From Nobel prize winning physicist Kip Thorne’s 1994 book BLACK HOLES AND TIME WARPS. I was forced - FORCED, I tell you - to order three inexpensive wooden meter sticks from Amazon just so I can do this in real-life.

Get three meter sticks: that’s a measuring stick like a yard stick, but it’s one meter long, it’s divided up into one hundred centimeters, and every centimeter is divided up into ten millimeters.

(A couple of winters ago I was driving home from work in the dark in a bad snowstorm and I passed a county dump truck with a snow plow blade rolled over on its side in the median, its chains clearly visible on its tires. Sometimes it just doesn’t matter what equipment you have, you’re screwed anyway.)

Eh. Denver Colorado. All seasons is what I did for decades. Then, Subaru WRX. Now I have two sets of wheels, one with the OEM tires, one with Blizzaks. Takes just a few minutes for the tire shop to swap them. I worry a lot less.

I think I was carrying a Glock 23 that day. Now I’d probably use my HK VP9.

The instructor was all about choice #1 being avoiding a confrontation in the first place. I totally get that. Just don’t let yourself get into that situation if at all possible.

Years ago I took a tactical shooting class. Here’s what I learned that’s pertinent to a knife wielding attacker. A handgun has a useful range of about the length of a car or the width of a room. Any further than that and either you won’t hit your target or you won’t do enough damage to stop your attacker. If you’re…

Similar story with a five year old Goodyear Assurance Tripletred on my old Subaru Legacy GT. Alls well that ends well, but it could have turned out very different, coming apart on Interstate 70 during rush hour within sight of my exit.

No jury of your peers would have convicted you.

I couple of years ago, Mrs. Overclock and I were smack in the middle of the second season of DEXTER. Then one evening, we tried to bring it up on Netflix streaming on our Tivo, and it wasn’t there. We grabbed a tablet, noodled around on with the Netflix app, and verified that it has disappeared. Netflix no longer had…

(I wish that woman in the lead stock photo *was* Allison Shoemaker, because then I could ask her where she got those awesome sunglasses.)

This was always how I figured it worked - some kind of quantum tunneling on a macroscopic scale - until they had a Duplicated Kirk, and later a Duplicated Riker, and later a trapped Scotty, and... well, you get the idea. Stargate SG-1 pulled a similar thing: I figured it was a wormhole you just stepped through, until…

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” — James Mattis

I don’t care where the beef comes from or who ground it. I’m getting my steaks medium-rare but my burgers well done. That’s my plan to stay out of the hospital.

This. They make a *great* double feature. And watching them that way reveals how many tropes they share. (That’s not a bad thing, it’s a fun thing.)

... with malt powder.

I like Irn-Bru. Yeah, it tastes like bubble gum crossed with creme soda. The spousal unit and I tried it when we were in Scotland for the first time way back in 1995. From time to time, I order a six-pack, and sometimes a canned haggis as well, via Amazon.com - expensive enough that I only do this maybe once or twice…

You’re doing the Lord’s work here. This has plagued me for eons. Thank you.

We’ve all probably heard that meme “the three most important words in the English langauge are ‘let me help’.” (Did that come from ST:TOS?) But I believe the three most important words are ‘I don’t know’. Much grief could be spared - in our personal and our professional lives - if people were just straight up honest…

I totally believe that this works. I’m going to start using it.