December 03, 2003
Wanted: Perspective
Kim DuToit is stirring it up again, but this time I don't understand the argument.
Frank Sinatra vs Harry Connick Jr. Style vs substance. I like apples and I like oranges.Posted by: Ted at 06:14 AM | Comments (43) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
BestOfMe Symphony
Jim at Snooze Button Dreams has a neat new gig going on. Follow this link for full details, but here's a brief:
This post compilation meme is structured like the Carnival of the Vanities but concentrates on the best posts from the history of weblogs. Post submission criteria are very simple. The post must be at least 2 months old and the submitter must think it is a very good post. How easy is that?Posted by: Ted at 05:28 AM | Comments (44) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
December 02, 2003
Air Force Blue (part 4)
Last time, I talked about the serious side of Camp Bullis, Texas, which is where Air Force Security Policemen get sent to be trained in Air Base Ground Defense. They tried to keep you as busy as possible because there wasn’t a whole lot to do with the inevitable spare time. This go-round I’ll tell you about thePosted by: Ted at 01:06 PM | Comments (43) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Rules for Technology
"There's a set of rules that anything that was in the world when you were born is normal and natural. Anything invented between when you were 15 and 35 is new and revolutionary and exciting, and you'll probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things."
-- Douglas Adams I saw this in The Salmon of Doubt (recommended by fellow Munuvian Daniel too), and found on the net at the lovingly constructed farewell page by the UCLA Astrobiology Society (which is entirely apropos when you think about it).Posted by: Ted at 09:58 AM | Comments (45) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Rocketing Around the Blogosphere
I'm going to wander all over the place with this edition, including a couple few old friends, as well as some folks who I'd guess aren't already on your radar screen.
Starting off with some naughty stuff, check out Book Whores, reviewers of 'Cruel and Unusual Books'. Plenty of links to their listed favorites, and categorized into such as Bodice Rippers and Absinthe & Opium. I discovered them courtesy of Yummy Wakame, a beautifully designed site that I found via ErosBlog. Her byline reads "Porn, Politics, and Punditry". Blogslut works in the Internet Porn industry. I'm looking forward to reading more of her insights about the industry, because so far it's pretty interesting stuff. It's not all porn related, but it's not kid-safe either. This is just fowl, and yes I spelled it that way intentionally. Do you remember the joke about the difference between kinky and perverted? The story at the link is perverted. Hey, I laughed as I read it. Ok, let's move away from the adult section... Rocket Man has a great review of missions to Mars, including several that he's worked on himself. Thanks to Professor Hall for pointing this out. You may have heard that the Japanese lost a rocket that carryied a couple of spy satellites last week when their home-built rocket failed. Rand Simberg talks about the possible shortcomings to the way the Japanese are approaching space (hint: way too NASA-like). He also talks about the Chinese and their long-term goals. Read the comments too, there's some intriguing debate going on. And just in case you don't read Rand because you think it's all tech-related (as if that's a bad thing), check out his razor-sharp parody of Al Gore. Congratulations to Kurt of Jockularocracy for being invited to join the Bear Flag League. These folks are smart California bloggers, and restore my faith in my home state. You probably already read some of them. California also has the coolest state flag. No arguments will be entertained. If you disagree, you're wrong. Terry of The Coyote's Bark is travelling in Asia, and posting some amazing pictures. He also managed to catch Simon's soiree of Hong Kong bloggers. Ten Rules of Cell Phone Etiquette. I hate the damn things. Occasionally, my wife will insist that I take hers, but I seldom turn it on and it just sits in the glove compartment. I don't have one of my own, and can barely work one. In fact, Liz is going to give me the instruction book for hers this week so I can check her voice mail since everyone will be calling to find out how she is. Link thanks to DynamoBuzz, a Jersey blogger who scores bonus points for the (intentional?) Zappa-esque reference. And just because the whole point here is linkage, check out Backstage, a charter member of the Axis of-- "Dirty Diana" [Bad]
-- "Girlfriend" [Off the Wall]
-- "The Girl is Mine" [Thriller]
-- "PYT" (Pretty Young Thing) [Thriller]
-- "Liberian Girl" [Bad]
-- "Albino Man Barbie" [Dangerous B-side]
-- "Sexy Sexy Nose Hole Jackie" [Japanese Import] Justice is Coming. And his name is not Ryan Leaf. A San Diego Chargers blog, for the masochistic among us. LeeAnn, the Chargers and Padres are the price you pay for living in paradise. "I got my first boner in church." Finally, like the last kid picked when choosing sides, our honorary right-fielder (someone has to be it) is LasagnaFarm. Amusing stuff, even moreso since almost none of it applied to me. Except maybe that boner line. Is there a statute of limitations on sin?
