing the teams that came to enjoy themselves and play ball despite not having played in college? Is it actually necessary to wear batting gloves and that thing on your forearm to prevent tennis elbow? Must you talk shit to our pitcher if you don't like the way he's tossing it? Fuck off, you didn't even call small baby bouncies.

I mean fuck. The world has competitive people in it, but what we're talking about here is not competition. Competition is trying hard and beating somebody who put up a fight. This is the point where I bring up the oft-used paintball parallel. My home field is chill as hell. We go out and miss the first game while talking to the field owners and shoot our friends and taunt them if we know them well enough and then break for lunch. Some days the usual suspects are few and the new guys are many. If we wanted we could bring out our super tournament guns and put some serious hurt down. The problem is that we have this aversion against being complete douchebags (sandanas and obsession with shooting games aside). The regulars all gun down to handicap themselves and make it more interesting, both for the new guys and for the guys who have been playing for a decade. And sometimes the new guys shoot me all day, and hey, thems the lumps. Gonna play guns you might get shot

Ok, I'm going to get off this particular soapbox now....that other team is still a pile of stupid heads, though.

Mustache March

2008-03-04T16:04:00.000-08:00

One of my friends does this thing - Mustache March. It's actually pretty self explanatory. In the month of March you grow out the hair on your upper lip. For some reason I find myself participating. This proposition is particularly exciting, or perhaps terrible, because I am more or less incapable of growing a proper mustache. Most of the time this doesn't end up mattering much since I am not really mustache inclined. But dammit, it's mustache march and we've got to do something!

Mustache watch, day 3: Stache is well on the way to skeevy. I don't have anything growing in the center, so really what we have is two little stachelets. It is also quite sparse. I expect to become more and more hermit like as the month goes on and I can't stand to be seen in public.

I've actually taken carrying a Bic razor in my bag. Just in case I can't stand it and the stache needs to be taken care of right freakin now. I'm already flirting with that point. Just as well, because with this abomination on my face I'm not flirting with anything else.

Mustache puzzler of the day: There is a style of bicycle handlebar called a "mustache handlebar," named for its resemblance to the facial adornment. There is also a type of mustache called a handlebar. Wrap your mind around that time bomb!

Restoring my faith in youtube

2008-01-23T23:44:00.001-08:00

If you search "paintball" on youtube you get 42,200 results. 42,000 of them are of some kid demonstrating his setup and how fast it can shoot and how cool the green accents he put on there look. I don't know what possessed me to click on a link to "Autococker 15bps (balls per second)," but I did. Just a glutton for punishment I guess. This time, however, I struck gold.

PSA - Bike Fenders

2008-01-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

Well this space is fast becoming a documentary of me acting like a know-it-all snob, but there are some things I just can't stand. People misusing things in stupid and less effective ways is chief among them.

This is your bike fender. You spent $15 on it so you don't end up with the freshman racing stripe painted on your ass when there are puddles on the ground. Congratulations, I applaud your purchase, and your resolve (or lack of automobile) that keeps you riding through inclement weather. Now let's go over how to use this thing:

Your back tire is kicking up mud and water. You would like it to not hit you in the back. You install a 3 inch wide piece of plastic between you and the tire. The tire is 2 inches wide and your back is 14 inches. Well, my back is, and I don't really care how muddy you get.

If you place the 3" fender right next to your back, all you've done is protect a 3" wide strip of your back, leaving an impressive 11" inches of you spattered in mud and leaving people behind you wondering who that skunk kid is. This would classify as a poor use of 15 bones, in my book.

On the other hand, lets say you put the fender closer to the tire instead of close to you. The downside to this is that you no longer look like you're sporting a hefty radio antenna on your ride. The upside is that mud isn't going to hit you. period. Here, I drew a diagram. It's all about cutting down the angle that mud can fly off the tire at.

Granted, the majority of crap will fly off the tire in the same plane as the wheel, since the wheel is spinning on a fixed horizontal axis. Go search centripetal force on wikipedia, I don't feel the need to explain it. However, there are other forces at play here, and unless your fender is placed in an idiot-proof spot, you will be branded an idiot. Until you wash your clothes, at least.

Ok, that was a lot of words. Now here are a lot of pretty pictures for you visual learners:

Good Fender

OK Fender

Overkill Fender

Stupid Fender

What happened, couldn't kick down for an entire fender?

I just plain don't get this one. Maybe some sort of winglet for aerodynamic stabilization?

Dear Friends....

2008-01-13T11:55:00.000-08:00

If I get shot in the grill and end up with orange paint up my nose, it is your responsibility to tell me so when we get back to the cars. It was there for four hours and nobody said anything. It actually dried during that time. Thanks guys.

-me

PSA - your fancy umbrella

2008-01-10T19:21:00.000-08:00

The stormy season is obviously upon us, and greets us with the open arms that are rain and wind. Fortunately us humans are a handy bunch, and we came up with these brilliant little tarps on a stick to keep the rain off of us. Then we way overthought the problem and figured out how to make our tarps break regularly.

I'm not here to judge how your umbrella looks. I'm not saying that a giant watermelon looking thing above your head won't get you hit, maybe by me, maybe by a total stranger, who's to say. But more than that, I'm saying nobody will need to hit you when your rig collapses and pokes you in the eye.

Take your basic umbrella. It's a 3 foot long stick with folding rods, and nylon stretched between them. A little collar on the umbrella neck slides toward the point and pushes the main vanes out using smaller little connecting arms. It took three lines to describe that, and they get more complicated from there. You have the ones that telescope, you have the ones that telescope and are spring-loaded (mostly awesome for poking your friends with minimal effort. Otherwise not that novel), you have the compact folding ones that bend in three places per vane, and then you have the super compact ones that either bend 21 times or are so small when open that you get to pick which shoulder you'd like to be dry.

Basically my gripe is this: unnecessarily complicated things are way more prone to breakage. We could probably even go back a step - things with lots of moving parts made of stamped and folded metal to questionable tolerances and of unknown material and origin are prone to breakage. The more parts, the greater the chance that you're umbrella is going to be doing its best imitation of a drawer of forks after an earthquake (and we all know what that looks like, sure...). I mean, the umbrella-frame antenna in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure didn't even last, and they had the knowledge and budget of the entire future world backing them.

The strongest thing I could dream up is basically a rigid, permanently open umbrella with maybe a rigid outer ring and some tension cables leading from the vanes to the stem to keep it from flipping inside out. Practicality, however, rears its ugly head. For those of you who actually want to carry an umbrella around, get the biggest thing you'll actually carry. Generally bigger = fewer folding parts. If you don't want the rigid-pole old-school kind, see if you'd haul a one foot long semi-compact. If you get caught with a busted umbrella that folds down to 4 inches, somebody might telescope it out and club you with it. Maybe me, maybe a total stranger, who's to say?

PSA: WD-40

2008-01-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the holidays, I bring you this PSA regarding WD-40.

"There are only two tools you need. Duct tape and WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, WD-40."

