Thu, 07 Feb 2008
Yes, I'm Here
Had a little trouble this week as you may have noticed. My DSL connection
frequently is interrupted when there is a storm and this week's weather
tantrums were no exception. Well, except that I was offline for a while
and when I got things sorted out, it seems that ATT had decided to
change my IP. This required a little bit of configuring to get
my email and web server back in action. All is well now.
What's that you say, something about voting in Super Tuesday? Well, yes I voted. First time I have ever voted in a primary actually. Who did I vote for? The winner of course!
Thu, 19 Apr 2007
Second Thoughts
I was going to ride my bike in to work today and I actually got
up early and was ready to go. But last night I did look at some of
the graphic material on the Internet related to the V Tech massacre.
I may be getting just a bit paranoid but I decided not to ride. The
photos of the guy with the gun and knife, etc... just made me not
want to be exposed in public too much. I would normally go out
for a walk during lunch but I am wondering about that now too.
Several commentators are wondering why NBC decided to give the killer a forum for his thoughts. I don't disagree with this question. We have already seen threats and alerts all around the country due most likely to copycats. What is the purpose of showing all this stuff?
And the real story in my opinion is the question of antidepressant drugs. This story reveals that his room mate observed him taking prescription medication. Was this a factor in his violent acts? Is the FDA looking into it? Maybe I'm off base here but this seems like a serious question to me.
Sat, 07 Apr 2007
Some Enemies
Amazing that there are some people who would actually waste time
poking fun and attempting to get a response from me. It can be amusing
in some respects. But, at any rate, I have prevented the use of in-line
images from this server. Used to have it on in the past but didn't turn
it back on when I reloaded the server last year. Thanks for the reminder
guys. Aren't web servers fun?
I also redirected every link from the trashing forum. If you are reading this and you came from there, you went through a couple of pages first. That's cool. So, what do you want now?
Update
As I looked through the logs today I see several people who made the effort to bypass the redirects and browse through a few things on my blog and in the photo gallery. Are any of you willing to identify yourselves? What is your interest in me other than to try and find a way to give me some shit? I am watching things very closely and I have the IP's of your service providers. I know when you have come here from Stl Trashing and I don't consider you a friend if you came from there.Wed, 28 Mar 2007
85-100% You must be an
autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good
show, old chap!
Do you deserve your high school diploma?
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Mon, 26 Mar 2007
The Pfoodman Speaks
One of my cycling colleagues, Ralf Pfremmer, is featured in
this story in the Post. I have known Ralf for a couple
of years and always enjoy riding with him although he is at a bit higher level
than me. He gives it a lot more time than I can at this point (that's my
excuse at least). And be sure to check out
Ralf's blog which he recently
started. He's a pretty decent blogger too.
Tue, 16 Jan 2007
The Two Kids
I think everyone in St. Louis is fascinated, afraid and to a degree
obsessed with the weekend news of the two kidnapped kids who were
found. There are a lot of questions which are still unanswered. Saturday
morning we were able to watch a bit of the news conference put on by Shawn
Hornbeck's family. Shawn Hornbeck's stepfather is a good speaker and obviously
cares very much not only about his own stepson but other children who are still
lost. At one point in his talk, he mentioned that things are not the same as
they were "when we grew up" and that you just can't let your kids alone
anymore. Well I wanted to ask why? What has changed in a mere 50 years or so
to make this society so dangerous for children? I'm not going to
pontificate or anything but if anyone would like to offer ideas,
I'm interested in hearing them. What has changed?
Bill O'Reilly's book, "Culture Warrior" offers some ideas. O'Reilly mentions the ACLU as being one of the powerful leaders in the Secular Progressive movement. O'Reilly details the ACLU's support of NAMBLA (National Man Boy Love Association), a homosexual group which promotes man boy relationships. The book describes a case in Cambridge Massachusetts involving two men who plotted, kidnapped, killed and violated the corpse of Jeffrey Curley. These two men got their ideas from the NAMBLA organization. This information was obtained from a diary kept by one of the men. The parents of Curley took out a lawsuit against NAMBLA but it was thwarted thanks to much support from the ACLU.
The leader of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, is an openly gay activist. They are also funded by wealthy radicals, Peter Lewis and George Soros. O'Reilly is of the opinion that this organization represents a problem for our children. I tend to agree. In all the countries where pro-gay laws have been passed (homosexual marriage for example), there has also been a corresponding lowering of the age of sexual consent. In Canada for example there have been attempts in recent years to lower the age of consent to 14.
Wed, 10 Jan 2007
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The set on the right I picked up at the local Radio Shack for half price. It is made by a company called Life Like. The scale is slightly bigger than HO (1/64 I think). The quality of this set is only marginal. The track does not stay together very well and the guard rail does not attach very well and one of the controllers had a sticking plunger. Never the less, it is quite fun to play with and my son really seemed to enjoy it once he got the hang of it.
When we went up to Canada, my brother-in-law gave the other set (on the left) to my son for a Christmas present. It is made by Artin which is a more active player in slot cars these days. They make a wide variety of sets. This one is much more challenging with the loop-d-loops. You have to go full throttle to make it around but you also have to break hard to avoid deslotting when you come down. It took us a while to get the hang of this one but it is tremendous fun now that we have. The quality of the Artin set is much higher than the other one. The cars are faster and have stronger magnets. The magnets are an innovation which was not used in the older sets I had when I was young. These magnets act as ground effects and hold the cars to the track.
