I’m gonna party like it’s my birthday!

I usually buy myself some absurd expensive bleeding edge piece of technology for my birthday (like the Linux in a Qube©? Or Misubishi’s first 65” HDTV that my friends called Becky II) but this year — being a landmark birthday, 35 — I threw a party for me and friends at the Round Rock Express ball park (known as the Dell Diamond). Check out the leather couches and bowl of Shiner.

Take this quiz to see if you can tell the difference between CGI pictures and “in-camera” photographs.

CAGW released their 2005 pigbook listing last year’s pork projects that were slipped into bills.

Once again, Congress porked out at record levels. For fiscal 2005, appropriators stuffed 13,997 projects into the 13 appropriations bills, an increase of 31 percent over last year’s total of 10,656. In the last two years, the total number of projects has increased by 49.5 percent. The cost of these projects in fiscal 2005 was $27.3 billion, or 19 percent more than last year’s total of $22.9 billion. In fact, the total cost of pork has increased by 21 percent since fiscal 2003. Total pork identified by CAGW since 1991 adds up to $212 billion.

Just knowing that Rick Santorum is behind a bill sheds a negative light on it for my sensabilites anyway, throw in EFF’s derision and the apparent corporate welfare and I have to speak out aginst The National Weather Services Duties Act.

The National Weather Service (NWS), a taxpayer-funded agency, monitors thousands of weather stations around America in order to predict hurricanes, sunshine, and every meteorological event in between. In addition to the raw data that it assembles, NWS has recently started offering more user-friendly info to the public via the Internet. So why has Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced a bill that would restrict the kind of information that NWS can freely share?

The National Weather Services Duties Act (S.786) would ban NWS from “competing” with private entities by making it unlawful for the agency to publish user-friendly weather data and barring NWS experts from speaking one-on-one to news agencies. Why? Because Senator Santorum believes that companies like AccuWeather would make more money if they didn’t have to compete with “free.” That’s right – he believes you should pay twice for your weather information in order to line the pockets of the private weather industry, which already benefits from repackaging the data that tax-funded agencies like NWS give away. That’s not only unfair, it’s a bad precedent for our national information resources. Help stop S.786 by sending a letter to your Senators today!

He makes it too easy.

I was not aware though that it’s now (since this photo was taken) illegal for Americans to even consume Cuban cigars while overseas.

Hopefully, only Zach and Brian will find a need for this breakup conversation simulator but the rest of us could use it as a “negative feedback generator”.

Amazon’s A9 is now providing street-level photos of addresses in its search engine in certain areas. What does this mean for you?

It means you can experience the first several blocks of my walk to work by visiting this link and clicking left on the “Walk up and down the street” arrows.

This is a little odd. I do wish Cynthia or I had made it into one of the photos though.

This recipe sounds like artery-hardening joy, but the best part is this quote near the end.

…These keep for days (no need to refrigerate)…

I suppose it is no surprise that I scored “98% (Dixie). Is General Lee your father?” on this quiz that attempts to determine your roots.

Everyone needs to read up on this and take it up with your Representative.

Why is everyone so quiet?

Becky’s cohorts are hosting our dinner at Old Homestead Steakhouse in
Borgata. This appetizer is (from the top layer down) crab legs,
oysters, shrimp and lump crab.

I thought this was metaphorically appropriate for the porch.

James Carville and Pat Buchanan carpooled into the District together to help launch a ride-sharing campaign to help ease the burden of Washington traffic. It is one of the few things the Democratic strategist and one-time Republican presidential candidate agree on.

The two left a Park and Ride near the Dulles Greenway in Loudoun County at 7 a.m., with Carville on the left of the car and Buchanan on the right.

Becky is working a convention in AC, NJ and as usual I found a way to
mooch along. Whoever said AC was a pit compared to Las Vegas obviously
found some obscure reason to leave the casinos because the slots and
table game rooms are virtually identical — annoying and designed to
keep you walking in circles. (It took directions from three Bally’s
employees and 15 minutes to get me to the doughnut shoppe this
morning.) However the poker rooms here are top notch in comparison.
They are seperated from the rest of the confusion, covered in wide
screen tv’s (to accomodate the sports book cross-over crowd) and often
non-smoking. The poker room at Borgata (pictured here) even has a fancy
set of plasma monitors that displays the queues for poker games.

Took third in today’s stage in the TdG. But more impressively, Armstrong’s been funding anti-doping research for a while.

Honest to god, this is almost enough to get me to jump back on the Lance bandwagon. Allez.