Strange Brouhaha

Put on "Fade To Black"

2008-05-13T19:17:00.002-05:00

(I know, it's a cliched exit and it was probably cliched when I did it on the radio back in the day...but whatever.)

If we are being completely honest with ourselves, and we are, my heart has not been in this blogging "thing" for a while. I'm not sure when that started being the case, but it is the case.

I haven't been daily for a long, long time. I don't think I've been terribly interesting since long before that. It was bad enough when I was CNN's most loyal reprint site, but I think day after day of "Ooh, look, a meme!" really killed it for me.

So rather than continue to update sporadically with mildly pithy tales of stuff that happens and stuff I'm thinking about, I'm hanging it up and walking out of the building for the last time.

Thanks for reading, and we'll see you around.

Have a laugh, on me!

2008-05-08T21:42:00.003-05:00

Someone at work pointed me at this video by Barats and Bereta.

Which led me to this video by Barats and Bereta...

...which led me to THIS video by Barats and Bereta.

I had a good lunch hour the other day.

As a matter of fact...

2008-05-05T21:40:00.002-05:00

Yes, I did fail to write a single word for this year's Script Frenzy. Just overtaken by events, I guess. I don't even feel guilty, which is either a good thing or a bad thing.

Yes, I did purchase Grand Theft Auto IV on launch day, and yes, I am playing it. Verdict so far: not as strong a beginning as GTA: San Andreas, but it's good so far. I have a feeling the Bad Things are about to happen.

Yes, we did watch "This is Spinal Tap" this weekend (The Child was at a sleepover), and yes, it's still funny. "I'm just as God made me, sir!"

Yes, I do miss CompUSA. Sure, they had high prices and a fairly lousy selection, but it was the only place a person could go in this town for components. If your computer blew a fan or something on a Saturday afternoon, you could always go to CompUSA and be up and running again. Now, at least around here, there's nowhere. Best Buy doesn't sell parts, and I only use Circuit City for the short-term rental program. This isn't prompted by any purchase I needed to make; I was just talking to someone today and we both realized that it was true.

Yes, we watched the Kentucky Derby this weekend. Amazing race, tragic outcome. Even though I was sitting there saying, "At least show the horse collapsing!", I have to agree with NBC's decision to show none of it. There were some very nice articles about Eight Belles today.

I actually went to the mall

2008-05-03T09:51:00.001-05:00

It's something I try not to do; the last time I was in the mall was a couple of years ago, I think. I often get mildly humorous stories out of the mall, so I should probably go there more often, but it's so...mall-like. What exactly is at a mall that people need, anyway? Clothing stores, I guess, but what's the point of a "Sleep Number Bed Store" or a Cinnabon?

And the mall kiosks. I don't understand these. $100 Oakley knockoffs? Cheap, crappy weaves and hair extensions? Hermit crabs? Do people buy this stuff? What's the target market here--people with too much money and too little sense? (Don't answer that, I know the answer.) ("Yes.")

The Apple store is in the mall, and since I had my "Genius" appointment, the mall was where I had to go.

What can I say...it was a mall. And the mall is a perfect place for an Apple store: obsessed with outward appearance, expensive, ostentatiously "hip". All of the male employees had a certain look: skinny, short hair, meticulously-trimmed beards or goatees, small rectangular glasses with black frames. (When I went back this morning, I almost wept at the sight of a dumpy guy in an ill-fitting Apple t-shirt because he totally didn't fit "the look" and was, at last, a welcome breath of humanity.)

I shouldn't complain too much; my computer is fixed, and free, since it was still under warranty. And they definitely had some nice-looking external drives. Maybe I'll have to hit newegg.com after lunch...

I keep saying this, and I never stick to it, but...

2008-04-29T21:33:00.002-05:00

...never again, Apple.

I have owned two reliable Apple products in the last 24 years. One of them is a Mac Plus, which would still be running today if I hadn't lost all the system software and hosed the hard disk by letting an 18-month-old play with it, and the other is my iPod Photo, which I've had for several years now and which is still going strong.

This is far outweighed by the large amounts of junk I've worked with, both personally and professionally, that has the Apple logo on it.

It's also outweighed by the somewhat more nebulous sense of personal betrayal I feel whenever I think about having been burned by two processor switches--the 68K-to-PowerPC switch and the PowerPC-to-Intel switch. In both cases, I had bought new machines not too long before the switches were announced. It's more that I feel like I was burned than that I was actually burned, but emotion is the primary source of whatever loyalty Apple has among its fan base and so I think that I'm allowed some emotion in this case.

But back to the large amounts of junk.

I have never gracefully retired an Apple machine (other than the Mac Plus). Every Macintosh I've ever owned has fireworked or bricked in some way. Two Macintosh LCs suffered catastrophic disk failures; in one case, the hard drive seized with no warning, not even the "Iiiiiii'm dyyyyyinnnnnngggggg" whine that usually precedes such a failure. One iBook G4--same deal, which I covered in detail elsewhere.

More anecdotally: when I worked for the School District, we were constantly sending Macs in for repair. PCs just chugged along. Macs, not so much. Macs required more handholding and setup and massaging; the PCs were far more reliable, and in greater numbers. To this day, I always recommend Dell to people who are buying PCs, because the Dell PCs we used were stone cold solid.

The latest, and I hope final, outrage: the Mac mini that I bought five months ago has turned up a bum DVD drive. It won't mount any DVDs at all--movies or software. The last time I used the drive for DVDs was sometime in March, at which time it worked perfectly. Now, nothing. Oh, it works fine on CDs, but it just kind of chews at DVDs for a few seconds and spits them back out.

Fortunately, it's still under warranty, and I have an appointment at the Apple store in the mall tomorrow to have a "Genius" look at it. So I should be able to get a warranty repair out of the deal. I hope.

(And remember...there were ALREADY problems with this machine when I took it out of the box.)

Still: never again, Apple. I have had enough of your junk. This time, I'll take the hint. And Apple fans--of which I used to be one--I don't want to hear it. Other than the Mac Plus and the iPod, I have never, ever had anything but a disappointing experience with Apple. Never again.

It's bizarre. My computing experience has been totally at odds with reported anecdotal evidence from other people who know what they're doing: Windows ME was rock solid for me; I have no problems with Vista; every PC I've ever owned and/or built has been completely stable. Apple products, on the other hand, which are supposed to Just Work and to help you Think Different and which feature in all of those cute ads with John Hodgman, have been nothing but a headache and a nuisance.

Never again, Apple.

Never again.

Has it really been almost a week?

2008-04-27T08:33:00.002-05:00

I suppose it has.

I have by now listened to most of "Snakes & Arrows Live". Is it just me, or my speakers, or is the mix really lousy? The drums were way forward. It kind of goes back to the crappy mix on the studio "Snakes And Arrows." Posse member Matt D and I had a discussion about it last June...not that anyone else would necessarily know that.

The new computer is now completely outfitted with everything I wanted to install, including something to get music and video on and off my cell phone. iTunes is working correctly, Dawn of War: Dark Crusade plays extremely well, Windows Vista is quick and responsive. I pronounce myself almost completely satisfied. The only glitch, really, is that the wireless keyboard and mouse I'm using are not that great--they suck batteries like you wouldn't believe. But I really need to be able to get them off the desk if I need space, so I don't really want a wired keyboard and mouse. I'm not sure how to solve that one.

Apparently, there are people who think that Barack Obama needs to denounce gangsta rap and rappers. You know, because they're black and so is he, and because he's picked up some endorsements from the hip-hop world--which of course, is composed entirely of violent anti-white artists. When John McCain apologizes to the world for all of Chuck Norris' lousy movies, then we can talk. (I was going to say "When John McCain denounces The Mentors..." but he would do just that, and it doesn't really touch on the main point, which is...uh, well, there are actually a lot of points all mixed up in there, such as "John McCain is getting a free pass from the press on all of his idiot endorsers," and "Why are we focusing on bullshit?" I know, that's not particularly insightful, but why waste insight on trivia?)

"How do you cram a 1,000-page novel into three and a half hours of stage time?" asks a critic of the Gone With the Wind musical that opened in London recently. Well, it must be possible, because they sure crammed the 1,000 page novel into a (slightly more than) three and a half hour movie that has become an enduring classic. Honestly, I think the play's writer (who was also the composer and lyricist) should probably have adapted the movie instead. I'm no expert on adaptations, and maybe someone who is can correct me, but the movie has already taken care of "the hard part," which is taking the essentially internal world of a novel and translating it into the essentially external, visual world of film.

Here's yet another video that they had on Boing Boing recently. You know, when I started this blog, I was essentially a CNN reprint site...I hope I don't turn into a Boing Boing reprint site.

Anyway, here's a couple of guys on the uke doing the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop."

Now THAT would be a cool model

2008-04-21T22:30:00.002-05:00

Courtesy of Red Ferret Journal, here's a video of a train passing through an outdoor market in Bangkok. The market is set up on the tracks. When the train comes through, everyone moves out of the way. Produce and stuff is left--the train clears it.

The post at Red Ferret actually links to a second video shot from the back of the train of the market setting back up. This is pretty amazing.

It's been easy...almost too easy

2008-04-19T21:13:00.003-05:00

I am almost done setting up the new PC. The build itself was easy, easier than any build I've ever done. The wiring in the case is a little messy, but I can live with it since I never have to look at it. It's enough that the wires are out of the way of the fans and hot items.

I chose Vista Home Premium, and while it took longer than I expected to install and update all of the drivers for the various components, overall that part of the process went smoothly and painlessly--especially once the wireless card was up and running so that I could bootstrap to the latest driver...which made the card actually stable.

Not surprisingly, what has ended up taking the longest has been data transfer. I have over 30GB of music in my iTunes library and another nearly 30GB in loops for a music program. This is a lot of data to transfer over a wireless network; I think it's about 18 hours worth of copying.

Clearly, an unacceptable amount of time.

Fortunately, I have an external hard drive that I can use to bridge the gap. Even with having to copy the 30GB loop library over to the Mac, and having to figure out why Windows won't see the FAT-formatted drive, and copying 60GB off of the Mac and onto the hard drive, and off of the hard drive and onto Windows...I've still spent less than a third of the time a transfer over the network would have taken. (No, wiring up to the network was not an option. I swear, our next house will have Ethernet jacks in every room.)

Right now, my iTunes library is merrily synchronizing itself with my iPod. (That was an adventure, too--I had to modify the official "copy your iTunes library to another machine" instructions before my library would come up. But all is good now.)

As a special treat, here is a video clip. Let me set it up for you.

I was flipping channels on the TV while all of this data transfer was going on, and I happened upon that one movie where Adam Sandler plays a whiny retarded guy. (Ha ha--of course, that's the perfect way to describe all of his movies.) This one happened to be Little Nicky, and while I'd normally pass it right by, the scene I caught happened to be one with Reese Witherspoon in it.

At the end of this scene, Nicky and Reese discover that Nicky's brother is about to complete his plan to become the new Satan and conquer Earth. Nicky needs to use "the power of good" to stop him. Reese gives Nicky a glowing ball. When Nicky asks what it is, Reese allows as to how she's not quite sure...but he'll know when it's time to use it.

Nicky returns to Earth to confront his brother. I guess Nicky has some kind of magic flask that he's supposed to use to capture his brother--I'm not too clear on the details--and he and the brother both get trapped in the flask. The brother gets out first, and turns into a giant bat and is flying around taunting Nicky. Nicky gets out too, with help from his girl, and this scene picks up shortly before Nicky realizes that it's time to use Reese's gift.

I will forgive the crappy animation...because this scene is perfect. Whichever of the three credited writers (Tim Herlihy, Sandler, and Steven Brill) came up with this deserves some kind of award for it. Even just a pat on the back and a "well done."

Yep, we felt the quake!

2008-04-18T20:34:00.002-05:00

The Midwest got hit with an earthquake early this morning. The epicenter was down in Illinois, but yeah, it woke us up.

Or rather, it woke The Wife, because it rattled the picture on our wall. Naturally, she then woke me. By the time I woke up and got out of bed to inspect, the tremor was done (4:39).

Naturally, SHE went back to sleep. I tossed and turned and listened to the radio on my phone (I tuned in to a news station to see if there had been an earthquake, and sure enough...). I was awake for at least another hour and a half.

But that's okay, The Wife. :) I got back to sleep just in time to wake up again.

Rush needs to stop MESSING with me!

2008-04-18T20:06:00.003-05:00

I did end up buying the components to make a new computer, and they all arrived today (C2D E6750, 2GB g.skill RAM, P35 mobo, 500GB HDD, GeForce 8800GT). I have a two-page checklist/outline of things that I need to do get everything put together and all of my data transferred over from the Macintosh.

