On the other hand, SFO charged me $2 for a twist donut and $10 for a day's worth of wireless access. If only I'd made my flight and been able to implement the "stumble onto the plane and pass out" plan, rather than the "sit around the terminal for three hours with nothing to do" plan.
I forget - do you drive a BMW, or just joke about it?
Are your mechanics happy-elves?
"Torque, torque, torque
Bang, Bang, Bang"
This is where we go all CSI on the photo and reconstruct an image of you from your reflection, exposing your identity to all, right?
Dude, you didn't need to hire mechanics to install your spinners. You could've saved money and done it yourself. Lazy, lazy, lazy.
reconstruct an image of you from your reflection
I worried about that! There's a fair bit of glare here, so I couldn't be sure that I was safe; then I decided that I was being paranoid.
Does anybody know how to replace a nozzle for windshield wiper fluid? One of mine has gone missing and I was thinking it's probably really easy to fix except I have no clue. Is it something I can just buy at [insert name of your favorite national big-box auto parts supply store here] and pop in?
We're all keying off your TEMPEST signature anyway.
I had the same thought Becks did. We should all get together and have a lock-changing party.
I meant to ask yesterday - Ogged, do you guys do just equity, or fixed-income as well?
SB - I figured getting investment advice from random guys on the internet was the best way to do it...
[but feel free to redact, as necessary]
mike d, I'll tell you what I tell the trader (and basketball fan) every day: buy low, sell high, get high.
7: On Hondas., it's a simple pop-in part. However, it can't get lost even if its mounting breaks because it's attached to a hose. You might want to check for a split in the hose or a broken nozzle feed stem in the hose while you're looking at things under the hood.
6: The csi image reconstruction stuff is mostly faked, fwiw.
15: Thanks, I will check it out. 16: That will make the image reconstruction even easier, if all we have to do is fake it.
re: 16
Yeah, I work with Photoshop in my 'day' job. A lot.
I'm always amused in TC shows and movies where people extract information from images that just isn't there.
17: exactly. I'm away from any machine with a photoshop-a-like, so I'll have to leave it in your good hands.
After extensive work on the image, I can tell you all that Ogged is lying about being Iranian. Instead, he appears to be a linden tree.
All I wanna do is zoom-a zoom zoom zoom on grainy JPEGS
18: TV, meet the Shannon-Whittiker sampling theorum. S-W, meet TV.
I can't believe I just typoed theorem. I can already hear them coming to take away my degrees...
Can't see where you're getting that linden from; bark seems too light and leaves are too hard to distinguish.
http://www.mcgrattan.f2s.com/swank.jpg
Best I could in short space of time.
That's awesome, ttaM. Now you're under arrest.
Clowna: I have had good luck with the guys at http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/ I have bought a handful of replacement mirrors for our old focus from there. Much cheeper than from the local store. I don't know the exact model of your car but I was able to find a washer nozzle for my 9-3 from there.
For the record I am a data point against Ogged's Saab-hottie-car theorem. Or maybe I am just very deeply and profoundly confused and unable to see myself as others do...
Contest!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marthamcc/513574749/
re: 28
that's great.
I just gave mine a tiny tweak, and reuploaded. So if you refresh it, it's slightly better than it was a few minutes ago.
24: I'm just making it up -- I wouldn't know what kind of tree that was unless it had a label screwed into its bark.
30: you're too subltle for me. I thought it looked excellent the first time.
Heh. I looked at it and kept thinking (of mine) 'arggh, that edge is too hard'. Maybe overdone it now.
Some days, I'm just not comfortable around you people.
36: What makes that story almost certainly false is the idea that anyone would be pissed Bob Shrum wasn't working for them.
40.---That one makes it look like there's a star-nosed mole under the table snuffling its way towards the photographer.
re: 38
I had to make do with a photo of the real Ogged, but I see you managed to capture the naked id that Brad was talking about.
That one should look upon apo's work and FEAR.
"My name is Apostropher, blogger of bloggers:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
If he'd had despair, he wouldn needta be at the mechanic's.
So does this mechanic's have anything going for it besides free WiFi and a veraaaahhhndah, or do you just go there for the Beemer-driver-like perks?
So does this mechanic's have anything going for it besides free WiFi and a veraaaahhhndah
There's the Hitlers hiding in the trees, for one thing. Always a big draw.
does this mechanic's have anything going for it
The wifi and veranda are new, but I've been driving almost 45 minutes to go here since I got my car, because they're fantastic. They do really good work and I don't ever worry that they're trying to cheat me. They work on Honda/Acura/Toyota/Lexus, and you can drop me an email if you'd like to know where they are, although I imagine they're even farther from you.
Bridgeplate, how is it that you have access to the Unfogged server?
The tree appears to be a birch. Ogged's mechanic may be in the north woods, or maybe Siberia.
Bridgeplate, how is it that you have access to the Unfogged server?
There are things I haven't told you.
39: You are more sensible than many Democratic candidates.
I thought surely that story would sink either Shrum or Edwards -- and Edwards' campaign has not exactly leapt to deny it categorically -- but n.g. so far.
