Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesday: Alcohol!!!

In chemistry, we teach you that there are five simple reactions:  synthesis, decomposition, single replacement, double replacement, and combustion.  Synthesis is bringing two or more pieces together to form a new unit.  Decomposition is shit falling apart.  Single and double replacement reactions are pretty straight-forward:  they're just switching things out for something new.  Combustion reactions, however, are the stuff of dreams.  Or the dreams of Tuesdays, at the very least.

I have a new lab assistant.

Within chemistry, there are different divisions which add a different layer to the five basic types of reactions.  Myself, I'm an organic chemist.  Despite what several of my dates have thought over the past years, organic chemistry has nothing to do with being a perv.  Yes, I've been accused of being "like that" when I tell a woman I'm an organic chemist.  I mean, take a spin around my blog and you'll know that I'm "like that," but usually not on the first date.  Or the first fifteen minutes of the date.  Maybe.

Organic chemistry is the study of the element carbon and all of its myriad fascinating compounds...with the notable exceptions of carbon dioxide and calcium carbonate (and other metallic carbonate salts...mostly...sort of...um...let's move on).  These compounds are usually considered to come from non-organic, or non-living, sources...even though animals exhale carbon dioxide and plants take carbon dioxide and form it into sugars.  Oh, and sea creatures make a literal shit ton of calcium carbonate that we use to build things with and as decoration.  Um...again, let's move along.

One thing about organic compounds is that they feature carbon and hydrogen.  Usually, they feature a lot of carbon and hydrogen.  We chemists, always a clever lot, refer to compounds that feature a lot of hydrogens and carbons as "hydrocarbons."  Brilliant, eh?  I thought so, too, as did many of my predecessors!  Now, when you mix together hydrocarbons and oxygen and add in just a touch of flame, something wonderful and enchanting happens!



*inhales deeply*  Magnificent!

What you are seeing here is the mixture of ethanol--yes, the same ethanol that causes you text some gorgeous red-headed girl in the middle of Pennsylvania at three in the morning--vapor, oxygen, and just enough of a heat source to get this thing going.  Since the neck of the vessel is narrow, the fire cannot reach all of the vapor at the same time, so that's why you see that lovely cascade of fire sliding down the insides of the plastic bottle.  The ethanol has pooled a little in the bottom, which is why the bright yellow flames dance in the middle of the bottle once the cascade has reached the bottom.  Heat from the fire has caused the air to warm and rise toward the opening of the bottle, which is why the dancing flames are climbing toward freedom as the fire begins to extinguish itself.

Now, I know I just talked about hydrocarbons, and technically ethanol is not a hydrocarbon; it's an alcohol, which means it has an oxygen inserted between one carbon and one of its hydrogens.  In theory, you could do this with any hydrocarbon with a low enough boiling point that it's a vapor at room temperature.  Butane comes to mind.  As does gasoline (octane)--both of which are hydrocarbons.  Unfortunately, I personally would not try that; the combustion reactions of these gases are pretty spectacularly exothermic (they're hot), and that could cause some issues.  What kind of issues?  Let's find out.

Caveat time:  the "whoosh bottle" is a pretty simple experiment, but you need to make sure you're safe doing this.  After you swirl the ethanol around inside the bottle, dump out the excess liquid.  Make sure the bottle is not cracked or structurally compromised.  And, for the love of God and anything else you might find even the slightest bit holy, be fucking careful.

Why?  What happens if you're not careful and don't follow the instructions?  You'll end up like this dipshit here: 



Fortunately, no one was hurt.  I don't know if the bottle was cracked or if there were any other issues, but the excess ethanol was not dumped out.  That left way too much fuel for the fire and the expansion of the gasses trapped inside the bottle was too rapid for the bottle to hold together.  Thus, kaboom.

In the top experiment, the phenomenon witnessed is called "deflagration," where the fuel is ignited and burns away until no more fuel is left to consume.  It's like a very fast, very hypnotic, very pretty log burning in the fireplace.

The second is a detonation, because the container couldn't hold it and everything went boom.

And notice, aside from some bad glasses on the teacher's face, no safety equipment was used (although flannel shirt girl did have the fire extinguisher ready and handy for the teacher to use).  Safety first...or, somewhere in the top five.

Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: We're Back!

If you have been a reader of this little slice of the Internet, you know that there are a couple of things that I like.  Well, boobs, yes, and they usually travel in a pair, so good job.  You aced the pop quiz.  Nicely done.

The other things I like are explosions and doing stuff around the house that makes me feel all handy and manly and rawr, I want to feel some boobs now.

This story begins on Valentine's Day. I was preparing to take a shower ere heading off to the grocery to get something to cook for dinner.  I turned the water on and left it run so that I could climb in and enjoy the warmth of the wet water running down my tortured and aching muscles.  However, when I stuck my hand in to check the temperature, it was like feeling ice pelting down on me. 

There's some kind of Eskimo fetish
going on out there...apparently

Huh.

So, I let it run for a little while longer.  Still cold.  Then I turned on the sink's hot water faucet.  Call Manny and Sid, cause we got another Ice Age on our hands.

At which point, I uttered many a swear word, almost all of them beginning with "fuck."

Fortunately, I have a brother who is a plumber and an electrician.  Unfortunately, my brother the plumber and electrician lives four states and approximately 13 hours away.  Fortunately, there is this website called Facebook, where you can stalk your old high school crushes AND ask your handyman siblings for assistance when needed. 

He told me to press the reset button.  Reset button?  I didn't know there was such a thing.

There is.  It's usually hidden under the top panel and it's big and bright red and you can't miss it, even if you think you can.  You will immediately hear the water heater switch on, too, upon pressing it.  Neat.  Sexy AND informative, this blog.

So, I crawled into the darkened depths of the crawlspace and pressed the reset button.  Everything was Jim Dandy, Hunky Dory...for about 36 hours.  On Tuesday, I had to reset the water heater four or five times.  All the mind-numbing cold water pouring out of the shower...numbed...my mind...and so I lost count.  But it was definitely a whole number and it was more than three and less than seventy five.

Anyway, I decided to act.  Coming home early on Wednesday afternoon, I drained the water heater and rushed off to buy a replacement kit for the water heater elements--those things which do the yeoman's work of heating the water in the tank.  It set me back about $40.  Not a problem.  The problem was, though, that I began to worry just a bit, because in order to heat all that water inside the tank, it requires electricity.  A LOT of electricity.  So, I was fearful of electrocuting myself under the house with no one around to notice that the lights went dim for a few moments and that the lovely smell coming from under the floorboards was not dinner, but it was, instead, roast Dad.

Precisely what I was trying
to avoid doing...

Spoilers:  I'm savvy enough to have found the correct switch to throw on the breaker box, AND I double-checked the flow of electricity through the machine.  Multiple times. There was none.  Cool.  Let's do this.

