Earlier this week while the usual suspects were at the Birchmere for Henry Rollins, I noticed that a couple of musicians that I wanted to hear, namely, Jonathan Coulton with Paul and Storm would be playing later this week. Unfortunately, inquiring at the theatre I found out that the show had been sold out for some time, but that I might have gotten lucky if someone would be selling their tickets. It was Lyssa and Mika who heard on the Net that someone locally was selling off his tickets to the show, and Mika jumped at the opportunity to pick …
Please be advised that a noticeable taste of blood is not part of any test protocol but is an unintended side effect of the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid, which may, in semi-rare cases, emancipate dental fillings, crowns, tooth enamel, and teeth. --GLaDOS, Portal
Last week, I went to the dentist for my six month cleaning and was treated to an unexpected, and rather unpleasant surprise. Remember that molar I broke a couple of years ago - you know, the one that I had filled, fractured, capped, had a root canal on and re-cappped? When I was getting checked out last …
I don't remember exactly who it was that got me into Henry Rollins' spoken word stuff. It might have been Mika, who gave me a two disc set for a long drive a couple of years ago. It might have been Lyssa, who tends to follow literature of all kinds. It might have been a couple of episodes of his television show on IFC that I caught online once. Hell, for all I know I've had those CDs since undergrad and I completely forgot about them. It's happened before. What I do know is that when Mika told us that …
The saga of Dr. Peter Watts continues. He's crossed the US border a couple of times for hearings since his arrest in December of 2009, ostensibly for attacking a US border guard while trying to return to Canada. It's a given that he's going to go up on trial for real. However, it appears that he is now considered a fugitive from the law because he failed to show up in court on Friday, 5 March 2009. It is standard operating procedure that the defense and counsel are informed of their court dates in advance, but this time it seems …
I've been following the surreptitious webcam surveillance saga of Lower Merion School District since the story first broke in February, and some interesting news has come out of the Philadelphia area. It seems that two people on the school's IT staff have quietly been placed on paid leave as a result of the investigation. The school district is still clinging to their story that the webcams were remotely operated to aid in recovering stolen laptops, nevermind the fact that the camera can't actually see anything if the lid is closed. Plus, it's remotely possible at best to identify the location …
After badly breaking a load-bearing part of your body it's not uncommon for an orthopedic surgeon to install a couple of after-market bits of hardware to hold the bones together while they knit. This usually takes the form of a couple of titanium alloy screws, though plates, rods, and tubes are not unknown. The downside of using something made out of metal to put things back together is that the screw holes left behind after the implants are removed require additional time to heal. Plus, the holes further compromise the structural integrity of the bone until they fill in. In …
There is a lot of breathlessly sensationalistic reporting about the arrest of Senator Roy Ashburn of California. Now, while my black little hearts oh so dearly want to leap up and down for joy at this turn of events, that's not the right thing to do. Let's face facts, here: he's been humiliated. He was thrown in jail but got out on $1400us bond (wow, that's cheap for DUI). His family and especially his children are probably taking this about as well as they would a pregnancy test that says they're about to have puppies. Chances are this could be …
Things have been a bit dodgy over the past couple of days. I haven't written much because of stuff going on at home. Somehow, Leandra's systemware got horked along the way (I'm pretty sure that I messed up an upgrade somewhere along the line and it cascaded out of control) and I spent most of the weekend trying to fix it. While I think that I made some progress getting things put back together there is no guarantee that things aren't going to go seriously pear-shaped in the near future. Plus, I really don't have the bandwidth at home anymore …