One thing that is not on my list is "plug the computer into the power strip," which turns out to have been kind of a mistake because there are no spare outlets on my power strip. There will be, when the Macintosh and the external hard drive are gone, but right now there aren't.

(Third paragraph, where's Rush? Don't worry, they're coming.)

Whenever I go to Best Buy, as I did just now for a new power strip, I do three things: look at PC games, look at XBox 360 and Playstation 2 games, and look to see if there are any new Prince or Rush albums. Best Buy, or at least our Best Buy, sometimes stocks imports and weird stuff, so I figure it doesn't hurt to look.

Rush has a new album. A new live album. Didn't they just have a live album? They need to stop messing with my head. It seems like it was not that long ago that they put out Snakes & Arrows, and all of a sudden here's Snakes & Arrows Live.

Yes, I bought it, but I haven't listened to it yet. I'm not even sure why I bought it, except for completeness' sake, because I sure the heck haven't listened to Snakes & Arrows itself since the first time. For God's sake, I DIDN'T EVEN LOOK AT THE PLAYLIST. For all I knew, frickin' Tai Shan was on it! (It's not.)

My demand is simple: Geddy, since you are cooler than Alex, please inform me when you release a new album so that I can be prepared to spend the money. Also, please release more studio albums. (Heck, another covers EP would be fine.)

Now Go Away! Or I Shall Taunt You A Second Time!

2008-04-16T22:10:00.003-05:00

Courtesy of Mr. B. A. Fett, the Spamalot game. Apparently it even has unlockable weapons based on Spam barcodes.

My top score so far is 3645. Tim kicked my ass a lot, but I finally got him...only to be overrun by 10 Knights on horseback.

Is it really that bad?

2008-04-16T21:53:00.002-05:00

Driving home today, I was listening to the comedy station on the radio and heard Yet Another Routine about how We Hate Crying Babies On Airplanes.

I've done a lot of traveling. Short inter-island hops when I was a kid, longer trips in college and as an adult. And, I shall not hesitate to remind you, "longer" means "up to twelve hours flight time alone." That one I've done probably two dozen times, Honolulu to Des Moines or Madison.

And I fly coach.

Maybe I'm just not as sensitive as some people, but I've never been bothered by a crying baby. Is it really that big a deal? Do people just not understand that Babies Cry?

Funny Quiz

2008-04-15T19:10:00.001-05:00

Medieval Torture Device or Bed Bath And Beyond Gadget?

I got 100%, although I admit I guessed a couple of times.

Where the hell have you been?

2008-04-13T22:32:00.002-05:00

Tired.

I've just been tired. Tired of everything. Tired of doing things. Tired of writing things down. Just...tired.

Now, the bronchitis didn't help. But I'm mostly better--for example, I can now walk from my car to my office without feeling like I need a nap--and I'm still just tired. In a lot of ways, it's kind of reminiscent of the first few weeks of my spinal injury last year.

But I'm mentally tired, too. I think I just need a vacation.

It's been a while since I've blogged. What's been happening?

I've been playing Half-Life 2 on the Xbox 360. It's like old home week, and it's made me remember how awesome it was running Chunky Boy's Firearms Server (R.I.P.). The only problem? I'm getting motion sickness! Really bad motion sickness, too. It's a little alarming; Quake 2 games (like the original Half-Life) never did that to me, and hell, I played Descent without feeling like I was going to barf. But I can only play HL2 for an hour or so before I have to stop. (Prey was like that for me, too.)

I bought Guitar Hero III. Fun, but the songs are kind of lame. The wireless guitar is good, though, and it works with Rock Band.

I've been considering buying a new PC and ditching the Macintosh entirely. It'll be a pain switching my iPod and iTunes library, but I'd have a gaming PC again. I thought I would switch entirely to console gaming and never need a gaming PC...but I think it's not happening. I'd ditch the Mac because it doesn't feel right for me to have three computers on my desk. I'm trying to figure out a good small form-factor loadout that will play games--if you have any ideas, let me know.

I haven't been writing my script for Script Frenzy, and I don't think I'm going to. My brain doesn't want to work, so I will allow it a vacation.

I've been reading the latest Company book by Kage Baker, The Sons of Heaven. Kage Baker is great, the book is great. There's something about the phrase "the Botanist Mendoza" that hits me right. I wish I could explain it.

We've been taking a stab at cleaning up the house. Still a work in progress.

We've been making plans to celebrate our anniversary a little early this year. We're going to go to L'Etoile again. I'm looking forward to it. We've also been looking ahead to our fifteenth and trying to come up with plans for a trip. That's in 2011; we're looking at places in the Pacific Northwest and the American Southwest and maybe (maybe) the Caribbean, but that's kind of just how it's shaken out--we're trying to concentrate on places that we've never been. If you have suggestions, let me know. Money is sort of no object, although we're not really looking at places that cost a thousand bucks a night. (What that means is that money IS an object, but we can do better than a Motel 6 and a trip to the dinner theater on route 30.)

I've been watching "Top Chef". This is the first season I've really been into it. Shows like Top Chef really point out the deficiency of TV, though--you can't smell the food, you can't taste it. But damn, it sure looks good. Anyway, there are a lot of volatile personalities, and since they're drunk for the judging it makes for some...interesting television.

The new season of Deadliest Catch starts on Tuesday.

I e-filed our taxes this year. I'm not sure I'm going to do that again; it cost nearly forty bucks, all to save a few sheets of paper and a trip to the post office. I don't think it was worth it.

The Child is doing her science fair project on ladybugs. I've been trying to guide her in her presentation--but I haven't been doing any of the work for her, so she's very proud of the work she put in on the project, and it's all done and arranged the way she wants it. My guidance was limited to making sure that she planned out what she wanted to say (it's a report, not an experiment) and that things were spelled correctly.

For the aforementioned project, I printed out a couple of PD and CC-licensed photos at Walgreen's. When I did that, they called me and said "These pictures are too good. You need to sign a release when you come in to get them." Uh, okay. At work, we have a product that prints photos over the Internet (using technology built into Windows), and I've printed a lot of photos--some of them better than these two--at a lot of different places here in town and I've never had to sign anything. It's a little annoying, and while I understand that they need to cover themselves, they have no criteria other than "it looks too good." I kept pressing them for an explanation, and they couldn't provide one.

David linked to this video the other day. It's great. As he says, be sure to watch at least half of it. But I think the ending is fantastic.

I guess that's it.

Word count: ZERO

2008-04-04T22:01:00.003-05:00

The Wife has been ill for what seems like forever but is probably around two months. During that same amount of time, The Child seems to have been mostly fine, while I have had the flu.

Tuesday afternoon I felt very strange--I ended up feeling very fatigued and ill by the time I wrapped up my half-day of work. (Tuesday, of course, we put paid [we hope] to the furnace saga.) I was so fatigued that the idea of picking up a spoon made me a little nervous, in a "can I really do it?" kind of way. I was so fatigued that I couldn't even contemplate speaking--I worried for a moment that I was having a stroke or something. That was accompanied eventually by a fever. Then a cough.

Wednesday and Thursday were not so bad; I made it through most of a workday on Wednesday, and the whole thing on Thursday. I hit the Tylenol hard and blew my nose and had some chills but they weren't too bad.

This morning, something happened that made us sufficiently nervous to cause me to Actually Go To The Doctor, a rare occurrence. I won't say what it was, because it's kind of gross.

Anyway, I met this really cool doctor (Iranian, by way of Germany--we talked a little bit in German, but I was too out of it to really concentrate), and after a just-in-case-it's-pneumonia X-ray, he told me that it was probably bronchitis. I got some antibiotics, a box of guaifenisin, and went home.

This is all by way of saying that I haven't actually started writing my ScriptFrenzy entry this year, and it's entirely possible that it won't get done.

You'd think they'd sing about Georgia or something

2008-04-01T21:41:00.001-05:00

Boing Boing featured this video today.

It's a Finnish band, backed up by the Red Army Chorus, covering "Sweet Home Alabama."

Oddly enough, I find that it sort of works.

Didn't I just say "Yes...AGAIN"?

2008-04-01T07:57:00.003-05:00

Yes I did.

For those of you keeping score at home, this is the fourth time in a little bit more than two months (the first time was at the end of January). The unit kicked on last night, but the blower never started and after a couple of minutes the furnace turned off. A Saga Ensued.

Repairmen are on their way. They were just here last week. I'm thinking of making closet space for them with their names on it. I wonder what the heck is wrong.

Update: One thing I noticed last night was that one of the vents from the furnace to the exterior--either the exhaust or the intake--was snapped off and lying on the ground. Who knows how long it's been that way; it's all been covered up by snow and ice. That could have been the source of all the difficulty: water getting into the furnace and blowing everything out. The repair guy fixed us up and replaced the PVC vent and we have blessed, blessed heat again.

Gadgets

2008-03-31T20:23:00.002-05:00

I need a gadget.

Yes, NEED.

So far, I've only decided that I don't need a new computer and I don't want a new cell phone. (Technically I DO want a new cell phone, I just don't want to splash out the eight hundred bucks that a good one will cost me. Seriously...I think it would actually be cheaper than that to pay the Early Termination Fee on my current contract and get an iPhone.) Oh, and I don't want a portable media player; I have my phone and iPod for that.

I know...that makes it really difficult.

Does anyone out there have a gadget that they love? Nothing I've seen has inspired me yet; the only things I've seen are things that I want to have, as opposed to things that I want to use.

FADE IN

2008-03-31T20:19:00.002-05:00

The curtain goes up on ScriptFrenzy at midnight tonight. I'll be participating again this year.

You know...I think every year I've done National Novel Writing Month, I've said some variation on "And this year I've learned my lesson: plan first, then write." And every year, I fail to plan ahead.

So why should this time around be any different? I have an opening scene in mind, but that's about it. I keep meaning to sit down and do it properly, but I guess I've lost the right mindset. Oh well. It's fun, and that's what really matters.

Daddy, where's Brett?

2008-03-30T08:23:00.002-05:00

The Onion has a pretty good idea about what happened to Brett Favre.

Satellite Dish Installation

2008-03-30T07:54:00.002-05:00

Dave Barry, I think, would call this "People Different From Us." It seems that this gentleman was trying to install his satellite dish. He needed to get through an exterior wall to run a cable and couldn't quite get it right, so he used a gun to make a hole in the wall.

Unfortunately, it made a hole in his wife as well.

My unsolicited advice: pay the installation fee for your satellite dish. Satellite installers are trained in the proper way to use firearms to drill holes.

Alllllll my exes live in...oh, wait, TAXES

2008-03-28T20:26:00.002-05:00

Today's Limerick and Haiku prompt from Mad Kane is taxes, tax returns, or forms that drive you nuts.

I used to be stridently anti-tax, but I finally beat it into my head that taxes are how we pay for things. (Yes, I know: Duh.)

I earn some money.
The IRS takes its cut.
That is fine with me.

I mean, it's the price for living in civil society.

What really frustrates me about taxes now is that there are so many ways for people and corporations to get out of paying them. Having been a low wage earner, I think it's great that people making under a certain amount don't have to pay taxes. However, I think that somebody making twenty-five million a year should have to pay his 30 percent just like anyone else.

I used to really love doing my taxes. I had a special pen, and a great calculator, and I could sit down and do everything in an hour and be done with it. Now that our finances are a bit more...complicated, I've found that I really need software to help me out. Needless to say, it takes a lot longer than an hour. The procrastination bug has hit me pretty hard; I've barely started on this year's filing, and here it is practically the end of May.

The problem with doing my taxes on the computer is, of course, the presence of computer games. I'll sit down, intend to fire up Tax Cut, and find myself playing a game instead. By the time I'm ready to get started, I'm yawning and ready for bed instead.

My wife ordered: "Do taxes now!"
I said "But I'm still playing WoW!
The 1040 can wait
With Form 1 for the State,
While I finish protecting this cow!"

Not a true story, of course, because I stopped playing World of Warcraft long ago. But still mildly humorous. Sort of. I mean...you have to protect a cow!

"What's the blaaaandest thing on the menu?"

2008-03-26T20:58:00.003-05:00

Boing Boing linked to this video today, but if you don't read BB, then this will be new to you. It's a sketch from a sketch comedy show about a group of Indian people who go to an English restaurant in Bombay.

I've seen people behave exactly like this in a variety of ethnic restaurants, and it's hilarious to see the tables turned.

Yes...AGAIN

2008-03-25T19:34:00.002-05:00

Ever since the last time we had trouble with our furnace, I've been pretty religiously checking the thermostat every night before I go to sleep to make sure that it's reading an appropriate temperature. I think my religion must have lapsed yesterday and my eyes just kind of glided over the thermostat.

