Living in fear is no good to anyone.

Movie night was very crowded. The fried chicken came out good and was all eaten quickly. There were a bunch of friends of Omni's that few others knew. Most of them didn't really seem to fit in or enjoy our crowd. Things didn't quiet down until about 0330 when most everyone went home.

Saturday, lalabob11 and I drove out on US-60 East and up into the Manzano Mountains. I had planned a route, but part of forest road 422 was still closed for the winter, so we ended up having to backtrack to the highway. I took some photos of a deep wash while we were exploring. The photos will be uploaded to Flickr eventually. We then went up NM-55 and NM-337 to Tijeras. From there we had planned on going up to Sandia crest and watching the sun set, but instead decided to go to Hobby Lobby and buy crafty things. I got a couple of sun-catchers to put together and bake and lalabob11 got some point protectors for double point knitting needles. Then we went to visit her sister and see the new baby (I hadn't seen him in person yet). After that we had dinner at Shogun Sushi which was relatively cheap and reasonably good. The scallop sushi wasn't the freshest I've had, but it had especially tasty seasoning, so it was the overall best scallop sushi I've had. On the way back to Socorro we stopped at Walmart to see if they had the pocket knife lalabob11's been wanting. They couldn't be bothered to have someone come to the back and open the cabinet to see if they had the knife, so we couldn't get one (jerks). I ended up getting a set of two cast iron pans that I've been thinking about that were ~$5 cheaper than at the Socorro Walmart. The pans are both about 10 inches in diameter, but one is deep (3 quarts) and the other is shallow. The cool thing is that they can be used as lids for each other.

Sunday I was around the house all day, doing random stuff. I did some dishes, made turkey mole, baked a rich chocolate cake, set up and used the Roomba Sage that I ordered that arrived the other day (it vacuums pretty well and is relatively quiet, but it's not good at edges) and I made the sun-catchers. One is a planet with rings and the other is two frogs sitting on a lily pad. It's hard to find these sorts of sun-catchers in stores, but the company that makes them has a website, so I think I can order more directly if I want.

If you cross the U.S.-Canada border with a computer, you may be uselessly accosted.

Many Mennonites are leaving Missouri due to new ID requirements.

Only on Tuesdays

Smith v. Smith (scroll down a bit) is an interesting case regarding child custody and the gender identity of the child

In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith spoke out against McCarthyism with this speech. There's good material to learn from there.

...the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.
--James Madison

On Friday evening, I put the top down on the jeep because I knew I'd be doing a bunch of driving and the weather would be nice. Movie night went well; some people that don't usually come came, making the crowd about as big as it would usually be excepting that people were away on spring break.

Saturday morning I drove up to Albuquerque to meet popefelix and pick up the bar stools I ordered from Unpainted Furniture. Lunch at Taj Mahal ended up being more complicated than anticipated, but was OK. After lunch I went up to Desert Rat, looked around since I hadn't been in the store before, and bought a tow strap and clevices to replace the ones that were stolen back in January. Next was 328 Chinese to get a bunch of takeout for dinner. Ying and John were both very friendly, chatted with me a bit, and gave me some free crab rangoon and chicken in foil while I waited for the takeout to be prepared. It turns out they've been open since January 26th. When I asked Ying, she said 328 is "just a name; a lucky number." Finally, I went to Unpainted Furniture to get the stools. It had been my understanding that they would be assembled stools I would just need to finish, so I had taken the back seat out of the jeep. They were actually just pieces in boxes that I'll have to put together myself. This is good and bad: it's more work for me, but they will likely look nicer than if they had been pre-assembled. When I got back to Socorro, I bought a hat at Brownbilt's to protect my head from the sun when my jeep's top is open. Finally, we had a big dinner of the take out from 328. The dishes were all as good as before at the old Hong Kong.

Today, Sunday, royal_spice and popefelix came down and we went out to explore in the jeep. We first went out to Garcia Canyon (it's west of Water Canyon) and drove until we ran out of road the jeep would fit on. We then parked and hiked up the canyon and then up the west side for a while. Next was Jordan Canyon (it's west of Garcia), but a short way up the road, there was a locked NFS gate with a "Road Closed" sign. There was a track over some big rocks around the gate that I could have made, but it was decided best by all to just go somewhere else. We instead went back to the Water Canyon road and up the South Baldy road to the top. Up there, we hiked around some looking at the panorama. Once we were tired, we went back down and to Socorro and had dinner at Sofia's. After dinner they left. A good day was had by all.

