I Am Mike D

Effin' Awesome! Group B Lancias

2011-07-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

I love watching the rallies when given the opportunity, but they just don't hold a candle to this stuff. Does anyone really care about the car in today's WRC? It's all about the driver, which is cool, I guess. the cars nothing special IMo. These Group B monsters were like steroid loaded thoroughbreds in a rage on coke with a bottle of whisky. The drivers had amazing skill to tame the hell-beasts.

The crowds? They were plumb crazy.

Blackbird in a Box (or not...)

2011-06-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

The first trip wasn't as fast as future ones would be...

Apparently this picture isn't of a SR-71 Blackbird in a box as I tweeted earlier. It is the SR-71's predecessor, the A-12 secretly being transported to Groom Lake, otherwise known as Area 51 (See Area 51 Declassified at National Geographic They have some cool pics in the photo gallery). How many 'UFO sightings' do you think this airplane was responsible for?

After a bit of research, I have replaced the SR-71 at the top of my 'bad-ass' aircraft list with the A-12. The reasons are three-fold?

The A-12 was faster.

What??? But the SR-71 has the speed record to this day!

That is an 'official' speed record... You can't have a speed record for an aircraft that nobody knows about. Which brings me to my second reason.
The A-12 was classified until 1981. They last flew in '68 but were kept in top secret storage until de-classified. The A-12's were CIA planes... Spooks!
The only remaining M-21 (a variant of the A-12 to launch a D-21 drone) is located at the Museum of Flight not far from where I live. I can go stand under its wing and see the massive Pratt & Whitney J58 engines first hand.

BTW, happy fathers day, fathers! I'm luckily to have a dad and a father-in-law that share my fascination of all that flies. It's always enjoyable to talk airplane with them!

My Favorite 787..

2011-06-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

...No, not the the Boeing 787 built just a few miles from where I live that first flew on my birthday... ...The Mazda 787B, which if memory serves me correctly is one of the loudest race cars ever.

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Dang, that thing screams!

The End of Dewey Decimal?

2011-05-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

The new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago:

Does this mean the end of the Dewey Decimal system?

This is a very interesting setup, but I am surprised if this is the first library to do this. My only issue with it is that it takes my favorite part of the library (or bookstore) away. Sure it is great if you have a laser focus on the book that you are looking for but not so good for browsing. Me, I like to browse. I go in with a certain book on my mind, but after thumbing through the others around it I may leave with something different. A good website setup can alleviate much of this, but you are lacking the tactile feedback that I love (son of a librarian).

Will/are books dying off like magazines and newspapers? While I am one hundred percent in for the web replacing the periodicals, I am not sure I feel the same with books. I did recently read Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris* on the Kindle app on my phone and enjoyed the experience, I would have enjoyed it more in book form. I picked up the Kindle version as I was going on vacation and my phone is one hundred times more portable than the hardback, which I also own. Hell, it wouldn't even fit in my cargo pocket let alone the front pocket where I keep my phone. Only two other negatives that I can come up with for digital versions. When your battery dies, no more reading for you, and when traveling, you cant read between leaving the gate and ten thousand feet. The latter is no big deal for me if I get a window seat, my nose is flattened against the window looking outside that whole time.

Summer Beer

2011-05-04T18:39:00.000-07:00

Once again I have chosen New Belgiums Mothership Wit as my beer of choice for this summer. At least when I require the beer to be gedrunken out of a bottle. It is fun and it makes me happy.

Tried one out of my tulip glass yesterday, and Mikey no likey. Bottle today, yay!

Note: Mike has only consumed one at the time of writing. He is not high on teh beerz, he is high on life!

Now.... Music!

You're welcome.

One of These Days, I'm Gonna Take Apart a Lens...

2011-05-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

I have an old 24-200 auto-focus zoom lens that isn't worth twenty-fie bucks anymore. Some rainy day I'm going to respectfully tear it apart. A ton of coolness in there (motors, gears, lenses, etc).

Aperture Revealed - 240 fps - HD from Camera Technica on Vimeo.

[h/t Gizmodo]

Slammed Duallys

2011-05-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is, but I have always had a thing for slammed duallys...

Adding diesel to the equation and I like them even more!

Remember, recycle!

[h/t Jalopnik]

Project GMFAINS

2011-05-01T13:51:00.000-07:00

Get Mike's Fat Ass In Shape

Got some new tires for the Franken-Bike and took her for a spin today. First ride of the year. After spending almost two weeks in Kauai, I got the jones for being active outside again. Luckily we live really close to a good bike trail so I can ride right from the house without dealing with too many cars (I am a mountain biker first, no cars out there). I did around 5 miles out, came to a good hill and rode up it. After sitting for a bit and trying not to hurl, I rode back, taking a longer route. All in all, I ended up doing 12 miles at a decent pace. Felt good, except for the wanting to hurl part at the top of the hill. Had to do a bit of trail-side maintenance (shifters out of tune, brake started rubbing, but the bike performed great. The tires, Schwalbe Marathon Crosses worked great. They rolled great on both the paved road, and a couple of gravel and double track sections.

Only one problem... My rear hurts.

Nuclear Power in Perspective

2011-03-14T16:28:00.000-07:00

How many people died because of Three Mile Island? None.

There is no question that the events in Japan are ongoing and serious. That said, I believe a lot of people are being misled by much of the news coverage.

Read the rest here...[Meteorological Musings]

I think people fear nuclear power so much because they don't understand it. Events such as this don't help, especially with sensationalized media. Saying stuff like "there is cause for concern, not for alarm" [NPR] doesn't get viewers, listeners, or readers like cries of Chernobyl II!* Politicians saying that we should temporarily halt the development of nuclear plants... ....The Fukushima reactors in question are almost 40 years old. I'm pretty sure that development has progressed since then to make them better and safer.

I'll take a nuclear power plant next door to me over a coal fired plant any day. And I'll wager that coal shortens more live than them too.

* Note - Chernobyl has around 60 confirmed casulties though they figure that eventually around 4,000 will pass from cancers caused by it. Automobiles BTW kill around 40,000 a year in the US.

Tsunami, Before and After

2011-03-12T18:57:00.001-08:00

Unbelievable before and after shots... Post-earthquake imagery of Japan - The Official Google Blog

Be sure to click through to view the hi-res versions. Sobering.

The top before and after photos of Yuriage looked familiar to me so I looked it up. Sure enough, it is the town in the following footage that you have probably seen quite a few times now. (click for video)

The following is a shot I took of my Google Earth of the same area.

This is the 'after' picture from Google Earth...

Holy crap. I un-precisely timed the wave in the above video and measured a known distance on GE and found that that tsunami was travelling at 15 mph. Doesn't sound like much until you see what it does. A picture is worth a million words.

The only good new I can give regarding this is that as far as I can tell, the poeple residing in this area had about an hour between the quake and the tsunami hitting. Hopefully they were well drilled and knew what to do.

Here is an even more devastating before and after set from the other side of the river...

Before

After

BTW, if you have Google Earth, the links to the KML files for the imagery that I used was located in the above Google blog. If you don't have Google Earth, get it.

BTW

2011-03-12T09:35:00.001-08:00

I'm back!

We'll see how long I can keep this up....

More Quake Thoughts +Vid!

2011-03-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

Did he really mention Global Warming™ with this disaster? (~1:00)

Honestly pal, I'm fairly confident that even if the ocean was two feet lower*, it won't make that much difference to a tsunami like this...

*The ocean has risen by a little more than a quarter of that in the last century. Fascinatingly, the oceans have risen by ~150ft in the last ten-thousand years.

Thoughts on the Sendai Earthquake in Japan

2011-03-12T07:29:00.000-08:00

First of all, my heart goes out to all impacted. As I saw someone said on twitter, I hope for every tragedy there are ten narrow escapes and twenty miracles.

Out of all the natural disasters, I find earthquakes the most horrific. Hurricanes do a huge amount of damage over a wide area, but you have a good warning to hunker down. It may not save your house, but it can save your life. Tornados horrify with their randomness and surprise. Like a scalpel across the landscape they can obliterate your house but leave the guys place two doors down untouched (relatively).

Earthquakes take the worst of those two, scale and surprise, and possibly throw in a tsunami on top of it. At least with tornados, you can look to the sky and know if there is a chance for one. An earthquake the best info you have is, we haven't had the 'Big One' in awhile (hundreds of years) and we think we are due...

The other reason that I find them the most horrific is that I live in an area that has earthquakes. I can recall feeling the ground move four times in my life. Luckily none anywhere close to the power of the Sendai quake. Having a building that you take for granted the fact that it built on solid ground churn back and forth is a surreal experience. I think the noise is what sticks with me the most is the noise. Like a freight train on bad tracks with things not tied down.

Something I noticed in some of the videos that I watched of the Sendai quake was how there wasn't much panic in the people. People not running for their lives, people not screaming. During the Nisqually quake, a paltry 6.8 compared to the Sendai 8.8, I was in a big box hardware store. I was proud of myself for being calm and in control. I remember looking up and stepping away from a shelf that I was by and saying to the stranger next to me, "Hey, I think this is an earthquake". Then I just watched stuff move in awe. Afterwards I had the same feeling that I would get doing a drop on the snowboard or mountain bike.

