Thursday, December 30, 2010

Young Claus and Sharp Claus

"Young Claus" and "Sharp Claus"

Some say my too-lazy-to-shave beard has earned me the appearance of a young Santa (or possibly the ghost of Christmas present). And the cat, well, you maybe can figure out that pun for yourself.

Anyway, Happy Holidays!

Edit:
I've been asked a few times what that shirt says. It features a Nintendo controller and says, "I have control issues."
...but I like the sentence it forms in the photo: "I have... cat."

Monday, December 06, 2010

The Blind Blinding the Blind

I've had more occasion to drive at night lately, so in addition to dealing with the usual Blind-spot Billy, Cell-phone Cindi, Double-lane Doug, Lane-weaver Lenny and Slow-merge Stella, I get to contend with another faceless freeway stereotype: Nova-beam Ned.

You've seen this guy, right? Who could miss him?

Now, I'm an engineer. I understand and appreciate that the task which falls to headlights is one of cruel difficulty. A car's headlight must illuminate (well into human-eye levels) a relatively flat surface (which is usually black), as great a distance as possible, without melting its surroundings (in fact, there's a nice hot internal combustion engine inches away), from an angle that's approaching zero degrees.

It's a ridiculous job. So, in many vehicles (see: status symbol pickups) the headlights play fast and loose with the low angle. Mount 'em higher, and the other problems shrink. Of course, it means that the driver of that car gets to see better, while the drivers of every other car on the road get two retinas full of blinding glare.

A second (and even more evil) tactic is to replace the light bulb with a dimensional portal, connected via space-time-bending wormhole to a massive star currently going supernova. ...Or maybe it's just a really powerful blue bulb, I guess that's possible. Whatever they are, I hate them, and if you have them in your car, I hate you, and you are a bad person.

Nova-beam Ned: To call you a heartless sociopath would be an insult to the heartless sociopath community. I want to mount a heavy and expensive adjustable parabolic mirror on my car, to reflect the torrent of angry light blasting from your evidently nuclear-powered car down to a fine point, focused like the sun through a magnifying glass, directly into your eyes. Once your irises are vaporized and your corneas aflame, I want to shatter those blue bulbs of death, and grind the resulting mess of broken glass and high-voltage wire right into the raw, bleeding cavities once home to your eyes, wreaking havoc on the remaining nerve tissue and sending unholy wattage into the optic center of your brain.

Do I want to do these things because I'm sadistic? Well maybe. But mainly, I want karma to balance. I want done unto you what you have done unto others. ...Actually, I just want you to use regular non-nova-beam headlights like a sane person. Would that work for you?

(see? So much nicer...)

Friday, December 03, 2010

A Moment of Silence For Cheese

This has been a difficult week for my stomach to ... stomach. Village Inn no longer serves their cheddar soup at all, and Training Table (also known to me as cheese-fries-with-hickory-sauce-place) has closed and is being torn down.

Got plenty of good cheese at home, so life as I know it hasn't fundamentally changed, but what's a blog for if I can't sometimes whine about little things that make me sad?