BrianJarrett.com

I’ve been watching this excellent show on Discovery chronicling the NASA space flight missions.  It sparked my interest in the Mercury 7 and subsequent Apollo missions and compelled me to do a bit of reading.  I quickly began to see parallels between the ill-fated Everest climb of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine and the fatal Apollo 1 tragedy that took the lives of astronauts Roger Chaffee, Ed White, and Gus Grissom.

I further drew more distinct parallels between Gus Grissom and George Mallory.  I’ve written about the Mallory and Irvine tragedy in detail but I’ll summarize again here.  George Mallory died in 1924, along with his young climbing partner Andrew Irvine, attempting to be the first to reach the peak of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.  There is much speculation they made it to the top but died on the descent; however, the generally acknowledged opinion is that they died on the ascent, having never reached the top.  Part of why their story is famous is because of the possibility they might have actually reached the top first (a missing camera might hold photographic proof).  The pair, particularly George Mallory …read more »

Traci finally had enough of our piece of crap Hoover Windtunnel vacuum so she decided that we were replacing it. She’d been eying the Dysons for some time so when she got the 20% off coupon from Bed, Bath, and Beyond she decided to act on it. We headed over to BB&B and picked up the Dyson Absolute. It was $499.99 but with the 20% off coupon we saved $100.

I have to say, after using this thing I’m really, really impressed. It’s much lighter than the Hoover and the overall design is much more user-friendly. For instance, the beater brush button on the Hoover was down on the floor whereas the button on the Dyson is up high on the handle, saving an annoying stooping down to turn the switch on or off. It glides over carpet and hard wood floors without virtually no effort, and the canister is really, really easy to empty.

And, of course, it doesn’t lose suction like our Hoover did.

We were spending about $100 per year on filters for the Hoover (if we changed it three times) so I figure after four years this thing has paid for itself (there is no filter to replace; just wash it out). Not to mention that the Hoover was plagued with problems, …read more »

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Christmas trees it’s to not buy one pre-lit. We’ve spent more time trying to get our pre-lit tree to actually light than we would have ever spent on just stringing the lights ourselves. Buy a good tree in two or three sections; that makes it easy to assemble. Then just …read more »

It’s about time somebody did this. Finally someone refused to cover the superfluous, retarded, ridiculous, pointless, and idiotic story of Paris Hilton’s irresponsible DUI and subsequent incarceration/media frenzy. Every day in Iraq American boys and girls-our children, brothers, sisters, uncles, friends, and neighbors-are dying needlessly in Bush’s oil jihad. The Dark Lord is high on Jesus and running around the world blowing things up like a maverick gunslinger, all the while throwing American bodies into the fire faster than he could snort a line of coke in his party days. Iran is gearing up to blow us or our interests up, al-Qaeda and their sympathizers hate us more than ever …read more »

Concerning Issac Hayes’ decision to leave South Park:

“South Park” co-creator Matt Stone responded sharply in an interview with The Associated Press Monday, saying, “This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology… He has no problem — and he’s cashed plenty of checks — with our show …read more »

I don’t watch the news too much; it either depresses me or pisses me off. Local news is boring and the national news, well, I can only hear about so many American soldiers dying in Iraq in one day. Between the suicide bombers, kidnappings, beheadings, and just plain killing in the name of Allah I’ve had my fill of the whole, messy thing. But, every so often, I hear a story that catches my attention, one that makes me smile even. There’s something about

…read more »