Osmond Mania

In honor of the Osmonds getting the band back together I went out on ebay and found something to wear to the show.

Love,

Pete

I am alpha cat!!!!

Cats are definitely hierarchical. My wife and I have two cats. Mao and Gracie are brother and sister from the same litter. Mao is a 15 pound behemoth and Gracie is a dainty little 10-pound cutie. For most of their 3 year life, Mao has been alpha cat and Gracie has been beta cat. That changes from time to time when Gracie gets sick of her big brother beating up on her. She'll go ape-shit all over him and he'll be beta cat for a day or two while she enjoys some time on top of the feline hierarchy.

Oddly enough, my wife and I often fit into the different levels of cat-ness. I usually slot in just below Mao, my wife goes back and forth between being just above or just below Gracie on the pecking order. (Keep in mind that this has nothing to do with the human hierarchy of the home. That is pretty well defined. My wife is in charge and I am a step down. I sometimes ignore what she says, but she's always on the top of the ladder.)

Last week all of this changed. The cats have their own ways of letting us know that it is time to wake up. Gracie is usually quite respectful and cute. Mao is often a bit more aggressive. As alpha cat, it is his right.

I was napping on the weekend and he decided to wake me up. He snuck a paw under the covers and extended his claws on my stomach. In my reaction to getting needled in the ribs, I moved to protect myself. I accidentally kinda whacked Mao on the side of the head. He went flying off the bed and ran away. He wasn't hurt at all, but he definitely changed his outlook on things.

Obviously I was now faster and more powerful than him, so I instantly became alpha cat. I can tell this because he now pays attention to what I tell him. He loves to play with the phone cord. Now when I tell him to stop, he stops and goes to do something else. That is one example. He really has changed his entire way that he deals with me.

The changes are not only in the dealings between Mao and me. Gracie treats me differently too. As charlie cat, she now works really hard to please the new, more affectionate alpha cat. With that in mind, she gets first pick of where to sleep on the bed when it is time to hit the hay. She chooses a prime spot up by our heads. Mao is relegated to the bottom of the bed. She also gets some respect when it is time to play. Usually Mao just takes over any game that Gracie and I are playing. Now he actually waits his turn until she's done.

My wife seems to jump between charlie cat and delta cat. That hasn't really changed with my ascention to alpha status.

I'm a benevolent and kind alpha cat. He still gets play time and lots of affection. At some point that will be seen as weakness by him and he'll try to assert his alpha status. I'm working on ways to keep alpha status without whacking him on the head. My guess is that a squirt bottle with water in it might be used. :D

Later.

Pete

One less tooth makes a difference....

Oy oy.

I've been baaaaaaaaad lately. I either haven't had much to say or haven't had time to say it. I'd like to change that a bit. A lot has happened lately and I'd like to get back to blogging about it.

One of the changes for me lately is getting back in the swing of commuting by bicycle. I was seriously sick earlier this year (reason #204 why I haven't been posting much) and a few weeks ago got the thumbs up from the doc to really get back to riding as much as I want.

I'd been riding a few days per week, but not alot of intensity or distance. I was just putting miles in.

Two weeks ago I started riding to work again when my schedule allowed. That had me riding Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The big difference is that I've been riding the fixed gear bike lately. I was a little worried about getting the right gearing and I thought I had it about spot on.

Running a 44x17 gear I was a little uncomfortable on both the downhills and uphills. I'd have to be ready to hit the brake if I got spinning too fast and needed to back off on the downhills. The flats and gradual inclines/declines felt pretty good. The steep climbs were pretty tough. Some were a pretty normal stomp, but two climbs on the way in and three climbs on the way home were slow, tough cranking to get to the top. That kinda made me feel like I had the right gear.

This weekend I got a 16t cog and thought I'd give that a try. What a huge change 1 tooth makes. The hills that were slightly uncomfortable became much faster and much easier to keep up with the spin. The downhill near home that has one of those radar-activated speed signs recorded me at 19mph with the 44x17 when I was pretty close to spinning out. I hit it this morning and was going 24mph and didn't feel bad at all about the spin. It was really nice.

The climbs were another story. The two slow cranks on the way to the work required even more cranking, though I don't think I really moved any slower up them with the 44x16 gear.

Overall my normal commute time to work was cut by almost 11 minutes. Everything rolled faster.

