Gird Your Loins people…

After what was already a busy week in North Korea, what with three nuclear missile tests and all, North Korea is ready to declare an end to the Armistice…

North Korea’s military says it considers South Korea’s participation in a U.S.-led program to intercept ships suspected of spreading weapons of mass destruction tantamount to a declaration of war against the North.

The communist North’s military said in a statement Wednesday that it will respond with “immediate, strong military measures” if the South actually stops and searches any North Korean ships under the Proliferation Security Initiative.

The statement, carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency, said North Korea no longer considers itself bound by the armistice that ended the Korean War, as a protest over the South’s participation.

A nuclear armed country reviving a decades old war and a feckless US President that can’t muster any more than a mild rebuke? What could go wrong?

Are you ready for the cost of absolutely everything to increase? I know I am!

But we’ve got to raise money to pay for all the new spending somehow…

A gallon of milk would jump from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost $6,250, but the nation’s debt would stabilize and everybody could see a doctor.

Don’t worry. They’ve got this scheme running in Europe already, and they are in fine economic condition.

Aren’t they?

I’ve actually written a few posts about Harry Truman already, so I won’t go over them again. (You can read them here and here and here if you’d like.)

But I did come across a few more interesting Truman facts the other day…

• Truman cheated to get into WWI. His eyesight was really bad. So he memorized the Army’s eye chart.
• Truman, who was President during WWII, was born in 1884.
• While he was involved with local politics in Missouri, he did not hold a major political office until he was elected as a US Senator at age 50. He was re-elected to a second term, and was then selected to be FDRs third VP.

Source: History Channel

The Wife^® and I continued our Bands That Were Popular Before We Were Born Tour by seeing Fleetwood Mac this weekend.

It’s always hit or miss with old bands. The shows can be really good (Billy Joel/Elton John), or really pathetic (Steppenwolf). This one was a good show. The only bummer was that Christine McVie was not there, so we didn’t get quite the whole lineup.

The onstage banter by the band inspired me to come home and do some research. While all bands tend to have a tempestuous back story (hence Behind the Music) the FM story is a little more tumultuous than most:

• Fleetwood Mac was formed in 1967 in the UK.
• The band is named for two of the members, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. McVie was not part of the band when it formed. But Mick Fleetwood named the band for him anyway, expecting that eventually he’d be able to convince McVie to join his band. He joined several months later.
• The band has had 16 band members over its 42 years of existence. They have had several different distinct lineups.
• Fleetwood Mac started as a blues band in the UK. They had a few hits that you have probably heard, but probably didn’t know was them. One was Black Magic Woman, written and originally recorded by FM, but really made famous by Santana. The other is Oh, Well which has the lyrics “I can’t help about the shape I’m in/I can’t sing, I ain’t pretty, and my legs are thin.”
• The bluesy style was due in large part to frontman Peter Green. He was in the band for a few years until he decided to stop being a rock star. He decided instead to give away all of his money. He may or may not have been schizophrenic.
• After Green left the band, they went on a tour in the US. During that tour one of the bandmembers disappeared. They found him a few days later. He had shaved his head and joined a cult. He chose to stay with the cult.
• The next guy that joined the band ended up having an affair with Mick Fleetwood’s wife. He was fired, and the band kind of sort of broke up.
• But they couldn’t break up, since they still had contracts for their remaining tour dates. So the band’s manager, without their consent, put together a completely new band with completely new people, stole the name Fleetwood Mac, and put his new band on tour. Eventually, through a few lawsuits, the band got their name back.
• After getting their band name back, now frontman Bob Welch quit. This left the band with some holes to fill. (BTW, we’re only in 1974 at this point)
• While in LA, Mick Fleetwood heard an recording by a band called Buckingham Nicks. He decided he wanted the guy from the band, Lindsey Buckingham, to join his band. Buckingham agreed to join if his girlfriend Stevie Nicks could come too.
• At this point the band had the lineup that most fans are familiar with: Fleetwood, John and Christine McVie, and Buckingham and Nicks. They recorded their first album together and it was a hit.
• Then the band recorded their follow-up album Rumours. During this time the McVies were divorcing, Buckingham and Nicks were breaking up, and Mick Fleetwood divorced his cheating wife. There may have been a few affairs in there as well. But all the drama led to great music, and the album went platinum 19 times.
• The band pretty much stayed with the same lineup, and continued to record albums and tour occasionally.

