Tonight’s Chuck had some great movie references. Topping the list is probably Sgt. Al Powell, played by Reginald VelJohnson. He also eats Twinkies in both shows. Astute readers will remember VelJohnson playing Sgt. Al Powell in ! Michael Rooker plays the hostage negotiator. The bad guy is known as "Ned" Rhyerson (a character from ).
There’s probably more, but those were great.

No, no, no, no, no, NBC, no! Tonight's development in the love story between Sarah and Chuck is terrible (worse than having Nicole Richie guest next week). I live vicariously through Chuck, and I don't like the way my vicarious life is suddenly going.
Fix it. Immediately.

In typical fashion, republicans attack good ideas, even ones they have no legitimate basis for discrediting. Just to make the other guy look bad.
In this case, I'm referring to the McCain camp's response to Barack Obama's suggestion that Americans make sure their tires are kept properly inflated. They accused Obama of being ignorant of energy issues, but in typical fashion, they are wrong. Most cars on the road have under-inflated tires. Each 1 psi of under-inflation loses about 0.4% fuel efficiency. Most cars are 20% under-inflated. (You can also maintain your air filter. More information on the EPA's site.)
The amount of oil saved if America were to properly inflate all her tires would significantly exceed the entire production of all new offshore drilling, and drilling in ANWR, combined. Moreover, it would happen immediately (within weeks, or however long it takes Americans to check and inflate their tires). Not 10 - 20 years (which is how long we'd have to wait for new oil drilling production to come online and ramp to full capacity).

Economy Gauges

Another place where you can improve fuel economy is driving slower, and accelerating more gently. I don't know about you, but I like driving fast and accelerating hard. But if I could see what my actual fuel economy was, I might think twice. I might ease up on the pedal a little bit. Some people might ease up a lot.
Which brings me to my idea: the government can mandate that all new cars and trucks sold in 5 years must have fuel economy gauges. Many new cars already have them (and some, like Mercedes & BMW, have provided them for decades). The gauge should be on all the time (many today are buried in the pages of the trip odometer), and needs to show at least a couple of moving averages: one spanning a few days, one spanning a minute or two. You could get fancier, by making a prediction on when you will next need to visit the pump (in days & hours). Also, the computations need to be the same across the entire industry, so that automakers can't fudge it, and so you can compare vehicles. They need to be treated the same as odometers, in terms of legal requirements for accuracy and precision.
This one would take a few years to implement, but will have return in much less time than drilling, and will come at a much lower price. It will be resisted by the auto makers who will whine that the requirement will put them out of business. But that's all bullshit. The BOM on a good display should be less than $50 in production quantity, and the R&D is trivial (these things are not rocket science; the hardest part will be the ID, and they're doing that already).
Conceivably, the government could even give some of the tax breaks it gives to Big Oil over to Big Auto to help implement the gauges.
I'm sure the republicans will side with Big Business Auto and never allow it, or water down any such proposal until it's useless. After all, such a change would reduce oil consumption (virtually for free), and we can't have Big Oil making less money. Fucking republicans. Assholes.

Here are some photos of the newly-assembled and installed workbench. I've temporarily placed a plastic drop cloth over the top, so that I can work on the messy carbs without damaging the surface. I'll probably add trim and a top of 1/4" hardboard.
Still to come are a shelf, face frame, and doors for the lower part.

Not sure if I'm just procrastinating, but as I was working on the eBike's carbs this week, I realized I really needed a workbench in the garage. I'd been planning to put one in, something that went along part of the back wall, around the corner, and down the side a bit. Tired of hunching over the carbs on the floor, I finally decided I should build something this weekend.
The vision is something like this (although I may not bother with the upper cabinets; we'll see):

I realize what you'll see below doesn't look anything like that, but it will. Someday.
I spent a good five hours (and $280) at Sawdust Shop cutting the pieces for the carcasses of 1.5 workbench-cabinets. I've partially assembled one of them tonight, but I'm done for the day. I'll finish it in the morning, and hopefully make some real progress on the carbs.
Here's a wide shot of the left half of my garage. You can see the beginning of the pedestal near the back wall.

The completed pedestal. I was originally going to just hang the cabinet-workbench from the wall, but the expert at Sawdust Shop convinced me to build a pedestal. This will support much more weight more effectively:

Here the three walls have been screwed in:

A closer view of the pocket screws:

The rear nail strip is fasten to the carcass with pocket screws:

Here's more detail on how the pedestal sits under the cabinet. The floor is pretty heavily sloped, so I will have to shim things up. The wall seems to be plumb, though, which is good.

I rested the top nail strips and work surface on top. Tomorrow I'll glue and fasten them down properly, but this gives you an idea of how it'll look.