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Thursday, September 28, 2006

SpaceShipTwo ... video

Hot. http://www.space.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=Virgin_galactic01
http://www.space.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=Virgin_galactic02

In other news, SpaceDev's ship is also supposed to make it around the same time frame. We will see, I got more faith in Scaled, but I got my money on SpaceDev

Iran prediction

I had a thought yesterday, and thought I should put it on paper.

If we have to go to war with/attack Iran, I believe that we might unveil a new weapons system.

We won't if we only blockade Iran (much better plan, cut off gasoline and the country implodes).

I hope we don't have to get into a confrontation with Iran, but it is just something that I thought of.

SpaceShipTwo

Check out this post... http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/first-images-of-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-cabin-203802.php

Neat pics, I should check virgin galactic for more.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Pope's Words

ACE said it well. The very thing that the Pope was saying became true. Wtf is that? That would be like the Pope saying, "United States, you invade all sorts of countries!" and then we invade Iran or North Korea. And then we get mad at the Pope for saying we invade countries. I also think the Pope is a weeny. He SHOULD NOT back down. He said what someone else said, quoted them. The quote is mostly being used out of context, and the whiny muslims can just STFU. People should be allowed to say things that are true, or were true. When they don't or they apologize for telling the truth, it is a travesty.

DO NOT back down. The fact that they firebomb a church over some remarks that are 600 years old just says that they have not changed. Not all of them mind you, but the militant subset. They are looking for reasons to be pissed off. They compare the Pope to Hitler, but the closest thing to Hitler and the holocaust is themselves. The Holy See did not send bombs into mosques. The Holy See does not want to conquer the lands around him and make a huge empire where only one race/religion exists. Some muslims currently have Hitler-like ambitions, and we need to wake up. Before another world war scale war.


Airborne Combat Engineer: Muslim rage against the Pope

Never in the history of Christianity has a pope been proven correct so quickly and demonstrably.


Sunday, September 17, 2006

Roomba

My mom recently wanted to keep up with the Jones. She bought a Roomba. (and a car mounted GPS, but that is another story)

I was tasked with setting up the Roomba today. She hadn't taken it out of the box. I plugged in the base station, put the battery in the Roomba, and started it going. That thing works pretty well. Misty didn't care about it, the casts didn't care about it, and it wasn't annoying. It was fun to watch. It cleaned the downstairs living room very well. It even did under the couches.

It has this mode that when it finds a "particularly dirty spot" it will go into "deep clean mode" and go over that section more. This happened on a section of the carpet, and I could see why. That is pretty neat. If you have seen our living room, it is a pain in the ass to vacuum. This thing had no problems. It changed from rug->hardwood floor->rug easily. It pushed a trash can into a corner out of the way. We left it running while we loaded the washing machine.

Matt and I were moving a washing machine and spilled some water. As we were loading it into the truck, we joked about how we hoped it wouldn't eat any of the animals. As luck would have it, it did get into trouble. It found the spilled water, and was trying to suck it up. I freaked out, dried it, and everything was ok. I was surprised about how much STUFF it picked up. It is currently charging, and I set it up to start cleaning again at 8:00 pm on Sunday (today). Hopefully the family is watching tv during prime time and freaks out.

You program the Roomba with a remote control. You can hook the remote control up to your computer with usb. I don't know why (but I can think of a few reasons). You can steer the Roomba with the remote, or schedule when it will vacuum. It won't fall down stairs.