Hopefully when the 'Big One' hits Seattle (we're due...) I will be able to repeat that performance.

WHO DAT?!?!

2011-01-08T17:51:00.000-08:00

Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say they gonna beat dem Hawks?

What a freaking awesome game! The team that everybody loves to hate, the 7-9 Seahawks beat beat the defending Super Bowl champion Saints 41-36. Did I mention that it was an awesome game?

Talking about haters.... Did you see the game that Hasselbeck put up? That, by the way, is why you play him if he is healthy.

My ears are ringing, my throat is sore and I'm pretty sure that I won't have much of a voice tomorrow, but it was worth it. Seriously, that was just about as great as the 2006 NFC Championship game. We hung out in the stadium for ten minutes or so just soaking up the buzz. A few players circled the stadium high-fiving fans. I loved it!

GO BIG BLUE!

Drifting Trikes... Pure Awesomeness!

2010-12-30T11:13:00.000-08:00

Holy crap this looks like a lot of fun!

It's like a Big Wheel for adults! Too bad about the freewheeling pedals though... Part of the charm of the Big Wheel was skidding to a stop with the front locked up and the ensuing flat spot you had to ride around with forever afterwards.

Piano Playing Flying Robot vs Steve the Light Pointing Robot

2010-12-30T07:56:00.000-08:00

Well this is pretty cool...

A flying robot playing 'Jingle Bells' on a piano. For those of you that doubt, they threw in a clip at the end of 'Echo' (the robot) failing. Looks like it had a bit too much to drink...

Kinda puts my first robot, Steve, to shame....

Yeah, that is all Steve does. He sweeps across 180 degrees looking for the brightest light source and points at it. Not very useful except as proof that I could make and program something like that. I have some ideas for some cooler shiznet, but first I have to learn.

Snowpocalypse 2010/ Life in the Convergence Zone

2010-12-29T08:31:00.000-08:00

This morning it was snowing at the house... Since I was home (took the week off), I drove Carrie to the park and ride so she wouldn't have to worry 'bout the driving.

Good call by Mikey! Our neighborhood roads were white, but not too bad. We got on the freeway to go a mile or so up to the P&R and it was a disaster! A couple of cars in the ditch, and a few more facing the wrong way. The exit that we take was all but impassable as cars were strewn every which way. I bailed out as it would have taken just one more car loosing traction and it'd be blocked.

The next exit up the freeway was in better shape so we got off and headed back down South. There was a bus jack-knifed on the off-ramp. We decided to go to the P&R within walking distance of the house in case Carrie can't get a bus. When we got close, we crossed a line and, bam, the roads were no longer snow covered, just wet. I dropped her off, and within the 3/4 of a mile from the P&R, the roads were again snow covered and slick. Weird!

Word, this is what life is like in the PSCZ*, yo! We don't front!

*(Puget Sound Convergence Zone)

Ahem... Here are a few pics to show what is going on.

Here is a radar image of the convergence zone. We live right in the middle of it (North-South). Basically, the Olympic mountains split the upper atmosphere winds causing them to come back together (converge) directly over my house. this causes updrafts that lead to more active weather.

Traffic cam close to my house...

Traffic cam close to my office...

Quite a difference eh? Unfortunately I clipped the cams wrong so they advanced to the time that I saved them. When I first looked at the cam the entire freeway was blocked. Cliff Mass has a better, earlier shot on his weather blog.

Mike's Playoff Rant

2010-12-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

I am SOOOOO sick of listening to people bitch that, should the Seahawks win next week, they don't deserve a playoff spot because of a losing record. They deserve a playoff spot because that is in the rule book. A division winner gets a home playoff game. Simple as that. Therefor, if they beat the Rams, they will be 4-2 in division play, and deserve their playoff spot.

Boo hoo, that's not fair!!!

Is it any more 'fair' if an OK team is in a division with three crappy teams giving them six easy wins?

In 2008 the Cardinals went to the playoffs with a 9-7 record, 6-0 in the division. That year the Rams were terrible (2-14) and so were the Seahawks (4-12, with two wins over the Rams). If either of those teams were at the level they are today, the Cards could have easily been 7-9 and still won the division. Oh yea, and they went to the Superbowl that year... Is that 'fair'?

Is it fair that the Seahawks typically travel the equal of a flight around the world every season (~25,000 miles) while some teams travel less than 10,000?

Life isn't fair, and sport is like life condensed into a one year season. Work hard, make the right choices, and being a good person is no guarantee that nothing but good will come to you. It sure helps your chances. There is alway the randomness of being in the right place at the right time.

Merry Christmas - My Gift to You!

2010-12-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone! I present to you my present to you. (heh!) A physics lesson. Oh joy! Force = Mass x Acceleration, or in laymans terms the law of tonnage. The heavier they are, the harder they are to stop.

3,500lb Audi slides slowly into parked car, there is a bit of jostling. 35,000lb snow plow slides slowly into parked car, there is a whole bunch of jostling.

Here is an extreme case... Prolly the same speed, but the mass is way higher!

Skip to around 4:23 for the meat of the damage. As far as I can tell nobody was hurt. More here...

Again, Merry Christmas, I hope you are enjoying family and friends today.

Christmas Tree 2010

2010-12-24T19:28:00.001-08:00

Christmas Tree 2010

Our tree for 2010... If I'm taking pictures like this, there isn't much need for Carrie to decorate. Look closely and you can tell where the red ribbon is.

Oh Chrismas tree, oh Christmas tree
Oh Chrismas tree, oh Christmas tree

Inside joke, you had to be there....

Blurry picture of our tree this year. On purpose.

Mike's Epic Non-Traditional Christmas Music Post!

2010-12-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

I guess it really isn't epic, that just sounded good in the title. Anyhoo, Here I am, sitting in front of my laptop, sipping coffee, and thinking of my favorite Christmas music. Hell, why not share!

#6, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" by Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa.

BTW, Ahmet taught me how to dance.

#5, "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)" by the Ramones

#4, "Christmas in Hollis" by Run DMC

#3, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" by Bruce Springsteen

#2, "Christmas Wrapping" by the Waitresses

Bonus - as performed by the Donnas

Of course these all cower to the greatness that is Andy Williams singing "Happy Holiday/The Holiday Season"

He'll have a big fat pack, upon his back
Lot's of goodies for you and for me
So grab a peppermint stick, for old St Nick
Hang it from the Christmas Tree

Yeah!

Thinking about it, these aren't non-traditional, at least in my house...

While we are at it how about a little Streisand...

Uh, Babs, that last take was pretty good, but you know what would be better? Speed it up x6....

Sorry 'bout that last one. It could have been worse. I could have posted "Blue Christmas", "Hey Santa", or "Little St. Nick". Or this...

Merry Christmas all!

Merry Christmas - Star Wars Style

2010-12-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

There won't be snow in Dagobah this Christmas time.....

Enjoy!

DV sounds a little different IMO...

An Example of Why I Can't Stand Alonso....

2010-11-14T09:09:00.000-08:00

From Joe Saward's Grand Prix Blog...

"...Alonso might have been wiser to wave congratulations at Petrov for a job well done, but instead he gesticulated rudely, which did nothing for his reputation as a good sportsman."

Petrov did nothing wrong, he was racing for position (and a job). He couldn't care less that Alonso needed to get past him to win the championship. Did Alonso think that because of his history with Renault that they should pull over and let him by? Probably.

The Biz vs Goldblum... C'mon, Don't Give me That!

2010-11-12T17:17:00.000-08:00

Ever seen Jeff Goldblum and Jemaine Clement in the same room?

As a lazy Blogger I have embraced Twitter

2010-10-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

...for most of my talking to walls. Much less pressure as I only have 140 characters to get my point across, and I don't have to worry about punctuation.

My goal is to share what I find funny or interesting, not what I am doing at the moment or what the cat is doing (I don't have a cat... yet...)

BTW, having a nice homemade cobb salad tonight. Props to Carrie. And a beer.

F1 2010 (The Videogame)

2010-10-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

Man, just finished 40 some laps of Monaco, and I am beat up. Using the my wheel and pedals I actually get pretty sweaty. (I typically don't sweat while gaming...) It is a workout, and I don't even have the force-feedback turned on.

Right now I am going through my first season on easy. I have the racing line turned on, full abs, traction control and an automatic transmission. For a bit of realism I am forcing myself to stay in the cockpit view. Good lord, you can hardly see anything when your eyes are only two feet off the road. Even tracks that I was familiar with from previous game are tough as the cars are so fast a brutal. Corners come at you like machine gun fire. Luckily, like in a real F1 race, you get a practice session before quali. It takes me quite a few laps to find the groove of the track. Monaco was especially tough, as going around Rascasse, you couldn't see a thing. I never really 'got it', but I was starting to get close at the end. The tracks without walls on the edge are much easier, as they are much more forgiving.

