June 03, 2004
This is an evil pie. If it was a human being, it would be the kind that your daughter explores her love of bondage and discipline with. If it was a flower, it would be a dandelion nodding its impudent yellow head on the 18th hole at Augusta. If it was a car, it would be the bastard love-child of KITT and the Batmobile--and the midwife would be Jesse James. It's a high-voltage vibrator-induced multiple orgasm for your tastebuds.
I stand humbled.
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12:23 PM | category: Links
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I'll be perusing their database this evening, and hopefully I'll find that machine I remember so fondly.
Posted by: Ted at
10:23 AM | category: Links
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Cooking is chemestry.
Everything that happens when you cook is either a chemical process or the catalyst for a chemical process, and that includes mixing, heating, blending, baking... all of it. We use recipes to control those chemical processes in a way that leads to (hopefully) edible food.
Alton Brown has a show on the Food Network called Good Eats. In it, he digs deep into the why of cooking, and he's entertaining as hell doing it. If you haven't had a chance to see it, you really should. His shows generally focus on one narrow theme - for instance, fish & chips - and as he cooks, you get the story on what's really happening to the food as you prepare it. And knowing the 'why' of things helps you to understand why certain things are done and to avoid potential problems.
J-Walk Blog pointed out a nice feature about Alton Brown in Wired. It'll give you a better idea of why this show is one of my favorites on television.
Posted by: Ted at
09:31 AM | category: Links
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Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes...and all of this...all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars. -- Commander Sinclair, Babylon 5
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08:21 AM | category: Space Program
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June 02, 2004
Thanks to Transterrestrial Musings for the pointer.
Posted by: Ted at
11:55 AM | category: Space Program
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Ramstein, Germany. IÂ’d been assigned there for a year or so, and without changing desks IÂ’d worked for the Electronic Information Systems Division (EISD), then the Computer Systems Organization (CSO), then the Information Systems Services Office (ISSO), and rumors were flying that yet another name change was in the works.* Our mission hadnÂ’t changed one bit, just the hats we wore and how we answered the phones. It got so silly that I came up with a new name for us: the European Integrated Electronic Information Organization. Yepper, E-I-E-I-O.
My first memorable encounter with the copier was when I was standing around it with another NCO and our section leader. Our section leader was a newly promoted Captain, and (rightfully) proud as a peacock about his new rank. As we were talking, I said something about the “Lieutenant” out of habit. He immediately interrupted me and, pointing to the bars on his shoulder, reminded me of his new status. Instead of apologizing or just acknowledging him and getting on with it, the evil influence of the copier took hold of me and I heard myself say:
“Well Sir, you’ll always be a Lieutenant in my heart.”
You can imagine how well that went over. But you can see what I mean about the evil copier, right?
Our organization was a tiny part of the Communications Squadron, and we were attached to the comm guys not because we fit in there, but because we fit in even less anywhere else. The comm folks hated us because we were computer pukes, not communications, and both sides were quick to make the distinction. Mostly, we went our way and did our thing and the less we had to deal with the rest of the squadron the better we liked it.
Which worked great until we got the idea to form an office softball team for the base league. We talked about it and decided to do it for fun – no serious win-at-all-cost attitudes for us. And then word came down from on high that the squadron already had a team, and that we were invited to try out for it, and they might send their ‘leftover’ players to our team, but we could not be in the league independently. Screw that, we entered anyways, under an assumed (organizational) name: E-I-E-I-O. Had shirts and hats made and everything, and caught major hell halfway through the season when we showed up to play our parent squadron in a scheduled game.
Back to the copier. Like most small office photocopiers, probably more unofficial stuff was copied than real work-related documents. The Air Force decided to combat the waste by placing a tiny transparent sticker to the underside of the glass, so that every Xeroxed page was marked in the upper corner with a letter and number code showing what copier reproduced it. Every copier on Ramstein had itÂ’s own tiny little ID code.
Most of us ignored it and went on using it anyways. One weekend I went into the office for something and found the NCOIC (my boss) at the copier, making stacks of personal copies. Yet another clue about the evil influence of the machine. Well, maybe not, because the NCOIC then showed me that by unscrewing this and this and this you could lift the glass out, rotate it 180 degrees and the sticker wouldnÂ’t show up anymore! Wow, my boss showing me how to circumvent the system for personal reasons. Evil copier.
About the time we were getting our stern talking-to about our unauthorized softball team, a group of us were sitting around drinking and bullshitting, when inspiration struck. I canÂ’t claim credit for the idea, because I honestly donÂ’t remember who thought of it. Like I said, we were drinking.