Oops.

A couple of days ago, The Wife asked me if I was cold. I said "I'm always kind of chilly when I sit where you're sitting," namely on the couch. Last night, when I went to bed, I said "Wow, it's really cold in the bedroom."

This morning when I woke up, it was definitely downright chilly.

Looked at the thermostat: yep. 62. Much, much colder than we usually keep it--cold enough, in fact, that we probably hadn't had any heat in the house for at least two days, meaning that when The Wife asked me if I was cold...the furnace was already broken.

Again.

I wasn't able to stay home for the repair guys this time, but I have it on good authority that they were not happy--and that they're trying to get someone from the furnace manufacturer to come out and look at it. They've even discussed our furnace at the service company's tech meetings. We're a legend!

I don't know, aren't we at the point of diminishing returns, here? They've absorbed so much in warranty repairs that it would probably be cheaper for them to just throw us a new unit. Like I said, I don't know.

MORE SNOW

2008-03-23T19:45:00.001-05:00

We got somewhere in the neighborhood of six to eight inches Thursday. We got some more today -- and may still be getting it, I haven't looked.

I never thought that the White Witch's winter kingdom (always winter, never Christmas) was that bad. Now I know better. I just want the snow to go away.

On the bright side, wire definitely got our hundred inches this year.

And more is coming.

ARGH

Saturday Nine

2008-03-22T20:56:00.002-05:00

I think I'll try this week's Saturday Nine. It is about food, after all.

1. When you go to a restaurant do you tip better if the server is good-looking? No. To be honest, I barely ever even look at the server. I've been to restaurants where I couldn't have picked my server out of a crowd. Kind of shameful, I know. I generally tip at least 20% no matter what the server looks like.

2. Have you ever asked anyone to turn off their cellphone in public because it bothered you? I have to confess that I don't understand the impulse to do such a thing. Let's say you're in a restaurant and the couple at the table next to you are having a conversation that you can hear perfectly. Would you ask them to stop? No. I don't really see the difference. About the only time I object to people talking on a cell phone is in the library--where people talking loudly in person would bother me too.

3. Is your noon meal called "lunch" or "dinner?" Lunch. Isn't "dinner" at lunch a Southern term?

4. Do you generally make reservations first? McDonald's doesn't take them. Seriously, though, no. Unless we're going somewhere that we know will be crowded, or where reservations would be a good idea (or required), we don't make them. The places we tend to go don't get up to much more than a ten minute wait, and that if we're unlucky.

5. Do you ask for a booth or a table? A booth, usually. We go to one place semi-regularly that has the bad habit of putting two people at booths built for 6-8. It messes them up when it gets crowded. I'd rant about people who ask for booths when only the big ones are open, but frankly the restaurant staff just sits people there without asking.

6. Do you ask for a doggie bag? Heck yeah, although I don't think anybody actually calls it that anymore. Restaurants pile more and more food onto plates--you paid for it, you should take it home if you can't finish it. At the restaurant I mentioned in #5, they charge you an arm and a leg for a milkshake big enough for three people, and we get a cup for the leftovers. Why let the food go to waste? They'll just throw it out.

7. Would you complain to the management if there were children crying nearby? Quite the opposite. I smile kindly at the parents to let them know that it's okay. I'm a parent; I know the deal. Kids cry.

8. Have you ever sent food back? Never. There's only been one time that I've been tempted to, and that was at a steak place that (deservedly) closed. Apparently, some people like to take a bite of meat and taste burn, but not me. The cook was a little too aggressive with the grill and with the salt. The inside was a perfect medium rare, but the outside tasted like charcoal.

9. Do you find servers singing "Happy Birthday" cute or annoying? I friggin' wish they'd sing Happy Birthday. The birthday songs they have at those lousy chain restaurants are annoying. Happy Birthday would be cute.

It's Limerick and Haiku Time

2008-03-22T07:46:00.000-05:00

I think I wrote an entry for last week and never posted it. At least, I don't remember posting it, and I'm too damn lazy to go see.

But THIS week's Limerick and Haiku prompt is: poems about poems.

First, I want to get an old chestnut out of the way:

There was an old man from Peru
Whose limericks stopped at line two.

That's done! Now, a limerick and a haiku about poems or about writing. One of the main things that keeps me from writing is procrastination; a lot of times I get caught up in making sure that everything is "just so": the desk, the document in Word, custom macros (that of course need development and tweaking before any writing can possibly begin). That procrastination, of course, masks a glaring deficiency.

A cup of coffee.
Everything arranged just so.
Now I need a plot.

I'm not feeling a limerick this weekend, sadly. Really--what's going to beat the "dog crap" limerick?

Hiding in plain sight

2008-03-21T19:35:00.002-05:00

This week's excuse for no posts: I just haven't had the time. I've been busy reading and preparing for Script Frenzy. Most of my preparation has consisted of reading and taking notes on a book by Christopher Vogler called The Writer's Journey. It's yet another Hero's Journey book, but it's pretty good and it came highly recommended.

Anyway, about "hiding in plain sight". It seems that science blogger PZ Myers signed up to go to a screening of "Expelled" in Minneapolis. "Expelled" is a movie that tries to get people to buy into creationism; it's most well-known for its producers having tricked many of their interview subjects into thinking that the movie was going to be a debate between science and...well, non-science. Myers is one of those subjects.

At the screening, he was asked to leave--under what authority it is not clear--but his family and their guest were allowed to remain for the screening. Ironies abound here, of course, but...well, you should go read the article. Far be it from me to spoil the fun.

(And, of course, if you read the comments on the article, you will see that the lies are starting up. Some of the creationists are as bad as Scientologists.)

Interesting spam

2008-03-16T22:01:00.002-05:00

I've gotten an intriguing bit of spam. I'm extremely tempted to go to the URL just to see what they're trying to sell.

"Don't give up," it says, "there is hope for you. There are many ways to get started, and it is easier than you think." Then they tell me that the "first step" is knowing my options, and that the second step can be found at their URL.

And that's it. The URL itself--naturally, I'll not reproduce it here--is not indicative of anything. Get started doing what? What's easier than I think?

That's practically a message from the universe, isn't it? "Don't give up. There is hope for you." Very inspiring.

Don't give up! There is hope for you.

Randomness

2008-03-16T18:47:00.003-05:00

Let's check out this week's randomness.

Would you rather...
1. sky dive or bungee jump?
2. eat a hissing cockroach or eat a slug?
3. have lifelong free entry to all theme parks
or lifetime free entry to all movie theaters?
4. spend one month without books or one month without tv?
5. have the ability to fly or be able to become invisible?
6. to have a personal shopper for life or a
personal fitness trainer for life?
7. be spiderman or be superman?
8. be stuck in the 70's or be stuck in the 80's?

1. I'd rather sky dive. With sky diving, once you're down, you're down. With bungee jumping...you're bouncing around.

2. Depends on the preparation.

3. Lifetime free entry to movie theaters, of course. There's not a theme park within a hundred miles of here, but there's a movie theater five minutes away. If it was free, I'd go see a movie every night.

4. A month without TV would be far easier. We've lived without TV before; I can't imagine living without books.

5. Invisibility would be far, far cooler. Think of the places you could go and the things you could do. Wouldn't it be neat to be in the Oval Office, or in the editing suite looking at the new Star Trek movie?

6. What does a personal shopper even do?

7. I'd rather be Superman. Spiderman is cooler, but I think I'd rather be able to fly. (This doesn't contradict my answer to #5; neither hero can turn invisible.) Superman also has an incredibly large array of powers.

8. It depends--how old would I be? I think that if I was an adult, I'd want to be in the 70s, but if I would have to be my actual age, I'll take the 80s. Who wants to be four years old again? Not me.

Music

2008-03-14T22:28:00.002-05:00

We've got a subscription to XM Radio. Now that I've got a car kit installed and can listen to it on my commute, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Even when I can't find anything I want to listen to.

I'm still learning the channel lineup; there's an Old-Time Radio channel, which plays some good stuff; there's a Show Tunes channel which seems to consistently play selections from "Barnum!"; there's the '80s channel which plays a lot of music that I didn't like then and still don't like; there's Radio Disney, which The Youngster and I listen to on the way to school in the morning.

There's Boneyard, which plays '80s hard rock. It's usually good for a laugh; I like to check it out every once in a while to see what they're playing. Usually I end up chuckling--Sleeze Beez, Dangerous Toys, Trixter, Britny Fox, Enuff Z'Nuff--and then moving on, because a man's got to draw the line somewhere, right? Occasionally they'll play something listenable, although I can't think of an example off the top of my head.

And then there's XMLM, Liquid Metal, the heavy metal channel. I've been listening to it more lately, and I'm not sure why. Nine songs out of ten are by bands I don't recognize.

I think metal has passed me by. I liked it back when bands were still allowed to have musicality, lyricism, dynamic levels, singers and guitar solos. Now it seems like there's a depressing lack of those things, and the music has been reduced to pounding, repetitive rhythms and harsh, processed vocals. Believe it or not...it's background music. Very powerful, aggressive background music, but background music nonetheless.

Bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Testament, Anthrax--these were bands that demanded that you sit up and take notice. "No, you may not do other things while we are declaiming! AND CHECK OUT THIS SOLO! AND THIS ONE! AND HERE'S ANOTHER!" Even the fastest thrash bands like Slayer and Nuclear Assault bore resemblance to music. The stuff I've been hearing over the last few weeks has been surprisingly dull; despite the jackhammer rhythms and half-shouted vocals, nothing has said "YOU MUST LISTEN!" (In one song, I counted four different rhythm patterns, repeated over and over and over again. It's getting to where metal is as bad as some of the unlistenable crap on the top 40 stations. When metal starts treating "uh, uh" as a lyric, I'll really be worried.)

You know, I feel almost old and curmudgeonly about this. I wonder if the metal of the late '80s and early '90s sounds as quaint to today's fans as the rock and early metal of the late '60s and early '70s sounds to me.

Yard Work

2008-03-14T22:08:00.002-05:00

Mad Kane's Limerick and Haiku prompt this week is about yards and/or gardens.

As I look back at my life, I'm shocked to realize that I've never lived in a place with a yard. At least, not a place that I remember--our house in New Jersey had a yard, but none of the places we lived in Hawaii did, and none of the places I've lived in in Wisconsin have. The closest we came was that our last apartment had a nice, shady, green common area--but that's not really the same thing.

And as for gardens...pfff, forget it, my thumbs are as black as the cover of "Smell The Glove."

When I was growing up, as my grandparents were getting older and grandpa was less able, it would fall to my dad to do a lot of the yard work. Sometimes, I would help.

In a lot of ways, my grandpa was a big 'ol Luddite. There are times when I think I've inherited that from him; I'm very much an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of guy. If you've been doing something one way for a long time...you might as well continue doing it that way, even long after better ways are available. (This is the same attitude that makes it possible to earn a living today as a COBOL programmer.)

I spent my weekends
Up at my grandfather's house
Pushing the mower.

And when I say "pushing," I do mean pushing. Grandpa had a push-mower. Every so often he would have to take it to get the blades sharpened. I swear he must have used that thing for fifty years, and in a lot of ways, it made perfect sense: the yard wasn't really all that big, and the push-mower was nice and quiet. Why ruin a peaceful, sunny morning with a big noisy racket?

I think maybe if I did have a yard, I'd consider a push-mower. No gas to buy, no small-engine maintenance--just an unhurried afternoon pushing the mower along the back forty. Whatever a back forty is.

Old, old tech

2008-03-13T21:25:00.004-05:00

I realized today that I've been in the technology industry for almost 14 years now. I left the Music Store in fall of 1994 to start at the School District. I had been using computers long before that of course, but that's when I really started getting paid for it.

You know how a pocket calculator has more computing power than the spacecraft that took our astronauts to the moon? I'm pretty sure that my cell phone is more powerful, pound for pound, than the computers I worked on when I was at the School District--and that includes the file servers. It definitely has more storage space.

I've been in computing long enough to have gotten screwed by Apple TWICE during processor changeovers.

I've been in computing long enough to remember when a 486 DX2/66 was the top dog.

I've been in computing long enough to remember when a 14.4 modem was an exotic, rarely-seen creature. It's an exotic, rarely-seen creature nowadays, too...but for an entirely different reason.

I remember Micro Channel and Token Ring. I loved Token Ring because if you set your TR card to the wrong speed, you could--if you didn't fix it quickly enough--take out all of the computers in the school. (And they could see it at the operator's console downtown, too.)

I remember configuring XFree86 by hand in Slackware Linux, and having to dig out manuals to find the horizontal and vertical refresh rates of the monitors I was using.

