Uhh...

I love it when they do all the work for me...

Speaking in support of teaching "Intelligent" design in schools instead of that crazy evolution thing, the Religious Right[tm] sought out their leading thinkers and came up with this gem from Pennsylvania Pastor Ray Mummert:

"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture," he said, adding that the school board's declaration is just a first step.

Thanks Ray.

WikiWikiWiki

A couple of weeks ago, my current favorite TV show, Deadwood, made mention of the "Comstock Load". Somewhere in the back of my brain, something went "hey...that sounds familiar, but I don't remember why". So I took to the internet and hit one of my favorite online reference resources...Wikipedia. It's a free, Wiki based, multi-language, user-editable encyclopedia which covers just about every subject known to man.

I did a search on Wikipedia for "Comstock load" and to my surprise, found nothing. Cool! A perfect opportunity for me to contribute something to the cause. I did a bit of reading online and got a rough handle of what exactly it was, and started preparing my resources. I then mentioned my idea to a friend at work, Ben. When he heard that there was no entry, he asked..."did you spell it right?" (always a concern with me, and I should have known better). I did a Wikipedia search for "Comstock Lode" and surprise surprise, there was a well written article on the whole thing. Damn.

So, with my original hopes of contributing to the encyclopedia in great and wordy ways dashed, I did all I could. I created an entry to help all my poor spelling brethren. Without further ado, I present the world premier of my Comstock Load Wikipedia article:

"Comstock Load"

However, due to the magic of Wikipedia's auto-redirect, you will probably never get to see it. The original looked much like this:

---

"Comstock Load"

see: Comstock Lode

---

Carry on, poor spellers, we will prevail.

Tech Support, may I help you?

Yes, please. Tell me about your stupid computer problems while I stand here in the restroom with my dick in my hand, trying to take a leak. I've got nothing but time on my hands (err...).

Even better! You can be like the coworker a couple of weeks ago who actually followed me as I went into the bathroom to ask me about computer problems while I peed.

My next move...

This kind of bicycle culture, and legal hash? Time to book a one-way flight.

http://www.pbase.com/rossw/am_bikes

Rapid fire updates

No internet access at home yet (Who'd have thought it? In a bigass apartment complex, nobody has an insecure wireless access point I can borror for a few days. The nerve of some people!). And a ton of things broken at the office means little time for blog updates over the last few (and possibly next few) days. So I'm gonna fire off a couple of short posts when I think of them...the first being:

5 years at the current job as of 3/18/05. My longest stretch ever. Time to talk to the boss about getting more pesos outta this place. The coffers are running pretty low. Hopefully I've proven myself an asset. I like to think I have.

Big thanks

Crazy mad big thanks to Steve and his girl Donna for helping out with the move on Saturday. It was very very appreciated. I still owe you two and DT beers/food as payback.

Most of my junk is now at the new apartment. Still gotta get a storage unit for some stuff and move the last bits out of the townhouse. Man, this is no fun. Hopefully I'm in the home stretch tho. Next all we have to do is clean the old place top to bottom. Ugh. This is no fun.

Props

Thanks to some help from DT yesterday, the girl and I were able to nearly clear her apartment of stuff. Got a couple of pieces left (which Spearment has generously offered to help with tonight). Then tomorrow, it's on to my house, and all my crap. Which, thankfully, has been whittling down day by day.

Minimal blog time

So the blog has taken a back seat. Sorry, faithful readers. I'm in the process of moving. Moving out of the three-bedroom townhouse I share with my sister and my kid, and moving into a two-bedroom apartment which I'll be sharing with the girl and my kid. It should be...interesting. I'm betting by the time the lease is up in a year, we'll all know each other *really* well.

I've been spending a lot of my time down-sizing my worldly possessions. Why exactly do I need that 1990 Performance Bike frame that I nabbed out of somebody's garbage two years ago? Right...I don't! Thus far, I've dropped two truckfuls of stuff off at various thrift stores. I've also taken a bunch of stuff to mom's house for storage (yay extra basement space!). When I'm done with this exercise, I really hope I'll live a more streamlined lifestyle. I don't need boxes of crap that I never even look sitting in my closet for years on end. It's time to get down to essentials. Bike/bike gear, camera/camera gear, socks, underwear, maybe some books (most about biking and camera-ing). I could be forgetting a few things, but you get the idea.

We just signed the lease on the place today, so the girl and I took over one truckload, and one carload of stuff. Got the bike rack set up on the balcony. Got two bikes hung on it (we're three floors up, so if any of you are having Spiderman-like thoughts of pilfering my prized 1999 Fisher Aquila SS, all I can say is "bring it, Spidey"). I have piles all over the townhouse now. This pile is the thrift-store-pile, that one is storage-at-mom's-house-pile, that one is move-to-the-apartment-pile, the one over there is the store-it-somewhere-till-we-can-get-our-hands-on-one-of-the coveted-garage-units-at-our-apartment-complex-pile.

I'm really pissed that the real estate market around here is so outrageous that someone looking in from the outside has little chance of breaking in. I lothe the idea of spending over $16,000 in rent over the next year with nothing to show for it at the end. The one shining point is that we got a great deal on this place, so hopefully we'll have some cash socked away by next year (the year after, at worst) for our own place. This moving crap is for the birds.

SaveTheStupidPeople.com

I swear I'm going to register that domain.

After three people were killed in two separate incidents around here, Montgomery County has had to issue "train safety directive" to try and save it's stupid citizenry. I thought I'd do my civic duty and write this directive myself, and donate it to the county. Ready? Ok, here goes:


1) Don't f*cking walk along train tracks!


You're welcome.

Kill your television

Woot! The new season of Deadwood started tonight on HBO. I love that show. Any show that drops the F-bomb more times in an hour than I do in a day says "quality programming" to me.

They replay the Sunday episode on Tuesday at 9pm.

Nothing much

I ended up having to come in to the office Wednesday night for a bit to fix a broken thing. So yesterday I figured I'd cut out a little early and head to Alexandria to Huntley Meadows to see what sunset there is like. While it's becoming my regular shooting ground, I had never been there for sunset. Of course I had to pick the day it was like 31 degrees at most. There was *nothing* going on at the park (I maybe saw 3 birds the whole time, and they were crows...and way off in the distance, at that). So I stuck around till just after sunset then headed for Arlington.

As I was cutting through Old Town Alexandria, I see that the George Washington Masonic Temple is lit up. I've always wanted to try some night shots of it. Why not tonight? 27 degrees is good for the soul, right? Good thing I forgot my hat and gloves, too. Brrr.

Got to the monument and set up the tripod and got a couple of long exposure shots (I just wanted to play around with long exposures and night shooting). Moved to a copule of differnt spots and repeated the process.



I was out maybe 45 minutes before my half-drained battery succumbed to the cold and died. My first battery had died at Huntley Meadows. I took that as nature's way of telling me to go home and get warm.

Oh yeah!

Country Music Television never looked so good.

They just got themselves a new regular viewer.