Jun 30, 2008

Ah yes....the 232nd anniversary of 7-4-1776 will be here this weekend.  I've found it interesting that the "Out of a Job Yet? Keep Buying Foreign" bumper stickers are being balanced in number to the odd plastic inflatable, made in China, "god bless america" US yard flags....Ummmm....quit yer bitchin' consumers y'all gets what ya pay fer. 

Jun 26, 2008

Re: Look What's In The Barn

Got a forwarded email about a retiree and his wife from New Jersey or some such place that sunk their savings into an old farmhouse and barn in Spain, only finding out what was in the locked barn after the purchase.

I REALLY wanted to believe that one...

It makes me wonder, if the percentage of apocryphal emails that come across our desks is any indication, how much of what people say to each other in person is absolute hogwash?

Jun 24, 2008

PALM

In recent years I haven't had much interest, mainly for the time and money involved for the privledge, in riding in organized bike tours. They have to pretty darn cool. If I want to go on a long ride, get lost and travel down smooth roads that I haven't been down before I can still easily do so and still be able to have money for beer and the afternoon to relax at home....and,maybe, however unlikely, get a project or two completed.
Had I been a little more aware I would have considered the 2008 Pedal Across Lower Michigan. This year the route comes within feet of my house and I had to chuckle at the idea that, after a week of camping, communal toilets and excessive body stench, I would be able to peel off from the group, grab a shower and my cruiser and finish fresh as a daisy and in comfy clothes.

Jun 19, 2008

one more gratuitous bush bash

An op-ed in The Independent about the possibly irreperable fracturing of the US/GB 'special relationship' had a nice line:
And whatever the future holds for transatlantic relations, there will be very few in this country who watched President Bush's plane depart yesterday without a feeling of profound relief that the end of this disastrous presidency is finally in sight.
There will be no counting the collective sighs of relief blanketing the globe on 1/20/09 as we all emerge from his malignant reign.

Jun 18, 2008

Get me a tissue...

I caught a segment on one of the evening news programs last night regarding the price of gas and the renewing popularity of mass transit, what else is new. There was a brief spot regarding a young go getter that had finally reached enough status and position to buy his dream car....a BMW 5 Series...only to have the price of gas make it an impossibility to drive the car to work. Instead he now drives approximately 5 minutes so he can then take the bus or train to work. Gosh, I feel sorry for this fella....actually I feel sorry for the people that may have to share a seat on the bus with this jackoff.

the twitter president

Barack Obama is on Twitter. And flickr, LinkedIn (wonder if anyone I know knows him), BlackPlanet, and Asian Ave. And a whole lot of others.

Twitter and flickr, though, really struck me as to the level of saturation his campaign is reaping. If one only read the Obama blog and Obama twitters every day, they would have very little time to read anything else. I think using Twitter is smart, don't get me wrong, and they seem to be fairly good at it, judging by the posts - pretty vanilla, but what can you expect, really: "OMG, Michelle just got her friend to hook up with the pimply Secret Service guy, ROFL!"? It makes perfect sense that the guy leveraging gobs of internet savvy would use it, but it's also a dichotomy for the 'deeper conversation' candidate; the guy who finally urges us to look beyond the sound bites to a greater understanding of the issues is plastered across the ultimate sound bite machine.

Add to that my guess that it's not actually him even calling over his shoulder to a muscle-thumbed aide, 'hey, twitter this' and rolling off a quick 140 character missive to the masses, and you really have an odd phenomenon. The second- and third-person twitterings of the crisp and professional rhetoritician. Plus, he's following more people than are following him... ? Really? How voracious of a reader can one be to check up on theparty cow ("Hoping to get what I need. What I want seems to be out.") in the middle of a campaign? Is this any less contrived than a prime-time TV commercial?

Like I said, I don't fault the Obama camp for using Twitter, or any other tool to increase their exposure and strengthen ties to those who want to follow him. Quite the contrary. I think the potential of any 'web 2.0' tools to increase access, transparency, and communication once a President is in office is huge. It's just a little jarring, is all.

Jun 17, 2008

fotD 22


I like that I've been on the red line a hundred times and not once did it ever occur to me to take a picture like this one. Excellent.

it's not old age

In a conversation with a coworker I just now used the throwaway term 'must be old age' regarding our mutual forgetfulness, but I don't really believe that to be true.