All in all, I love the game. Of course, I am a F1 fanatic... The graphics and sounds are great. The cars are very well modeled (the McLaren has the f-duct scoop on the nose, etc). I look forward to doing lots of laps when the weather goes completely south.

Oooohhh, and talking weather, they did a great job with that... When it rains, your vision is severely impaired. The cars throw up a huge mist, and you have drops all over your visor. Looks just like the in-car from TV.

Leon! Leon! Leon!

2010-09-26T17:22:00.000-07:00

Just got back from one of the best games that I have witnessed. Wow! Best part? Turning to Carrie while watching Leon Washington head bobbing to the music before the second half kickoff and saying, "If he runs this in our first born's middle name will be Leon". He ran it in. Second best, telling her if he ran in another, the first name will be Leon. Now, if we have a son, the kid will be named L.L.

Fantastic!

My voice hurts, by the way.

Oh, and Faith Hill is no Joan Jett. That 'Sunday Night Football' song is trash. This here is the stuff

Parenting Tip

2010-09-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

Heh!

Mike has re-discovered comics, and this is one of my favorite strips at the moment. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

More Proof That Dogs are Better Than Cats

2010-09-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

Let's see you do this in one take with cats...

OK Go's newest video White Knuckles.

Twelve dogs, twelve trainers, thirty eight buckets, two furniture movers, all kinds of furniture, one hundred twenty four takes, thirty of those complete, and one goat. Once again, OK Go does it the hard way which, in my opinion, makes it better. I'm gonna watch again.

By the way, do yourself a favor and click through to YouTube and watch full screen in 720p HD. You can thank me later.

[h/t Gizmodo]

Red Zone

2010-09-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

Today was a good day. Why? The reasons are many. I got to sleep in to ten after another six day fifty-five hour plus work week that I should have called in sick two days, but didn't as we are slammed. I'm feeling the best I've felt all week. Today had 'football weather' meaning rainy and cloudy so I don't feel guilty for watching football all day. ...And I discovered the NFL RedZone TV channel.

If you are a NFL fan and/or have ADD, ti is the greatest thing in the world! Basically the RedZone shows all the interesting stuff that is going down in the league in realtime. If a team is in the red-zone threatening to score, they show it. A team trying to make a comeback late? They show it. Two games at interesting points? They split the screen and show it. Fantastic!

Basically, if the games that are available to you to watch are uninteresting, watch the RedZone. Chances are, something interesting is happening in a game somewhere.

Sadly, today was a free trial. But it was successful. I may have to make a call to my provider to see about getting it activated. I'd happily pay five bucks a month more for just that channnel. Unfortunately, they will probably want twenty because it is packaged with twenty other channels that I won't watch.

It's That Time of the Year!

2010-09-16T16:53:00.000-07:00

...And I'm sick.

Sweet.

A Camper For Mike!

2010-09-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

Happy Labor Day everyone! Haven't been posting much (or anything) lately as I have been pretty busy performing labor at work, if you can call mouse herding labor... Pretty much six tens for a while now. My work isn't physical, but I sure come home tired in the head. Anyways it has been really nice to have three days off with nothing planned. Enough of that, lets get on to stuff that has to do with the title...

For quite awhile I have dreamed of the perfect camper. I have no use for a big fancy motorhome or trailer that can't travel far off the pavement, I want something that can go almost anywhere. Today, while doing some web-surfing I think I found the perfect one. The XP Camper.

This here is my perfect camper. A few standout items that make me love it... The diesel appliances, no propane. It looks to be setup to go a long time being self contained with solar panels and 80 gallons of fresh water. It sits on a flat utility bed on the truck, which allows for more room, and more utility when the camper is off. It looks to be made with good marine quality fixtures. The only downfall I see is that it is pretty spendy for a fully outfitted camper, north of $70k w/ a kitted out flatbed installation. That does not include the truck. ...Always a catch. You can save 30k by buying a shell and kitting it out yourself.

Time to start saving!

My First Light Painting

2010-08-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

...Not bad for a guy that hasn't written cursive in 25 years. Taken on Rialto beach in La Push, Washington.

Congratulations John Randle (Video)

2010-08-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite football players of all time, and that was even before he played for the Seahawks. Congratulations on making the Hall of Fame. As you can tell from the picture, Randle liked the eye-black, and I am a little disappointed that the NFL didn't have it on his bust... Here is a video of him getting ready for the season.

Classic!

Look at that, two Seahawks in one Hall of Fame class! (snicker) John Randle, and Jerry Rice... Randle joins the other great Seahawk defensive HoFer Carl Eller (Hello Minnesota!).

The other Seahawk HoFers are Steve Largent, Warren Moon, and Franco Harris (heh, We get him in exchange for the 2006 Superbowl XL trophy). All joking aside, we get to claim Moon, as he has tight ties to here (Huskies, broadcasting), and the Oilers no longer exist.

Hello!

2010-08-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

A token post from me, as I realize it has been almost a a month.

Why?

Because I have been working hard to get in shape for winter.

How?

I'll let the picture do the talking...

Fast cars, fast women, cigarettes and beer!

Alonso's Renault return 'a mistake'

2010-07-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

Alonso's Renault return 'a mistake' - ESPN F1

Agreed... It's too bad that Alonso seeming can't function on a team where he isn't the clear number one. I think racing is most exciting when the teammates duke it out on the track (as long as it stays civilized). See McLaren and Red Bull (apart from Turkey).

I think Jenson is doing it perfectly. I have no doubts that he isn't laying down for Lewis, and if he gets beaten by Lewis he doesn't seem to be all 'pissy pants' about it. I don't think it is an act(if it is, he's a good actor). Lewis does alright with it, though you see little glimpses of frustration every once in awhile. Vettel and Webber look to have a good amount of friction between them, but neither seems to be running from it, Red Bull has signed Webber for another year.

On the flip-side, I can see how it makes sense to have a clear number one. Example, going into Turkey, if memory serves me correctly (to lazy to look it up), Jenson was leading the drivers championship. Since then, in each of the last three races, he has finished directly behind Lewis. Hypothetically, lets say the whole team, including Lewis, was working to win him the championship. Lewis would have let him have the position in Turkey, and somehow let him by in Canada and Valencia. Now instead of third place Vettel being 12 points behind Lewis for the championship, Vettel would be in second, 23 points behind Jenson. More cushion. Lewis would be third, 5 points behind Vettel.

2010 Canadian GP Podium

Jenson button and race winner Lewis Hamilton celebrate after a 1-2 finish for McLaren in the 2010 Canadian GP

In 2007 if McLaren had favored Alonso like that, he would have been champion that year (Both him and Lewis lost out by 1 point), and most likely in 2008 too. That would have been four championships in a row. Maybe that is why he is so bitter. He came from Renault, where he was the clear number one and got thrown in to a situation where he was on equal ground with the other driver. By no means helped by the fact that Lewis was a rookie.

Largest Dandelion EVER!

2010-07-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

Just sayin...

Photos from the Canadian GP

2010-06-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly getting some photos up from my trip to the Canadian GP. Took over 2400, already deleted 400, a ton more to go!

For example, here is a screenshot from Adobe Lightroom of a small percentage of the pictures that I took of the McLaren MP4-25 race car of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button...

Uhhh, as of right now I have over 450 of that car and most of them look the same. Eventually I'll have it down to around 10-20, but that will take awhile.

Anyways, Here is a link to my Flickr photostream for the event. As I weed out nice shots you'll see them there.

Mike on the Drums! (video)

2010-06-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

A little video from a gig...

Someone put a wallet in his mouth!

For Carrie.. (Jenson Button)

2010-06-11T20:10:00.001-07:00

Carrie's boy... World champion dream-boat Jenson Button. Picture by ME!

How Mike Starts Every Morning...

2010-06-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

Nothing like a little 'O Fortuna' and a smoke to get you ready to tackle the world!

Gonna have to talk to Carrie about filming me in the shower... I guess it doesn't help that I blog it.

Everything Cool (For me)

2010-06-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

Absolutely stunning footage. This packs just about everything that I find cool into one video. Snowboarding to gadgets to mooses (sic). That camera on the truck would make my commute look interesting!

Funk Breakfast - Bootsy!

2010-06-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

Damn! I need an alarm that wakes me up with teh* funk! If this stuff doesn't get you moving, nothing will.

* - Nine out of ten 'teh's that I use are on purpose.

Get Up Offa That Thing - Now With Fringes!

2010-06-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

Heh! Good God!

I thinks he's back...

Mike is learning to dance. This here is step one. Step two? Buy headband, and clothes with fringes.

James Brown FTW!

A Good Write-up About Lost

2010-05-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

‘Lost’ Finale: Best Show in Television History Comes to ‘The End’ Ben Shapiro, Big Hollywood

Agreed... 'Best show in television history'.

Though I disagree with this...

I was angry because I felt that the end of the show embodied a rather depressing underlying philosophy. At the end of the show, we find out that the alternate reality of Season 6 has in large part been a ruse. It wasn’t a different timeline created by Juliet’s nuke at the end of Season 5; it was a purgatory state created jointly by many of the Oceanic 815 survivors where they could find each other and remember their lives before passing to the next stage, presumably heaven.

