Which is somewhat strange expression when you think about it… unless you’re in landscaping or something… but it seemed appropriate for letting our readers know that Microsoft corporation has decided that they are interested in php underpinnings that make this technowonder site possible… And so we’re selling out to M$…. i know, i know, i hear the moans of “not another piece of ingenuity being sucked dry to reduce the competition for mediocre M$ products…” But what can I say? Everyone has a price and mine is 20 million dollars. :D
Author Archives: scottsoapbox
A REAL Man’s Engine
In my browsing through the net, I found THE engine swap. Forget about putting an Integra engine in your Civic. Forget about shoving that big block into your Impala. The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel is ALL the engine you’ll EVER need. Let’s compare it with the specs of the enviable Dodge Viper and the new F150 that Ford seems so proud of lately.
| Engine Type |
Ford F150 5.4L TRITON? V8 Cylinder Engine |
Dodge Viper 8.3L V10 Cylinder Engine |
Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C Inline 14 Cylinder Engine |
| Horsepower | 300hp (@ 5000rpm) | 500hp | 108,920hp (@ 102rpm) |
| Torque | 365 lb/ft (@ 3750rpm) | 525 lb/ft | 5,608,312 lb/ft (@ 102rpm) |
| Fuel Economy | 14 / 17 mpg (City / Hwy ) | 12 / 20 mpg (City / Hwy ) | 75 FEET per gallon (estimate) |
Awesome! Now THAT is some POWER! Of course, it’ll be killer at the pumps with record high gas prices around the country… Oh did I mention that the RTA96-C was designed primarily for use in very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them.
Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. Some facts on the 14 cylinder version: Total engine weight: 2300 tons (The crankshaft alone weighs 300 tons.) Length: 89 feet Height: 44 feet Even at it’s most efficient power setting, the big 14 consumes 1,660 gallons of heavy fuel oil per hour.
Guest Writer Jeff: Buying Baby Clothes
My brother wrote a short narrative about his recent adventures buying baby clothes. It was so good, I had to include it on my site.
Today I bought my first baby clothes. You see, I wanted to surprise Elizabeth, to show her I love her and our daughter. And as a show of solidarity between us. The pregnancy is very real for her (as it should be). The child is actually growing inside of her. She can feel the baby moving and kicking. I cannot. She is ?showing? now, as they say. But it really wasn?t until the ultrasound that it became real for me. To see our baby moving, to see her spine and fingers and toes. Wow. It was amazing. To find out she is a girl. This was quite a surprise. The historical ratio of males to females in the Kuban family is almost 3 to 1. My grandmother had to have nine kids just to get two girls. There are about 7 girls out of 25 grandkids. Our money was on a boy. However, almost everyone we knew told us we were going to have a girl. Though I?m not entirely sure why. ?Jeff needs to have a girl.? ?It would be good for you.? ?You don?t know what it?s like.? True, I did grow up with 3 brothers and a youthful dad. But it took a while to deprogram our mom into a mother of 4 boys. I?m just kidding, she was always a wonderful mother. And I will also agree that there were quite a few times that I did not understand her at all. For instance, her daily ritual of going out onto the deck and screaming ?Save me Jesus!? and ?Take me now Lord! I?m ready!? Hmmm?. My mother still wore dresses and makeup. She had 87 purses, and sweatshirts with sequined snowmen. All hallmarks of womanhood, right? Not enough, apparently. And then I got married. Don?t get me wrong, I love being married, and I love my wife, but isn?t it enough that I live with one irrational, emotionally-driven, estrogen packed being? How would another one ?be good for me?? How would having a girl rid me of all life?s problems, and set things right again? Or do they say it just to watch me squirm? Do they get some kind of sick pleasure out of telling me I? m not going to get what I want? Like the insane old lunch lady who would ask if you would rather have pizza or the pimento cheese sandwich, to which you would of course reply ?Pizza,? only to have her turn around and say ?Sorry, honey, all out of pizza. Here eat this yellow paste with red and green spots in it that we call ?cheese.? Bwahahaha!?