Was that really a styrofoam cup of coffee, or was it...
50: Most likely, plus I'm pretty happy with my current mechanic. If things go ever go south with them in the future, though, I may take you up on that.
I used to work with a mechanic for my VW Bus -- Eric. I like having personal relationships with the vehicular specialists. As friends, I mean.
Anyway, Eric was, and presumably still is, a long-haired hippie, and his veranda was his back porch which overlooked his garden. Kale out the wazoo! I used to pace back and forth through his garden, and observe, and ask.
If you knew how to speak properly to Eric (a slightly delicate matter), you could take home some kale once he was done putting in your new carburetor. You might want to talk to him about his cats, and pet them.
Utterly delightful, my friends. No kidding.
Don't tell me you haven't noticed the tree-Hitlers before, Dave.
The tree-Godwins keep covering them up.
SB's in ur server, postin' tree-Hitlerz 'n' keepin' seekritz.
I thought I was the only one who saw them.
Fuck the sanctity of off-blog communication, ogged. The people demand answers.
Dude, I don't know what Standpipe is up to. Reasonable guess: someone uploaded the photo for him. Other guess: Bridgeplate is Beelzebub.
'n' keepin' seekritz.
You hope.
The frightening thing is that SB is not trying to be funny. Don't joke about his or her tree-Hitlers. She or he is also pretty labile, and doesn't know whether tree-Hitlers are a good thing or a bad thing. But he, she, or it cares, and that's what's important.
More from Steely Dan, this time directed to Wes Anderson.
Although the music is not entirely out of line with the chic "retro" pop you seem to favor, it's been fire-mopped© clean of every last trace of irony and then re-ironized at a whole new level - "post-post-post-modern" if you will.
Admiral!
69: But is a change from "unsure about tree Hitlers" a move to "unsure in some other way about tree Hitlers" or to "sure that tree Hitlers are bad" or to "tree Hitlers are good"? Because I think it's only the last one that we need to worry about.
Reasonable guess:
Fuck reasonable, ogged. The people demand scuttlebutt.
People, Standpipe is the Unfogged server.
The scuttlebutt is that the ambisexual Labs is SB's fucktoy and does Standpipeself's bidding without question.
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. (Except, you know.)
Kind of a quiet day around here, no?
It's like everyone went to the beach or something.
For a while there I was afraid I was the only one still not-working.
Where am I blogging?
Where am I blogging?
Won't you link me, click through?
I'm still in the office; not getting much done, watching my plant die. I should probably water it sometime.
Seems it's mostly the lawyers who are still working (or "working") rather than taking off for the long weekend.
It can make it a surprisingly long time between formal waterings if I empty unfinished cups of coffee into it.
There's no such thing as the ASPCP, right?
I should probably water it sometime.
Everyday, I water my office plant with coffee that has gone cold sitting on my desk. It has survived for months on this sustenance alone.
I'm at work for another thirty minutes and then on-call all weekend. And the manufacturers of our most commonly deployed firewall pushed out a bad antivirus update this morning that makes firewalls go boom. On the other hand, I don't have to deal with anything on Monday at all due to happy surprises regarding work schedules and people wanting to work holidays for extra pay.
I'm still in the office. My boss won't go home. Everyone just wants him to go home so we can.
I left work around three, since there was no one in the building in terms of staff aside from security. And most of them are far away from my office. It's always sort of weird when the place empties out like that. This huge building, with no one around. No one to hear me scream. Well, there were some people in the galleries, but nowhere near me.
The AirForce is apparently no fun. (Actually, the story probably isn't funny -- the details aren't clear, but bad stuff appears to have happened. But the headline is funny.)
Is your plant all jittery from the caffeine?
I spent the day at home getting thrown up on by a two-year-old.
Seems it's mostly the lawyers who are still working
Working at home (but not productively), but working. It's what we do.
Oh, poor Noah, and poor you and R., especially given how unwieldy she must be.
"When did you stop brandishing your wife?"
Is your plant all jittery from the caffeine?
Jittery? Nah, I can hold my juice. Helps me type faster, too.
Oh, she went to work. I got the day full of bodily fluid detail. He seems to be better now, but threw up through the night and up 'til about noon. There's been a lot of unpleasant laundry action today.
I'm still working, making up time for the week.
90: Holy shit, I can't believe no one has commented on the pic accompanying that headline.
97: Last winter, the girls came down with a stomach flu. They catch things from each other, so they're rarely sick at exactly the same time -- so with the first bout and its recurrence a couple days later, we had basically four solid nights of vomiting. Each instance generated an entire load of laundry, of course. See if you can guess when the washer decided to break down.
90: I don't get it. They're charging her with sodomy? For sodomizing someone? Or can you get charged with having been sodomized?
90. It is not the Air Force that is no fun, it is the Air Force lawyers who are no fun. Drunken threesomes ought to be mandatory for crying out loud, not punishable.
Apo, you are a strong, strong man.
And now, I have finished my last brief of the week and can get the hell out of the office. Tomorrow morning, me & Mrs. NCP are off to the mountains for a long weekend. Woohoo!
