Joke of the Week

A pastor is up in front of his congregation and he says "Now it is not in keeping with being a good Christian to believe in ghosts. Is there anyone here who believes in ghosts?" Several hands go up. "Well", he says, "is there anyone here who claims to have seen a ghost?" A few hands go up. Exasperated, he says "Ok, let's go from the sublime to the ridiculous. Has anyone here ever made love to a ghost?" One man in the back of the hall raises his hand. The pastor says "Do you mean to stand there and tell me that you have made love with a ghost?" and the man puts his hand down and says "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said goat".

Follow the bouncing time zone

Ok, I'm glad I'm not anal about changing the clocks each time we move from one time zone to another. Here is the history of our time changes over the past few days.

10/30 - In Phoenix,AZ - MST (they do not do DST in AZ).
10/31 - In Las Cruces, NM - MDT (+1 hour)
11/1 - In Las Cruces, NM - MST (-1 hour)
11/2 - In Alpine, TX - CST (+1 hour)

WTF time is it now?

Nathan Fillion's Halloween Tribute to Firefly!

California, Summer/Fall 2009

Our tour of California from Napa to San Diego, September and October, 2009. Hover over any picture on the map to see the name of the location, and click to see a larger version of the picture or a link to information about the location.

Summer 2009 Trip Map

Our trip across country from Bethel, CT to Pacifica, CA, July, August, and September, 2009.

Hover over any picture on the map to see the name of the location, and click to see a larger version of the picture or a link to information about the location.

Validate My Cartoon!

I love it when two unrelated, non-political cartoons use the same subject on the same day.

DIY Satellite Finder Circuit

Ok, I have been looking for this circuit on line now for a while and I finally found it. (Thank you Kostas 711 in Patras City, Greece.) Turns out it is a pretty simple circuit. Part of it is a voltage regulator and filter to isolate the voltage supplied by the receiver and using it to power an op-amp which will run the meter. The rest of it isolates the carrier frequency from the satellite, rectifies it, and feeds it to the amp input. The amp output drives the meter. Voila! Now I know why these things are so cheap. The most expensive component is the meter. I saw some other DIYers looking for this online as well so here it is just in case they Google me.

I still would like to try to build it myself and use my volt-ohm meter for the display, perhaps without the op-amp. Maybe just a couple of caps, rectifiers, and a choke, Use a couple of RCA jacks for the output to the meter. Voila!

I’ve also created my own satellite look angle calculator for Windows. I found the formulas for the elevation, azimuth and skew by looking through some learning material on the subject. They didn’t have the development of the formulas but they had some sample problems.

I also found some data regarding magnetic declinations to add in, since I use a compass to do my site surveys. Right now the calculator only does the North American continent and DirecTV and Dish satellites. I am working on an upgrade and would also like to develop it for my Palm phone. The iPhone and Touch would be fun to do too, but I do not have a Mac for development. Perhaps later.

The Return of Ciruit City

Circuit City under new management, apparently as an online only entity. I'll bet you all couldn't wait.

TVs, Computers, Cameras, Desktops, Laptops, Consumer Electronics, and More at CircuitCity.com

Racer’s Weekend

Here it comes, my 60th birthday. I will be happy as a clam and Ellyn will likely be bored out of her skull. She will have satellite TV and ear protection to keep her happy and I will have 4 days of high octane fuel fumes, tire smoke, and loud engines. I am talking about Charlotte, NC and Memorial Day weekend.

As of this afternoon, we will be camped just outside turn 3 of the Lowes Motor Speedway for 4 nights. It will be dry camping, but we should be able to survive for that long on just our tanks. Tonight is pole qualifying for the Sunday Coca Cola 600. Ellyn has actually agreed to come to this, as it will be just one car at a time and only a couple of hours long.

On Friday, we are going to go on a tour of the Hendrick and Roush garages. We toured Hendrick some years ago with Logan and Brian but I things have changed a lot in that time. Back then, Jeff Gordon was still working on his list of goals and now he is one of the veterans of the sport and teamed with Dale Earnhart Jr., Jimmy Johnson and Mark Martin.

Friday night is a sprint car (World of Outlaws, not Sprint Cup) race at the dirt track oval adjacent to the Lowes track.

Saturday night is the Nationwide Series Car Quest 300 and then the Coca Cola 600 is Sunday night. I will also probably watch the Indianapolis 500 on TV on Sunday afternoon.

Monday is of course Memorial Day but we will be on the move again headed up I-81 toward Virginia.

Red Sox Humor

From Keith Knight’s The Knight Life.

It Finally Happened!

Our house in Danbury, CT is sold! We are now back down to a single home, which has wheels and an engine. We are now, officially, full-time RVers. Unreal. It only took about 15 months to bring it to fruition after its inception in January 2008, when Ellyn came home and said she could not take any more of here current work environment and that we should sell our house, buy and RV, and travel for a year. Well, that year, which now looks like it could be as long as 2 years, begins today, 4/17/2009.

Right now we are camping near Asheville, NC, on a beautiful hilltop. The sun just went down over the Blue Ridge Mountains and I am sitting at our picnic table. Just an hour ago we were enjoying a great meal of sausages from the grill and couscous from the microwave. Now a breeze is kicking up a bit, to switch the aerodynamic vents on the RV, as the air cools down from the wonderful 70+ degree day we had. Tomorrow we plan to do a little kayaking on the French Broad River.

Song Parody

I started having the Beatles song "I Saw Her Standing There" running through my head the other day and a few alternate lyrics started showing up. Soon I had nearly an entire parody mapped out so I wrote it down. Here it is. Enjoy.

