New blog location

I've stopped using Blogger and moved to using G+ exclusively:
http://chrisclark.net/blog

Laters!

One of my Favorite Bloom County Comics

Table Be Round

From Robot Chicken:

It's Caturday

Make Me A Sammich

Back to running

I'm finally back to running. During my recent trip to Europe, I didn't have much opportunity to hit the pavement due to bad weather, exhaustion, too dangerous to run, or just not enough time.

I went out for a little over two miles in my neighborhood on Wednesday and I did 3.25 miles this morning. I still have a decent pace (around 8 min/mile) considering I've only run a couple of times in the last month.

The amazing thing (to me, anyway) is that I've run nearly 500 miles already this year. Of course, I know people that have doubled that or more, so good for them, but I don't compete in marathons, and I've had a lot of days that I couldn't run, so good for me.

My hope is that I will be able to get my butt out of bed early this summer so I can get back to doing 40+ miles a week.

Amazing 3 year old drummer

Normally I ignore videos with kids in them, but this kid is incredible for his age.

Bye bye Facebook!

My Facebook account has been deleted:

Hi Chris,

We have received a request to permanently delete your account. Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days.

If you did not request to permanently delete your account, follow this link to cancel this request:

http://www.facebook.com/account_delete.php


Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Done and Done!

In parallel worlds

I would like to live in a universe where Glenn Beck was sane:

When Bush had to nominate a Supreme Court Justice, the right was freaking out about the suggestion that Dems would possibly consider not voting for, to use their own words, "activist judges".  We have Karl Rove to thank for that and for any fodder that is flung from the neo-cons today.  I'm not saying that Kagan is the right choice, but you have to pick a better reason than "because a liberal nominated her".

Time Lapse of Eyjafjallajökull Volcano

From the article:

So I saw all of these mediocre pictures of that volcano in Iceland nobody can pronounce the name of, so I figured I should go and do better. But the flights to get over took forever as expected (somewhat). 4 days after leaving I finally made it, but the weather was terrible for another 4. Just before leaving it got pretty good for about a day and a half and this is what I managed to get. 

Watch below, or click here for a better version of the video.


Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

Flying out of Rome

I'm sitting in Rome's Fiumicino airport and am in awe of how inefficient this place works for international flights.  Here's how the morning has been:

1) Get up early to get to Rome's Termini Station.  They have a non-stop to Fiumicino which is nice.  The floor of the train is about 3 feet above the station platform, which isn't nice if you have heavy bags.  Sure there are stairs, but the door is narrow so you have to lift your bag up and put it on the train before you get on.  I get behind the woman with an 80 pound bag and it takes three people to get her bag up the stairs.

2)  Once you get to Fiumicino, you grab your bags and walk, walk, walk.  Get on a bus that takes you to the back side of the airport for Terminal 5.

3)  In Terminal 5, you wait in a line for someone to verify your passport and ask you the stupid "are these your bags" questions.  Once you say that you haven't accepted anything from anyone else, she puts a sticker on your passport and bags.

4)  Then you get in another line to check in at an automated kiosk.

5)  Then you wait in a line to check in your bags and get your boarding pass.

6)  Then you wait in the security theater (some call it security screening, but it isn't really. . .don't get me started)

7)  Once you get your stuff together after the security screening, you wait in the passport control to leave the country.

8)  You walk through a door and get on a bus to be taken to another part of the airport.

9)  This is one big, round room with 20 or so international gates.  These are the gates that handle the 300+ passenger planes.  There are two places to get food.  Needless to say, getting food is a bit of a chore.  There are so many people you don't know where the line is.  People are everywhere.  I waited in a line for ten minutes when I, and the people in around me, found out we weren't actually in a line to get food.  We were in the line to PAY for food, but we had no idea of what we wanted to eat.  I left, they got in the other line to see what food was available in the display case.

10)  There are three electrical outlets for this entire room.  One is the old three pronged outlet and I don't have an adapter.  The second would require me to crawl on my hands and knees for about 20 feet behind a ticketing booth.  I'm sure security would love that.  I found the third one next to a currency exchange counter.  The guy working there was really annoyed when I asked if I could plug my laptop into it.

I still have about 45 minutes before my flight.  I'm curious as to what I'm going to find next.  All I can say is I'll be glad to be back home so I don't have to deal with the stress of airports.

See you on the other side of the Atlantic. . .