The reason this was depressing is that you spend six years hoping for these characters to find happiness, only to realize that the only happiness they truly find comes after they’re dead. That may be comforting for some, but it depressed the living hell out of me.

[highlight by me]

For the main characters, no, they didn't find true happiness until they died. They were all deeply troubled individuals. He over looks Bernard and Rose. Sure they weren't 'main' characters, but they a had a part, especially in this last season. They seem to have it figured out a season or so ago, when they made a life for themselves away from everybody on the island.

Desmond too, in my opinion, found happiness before dying, though it took a few electromagnetic jolts to get him there.

My thoughts are that the sideways flashes, 'purgatory', or whatever you want to call it, was more of a parallel universe. You were there no matter what. As the past was the same as the present and the future, there was no time. Some died before finding 'happiness' (Jack, Locke, everybody else we saw die...). Others didn't.

Of the ones that we don't know how they eventually died, I think Hurley found the happiness. I don't think that Sawyer found it, that guy had issues as deeper than Jack.

Eloise, is interesting... She knew what was going on, but didn't want to lose he son again. I think we left Ben in the same state.

Video - Dog Caught in Fence, Happy Ending

2010-05-27T16:52:00.000-07:00

A little hard to watch the first half, but the end is well worth it.

click through here if the embed isn't working.

More evidence that a Lab is the best dog in the world....

[h/t Ace of Spades

My Thoughts on Lost

2010-05-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

Let's cut to the chase, I loved the finale of Lost. The series ended just as it started, with a lot of questions. Some complain, but that is why I think it was so great. It wasn't your typical dumbed down television, here are all the answer so you don't have to use your brain and imagine....

Here is what I think...

The 'sideways' flashes were 'purgatory', a place for their souls to get right for the next place (Heaven?). Like Jacks father said, and I badly paraphrase... "everyone dies, and moves on to the next thing. They do it by letting go".
Everybody in the SWF's died at different times. People that died early in the show were there, people that we never saw die were there. I like to think that the the people that got on the plane survived and hopefully lived to be old people (with a lot of counseling). They hinted that Hurley with his #2 Ben had a good run protecteting the island, maybe thousands of years. Again, Jacks dad layed it out for us, in the SWF (heh) the past was the same as the present which was the same as the future.
The island was a gateway to hell.... You die, you get sucked down the drain when the cork was out. It looked to me like the hell vacuum was so strong, it was gonna take everything down there anyway. (prolly why it needed protection) A black hole of hell... So strong, it sucked the smoke off of Flocke.
Jacob was good, Flocke/M.I.B./Smokey/Samuel was bad (Actually, I know...). I was iffy on this until the last few episodes. I had hoped that it would be that way, but after watching for six years I kept my legs braced if they were to yank the rug out from underneath me.
There is now way that I am hopping on that 737 to leave the island... If it is light enough to get off that primitive runway, it doesn't have enough fuel to get them far. ...And, how in hell do they know where to go? I would have felt much better about my chances on that nice 40-something foot sailboat.
My only real disappointment.... After being irritated with Michaels screams of "Walt!" for like ages, we have no idea of why Walt was so special. I guess that is the problem with casting a 12 year old in a series that lasts 6 years. He looks a bit older now...

As I mentioned in my Twitter, the end had me bawling like a 3 year old... They already had me tearing up with a masterful mix of music, happy (everyone reunited, ready to move on), sad (island Jack dying). Then as Jack is laying down to die, you hear a woof, and Vincent the yellow lab comes out of the woods, licks Jacks face, and lays down beside him...

[watch a YouTube of the end here...]

Damn. I'm having hard time even typing this. This would have gotten me a few months ago too, but after losing my good buddy Clyde, this absolutely gutted me. Last month, I was Vincent to Clyde's Jack, holding him as he went to sleep, last night we saw the opposite. I have no doubts Clyde would have done the same beside me. Didn't sleep a wink last night, not dwelling on Lost, but thinking about Clyde.

I would have made just one change as director... I would have Vincent rest his head on Jacks chest. Don't know if I would have been able to handle that though...

That last moment was literally the grand cherry on top of the cake. Boy did it hurt (for me), but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Lost was already my favorite television series ever (decided that a few years back), but now I am fairly sure that it will never be topped.

The Greenland ice cap looses 1/3 the volume of Lake Erie EVERY YEAR! That means...

2010-05-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

...that it will be gone in 12,500 years.

Read 'On Being the Wrong Size' from Watts Up With That? by Willis Eschenbach.

The gist... (for those of you who only like 'clicky' enough to get this far...) Facts such as the title are worthless without scale.

If you read this article from the Grist (the gist from the Grist, I'll be here all day), it reports how much mass the Greenland ice cap is losing annually.

Scott Luthcke weighs Greenland -- every 10 days. And the island has been losing weight, an average of 183 gigatons (or 200 cubic kilometers) -- in ice -- annually during the past six years. That's one third the volume of water in Lake Erie every year.

...

The good news for Luthcke is that a separate team using an entirely different method has come up with measurements of Greenland's melting ice that, he says, are almost identical to his GRACE data. The bad news, of course, is that both sets of measurements make it all the more certain that Greenland's ice is melting faster than anyone expected.

[highlights by me]

Holy crap that is a lot! Lake Erie (huge) would be drained in three years at that rate!

One problem... I see no mention of the size of Greenlands ice cap. (See 'On Being the Wrong Size'.) If you compare the rate of loss to that you find out that the GIC is losing 0.005% to 0.008% of its mass a year. At this rate, Greenland will be ice free in.... wait for it... 12,500 years!

A little more scale for you, 8000 years ago we were coming out of the Stone Age.

An a little more scale yet (with pun), I need to lose some weight. At this rate, it will take me over 50 years to lose A POUND!

Of course, those numbers aren't as alarming...

Like Mr. Eschenbach, the writer of 'On Being the Wrong Size', this greatly annoys me. Why does everything have to be reported in this way? The statement, "...losing 1/3 the volume of Lake Erie" is no different number-wise than "..it will disappear in 12,500 years".

Alarmism.

The good news is, today with the inet, I can find out the big picture sitting here in my underwear with my coffee. Wasn't really that convenient back in the day. Libraries frowned upon guys that needed to lose weight drinking coffee in their underwear while browsing.

The bad news, very few people seem to do that.

BTW, Lake Erie is the smallest of the Great Lakes by volume. If he had used 'the' great lake, Lake Superior, the ice cap would be losing 1/75 of its volume a year. Again, that doesn't sound as scary.

That is one slammed VW!

2010-05-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Slammed VW's were the shiznit when I was in high school.... Never saw one this low.

Coffee Mug

2010-05-17T20:24:00.000-07:00

Here a bean, there a bean
everywhere a mean bean

More Descendants

Everything sucks.

Franken-Bike... It Lives!

2010-05-16T19:33:00.000-07:00

Here it is, the culmination of my weekend project. Franken-Bike.

I believe this thing has a part that has hung off of every mountain bike that I have owned except my newest (haven't upgraded anything on it yet). It all started with a '93 Stumpjumper M2. As far as I know, the only part in common with that bike is the purple Chris King headset. Later I cracked that frame and Specialized replaced it under warranty with the red one that I currently have. The front wheel with the Machine Tech hub and blue nipples, and Avid brake levers are from my second bike, an AMP B2. The pedals, crank, stem, bars, shifters and saddle are from my third bike, a '97(?) Specialized FSR Elite with a Manitou triple-crown fork. (can't find a picture).

This is gonna be my 'road' bike, as my current bike, while awesome on dirt, is miserable to to pedal on asphalt. I took a spin in the neighborhood this evening, and the thing scoots. On caveat, I have to watch out a lot smaller obstacles... I about went down rolling over a little half inch rock.

Beautiful 'Classic' Caymans...

2010-05-14T21:15:00.000-07:00

The Cayman Interseries: HSR, Road Atlanta from TangentVector on Vimeo.

What a great idea... Gather up a bunch of Porsche Caymans for a racing series and slap classic Porsche racing liveries on 'em. Even the pink pig (one of my favorites!) is in there (3:05).

LeBron's Elbow...

2010-05-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

Just started following Lebron's Elbow on Twitter. Hilarious! here are a few gems.

In the training room getting "loosened up". Lot of rubbing and oil involved. I'll be shocked if I make out here without getting pregnant.
12:54 PM May 3rd

Delonte West brought a guitar case to practice today. I almost crapped myself until he opened it and it was filled Gummie Bears.
about 7 hours ago

...and...

Bedtime. Not gunna lie I'm pretty bummed. So to cheer myself up I glued LeBron's head to his pillow.
about 21 hours ago

Apollo 11 Launch at 500 frames per second

2010-04-29T20:56:00.000-07:00

Cool (to me) video I came across while surfin' this evening....

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Sure is a lot of power there.

[h/t Epic Edits Weblog]

Clyde Sleeping With His Ball

2010-04-26T20:59:00.001-07:00

Taken two weeks ago. He sure loved that ball, and I did too, as it didn't have enough mass to break anything of consequence when he threw it (it happened quite a lot).

