Anwar Al Awlaki

Blown to hamburger by a guy with a joystick sitting in an air conditioned room in Las Vegas.

GoPro HD + RC plane + Great scenery = Cool video

The arrest this week of a homegrown jihadist who wanted to fly big radio controlled planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol piqued my interest in big RC aircraft.

After looking at a few YouTube videos of RC jets, I started checking out videos made by enthusiasts who mated GoPro Hero HD video cameras with their planes. There are a lot of really good videos of this genre, but this has the most spectacular scenery I’ve seen.

Matching helmets

Maria’s HJC FS-15 “Terror” helmet arrived yesterday and it’s a perfect fit.

This is the first time since we bought a pair of Schuberths around the turn of the (21st) century that we’ve had matching helmets. Now all we have to do is ride together.

Or, I suppose we could wear them in the car.

Wednesday morning stuff

Who knew carpet cleaning could be so gratifying?

Maria and I shifted the dining room table and chairs into the foyer and I shampooed the carpet, eradicating four years of neglect and pet stains.

The living room carpet looks splendid in the wake of yesterday morning’s cleaning and now I’m eyeing the master bedroom carpet.

A quick check with my Indianapolis BMW Club friends indicates nobody is planning to ride to the Return to Shiloh rally south of Savannah, Tenn. this weekend. The weather promises to be dead-solid perfect – highs in the mid- to low 70s and lows in the mid- to low 40s with zero percent chance of rain. It seems a shame to pass up rallying in weather like that, but I prefer the company of friends, so I think I’ll skip this one and plan for another rally where I can hang out with my Indy friends.

Besides, I’ve pretty well tapped out all of the National Parks Passport stamp opportunities in the Shiloh area – my only other motive for going.

No, the rich DON'T pay lower taxes than us

Tax Demagogues Are Lying Liars, in One Graph

So much for the lies of those who would foment class warfare. Evil bastards!

Terror!

My HJC “F15-Terror” helmet arrived via UPS this afternoon.

Under normal circumstances, I would never consider buying a helmet like this, especially since I bought an HJC flip-face helmet for $200 a few months ago.

But this was an exceptional deal from MotorcycleGear.com – a $270 Snell-rated helmet for $50.

$50?

Hell yes!

I can overlook the bizarre styling for a deal like that. Actually, it’s so far from what I would normally buy, I kinda like it.

It comes with a rubber piece to deflect the rider’s breath from the face shield and a fabric air dam under the chin that made the helmet feel overly tight and claustrophobic the first time I put it on. Happily, those features can be easily removed and once they’re gone, it feels fine. I think it’s lighter than my other HJC and a late afternoon jaunt up to Paragould and back made it clear that the ventilation system is superior to the other HJC and probably the best I’ve ever experienced in a helmet.

I showed the ad to Maria after I ordered mine and, having a similar capacity for whimsy, she wanted one too. UPS says it will be delivered tomorrow.

If this is a deal that appeals to you, MotorcycleGear.com still has some left in Small, Large and Extra Large. Just go to their web site and click on “Closeouts” and then “Helmets.”

It works!

I filled the new Bissell Bronze PROheat2X Cleanshot Pet carpet cleaner with water and cleaning formula and attacked the living room carpet this morning.

I’ll know for sure when it’s completely dry, but it looks like it removed all of the stains from dog accidents and the carpet looks better than it did when we moved in four years ago next month.

We’ll haul the furniture out of the dining room tonight and I’ll do that carpet tomorrow morning. Or maybe tonight, if I feel ambitious.

Taking the war on pet stains to a new level

We awoke today to several dog messes on the carpet in the dining room and living room.

Pete the Aussie got the squirts, which makes for really tricky cleanup. The ShopVac does a passable job of snatching the stuff up, but there are invariably some stains left behind. Spot Shot, a cleaning formula made for pet stains, usually does the trick, but today’s stains are more stubborn.

I did some online research and concluded that the Bissell Bronze PROheat2X Cleanshot Pet carpet cleaner looks like what we need. It has lots of well-written enthusiastic positive reviews on Amazon.com. I found it on Amazon.com for $228, but discovered it was also on the Target web site priced at $225. Target said they have some at their Jonesboro store, so I drove there right away and was delighted to find this model is on clearance for $188.89!

Assembly was a breeze and I plan to study the owner’s manual this evening and put it to work first thing tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, Pete will sleep on the back porch tonight.

Our tax dollars at work

Saturday’s mail included a large envelope from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Why are we getting mail from the EPA, I wondered?