Well after all this fun, I started looking around the Internet to see what is out there and discovered that there is lots of activity in slot cars. Now I am entertaining the idea of building a track out of wood. Old Slot Racer has lots of info on how to do it as well as photos and video of tracks that have been built. You can be really creative with building your own track. This could be a fun project.
Mon, 08 Jan 2007
Back from the North
After a brief vacation in Canada last week, I'm back. Went up on
Friday the 29th of December. We actually drove all the way
to Mississauga which is right outside of Toronto in one day. We made
a couple of stops for dinner and lunch. We started out at around
8 am local time and ended up there at around midnight Eastern time.
That was quite a hall. On the way back we broke things up with
a visit to one of my wife's friends in Detroit.
Had a decent amount of seafood which is typical of our visits as well as taking time to see relatives. Training took a bit of a shot as I really didn't do a whole lot. But I will start riding the bike this week. More posts to come so stay tuned.
Thu, 07 Dec 2006
Crossing the Panama Canal
Time Lapse photos. This is really cool. Props to Brownpau for this one, he always has good stuff.
Tue, 22 Mar 2005
Web Riddle Mystery Game
Notpron is the web site. Someone shared this with me recently.
I don't have enough time to really get into this but it is
an interesting way to use the web and it doesn't cost anything.
Fri, 04 Mar 2005
- What a fantastic day it is today. I was planning on riding in and when I woke up, I tuned in to the weather on my HT and heard it was 41 degrees at 5:30. Oh that is so good. I am getting tired of these sub freezing mornings. It makes the bike ride much easier when it's above freezing. Not as much stuff to put on for one thing. I was able to get in by 7:15 and then do some ab work and stretches at the fitness center where I take a shower. Perfect. Now let's see if we can have more of these days the rest of the month!
- Wikipedia has some good entries on Free Radicals and antioxidant. Check those out and notice the prominence of Vitamin C and E in these entries.
- Both kids have gotten the flew this week. Jonathan is pretty much over his but Tina is still recovering. Mom and Dad show no signs of catching it yet. This could be a real test of my Vitamin protocol. Let's see what happens.
Thu, 03 Feb 2005
The Trouble With Hubble
Back in the early 1990's I was playing guitar in a jazz
band with some friends. We were having a great time
and it was the first time that I had attempted to play
this kind of music (although I've been a fan of jazz fusion
for a long time). One problem we had was trying to
come up with a name (no band has that trouble right?).
It was around the time of the Hubble telescope and
the lens problems had just been discovered with the
satellite (it was nearsighted). So one practice I
came in and I confidently told everyone that I had found
the perfect name. "The Trouble With Hubble" I said, "that's
just perfect!" Well, no one really liked it. The best I
got from everybody else was something like, "Gee, I don't know."
Flash forward to today and there's more trouble with Hubble! As in, it's going to come down in a few years and we're not talking little pebbles re-entering the atmosphere either. So 15 years or so on and my idea of a band name would still be relevant don't you think?
Tue, 04 Jan 2005
How to Choose Assistance to Asia
Charity Watch is an organization devoted to grading the
philanthropy efforts of organizations. With the tsunami crisis,
there are many opportunities to help and many of us are
moved to make a contribution. But remember that there are likewise
many opportunities to take advantage of you. The above mentioned
web site can help sort things out.
Mon, 13 Dec 2004
Christmas Party
Saturday night we went to my company Christmas party. Now these are pretty unique parties. They are usually at some interesting
architectural place. This year, it was at The Thaxton building.
The artist (and perhaps owner?) who did most of the art-deco
artwork inside was at the party to answer questions. It turns out
that this building was originally built by Eastman Kodak. Now this
really got my curiosity up since I worked for Kodak from '87 to
'94 here in St. Louis and I don't remember anyone ever talking
about this place.
In fact, the company had completely forgotten about the building. It turns out that it was built in 1927 and sold in 1954. It was a prototype of a display building which Kodak had intended on using to display and sell their consumer photographic products. They had planned on building a whole bunch of these but only five were built due to the great depression. And the one here in St. Louis is the only one of the five left.
On the first floor there are inset panels which featured large photographs. These were painted over by a subsequent owner. In the basement was a large development lab where film was developed for customers. The guy at the party said they found a lot of old stuff in the building as they were cleaning it up. Unopened boxes of film and old cameras that are probably worth some money to some collectors. They were going to call it the Eastman Kodak building but Kodak didn't like this and decided to sue them over it. So it's now just called the Thaxton building after the developer. The panels all have art deco paintings in them now and downstairs is a nice bar and eating area. It was really a beautiful building to be in but I found my self wondering a lot what it was like in it's original form. How exciting that must have been as consumer photography was in it's infancy. This must of been a pretty high tech place to work!
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Bobber's latest Del.icio.us links:
- Coming Battle Over Open Source Phones - Forbes.comCell Phone OS battle heats up with Open Source at the middle!
- Groklaw - Barracuda Networks Countersues Trend MicroIBM provides patents to aid Barracuda.(tags: FOSS)
- The Necessary War by William S. LindAnother good review of Buchanan's new book.
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