Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Crusoe
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Seinfeld - "The Foundation"
George: "What was that line you told the Ross', something about a way, and a light" Jerry: "No, its she's not really dead if we find a way to remember her." George: "That's it, that was the line that destroyed my life!"
George: "I was free and clear, I was living the dream, I was stripped to the waist eating a block of cheese the size of a car battery!"
Jerry (commenting on Elaine's trip to Mexico to find ideas for the catalog): "Anything you couldn' get rippin' open a bag of Doritos and watching viva sipada?"
Dolores: "When I heard you got engaged - I thought maybe you had matured, but obviously there's no growth here" Jerry: "Well I can't argue with that"
Kids from karate class: "Now we finish it!" - clearly a reference to "Highlander".
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Belgian Grand Prix Results
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Another Formula One Weekend
F1 weekends on Speed are fun. Weekend is Friday practice, Saturday knock-out qualifying and Sunday race day. With limited in timezone races, I usuaully wake up early and watch the European stuff live, and the Asian stuff on DVR. This gives me my racing fix early, then I can spend the rest of the day doing whatever. This morning I was up very early so clicked on the DVR to catch Friday practice. The fun thing about Friday practice - compared to some other race shows is that we get to see cars on track virtually all the time while getting commentary about the track, the personalities, the rivalries and all other stuff that is mildly interesting, but the presenters are humorous. They have an ex-mechanic, an ex-driver, and are well respected by F1 overall - with one of their commentators being the official post-race interviewer. They seem to genuinely enjoy each others company and poking fun at each other whenever appropriate. Such as when Peter Windsor used the phrase appices to describe the monster 4-apex turn in Turkey. They were all over him about that word. Another fun one was when they found some old footage of David Hobbs doing commercials for pants and quoting it was a "jolly good price" they were classic 70s plaid polyester - they claimed he still had them in his closet. Saturday morning qualifying is fun - I also get excited when I hear Bob Varsha say: "Qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix starts now", then we get the music, and we hear Steve Matchett hollar as the music starts: "Right now boys, Right now" One of the things I've enjoyed is learning the British slang that will occassionally creep into the commentary - moreso on race day, but also on practice and qualifying day.
Some of my favorite quotes - some similar to US quotes, some not.
- He looks like a one armed paper hanger in a gale
- Look how close to the wall they are - not even enough room for a fag-paper - that one caused a follow-up comment to describe that in UK fags are cigarettes
- Look at the damage to the Red Bull - he hit that curb and now his car is completely knackered
- Kerrrr-blammo - That's one of my all time favorites - for when an engine blows and dumps a huge white smoke plume all over the track.
Here's a few pics of Kimi's engine going Kerrrr-blammo in Valencia.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Defining Bureaucracy
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Long awaited catch up post + Stupid Scary Movies
On to the meat of the post for today – Stupid Scary Movies. As I mentioned above my younger daughter is now a junior in high school. Over the course of the summer we have rented a few movies, some good, some mediocre, some bad. Three scary movies we watched were: Vacancy, Untraceable, and Prom Night. Each of these scary movies had various degrees of stupidity involved with their characters and story lines. For those who have not seen these movies and want to, you may want to not continue as I’m confident this will spoil some of the movie for you. The above list was listed in order of stupidity. I’m not too good with character names, so this may be a bit vague, but the stupidity will ring true.
Vacancy – overall this movie was good, there was a lot of suspense. Towards the end the stupidity involved the couple finally making contact with the police and them sending an officer to investigate the situation. He ultimately manages to get himself killed, and therefore obviously doesn’t check back in with HQ. This should have been a sign that perhaps something was amiss. However, no additional resources are sent for further investigations. As the movie closes they once again call the police, to which dispatch responds: “We sent someone there last night”. Interestingly they didn’t find it odd that he never returned, called, or in any other manner checked in to say everything was ok.
