Sorry, Mark. I got a parking violation last week but managed to get out of paying it when I was able to prove that I'd already paid for a street permit back in December; I'd just never received it.

-Alyce

Craig, your car was destroyed because you had a Boston Bruins license plate.

Joe, the most honest "reporter" in America is the comedian and fake journalist Jon Stewart, and if that doesn't scare you, nothing will.

Mark, it sounds like Chicago needs another cow-and-lantern.

--Jon
My goofiness knows no bounds!

Craig, I am impressed by how your windshield held up.

Mark, mayors that have late night airstrip destruction parties and required membership in the "City of Chicago Sticker Club"? There must be a different hotspot for game development that has a better level of sanity...

Oh, don't get me wrong, there's no insanity about it: it's all about the cold hard cash. The Benjamins, or the so-called "bling-bling," if you will. I'm resentful but at the same time I have to sort of admire the city government's dedication to squeezing out the tax money needed to keep this place functioning. As for alternative game dev hotspot locations, those are basically California and Texas, so I'll let the reader judge how much saner that would be.

-- Mark

The Boston Bruins plate was actually wrecked before the accident. The plate mount only supported the top two holes, there was no backing below. When you've got a thin piece of plastic that is only secured on one side and frequently faced with a 50MPH head-on wind you don't expect it to last. I still have my classic spoked-B metal plate that was on my first car, although it has been retired. The search for a solid plate continues...

I don't remember the windshield being very cracked in the accident. Time and environment probably extended the damage before the pictures were taken, not that there is even much to show now. Both airbags deployed with a fresh chemical scent that I won't forget. BTW, the black cylinder with the blue end that is resting on the hood is the drive shaft to the rear axle. I found it down the street when cleaning up after the accident. The spring shown does not normally mount around the drive shaft, at least not on any design I've seen.

I think I'll name my new car Fresh. Baja Fresh. Mmm... now I'm hungry for a burrito.

-Craig
Now that I'm dealing with another 2 years of car payments I can only afford one "bling."

Now that I'm dealing with another 2 years of car payments I can only afford one "bling."

I know the feeling. Since we bought a house a few months ago, Ivy and I can only afford a "bl."

--Jon
The "ing" is on layaway.

After a quick stop at one of the absurd "currency exchanges" which are the third most common sight on Chicago city streets after Vienna Beef stands and Starbucks outlets, I am now $110 poorer. But to compensate I now have a small piece of plastic on the inside of my windshield!

Grr.

-- Mark

I got to drive the bulldozer all by myself this morning. That went well and was a testament to the effectiveness of the bulldozer-driving simulator. (It really works!)

Last night, I got to walk a mile and a half on a wet ice-covered road in the dark. That didn't go quite so well as the bulldozer driving this morning, but I did finally get home.

I should note at this point that the *reason* I got to drive the bulldozer all by myself this morning and the *reason* I got to walk a mile and a half in the dark on wet ice-covered road last night was that I also got to drive my truck off the road on the way home from work last night. Oops.

Anyway, the truck was uninjured, just had a wheel hanging over the edge of the road and three others on not-easy-to-stand-on ice, so it couldn't get itself unstuck.

As more astute readers probably have figured out, the bulldozer driving this morning was to get the bulldozer up the road to unstick the truck. It was a purposeful journey, not some joyous excursion where the bulldozer and I went out for a light-hearted spin in the fresh air and sunshine.

Following the unsticking of the truck, Roy (who'd been driving the bulldozer during the skilled "unsticking" process where things like turning the proper direction on the *first* try and an ability to back up without wrecking anything were important) and I spread stone on the road to prevent future offroad excitement. Spreading stone on the road is a mostly-mechanized process that represents a heck of an improvement over the old way.

The old way involved two humans, a shovel, and a pickup truck. Under the old way, one human stood in the back of the pickup and flung stone onto the road while the other human drove very slowly and occasionally tapped the brakes to make the human in the truck bed fall over. (Very funny for the person driving. Not so funny for the person flinging.)

The mostly-mechanized, new, improved process takes two humans, a shovel, and a dumptruck with a stone spreader attachment. (Like sewing machines and food processors, your pricier dumptrucks come with nifty attachments.) In the new way, one human drives the dumptruck slowly down the road and controls things like the stone auger and the degree of bed tilt. The other human perches on the rail of the truck bed and uses the shovel to whack at the semi-frozen snow/stone mixture in the bed of the truck so that it doesn't clump up and refuse to fall into the auger. Guess which job I had? (Hint: You do not give the 'driving the truck' job to someone who has recently demonstrated an inability to keep trucks on roads.)

