President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize
Wow, the Norsemen really love Barak!
Publicly, that’s all I can say. Privately, I say “Yes!”
The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for 2009
Wow, the Norsemen really love Barak!
Publicly, that’s all I can say. Privately, I say “Yes!”
Schuyler and I went down to the Box Shop Thursday night to experiment with the Fire Fog effect I’ve been trying to drum up. We certainly made fire!
Yes, that’s Schuyler with a Hudson sprayer filled with 87 octane unleaded gas. Don’t try this at home! Aww, do what you want, it’s your home!
Unleaded gas, kerosene, Coleman fuel (white gas), and Smirnoff apple flavored vodka were all underperformers :-(. The unleaded shows these pretty sparkles as if there were iron filing in them. Kerosene burns a little slower, Coleman fuel a touch slower still, and the vodka put the fire out more than it lit it.
In general, spraying makes “a big flame” which is pretty and fun to play with but not what I am shooting for. We couldn’t get it to reliably make the effect I was looking for. What I’m shooting for:
A 6′ tall, 10′ wide, 10′ long volume is filled with a flammable aerosol. A spark at one end of the volume lights the aerosol on fire. The spectator is able to watch the flame front slowly rip cross the volume. After it cools, another aerosol release and another spark from a different direction lights it up again.
Just once during the night I got what looked close to what I’m aiming for. There was absolutely no wind, I had sprayed a mist more or less in a column over the barrel, the fire caught and ate from the bottom of the mist to the top and over to the left a little :-)
Next tests will involve:
Charlie showed us this propane in a bottle trick that was pure magic. Stick the head of a propane torch in a clear bottle, the larger the better, he says a 5 gallon carboy is perfect. Turn the gas on to fill the bottle. Then light it. A blue flame rips through the air in absolutely beautiful and delicate ways. We tried with an empty hard liquor bottle and it was zowie! So Michael brought out a 5′ x 3″ pyrex tube from his pyrophone. Filling the tube and lighting it was tremendous fun! When on, it would resonate the tube and make music. Or if you put a lot of gas in and then light it, the blue flame would leap through the tube in fascinating ways!
As I was exiting the rear door of the bus on my way home, 3 or 4 people got on the bus through the back door. There’s big signs saying that you’re not allowed to do that so I looked into it.
Yup, fare evading is crazy rampant. This article says:
A study conducted in 2004 and 2005 by the Municipal Transportation Agency and released last year found that between 54 and 73 percent of riders at three subway stations didn’t pay a fare or show a pass.
WHAT? Roughly 60% of riders are freeloaders?!?!?!?! You are kidding, right?
Oh my. Read this from January 2009:
In the past two years, Muni has more than doubled its staff of fare inspectors, to 49
…
The investigation helped kick-start reforms to Muni’s fare enforcement, which helped the agency collect $35,000 in fare-evasion tickets from July through September [2008 I believe]
That sounds good until you do the math. A first time offender pays a $50 fine. Liberally assuming that every one of the fare evaders was a first time offender, and that a pathetic 50% of ticketed people actually pay, that means Muni issued 35,000 / $50 / 50% = 1400 tickets in 90 days.
Therefore, there are 49 inspectors that issued 1400 tickets in 90 days.
The entire Muni inspection team issued 1400/90 = 15.6 tickets per day for 90 days.
15.6 tickets / 49 inspectors = The average inspector issued 0.32 tickets a day over 3 months.
You have GOT to be kidding. On my way home tonight, in 30 minutes, I saw more than 10 people walking in the back door of a Muni street car and then the #14 bus. Apparently if I were a Muni inspector and I ticketed those folks, I would have just done my job for an entire fricking month.
This is wrong.
I am outraged.
Really.
The fricking Blue Angels are strafing the city again, it must be Fleet Week. At first I didn’t really notice it. Now, after 4 hours, every time I hear those machines go screaming by, my guts tells me, “Shit! Shit! Shit! You’re gonna get killed! DO something!” My guts seem to be more worried about the building being bombed and me being crushed than getting shot per se.
Not fun.
They can stop now.
Any time they want.
Charlotte got me a Daisy Powerline 880s airgun that shoots BBs and pellets for my birthday. Wee!
Local copy of Powerline 880 Manual
I can now blow the heck out of any cardboard box within 200 yard radius! Those boxes don’t stand a chance!
I was throwing together dinner with stuff I had on hand, rice, some pignolia nuts and spinach from the freezer. It needed something meaty but I didn’t have any meat in the freezer. I had lonza from Jessup so I sliced some thin and chopped it so it looked like confetti. It was a culinary revelation! The salt, the texture against the rice, the chew! Wonderful!
In brief, 2 gun laws just passed, one specifically banning gun shows at a particular location by name, the Cow Palace just south of San Francisco. The other law makes it a big expensive hassle to sell handgun ammunition including “requir[ing] handgun ammunition vendors to obtain a thumbprint and other information from ammunition purchasers…” and “handgun ammunition may only occur in a face-to-face transaction, with the deliverer or transferor being provided bona fide evidence of identity of the purchaser or other transferee.” That makes handgun ammunition something of a controlled substance (but feel free to open up on your neighbors with a shotgun)
The governor can veto these laws up to 30 days after they passed. That’s October 9th or so. Please call the governor’s automated telephone voting system right now and request that he veto these laws. Here’s how:
FOR AB962 (Ban on Internet Ammo Sales) passed 9/11/09:
Step 1: Call 916-445-2841 (Governor)
Step 2: Press 1 for English
Step 3: Press 2 to comment on a bill
Step 4: Press 2 for AB962
Step 5: Press 2 for Oppose (VETO)
FOR SB585 (Ban on Cow Palace Gun Show) passed 9/9/09:
Step 1: Call 916-445-2841 (Governor)
Step 2: Press 1 for English
Step 3: Press 2 to comment on a bill
Step 4: Press 3 for SB585
Step 5: Press 2 for Oppose (VETO)
I’ve written 2 other posts about this:
It’s like education, only with way more profanity.
I just read this article about dictionary words and darn it if I didn’t learn something while laughing my deceptively large balls off (inside joke, sorry).
I love that despite the crass language and insane sounding examples, their articles are really very well researched. You can laugh and learn through the entirety of their articles.
Just a couple great articles…
There, you’re smarter now. Good. Repeat as needed.
That is stupid.
PARTICULARLY since the firmware has a whole section for “Port Range Forward”ing. DOUBLY SO since the firmware upgrade I ran today, bringing it from a 2007 version to a 2009 version, improved on this by adding a “Single Port Forward” feature. The ASININE trouble is that you have to specify what IP address you are forwarding to BUT you can’t associate an IP address to a MAC address on the router. DUMB.
Yes, you can set the IP address manually on your computer but SCREW THAT SHIT.
DD-WRT, Tomato or Open-WRT will be installed shortly.
Update 11-21-09: Tomato installed. Loving it.