army navy surplus store

I just got back from the Army & Navy Surplus store. This was my first real experience in one, and I would like to share some comments on it.

First off: the loot. For just under twelve dollars, I bought: 1 (one) ammo can, 2 (two) different dental tools, and 1 (one) shiny brass button.

Ammo can($5.99): for those who don't know what an ammo can is, let me explain. Imagine a metal lunch box. the kind with the latch on the side. Now imagine a metal lunch-box designed to carry hundreds of lethal objects capable of taking a mans head off from 50 meters, that is completely waterproof with and could probably be dropped off of a plain (at altitude) without a parachute, get mauled by a black bear, and then tumbled along the bottom of a river and still keep your new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows nice and dry. In short, a musty smelling super-lunch-box-on-steroids. It makes the ultimate geocache.

Dental tools($1.99 each): small tools designed for dental use (but you already knew that.) the ones I bought make a good torsion wrench and a good tool for detailed clay work. If you ever need lockpicking tools on the cheep, go and get these

shiny brass button (about 75¢): It's shiny and small. I like small shiny things.

as for the store itself, it was awesome (literally, it inspired awe.) there where many fun things there. In my opinion, any store that will sell you a gas mask, a ghillie suit, and a month's worth of MREs is the best shop ever!

static analysis

The Economist ran a static analysis on the number of blades in disposable safety razors and concluded that the number of blades would reach infinity by 2015. I support it, you could take it apart and have an infinite amount of razors available for use! w00t!

Cthulhu '08

my first ever program

I made this simple " game " thing using scratch.

Hooray, my first ever "program!"

scratch

I was just playing around in scratch. It's fun and easy, and seams like a great intro to programing. Check it out, yo!

me as a simpson

didn't quite work the first time.

there we go.

this was done at simpsonizeme.

once-a-day

I would like to start another blog that involves me doing something everyday. could be anything, so long as it meats the following requirements:

1) must be easy enough to do that I can do it once a day, even with homework.

2) must be versatile enough that I con be creative with it.

3) I must be able to do it for an entire year (366 days, next year is a leap year)

an example that would work splendidly would be haiku. this is easy enough that I could throw one together even on the most homework cramiest of nights, but I could also get creative with it, and be able to produce 366 of them.

If you have any ideas, please enlighten me. I am sure I will settle on something.

blogs I found.

Here are two more blogs I have found.

skull a day. fun blog of a guy making a new skull everyday.

lurking rhythmically interesting blog written by a discordian

title granting.

I do herby bequeath upon jeremy of ruhlandpedia the honorary title of:

Assistant to the King of Island Number 2 on Devil's lake.

*taps shoulders with long, thin object*

This is effective immediately, and is not reversible, though you may choose to not present this title at your own discretion.

Congratulations on obtaining this title, as you have beaten many potential applicants (upwards of six billion humans an several trillion other sentient species) to ascertaining this title. *shakes hand, or other appropriate appendage as per social requirements of recipient*

yours sincerely,

His magnificently whimsicle newfangled autostereogram, lieutenant Commander Pope Ja’son marrowfat pharmacophore the marsupialized murid eating palmiped, high lord chairmen of wibbly strudel in the misty river, grand high master pope of the nova-condenseian order.

my thaughts over the last week or so.

I have not posted for a while now. I appologise. However, this should be about the length of several posts that I was going to post during the time I was not posting. so, here we go:

1)

Today, I will discuss a seemingly ubiquitous, an I assume, often ignored item: the milk jug. The following are a list of attributes about the run of the mill milk jug. As far as I can tell, the design seams more or less standard in the U.S., with the exception of a couple of minor differences.


A picture of the milk jug I am observing. Note the little indent in the side. it is prevelant on two adjacent sides, the other two have stickers with information and advertising. The bottle is made of some sort of plastic, and much of it hase a pitted, rough look.


A picture of the lid. it can screw onto the mouth of the jug. There are ridges on the sides to facilitate easy gripping and turning.


While not in use, the cap is held in place by this ring. The ring serves to prove that the bottle has not been opened. To open it, the (towards the top) is used to rip the rest of the ring off.

The ring has 4 small indentations along the outside, spaced evenly. These indentations are easy to tear.


When torn entirely, the ring makes four equally lengthed strips, and one more equally lengthed strip plus a tab. Each strip has 7 ridges on it, totaling 35 ridges for a complete ring.

Other asorted observations
1) the tab has a skinny section which is slightly skinnier than the ring, and a fat section, the same width as the ring. both sections are of equal length.
2)the handle is in the upper section, which facilitates easier pouring.
It would appear that someone, or someones, put a great deal of time into designing the these simple objects. To these someones: good job, and thank you. One slight criticism, the handle should extend to the middle of the jug, so that the hand can be positioned at the balance point of the bottle, thus allowing for easier carrying.

