IceMetalPunk - The use of the mask was two-fold - more than one person could use the mask and I am guessing that they did not want to worry about crows waiting for them in a dark alley - remember a flock of crows is called a murder.

"A Murder of Crows" goes into the intelligence of crow in depth - including discovering that crows can distinguish individual humans and warn other crows about the 'evil' humans.

The worst loss I ever had was a REIT but then I had a different one that did pretty well - I listened to my b-i-l and got out of it. I expect to get back in when it is time to reallocate.

And we want that samurai umbrella with a Blade Runner mod - I am a Seattleite

When I was 17 I worked as a driller's aid on a seismograph crew; part of my job was to prep and drop the blasting powder into the hole. Prepping was screwing 3 tubes of blasting powder together, poking a hole in the top one, inserting the blasting cap and lowering it. I would scoop about a half an ounce out of each…

Blame it on the voice coaches - did you hear about the voice coach for Steel Magnolias?

BDubs: sorry but I am struggling with jingling breasts, jingle bells I understand but.....

LED is going to do for bike-liting what baseball cards did for bike/motor sound effects.

That deflexion sounds like the Karatands from Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" - a flexible glove that hardened on impact.

One of the places I used to work, we used the sniglet books to generate passwords. When it was time to change passwords and the new password was chosen, an email went out with b#p#w#. Those were the days of innocence when VAXes ruled and 8 character passwords were unbreakable within a user's lifetime.

Interesting but I just put the sheets back on the bed - problem solved. How hard was that?

There was a series about an ex-wrestler who was on the 1980 US Olympic team (the one Carter boycotted). The stories were mostly about him using his wrestling chops to solve crime. I think it was written in the 70s. IIRC it was a pretty good read until about the 6th book when he took over a cult of some sort.

A caveat - use only plastic soda bottles, do not attempt to reuse glass soda bottles unless you want to make a grenade. I like my sparkling water to *SPARKLE* so I set mine to 60 pounds. Other hints: the colder the water, the more CO2 it will take; don't pre-mix your flavoring before carbonating.

My quick fix for windows that stick when you try to open them or stuck/sticking drawers is to rub the high-friction parts with a bar of soap. An incredibly easy, cheap method to make life just a little easier.

I read that more along the lines of 'fixing' the family pet - once it is fixed, it won't be a bother any more.

I got that he was dating the ex so, yes, maybe you might be going overboard when you use the words 'cheating' and 'girlfriend'.

Think Roy Cleveland Sullivan - he holds the world record for surviving lightning strikes - 7 verified (he says he was hit once as a youth but does not claim it because he was alone). The really, really odd thing is that the 7th time he was struck he woke up to see a bear trying to steal the fish from his creel so he…

All you zombies

We did not have central a/c but we did have central heating so we would run the fans all summer - it would pull the cool air up from the basement and move it through the house. The furnace had a 2-stage fan that sort of behaved like an overhead fan or whole house fans.

When I built my machines, the big savings was that I had a friend who let me into The Company Store so I could get the OS for next to nothing. I was all hot to overclock and all that but I never really did much of that - I just needed a gaming machine. With the cost of new machines being so low, I don't think I…