A Horrible Choice

Troy asks this question. A guy I knew and hung with in the early 90s was in a motorcycle accident and his leg was badly injured. He went through surgeries and agonizing physical therapy and he eventually lost his leg anyway. I think in a similar situation I would opt for the amputation and get on with my life as soon as possible.

Yahoo Developer Virus

For a couple of weeks at home I was having trouble with a virus that is described as the Yahoo Developer YQL Console virus. What happens was that every time I tried to do a Google search I got kicked over to the site that read Yahoo Developer. It took over my laptop and slowed everything down. I used the steps set out by this Metafilter user and that helped up to a certain point. The virus would go away but return. What I learned through more searching was that I needed to do all those steps and also reinstall the firmware on my router. I think the virus was living on my router. After I ran all the antivirus software and resinstalled the firmware on the router the virus went away and has not returned for a few months. I didn't see much on the message boards that addressed that so here is my little contribution to world peace.

Hollywood Marines

This is me and Cale in either 1989 or 1990. I think we are at an outdoor festival in Oceanside, CA. We were obviously spending a lot of time at the beach at this time.

Annual Trip to Darlington

Here it is Mothers Day weekend and Jeff and I met in Darlington so we could go to the NASCAR Bojangles Southern 500.

I didn't take that many pictures of the race itself this year. A night race from high in the grandstands makes it hard to really get good shots of the cars. Besides, walking around and taking pictures of the fans is more fun.

We did get a funny story out of the trip. After the race we were back at our campsite and after a few minutes of sitting around and talking I noticed there was a person in our tent sitting on my air mattress. It was one of the campers from the site next to ours. I said to the guy, "Hey man, you're in the wrong tent."

He said, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I said, "pretty sure."

He was really, really, really drunk and more than a little confused but, at least, he was't belligerent.

Jeff said, "Here buddy, let us help you up."

He offered us his hands and we walked him over to the campsite next to ours and sat him in a chair there. We headed back over to our campsite and had a good laugh. About a minute later he lurched to his feet and walked back into our tent and sat down on my air mattress. We laughed some more and pulled the tent flap back and I said, "Hey man, you're in the wrong tent."

He was shocked. "I am?" he asked. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I said, "we're sure."

We walked him back over to his campsite. This time I noticed that there was someone in his tent. I pulled that flap back and said, "Hey, does this guy belong to you?"

His friend laughed and said, "Yeah." We pushed drunky into the tent and went back to our campsite and that was the end of that.

The next morning I saw our friend sitting in a chair at his campsite and I walked over and said, "Hey, we had to kick you out of our tent last night."

He looked confused and I could see him thinking real hard and it hit him, "Oh, yeah. Sorry about that."

I said, "No big deal, you were't being a dick or anything, it was funny."

Not as good as the story about the drunk women swearing at her husband during my first trip to Darlington but it's still a good Darlington story.

A few photos

A rare rat tail


One of those giant Budweiser horses


Ryan Newman hanging around by the giant horses


The center square of Darlington bingo, the rebel flag bikini top


Joey Logano signing autographs at his souvenir trailer


A blind man and three young ladies


South Carolina state trooper making sure drunk pedestrians don't get run over by drunk drivers


Three officers watching to see which rich person climbs out of a recently landed helicopter


Many people, including us, did enthusiastically "proceed to party."


This is Jeff


The same panorama I took last and the year before from our seats. For this reason alone I wouldn't mind new seats but the view right here at the entrance to pit road is too good to pass up.


I like this picture I took down on the concourse during the race. I posted it on Instagram


This is a short video of the cars going into turn three shortly after a restart so the cars are still bunched up.


Darlington, always fun. Always a two-day hangover.

Donald Rumsfeld has Balls the Size of Pluto

So, the man who planned the Iraq war with only one strategy, a strategy that "fit their hopes and what they wanted to be the case" said this last night on Hannity.

"HANNITY: We will have you on specifically to do a lot of talking about that. Why the mysterious reluctance and resistance? Look at that, he was on two weeks later on "The View". He went that day and spoke to the United Nations and still is blaming a video that we all know is a lie

RUMSFELD: I can't imagine how a person could stand up there when everyone involved knew it was a terrorist attack. It was the anniversary of 9/11. The people were not demonstrators. They were well-armed. And, the idea that it was somehow related to a YouTube video and that, that narrative kept being promoted, I suppose it's because it fit their hopes and what they wanted to be the case." Is he that self unaware or intentionally lying or just stupid? I am at a loss.

Ask MRN

At the race at Darlington on Saturday I was listening to the broadcast by MRN, the Motor Racing Network. I like listening to them, they do a good job. Around 9pm it was announced that if you had a question about the race you could post a question to Twitter using the hastag #askmrn. Being a smart ass I sent out a tweet and received a reply.:

@zzazazz no

— Motor Racing Network (@MRNRadio) May 12, 2013

My battery was running low so I didn't see the reply until the next morning. It gave me a good laugh.

Lawn

A few days ago when it was sunny I got to lay in the grass.


The grass



The doofus in the grass