politically correct fighters and another mystery solved

On the one hand, GE makes engines for fighter jets. On the other hand, some people might be disturbed by the idea of a fighter jet used for, oh I don't know, maybe fighting. What to do. The solution, this promotional panel next to a model of their wonderful engine that suggests that the purpose of an F-16 is to use its powerful engine to flee to safety if it encounters an enemy!




caption: GE is proud to supply the engine for the Air Force's latest "Fraidycat" version of the F-16.









It seemed like I spent waaay too much time finding this photo, in fact only the thumbnail version of it, but some information is so important to get out to the public that such diligence is appropriate.


caption: I can't count the number of times I've been asked how
Amtrak keeps the caps on the back of the armrests. Philips head screw.

how are your peaches? and choosing a dog

caption: If you notice that your peaches are
marked "best before Mar'03", they're still
fine now.

(This only makes sense knowing the date sent was 3/6/04; I don't have of this same batch left to test now.)

New caption (for Nancy ONLY): If you can trick peach cubes into sliding down a plastic spoon handle into a some juice, before they know what's going on, you can seal the top and sell them as food!



caption: I described what kind of dog I want to the pet store sales person. She
suggested this one. Seemed kind of
gay. I passed.

Shift Happens and other video links

A friend sent me this link to a video narrative on some interesting statistics on the the information technology explosion and the global work force. I thought a couple of other videos there were interesting too. Check out "When graphic artists get bored" and "Laughter is contagious" (I think, don't see it on the displayed items at the moment). Just noticed the title of the post is the link but doesn't look like one, so click on it.

being followed

My shadow realized that I was following it and, suddenly stopped and confronted me about it. No, it didn't SAY anything--it's a shadow. But if looks could kill I'd be dead.

holes, scuffed heels, and what?

Lots of pictures that I sent, early on, were of things on, around, or seen from a commuter train while I was, yes, you guessed it, commuting to and from work.




caption: Wondering what the default pattern is for holes in something but
didn't ask because I'd have
interrupted? This is it.

new caption for Nancy ONLY (because I never interrupt anymore): Wondering what the default pattern is for holes in something? This is it.







caption: I can't imagine why you would
care how scuffed my shoe heel is.
It's this scuffed. Okay?!
SATISFIED?!!!

(Note: Just to not leave the wrong impression, I never let Nancy not having actually asked me something, like how scuffed my shoe heel is, prevent me from pre-emptively responding with exasperation and sarcasm.)


The following was one where I thought I had an interesting image but I never came up with a caption. It's the overhead storage rack, looking straight up from the seat. I tried doing something with it looking like a ladder, or rotating it 90 degrees left and having it be the mustache between a mechanical monsters eyes and mouth. Nothing worked and I gave up. Any ideas?




caption: ?

squirrel not using an umbrella

Okay, in the course of getting myself setup to post old photos with captions that I've sent to people, I realized that some of the captions are inside jokes or, otherwise, only make sense with a little (or much) more context, so I'll provide that when needed. Also, this will be really boring for Nancy, who has already seen most of these, so for her sake, I may provide alternate captions, for her eyes only (this will be on the honor system so if you aren't Nancy please IGNORE the additional captions). If I've completely missed with my caption, please let me know what it should have been (must be 125 characters or less to meet the original caption limit).

From Feb '04:



caption:

squirrel not using an umbrella



caption for Nancy ONLY:

squirrel not using an umbrella near shovel





caption:

Squirrels more political than we
thought? Here, clearly, one
protests our actions in Iraq by
turning his back on the flag.








caption:

This image may seem familiar. This
time, see if you can find the
squirrel then create your own
caption.


(recipient of the last photo couldn't make out the squirrel sitting at the end of the rail as a squirrel)






caption:

Unless you think you might need
some of this stuff, I'm
throwing it out. I'll need to
know by Thursday morning.

photos with captions: an inadvertent hobby

For a long time I resisted getting a PDA because I usually had my laptop computer with me and I didn't want to carry yet another special purpose device. What made the difference for me was when they came out with the combination PDA and cell phone with wireless Internet access. As a very secondary consideration, I thought it would be interesting to have that gadget include a digital camera as well--relatively low resolution notwithstanding, it seemed like having some camera with me all the time vs no camera most of the time might pay off. I even decided to take advantage of the one month free trial service that allowed me to send pictures with captions to people wirelessly. Within a very short period, I realized I'd stumbled upon a new and favorite hobby.

