Fun with MS Paint

It looks better when you click on it for the full view.

World Series Update

The Red Sox are set for a repeat performance of their 86 year drought ending World Series sweep against the Cardinals in 2004 as they stand poised to shut out the Rockies as they just wrapped up game Three of the World Series for their third consecutive win of the first three games to bring the standings 3-0 with the Rockies on the verge of being shut out. Be sure to watch tonight's 4th and last? World Series game at 8pmEST.



Some highlights from last night's game:
Rookie Jacoby was the star of the night being the second Rookie in World Series history to score two doubles in one inning. He also became the first rookie in 61 years with four hits in a Series game, getting three of Boston's seven doubles. By inning 3 the score was 6-0 the Red Sox. The Colorado Rockies rallied in the bottom of the 6th, bringing in 5 runs to only be trailing by one. But the Red Sox were quick to snap back from complacency, keeping the Rockies from scoring anymore the rest of the game and managed to finish up the longest 9 inning game in World Series history (4 hours, 19 minutes long to be exact) to win it by a sizable margin, 10-5.

Things to take note of going into game 4.
No team in the 103 year history of the World Series has come back from a 3-0 deficit to win the World Series, putting the Rockies in a rather rough position. They are off to a... rocky start (ahem) to say the least. Between a rock and a hard place as it were. The Boston Red Socks were the first team ever to come back from a 3-0 deficit in the World Series playoffs for the Pennant against arch rivals the New York Yankees in 2004. The curse really seems to be broken.

Click here For more on the Red Sox and the World Series

Random Shenanigans.

Dan rockin' the Nat Sherman shirt.


A flower keeping the Co-op pretty.


I wonder how often the driver of that Delorian goes back to the future.

Actually, I think it's a Lotus Esprit. here is a pic of a Lotus Esprit Concept car from 1972:


Self taken photo monkeying around on the outdoor gym ropes at Ben's. Notice the form: perpendicular legs to torso. Not easy.


I dunno if images like this are boring or not. But fall fell. Err.. fall has fallen.


A fine evening for a hot air balloon ride. This harked me back to Australia.

A life less... ordinary...

A very curious Mantis wants me to play with him/her.

Come on, put 'em up. I ain't afraid of you.


Aww, c'mon, you're no fun.


Aww, man, don't make me beg. Won't you play with me?


Alright, whatever. I'm outta here.


In a deep Barry White voice: "I'll just be grooovin' along now. See you around."

Mt. Graylock

On the way to Mt. Graylock...


Greeted by the opening of the heavens at Mt. Graylock


Lovely Leslie lilts through the leaf litter


Maria leads the march


The wayward travelers: Maria, John, Doug and Leslie


John reads about forest succession where competition is low for the small mammals. (They'll be a blog on those later...)


Red is the color of war. A blood red leaf upside down is the signal of a nation in distress.


Maria tries to get the tree to come with her.




Das Ende

More nonsense for your horse sense

Joan doesn't like to be late, so she sets her watch ahead by 7 minutes. When she travels from Los Angeles to Chicago, she forgets to adjust her watch. In addition, her watch stops for a full 23 minutes before she notices. By how many minutes is her watch off?

One of the possible answers is the right one:

90
104
120
136

Uhhh... say what??

umm... there's 14 minutes between the first two possible answers.
16 minutes between the second and third as well as third and forth.
Ohh... heh, I get it.

mmmm, here's an easy one:

Which picture completes the analogy?

An even more absurd one

Brain Teaser

Complete the "pattern" with one of the appropriate images from below. Oh really? Pattern, huh? You think so, do you? WHAT FREAKING PATTERN!! Who designs these tests, honestly? If anyone thinks they know how to solve this abominable riddle, please, please enlighten me. I will be adding more brain teasers periodically, so check back often. Please provide your reasoning for your choices. Thanks.



Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater:

No dice

Well, I think the prosthetic limb was just completely covered by her pants and earlier in the semester maybe she was wearing shorts because I always remember it being pretty prominent. But today it was moving just like her other leg, with only the ankle of the prosthetic showing - and it was in a sock and boot like her right leg, so no blip in the matrix I'm afraid. Oh well, would have been fun. :)

The following is true.

