Friday, January 16, 2009
Are You People Crazy?
I'm Having Serious Second Thoughts...
OK...it's like this.
I don't own a sled.
nor skis
no snowmobile in the garage or shed.
and while I'm at it there's no actual snow outside in my yard...BUT
IT'S FREAKING 9 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT OUTSIDE MY FRONT DOOR RIGHT NOW.
Meanwhile, our our Little Island its a balmy 34 degrees F.
I can't imagine what it's like in Minnesota or Wisconsin or in downtown Chicago right now.
Like I said in the title...if you live there ...
ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY?
OK...it's like this.
I don't own a sled.
nor skis
no snowmobile in the garage or shed.
and while I'm at it there's no actual snow outside in my yard...BUT
IT'S FREAKING 9 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT OUTSIDE MY FRONT DOOR RIGHT NOW.
Meanwhile, our our Little Island its a balmy 34 degrees F.
I can't imagine what it's like in Minnesota or Wisconsin or in downtown Chicago right now.
Like I said in the title...if you live there ...
ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY?
Thursday, January 15, 2009
155 Safe In Hudson River Crash Landing
Katrina Victims Still Stranded On Aircraft's Wing
Bush Administration Blamed For Rapid Rescue Of White People...
Bush Administration Blamed For Rapid Rescue Of White People...
Spinning In Circles To Keep From Freezing To Death
Who's Idea Was This Any Way?
OK, it's below freezing outside after making it up to 42 about 5 PM yesterday, and looking at the forecast its going to keep cooling off toward a daytime high of 25 on our way to sinking down to FIVE degrees Fahrenheit Thursday night.
Same for Friday night.
We might see daytime HIGHS near freezing once or twice between now and Tuesday.
Meanwhile, checking the weather on our little Island, I see that it's near 40 degrees down there on the Atlantic Ocean right now, and they're looking at the mid 50's tomorrow with some lows in the 20's at night and highs in the 30's and 50's through early next week.
What the HECK was I thinking moving up here last spring?
OK, it's below freezing outside after making it up to 42 about 5 PM yesterday, and looking at the forecast its going to keep cooling off toward a daytime high of 25 on our way to sinking down to FIVE degrees Fahrenheit Thursday night.
Same for Friday night.
We might see daytime HIGHS near freezing once or twice between now and Tuesday.
Meanwhile, checking the weather on our little Island, I see that it's near 40 degrees down there on the Atlantic Ocean right now, and they're looking at the mid 50's tomorrow with some lows in the 20's at night and highs in the 30's and 50's through early next week.
What the HECK was I thinking moving up here last spring?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Quote(s) O' The Day
Pearls Of Wisdom For Trying Times...
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
And finally...this one sort of covers this coming inauguration day:
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
Sir Winston Churchill
British politician, Writer, and Painter (1874 - 1965)
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
And finally...this one sort of covers this coming inauguration day:
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
Sir Winston Churchill
British politician, Writer, and Painter (1874 - 1965)
This Ain't MY Alabama
Someone Needs To Get A Life Down There...
Crap like what happened in this news story just makes me shake my head:
NOTASULA, AL -- Residents of the tiny Alabama town of Notasulga are rallying around a local fixture after his eviction from the post office.
"Sammy" the cat was banned from the building after someone wrote in to complain about the cat's presence.
"They said 'This is a federal building and he doesn't pay federal taxes so he can't come in'," said postal worker Rochelle Langford.
Before his banishment Sammy spent most of his time lounging in the post office's window.
Sammy's supporters think they've found a way to move him safely back in.
They've rented a P.O. box in his name.
Post office workers say they'll allow Sammy back in, but will try to keep him out of the way of customers.
Crap like what happened in this news story just makes me shake my head:
NOTASULA, AL -- Residents of the tiny Alabama town of Notasulga are rallying around a local fixture after his eviction from the post office.
"Sammy" the cat was banned from the building after someone wrote in to complain about the cat's presence.
