Is it just me?

Spider On The Track,
originally uploaded by brentbat.

Or does anyone else look at this picture and think "good heavens man, what have you been drinking?"

Stylized

my new (and first) tattoo,
originally uploaded by megpi.

Good job on counting up the electrons and the ordering of the Bohr atomic shells in this tattoo, but to me the image suggests a valence bond relation, rather than an ionic bond appropriate for a compound of such widely varying electronegativities. That last electron does not want to have anything much to do with the sodium and is firmly in the camp of the chlorine ion.

If I were the wearer, which I'm not, it would bother me.

My God, it's full of floor wax

Glide Path,
originally uploaded by The Devil in the Detail.

Acid colors are so '60s. Here in the real 21st century we know the value of a palette of earth tones.

On reflection

In a glass door I saw a number 12939. It was the reflection of a sign reading PEPSI.

Keene State graduation

The Keene State graduate,
originally uploaded by milkfish.

I posted this inadvertently via Ping.fm, but I like it and think I'll keep it.

Last weekend's graduation pictures: http://u.nu/8vt5

By the way, I'm working on some new actual content for this site soon.

An unpleasant development

This has been up for over a week on our floor at work, so we have been forced to go up a flight or down two flights. No sign that anything is being done to remedy the situation either.

Two notices for your consideration

• Some library patrons are just better with their hands than others.


• Informational display seen while shopping for GPS units.

Better than a red-eye touch-up

Fantasy lightening dip,
originally uploaded by Robin Hutton.

This image made me think about the great many other snapshots which might be improved by the addition of a little bit of electrical discharge.

Before:
Late for children's day,
originally uploaded by Seema K K.


After:
having mixed in this image via The GIMP.

I modestly think the results speak for themselves.

Memory aid

I snapped this while in the checkout line at a supermarket, by way of perfecting my spying skills. It doesn't look to me as if that little note gets changed very frequently if at all. It is number 277 in the list of bad passwords, not even in the top ten among numeric passwords.

The mind reels. A determined band of thugs could gain access to the register and give themselves DOUBLE COUPONS with abandon.

What did not happen over the last 36 hours

When I came home from work on Monday, hoping to have some supper before we went to church, it was not to a scene of happiness.
The acrid chemical smell in the air led us to suspect a fire in the microwave oven, so my wife had called the Fire Department, who told us we should not stay inside. It was cold and my wife went into our neighbor's place across the street, while I did not.
Besides the four or five fire trucks there was a freelance photographer there and eventually a person from the gas company, who I did not speak to at first.

Once they took a look around, they opened the windows and doors, then brought in large industrial fans on extremely long extension cords to take away most of the fumes, while we waited, wondering what was happening. Eventually one of them told us that the gas furnace had overheated and had to be turned off and sprayed down with water to cool things off, and that it was not any problem with the microwave at all. I went in to look at the old furnace, which did not seem to be in very good shape after all this.
We ended up not making it to church that night. Also, we did not have much heat in the house except for a couple of small space heaters we set up.
The next morning, I stayed home to make some phone calls, hoping to find out whether our homeowner's insurance would provide any payout (it would not). A gas company representative came by and quickly determined that the boiler was shot and could not be repaired. We measured the size of the rooms and he based on a few other quantities, he determined that the old 200000 BTU input boiler was too large for the residence. Their quote on a new, smaller, modern gas boiler was not something I wanted to accept immediately though. I called other heating contractors in the area and the first couple could not set up appointments with me right away. One of them did come to visit, discuss what they could do, and agreed to set us up with a newer, even better, system, though not appreciably lower in price than the first quote. Since they could start right away, however, and in consultation with my wife, I agreed, drawing down heavily on a line of credit I had wanted to spare. The heating company spent the following ten hours pulling out the old unit and putting in the new 150000 BTU unit, finishing just shortly before midnight, a couple hours later than expected.

The brand-new boiler does not take up as much room in the basement as the old one. Even the heating guy admitted it is not the kind of big purchase you would care to show off to people, all that much. On the other hand, it should not attempt to run while dry the way the old one apparently did.
All this for a price which, had I paid them solely in dollar bills equal weight to this twelve-pack of soda, I would not have reached. I wrote two unpleasant checks, since I did not even have such a heavy stack of cash on hand. Were it not for the pictures they still need to take for the local permit application, I would be at work this morning.
Still, we witnessed no explosions and no fires raging out of control, nor freezing pipes and no one crushed by hundreds of pounds of cast iron.
Clarification: Everything did in fact happen, that's not what the title's referring to. I have simply cast all the facts as negative statements, in the spirit of Raymond Queneau's book Exercises in Style (the chapter called "Negativities"), perhaps in order to be contrary, perhaps not.