We miss you buddy!

The Stig... In Legoland

2010-04-26T19:56:00.000-07:00

Some say that his breath smells of magnesium, and that he's scared of bells...

All we know is, he's called the Stig.

Spotted near the original location of 'The Office'. (Dwight over Gareth FTW).

Not sure why Google takes down 'Stig' sightings on Maps. It makes me sad (see my Loch Ness post from January). That is why I took a screen clipping this time. My guess... money.

Here is the map of LegoLand... See if you can find more of him.

View Larger Map

I used to have a lawn...

2010-04-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

Getting a lot of visitor reading my post on the loss of my good buddy Clyde the Labrador and was feeling a little embarassed about the shape of the backyard in the last video...

This is what it looked like pre-dog, and most of all pre-trees-that-grow-at-a-ridiculous-rate-and-blot-out-the-sun.

I'm gonna need a chainsaw to get back to that....

Mike's New Interest? French Art Films...

2010-04-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

Beautiful! ...And the music!!!

Baba O'Riley

2010-04-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

Carrie and headed out to see Conan O'Brien the night after Clyde passed away. It was good to laugh, though seeing video of his chocolate lab licking peanut butter off his foot (to pass time while he wasn't working) was a bit too soon... but still funny.

We were rewarded with this... Listen carefully and you can here me yell "woo!" when Mike McCready starts playing the lead in to one of the greatest songs ever.

Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready... SWEET!

Made me feel old though. I realized that for the predominantly twenty-something crowd this was probably the equal of Steve Winwood coming out and belting a rousing rendition of Bill Haley's 'Rock Around The Clock' when I was twenty four.

Sounded better where I was sitting, I didn't get so much horn.

Not the first time EV and MM have belted this. Here's PJ rocking it back in 1993. Stone is doing laps....

A Hole in My Heart (Not Sappy)

2010-04-18T19:48:00.000-07:00

I have discovered where the term "hole in my heart" comes from... No joke I literally feel like there is a void under my rib cage. I always thought it was some sappy lovey-dovey thing for girls.

It is also a curse. Why? That damned Extreme song. (1:17 to cut to the chase)

Thanks a lot Clyde! :)

Sir Ludaclyde Donnagan of Skye (March 17, 2007 - April 18, 2010)

2010-04-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Our good buddy passed away this morning at 6:45. He will be greatly missed.

This all happened quite suddenly in the last thirty six hours, totally out of left field. To keep it short, he had a brain tumor that started showing slight signs (stumbling) on Wednesday, but quickly progressed between Friday evening and Sunday morning when he stopped breathing on his own. We were able to be at his side as he passed quickly without struggle.

We had way too little time with the Captain. May 5th would have been only the three year anniversary of us bringing him home. In that short amount of time he made a huge impression on us. Whether it being making us laugh, or pissing us off, every memory of him is a good one.

Take our try at organised training. Clyde barked constantly and just wanted to play with the other dog while the trainer was talking. When it was our turn to do the floor exercise he promptly dropped a duce in front of twenty other dogs and owners. Yeah, I believe everybody understood, but it is still embarrassing to picking up a turd while others are watching. Extremely stressful at the moment, very funny now.

We have a ton of stories like that.

He was a gentle soul that loved food, everybody that he met and water (in that order). He ate every meal like we hadn't fed him in weeks, met every person like he hadn't seen them in years (even strangers), and took to water like an otter. His favorite place was the Edmonds Dog Park on the Puget Sound. It could be thirty degrees out, and he would wade chest deep with his back to me, waiting to toss his bumper. I would try to keep him above, in the dry part of the park, but he would eventually bolt, and go in by himself. He loved to fetch his ball in the family room until it was annoying.

I am sure glad that I dragged out the P&S camera last weekend, and shot some video. I had no clue that it would be the last time. I put one up on this post, Clyde Going Ape, showing him in full freak out because we drove to the park. He was like a teenage girl going to see the Beatles.

Here he is on that same trip, doing his favorite thing, fetching his bumper out of the water....

And finally here is a video of Clyde and I playing in the backyard (while Carrie worked) the day before.

I love that at the end of the last video, he gives me a 'high-five'. Suspiciously it was much the same movement as his 'low-five' and the 'on-the-side'. The handshake was the same thing too. He would only do it with the proper paw.

Clyde was a special dog and in our short time with him he made our lives better. I would do the experience all over again exactly the same, no question, even knowing how it ends. He was our Pooper....

Clyde, buddy, we are really gonna miss you. Thank you for all the joy you added to our lives. Already I miss the incessant pawing at the back door to go out, only to change your mind when I opened the door, or paw to come back in ten seconds later after you just sniffed the air a couple time.

I'm going to miss my walking buddy, though my shoulder might not.

I sure wish you were here laying under my feet, bored, as you often did when I was sitting at the computer.

Adios amigo, you were a great friend!

Ukelele + Ramones = Smile

2010-04-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

I wanna be sedated, by Gus and Fin...

Thanks guys, I needed that.

World's Saddest Cookbook

2010-04-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

[h/t Serious Eats]

Lol, that IS pretty sad...

From the comments -

...Microwaves were introduced as the next big cooking device that could speed meal preparation and possibly replace conventional ovens. Today we associate them with boiling water, reheating leftovers or beverages and cooking frozen ready to eat meals.

Does anyone actually cook in one?

Carrie and I are going on seven years with out one, and other than the occasional weekend-coffee-that-could-be-warmer, we haven't missed it much.

Clyde Going Ape (video)

2010-04-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

Clyde gets a bit excited as we pull up to the dog park....

We did a good job burning off that energy. We've been home for 4 hours and all he has done is sleep. The bad news is, that means he will be getting his second wind jut about the time we head to bed.

Three Sheets Fall

2010-03-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

Well, that sucks....

Good to see Three Sheets coming to the travel channel in HD. Carrie and I have been watching since the Mojo days. Zane travels the world showing us the local spirits, drinking customs, and hangover cures. Entertaining and educational. Check it out.

Charlie Whitehurst = Barry Gibb?

2010-03-21T17:45:00.000-07:00

I hit the floor laughing when I saw this (happened to be drinking a beer, so that helped).

Create a caption: Whitehurst and beards - Seahawks Insider

Charlie Whitehurst...

Barry Gibb...

Hmmmm.....

Personally, I think Charlie Whitehurst is bizzaro Hasselbeck....

I Like Hasselbeck, and am a bit of a sentimental fan, so in solidarity, I shaved my winter beard... That and my fear of a 'beard tan'.

Oh yeah, and I was starting to look like they pulled me out of a 'spider hole'.

I am excited for the Whitehurst era (If there is an era, that means he was worth every cent...) and hope he does well (duh).

Volcanic Fissure Opens In Iceland

2010-03-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

Quite an impressive! Like the finale of a good heavy metal show...

Volcano erupts near Eyjafjallajoekull in south Iceland - BBC News

An Icelandic volcano, dormant for 200 years, has erupted, ripping a 1km-long fissure in a field of ice.

The volcano near Eyjafjallajoekull glacier began to erupt just after midnight, sending lava a hundred metres high.

Icelandic airspace has been closed, flights diverted and roads closed. The eruption was about 120km (75 miles) east of the capital, Reykjavik.

...

There had initially been fears that the volcano could cause flooding, as it causes ice to melt on the glacier above it, but that scenario appears to have been avoided.
However, it could cause more activity nearby, scientists say.

"This was a rather small and peaceful eruption but we are concerned that it could trigger an eruption at the nearby Katla volcano, a vicious volcano that could cause both local and global damage," said Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland's Institute of Earth Science, Associated Press news agency reported.

[h/t: Watt's Up With That?]

Don't eat the Krab!

2010-03-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

A little rule that I like to live my life by... Don't eat crab spelled with a 'K'....

I'm sure it was just fine as the boats that probably caught said 'krab' were visible from their deck. It just makes me uncomfortable.

Happy Birthday Clyde! (pics)

2010-03-17T20:22:00.001-07:00

The big chief is now three years old! Getting a little grey beard, though in real life it is quite a bit less. The flash reflects off of the silver pretty strong.

Note - I use treats to get his attention. While it works good, it has it's side effects.... (look closely at #1, easy to spot in #2)

Speedy Gonzales, Friend of Everybody's Sister...

2010-03-15T19:22:00.000-07:00

Heh, back when cartoon were great! Pretty sure I saw this as a kid (multiple times), pretty sure I didn't catch the humor in that line.

Apartment Music (if you hate your neighbors)

2010-03-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

Play it loud, play it proud!

I'm trying to expand my musical horizons and I think I may have found the edge...

I like this one much better...

The Pacific and Tom Hanks

2010-03-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

-Tom Hanks

Uh, no, it doesn't.

Boy I really wish entertainers would keep their mouths shut, it really puts a sour taste in my mouth when I want to enjoy their product. Sorry Tom, it may sound familiar to a simpleton, but in reality that is a load of crap.

See "Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?" an article by Victor Davis Hanson...

Some stuff I pulled from the above article...

Before WWII we had good relations with the Japanese. China was our ally, a country that is also different racially, and even more culturally than the US.