"They said 'This is a federal building and he doesn't pay federal taxes so he can't come in'," said postal worker Rochelle Langford.
Before his banishment Sammy spent most of his time lounging in the post office's window.
Sammy's supporters think they've found a way to move him safely back in.
They've rented a P.O. box in his name.
Post office workers say they'll allow Sammy back in, but will try to keep him out of the way of customers.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Wierd Crap I Have To Worry About
Somebody Slapped Me Back To Thermodynamics Class...
If you're looking for pithy writing, humor, or a good rant this morning I'm sorry to report that thus far it ain't happened here.
You see, my brain has been attempting to get itself wrapped around a phenomena called a BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) and as a result I'm wrestling with things like this equation:
Energy in Compressed Gas = ((Psub 1-Psub 0) x 2 x Vsub 1)/(Lambda sub 1 - 1)
Where: Psub 1 = absolute pressure of gas in question (in my problem it's steam)
Psub 0 = absolute pressure of ambient air
Vsub 1 = Volume of Pressure Vessel
Lambda sub 1 = ratio of specific heats of gas in system
Problem is--everything is in Metric and I'm a little rusty in my Newtons and Pascals and Joules--and for some reason I seem to keep coming up with numbers that are several orders of magnitude off from what I would need to make a prediction that something made out of stainless steel would explode.
I took five quarters of Calculus and a quarter of differential equations about 29 years ago, but today finds me wrestling with even the simplest thermodynamic concepts which in this case should be able to be solved by an EIGHTH GRADE ALGEBRA STUDENT...
SO I'M PISSED that my brain's having problems with this mental gymnastics.
I guess I'll take a little nap and come back at it fresh in the morning and see where my efforts get me.
dang it...
If you're looking for pithy writing, humor, or a good rant this morning I'm sorry to report that thus far it ain't happened here.
You see, my brain has been attempting to get itself wrapped around a phenomena called a BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) and as a result I'm wrestling with things like this equation:
Energy in Compressed Gas = ((Psub 1-Psub 0) x 2 x Vsub 1)/(Lambda sub 1 - 1)
Where: Psub 1 = absolute pressure of gas in question (in my problem it's steam)
Psub 0 = absolute pressure of ambient air
Vsub 1 = Volume of Pressure Vessel
Lambda sub 1 = ratio of specific heats of gas in system
Problem is--everything is in Metric and I'm a little rusty in my Newtons and Pascals and Joules--and for some reason I seem to keep coming up with numbers that are several orders of magnitude off from what I would need to make a prediction that something made out of stainless steel would explode.
I took five quarters of Calculus and a quarter of differential equations about 29 years ago, but today finds me wrestling with even the simplest thermodynamic concepts which in this case should be able to be solved by an EIGHTH GRADE ALGEBRA STUDENT...
SO I'M PISSED that my brain's having problems with this mental gymnastics.
I guess I'll take a little nap and come back at it fresh in the morning and see where my efforts get me.
dang it...
Monday, January 12, 2009
Senatorial Glamor Photos
Minnesota's Finest?
At least Ronald Regan and the current California Governator can have some dignity when looking back at their acting/TV careers...
(and NO...this is NOT a PhotoShop image...)
At least Ronald Regan and the current California Governator can have some dignity when looking back at their acting/TV careers...
(and NO...this is NOT a PhotoShop image...)
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Places I Didn't Know I'd Been
Check Out The Company I'm Keeping Here...
http://www.ccblincoln.com/CCBL/3Background.html
Wall Street Journal?
Harvard Crimson?
New York Times?
Dang...Imagine what I could do as a writer if I actually put my mind to it?
http://www.ccblincoln.com/CCBL/3Background.html
Wall Street Journal?
Harvard Crimson?
New York Times?
Dang...Imagine what I could do as a writer if I actually put my mind to it?
Places I Used To Go
Things I Used To Do...
Sitting here in the New Year in the cold winter weather on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River, I find my mind wandering off to all the warmer places I've been and even used to live in the days and years past.