It will be interesting to see what happens on the way home. Riding home is mostly uphill, though there are realy only 3 hills of the slow cranking variety. In theory I should be able to stomp up the others with only a little more effort than with 44x17.... I'll be moving a little faster though. I should also get more recovery on the short downhills that I have leading up to the bigger climbs. That should make the climbs a little easeir. 44x17 didn't give me much recovery time because I was having to work so hard to keep spinning so fast.

One last comment... I'm spinning 180mm cranks. Chris Jabberhockey is thinking of ditching his White Industries cranks. He doesn't like the way the chainrings are set up. He's doinked at least one by hammering it on a log. If he feels like selling them, I might drop down to 175s. It would make my spin a lot better. I'll see how this works for a while first.

As usual, I've babbled on about shit hat no-one but me cares about. :D

Talk to you soon.

Pete

Quuote for the day...

Guy Noire:  "She walked into my life wearing a Mt. Rushmore t-shirt.  Those guys never looked so good, particularly Washington and Jefferson.... kind of bloated, but definitely happy."

 

Love,

 

Pete

My friend's new dog.

My friend Maxine got a new dog.  It is a long story how it found her and I will gladly spare you that. 

 

It is a breed of dog that someone is trying to establish.  It is called a Poochi.  That is a cross between a poodle and a chijuajua.  I suggested that the name is boring.  They should have called the breend Chiwoodle. 

 

Okay.  That's the end of my marginally funny story.  You can pretend to laugh now.

 

Pete

Mexican NASCAR

Oy oy.

 

Yesterday was the NASCAR Busch series race held each year in Mexico City.  It is a road course event and I've really grown to love it.  It was broadcast in Spanish on ESPN and in English on ESPN2.  I watched ESPN.  It was extremely cool to see the difference in coverage, even though I could barely understand a word. 

 

I like that NASCAR has slowly become a little more international.  Not only do they now have Toyota in the line-up, but they've also got some foreign drivers.  There were 7 drivers from Mexico in the race.  The top 10 had a Colombian, 2 Mexicans and an Aussi.  The race was finally won by Juan Pablo Montoya.  It was a great race!

 

One of the things I enjoyed was the pronunciation of some of the names by the Mexican announcers.  My personal favorite was "J. J. Yeley", which in Spanish comes out, "Yay Yay Yeley". 

 

NASCAR has the rap of being an American sport that deosn't really interest the rest of the world.  It was very cool to see 72,000 Mexicans show up to enjoy some racing.  NASCAR and the Mexican hosts for this race seemed to put on a great show.  With luck, it will bring some new fans to racing as well as some tollerance and enlightenment to American race fans. 

 

I can' wait for next year's race.  Maybe we'll even get a cup race down there. 

 

Pete

Building a new fixie...

Ahhhh... the project has started.  I ordered parts and they'll start trickling in over the next week or so.  Hopefully I'll have it all and built by the middle of next week.  Finding time and a place to ride it are going to be tough. 

 

What is it???? 

 

I've wanted a big-tired fixie for riding off road for a while.  This will be fully rigid and at this point will have absolutely no brakes.  The frame is designed around the Surly 3.7" endomorph tire and Large Marge rim.  From what I was told, there are only 6 of these frames in existance.  The frame is steel and the welding work on it is seriously cool looking.  The fork is definitely a little different than what I'm used to.  It uses a through axle and a kind-of unique bearing set-up.  I can't really describe it more until I actually see what it looks like. 

 

I went with shorter cranks than usual -- 175mm.  The bottom bracket spindle is one of those 48 spline variety.  ISIS cranks and BB were an option, but I went with the weird splined ones because I also went with tubular chromoly cranks for strength.  It is easy to mess up your cranks when you can't coast over obstacles.  Someone my size has to be careful with that.  I'm also going seriously retro with this and getting platform pedals for it. 

 

To start out with I'll just be getting used to riding this thing.  I'll use it as a grocery getter and just do some urban riding on it so I get used to not coasting.  Hopefully by early spring I'll be hitting the trails with it.  In the beginning it will be mostly mellow stuff... Wakefield, Rosaryville and maybe Schaeffer.  I'm definitely going to have to learn to deal with log hops on this. 