Untraceable – again overall I would rate this good, there was an interesting plot, and the concept of using the Internet viewership to kill people was dramatic. Now for the stupidity – and there is quite a lot of it. After the first two people are killed the FBI is unintentionally portrayed as quite unable to conduct an investigation. The first two men worked together. Clearly the lines of investigation should have centered on looking into the things they worked on together – and they should have had a much earlier line into the killer. Then we get to the FBI agent being snatched. I think a base quality of an FBI agent is ‘not an idiot’ – the way in which he is lured to his eventual death is a bit hokey. Also, foreshadowing of the blinking Morse code was lame. The ending became quite stupid on a few levels. First Diane Lane’s character – somehow ends up in a deserted part of town, don’t quite remember how this happened. Her car, cell phone and all other electronics cease to work. After doing some amount of wandering around the bridge, using the emergency phone, and such she decides – ah well look my car’s lights are back on – I bet I can just go get in my car and everything will be fine. Needless to say the killer is there and snatches her in a setup for the ending. In the lead up to her being snatched her friend / boyfriend is the only police / FBI in the area and he must spend untold minutes racing in vain to try to help her. Really seems as though there should have been someone else close that could have responded to help her.
Prom Night – we just watched this one last night. I would give this a mediocre. The suspense was good, and there were a few good shocks as doors and closets were closed and mirrors revealed surprisingly scary things again and again. The movie was right to the action with several killings in the opening scene, which had stupidity to spare – wherein the girl comes home to her house and she never realizes that her father is laying in front of the television with his skull bashed in. Fast forward three or so years and it is as the title claims – Prom Night. Once things move to the prom the stupidity really starts. The killer manages to convince a cleaning lady to let him into his room because his card is damaged. I would hope that the hotel workers are instructed to not randomly let people into rooms with damaged keys. Also – on the “this guy just looks wrong to be here” factor – he rates a ten. Wearing a baseball cap, sport-coat and jeans, unshaven and continuously hiding his face. She gets killed and he has her master key for easy access to kill at will. Back at police HQ they learn of his escape from “maximum security mental institution” which should, I would think, be a bit more difficult to escape from and not have a suspended ceiling in a jail cell, to climb up and out of. The detective in charge heads to the prom to watch over things. A girl who has been waiting to be crowned prom queen all night decides to leave 5 minutes before crowning to be with her boyfriend in the hotel room. She bumps into the killer on the elevator, he returns and kills her after a lengthy chase involving quite a lot of clumsiness, tripping, slipping, clunking and falling. Ultimately they learn the killer is checked in, and decide to evacuate the hotel. He does this by pulling the fire alarm and having everyone exit. Off scale high on the stupid-o-meter – the target of the killer – shows up with alarms blaring and voices announcing “Alert, you must exit” and states rather flatly: “I left my mother’s shawl in the room, I need to go get it”. She states this a few times – lest we miss it – and proceeds to return opposite the flow of the masses up to the room to find her shawl. Several stupid things happen and the killer doesn’t get her. The police then conduct a floor-to-floor search and don’t find the killer because alas he has killed a bell-hop, stolen his clothes and quietly left. The main target has now returned home. One detective and one uniformed officer are “on watch” at the house where they are sure the killer will return. Rather than posting a dozen or more cops, which being a big-city should have been an easy task. Just as in Untraceable, we are treated to the one key detective racing to save the day – rather than using the resources of the department to secure the location. After a stupid dream sequence, which replays almost exactly in real-life involving a remarkable amount of stupidity of getting a drink of water, taking a pill and having the killer appear in the mirror when the medicine cabinet is closed. The killer kills the boyfriend, snatches the girl and pulls her into the closet. Just as the detective is about to reach into the closet, someone screams and he runs to check out what happened 30 feet away. She then elbows the killer and begins to scream and run away – oops some tripping ensues to make it more dramatic, and the detective 30 feet away doesn’t respond for a full two minutes entering just in time to shoot the killer once, twice, maybe three times. He falls dead and the detective states: “Its ok”, well it clearly isn’t – three of her close friends are dead, her boyfriend is laying on the bed five feet away dead, but well – she’s alive so I guess it is OK.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Drag Racing
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Spanish Grand Prix
As happened last year between Michael and Fernando - Q3 started with a chase. Hamilton maintained the lead and then the fuel burn off began. A bit of running around the track until first tire changes, right around 7 minutes left in the session. Then a few more laps around the course to set up for final hot laps on soft tyres. Everybody pitted with Alonso being the last on track. The setup was there for a big finish in front of the home crowd. The finish was very exciting - with everyone advancing their times during the last run to the line. Massa, Hamilton and Räikkönen all pushing - Massa finishing P1. Alonso had about 20 seconds before he reached the finish line. Very close - just came up short.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Hate Crime Legislation - Do we need this?
