One Small Step for Nerds...

A giant leap for nerd-kind:

NASA Shuttle to Launch Luke's Lightsaber

Cutest News Item Ever

Baby hedgehogs adopt brush as mother.
Newsworthy? No.
Adorable? Hell, yeah.

How I spent my Friday Night

You've all often heard (or actually read) me complaining about Football Season-- and my crazy Friday nights. Life has improved greatly since we moved to Florida. Our sports department has three full-time anchor/reporters, and on Friday nights, we get tons of help from our news departnemt. Several news photographers (and a few reporters) shoot games for us, and we have two producers who dedicate their evenings to writing scripts and getting scores. Oh, and our new news director gave us three more minutes than we got last year!

As a result, our Friday night "Frenzy" looks pretty damn good. Yeah, there are still a few kinks to work out, but if you'd like to check out our show, it's on the web! You can catch everything except the intro (we use copywrighted music, so we can't put it on the web) and the final 15 seconds (where we just say "bye!").

How I spent my Friday Night, Part One
How I spent my Friday Night, Part Two

Let the Conspiracy Theories begin....

I just got a message from a co-worker... He's not quite as paranoid as Fox Mulder, but he's a little too interested in conspiracy theories. I'm sure you know the type... he means well, but sometimes he's a little "spooky."

Anyway, he passed along a new conspiracy theory... saying that there would be another terrorist attack in the next month.

His evidence? An anonymous investor has purchased a total of 245,000 "put options" on a European stock index. In essence, this mysterious investor is gambling that the price of this particular fund will drop by more than a third, sometime before September 21st.

Now, I don't know crap about the stock market. I know it goes up... I know it goes down. But if one of the mutual funds in my IRA dropped by a third, that would probably mean that the stock market as a whole had dropped by about that same amount.

So, how does this all tie in with conspiracies and terrorists? I've seen news reports in the past that report similar activities shortly before September 11, 2001. Apparently, "put options" skyrocketed on United Airlines, American Airlines, along with prominent WTC occupants Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.

What does this all mean? Hell if I know. The good news? The 9/11 Commission debunks the whole insider trading link to September 11th, and says the "apparently suspicious [activity] proved innocuous."

I wonder what Fox Mulder would think? Maybe the aliens could tell us.

And who says Blondes are dumb?

If you haven't seen this yet, you simply must check it out:

Miss Teen South Carolina's Q&A session

Wow. That's really all I can say. Just... wow.

Calling all Classmates!

I know this is a longshot-- but what the heck.

My friend Anne is one of the organizers of our 20-year class reunion, and she's been having a heck of a time trying to find all 475 members of our graduating class in time for the October festivities. I don't think they're snail-mailing invitations out, which kind of stinks, because it's a lot easier to find a mailing address for someone than it is to find an email address or a phone number. After all, people are getting rid of landlines and switching to internet-based phones, which means a lot of folks have unlisted numbers.

Anyway, they've managed to find a little over a quarter of our graduating class via the internet, and most of them have signed up to be members of our Yahoo group.

But just in case people are Googling like mad, trying to find information on our class reunion, you can join the Rochester Adams Class of 1987 reunion group and get all the info there!



Click to join rochesteradams1987
(PS- if you're just some jerk who wants to crash the party... the admins won't let you into the group. So there.)

Paging Mr. MacGyver

(Note: the following is a post that I actually wrote about two months ago... but for some reason, Blogger saved it as a draft, and it never posted. I just found it... so here it is.)

(or is it MacGruber???)

Remember MacGyver? The guy who could save the day with a paperclip, a stick of gum, and a square of aluminum foil?

Apparently, the internet has its own MacGyver, and his name is Kipkay, and he'll teach you how to hack all sorts of interesting things:

Power your MP3 player with two potatoes
Reviving a dead car battery with a glass of wine
Make a cheap pair of noise cancelling headphones
Chill a beverage in two minutes (I actually saw this one on Mythbusters years ago)
Build a new battery for your laptop computer
Turn a one-time-use camcorder into a reusable video camera

Only In Florida...

Ahhhh, Florida. Home to the crazy, the corrupt, and more elderly folks than you can shake a stick at (though why would you want to?). So when things like this happen, you just shrug and laugh.

Of course, I'm relatively new to Florida. As you all know, I grew up on a different peninsula. Michigan was my home for well over two decades. But people are fleeing the Great Lakes State like rats deserting a sinking ship. Some say it's because the auto industry has gone into the crapper... But I think it's because something like this could only happen in Michigan-- and it's a sign to get the hell out.

A Brief Hiatus

I've been in Michigan since late Monday night-- so my already sporadic blogging tendencies have been thrown completely off-whack. Sorry!

We've done some fun stuff while I've been down here-- splashing around at a waterpark, checking out the classic cars on Woodward, and a mini class reunion (mostly with people I didn't know very well).

But rather than ramble on about that stuff, I'll give some links to the last few stories I've done at work instead. Some are good, some are not-so-good.

(Update: for some ridiculous reason, I can't get the website to go directly to the video when you click on the link. So, click on the link, then click on the "Watch Video" link, which you'll see directly below the image on the left side of the page.)

The Story of Frankie Ryff
Dolphins Training Camp is a Small World
New Season, New Look for Bucs
Local Couple Prepares for Climb of their Lives

Crazy Cat Lady

Thank God for Cory. If he hadn't stumbled into my life, I'd probably already be well on my way to being a "crazy cat lady."

And let's face it. We all know that I'm not a particularly neat or clean person (check that... I'm a clean person... I just don't keep a very tidy house). If I were a crazy cat lady, I'd be knee-deep in hairballs and poo-sand.

And I guess that's what makes this item so fascinating: A woman in Russia has 130 cats in her Moscow flat. Oh, and her home appears to be fairly clean, which is why I find the whole story a little bit suspect. Regardless, you must make sure to watch the video-- it's spectacular.

Do you think she's converted her bathtub into a giant litter-box? Just a thought.

And while I'm on the topic of kitties, Get well soon, Opie!

In Memoriam

Six years ago, our friend "Broccoli" got a kitten, Huxley. She was cute and playful-- and unfortunately, not long after he got her, he found out she had feline leukemia.

That broke my little heart. I saw how attached he was to her after just a few weeks, and how much fun she was, and how well they complimented one another. And I worried that she wouldn't live very long and that Brock would be crushed.

But Huxley grew up, remained playful and fun, and I stopped worrying.

Last night, Cory woke me up and told me that Huxley had died, and that Broccoli had posted about it on his blog. And of course, I cried like a baby when I read it. When you have a chance, head over to his blog and check out the beautiful pictures of Huxley and read her story.

Out Of Order

I don't know what made me think about this just now, but a couple of days ago, I was shopping at Ross (if you don't have Ross Stores in your area, imagine if TJ Maxx and Marshalls got together and had a learning-disabled child). Anyway, I went to try on a top in the dressing room, and two of the fitting room stalls had "Out of Order" signs on them.

How can a fitting room be "Out of Order?" I don't get it. Does the mirror make you look so fat that you won't want to buy their clothes?