bike close call

I started riding my bike to work more, and its a somewhat perilous ride. At least, its become one as of last night. On the way home, a honda tried to turn right at an intersection right while beside me. It was technically the closest I’ve come to hitting a car ( less than 3″ ), but wasn’t too big of a deal. The driver drove off, I rode off, and the lady at the bus stop said “Oh my goodness!” Thank you, Shimano, for V-brakes.

In Bellingham, I was riding home one night after school, downhill, going ~30mph, and a person in a car kicked their door open very suddenly, and I cleared it by over a foot, but it was much scarier than yesterday’s incident. It might have been the speed, it might have been the car behind me, or it might have just been the fear of hitting a car door at 30mph.

Invented the Remix

There’s a great tutorial on making PDFs with PHP on WebMonkey. There’s aslo an annoying doubleclick ad for P Diddy’s new alubm “We Invented the Remix”. It isn’t so much that Puff Daddy annoys me, well, actually it is… but, the idiot rapper is now claiming he invented the remix? The fact that phonies like this idiot can make it prove that there are problems with both capitalism and darwinism. I just hope he fades out quickly.

Also on a musical note, the PDF article had a link to Disc-Cover, which will look up an album on the freedb and create an album cover for you in PDF, or whatever. Pretty cool programming. I can’t wait to try and print covers for all those “cover’s I lost”, as the programmer says.

cars make the world go round

Michelle and I went to look at station wagons this weekend. We were feeling the cabin fever after Barley’s surgery, so looked for any excuse to get out of the house. I was quite surprised when I was driving a Subaru Outback a few hours later. After looking for a while, one dealer mentioned that Subaru was going to release a “pickup” called the baja. Take a look, and you’ll see why I put pickup in quotes.

One the drive back, I wondered what cars would look like if everyone’s cars changed from what they are now to what kind of car those people should drive purely by their driving habits. Imagine how many Expeditions would turn into Geo Metros and such. My van would probably turn into a bike because I live only 3 miles from work. Its interesting to see what cars people pick for themselves. I guy I knew back in high school wanted a big dual-axel chevrolet. It was absurd, but if you picked cars by body type, he probably would have been a dually.

I like cars, but I shouldn’t.

Audio Books & worker productivity

I’ve been listening to Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets while working on the WebCT page. I’ve been surprisingly productive, partly because I’ve been so interested in the work I’ve been doing, but maybe there’s some productivity increasing apsect to listening to children’s fiction. Probably not, but I’m enjoying it anyway.

My friend and former roommate Ben is in town for a toxicology seminar. We’re going to meet him at Bridgeport for dinner. I hope he’s enjoying Portland.

Law School – 1 year down

Michelle finished her last final yesterday, and is now a 2L – That’s a way to say second year without having to spend any extra effort saying “second”. Remember, for Lawyers, time is money, and those extra letters cost an additional 30 cents for a high powered lawyer.

Last night we got together with a bunch of other happy 1 & 2Ls and had sushi before going downtown for a school sponsored show. They provided free drinks and food, and it was a cool scene, if somewhat loud for hundreds of L’s who were rejoicing together.

Honors
Michelle got an honors in her Legal Writing class. We’re so excited that everything we’ve said in the last 12 hours has had “honors” attached to it. …”can you turn out the light…with honors…”

Finals blues

Michelle has finals this week and next. Then she’ll be done with her first year of law school. I’m amazed that she’s still alive. She definately handled the work load better the second semester, and I guess that’s why people always refer to the first year as the worst. You just get used to the work.

Not to be out done, I also have a final. But its an open-note, open-book, open-group final. We can work with our groups. Maybe I won’t read the last two chapters.. Oh wait, I’m taking this class for the purpose of learning the material. The final also requires that we install a web server. I’m going to install apache, even though its “harder”. Just like I told the Qwest guy who tried to sell me DSL at lunch – Screw Microsoft.

Enjoy the weekend.

NASCAR for Dummies??

The other night, Scott, Sarah, Michelle and I were clowning around in Borders after dinner. I was walking back towards the computer books sections to see how little I know when I past by NASCAR for Dummies. I have to admit I felt a lot better after seeing that, because even though I don’t hardly know anything, I’ll never need that book.

I made a comment to Scott about the redundency in the title, and we both laughed out loud. Fortunately, no one was around to be offended. I just looked it up on Amazon.com and found that there were plenty of used copies for sale.

Well, I gotta go. I just got e-mail from an AOL user who can’t log in. They forgot to leave their name and what class they’re trying to access. I guess they assumed I could look up their profile, or buddy list or whatever.

Powerbait – for better memories

I was driving on I-5 to my Web Server class this morning. I saw a billboard for Powerbait, a fancy and potent fish bait, that said something like “make better memories”. The idea I guess is to use powerbait when fishing with your kids to improve your chances of catching fish, thus improving your time together. What struck me as funny was the concept of improving your children’s lives through super potent fish bait.

What struck me as funnier was a twist on the idea; fathers using drugs to make themselves Super Dads. Just imagine how cool your dad would appear if he was on PCP and was lifting up cars and no-one could restrain him. Imagine the playground talk.. “my dad tipped over a semi, then fought off 12 police officers..”

PCP – be the best parent you can.
Speed – be the most efficient mother you can.

anyway, the web server class was fun, like 8th grade computer class. Too bad we’re using IIS.

ESB like Fuller’s

I forgot to mention this; my last batch of beer was great. I made an ESB using a Redhook clone that I took some liberties with. It was great. I used White Labs Edinburgh Yeast, which gave it a more anglo-like flavor. I might be embellishing, but it really was of the quality of Fuller’s. I only wish it wasn’t gone. I’ll be keeping the recipe.

The batch was named Lefthook, here’s the label