Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

Windows Advice

I have learned one important thing about Windows 7 in my time using it. I recently upgraded my laptop from Vista Home to 7 Professional. I own a license to install the program, but I have not been able to find the receipt for purchasing, which also contains the key. I installed the OS anyway, just as a trial version, hoping to find the key in the meantime. I found a trick online to reset the 30 day activation time window, so whenever I thought of it, I would reset the time, so that I would always be within the window.

Apparently it is only possible to reset that counter 3 times, giving you 120 days to activate the program. I did not realize that it had a finite number of times. I found the part in the registry where that counter is saved and changed the value in hopes of being able to reset again. That worked, in the sense that it no longer asks me to activate. I failed miserably in that Windows now thinks that it is counterfeit and constantly has to remind me of the benefits of purchasing legal software and that I might be a victim of software piracy.

So the lesson in all of this is simple: Don't lose your Windows CD key.

Random Fact of the Day

The five-trillionth digit of pi is 2.

Ouch

Dow down almost 800 points this morning on news that Greek government employees are violently rioting at the prospect of taking pay cuts and get a week or two less paid vacation per year.

More Global WarmingCooling

Winter storm warning and heightened avalanche risks sound pretty usual around here during the winter, but not in May. High temperatures in the 40s, snow in the passes, and gusts of wind creating blizzard-like conditions are a little unusual for the middle of spring. It must be global warming. If Al Gore would unleash his warming invention on this area we might be able to enjoy some spring weather.

Fire Rainbow

Fire rainbows, also called circumhorizontal arcs, are quite rare and very cool looking. Here are a handful of images I've found, clicking on them will take you to the sites I harvested them from.













I have no memory of seeing one of these myself, but if I ever get a picture of one it will be posted here as well.

Fun Banner Ads

I was browsing through the past posts made on this blog trying to remember what all was there when I saw on ad at the top that stood out to me. Basically crude drawing with the caption something like "Use one weird old tip to shrink your belly a little every day." I wasn't going to click on the ad to see exactly what they were trying to sell me, but I guess it costs much more than someone like me has to spend. If someone eats less junk and exercises more I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to "shrink their belly."

TBQ Update

There are now 4 days until District Finals at Northwest University. Make good use of the remaining days in order to do your best at the last meet of the year.

National Tax Freedom Day

Happy Tax Freedom Day to everyone. According to the Tax Foundation the average American pays 26.89% of their income in taxes. This naturally means that 26.89% of the year is spent earning money for the government rather than yourself. At 3:34AM this morning 26.89% of the year has passed, so assuming the government took all of your taxes at the beginning of the year, today would be the day that you are able to start keeping your wages for yourself. Those living in Alaska get to celebrate Tax Freedom Day early, as the lower state taxes allow them to celebrate on March 26. Connecticut residents have higher taxes and therefore cannot celebrate until April 27. See information for all 50 states at the TaxFoundation.org site.

TBQ Update

There are now 11 days until District Finals at Northwest University. Study hard and keep up the good work.

Peeps

What do you do with all of those Peeps that are on sale now that Easter is over. Some people like to eat them, most of us can’t stand them. So some make elaborate sculptures with them. The Washington Post hosts a sculpture competition every year and posted the 38 top entries. Why 38? Maybe they had 38 entries and didn’t want anyone to feel left out; maybe 38 entries were worth viewing and therefore all of those were shared. See the top entrants at the Washington Post site here.

An Alligator Ate Your Order

This is what one man was told when he called Amazon wondering why his package hadn’t arrived by the projected delivery date. The rep on the phone said it may have been eaten by another animal, but was sure that it was eaten en route and would therefore never be delivered. This was news to the shipping company which tracked the package to a delivery truck that was on its way to deliver the package. Read the full account here.

TBQ Update

There are now 18 days until District Finals at Northwest University. Study hard and keep up the good work.

Waiting For The Rest of the Story

The government has a new definition for WMD. This now includes "improvised explosive devices with explosive formed projectiles." If this is indeed the case, those who claim there aren’t, nor ever were, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are full of crap. Afghanistan also has a bunch there too.

This topic came up because a group of guys out east are charged with terrorist plots of trying to kill police officers. If this story is indeed true, these guys need to be locked up, but since the police kept changing their story when sending in a full strike team to arrest these guys, I have no reason to believe their story. A neighbor said, "Helicopters and planes in the air, and guns drawn everywhere. At first, they said it was meth, then guns, then bombs." All three are different, I don’t see how they could be confused with each other, and if the officers on the scene honestly did not know why they were there, they probably should not have been there.

