What happens when your hair gets long but you don’t want to look like a dirty hippie?

I don’t know what you would do but I went out and bought a tube of brylcreem. If it’s good enough for my grandpa then it’s good enough for me! And, always remember, a little dab’ll do ya.

Going Full Nerd

After setting up a second monitor yesterday, I bought a mechanical keyboard last night. I’ve pretty much hated the stupid wireless keyboard I bought on sale when I built this computer, and I guess I just snapped.

Learn from my mistakes, kiddies, don’t buy a cheap wireless keyboard because you might wind up so frustrated with it that you go and spend 5 times more on something nicer, rather than just starting out with something only twice as expensive.

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I put a new bookshelf in

Well, really, an old bookshelf, but we were cleaning out the garage the other day and it finally got moved into my new room. Well, probably “old room” at this point since I’ve been living here for over a year, but…

In any case, note I have a bookshelf to stack the “I’m going to read this someday soon, I swear” books. Under the beneficent gaze of Jimmy Carter and a B52 loaded for Commie bear. As one will.

Frivolous, but

With my christmas bonus money I purchased a swath of items, including the shrimp, but probably the most frivolous was to upgrade one of the “random 2gb RAM card someone gave you so you plugged it in since you had a free slot” with a nice shiny new 8 gb card to match the other one you bough when you built the compy. Tacit Blue is up to 20 gb, baby! Maybe next year I’ll be able to find a graphics card to match and mate with the one I’ve got…

Winter

I’ve just discovered this guy on Youtube, and I absolutely love him. While I don’t exactly share his views on winter, lets just say that I can certainly sympathize:

Yesterday out at my dam I had to chip out the outlet control stem to measure the water level. In the course of this, I did a total Looney Tunes moment on the ice, where your legs go spinning in a blur before your feet flip out from under you, and landed squarely on the measuring tape I had on my hip. Then, not 5 minutes later going down the other side a rock hidden under the snow went out from under me and I landed squarely on the measuring tape in the exact same place on my hip again. Bearing in mind that I’ve now been going out to this dam at least once a week since last September (averaging I think something like 2.5 times a week though), and I’ve had this exact same measuring tape on the exact same spot on my hip for nearly all of those other days, and never landed on my hip once, let alone twice in a day, I’m inclined to scream “WHYYYYYY?” to the heavens.

the. effing. future.

I just ordered a new pair of spectacles from the internet. Plug in the prescription and go. And now, comes the improtant part. I spent 50 bucks (including shipping and a sunglass clippy bit). In the past I’d have to spend 4 hours at the shop with their limited selection and wind up spending $300.

And here’s the best part–the pair of $50 glasses I’ve been wearing for the past two years have held up much better than the junk I was spending 300 bucks on before I came to this revelation. No more having to go in the get the lenses replaced every 6 months because the high index layers were flaking off.

I don’t have a flying car, but I can order pizza and glasses off the internet. The future is still alright.

So, uh… I kinda did a thing (techno-geek allergy alert)

Well, my old Samsung SIII has been dying for the past year, and rapidly accelerating here in the past week, giving out “Can’t find SIM card!” warnings requiring resets and generally just slogging down. So, possessing the knowledge that I was eligible for a subsidized upgrade, I hied meself down to the Verizon store, and found that the new Ultra Greatest Phone EVAHR, the Droid Turbo, had literally come into the store mere hours ahead of me–the guy had never even played with it until I asked to see it. For the price of VERY MANY Brownell’s on-sale AR lowers, I walked out with the latest bit of technogeek pocketslavey, and have been messing with it ever since.

…It’s kind of crazy that you can walk around with a quad-core-3-gig-RAM-32-gig-memory geegaw that could have gotten the astronauts to the moon with room to spare for–and correct me if I’m wrong but even if I am I think I’m not too far off–the contents of the library of congress, and 30 pounds of vinyl to boot.

While it lacks a few features I would have liked, namely removable memory and battery, it smacks the rest of my want list out of the park (decent camera, no Samsung TouchWiz UI [*spit*], and nice enough specs to last a couple years), so far past what the rest of the offerings out there currently are there was no contest–and I figure that with the memory card (that was from the old Droid X, no less) my Samsung was the same size, and I was just now about to run out of room on the card for new pictures, and no matter the amount of Technowizardry they always only seem to last 2 years anyway, so I’d probably be just fine–and if not I’ll just have to be more diligent about deleting the extraneous photos of the blurry ground I always seem to take 3 of before I get a picture worth saving.

AAAAAAAAaaaaand now that I’ve found something else to completely bore you all with, I’ll leave you with the standard FCC/FTC/FAC/FCKTL disclaimer that no, I didn’t get anything out of this, and yes, I would have been happy to have gotten something out of this, dammit, for future reference.

So, goodbye little Samsung, you served me well for two years, making me hate you nearly constantly for the past one, and I hope I never have to use you again!

Later, Taters

I’m off to Utah for a few days to sit on a boat in some canyons and drink rum and tonic water in various combinations. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do stupid while I’m gone.  If you catch Ebola please cover your mouth when you sneeze.  Might could expect some pictures by the end of next week, but don’t count on it. The motto of Houseboat is “Start easy and then just taper off.”

Oh, also, “Happy birthday to me!”  “Thanks, me!” “Me, you’re starting to get old.” “Nonsense, the doctor told me the other day that he didn’t think you needed to get your blood screened for high cholesterol and the like until you were 30.” “Wow, me, considering the last 3 years have passed in such a blur, what makes you think the next 3 won’t?” “Stop thinking about that and just go enjoy Powell!” “Sounds like a plan.”

Next to my bed

This is what is currently in the “being read”  pile. Not counting the couple books that were in it that were done, and so got put away before the picture.  All the airplane and tank books are out because a) I’m a plane geek and b) to look for paint schemes for Dropzone Commander, the rulebook for which can also be seen.

That’s 12 wood-pulp books and 6 magazines (and now that I think about it, there’s another couple magazines on the headboard, and we’re not even counting the bibles and devotionals and hymnal…), and who knows how many things are in the Kindle…

New experience

I’ve never had to superglue one of my toenails back together again. Until now.

Dazed and Amazed

Went out into the yard this morning and just sort of wandered back and forth, stunned. If I need to remind you, this is what it looked like before. I am not sure I’m going to be able to handle not having to go out and shovel and rake and pick up rocks for hours on end every day.

This reminds me of my time as a rocket engineer intern

Yes, for those of you who weren’t around here in early 2011, I was an actual honest to goodness rocket engineer for a few weeks.

And the engine I helped ready exploded quite spectacularly.

Much like SpaceX’s Falcon 9R just did (though ours was just on the ground in a test stand).

But the thing I remember most was that when it blew up, taking the metal building it was in with it, with debris landing a half mile away, the head engineer just sort of nodded and said “Interesting.”

Thread-killer

As per request, a close up of my tiny emergency/dress pants/loose thread cutting Spyderco. It’s been living mostly full time in my pocket organizer, and doesn’t get that much use, but after two or three years of that it’s still sharp enough to shave the hairs off my arm. A solid little thing, I quite like it.

Pocket dump

Because Butch did it and I haven’t done it in a long time.