Statue of Liberty-size Abe Lincoln in my hometown? Heck, why not? But please blowtorch his suspenders on real tight so the tornadoes don't blow off his britches.

Wow!!!! Hello family and friends, just wanted to let you know that the 6.5 quake that you're watching on the news happened in San Simeon, which is about 3 hours away, give or take.

Look at the big red square!!!

Here in Milpitas, I was sitting on the couch, and started to sway a bit. I thought I was imagining it until I looked over and saw the ornaments on the tree swaying as well. I looked back at Angus, who was on the couch behind me, and he seemed totally unfazed. It lasted about 30 seconds (give or take) and felt like I was in a boat on the sea, just swaying back and forth. Not violently or anything, but definitely perceptibly.

Dave was here with me when the last earthquake happened. That one was fun. This one was more scary because I was here alone. Now that it's over, though, the memory of it is fun :-)

A $3 million realignment of Rybolt that could be complete within three years.

More Info

According to this article, the exact part of I880 that I take to and from work 5 days a week will finally be construction-complete on November 13th, this year! WOOHOO! On busy days, this will cut my commute in half! Exclamation Point!

Over the last month or so, I had been having dizzy spells. Just a general feeling that when I turned my head, my senses took a second longer to realize the fact. Because it lasted a few weeks, I went to the doc. The only real thing that came out of that visit is that we discovered that my blood pressure was 150/104 ("normal" is 120/80, but everyone's different. However, 150/104 is high by anyone's standards). I checked it at work a few times, and it was consistently 130's/90's. Ugh.

Anyway, I went to the eye doctor a few days ago and had this "retinal scan" done (instead of using dilation drops). It showed a nice little picture of my retina. My right retina is already showing effects of high blood pressure... where the artery and vein cross, there's a definite narrowing. The eye doc said that the artery's pressure is compressing the vein somewhat. I also have plaque (cholesterol) that is clearly visible in a few vessels of the right retina. Whenever I take my pressure at work, I take it in both arms. Curiously enough, the left arm is consistently a little lower than the right arm. And my left retina is perfect. (Yay left!)

I went back to the doc for a blood pressure recheck today. 112/82. Yay again!! I asked her for a cholesterol blood test and had that drawn... I should know the results in a few days. As I was waiting to get my blood drawn, the patient next to me (young guy) was having his drawn. Although I could not see his face, I could sense by his body language that he didn't quite like the sight of blood. Sure enough, after the phlebotomist withdrew the needle, the guy turned his head a little and I could see he was pale and woozy. The phlebo had him sit back in the chair and called for a nurse. The guy leaned back and I thought he fainted because he started twitching a little. By then, though, the nurse came around and got him on the floor with his legs up on the chair.

It was kind of interesting to be able to watch from afar without having to be responsible. Anyway, when it was my turn to have my blood drawn, the phlebo had me put my arm on the counter, then hesitated.... he looked at me and asked, "Do you have any problems with having your blood drawn?" with this sort of apprehensive look on his face :) Hhahahhaha. I told him none whatsoever, and happily hopped down and walked away when it was over, leaving the other guy still on the floor drinking some juice.

It must really suck to be that scared of needles. He probably doesn't have cholesterol in his eyeball, though. I guess we all have our crosses :-)

The eastbound portion of the bay bridge is closed tonight due to a burning moving truck. No injuries. No word, yet, on whether the truck is yellow.

Speaking of yellow, Geena and I made some deviled eggs, and they were and are good! How come I'm eating yellow right after I warned all of you to stay away from yellow? Duh! I wanted to keep all the yellow to myself!

Bye!

Apparently I am not the only one who is desperate for this stuff.

Dave and I went to Big Lots the other day, and they actually had Vidal Sassoon products. LOTS of them! But no Deep Treatment Therapy. If anyone lives near a Big Lots and has a minute, maybe you could scope it out for me? :-)

This Physique stuff is total crap, btw.

Here's some interesting/fun links:

• Ping Pong. Extremely clever! Not sure if this will work on your computer, though.
• Wooden Mirror. Click on the movie at the very bottom.

In unrelated news, whenever I view our website with the RetroCat theme, the theme song to Shaft starts going through my head.

I finally got some pictures of the shiny red new car. It's a great automobile. :-)

I had an interesting experience buying it. I first went to Edmunds.com to do a little research about it and get the invoice price. From there, I was able to request a quote from a local dealer. The only one that responded halfway decently was Sunnyvale Volkswagen. Joe was pretty low pressure and he quoted me near invoice price.

