csammisrun

November has just flown by without a whole lot of crazy stuff going on. You all know how it is: DST changes and hours become other hours, three entire Thursdays go by until Thanksgiving, then before you know it December.

My job continues to be great. When I started here I asked if I could have a fishtank, and the answer was “well how big of a tank?” then “sure.” Earlier this month I up and put a 2.5 gallon tank (designed by Courtney, more on that later) on my desk, and in that tank I put a betta. Between the tank and my vine, I’ve got a nice zen thing going on.

The tank on my desk. Not pictured: any work whatsoever.

The betta, whose name is Pixel because he’s red-green-blue.

My home-animals are also good. I don’t have any recent pictures of my saltwater fishtank, though I did take a couple of the cats in their new beds. They got beds because they’re now banished from sleeping in my bed due to them being hairy and shedding like crazy, which means I have to shut them out of my bedroom at night. I didn’t want them to be uncomfortable

Gromit

Shaun

Also, I made some Christmas earlier this week. My large fake tree from last year ended up looking odd and being a general pain in the ass, so I got a small fake tree instead.

Aww, Gromit wants to be Christmas!

I was having some serious problems getting a non-fuzzy picture of the tree.

Or non-speckled.

I’ve been idly reading forums geared towards automotive enthusiasts who own Mazdas. It seems that a semi-popular thing to do with Mazda3s is to re-badge them as a Mazda Axela. I’m not that big of a fanboy, but Courtney had an interesting proposition: why not re-badge it as a 323?

I looked on eBay, but no one was selling extra badges from the Mazda3 and the Mazda2 (I wanted to make the fonts look decent). All seemed lost, until Courtney noticed the car’s side panels: a shiny “2.3″ badge on each side. Well dang, between the immediate availability of numbers and the fact that yesterday peaked around 75 degrees, how could I not?

It’s been three months since I bought my new car; I’m honestly surprised I haven’t done something like this already

Fishing line behind the badge cut through the adhesive holding it on in relatively short order.

The car was sitting in the sun, so the adhesive was already soft. Hot water, soap, and my thumb cleaned the residue right off.

Both 2.3 badges and the 3 badge from the back are off. Also featured, the lovely gouge some asshat left in my bumper a couple months ago.

The 2.3 badges got de-gooped, sawed apart, sanded down, and reset on 3M indoor/outdoor mounting tape. I think this is pretty much exactly what Mazda used in the first place.

Laying out how the re-purposed badges will look.

Hooray, a Mazda3…wait

Victory!

It’s so beautiful!

A wash and a wax later, and everything looks spectacular. Thanks to Courtney for the great photos, and the idea, and locating the 2.3 badges, and cleaning off the badges, and making handy loops of fishing line for cutting them off in the first place…we went through a lot of fishing line.

Yesterday Courtney and I went and voted for the 2008 general election. How is that possible? Did we travel forward in time??? No, we just used the magic of advance voting, which started in Johnson County on the 21st. Perhaps you are reading this on your computer machine now, sighing in envy and wishing that you too can go vote early to avoid what will probably be ridiculous lines on November 4th. Perhaps you can!

DuPage County, IL, advance voting started for you people two weeks ago but ends on the 30th! There are locations open this Saturday for people who might be registered in DuPage but not living there and maybe going back on some weekends.

Grundy County, IL has also got until the 30th to advance vote in the county courthouse in Morris.

Story County, IA, you’ve got one shot left if you don’t want to truck over to Nevada - get your ass to HyVee this Saturday!

Jackson County, MO, you’re plumb out of luck. No advance voting for you. Certain companies that work people ridiculously hard are, however, legally obligated to let you go vote - don’t let The Man keep you down.

I was looking up tour dates for Kamelot - a power metal band from Florida - and what a shock, their current tour doesn’t stop anywhere near Kansas City. Not even St. Louis. As near as I can figure the closest they get is Mokena, IL. It’s a southwest suburb of Chicago. This is not a town I’ve heard of before today, even having lived in the Chicago suburbs for eighteen years. I’m guessing that they’re playing there because of the Tinley Park amphitheater.

