What Happened This Spring 2011

As a kid growing up reading science fiction on a daily basis, I assumed by age 40 we'd be in contact with at least a dozen alien races, have bases out to Jupiter, sent probes to the 12 nearest stars with planets.

Now we can't even get a Mars mission going. Someone should go there and STAY there, it's too far to come back, who cares if it's dead, exploration is like oxygen to humans.

Some of the people I've met are a fair substitute for aliens though. I try to remind myself that they just have a different style.

Walmart beats class action suit

Interesting discussion about Walmart, a microcosm of America. I shop there, there's no alternative for certain things, but mega entities in business and government are always a sign of stagnation, not growth.

Laser Drops

If you google 'laser drops' you won't get this, apparently they use the cut out part for something else, I've seen these at the local junk yard.

From an auto mechanic wanted ad: 'no whiners. no tackle box on your face'.Haven't seen that lately, the style now is a little lower lip mustache and a shaved head, quite an improvement over the metal mutiliations of the 90's.

Coldest spring in the 28 years I've been here. Not all bad though, some intermittent springs haven't dried up yet.

Little green bugs

A traffic ticket will up your insurance rates by 20 percent. I heard insurance companies buy police departments state of the art radar guns, etc. , is there a connection?

One thing I've never understood is why toll-free numbers leave out the '1' as in '1-888-345-6789'. Are we supposed to be born knowing there's a '1' in front?

Kinect Motion capture on Youtube
More mocap with 3ds max 9
My youtube channel

It's not getting a lot of hits

To save these videos, type the words 'about:cache' in Firefox's address area, you'll get a page with something like this on it somewhere- C:\Users\hike1\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\m7yc1i5x.default\Cache

Copy and paste that into Explorer (windows, not internet) and you'll see a bunch of gibberish files with no .flv's, after the filenames. The '.flv's will be megabytes, just select, right click 'rename' the big ones with .flv at the end, then view with VLC video lan player, why this is a big hassle is beyond me.

Hail May 18, 2011

A new one on me, it likes pecking carpet.

King snake (or is it a coral?)

I just noticed on my Credit Union West statement there's a little check icon which is an actual picture of the check I wrote, now if I'd just put something in the 'memo' area, I'd know what I bought as well as who I paid.

Snowed March 21, just a little.

'Transactional analysts believe that people are ok that is , good fine , loving cooperative, eager to help beautiful, intelligent, healthy.Why then do they act so badly? Why do they smoke three packs of cigarettes a day; why do they eat too much why do they kill themselves with alcohol and heroin?

Why are they mean to each other, why do they steal and lie, let themselves be abused and exploited? The answer we believe,is that they are scripted to act thus.

In addition, I believe that once scripted we are encouraged to remain in our scripts by people who benefit from it.

We are encouraged to smoke, drink, eat, and abuse drugs by the food and drug industries .

We are aggressive competitive, and indivudualistic because, as will be explained later, those traits make us easily exploitable as workers and citizens.'

Claude Steiner, "Scripts People Live" 1973.

Progress, no one is encouraged to smoke anymore, although there are still ads for nicotine here and there.You can buy his book at http://www.emotional-literacy.com, it's really good, the guy who invented Transactional Analysis is Eric Berne, of 'Games People Play'.

'A man gets caught in his own doin'. You can't change what you are and if you try, something always calls you back'.

Burt Lancaster in 'The Lawman'.

Derek Boik sold me this 1984 honda trike for $300, thanks, Derek, you saved my back and legs. Like cfc's and lead paint, these vehicles are so deadly they aren't allowed to be made anymore. My nephews were each riding one at age 3, I think. Just don't drink/go fast. I'm going to get a trailer and haul dirt, rocks, and logs, the 3 main forest ingredients.

Wait, I had 2 crates when I left. The trailer is a hand truck with cement mixer tires. It's pretty wimpy uphill with 2 crates of dirt, I went perpendicular when the trailer pulled the back of the bike down, have to lean forward going uphill.

They haven't arrived yet, I just ran across this from some previous summer.

My 1st split rail, 1st I scored a line with an electric chainsaw, then cut with a circular saw, then drove wedges, it took about 15 minutes.

April 8, snowed 3 inches. A 76-year-old UNNAMED neighbor of mine had some chest pains yesterday and drove himself to the hospital. Luckily for him and the people he didn't collide with on the way from passing out from a heart attack, it wasn't a heart attack. Is this any different from DUI? Oh, right, it's legal. Lifeline ambulance has a $50 a year service, all the trips you want, the signup isn't until September though.

I was getting 25 KB/sec download off the satellite, after I brushed the snow off it with a broom it went to 48.

Nick Russo and the economic crisis.

Don't say you weren't warned!

I was trying to find a way to make my monitor grayscale, as colors make my eyes tired, haven't found it yet, but by r-clicking on the desktop and going /personalize/window color and appearance (in windows vista) and picking 'windows classic' (windows 95? 3.1?)was a great improvement over the default.

Desktop zoom.

This doesn't work with 2 monitors but is really weird!-on vista anyway.

atv home made trl - $58000 (phoenix az) Date: 2011-04-14, 11:25AM MDT Reply to: see below atv home made trl.very light to pull,10 long by 5 wide,color blue. $580,00 call 928 710 0949,

http://prescott.craigslist.org/mcy/2324948866.html

Well, is it 58,000 or 580,000? It makes a difference, you know

If you think YOU have troubles..

The Edge of Nowhere
Growing up in Alaska in the early 1900's.

A true story, very intense

Drowing Tucson
Growing up in Tucson in the late 1900's.

This was so intense I couldn't finish it, I HOPE it was made up.

"The Road" a movie with Viggo Mortensen, on the dish, could also be named 'As bad as it gets'

Your library might have these books

Sheldon Kopp quotes
More Sheldon Kopp quotes

He was a psychiatrist who wrote 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him".

Trim the garage with split rails.

Churning out split rails, I checked Home depot, a 16' or might have been a 20' 2x6 is $21. My longest is 16'.

Speaking of vast architectural enterprises, Susan Lozoraitis drove us down to see the desert cacti bloom April 26, There were 4 kinds of cacti at the Agua Fria, all blooming. Still some water in the Agua Fria, we were about a month late for the real flood/flower show.

We also visited Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri's installation near Cordes Junction.

The gray part has actually been built, nothing in the last 20 years or so though to my knowledge. Soleri is 90, and they make cast bronze bells, give tours, etc. Life is short, dream big! The buildings have a lot of round features which are absent in mainstream architecture, it would have been good if some of his designs were incorporated into mass housing.

Got a Wagner spray paint gun at Home Depot for $68, it works! You just have to thin the latex to 30 pct water, stand 14 inches back and spray light coats, about 4, and let it dry in between. Now it looks like the walls need painting.

I just discovered there's a little sliding thing on the edges of SDHC cards, found in digital cameras, mp3 players, which if moved will make your camera say "CARD LOCKED" until you slide it back.

Easter Egg Toss

A small demo of Unity 3d and Playmaker scripting/state machines, eggs are pretty

ragecube

A small demo of Unity 3d and Ragecube. Tug the lower right corner of the cube guy to make him jump.

Aria Arizona map images

Supposed to be Poland Junction satellite/aerial photos, don't have the bandwidth to DL the big ones.

Note to myself-don't walk on the sticky side of duct tape

Pure chance I found him, don't look in his location more than 5 times a year

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