I’ve got to find something entertaining to do

April 8th, 2008 • chatter

Today has just been so boring. Work’s been slow all day and there’s nothing interesting on TV…I think. I’m not really sure as I don’t watch TV except on my lunch break. No good music has come on and since Temple of Despair Radio stopped doing the Black Mass podcast, I no longer have cool rockabilly/70s rock podcasts to listen to. I just found out Earth are touring but they’re not coming to Florida. Which reminds me that very few good concerts have been planned for early summer down here. Anything that’s resembling an awesome show is down in Miami Beach .

I’ve really got to go find something to do. Perhaps watch a movie.

Ugh, is this semester over?

April 7th, 2008 • education

I just finished writing a real steamer of a paper. It’s complete crap and my teacher’s going to know it is. All I can really gather from the paper was that I managed to read three books on varying degrees of Arabian and Middle Eastern politics and their formation in the post-colonial period and how Islam got to where it is today, politically…for the most part. Sure, I missed out on specifics about the Israeli/Palestinian conflicts (not really the topic of the paper) or intricacies of Wahhabiyya but still, I managed to eek out 7 pages of crap in an effort to not kill my grades. Oh well, one B won’t kill me.

Now I have to find an animal and map its cladogram back to the last known human concestor.

Judgement Day wins a Peabody

April 5th, 2008 • chatter

No, not that crazy “day of reckoning” that apocalyptists and most Christians think is always on the immediate horizon. I mean the series produced by NOVA/WGBH of the Dover, Pennsylvania trial that shot down — at least in Pennsylvania’s Middle District — Intelligent Design being proposed as a viable alternative to evolution and being taught in schools — again, at least in Pennsylvania’s Middle District. I applaud the NOVA crew for their award. I’m ready for this thing to come out on DVD. This and A Brief History of Disbelief.

Now I’m going to find the addresses to those boneheaded proponents of SB2692 here in Florida that their “academic freedom” crock of a bill is just that, a crock. They want to propose that Florida students, already not the brightest of kids, be taught “competing theories” to evolution. They don’t exactly mention what those other theories are by name explicitly (nor can they actually name one) but Sen. Storms sure makes it known she’s pro-ID and anti-science. For a bill that has “nothing to do with religion”, why are its biggest proponents culling Christians for support? With boilerplate text from the Discovery Institute, only Christian backers, and a “number of persecuted teachers who spoke out about weaknesses in evolution” (who’ve yet to be found for testimony), I’m not sure how this bill lacks any religious overtones…or credulity. Of the primary and secondary school kids I know, none of them are the most intelligent and signing in a bill that can let teachers espouse non-scientific gibberish as science is only more of a set back.

These kids are dumb enough, why are you trying to make them even more dumb, Senator Storms?

The car, she’s fixed!…almost

April 2nd, 2008 • chatter

I finally got to finish fixing the Focus last night after my neighbor Steve managed to score the thermostat housing for cost at Maroone. As the day went on, I started to freak out because my window for getting the part, if he could not, was quickly closing but he came through. Way to go, Steve! What I thought was going to be a quick 10 to 20 minute job turned into over 2 hours which sucked up my entire night. The worst part of it was the fact that it took longer to actually get the thermostat housing back where it belongs than it did to do everything else I had to do (refill the radiator…twice, change valve cover gasket, replace windshield wipers). Stupid thing just didn’t want to go back in so I could bolt it on. Ford must’ve had some idiot design the layout for the engine bay to save space or something, it’s insanely cramped. I was going to remove the cam gear cover except there’s two other parts blocking one of the bolts so how you’re supposed to do anything other than change oil/battery/radiator fluid without spending an hour is beyond me. I can’t ever remember having this much trouble doing anything on my Saturn or my old Buick but this thing is just a pain.

After I managed to get the stupid housing back in place and hoses put back on, everything was OK for about 10 minutes until it started to gush fluid from a hose that I didn’t check earlier. Turns out the cheap hose clamps car makers use cut through the hose as well. Then one of the spark plugs misfired but that was my fault for not checking the spark plug boot properly. All said and done, the car’s running tip top now and all I need to do is change the oil in the next two weeks and replace a non-working door handle. Of course, I still have to do a laundry list of things to my car now .

I cannot wait until I can replace my dying car with a non-dying motorcycle.