Photos of 328 Chinese were uploaded to my flickr yesterday. Photos from today's trip will be uploaded tomorrow, probably.

It's rather like a puddle waking up one morning. I know they don't normally do this, but allow me, I'm a science fiction writer. A puddle wakes up one morning and thinks: "This is a very interesting world I find myself in. It fits me very neatly. In fact it fits me so neatly... I mean really precise isn't it?... It must have been made to have me in it." And the sun rises, and it's continuing to narrate this story about how this hole must have been made to have him in it. And as the sun rises, and gradually the puddle is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and by the time the puddle ceases to exist, it's still thinking - it's still trapped in this idea that - that the hole was there for it. And if we think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it in the way that we have been destroying it, because we think that we can do no harm.
--Douglas Adams

I found it online. I don't know what essay or talk it's from.

The "War on Drugs" has been going on for several decades now without any discernible benefit to either our country as a whole or the American people. It has produced this minimal benefit while exacting a very high price, both in terms of dollars spent and the toll on the lives of people caught up in its net.

For the Nippophiles in the room (NSFW):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAYQZkAH9nY

This is sort of wrong:
( Kirby Valentine )

The various car manufacturers have test tracks where they run their cars. Here are aerial photos of many of them:
Test Tracks (I haven't found a way around the site registration, so I registered (free) to see the article.)

I want something like this:
http://www.tuffyproducts.com/trunk/071.html (~$400)
or maybe this:
BesTop InstaTrunk (~$140)
There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

These are also cool:
http://www.tuffyproducts.com/door/043.html (~$50 per pair)
http://www.tuffyproducts.com/door/104.html (~$40 each)
http://www.acmejeepparts.com/products/13103_01.htm (~$20)

This looks interesting and is not Jeep related:
http://www.redsavina.com/

Fun music:
http://weebls-stuff.com/toons/hos/
http://weebls-stuff.com/toons/chase+me/

Turkey at movie night tonight. It's got pine nuts and garlic in it. :)

More about the Electoral College:
Math Against Tyranny

The same logic that governs our electoral system, he saw, also applies to many sports--which Americans do, intuitively, understand. In baseball's World Series, for example, the team that scores the most runs overall is like a candidate who gets the most votes. But to become champion, that team must win the most games. In 1960, during a World Series as nail-bitingly close as that year's presidential battle between Kennedy and Nixon, the New York Yankees, with the awesome slugging combination of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Bill Moose Skowron, scored more than twice as many total runs as the Pittsburgh Pirates, 55 to 27. Yet the Yankees lost the series, four games to three. Even Natapoff, who grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, conceded that Pittsburgh deserved to win. Nobody walked away saying it was unfair, he says.

Natapoff's argument is all about that analogy. Pittsburgh may have won the Series that year, but they clearly weren't the best team that year. I, at least, don't want the candidate that wins the Series, I want the best candidate.

car_help
This community just got started. Pass the link around so people know about it and maybe we can all help each other with car troubles.

Most are offensive, but some are really funny:
http://www.thingsmyboyfriendsays.com/

Last Saturday, I drove the jeep to Albuquerque with lalabob11. We didn't drive on I-25 at all. We took dirt roads all the way from Socorro to US-60 between the Blue Springs and Mountainair and then up various back highways until we got to the cement factory on I-40. It took us 7 hours to get up there, but was fun, and that was the point. It'll be a much more fun drive in the summer, with the top down.

On Sunday, houdini_cs and niap_si_efil came over and we did some maintenance stuff to houdini_cs's WRX, installed his front strut brace and also put the air compressor in my Jeep. Now I can air-down and air-up my tires out in the middle of nowhere if I need to. :)

I've taken the first step to deal with my sleep apnea: I have an appointment with my GP tomorrow afternoon so I can get a referral to have a sleep study done. Wheee.

