Aimless Wandering

I used to think that e-Bay was the home to the truly weird stuff for sale on the interwebs….

Turns out Amazon is just as bizarre…

Why there’s the Badonkadonk Tank yours for just $19,999.95.

A UFO detector for just $94.95

Oh, and don’t forget the Uranium Ore for the low price of $22.95.  Great news everybody! You can get the Uranium Ore AND a Futurama DVD together for just $38.94t

Sit back, relax and check out this old video of the PBA skills challenge. It’s got some amazing shots - and of course some good trash talking too!

What I want to know is how you convince a bowling alley to practice these shots?

I’ve seen lots of people GET a 7-10 split, hell I’ve gotten lots of them myself. Picking one up, well that’s a different story. It can be done, check out this video of Mark Roth picking one up. It’s the first time it was ever done on television:

No less amazing - Walter Ray Williams picking up the 4-6-7-10 - again a first time on television.

There’s been a spate of weird cell phone stories passing through the tubes this past week.

Originally I thought this one in The Register about the dead Malayan man who managed to rack up $218 TRILLION US in cell phone charges - at least according to his cell phone company that is…  His surviving son who received the bill and a note insisting that he pay the bill in 10 days or “get a laywer” says he can’t wait to face the legal action that Telekom Malaysia is threatening.  BTW that phone bill is about 17 times the GDP of the United States!

Now, I hate Verizon Wireless.  No, I’m not a subscriber and never have been.  But I’ve researched the plans, read the reviews and heard the horror stories and long ago was convinced that I didn’t want them for a cell carrier.  Well Pocket-Lint is running the story of Corey Taylor who realized that Verizon Wireless was evil after signing the contract to give up his first born as well as three pints of blood a month for the next 3 years (ok maybe it wasn’t that stiff a contract) and went looking for a way out.

His solution…  Death.

He didn’t kill himself - although he did create a fake death certificate and convince a friend to fax it to Verizon on his behalf…  Verizon however caught wind of the scheme and forced him to pay the $175 early termination fee.  My guess as to what gave it away- Mr Taylor probably called Verizon to confirm they received his fax!

So I took The Boy over to the annual airshow today.  We only spent two and a half hours there but considering that the trip cost me all of $3 for parking, $5 for drinks for the two of us and another $5 at the end for a toy plane as  a reward for good behavior, I think it was a decent way to spend the morning.

There were a lot of planes on display, and The Boy did a really good job waiting in line to check out the planes we could climb in to - he did much better than I would have expected a four year old to do…

I don’t have any pictures because The Wife took my camera with her to Alaska, and well she conveniently couldn’t find her camera before she left…

But while we were waiting to board an old Soviet built passenger plane there was a model airplane demonstration going on that was fascinating.  One guy was flying an electric powered model of the Boeing 777 airliner, that was all well and good, except I’ve never seen (and don’t expect to ever see) a 777 flying upside down!  Or for that matter doing barrel rolls!

There were several models of WWII vintage fighter jets that were just stunning in their detail - and sound.  There was also a rather large - 5 and a half to 6 feet long- model of a stunt plane that was flying in circles balanced on it’s tail!

There other flying models that caught my eye were the helicopters.  They didn’t appear to be detailed in any special way although they spent most of their flight time - upside down!  The announcer was talking about how maneuverable the helicopters were, and that they were built so well that they could do maneuvers that real helicopters couldn’t…  Actually I think the reason why real helicopters don’t do some of the stunts these models were doing is because a real pilot would have been smeared across the windscreen from the G forces being imparted on them.  Besides the loops and rolls, these helicopters were flying balanced on their tails snapping back and forth as if on a rubber band.  It’s impossible to describe how these things were flying, as I was standing there and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Model aircraft has always been something that has fascinated me.  But the price and stress of owning and flying such impressive aircraft as these has always kept me out of the hobby.  Some of these aircraft cost well over $1,000 and several hours to build - and the thought of trashing something like that thanks to a botched landing is just too much for me to handle….

If you haven’t heard, there was a HUGE accident on Sunday not far away.  A tanker truck exploded and caused a major interchange to partially collapse.

The driver survived, which was amazing enough.  But apparently after the accident the driver WALKED almost a mile to a gas station where he encountered a cabbie who helped him.  The truck driver said he didn’t have a cell phone and he kept walking because nobody would stop to help him!

Click below for the video from the local NBC affiliate:

http://video.nbc11.com/player/?id=97289