I even miss some of the colder places I've visited, although this is as far north as I've ever lived "officially" (if you don't count the homes of friends and lovers I camped out in in the past.)
It's not that I don't love living here in our little large city in Eastern Tennessee, or that I regret moving here from our little Island on the Georgia Coast last spring, it's just that after spending an entire summer with not much of a sun tan for the first time since I was six years old, and now after spending half the winter with cold weather and the threat of snow--but not much real snow--that I sneak a peek at the National Weather Service Website for St. Simons Island and I see that it's 59 degrees down there--and the same website confirms why my sock encased feet are cold here in Knoxville because it's 30 degrees F with another "chance" of snow over a four days period later this week.
(someone remind me to get out my snow making equipment...)
I don't mind the cold, as long as it snows and it's a usable snow--something you can sled or ski in or on.
Or at least something that you can drive a few hours away from Campobello or Greer or Greenville or Spartanburg (and now Knoxville) and follow a County Snow Plow up a random mountain, park your truck, and proceed to slide around taking ski lessons at midnight in a 16 degree fog of snow?
If it's not just a little sledding snow and you don't live on a ski mountain, I say the next best thing is to get a doozie of a winter storm/blizzard that shuts most everything down, and after the rest of the public all get home after buying all of the bread and milk and cigarettes and peanut butter on the grocery shelves, that when the snow stops falling you can creep out in your giant white four wheel drive Suburban and wander around on back roads and up Saluda Pass or up to the 6,800 foot top of Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina and shiver in the parking lot taking pictures all by your lonesome.
I've done all that...and I found it to be an extremely satisfying experience.
Then there was the year I escaped from Atlanta after my house burned down, and I ran away to Mexico Beach Florida and lived on the Gulf of Mexico for a winter.
Everything I owned at the time would fit into my TRUCK.
It was actually a very liberating experience....talk about getting rid of old "baggage"...
I got away with only having to live through a few nights that went below freezing down there, and there's something inherently soothing about wandering around totally alone on the beach in the winter with grey sky overhead.
Many times my buddy Dave the Guitar player and I would drag our PA speakers out on the deck of the Lookout Lounge on the Bay County Line in January and He strummed and sang while I played the Harmonica and sang along.
We only drew a crowd of a few dozen locals most of the time...but today I'd pay to spend a Sunday night in January wearing flip flops and shorts doing exactly that. We actually got paid back then to do something I only started doing in the middle of my crazy, screwed up, fun life.
Did I mention the 32' Sea Ray boat I bought down in Hollywood, Florida and sailed around on and lived on in the intercoastal and the Keys and had stolen by pirates and sank? I never heard from that boat again after leaving it in a marina expecting it to be put into dry dock for some repairs on one of it's two giant Chevy V8 engines, but...
That experience was worth EVERY SINGLE PENNY in the end...when it's all said and done.
talk about making enough money to buy Miami and pissing it away so fast...
While I'm on the subject of boating...do you know anyone else but me that's rented a giant houseboat in the Keys...ran it a ground not once but TWICE in one day in a storm (within twenty feet of the same spot) after breaking anchor, sank the outboard powered dingy, and almost lost his girlfriend over the stern and off the bow a couple of times while she was chasing the dingy or handling the anchor and I was in the cockpit trying to steer into the wind with one of the two twin engines dead?
You can't PLAN stuff like that, it just happens...especially to me.
Fun...FUN...FUN...
More recently the time spent living on our little Island was rather sedate by those earlier lively standards. Other than continuing my real estate investment folly's and starting to ACT IN COMMUNITY THEATER...ultimately giving up imitating "Slingblade" and ending up taking over the set building and management duties for two different theaters.
I was proudly and largely USELESS back then ...my existence revolving around the theater, condo swimming pool and the beach (and some local pubs and taverns.)
