Merry Christmas from the great state of Texas! We’ve been in Houston nearly two years, and aside from the humidity, we love life here. Whether we are visiting art exhibits, attending concerts in the park, trying new restaurants, or driving by enormous mansions, we always find something entertaining about this city. Outside Houston we’ve enjoyed visiting the capitol building in Austin, the river walk in San Antonio, and a real working ranch outside College Station. We also can confirm for those of you wondering that everything really is bigger here: hair, food portions, boots, houses, jewelry, trucks, and so on… It’s rather amusing!

A lot has changed since we moved to Texas, including our jobs. Lach works for the Office of Emergency Management in an adjacent county. While it was a quiet year as far as hurricanes go, he stayed busy implementing programs and speaking for groups locally and around the country. He gets to speak at a large convention in San Antonio next year about how government can use Web 2.0 to communicate information during an emergency. Kari works for KIPP SHINE Preparatory school as a Pre-K 4 teaching fellow. KIPP is a charter school system that started in Houston and strives to close the achievement gap. She co-teaches with a lead teacher and will become a lead teacher herself next year. Regardless of the time and energy it takes to teach at KIPP, it is a great fit. She is amazed everyday at how capable and talented her 4 year olds are.

We are blessed to have found Kaleo, our church in Houston. It is because we found Kaleo that we have felt so welcome and at home here. We quickly realized that Kaleo was the church for us: on the first Sunday we visited we were invited to lunch after church, dinner the next week, a Bible Study, and even introduced to other Washingtonians. Several of the families that reached out to us that first Sunday are among our closest Houston friends today. About this time last year, Lach became a Community Group leader. After a year of weekly Bible studies, a retreat, service projects, and regular celebrations with our community group, they have become our Houston family. Kari also participates in the children’s and music ministries at church.

Our “family” has expanded since we moved to Texas. Donnie (our 2000 Honda Insight) has been a delightfully efficient addition. He’s especially helpful to have around for Lach’s 60-mile commute to and from work and when Lance(r) gets tired. It’s hard to believe he’s only been with us since May. Scooba Steve (Roomba’s mopping cousin) has been another fantastic addition to our home. He’s such a diligent and hard worker. We wish he knew how to climb walls so he could clean our windows and mirrors, too!

We hope that this holiday season is especially merry and bright for you and your family. We thank God for your friendship and pray that He would bless you and draw you closer to Him in the coming year.

Merry Christmas,

Lach and Kari

The thing is, bacon is the best part of many breakfasts, and I struggle with finding the best way to cook and eat it. One of the problems with bacon is the grease, I want to save it and use it later, but it’s such a hassle to handle.

Another unrelated (until now) problem is with waffles. The waffle iron should be sufficiently greased up with butter, but butter browns at the hot temperatures I like to use for my waffles.

The solution? Cook the bacon in the waffle maker. The win? Bacon waffles.

Takes 20 minutes, makes 4 big waffles.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb of Bacon, cut in half
• 1 3/4 c All-Purpose Flour
• 2 Tbsp Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Baking soda
• 2 Eggs
• 1 3/4 c Milk
• 1/2 c Butter, melted
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 2 Bowls (one medium)
• 1 Whisk
• 1 Spoon
• Cup and spoon measures
• Waffle Iron
• An Iron Constitution

Recipe:

In the medium bowl mix together the dry ingredients (but no bacon), and put about 4 or 5 cut bacon slices on the pre-heated waffle iron, on the lowest setting.

Open the waffle iron when the light turns green, and move the bacon around so the whole piece gets cooked, not just the little squares.

In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix the rest of the wet stuff in. You might have to microwave the milk to keep the butter from solidifying when you add cold milk.

Quickly pour the wet stuff into the dry stuff and give it a good mix. It should be super lumpy, lots of little lumps. don’t over-mix.

By now it’s probably time to add about 1/4 cup of waffle mix to the waffle iron that has the bacon in it. Don’t remove the bacon first, just make sure it’s in the middle of the iron. To be clear, you’re pouring waffle juice around the bacon in the hot iron. Yes, this is magical, try to hold the cup steady since you’re now pouring and laughing like a mad scientist…

Close the lid with the waffle juice in there and cook it until the light turns green.

Serve the waffle with a little butter and lots of maple syrup.

Enjoy with fried eggs and french-pressed Pike’s Place Roast.

Yes, this is a blog post asking for your money, but it’s not for me for once!  If you already know about Search and Sleepout and want to give, visit Lach’s Sleepout Fundraising Page. If you don’t trust me, what about Clyde Drexler? Hey look, it’s us in that YouTube video!

Here’s another clip of Houston’s City Council congratulation SEARCH on the success of SleepOut: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOWjl9pOT-k

We have volunteered for Search before, helping them clean up their main building, and of course we were at the Sleepout last year (we were on the local news!) Search is an amazing ministry. They’re non-denominational faith based, meaning they encourage a more holistic recovery for those suffering from homelessness, directing them towards spiritual healing as well as physical, mental and emotional healing. They help at all phases of homelessness:

• They have vans that take socks, clothes, blankets, food, etc. to the homeless living on the streets every night
• They have free voicemail boxes for folks using their services, so they can hear from family or employment prospects.
• They have apartment placement services which help find and pay for a place when they want to get off the street.
• They offer computer and basic job skills training
• They offer job placement services through connections and partnerships throughout the city.
• They even offer nice clothing to wear to interviews.