This may help as a small insight into my mind.

2)
I have bean fibbing about my age recently. Not out of vanity, I am quite comfortable with my age, but for fun. See, I have bean fibbing to computers, saying that I was born in 1910 just to see what happened. One of the places I tried this was at facebook. I was attempting to find frank key's page, but, alas, one must register to do so. I stated that I was borne in 1910, making me 97 years old. however, face book turned me down, saying I must use my real age. probably something about saying I was still a sophomore in high school (grade 10). Then I tryed saying I was 5 years old (born 2002), and was flat out rejected. fortunately, they are no longer I.P. blocking my computer...

I tried this on blogger as well. I have stated that I was born on january 1^st 1. I checked my profile, and it stated I had the chinese zodiac sigh of a rat. Enraged, I furiously changed the year the appropriate amount to match my zodiac sign. It still stated I was a rat. I was surprised that their program for finding the zodiac sign was incorrect at that time. If anyone knows the exact year it stops working, please tell me.

3) I went camping in the north cascades on thursday, and came back today, saturday. I had a good time, did some nice hikes, good weather, pretty views etc. etc.

what I want to talk about are some of the people I met there. One of the services offered by the park is ranger talks about various aspects of the park. These take place at dusk, and are generally slide shows. I watched one on hydroelectric power. I learned nothing new, but enjoyed myself nonetheless. the speaker was a very good speaker, good rhythm, fun to listen to, that kind of thing. Afterward, my mom struck up a conversation with some nice people from my area, who lived only a few blocks away. They where impressed with my "brilliance." an I learned something

People are easily impressed. All I had to do was unexpectedly flash the word "bio-mass," and give a correct definition, to Impress them. So, for all you low self esteme people, reed a few chapters out of a science book, go out into the world, and recite it.

allow me to eat a sugar packet before continuing with my next topic.

mmmm... crunchy. thank you for that. incidentaly, my prefered brand of sugar for eating raw is "sugar in the raw."

4) harry potter predictions

For those not paying attention, the last Harry Potter book is coming out.

my prediction: Hagrid dies! why? well, we have been promised a character death, and Hagrid qualifies. It would also be sad.

5) bent objects

Readers may have noted the "next blog" link in the upper left hand corner of my blog. I encourage you to use it. An excellent blog I found using this is bent objects

no review or anything, but check it out, the guy does fun stuff with wire and everyday objects.

7)
I recently got a wonderfull new desk. It is about 8 ft long. Here are some pictures


my new desk, with starburst for size.

and finally, a cookie to those who noticed that number 6 is missing.

one final word (with punctuation): pants.

gone campin'

Im gone campin' be back saturday maybe.

Truth Rests

I have finally uploaded my novella.

you can download it herecourtasy of DivShare. Have fun!

On a side note: I distribute all of my content under the humorous "Kopyleft: all rights reversed." This means that you are free to distribute it, change it etc. All I ask is that you don't do it for money, and leave my name on it. I do this because I believe that information should be free. So, give this to all your friends, translate it into yiddish, translate it back just to see what happens, write a sequel, or an alternate ending, or slash fiction between Prince edward and Charles, just tell me about it, 'cuz I want to reed that.

To get the ball rolling on this, I used babelfish to translate the text of the story into dutch and back to english. this is the result. If you want the original text of the document, just let me know.

our smoke bomb.

Jeremy of Ruhlandpedia got together and made a smoke bomb for independance day. The final process that we used was:

10 mix sugar into elmers glue
20 mix stump remover (potasium nitrate) into glue/sugar thingy
30 lay to dry on a paper towel.
40 cram paper towel and mixture into paper cup.
50 when ready to light, cover in alchohal and light.
60 watch.

Now, on with the pictures.





videos of it burning will be up soons!

a picture is worth a thousand words.

We have all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. (for those who have not, say "a picture is worth a thousand words" aloud. If you are deaf, just read it.) I agree with this statement. I am sure that a picture of, say, my desk could easily garner one thousand words. But, I doubt that a grainy, out of focus picture of an unremarkable floor could get as many words as the pulitzer prize winner for 2006 . This leeds to the disturbing conclusion that not all photographs are worth 1000 words. Perhaps, they average to 1000 words, where verbose photographs are balanced out by the shy ones.

This lead me to an epiphany. Pictures with higher resolution would probably tend to have more words than ones with less, simply because there is more detail to talk/write about. Therefore, a monitor that displays pictures with higher resolution than one with a lower resolution would tend to gather more words. while they average out to be 1000, one could have 1020 while the other has 980. This leeds me to my next conclusion, that monitors, televisions etc. could be rated by the number of words on average that they get. This ranking system would be an easy way for consumers to know how a television ranked against other televisions.

