Scott's Case Files

Guys Weekend: Still Alive

This past guys weekend was a real success.  I won't rehash the details, as you can find on The Bratmeister's site as well as Just Plain Jim's blog, but will say that I had a great time and wish that there were more of them.  We're slowly looking at changing how these work and, in hopes of making them happen more often, may morph them into family weekends instead.

One of the things I will bring up from the weekend was playing Rock Band on Friday night.  My favorite song from the song-list was Still Alive, the song that plays as you finish playing the video game Portal.  I'm embedding my favorite cover of that song done on, believe it or not, a ukulele.  The lady has talent - enjoy!

500th Post

Welcome to this blog's 500th post.  Started in September of 2003, that's about 100 posts a year which isn't that bad at all.

And to my loyal readers, I hope to have 500 more...and even more after that.

Opening Day

If there is anyone in Milwaukee that cares less about the opening day of the baseball season, I haven't met them.

Work is putting on an opening day luncheon in the office and even that's not doing anything for me.  I literally won't eat a bratwurst unless it's made by my bud The Bratmeister.  As I've told him on many occasions, he's ruined all other brats for me.  Oh well.

Still, I'm on the cusp of a guys' weekend, so that's a good thing.  Let everyone else have the Brewers - I'll take my buds over them any day!

Motorcycle Awareness Test

Click the link below to take an awareness test.  Sound is helpful to get the full experience, but is optional.

It was used to illustrate why motorists don't notice motorcycles on the street.  The most common motorcycle accident involving another vehicle being a motorist making a left turn at an intersection, cutting off a motorcycle rider who had right of way coming from the opposite direction intending to ride straight through the intersection.  The result is a dented passenger door on the car and a seriously injured or dead motorcyclist.  The kicker is that when such a thing happens, the motorist who has injured or killed a biker gets a citation for failure to yield or some other minor charge and that's it.

Awareness Test

I failed it myself for just the reason stated at the end.

I've Got A Golden Ticket

This weekend is Hops & Props at the EAA in Oshkosh with my friends The Bratmeisters!  Woohoo!

Last year's event was fantastic - a care-free event of fun and camaraderie where the closest thing I had to a worry was whether or not I was drinking enough water between samplings to make it to the next station.  And the sampling glass, which I finally got home recently, was pretty cool.

This year everyone's mobile and uninjured, which is a good thing.  It'll be good to see my friends and spend some time.  It's been too long!

I Walk Alone

I was reading some posts on one of the motorcycle forums that I belong to - Adventure Rider in this case - and came upon an interesting quotable quote.  It was in a post about riding solo and the quote was from Rudyard Kipling (he wrote the Jungle Book - I know you'd have googled it otherwise) and it goes like this:

"Down to Gehenna or up to the throne,
He travels fastest who travels alone"

I took some time to sit back and mull that over, giving it its due.  Many meanings there and most of them really resonated with me.  It's about solitude and seclusion.  It's about gain and personal loss.  It's about tragedy.  It's about goals and their costs.  It's about so much more, but my patience and time is limited.

I really like to ride and travel alone.  I'm on my own schedule - I leave, rest, eat, sleep, recreate, explore, and arrive on my very own schedule and according to my own interests.

I enjoy living alone.  I do what I want when I want and how I want.

I enjoy not being in a relationship.  Maybe that will change, but I know how I feel right now.  Even when I crave companionship, at the end of the day at some point I'll just want to be by myself and not have anyone there to bug me.  I also like doing what I want with who I want without having to answer alot of questions or endure suspicion.

The bottom line is that I think that I'm a generous guy in a few respects at least, but when it comes to my time I'm very selfish.  My time is my time and that's the way it is - I won't get another chance or lifetime or eternity to use it.  My hat is off to the parents out there - taking that HUGE step past just giving of yourself in a relationship.  I couldn't survive with the utter rarity of me-time.

That's also probably a good reason that this blog has worked out so well for me - I share with you when I want to and on my own terms.  And if there's a more me-oriented forum than a blog out there, I don't know what that is.

So I'll get where I'm going (more likely the proverbial Gehenna than the throne) when I want to get there...the trip will just be a lonely one and I'll have no one to share the memories with.  I can live with that.

Oh The Weather Outside Is...Getting Better

For those of you not in the Midwest United States, blizzard weather roared through here a couple of weeks ago though now the weather is at least clearing up.  Having tromped out in the nastiness, I can say that the cold isn't what got you - it was the snow.  It was a "light" snow, so the wind constantly whipped it around into your face, the stinging shards of snowflakes biting into you after a while.  And was it windy!

I actually remarked to a friend at how when I was a kid, I would have loved that weather - I'd be out making snow forts and snowmen in no time flat.  Now I dread the cold and snow like that.  I think I'm old.

My job actually closed down halfway through the day, that Wednesday, conditions were so bad.  So while I was waiting for the bus I snapped a few pictures with my phone's camera to give you an idea about how bad it was out there.  Enjoy!!

Stop Sylvia Browne

Today marks the one year anniversary of the Stop Sylvia Brown web-site.  It is a site dedicated to providing facts - backed up with references - about the so-called "psychic" Sylvia Browne and her multitude of predictions.

Sylvia Browne, for those of you not familiar, is a famous psychic who does everything from private readings to shows where she makes predictions for audience members to starting an actual religion based on her "knowledge" of the afterlife and of god.  It is the opinion of many skeptics, including myself, that she is a fraud who feeds on the insecurities and emotional heartache of her clients and makes alot of money doing it.  She lies again and again, gets away with it, and she knows it.  In my book, that counts her as Evil or something very close to it.

The site is run by a gentleman named Robert S. Lancaster who has done alot for the skeptical community by maintaining this site in as unbiased a manner as is possible.  When she makes a correct prediction (a rarity or due to statistical probability) he notes it.  When she makes inaccurate predictions, that gets noted as well.  When things pop up that she didn't actually do, he makes sure that is made known also.  It's a fair web-site.  It just so happens that her predictions are so severely off that the site, on first glance, appears biased.  In reality, Mr. Lancaster simply calls them as he sees them - for or against Browne.

I HIGHLY encourage you to check out this site (particularly the articles section)and see for yourself what Browne's claims are and how little she has to back them up.

In closing this post, I'd like to quote from Mr. Lancaster's site - I think he says it best:

"I am a skeptic. That means that I require evidence of something before believing it. And, with controversial topics such as psychic phenomena, I would require very compelling evidence indeed.

So, given that:

1. Sylvia Browne steadfastly avoids any scientific testing of her purported powers.

2. Her performances on television seem to be indistinguishable from "cold reading" (a method used by stage magicians and phony psychics to simulate "real" psychic powers).

3. Her track record of "psychic predictions" (as put forth on her web site and on television and radio appearances) appears to be no better than that obtained by educated guesses.

Given all that, I firmly believe that Sylvia Browne has not shown that she has 'real psychic powers', and that she should either prove them, or stop pretending she has them."

Skeptical Moment: Backmasking

Go ahead and take part in a little experiment conducted by SkepticReport.com.  I think that you'll find it interesting and it takes just over two minutes of your time.  Sound is required.

Emo Lawns

Nephew: Uncle, you should get an emo lawn.

Me: An emo lawn?  Why?

Nephew: It cuts itself.