Free Lifelock?

I've been thinking about trying this do it yourself Lifelock. Apparently you just fill out a form every 90 days.

Parallettes

These are homemade parallettes. They are like gymnastic parallel bars but minified for home use. Sure, you could just go out and buy parallettes, but those things get awfully expensive. Oh sure, you don't want to break your neck with a shoddy product. Thats why I put these under some stress tests:

The bars are about a foot off the ground and a little less than 1.5 feet of usable bar space. It takes an entire ten-foot PVC pipe from your local hardware store, and was so easy to make, even I could do it! Best part is, it cost me only $40.

You can find the directions at CrossFit. And, if you want to see someone who uses parallettes properly, you should check out Randal Setzler's YouTube video (hint: you don't stand on them.)

And before I forget, I'd better give Zane his props for convincing me to do it. These things are fun!

Reel mowing

A couple of years ago I was out on a jog and saw a guy mowing his lawn with a reel mower. At that moment I thought if I ever have a lawn I should do that. I try to save the planet as much as I can, and I thought this would be a great way to help. I now have a lawn and a reel mower. So far it has been great. The one thing I have learned is mow often. If the grass is too tall it just will not work.

This week I have heard a couple of times the mayor of Wichita talk about how Wichita has had higher air pollution then it should the last two months. He talks about how you should get a new lawn mower, because old ones are very bad on air quality. He never once says get a reel mower. I find that sad. How many people don't think about that and how much could it save?

The bottom line is if you have a lawn consider a reel mower. You never need to change the oil or gas them up, and they are a great workout if you just sit in an office all day. It is a win-win-win.

Goodbye to Agnew

I was told that Agnew is coming down this summer. A little research turned up a leader story about it. I know Agnew is an old building with some issues, but when I was at Fort Hays it was where some of my best times happened. The wild Friday nights of playing Mario cart in Shayne and Alex room. Or the times we just went down the hall and got a bunch of people together to play basketball or soccer. It was only place I have ever lived where I know almost all my neighborer. I could good on and on about all the great times, but for those who lived you already know. I was prod to be an part of agnewtions. Goodbye old friend and my the housing that replaces you be a place for others to enjoy, live, and learn.

From the agnewtions facebook page. It says it all.

Air conditioner: $98.00
Double room+15-meal plan:$5,196.00
Living in a coed dorm without freshmen: priceless

The Manga Guide to Calculus

The Manga Guide to Calculus follows a story of a young reporter who must use calculus to analyze data to discover news stories, or something like that. What I find amazing about this book is that for $20, you can get entertained while learning calculus, even going as far as partial differentiation and Taylor series expansion.

$20?!?! Man, what a deal! My stupid boring text book I used in college cost way more than that. Not only that, but there is an entire series of "The Manga Guide to..." books, ranging from databases to the universe.

I'm seriously considering getting this book, and integrating it into my life. Did I just make a stupid math joke? Yes I did, and it was a bit derivative to boot.

Best commercial ever (even if intel is evil ;)

Play Budget Hero

Budget Hero is a game about balancing the federal budget. Based on the actual economic model and data used by the Congressional Budget Office, it's your turn to decide what to spend on, and what to cut.

Not only that, but you get to choose up to three different "value badges" our of a pool of eight to measure how your decisions on your budget affect what you value. For example, you might choose the green badge, the energy independence badge, and efficient government, like I did the second time around. If you choose the card to award $30 million to the person that invents a better car battery, then that would contribute positively to your green badge. Choosing to drill for oil in Alaska would increase your energy independence (oddly, I don't think that affected my green badge negatively, though). Double clicking on the cards will tell you what your spending/cutting would do, so make sure you do that, rather than just drag the cards onto the "recently played" pile. Research, people!

Let's just say that I effectively nailed the efficient government badge. The other two badges, not quite a quarter was earned. I'm not proud of what I did, but suffice it to say that there would be more than a few old people angry with my decision to destroy social security as much as the game would allow (little do they know that the joke would be on my generation anyway). But I did reduce the national debt from $13.8 trillion in 2008 to $9.2 trillion in 2018 and delayed the budget bust from the year 2038 to 2070, so at least I've got that going for me.

All in all, it was a fun and educational game. I actually felt like this game helped my life and my understanding of government spending in a positive way, which is more than I could say for many other games I've played in the past, like Bart vs. the Space Mutants.

An article about the development of the game can be found at Gamasutra's Post Mortem: Getting Serious with Budget Hero. It provides some interesting gamer statistics, it is worth the less-than-five-minute read time.

Weird Al on Circus of the Stars

I remember watching this when I was nine or so. I still get nervous watching this sway pole act today. Watch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8CTEEOMLgE.

Then, become a fan of his on facebook!

Tic-Tac-Toe

Paul and I are in the process of game creation. Our plan is to start small and work our way to bigger and better games.

So our first collaborative work is Tic-Tac-Toe. You can't start much smaller than that. It's finished, and now we plan working on a Tetris clone.

