Zack Morris - Story of My Life

Before I get poison ivy again next year and forget how the heck I got over it, I just want to record the best treatment:

1. The first 7-10 days: Calamine Lotion (Caladryl) is the ONLY thing that works during the first week you have poison ivy. (more…)

I CAN’T BELIEVE HE’S REALLY PRESIDENT
DEAR BUSH DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT
CLICK BELOW FOR FULL SIZED IMAGE

My girlfriend Kellie and I went as Zack Morris and Kelly Capowski this year for Halloween.

(more…)

Well I am on my second day of the oral steroid prednisone. I woke up yesterday and couldn’t hardly open my eyes, so had to go to the doctor. I got poison ivy during our annual Bruneau Canyon camping trip on September 22nd. So I am coming up on 5 weeks of rash, which will probably end up being 6 weeks and is unusual. I was almost healed and then vaguely remember scratching this dead looking patch on my right inner elbow, and I think it released a pocket of the ivy resin under the skin, kind of like bruising a tattoo or something. Anyway it went into my system and my head swelled up like a pumpkin! Also washed the sheets almost that same day, so I think some resin got on the pillowcase. I have elephant ears now too.

So I’m just going to list what to do and not to do:

(more…)

For the first time in 6 years, I finally have faith in my country again. It’s official, the democrats won majorities in both the House and Senate, most governors are democrats, old Rummy resigned, we have Nancy Pelosi as the first female speaker of the House, it’s almost like I woke up in Canada. Phew, now I don’t have to move.

On Tuesday I went to a calling party for MoveOn.Org. They made almost 7 million calls to people in swing states and had a very real impact on this election. That, combined with bald faced naked corruption on the part of the Republicans, gave the people a voice for the first time in, hmm, well I guess my lifetime. I’m not even joking, the last time I remember something going my way in politics was when Clinton got elected! (more…)

Once again it’s been friggin’ forever since my last post, but here is yet another costume from the recesses of my mind. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the headline says it all:

(more…)

Well this is my first retraction. I talked to my buddy about the DUI and he said “he was like 2 over”, a figurative thing, like “I was going like 2 over the speed limit” (so not a literal 0.082 or even 0.10, but possibly a 2.08 I suppose). We actually have no idea what he came in at, so maybe he was 3 sheets to the wind. They aren’t nice enough to just tell you your score I guess. Kind of like how the credit score agencies aren’t nice enough to just call you and tell you that your identity has been stolen. So anyway, sorry about the mixup and I hope it didn’t mess up the RSS feed, but I didn’t want to be the source of misinformation, so I went ahead and just changed the original post (I’ll avoid doing that in the future). The rest of the article is of course 100% factually accurate

I got sick of trying to plan my meals for weight training so I made a calorie calculator. It automagically looks up foods as you type them in, and fills in the nutrition facts, so you don’t have to do it manually. It is really important to do a proper accounting of your meals so that you aren’t shooting yourself in the foot after working so hard in the gym. I have also started a weightlifting tips page that explains the different ways of training, such as for strength and for size, and has a bunch of nonintuitive tips, which should be done soon. (more…)

So my buddy got a DUI last weekend and we bailed him out at 7 am. I’m not going to go into a lot of details, but basically he was just barely over. So ya that sucked. It’s hard for us old timers to remember that the limit isn’t what it always was, something reasonable like 0.10. I won’t go into a lot of details, but needless to say, the highlight of the night was when his wife told the cop “can you at least give me my f***ing tampons!” It seems that he was the only cop who had a clue what was going on, kind of a tough looking fellow, who seemed almost irritated that the other cop was giving such a hard time to a, well, almost sober person. Kind of ironic. (more…)

Well, it’s been a year since my last post, so figured it was time for an update, just in time (belatedly) for Halloween.

This costume was HOT going downtown. Budumbump chish.

What do we have here…
(more…)

I decided to post a few quick maps of where I’ve been:

create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide

create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

create your own personalized map of Canada
or write about it on the open travel guide

The most fun places by far were Idaho (home state), Illinois (college), and Costa Rica (visited my friend Zack). Most of my family on my mom’s side lives in Nebraska. California and New York were cool, but I didn’t get enough time there to form much of an impression. I was in DC pre-9/11 and remember an entirely different city than the militarized hell hole we know and love today. Costa Rica was a surreal happy place, like the US in the 60’s/70’s, before we lost our innocence to the robber barons and media. I have been in a balance of so called red states and blue states, and I have to say that the people in democratic strongholds seem to be much more spiritually enlightened than those in red states. Curiously, the land and environment are much better in republican strongholds. I think the people there take it for granted, which is why they devote so little attention to environmental or social causes. They have an abundance of resources that people in cities may never understand.

9x3 inch 300 dpi bumper sticker and banner ad sized images available here and here. If those don’t work, try here and here.