Think how much easier "1100 words" is for the average consumer than "1080 i 30 in. panoramic L.C.D. flat-panel H.D.T.V." Sure, there is less finesse, but think how much more efficient it is. Also remembering that half of america is even more stupid than the average american, this could be a godsend to the costumer service and sales industries.

my name (update #1)

I am adding lieutenant Commander to my name, placed just before "Ja'son". My name is now:

His magnificently whimsicle newfangled autostereogram, lieutenant Commander Ja’son marrowfat pharmacophore the marsupialized murid eating palmiped, high lord chairmen of wibbly strudel in the misty river, grand high master pope of the nova-condenseian order.

see here for a breakdown of my many names and titles.

burn notice and ducks.

So, I watched the series premier of the show "burn notice" and that means... another Drivel review!!! (wooo!!! yay!!! wooo!)

burn notice is about a spy, Michel Westen, who gets "burned." Our hero then returns to Miami and becomes a private detective. While I prefer not to judge shows until a minimum of 5 episodes, preferably 10, have passed, I will give an initial review.

The show is occasionally interrupted with a voice over from our main character. These interruptions are often sarcastic and/or sardonic. I found them to be entertaining and fun. Another thing I liked was his lack of weapons. Sure, there are guns, but michel doesn't get a "Q" character to supply him with the latest and greatest. He has to make do with supplies from the local hardware store, or what he can steel. This brings up a fair amount of hacking (the good "get stuff to do stuff it wasn't intended to" kind, not the "crack into and cripple a computer" kind). The hacker attitude of Michel gets bonus points, as does the line "Don't fight with guns. Guns make you stupid. Fight with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart."

Bottom line: a good show with wit, and a few fun hacks. 5 candy wrappers/check plus

On a side note: RUBER DUCKS!!!

In 1992 (my birth year...) over 29,000 rubber ducks where accidentally released into the ocean in a shipping accident. Ever since then, they have been giving scientists information on the currents of the ocean. They are now expected to land in brittain. I would like to give a shout-out to our fadded yellow, rubbery friends! Thank you for all you have given us.

Also, a nice rewarad is in place for anyone who finds one and can send it to the company who made them. Happy hunting.

fireworks.

so, the 4^th of July is aproching. For those (un)lucky enough to not be in the U.S.A.(worst country name ever I might add. so uncreative.) the 4^th is our suposed "independance day" when we "gained" independance from britain. We did not actualy gain independance for some time, but nonetheless, this is when we celebrate.

one of the most important (in my opinion) of these celebrations is fireworks. The 4^th is one of two premeir firework holidays, the other being new years. For those outside the U.S. substitute your own firework holiday, such as Guy Fawkes day. Fireworks are launched at shows, or on private property. so, for (insert time devision)'s post, I am going to talk about fireworks.

so, first off, legality. There are some basic laws that are instituted at the national level for fireworks in the U.S. Many states then add their own laws, some banning them outright. Washington state has very few fireworks laws, but this varies greatly from city to city. in the particular area that I live in, along with several others, fireworks are banned completely (though compliance with this ban is minimal.) However, there are some places where fireworks can be launched, though only on some holidays, like the 4^th.

now, onto the fireworks themselves. while many can be perchased at local fireworks stands, fireworks surpasing the federal limits can be purchased on indian reservations. An alternate to that is to make them yourselves, which you will of course not do if it is illegal to do so.
this is a resource on where to find chemicels in everyday products.
this is a resource on how to make fireworks.
and this also has chemicles and guids to fireworks
I intend to make smoke "bombs" made from 60% potassium nitrate and 40% table sugar melted together over heet. I'll need to find some sort of fuze thou...

notes:
for the "(un)lucky" thing in the first paragraph, substitute either lucky or unlucky however you see fit.

I say "we" rather than "they" when refering to the revolution because we are supposed to be filled with patriotic pride, and I fear what the N.S.A. will do to me if I am not.

frivolous eggs

"EEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGGGGGSSSSSSSSSSSS!" circulon 7 of the gama order yelled. Loudly. So that all could here.
"What about eggs?" asked Crylor 12 of the beta construct.
"Do you not know? EEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGGGGGSSSSSSSSSSSS! are the gama order's most revered food stuff. Not that I would expect a minion of the beta construct to understand." replied circulon 7.
"What kind of eggs?" asked Crylor 12. "Space chicken? Human? Nova-Condenseian tree mite? What kind of egg, and why is it so important?"
"Any kind of egg will do, for it is in the heart where one's true egg-iness resides, not in ones egg." resoponded circulon 7.


END.

It is at this point that I choose to dismiss this story as frivolous and stupid. Better content to follow.


changing the rom on an e-voting machine in under 60 sec.