This has been bugging me lately. Maybe its because its the time of year when people feel obliged to buy gifts for, among others, the rough and tumble manly men who adhere strictly to the duct tape and WD-40 regimen. (adhere!) Don't get me wrong, duct tape and WD-40 are both terrific in their own rights. As far as I'm concerned WD-40 is the master of its game for what it's supposed to do. The trouble starts when people start declaring it universally helpful and applying it where it shouldn't be used. At this point you have a pile of guys thinking they've got it under control, maybe grunting a bit, and ultimately using a terrific invention to break shit further. For shame.

Let’s start at the start. WD-40 stands for “water displacement attempt number 40.” Forty was just the time that it happened to work. The job of WD-40 is to get rid of water. Along with this goes getting rid of rust and gunk, as well as preventing the same. If properly used it’s slick as hell. When it comes to these tasks, you’ve got the magic bullet. And it smells pretty good.

What WD-40 isn’t is a long lasting all-purpose lubricant. For that, you want grease, oil, graphite, Teflon, something not this. The thing about WD-40 is that it doesn’t really have staying power. It dries up, blows off, runs away, I have no idea what it’s actually doing, but after a while it just ain’t there no mo. The other (and significantly worse) thing about WD-40 is that it eats petroleum based things like some kinds of plastic and rubber. Like I said, it’s a bit of a solvent and it kills water. It’s not really meant to grease everything under the sun, tough guy. So before you douse your [whatever] with the yellow and blue can, remember that in two days your orings, seals, and plastic bushings may have turned to gum.

So what to do...how about this: If you own a hammer, a pipe wrench, and a tape measure and try to get everything done using only those tools, go ahead and WD-40 this hell out of everything. It's not really going to make it worse. If you own calipers, torx wrenches, a torque wrench, or gaskets of any sort, consult the goddam manual.

Gratuitous video of guy smashing WD-40 can:

2008: Resolutions

2008-01-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

Usually around this time of year I try to figure out what I resolved to do last year and reflect upon how quickly I not only failed to do so, but completely forgot what I resolved. 2007 was different. I don't think I even got around to resolving anything. That pretty much set the tone for the year.

2008 has a resolution, at least. I figured everybody's doing it, might as well. The thing is, all I could come up with was "Get to it." Feeling pretty good about it though- if by this time next year, I can look back and say, "Man, 2008. I really got to it." ...well yeah, that'd be cool.

...aaand we're back

2008-01-04T15:24:00.001-08:00

After a not-very-well-earned sabbatical, we now return you to your very nearly regularly scheduled attempts at humor and insight. Sorry.

The christmas season came and went. The season kicked off as usual, with me and my dad getting into the holiday spirit by swearing a lot. I feel no remorse about this - there's always something wrong with the fucking christmas lights. You get all the way done and discover that one of the strings died while you were putting it up. You take that one down and replace it with another string containing an equal number of lights, only to find that this string is 3 feet shorter than the last. I will never understand why 70 lights at 4 inch spacing does not consistently result in 280 inches. Then you accordion everything downstream of that over 3 feet to match, and you end up not making it around the last window. So you add another string, and now you have an extra 20 feet of lights that you have to hide in the bushes. This cycle would go on and on forever without a) better planning or b) an eventual "eh, that's good enough" attitude. Guess which we usually end up on. Once I achieve this frame of mind, I usually have about three-and-a-half weeks to let it fester before last minute panic forces me to shop for gifts. If the mall is crowded, you're all getting extension cords.

At the moment it's storming like a righteous mofo. Blowing so hard that whole trees are coming uprooted! Actually it's kind of awesome. If the weather is going to be crappy, it might as well do it in style. Get interesting for a bit, then get done so we can go outside and have a picnic or something. Maybe not quite Katrina interesting, but there are falling sticks to dodge and random crap strewn in designated no strewing places. Why yes, that is a SodexHo food cart in the hedge. Thank you for noticing.

hell if i know

2007-11-18T21:29:00.000-08:00

Just back from another fine weekend of practice. Except, our act is not together, whatever it is, and whenever I run to the easiest bunker in town I get shot stupid about 20 seconds in. Questions about next year are right in our faces now. Do we want to keep going, who's in, what would it take. Sponsorship, a home field, a full squad, consistent practice? We're counting players, thinking of holding open tryouts, thinking of moving, thinking of asking people on, considering pyramid schemes, something to make it work. And if it can't work, we need to figure it out so guys can get on with life or find a team and keep going. To the guys mature enough to be able to give a straight answer, thanks.

I'm going to out and admit it - I often consider quitting paintball. Some Sundays you can't take three steps without getting lit up, and you drive two hours home wondering what the hell you're doing with your time and money. Some days the only other people at the field are there for a dorm trip or to test their battle skills or some bullshit, plus one kid who thinks he's hot shit and spends all day screaming and overshooting the new guys. Some days only three guys can make it and you can't do shit, but you got up at 5:30 and came out here to sit in a parking lot. Sometimes it's when you have to pay the credit card bill you racked up for air fare, hotel, rental car, and paint and suddenly you're staying in every night until the first comes around. Sometimes your friends from the rest of life wonder why you keep doing this, after you pass yet again on another soccer league with a bunch of guys you love, or skip out on a friend's wedding because the team needs you to fly out to East Bumfuck and put some paint on some people just so. And some days, you watch a couple games from the stands and go "what the fuck is this that we're doing here?"

If you're playing to impress people, you're going to be disappointed. You learn that talking about paintball is about as good at parties as describing the chain of events that led to you switching fabric softeners. 95% of the time you end up on the wrong end of some raised eyebrows that say "seriously?", or some jackass tries to tell you about how hard his gun can shoot and how his cousin used to have this angel.

But then Wednesday rolls around and you can't wait for Sunday so you can show up and do your thing and blast some people. Thursday afternoon your roommate catches you pretending to snap-shoot behind the couch, and you have to try and play it off like you were stretching. One weekend you go play by yourself and suddenly these guys you spend your Sundays with don't have your back, and there's no way in hell you're going to trust that kid wearing the camo to get your tape so you can do your thing, and absolutely zero chance people are going to shift and lock the zones back down when the snake side starts to drop. Field layouts for the next tournament are released and automatically half your work day is up in smoke. And when it's you who spots the gap and takes the other team apart, you wonder how you could ever give this up.

Recent quotables from the field:

"It's 9:00, where the fuck is everybody? And why can't I feel my fingers?"
"That's the rage."

"I'm seriously going to cry the day we decide not to be a team anymore."

"Left nipple's hot!"

"Some guy with a chest protector on bunkered me."
(chest protectors are the Smirnoff Ice of paintball. Unless you have boobs, in which case protect away.)

"Who else gets to do what we get to do? We travel around the country shooting people. We get to do something we love. When are we going to be able to do this again?"

apologies to Matty Marshall, who said it better than I did.

