Car trouble

Looks like we might be looking at some big repairs - C called me to let me know that her car had a small engine fire! About a minute before she arrived at her destination, she smelled something and thought someone must have been burning something.

She arrived and when she stopped the car, she noticed some smoke from the engine. Popped the hood, and there were some small flames.

She called 911 and by the time she finished getting TGM out of the back seat, the fire department was pulling onto the street.

No word yet on what the cost will be for repairs, or if insurance might cover it. But, I am very thankful, and praising God for his numerous mercies!

Karate, babies, and cthulhu

Today was another training day with AP, this time with me leading the training. Lots and lots of basics, with kicking having a focus. Then we did some one-step style of training, but a bit more fluid. Lots of close in work.

Last time we trained was his turn to lead, and we worked almost the whole time on gun defense. Hint to attackers - stay at least 5 feet away, and preferably 10 feet away if you're using a gun on someone. Anything inside 5 feet gets you within striking distance and by the time you get into touching range, you'd be better off with a knife.

Last night was a rough night with TGM. About 1:00 she woke up screaming crying and refused to be comforted, wailing at full-tilt for at least 10 minutes even with C and I holding her and walking her. Eventually she did slow her crying down enough that she was willing to nurse a bit, and she eventually went down. A couple hours later - awake again.

When I was training with AP, he mentioned that his daughter (just a few days older than TGM) was up several times last night too with lots and lots of crying. He suspects teething pains.

I suspect that it was a cthulhic creature from outside space and time which invaded our universe, and the psychic disturbance was felt by babies all over the Local Group of galaxies. Thankfully, the cthulhic monster came out into inter-galactic space on the far side of NGC-3109 and didn't think to bring a method of propulsion, so he'll be floating around out there for few billion years, or until some poor schmuck doing deep exploration runs into it and gives it a way to feed off the billions of beings living in NGC-3109. That still won't affect us since NGC-3109 is 4.2 million light years away and receding. Just thought you would like to know.

Marriage in a Recession

I don't know if anyone else has heard this, but a few articles have made the news rounds over the last couple months about how more and more people are putting off marriage because of the tough economic times.

Well ... Maybe not.

Are the bots taking over?

One of the interesting things which is happening in financial trading circles is the Rise of the Machines - automated trading programs designed to perform trades at very high speeds based on fleeting opportunities. However, as bots become more common there are some side effects:

Many bots can see the same opportunity and jump on it all at the same time, generating some really big effects. Bots can enter a cascade effect, sort of like a human-driven stock panic or bank run, only much, much faster. And they can communicate to each other, not necessarily directly, but with their actions and reactions to trades being placed.

Woot.com isn't a typical sort of ... anything. But it's certainly not a typical news source. But, here they have a cool article on these bots, somewhat tongue in cheek, but still impressive:

There was an instance where this actually did take place several months ago on May 6th - in intra-day trading, the DJIA suddenly plunged several hundred points (6%) in the matter of just a few minutes, and then rebounded nearly as quickly.

Any guesses as to where Skynet may have its inception?

Happy 23rd birthday to me!

Yup, I'm getting old. Old enough to be getting those "old people" cards, you know, the ones that say things like

"It's your birthday, and I want you to remember just one thing ..... Yeah, just one thing. Anything! Go ahead, see if you can!"

Hardy, har, har.

I still have another year to go before I hit 40! I'm not old yet!

And to prove it, I could send you a picture of my toenails.

I attended a young girl's birthday yesterday and got my toenails all done up nice and pretty with lots of reds, pinks, and purples.

Ha! That would prove that I'm still young! Right?

Just a tidbit of data

The U.S. needs to add about 150,000 jobs a month to keep up with natural growth in the labor force and start to push down the jobless rate, economists calculate. - Marketwatch article

I sometimes have wondered how new jobless claims can be so high for so long - it seems like pretty soon at these rates would eventually account for everyone in the country. Right?

Well, three years of that level "only" adds up to 16 million. And with over 300 million people in the USA, there are still a lot of people who can file for jobless claims for the first time. Especially when there are nearly 150,000 new job seekers entering the market every month. And even more especially when there are situations where people can file "first time" jobless claims more than once, depending on state regulations.

No real point. Just something that caught my eye.

Quick workout at work

I did just a quick workout at work and thought I would take a shot at calculating how many Calories (big C) were needed to lift the weights I lifted. Note, that isn't the number of Calories actually burnt, but rather the number of Calories of energy needed to lift the weights a given distance.

I assigned each lift a 1 meter distance. Things like lat pull-downs and flies were probably close to a meter, but curls were probably short. However, there was also energy being expended in resistance keeping the weights from falling back down to the floor at 9.8m/s/s, so for ease of estimation, I just used a 1 meter average for most lifts. Squats only got assigned a 0.5 meter distance.

All in all, 13.1666535 Calories (55299.9447 Joules) of energy would be needed to lift the weights the distance I lifted them. I won't break down all the weights and number of reps, but that is the equivalent of lifting 1000 lbs nearly about 13.8 meters straight up. (yes, I know I'm using pounds and meters which sounds weird)

Just to depress everyone, a single Starburst has about 10 Calories in it.

Which, in its own way is pretty impressive to consider that a single Starburst candy has enough chemical energy in it to lift 1000 pounds over 40 feet in the air.

So, you gonna go ahead and eat that Starburst considering you would need to lift 1000 pounds 40 feet to burn it off?

:-)

Making Out Like A Bandit

Yup, at our clogging performance, Jeremiah managed to make out like a bandit! While were were dancing, Jer went around to all the various booths that offer free stuff. The festival wasn't so much a craft show as it was a place where businesses came to set up booths to advertise - mostly things like cable companies, banks, county services, and places like that. Almost all of those places offer free doodads to attract people over to their booth.

Jer got one of our reusable shopping bags and took it around. About 15 minutes after we finished our last clogging performance, Jeremiah got back with the bag stuffed FULL of stuff! Quite a bit of candy (including a string of 10+ lollipops), lots of pencils and pens and erasers. Some balls. A alien balloon. And a really fancy pen and letter-opener set.

Yup, a very nice set. Velvet cushions inside the really nice holding box. Gold-colored solid metal for the letter opener, nice, solid pen. Yeah. Wow.

Wow 1 because a place was offering such a nice hand-out. I should probably pay attention to the name embossed on the pen.

Wow 2 because he picked it up and they let him. An eight year old boy isn't the demographic to which you want to hand fancy pen and letter opener sets.

Coming up - the Fall Festival. Everything is free there, with lots of candy, food, games, rides, and shows. He's gonna love it!