Another Word for Nerd

Warning: Political opinions ahead.

I had $29 bouncing around in PayPal, and for a week or so had been debating what to buy.. Gun stuff, books, etc. - but hadn’t been able to decide on what to spend it on. Last night I finally spent it on stuff from store.barackobama.com.

This year is the first time that I’ve ever donated money or contributed to a political party, because this is the first year that I’ve seen a candidate that actually offers hope for the future. I’d previously donated $10.01 to his campaign back in February, and will be donating more before November.

In 2004, I switched parties and voted for Kerry simply because he was running against Bush. In 2008, I’m voting for the candidate that can pull us out of this mess.

I’m having a heck of a time finding a jeweler or watch repair place to do a simple bezel insert replacement on a pair of Invicta 8926 watches (Rolex Submariner clones). I’ve got the replacement parts, I just need someone with steadier hands to do the actual work of popping off the old insert and gluing the new one in.

When the inserts arrived in the mail last weekend, I took everything to my normal jeweler, the Jared location at Gessner and I-10. Their watch repair person said “Sorry, we’re not an Invicta dealer, I won’t work on them.” I’ve done thousands of dollars of business with them at that location, but their refusal to do a 5-minute job on a $100 watch (when they know I’ve been considering the eventual purchase of a $6K watch from them) made me REALLY frustrated.

I then headed home, and realized that Houston Jewelry was in a strip mall a couple of blocks from the house. I stopped in, explained the situation, and that I just needed a simple part replacement done. The lady I spoke to said “Sure, we’ll work on anything - leave it with us and we’ll call you on Monday with an estimate, this shouldnt take them long at all.” I just got off the phone after they called (note that it’s now Tuesday) and they said “Sorry, we don’t work on Invicta watches.”

Why is it so hard to find someone in west Houston that’s willing to take my money and do this simple 5-minutes-per-watch part replacement?

Heck, I’ll even provide illustrated instructions!

I always say “Three things you shouldn’t discuss at work are religion, politics, and firearms”, and I don’t normally like to discuss religion or politics with friends (I have a few fellow firearm enthusiasts as associates).

However, I early-voted today.

I recently came across a 4-volume set of the Popular Mechanics Illustrated Home Handyman Encyclopedia & Guide (from 1961) in the bargain bin at a local used book store. Of course, I grabbed them - for less than $5 total!

The ~4000 pages of projects are amazing - it’s basically your grandparents’ equivalent of today’s MAKE Magazine; with a lot of projects that wouldn’t be printed today due to liability concerns.

They’ve got everything from planning/building/remodeling a house, woodworking, metalworking, making your own boat/go-cart/children’s playground equipment, indoor shooting ranges, to radio repair, electronics, photography, gardening, farming, and equipment to make handling your farm animals easier.

Over the past four days I’ve taken pictures of the title pages and illustrations for the most interesting articles, and put them up on Flickr. I’ve also contacted Popular Mechanics to see about getting permission to break out the scanner and make proper PDFs of the best stuff.

The Flickr collections page, with one set for each volume, is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/collections/72157603639900790/

JANUARY 14th UPDATE: I’ve received permission from Popular Mechanics to make PDFs of the articles and put them online! That’s coming soon.

On Monday, the President passed an executive order that lets the government freeze or the assets of any person that they determine to be guilty of “undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq.”

The scary part? This can theoretically also cover protesting against the war.

I went to install the replacement Amiga 2000 power supply, and discovered that I’d plugged the original power supply into the motherboard incorrectly, with the connector off-by-one. d’oh!

The original works fine:

At least now I have a spare, and it only cost me $12.

I don’t normally talk about politics here, but this made me laugh.
(by Brian Topping, via Boing Boing):

On Tuesday, October 17th, the President will sign the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.

This bill:

* re-establishes President Bush’s military tribunals, which were rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional
* legalizes U.S. war crimes committed before December 30, 2005
* disallows any person harmed by the U.S., in violation of the Geneva Conventions, from filing a claim in U.S. court
* strips legal residents of the U.S. of their right to challenge their detention in court if they’re accused of being “enemy combatants”
* abolishes the right of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention, which in effect pre-judges all of them as guilty
* approves the “CIA program” that allows waterboarding and other forms of torture
* names any individual, including citizens, as an “unlawful enemy combatant” if they provide “material support” to those engaged in hostilities against the U.S.

It was nice living in a free country, while it lasted. Now, you can’t even criticize the Vice-President without getting arrested.

After seeing this, I decided to make my own Macbook laptop sleeve instead of spending $30-50 for one.

News 8 Austin is definitely showing where their priorities lay today.

As much as I dislike sappy “NEVAR FORGET” stories, they chose to completely ignore what happened five years ago, and talk about FOOTBALL instead!