Switching out elements on a water heater is actually fairly easy.  I'm here to attest to this.  For real.  It took me all of fifteen minutes to get the top element switched out.  I was pretty proud of myself.  I was going to get this done in an hour and a half (an hour of the project being the draining and the shutting off of power) and we would have hot water by dinner time.

Eh, not so fast, my friend.

The bottom element...was a bitch.  To put it kindly.  I sliced the living hell out of my knuckles trying to get the beast to move.  I laid on the wrench, pushed, sprayed it with all manner of lubricant, tapped on it.  Nothing.  It would not move.

After two hours, I decided to call in professional help.  Enter Kevin, the friendly guy from Roto-Rooter some national chain who laid on the wrench, pushed, sprayed it with all manner of lubricant, tapped on it, nothing.  He even put a hex nut head on the element and stood on the wrench.  It. Would. Not. Budge.

Well, fuck me running. 

There's a little back story to fill in here, as well:  the water heater was easily 30 years old.  I'm shocked that it lasted this long.  It was not up to code, and since I'm looking to sell this money pit house in the near-ish future, I made the decision to get a new water heater installed.  Again, I relied on the professional.  Mostly because there was a SECOND fear lurking in the back of my mind while dealing with maintenance on a water heater.  Namely, that it would build up pressure and burst, shooting through my house like a rocket.

Seem far-fetched?  Again, not so fast, my friend.



I know I give Mythbusters some shit for their "scientific" claims for all their experiments, but there is some serious proof in the pudding here.  That video should set you up with another video to watch from Mythbusters where they destroy a small house by having a water heater shoot THROUGH the entire structure.  It's pretty impressive.  For real.  Watch it.

Science

Oh...the explanation.  Right!  When the pressure builds up inside the inner chamber of the water heater, the water begins to get really pissed off.  It wants to expand, to turn to steam, something--anything!--to relieve that pressure (which is why there is a pressure release valve on water heaters).  These water heaters are engineered to release out the bottom in just such a scenario (rather than rupturing and shooting shrapnel everywhere, which is actually a lot worse than what you just watched), which unfortunately turns them into rockets.  Rockets that fly 500 feet in the air, gushing superhot water, but rockets nonetheless.

Ah, science!

So, not only was I glad to not have electrocuted myself, but I also am glad that I had the professional install the water heater so that it was up to code AND installed correctly.  Even if my $40 fix-it-yourself project suddenly turned into something that cost over $1000.  I'm up to code, and there's nothing firing off through the two floors of my house and the roof.

Oh, and the showers?  Yeah, they're nice and hot now.  And I don't have to crawl under the house in order to press the reset button on the water heater.  Now I can save all that energy for pushing better, more sexy buttons.

Yeah, I'm not sure what that means, either.

Totally Sciencing It Up: The Shot Heard 'Round the World

As if there was any doubt what explosion I'd talk about this week.  But, in case you missed it, there was an impressive meteor event in Russia last week, where a chunk of space rock came plummeting into our inner atmosphere and detonating over the Chelyabinsk region.  Since it actually flew over a fairly well-populated area in Russia, there have been dozens of videos of the event, which is pretty cool because things like this are rare enough on their own.  To give planetary scientists a chance to look at and study the event, though, was invaluable.

The event itself would have been cool enough if a big hunk of rock had simply fallen from the sky.  However, when the hunk of rock exploded in the atmosphere, well, that was something to write home about!  Here's a compilation of some of the best videos capturing the event, thanks to Russia Today's channel on the YouTube:

Pretty impressive, to say the least.  Unfortunately, thanks to the shockwave of the explosion shattering glass and throwing people to the ground, about a thousand folks sustained some kind of injury.  Fortunately, nothing seemed to be life-threatening.

So, why did this thing explode?  Well, we all know that when an object enters the Earth's atmosphere, it begins colliding with all the gas molecules that comprise our atmosphere.  The object giving us our close encounter is usually traveling at such a high rate of speed that it suffers millions of these interactions a second, and the brushing off of gas particles is enough to transfer heat via friction to the chunk of space rock.  This heats the object up until it starts to glow--think about the coils in your toaster, except imagine them traveling around 40,000 miles per hour!.  Since most space rocks have a fairly high content of iron in them, this analogy isn't too far off.  We've all seen pictures of forges and foundries where molten iron and steel are glowing hot.

The reason why iron (and most anything else that glows when heated) does that is because pumping heat into a system adds energy, and when you add energy, you excite the electrons surrounding the atom.  As the electrons get excited--like, literally quivering with anticipation--they jump, much like a corgi looking for a treat.  Unlike the corgi, the electrons have to travel into different shells surrounding the atom.  After jumping, the electrons aren't where they are supposed to be, they are excited, and they now want to go home where they are more comfortable.  The electron then falls back down to its original shell, and when it falls, it releases that energy in the form of light (and heat).  

But why the explosion?  Well, as you might expect, the heating of the space rock isn't uniform.  The composition of the rock isn't uniform, either, and so as it heats, some of the solids in the rock are vaporized--literally turned into gas form--and as we've learned, gasses expanding more rapidly than their container can withstand = explosion.  And explosions = awesome.

And what an explosion!  It was estimated that the Chelyabinsk blast was roughly equivalent to 20 atomic bombs going off at the same time!  Sensors from around the globe picked up on the shockwaves, which does, literally, make it a shot heard around the world.  Im. Press. Ive!

The difference between all these space rocks, also, involves where they are and their size.  Asteroids (literally, "star forms") are very large chunks of space rock, but they are smaller than planets, planetoids and moons, typically have no atmosphere, but they do have enough mass to exert gravitational pull on other objects.  Sometimes the definitions can get a little hinky.  Phobos and Deimos, Mars' moons, are technically captured asteroids from the asteroid belt.  Eventually, someday, they'll crash into the surface of Mars.  Talk about Fear and Dread!

Meteoroids are small chunks of space rock, like our friend who provided the spectacular aerial show over Chelyabinsk, that have not interacted with Earth's atmosphere (yet!).  Once they hit the upper atmosphere and start glowing, they are called meteors.  If, by chance, they make it to the surface of the Earth (which, despite its size, the Chelyabinsk meteor has yet to provide evidence of reaching the ground) they are called meteorites.  Or starmetal, if you're into D&D--which I'm not.  Seriously.  Stop looking at me like that.

Of course, it has to be mere coincidence that this whole thing happened but three days after the DVD release of Skyfall.  *nodding*  Well-played, MGM...well-played...

Totally Sciencing Shit Up Tuesdays: Melts in Your Mouth AND in Your Hand

If I say I did a lot of reading during the time when I wasn't posting much, can we call it a sabbatical?  No?  Fine.