Anyway. That was my morning.

-- Jessica
Even though it is somewhat gratifying to have immediate application for newfound knowledge, I'd rather not have run the truck off the road last night.

There's a reason I live on a road which is also a numbered US highway. Other people get to take care of the bulldozerish projects.

--Jon

My sister forgot the other important improvement in stone spreading....having a functioning tractor with which to remove snowcover from our pile of anti-skid and to load the dumptruck with the stone. In days past, and never to return, slave labor (that would be me) was used to fill the bed of the pickup truck with the semi-frozen snow/ice mixture. A double your pleasure and double your fun sort of deal. In ideal conditions the stone does not need a person with a shovel to make it slide into the auger, the tilt of the bed suffices. Today was not ideal.


Roy

Question. Has anyone here ever seen an anime show called "Betterman" that airs on TechTV?

Is it just me, or does that show make absolutely no damn sense?!

-- Mark
I work on MoS in front of the TV, you see, and when I run out of taped episodes of Law & Order and Stargate I'm forced to accept whatever random nonsense comes over the cable box... and my God, but does the term "random nonsense" ever apply to this show.

Mark: What's a "currency exchange"? It sounds like an Orwellian word for "place that takes all your money and replaces it with cheap crap."

-Alyce

Edited by author 02-12-2004 11:46 AM
I know this is extremely juvenile of me, but I find it amusing that the head of the South Korean team who cloned a human embryo is named Dr. Woo Suk Hwang.

-Alyce

Unkind commentary about where I live:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynews...tyles/s_179031.html

"There's a lonely, grueling stretch between Bedford and Harrisburg where you have no choice but to bear down and confront a cold, harsh reality: You're about a hundred miles from civilization in all directions."

-- Jessica

You have to admit that worrying about that characterization of your area after two days of commenting on using heavy equipment to make your dirt road passable is slightly ironic, no?

--Jon

I wish to contradict the statement that those lonely counties are only inhabited by birds. I've seen multiple deer along those stretches as well.

--Ivy

Ivy: I was sufficiently moved to send the author an email. For your amusement, here is the email I sent:

I live about four miles outside of Breezewood, PA in Fulton
county. That's one of the "counties you didn't even know existed and which appear to be populated only by birds".

Now, I can understand the "not knowing the county existed" problem. Why, I myself only recently found out that there really is a real Limpopo River. See, I'd been going merrily through life thinking that the great, grey-green greasy Limpopo River (see http://www.online-literature.com/kipling/165/) was imaginary, just
like the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake was imaginary. To my great surprise, though, I recently discovered that a real Limpopo River runs from the South African / Zimbabwe border to the Indian Ocean. There are even pictures of the Limpopo River on the internet. It is grey-green and greasy-looking because of all the silt in the water. Wow. Who knew? Anyway, the 'not knowing' thing is excusable. If I'm allowed to miss a fairly major river in Africa, you are allowed to miss a couple of inconspicuous counties in
south-central Pennsylvania.

However, as a lifelong resident (except for college) of the
area, I can state with certainty that more things live here than birds. For example, we have an extremely healthy deer population. We've got a fair number of black bears, too. :)

You wrote that "the tangible sense of desolation kind of makes you wonder what football team the people out there cheer for". This, I can help you with. As far as Bedford and Fulton counties, it's Steelers country. ABD (anybody but Dallas) is also a popular choice, particularly if Dallas is doing well. As a side note, the 'tangible sense of desolation' is one of the area's more popular exports -- we ship it out along with our more capable young people who leave to find work in assorted big cities.

We do know what football is, though I'd wager that more people here follow NASCAR than follow football. NASCAR is very popular around here for reasons that escape me. To me, it looks like a bunch of guys driving fast and turning left.

You wrote "The only good news is that horses and buggies aren't allowed on the turnpike."

Locally (Bedford and Fulton counties), we don't have the horse-buggy thing so's you'd notice. Sometimes you can see Mennonites (religious folks whose ways appear similar to the Amish) at the local horse sales but not often. The horse-buggy thing is more the Amish who dwell primarily to the east of us, in the flat, fertile lands south of Harrisburg.

-- Jessica