The VIN plate on the door of my 1990 Miata says (in clear) that it was built in "MAY 1989"

Which means it's now over 25 years old (!) (It's at just over 178,000 miles.)

NYS says that I can get "Historic" plates for it in the following calendar year, so, Jan. 2015 ( Read more... )

When I was about 5, my family took me on a family vacation that included a factory tour of Hershey's. I seem to have been deeply imprinted by the experience of meeting a 1000-gallon open vat of liquid chocolate ( Read more... )

Teach Yourself Na'vi

This pretty much HAD to exist, didn't it?

(Hey, what's the Klingon for "That's the geekiest thing I've ever seen?"?)

I figured that SOMEWHERE on the planet, there must be a Hotel Hilbert.

(And you could go up to the reception desk, and INSIST that they find you a room. . . "FULL? How can the Hotel Hilbert be FULL?")

A Google search for "Hotel Hilbert" turns up a "Hotel Brigadier Sh De Hilbert Mario", in Santa Fe, Argentina - - but the sign on the door there ( Read more... )

I finally found out what's going on up at Exit 6 of the Northway ( Read more... )

I went to college at a place that bills itself as "A Technological University", so lots of my friends from those days are engineers and the like: people with a higher-than-average propensity to build stuff ( Read more... )

A Meme for All Seasons: the 1999 All-Time Readers Poll Short Story List

borrowed fromjames_nicoll

"The usual rules apply: bold the ones you've read. Strike the ones you've read that you don't think belong on this list. Post a peeved comment about stories you think should have been on this list but weren't (Extra credit for complaining about the lack of ( Read more... )

Seen on the blog "Suburban Guerrilla" ( http://susiemadrak.com/ ) - - the quiz seems to be an ad for a book, but the results were fun enough:


( Read more... )

One of my kids saw an episode of "Monk" at somebody's house, and expressed an interest in seeing more. (We don't have cable ( Read more... )

Inaugural Day: we saw two Supreme Court Justices.

Both of them are Republican appointees.

One of them is 88 years old, and was tasked with administering a 74-word oath, and does it perfectly.

The other is 53 years old, and completely botched the administration of an oath only 35 words long.

So what's the obvious difference here?

The one who was ( Read more... )