See you on the other side!
90: I don't get it. It's illegal to have a threesome in the military? I would understand the rape charges, but the article says those couldn't be proven. I don't approve of people going to jail for having consensual sex. And if the male involved is getting a harsher sentence, what did he do differently?
And now I leave for a roadtrip. Goodbye!
90: Holy shit, I can't believe no one has commented on the pic accompanying that headline
See the beginning of Doctor Strangelove, an aerial-refueling sequence to "Try a little tenderness" Pretty pro forma by now.
The story was pretty sordid, at least so far as the guy's actions alleged. The convicted airman was apparently both drunk and not much more than an accessory.
Yeah, I don't see what's rape if no one presses charges.
107: Revision: I don't see what's legally rape if no one presses charges.
The victim didn't testify; I don't see where you get that she's not pressing charges.
I'm actually not sure what 'pressing charges' means (that is, I understand it in the vernacular, but I don't know of anything legal it translates into). The victim of a crime doesn't get to decide whether it gets prosecuted.
I have to admit that I saw it and decided to post it based on the headline. I reconsidered enough to comment about the actual story, but I shouldn't have posted it as something funny, given what seems to have happened.
Okay, I guess it's possible. It was not clear to me from the article that there was a victim who self-identified as a victim. Most of the discussion on the article seems to assume it's just military Puritanism. Maybe the writer of the article wanted to downplay the possibility that this is a legitimate rape charge?
The victim of a crime doesn't get to decide whether it gets prosecuted.
Really? Isn't this the problem with enforcing domestic abuse, that the police get called, there is evidence of abuse, and then the abused person says, "Don't take my spouse away!" so they can't do anything?
I was asked some similar question when I went to the police about a high school kid who, uh, masturbated at me in a parking lot. If I was willing to make a more formal statement, they could do something about it, but if not, they'd just haul him in (for like the 30th time) and tell him not to do it.
Well, there's a de facto ability to put the kibosh on a prosecution by not testifying, which is I think what happened in your case, but if the victim's cooperation isn't necessary to prove the case, they don't get a veto.
I think. Criminal law isn't my area -- someone who does this stuff for a living is welcome to straighten me out.
110: Well, presumably in a non-property crime, it's awfully hard to bring a case without a cooperative victim/witness. So if none of the 3 wants to say that a crime happened, it's hard for the prosecutor to do so. Which is where we get the idea of a zealot prosecutor: You may not think you've been raped, but I do.
But with rape specifically, it seems like the victim's statement would be an absolute necessity, as long as they are of legal age, not related, and not involved in a financial exchange.
Although the zealot prosecutor gets more sympathetic if we're talking about changing stories -- a witness who intially described an assault, but then later refused to testify.
The impression I got from reading the article is that the victim won't testify but the prosecution thinks they've still got enough evidence to charge the male but not the female airman with rape.
117: I'm guessing they have statements from the other two participants that under military law are sufficient to establish the elements -- probably a certain level of intoxication.
116: That's a pretty slippery goddamn slope there. Is there any precedent for prosecutors successfully going after otherwise-legal sex acts by assuming there was rape when the parties both claim to have consented? (I ask, of course, because I often think, after sex, "Holy crap, I'm going to get arrested.")
118: I see. There is space for that kind of thing.
116: 113-pwned.
Is it really fair for the lawyer to pose a question as if from ignorance, then answer it before anyone else can respond?
I'm calling the Bar.
121: Not testifying doesn't necessarily mean not cooperating -- this would look awfully weird if the 'victim' was out front picketing with a sign saying "Free Airmen Smith and Jones! I was having fun!" But it's not clear that that's the situation.
I ask, of course, because I often think, after sex, "Holy crap, I'm going to get arrested."
I really need to read AWB's blog more.
123: After the week I've had, I'd like to be heading for a Bar.
Did you hear the one about the lawyer who ran her practice into the ground?
Her problem was she couldn't pass a bar.
124: I wish it were clearer. The discussion on the site starts trending that direction, but mostly seems to assume that this is being prosecuted because of the fraternization between ranks, that even if there was a consent issue, they're pursuing this because of rank.
127: That can't be right -- if the issue were fraternization, wouldn't they be punishing the senior rather than the junior people? I think the discussion is complaining that they aren't pursuing the sergeant on the fraternization charge.
The real subtext is that they're prosecuting because the two of them didn't show up for services Sunday morning. This is the Air Force, after all.
112: The she-bears of today ask for help with even one horrible little boy, whereas the really serious she-bears of biblical times could handle 21 apiece. No wonder we lose all our wars.
Elisha didn't have the power to call up white bears; our powers are more subtle.
And they get all sweaty and out of breath in the Holy Land -- not enough ice floes.
117
Not really, see numerous rape/murder convictions.
133: Maybe because in a rape/murder situation the jury is less interested in hearing how the little slut was asking for it.
I believe, however, that when a rape victim is murdered before the rape trial by someone other than the rapist (i.e., when rape isn't an aggravating factor of murder), the rape trial can be dropped.
