Friday Fragments

They are rewriting the Hardy Boys series for modern kids. Instead of Frank saying, "Come on, I found a swell clue!", Joe will say things like "Cleaning up crime? I'm into it. Cleaning up parrot poop? Not so much". I am not kidding about this . I wish I were. Coming soon from the same publisher, The Lion, The Witch, and the Clothes Closet.

Here's a story about women who were disappointed they did not win free boobies . Women should stick with the boobies they already have -- most normal guys who don't live in a strip club will agree that natural boobies are always better than fake boobies. Boobies boobies boobies. Here are some more boobies in the news (Phyliss wants to go to the discotheque ). What do you think about boobies?

These ADD-inducing space-cadet posts are very fun to write. I admit though, that I blatantly stole the style from this blog . Originality is for the weak. I also plan on stealing the "News Highlights" idea from the ChompBlog next week. In exchange for my theft, I will plug their blogs. You should read them religiously, or just sort-of-daily if you are not the pious type.

Ethics Day

As part of an annual recertification at work, every employee must take an online course in Business Ethics. Because the denizens of the URI! Zone are a shady bunch, these highlights might be helpful in your own lives.

Socially aware customers are generally white, blonde, female, and braless (which raises two other ethical points, but only when it's cold outside).	Mimi is obviously more concerned with the fact that her coworker is a total tool-face.
In the corporate culture, the secret handshake generally requires you to slip exactly $427 in bribes as suavely as possible.	In this example, Marty wonders whether it was ethical to give that ear-training student a B+ in exchange for twelve bootleg copies of Practica Musica and MacGamut.
You know what else encourages whistleblowing? Traffic cops and marching bands.	James is also featured in the Sexual Harassment course, for his flesh-coloured shirt with boobies printed on the front.
However, ethical frameworks will not prevent your employees from being bitten by zombies.	When forming an ethics committee, always choose the pale guy with man-boobs as your Chief Officer.
Ethical frameworks are best conveyed to the company by strippers.	All issues will die in the "right and wrong" branch of the new corporate decision tree, because it is not in question form.
One ethical concern that has arisen is whether we should clone really fat sheep. Although it may feed many third world countries, the lambs run the risk of having body issues and baalimia. Always remember that you can't get something for mutton.	1) Do I really need this many pockets? 2) I could change into some jeans or introduce myself as "Party Pants". 3) If I change, I will not have as many pants-related pickup lines to use on Erika. 4) I'm sticking with the pants! 5) Erika chose Mark! What a tool-face.

Weird Search Day

or "How I stumbled upon the URI! Zone"

Today is Mike's (of Mike's and Chompy's) lucky day, since the number of strange Google searches are increasing exponentially, and leaving enough search terms for more than one Weird Search Day this month!

ask jeeves is it OK to fly 2 weeks after having wisdom teeth removed?
HEAVENS NO!! THERES A PRESSURE CHANGE WHEN YOU GO UP IN A PLANE AND ALL THE BLOOD IN UR BODY WILL SHOOT OUT THROUGH THE HOLES IN UR GUMS AND FLOAT AROUND THE CABIN. THEN ULL GO INTO SHOCK AND DIE. PLZ STAY HOME 4 AT LEAST 5 WEEKS. THX, JEEVES.

roller hockey "mike catania"

Mike Catania was the right winger on the Lowell Lunchies until he was permanently banned from the game after a post-game fight with the center of the opposing team, Mass(achusetts) Attack, who he claimed had struck his teammate in the eyeball.

what is the name of the penis-shaped building in Barcelona?

The proper name of the edifice is Torre Agbar, but you can just call it Richard.

marion barry party animal T-shirt

Review Day

There are no spoilers in these reviews.

Under and Alone by William Queen:
Reasonably priced at $6, this was the last Kindle book I read on our Washington-California vacation, and tells the tail of an ATF agent who goes undercover with a criminal biker gang for two years. It's a fast-moving page turner, even though some of the details seem more fictional than true. It also made me look shifty-eyed at all of the California bikers we'd pass daily around Santa Cruz and its environs.

Final Grade: B+

Neti Pot:
I've had some throat and nose congestion problems ever since my bout with strep throat last October, so I thought I'd try out a Neti Pot, which flushes out your sinuses with warm saltwater. It took a few tries to mix the right concentrate that didn't burn like drowning (1 cup warm-to-hot water and 1/4 teaspoon of salt per nostril, erring on the side of hotter and saltier), but I can tell that there are immediate results after flushing: it becomes almost effortless to clear the pressure in my Eustachian tubes. You don't actually get to see any grossness ooze out of your nose, which was kind of disappointing, but your airways definitely feel clearer in the aftermath. I've been using it daily for about two weeks now, so I can't tell if the effects will persist in the long-term. I also think "Neti Pot model" is an inauspicious way to break into the biz.

