I want to be a clone.

Cloneliness is next to Godliness.

Another Acadia Green Metallic '99 Forester L with a tan interior running around Broad Ripple... with a "Mitt" sticker. Is hippieflage officially a thing now? *checks Google* Apparently it is.

Sunday morning...

Ruger 22/45 and M&P 9. Again.

Gun pic from Sunday morning... which is kinda pointless, because it looks like the gun pic from the range trip before that, and the range trip before that, and the range trip before... well,  you get the point.

Maturity test...

Everybody else in our little group walked past this sight just fine, but I went into a fit of Beavis-and-Butthead-esque snickering.

Then again, I can't walk down the imported foods aisle at the grocery store without collapsing into helpless giggles at the sight of a can of spotted dick.

Lord, grant me maturity, but not yet.

I'd say it's psychosomatic, but that's all in my head.

I don't know how medical personnel do it. After taking care of a sick roomie for a day or two, every physical sensation I get is filtered through the light of her reported symptoms.

Is that twinge the onset of a sore throat? I feel a little hot, but is it because it's hot in here, or is it just me? There's a tiny bit of a headache, but is it just that I'm dehydrated first thing in the morning and haven't had caffeine yet, or am I coming down with RobertaXitis?

The smart thing to do, of course, would be to proceed with my normal weekday routine and peek in on her every so often, rather than lounging about in my pyjamas and psyching myself into being sick, too.

I has a sad...

Those cool 10-8 mag floorplates for the M&P? As it turns out, even with rounded corners that are snag-free to the touch, the matte anodized aluminum will abrade its way through a cotton chambray shirt in a surprisingly short amount of time.

EDIT: Because apparently this needed clarification, that shirt went through two summers with the same gun under it. I changed mag floorplates and... BAM! ...holed in a month. As mikee pointed out in comments, since aluminum oxide is, you know, used as the abrasive on sandpaper, this probably should not have come as a surprise. Hey, Hilton Yam: Outstanding product, but maybe you should consider some clearcoat? Someone should bring this to his attention.

The abraded area is a couple inches square.

 Back to the factory plastic parts for CCW. :(
.

Unsicher bei jeder Geschwindigkeit

...is the topic of Road & Track's June issue. I'm a Car & Driver reader myself (I defected from R&T back in the '80s) but I picked this issue up since it was a 50th anniversary paean to the Porsche 911, which has always been somewhat of a dream car of mine. I've driven a couple of 911s, but still haven't owned one; the closest I've come is a pair of 924 volksPorsches: a '78 and an '87 "S" model. The latter's 50/50 weight distribution, high polar moment, and benign departure characteristics make it practically the antiparticle* of a '73 Carrera RS in the handling department.

The link in Marko's post went well with a lot of the reminiscing in the R&T retrospective. It's easy to forget that the early 911 was a success in spite of its handling, not because of it. That, and the fact that there was no word in German for "Ralph Nader" back in the Sixties.

*Firefox's spellchecker knows "antiparticle", which tickles me no end, for some reason.

Overheard in Roomie's Bedroom...

The TeeWee is tuned to the TODAY show. The entire TODAY crew had been en route from Hawaii to Yellowstone for their little 'Tour of America' week of filming on location in vacation spots when the monster tornado ripped through Oklahoma yesterday.

Like a gigantic aluminum buzzard circling down to a fresh carcass, the plane bearing Matt Lauer and company veered away from JAC and into the landing pattern for OKC.

Matt Lauer: "...At least the storms will be moving in a more positive direction."

Me: "What, towards New York?"

Later:

Reporter: "They're pulling tiny victims from the rubble..."

RX: "There's nothing network news likes better than tiny victims. They're like child abusers by proxy."

Incidentally, I am given to understand that TODAY pulls in half a billion in revenue for NBC and that Matt Lauer, in turn, is paid 25 million of that, which is insane. That Willie Geist guy seems like a nice and personable young man and surely pulls in more viewers than that odious choad of a prima donna Lauer repels, and probably at a fraction of the cost. Ditch Matt and maybe I'll actually watch your show sometimes, rather than just occasionally listening to it from the next room.

Automotif XI...

Summertime in SoBro again...

After returning from the range yesterday, I pedaled over to Twenty Tap for a steak salad and a pint of Upland's Lightwave. Parked up near 54th and College was this tastefully restomodded '62 or '63 Mercury Meteor:

Blues out in front of The Jazz Kitchen: I could see myself behind the wheel of this san-o Sixties Merc.

Hello!

Sunday nights are WoW nights, and most of the folks I run around with are on Mountain or Pacific time, so I'm usually up past pumpkin o'clock, hence the slow starts on Monday morning. I should have the nozzle on the free ice cream machine cleaned out shortly.

I'm going to finish this coffee and go put a couple miles under the bike's tires. Bobbi has pics from yesterday's range trip for your viewing pleasure in the meantime.

Expose yourself to art...

Yesterday was Art Fair time. I always enjoy the Broad Ripple Art Fair. Even though I can't tastefully decorate a jillion square foot mansion with original pieces, I can still wander around and "Ooh!" and "Aah!" at all the pretty stuff, and I usually manage to take home a trinket or three as a sort of souvenir...

Expose yourself to art! (Click to embiggenate.)

