That Can't Happen!

That Can't Happen!
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Eastern Colorado

Self Tracking

asheville trip
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Here is the actual, timestamped route of my recent trip east, as logged by my Wintec GPS datalogger.
This nifty gizmo is a global positioning device with no screen and a single button for an interface. Once powered up, it takes a minute to acquire a signal lock and then logs my position to internal memory. Default is every five seconds, but I've dialed it back to 35 seconds to increase range (both battery power and storage capacity).
At the end of the trip the Wintec unit interfaces with my laptop via USB or Bluetooth (at least, the Windows-booting part of my laptop) and I can import the log files into Google Earth. My original intent was to share the Google Earth file, so everyone could play with it and see where I've been, but the Wintec device is too accurate: I really don't want to let the whole internet know which house is mine. Starting and stopping points, pulling over for gas, wrong turns... everything shows up just as if one had an eye in the sky.
I haven't used it for land mapping or geotagging yet, but I'm dying to.

Alright! Nine days behind...

Ok, I realize that my New Year's Resolution is officially in the toilet, but this post marks me intention to generate and then backdate content for the past nine days. If this post wasn't here, then no one would be the wiser... except people who check Pikamac every day, hungry for new content. To future readers, this post will be the only evidence that I'm a slacker.

Asheville Showcase and Fixture Company

Asheville Showcase and Fixture Company
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

The robot's feet are cupcake pans!

Asheville, NC

Sunset over Willow

Sunset over Willow
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Back to Missouri after a long, very fun road trip.

Willow Springs, MO

Hooray for Dollywood!

Hooray for Dollywood!
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

On the tram to Dollywood.

Dollywood, TN

Sometimes I lick back...

Sometimes I lick back...
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

A Full Load

A full load
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

4200 pounds of filing cabinets.

bunkhouse mark

bunkhousemark
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

bunkhouse moira

bunkhousemoira
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Hat Chicken

hat chicken
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Ah... hat chicken. The chicken you get your father to steal from the waitress and then drunkenly smuggle out in your hat to eat later.... is there any sweeter chicken?



Answer: No, none sweeter.

New Shoes

Against all odds today, I bought two pairs of shoes.

The secret is get the exact same size and brand of whatever the pair of shoes I'm currently wearing is. This eliminates the tedious "trying shoes on" process. It helps to wear shoes from a well-known shoe company, rather than shoes found in an abandoned house.

Also, the oddly-named "Shoe Carnival" has great bargains on quality footwear, all in a carnival atmosphere!

"Are You Concerned..."

"Are you concerned that your little boy is going to grow up to be an unbelievable dork?"

A three year old's birthday party has to be about the child's favorite show, right? What if the favorite show is The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer? WCCO has the details.

This is awesome. I want a Jim Lehrer birthday party, come October!

via MetaFilter

Songs I 've sung at Karaoke:

Tonight:
Lynard Skynard: Gimme Three Steps
CCR: Looking Out My Back Door
Tom Petty: Breakdown
AC/DC: Back In Black
Rolling Stones: Not Fade Away

Previously:
Rolling Stones: Angie

The prevailing attitude from the audience is stay away from AC/DC, otherwise I rock.

An interesting bug

06_16_06_0957
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

I saw this pumping gas this morning: it appeared to be a bit of tumbleweed, but is in fact a tiny bug that looks like it is made out of bone.

Willow Springs, MO

Poor Taste?

06_11_06_1420
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

JESUS HUNG
IN THERE
FOR YOU

Cabool, MO (incidentally the same town where I saw "Thou Shalt Not Covet" spray-painted on a dumpster.

Impulsive Buys

I've bought a lot of things because they looked cool in the store: taffy makers, premium vodka, limited edition candy. All those times I went to the grocery store hungry (or the liquor store drunk). The folks at The Inpulsive Buy are like me: sucker for that which is new or those things that have been improved. Good stuff.

Crime Spree

I know I blogged about this before, or planned to, but a few months ago we bought a six pack at the liquor store and paid with a five. The woman behind the counter checked it with the counterfeit-checking marker. If I had a decent search on this blog I would direct you to the post where I rolled my eyes.

Flash forward: headline of this week's Howell County News is Counterfeit Five and Twenty Found in Willow Springs.

