Tag Archives: metro

Uncategorized

Tuesday – 9402

Leave a comment

Another *busybusy* day at work, but eased when I got home – BHK made supper of the remainder of the sloppy joe mix became taco salad fodder, with a side of veggie taquitos. Good stuff… BHK and I watched the Vampire Ventriloquist’s Dummy episode of Middleman – the show continues to shine. Venture brother’s first half was pretty spiffy, too.

Other things that brought cheer – seeing these kitty pictures in the archive… both were taken at the same time – both kitties sucking up as much sunlight as they could hold. Newt was totally whited out, and pye looks very comfy on the purple couch.

nukepyeonnewtcam
nukenewtonpyecam


Metro’s official stance on begging on the trains and buses –

Dealing with panhandlers

-Panhandling and soliciting of any kind are prohibited on Metro.
-Donate your money where it can do the most good by supporting local social service programs.




The nice folks at NPR have done us all a favor and taken some used Kinoki foot pads to be tested to see if they’d drawn anything out of a guinea pig reporter’s body. Guess what? They didn’t.

Reporter Sarah Varney bought some Kinoki foot pads and wore them to bed. She also subjected her husband to the (alleged) detox treatment. In the morning, they both awoke to the stinky brown mess that the advertisement had promised. Not convinced that the brown stuff had actually come from their bodies, our hero took the foot pads to a lab and had them analyzed and compared with unused pads.


“Compared to the blank that’s almost identical,” said the scientists. “It looks like three of the same sample, basically.”


A doctor from UC Berkeley confirms the scam diagnoses. Your body already eliminates “metabolic waste” and “toxins” through, um, other means…

“For many hundreds of thousands of years we’ve been successfully eliminating them through the usual means, which is urine and feces, and there has been no demonstrated need to accelerate that.”

So what is all that gunk in the pad? We’re not really sure, but it shows up if you hold the pad over a pot of boiling water. Who knew distilled water had “metabolic waste”?


Japanese Foot Pad Is Latest Health Fad [NPR]




1 year ago – coolpix dies, 365, icehouse games comp, car wars card game, misc gaming, Illusionist

2 years ago – gateway theater pic, steam shovels, zap guns, dr octagon

3 years ago – bro out, pay links, looking back meme, friday 5, monkeys in gov’t

4 years ago – Scotto as the prisoner, TV/Game idea, nazi weddings, adsense poof, steven tyler is a salt vampire, lj permanence, sick at work, poo humor, skin dry

5 years ago – menstrualhut cloned, vampire game, pam visits, eagles vs giant gerbils, under nyc

6 years ago – A/C issues, Everyone Guilty of Enron, cake, Hurricane Andrew, bus stop photos, keywords

7 years ago – I photoshop my dream, coloringbook, fecund

8 years ago – time of darkness Geotarget

Uncategorized

9370 – Thursday –

Leave a comment

Veggie-protein meatloaf, green beans from the garden and a simple salad made for a great dinner tonight, compliments of BHK.

Middleman was excellent, again. I wonder how long it’ll take them to run out of steam? Alien dictators and Boy Bands. So far, so good!

That’s about it for me today… Have some cool links du jour from around the web, dear journal!

Om Nom Nom Nom. – pictures badly photoshopped in paint to look like monsters eating things. Ah, simple pleasures.

Atari 2600 Label Maker – produces authentic looking Atari 2600 Labels including the famous “Picture Label” using your own image and title.

WASP Injection Knife – This weapon injects a freezing cold ball of compressed gas, approximately the size of a basketball, at 800psi nearly instantly. The effects of this injection will drop many of the world’s largest land predators.

Metro Hack –

Thieves took a legitimate paper Farecard with $40 in value, sliced the card’s magnetic strip into four lengthwise pieces, and then reattached one piece each to four separate defunct paper Farecards. The thieves then took the doctored Farecards to a Farecard machine and added fare, typically a nickel. By doing so, the doctored Farecard would go into the machine and a legitimate Farecard with the new value, $40.05, would come out.



