This is freaky. Your basic average middle-aged guy with a few extra pounds and a beer belly documents four years of persistent workouts, one picture per month. I agree with one of the commentors that he probably should have stopped at about 18 months, but there’s no denying that this is an impressive effort.
The source of the pics and the guy’s website are here.
I have a nephew who has always been fascinated by my ability to start a fire with non-traditional tools. We had a camp-out once where I started our camp fire with a chunk of metal, a rock, and a knife (magnesium shavings and sparks will start a fire even in wet conditions.) He spent quite a while trying to figure out what the “trick” was.
Here’s a site that provides instructions for starting fires with primitive tools, including bow drills, hand drills, and flint/steel. They also sell bow-drill equipment, which sort of seems like it defeats the purpose, but hey, whatever lights your fire.
Corporate Lesson 1 : Naked Wife
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor. Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.”
After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob.
After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 dollars and leaves. The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks,”Who was that?”
“It was Bob the next door neighbor,” she replies. “Great!” the husband says, “Did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”
Moral of the story:
If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.
Corporate Lesson 2
A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says, “I’ll give each of you just one wish”
“Me first! Me first!” says the admin. clerk. “I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.”
Poof! She’s gone. “Me next! Me next!” says the sales rep. “I want to be in Hawaii,relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.”
Poof! He’s gone. “OK, you’re up,” the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, “I want those two back in the office after lunch.”
Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.
Corporate Lesson 3
A priest offered a lift to a Nun. She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg. The priest nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg. The nun said,”Father, remember Psalm 129?”
The priest removed his hand. But,changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again. The nun once again said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?”
The priest apologized “Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.”
Arriving at the convent, the nun went on her way. On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129. It said, “Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.”
Moral of the story: If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.
Corporate Lesson 4
A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A rabbit asked him,”Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?”
The crow answered: “Sure, why not.”
So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested.
A fox jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very high up.
Corporate Lesson 5
A turkey was chatting with a bull “I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree,” sighed the turkey, but I haven’t got the energy.”
“Well, why don’t you nibble on my droppings?” replied the bull. “They’re packed with nutrients.”
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.
Moral of the story: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there.
No idea where these came from, a friend just emailed them to me and I thought they were worth sharing!
Someone asked where I got that photo that’s current gracing the site header. It’s actually a bunch of individual photos stitched together with the demo version of Autostitch, a program that does automatic image stitching. It’s pretty slick.
Oh, and the image itself is taken from the path on the jetty that separates the Mission Bay inlet from the San Diego River. The big white building in the center of the picture is the Hyatt Islandia. The Sea World tower is toward the right. My sailboat is in that forest of masts between the Sea World tower and the bay.
Anyone with the name Hicinbothem is probably related to the rest of us. I’ve been interested in the genealogy of our name for many years. Here’s what we know:
The Hicinbothems in the US came from Ireland, but we have no information about their early days.
The first arrivals were probably brothers, David, Robert, and William, possibly along with their father or uncle, also a David. They arrived by ship from Liverpool, England, in 1840. At least one more came over somewhat later; there are records of a Sidney Hicinbothem in the early 1850s, but she did not settle in the NYC area with the rest of them. The 1840 date is interesting; it predates the Irish potato famine by several years, so one has to wonder what prompted their exodus. There may also have been yet another arrival; we’ve found a branch of the family in Idaho that has no known connection to the rest of us. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get any information from them so far.
The original male Hicinbothems settled in the Morrisania section of New York in what is now the Bronx. Quite a few of them are buried in Greenwood Cemetery there. All of the brothers married and had families, and their sons had families, and so on through six or seven generations, so there are now probably a couple of hundred Hicinbothems spread out all over the world. We have extensive records of most of them here.
Alas, in this age of identity theft and internet rogues, we do not allow unrestricted access to our extensive database of Hicinbothem genealogy anymore. If you have a legitimate interest, you’re welcome to request access by sending us an email.
If you already have the username and password, click here and you’ll get an offer to log in. Please note that three login failures will immediately block your IP address from further access; you’ll need to email us to get it turned back on.