You can make "virtual walls" and it came with two of those units. It automatically finds the base station for charging when it is needed. All in all, it was fun and did what it was supposed to do. I think that if my mom can remember to clean it out it will be worth it's cost.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Saturday Game + Sunday Turkish festival

So we went to the game. Adam, Andy, Dana, Hakeem, Jeremy, Nic, Sara, Todd, and Zb. Sorry Todd, your name is next to Zb, it was the alphabet's fault. We went in the North gates, but walked to the South side to sit behind the Gold-fellas. They are these guys that paint up in yellow and have bright yellow wigs. Adam is/was a member, so we got to sit right behind them. Second row! Sara and Nic are the best fans in the Stadium. Everyone else not in our group definitely needs more school spirit. We as a group were much more lively than the goldfellas, they disappoint. Adam was the "b" in "bulldogs", the name of the other team's mascot. We pulled Buzz, the mascot up into the stands, and everyone except me molested Buzz in some way. I had gone to get water. Nic and Sara were yelling at Buzz the whole game to come and visit us. Zb left early and missed the excitement. We destroyed the other team, 3rd or 4th string QB was in by the end of it.

We went to ice cream at marble slab post game. I had peanutbutter/strawberry w/Oreo mixins. MEOW. MEEEEOOOOOWWWW. I think we freaked out some little kids. Boots needs to be shared, his meow is designed to wake the dead. We yelled cheers and talked to people stuck in traffic on tenth street on the way home. We got word that one of our friends fell asleep early, and we almost drew on his face with a permanent marker. We picked up a Lisa along the way and went to Rocky Mountain for pizza. I think the waitress was disappointed in the lack of beer ordering. "We'll take a water for everyone", and her face fell. We ended up back at my place, and festivities resumed until late into the night.

I went to the Turkish festival hoping for some shawarma, but it was not meant to be. I did have some humus and other assorted Turkish foodstuffs. We got there kind of late, so we basically had time to eat, and then left for football. It was an epic game! between Denisse, Sara, and I, and Erica, Melissa, and Steph. My team won under the great Quarterbacking of Sara, and the running skillz of Denisse. I had one touchdown, and the last was Denisse out running Steph and Erica. Thanks to Steph for insisting that we play, I need to play more random games in parks.

Friday-Saturday Morning

Well, Friday is pretty easy. I had a splitting headache and went to bed early. I ate dinner, and took a nap. Woke up, and turned three times, and fell asleep till morning.

Saturday was a more interesting day. I went with Andy, Josh, and Sara to a gun show. I bought a rail so that I could mount the red dot that I bought earlier. The rail/mount was on backorder, and it was the same price so I canceled the backorder-ed part. Bad news though, the rail is not the right size for the rings, so I am still not able to mount the optics. AND! I need a new case because it won't fit with the optics installed. A vendor tried to sell me on a 40 round 1911 mag, but I thought better of it (what would I need a 40 round mag for? ... ZOMBIES)

Andy is now the proud owner of an SKS. He bought a sling for it, and the person that sold it to him is an interesting character. Coyote Frank was giving beads out to women at the show, "Hey lady! want some beads? You don't have to do nothing for um". Turns out he went to Troy (the school that we are playing next week), and played on the football team. He told us that we were like the 70's gang, all we needed was an Ar-ab. I suppose that he thought that Fez was an arab? I am not entirely sure... HOPEFULLY we see him at the game, it is sure to be amusing. His card has a picture of him and his wife in a bathtub, old west style. They "weren't naked". Her face is blurred so that "some punk kid doesn't tell his momma and get her fired" from a teaching job. We "learned" that Andy is squeaky clean, but that was expected. Personally*, I think that Andy isn't squeaky clean, but that the FBI just had his file on its desk.

Josh found a nice shotgun that "felt right", and I have to agree with him. It was a pump action with a pistol grip, no stock (but came with one). We both preferred the plastic stock SKS with a pistol grip (also the folding stock version), but admit that it might not have been as fiscally responsible for the intended use.

Sara believes that grenade launcher attach points are overkill. I wonder what she will do when the zombies come! or the Giant mutated spiders (we watched the end of eight legged freaks). I would agree with her, but I think that the point of having one is that it IS absurd. You can't really get a grenade to launch, so it really is useless.

After the show we went to get some items from my sister's place. Turns out it is near Andy's childhood home, so we toured his neighborhood also.

