Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's April 23rd.  People who were born today include William Shakespeare, Max Planck, Admiral Karel Doorman, "Sunny" Jim Bottomley, Warren Spahn, Shirley Temple, Roy Orbison, Kenji Kawai, Valerie Bertinelli, Andruw Jones, and John Cena.  Wrigley Field hosted its first baseball game on April 23rd, 1914, too.

And in 1968, in a hospital somewhere in Chicago, me.

At this moment, let us spare a moment's sympathy for my mother.  I was a big baby, pushing 10 lbs... and I was over a month late, originally scheduled for St. Patrick's Day.  Thanks, Momzerduck!

So today, I turn 40.  Nobody is more surprised than me.



UPDATE: The candles on my birthday cake...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:35 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 There's something like that in Stratos 4.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 23, 2008 10:05 AM (+rSRq)

2

Boy, blowing that one out is gonna be a tough job.

Give me a three-toed sloth, a tongue depressor, and a hurricane though, and I think I could pull it off.

Happy Birf'day.

Posted by: Will at April 23, 2008 11:19 AM (WnBa/)

3 I can understand the sloth and the hurricane, but what's the tongue depressor for?

Posted by: Wonderduck at April 23, 2008 02:05 PM (UdB9M)

4 It's for applying the sloth, of course.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 23, 2008 04:41 PM (+rSRq)

5 Oh.  Yes.  How could I have been so stupid?

Posted by: Wonderduck at April 23, 2008 05:56 PM (DcSb+)

6 10 pounds!

My God...the omelet you would have made....

Posted by: brickmuppet at April 23, 2008 07:09 PM (CTUU/)

7 Whoops!  A belated happy birthday to you!

You're exactly one day younger than my younger brother.  So you're still a spring duckling as far as I'm concerned.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 27, 2008 06:08 AM (PiXy!)

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^{Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 18, 2008 11:32 AM (+rSRq)}

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:51 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I'm finding myself at a loss of what to blog about.  Nothing is particularly jumping out at me right now.  Sure, there's a race coming up, but that's NEXT weekend.  There's a big event in my life coming up, but that's NEXT week.  Now?  I'm not even motivated enough to watch the last two episodes of Clannad (and then Toei's movie version).

So lemme hear from ya!  Gimme some ideas, 'cause I'm fresh out.

Meanwhile, here's a completely unrelated picture:

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:17 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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So I wake up this morning, brush my teeth, get a morning beverage, settle in front of Chiyo-chan (my smart and wonderful computer), and hit the power button on the 19" CRT.

Nothing.  Oh, it degausses itself, but nothing else happens, except for making this frightening "click. click. click. click. click." noise.

Crepe.  Dead monitor.  Well, I DID only pay $99 for it at Big Blue Box four years ago, I think that's decent enough value... but no matter what value I got out of it, it was still dead, and I was still without a working monitor.

Fast-forward to now.  Chiyo-chan is now connected to a 19" HP widescreen LCD... specifically, the w1907. 

^{Oh.  My.}

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:43 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Tonight is Yuri's Night, the annual celebration of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human in space.
It's amazing to think that we've been going into space for 47 years now.  Astronauts, Cosmonauts, Taikonauts, those of other countries, and those of us who have ever dreamed of traveling into the "final frontier", should all raise a toast (vodka and Tang?) to Gagarin, the first of a select few.

But did you know that, during the run of NASA's Space Shuttle program, there have only been 830 crewmembers for all flights (including people who have been on multiple missions)?  A VERY exclusive group, considering the population of our planet.  Fewer than 500 individuals overall have gone into space.  A tiny amount of people from 37 different countries have "slipped the surly bonds of earth and touched the sky."

Now here's the Surprising Fact I mentioned in the title of this post:

Only 734 people* have ever driven in a Formula 1 race.  Fewer than the number of Space Shuttle crew.  Not that much more than the total number of people who have made it into space.

Who knew?


^{*That number includes individuals who drove in the Indianapolis 500 from 1950-1960, when it was considered part of the GP series.}

Posted by: Wonderduck at 04:39 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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