 

I'll post photos when I start getting stuff in.  I don't mean to be so mysterious.  I'm just not sure how it is going to turn out until I have parts in hand. 

 

More to come soon. :D

 

Pete

 

 

My Political Commentary for Today

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said today that the US is not planning a war with Iran. You can read the story HERE if you want. It has nothing to do with the comment I'm going to make.

I'm wondering if that headline is supposed to make Americans feel better? Obviously the Bush Administration didn't plan a war with Iraq either. That did not stop them from invading.

Love,

Pete

Severe Weather Warning.

I got sick of my Mom sending all of these tales of snow and woe from Colorado. They've had 9 major storms since December 19th. She's still got many feet of snow on the ground. Though it melts a little here and there, another storm comes along and adds to the pile.

In response, I decided to make up my own weather advisory for the DC area.

Our weather-free winter is taking a radical turn. We're expecting a severe dusting of snow tonight with some drifts reaching 2" by morning. Mild breeze warnings have been issued and they've advised people who are driving that the roads might be moist. The local authorities are making urgent "don't drive unless you feel like it" pleas to the public. I can only hope that we'll pull through this one smoothly.

It reminds me of the weather advisory from Kent Brockman, Action News anchor on The Simpsons, "The death toll from today's killer storm is still at zero, but it is poised to shoot up at any moment!".

I hope you all survive this storm with grace and serenity.

Pete

A Love Story...

A friend of mine sent me a link for an on-line madlib love story.  I decided to give it a try.   Here's the story that came out of it: 

 

My Love Story

 

One squishy summer day at Rhode Island you see the most intense creature you have ever seen. Their name is The Queen of England , and every move she makes just turns you on more and more. You nudge your best friend Kareem Abdul Jabar and say, "Wow, that has to be the most tart body I have ever seen." Suddenly, she looks in your direction and starts walking right towards you!!! she says, "I noticed you staring at me from over there. I just had to tell you, that I think you are so Portuguese , and was wondering if you'd like to go to Tasmania with me and harvest radishes in the moonlight ?" With a stupid smile on your face you say, " Chicks dig guys with green shoes " and go with them. When you finally get to Tasmania , she moves closer to you, and gives you the biggest kiss ever. The two of you are passionately kissing, when you feel a plumber hit you on the back of the head. You open your eyes to find out it's all a dream, but there is a note left next to your bed.

It reads: " The Queen of England is the love you've been waiting your whole life for. she will ask you out in 69 days or less, but only if you send this e-mail to at least 10 people within the next few minutes. The more people you send it to, the sooner they will ask you out, and you both fall in love. Do not take this lightly, because if you simply ignore this, you will have bad luck in love for the next 69 years!"

 

 

Farticus! FEEL MY POWER!!!

Kids are great.  I've got friends who have particularly strange kids.  My friend Kwan has two AWESOME kids.  This story is about his boy Ty.  Ty is in second grade. 

 

Ty came home this week and announced that he has a new nickname:  Farticus.  It is like Sparticus, but different.  He runs around and says, "I am Farticus!  Feel my POWER!" and then he farts. 

 

When he told his parents this, his mom hung her head in shame.  Kwan, on the other hand, did an okay  job of pretening not to think it was funny.  He really had to work at it though.  Kwan told him that this was a bad thing to do and that if he continued to do it, he would lose all his friends.  Ty's first response was to say that wasn't true. People flocked around him because they thought it was funny.  He then added that he didn't really care if he lost all his friends bechasue HE thought it was funny. 

 

What makes this story even funnier is that Kwan is now trying to teach his son to control his farts.  Kwan should probably change his name to Burpicus because he's completely incapable of controlling his own burps. 

 

I'm obviously on a similar intellectual level as Ty because I think it is funny and I can't wait till he comes over to my house and I can teach him some more naughty, but harmless stuff.  :D 

 

Pete

Modified Cars in Germany.

Hey folks.

I just got back from a week in Germany. I was doing work stuff the whole time and got almost no opportunity to relax. I did a little touristing, but not near enough for my taste. The one day that I would have had time to walk around and shop had hurricane force winds and we ended up staying in.

As always, I enjoyed seeing the cars that people drive. I had a few observations that I thought I'd relate.

