Halloween fever . . .

Well, we started getting out the Halloween decorations this year and I have to say that this is my favorite holiday of the year. You get to dress up and get free candy. No other holiday has every given me more excitement or enjoyment, and that includes Christmas (thanks for the socks each year Mom.)

I regularly peruse the do it your self blogs and sites and find a lot of very cool costumes (see previous posts) and other Halloween decorations. I already posted some good costumes so here are some sweet Halloween decorations.

Creepy Crawling Skeleton - This walk-thru is a bit more in depth than a 5th grader or probably even an 8th grader could complete without assistance. However, the end result is creepy and even without movement would be cool looking. [Creepy Crawling Skeleton]


For those of you that want to create the whole experience and are up to the challenge, try your hand at this working drawbridge with sound. I would be curious in how it could be modded to work with a front door or even someone's haunted house. The ideas are sound and the step by step walk-thru is easy to follow. [Working Drawbridge]


For the younger crowd or for those of us that just like a bit easier project, FamilyFun.com has a large selection of do it yourself crafts that are easy and as the name says fun for the family. My favorite is the CandleEyebra that is very simple but would be cool if you had a large quantity of them and you could do it to different sized glasses for other effects.

For a huge list of items visit the Monsterlist of Halloween Projects. This site has a lot of good ideas and projects.

Go crazy as this is the time of the year where spooks and goblins run amok. You know everyone loves seeing the house that went over the top with Halloween decorations each year.


Oh and Mom I like socks. There is nothing wrong with socks.

Bailout Fails: So what happens next . . .

I think that Clark Howard put it best:

By now you've heard that the federal bailout plan failed in the House of Representatives. Remember, the first job of a politician is to get re-elected. So it is any wonder that -- weeks before an election -- elected officials balked when faced with a bill that was unpopular and little understood by the average person?

Now the inevitable question: What's next? First, Clark believes we are in a recession and it will deepen. Second, this is not the eve of the Great Depression. We may have unemployment, but it will be more like the kind we faced in the '80s -- not the '30s. This is not gloom and doom.

In the post-Civil War years, we had 8 major recessions in the United States if Clark remembers his history correctly. Then in 1907, we had a credit market failure that had to be corrected by JP Morgan -- the man, not the company.

Any recovery will take a while. We borrowed and spent money that we can't pay back. We have millions of houses to work off as excess. Nothing can recover until the housing market returns to equilibrium.

During the recession in the early '80s, we had mortgage interest rates that were above 20%! But we went through difficult times and recovered. We just have to work off the excess -- too much house, too much car, too much debt, too much government spending.

Working off the excess means our standard of living will be slightly lower for the foreseeable future. So you'll have to live on less of what you make. It won't be pretty or happy, but it is not the Great Depression.[Clark's Shownotes bold and italics added for emphasis]

Start saving everyone.

How to Influence a Conversation . . .

I am a fan of the Lifehacker site and blog. They recently had a post with some very good tips on how to hack a conversation. This details different methods to control a conversation and although most are pretty basic and common sense, they can be very effective if you keep them in mind and practice them until they become habitual.

Additionally, it is nice to be able to read what the other person is thinking or feeling during a conversation. For men, this may just help our attention span by giving us something else to do during the conversation to keep our attention, and for all of us, it can help direct a conversation for our benefit.

A whole lot more than just words passes between people who are talking, so a few simple conversational skills can help you recognize what's really being said and help you lead the discussion your way. Learn how to read body language and facial expressions, de-code euphemisms, ask sensitive questions, criticize constructively, get what you want in negotiations, cut off chatterboxes, and more with our top 10 conversation hacks.

Visit their blog at [LifeHacker]

What did he say?

With the recent debate and the November election approaching, wouldn't it be nice to know what each of the candidates said previously? What did John McCain say about this issue, and how did Barack Obama reply to that statement or what did he state previously about the same issue?

I feel that many people base their political decisions (vote cast) off of what their friends say or what the last article they read in the newspaper/online blog said about an issue or politician? Google Labs recently released a tool that allows you to search for keywords and compare what politicians have said. Now anyone can get up to date on the issues that are important to them and make decisions from what candidates have actually said.

