Last Free Man

Spelunking Tevas

The lake levels in Georgia are so low due to the drought situation that all sorts of things are coming to light.  Original tree stumps from the demolition that began many of these army engineered lakes are seeing the sun for the first time in 50 years.  It feels almost like an alien landscape in some places where the water has been concealing the land below.

(low lake levels linger!)

I have been visiting lake Alatoona my entire life.  Swimming and doing all the normal quirky kid stuff.  I have seen many lake level changes over the years as the Army corps of engineers ultimately decides the water pool levels of this lake.  Never has the lake been this low, and scouting around its perimeter leads to some pretty interesting discoveries.

Today while out with my brother and our lady friends, we discovered a cave.  Deeply embedded in the side of a high outcropping peninsula.  Normally this huge opening would be 20 feet or so underwater but today it was seeing the sun just like the rest of us.  I really can't say enough about the new Teva trekking flip flops.  With the heavy lug soles, and sticky rubber bottoms they are truly extreme flip flopping required gear.  I have used mine to the point of them being only allowed in the garage due to their bear ass smell and mud caking.  Bravo Teva for another high end flip flop!

(Cave entrance flip flop offroad mode enabled)

The cave's opening now root filled and cracking was almost a temptation.  When looking inside you could see at least 30 feet in, with a deep turn downward.  When my brother stood on a steep upper ridge the entire cave face began to fall inward.  Showing its unstable nature right away was enough to persuade me from any attempts at discovery.

There is something really child-like and fun about discovering something as dark and mysterious as a cave.  It speaks directly to my sense of adventure and love of the unknown.  Of course there is nothing like half a ton of crumbling earth coming down in front of you, to snap you back and leave the spelunking to your in game character.  Their is no save point in real life, best leave the heavy adventuring to my online counterparts...

Caving and blogging:

http://www.lastfreeman.com/driving_and_blogging/2008/01/27/index.html

The old man is brave...

My father is probably the most iron constitutioned, brave man I know.  His will is legendary, I remember as a young man just starting out in the electrical profession as a helper still living at home.  My dad would stir in the morning and I knew it was time to wake up, usually about 04:45.  This night I was up very late playing Quake on the old Heat network to the tune of 2AM.  My mom woke me up with the news that my dad was in the bathroom and getting very sick, throwing up.  I remember thinking I guess I'll get some sleep after all, just when I was about to log back on and get back to gaming, my dad pokes his head through the door and says: "you about ready to go?"  I was floored, he is unstoppable.

He has and will eat off of carts in foreign countries, he has also lived to tell the tale of such exploits as: mayonnaise corn stick, Mexican hot dog thing and many other cart creations.  Carnaval 2008 is in full swing in Cozumel Mexico as we speak, and as usual the man is in great form.  Making a mockery of all other touristas as he goes from cart to cart in search of the holy grail of roll-away treats.  This man is legend, not you Will Smith.  The cart man cometh beware ye the weak:

Corn thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j03cqPKvMm4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-hwZPpnso0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhrjkVF5AA8

Hot dog Mexicano:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEfAGwUnmjI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1-xkmS566Y

Misc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=770K8PBZCzY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVy6usEZgWs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ekvWZImtaI

Grunter Hunter

yeah I turned 33, It snowed, ate some good food, story over.  The real truth of the matter is the most exciting thing that has been going on in January for me is my Grunter hunt.  Who is Grunter, you may ask?  A super rare, boar that occurs in the crack that is World of warcraft.  This boar is one of the most elusive beasts in the entire game, (apart from the massive dragons deeply embedded in 4 hours of dungeon, obviously duhh.) 

He is so rare for several reasons, one major problem with finding him is his spawn rate is set at 36-40 hours, that is a massive window to miss something this rare.  This boar also spawns right in front of a major road with a lot of foot traffic.  The boars color is also very different than the others as it is black and sticks out like crazy against the reddish hues of the Blasted Lands.

(More rare spawns, no Grunter!)

I began hunting this boar mainly because I like to tame rare beasts for hunter pets, because they look different than their normal counterparts.  Plus i love the challenge of finding a rare monster, tracking and waiting for spawns is a grind, to be sure.  However when the spawn happens and you see the mob you were looking for its a pure adrenaline rush.

(Note the framerate in these pics a stack of 8800gtx beats the shit out of this game :D)

I started my hunt in early January, just lightly watching the area he spawned in, just in case I got lucky.  After doing a bit of research online, I started to lose some hope because of the insanely low spawn rate.  One pop every 36-40 hours seems almost impossible, but I figured as long as I was getting EXP from the local area it wasn't a total wash.  People questing the area were a constant source of anxiety asking me why i was holding this little hill, or why there weren't any boars around (I'm from the old school of rare spawn thinking, keep killing the placeholders until you hit the jackpot.) 

