Terrorism is the problem and Michelle’s dad has the solution: arm senior citizens and send them over to Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda. The central concept is that retired people don’t worry as much about things like “time” and have the patience to look in every nook and cranny over there. They wouldn’t hesitate for a second to drop a grenade down Bin Laden’s shorts when they find him. Then they’d probably spank him and send him to his room. We refer to it as the “Old Fart Brigade”.
I have never really put much stock in this plan because a lot of older people complain about things like heat, and Afghanistan happens to be a desert. It might not only be a desert, but the U.S. Government makes it sound like it is, and I’m not one to be unpatriotic and question whether they’re right about that or not.
I was surprised today to see an article online that made me reconsider, though. Some dude armed with a tire iron tried to mug a senior citizen. What happened? Dude with the tire iron got served old school is what happened. That’s right. The old guy went all ninja on the mugger and relieved him of his weapon in a kung-fu maneuver that media outlets will need to hire the Matrix team to reenact for the Evening News tonight.
Amazingly, Police don’t recommend the Senior Ninja approach to everyone:
Groneman said Ferraro did “a good job” of disarming his would-be assailant, though he would not recommend other people attempt such a brazen act of self-defense.
That’s where the Police have it wrong. I’m guessing all old-timers have these skills. It’s a skill you learn by cold-chilling and thinking about “stuff”.
That old timer was amazingly spry and lucid. There might be something to the Old Fart Brigade after all.
Birthdays are awesome. But they have one inherent flaw: they only last one day. It ends up being a bittersweet experience because after a day of glorious self-centric celebration and indulgence, the next day is spent wallowing in the disappointment of having to pay attention to other people again.
Michelle and I discovered some time ago that things go much better when you spread the celebrating out over longer periods. Enter Birthweek and Birthmonth. The concept is simple enough: once you enter the month of your birth, you can officially begin celebrations under the umbrella of Birthmonth. Then, celebrations intensify during Birthweek. Birthweek is the week during the month that contains your actual Birthday. There is some leeway here, as the person of honor is allowed to choose the official start and end of Birthweek - the only stipulation being that Birthweek can only last seven days and has to contain the actual birthday. Of course, the festivities are most intense on your Birthday.
My birthday is in September, so I have the glorious honor of currently being in Birthmonth. Festivities started this past weekend. It’s the last weekend Michelle’s parents will be in town, so we celebrated my birthday early. Technically, we celebrated both Michelle’s and my birthdays because her parents won’t be in town for Michelle’s birthday, either. I’m going to ignore that. It is my Birthmonth, ergo, I get to ignore things like that.
We spent an awesome day Saturday in the city. We started with breakfast at Cafe Besalu in Ballard before heading over to South Lake Union to take an air tour of the Seattle area by waterplane. The weather was perfect and the trip was spectacular. After the plane ride, we headed up to Shilshore Marina and walked along the shore at Golden Garden Park. Finally, we headed over to Ray’s Boat House for dinner. We took advice from regulars and sat at the Boat House Cafe and ordered from the restaurant. The Cafe has outdoor seating on the rooftop patio, but the restaurant has a superior menu, so it’s the perfect situation. I think you would be hard-pressed to find a more glorious view than the one from our table. We were lucky enough to catch the sunset while we ate in almost perfectly clear weather.
We love this city.
Enjoy the photo album, but if you’re not interested in flipping though 95 photos, make sure you skip to the end and see the photos of the sunset; there really is no sunset like a sunset on the West Coast.
Well, it’s officially ready for public beta testing. I finished the DM Albums™ Plugin for WordPress, which is an embedded version of my online photo album tool called DM PhotoAlbums™. (DM PhotoAlbums™, along with my online file management system called DM FileManager™, will be ready for public beta testing in a few months’ time as well.)
I have been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and while it’s not like Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets, it is bad enough that when I get something stuck in my head it’s curtains until I finish it. In fact, Michelle experienced this while I have been working on this post:
Michelle: “Hey, Frank. You want a beer?”
Frank: *glare*
Honestly, who glares at their partner when being offered a beer? I need medication. But the beer will cover it for now. Vicious cycle.
Back to the point, I have no Earthly reason to build this plugin other than that it bothered me that I had links to photo albums in my posts which, if my readers are anything like me, don’t get clicked on. But I definitely want people to see the photos so having the photos in-line is the solution. And, because I’m I’m in the software development business, I am not about to use a service like Flikr for managing my photos. I want things the way I want them, not the way a service dictates I should want them. That feels very “Microsoft” to me.
The more detail-oriented (and dorkier) readers among you may have noticed that I’ve silently been testing my plugin in my blog. Instead of seeing the links to my photo albums (Photo Album: {link}), the photo albums are shown embedded in-line in the post, like this:
Nerd Alert: The rest of this post (after the jump) will not include any more English, and will consist entirely of GeekSpeak. But read on, it’s good for you.
It turns out the Dinosaurs were killed by Terrorist Asteroids. I haven’t assimilated all the information yet, but it appears the Asteroids were Militant Anti-Dinos who originated from the area between Mars and Jupiter known as “Space.” Much like modern strikes, it was a violent suicide attack:
An ancient collision between two mega-asteroids spawned the killer space rock that slammed into Earth and marked the beginning of the end for the dinosaurs, a new study claims.
Scientists think the celestial smash-up took place some 160 million years ago in the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Despite various internal memos warning them of the impending danger, the Dinosaurs never saw it coming since they were too busy spreading their policies across the globe and were convinced no Militant Asteroids would dare make such an audacious attack.
Scientists have been piecing the evidence together on this 160 million year old case using a process called “Advanced Science”. If this is anything like the approach the US Government took in the aftermath of the 911 attacks, it could be a while before Asteroidia is turned into a Democracy.
There are an awful lot of models that are required in order to come to the conclusion,” said Jay Melosh of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who was not involved in the current study.
And, quite frankly, it sounds like a lot of work to go through all that. I’m guessing only about 10% of people would understand the models, so I recommend they make up models that sound convincing but are too complicated to understand. Then 90% of people will believe them and that’s a lot better than real science can do.
Mr. Melosh seems to be taking my advice. Check out his closing comment:
“I don’t find any of them implausible and the conclusion seems to be plausible.” He added, “I don’t have any problems with the models, but they are models.
Yup. Jay has it all worked out. My work is done here.
fight Al Qaeda. The central concept is that retired people don’t worry as much about things like “time” and have the patience to look in every nook and cranny over there. They wouldn’t hesitate for a second to drop a grenade down Bin Laden’s shorts when they find him. Then they’d probably spank him and send him to his room. We refer to it as the “Old Fart Brigade”.
because after a day of glorious self-centric celebration and indulgence, the next day is spent wallowing in the disappointment of having to pay attention to other people again.
ed version of my online photo album tool called DM PhotoAlbums™. (DM PhotoAlbums™, along with my online file management system called DM FileManager™, will be ready for public beta testing in a few months’ time as well.)
were Militant Anti-Dinos who originated from the area between Mars and Jupiter known as “Space.” Much like modern strikes, it was a violent suicide attack:
