Can I use it to brush my teeth?

This time, in the cleaning supplies aisle. It was bound to happen sooner or later:

Looks confusingly similar to:

Antics

Conan again acting silly at Good Housekeeping.

There’s a Monty Python joke in here somewhere

So the international aisle at the Meijer now has a British section. Those Brits are strange people:

Screwed?

Tire tread: 2 mm
Snow outside: 6 in and rising
Gasoline in tank: um … “E”

It might be a long drive home tonight. Why did I take my snow tires off last weekend? Oh yeah, because yesterday was supposed to be spring.

Monkey Butt?

How bizarre. Last night at the hardware store, I saw this at the counter:

My neighbors

These feral cats were born outside my apartment just this past spring, so they were mighty confused during the first big snow fall. I should bring them over to my office to take care of the mouse problem.

How to drive me crazy …

… if you’re a mouse:

• Sneak into the EECS building through one of numerous doors that idiot construction workers have left open.
• Crawl into my office desk and chew up my headphones and coffee mug.
• Shit all over the place.
• Make scratching noises while I’m sitting there, trying to get work done.

It reminds me of …

Unlike Danny, Mike Rowe is a much better host. He’s funny, humble, and doesn’t talk too much.

Oww

There’s surprsngly lttle space between my car’s wheel spoes and the brae calper. One mght say not even fnger-room.

Treehugger

There’s an expansion to the cleanroom going on, and the area around the construction site is being redone too. The other night, I saw this big yellow sign bolted to the stump of one of the trees that were cut down. It’s a pretty good drawing of the Lorax! The next morning, though, the stump was covered up by mulch. I wonder if the sign is still there; I’m too shy to actually dig through the mulch to find out.

Digging for gold

My car must have super range, then!

This is what happens when marketing is allowed to mess with solid engineering terms. “Range-extending power source”? Where the hell do they get off calling a gasoline engine a “range-extending power source”? What a disgusting way to re-brand hybrid technology.

Save the Earth

In the movie Transformers, if you watch the scenes filmed at the Hoover Dam carefully, you’ll notice the conspicuous white exposed rock where the water at Lake Mead is reportedly at a 40-year low. Kudos to the film directors for not hiding this non-fiction omen of the future of our own planet.

It’s a bit nutty

For the longest time, I thought the “squawk squawk squawk” sound that squirrels made was a vocalization, but then I watched one closely and realized it was the sound of its teeth gnawing on a nut shell. Like nails on a chalk board. Their eyes are also disappointingly rat-like.

Shame on … ITCS?

In yet another stunning example of time wasted due to (my best guess here) Microsoft, I have resorted to installing SASL and Postfix from their respective sources, only after extricating this code:

if (var_smtp_sasl_enable
  && (session->features & SMTP_FEATURE_AUTH))
  vstring_strcat(next_command, " AUTH=<>");

from src/smtp/smtp_proto.c. Curiously, it is not easy to search for the term “AUTH=<>” on Google. Nevertheless, there are intrepid souls out there who had already found the problem. Now my roaming laptop can send authenticated SMTP to the main UM server!

Quack

I have no words for this one, you just have to watch.

Long live the Phoenix

There is this show on Discovery that I can no longer watch: Built It Bigger. The host of the show, Danny Forster, is a huge poser. The camera-work, locations, and workers they show are really cool and educational, but this guy Danny is decidedly not educational. Every episode begins with him saying:

“I learned a lot about engineering in architecture school.”

This is a warning sign. Obviously, architects are going to have to understand mechanical properties of structural building materials to make proper designs. Danny, however, did not learn enough about engineering. Among his various gems:

“… this slender track can withstand the 50 tons of pressure exerted by diving trains.”

Tons are units of mass, Danny. Pressure is force (mass times gravity) per area.

“We’re gonna change from one G at the top here … to three and a half G’s at the bottom of the drop.” Then Danny says,“At that point, there’s additional gravity pushing me down.”

Sorry Danny, gravity pulls. It’s your fat head that’s pushing you down.

But the kicker last week was this one. Danny and a construction worker pick up four steel reinforcement bars totaling a weight of about 260 pounds and carry them together across a skyscraper floor. After putting them down he says,

“Whew … just had 265 pounds on my shoulder.”

No Danny, 130 pounds, because you carried it with another person.

At least the show acknowledges how stupid he is:

“Intelligent” design?

They say it’s odd how a show like The Simpsons persists on the same network as Fox News. Happy 19th season!

Powder

Today during our outreach project

Jen: “There was an albino kid in my elementary school.”
Jo: “Really? Was he really pale, like Phil?”

One hour later

Me: “Joanna said I was really pale …”
Christine: “Ohh, I didn’t really notice but now that you mention it … why are you so PALE?”

My baby’s all growns-up!

There’s a jumping spider that has been living in my apartment all summer. At least I think it’s the same one, because today I saw a really big one (well, big for jumping spiders) on my shower curtain. Jumping spiders have great big anthropomorphic front eyes. Isn’t he cute? I let him go outside after taking pictures. He’s getting too big. Maybe my apartment will be overrun by ants now ….