Ohio man tells executioners “It’s not working” – A double murderer was put to death in Ohio on Tuesday but not until after one of his veins had collapsed, causing the condemned man to sit up and tell his executioners, “It’s not working,” officials said. … Spokeswoman Andrea Dean said the execution was delayed about 90 minutes because technicians had trouble initially finding a site in Clark’s arm for the intravenous line carrying the chemicals. Then shortly after the poisons were supposed to have been pumping into his body, she said, he sat up saying, “It’s not working. It’s not working.” Officials determined that a vein had collapsed. Curtains were closed to block witnesses’ view until technicians found a vein in his other arm. They were then parted to reveal him dying, witnesses said.

An interesting article: MACHINES OF DEATH – With more than 3000 prisoners currently awaiting execution, death row technology makes the taking of a life humane and painless. Or does it?

The current forms of execution includes:

• Hanging – The problem with hanging is that the drop length, hence the rope length, is critical. The desired result requires 1260 ft.-lb. of force to snap the neck. If the drop is too short, the victim strangles–a horrific episode that can last up to 15 minutes. Too long a drop risks decapitation–an equally unappetizing event. To calculate the correct drop length (in feet), the equation is 1260 divided by the victim’s weight.
• Electric Chair
• Firing Squad – Five shooters behind the partition are armed with standard Winchester Model 94 lever-action rifles. Four are loaded with a single Winchester Silver Tip 150-grain .30-.30 cartridge. This relatively light bullet expands well at short distances. The fifth rifle fires a blank. The shooters lean on a rest and fire through slits in the partition. None of the shooters knows who has the blank. What’s the point of the 5th person having a blank? I always thought it was that only 1 had a real bullet and 4 had blanks so they wouldn’t know who shot the guy. With 4 real bullets, chances of you actually hitting the guy is super high.
• Gas Chamber – The gas inhibits the blood’s hemoglobin from transferring oxygen to the body’s cells, causing cellular suffocation. Death occurs in 2 to 18 minutes, often with convulsions as the body writhes for oxygen.
• Lethal Injection – While the condemned may have a peaceful outward appearance because of the barbiturate and relaxant, internally his lungs are imploding and his organs are writhing. Death usually occurs in 6 to 13 minutes.

What isn’t too common for executions is what most people describe as a painless death, or used for suicide or euthanasia: Carbon Monoxide. Some describes it as falling asleep. It just strikes me as odd when there’s this much more peaceful way of killing people, but we still result to somewhat brutal ways like electric chair or gas chamber.

Woman, Son Convicted in Mouse-In-Soup Scam – Charges were filed after a necropsy showed the mouse died of a fractured skull. It had no soup in its lungs and had not been cooked, signs that the rodent was dropped into the soup after its death. Sigh… another Wendy’s incident.

Bit of Finger Mistakenly Served to Diner – A diner found a piece of human flesh on his hamburger shortly after a restaurant worker accidentally cut his finger, and a spokeswoman said the company was “very, very sorry.” At least this was a legit incident. Though it seems that they won’t be satisfied with just an apology. The diner called police, but an officer told him that it was not a criminal matter, Detective Sgt. David Drake said.

The best Super Soaker commercial ever: The Oozinator (from Deadlock) – pretty hilarious (or maybe gross) video. I couldn’t believe this was actually a real commercial. But apparently it was a real product: SUPER SOAKER OOZINATOR. Shoot out globs of gooey bio-ooze and then drench ‘em with water!

ABC.com: Full Episode Streaming (from /. and Ars Technica) – Welcome to the only place online where you can watch full episodes of your favorite ABC television shows! Current shows available for watching include Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias, and Commander in Chief. There’s still advertisements which you aren’t allowed to “skip”, but it’s free. Resolution is a bit weak (320×240 I believe).

How does Dyson make water go uphill? – James Dyson’s uphill water feature has been the striking image of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. But how did he do it? An interesting piece of art work. I’d like to see a video of it.