Google Street View: Coming to a street near you

I was talking with one of my co-workers during a break, and he revealed that Utica, KS had been Googlized! So I wondered what other places of Kansas they drove through. As it turns out, it was a bunch.
They hit Tribune (and some highway), Macksville (who is this guy?), and plenty of other western Kansas towns got hit too. An obvious one they missed: Hays! I'm sure Google will not stop until they've managed to index every town, and then move on to our very own brains. It'll be great, I can't wait.

Mario Kart!!!!!!!!!!

Do you guys remember playing Mario Kart all the time? I sure do, and I found this song on youtube that brings me back to the good ol' days.



Enjoy

Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime

It is Christmas season, and you know what that means: Instead of radio stations playing standard rotations of 5 pop songs on repeat, they play their rotations of 5 Christmas songs on repeat. YEAH!

So instead, why not listen to a catchy Christmas song set in the future? (Don't worry, you don't need to buy it, Jon offers the song for free. I'm sure he'd be happy with more money though)

If you would like visuals with it, I'm sure some YouTube goods will help out.

Paul! What's the deal with your alternate life?

Hey Paul, I just watched this video on YouTube, and you've got some explaining to do. I was just wondering when you decided to move to "Chicagoland, Illinois?" Also, when did you gain all that weight and change your vocals? I noticed that you still like to wear red hats at least.

Whew.... Gald I check this place once in a blue moon

Not much happen here in the blog world. It must be way too exciting out there. Me I'd rather be...

One Night, Three Targets.

It was a September night and needed some sauce. Not just any sauce we needed Tikka Masala. They reason we wanted the sauce was friend was over and wanted some because they could not get it where they lived. So the word was you could get it at Target. We go to a Target close to the house find where the sauce should be and no sauce. We ask the a target employee, which was very nice and told us how to find it other stores in town have the sauce. A quick check with the service desk and we find one Target close by has one jar and one Target across town has 12. We call the close Target to check and according to them they have one jar. I make the call and we go to the close one. We get there and no sauce. No space for the sauce on the shelves. We ask an employee and he has no idea. 20 minutes later and across town we hit the jackpot. 12 jars of Tikka Masala. We take 6 and go. Funny thing is I still don't know if it is any good. Guess I will have to cook some chicken :).

Famous People Punching Steve

If you want to make it big on the Internet with photography, you have to have a theme. I guess. Anyway, this guy is no photographer, and the lighting and framing are all wrong, but the shots are still striking nonetheless. Go to Famous People Punching Steve, and I'll guarantee that "You'll laugh 'til you stop laughing!*" (tm)

*Assuming that you started laughing.

The Luke Arm

The Luke Arm is an advanced prosthetic device that is, um, head and shoulders above the rest. You can watch videos about it at medgadget. I only watched part 2, but it provided a nifty and simplified version of how it works. People, listen: This thing can pick up grapes! There was another guy, who had no arms but two Luke arms, and was able to disassemble and reassemble a gun, and then fire it. All of this with minimal training too!

It may be a long video (almost 15 minutes) but there are some really neat things going on.

Firefox tweaks I can use

Personally, I use tips 9 and 10 from this guy's list of 28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks.

Trick 9 is about how to handle JavaScript pop-ups, which differs ever so slightly from the normal method of pop-ups, I guess. Whatever. Ever since Firefox got the ability to open the list of tabs that were in the previous session, I was always a little ticked when I found out there was yet another Firefox window open that had an advertisement in it. Well, no more, Paco!

Trick 10 is useful for me because it enables spell check in all fields, not just the multi-line ones, and I am a horrible speller.

Take this mac

http://www.slate.com/id/2198535/?gt1=38001

Weee

FHSU has an awesome debate coach. Kind of wish I knew the guy.

Payless vs. American Eagle

A few years ago, the accounting club went on a field trip to Payless Shoes and they were talking about how Payless owned the trademark for American Eagle shoes. They were getting ready to start marketing shoes with that brand name, and I thought, wow that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Well, it took a few years, but here it is. Maybe I should quit my day job and become a psychic. I'm going to need my visions to come true faster, though.

While I am at it ...

Have you ever noticed that places seems bigger when you were smaller. Well I few summers back the family took a trip to the one room school I went too as a grade schooler. While I as there I took the chance to do something I could of never done back then, grab the rim. Note the rim is now bent down so had it not been for that I might of still not been able to grab it. Anyway, I did get it, but I had not planned it out so well as you might see.

Paul's Sidewalk View

So I was looking over some of the videos I have taken with my camera and found one I thought I could post about. It is nothing great. Just my attempt of recording a video while riding a bike. I am calling it "sidewalk view", because it is like Google's street view on a bike. This made me think I should get an eight way camera and do just that. Except I don't want to be sued.

Anyway here is 22Mb of junk to let Google backup forever.

P.S. I also found FHSU has a youtube channel thing, seems like a lot of tablet propaganda.

