Noreen's Quake on Saturday night

Noreen felt an earthquake Saturday night (her time). It was a 5.7 and only 20-30mi off the coast. Info and map.

Tom Ridge to join Home Depot

A perfect payoff for Tom Ridge, supporter of illegal immigration (as Home Depot is) and plugger for sales of duct tape and plastic sheeting. I don't normally believe in conspiracy and bribery that much, but you can't make stuff like this up.

Opinion Journal apologizes for error

The official language of Belgium is not Belgiumish, as we said in an item yesterday. We regret the error. Belgium's language is actually known as Belch

Full article here

Japan Kicks Russia's ass

Ok, this headline is 100 years too late, but it's still a great story that set in motion Teddy Roosevelt's Nobel Peace Prize and the downfall of the czars in Russia.

Rookie cop scores a win in less than 1hr

A line from a book about cops I read a long time ago, "Ok, I'm the police, now what?" uttered by a rookie on his first patrol came to mind when I read this article.

Car chase and crash near the house

Story about a chase that started near my house and ended at the interchange I take to go to work every morning.

Japanese tourist traps

Mainichi article about tourist traps in Japan.

Noreen and I have visited 3 of these, Odaiba Island (Tokyo), Tokyo Tower and the Sapporo Clock Tower.

Odaiba is famous for...being there. It's sort of a mall, with a retro section that has tons of retro arcade games and a cork-gun shooting range.

Tokyo Tower is another one that's famous for being there. Fortunately, it's within walking distance of a huge temple, so the trip out there isn't a complete waste.

And the Sapporo Clock Tower is famous for being old (1879?). But it's within walking distance of the Sapporo TV Tower, which gives you a great view of the park and all of Sapporo.

Decent CNN article on Blink & Malcom Gladwell

Article here. Make sure to read the blub on his hair.

Good news about alcohol and food poisoning!

If you're worried about getting food poisoning, have a shot or a glass or 20 of wine! You'll be fine!

Test of Email posting

Posting to the blog via e-mail has been busticated for a while, this
is a test to see if it's working now.

Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?

This and more traffic-controller/pilot comedy gold.

Can I get a "Hell Yeah"?

Chow-Yun Fat (HK action picture star) is in a Western Zombie flick. website here. It's barely in production....hopefully this hits next year. Or sooner.

Kids, violence and the media

A study on Foxnews of studies shows that kids who see violence get agitated short term. Well, no kidding. First, my commentary: 1: If it's in the news, it ain't science. (long dissertation on that). 2: It's a study of studies. Which means it's BS. (another long dissertation).

Oh, and I'm reading a book that completely destroys this.

Back from Misawa

Got back from Misawa yesterday. I think I'm over my jetlag, but I doubt it. It was snowy as all get out in Misawa. On Wed & Thurs, Misawa officially received 11.5" of snow; I think that they picked up a total of 2 ft while I was there.

The yakiniku dinner in Hachinohe was very cool. We wound up sitting with the Executive Officer (XO) of the Navy "side" of the base. So, I was my charming, witty self and Noreen and I had a great convo with the XO about everything.

I also taught Noreen to do some swimming. On Tuesday, our first day at the pool, I got Noreen started on the elementary backstroke and had her get into the deep end (8ft) of the pool; she was totally freaked out by being in the deep-end. Wed, I worked more with her and she actually swam the length of the pool and on Thurs she was jumping off the end of the pool into the deep end. I also had her swimming under water for a weight that I tossed into the pool (I kept that work in the shallower end of the pool). Not bad progress for roughly 5-6 hrs in the pool, eh?

The connection at LAX to my commuter flight to San Diego was easy (sailed through immigration and customs), but I had to clear security at the commuter terminal at LAX , and if I made it with 15 min to spare before my flight boarded. If anything had taken more time, I'm sure I would have missed my San Diego flight. But, one of my suitcases DID miss the flight to San Diego. One made it, but the second was held up at LAX for "security/customs" according to the guy in San Diego. Well, my suitcase came on the next flight from LAX, about an hour later, and TSA hadn't even opened it up, so I don't know what the deal was.

News from Misawa

Not a whole lot to report. Went to dinner for Valentine's Day on Monday night. Tuesday afternoon was spent in the pool teaching Noreen to swim. I got her to do the elementary backstroke and being used to the deep end. We're headed back this afternoon to work more at it.

It's been snowy and cold here in Misawa, I don't think it's been over 32F since I got here! Tonight we're going out with Liberty Tours (they run little tours around the area) to Hachinohe, a town just south of here, to a yakiniku restaurant (all you can eat, cook it yourself on a grill at your table).

And we didn't make it out to Hirosake castle, either. We couldn't sort out when it was and how to get there. Oh well....