Guh? I mean, seriously, who has time to pass a fake five?

Edit: Stumbled across the original post. I need to switch this whole thing over to WordPress.

Laughing Close Choking Backwards

Laughing Close Choking Backwards
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

West Plains, MO

Squished Pennies

This morning I found a squished penny from the St. Louis Science Museum while cleaning out my truck and this evening MetaFilter has a great post on squished pennies.
Synchronicity.

Big kids playing with smaller kids' toys

Last couple days I've been clicking back and forth between my normal internet routine and GI Joe story dioramas. Curtis and Mike are two folks that I've found that are still doing what everyone like me (me, anyway) did when young: make up elaborate mythologies and histories for our action figures.

Although once I discovered a screwdriver that fit the tiny screws holding the action figures together they became dolls, as I swapped their parts to make the coolest looking guys I could.

Scoville Units

Salsa dinner is the best dinner. There's no nutritional guilt when you make it yourself out of fresh vegetables. Anyway, Wikipedia has a handy chart for determining how hot hot peppers are:

* 0: No heat
* 100 to 500: Pepperoncini
* 500 bis 1000: New Mexico pepper
* 600 to 800: TABASCO® brand Green Pepper Sauce
* 1,000 to 1,500: poblano pepper
* 2,500 to 5,000: TABASCO® brand Pepper Sauce
* 2,500 to 5,000: jalapeño
* 7,000 to 8,000: TABASCO® brand Habanero Sauce
* 10,000 to 23,000: Serrano pepper
* 30,000 to 50,000: Cayenne pepper
* 50,000 to 100,000: Thai pepper
* 100,000 to 300,000: Habanero chile
* 855,000: Naga chile
* 2,000,000: pepper spray
* between 15,000,000 and 16,000,000: pure capsaicin

Mmm, good. Also, I forgot to mention Alton's chile pepper episode.

Erik's Super Yummy Salsa

Ingredients:
eight tomatoes
a sweeeet onion
whatever peppers you can find at Walmart (Missouri) or your local farmer's market (elsewhere)
In my case I have pablano, serrano, habanero, and the elusive white hot pepper. We like hot salsa.
some garlic
some lemon and lime juice
a little salt

Roast the peppers on your grill, then remember you don't have a food processor and chop everything by hand. Realize that the white hot pepper is just as hot as the habanero and wish you hadn't taken such a big bite to test it. Combine ingredients and chill. Also, put the salsa in the refrigerator.

Serving suggestion: eat chips and salsa for dinner four nights in a row!

Mom, you may want to skip this one...

As I was waiting for the caulk to dry, I decided to run into town and get some things we needed, like paper towels and hot sauce. My truck rattled along in the usual way and I sang along with Tom Petty: "I'm not afraid of you running away, I get the feeling you won't". About two miles before my exit I accellerated and got into the left lane to get around an oversized vehicle - something hidden under a huge blue tarp. Around 70 the shaking got worse and I thought that one of my tires must be wearing unevenly. Then the vibrations got much, much worse and I was fighting to keep control of the wheel. I braked and the truck pulled to the left into the grass center median. The brakes weren't slowing the truck and I thought to myself: This is how it ends. I steered away from the oncoming lanes, or perhaps just fishtailed back onto the right lanes and then back into the median and the process repeated. All the swerving gave the brakes a chance to work and I ended up on the left shoulder going the appropriate way. I let out the sort of whoop I reserve for shooting rapids, one that says that was fun, but I'm a damn lucky man.

I got out to survey the damage: the tread of right rear tire was shredded but somehow it was holding air, left rear had chunks of tread missing, there were all kinds of lines hanging down and the whole affair smelled like antifreeze. I cut out one of the rear coolant lines to keep it from dragging; the return line was obviously misisng but nowhere to be seen. I took it around to the side of the truck that was not being buffeted by passing tractor-trailers and started to fashion it into a "U" shape. A driver going the other direction stopped and asked if I was alright and needed any help. I assured him that I was OK. He responded to his wife, "Honey, get OnStar Emergency Services on the phone".
"Oh I'm fine, I don't need those guys."
"Actually, I have to call to cancel them."
He'd heard about me on his scanner and had assumed that I was in a lot more trouble than I appeared to be. He could have been right, but as it was I waved him off letting him know that I didn't need any help changing the tire and that the one with the missing chunks would probably make it to town. Some of the broken lines were to carry freon to the rear air, but they weren't causing problems. I took my "U" shaped piece of metal I bridged one coolant line to the other so I wouldn't lose any more antifreeze. I keep a couple of hose clamps in the back of my truck for just such an occurence. I also had an orange reflective triangle and set it up so I could change the tire as safely as I could. Changing tires is easy and I packed up all the gear, waited for a break in traffic and started to drive to mile to town.

