Sweetie was digging all kinds of Vermont yesterday – Teddy bear factory, Mount Equinox, *pancakes*, lake champlain, maple everywhere from leaves to syrup! I wish I could be along for the ride, but I’d be a coughy-yucko addition this time, anyhow. We’re making plans to go again over the summer, maybe with Chris, Larry and Tina.

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Chest / Nasal congestion was at its worst last night, but as dawn broke, I believe so did the fever. Cough is better and nose isn’t running so much. Slept most of the day away yesterday, and plan on doing the same today, in the hopes that I’ll be good to go back to work on Monday. Making lots of soup and garlic toast to keep fluids up and the more vampiric elements away while I doze on the futon, watching old movies on DVD, and swigging gallons of water.

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Quick colorization in photoshop

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Best silly domain name found today – http://www.canspidersfart.com/

from yahoo answers, a solution – Most spiders inject a digestive fluid into their prey and as a consequence, consume most of their meals as a liquid diet with little or no solids being ingested.

What very little gas is produced in their digestive tract seems to diffuse out of the alimentary canal without “flatulence.”

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Meme – Flickr search for “Halloween” + your birth year. Mine is Halloween 1969, and my favorite is a toss-up between these two:

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Your Pride Quotient: 14%

You the furthest thing from prideful – truly humble. You don’t consider anyone or anything beneath you.

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The First Computer

A mysterious device found in Greek waters was not brought by aliens, but it was used by ancient Greeks to track distant stars.

In 1901, divers recovered a shoebox-size, gear-filled box from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. Ever since, the enigmatic box—known as the Antikythera Mechanism—has spawned its share of bizarre theories. “Some people thought it came from outer space,” scoffs Athens University physicist Yanis Bitsakis. “And since the mechanism has Greek writing on it, the other ridiculous story is that Greeks themselves came from outer space and brought the mechanism with them.” More sober minds suggested the box was a clock or a navigational device, but even those interpretations rested on skimpy evidence.

Now an international team of researchers claim they have found the answer. Three-dimensional scans of the machine’s innards, taken last year by an eight-ton “microfocus” X-ray machine built around the mystery object, revealed ancient inscriptions and complicated gear trains that gave away the machine’s purpose. “It’s an all-in-one astronomical device,” says Bitsakis, who spends up to 15 hours daily deciphering the inscribed text. “In a single machine, the designer tried to put all the knowledge he had about astronomical phenomena.”

The 30-odd bronze gears and 2,000 inscribed Greek characters in the Antikythera Mechanism helped ancient Greek scientists track the cycles of the solar system and calculate the motions of the sun, the moon, and the planets. According to Cardiff University astrophysicist Michael Edmunds, the box technically qualifies as a computer. “To build one of these is not trivial,” he says. “It shows how technically advanced the Greeks were.”

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1 year ago – newt pic, random one liners, newtcam time lapse, crazy man Michael, palm post, wallace and gromit, aventura pics

2 years ago – Kiwanis bust, shirt pocket shotgun, bus observations

3 years ago – went article submission crazy at sa.com, linkies, and hairball dinosaur

4 years ago – Frankenstein, Manchurian Candidate, MD sniper, walk at about 3mph

5 years ago – distance poll, evil news, cecity

6 years ago – troll, Saw Psycho Beach party with the bro, Pinky Tuscadero violates probation

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