qotd the world is a ball i spin with my feet.  ¶ 8:00 AM

  qotd all dorks are bastards in their fathers' eyes.  ¶ 8:00 AM

  ice arctic ice rebounded 60% this year over last. that's great! in other news, this year's drought is nowhere near as bad as last year's drought. sometimes you just need to tell some people to get a fucking clue.  ¶ 8:00 AM

  foodera apparently the average american spends $150/week on food. so do we. oh wait. that's per person. our $150/week feeds a family of four. which works out to about $5 per person per day. and we get plenty to eat. really really good stuff too. the beautiful and talented alisa has lots of fun in the kitchen. and yeah it means i have to do the dishes. ugh! but it's totally worth it. anywho. so i really don't see why it's such a big deal to eat on a food stamp budget. let's put this another way. the average family of four spends $450/week more than we do on food. crikey, no wonder you're fat. at the end of the year, we have an extra $23k in the bank. crikey, no wonder you're poor.  ¶ 8:00 AM

  more tiears okay so are there no conditions under which i'd support larger electric rate tiers for people who live where it's hot and want me to pay for their air conditioning? well, yes actually. the houses in the central valley are twice as big as on the coast. but cost half as much. so they pay half as much in property taxes. ie my property tax bill is around $500/month. and i bought my house 20 years ago. a central valley house under the same conditions would cost @250/month. so i was thinking... i'll support your proposal to double my electric bill from $50/month to $100/month... if you support my proposal to double your property tax bill from $250/month to $500/month. fairness is a double edged sword my friend.  ¶ 8:00 AM

  tiears apparently there's a proposal going around in california to change the way electricity is billed. it's currently a statewide tiered system. the kilowatt-hours (kiwis) in the first tier are cheap. the kiwis in the next tier are more expensive. and so on until the kiwis in the top tier are like 5x more expensive than the bottom tier. the basic idea is to make electricity for your everyday needs affordable. but to penalize people for using too much. seems like a pretty good system. so what's the problem? people who live in the central valley where it's hot use a lot more electricity than people who live on the coast. my electric bill is typically in the $50/month range. rumor is, theirs is in the $500/month range. most of which is air conditioning. which we don't have. cause we don't need it. so the idea is to adjust the tiers by location. ie people in the central valley would be able to buy more electricity at the lowest rate. so their electric bill would be on a par with our electric bill. even though they use several times more juice. seems like a really good idea from their point of view. the problem is... i've shopped for houses in the central valley. they're big. my house is 2400 square feet. it's bigger than we need. my house would be a small house in the central valley. bigger houses cost more to cool. my house has insulation. lots of it. the houses we looked at in the central valley were cheap assed things. no insulation. single pane windows. so gee whizakers batman. no wonder air conditioning costs a fortune. frankly, i don't have any interest in subsidizing those poor sweltering folks living in a house much much larger than mine. i'm not completely heartless though. i might be willing to subsidize insulation and e-star windows. simply cause it encourages people to use less electricity instead of more. dumbasses.  ¶ 8:00 AM

  new job i have a new job. it's the same as the old job. but i'm going to blame it for not posting nigh daily. i'm doing the same thing at the same place. but this time i actually have responsibilities and deadlines and commitments. so that'll be something new to put on my resume. if i had a resume.  ¶ 8:00 AM

  boom! heh. nope. this isn't about syria. b pushed his bike home the other day. he didn't call cause he was afraid we'd tell him to ride the bus. interesting decision making process in this one. anywho. he left for the weekend for ordeal of the arrow. he was pretty grumpy when he was at home cooking dinner. but he was pretty happy by the time he got to camp. i said i'd fix his flat for him. which i did. twice. the first time i tried a different technique for patching. it looked like it worked great. but apparently no. i worked some glue into the pinhole. and inflated the tube until it was approximately the right size. then applied the patch as per normal. clamped it until it was dry. installed it. very carefully so the tube didn't get pinched between the tire and wheel. have made that mistake countless times before we figured out what was going on. anywho. i pumped it up to 380 kilopascals BOOM! hiss. wtf? tore it back down. and the patch had exploded. the patch itself. the patch didn't get torn off the tube. the patch - well, what was left of it - was still firmly attached to the tube. the center part over the original pinhole was shredded. weird. not just weird. but really weird. i have no explanation. i'm going to try repeating this experiment with a throw away tube some time. cause it could be a pretty good prank to play on someone.  ¶ 8:00 AM