I remember when Windows 95 came out, and we all had to scramble to try to make it work on our machines. And then we had to scramble to find a way to deploy it throughout the District.

When I worked at the School District, we were all issued cassette carriers (remember audio cassettes?) that we crammed full of floppy disks containing drivers for every device imaginable, floppy disks containing fresh copies of MS-DOS 6 and IBM DOS 5, boot disks for several different machines, NetWare boot disks, Windows 3.1, Microsoft Office, you name it, we had it. Those disks and a set of screwdrivers were really all we needed to keep 6,000 workstations more or less running most of the time. All of those disks would fit on the USB thumb drive I have in my pocket. With room to spare.

When I worked at the School District, we did server backups on an old plasma-screen luggable. Kids: plasma screens mean something entirely different today than they did back then. Those backups were great; we never did them very regularly because they took a long time, and usually setting up a backup would involve having to go back to the school early in the morning--because doing a backup would also involve taking down the entire network. Once, we discovered that we needed to restore a server from backup. That was the same day we discovered that our thousands of backup tapes were no good. Oooooops.

When I worked at the School District, I met some interesting people. None of them was as interesting as the kid who insisted on showing me his Pez dispenser collection. I sometimes wonder what that kid is doing now; that was long enough ago that he's probably graduated from college and working somewhere. I hope it's at the Pez factory.

What's on your desk, part 2

2008-03-10T20:21:00.002-05:00

I had fun cataloging my home desk. I'm sure it's not nearly as interesting to read as it is to do, but here's what's on my desk at work:

2 20" widescreen flat panel monitors

Keyboard

Mouse

Left, center and right speakers for two sets of surround speakers

Volume control for one of the sets of speakers

Business card cube

Phone

Dell Optiplex GX260

LG DVD burner

Water cup

Cell phone

Five mini DVDs with raw footage of a dance concert

A 256 MB USB card

2 Stacks of post-its (one is from Zippy's!)

Three BD-RE discs

A 1/8"-to-RCA stereo cable

A CD of a recording session that I helped with

2 sharpies (1 red, 1 blue)

A straightened-out paper clip

A Windows Vista 64-bit install disc

A bootable CD for my test machines

A manual for a video camera

Three pens

A pencil

An amazon.com receipt

Performance review forms

Two spiral notebooks

A folder of resumes and interview notes

The January and March issues of "Software Test and Performance"

The March issue of "Better Software"

A brochure for the STAR EAST conference

A catalog of training courses from SQE

Perry, "Effective Methods for Software Testing"

Craig and Jaskiel, "Systematic Software Testing"

Duke Nukem 3D mousepad

And if you count my test machines and desk extension as being part of my desk...

A Line 6 GuitarPort

Another bootable CD

MDR-V700 Stereo headphones

Right rear surround speakers

Mackie DFX-12 mixer

Sony HDR-SR11 High definition video camera

Right-angle-ended SATA cable

3 1/4" headphone adapters

Another stack of post-its

RCA stereo cables with pass-thru ends

6-foot instrument cable

About 300 blank DVDs of various brands and types

50 or so blank CDs

5 or so BD-RE discs

The manual for the mixer

A mini Brewers helmet

Sunglasses

Pilot’s wings with my name

My work desk really does give a snapshot of all of the things I need to do and/or think about during the course of a typical work day. I don't feel like my home desk is so representative, but that's probably because it has less of a focused role. In other words, I go to my work desk to work--but my home desk serves multiple purposes.

What's on your desk?

2008-03-09T21:57:00.002-05:00

What's on your desk?

Here's what's on my desk at home, from left to right and back to front:

Computer speakers.

150GB external hard drive.

Logitech USB mouse.

A picture of The Child and her friend.

A stack of paper fortune tellers.

A desk caddy containing three pens, two pencils, a stack of post-its, a stack of bills, postage stamps, and a 2GB SD card.

A coiled-up bit of pipe cleaner.

A piece of driftwood.

A checkbook.

A Nintendo DS.

Acer LCD computer monitor.

Batgirl, Batman, and Captain America.

A pinecone.

Mac Mini.

iPod dock.

The mouse for the Macintosh.

Two old checkbooks.

A blank CD.

A piece of pottery that's supposed to go with me to my office.

My glasses.

A box of tissues.

A wedding invitation.

A stack of receipts.

A couple of music CDs.

A sketchbook.

A Memory Stick for a PSP.

A boxed copy of Media Manager for PSP.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War.

The September 2007 Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

Another stack of post-its.

A business card holder for my wallet.

A pair of earbuds.

The Child's nametag from her desk at school.

A cloth for cleaning my laptop screen.

The aforementioned laptop.

The remote for the Mac Mini.

A permission slip for a field trip--it's waiting for me to dig out four bucks.

A renewal form for National Geographic.

My cell phone.

My iPod.

A stack of our tax info.

Two copies of TurboTax (they sent 'em to me in the mail; you pay for it online, so it's not like I'm getting charged twice).

The following books:
- Robbins, "HTML & XHTML Pocket Reference"
- Meyer, "CSS Pocket Reference"
- Maxwell, "Leadership 101"
- Arthur, "The First-Time Manager's Guide to Performance Appraisals"
- Killian, "Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy"
- Howard, "The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian"

The Logitech wireless mouse for the laptop.

It sounds like a lot, but the desk is actually neat and organized.

Feast Time, Uncle Red

2008-03-08T16:35:00.003-06:00

Here's Friday's Feast for yesterday.

If you could be any current celebrity for one whole week, who would you want to be? Would I be able to transfer funds to myself from that celebrity's bank account? Because if so, Bill Gates. Otherwise...is the life of a celebrity really so interesting that I'd want to take it over? Because reading a book in, say, Brad Pitt's body isn't going to be any different from reading it in mine.

On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being highest), how much do you enjoy talking on the phone? For a long time after I left the School District, I would have answered this "1 or less". I'm up to 2 or 3 now. I like talking to my family, and my parents, and my sister, and other people who are far away. But that's about it. I still refuse to make outgoing calls--even to renew my prescriptions, which is a completely automated process--unless there's nobody else around who can do it. Ask The Wife; I bet it pisses her off.

Name a charitable organization to which you have donated (or would like to). I don't like discussing this, because it seems to me that people who say, "and I donated X dollars to Y charity" are saying it so you'll notice them and tell them what wonderful people they are. Donate money because there are people out there who need it, not because you want some sort of pat on the back.

What is a food you like so much you could eat it every single day for a month? Sushi. Which is a cheat, because there are so many varieties!

Have you or anyone in your family had the flu this year? Yes. The Wife is coming out the end of a week-long bout, and I am similarly recovering. The Child so far has been spared.

I will drag myself out of the grave...

2008-03-08T09:01:00.003-06:00

...for this week's Limerick and Haiku prompt by Mad Kane, because I like the limerick and haiku thing. It's one of my favorite times of the week.

I've had the flu for the last couple of days; it took The Wife out for over a week. We're a wreck. At least The Youngster hasn't gotten it (yet). I'm just starting to feel better.

Anyway, the prompt this week is "age and/or life stages".

The first thing that popped into my mind when I thought about age was Jack Benny. I've been listening to a lot of old Benny radio broadcasts recently, and there are three running gags in the program. The most famous, of course, is that Jack is cheap. (That's the character "Jack Benny". The real Jack was, by all accounts, exactly the opposite.) The second most famous is that Jack can't play the violin. (Another reversal of reality.)

The third running gag in the Benny program had to do with Jack's unwillingness to admit his real age. I just listened to a show where Rochester had "a round table discussion" with someone on the question of Jack's age; "it's not the question that they had a problem with!"

"How old are you, Jack?"
Mr. Benny would respond,
"I am thirty-nine."

Unfortunately, that's a pretty lame haiku. I mean, it fits the syllable pattern and all, but that's about it. So I'll toss in another one, free of charge.

When you're a parent--or even when you're not--it seems that time goes by a lot more quickly than you think it has any right to. I was reminiscing to The Youngster just the other day that I used to be able to grab her and flip her over (safely!) with no problem. We would have a grand old time.

It was yesterday
That my little girl was born.
Tomorrow...she's ten.

(Not literally true, of course, but it will be true by the end of the year.)

By the way, the event that really made me focus on how much time has gone by was a job interview I conducted this week. It was with a young man who had almost exactly the same professional background as someone I used to work with at The Music Store. I asked the applicant if he knew the guy...and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it was a dumb question, because I stopped working at The Music Store almost fifteen years ago.

Tangentially related to age, here's a limerick about a birthday party. You could say that a birthday party represents passing through different stages of life.

Though it took us a couple of tries,
We rounded up all of the guys.
When he walked through the door,
Timmy's jaw hit the floor
As all of us shouted "SURPRISE!"

Wisconsin has lost two giants today

2008-03-04T18:15:00.002-06:00

Gary Gygax failed his saving throw and has left the Prime Material Plane. Along with Dave Arneson, Gygax invented Dungeons and Dragons and founded TSR in Lake Geneva, WI. I don't play D&D anymore, but it was a huge part of my life for a long time. So long, Gary.

And Brett Favre retired. Packers football will never be the same, and it will be a long, long time before we see his like again. Buuuut...it was time for him to go. It was the right decision, and it's somehow fitting that the last pass of his career was a game-losing interception. So long, Brett. See you in the Hall of Fame.

Here's what I want

2008-03-03T21:58:00.002-06:00

Okay, so here's what I want. Call me when they make this.

I want something no bigger than an iPhone. It has to make and receive phone calls. It has to be able to play music and video (although video is not so important). It should have a camera.

It needs to run Windows. It needs to run Office, or at least a version of Office that's compatible with my home and work machines. (If Windows Mobile does this, then that's fine.)

I need to be able to write on it like a Tablet PC or UMPC.

It should be instant-on, like a cell phone. It also needs to be able to last an entire day for whatever I want to do--I'm willing to be required to plug it in for a recharge every night, but if I need to use it for six, seven, eight hours at a stretch, it had better accommodate me.

It should have WiFi. And a microSD slot. It should recharge (and connect to my computer) via a miniUSB port. And it should have a standard headphone jack.

What I want, basically, is the equivalent of a TabletPC, portable media player, and cell phone all rolled up into one package no bigger than an iPhone. (Okay, the iPhone is pretty thin--a little bit thicker would be fine.)

And I want it to be no more than a thousand bucks--much, much, much less if it's going to be tied to a cell phone contract.

I know, this is a lot to ask. But surely someone out there can make it happen. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is going to come close. The iPhone comes close. UMPCs come close. I WANT MY CONVERGENCE, DAMN IT.

Limerick and Haiku time!

2008-03-01T08:13:00.003-06:00

I have only barely blogged this week. I keep falling asleep. It's really annoying--I'm barely able to get the dishes done and open up a book before my toes start to curl (the sign that I'm going to fall asleep). Then I wake up at 12:30 and stagger off to bed, blogging undone.

Anyway, the limerick and haiku prompt this week is "walking". By the way, I like the title of the post: "Pedestrian Poems". Nice double-layer of meaning there. Certainly my doggerel is fairly pedestrian!

Walking is a very mechanical process, isn't it? I once saw walking described as a continuous controlled fall, which just seems like the perfect description--fall forward, stop yourself with your foot, and repeat, swinging your legs so that you're constantly moving forward.

Left foot, then right foot.
One in front of the other.
The miles disappear.

One year in college I visited my aunt and uncle for spring break. It was a nice visit; I read Whitley Streiber's "Communion" and had nightmares for a week. I think it was that visit, actually, that made me think that Madison wouldn't be a bad place to live.

Anyway, they had a dog, and I walked the dog one day. I'd never had a dog and didn't know much about them. They sure do some interesting things. This is a true story, except for the name of the dog.

Though I'd rather be taking a nap,
I'm walking my auntie's dog, Hap.
As Hap pulls on my arm,
I note with alarm
That she's eating some other dog's crap!

Tina's Tuesdays

2008-02-26T20:45:00.002-06:00

Tina's Tuesdays is all about email this week, and I'm mostly answering it so that I can confess the embarrassing answer to the first question.

1. How many email accounts do you have? . Two that came from my ISP. One at work. Two email addresses for this blog. Two for The Wife's website. Two for the eventual update to this website. Three throwaway gmail accounts for registrations. Two other gmail accounts. One at my father-in-law's website. I'm also fairly sure that I have a yahoo/geocities address. That makes sixteen, which is probably about ten too many.

2. How often do you check these accounts? The one at work, of course, is checked automatically and constantly through the day without my having to do anything about it. My own personal email account from my ISP is pretty much the same; I check it a lot from work, and the home computer polls it every five minutes. The three gmail throwaways I'll look at once a month or less just to see how much spam I'm getting and from where. In fact, I only check my gmail accounts rarely. The account at my father-in-law's website automatically forwards to my ISP account. The other website accounts I check about once a day.

