Well, with another autocross this weekend, I guess I should probably talk about the last one: Pics: Got first in my class, but it was a slaughter: No one else had race tires, nor any experience autocrossing. Capture of my times: 40.186(1) 40.604(1) 37.637 37.375 38.955(1) Best time: 37.375 I had the victoracers running at 50/45 psi throughout the first 4 runs, and then had a wild ride on the last run with 40/45 pressures. ...
Seen on a Wendy’s drive-thru window: “Picture menus available on request” ergo, “If you can’t read this message, we have menus you can use.” Another famous one: “Can’t read? Call 1-800-….”
Muhahahaha….PEEPS!
Dictionary.com/quotidian Everyday; commonplace: “There’s nothing quite like a real… train conductor to add color to a quotidian commute” (Anita Diamant). Recurring daily. Used especially of attacks of malaria. “Anglo-Saxon is a livlier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words” (Strunk + White, p77). Still, cool word Laura!
Okay, from the same article: Wow, imagine that– students making rational decisions. So of course policy makers should be worried. Let’s see, you can: a) Work your ass off for 4-5 years in, what is usually, a very difficult academic program. Then you can, if you are super lucky, find an engineering job where your employers will work you to death. You will live under the cloud of being reminded that your salary is 5X higher than those equally talented people from 3rd world countries, any one of which could be brought in on a moments notice to occupy your chair (h1b, L1), should you stumble. Of course, since there is an near infinite supply of technical labor available to US companies, you will have zero salary mobility. Well, ok I’m exagerating, you won’t have *zero* salary mobility– you’ll have some *nagative* salary mobility, which is what is currently happening to most of the engineers I know. ...
Daily wisdom from slashdot Joe was an engineer. He worked hard, studied hard and took pride in his work. He was also faithful to his wife, raised two children to be solid members of the community and attended church every Sunday. Finally after a full life Joe died in his sleep one night. On awakening he found himself facing St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. Peter looks in his book, and finds that Joe is not in the Authorized list. He looks at Joe and says, sorry!, pulls the trapdoor lever and Joe starts falling. Joe yells “Wait there must be some Missstaaakeeee”. ...
Back in the halcyon days of high school (»shudder«), I had a friend name Shannon Bradley. Shannon was a somewhat portly, though pretty blonde girl who was in French class with me for 3 years. At least once a week, she would sit down just across from my secret crush Amy Roberts swivel around to me (sitting right behind my Valkyrie Mountain Goddess Amy, natch!) and say: Harold I’m going to complain ...
My compliments to Autoextremist.com for making my day: BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard. SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end. ...
Great! The biggest competitor for the MINI comes from….BMW ITSELF: Interior: Basically, what you have here is a rear-drive MINI, folks: A premium small car (priced in the low $20k’s). BMW swears it’s not going to bring the car here, because it feels it will “dilute the brand image”. Okaaaaay….a MINI shares about 50% of its mechanical & electrical parts with a 3-series Beamer (the 5-link rear suspension is basically identical, minus the driveline). Has that ‘diluted the brand’. What I read here is: “We don’t want to deal with the plebian VW crowd.” ...
As I got up this morning, I heard an interview on abc “Good Morning America” with Richard A. Clarke, former Whitehouse advisor on counter-terrorism. Clarke alleges that immediately after 9/11, the Bush Whitehouse was looking for a way to go into Iraq, using Iraq as a scapegoat. I don’t know why, but above the din of pundits and allegations, I found this man compelling. In interests of balance, GMA had Condolezza Rice on immediately afterwards to allow equal time for rebuttal. Rice’s statements were diffuse, ad hominem, and I got the distinct impression she was lying. ...
Thank you, fark!
Requiem for a contractor: Offshoring has taken an interesting twist, as those who seem most vulnerable at the moment are not the expensive regular employee’s you’d expect, but rather their cheaper, domestic contractor bretheren: “Seems like if you’ve been a contractor around here long enough, they either hire you on full time or fire you. Paying you by the hour is too expensive, when India’s an option” Maung, I hope you land on your feet, you happy little man. Keep reading those books, and don’t worry: America will come to her senses one day.
Okay this is just cool: Google has a new application where you can find businesses and people who live around you: local.google.com
Okay, so I’ve had car fever since the blasted auto show on Saturday, so in hopes of assuaging the Gods of Capitalism, I’ve weaned myself down from wanting to buy a new Toyota Tacoma: (I will have one of these puppies one day, folks: Utterly reliable, simple, easy-to-work-on, efficient, and still with that simple truck image. These little workhorses aren’t poseurs. They need to make ’em with a diesel engine from their European Yaris. Imagine, a little workhorse like this getting 40 mpg, with gobs of torque) ...
Well, I’m about to join the ranks of the digital revolution. (::sigh::) Finally going to buckle-down and get a digital camera. Normally I’d go whole-hog and get a digital SLR, but they’re pricey ($1500 to $10k) and I just like shooting w/film, especially my Voigtlander rangefinder. Anyway, got one off ebay for pretty cheap: A Nikon Coolpix 3500. Here’s a pic of one: It’s 3.2 Megapixel, which is reasonably high-res for my use. ...
MotoringFile: A little plagiarism is good for the soul (from Gabe Bridger’s site): Mini designer Frank Stephenson explains what a can of Budweiser and the new MINI have in common: “We worked a number of 24-hour days trying to get the full-sized clay model completed for presentation to the board of directors,” says Stephenson. “So when we finished the job with just hours to spare, I thought it appropriate that the team have a beer or two to celebrate. That’s when I spotted the problem.” ...
Quick one: Q: What’s the difference between a porcupine and a BMW? A: A porcupine has pricks on the outside.
it seems odd to me, but George W Bush is seeming more and more the sacrificial lamb of America. Caught betwixt corporate interest, ultra-conservative isolationists, and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, his policies can’t cover all the bases. If oil prices and inflation rise, he’s one misstep away from being the Republican Jimmy Carter: Well meaning but inept, swept aside for the politician of the moment. In Carter’s case, that was Ronald Reagan, who seduced the people with his eternal optimism, hard-line Cold War tactics, and military reinvigoration. The Good Son of the moment would seem to be Kerry, who appeals (if secretly) to many in the electorate, for several reasons: ...
Depressing blog of the day: My dreams have been trending towards the apocalyptic lately…no real idea why: Last night I was reading on fark about some pending announcement from NASA about a “significant” event in the solar system. So, of course, some fellas are making cracks about some comet or asteroid being inbound and them not wanting to tell us about it. So, I promptly go to sleep (well, at 1:30 am, but more on that later) and have this ultra-vivid dream about the End of the World: For some reason, I was at work, and the skies were dark and ominous. We were all looking out the window of Building 082 towards the south, and I got hints of conversation: ...
Life after the Video Game Crash: Gaming simply can’t survive that way. There’s a reason why you can still see a motion picture a century after they hit the scene, but Vaudeville shows are extinct. There’s a reason why people still go to operas while live gladiator contests and public witch burnings are both rare and poorly-attended. In the entertainment world there are wives and then there are mistresses, long-term relationships and drunken one-night stands. ...