1 year ago – karma, John Lovitz pummels Andy Dick, car moving nearly squishes BHK and Amy, new shoes, Hp movie, bhk’s 4th grade yearbook and kid goodies, matt’s summer mix

2 years ago – movies, writing, housebound, heifer.org, king kong song, monday meeting, planetary mass comparisons, I doubt fate/design, lego jesus, oh don piano!

3 years ago – visited with constance1010 and tarpo, book meme, fanfic folks angry with original Harry Potter Author, zefrank’s sing-along, AIM email, bananaman

4 years ago – zombies, urine, veggies, pagerank test

5 years ago – celeb divorce, there-sales, batman movie, witch game, hulk’s diary

6 years ago – palm doodle-strip, lost hosted photos, crank yankers 80% sucks. Fortean times, F-ing Mongorians!

7 years ago – important people, ne plus ultra, anile, evil news, more majestic, now defunct Newton ICQ-bot

8 years ago – junky food, prepped April for launch, budgeting, hung out with bro, me no like stinky Geotarget

Uncategorized

9351 – Tuesday

Leave a comment

Okra harvest!

Okra has come in with the first zucchini – vile, slimy okra. We’ll see if BHK can win me over to this veggie, like she did with Zucchini.

John R Cambron (who lives in North Beach!) has an excellent track map showing the layout of all switches, yards and platforms in the Metrorail system. Now, he’s expanded that map based on the Metro 2030 vision to create a potential 2030 track layout. – via


In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that accusations against a Muslim from western China held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims. The unclassified parts of the decision were released on Monday.

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.


The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”


more here at the NY times


So, how many human rights advocates are going to boycott all of the sponsors of the 2008 Summer olympics in Beijing ?


Numerous human rights violations have taken place in China because of the Olympics, according to an Amnesty International report. In 2006, Beijing implemented a detention without trial scheme called “Re-education Through Labor” which targets people who have committed minor offenses and are forced to work long hours and can be detained for 4 years. Concerns over the games also include the potential for boycotts from pro-Tibetan organizations such as Students for a Free Tibet as well as from organizations such as Amnesty International upset with China’s involvement in the crisis in Darfur.


Biggest tricks for me to avoid would be be –

Johnson and Johnson – very big company – not sure if we could dodge every tendril. I can rattle off at least 5 of those items in our home right now.

GE – everywhere, also owns a ton of stuff – (including TiVo, Universal Studios, and USA network, home of Psych)

Coca-cola – everywhere, but avoidable if you take note of what you’re drinking, including water.

Visa – well, that’s my bank’s debit card, and almost every place on the planet takes it… so, unless I want to live and trade with cash-only businesses, that’s a deal breaker. Too big to defeat.



Items of little to no difficulty –

McDonalds – not hard for me to miss out on – we only ever go for shamrock shakes or pumpkin at halloween. Easily avoided.

Samsung / Panasonic – easy peasy. I get 99% of my electronics from other sources, though our tv is a samsung right now.

VW? Awww… you guys let me down. Would I have to boycott playing punch-buggy?

Adidas – no problem missing out on them.

UPS – I do use them on occasion, but there are alternatives.

Snickers, Tsingtao, and Budwiser – I can do without all of those.

Kodak – plenty of other options there, too, but they’re in a lot of places. depending on the extremism, some might want to forego any book that used kodak photography or processes. Movies, etc.They are teamed with Motorola and Lexar, for that matter.

Who can say? I won’t be that extreme, but sometimes I feel that I should.


‘Zero’ chance lottery tickets stun some players – Through a request filed under the Freedom of Information Act, Fishwick’s firm was able to obtain records that showed the Virginia State Lottery sold $85 million in tickets for which no top prize was available.

