Monthly Archive for August, 2013

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My Minivan Is Faster Than Your Minivan?

Wherever you are in the world, there is someone in an Acura MDX who is in a rush to get somewhere.  If you arrive at a red traffic light and there is an MDX alongside you, you can bet that when the light goes green, she/he will floor it to get in front of you in your lane, regardless of whether yours is the fast or slow lane.  It must be out of some feeling of inadequacy for thinking they left the dealer with a performance crossover like a Infiniti FX or BMW X5 that are built on RWD sport sedan underpinnings, but discover that they bought something built on a FWD Honda minivan platform.

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Smart-ass

I have yet to see someone driving a Smart who doesn’t drive like a pompous ass-hat.  If they have the Brabus styling package (no performance difference), or have sticker-tuned their car with AMG emblems from some other vehicle, then doubly so!

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Still Cannot Find

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Wtf, finally made it, 10:00, and I still don’t know where my mind went. A little sprinkle greeted me, breeze is weak but it’s not so hot in the shade up here. I hauled all this gear up here so I’ll try some Les Stroud and take some video of myself on the trails.

Lost mind

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I don’t know what insane bug got in my butt. I’m sitting here on the sidewalk 3/4 of the way up St. Louis Heights at 9:40am on a Saturday! I took the FRS in for service for some issues so I decided to ride my bike up St Louis. Geared up with all my video stuff. It’s quite beautiful weather, but on the flip side hot. The bus passed me when I was at the bottom of the hill, I should have caught it.

Random Garbage Headset

Really?  Is there anything correct here?  The top overlocknut is cross-threaded.  The lower of the two keyed washers is turned and jammed on the threads so the key isn’t in the groove.  The second (second?!?!) overlocknut spins and neither tightens nor loosens, since the threads have been stripped on the steerer.  The giant spacer is just a piece of random tubing and is not square on top or bottom.

…oh, and the headset is loose.

2013 Summer Anime

It’s been over several weeks since the start of the new anime season in Japan, so a lot of the shows are pretty far along.  It’s a little late, but here are some reviews of current properties if you haven’t started watching yet and need a helping hand trying to pick what to watch.  They’re not in any specific order:

Kiniro no Mosaic – when it was first announced, I was somewhat interested in this title, but after watching the first episode, the inevitable end was fairly obvious. The Japanese character being heavily Westernized and the foreign character being well-versed in Japanese culture schtick has been done numerous times before, but usually as an aside, not as a core interaction device. I’m sure we won’t see anything new this time around. The character design is cute and the character animation is above average. The backgrounds are very good. By nature of two of the characters being from England, the English language is naturally going to be encountered. They got reasonably close grammatically, though it is still a little “Speed Racer” awkward. The thing that ruins it is the accenting of words within the sentences is all off. At least it will probably be a somewhat entertaining ride.  B-

Root – I have top  say I was pretty let down, I was looking forward to this, but it fell pretty flat for me. It isn’t terrible, it looks nice and can be entertaining, but the gags and humor are a little weak. Yes, the English is bad, although correct. But that’s something I’m used to and expect, although there has been a rare case of native English voices, but the script they read from is filled with odd english. It just occurred to me, they really should be speaking the Queens English. Wonder what that would sound like! C+

Continue reading ‘2013 Summer Anime’

Got a Berg?

It had come up in conversation with our resident Kauai expat this Goteborg musubi. What’s that, we all asked? Seems to be a Kauai thing, SPAM wasn’t good enough for them. They had to get all hoity toity and use some exotic euro preserved meat. Although what you find will most likely be a Hormel product, the same as SPAM. On some quick investigation it turns out that the sausage is a dry salami type sausage from Sweden. Who knows exactly how/when it came to be a local musubi ingredient, just as SPAM has. Perhaps as consequence of the size of the slices, or more likely just because the Atooi wanted to different, the meat is placed on the bottom of the musubi as opposed to the traditional SPAM on top. Continue reading ‘Got a Berg?’

Crowded

I never saw so many people out at the Ditch.

When we met at the trailhead on Sunday morning for a quick spin, the parking area was full. Chris wondered if Xterra or something was coming up, though we didn’t see anyone who really fit the flailing triathlete profile out on the trail. Almost immediately, a lady with a helmet came out through the gate. She didn’t have a bike, which confused me. Was she just a clumsy hiker? Later as we were heading in, she went in to retrieve her bike that she had left just inside the opening in the fence. Her riding companion had finally arrived at the bottom of the trail and was expousing her learned wisdom on the Maui shark attack victim from Germany. Just as we were starting the climb, a pleasant lady sand her two pleasant dogs also began the trail. Continue reading ‘Crowded’

Perseids Denied

The weather last night at the peak of the Perseid meteor shower was actually nice for a change.  Went out at midnight but didn’t see anything.  It’s not exactly a low-light environment in my neighborhood: The rental across the street had all the lights going.  I woke up at three to go and look again, but it had clouded in.  I found a place where the neighbor’s lights (still going full-blast at three!  This is great during termite season as all the critters go over there) weren’t burning my retinas, but after fifteen minutes I went inside to avoid waking up in the driveway in the morning at sunrise covered in dew… and mosquito bites.

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Target

Dang, does my car have one of the Glen Larson targets painted on it? It’s gotten bird poop bombed the last two days, and I don’t park under any trees or power lines! Who squeezed the pigeon over my hood?
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