Under a Gibbous Moon

Now I do read Boing Boing, they have some interesting stuff from time to time. One thing, though, that I dislike is that the site’s founder, Cory Doctorow, seems to be batshit insane. He regularly makes position statements and then backs them up with evidence that either makes no sense or contradicts him.

Case in point. Apparently some lady stops to lecture kids on the benefit of selling their product instead of giving it away. Is she a douchebag if this actually happened, sure, they’re kids. Then Doctorow goes off on some weird tangent about companies taking stuff and then selling it. As evidence he says:

Sounds about right — companies take over our public aquifers and sell us the water they pump out of them; telcos get our rights of way for their infrastructure, then insist that they be able to tier their pricing without regard to the public interest.

A little bizarre. Most companies have to pay leases to the government to tap those aquifers. Even if they don’t, he’s free to drill his own well and even give it away if he wants, see how much money it’ll cost him to drill the hole, lay the pipes, pump the water and then maintain the whole damn system.

Then he complains about the phone company laying wires on his property. Once again, apparently this infrastructure is magically free in his world and apparently he’s hoping the phone fairy will come along and connect his calls.

It’s called TINSTAAFL (There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch), Cory. I learned it in high school econ.

I got a fair amount of hate for my Atheism as a religion post. Not one to leave well enough alone, I came upon this article. In part, it reads:

Faith-based atheism? Yes, alas. Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence. (And some of them can behave as intolerantly to heretics who deviate from their unproven orthodoxy as the most unbending religious Inquisitor.)

It’s an interesting read, though much of it I covered all ready, though his has bigger words. So, to all you Atheists out there, remember: You’re hate just proves us right.

Iain Burke is just that. It takes a certain amount of narcissism to take the time to accuse someone of “ripping off your work” when all you did is take the Sherwin Williams logo and add color in the first place. You sir, are a fucking twit. You are one of the people that is wrong with this country. If you want to claim originality of the piece, at least have the decency to re-draw a similar picture of Sherwin Williams “cover the earth” logo and call it yours. Don’t just photoshop out the name and call it yours. The BP version that is all over the net was posted for humor, not orginality. This is unlike your fraudulent attempt at “art”. Make the world a better place. You want alternative fuel sources. Kill yourself and burn the body. Even better, two birds with one stone. Just throw yourself in a fire you worthless bitch.

This weekend I competed in this years ADFPF National Championships. It was held in the university rec center in Columbia, Missouri. It was a nice facility with plenty of room for spectators. The meet was run fairly quickly and as smoothly as can be expected for a meet with about 70 lifters. Everybody put in a lot of work to pull this off and I thank them for their efforts.

The warm-up room was the rec center’s weight room, so it was very well supplied. I competed in the equipped division which is single-ply. I was in the 145 kg division and weighed in at 142 kg.

Squats

1st- 305 kg -good 673 lbs
2nd-325 kg -good 717 lbs
3rd- 340 kg -good 750 lbs

Squats went well and were pretty fast and relatively easy. For some reason, all three felt like 8 tons to unrack but once I did that it felt normal. I had more in me, but it was a 20 kg meet pr, so I can’t complain.

I want to extend a special thank-you to Tayler Epperson for his help with my squat suit.

Bench

1st- 220 kg -good 485 lbs
2nd-250 kg -bad 551 lbs
3rd- 250 kg -bad 551 lbs

I have been having a little trouble with my bench for a while and it is really been hard to pull that piece in on meet day. I lowered my anticipated opener 10 kg to secure my squat. I screwed up my technique twice for my 2nd and 3rd. First time I moved too high too fast and started to lose it towards my face. Next time I over compensated and didn’t move up at all initially and I started to lose it toward my belly but pulled it back, but by then I stalled half way up. Done this weight many times in the gym without a hitch, but that’s how things go.

I want to put out a special thank-you to Tim Piper for doing my hand-offs and helping me to switch shirts. You did a fantastic job.

Deadlift

1st- 300 kg -good 661 lbs
2nd-320 kg -good 705 lbs
3rd- 330 kg -good 727 lbs

The 3rd was a 5 kg meet pr. It went up surprisingly fast for the beating I took on squats already. I probably could have gotten 5 kg more, but a pr is a pr. Tore both hands too. I don’t deadlift in training, so it’s a little much for them.

Total 890 kg or 1,963 lbs. Also a meet pr. I was really gunning for 2,000+ lbs that day, but my bench failure cost me that. I ended up getting 1st in my weight class and was just edged out for the overall by formula. Bench cost me that too. Next time. Total is moving up, but I have not got a 500+ bench in at a meet in almost a year and a half and that really burns me.

God, I love captcha.