People often use age as soon as you hit 30 or so to explain away every little mental gaffe, but it's come to dawn on me that it isn't age, it's lack of attention toward what are often very boring, even if essential, details. I didn't forget my tie this morning because I'm senile, I forgot my tie because it wasn't where my ties normally are and because my wife asked me to get her phone for her as she was going to try to get some more sleep. So my focus shifted from 'get tie, lunch, and leave' to 'get phone - why the hell is she asking me to get her phone? Why can't she just take her phone to bed with her at night so that she has it if she wants it? I should try to remember to do it for her so I can avoid having to get it in the morning...' and on and on, and before I know it I'm driving down the street without a tie.

For a time my life was mostly about myself, filled with things I cared about that I wanted to remember, not just day to day but also hour to hour. As my life has shifted, though, I've found myself swamped by minute to minute items that I truly don't care about: diaper bags appropriately stocked, tissues available, who has eaten what, what various family members are celebrating, etc. The life I'm enjoying now requires these minor things of me but it doesn't help me focus any more intently on them. The flip side of that coin also adds annoyance at those things to the mix, an annoyance which is corrosively distracting.

What to do about this? Nothing, I assume, short of finding my dream job so I can unload about 30% of these things and being patient enough to take the other 70% as the mundane that accompanies the great. And beer. Beer could probably play a more important postive role in there somewhere...

Jun 10, 2008

Way Feebill

It's in my head and will not leave...
Fee Waybill, over and over again in my head, FeeWaybillFeeWaybillFeeWaybill.

Jun 9, 2008

leaf blowers, part 2

Seriously. I just drove past a yahoo who was very fastidiously blowing every last blade of mown grass out into the street, well away from her curb. And no, this wasn't the same yahoo I posted about earlier. She didn't even stop as I had to drive through her little green cloud. Jesus. And even though double extra large t-shirts do a lot to hide their contents, they don't do so much as to reveal that this was a person who could've benefited greatly from using a human-powered broom for awhile.

Check this page out for more like the following:
  • There is no evidence of increase in the cost of lawn care when blowers are banned. (and think about the savings in fuel costs - essentially, lawncare companies could push that cost onto their workers, who would pay it in muscle effort)
  • Dick Roberts, organizer of Project Quiet Yards in Greenwich, Connecticut, told House & Garden in 1996, "We did a test on a half acre of grass clippings and found a rake was only ten minutes slower than a blower." That extra time would equate to less than one minute for a typical-size yard in my neighborhood.
  • Small gasoline engines create up to 20 percent of the air pollution in cities, particularly NOx and particulates



Jun 6, 2008

Pedestrian Protection.

Man...I'm torn on this one. It'll either take all the fun out of driving or make it REALLY interesting. Just think of the possibilities if it came with a trampoline option.

Jun 5, 2008

Out of left field

There are an unlucky few people in my life that weather my spontaneous ranting more or less in person. This morning Mal sent along an innocent link to an msnbc (MSNBC? - not sure if they're trying to be all internet e.e. cummings cool) report about how few people wear ties to work these days, bonding, if you will, over our shared affliction of working in an office that requires them. He couldn't have seen my reply coming with a telescope:
I uncharacteristically allowed the video you sent to keep playing.

Not sure if you saw what I did, but Brian Williams read a bunch of viewer emails, all lamenting the high costs of gas and food, talking about how their Memorial Day weekends were just ruined by high costs, and how they couldn't enjoy what they have grown accustomed to. Interestingly, all of their descriptions mentioned (and one guy listed with verbose gusto) the meat they like to grill on Memorial Day. I understand the crunch, I really do, but what a bunch of weak, whining fops. Jesus Christ, does no one recognize in much of the American populace the spitting image of King Louie and Henry VIII? What a country of bloated, self-entitled, selfish morons. Do they know what our hunger for ethanol, beef, and fish does to the rest of the world? Women in west Africa line up on market mornings to buy fish heads with which to make soup, fish heads being the only part the West doesn't use and so the only thing those women can afford. And some yokel in Poughkeepsie actually writes in, and is given his say on national news, that he's gonna have to eat 'home made burgers and pop instead of ribeyes, ribs, and beer.' Oh, my heart bleeds for you, you stupid hick. I don't know what I wish happens first, his pulmonary edema or choking on the bun. Humanity has a long way to go, buddy.

