Shoe closets are the environmental disaster.

So... many months ago I promised my gf that I would build her a shoe closet.  While the original plans were to be a magnificent synergy of engineering and showmanship not seen since Monticello, assuming Liberaci lived there... unfortunately the cost of tempered glass, mirrors, and tract lighting brought it into being much closer to a basic pine board bookshelf that might eventually have doors... as long as I don't have another vehicle that blows a head gasket. (good wood is expensive) Anyways, so there I am in my parking space about to paint this bookshelf for shoes when I decide try something different.  I have a spray gun that is designed for painting cars... but I figure it might work for bookshelves too if I thin out the paint enough.

It turns out it does!  It works great! I was using water based "Lowe's paint the baby room" brand paint.  I had to thin it down pretty good to get it to go through the gun, but it was working fine... until I got the air hose snagged on a corner of the shelf.  I had just taken the top off the feed cup and had just topped off the thinned paint.  The air hose at the end is basically a big rubber spring so when it released it sprung... and I tossed the whole container of paint up into the air.... way up into the air...!  Luckily about half of it landed on my head.  The other half unfortunately landed on the pristine dark black blacktop of the parking lot.  (did I mention it was white paint?)  Yea... so there I was looking at what should have been a small spill spread across the dark black parking lot like it was fucking nanobots consuming the earth!  I had thinned it out enough that this small cup of paint was spreading across the dark surface in a way that seemed to defy reality.  Well no problem... it is water based paint, I can just mop it up.

NOOOOOOO!!!! So I attempt to mop it up, but the added water from the mop just feeds it.  It starts spreading more!  Though it seems impossible, I now have covered about twenty parking spots with white paint.  Remember I live in Florida in a condo.  For everyone here, their parking spot is like their yard used to be before they retired.  They don't keep a pristine green lawn anymore, they keep a shiny black parking spot... and I am spraying everyone's yard with bleach!

I have the parking spot right next to both the complex manager, and the president of the condo association so I can't even pretend I am not the epicenter of this disaster. I am already the asshole lowering property values with shit cars that leak everywhere that I start loudly at 6 in the morning to go to work.  Now, I am going to be the asshole that ruined the beautiful parking lot too.

(Not cut out for condo life. Makes plans to move to Montana ASAP and become a hermit.)

Shit shit shit... It keep spreading.  I have now accidentally painted about half a football field of parking lot with a single cup of paint.  I am the god damn Jesus Christ of paint, who needs your fishes and loafs... I got a cup of white paint... I'll make the world look like Greece! For some ridiculous reason, it seems to be applying ten times better to the oiled asphalt than it was to the sanded wood shelf but I don't have time to think about that now.

SUDDENLY, Some old Canadian Snow Birds Stop to Talk...
"Hey! what you do'n?  You decide to wash everyone's parking spot?"

I don't have time for this right now. I am trying to reduce the number of letters I get from the home owner's association per month!  This isn't going to help... but no one can refuse a polite conversation with Canadians.

So I go with, "Nice work in Sochi, I spilled some paint... enjoy your evening!"  I then run past their Ontario plated Cadillac with a push broom and a hose.  (Everyone already thinks of me as entertainment around hear anyways, oh well.)

I change tactics and decide to advance in a new direction.  No more moping, I'll just filter this shit on it's way to the ocean.  I threw some rags in front of the drain then took a hose and flooded the whole god damn parking lot. I figured the paint will just float along with the water, the water will go to the drain, and the rags will pull out the paint.

Thank god that finally worked, though for a moment it seemed I had made it even worse if that was possible.

I literally washed the whole parking lot and just filtered the paint out with rags before it left for the ocean.

Fuck me... now back to painting this damn shoe shelf...

I did get the first coat of paint done, but then I had to move off to other adventures for the day like walking the Chihuahua and metal detecting for treasure. (only found a quarter)  I still need to put a second coat of paint on the shelf so I might as well leave it close to where I can paint it. Unfortunately, it is really big... too big in fact to fit in the garage anymore.

As an aside, if I learned one thing from the Ukrainians while I was there, it is "build it BIG!"  By nature, I tend to overbuild.  I wanted to leave the shelf in the parking spot overnight for convenience,  but need to put it in the garage to protect it from the rain, but it didn't fit. Yes, that's right... the shoe shelf wouldn't fit in a 4 car garage.  Like I said, it is to big. So, I just put it in public the hallway for now... should be fine right?

Ukrainians go BIG. This is Ukrainians version of the Iwo Jima monument.  A 5,000 foot giantess of victory. It also does not fit in the garage.

Also... these guys did the math... enjoy the statistics.

Graphic from outerplaces.com.

Mars-One, Pooping on the Internet, and Growing new body parts:

Ok, so I know I am stumbling around the internet like a big dumb animal... sorry if I am leaving big dumb animal turds in all of your inboxes.  I have just started a twitter account, as well as a google+ and linked in.  Actually the last two I might have had without really knowing I had them.  It seems google just signs everyone that walks past a computer up for a google+ account and I have really no idea why I had a linked in account.  I have been trying to not click the "Carpet Bomb Everyone You Have Ever Emailed" button when I sign up for these sites... but sometimes they trick me.  So my apologies to your inboxes if I filled them with unwanted mail.

"So, Nick, why the heck are you pooping all over the internet?" you might ask.

Well, it all comes down to the Mars-One Project.  It is becoming more and more clear to me that the only way for this project to succeed is for all of humanity to get behind it AND stay interested in it.  So, I need to shit all over the internet to try and get people aware of it and interested.  Also, and more selfishly, I want you and all your friends to both want to send me and then keep me alive once I am there on Mars!  It would be pretty dire to get up there, then be subject to budget cuts...

