Super Villain Time! Which Super Villain are you?
I’m Apoca-who? Ah, okay: Apocalypse (comics) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Back when I was into comics, I was more DC focused than Marvel.
Your results:
You are Apocalypse
|
You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest. |
Click here to take the “Which Super Villain are you?” quiz…
Link to Which Super Villain are you? Quiz
Eric's Favorite Quotes, II
(The last one here being more of a parable that’s quite popular with a number of folks…)
Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself loses his misery.
– Matthew Arnold
A monk asked the master: “How are you when death arrives?”
The master replied: “When served tea, I take tea. When served a meal, I take a meal.”
– Zen Mondo
You are never too old to be what you might have been.
– George Eliot
There was a beautiful young girl who became pregnant out of wedlock, and told her angry parents that the father was an old and revered Zen master with a reputation for living a pure life. When the angry parents accused the Master, all he said was, “Is that so?” After the child was born, the Master brought the baby into his house and raised it as his own. After a year passed, the girl, stricken with remorse, finally recanted and told her parents that the Master was entirely innocent. The embarrassed parents came to fetch the child, apologizing to the Master and begging his forgiveness. All he said was: “Is that so?”
– Zen Story
Technorati tags: Eric Richards, Quotes, Quotations
HistoryLink.org: The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History
Oh, no, there goes my free time: HistoryLink.org: The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. Now that we live where Redmond meets Woodinville, I’m a lot more interested in local history, along with the history of Seattle (something more than Underground Seattle).
I saw a reference to HistoryLink.org this morning in the Sunday paper. Nice.
Which Superhero am I? And which are you?
My results from taking the online quiz (link below): I’m 75% Superman (!).
Your results:
You are Superman
|
You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz
Eric Richards – My Favorite Photo
Okay, ego-centric time with several purposes:
(1) Test what it is like to post a photo via Windows Live Writer,
(2) Share my favorite photo of (ahem) myself, and
(3) Try to associate a better photo of myself that shows up on a Windows Live Search for images associated with “Eric Richards” – my doodles recently showed up and that’s a bit embarrassing.
Story behind the pic:
It was Saturday, May 4th, 2002. I’m sitting next to Jim Preston, Susan’s Dad and my new Flordia-based Pa, and it’s right after we celebrated John Preston (Jim’s son) and Adrian Le’s wedding. That same night, at the reception, I met this wonderful young lady, Elisa Schmitt. I was happy and bedazzled, and in the process of being quite razzed by the photographer, Bob Preston (Jim’s brother), over my happy state.
Eric's Favorite Quotes
Like many people, I have a tear-off day calendar in my office. My calendar consists of philosophical quotes and stories. Some are hits, some are misses. I save the home runs to read through later.
As part of wrapping the year (and cleaning out what is to be my old office, soon), I decided to transcribe all those quotes before I accidentally recycle them, and then post the ones I like in small batches.
A person’s favorite quotes no doubt give you one bit of insight into that person.
Since my absolute favorite philosopher ever is Epictetus, we’ll kick it off the first batch with a quote from him that does an excellent job in summarizing his stoic outlook:
Learn to wish that everything should come to pass exactly as it does.
– Epictetus
My life is my message.
– Mohandas K. Gandhi
You see the hut, yet you ask, “Where shall I go for shelter?”
– West African Proverb
As a man is, so he sees.
– William Blake
There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.
– Fritz Holling
Talk does not cook rice.
– Chinese Proverb
A Different Sort of Tree House…
Via Raymond Chen’s blog, a picture of a house on Redmond Ridge that had ten trees fall on it from our recent windstorm: The Seattle Times: Half the power restored, 533,000 customers still powerless.
Wow!
As I mentioned before, we were very fortunate here at our Tree House nestled into the hills of Hollywood Hill only to have small fir branches bouncing off of our roof. I’m running out of excuses to haul-off the other tree limbs & such scattered about on our property, so that is bubbling up to the top of my to-do list.