Click here to go to the site itself Google Labs In Quotes

When you get to the site, notice the drop down menu in the upper right. You can choose a country from the menu or go custom and create your own comparisons. Also, there are drop down menus directly below the politician's picture to chose another person on the fly. I have to say this is a great tool and will be interested in seeing how much flip flopping I can find.

Pay in mind that these tools in the lab are being worked on and the notice at the bottom of Google's own page states:

Please note: These technologies are still in the beginning stages of development, so they may disappear without warning or perform erratically. If something's not working on this page, please come back and try it again later.

[from Google Labs Page]

Free Money . . .

Recent news has been buzzing about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed Troubled Asset Relief Program(TARP) that has the government bailing out the financial sector for $700,000,000,000 of the taxpayers money. Lets take a look at some numbers.

The US resident population is currently at 305,262,958 as of today at 1:50 PM. [CENSUS Population Clock]
The US housing units estimate is currently approximately 130,000,000 homes. [CENSUS Housing Spreadsheet]

This means that they could be giving each household in the the US $5,384.61. Now while that does not look like much in the overall scheme of things, I sure could use the extra $5,400 for a lot of things such as bills, however on the other side of the coin, that means that every household would now share the debt of $5,400 a piece to "try" and bail out the financial services industry.

Colin Barr, a senior writer for Fortune Magazine said the following:

With the bailout proposal, Paulson seems to have abandoned hope of holding financial-sector players responsible for their mortgage-related missteps and is instead intent on distributing those losses to taxpayers.

Marc Heilweil, manager of the Marathon Value mutual fund in Atlanta, responded to this with:

"Paulson should have appeared for his 10 a.m. press conference in a Santa Claus suit. But these gifts aren't going to underprivileged children."

I agree that something needs to be done. I do not agree that we need to hand over $5,400 a household to the financial sector free of charge. We already have a huge debt and this is a chunk that should be paid back or come with huge penalties to those that caused the problem.

Ultimately, Paulson's assurance that "the ultimate taxpayer protection will be the stability this... program provides," does not confince me of the need to go into more debt. Spreading out the financial sector's mistakes to the rest of America will just add to the financial strain already felt by many Americans.

On the plus side, a very savvy and fun to listen to Money Guru had the following to say about the current situation.

How long will financial difficulties last?

How to Smile at the World . . .

After talking about Doom and Gloom for a few weeks, I figured I should hit the lighter side of things with how to smile at the world.

The Russian town of Chelyabinsk all got together, found out when the Google Earth satellite was going to pass over their town, and created the following group picture.

Looks like fun, and you could have a potluck after the event with the whole town. Ultimately, the map does not look like it has been updated quite yet, or maybe it has already been removed, however if you want to look through the town and find what I couldn't here is the Google Maps link for this town. [Pic and original information posted by SlashDot]

My Little Honda . . .

I wrecked on an ATV at the end of July (still having a fair bit of pain in my hand), then was in a car accident a few weeks later where my Jeep Liberty rolled and was totaled. Luckily I was not hurt at all in that accident. So I figured that the universe was trying to tell me something.

"Go buy a motorcycle."

I did my research and ended up wanting either a Honda Rebel, or a Suzuki GZ250. Due to the gas prices being higher, and these bikes getting 80+ mpg, this type of bike is pretty hard to find around my area and one of the dealers that I spoke with even had a 9 person waiting list for the Suzuki for 2009. So, I ended up finding a used Honda Rebel from 2006 that had 135 miles on it on Craig's List.

After the money exchanged hands, I sat on the machine gripping the throttle and feeling the wind flowing through my hair. When I was done relishing the feeling and being ready to go, I dropped the clutch a bit to fast and ended up half a second later a few inches from the neighbors mailbox across the street where I managed to reign in the bike sans any scratches. I think my wife who was in the car watching all of this probably had to restart her heart at that point.