A square coffee mug from Dutch Lake Pottery.

The knife blade is hammered from an auger bit. The handle is sambar stag with a blood jasper pommel. From 2Jakes Custom Knives.

Postcards from ArtFroH! Including the awesome Lincoln vs. Washington: 4 Score and 7 of Butt-Whuppin'!

Dear Product Designer:

Why did you make the thread pitch so fine (or whatever the technical term is) on the cap on your tube of facial moisturizer? It takes 379 complete revolutions to get the cap back on the tube, which is a tricky thing to do nine-fingered while balancing a big glob of moisturizer on the tip of your index finger.

I hate you every morning.

Three and a half miles...

It's not much, but biking into Broad Ripple Proper and back in the mornings burns more calories than sitting at my keyboard.

Becoming a non-smoking user of Apple products has made me fat and stupid, and I'm trying to rectify that situation.

I think beer consumption at home is going to have to come to a screeching halt. If I want a pint, I can bike or walk to Twenty Tap or Fat Dan's.

There's also the synergistic effect that quitting smoking and doing most of my reading via the Kindle app on my iPad has had. I need to figure out a new reading ritual to replace sitting on the porch and smoking, because I've read maybe three complete books since I quit back in March, which is down some from my accustomed book-every-day-or-two clip.

And the reason I say three "complete" books is that the difference between reading on the iPad and reading a regular book is that on the Apple product, the distraction machine is built right in. Reading a history book and encounter something that tickles your hindbrain? Wikipedia is a button press and screen touch away! And while you're in there, better check your Facebook and Twitter, and see if anybody's posted in that forum thread you replied to, and your email account just chimed, and... where were we? Oh, yeah... page three. Still.

My Kindle currently has probably half-a-dozen or more books in various stages of completion, which is uncool.

Seen outside the Broad Ripple Art Fair...

Parked up along the Monon were these two very Broad Riparian steeds:

Very unlikely to be confused with the other bikes in the rack.

Pedaled into Broad Ripple Proper for a delicious brekkie at Petite Chou*. Wandered all over the Art Fair, then went to the Blogmeet, then went to see the new Trek movie. Absolutely whupped. More later.


*I had an omelet with Smoking Goose Ham, brie, and caramelized leeks. Yum!

BANG!

The post is over at the other blog this morning.
.

Found on a random memory card...

Random Numbers "Rannie" Wu

My weird little lopsided chatterbox of a cat. She'll be twelve soon.

Clean machine.

While I was out yesterday running mundane errands, like getting Swiffer refills and more Epsom salts for the almost-completely-faded bruise on my backside, I stopped at the Staples next to Target on a whim and checked out the keyboards they had there for sale with an eye toward replacing the buck-wretched unit that came with the new machine.

Lo and behold, I discovered there is such thing as a Logitech washable keyboard. The keys are spaced a reasonable distance apart to avoid fat-fingering and give satisfying, if not exactly IBM Model M-like, tactile feedback when struck. As a bonus, there's a little brush clipped to the bottom of the keyboard for dusting stuff out from under the keycaps, and the USB connector on the cord has a tethered cap to cover it when you're giving it a scrub in the sink.

Very much liking it so far. Living at my keyboard as I do, this definitely has potential.

The whole freaking system is out of order.

I wonder how many liberal Democrat party loyalists who are indignantly pointing out that it's not like President Obama specifically called the IRS and told them to go after them right wing Tea Partiers would also insist that Captain Ernest Medina is as much of a war criminal as Lt. Calley or, to use a more recent analogy, hold Bush responsible for the excesses of Abu Ghraib.

Power that can be abused eventually and inevitably will be abused.

Forget it, Jake; it's Chinatown.
.

Ugh.

Awful dreams, thankfully only remembered in fragments.

A dank, gray, decaying urban landscape, perpetually overcast and chilly enough to make the joints ache but never cold enough to snow. Rusting chainlink and unpainted concrete and brown weeds. Mobbed-up Russian immigrants. A handful of broken teeth. Always late. A daughter's feigned concern over the damage done by her father's fist, disgust flickering in her eyes and behind her words. Stolen moments of something like happiness in the shape of a pint flask, always fearful of being found out.

Brr.

One of those mornings where it was a relief to open my eyes. Time to pedal.

That's a lot in Internet Years.

Kevin at The Smallest Minority just celebrated his tenth blogiversary.

To put that in Internet Perspective, when Kevin started blogging, he couldn't link to YouTube videos because YouTube didn't exist. The world was a better place because there were only two Matrix movies. He couldn't make fun of World of Warcraft players, although CoD was fair game, since the very first Call of Duty game came out at the same time. It would be four years before someone could leave a comment on his blog with an iPhone, and nobody could link to his blog via Reddit or Digg.

When I started VFTP, I wanted to grow up to be cool like Kevin.

Congrats on ten years, dude!

Overheard in the Office...

RX: "We're getting closer to Miss Bobbi's preferred world, where you could roof the house with solar cells..."

Me: "What, petroleum-based shingles and solar panels are on intersecting price curves?"

RX: "Exactly."

Blogmeet Reminder:

Saturday at 3:00PM at Fat Dan's.

Since there's an Indy 1500 Fun Show coming up on the 31st/1st/2nd, we should also arrange some sort of meet & eat for that Sunday, too, right?