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. At least Cheney is not yet emperor. After thinking on the current state of affairs for a day, I have decided to revise my advice on what to do about Bush. Leaving the country is not an option, and neither is bankruptcy, I was just reaching for something quick to ease the pain, besides beer. No, we have to just be vigilent and stay the course. Thousand points of light. Maybe we need more mind numbing phrases like the Republican PR machine uses. I have begun plastering my car’s bumper with stickers for Kerry/Edwards and gems like “losing faith in humanity one person at a time”. Let’s come up with some bumper stickers for Bush.
    What do you think of my first attempt? Our mission is to discredit the robber barons anyway we can, like the political cartoons of the 19th century, showing big fat men in suits driving their trains over the backs of the working class. The body count in Iraq has now passed 100,000, but since they weren’t Americans, they evidently don’t matter to whoever elected Bush. Well, they matter to me. The political cartoons showing the situation in Iraq would be so distasteful today that we would all vomit and pass out. Perhaps making fun of the situation is not appropriate, but we can at least humiliate George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Asscroft, Condoleezza Rice, and unfortunately Colin Powell (hey, I liked that guy!!!) directly. I mean, come on guys, this is probably the easiest administration to spit on since Nixon. (more…)

    Well, I’m writing this before the election has officially been called, but it appears that John Kerry has lost (I even voted way out here in the republican stronghold of Idaho, to try to throw off the popular vote). I admit that I was pretty sure he would lose, because America has not woken up in the dozens of fundamental ways that would be required for the country to make such a large change in direction as to dump Bush. This was by far the worst campaign of smoke and mirrors and misdirection that I have ever seen (easily dwarfing the 2000 election which resulted in George W. Bush being elected merely because his name happened to be Bush). It’s amazing to think that Kerry could lose due to a few choice phrases from Karl Rove, namely flip flop and waffles. It’s amazing that Kerry’s 30 year old war and post war record (one of the most patriotic performances of the post Vietnam era) would be brought back to discredit him. It’s amazing that Bush won mainly because people were too afraid to dethrone a sitting president in wartime (never mind that Bush started the war with a sovereign country). I could continue for many pages, but that is not the point of this entry.
    No, what I would like to tell all of you is that it’s time to look on the bright side: Bush has to clean up the disaster of his first term. Kerry is off the hook, and we will have four more years of side splitting jokes at Bush’s expense. Maybe it is good that when the fall happens, democrats will not be responsible. We have facts staring us in the face that spin will not alleviate. No amount of military might can save Iraq. The deficit has now passed the point of no return, since republicans have never lowered it in my lifetime. The wealth imbalance has also passed critical mass, since the minimum wage is a joke at 1/3 the liveable wage, while CEOs are getting million dollar bonuses for bankrupting corporations. Baby boomers are reaching retirement age, and even republicans know that privatizing social security will not help the elderly. These are all catastrophic disasters, so sit back, enjoy the show, and maybe even toss in a few “I told you so”s now and then. (more…)

Here is my halloween costume for this year. If a flip flop can vote for Kerry, can’t you? (5 pictures total)

(more…)

After seeing P. Diddy’s mohawk and other oddities on the MTV Video Music Awards, I realized that I no longer want my MTV. Do you want it? If you know anyone that wants it, please notify them that the mohawk they are sporting is no longer (and never was) in style and to please not vote this November. I pity da foo.

9x3 inch 300 dpi bumper sticker and banner ad sized images available here and here. If those don’t work, try here and here.

Image from digibarn.com

    Ordinarily I love Google. It is the closest thing to an AI (artificial intelligence) that I have come across, and has made me 100 times more productive (ok and more lazy) than I was growing up. But that doesn’t mean that it is perfect. The good old boy mafia that runs our country is always trying to get a piece of the action, and they have done a brilliant job with Google. In order to prevent companies from becoming too powerful, there are rules that make a company publish its records to the SEC once it makes a certain amount of money. Ordinarily that is a very good thing, for scary companies like Microsoft or Enron. But Google is not a regular company. Google is a geek’s paradise, doing everything the “right way” and curiously making outrageous sums of money as it runs circles around the competition. My complaint is not so much with Google, but with the fat cats and market makers that understand human nature and how to exploit the poor.
    Google went public today at $85 per share. There has been discussion at slashdot about why this number is so important. In my humble opinion, this isn’t about market cap and valuation, this is about human nature. I would bet all of the money in the world, all of the money ever printed, that when a good company opens at $85, it will very quickly go over $100, due to psychology. That is precisely what happened. Now that in and of itself is no big deal, until you consider who makes the profit. (more…)

Well, the world has changed dramatically (for the worse) since I graduated from college in the late 90’s and it is time to get the word out. This blog will be arranged like a news source (like slashdot or to some degree igeek). I’m going to tell it how it is on everything from politics to science to geeking to dating. A few details about myself: I am 27, a recovering geek, I am an extreme moderate slightly to the left, I think very little happens by accident and see orchastrated mayhem in all aspects of american life. The current administration is made up of robber barons that work under the guise of idiots. I like to be awakened to the fact that I am wrong, so feel free to dish out criticism.