But I absolutely am responsible for the implementation, because when it comes right down to it, what good is a stupid idea if you donÂ’t have the balls to make it happen, eh? So early Monday morning, my partner in white-collar crime and I lifted the glass on the Xerox machine, turned it over, and by carefully scraping with a knife blade, we removed the letter/number code and replaced it with rub-on letters that spelled out EIEIO. It was a near perfect match, and because the mark showed up on every copy (and had for months), nobody even paid attention to them any more.
A couple of weeks later, we realized that it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who was responsible for the symbolic ‘bird’ we were sending out with every copy, so we changed the decal again. Who knows what possessed us to do this? Wait, it was the copier!!! I tell you, that thing was evil.
This time we changed the copier code to read “FOAD”.
For the innocent, that stands for “F__k Off And Die”. It’s also a valid hexadecimal number (make the ‘oh’ a zero) if you’re a real computer nerd, which is interesting but hardly relevant.
We held our breath, and waited for the shit to hit the fan. And waited. And waited. And it didnÂ’t, because nobody noticed.
Several months later, my compadre and I were called into the Captain’s office. He “knew” we had changed the sticker, but he couldn’t prove it. He was throwing a fit because copies from our machine were headed out all over Europe, and each and every one had a cheerful little “FOAD” in the corner. We played appropriately dumb, but I did admit that I’d noticed the sticker before. He almost stroked out when I told him I assumed it meant “For Official Authorized Duplication”. I was full of shit, and he knew it, and he knew I knew he knew it (and so on), but there wasn’t much he could do about it other than to suggest that the problem better be taken care of. Sometime in the next few days, someone mysteriously changed the label again by scraping it clean and from then on our photocopier was the only Air Force copier in Europe without it’s own little number of the beast.
* I know for a fact that ‘EISD’ is correct, but the others might not be spot-on. If nothing else, they give you an idea of the acronym-hell that the Air Force can be.
Posted by: Ted at
06:10 AM | category: Boring Stories
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A - Joan Armitrading, Atlanta Rhythm Section
B - Beach Boys, Bachmann-Turner Overdrive
C - Chicago, Alice Cooper
D - Doobie Brothers, Diamond Rio
E - Earth, Wind & Fire, Electric Light Orchestra
F - Foghat, Myron Floren
G - Grateful Dead, Guess Who
H - Heart, Head East
I - Incubus
J - Jethro Tull
K - Kansas
L - Little Feat, Lovin' Spoonful
M - Glenn Miller, Michael Stanley Band, Molly Hatchet
N - Night Ranger
O - Orleans (yeah, I like 'em. deal with it)
P - Pablo Cruise, Pink Floyd
Q - Queen
R - Rainmakers, Lou Rawls
S - Styx, Sly & the Family Stone, Spinners
T - Temptations, Third Eye Blind, Tubes
U - Black Uhuru
V - Van Halen
W - War, Bob Marley & the Wailers
X - Xavier Cugat
Y - Weird Al Yankovich
Z - Frank Zappa, ZZ Top
Posted by: Ted at
05:14 AM | category: About Ted
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June 01, 2004
2. Interview assistants.
3. Practice maniacal laugh.
4. Find body.
Now for step 1, you could do worse than looking here.
And no self-respecting Doktor would be without one of these, although you could get by with one of these until you inherit the fortune from your sinister uncle who lives in the castle.
Follow the links, have fun, and imagine the delight a youngster would have by building something like this for the science fair. Make the other kids look like Abbey something-or-other.
Can I call you "Igor"?
Posted by: Ted at
07:24 AM | category:
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I could use some sleep though. I stayed up into the wee hours each night, watching my crap movies. Now our young dog is sick. He's acting like a typical male cat, winding around your feet constantly and demanding attention. Not sure what's wrong, but he's still eating and playful. He's just acting 'off'. Of course, being sick he's restless and was constantly walking around on the bed all night. He's little too, so my sleeping body is nothing more than an obsticle to be navigated over in the dark. He woke me up more than once doing the little doggy circle-dance on my back as he tried to get comfortable.
I was also a major oinker all weekend about eating. Constantly hungry for some reason. To make up for it and get my slacker butt back into healthy food mode, today I brought a low-fat yogurt for breakfast and fruit for lunch. If anyone is interested, I've lost about 30 pounds since the beginning of the year.
Yesterday, the Action Channel showed a Combat! marathon. Starring Vic Morrow, the series ran in the early 60's and was about a platoon during WWII. I had it on for most of the day, which really brought back some memories. Combat! and Bonanza are the first two shows I can remember watching with my dad.
A friend sent me this:
If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you can read this in English, thank the US Military.
I'll extend those thanks to our friends and allies around the world, because Lord knows nobody can do it alone.
Posted by: Ted at
05:41 AM | category: Square Pegs
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