A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
Those miscellaneous things that just must be published.
Tonight’s den meeting was a blast! I really enjoy watching the scouts have a good time. We made 2 liter bottle rockets! They worked great.
We used this design (may have to view it via Google Cache). Another good link and a variation (check out the launch mechanism on that one!). You can even add a parachute. I want to build the pvc launch pad.
Serenity is being used to promote gender equality.
The move is a direct effort to help raise funds for Equality Now, one of writer/director Joss Whedon’s favorite charities.
Equality Now is an international organization which works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world through the mobilization of public pressure.
[Source]
Get your Internet over cable; Get your television over the Internet.
Sometimes I read something I want to save for later but bookmarks in a web browser do not cut it. Often I am not on the computer where I will need the reference later. Ergo, blogmarks!
In today’s blogmarks, we have How to see in the dark which I mark not for the information but rather to grab the rss feed when I am back downstairs. I like comparing these DIY pages. Speaking of, Make: (which I looove! Next issue should be coming out soon. Thank you Carmat!!) is coming out with a new magazine called Craft:.
Next up, 450+ helpful freeware utilities. I blogmark this not because I want to jump in and use these utilities. I don’t trust them! However, I troubleshoot enough computers and do enough geeky things that I may find this a good reference. Someday I’ll look them over.
Brings us to the New York Times, Students Searched Without Warning
the new searches would be used to confiscate not only weapons but also an array of “dangerous instruments,” as well as cellphones
Oh yeah, get those dangerous cell phones!
He advised any principal whose school faced the surprise searches to postpone any tests scheduled for first period. “Give the exam the next day,” he said.
Way to put the importance on education there Bloomberg!
And the final blogmark, Portable DVD player to include slot for Gameboy Advanced games.
Do you have trouble parallel parking? If you have a good hand brake and front wheel drive like this Honda Civic then you too can parallel park perfectly everytime! Or you could do it like they do in Japan. My favorite is the Mini-Cooper sliding into the space.
I went to 9th and 10th grade in Medford, New Jersey. I went to 11th and 12th in Germantown, TN. Because of the differing state laws on when you could get a driver’s permit, I missed out on driver’s ed and instead had private lessons. Johnny “Dr. Fever” Caravella pulls up to my house in a beat up Nova. To learn to parallel park we drove to Memphis State University where I practiced until we bumped into one of the cars then we would pull ahead to find another spot until we bumped into those cars and repeated the process. Eventually, I became pretty good at parallel parking.
Michael had a warning from his heart and may have a little bypass in his future. Head over to No Silence Here and wish him well!
Have you heard any weird booms and then perhaps been knocked off your feet?
A series of strange window-rattling booms or rumbles have been heard and felt in recent months in Alabama, North Carolina, Mississippi, and, on April 4, in San Diego County. …nobody seems to know what the hell caused the disturbance. …"My garage door is double steel and it weighs about 500 lbs.," a man in University City wrote. "It was rattling back and forth like a leaf in the wind for about 3 or 4 seconds." … one of the leading explanations for the San Diego disturbance is that the military is testing a top-secret spy plane called the Aurora…
The military denies knowledge of such a plane. [Source]
This Blog Is Full of Crap has a game called The Dead Pool in which my wife participates. They are having their 17th caption contest and I’ve decided to enter with the picture below.
Ah! My last piece of concentration is lit. My last stick of Satya Sai Baba Nag Champa Agarbatti is burning down. May we never go to war with Bangalore!
In a vaguely related topic, I heard on NPR this morning that our politicans put legalization of marijuana on the table as a possible tax revenue to help pay for health care.
Honestly, instead of punishing him shouldn’t we give him a certificate for creativity and punish the girls for stupidity?!
MIAMI (Reuters) – A 76-year-old man claiming to be a doctor went door-to-door in a Florida neighborhood offering free breast exams, and was charged with sexually assaulting two women who accepted the offer…
One woman became suspicious after the man asked her to remove all her clothes and began conducting a purported genital exam without donning rubber gloves…
At least two women, both in their 30s, let him into their homes and he fondled…
Read that closely. She let a strange man into her house, allowed him to fondle her breasts, then stripped naked for him and only after she allowed him to touch her genitals did she realize he wasn’t wearing gloves and only then did she become suspicious. [Source]
Since we are pointing out victomizations in the news, the woman found alive in a landfill should not go without notice.
A landfill employee … saw Huston’s feet sticking out from a garbage pile…
…she was driving to work Thursday morning when a man wearing a ski mask and carrying a gun climbed into her car, demanding that she drive south. The next four nights… they drove through Washington, Oregon and California. They stopped occasionally at rest stops and service stations. …
here was no indication she had been assaulted.
I understand fear does strange things to a person. I understand kidnap victoms take to their captors. I don’t understand how in 4 days during which the car jacker had to sleep, and past numerous state troopers that they must have driven by, that she couldn’t draw attention to her situation. Flip the bird at a cop. Tap out SOS with the brake lights. Do something!
I tried hard, without success, to get my daughter to take a self-defense class and all I got was "I know all that stuff." I would like to hope that I am not enabling her to be a victomvictim. [Source]
This window has 3 tabs. One is for another post and two are parenting related.
Blogtopsites presents the top parenting blogs.
The Exploratorium brings us an invaluable list of hands-on activities! These include:
Apparently our bear problem is on the move.
A while back I wrote about a civil engineer/architect that showed removing traffic signals and signs actually reduced traffic accidents. Now I can’t find the article which means it very well could have been in my drafts lost in Blogger’s callous deletion of my account.
Notice that there are no red light cameras in this video. For that matter, there are no traffic lights, stop signs or person directing traffic. There are also no accidents.
Here in America, we have traffic lights.
A bit of news made the rounds not long ago. Texas was arresting drunks in bars (you know, fish in a barrel). They assumed these drunks would try to get behind the wheel of a car (guilty until proven innocent – doesn’t imply I want drunks on the road). After much ridicule and public protest, "Operation Last Call" has been "temporarily suspended."
[Source]
