City of Angels

At first light tomorrow, The Wife and I are off on a road trip to see her brother et al in LA. We'll be stopping off at Vegas for Saturday night at the Tropicana, but don't expect much material for FtN, as we will probably be just as likely just get a bite and hit the bed as we would be to spend time at the gaming tables.

Was this space for camera phone pics, but don't expect much more.

We'll probably be leaving the gang at Los Feliz on Wednesday and getting back in time for me to hit the ABATE class Friday evening.

Good times!

The Po' Folk Rez

I didn't watch the Shrub's address last night, so this is the first (obviously extremist) take I'm getting on it, but... Did he promise forty acres and a mule, too?

No, but that's not the worst. Proposal #3: the creation of a Gulf Coast Homesteading Act (or something like that) which will use a lottery to give poor people plots of land in government-owned territories, provided they commit to building homes on that land and living there.

Yes, that's right. They are going to create a reservation to contain the poor of former New Orleans. I have no fucking words.

The actual transcript is quoted, too, and it really doesn't sound any less ridiculous.

HOTTness

Amina Munster: Redefining Beauty

I like SG because it shows that you don't have to conform to the blond bombshell standard of perfection to be beautiful, and Amina Munster truly exemplifies this. Amina is a gorgeous, heavily tattooed amputee who lost her leg and the tips of her fingers due to lack of circulation and oxygen after nearly drowning as a child. You can read more about her experience in her BME interview. Since her debut on Suicide Girls in 2002, she has never shown her missing leg in any of her photos. That is, until today.

Some knockout content at Needled (compare with the standard promo at INKEDblog, which has been a pretty steady letdown since I found it).

Of course, I had to forward the article on to my tattooist, Fish, who has been known to have a bit of an amputee fetish... ;)

Belfast Is Burning

What the hell?!

At least 50 officers were wounded over the weekend when extremists fought riot police and British troops in the worst Protestant violence in a decade. The British governor and the territory's police chief said two outlawed Protestant paramilitary groups mounted machine-gun and grenade attacks on police.

Last I checked, I thought things in Ireland were going nice a peaceful-like... Now suddenly we're back to molotov cocktails and machine guns. WTF?!

Poor Pete

Flyers' Forsberg, Hatcher hurt

Philadelphia's Peter Forsberg and Derian Hatcher will miss most of the Flyers' training camp with injuries that will sideline each about two to three weeks.

There is no doubt in my mind that Peter Forsberg is the best hockey player in the NHL -- when he's healthy. This is precisely the reason I couldn't be too bummed when the Avs let him leave.

And of course, any bad news for the Flyers is good news to me! ;)

Crafty Bastards!

Deceit of the Raven

Last year, in the journal Animal Cognition, the behavioral biologist Thomas Bugnyar described a twist in an experiment he was conducting with laboratory ravens. The birds' job was to find bits of cheese hidden in film canisters, then pry open the lids to get the food out. One raven, Hugin, was best at this, but a dominant bird, Munin, would rush over and steal his reward.

So Hugin changed his strategy: when the other bird came over, he went to empty canisters, pried them open and pretended to eat. While the dominant bird poked around in the wrong place, Hugin zipped back to where the food really was. He was deceiving Munin.

Ooooh... That's just creepy how clever the little pinheads can be!

Nevermind other birds, like African Greys. Yikes!

Boo on new firmware!

Well, well, well... According to this I need a new wireless router because my cable modem's firmware got upgraded.

Super.

(Honestly, I'm just happy I found the information I needed. Comcast technical support was useless, of course. I'm not blaming the tech support people -- They are just trying to get through another day at their their jobs just like everyone else, and they can't help it I know just enough to get myself in trouble sometimes.

Still, though... If somebody figured out that the firmware upgrade causes bustication with routers equiped with slow speed WAN port, you'd think the broadband providers might want to disseminate that info.)

CaseMod Idea: iBoomBox

  1. Take an eighties-style boombox - a big ghetto blaster.
  2. Remove tape deck guts.
  3. Insert laptop guts.
  4. Use a big hard drive (like 120GB minimum).
  5. Shield the fuck out of those speakers.
  6. Replace tape deck front(s) with an LCD.
  7. Also put a laptop trackpad (or, cooler, an iPod click wheel) on the front.
  8. Do some outrageous software hacking.
  9. Optional/Add-ons:
    1. Replace FM antenna with WiFi.
    2. Add webcam to send shots of your mad breakdancing skillz back to a blog/Flickr. (Repeat #8)

Voila! iBoomBox!

Honda CL350 Update

I am happy to report that my buddy Erik and I made some happy progress on the CL350 over the weekend. First, we got the carbs cleaned and rebuilt -- We're just going to give 'em a shot as-is before we worry about replacing any jets or anything like that.

Then - in what felt like a major leep forward - we figured out the electricals. We were worried that the whole thing was dead and would require us to strip the entire harness to track down bad connections. As it stands, though, once we figured out the correct combination of switch positions, most things seem to work. The horn doesn't sound on just battery power, but we'll see if that changes when the motor is running. We're also not too sure about the electric starter, but we're not quite to the point where we feel the need to worry about that too much.

Yesterday, I put the gas tank and the seat back on and test-fit the carbs with the throttle cable and so forth. I also gave a shot at fitting the pipes back on, but that's a bit too unwieldy for a single pair of hands.

We have a handful of parts we will need to order from Honda soon in order to button the whole thing up (and then there are various parts, like broken light lenses, that need replacement for mostly cosmetic reasons, but those can come as they come), but it's really looking like a motorbike now.

--

Also worth noting (and somewhat exciting for me): I just signed up for the ABATE Basic Rider Course. So, at least I'm more likely to have my motorcycle endorsement before the Honda is road-worthy now. ;)

Good Guy of the Week Award

The inaugural BlahStuff GGotW Award goes to a co-worker of mine named Matt Holzmann. Why? Well, try this on for size:

I'm heading down there to help rescue people from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

...

Why am I going? Well, I have wilderness first aid experience, boat driving experience, just enough vacation time, and I would hope that someone would do this for my mother, if this sort of tragedy struck Florida.

Even better, Matt somehow managed to arrange to pick up a pontoon boat from someone who works at our new parent company in Little Rock.

Just fantastic. Way to go Holzie!