Far South of I-10

I'm changing URL's for this blog, I started to when we moved to colombia, but I never really have time. Please update your links. http://farsouthofi-10.blogspot.com/

Another flowchart today from Achewood . Any time a cartoon includes a flowchart spitting in the face of death, you gotta love it. (pretty uneven cartoon, though, but when the topics range from lying robots to gay porn, ya gotta expect that. It could be eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow some crazy korean kid could blow us all away!

The Nytimes has an article today about how solar power still doesn't make economic sense. They use an example for a house with a system that costs $54000, which to me seems excessive. The only way solar power will make sense for anyone is to first cut down the demand side of the equation, you can't solar power conventional air conditioning! I took a class a few years ago on designing and installing PV systems, and I learned from that class that it is possible to either be a shark and screw people out of a lot of money and sell them things they don't need, or you have to live like the instructor did, in a crappy 30 year old camper. The 3rd way to live would probably entail me continuing to work in the oilfield while selling PV on weekends. To me, the people that installed a $54000 system are sharks. A rule of thumb would guestimate a pv system costing $15/watt installed. So a $54000 system would be a 3.5 kilowatt system, and if New Jersey gets 4-5 usable hours of sunlig...

Bill Whittle at Eject,Eject, Eject has a fantastic post rebutting conspiracy theories that is like a cool wind blowing through a teenagers fetid bedroom, his post has the cleansing power of logic to sweep away the augean stables of stupidity that infests the modern world. My favorite quote: ALL of these 9/11 conspiracy sites have museum-grade idiots stating what “obviously” happens at velocities and temperatures that they are flat-out incapable of understanding. Not only are these people too stupid to understand the physics involved with what they are bloviating about…they are too stupid to realize that they are too stupid. Too many people believe the conspiracy theories in the world today. They use magical thinking instead of logic and science, which tells me that when the world crashes some day, it'll be hundreds of years before it gets back to the same level again since society is currently dismembering the enlightenment structure that got us to this point, we're racing ba...

In our apartment we have a balcony that opens up to what should be a side street, but since the next street over has become a major traffic jam, our quiet street seems to get louder every day. Car alarms, traffic, the rattle of trucks filled with propane bottles, it all fills the street. Stranger still is the sound of horseshoes, since a major mode of garbage removal is horse drawn wagons. Most garbage is picked up by modern trucks a few times a week, but the horse drawn wagons pass every few hours and pick up things of value like cardboard boxes, or appliances, or an american flag that my wife tried to throw out. (I had to explain that it's not junk no matter how fucked up looking it is, we need to burn it during a barbeque after I rescued the flag from the trash.) In the mornings on the weekends there is a tamale vendor that walks the streets, "Tamales, tamales, tamales" she cries, and it's more stretched out than the tamale vendors in the apartment where I lived...

It's pretty depressing that at some point most of the blogosphere will be nothing but dead links and dead people. As my bookmarks such as Cathy Seip and Acidman pass away, the internet will become another tomb of man. As William Cullen Bryant said: ...The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods—rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man! with a modern update: The links and banner ads, porno and erection aids Arguments over politics and religion, cutting wit and sock puppets, bloggers and MSM fill this internet, this google cache, the darkening web

I'm just waiting out the last couple of hours before I turn 40. In an optimistic way of looking at things, I've probably got another half-life left to go. Less optimistic way of looking at things gives me 20 - 25 effective years before I retire to the couch full time. Since I've only got 17 years professional work experience, I still have more ahead of me than behind me. (not sure if that's optimistic or not, I think I'd rather retire now) Who knows? maybe in 40 years aging will be conquered, and I'll live long enough to see all the rich and famous people get treatments that keep them young forever and I'll shake my diet bud can at the HD hologram set as Paris reenacts her sex tape live on CBS for the 50th anniversary of it being released on the internet. As my palsied liver-spotted hand stabs at the tivo button, tivo will reach into my blogspot archive and bring out this post and I'll get the satisfaction of knowing I was right about the future bef...

We're in Bogota and George Bush arrived this morning. He's having lunch now at Casa Narino where President Uribe lives. The airport is pretty much shut down this afternoon and the normal opening of the streets to pedestrians and bicycles is canceled today so we're just huddling down in the apartment with delivery pizza. The cnn ticker occasionally flashes that colombian police are battling protesters, but the local news isn't saying anything about that, who knows what that means. Lots of police sirens in the distance, I hope they are just leading the president to safety. From El tiempo: La Policía Metropolitana informó que algunos alborotadores trataron de tomarse la estación de TransMilenio de la Avenida Caracas a la altura de la calle 34, zona donde fueron atacados algunos comercios y sucursales bancarias. Los disturbios se produjeron tras un mitin de protesta por la visita, convocado por la Gran Coalición Democrática, convergencia de centrales sindicales, partid...

