My new goal is to make myself a decent machete. You just can't buy one in this country. You either get a hunting knife (too small) or a bushwhacking machete that is too long and thin to do anything but cut tall grass. And if I could find a nice strong steel blade 16 inches long, I'm sure it would cost too much. A piece or spring steel from the junkyard, a few hours with a bandsaw and a grinder, and some tempering goodness with the grill should do it.

Desperate Housewives

Sunday:
MySonAnonymous (11:40:28 PM): Why do you watch Desperate Houswives?
MySonAnonymous (11:40:35 PM): Seems a little, I don't know, gay.
Monday:
MySonAnonymous(9:00:22 AM): Dude, this show sucks so much ass.
MySonAnonymous(9:00:27 AM): What's wrong with you?
MySonAnonymous(9:00:32 AM): Did ou lose your balls?
desperado1725 (9:07:32 AM): which episode did you watch?
MySonAnonymous(9:07:40 AM): The first one.
MySonAnonymous(9:07:55 AM): Oh wait, she just started the curtains on fire.
MySonAnonymous(9:08:01 AM): Now that is funny.
Tuesday:
MySonAnonymous (7:45:40 PM): Bob, do you have episode six of DH?
MySonAnonymous (7:45:42 PM): I'm missing it.
...
desperado1725 (7:46:33 PM): you are on 6?
MySonAnonymous (7:46:38 PM): Yeah.
desperado1725 (7:46:40 PM): hahahahahah
...
MySonAnonymous (7:47:01 PM): What's so funny, asshat.

Why is there urine on the toilet seat? How hard can it be to aim that thing? Women are often tormented by these questions, and even men sometimes are at a loss to explain why their urine sprays out of control. It's quite simple really. First of all, forceful urination, coupled with a high water level, is often enough to cause splashes that reach the seat. There's not much to be done about this, except trying to hit the back of the bowl just above the water level.

The more disturbing source of toilet seat urine is unexpected urine exit angle and/or multiple simultaneous trajectories, i.e. spray. These phenomena are typically short-lived, reverting to normal operation in less than a second, but not before leaving urine on the seat, tank, floor, or wall. It was after a particularly spectacular such incident that I finally realized the cause of this bane of civilized urination. The tip of the male urinary system can get fully or partially dried shut sometimes, for various reasons. Imagine a garden hose that is partially pinched shut at the end. The stream exits at a different angle or even in a spray. The solution is simply to make sure everything is opened up at the end before urinating. It has kept me incident-free for years now, and I hope it can help men everywhere to pee straight the first time, every time.

Well, I got my new "full spectrum" bulb today. It's on right now and it does actually look like daylight in my room. For $22 including shipping, I'm not sure how worth it it will be. Yet. Supposedly it makes you happier. Also today I tried the sun dried tomato flavor of alfredo sauce. There was mold under the lid, so I had to scoop the top layer into the trash, but the rest was good. My chicken brocolli alfredo is second to none.

I was thinking about dreams the other day, and this article I read which basically says that dreams aren't experienced as they happen, but are merely the result of our consciousness, upon waking up, interpretting the jumbled state of our short term memory resulting from REM sleep. This made me think of this one time when my brothers and I were helping each other to pass out by hyperventillating and then standing up really fast. Ya, stupid, but it worked for me, and when I woke up, I rememberred having this dream that lasted for hours, but I was only out for a few seconds. So, either our consciousness is capable of operating much faster when we're asleep, or it's not really operating at all. The latter makes more sense, seeing that sleep is, by definition, unconscious. I've also had lucid dreams though, where I know that I'm dreaming and can control my dreams. Of course that be the same thing, that I'm just interpretting my memory space that way.

This brings up a very interesting question about our memory "file formats." Most methods we have devised for representing information, take divx for instance, have strict rules that define "legal" files. If you scramble a divx file, it probably won't play, and if it does, won't be meaningful. But we can always make some kind of sense of our dreams. Our short term memory must use a language where every possible combination of the symbols is at least parsible, and usually meaningful. This would be very compact, unlike spoken languages or computer languages, which have many possible but meaningless combinations of symbols. And, the symbols of the representation must be very high level, more on the level of sentences or concepts. I think our sensory processing networks produce a kind of hash code for everything we encounter and "remember." When we see something, it gets processed and the result compared with the hashes in memory. That would explain why recognition is so much easier than recall, and why we have to look at a word written to tell how to spell it sometimes. That's my thoughts on that, but I'd welcome any input.

Texas Cops. You gotta love 'em. Disclaimer: the following account is not intended to describe real events. So I'm driving through Texas on my way back from California, I-40 is 2 lanes at this point, and sure enough, I see him too late, hiding in the tall Texas grass in the median. 85 in a 70, not too bad, but there he was with his lights on several cars behind me. When he got closer, I got in front of a big line of trucks and slipped him at a convenient exit. I hopped on the on-ramp only to see that the cop was heading back for me, going the wrong way. So he eventually pulled me over, but because he had lost sight of me, couldn't get me for speeding.
I got a warning for "unsafe lane change," written under a crossed out "speeding over 70." Ridiculous. The cop asked me all these questions, even checked my Student ID to make sure I wasn't lying about where I go to school. Then "Have you ever been arrested?" "No, I don't think so." "Really, because you have a record." "A what?" "Ya, receiving stolen property. You were charged but never arrested." "Excuse me? When was this?" "Well I don't know." "Well can you find out?" Radio traffic, then "2001, in New Hampshire." "Well Sir, I've never been in New Hampshire. " More Radio traffic, then "Umm, sorry, ya, that wasn't you." Ya, nice try officer. Well, OK, he did have me a bit worried for a minute.

Well, paragliding is the coolest thing ever. And San Francisco is one of the best places. To save cash I slept in my car near the launch site Friday and Saturday night. This was illegal, as a friendly officer was kind enough to point out at 3am Sunday morning. He then asked if I had any outstanding warrants. I said I didn't think so, but he should probably check. Seeing that I was obviously not from around there, he decided to let my violation of the city ordinance slide.
Here are the paragliding pics.

After paragliding on Sunday, I hit up Yosemite for a couple nights. It was beautiful. I saw 2 rattlesnakes, a deer, and lots of really friendly squirrels.

Here's the lovely granite scenery:


Here's the pool I swam in. The smooth rock above the pool was slippery enough with the water to allow sliding into the pool. Way too exciting.


Here I am relaxing in my hammock:


And here I am after my sunset one-way conversation with Almighty God, who pretended not to exist. Sure fooled me.