So now here I sit in Knoxville, tanless and boatless, ass falling off and hair falling out, within three miles of the mighty Tennessee River--a body of water that can take me all the way to Mobile or New Orleans and on to the mouth of another "Mighty" River--the Mississippi.
How far I've sunk...How low can I actually go?
I'm a disgrace ...settling for owning a house instead of a giant fiberglass hull, and actually taking a full time job working for another man/company for the first time in over 18 years?
WTF? (what the heck...in Christian terms)
Well, not to worry...the Hull's still out a ways in the future, butI'm putting the band back together getting this independent consulting thing going here in the next few months.
Please understand if the blogging suffers a bit along the way because I'm looking at 12 & 15 hour days marketing instead of steady 8 hour stints, but I'll still be looking at the news and thinking about saying/writing something worth reading...until then
...Y'all have a good one.
Sitting here in the New Year in the cold winter weather on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River, I find my mind wandering off to all the warmer places I've been and even used to live in the days and years past.
I even miss some of the colder places I've visited, although this is as far north as I've ever lived "officially" (if you don't count the homes of friends and lovers I camped out in in the past.)
It's not that I don't love living here in our little large city in Eastern Tennessee, or that I regret moving here from our little Island on the Georgia Coast last spring, it's just that after spending an entire summer with not much of a sun tan for the first time since I was six years old, and now after spending half the winter with cold weather and the threat of snow--but not much real snow--that I sneak a peek at the National Weather Service Website for St. Simons Island and I see that it's 59 degrees down there--and the same website confirms why my sock encased feet are cold here in Knoxville because it's 30 degrees F with another "chance" of snow over a four days period later this week.
(someone remind me to get out my snow making equipment...)
I don't mind the cold, as long as it snows and it's a usable snow--something you can sled or ski in or on.
Or at least something that you can drive a few hours away from Campobello or Greer or Greenville or Spartanburg (and now Knoxville) and follow a County Snow Plow up a random mountain, park your truck, and proceed to slide around taking ski lessons at midnight in a 16 degree fog of snow?
If it's not just a little sledding snow and you don't live on a ski mountain, I say the next best thing is to get a doozie of a winter storm/blizzard that shuts most everything down, and after the rest of the public all get home after buying all of the bread and milk and cigarettes and peanut butter on the grocery shelves, that when the snow stops falling you can creep out in your giant white four wheel drive Suburban and wander around on back roads and up Saluda Pass or up to the 6,800 foot top of Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina and shiver in the parking lot taking pictures all by your lonesome.
I've done all that...and I found it to be an extremely satisfying experience.
Then there was the year I escaped from Atlanta after my house burned down, and I ran away to Mexico Beach Florida and lived on the Gulf of Mexico for a winter.
Everything I owned at the time would fit into my TRUCK.
It was actually a very liberating experience....talk about getting rid of old "baggage"...
I got away with only having to live through a few nights that went below freezing down there, and there's something inherently soothing about wandering around totally alone on the beach in the winter with grey sky overhead.
Many times my buddy Dave the Guitar player and I would drag our PA speakers out on the deck of the Lookout Lounge on the Bay County Line in January and He strummed and sang while I played the Harmonica and sang along.
We only drew a crowd of a few dozen locals most of the time...but today I'd pay to spend a Sunday night in January wearing flip flops and shorts doing exactly that. We actually got paid back then to do something I only started doing in the middle of my crazy, screwed up, fun life.
Did I mention the 32' Sea Ray boat I bought down in Hollywood, Florida and sailed around on and lived on in the intercoastal and the Keys and had stolen by pirates and sank? I never heard from that boat again after leaving it in a marina expecting it to be put into dry dock for some repairs on one of it's two giant Chevy V8 engines, but...
That experience was worth EVERY SINGLE PENNY in the end...when it's all said and done.
talk about making enough money to buy Miami and pissing it away so fast...