Inside was an Endangered Species: Save Our Species coloring book.

WTF?

We don’t have any coloring-book-age kids, don’t use pesticides that imperil any endangered or threatened species of wildlife and have absolutely no use for this propaganda from what I consider the most wrong-headed, economy-destroying branch of the federal government.

It had to cost them at least $1 to send this thing to us and God knows how many others they wasted on households without kids or pesticide use.

It’s a Sunday morning bagel revival!

Problem: The eight remaining bagels from the dozen-and-a-half I bought nine days ago at City East Bagel in Memphis have become hard as rocks and inedible. Should I throw them away or is there a way to revive them?

Solution: Google the words “revive” “stale” and “bagel.” This led me to bagelbuoy.com and their Helpful Bagel Facts page where I learned “Several-day-old bagels tend to harden. They may be freshened up by toasting, broiling, microwaving very briefly (15 seconds), or moisten with water and bake for 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven.”

So I dipped the eight bagelrocks in a bowl of water, arrayed them on a baking sheet and popped them into a 350 degree oven. When I pulled them out 10 minutes later, I was pleased to note the delightful fresh-baked bagel aroma and see that they yielded when poked with a finger.

I let them cool for about 5 minutes, sliced, toasted and cream cheesed one of the chocolate flavored bagels and was delighted to find it was just as good as the day it came home from Memphis.

Make his day, Michael

Filmmaker and propagandist Michael Moore is in the news again, this time making veiled threats against the rich for not wanting to give their money to people who have no inclination to work.

“The smart rich know they can only build the gate so high. And, and, sooner or later history proves that people when they’ve had enough aren’t going to take it anymore. And much better to deal with it nonviolently now, through the political system, than what could possibly happen in the future, which nobody wants to see,” Michael Moore said on Current TV’s “Countdown” program.

Moore was alluding to riots, which he was discussing with “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann prior to his comment to deal with things nonviolently now.

And once again my thoughts turn to Clint Eastwood’s warning to Moore at a National Board of Review awards dinner in New York six years ago.

"Michael Moore and I actually have a lot in common - we both appreciate living in a country where there's free expression,” he said.

Then fixing Moore with a cold steely glare, he added, "But, Michael, if you ever show up at my front door with a camera - I'll kill you."

The New York Daily News reported the audience erupted in laughter, and Eastwood grinned, and said, "I mean it."

Perhaps Moore would like to lead the charge at Eastwood’s house.

Another low-mileage year

It’s the last day of summer and I’ve ridden fewer than 6,000 motorcycle miles so far this year.

With only a couple of rallies on my fall calendar, it’s unlikely that I’ll earn my 10,000-mile award this year from the Indianapolis BMW Club. Again.

Crap.

Pat Boone gets it

Well worth your time

Watch live streaming video from ideacity at livestream.com

Watch this video and pass it on (15 min).  The gentleman identifies himself as a Muslim, Marxist, and at least in 2008, an Obama supporter.  I know that this has been said by many on the political right, this is first time I've heard someone on the left, a Muslim, Marxist and O supporter saying like this.

If you never watch another video, please watch this one.  The speaker is an Indian Muslim who is warning us to wake up.  He has tremendous courage and pulls no punches on what is happening with Islamist fascism.  Make sure you listen to the end of the tape where he says we now have three members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the White House (and names them).

He is elderly and in a wheel chair recovering from cancer treatments - perhaps that's why he has the courage to speak out.  This is probably one of the most important messages of our day.

“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”

Hartwick College's money bomb

Asked what he considered mankind's greatest invention, Albert Einstein replied, "Compound interest."

Here's why:

Trust Issues - Lapham’s Quarterly

Collecting stamps

I went for a little 220-mile jaunt today to get a couple of stamps in my National Parks Passport.

Today’s ride took me up to Van Buren, Mo. to the Visitors Center of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.

I left the Citgo station down the road from our house at 9 a.m. and arrived at the visitors center about 11 a.m.

I got my stamps and, as I was shooting the photo above, Bill Hutchinson, a Floridian hauling a red BMW R1100RS in his pickup truck, drove up with his wife on a similar quest.

Bill offered to shoot a picture of me with my bike and the visitor center in the background and we ended up in a pleasant 10-minute chat about BMWs, the BMWMOA, and, of course, great roads. Bill and his wife are headed for Rocky Mountain National Park where I sang the praises of the Trail Ridge Road.

