Timmerov's Blog
gravity
"timmer doesn't believe in gravity." or so the misquote goes. my actual position is that the force of gravity is imaginary. what?!?! it all has to do with equilibrium and human ego. equilibrium is defined as being at rest, ie there are no external foces applied to you. am i at equilibrium right now sitting at my desk typing this blog? human ego, anthrocentricity, and high school physics, demand that i AM at equilibrium. but if i build a real (or imaginary) accelerometer it would show that i am accelerating upwards at 1.0 g's. ergo, i'm not really at equilibrium. high school physics class supports its position by teaching you to draw force diagrams with a vector pointing down labeled "weight". is this wrong? well, yes and no. it's an easy way for phsyics students to get the right answers. unfortunately, the understanding of the underlying principles is lost and leads to more confusion when you start talking about objects in space stations and rocket ships far from earth which really are at equilibrium. if i really am at equilibrium then i, my chair, my desk, and all the other junk in my office should be floating around the room just like it would be if i and it were lost in deep space.
so what should be done? well, F=ma asserts the equivalence of forces and accelerations. rewrite the equation as F-ma=0. introduce an imaginary force called W for weight equal to -mg and voilá we have F+W=0 which looks a whole lot like the equation for an object at equilibrium. so the next time you find yourself drawing force diagrams on the blackboard of a high school physics class draw the weight force vector dotted (or with a different color) and label it "-mg" instead of "W" to remind yourself that it's not a real force and to demonstrate that you are smarter than everyone else in the room. ;->
all night party at my house
snails and slugs love to eat our modest city plot organic garden. in defense of our prized vegetables, mom takes the boys out at night to stomp eggshells and leave the sharp little bits that tear up snail bellies. another thing we do is to leave out cups of beer. the snails climb in for a refreshing drink and drown. snails aren't very smart. usually, we use miller lite. cause it's cheap. last night however, we used some sam adams. i'm not sure if the slugs like it better but the raccoons sure do. a family of four came by just after midnight, drank up all the beer, and presumably munched down any slug bodies therein. then we had a gang of drunk raccoons pawing at the sliding glass doors to be let in for some more of that yummy beverage. we always assumed it was the cat that tore the holes in the screen doors. now i'm not so sure.
garrett's words
at (cat, hat, that), mom, dad, boop (poop, scoop, cup), uh oh, no, mine, boom (spoon), dairy-izz (there he/she/it is), duck (duck, stuck, truck), gack (quack, track), ding-ding (train, please, thank you), bawl (ball, bottle), bob (the builder), ditty (dizzy - the cement mixer on bob the builder), dumb (come), hi, bye-bye.
one day, bennett said, "i'm stuck! i'm stuck!" and garrett said, "gack, gack".
score!
apparently, keeping a blog is good for my point production. this is two weeks in a row i've scored against a former teammate goalie for the first time. i added an assist seconds later for a two point shift. it sure feels good to get a win. the season and a half winless streak comes to an end. big yay!
as a bonus, i got to see the scar i left on an opponent's eyebrow in the closing seconds of the last game of last season. my first 5 minute major penalty. my first game misconduct penalty. nine stitches from forehead nearly to tear duct. he, and i suppose i, were real fortunate it wasn't worse.
OUCH!
bennett scored three bullseyes at the camp michigania 5 meter archery range. there we many other 5-6 year olds there with their dads. they had cute little pint sized compound bows. one of the kids near us dry fired his bow and started squeeling. when i looked over i was expecting to see the kid holding his left forearm which is the typical archery injury. but no, his dad was tugging on the bow which seemed to be attached to the front of the kid's shorts. junior managed to get his wee yoink caught between the bowstring and the lower cam. OUCH! i'm like, "draw the bow! draw the bow!" dad draws the bow freeing his kid's poor member from unspeakable torment and whisks him off to a shady bench to assess the damage. word spread among the adults down the firing line with reactions much like you're probably experiencing right now. bless this kid though. he really wanted to shoot archery. ten minutes later they came back asking if there were any bows without wheels. staff fixed him up with a nice little recurve. we were all very careful to make sure that the kids had their left arms fully extended when they let go of the string.
kitchen update
things are progressing. a few minor hitches with the city. the estimate came in today much lower than we were expecting. probably because the allowances don't account for alisa's insistance on quality. i love this woman.
cost of new kitchen so far: $3,410.98
rc construction havoc
new buildings are being built not far from our house. so i take the boys to the site for a picnic lunch and to watch the trucks. all boys love trucks. one thing i noticed is that the cement pumper truck was being driven by a guy with a radio control panel. and that got me thinking. i'm pretty sure i could build such a device. and with it i could pour cement anywhere i wanted. muhahahahahahahah!
