shrink, I want to kill

I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill.














Bono meets Pentagon chief to discuss poverty

the state of my blog

a few weeks back I was surprised to find that industrious little high school math students came to my blog seeking information on how to use a TI-86. well, things have gotten weirder. here are a few of the more interesting searches that have brought people to my illustrious blog this week:

1. "stansfield tires" (I guess that's not too surprising, but why would someone actually seeking tires check out my blog?)
2. "wooden nickels"
3. "henry miller FEMA trailers" (at first I thought, what in the good green earth does henry Miller have to do with FEMA trailers? But then I googled it and discovered that the famous writer shares his name with a FEMA lawyer - who I can't ever recall blogging about, but whatever...)

and my personal favorite:

4. "how to write a apologize letter for drinking beer in school"

well, my friend, I hope reading my humble blog somehow helped you write a well-received apologize letter. my advice: perfect grammar will get you nowhere, so don't worry about that, but stay in school anyways. well at least high school. just don't go to grad school - it sucks, and even drinking beer during class doesn't make it more fun.

eduardo kingman

I saw this picture on a Bolivian blog (yeah, I'm all about working hard today) and it reminded me of Guayasamin (see below). I looked it up, and lo and behold, the painter is also Ecuadorian.















makes me feel like a huge jerk, but still, it's pretty cool.

Martin Luther King III's letter to John Edwards

From the Below Boston blog...

January 20, 2008

The Honorable John R. Edwards
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Dear Senator Edwards:

It was good meeting with you yesterday and discussing my father's legacy. On the day when the nation will honor my father, I wanted to follow up with a personal note.

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of back and forth in the political arena over my father's legacy. It is a commentary on the breadth and depth of his impact that so many people want to claim his legacy. I am concerned that we do not blur the lines and obscure the truth about what he stood for: speaking up for justice for those who have no voice.

I appreciate that on the major issues of health care, the environment, and the economy, you have framed the issues for what they are - a struggle for justice. And, you have almost single-handedly made poverty an issue in this election.

You know as well as anyone that the 37 million people living in poverty have no voice in our system. They don't have lobbyists in Washington and they don't get to go to lunch with members of Congress. Speaking up for them is not politically convenient. But, it is the right thing to do.

I am disturbed by how little attention the topic of economic justice has received during this campaign. I want to challenge all candidates to follow your lead, and speak up loudly and forcefully on the issue of economic justice in America.

From our conversation yesterday, I know this is personal for you. I know you know what it means to come from nothing. I know you know what it means to get the opportunities you need to build a better life. And, I know you know that injustice is alive and well in America, because millions of people will never get the same opportunities you had.

I believe that now, more than ever, we need a leader who wakes up every morning with the knowledge of that injustice in the forefront of their minds, and who knows that when we commit ourselves to a cause as a nation, we can make major strides in our own lifetimes. My father was not driven by an illusory vision of a perfect society. He was driven by the certain knowledge that when people of good faith and strong principles commit to making things better, we can change hearts, we can change minds, and we can change lives.

So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father's words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.

Sincerely,

Martin Luther King III

allow me to correct myself:

contrary to what I was saying the other night, the UMass Lowell men's ice hockey team is Division I. In addition to being Division I, they are apparently really really awesome and currently ranked 4th in Hockey East. So my apologies to anyone who was actually listening to me when I was making shit up about hockey. Remember, I'm the one who didn't know what the C in AFC stood for. So when it comes to sports, don't listen to me unless I'm talking about the infield fly rule.

ode to stansfield tire

It's not every day I'm happy about customer service - just thinking about my experiences with Verizon and Bank of America gives me tiny little heart attacks. It's even less often I'm satisfied with the experience of getting my car fixed. But the dudes at Stansfield Tire have made my heart grow three sizes today.

I happened upon Stansfield Tire about two years ago when I moved into the neighborhood. I had previously been having my car serviced at the Source of All Worldly Evil, so I was pretty psyched the first time I went to Stansfield Tire and discovered that I don't have to pay $600 to find out that nothing's wrong with my car (or that every single solitary thing that has ever been wrong with me car is in fact, my own fault/"due to wear and tear"/not covered by my warranty. EFF YOU, IRA!)

So, back to the story here... Today I had driven to work in four-wheel drive, and on the ride home I put the car back into two-wheel drive. When I took my first left-hand turn of the trip, I heard a really loud, really disturbing pop/thud coming from my back driver's side wheel. I drove out of my way to make sure I had to take both a sharp right and a sharp left, and the noise happened only when I made a left. Plus the car had started to make a sinister groaning sound when I was going straight. I've always had some issues getting my car to switch between four- and two-wheel drive, but this time, none of my old standby tricks were working.

So I pulled into a gas station and called my friends at Stansfield Tire to see if they could take a quick look at my car before the end of the day. The guy who answered the phone proceeded to ask me a series of questions, analyze my problem over the phone and talk me through fixing it. In the time it took him to do this (quite a while), he could have told me to come in and made me pay an hour's labor. I also have to mention that he had no idea who I was, that I was a regular customer, or any of that. He was just being nice. Un. be. lievable.

In the end, what he told me to do (put it in reverse and back up 30 feet, some other crap I don't remember) worked like a charm and I didn't have to take the car in. On its own, this episode probably isn't that exciting or groundbreaking. But I've been this satisfied every single time I've dealt with these guys, with the exception of one kind of fatherly lecture ("It's an oil change every THREE thousand miles, young lady. Not eight thousand miles, not nine thousand miles.") Their nice service and lack of desire to rob me blind are just so refreshing I feel like shouting it from the rooftops. And whatnot.

So in the immortal words of Ice Cube, go to Stansfield Tire for all your tire and car repair needs.

i'm not an engineer

but I do spend 20 hours a week having my intelligence insulted by engineers, so when I found Cooking for Engineers, I was expecting a useless collection of gross recipes written in a condescending, unintelligible manner. I should rephrase that - I was hoping it would be like that, so I'd have an excuse to call engineers useless, gross, condescending, and unintelligible.

Oh look, I just did it anyways!

But I digress. Cooking for Engineers is actually a super awesome and incredibly super website. Some of the recipes are weird chemical experiments, mock apple pie and the like. But most of the recipes are good, plus there are lots of pictures, plenty of step by step information for the more difficult stuff, and interesting explanations of the science behind cooking and baking phenomena. Check it out next time you're at work - especially if you work with engineers, who may walk by, spot a chart like this, and think you're actually working:

:

Material	Thermal diffusivity
Copper	120 * 10-6 m2/s
Aluminum	100 * 10-6 m2/s
Cast Iron	22 * 10-6 m2/s
Carbon Steel	14 * 10-6 m2/s
Stainless Steel	4.3 * 10-6 m2/s

who knew?