A pal of mine moved down to Myrtle Beach to deliver pizzas for a summer, and moved back three years later.  Went down down to visit her, and we had an issue with the whole “there’s no last call” thing.  Instinctively started buying extra rounds at 12:45am (just before Delaware’s last call), and kept going until dawn (Wha?  is that the sun?)

so wrote a little haiku about it

sunrise on pool table
thru the bar room’s smoky haze
forgot to sleep. D’oh!

I Hate Blind People.

No, not real blind people. But the idjits that drive around at night with driving lights turned on with normal driving.
From PIAA:

What is the difference between a fog light & a driving light?
Fog lights provide illumination forward of the vehicle that enhances visibility in fog, rain, snow, or dust. Fog lights are intended to be used in conjunction with standard headlamp low beams. Driving lights are mounted to provide illumination forward of the vehicle and intended to supplement the high beam of a standard headlamp system. It is not intended for use alone or with the low beam of a standard headlamp system.

From Hella:

What is the difference between fog lamps and driving lamps?
Driving Lamps project a long, narrower beam of light, in a variety of beam patterns, designed to provide vision at a greater distance. Fog Lamps provide a low, wide pattern of light, designed to shine below the haze created by fog, rain, and snow, reducing glare and improving visibility significantly in inclement weather. Driving lamps are typically used in conjunction with your high-beam headlamps; fog lamps are typically used in conjunction with your low-beam headlamps.

More reading explains just whats wrong with you:

In clear conditions, more foreground light is not a good thing, it’s a bad thing. Some foreground light is necessary so you can use your peripheral vision to see where you are relative to the road edges, the lane markings and that pothole 10 feet in front of your left wheels. But foreground light is far less safety-critical than light cast well down the road into the distance, because at any significant speed (much above 30 mph), what’s in the foreground is too close for you to do much about. If you increase the foreground light, your pupils react to the bright, wide pool of light by constricting, which in turn substantially reduces your distance vision—especially since there’s no increase in down-the-road distance light to go along with the increased foreground light. It’s insidious, because high levels of foreground light give the illusion, the subjective impression, of comfort and security and “good lighting”.

But heck, what do they know about this? I mean, these people are just out to sell you lighting.

As part of this, who the hell thinks its a good idea to have streetlights every 30 feet going down the road? The power company thats who…

“Oh waaaaah, politics is way too mean” - whiney bitch.

Sorry, it has to be.  Nothing is more important than who you select to govern you.

These are a few examples of what may be a little too over the top:

“Vote for Candidate B, he’s got your best interests in mind!” - recorded telephone message, sent to all voters in the district, paid for by Candidate A.  Ringing your home phone at 3am every morning.

“Candidate B still has not confirmed he has stopped beating his wife”

Fax machines.  ’nuff said.

This quiz is a little hinky…. but it’s still good stuff!

Why oh why can’t McDonalds figure out how to keep eggshells out of their McMuffins?  C’mon, teach your people on the grill to crack the eggs not on the egg rings, but on the flat of the grill.

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

---

ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.

---

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

---

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

---

ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can’t remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years

---

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, “Where am I, Cathy?”
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan.

---

ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.

---

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

---

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he’s twenty-one.

---

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?

---

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh….

---

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?

---

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

---

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?

---

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

---

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.

---

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.

---

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!

---

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?

---

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

The Razor puts someone in their place… Scott uses his toungue purtier than a 20 dollar whore…

The method of thinking is different between the middlelanders and the strange Left and bizarre Right.

The middlelanders go with the old axiom that: “I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

The bizarre Right says: “I disagree with what you say and I will kill you if you say it again.”

The strange Left says: “I disagree with what you say and I will kill myself if you say it again.”

Sting says today’s rock music blows

British rock star Sting said contemporary rock music is so stagnant that he prefers to sing 16th-century English ballads.The former teacher who shot to fame as lead singer, bassist and composer in the 1970s and ’80s for The Police told German newspaper Die Zeit that he prefers singing songs of Elizabethan lutenist and composer John Dowland to the rock music of today.

I whole heartedly agree.  I can’t think of more than 4 or 5 songs from the past 10 years that was worth listening to.  Most of it is insipid crap.   Every song I listen to, it seems that they just use a random generic love song generator application to write all the lyrics.  None of the songs tell an actual story, you can probably mix and match the words from various songs to make new songs.

Poll: Half of Americans think Congress is corrupt - CNN.com

Half of all Americans believe most members of Congress are corrupt — a figure that has risen 12 points since the start of the year — and more than a third think their own representative is crooked, according to a new poll released Thursday by CNN.