1 year ago – hot brain, hot pixel, night of the comet, the frighteners, Louise and in-laws at supper, dinner pix, shag and klondike bar

2 years ago – nearly naked neighbors, gray day, mob supply pic, newt pics

3 years ago – talked to Arnie’s Sec, newt and graffiti pix, autostitch, wifi theft arrest, reality show premises, j-walk on podcasts, programmer joke, google maps goodies, flightgear, wifi hotspot backpack, my messy office, bear-knocking, sex pred info pages

4 years ago – combos/snausages , wisdom, serving sizes, ramen, Rockford Files, Planetarium pictures, weather, sock thief

5 years ago – call block, snapple, intelligence gathering, Batroc, flashback cartoon, addictive data

6 years ago – oz/floyd connection, pimps at sea, rss feeds start, cat dreams

7 years ago – cej returns, unpacking videos, 1992 tax info, the challenge, corn chowder, kubrick quiz

8 years ago – Rowlf sings, April actually kicks back a few bucks, pondering a new recorder Geotarget




Uncategorized

9323 – Tuesday – man loses left side in accident, he’s all right now.

Leave a comment

The first estimate on cutting down the dangerous trees in our yard is right at $5000. $3100 for removing the two trees near the house (with the one near the power lines costing the most) and 1800 for the ones near our elderly neighbor’s house. The tree guy said the one directly behind the house looks like its dying.

Second had the $3100 reduced to $2200 – we’ll see what the guys tomorrow think. Still waiting to see what’s to be done re: the Element’s windscreen.

Had in-laws over for veggie meatloaf, salad and stir-fry veggies – all were delicious. (Larry had hot dogs – still doesn’t want to try non-meat stuff … not like hot dogs are all that higher in critter content!)


This Thursday the 19th is, according to WMATA, “Dump the Pump Day.” Residents are supposed to take advantage of metro in order to see how much money they will save on commuting costs for a day. They are also sponsoring a related contest to guess the daily ridership on Thursday – you could win a $100 SmartTrip card.


Thanks to an anonymous whistle-blower, a Walgreens pill-flipping scheme has been blown wide open, according to CBS. "Pill-flipping" refers the practice of pharmacies that purposefully switch Medicaid patients to more expensive versions of certain drugs for the sole reason of collecting more money from the government. Naturally, when this happens, taxpayers pick up the bill. Athough, Walgreen’s officially denies any wrongdoing they have agreed to pay the government more than $35 million.


Open-Source Tower Defense is a Half-Life 2 Mod. You can choose from 4 upgradeable towers to see how long you can last protecting your castle against never ending waves of bugs. It’s a project of OneEyed that is now opensource for everybody to use.

Contains:
– Game Files
– Source Code
– Map Hammer .vmf file of the map.

Checkout the moddb website for more info over here.


1 year ago – 70 questions with bhk and scotto

2 years ago – cleaning day, flying rays, quizzes

3 years ago – Thai/sushi instead of Moroccan, retro illos, heat, tiresome week, groovy quote, shinto, Child sacrifices in London, hobo sign decoder sheet

4 years ago – audioblogger/pic remote links a no-no, bro being bad, domain shuffle (newt has an email now!), local language map

5 years ago – sleepy newt-pic, black spot, signmaker, Scott spellings, Man of iron-isms (game notes from 1995), talked with Doug Wu

6 years ago – Doug and Cathy, animal babies, Gaming. (wow… must be something about this week for reflection), Barbie, SQL for rgladiator, a kiss goodnight, forgotten silver balls.

7 years ago – Reminder that tomorrow is Kev’s Sister’s B’day, 7 things meme (I wonderhow many of those have changed?), missile silo home, how to be a superhero, superpower origin poll, enchiladas of doom

8 years ago – not a thing, but I know rough waters are aheadGeotargetVisitor Map

Uncategorized

9313 – Tuesday

Leave a comment

I still feel pretty-lousy, but went in to work – too much needs to be hands-on today – meetings, etc.

My shoulder muscles and ribs / stomach are all especially tender from the coughing. I’m being extra lazy with my entries until I feel more up to speed.

BHK made pizza tonight… I had two slices of green pepper and cheese. First real food eaten since Sunday. It was delicous, but I couldn’t consume more than that… or any pie for fear of retribution.

I can’t imagine a homemade blueberry pie lasting a week in my house. I must’ve been terribly sick, indeed.

Cut and paste links ahoy!


Three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame have gone to the dogs, so why can’t Cheeta the chimp get some love? The animal actor, whose credits include the 1967 comedy “Dr. Doolittle” and the “Tarzan” movies, is trying for the seventh time to get a sidewalk star and become the first monkey to get the honor. His handlers have launched an online petition to get supporters to urge the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to give him a star in 2009.