Final Grade: B+

Puzzle Dimension:
Puzzle Dimension is a turn-based 3D puzzler, where you navigate a ball around a maze collecting flowers so you can activate the exit. The ball is always on the "ground", so as you rotate onto a ramp, the entire world shifts around you (see a gameplay trailer here). The presentation is very nice, with old-fashioned Nintendo style music that refines into live instruments as you collect more and more flowers, and the puzzles get hard very quickly. There isn't much twitch-action, other than the need to hit spacebar to jump over gaps sometimes, but the camera can be a little tricky to maneuver when dealing with the more convoluted worlds.

Final Grade: B

Still at the Beach Day

I am still at the beach today, but destined to return on Sunday. To date, I've read three 500 page books and started a fourth, although one was really boring so I skipped most of the essays it contained. I haven't done much on the computer, because the Internet connection is DSL, and I can almost get a faster download speed than 0.8 MB/sec via telepathy. I did do the owner a favour by encrypting their open WiFi hotspot to match the settings they thought they had, based on the index card on their fridge -- this is why you always want to rent your beach house to a computer scientist.

If you hadn't heard, Anna and Ben had their third child, Kathryn Joy Ahlbin, on July 25. Since the middle naming scheme is to use words like Faith, Grace, and Joy, we can only hope that they will continue having babies until they run out of positive words and have to dip into less desirable names like Sloth and Greed. Congratulations!

What have you been up to this week?

Weekend Wrap-up

Friday night was Steak Night, with my already perfect New York recipe augmented by a thin layer of brown sugar. We sat on the back porch and listened to the pleasant sounds of "no bats in the walls of the house" until the mosquitoes ravaged our skin like juice-crazed toddlers in a ball pit full of tator tots.

I spent most of Saturday working on the URI! Zone and cleaning out years of coding cruft -- if you are still in the 0.4% of my visitors using IE 6 or 7, you will no longer be getting special treatment. The look and feel of the URI! Zone has not changed dramatically in several years, and this year's update will be more of a blue refinement than overhaul. I also updated my web server to eliminate the rule that prevents people from hotlinking my images for their Myspace profiles (circa 2005) and added a new rule to get rid of the Chinese Baidu searchbot that is obviously searching for defense secrets amidst all of my posts about Alias.

We had dinner out with friends at Page & Brian's on Saturday night, and Rebecca started the "everyone else is pregnant!" phase of life which I passed through a few years ago while she was in her "everyone else is getting married!" phase.

On Sunday morning, my dad helped to reseal the side of the house, where 18 vampire bats had taken up residence earlier in the week. My bat exclusion filter had worked wonders, as no bats had been on the premises for several days. He also brought over the first season of House of Cards, which Rebecca and I spent most of the evening devouring, in addition to wings from Joe's Pizzaria.

How was your weekend?

Random Chart Day: Washing Machine Timer Conversion Chart

Kleine Scheidegg Day

Running with the cows (we were caught in the stampede when the dogs came out to round them up for dinner).

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2016 album.

• Events
  • Made wrap steaks for a yoga "shirt-cutting" party on S 7/2 and hiked 10 miles at Signal Knob on S 7/3.
  
  
  • Had our traditional 4th at the Whitmer's in Taylorstown on M 7/4.
  
  
  • Went to Rebecca's work picnic in Olney Park on F 7/8.
  
  
  • Had meatloaf with my parents on S 7/9 and a delicious Fords dinner on S 7/10.
  
  
  • Picked up Rebecca's parents from the airport following their California adventure on T 7/12.
  
  
  • Hosted a Bastille Day BBQ on S 7/16, then tried out the tapas restaurant, Barcelona on S 7/17.
  
  
  • Attacked by angry yellow jackets while mowing on W 7/20.
  
  
  • Attended the Thao / Sufjan concert at Wolf Trap on F 7/22.
  
  
  • Had Game Night with the Smiths on S 7/23 and then ate at the V for dinner on S 7/24.
  
  
  • Planning to attend an "Acro Yoga" event with Rebecca this evening.