Nursery rhyme

Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod, one night sailed off in a wooden shoe;
Sailed off on a river of crystal light into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going and what do you wish?" the old moon asked the three.
"We've come to fish for the herring fish that live in this beautiful sea.
Nets of silver and gold have we," said
Winkin',
Blinkin',
and Nod.

10 tips for those let go from finance

With the number of high finance executives being downsized from Shearson Loeb Rhodes Pierce Fenner and Smith Mae Mac and the like, it is time to think of ways in which the affected workers can make a positive step forward in their lives. Here's the list I came up with:

1. If you were an experience in Structured Investment Vehicles, get yourself to Detroit and see whether they might be able to use you in a new line of concept cars of the same name.
2. Employers are probably completely swamped with resumes from your colleagues right now, trying to figure out whether all the acronyms are real or made up. Hire yourself out as a resume reader to help filter the good ones from the bad.
3. Contribute a foreword to a new published edition of Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
4. Take your skills offshore to bring the home of universal homeownership to the common Chinese citizen. Learn Mandarin first.
5. Don't you know there's a crisis in the health care industry in this country?! Get a set of scrubs on, pull on some surgical gloves, and learn to do something useful, anything!
6. If you are still occupying space in an office, open up an account at Etsy and sell the crafts you make from leftover office supplies.
7. Form a monastic order with your coworkers, roam midtown Manhattan begging for alms and doing good works. Call yourselves the Mad Mendicants.
8. Get yourself to the State of Alaska, where all citizens are granted an annual stipend from the state, making it the ideal socialist paradise. And IT folks: while you're up there in the frigid north, you could make a living running computer datacenters with natural rack cooling provided by the Arctic air, and piping the warm air to heat dwellings. Ample diesel supplies to power the backup generators are available as well.
9. Entrepreneurship may be a good option. See the picture for one concept.
10. Appear as a contestant on a new reality show for mortgage insurance specialists forced to live by their wits and set in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. One challenge could involve defrauding the local denizens of their swine and roots. Attire: formal business wear.

Stay out

Archaeologists reveal signs that the builders of Stonehenge fenced the common people out.

I am eager to find out exactly how this worked. To get in to see what was going on, could a person go to a 3000 BC ticket counter (bearing a kid goat, perhaps)? Or was there a stone-axe wielding bouncer at the main entrance with a list? If one of the masses caught a glimpse of the Megalithic structure, could he or she sell the story to the mass media in order to satisfy the popular curiosity? Or would that be suicidal?

In a more practical sense, it raises the question as to whether the ancient palisade structure ought to be recreated. It could be done privately, supported by advertising space, thus leaving the great stones untouched by commerce.

SQL nerd alert

Drop,
originally uploaded by mag3737.

It's Mr. DROP TABLE;

Ascending the Pyrenees

Marcel Compayre, Luchon, septembre 1895. Série A. Hanau n° 38,
originally uploaded by Bibliothèque de Toulouse.

The Tour de France* bicycle race begins this Saturday. The first stages will be in Brittany, then through the Massif Central, hitting the Pyrenees around Bastille Day, the Alps a week later and then on to Paris.
*(link broken, try this new site instead)
My guess is that the fellow pictured here had no performance-enhancing substance coursing through his system except perhaps for a bit of Irouléguy perhaps.

Not in Kansas any more

Via www.commentbaby.com

See also the Wikipedia entry on the phrase.

Wrist reactor

I'll be very disappointed if the PU on this item does not stand for Plutonium.

And I think all the apparel by this manufacturer should have at least a gram or two of deuterated or tritiated moisture, for truth in advertising.

Compare and Contrast III

Ding dong merrily on high.

This post has been removed due to bitrot of all of its content over the years. Sorry!

Thinking of Windows 7

I am certain I'm not the only one to have come up with this meme, but I may be the first one to have hacked up a promotional poster for Microsoft's next OS.

Source images here and here.

B&W

rayas,
originally uploaded by VjTuX-2008.

I like the look, but I think I like her even better vectorized.