How does he explain the brutal wars between the Japanese and Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Pacific Islanders? The US allied with them against Japan because Japans policies in the Pacific were in tune with Nazi Germany, not because of the Japanese 'believed in different Gods'...

Hanks suggests they wanted to 'kill' us, we wanted to 'anninilate' them. Had they developed a WMD, does TH think they would have hesitated to use it? (They too were working hard to develop them...) Would Tom Hank's Los Angeles look today like a prosperous and modern Tokyo if they instead of us had been successful?

Almost immediately after the war, Japan was an ally with the US against Communism. ...Despite horrible battles such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa that were still pretty fresh in memories...
Hanks apparently has confused the furor of combat — in which racial hatred often becomes a multiplier of emotion for the soldier in extremis — with some sort of grand collective national racial policy that led to and guided our conduct.
Could an innately racist society go through the horror of Okinawa (around 50,000 Americans killed, wounded, or missing), then a few months later in Tokyo have MacArthur ensure a relatively peaceful transition to 'a rather radical new independent and autonomous democratic culture'? (Something that I think is usually overlooked, people stop reading at the signing of the surrender documents on the battleship Missouri)

In Hanks’ case, he is either ignorant and has done little real research, or in politically-correct fashion has taken a truth about combat in the Pacific (perceptions of cultural and racial difference often did intensify the savagery of combat) and turned it into The Truth about the origins and conduct of an entire war — apparently in smug expectation that such doctrinaire revisionism wins applause these days in the right places (though I doubt among the general public that he expects to watch the series.)

I don't think Hanks is a stupid man, so I see it as more of the latter. I find it both sad and scary that there are many who digest crap like this as truth. War is a very ugly complicated bitch, to summarize it like Hanks did above is unfair to history and especially unfair to those who fought for his freedom to live his life how he does.

I'll let Victor Davis Hanson finish it off...

All in all, such moral equivalence (the Japanese and the U.S. were supposedly about the same in their hatreds) is quite sad, and yet another commentary on our postmodern society that is as ignorant about its own past as it is confused in its troubled present.

(underline by me)

[h/t Big Hollywood]

I Find Karen O Hot... (Video)

2010-03-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

Back off Dave...

So, do you come here often? (Clyde pic for those of you that don't use the clicky)

2010-03-08T19:44:00.000-08:00

Clyde bellies up to the bar...

The dog with a hurt foot being mopey around new years time.

Belly of a 747

2010-03-05T22:00:00.000-08:00

Slick video of what it would look like if you hung on for dear life to the nose gear of a 747. For kicks, the pilot then lowers the nose gear alone so you could see the aircraft clean. Beautiful!

Racing Car Graphic Design

2010-03-05T17:09:00.000-08:00

Came across this while pounding through the Reader today. It is a book on the graphic design of race cars by Sven Voelker.

Most people don’t know that racing cars from the likes of Porsche and Ferrari were given their looks not by marketing strategists or designers, but by chance. Go Faster is a collection of over one hundred examples of racecar design that documents the carefree anarchy in which they were created. In the book, each colorful racing car is featured next to a blank, white model. Thanks to this juxtaposition, Go Faster shows its readers exactly how graphics modulate the look of the vehicle. The neutral models also give readers ample opportunity to imagine their own possibilities for graphic design in motor sports.

Check the video from Gestalten...

Damn, if that isn't in my wheelhouse! Back in the day, I was mesmerized by these cars and their design. The Gulf Porsches? C'mon! I could stare for hours at pictures of them as a kid (magazines were my internet). The book looks so cool that I made my way over to Amazon and ordered up a copy (not a bad price either). This looks is gonna look good on the coffee table.

If I had a good place to display them tastefully, I wouldn't mine having some diecasts of the cars that I love. (That is a Christmas hint y'all, but it doesn't mean get Mike a hundred of the things...)

[h/t Jalopnik]

Note: I am starting a Christmas hint tag so that certain people that complain that they can't find anything for me, can have a few clues to what might make a cool gift.

New OK Go Video

2010-03-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

OK Go who first came to my attention with the amazingly simple (yet complex) video on YouTube for their song 'Here it Goes Again' (watch it again, it is genius), has released just released another video. No way could you describe this one as simple!

What a fabulous Rube Goldberg machine! My fav part... The TV.

Added bonus, it is embeddable, thanks in part to an open letter by Damian Kulash of OK Go. It is a good insight to the going ons of the modern music industry.

So, if you liked it, do like I'm going to do, once I repair the powercord to my desktop (Clyde) that has my music collection because I have yet to transfer it to my NAS so I can access it throughout my house... (deep breath) and by a song or two or a whole album of theirs.

The Physics of a Wrecking Ball

2010-03-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

Wow.

Gotta keep your head on a swivel when driving through a construction site...

If that were a real wrecking ball, that thing would have gone right through that car, barely slowing down. That and someone probably wouldn't have yelled "cut!" at 0:16.

Paul's Boutique

2010-02-27T16:04:00.000-08:00

A good read over at Big Hollywood on the Beastie Boys second album 'Paul's Boutique' by Cam Cannon.

As many of you know, and as many can guess (hint, my web site address, iammiked.com), I am a big B-boys fan. This is the album that started it all for me.

Way back, when I was in the ninth grade, the Beasties first album, 'License to Ill' was all the rage. "Fight for Your Right", "No Sleep 'till Brooklyn", "Paul Revere". Guys walking around with stolen VW logos around their neck. I hated it, thought it was sillyness. Since, I have learned to like it, but it isn't even in the top five of my favorite Bboy albums.

Then I saw this video...

Oh yeah, that's the stuff! The album was all over the place, and I mean that in a good way. You had '5-Piece Chicken Dinner' to 'Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun' to the 'Shake Your Rump' and everything in between.

My favorite was 'B-Boy Bouillabaisse', a collection of a bunch of shorts at the end. Here is a taste, 'A Year and a Day'

Nice time lapse by the YouTube poster BTW.

Many hours have been spent with this on eleven, and I see no end in sight.

Now, I'm off to mix the Bass Ale with the Guinness Stout out with the guys. Later!

500th post!!

What a Joke!

2010-02-19T20:51:00.000-08:00

Here we go again, the racist tag thrown around to belittle someone that you don't agree with. Yay journalism!

CPAC Speaker Bashes Obama, in Racial Tones by KATE ZERNIKE

How can conservatives win the youth vote that overwhelmingly went for Barack Obama in 2008? At the Conservative Political Action Conference, apparently, some are betting on using racial stereotypes.

In a panel appealing to conservatives under 30, Jason Mattera, author of a forthcoming book called “Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation,” likened the gathering to “our Woodstock.”

“Except that unlike the last gathering, our women are beautiful, we speak in complete sentences and our notion of freedom doesn’t consist of snorting cocaine,” he said, “which is certainly one thing that separates us from Barack Obama.”

[...]

He then mocked what he described, with a Chris Rock voice, as “diversity,” including, he said, college classes on “cyber feminism” and “what it means to be a feminist new black man.”

Now that you have read that, listen to Jason Mattera's speech... Go ahead and skip to 3:30 where he does his 'Chris Rock' voice. Did you hear it? No? Try again...

Here how I see it, first of all, if he is doing a Chris Rock impression, it is the the worst I have ever heard.

Second, the guy is from Brooklyn, and like a few people from around there, he has a bit of an accent... I could tell no difference from how he talked at the beginning to how he talked at the end. That is, as far as I can tell, how he talks.

Third, if he was doing a 'voice', I would have called it more of a Christopher Walken. But since Christopher Walken is a white guy, it is harder to label him as 'racist' for doing that.

Of course in the comments, the liberal lemmings take the bait like sharks to chum.

What can I say? This is almost as disgusting as Sarah Palin's VP campaign rallies.

[...]

Let's face it, there's no way around it,. the Republican Party is the old southern dixie-crat, un-repentent, segrationists in a new suit.

[...]

i know who rupaul and barney frank, but who's jason mattera? (i can safely guess i can continue not knowing who he is.)

[or what the shift-key is... Sorry, back to the comments]

These folks have no ideas, no policy proposals, no solutions, and they are left with all that they are good at - name calling - disgraceful!

Woo! we got Palin in the first comment! How many of them do you think heard the guy actually speak? How many of them said like stuff about Bush?

Seriously, there was not one ounce of racism in there. He is just a guy that isn't too happy with the president that is currently in office. There is nothing wrong with that is there?

Can I only dislike the policies and actions of presidents or people that are of the same race as me? I wonder how Kate Zernike feels towards Clarence Thomas? What 'voice' does she use when discussing his rulings...

BTW, here is a link to Jason Mattera's book, Obama Zombies: How the Obama Machine Brainwashed My Generation.

I just pre-ordered one. He can thank Kate Zernike for pointing me his way.

[h/t Ace of Spades]

Turn yourself into a cartoon with Vin Diesel...

2010-02-17T17:21:00.000-08:00

Ad seen while mowing through my reader today -

I can't tell which one is the cartoon and which is real...

Vin, I kid, I kid!