score!
i scored a goal at last night's hockey game. i don't score very many goals in a season so i figure i get to boast about it. i won't mention the missed empty netter, nor the two low angle scoring opportunities. nor the fact that we lost. i don't particularly like this team. they kept threatening to kill me. got to me last time we played. then i decided if they actually try to injure me i will call the police and force them dodge an assault charge. anyway, it felt good. the goalie used to be my goalie way back when we both played in beginner league. this was my first goal against him ever. they wouldn't let me keep the puck.
grandpa roush
my grandfather passed away last tuesday while i was unreachable at camp michigania so i missed the funeral. he had had a stroke several months earlier and was in hell. he couldn't eat and was completely paralyzed on the left side. he didn't want to live like that. he got yet another bowel infection and grandma did the humane thing and let him go instead of letting him continue to be tortured. now he's in heaven. i still haven't told bennett. he's gonna be upset. i'm going to send my grandmother some flowers. the next time i get to pennsylvania i'm going to go to cole's hardware, buy a hammer, and put it on grandpa's grave. he was always building things. once when i was little, i got too helpful. i still have the scar in my eyebrow from a hammer backswing.
klm
i don't like flying with northwest because they are partnered with klm. a klm pilot was in a hurry in 1977 and 583 people died at tenerife when he bashed his 747 into a pan am 747. klm, shielded by the dutch government, has never accepted responsibility for the worst accident in aviation history.
camp michigania
the beautiful and talented alisa has been going to camp michigania since she was a kid. we're leaving tomorrow at 5am. it should be fun. i don't particularly like sailing, swimming, beaches, horses, or camp food. but alisa does and so do the boys. i can go climb ropes, shoot .22's, and hide in a quiet empty cabin with just me and my laptop while someone else tends the offspring. ah... vacation here i come!
spam
everyone hates spam. i as the webmaster of deltatao software especially hate spam. several years ago a dissatisfied customer, sic some young snert, signed joe's email address up for every imaginable spam list. now he gets 1000+ spams a day. fortunately there are solutions. for $30/year you can get a
pop account at yahoo. they do a wonderful job of deleting the junk. for any business big enough to have its own mail server then i have to plug
barracuda networks started by a a friend of mine. i just got the first beta test box yesterday. it took a few hours to set up and it's noisier than a c130 landing at moffet. but i haven't seen spam since. /action dances around the office.
but seriously, there's really only one way to stop spam. and that is to make it unprofitable. legislation isn't gonna do it. if they go bankrupt sending the junk then they'll stop sending it. so don't buy anything from a spammer. or a telemarketer for that matter.
dreams
i wake up walking down the street with absolutley no idea how i got there. my hands hurt and there is blood on my shirt and face. i'm not cut. there's something dark and sticky on the bottom of one shoe. i turn towards home. it's not that long of a walk. stick. stick. stick. stick.
10th anniversary
i married the beautiful and talented alisa ten years ago this week. how can it have been so long? to my wife i say i love you, thanks, and i wouldn't trade away a single moment.
crown of thrones
crown of thrones is a dnd game we play every three weeks or so barring real life conflicts. friday night we defeated a dead guy in a bad ass flying chair who had kidnapped the king's "son". the monk (played by me) got him in a head lock and never let go. the cross-dressing fighter (also played by me) then whipped him with chains until he exploded in a massive fireball of evil. the other players did some stuff too.
california budget
question: why is the california budget in the toilet?
partial answer: because we as voters passed 99.44% of all bond issue propositions on every ballot for the past decade.
bonds are loans. we have to pay that money back. with interest. lots! of interest. yeah, sure we want clean water, better schools, better roads, and mass transit. putting these things on the state credit card when we have a billion dollar surplus is a bad idea. we should just use the surplus for these things. putting them on the card when we have a billion dollar deficit is an even worse idea because we can't afford them.
vote no on all bonds and no on all loans. at least read the fine print. often times it's someone's pork barrel packaged all pretty.
pizza HOOT
we were in germany about a month ago. it was a wonderful visit. my wife and i both speak a little german. enough to get by anyway. but that pesky native language kept creeping in. we always read pizza hut as pizza hut. hut like the shack. then one day we heard the voice of an enthusiastic native woman with kids in tow say pizza HOOT which would be the german pronunciation of aich-yoo-tee if not the extra emphasis on the HOOT. hut (hoot) in german means hat. my wife and i got a severe case of the giggles imagining german epicurians walking around with fresh baked pizzas on their heads. hot melted cheese running down their shoulders.