Types of information we collect:
Your current internet address (IP address) is stored in the server logs each time you visit. The type and version of your browser software may also be collected if your browser is configured to allow it. If you do not wish this to happen, you should investigate using a web surfing proxy or anonymizer service.
Our sites will not disclose any personal information about you to any third party unless required by law, or in the good-faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to comply with legal process, respond to claims, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our other visitors or the public.
Our web hosting provider, BlueHost, has their own privacy policy which is outside of our control. You may visit their public site, linked above, to find out more about their policies.
Cookies
The WordPress software that is the basis for this site uses browser cookies to keep track of which messages you have read, and other information about your visit. Cookies are small text fields which are generated by our system and which stay on your hard drive between visits. For example, we use a cookie to store your name and URL when you post comments so you don’t have to re-enter them each time you visit. These cookies do not collect, store or maintain any private, personally identifiable information. You do not have to accept these cookies to visit or use this site; however, turning cookies off will impair the site’s functionality. You may refuse the cookies, delete the cookies from your hard drive, or turn off cookies at any time by updating your system’s browser preferences.
Comments on Articles or Posts
If you provide personal information in a online posting, that information is visible to anyone, and may be used by someone in a manner unintended by you. For that reason, we discourage you from posting any personal information on this or any website in comments or otherwise. We reserve the right to delete, modify, or edit any message, comment, or posting you may make on our sites without notifying you. Your continued use of this website indicates your agreement with this policy.
Our sites will never send you unsolicited or automated email unless you specifically opt-in for such mailing (for example, if you explicitly register for a mailing list or listserv.) If you provide your email address in a comment, we may elect to contact you to verify the validity of your comment before it is posted. If you enter into a commercial sales or service agreement or contract with us, we may email you status reports, billing notices, and other information directly related to your transaction. We will never send you unsolicited commercial email for any reason.
The article itself isn’t that great, but check out the comments on this post on Consumerist about the final flight upgrade.
Well. That was fun. I’m glad it’s over.
I’ve moved the Hicinbothem web sites (.com and .org) to a new web host, Bluehost. The single new host has the same (or more) features than the old multiple hosts at about a quarter of the cost. If you’re reading this, everything has gone well and you’re looking at the new host.
Oh, and as if moving everything wasn’t enough fun by itself, I did a little spring cleaning and a tuneup at the same time. The entire site has been moved to a WordPress blogging platform. I’m still in the process of cleaning things up and importing old data, so there may still be a few things that don’t work. They’ll be fixed over the next couple of days.
Those of you using the Internet Explorer browser may notice a few things that don’t look real nice. All the design and construction have been done in Mozilla Firefox so there’s still some adjustments that need to be made.
The blogs which have always been the most popular part of the site can be found via the “topics” and “archives” links over there to the left. The older entries that were on other blogging platforms have mostly been imported into WordPress but there’s still some cleanup to be done there, too. I’ve added a couple of nice new tools to make it easier to add blog entries, and I’ve been testing them out over the past couple of days. You can expect to see more content, more often.
If you have a hicinbothem.com email address, it should be working again. The webmail interface is exactly as it was before, and your POP3 email client shouldn’t have needed any changes.
Any problem or questions, let me know.
Scott Adams, who’s best known for being the creator of Dilbert, has been fighting with episodes of spasmodic dysphonia for the last two years. He’s explored several treatments, including Botox injections into the throat. He’s considered surgery. He’s in the early phases of a non-medical treatment that seems to be working. That blog entry discusses the problem and how all the info about treatment options is pretty much controlled by big pharma.
I find this fascinating. I have an old friend who’s plagued by the adductor form of SD. He’s not rich and famous and he doesn’t have insurance that pays for any kind of treatment, so he basically lives with the problem. In a way, it’s kind of funny; if I call him and he responds in a kind of Gregorian Chant, I know it isn’t a good day. And forget going out anywhere when he’s having an episode. (He can’t talk and I’m mostly deaf. Wasn’t that a comedy with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor?)
By the way, I recommend Scott’s blog. It’s a fascinating look into the mind behind Dilbert.
Here’s an interesting anecdote of a guy describing his encounter with his fifteen minutes of fame.