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream--a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.

from "No. 44 The Mysterious Stranger"
by Mark Twain

This is exactly the realization I had come to that has pained my feeble brain for the last two years.

Here is what happened today:

Chesterules: strange thing happened in class today
Chesterules: funny, because I think about stuff like this often
Chesterules: what if something "impossible" happened in my scope of reality?
chesterules: why shouldn't something happen?
Chesterules: how would I react?
Chesterules: Would I bother telling anyone?
Chesterules: well, something did happen today
Chesterules: while I was taking my test
Chesterules: the overweight lady in the back of the classroom - the one with the prosthetic leg, she left the classroom after she finished her test -but she walked out normally - her leg was no longer prosthetic but normal. I didn't even much notice. I mean, I noticed but I didn't react. I watched her leave, to make sure it was her, and to make sure her leg was normal, even though I could plainly see that it was, I didn't need to look on.... I then went back to my test... feeling a little "uhh" about it, but that was it, nothing more. I had enough to worry about right in front of me, I couldn't worry about whether peoples' prosthetic legs are magically becoming normal over night.

Now I am very curious if it will be normal on Monday or if I was just momentarily tripping...

Short winged blister beetle or oil beetle

Happy Birthday Sharon!

Thanks for having me be a part of your birthday Sharon. It was fun digging holes and running the wheelbarrow back and forth. I needed the exercise. Sorry about your tree. :( Dan, email me the pics so I can post the foolish reason why the tree got hurt.

Ben digs a hole.


Sharon found some very strange antlike bugs. What to do? What to do? We pulled our hair out and screamed frantically. But we never were able to figure out what they were online. It shall forever remain a mystery unless Tom Tyning can shed some light on the matter in class on Tuesday when I show him da pics.




We also saw a cool bat looking moth:


It actually was trying to mimic a leaf, not a bat.


Dan heaves. Dan hoes. While Ben looks on.




Well... that's all folks!

Gone fishin'

Went down to the pond to catch some fish in Field Methods class. We caught fish. I squealed like a little girl when I had to put the worm on the hook and hold the fish and try to remove the hook from its mouth. I failed at both. Well, I eventually got the worm on the hooks. Tearing worms apart is not nice. Poor worms. Poor fish. Poor world.

The girls caught most of the fish.






Tom removes the hook for the squeamish girls. *ahem*


Nate and I caught some minnows.


All in all we caught 4 fish. 3 caught by girls and one by the boys, and the one guy that caught the fish was the one who brought all the fishing poles and is a fisherman. So what do we learn from this? Guys can't fish.


Oh yeah, and one fish caught bare handed by me. As you can see I'm about to eat it raw. "Riggling, and raw" mmm mmmm.

Gassavers.org

So I've been getting advice from this website gassavers.org on how to get my car in tip top shape. One of the guys on the site agreed to help me out so Ben and I drove to Dartmouth college last weekend where the guy SVOboy from the site futzed around with the car, cleaning this, poking that, prodding and probing and tweaking and more or less not accomplishing anything. But the drive was fun. We drove 75-80 the whole way there and back and averaged 44mpg. Respectable. About what the Prius manages at those speeds.

It's gotta be the EGR valve. Just plug the IACV and blow on the PCV or something.


Now we're getting somewhere.


Maye there's a vacuum leak


Just gotta clean out the IACV


In the end we got the idle to stay at 500RPM for about 2 minutes, but then the sticking idle and roaming idle returned. I brought it to the mechanic and after some head scratching and but crack scratching and whatever other scratching mechanics do while trying to figure out the problem, he decided to clean the throttle body out completely for $180 as well as replacing the fuse for my headlight. Problems solved. Another mechanic had offered to replace the throttle body for $200 so I guess I came out of it okay. Just need to get a cluster from the junkyard to fix the odometer and speedometer and the car will be in tip top shape. Love the little gas miser. But don't be under any illusions of the car's incapabilities. Ben and I did a 0-60mph sprint in 12.6 seconds. But that was with a very bad start and less that swift gear shifts.