This keeps happening with metal bands, for reasons that I’m not completely clear on. I’d blame a perceived lack of listenership, but Gigantour ‘06 went to Oklahoma City of all places. Come on guys, Kansas City has some places where a band can do a thing like play a song

Eight years ago John McCain was a pretty decent politician guy. I wouldn’t have voted for him (I didn’t vote in the 2000 primaries anyway, being 17 at the time) but he had a relatively sane head on his shoulders - he certainly wasn’t a democrat, but he was moderate. Chronicled here are a series of interviews Sen. McCain did on the Daily Show that showcase an eight year long buy-in into the sort of right-wing nuts that ridiculed him in his 2000 run at the GOP primaries.

• July 26, 2001: McCain has the NRA pissed at him for being involved in a bill to require background checks at gun shows. A decent sense of humor all around. “Maverick” was not a word that makes me grit my teeth.
• March 19, 2002: Gunning for campaign finance reform, seems very comfortable with himself, again with the sense of humor.
• May 10, 2004: McCain talks about his direct questioning of Rumsfeld about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. He was one of the first Republicans to ask directly about the level of awareness that the Bush administration had on the subject.
• November 8, 2005: Talking about a war bill provision that McCain introduced to outlaw (for reals this time) physical torture of enemy combatants.
• April 4, 2006: Here’s where things start to get a bit upsetting for the man. He’s starting to pander to the far right base by paling around with Jerry Falwell - and he admits that he’s doing it.
• April 24, 2007 (part two): Looking very prickly and uncomfortable. McCain’s presidential campaign is going now and he’s talking about deadlines as “surrender” in Iraq, IED jokes, the whole deal. Sounds a lot like the terrorist fear-mongering we’ve been hearing nonstop out of the McCain/Palin campaign recently.

Also it’s pretty weird to look back four years and hear “Mission Accomplished lol” when that joke was only a year old :/

Thanks to Davish Krail on Something Awful for suggesting the method of this highly informal study.

Today I set up a Google Alert to tell me when someone talks about shaim. Not two hours later I got the first hit: “There is a chiyuv to speak out against r’shaim.” What?

The Hebrew r’shaim translates to wicked men.

٩๏̯͡๏)۶ - My spoon is too big!

A little while ago I realized something: with but a few exceptions, I rarely pay attention to the TV when I have it on. Most of the time it’s on for the noise factor. Here’s a summary of my TV watching habits:

• Four current shows with regularity: House, Stargate: Atlantis, Metalocalypse, and Battlestar Galactica.
• Something while I’m exercising, a half-hour a day.
• This is a lie, I need to exercise more
• The Weather Channel in the morning.
• Occasionally Adult Swim in the evenings as I’m falling asleep.

The rest of the time, it’s just tuned in to have something going on while I’m reading or programming or doing god knows what else to occupy my evenings.

Why am I paying for this?

Today I canceled my cable TV service, though of course I retained high speed internet - that’s as much a utility as water. It’s saving me around $30/mo. But whatever will I do about my current habits?

• Television networks are getting better and better about making their shows available on the Internet. House, Metalocalypse, and BSG are all confirmed available-within-a-day-of-broadcast. If SG: A isn’t already, I will survive.
• I have plenty of TV episodes on DVD and my computer to watch while I’m exercising, or I could do something drastic and listen to music.
• I hear they have the weather on the Internet these days!
• If I need some noise to fall asleep to, again with the computer.

Recently, my girlfriend has been thinking about getting a cartilage piercing in her ear. She did some research on the topic - as any good librarian does - and found a place in Waldo, MO called Irezumi. It’s evidently rated very highly among tattoo and piercing enthusiasts.

Last night around 9:30, we were sitting around debating what we should do. Bowling? Nah. Pool? We’ve done that recently. We wanted something new. Courtney started looking around online to see what Irezumi’s hours were, in case she wanted to get the piercing sometime soon. Turns out they were open until 11PM Saturday night. I suggested that she could go get it done now, and before either of us knew it we were heading to get a hole poked in her ear.

I don’t know anything about tattoo parlors or piercing establishments in general, but I have to say I was very impressed with Irezumi. The place is very clean, the staff is friendly, and the entire process was inexpensive and very fast. A++++++ would watch someone get needled again.

I made it back from Ames yesterday with my car completely unphased by the trip. This is unprecedented!