Oil Spills

2007-11-11T11:02:00.000-08:00

Every now and then something happens where I find myself really wishing I could've just been in the room when the engineers were doing their design thing. Presumably they did the best they could, and it just wasn't idiot proof enough. Here's what probably happened:

Engineer 1: So we'll be carrying 1300 tons of oil. How do we prevent it from spilling everywhere in an accident?
Engineer 2: Lets beef it up. We'll give the ship a double hull.
Engineer1: Sounds good. And what happens if we hit something pointy, and it manages to pierce both walls?
Engineer 2: Well it would be stupid to put all our eggs in one basket. Let's make 10 compartments for the oil, so if we rupture we don't lose all of it at once.
Engineer 1: Got it. Ok, what happens if they hit something really big really hard? Like, they run into a major bridge?
Engineer 2: A bridge? Fuck, man, we put a rudder on it, right?
Engineer 1: Right, steering. Ok, I think we're good.
Engineer 2: I'm going on lunch break.

Calvin

2007-10-19T12:34:00.001-07:00

You know what really grinds my gears? Stickers of Calvin (and sometimes Susie Derkins) praying to a gigantic cross. In addition to this being a fatty copyright infringement, did these people ever actually read Calvin and Hobbes? No. No they did not.

I'm thinking as retaliation on behalf of me and whoever cares to align themself, I'm going to cook up a batch of stickers depicting [insert your favorite religious figure here] water skiing. Now I'm not saying they water skied or didn't water ski. I don't know. It's not really well documented, I'd imagine. The point is, that's not what they're about. Cowabunga!

Somebody go halfsies on this with me

2007-10-02T16:42:00.000-07:00

If we buy two, we get five dollars off! Plus we can tape cardboard to the front as armor and have wicked jousting fun with wrapping paper tubes.

http://sacramento.craigslist.org/bik/438351939.html

"2 California Charriots with front suspension and hand brake. Minimal usage, foam grips are dry. Shock covers may have cracks, otherwise good condition. These cost $119.00 each new I believe. The other one looks about the same but is buried in my garage. $40.00 each or both for $75.00."

Location: Cameron Park
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Freshmen

2007-09-26T13:03:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow marks the first day of the year for students at UCD, which means a number of things. The roads and eateries will be packed, the bathrooms on campus will once again become disgusting and unusable, furniture will go missing, and not-very-clever messages will be left on our chalk boards. More importantly, though, there will be 6,000 freshman trying to stay upright on bicycles. Davis is a biking campus and a biking community, but if you zoom out beyond that you quickly find that we, the people of the United States of America, are not a cycling culture. Maybe we are between the ages of 6 and 10. So basically what you've got is a bunch of 8 year olds (with rusty bike-handling skills) trying not to run into one another. Stanford is also a biking school, being enormous, flat, and mostly paved, and has similar troubles. Everybody is back on a bike for the first time in years and waaaaaay too confident in their abilities to maneuver past trouble with their superior intellect and life skills. I heard that the average Stanford student gets into two bike crashes a year. I only managed two* during my entire stay there, and I was considerate enough to not take anybody else down with me.

Stanford has an Intersection of Death, which is basically what it sounds like - an unmarked intersection that nearly everybody has to ride through on the way to and from their classes. There are a few conveniently placed benches right on one of the corners of this intersection, and if you can get over being a bit of an asshole, its some terrific free entertainment to sit and watch people do stupid things. Extra exciting when somebody goes flying though late for class or if somebody on a skateboard doesn't know what they're doing. Davis seems a little more self-aware, on the administrative level at least, because they've installed traffic circles at all of the major bike intersections. However, I'm not confident that everybody knows how to use a traffic circle. Shit, I'm pretty sure not everybody here knows to ride on the right and don't stop abruptly and start talking on your cell phone in the middle of a busy street. But anyways, if I'm unavailable tomorrow, try the traffic circle by the silo. I could use some company.

*Crash number 1: Riding down a short hill, over a plank across a stream, and then up another short hill on Nic's bike. Nic's bike has no brakes, no seat, and no clamp to prevent the handlebars from rotating freely. It is orange, though.

Crash number 2: Attempting to take a turn, wave, and switch on my bike light while going over a curb and carry several large pieces of aluminum roundstock for a project. It's also worth noting that I can't ride with no hands. I crashed right in front of the side of my dorm with all the windows, a dismaying number of which produced familiar faces. All I could think to do was make a gravel angel and try to play it off.

NPPL Kansas City, Update 1

2007-09-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

All seven guys arrived safe and sound in KC, despite a missed flight and some last minute scrambling. We spent Thursday walking fields and figuring out game plans. We also spent a good amount of Thursday lost in various parts of Missouri and Kansas. Everything is under construction here, and every time we think we can see a straight line to our destination, we're blocked by half a building or a city-block sized pit. What else about Kansas...For some reason, its cool for people to randomly park in the right and left lanes. There don't seem to be any signs saying its ok during certain hours or in certain areas, people just do it, parked right in the lane. You'll be cruising along and every couple blocks there are a few cars right in your way. Also, it looks like people have trouble turning right cleanly. Most of the corner curbs have been pulverized by constant curb integrity checks.

Preliminary round consists of 8 games, 5 on Friday and 3 on Saturday. We went 5-0 today, which is an excellent start, despite some sloppy closes. I think at least two or three of us shot JT at various times. JT is on our team, so...not the best person to shoot. As for the venue, Hello staph infection! We play on astroturf, which they reuse and bring to each tournament. Problem is, they hose down the turf after each event, then roll it up wet and let it sit for two months. There's this funk nasty smell that I can't really recommend.

Check out nppllive.com on Sunday if you want to maybe video of us playing. No idea when and if, though. More soon!

Kansas City

2007-09-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Just a few hours until we fly to Kansas City MO to do or die for our season. We started this year strong, with a win and a 2nd place finish, and tanked hard in our third tournament in Boston. From the way we practiced between our second and third events, we had it coming. For the last month and a half we've been struggling to get it together again and rediscover the drive and intensity we had at the beginning of the year. To tell the truth the lead-up to this one has been a goddam mess. Every week is a fight to get a good practice together, to get enough guys to drill or scrim, to find paint for everybody, and to find money for all of this. Three days before the tournament we still didn't have a full seven to bring to Kansas City, and were asking ourselves what happens if we actually have to go with five or six. Devin wins quote of the day with his response: "Fuck it, we go in brawling. That's what we do."
Despite all the confusion and logistical trouble, I'm cranked up for this event. We have a strong squad and a pretty decent draw, and we're hungry to come back from the wreck in Boston and shoot some people.

I've tried a couple times to write about the chunk of life devoted to paintball, but each time I end up sounding like I'm biting hard on Matty Marshall in "Sunday Drivers." So, here's Matty Marshall in "Sunday Drivers." I've got some stuff to pack and a flight to catch.

"It happens on a random Monday, coming back from an event, or late on a Sunday night, right before you get on the plane and you're about to be frisked for the third time. You're driving, you're flying, you're sitting in an airport seat with boys from the team. You're drinking stale coffee trying to stay awake. You're explaining the fat welt on the side of your neck to a confused stranger or a best friend. You're coming back to the other life, the one without paintball, where no one understands why you do it. You're tired, you're working off little sleep, and the question creeps up and you try to ignore it "Why do I do this? Why the travel, why the losses, the missed work, the missed school, hours of practice and the complaining girlfriend?" Because the lure of living a paintball life is just too potent, and the products of the road, the travel, are memories forever in trips and strange lands with stranger people. At tournaments, it feels like, for once, you actually get to live as loud as you want. It's worth the sacrifices, its worth all the bullshit, because if you work hard enough, a Sunday will roll around, and you'll be in the huddle, screaming, with your hand in, one among ten, playing for the world title, and suddenly all those cliches that you ever heard make sense, and you, are defined. You say it to yourself, and it means everything "I am a paintball player, and this moment, right here, is my life."

Status

2007-09-14T11:43:00.001-07:00

Burner: Burning
Lid: On order
Lab: Evaporating
Cranks: Pulled
Team: Registered
3 1/2" x 1 1/4" 304 stainless concentric reducing cone for butt welding, in stock in either 10s or 40s: No
Rage at above: Building
Weekend: Imminent

really amazingly small talk

2007-09-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

This morning found me at the coffee cart, pondering the various donut options to go with my french roast, and I saw that they had cups of carrots and celery on offer. The part of me that thinks I'll have cardiac problems in later life liked this idea, and the part of me that would like to be in better shape also applauded, and the part of me in charge of the digestive tract and regularity probably also said something, but all I heard was a sort of gurgling sound.

A ten ounce plastic cup of carrots and celery evidently runs $2.49 + tax. I'm not that hard up for money that this killed me, but what the fuck Davis? This town really is rich and green. Almost makes me want to bring a lunch, if I weren't so damn lazy.

What the hell, Ads by Google?

2007-09-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

I will never understand why 'ads by google' thinks I'm a mom. "Are you a slacker mom" and ads for daycare keep appearing next to my paintball team emails. Perhaps it's the universe's attempt at entropy within the organized technical wonder that is google. To be fair though, if I am a mom, I've certainly been remiss in my duties to whomever the hell it is that I'm supposed to be mothering.

Another winner, amid a sea of useless but at least relevant paintball ads:

The real winning ad just came through. No commentary of mine could do justice to it. Here you go.

The Game

2007-09-05T20:28:00.000-07:00

The Game. Do not question it. Just play.

Rules:

Rule 1. If you think about the game, you've just lost the game.

Rule 1 1/4. If you lose the game, you have to tell somebody, preferably somebody who plays the game.

Rule 1 1/2. Once somebody loses the game and announces it, there is a 15 minute grace period for everybody around to forget about the game again.

....aaaaand GO! If later today you should find yourself wondering "what was that game?" or "I wonder if anybody else plays this stupid game" or "How can I make Joe lose the game?"....too late sucka, you lose. And the more you play, the easier it becomes to lose. So yeah, good luck with that.

Ok, so maybe some ground rules...

2007-09-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

In the first post of the new blog I declared that I'd just write whatever. Three posts in I'm chickening out. I feel I need to steer clear of certain things, or this little neck of the web is going to disgust even me.

To avoid:
-Overly detailed accounts of what happened today with the intent that if the world goes ape and this blog survives, future generations/aliens will have a glimpse of our daily lives. Tourists with cameras, take note here.
-Detailing the "why" of this and that.
-Expressing feelings other than amusement, incredulity, or irritation.
-Rambling introductions. Sort of.
-Predictable formatting.
-whizzing on the electric fence.

That is all for now.

More bikes!

2007-09-02T02:41:00.000-07:00

I almost got smished in the road yet again today by a dude in a minivan. It always seems to be minivans and SUVs piloted by the oblivious and the super-aggressive. I'm becoming much more liberal with the finger these days. For everyone's betterment, I hereby impart the following knowledge: If there are 3 lanes going the same way and no bike lane, the right lane is mine as much as yours. It is not, however, both mine and yours at the same time as you try to wedge by me and either risk running me over or running me into the line of parked cars. If you're only going 2mph faster than me, would it kill you to change lanes if you're hell bent on passing? If you risk running me down because you're too lazy to check over your shoulder, I'm eventually going to catch up with you at a light and do something awful. Nya-nya-nya.

The gods of craigslist smiled upon me today and I snagged an old school Schwinn road bike for $40. Actually I grabbed 2 bikes at once, bringing my count up to...too many. One for riding, one for riding fixed, one for leaving at work, one for the rain/locking up around town and not worrying about. I also still have my first bike that came with training wheels and red and white padded checkered things. We're going to need more real estate soon to house this farm.

Ya gotta accessorize! Buying a good $30 set of lights and a $25 lock makes sense for $400 bike. In fact, they're pretty much mandatory if you're going to be riding at night and leaving the bike anywhere with the expectation of coming back to it. On the other hand, those little things more than double the cost of a beater. Its still relatively cheap, but its the most sting I've felt from a small purchase since I bought that free-range scorpion farm. Too much?

Then there's the tires. The tires are just about as old as me, but tire years must be akin to dog years because at the ripe old age of 25 the tires are disintegrating and covered in cracks, whereas I still have yet to lose any parts and am equipped with just the one crackola. badum-ching! Bad crack jokes aside, blowouts are bad news, and new tubes and tires need to happen soon. Damn you, obscure 27" x 1 1/8 sizing!

The second bike purchase today was totally on impulse, since it wasn't actually advertised. While checking out the schwinn I spotted a blue Nishiki Riviera leaning against the wall and grabbed it too. Total shit show. The frame is in great shape though, albeit maybe a size too small for me. If all else fails I can steal the cranks and put them on my fixed, if I can figure out how to get the stripped ones off. grr

Gear

2007-08-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

If you don't play paintball and aren't interested in hearing about gun problems, you should probably start at paragraph 4 or so.

Since I started playing paintball in 2001 I've been plagued with gear problems. My first paintgun, a tippmann (known to be more or less bulletproof) suffered from wild velocity fluctuation. Turned out to be a cracked power tube. My next gun, an autococker, fell victim to not only the normal host of troubles that accompany a highly adjustable gun owned by an idiot with a wrench, but such new and exciting problems as not being able to thread a barrel into the body and having a bolt seize in the top tube. For those of you who don't speak paintball, this is somewhere on the order of finding out your skateboard has transmission problems.

Next gun was an Angel. I don't even want to talk about it. The first motorized loader I bought, also marketed as bulletproof, died when the battery terminals decided they didnt want to be springy anymore. The second loader broke no less than three times, between the feedneck, the loader lid, and the shells. At one point I went on vacation for a week and left it sitting on my desk, and when I came back it had committed suicide - the battery door had shattered into 3 pieces from the forces associated with staying closed.

Last year during a practice in Santa Clara, the top of my newest gun peaced out mid-game, taking my hopper and some of the gun body threads with it. A photographer captured the moment for all to enjoy. Note that the hopper is still feeding even as it flies away. Something works!

Currently I own four tournament grade guns, having already sold off most of the aforementioned ones. There is no really good reason that any normal person should need this many guns. In a given day, you might possibly require a backup gun when something awful happens, but two is generally considered plenty. I bought the fourth gun because the first three had a bad case of gremlins. Two with some sort of bolt problem (the 'general malaise' of paintball), one with board trouble, one with eye trouble, one with low pressure regulator problems, one with crazy shootdown for whatever reason, and with wicked bolt stick. For those of you doing the math at home, a few of these paintguns are not doing well.

