MattPie

This is more in the neighborhood of the literal awesome, as in creating a sense of awe. So on Saturday, my gf and I were watching a lightning storm out of the back of my house. After a couple reasonably close strikes, lightning hits the pole in my back-neighbor's yard. Shower of sparks and whatnot, power goes out. Holy crap. A few moments later, the power comes back on and you can see arcing at the top of the pole, it looks like the ceramic insulator was fried. Power goes back out after a minute. Second time the power comes back on, more arcing, some smoke, then fire, then the box on the pole pops in a much bigger shower of sparks. (It wasn't a transformer, too small) I had tried to call the electric company previously, this time I called 911 to get the process moving. Figuring the power was out for awhile, we went out for a fantastic dinner and some craft beer (pea and mint risotto, SlyFox O'Rielly stout on cask for her, and a nice IPA or 3 for me). When we got back, the clocks were reading 12:21, so the power had only been on for 20 minutes. Awesome!

Maybe, but you could argue that economically, it's easier to draft talent and pick up gritty role-players than the other way around.

A nice stout or porter, perhaps?

In my defence, I wasn't watching the Amerks thread and didn't see it in the big club threads. :)

Which thread? I didn't see it.

Wait, Mark Mancari? http://sabres.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=637362&cmpid=rss-News

You didn't have internet at work and your productivity went *down*??? Yep, you sweat out a lot of sodium, which you need to replace. The technical term is hyponatremia, but it's commonly known as water intoxication or poisioning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication Complaint: back to the office for the first time since June 21st, I could have used more time.

Looks like you're mostly correct on both parts, the purchase is kind of correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Land_Company And the name appears to be correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo,_New_York I knew about the land company part, but I never caught the name. I guess the Dutch are lucky we let them keep Amsterdam, NY as-is.

My BMW R1150R. It just keeps going (knock on wood), 54k on it right now. The Honda is still in progress, I haven't gotten much time to work on it. You're telling me, riding all day in the 90s isn't a great time.

Gerbe isn't listed, they could use him.

You know, even old New York was once New Amsterdam.

That is fantastic. On that same note, if anyone wants me to ride their motorcycle(s) around for them, I'm sure we can work out payment options. I'll supply my own gear. Fantastic: 10-day bike trip starts tomorrow. In rough order of states: MD, VA, NC, TN, maybe GA and AL, KY WV, OH, NY. Riding the mountains.

I should have been more specific with the streaming thing before: I don't have cable, so does anyone know of an audio/video Internet feed for the draft? Thanks!

There's rumors of it, but who knows.

Oh yeah? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4szGxaKF8Qw

Not for nothing, but I just looked and it claims 73 F for Halifax right now. That sounds pretty perfect for me. :) It was 80 F at 8am today, with the high in the mid-90s (F, again). And I'm not even in the south.

Anyone have a good internet streaming idea for the draft? Doesn't need to be video, I wouldn't mind listening to it while I'm doing chores Friday night. Would it be on WGR?

I find hockey tape is a little nicer than duct tape (and apropos for this forum). Gives a little bit and being cloth-based breaths better so the skin underneath doesn't get clamy.

Yep. There's youtubers videos out there with the original words. Anyways, I never thought of it as a loss, since it was reasonable that the UK could have taken the colonies back. I suppose that's the best definition of a tie, both sides feel they won. Except here, where everyone thinks a tie is a loss. :-)

Off to Buffalo this weekend for some family and girlfriend time, fantastic.

While I'm excited that I got tires for my bike mounted and balanced yesterday, that's only 1 of a bazillion bike and house projects I need to get done.

It's not that new of a concept, people keep rehashing the same ideas in books, probably for as long as books have been written. :) If you're looking for art, you need to get away from Hollywood and the local megaplex. There are a lot of medium-budget movies with 'stars' being made, you just have to look for them.

Beat me to it! Young Frankenstein is 1974, but deserves an honorable mention. And no one has mentioned the Great Escape yet? Steve McQueen may be the one person cooler than Dean Martin.

I was wondering about that. :) Camping: good. Beer: good! 10's of thousands of people with you: not as good. After camping at the BMW rally last year in a field in the sun with 10,000 other people, I'm questioning the benefits of large scale camping.

I think you're mistaking the 1% (or whatever the real number is) of gay people with the fairly large portion of the population that support gay rights but aren't gay. For me it's more or less a belief system. We're in trouble if we start discriminating on belief systems (with the usual caveats about directly harming others, etc.).