*not my real opinion, Andy is of outstanding character. (well, not outstanding, but at least he isn't a convicted felon)

BRAINS .. mmmm .. BRAINS

Friday, September 08, 2006

Congress Fun

ok, weird....

H.RES.981 : Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 503) to amend the Horse Protection Act to prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption, and for other purposes.

an amendment to the same,
H.R.503 : To amend the Horse Protection Act to prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption, and for other purposes.

finally! something about Sudan!
H.RES.992 : Urging the President to appoint a Presidential Special Envoy for Sudan.

new coins!
H.R.2808 : To require the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins in commemoration of the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

again, FINALLY I hope something happens. We can't say that we care, when we really don't.
S.RES.559 : A resolution calling on the President to take immediate steps to help stop the violence in Darfur.

wtf? S.3867 : A bill to designate the Federal courthouse located at 555 Independence Street, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, as the "Rush H. Limbaugh, Sr., Federal Courthouse".

Eh, at least they are reading new bills lately. They are pretty big slackers. I got two posts on recent news articles, but I am searching for the time to write them.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

And so it begins...

Ahmadinejad Purges

I hope that the world will begin to understand. These things seem to follow a set pattern. First the people lose freedoms. Then the government begins to remove those that oppose it, within the government and within the new generation. How do you remove people in the new generation before they cause trouble? Why by removing their teachers and other people that encourage the people to think for themselves. He has "cracked down on independent journalists, web sties, and bloggers". There is a VERY good reason that we have the Bill of Rights. It is designed to contain rights that allow for a peaceful revolution, and hopefully, liberty for all.

The people need to be aware of what is happening around them, and also learn/share ideas and information with the world. This is accomplished through the media and connections with other people (internet). The professors that he has the most problems with are the very same professors that are working for more freedom of expression. They must be on to something, and he must be scared of it.

The purges have not happened yet. And that is an important point. We will see how much power he really has.

Iran is on a very slow motion train wreck, and following a pattern we have all seen before. It is our duty as part of mankind to detect, see, and avoid this problem. (DSA is a term that they were using for automated TCAS type stuff (collision avoidance in airplanes)).

Btw, they need to allow women into soccer games. They obviously have never been to a football game with drunken hot chicks. (more so because they don't drink, or play football). Good thing the Iranian chicks showed up for the world cup.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Experience

"Experience has been defined, perhaps a bit lightheartedly, as just a sequence of nonfatal events."
- Engineering Design, 3rd Ed. by G. Dieter.

Woah - Ethanol

Ethanol conducts electricity.

Football - Notre Dame

I went to the Notre Dame - GT football game this weekend. It was fun for the first half, then our liquids ran out. Oh, and we started losing. We started out good, but then would not stop the Notre Dame advances, or advance ourselves. I think we scared some of the people next to us. I am going to start saving up for a turkey leg next game, this dude next to use got one and I almost stole it. "free with running" was the motto of the day. Beer was plentiful, even though I don't really like beer. These guys gave us beer in exchange for our opinion on the movie Zoolander. I got beer from Bill for greasing the wheels of game-viewing. I felt bad about the Zoolander beer, I didn't drink it and just brought it home for someone else. After the game, we went to Krystals for a sackful. I found out that conveniently the weekend that I am going out of town they are having an eating contest. Oh well, next year I suppose.

We had a housewarming party for nic, pam-peter, and peter's roommate on sunday. Highlights include:

  • Andykerr getting pwned by a drunken girl
  • Excellent pork chops and brauts
  • Swimming and other associated watersports (and I do mean watersports!) (frisbee, not the other kind!)
  • Great beans and decent daiquiris that somehow had no ice particles. I am still mystified.
  • The magic of youtube
  • R-thomas style water drinking (I try not to order any food from that place)
I finished my book on Lean Manufacturing, it was a very interesting and informative read.