After riding for a while now and learning to appreciate the feel and experience of riding a motorcycle, I have a few requests:

1. Please do not tailgate me - My wife and two kids want their hubby/dad to get home safely and if anything happened where I fell of the bike you could not stop if you are within 5 feet of my back wheel.
2. I do not want to race - Just because you are compensating for something with your car does not mean that I am doing the same thing by riding a bike. That and I do not want to waste my gas.
3. Please do not cut me off - Driving in Atlanta is pretty hectic sometimes and some areas are death traps for anyone. I leave space between the car in front of me and myself for safety reasons, not to have people go around me and cut me off. Trust me, the two seconds you save will probably be lost at the next stop light so do not place yourself and me in danger for that quantity of time.
   

Any cooperation with these items would be much appreciated. Other than that, I love riding.

Gasoline Troubles in the South . . .

Gasoline shortages have been affecting Atlanta for the last week or so and are reported to continue for the next week or more.

I spent about an hour last night trying to find a gas station that still had any gasoline. I probably drove past about 20 or more that were dark or had the pumps bagged. Earlier this week we actually sat in line waiting for gasoline as our car sat on empty and I had images of pushing the car up a hill.

Hurricane Ike shut down Texas refineries that produce some 20 percent of the country's gasoline. The southern states depend more on Texas oil and gas than other parts of the country, and that's why the shortages are hitting the South particularly hard. [Times-Herald]

And it gets worse. In the past, Gas prices in Georgia were some of the lowest in the nation and are now are currently some of the highest in the nation. Yesterday, the national average for regular was $3.718. The Georgia average was $3.976, and the Atlanta average $4.021. [EIA]

Additionally, Atlanta's air quality issues have placed strict gasoline blend requirements on the area, meaning that fuel can't necessarily be diverted from other nearby locations that have additional fuel.

As of 4 pm on Monday, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released the following report:

Petroleum
As of 12:30 pm EDT (11:30 am CDT), September 22, the Minerals Management Service was reporting that nearly 1 million barrels per day (or about 77 percent) of the federal portion of the Gulf of Mexico’s crude oil production was shut-in. As of 9:00 am EDT (8:00 am CDT), September 22, the Department of Energy reported that there are 9 refineries in Texas and Louisiana that are shut down due to Hurricane Ike. These 9 refineries have a total capacity of 2.3 million barrels per day (about 13 percent of U.S. operable capacity), and represent almost 800,000 barrels per day of gasoline output (nearly 9 percent of U.S. gasoline demand in September) and about 500,000 barrels per day of distillate fuel output (just over 12 percent of U.S. demand in September), based on recent historical data. So far, since refineries first shut down before Hurricane Gustav, over 41 million barrels of products have not been produced, including over 19 million barrels of gasoline and over 13 million barrels of distillate fuel. This does not include reduced production from refineries that have reduced runs at various times during Hurricanes Gustav or Ike. As of September 22, 6 refineries were running at a reduced rate. As of September 22, the Colonial and Plantation product pipelines continue to operate at reduced rates. Both of these are major product pipelines going from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast.

It takes several days for a refinery to get back to normal operation after first getting power restored, even if there is no significant damage following a hurricane. Refined product supplies are still constrained in portions of the country because of refining capacity that is still significantly reduced from pre-hurricane levels, as noted above. As refineries return to full production, supplies will increase into pipelines, thus providing more supplies to those that have seen constraints in the supply system. But it could take several days or even a couple of weeks before the distribution system, from refineries to retail stations, is once again at pre-hurricane operation levels.

And the moral of the story is: "Fill up often and if possible do not wait till the needle gets near the empty. If you see a station with gasoline, top off your tank and then call me and tell me where it is."

LHC Meltdown . . .

The Large Hadron Collider got a little hot under the collar and one of the doohickeys melted and fused with one of the humdingers.

CERN spokesman James Gillies explained, “"It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out.”

Interestingly enough, the device has to be at absolute zero to work, and that would be dangerous for repairs to be made in, so they have to up the temperature in order to fix these magnets. Sounds simple right? It will take them around two months to make these repairs due to how long it takes to change the temperature in the LHC. Moving the temperature up takes a few weeks, they then have to do the repairs, and then lowering the temperature eats up another few weeks.

On the other hand, the launch could be seen as a huge success as more than a billion people tuned in to watch it break. Sure it was anti-climatic, but even breaking is pretty interesting for this freezing metal monstrosity.