So... the five of you that read this blog, please tell your friends.  Hopefully it will snowball, and I will come across as interesting enough that you want to read more of my blog updates as I explore Martian caves and talk about the night life in the first extra-terrestrial village ever.

I guess what I am saying is... Tell your friends to read this... Also, sign up for my twitter account so I can let you know when I have had a few drinks next to my computer and wrote some more stuff on this blog.

Sign up for my twitters at @NickNoreus.  Actually I am only mostly sure that is my tweet account.  If I am dicking that up, someone please let me know.  I am still trying to figure out how to get my flip phone to make tweets.

Alright, this is starting to sound too much like an NPR pledge drive... so let me tell you a story about a shower I took this week!

After work, I cam home, got into the shower... then had this really weird feeling that some other dude had been in my shower!  At first, I couldn't tell why I had that feeling, but after a little bit of investigation I realized that I could smell him!  Academically I knew no dude had been in my shower, but I really could smell this guy and my body tensed up for a fight because it was sure that there was some dude in my shower.

I looked around to see that there was nothing out of place or added to the bathroom...  but still I could smell this guy.  What the FUCK!?

Then I realized... it was me!  I was the stranger in the shower!

That morning I had gone to an emergency back up supply of deodorant and was not used to that smell. (It was a shitty gas station brand deodorant that I used to keep in my glovebox incase I forgot to put it on before work.) When I took the shower I smelled unfamiliar man and my body didn't like it... My body totally went into fight mode.

Then, as a coincidence that is too good for me to even make up, there was a little finch on my Buick that was defending his nest from the reflection of himself in my rear view mirror.  Unfortunately I don't have a picture or video of the finch, but just imagine a little bird very intently blustering on the mirror of the Buick sure that he was in a fight... but still by himself.

Also, XKCD is really bringing it strong recently for the Atmospheric Science crowd these days.  I would prefer not to post so much from the same site, but he is doing a bang up job.

Personally my favorite chart was always the Skew-T Log-P... and also some experimental one I remember from Penn State, but I haven't seen it in years.

Finally, I just want to bring this to people's attention:
Do it yourself cloning kit. Just a bottle of roses lime juice!
After you reed it, consider the implications... Wow!

Roller Derby Babies and Hot Yoga

So last Saturday I got tricked into going to a roller derby practice.  It was supposed to be a practice bout, (roller derby matches are called "bouts") but in reality it turned out to be girls practicing solid roller derby fundamentals like stopping, falling, and skating backwards.  (Turns out they don't wear fishnets and miniskirts for practice either.)  Useful I'm sure, but probably closer to watching a pitcher practice his curve ball than watching batting practice prior to the home run derby if you don't mind my using a sports analogy to describe sports.  Luckily for me it was held in a building on the Fort Walton Beach fair grounds so I started to wander off to look at the old farm machines.

Suddenly a girl skates up to me, hands me a crying baby, and tells me; "Here... Take him outside if you want." She then skated back to practice.

Holy SHIT!! A baby!?!?!?  I am qualified for many things, but being handed a crying baby then left unsupervised is not one of them.  Usually I hand crying babies BACK!... anyways, I figured I like "outside" maybe this kid and I will get along.  As I started walking toward outside... the intensity of the crying increased exponentially.  It got to the point where I was worried about him bursting the top of his head off if I took one more step toward the doors.  I wasn't going to risk that sort of thing so I went back into the practice room where the crying was about what I would consider an intense whimper.

Somehow, I ended up with all the lost children of the roller derby girls, and I was their peter pan!

No not really... basically I just ended up surrounded by the kids and felt vaguely like the only adult and somehow that made me somewhat responsible for everyone's safety. The only game the kids wanted to play were karate and run in front of the track...  perfect...

Eventually a large piece of paper and a dried out set of markers won the day.  I drew a pirate ship... so then everyone decided to draw bigger better pirate ships.  It kept them alive till I could relinquish responsibility for all the kids.  Also, I drew a dragon that was immune to pirate cannons so I also feel like I won the drawing too.

Yesterday I didn't have to go in to work till the afternoon... so bright an early I get asked the age old question, "Do you want to come to yoga with me?"

At first I thought it was a terrible idea... but after a few moments I realized I didn't have any really good reason not to, so I went.  I asked what to wear and was told "as little as possible."  I went with ranger panties and a band shirt I had from high school.  (a marching band that I was in... not ACDC or anything...)

I have never been to a yoga class before.   Apparently there are different types of yoga and this is what they call "Hot Yoga."  Let me describe it... We got there and an old hippy lady rents me a rubber mat for 2 bucks.  The way they clean this mat is not totally apparent, but whatever... Then I go into the "studio."  It is sweltering.  Like breathing butter.  Probably this is part of the experience to simulate the open air yoga studios of the interior of India.  That is how I rationalized it anyways.  Also, it was filled with beautiful young women wearing skin tight cloths.

Immediately I started to worry!  Why would my very possessive and willing to slap me in public girlfriend bring me to such a place?

Admiral Ackbar knows... "It's a Trap!"

The next hour and a half was watching the old hippy lady perform feats of strength and then failing to emulating them.  Also sweating... did I mention that rubber mat?  When you combine that much sweat and a rubber mat, you have effectively made a Slip'N Slid.  Yes, so all the balancing has to be done on a slip'n slide.

So... Hot yoga  = doing feats of strength surrounded by girls in tight clothing while playing on a slip'n slide.  I'll probably be attending again soon.