3. What was one of the best or worst emails you have ever got? One of my favorite emails was from someone who was actually using my LaTex playwriting package. It was kind of cool to think that someone I didn't know and had never met was deriving a little bit of use from something I had done.

Five...times five...that's twenty five, isn't it?

2008-02-26T19:53:00.003-06:00

I'm going to have to come up with 25 things for Take 5 Tuesday, but that's okay because I did it last week too.

1. 5 of your favorite blogs. noise-to-signal, Gizmodo, Boing Boing, Sadly, No!, and By Ken Levine. I consider Glenn Greenwald (you may need to click past an ad) to be essential reading, sort of an emeritus in this category.

2. 5 things you bought recently. Uh, gosh. This doesn't say the last five things, just five recent things. Let's see: A 1 GB Memory Stick M2 for my cell phone (works like a charm, but I wish the phone used MicroSD instead); lunch at Nick's Restaurant on State Street (very good mushroom-swiss burger); Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey (haven't had a chance to look at it yet); breakfast at Hubbard Avenue Diner in Middleton (I had a Denver omelet, which was really good--and I don't usually like green peppers); and a book on comedy writing, the title of which escapes me at the moment.

3. 5 of your favorite sports to watch. In this order: Volleyball, University of Hawaii football, Green Bay Packers football, baseball (in a stadium), and Formula 1 racing. Honorable mentions to roller derby and professional wrestling.

4. 5 of your favorite numbers, (if you actually have 5 of them.) Pi (3.1415926535), e (2.718281828), Avogadro's number (6.0221415 x 10^23), c (the speed of light, 186,282.397 miles per second) and, of course, the number of dull people it takes to change a light bulb.

5. 5 completely random things. Completely random? First, there are three pens in the organizer on my desk. Second, the capital of New York is Albany. Third, when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore. Fourth, when the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars. Finally, it turns out that I do not know the way to San Jose.

Run, Ralph, run...AWAY.

2008-02-24T15:44:00.002-06:00

Ralph Nader is running for President.

The Wife and I agree that he must be a Karl Rove operative or some kind of stupid, unethical narcissist.

Does he not remember or care what happened in 2000? Does he not understand that while he is not solely responsible for the George W. Bush presidency, he bears a certain amount of responsibility for it?

This is just another picture to go next to the dictionary definition of "asshole".

Haiku and Limerick time

2008-02-22T20:47:00.002-06:00

This week, Mad Kane asks us to contemplate time. I probably would have written a haiku similar to hers, but now that that's out, I guess I'll have to try to be original. DARN IT!

First of all, I'm reminded of the famous limerick that goes

There was a young woman named Bright
Whose speed was much faster than light.
She set out one day
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.

Anyway, time is one of my favorite subjects. Is time really just there to keep everything from happening at once? Or is it some kind of benevolent force?

A philosopher,
Wiser than I am, once sang,
"Time is on my side."

"The Planet of the Apes" (the original; did you know that Rod Serling co-wrote the script?) is on TV right now; here's a limerick about that.

Taylor got into a scrape,
and was caught when he tried to escape.
As he hung in the net,
he snarled a threat:
"Get 'em off me, you damn dirty ape!"

Now, technically, since "Apes" is a time-travel movie, that could count as a limerick about time, couldn't it? Couldn't it?

Well, no, not really.

So here's one, it's based on an oldie but goodie about a man whose wife's overuse of a certain phrase has him ticked off.

Said the man to his wife, "I'll admit,
when you say 'Just a sec!', I could spit!
To its use I object!
No more secs! No more secs!"
And then sheepishly, "Well, just a bit."

Vote!

2008-02-21T20:19:00.003-06:00

No, not for your favorite Presidential candidate (although you should do that, too)--for your favorite SNL cast member. The Tribune has put together a little tournament, which I went to courtesy of the fine, upstanding Sir F. Crisp, that would have been better (if, sadly, unwieldy and completely unmanageable) if they had actually included all of the cast members.

I took the time to vote (Murray, Crystal, Aykroyd, Hartman in the Martin Region, Morgan, Curtin, Poehler and Murphy in the Baldwin, Farley, Carvey, Hooks and Radner in the Goodman, and Myers, Chase, Lovitz and Belushi in the Hanks). This is important stuff.

Please note that some of my choices were predicated on the basis of who I hated the least; for example, I would vote for pretty much anyone before voting for the likes of Ferrell and Sandler.

Tales From Q School

2008-02-20T20:46:00.003-06:00

I've written a little bit in this space about how much I like John Feinstein; the last book of his that I read and reviewed was Next Man Up, his volume about the Baltimore Ravens' 2004 season.

In that review, I wrote:

The writing is typical Feinstein. He's a great sportswriter, which means that the prose tends to be a bit purple sometimes. If you've read any of his superlative golf books, you know what I mean and you know that, at least the way Feinstein does it, it's extremely gripping. Feinstein, for me, has two unique gifts: first, he can make the boring seem exciting; and second, he just has a way of making you say "Man, I want to do that!"

I just finished reading Feinstein's "Tales From Q School", and while I would still recommend it--as I do all of his books--it's a little bit of a letdown. I love reading Feinstein's books for the drama and the tension, and there's very little of it here. Only towards the end, where Bill Haas needs a birdie on the last hole at the Q School finals, do we get the trademark Feinstein verve and energy, that "Holy crap!" moment.

Still, Feinstein makes a person say "I want to do that!" While it wasn't as strong as it was after, say, "A Good Walk Spoiled," I still got the feeling that I wanted to go buy a set of clubs and head out on the Tour.

Even if you don't like golf, or sports in general, you could do a lot worse than to read this book.

Take5 Tuesday

2008-02-19T19:18:00.002-06:00

I'm not sure if I've ever tried Take5 Tuesday before. I don't think I have, it looks pretty new. Here's today's.

1. 5 of your favorite words. Defenestration, of course, followed by onomatopoeia, conflagration, noisome, and wizened.
2. 5 of your favorite quotes. These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I probably have others that are more favorite than these, but these bubbled up first.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always. (Gandhi)

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember what you said. (My dad)

Three men can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. (Franklin))

That's the biz, sweetheart. (Remo Williams)

Come with me if you want to live. (The Terminator)

3. 5 things you like about your job, (if you have one.) I work with interesting technology, usually before it's released in this country. I get paid pretty well. I have a great staff. Every so often I'll be watching TV and I'll hear and/or see things that I know have been made with the products that go through my department. And last but not least, I'm back to playing guitar at work, for work. (Occasionally.)
4. 5 places you would like to live. Madison WI, Honolulu HI, New York NY (only if I was rich), Chicago IL (ditto), London England.
5. 5 things you like about blogging, (or the internet in general. First, information is never more than a few clicks away; accurate information may take a bit longer to uncover. Second, blogging forces me to write at least a little bit. Third, it sort of relieves me of the responsibility of sending out "Here's what we did this year" letters, at which I would be terrible. Fourth, it saves stamps when I want to write a letter. (And yes, I realize that I'm spending the equivalent of six books of stamps to be on the Internet every month. But all I have to do for that is write a check!) Fifth, memes like this one are a great way to make a person think about his life.

Polling place humor

2008-02-19T19:11:00.003-06:00

I went to vote today, on my way home from work.

One of our neighbors was working at the polling place. I don't know how they do it where you live, but here there are two people who each check your name against the list of registered voters. I gave my name to the woman who was not my neighbor, and dutifully spelled it out. My neighbor said, "He's the father of that very tall, beautiful girl who was in here."

"Well," said the lady. "I can see where she gets the tall from!"

I said, "And the beautiful!"

They both just laughed. My neighbor handed over the little ticket that means "give this person a ballot." It's the kind of process that makes a lot more sense if the place to pick up the ballot is more than a step to the right, but I'm sure there's some kind of well thought-out reason behind their not being able to just hand me a ballot and cut out the middleman.

Anyway, the middleman--another nice older lady--said, "Were you flirting with those two ladies?"

"No," I said, "I was just trying to get them to admit that my daughter gets 'beautiful' from me!"

She just laughed, too.

I would have liked to take it a bit further with the mock outrage, but there were people stacked up behind me.

I'm glad humans don't have three feet

2008-02-17T16:22:00.002-06:00

If we did, we'd be waiting for the third shoe to drop.

It started raining through the chimney again...then pouring through the living room light...then dripping through the ceiling between the chimney and the light.

And the furnace went out again. Yay for emergency fees.

The rain in the living room is mostly stopped now that the weather outside has gone back below freezing, and it will stay there for at least the next week, giving the condo association guys time to get up there and knock all the ice dams out. And the furnace repair guy is working to get our heat back now.

This is kind of like having both nineteen inches of rain AND nineteen inches of snow. This morning I went out to get some sidewalk salt, and there was flooding in a few places--like right near the place that's supposed to absorb all of the runoff. That's not to mention the lake that is our front walk. (I stepped into it in slippers today. It was less cold than you'd might imagine. No, I did not do that purpose.)

I'm about ready to throw in the towel. Spring is going to be hell.

We'd better have a mild summer.

It's Limerick and Haiku Time

2008-02-15T22:01:00.003-06:00

Mad Kane's Limerick and Haiku prompt for today is all about bad jobs.

I've blogged about some of the jobs I've held before, so this is not new territory--except of course for the limerick-and-haiku part.

Not really about a bad job, more like a unique job. For the State of Hawaii, I helped conduct a survey for the replacement of ballast in all of the flourescent light fixtures in the State's public schools. The way to tell what kind of ballast a fixture would need was to count the length and number of flourescent tubes the fixture could hold.

There were four of us doing the survey, all college kids. We got State cars that we drove around to all of O'ahu's public schools. One day, my partner and I were headed back to the office, and I was going significantly over the speed limit. As we went around a turn, we saw the police motorcycle. Then we saw the radar gun. Then we saw the flashing lights.

My partner was mortified, of course, especially since I only had my learner's permit. It got worse...the officer asked what we did for the State.

Stopped for going fast,
I looked at the cop and said,
"Uh, I count lightbulbs."

The policeman just said, with a snort,
"Here's your ticket. We'll see you in court."
I entered my plea
And then paid my fee
And was only a few dollars short.

(I wasn't really; I had it all.)

The 20 Worst Foods In America

2008-02-15T19:37:00.002-06:00

Via Red Ferret Journal, here's Men's Health's list of the 20 worst foods in America. The only one of those I've ever had is the Macaroni Grill Spaghetti and Meatballs with Meat Sauce. But they all look gross.

Also...yeah, I still would rather have snow than 19 inches of rain in one day. But check back with me when all of this stuff starts to melt.

Ugh

2008-02-14T21:31:00.002-06:00

I see that it's been a while. My current excuse is that I'm obsessed with playing Oblivion on the Xbox 360. Yes, I'm a little late to that party.

In a nutshell, I find the game to be entertaining but flawed. The flaw is this: the main quest is dull. This means that I really don't care if I finish the game. In fact, I've already started a second character and will probably start a third, all without ever seeing how the main quest turns out. And I really don't care how the main quest turns out, because closing Oblivion gates is DULL.

Anyway, here are a few brief items.

I saw a Marlon Brando 3-DVD set in the bookstore yesterday. Called "The Marlon Brando Collection," it contained a legitimate classic, "On The Waterfront," an iconic classic, "The Wild One," and, uh, a third movie. I was tickled, because I had in fact been thinking about this third movie a few hours before, but..."The Freshman"? That's kind of like putting out a Great Books collection and having it include "Moby-Dick," "Pride and Prejudice," and, I don't know, "Scruples" or something. Judith Krantz has her fans, but I doubt they think of her as another Melville.

Some meme or other asked about favorite jokes. Mine is still "How many dull people does it take to change a lightbulb?" But you have to do it right.

CNN was asking the other day if anyone still cared about the Oscars, and I was able to answer "no" with a clear conscience. As most people probably know, because I can't shut up about it, I have not believed in the Oscars since 1991, when Ghost won for Best Screenplay.

I'm also on a radio kick. I've been listening to a bunch of old Jack Benny shows, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve, The Shadow, Fred Allen. I was born a hundred years too late; I'd love to have written for those shows.

The Wife and I just watched "Raiders of the Lost Ark" a couple of weeks ago. Now, the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is out, and...pardon me while I whip one off...there, that's better...at around 1:00 or 1:02, LOOK WHERE THEY ARE! I was skeptical about this movie, but I'm sold now. The trailer has done its job.