Seems like the libs think we need more hate crime legislation. I'm not sure precisely what's driving it this time. There seems to be a penchant for this every so often. Now however there does seem to be an organized opposition to it, and it may actually receive a veto, which I think is appropriate.
I think that part of this stems from the leniency that has been shown in the past for criminals. The phrase "the crows coming home to roost" springs to mind.
I certainly agree that the types of incidents we saw before the civil rights movement should not have happened. For too long juries tended to not convict those similar to them when they committed crimes against the different. This injustice does still happen and is what must be prevented. Frequently people point to the Matthew Sheppard incident as reasons why we need hate crime legislation. My point is that it is quite illegal and criminal to tie someone to a fence and beat them to death. The lame gay panic excuse attempted by his assailants was just that - lame. They belong in jail, and thankfully they are there. My point is simple - convict criminals for their acts! Here are my comments from almost precisely 7 years ago, when someone blew a gasket and killed a bunch of people back in Pittsburgh.
- All crime is hateful
I found the dissertation by Steven D. Irwin and Joel Ratner of the Anti-Defamation League on the topic of hate crimes interesting ("Getting Tough on Hate Crimes," May 7). They seem to indicate that they would prefer that a person's thoughts while committing a crime be taken into account; that we should increase the punishment for such heinous crimes based on a person's race, religion or ethnicity; and we should expand state laws to encompass "all other categories of hate crimes."
This is, of course, in response to renewed violence on the part of one Richard Baumhammers. I ask Messrs. Irwin and Ratner this: Is it not sufficient that five human beings were killed? Or three, as in the case of Ronald Taylor in March? Should not such violent killers be locked up for the rest of their natural life, regardless of their victims' race?
I ask those who would rush to enact so-called hate crime legislation: Does it matter that those killed in these events where chosen based on race, religion or other such criteria? Would it somehow be more acceptable had they killed people completely at random? Or might it be better still if those no longer with us were similar in ethnicity to the shooters?
Let us focus on the crimes actually committed: The punishment for these acts should be swift and sure lest others decide to continue this onslaught on decency.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Anti-Racing on the NJ Turnpike
Beginning another F1 Season
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Crazy Drying Dog
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Fun with planes
Friday, November 10, 2006
Rutgers beats Louisville 28-25
The last game I really sat and watched - besides Super Bowls was Penn Trafford losing to Upper St. Clair in 1997 WPIAL AAAA finals. That game ended very similar to the Rutgers game. At the end of the PT game the kicker shanked an extra point that would have tied the game. At the end of the Rutgers the kicker shanked a field goal attemp, but lucky for Rutgers there was a defensive penalty and the kicker got another shot at it. He split the uprights and gave them the lead. The ensuing kickoff was quite exciting as the kicker needed to help out with the tackle, the students swarmed the field and had to be sent back to their seats. Fortunately the last play of the game appropriately ended with another sack of the quarterback. The final play was more impressive since Rutgers sent 6 defensive player deep to protect agains the hail-mary the fiver front guys just blew through the line and once again swarmed the QB! GAME OVER and the fans poured onto the field.
It was quite a game.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Rutgers vs. Louisville
Sunday, October 15, 2006
New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge
We started at the light closest to home, again in retrospect this may have not been a good starting point, Sea Girt.
Sea Girt is another small town on The Jersey Shore. It was a very cute little town, with an interesting small light. Much more like a house with a light stuck on top, as opposed to the imposing structures most think of when hearing the word lighthouse. It did have a nice Forth Order Lens
. That's just sunlight being reflected around the room.
Next we drove on down to Barnegat. Barnegat is a tall lighthouse much like what you would anticipate.
As you can tell from this picture it was hard from up close to get a good shot of it, there's another in the slideshow that's from a little further away . This light is way out there, a good long ride from the Garden State Parkway out across the inlet then out to the light. The line to climb was fairly long, so in the interest of time we decided not to wait and walk all the way up. We did take a few pictures, including
Kellie with a bright blue tongue.
