In the past five days, I've driven between Omaha and St. Louis and Omaha & Lincoln. And to the nitwits out there who think they can safely operate a motor vehicle and chat happily away on their cell phones all the while, I say:

No you can't.

You're so busy chatting with your friends about nothing in particular that you're not watching your speed, you're not watching the cars who are trying to get around you because you're yakking instead of driving, you are endangering yourself and anyone who has the misfortune to be around you.

THERE IS NOTHING SO DAMN IMPORTANT THAT REQUIRES YOU TO ANSWER THE DAMN PHONE WHILE YOU'RE DRIVING, AND IF THERE IS, JUST PULL OVER SOMEWHERE AND TAKE THE CALL THEN!

I am trying to teach my daughter good driving habits. You're not helping...unless it's to serve as a bad example.

SO KNOCK IT THE HELL OFF.

JSM

Via Good Morning, Silicon Valley:

Hamilton Sundstrand, the contractor designing the Orion’s plumbing system, needs the equivalent of the daily output of 30 people to test a chemical meant to keep all the tubing clear. Artificial urine just isn’t the same, so NASA sent out a memo asking for contributions from the employees and visitors at 2200 Space Park, near the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

I can't win lately. Last Thursday night it was a production job blow-up. Last night it was a call from the Omaha Fire Department at 4:30 a.m. Someone had gotten stuck in one of the elevators and they needed to be let in to render assistance. I guess they kept calling apartment numbers until someone stupid answered. :)

I'd forgotten how to buzz them in, so just threw on the old sweats and hurried downstairs to let them in--using the GOOD elevator, of course.

This is from...Journalista, Japanator, and Rinkya Stores. It's gotten around.



Yes, it's your very own Hello Kitty Disaster Kit.

Details here.

More sad news out of St. Louis: Steamers great goalie Slobo Ilijevski dies of ruptured aorta.

I realize he's not exactly a household name, but I was a Steamers soccer fan back in the early 80's, and Slobo was one the top goaltenders of the MISL. He had a habit of bringing the ball upfield himself (leaving his goal open), which made us all scream "SLOBO!" in a combination of cheering and "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING????"

He made every game he played interesting, to say the least.

It was a very busy weekend. Errands to run, house to clean, stuff to go through, lawn to mow (the ground is so saturated that it's definitely a weekly task, dammit)...and very-much needed haircut to get.

I prefer my hair short but with enough length to look decent. Due to the crappy cut I got back in June (if you don't want a "Husker farmboy cut" in Omaha they get really confused, I've found), I was now less George Lucas and more Chewbacca. In this heat it was really annoying and uncomfortable, so I went over to the local Great Clips in hopes of getting a decent cut this time.

The stylist asked me if I wanted a "five". I took this to mean she'd take off about 5/8 of an inch, so I said okay. What I didn't realize until it was far too late was that she meant she'd leave 5/8 of an inch.

Yup. I haz buzzcut. No, you don't get to see it.

Reaction at home was pretty much what you'd expect. The Redhead insisted I wear my Cards hat most of the weekend; Darling Daughter managed to restrain her laughter, but only because I had promised to take her on another driving lesson that evening. She did note, however, that I have a black "skunk streak" on the upper left side of my head. The few plusses I have found (and believe me, I've been digging for 'em) are: my ballcaps now fit just fine, I don't have to mess with a hairbrush in the morning, instead of shampooing it, I just buff and polish it, I won't have to pay for another haircut for at least two months and...well, that's about it.

My biggest worry was coming into work this morning; my coworkers are a pretty merciless crowd. So of course the first two people to see it said it looks really good on me.

Sigh.

East Bound and Down is not a good song to have running in your head during the seven-hour trip back home. Especially if you're trying very hard to avoid meeting Missouri State Highway Patrol officers.

Hopefully my brain will come up with something that keeps my already leadfoot tendencies in check...

This is not from End of Evangelion...



It's from the storm that ripped through Omaha last Friday, courtesy of my director.

Day-amn.

But I'll be nice and cut for spoilers.
( Read more... )

I was puttering around the house Saturday morning when the phone rang; it was my mother, wanting to make sure I was safe. "Why wouldn't I be?" I asked. "Well, your brother said there'd been a tornado in Omaha," she replied. Thinking that she'd gotten confused and believed the ones that had hit a few weeks ago were more recent, I told her that I'd left Omaha Friday and as far as I knew everything was fine.

When I got done calming her down, though, something told me to hit the computer. And sure enough, no more than two hours after I'd left, Omaha got hammered by a nasty storm and winds up to 130 mph. Whoa. And the reports were that power was out all over the city and in some cases wouldn't be restored until the following weekend.

Well, having watched Red and Darling Daughter endure that more than a few times last year, I decided to make a call or two before heading back. The manager of my apartment complex told me that they did have power as of Saturday. That meant it'd been out for at least twelve hours prior. So much for the contents of my fridge; fortunately, there wasn't that much in there at the moment.

I got back here about eleven last night, and there were pockets of blacked-out homes here and there down Dodge, as well as a number of bashed-up signs and downed tree limbs. Seeing as I work in a glass building, I'm wondering what I'll find here shortly when I head into work.

But you know, I'm glad I wasn't around. I dislike storms to begin with; this one would have really freaked me out.

JSM