Fight Club Pro

"The first rule of Fight Club Pro is you..." [BANG!]
"[Wheeze]...the second rule...[wheeze]...of..." [BANG!]

Poor Kitty!

The Cats Of War.

via Say Uncle.

Kill Or Capture?

Of all the people on this planet, OBL was most responsible for creating the security climate in which we now must live; a world of exploding vests, exploding backpacks, exploding belts, exploding shoes and even exploding underwear. So I find it ironic that critics are suggesting that OBL should have been given a chance to surrender.

The Reward

Congress should rescind the $25 million reward for the capture or killing of OBL and instead appropriate a one-time, tax-free $25 million contribution to the Navy SEALS foundation, to benefit the families of those brave men.

Just my opinion.

Pop

I was exploring the local suburbs this afternoon when I noticed that the rear end of the bicycle was sliding from side to side. Yep, a flat tire. I carry a full set of spares but this time I was SOOL because my mini-air pump was hors de combat. I walked about two hours to get to the nearest service station and an air pump. I replaced the tube with the spare from my kit, and dropped some coins into the air compressor. The rated pressure for this tire was 30-60 psi. As the pressure indicator reached 40 psi there was a loud bang and the new tube ruptured. Badly? No, extremely well! See below:

Can't patch that! So I set about seeing if I could find and fix the puncture in the old tube. I put a few pounds of air back into the tube and passed it by my face until I felt a stream of air. It was just a tiny puncture. So I patched it and inflated it...very carefully this time! And biked home.

New tires and tubes will be the order of the day tomorrow. The rear tire was slightly damaged by the explosion, and the bike is going on two years old now. The tires look OK, but they have a lot of miles on them. So I'll be getting two new tires, three new tubes (one as a spare) and a new pump for my tool kit.

The repair took only about twenty minutes, but a pump or a source of compressed air is absolutely essential.

Four In One

I've been struggling with an old desktop computer for years now. I'm too frugal to buy a Mac, although they are very tempting. So last week I plunked down several hundred dollars on an HP desktop with a 64-bit AMD quad-core processor, 4 gigs of RAM and a terabyte drive. I bought a new copy of Windows 7 and an ebay copy of Windows XP. I already had an OEM (bootable) copy of Windows 2000 Pro. I have some old home movies that I want to edit using Adobe Premiere on Win2K, a legacy scanner that works under WinXP, and I wanted to run iTunes on Windows 7.

So I installed Ubuntu Linux 10.10 as the base OS and repartitioned the disk. Ubuntu is free, but I paid $10 for a set of commercial install disks. Then Oracle's VirtualBox (also free) and then the three windows OSes on top of that. Total time spent was about four hours.

On the bottom is Ubuntu, running Firefox. Next is Win2K running Adobe Acrobat Reader. Next is WindowsXP, running Internet Explorer. And on the top is Windows 7, running iTunes. All running on the same computer at the same time. They can share files, network connections, CDs and DVDs and USB ports. And even cut and paste between applications.

I have no idea how this works.

Our Extra Special Guest

On the left, Jay G., and on the right, Alan Gura.

Our First Special Guest

Jay G., from MArooned.

Blogmeet!

We're gathering...

Congress Cancels Cable

Philip Greenspun proposes that the easiest way to understand the recent $38 billion budget-cut deal is to divide by 100,000,000 and analogize it to a family budget:

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Link via Boing-Boing.

When Mattress Marketers Go Rogue

At my age, when I see a sign that says "Speed Hump Ahead", I take a detour.

Lorton To Vienna And Back

Monday was a beautiful day so I set off from the former Lorton Prison

headed for the nearest point on the W&OD Trail (my old stomping grounds). Packed a lunch and set off about 12:30. There was a nice tailwind as I set off, and this was actually of some concern, because I would have to pedal into it on my return trip. But in my experience, winds are very variable and unpredictable, and it was quite possible, even likely, that the wind would reverse by mid-afternoon and I would have a tailwind for the ride home, too. Wouldn't that be nice?


A little more than two hours and eighteen miles later I was closing in on my destination.


I stopped for lunch near this historical marker on the W&OD Trail in Vienna.

The trip back was difficult. The wind had picked up and was now gusting, and it was a headwind. To me, there's nothing harder than pedaling into a headwind; it's like going uphill for mile after mile, with no downhill sections. I must have walked the last five miles.

