When Layla and I bought our house, the fantastic ~500 sq. ft. deck off the back end of the house was freshly built, but wasn't yet finished. This is pretty typical of the area, since you really have to wait for wood to dry out before you can seal it,...
I'm sure you're all getting a facefull of the iPhone madness today. The twins of gadget blogs have been posting non-stop about all of the excitement leading up to the product launch...which is all well and good, except that I'm finding it difficult to get my daily fill of low-thought...
Everyone dress for somewhere between 52°f and 66°f. And 30% of you bring umbrellas....
I'm guessing this bad boy is at least four inches across. I hate bugs....
And by explain, I don't mean pointing out that I'm too busy to post something substantial....
This just in: U.S. justice system delivers de-pantsing to member of justice system. I'm pleased....
I got to see a B-17 fly overhead in Kirkland today. I [heart] this city....
I've been using the same pair of running shoes since 2002. Not continuously. But they're starting to get really worn out, and I've noticed that my right ankle and calf develops a dull pain when running. My trainer (and others) have suggested that the shoes are about dead, and need...
Layla and I have been slowly making our way through CSI episodes over the last 18 months or so (thanks, Netflix). We've gotten through most of CSI and CSI: Miami, and are only now starting on CSI: NY—and one of the first CSI: NY episodes was Three Generations Are Enough,...
This came across English Russia recently: a recruiting advertisement for the Russian border guard service features a picture of Mt. Rainier in the background. Yes, the same Mt. Rainier parked just south of Seattle....
I got a certificate for a free massage when I finished the first half of the 20/20 program. That was like, three months ago...and the certificate is going to expire soon, so I set up an appointment for tomorrow morning. A massage is something I've never paid for on my...
Layla threw together mytwocats.org the other day, ostensibly to play around with Office Live. Hrm. I think she put together this page purely to annoy me....
Driving down to SeaTac on Friday, we got a rock to the windshield. This sucks. At nearly an inch in diameter, I think it's far too large to repair....
Layla and I watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated last week. It kicks ass. TFINYR exposes the MPAA rating system—the only major film rating system worldwide that relies on anonymous raters and opaque policies. The film explains how arbitrary the ratings can be, and then cracks into the way...
Many thanks to the gents who helped me celebrate one of the last nights I'll spend as a bachelor. Now, I need to pass out....
One of the cool parts about Forza Motorsport 2 is the ability to take photos in the game and then later download them off their website—Xbox Live handles the uploading and tagging with your Windows Live account. So here are the handful of shots I've taken recently. Classic sports car...
The best part is right at the beginning....
Mouser asked a good question this morning: how does Forza Motorsport 2 compare with the Gran Turismo franchise we've all come to know and love on the Playstation? Before I answer that, I should note that the last GT game I seriously played was GT3. I've cracked open GT4 a...
This is another cameraphone picture of the Boeing 747 LCF. I took this picture because I didn't think I had a shot of the LCF flying overhead. I realize now that I'm a huge dork and already posted about it. And note that I'm really surprised that this picture came...
I don't typically play video games, except when they're exceptionally good and I'm feeling exceptionally out of it. Well, Forza Motorsport 2 came out a few days ago, and I'm feeling way out of it. From the hour (or so) that I've been playing this, I've bought a VW GTI,...
My truck goes through a lot of fuel. It's got an ancient 390 cubic inch (6.5L) V8 topped with an even more ancient Motorcraft carburettor, and the whole boat weighs in at around 5,000 pounds dry. A substantial portion of the time I'm driving it, it's got lots of cargo...
I snapped this first picture on I-405 (no, I wasn't driving) on March 31 of this year. Today, at Lowe's, I spotted the same car. Yowch. Judging by the camber in the first picture, I don't suspect that rear tire lasts very long—and that's a bummer, since I'm guessing that...
I ran across something called supercooled water today. I've got no idea if this is completely legit or not, but here's what I've heard: Water, contrary to what you'd expect, takes some coercing to freeze properly. If it doesn't fall into the correct lattice structure when it reaches its freezing...
I ran across the Freakonomics blog earlier today. Lots of amusing stuff there. And holy crap, this guys posts more often than I do. Awesome!...
I lost part of my vision today in my right eye. I've got absolutely no idea why it happened, but it caused me to flip out. Essentially, I had some distortion in a ring around the perimeter of my right eye, and I had some loss of peripheral vision on...
I'm sure you're all (mostly?) aware of the Lego Mindstorms NXT microcontroller and associated peripherals, which give your Lego creations some level of programmable robotic behavior with a bare minimum of hassle. It's a well-targeted kit that weighs in around a few hundred bucks and delivers a programming experienced that's...
Since I'm sure you're all still so excited from yesterday's post, here's another picture of a truck exceeding its payload capacity. In this case, it's a 2wd Dodge 2500 longbed (so...a direct competitor to my 2wd 3/4 ton longbed, only newer) but it's far more heavily loaded than mine was....
In an attempt to weasel out of the lawn-thatching I promised yesterday, I decided to move some more dirt. About 7,000 pounds more. As you can see at right, the rear suspension on the Ford can't take much more than a solid cubic yard of topsoil. I'm guessing here that...
This is what I look like after I've moved two cubic yards (~4,000 lbs.) of topsoil into my back yard, and broken down another cubic yard of hard-packed dirt mounds into a level field. Tomorrow involves another cubic yard, and when I'm all done hauling dirt, I'm going to get...
This may be a little out there for some of you, but anyone who's ever driven on a racetrack (heck, even in traffic?) can probably appreciate what's going through this guy's head. What comes out of his mouth, on the other hand, is something else entirely. Don't despair if it...