The Safety of the LHC

How the LHC Works

Facts and Figures

The LHC Experiments

Data from (TimesOnline)(CERN)

Brisingr. . .

I was introduced to the Eragon/Eldest series by my brother Joe. Now he is not the Fantasy reader that I am and so I was pretty interested in this series. I am not sure how many of you are fans of this series but the new book, "Brisingr" is coming out tomorrow 09/20/08.

This book will continue where the second book, Eldest, left off with Eragon and Saphira escaping from the battle with their lives and supposedly the book goes into how Eragon has to try and juggle all of the promises that he had made to the different groups in the previous books.

Although I have enjoyed the series so far, I felt that Eldest took a step backwards from how good the first book was.

In the first book, the character had that "come alive" feeling that made it a page turner for me. However, Eldest seemed to get bogged down and I found myself wishing it would just move the story along. I hope that the third edition continues with the writing that first book started and doesn't bog down. This was in essence what ruined The Wheel of Time series for me.

If anyone reads this book and can share their viewpoint, please feel free to leave a comment.

Financial Thoughts . .

The Bing Blog took a very rare look at the current situation and I think that it is a very refreshing view.

Maybe all this misery is just payback

Now it seems a little vindictive and maybe the writer had a few problems with the market and the people that work with and around the market. However, it does point the finger at a group of people other than the big businesses. From the articles that I have read, the majority of articles and blogs seem to focus on the big businesses and what they are doing.

Lehman Bankruptcy: Bankruptcy laws under a Microscope

The Lehman bankruptcy problems seem to just be starting. Ultimately, this gigantic lending corporation declared bancruptcy yesterday morning and then the fun started.

“I think it’s a really scary time right now,” says Ed Morrison, a professor
and bankruptcy expert at Columbia Law School. (from the article referenced below)

Interestingly enough CNNMoney.com explains in a recent article that our law structure is setup to protect smaller entities from creditors, however for the larger beast that is Lehman it is designed to not be as protective. This is really the litmus test for these laws.

Smaller institutions get an automatic stay that basically freezes its debts like we saw with Delta recently, however Lehman will not get the same protection against many of its creditors.

In the article, Morrison goes on to explain that in 1978, and in amendments passed in 2005, most financial contracts — including securities contracts, swaps, repurchase agreements, commodities contracts, and forward trades — are unaffected by automatic stays. Worse still, as soon as Lehman’s parent corporation goes into bankruptcy, that event (under the contractual language governing most of these) triggers default, allowing the counterparty — the bank or other institution that entered into the deal with Lehman — to immediately accelerate or cancel the contract and seize whatever collateral may cover it.

Why? The thinking, Morrison explains, was that if an investment bank like Lehman ever failed, all its counterparties (like, say, a Bank of America) could extricate themselves immediately from Lehman’s troubles rather than getting mired in a bankruptcy proceeding. “They won’t be locked in and dragged down with Lehman,” Morrison says. The laws will — theoretically — minimize risk of market meltdown. (paraphrased from the article)

Ultimately, the stock market took a down turn and there is a lot of worry now about the price of oil and the housing market. Only time will tell if the trend will continue.

Awesome Halloween Costumes: Part 2

I am truly amazed by the human ability to invent things. Just looking for do it yourself Halloween costumes came up with more information than I could read in a week. After perusing this information looking for the diamonds in the rough, I have whittled it down to a few of the good ones.

It took me a minute to realize what this was, but it would be a cool project. The mask is not shown but I included the link below.

How to build an Ironman Arc Reactor.
How to build an Ironman Mask.













The previous project too easy for you? Try this complete make your own realistic werewolf costume.

How to build a realistic werewolf costume.
















The blog zzilch has a post about how they used to make their own costumes with a few very good links to easy and harder costumes.

Homemade Halloween Costumes on zzilch

Large Hadron Collider. . .

It appears that I misspelled the name of the "Doomsday" device that was supposed to wipe out life as we know it by testing black holes and thinks like that recently. I had it spelled as Halidron but I guess it should be Hadron. If you would like to know more about that device and don't mind reading scientific college textbook like PDF files feel free to follow the link below.