Anyway, while I was out and about, gadding about town in my labcoat and safety glasses, I read a book called "The Disappearing Spoon" by Sam Kean.  A quick summary would go something like "Kean investigates the history and position of all the elements on the periodic table."  It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but for someone with a chemistry degree and a mild interest in the science, I found it to be an enjoyable read.  The science got a little more intense toward the end of the book, but it's still worth a look if you enjoy reading about some of the strange histories that went on behind the elements on the periodic table.

Quick tidbit I picked up:  Did you know that Marie Curie had a bit of a reputation for being a cockmonster?  She was accused, multiple times, of putting the moves on various other scientists by luring them into closets to show how her radium samples glowed in the dark.  And, when in Rome.  Er, Paris...

Speaking of Paris, did you know France has a shitload of elements named for it on the periodic table?  The easiest one to identify is Francium, element 87.  As the segue leading into this paragraph referenced Paris, it, too, is recognized as Lutetium, element 71, which derives its name from Lutetia, the Latin word for the city that we now call Paris (which is named for a warrior from the Iliad...)  The other Franklandia-inspired element is Gallium, number 31.

Gallium is linked to France based on the old Celtic kingdom of Gaul, which Julius Caesar brought under Roman rule in a rather impressive fashion.  There is a second, somewhat contentious origin for gallium's name, but it's also French AND Roman.  The man who discovered gallium, Paul Emile LeCoq, allegedly named gallium for the Latin word gallus, which means rooster, which is what LeCoq means in French.  This has since been shown to be apocryphal, and the etymology is typically associated with Gaul.

In one of those cosmic sort of coincidences, any Latin student worth his or her snuff knows that "All Gaul is divided into three parts"...and gallium is found in the third column of the periodic table because it has three valence electrons.  There has to be a conspiracy theory in there somewhere.

Gallium is an interesting element in that it is a metal--it's shiny lustrous, can be drawn into a wire or molded into a sheet, conducts heat and electricity--and in the morning of a lovely spring day, it is a solid.  By the afternoon, it's a liquid.  In fact, if you hold it in the palm of your hand, it melts!  The melting point of gallium is somewhere around 86F (30C).

Well, this certainly screams for a demonstration, doesn't it?  Absolutely!  Enjoy!

Gallium can possibly be toxic, so don't try this trick at home, or, if you do, don't blame me when the cops show up asking questions.  I'll blame it on Sam Kean, anyway.

Gallium itself isn't used much, but gallium is such a whore for other metals that it alloys readily.  I've never seen this, but apparently gallium and sodium spontaneously mix together to form a T1000-esque puddle of liquid metal which is almost as lethal...just in a really prolonged exposure sort of way.  However, gallium salts make some damned fine blue LEDs, and gallium is responsible for the blue light of your Blue-Ray player (eh? eh?).  A gallium alloy is probably the shit in your thermometers, since mercury be all toxic and such.

Did I say spontaneously alloy?  I DID say spontaneously alloys!

Sure, that was a mild "explosion", but it burst nonetheless.  It did fit the proper definition of a gas (carbon dioxide) expanding within a container (the can) faster than the structural integrity of the container could withstand.  So, hooray Tuesdays!

Gallium also can make some high-quality mirrors, since it is shiny (as well as lustrous) and the surface is highly reflective.  You just need to make an alloy of it with another metal in order to avoid having your mirror get all melty when you're drying your hair.  Curiously, it "wets" whatever it is touching, so if you play with it too much you'll go blind you could end up with a fine, gray sheen on your hands.  Handle at your own risk, Solomon Grundy.

Gallium's size actually allows it to diffuse into the spaces between metal atoms in metallic lattice structures.  You can actually see this happening in the time-lapse video above (the second video); it's the disruption of the metal interactions that make the alloys brittle and/or liquid (depending on how much gallium is present).  For some strange miracle of nature, gallium just loves to get in there and intimately mingle with these other metals.

When it comes to alloys, this element certainly is that kind of gallium.  And we love it!

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Watermelon's Revenge

Remember this little feature?  Of course you do.  I get on here, blow my own scientifically-laced trumpet, and then you tell me how much more fun I would have made your science class if I was your teacher.  We all laugh, I get a swollen head (not that one...unless YOU'RE making the comment...you know who you are...), and then we move on to bigger and better things:  namely, for you, life.  For me?  Booze.

Anyway, remember that fantastic little featurette I brought you a while ago where some cat filled a bottle with liquid nitrogen and then shoved that mother up into a watermelon?  Comedy quickly ensued?  Surely you remember it!  If not, here's the link for a refresher course.

Caught up?  Better?  Let's go.

So long, watermelon; we barely knew ye.  Except that there are thousands of your brethren lying in fields all over the country, just waiting to have all sorts of disturbing escapades involving detonations and swiftly expanding pockets of gas.  Or perhaps other fates await you.  We shall see, won't we?

That brings us to this week's episode--as if these things have been episodic...you can't go several years between installments and keep it a series, right?  What the hell kind of person would do that?

Point taken.

I stumbled upon this video yesterday and, well, I'll admit...I have no idea what's going on here.  What is their motivation?  I can't read or understand Japanese, but my main guess is that their motivation is that they are "guys" and the watermelon was just sitting there begging to be wrapped in rubber bands.  And, oh, the results are magnificent.



Oh, thank you, internet.  Only here could I see a watermelon wrapped in rubber bands give a money shot to a bunch of bored--yet creative--kids.  Awesome.  It's kind of like the watermelon, accepting its fate, decided to exact one last bit of revenge on the way out.  I hear that stuff burns--even coming from a watermelon!

There's not much science-y going on here.  The combined pressure of the 500 rubber bands wanting to get back to their non-stretched forms was greater than what the cellulose of the watermelon's rind could withstand.  With the inelastic fruit rind quickly collapsing, all that pulp on the inside needs to go somewhere.  And go it does!  Boom.  Fruit salad for everyone!

Well, except for you, Sisyphus-cat.  You keep rolling that bitch up the hill.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: This Is Why It's So Effing Hot

I probably should not be whining about this, since it's not three million degrees in North By God Carolina...yet. Or again. Or however you'd like to put it. However, I've said it before and I'll say it again: the coinpurse is hanging mighty low.

I guess the price to pay for one very nice weekend is that we'll soon be thrust deep into the bowels of a very certain fiery hell. Some people (Texans, mostly) call it "summer". It's summer, so let's crank the motherfucking heat all the way to 11, right Mother Nature?

Who knew Mother Nature was such a fan of Nigel Tufnel?

Anyway, this whole ungodly heat wave that has been melting butter all across the Midwest and Great Lakes region--and which is headed straight for the east coast--is just more fuel for the fire for the global warming crowd. Any stretch of hot weather causes them to scream about carbon footprints and cow farts and such. Just like balls-deep snow causes the extremists on the other side to squawk just as loudly against global warming. Whatever it is, global warming or not, I know that I have to wring my pillow out around 4:20 every morning, and that's just not good eats.

