So, just a day after a judge stopped the National Do Not Call list because the FCC overstepped it’s powers, Congress has voted, and the president is expected to sign later today, for the list to go forward. Apparently, if you get 50,000,000 Americans to sign off on wanting someting, Congress is quick to put it into action.
Ricky Williams is a fucking machine. That was the most amazing display of grit, determiniation, power, speed, and conditioning I’ve ever seen in any sport. Bravo, Ricky!
…which is sad, because I really like this laptop. I’m really happy with the Sony Vaio, much better than my last two laptops (a no-brand Dell and an HP). However, it’s decided that the screen won’t work about half the time. The backlight comes on, but no image shows up. If I plug in a monitor at boot time, then the laptop correctly recognizes it and enables the external SVGA, but the screen usually still doesn’t work. Usually, if I boot with the monitor, and then shut down again, then the next boot will correctly turn on the LCD. Today, however, it didn’t work. Several hours later, it did decide to work, but it’s definitely getting worse. I hope that, when it finally dies, I can get a decent laptop.
magic
4. n. The ultimate goal of all engineering & development, elegance in the extreme; from the first corollary to Clarke’s Third Law: “Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced”.
Well, trains at least.
Anyway, I saw a Modern Marvels episode today about trains. They talked about how wonderful and fast trains were in France and Japan, and how horrible and slow trains are in the US. Let me put it this way. We now have a fast train, that goes 110 miles per hour, for a few miles! Of course, there are over 300 bullet trains in Japan, and even more in France, which go upwards of 250 miles per hour. Granted, this was in 2000 or 2001, but still. Michigan is being praised for efforts on the Detroit-Chicago run that gets the train up to 70 mph for a stretch of 65 miles in western Michigan. The goal is to get the trip down to three and a half hours. In contrast, it takes 1 hour and 8 minutes to fly from DTW to Chicago O’Hare. It also only costs $75 round trip to fly. And, according to Mapquest, it takes 3 hours and 56 minutes to drive from Ann Arbor to Chicago. So, that train ride isn’t looking so good, considering it leaves from downtown Detroit, which adds another 45 minutes to drive from Ann Arbor to the departure point. Now, if they were to get the train ride down to under 2 hours, and charged, say, $35, rather than the $57 they’re charging, it might be worth it. And, if they could get it down to 1 hour (which is a damn fast train. Average of 325 mph) then I might consider going to Chicago for an evening. As it is, there’s no chance I’d even consider riding the train, when the plane only costs half again as much and takes a third the time.
On the plus side, there’s a commercial maglev train in China. A new form of transportation has gone public for the first time since the airplain. Maybe there’s hope for the vacuum tube train maglev trains doing ~1000 mph under the ocean afterall…
Well, the big news is that Janette is pregnant. She’s due in May.
Now, we have to tell tons of people. Well, we’ve already told tons of people, but we still have to tell more. There are two issues with this. First, what do we say? We went through this when telling our families. Especially me, since Janette can say “I’m pregnant”, but I can’t say “We’re pregnant”, because “we” are not. There are tons of euphemisms for our situations, all of which are absolutely horrible, in my opinion. “Expecting” is the most common and “nicest”, but I really hate that one. So far, the only thing I’ve said is “pregnant”.
The second problem is the questions people have. Some of these are “When are you due?”, “Are you going to find out if it’s a boy or a girl?”, “What names are you thinking of?”, and so on. The first one is really easy, we can say “May”. The rest are harder, and all we can really say is “We don’t know”.
The questions are why I dislike having life-defining events. “Where are you going for college?” “What are you majoring in?” “When are you getting married?” “When are you having kids?” Hundreds and hundreds of questions about my life, most of which are not really the business of anyone else.
Anyway, rant over. You all can ask your questions now.
Check this out. This guy made a $200 George W. Bush bill, and actually used it. He got arrested, but I don’t care about that. Look at the bill. It’s absolutely hilarious. I like the oil well, and the “Moral legal tender” part, and some of the signs. Very funny.
We got upside-down 7up glasses.
When we were at Disney World, I bought a Katana at the store in Japan. Just after we got back, they called and said they were out, and a new shipment would come in from Japan at the end of the month. Well, today, my sword arrived. Here it is:
This is a show sword. It’s not good enough metal to take an edge. However, it looks good, and it feels good to hold, and it was fairly cheap, so I’m quite happy with it.
The popcorn at Michigan Stadium is called Popped Maize. I thought that was funny.
At any rate, slow start, not a great passing game, but a stifling defence (gave up 138 total yards, and under 100 yards each for rushing and passing) and a rolling (392 yards) ground game, and Michigan cleans up. Good game, on the whole, and Gutierrez continues is perfect streak with 1/1 for 8 yards. I wonder how long he can stay perfect?