Our friend, Jake, is on the board at search, and we know first-hand that they do good things in the community. We even had a chance to met and talk with another director of Search, who was once a homeless man himself helped and rehabilitated by Search.

In my mind, this is among the best, most honorable, and successful homeless outreach programs in the nation. I am proud to support Search’s ministry here in Hosuton.

Now I’m asking you to help too. I know many of you live outside Houston, but some of you haven’t supported the homeless in your local community yet this year. If you can, skip on this and donate locally of either your time or money; if you can’t, please donate to raise funds for the Sleepout this year.

One thing that  we hear over and over again when working with the homeless, is that above all they appreciate seeing that people care. This alone can be enough to motivate them to get into or continue a rehabilitation program. By donating to the Sleepout, you send a strong message to the homeless in Houston that people, all over the country, care about them and want them to have every opportunity they can.

So what’s Sleepout? We’ll be sleeping “under the stars in Sesquicentennial Park,” in downtown Houston. We’re not to bring food or tents, and will be provided with cardboard to lay on for padding. They will be feeding us the standard sandwiches they give out from their vans in the evening, but they’ll give us hot delicious breakfast after we’ve completed the event.

Us “Sleepers”(who will actually spend the night at the event) are responsible to raise funds by asking friends, family and others in our community to sponsor our commitment to the project as “Sleepers.” On Saturday, we will get to watch a “Faces of Homelessness” program in which individuals who have overcome their struggles will tell their stories.

All proceeds benefit SEARCH Homeless Services.

If you want to support us this weekend, visit Lach’s Sleepout Fundraising Page.

As Search says on the website, “One person can make a difference.”

Love you all, thanks for reading this far.

You really have no excuse not to be on Twitter, so either sign up now, or just follow me.

My updates are protected, but I’ll let you in, I promise.

If you have any Twitter related questions for me, feel free to ask them here.

Glacial Ice

The Woods Boulevard

Boardwalk

Untitled

Kayaks

Water and Boats

Boardwalk

Fairhaven Village Green

A Berry Nice View

Boat

Earth Water Sky and Sleep

Rock You

The Engagement Tree

Bellingham Marina

Zuanich Point Park

My demographics background says woman's razors don't sell well in this neighborhood...

Not sure what that Gnome is pumping. Tony the cat joins me lamenting the greyness.

"I recon there's a lot of faries in Seattle..." Best. Texan. Quote. Ever.

The wall behind the glass stairs at Hotel 1000 in Seattle.

Otis and Joni at the Alter at beautiful Lowman Park in Seattle.

Sam tells me "It's not about you, Lach."

Nice old structure in Whatcom Falls Park in Bellingham

Blackberry season means there's tasty snacks on the trail

It has a sunroof for firing the AK-47.

My new used Trek 4500. Nicest bike I've ever owned.

The view from the top of Alabama Hill in Bellingham

The forest smelled sweet and musty. Very nice, had forgotten about that.

The namesake of Whatcom Falls Park in Bellingham

Little sister watches as sister and friends jump rom the high cliffs. Delayed shutter = splashes.

The site of the 1999 Olympic Pipeline Explosion in Bellingham

This trail was my 3 mile walking commute when I lived in Fairhaven

Another shot of my former commute. Ahh...

Almost two months into owning it and I’m absolutely in love. We almost halved our daily commute cost, and have learned some neat tricks in the process.

The Good

My highest tank mpg was 82 mpg. I logged over 820 miles on a tank and put just over 10 gallons in it. It took me over 2 weeks to drain that tank, commuting 60 miles every day.

The car rides tightly and feels like a CRX. It should. It’s only an inch larger in all dimensions than the late, great, Honda CRX. It has two supportive nylon mesh seats, fully automatic climate control, an all-digital dash and a high beltline.

The trick to getting 82 mpg was twofold: reasonable hypermiling, and some creative use of cardboard. The hypermiling tactics I used were minimal, since I didn’t want to sacrifice safety for mileage. I would accelerate quickly, using electric assist if needed, to get up to speed as quickly as possible. Of course, “up to speed” is not the speed limit, it’s some reasonable speed below the speed limit. If there’s a lot of cars on the road it might be exactly the limit, if there’s nobody else it might be 10 under. Once at speed I back off the accelerator and settle in somewhere between 100-120 mpg, using the throttle only to maintain speed as needed, and holding the engine in lean burn. The lowest I would allow the instant MPG to drop in this scenario is 75mpg.

The tires are over-inflated to 65psi. I’ve been told this is insane, but it got be a couple more MPG. It’s laud as hell with the tires cranked up that high, you have absolutely no idea how loud it gets.

I drive with the AC off and the Windows up. Last week it was 103 so I used the AC, but it knocks about 20mpg off the ride. It gets really hot inside the car, so I’m dreaming up a cooling system for the batteries. I have no doubt that I can survive a 30 minute 120 degree car ride, but I’m nearly positive the batteries cannot.

