So, the Winter Olympics might be better renamed to the European Olympics. No wonder the Winter Olympics lacks popularity! Most of its sports are very European centric. How much Bobsleighing or Ice Skating is possible in places like Nigeria or Costa Rica? Sure, China and South Korea have been welcomed into the mix, but these two are from regions that are winter sport friendly. At least they add snowboarding. That's actually exciting to watch, since they allow contact and there's a good chance for at least one big wipe out! The woman's Snowboarding Cross final had three wipe outs, and one of those was from the #1 contender celebrating before she crossed the finish line! lol Anyways, U.S.A.! U.S.A.! hehe
Oh, and one comment about those South Korean speedskaters! Speed Skating is not a team sport unless it's Team Pursuit! The South Koreans are pretty much just outright cheating by playing as a team instead of individuals. It's legal right now, but if they keep it up, I'm sure the rules are going to be changing to not allow that sort of team work in the future. They screwed a couple of better racers out of gold medals because they were working together. If a racer isn't going for the gold medal, they don't belong in the finals! The teamwork strategy is not in the spirit of the Olympics for non-team competitions.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Daytime Motorcycle Cop with Radar
Well, my record is now 18 and 3. For some reason, I haven't been able to avoid a ticket when I'm pulled over by a motorcycle cop with a radar gun at daytime. All three of my tickets have been issued by this very specific demographic! Cops are normallly pretty cool about thangs when they pull me over. Normally, they give warnings of some type or another. But for some reason, when they fit that particular demographic, they issue a ticket to me. Bummer. Traffic school, here I come.
Haunted Room
When I was growing up, on house my family lived at was frequented by ghosts. I don’t know who/what the ghosts were, or where they resided specifically. I just know that every now and again, we’d experience strange things. Often, our entire family would get strange dreams within a very short period of time. Once, when I was seven, the ghosts got a bit more impish with me.
The house was part of a duplex; each side had 3 bedrooms on a corner lot. My room was small and in the middle of the house with large windows along the backyard. It had one normal door to the hallway that lead to the other two rooms, and one sliding door that opened into the kitchen. I often keep both doors shut at night. My room was only illuminated by distant street lights thru closed roller blinds. This one night, I was awoken in the middle of the night, in my bed of course. I remember being on edge and scared, but still curious. I felt something in the room with me. I didn’t know what. My parents had taught me about demons (from the Christian Fundamentalist perspective), and since I had nothing else to reference, I immediately associated my sensations with my limited understanding of demons. My mother also taught me that if I had an encounter with such demons, I could simply call upon god’s name and that would scare them off. For some reason, this night I did not immediately resort to this. I was too frightened to speak or get out of bed, and I was a little curious actually. I tried to get a handle on what I was feeling. I imagined Halloween style ghosts floating near the ceiling. Of course, the reality is, doing this did nothing, and I soon found that out.
Trying to convince myself that it was all just in my mind, I started to relax a bit. For a short while, I just laid in bed, awake. I was lying on my side when I noticed something coming from my closed closet on the oppose wall from my bed right, in front of me. There was a dark half circle shadow that appeared from the crack between the closet door and door rim, as though it was a hand reaching out from inside my closet. I couldn’t believe it. I stared as long as I could dare. I was so frightened, I hide under my blankets. My heart was pounding. I never saw anything like that. What I had been taught said that this was a demon. I got up enough courage to peak out from under my blankets and looked again. It was gone. The sense that something else was in the room was not gone.
Without the visible manifestation, I did start to calm a bit. I began to think that since these demons were in my room, I would simply look out the window over my bed until they decided to leave. So I sat up in bed and ducked under the blind with the plan of just looking into our backyard. Well, this calmed my nerves for a second or two, until I saw a large silhouette appear as white shadow right on the window all around me. I looked at the edge of the silhouette around me on the window, rolling me head and eyes from my right, up and to the left. I was sitting with my face practically pressed against this manifestation! In an instant of pure fear and dread, I zoomed back under my blankets and just started instinctively praying to god for all of this to go away. I was tense for quite some time, but the other presence was gone. I was awake for quite some time that night.
I told no one of that event for years. Of course, I’ve since realized that the spirit in my room that night wasn’t able to harm me, regardless to its nature. What are ghosts? I don't know. In this case, I guested is that it was an earthbound ghost that was having some fun with me. Or, maybe this are demons of some sort, whatever that means. Anyway, other visitations did occur, but after that night, I never experienced any other tangible manifestations at that house.
