Have a Secret?

I stumbled upon an interesting blog today. PostSecret

It's a little funny, sad and scary at the same time.

Let the man sell his bologna

So I got an email from my buddy Devan today about a Mexican man trying to enter the US with some unauthorized bologna

It seems the feds were really concerned about this guy. Just putting aside the fact that he was transporting meat in unrefidgerated suitcases let's look at this quote for a second...

"The agency said the man stood to make a hefty profit."

I mean come on. Let's see...80 rolls of bologna at $8.

So we can figure he has already put out about $640.

Let's say he sells them for about $30 a piece (although I don't know who buys $30 worth of Bologna at once) for a total of $2400.

Maybe he comes away with about $1800, maybe!

Let the man sell his friggin bologna, buyer beware. If you are buying bologna on the side of the road from a suitcase, maybe you deserve what you get. Let this man make a buck and feed his family.

But he really should try to keep it cold while he's smuggling his bologna.

Just my thoughts.

I throw the sucka in the front for the ones that front

The Legendary Roots crew in Colonial Williamsburg

Huge weekend to report on.

First Johanna and I did a local Mountain bike race...The O-hill Meltdown for some pain and suffering. I think it's one of the toughest local races that we have around here. The laps are only 5-6 miles but each lap has over 1000 ft of climbing with most of it coming in the first half of the race. There's not much recovery because the descents are really sketchy and not very long. Anyway, I think I came in 9th out of a bunch of guys and Johanna came in first in her two-person, expert woman field.

After the race Johanna and I drove two hours to Williamsburg to see The Roots in concert at William and Mary. We were only 10 minutes away from Colonial Williamsburg so we decided to stay the night and take in some history.

I don't have any pics from the Roots concert because you aren't supposed to take any recording devices in to the venue, blah blah blah. Security was minimal at best, so I could have brought in the Digi-cam and snapped some shots. I am sure there were about 1000 camera phones in the place so it wouldn't have been a big deal.

The Roots were off the hizzle! No surprise there. They played a TON of music and gave a great show. I think Black Thought was rhyming for at least an hour before he took any kind of break. Then things got mellow with Stay Cool, You Got Me and some more of their laid-back tracks. Black Thought always keeps you guessing because the songs never sound the same as they do on the albums. He is always getting creative with the rythms or having fun with the lyrics.

As it got later I was a little concerned that they wouldn't do one of my favorite tracks...Ain't Sayin' Nuthin' Sure enough, after the mellow stuff and some more messing around, they ended with a set of CRAZY HIGH ENERGY songs and of course, Ain't Sayin' Nuthin' was in there.

After that set, the lights went out and The Roots walked off stage. They could have left then, but the crowd was way to amped to settle for that. After about 5 minutes of constant applause and yelling, they came back on stage and performed a bunch of random stuff. Some Talib verses, an LL Cool J verse, some of thier older stuff. There was one point where Brother ? was singing the lyrics to MJ's Annie Are You Okay?

After the show, we went back to our colonial-eske hotel and watched TV until about 1:30 in the morning which wouldn't have been so bad but there was all kinds of door knocking around our room at 7:30 in the morning. After a long day of racing, driving, and concerting, 6 hours of sleep just doesn't do the trick.



We eventually got ourselves together, had a wack Continental breakfast of Kroger donuts, toast and OJ and made our way to Colonial Williamsburg.

I'll stop yammering and show a couple of pics from the trip.

One of the first things I noticed about Williamsburg in general is how flat it is.


You gotta be able to get your Colonial Birkenstocks.


I think I am falling asleep here.

One more link for you

I am sure not everyone gets the Brown Alumni Monthly but something in there has made it at least as far a FARK. Check it out. I think it's a pretty clever idea, and I am proud to say some fellow Brunonians (sp?) came up with it.

Click the title of the post for the link.

Useless Link of the Week: www.419eater.com

Here is the first installment of what I will call "Useless Link of the Week". Web portals that serve no real purpose but to waste your precious time and keep you in front of the computer and away from the sunny outdoors.

You will need some background for this one. I am sure everyone has gotten spam from an individual claiming to be a Nigerian official with a surplus of money (in american dollars) and they need someplace to put it. This scam only works because Americans are greedy and dumb! Bascially this "Nigerian Official" needs a place to keep the rediculous sum of money and you are promised a percentage of the money when it's all over. Of course various "fees" come up in the process of transferring the money and the unsuspecting American is convinced that each of these fees will be the last before the tons of money are deposited into their account.

Well, this is an example of someone who has decide to turn things around on the scammers. This guy actually resonds to the scammers, promising the money that they need but ends up getting money out of the scammer! It's hilarious! The link that I sent you to is just an exapmle of how he did it. There are several case studies and this is by no means the most money he has scammed out of a scammer but it's great.

It's a little long, but just skim through the first couple of pages, you won't be sorry.

