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Car
My car has been noisy lately. Yesterday I heard a couple clanks when I turned corners on my way to work. When I got to work, I lay down a cloth and got under my trunk. My muffler had come loose. I just had the whole works replaced four years ago when there had been a different problem with it. There are two rubber cuffs that each loop around ( Read more... ) -
Entertainment
Wanted is a great movie! Fantastic action scenes with a good, coherent plot and dialogue, not at all like the Matrix. I could have done without bullet-bending, but whatever. Five stars. Now I want to read the comics ( Read more... ) -
Nothing important
Two Jahova's Witnesses came to the door today asking if I was interested in talking with them about economics. I shouldn't have gotten so excited. They read to me a passage out of the bible about how people should be happy as long as their basic needs are met, and not have a love for money, and we talked about how that relates to the current ( Read more... ) -
Hail
Whew. I was working on a paper, enjoying a nice mid-60s breeze. Then, in the span of 15 minutes, the wind kicked up, the sky went dark, balls of ice a half-inch to an inch in diameter showered out of the sky for a while, turning into heavy rain, then stopping. The clouds blew away and everything was sunny, calm, and beautiful again, except ( Read more... ) -
San Diego
I recently made a trip to San Diego for my dad's wedding. It was great! The weather was warm and sunny every day. The beach was clear. The people were friendly and laid back ( Read more... ) -
Voting
As election time approaches, I feel compelled to issue my usual explanation of the pointlessness of voting. Fivethirtyeight.com pointed out that my vote has a 1/30,000,000 chance of deciding the outcome in my state. It also linked to a potentially interesting article on why it is rational to vote: Read more... ) -
The consequence of sounds
I've noticed that people are using the verb "vet" an awful lot since the Sarah Palin pick. It reminds me of when "vitriol" became popular for a few weeks. Why aren't more people saying "bellicose"? McCain was referred to as bellicose several times regarding the Russian invasion of Georgia. What makes one relatively obscure word suddenly in the ( Read more... ) -
Lucky Dice
Do you have lucky dice ( Read more... ) -
Goings-on
After months of increasing joint pain, I figured out that the arthralgia was a side-effect of Claritin. I stopped taking it (after my most allergy-free year ever), and the pain went away in a few days. Except my left elbow still hurts a lot. I ran three miles last Tuesday. It felt wonderful, but I was left quite sore after so much inactivity. ( Read more... ) -
Pretentious Book List
From bluescissors76These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded ( Read more... )