Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver

(link)I would not have heard anything about this had I not heard it on Fox news channel this morning. Basically what this man, Jeff Peckman, is suggesting is that we have a commission of panel of experts to “create a responsible, common-sense strategy for dealing with issues related to the presence of extraterrestrial beings on Earth.”

The Fox News anchors took their turns at cracking jokes and making fun of him, which I think was the only reason why he was brought on the show. This in itself pissed me off. Are we as a country that idiotic to assume that we are alone in this galaxy? Even Carl Sagan, the renowned astronomer, never denied that we should always continue to search and study all claims of UFO’s. While he stated that we have no evidence that extra-terrestrials had ever visited us or will in the near future, we would be fools not to study all of the evidence given.

So these Fox News anchors asked him about how many people thought he was crazy, and if he was a moon-bat, and lampooned his efforts to suggest something that, our Federal government has already done. So are we saying that because our Federal government has done some research that our local governments should not even broach a subject? We have trained emergency response teams for all sorts of things, should not local civic planners at least consider the implications of every “what-if” scenario that they can come up with in order to not be faced with the scenario and not have some guidelines?

In fact that many cities and towns across America did not ever think that someone would fly some planes into the buildings in New York. But now across America small towns now include contingency plans on the happen stance that terrorists would try to destroy a building or a plant or a factory in their humble corner of their state. So given something like this – do we have to wait until an event happens before we at least give some thought to the civic duty of at least developing some sort of plan?

All this man is really suggesting is that we as citizens write up how we should handle situations. Logically it makes sense. We plan for outbreaks of super diseases, asteroids hitting the planet, etc. Why would you want to deny that we should at least discuss a common sense approach to how we could deal with the situation as far-fetched as it may seem.

I guess what bothers me is that people can be so dismissive and close minded that they don’t look at the logical aspects or possibilities. The fact is that we really don’t know our real probabilities of being visited. In the absence of evidence we don’t know if we have in the past or will in the future but we all are truly morons if we are arrogant enough to assume that we are the only ones out of the vastness space out of the billions of billions of stars and solar systems.

Finally, Our Long National Nightmare Has Ended.

That’s right, folks.

After terrorizing our airwaves for six years, Sue Johanson is ending her show.

Maybe now, finally, our long national nightmare may be over. Now, Beerslinger can flip through the channels without worrying about finding her show and screaming “GYAAAH!!! Old Lady selling dildoes, OLD LADY SELLING DILDOES!!!!” (True story about the first time he saw her, and one of the funniest damn things I’ve ever seen.)

Out.

Wetwired Podcast Episode 4- The “Iron Man” Review.

wetwired_radio_small144.jpg

Here, we present Episode 4 of our podcast in which we discuss the latest superhero movie to come out, Marvel’s Iron Man. I also discuss a bit of my history with the character, and why i had to see the movie twice to see the whole thing. This one… well, it could only happen to me, folks.

Oh, and I’ll try to have the next podcast out by the end of the week. We know we’re a bit behind on this one, but we’ll make up for it with a double-shock this week. Don’t forget, you can also subscribe to the Podcast through iTunes.

Out.

 
icon for podpress  The Obligatory-ish Iron Man Movie Review [14:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Gas Prices : Cause and Effect

Let’s talk for a minute about our three political candidates and their proposals for the “Summer Energy Crisis
We have to agree that for every cause or action there is a subsequent reaction or effect. So the proposals so far actually effect us more than we expect.

McCain:
Called for several highly targeted tax cuts and federal spending initiatives. Included were a summer gas-tax holiday that would suspend the 18.4¢ federal gas tax and 24.4¢ diesel tax, and a doubling of the personal tax exemption for dependents, from $3,500 to $7,000

Clinton:
“We will pay for it by imposing a windfall profits tax on the big oil companies,” she said on Tuesday. “They sure can afford it. This is a big difference in this race. My opponent opposes giving consumers a break from the gas tax but I believe the American people are being squeezed pretty hard.”

Hillary will impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use the money to temporarily suspend the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax and the 24.4 cent per gallon diesel tax during the upcoming peak summer driving months.

Obama:
Against Summer Holiday but for windfall profits tax.

Ok, so first of all, we decide to give ourselves a break 18.4cents per gallon. What’s the up and downside? Upside, gas may be slightly cheaper. Downside, our regularly scheduled repairs and maintenance to our bridges and roads won’t have their budget to do their jobs. Where do we get the money?

