Hmm, I guess we're collectively unhelpful. What's your budget?

I think I do this every year, but what do you get a guy for christmas? my cousin is 30 this year, and I have NO idea what to get him... I might cop out and just buy movie passes, but that seems rather boring...


so, ideas anyone? what do you GUYS want? maybe that'll spark some inspiration...


or I could try and find out if they have a smaller version of this thing more in keeping with my budget: The ONLY Radio Toaster.

$40 isn't a whole lot to drop??

that's practically FREE!

it includes frames AND lenses?

man, I think I paid something like $350 for my last pair, but they were 'high tech' thin lenses... thank goodness for health insurance.

Has anyone ever bought prescription glasses online? I got pointed to this post this morning, which goes through the process step-by-step and is pretty positive about the result. (And you can't beat the price.)

That led me to Glassy Eyes, a blog devoted to the purchasing of eyewear online, and they're very positive about stores like 39 Dollar Glasses and Goggles 4 U (the latter of which has a name that doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but boasts free shipping anywhere and packages starting at about $25USD, and is well-reviewed by Glassy Eyes.)

In any case, I'm curious now. I mean, $40 isn't a whole lot to drop on prescription glasses. I'm thinking about giving it a shot, but I'm wondering if anyone here has had any experience with this kind of thing before.

George bush does yoga!

okay... another concert:

Hawksley Workman is coming March 24 to the WINSPEAR. This should be an awesome show. The Orchestra section has already pretty much sold out.

I will be buying tickets next week... let's say... Tuesday.
If you are interested, please let me know. I'm going to buy for a whole bunch of people, so please check your schedule.

Gah! Darn no speakers on this infernal machine! I'm going to have to watch at home.

I'm SO making my dad watch this!

awesome video.

How It All Ends:

I intended to post this once I finished reading them all, but I don't think that's going to happen for a little while. In any case, NASA's got this great page called the Don Pettite Space Chronicles, where the science officer on the ISS wrote about this and that. Some amazing and mindtwisting experiments, and the writing is really quite good, too. A short piece:

The Smell of Space

Few people have experienced traveling into space. Even fewer have experienced the smell of space. Now this sounds strange, that a vacuum could have a smell and that a human being could live to smell that smell. It seems about as improbable as listening to sounds in space, yet space has a definite smell. Being creatures of an atmosphere, we can only smell space indirectly. Sort of like the way a pit viper smells by waving its tongue in the air and thenpressing it to the roof of its mouth where sensors process the molecules that have been adsorbed onto the waggling appendage. I had the pleasure of operating the airlock for two of my crewmates while they went on several space walks. Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn't quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces. It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as "tastes like chicken." The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.