Alcohol
Barenaked Ladies
Words & Music by Stephen Duffy & Steven Page
Alcohol, my permanent accessory
Alcohol, a party-time necessity
Alcohol, alternative to feeling like yourself
Oh alcohol, I still drink to your health
I love you more than I did the week before
I discovered alcohol
Forget the cafe latte, screw the raspberry iced tea
A Malibu and Coke for you, a G&T for me
Alcohol, your songs resolve like
my life never will
When someone else is picking up the bill
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When the kids see me at the computer, they like to ask to see a train video. Today I decided to find a video of a steam train. That’s when I found clips from the last steam run Norfolk Southern ever made: the Norfolk and Western 611 excursion train making its last run to its final resting place in Roanoke, Virginia in 1994. I wish I had known about it then.
Take a look at these clips on YouTube. Hear that steam whistle? Haunting, isn’t it? I can imagine what it must have been like in the 1950’s, lying awake on a rainy night and hearing that lonely whistle sounding across the dark landscape. That whistle has soul. No diesel’s air horn will ever sound like that.
The 611 was well-prepared for its retirement by its Norfolk Southern crews. It is now on display at the Virginia Museum of Transportation. Just last month it was rolled out of the roundhouse, still looking ready to go.
I’ve got to visit the 611 the next time I’m in Roanoke!
Every time I fire up Google Earth I marvel at how much fun it is to zoom around the Earth from the comfort of my easy chair. The other night, a friend sent a Google Maps link to India’s Alang shipyard: the place where supertankers and other ships go to die.
Zooming around the imagery of Alang, I spotted an aircraft carrier waiting to be dismantled. That lead to a Google search of its identity, revealing it to be the former British Royal Navy HMS Vengeance. While the story of Alang is fascinating in itself (and worth a read, or a look on Google Earth), I happily discovered a site that documents these Google Earth finds:
Intrepid Earth.
Intrepid Earth scours the world through Google Earth, bringing you the good stuff. As a former “spook,” I was pleased to see the all the military and defense-related images, such as Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval base or Russia’s behemoth Typhoon-class submarine. Intrepid Earth makes for a great tour guide.
MT.Net says check it out!
I’ve chosen a new theme for MT.Net: Random Image! It randomly rotates the photo on the banner, so it should keep things interesting.
I will soon stock it with my own photos. I hope to take some shots of Raleigh landmarks to add to the rotation but I have surprisingly few of those at the moment.
BoingBoing pointed out the secret deal where one can get DSL service from AT&T for $10/month.
BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow says AT&T is evil and doesn’t deserve your business. I say that’s precisely the reason everyone should sign up. At $10/month, AT&T must surely lose money on every line. Therefore, sign up as many of your friends and family as you can!
The Consumerist: AT&T’s Secret $10 DSL
Bellsouth: Bellsouth FastAccess DSL Term Agreement Plans Available
I once read a book called The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, a true story of an Ebola outbreak in Northern Virginia in 1989. I think its one of the most terrifying books I’ve ever read, particularly since I lived nearby around that time. So maybe I’m just being overly paranoid, but I’m not too keen about our government’s potential plans to set up a bioweapons lab in Butner. The NBAF would be playing with fun stuff like anthrax, Ebola, avian flu, and other deadly pathogens right on our doorstep.
The Butner facility is being deemed a replacement for the aging Plum Island facility in Long Island, NY. Plum Island has generated a lot of attention with books like these, detailing alleged safety violations at the bioweapons facility.
Hey, I like job growth as much as anyone. I just don’t like the potential of infecting the local population with some plague in order to get it. I’m thinking the NBAF is one Yankee transplant to which we can say “no, thanks.”
I’ve got another dentist appointment today, one of my every-six-month checkups. While taking care of my teeth is not news, the fact that another six months has gone by is. To me, anyway. Whenever I’m making my next appointment, I always think wow, six months is a long time. Then its here before I know it.
Where does the time go?
I said last February that Jim Black should go, and now he will go … to prison! Black got his just desserts today when he was sentenced to 63 months in PMITA prison.
He earned it, too. Today’s paper says he took not just $50,000 in bribes, but $500,000 in bribes. That makes Meg Scott Phipps look like an amateur.
What we still don’t know is which lobbyist wrote the check. Come on, Jim. Who’d you sell us out to?
I was shocked to learn yet another of my cartoonist heroes has died a tragic death. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette, author of the Kudzu comic strip, died in a car wreck today. He was 57.
While I thought Kudzu seemed stale as of late, it was the coolest thing back in 1986, my junior year of high school. This was Kudzu’s “moon pie” phase, a schtick that wound up decorating the signature pages of my South Meck High School yearbook. Continue reading
When I thought I’d be taking the train north last week I decided I wanted to know where I was. Since I no longer have Windows on my laptop, my Microsoft Streets and Trips software wasn’t an option. That’s when I remembered a sweet Linux mapping application called Roadmap.
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