From Diane, via Dustbury:

If Gore invented the Internet, why do so many Internet addresses start off with Dubya, Dubya, Dubya?

Posted by: Ted at 07:33 PM | category: Links
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From California Yankee:

Fred Krupp, head of Environmental Defense, says the President's plan to designate the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve as a National Monument creates the world's largest marine protected area.

About the size of California, the national monument will be 38 times larger than Yellowstone, and larger even than Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It will consist of 139,000 square miles of largely uninhabited islands, atolls, coral reef colonies and seamounts, starting 160 miles west of Kauai, the remote 1,400-mile long string of islands extends to Kure atoll, west of Midway Island.

Posted by: Ted at 05:37 PM | category: Links
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From Dustbury:

Boral Bricks' newest plant is in Union City, and when its test production run proved to be up to industry standards, Boral first thought about selling the bricks at a discount.

But no, you can't buy them: instead, Boral is donating the entire run to Central Oklahoma Habitat for Humanity, enough to build 54 houses.

Posted by: Ted at 11:45 AM | category: Links
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1 For the love of God, Ted, have you been hitting the Amontillado again?

Posted by: CGHill at June 21, 2006 02:45 PM (wmpjK)

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To the elderly gentleman seen on my drive home,

Sir, you are a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma (to paraphrase Churchill).

Your hair is white. Not gray. Not silver, but that dingy white that makes one think of yellowed old bone.

Despite the color, you have that odd youthful haircut that no one can miss. Maybe you think it reminds people of the Beatles. It made me think of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.

You drove for most of ten miles with your right blinker on.

Yet you drove like a young bobsledder, seemingly immortal as you were weaving in and out of traffic, going so far as to straddle two lanes for long stretches as you decided which side would give you an advantage measured in seconds. Bonus points for using your turn signal, even though it was only correct half the time.

Finally, a word about your car. The Scion isn't cool. It looks like the box a Mini-Cooper came in.

Posted by: Ted at 04:19 PM | category: Links
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I already knew it, but it's still nice to have confirmation.

Thanks to Lemur Girl, who's due congrats for completing her college degree! Yay!!!

She's got the low-down on the link above too.

Posted by: Ted at 05:33 AM | category: Links
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Y'gads, another long forgotten regular feature exhumed from its shallow grave...

Zoe Brain tells about an open secret, namely that the two Mars Rovers are each carrying a piece of the World Trade Center aboard.

The company who built the drills on the robots' hydraulic arms are based just a few blocks from Ground Zero.

Staff at Honeybee Robotics fled clouds of dust and smoke when the Twin Towers collapsed.

And they decided to pay a "quiet tribute" to the 3000 victims of September 11 by putting debris from the attacks into their design.

Engineers at Honeybee turned two pieces of aluminium from the site into shields to protect the wiring on the drills. Each curved piece is the size of a credit card, and marked with the American flag.

More technology news from Random Nuclear Strikes, where we find out that a recent breakthrough might make hydrogen as cheap to produce as gasoline! Yay! Maybe, but there's a bit more to the technology than just making cheap fuel. Read and become informed.

In related (somewhat) energy technology news, Buckethead of The Ministry of Minor Perfidy links up to a new idea that's making waves, mainly by adapting an old idea to new technology. This looks promising.

Did you know that Mercedes makes a *Luxury* car?!?!?!?! Head on over to the Parkway Rest Stop and check out his sighting of a Maybach Motors creation.

Ah, employee handbooks. Source of endless amusement and/or teeth-gnashing, depending on your mood. Check out some detailed analysis of one such over at Nothing to see here, move along.

Finally, I've got good news and I've got bad news from the world of toons. Bad news first...

DeDoc posted about the passing of Alex Toth. Who, you may ask? Mr. Toth was the artist who did the original Johnny Quest, among other works. Doc has the links.

And in Toon good news...

Hearst's King Features Syndicate and Warner Home Video have finally come to terms, and 231 classic Popeye cartoons originally distributed to theaters by Paramount will be available on DVD.

The package also includes some made-for-TV cartoons, but what you care about here are the originals, produced from 1933 to 1942 by the Fleischer Studios and from then until 1957 (using some of the same animators) by Paramount's own Famous Studios.

I'll end it here on that happy note. You are happy, right? Original Popeye on DVD? I'm smiling.

Posted by: Ted at 02:06 PM | category: Links
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Way back in the early days of Rocket Jones, I was a blog-linkin' fool. There were many and varied ways I used to spread the love, as it were. One original idea was the Great Random Google Junket - aptly and beautifully named by Susie - where folks would leave various words in the comment section and I would combine them into Google searches and post the results.

As I mentioned, Dogette's comment gave me the impetus to revive the idea, much like lightning striking the mad-scientisty doodads erected atop Dr. Frankenstein's tower.

This may become a semi-regular feature again. In any event, and in order to invade Dogette's privacy, I dedicate this first one to her, and ask you all to put on your best Jan Brady voice and welcome the Rocket Jones Great Random Google Google Google Junket!

Interestingly, when I googled "poop" and "shrub" (two frequent topics at TND), amongst the expected horticultural sites were a surprising number of hits from anti-presidential mouth breathers. Easily distinguished from intelligent life by a complete refusal to offer anything resembling intelligent debate, they don't bother to degenerate to name-calling. They just start there and it quickly goes downhill. They are also strikingly alike in that they offer no alternatives or suggested ideas beyond "it shouldn't be like that".

Moving on, sort of, if we add the terms "privacy" and "orange" to "poop" and "shrub", we get a link to, ta-daaaaaahhhhh:

Harley's Poop Patrol. According to their website, they're number 1 in the business of number 2, and they service all of Orange county. I wonder if they've ever done a cameo on that television show. Their rates seem reasonable and they offer customer testimonials! How cool is that. Way to go Harley!

