So I was at the Miller’s gas station on Nuckols Road today pumping gas. It was cold as all, and me being the procrastinator that I am, had no coat to wear whatsoever because I was washing every single one at once. So not only am I standing out in the freezing cold, but then the gas pump decides it would like to strike up a chat. The first thing that loud, annoying box thing blares through the speaker tries to lure me in for a snack. “In a rush? Come on in and pick up a ready-made sandwich for the road!” No thanks, I just ate. The thing just keeps on belting out reasons that I should venture even farther from my warm car and enjoy a less-than-decent snack or beverage. It’s bad enough that the on-screen prompts ask if you want a receipt, a car wash, or want to pay in or outside (okay seriously, if I’ve already swiped my card, isn’t there, oh I don’t know, pretty much a more than 100% chance I’m paying outside?). But this thing just kept on telling me what I needed to buy. The short version: “You want a sandwich?” NO! “Some chips?” NO! “A slushy?” NO! It’d be frozen solid by the time I got it back to the car anyway. “Coffee?” I don’t like coffee. Plus, I just gave away half my life savings to the big oil companies anyway by filling my gas-sucking Xterra (I really need to sell it) all the way to the top; you think I have any more money left over to donate to your dinky mini-mart snack department anyway?

So after all of that, my receipt prints as I requested in the “Do you want a [fill in the blank with a non-needed gas station service here]” questionnaire that is thrown at you before you’re even allowed to touch the gas nozzle. The talking box on top of the gas pump then gleefully informs me of the following information:

“Welcome to Miller’s Neighborhood Market! Congratulations, you’re at the $300 Miller’s Easy Rewards gas level for February! Come on in and get a free hot dog courtesy of your friends at Miller’s!”

Well dang, all I have to say is, for $300, that thing better have flakes of gold embedded in the meat or something nifty like that. The so-called “free” hot dog was funded by my $300 in gas purchases, you ignorant talking box. Sounds like Regal Cinema’s Crown Club Card. You go see like 50 movies and you get a free small popcorn without butter. Nice! Customer loyalty programs rock.

I couldn’t help but make another FAIL image for this one to send to the FAIL Blog. President Bush has ordered that a United States spy satellite that has lost power and is falling out of orbit (threatening many lives if it hits earth) is shot down by an SM-3 Navy missile in the Pacific Ocean tonight. As an interesting local note, tonight around 6:15 PM you should be able to see the satellite pass above Richmond. It will look like a very fast moving plane and will be very bright. The satellite only passes near our area a few times a month, so if it’s clear out this evening, see if you can spot it! Hopefully the missile hits it and the problem is taken care of, but rest assured, if they miss, I’ll have an even better FAIL image to post. Here’s the article about tonight’s mission:

A Navy heat-seeking missile is getting its first real-world use in an attempt to demolish a crippled U.S. spy satellite before the orbiting craft falls back to Earth. The targeting of the satellite — which could come Wednesday night — is not the mission for which this piece of the Pentagon’s missile defense network was intended, however. The attempted shootdown, already approved by President Bush out of concern about toxic fuel on board the satellite, is seen by some as blurring the lines between defending against a weapon like a long-range missile and targeting satellites in orbit.

The three-stage Navy missile, designated the SM-3, has chalked up a high rate of success in a series of tests since 2002, in each case targeting a short- or medium-range ballistic missile, never a satellite. A hurry-up program to adapt the missile for this anti-satellite mission was completed in a matter of weeks; Navy officials say the changes will be reversed once this satellite is down.

The government issued notices to aviators and mariners to remain clear of a section of the Pacific Ocean beginning at 10:30 p.m. EST Wednesday, indicating the first window of opportunity to launch an SM-3 missile from a Navy cruiser, the USS Lake Erie, in an effort to hit the wayward satellite.

Having lost power shortly after it reached orbit in late 2006, the satellite is out of control and well below the altitude of a normal satellite. The Pentagon wants to hit it with an SM-3 missile just before it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, in that way minimizing the amount of debris that would remain in space.

Left alone, the satellite would be expected to hit Earth during the first week of March. About half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft would be expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and would scatter debris over several hundred miles.

Adding to the difficulty of the shootdown mission, the missile will have to do better than just hit the bus-sized satellite, a Navy official said Tuesday. It needs to strike the relatively small fuel tank aboard the spacecraft in order to accomplish the main goal, which is to eliminate the toxic fuel that could injure or even kill people if it reached Earth. The Navy official described technical aspects of the missile’s capabilities on condition that he not be identified.
Also complicating the effort will be the fact that the satellite has no heat-generating propulsion system on board. That makes it more difficult for the Navy missile’s heat-seeking system to work, although the official said software changes had been made to compensate for the lack of heat.

The Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said Defense Secretary Robert Gates was briefed on the shootdown plan Tuesday by the two officers who will advise him on exactly when to launch the missile — Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of Strategic Command, and Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who held Chilton’s post until last summer.

China and Russia have expressed concern at the planned shootdown, saying it could harm security in outer space. At the State Department on Tuesday, spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that the U.S. action is meant to protect people from the hazardous fuel and is not a weapons test.

Well, today’s a day of meetings of all sorts. I’ve been to two, got one more this afternoon. Some good things resulted from these meetings, and things are finally getting back on track it seems. First off, I just got a great job offer today that I’m taking with a local computer company, where I’ll be able to repair Macs (I’m even going to become an Apple Certified Repair Technician just like the people that work at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store) and might even get to set my own hours. I tentatively start the second week of March. I’ll say more about what company it is and everything once all the details are hammered out.

In other news, Virginia Credit Union asked me to be in a TV commercial with a few other members to talk about our experiences with them. They’re filming it near VCU next to the new business building the first week of March. It should be fun; I’m looking forward to it.

I’m meeting later this afternoon with members of the Richmond Outreach Center (ROC) at Deep Run to film a segment about the work they do to for people who would otherwise not come to Christ. They’re the last of ten organizations to be filmed that are benefiting from funds raised at the 2008 Deep Run Marathon Dance. I’m producing a DVD of the event again this year, and I’m looking forward to the event. It’s a great experience.

Things are looking up!

Kamen Gordon posted a couple days ago one of the best blogs I’ve seen in a while, called the FAIL Blog. It’s filled with pictures of things failing/not working out. Funny stuff. Well, I have another one for the list. It’s game over for HD DVD. Toshiba finally pulled the plug on it today. It’s about time. Blu-ray has been killing the format for a long time now. Finally, no more format war, no more wondering what’s going to be the next generation disc. Prices will start to come down and DVDs will eventually start to be phased out (don’t worry, you can play DVDs on Blu-ray players).

This is one of my favorite new songs. It’s from the movie The Bucket List, and is probably one of John Mayer’s best performances to date. It echoes the sentiment that you should always tell people what you feel before it’s too late because life is so short.

So I didn’t send my computer in after all. I’m realizing there’s really no 7-10 day period (amount of time Apple says it would take for my repair to be completed) that I can be without my computer because of exams, note taking, special projects, church work, etc. I guess I’ll send it in sometime this summer. Anyway, big update on some projects I’m working on now, speaking of which.

Well, I’m shipping out my MacBook Pro to Apple’s repair headquarters in Texas today to get fixed (I’m taking it to the Apple Store and they’re taking care of the shipping). Ever since I’ve had it (last June) it’s never gone to sleep right. When you close a Mac, it’s supposed to go into sleep mode and keep all your applications running and ready to go when you open the lid again, but my computer was born a rebel and decided against going with the status quo. Whenever I close it, the screen goes to sleep, but the computer keeps running and overheats, in turn draining the battery. This is especially fun when I’m at VCU and it starts burning up in my backpack and, here’s the best part of all, the battery is dead by the time I need to use it again because it decided to keep running. The thing has a personality of its own, I’m telling you.

I also dropped it on a video shoot recently where it was used as a prop (I was the one that dropped it, everyone calm down; despite what it may have inadvertently sounded like in one of my previous posts, no one from the church video team is to blame for anything). The case was dented in the corner and the slot-loading disc drive is hard to load now, so I’m most likely getting the entire aluminum case replaced, depending on the cost. The sleep issue is covered by the AppleCare three year extended warranty I bought, but accidental damage such as my casing is most likely not covered by the plan.

I’ve backed everything up via Mac OS X Leopard’s Time Machine feature onto my 1TB hard drive, and post-dated all of my blog entries to automatically show up on my blog on the day specified (I didn’t know you could even do this until recently; pretty cool). I’ve posted a few new entries (albeit smaller and simpler) for the upcoming week and will post a few more throughout the week via Utterz and/or my iPhone. Hey, I’m in Blog 365, I’ve gotta do it! My Mac should be back by next weekend.

I’ve created a lot of funny, sometimes stupid or ridiculous, Photoshop creations over the past few years, and hope to post one every week or two for your enjoyment. I’m calling them Irrational Illustrations. The first one is rather recent. I always drove past the pictured billboard on Interstate 95 on my way to VCU, so I went out and snapped a picture of it, added a touch of humor and a hint of sarcasm (Wow I’m never, ever, ever sarcastic on here at all!) </sarcasm>, and voila! You have yourself a case of false advertising! Get the facts straight, AT&T, geeze!