Here's a song for a bitterly cold Sunday

2008-02-10T07:18:00.000-06:00

Mr. Bourne introduced us to this song the other night. It's Scottish singer Dougie Maclean, with his song "Caledonia."

And in the interest of furthering our discussion on covers, here's a version of the same song by Celtic Woman. Take a listen. Notice how it's technically perfect, beautifully arranged and performed...and utterly lifeless.

I think this song needs a grizzled road vet to sing it, not a pretty girl with a pretty voice. The Celtic Woman version reminds of nothing so much as "I've Never Been To Me" by Charlene. (Remember that one?)

This isn't THE haiku...

2008-02-09T18:49:00.000-06:00

...but it is A haiku about the Battle of Hastings.

Harold lost his life.
It was in 1066.
The Normans won there.

So take that.

What was the topic again?

2008-02-09T15:53:00.001-06:00

Mad Kane's Haiku and Limerick Prompt yesterday was about absent-mindedness and/or memory.

Let's indulge. There's an episode of "I Love Lucy" where Lucy and Ethel sit in Lucy's kitchen and commiserate about their marriages being in a rut. Ethel's story was all about how Fred comes whining to her every morning about not being able to find his glasses--and every morning, she finds them in the same place.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Fred came into the kitchen:

"I can't find my glasses!" yelled Fred.
His wife chuckled and watched him turn red.
Then she said, with a sigh,
As she pointed up high,
"They're right there on top of your head."

Of course, the haiku part is harder. It's kind of hard to fit a lot of stuff into a form that's all about minimalism. (And note that I said "hard," not impossible. When The Worst Writing Teacher In The World said "You can't write a haiku about the Battle of Hastings," I turned around and wrote one. I wish I could remember it.)

Anyway, here's a haiku about memory. Or, more precisely, "Memory."

I always tear up:
Old Deuteronomy says,
"Sing, Grizabella."

Actually, it sounds a little better if you let me have the extra syllable:

I always tear up
when Old Deuteronomy
lets Grizabella sing.

KA-BLAMMO!

2008-02-06T21:41:00.000-06:00

We just got slammed with a ton of snow--up to 20 inches in some parts of the state, at least 10-12 by our house. The Interstate was shut down for hours after a couple of semis jackknifed at the county line. They closed the schools for the second time in a week, which is crazy for Madison; I don't think the public schools here closed twice in the last decade.

As for me, I didn't make it in to the office today. My windshield never cleared properly, and as I was squinting through the morning snow and thinking "I can make it," I suddenly realized that it wasn't going to be any better at the end of the day, so I ended up working from home. Got a lot done, too.

When I got home, I shoveled 3 inches or so of snow from our front walk just for fun. Five hours later, there was another six inches. Yay snow.

I can't wait to shovel out the car in the morning. Uuuuugh.

Do we even need real stuff anymore?

2008-02-04T20:52:00.001-06:00

Courtesy of the Red Ferret Journal, here's a vector art gallery that just blew me away. It's probably mildly NSFW, but only mildly.

What's the secret here? Laying the right skin over your vector frame?

BEST FOURTH QUARTER EVER

2008-02-04T06:59:00.000-06:00

I'm glad to have been wrong last night.

That fourth-quarter pass from Manning to Tyree--The Helmet Catch--will still be on highlight reels a hundred years from now.

Pre-Christian origins of the Super Bowl

2008-02-03T10:45:00.000-06:00

I read a fascinating article on Daily Kos about the pagan origins of the Super Bowl. I had no idea that so many of our traditions had their roots in antiquity.

I look forward to the author's revelations on the Serius Mundi.

Ugh, and ugh

2008-02-03T10:13:00.000-06:00

1. The weather finally caught up with me. I don't get sick very often, but I've been laid low since Thursday afternoon. I was supposed to go push buttons for Michael and Damon, but I had to punk out on them. I'm just barely starting to feel human.

2. I think the Giants have a chance today--they've been playing hot. Of course, I don't think they're actually going to win. Patriots by ten, but the game won't be over until the middle of the fourth quarter. It won't be a snooze-fest by any means.

3. If you have a Sony Ericsson cell phone from your service provider, and you're curious about what's actually supposed to be on your cell phone, check out WotanServer.com.

4. Some parts of the Big Island got up to nineteen inches of rain yesterday. I guess that puts what seems like the near-constant snow this winter in a little bit of perspective. I'd much rather have nineteen inches of snow than nineteen inches of rain. Not that either would be great.

We have a word for guys like this

2008-01-30T19:16:00.000-06:00

And it's "asshole".

Here's the scenario:

1. Driver hits and kills teenager with car
2. Driver sues parents of teenager for damage to the car

Yeah, I couldn't believe it either.

In which we are lucky

2008-01-29T16:01:00.000-06:00

The relevant portion of this video is around 1:05, when Hugh Laurie as the monumentally stupid Prince George starts belting out "Luuuuck luck luck luck."

I woke up this morning and I was cold.

This is kind of unusual for me. I don't usually feel cold in the house; we keep it at a comfortable temperature around the clock. And even though our bedroom is a little drafty, I don't usually get cold in the middle of the night (assuming a proper level of blanket).

So something was wrong. I thought about it for a minute and decided that yes, indeed, it was a few degrees colder than usual. I'm not terribly sensitive to temperature changes as a general rule, although I've noticed recently that I can pretty reliably detect when it's around 30 degrees out.

I walked downstairs and looked at the thermostat. Set to 69 as usual...but the temperature was 64, long past the point when the furnace should have kicked in.

"How is that lucky?" you're asking. Patience, we'll get to it.

The Wife was the pleased recipient of "You'd better call HVAC Guys." (Our service place is not really called HVAC Guys.)

"I thought it was colder than usual," she said.

We eventually got a repairman out to the house. We always use HVAC Guys--they're a little more expensive, but their service is great. There was a bit of a wait, I suppose due to some crossed signals, but "My furnace is not working" is a bit of a call to action here in The Upper Midwest.

I'm reasonably fortunate that I have the kind of job where a person can work from home once in a while, because that's what I ended up doing.

At first, everything went smoothly. I bitched a bit to the wife about how these guys charge eighty-eight bucks just to show up, but it was a gentle, friendly bitching. The HVAC Guy went downstairs and came up after a few minutes and said "Just gotta get a part from the truck."

When he came back in, he said, "I'm going to replace the circuit board and that should fix it up."

That set off a little tickle in my head. "Is that the same part that we replaced a few years ago?" The blower board had had to be replaced when the furnace was practically brand new.

"Could be. I'll check."

A few minutes later, blessed warmth began flowing from the vents.

Then it stopped.

A puzzled noise wafted up from downstairs.

HVAC Guy came back up, eventually. "Gotta get another part." He explained that the board hadn't fixed the problem, and there was only one other part that could be causing it.

A few minutes, some clanging.

Nothing.

Clomp clomp clomp, up the basement stairs. "Uh," said HVAC Guy, "I need to go out to the truck to make a phone call. Something peculiar is going on with your furnace. I've never seen anything like it."

These are not words calculated to lower the blood pressure. By this time, he's been here nearly two hours. He's a smart guy, and he knows what he's doing, and I'm totally not complaining about him or his company. It's just that "peculiar" is not the handmaiden of "inexpensive to fix".

A little bit later, he comes back in and reports that his boss is coming out to have a look. "This is the kind of problem," he said, "that we talk about at staff meetings!" Having had that kind of problem myself in my own professional life, I know exactly how to translate that: "HOLY CRAP!"

Then he says, "It's a good thing you've got the parts and labor warranty."

Cartoon dollar bills started flying from my wallet. The real bills followed shortly thereafter.

The boss shows up, oozing experience. He looked kind of like Sam Elliot--the kind of guy who could probably fix every damn thing wrong with anything you give him. They both go downstairs, confident that Now Things Will Get Done.

Later, the boss comes up and goes outside. When he comes back in, I catch his eye.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" he asks.

"Is it down to that?"

It turns out that they can't quite believe the voltage readings that the first guy's meter gave him, so the boss went out to get his own. "There's no explanation for that," the boss says.

Banging noises, raised voices, puzzled sounds from the basement.

The boss comes up, goes out, comes back, goes downstairs.

After five hours, the problem is fixed. The boss goes, and the first HVAC Guy explains what was going on. It seems that they replaced the circuit board, which worked once and then died. Then they replaced the valve, which worked once and then died. They replaced the board with a new one. It worked once and died. They called the factory, and the factory told them to replace both items at the same time, which they did. Result: working furnace. Apparently the blown parts would in turn blow out the new parts if they replaced them separately.

He says, again, "You've got the parts and labor warranty, which is good," and goes out to the truck to write up the bill.

When he comes back, he says, just in case I didn't get it the first time, "There's a ten-year parts and labor warranty on that furnace. That's really great; never let anyone tell you it's not."

He hands me the bill. "Those boards are seven hundred bucks each, and we used three."

I grab the wall, heart pounding.

"The valves are eight hundred bucks each, and we used two."

My vision is turning gray. I may not be as smart as I once was, but even I know that that's $3700 before we even talk about eight man-hours of labor.

"But," he says, "you've got the warranty."

Hands shaking, I glance down at the total.

Eighty-eight bucks plus tax--the amount they charge just to show up. I briefly wonder if I should offer him a BJ or something, but the moment passes and I pay him.

Luck. Luuuuuuck luck luck luck luck.

A limerick and haiku meme...cool.

2008-01-25T21:26:00.000-06:00

I thought I'd try the Mad Kane Limerick/Haiku Prompt. The topic: decisions or indecision.

Try these on for size.

I know it's coming,
But I don't know the answer:
Paper or plastic?

I'm having hell of a time
Conceiving an adequate rhyme!
Please know that I tried,
but couldn't decide,
Quite how the last line should go.

The limerick, of course, is in the spirit of one of my favorite poems: "Roses are red, violets are blue. Most poems rhyme, and this one is no exception."

I like dreaming about spending money!

2008-01-25T20:50:00.000-06:00

Over at Friday Fun, Kiki says, "I have money on the brain since I just filed our taxes for the year!

1. If you were to get a unexpected windfall, what is your first thought on what to do with the money? Were you practical or not?! My first that was indeed practical: since we will certainly owe money on our taxes this year, I would sock a windfall away in my savings account until April.

2. You have $1000 to spend on yourself. What do you buy? With $5000? I'm assuming here that this is money that I have to spend. With a thousand bucks, I'd probably buy a Kindle (not nearly as ugly as the photos make it out to be) or a Sony Reader eBook device and some books, and a new cell phone. With five thousand bucks, a digital piano. I'm not sure why, since it'd just be another thing I don't use, but I guess I have high hopes.

3. You have $1000 to spend on something for your home. What do you buy? With $5000? For a thousand bucks, a new water softener system and a new dishwasher. Our softener really needs replacing, and our dishwasher isn't that great--I want one that really is quiet. For five thousand bucks, I'd splurge on a big-screen HDTV, Blu-ray player, home stereo receiver and 5.1 sound.

4. You have your windfall and you realize your car is older than you. So what do you buy? A Prius. Although to be honest, I'm totally happy with our Ford Focus, and I'd certainly consider getting another one of those instead. (Okay, "totally happy" is a lie, because the pedal arrangement doesn't suit my feet and I'm constantly cursing it. But other than that, it's a great little car and I would indeed get another one.)

5. You decide to buy some books with your windfall at Amazon. What 5 books would you get? Hmm, this is tough. Steve Martin's new book, "Born Standing Up" for sure; I've read excerpts from it and they've been fascinating--and I don't even care that much about Steve Martin. A book for professional development, possibly Perry's "Effective Methods for Software Testing" or Black's "Pragmatic Software Testing." A book on humor writing (Kachuba, maybe, or Perret or Truman, but I'm open to suggestions), because I want to try to figure out how to be funny on purpose, and because reading about writing is far easier than actually doing it. I'd get my mother-in-law's advice on a good book about John Ford. And finally, even though I really don't like Shakespeare, a Shakespeare omnibus.

"Just enough to piss you off"

2008-01-24T18:59:00.001-06:00

Since the car I'm currently driving to and from work has no radio, I've had to spend some time thinking. Here's what I was thinking about yesterday.

It snowed today. Not a lot; in the words of someone I work with, it snowed "just enough to piss you off."

How much is that? Here's what I came up with:

...When it snows enough so that you have to start the car and get out the scraper and brush off your windows, but not enough so that the car is warm when you climb into it.

...When it snows enough so that the roads are slow, but not bad enough for the city to send out plows and salt trucks.

...When it snows enough so that your walkway needs shoveling, but not enough for the landscaping service (we live in a condominium development) to come and do it.