1984 Ford Thunderbird (he wouldn't let me take a picture of his car so I found one on google that is what it looked like.)


So this mechanic I brought my car to. He's an interesting guy. I tell him there's still a hesitation problem while driving at low RPMs. He tells me cars aren't designed to be driven at 1100RPMs. After twice around the block down route 71 to demonstrate how I should be driving my car, his answer to the problem is to keep it above 1700RPM: "the car doesn't *like* to be at 1100RPM. Listen to the car, it will tell you what gear it wants to be in." I tried to explain to him that I like to get 60mpg from the car. He tells me no car was ever designed to get 60mpg except maybe hybrids. He then demonstrates how *his* car also doesn't like to be driven at low RPMs. This was quite an experience. His car is an old 1984 Ford Thundercrap or whatever, all modded out for bare bones performance. The car has been stripped down to a weight of 2200 pounds, just 100lbs more than mine. The rear seats have been taken out and the fronts replaced with bucket seats equipped with race seat belts that don't work. This, after lecturing me about how concerned he is about safety. (I had asked his opinion of coasting down hills in neutral, which he saw as a good recipe for getting killed.) He then demonstrated the RPMs his car likes to be driven at. So we're ambling along at a modest pace. We turn down route 71 and we're putting along and I'm waiting for him to do something, or say something... for something to happen. All of a sudden (but I was half expecting this) he let's the car rip. The already loud engine roars to life as the speedo and RPMs fly northward then southward as I feel myself get pushed back in my seat, the cabin noise increases, the engine starts to make a high pitched jet engine sound and just before take off I glance a look out the window to see the airport go whizzing passed when he slows down and asks... "feel the difference?" Yes... got it... car likes the high RPMs... won't soon forget it. At this point I feel like I am in one of those B horror movies from the late 70s or early 80s that never got made because I'm living it now, two and a half decades later.... He claims we just hit 130mph. I'm skeptical but don't say anything. I'm pretty sure his speedo is off by a good 15-20%, but maybe we hit 100mph. He claims 4000RPM in 4th gear is 130mph. (His speedo only goes up to 95.)

Well, maybe any other sane person would slowly walk away at this point and say thank you very much and never return again down that dirt road to the mechanic shop hidden from view (sorry, again, about that Dan) but I somehow like the guy and he offers to give me 1/2 hour of his time to look at my rear brakes which are making a clicking noise. We jack the car up, get the wheels off and he takes a look at the brakes and immediately starts doing the "oh jeez, do you guys have *any* idea what you were doing" routine about Ben and my brake job. He then asks me to look at the brakes and tell him what is wrong. I fail it. With some leading questions I finally see it. The backing plate has been bent. How did that happen!? All I can say is Oopss... He then goes round to the other side and points out some brake fluid that has leaked from the brake cylinder and some excessive brake pad shavings. Back to the left side he starts to disassemble the brakes. He discovers the clevis or adjuster has been worn down--all the way down to the threads. Will need to be replaced. While taking the brakes apart to fix the problem, the other cylinder starts leaking fluid badly. He then proceeds to lecture me on why you don't work on cars yourself when you're not a mechanic, especially something like brakes, and why there are professionals that charge what they do to do the job right and to *please* bring the car to a professional the next time it needs work. So I have no option now but to pay him to fix the brakes. The car isn't in any shape to drive. New brake cylinders need to be installed as well as new brake hardware and a new adjuster/clevis.

So I call Dan to get a ride but I don't take into consideration maybe he doesn't know where the place is. Like I said, you cannot see the shop from the road because it is down a little driveway and hidden. So I start to walk to Dan's house from town and keep expecting to see him on the way. About 1/2 mile from Dan's house, by the airport, I hear a car slow down behind me: poor Dan spent the last 45 minutes driving around town looking for this phantom mechanic shop and finally gave up. Moral of the story, if you want something done right, hire a professional.