The painful thing about pulse and glide (not related to the Insight) is that it’s not as simple as averaging mileage multiplied by mile to get a new average, allow me to restate an example I had read somewhere: Imagine you are traveling up a mountain pass which is 100 miles long, and you use ten gallons of gas to get to the top (10mpg). When you get to the top you turn around and drive back down, using only one gallon of gas (100mpg). The average for your trip is not 55mpg (110mpg/2), it is 18mpg (200miles/11gal). It means it’s a lot easier to LOWER your MPG than it is to RAISE it.

Of course, I mentioned a creative use of cardboard. I was looking at the car’s engine bay and realized that the upper grill does basically nothing. I have come to believe that it was a design concession:

Engineers: Here’s the final proposal for the car, sir, it has a .16 Coefficient of Drag (CD).
Lead designer: It looks like the frog prince and Woody Allen’s lovechild. Where’s the grille?
Engineers: It doesn’t need one, all the air travels…..
Lead designer: The grill is the mouth, it needs to have a mouth. All cars have mouths. Nobody wants to drive a car without a mouth.
[Engineers go back the lab, cut a hole in the front of their design and add mirrors, realizing this increases the CD to .25 and commit Seppuku]

So I went outside one day with cardboard and painter’s tape and taped over the upper grill opening. I refilled the tank and went about my commuting. Two weeks later I realized I had increased my tank-MPG by over 3mpg. I scored some plastic from Philip and am going to fabricate a permanent grill-block which doesn’t look like a big blue band-aid.

The weird

This car looks really funny. I think it’s awesome, but I get a lot of weird looks. It has fender skirts. It has a tapered back end. The rear wheels track narrower than the front. It has 2 rear windows. The tires are skinny. It doesn’t help it’s case much that it’s bright-freaking-red (Official Honda color code). It is impossible not to be noticed in this thing. We call it the “cracka’ spaceship” after an eventful ride through the 3rd ward where I’m pretty sure the look on everyone’s faces was saying “What’s that cracka’ doin’ in that cracka spaceship?!?!”

Our car stinks. We keep imagining the person who owned it before us. We know they had dogs, and let them ride in the car (bastards!). We also know they were hippies, because they lived with this car in Dallas TX (FRAKING TEXAS, PEOPLE) for 8 years before trading it in. Kari imagines a man, but I imagine a woman. She’s in her late 50s, with long, dry, scraggly formerly blond hair. She’s wearing a tie-dyed long dress and has big square framed glasses. Her pekingese are named Al Gore and Gandhi and she talks to them like they’re people. Kari pictures a guy, wearing tie-dyed shirt with 5 cats. I don’t know what’s creepier.

The Ugly

This car is slow. You can make it go fast, but you’ll only get 40-50 mpg. That sounds like it’s ok until you remember that you paid extra for a battery you’e killing, only 2 seats, and you’re going fast in a “craka’ spaceship.” If you want to go fast, go get a 00-04 Jetta/Golf/Passat/Beetle TDI.

The AC kills the motor. The Gas motor (ICE) has only 70 horsepower. That means when you turn on the AC the ICS has to work it to keep the juices flowing. If you want AC, buy a Prius, or a TDI Golf. You’ll thank me.

People hate me. I get anti-hybrid aggression quite frequently. Most of the reactions are positive (laughter, bewilderment, jealousy, suicidal thoughts at the gas pump), but occasionally you’ll get that one driver who wants to drive up behind you and flash his lights. You move over and he does too. He HATES you because you are one of those “hippie pieces of sh**” he joined the National Guard to shoot at in May of 1970. No matter what you do, he has made it his life goal to make you feel uneasy in your “environmentalist (pussy) tree hugging mother-f***ing little piece of Japanese you-know-what.” Of course, I LOVE those guys. I love them for 4 reasons: 1) He can only do that for so long before he has to stop to get gas, and I keep driving (we can do this 3 times before I have to stop) 2) Everyone that passes him thinks “what a jackass” 3) I don’t have to worry about pissing off the car behind me anymore and 4) It’s fun to make mad people even angrier.

That’s it for now, friends, my lunch break is coming to the end. Sorry for the PG-13 language at the end there, I guess it’s just a lot funnier if you read it out-loud with a Texas accent. Sorry I’ve been so absent in posting on here, I have a big post about PIER and my time (or lack thereof) there that I want to post, but it’s taking me a while to get my thoughts on paper. Stay tuned…

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Seriously though, where is this place? Anybody know? There’s a larger village on the north coast of the island, but I can’t find information about it anywhere.

Update: Looks like the Island is names Tristan da Cunha. It’s been annexed by the British since 1816, and is a part of St. Helena. Any more info you can find would be appreciated. I’m so going… I want to run an internet business from there, how awesome would that be? .sh here I come!

This short film was created in 2007, and has a surprisingly universal appeal. It’s catchy, digestable, and well done. I highly recommmend the watch if you need to smile. It’s the kind of thoughtful peice that can bring tears of happyness to your eyes.

Cheers!

… welcome.

As you may know, I’ve been trying a new tool called Wishpot. Part of what lured me into it was the ability to have folks contribute small chunks to buy expensive items.  The idea sounds fantastic: no more coordinating on get-together gifts, simpler cross-store wedding registries, etc. Of course, the way Wishpot integrated their contributions is a little half-baked, since when an item reaches the full contribution amount, it isn’t automatically purchased and shipped. They don’t even have fancy scripts to determine how much your contribution should ACTUALLY be based on the estimated assessed PayPal fees (boo PayPal fees!). It’s close though, to true distributed cofunding.