1) There's a BMW that we don't get here in the states that looks pretty cool. Imagine if they made a Z4 in a 4-door wagon. Well you don't really have to imagine it because they do. They don't sell them in the US though. It is a cool looking car.

2) There are very few modified cars in Germany. I saw 2 or 3 cars with aftermarket wheels and only one car with enough modifications that it really changed the body lines at all. It was a pretty cool Alpha Romeo spyder with flared fenders and wide, deep-dish wheels. That's it! Everything else was stock and 95% of the cars had steel wheels. I know it is winter and many folks will bring out the bling for summer. I just thought it was interesting.

3) In America, VW's large van is called the Eurovan. That made me wonder, What do they call that same model in Europe? The Amerivan? NOPE. It is the Transporter. I actually knew that from previous trips and plenty of time on Vortex. What I didn't know is that they have a special edition model called the California Cruiser. :D

4) In the 90's VW made many themed editions of the Golf. One that I hadn't seen before, but saw three examples of last week was the Bon Jovi edition VW Golf Wagon TDi. I didn't see much special about it except for the badging.

5) Driving on the autobahn is pretty cool. Conditions were not ideal to really fly, but we got our Passat wagon TDi up to about 180kph in the left lane.

Later folks. It is good to be home.

Pete

Geography Lessons.

I read this article at my desk this morning and thought it was funny.

LIMA (Reuters) - Royal Nepal Airlines has apologized to Peru after mistakenly using a photo of the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu to promote tourism in Nepal.

Peru's foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday the flagship carrier of the Himalayan kingdom, about half way around the world from the Andean country, had put the picture of Peru's tourism icon, Machu Picchu, on a poster under a slogan "Have you seen Nepal?"

Here's the whole article.

Have a nice day, dammit!

Pete

Finally a good run.

I'll keep this short. After over 3 weeks off my workout regimen due to injury, I finally got a good run in last night. It wasn't long. It wasn't fast. It was, however, 100% pain-free.

I took it slow and easy and made sure that I stretched well before going out and I used good form while running. It is easy to fall into the trap of shuffling along and not lifting your knees when you're trying to run slowly on a recovery run. That can start bad habits which lead to injuries.

I can't tell you what a relief it was to complete a whole loop after coming up lame the last three times I tried.

We'll try it again today. :D

Pete

New Combos Commercial.

I saw a new Combos commercial while watching the Broncos' game. This teenager goes into his Mom's room, looking sick and kind-of sweaty. He says something like, "Mom. I think I've got a fever." His rather rotund Mom rolls over in bed and you find out that Mom is rather masculine looking. In fact it kinda looks like John Goodman win a wig and nighty.

(S)he feels her son's forehead and says, "You're probably just hungry. These will make you feel better. They've got pizza stuff inside." and gives the lad a bag of combos. He eats a few and goes back to bed.

Then the announcer says the slogan:

"Combos: What your mom would feed you if your mom was a man. "

Bwahahahahaha

I need to go buy some Combos. Any advertising guy that uses big, transvestite moms to sell pretzels with cheeze in them deserves a big raise! That's the best bit of marketing that I've seen since Quiznos used the sponge monkeys to sell sandwiches.

Now that I go out and look at Youtube, there are a bunch of these commercials. Search on "Combos Commercial" on Youtube.com and let me know what you think.

Love,

Pete

Movie Review... Apocalypto and Van Wilder II

My wife and her friend wanted to go see Apocalypto. I had no desire to see anything that violent, so I went to see a new suspense movie out this weekend. Van Wilder 2. A suspense movie, you ask? Yes it truly is. There's a lot of suspense involved. Is she, or isn't she going to take her top off? The answer was always "Yes".

If you saw the first one, then you know the plot of the second one. Kal Penn is awesome, as always. If you liked the first one, I think you'll like the second one too. I did at least. There are some VERY GOOD and funny lines that got the whole theatre laughing (all 5 of us).

It'll be good to see the unrated version. :D

While Mr. Gibson's Myan epic might have a bit more social relevance in the long term, I personally feel much more enriched for having a lighter, more entertaining movie going experience.

Love,

pete

Two Hot Dogs and a Finger

Ahhh... It is nice to be back posting on my blog again. I found a juicy little nugget while driving cross country for Thanksgiving. I thought it was devious enough to post.

