Sunday, July 31, 2005

Double your pleasure


dbrainbow1
Originally uploaded by hbot3000.
A nice Double Rainbow, sadly, I couldn't get the whole thing in my viewfinder. You'll just have to trust me when I say it was a full, double rainbow. My mom noticed that the outer rainbow had inverted colors and relayed the fact that a couple decades ago, artists for publications (religious or otherwise) would correctly paint a double rainbow (with colors inverted) and it was taken by some in the church community to be a secret satanic symbol. My mother said in retrospect it was pretty stupid of people to make such an assumption. I tend to agree.

Devious little Monkey


catcupboard
Originally uploaded by hbot3000.
I turn my back for one second, ONE SECOND, and Bouncer's on the second shelf. Ooh, you little rascal (shakes fist).

Life on Mars


marssunset
Originally uploaded by hbot3000.
Blogging is still sporadic. Been busy and tumultuous here at casa Robotica. I think I do have things to say, but at the moment gaming seems to be what I really want to do. Will post when I'm ready. Until then enjoy a few pictures (click through to check flickr for more).

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Bonus Cat Picture


catzilla
Originally uploaded by hbot3000.
Be sure to go to flickr if you want more comicon pictures. I should have taken more, but I was too busy absorbed in the wonderment of it all. In the meantime, here's the empire versus it's greatest threat: catzilla. What you can't see is that he's gnawing on a small troop walker (At-st).

Fun with legos


cruiser6
Originally uploaded by hbot3000.
The engine section of one of the cooler things at the con. Really big, really cool lego cruiser. I'm such a geek. Click the image to browse all of my comicon images.

Monday, July 18, 2005

Regurgitation Station

"This isn't the future. This is some fake plastic future. This is a soy-based future substitute." -- Fafnir (Fafblog)

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Help us bankokslut, you're our only hope.

Wonder why Anakin fell so hard and so fast for the old queen, er I mean Emperor? In space no one can hear you bite your pillow. No wonder he and the luscious Portman had no chemistry.

Speaking of chemistry y'all remember what happened to that mythological miscreant who stole the sodium and stuck it in his back pocket. Hopping hooligans! He got a hot seat. That tale is Aubrey-licious.

Now that you have a new gal-pal you’ve got to wrangle up them there unruly pubes. Wouldn’t want any to pop up in an unsightly place such as the sleeve of a bathrobe for instance.

So bankokslut (or anyone else who knows), I need an honest opinion. How good is Corgan’s latest TheFutureEmbrace. My frame of reference, I’m a radio friendly Smashing Pumpkins fan, but I’m no fanboy.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Work Schmerk

I finished the Salmon of Doubt by and about Douglas Adams over the family reunion. If you are a fan of his, and have not read it, you have done yourself a disservice. His interview on why he's such a strong atheist is very interesting. Well, he's just very interesting. The whole book is filled with non-fiction he wrote about Apple products and science and such and notes from his friends on what a cool person he was. Did you know that he was born in Cambridge the same year that Watson and Crick made a monumental genetic discovery? And that interestingly enough, his initials are DNA? I have more tidbits and revelations for you, but you will have to expand the post.


For those of you interested in climate change, or interesting/scary events that may be indicative of climate change, I present to you this article from the San Francisco Chronicle. It's about how the cold water that usually moves next to the coasts of Northern California and Oregon hasn't done that this year, thus the plankton that comes with it hasn't come to the coast, and various species are having issues with that. The article explains it better. Also, here's an oldie but a goodie about rapid glacier melting.

I'm in the last chapter of the Long Emergency, where he gives his idea of what the next 20 years will bring. It's not very sunshiny. Essentially he thinks most of us will have to rediscover farming and that the consumer life as we know it will collapse. I'm not sure how much I buy it, he pretty clearly sums up why he thinks alternative energy won't save us, or won't save us in time. You have to buy into a few key assumptions of his theory, but none of them are that much of a stretch. I would certainly miss my electronic amusements should we start having problems like that. But whether you buy his societal collapse theory or not, it is at the very least an interesting thought experiment. It's pretty interesting to learn just how much of our society is built on the idea of cheap oil forever, and just how poorly we've planned for a lack of oil. Part of the appeal I guess, comes from memories of all the end of the world stories I read as an Adventist youth. I suppose if you were apocalypse-minded, you might postulate that peak oil could easily play a key part in the adventist version of the end of the world. I'm not inclined to be that negative these days I guess. I worry about our lack of planning, and to some extent how much I believe in the end of the world, but choose to believe that life is what we make it. Anyway, I digress. As a further digression though, my dad flipped through it and put it down again, stating that he thought Christ would return before we ran out of oil so why worry about it? What kind of attitude is that? What a silly reason not to care about the consequences of our actions. I thought conservatives were all about consequences and such? Okay, I'll stop, but just so you know, I could go on all day. And will go on to add that there is considerable speculation that this year is the year we hit hubbert's peak (the halfway point in world oil supplies, and the point after which oil production will drop dramatically in just a few years) and that we could hit $80 dollars/barrel by Christmas. But, like my dad said after making his end times prediction, "I ain't no prophet."