To test this (selflessly), I want to enlist you readers to help us out. It’s pretty simple, actually, and there’s a couple things you can do: first, Kari and I want to see Quantum or Solace in the theater. The tickets are a little pricey, and with our spending freeze it’s notgunnahappen. I’ve added the value of two tickets (plus PayPal fees) to my Wishpot, so you can go there and pitch in to help us out. Secondly, as a bigger attempt, I have added the entire box-set of James Bond DVDs to my Wishpot. As you can imagine, it’s quite expensive, at $120 for 20 DVDs (doesn’t include Casino Royale, which we already own).

What I need you to do is click on one of the following links to either pitch in for QoS tickets or the box set. What you do is up to you, based on the total contributed amount, total percentage, and final value of the goods. I pay about $100 per year, plus my time for this blog, so I’m hoping in one fell swoop it can all be worth it.

Click here to see the Quantom of Solice tickets Wishpot item

Click here to see the James Bond Box Set Wishpot item

As I see it, I get about 200 unique visitors a month, on average. If each person pitched in a dollar, we could go see QoS tomorrow. If each person pitched in $10, we’d have a Bond, James Bond collection in two days. If I run this for 2 weeks, and everyone pitches in $3, we’ll hit both goals. If this is a total failure, and nobody gives, I learn something, and probably try to bum a couple tickets off friends the old fashioned way.

When the dust settles in 2 weeks, I’ll report back with what happened, whether I think it worked out, and what Wishpot (or future distributed cofunding sites) should do to improve the experience. Please let me know in the comments what you think about the theory of distributed cofunding, or wishpot’s flavor in general. Do you know of a better way to do it?

Thanks Engadget for the head’s-up.

Today I got the call that my employment was being terminated, and while I’m saddened and nervous, I’m not surprised.

Goodbye PIER, best of luck to you all who remain, you’re a fantastic team and I will miss you.

Video below:

If you want the straight-up link to do it yourself, here it is: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fsparkwash.com%2FHoustonVotingLocations.kml&g=4000+Essex+Ln,+Houston,+TX+77027&ie=UTF8&z=10

View Larger Map

KML file courtesy of http://www.batchgeocode.com/

The Signing of the Declaration of Independence

While I was in church today, learning about Christ’s love and mission to bring his Kingdom to earth, the evil US government took action directly opposed to Christ’s message of love and tolerance.

Sorry for going political here, but I really have to get this off my chest. I truly see the original intent of the US Government as being one which allows the advancement of the Kingdom of God, because it promoted basic human rights (the fundamental basis for religious and/or moral expression). I do NOT believe that the US is a Christian nation, but that rather, on paper, it is the perfect government for the advancement of Christ’s mission. We have however fallen so far away from the original intent that it would be virtually unrecognizable to the founding fathers.

For the record, I voted for Bush twice. I thought (and still think) that Al Gore was an idiot in the 2000 election, and in 2004 I admit I was emotionally and irrationally caught up in revenge and a spirit of intolerance that many of us were both the victims and purveyors of.

Now we have gone too far. Our government, while corrupt for a long time, is over-stepping the bounds even us (now) authority-loving Americans can tolerate. The retaliation against Afghanistan was just. The war in Iraq evil and wrong. Now we attack Syria, and continue to antagonize Pakistan (don’t they both have nuclear weapons programs?).

Please dear reader who’s intellect I respect, expect and depend on, check out the following links:

This revolutionary document contains lines like “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” and “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” One of the authors of the document was quoted as saying “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.” The author in question is the revolutionary Thomas Jefferson, and the document is The  American Declaration of Independence.

The second document is almost as old, and contains strict rules for the US Government. Most people have never read it, and as such have no idea what rights it grants them. According to this document, the lucky citizens of the mythical nation that adhere to it don’t have to let police search them without cause, or open their doors for anyone. They have the right to arm themselves in the case they should need to overthrow the government or fight an attacking army. They even have the right to say whatever they want, to whoever they want, whenever they want. They are innocent until proven guilty too! I want to live in the country that wrote and adopted the US Constitution!

Finally, not as old but just as important, there is another revolutionary document almost none of you have probably read, but you ABSOLUTELY MUST! It is called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was written by these crazy hippies called the United Nations, and these peace-sign flashing liberals signed it into “law” in 1948. It’s older than almost everybody with a working Internet connection. There’s a beautiful video summary below, for those of us who don’t like reading intensely long documents on the computer screen (I’m with you there!). For those of you who may be visually impaired, I apologize for not having a transcript for the said video, but the text is contained in the aforementioned link:

America, I love you. Please be the nation you promised us you could be. Switzerland is far away from here, and they probably won’t take me anyway.

Prophetic…

Well, power came back on about 5 minutes ago. It couldn’t come on until we had gone to the store for ice, and thrown out the entire contents of our fridge and freezer. Mullen luck.

Anyways, that’s about all I have for an update tonight! I never said it’d be a long update, just a big one.

