The Stump

These are pictures of my fish. His name is Poopsmith Longshanks, or Poopshanks for short. He is a betta that lives in my office.

See Homestar Runner for part of where his name came from. His predecessor was The King of Town.

Last weekend (July 15) I went on a backpacking trip to the north unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park (Achenbach Loop) with my friend Nathan Cantrell. It was beautiful day for a hike, though a little hot. I guess it was 108 degrees.

I used to hike a lot in the Negev Desert of Israel, so this was a normal thing for me. . .at least that's what I thought. It turns out that I'm not in as good of shape as I was 5 years ago. The first 10 miles of a 17.5 mile hike kicked our butts.

Since the heat was so intense, we had to carry more water than normal; totalling 18 liters. For you English system types, that's 4.76 gallons. Needless to say, our packs were rather heavy (just the water was 39.7 pounds). This caused a problem for Cantrell, since his pack was too small and wasn't distributing the weight properly. At the end of the first day we decided to hitchhike back to the car.

We were amazed that a car came driving 20 miles into the park after dark (the car came because we prayed). We caught a ride back to the main campground where our car was (we planned to camp in the back-country) with a couple of East Indian guys. We had a blast to hanging out with them for the 20 minute car ride back. One guy had a beard and was wearing a big black turban. Too bad I didn't get a picture...

Another thing that made this an interesting hike was that the buffalo were in rut. I normally don't concern myself with herd animals much, but I wasn't going to press my luck with any horny bison bulls. We had to be very cautious on at least three occasions when the buffalo were right on the path. I was very close to them on some occasions, but taking a picture was the last thing on my mind at those times. They grunted a lot and smelled very strong. It was nerve racking at times when I could smell them, but not see them. We obviosly made it by without getting charged!

AIDS transmission is much lower in men who have been circumcized. See article.

Let's say you are a CEO or something big like that, and you have many millions if not billions. One day you decided you wanted more, so you started making your accountants and auditors fudge the numbers in order to get even more millions/billions. Then you get caught with much publicity and the whole nation despises you universally. After a long and drawn out legal process you get booked with many years in the big house. Would this not be the prime time for you to stage your own death (assuming your scruples were not violated by doing so)?

I've gotta wonder about that when I read this about Enron ex-chief executive Kenneth Lay who apparently died a couple of days ago.

Is he really dead? A hundred million bones can buy a lot. . .

PS - If only Hank Greenberg and AIG had gotten the publicity that Enron and Worldcom (that's MCI to you) had. I suppose that was hitting a little too close to home for the business media to condemn too harshly.

I thought it was great how this Economist article described Google:

the world's most valuable online advertising agency disguised as a web-search engine.

It's the fourth of July today, and we finished rebuilding the deck on my condo. I decided to go with the Ultradeck artificial boards on the top, and they ended up being way cheaper thanks to the timing of my marginally whimsical decision to put new boards down (they were on sale!). Thank you, Jesus.

This calls for a DECKABRATION(= Deck Celebration). Pictures to come.

I haven't decided if deckabration should be spelled like so: decabration. The difference being that the second spelling calls for 10 different celebrations instead of just one.

Jordan Berg deserves all of the glorious recognition for coming up with the deckabration name.

I posted some pictures just now, silly ones and some from my Boston trip.