Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Life In the Suburban Jungle

James Lileks needs a GPS system.

James ”the bleat” Lileks has problems trying to get around in one of the newer branches of the Minneapolis-St Paul metroplex. And, from the sounds of it, we’re WAY ahead of him, vis-a-vis trying to find ones way in Pueblo West. Here’s his comment, taken from today’s Bleat

This morning I had to get Gnat to an event in a distant suburb, one of those newer places with an utter absence of parallel or numbered streets. Nothing but serpentine roads, cul-de-sacs, and the occasional main drive hewn from an old path laid down 140 years ago by farmers ekeing their careful way to market. I planned the route yesterday, and since I knew the area a little I figured it would be easy. And indeed it would have been easy if the streets had intersected where I thought they would. They did not. When I reached the intersection and noted that my street wasn’t anywhere in sight, I had that aw-crap moment get when I’m off the map. I hate being off the map. I like to know where I am at all times. This is why this feature rarely originates from, say, Pantagonia.

I feel extactly the same way, every time I contemplate a foray into Pueblo West. It’s as if they deliberately planned to confuse anyone who wasn’t born and RAISED there. I imagine that their pizza delivery people must come from special schools where they are fed the minced brains of deceased native residents so that, like planaria, they can learn the lay of the road-net. Either that or three months later they check into a mental institution.

Everytime I have to go to Pueblo West, if it’s more than a quarter mile off US 50, I take the laptop, connect the GPS and fire up the tracking system.

I hear that Pueblo West is planning to change its name sometime in the future. I suppose this is part of an overall plan to keep the unwary confused....

Lost Motorist: Is this Pueblo West?

Convenience Store Clerk: No.

Lost Motorist: NO?!?!?!?? Where the hell am I?

Convenience Store Clerk: Exactly.....

Where is Rod Serling when we REALLY need him?

Monday, August 15, 2005

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Battle

The loss of an Abrams Main Battle Tank (MBT) has experts scratching their head.

On 28 August 2003, an M1-A1 Abrams MBT was destroyed in a manner that has caused considerable confusion to many military experts and personnel. Here’s an article on the incident

The agent that destroyed the tank left a hole smaller than a pencil. It traversed the crew compartment, passing through the seat back at the Gunner’s position, the Gunners flak vest, various key components of the tank’s weapons systems and “came to rest after boring a hole 1 to 2 inches deep in the hull on the far side of the tank.”

The experts continue to attribute the loss of this tank, with no casualties amongst the crew, to enemy action. Possibly what is called a ‘golden B-B’, a special round that has all the luck in the world in penetrating the armor of an Abrams tank. Something that even enemy main battle tanks find hard to accomplish. There were rumors of a new type of RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) munition that was a double-whammie, two explosive charges timed to go off in sequence in order to burn through the two layers of amor.

I don’t think so. Why? Well, for one thing, every known weapon system that the Iraqi insurgents have would, if it penetrated the armor of the tank, killed all the human occupants of the crew compartment with what is termed ‘spawling’; molten pieces of metal flying through the compartment as a result of the energy released as the weapon penetrated the armor. That didn’t happen. Furthermore, if it were a new weapon, one would think that the Iraqi insurgents would have got their hands on more of them and we’d have a lot more tanks knocked out as a result. That hasn’t happened either.

So...what was it?

I think it was something completely out of this world. I mean that quite literally. Here’s a report on these things.

They weigh as much as a ton, take up the space of less than the tenth of a width of a human hair and travel at 900K mph. They whiz through space and occasionally slide through the Earth as if it weren’t there, coming from any direction. Nothing can stop them, as far as we can tell.

Fortunately for us, they are rather rare. I think our Abrams tank got hit by one of these things.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Penzeys One

The source of all spice has a new mag on the street.

Penzeys, the people who bring a world of flavor to your door, on demand, have come up with their challenge to Martha Stewart—a magazine for anyone who likes or wants to cook well with good seasonings.