I've sent over 400 pictures with captions, so far, and found that what made it fun and interesting for me was the immediacy of it and the challenge (for me), usually trying to be funny, to work within the original limit of 125 characters for the caption. Having been overly shy about sharing my creative work, my audience for these captioned photos was almost entirely limited to my friend Nancy, who shares my sense of humor. Being a little slow sometimes, it took awhile before I realized that if only 1% of people have my sense of humor, that' 3 million people, just in the United States.

So, for the sake of bringing a few smiles on occasion AND having a large stockpile of things I can post quickly when I have nothing "new" to offer, I'll be posting some of them here, working through them from the oldest first, starting with my next post. Also, I've taken many photos for which I never did come up with a caption, which is sad, so I'll be posting photos those and challenging you to come up with one where I haven't.

At least only one broke

Pow! Damn it, I dropped the 3-pack of preserves. That's okay, I really only wanted the apricot preserves anyway and what are the odds of ... DAMN IT!!!

I TOTALLY caught ...

... my kitchen sink rug with a "bed head"! I laughed my ass off and belittled it, just because I could. Now it's ticked off at me and I have to stand 2 feet from the sink and reach over it. Next time I'll be more sympathetic. Maybe it wasn't funny after all. Who's laughing now?

(Sometimes I come up with more than one caption for a photo. Another one for this was "Tora! Tora! Tora!", but that makes no sense now.)

Geography Quiz

Using the map in my last post, an alternative map from the source of you choice, or by driving from state to state and asking around (for those of you who are "social" learners and/or for 5 points extra credit), answer the following questions:

(oops, wait ..., new South Park episode break ...

Okay, I'm back. Thanks for waiting.)

1) Which state is the most sociable (i.e., has a common border with the most other states)?

2) Why?

3) Which state is the least sociable?

4) Is Lake Superior just a name or is it also an attitude and an explanation for Michigan?

5) Either:
A) If you can't read the names of the states on the map, which ones don't you recognize?
OR
B) If you can read the names of the states on the map, which ones did you think you recognized but, actually, didn't?

6) Which states have an unacceptable shape but can be forgiven for that?

7) Which states have an unacceptable shape and something MUST be done about it?

Well???

I've caught myself being disappointed with checking my blog and finding I haven't posted anything new lately, so I know how you must feel. I'd started spending time looking into some of the nifty things you can do with a blog, like adding a visit counter and getting other basic statistics on activity. I just STOPPED doing that in favor of posting this; it actually makes sense to have something worth keeping statistics on before you start keeping them. As I was discussing with my friend Nancy, yesterday, imagine if the founder of Google had been stopped by paying attention to how he spelled the name of his company instead of focusing on the service it would provide. It's actually a mistake; he intended to use the word googol (which means 10 to the 100th power, a LARGE number) but who cares now?

I am still interested in pushing the envelope of what would be interesting in this blog, for me and others, and I'll find a balance between unrealized intentions and actual content. Maybe I'll just post links to other interesting things when I'm not taking the time to create anything myself--sort of like blogger Muzak while you are waiting ;-)

For now, since everyone has fond memories of geography quizzes, study this map and we'll have a quiz later.

favorite movies

In case you didn't notice (and it seems likely since I didn't notice any flag that my profile was updated), I've added my list of favorite movies to my profile. Lest some of you think I have obsessive/compulsive tendencies (although, for the record, I have obsessive/compulsive tendencies), I didn't create the list from scratch. I just grabbed my Netflix 5 star rated list and, even though there are 62 in the list, posted the whole thing instead of editing down to something less on some basis (like, let's see, favorite movies I like more than my other favorite movies).