After nearly 3 weeks of hunting and 30 minute checks almost hourly it happened!  This morning as I was getting ready for work, I quickly logged in.  I have been logging out right on top of the small hill nearby Grunter's reported spawn.  Just like clockwork I killed the two boars that spawn in the same area and just as I look right...  Pop!  Grunter spawns!!

Just a little east of the small hill I have been holding for so long.  I abandoned the temporary pet I had been using and got ready for the tame.  I worried about other players grabbing him so I threw down a freezing trap and stood back as far as I could ready to cast "tame beast."  I put the trap down because Grunter has a nasty ability called knock back that could literally knock you off your feet, interrupt the taming process and allow some other player to steal him.

(I'm pretty sure, I hit every rare spawn in this quest to find and tame Grunter)

As luck would have it he hit my trap right at about 4 seconds, was locked up for 15, and dropped the ice with 1 second of taming left.  Right as I could see him start to glow, an indication he may be about to do knock back, he was tamed!  He immediately went to my side and joined my party as my new pet.  Success!  The Grunter hunt was over!  I wiped the sweat of my dwarven brow and went to work feeling just a little more accomplished this day.  As I was sitting in traffic looking around at all the other hamster wheel slaves, I thought to myself: "how many of you went on an epic hunt this morning?!"

(Grunter)

Again with the snow!

Winter storm watch 2008 part deux!  Uggh I barely have time for work, school, or family what with all the snow issues down here lately, I gotta track this stuff.  The current media frenzy is centered around a damn near computer model guarantee of 1-3 inches of accumulated sexy snow sometime in a huge 12 hour window Saturday.  A 12 hour window!  So I again will climb on my warhorse and begin the careful examination of the frenzy that is snow in the south.

I can only hope for such gems as the hooters girls snowfight or super fancy fur lined vest fashions from a few days ago...  A few live reports from earlier this week follow:

Snow watch 2008

Cats and snow, not so much

24 hour live coverage! Snow watch 2008!

Union county is out of rock salt, milk, eggs, and bread sold out in white county, over in Gwinnett county there is a lack of coats at Hooters!  The madness is now, the coverage cranks up as the snow began to fall at 16:18 in downtown Atlanta.  A light dusting, is slowly becoming a sleety mess as we speak.  The journalism so far has been top notch, with the channel 2 guys running 7 remote reporters, 11 only has 3, while channel 5 is at a 2 currently.  WSB is flexing its mega weather muscle and seeking domination!  They are of course the only true source for reliable information, with a 30 minute update promised every hour and a 04:30 start tomorrow they win!

The rest of you local weather guys better stick up your game!  Cowboy up Ken Cook, you have a porn star moustachdar, now use it man!  Complete local cynical coverage is now over at the Driving and Blogging area, your source for winter weather perspective.

(Local Hooters girls having snow ball fight makes the 5 o'clock news, this is snow madness I tell you!)

Snow Watch 08, it begins...

The snow is coming, wintery mix, sleet whatever.  The current models are saying the rain should begin this afternoon with a chance of conversion to freezing rain or sleet later today.  Just in time for our famous five o' clock rush hour.  People in this state can't drive in the rain alone, I can imagine the threat of a wintery mix, it should make for some real clown car hijinks on the ole' expressway. 

Current radar is showing a front moving in and cool air dipping down, with the ever changing data it is hard to tell what might happen.  This is the best ratings forecast... 

Snow 1 Humans 0

Winter weather hysteria coverage begins now!

As usual the mainstream media myrmidons are battling for ratings as the true source for winter weather news!  It has been almost 15 years since we have had any remarkable winter precipitation, ice storm, or other various snow tomfoolery.  This kills the media markets because that is the number one ratings driver.  The invention of weather emergency and attempts at turning every cool breeze into snow watch 2000, have been comical at best.

As it stands Thursday appears to be a 40/30 day with a 90% chance of rain.  Could it be snow, sleet, or ice?  Only the ultra secret computer models can tell us, one thing is for sure I will be monitoring the local panic and tomfoolery as it unfolds with my own brand of journalism.  I am locked and loaded, ready for the feverish milk and bread runs, the crawlers on the bottom of the screen updating the storm, let’s do this!

Last year the highlight for me was when a local info babe asked the national weather correspondent "why all this cold weather” he replied "its January..."  how this man did not respond with a brick lobbed carefully is beyond me.