Those close to me generally agree that I need to find a sport with less equipment. I considered taking up running, figuring that even I could avoid shoe malfunctions. This idea ended up flopping for two reasons. One, I hate running. Two, the human body could be considered the necessary equipment for running, and I'd hate to have a leg to fall off mid-stride. I decided, for reasons that I now know better than to believe in, that cycling would be a good compromise. Its an aerobic sport, you get to go somewhere to distract you from the unpleasantness of getting tired, and all you need is a working bike. Cycling, it turns out, can demand more gear than
cog collecting.

The road bike has a few creaking noises to it, but on the whole it more or less works. My fixed gear, on the other hand.... a fixed gear is the simplest bike you can make. No shifters, no freewheel (the ratcheting thing that allows you to coast), brakes optional. Its a frame, 2 wheels, and some pedals. At the moment I'm having major problems with the pedals.

Should I fear using equipment more than I do? Possibly. My job requires me to operate machinery that is plenty capable of taking a finger or an eye, and while paintgun malfunctions suck, bike malfunctions hurt. I'd go hide in a cave, but caves are prone to collapse.

The last thing I did before posting this blog was grab a toothpick from the toothpick jar. Out of probably 200 toothpicks, mine was the only deformed one with no point on either end. Is it tomorrow yet?

Off to a rough start

2007-08-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

So somehow its already day three and the new blog seems to have kicked the bucket right out of the gate.* I migrated all of my previous posts over from myspace (well, migrated is the wrong word. I copied and pasted a lot. Myspace is gimpy, it turns out) but that doesn't really count. The good news? There are six drafts waiting in the wings for some time and inspiration to finish them off. Not to mention the authoritarian toilet blog, which has been brewing in my mind for months. So keep checking back! For now, I leave you with this link to some most excellent Japanese television programming. I am truly envious that I was not a part of this.

*When I'm dictator that's going to be a sport that all the kids have to play in elementary school. Each heat lines up at the starting gate, gate lifts, and they run two steps and punt a bucket. Maybe you could glue one of the buckets to the ground as a joke. Maybe two kids run at the same bucket from gates on opposite sides and try to kick the bucket so that the contents spill onto their opponent. Maybe all you do is take two steps and kick a bucket.

Goals and...wait, goals?

2007-08-22T16:12:00.000-07:00

Here we go, a fresh blog to fill with poor word choices. I have kept a blog before and tried to keep a reasonable standard of quality in the posts. This resulted in about one post every two or three months, and they still weren't all winners. Nowadays, I strive to say no to quality control! Prepare for a lot of stream of consciousness, cell phone pictures, and personal commentary on pretty much nothing. Maybe some lead-based toys from China will slip through. Self indulgence, updates on that idiot kid at work, notes-to-self, and rampant linking to other people's creations. Hopefully for you, the unwitting reader, some entertainment will fall out of this. I think I had 5 readers on the previous blog (Thanks Dave/Adrian/Stacy/Kaity/Jillian). My market analyst tells me that this new strategy will likely reduce me to about two readers. Well I told him to shove it up his butt, and who the hell are you anyway, I don't have a market analyst! Whatever, I'll have to artificially inflate my hit count by visiting my own page from every computer I can get access to. That's not too sad, is it?

Anyway, this is all by way of saying that if I were you, I'd let a few posts build up and then sift through for the good stuff. Wait, no, if I were you I'd send me a large sum of cash for no reason. Is it too late to say that? Or if you're not feeling so charitable but are either bored or obsessive, g'head and just check all the damn time, that's fine with me.

The Rules of Shotgun

2007-06-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

1. You must be able to see the car to call shotgun.
2. Shotgun only lasts until you get out of the car. If you stop at a gas station and get out, shotgun is up for grabs again.
3. Shotgun can be trumped by "Slingshot Warrior" unless "Shotgun no Slingshot Warrior" or "Shotgun no battle" is called.
3b. "Indian Rampage" trumps both "Shotgun" and "Slingshot Warrior" unless "no battle" is called. I know this has potential to be very offensive, I didn't make the rules here. Indian Rampage allows the caller to decide where everybody in the car sits, including the trunk but excluding the driver. Indian Rampage is only effective between the hours of 11 and 12 (AM or PM).

The Birds and the Bees

2007-06-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

I swear this actually happened.

Monday 6/4 – Went out to the car at lunch and found it covered in a swarm of bees. None of the neighboring cars had bees on them.

Tuesday, 6/5 – 3:00 Soda break at the Silo Bookstore. Walking back to my building with a berry-Dr. Pepper in hand, a duck flew into my head. Yes, I was struck by waterfowl. A mallard swooped in from behind and to the right and whacked me in the temple with his wing. He then landed alongside another mallard who had managed to avoid me and began to quack. I looked around desperately for spectators. None to be found.

Wednesday, 6/6 – Walking to the car after work and a crow was following me and screaming at me. Every time I'd get away a little, he would fly to the tree or building directly overhead and continue squawking at me. Followed me for about 2 blocks, which is the entire distance from my building to my car.

Thursday, 6/7 – Crow was waiting for me in the morning, and followed me back to the building. Terrific, he knows where I live. Now I know crows are smart as hell*, but this one is about to get blasted.

Friday, 6/8 – No remarkable encounters with anything flying. Best day this week.

Saturday, 6/9 – Went to the air show at Mather field. A Thunderbirds solo pilot experienced a 'birdstrike' and had to land. Yeah, we killed the bird, but it damaged a $15 million plane and sunburned 70,000 people. But man, we killed that bird.

Week of 6/10 – Crow follows me to or from the car several times this week. A passing cyclist informs me that the crow is scolding me. Who the fuck asked that guy?

Wednesday, 6/20 – The crow is after me again. This time I hid behind some trees until there was nobody around and then lobbed a few small rocks at it. My ability to throw straight up in the air shames me. Try it sometime, your body gets in the way.

Thursday, 6/21 – Walking around downtown Davis and a bee lands on my shoulder and will not go away. This isn't something that would be worth mentioning at all if it wasn't part of the ongoing chain of 'airborne critters harassing me' events. After 2 minutes of walking around and flapping at it, drastic measures were taken to get rid of the bee. Success, but at the cost of minor loss of clothing. I was getting tired of this shit happening so I squished the bee when it came out. Take that, nature.

Later Thursday, 6/21 – Riding along the American River Bike Trail, where there are tremendous swarms of bugs around dusk. I've never figured out what a swarm of bugs like that does except for get hit by bikers. There were several of those little flippy darty birds flipping and darting around after the bugs, and one such bird darted in front of me and hit me in the armpit. At 20 mph, I sort of hit him too. Dragged it along for a half-second before he got away. Further down the road, as I was wondering what all this meant, I nearly ran over a quail that was walking across the path.