Posted by: Ted at 09:18 AM | Comments (46) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
December 01, 2003
A Cornucopia of Ted
aka 100 Things
Posted by: Ted at 08:39 AM | Comments (57) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Build It - 2
This is a series of posts where we’re building a basic model rocket online. Each post shows part of the process step by step, including pictures and passing along tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way. To learn more about what model rocketry is about, see this Q&A.
The main part of the post is in the extended entry so you don’t have to deal with it if you don’t want to, but I hope you follow along because when we get done you’ll have built and flown your first model rocket. Questions asked from before are answered too.Posted by: Ted at 05:18 AM | Comments (44) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 30, 2003
Fantasy Hockey
I've never been in a fantasy hockey league before this season, and knew absolutely nothing about it. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what was going on, and despite myself I'm doing ok so far. Here's some things I've observed, which may or may not mean squat.
1. Luck plays a big part in success. You can do a lot to help yourself during the season, but luck or the lack of it will make or break your season. Players doing unexpectedly well, avoiding injuries, hot teams and more will all factor in. 2. The draft is critical (sometimes). Our league used an automatic draft, where team order was randomly determined just prior to the draft, and then players were assigned by offensive rank and position. So first the centers were doled out, then left wingers and so on. We were given the chance to 'customize' the draft order for our teams, but I decided to trust the automatic method. So far, it's worked out great for me (see 1 above). 3. Goaltending, goaltending, goaltending. You need two solid starters, and two stars would be better. Five of the top six teams in our league lead with goaltending, and the other is reminiscent of the old Pittsburg Penguins, ignoring defense and winning games 5-4 all season long. Once again, I got lucky here, picking up the hottest goalie of the season, Numinem of Atlanta. My second goalie is Esche of Philly, which is good because he wins almost every time he plays, but he's being platooned so he only plays around half the games. My original third goalie was Broduer's backup in New Jersey. I got rid of him quickly because Martin Broduer plays more games each season than any other goalie. 4. Go with your strengths. Early on I noticed that I was getting big points every week because my team made a lot of shots on goal (not every league awards points for this). I began waiving and drafting players with that stat in mind. Given two available players of roughly equal stats, I'd take the one who took more shots. You can't score if you don't shoot, right? This strategy has paid off in that my team has the second-most number of shots, and my players tend to score plenty of goals, assists and game winning goals. The main weakness of my team is the plus/minus stat. Basically, if you're on the ice when your team scores, that's a plus one. If the other team scores while you're on the ice, then that's a negative one. An overall negative stat generally means that the opposing team has an easier time scoring while you're on the ice. Positive stats mean just the opposite. Players from the powerhouse teams like Detroit, Ottowa and St. Louis are generally going to have more plus players, although each has one or two guys who are really down there on the minus side. Again, I tend to give more weight to this stat than most because I'm trying to improve it. Once the season starts, you can do that only incrementally, because you'll seldom find more than marginal players on waivers. 5. Trades. If everyone in your league is just standing pat with their team or only dropping and picking up players via waivers, then basically the season becomes a lottery. Whoever had the best computer-generated draft is going to win. That's no fun at all. The league I'm in has had a few trades, but not many. I've made two out of a dozen or so that I've proposed or been offered. I just made a trade that I knew would either make me look like a genius or an idiot at the end of the season. Early returns are for idiot. I traded offensive-minded Miroslav Satan (is that a great name or what?) and another player for two players who had great plus/minus numbers and slightly less production on offense. Once again I was trying to improve the most glaring weakness of my team without screwing up my other stats too badly. Unfortunately, one of the players I got in return was injured the day of the trade and is out indefinitely, so I shot myself in the foot there. So it goes. I figure I spend about 20 minutes a day on average looking at scores and such, and it's been fun and added a lot to my enjoyment of this hockey season. If you're a hockey fan it's worth looking into for next season.Posted by: Ted at 07:36 AM | Comments (45) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 29, 2003
An unexpected visit from an old friend
Mookie (who blogs dead people) and I had the house to ourselves today while mom did her last day of work for awhile. We did some chores and straightening up, then sat down to watch George of the Jungle together. If you haven't seen that movie, then you need to be smacked upside. If you saw it and thought it was stupid, well... duh!
