Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a conversation with someone in person and see their mouth move now, but hear their words a second later? Yeah . . . that would be funny!

Monday, September 26, 2005

Did you ever stop and wonder what the world would be like if there was no moon? First of all, you might as well stop wondering because if there was no moon, you wouldn't be around to ponder its absence.

First of all the moon is what keeps our planet's tilt and rotation in it's slightly over 23 degree tilt and 24 hour day. Without the moon we are talking about wild 90 degree varying tilts and days that could be be just 4 hours long! This means that seasons would be way out of control and with polar ice caps melting and re-freezing, you might as well forget living on any kind of land even remotely near an ocean. Speaking of the ocean, you know those tides that control so much of this planet's ecosystem? Yeah you can kiss those goodbye too. And lets not forget that any extraterrestrial object soaring towards our planet now has absolutely no chance of being pulled off course by the moon's gravity.

So basically in a nut shell, without the moon I wouldn't be writing this Blog and you wouldn't be reading it. Also you wouldn't have such a beautiful site in the night sky. The moon however is retreating from our happy home at a little more than an inch per year, but I figure by the time it is far enough away to create such a chaotic world, there won't be anyone left here anyway, or we would have at least figured out a way to keep the moon nearby with some really really big jets!

So actually it's no surprise that we see the moon in our sky these days, because frankly, our very existence relies on its presence and orbit. The biggest coincidence however, with our moon is the fact that the distance is just so perfect that we have total eclipses. At one time, the moon would have entirely blocked the sun out, and in the future, there will no longer be a total eclipse as the diameter of the moon in the sky will no longer cover that of the sun's. But for now, the moon rests ever so perfectly within the sun from our perspective once every 8 years. How truly amazing that is...

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Now this truely is the ultimate personality test!
So I was sitting on my recliner today reading about Jose Manuel Rodriguez Delgado and his experiments in the 1970s with implanting circuit chips in the brain of animals and humans when all of the sudden there was a sudden BANG! at the back door. It sounded like someone threw a stone at the storm window. So I quickly stood up and looked over at the door and to see that it was completely shattered! I saw no signs of abuse or anything. The glass just seemed to spontaneously shatter in its place. Upon closer investigation of the broken door I was amazed to discover that the shattered window continued to shatter and break right in front of my eyes! It sounded like the door was made out of Rice Crispies and just kept snap, crackle and popping. Once I knocked the glass all out and cleaned it up, the pile of glass that now resided in the trash can continued to break and shatter! If anyone could provide me with any kind of explanation to this enigma, I would greatly appreciate it! Here are the facts:
  • Glass door spontaneously shatters into thousands of pieces with no signs of any external stimuli
  • Once shattered and what I thought was all the glasses kinetic energy had been expelled, the broken glass continued to shatter and break without any intervention
  • Once knocked down and inside the trash can, the pile of glass continued to break and shatter even more
Could it be that by just reading about Delgado's experiments with the brain, I was able to use telekinesis to subconsciously destroy what was symbolically the doorway from a closed controlled mind to an openly vast new area of enlightenment?

Thursday, September 22, 2005

There’s nothing like spending the day “working” at a science center in Pittsburgh. It is also nice to get done that work (which was actually a seminar) early to check out the center itself. The Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, Pa has tons of great hands on science stuff for all ages. There I was able to build and launch miniature rockets, build and test atomic structures, see the stars, become a TV meteorologist, and even step aboard a once active U.S. submarine. That was one of the neatest things we did. I’ll tell you one thing, I thought my freshman year at college was cramped, to live on such a marine vehicle is pretty much giving up every right you ever had to be comfortable. And the valves! My goodness the valves! There were knobs and wheels and switches all over the place controlling everything from air flow to fluid flow to every other flow known to man. How fifty-one men could operate such a vessel and live on thing is beyond me.

Another cool thing that was “test drive-able” was the earthquake simulator. You sit down in the thing like you’re at a diner in California and you select what Richter scale magnitude earthquake you want to experience. Never having experienced an earthquake before, let alone one that measures 7.1 on the Richter scale, I found it quite uncomfortable. The nice thing with the simulator was when I was sick of the shaking I just walked off. In the real world, it boggles my mind that just walking off is NOT an option.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Someday I may write a book about club etiquette, but for now, I'll just shorten it to a blog post.

On a comical side note I was at a seminar yesterday in Pittsburgh regarding Opto22 hardware and the group was asked a question as to whether anyone knew what a blog was. Only 3 of us raised our hands, I was just about speechless, but then most of the people there were mid-40 males who probably had 10 secretaries at work to do any sort of computer bidding they wished.

So back to the topic at hand, here's what baffles me about club etiquette. If you're a girl, you go to the bar and sit there, flirting with the bartender hoping to get more drinks at a lesser or no cost. Once the music comes on the girl is up and dancing with anything that moves. If the girl sees a boy that the girl may be into she turns her back to him and steals a glance every minute or so thinking, "How can this person not know I am into him? I am making it so obvious!" This sort of thinking could have led to the downfall of women had men not stepped in and drunkenly randomly danced with anything with two breasts. As luck would have it every now and then both Boy and Girl get lucky and make eye contact and dance around for a little. Sometimes however this does not happen so Girl goes back to her seat at the bar where she is back to flirting with the bartender, but now she has striked up a conversation with the girl next to her effectively blocking out any other conversation from the opposite sex that may come her way.