(NOTE: This post is in no way intended as a trick to get more people to view my profile and make me seem more popular. However, if that consideration is enough to stop you AND you are, nonetheless, just dying to know what my 62 favorite movies are, let me or someone else know and we'll find another way to get the list to you.)

niche services

In the course of talking to my friend Nancy yesterday, we identified a new market that is not being adequately served. The issue is people having anxiety over getting dental work done. She has reactions to Novocaine, I have sensitive teeth and am not thrilled about the injections to numb me up and, invariably, the dentist wanting to proceed before they have fully taken effect. There is a dental group in my area that has partially addressed this. They call their approach "sedation dentistry" (or something like that) and, apparently, somehow they knock you out for their procedures--even teeth cleaning. We like this idea but it seems it could go one step further for people who are anxious even at the thought of the work being done; admittedly, a smaller subset of people. The answer for them--"abduction sedation dentistry". You sign an agreement and whatever releases are necessary so that, when you least suspect it, agents of the dental group, who are privy to your normal routines and stalk you, sedate you, abduct you, transport you to the dentist for the procedure, and, upon completion, return you to the site and circumstances of your abduction, with you regaining consciousness none the wiser for the intrusion but wondering why your mouth is a little sore. I think it could catch on.

adventures in the culinary arts

I admit that most of my efforts in food preparation are fairly basic but it's not like I'm stuck there. For example, it occurred to me that instead of unceremoniously dumping my hot, cooked, multi-grain breakfast mush into a bowl I could dump it unceremoniously onto a PLATE, like so:



Then I noticed that, although it tasted great, it didn't look all that appealing due to it landing mostly flat side up. So the next time, voila, dumped on a plate, mostly flat side down PLUS drizzled with honey, like so:



Then, thinking there was nowhere else to go in the breakfast mush arena, I realized I'd been overlooking a fringe benefit of not rinsing out the cooking pot promptly--dry, translucent, mush goo flakes! Clearly these will make either a dandy garnish or an extremely light separate snack.

you may not be able to see the photos

Getting reports from people that they can't see the photos. Looks like I have to add permissions by individual (argggh) at PictureMail. I'll come up with a better plan. Thanks for the feedback.

Nope that's not it. Maybe the link moved and I had it cached. I've just uploaded the same photo here, so maybe that will be less problematic.

Okay, I've just added a picture to my profile but, immediately, that reminds me that one of my pet peeves is people adding "authority" to what someone says based upon sometimes very superficial impressions of them. I'd rather have whatever I have to say evaluated on the merits so, on the outside chance that my profile photo lends credibility, inappropriately, here's a less staged photo, from early one morning or late one night (I can't remember) when I'm in my confused and or skeptical mode (I don't remember which).

And so it begins...

Well, I'm off to my usual start but I declare this first post as a victory over my procrastinating past!

I recently promised some friends that I would set aside all of my considerations about doing a blog and just do it--just because I can. I got my primary inspiration to do this from my sister, who proposed it over a year ago, and my friend Nancy, who started her blog about 8 or 9 months ago. I've challenged myself to be as openly self-expressed as Nancy has been and not devolve into my usual "analysis paralysis" and stifling perfectionism that has kept me on the sidelines for much too long.

To give you an idea of how things typically go for me, here's how it went to get to this point:

1) coming from a commitment to being generous, I decide that blogging is the answer to my getting familiar with sharing whatever I have to share much more publicly;

2) promise my friends that, within 3 months (yes, that's right THREE MONTHS!), I'll have started blogging;

3) create a list of prerequisites to getting started (some reasonable, like researching sites, tools, and features; some not so reasonable, like finishing certain projects and chores first and, of course, staying overly involved with my job, even on my days off);

4) with just a week to go before my self-imposed deadline and being committed to honoring my word, I finally dive into getting things done;

5) last night, having indulged myself with two final distractions (creating yet another email account and setting up my Treo to synch with it), I stub out my blog page and get oh so close to that first post;

6) at 3 AM this morning, can't decide between a "first post title" of "And so it begins..." (the winner) and "Hello world!" (which comes from my computer programming experience);

7) about an hour ago, it's bothering me that I don't recall where the phrase/quote "and so it begins" comes from and I decide that maybe it's lame to start off my "self-expression" project by just repeating something that someone else said, so I'm off Googling for references to it; and

8) I realize that I'm still just stalling AND it's inconsequential AND between the two titles I've thought of "Hello world!" is as bad as it gets AND someone else (Living Photoshop blog) used the exact title to start his blog BUT it looks good--so I'm stealing it!

So here it is! Step one complete. Now I'll be getting on with making your future visits worthwhile.

Hmmm, about that posting a picture issue ...