Going old school and musing about online cr@p

Lately I've not been writing new posts very often; and when I do, they've tended to be on one topic and - for better or worse - slightly moralistic and definitely opinionated. But I guess given that this is MY blog, I can opine on whatever I damn well please. However, I think maybe I've gotten somewhat afield from where I started this blog nearly a year ago. However, writing like I originally started doing where I touched on a broad range of topics each go, was time-consuming and created a lot of self-imposed pressure to produce. However, it's been a while since I did the shotgun approach to topics so I'll go a bit old school this go around.

So. Um. Now I have to figure out sh*t to write. Damn. Chalk it up to writer's block or apathy. Name it what you will. I think part of my problem is that I've been purposefully staying offline and away from the web. It's a morass of brain-numbing crapola in large part. To be sure there is a tremendous amount of helpful and wonderful stuff online, but mostly I think the garbage far outweighs the gold (on which side of that equation this blog falls is entirely up to you). The other hard part is that it seems people spend a lot of time making the crap look really good and enticing while truly useful info tends to be pretty visually boring. For example: the website for People is fairly visually appealing; however I'm not sure how useful the info is other than pure entertainment (although we need to mentally relax from time-to-time). On the other hand, The Economist website, is clean looking but certainly not going to win a Webby Award for eye candy. And it seems the more base instincts a site appeals to, the easier they are to navigate...but then again, maybe there are other reasons why a porn site is easy to navigate one-handed.

Speaking of eye candy, I'm going back to one of my personal memes very early and dropping in the cover of the most recent copy of W Magazine with Kim K on it.   How does a photographer get a photo shoot like this?

Now where was I? What else is going on in the world? Oh. While I'm not a big fan of what has been going on at my alma mater the last few years with respect to Schiano and McCormick running roughshod over the rest of the athletic programs to the benefit of the football program, I still support the athletes. They don't make the politics. That being said, I'm saying my prayers for Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand, who was paralyzed from the neck down while making a tackle in a game against Army this past Saturday.

Oh hey, if you're looking for some easy reading with battle, guns, swords, good guys, bad guys, damsels in distress and the like, then look no further than the Sharpe Series by Bernard Cornwell. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, Richard Sharpe comes up from the ranks (and the gutter) to become an officer in His Majesty's Army. Utterly predictable, they are nevertheless good clean fun...although with 21 books in the series, I'm wondering at the end of it all how many people Sharpe, ever the soldier, will have ended up killing. If you do undertake to read them, do so in the chronological order of the books, not the order in which they were published (Mr. Cornwell jumped around a bit as he decided to write about this battle or that one). Thus you'll want to start with Sharpe's Tiger. Enjoy!

One other book you should read if you have the chance is The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. Just be prepared to keep picking your jaw up off the floor as you wonder why a bunch of Wall St types aren't in jail being someone's bee-otch.

OK, at this point I'm wrapping it up. Just not feeling terribly inspired and I do need to get something posted.

Larissa vs. Kim, Trends and Bread Clips...

Well, 50% of the world's population is breathing a sigh of relief as Larissa Riquelme, the lingerie model from Paraguay, has announced she will run nude through the streets of Asuncion despite her home country being knocked out of the World Cup. She made this decision to give "a present" to those hard-working players who brought pride and recognition to her country. Umm...honestly, I think Ms. Riquelme brought more recognition to her country than the national futball team.

For those of you not in the know, she had pledged to run clad only in body paint the colors of the Paraguayan flag if the team won the World Cup. Upon that announcement, in addition to a world-wide drop in Viagra sales, Paraguay suddenly had pretty much the support of any man from any country knocked out of contention...and probably quite a bit of support (even if in secret) from fans whose team was still in the hunt. I can guarantee this will be a historic run, thoroughly documented by the media with the particular photo assignment being eagerly sought after by sports photographers the world over...and just about any other guy even remotely involved in media. Suddenly the lowly photographer at Sports Illustrated who has covered South American sports in backwater towns for years while suffering the teasing of his colleagues assigned to "more prestigious" assignments like the NFL Combine now has most coveted job in sports.

As usual, visit Dave over at The Savage Truth for better sports analysis and better jokes.