(View Full Size Image Here)

It’s Valentine’s Day. I’ve never liked it, and I don’t know that I ever will. It’s just another one of those “Hallmark Holidays” if you ask me (I know, there are far worse holidays that I think actually were invented by the card company, including such ridiculous things as Boss’s Day, Sister Day, Brother Day, etc.), where Hallmark banks on selling a lot of cards (I think FTD, the floral people, are in on the scheme, too), making single people feel inadequate, and complicating relationships because it brings a certain level of expectation that  a guy or girl should do something for the big day. For example, whether to go out for a nice dinner or get flowers, etc. This is even more sticky of a situation for people in those situations where you’re sort of dating, sort of not, and you have no idea what is expected. I’ve been there and done that, believe me. It sucks. Let’s move on to February 15th, please.

Singles Awareness Day ((SAD)… how do you like that acronym, huh?) is what I like to call today, and why not let it be a real holiday? There are plenty of other really stupid holidays floating around aimlessly on our national calendar. (In case you were wondering, it’s National Pet Dental Health Month, for example… come on, seriously?) Here are just a few more holidays I looked up that fall in the month of February, just for laughs:

• Dump Your Significant Jerk Day
• Laugh And Get Rich Day (huh? If this were true, I’d be a multi-billionaire as much as I laugh)
• Pro Sports Wives Day (oh come on)
• Get A Different Name Day (how about “Find Something Else To Give Its Own Day T0″ Day)
• Ferris Wheel Day (why?)
• Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day (so random)
• National Tooth Fairy Day (seriously?)
• International Pancake Day (I actually participated in this at IHOP on Tuesday… free pancakes!)
• Clam Chowder Day (hmm ok)

Get real, people. (Oh, and Happy Singles Awareness Day!)

It’s absolutely critical that we do something right now to save our planet from certain peril. An eye-opening new special on global warming will air tomorrow night on the National Geographic Channel. It’s called “Six Degrees Could Change The World.”

In it, some of the world’s top experts on global warming lay out what to expect as the earth warms over the next century:

At 1 degree Celsius, most coral reefs and many mountain glaciers will be lost. A 3-degree rise would spell the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, disappearance of Greenland’s ice sheet, and the creation of deserts across the Midwestern United States and southern Africa. A 6-degree increase would eliminate most life on Earth, including much of humanity.

How do we fight this impending doom? Several people have some very creative, yet expensive ideas. There is hope yet. Check out the following ideas:

Simulating Volcanic Eruptions
The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines sent an estimated 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide high into the stratosphere. Winds proceeded to spread it all over the planet, forming a high-level haze that reflected back light from the sun and reduced global temperature by 0.5 degrees Celsius. Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen has proposed simulating the Pinatubo effect by using artillery guns or balloons to inject sulfur into the atmosphere. (Rockets filled with sulfur could also do the trick). Crutzen calculates that the cooling effect would begin within six months and last for up to two years. Artificially duplicating Mount Pinatubo’s effects each year might cost $250 billion, though Crutzen says a relatively affordable $25-$50 billion worth would be enough to make a difference. A major downside is the possibility of creating acid rain or wreaking havoc with global weather patterns, as the eruption of the Indonesian volcanic island of Krakatoa did in the 1880s.

Lenses In Space
University of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel has suggested using non-polluting, magnetically-powered vehicles—a concept that NASA is already exploring—to transport trillions of lenses made of silicon nitride film into space and deposit them near inner Lagrange point 1, an area where the combined effect of gravity of the Earth and the Sun would keep them in the same place relative to Earth’s rotation. The lenses would be about three feet across but incredibly thin, weighing about a gram. Rather than blocking sunlight, they would bend some of it slightly away from Earth, reducing the amount of energy transmitted by about 2 percent. Manufacturing the immense quantity of lenses and putting them into space—some 20 million launches would be required—make Angel’s idea a lengthy and pricey one, but he has estimated that the cost would average out to $100 billion annually over the lenses’ 50 year lifetime. The lenses would also be difficult to turn “off” if necessary, and could lead to uneven cooling effects.

Turning Pollution Into Baking Soda
Burning coal to generate electricity is one of the planet’s major sources of carbon emissions. To cope with their seemingly insatiable demand for electric power, the U.S., China, and India plan to build 850 new coal-fired plants by 2012, which will spew five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol nations aim to eliminate. Many believe that carbon sequestration, in which carbon dioxide emissions from smokestacks are trapped and stored, is the best answer. But most ideas for what to do with the carbon dioxide—such as pumping it into manmade caverns—would be costly, and there’s always the risk that the gases will escape. That’s where a Texas-based startup company, Skyonic, and its innovative new carbon sequestration technology, gets involved. Plastic mesh sheets capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted by a power plant, which is then mixed with sodium hydroxide to produce harmless baking soda. Solids are easier to store, and since the baking soda produced is high-grade, it can be recycled for industrial applications or even used for baking. Texas utility Luminant installed a pilot version of the technology at its Brown Steam Electric Station in 2006, and Skyonics is now designing a system that it hopes to install on a large 500-megawatt power plant in 2009.