Something like 99% of the time (and possibly even more often) when someone forwards an email that was forwarded to them as part of a long chain of forwards, my reaction is one of annoyance. Even if it isn’t a chain letter, it tends to be something that 100 other people have also forwarded.
But still, there is that very small but non-zero number of times when the stuff being forwarded is actually good for a grin. I’ll probably be sick of this one too in a week or so, but for now, here’s one Mom passed along.
You might remember when this accident happened 8 years ago this March.
This Southwest Airlines flight from Vegas overshot the runway at Burbank
The plane smashed past the airport fence, careened across the street and ended up with a collapsed landing gear, right next to a gas station.
But that’s not the amazing part!!!
At the end of the first day of the floor installation, my bed was scattered across three rooms. I unrolled a foam pad from camping, laid some sheets across it, and that was my bed (and as expected, I slept quite well).
On the one hand, no camping experience is complete without a campfire, but on the other hand, I’m not quite dumb enough to build a fire in the living room. (Besides, isn’t that what the kitchen is for? I’ve certainly had enough smoke come out of there!)
I don’t know if anyone realized it at the time, but the report on Day 1 was written that evening. And not from a coffee shop either. (I don’t much care for coffee and although they do have other drink options, I really didn’t feel a need to drive somewhere at 10:30 PM just to post an update.)
When I moved everything to the basement, I very deliberately left my wireless router set up and connected. My plan for that entire period (and it ended up stretching over several weeks) was to use my notebook for everything.
My experience has been that the notebook is a very capable computer for a number of tasks, most particularly email, word-processing, and most online activities, but typing with the keyboard so close to the monitor for prolonged periods tends to cause a stiff neck. To solve that, I have an adapter that lets me plug a regular keyboard and mouse into the notebook through its USB port. Just elevate the computer a bit, and it’s a bit more comfortable than it might be otherwise.
So that evening, I stacked up some of the woods scraps that were laying around and used the computer as a replacement for a campfire. The only thing missing was a video clip of a fire, but there are plenty of those available on You Tube.
Related: Day 1 Photos
Day 2 Photos (Coming Soon)
I was up until 1:30 painting last night. The upstairs hallway is now complete and except for some touch-up work, all that remains to be done is half the kitchen. The hallway is a small area, but with four doorways, a closet, an air vent, and a half-flight of stairs, it took a lot longer than I expected.
I was really tired when I went to work this morning, but if anyone had suggested that perhaps it might have been a good idea to have waited until this coming weekend to finish, I was prepared to tell them, “You can have my paintbrush when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
But I screwed up last night. I left the paintbrush on top of the ladder and it’s now one solid mass of latex.
If you want my paintbrush, come and get it. It’s yours.
Of the features of Google’s GMail user interface is something called “Web Clips.” It’s near the top of the page and features the headlines from a number of RSS feeds and even offers you the ability to add feeds of your own choosing (I heartily recommend you search for "http://dactylmanor.org/blair/zero/feed/atom" and click the Add button).
Of course, Google being Google, they can’t resist taking a feature like that and doing a little extra with it. For instance, if you go to the Spam folder, the web clip headlines are replaced with links to recipes. More specifically, recipes involving Spam, the alleged meat product.
Visiting the Trash folder, the web clip area is used to display a series of recycling tips. Most are ordinary tips such as “Plastic bags can be reused as bin liners or package stuffing” or “Empty tissue boxes can provide easy and handy storage for plastic grocery bags.”
Today however I spotted a truly unique recycling tip. Not only was it environmentally friendly, this tip also involved such a bold fashion statement that I’m not sure even Green Gal would have suggested it:
You can make a lovely hat out of previously-used aluminum foil.
Tuesday’s Washington Post had an article about the Phoenix lander (and I really do hope it’s meant as a reference to the mythological creature and not a revelation that they’re exploring Arizona) which includes a photo inset showing a soil indentation from the lander’s arrival. Under the picture, there’s a note which among other things points out that it cost $420 million to send the probe a distance of 422 million miles.
At first, $420 million sounds like a lot of money, and in absolute terms, it is. But looking at it from another perspective, that’s less a dollar per mile. That’s significantly cheaper than taking a cab.
My house has about 900 square feet of floor space. (And an undoubtedly similar amount of ceiling.)
The living room, dining room and upstairs hallway have about 880 square feet of wall space.
Likewise, the three bedrooms have a combined wall space of approximately 896 square feet.
By comparison, the kitchen has a relatively paltry 168 square feet of wall space (not counting the space occupied by cabinetry).
This gives me a combined total of nearly 2000 square feet of wall space versus only 900 of floor space.
Those of you who use numerology for things such as predicting baseball playoffs may find some significance to these numbers. For myself, what’s clear is that even though they’re all approximations, if I could somehow figure out a way to walk on the walls, I’d have a lot more room to move around.