I wanted to see how the other VW dealer in town was, so Dave and I went to take a test drive at the dealership on Steven's Creek. Nick was a typical car salesman and was very high pressure. I came prepared however, and Dave says that he thinks I made Nick cry. :-) The book we have is a lot older, but I think I did pretty good - I got Nick down about $5,000 by the time we left. But did I really want a license plate cover that said "Steven's Creek Volkswagen" or the obviously more cheery "Sunnyvale Volkswagen" ?

So back to Joe I went, and got my little car for about $65 over invoice. It didn't go perfectly smoothly however....

keep reading...

Sleeper agent ? He was moved to a military prison so they could more "liberally" interrogate this newly appointed enemy combatant.

Finally. There's a name for my musically challenged weirdness.

I was taught that mules (half donkey / half horse) were sterile, but I guess not. It's old news, but new news to me.

www.tennille.com

could this be true? did tennille really make a domain name and a website?

no. i was looking around for domain names and this one was taken. seems that this young lady has beat me to it ;)

"I have no idea how long I'm going to live. I'm just going to keep eating Big Macs," Don Gorske said.

Don made that comment back when he had only eaten 18,000 McDonald's Big Macs. Now he has eaten 19,000 Big Macs.

keep reading...

Kevin and Caryn have announced their Baby! website. Go and check out the latest Baby! news!!!

The only known photograph of Abraham Lincoln. Cool eh? I grew up in Lincoln, Il (most Abraham Lincoln look-alikes per capita), so I think everything related to Abe is cool.

Just a quick link. Don't get stuck there.

Take a look at this certifiably happy man.

keep reading...

Peoria was the breeding ground for this life-changing discovery.

I found the article fairly interesting, but if you just want to get to the good stuff, it's about 7 paragraphs down.

Who knew? Or did you all know, and I'm the only one out of the loop?

Wonder if that rotting cantaloupe came from BU's cafeteria? :)

One day I was clicking on whatever site popped up on Moveable Type's Newly Updated Blog List. I came across life from an l-shaped desk and have been enthralled ever since. It's a photo blog, and I find Jace's pictures to be at the very least interesting and at best exceptional. I check it every day.

Marge remarks to Lisa: "I can't count the number of times (Homer) has done something crazy like this."

Lisa responds with 300.

"Hmm," says Marge. "I could have sworn it's been 302."

keep reading...

What the heck is a snow roller?

keep reading...

America's Beef Producers put up this neat site for kids. There is one problem, however. It's fraud!

keep reading...

I just read the short science fiction story, A Sound of Thunder for the first time, and I thought it was a great read. It's funny that I love classic time travel stories, but I never seem to like any 2000-style time travel stories. A movie is supposed to come out in 2004, but I don't expect it to be very good (but I'll still probably watch it).

I forget, did someone else already tell me about this? I think somebody did, but I don't remember who. Here it is.

Last night, I watched The City of God.

keep reading...

Vegans are Witches

Once you get done with the article, notice the advertisement at the bottom of the page (I doubt if it'll change from what I saw).

It turns out hiccups are not all fun and games, afterall. Medical science aside, several years ago, I realized that if I open my mouth to full capacity (don't hurt yourself), and then held my breath for 20-30 seconds, my hiccups would cease. The next time you get hiccups in a public location (such as Walmart, your local library, or standing next to some hungry sea lions), try this out!

This is pretty neat. The middle is a bit slow, but the beginning and end are gorgeous.

Today I woke up at around 10:45am or so, and came on down to the couch to check up on the latest news/email, and then I felt a tiny jolt. There were about 3-4 tiny jolts over the course of 4 seconds. The particular earthquake that I felt was 3.5 on the Richter scale, and was centered about 30 miles away. Here's a news story.

Since geena was still asleep, I woke her up and reenacted the earthquake for her. First I had her come down the stairs and sit on our couch. Then I went behind the couch and hit the back of the couch with the palm of my hand 4 times. Foolishly, geena asked Mother Nature for another earthquake so she could compare my rendition to the real thing. You shouldn't taunt Mother Nature, even if your fiancee just woke you up from a sound sleep because of a tiny barely newsworthy earthquake.

I made some very minor alterations to my "No TV" post, and then posted it to Kuro5hin.org. Somehow or another, it managed to make it through their editorial queue, and now I'm a published author! Yay!

keep reading...

Californians (particularly San Franciscans) have a skewed view of reality.

