Special thanks to the BBC for this story teaser title, which successfully got me thinking about non-work at work. A bad thing considering some of the scenery there.

One clear day the inventor of the Harley Davidson Motorcycle Corporation, Arthur Davidson, died and went to heaven. At the gates, St. Peter told Arthur, "Since you've been such a good man and your motorcycles have changed the world, your reward is that you can hang out with anyone you want to in Heaven."

Arthur thought about it for a minute and then said, "I want to hang out with God."

St. Peter took Arthur to the Throne Room, and introduced him to God. God recognized Arthur and commented, "Okay, so you were the one who invented motorcycles, eh?"

Arthur said, "Yeah, that's me!"

God commented, "Well, what a big deal in inventing something that's pretty unstable, makes noise and pollution, and can't run without a road?"

Arthur was apparently embarrassed, but finally spoke, "Excuse me but aren't you the inventor of woman?"

God said, "Ah, yes."

"Well," said Arthur, "professional to professional, you have some major design flaws in your invention: There's too much inconsistency in the front-end protrusion; it chatters constantly at high speeds; most of the rear ends are too soft and wobble too much; the intake is placed way too close to the exhaust; and the maintenance costs are outrageous!

"Hmmmm, you may have some good points there," replied God, "Hold on."

God went to his Celestial supercomputer, typed in a few words and waited for the results. The computer printed out a slip of paper and God read it.

"Well, it may be true that my invention is flawed," God said to Arthur, "but according to these numbers, more men are riding my invention than yours."


[ via Gary ]

• It has been an interesting week for sure. And of course by "interesting" I mean "awful." The strangest part about it was that nothing particularly evil happened. Work has been busy, but good. Sum it up to just having been one of those weeks, I guess.



• My car started sputtering yesterday on my way back to the office from Arby's. I have heard suggestions that the cause of this intermittent issue is the spark plugs, spark wires or perhaps the fuel filter. An agent at work gave me the name and number of a local mechanic who does good work inexpensively. He will be receiving a call from me this afternoon.



• I just watched some guy out the window leaving the office wearing a t-shirt that stated, "If you can't race it or take it to bed, it's not worth having."



• I was very pleased to find out that the network operations centre that is home to my server was not forced to use emergency generators to maintain service, despite their being only a thirty minute drive from Manhattan. This event reminded me of a time I was driving through Jacksonville from Tallahassee on my way to Orlando and the power company there, JEA, suffered a failure that blackened the largest city geographically in the contiguous United States (Sitka, Alaska is the largest in the entire United States). I grew up fifteen minutes away from Niagara Falls and have been on the public tours of the hydroelectric power generation stations, one of which was alleged to have been struck by lightning yesterday.



• I do not have any big plans for the weekend. Probably going to stay home most of the time and do things around the house.

I love the irony in this second ranking result from a Google search for "URL Stickers."

I would like to share a message I recently received from someone who, via search engine, found Mount Sutro and decided to share a story with me. We have exchanged a few e-mails since and she has given me permission to share her original message here.

Your website about Mt. Sutro is very interesting. I myself have always had an "inexplicable fascination" with the tower, since I was a little kid back in the early '70s. We actually lived in the valley, but my grandmother, who was very sick with cancer at the time, was being treated at UCSF hospital there on the mountain. I recall as a child sitting in the back of the car, driving to San Francisco to visit her and my parents always telling me to "look for grandma's tower" and by that I knew we were getting close. It was visible as we'd come over the mountain into the bay, before we'd reach the bridge – it was so tall. The tower, of course, is located just behind the hospital, so I'd spot it and watch as it got closer and closer until we were finally there. So now even to this day, I can't make that drive to the City without seeing that tower and thinking about my grandmother, who has since passed. Isn't it bizarre the things we associate certain people??

Anyway, it was really fascinating to read all of your facts about it. Something stirred in me to run a search for Sutro Tower, and so I stumbled across your website! Cute cat, by the way. :-) I have three.

Have a good weekend,
Melinda

Thank you, Melinda. Your message made my day.