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about me. . .part deux

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my vacation was hell on wheels or i'm so tired i feel like i'm firing on only 5 cylinders

what a vacation. oh, it was fun, the family had a great time, no doubt, and it was great to get away from the pressures of work and all, but it's the back-story which left the wife and me so darned exhausted.

let's back this station wagon up and give you the whole ride.

the week before we drove off into the sunrise to our vacation, we had the luxoboat in for a tune-up. you see, it was running rough--had been for some time, and i knew it needed some tlc. the verdict from tom and don (my trusted mechanics)? low compression in cylinder 5.

my options? spend $2 grand on a tear-down to find the problem, and up to $4 grand to fix it. . .

. . .or drive it the way it was.

i was planning on replacing the old wagon queen family truckster in about a year, so i figured drive it the way it was. what's the worst that could happen? crappy gas mileage and a check engine light stuck on.

drive on we did.

5 days into the vacation, the check engine light started to blink and chime at us as we drove through a town near home on our way to the beach, so we turned around and headed for the nearest dealer which sold cars like ours. we asked the service guys to pull the error codes and see what was wrong with our car.

no compression, cylinder 5. not low compression, no compression.

what did this mean for us? what was the worst that could happen?

a seized up engine, that's what.

when? i dunno, 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months. . .

. . .or spend $2 grand on a tear-down to find the problem, and up to $4 grand to fix it, or $6 grand for a new engine. . .

. . .or replace the car.

so what started as a vacation in a concorde which plainly could no longer fly turned into a trip to the local toyota store and a return home in a new car.

and i had just paid off that damn car two months before, proving murphy's law: all warranties expire upon payment of invoice.

dubious word of the day: stados

Everything is great, couldn't be better, feel great;
Compliment on a job well done.

Hey, Clancy, stados on your last deal.
The Lakers are stados tonite.

no soldier left behind. . .

under the terms of the president's no child left behind law, if a school doesn't meet benchmarks or make sufficient progress for two years running, federal funds are cut back or eliminated.

here's a thought: apply the same funding principles to the war in iraq?

cheers

happy birthday dad

i must be out of my pis-pis-piston head!

at long last, I found this clip of max ranting about being a spokesman for car parts! worth the watch if you are a max headroom aficionado as I am. . .

click the pic.

this from the guy whospends four months of the year. . .on vacation

george w. bush said people should treat MLK day as king's late wife, coretta scott king, wanted it. "it is not a day off," bush said today. "it's a day on."

you're in the army now

the united states army is lowering its standards for education, and for DUI arrests. this'll help with recruiting. . .well, it's the same way they filled the position of commander in chief.

- david letterman, 5 january 2007 -

smells like wet dog

a christmas story to share, not that you haven't heard enough of christmas. . .



my 6-year-old came home from school on the day before christmas break with magic reindeer food--a mixture of oatmeal and glitter, compliments of her first grade teacher. the instructions were to sprinkle it on the lawn so that the reindeer could snack while santa was in the house doing his christmas thing under the tree.

when anna was walking down the stairs in her pajamas to go outside, she slipped, and some of the magic reindeer food spilled on the steps and the landing. i told her not to worry about picking it up, because if the reindeer were really hungry, they could come in and snack on the rest of the reindeer food in the house. but i gave her a stern warning: reindeer smell like wet dog, and if she were to smell wet dog in the house in the middle of the night, she was not to come out of her room, or santa and his reindeer would vanish in a blink, because santa was only supposed to be in our house while we were sleeping.

the next morning, anna rushed into our room, and whispered very loudly that she thought she smelled wet dog during the wee hours, but she was a good girl and stayed in her room.

no dot-comment

no bluster from me on this blustery day.

wacky dictionary entry of the day

prune (v) (also pruned; prun·ing)
(from Latin pro- + rotundiare (around)
1: the act of cutting off or trimming overgrowth, overextension or overreaching parts of a tree, shrub or bush.
(see also 2006 ELECTION)

apologies to merriam-webster online

seen on the south end of a northbound '73 ford truck headed out of nashville at its top speed of 102. . .with a hound dog in the bed

time keeps on slippin' slippin'slippin' into the future*

an anonymous reader left this comment recently:

"just a question you will probably find annoying, but i must ask. how (and where) do you find time to do all this 'blogging'?"

it takes 15-20 minutes to compose a blog. it's all random stuff. . .not like I am writing a dissertation or anything. just stuff. sometimes yesterday's blog has nothing to do with today's, and sometimes there's a running theme. sometimes these running themes are spread over months or years, so i have to make them obvious by appending the titles with a part deux or somesuch kitsch.

in the two minutes it took to respond to an email on this subject, i could nearly have been finished with the text of this blog, but how, i wonder, do I find all this time to blog when I have all this sorting through fw:fw:fw:fw:fw:emails to do?

someday i'll figure it out.

and maybe, mother, someday you'll get it too.

*apologies to the steve miller band

futile?

rutgers university's football team was known for a long time as an exercise in futility.

no longer. they came out of oblivion and from behind and beat third-ranked university of louisville 28-25 yesterday. . .and they did it in front of a stadium record 44,111 home-field crowd in piscataway, nj. . .and in prime time in front of a national tv audience.

they are now one of four remaining undefeated teams, and are now in first place in the big east conference.

even new york has scarlet fever:
the empire state building was lit last night
in red in support of the LU v RU game

futility? methinks not.

next game: saturday, 18 november.
kickoff time tba.

photos copyright 2006
rutgers university
used with permission.

photo of empire state building
by associated press.

• • • • our second nominee into the• • • • second annual bored stiff geeks• • • • hall of fame

if someone has entirely too much time on his hands,
he (or she) must be a bored stiff geek.

we have another nominee with paper and scissors, but this fellow gives papercut boy a run for his money!

julian beever is an english artist who's famous for his art on the pavement of england.

it certainly is amazing what you can do
with a little chalk and an expanse of sidewalk!


yes, they're walking around the "hole" in the sidewalk!




both his feet are on flat pavement!


this drawing of a "rescue" is supposed to be viewed
with an inverting mirror.


spiderman to the rescue!


batman & robin to the rescue

you decide. . .papercut boy, or the beever?

• • • • the 2005 inductee
• • • • can be seen here

ready. . .aim. . .part trois

from what would have been the day after the election in november 2005 (if we had had an election in november 2005):

i used to think that people who left their W'04 stickers on their cars were gloating, and that they should get over it and move on. but i realized today that nobody sporting a W'04 sticker would consider "move on" as an option--sounds too much like moveon.org, i guess.

then a colleague of mine suggested this: don't people who sport W'04 stickers on their cars realize they're making themselves targets?

to which i replied: if people sporting W'04 stickers are of like mind with W, and W is of questionable mind. . .

-------------------------

my point: take off your campaign stickers if your candidate won (or lost), stop gloating (or sulking), and move the hell on. we have the future to think about, and we're all in this together, republican or democrat.

all the news that's fit to blog

we here at bored stiff geeks are proud to announce (really proud) that our little blog made news.

melissa mcnamara at cbsnews.com gave bored stiff geeks a moment in the spotlight on november 1 for a little commentary we made on october 28. look in the section called using the internets, about two thirds down the column.


we couldn't be more honored.

payback

jesuit high school's varsity football team made short work of the southridge skyhawks last night, capping an undefeated season and clinching the metro league title, a title which they had to share last year with southridge, the only team to defeat jesuit in the 2005-06 regular season, and that was in the season opener--21 games ago.

even more sweet is that they did it on a nationally-televised game on fox sports network's high school game of the week.

paul weatheroy runs
for yet another td

it wasn't even close. 38-nil.

what a way to seal the deal.

for the story as seen
in the oregonian,
click here

kitsch is dead

well, at least the pink flamingo is dead. after 49 years, its manufacturer is ceasing production of the venerated-and-yet-reviled lawn ornament.

couldn't they have waited just one more year and had a 50th anniversary edition of the pink flamingo?

nah. that'd be too kitschy.