Wub's Ramblings

Things I didn't do while Wubwife was away

2009-07-11T21:12:33Z

Wubwife was out of town for a few days, abandoning me with the two littlest wublings. Here's a list of things I didn't do while she was gone:

- I didn't lock the door on the car when we went places
Wubwife is big on locking the car door, even when we just step into a fast food joint... most of the time I didn't even roll up the windows...

- I didn't always use plates and utensils when we ate...
I figure the counter is clean enough.

- I didn't lock the front door during the day.
A couple of times I forgot to lock it at night too...

- I didn't put sunscreen on the kids when we went to the pool.
I didn't wear sunscreen as a kid. If melanoma was good enough for me...

- I didn't feed the cats.
I just put a big scoop of food on their perch and it lasted for days.

- I didn't eat any vegetables.

- I didn't make the bed.

Things I did end up doing:

- The dishes
I can't believe how many cups the kids went thru!!! I seriously suspect that they are incapable of taking two sips from the same cup.

- Bathing
I thought it would be nice to not smell like 4 days of funk.

- I did make the kids go outside!
I didn't just let them veg in front of the TV full time.

- Cleaning up a bit
I'm fairly low maintenance and don't make much of a mess, but I did have to go behind the kids a bit so the house didn't look like a big mess.

- I did get her a Welcome Home cookie-cake
It was mostly Mini-wub's idea. Tho I did forget to get the bouquet of flowers to go along with it.

Pics from our 2009 trip to Lake Chateaugay, NY

2009-06-28T22:10:06Z

We just got back from our vacation to upstate NY. Its a long trip, but worth it.
We spent a week in the Adirondacks, the unconnected wilderness.

The cabin is part of this beautiful old camp site that has been in my father-in-law's family for generations. Just the basic amenities with a wonderfully out-of-date kitchen nook, but no computer, no TV (tho we did still have games on the DS and iPhone), and barely even a phone.

Lots of fishing, swimming, riding in boats. I even fished for the first time in years and managed to catch a few perch. Mostly a week of relaxing without all the distractions of modern life.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15597546@N04/sets/72157620550675797/

Its nice to be back in the connected world tho.

I'm in Wikipedia

2009-06-02T14:45:32Z

I wanted to tinker a bit with Microsoft's new Bing so I decided to egosurf and lo-and-behold but one of the various links is a link to a Wikipedia Page (and I didn't create it even).

Cool! I've made it to Wikipedia :-)

This is just wrong: Chicken in a Can

2009-05-01T15:58:10Z

I really shouldn't look at this so close to lunch time...

Chicken in a Can

Go ahead, click the link for more!

Winnie the Pooh: On the Swine Flu

2009-05-01T00:51:59Z

All True Bible Stories for Children

2009-05-01T00:25:15Z

Funny site that brings the goodness of the Bible to Children!

WTF??? Kung Fu Porn???

2009-04-30T14:28:55Z

This one has to rank real high on my WTF meter:

Kung Fu Porn (NSFW, duh!)

Apparently a clip from this movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113757/

Rule 34 strikes again...

There Will Be Brawl

2009-04-30T14:12:21Z

A "drama" set in the Super Mario Brawl universe. Lots of hilarious Nintendo/Mario references.

Its not for kids, but funnee for adults (at least those who are familiar with the Super Mario Brawl game setting).

Enioy: There Will Be Brawl

Wonderful video of street musicians singing "Stand By Me"

2009-04-29T17:54:42Z

Here's a great video by "Playing for Change".

Starting with a musician in Santa Monica, the artist took the base recording all around the world and recorded musicians adding their rifts to the song. The end result is a wonderful and eclectic and very touching combination of talents and worth the watch.

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

via gizmodo

Beware! Cows eating cars ahead!

2009-04-28T17:00:25Z

Bigotry and Religious Fredom

2009-04-28T14:40:15Z

Bounce from the Atheist Revolution

I am confident that some do indeed feel threatened by gay marriage (or even the existence of GLBT individuals), but I suspect that most are motivated by a fear of tolerance and what it might do to the intolerant beliefs they have embraced.

Good general article about intolerance in the fundamentalist community.
enjoy.

Giant Gay Repellent Umbrella

2009-04-22T01:21:34Z

http://www.giantgayrepellentumbrella.com/

Funny response to those "gathering storm" idiots (I won't link to them because I don't want to give them any more credibility they don't deserve).

Niqab wearing woman denied French citizenship - Muslim member of Govt says "Good"

2009-04-20T01:11:21Z

We need to see and hear more of these stories

A Muslim member of the French Government has attacked the head-to-toe Islamic dress as a prison, applauding a court decision to deny citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wore it.

