Kravlor.com - The Personal Site of Mike Bongard

In This Economy...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:10:22 -0500

... you might be earning as much interest on your cash by stuffing it in your mattress instead of leaving it in the bank.

Just don't throw it away.

A Product Warning Obviously Not Written By Lawyers

Wed, 20 May 2009 21:29:07 -0500

From HDTV outdoor antenna instructions:

WARNING
Do not attempt to install if drunk, pregnant or both.
Do not eat antenna.
Do not throw antenna at spouse.

That made my day.

A Simple Comparison

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:00:35 -0500

I've been asked to give a talk at my alma mater in a week. (Abstract!) I'm looking forward to it!

While reviewing my slides I'm putting together, I ran across these fun facts:

Highest elemental melting point: Tungsten (74W), ~ 3,400 C
Temperature of Sun’s surface ~ 6,000 C
Fusion reactor: ~ 20,000,000 C

This is why I like fusion. And preparing talks like this -- because it reminds me just how awesome it is to be working on real fusion devices. :)

Time to be (even more) Proud of My Dad -- One of MN 2008 Lawyers of the Year!

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:11:06 -0600

The title says it all. What an honor!

Dad's been working this case for quite some time, and it's still going on -- sometimes, seeming like a dramatic courtroom novel instead of being real life.

Links:

Minnesota Lawyer
Firm Press Release

Way to go, Dad!

So, I joined Twitter

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:51:15 -0600

Now people have another way to keep track of me. On Twitter.

I'm still not sure if this will be useful, but I'll give it a shot. I mean, if my various blogs aren't enough, or my Facebook account, or an email, or a phone call, now you can see limited character sporatically-updated "tweets" about what I'm doing without any actual interaction with me personally. :)

Not to be harsh. I figure with a shiny new phone that has Twitter integrated, etc. it'd be nice. But for now, my cell phone is just a phone. (No camera, Internet, or anything!)

This is Me

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:56:54 -0600

Today's XKCD totally is related to me.

I use TrueCrypt on my laptop to achieve whole-disk encryption that's NSA-proof strength. Why? Primarily anti-theft; I don't want my personal files used/abused in any way. The typical thief will see the "enter password" on bootup and either give up or reformat the disk drive. (The 10% speed boost resulting from its installation was a great benefit, too -- good work Open Source software engineers!)

Still, it offers peace of mind against theft. That the same software offers all the tinfoil-hat precautions like secret hidden partitions, etc. with plausible deniability, is certainly great. Still, this comic totally captures Kristen's sentiments:

Oh my goodness Mike, that is so you.

I'll get the wrench.

Saddlebacking

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:13:40 -0600

I've received an invitation from America's best advice columnist Dan Savage to help enshrine the new definition of the verb "saddlebacking." Just like the Savage Love-defined "santorum," we've got a new word to represent interesting dirty concepts.

Please feel free to view the new definition (NSFW!) at saddlebacking.com.

Other Dan Savage-related news: I stumbled across this fun clip of Dan Savage on the Colbert Report where he manages to make Colbert lose his composure. (Not bad!)

Sometimes, I miss cable. :)

Bombadil, I hardly knew ye

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:56:27 -0600

Just a little stumbling on the WWW today yielded a rather fascinating, in-depth analysis by Gene Hargrove of who Tolkein's Tom Bombadil really is.

Why would I end up reading such a long, in-depth analysis? Well, it's primarily because I always found Bombadil's presence annoying in the LoTR. He always seemed out of place -- and I could never get over the fact that he had tremendous power over the Ring: immunity to its effects; seeing Frodo while wearing the Ring; and even making it vanish.

Hargrove's argument is that Bombadil and wife Goldberry are in fact two of the Valar: Aule and Yavanna.

And boy, does it make sense. At least, it makes sense to total Tolkein nerds like myself who have read the Silmarillion more than once. He does a great job of pulling together writings of Tolkein's letters, the Silmarillion, and others, fitting things into place.

And it now gives me a nice, consistent view which explains Bombadil's power over the Ring.

A Spontaneous Moment of Hilarity

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:16:50 -0600

My wife and I had a fun moment this last week that I felt was worth sharing.

We received a small decorative hot-air popcorn making machine that is essentially a scaled-down version of a movie popcorn maker. Our first trial run of it was this last week, while we prepared to watch some well-deserved "24" man-opera action.

