I'm 27, why do you ask?

There are two things I've been spending my time on lately that are worth sharing with the world.

First, Trackmania nations. Go there and download the free game found on the upper right side. It's half of a gigabyte so the download might take a few minutes, but it's totally worth it.

The game has a really fast learning curve. You race cars using the four arrow buttons on your keyboard - that's the only instruction you'll ever need for this game. Even though it's so simple, it is super addictive because you are always improving. I'm currently ranked 244,212th in the world (613th in California).

When you create your account, add me (dentalninja) to your buddies list then you can see when I'm online and join in the same races I'm doing. Six of my dental school friends are on my buddies list.

Here's a couple screenshots I just took to give you a sneak peek:


My son likes to watch and point out whenever there's a blimp.


The second thing I feel obligated to share is adultheelysshoes.com. Earlier this week I got a killer deal on my very own pair of Heelys. The website is run by a friend of a friend who has a huge warehouse full of them in Idaho. He orders very large quantities and is thus able to sell them for cheaper than what people pay on ebay.

I wore them to school on Friday but didn't dare put the wheels in while working on the clinic. Maybe one of these days right before I'm outta here I'll be brave enough to cruise around the clinic floor all dentisty-looking in my scrubs, gloves, mask and dental loupes! For now, I'll just be content to cruise around in the lower level of the dental school where the linoleum floors satisfy my NEED for SPEED!

For those of you who don't have a clue what I'm talking about, here's a video of Brett Favre demonstrating how to ride Heelys. At the airport. Without pants. As cool as the "Heely Dentist" sounds, Brett has set the bar pretty high. I'm glad to see he's enjoying his retirement.

C'mon spellchecker, really?

After writing all about ninjavitis on my other blog, I just wanted to shoot a quick email to the guy whose comic I used and I must have had writer's fatigue or something because I seriously had to ask my wife how to spell "put" as in, "put the red line under the misspelled word."

Spell checker, you were just messing with me, weren't you:


Yeah, that's right, I was trying to say "I pew the story up" or "I poo the story up." Thanks for keeping me on my toes anyway, spellchecker.
P.S. I've noticed you still don't recognize "Obama" and would like to replace him with "Obadiah." You must be part of the extreme "religious right" I'm always reading about.

Books should be free

Lately I've been re-discovering my love of audio books. Several years ago when I had a job that required me to be all by myself in the middle of nowhere for 8 hours at a time, I found that my library card and a $5 cassette player were great company. The fact that I also had a 4-wheeler and a truck with endless muddy marshes to explore made me happy as a clam. When I tell people I used to work in mosquito control, they never realize what an awesome job that was.

Anyway, since Jordan loves playing in the park we try to get there on a daily basis. Initially I would always bring a book but found it distracting to constantly be looking up to check on him, so I broke out the ipod and finished listening to "Angels and Demons." When that was done, I stumbled across the site booksshouldbefree.com which has free mp3 downloads of classic books that are now in the public domain. The good part? They're free. The downside? They're done by people like you and me instead of professional narrators, so you have an occasional chapter that's really tough to pay attention to.

Just in the past few weeks I've found all kinds of time to "read" while I walk to school, do lab work, and of course while I swim! I've cruised through "The Island of Dr. Moreau," "The Art of War," and I was about to finish "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" last night when a massive cramp in my right leg cut my swim a little short.

Next up in the queue is "Treasure Island" and "The Man who knew Too Much." I'd appreciate any recommendations from that site or if you happen to know of any other quality free audio book sites let me know!

Of blimps and tanks

Recently I conducted a poll regarding which of these two super awesome vehicles you would rather own. I took this poll because I'm not entirely sure how I feel, and someday if I'm ever offered a blimp or a tank, I'd like to have a well-thought-out answer. You probably should too.

This all started several years ago when I realized I wanted a tank and a large area of otherwise useless land on which I could go tanking. Lately, however, my son has me thinking that maybe our future hypothetical wealth could be better invested in a blimp. (Don't ask me why in this fantasy I have enough money for one or the other but not both, that's not the point.) The kid is obsessed with blimps, and if you manage to get him chatting he's likely to tell you all about the blimp crash. "Huge... blimp... pop.... .crash.... happen.... fire..." all with a very enthusiastic expression. He's only witnessed this event in his bedtime stories - which are often guided by his interjecting ideas to help the plot progress. Recurring themes include blimps, waterfalls, pirates, Jessie, and basketball.

Back to my dilemma. Do I dream about someday being able to squash sage brush while firing my tank-bombs at unsuspecting rocks? Or would I be wiser to spend a day leisurely drifting along with the clouds while reading a book and sipping lemonade? Here are the original poll results:


Seems like blimps win, right? Not so fast. Since the results were so close I used an old trick to keep the contest going. I made a facebook page for blimps and a facebook page for tanks, and I launched them at the same time without personally becoming a fan or letting anybody know about them. It was interesting to see them compete. Blimps jumped out to a very early lead with one or two fans who didn't stay long. Then they stayed at one or two and have slowly risen to six. Tanks, on the other hand, didn't have any fans until very recently, but in a matter of a couple weeks the fan base has grown to 18.

By now you probably have a preference in the great blimps vs. tanks debate. If not, I urge you to decide now before you jump into the very lively and heated debate that is sure to take place in the comments section below. Seriously, I want to know which you would choose and why.