I’m not dead.  I’ve just been up to my ass in alligators.  It seems as if everyone finally woke up on the job and I seem to be on everyone’s critical path (at least to hear them tell it).  Anyhow, I think I’ve finally got a handle on things.

More to come…

A friend of mine recently had a bird strike on his car.  While this isn’t exactly uncommon, this particular bird left something very interesting behind on the side of the car.  Check out the last picture at that link.  It’s freaky weird.

Driving doesn’t usually bother me, but this last trip just about wore me down to nothing.  I think it was mainly the wind.  On the trip up we fought 30-40 mph cross-winds from Amarillo well into Colorado.  Although I guess the section of road from Clayton to Raton with snow blowing horizontally from the right with the sun shining to my left was kind of interesting.  Not to mention the attack of the tumbleweeds (by the tens of thousands) in Texline.

On the way back it was the same problem from Amarillo all the way down 287 to the Harmon Road (E Bonds Ranch) exit.  It certainly gets your attention to suddenly have an 18 wheeler attempting to share your lane.  But I wouldn’t recommend it on a regular basis.

Note to NMDOT : If you’re going to slow us down to 45MPH on that ever-so-monotonous stretch of US64 between Clayton and Raton the least you could do is pick a section you’re actually working in.  Lowering the limit on a twenty mile stretch when you’re only working in a small section just pisses people off and conditions them to ignore warning signs.  Unless that’s your intent so as to generate higher ticket revenue…

So I get back home yesterday afternoon and have to turn on the air conditioner.  Did someone miss that whole December memo?

And then it was 78° again today.  Jeeze.

I’m no fan of speed bumps, especially on public streets, but they’re not really too annoying since my Avalanche barely notices them.  Apparently, though, some people are more annoyed than others.

Honk if you hate speed bumps!

A campaign by that name was launched several years ago by a Florida radio station after drivers complained about bumps in residential areas.

When they drove over speed bumps, drivers would honk to vengefully release noise pollution into the neighborhood. Apparently, the practice caught on, and residents began to think twice about petitioning city hall for the traffic-calming devices.

Since then, intermittent honking campaigns have been reported in other states. Last week, a reader admitted that he recently honked while driving on speed bumps in Dallas’ Park Cities area. “It was a huge stress reliever!” he reported.

To be consistent (see previous post), I could point out that speedbumps target both the law-breaker and the law-abiding regardless of innocence. 

Still, I can’t help but think that the type of person who would honk because of the speed bumps is also the same type that made the residents want to install them in the first place. 

Frakin’ MADD.

More to come…

So it seems that some of our airports don’t have sufficient margin available on their runways.  At least if you take into account a year-2015 standard…

More than half of U.S. commercial airports don’t have a 1,000-foot margin at the end of a runway, an overrun area the federal government says is needed as a safety zone, according to statistics supplied by the Federal Aviation Administration.

  Some of the busiest airports in the country—including Los Angeles International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport—as well as Baltimore-Washington International Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport have more than one runway that doesn’t meet safety standards, according to the FAA.

  The FAA says it is diligently upgrading the runways. The agency expects that all of them will meet the standard by 2015, when they are legally required to do so, according to FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.

  “Today, 70 percent of commercial service runways have a runway safety area within 90 percent of the standard,” she said, adding that 236 runways were improved as of Sept. 22.

It’s not so much this particular issue, though, that got my attention.  It would appear that the airplanes aren’t the only thing landing without sufficient runway:

“Our runways are out of shape, and the Bush administration has failed to move to correct the problem,” Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, New Jersey Democrat, said yesterday. “If we don’t get serious about runway problems, the result could be disastrous.”

Is there anything that this dingleberry can’t turn into a “Bush” problem?  If the overrun standard isn’t required until 2015, what’s the deal here?

Now if you want to see a short runway, check this out:

I see that tonight’s episode of Mythbusters includes a segment called “Exploding Lighter.”  They’re testing the myth of whether a small, disposable, butane lighter can explode with the force of several sticks of dynamite.

This reminded me of some of my youthful empirical studies in combustible and explosive materials.

Perhaps at this point I should include the standard Mythbusters disclaimer concerning my youthful antics.  Please do not try this at home, kids.  You’d probably be charged with a felony these days…

Growing up in East Texas I possessed a Daisy 880 pump-action .177 caliber pellet gun as well as plenty of free time during the summers to scour the roadsides for whatever items might be found.  I learned that sometimes discarded Bic lighters still had a little bit of life left in them as well as that discarded Coke bottles explode quite nicely in 100° temperatures when hit with a well-placed BB if the owner had thoughtfully recapped it before littering.  But I digress…

Curious as to whether a lighter would explode when shot with a BB gun, I set up a small experiment, which I conducted at dusk when the light was fading for best effect.  Taking a piece of tape I would light the lighter and use the tape to hold down the stupid little button.  I would then place the now lit lighter on a fence post and retreat to a (relatively) safe distance with the BB gun.  If the gun was sufficiently pumped to destroy the plastic quickly, a nice little fireball could be created when the lighter was hit.

Not that I’d want to have a lighter explode in my pocket, mind you, but it didn’t seem to be all that powerful.  Of course, this was a situation where I orchestrated a quick release of the lighter’s contents.  I would imagine that if you could slowly heat the lighter to increase the internal pressure that it might be much more dangerous.  I never did try that one, though.

Since I’m fairly certain the statute of limitations has expired, I’ll relate another of my youthful experiments.  It involved the heads of about 50 matches, some very fine copper wire, a length of larger wire, a small pill bottle, and a 9-volt battery.  I put all but one of the match heads in the bottle.  The last one I wrapped with a couple of turns of the fine copper wire, which I then joined to the larger wire.  The wrapped match head went into the bottle with the rest and the top was sealed with tape.  I then ran the wire a safe distance from the bottle and applied the battery.  It made for a nice little electrically-activated incendiary device.

Perhaps it’s better that today’s kids have Playstation and other indoor pursuits to keep them occupied.  There’s probably nothing quite so dangerous as a young boy with nothing to do during the summer (although in my defense I will note that I never set anything on fire that I didn’t intend to and no charges were ever filed   ).

Someone using a spyware infested browser on IP 72.47.11.29 (which appears to be an IP belonging to a residential high speed internet customer of Cebridge Connections in Pilot Point, TX) hit my site searching Google using the string “fuller, chacon, foster, stratso.”  There are only two hits on Google for that particular string, and this posting of mine from May 3, 2005 is the top hit.  That post was about some little wankers who had vandalized the high school stadium in Pilot Point by cementing a basketball goal in the middle of the football field.  The students involved were Steve Stratso, Josh Chacon, Matt Hatten, Britton Foster and Drew Fuller.

Whoever hit the site and read that post was obviously offended by it and decided to send the following missive via contact form:

To: <email redacted>
From: your gay <and@ihope.you>
Subject: Contact Form: get
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:46:15 -0700 (PDT)
Message from IP:72.47.11.29
Referral URL:

ran over by a semi while your wife and kids are watching.