Raving and Ranting.

Who: Cruel Wife
What: Card left on her car window under wiper, by psycho motorist
When: Yesterday, during snowstorm
Where: Meijer’s Grocery, in a snow-covered parking lot 

Side 1 

Side 2

 

 Isn’t that nice that the person is taking personal responsibility for prompt corrective action in the future?

****

 

An email exchange from last night between myself and a co-worker, and Office Assassin Savior of Kittens was on the distribution list…

Butcher of Lansing:  My firebox is lit up like a kiln furnace. The cast iron humidifier pot on top is about boiling over. CO2 outside to the max, but it sure is comfy in here. The only good thing about the Emerald Ash Borer.
Quit blowing out the drive as soon as I could get the cars out. 8 inches of snow on top of what appeared to be an inch of slushy ice about choked the blower. As Anthony said, very slow moving and fighting the steering. And then the wind blowing it right back in your face. Ugh.

 

Me:  Oh yes, that is far too much effort. That’s why I encouraged Cruel Wife to go out to shovel it by hand.

        <<me nodding energetically and stupidly>>

 

Butcher of Lansing:  And you are not face down in the remaining snow??

 

Me:  If she thought I actually meant it I would be in bags distributed all across lower Michigan.  I’m not a *total* idiot.

 

You are probably wondering, Dear Reader, why that would seem to be something I thought you should know.

Well, Cruel Wife dropped me off at work this morning and talked to Office Assassin Savior of Kittens, who told her about those emails saying only that they were incendiary. 

 ****

 

As I waved her off, thinking of that business card, I said to CW, “Stay away from the assholes!”  To which she yelled “How can I?  I am married to you!”

 

She meant this in the purest of fun, not anger, so don’t be alarmed, Dear Reader.

 

Later, however, she emailed me from our favorite sushi joint with just two pictures. I think she is sending me a message but I do not know what.

Before.

After.

 I am disappointed in her for not finishing her salad.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

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Amazing weirdness.

Skip on down if you want to avoid the not-quite-a-rant…

I’ve been quite surprised at the number of weird statements lately that are out of character.  For example, Stossel on O’Reilly…

Libertarian pundit John Stossel admitted to Bill O’Reilly tonight that he can’t join in the libertarian outrage over the NSA surveilling Americans’ private communications because it just doesn’t bother him that much. He argued that privacy is already being violated en masse by large companies like Google and Facebook. O’Reilly challenged him, saying that there should be cause for concern due to potential government abuse like in the case of the IRS.

Stossel told O’Reilly, “My privacy is already blown… Amazon knows, Facebook knows all kinds of things about me.” O’Reilly admitted he’s confused by all this tech stuff, saying that while he can understand websites like his own being able to track who pops on and goes to certain pages, he can’t imagine how these sites are tracking all sorts of user information.

Stossel shrugged his shoulders and said it could happen, but ultimately, “I figure everything is out there, I try not to have secrets.” He did admit there is a difference between companies monitoring user data and nations monitoring the people’s data, because “Google and Facebook… can’t lock me up or kill me.”

O’Reillly shot back that there is strong potential for abuse if someone involved in the surveillance leaks information through improper and illegal channels. Stossel acknowledged his position has put him at odds with his fellow libertarians, saying “I’ve been called a traitor to the libertarian cause.” He concluded by the segment by saying it should be an outrage that four million people are given the security clearance to see these programs in action.

I’m not going to call Stossel a traitor but I am surprised.

It doesn’t really matter what the gov’t intentions are, searching without cause just isn’t cool and is not protected behavior that the gov’t can engage in.

Ann Coulter was ok with cameras watching everything after the Boston bombing.

Rubio shouldn’t be supporting “immigration reform”.  Even the sanitized name is loathsome.  Good friends of mine were sent packing back to Germany, so why should illegals from south of our border be given a pass?

The New York Times is the voice of reason to not arm the Syrian rebels?

