I’ve recently learned that I can engage a “turbo mode” on SuburbanAdventure, where users that have Google Gears enabled can get a specially rended version of the web page for apparently “wicked fast rendering”. Of all things on the Interwebs, I think the blog is quite possibly the least resource intensive with the exception of Eudora webmail or IRC. If you find that my awesome content is so mind-blowing that it’s brings your Altair 8800 to its knees, I’ll engage “TURBO MODE” so you can strap in and feel the Gs on your 4MHz chip.
Sign of Economic Hardship
While driving to work I saw a car pulled over by a Town and Country Minivan that had been converted to a cop car.
I was going to try to add something witty to this observation, but there’s something perverse and sad and funny and enraging and mystifying about it like a crying clown.
The Making of the OSR Video
The below video is the result of a ludicrous amount of time. Had I the chance to go back in time and change my response to Bill’s question “can you make a promo slide show for camp?” I would have said “no, I need to catch up on flossing” or something equally dumb as an evasive move such that I could run when he blinked.
The source material wasn’t exactly designed for promotional means. The photos had a “family photo album” quality to them, which is nice for slide shows and adds a homey touch, but not too good for promotions. Every good picture of the Water Carnival had someone mooning the photographer.
Some photos simply made no sense, such as this gem:
Joe, doing something....
From the cropped picture it may appear that Joe just discover that his boxers were a bad place to store his loaded mousetrap collection, but it can’t be. In the uncropped version, one can clearly make out Joe’s shorts and the only place that pain that’d induce this phase could come. More importantly, this is one of two successive photos where Gary’s to Joe’s right (our left) holding a snake and he’s staring into the distance like someone sent a curling stone into another man’s scrotum.
Trying to find a picture of the water carnival was tough for 3 reasons:
1) The photo was underexposed or noisy
2) Dan Rowley or another member of the Aquatics staff looked like he was about to rip off a kid’s head and sharpen his ogre teeth upon their bones.
3) Some kid is mooning the camera.
Normally the last isn’t a problem as I’m rather good at removing undesirables from photographs as proven by my “no pimple left behind” treatment I’ve been called on to perform for people looking to gussy up a photo. But, somehow the very gestalt of the picture screamed “ass crack!” such that if it weren’t present, the visceral equipment of perception would be aghast to not find a vertical smile as it condensed meaning from a cloud of data.
I don’t want to lash out at the photo takers as they’re all nice people who been given technology with little training like expecting a boa constrictor to operate a x-ray machine or an 18-year old a voting booth. Every camera has a review function built into the LCD so while reviewing the photos I entered a near paroxysmal rage when I saw a photo that was both underexposed and noisy, followed by 22 other underexposed and noisy shots.
Finally, there was the actual content. I excluded several COPE pictures of the mountain board operators seemingly ignoring the kids going down the hill (there’s always the photographer). Although there were several amazingly framed shots of kids succumbing to sudden gusts of gravity from their carbon fibre death traps as the Health Lodge sign came into view. One COPE picture actually made me smile in joy for literally minutes.
Richard Ebright - Transcription Expert
As I thought an later confirmed, Dr. Richard Ebright is an expert in DNA transcription at Rutgers, and he had the courtesy to sally forth and risk death at our COPE course after years of unfolding the mechanisms that create human life.
Gun pictures were tought to get as it was either a child who would probably be blown back as the bullet stayed stationary or a grizzled, slightly crazy adult, getting his last Charlie. Every picture of the archery staff involved them wearing some sort of non-hat on their heads even in the Norman Rockwellesque “Son, lemme show you how to shoot” ones. There were about 20 pictures of people cycling, but each was either a kid, thinking he was about to fall, a kid about to fall, or a kid falling. “Oh Shit!” shouldn’t be the face when one tries to inspire confidence. I could have used a cannondale promo image, but most were out of place.
Considering we started with 13,000 photos I think we pulled out a solid 60. Tempus fugit!
OSR Promo Video
Thoughts?
Goodreads Confidential
For years I’ve kept a list of books I’ve read largely for bibliographic purposes. That way if I ever needed to cite something I could pull out the list, invent a page number, invent a statistic and accurately attribute it to the author complete with print locations. Goodreads.com is a “reading social network” but more importantly the site keeps this information so I can pitch updating the spreadsheet. After I updated it with what I’m reading, it searched for other users through my gmail contacts and presented a list that I’m hesitant to friend: they’re all churchy. All of them. Every stinking one. The page displays your most recent read book and I’ve recently gone on a bidge of skeptical reading ranging from The Faith Healers by James Randi to Irreligion by John Allen Paulos (Temple prof, go Owls!). For fear of their divine wrath I have to space my updates in pairs so The Secret Origins of the Bible will be quickly followed by The Big Book of Adorable Puppies or something equally buccolic to both act as protection from the superficial glance and as counterweight when St. Peter reviews it.