The other half of Americans are willfully blind.

Major media finally picked up the ipod virus story that I broke several weeks ago.

Nice to know they’re really on the ball, helping warn all the users who could have gotten infected… But, sucks to be all the users who in the last two weeks are now infected with a virus because of how slow media is.  Bastages…

OK, every once in a while someone goes a little above and beyond and deserves a little recognition.

We drove a coupla thousand miles back east in my Honda Ridgeline truck.  What’s great about the Ridgeline is that it has a full size trunk under the bed.  So it fit all our luggage no problem.

However, while out there, we raided the storage room in my parent’s house, and my wife wanted to take a nice big framed mirror, and a couple large framed paintings back with us home.  Now, they technically belonged to my brother out in LA, but I’m sure he won’t mind.

Problem is, forecast was calling for rain on our three day drive back.  To the rescue comes Retrax.  Not your normal hard top tonneau cover that gets in the way when hauling, this is a sliding lexan roll top bed cover.  I called and ordered, and it was delivered to me in two days at my parents place, so I had time to install it before we had to leave for home.

It looks incredible, works great, and took me and my dad less than an hour to install.  It can be completely removed in about 30 minutes with no indication it was ever on there, since no holes or anything were drilled, it used existing mount points.

So we put the paintings and mirror in a large plastic bag just in case, put them in the bed, rolled the lid shut, and drove back for 3 days in the rain.  No problem at all.

So thanks to the Retrax guys for getting it to me so soon, and for building a nice product.

OK back from my trip to the mid-atlantic.  We drove so we saw a lot of the scenery.  But that also means we were exposed to drivers in different states.  Let’s go over my impressions:

Delaware/Maryland:  Just as horrifically stupid as I remember.

Pennsylvania:  I drove through western PA for a bit, and when it is dark and rainy on the high speed but very curvey turnpike, you should slow down to double digit speeds.

Ohio:  All the stupidity of DE/MD, but without any natural talent.  Oh, and you have to look to quantum mechanics to figure out if they actually do hit your vehicle when the other driver passes you and cuts back into your lane with nary a hairs width between the bumpers. They must take that keep right except to pass thing to its extreme.

Missouri:  Must be the slowest readers ever.  Because every time someone in the passing lane went to pass a tractor trailer, they seemed to stop halfway, matching speeds with the truck.  I’m assuming they’re reading what’s written on the side of the truck because they can’t be so stupid to ride in a trucks blind spot for miles, blocking the passing lane.

Kansas & Colorado:  Best drivers on the entire trip.

There’s a few other states, but they seemed to be relatively normal, not too good, not too bad.

Dump the male flight attendants. No one wanted them in the first place. Replace all the female flight attendants with good-looking strippers! What the hell - the attendants have gotten old and haggard-looking. They don’t even serve food anymore, so what’s the loss? The strippers would at least triple the alcohol sales and get a “party atmosphere” going in the cabin.

And, of course, every businessman in this country would start flying again, hoping to see naked women.

Because of the tips, female flight attendants wouldn’t need a salary, thus saving even more money.  Hell, I suspect tips would be so good that we could charge the women for working and have them kick back 20% of the tips.

Muslims would be afraid to get on the planes for fear of seeing naked women. Hijackings would come to a screeching halt, and the airline industry would see record revenues. This is definitely a win-win situation if we handle it right - a golden opportunity to turn a liability into an asset.

Why the hell didn’t Bush think of this? Why do I still have to do everything myself?

Sincerely,
Bill Clinton

Just a friendly warning:

A 30gb black Apple IPOD, purchased by me on the first of October from a big box store (Costco), factory sealed, contained the ravmone.exe virus and its supporting files on the drive.

Newer versions of antivirus software (both Symantec and NAV) did detect the virus.  On a test box I disabled the AV software and allowed it to infect the system, and confirmed that this is the case.

A few posts in the apple forums has other people reporting the problem. 

The details on the virus is here: http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_139985.htm and is known to McAfee as W32/RJump.worm.

This virus is also known as:

• Backdoor.Rajump (Symantec)
• W32/Jisx.A.worm (Panda)
• W32/RJump-C (Sophos)
• W32/RJump.A!worm (Fortinet)
• Win32/RJump.A (ESET)
• Win32/RJump.A!Worm (CA)
• Worm.RJump.A (BitDefender)
• Worm.Win32.RJump.a (Kaspersky)
• Worm/Rjump.E (Avira)
• WORM_SIWEOL.B (TrendMicro)