I love the comic achewood, I only saw it last week when lileks pointed it out, but there are years online with a pull-down that lets you choose different story arcs. It's kind of funny strange and funny haha at the same time. This one really hit the nail on the as far as depression goes, when a good objective for the day is to eat some goddamn peanutbutter.

I'm in quito for work and I'm stuck in the hotel room because I've picked up some kind of stomach virus that won't go away. All I've done for the past 24 hours is migrate from the computer to the bed to the bathroom, so I got to watch about 15 hours of TV yesterday. One of the expat channels is showing forrest gump this week, so I settled down to watch forrest and bubba discuss boiled shrimp fried shrimp, shrimp sandwich, etc. One scene that particularly jarred me was the peace protest rally, where they are protesting Fucking VIETNAM! The big banner behind the podium says "Support our GI's, bring them home". Which makes me wonder if the hippies even spent money to reprint signs for this war, or they are using the same ones. Iraq and Vietnam are similar in that the roots of both wars are deep. There were several points in time before ground troops were in vietnam where we could have changed policies, not returned indo china to france after WWII, not...

One of the reasons I've felt weirded out this past week, apart from too much work and not enough time to do it is that I'm reading 'One- hundred years of solitude' by the colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I tried to start reading it in spanish, but it is so different and weird that my first reaction was 'fuck, my spanish must really suck, because I don't have any idea what he's talking about.' So I bought the english version instead and it really is a fantastic book, in every sense of the word fantastic. It follows 5 generations of the Buendia family and it rings so true at the same time that every almost single event that happens in it is false and magical, the story is told in the past fantastical tense. Everything that happens could be a later mythical interpretation of past events, instead of a town being built because a group of young couples are moving away from their parents after one of the men kills a rival, instead they leave because ...

Do you ever travel to a different city and go to one of those places...what's it called? oh yeah, a casino, and you play craps for about 4 hours and lose $100 in a slow unfun kind of way while drinking what do you call them? oh yeah, cuba libres, then you get get tired of losing so you go over to the $5 baccarat table even though you don't know the rules, but it's really pretty easy so you play and you win back your money plus another $50. Then you go back to your room and turn on the tv and they have what's it called? oh yeah, the wizard of oz with Pink floyd's dark side of the moon dubbed over it, and it plays and it plays and it seems to fit so perfectly that you realize that pink floyd, the people that wrote the wizard of oz and the guy that dubbed the movie with the album are all doing you know, what's that called? oh yeah....serious drugs. Man, I hate it when that happens. [dorothy is just meeting the scarecrow, and "dark side of the moon" is p...

I've been so busy lately that this morning I'm actually tharn. Like a rabbit being stalked by a coyote, or a manager stalked by too many employees, I'm laying in the grass with my ears flat against my head as snowflakes of emails drift down around me and the buzzing cricket of my cellphone rings incessantly. Should I dash for the warren, just shut down my rabbit computer and leave the crickett where it lies, vibrating? Unfortunately, I'm in the warren, it's sunday morning and the oilfield is calling me here at home....shit, no more rabbit metaphors.

Steve Martin has a great blurb in the New Yorker called 72 Virgins. Linked from Instapundit, since I'm so busy lately the only web surfing I do is check LGF and instapundit to see what's going on in the world. It's sunday, so I read the Nytimes & times picayune too, yeah! Here's the 20's, I hope bin ladin is enjoying his 72 Virginians : Virgin No. 21: I hope you’re not going to sleep with me and then go sleep with seventy-one others. Virgin No. 22: Do you mind if we listen to Mannheim Steamroller? Virgin No. 23: Are you O.K. with the dog on the bed? Virgin No. 24: Would you mind saying, “Could I see you in my office, Miss Witherspoon?”? Virgin No. 25: Ride me! Ride me, Lucky Buck! Virgin No. 26: You like your vanilla hot? Virgin No. 27: Does Ookums like Snookums? Virgin No. 28: It’s so romantic here, dead. Virgin No. 29: Well, I’m a virgin, but my hand isn’t. Virgin No. 30: You are in?