So as the closing credits rolled, we were watching for the song titles because one in particular had caught our fancy, when a name jumped out at me. Sergio Aragones. He was listed as one of the animators for the opening credit cartoon. Does that name ring a bell? I spent years loving his little doodles in the margins of MAD magazine. Each issue had countless little masterpieces scribbled in random corners of each page. And that brought back names I didn't even know I remembered. Don Martin (master of odd sound effects), Dave Berg (The Lighter Side...), Antonio Prohias (Spy vs. Spy) and Mort Drucker. These guys were my heroes growing up, because I wanted to be a cartoonist too. I wasn't bad, but nowhere near talented enough to make a living at it. Oh well. On the first trip to the grocery store every month I'd scan the magazine rack and snag the latest issue of Mad. My mom would just roll her eyes and add it to the pile at the checkout. She never complained much because I would read them cover to cover. Heck, most of my popular culture came from those pages, as I read parodies of the movies of the day - movies I'd never see in their original versions. I'd carefully fold each back cover to find their secret message (thanks to Al Jaffe), and cover my lunchbox with Mad stickers trumpeting inane sayings. Once my brother got old enough, he started to get Cracked magazine, and I always looked down on him for it. Cracked was funny (remember "Shut up's"?), but it wasn't the original, ya know? I have a box of old Mad magazines in my basement that I rescued from my parents house a few years ago. I was actually kind of amazed that they had kept them for all those years. I was proud to introduce my kids to 'the usual gang of idiots'. Update: While doing some research for this post, I found references to early illustrations done by Basil Wolverton. I loved his work, but only found it in the complilations and paperbacks. He was a little before my time. Also, fans should check out Doug Gilford's Mad Cover Site, especially his very cool cover trivia pages.Posted by: Ted at 08:35 PM | Comments (47) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Seriously
If you’ve read any of these, then you know what its all about. This is the personal stuff, the things I need to vent about or get off my chest in an attempt to de-stress myself. I do a little of that inside the extended entry. Read it or not, it’s up to you.
Posted by: Ted at 07:56 PM | Comments (45) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
oooooh-kay
I was jes' chillin' last night and caught an interesting program on TV. Listed as Bram Stoker's Burial of the Rats, it stared Adrienne Barbeau and lots and lots of other scantily clad ladies. And rats. Although they're not treated all that kindly (there are a couple of rat deaths), they are an integral part of the story. Did I mention scantily clad ladies? We're talking serious leather bikini's and topless dancing. And rats. And scantily clad ladies.
It was on the Showtime Beyond channel, Victor.Posted by: Ted at 07:53 AM | Comments (50) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
I looked into it a little further, and it was a made-for-TV Showtime production. That explains the maximum boobage. Apparently these weren't normal rats either, groups of them could strip a skeleton clean quick enough to make piranha jealous.November 28, 2003
Hoser, eh?
Build your own outdoor ice rink. Link courtesy of the Hockey Pundits.
Posted by: Ted at 12:24 PM | Comments (43) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Feeling good
Lynn from Reflections in d minor reflects on why Thanksgiving is special to Americans. This is a beautiful bit of writing and absolutely correct too.