About half a mile from town my temperature gauge was in the red and I pulled over. I scrounged up all the half full antifreeze jugs and drinking water containers and dumped them all in the coolant overflow tank. If I was going to wait for this thing to cool down enough to add water properly, it wouldn't have been on the side of the road. I nursed the truck into the Walmart parking lot, the needle flirting with overheating all the way. The nearby gas station had a spigot and I dumped some more in the overflow tank and went to the nearby Taco Bell to let the whole system cool down. One Ultimate Chalupa later, the radiator was cool enough to add water and I was able to drive it the rest of the way across the parking lot to the Walmart Express Tire center. I got them started changing the two garbage ones and then called my brother to let him know I would be back late. After telling him this story is when I started losing the cool focus that let me make all the repairs and get back to town. I started shaking a bit and very nearly threw up in the paint aisle.

Luckily, the Express Tire Center took almost an hour and a half and so by the time I had to drive home I was feeling fine. Mostly fine. I saw my tire tracks in and out and in and out of the median and five hundred yards away saw my missing coolant line sticking up out of the ground.

Here's a picture of what I assume caused the problem: the right rear tire. The heat of the day caused the tread to delaminate and caused me to lose control. The shaking pushed me into the median and probably jarred the lines loose. I don't know what could have caused the left rear to get torn up, but I'm sure that my two new tires will hold up much better. I may never know, as I feel that it's time to sell this truck and get something with airbags.

DIY

I'm all about doing things oneself (ObMakeBlogLink). So instead of waiting around for Congress to get around to it, I was pleased to find these do-it-yourself presidential impeachment instructions. Had I only known!

Snake on a Plain

Snake on a Plain
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

According to this page, this imposing looking fellow is a harmless Black Rat Snake. Non-venomous, perhaps, but harmless? I nearly had a heart attack after stepping on him in a part of the country known for copperheads. Then I yelled at him and he ran away.

Well, slithered away.

...they must have known that their heads would soon roll...

It is amazing to me that Cimino survived that meeting. I'm pretty sure that if I had been head of the studio, I would have killed him right then and there, irrespective of the legal consequences. At least his death would have created a big enough scandal to bring curious people into the theaters.

Heaven's Gate

Two Firefox Blogging Tools

As a Blogger, I do a lot of copying and pasting and spend a lot of time typing < a href=yadda yadda yadda. Now that time is decreased, with a Firefox exension to automatically copy highlighted text to the clipboard (Auto Copy) and an extension to copy both a link, the link location and then auto format it (CoLT).

Thanks to Lifehacker!

For the non-blogging sorts, here's Mentos and Diet Coke Fountains!

Stir Wers Men

Stir Wers Men
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

A new generation, a new set of movies, but it's still cool to set up armies of plastic soldiers to defend against come-what-may. Here, a dozen clone troopers defend the hamster against robot invaders.

What you can look at.

What you can look at.
Originally uploaded by nekosoft.

Found at Wal-mart: a microscope/telescope two-pack that lists viewing options as a selling point. "View Earth, Sky and Microscopic Objects" For example: Nature, The Moon, Mouse Kidney.

What three items could be less related?

And no, the mouse kidney does not come in the box. Walmart does not sell mouse kidney. And now, that's all I want to look at.

Apple Sauce Brain Man: New content!

Due to popular demand (one reader of this blog counts as "popular demand"... Hi Nick!) Apple Sauce Brain Man Numbers Ten and Eleven (circa 1995), as well as issues One and Two of a failed, but really fun, eBay experiment (circa 2005). I feel I ought to mention, I forgot I wrote ten when I wrote eleven, so there's some overlap there.

Previous ASBM here, I promise I'll rescan and get them off Tripod.