We cleaned out our freezer this morning.  We will probably finish cleaning out the refrigerator this evening.  We tried to eat as much as we could so we wouldn’t have to throw much away and I think we did an ok job.  Unfortunately its difficult to go thru near-full jars and bottles of jam, salad dressing, mustards, and other condiments.  Last night we headed to Pearland to help our friends eat a bunch of meat that they could no longer keep cold enough to save.  It was really fun to see a number of our friends from church and feast on meat!  They had hotdogs, two kinds of sausage, pulled pork, chicken, hamburgers, salmon, and then some!  They felt good about using it up rather than having to throw it out.

We don’t know when our power will be restored, but until then we are very much enjoying the cool front that is moving through Houston.  We’ve slept comfortably with the windows open over the last couple of nights.  If this cool weather moves out and we still don’t have electricity, we may have to arrange to sleep over at somebody’s house, but for now we stay home and have candle lit evenings, awesome french press coffee, camp stove meals, and our battery powered radio to keep us connected to the happenings around us.

Thanks everyone for praying for us down here and for checking our blog for updates!  You are welcome to try calling, but we are still barely receiving calls because the networks are so busy.

Lance is REALLY scratched up from flying debris. Turns out roof shingles flying at 100 mph can do some serious damage. Even the back window has a huge scratch in it! yIKEs! We’ll be calling Geico on Monday to see wat tey can do before poor Lancie-poo starts rusting.

We’re going to drive around later to charge the gadgets (yay power inverter!) and cool off (yay AC) and take some pictures of flooding. We’ll have to be back by 9pm though because there’s been a city-wide curfew ordered from tonight through the 19th. Of course I view this as an unnecessary increase in power by what is essentially a police state right now, but I’m not about to go out and protest. This is Texas, I don’t want to get shot.

We’ve seen trucks driving around to restore power, and all around us lights are on, but not here. The city is rightly focusing on hospitals, nursing homes and Hotels. I scratch my head as we drive past lit-up car dealerships and strip malls, then sleep without covers in an 80 degree bedroom. :S

I’m working on uploading some photos to Flickr, it takes a while on this slow internet connections.

The cell phones still don’t quite work. Calls get dropped before connecting, ad even SMS and Voicemail notifications come in bursts a few times a day.

Flooding is still pretty bad (pics later?) all around town. There’s been a bit of rain today even with the storm gone, and it’s exacerbating the flooding problem.

That’s all for now, I’ve gotta get the Flickr upload to go through. More updates to follow!

UPDATE: Kari turned the sink faucet just before we left and our water is back! Yay!

The buildings nearby have lots of windows busted, there’s insulation blowing everywhere. The storm drains were plugged (until Kari and I walked past, that is *grin*). Fences are gone, trees are down, roofs are ripped up. The awesome power of the storm was very evident.

Lance was ok on the roof overnight. There’s shingles and metal roof pieces everywhere though, so I’m sure there’s scratches we’re not seeing.

We’ll have pictures and maybe video when we get power back.

If the video doesn’t work, it’s because we JUST updated it. Give it a few minutes, then try again. Cheers!

At this time, mandatory evacuations have been ordered for much of the city, but Kari ad I are safely outside the surge zone, and out of a flood area. We are subject to the wind and rain however, and are preparing for infrastructure loss. We can’t do much during the storm, but we have duct-tape and tarp for covering windows afterwords if needed.

We have friends we can stay with as needed, and I can work from TranStar once we lose power/connectivity.

Just be warned that our cell phones are already acting up, and we’ll probably leave them powered off to conserve battery life for when we may need it.

To get more information about us, keep coming back here. To get more info about the storm, check out the links below:

StormPulse
Weather Underground
Harris County Office of Emergency Management
CW 39 (Video Clips)

Keep us in your prayers!

Genesis 3

1 Now the Craigslist Scammer was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, “Yea, hath God said, ‘Ye shall not ride every scooter of Asia?’”

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, “We may ride the scooters of Asia, Honda, Yamaha, and Genuine Scooter Company, which the LORD God had made: (3) But of the scooter of Craigslist which is of China, God hath said, Ye shall not buy of it, neither shall ye ride it, lest it die.”

4 And the Craigslist Scammer said unto the woman, “It shall not surely die: (5) For God doth know that in the day ye ride thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing Chinese good. Ye shall possess disc brakes, remote start, and engineering similar to the Honda scooters, which the LORD God also had made.”

6 And when the woman saw that the Scooter was good for features, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a 150cc water-cooled engine to be desired to make one fast and quiet, she took of the scooter thereof, and did ride, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did buy it.

7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were foolish and broke; and they changed the fluids, and made themselves new gaskets.

8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garage in the dry afternoon: and Lach and Kari hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the cars of the garage. (9) And the LORD God called unto Lach, and said unto him, “Where art thou?” (10) And Lach said, “I heard thy voice in the garage, and I was afraid, because I was poor; and my feet are sore from walking.” (11) And God said, “Why were you walking from Montrose, Hast thou ridden the scooter, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not buy?” (12) And the man said, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the Craigslist Scammer, and I did buy the scooter.” (13) And the LORD God said unto the woman, “What is this that thou hast done?” And the woman said, “The Craigslist Scammer beguiled me, and I did ride.”

14 And the LORD God said unto the Craigslist Scammer, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all Craigslist, and above every angry blogger; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: (15) And I will put enmity between thee and the Mullens, but you will not be punished in this life, because Christians aren’t to sue one another.”

