April 29, 2008

THIS is why the Pirates have sucked for so long...


For the love of all that's holy, why?

The Pirates didn't REALLY wear mesh caps in 1986, did they?  And does Leyland's head look a little... odd-shaped under there?

as seen at the Uglybaseballcard blog, a great read for us fans o' baseball.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 53 words, total size 1 kb.

April 23, 2008

40.

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 CenaWrigley 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
Post contains 110 words, total size 2 kb.

April 18, 2008

C2K

2 Hmm... how about this: Top 10 reasons why HWMNBN must not be named.

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


And that, ladies and gentlemen and ducks, is the 2000th comment here at The Pond, according to the little counter down on the right sidebar.

Holy mackerel.  This duck is amazed.  Thanks to Steven for the comment, and to everybody who's taken the time to speak their minds about my lack of one.  Without y'all, The Pond would be nothing more than an empty water-filled hole in the ground with one weird, anime- and F1-obsessed waterfowl talking to himself in it.

Which is a very surreal mental picture, if you think about it...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:51 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.

April 17, 2008

Hmmm.

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:

Durrrrr...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:17 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 82 words, total size 1 kb.

April 14, 2008

Chiyo-chan Gets A Facelift.

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.
I have to play with it some more, get the brightness/contrast levels to my liking (out of the box, it was bright enough to give me a headache), but this thing was a revelation.

Then I hooked it up to the computer via the included DVI cable.

Imagine all your life, you've been driving a miserable 4-cyl Yugo.  Then someone hands you the keys to a McLaren F1 supercar...

Yeah, it's kinda like that.

I tell ya, Morty, this thing is GOOD.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:43 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 202 words, total size 1 kb.

April 12, 2008

Yuri's Night: A Surprising Fact

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
Post contains 212 words, total size 2 kb.

<< Page 1 of 1 >>
41kb generated in CPU 0.0169, elapsed 0.3305 seconds.
49 queries taking 0.3201 seconds, 298 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.