The Ozark NSR is the nearest passport stamp location in an online database I downloaded to my Garmin Zumo 550. I also consulted a similar database for McDonald’s restaurant and found the listing for Van Buren to be off by about a mile.

I took a few minutes for a double cheeseburger and water (lunch for under $2), then hit the road for home, stopping for gas south of Poplar Grove, Mo. and rolling into my garage at 1:54 p.m.

It was hardly an epic journey, but it was fun riding to somewhere new.

The Zumo report

I have successfully resurrected the Garmin Zumo 550 GPS that died during a day in my saddlebag in the hot August sun at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It failed to start when I put it into its handlebar cradle that afternoon and subsequent attempts to bring it to life via a USB connection to my netbook failed.

So I bought a new Zumo 550 from Amazon.com, had it delivered to the home of friends south of Crawfordsville, Ind., where I was staying after MotoGP, and did the rest of my 3,045-mile trip with the new unit.

I searched the Zumo Forums for clues after I got home and decided it was worth paying $24.95 to BatteryShip.com for a new Zumo battery (free shipping). It arrived last week, I installed it, and my old Zumo 550 sprang to life with all of its data intact.

I noted earlier that the new unit speaks the names of streets and roads and destinations instead of just saying “turn left” or “take ramp right.” I figured that was just a software update not present on my old Zumo.

Not true.

I learned from a post on the Zumo Forums that my old Zumo had the same capability – I just needed to pick the right voice in the “Locale” settings. The trick is to pick a voice with (TTS) after the name. In my case, I picked “American English-Jill (TTS)” and now my old Zumo has an expanded vocabulary.

Of course, I would have known that if I had paid attention to page 40 of the owner’s manual.

I’ll recoup some of my expense by selling the old Zumo unit on Ebay.

I hate this stuff!

Mixed fruit jelly is an abomination. It doesn’t taste like anything in particular and adds nothing to whatever you put it on.

When a waitress brings me a packet of this shit, I send her back to get something with real flavor, preferably strawberry, but grape will do in a pinch.

I did an internet search and was stunned to see several manufacturers, including Smuckers, actually sell this crap in jars, but I can’t imagine what kind of boring people would buy it.

I don’t hate many things, but I hate the very idea of mixed fruit jelly. It must be made for people who have no taste buds and no imagination and are unable to express a legitimate preference.

Bagelicious!

We drove to Memphis and City East Bagel last Sunday morning to get a good breakfast and stock up on bagels.

We brought home 18 bagels of various flavors, gave several away to Arkansans who hitherto had not had a bagel experience, and consumed almost all of the rest.

I decided I’d had enough of hand-slicing bagels, so I bought one of these murderous-looking bagel slicers from Amazon.com. It arrived yesterday afternoon.

With only a couple of bagels left, I figured it was time to re-stock, so I drove the del Sol to Memphis and bought another 18 bagels for $22 and change. I gassed on the way home and determined I’m getting 29.1 mpg.

So with gas at $3.39 a gallon, that makes the total cost per bagel about $2.38. Not counting the $19.95 I spent on the slicer.

I don’t care. They’re damned good bagels and I’ve not seen their equal in
Arkansas.

Top 10 tweets about AttackWatch.com

10) @ScottSwett1 #AttackWatch: I, for one, am honored to be recruited as an informer by our new insect overlords.

9) @iowahawkblog: I’m grateful to live in a country where the totalitarians are so hilariously inept. #AttackWatch

8) @justkarl: .@Doc_0 #AttackWatch already has a bat-signal, but it’s solar, so it doesn’t work at night.

7) @secupp Watch out, monthly jobless report. @AttackWatch is onto you. #attackwatch

6) @freeulysses Hey #attackwatch my boss just said the purpose of a business is to make a profit for it’s shareholders. Can I like, citizens arrest?

5) @RachelWard301 @attackwatch I sneezed & some guy I don’t know said “God bless you”. I want him arrested for forcing his religion on me. #attackwatch

4) @madisonmom4 #attackwatch I have to turn my husband in, he told my son there’s only 50 states. What a commie

3) @CalebHowe Extra points if you turn in your parents. MT @AttackWatch See a new attack on the President or his record? Use #attackwatch to report it.

2) @johnhawkinsrwn Bush wanted people to say something if they suspected terrorism. Obama wants you to alert #AttackWatch if you think someone doesn’t like him

1) @mkhammer I prince of Nigeria. Please to unleash many riches I send you. Simple help by report @michellemalkin to #AttackWatch. Also, ur credit card.