I disappointed you when I couldn't provide a link to video of the nitrous-injected chainsaw.

Would a V8 powered chainsaw do?

Posted by: Ted at 12:44 PM | category: Links
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I love it! Courtesy of ESPN, here's an excerpt:

One more thing: They moved the nets closer to the boards and changed it so goalies can only play the puck within a 28-foot, trapezoidal area behind the net that extends 6 feet from either goal post. If you skate beyond that area, it's an automatic two-minute penalty, which will be fun if only to hear what they call the penalty. Two minutes for trapezoidal desertion?

(Confused? So am I. They should have gone with Plan B -- tying the goalie to the net with a 10-foot chain, almost like how you would tie up your pet rottweiler outside. Wouldn't that be fun to see goalies occasionally forgetting about the chain, skating towards an errant puck, then cruelly getting yanked backward when the chain extends too far? Plus, they could potentially get caught up in the chain, or use it to trip other players Â… really, I see no downside here. Although it will be loads of fun to hear Barry Melrose pronounce the word "Trapezoid.")

The entire article is hilarious and still manages to peg the issues. Kudos to The Hockey Pundits for the pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 08:50 AM | category: Balls and Ice
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Recently, the Pittsburgh Film Workers Fest was held to celebrate independent horror films.

These are the statuettes awarded (click image for bigger size):

Specially created for the Fest, these are just too cool. The heck with Oscar, I want a Creatch!

Posted by: Ted at 06:54 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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Mozongo now has a weekly podcast about the latest and greatest in mobile technology. Check out this week's cast, where they talk about the Motorola Q and the HTC-Wizard smartphones.

Posted by: Ted at 06:02 AM | category: Links
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Alan Zoe Brain has always been one of the more interesting bloggers out there, both at A.E.Brain and at The Command Post. The last several months have been downright surreal.

Zoe is also one helluva human being, having sent an encouraging email to me when I was fretting about my wife's surgery. He's had some medical issues of his own to deal with, er... She's had some medical issues of her own to deal with.

Regular readers know that I'm not one to rattle the tip cup, but in this case, Zoe's medical bills are going to be far in excess of what insurance might cover. Head on over, read about a drastic, involuntary and unexpected change in lifestyle (there are many posts over a period of time), and if you feel so inclined, drop some bucks in his jar. Thanks.

Posted by: Ted at 05:13 AM | category: Links
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Matt posts zombie pictures so I don't have to.

Awesome site redesign too.

Posted by: Ted at 07:12 PM | category: Links
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The San Jose Sharks took out this full page ad in the San Jose Mercury newspaper (click to embiggen):

Thanks to Sharks Page for pointing this out.

Posted by: Ted at 07:04 PM | category: Balls and Ice
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Sitting here in front of me are two naked oranges.

Not naked as in bereft of rind, but still naked in a way nature never intended oranges to be. There's a story here. It's short, but makes up for that by being entirely pointless and probably boring.

My wife, Liz, works for a rather large medical practice. A dozen doctors, plus nurses of various kinds, administrative staff and auxiliary support adds up to some seventy or so.

On Friday's they'll often do a "theme" sort of thing, good for morale I guess, where everyone dresses in Hawaiian shirts or some such. Often, food is involved. Today's event was bizarre, it was "bring your favorite dessert" day. I suspect that the practice may be secretly planning to expand services into the nutrition field, or perhaps even dentistry, and this is a ploy to jump start the customer base.

So Liz mentions the upcoming "bring your favorite dessert" day, which automatically translated in my mind to "untested recipe on unsuspecting guinea pigs" day.

At home, if I make something new and I'm the only one in the family that likes it (and why would I cook something I wouldn't like?), then I'll eat it Thanksgiving turkey-style, until I can't stand the sight of it and then throw whatever's left away. Then I'm sick of it and don't want it for a long while... until I get a hankerin' and the whole cycle repeats anew.

But I love these office parties. They give me a chance to whip up something new and experimental without worrying about who's going to like it. If the wife and kids enjoy it, it goes into my recipe binder. If not, oh well.

So I made orange cookies. I don't remember where I got the recipe, but it was a long time ago. I know John posted something similar once, and I've seen variations here and there. I'll post my version sometime in the next few days.

They're pretty good, and (score!) Liz and Robyn like them.

But they call for lots of grated orange zest, so for lunch today, I've got these two naked oranges in front of me.

Posted by: Ted at 11:51 AM | category: Square Pegs
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Over at Munuviana's own Feisty Repartee, Christina is hosting this week's Carnival. Yum.

Posted by: Ted at 11:25 AM | category: Recipes
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Got a last-minute email from a rocketry bud letting me know that at 9pm last night on the SciFi channel, the show MasterBlasters would be focusing on rocketry.

