Gary_Yngve

i still don't know who that is

I've noticed that Safeway has had expensive eggs lately. Only a few years ago you could regularly get a dozen for $1. Yogurt's also getting expensive... cheapest I've seen lately is $.60. Used to be $.25 per cup on sale. I haven't noticed too much increase in my bread (I buy Ezekiel sprouted wheat) or sliced cheese, both of which I buy from TJs. It's still pretty easy to go cheap on groceries... 50lb of rice is $20, beans are cheap, mirepoix veggies are each under $1/lb at safeway.

That reminds me of a comment from an ex-Microsoftie who was with the company since the 80's on why he's not a billionaire: "When you get divorced, your net worth is right-shifted."

yeah, i think money might be more bang for the buck for a foodbank, but giving food directly is: - less abstract - a chance to clean out your cupboards - a chance to make well-off people aware of people in need

i don't even know who that is

i think that spelling is a skill that is pretty independent of all other intellectual skills. i know many very smart people who are absolutely horrible spellers. then there are people who see misspelled words that automatically light up in red and cause them to lose track of what they were reading...

a Hotmale that's not broke

teehee, this is funny stuff. my girlfriend criticized me for the chinese fire drill comment when i witnessed one in a traffic jam on 520 and she said it was culturally insensitive. i asked what it literally meant, and if it lost its original meaning, then it should be fine. she's been ultra-sensitized to it from years of schooling in health sciences, where they've been neutralizing every possible offensive term. (i agree with the transition of VD to STD; not sure i understand why it was further necessary to go to STI. though i think it would be funny to talk about MD: Martian Disease) i suppose you could say that a car has been souped up. and the folks driving said cars are soupheads? that might be a better phrase to adopt. i'm sure i've said plenty of risque borderline offensive stuff in lecture to make a funny and keep the students awake; I have yet to be called on it.

yes, that's correct. wetness/iciness of rope/cord can also have an effect. you can also use a belay device to tend the prusik. still, no matter how good your "self-tending" pulley is, keep an eye on it and help it out if it's getting jammed.

you just pointed to a heavy (12 oz) and strong (38 kN) pulley intended for professional rescue. SMC also makes a much smaller, lighter, and cheaper pulley (green) that is a nice crevasse rescue pulley. the mountaineers found it performs slightly better than the nearly equivalent REI blue pulley. what you need to keep in mind is that self-tending performance will depend on the pulley, the diameter of the rope, and the diameter of the prusik cord.

are you offended by the term chinese fire drill? do you think the average chinese person is offended by the term? do you think the only people offended by the term are people who think there may exist at least one chinese person offended by the term? what should we call the act of stopping at a red light, running around the car, and getting back in, instead to be PC? now repeat for the grainy term for a decked out crappy car w/ spoiler, special rims, neon license plate holder, etc... is that offensive? what should we call that to be PC?

I think the Dems realize that if they reverse the popular vote via the superdelegates, they'll lose the election in Nov (at least if McCain is the Repub candidate).

you sound like an alpinist on a "planned" unplanned bivy.

meat must be rested after cooking so that the juices don't come out upon serving

mmmm, smorgasbord

It's better than whatever prez candidate from ten years ago or so doing the Macarena on natl TV.

What if your schedule is double-booked?

I'd have to say patents are a good thing. It lets industry focus on developing technology with some assurance that a competitor won't market their inventions without having spent the research costs. Otherwise, something like the academic paradigm with obtaining grants and funding would need to be used, which results in much slower progress, due to more limited capital and much time spent begging for money. Additionally, the incentives for academic research are less than the incentives for industry research -- the former won't make you / your company billions of dollars.

There's some good Soviet jokes on this page: http://www.geocities.com/troys_tales/jokes.html

Very interesting read! Thanks!

There are lots of people who don't take up mountaineering until their forties.

I dunno what bstach is trying to say, but I can offer the following related advice: - When you're first learning to place gear, don't climb anything you're likely to fall on - When you're climbing on low-5th blocky terrain, understand that most every fall above a piece of gear can be an ankle buster -If you're taking over an hour to lead a low-5th pitch and there's a party behind you, they're gonna be pissed I personally like having along some hexes/tricams for multipitch moderate trad routes for anchor building. Saves your cams for the climbing. Which cams you'd want to acquire first (you should get a set of nuts before getting any cams) depends on what you're planning on climbing... around here, I'd say red & yellow camalots (1 & 2) then yellow & orange tcus then green camalot & blue camalot (.75 & 3) then blue tcu then #4 camalot you can bias the order to whether you think you'll be climbing desert cracks, compact alpine rock, etc. don't worry about doubling up yet -- let partner help out with that. if there's one piece i place more often than anything else, it's probably .75 camalot (if it's #1 camalot ground, it's a handcrack and doesn't need as much pro)

the site has an injunction against it preventing the domain name from being used, but it can be accessed directly at http://88.80.13.160/ basically it provides an anonymous means for whistleblowers to post leaked documents and analyze and distribute them, and of course, some powerful folks don't like that. will be interesting to hear how this plays out in the courts (not that they can stop it -- it's easy to mirror sites internationally)

The website http://www.juicycampus.com/index.php has ruined students' privacy so much that now there is a backlash, with college students wanting to ban the site! They had the ultimate freedom to post anonymously about who was sleeping with whom, and the public nature of it (even though it's not google-able) scared them silly!

those kneepads are hilarious