A shout out to the Mad Dog motorcycle club in Hong Kong. I thought their leather vests were way cool and asked a member how I could get one. The response started with a polite sneer and ended with a rundown of the commitment and dedication the members have to their club. So I guess the only way I’ll get the vest is to get a knock off made at a local tailor in Macau or Zhuhai – and then if a Mad Dog ever sees me wearing it they’ll kick my butt – so maybe I won’t do that….

Back in the late 90’s or so I did have the privilege of playing for Sonny Barger of the Hell’s Angels. It was a private party and I was playing with Freddy Fender – I think it was in Hollister, CA. I remember Sonny approached Freddy to play a specific song and Freddy was like “Yes sir” – which was pretty funny because Freddy was a longtime Harley rider and a badass in his own right. But there’s a pecking order.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AEymY2U1FI

You can read about Sonny Barger here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Barger

MAD DOG MC History

On October 3, 1994, Tom Leber and some close friends gathered in his garage and founded the Mad Dog Motorcycle Club. The result was an organization built on the principle of camaraderie and diversity. A brotherhood bounded by principles instead of borders. Since then, the Mad Dogs have set fire to the streets of the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong….and further … creating the standard for motorcycle clubs in South East Asia.

To find more about the legend of the Mad Dogs visit the Mad Dog Hong Kong MC Website.

I’m told that the Mad Dog Hong Kong MC demands loyalty and commitment from it’s members, but keeps family first. And that can’t be a bad thing. Ride on!

Here is a segment from the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special featuring Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia singing an ode to “Life Day” – the Star Wars Universe’s answer to Christmas.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Friday, November 17th 1978.From 1978, the Star Wars Holiday Special about the celebration of “Life Day”, the Wookie equivalent of Christmas. Generally considered to be perhaps the worst show ever aired on tv. You can read all about it at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Wars_Holiday_Special

STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL PART ONE:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCNGjKnTzaQ

CANTINA SCENE – SW HOLIDAY SPECIAL
Bea Arthur runs the cantina!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVbCS8vg8m0
Bea Arthur runs the cantina on Tatooine. Late 70s.

BEA ARTHUR SINGS!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzXKySxPFCI

This is a video of Bea Arthur singing in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Comedy Gold!

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Read more info on Buck Owens at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Owens

I was reading on that link about Buck Owens, the Bakersfield Sound, the death of his guitar wingman Don Rich, and the revival of his career with Dwight Yoakum. There are some great videos of Buck Owens and Don Rich on YouTube. Here’s a couple videos I enjoyed with Buck and “Dangerous” Don Rich. Hope they make you feel good too…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkNsqdGm0wo

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfSPneMXCgk

Roses are #ff0000, Violets are #ooooff, All my base are belong to you.

My geekiest Valentine’s Day ever – upgrading software on 8 community websites. Woohoo! My geeky Valentine’s Day gift to them.

UPDATE: I received an email asking what the first line meant. #ff00oo and #ooooff are HTML color codes, and “all your base belong to me” is a mistranslation that originated from a Japanese video game. You can read more about that translation and phrase here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

EVERY page I see has this warning – including www.Google.com and Wikipedia.

Anyone know what’s going on with Google?

UPDATE: Yes, it was real. Answer follows:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28950149/

Google users get bogus warning on site searches
‘This site may harm your computer’ appeared with every search result
The Associated Press
updated 2:54 p.m. ET, Sat., Jan. 31, 2009
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Computer users doing Google searches during a nearly one-hour period Saturday were greeted with disturbing but erroneous messages that every site turned up in the results might be harmful.

The company blamed the mistake on human error and apologized for any inconvenience caused to users and site owners whose pages were incorrectly labeled.

The glitch occurred between 9:30 a.m. and 10:25 a.m. ET, Google said in an explanation on its company blog. Anyone who did a Google search during that time likely saw the message “This site may harm your computer” accompanying every search result, the company said.

Google said it routinely flags any search results with that message if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously, a practice aimed at protecting its users. It gets its list of suspicious sites from StopBadware.org, a nonprofit project headed by legal scholars at Harvard and Oxford universities who research consumer complaints.

Saturday’s error happened when the latest update to the list was received from StopBadware but was checked in erroneously in such a way that the warning would apply to all URLs, the company said in a statement.

The glitch was caught by on-call staff and the file was quickly fixed, Google said. Since the updates are applied in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing at 9:27 a.m. EST and disappeared no later than 10:25 a.m. EST, with the duration for any particular user approximately 40 minutes, it said.

“We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in to prevent it from happening again,” said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, in the statement.

According to the new definition, a full-fledged planet is an object that orbits the sun and is large enough to have become round due to the force of its own gravity. In addition, a planet has to dominate the neighborhood around its orbit.

Pluto has been demoted because it does not dominate its neighborhood. Charon, its large “moon,” is only about half the size of Pluto, while all the true planets are far larger than their moons.

Pluto is now officially a “dwarf planet”. But it’s no longer part of an exclusive club, since there are more than 40 of these dwarfs, including the large asteroid Ceres and 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena—a distant object slightly larger than Pluto discovered by Brown last year.

Update Feb 2009: You can talk about this topic in the discussion forum at (and play video games too!):
http://forum.conradaskland.com/showthread.php?t=9

Update May 2009: Here is information about the “Planet X” theory and information on why Pluto was initially considered a planet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_x

Update August 25 2009:
The debate rages on. Did you know that 90% of the critical letters complaining about Pluto’s demotion come from North America? Food for thought, here’s the article:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/08/24/pluto.dwarf.planet/index.html