Next we went down to Tucker's Island Lighthouse. This is considered a replica lighthouse as the original fell into the sea in 1927. This had some of the better exhibits.
Including a Third Order Fresnel Lens. 
We then headed down to Atlantic City and the Absecon lighthouse. This is another tall lighthouse. This one we walked up and down, and got some interesting shots from the top.
After seeing the light we decided to drive around AC a bit and get some dinner while we were there. We determined something quick and known was good so we did Ruby Tuesdays. We wrapped up in AC and headed south again.
Next stop - Hereford
- this is one of only a few pictures from this light. We wanted to be sure to get to the next stop before 6PM and we only stayed for a few minutes.
After a fairly long drive into a very remote area we finally reached East Point Lighthouse only 5 minutes before 6. 
This was a very run down lighthouse just beginning the restoration. It will be interesting to go back in a few years to see what they accomplish.
Last for us was Cape May Lighthouse.
A very tall lighthouse. We arrived just after sundown, so could not get very good pictures. From afar it looked as though some silhouettes might be possible but it was not to be.
All in all a rather challenging day, hence the name, but we had a good time, had some free slurpees - hence the blue tongue - and all in all are looking forward to next year.
Monday, October 09, 2006
A great sporting weekend
Although I am not a *huge* sports fan. I did watch quite a lot this weekend.
Baseball -
Watched the Tigers finish off the Yankees which was great. Added bonus is that a lot of my Detroit clients should be in a good mood this week. The Mets wrapped up the sweep of the Dodgers, let's see if Tommy LaSorda will be so excited about the playoffs now that his Dodgers have been eliminated.
Formula 1 -
Final sports item of the weekend was early early Sunday (afternoon Japan time) I caught it on Tivo - when Michael Schumacher went Kerr-Blammo giving Fernando Alonso and Renault the win and a 10 point lead in the points, now all he has to do is score 1 point to take the championship. Next year he moves to West McLaren Mercedes so I can pull for him to beat Kimi who's taking first seat from Michael at Ferrari.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Coca Cola Blak
Monday, September 25, 2006
Driving to school - 1 hour and 2 minutes
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Dover 400
Well I'm now sitting here in the grandstands waiting for the Dover 400 to start. . Green flag is supposed to fly at 1:10PM. Currently 11:10AM and we have drizzling rain - which will not be good if it continues. We'll be here all day and night.
Travel here was a bit of a nightmare - the first 120 miles used up the first 110 minutes. The next five miles used up the next 90 minutes. What a royal disaster - we spent 40 minutes on the shoulder waiting to exit then they closed the exit ramps closest to the track were closed - lots full I guess. Finally went and parked at a commercial park with shuttle to track. We should have just gone directly to the outer lot. Would have saved at least 40-50 minutes maybe even more.
12:30PM - The sun is out. Hard shadows are evident. The sun has been playing peek-a-boo with the clouds all morning. Now with the race only 40 minutes away it makes a shining appearance. If it stays like this we'll go green on time. That's one thing I have to say about F1. Unless it is a monsoon they run.
Speaking of F1 - I'm going to have to change teams. No longer can I route for BMW-Sauber. It will have to be West McLaren Mercedes. Well at least Juan Pablo is gone (I never liked him even when he was at Williams BMW), of course Kimi will be gone soon too - no idea who the team will be next year. Pedro De La Rosa (sp?) looks to be a good driver in Montoya's spot not sure who will be riding #1 and who will be #2, or more accurately #5 and #6, as McLaren looks like a lock for P3 in constructors. It will be interesting to see how this season pans out if Michael can get his last championship or not. I've been anti-Michael since his 'world tour' in 2004 - but as much as I like Alonso I think seeing Michael go out with a world championship. I didn't like the way Ferrari handled the press for Michael's retirement at all.
Back to NASCAR - 1:45PM - 50 laps complete. 3 Yellows so far. The sun has stayed mostly out. Good racing so far. #99 made a good pass and really extended his lead before most recent yellow. Almost caught up with end of field to put them a lap down but not quite. Tony Stewart is out already - out in wreck.
4:45 - Great pass right at the end Jeff Burton passed Matt Kenseth for the win. Exciting finish. Now waiting for the bus in the pouring down rain. What a joy! Into each life a little diversity must fall. All in all a fun day.