This morning, a young county cop walked up the driveway and informed me that some neighborhood kids had written words in spackle on the Jeep. I had to pull it in the driveway and scrub as much off as possible before it dried completely and set; luckily it was water-soluble, so I got everything off the paint and called it good. I’m thinking they’re not professional criminals, though-who writes the word WIMP if you’re up to no good?
Oh, crap. The NYT reports that men who spend the majority of their time sitting (say, in front of a computer, for example) have a much higher risk of heart disease, even if they get regular exercise.
I made a backup of the Idiotking database and upgraded the engine to WordPress 3.0 last night, which I’m hoping will speed things up around here. Simple HTTP requests to the website come up quickly but anything WordPress related (well, PHP related) is still slow as dirt, so I’m going to spend some time monkeying around with things here on the site to see what the culprit is. So if you see things missing for a while (the sideblog or Flickr feed at the top, for example) you’ll know I’m testing things out. So far, doing simple things like adding a post and editing on the backend seem to be much faster.
As always, if you see anything hinky, let me know in the comments.
Normally, I find the subject of air disasters morbidly fascinating, but this particular example is noteworthy because I flew on this very plane only two years before the crash.
[Youtube has since removed this video for copyright reasons]
Owning a 34 year old truck means that I will soon be intimately familiar with crumbling 34 year old wiring. Thus: a link to this very well-written Multimeter Tutorial.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
This afternoon I’m listening to some live Soul Coughing, courtesy of the Internet Archive. I miss good music.
We got back into Maryland just in time for a couple inches of desperately-needed rainfall. The rain barrels are almost full, and I’m fully expecting the grass to be lush and green for about two days before going back to a post-apocalyptic shade of brown.
Finn seems to be in the grip of the Terrible Twos; there is suddenly much whining and crying and carrying on over the smallest of things. Mama and I are resolute and speak to her in even, measured tones about how she should use her words and explain what’s wrong instead of making keening noises. Hopefully this, too, shall pass quickly. Potty training, though, is going along like gangbusters. She makes me so proud.
Mama graciously let Finn and I sleep in until 8:20 this morning, so tired were we after our three-day adventure to New York for Great-Grandpa’s 95th birthday party. Finn got to spend time with her grandparents, meet a huge swath of her extended family on my side (this was one of the biggest turnouts we’ve had in years) and play in the lake, something she did not stop asking to do even as the stars were out and the fireworks were going off.
And now I’m back to missing her and her Mama terribly as I go back to the grind.
1. Family Date Night is tonight, which means we will take advantage of the slightly less humid weather to walk downtown for milksheep and icecream.
2. Tomorrow we’re heading north for Grampy’s 95th birthday bash at the lake, a visit with Renie, Grandma and Grandpa (not to be confused with Grampy, who is technically Great-Grampy) and a good portion of the extended family. It will be all too short but a good time regardless.
3. Cooler weather in the forecast.
Wow, after reading this story, I’m going to have to rethink our current animal situation: Cats were eating man, 74, found dead with mom.
…crews removed a dozen cats from the home on Tuesday. They also found four more dead cats and a dead dog in the residence.
I was walking down the stairs of my parking garage, lost in my own thoughts, when a peculiar sight stopped me dead in my tracks. A single Marine, in crisp dress blues, stood in front of a hookah bar, saluting a bouquet of flowers. I struggled to pull my camera from my bag before he finished, but was only able to snap off one shot before he spun on his heel and marched away.
His dedication to his fellow soldier, and the bitter irony of the dead Marine’s story made me appreciate my life that much more.