I need to slow down my typing: my knuckles are sweating.

Anyway, global warming, celestial alignment, God's hot little prank on all of us--whichever reason you can come up with for this ball-saggingly hot streak, there's no denying that the temperatures are cranked up. Grab yourself a cool glass of ice tea or iced water or scotch on the rocks and check this shit out:

By the way, when I hit 45, scotch on the rocks is all I'll be drinking. You've been given ten year's warning, Scotland! Time to up the manufacturing process!

As you can see in the video, the sun doesn't get along too well with Thai food, either. That big, galactic fart was a solar flare coupled with a massive ejection of charged plasma particles. Fortunately, that was pointed anywhere but toward the Earth. If it had been pointed here, well, we wouldn't be having the conversation, now, would we?

Here's another clip, a closer view but also viewed at a slightly different wavelength of light so you can see the shit falling back into the sun. It's pretty awesome to see the light flaring when the sun's own ejecta lands back on its surface.



Now, run that back and pay special attention to the place where the flare originates and watch it as the flare erupts. Did you see that dark circle running away from the epicenter of the explosion? That's a blast wave. On the surface of the sun. From where part of it blew out.

*takes hat off head and fans self*

Pardon me. I need to catch my breath.

Here's something cool, though. If you look at your keyboard right now, everything you see--the carbon that makes up your flesh and bones and the plastic keys to your keyboard, the aluminum that forms the frame, the hydrogen and oxygen that makes up most of that delicious cup of coffee sitting on your desk, even the calcium and phosphorus that makes up the ceramic of your coffee mug--all came from shit like this. The sun--or any star--burps out the atoms that make up pretty much everything (elements heavier than iron, though are made when the sun truly gets surly and goes supernova) when it ejects material out of itself like this. Most of that stuff fell back to the sun's surface, it's true, but some of it went floating off into the deep, dark nether regions of space and may, someday, turn into the coffee mug or ballpoint pen of some future denizen of Earth. Or it could go further out and be incorporated into some alien life form's civilization.

That's pretty fucking beautiful, if you ask me (and I know you did...why else would you be here if you didn't want to know?), even if the sun could, tomorrow, point one of those blasts directly at the Earth. If it happened, we'd have about eight minutes to call our loved ones and hurry to the shelters where we can bend over and kiss our asses good-bye.

Kind of warms the heart a little, right? Well, good. Now that your heart is warm, it matches the rest of this hellish weather, doesn't it?

Where's my damned scotch and water?

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesday: The Little Rocket that Could

Avert your eyes, space travelers, because we're going to get this explosions going early and you are going to swear off your intended mode of travel in about thirteen seconds. Behold the mighty spectacle of your GPS not working quite so well as it could:

Now that, my good people, is what blowing shit up is all about! *pauses for a second* Let's completely forget about the amount of money that went up in one incendiary flash of rocket-fuel and liquid oxygen. Did you totally see how that shit was raining down from above? All fire and brimstone and you'd think Loki had picked his flaming sword back up and was going all Sodom and/or Gomorrah on the Cape! Destruction of that magnitude is the most exhausting thing anyone can engage in, aside from soccer.

Think about this for a moment: you're an average Joe rocket scientist. The world to you is all force vectors and Greek letters and silly shit like that. You drive to work, minding your own business, proud of the fact that you're going to put a new GPS satellite into space so that fathers driving their families on vacations don't have to stop and ask for directions when--WHAMMO!--you've been knocked on your ass by a concussive shock wave tearing through the sky five times the speed of sound. Your ears are bleeding from the force of the noise that just ripped through your skull like a bullet through wet tissue paper. The sky is on fire, and it's headed toward you. You're dazed. You're confused. And every year, they stay the same age!

Well, damn, you think. Chalk one more up to combustion kicking the living hell out of potential energy today. I guess it's back to the drawing board! This is, of course, after you've jammed wadded-up kleenex in your ears to stem the flow of blood and pulled your eyes out of your hippocampus where the force of the blast wedged them. Firmly.

I think I'll just go to lunch and we can sweep this thing up and start anew, you continue thinking, gathering the charred remains of your briefcase. You blow out one piece of paper which is still, comically, aflame. You pull on the tattered remnants of your blazer and you head out to the parking lot where you climb into your car only to realize that the wheels are melted to the ground. And Steve Martin is riding shotgun.

"Hello, Bob," you say, after dialing your cell phone and becoming mildly peeved that you're getting less than ideal reception, tiny pieces of GPS satellite slowly spiraling around you, "yeah, I'm going to need you to come out to the parking lot of my place of employment. I think I've totaled my car. Yeah, see you soon. Buh-bye."

And this is just, to quote the dispatcher, "an anomaly of the Delta II launch vehicle." Imagine if a real meddlesome headscratcher had occurred.

Granted, this can be turned amusing based on no one getting injured, which is fucking amazing. In case you missed the cause of the explosion, they determined a seventeen-inch long crack in one of the boosters caused some fuel to leak, a flame to get in, some oxygen to comingle up in that bidness, and then BOOM HEAD SHOT!

I guess it's true what they say: Crack kills.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Isn't it Ironic?

Recently, in the lab, I've been working with a lot of iron powder. The stuff is great in that it does exactly what I want it to with minimal side reactions. For a chemist, that's like getting a lap dance with a happy ending. There's very little mess, it gets the job done, and the only danger is leaving some of the iron in your sample when you take an NMR. That's the equivalent of lipstick on your collar and an angry wife.

Anyway, aside from its electron-donating capabilities (making it a reductant...remember kids, LEO the lion goes GER!), iron is pretty cool stuff, chemically-speaking. Of the myriad of reactions I've done in my day, the ones involving iron seem to work the best. It might not be the sexiest metal to throw into your reaction, but it sure is reliable and it gets the job done. Iron is kind of the Pittsburgh of the periodic table.

Now that I'm done with metaphors for iron and its chemical potential (I see it as a metal with HUGE upside!), there was one thing that caught my eye on the side of the bottle when I cracked it open and started slinging the fine, steely-gray powder around the balance area. It caught my eye because it was colored over in pink highlighter: CAUTION! Highly Flammable!

Flammable? Iron? Oh really?

And then I thought on it some more. Iron, by its very nature, enjoys coupling with oxygen. A lot. In fact, iron and oxygen get rather kinky: two irons and three oxygens are known to bind up and share one another freely back and forth. We tend to call it rust.

