And you thought the idea of a block of blue ice crashing through your house was a problem...
Once a balloon leaves the state, its toaster-size communications pod would jettison, deploy a parachute and fall to earth, where it would signal its position.
"We'd pay some guy a bounty, put in a new battery pack and send it off again," Knoblach said. Schafer said the repeater could be used indefinitely "unless it lands in a lake or gets run over by a truck."
Hey! Hey! It's disc golf for agoraphobes. (Mute first if you're at work.) Too funny.
I'm currently reading Crossworld by Marc Romano. Ostensibly (take that Marc!) it is about how he started doing crossword puzzles and his experience at a tournament. It might not sound like it but it is actually very funny if you can get past one thing: Marc seems to have a need to use Brobdingnagian words every few pages. Words like, well, Brobdingnagian, quidnuncs, or poitrine (whatever that means). I'm only half way through but if you have any interest in crossword puzzles and access to a good dictionary (like maybe one that has "poitrine" in it), I recommend it.
Decades ago, I started my work phase of life by joining the Arby's family. I have many funny stories from those days. One of them was about the "roast beef". I remember seeing this stuff before it went into the oven and it was white, not beefy red as you might guess. I remembered it said something about the ingredients including ground beef. I remember thinking that it was quite strange.
Well, I just happened to be thinking about Arby's, went to their website and found, in their nutrition guide, a list of ingredients in their Roast Beef:
Trimmed boneless beef chunks (minimum 70%) combined with chopped beef for a maximum of 12% fat. Contains up to 9.0% of a self-basting solution of water, salt, sodium phosphate.After my summer at Arby's, I didn't eat there again until this past year.
I get my daily dose of Dilbert delivered directly, um, damn, out of d-words. Anyway, I read them on the Internet. Yesterday's was one of the funniest and most irreverent I'd ever read and I wondered whether any newspapers would not have run it.
According to his blog, Scott Adams* actually produced two versions and you can read them both and see what you think.
* - I originally wanted this sentence to begin "According to Scott Adams blog" but I knew I needed an apostrophe in there somewhere. Adams'? Adams's? Adam's? Maybe it's like Attorney General and it's Scott's Adams? When in doubt, simply avoid the situation altogether.
This morning on the way to work I did something I haven't done for many months, I listened to Howard Stern. The weird part is that I don't have a Sirius radio.
I was just listening to my normal station when I pulled up to light. I was directly behind a van. I'm guessing that the van had Sirius and used a transmitter set to the same frequency as the station I was listening to and, voila, there's Howard. I only got to hear a couple minutes but it sounded like he was talking to a guy who used to push the censorship button and one of the stations he was on. He was just bitching and whining about that sucked and how it's so great to be on satellite, blah, blah, blah.
So, thanks Howard (and the van driver) for the sneak peak. You reminded me why I stopped listening and it seems nothing much has changed. My curiosity satisfied, I surely will not be getting satellite radio any time soon.
Answer to the previous puzzler: on Monday I posted that Captcha thing.
The correct answer was 2. cogkkvw. (highlight to view answer)
About 15 years ago I went to the movies with my friend and her future husband. (I don't recall the name of the movie.) FH was sitting by the aisle, then my friend, then me. After the movie was over, FH and I got up to leave (FH actually started up the aisle) but my friend just sat there. After a few seconds I realized she wasn't making any effort to go.
"You okay?" I asked. FH meanwhile realized we were not behind him and returned. Clearly she was not okay and we both sat down and waited for her to gather herself together. The entire theater emptied, the credits finished, they were almost done cleaning the theater for the next show before we got back up to leave.
I guess my point is that some movies can have powerful effects on some people.
Last night I watched Crash and although I was able to walk after watching it, I found it to be a powerful and disturbing movie. I highly recommend it. As usual, I had no idea what the movie was about before seeing it and won't give away the plot. If you must know what it's about you can click the link above but I personally think it'll play better if you go in blind.
The picture you see to the right is one of those "captchas" they use to ensure comments are being written by people and not bots. I stared at this one for quite a while wondering whether it was
Even a Steelers or Seahawks fan would have to admit that yesterday's games were, if not downright boring, at least unsuspenseful (like that's a real word). How does this bode for the upcoming Superbowl? Make your voices heard!