Halidron Collider Details - PDF file from CERN

An excerpt from the above file:

LHC stands for Large Hadron Collider. Large due to its size

(approximately 27 km in circumference), Hadron because it accelerates

protons or ions, which are hadrons, and Collider because

these particles form two beams travelling in opposite directions,

which collide at four points where the two rings of the machine

intersect.

Hadrons (from the Greek ‘adros’ meaning ‘bulky’) are particles

composed of quarks. The protons and neutrons that atomic nuclei

are made of belong to this family. On the other hand, leptons are

particles that are not made of quarks. Electrons and muons are

examples of leptons (from the Greek ‘leptos’ meaning ‘thin’).

Awesome Halloween Costumes Part 1

Although I could (and should) probably come up with a better story/caption for this picture, in reality I just came across it in a do it yourself moustache hat that would be a pretty cool start for a Halloween costume. Feel free to post any caption in the comments that you think would better fit this picture. I think I will see what other do it yourself Halloween costumes I can turn up.

For the original article click here.

Where's the man who assaulted you . .

This made me chuckle a bit.

Halidron Collider

Description of the picture above:

Explanation: Europe's CERN built the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle accelerator yet created by humans to answer some fundamental questions such as "Why do objects have mass?" It will also look at micro black holes, magnetic monopoles, and explore the possibility that every type of fundamental particle we know about has a nearly invisible supersymmetric counterpart. In the picture above, a person stands in front of the huge ATLAS detector, one of six detectors being attached to the LHC.

The Halidron Collider is scheduled for its first "Big Bang" test on Wednesday 09/10/08. This device is supposedly able to create a simulated "Big Bang" or recreate what happened when our universe started out. A lot of the forums and commenters are getting pretty heated about this because they see this as the scientists putting the entire world in danger for an experiment and some of the comments have been quite heated.

According to the scientists, there's no chance that the Earth will cease to exist as CERN scientist activate the Large Hadron Collider this Wednesday. However, feel free to watch using the real-time CERN video broadcast.

The video was just an idea of what could happen to our planet as it has happened 6 times previously in our planet's history according to the text in the video.

Obscurity . . .

Ha ha ha ha ha. I placed a counter on my blog just because I was curious and I probably should not have done that.

Just for kicks I started it out at 4 thousand something and I think it has gone up by as many times as I have visited it. Oh well, I name today the 1st annual Obscurity awards day and present myself with the following:

Cape Caveral as a war zone.

Wow. I have wondered what would happen if one of the rockets we blast into space ever exploded on the launch pad. Well, here is a video of what happens when it explodes a few seconds off the ground.



I would say very cool, but that was just horrific. The damage and heat is incredible.

Tech Article "20 Tech Habits to Improve Your Life"

One of the editors for a tech blog that I check daily wrote a great article about how todays technology can help improve your life instead of clutter it up and confuse you.

Find the full article on PC World's website here.

Bad Day on the road

I think this driver had a pretty bad day. He must not have been paying attention to flashing lights or lowering bars.



Also I am not sure why he did not just gun it to get out of the way. A few scratches from the lowered bars would be a lot better than what happened.

Another one that is just amazing to watch:

Strange Knitting Projects

I do not know how to knit. This how-to project actually looks kind of fun though it is not quite enough to get me to learn. For all of you knitters (sp?) that can do 0 - 60 knitted loops in less than 2 seconds here is a fun project:

HOW TO - Knit a Dissected Rat

You do have to buy the patter from Etsy.com, however they also have a dissected frog pattern. Click here for the link to this patterns page. Only $4.00.

Edit: This item appears to have sold out on 08/27/08 so we are too late unfortunately. There are a lot more patterns that are pretty interesting from this site.

Shower Gel Dispensers

Well, sometimes looking over geek sites I run into things that are perfect for geeks. The rest of us just laugh and then mentally decide who we could give this to as a gag gift. Without further ado, enter the proof. . .



This would be actually kinda cool to have in the shower and I am sure that kids would love it. If you would like to own your own nose you can for just $17.95 by ordering from here.