Marvel Should Get on This
I totally support this kid.
see more pwn and owned pictures
Steak, calming? Maybe. Ribs? Definitely.
Cake Making and Icing Compensation
Normally I prepare enough icing for my carrot cakes such that I can make one cut, ice two layers and have enough that my dad, brother, dog, cat, and brother’s girlfriend can each take a massive fingerful of the whipped cream cheese icing.
I prepared a cake tonight for work as I’d never bake a proper “congradulations, you shot out a baby” cake for coworker’s now six-month old (I was busy) but at 2 AM there’s few beaterlickers about. There’s a ridiculous amount of icing on the cake. I could have easily iced a 3rd layer or possibly another cake. There’s a spot where it’s an inch deep. It’s more like someone made an icing cake and dumped a carrot cake on it. I did some work to try and make it less obvious so there’s a slight shelf where the icing extends beyond the cake forming either an icing overhang or an icing hat, depending on your vantage. I left the cake out, homing my cat would go to town on it, no dice. With a pound of cream cheese, 2/3 pound of sugar and a fresh stick of butter I may be responsible for either killing, or inducing diabetes in several of my coworkers.
Bonus Story: My cake recipe involves about 200 grams of whole vanilla yogurt which I thought I had. Well, having what is vanilla yogurt and having what was vanilla yogurt and is now an affront to both a just and loving God and baking soda is another. I went to Wawa to get some yogurt and they had no whole or low fat vanilla yogurt, just non-fat which uses artificial sweeteners that taste like burning tires post-baking. I grabbed a 230 g container of peach fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt and proceded to checkout, where the checkout agent put it in a bag. I was so dumbfounded that my single serving of yogurt received a bag, I didn’t object like I normally do.
I go home, and start spooning out the yogurt and hit the peach part with only 180 grams of usable yogurt. I’m not going back to Wawa to purchase another single serving of yogurt so I look around for a yogurt substitute. I wondering if any of my coworkers will identify the 20 grams of mayonnaise in the carrot cake.
The Sounds of My Brother I'll Miss
My brother is growing up and buying his a house (with assistance) and I’m mourning/celebrating his imminent departure. I looked around the house, joyed at the crap he’d take with him, especially the things that were my mother’s that he took over, like the curio for porcelain filled with shot glasses or stereo cabinet that nicely holds 3 rifles, 2 shotguns and enough ammo to stop a smallish epidemic of the Rage. I hope he takes the television he destroyed innocently enough by repeatedly smashing helicopters into it during his “things that fly with blades spinning parallel to the floor” phase which was succeeded by his “things that fly with blades spinning perpendicular to the floor” phase. The latter took up much room and our pool room is now a graveyard of Styrofoam and scale appropriate hack jobs or so I’m told. I didn’t realize that when a plane’s tail falls off it’s reattached with a 18 inch wide piece of cellophane tape and girded with logs or what ever a scaled up bamboo skewer would be.
But the things I’ll miss the most are the odd periods of excitement/terror that accompanied my brother discovering some new problem or situation in the house that was best fixed by a large calibre handgun. Today’s was “don’t be alarmed if you hear a loud bang *holds up revolver* but the pumpkin has to die”. Little did I know that the proper tool to open a pumpkin to retrieve seeds was not a pearing knife but a Smith & Wesson. Who knew?
Irrational Exuberance
It’s 4:00 PM and my coworker just did a little jig because his supervisor left slightly early. My coworker leaves at 5:00 PM normally and his supervisor at 5:30 PM. But he did a literal dance. I asked him why, “because it’s Friday and the boss is gone”. I checked in periodically if he was whittling away at the time left in his day by reading the newspaper, online articles, or even an excessively long coffee break. Nope, his nose was to the grindstone solidly until 5:00 PM. On the way out, he did a little shuffle, too.
Did I miss something?
Poorly Targetted Ads
Google Adsense has served up some odd things through Gmail before including bed-wetting clothing and feminine care products. Today I was served up an ad for Topamax, an anti-convulsant. Is there something in my mailing pattern or search trends to indicate I’m epileptic?