Secondly, to get the money we tax the bejesus out of the oil companies, who because of demand and the cost of a barrel of oil rising, have made more profit. Some would call it a Windfall Profits Tax. But what about the billions of dollars they lost prior to this year?

Cause:
Tax Oil Companies to Pay for 18cent/gal summer.

Effect:
Demand goes up, price of oil goes up more.

Because consumers see “oh look, we might save some money because of a fed. holiday on gas prices” the normal demand on fuel increases, thus because supply is still short and our domestic oil production is still stagnent, the price of gasoline increases.

I’d like to do the dirty math though to see what I’m really supposed to save. So being that I’m in Austin, what is that math?

Gas Tank: 18gallons
Average Tank Fills Per Month: 3.5
Cost of Premium: $3.77/gal
Cost Per Month: $237.51
Gas Holiday:
.184/gal
Savings:
$43.70
Cost with Savings Per Month: $193.81

So, I’d save $43.70 a month over the summer. Obama stated that it would average out to $28 over the entire Summer, so his Math is fuzzy. But let’s look at what really will happen.

Cost of Gas during the summer: $4.05
(Including Oil Companies Taxation)

Cost to Fill 18 Gallons 3.5 times:255.15
Savings: $46.94
Cost with Savings:
$208.21

So now I’m paying $14.40 dollars more because of the demand of oil, inflation of the dollar, and the summer gas holiday paid for by taxing the bejesus out of the oil companies. Yeah, sure this is all a real good idea.

Where is Dennis Miller when you need him?

You know what this country needs is a jolt. Look we are fighting with these people over there, they’re our worst enemies. They live to kill us. I mean and we’ve got Alaska sitting up there and we bought it for dirt cheap, it’s loaded with oil and yet we don’t go in because there’s like five caribou in there, you know? Screw the caribou! I don’t give a shit [bleeped out] about the caribou! I say you run a pipe in there and suck it dry. The caribou can wait.

Seriously people, lets relax the tax and EPA regulations and boost our own supplies here in the US.

Wetwired Radio: Podcast - Episode 3

Wetwired Radio Presents: Our third podcast. Yay. Ok, after continued stupid technical difficulties, and the fact that we’re slightly perfectionists, we’re glad to have it finnally up.

Topics covered: Austin road trip, new apple macbook, “Yes, I assure you, we’re open”, Clerks Reference, Huts Hamburgers, the Oasis, Apple Store, date, Jenna Jameson, Team Building, the View.

Listen to this via itunes or directly below.

 
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Chillville Sunday

Good Rainy Sunday to you all in Austin.  Today starting off good with yet some more great music from Chillville.  If you’re not in Austin you can stream 101x by going to 101x.com .  Make sure you also help the local Austin Music people by going to The Year of Austin Music.

Expect an updated Podcast from us here at wetwired at some point today or tomorrrow.  Sorry for the delay.

Also remember, head out to Cedar Park to the Exxon on Bagdad Road and get some cheap gas!

Wetwired Updated

Just updated to Wordpress 2.5.1 which contains 70 or so fixes and some security bugs etc.  Additionally they add a hash to the cookies which is specific to the site that makes it harder to hack.  Anyway, you guys won’t notice much, that changes are mostly all back end.

Austin Area Gas Prices

It’s actually interesting, I went to my first non-denominational church on easter of this year.  Now another Church in the Austin area is doing this:

Members of the HighPoint Fellowship, non-denominational church in Cedar Park, will buy down the price of regular unleaded gas to $2.49 at the Exxon station, 1900 Bagdad Road in Cedar Park, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. Customers will get to pay that low, low price for their gas as the church pays for the rest.

Austin-area gas prices hit an average of $3.44 this past week, according to AAA Texas.

The last time Austin-area gas prices were at the $2.50 range was in March of last year.

 

Wow, now that’s cool stuff. I just hope if I manage to get out there, people are respectful when they go to fill up and don’t fight over the lines.

 

New Podcast Soon.

Okay, so here’s the thing.

I have a new podcast recorded and ready to go. New music, even.

However, I just bought a new laptop and this one doesn’t have any ftp software installed yet, and furthermore I need to get some info from Pylorns to get the server info again. (My bad, admittedly, that I didn’t bother to write any of this crap down BEFORE SELLING MY OLD NOTEBOOK.)

So, be patient. There will be a new podcast hopefully within the next 24 hours.

Out.

