Hey, who farted?

Ok obviously not much going on, a nice quiet Friday night.  I just finished a pretty big painting tonight so I'm kind of celebrating.  Yeah, it's not really big but 26" X 41" is a little above average for me.  I started it a couple years ago and the closet ate it for a while then I dragged it back out a few days ago and decided it needed to be finished off.  I tried to take a picture but I guess I need to do that in daylight, the flash tends to ruin it.  I'll get a better shot tomorrow outside and post it.  I just got this loaner comp to accept my printer which has the port for my camera flash card so now I can upload from my camera.  I still need my old files etc and a decent comp to set up a nice web page of all my art though.  I'm trying a bunch of different styles these days, this new painting isn't one of the new ones but it looks pretty cool.  Some day I hope to stumble across a style that works and people really go for it and I become rich enough to say "Fuck You" to the dumbasses and be able to retreat into a house in the middle of 500 acres of woods, swamps and hills with moats and machine gun nests and electrified fences and razor wire.

On a lighter, less self-centered side of the near future, the good news is that the space program might actually be something to look forward to after all...  Obama is putting a bill through that looks like it's going to pass, one that insures that we not only get at least one more shuttle flight beyond the proposed last one next February, but that we immediately begin work on the next heavy lift-off rocket to further the exploration of space, and it makes significant reference to "beyond low Earth orbit" capabilities.  That means the moon, among other things.  In my opinion we should probably already have a small outpost on the moon if for no other reason than to shut down those "we never went to the moon" people.  Anyway, it seems like a logical place to conduct the first experiments for how we're going to handle going to places like Mars and the exotic vacation planet Risa.  Here's the bill, click the link.  I found titles II and III the most interesting.

Library of Congress search
Type in  S. 3729 in the search, that brings you to the bill.  Then look at "Text of legislation" and look at the most recent item, it was up to 3 today.  After that you can read the whole bill but II and III were best as I said.  I tried to link the text page but it times out after 30 minutes.  Maybe it works anyway if you go straight to it.  Try this link first.  Try this, text of legislation bill S. 3729

Last but definitely not least, there's this...  In Zelda Twilight Princess...

What you're seeing is four bottles of purple juice, the fairy tears.  That means I got one from Jovani, and did the Cave of Ordeals three times for three more fills of the juice.  (The only way to get multiple bottles of it.)  The Cave of Ordeals gets harder each time so this is kind of something to lust after.  Who's your daddy.

Well, it took a while to get a halfway decent shot, and it still looks kinda washed out but it's close enough.  I think to get a good picture I have to have just the right light. I think clicking it gives you the full size and it might look better and more detailed there.  I don't think even full size it shows the highlights in the dolphins' eyes and a lot of other details.  Whatever, hopefully I can trade it for some money.

Dinner and a show...

Ok, I guess they're too cool for us to eat, but I imagine that any other sea creature that eats one gets a nice light show and possibly a monstrous mutation beforehand.  If I had an office to decorate and enough money so that it wouldn't put me out to spend about 20k on a wall sized aquarium, I'd fill it with these guys.  The following link is a page with several short videos showing the amazing effects that the cuttlefish are capable of.

NOVA videos of amazing cuttlefish

This would be small but acceptable, but two or three times the size would be more like it.  Also the lighting would need tweaking, as well as the addition of a a few palms on either side and maybe ferns of assorted texture.  Then a coffee table and a nice leather couch facing it, a mini fridge built into the coffee table, a couple lava lamps, blacklights, and a fine glass hookah and I'm ready for work.  Anybody wanna come work for me?  Hah!  I can tell you that there would be no need to yearn for the weekend.  Which it almost is, by the way! 

Hey Kylie, nice to see you!  How's everything?  I'm hoping the recent troubles have worked themselves out and life is getting back to something resembling normal.  You had a visor for the flourescent lights?  Sounds extreme but probably worked, I never thought of that.  I usually wear a ball cap so I'm pretty much visored at all times anyway.  I bet without it I'd be annoyed by the constant bright lights.  As for the Xmas lights, I've been doing that too since the landscape lights died, I have a couple strings of blue and green I light up on the weekends.  Normal lights suck, don't they? 