I don’t know Brewer’s historical stance on the matter but I’d think now of all times is not when you want to expand any programs.

Has the world gone nuts?

****

Co-worker Butcher of Lansing brought in a duo-pak of these, demo’ed one, gave me the other to show to the kids.  Hackerboy will love it.  I’m still kind of appalled.

****

Here.  Have a zombie squirrel.  THIS is the source of the upcoming zombie plague.  Not the manatees like I originally thought.

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Miss Iowa Missing Forearm.

Holy crap, they better catch the guy that took it.

Oh, come on.  Just kidding.  Relax.  You got to hand it to her.

Relax.  Get a grip.

(sigh)  No, really, good on her for competing.  Hard enough competition as it is, it must take some bravery to get up there like that.

****

Father in law is here.  Good visit.  He’s being well-fed so he’s happy.  We’re going to treat him to sushi sometime this week so I thought I’d dig this pic up.

Yes, I’m horrible for thinking it is funny.  No, I did not do it.  Don’t even remember where it came from.

****

I saw this five days ago and just thinking about it today caused a testicular rupture.

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New Zazzle T-Shirt Designs.

Yes, it sure does look like I’m going commercial, doesn’t it?

Last ones for a few days.  I really enjoyed making both of these.

A Crabby-Sushi T-shirt.  (Inspired by a very good friend of mine.)

A Rad Shark T-shirt.  (Inspired by another very good friend of mine.)

General store stuff…

Note:  The store is in a bit of disarray… Zazzle doesn’t update rapidly at times.

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A Great Weekend.

Ok, I’ll get the whine out of the way first.

Pain-wise it was a terrible weekend.  Bad.

Enough said.

The first good part of the weekend was hanging with my daughter today.  I was working on a piece of vine for stationary.  GirlHead, who is seven and already shows all the signs of being a very good artist someday, came up and said “You need to change that color.”  So I started asking her what she’d do next.  Pretty soon what had been a simple ivy vine without leaves was tweaked and leaves added and color changed…  here’s the upper left corner of the stationary where she took the flow of the design, and where I’m keeping it.

She had it looking better than I did…

The second good part of the weekend was that my friend (the uber-smart PhD lady) came out and took me and Cruel Wife to sushi lunch yesterday.  Yes, I was bummed that her significant other could not come, as she is back home still recovering from a very serious condition but on the mend.  It would have been way cool but there will be other trips.  They are two of the best scientists to work for – period.  You say to them “Gee, I really don’t know that I’d do it that way.”  Normally a PhD would say “Eh.  Do it anyway.”  But no, they’ll ask why you feel that way and listen.  They might decide to do it their original way anyway, but as often as not will say “Let’s give that a try instead.”  I’m not used to PhD’s that value an engineer’s gut feelings.

Anyways…

So we had a huge sushi lunch.  I had a Godaiko roll – it had salmon and tuna (hamachi) which are two of my favorites.  Cruel Wife got a sushi lunch – a spread of multiple things including the ubiquitous California roll and another nigiri-style dish with eel (unagi).  Sushi-Q got both maki and nigiri sushi and I cannot for the life of me remember what they were.  They were all fantastic and we shared them around.  The kids were at home with the sitter and so we spent an hour and a half just tasting, savoring, and pausing to enjoy the food.  If one is going to ingest high levels of mercury, one should enjoy it.

While we ate, we talked about work (which is what geeks do), motorcycles, California, and whatever came to mind.

After, we stopped off at work and showed Cruel Wife the project that has been consuming my life and will for a while yet.

Then we went home and got ready for dinner.  Sushi-Q left work after several hours and drove out to our house and we hung out again.  I pulled the smoked pork off the smoker – it had gone for 15 hours, just sweating it out in applewood smoke and steam.  I made some couscous and some rice and there was corn on the cob, too.

We talked and drank tea and discussed archaeology, food, dogs, remodeling, and even the pitfalls of camping and in lieu wiping one’s hindquarters with poison ivy accidentally (and how that takes months to heal from).