I'd never seen the show before, but what it seems to be is a set team of generalists (engineers, fabricators, etc), known as the MasterBlasters, go up against a team of "experts" to accomplish a given task for the episode. For last nights' experts, the rocketry guys were led by Erik Gates, who is a legend in high-power rocketry. The rest of his team included his brother Dirk, plus some of their friends who've helped on other big Gates Brother's projects (great photos of their work are available here). You may have seen the Gates Brothers on the show MythBusters, when they assisted in the episode where they strapped rockets to the top of a car.

Back to MasterBlasters. Inspired by the movie Wizard of Oz, each team was given a kid's playhouse made of wood. These weren't flimsy little structures, they were basically mini-houses with an attached porch and full roof, maybe six or eight feet to a side and about that tall as well. The challenge was to launch the house with four rocket motors to the greatest possible altitude, the house had to spin at least three times on the way up (tornado!), at the top the wicked witch on her broom had to be released to fall seperately, and the house - with Dorothy (and her little doggie too!) on the front porch - had to be returned to ground safely.

Quite a task.

I won't give spoilers, because it's quite fun to watch the final results. I found it interesting that, as is usually the case in these kinds of shows, the two teams came up with radically different solutions to the problem. The rocketeers basically used the house itself as the nosecone of their rocket, whereas the Masterblasters built a mast containing their rocket motors to drag the structure behind. It worked very much like the escape tower functioned on the US manned capsules (and I talked about the escape towers here and here with my posts about the Little Joe series of rockets).

Fun episode. If you get a chance, see it. I'll be checking back to see what other kind of fun the MasterBlasters get into in future shows.

Posted by: Ted at 11:34 AM | category: Rocketry
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I found a link to an interesting "type of humor" test over at Boudicca's, and gave it a whirl. I like the results, but I wonder, do you think it's accurate in my case? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

(results in the extended entry) more...

Posted by: Ted at 05:55 AM | category: About Ted
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1 er, no. Doesn't sound like you at all but then maybe I'm asleep at the laptop. :-)

Posted by: Cindy at July 28, 2005 09:29 AM (PvCQB)

2 That test is crap! I scored like...WAY LOW on dark. That test is crap.

Posted by: Derek at July 28, 2005 12:48 PM (wEVXE)

3 Sounds pretty close to me. And I'd definately say you have a dry delivery as opposed to over the top. Sample: "I want to know what this 'empty nest syndrome' is all about." heh.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at July 28, 2005 09:36 PM (0ovgk)

4 "somehow there's something slightly menacing about you"

No offense doll, and I hate to detract from your image, but you're about as menacing as a Care Bear.

Nor do I think your delivery is dry or OTT. You are damn funny and we're all laughing WITH you. And sometimes AT, but usually WITH.

Posted by: dawn at July 28, 2005 11:47 PM (Dh1V0)

5 Me: The Prankster

Your humor has an intellectual, even conceptual slant to it. You're not pretentious, but neither are you into what some would call 'low humor'. You'd laugh at a good dirty joke, but you definitely prefer something clever to something moist.

You probably like well-thought-out pranks and/or spoofs and it's highly likely you've tried one of these things yourself. In a lot of ways, yours is the most entertaining type of humor.

Hmm... That's pretty good.

No offense doll, and I hate to detract from your image, but you're about as menacing as a Care Bear.

Now that's funny!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 31, 2005 06:38 AM (4N+SC)

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But I'm such a little bitch.

The NHL will return to the ice with the busiest night in the league's 88-year history.

Not wanting fans to have to wait one extra day to see their teams, the NHL has scheduled 15 games -- including all 30 clubs -- on opening night Oct. 5. Before the lockout that wiped out all of last season, the record for games in a day was 14, done nine times but not since 2003.

The schedule, released Wednesday, features more divisional games as teams will play their biggest rivals eight times instead of six.

Yeah, I'm freakin' excited again.

Off Wing Opinion has a link to the complete schedule, along with this:

NHL Roundup recaps every NHL game from the previous night, and runs Monday to Friday. Rink notes is a digest of features from around the league that usually runs at lunch time.

While you're surfin' the ice, check out The Hockey Pundits too.

Posted by: Ted at 05:36 AM | category: Links
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1 yay! I'm such a hockey whore, I can't stay mad at the NHL...

Posted by: Derek at July 28, 2005 12:49 PM (wEVXE)

2 This post made me look really cool today. The guys are work were talking about hockey and I mentioned your little tidbit about all the clubs playing. OOOO - look at me! A chic who know hockey! Ya. Right.