Any how, on to the baby clothes. It would be a nice surprise. A way to show support. Besides, how hard could it be? I know what is ?cute.? I?ve seen babies with nice outfits, and babies with hideous ones. So I went to Old Navy: trendy clothes without the trendy price. I walked past the men?s section, and women?s, and came to the section that I have managed to avoid my entire life: the baby section. And not just a general baby section, but the one for baby girls. Immediately, I was engulfed in pink and purple. I felt out of place instantly, even though I tried my hardest to look as though I belonged. Like the freshman on the first day of classes who walks two miles out of way because he ?knows where he is going.? He looks at room numbers out of the corner of his eyes, and after taking a wrong turn will dart into the bathroom like that is where he meant to go. And after sitting down in a classroom will not leave even if it is History of the Feminist Movement. And that is certainly where I was today. I was the guy who failed to realize why there were not any urinals in the bathroom, who went one aisle to far in Walgreen?s, who did not see ?nursing mothers only? on the door. Retreat! My mind screamed. Cut your losses, and go home. Tell Elizabeth you went but couldn?t do it, she?ll understand. It?s the thought that counts, right? And then I was hit by the flood of realization that this would be my plight for the rest of my life. Just wait until puberty, my sadistic mind taunted. This ain?t nuthin?. True. So with the thankfulness that I could postpone infinite amounts of embarrassment for at least 10 more years, I endeavored to persevere. It took quite a while to find a suitable size. Having no prior experience with shopping for babies, I had no idea what ?2T? meant or up to ?23 inches.? Well, I could guess on that last one. Thankfully, Old Navy also included approximate age. Since I could unquestionably say how old our daughter would be when she was born, I looked for ?0.? I found Daisy Dukes for newborns, tank tops for newborns, and a plethora of dresses. I needed to narrow my search. No pink, I thought. Elizabeth has mentioned that before. No winter clothes. No Winnie the Pooh (I don?t know about you, but having Pooh Bear all over the walls, and bed, and clothes, and dressers, and toys has always kind of disturbed me). So what?s left? Ah, here we go. A bodysuit thingy. Blue is for boys though, right? Don?t want my daughter confused before she?s 1. What about white? Come on. You can do better than that. What about these? A t-shirt with some pants. Easy enough. ?The pelican likes to fly in the sky? one of the shirts proclaimed. So? Besides, it has a little too much glitter. Crocodiles? Despite the shirt?s version of how crocodiles behave (apparently they like to build sand castles), I seem to remember them being a little less cordial. (Again, we?re trying to minimize confusion.). Only a couple left. This one has big face of a cat on it. Now, I?m not the biggest fan of cats, not to mention the purple leopard print pants, so I declined that one too. Here we go! A nice happy elephant, with striped pants. All the elephants I could remember were happy (except for the ones in the zoo, or course). And it looks fun. Triumphantly, I took my chosen item to the checkout line. The clerk looked at me with the most dumbfound expression I have ever seen. She slowly scanned the outfit, while looking at me as though I had a little finger growing out of my forehead, that was happily wiggling ?Hi? at her. I gave her my card, and she scanned it, still staring at my forehead finger when the register beeped. She looked at the baby outfit, then back at me, and asked ?Would you like a gift receipt?? To which I cheerfully replied, ?That won?t be necessary.? I signed on the line, and she gave me my bag. As I climbed into my truck, I looked down at my bag and sighed.
The Buffet
I have long since reasoned that there is a buffet in the women’s restroom. Follow this logic: When you take a girl out to eat, she goes to the bathroom (sometimes several times) where she stays for long periods of time, and then she hardly eats anything during dinner. So… there must be a buffet in the women’s restroom. ;)
Learn Your ABC’s In Graduate School
We need education reform. In this country the average age to graduate from school is 25 and it’s trending toward 30. Our country’s reluctance to tell anyone they didn’t make the cut has caused a massive reduction in standards across the board in education. This reduction of standards has watered down the value of each level educational attainment — thus causing the need for higher levels of education to compete for the same job. This need for higher levels of education and our country’s reluctance to tell anyone they didn’t make the cut has led to a lowering of standards that “doesn’t leave anyone behind” which has watered down the value of that level of educational attainment….
This maddness has got to stop! “Not everyone is college material” used to be a meaningful phrase from days gone by… it has been replaced with not everyone is phD calaber material because soon you will need a phD to get a normal professional career job… or perhaps just a Masters and a Law Degree… Which would be great if it still meant what it used to mean to attain those degrees. Instead we are “educating” people for 30 years to be able to effectively maintain the status quo in a middle management job. We should be trending towards full education by 20 years old. Imagine the economic benefits for the individual and the country. Instead of lowering standards and letting everyone through – which forces the first half of each institutions curriculum to merely reteach everything that you should have learned in your passed institution and hope that you learn it this time -we should be raising them. Then at least 50% of schooling could litterally be thrown away without any sacrific in lost knowledge. For instance, instead of having 2 years of “core” classes during undergrad that reteach everything that should have been learned in high school – instead of reteaching everyone – we would only re-teach those that didn’t learn it the first time. And we re-teach them where they should have learned it: in high school.
To use a fake example: The institute of running shouldn’t have their walking class slowed down by people that haven’t learned how to crawl, because they didn’t learn it in the crawling classes offered at the walking institute due to the fact that no one is held back at the institute for crawling lest we hurt someone’s feelings. I mean why hurt someone’s feelings when we can undermine the entire educational structure instead. The crawling institute should teach crawling. The walking institute should teach only walking as there exists another institute to teach crawling and if you need to learn to crawl you should go there. Same with the running institute. Only running. No remedial walking courses. You want to learn to walk go there. When you are ready to run come here.
We should move people through an educational system because they have mastered what we were teaching them – not because they have become a year older.