In Japan

The trip from SD to Misawa was uneventful. I got to the commuter terminal well before my flight left (7am for a 9am flight). They got me on the 7:30 flight up, which got me in to LAX with lots of time to spare. The LAX to Tokyo flight, however, sat on the ground for some unknown reason for nearly an hr after we pushed back from the gate. We still got into Tokyo at 4pm and I got into a chilly Misawa at 10:45pm.

Not much really planned, except that we might go to the Hirosake Castle lantern festival, if we can figure out how to get there, etc. I don't have a link on it, since everything I found was in Japanese.

Funny video

This video for a track from Fatboy Slim (who also had the Christopher Walken uber-dance video "Weapon Of Choice") done by a contest winner. Very funny!

RFID coming to a casino near you

Steve Wynn is putting RFID in his casino cheques

Sugar lobby vs. everyone

I don't really have a horse in this race, except for the fact that the sugar lobby is trying to get the government to clobber the producers of Splenda, a sugar substitute.
The Cato Inst. story is here

It's worth noting that the website Truth About Splenda is run by a Washington PR company called Qorvis that has done work for such wonderful groups as the Saudi and Hatian governments (see story here.

Making movies in India

A wacky story from Salon about an American working in Bollywood films. (they have an ad you have to watch to get to the story, just ignore the ad)

Kill your television

Kill your TV with a BB minigun. Very cool video.

A story from Chris's old school!

This story comes from the school that Chris used to teach at!

ESL students meet and defeat English

Story here.

You can't sleep with me because it is too crowded. But you can probably sleep with my sister. That's what most of my friends do when they visit.

In my kilt!  

Debating terrorism using Islam

This is just flat out amazing. A judge in Yemen is debating Islam with terrorists and WINNING.
Story Story

Readin, ritin and race education

No wonder the US is getting its ass kicked in technical fields. Story about politically correct math.

Welsh Pride goes too far

Ok, this is just nuts.

Literally.

From the "No Shit, Sherlock" file

Men and women are different. Story by John Leo here.

UFC and Superbowl Weekend

I went to Vegas on Saturday with a guy from my Krav class (nicknamed "Cuco") to see UFC - Ultimate Fighting Championship at the Mandalay Bay. We left at 8am and got to Vegas around 2pm, after a stop in Barstow for breakfast and gas/pit stop in Primm (on the state line). Went to a gun shop in Vegas where I shot up a target of Osama Bin Laden with a Tommy gun. (the picture below is me striking a pose). Yes, the OBL target is upside down. That's because most SMGs (the Tommygun especially) creep upwards when firing, so the range has you aim at the head (the "bottom" of the target), so that your burst doesn't wind up shooting the roof. Shooting the roof at a range is considered to be bad form. We checked into Motel 6 and headed over to MB to hang out and wait for the fights.
We saw on our tickets that cameras weren't allowed in and MB had a sign up also saying no cameras, but they weren't even pretending to enforce the rule, so we both took our cameras in. My pictures at the fights didn't turn out so hot, so I'm not posting them. MB's arena for the fights was about the size of a hockey arena (12K seats?) and our seats were up in the corner, first row of the 2nd section. There were plenty of big screens around showing the fight, too, so it was easy to watch what was going on. The fights were all very good and Cuco and I had a blast.
There was a distinct lack of fights in the crowd, compared to the King of the Cage that I went to with Steve/Ron/Tom last summer. I suppose the $75 tickets and the distance from LA keep the hoods away. We had a very late dinner at Hard Rock and crashed after that so we could get up early and beat traffic home (and be back in time for the Super Bowl). And I only dropped about $1 in the slots, didn't win anything, obviously. That was the only gambling we did.

The trip back to SD was a bit of an adventure. We were coming through the mountains when Cuco asked where we were and I told him "Victorville." When I said that I looked waaayyy off in the distance and saw some serious storm clouds. We got into it just outside of Victorville, with good hard rain and a spell where were in the CLOUDS. Visibility was down to less than 50 ft, and I was doing 35mph thru the mess. There's no place to turn off the freeway around there, so you have to keep on truckin. Got back to SD at 12:30, in time to grab a nap, head to Subway to get the 3ft party sub and off to Steve's house for the SB party. It was mellow, only about 6 of us there, which was the right speed for all of us this weekend.

Andy holding a Thompson submachine gun after shooting up OBL.  

The hijacking that wasn't

Turns out that the hijacking report from earlier today was false, so says Reuters

Hello World!

Welcome to my blog. I have no idea what I'll be posting here, probably just random news of the day along with commentary on stuff I read, links to articles I find interesting and other random offensive/funny content. I'll make sure that stuff that could be considered "not safe for work" (like naughty pics) is linked and doesn't show up as a picture on the page.

Google has a couple of nifty (free) utilities, Picasa that is a picture management app that merges nicely with their photo hosting, Hello.com so I can click on a pic on my computer and have it automagically posted to the blog.