If the official story given is indeed true, these guys are scum who need to be locked up. Read the full story here on the Chicago CBS site.

Weird Weather

So far today we've had rain, lightning and thunder, hail, and strong winds. The temperatures are quite a bit cooler than normal, the day is wetter than usual, and the global warming nuts still believe that we're going to roast to death.

Unofficial League IV Scores

Devon - 170 - Championship
Phillip - 75 - Challenger
Iva - 30 - Challenger
Melissa - 15 - Championship
Stuart - 10 - Championship
Liana - 5 - Challenger
Elizabeth - 0 - Challenger

I'll make any updates or corrections needed when I actually get the official results.

Earth Hour?

Did anyone celebrate earth hour this year? Yeah, me neither.

Congrats to the TBQ Teams

Good job today everyone. Your hard work is paying off. We have some work to do for the District meet on the 17th, but it is mostly review for all of you. I should have scores posted here soon.

Gov. Gregoire Threatens a 20% Cut

On Wednesday, Gregoire threatened the state congress that if they could not come up with a plan to raise enough taxes to cover the projected $2.8 billion budget shortfall, she would start cutting state programs by 20%. Read the full story here on the KOMO site. If you read most of the comments on the article, most people seem to like the 20% cut idea. I consider that 20% cut a step in the right direction, which should be follows very quickly with another 20% cut. Unfortunately, she is only threatening to cut pet projects in order to scare the congressmen, there is little chance of actually adopting any form of fiscal responsibility on her part.

TBQ Update

Just a reminder to all TBQ people, Chapter 12 & 13 for Thursday. Also, League IV is THIS Saturday in Redmond.

HealthDeathcare

The people screaming that we need Obamacare will get their wish...in four years. Thankfully there is still a chance that the Supreme Court will read part of this bill and then deem it unconstitutional.

School Supplies

It seems that the Department of Education is stocking up. This time it's not computers, or textbooks, or even pencils and paper. This month the Educational Department is stocking up on short-barrel Remington 870 Police shotguns. According to FBO.gov, an order was placed for twenty-seven 12-gauge variants of the shotgun. They bought these particular guns because they "are designated as the only shotguns authorized for ED based on compatibility with ED existing shotgun inventory, certified armor and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts."
In an age where school officials have virtually no ability to discipline students, short barrel shotguns seem like a bit excessive. Maybe the department is planning a hostile takeover of a number of private schools in order to increase the average test scores of failing school districts.

Google Maps

What happens when a deer crosses the road in front of the Google Maps vehicle?

Click the image to find out. But yes, the deer did survive the encounter. Search for Google Street View Finds to find many more interesting things seen by the Google cams.

TBQ Update

Just a reminder to all TBQ people, Chapter 11 for Thursday. Also, 11 days until League 4.

Facebook Funnies I

Pastor Jeremy has to be one of the most random people I know. He's also one of the most annoyingly extroverted people, which makes a great combination. I don't see him very often but he posts on Facebook almost hourly. Here's one of his more memorable posts in recent weeks:

Click the image to read the comments that followed. I will be keeping an eye on his wall for more fun things to share with the world.

Great Rube Goldberg Machine

At roughly 3 minutes 20 seconds long, this is a great machine to watch. The band literally spent months setting up and testing the machine in order to get it to run in time with the music. They did set the machine up so that they could do a cut in the camera shot if necessary to splice two takes together, but it wasn't necessary.


Here's the YouTube link, and yes, they even have 1080P available. I found this video originally linked from the Death Pill blog.

Thursday Practice + Sunday

Thanks to Stewart and Phillip for showing up today. To those that didn't, you probably had a good excuse. I'll see most of you on Sunday for our morning That The World May Know videos, and some review of material.

Idaho Wants Your Business

Unlike Washington and Oregon, the government of Idaho wants businesses to locate in their state. Governor Otter wrote a letter to the businesses of Washington, inviting them to relocate in Idaho to avoid the oppressive tax increases currently in the planning stages. Here’s a quote from his letter:

Businesses small and large are the backbone of Idaho’s economy. They employ our citizens, who in turn can provide for their families. Businesses and individuals also pay reasonable taxes that enable State and local governments to provide such essential services as public schools and public safety. And make no mistake: Any business that doesn’t pass along its operating costs to consumers – including their tax bills – doesn’t stay in business for long.

If the losers in Olympia would realize this, our state would become a much better place to work and do business. In the mean time, we can only hope for some change in November, or find a good real estate agent in another state, like Idaho. Read the whole letter from Governor Otter Here.