According to my calculations, there was indeed just enough snow to piss me off. I had to scrape off the car, but still had to sit there shivering while it warmed up. It took me over an hour to make a twenty-five minute drive. And when I got home, I had to shovel.

When we moved here, I loved the snow and the winter. Now I have won the victory over myself and have joined the ranks of people annoyed by winter.

I don't know, though...the thought of living somewhere where it never gets like this just doesn't appeal, either.

Briefly Noted

2008-01-21T21:47:00.000-06:00

"Oh somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; the band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light, and somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; but there is no joy in Mudville--mighty Casey has struck out." Thanks for losing the NFC Championship, Brett. Yeah, you got the Packers there and the regular season was awesome, but the only one throwing those dumbass passes into triple coverage on Sunday was you. Right now, I feel a little bit like Hitler in this video.

The deal with Brett Favre has always been "you have to take the bad with the good, because it's what makes him Brett Favre." But Jesus...he was supposed to be the "under control" Favre this season.

Give Me Five on Becca's Buzz asks for our five favorite eBay searches. I go through phases with eBay, and haven't looked for a while, but here they are: clarinets, HOn30, HOn3, X-Men comics, and Doc Savage. Why? Every so often, I believe that I could learn the clarinet; HOn30 and HOn3 are model railroad gauges, and every so often I get the itch to build something (that itch has resulted in about a dozen unbuilt kits on my workbench); every so often, I try to look up a copy of my favorite old X-Men comics, but I don't need to now that my dad has sent some of them along; and every so often I try to look up some Doc Savage magazines because Doc was awesome.

"Rhythm Of The Night" by DeBarge is on the XM 80s channel right now. It's noteworthy only because I remember that as being a color guard audition song one year in high school. You know, of all the things I participated in back then, that's one I kind of wish I hadn't done. At least not the second year.

The other day, when the high temperature was one degree below zero Fahrenheit, I was buying some groceries. When the checker asked how I was doing, I said "Well, I suppose it could be worse. But it is really cold out." She agreed with me. But the bagger said "Hey, look on the bright side. When was the last time you saw a mosquito?" I had to acknowledge the wisdom...but when I stepped out into the cold, my nostrils froze, and I would have gladly slapped away a mosquito or two instead.

Here's a bit of what you're missing because you're not me and you don't have the Shadow Warriors box set.

Two things I am not bearing kindly after watching a bunch of episodes over the last few days: first, the music is ALWAYS the same, and it's starting to get on my nerves--that nice little ballad that plays when Hanzo and crew are running is ALWAYS what plays when they're out to kick ass; second, I have a strong dislike for day-for-night shooting, and that's almost all they use in this show.

Food

2008-01-18T23:45:00.000-06:00

I'm hungry, so the Friday Fun: Yummies Edition appealed to me.

1. What is your favorite guilty pleasure yummy food? Hmm, how guilty? I have this maybe once a year, because I think it's approximately the unhealthiest thing in the world, but I really, really love Hostess cherry pies. I don't watch my calories or anything, but I think they're about 500 calories and high in saturated fat.

2. It is snack time. What do you reach for? Chips? Ice cream? Something healthy? Fruit. An apple most of the time, but other things when they're in season. Grapes, for example, or peaches if it happens to be that one week of the year when you can get a good grocery-store peach. However, it really depends on what I'm in the mood for; second to fruit is a slice of whatever kind of cheese we have laying around.

3. What is your ideal breakfast? Spam or Portuguese sausage with rice and eggs. A close second is french toast, sausage and hash browns from Upstairs Downstairs, where The Wife and I used to go every Saturday when we first moved here. They have since closed. Sigh.

4. What are you craving right now? All the food I just talked about! Actually, I've been craving a big bowl of saimin recently, but it's tough to get good ingredients. I should see if one of the local Asian markets has char siu and kamaboko. Bok choy is easy, green onions are easy, eggs are easy. Maybe I'll go out tomorrow and look.

I do not think it means what you think it means

2008-01-16T20:15:00.000-06:00

In Mac OS X, you can set up your network with an option called "Using DHCP with manual address."

Apparently, this does not mean what I think it means.

To me, it should mean that I get all of my networking configuration information from my router with the exception of the IP address. To me, it should mean "this is exactly like having a statically-configured host, but without having to remember the DNS server addresses." In other words, all of the convenience of DHCP plus all of the convenience of a static address.

But no. This is not what it means.

Yes, this is my fault for assuming a definition of "manual" that was incorrect.

I came to know this because my source control server has been having a problem. Ever since I switched to the new Mac, responses have been glacial (ten seconds per request, and you make a lot of requests when you use source control). Everything else on the computer has been working correctly, everything else it needs to do on my network and on the Internet has not been a problem. Only the source control has been a problem.

It turns out that the source control server software is kind of sensitive to network configuration. While my assumption about the setting I used was, I felt, entirely reasonable, it was completely wrong. When I changed the network configuration to "Manually," even though none of the information actually changed--and I want to stress the "none" part--the source control server started responding normally.

From an engineering standpoint, I understand why "Using DHCP with manual address" is a valid menu item, since it describes what you can do...as long as you're using certain router hardware!

From the user's perspective, this is obviously a problem. I'm not a dumb guy (although I'm by no means a networking expert), and neither are the many other people who have run into this problem, at least according to the Internets. I'm a smart guy who was probably too smart for his own good in this case.

Those of us on the engineering side of the equation would do well to remember things like this when we're designing and checking our applications. Sure, WE know what those menu items mean...but would a reasonably-educated user be making the same assumptions we are?

The least-visited top websites, huh?

2008-01-13T20:09:00.001-06:00

This week's Sunday Seven from Patrick is sort of interesting. He links to a list of the top 500 US websites and asks us to name the first seven that we never (or hardly ever) visit.

Here are mine:

3: MySpace

5: Facebook

10: Craigslist

12: Megarotic

13: AOL

15: Megaupload

18: Photobucket

I was unsure about a few. I don't go to live.com itself, but I do go to maps.live.com. I don't go to msn.com on purpose, but when I'm working and open up IE on a clean machine, msn.com is the default website and I sometimes read the news from there, if there's something interesting.

The same goes for go.com. I don't go there specifically, but since espn.com and abc.com are part of go.com, I end up at go.com domains every so often.

Even number 2, yahoo.com, I don't ever visit on purpose, but since my website for my LaTeX package is hosted at geocities, I do occasionally have to go to a yahoo subdomain.

You Will Die From Cute

2008-01-11T21:00:00.000-06:00

I'm not a girl or anything, but I figured I'd share this incredibly cute video from CNN of a polar bear cub at the Nurenberg Zoo. This is the cub whose mother was going to eat it--they rescued it after public outcry over an incident where another polar bear ate her two cubs and zookeepers did nothing about it.

As you watch this, imagine a dozen Japanese girls standing around giggling into their hands and saying "KawaiiiiiiiIIIiiii!!" It really completes the scene.

Mmm...Shadow Warriors

2008-01-10T21:09:00.000-06:00

You wish you were me, because with some of the gift card I mentioned earlier, I bought the Shadow Warriors Season 1 set. I loved this show--I used to watch it on...shoot, I don't know, could be KIKU, could be something else...when I was in high school.

My only complaint? Dude, they make these things called dual-layer DVDs with what they call a "layer break" so that you don't have to get up and flip the fricking disc over. 1997 called and they want their tech back. Jesus.

I also recently bought the Star Trek: The Animated Series box set, so I suddenly have a ton of DVDs to watch. But I'm too busy playing Rock Band.

(How whiny and self-indulgent is that, huh? "I can't watch TV! I'm too busy playing video games!" Again: Jesus.)

Now if only they'd box up a season or two of "Tokyo Housewives," I'd be set.

Short Movie Reviews

2008-01-08T18:55:00.000-06:00

I have seen some movies recently. Here are my thoughts.

There Will Be Blood: Yeah, but you have sit through twenty boring, largely-pretentious hours of Daniel Day-Lewis as Jed Clampett before you get to the blood. And then there's still another sixteen hours before the movie ends and there's a little bit more blood. I'm not stupid; I get the point that Paul Thomas Anderson is making. It's just that less and less seemed to be happening in this movie with every passing minute. (Plus...I have to be honest and say that I was confused by Paul Dano's dual role. I swear the first character never mentions he has a twin brother. Maybe I just missed it.) A muddled mess. Avoid it. If you can sneak into a theater and see it for free, do so for the oil rig explosion.

In the interest of fairness, I will say that the wordless portion of the movie was really cool. So see it for that, too, but like I said, only if you can see it for free.

Atonement: The title sums up perfectly what I would like to see from the director for making this thing. Again, I want to say up front that I'm not stupid, and I totally understand what the point of the movie was--but the journey is not worth taking. The structure stinks, and the ending is a horrible, horrible cheat. It worked well in the book, but this isn't a book, it's a movie and it Just Doesn't Work. The whole thing is basically an excuse to masturbate to Keira Knightley, who is hot. But nothing here is a surprise, nothing is romantic, nothing is particularly well-written or well-acted. A muddled mess. Avoid it. If you can sneak into a theater and see it for free, do so for...uh...well, I can't think of a reason. Maybe the newly-celebrated Dunkirk Tracking Shot, although frankly it did nothing for me.

Juno: I enjoyed this movie. I think the best thing I can say about it is that I really, really tried to find something about it that I didn't like, and there wasn't much. Be forewarned that the script is not nearly as brilliant as people are claiming it is, and that the acting is not nearly as great as people are claiming it is--but both are still pretty darn good. About the only thing I wished was that they had not had Every Single Character be so damn snarky all the time. I say this as a fan of snappy dialog: stop already with the snappy dialog. I thought it was a touch sentimental about motherhood, so if you're the kind of person who wants to avoid that, perhaps you should stay away from this movie, but otherwise it was perfectly enjoyable.

Best headline ever

2008-01-07T07:49:00.000-06:00

In yesterday's paper, I saw a headline that has to be among the best headlines ever written for a newspaper. I'm going to link to a story about the case, but understand that the linked article has a different headline.

The story in the paper: "Man sentenced for having sex with dead deer."

Yes, it was really this bad

2008-01-06T20:38:00.000-06:00

It was very foggy here today. Driving was an adventure--I went to the market this morning on an ultimately futile trip, and I couldn't see the traffic lights until I was practically at them. At the stop light, cars appeared from and disappeared into a thick white blanket.

It doesn't get like this around here that often. I wish I had had a camera, but the CNN article should at least give you the general idea.

Note to The Wife: I guess I did end up blogging about the fog. :)

I hadn't thought of this

2008-01-05T07:59:00.000-06:00

On a discussion site recently, I came across someone trotting out a tired old chestnut: "George W. Bush isn't really an idiot, he's just faking." It had all the standard arguments: they don't hand out the keys to fighter jets to morons; you don't become the president if you're stupid; the stupidity is an act designed to lull our enemies into a false sense of security. They even had a new element that I haven't seen before: that his SPEECHWRITERS are responsible for all of the stupid things he's said (you know, "food on your family" and OB-GYNs "practicing their love" on their patients).

One look at the deer-in-the-headlights reaction he had in that elementary school classroom on 9/11 should dispel that one.

Anyway, the cornerstone of this person's assertion was that The Decider has degrees from two of the nation's most prestigious colleges, and so he can't possibly be a moron.

One of the respondents had this to say: "There are plenty of people who, if given a pass on admissions, could get a BA in History and an MBA from an Ivy League school." I'd never thought of it quite that way, but of course it's true. (Add to that, of course, that Bush was a solid C student, and the bar is even lower.)

Besides...if you were acting, would you really want to have the results of your act be that you're universally regarded as the worst president in history.

(I should mention that the cornerstone of the person's original argument was that it's all an act that's supposed to benefit the people who bought the presidency for El Chimpacabra, and that the stupidity is supposed to be one of the things that's making it possible for him to escape accountability for all of the lawbreaking that his Administration has done. I don't get it either.)

A few brief notes because I'm playing Rock Band

2008-01-03T21:20:00.000-06:00

Rock Band is fun. Playing the drums is fun. I have been playing Rock Band far too much. In addition, Rock Band. Rock Band. And Rock Band.

Obama wins Iowa...Clinton and Edwards in a dead heat for second. On the Republican side, the ridiculously-named Mike Huckabee looks like the winner. Don't get too excited; Iowa picks eventual nominees only about half the time. I'm not sure which psychopath I'd want the Republicans to run in the general election...but I think the better jokes would happen if it was Huckabee. His name is practically a punch line: "Why did the chicken cross the road? HUCKABEE." (Okay, maybe not.)

Did I mention Rock Band?