Update:  When I walked back to the gate, there was a scrum of about 200 people waiting to go through one line for the airline to scan your boarding pass (there was a second line only for business and first class).  There was no organization because we were just in line to get on another bus to take us out to the plane.  That made a total of three bus rides AFTER I arrived at the airport.  Each one of them was packed like a sardine can.  We took off and arrived about an hour late.

Texas schools board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns

One of the (many) problems with the Texas School Board decision is that there is one board that makes textbook decisions for the whole state.  That's a lot of books, so if they make a change in a book to suit their needs, it changes for the rest of the country.  Book publishers are reluctant to make different editions for different states.


From the article:

US Christian conservatives drop references to slave trade and sideline Thomas Jefferson who backed church-state separation

...

The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy.

They just don't get it. . .

If more businesses operated like Goldman Sachs...

By Tom Tomorrow:

Rush -- Fly By Night

Very old school music video (or promotional video as they were usually called back then) from the 70s.

Got any bright ideas?

From the Deutsche-Welle article:

BP's 100-ton containment dome failed to funnel oil leaks that have been polluting the Gulf of Mexico for over two weeks. As the slick reaches US shores, BP wants you to come up with a solution.

Aren't they supposed to have all the geniuses?  Oh, right.  They cost money and it would make a slight dent in their all-time record profits.

Here's where our priorities are

From the article:

Challenger Investigation Got $175 Million. Columbia $152 Million. Lewinsky $30 Million. 9/11 $15 Million. Financial Crisis Gets Only $8 Million

 

We don't need to really worry about the truth behind 9/11 or the financial crisis, we just need to make it LOOK like we are worried about it.  Now the Monica Lewinski thing, that's a big deal.

 

Have Aliens Hijacked one of the Voyager Probes?

A few days ago, Voyager 2 started sending garbled data.  "Some" say that an alien has hijacked it and is trying to communicate with us:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/wacky/have-aliens-hijacked-voyager-2-spacecraft/story-e6frev20-1225865566982

How To Destroy Angels' New Video

Trent Reznor's band, How to Destroy Angels, has a new video for their song "The Space In Between [Null]".  Check it out here:

http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/musicvideo/5556-how-to-destroy-angels-the-space-in-between-null

Quit Facebook Day is Coming Up!

May 31st has apparently been declared as "Quit Facebook Day".  Not so coincidentally, the suits (Zuckerberg has been wearing a suit because he lost a bet or something like that) held an emergency meeting at Facebook today (Thursday) to figure out what to do about their horrible privacy practices.

http://www.quitfacebookday.com

Thousands of undelivered letters hoarded by US postman

From the BBC article:

Tubs of undelivered letters were discovered in April when the US Postal Service worker missed several days of work and managers visited his home.

I was hoping to read "a neighbor was quoted as saying 'Newman!'", but I guess no one around there has watched "Seinfeld".

Tea Baggers Search and Vandalize a Classroom

From a Portland Press Herald article:

The Republican State Convention was held at the Portland Exposition Building, which is on Park Avenue, near the middle school. Party members from Knox County caucused in a classroom used by eighth-grade social studies teacher Paul Clifford.

When Clifford returned to school on Monday, he found that a favorite poster about the U.S. labor movement had been taken and replaced with a bumper sticker that read, "Working People Vote Republican."

Later, Clifford learned that his classroom had been searched. Republicans who had attended the convention called Principal Mike McCarthy to complain about "anti-American" things they saw there, including a closed box containing copies of the U.S. Constitution that were published by the American Civil Liberties Union.

[School Committee member Sarah] Thompson, whose children have attended King, noted that the middle school follows an Expeditionary Learning curriculum, which encourages students to investigate subjects in depth and from all angles.

She also defended Clifford, saying that he wouldn't promote one political ideology over another or restrict students from expressing their own thoughts, which were reflected in some posters in the classroom that students had made.

How can a copy of the constitution be considered "Anti-American" no matter who published it?  Not to mention the fact that the ACLU (whose client list includes Rush Limbaugh) fights to uphold Civil Liberties as outlined in the Constitution and the Amendments.

R-tards!

The new "iGuido" from Apple

The new "iGuido" from Apple.  It's kind of like the iPhone, you gotta problem with that?

Taken from my hotel room in Rome.

The Wet Willy. . .

 

It's coming to get ya'

(Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of England)

Check out mah guns. . .

