The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for the ‘General’ Category.
I’ve set “Subscribe to Comments” to “on” by default. That means unless you uncheck the box at the bottom of your comment, you will receive an email any time someone else leaves another comment on the post.
Tell me if you like this. If not, I’ll change it back.
“Icer Air 2005,” [on August 27th, 2005] sponsored by a Nevada company that makes snowboard wax, will feature 10,000 cubic feet of snow, a ski jump, an MTV crew, a DJ and thousands of cheering fans in the heart of San Francisco’s grandest neighborhood.
“What the hell are you guys thinking?” said Bruce Miller… (SFGate)
I now have a California driver’s license, California license plates on my car, and I’m a registered Libertarian (After hanging out with the guy who ran for Congress on the Libertarian ticket last year, I was reminded that a large number of Libertarians are insane. No matter, the ideals of the party are closer to mine than the two bigs. So I checked the “Libertarian” box)
I made a reservation to get my license in Oakland yesterday. Turns out that making a reservation doesn’t get you much (read: “anything”). I ended up spending 1 1/2 hours waiting outside for a guy to spend 60 seconds filling out a form verifying my odometer reading. Then another hour waiting… then… blah blah blah. Well, I got to the car registration part and the lady said my car needed a smog test and she needed $211 from me. I was a bit suprised at the price so I went onto the California DMV web site that evening and they had a little form where I could figure out how much my registration would cost…. $110. I went to the San Francisco office today, told the lady what the web site said and she… … … agreed! She reduced the bill by $101! That more than paid for the $40 street cleaning parking ticket I had gotten that morning!
Bring a printed copy of your California Vehicle Registration Fee Calculator results to the DMV. It could save you money.
Here are some images from the Colossus project. And a video clip. There will be lots more when it’s finished.
Zachary Coffin – the artist
Corbett Griffith – the chief engineer
I’m still shopping around for helpdesk software. I came across an article that mentions Magic Service Desk. I found that BMC software just bought the company… interestingly, I used to work for BGS Systems, which was bought up by BMC.
So, I go looking for this helpdesk app on the BMC site. The amount of Powerpoint generated, gold plated crap I had to wade through to see what the product was about was astounding.
Then again, if they are really getting the $5,000 per seat they are asking when free software is available that does it just as well…
Misdirection is alive and well, and living on the interweb!
PS. I never ever, not even once for a moment beliveved that any of those 23 year old babes in suits that they get from the stock-web-image catalog were going to come to my house if I bought their crummy software. Well, maybe just for a second.
Dear Lazyweb,
I’m looking for a good helpdesk application. Mostly what I’m looking for is tracking email trouble-tickets from thousands of customers. Can you recommend an app?
I’ve browsed Sourceforge.net, Freshmeat.net and Helpdesks.com and found a whole lotta apps that might fit the bill. But I just want one that works.
Any suggestions?
Update 1-24-10: Ok, if you thought the “300 things” list below was good, here’s
1575 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG!!!
CAUTION: If your sides begin to hurt while reading this, stop immediately! and come back tomorrow!
I stole this list.
(thanks to Dave for pointing it out to me)
Continue reading ‘300 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG’ »
I went to NIMBY to work on Colossus 2 nights ago. I got there about 7:30… worked a while grinding overly large welds made between the column and gussets. 
And then on to grinding the upper arms of the beast. I stopped for pizza and beer with the guys… for chatting with Elysia (who I will now call Shwa because that’s what her name starts with ;-) and her uncle… chatting with the woman making the 20 foot tall Ganesh (which, I just found out, will have an ancient stone finish) and…… I stopped to watch robots battle!!!
A woman came in at midnight or so and said the we should come out and see two robots fighting each other down the street. About 10 of us started out walking down the street. When we got there we found that the robots were fighting each other, they were fighting television! More precisely, they were about five televisions and computer monitors in a vacant lot; the two robots were bashing and smashing the televisions until they were nothing more but piles of plastic and smashed glass! The smaller robot was particularly good at spinning around and whacking things while the larger robot, with its propane fueled beacon on the top, it’s heavy steel armor plating, and larger frame would just hit things head-on repeatedly until it would roll over the smashed remains.
It was wonderful! After the robots had laid waste to all of the televisions the designer and pilot of the larger one was quoted on the way back to the laboratory as saying, “It’s cheaper than therapy.”
(Image courtesy it’s designer at THERM.)
Recently, my google search results have been more and more diluted with web spam. :-(
To the tune of “Kill da wabbit”, “Kill the spammers, Kill the spammers, Kill the spammers!”
I had been doing some research on getting a motorized bike and the Golden Eagle Bike Engines motorized bicycles, running EHO25 25cc Robin/Subaru Mini 4 engines get about 225 miles per gallon. The similar EHO35 35cc Robin/Subaru Mini-4 gets about 200 MPG. I’ve seem this claim verified in a few places.
These are 1.1 and 1.6 horsepower 4 cycle engines made by Robin Subaru that weigh under 8 lbs… under 13 with mounting hardware. So that’s a 200 lb rider, 25 lb bike, 15 lb engine…
I’m thinking of getting a motorized bicycle because:
– You need a lot of motorcycle to go over the Bay Bridge comfortably…. 250CC, $3-5k used. A motorized bike costs $200 for the bike + $550 for the engine, new. I just saw a used bike and engine on Craigslist for $325.
– You need a lot of nerve to take a motorcycle over the Bay Bridge. Lane splitting is nerve wracking and dangerous. In the 1 month I’ve been here, I saw one bike almost get bowled over by a car that didn’t see the bike and moved into his lane (or he was being a super-duper asshole). And pretty much every lane splitting motorcycle I saw was inches away from disaster.
– I mostly want the motor so I can keep up with slow urban traffic… SF traffic peaks at about 35 mph
– It would be peachy keen if I could easily put a motorized bike on a bike rack hanging off the back of my car.
– It is convenient to combine a bike (that can be run under human power) with a vehicle with more range and speed. Electric bike batteries are too heavy and underpowered.
– A motorized bike compares favorably to a 150CC scooter:
A motorized bike wins in most of these categories. So why don’t I see more of them on the street??? Am I missing something?
Beuller? Beuller?
Potential negatives….