'Round the World - Faroe Islands

2010-02-14T11:07:00.000-08:00

View Round The World in a larger map

I'm still moving forward with my (simulated) flight around the world. It has slowed down a bit as I have been spending more time learning to fly a Cessna 185F Skywagon. That plane is a tail-dragger and I am having a tough time setting her down without bouncing back up a few times. Practice, practice.

Last night I landed in the Faroe Islands, a place that I didn't know about before I set out on this trip. From what I've seen, it looks like a place that I would like to visit in real life. Very beautiful, some amazing geography. Here is a little video to give you a taste...

Next hop will be to Iceland, not sure what airport yet.

BTW, the new map above should give you a little more information on the airports that I have landed at. Clicky.

Americas Cup Coming Back to America

2010-02-14T09:46:00.000-08:00

BMW Oracle's USA-17 wins the America's Cup, bringing it back to the United States.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chatani/ / CC BY 2.0

What a great bit of sailing, and a fantastic bit of engineering. Alinghi gave BMWO a good race to the first mark leading for a good part, ending up trailing by 28 seconds. Then BMWO just marched away from them getting a 2km lead and eventually winning by over 5 minutes. In my uneducated opinion, Alinghi's only hope was for BMWO to make a big mistake, break, or have some super-bad luck with the wind. None of those came true.

Congratulations BMW Oracle,

Super Bowl Halftime (With Bonus Video!)

2010-02-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

Why are we still being punished for Janet Jacksons nipple? C'mon, The Who was the oldest halftime show since George Burns and Mickey Rooney in 1987. Mickey Rooney was only a year older than Daltry. I believe George burns was 127 at the time.

Honestly, bringing back Up With People would be better.

Don't get me wrong, I love The Who but that was lame. It would have been better if they played one song than the medley thing. What, no Happy Jack?

This video is from a show two years before I was born, and I'm getting up there... (sidebar - I could watch Keith Moon play all day... )

I can't wait until Super Bowl LXIV when Pearl Jam takes the stage!

Hey Mom, Beer is Good For You

2010-02-07T08:49:00.000-08:00

Eat your broccoli, drink your beer!

Over at the Washington Beer Blog I read some good news this morning.

Study Finds Beer is a Rich Source of Silicon, May Help Prevent Osteoporosis

A new study suggests that beer is a significant source of dietary silicon, a key ingredient for increasing bone mineral density. Researchers from the Department of Food Science & Technology at the University of California, Davis studied commercial beer production to determine the relationship between beer production methods and the resulting silicon content, concluding that beer is a rich source of dietary silicon.

...
Based on these findings, some studies suggest moderate beer consumption may help fight osteoporosis, a disease of the skeletal system characterized by low bone mass and deterioration of bone tissue.

...
The hop samples analyzed showed surprisingly high levels of silicon with as much as four times more silicon than is found in malt. However, hops are invariably used in a much smaller quantity than is grain. Highly hopped beers, however, would be expected to contain higher silicon levels.

IPA's are better for you? More good news for me!

“Beers containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon,” concludes Dr. Bamforth. “Wheat contains less silicon than barley because it is the husk of the barley that is rich in this element. While most of the silicon remains in the husk during brewing, significant quantities of silicon nonetheless are extracted into wort and much of this survives into beer.”

Article: “Silicon in Beer and Brewing.” Troy R. Casey and Charles W. Bamforth. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture Published Online: February 8, 2010 (DOI: 10.1002/JSFA.3884); Print Issue Date: February 2010

Yes Mom, I saw the word 'moderation' in there.

What are they gonna tell us next, that beer is better than milk? Sweet, though it is horrible on cereal.

Loch Ness

2010-01-25T19:56:00.000-08:00

Seen on the side of the road in Scotland....

View Larger Map

Some say that his politics are terrifying, and that he once punched a horse to the ground...

All we know, is that he is called 'the Stig'.

[Edit 04.26.2010]
Since Google doesn't seem to like 'The Stig' and removed his image, here is a screenshot.

Where in the World is Mike?

2010-01-24T17:55:00.000-08:00

Still working on flying around the world. Made it throught the Middle East, flew a loop around the great pyramids, and finally made to Europe. I just arrived in Athens.

View Round The World in a larger map

Staying true to my word, I haven't used the time acceleration at all. Haven't crashed either (other than computer crashes). I have no idea the path that I'll take through Europe, other that I'll end up in the Orkney Islands of Scotland with a hop to the Faroe Islands to Iceland.

So far I have over 50 hours in my Real Air Beechcraft Duke outfitted with a Reality XP Garmin GNS 530w GPS (only about 5 hours with the GPS).

Yes, I'm still doing it NWA style, putting it on autopilot and reading a book. Just finished Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. Good book BTW, I really liked it.

Championship Day!

2010-01-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

Woot! Championship day is here!

In my opinion, I think this Sunday is better than Super Bowl Sunday. Mostly, because you get two games. ...And the games are the focus, not the commercials.

I sure fell blessed to have been able to experience on live with the Seahawks first hand, probably one of my favorite experiences ever. The buzz building up before the game. The buzz of the game itself, and the explosion of emotion of the win. I have goose-bumps thinking of it. I hope I get to do it again, but doubt it will be as great as the first time.

Note: That Bald Eagle flying around during the National Anthem in Indianapolis was very cool, but not even quarter as cool as a few F-15 Eagles flying by after "The home of the brave."

Most Useless Stat Today...

2010-01-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

Poll: 63% Know Spouse Who Cheated

Nearly two-thirds of all Americans know someone who has been unfaithful to their spouse, according to a new CBS News poll.

Does anybody see a problem with this? It means nothing!!!

THIS JUST IN.... Nearly 100% of people know someone with red hair!!! (I made that up, but I am fairly confident that it is true)

It irritated the hell out of me this morning when I heard this on the news as I was driving in to work. The anchors were swooning over the number, "ohhh, wow, that is a significant number!"

I've known, say, two hundred people. (I'm a bit of a hermit) I know of only one person that has cheated on their spouse. Carrie has know five hundred people. She can only thing of two that cheated. If we were polled according to this, 100% of the people in my household know someone who has cheated. A much more meaningful stat would be that as far as Carrie and I can tell, only 0.4% of people that we know have cheated.

Yes, I am sure more that 0.4% percent of people have cheated, but I am sure that the number is closer to that than the 63% stupid stat.

The D is for DALOTO

2010-01-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

Yay, a new tag-line! (look up ^^^)

The D is for DALOTO.

What is 'DALOTO'? 'DALOTO' is short for 'Do A Lot Of Things Okay'. (I made it up.)

It is how I live my life, the opposite of 'Do one thing and do it well'. Why? Because there are so many fascinating things out there and unfortunately not enough time to learn them all well enough to be an 'expert'.

Things such as sailing, RC cars, woodworking, programming, cooking, interior decorating, gardening, nunchucks (kidding), etc... I want to learn just enough of many things to make me dangerous.

Take my latest venture, flight simulators. Not content to just take-off and fly around, I've been reading about and trying to implement real flight procedures. Tuning the radios (both communication and navigation), adjusting mixture, regulating the engine temp with the cowl flaps, etc... I bought an add-on plane that just about all of the switched and knobs work. Currently I am on a round-the-world trip using it.

View Round The World in a larger map

Not only am I getting a rudimentary knowledge of flying, but I am getting a better knowledge of geography. I can now find places such as Tokyo and Hong Kong on Google Earth without seeing borders and names. Sadly I didn't know where Taiwan was. Oh, I could come within a thousand miles of it and find it if names were on, but that was about it. I wasn't sure if it was an island or part of the mainland. (It is an island)

I am doing this trip real-time, no acceleration, in one to two hour hops. Over 50 hours in... Boring? Not really, I take off, get set on my course, switch on the autopilot and typically read a book, NWA style (I have yet to overfly a destination). I listen to monitor ATC (yes it has that), and set my book down when it is time to land her. I explore my destinations on Google Earth either when planning my flight, or after I get there. I am also trying to learn morse code, so I can tell that I am tuned to the proper frequency.

Nerdy, yes, but that is DALOTO in a nutshell. I am not ashamed.

From now on, or at least until I become bored of it, I will try to tag any of my posts regarding stuff such as this as 'daloto', so you can easily navigate back to them. You're welcome!

The Most Useless Machine Ever/New Years Resolution

2010-01-01T09:41:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everybody! Hope all y'all had a good and safe celebration and that there aren't too many throbbing headaches this morning.

I, being the old man that I have become, brought in the New Year reading a book I got for Christmas (Atlas Shrugged/Ayne Rand, loving it, thanks Mom!), while sipping a Talisker 10yr single-malt scotch. That is just the way I roll...

Anyhow, yesterday I came across the 'Most Useless Machine Ever'...

...And it fascinated me. Like it's name implies, it is a useless machine. All it does when you turn it on is reach out with an arm and turn itself back off. Yes, you can probably find a manufactured box that does the same exact thing at a silly knick-knack store, but that isn't the point. I am so fascinated with it that I have decided to make it one of my resolutions.

I, Mike D, resolve to build the 'Most Useless Machine Ever'. More important than building it, I resolve to learn why/how it works.

