Whoever said wind turbines litter the landscape?
This 3-D image won first prize at the AWEA wind power conference recently in Pittsburgh.
“While making this piece, I intended to show the beauty of renewable energy sources,” said creator Aleksandar Rodic.
Nice.
This morning, during announcements, I learned that this week we are celebrating/recognizing:
I thought that wasn’t nearly enough. So this week I will also be celebrating on a daily basis:
Today, Monday, Oct. 22: National Nut Day
Tuesday Oct. 23: National Mole Day and Tv Talk Show Host Day
Wednesday, Oct.24: United Nations Day and National Bologna Day
Thursday, Oct. 25: Punk for a Day Day and World Pasta Day
Friday, Oct. 26 National Mincemeat Day
So, please try not to bother me–I’ve got a lot of decorating to do.
“A mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension.”—Oliver Wendell Holmes
This summer, my family and I had the opportunity to take a trip of a lifetime. The 1st of July, we packed the whole gang, along with Lisa’s parents, into a Scandinavia Airlines 747 and traveled for three and a half weeks in Denmark.
‘Course the problem with a “trip-of-a-lifetime” is that once taken, your brain picks up things. The trip stretches you. You learn things. You might even become a bit savvy. And having done it once, you can’t help but begin to work out how you might do it again—which, of course, means that the whole idea of the trip becomes less “once-in-a-lifetime-ish” and more “let’s-do-this-again-ish.”
The tricks you learn along the way the first time around, make the second trip all the easier.
Today I want to share one of those tricks, because this is one of those almost “too-good-to-be-true” deals. If you’re considering a trip to Europe anytime in the near or even distant future, you need to know about this.
Because learning about the Volvo Overseas Delivery program is pretty cool. But experiencing it completely blows your mind.
Flip through this when you get a chance. Unlike my last post, this is not a waste of time.
It’s a good quick read.
As we move forward in this age of rapid communication, personality testing and identification becomes more and more critical. In order to better communicate with others we need first to understand what type of people we are. To meet this need, there seems to be a dramatic increase in the number of personality tests available. Indeed, with these sophisticated psychological tools, you can learn all kinds of things about yourself and how you best fit into the mix.
Recently, however, I’ve become skeptical. I mean, c’mon; can a list of questions and numbers really add up really add up to enlightenment?
Like I said, I had my doubts. That is, until I found The Superhero Quiz
Forget the Multiple Intelligences. Forget Emotional Maturity. Forget IQ. Nevermind Rorschach. Now I have some information I can use.
My results:
As you might imagine, I am not all together pleased.
I mean, Superman? Yawn. I’d rather be a little darker, more mysterious. Yet according to the results, I’m closer to being Supergirl than Batman. I should have rated the importance of gadgets higher.
At any rate, it’s obvious I need to work on my dark side.
So, as long as I was at it, I figured a good place to start might be The Superhero Quiz’s alter ego–The Super Villian Quiz.
My results:
Not bad. I can live with being a Dr. Doom. I guess he’s pretty cool. Not sure what to think of that “vanity” thing but I can examine that issue in more depth at my next counseling session.
Which reminds me . . . I’ve been meaning to do a little follow-up. Shortly after posting this cool picture of a superhero I created all by myself, Jeff Herbert, an alert reader who also (as luck would have it) just happens to be the creator of Hero Machine, left this comment:
Glad you liked it, Chris, I hope you had as much fun creating your character as I did creating the program.
One thing, though, you’d be better off using the full version on UGO.com, the only licensed site for hosting HeroMachine, as it has all the latest items and expansion units in it. The one at MarvelC is not authorized, they just kind of ripped it off from me without asking, and they won’t take it down. People!
Jeff Hebert
HeroMachine creator
Obviously I rushed right over to check it out. Jeff”s right (of course). This site totally ROCKS! They even have a couple of versions of the Hero Machine that you can choose from, including Rock Star Edition, and Real Life Edition, which I used to nurture my villainous vanity and create this strikingly accurate image of (you guessed it) me.
