Flying W Things

Spam

Spam. Everybody gets it. Today I got a new variation on the classic "help me get money out of (insert African nation here)" scam:

Subject: From Brunei

I am a 23 years old and a British citizen who was taken to Brunei by my father at the young age of 12. He deceived me that I was going there on vacation and later married me off to a wealthy Prince in Brunei who is 30 years older than me.

I was thus forced into marriage and when I objected I was beaten and raped by this Prince. I was locked up in a house for two years after which I submitted and decided to accept my faith, knowing that was the only way out.

After I got my freedom back I have been allowed by my husband to have access to his businesses. Over the years I am been able to acquire some money $16,000,000.00 (Sixteen million dollars), which I diverted into a private finance house in Darussalam without his knowledge.

Right now I have mapped out a plan of escape out of Brunei, first of all I want to move the fund out of the Brunei. This is where I need your assistance, I will move the fund out of Brunei on your name through a Cargo courier company to Europe to avoid been detected by my husband. After which you will help me secure the fund before I get out of Brunei.

If you know you are capable of handling such a huge amount of money respond to me and I will compensate you by giving you 10% of the total fund.

Note also that you must keep this transaction secret as my life is at stake if my husband or any of his relatives hear of this transaction they will stone me to death or hang me.

Respond to me immediately so we can proceed.

Now, I know you're not supposed to reply to spam, but I couldn't resist sending this:

Infidel woman!

You have outsmarted yourself this time. I am your husband!

To reward your insolence, my brothers and I will stone you to death and hang you today at sundown.

I crack myself up.

I Got Nothin

I seem to be stuck in the Blog Doldrums.

However, some people that I know are putting up some good stuff. I will attempt to drive some traffic their way.

First, go read the link Mike posted here. Hilarious.

Next, check out what Mister P has to say about Mister Roger's Trolley. Math is your friend.

You may now return to your regular surfing. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have some content of my own to share.

Nothing But Net

Funny thing happened tonight.

First, a little background: 1. Claire has a beanie baby puppy that is her main "lovey" 2. When we are trying to get the kids to go to the bathroom before bed, we will often make a game of it - "I really have to go to the bathroom, I hope no kids get there before I do..." I know, I know - but it works.

So, Katy pulls this little stunt and Claire races off to the bathroom. The second part of the game is for Katy or I to act surprised to see a child there when we arrive. Katy happens to have puppy with her as she rounds the corner to the kids' bathroom, where Claire is already sitting on the toilet.

In her "surprise" she tosses puppy up in the air.

Then, much to her actual surprise, she does not catch puppy on the way down but instead knocks him right between Claire's legs and into the toilet.

Nice shot. Cue crying. Cue wailing.

Need a rich relative?

Ok, one last thing for today.

Need money for college? Trying to figure out how to fund your kid's higher education?

Look no further than My Rich Uncle.

I heard about this group on NPR this morning. They give you money for college, in return for a percentage of your earnings for some period after graduation. They are currently focusing on business, law, and engineering students. The payback percentage ranges from 2 to 8 percent of your annual income, although they didn't say for how long.

Sounds like indentured servitude is back - with a vengeance.

Forget about milk...

Got Renter's Insurance?

As Mike points out, there was a fire in the apartment complex across the freeway from our building yesterday. The fire was on the first floor of what looks to be a three-story building. I wonder how the people on the second floor made out.

Being that this is Los Angeles, no less than four helicopters and one fixed-wing aircraft were hovering/circling the area within five minutes. Crazy.

In other news, this morning we had another long meeting about everybody's favorite topic, Media Asset Management. One of the statements we were reviewing included the phrase "blah blah blah identify and review centers of excellence blah blah blah..."

This elicited the Quote of the Day:

Are other people "Centers of Suck?"

As a result, the offending language was removed from the report. Thanks, Mike, for furthering the "Jargon Free for 2003" movement.

Appeasement

Ok, so everybody seems to want photos of Katy. Give the people what they want, that's what I say. Here you go:

This picture is around 18 months old. The matching shirt and dress Cameron and Claire are wearing are courtesy of Katy's folks, who were kind enough to take us all to Hawaii two years ago. Oh, the rigors of travel...

I welcome you to take up any other matters directly with Katy. She can be reached at katy at flyingw dot org. Bonne chance!

[French usage corrected on February 24th. Thanks Yves!]

Excess Bloggage

Much has happened recently. I will try to sum up. Many photos in this post.

One of the benefits of having a window office on the 18th floor - here's a picture I took from my office window:

It's neat to see this guy cruising around looking for food. I haven't seen him power-dive after a wood dove yet, but I'm sure it will happen sooner or later. Let's face it - birds of prey are cool.

Ok, onward.

We spent President's Day weekend in Mammoth - some friends of ours have a place there and invited us for the weekend. We tried to exhibit some restraint in accepting the invititation - I think we managed to "consider it" for about .03 seconds - but Katy and I were both excited about the chance to spend some time in the snow with the kids.