The house was part of a duplex; each side had 3 bedrooms on a corner lot. My room was small and in the middle of the house with large windows along the backyard. It had one normal door to the hallway that lead to the other two rooms, and one sliding door that opened into the kitchen. I often keep both doors shut at night. My room was only illuminated by distant street lights thru closed roller blinds. This one night, I was awoken in the middle of the night, in my bed of course. I remember being on edge and scared, but still curious. I felt something in the room with me. I didn’t know what. My parents had taught me about demons (from the Christian Fundamentalist perspective), and since I had nothing else to reference, I immediately associated my sensations with my limited understanding of demons. My mother also taught me that if I had an encounter with such demons, I could simply call upon god’s name and that would scare them off. For some reason, this night I did not immediately resort to this. I was too frightened to speak or get out of bed, and I was a little curious actually. I tried to get a handle on what I was feeling. I imagined Halloween style ghosts floating near the ceiling. Of course, the reality is, doing this did nothing, and I soon found that out.
Trying to convince myself that it was all just in my mind, I started to relax a bit. For a short while, I just laid in bed, awake. I was lying on my side when I noticed something coming from my closed closet on the oppose wall from my bed right, in front of me. There was a dark half circle shadow that appeared from the crack between the closet door and door rim, as though it was a hand reaching out from inside my closet. I couldn’t believe it. I stared as long as I could dare. I was so frightened, I hide under my blankets. My heart was pounding. I never saw anything like that. What I had been taught said that this was a demon. I got up enough courage to peak out from under my blankets and looked again. It was gone. The sense that something else was in the room was not gone.
Without the visible manifestation, I did start to calm a bit. I began to think that since these demons were in my room, I would simply look out the window over my bed until they decided to leave. So I sat up in bed and ducked under the blind with the plan of just looking into our backyard. Well, this calmed my nerves for a second or two, until I saw a large silhouette appear as white shadow right on the window all around me. I looked at the edge of the silhouette around me on the window, rolling me head and eyes from my right, up and to the left. I was sitting with my face practically pressed against this manifestation! In an instant of pure fear and dread, I zoomed back under my blankets and just started instinctively praying to god for all of this to go away. I was tense for quite some time, but the other presence was gone. I was awake for quite some time that night.
I told no one of that event for years. Of course, I’ve since realized that the spirit in my room that night wasn’t able to harm me, regardless to its nature. What are ghosts? I don't know. In this case, I guested is that it was an earthbound ghost that was having some fun with me. Or, maybe this are demons of some sort, whatever that means. Anyway, other visitations did occur, but after that night, I never experienced any other tangible manifestations at that house.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Myths of Space (movies)
There are pretty big problems with every science fiction space movie or TV show, except 2001: Space Odyssey.
1. There are no auditable sounds in outer space. Maybe ships battling it out in a very dense nebula might produce auditable noises, but other than that, the only auditable noise transmitted is within the ships or objects themselves, and not across the vacuum of space. The first season of Star Trek got this right, but even the makers of that show eventually opted for the excitement of noisy explosions.
2. Massive fireball explosions do not occur in the vacuum of space, even when oxygen is involved. How is this known? Well, although Apollo 13 crew members did not see their service module oxygen tank explode, it certainly didn’t rip through their vessel in a fireball when it did blow. That incident may suggest it’s pretty hard to blow-up even flimsiest objects in space because the vacuum outside the object creates the path of least resistance for any force being exerted on the object. That’s my own thought on the matter. But the fact is, the vacuum outside the ship does cause any explosion to dissipate so rapidly, no fireball would have a chance to form.
3. When a person is ejected into space without protection, they will not simply explode from the pressure of their body. I’ve only seen two movies get this right: 2001: Space Odyssey and (believe it or not) Airplane II. The human body doesn’t have nearly enough pressure built up within it to spontaneously explode when going from normal atmosphere to vacuum. What would happen is that the person would suffer lose of consciousness from lack of oxygen to the brain, get the bends and prolly actually begin to die only after a couple of minutes. A couple of incidents have already occurred that support these conclusions, where either a whole person or an area of the body was exposed to a vacuum environment.
Sources: Basic High School curriculum (LOL), http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/waw/mad/mad12.html, http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=8, http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html, and the Apollo 13 “historical records”.
1. There are no auditable sounds in outer space. Maybe ships battling it out in a very dense nebula might produce auditable noises, but other than that, the only auditable noise transmitted is within the ships or objects themselves, and not across the vacuum of space. The first season of Star Trek got this right, but even the makers of that show eventually opted for the excitement of noisy explosions.
2. Massive fireball explosions do not occur in the vacuum of space, even when oxygen is involved. How is this known? Well, although Apollo 13 crew members did not see their service module oxygen tank explode, it certainly didn’t rip through their vessel in a fireball when it did blow. That incident may suggest it’s pretty hard to blow-up even flimsiest objects in space because the vacuum outside the object creates the path of least resistance for any force being exerted on the object. That’s my own thought on the matter. But the fact is, the vacuum outside the ship does cause any explosion to dissipate so rapidly, no fireball would have a chance to form.
3. When a person is ejected into space without protection, they will not simply explode from the pressure of their body. I’ve only seen two movies get this right: 2001: Space Odyssey and (believe it or not) Airplane II. The human body doesn’t have nearly enough pressure built up within it to spontaneously explode when going from normal atmosphere to vacuum. What would happen is that the person would suffer lose of consciousness from lack of oxygen to the brain, get the bends and prolly actually begin to die only after a couple of minutes. A couple of incidents have already occurred that support these conclusions, where either a whole person or an area of the body was exposed to a vacuum environment.