Bonus Trivia:

• Stevie Nicks’ real name is Stephanie. She’s originally from Phoenix, and she’s 61 years old. Her mother is still alive, and was in the audience.
• Christine McVie’s birth name was Christine Perfect.
• Mick Fleetwood is also 61. John McVie is 63.
• Lindsey Buckingham plays a Rick Turner Model One Guitar. It was custom made for him. He has 3 of them. He uses several when playing live, trading them off between songs. He also does not use a guitar pick. He plays using a style called fingerpicking.
• The Model One that Buckingham plays has more playable frets than many other guitars. There are 24 compared to 21 on a Fender Stratocaster or Gibson Les Paul.

Source: This Site and wiki

adj.- Something that is powerful despite its diminutive size.

noun- (1) A Miniature Chicken. (2) A member of the British Military that is shorter than average, but still scrappy.

Jeff previously posted about radar, which I was thinking about this morning, which lead me to think about radar’s cousin (not Radar O’Reilly, mind you) Sonar.

Sonar was originally an acronym for sound navigation and ranging. It being written that way makes me think it was originally an acronym, but is now a word on it’s own.

Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater) to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels. Also, the captain of the Red October can use it to respond to secret American messages.

Essentially, sonar does the same thing as radar, but with sound-waves instead of radio waves.

You can also point sonar into the sky and make it into sodar; SOnic Detection And Ranging. Sodar systems are used to measure wind speed at various heights above the ground, and the thermodynamic structure of the lower layer of the atmosphere.

Source: Wiki/wiki

I came across a recipe that called for Kosher Salt the other day.

Now, I’m certainly not the world’s biggest expert on what it means to be kosher, but I struggled to understand how salt would not be kosher.

Turns out that Kosher Salt is only called Kosher Salt in the US. In Britain, it’s called Koshering Salt, and in the rest of the world it’s mostly just called coarse salt.

It’s really just regular salt that has larger grains, i.e., is ground more coarsely. Because of the large grains, the salt is good for use in curing meats. (Or, to put it more graphically, in removing blood from meats.)

So what’s the deal with the name? For a meat to be certified as kosher, it cannot contain any blood. So the people who produce meat use this “kosher salt” to remove the blood and make the meat kosher.

And just for the record, all salt is kosher. Unless you add blood for some reason. And that would just be gross.

Source: wiseGeek

If you call 811 from just about anywhere in the country, you’ll get connected to the “call before you dig” service for your area.

Source: A how-to video for installing a patio. On the web at Call811.com

If you’ve been following along, you know that I recently had to reload my PC. Which of course turned into reloading all four of the PCs in the house and setting up a server complete with Windows domain and centralized antimalware protection. You know, for fun.

Part of reloading PCs is reinstalling all of the old software. So I got to the point where I wanted to load Adobe Acrobat Reader so I could read PDFs.

I went to the Adobe website to download the latest version, and I paused… Uhh… 41 MB? Can that be right? For the Portable Document Format reader? So I started crawling the world wide web of information for some more, you know, information.

Not only is Acrobat Reader 9 a 41 MB download, but it balloons up to over 200 MB once you install it.

Now I may be old fashioned, but there’s nothing portable about a 200 MB application. Plus for all that bloat, it still takes 30 seconds to launch, and is annoying for a variety of reasons I don’t feel like listing. If you’ve got Acrobat Reader you know what I’m talking about.

So, the search for alternatives was on. I tried a variety of free Acrobat Reader alternatives, but I settled on Foxit Reader 3.0.

It’s a 3.5 MB download, 7 MB installed. And it loads FAST. I mean, lickety split fast. In a blink of an eye fast. And there’s no splash screen, no “speedloader” that loads itself on startup, and no secret memory hogging service running in the backgound.

There were other alternatives that were even smaller and even faster, but the Foxit product keeps most, if not all, of the functionality that I ever needed from Acrobat Reader but without the bloat and extra crap.

My only complaint is that they (in a disappointing and very Adobe-like fashion) try to sneak the Foxit Toolbar and (for some reason) a link to eBay on your desktop as part of the install. But you can opt out of both.

I’ve been using it for a few days now with no other complaints. There’s still a chance that it could turn out to suck, but if you want to significantly speed up your PC, try it out.

Gleeking (also gleeting, gleeping, glitting, gleaking, glicking, glanding,
geezing) is the projection of saliva from the submandibular gland upon
compression by the tongue.

Source: Wiki