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Repelling soviet invaders, one compact car at a time November 28, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Links , add a comment

Another example of a technology forgotten before its application could be reached. The application? Fending off soviet troops in Colorado? Equip the nearest car with armor plating, as some interesting individuals suggested back in 1940 (Original clipping). Maybe then those poor Eckert boys could have survived.

Vanished like a varnished vole November 25, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Play , comments closed

The tiddlywinks fury will have no bounds when they discover the marmalade spread on their mouse pads.

I should be in bed November 18, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Life , 2comments

Well its 3:30, I’ve been debating not going to bed. I should, there is lots of work to do tomorrow. I’d just been putting it off, as I am prone to do. Maybe just because I like staying up late and chain-losing hands of solitaire and/or catching up on tv shows that I may or may not have seen before already. I should go to bed, but I think I’ll see what music yonder shuffle brings, and fling aces kings and queens about with reckless incompetency, if not till the morning, then just a few more songs.

Update: God may not play dice with the universe, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a sense of humor. Seconds after I initially finished this post, true to what I said, I had windows deal me another hand and I hit play… and here in its entirety is what shuffle brought me:

Looked out my window last night,
From my pillow and I,
Saw the willows weeping a causal sigh.
Man in the moon looked rather,
Sad and confused as if he’d,
Become a mirror into my watery eyes.
I dreamed and prayed through the night,
Please send some grace with your morning light

[Chorus]
And he sent you along like a summer day
With a blue-sky smile on your funny face
And a bird flew by singing everything’s gonna be, ok yeah
So we laughed all day with the man in the moon
And we thanked the good Lord for the afternoon
‘Cause he showed me His love by sending me you
And it’s ok now
Everything’s ok

Opened my window tonight,
Saw the rain falling light,
Whispering that everything in alright.
Long, low, and gentle rumble,
Starts in the west and tumbles,
Across the corners of the colorless sky.
I blow a kiss through the dark,
Sails on the thunder and reaches heaven’s heart.

[Chorus]
And he sent you along like a summer day
With a blue-sky smile on your funny face
And a bird flew by singing everything’s gonna be, ok yeah
So we laughed all day with the man in the moon
And we thanked the good Lord for the afternoon
‘Cause he showed me His love by sending me you
And it’s ok now
Everything’s ok

We laughed all day,
And we thanked the good Lord,
Cause He showed me His love,
Ok now

[Chorus]
And he sent you along like a summer day
With a blue-sky smile on your funny face
And a bird flew by singing everything’s gonna be, ok yeah
So we laughed all day with the man in the moon
And we thanked the good Lord for the afternoon
‘Cause he showed me His love by sending me you
And it’s ok now
Everything’s Ok
- Chris Rice - Everything’s Ok

A Visit with Dr Fish November 14, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Life , add a comment

I was inspired and set forth to make a video tour of my new house. Not particularly good, but the camera’s ability to do video isn’t that great, and I didn’t really plan any of it.

Update: thanks to Dan, I’ve installed the plugin (wpvideo) that allows me to embed the player properly…

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSQntsXqLCE[/video]

Why I should never travel without a camera November 8, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Life , add a comment

Imagine an older woman, floral print dress and lawn chair. She’s got an umbrella to protect herself from the glaring sun as she calmly sits by the curb of a crowded intersection. There are several other people of varying ages and appearances sitting with her strung along the curb. They all have signs, most of which have far too much print on them to actually be legible except perhaps if you got out of your car and walked over. The exact meaning of the signs isn’t quite clear but the ones you can read are all fire and brimstone, banding Hell about as if it were a red pen used on the lives of all who drive past (don’t even try to claim you don’t know what red pen, you know what I’m talking about).

I really did almost park my car somewhere so I could go chat with them. My overwhelming curiosity was not what church they attend or even really who they are, but what they hoped to accomplish. To ask them how many lives they’ve seen truly transformed by a shotgun-peppering of self-righteous guilt. To ask them how long it’d been since they had actually fed the hungry rather than taunted them for their lack of food. But I didn’t, I suppose because I knew that whatever answer they came up with, mine was probably worse. Well that and I was headed back to work.

Say it ain’t so! November 6, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Play , add a comment

So I’ve got an account going at Last.FM, which among other things, recommends music based on what I’ve played. It also has the ability to group together so called musical neighbors based on similarities in listening tastes. I was just idly browsing my neighbors and discovered something horrifying that has me wondering if I should scrounge up a Petra album or two so I can change neighborhoods so to speak… one of the people I’m listed as having a “Very High” musical similarity has, as their #1 listened to artist… Hanson. And if that name doesn’t ring a bell then try MMMbop, and if you still don’t have their annoying one-hit-wonder prize song stuck in your head then you are a fortunate soul. For those of you that do (if you haven’t already deleted your bookmark to this site in anger), as penance for this horrible thing I’ve done to you, may I suggest a remedy… start humming/singing/whistling “Walk Like an Egyptian”. On several occasions in my own experience I’ve found that to be a good solution for songs stuck in the head, it cancels them out somehow (and almost never remains behind to bother you afterwards).

