Less annoying

If you've ridden in my car recently you've no doubt been annoyed by the head liner coming down in the back and the low oil pressure alarm going off periodically.

The oil pressure sensor was changed and it looks like the new one has a lower pressure setting so perhaps it will be happier in my high miles engine than the old one was.

And for the head liner, well ... I once heard something about how "The good enough solution often becomes the permanent one." Oh well, meh.

Fruit MRI

Via Reddit Someone took MRI scans of fruits and vegetables and animated the results. So awesome. My favorite is the mushrooms.

Playful Porcupine

Does this mean that all other porcupines are lonely and misunderstood?

Skiing on waves

Another skiing post - amusing!

Wow smoking is boss!

Where can I get a pack, I want to have those kinds of good times!

Ratatat

I had never heard of Ratatat before last night when Pandora thought to give them a spin for me. Enjoyable!

TV...

ENHANCE!
62" DLP, thanks Craigslist!

From forweb

Dry.

To all of you who patiently listened while I explained how the rear hatch on my car had become heavy because water was leaking into it. I was wrong. So wrong that I drilled a small hole in the bottom of it and no water poured out wrong. So wrong I pulled the trunk trim off and had to take a look wrong. My Dad told me the gas struts on the hatch were blown a month or two ago at least. He was right, good job Dad. A pair of replacement gas struts on the way at a cost of $32 each. A hatch that stays up all by itself in my very near future.

 

X-ray pin-ups

Haha, link pretty silly

Flying with Chase

This evening Chase invited me to ride along for some flying over Ventura County! Fun stuff, it had been about 8 years or so since the last time I was up in a small airplane. We checked the airplane out, took off from Camarillo and went a short distance over to Santa Paula. There we did a few landing and take offs with 3-4 other people doing the same. And then we flew over to the coast just west of Magu Rock. And then back to Camarillo for a few more landing and take offs. Here's the pics!

PhD's bum deal

You knew you didn't want to become a grad student for 7 years, but you couldn't quite put your finger on it...

You laughed at The Simpson's jokes perhaps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XViCOAu6UC0

This _lengthy_ article lays out why PhD study is a bad deal for American grad students.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16191/

tl;dr summary: There is not shortage of scientifically trained persons in the USA, there is a shortage of research positions and adequately paying jobs. This is why American students are shunning the technical fields: it's a bad deal.

Cool flight tool

Let's you see how far you can get for given dollar amount.
http://www.kayak.com/explore/

Seaside Florida

I spent the last week at a beach house a few miles east of Seaside Florida. I had a great time. It only rained when we first arrived, and only that night, and not during any of the days. The temperature was near ideal most of the week with it starting to warm up on Friday and Saturday. We thought we might get some oil from the big spill, but Louisiana is taking the brunt of that, not Florida at all. Coming home took close to 12 hours, and I guess my only complaint is that for traveling for 12 hours perhaps a more exotic local than Florida could be reached?

1949 Harley 45

I got to ride the old Harley this weekend! This bike was my uncle's way back when, and my Dad recently brought it back to road worthy status. Really interesting to ride with the foot operated clutch and 3 speed hand shifter!

(click to play short video clip)

LA Galaxy Game for Kevin's Birthday

Fun times were had Saturday night at the Home Depot Center to celebrate Kevin's Birthday and watch some professional soccer. (My first time to a game, and also the first time I have watched a whole game, actually the first time I've watched anything more than highlights haha!) The LA Galaxy were playing the Philadelphia Union. I learned a bit about soccer from Kevin during the game. Apparently are only 3 substitutions allowed per team through out the 90 minute game. A dude from the The Union got a red card for pulling some stupid slide tackle move when the game had already stopped. From that point on The Union played a man down, I didn't realize that they wouldn't be able to sub another guy in. 8 of the players will be on the field for the full 90 minutes. Pretty crazy endurance! A good group turned out and Kevin's birthday package deal got us great seats. Although from the looks of it, it doesn't really seem like any of the seats are that bad. The stadium seemed smaller than when I was there for a concert a few years ago. I guess the grass looks smaller than rows and rows of thousands of chairs.

The LA Galaxy scored a goal in the first minute of the game, and were up by three by the end of the first half. They didn't seem to be struggling too much to retain control. The crowd was pretty mellow with the exception of the two "fan sections" that had drums and chants going back and forth between them. It would be fun to go to a sold out Chivas USA game where I imagine that enthusiasm spreads to the rest of the Stadium.



(Yay phone camera!)

A couple clips of the game, just to give a flavor for the stadium.