After the first couple of these things I was figuring it was just weird, but now I'm starting to consider my options. They seem to all revolve around building an ark, carrying an attack-rodent, growing gills and living underwater, or generating some sort of force-field powered by crystals and diesel gasoline. Anyway, I'm open to suggestion.

*Crows can use tools. Davis contains a few groves of walnut trees and a huge flock of hungry crows. During the walnut season the crows want to eat the walnuts (no surprise here) but are unable to break the shells. The solution they've devised is to pick up the walnuts and wait for a car to drive by and drop them into the road in front of the car. The car runs over the walnuts, cracks them, and birds feast. The first time I saw it I couldn't believe it, there were actually birds dropping what appeared to be bouncy balls on the road in front of me. Evidently, the crows are unable to distinguish between cars and bicycles, which has resulted in more than one cyclist being pelted with walnuts from above.

For the skeptics who are saying "that's not really using tools"……check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo
BAM!

Only so Complicated...

2007-03-22T16:43:00.000-07:00

If you only had one job and you'd been doing it professionally for years and years, you'd think you'd be fantastic at it. Hendrix could play an out of tune guitar and bend the strings to bring it into pitch. Old machinists can feel a screw with their fingers and tell you the thread pitch, and identify what type of steel you're working with by the sparks it throws when you hit it with a grinder. Professional truckers can back up trailers with free pivots in a smoother arc than I can drive my car. Meter readers can go to an apartment complex and read 8 meters at once, and work out the math in their head on the way to the next stop. They say we only use 11% of our brains, and I'm betting the other 89% is there for adaptation (and good ol' laziness).

So why can't a shopping cart company make a cart with 4 wheels that touch the floor? How is it possible that after 25 years cd cases still suck so hard? Why can't the vending machine lady load the snacks so that they actually fall out when you order one? Is it really possible that this entire rant is because of a stuck bag of skittles?

God Gives Man Earwax

2007-03-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

Here you go, man, a wax for your ears. No need to apply, it will just sort of occur naturally. This will not affect you and you may not even notice it for quite some time, since you will not have anything proper to stick in your ear for thousands/millions of years, depending on who you listen to. In the future it will become a nuisance when it gets on your headphones and generally grosses people out. Around the same time somebody will invent a swab to clean your ear with, and then immediately tell you not to use it in your ear. For now, if you are fortunate to live long enough to grow ear hair, it will hold it down nicely so that it doesn't blow all willy-nilly when you're running after something. And put on a loincloth, for the love of me.

It's really been quite slow at work.

Gauze

2006-11-20T19:09:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog thing, I vowed not to use it to gripe, or at least not to gripe too much, or maybe not to gripe exclusively. Tonight, I go for broke. I got an owee on my elbow this weekend, and the actual bad part is surrounded by parts that aren't so bad but are not something you'd want to stick a bandaid to. Fortunately, we have these big gauze squares that you can tape to stuff, so I did just that. Gross alert ahead.

ok, you were warned. Over the course of the day I evidently formed a scab, which normally is awesome, because that sucker stays around for a week or so and when it goes, behold, you have skin. Unfortunately, whatever it is that forms a scab melded with the gauze, so I had cloth embedded in my arm. it's midly amusing until it comes time to take it out. If that isn't already a thing they do to people who shake babies, we should really look into that.

While I'm thinking about it, check out www.dontshakeyourbaby.com
It is a real and very serious site, but you have to wonder how big the overlap is between people who shake babies and people who would stumble into that website. I've got this venn diagram in my head, and it looks like two hula hoops, only one of those hula hoops is silver and in storage in a European carport, and the other one is bright red, sweet, often found in the center of olives, and not really a hula hoop at all, when you think about it. Sweet Damn, I should've gone into the diagram business.

Oh, Sweet Boredom

2006-07-21T01:09:00.000-07:00

I bought a pair of crossbows on the internet today. God Bless America! And capitalism! Yes, crossbows, like the sideways bow and arrow thing with a trigger. Our intent is to convert them to shoot paintballs instead of arrows, because a) we are some industrious and humorous fellows, b) what do we ever do that isnt motivated by paintball these days, and c) why the hell not. A couple weeks ago I hollowed out a pod and hid an air horn in it, and when the time was right I busted out the horn and scared the poop out of some dude instead of blasting him with the traditional gelatin encapsulated pellet. And yeah, that was fun, and obnoxious at distances of up to a mile, but this...well, you dont want to be the poor sap who gets bunkered with a crossbow. Youd never live that shit down.

The online store I got these things from claims to be a purveyor of self-defense equipment. Let us consider the practicality of defending your home or your person with a toy eff'n crossbow, and then let us chortle for a bit. The same store also sells ninja stars*, lockpicks, surveillance and night vision equipment, and a belt buckle that converts into a knife. The only possible conclusions are that either this is in fact not a self-defense store at all, but rather a nerd shop, or that it is some sort of store for ninjas.

Now I will admit to being a fair nerd myself. Im on myspace, for fuck sake. To some extent you have to kind of embrace the inner nerd. When you go to school surrounded by thousands of other nerds of various calibers, the bar drops real far. Its more of a speed bump, really. But I draw the line somewhere well before spy equipment and a knife concealed above my crotch. Evidently crossbows are right on said line, which I wouldnt really have thought, but I promise not to use them for their intended purpose**. Thats got to be worth a few points.

*Thanks to some dude who ventured into town from the river, Ari and I both know that throwing stars are illegal in California. We also know the fear of some guy from the river pulling out a big knife and waving it around while ranting some shit about throwing stars.

**The intended purposes of toy crossbows are to hunt wild chickens and potentially shoot your eye out, as near as I can figure.

--Epilogue--

After I posted this, this guy requested to be my friend. He sells stun batons, rings that shoot pepper spray, and gloves with steel shot sewn into the knuckles so that when you punch somebody the world explodes. They also would go well with my shoes. so....does anybody know how to make it so the blog isn't searchable by keyword?

whatever

2006-05-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

I found a journal I was sort of sporadically keeping about 4 years ago, and it contained these sage words:
I bet if we didnt have shoulders sticking out to protect the head, we'd catch our eyes on a lot more nails and stuff when we bumped into things.

True now as it was then.

There's a paintball bunker sort of shaped like a lopsided pyramid that everybody calls a 'Dorito,' after the chip. In England they call it a 'teabag.' I'm pretty sure I couldn't handle everybody yelling that.

I sometimes use a strap wrench to open foods. But my mom uses chopsticks to get stuff from the top shelf, so I figure its a wash in the end.

I bought a cheap little RC plane on a whim, just for kicks. Don't look at me like that. I didn't spend any real money, it was an impulse buy, I tell you! The instructions for charging the battery are 'plug it into the wall and when it starts to get hot, unplug it.' Every time I add to the risk of catastrophic fire, Dave gets another gray hair. Said plane doesn't have flaps or ailerons or a rudder or any of that fancy shit. Just 2 motors, one on each wing, and the controls allow you to go left, right, or forward. Just as well, because I have no idea how to fly a plane and I don't really have the patience to learn. We tried to launch this puppy from the deck of Peter's beach house toward the sea, but the wind caught it and about 2 seconds later it smashed into the house nextdoor. Both wings broke off, the body shattered, the battery went to lands beyond, it was awesome. It has since been repaired with packing tape and coffee stir-sticks.