Your Ride: Using that amazing thing called Google, I saved at least $500 if not closer to $1000 on car repair bills. Here's the deal - the AC in my Volvo would stop blowing cold air after 15 minutes or so. If I turned if off for about 10 minutes or more, it would blow cold again for a while before stopping again. Puzzling. When I had the car in the shop for routine maintenance, I asked them to look into it but they couldn't duplicate the problem (and pretty much treated me like I was an idiot with questions like "Did you have the AC turned on?"). 

By visiting a few online forums like Volvospeed and Volvoforum I determined this was actually not an uncommon problem. After reading through a number of the postings, I narrowed my problem down to being that the AC compressor clutch was starting to wear down and the gap to engage too big. Solution: shim it. Recommended method to shim it? Use bread bag plastic clips and Super Glue...no joke!! It took about 10 minutes to fix and now my car AC works perfectly...critically important since it's been over 100 degrees these past few days here in Jersey! Lesson learned? Before taking your car in for potentially expensive repairs, poke around on the web to learn what you can about the problem (especially on owner-forums), and determine if there is an easy and inexpensive way to DIY.

Trends: Speaking of Google, if for no other reason than being bored check out Google Trends. You can type in search words or terms to see how often they are being looked for, even comparing them against other words. There's also a listing of the Top Ten Trends and Searches on Google - some interesting stuff sometimes! For example, type in aforementioned model, "Larissa Riquelme" a comma and then "Kim Kardashian" and you can see that the very attractive Ms. Riquelme was not on the radar until June 14 of this year then suddenly shot up on June 28 (while Kim has held relatively steady for about 3 years), out-stripping (pun definitely intended) searches for Kim due to her announcement of a clothing-free run. The letters indicate news stories about the topic in question, listed to the right of the graph. Below there is additional info on the search term - what country, city and language for which the term was most popular. For Ms. Riquelme, not surprisingly the highest number of searches come from her home country of Paraguay, but oddly enough the language with the most searchers was not Spanish but Korean! For more mundane topics, there is often seasonality such as "Tour de France" in July, "pie" around Thanksgiving and, oddly enough, the searches for "weddings" literally spikes the day after Christmas year-after-year (guess what she got for Christmas).

Le Tour: It's been an exciting first few days of le Tour de France thus far with a seemingly excessive amount of crashes and riders out of the race already (note: anyone who thinks bike racing is for wimps should check out the crashes and the resulting blood and broken bones). On the second day of racing, after nearly 223 km (138 miles) of riding there were three major crashes inside the last 3 km, one of which blocked the narrow road entirely and brought the peleton (the main body of riders) to a complete stop! In the GC (General Classification aka Yellow Jersey aka Maillot Jaune) standings there are a few surprises at this point although Contador looks well-placed going into the Alps in a few days when Stage 7 begins. Lance is a bit further back after suffering from two punctures on the tricky cobblestone stage. Probably the biggest shocker thus far is the Manx Missile, Mark Cavendish, being in 36th place in the Points Standings for the best sprinter. He's figured as a major factor for the Maillot Vert (Green Jersey) but has so far been rendered impotent while his main competition, Thor Hushovd, leads in Points with 80 total to Cavendish's 15. Stay tuned!

Guy Books - Are you guys looking for good beach-reading material this summer? I've got some for you. Normally my wife (and sometimes the kids too!) likes to gently tease me about my usual reading selections and their general lack of excitement...such as Understanding Wood, The Intelligent Investor, The Handplane Book, and other such non-fiction fare. However I do have one favorite fiction author who writes action-packed historical fiction. Meet (if you aren't already familiar with him) Bernard Cornwell, one of the most prolific writers out there. For the most part he writes series - which is great since I have always enjoyed his books so much I want more of the characters - with my favorite to date being The Saxon Stories. Five books (and counting) written in the first person, the series follows the life of Uhtred, a warrior in 9th century Saxon Britain/England (or what will one day become England). Many of the characters portrayed are figures known to history and the larger framework of the books follows historical events. So if you're up for page-turning adventures back and forth across the landscape, mighty battles, definite bad guys (more often-than-not a demonic member of the clergy), switching allegiances as necessary, comely women, drunken victory feasts...it's all there.