It was just a pleasure talking about whatever came to mind and it felt strange to not have your guest’s eyes glaze over and roll back in his/her head when something gets real geeky and technical.  The kids loved having company, too.  And the dog, Zoe-pup, was eating the attention up big-time.

First weekend in a long time where I felt like I had a weekend.  I didn’t know you could hurt like hell and still have a good time, it’s been so long.

****

Hoyer and Pelosi get closer to see if it is Reid's farts that smell so rancid or just the man himself...

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The Weekend Beckons.

A wonderful PhD (Piled higher and Deeper) friend has come out from the Left Coast on her bi-annual pilgrimmage to… whatever the hell you want to call my workplace.  She’s a co-worker and senior scientist – scary-smart and lots of fun stories to tell.  Loves sushi and owns/rides motorcycles – that’s always a combo that will win points with me.  If I had to give her an anonymous blog name it would be Sushi-Q.   The Sushi part is pretty obvious and the Q relates to a project we’re doing that involves things with a high Q-factor.  Enginerd joke.

Sloth was another name she went by online for a while but I just didn’t feel like Motor-Sloth was as fun as Sushi-Q…  Besides Sushi-Q is also a nod to my favorite author, Neal Stephenson, and the jap-rap band in one of his books, Sushi-K.  The book is Snow Crash – it follows the story of a black japanese pizza delivery man whose name is Hiro Protagonist.  Yes, you read that right.  Hiro Protagonist.  Hiro works for the Cosa Nostra and if you don’t deliver the pizza in 30 minutes or less they make you disappear.

Anyway, Sushi-Q was cranky… actually more crabby than anything… a while back and I felt this idea coming on, and so I made a logo specifically for her…  that logo was an absolute kick in the ass to do even if it did take a LOT of work.

So she’s taking Cruel Wife and myself out to lunch (sushi, yay!) and then that night she’ll come up to our place where I will just be finishing up smoking a dead critter.  The kids will mob her but they love guests so they probably won’t be monsters.

The pig -pork butt – has just been lovingly rubbed with salt, brown sugar, heroin, paprika, cayenne powder, cocaine, garlic and onion powders, cumin, coriander, chili powder, salt, and crystal meth.  It is just that addictive once you smoke it for 14 hours with applewood.  Oh and you wrap it all in a big tobacco leaf as well, just in case people aren’t addicted to it already.

I daresay that it is pretty good smoked food.  Not one person has waddled away from my smoked meats without having loosened their belt or popped the top button on their pants.

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Move over, Clint.

Update: Why we’re the major world superpower.  The automatic donut maker machine.  I assume a USB version is in the works.

~~~

Forget the spaghetti western.

It’s time to step aside.

Ascension is here, now, for the…

Sushi Western.

To be reckoned with?  Hai…

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Everybody Loves Hypnotoad.

Everybody Loves Hypnotoad.  Everybody Loves Hypnotoad. Everybody Lo…

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It’s Monday, So I Refuse To Be Serious.

Perhaps I’ll be serious later, but not now.

Ever wonder how we would get along without certain types of refined technology? Innovative people, recognizing that necessity is the mother of invention, realized that just plain old desire could be as well.

Crude Technology That Worked … supposedly. I don’t doubt that some of it did.

Sometimes, luck DOES go your way, as this St. Bernard pup Burmese python proved. (where the HELL did I get that from???) Anyway, the Burmese python was found where you’d expect, in Idaho.

Here is the pup.

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Random Photos in My Office

(click for the large image size)

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A Co-Worker Knows I Love Sushi and Once Encountered Anything But… It was a Bad Story and too long to tell here.  Anyway, she was mocking my inability to find real sushi that one time.

That there, folks is a set of erasers shaped very much like sushi. Identify them, why don’t you?

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Gary, My Snail and Patron Saint

Darth Tater

Despite Darth Tater looking like a toy (at work, no less, he has never been removed from his box.

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