Oscar the Grouch is probably grouchy because he lives in a trash can. Id be grumpy too if people kept opening up my roof and dumping garbage on me. Maybe he was a regular green fuzzy dude who fell on hard times and everybody dumps on him. Ooh, pun!

Check out the Ask a Ninja podcast at www.askaninja.com

Ive never really seen the point to having a video iPod until now, and now I want to get one at the risk of wetting myself in public while watching this thing. How to kill a ninja is the greatest.

Haikus on the Lifestyle

2006-05-04T17:30:00.000-07:00

This is my life in haiku

Sitting on the couch
Working on my butt callus
Man, that's leathery

-----

I made eggs today
But forgot to scramble them
Do we have ramen?

-----

Socks off, ten seconds
Snake is hot, dorito one
Get that guy out ref

Progress

2006-04-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

Updates in LIFE. mostly the monetary part. some of the digestive tract too.

1. I got a desk at work. hooray!
1a. I have to sit at it all day and enter data. sheet.
2. I've got health insurance. booyakasha.
2a. Now I can break shit again.
2b. Does anybody know how the hell kaiser works? All the directions say is to "live well and thrive."
3. My bowell movements are becoming quite predictable. What's that all about?
4. I spent my tax return already.
4a. Mostly on cookies. And a data acquisition device.
4b. Everybody needs a DAQ!
4c. Want to buy mine?
4d. I still have not received my tax return.
4e. Ow, my credit.

***Edit: The Strangeness Continues***

Something ain't right this afternoon. We caught one of the patients stealing a huge stack of magazines from the waiting room of our office...she did it in waves. She left the office like 4 times to pile another few magazines in the stack she was forming outside the hallway bathroom. I managed to shut my leg in the car door while standing outside the car, which was quite a feat, and I got a package from newegg that contained some blank dvd discs, some computer cables, blah blah, and a really long human hair. Also, I evidently have been drinking milk that expired 6 days ago. I'm still standing, and the milk hasn't gone chunky or anything, so I'm going to go ahead and call bull doodie on that one.

...and happy birthday to just about everybody, at this point. What the hell happened 9 months before april '82 that got everybody so baby makin?

Resume the Mediocrity!

2006-04-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

It came to my attention that there are a few people who actually read my blog, which sort of unnerved me. I resolved that the next post would be something actually worth reading. ...and I haven't posted since then, over a month ago. In an effort to kick start the blog again, at whatever level of smeh is necessary, I present this lousy link.

I bought a lithium ion battery pack to put in my loader, and in a word it doesnt fit. So today's adventure will be to desolder and rewire these things. The following is the warning I found when searching for a how-to on the net.

http://www.able-battery.com/Lithium_batteriy_FAQ.htm

Who's seen happy fun ball?
Rest assured, none of these warnings will be heeded and some shit is going to get soldered tonight. If I look nervous or blowd up later you know why.

....and, of course, the image of the day....

so birds....

2006-03-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

Was watching a flock of birds fly around and make turns as a unit today, and considering that while they look all cohesive and natural, some of the shiftier ones are probably thinking some of the following thoughts:

"Oh shit they're going left! oh shit they're going right! oh shit they're going left again! oh shit oh shit oh shit"

"Don't you fucking touch me, Larry. Don't you fucking touch me Larry. Don't you fucking touch me Larry. You fucker! Moooommmmm!!!"

"On lap 8 I'm going to make my move."

"Alright, who farted?"

Thing du jour

2006-02-18T20:31:00.000-08:00

I've decided to try out a new thing in the blog, wherein I declare something or other the item of the day. The category may be of my choosing and you bet your ass it won't be daily. It'll be like adding a feature to a newspaper, except without any of the stress of journalistic integrity or a regular audience.

anyway...Moment of the Day: I was driving out of the supermarket parking lot with the window down and I hear this sort of slightly screechy blowing sound to the left. There's a man there in his 70s try to whistle to get the attention of his wife who had just stepped out of the store. Except the dude clearly cannot whistle. Mostly he just moved a lot of air and did some spitting. You'd think, at 70 yrs of age, you would either a) know how to whistle, or b) know that you can't whistle and stop trying to do it in public. Eventually he gave up and just started yelling "Hey!" and waving his hands.

A camel is a horse designed by a committee

2006-02-17T18:46:00.000-08:00

Hoooly shit folks, you need to check out http://www.rickygervais.com and listen to the podcasts. Ricky Gervais is the dude who began the show "The Office" (british version, which spawned the US version) and is one of the writers for Da Ali G Show. The podcast is basically him and his friend interacting with this guy Karl, who is a strange bean. Give it a shot, its free and fooking hilarious. Man, I wish my mind worked that way.

At the risk of turning my blogs into nothing but parroting back of shit i've heard, this was funny too....a short audio essay on how the indie coffee shop thing doesnt really work.

Olympics are on, and theyre currently showing Ice Dancing. Not skating, not racing, nothing involving a puck or a ball. People rag on curling, but seriously, how many people do you have to beat to compete in olympic ice dancing? There are probably what, like 25 people in the world who ice dance to begin with? Which is awkward, because there's that one odd person when they pair up to dance, and thats got to be hard on the ol' ego. But I have trouble believing that this is enough of an institution that there are real established parameters for judging and people qualified to judge and give commentary. I know skeleton doesnt really have that many participants yet either, but at least you put your neck on the line cruising down an ice chute at 70mph in a unitard. Also, you have to suffer the indignity of the unitard.

Dang, momma, git my shotgun!

2006-02-16T23:16:00.000-08:00

A kid came up to our house today to sell magazines, and when I answered the door he looked at me for a second and then asked if my parents were home. No respect.

Same shit, different day, and for a while I considered posting my thoughts on the Danish cartoons, but instead I'm just going to catalog the greatest jokes I've heard so far about Cheney shooting a dude. Oh man. But first, a quick bit of commentary from yours truly...

Apparently people in the hunting community say that these sorts of things happen "fairly often" and its not really a newsworthy event. Ok....does that seem kind of wrong to anybody? guys are shooting eachother in the head fairly often, mundane or not....

In a potentially related story, America's hunting population continues to decline sharply. Some experts theorize that this reflects a shift in cultural values and urbanization throughout much of the country, but seriously, we just heard the hunters say they shoot eachother all the time. I think its natural selection.

*Edit*....you have to see the pic of whittington after he came out of the hospital. thats some nasty bruising! its like dawn of the dead. beware, slightly gruesome.

feel free to chime in if you've heard any good ones
--------------------------------------------------
"But here is the sad part -- before the trip Donald Rumsfeld had denied the guy's request for body armor." -Letterman

"The weather back East has been atrocious. There was so much snow in Washington, D.C., Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fat guy thinking it was a polar bear." -Leno

"I'll be here all day with continuous coverage of how Vice President Dick Cheney shot a 78-year-old man in the face after he mistook him for a small bird." -Ed Helms, of The Daily Show

"Newsweek's Andy Borowitz reported that the federal government had issued a color-coded "Cheney Alert" to warn of future attacks. 'What we have learned, the hard way, is that Dick Cheney can attack without warning,' a faux Homeland Security boss Michael Chertoff declared."