The Minty-Boost battery charger worked better this time. I loaded it with four new alkaline AAs. At 4:30 the iPhone reached 20% of capacity so I attached the Minty-Boost and rode on. It charged the iPhone from 20% to 47% in about an hour, even while the Cyclemeter GPS app was running - it's a big power-hog. After an hour on charge, the iPhone beeped to indicate that something was wrong - the charger was depleted - and I ignored it, just to see what would happen. What happened was that the iPhone rebooted itself. So I disconnected the charger. Cyclemeter didn't miss a beat, however - it picked up where it had left off. And at the end of the ride I still had 32% of iPhone battery left.

More on The Big Lebowski 2

The Big Lebowski 2 with Tara Reid from Tara Reid

A trailer for The Big Lebowski 2 with Tara Reid playing all the parts. She incorrectly predicted a sequel last month, and this is her act of atonement.

World's Most Expensive Rifle

It's $820,000.

Neatorama.

1911 Call Sign

Currently (9:30 PM EST) you can hear (at 7175 kHz) on SSB the ham radio station OL1911VP in the Czech Republic. It's a special callsign to recognize the 100th anniversary of the Victoria Plzen Football Club. Needless to say, there is quite a "pile-up" trying to work this guy. In just a few minutes he has worked stations in Martinique, Barbados, Venezuela and all over the U.S.

UPDATE: and, as always, there's an app for that:

Long Ride

Friday was a beautiful day. Bright overcast, high seventies. No wind to speak of. So I took a long bike ride. Packed a lunch and set off from the old Lorton Prison, now called the "Workhouse Art Center". I pedaled up route 123 toward Fairfax along the paved bike trail. It's called Ox Road in Prince William County, and Chain Bridge Road in Fairfax County. Then back by the same route. I pedaled for 4:45 and rested for 25 minutes to cover nearly 35 miles. Not the longest trip I have ever taken but a grueling slog; I haven't biked in months and I'm out of shape.

Check out the display from the iPhone:


Notice how little battery is left after less than 5 hours of continuous GPS use. That battery was in a car charger until the minute I pushed off at 12:20. I brought along a neat little USB charger like this one:

But the iPhone didn't like it; it reported, "The charging device is not supported..." So the iPhone was nearly dead after five hours. This is an app called Cyclemeter.

Here's a snapshot from near the end of the trail:

Waples Mill Road in Fairfax. Just a mile from the NRA's HQ the country is surprisingly wild; I saw a large adult red fox a hundred yards farther down the road. And an eagle carrying a squirming fish in its talons.

The NRA building is at the 16-mile point. As you can see, I had some trouble finding a bicycle route across I-66!

When I got home I was exhausted and fell asleep for a couple of hours. Then I took a shower and the salty taste of the water surprised me.

Augustus Owsley Stanley III

His obit is in the NYT here.

And there's a 2007 article about him in Rolling Stone here.

Excerpt:

Over the course of the next fourteen years, Owsley — known to his friends as "Bear" because of his prematurely hairy chest as a teenager — enlisted in the Air Force, became a ham- radio operator, obtained a first-class radiotelephone operator's license, worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and served as a summer-relief broadcast engineer at TV and radio stations in Los Angeles. He married and divorced twice, fathered two children and got himself arrested on a variety of charges. He also studied ballet, Russian and French.

Coincidence?

Screengrab from the New York Times:

Screengrab from Boing-Boing:
Notice the very curious misspelling of the word "imminent" in both articles.

I guess I can cancel my subscription to the NYT if they're going to cut-and-paste from Boing-Boing.

Insiders Reap Fortunes From Federal Programs

Story in the WaPo here.

Read it and weep.

See if you don't agree with me that the Small Business Administration should be closed; shuttered; zeroed out of the budget. Its enabling legislation repealed.

Small business loans, minority set-asides, non-competitive contracts, women-owned business preferences... they're all open invitations for people who know how federal contracting works to game the system and pay themselves generous salaries, hefty bonuses and huge profit participation. Check it out: the Alaskan shareholders received an average of $300, but the D.C. lawyer who set it up earned $500,000 annually.

Fire Leapt From Their Telegraph Keys

It was the worst solar storm in history, the Carrington Event in 1859:

In addition, the geomagnetic disturbances were strong enough that U.S. telegraph operators reported sparks leaping from their equipment—some bad enough to set fires, said Ed Cliver, a space physicist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Bedford, Massachusetts.

NatGeo.