Christmas In Pennsylvania

Santa stopped by alright! Everyone was so generous and thoughtful with their gifts.

Pictures Here.

PENNDOT Victory Junction/NASCAR Specialty Plates

PA is jumping on the NASCAR bandwagon with newly released license plates.

Here is an example of one.

The philoranthopic part of all this is that "A portion of the Victory Junction/NASCAR specialty plate fees will go to Victory Junction."

THIS IS THE BEST EVER:

I swear to god this is question and answer posted on the PA DOT website:

"If my driver is no longer racing, is my plate still valid?"

Yes.

You gotta love rednecks!

NASCAR Specialty Plates

Some new pictures...

All Pictures Here.

Will Santa and his 8 reindeer visit your house this Christmas?

Not likely. And for the five specific reasons I have listed below.

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 1 in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4.The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as space crafts reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

This WAS Jeopardy!

Tonight was the end. Ken Jennings lost on his 75th appearance on the popular ABC gameshow. But not before he scooped up more then $2.5 million in winnings.

He averaged more then $30,000 per show, but lost to a real estate broker who looked like she just got out of a 1987 movie. Two miscues in the double jeopardy round by Ken where he was incorrect in giving Alex the correct question started his crash and burn.

Then this final jeopardy question but the proverbial nail in the coffin.



Who knew the question was H&R Block? (besides the girl from Threes Company?)

Of course he went out in style....

Thanskgiving

A very family Thanksgiving.

All pictures here.

Duke Gardens

Duke Gardens, Hillsborough NJ

The whole family took a very nice trip to the gardens today. Thanks Mom for an amazing brunch and to Scott for showing up.

My favorite part was our guide. She was quite high on herself and a little bit.... well a lot a bit annoying. And I'm not just saying this becuase she yelled at me either!

"Sir, sir - can you come in here please. You NEED to keep up with us, PLEASE stay with the group."

My other favorite part was the she said that she had a great niece also named Paige. Her nice was named after her mother whose name was Pearl. You do that math.

Oh well, it was still a great time, and thanks to Beth too for getting the tickets.

All pictures here.

Holiday Gift Ideas

I have been working night and day to get the official "Holiday Gift Guide" up and running! There are many categories to help you pick that perfect gift (right from your chair).

Check it out at http://www.mynextclick.com/giftideas.html!

More Pictures

The "lost Halloween" photos. Click the picture to see all!

30 Years Old

Yup, 30. I have been 30 since April, but we are headed to Matt Davey's house in a few hours for his suprise 30th birthday party.

(I hope he doesn't read the blog between now and then!)

Below is a little something that I worked on for his present.


-----------------------------------------------------------

30 Years Old Isn't A Big Deal!

...or is it?

It takes 30 years:

For a car to be defined as a "classic“
For falling snow to become spring water
For 1,560 Mondays to be finally over
For nylon to decompose
For a Green Turtle to reach sexual maturity
For society to embrace a new innovation
For all the water in the Red Sea to be refreshed
For 360 months to pass
For a saguaro cactus to flower and produce fruit
For a single molecule to reach the stratosphere from the surface of earth
For the Whitebark Pine to produce its first cone
For your mortgage to be paid off
For 10,950 days to pass
For a plastic bottle to biodegrade
For an olive tree to reach maturity
To turn $15,000 into a $1,000,000 in the stock market at 15% return
For Saturn to make one complete rotation around the sun
For 262,800 hours to pass
Before a coconut tree bears its first fruit
For a barrel cactus to grow 2 feet
For a forest to recover after a fire
For 15,768,000 seconds to tick off
For concrete to completely cure
For toilet paper to decompose at 13,000 feet
To form one inch of topsoil
For a uranium atom to lose 1/2 of it's radioactivity

And remember: You are not 30, you are $29.95 plus tax.

*all facts courtesy of google. Click here to see the query.

October/Halloween Pics

Paige at the park in the sand box.

Click the picture or the headline to see all pictures.

They said it flurried last night, but we are unable to verify.

Thanks to Scottie, the attic stairs are installed!!!

See you all soon for Thanksgiving.

Paige at Lowes

Paige at Lowes. Kurt Busch will still win!!!!!!!!!

Give me all your taxes!

A man wearing a George W. Bush mask robs a bank near York, PA. Must be a democrat! Story here

How to spot a *really* rich guy.

Click here

ThatsRacin.com | 10/24/2004 | Ten confirmed dead in Hendrick Motorsports team plane crash

ThatsRacin.com | 10/24/2004 | Ten confirmed dead in Hendrick Motorsports team plane crash: "Ten confirmed dead in Hendrick Motorsports team plane crash

By JIM UTTER KYTJA WEIR AND BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

ThatsRacin.com and The Charlotte Observer


A Hendrick Motorsports plane carrying two pilots and eight other passengers crashed into a mountain Sunday afternoon en route to the Subway 500 NASCAR Nextel Cup race in Virginia.
Ten people were confirmed dead, including four relatives of Hendrick Motorsports CEO Rick Hendrick: His son Ricky Hendrick, his brother John Hendrick, and John's twin daughters Jennifer and Kimberly. John, 53, was the president of Hendrick Motorsports. Ricky owned a Busch Series NASCAR team and ran Performance Honda of Pineville, a motorcycle dealership.
Also killed in the crash were five Hendrick Motorsports employees: General Manager Jeff Turner, Randy Dorton, the chief of the company's engine program, engineer Scott Latham and company pilots Dick Tracey and Liz Morrison. The 10th victim was Joe Jackson, an executive with DuPont, which sponsored Jeff Gordon's Hendrick Motorsports car.
The plane had left the Concord Regional Airport, where the company has a hangar, and was headed to the Martinsville, Va., airport for the race where four of the company's teams were competing.
The plane crashed into Bull Mountain, about 10 miles west of the airport, shortly after 12:30 p.m., FAA officials said.
Emergency teams in Patrick County, Va., responded, but the plane appeared to have crashed in a remote area, said Keith Holloway, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman. Holloway estimated that federal officials wouldn't be able to reach the crash site until Monday morning.
It remains unclear what caused the crash of the Beech 200 King Air plane, he said."

Hendrick Plane Goes Down

A Hendrick Motorsports plane carrying two pilots and eight other passengers crashed into Bull Mountain, about 10 miles west of Martinsville, Va., site of Sunday's Subway 500 NASCAR Nextel Cup race, the FAA confirmed. FAA spokeswoman Arlene Murray said a Beech 200 owned by Hendrick left Concord (N.C.) Regional Airport and crashed about 12:30 p.m. Eastern time Sunday, near Martinsville Speedway. There was no news as yet on injuries or fatalities, Murray said. HMS had four teams competing in Sunday's race with drivers #24-Jeff Gordon, #48-Jimmie Johnson, #5-Terry Labonte and #25-Brian Vickers.(ThatsRacin.com)
AND NBC 6 News TV out of Charlotte, NC is reporting live that John Hendrick, Ricky Hendrick and engine builder Randy Dorton were on the airplane.(10-24-2004)

OBX

A handsome bunch.

Click the picture for all of the photos....

Terror Behind the Walls

Hounted Prison in Philly.

Looking for something to do this October? Check this out.

It was ranked 9th best haunted house in the U.S. this year!!!

Jib Jab is Back at it

This is the brand new Jib Jab animation about our country's political status.

Add a little McGreevy humor - and this is one funny cartoon!

Agent Starling

The birds are really out of control lately! This appears to be a huge flock of Starlings. We had the deck door open and heard what sounded like hundreds of thousands of them. I snapped this picture when something startled them and they took off.

(Get it? Startled them? Never mind)