I didn't see the thing about the ties, though. I'll have to take your word for it, though I assume it's part of your crazy conspiracy theory, anti-The-Man ranting. It's not wearing the ties I have a problem with, it's pants.


Jun 2, 2008

How do you spell 'sprawl?'

Given the standard distribution of economic classes in this country, I'm sure this is indicative of nothing new whatsoever, but the top kids in the recent National Spelling Bee all live in suburbs.

Conclusion: If you want to learn to spell, live driving distance from a Target. If you want to make lots of money using a skill like spelling, live within walking distance of a Starbuck's.

Tour De Doug

I've already come to terms with the idea that A) I'll never be a world class cyclist...more like sloppy, fat guy, creepy class status....especially in my cycling shorts (is there a hillbilly class in cycling) and B) since the birth of my son taking any time to ride is going to be a wonderful luxury this year. I've managed to get out 7 times for a total of 140 miles and I'm very pleased about that fact.
Yesterdays ride almost made me decide to chuck it all together and just drink beer for the season. After spending the first 3/4 of the ride trying to pedal my fat body into the wind like you'd push a mossy boulder up a steep, wet, grassy hill I made the turn home, caught a break and became as fast as...well the wind...reaching mind numbing speeds of (due to the fact that real cyclists may read this blog prevents me from revealing any actual speeds), AND THAT'S FAST! Where the hell is my yellow jersey???

wings

The Red Bull Air Race blew through town last weekend, reminiscent of supercharged aviation glory days and splashed with a modern marketer's panache across jumbotrons and skylines. Featuring a barrel-rolling helicopter, high-speed landings from skydivers only feet away (one of the only benefits of our not-great Zone 4 tickets, visible in the background of the photo below - I spent half the day trying to see around the carousel), various air show fly-by staples, and of course the shit-hot racers bat-turning and skimming over the water through the tight, exciting course, the action exceeded my expectations, which were high.

photo by Mike Pierzynski

Interestingly, I thought the sideshow stuff would be more sophisticated and hyped-up than it was. The flight simulator in GM's Wintergarden was pretty much just what anyone with an Xbox could set up in their living room, and the rest of the usual fare for this type of thing was lessened - I only saw one souvenir booth (with a really long line), one local radio booth, a Saab display more than a block away from GM HQ (with a jaw-dropping, 100%-ethanol-burning, Aero concept) and a few second-tier model types with Red Bull shirts mingling in the crowd. Additionally, if you were out in Zone 4, the jumbotrons were binocular range away and I had to concentrate to catch the over-the-top excitement of the announcers; it would have been smart to hang one of the jumbotrons and add some speakers at the far side of Zone 4 instead of stacking two, facing in the same direction, closer to the RenCen (though the use of cranes to do this may have precluded that option as it would've been close to the helo and skydiver landing spots). Even if they didn't move the screens, though, audio needed to be better. They tried to keep spectators up to speed, but most people in Zone 4 seemed unsure of the end result of the race (American Kirby Chambliss edged out Paul Bonhomme, a Brit).

Basically I expected the racing would be great to see the first half-dozen times, growing monotonous, but all packaged up in a super-slick marketing package to maintain interest. Almost the opposite was true; the marketing was pervasive but not oppressive, and the racing was awesome right to the end. Not once did I want to miss a run, especially as Zone 4 saw the 230-mph approaches maybe 50 or 60 feet above head level. The flying was extraordinary, the skill of the twelve pilots so perfectly matched that finish times at the top were separated by hundredths of a second, and while there were thankfully no major screwups, even tiny mistakes sliced dramatically through the little margin for error they had; a couple of times it was easy to see when a pilot dipped a little low, looking as if they were about to slam into the water. I didn't see any pylons get hit, though we did see a practice run last Thursday where a pilot hit two pylons, one on the quad (the pad with four pylons on it) and one on the very next pad, deflating both immediately.

I hope it comes back to Detroit next year - the perfect setup short of getting to ride in the photo helo would be a few tix in whatever zone is right in the middle of the course with a room at the RenCen Marriott to fall back to (though after looking at the pix on flickr, maybe watching from the Windsor side would be better, scenery-wise). Fingers crossed.

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong about no one hitting a pylon! This and other great shots over at Detroit BikeBlog (photos by Adrian Platts) - you can just see the tip of the pylon clipped off - amazing that he got this shot, but as you can see from his blog, Adrian takes some outstanding photos: