Still Alive!

The party went surprisingly better than I thought. Thank God. Only double the normal number of people showed up vs. quintuple. Now I'm done.

In Case You Missed It

Greece is o-fishully in default on their sovereign debt. Credit default triggers swaps, and the big investors lose nothing, much. Those of you not reading Mish will want to know (because nobody else is saying) it: Greece is about to fall out of the Euro zone. The Euro was supposed to be a permanent institution based on strong national economies as members.

Right about now would be a bad time to be traveling to Greece, unless you don't mind a bit of adventure.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men Mothers

#3 is 4 years old. My Darling Wife wanted the first birthday party he has a chance of remembering to be a big one, so she invited a bunch of people. Usually most people won't come. This time instead of 25% we're looking a lot closer to 75%. We're expecting something like 50 people, half of them children, and our house is small . . . and it's raining and will be tomorrow, and muddy besides.

Previous plan: turn them out into the backyard. Current plan: ???

Feel free to pray for us. This is going to be crowded at best.

Madness at Work!

Fat Boi Cain't Be Faded! Edition

During a break, IT Buddy was snatching LB's remote controlled helicopter out of the air and walking around with it instead of letting it go. He got tired of LB's verbal abuse, so IT Buddy came and snatched my helicopter out of the air instead. I was having none of it. I went and grabbed him around his neck with my right arm, but he wouldn't let go. I put my right leg behind his and tried to throw him but it didn't work. We went down but he was so heavy I couldn't get any liftoff to toss him over my hip! He slipped out of my grasp while I was busy being surprised that I couldn't throw him.



He popped up and I did too, then I told him (for the 20th time already) to let go of my baby helicpter. Finally he let go. Then I complained to LB that I couldn't flip IT Buddy because he was too heavy. He said "I know, I hurt my back picking him up." LB gives piggyback rides when IT Buddy jumps him from behind and LB just keeps walking. In 8 years of piggyback rides, LB says, IT Buddy has never been this heavy.

All in good fun. This is what we call "rasslin'". Ladies, this is what happens when you are not around to scold us. Teehee!



But, says LB, you should have seen what went on here before IT Buddy went on antidepressants and we were an even smaller, even funner company. On the other hand, I guess it's better to be a little bigger and slightly less free at work . . . the OLD IT Buddy (not this IT Buddy!) used to show up and watch porn all day on the company computer network. Sometimes he was even sober! *rimshot*

Now that I think of it, I guess that explains why we always lost internet access for about an hour pretty much every afternoon. Wow.

Small company, big fun . . . but . . . with in reason!

Barbaric Treatment of Prisoners . . . Okay or Not?

I'm not sure how to feel about this one. Connecticut has a prohibition against prisoners committing suicide. They also mandate that jailers must care for the health of their prisoners. On the other hand, who is anyone to force feed another adult, if he be on a hunger strike in protest of his ill treatment? Well, their supreme Court just said the jailers are those anyones. It is (for now) okay for prisoners in CT to be restrained and force-fed against their will. This is barbaric, I freely grant. But in the case of a prisoner whose well-being the State must maintain,

is it acceptable?

A Hedge Against Inflation

While searching for something else, I found an eBay auction for the famous Nikon 58mm f/1.2 Noct-Nikkor. It was bid up over $3400. With 34 bids. Usually when I hear of $$$$ price for a lens, I think of a fast, long supertelephoto. But this is a horse of a different color.

Nikon lenses: the good ones hold their value. The really good ones increase in value.

George Bush Strikes Again!

The Internet was down at our house yesterday.



I guess it's just as well . . . I was busy trying to get the childrens' computers going for school next year. Does that count as a project, or as work?

Sorry, That's Just Crazy

Some very wide angle lenses you sometimes hear jokes about how you need to watch how you hold the camera so you don't get your hand in the shot. But I was browsing around Ken Rockwell's site just now and here's a lens that literally takes pictures of itself!

(as well as everything else within a 185 degree field of view)

Crazy.

On This Day In History...

50 years ago today: A black man showed up all the white boys. There were 36 professional black basketball players. Wilt Chamberlain scored against all those honkies, then he did it again, and again, and again, and again, and again . . . 100 points in a single game. Against a team of professional players. They quintuple teamed on him even, and it didn't work.

Wow. It must have been amazing to see him run the court, shoot, dunk, etc. But you don't get to see it.

The other day, NP, who had never thought about it before was shocked to realize that there is no audio recording of the voice of President Lincoln. Well, they didn't film everything in the 1960s either, and the only recording of this basketball game is a low-fi audio recording of the fourth quarter.

The guy who was keeping the statistics for the game wrote on a sheet of paper and gave it to Chamberlain. This is as close as you get to video:

You Are Not Alone

Everyone seems content to chalk up to natural causes the death of Andrew Breitbart. I would be happy to know that it was a natural death. It would be easy to believe, seeing he wasn't the healthiest man alive.

But still, of all the men in America he must be high on the list of people to die of "natural causes" before fulfilling a promise to release video that would sink Obama's reelection campaign. Here's hoping, for the sake of the Republic, that he should have just stayed home from the bar that night.