There's nothing like a good bargain story to put a smile on your face. This particular one reminds me of the guy who bought thousands of chocolate pudding cups (for about $0.25 each) to get the lids which were worth 100 American Airlines miles (depending on who you ask, 100 miles is worth between $1 and $2).
Here's the bargain in a nutshell. At a supermarket called Meijer (I don't know where they have stores) if you buy six blocks of Kraft 1/3 Less Fat Cream Cheese ($0.99 each) then the register will print out two $4 coupons good for your next shopping trip. Take these coupons, get six more blocks of the cream cheese plus whatever else you want for around $2. Check out and receive, you guessed it, two more $4 coupons. Repeat.
The following excerpt from one of the posts show the lengths (depths?) some people will go for a bargain.I had an entire cart full of crap - spaghetti, ready make pasta dishes, frozen foods, canned foods, lunch meat, bread, hot dogs, you name it, it was in there. My cart was literally overflowing. I went to grab a second cart to transfer the bags into after I rang the food out and started the process. Scan, Scan, Scan, Scan, hand coupon to cashier, pay 30-some cents on credit card, sign, put bag in cart, repeat. This worked about 20 times, then the coupon printer stopped printing the coupons. Uh oh! It seems the coupon printer figured out the jig was up and wanted to scam me - it had paper and the register attendant checked it... All was well with the printer!
My favorite part is that last sentence where the guy was actually re-ringing his paid for cream cheese so as to get the extra $2 worth of free stuff. Classic! Read the whole FatWallet thread here (this post is on page 5 but was rated poor(!) so you might need to change the "ratings filter" to see it).
But the coupon printer in lane number two didn't know anything about this, so I switched stations. Again, after 20 times or so the printer didn't print anymore. Same story, the printer had paper, etc, so I switched to another lane. I had a group of employees watching me and laughing, nobody cared. The guy that was highest in command (albeit not a manager) said, "Well, the coupon is legit, he's just a smart shopper!"
Now, I ran out of cream cheese after about the 8th order, so I was transferring the bags of food that I had already purchased back to the "staging platform" of the uscan and re-ringing the cream cheese over and over again.
Long weekend in Florida visiting family. I JetBlue'd down and weather caused delays both ways (not surprising). I think JetBlue gets high marks mostly because the "old line" airlines coach service has been so awful the last decade (or two). The announcement flight attendant on the way down was quite the comedian throwing in tidbits like "If you are sitting next to a child, or someone just acting like a child, put your mask on first..." Just before take-off, I noticed the woman sitting next to me reading the "Prayer for Air Travelers" which reminded me of the time I flew to Chicago in a February snowstorm. After I pointed out to the woman sitting near me that we had been circling for quite a while she said something along the lines of how if we crash she would get to go to heaven. Ahhhg! This woman is praying we'll crash!
It appears that 345 people were killed during the Hajj this year. And the blame game begins: Saudi government didn't deploy enough security, security forces didn't do what they should, pilgrims that didn't listen to rules or follow signs, or, my personal favorite, "one or two stupid people".
"It only takes one or two stupid people out of a couple of million to cause a tragedy like this."Yes, I'm sure there were only one or two stupid people at the Hajj, throwing stones at pillars that represent Satan.
Would you eat in a restaurant that had no lights and all the waitstaff were blind? You can try one in Paris and, soon, in London.
It certainly sounds like the kind of place I'd like to try at least once.
Update: Parlez vous Francais? Then read their menu.
In the world of sports injuries, this may be the most ludicrous. I've got a blister on my middle finger from playing disc golf (3 rounds this weekend). It is more interesting than bothersome. I guess it will develop into a callous eventually. Ah, the sacrifices we must make.
I'm no lawyer but I'd say that according to this law it would be a federal crime to read someone's e-mail without their permission.
I was watching Dr. 90210 and something struck me. It was a nipple. They normally don't show nipples so what was different this time? Here's the deal:
The person having surgery is a female-to-male transsexual. He is having a breast/nipple reduction. When they show the breast before and even during the surgey they blurred out the nipples like they normally do. Then the doctor got to the nipple reduction. As soon as he snipped away a part of the nipple and started sewing the smaller "more manly" nipple, they unblurred it. Utterly ridiculous.