16 Unto the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy transportation; in sorrow thou shalt go to work; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, but he shall be without a vehicle.”

17 And unto Lach he said, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of Kari, and hast purchased the scooter of China, of which I commanded thee, saying, ‘Thou shalt not purchase of it:’ cursed is the pavement for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou walk of it all the days of thy life, upon thy four-wheeled contraptions shalt thou go, and gas shalt thou buy all the days of thy life. (18) Pollution also and gas prices shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt drive alone with three empty seats; (19) In the ache of thy muscles shalt thou walk home, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

20 And Lach called his wife’s name Kari; because he had to carry everything wherever he walked now.

21 Unto Lach also and to his wife did the LORD God make Lance run well, and be inexpensive to repair.

22 And the LORD God said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know Chinese good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Japanese brands, and ride, and smile for ever:”

23 Therefore the LORD God sent the Mullens forth from Craigslist, to walk and drive the four wheeled vehicles.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the top of his bank account zeroes, and a broken scooter which could not even be driven to the shop, to keep the way of the Japanese brands.

The real problem here is that Platies give birth to between 10 and 100 young, and have a tendancy to eat their babies (yeah, I know they’re called “fry,” bite me) after giving birth. Our filter’s also not ready for babies, and there’s Gouramis and a Betta in the tank too, and I think they will be prone to devour the baby Platies. My attitude has always been “they’re just fish,” but now that they’re baby fish I’m having this huge moral quandary. On one hand nature is cruel, and the other fish would have an honest shot at eating the babies in the wild; on the other hand they’re babies for goodness’ sake!

I need your help, as a faithful reader of my blog (hi mom). Should I try to protect and raise the fry, or let nature run it’s course? If I choose option 2 (nature) should I get the tank ready for nature by putting a screen over the filter inlet? Vote below

[poll id="2"]

UPDATE: DARN IT ALL! Turns out we have 2 boys and 3 girls! Oh noes! Apparently you can sex Platies fairly easily: a male Platy has a skinny anal fin and a female Platy has a fanned anal fin. It might be my imagination, but I think I can already see the darkening spot above her anal fin that would be the fry’s eyes. I might be taking the boys back to the pet store to avoid this problem in the future…

That’s right, boys and girls. while downloading the newest OOo beta release (lets hear it for native Aqua on OS X!), I noticed it was seeding quite quickly. Just weeks after they were ordered to stop too!

Torrent on (legally, of course)!

I guess I was born for this texas stuff…

This is me, back home in Washington, in the Mount Baker National Forest on the eve of my wedding. In case you’re wondering, Wile E. Coyote didn’t come home with us.

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Just a friendly reminder to read carefully, examine URLs, and NEVER enter a password if you’re suspicious of phishing.

Take THAT Houston, triple hitched semi truck! Who would’ve thought those hippies in Oregon would have you beat on that one?

UPDATE: If you liked that, you’ll love these. Because most of these are in Australia (infamous for their “road-trains”) I can’t help get a “Mad Max” vibe from this.

This is an amazing picture of a large prop plane dumping fire putter outer right near a house in Santa Barbara.

From here (more cool pics on that page too).

Today I opened my email from Clint to find the ad shown above. Priceless. GOOGLE KNOWS!

Please see this video, so you can know what’s happening to the constitution right now. This is extremely terrifying.

Thanks firedoglake.

UPDATE: More information on the FISA fiasco is here. RIP 4th Amendment, 1791-2008.

I usually try to have some witty or smarmy comment to make about my links, but just… wow. Wow.

Link

• ICS was born out of wildfire response. It was developed out of the need to communicate response activity and centrally control efforts. Before ICS was developed, you would run into a situation where team A was using controlled burn to slow a fire, and inadvertently run the controlled burn into team B, who was also running a controlled burn in the opposite direction from another fire. The two teams would end up back to back battling blazes they had started, and there were many fatalities.
  As a result of the fire-focus of ICS, and the fact that these folks have been using it for decades, this is a very well run UC (Unified Command) and JIC (Joint Information Center).
• PIER was made for this crap. It’s great to see it working so well. The age of the product is showing through, the UI’s a little crusty (something Geoff’s addressing already) and out old-as-dirt version of TinyMCE is aggravating at best.
• As usual with incidents where PIER is used, this is a bit of a love-fest for the product. People are using and it’s clicking. Encouraging to us folks who typically only deal with customers once something’s broken.
• This place has some col toys. Sure, the internet connection SUCKS (really lame state and federal firewalls, between the two it’s hard for people to pass stuff back and forth), but who needs good internet when there’s fire-dumper airplanes reloading and refueling 100 feet from you?

I’m having a really good time here, posted below are some pics from here in the JIC and around the complex as well. Cheers!

I’m off, last-minute style, to help with the JIC in Redding for the California Wildfire response. The PIER site they’re using is here.

I’ll try to post pics and updates while I’m there.

I’m excited to be working with the department that invented the Incident Command System, it should be enlightening and exciting.

More to follow…

It looks like Bond’s hitting hard, and finally behaving like a normal action hero. This may disenfranchise Bond fans, but it caters to the Bourne Identity crowd. Today’s moviegoers want smart, gritty action, with a good guy we can identify with. With the old Bond movies, I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to kick “a” or it I wanted to kick him in the junk and tell him to move on. I wouldn’t dream of kicking Daniel Craig int he junk, because he’d come after me and defibrillate me. I know he wouldn’t be afraid to either because he did it to himself in Casino Royale. Plus his pants are probably Italian and worth more than my life.