I pretty much back this position:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/news2/2007/01/time_to_remove-print.html

"They helped us load our van," Kutz said. Investigators used a fake identity to access a surplus Web site operated by a Pentagon contractor and bought still more, including a dozen microcircuits used on F-14 fighters.

The undercover buyers received phone calls from the Defense Department asking why they had no Social Security number or credit history, but they deflected the questions by presenting a phony utility bill and claiming to be an identity theft victim.

Elementary teacher Derek Porter witnessed 15 different car collision on icy roads outside his Portland apartment Tuesday morning and caught several on home video.

niap_si_efil posted this the other day:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040405fa_fact?040405fa_fact
It's a really interesting article about average human heights over time and why the U.S. height average isn't going up.

This service looks neat, but is only available in the Seattle area right now. There might be something similar out here in NM, but probably not in Socorro.

Webcomics: Lunchbox Funnies

I've met this cat:
http://www.stuffonmycat.com/index.php?itemid=2904
It's milkmandan's cat Aleph.

Parked right in front of royal_spice's house, my Jeep was broken into. Nothing on the jeep is broken, they simply unzipped one of the side windows and climbed in. My 30' tow strap, 4.7 ton clevises and insurance and registration cards were stolen, but that's not the bad part. They stole my big yellow coat, one glove and the hat and scarf lalabob11 made for me last year. :( The knitting loom, 1 glove, the 4" tree strap, winch remote control and tire deflators remain.

10th Annual Festival of the Crayons.
Originally uploaded by jarrodlombardo.

royal_spice came down to Socorro Saturday night and we went to the Festival of the Cranes on Sunday. I didn't really get any good photos of cranes, but I got lots of snow geese. Photos from the Festival of the Cranes

I also uploaded the panoramas from last week's North Baldy Trip.

An interesting drive:
http://06wrangler.livejournal.com/6803.html

I went out with the Jeep today. I wrote about it in my Jeep journal:
http://06wrangler.livejournal.com/3384.html

I'll post the photos tomorrow probably.

I'm leaving for western Washington tomorrow morning, early. Penny Arcade Expo for the first few days and then hanging out with various people up there. I'll be back in NM the evening of September 2nd. While I'm gone, I'll be able to post to LJ from my widget, but I won't be able to leave any comments or read any entries.

Instead of creating a physical logbook to keep in my Jeep with the service record and whatnot, I created an LJ to keep track of all that. (I know I'm a big nerd.) I doubt most of you care to read it, since most of the posts will be about details like how much gas I just bought or when I changed the oil, but here it is: 06wrangler.

( My Interests Collage! )

I decided to buy the Wrangler. I took a photo of it with the "SOLD" sign hanging from the mirror, but I can't upload the photo because we currently don't have any computers with working USB ports in the house so I can't get anything off of my camera.

Friday night we can't go up to Albuquerque for the Imbri movie night because lalabob11 has to work Saturday morning. For people who can't/won't go up to the Imbri movie night, there will be a movie night at JPL, but I'm not cooking dinner because I'm not in the mood to deal with it.

Saturday night, lalabob11 should be off work by 8 p. m. Once she's off, we'll leave for Albuquerque to attend admiral_jc and faeflitt's going away party. We would like to stay with someone in Albuquerque that night.

Assuming we can stay somewhere in Albuquerque Saturday night, on Sunday, on the way home we'll stop in Belen at Auge's (a car dealership). Today I went for a test-drive in a Jeep Wrangler Sport. I'm going to go on another test-drive on Sunday to get a better feel for it. I liked it, but I'm not sure if I want to buy one yet.

A big hurdle was my uncomfortableness with manual transmissions, but my insistence that the next vehicle I get has one. The Wrangler I'm looking at is a 6 speed and is geared low for off-road use (all the Wranglers are). It being geared low is nice for me because starting from a stop (the situation when I and most people out of practice with manuals stall most often) is easy and I plan on using it primarily for off-road/camping trips. My test drive was only about 10 miles long, but I did have 5 starts from a stop and was also able to spend a bit of time in each of the 6 gears. I didn't stall at any time, and my only significantly rough shift was from 2nd to 3rd while making a left turn while being tailgated by an aggressive pickup.