Nanuq

I ran across one on Ebay and placed a bid. I've been watching it for days... today at 45 minutes before auction end it was MINE for $20. And then it got ugly. In the last 15 seconds it went to $132 and change, and ended. Did I win? Not even close.

It seems that it's an endless wait for my new watch to arrive in the mail. But on second thought... is it really? The cumulative distribution function of the normal distribution is expressed in terms of the density function as follows: where the standard normal cdf Φ is just the general cdf evaluated with μ = 0 and σ = 1: The standard normal cdf can be expressed in terms of a special function called the error function, as and the cdf itself can hence be expressed as The inverse standard normal cumulative distribution function, or quantile function, can be expressed in terms of the inverse error function: and the inverse cumulative distribution function can hence be expressed as For large x the standard normal cdf is close to 1 and is close to 0. The elementary bounds in terms of the density are useful. Using the substitution v = u2/2, the upper bound is derived as follows: Similarly, using and the quotient rule, Solving for provides the lower bound. Meaning... it will get here when it gets here.

I'M POWERMAX!!!!!!!! YOWZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bring on the babes and sportscars!!

I got my Seiko Orange Monster back from an "extended" loan and it needs a new domed "Hardlex" crystal ... the old one is smashed. Can anyone point me toward one? I'm coming up with blanks here. Cheers!

Enjoy! More photos to come when she arrives at Chez Nanuq.

Shark fishing from kayaks!

Think you're safe camping inside your car? Think again. Bear Busts Into Van

Here are a couple of vintages. Mine is 49 years old, and the delightful Ms. Nanuq's is 68. Together they represent 117 years of mechanical bliss. Enjoy!

Only two of these watches are duplicate examples. Can you tell which?

Enjoy! *snerk* http://ak.imgfarm.com/images/snowglobe/globe.swf

You just can't make this stuff up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDQ1GAZZk6E

Holy smokes... he's got the wrong insert and wrong caseback, the dial looks horribly redone, I suspect not even genuine, and it's at $9,100 with 5 days to go. And here's a very nasty 6536 dial with red lettering, it's $3,300 FOR THE DIAL with 4 days to go. Insanity.

This poor guy was hit by a cruise ship, and died from massive blunt force trauma. That's too bad... it makes me wonder if the state needs to cut back a little on the numbers of cruise ships? This is the second one this summer.

Every guy needs a place to unwind and relax. Here's mine, let's see where YOU kick your shoes off and unwind at the end of a long day. (ps: yeah that IS a big wolf)

Where's Tanfoglio? He ain't got nothin'

I'll be back in a couple days ... if anyone needs me, this is where I'll be: Ask Mike, he knows where this is.

Call me butterfingers but I dropped my DW Daytona with Mystery Movement from waist high onto a tile floor. Okay, hold it ... it was A-C-C-I-D-E-N-T-A-L this time!! I can report that the movement took the hit just fine, no worries there. BUT... my crown was unscrewed and it fell onto the crown. That bashed it enough that it cross-threaded the crown onto the tube and when I unscrewed it to ascertain the damage the tube unscrewed from the case. I took it apart and the tube/crown/stem are well and truly trashed. So, who here knows how to fix this for me and wants to take a stab at it? Thanks! I know it's not that big of a deal to do, but my time is SO sparse that it will sit on my shelf for a year before I get to it. I just know it. Anyone?

How does the song go? "If you could read my mind love, what a tale my claws could tell........" This was down at Bertha Creek