Colbert’s smart bomb (from MS newsgroup) – I saw a lower quality version of it yesterday, but Steven Colbert (from Colbert’s Report – pronounced col-bear re-pore) did a hilarious stand up at the White House Correspondents’ Association. The site doesn’t require registration, but you have to click on that advertisement link (direct download). At the same dinner, Bush apparently pulled a trick of his own. ‘Double-You’ Bush delights media – Playing up to his public persona, Mr Bush sent himself up alongside impersonator, Steve Bridges. … Steve Bridges, who lampoons Mr Bush on television, was invited by the president to mimic him at the dinner.

Hyperactive (from MS newsgroup) – a video of Lasse Gjertsen doing a random sound track with noises he made. It was pretty funny. You can find more of his films at: LasseFilm, but they appear to be all animations besides another one where he gets run over by a car.

Next step in pirating: Faking a company – After two years and thousands of hours of investigation in conjunction with law enforcement agencies in China, Taiwan and Japan, the company said it had uncovered something far more ambitious than clandestine workshops turning out inferior copies of NEC products. The pirates were faking the entire company. Wowza! Impressive!

Study of ‘Pheromone’ Products – Modern Day ‘Liquid Panty Remover’ (from Deadlock) – Real pheromones can work very well. The problems is cutting through the hype to find out which ones are real and work, which ones are real and kinda work, and which ones are totally worthless. Here are the ratings. Haha. Someone’s gone and actually tried all these. I wonder how he managed to rate how well it worked. To see if he was able to pick up any ladies at the bar that night?

The Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP is pretty bad ass (from Deadlock) – Pretty interesting video showing the Logitech Quickcam software that has motion detectors that draws stuff on your face.

Firefox Flicks Video Contest Winners Announced (from /.) – These flicks are actually pretty good an funny.

Crazy Quarters Skills (from Esca) – I think I’ve posted this video before, but here it is again. Bouncing quarters off the table and into a cup. I wonder how many times they’ve tried for certain tricks before actually making it. Didn’t they have this as part of the game in Leisure Suit Larry?

Gadgets for the Lazy (from /.) – In today’s automated world, there’s a fine line between efficient time management and laziness. Here are a few gadgets we think cross the line most egregiously. Check out our other photo galleries on our photo blog. The ones that caught my eye include: Ice-cream turner, The bird 2.0, Bugle emulator, Shoe mops

Mexico to decriminalize pot – Possessing marijuana, cocaine and even heroin will no longer be a crime in Mexico if they are in small amounts for personal use under new reforms passed by Congress that quickly drew U.S. criticism. You no longer have to fly to Amsterdam to legally smoke pot. Mexico is just a south of U.S. borders.

Last ninja: ‘Be able to kill your students’ (from /.) – The teachings of Grand Master Masaaki Hatsumi echo through my head as he entreats me to attack a blackbelted disciple with a practice sword. “Always be able to kill your students,” he says. Chilling words from a shockingly fit 76-year-old man who bills himself as the world’s last ninja and stocks his training chamber with weapons such as throwing stars and nunchucks. Especially to a neophyte whose closest brush with martial arts was watching Bruce Lee matinees as a kid. An interesting quote:

I have studied under Hatsumi, years ago. Before a lot of the current ‘purpose built’ combatives were created for military and govt. use, he and his instructors would train select U.S. govt. and military personnel.

Someone mentioned that “ninjitsu is the art of assassination”. An inaccurate statement.

Ninpo Taijitsu (a very rough translation would be ninja combat), as taught under the Bujinkan, consists of several different schools. Stealth, sword combat, locking/holding/throwing, striking, etc. are some examples of the different schools, each with their own head instructor.

There is a famous story from the ’50s (?, maybe ’60s) where the Japanese National Judo Champion (at the time he was also the world champion) essentially ‘called out’ Hatsumi and ninpo taijitsu as a ‘fraud’. Said champion was invited to face off with Hatsumi. Hatsumi proved he was no fraud, and shortly thereafter the Judo champion became one of the senior instructors at the ‘judo’ school of the Bujinkan.