She was denied citizenship because she "had failed to integrate".
Failed to integrate is an understatement:

She lives virtually as a recluse, disconnected from French society. She has no concept of laïcité [the principle of the secular State] nor the right to vote. She lives in total subservience to the men in her family

Good job France. If someone wants to become a citizen of a country, they should do more than just living there. Showing even a basic knowledge of the country they live in seems a good start.
Its also a good move to remind some groups (particularly whacky religious groups of any type) that they have to play well with everyone, not just their own group...

The Greatest Costumes Ever

2009-04-10T00:39:28Z

They can exterminate me anytime....

Close Range - Demo

2009-04-09T20:54:32Z

Hahaha... Now you can play the Close Range demo online!

Little street in Pennsylvania gives Google Street View a show

2009-04-09T19:42:59Z

Big funny. Seems these guys in Pennsylvania knew Google street view was coming in for a look and they decided to give them a show.

Start the show here and just follow the car down the road and watch the fun.

After watching it, check out this link of a creepy kid in the window...

UPDATE:

On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more...

Street View technicians captured 360-degree photographs of the street with the scenes in action and integrated the images into the Street View mapping platform. This first-ever artistic intervention in Google Street View made its debut on the web in November of 2008.

An incredible cast of real-life characters contributed their time, energy and talents to creating pseudo-street life on Sampsonia Way. Please check out the scene breakdown, the participant page and the video documentation to learn more about the artists, groups and participants that made Street With A View possible.

From http://www.streetwithaview.com/

Badgers!!!

2009-04-07T15:02:19Z

Badgers are so cute!!!

Why hasn't anyone domesticated badgers yet??? I'd prefer a badger to a dog any day.

Obligatory badgers, badgers, badgers link...

Bus Sign I'd Like to See

2009-03-31T01:46:05Z

Generated via The Bus Slogan Generator

No Pork at Internation Conference Because Muslims Don't Like It...

2009-03-30T00:52:43Z

Reminds me of the old saying: If you don't like something, don't do it...

Because some Muslims at the International Conference don't like pork, no one at the International Conference gets to eat Pork.

I really hate hearing about ignorance like this. I feel like eating a batch of bacon now.

More Bike Pics!

2009-03-29T20:22:48Z

Sun's out and its a nice day for a ride!

Just got a new bike!

2009-03-29T00:56:42Z

Got a new bike tonite! Brand new fresh from the crate.

More pics tomorrow when there's light.

WTF??? You don't have to drive to be convicted of drunk driving???!!!

2009-03-24T22:30:07Z

I've posted before about how stoopid the war on drunk driving has become (I'm too lazy at the moment to look up my previous posts, just trust me on this one), but this one has to take the cake.

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that a man sitting drunk in the car without the keys in the ignition can still be prosecuted for drunk driving.

The court's 5-0 ruling came in the case of Michael Cyr, who was arrested in Manchester in February 2005 in a parking lot near a bar. He had started his car remotely and then sat in the driver's seat intoxicated, but never put the key into the ignition and didn't drive anywhere.

Now this is the guy's third conviction, so he is clearly a repeat offender and exactly the person the drunk driving laws should be targeting. But this is really ridiculous.

Cool Video: What's in the Box?

2009-03-24T21:38:15Z

Cool amateur sci-fi video. Borrows sound and some elements from games and puts them together in a real cool short with damn nice effects.

Diebold Admits All Versions of Their Software Delete Ballots Without Notice

2009-03-18T15:11:45Z

I know its beating the long-dead don't-use-electronic-voting-machines horse, but it still bears repeating until we get rid of this first batch of clearly corrupt batch of machines.

Bounced from The Brad Blog, at a public hearing about how incompetent Diebold was, the Western Region Manager for Diebold admits that their machine will delete ballots with no alert, no verification, and no logging.

Every time I read another article about how incompetent these machines are I really just can not fathom the depths of stoopidity this company must have plumbed to find project managers and coders that would design it this way. I would think that a CIS 101 student would be smart enough to design a better system and I know that any coder worth their salt would be embarrassed to have released such a shoddy product.

The worst part of all this is that good vote counting software is incredibly easy to write (HINT: Write only tables) and adequately secure counting software is not that much harder (HINT: change the default passwords), but because of the criminally corrupt nature of this round of product it will be decades before the public will trust another electronic system.

So the take away message is that if you have to vote for anything, make sure you do it by hand on paper. And if your local district wants electronic machines, make sure the machines are open to full testing by anyone, not just corrupt company shills.

2009 Planting Photos

2009-03-17T16:17:12Z

Every year we try to start a few plants.

We do great getting them started and sprouting, but we always manage to kill them before we get them into the yard. :-/

But we keep trying and figure some day we'll get it right!

This year we are planting: Cantaloupe, Watermelon, Peppers and Luffas.

We started them this last weekend (15th March) and here's the photoset for it.