Restoring My Faith In Humanity

Ah, virtually nothing can renew your faith in humanity like an early morning trip to a carry-out. This fine morning I stopped at one in one of the small towns I travel though on my way to work.

Inside, a mother was having a confusing conversation about which off brand cigarettes were the cheapest. The smokes were of course for her daughter who looked to be sixteenish. You know what they say, the family that smokes together.

Relaxing

I spent last weekend up at JK & P's cabin at the lake in Michigan. It was quite fun and I discovered something that has been missing from my life for the past couple of years, the darkness that only comes with being away from the city.

For the past five years I have lived in a sort of perpetual Arctic summer solstice where even after the sun does go down artificial light continues to pour into my apartment from dusk to dawn, and most of my vacations tend to send me to other large American cities where the same thing occurs. The opportunity to wander around in actual darkness was very reinvigorating, and getting to see things like the Milky way again were great. I have got to get out of the city more often.

Oh No!

As I briefly check in from my hiatus which should end this coming weekend, I have received the worst possible news. It seems Takeru Kobayashi has developed jaw arthritis and may not be able to compete in the July 4th Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating contest. From the Daily Telegraph:

Takeru 'Tsunami' said he can only open his mouth to make a gap the size of a fingertip after being diagnosed with jaw arthritis.

In an entry on his blog entitled Occupational Hazard, Kobayashi said: "My jaw refused to fight any more."

The injury occurred only a week after the slender 29-year-old started training to win his sixth
straight title at the annual July 4 Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating contest on New York's Coney Island.

"I feel ashamed that I couldn't notice the alarm bells set off by my own body," he said. "But with the goal to win another title with a new record, I couldn't stop my training so close to the competition.

"I was continuing my training and bearing with the pain but finally I destroyed my jaw."

Gee, hard to believe scarfing down all those hot dogs has negative ramifications, isn't it?

Hey Kids

Sorry for the lack of posts, my Internet connection has been anywhere from non-existent to intermittent for the last week and a half. I guess Time Warner is doing some sort of an upgrade and understandably, there have been outages in that coveted three AM to six AM time slot. Not much I can do about it as Time Warner is my only choice where I live.

Anyway, it seems to be back working again although I am still losing the local ABC affiliate and the radar channel. What are you going to do?

Taming The Appetite Of Blogger

Blogger has a new feature where it automatically saves your posts as you go which should be a great help to me. As you can probably tell, I write these posts on the fly, with no editing, spellcheck them and post them. As a result of this I've had blogger eat quite a few of my posts when I tried to upload them to the blog.

For instance, I though I lost the post I wrote yesterday about torture and the right when I attempted to post it and received the Google error message. I was fortunate that I was able to recover it. You, on the other hand were not fortunate because you had to read that drivel, ha!

Happy Birthday To Me

Today is my birthday, so tomorrow's posts will probably be pretty light. I anticipate a lot of debauchery tonight. By the way, anybody know when our friends from out of town are coming in for Jazzy's wedding?

Checks

Hat tip to the State of Ohio and the IRS. I filed online and received my return in under two weeks.

Regatta

This is rather funny.

Found via Atrios.

Hooray For Me

Awesome, now I get to spend the next few days working on a catastrophic software failure.

Technical Difficulties

I've been having some connectivity problems that I finally traced to a bad cable going to my WIFI. Years of stress from hanging down from it eventually damaged the plug.

Laughable

Unfortunately, I don't have the screencap of my appearance which was subtitled:

Phlip

Great Blogger

Found via Atrios

Friday Cat Blogging

In general, I think the whole Friday cat blogging thing is rather stupid, but since it's Good Friday, I'll relent.

Not A Fan

I really don't care for the new anchors of CNN's American Morning. Bring back the O'Brien twins.

I'm Alive

Just in case you might of thought that I died or something, this post proves you wrong. I've been busy, and a little burned out on writing here so I took a few days off.

But now I'm back just in time for the best week of the year. Yes, March Madness starts this week and the first week is always the best week. Speaking of basketball, a couple of things.

First, the Dick Vitale ads for Hooters has got to be the worst national ad campaign I've ever seen. The script is terrible, and the production values are even worse. Did they hire a high school AV club to shoot these ads?

Secondly, the University of North Carolina is a pretty prestigious university. Do you think they could maybe get Tyler Hansbrough a mask in which the eye holes line up with his eyes? What do they think he is? A fish?

Is Anyone Else's Cable Screwing Up?

Mine keeps going through this long reset early in the morning. I mean, it's really long, like a half hour. It is really screwing up my ability to write on this blog.

This is one of the reasons I stay with Blogger. As much as it screws up, at least I don't have to troubleshoot the problems myself. I have enough problem with my own equipment without having to deal with that also. By the way, have I mentioned lately that Gateway sucks.

Blogger!!!

If you're wondering, as I am, why the text spacing is different coming out of a blockquote, I haven't a clue. It is bothersome to me though to have the text spaced like this.

Then

Have it come out the other side spaced like this. I have checked through and made sure there is nothing in the html editor that produces this spacing. It is driving me mad. Tell me how to fix it Blogger people!

Ice Storm

I really don't expect to have both Internet service or electricity today as a major ice storm is currently hitting my location. We'll see.

Update: Huh, the ice storm turned out to be nothing more than rain here, for now. So much for accuracy in forecasting.

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Spaces

There is a pretty funny story in the New York Times about astronaut U.S. Navy Capt. Lisa Nowak who drove from Houston to Orlando to confront a potential romantic rival for fellow astronaut Navy Cmdr. William Oefelein.

Nowak, who apparently had no time to spare, reportedly wore diapers to avoid stopping for restroom breaks.

The whole story is odd, these people go through some pretty serious psychological evaluations before they ever get to go up into space, but judging from Nowak's photo, she has lost it since her last flight back in July of 2006, not that anybody's mugshot looks good.

Somebody Is Trying To Win A Darwin Award

I'd hate to be the first one to experience an equipment failure.

I Know It's Arkansas, But

The lawyer of a reputed crack dealer in Little Rock is challenging the appointment of Bush toadie Timothy Griffin as US Attorney. John Hall says that because Griffin was appointed using a little known provision in the Patriot Act that allows for an end run around Senate confirmation, the appointment is unconstitutional.

I'd have to guess that the prosecution's case is a slam dunk for Hall to take this tactic. I did find this interesting from his motion though. From TPM Muckraker:

Conceivably, under the Attorney General’s interpretation of his appointment power in § 546(c), an incompetent or a blatantly politically appointed U.S. Attorney could hold office like this for seven and a half years, or even longer, assuming the President is re-elected, without ever facing Senate confirmation over his or her qualifications.

Um, when did we go to eight year presidential terms?