See what kind of shit (*ahem*) we get into during a Random Google Google Google Junket?

Triticale jumped right in and offered up "snorkel". Since I'm shining the giant bright spotlight of attention at Dogette, I combined "snorkel" with "dog" and came up with Snorkel Dog boxer shorts.

"I heart pesticides". So goeth the wisdom that is Dogette, now available thanks to this site.

And finally, in one of those odd good/bad situations, we find that Howard Johnson Enterprises (home of the bright orange roof) also produce "all season triamine weed and feed". I'd probably skip the salad bar next time you're at HoJo's, eh? Actually, I have no idea if it's the same Howard Johnson. I'm too lazy to dig deeper.

But not too lazy to find this (.pdf format) data sheet on Triamine2, which is described as "A three-way post-emergent selective broadleaf herbicide" with lots of other scary words listed after that.

Ok folks, so that's how the Great Random Google Google Google Junket works. Leave a word in the comments, and try not to get too out there with your vocabulary, since medical terms tend to bring up boring medical sites, etc. Get creative but keep it on the common end of the spectrum.

Do it for Jan.

Posted by: Ted at 05:04 AM | category: Google Junket
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Over at Random Nuclear Strikes, AnalogKid defines several common units of measurement, and helpfully provides their metric counterparts.

A sample:

Yesterday, I used the term “Shitload”

1-Load = The amount of work you can reasonably get done in 8 hours

1-Buttload = 1 Load plus your lunch break

I read these last night with wife Liz and daughter Robyn over my shoulder, and we were all laughing out loud. Don't miss those metric equivalents!

Posted by: Ted at 05:29 AM | category: Links
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Zarq-man is dead.

Maybe he can start a trend, you know, dead blogging.

Posted by: Ted at 05:06 AM | category: Links
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Thanks to a comment by Dogette and the reinforcement by Buckethead, I'm seriously considering the revival of a regular feature of the early days of Rocket Jones. Renamed slightly, of course.

The Rocket Jones Great Random Google, Google, Google Junket.

What say you?

Posted by: Ted at 08:19 PM | category: Google Junket
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1 YAY!

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at June 08, 2006 06:00 AM (DdRjH)

2 Sounds good to me!

Posted by: Tuning Spork at June 08, 2006 08:15 PM (jayhm)

3 What? What'd I do?

Posted by: dogette at June 09, 2006 08:23 AM (wN2Jx)

4 This time, can I have snorkle?

Posted by: triticale at June 11, 2006 12:03 AM (0WmrJ)

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That's when you take something and squeeze it until it ain't fun anymore. That's as good a description as any for a majority of the memes floatin' around out there.

But it has been awhile since I've played the meme game, so all I can say is, Susie can tap me anytime.

Here we go.

5 things in my fridge:
* yogurt
* reduced-cholesterol eggs
* regular eggs (for baking)
* reduced-cholesterol margarine
* butter (for baking)

5 things in my closet:
* large box full of unbuilt rocket kits
* assorted prom dresses from the girls
* "junk shelf" containing, among other things, spare AA batteries for my cordless mouse and keyboard
* Rachael's video camera (our old one)
* clothes of all kinds (I don't have a dresser)

5 things in my briefcase:
* foldable bluetooth keyboard for my PDA
* chapstick
* computer textbook that I'm working my way through
* mini-mag light
* Leatherman

5 things in my car:
* sunglasses
* bag o' bungee cords
* tarp
* umbrella
* ice scraper/window squeegee

5 people I want to torture with this meme:
* Link back here or leave a comment if you run with it

Posted by: Ted at 06:45 PM | category: Links
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Mapgirl is hosting this week's Carnival of Personal Finance. Go, visit and usk djc nm87##2i----------

Posted by: Ted at 11:33 AM | category: Links
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Pimp My Cubicle. We're doomed I tell ya. Freakin' doomed.

Posted by: Ted at 05:06 AM | category: Links
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The title is one of those eternal questions, asked in a purely spiritual sense.

I've been very naughty because I haven't written about this sooner, but it should be alright because "salvation is negotiable". At least, so says Father Nookie of the Church of Chaos.

No, my meds are fine, thanks.

See, it's like this... a while back I got this package in the mail. It was small, but packed full of concentrated coolness. As I pulled item after item out of the box, I was amazed at the generousity of Blue. What this guy did was to send me a care package full of music and poker goodies.

If you've been to Blue's place, you know that besides his day gig as a 'puter drone, that he's a blogger and podcaster. He's also a musician with a studio in his basement, and several self-produced CD's in his catalog. And that's what was in that little box.

Not long ago he finished up the soundtrack to a television documentary, and he included a copy of that. It's perfect for the Friday afternoon commute, when I need to stay calm. As an added bonus, being mostly instrumental, I can make up my own lyrics to serenade the idiot-du-jour in traffic.

This morning (and what reminded me to finally write something about this), I listened again to Church of Chaos: Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins. Blue describes this as "industrial dance", and it's chock full of memorable wordplay set to catchy, hook-filled music. Great stuff, if you like the style. I do, it's excellent cranked up during my early morning drive to work.

Like I said, there were several CD's in the box, and I'll talk about the others real soon now. In the meantime, I really do recommend Blue's music, because everything I've heard has been good times.

This week Blue is in the studio, working on his latest Booze Monkey offering. Sometime this summer (I think), he'll be playing a live gig in Winchester, Virginia. I'm planning on going, and I think that it would make an excellent blogmeet as well. Stay tuned and I'll keep y'all up to date on future plans.

According to Miss Sin, the average length, erect, is 5 1/4 inches. So there's a physical answer to that metaphysical question.

Posted by: Ted at 05:15 AM | category: Links
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