mattlary's weblog

I got this in an email from my father; it’s pretty good:

An honest man was being tailgated by a stressed-out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him.

He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The tailgating woman hit the roof–and the horn–screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, “I’m very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the ‘Choose Life’ license plate
holder, the ‘What Would Jesus Do’ bumper sticker, the ‘Follow Me to Sunday School’ bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car.”

I just found this site tonight with awesome Star Trek Motivational Posters. One of them might end up in my cube sooner or later. BTW; Picard was the better Captain.

I just read that Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert) passed away this week; I remember watching his show when I was growing up, and I’m sure it had something to do with me pursuing the sciences.

I gave blood tonight; but I tried the “Double Red” donation option.  Basically what that means is that they hook you up to an apheresis machine that takes only red blood cells, but by doing so they can take twice as much as would be contained in a whole blood donation.  So I reluctantly agreed to do it and they hooked me up to the machine.  It was actually a lot more comfortable than the whole blood donation; the needle didn’t hurt when it went in, and I got to sit in a recliner type thing.  It started by taking blood as a normal donation would do, then the machine pumped the plasma back in- I’ve never had an IV, but the experience was similar to what I’ve heard an IV feels like.  It did that twice and then was done- the cool part was that I left just as hydrated as when I had arrived, because it replaced most of what was taken.  So anyway, it was an interesting experience and I would recommend it to anyone who’s eligible.

I’ll probably be posting about some Net Neutrality/Online rights stuff soon; check out The EFF in the meantime.

I think the USA should do things this way:

 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070318/26fines.htm

I found this video tonight; it’s a Haunted History segment from The History Channel about Beardslee Castle. Beardslee Castle is a restaurant in the Mohawk Valley near Little Falls that’s notorious for being haunted. It also happens to be where Calin and I had our wedding reception

The segment is pretty short, but you can read more about the ghosts here.

[http://www.history.com/media.do?action=clip&id=hauntedny_beardslee_broadband]

Update:  Beardslee Castle is nowhere near New York City 

http://www.josplumbing.com/