So, it only makes sense that iron would be more than happy to react with the oxygen in the air. And, as I hope I've shown you time and again, fine powders love to react explosively in the presence of an ignition source. And if you don't believe me, well, here is a safety video about iron "fileings" (it hurt to type that) that you may tickle your eyeballs with:

Despite the lack of production quality, the terrible misspellings (which I shan't repeat here) and the diligent commentary...I actually like that video quite a bit. I'm being quite honest here. Essentially, the reaction was the one I described above, iron + oxygen + flame = fast rust.

Fe⁰ + O₂ ---> Fe₂O₃

Kinky.

Now, if you're like me (that is to say, "girthy"), you've used those heating pads before, where you open the pad up and put it on your body and you eventually begin to feel it warming up. It's supposed to help loosen "tightened" muscles, and provide all the relief that icy hot gives, just without the burn and the cloying aroma of menthol. Usually, I start to purr like a kitten about five minutes after they're on and then scream like a banshee thirty minutes later, because they've become too warm. I'm a sensitive little spanker.

It's the same reaction, though. The pads are packaged in nitrogen, which won't bind to the iron, meaning no reaction. Once exposed to air, and the 21% oxygen therein, the iron begins to rust, releasing energy in the form of heat. The heat is then transferred to your muscles, where it acts like a topless Thai massage therapist, working away all the tension and soreness that a spate of failed reactions in the lab can leave you with. Science can be sexy!

Oh, and then there's that other thing about iron being reactive and explosive. We've seen it several times before, just under the a different name. When we mix iron(III)oxide (rust) with aluminum powder, we get one of the formulas for thermite.



Thermite always leaves me a little worked up after watching it do its thing.

The lesson here is, yes, even iron can be flammable. And you should totally read and believe the labels on the sides of the chemicals and practice the utmost in safety in all lab settings. Nothing good will ever come of an accident in the lab.

Shut up.

Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: Darwin Awards

Oh good Lord. Whoever decided that we shouldn't have any three-day weekends between the beginning of the new year and the end of May should be publicly horse-whipped, perhaps even nude, somewhere in Vermont. We haven't even made it through January yet, and I'm looking forward to the holidays, 2011 style.

Or, if not the holidays yet, at least a weekend where I can be somewhat lazy and not wrestle dead flora out of my living room and into the woods next to my house. There's no need for the Ents to come mooting around this place; I let that tree live the life of Riley for at least two weeks after it should have been relegated to compost. House guests and fish smell after three days; Christmas trees get dry, brittle and leave rings of needles everywhere for you to sweep up later.

Fortunately, the house is mostly recovered from the holidays. I sure haven't recovered yet. Something about my ass and the couch becoming one for a period of nearly two weeks puts the damper on that whole "ambition" thing. So, I don't know about you, but I need a pick-me-up. Since I don't really drink anymore, and I have all the naked women I ever need lying in my bed right now, I guess I'll have to exercise some other vice.

Oh, hey, videos of explosions!

Here's one of someone who...didn't know what he was doing, or at least has a hard time figuring the heat of enthalpy of a reaction. He also didn't realize that constricting the area for the explosion to take place in was a very bad idea.

In case you missed it, he's lighting a mixture of acetylene gas (the stuff they put in blow torches) and oxygen. Oxygen is there to support the combustion of the organic gas. I'd write out the balanced equation, but you guys don't come here for science, you come here for videos of shit being blown up and egregious use of the word "fuck".

I want you to pay special attention to how the hood sash ends up after all is said and done in the video. To say it was left askew would be an understatement; homeboy's lucky he still has both hands, use of his eyes, or even that he still has a head.

Granted, at least he tried being safe with his explosion gone awry, unlike this dumbass:



Too bad that ugly-ass shirt didn't get taken out in the explosion, Mr. Goggles Would Ruin My Fashion Sense.

Well, it's still a long time until May, but watching these videos does take away the pain of the long slog through the ass-end of winter and the opening weeks of spring. How long until college football starts back up again? Nine months? Fuck.

Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: Because Pumpkins Are Too Good NOT to Blow Up

Ah, Tuesday, when we appeal (somewhat irregularly) to the pyromaniac in all of us. Remember, when it comes to pyromaniacy--or sexual harassment--if you do it once, it's not a problem. Or a pattern. It's an isolated incident.

Just, bear that in mind.

And what have you provided for us today, oh wonders of the internets? What have you given us to while away thirty seconds with this morning? Could it be gourds flying apart quickly and violently, accompanied by flashes of light and near-sonic booms?

Why, yes. Yes, it could be.

But, what would make a concussive end to a pumpkin's life more satisfying? Could it be, possibly, lighting the fuse with the lit end of a cigarette? How about someone worrying aloud and off-camera about their cat-litter-bucket-cum-pumpkin stand and the state of said litter bucket at the end of this exercise? How about throwing in a ramshackle barn, crudely made dog pens, and ten miles of green garden hose wound upon a hose reel and stretched out into the yard? What about someone opining off camera, loudly and barely intelligibly that it doesn't need to be so loud and enthusiastic next time?

Dear me, could we get all of those things in one?

Yes. Yes, we could get all of those things in one.

I'm sure he hasn't practiced by blowing up meth labs or anything before.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Pumpkin Time!

One of my favorite things about this time of year used to be pumpkin ales. I love them. Er, loved them. *heaves a heavy, dramatic sigh* Post Road (acquired some years ago by Brooklyn Brewery) and Dogfish Head had two of my favorite pumpkin ales. I'm not sure if one can really pull that much pumpkin flavor from the beer, but the mixture of the spices and the smoothness of the beers were what really drew me in. Plus, I love fall, and the flavors of the beers always seemed to mix well with the gradual changeover from green to red, yellow, and orange of the fall leaves.

However, as you know, I'm not a big fan of pumpkins themselves, stemming from a traumatic childhood experience in which a pumpkin started talking to me. It might have not been just the pumpkin suddenly finding its voice as I drew near; the entire scene was scary, because that house looked like it should be haunted.

Anyway, nearly three decades later, and I still stare at those cold, cruel, demonic faces carved into the empty orange gourds and I fantasize about them suddenly being no more. Thankfully, we have the internet these days. And when you mix the internet, some pumpkins, and some bored people, you get videos! Here's a newer video involving the detonation of pumpkins that I had not seen before. Enjoy!

The one blowing up under water was a nice touch.

Jack O' Lanterns (or Jack O' The Lantern) were not originally pumpkins. The tradition started in Ireland and on Great Britain back around the time when Roman influence was still felt in that part of the world. The pumpkin is a North American vegetable, so it stands to reason that there weren't any pumpkins around for the old Celtic peoples to carve up into garish, illuminated faces. Thus, before the rise of the pumpkin, people used turnips to carve into Jack O' Lanterns.

