Thursday, January 29, 2009

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

.............White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, November 2008

He might as well have been explaining his boss's "stimulus" plan. WSJ Article

Pelosi is the worst liar ever

Or maybe I should say the best one?

The House passed an 812Billion dollar "stimulus" bill yesterday. The breakdown includes something like $111B for "medical" related spending. The majority of it is for Medicare/Medicaid. How much for science and technology? $16B.

The American people should be absolutely outraged at this!

To top it off, our illustrious, and bi-partisan speaker of the house, Nancy ($32M dollar) Pelosi had the nerve to go on the morning shows touting it as a victory for the average American. She is still harping on the fact that we've already "given" $700 to the banking industry. Oh and she also took credit for catching Citigroup trying to buy and $50M jet and then canceling the order. What a piece of work she is.

I wish she would crawl back into whatever crypt she escaped from!

Read for yourself: http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/legislation?id=0273

By the way, it's 647 pages of bureaucratic bull.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

2009 Sprint Cup Schedule for MS-Outlook

I'm doing this as a service to my fellow man.

I entered the entire NASCAR Sprint Cup 2009 schedule into my MS-Outlook. Since I sync my Outlook with my mobile phone, I'll never miss another race! I'll actually be notified one hour in advance of each race thanks to the reminder feature.

I'm making this file available for purchase through ebay! Please help me send my kids to college!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Close Encounter of the R2 Kind

A few weeks ago I had a little time to kill on a layover. So I took the shuttle from Dulles to the Udvar-Hazy annex of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. It's a great place for any space or plane nut to spend a few hours. It's actually on the grounds of Dulles airport and there's a $1 shuttle from the terminal.

One of the pop culture exhibits is the "Mother Ship" model used in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." It was interesting to learn that the model was made from parts of other commercially available models such as model trains.





I was also surprised that the builders attached some very small inside jokes that were too small to appear in the final film, but can be found on the model if you search long enough. I found a tiny TIE fighter, a graveyard, and some other things.

Here's a closeup of my little buddy, R2-D2, standing on the hull:

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

New Compound Word

Let's say you're in the middle of explaining your new idea to a colleague. Before you can finish they make a sarcastic remark about your idea that totally derails your train of thought.

I call that getting "snide-tracked."

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Winter Wonderland



O Canada! I flew in from Charlotte to Montreal via Toronto tonight. I'm always amazed at how formal and high strung the customs folks are. They're very stern! I thought Canadians were kind, easy going folks. But every time I come in I get the 3rd degree and they don't seem interested in any tomfoolery!

I'm sitting in my hotel room at the Aloft hotel at the Montreal airport (YUL.) The roads around the hotel are pretty clear but the snow is piled up as high as 6 to 8 ft on the edges of the parking lot. If only the kids could see it!

Blink XT2 Thumbnail Failed Fix

Well, this is a bit frustrating. I have one outdoor Blink XT2 camera from Amazon which I installed about a year and a half ago...or maybe tw...