Apparently some woman actually fell for the old “send us your life savings and we’ll give you $20 million”. The really sad part is that she sent strangers some $400,000 over a two year span and her bank even warned her to stop but she was so obsessed with getting the big payola that she didn’t listen.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,453125,00.html

I got this link on a technical e-mail list where several of the members are located in the Houston area where hurricane Ike went through recently. These are before & after aerial photographs of the Bolivar Peninsula area of Texas. Pretty dramatic although not as bad as the before & after photos of the big typhoon a few years ago (I think that one was in the Indian Ocean).

http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/ike/photo-comparisons/bolivar.html

Boliver Peninsula, TX before and after hurricane Ike

 

I ran across this $400 LEGO Death Star kit at Gizmodo, it looks simply awesome. Too bad I don’t have that kind of money to drop on a one-time build that would probably just sit on my shelf. Dare I say it’s actually cooler than the action figure-scale Death Star I had back when I was a kid (although nothing will compare to the rubber Dianoga (trash monster to us kids back then) and foam-rubber “trash” in the trash compactor of that playset).

Yes, I’m nearly 40 now and finally got my first tattoo tonight. I have thought about this for at least ten years and finally decided on exactly what I wanted. My dad is the original owner of a ‘67 Corvette and I decided that having that on my arm forever would be a good way of remembering my childhood (he bought the car two years before I was born so it’s always been in my life) and also remind me of my Dad, all the time we spent rebuilding the carb etc. on that car.

I am not one to get a portrait of my family members inked so I thought this was a nice balance. Of course I now have the bug and am planning my next one already. I will probably get a paw print from our first dog Saratoga next but after that I want a Lovecraft/Giger type of creature, I can’t wait to provide some background info & images and let the artist go wild.

Anyway here’s what it looked like just before the bandage went on:

I just washed it off and it looks even better now, will post that pic tomorrow (no time to crop it tonight).

Somebody at work e-mailed out this 5MB video so I found it on YouTube to share. I’ve seen some wild cube pranks posted before and some of my friends have pulled off some good ones but this could be the best one I’ve ever seen.

I am so sick of this person at work who clips his fingernails in his cube multiple times per week. Well, I hope it’s fingernails and not toenails. Why the hell would you wait to do that at work instead of at home? I sit here grinding my teeth for several minutes while listening to “click-click-click”.

I was really thirsty while waiting for my commuter train home the other day so I decided to buy a Mango Melon flavored SoBe drink at the deli. It was tasty as usual but then I made the mistake of reading the ingredients list. Why in the hell do they put Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin in a beverage? When I think rosin I think of a major league pitcher and his chalky white bag.

This stuff also has “A blend of hibiscus, ginseng & astragalus”. The first one is a flower we used to grow in our backyard, the second is a common additive these days but wtf is astragalus? I had to look it up and the top three results at dictionary.com were foot bones in vertebrates. Down lower on the list is “a large genus of annual or perennial herbs or shrubs of north temperate regions; largest genus in the family Leguminosae”. Who knows what in the hell good that’s supposed to do for my body.

Sweetest Easter peep show I’ve ever seen (and yes it’s more of a strip club than a peep show, so sue me):

Yes it’s true, some guy in Fontana, CA had such a craving for carnitas that he robbed a guy on a bicycle at gunpoint for $20 worth of tacos. Now I love a good carnitas taco as much as (or more than) the next guy but that’s kind of silly. And what was the victim doing with that may tacos? Around here that would be enough food for 3-4 people, wonder if he had some half-baked friends waiting for him at home? That’s a sad thought: the poor courier showing up at the house empty handed, the wailing of two other stoners about the lack of munchies. What a shame.

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) - A hunger for carnitas nearly led to some carnage after a Fontana man was robbed of a bag of tacos at gunpoint.

Police Sergeant Jeff Decker said the 35-year-old victim had just bought about $20 in tacos from a street-corner stand Sunday night and was bicycling home when the suspect confronted him and said “Give me your tacos.”

Decker said the suspect grabbed the bag of food, punched the victim in the face and began to flee.

When the victim demanded his tacos back, the suspect pointed what appeared to be a handgun at the man and threatened to kill him before running away.

9NEWS - Article - Sidetracks - Robber steals tacos at gunpoint

Yep, the Christ Redeemer statue in Brazil took a lightning strike on the shoulder recently, made for quite a picture.

Story here