Sources: Basic High School curriculum (LOL), http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/waw/mad/mad12.html, http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=8, http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html, and the Apollo 13 “historical records”.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Anudder weekend of fun :)
I enjoyed getting to spend an evening with Miriam out last Friday. We had dinner at Viva Sol in Mountain View, as we have so many times in the past. Cuz of the season, we didn’t get to dine outside though. Afterwards, we ended up a Zucca’s in downtown Mountain View and met several interesting characters. We met two owners of several other local establishments. They were very entertaining along with Zucca’s owners too, of course. Later, a regular showed up and started going on about how the U.S. is going to be beat by China. Kinda funny. He’s arguments were that of a drunk, and were a bit outdated. Anyways, Miriam and I eventually settled at a table with Zucca’s owners for awhile before calling it a night.
Allie and I meet up on Saturday to go over to her boss’s house for a wine tasting tour in the Livermore area. There was ten of us total. We had great fun at two wineries. I can’t remember the names of either of them right now, and prolly for good reason. hehe At the first place, we got a sampling of 8 wines. The winery was set in a relatively beautiful area, save for the growing city over the hill, and the trailer park at the bottom. The wine was good, but nothing that really impressed me. The second place was a smaller operation with organic fields. Are group was too big to keep in the serving area, so we eventually ended up at large a large table in the outdoors area. The afternoon waned to the likes of sheep jokes and playfully harassing the hostess (mostly with sheep jokes). This was prolly the best day I’ve had in quite some time.
Allie and I meet up on Saturday to go over to her boss’s house for a wine tasting tour in the Livermore area. There was ten of us total. We had great fun at two wineries. I can’t remember the names of either of them right now, and prolly for good reason. hehe At the first place, we got a sampling of 8 wines. The winery was set in a relatively beautiful area, save for the growing city over the hill, and the trailer park at the bottom. The wine was good, but nothing that really impressed me. The second place was a smaller operation with organic fields. Are group was too big to keep in the serving area, so we eventually ended up at large a large table in the outdoors area. The afternoon waned to the likes of sheep jokes and playfully harassing the hostess (mostly with sheep jokes). This was prolly the best day I’ve had in quite some time.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Weekend Fun of Sorts and such
Well, a very relaxing weekend both started off extremely hectically and was very busy for Allie who took care of in town stuff for me while I was away. Thank you, Allie. ::muah:: So, there's like repair work that needed to be done to my apartment right away due to a leak in the pipes in the wall. Well, I was going away for the weekend to Seattle to visit Dave and his g/f. There was no way I was going to be able to stick around the apartment. Luckily, my g/f stepped up and took care of everything for me. This allowed me to have a relaxing weekend. Needless to say, I owe her big time. :)
So, in Seattle, Dave and I hung out and did some exploring around town. The Seahawks where playing in the Superbowl on Sunday, so the whole area had Superbowl fever. (This is the first time the Seahawks made it to the Superbowl.) He showed up his big new office to me. We checked out a couple of new restaurants (new to us). On Friday night, we accidentally ended up in an area of town I know, and I was like, "Turn left here. There's a good sushi place around the corner." It was funny that I was taking Dave and his g/f to a restaurant when it was them who was trying to take me out. lol
Sunday, his g/f had a good idea. We headed over the Gig harbor to rent a boat. The day was sunny and fairly warm. Perfect weather. Well, because of the Superbowl fever, none of the boat rental places were closed. The bastards. Oh well, we had a good lunch at a nearby restaurant. So basically the point of the trip for to find new restaurants. lol
When I got back, I found that Allie took care of all the stuff that needed to be done and had done my laundry too. I'm very lucky. Oh, and the news I went up to tell Dave?
Allie and I are engaged.
So, in Seattle, Dave and I hung out and did some exploring around town. The Seahawks where playing in the Superbowl on Sunday, so the whole area had Superbowl fever. (This is the first time the Seahawks made it to the Superbowl.) He showed up his big new office to me. We checked out a couple of new restaurants (new to us). On Friday night, we accidentally ended up in an area of town I know, and I was like, "Turn left here. There's a good sushi place around the corner." It was funny that I was taking Dave and his g/f to a restaurant when it was them who was trying to take me out. lol
Sunday, his g/f had a good idea. We headed over the Gig harbor to rent a boat. The day was sunny and fairly warm. Perfect weather. Well, because of the Superbowl fever, none of the boat rental places were closed. The bastards. Oh well, we had a good lunch at a nearby restaurant. So basically the point of the trip for to find new restaurants. lol
When I got back, I found that Allie took care of all the stuff that needed to be done and had done my laundry too. I'm very lucky. Oh, and the news I went up to tell Dave?
Allie and I are engaged.
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