Yeah, right. A rocker w/ a PhD. Tell me another good one...

No, really!  To show that not every rocker is all bang and no head, Queen's Brian May completed his doctoral thesis in astrophysics and is now a Ph.D.  Way to go, Brian!  Now go and write a song explaining e=mc². :)

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

So begins the novel Paul Clifford by Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton.  As most of you probably know, this line is used by Snoopy as he hunches over his typewriter (typewriter? What's that??) writing his great Beagle novel.  The opening sentence has also come to signify... ummm... let's just say, not very good writing.

There's even a contest called the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest where entrants submit an opening sentence to a non-existent novel.  The winner for 2008?  Here it is, in all its... glory.

"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'"

I love it.  I just wish the author would have written the rest of the novel!

Some firsts for me!

I have a couple of "firsts" to post about today. Actually, make that three firsts...

First first is this is the first post of July. :)

Next first is that I ran in my first organized race ever this morning for the Fourth of July! Yes, it was "only" a 5K, and no, it wasn't my best effort, but I got to run with my daughter Jelly Bean and that's what made it really special.

Final first for this post is that earlier this week, I played my first round (well, half-round -- 9 holes) of golf on a "real" golf course ever! I must say, I now know why people get so addicted to it. And much like running or skiing, it's not really about beating those you are with, but getting better and doing your best. Believe me, I've got a ways to improve, but I do have to say I improved a bit over the "course" of the afternoon. I started out shooting a 24 on my first three holes (par 11) (yikes!), but I ended up with par-par-bogey on my last three holes. Pretty good improvement if I do say so myself. Now, how am I going to convince Alisonwonderland to buy me a set of clubs... :)

I guess my daughters are only thinking of the environment...

Some bricks, some bricks, my kingdom for some bricks!

Remember when you used to keep little kids around just so you had an excuse to buy LEGOs and build with them? Okay, okay, maybe you had/have little kids around for other reasons, but a good one was so you could buy LEGO sets and not seem silly. Well, now you don't need kids to be able to play with whatever LEGOs you want! Just go to http://ldd.lego.com and download their LEGO Digital Designer program. With the program, you can build either from LEGO's own sets, or you can build from scratch and let your imagination run wild! In fact, there's even an option to let you upload your creation to LEGO. I can guarantee you'll waste countless spend a few well deserved hours off building some nifty models.

Happy Belated Birthday x86!

I'm a little late with this, but 30 years ago on June 8, 1978, Intel introduced its first 16-bit processor called the 8086. For those of you too young to remember, or too non-technical to care (I'm old and a geek, so I do know about this), the 8086's architecture would be the heart (and brains) of the laptops and desktops you work on and the servers that power the internet.

In 1981, a little company called IBM introduced the PC Model 5150 using a variant of the 8086 called the 8088. From there, other companies like Compaq sprang up using the 8086 and other improved processors like the 80386, 80486, Pentium, and so on. The base architecture of the processor, which became known as the "x86", now drives most of the "personal computers" we work on daily. This even includes the Macintosh computers which switched from IBM's PowerPC chips (yeah, that same small company. A story for another day...) to Intel's x86 chips.

So anyway, wish the chip in your computer a slightly belated happy birthday!

For Sale: Cheap! 1984 Pontiac Firebird with a few mods

For those of you old enough to remember Knight Rider, I present to you KITT! Now on eBay Motors, and on sale!

UPDATE: The bidding is over and winning bid? $53,000. For a friggin' 24 year-old glorified Firebird... :P

So *that's* how you get kids to do chores...

If you're a kid, STOP READING RIGHT NOW! This entry is only for adults and you should stay away. It's a secret that only parents should know, so leave this site right now!

There, that should do it. Only us parents now.

Think you can't get your kids to do chores? Are they only doing a small percentage of what you've asked them to do? Well, here's the answer, nice-n-neat in a FoxTrot cartoon. I love FoxTrot if for no reason than for Jason, the son. A true little brother to his big sister and brother. A total nerd in the best sci-fi tradition. If you can find some of Bill Amend's old collections, I suggest you read them. I think you'll be amused.

Anyway, without further ado...

Did you ever have one of those days?...

Well, it appears that this guy did. A French skydiver named Michel Fournier was planning to break the world record by jumping from 25 miles (!) above the earth's surface. I'll let you read the story here. Of course, a jump like this is full of risks to begin with. Not only is there great physical risk, but his own French government wouldn't let him jump, presumably due to danger to other people. Finally, he was able to get approval from the Canadian government. Then comes a whole unexpected risk. Just as he's getting ready to go up, his balloon -- get this -- floats away without him, or anyone else aboard, for that matter!

I must say, I feel really bad for the guy since he sold all his possessions to finance this attempt, but really, I think I've seen this episode on the Road Runner or some other such cartoon. If he gets another shot at this, I'm sure one new item on the pre-flight checklist will be "Make sure the friggin' balloon is tied down!!!".

Buy one, get one free!

Oh, dang. I missed out. It expired on May 31. But really, it was legit. Check out the link in the website here. At least the link was there as of a few minutes ago... :)




But I definitely can't take credit for finding this deal! Thanks for this go to your friends and mine at Gear Diary.