Rants

I get pissed sometimes. Time to Rant!

GREEN AND MEAN

Life, Rants

I just read an article about hydrid/alternative fuels that actually had me trying to sell my car so that I could buy diesel. It’s about Johnathan Goodwin a “car hacker” who can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental among other feats. He even chose the anti-environmental poster-car, the Hummer H3, for his next conversion project. What’s he doing with it? He dropped in a 60,000 rpm turbine engine to power the generator that’ll  recharge a set of “supercapacitor” batteries that in turn power the electric engine. The result?

A 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!

The real impact to me is that he’s doing this with existing technology. He’s not waiting on parts or technology to be developed. He’s in his garage tinkering, making mistakes, making guesses, but most importantly making progress. This is a quote from the article talking about the Impala that he did for the MTV show “Pimp My Ride”

The show chose a ’65 Chevy Impala, and when the conversion was done, he’d doubled its mileage to 25 mpg and increased its pull from 250 to 800 horsepower. As a stunt, MTV drag-raced the Impala against a Lamborghini on California’s Pomona Raceway. “The Impala blew the Lamborghini away,”

FastCompany article

DAMN!

In honor of the Daily Download

Life, Rants

Before I worked here I was uncomfortable pooping in a public bathroom. I think everybody is a little. You can’t spread out like at home, theres no reading material, and of course theres somebody else about 2 feet away doing the exact same thing.

I was afraid to make any noise. Now I realize that its like prision in there. You have to come in and stake your claim. Make that toilet you’re bitch, or you will become its bitch.

That’s what happened today. Don’t know if it was the JBCs (Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers) from last night, the caramel scone from this morning, or the gyro from lunch but I was back in the bathroom for the 3rd time today. The first two rounds had gone according to plan. So like a heavyweight fighter I swaggered back into the ring for a third time. No audience at first, but then the challenger entered. 8 thought this was going to be easy when I heard the crinkle of paper ass gasket. I let loose a satisfying barrage. Then waited for the challenger.

Then I heard it…

It sounded like he had just dropped a hard sided suitcase filled with bananas and they all spilled out. I heard a finishing grunt and knew I’d been beaten. I sat there until he triumphantly strode out of the stall,washed his hands,and Left. I will tell my children “I have seen the shoes of a legend and they are reasonably priced black leather”

The Daily Download

Later!

Update Albo still a douche. Rust also douche.

Life, Rants

Washington Post Article

A quote from Albo

“My job as a delegate is to make people slow down and build some roads,” Albo said. “This bill does both.”

No dumbass, you can’t do both. The intake of money comes from the fact that people aren’t slowing down and thus have to pay your insane fine.

Also.

In Virginia, the fee can be paid over three years. After the first third is paid at the courthouse, the other two are to be billed by the state Department of Motor Vehicles. DMV officials have not determined how that will work, a spokeswoman said.

So this law goes into effect in 7 days and you haven’t even worked out the payment details? Stinks like you snuck this into a larger bill because there’s no way this would pass on its own. OH WHAT’S THAT? You tried to pass this bill before and it didn’t work. I love politics!

OH WAIT, I fucking hate politics.

Still pissed off…

Starbucks… for 2.50 can I please get the good stuff?

Life, Rants

Why is it that every other day my coffee kind of sucks? I pretty much get the same thing every day. I’ve switched from a Venti sugar-free vanilla coffee to a grande sugar-free vanilla americano. But it seems like sometimes they forget the syrup or something. They never forget to charge me, they always remember that. But after I take a few sips I realize that it’s just plain, but by that time I’m already on the elevator.

Sneaky bastards they are.

Later!

Vegans… an Argument You Can’t Win.

Life, Rants

Every once in a while I try to argue with people. These people are usually much more adept at arguing than me and I usually just give up. They think they’ve won, but in reality they just care more about their stupid problem than I do.

Vegans seem to love to talk about being vegan. (I’m a 5th level vegan, I dont eat anything that casts a shadow) I have no problem with a person being against the inhumane treatment of animals. Dog and Cats especially. I do think that some of the meat industry disgusting and there should be tighter regulations (thank you Fast Food Nation). But here’s the problem, we eat meat. Say… 90% of Americans are omnivores, off the top of my head thats about 270ish million people. How can you provide meat for that amount of people and not have some kind of large scale meat industry that keeps the meat movin? We’re really in a no win situation here, either eat, or be nice to the cows/chickens/etc.

What got me started on this is that I just read an article about a little girl (6weeks) who died because her parents were vegan and they starved her to death. Hopefully they will get some deserved punishment. Here’s a link to an Op-Ed piece in the New Your Times that says the rest of what I want to say… because I’m tired of arguing about it.
My favorite line of the article:

There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.

Later!

Because everything is a crime somewhere.

Life, Rants

The article is about a man being arrested for using a cafe’s *FREE* wifi signal from his car. FREE. Not just unsecured, but FREE. At the end of the day he doesn’t do jail time and his record is clean. But he did have to pay $400 and do 40 hours of community service… I would be pissed. Hell of a price to pay for checking your email.

The article contains this gem of a quote from the arresting officer.

“I had a feeling a law was being broken, but I didn’t know exactly what,” Sparta police chief Andrew Milanowski told the TV station.

via Ars Technica