McCracken Rodeo 2008

Free Army Advertisement Music

There's a great series of TV ads that the Army shows. What makes them great for me is the inspiring symphonic goodness playing as the action goes on.

It turns out the song is called "Army Strong" and it is freely available for downloading at the United States Army Bands MySpace page if you have an account set up with MySpace. If you don't want the hassle of that, you can also download the mp4 at the U.S. Army Field Bands Listening Room. But don't let them con you into getting QuickTime just so you can play the song. (It is official: QuickTime is now higher up on my devil list than MySpace). Just use VLC and don't regret a thing, since it already comes with all the codecs it needs.


On a side note, you might wonder why QuickTime is ranked higher on the "things-I-hate" list. It is simple. If I need a MySpace account, I can use a throwaway email address to get what I need and am then done. QuickTime, on the otherhand, would have to be installed on my machine, and I've had it up to HERE [raises hand to neck level] with it asking me to buy QuickTime Pro.

Classics Corner #16: Speech Recognition

I was searching around the blog and I happened to rediscover Paul's entry on his test of Window XP's speech recognition. It's even funnier if you read it out loud, as if you are trying to use the software yourself. Personally I found it among the most hilarious of our entries, and so far it's comedy has stood the test of time (of two years).

It's harvest time!

Water in a hurry.

A lot of water.

The House that Frank Lloyd Wright Built

Paul tipped me off that the only house that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Nebraska is right here in McCook. It's at 602 Norris Ave. if you want to Google Map it.


There are no markings on it that says "Yo. The same guy who built the Guggenheim built this place." However I'm fairly confident I snapped photos of the correct house because it was by far the least boring house at that particular intersection.

Even the garage is nice.

There are still unanswered questions. Questions like "How exactly did Paul find out about this house anyway?"

Another question that comes to my mind is "How did this guy manage to build 532 homes?" His first house was 1889. During this time he worked under Louis Sullivan (considered the creator of the modern skyscraper) but Frank apparently thought he wasn't getting enough work, as it was later discovered that he was building additional buildings privately, without going through the firm.

His last design was in the year of his death, 1959. That means across the 70 years of his career, he was averaging about 7.6 homes a year, or a little over 1 building every 1.5 months. And these aren't Podunk cookie-cutter-type mobile homes, each was a unique work of art. Frank Lloyd Wright, I salute you!

For Jon

Hey Jon, I bought some of those really spicy chips you really liked, I'll have to send them to you so give me your address some time in the near future (but I wouldn't post it on here).

Shayne's Link-Happy Post #257

Since I have nothing creative of my own to say, here is a collection of someone else's funniness.

• First, we have a comic strip for all you rabbit lovers out there.
• Next up is a collection of Calvin's dad's answers to common kids' questions like why does the sun set. (Too bad the guy didn't just show the actual comics themselves. Man alive!)
• Last but not least is a technical discussion of computer device communication. Thanks to my comp sci background I was able to understand a little bit of what was going on at least.

Hey, I still have some time. How about a rant?

Thanks to Wikipedia, I no longer need to use my brain for knowledge. It has nearly everything I already know. Ever since I came to this realization I now only keep a list of words in my brain that will point me to the various pages of my hive mind knowledge.

And look at me now! I have many more free synapses for use. I can now just focus on using my mind only for creativity purposes.... hey, wait, that sounds familiar. What was it I said at the beginning of the post again? Oh well.

Bye Hays

After six year of studying and fun times I have left Hays KS behind. It is odd how a you can come to like a place you did not at first. I remember after my first day of classes, me and my brother went to pizzahut and I can recall that feeling. That how am I going to make it. Anyway Hays changed me a lot and I will always be glad I sent six year of my life there.

Congraduations!

"Congraduations? Surely that is a misspelling," you might think. But make no mistake! Con is a prefix meaning "with, together" and this certainly fits the bill. We've just had three of our fellow bloggers graduate from FHSU last Saturday. I've already expressed this to Clarice, Jessie, and Paul (notice how I put it in alphabetical order there? Brilliant!), but I would like to say GOOD JOB for having done it. So there.

...
And it is also a play on words. That word I used for the title, "Congraduations," I mean. Most people expect one to say "Congratulations" except this time I didn't and it was so exceptionally hilarious that I had to use an unnecessary amount of adverbs to explain the funniness of it all. Also, it is somewhat late and I'm very tired as I write these words so don't trust me on that assessment.

Anyway. Have many good years of using the skills you learned at FHSU, and look back on those fun times we shared with fondness. I know I did.

...
Perhaps the joke is lost on you. I mean "Congraduations," man! That is some funny solid GOLD right there! I was afraid to even use the pun, because there happens to be a stitch shortage in the medical industry right now, and if you laughed too hard, as the old saying goes, then indeed you would not be able to seek the medical attention you would so desperately require. They'd have to improvise and use Krazy Glue(tm) or something.
...
I just wrote all that. Looks like time for bed for me.

In conclusion: WOOO!