Hatsumi is the real deal. I’ve seen him run along the top of chain link fences. At one seminar, a 250+ lb. Marine spoke up and said “Ok I know you’re good, but really…in combat – what are you going to do to me?”. Hatsumi sqared off with the Marine, and had him on the ground and incapacitated very rapidly. No ego, no bravado – just a teacher who understands that you must be able to demonstrate that what you teach will work for real.

Hatsumis instructor, Takamatsu, was (for lack of a better term) a real life ‘ninja’. He was an agent/assassin/etc. for hire that worked for various warlords in the late 1800s.

Do some searches on Hatsumi and Takamatsu – I believe you guys will find some very interesting reading.

Sadly, when Hatsumi leaves us the Bujinkan will probably never be seen again in its current form, with one true Master overseeing all of the various schools that comprise Ninpo Taijitsu. It will truly be the end of an era.

Regards,

Former (novice) student of the Bujinkan

Da Vinci judge’s secret code revealed – A secret code embedded in the text of a court ruling in the case of Dan Brown’s bestseller “The Da Vinci Code” has been cracked, but far from revealing an ancient conspiracy it is simply an obscure reference to a Royal Navy admiral. … High Court Justice Peter Smith, who handed down a ruling that Brown had not plagiarised his book, had embedded his own secret message in his judgement by italicising letters scattered throughout the 71-page document. … But the lawyer, Dan Tench, cracked it after a day of puzzling. The judge’s code was based on the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical progression discussed in the book.

Show asks porn stars to test acting skills – A new television reality show invites porn stars to test their serious acting abilities in London’s theatre district, raising the question: Debbie can do Dallas, but can she take on Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard”?

Transsexual should get pension at 60 – EU – A British transsexual woman should have her pension paid from her 60th birthday instead of her 65th as a man would, Europe’s highest court ruled on Thursday. Maybe if you want to retire early, it’s time to change genders.

And the world’s sexiest woman is… – British actress Keira Knightley was voted the world’s sexiest woman in a magazine poll on Thursday, beating model Keeley Hazel and Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson into second and third place respectively. Keira is so　セクシー.

Friday
On Friday night, I had called CDMCC around 8 and they had come back from boating awhile ago, but wasn’t hungry yet and was planning to have dinner around 10. So I left work around 9:30 and headed to his place. We tried that Belgium beer pub again, but apparently they stopped serving food at 10pm and by the time we got there already it was 10:30. We ended going to Wild Ginger instead. The food there was pretty good and not as pricey as I’d imagine for a restaurant that looked pretty high class.

We went back to CDMCC’s place afterwards and played a game of Fool and Team Guys (Vandel, CDMCC, and me) vs Team Girs (Liam, Brenna, Elizabeth) and we completely dominated. Haha. I don’t seem to recall waht else we did that night (no, I wasn’t drunk), but I also wasn’t armed with my camera so I’ll just say we left ~2ish because everyone else was “tired” (*nudge nudge wink wink*).

Saturday
On Saturday, we had plans to go camping at Big Four Ice Caves if it didn’t start raining, but of course it did, so that was cancel. Instead we made breakfast at 2pm in the afternoon with pancakes, potatoes, and scrambled eggs with mushrooms. It was really fun. We went shopping at Larry’s and got a bunch of ingredients and sauces and powdered sugar (yummm…). We sat around watching TV for awhile and CDMCC had made reservations at Brasa at 6:30. Yes That’s about 2 hours after breakfast, but there wasn’t anything we could do about that anymore.

We first went to Nordstrom to pick up CDMCC’s Diesel jeans which he had altered to fit better. I’m guessing he got that as a present from someone or maybe it was a present to himeself.

Dinner was fun at Brasa. No one was “that” hungry, but everyone seemed to have finished their food. Well, everyone besides Liam, who also apparently left his left overs back at CDMCC’s apartment. This was my 2nd time there and apparently you could use the Prime card there:
Receive the second adult entree of equal or lesser value in the party (party meaning 2 or more people) complimentary.