The Jack O' Lantern was used to frighten off evil or bad spirits that might be hanging around the fields and crops. In the ancient Celtic tradition, the end of the summer was celebrated during a festival called Samhain (which means "summer's end"). Like many other cultures, the Celts celebrated the harvest by thanking and venerating various fertility gods and goddesses during the months of the harvest. The Celts also believed that the boundaries that existed between our world and the world that housed the spirits of the dead and demons grew very thin during Samhain. Thus, the Jack O' Lantern was used to ward off those dastardly spirits that might otherwise spoil the harvest and ruin everyone's good time.

Do you know what the Chinese used to frighten off evil spirits hellbent on wrecking the harvest? Explosives!!! I wonder if it would be possible to carve a pumpkin using explosives???



Well, I'll be damned. I guess it is possible.

Anyway, thanks to the prevalence of witchcraft...or alleged witchcraft in North America, the pumpkin became associated with witches. It was a natural progression to make pumpkins associated with the supernatural. Plus, I can only imagine that it's a helluva lot easier to carve a pumpkin than it is to carve a turnip, but that is purely conjecture.

So there you have it. Pumpkins: they make great beer, better pie, excellent demon protection and fucking fabulous shrapnel.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays, Vulcanalia!

August 24^th was a busy day in Roman history. In 49 BC, the Second Battle of the Bagradas was fought, in which the Roman forces lost. In 410 AD, the Visigoths started pillaging the city of Rome itself--a festival of plunder and rape that would last for three days.

However, neither of those are why we're here today. Today marks the one thousand, nine hundred and thirty first anniversary of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which buried the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae. Of the three, Stabiae suffered the least, while Herculaneum was history's red-headed stepchild in that it was completely forgotten until archaeologists began poking around the site where Pompeii had been and found another city. Research then revealed that the city's name was Herculaneum.

Now, here's a bit of irony for you. Vesuvius went up on August 24^th. August 23^rd was the day set aside on the Roman Calendar to celebrate Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, both beneficial and harmful. He was associated with Haphaestus, the Greek god of fire and smithworking. As such, he is considered a fertility god, because ashes provide fertilizer when worked into the fields. He is also a bit of a war god, because you can use fire to subdue your enemies. Along with all of these, he is a master smith, who keeps his forge beneath Mount Etna.

Apparently, Vulcan was none too pleased with the natives as they celebrated his special day.

As I mentioned before, his festival is the Vulcanalia, which was celebrated on August 23^rd, was an offering up to Vulcan to prevent fire from harming the wheat crops which were nearly ready to harvest at this time of the year. Typically, the late summer was the dry season, so crops of all kinds were especially threatened to be ruined if anything sparked a fire, so it's best to appease the fire god to keep these kinds of things from happening.

Since Vulcan was a fire god, his temples were typically located outside of the cities, so that celebrations for Vulcan would not destroy the entire town. As you might imagine, a lot of the religious rites surrounding Vulcan's worship involved open flames.

And, yes, we derive the word "volcano" from Vulcan's name, since his smithy was underneath Mt. Etna. He was married to Venus, and it was believed that whenever she was unfaithful to Vulcan (which is to say, a lot), he would get pissed and hammer out his frustrations in his forge. Sparks would fly from him work, which would be visible coming out of the top of Mt. Etna. Kind of like this:

Now that's some nature blowing some shit up, my friends.

Mount Etna is located on Sicily. However, Vesuvius is located down the coast of the Italian peninsula from Rome, sort of in the "ankle" region of the boot. The thing about Vesuvius is, it started smoking and billowing ash on Vulcanalia of 79 AD. It wasn't until the next day that it went up, destroying the three cities.

The area around Pompeii and Stabiae was a very popular resort for wealthy Romans, and August was the time when most of the Roman families would have gone south to their villas for vacation. This means thousands of people were killed in the volcano's explosion and eruption that ensued. Famed historian Pliny the Elder (that's pronounced "Plinny") was in the area when Vesuvius erupted. Pliny commanded a fleet of ships, and he decided to take a closer look at the volcano as it erupted, because Pliny was famous for writing about the natural world. This wasn't just a grab for further fame, however, as Pliny did command his ships to sail across the bay to Pompeii and Stabiae in hopes of saving some of the people who were stranded there.

Unfortunately, this was the last thing Pliny would do. Pliny died on August 24th, 79 AD, but we know that his attempts to save people were successful because survivors escaped to tell Pliny's nephew, Pliny (this one being "the Younger"), that the Elder had saved them.

In Pliny's honor, the tall pillar of smoke and ash that spews forth from a volcano is referred to as a "Plinian cloud" and any volcano which does this is said to be undergoing a "Plinian eruption". Something like Krakatoa exploding is referred to as a "super-Plinian eruption". I'll bet he's so happy.

Pompeii and Herculaneum were not rebuilt. Instead, this paved the way for an ancient Greek city, Neapolis ("New City"), which was now under Roman control, to thrive as the major port in the area. It has grown up today to be known as Naples. Naples still sits in the shadow of Vesuvius.

And to add just a bit of doomsday cachet, Vesuvius is not a dormant volcano. In fact, recent seismological studies have shown that the magma chamber beneath the volcano is filling once more. In other words, you might want to put off that trip to Naples for a while, lest you end up like Pliny the Elder...but you'd have to put one about two hundred pounds before that happens.

Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: C3H8 Edition

I had to deal with a tragedy here of late. It's been kind of hard for me to deal with emotionally, especially since this is mostly my fault. Guilty conscience and all. Anyway, I had to lay to rest a dear friend.

My grill has finally come to the point where it's no longer practical to use it. Mostly because I set it on fire last week. Totally accidental, I assure you. It's been a constant companion for six years now, so I'm a little sad to see it go. However, the six-year accumulation of grease and fat from all the various food that I've cooked on it was the final doing in of this once noble beast.

The other night, I had some kabobs that I wanted to cook, so I thought I'd put some aluminum foil on the grill, warm it up and then cook until the meat was seared on the outside and then--according to my plans, at least--I was going to yank the aluminum off the grill and then slow cook the meat and vegetables until they = delicious.

So, that was the plan.

I went out, put the aluminum foil on the grill grate, and lit the clean-burning, even-heating propane. Everything was fine. I went inside to get the kabobs ready, as they had been marinating for a couple of hours in the fridge. This task took me all of five minutes. As I was getting ready to take them outside, I looked out the kitchen window.

"Odd," I said to myself, "there seems to be a lot of smoke in the backyard..."

I continued on my merry and blissfully ignorant way. As I came down the steps of the back deck, I looked over at the grill to see smoke and flames billowing out of it. I had, of course, put the lid down on the grill so that the heat would be trapped inside.

"Curious," I said to myself, approaching the bubble of hot air and smoke that enveloped my grill and the porch of the building where it sat, "this should not be happening."