This little gem was found at a Sheetz truck stop in Western Maryland. First of all, I think the cartoon chick may be a little too hot for ordering hot dogs. I'm not sure that would pass the PG13 test.

Second: What does she mean by giving the peace sign with her left hand? Is this an anti-war statement? Does she want you to order 2 hot dogs? Is there one finger left up on that hand for each button on her top?

Third: What the heck is going on with the right hand??? That bitch is flipping me off! Damn! the marketing works with me. I LOVE it when cartoon hotties flip me the finger, flaunt their cleavage and show their contempt for the war in Iraq at the same time. That definitely gets me all hot. I'm guessing it does for truckers too.

Oh well. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic. What do you think of the hand gestures that she's making. Is there something to be read from the way she's holding the hot dog?

You're all perverts. (That's a good thing).

Love,

Pete

The Wrong Lessons.

Hey folks.

 

Sorry for going political today, but I need to. 

 

President Bush was touring Vietnam yesterday and talked about the Vietnam War and compared it to the war in Iraq.  He commented that we need to learn the lessons of the Vietnam war and make sure that we don't pull out too soon. 

 

That isn't the lesson that we needed to learn from Vietnam.  There are many that we can learn from decades of war in Vietnam.

 

1)  Never underestimate a people's desire to fight against an invading force.  This was true on so many levels with Vietnam.  American policy makers and generals could not comprehend the casualties that the North Vietnamese were taking in the war.  America lost its will to fight with fewer than 60,000 dead or MIA.  Vietnamese deaths have been estimated as high as 1,000,000 and they were still putting up a fight.  In Iraq, for every insurgent that is killed, another steps into his/her place. 

2)  Learn about a people and their history BEFORE invading their country and you'll make better decisions.  Vietnam had a long history of imperialism, and a long history of fighting it.  Not understanding that lead to the problems listed in #1.  Iraq has had years of friction and violence between its Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations.  Invading the country, removing the government and disbanding the police and military is NOT going to make things better. 

3)  Tell the truth.  Public support on the home front dwindled during the Vietnam War in part because the folks back home stopped believing that they were being told the truth.  The media said one thing and the government said another.  What the government was saying didn't match up with what the people perceived as reality.  The Johnson and Nixon administrations railed against the press coverage of the war, but the information they were putting out didn't match with reality.  They lost credibility. That seems to be happening again with Iraq.  We invaded Iraq on bad information and from my point of view, almost EVERY word about the war that comes from the Bush administration does not ring true. 

4)  Treat the cause, not the symptom.  There are a lot of causes to the problems that we faced in Vietnam and are facing in Iraq.  Unfortunately the biggest cause is one that we can't treat.... entering the conflict on false pretences with bad information.  We never were able to overcome that in Vietnam.  The cause of that conflict was imperialism.  Fighting that war just made the root cause worse.  It isn't that different in Iraq.  The Bush administration said the cause of the problem was Saddam Hussein.  That obviously wasn't true.  He had no links to al-Qaeda.  He's out of the picture.  Things are much worse than they were before we invaded.  The country is, by many standards, in civil war.  We're in the middle of it.  We're the cause of it.  We don't appear to be able to do anything about it.  We've created a terrorism problem that may never go away.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I don't think that we need to cut and run.  Pulling out of Iraq now would be truly disastrous for everyone involved.  We do need a new strategy though.  Start telling the truth about the war.  Make sure that our troops have EVERYTHING they need to succeed.  Get back to winning hearts and minds through making life for every day Iraqis. better.  Just killing people isn't working because no matter how many people we kill, there will always be more who step up to fight.  We cannot win a war like that.  Handing off to the Iraqi military is not the solution either.  We need to address the cause.  There in lies the problem.  If we're the cause, how do we deal with it?  We can't pull out.  Chaos will rule. 

 

Do something good.  Win some hearts and minds.  Make their lives better in some way.  Keep on the high ground.  Don't murder and rape civilians.  Don't torture prisoners.  Don't insult Islam.  We need to find a way to be the good guy, even though we've invaded another country and are killing its people. 

 

I hope someone finds a way that we can win this war... or at least get out of it alive.  There are no easy answers.  Every action will have a high cost.  It burns me that we entered this war so casually.  War shouldn't be casual.

 

Sorry for ranting.

 

Pete

 

Canadian humor.

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