The five-hour drive on Friday went well - hurrah! - and Saturday morning found us playing in the snow. Here's Claire tossing a snowball (well, ok, snowchunk) at Katy:

Cameron is considering similar mischief, with me as the target this time:

Saturday night brought 3 or 4 inches of fresh, dry snow - great for sledding but not so hot for building snowmen. We focused our efforts on creating a good saucer sled run. Claire and Cameron were a little reluctant to fly solo at first but quickly got the hang of it.

Here's Claire after a good run:

And our little speed demon Cameron:

We all had a great weekend - good company, nice place, good weather, and best of all, two highly successful 5 hour drives. Woo Hoo!

Anyway, here are a few more pictures from the weekend.

Ok, on to topic number three:

Today at work somebody forwarded a link to an essay titled "Why Nerds Are Unpopular." I found it interesting, as I suspect many high-school social misfits would. If you'd like to read it, here is the essay in question.

My favorite quote from the essay: "Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits."

A few observations before you go read that - first, it's quite long. Even longer than this weblog entry. Second, I think it panders a bit to the nerd crowd. I wouldn't dismiss it just on those grounds, however. Read away and let me know what you think.

(One last thing - I'm sure this clever entry title is already in use somewhere, but it came to me as I thought about all the stuff I had to write up. Oh well. I've already decided that there are few original thoughts to be had as it is.)

Waiting for a spreadsheet

I am waiting for an Excel spreadsheet to rebuild/relink/resomething. Tedious.

Luckily I have the Internet to entertain me in the meantime. While checking my usual sources of baseball information, I came across this article at Baseball Prospectus. The article offers another perspective on overhauling the MLB playoffs, which some people seem to think needs fixing.

It's hard for me to argue against the Wild Card when it allowed My Boys to win the World Series last year, but baseball does not need more playoff teams. Neither does it need interleague play. This is not an opinion. It is a statement of fact.

Ok, end of sermon - the spreadsheet is done. Back to work.

Electronic Crack

What I am about to say will cement my reputation as a geek. That's ok, I'm comfortable with it.

Neverwinter Nights is crack.

It is some good stuff. This computer game is not "like" Dungeons and Dragons. It IS Dungeons and Dragons. And I have merely experienced the single-player mode.

If Katy were not around to protect me from myself I would likely be driving down to Mexico to get some of this so I could play for days at a time.

If you ever enjoyed a little RPGing you owe it to yourself to get this game. It has turned my computer into a way-back machine - once again I find myself having conversations with people about their "elven ranger with a 20 dexterity" and making lame jokes about missing saving throws. It's like being 15 again - this time without the acne and transportation issues.

Now if you'll excuse me I have some other things to take care of on my computer, before Katy gets home from the store...

Pâté en croûte de fromage d'hamburger

It was getting late this afternoon. Time to make dinner.

I volunteered to cook, but we couldn't come up with anything to make. Then Katy saw the box of Bisquick.

"What's this Impossible Cheeseburger Pie recipe? Looks like we've got all the ingredients for it..."

Not a lot of other options were presenting themselves, so I whipped some up - brown some hamburger and onions, grate a little cheese, mix up the Bisquick and pour it all together in a pie plate, voila! Katy and I both liked it - heck, what's not to like? More importantly, the kids scarfed it up.

Haute cuisine? I think not. However, I'll be looking to the Bisquick box for cooking tips in the future.

Breaking News

This just in:

Today at preschool a boy kissed Claire's hand. According to Katy she seemed quite pleased about it. She said "I've never had one of my friends kiss my hand before, mommy!"

Hmm.

I did not realize that I would be shopping for a shotgun quite so soon.

Back to Baseball

Now this is some funny stuff. Rich, are you reading this?

Thanks to Mike for the link.

From Astronauts to Tolkien

One of the weblogs I have started reading is Baseball Musings. As it turns out, the author has a connection to Dave Brown, one of the lost Columbia astronauts. He posted the following from an email Dave's wife sent him:

I would just like to pass on some words, that Dave had told me, for I know that he would had liked for all to hear. One of my many conversations that Dave and I have had over the last few months was about if something should happen to him during this mission. As he turned towards me and looked right into my eyes, he said "that I want you to find the person that caused the accident, go to them and tell them that I hold no animosity for the decision that resulted in the loss of the vehicle. But also tell them that I died doing what I loved to do..... and I hold no regrets.

Wow.

I realize that some of my readers may think me obsessed with the collected works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and that the following will likely only serve to reinforce that belief, but one of the first things that I thought of after hearing about the Columbia was this bit of poetry from The Two Towers:

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

A Kick To The Gut

You don't need me to tell you that the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on reentry today.

I couldn't watch more than a few minutes of the coverage this morning for a couple reasons - one, Cam and Claire were starting to ask a lot of questions I didn't want to answer, and two, it made my stomach hurt.

Just sitting here composing this entry is giving me chills.

I remember Columbia's first launch quite vividly. It had been pushed back a few days, which worked out for me - it ended up launching on a Sunday morning. I was up early on Sundays anyway - to deliver my papers - so I got up a little earlier than usual and watched it on the 13" TV in my bedroom while I rolled newspapers. I kept the sound turned down so low I could barely hear it to avoid waking everybody up. I was totally entranced.

Today I feel like the wonder of that morning has been ripped screaming from me - for the second time. It fills me with an incredible sadness.