Less than a week before my FB gets whacked

In less than I week, if all goes well, I'll be deleting my Facebook page.  Why wait?  First, I want to make sure I have contact information for the people I need to keep in touch with.  Second, I'm in Europe right now and I have some sort of weird feeling that if I'm at home, I'll be able to fix something if it goes wrong.  Not sure what that's all about, but anyhoo. . .

I've told people over and over that the people behind Facebook are not concerned with your privacy and you should basically consider EVERYTHING to be public as if it were plastered on a billboard over your house, no matter what your privacy settings are. 

For example, those pictures of you drinking underage?  Do you want a future employer to see those?  Companies admit that they do simple Google/Facebook/Myspace searches for your name to look for stuff like that before hiring people.  Even if it was many years ago, consider yourself to be pre-judged!

If you are simply staying with Facebook because you are addicted to Farmville or another Zynga game, you may be in luck.  Zynga makes a ton of money off of people like you and Facebook is levying a huge tax on them.  Zynga currently pays about 33% and FB says that they need to pay closer to 50%.  Technically, Zynga can afford it, but the smaller game developers can not.

Facebook is the AOL of the decade.  They both run/ran a "walled garden" trying to keep people inside of their network.  Eventually, people figured out that the Internet was a lot more interesting without AOL's private network, hopefully Facebook will suffer the same fate.  Am I bitter?  Maybe a little.  There is a need for social sites like FB, but not at the expense of privacy.

First post from Italy

This is just a teaser of some of the great pics I've taken so far.  It's some of the ruins at Pompeii.  Stay tuned for a full (probably boring) pictorial of my trip. . .

Le Mew

This reminds me of Pepe Le Pew (the female cat in the cartoon would say "Le Mew".  Most people don't think about it, but Pepe was a stalker and should have had a restraining order placed on him.

Last Day in Germany

Well, it's Saturday.  I'm in Germany, and planning on going to Italy tomorrow.  Hopefully the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull (not sure how to pronounce that?  go here) will not disrupt my flight.  Several airports in Spain, Portugal, United Kingdom, and Ireland have been closed.

I did manage to go out for a couple of runs during the last week and a half I've spent over here.  I would have gone out more, but it was very cold and rainy for about 5 days.  While out, I had to take a pic of this bus.  They really know how to paint their buses, don't they? 














When I did go out, the runs were pretty good.  A couple of bridges and hills sucked the energy out of me.

While here, I was all too aware of the presence of Americans in the form of military, civilians, and contractors.  How could I spot them? First, just look for a McDonalds.  Second, look around for the pickup trucks with oversized tires and glass-pack mufflers or a Dale Earnhardt edition Monte Carlo.  Dead giveaways.  Third, the noisy jerks in the hotel going out to the clubs at midnight and coming back at 5 a.m.  They have no appreciation for the fact that they aren't the only people here in the hotel and just keep talking, laughing, screaming, clomping around in their dress shoes, etc.  Annoying, to say the least.

I also came to the realization that as annoying as that stupid "small world" song at Disney World is, the world is apparently smaller than I had originally though.  I went onto Ramstein Air Force Base to go to the Commissary (grocery store) to get a sammich and ran into the wife of a friend of mine that I worked with in South Korea more than 20 years ago.  I hadn't seen or heard from him since I left there in 1990.  He's retired and working as a civilian for the Army over here.  He lives about two miles from my hotel.  We had dinner a couple of times, but that's about it. 

Not much more I can say about my stay here other than working ten 11 hour days kind of sucks.  Tomorrow is going to be a long day flying to Roma and Napoli.  Hopefully I'll have some sort of Internet access and I'll be able to share some pictures of the trip.  Otherwise, you'll just have to wait.

I Just Ran

7.1 Miles in 63 minutes

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3708531

Ramstein-Miesenback and Landstuhl

Cats are sneaky

TSA Agent and Airport Cop Caught Stealing Food and Assaulting Clerk

So when are we going to admit that the TSA is overflowing with incompetent idiots and get rid of them?  They serve no other purpose than to waste taxpayer money and inconvenience us.  What other corporate industry does the government provide security for?  The airports and airlines should be providing the security.  That way if we don't like the way things are going at one airport, we can go to another one.

From the article:
An airport cop and TSA worker both showed up at a Hartland Township, MI gas station to buy some booze in order to continue their buzz (which means they drove there drunk already). The two paid for the booze, then Renee Zima, the TSA officer, is accused of stealing two pieces of pizza, and leaving the store.


