• Funny,  Immigration,  Quotes

    Wednesday rapid fire

    • Immigrants’ Jobless Rate Falls Below U.S. Natives’

      The jobless rate among immigrants fell below that of U.S.-born workers last year for the first time in at least a decade, according to new government data, during a hiring boom by construction, hospitality, and other companies that rely heavily on immigrant labor.

      Unemployment among immigrants was 4.6 percent in 2005, down from 5.5 percent in 2004. The jobless rate among native-born Americans was 5.2 percent, down from 5.5 percent a year before.

      That falls in line with Glenn Reynolds’ comment of

      One difference between the demonstrations in France and the demonstrations in America: The French are demonstrating for the right not to work hard, while the demonstrators in America mostly want to work.

    • How to Pull an All-Nighter
    • Michael Yon is back
    • Classic Tough Guy One Liners, my favorites

      “Fools get away with the impossible.”,
      “She couldn’t be all bad. Nobody is.’ “She comes closest”,
      and
      “You’re better off than me… You got me for a buddy… I only got you.”

    • A nice general article on plug-in hybrids.
    Comments Off on Wednesday rapid fire
  • Cycling,  Photography

    Blood and guts edition


    Yesterday I decide to go on a lovely bike ride. I go a bit further than I normally do, and on the way back I almost run over a cutting knife placed edge up on the bike path. I would presume it was placed there deliberately.

    I pick up the knife and take it to the Clarkston police station, which was only about 100 yards away. I hand it to the cop (yes, I did walk up to a cop while holding a knife. He seemed cool with it.), tell him the story and he thanks me for doing it. All was good.

    Then, while passing a jogger on the path, I misjudge the amount of room I have to work with by about half an inch and greet the ground at 15 miles an hour, landing knee, shoulder and head. Happily I was wearing a helmet at the time, otherwise I would have had to go to the hospital. I wound up having bad road rash on my leg, some shoulder bruising some minor neck pain/stiffness.

    I took some photos of the blood and what not, but they turned out really blurry and I’m not going to post them.

    That was my day.

    Comments Off on Blood and guts edition
  • Blogging,  Tech

    A nice feature

    The Knoxville daily newspaper has an interesting feature, called Random This, where they send a correspondent out with a video camera to document some feature of life in Knoxville. It’s not hard news, but it is much more detailed than a column would be. 800 words about a visit to a tattoo parlor or shooting range would not be terribly interesting, but the video version is. It’s a good example of something that could only be done online.

    Comments Off on A nice feature
  • Biz,  GPS

    Grinding

    The combination of spring break and tax time has made the past few days excruciatingly dull. Most of the people I work with are out out of town, the rest are doing taxes (like me) and that’s thrown all organization out of whack, which is bad. I’m in the odd position of not having anything pressing going on, and no work related stuff to talk about, which happens very rarely. The combination has made me moody the past three days.

    In other news, I did get the Garmin Street Pilot in today, I’m about to take it on it’s first test ride. We’ll see how it goes.

    Comments Off on Grinding
  • Biz,  Blogging

    An unusually quiet day

    Definitely one of the most quiet on record, I guess everyone really is on spring break.

    On another note, I just visited this blog’s Technorati profile and I find that I’m linked under “a loner’s temperament” and experpted on a Malaysian blog.

    Most surprising of all though is being linked from the Columbia Journalism review. They picked up on my Cheney – Abu Ghraib theory. It’s quite flattering.

    Now, back to taxes.

  • Atlanta,  Photography

    New gallery

    I just finished with the photos that the lovely and talented Debra and I took last night. We would up taking all of them in the daytime (it was too cold after dinner) and I’m quite happy with some of them. I was careless with some of the angles and I left way too much stuff in the backgrounds (how many times can you see my shadow!?) but the bright sunlight and blue sky provided for many interesting opportunities in Photoshop.

    While the last round of photos turned out to be quite dark and noirish, this one turned out to be more gothic and apocalyptic, nonetheless, some of them turned out quite interesting. I left some of the originals in so everyone can see the changes I made.

    The goal for this photo series it to have fiddler silhouettes, which this round is not. I do like it though. In case anyone is interested, the Auto Exposure Lock made no appreciable difference. The location was on Howell Mill Road.

    Thus I give you, Debra on the edge of forever.