The 76-year-old chimp, who the Guinness World Records has called the oldest living, non-human primate, is retired and lives in Palm Springs. Cheeta also has a MySpace page. (see also – http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/GoCheeta/ )


John McCain wants to kill folks on dialysis.


This video – A Washington DC news crew goes down to Union Station to interview someone from Amtrak about people who have been stopped from taking pictures even though there’s no policy against it. As the Amtrak spokesperson is explaining that there is no policy against photography, a guard comes up and tries to stop them from filming, saying it is against the rules.



1 year ago – justice frozen in carbonite pic (taken at the courthouse where I was married… and across the street from where I worked)

2 years ago – chatting with tomi & tina, redd foxx fairly suxx, many mp3s, cat trees bear, the hoff sings, weather

3 years ago – sleepies, bro on upswing, free lunch, tropical storm Arlene, ice cream truck music, newt, bus stop and pics, Coprology, hurricane, I spy

4 years ago – hungry-boy, Shambhala, lawn chair boat, Alan Yu vs. the invisible shrinking psi-agents.

5 years ago – good ol’ days, There-stuff, mummy locator

6 years ago – wonder twins movie optioned, Baiso, Rose Red, Bunko Shenanigans

7 years ago – Uddercream, Eugene Mirman, evil news, lit-quiz, chachi and opium

8 years ago – bubble, simpleGeotarget

Uncategorized

9294 – Memorial Day – Monday

Leave a comment

Thank you to all the people that worked so hard to make my life as free as it is.



.hot.0524081304.jpg.

pictures – ATW man salutes our fallen heroes, and I complain about the heat. (Not nearly as hot as it was in other locales, so I hear!)

Slept well on the new bed – I wasn’t feeling so hot earlier, but a nap helped my back and headache quite a bit. Still a little nauseated, but not too terrible.

We had the in-laws over again and made more franks and beans for dinner, and this time, the bonfire and s’mores were a reality. Added bonus was blowing bubbles.

Opted out of the new town trolley to Pete Green’s – The route is cute, and could be a lot of fun – two bits to ride can’t be beat. I wouldn’t mind just taking it for a little day-tour out and about where BHK and I can relax and take in the scenery. I suspect that the trolley’s primary use will be for drinkers getting home safe… I’m all for it if it keeps the drunkies from behind the wheel.

I want to pick up a bike – the in-laws cycled up the beach for breakfast this morning, and I thought it sounded like a fun way to ge tout of the house for a bit.


I still haven’t decided what new e-books to put on the PDA – maybe I’ll take a breather and stick to pulp-books for a bit.


1 year ago – info about 20714, shaved ice man and diabetes, bake sale!, things going smoothly, satori quote

2 years ago – 2nd life upgrade, mm pickup issues, 26 letters about me a-d, wilma buiding, poo-poo ice, c-64 emu, super chicken, robot caveman

3 years ago – slack, WEP cracking in 10 min, forget me not panties, sithy meme, wiktrivia, Nosferatu download, writing assignment, how to fake fingerprints, sat maps make me think of people as ants

4 years ago – put motion detection on newtcam, last done meme, life on venus, AFMBE – Zombie Smackdown, FL Drugs, hummus

5 years ago – Memorial Day, freaky wind, There, superhero factoid, castrati, Skeletor and Gang, Chipotle, Joan Cusack crush

6 years ago – Gargoyle, [info]menstrualhut troll, comparison poll, memory from DC (my evil twin), yeti @ home, monster’s inc good

7 years ago – monad of John Dee, Morikami, Shrek good, Pearl Harbor bad, lj-death hoax, icky stuff, good stuff, o Mousewheel event, flash ponderings

8 years ago – subject lines, Hunter thinks that my first icon looks like I’m in the phantom zone, age difference, I have done all but the car on that list, 125 things about meGeotargetVisitor Map


Uncategorized

9289 – Wednesday

Leave a comment

Pyewacket says, “Soon.. it will be my turn in the sun. Soon.”



tackle followed.

pyecam (06.39 PM May 18, 2008)


BHK made some awesome Spicy Thai-style curry soup last night. We had the in-laws over and watched the first half of “What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw“

Thought we had the whole thing on tivo, but Whoops! It was a 2-parter. Good to David Warner, even if he wasn’t a primary.