When the store clerk approached them demanding payment for the items, Zima flashed her TSA badge, claiming she was with Homeland Security. When the clerk tried to get their plate number, these two idiots bent the plate, then stood in front of it, blocking his view. When the clerk went back outside, Zima’s partner in crime (and off duty airport police officer) Richard Frederick punched him in the face.

8 Things People Steal from Walgreens

From the article:

All of the toothpaste was locked up behind those protective plastic security shields. We had to push a button to get an employee to come unlock it for us, which is never not demoralizing.

Considering how common, cheap, and unsexy toothpaste is, we were perplexed.

The employee explained to us that before Walgreens started locking up the Colgate, shoplifters would practically clean the shelves out. The problem got so bad, they could barely keep it in stock. Which made us feel awful for those folks in the neighborhood so desperate for an oral refresh that they'd steal a $3 tube of toothpaste from the local 'greens. But also got us thinking -- what else are people stealing around here?

Here's what we found. . .

Read on to see just what people in the lower Haight district in San Fran steal

White Couple Has A Black Baby Because Of A 3D Movie

 I guess the old "I found the baby on the doorstep" lie wasn't working any more. . .

From the article:


The wife of a US Army Soldier, Jennifer Stweart, claims she got pregnant by watching a 3D adult film while visiting friends in New York.

38-year-old Jennifer Stweart used the bizarre claims to explain to her husband why their child was black, despite the lovers being very much white skinned.

Russian special forces storm oil tanker, free ship

I don't have a problem with this happening more often, along with a few more pirate casualties:

Russian special forces rappelled onto a disabled oil tanker taken over by Somali pirates and freed 23 Russian sailors early Thursday, the commander of the EU Naval Force said. Ten pirates were arrested and one was killed.

...

The special forces had been aboard the Russian anti-submarine destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov, which rushed to the scene after Wednesday's seajacking. A helicopter was dispatched to investigate and was fired on by the pirates, EU Naval Force said. The Russian warship returned fire on the pirates, it said.

Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with "rent boy"

I hate that people are still surprised when these anti-gay retards is outed.  The Miami Times reports: 

On April 13, the "rent boy" (whom we'll call Lucien) arrived at Miami International Airport on Iberian Airlines Flight 6123, after a ten-day, fully subsidized trip to Europe. He was soon followed out of customs by an old man with an atavistic mustache and a desperate blond comb-over, pushing an overburdened baggage cart.

That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami — the callboy's client and, as it happens, one of America's most prominent anti-gay activists. Rekers, a Baptist minister who is a leading scholar for the Christian right, left the terminal with his gay escort, looking a bit discomfited when a picture of the two was snapped with a hot-pink digital camera.

 . . .

For decades, George Alan Rekers has been a general in the culture wars, though his work has often been behind the scenes. In 1983, he and James Dobson, America's best-known homophobe, formed the Family Research Council, a D.C.-based, rabidly Christian, and vehemently anti-gay lobbying group that has become a standard-bearer of the nation's extreme right wing.

He's one of those people that thinks that homosexuality is a mental illness and can be "cured".  Too bad hypocrisy and neo-conservatism can't be cured.  They are more of a mental illness than most things.

Home Stretch

I've been sans mobile phone for more than a week now (traveling in Germany).  I don't really talk on the phone that often, but I've been using an Android device (first the G1, then the Sprint Hero) for nearly two years and I'm just so used to being able to pull up a map, translate a word, jot down or research an idea, and of course, text message and check e-mail, all at a moment's notice.  Now I get back to the hotel and I have 20+ e-mails to respond to every 12 hours or so.  Oh well, it'll be over soon.  I'll be back in 3G goodness in a week and a half.  I think I'll survive.

Trent Reznor's New Post-NIN project

Hear Trent Reznor's first post-Nine Inch Nails music: How to Destroy Angels' "A Drowning"

http://pitchfork.com/news/38686-how-to-destroy-angels-a-drowning/

It's not NIN, but it's not bad. There are some definite hints of Trent's musical stylings, but that's about as close as you get. His wife, the singer, has a very soft and soothing voice that goes well with the music. Try it, you might like it.

Leaving Facebook Soon

Too much bad privacy joo joo coming from Facebook. Leaving it soon. . .more later.