Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

The in-laws are away to the airport and I have a day off thanks to Martin Luther King. In honor of Dr. King, I will quote him here:
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Blog News:
Michele updated the color scheme and a bit of the layout on her weblog.
Paul has been playing around with his weblog template has a story about an imposter of me!
I was persuing megarad.com, a E/N site, when I cam across linkswarm.com, a pure MLP site, and finally I ended up at Icon Wars, a great Flash animation. Enjoyable stuff all the way round.
Mr. P posted a nice video clip on his site. His direct links aren’t working, so you’ll have to go to the main page and scroll down to the January 19, 2003 post.
News of the stupid:
It appears that San Francisco has banned Segways. What a bunch of morons.
Brewing News:
Today I plan to bottle my beer. Pictures to follow.

Righty right, here’s the update. Plenty of photos…
Here’s a picture of the new laptop. It’s most tasty.

Yes, I know you are jealous.
Twinkie Update:
We had another Twinkie Eating Contest at work on Friday.

I handed out the Twinkies and the race was on.

I won the first race with the slow time of 16 seconds. We raced a second time and Gary won with a time of 10 seconds. He swallowed the twinkie whole. No chewing. He almost couldn’t do it, but he did.
Geocaching Update:
We had the Team WWDN Geocaching Picnic today. There was much fun to be had. I previously hid five caches at the park. I handed out the coordiantes and everyone went to go find them.

Zoe found the first cache. I think everyone had a good time. In any case, I enjoyed my self. It happened to be Snow Day at the park and the city had dragged in tons of snow. The kids got to play in the snow and throw snowballs around.
Mars Update:
If the rumors are to be believed, it looks like we are headed to Mars. Supposedly, the President will announce approval of a NASA nuclear rocket and the goal of putting a man on Mars by 2010. I sure hope it’s true. Earth needs it’s space program kicked into high gear. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

It’s a little before 7AM and I’m up with Zoe. She’s playng Animal Crossing on the Gamecube. I’m laying on the couch with the new laptop.
Yes, you heard right, new laptop. I finally took the plunge yesterday and after doing much research bought a HP ze4220 notebook computer. It’s got a ton of whiz bang features even a combo DVD/CD-R writer drive.
I booted it up last night after the kids were asleep and Michele and I watched as the computer booted for the first time. In short order I was downloading all the recent patches and slapped in the wireless card. For all the issues that exist with Microsoft, I have to admit that Windows XP is one smooth piece of software. I unplugged the network cable and the laptop switched to the wireless card seamlessly. I am quite happy.
Today is the geocaching picnic. I prepared the mini-caches last night that I’m going to place at the park for the others to find. It should be a good time. I’m going to place them early and then hopefully pick up a lunch at Kentucky Fired Chicken. I know it’s not the healthiest place to eat, but it sure does work good for picnics.
I don’t have any great linkage for you all this moring. I need to eat some breakfast and drink a cup of coffee now. Later.

My vision is blurry and I intend to sleep soon.
You should go check out Brad’s site. He compares me to a Maori warrior.
Well over a year ago, I posted about Burger King Tacos. In the comments there, Tom K. said this:
The tacos are the greatest, and I know dozens of transplanted New Yorkers here in Northern Virginia who are going ape over them. Just like good ol’ Jack in the Box….but, sadly, they’ve been discontinued permanently at all Burger Kings around here. Everyone I know is boycotting BK and I can’t believe they got rid of the best fast food out there. Is anyone else having this problem???
Since he posted it in a story from August 2001, none of you would see it. Any reports of Burger King tacos disappearing in your neck of the woods?
I was quite enthused about watching the Man vs. Beast show on Fox. Matt has a good writeup about it. I couldn’t stop talkinga bout it this morning. The girls and I were enthralled. Today, when I got home from work, my daughter’s were watching it again. I’ve raised them well.
Alright, time for bed. My mind is wandering…

So here I am in Lucky Baldwin’s waiting for the weblog Meetup to happen and no one else is here. I brought my cantenna and used it to wardrive an access point somewhere in the building and now I’m on the net.
Len just showed up so I’ll stop the blogging now. Time to drink.

Today is my father’s birthday. The girls and I went out to dinner with him and my mom tonight to celebrate to the Parkway Grill in Pasadena. The food was delicious and we had a great time. Happy Birthday Dad!
A few days ago I finished my latest book, Big Fish by Thomas Perry. It’s another crime novel more in the vein of Metzger’s Dog as oppposed to The Butcher’s Boy. I quite enjoyed the tale of a smuggler’s life and the involvement of some ‘hollywood types’ into it. It was a fast read, and I’m glad I got it from the library instead of buying it.
The last few days have been busy with family in town and work. The upcoming weekend will be busy as well. Perhaps I should go to bed early to get some rest.
Some of you may not be interested in my going to sleep, so here are a few links for your enjoyment:
Postal Experiments
International Federation of Competitive Eating
Strongbad draws a dragon
What if Fox bought Disney

I can eat a twinkie in 12.85 seconds. That beats the local record of 13 seconds.
Chris and Dave were telling me that they had a speed Twinkie eating conference over the weekend and that Chris had won with a time of 13 seconds. Brad was nearby and stated that he could beat that. Someone tossed him a twinkie and the stopwatch came out. I decided to make an attempt too.

Brad attempted to shove the entire Twinkie into his mouth and swallow. I went with the 3 bites with seperate swallow method.

Here I am winning the contest while Brad is still masticating. Note my Survivor style form with tounge display and raised arms.
12.85 seconds, I dare you to beat it.

Purely hypothetical question here…
Imagine that your wife had an unnatural love of stapleguns and loved to use them to attach everything from christmas lights to party ribbons. Now imagine that she wanted to use the staplegun to attach a sheet over a window. That would mean stapling directly into plaster.
Is it so wrong to question the use of a staple gun inside a house on the walls?

I moved the beer from the primary fermenter to the secondary fermenter. I measured the specific gravity and the rough calculation is 4% beer. Not bad. A few more days to eek out the last bit of fermentation and I’ll bottle it.
Tivo News:
Tivo announced several new options today at CES. They are all great. I don’t knwo which one to get…
You can get a Tivo with a DVD player built-in.
You can get a Tivo with broadand access that you can access from the internet and move clips to other Tivos in your house.
You can get a Tivo that records and plays HDTV.
Health Update:
Will all you stop worrying about me? Sheesh it’s not like I’m gunna keel over.

All the sudden, a few days after my vacation finishes up and I go back to work, my body is revolting against me. I’ve got a cold, my right eye feels like someone is stabbing an icepick into it, and my right elbow hurts from spending too much time at the computer at work.
I’ve been trying to eat well, get some sleep, and stay off the computer at home, all to no avail. I feel like going home taking two vicodin, drinking a beer and sleeping for two days.
In other news, MartinMartin has got his weblog groove on.
Some have asked (ok, one person asked) how the blogrolling thing was working. For a limited time, you can take a look at my blog test page. As the weblogs get updated, they pop to the top of the list and get a (new) flag next to them. Weblogs that don’t get updated drop to the bottom of the list…
Make sense? OK, gotta go back to work.