More pictures taken recently – Newton and Pye playing, fighting, pixellated, hancock standee found object to color a pedestrian punching devices and me on the bus. Also, a snake in our yard, and birds I gave popcorn. Clicks embiggen, as always.

0519081738.jpg.0519081736.jpg.Fw: Cute!.Fw: CUTE!.pixel newt n pye
0516081601.jpg.0516081948.jpg.cbook.pedestrian punching machine via car.S6301932


BHK turned me on to PMOG – The Passively Multiplayer Online Game. My profile is here…if you play, let me know! Will it be the next KoL ? Only time will tell!


Slow-motion videos of people getting punched in the face (background on the clips, shot at 1000 frames per second) [via]


1 year ago – voice post – testing the auto-transcribe, work, strangers with candy

2 years ago – birthday party mental_circles, with pictures

3 years ago – creepy star wars moment, S.T.A., world view, making fiends #18

4 years ago – gmail trades, archive the dead, fruit pies, pirate, bro broke another straw

5 years ago – gamer purity, my buffy blasphemy, newt-grumpy/nosy, p/t, SOP

6 years ago – rainy, ashcroft snooping, what’s better, catgrass growing crazy, more pictures to repair, SOP, Lao-tze

7 years ago – bibelot, albedo, TV crushes, Dark Sun, Post to the net/privacy rant, enneagram, SOP, evil news, ‘hear, hear’

8 years ago – nuffin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Uncategorized

9286 – Tuesday

Leave a comment

Know what I like, dear journal? Quiet, that’s what I like.

So many ambient sounds in my life… traffic, coworkers, key-clicks.

Of course there’s good stuff, too, like my wife’s voice and Newt/Pye Purrs.

It seems like some sounds are just deafening, and unending. The roar and rattle of air conditioners, people talking up the road or down the hall, my own breathing.

I sometimes like it to be so quiet that I can hear my heart beating in my body.. or the tendons of my neck stetching like rubber bands when I turn my head…. the odd pop of a joint when I stand up, or just hold my arms out at my sides. The roar of the ocean when I get ready to yawn.

But I’d rather hear the annoying rabble noise and not miss my family and comforting sounds, than have perfect quiet.


Archaeologists studying a 385-year-old Spanish shipwreck off the Florida keys have found a gold combination toothpick and earwax spoon. The item was carved with a 16th-century Spanish inscription that translates roughly as “For the man who has everything.”


Unless you’re willing to risk being stranded with 14 other passengers several stories underground in a cattle car elevator on a hot summer day, or plunging at extreme speeds down an escalator with a broken chain, you might want to steer clear of NYC’s subway system lifts. The New York Times has published the results of an extensive investigation that includes tales of daily breakdowns, comically undertrained mechanics, and about $1 billion spent over the past decade.


The heck? –

Cecil says:

… something called canine transmissible venereal tumor, a very rare example of what’s known as a parasitic cancer. Unlike most other contagious cancers such as cervical cancer in humans, CTVT isn’t spread by a virus but (as recently proved) by cancerous cells themselves. Genetic analysis suggests the tumor originated in an individual wolf or domesticated dog, probably in east Asia, between 200 and 2,500 years ago. This long-dead canid’s much-mutated cells are still alive and being passed along during coitus (or sometimes through casual contact) centuries later, making it the longest-lived mammalian cell line known. The disease is now found throughout the world, especially where there are large populations of strays. It can be treated with surgery, radiation, and chemo, but most otherwise healthy dogs recover spontaneously after several months.