 

I Saw That Sandwich There (to the tune of "I Saw Her Standing There" by the Beatles)

Well it was twelve seventeen

If you know what I mean

And my hunger pains

were way beyond compare

So how could I dine on another,

Oh, when I saw that sandwich there

Well I ordered up some fries

and a Diet Coke besides

And before too long

My meal would be prepared

I couldn't dine on another

Oh, when I saw that sandwich there

Well my stomach crooned

When I crossed that room

And I held its hard roll so fine

Oh it was seasoned oh so right

And I savored every bite

And before too long

My hunger was more spare

Now I'll never dine on another

Oh, while they have that sandwich there

(Instrumental bridge)

Well my stomach crooned

When I crossed that room

And I held its hard roll so fine

Oh it was seasoned oh so right

And I savored every bite

And before too long

My hunger was more spare

Now I'll never dine on another

Oh, while they have that sandwich there

Yes, while they have that sandwich there

Oh, yes I love that sandwich there

Funniest "Tom the Dancing Bug yet"

Click for larger image:

Spot The Frog free online comic strip library at comics.com

Spot The Frog

Sadly, one of my favorite cartoons (that I read online using the Comic Reader by Evan Reynolds) ended a 4 year run in September of last year. I was a bit slow on the uptake and did not check up on why they were running reruns of old ones until recently. That was the bad news, although I am still reading it because I missed most of the first two years of these cartoons.

However, I also discovered that the creator of "Spot", Mark Heath, has his own website, Nobrow Cartoons, which has a very large number of non-Spot comics he has done over many years. These are all single panel cartoons which are usually puns (like the one with a hippopotamus sitting on a guy who is thinking he is cold, numb, and irritated, and the caption says "hippothermia") and are very funny, and some may not be appropriate for all ages. I have not found one yet which is not at least chuckle-worthy.

The site will bring up a new cartooon at random each time you access it, or you can use "Dr. Mueller's Panoptical Cartoon Engine" to dial in a set of three criteria and generate a new cartoon which meets this set. Very ingenious.

The Big Bang Theory Video - Bad Joke - CBS.com

The Big Bang Theory Video - Bad Joke

This show is one of the few I actually laugh at on TV. The dialog is great and there are so many jokes which are written for a very sophisticated audience, one which would get a joke about a physicist. It is even funnier when it is told by the ditzy blonde on the show. And then later, when she explains about "shields" as something from Star Trek, and then looks surprised and says "Where did that come from?", is even funnier.

Click here to see that clip of Penny telling the joke.

Here is the text from the "vanity card" Chuck Lorre puts at the end of the show. It can only be read if you record it on a DVR and pause at the right time, since it is only displayed a second.

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #247

The quantum physics joke Penny tells the guys in tonight's episode was told to us by Nobel award-winning physicist, Dr. George Smoot. Penny tells it in about twenty seconds. Dr. Smoot's version probably took about three minutes, although it felt a lot longer. No one had the heart to tell him to get to the punch line, proving my hypothesis that in addition to time slowing down as you accelerate, it also grinds to a halt when you're being courteous to a genius. 

Thanks for the joke, Doc!

Welcome to 100 Hours of Astronomy

Welcome to 100 Hours of Astronomy

I have got to get to one of these sessions. There is one in Ridgefield but we may not be in Danbury any more then. We might be up near Boston at Fox Hill Village. 

When we were camping in Fort Myers, FL, I went outside on a clear night with our field glasses and took a look around. I had forgotten what can be seen beyond the few stars that can be seen by the nacked eye with all the light pollution near cities, highways, and malls. I have wanted to get a telescope since we got the bug to move out of our house and go on the road. This might ice it. We'll see.

Going back to Charlotte for my 60th Birthday!

The last time I was at Lowe's Motor Speedway was in July of 1999 to attend the Fast Track driving school and drive a race car around the 1.5 mile raceway. This was my 50th birthday present from Ellyn and the boys. This year, for my 60th, Ellyn is letting me go to the Coca Cola 600 on Memorial Day Weekend. We have reservations to camp outside turn 3 for the week, but we will probably just be there from Wednesday through Monday. I already have a ticket for a seat on the front-stretch, and Ellyn will be hunkered down in the RV with ear protection. However, she is going to attend the qualifying session on Thursday. Only one car will be out at a time and there is little chance someone will crash so she is ok with that.

There are no hook ups for the RV in the camping area but we have our generator and holding tanks to rely on. I am going to purchase a couple new batteries for the RV when we get down to Virginia. The Costco there has 6 volt, deep cycle batteries made by Johnson Controls and the two 12 volt batteries we currently have will not hold a charge. People claim that two 6 volt golf cart batteries in series give better life and reliability than two 12 volt marine batteries in parallel. They also will fit in the same space under the hood. Costco sell them for only $75 each so I am going to give them a try.

Joss Whedon's Firefly Season 2

Joss Whedon's Firefly Season 2

Yes! Please! Firefly streamed from the internet? I would pay even more than $4.00 an episode! Fill out your "Recuit Profile" today!

It took me all day, but I was able to successfully capture the "leap second" on the time.gov website which shows the official U.S. time. At first, I was going to watch the US Naval Observatory site, which displays the UTC time, but I looked at the html source and found it was just sampling the atomic clock time every 3 minutes and so would not really show the leap second.

I also got a copy of Quick Screenshot Maker, which was able to capture and save an area of the screen at one second intervals.

I had to be at the laptop at 7 PM because the java displaying the time would fail occasionally. So then it was just wait-and-see and, sure enough, the leap second showed up as 18:59:60.