bluh

I have a chipkey from the Al Warren Oil Company so after I use it to put biodiesel in my car, they send me a bill. Fortunately it has a breakdown of all the fuel taxes, which I find interesting.
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The spirals painted in the urinals in SeaTac are merely a suggested aiming spot, not a hard and fast rule.

I can tell, because my ass hurts.

No, not like that, you preverts. Saturday my special lady and I partook of a leisurely 25 mile bike ride. Me on my steamroller – my singlespeed Gary Fisher Tassajara frame with a Surly 1×1 cro-moly steel fork – and Nikki on the $20 Raleigh Sportif road bike I picked up at a thrift store. Another Jackson for new tubes, tires, water bottle cage, a quick 15 minute tuneup and it was ready to roll. All the construction on Archer made us take a slightly out of the way route, but fine less-used neighborhood streets always make for a relaxing ride. Some light weightlifting at the fancy new UIC fitness center and a more direct ride home was an awfully nice way to spend a couple hours on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

I spent a good half hour trying to get my motorcycle to start, despite topping up the battery and slapping it on a charger overnight. After winding myself trying to roll the damn thing off, I finally just jumped it from the Golf and it started right up. After letting it idle for a while and some mild smoking from the bits of grease and oil what had leaked onto the exhaust system, I started taking it around the block five or six times, progressively faster. It’s running suprisingly well. I hope I can get the idle wonkiness worked out with some tuning of the idle air mix for the four carbs and running a couple tankfuls of gas through it. It’d be nice to have it for running around town or actually ride it to work on secondary roads. Also been thinking of selling it and getting a scooter for around town stuff, since they’re cheaper to run than a motorcycle and if under 50ccs, you don’t have to have a M-class license (which I have, but my wife does not). Not to mention arguably safer and more practical than a 1982 Suzuki GS550 for city use.

Today was spent doing the typical Sunday stuff, sleeping late, drinking coffee, working out the menu for the coming week, grocery shopping, etc. Finally found an oil sprayer so we don’t have to keep getting those damn cans of pan lubricant and also picked up a few other niceties for the kitchen.

Yeah, hell yeah I’m domestic.

You wanna know how much? Here’s a short list:

• Put up a clothesline in the back yard
• Construct some manner of fabric sun shade for the deck
• Install some pleasant lighting for deck use
• Make a top for the outdoor bar Mike and Linda gave us
• Compost bin

You get the picture.

Awesome. I truly hope this idea works out.

It works like this – you pipe the exhaust from fossil-fueled power plants into algae farms. Algae gobbles up the CO2, grows fat and happy. Every day, the algae is harvested, squeezed to release the oil it contains and is dried. The oil undergoes transesterification to convert it into biodiesel, the dried algae is then used to make ethanol and the exhaust from the power plant now has 40% less CO2 and 86% less N20.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/11/tech/main1202264.shtml

This not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-fueled power plants, it provides a dirt cheap basestock from which to produce biodiesel and ethanol and produces more oil per acre than soybeans – 15,000 vs. 60. The only downside is it would take a 2,000 acre farm to produce 40 million gallons of biodiesel and 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. There’s only, say, a thousand power plants in the US with that kind of surrounding space. Assuming yields and everything are correct, we’re talking about producing on the order of 40 billion gallons of biodiesel yearly from the exhaust of existing power plants.

When that biodiesel is burned, it would released the CO2 gobbled up by the algae back into the atmosphere, but more algae farms could gobble that right back up. We’re not closing the carbon loop, as is the case with soy or canola biodiesel, but we’re getting a free ride off it at least once, possibly multiple times.

Less greenhouse gasses and N2O-caused acid rain, cheaper, easier, faster biodiesel basestock production, starter material for ethanol as a waste product and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. I think this is something everybody but OPEC can get behind.

1. Game delayed for a few minutes because of a squirrel on the field
2. Big Hurt hits 2 homers in his first 3 at bats
3. The As have white shoes.
4. Strike zone appears to grow and shrink with the home plate ump’s whim.
5. Ozzie ejected after confronting HPU about #4 in second inning, saying at least five variations of “fuck” in doing so.
6. I don’t like this disturbing trend of the NL-esque longball in the AL.
7. Currently in extra innings.
8. Sox win.

In other news, we saw Mexican Cheerleader at the Beat Kitchen on Saturday night. Been a long while since we’d been out to see them and we had a fantastic time, as usual. Last time was the Blizzard of ’05 in West Dundee. Despite General Mill’s refusal to sponsor the band yet make Pete speak Anthrax lyrics in the voice of Count Chocula, the show ruled. MC really knows how to rock out with their dongs out and they were really on top of their shit this time and every bit as loud as I’ve heard them. Nice.

Scott almost called me on Kentucky Derby Day (dangerous) and Jimmy Karl White claims to have rampant mint growing at casa de karl in Berwyn (BERRRR-WYNNNN). Could be dangerous, hopefully it will be. Stay tuned, Chicagorillas. Mr. Natural completely harshed on the Blue Ribbon Beer I purchased for him while we watched A.J. Pierzynski get drilled in the grill for the millionth time that day. As some manner of rockabilly show had gone on previously, I made the obvioous connection of White Sox, Rednecks & Blue Ribbon Beer.

With almost all of the domestic travel I’ve done for work and a little for personal trips, I’ve had quite a few rental cars. The nice thing is I get to go on extended test drives and see what these cars are all about. Unfortunately, I have to drive these cars for a day or more. Thinking about getting a rental or actually buying one of these cars? Here are my incredibly biased views.

Remember, this is about the specific cars I drove. I know you love your whatever that I shortly will trash talk, but I don’t really give a shit. Car reviews are supposed to be subjective.
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The Ninja Bong asketh:

Now do you know what A&P stands for?

Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company.

We watch the Food Channel as the default channel, so it’s on a whole lot.

A & P was the first chain grocery store in the US.
Piggly Wiggly (aka Hoggly Woggly) was the first self-serve grocery store and opened in Memphis TN.
One Rachael Ray show per day is too much. The four in a row last night were way too much.
Alton Brown should lay off the cutesy schtick once in a while and stick to science.
We miss Iron Chef.
Iron Chef America is one of the worst shows ever.
Bobby Flay is still a supreme asshole and cooks the same damn thing over and over.
Mark Summers, OCD master of Double Dare fame, is clearly a robot leased to the Food Network.

If only Rick Bayless was on PBS as much. Selah.

Overheard on the news tonight:

“High gasoline prices are causing people to re-evaluate their driving habits.”

IT’S ABOUT FUCKING TIME.

Hell, that’s what we did. Traded in my `95 volvo for a shiny new VW Golf with their awesome TDI engine. Going from 26 mpg to 45 mpg (and climbing) sure is nice. Yeah, we had to readjust our monthly budget, but what if fuel hits $4/gallon? $6/gallon?

I should be around 50 mpg this summer.

We’re also working on shedding a car. Anybody what wants to buy a 2005 Scion xB in excellent shape with a manual transmission, transferrable warranty and only 16k miles, let us know: blue scion xb at that google mail site, y’know, gmail no spam dot no spam dot com.

Man alive, i hate spambots.

Started getting more junk this past fortnight – a couple messages a week, max. That’s a couple too much.

I edited some comments and entries to further obscure and obfusticate my email addy.

So just so they know what’s up, here are some addresses they should mail instead:

uce@ftc.gov
enforcement@sec.gov
president@whitehouse.gov
missed-spam@comcast.net

thanks.