There, it is official!

Back when I was a wee laddie, I thought that electronics was the way that I was going to go. I'd get the Radio Shack (oh snap!) IC catalog and thumb through library books, but I never had the patience to learn. Now I do! This can be another feather in my "do-a-lot-of-things-ok" hat.

If you want to build one your yourself, head over to Instructibles to find out how.
[h/t Gizmodo]

BTW, anybody catch the circular references in this post? No? I was drinking Talisker, from the Isle of Skye. Home of the MacLeod Clan. I have a great, great grandfather MacLeod. The song on the YouTube is by a Kevin MacLeod... Weird! I know, only to me...

EcoSnoop

2009-12-29T09:23:00.001-08:00

Well isn't this just special...

EcoSnoop is an iPhone app that allows people to ~~rat out~~ report neighbors and businesses that are not being 'eco-friendly'. Here is their mission statement...

Link to their web site...

A Mission for Change

EcoSnoop's mission is to help our communities heighten awareness of opportunities to be more green, save energy, improve treatment of animals, and even fill pot holes. Leveraging the power of the community, EcoSnoops use their Apple iPhone to capture clear pictures of a problem and post these pictures on a community website so that building owners and others can take action. Have you ever.....

Seen lights left on in a building, late at night, for no good purpose?

Noticed a door that never closes properly, wasting heat or air conditioning?

Observed a truck unnecessarily idling at a loading dock?

Been bothered by a broken sprinkler running non stop?

Complained about street lights left on all day?

Wanted a pot hole filled?

EcoSnoop lets you help solve these problems and more. EcoSnoop is a photo driven "Trouble Ticket" system, letting you identify a problem while leveraging to community to take corrective action. The EcoSnoop website is a tool for environmental awareness and a tool for actively promoting energy conservancy and green awareness. By using the EcoSnoop iPhone application, the user becomes an important link in the chain of helping to report and mediate green waste (energy, pollution, etc.). Additionally, by going yourself and encouraging friends to utilize the website to add as much information as possible about the picture (address information, responsible party information, etc.) you are giving the EcoSnoop community the tools to encourage positive change!

Nice, they even have a map so eco-anarchists can find the best route over to someones house. Smash all their evil incandescent lights. Pretty sure they don't encourage that, but hey, the info is there.

They tell us that it isn't 'Big Brother'. Which I agree with, if they are talking about the TV show. I would call 'EcoSnoop' more of a Big Brother/Stasi informant type mashup.

Good thing these little informant punks will have to break in to my house to find out that I keep the temperature at precisely 88.5° at night because I don't find a comforter that comfortable. Just a thin sheet thank you. Preferably washed daily, because I tend to sweat a bit at that temperature.

That, and my Commando 450 shower head. It's typically only used in the circus. For elephants. Power.

[h/t Watts Up With That?

Poor Clyde

2009-12-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

Clyde is not a happy-camper right now...

Took the big fella to the dog park the day after Christmas and ran him for an hour and a half. Good times, he loved it. Other than him getting a bit tired near the end I didn't notice that anything was wrong. When we got home and I hosed him off (couldn't keep him out of the water...), he was holding his foot up.

I took a peek and noticed that a huge chunk of skin from his pad was gone. Ouch!

That's why I love dogs. He would have retrieved his 'squirrel' all day with his foot like that, thinking that is what I wanted him to do. No complaints.

I take that back. He's complaining today. He is a mopey whine-a-saur. He's sitting next to me as I type with his head on my lap feeling sorry for himself. To keep him from licking his wound, we bandaged it up and put on a dog sock and shoe over it to keep it clean and together. He's not a fan as you may be able to tell from the above picture.

The good news is that I am now finally confident to take him out hiking with me. If I can keep him close to me at a dog park with hundreds of dogs running around (for the most part he ignores them) I'll have no problem in the woods.

Rock 'n Roll Fun

2009-12-27T18:36:00.000-08:00

So your are at the Toronto Foo Fighters concert and Taylor Hawkins is playing his drum solo. He stops and plays plays a little morse code on the cymbal... (-.-- -.-- --..) and out walks Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson to rock out to YYZ. Freakin' Awesome!!!

The reasons I find this cool are xxxx-fold
1) I like the Foo-Fighters
2) I LOVE Rush
3) I love the song YYZ
4) I am an aviation buff

'YYZ' is the airport code for Toronto (the home of Rush). The rhythm that you hear at the start is morse code for YYZ thy same that you will hear if your aircraft's radio is tuned to 112.15MHz in the vicinity of Toronto. Except it won't rock as much.

Woo!

Merry Boxing Day

2009-12-26T19:50:00.000-08:00

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Here is my gift to you, almost five minutes of pure awesomeness.

I like the guys description of the video...

Yay for fireworks and UAVs.
I'm an unemployed Electrical Engineer, anyone want to hire me before I set the house on fire?

Why Star Wars: Episode 1 Sucked - in 70 Minutes

2009-12-19T08:53:00.000-08:00

70 Minutes?!? You gotta be kidding me!

Just finished watching these this morning, I was mesmerized... Episode 1 the Phantom Menace sucked so bad, you need 70 minutes to explain why. No worries, you don't need to pencil out a large chunk of you day to watch, it is nicely broken up into ten minute chunks.

Ever watch something that you liked as a kid, but when you see it as an adult you think, "that sucked, why did I ever like that"? You liked it because as a kid you are much easier to entertain. Things like 'The A-Team', 'CHiPs', and even some Christmas specials. It ruins the memories of joy I had as a kid to see these things as an adult. Sure I'll pull up the theme songs, or watch the opening occasionally on YouTube and it gets me excited... But any more than that and it is a downer.

After seeing 'The Phantom Menace', I was a bit worried that the same held true for the the original three Star Wars films. I went back and watched them. Thankfully, they still hold up well in my opinion. It is just the new ones that sucked. Like this reviewer says, they were written for babies. I blamed the stink on the Jar-Jar character but as this fella shows, it goes way beyond that.

No worries, this isn't some 'fanboy' review, it is very well done and humorous. Do yourself a favor and watch these.

[h/t Big Hollywood]

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Best Christmas Song EVER!

2009-12-03T20:43:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays, The Holiday Season. Andy Williams.

Best part:
So whoop-de-do and dickery-dock
Don't forget, to hang up that sock
'Cause just exactly, at twelve o'clock
He'll be coming down the chimney down..

A couple glasses of Christmas cheer, and I am belting this out with my shirt off. Fantastic!

It doesn't make cents!

2009-12-03T16:42:00.000-08:00

Why are there still pennies?
Would it bother you if that item that costs $3.99 now cost $4.00 (or $3.95)?
Can you buy anything for less than five cents anymore?

Try walking around walking around with a dollars worth of pennies in you pants pocket sometime... Without a belt...

I cannot think of one good reason to keep them around. A friend of mine was recently complaining that his bank won't take them unless they were rolled. I don't blame them one bit. Would you give me a ten dollar bill for six pounds of pennies? You'd be making about eighty eight cents on the transaction... Probably only take you a half hour to count them... People forget that the bank has to pay the person that has to count them, and the machine they use probably costs a pretty penny too.

As of 2007, the penny cost 67% more to distribute than it is worth. All that work to get thrown away or thrown in a box in the closet.

Read more here...

Teh Hate!

2009-11-22T08:52:00.000-08:00

[Note: the 'teh' was on purpose...]

Palinophobes Hate First, Ask Questions Later

Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus’ Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor’s writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book:

“The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.”

Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, “That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate.”

But soon, the original contributor confessed: “I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It’s taken from the first paragraph of ‘Dreams From My Father,’ written by Barack Obama.”

Heh, that is what I would consider a grade-A text-book troll. An art that wielded often on the i-nets, rarely this well.

I still find it amazing the bile that Palin brings out in people... I think that she is second only too GWB. Good lord, the AP devoted eleven reporters to fact check her book. Really?

If the roles were reversed and Palin was a Democrat getting ridden like this would we hear screams of 'sexist'?

Here is my favorite.... "AP: Palin book goes after McCain camp but not Levi". Fittingly it is in the entertainment section.

My two favorite parts, the tagline...

.. the 413-page tome doesn't contain a single reference to the father of her granddaughter, soon-to-be Playgirl model Levi Johnston.

And this line...

... the book - which contains 68 color photos but no index

The horror, no Levi, no index!!! My eyes are rolling.

Is There Anybody Out There?

2009-11-16T15:49:00.000-08:00

Mike's mind-blower for the day...

There are probably as many stars in the universe, ~10²³ give or take, as there are grains of sand on Earth...

If one in a million of those stars had planets, and one in a billion of those planets had life-favorable conditions... You would be left with a hundred million planets that could have life.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if there was life out there... What would surprise me would be if we found it... ...or it found us...

BTW, that isn't a background from the movie Star Wars, that is a picture taken by the Hubble telescope. You are looking at over nine-thousand galaxies which contain between ten million to one trillion stars each. There are probably over one hundred trillion stars that you are looking at there alone. And that is literally just a speck of the sky...

Hmmmm...