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris. There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live. Outer space exists because it's afraid to be on the same planet with Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits. Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding. Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice. There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist. When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the Earth down. Chuck Norris is so fast, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head. Chuck Norris' hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush. Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink. Chuck Norris doesn't wear a watch, HE decides what time it is. Chuck Norris gave Mona Lisa that smile. Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door. Chuck Norris does not get frostbite. Chuck Norris bites frost Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean. Crop circles are Chuck Norris' way of telling the world that sometimes corn needs to lie down. The Great Wall of China was originally created to keep Chuck Norris out. It failed miserably. Most people have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Chuck Norris has 72... and they're all poisonous. What was going through the minds of all of Chuck Norris' victims before they died? His shoe. Chuck Norris is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis. Chuck Norris doesn't churn butter. He roundhouse kicks the cows and the butter comes straight out. Chuck Norris will attain statehood in 2009. His state flower will be the Magnolia. If you spell Chuck Norris in Scrabble, you win. Forever. The opening scene of the movie "Saving Private Ryan" is loosely based on games of dodgeball Chuck Norris played in second grade. Chuck Norris once shot down a German fighter plane with his finger, by yelling, "Bang!" Chuck Norris once bet NASA he could survive re-entry without a spacesuit. On July 19th, 1999, a naked Chuck Norris re-entered the earth's atmosphere, streaking over 14 states and reaching a temperature of 3000 degrees. An embarrassed NASA publically claimed it was a meteor, and still owes him a beer. Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse... horses are hung like Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris is the only human being to display the Heisenberg uncertainty principle -- you can never know both exactly where and how quickly he will roundhouse-kick you in the face. In the Bible, Jesus turned water into wine. But then Chuck Norris turned that wine into beer. Chuck Norris can hit you so hard that he can actually alter your DNA. Decades from now your descendants will occasionally clutch their heads and yell "What The Hell was That?" Time waits for no man. Unless that man is Chuck Norris. Pluto is actually an orbiting group of British soldiers from the American Revolution who entered space after the Chuck gave them a roundhouse kick to the face. There are no steroids in baseball. Just players Chuck Norris has breathed on. Chuck Norris once challenged Lance Armstrong in a "Who has more testicles?" contest. Chuck Norris won by 5. Chuck Norris sheds his skin twice a year. When Chuck Norris falls in water, Chuck Norris doesn't get wet. Water gets Chuck Norris. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Norris? ...All of it. Chuck Norris CAN believe it's not butter. If tapped, a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick could power the country of Australia for 44 minutes. Chuck Norris can divide by zero. When an episode of Walker Texas Ranger was aired in France, the French surrendered to Chuck Norris just to be on the safe side. While urinating, Chuck Norris is easily capable of welding titanium. Some people wear Superman pajamas. Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas. Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door. Hellen Keller's favorite color is Chuck Norris. If at first you don't succeed, you're not Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink. Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but a Chuck Norris glare will liquefy your kidneys. When chuck Norris does division, there are no remainders. Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, until Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked her into a glacier. Chuck Norris can blow bubbles with beef jerky.

I'm (still) looking for a set of hands for a LeJour Superman, 17j auto movement. Can anyone help me out?

As issued today by the Vatican: 1. You shall not kill. 2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm. 3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events. 4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents. 5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin. 6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so. 7. Support the families of accident victims. 8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness. 9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party. 10. Feel responsible toward others.

Alaska... land of the Midnight Sun! I took these tonight, with no flash. This is ambient light here in the far north.

I spent the last couple days waaaaay out in the wilds of Alaska. It wasn't until I got out there that I realized I left my camera home! I sure regret that, I could have posted some amazing photos here. I spent a lot of time by the ocean on some bare granite shores where glaciers had worn the stone down in amazing carved shapes. Looking from horizon left to horizon right, I would bet there wasn't more than maybe 1 or 2 other humans as far as the eye could see, and that was easily 100 miles. I sat there for hours this afternoon with my dog, watching the ocean and thinking about life. Something dead washed up on the shore about 400 meters away and bald eagles began to arrive. Before a half hour had passed there were 18 bald eagles flying and wheeling over the carcass, fighting and making those pathetic little tweet sounds they make. After they'd eaten the carcass they flew up into the winds and then began riding the thermals over my head. I was getting a little nervous for my dog, as eagles have been known to attack. Tonight I am home, exhausted and completely sun and snow burnt. It was a magnificent trip. I wish I had my camera.

Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2FM dial in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won. Hi Sue, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse, Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but t I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut. So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt. Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job."