Perfect…
God told Bush to go to war
Oh my god. Here we go.
From the BBC Press Release about an upcoming TV show:
President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq – and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.
Nabil Shaath says: “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, “George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.” And I did, and then God would tell me, “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …” And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, “Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.” And by God I’m gonna do it.'”
Three Days
Three days is how long my new garage door lasted.
On Friday, I had someone come out and replace my garage door. The old one was starting to rip itself to pieces and I decided it was time to get a new one.
We got a (somewhat) cheap, thin steel door installed. Cheapest they had, but it looked nice and worked well.
On Monday, my father-in-law managed to drive his truck into the door.
He didn’t hit it hard, “I just bumped it” is what he said, but he hit it hard enough to bow two of the panels and put a huge (6″ x 24″) dent into it.
Argh!
So now I have to see if I can push the bump out from the inside well enough that I can live with it.
Or do I just make him pay to replace the door section?
Well, we are back
In case you didn’t notice, my server was off the air all day today.
We had a major storm last night where we got more than four inches of rain in about an hour. Apparently the power flickers and brown outs were too much for the power supply in my firewall and it took a digger.
I didn’t realize this had happened until I got to work this morning, so the site was down all day until I could get home and fix it. Luckily I have a supply of power supplies around, so it took all of five minutes to fix.
I also decided that enough is enough and went out and bought an APC Back-up Pro 1100 UPS to run all my gear off of. It also has a surge suppressor for the phone line, so hopefully I won’t lose another DSL router to lightning again.
I took all the stuff down and rearranged a bit and now it looks all nice and neat in the “server room”. I’ll have to take a picture and put it up.
Selling my photos?
John at work mentioned that his wife has been selling her digital photos on the web using iStockPhoto.
This piqued my interest, so I looked into it a little bit. I like to think that I’m a reasonably good photographer, so why not try and sell some of my photos?
But where to sell them? iStockPhoto seems interesting, and is free for the seller, but you don’t earn very much when you sell a photo – between $0.20-$0.60 per download.
Then there is ShutterPoint. ShutterPoint costs money to get into as a seller – something on the order of $9.00 for 50MB of space for 6 months. That’s not too bad. The other deal with ShutterPoint is that you set the price for your photos (I see prices ranging from $20 – $60) and ShutterPoint takes 15%.
So what to do?
I think I’ll sort through some of my photos and pick a nice bunch. Then I’ll open an account at ShutterPoint for 6 months and see what happens. It’s only $9.00 after all.
If I don’t sell anything in 6 months, then I’ll close the ShutterPoint account and open a free one at iStockPhoto. Or just give up.
I’ll have to see what images I choose and might have to try and get some model releases… Or simpler would be to not use any photos with people in them.
Like Motorcycles? Like Ultralights?
Have I got a deal for you…
A Virginia company called Flite Bike has come up with a different and totally unique concept – a Buckeye powered parachute built around a Honda Reflex motorcycle, claimed to be “the world’s first roadable powered parachute.”
Read the story here.
Rockets!
Here is a fabulous 74 picture flickr set of rocket launches in the Black Rock desert area.
Wow.
I really need to start playing with Estes rockets with the kids. (Kids make such great excuses to play with toys. 🙂 )
I love the commentary on the photos – when the rocket fails on launch and blows up, they call it an Unscheduled Rapid Disassembly
Of course this came from Boing Boing.
It’s Banned Books Week!
And the American Library Association has lots of ways to help you celebrate!
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, the annual event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.
Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.
Sorry, Gotta Go!
When You Absolutely, Positively Have to Get Off the Phone SorryGottaGo.com – Helps End Unending Phone Conversations
This site is full of sound clips you can play when you are stuck in a phone conversation that you need to get out of.
You name it.
The Skylighters
The Skylighters were the 800-odd men of the four batteries of the 225th AAA Searchlight Battalion. After training at Camp Davis, North Carolina, the 225th arrived in England just before New Year’s Day 1944, and became part of the antiaircraft defense of England. In mid-June, the Skylighters landed on Omaha Beach and formed part of the defense of Normandy. Thereafter, for most of their dash across France and the Low Countries, the 225th were attached to the 9th Air Force’s 422nd and 425th Night Fighter Squadrons, who flew the deadly P-61 Black Widow interceptor against the Luftwaffe.
The main site is here.
But what really brought me to this wonderful site is the WWII Pin-ups section.