Lego barrage

I decided to get off my lazy butt and upload those LEGO pictures I've had hanging around. Head on over and check out my latest LEGO goodness!

For those even lazier than I, here is a taste:

You can have my garden when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers

A recent letter from the friendly neighborhood homeowners association:

On behalf of your association's Board of Directors, we are writing to advise you that your property may be in violation of the governing deed restrictions of the association which may be corrected as follows:

Upon receipt of this letter, you will need to remove your vegetable garden. This is a violation of Association Documents.
...
[emphasis mine]

Oh, yeah, you read it right. Remove my vegetable garden. Over my dead body.

In this day of pressing climate concerns, rising fuel and food prices and global eco-consciousness, with every other house in the neighborhood being foreclosed on or for rent, they're seriously going to try to get me to take out a vegetable garden? We're not talking about a tacky statue of a gnome (sorry gnome-lovers) or a pink flamingo on a stick. These are well maintained living plants providing food for my family. See here for some pics.

They're going to have a hell of a fight on their hands. I'm generally very non-confrontational. After my last house, I've deliberately avoided participating in the HOA. Now they're going to discover why you don't want to bring stupidity to my doorstep. Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

I'll post more when I'm not so pissed off and can establish a rational strategy.

Setting Priorities

We had my daughter's 2-year birthday party yesterday. In the middle of it, as I was showing off my garden, I dashed back inside and demanded the camera from my wife. You can get pictures of a cute, adorable two-year-old anytime. What you can't get is a shot of the awesome spider sitting in the bud of a sunflower! When I came back in I plugged the camera in to the TV and started flipping through all the pictures I'd taken the last few days of bugs. I was explaining (in my authoritative pseudo-expert way) what kind they were, whether they were beneficial to my garden, why they had the coloration they did, etc. One guest asked, "How do you know all this stuff about bugs?", to which I replied, "I read Insect Picture of the Day".

Props to David Brady for this awesome site and the inspiration he has created in me to go crawling around bravely photographing creepy-crawlies that make others scream like little girls.

Except for little girls. Or at least my little girl. The cries of joy, "Daddy, bug! 'pider, 'pider!", as she examines the tiny spiders running along the porch are just too adorable!

Post to del.icio.us | Digg this | Post to Furl

Tags: bugs, spiders, cuteness

Isn't this the 21st century?

So I called my city's Water Department and I was sitting through one of those interminable automated menu systems. You know, Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. Press 1 for blah, blah, blah. Anyway, while tapping my fingers, waiting to get to the menu selections, I hear If you have a rotary phone... . A rotary phone? Someone still has a rotary phone? Enough someones that the city felt the need to mention it in their recording? Who has a rotary phone still?!? Do they even make them anymore? Talk about backwards compatibility. My 5.5 year-old son doesn't even have a concept of a phone that you plug into a wall (we've cut the landline and gone all-cellular). To him all phones are called 'cell phones'. I don't think he even knows the iconic shape of a handset. He probably doesn't even know that the "ring" of a phone was called that because there were actuall bells that rung when a call came in.

<old-man-voice>Back in my day, we didn't have buttons, we spun a wheel to dial. You kids with your new-fangled buttons, you've got it easy. I've still got calluses from those wheels.</old-man-voice>

On a similar note, referencing the 21st century and all, where's my damn flying car? I was promised a flying car by the year 2000! I remember being in elementary school, calculating how old I would be in the year 2000 (26), and dreaming of never having to go to school again while driving my flying car.

Oh, well. It's not all bad. I've got a minivan.

Post to del.icio.us | Digg this | Post to Furl

Fucking idiots

I can't take it anymore. The mind-blowing stupidity present in this world has forced me to break my self-imposed silence on matters of religion to post about this. The death of George Carlin has stirred up all kinds of shit. Some people with much stronger stomachs than I have got perused some of the fundamentalist nutcases responses to his death. I tried. I tried to be open minded and see how the other half lives. And then I run across this kind of tripe. The signature at the bottom of the comment reveals the true mentality of these people.

A new commandment I give to you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. John 13:34

followed by the image of the Confederate battle flag.

WTF? Did I miss a turn somewhere? Someplace where the secessionist states didn't support slavery? How is that compatible with the noble principle of loving one another?

The stupid; it burns!!!

Props to ERV for pointing this out

Post to del.icio.us | Digg this | Post to Furl

A sad day for reason

It's a sad day. One of the best and funniest voices for reason is gone. George Carlin has died at the age of 71. Give 'em hell, George!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCz0-HY1TLU

Via Pharyngula

Post to del.icio.us | Digg this | Post to Furl

Dirty fingernails

So here is why my fingernails are dirty all the time and my neck is sunburned; I've been puttering around the garden. "You're a computer geek," you say, "what the hell are you doing outside, let alone digging in the dirt?" I can't help myself. I've become fascinated with growing things. After my experiment last year of a single tomato plant (that gave me about 30 tomatoes) and some herbs, I went at it full bore. Here are some of the results:


You can view the rest on my Flikr photostream


Post to del.icio.us | Digg this | Post to Furl