Irish Woman just came in, gave me a kiss, and said she’d miss me. I guess I’ll see her in February.

She knows that I will only talk to her during commercials until after the Pro Bowl. Other than that, I will be a hole in the couch while I absorb the sweet nirvana that is football.

I’ll start picking games when the regular season starts. I enjoy watching the pre-season, but in the words of Chick McGee “The games don’t count, but the injuries do”.

I found the above picture at Picture is Unrelated, a great place to find photos of things that just don’t look right.

Believe it or not, I saw things a lot like this many times in Russia. I only saw two dedicated gas stations in the entire country. Everywhere else that we bought diesel was a tanker truck sitting on the side of the road. Outside of large cities, you either bought fresh food from amateur vendors like our friend above, or you bought food from someone cooking it next to their truck on the side of the road. You didn’t ask what meat was in the shashlik, you just ate it.

On this day in 1974, President Nixon resigned.

It took members of his party telling him that he would not be protected from impeachment and conviction to get him to do the right thing.

If he’d been a man and run a clean re-election campaign, he still would have won.

If he’d been a man and refused to cover up for his goons when they broke the law, he would have been a successful two-term president.

Instead, he ran a dirty campaign, then tried to block the course of justice when the morons he had running the campaign for him got caught. When Congress tried to investigate, he stone-walled, and put the entire country on hold for a couple of years while he fought like a cornered rat.

Yes, as president he did some good, and his legacy is more than Watergate. But I blame him and his actions for the paranoia that most people have towards the government. And I hope his reputation is never polished enough that it loses its stain.

First they came for the drug users, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t do drugs.

Then they came for the drinkers, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t drink much.

Then they came for the smokers, but I didn’t say anything because I don’t smoke.

Now they’re coming for the fat bastards, and there’s no one to speak up for me.

I just finished reading Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia.

Basically, a regular joe, who happens to be into guns, gets attacked by a werewolf. Since he not only survives the attack, but kills the werewolf, he’s offered a job by an international company that specializes in the finding and destroying of supernatural monsters. Much fun ensues.

The book has been talked about on a lot of the gun blogs because the author is an accomplished shooter, and the guns discussed in the book are realistic and correctly described and discussed.

If you’re into e-books, you can buy it at Baen Books. If not, then check out Amazon.

Well, after 4 days of looking for my keys to the van, I finally gave up.

I had the van towed to the dealership this afternoon, and they cut me a new key based on the VIN. Keys for Caravans are EXPENSIVE because they have to have a chip in them and the chip has to be programmed to the specific car it’s mated to.

Cost of towing a car that’s locked in Park – $105
Cost of cutting a new key, complete with built-in remote for doors and alarm – $219
Having your wife give you that shit-eating grin but not saying “I told you so” – Priceless

Cracked has a photo montage up that tries to show what the world would be like if sarcasm ruled.

This is my favorite:

If sarcasm ruled the world, I’d definitely be somewhere high in the ruling class.

Apparently this has been one of the wettest days in Louisville history. I’ve heard reports of as much as 8 inches of rain in an hour in some places. Amazingly, noone has been killed as Louisvillians learn that their cars do not magically turn into submarines when the roads are flooded.

I had a doctor appointment this afternoon, and since the interstate was a parking lot, I tried to get through on surface streets. I made it about a quarter of the way downtown, when I got stuck in a deadlock. The street I was trying to go down hit a very low point, which had turned into a small lake. The city fathers had chosen to put barriers between the two directions of traffic, so no turning around and going back until everyone cooperated.

For those of you who don’t know, when your tire treads fill up with mud and your car starts to sink, you should ease off on the gas. This is a shout out to the lady who asked all of us to give her a push and then got mad when we told her she was hosed and needed to call a tow truck.

I and about 3 others sat there for an hour trying to convince 50 other people to either backup or turn around and use the nearest intersection to get out of there before a police officer came and made them do it. I rescheduled my appointment so no harm no foul.

The Irish Woman’s building completely flooded, as did the animal shelter and the main library. That crushes Junior Bear’s plans for this weekend. The library was going to put on a miniature comics convention, but that’s probably not going to happen now.

My thanks go out to the LMPD, all of the firemen in Louisville, and the National Guard troops who have worked to help those who need it tonight.

Casa de Oso came through OK. The sump pump is going off with regularity, and both ponds are overflowing. Otherwise, we seem to have come through it OK.

like a cow pissing on a flat rock.

We’ve gotten a couple of inches so far, and I expect another two to three today. Junior Bear is home and is holding down the house while I’m at work. Irish Woman reports that her office building downtown is leaking like a sieve and has a couple of feet of water in the basement. I walked through the storm to get from my car to my desk, and I’m pretty sure I saw some animals being led two by two by some old guy from Bullitt County on the way in.

This has been the weirdest summer I’ve seen since I moved here. It’s been cool to the point of strange, and we’ve gotten more rain than I’ve ever seen. It reminds me of the summers back in North Dakota. A couple of really hot days, but otherwise very pleasant. And when it rains, it washes away cars and small children.

I’m going to stop calling this area Indyucky and start calling it Seattle on the Ohio. If I can only find a good cup of coffee, the picture will be complete.

Saw this over at Popular Mechanics. Not sure who to give the H/T to. My apologies to the source.

These are some small, relatively low cost pieces of equipment that would make a short-term disruption in basic services a bit more comfortable.

A couple of notes:

My brother-in-law has a couple of those Honda generators, and they are QUIET! If I were to re-purchase my generator, I’d probably go with those.

A power inverter like the one in the article is a semi-replacement for a generator in a pinch, but it won’t crank out the amps you need for a refrigerator or a sump pump. But even in normal life, they come in handy. I use mine to power a laptop on long drives so the kids can watch DVD’s without me having to bring along a separate DVD player.

I hadn’t seen a bathtub bladder before, but it makes sense. With a separate container for water, you don’t have to worry about how clean the tub is in the event you have to use it to store water temporarily. In an emergency, clean water is probably the most volatile thing you have to provide. Lack of it in hot weather will degrade you and your family faster than anything else. If you have water, but it’s contaminated, it makes your job a lot harder to clean it, or you face the risk of some pretty horrific illness.

But remember, equipment doesn’t mean preparedness. Plan, re-plan, and then plan again.