Luckily for us, there are no known parasitic cancers in humans, and only two additional ones affect animals. One arose spontaneously in a laboratory hamster around 1960: it’s a reticulum-cell sarcoma that can be spread by casual contact, cannibalism (hamsters’ souls are a lot darker than you might think), and mosquito bites; the tumor grows in the larynx and eventually leads to suffocation. The other is a condition threatening Tasmanian devils with extinction in the wild, called devil facial-tumor disease. First noted in the 90s, it’s spread by bites; the tumors grow around the mouth and eventually cause death by starvation.



best quote heard today. “she is wound like an angry watch” Wish I’d said it.


1 year ago – BHK and I hit solomon’s island, new video games, pictures of cats and family, trekkies, fake monkey entry from bhk, memes, bradbury, bionic woman series coming

2 years ago – cleaning up, ray ig, robby rotten, vista, windows registry, 10 things/commandments, mc birthday, stinky tuber at fairchild

3 years ago – Star Wars With Kev & Bheesham, Apophenia, vega, posting distro, newt and Orangeade pic

4 years ago – friendly gator banished, bro moving, spymac, ephemerist, oddtodd’s gig

5 years ago – monkey-shakespeare, 5-things meme, military waste, ad shield

6 years ago – good walkies, missv goodies (need to reupload pic of newt in his cloth), piggy database

7 years ago – fun tv, lambaste, 9-to-5, Hawaiian love, tv part poll, astley issues, cool orange cats, clutch, gun quoteGeotarget

Uncategorized

9191 – tuesday

Leave a comment

Watched the last two episodes of Alien in America while BHK snoozed on my arm last night – pretty good.

BHK got some nerds jelly beans (sold as “giant chewy nerds”) when we went to Aardvark last weekend.

The Orange were my Fave, Green were hers. (as is our usual) The crunch really added something – I liked them a lot more than standard jellybean fare, even though I like jelly belly soda-pop flavors quite a bit, too.

On the C7 bus this morning, we passed another bus (R3) with the front banner flashing “call 911 – emergency, call police” on the front. I alerted my driver, and she said that it’s a common accident – the other guy likely pressed the alarm button by accident and doesn’t know better. I suggested that she call the station just to be sure, and she stated that it wouldn’t be needed… someone else is bound to do it.

That puzzled me… what if the guy were in actual trouble? I got off the bus and contacted to police to let them know… they haven’t called me back. I wonder if they’re even following up on it?

I figure it’s better be safe than sorry… If I see a sign that says “HELP!!”, I’m going to act on it – especially if it’s as simple as dialing 3 numbers on my phone.

Fancast – free streaming TV, full episodes (or just a clip )

BHK came up to the office and joined me for a secret lunchtime nosh in the parking lot… nom nom nom. I love seeing her, and a visit in the middle of the day was wonderful.

Pesky that I’m a little behind on my “book bingo” – I keep reading authors whose name end in B, W, or S! Bradbury, Wilder and Stewart aren’t helping!

50 things I’ve done (or, the meme that would not die… ) meme continues with item 31. I…

31.’have been hit in the face with a pool cue… got me in the jaw. It was pretty unexpected – I wasn’t doing much of anything, except putting my face where a guy was swinging on someone else. This was when I was 24.

32.’shot 3 day old dunkin’ donut munchkins from a wrist rocket slingshot at people, and connected at 20 yards. It stings! That’s a powdered sugar version of paintball. Plus, if you’re hungry, you can eat your ammo. (Preferably soaked in milk first to soften them up.) This was when I was 15.

1 year ago – D&G off to NY, emergency prep meeting, potato candy, missed 300 with lj folks, birdwatching, everything test

2 years ago – quizzes, secret ritual skeletons, crapulous, neverwinter nights

3 years ago – Open house follow up, pacific northwest tree octopus, lj badge, credit card scam, lois lane’s mustache

4 years ago – walk piccies (sudsy fount), CS bombed as a tech, zombies, condos, legal poop, broken website

5 years ago – Newt in a tub, wandering walk photos

6 years ago – I’m Newt’s bfast table, at the doc, parrots & cuban food, Asimov died of AIDS, Dave’s birthday on the 14th, spiders, squids,Stichomancy, and a little zen, death to smoochy, gypsies

7 years ago – good day, accomplished much, new phone, akimbo, Super Newt, fun words, random plotsGeotarget