"The Earth, she's flat like your head!"

It must be flat for I seemed to have fallen off the edge. Not much to note this week.

In welding class on Tuesday I had an 'ah-ha' moment. I still need more practice though. I may switch from stick welding to mig welding this week as that is really the type of welding I intend to do.

Not much done in the garage this weekend. While it was warmer (per the thermometer) this weekend, it was colder outside (due to the wind).

I helped my neighbor take some pictures of his 1972 Chevrolet C-10. I think I ended up taking about 140 pictures. He is listing it on ebay tonight. (I did get to drive it up and down the street today. Sweet!)

[7.4 lbs to go]

300 Baud

Arg, matey. The pirates are plundering for topics again.

Brian was reminiscing about the glory days so I thought I would whip this out. Somewhere on this page you will find a picture of my first modem. Three hundred baud. Blazing fast. If you go read this page you may find out things you didn't already know. But you won't be any smarter when your done.

What's another name for pirate treasure?

Roger Roger

When watching The Phantom Menace on the big screen I recall hearing a battle droid say roger, roger. For some reason this struck me as funny. I recall that I laughed out loud. This was the only laughter in the entire theater. Why was it funny? What does it mean?

It turns out 'Roger' is the term for the letter R from the old JAN alphabet (Joint Army/Navy). This sequence went Able, Baker, Charlie, etc. The modern or NATO phonetic alphabet use the sequence Alpha, Bravo, Charlies, etc and uses Romeo for the letter R.

So 'roger' is simply the letter R but still what does it mean? Apparently it was a term used by WWII pilots to signal they had received a transmission. And roger wilco means message received, will comply.

But that still does not explain why it was funny. Perhaps it was the context of use in the movie. Perhaps the droid was scared or malfunctioning. I don't recall.

We bought the kids a Nintendo Games Cube for Christmas. One of the games they have is Lego Star Wars. This games is amazing (if only they would let me play too). During the game, you often hear a battle droid say "Uh oh!" or "Roger roger". This tickles me too. Perhaps it is just the computer synthesized voice.

Did you know the term droid started out as 'droid, an abbreviation for android.

Blamo!

You know how it is. One minute you have a grovy topic to type up for you blog, and the next minute blamo! Your considering posting the subject lines from most interesting spam you received and what the weather is supposed to be like. How droll. What next, female bandits? Yes, we have all been there.

Here goes the weather. At lunch today the weather must have been up into the 40. Time to drop the lid for sure. I had definitely been experiencing withdrawal.

I finished up my homework today. Two days early. Simply amazing.

Ah, yes, it has returned. And not nearly as interesting as I remembed it being. As of yesterday, the oil is now gone. (Only 15 months later.) Happy Birthday Chad.