The truth is any news story stealing the focus from Hillary’s crocodile tears or the dead person lips of Obama is s plus.  How can you vote for someone with lips like a floating, oxygen starved corpse is beyond me, keep doing what Oprah says sheeple, bahhh bahh the wolf is coming.

Snow 1 Humans 0

Giada Geometry lesson

Geometry (Greek γεωμετρία; geo = earth, metria = measure) is a part of mathematics concerned with questions of size, shape, and relative position of figures and with properties of space.

We are primarily concerned with geometry in this study.  No scientific study, mathematics or otherwise is complete without the basic scientific method.  Theory, hypotheses, and the eventual conclusionary thinking.  I have lived my life ruled by these principals, and have been quite successful in doing so.  My job requires keen troubleshooting daily, the adventures I partake online in the mmo universe also need the method, I make up recipes constantly as well thus requiring further order of study. 

Speaking of food, my primary study today will again focus on a Food network starlet Giada Pamela De Laurentiis.  I must take a second and really applaud the food networks recent shift from an overly preachy health food channel, to  what it is today, and that is a virtual stable of hot milfs cooking up tasty treats under hot lights with cameras at 45 degree angles.  My creepy imagination could have never dreamed up some of the great camera angles they throw at these girls, I can hear the engineers now "we gotta get that pan shot, don't miss the boiling water!"  Yeah it's about pot shots, more like can shots, but I digress...

If the food network would get rid of that BAM guy, promote Paula to president of the world, and cancel that red headed bastard Bobby Flay (gay,) they might just be on to something.  I will never forgive Bobby Flay's ginger ass for embarrassing all of America when he appeared on the real Iron chef and subsequently acted like a small dicked red headed asshole by standing on a cutting board and declaring himself a god.  Ugggh just die already.

With all rants aside I have a hypothesis.  Having been an avid Giada fan I have been carefully studying her geometric profile.  As of late, I have also noticed a major change, her volume is increasing.  In the upper 20% of her mass.  I will continue to observe this trend, carefully documenting the event.  I am establishing documentation, line graphs, pie charts all kinds of scientific shit.  This is my second study of this kind as I was very involved in another Food network mega babe Rachael Ray when we did the Slip science study (we indicates The voices in my head and I.)

My first foray into this examination, geometrically speaking is this little gem of data I recovered while copying some video from my Tivo.  I have exhaustively studied this clip and will continue to do so for many months.  I will update this study as soon as relative data presents itself.  Hey can't I be a guy for just a sec!? 

   

New Years 2008 Blow out review!

New years is all about family, drinking and blowing up big stuff.  This year was no different in fact I would say it was by the far the explosionest, eatingest, familiest one yet!  We found ourselves at the family retreat our beautifully renovated lake cabin overlooking Allatoona lake.  Right away there was surprise and intrigue as we pulled up and realized that as usual my father the "master of surprise" had done it again.  Parked out front was a brand new Club Car electric golf cart!!  Now we could tear around the lake in style with a powerful golf cart for all our adventuring needs.  It was dark, my brother and I had already consumed a half gallon of Rogue's finest, what's left to do but go for a night ride!

Later after some really tasty dinner treats including buffaloed oysters, coconut shrimp, seafood dip, shrimp n' grits and numerous others, it was time for the fireworks setup.  My brother and I scouted around into the night, it was of course another excuse to ride around in the golf cart at high speeds under the influence, a pleasure indeed!  At one point scaling an incline at high speed ejected me from the cart as it almost tipped as my leg hit the safety bar I cracked my Sidekick III into certain doom.  This is what the holidays are all about dumb drunk tomfoolery with my brother.  No one remembers the sitting around the tree drinking egg nog crap, it's the scars you cherish...

Once we decided on a drop zone for the mortars it was just a matter of laying them out and orienting the fuses in the same direction.  Some of the cake boxes this year we blew up were:  boys toys, one perfect thing, saturn missile 750, wild cactus, and a few other smaller variants of the saturn family.  I will say the "boys toys" while very gay in title was interesting in performance.  It was a very different multi stage mortar system with lots of fanning small rounds.  They fired quickly and sequentially in a fan pattern and made a sound resembling a motor scooter.  Lots of color and a sky full of streamers.  I think this is an interesting concept in box mortars, a quiet firework based on color!

We all cheered in the new year at the stroke of 12:00AM.  With my dad's toast to the greatest family in the world I truly think 2008 will be a wonderful year full of joy and wonder!

Videos New years 2008

A few New Years eve videos:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B7636B25930B7DE1