From the "duhhh" department:

Boys Have Higher Rate of Delivery Complications

Well duh! Get it? Ha ha! See! I'm poking fun at a news title just like Jay Leno!

Maybe the title should be: "Birthin' Boys Buoy Badnesses". That would make more sense. Or maybe you're just supposed to know what it means from the context?

Here's a follow up news story in regards to that one Bradley guy. I wasn't going to post it until I read the last sentence. It made me laugh.

Did you know that the City of Milpitas is located in San Jose, California? geena just noticed that our water bill gets sent to:

CITY OF MILPITAS
PO BOX 11100
SAN JOSE, CA 95109-3100

That is super-information.

This link is a classic. I'm sure many of you have read it before, but I just re-read it for the ninth time and it still made me slightly snort (note: I did not snark), so I'm sure you'll do the same.

It woulda sucked to have been the roommate of this other Bradley grad.

This is so real.

i like it when people comment. and what got the most comments? underwear. here's some more underwear:

this guy's underwear is not really worth as much as you think. it's feeling a little cold down here. i wish a primate would shove me in her bra. need to learn more ?

i sure hope moon version 2.0 doesn't hit the earth! if it does, it's funerals for you and me. and if the moon doesn't get us, some marketing genius at Wendy's certainly will. so true (note: that last one is only funny to geeks).

it's been a while since i've posted some super links. (and did i mention i now hate capitalization? my shift key sucks. i also hate the letter 't', but i gotta use that). here's some links...

hello, how may i help you today? would you like some cheese with that apple? i know what you need, you need a pet. they're always great when you need a pick me up.

super.

Read some super stuff:

• SportBrain is back! - They went out of business about a year and a half ago, and I haven't exercised since. Thanks to geena noticing they were back online, I can exercise again. I just walked 2.5 miles @ 3.9 MPH (translated as 4526 steps in 40 minutes). Overall, I've burnt 253 calories today (that is .5 cheeseburgers or 2.5 bananas [mostly cereal and pizza for me]).
• How much will geena walk today? I'll bet I'll have walked more! Bwahahahahaha! (I'll also say I'll more than her).
• K, remember when I said to watch McDonalds stock? - It's moving!
• Did you know it was raining? - It's been raining very hard now, for about 3 days. We saw about 10 bursts of lightning the other night (with thunder and everything)! That doubles the amount of lightning I've seen since living in California. Lucky for us, most of the storm damage is happening north, south and west of us.

I have indulged myself tonight into what can easily be called the height of laziness. Here's a little background:

In the beginning, there were chocolate chip cookies. Women everywhere had to milk the cows, gather eggs from the chickens, pick chocolate chips from the chocolate chip tree, then combine these ingredients and bake the cookies over a fire that their dear husbands had spent hours chopping wood to provide.

Then, there were markets. Women everywhere could now go buy the ingredients (thereby no longer having to care for chocolate chip trees, which I hear are a real pain in the ass to maintain), whip together the chocolately goodness wafers and bake them in the newfangled ovens whilst their children were at school.

Next, pre-made chocolate chip cookie dough made its' debut on the scene, and people (Nope, men had NOTHING to do with the actual chocolate chip cookie making process until this very point) everywhere picked up tube-shaped ready-to-go-dough. All they had to do was slice it into cookie-shaped, uh, cookies, bake them in the oven and presto! Chocolate chip cookies. Grandmas everywhere were incensed! How could they have raised their progeny to be so ... lazy? Ludicrous.

Now comes the part that makes me ashamed to face my grandma again ... We have bought ready-made-cookie-dough-already-cut-into-cookies!!!!! Yep, all I had to do was transfer these little chocolatey gems from their little tray in the package to my cookie sheet, bake them in my digitally-time-and-temperature-controlled oven, and viola! Yummy cookies!

Please, please no one tell my grandma. Although Pillsbury will NEVER top her made-from-scratch chocolate chip cookies.

pre-sliced/pre-rounded cookies

what is left of the cooked cookies

There's been too much fluff on this blog. From now on, I'm going to post controversial tidbits of super-information. Super-information post #1:

• My friend, Kevin, is fat (December 12th entry) - Keep an eye on his web site to see if he sheds those tasty oreo milkshakes.
• Find Yer Sex Gateway - Find out what you are by telling it what you have.
• Dr. Laura gives Star Trek Nemesis thumbs up! - She is her kid's mom, and her Star Trek's fan.

That's all for now. Watch the "Super-Information" category for more of the controversy that you've grown to love. Super.