In the meantime Sober Boy is standing at the bar scoping out his prospectives for the night. He finds a target but is disappointed at the fact the girl already has a boy she is with. So the boy continues on. Then at some point Girl is trashed enough from all the free drinks that she is dancing with only other girls and no longer acknowledges that there are guys in the world. Anyone with two legs will be treated the same on the dance floor. The boy on the other hand never ever gets this trashed as he needs to continue paying for his drinks all night long.

The process continues until that lucky occurrence happens I mentioned before, or both parties get tired and dangerously drive home only to get just a few hours of sleep before needing to meet obligations later that day.

Of course the above observation is just that, an observation, and not all people fall into those categories. So if you find yourself at the club scene, be sure to remember what I just wrote and don't do the norm, it may just pay off. Although I have yet to experience it paying off . . .

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

So I was watching The X-Files yesterday and it got me thinking, "What if what we perceive to be the direction of time is totally incorrect?" Let's say every morning we get up, go about our day, and then wake up the previous morning with no memory of the day we just lived. Yet every morning we have memories of previous days that we have yet to live. It's something you could never prove. Or an even more crazy idea would be if our lives were just completely different day by day and we only had memories of the life we were living today. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up a pirate, or a rock star, or Jessica Simpson for that matter. But I'll never know because I'll have all the memories as if that's how I have lived every day. Today I woke up James Barley, friend to most and blogger extraordinair, but tomorrow maybe I'll be Kyp Durron, Jedi Master and starfighter pilot captain in a galaxy far far away . . .

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

So it would appear that the new color that is in this year is brown. Last year it was pink, and now it's brown. To make matters worse, there are items that fall within both years and are both brown and pink. Luckily, I'm not a girl so none of this applies to me (or so I think) but if I were, I don't think I'd be wearing brown. Why have two of the most absurd colors be "in?" It would be nice to walk thru a mall and see other colors like green, or blue, or bright orange! Is the world not depressing enough that we need pink and brown to depress us yet further? It's no wonder half the people of this country (by no means is this an accurate number) are on depression meds. With colors like that, who needs women to make you depressed?

Monday, September 12, 2005

Remember those good old elementary school days when you used to walk home from school? And on every corner there was a student safety patrol crossing person who told you when you could cross the street. It's a good thing you had that older kid there to tell you that the coast was clear and you could cross safely wasn't it? Okay, reality check here. Guess what, you were about 8 or 9 at the time and that "older kid" telling you when you could cross the street, yeah we was about 11. Now I'm not a parent and I don't play one on TV, but I'm pretty sure there's no way I would be letting my 8 year cross the street by himself just because a 5th grader told him he could. Sure when you're 8 a 5th grader seems so old, so mature, but know let's look back on things with our experienced eyes. Are people crazy?! Does this seem logical to you??!! Can schools actually allow this???!!! Actually encourage such behavior????!!!! Maybe it's different when you actually have kids, but I find that hard to believe. I'll let you know my thoughts then if that ever happens I suppose.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

I have some how managed to avoid paying over $3.00 per gallon for gasoline. How was I able to accomplish such a feat? Well, last Monday when I heard about the destructive possibilities of Hurricane Katrina I made a wise decision to fill up the gas tank even though it was only half full (this is very unlikely as most often than not, I like to see how far I can drive once the gas light comes on). Knowing that gasoline prices would rise due to the damaged oil refineries on the Gulf, I got gas that Monday after work. By that Thursday gasoline prices had risen from $2.49 per gallon to $3.29 per gallon. You could watch the station price signs change by the hour. Then once the weekend came, prices dropped back $0.10. Finally by early week gasoline had dropped back to $2.99 per gallon. As luck would have it, I barely traveled this week in my car except to and from work so I have yet to fill up since last Monday, thus avoiding paying more than $3.00 per gallon at the pump. My Cavalier will be running on fumes come next week, but I'm getting gas as cheap as I possibly can. I have a bad feeling the $2.00 plus prices are here to stay though...

But it's hard to complain about such petty things these days when I have such commodities as a place to stay, and food to eat...

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

I never liked spam. In fact, I think it is the most unbelievable marketing ploy ever. Never once have I ever followed a link on a spam email nor do I ever plan on doing it. It baffles me that people would actually want to check out some of that stuff. But then I guess you could consider me "Not of the Norm." Yeah I guess it's weird I'm not into the penis enlargers or the super naughty mega horny monkey sex, or the German home interest rates, or more of the super naughty mega horny monkey sex, or the super mega galactic penis enlarger. I mean, all the people I know are just running to the stores looking for these items! I try to tell them, "No you can only get them online," but they just won't have it.

Okay, so here I am back to reality. Come on now! Why is anyone clicking on these things? But back to my initial grip, I now seem to be getting spam blog comments. You can check out a few of them below if you wish, but there won't be any more after today. Sorry about the inconvenience, but when you comment from now on you'll be prompted for a word verification. But don't be afraid! Just re-type the letters you see when you try to comment. I realize it will take you an extra five seconds, but I refuse to support such spamming tactics.
If the Moon was a cookie, would you eat it? I know at least one person that would.

And if the evening sky was a glass of milk, would you drink it? I know I would.

And if all that you could ever hope to do was spend eternity dunking a giant cookie in the most beautiful and gigantic glass of milk you could possibly imagine and indulging yourself in such a moment . . . Man wouldn't that just kick a**!