I was bold enough to lift the lid of the grill to find the entire bottom converted into a howling inferno. The voices of the damned screamed forth from the billowing clouds of flame that were erupting from the grill. It seems as though the aluminum foil I had so cleverly put on the grill a few moments before had deflected the heat and flames down, catching the accumulated grease and fat on fire. And when one little bit of that mess caught, the whole fucking thing went up.

"This cannot be good," I said to myself, and quickly turned down the heat, then thought better of it and turned the gas off. The grill continued to burn. I stared at it for a moment, transfixed. Then, suddenly, in the depths of my over-active-imagination, I envisioned a stream of melted, burning fat dripping from the base of the grill down onto the propane tank. My pulse quickened, my breathing grew shallow, adrenaline coursed through my veins.

Certainly--according to my twisted vision of reality, at least--the propane tank was about to go up spectacurlarly. I was going to die.

So, I did what any red-blooded Frenchman American male between the ages of 32 and 45 would do: I ran for my fucking life! I quickly ducked back into the house where I peeked out at the grill from the window in the living room, as if watching the neighbors partaking in some sordid affair.

"Is dinner ready already?" my wife asked.

"Uh...no," I said, expecting at any moment for the grill to go kaboom!

"What the hell is going on then?" she asked. I explained myself.

Eventually, we stir-fried the kabobs (which required taking them off the skewer, thanks) and they were delicious. And, I'm happy to report that my grill did not detonate. However, if it did, it would have looked something like this:

When I eventually came to reinvestigate the charred, smoking remains of my grill, it was a sad sight. Amazingly, it had burnt hot enough to cause the aluminum foil to fall apart. What wasn't left in shreds in the bottom of the grill had coated the outside of the grate. Everything in the tub of the grill was black, some of it still sizzling, but the burner was much the worst for wear. Rusted and falling apart, I knew then that it was time to bid adieu to my friend, the grill.

Which brings me to the next phase of my life: loving a second grill.

I went to Lowes yesterday because they were having a sale on grills. I got a smaller version (I really don't need three racks as I only ever really used two in my old grill). The lady who unlocked it for me made no bones about how she wasn't going to help my fat ass cart off or load the grill in my car. In fact, I think she actually said "Here." as a means of telling me it was mine. More excellent customer service from America's Home Improvement Headquarters.

Fortunately, it has two wheels so I carted it off to my car, where I realized that it was just that much too wide for the back of my car. However, if I could just angle it...but I couldn't find the right angle.

Then, three angels appeared. Three very Southern, very paint- and sawdust-covered angels. They were angels because, well, one of them was wearing a California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels hat. So there.

But, they helped me load the grill in my car, and one of them even went to get some twine so that we could tie everything shut. They were very pleasant, very friendly fellows, and I'm eternally grateful to them. True Southern Hospitality at its finest.

I explained my plight about the burnt grill to the ringleader, a squat and swarthy fellow named Billy. He listened, then got a big grin on his face.

"Jesus, man, don't admit to anyone that you set your grill on fire!" he told me. I laughed and then reminded him that half the fun is telling the story. I thanked them once more, and I was off. I made it home safely, the new grill is in the back yard. I think tonight, I'll have my final send-off for the old grill.

I'm thinking a Viking funeral is the only proper way to send it off.

Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: Liquid Nitrogen

You know what's funny? When someone says they want to try to get back to posting everyday, and then don't post for three consecutive days. Hilarity. I have good excuses (they involve spending "time" with "family" and "being a father" and "cleaning up a nasty virus that was eating my computer on Sunday"), but I won't spend them here. I'll save them for another day.

So, I thought I would try to make it up to you by posting videos of explosions. Everyone loves blowing shit up, right? I thought so!

Anyway, as we've gone over here before (oh, look at that, the "imperial we"...not too full of ourselves now, are we?) an explosion is simply an expansion of gases more rapid and forceful than the container that is holding them can withstand. So, if there's too much pressure too fast, then boom. And giggling, though that's more a side effect, at least so long as everyone still has all their fingers, toes, eyes, balls...what have you.

It would, therefore, make sense that, if you have the liquid form of something that prefers to be a gas at room temperature, and you warm it up quickly, there's a good chance there could be some of that rapid expansion of the gas with cataclysmic results.

Like, say, a plastic bottle full of liquid nitrogen thrown into a warm pool...

That's short, sweet, and to the point. I like it, especially since the lights of the pool look green.

Obviously, the liquid nitrogen would warm to the temperature of the air--albeit slowly(-ish)...plastic is an insulator, after all--and the bottle would explode. However, with the water jacketing the bottle and helping transfer heat more efficiently, the bottle goes off faster and, presumably, harder (there's not as much time for excess gas to leak out). And, since it's underwater, you get sexy wave action.

But what happens when you really heat the living shit out of liquid nitrogen? Oh, it's time to call in some thermite:


Perhaps not as satisfying as other thermite reactions shown on here, but it was still kind of fun watching the liquid nitrogen boil away and the pool of molten metal piling up on the cinder blocks.

Plus, thermite is always cool. Heh. Explosion humor.

Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: Back With a Bang!

*takes a deep breath*

Ah, it's good to be back!

So, to answer your questions about yesterday: things went well. I wasn't able to do my presentation because of a software incompatibility issue; I had a more up-to-date copy of MS PowerPoint than the school's computer could handle. So, instead, I spoke extemporaneously to the kids about what it is I do in the field of neglected diseases, and then I talked to them about chemistry. After that, we looked at the periodic tables, and then I did my experimental examples. Glowing water? A total fucking hit. Freezing cold ice packs? Knocked their socks off! Baking soda and vinegar volcano? Probably wouldn't have wowed them as much if I wasn't such a showman.

Take that red, seizure-inducing strobe light guy!!!

Most importantly? My daughter wasn't embarrassed to have me be seen in public. She even wanted me to stay and eat lunch with her.

I'll take that father of the year award now, thankyouverymuch.

As I mentioned yesterday, I decided against bringing a canister of highly flammable solvent and matches to an elementary school. Oh, sure, they have fire extinguishers and insurance and such, but I didn't want to be THAT guy. You know, the guy who burned down the school? The hero to countless elementary school delinquents for my legendary case of accidental arson? Yeah, him.

However, a couple of kids did ask me about explosions.

"Do you know anything about explosions?" they asked.

Fuck and to the yeah, little ones. Gather 'round whilst I tell you all about the best ways to blow some shit up!

Okay, so I didn't precisely tell them how to blow some shit up, just that yeah, you can make some explosions. Especially if you crank the lid on the bottle real tight before running away and pretending like you weren't in the area at all that day. *insert angelic halo here*

Mostly, they wanted to know about dry ice and dynamite/TNT. I reminded them that TNT was discovered by Alfred Nobel, and that the world was so thankful for his gift of high-grade explosives that they named an element after him: Nobelium, number 102.