While I'm on the subject of boating...do you know anyone else but me that's rented a giant houseboat in the Keys...ran it a ground not once but TWICE in one day in a storm (within twenty feet of the same spot) after breaking anchor, sank the outboard powered dingy, and almost lost his girlfriend over the stern and off the bow a couple of times while she was chasing the dingy or handling the anchor and I was in the cockpit trying to steer into the wind with one of the two twin engines dead?
You can't PLAN stuff like that, it just happens...especially to me.
Fun...FUN...FUN...
More recently the time spent living on our little Island was rather sedate by those earlier lively standards. Other than continuing my real estate investment folly's and starting to ACT IN COMMUNITY THEATER...ultimately giving up imitating "Slingblade" and ending up taking over the set building and management duties for two different theaters.
I was proudly and largely USELESS back then ...my existence revolving around the theater, condo swimming pool and the beach (and some local pubs and taverns.)
So now here I sit in Knoxville, tanless and boatless, ass falling off and hair falling out, within three miles of the mighty Tennessee River--a body of water that can take me all the way to Mobile or New Orleans and on to the mouth of another "Mighty" River--the Mississippi.
How far I've sunk...How low can I actually go?
I'm a disgrace ...settling for owning a house instead of a giant fiberglass hull, and actually taking a full time job working for another man/company for the first time in over 18 years?
WTF? (what the heck...in Christian terms)
Well, not to worry...the Hull's still out a ways in the future, but
Please understand if the blogging suffers a bit along the way because I'm looking at 12 & 15 hour days marketing instead of steady 8 hour stints, but I'll still be looking at the news and thinking about saying/writing something worth reading...until then
...Y'all have a good one.
Good Riddance
Darwin's At It Again...
SIX Somali pirates who hijacked a Saudi supertanker drowned with their share of the ransom when their boat capsized as it left the vessel, their leader said yesterday.
Four others were missing with their share of the $3m payoff, which been parachuted on to the tanker on Friday, Mohamed Said said by phone from the port of Harardhere.
“The small boat that was carrying those killed and eight who survived was overloaded . . . they were afraid of a chase from outsiders [foreign navies of the combined maritime forces],” he said.
(here's the LINK to the story)
While I'm at it, let me point out there's also this good news...
THE mastermind of Hamas’s long-range rocket attacks on Israel was killed yesterday in an airstrike, according to Israeli military sources.
Amir Mansi, an engineer who commanded cells responsible for firing Grad rockets supplied by Iran, died after coming under attack from a helicopter.
The Israeli army said he had been trying to fire mortar shells at their troops when he was targeted. Mansi headed the Hamas military wing’s Gaza Strip rocket division and “played a big role in Grad rocket attacks on Israeli communities”, a military spokesman said.
Nuthin' like starting your Sunday morning reading about a bunch of dead terrorist assholes...sorta' puts a little spring in my step as I head to the kitchen for more coffee...
SIX Somali pirates who hijacked a Saudi supertanker drowned with their share of the ransom when their boat capsized as it left the vessel, their leader said yesterday.
Four others were missing with their share of the $3m payoff, which been parachuted on to the tanker on Friday, Mohamed Said said by phone from the port of Harardhere.
“The small boat that was carrying those killed and eight who survived was overloaded . . . they were afraid of a chase from outsiders [foreign navies of the combined maritime forces],” he said.
(here's the LINK to the story)
While I'm at it, let me point out there's also this good news...
THE mastermind of Hamas’s long-range rocket attacks on Israel was killed yesterday in an airstrike, according to Israeli military sources.
Amir Mansi, an engineer who commanded cells responsible for firing Grad rockets supplied by Iran, died after coming under attack from a helicopter.
The Israeli army said he had been trying to fire mortar shells at their troops when he was targeted. Mansi headed the Hamas military wing’s Gaza Strip rocket division and “played a big role in Grad rocket attacks on Israeli communities”, a military spokesman said.
Nuthin' like starting your Sunday morning reading about a bunch of dead terrorist assholes...sorta' puts a little spring in my step as I head to the kitchen for more coffee...