We were also fortunate for the power: it went off the Thursday night of the windstorm and came back on close to the very end of Monday, giving us just about exactly 96 hours without power. I had just learned to get the pellet-stove to a very efficient state. Folks up the hill from us went without power for at least a couple of days longer.
Dy-no-mite! Flying owls with dynamite, specifically…
I agree, the art is wonderful. It’s like a modern day woodcut style with excellent colors and balance. Forget the text…
Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century, is a spectacularly beautiful graphic novel. Here, for example, is one of the biggest threats to the white suburban hunter: dirty hippies and their evil sidekicks: the dynamite-carrying owl, sinister pig, angry Wall Street bull, dire wolf, terror chicken and Land Lobster
Source: NRA’s Secret Graphic Novel Revealed! – Wonkette
An update from Boing Boing, including a link to the entire PDF to download and… enjoy?
Update: I can’t say with certainty that this is in fact from the NRA — I’ve emailed them to ask. But Wonkette kindly shared a copy of the original PDF with us just now, and here it is: PDF LINK. I’ve been updating this post off and on throughout the day with discussion on whether it is or isn’t a hoax. Now that I’ve seen the whole PDF, it certainly looks real. Comments from folks who believe(d) it’s a hoax follow, at the end of the post.
Welcome to SeatGuru! Your Guide to Airplane Seats and In-flight Amenities
If you travel (me: not too often), this is a nice guide to consult before booking your plane ticket and choosing your seat: Welcome to SeatGuru! Your Guide to Airplane Seats and In-flight Amenities.
Choose the airline and the class of plane and then hover over the color-coded seats to see any pros or cons (e.g., does not recline) to the various seats.
(courtesy Boing Boing.)
Snow, Ice, Windstorm… Next Up: Brimstone and Locusts?
Well that was a doozy. Everyone around the Seattle and Redmond area has a story about the big windstorm (does it have an official name yet?). We’re still without power and it’s looking like it won’t be until Friday or Saturday before we can enjoy flicking the light switch and actually getting illumination. That will be seven or eight days on the occasional bit of generator power, an unfortunate record for me.
We call our house The Tree House because we’re blessed to have found just a nice little house nestled up the hill into the woods in the Hollywood Hill neighborhood. That’s all cool for just about every day of the year, except when the windstorm comes to town and plows into your hill.
Things I’ve learned:
- Doug Firs don’t drop branches. They drop limbs. Huge limbs that I’m hardly able to drag, let alone pick up and throw into the forest.
- Sleepy eyes seeing a large neighboring Red Cedar sway back and forth and then do a belly flop into the ground can make your eyes snap open so fast it hurts.
- Torrential rain is not native to the Northwest.
- The sky is so full of stars… without the light pollution of Seattle and the Eastside, I practically fall over at night gazing at all the brilliant stars in the sky.
- If there’s a severe weather alert, make sure that you’re all gassed up (when I think of this, I hear Mr. T growling it at me, meaning that there’s a “fool!” slapped on to the end).
We were very fortunate. Limbs dropped, trees fell down, trees snapped, but nothing hit The Tree House severely.
I hope as a result of this the region figures out how to avoid the power problems we set ourselves up for. Trees right next to powerlines, let along powerlines running through tree branches: bad idea. Cut cut cut!
I think we need to put some reflective stylings on our stoplights / stoplight posts, too. Last night I was delivering Elisa to a warm, powered place and I was driving on a local road (Avondale). If caution cones and stop sign placards had not been set out, there were at least one or two stoplights I would have blown through vs. treating it like a four-way stop, it was so dark and my headlights did nothing to call-out the stoplights. Combine that dumbness on my part with someone else at 90 degrees that is just as clueless and that’s not a happy result.
So, anyway. The generator is going but one pellet stove is not enough to heat the house. Down comforters: best invention ever. No internet: phooey.