What? You don’t think so?
Periodically we’ll get a wasp in the house. You know how it is.
One moment, you’re snacking on toast with peanut butter and chocolate chips, and the next, all hell breaks loose because a wasp starts dive-bombing random targets around the room.
The toast? Fuggetaboutit. One eye’s on the wasp, the other, frantically scanning the room for potential weapons–a fly swatter, a magazine, a shoe, a flame-thrower–something.
Anything.
For the briefest of moments, you even consider that toxic bug spray in the closet. Then you spot it. Sitting on the coffee table, not three feet away, is Al Gore’s, An Inconvenient Truth. The weapon of choice for desperate wasp killers.
Perfect.
You grab it, crouch, and wait for the wasp to land. For a moment, it hovers near the blades of a ceiling fan. Then, as if in a in a drunken stupor, it bobs and weaves toward the wall. For what seems an eternity, it darts around a window. Maybe it dives at an armchair.
Adrenalin laced thoughts whiz through your skull.
Why can’t it just land and make it easy for me.
If it lands on the curtains, I wonder if I can still squish it between the book and the wall?
Do wasp guts stain?
Maybe I should take a swing at it in mid-air.
Maybe, though, I’d just piss it off.
If I pissed it off, would it attack–fly down the front of my shirt, sting me mercilessly until it finally crawled up my neck and into my ear?
I wonder how that teacher dude in Karate Kid picked off that fly with a pair of chopsticks.
I wish I was him right now.
Meanwhile the wasp, understanding this internal monlog completely, bounces nonchalantly against the ceiling, making its way back to the center of the room.
Suddenly it dives right at you, causing you to flail your arms and make panicky grunting noises.
The wasp, chuckling with satisfaction, glides back up to the ceiling fan, lands on one of the lights, turns, and gives you the finger.
What are you going to do? Trash a perfectly good light fixture? Even if you did take a swing, the bastard’s protected by the other lights, fan blades, and curved nature of the glass around the bulb.
And now you begin to grasp the reality of the situation: You could be at this all night.
Curses. Bloody Red Barron.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. And today I make my revenge by revealing an ancient technique I learned while studying in the orient. The same one I used on that actual unsuspecting wasp in the picture above.
Warning: the following pictures are of a graphic and violent act perpetrated against a real wasp that actually flipped me the bird.
Follow these steps exactly–there is no room for error. Failure to do so could result in death by wasp sting to the inner ear.
Usually all that’s left after that is to pick up the pieces. The only tricky part is getting close enough with your opened scissors before it takes flight. As risky as this seems, most wasps are so blinded by arrogance they never suspect any trouble. It’s not their experience that men, sneaking around light fixtures with toast crumbs on their face, are actually highly trained killing machines.
It’s not their experience that men, sneaking around light fixtures with toast crumbs on their face, are actually highly trained killing machines.
While I’ve never actually been stung doing this, you should know, while very slick, this technique is not completely foolproof.
Take tonight for instance.
After the wasp landed in the ceiling fan, I looked around for a scissors–but the only one I could find was one of those plastic- child-not-really-sharp-ones. Still, I didn’t think it would make a difference.
Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I just missed my mark. But what happened next wasn’t exactly by the book. Instead of cutting it in two, I somehow managed to only pinch its antennae between the tip of the scissor blades.
Don’t ask me how. It’s never happened before. In fact, I later called the office of Strange But Totally Cool Ways to Kill Dangerous Insects and they told me that the odds of this happening are actually like a bazillion to one.
Anyway, after having my daughter take a picture. I found another scissors in an old Swiss Army Knife and took care of business.
So, my friends, there you have it.
Domestic men of the world rejoice. For no longer are we at mercy of this dangerous menace. No longer will we piss ourselves when we hear that loathsome buzzing. Today, the playing field has been leveled–just remember to wipe the food off your face.
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