I happened to flip the channel to MSNBC just moments before they broke in with the story of the Jet Blue situation last night, and spent the next two hours or so watching the plane circle Los Angeles as it burned off some six thousand gallons of fuel (at ~$4.50/gallon) before attempting an emergency landing at LAX due to a balky and badly ( Read more... )

Revenge is a dish best served deep fried, or at least that's the opinion of this fellow, who discovered that Fuddruckers, one of those family burger franchises with an excessively annoying name, was hotlinking directly to a game he'd written for his website, making it appear as though the game was actually hosted on theirs. Basically, they stole ( Read more... )

I finished Gaiman's American Gods a week back, and really liked it. It's sort of the book I was hoping Winter's Tale would turn out to be off Tale's early chapters. I liked Gods a lot better for a couple three reasons. First off, Gaiman doesn't fall in love with his own prose. Mark Helprin wrote a lot of beautiful prose just for the sake of writing ( Read more... )

Went to bed early rather than listen to all the blather. When I woke up, the thing that struck me most was the electoral map. My high school history book had the electoral map for every election from John Adams on, and the thing I remember about that is that the electoral vote always seemed oddly scattered. The red states and the blue states were ( Read more... )

R.I.P. Salty Brine, who was world famous in Rhode Island.

No school, Foster-Glocester...

Ye Gods! It's even worse than I thought. In addition to the 14 statewide referenda on the ballot, my town has an additional 9 of its own. I was a little apprehensive, because I hadn't seen any of them yet, but after doing a little research, it turns out most of them have to do with amending the town's charter to change the name of the town's " ( Read more... )

I will exercise my rights as a citizen after work. Down with fascism, up with freedom. Not that the outcome is much of a question in Rhode Island. One of the nice things about living in a non-swing state is that I haven't had to put up with a lot of propaganda ads. We're pretty much in the Democratic column all for all the national races. I haven't ( Read more... )

The big news is that I bought a truck today, a Chevy S-10 with and extended cab. I wanted a Ranger, but there were no extended cabs left at the local Ford dealer. Things I really like about the truck - the dual cassette/CD player and the third door for the extend cab. Things I'm not crazy about - only 2wd. The 4wd version was about $8K more, just ( Read more... )

Very odd day today. Woke up to a yellow haze across the sky, the result of smoke from forest fires in Quebec. Whoa ( Read more... )

I can see the thunderheads building to the northwest, so the cold front is finally approaching. 'Bout damn time. Another scorcher today, got up to 93 in the house, except for the little oasis I created in the back room. Got up at 5:30, and did 14 miles on the bike when the temperatures were still in the high seventies. Then I took some stuff to the ( Read more... )