Alright, no recent news worth ranting about except that dumbass Lindsay Lohan making a mockery of drug and alcohol use, and Old Rose from Titanic died over the weekend at age 100.  I'm hoping this time she managed to die without first throwing away a zillion dollar gemstone.  The odds are pretty solid.  :D

Wouldn't it be nice...

I guess in Sweden, a little creativity goes a long way.  This is the Pionen Data Center in Stockholm, a data storage facility built in an old fallout shelter.  They decided to make it an enjoyable place to work, and it looks like they did a pretty good job.  I suppose they had to do something to mitigate the depressing aspects of an underground shelter with the occasional rock walls and no windows, and they really set an example the rest of the world would do well to follow. 

This round conference room has a view of their servers and the floor is painted like the moon.  I think "work" might be a lot less like "work" if we could enjoy a setting like this, or any number of different themes, but any change from they typical white walls and white flourescent lights would be something to be happy about. 

See more of the Pionen Data Center here

I suppose it wouldn't totally cure how much work can suck, for example I still can't seem to get a simple work order put through to me that I don't have to take back and ask for clarification, but constant chaos makes it even worse.  A nice relaxing work area would go quite a way in making the day more enjoyable and less stressful.  I'd love to see creativity and a little fantasy used more liberally in public places.  Would it be so bad if you could shop in a supermarket that looked like this?  I'd shop there.  I used to have colored landscape lights strung around my living room with the lights shining up on the walls much like this place, but they were old and after several years they went defunct and I haven't replaced them yet.  I still keep it dark though and indirectly lit with blacklights, candles, and a lava lamp of course.  When and if the economy recovers and I'm able to afford it, I plan to set up a new set of landscape lights and some more plastic trees and ferns.  I don't think I'll do the smoke machine though, I'd never see the cats.  Just a couple tails cruising around like submarine periscopes.  Ha!

Only two left...

The shuttle Discovery is being readied for its November 1 launch, the second to last mission of the space shuttle program.  It's going to be pretty boring until we start another program of space travel.  Until then I guess we'll be bumming rides from Russia and China.  Some way for the USA to travel, huh? 

I just finished Under The Dome, and it was really good.  I was expecting a book of over a thousand pages to get into too much detail, I thought I'd be reading the whole life story of every major character, but it wasn't like that.  Stephen King really put together a good story, populated it with interesting characters, and once again thought up a plot and an ending that was totally enjoyable and gripping.  He puts you in the town which was cut off from the outside by a transparent dome, and once you're in there as well, you have to dedicate yourself to reading and reading, to get to the end and hopefully relieve the claustrophobia that comes from the isolation.  Very good book, and I recommend as did everyone I know who's already read it. 

Well, I'm not sure I'm going to be updating here as much in the near future.  It took me about 40 minutes today from the time I turned on this old loaner comp till I could do anything... between the log on process and it locking up and refusing to shut down, having to unplug it to shut it off, then logging on another time.  Very frustrating, to wait that long just staring at a machine that might or might not be working.  I'll be around, but I don't think I'll be doing this every day.  I just lost all my calm getting it going tonight.  And I was happily calm.  At least it's almost the weekend!

So much for "Go with God..."

Maybe it's just me, but if I were God and needed to call my faithful followers to my side I might just be considerate enough to take them in their sleep.  I mean, isn't God supposed to PROTECT you from horrible things like this crash?  A church van blew a tire and flipped on the New York State Thruway.  Read here... Church bus crash  I sure hope it didn't have a "Jesus is my co-pilot" bumper sticker.  Oh well, maybe some day the uber religious will realize that random is the word of the day when it comes to life.  Bad things happen to good people, even righteous church going folk, and bad people sometimes live their whole lives without ever being punished, live good lives and die peacefully.  It's the way the world works.  God, if he exists at all, doesn't intervene.  Obviously.

And on the subject of crashing, something that's just plain STUPID...

 Every time I see one of these "smart" cars I think how I'll never get into one.  I know it sports an inner framework capable of handling quite an impact, but still there's no denying the odds that it will be crushed like a bug, as in the picture, flattened in a sandwich style front and rear accident, or go rolling off into the distance like a bowling ball, shattering every bone of its occupants as it does so.  Here's a video that shows both its strengths and weaknesses.  In my opinion the weaknesses are just too scary.  Not to mention just riding in the damn thing.  I wonder if there was a reason they didn't put crash test dummies in it?  Smart car crash test