Archive for October, 2007
October
31
I just read an article about hydrid/alternative fuels that actually had me trying to sell my car so that I could buy diesel. It’s about Johnathan Goodwin a “car hacker” who can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental among other feats. He even chose the anti-environmental poster-car, the Hummer H3, for his next conversion project. What’s he doing with it? He dropped in a 60,000 rpm turbine engine to power the generator that’ll recharge a set of “supercapacitor” batteries that in turn power the electric engine. The result?
A 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!
The real impact to me is that he’s doing this with existing technology. He’s not waiting on parts or technology to be developed. He’s in his garage tinkering, making mistakes, making guesses, but most importantly making progress. This is a quote from the article talking about the Impala that he did for the MTV show “Pimp My Ride”
The show chose a ‘65 Chevy Impala, and when the conversion was done, he’d doubled its mileage to 25 mpg and increased its pull from 250 to 800 horsepower. As a stunt, MTV drag-raced the Impala against a Lamborghini on California’s Pomona Raceway. “The Impala blew the Lamborghini away,”
DAMN!
No commentsOctober
30
Just one of those creative outbursts, the thought had been bouncing around my head for a while. I really just think that Smelbo’s is a really cool name and that Kelli deserves her own band. Took me a few tries to get the elbows right.
October
30
Thought I should post something since it’s been a while. I’ve been working on Halloween stuff for the last month so i haven’t made much progress on the creative front. I thought I could use a new background for my computer so I threw together this 1980’s / McDonalds / MTAG mash-up. Think it works pretty well.
October
26
Before I worked here I was uncomfortable pooping in a public bathroom. I think everybody is a little. You can’t spread out like at home, theres no reading material, and of course theres somebody else about 2 feet away doing the exact same thing.
I was afraid to make any noise. Now I realize that its like prision in there. You have to come in and stake your claim. Make that toilet you’re bitch, or you will become its bitch.
That’s what happened today. Don’t know if it was the JBCs (Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers) from last night, the caramel scone from this morning, or the gyro from lunch but I was back in the bathroom for the 3rd time today. The first two rounds had gone according to plan. So like a heavyweight fighter I swaggered back into the ring for a third time. No audience at first, but then the challenger entered. 8 thought this was going to be easy when I heard the crinkle of paper ass gasket. I let loose a satisfying barrage. Then waited for the challenger.
Then I heard it…
It sounded like he had just dropped a hard sided suitcase filled with bananas and they all spilled out. I heard a finishing grunt and knew I’d been beaten. I sat there until he triumphantly strode out of the stall,washed his hands,and Left. I will tell my children “I have seen the shoes of a legend and they are reasonably priced black leather”
Later!
No commentsOctober
26
How can I not eat this. I went into the overpriced coffee shop only because I’d stayed up to 12:30 watching the first half of Leviathan and then I couldn’t wake up because the Hip Hop morning show on 95.5 wasn’t enough to wake me from my underwater dreamworld. I wanted a coffee, I needed fuel, but as I was standing in line I read the words that will haunt my fat cells forever.
“Chocolate chip Scone”
As if that wasn’t enough printed below them in smaller font hugged by parenthesis
“(filled with caramel)”
HOW MUCH, how much do you want for this morsel of delicious love‽
“$1.89″
Huzzah! At that point I might have given you all I had to partake in this feast. I gave her the card and then scurried out of franchise hell and into my office. Now I sit here in the crumbly aftermath waxing poetic about the cavern of caramel sludge that poured out of this delectible lump of dough.
And the coffee wasn’t bad either.
Later!
No commentsOctober
25
‽
as in “What the hell is going on‽”
it combines the functions of an exclamation point and a question mark. I think it also makes a killer band name, kind of like that new band !!! (chk, chk, chk). Interrobang should play metal. And they might need an umlaut thrown in there somewhere.
Later‽
No commentsOctober
25
Carved us some pumpkins we did! Well I carved mine, Laurel took more of a supervisory role and outsourced the work to an Asian workforce. (She told Wade what to do). I think the results are awesome! But we did it a little early, so I don’t know if they’ll make it to Halloween night.
(I also admit that wade carved the little pumpkin too)
Later!
No commentsOctober
22
Oh Man! I was totally supposed to write about this the other day when it was fresh in my mind. It’s kind of hard to remember to do these things when there’s no encentives. I think I’ll just give a list of things I can remember about the event.
- Totally cool architecture, even if they all kind of look like shipping containers.
- How did they keep all the plants alive when shipping them in?
- I didn’t see anyone from Ecogeek.org, Inhabitat.com, or Treehugger.com, I’m sure they were there somewhere.
- The international schools are great at Design.
- Having the electronics covered by a greenwall was an awesome design (puerto rico)
- The recycled formica outside was really cool.
And now other thoughts…
The real cool thing about the event was just being around regular people that are trying to make an impact on the environment. I’ve been saying to Laurel that environmentalism needs a makeover. Hippies in veggie oil powered VW busses have been saying it for years and it isn’t working, they need a PR makeover. It needs to be cool! If you can get the rich yuppies to buy it then the rest will follow. Why do we want Mercedes and Designer Handbags? Because celebrities and rich people have them and we don’t (also they’re well made and cool looking).
So what’s my great idea really? Envy! That’s right Envy, the new tool of the environmentalist. I’m telling you this is the way to go. If you can get the people in McLean, Virginia to buy $30,000 golden Buddha yard art that also is a rain water collection cistern that will automatically water the yard without using the public water supply then later when they’re popular you can introduce lower price versions to the general public. I want to make the H3 of environmental systems. I want to trick people into living green.
Later!
October
19
I’ve been drinking tea more at the office. This is partly because I’ve gotten tired of paying 2 bucks for a cup of Starbucks and also because the coffee they make in the office tastes like they made it with pinto beans instead of coffee. Usually I have the regular Lipton tea (there’s a big box of it in the cabinet) but sometimes I find some other kind to try. Today I found a straggler, a single bag of Echinacea Tea that someone must have cleaned out of their desk. I’m no stranger to eating or drinking things that other people have discarded so I thought it would be OK.
At first smell I could tell that something was going to be different about this cup. It had a weird smell of pine or maybe mint. It could have been the mint I was eating… but I wasn’t sure. I let the bag soak for a few minutes to make sure I was getting the full experience. When I finally did drink the tea… it was weird. But not in weird enough for me to stop drinking it, plus I was really tired and needed something. It was like I dipped a mint/pine air freshner into the cup along with the teabag.
I was going to quit drinking it when it hit me. It wasn’t like when you finally wake up after a cup of coffee, it was this weird ‘out there’ feeling. I think it was my chakra opening up, or maybe my third eye, this is yogi tea after all. It was a really pleasant experience. It made drinking this awful liquid worth it. This might be because of the tea, but I did find it in a cabinet at work, so it might have been there for years absorbing all the spiritual energy from hundreds of disgruntled HUD workers.
3/5 Schus
No commentsOctober
15
Hard times have fallen upon Montgomery Burns, the ‘green movement’ must really be cutting into the nuclear power money. Because he’s given up Simthers, the driver service, and his beloved hounds in favor of the Metro.