And so returns the prodigal son? November 4, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Life , add a comment

So today on a whim I decided to take advantage of one of the new office’s perks… a small gym in the upstairs. I’d happened to wander in there at one point and poked the huge treadmill’s buttons (there are so many!), and I decided to return and play with the buttons. At first I was using a built-in workout, but it was raising the speed of the treadmill so slowly I gave up (7 minutes in it was still slow enough that if I switched to even a lazy running stride I was too fast for it). I gave up and just punched up 5 mph for about 5 minutes, then feeling good, bumped it up to 6 for about 25 more minutes. Ended up going an estimated 3.5 miles counting the early walking. As I was going I was doing division in my head out of boredom (you try running in place for even 10 minutes and staying focused on it). Quite on accident during the cool down afterwards I discovered that it has a built in heart rate monitor (you have to grab on to these two odd little handles with metal contacts) and discovered that about 2 minutes after working up a sweat, my heart rate had already dropped back to about 60 bpm. Oddly about half a minute after I discovered that I got really light-headed and had to choose between continuing my walking cool down and passing out, or sitting down. Before I sat down though, I checked my heart rate again, it’d shot up to about 140 bpm, which seems pretty odd considering I was fine through the run and it’d been fine shortly after the run. I wandered home, still a bit wobbly, and laid on the couch for probably an hour and seem to be fine now. I think I’ll do it again (preferably without the heart-rate weirdness), and now that I can check my heart-rate I can use that as a gauge for how hard I’m working. I had to use a generic formula to determine my max heart-rate though, since I can’t find my pulse except after I’ve been exercising. Anyone else have that problem? I’ve tried both the two fingers on the side of the neck, the wrist, heck I’ve even tried a few other tricks. Noticing that while holding my breath I can see my chest move slightly, I’ve even tried using that, but that always yields something like a 120-130 bpm, and since I’ve not really been moving I find that hard to accept. Especially when the max heart rate for someone in my shape and age is just shy of 200 bpm.

As I said above, I’m planning to keep this up at least semi-regularly. I’ve not figured out when during the week, though once the shower attached to the gym is finished, before or after work might work nicely. Perhaps come greenville’s next homecoming 5k I’ll be a threat to tim again (not that I expect to run as much as tim, but I’m hoping for a slight edge in natural endurance, after all he was a half miler and usually I did 2 or more miles hehe). Anyway, no more rambling, in those immortal words: Push the button Frank.

First day eh? November 1, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Life, Play , 1 comment so far

In honor of my new job, I thought I’d relay a story about someone I talked to on the phone today who was obviously even newer to their job than I.

We had a minor hickup with a tigerdirect order, I called in to get it resolved and had a wonderful chat with someone who apparently can’t read or type without saying what he’s reading or typing. It was funny to hear him pounding away on the keyboard as he would type in what I’d just said “the customer says….”. Or as he was reading his checklist for issues “ok this is a missing item from shipment, thats a um 58, ok lets see, go to this form and fill it out as you talk to the customer…” The shining moment of the conversation, the one that very nearly caused me to lose control and fall off my chair laughing was the end after he’d finished reading aloud and filling in forms he changed his tone to address me… “tell the customer that the issue has been noted and someone will contact you in a day or two to confirm that you didn’t get the item” and then a bit more about it. Gotta love first-line phone support.

Well I guess I’ll make this a post with several topics, because I haven’t posted in a while. I got my first paycheck today, well timed since any day now the car loan people are going to start wondering why I haven’t payed them. Now that I have money again (or will once I deposit it somewhere) I’m willing to concede I was a little worried. Man I keep wandering off to poke around on other sites only to return 10-15 minutes later to discover I still haven’t hit save on this post. Whoops, did it again. I was going to go over to visit Chris and Mandie tonight, but found myself enjoying listening to music too much. And finishing off the a bag of baby carrots. Yup thats right, you heard me… I eat babies, thankfully in this country it isn’t illegal to do so if they are carrots. Now I’m pondering walking up to people who don’t know me that well and telling them I eat babies, I wonder if when it was all said and done they’d remember the next time they saw a baby or a carrot. But I ramble, and can’t even remember where I was headed when I got on this crazy thing.