Instead of talking about explosions and dynamite and dry ice and shit, let's just get to the video. And what a video it is. May I present to you, Fire in the Fireworks Factory!

Around the 1:22 mark, did anyone else think that billowing smoke cloud looked a little like Godzilla?

This whole thing was magnificent...unless you're that poor sonuvabitch holding the camera there at the end. It makes me wonder: If you piss yourself does that slow the flames down and give you just that much longer to writhe in agony and terror during your final moments...

Anyway. I like how things started out slowly--a pop here, a bang there--then, when things got out of hand, they really got out of hand. And it was all building toward that final blast. Personally, I really enjoy the slow motion, where you can see the shockwave traveling through the air and the surrounding buildings as it races toward the camera. That, my friends, is an explosion.

So, what have we learned today? Aside from explosions are awesome if you're not standing near them? The lesson here is that fires in fireworks factories are a lot more aesthetically pleasing than fires in other buildings. Plus, an enormous vat of barium chloride makes lovely green fireballs in the sky when it explodes.

Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: The Bad Decision

I'm not really here today. I'll be in a conference room all day, doing the quarterly meeting thang. Damn, I am so street. In my stead, I am offering you a video that will hopefully excite and titillate. Or at least satisfy your need for wanton pain and destruction that I normally offer up on a Tuesday.

So...most Tuesdays, I try to bring the glorious celebration of entropy that only an explosion can provide. Today, I'm going outside of the explosive box for a moment...but only because this shit is really funny.

I guess I should call it "Totally Setting Stuff on Fire Tuesday" or maybe "Totally Doing Something Stupid to Your Crotch Tuesday", but it just doesn't have the same feel.

Okay, well, here's the video:

Okay, so, what this dunderhead was trying to do was a neat little trick that you can pull to impress your friends. If you take some low-burning solvent--ethanol, acetone, ether--and douse your clothing in it, you can actually light the solvent on fire without catching the fabric--or yourself--on fire.

Seriously, don't do this at home.

The trick is that, since the alcohol burns at a much lower temperature than does cotton or flesh, you'll get this neat little dancing flame over your jeans or socks or what have you (your hand, if you're really brave and/or a charlatan attempting to hoax a bunch of uneducated medieval peasants). The fire will burn itself out and, since the fire isn't burning hot enough to catch the pants on fire, you should be in the clear.

Seriously, don't even attempt this on your own. Especially not when you're drunk.

What Captain Braintrust up above tried to do was show off for his friends. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that gasoline burns at something like 470-560 degrees C. Cotton's ignition temperature is 450 degrees C (and, of course, paper's is Fahrenheit 451...) The ignition temperature of ethanol is 426 degrees C...so you can see, it still burns pretty hot, but not hot enough to catch the fabric on fire. However, it will still make you nice and toasty and/or singe off your naughty bits.

That's why I'm telling you not to try this at home.

However, if you want to charm the pants off your ladyfriend, you can try showing her that you have "money to burn"...



Wow. That flaming hand trick was pretty cool. But, like the film's producer, I wouldn't recommend it.

Otherwise, someone might have to stomp out your nuts.

Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: Technological Destruction

Last week was not so good for me.

As you may recall, the old blog broke. Yes, it came back, but it wasn't an easy battle, exorcising all those demons in there. That, unfortunately, was only the beginning of my woeful travails.

On Monday of last week, my computer at work was infected with spyware. *gasp* Yeah, who knew that surfing around on the internet would lead to such a thing! Not I. I swear! Anyway, I got the one where the wallpaper is replaced with a big black box with red letters that reads "Warning! Do not use this computer. It is infected with spyware. You're a very dirty pervert, and you should be punished. This is only a small way of atoning for your sins, you filthy, filthy man. Buy our product, and we'll completely clean up all this here spyware for you. Convenient, no?"

I may have paraphrased that a tiny bit. However, you get the point.

So, not wanting to pay for their product (which would, undoubtedly, put more Chinese espionage programs spyware on the machine), I decided to run a sweep on my own. The computer already had spybot on it, so I ran that. The program did it's duty and I erased a couple hundred dozen things, and I figured things would be good. Only thing was...the spyware warning wallpaper was still there.

I didn't think much of it. I went home Tuesday night, logging off, hoping that it would be fixed when I logged back on. Maybe it needed that switch in order for the spyware to no longer be there. Except, it was still there Tuesday morning. So, Tuesday when I went home, I shut the whole system down. Maybe that would do the trick.

Wednesday...I couldn't log in to the computer. At all. Well, I take that back. I would log into the computer, and the computer would immediately log me right back out. Uh, not good.

Top that off with a phone that wasn't answering when I would pick up the receiver and would randomly cut off and hang up during the middle of a conversation, and I had one dysfunctional desk. I had to call IT and get them to fix me up, which meant reformatting my computer (but it also came with a memory upgrade--nice!). I was more than happy to hand it over for the day, especially if it meant the computer would run faster.

I had all that going for me last week. Along with getting this site up and running so that I could make the switch as seamlessly as possible (thanks, everyone, for understanding and joining me over here), I was getting a little stressed over the amount of gremlins that were plaguing my life.

But, it doesn't stop there.

Moments after Santa squeezed his fat ass back up my chimney, my dryer, overloaded with Holiday Cheer, up and died. Kaput. This dryer is no more. It was not pining for the fjords.

That, I could deal with. A trip to Lowes and the very next day, one large man and two gremlin apprentices carted off my old dryer (after I, alone, unhooked the broken one and hauled it out onto the deck, by myself!!!) and installed the new one. Runs like a top. Dries clothes. Everything you could possibly want from a dryer.

Not one to be upstaged by dryers or HTML code or computers and telephones, my television has decided to start blinking. At first, it was a short, momentary thing, where the picture would blink down into a tiny, dancing ball of phosphers in the middle of the screen. Now, it's doing it more often, so much so that it's no longer a blink but more like a short nap. Interested in finding out where the picture has gone, the sound is now following it.

This could be the straw on the dromedary's back. On one hand, I have the combined President's Day and Super Bowl deals that I can take advantage of. On the other hand, I really wasn't looking to spend $400-$500 on a new television right now. We were planning on replacing the television later in the year, perhaps as a Christmas present, but now...how can I possibly make it through a day without my daily dose of smug Canadian elitism without viewing Jeopardy? How, dammit, how???

So, I present you this: the cathartic end to a parade of technological wonders kicking me in the nuts and stealing the money out of my wallet--blowing up a computer.

I'm not sure which amuses me more, the epic mullet hanging off the back of the camouflage kid's skull or the dude on the bicycle casually cruising along in the background whilst a bunch of hooligans are detonating the cpu of a computer like it's an everyday occurrence.

Being that the mullet's not nearly greasy enough, I'm going with the dude on the bike.