"Dick Cheney and his buddies go down there hunting in Texas, and Dick Cheney guns down a guy. And they're hunting quail, and the quail disappeared. They vanished. And reports now that they're hiding in the mountainous area near Pakistan" - Letterman

"A mere five days after shooting a man in the face, Vice President Dick Cheney broke his silence about the incident by submitting to a no-holds-barred grilling at a public press conference. I'm just kidding. ... Actually, he sat down with Brit Hume on Fox News for not some much a grilling -- more of a teat suckle." -Jon Stewart

"If this story gets any bigger, pretty soon they're going to have to tell the president." - Letterman

"When the ambulance got there, out of force of habit they put Cheney on the stretcher. No, the other guy!" - Leno

"I'm surprised Dick Cheney loves to hunt so much. The five times the government tried to give him a gun, he got a deferment." - Leno

"Apparently the reason they didn't release the information right away is they said we had to get the facts right. That's never stopped them in the past." -Craig Ferguson

"He is a lawyer and he got shot in the face. But he's a lawyer, he can use his other face. He'll be all right." - Craig Ferguson

Menace in the Kitchen

2006-02-05T02:32:00.000-08:00

Ive never been much for cooking, but today I was feeling adventurous and decided to make a shake, completely sans instruction. Got Daves blender down off the shelf, threw in some fruit, some ice cream, some ice, some milk..that sounds about right. Then the wheels fell off.

For whatever reason nothing was mixing, so I decided to pick up the blender while it was on and shake it vigorously. In short, everything literally came apart, the lid came off, the glass part went flying, bounced off the counter, smashed a spare fruit that was sitting by the microwave, and then landed upside down in the trash can. The base kept clattered back down and kept making a noise for a few seconds until it finally quit, either out of some built in fail-safe or crippling damage. My shake ended up distributed amongst a good portion of the kitchen.

Since Ive lived here Ive made 3 attempts at cooking that havent involved something instant or plain pasta, and one of those resulted in some paper towels catching fire, and another resulted in a severely warped cookie sheet. The other one just produced bad food and dirtied every dish we own. For stroganoff.

Paintball Vol. 1 - History & an Absence of Camo

2006-02-02T00:47:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm gonna educate those of you who are unitiated. It has somehow gotten so that my only hobby is paintball, which represents significant cutbacks in hobby breadth from my hobby heyday in high school where i actually played sports and shit. What can I say, I'm out of shape. Anyway, I play a lot of paintball. Not pinball, not ping-pong. Ok, some pinball. But mostly, paintball.

I've been wanting to try paintball since sometime in the early 90's, but my parents never let me. My mom has since commented that knowing what they know now they wish they had let me. I might actually be good or something, instead of just acceptably decent. Its just as well, I suppose, since I probably wouldve gotten hit and cried and quit anyway. But I digress. Been playing since 2001, been playing nearly weekly for a little over a year. Yes it is expensive, yes I am completely broke, no I'm still not that good.

A quick note of history: Paintball began ~25 yrs ago in the woods, a bunch of friends stalking eachother and playing guns. In the past few years it has come almost entirely out of the woods and onto a sort of concept field known as 'speedball,' where the bunkers are all man-made and even on both sides of the field, and the field is generally small enough that you can shoot the opposing team off the break and the games take no more than 5 minutes.

For whatever reason, I am fucking terrible at woodsball. I started in the woods, everybody starts in the woods, and you go out for the first time with your friends because you want to play guns and see how you would do or whatever. Its nerdy, but I've accepted it. I should also point out that once you've gone a couple times, the camoflauge/military-look-alike thing gets old, and you end up being glad its becoming a sport in its own right. I am confident that in a real military event I would suck just as bad having never played paintball. None of the regulars at my field wear camo except as a joke or to be retro, nobody thinks they're a sniper, nobody calls the paint" bullets," "ammo," "rounds," nobody calls the paintguns "weapons," there is not a single tree or shrub at said field, and there is no rule that if you get shot in the leg you just hop around on one leg but keep playing, although I'm not saying that last one wouldn't be funny. My point is, we're trying to distance ourselves from militia types here.

PAINTBALL =/= MILITIA TYPES. well for some people it does, but I think they were probably militia types before they found paintball, and they really need to leave me alone.

Bandaids and CAD

2006-01-31T21:58:00.000-08:00

There are a remarkable number of people who are allergic to bandaids. What happens if they get an owie?

Website is finally coming along a bit, made a few awkward moves into some CAD models and threw an article or two up. If anybody out there needs to know in great detail how a sheridan valve works, and how it differs from its nelson-based cousins, we got you covered! It's to hell with formatting for now while we concentrate on content, so you the eager viewer cant actually view it. Ah well. My blog, and I'm excited about it. the website, not the blog.

Gung hay fat choy

EDIT: Turns out there's a thing called a "steri-strip" for the bandaid-phobes out there. hmph.

TGI Naptime

2006-01-27T21:58:00.000-08:00

Its friday night and I'm trying to decide what to do. after a long spell of sitting quietly on the couch, I decided maybe I'd just nap. Dave suggested that hey, lots of people nap before they go out. This, however, is the pre-sleeping nap. Details to follow

zzzzzz

*edit*
woke up and turned the lpr on my timmy up to 80. wowsa that shit is quick. its staying there. if you understood that, you are my friend and an equally big nerd. the rest of you, piss off! On second thought, I need all the friends I can get. For next friday night. I mean, the lpr is already at 80, what's left to do?

Long Live the Double Helix

2006-01-20T21:56:00.000-08:00

I have only the following to say tonight:

A) I detest the letter R. That is not negotiable.
2) 'q' has the tail pointing to the right and 'g' has the tail to the left, people. holy shit.
D) I never thought I'd say this but impulse threads are kind of cool.

Resolutions Update

2006-01-17T21:54:00.000-08:00

So I'm going to edit the resolutions a bit. I can do that instead of actually doing what I resolved to do, right?

1. Branch out the musical tastes, which are sort of singular at the moment.
2. Eat less sugar.
3. Get on a team and play some goddam tournaments.
4. Get this shit website shit off the ground. No, not THIS website, but THE website, which has nothing to do with myspace lameness.

flew to dc and back this weekend, and it looks really weird to fly through rain at night with the plane's wing lights on. The woman in the seat next to me tossed her cookies. one day i'm going to break down and buy a gamebody to make that shit more bearable. the flying, not the cookies.

What else do you talk about in a blog? What else do I even do? Work is not going to furnish a lot of material here. I work as a filing clerk at the moment, and there's only so many stories that can come out of that. I also work alone, in a parking garage that had a temp wall put up to make a little space to store the files, so as I progress through the alphabet I get further from the window, which is a shame, but closer to the electric heater I brought, which is good, cause its cold as shit in there. Oh office drama, why, why?