Ugly Americans

There was an article on CNN about the movie "21", which is based on the Ben Mezrich book "Ugly Americans". (I read the book some time ago and posted about it on my main blog.) The CNN bit led me on a kick where I checked out the Wikipedia article, which mentioned a possible true identity for the protagonist. A blog post had some more information and pointed to a Boston Globe article along the same lines. Is the reality as interesting as the book? It'd be interesting to find out for sure.

Statistics for Dollar-Value

Historical gas prices
Retail milk prices
(USDA ERS data sets)
Historical gold price
Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index

SATA Dev Resources

The Linux ATA project has a page for SATA development resources. Just in case I want to refer to it later.

Sad Socket

In Tuesday's edition of WSJ there was an ad by the Galvin Electricity Initiative with the tagline "Meet Sad Socket" and the catchcopy "You'd be sad, too, if you had to power digital-age businesses on 1950s technology." While Tesla's system worked well for the turn of the century—the 20th Century, that is—the grid as it is today is overtaxed and vulnerable to disruption. With people as ignorant as they are about infrastructure issues, reform is highly unlikely.

Egg McMuffins

The inventor of the Egg McMuffin has died. As I really like the Sausage & Egg McMuffin, I feel saddened by this news.

日本に住んでいた時も、朝早く起きたらたまに嫁と「朝マック」していた。

.50-Cal Hysteria

CNN has an anti-gun article that appears to be an attempt to garner negative public opinion of firearms using the .50 BMG cartridge. I submitted a comment on the article. CNN probably won't post it, so here it is:

While I don't doubt there's a problem in Mexico, in the U.S. there is no recorded case of a .50 BMG weapon being used to commit a crime. The rifles used to fire this round are huge and not easily portable because of the heavy action, long barrel, and the need to otherwise suppress recoil. Since .50 rifles aren't a problem in the U.S., what needs to be questioned is how the guns are getting into Mexico. It's illegal for non-immigrant residents to purchase firearms in the U.S. It's also already illegal in the U.S. to move firearms across borders without declaring them to CBP, and it's probably illegal in Mexico to take firearms across the border as well (I'm not familiar with Mexican law). Someone's not enforcing laws already on the books. Maybe this is another reason to put up that border fence.

Further comments:
.50 BMG is a very expensive cartridge, costing over $4 a round for surplus. Often times surplus comes belted, and must be de-linked before being fired in a non-belt fed rifle. Unless the agents found a real Ma Deuce (Browning M2 machine gun), this statement misleads readers to thinking there was one. An M2 is even less portable than a Barrett, by the way: over 120 lbs without the ammunition!
FN's 5.7x28mm cartridge is a carbine round, not a rifle round, meaning that it's closer to the 5.56x45mm cartridge, aka .223 Remington, used in the M-16. (The M-16 is indeed a carbine, not a rifle, and is maligned at the end of the article for being too weak. That may be true, but then why does the U.S. military still issue them, and why does U.S. law enforcement still buy them? For reference, a .22LR cartridge is 5.7x15mm!) A certain type of 5.7x28mm round is considered to be armor piercing, but it is for military use only and its sale to civilians is illegal. The attraction of the Five-seveN is that it uses the same cartridge as the P90, and has 30-round capacity magazines.
If the Mexican police really captured that much ordnance from criminals, why don't they use that equipment, or use the $200M to buy better standard issue arms?

Overall, this article was very misleading, and should be considered anti-gun propaganda. When it comes to firearms-related topics, CNN is absolutely biased in the negative.

Affiliate Scout

これって役に立つ？Affiliate Scout

そういえば、eBayもそういうのがあるらしい。

将積健士

ググってみたらアタリが出てきた。へー。

Info Athletes系のサイト：
ブランドガイド
バレンシアガ
キッズブランド

Advanced Ventilation Systems

In browsing house listings, I found a place that claimed to have an "advanced ventilation system (AVS)" installed. Having no idea what that was, or if it was for real, I did a search and found a store, Conservation Technologies, that has a few filtration products that look interesting. Interestingly enough, they're based in Duluth, MN.

The brand name is distinct, so I further searched on that and found the manufacturer's site: Venmar, in Canada. The site describes a Heat Recovery Ventilator, which apparently takes stale indoor air, uses it to cool fresh outdoor air, and expels the stale air while passing in the fresh air. That might be useful for the house I end up buying.

Dial 911 and Die

This is more proof that people need guns to keep criminals at bay. The cops won't save you—in fact, they have no obligation to even respond to a 911 call.