I was almost a teenager before I learned that "When the Saints come marching in" wasn't just the new orleans saints theme song. But here it is anyway. Who Dat! WHEN THE SAINTS COME MARCHING IN We are trav'ling in the footsteps Of those who've gone before And we'll all be reunited, On a new and sunlit shore, Oh, when the saints go marching in, Oh, when the saints go marching in Lord how I want to be in that number When the saints go marching in And when the sun begins to shine And when the sun begins to shine Lord, how I want to be in that number When the sun begins to shine Oh, when the saints go marching in, Oh, when the saints go marching in Lord how I want to be in that number When the saints go marching in Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call Lord, how I want to be in that number When the trumpet sounds its call Oh, when the saints go marching in, Oh, when the saints go marching in Lord how I want to be in t...

I'm in england for a class this month, and John bolton just made an appearance on bbc. He really pointed out the bias of the bbc, since every question was in the format of "when did you stop beating your wife?". One question was something like: 3000 american troops have died in Iraq, how many more will have to die before Bush admits his mistake? John bolton fired back and mopped the floor for any fair-minded person watching. With silver mustache flashing, he responded to one jab about how the Iraq war has increased terrorism, Mr bolton shot back 'just the same way that combat with japan increased after america responded to pearl harbor'. heh.

We're homeless again, our apartment that we've bought is still undergoing a makeover, and the owner of the apartment that we were renting finally noticed we were renting a nice apartment with no rental agreement, and at half the price they should be asking just because they are nice. Niceness apparently ended this week, they dumped a 20 page rental agreement with price hike and lease on on us, and we decided to take a hike and stay with friends for a week or two until the floor is done in the new place. One result of that is that I can't watch CNN or fox or bbc, because they only seem to be talking about Saddam, and a video of saddam's tongue sticking out as he's hanged isn't something our host's little boys need to see at their age. They can read about him in 10 years in their history books, as a great leader who sponsored national kite flying contests, and the imperialist americans removed him from power because he wouldn't sign our haliburton contra...

Kottke.org links to a meme about listing the cities you've visited this year. Since I did quite a bit of traveling this year I thought I'd give it a try: New Orleans, LA* Baton Rouge, LA Picayune, MS* Lafayette, LA* Anchorage, Alaska* Liberal, KS Oklahoma City, OK Tulsa, OK Cameron, LA Los angeles,CA Long Beach, CA* Bakersfield,CA Denver,Co* Airdrie, Canada Banff, Canada Calgary, Canada* Villahermosa, MX Coatzacoalcos, MX Agua Dulce, MX Mexico City, MX Edmonton,Ca Austin, TX Miami, Fla Paris Milan Venice Florence Rome Seattle Salt Lake City Lima, Peru* Quito, Ecuador* Bogota,Colombia* Paipa, Colombia Chia, Colombia* That's 11 States and 6 foreign countries. I'm glad to have seen most of those places, but Liberal, Kansas I could have done without. I probably spent the most time in Calgary, Quito & Anchorage apart from Bogota and Houston where we lived this year. My favorite place was Paris, maybe florence too, but those were on vacation. I can't picture hav...

One of my cowworkers had vacation scheduled over christmas so I had to come over to quito to relieve him, which meant canceling our weekend trip to visit the inlaws. (oh the pain). Quito isn't a bad tourist city, it's got the 'mitad del mundo' museum where we saw the effects of the coriolis force with water swirling counterclockwise on one side of the equator, and clockwise on the southern side. Then I balanced an egg on the end of a nail, and shot a blowgun at a cactus. All pretty entertaining stuff for a 12 year olds. These events took place on the actual equator, instead of the pretend where the mitad del mundo monument sits. For Christmas, south americans celebrate on christmas eve, with a late dinner, then opening presents at midnight. Since we couldn't eat until 10pm we needed a way to spend a couple My wife and I took a tour around Quito's churches, and we also went up to see the statue of the Virgin, which for christmas became part of what must be ...

We stayed up watching Titanic last night on Fox. My wife couldn't sleep so she watched it to try and fall asleep, I stayed up watching it initially to see if they'd show breastage on Fox in south america(they did), but since I really can't go to sleep in mid sinking, I stayed up until 3:30 too to watch Leo float away. I'm paying for it now though. I wonder what the locals here think of that movie and the class structure it shows from England and even America at that time. Class still applies in the US, on airplanes, getting into good universities, gated communities, etc, but no upper-class person would ever say that to a lower class person, they'd probably get punched in the face at best, more likely a 9mm gat would be pushed down their throat. Here in colombia it's very different, rich people here seem to assume that the poor will kowtow down, tug a forelock, say "si jefe", to every stupid comment. On sundays I'm typically out and about wearing ...