Also, Aston Martin’s are extremely sexy. I’ll watch it just for the scene where the car spins around on the parking garage ramp, certainly with machine-gun bullets spraying everywhere. Bond, PLEASE, don’t crash it this time!

I was cruising through my old photos the other day when I found this pic. I realize not everyone has heard the story about why this image is so epic, so here we go.

In June of 2004 my old Chevy Cavalier broke down on the I-90 floating bridge. Twice. On Tuesday both times. In the exact same spot. I towed it to the repair shop, fixed it, sold it to my neighbor for $500 and went to Tacoma to find a new car. At the auto mall I was shopping for old Land Rovers (hey, gas was cheap and I lived in Bellevue) but for some reason I test drove a 2003 Lancer OZ. It was fun. I was no longer looking for Land Rovers. Unfortunately, the dealer claimed that OZ was spoken for (lies!) but he had a nice red one back at the dealership. So I rode to the dealership to see my new destiny. It was a red 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer ES, I loved it and I bought it and named it Reuben.

“Now wait a second,” you may now be saying, “I thought your car was blue.” Well two days later the dealership still didin’t have the final papers from the bank, so I was still waiting for them to call me and I decided to explore my options. I drove up to Seattle Mitsubishi to see what they had. They just so happened to have a clean 2002 LS with no plates for sale for $1000 less than I had agreed to pay for the red one. They found me a 4.5% interest rate and I bought it instead. I returned Reuben to the other dealer and they shredded my papers.

Part of the sale with Seattle Mitsubishi was that they do some work on the car to get it up to snuff. They agreed to do a brake job and alignment, and replace the weatherstriping on the windows, “Come back next week.” “No appointment?” “Naah, just come on in”

The next week rolls around, and on Thursday I take Lance in to have the work done. I notice there’s no cars in the lot and the lights appear to be off inside. There’s a note on the door that says “Inventorying, please come back Thursday.” I figured I must have just missed them, and I’d come back the next week. I called the dealer just in case to leave a message, and the voicemail was full. Weird.

The next Thursday rolls around and I show up again, and there’s still no cars. This time the door has another note on it, in addition to the “Inventorying” note… It’s from the State of Washington. Something about taxes, oh, and a chain around the door handles with a fatty padlock on it.

I had a good laugh and came back later that night to take a picture, that’s how you get the image above. What followed was a 9 month debacle to get my car licensed and registered, since they never processed the paperwork and actually never fully processed the prior sale. The state had no proof I had bought the car, save for the copies of my papers I mailed to them. Seems the dealership hadn’t been reporting sales to the state in that last week, so they could pocket the money and run. guess the joke’s on them now.

The funny thing is how things settle into place after somehitng like that happens. Some weird stuff I remembered afterwards:

• They knocked $3000 off the price of the car, “Just for me.”
• When Kari walked in with me the sales guy looked her up and down and asked, “How’d you get so tan?”
• They offered to fix everything. No extra cost. “Just come back next week.”
• They offered to return Reuben for me. Yeah right.
• The repair bays had what looked like props for 3Fast3Furious in them

Man, if I could do it again I would have bought the 04 Lancer Sportback they had and negotiated them down to $500 for it.

Anyways, in true Lach fashion, nothing could come without some crazy unlikely story surrounding it and Lance is no different. He’s been such a trouble-free car too, maybe he’s compensating.

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, so it’s probably about time to do it again. Here’s an update on what’s been going on so far:

• We bought a Scooter. It was a bummer broken one (what, no coolent in a water cooled scoot?), but we’re getting it fixed as we speak. While we’re waiting, I’m staring at this picture and sobbing.
• Max died. I think some friends may have fed him one night, the next morning he was laying on the bottom of the tank “gasping.” We put him in new clear wayter, but he didn’t make it.
• We moved on past Max and got ourselves a proper tank with a filter. We have two Blue Guarmis and plants. We’re going to add more fish and finally a new Betta.
• Kari is almost done with her teacher certification classes, and finished her EC-4 test last night. We don’t know for sure yet, but I’m positive she passed.
• Kari will be looking for teaching jobs in the next month or so here.
• Kari’s 10 year high school reunion is coming up the weekend of the 5th. She’ll be in Corvallis, but I’m staying here, tickets are expensive!
• Church is going great,w e’re hosting the membership class thing at our house, it starts the week of the 13th, I think it’ll be on Sundays at our house.

Did I miss anything?

Found this on the internet, this is of course in response to Obama’s quote about stopping climate change, where he said, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …”

Ahh, the audacity of hope indeed…

Right after I shot this, a bolt hit the building down the street. The thunder hit me while the bolt was still hitting the building. It felt like someone punched me in the chest. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

People know me as an early adopter, someone keen to snatch up the latest gadgets the moment they hit the shelves. I have good news, it’s not true: I don’t own an iPhone, an e-Book reader, or a particle accelerator… I still buy my movies pre-viewed from Blockbuster and I still buy my music in iTunes and occasionally some random brick-and-mortar store. I don’t do a lot of downloading, although I’ve been known to snag a torrent of a hard to find movie (Hors De Prix, Salt of The Earth, BBC’s Top Gear) while I scour the interwebs for a place to really buy it. I’m listening carefully to Toshiba’s claim that BluRay is only a storage media, and waiting to see what the world brings us next for high-definition audio and video.