I had set it up to run by itself and found that it made a big mess all over my kitchen counter -- popped kernels of corn were all over the place, presumably because I didn't have a correctly-sized bowl to catch the popcorn. So, for our second run, Kristen had me wait and hold the bowl at an appropriate angle to catch all the kernels on their way out.

And therein lay the fun.

You see, shortly after one minute into the next popping exercise, with me standing at the bowl, I saw that the popping kernels were also causing a sizable fraction of unpopped kernels to be blown out of the popper. "That's strange," I thought, "since my last bowl didn't have lots of kernels all over the place." I kept staring at the bowl with more and more kernels piling up when it hit me.

Literally!

All those unpopped, superheated kernels which I had so efficiently been catching started violently popping all over the place. The entire bowl started erupting popcorn all over the kitchen floor, our countertop, my hair... everything.

As soon as we figured out that what was happening, it was too late to stop, so we just laughed along while the bowl was doing its thing.

We didn't get a big yield of popcorn, since it was all over the floor and ourselves, but it was enough to get us a light snack between commercial breaks. The next time, though, we used a towel too. :)

A Blast from the Past

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:40:13 -0600

Today, I ended up conquering an old DOS-based game that was among the first video games I ever played: Miner VGA.

There's nothing terribly special about it. By today's standards, it'd be awful. But on my cousin's shiny new 386 with 4 MB of RAM, it was one of the most fun things I had ever played, partially because it had a) color and b) sound. (The other 'landmark' game of this era for me? Wolfenstein 3D, of course!)

But, things have changed since 1989. (Ah, nostalgia!) The total awesomeness of this game, however, has not. Fortunately, one can use DosBox to emulate it perfectly. I would highly recommend anyone reading this to give it a shot!

A Simple Fact-Check Comparison

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:10:27 -0500

After watching the debate last night, I, like many others I'm sure, was a bit disappointed in McCain's demeanor and overall performance. It galled me that he had the nerve to repeat known, disproved lies from his campaign trail on national TV. I like what CNN has been doing with their 'fact check' work (partnering with FactCheck.org; what I don't like is that they don't summarize the fact check verdicts in the summary, forcing a click-through.

It seems like a pattern is emerging:

Summary of Fact-Check Verdicts for Campaigns
Issue	Campaign	Verdict
McCain health care plan; Business thinks bad idea	Obama	True
McCain: Misjudgment on Iraq ("greeted as liberators")	Obama	True
Obama: Never taken on party leadership	McCain	False
McCain: Not leader on Freddie-Fannie subprime lending warnings	Obama	True
Obama receiving record Fannie & Freddie campaign contributions	McCain	Misleading
McCain's involvement in Keating Scandal	Obama	True
Obama: 94 Tax-raising votes	McCain	Misleading; Misleading
Obama's comments re: Afghanistan	McCain	False
McCain health care plan; $5k credit insufficient for $12k cost	Obama	True

Wouldn't you think that the above presentation makes things a bit more clear?

Missed Advertising Opportunities!

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:17:11 -0500

I was waiting to give my 26th unit of blood yesterday, when I saw something I don't see every day: a blimp.

Watching that dirigible fly around the sky while I was giving blood helped keep my mind pleasantly occupied. Afterward, I was walking back to work and got a better look at the aircraft -- it was for Outback Steakhouse.

Now, I didn't go and get a steak dinner. But I thought about it. And that's more than I can say for every other form of advertising I've been bombarded with lately.

Sometimes, I'm amazed by the collective efforts of the Internet

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:35:00 -0500

In my last post, I wanted to add a little snippet from Seinfeld -- "The Ukraine is not weak!" So, of course, I googled it.

And stumbled onto a site rife with amazingly stupid stuff, which proceeded to eat my spare time this afternoon.

Stupid, but really, really amazing. Check it out.

Pirates! With Tanks!

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:27:26 -0500

Pirates Seize Ship Carrying Tanks, Ammo

It's not often you see news stories involving the following actors:

Pirates
The Ukraine
Tanks

Seriously. Now it's going to be even more dangerous to sail off the coast of Somalia -- because the pirates are going to be armed with tanks!

Ever wonder what a plasma looks like at 33,000 frames/second?

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:18:47 -0500

I just found out in this last week, after being able to borrow a Phantom v. 7.3 camera from PPPL!

Shiny New Movie (2.5 M DivX-encoded AVI)

Pretty darn spiffy, huh? :) Now I just need to write some image processing software...