Enjoy

March has Passed April is Here...

Lots to do this month and it's already half-done.

Where to begin?

First I have to finish installing the shower vent in the bathroom. I figure there will be three phases. Installing the actual vent, running the electrical, and actually connecting the electrical. Right now I am between Phase I and Phase II. (I think...I don't really know phases) No I was wrong, there's 4 phases. I have to run the vent somewhere. Either through the roof or out the soffet. Decisions decisions. I don't llok forward to trying to cut a hole in my roof.

Taxes, taxes, taxes. Not much to say here. I haven't dont them yet.

Bike races are coming. Johanna and I are racing this Saturday. First MTB race of the season. It's going to hurt like nobody's business.

That's a quick look ahead to April. Nothing much else to report.

Am I More Important than a Fire Truck? Yeah, I Think So!

So I have a lot of pet peaves that center around driving. Not that I am the best driver in the world, I have had my fair share of "Crap, where did that guy come from " incidents...but there are a couple of driving habits on the road that irk me to n end.

Some of them have to do with not using turn signals, some are because I don't like to wait for slow drivers, but the one that has been bugging me the most is people who think that where ever they are going is more urgent than the screaming fire truck, police car and/or ambulance that is headed their way.

I was under the impression that when you hear an emergency vehicle you are supposed to stay stopped (assuming you are at a light, interestection, stop sign) identify where the vehicle is coming from and do the best you can the get the heck out of the friggin way. Over the last couple of days (years really) I have seen more and more people
1) ignoring the sirens and not getting out of the way
2)accelerating through the intersection before the emergency vehicle comes through the interstection so that they are not delayed an additional 10 SECONDS by the oncoming big red fire truck.

I mean come on people, what are you thinking?

Even if you don't like the police because they caught you with an expired inspection sticker, chances are pretty good that the fire truck or ambulance is out on a mission to help somebody. You may be late to work, or you may need your morning coffee and you're running late, but is that REALLY more important than stopping someone's house from burning down.

...and what if that was your mom in that ambulance?

Plague, Bikes and Ikea

Lots of stuff to report I guess. The first is that I somehow managed to pick up the plague that everyone on the east coast has. It started sometime around Friday. I felt like absolute crap by Saturday night, I managed to get out of the house once on Sunday and I have pretty much been cooped up yesterday and today. I really shouldn’t be surprised that I am sick. Literally 9 out of 10 people that I know have been sick over the last three months. Hey at least it’s not that avian flu thing.

My new bicicleta

In other news...I did end up getting that bike I told y’all about. I ordered it on Monday and it was scheduled to come in on Thursday. Well, I stopped by the bike shop on Thursday after work and it wasn’t there. They told me it should be there the next day. I stayed for a little while to shoot the breeze and at 5:45 the FedEx guy shows up with one small box and one BIG box. The big box just happened to contain said bicycle. By 6:05 Mike and I had the bike put together and I was riding it in the parking lot. I have already managed to log a couple of hours on it Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Nothing too big since I have been under the weather. But this thing is phenominal. I don’t know the exact numbers but I think it’s probably less than a pound heavier than my hardtail and for that single pound I get

1) 100mm fork on the front (up from 85mm)
2) 100mm shock on the rear (up from 0)
3) Tubeluss wheels
4) Hydraulic Disk brakes

And probably a couple of other things that I can’t think of right now.

Trip to IKEA

On Saturday (after a short ride) a group of recently or currently plagued people went to IKEA in Northern VA. This thing was huge. I never really knew where I was at any point while inside the building. All I know is that we wandered around for several hours popping in and out of these different “zones”. First we went upstairs where they had the displays. There were these small “rooms” decorating with…you guessed it…Ikea stuff. They had these huge posters that said “Everything in this room could be yours for $1068.” You would look in the room and see four bookshelves one couch a couple of chairs, a coffee table and a freakishly small computer desk. Then came the kitchens. All different types of counters, cabinets, ranges, sinks, islands…It was a little overwhelming! And that wasn’t even the beginning of it.

Once you were done upstairs, you could go downstairs where you can actually load products into your basket, cart, pallet, whatever. Now if you just wanted to get in and out of there, good luck. Again we wandered down the predetermined path through kitchen stuff, bedroom stuff, rugs, laundry stuff, picture frames, lamps (Ikea has cool lamps), glasses, candles, plates, knives, EVERYTHING. Once the excursion was over you were funneled into the larget bank of cashiers that I have ever seen.

I really wish I had taken some pictures. That would have been kind of weird though. I managed to keep my head above water though. I walked out with two trays and a small wooden folding Plant Stand.

I'm gonna go take a nap.

Wedding pics posted

Anyone who is sitting around waiting to see the pics from the wedding...you are in luck. Here is what I was able to fit. It's a little less than half of the pictures that we actually have.

Enjoy.