• Projects
  • Worked on no proposals this month while waiting for the backlog of 3 previous ones to be awarded (1 of which we won yesterday!), and even took a few extra days off here and there.
  
  
  • Nuked a yellow jacket nest with more Raid than necessary, in retribution for two stings.
  
  
  • Did no open source work. Reached level 190 in Overwatch.


• Consumerism
  • Got new tires and wipers for my car.
  
  
  • Downloaded all of the albums that Rebecca has ever gifted to me from her Amazon account and am reacquainting myself with them now.
  
  
  • Enjoyed watching seasons of Shameless and Halt and Catch Fire, and eagering taking in the second season of Fargo at the moment.

July's Final Grade: B+, way too hot, but a surplus of free time.

Weekend Wrap-up

We spent the weekend in Pennsylvania in the tiny town of Mill Run.

We drove 180 miles north with Maia on Friday in a reasonably non-annoying trip through Maryland, only stopping twice (once at a rest stop with a playground that Maia completely dissed and once at a Subway in Cumberland). We arrived at a fun farmhouse in the middle of a working farm with cows and friendly dogs. Our friends, Sayak and Elisa, drove in from Columbus, OH shortly after. That evening, we had pasta and salad on the wrap-around porch while watching the lingering fog from an afternoon thunderstorm.

On Saturday, we walked all over Ohiopyle State Park. Maia liked the waterfall and riding in Rebecca's toddler backpack (which she finally fits in). We had lunch at Brenda's Family Restaurant next to our rental house which was forgettable. In the afternoon (following a grocery run to the cleanest Walmart Supercenter in the world) we grilled shrimp and sausage and then took a walk around the farm to look at cows. After Maia went to bed, everyone else played Wingspan, a game that made me think of Cones of Dunshire featuring some delicious-looking miniatures.

Rebecca and Sayak woke up early for a 4 mile hike at Bear's Run Nature Preserve on Sunday. We spent the morning on the wrap-around porch leisurely reading and enjoying the mountain breezes. Even Maia was pretty chill about being in one place for once, playing with a school bus toy and pretending to be a tea kettle. In the afternoon, I went on Maia nap duty while the others took a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright house, Fallingwater. We had grilled salmon and s'mores for dinner, accompanied by one of the giant German shepherds, Zeus, and ended the night with a game of poker (Sayak won).

On Monday morning, we went our separate ways and ended up back in hot Virginia around 2 PM, just in time for Maia's nap.

How was your weekend?

Beach Day

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2022 album.

• Events
  • Went to the dentist on F 7/1.
  
  
  • Had Ghazaley and Mike over for vegan tacos on S 7/2.
  
  
  • Had Elizabeth, Renae, and Sammie over for the afternoon on S 7/3.
  
  
  • Rebecca, Maia, and Ian went to Lake Barcroft with Rebecca's parents on M 7/4. Rebecca and Maia went to the Herndon fireworks that night.
  
  
  • Maia got sick with a non-COVID sore throat on T 7/5. Rebecca caught it and had the sore throat for another two weeks.
  
  
  • Maia had a family birthday party on W 7/6.
  
  
  • Maia had a kid-filled birthday party with water activities on S 7/10.
  
  
  • Visited my parents with Maia on S 7/16 to teach them about their new smartphones.
  
  
  • Went to Taylorstown on S 7/17 for a belated 4th celebration.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went to Pohick Bay and Pirate's Cove with our Fredericksburg friends on H 7/21. I stayed home with Ian and tooled around Sterling.
  
  
  • Airport drop-off for my parents on F 7/22.
  
  
  • Lunch visit to the Smiths on S 7/23.
  
  
  • Maia and I drove to Alexandria on the hottest day of the heat wave to water plants, on S 7/24.
  
  
  • Ghazaley stopped by for a birthday visit after dinner on H 7/28.
  
  
  • Picked up my parents at the airport on F 7/29.
  
  
  • Rebecca, Maia, and Ian went to Lake Barcroft with Rebecca's parents on S 7/30.
  
  
  • Had Car and Jordan over for sushi dinner on S 7/31.


• Projects
  • Refilled the refrigerant in our cars with weak A/C on M 7/18.
  
  
  • Laid down some new mulch in the neighbourhood common area on S 7/30.


• Consumerism
  • Enjoyed watching Only Murders in the Building, Season One.
  
  
  • Still playing Fallout 76 at level 274.
  
  
  • No amazing new music or books this month.
  
  

July's Final Grade: B-, lots of heat and sickness without much downtime