Title Penzeys One, the magazine is choke full of articles and recipes on fine food. I’m looking at the portobello mushroom sandwich and getting hungry.

I have to say, I’ve been VERY happy with Penzeys for the quality of their products and the timeliness of their services. Seriously....why spend $4 for an ounce of herbs de provance when you can get a pound of it for three times that? Do the MATH fellow Ms....

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Movie and a Fair to Remember

Movie Nite and more....

Our regularly scheduled Movie Nite for August has been expanded.

Instead of the regular two movies—The Incredibles and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow—on the last friday in August, the 26th, we’ve decided on an extended play arrangement.

Since the date of Movie Nite correlates with the weekend of the Colorado State Fair, we’ve decided to make our residence available to all members of a Colorado chapter of Mensa for quartering between Friday, the 26th and Sunday morning, the 28th.

If you’d like to see the fair and have a reasonable place to stay, feel free to contact us. We can accomodate a lot of people. However, at a certain point it would be wise to bring a sleeping bag. Beds will be on a first-come/first-served basis, unless people wish to negotiate amongst themselves.

Here’s a link to the Colorado State Fair.

RSVP to me by clicking on my name (below)....

Monday, August 08, 2005

When Are Rights Actually Wrongs?

Or, how to really torque off the liberal women near you.

Vox Day, a fellow M living someplace outside of Colorado, has an interesting article up on World Net Daily.

He’s got an equally interesting discussion going on over at his blog Vox Populi about how someone circulated the WND article and the feminazis called down their Human Resouces CattieBert on his poor a--.

BVRVRG 2005

A weekend in the mountains.

Good food, good drink and good company! That was the order of the day over the weekend at the annual Denver Mensa BVRVRG.

About twenty people from all over the country were attending. Most from the Denver group. However there were people from Portland, Oregon, somewhere in Arkansas and the Plains and Peaks group as well. Much of the time was spent in the pavillion of tentage erected to keep out the sun and attract the humming birds. Considering the ban of open fires, despite the fact of the recurring rain showers and the preceeding nights deluge, we did not make the annual sacrifice of a whole aspen. We are such conformists. Besides, Mina, our volunteer fire-fighter, was coming. She’d have had to rat us out.

Lattina was having ALL kinds of fun with a family of ducklings. She had them eating out of the palm of her hand.

To which she purred, “I’ve never had a duck touch me that way, before.”

Personally, I was in favor of having them over for dinner, a la fesenjan [Iranian roast duck with pomegranits and walnuts].

Forrest spent a lot of time educating others on the dangers of the NeoCons. Bob talking about just nearly anything that came to mind. Marcia has a new pet doggie. Despite her promise never to have another dog again. Charming 10-month old German Shepard mix. Lorna was up from Oklahoma with a friend in tow. Well, actually, he towed her up there, at her request. He belongs.... Sara Boe brought a young man who belongs too. She wanted to expose him to the group, but he found himself having lots of fun with a young lady, about his age, in a pair of campers next door.

The annual pilgrimage to Happy Valley, on Sunday, marked the end of regular camping activities.

All in all, a fine time was had by all.

Saturday, July 30, 2005

We’re Baaaack

Nothing like getting back into the swing of things.

It has been a long and busy six-months. Too much going on to spend as much time as I would like pontificating on things I probably don’t know nearly enough about to do so. But...still and all, things are settling down and we can get this thing going again.

There will be some rule changes, as in the previous incarnation, we discovered some loop-holes in the system that permited spamming of a most unsavory nature.

In order to deal with the problem of spamming of that sort, I’m open to suggestions on means to control it. If you have such a suggestion, please feel free to e-mail me with it and we’ll discuss it. Or you can comment....for the moment. I don’t think the spammers are aware of this blog’s existance just yet. But when they do find out, we’ll have to affect the sort of security that seems to be the best for all parties....save the spammers.