Once again, I’m stuck wondering whether I’ve caught a cold or am being hammered particularly hard by allergies. In any case, my energy-level is low this morning, and my brain is full of snot. Don’t expect particularly witty commentary today.
Saturday was Saintoberfest. Attendance was lower than I figured, but what the heck. Dave & Candy and Bruce & Lynn won third place in the tailgating contest, behind the guys who deep fry a turkey (it was nice that regulars in the parking lot won first place) and some ringers who are professional tailgaters, entering contests like that when there are cash rewards. Me, I took a day off from thinking about cooking and just heated up some meatballs, tater-tots and chicken wings. Adam (the celebrity judge) said that if I’d had the wings in the contest, we would have won, since he loves chicken wings - mental note made. Sorry guys. I also sampled a bunch of beers. I particularly liked Big Sky Brewing’s Scape Goat Pale Ale and Uinta Brewing’s Solstice. Also of note, Sconnie Brewery is only thirty miles from Viking Brewing. I think there’s a road-trip in my future.
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| Pile of branches |
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Yesterday was better than I expected. Trip to mom’s, then home. Nearly ran into my neighbor as I was pulling in to my garage. She was cleaning out her garage and making a huge pile of stuff for the trash guys. That, and her complaints that “my bushes” (the folks I bought the house from put in a bunch of things on the property line - I don’t think of them particlarly as mine though) were rubbing on her house spurred me into heading out with the clippers to trim back the various shrubbery that grows between our houses. A couple hours later, I had a blister, a pile of branches almost as big as a Camaro, and what feels like another three feet of yard. I can now mow all the way to the property line without getting a facefull of leaves and branches, and it makes me strangely happy. The only problem is that now I have to turn that pile of branches into something the city will take away for me.
- It’s not just Kryptonite bike locks, Gun cabinet locks no match for pen. Probably lots of other “high security” cylindrical locks are vulnerable, too. When security is through obscurity (i.e. people not knowing how to use a Bic pen to open a lock), it’s not really secure. [fark!]
- More on the Kryptonite lock story: Legal actions looms over bike U-Locks in B.C. There’s a lawsuit that’s looking to become a class-action. Meanwhile, Krypto has offered to replace all of the defective locks. You just have to fill out a form and wait. I’m still trying to find the third lock I know I have around here somewhere before sending mine in. [boing boing]
- A voting machine Touchscreen Hack Effort Called ‘Monkey Business’. Baxter the Chimp hacks a Diebold electronic voting machine in a video from Black Box Voting. After all, if a chimp can rig an electronic voting machine, do you think our president can’t? [flutterby]
- So in spite of John Kerry saying he’d get
our allies
into Iraq, Bush Gets NATO To Train Iraqis In Baghdad. But as Ed points out,We have over 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all of the NATO members have just 25,500 deployed anywhere… and they’re overextended.
So how are these allies going to help? They’ve got, as Mitch points out armies with tons of tanks, ready to fight a ground-war in Europe. And that’s going to help in Iraq how? [mitch] - L Neil Smith’s The Cat Came Back -- Or Tried To, Anyway talks about Yusuf Islam’s being barred from the US, goes on to say that John Kerry won’t be any better than GWB on things like this, since they both belong to the Boot On Your Neck party, and it’s time to vote for Michael Badnarik. That’s about the conclusion I’d come to, though for different reasons. [endwar]
- The First LRT crash is fatal. Yep, it took this long for the first crash, and it appears as though the driver made a mistake and drove through the crossing arm to get in front of the train. [strib]
- A study done at LAX says that Lines at Checkpoints pose a bigger security risk than anything else now. No real surprise there, I think. Heck, if people are backed up at the security checkpoint, that’s a lot easier to hit, since nobody’s been screened yet. [fark!]
- On the local legislative front: Kahn [says] election will not change. She’s still running for her seventeenth term in the State House. [daily]