The Hard Disk Crusher

The Hard Disk Crusher is a nifty item I saw in an ad and thought I'd share. The idea is to physically destroy the drive, rather than just trying to erase the data it contains. I don't think it's 100% guaranteed to destroy your data as a team was able to recover data off of the hard drives that burned up in the reentry of the Colombia space shuttle disaster. However, this should be a great tool for opening those impossibly hard nuts.

TBQ Update

Just a reminder to all TBQ people, Chapter 10 for Thursday. Also, 18 days until League 4.

Hurt Locker?

I really have no idea how someone chooses one movie over another when voting for awards. There should be some set of rigid criteria that determines many of such awards. That being said, I have no memory of ever hearing of or seeing anything about "Hurt Locker". I don't go to very many movies, so I don't see very many trailers on the big screen, nor to I watch live TV on a regular basis. But I'd at least think that if a movie was so amazing that it needed to be granted the designation of "Best Movie of 2009" that I would have at least heard of it before today.

Gotta Love Facebook

It may be especially true for Facebook, but it’s also very true for the internet at a whole. Anything you post online can probably be seen by anyone with internet access, anywhere in the world.


When posting things about someone on Facebook, make sure that they are not your friend, or they will be able to see it as well. Even if the person was not your friend, one of your friends may show them so keeping secrets is nearly impossible on the interwebs. This is another item from Oddee, although I will not post the direct link due to other content advertised on that particular page.

Failed Warnings

I know that warnings have become necessary in our lawsuit-happy culture, but they still go overboard when trying to warn people about potential dangers.

Click image for larger

I’m pretty sure that Parker here is not old enough to drive and so it really should not matter how much this canine fellow drinks. Click here for oddee.com where I found this image. Be warned that not everything on the linked site is guaranteed to be family friendly.

Renewed Commitment to Updates!

Starting this week I will be having content posted here regularly. What does regularly mean? In this case it means a minimum of one new posting per week, most likely on a Monday, although not always the case. There is actually content in the queue so I am working with a cushion to ensure that I can make this renewed commitment to regular posting.

You may also have noticed that the tbq.net site does not exist at the moment and actually has not for a few months. So for the time being the URL is forwarding to this page, so for that reason there will also be [more] TBQ related content posted here, so stay tuned.

Weird Suggestion

So I finally get around to getting a Blogger account setup and start building a profile. It seems that I had a partial profile built already, it shows that I'm already following a blog. It may be a suggestion by Blogger, based on the keyword contents of the Ethereal Madness blog over the last few years. This blog is for Vote Earth, which is the official blog of Earth Hour, arranged by World Wildlife Fund. Neither I, nor any other members of this blog, support WWF or any other similar "green" organization that seeks to destroy our standard of living to carry out their political agenda. I guess that's about it for my post.

Weird Ads

I open a new browser, which takes me to this page, as it is my homepage. I have this as my homepage for a few reasons. Primarily, if I see the same update over and over again I might be inspired to write something new. Second, I see if anyone posted a new comment since I don’t regularly check the email where the notifications are sent. And I sometimes just like to see what sort of ads Google decides to put on the page. Tonight’s surprise came when I see that there are 4 separate ads, but only one of them was in English, and the other three Hebrew.

I’m not 100% certain, but I’m pretty sure that of the very small percentage of people who this blog would appeal to, and the other small percentage of people who actually take time to look here from time to time, pretty much all of them are comfortable with the English language. I don’t recall anything that I’ve posted that would appeal particularly to the people who understand Hebrew, but not English.

I guess I could take the time to browse through translated, local newspapers from around the world and write random entries about them. I’m sure I could come up with a semi-informed opinion about the inner workings of Taipei’s city council, or what the latest Parisian, mafia member uses as fashion accessories to compliment their various firearms.

That all seems like a lot of work though, and I neglect things like this enough as it is. I did get a check in the mail this afternoon for $100.57 from Google as payment for my Adsense impressions. That alone might be enough to inspire me to write more and try to attract readers. We’ll have to see.

Your Pets Hate the Earth

This is a few weeks old, but still a great read. Apparently you can help save the planet by buying a Humvee and then using it to run over your neighbor’s dog. Dogs have huge carbon footprints primarily due to the amount of meat and meat by-products they require to live a healthy life. If anyone cares about junk science like this they should take the moral highroad and shoot all of those obnoxious, barking dogs in their neighborhood. You can read the full Yahoo news here.