Anyway, dinner went well, if you discount what happened to Liam. First his chicken was undercooked (still saw raw meat in the center) and had the chef fix it. Then he asked the waiter (or maybe someone else asked the waiter) what a certain meat was in his seafood/chicken plate. He told Liam it was some Italian sausage and as you know Liam doesn eat meat, besides fowls and seafood. Our waiter, which was awesome by the way, asked Liam if he liked it, but Liam didn’t dignify with a response which we all thought implied to the waiter that he didn’t like it, instead of he didn’t eat meat. I mean, it’s pretty hard for a waiter to tell that you’re “vegetarian” when you ordered chicken and seafood. Elizabeth order bass which came as a whole fish and she was pretty scared of it and asked the waiter if he could removed the head and the tail. You’ll be able to see the picture of the fish in the photo album which I’ll link later. I had ordered Tuna and it was yummy.

After dinner, we went back to CDMCC’s place and played some cards. We had several rematch games of Fools and Team Girls won breaking the tie at 2-2. We then brought out the birthday cake. Since we were celebrating both CDMCC’s and Liam’s birthday, but only had 24 candles, we chopped the candles in half to get 48 (24 for CDMCC and 23 for Liam). It was pretty difficult lighting all 48 candles with just matches, but in the end, we succeeded and the cake was a hugh fire (also viewable in the gallery). When they blowed out the candles, wax got everywhere and the top of the cake actually became a layer of wax. The cake turned out pretty good.

We then played a couple games of Golf and Pyramid (both drinking games). Since I didn’t drink, I had to play with tonic water, which was equally as disgusting. The games were pretty fun and now we were ready to hit the bars.

There was quite a bit of drama at the 2 bars that we went to. Everyone was going crazy and Liam just kept downing his drinks and got pretty wasted. Everyone was having fun. Then this guy comes up and tries to hit on Elizabeth, but Liam comes and saves the day and bumps into him on purpose. Then there was the woman with the big cleavage and Liam posed next to her while CDMCC took a picture. Then there was Liam asking a girl what she thought about being a 5th wheel (in the same table with the big cleavage lady, there were 2 couples and a 5th lady). She replied they were all just friends, but we managed to save Liam before anything else happened.

We then went to get hotdogs at this cart place. The dogs were delicious, comparable to Top Dog quality. I miss Top Dog.

We ended the night just chilling in the Spa.

Sunday
Liam had a flight out of SEATAC at 8:30am, so we left my place at 7:10. It only takes about 20-30 minutes to get to the airport. I had only gotten 2 hours of sleep and after coming back, I immediately hit the sack.

I got a call at ~1:30pm from Elizabeth that they were coming to pick me up to go hiking. They had to hurry, because it was already pretty late and Vandel and Brenna had a flight to catch at 7:50pm.

We visited Big Four Ice Caves. The hike was pretty short (1.1mi), but most of it was covered in snow. This was the 1st time Audrey (the dog) saw snow and she was having a blast. Unfortunately when we arrived at the caves, we found out the caves are snowed in this time of year and would open up around June. The scenary was still quite stunning. We also met some cool people along the way and actually saw a small avalanche (video 1, video 2). Then we also met this dog eating dog that wanted to eat Audrey, but the owners held him back.

We dropped Vandel and Brenna at the airport and headed back to watch South Park and eat pizza. Then CDMCC drove me back and I immediately went to take a nap and woke up ~12am.

Photos
Here are some shots I thought were worth displaying:

From Andrew’s and Liam’s Birthday 2006:

From Big Four Ice Caves:

Just wanted to wish my 3 yr roommate and still an awesome friend a Happy Birthday.

Liam, Vandel, and Brenna are up here to celebrate his birthday. They flew in Thursday night and leaving on Sunday. It’s been a blast so far, but as everyone noticed, the amount of drinking has dropped big time. Maybe it’s because people are getting older or maybe because they finally realize that beer tastes nasty. CDMCC actually finished his entire glass of beer before Vandel started. CDMCC still brags about this victory all the time.

They went boating and tubing today in the lake. I didn’t have time to go since I still had a lot to do at work, but I met them up for dinner.

My memory card seems to have died. Thankfully, I recently bought another 1GB CF card for $3 after rebate.