Wetwired Studios and Podcasting

We’ll I’ve received my professional grade amateur microphone today via amazon. Bundled it comes with a pop filter but apparently those are on back order. Reason behind picking this up is that I needed a better quality microphone from what I had, and who knows, I might do some more phone voice over stuff like I have done before for other companies.  You know the voice behind the “press one for english” type stuff.  

I now understand why there are so many books and gotcha’s out there about podcasting.  Sure if you’re just doing a single podcast for yourself its not that hard.  But if you want music, jingles, to use skype for a dual podcast - then enter the technical learning curve of quantum physics.  Ok maybe not that bad, but yeah, not easy.  Actually certain things are easier to do on a PC than a Mac when it comes to the podcasting, but the better software in terms of quality/editing seems to be for Mac.  I did come across some stuff made for PC that had additional items - i.e. ability to drop small sound effects and wav files into - I have not found that easy function on a mac yet. 

I’m sure after some more time I’ll know everything there is to know about professional pod casting.  You see, when we do something, we want to make sure we do it well, not half assed.  I’ve listened to a couple other podcasts out there and some are good, but a lot lack that professional radio quality - excluding the ones that actually come from a professional source. 

Wetwired Studio

Here is a picture of the setup, microphone hooked up to the macbook.

Wetwired Radio: Podcast 2, Electric Boogaloo.

Wetwired Radio IconWe present to you our second Podcast, where I discuss my venturing into the world of buying a new computer.

Yes, it’s more interesting than it sounds.

Out.

 
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Wetwired Radio: Episode 1

Wetwired Radio IconThis is our first podcast, somewhat of a test, we did this last week but we wanted to test it and have it for you guys to check out.  This podcast talks about Wetwired Radio, PodCasting 3 years too late, Life, Dating, and American Airlines general douchebaggery.  With this first podcast we’ve also dumped out to itunes but it will be some time before the information populates so stay tuned. Welcome to wetwired radio, we hope you enjoy our first test run.

 
  

 
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1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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Is that a drink in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?

Beerslinger Author

 Every bartender, no matter how stupid, quickly picks up on “danger spots”. That’s what we call the signs that a person or persons may cause trouble. The cardinal rule of danger spots is that dogs and drunks are very much the same- they are always braver in packs. Three mildly intoxicated “nice guys”, trying to show off for one another are always more trouble than one severely drunk prick sitting all by himself. I’ve seen this rule proven so many times it is my belief that it should be made a scientific law and placed right between gravity and relativity.

These three fairly well dressed women sit down at the bar and order some food to go. They show no visible signs of intoxication and I have no problem serving them two bud lights and a gin and tonic. Girl’s night out. Lots of giggling and flirting. Lots of drinking. At this time I red light them. This means I intend to cut them off but won’t tell them until they order the next round. Now every bartender hates to cut people off. Especially when they are not power drinkers, rather just people having fun. I was very relived when the food came before the booze ran out, another dirty job i could take a rain check on. As they are leaving i begin clearing away their drinks and find one missing. This has happened before, women trying to smuggle out drinks in their purse and such. I run to catch up with the lady, and realize that she has neither a purse, nor a drink in her hand. The only explanation is that she took it, and my interest is peaked to see where she hid it. When I very politely confront her, she giggles like a schoolgirl and says “caught me, didn’t ya?” In a crowded restaurant she then unfastened her belt and jeans and squatted down.

After a bit of digging around she produced the drink from the front of her pants.

While washing my hands thoroughly and disposing of the glass, I came to two conclusions. One, alcohol can make you do things you don’t want to live to remember the next day. Two, next time I don’t see a glass in hand, or a purse, I’m going to sit down, shut up and leave it the hell alone.

Sneaky Peach:
1 1/4oz peach schnapps
2oz cream of coconut
2oz orange juice
1oz grenadine
1oz sweet and sour mix
6oz crushed ice

Blend thoroughly. Pour into hurricane glass, garnish with an orange slice.

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Ahem… In Memoriam, Charlton Heston- 1924-2008.

83 years old, passed away with his wife of 64 years by his side.

And from all accounts, a hell of a guy. Most people don’t know he was on the stage near Martin Luthor King Jr. during the “I Have A Dream” speech. Not a bad actor, either. He was a man who fought for the little guy, and he will be missed.

Out.

Where are they now? Real Genius

Val Kilmer: Then

and now:

Mitch Taylor:
 

Remeber Kent from Real Genius?

He most recently was in Michael Clayton and this is what he looks like now:
 

Whoa!