The best thing to do is get a big-ass gun and shoot the fuck out of assholes that try to rob you. Someone who threatens one's life to rob and plunder deserves to die. Anyone who says citizens don't have a right to own guns means they want you to roll over for criminals and get raped in the backdoor. I say they need to get shot too.

Life Insurance

I should probably get some now since I'm no longer single.

Money Magazine's Lesson 20
eHow's How to buy life insurance
Yahoo Finance's How to buy life insurance
The Motley Fool's Insurance Center

MN CCW

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety has a website with information about obtaining a carry (CCW) permit. Well, I may just have to get one while I still can. There's a way to get multiple permits to obtain carry reciprocity among the thirty-some states that allow it. Now that would be sweet.

Eliot Spitzer Jokes

From CNN:

"It's just mind-blowing that he spent $4,300 on a hooker," said New York comic Lisa Landry. "It just shows how high the cost of living is in New York. That same hooker would cost $50 in Newark."
...
"They're talking about impeaching Eliot Spitzer if he doesn't step down," David Letterman said, "and I'm thinking, `Whoa, a Democrat being impeached for extramarital sex. Well, happy days are here again!"
...
Across the country, the "Tonight" show's Jay Leno peppered Spitzer with seven jokes. "The real ironic thing about this case?" he said. "Today the hooker said that Spitzer was done in a New York minute."

Politics is the only profession where the wife of a man caught with a prostitute has to stand by his side, Leno said.

"If this guy was a plumber ... he would have his wife's SUV tire tracks over his head," he said.

どやっ

湘南台に俺が好きなお好み焼き屋がある。それはどやっ。名もおもろいやねん。

前にリンクを貼ったと思ったけど探したら無かったから今付けた。

Why do we fall for bubbles?

Why do we fall for bubbles, you dumbass?

The answer is ego. Each of us has the capacity to completely ignore all logic and reason, to delude ourselves into believing that we're so special that nothing bad will happen to us. When we take risks that our bank accounts can't cash and deep inside we know better, we're being just a little bit too full of ourselves.

Airport Security Gestapo

For some reason I found a bunch of horror stories about airport security, as well as the lack of airline customer service.

One guy's tale of horror regarding TSA and GAT Security incurred a lot of comments on both sides. Ok, so the guy should've gotten there earlier, even before the counter opened, but the security theater in letting rentacops with superiority complexes mess with your stuff completely sucks. Let people with CCW licenses carry guns onto flights: some dude stands up and yells "Allah Akbar!" and he'll fall over with ten bullets in his head. Self-regulation beats government-imposed regulation every time. But the lemmings that are the bulk of this country are too self-absorbed to care about things like freedom and civic duty.

Another guy had a microcontroller programmer confiscated because of some incompetent screeners: "Apparently, it’s not 'improvised' if it comes in a printed box."

Apparently TSA screeners think hummus is a liquid. One gem of a comment: "I'm glad I live in America, where, at least until they rescind the Bill of Rights, I can proclaim THIS ADMINISTRATION SUCKS ASS." Indeed. However, it's because Bush is a neo-con, pushing his agenda down everyone's throats. Democrats do that as a matter of course. The Republicans have fallen quite a ways. McCain's a neo-con too, so what do we have? Three presidential candidates who suck ass. Ron Paul's the only decent candidate, yet he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell because there are too many stupid people. Well, they'll reap what they sow. In the meanwhile, I'd better stock up on bullets for when the revolution comes. I mean, there are all those stupid people.


Seems like from one of those sites I picked up a link to Alex Jones's Infowars site. He's a Ron Paul advocate, so he's gotta be decent. Check out this video of Bill Clinton, linked from Infowars. Sure sounds culpable, doesn't he?

餃子スタジアム

＠ナンジャタウン

1 out of 10 Americans are sleep deprived

According to the CDC, anyway. And I'm one of the 10%!

Part of it is time management. Part of it is wanting to do too many things. Prioritization is another important skill that isn't taught in school. Happiness has a lot to do with how well one can integrate those things into one's life.

LSI to Purchase Infineon Hard Drive Semiconductor Business

News from tha wire.

Aw hell. What does this mean for us internal folk?

Those LSI bitches are a tenacious bunch, pulling away some top people, and now hijacking one of our previous foundry partners. Perhaps I should update that resume after all.

EETimes has some insightful remarks as well.

ホトトギス

「なかぬなら殺してしまへ時鳥 織田右府」（織田信長）
「鳴かずともなかして見せふ杜鵑 豊太閤」（豊臣秀吉）
「なかぬなら鳴まで待よ郭公 大權現様」（徳川家康）

仮のリンク

後でまたまとめる
Shinada
Bandai [gashapon]
Figma
umipro