The Lord of the Blogs

Let's start this on a weird note:

This was my cup at Taco Time. That is a straw. Static is holding the straw to the side. 

This was weird. 

Straws come with a lot of static in America.

Here is a picture of me in my Microsoft Office, using Windows to take a photo of me taking a photo of an Apple with an iPhone. 

If you don't know what any of those words mean, Google them.

Office pranks

We covered a colleague’s office in pictures of my mentor’s face. Here are some samples. Can you find all the faces? (hint: you cannot)

For every face you see, there is an equal and opposite face that you cannot see

We have an injury!!!

America needs public healthcare. Why? So that your first question, when your hand is bleeding profusely, is not “Can I afford this?”, but instead, “How bad is it?"

Harley stands over Chris' deathbed, as Chris lists his life regrets.
Top of the list was that he never participated in that greatest of sports,
Latvian duck-spearing.

Calm down, Chris, that's just the drugs talking

Alright, rant time.

American units

So Americans use imperial .........

.......... not everywhere.

Skis are measured in centimeters. That’s centimeters, not centimetres.

Anything smaller than 1/32 of an inch, they use milli-, micro, etc, meters.

So metric. 

Then inches, feet, yards, miles, etc.

12 inches to a foot.

3 feet to a yard (ish)

About 5580 feet to a mile.

About.

I feel like I should start measuring in furlongs and paying in sovereigns and guineas, just for completeness.

I wouldn’t care if they were even something like a base 7 system, just something with a base. 

But no.

And I won’t even get started on Fahrenheit.

</rant>

American Sports

So I knew about Gridiron, baseball, and ice hockey. 

And of course all the normal sports, but they are normal, so we’ll ignore them.

Gridiron. 

My dad watches some form of football reasonably regularly, and I saw this a lot as a child, and learnt the basic game mechanics. 

Gridiron is confusing to me.

I know cricket too, by the same virtue, and baseball seems weird. 

Ice hockey makes sense, cos it is literally hockey on ice. Nothing else has changed.

But wait, there’s more. 

There’s this thing called Roller Derby. I thought it was cars that had roll cages. 

No. 

A Roller Derby team. A scottish one, at that.

It is a girls’ only sport, which is probably a wise thing, but that’s not to say the girls don’t get violent. From what I understand, it is truly just people beating each other up on roller skates, whilst a couple of girls try to outrun them all. 

Also, Americans love splitting sports up. 

Gridiron is very stop-start. So is Roller Derby. The game is 60 minutes, with two 30 minute halves. So far, so good; that is normal and sensible.

Then the halves are divided up into 2 minute jams …. um, ok.

So you have lots of little games. 

I reckon that if this was an Aussie sport it would be two 30 minute halves and that’s it. Fight to the death for 30 minutes. 

There is also Whirly ball. 

They seriously are not.

I found this hard to believe, but no, it seriously is a thing. 

Lacrosse, bumper cars, and basketball, basically.

Who thought of this? Of all the things to combine, why those?

Though, like I said in that transcript, I can’t talk; I watch things like caber tossing, haggis hurling, the Lifting of the Stones of Manhood, medieval fighting, and other such sports. 

In my defense, these are normal sports (except caber tossing), but if as weird as they are, the concept of throwing a telegraph pole just makes a lot more sense than a velodrome deathmatch with rollerblades. 

I’m now expecting to cop a whole lot of complaint and abuse from sports fans worldwide (well, AU and US) about this.

Skiing

We went skiing at Crystal. I stayed on green runs. Those who know me might be surprised, but these were hardcore green runs (Harley said they bordered on blue) and this is the second time I’ve skied.

It is fantastic though. If I get a full time position here, first thing I’m doing is getting ski gear. 

This is Harley Adams, a.k.a The Bumblebee

Second thing is getting a swanky car, cos I’ll be able to afford it.

What sort of car? 

Think about what sort of car you think I would get.

Think you’re right?

Forget Mercedes.

Forget BMW.

Forget monster trucks.

Even put DeLorean to the side.

I’ve been in a Tesla.

Tesla

Here is a review of the Tesla by The Oatmeal (caution to our younger viewers: strong language) http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla_model_s

Lasath took a Tesla for a test drive and invited me.

Holy cow.

So when I started driving on my L’s in Australia, a lot of friends asked my if I drove manual. 

“No,” I would reply. 

“Why? It’s more fun,” they said.

“I prefer to be driven than to drive,” I say, “And why bother changing gears when my car can do that for me and knows better when to do it?"

(admittedly I ride a bike and know well when to change gears then, but whatever)

Look, to be fair, I see their point. I can understand why manual makes driving more fun for them. Driving is just not fun for me.

But I have now ridden in a Tesla.

Stuff manual.

Forget automatic.

Tesla.

To all those haters who prefer petrol cars to electric, drive a Tesla. 

You know how you accelerate in a petrol car and it isn’t smooth, and it slows and speeds up for the gears to change?

This car has no gears. 

You press the pedal, and there isn’t even a delay (well, a delay comparable to the speed of light, which is negligible here).

You immediately go. 

Very, very fast. 

The engine … no, sorry, motor, is usually silent. Except when you really punch it, in which case it sounds, still fairly quietly, like a plane about to take off. There is no better sound for going fast. 

I will never love another car this much unless Tesla bring out a DeLorean.

Lasath wanted to call it KITT. Fair enough, he watched Knight Rider. 

I would name mine GLaDOS, and from then on driving would take on a whole new level of danger.

The Oatmeal guy wanted to name his Intergalactic Spaceboat of Light and Wonder. 

This is a well deserved name. 

“There’s armor plating, and they added a titanium shield."

Well.

When you can boast that your car has armor plating, and feels like you are about to take off when you accelerate, there is no competition.

 I also understand this car. 

Normally, people talk about transmission, and the this-sort-of-pump and the differential (not an equation, which saddens me), and I vaguely know my way around cars and just guess as to purposes, and occasionally get things right. 

This car makes perfect sense. 

Induction motor? Yep.

Electromag breaking? Got it.

iPad-type doohickey that controls everything like it’s JARVIS? Totally. 

This is also the most configurable car I have ever seen. 

Normally you get wing mirror adjustments, seat adjustments, volume temp and song choice. 

That iPad-thing configures everything.

You can have different profiles for different people who drive it, for all the zillion things you can change about it. 

The only thing missing is more voice commands. 

I might actually name my car JARVIS, just so I can get all Tony Stark on it. 

I agree with The Oatmeal. 

It is a wonderful car. 

It is literally the future. 

We are in the future. 

This is the frunk. Front Trunk. I probably should have called it a
Froot - front boot - but I didn't.

This is the entire car. Notice how small that is. There ain't a stupidly large number of moving
parts, pipes, tubes, etc, getting in the way and breaking all the time.
This is simplicity. This is awesome.

These are the motors.

This is the boot. Or the trunk, as Americans say. There is loads, loads, of room.

Dayumn fine car

This is the fob. There is no key, because you do not need one. You can open car doors
by pressing the relevant door on this thing, including the frank and the boot.
It also opens by proximity, or app.

I think Lasath was sold on this car.

On a side note, I unicycle to work. Some people think this strange. I think of it and perfectly efficient. 

Walking is too slow.

Riding a bike is fast, but has overhead of helmet, gloves, lock, and locking the bike up. 

Unicycling: faster than walking with zero overhead. 

Perfect. 

On a related note, my Portland trip is approaching ………