My first big step into the brave new world was last week when I downloaded an app called Requium (link to .torrent, may have NSFW ads) and stripped all the DRM out of my iTunes music. Over 8,000 legally acquired songs, none of which I could listen to on my non-iPhone. What Requium does is remove the “FairPlay” (ironic, eh?) DRM from the files so they can be used anywheres. It’s not a file sharing app, it’s not a piracy tool, although it is a violation of the iTunes TOS to use it (illegal?). Now I have 8,000 songs which are still playable in iTunes, only now I can put them on my Nokia 5610 ExpressMusic AND Kari’s new iPhone (should she get one?).

Now that I have all these gloriously nude MP3 files, I have sworn off the iTunes music store. Never again will I pay for something I can’t use and fortunately there’s some fantastic alternatives out there. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on Amazon.com, since I’m totally in love with the big yellow smile. Yesterday I made my first non-iTunes digital music purchase: Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. The whole process was seamless. Once I had downloaded the Amazon downloader (download a downloader anyone?) the files were downloaded and simply dropped in the folder of my choosing. No DRM, no drama.

In iTunes’ defense, you can also buy the new Coldplay album DRM free in the iTunes Music Store, by purchasing iTunes Plus music, but it’s a dollar less over at amazon, enough savings to buy one of the only other good Coldplay songs: Spies or Yellow .

I also finally opened up Miro, the new name of the old Democracy player. Miro runs on Windows Linux and Mac, and lets you download free video content to your computer. From there you can play it on the road, or just wait until the video has downloaded for a seamless viewing. Miro also lets you do naughty illegal things like subscribe to RSS feeds of torrent files of your favorite shows… but that’s bad, illegal, and way too logical so don’t do it. Now thanks to Miro, I’m subscribed to CNN’s daily video podcast, and the ONN. If tech like Miro keeps developing like this, we can kiss movie rentals and physical media goodbye (see the above video clip DOES have something to do with this random, disjointed post.).

I registered the mullen.me domain name, but had no idea it would go this far…

I think this about settles the bets on whether Houston will change Lach more, or it Lach will change Houston more…

My apologies to Otis, but I just don’t care much about Facebook status. I know, people use it to update what they’re doing, but it’s annoying to have to check Twitter AND Facebook. As a compromise, I don’t check Facebook. I understand however, that others may want to know what I’m up to (how narcissistic of me) so I update Twitter, which posts on my blog (above, under the title), and on Facebook via TwitterSync. Well, the TwitterSync dev (bless his little Seattle heart) wrote TwitterSync on the Twitter IM API (good call), which is terminally down (bad call). Twitter IM has been down for weeks now, and so has TwitterSync. At first I didn’t really care, since Facebook status sucks, but it’s been long enough now and every time I log into Facebook it says “What are you doing right now?”

So today I break down and add the terrible Twitter Facebook app. It works, but it’s pretty gimped and doesn’t have the features TwitterSync has. Of course, Twitter’s own Twitter app is FUBAR as well. I add it and after signing on get some crazy Ruby/FB error message (image above).

Now c’mon guys. You’re freakin’ Twitter, the golden child of the internet. Can’t you fix your app? Is the economy so bad you had to go get second jobs and don’t have time to update your software. Times like these I wish I knew one iota about code so I could go make my own app that doesn’t suck.

A Starbucks store very far from Seattle has taken Otis Kimzey’s advice. In December of last year Otis wrote about how Starbucks should have happy hour from 5:00pm to 6:30pm, to get people in during the slower times of the day. He was referencing this AdAge article (registration/subscription required, those rat bastards) and adding his own $.02.

On friday, on an OtisKimzey.com reader tip, Kyle told us that the Starbucks he worked at in Houston was offering a Happy Hour. That’s right ladies and gents, half off frappuccinos between 5 and 7 even on weekends. Kari, myself and Philip and Amber piled in the car to go check it out, and sure enough, right when we arrive we see the sign on the door (pictured above). Definately not corporate. Inside we see the following sign as well:

Of course, we were not alone. Youths everywhere. Frapps flying across the counter. Starbucks happy hour FTW.

We asked for Kyle, but the other employees jumped right on me, “He’s not here.” Manager? Shift supervisor? Why so defensive?

The employees working there said it was this store only, and not a push from corporate. They just printed the signs and started selling half off frapps during happy hour that Monday. They did seem nervous about all my questions, but they should be. The Mother Ship will not be pleased. They run a tight ship and don’t generally give stores flexibility over pricing.

This is such a great idea. Frapps have to have the highest margin of any thing ever sold. A grande costs $3.85, and there’s just no way it takes a) 20 minutes for the barista to make, b) lots of R&D cost recoup, or c) little flecks of gold to get that perfect sugar-infused flavor. So take a hit on margin for 2 hours a day. Get people into your store before or during dinner. I’ sure you’re still making money, and it encourages more people to buy Frapps and get hooked on them.

Corporate, if you’re listening (probably not), please give us happy hours in every store (but make better signs)!