Posted by: Amy at July 29, 2005 10:10 PM (tPzR0)

3 There's a lesson there: Read Rocket Jones and be Cool.

Posted by: Ted at July 29, 2005 10:46 PM (+OVgL)

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The title has not a damn thing to do with this post, but it's entertaining as all git-out to watch. Just thought I'd share.

I've been exploring the world of podcasting a bit more and returned (mostly) mentally unscathed.

Ken and Squip have part 1 of their bicoastal camping trip (sounds dirty, doesn't it?) available for your perusal. I think Rocket Jones got an oblique reference - feigned indignation was mentioned - over the supposed review I did on their show. That surprised me, because first, I didn't mean for it to come out like a review, I was just recommending it to my friends, and secondly, I should've made it more clear that "juvenile humor" is right up my alley. Obviously Ken doesn't read Rocket Jones, although they did seem to take my advice and talked about Squipper's breasts quite a bit.

Next up, I listened to the original apologizer, Blue of the Simian Syndicate. Right up front you're warned that the podcast isn't safe for families, children, work, etc. That's what headphones are for. Lemme tell you, the people at work were giving me some odd looks as I sat there working away and laughing my ass off at random intervals. In other words, business as usual.

I want to add to their warning, because the two shows I've listened to have been reeeeeely filthy. I don't believe for a second that these guys are gay, because if they were half as homo-nympho-maniacally inclined as they kid about, they'd never have time to actually speak into the microphone. In other words, they talk the hump, but they don't pump the rump.

Now I don't want to scare you away, because this podcast is awesome. Blue and buds are musicians, and the music on the two shows I've heard has been killer.

Don't miss M.C. Govenator and his newest "Go On and Touch It". I laughed, I cried, I voted Republican.

Now I need to track down Soccer Girl. Take my advice and give a listen, and then you'll understand.

Posted by: Ted at 06:18 PM | category: Links
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I like Oreo cookies. I don't have them in the house very often, because that would be bad for me.

When they came out with Uh-Oh's a while back, I thought it was cute. White cookie with chocolate creme. Not as good as classic Oreos, but tasty.

Their latest is Golden Oreos. Vanilla cookie and vanilla creme. They even suggest dunking them in chocolate milk. Cutsie, but again, they're pretty good.

But they ain't the original.

Posted by: Ted at 03:24 PM | category: Square Pegs
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I've been remiss in not keeping up with the ol' blogroll because, well, things have been hoppin' 'round the ol' homestead (that sentence brought to you by the apostrophe and the letter "d"... what? D's gone? how 'bout "g"? Hell, get "a" in here... screw his contract, in here. Now. Freakin' uppity vowels...).

Oh, you're still here?

Right, um... oh yeah, my blogroll... and, uh... oh! Yeah. I've meant to link to a few people who've been kind enough to link to Rocket Jones and I've yet to reciprocate, so I'll be doing a couple more of these soon.

So, lessee... (geez, what a goatrope this post is turning out to be... quick glance at the title - what the hell does that mean?)

I remember now.

Stu Savory has a blog, and on his blog he talks about things. As one does. (thought I was Helen there for a minute, eh?) Anyways, he's posted a link and pictures and plenty of background information about a PC simulation of the American version of the Enigma coding machine used by Germany in WWII (screw it, that sentence is so brain-dead that I'm not even gonna try and fix it... just reread it until it makes sense*).

Then he follows it up with this post.

As much as I grooved on the cryptography, that link just above is just amazing. Go. Read. Trust me, he writes way better than I (although I do know enough not to say "me" at the end of that sentence, so Ha!).

Really, go check it out. Just don't mention that you saw it here, or he'll probably think less of you. Hell, I would after reading this mess. I'm sooo delinked.

*Ok, I reread it, and you know what? I meant to. That's right, it's on purpose. It's google-bait. So there**.

**I'm serious though, about reading "Some corner of a foreign field".

Posted by: Ted at 11:42 AM | category: Links
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My latest review is up and this time it's a game.

Also, don't forget the Mozongo PDA forums, a small but growing community.

Posted by: Ted at 11:25 AM | category: PDA Reviews
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Posted by: Ted at 05:06 AM | category: Square Pegs
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Shuttle Discovery lifts off and reaches orbit.

Posted by: Ted at 11:16 AM | category: Space Program
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Turn down the sound before you head over to the Orgasmic Calculator. Every keystroke (hey, I typed that with a straight face!) is accompanied by bedroom noise.

Thanks Wegglywoo (and happy birthday!) (and I hope Callan's ok!!!!) for the pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 04:14 AM | category: Links
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This probably explains the popularity of electric razors as Christmas gifts too.

Thanks to Elisson for the pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 11:40 AM | category: Links
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