Yearly Archives: 2007

Tanks, Missiles and Guns in France of All Places

Tankmuseum17_2
When we went to France in the spring we took a day trip to see the Troglodyte caves and then the Musee des Blindes in Saumur, France.  For those of you who are like me and would travel to France without grasping a single word of the French language the Musee des Blindes is a tank museum.  If you’re wondering why I’m bringing it up now, well, I finally got around to uploading all of our pictures from the museum onto Flickr.  If you like you can see them here.

Michaelerinjustinattankmuseum_vid_2
The picture at the top of this post is our family in front of the museum and the picture to the left is a heartwarming shot of my kids inside the museum.  Since I’ve never owned a gun in my life, and the preconceived notion we Americans have of the French as being, well, French, I find it ironic that this NRA-approved, warm and fuzzy image of the armed-to-the-teeth American family was shot in the heart of the Loire Valley.

Why Do the Blazers Continue to Draft 7 Footers?

The Portland TrailBlazers announced that their top draft pick, 7-foot center Greg Oden, is likely going to miss his first NBA season due to knee surgery.  This is the same organization that drafted Sam Bowie instead of Michael Jordan, and then watched as Bowie flamed out due to injuries.  The Blazers did enjoy a limited run of success with Bill Walton in the late 70’s before Walton’s legs went kaplooey, but this organization needs to figure out how to win without a 7-foot center because they just can’t seem to keep one healthy.  On the other hand if I’m a 7-foot prodigy and I’m drafted by Portland I’m holding out until they trade me.  And yes I’m superstitious.

links for 2007-09-13

Oh the Humanity! 50,000 Worms Roasted by the State of NC

According to this story on the JournalNow site, some eco-friendly types at the NC State Legislative building were trying to use 50,000 red wiggler worms "to eat
one-quarter of the cafeteria leftovers and excrete waste would be
collected as compost for fertilizing plants, grass and other items
around the Legislative Building, where the General Assembly meets."  Unfortunately the bin containing the worm operation had an inside temperature that exceeded 100 degrees fahrenheit, effectively cooking the worms.

Further the article states the following:

Rosa believes the
high temperatures occurred because the material in which the worms
lived inside the bin still contained organic materials that could be
broken down by microorganisms in the food waste. That activity produces
heat.

The temperature rose further when workers shifted the pile around to try to get air in the bin.

"That’s how we have
to look at it, as a learning experience," said Tony Goldman, the
building’s administrative services director. Hopefully, he added,
"we’ve learned enough not to have it happen again."

Goldman intends
Thursday to bring in another batch of worms – about half the previous
amount – and start the process again. The first batch of worms cost
$400, while the bin was about $5,000.

Senate leader Marc
Basnight, D-Dare, asked administrators to test using worms instead of
shipping 250 pounds of waste weekly to an outside compost operation as
a way to save money and promote conservation at the Legislative
Building.

Unfortunately none of the reporters asked what seems to me to be two obvious follow up questions:

  • Is the state charging itself with eco-terrorism?
  • Has anyone ordered a copy of How to Eat Fried Worms?
  • What’s for lunch tomorrow in the cafeteria?

links for 2007-09-12

Apparently the Kids at Wake are a Bunch of Boozers

The Princeton Review’s 2008 Best 366 Colleges Rankings is out and in the category of "Parties", Sub-Category "Lots of Hard Liquor", Wake Forest comes in #14.  Hell, they finished ahead of Penn State (#17) and just behind the University of Georgia (#12).  Shockingly, preppy little Washington-Lee University comes in first.  In the Parties/Major Frat & Sorority Scene category the Demon Deacon children come in at #16, again squished in between Georgia (#15) and Penn State (#17).  Me thinks the Baptists aren’t too happy about this.

In the Demographics category Wake Forest is mayonnaise.  In the sub-category Homogeneous Student Population they come in #18 (my old friend Dimitri Kesari’s alma mater, Grove City, comes in #2 and Washington-Lee comes in #4).  In the sub-category Little Race/Class Interaction Wake comes in at #6 just behind Duke at #5 and just ahead of the University of Richmond at #7. In the sub-category Students Pray on a Regular Basis the kids at Wake don’t appear in the Top 20.  Again, me thinks the Baptists aren’t too happy, but I’ll bet the Mormons are ecstatic that BYU ranks number one in that category.

In the Type of School category Wake Forest comes in #8 in the Jock Schools sub-category, just behind Tennessee and just in front of Michigan, and well ahead of those baby-blue UNC Tarheels (#14) and those pansies at Duke (#18).

Sadly my own alma mater, George Mason University, didn’t place in any of the categories.

links for 2007-09-11

RottenNeighbors

Yesterday I wrote about winston-salem-crime.com, a free web service that "mashes up" Google Maps with crime data from the Winston-Salem police.  Today I found this handy little service called RottenNeighbor.com.  It’s not really a "mash up" since they simply want people like you and me to add rotten neighbors to their own Google Map database. 

I put in my zip code and the closest neighbor was one town over in Clemmons, NC.  Here’s what someone wrote about their neighbor:

Mr. — (name redacted) gets stoned and rides his ATV through other peoples property
spinning donuts and tearing things up at 2 a.m. What a loser.

This leaves me wondering what recourse someone might have against a person posting such information about them on a website.  While I can’t imagine anyone using his own name when posting a comment I do wonder if it would be possible to get the IP address of the poster if someone were to sue the site’s owner to get it.  Oh, wait…I just found one where a girl signed her own name.  Sheesh.

The site does have the usual disclaimer page, but that basically indemnifies them and not the user.  I’m thinking you’re taking a pretty big risk if you post something nasty, whether or not it’s true.  However, it does make interesting reading. Check out this one from someone in another part of North Carolina:

This man has 2 children( his own) and 2 step children. I had to go
through the courts to get him to pay his Child support as agreed. He
pays 350.00 a month for one child, one is grown. He pays the 350.00 and
that’s it. He doesn’t want nor does he feel the need to give anything
over that 350.00. Even when his child goes to him and begs him to help
him out with school activities that require alot of money. When he
found out how much he was suppose to pay each month he told me and his
son he’d quit his job before he’d pay me that. What does that say about
the love and concern he has for his own flesh and blood. He is a piss
poor excuse for a dad. He doesn’t spend quality time with his son and
now he’s almost grown. It’s too late now the damage has been done and
he reaps what he has sown. His son has a job now and doesn’t want to
have much of anything to do with his dad. I wonder why.

And then there’s this beauty, which I found when I put in our old zip code in Northern Virginia:

I GET BEATEN BY MY WIFE HARSHLY. SHE ONCE THREW ME DOWN THE STEPS AND I
LANDED ON THE PITBULL WHICH CAUSED HIM TO BITE THE BACK OF MY THIGH AND
I COULDNT EXPLAIN THE LIMP TO MY CO-WORKERS DUE TO EMBARRASSMENT, I
COULD SIT AT MY OFFICE. HELP!!!!

Now THAT’s a Leaky Ceiling

WaterleakWhen we first moved into our house we discovered that water was leaking through a door in my office on the second floor, running along a joist and then dropping through the ceiling in our family room.  We had a nice bubbling effect before the paint and drywall started falling onto our coffee table.  The picture to the left is from an apartment in Russia that has some kind of magical, water-holding material that caught all the water leaking from an apartment above and created what I’d call some significant bubbles in the ceiling.  If our ceiling had done that I’d have been tempted to repair the leak but keep the ceiling and paint a bra on it.