Also, I found another good reason to keep this blog anonymous. Apparently, sometimes search committees read your blog when you apply for a job and decide not to hire you based on what you wrote. So, uh, good to know.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Bueller . . . Bueller . . .


mattHauss
Originally uploaded by memory-hole.
This is a test of the group photo archive that I set up for kvc, eric, hazMatt and I. If anyone wants to contribute a picture to this let me know, we'll work something out. Anyway, just a picture of Matt and I on a recent trip to Walla^2. Yay for technology!

Thursday, July 07, 2005

I am . . . the One

So I believe I have successfully added a folding option to the blog. This means long posts can now be squished, so they don't take up the whole damn page. In other words, I control the matrix, it does not control me. So now, we will test this marvelous new feature, in order that we may enter the Utopia I promised earlier. If you click the bit of text that says "read more" or whatever I have it say eventually (in the spirit of slacktopia, I haven't decided yet) you will expand this post and see my usually rambling. Not thrilling, until you realize that I will be revealing my true weight as well. Go ahead and guess what it is before you click. If you guess right, you'll get a slap from me followed by "Oh you bastard, you bastard, how could you guess that high?"


My full weight will be revealed shortly. But first, additional comments on family reunion. The director of the camp we stayed at (the one with the wife who was content with her role) was always ramping up the religious talk to an amazingly annoying level. Every time he talked to us as a group he would say something like "Gosh, God just loves family. We're so glad you're here because God loves families. And he wants to increase his family right?" or some such. When you talked to him one on one, you could have a normal conversation (or so I overheard) but as a group, we always had to enter group think mode and repeat that we believed in Jesus lest He strike us dead. Douglas always used to talk like that too, to groups who came in? It's like you need at least 5 Jesus references per conversation to prove that you're not devil worshippers in disguise. What's up with that?

So, at surgical consultation yesterday (nothing big, don't worry), they weighed me. Funny story, my general practitioner didn't weigh me, but these guys did for no apparent reason. The result. Wait for it. 234 fucking pounds of me exists at the moment. I'll repeat that. TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR FUCKING POUNDS. I'm five foot nine inches tall. So, uh, time to get back on the horse I guess. And by "the horse" I mean I should probably start exercising again. Or take up an eating disorder. Hmmm, that sounds promising, I'll start looking into that. In the meantime, I'll just pretend that the weight is entirely due to muscle. I cherish my delusions.

Catch Wonder Showzen on MTV2 if you haven't already. It's the most offensive thing I've seen in a while. And I laugh and laugh and laugh. Nothing like a kids show that shows puppets vomiting blood. The show that's playing as I type this is all about patience. As such, it tries to annoy you as much as possible in a funny kind of irony. Good times, good times.

I'm giving the London bombings a day before I comment. Consider it a moment of silence for the dead.

In the meantime, remember, Minmei loves each and every one of you.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Notes from the field

7:15 pm 7-1-05. We have arrived at Living Waters Ranch. Dinner was delicious. Have seen many family members already. The introduction by the owners of this place was full of religious language that makes me uncomfortable. And I haven't even hit the sing-a-long hymn section of the evening yet. I may fall asleep on my bed shortly in the hopes of avoiding it. Because if I go, I ain't singing. I'm precious that way. Ah, it kind of astonishes me how ready I am to leave these religious practices behind. You may find it sad, but it occurred to me recently that I don't care if I ever step foot in a church again. Well, more on that later. The oddest portion of the evening came when I noticed that the kitchen apron that the director's wife was wearing had written on it: "I am content with my role." Considering how devout they seem to be, it didn't seem like it was intended to be ironic. Who knows, they might think I have no sense of humor. On the plus side at this place though, the rooms are nice. Far fewer activities, than say the old camp, but the buildings are about 3 times nicer. And the view is pretty decent as well. Maybe I'll post some to flicker once I get back.

12:04 pm July 4. I have engaged my powers of sleep to avoid those things that I find tedious. So far, I have used sleep to avoid Friday vespers, Church, and the Challis 4th of July parade this morning. Although I learn after the fact that my dad was apparently on one of the floats doing yo-yo tricks. One parade watcher was heard to remark, "that's incredible!" So, yeah, I'm a precious, family-avoiding flower. Yesterday, I climbed to the top of the nearby hill and learned two things that I already knew. I am grossly out of shape. Granted, we're at 6k feet here, but still. The amount of huffing and puffing I did on the way up was an embarrassment. The allergy attack didn't help either. The second thing I learned and I already knew was that I am horribly afraid of heights. I got dizzy in certain steep spots. Yup, machismo is my real middle name. Of course my real first and last names are "no" and "whatsoever", so I'm not sure how far that gets me.

7:36am 7-6-05: Sitting in the Boise airport taking advantage of free wireless. All airports need to incorporate this feature. So let it be written, so let it be done. Will post again later as time allows.