President Bush visits the troops in Iraq for Thanksgiving. This man is amazing, and that was the perfect thing to do at the perfect time. While I'm admiring leadership, let's give Hillary Clinton a hand as well, for visiting troops in Afghanistan over Thanksgiving. I've spent holidays working on the flight line, and visits like this are very much appreciated. And although I'm at work today, that's a good thing too because Mookie and mom are putting up Christmas decorations. It's nice to come home and find that my only job is to haul boxes back up into the attic. Oh yeah, it was a pleasant surprise this morning to find myself alone atop the standings in my Fantasy Hockey League. The top five or six teams have been tight all season, and it changes every day, but this is the first time I've been in first place all by myself. Woot!Posted by: Ted at 07:16 AM | Comments (44) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Build It - 1
I’m going to start a series of posts where I’ll build a basic model rocket kit online. The idea is to show the process step by step, including pictures and passing along tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way, while you follow along and build your own rocket.
I’ve asked a few people about this idea, and there seems to be some interest in it. Please feel free to ask questions as we progress, and hopefully we'll see some pictures as folks build and launch their rockets. Once again, there will be a separate category just for these, called “Build It”, and the main part of the post will be in the extended entry so you don’t have to deal with it if you don’t want to.Posted by: Ted at 06:11 AM | Comments (47) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Cheesecake review
A while back I made a quick and easy Caramel Apple Cheesecake using Jennifer's recipe. I also said that I wanted to try a variation using pineapple, so I made one for Thanksgiving.
The 'old-fashioned' recipe called for only 1 package of cream cheese, and the addition of 1 tsp of lemon juice. This resulted in a frothier and lighter cheesecake. Not better, just different. I used crushed pineapple (well drained) and coconut instead of apple, with 1/2 cup reserved for topping after baking. I also sprinkled more toasted coconut on the top. Result? It's good. Mookie prefers the apple version, but she likes apple better anyways. I like 'em both, and they're easy enough to do two at the same time. In fact, maybe three, because I'm thinking about cherries with slivered almonds and maybe a splash of brandy, drizzled with dark chocolate...Posted by: Ted at 05:35 AM | Comments (45) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 27, 2003
Giving Thanks
Today and every day, I'm thankful for all of my online friends and visitors who stop by. Your comments and encouragement mean more to us than you know. I also appreciate the time and effort you put in when you post to your own blogs. Reading you is like visiting with friends.
The blogosphere is an inside-out universe, where we can pour out our hearts and souls for all to see, writing things we wouldn't dream of saying to friends at work or church. Yet for all this honesty, the most common external details of our lives are hidden from each other. I may have a good idea of your fears and hot-buttons, even of your kinks, yet I don't have a clue as to what kind of car you drive or what your voice sounds like. I'm richer for having known all of you. Thank you, and have a Happy Thanksgiving.Posted by: Ted at 08:03 AM | Comments (49) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Anything will fly if you stuff a big enough motor in it
For some reason, rocketeers like to add the words 'of death' to the description of unconventional designs. The first time I'd heard this, I was admiring a huge fiberglass pyramid that was being prepared for launch. When I asked what it was, the owner proudly informed me that it was the Flying Pyramid of Death.
It's like an unwritten rule or something. I've seen the Flying Tetrahedron of Death, the Flying Traffic Barrel of Death (including flashing traffic warning light), and the Flying Port-o-potty of Death (aka Our Stinkin' Rocket). But people soon enough branched out into things 'of Doom' and 'of Destruction'. And of course, anything can inspire a rocketeer. For instance, the Vatsaas Brothers built and flew The Happy Birthday Party Napkin Rocket of the Apocolypse. The source for that should be self-explanitory. Well, except for the 'Apocolypse' part, but we already covered that. You should visit their site and admire what can be wrought of insane genius.Posted by: Ted at 06:48 AM | Comments (46) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
More non-Rocket Rocket Stuff
From the same artist who brought us the Oz painting from yesterday, say hello to Rocket the cat.
Now this is guaranteed to steam your buns! The Rocket Dog frankfurter vending system. It's Ergonomic too. Be still my heart.Posted by: Ted at 06:18 AM | Comments (45) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 26, 2003
Seriously
Ok, if you’ve read the first couple of these, then you know what its all about. This is the personal stuff, the things I need to vent about or get off my chest in an attempt to de-stress myself. I do a little of that inside the extended entry, along with the story of the birth of my son. Read it or not, it’s up to you.
Posted by: Ted at 08:45 AM | Comments (50) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Where would Jack Nicholson sit?
Posted by: Ted at 07:20 AM | Comments (46) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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