The guys from the condo association were here on Monday, banging on the roof and presumably removing whatever ice dams had built up around our chimney. The dripping stopped shortly after that. Huzzah! Of course, it's been below twenty degrees since then, so we'll see what happens once things get a little warmer.

The Sugar Bowl...Hawaii was overmatched, clearly. The offensive line couldn't deal, and kept letting Georgia pressure Colt Brennan. Without time to let the receivers get wide, Hawaii had no offense. I don't blame the Warriors, though; I blame the BCS. One word: TOURNAMENT.

Seriously, Huckabee? What's next? Junius P. Hornswoggle? Horace McGillicuddy? I think "please have a non-ridiculous name" should be a qualification for Presidential candidates.

I'm liking the XBox 360 so far, but I have one complaint: holy CRAP it's LOUD!

Oh, and by the way...

2007-12-31T21:26:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year!

Strange Brouhaha: The Year In Review

2007-12-31T09:05:00.000-06:00

It's the traditional time for year-end recaps, what with it being New Year's Eve and all, and I figured that I wouldn't buck tradition. 2007 was an up-and-down year for the whole world...but I'm not sure exactly how that would be different from any other year.

The problem, of course, is that since I lead a fairly unremarkable life, there's not a lot to recap!

In March, I fractured my spine when I slipped on some ice. I'm happy to report that it's pretty much all healed up; I've been reading through my archives and remembering what it was like to have to walk so slowly all the time and to be in so much pain. It wasn't fun.

In May, I was promoted at work. I have very few words of wisdom on this subject, although I do like what I had to say in October about my first job.

In June, I participated in and "won" ScriptFrenzy. This year, ScriptFrenzy is moving to April. I'll be ready. (They're also moving from a word-count goal to a page-count goal. We'll see how that goes.)

In November, my iBook G4 died. It turns out that my promise to never buy another Macintosh only lasted a few months, but that's okay. I recovered everything I needed to recover from the dead machine. No, I'm still not doing regular backups.

In December, we got Rock Band for Christmas and have been having a blast. My complaint? Two complaints, actually--first, my guitar broke and I'll be taking advantage of the warranty replacement, and second, the microphone doesn't fit into a standard mic stand, so I can't sing and play guitar or drums at the same time.

And...that's really it. My excuse (at least this year) is that my activity was severely curtailed by my back injury. But the truth is that I lead a fairly quiet life, and that's the way I like it.

Sports note: don't forget the Sugar Bowl tomorrow--the University of Hawaii plays Georgia. Go Warriors! (The BCS, by the way, should be called the "Not Everyone Is Eligible for the Bowl Championship" series.)

Recommend a book!

2007-12-30T21:34:00.000-06:00

One of my Christmas gifts this year was a gift card for Barnes & Noble. I realize that the good thing about a gift card is that you don't have to rush right out and spend it, and that I could wait for the perfect thing to come around, but I thought I'd solicit some suggestions.

So...have you read a good book lately? Is there anything you'd recommend? I'll take any suggestions, whether you think I might have read them or not.

There are absolutely no guidelines. I'm interested in anything good--fiction or nonfiction, any genre, any subject.

On a completely unrelated note, Josh pointed out David Lee Roth's bluegrass-flavored Van Halen covers. Here's one:

It doesn't really work for me. The band is incredible--I'll have to look these guys up and listen to some of their bluegrass work. But Dave...I think I've said this before, but David Lee Roth only works in the context of Van Halen, and Van Halen only works with David Lee Roth. This version of "Jump" just makes it painfully obvious; Dave isn't really changing his delivery--he's still got that arena-filling voice, he's still being Diamond Dave, and it doesn't fit at all.

Oh, and if you hit YouTube, and you search for "David Lee Roth bluegrass" and you watch one of the live performances, you'll momentarily wonder what Carson Kressley is doing singing Van Halen tunes, but that's Dave. (Seriously...I thought it was Carson, body language and all. See if you can find the Boston Pops performance.)

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

2007-12-29T09:49:00.000-06:00

I woke up this morning to see a little puddle in front of our fireplace. Actually, it wasn't so little, and since we don't use the fireplace, there was a lot of stuff sitting in front of it--all soaked.

Water is not pouring in, but the drips are pretty steady and the pans are filling up. Remind me again why we live in Wisconsin...

Fortunately, this is the first time this has happened to us, so I'm hopeful that this is a "nearly three feet of snow this month" problem and not a new "you will get this whenever it snows or rains" problem. I'm also hopeful that it's something that our condo association will have to bear the burden of fixing, but we'll see.

I'm fairly happy with the performance of our home so far this winter. We've had a ton of snow and intermittent bouts of warm weather to melt the snow--this can cause a lot of problems with leaks and drainage and stuff. So while it's true that I wish this wasn't happening, at least it's taken this long to show up.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T19:33:00.000-06:00

Happy Winter Holiday Season!

We're busy playing Rock Band.

Also, I got an addition to Wisconsin's largest collection of Hawaiiana--and it's strikingly similar to an idea that I had a few years ago, so I guess that one's off the table. It's called Honolulu Then and Now, a collection of pictures of Old Honolulu and current Honolulu, taken from similar angles. Very neat.

One Last Stab At Covers

2007-12-24T07:16:00.000-06:00

I'm out of semi-wise things to say about covers. Really, I don't think I had that much to say about them in the first place; it's pretty obvious that really successful covers need to do one thing: transcend. Think about the really great covers and you'll know what I mean; in a lot of cases, people don't even know they're covers.

So I'll just throw a couple of songs at you and see if they stick.

First, here's Gipsy Kings' "Hotel California". I don't necessarily think it's the greatest cover song ever--it doesn't transcend the original, in my opinion--but since the song was used in "The Big Lebowski", the video uses footage from the movie. John Turturro as Jesus is worth the price of admission.

Second, because it's Insert Winter Holiday Here, here's one of my favorite versions of "Sleigh Ride." I suppose it doesn't really count as a cover, but oh well.

Finally, since we've had a lot of bluegrass-style covers, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Dolly Parton's version of Collective Soul's "Shine". (I was gonna put up her "Stairway", but I don't like it as much as this, and I couldn't find it on YouTube.) Like the Hayseed Dixie cover from the other day, Dolly and her band turn the song on its ear and put in some great instrumental breaks where there really weren't any.

The Decider Is Stupid

2007-12-22T08:49:00.000-06:00

I think what makes this image of George W. Bush at Karol Wojtyla's funeral funny--I came across it because a friend sent my in-laws a Christmas card with a similar image--is that I can totally believe that it actually happened.

Covers week: Convergence

2007-12-22T07:59:00.000-06:00

I think covers work best when they bring something new to the song, as with yesterday's Keali'i Reichel piece, or when the cover band truly makes a song its own, as with The Gourds' "Gin & Juice". In The Gourds' case, they turned a fairly downtempo rap into a blizzard of bluegrass intensity--they made it a bluegrass song, not just a rap cover.

So here's another example of convergence, this time between bluegrass and metal. Convergence pieces really work best when you have a mismatch of some kind between the source and the original, when you take what I'll call a non-virtuoso piece and turn it into something completely different. Where I think they don't work is when you take an already virtuoso performance and try to match it in a different genre.

As an example, all of the samples I've heard of Iron Horse doing bluegrass-style Metallica covers really don't work for me. They just don't match the sheer power of Metallica, and Metallica really are (or were) virtuosi, so in the end I think that Iron Horse takes a wrong turn somewhere, just beacuse they're trying to match power, speed, intensity and virtuosity.

This video is different. I don't want to say too much about it, because I want you to have the joy that I did of trying to figure out what they're covering. The original is a classic, but this sort of transcends it. The band, Hayseed Dixie, adds something that was missing in the original: a great solo break. It makes all the difference in the world. Just like The Gourds did, Hayseed Dixie has turned their source material into a new song.

Here's a great video for the original tune, performed by a bunch of puppet-show Barbie dolls. The song is a legitimate classic, and the band is incredible--I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression from what I wrote above.

I am kind of surprised, though, that neither video exploits the iconic image of this particular band's lead singer, who has a distinct stance on stage.

Covers week continues

2007-12-21T07:47:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite cover tunes is Keali'i Reichel's rendition of The Beatles' "In My Life". As with The Gourds' version of "Gin & Juice," I think that this brings something new to the song, an elegiac quality that isn't present in the more uptempo original.

Tribute bands are an interesting variation on the concept of doing covers. I'm not sure that I'd qualify The Fab Faux's version of "I am the Walrus" as a cover--because it's not precisely a cover. Or is it? Whatever it is, it's amazing. This is as close to the Beatles as we're going to get. Amazing stuff. (Thanks to Sir F. Crisp for pointing these guys out.)

Here's the definition of bravery

2007-12-20T21:16:00.000-06:00

Let's say that you are walking next to a polluted waterway; let's call it the Ala Wai Canal. It's not the Cuyahoga River by any stretch, but it's infamous for being very, very dirty. People throw things into it, it's got a wide variety of dangerous bacteria in it, there was a nasty sewage spill in it in recent memory.

The Ala Wai is next to a relatively heavily-traveled road.

So there you are. Suddenly, a truck veers off the road and falls into the water, upside-down.

What do you do?

The definition of bravery: you jump into the Ala Wai.

As I was telling David today, I'd like to think that I'd do the right thing...but man, I don't know. It's the Ala Wai! I hope I wouldn't just say "Well...he's probably dead" and let someone else go check, but I can't honestly say that I'd just jump in.

That alone, as Captain Jeff Richards of HPD said, is worth a reward.

I guess it's a cover tunes week

2007-12-20T07:53:00.000-06:00

The Wife sent me this video this morning of Dynamite Hack's cover of "Boyz In The Hood". It's good. The only problem with it is that for it to work at all, it needs the video, which turns the song into an ironic look at...well, at a whole bunch of things. Without the video, I don't think the song really has anything going for it. It's funny to hear once, but having heard it, I don't feel the need to listen to it again. It's just kind of dull.

Obligatory Warning: While the video itself doesn't really contain anything that's not safe for work or small kids, the song definitely does.

Contrast that with the big sensation from a few years ago, the Gourds' cover of "Gin and Juice." It's a high-energy song that works on its own. It's musically interesting (and the dude plays the hell out of his mandolin). I think it brings something to the song that Dynamite Hack doesn't bring to "Boyz". A certain je ne sais quoi, if you will, but I don't know what it is.

Warning: the video is homemade, and contains some imagery that would probably be considered unsafe for viewing at work or in the presence of small children. Also there's a picture of The Decider being sodomized. (You can just kind of glide over the guy miming playing the banjo during all the mandolin solos.) Uh, and the song itself is probably not something you'll want to blare over the PA.

(Endnote: for the rest of my life, I will wonder if I used the "je ne sais quoi" bit at the right time, or if I should have saved it. Or maybe I'll just overuse it the way I do everything else!)

Palate Cleanser

2007-12-19T22:14:00.000-06:00

Pointed out by Sir F. Crisp, here's an Aussie version of a Beatles-themed "Stairway" cover. Apparently it's from 15 or so years ago.

I love it. Especially when they kick into "And as we wind on down the road".

Perhaps I don't understand the meaning of the word "great" (Updated)

2007-12-19T21:35:00.000-06:00

VH1 is running a series called "The 100 Greatest Songs of the '90s." I learned all I needed to know when I flipped past it and they were telling us what was coming up after the break: "Love and Affection" by Nelson.

Nelson.

Of course, VH1 is being cagey and hasn't yet published the actual list, so I can't confirm that Nelson is on it. I surfed over to VH1.com and had a peep at their page of videos for the bottom 20. Know what else is on the list? Sit down--I'm not responsible for you dying when you pass out and hit your head on the way to the floor.

"Rico Suave" by Gerardo.

"Gett Off" by Prince. (Sorry, Prince...this song is crap.)

"Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus.

ACHY BREAKY HEART.

Let me reiterate, since we're a few paragraphs into this thing by now, that this is a list called "The 100 Greatest Songs of the '90s." And that "Rico Suave" and "Achy Breaky Heart" are on it.

Has the world gone mad? Is there a definition of "great" that my dictionary doesn't have? Did I miss a memo somewhere?

The 16 videos that they have to represent the 20 songs at the bottom of the list are a tour through the world of crap and mediocrity. There are some good ones there--I happen to like the Paula Cole song, and the Cranberries song--but by and large this is utterly forgettable crap.

If you want a real head-scratcher, check out the list of songs that apparently weren't "great" enough to make the list. Highlights include Faith No More's "Epic", "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's Addiction, "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio, The Black Crowes' "Hard To Handle", Seal's "Kiss From A Rose" and STP's "Interstate Love Song."

The hook for "Interstate Love Song" ALONE at least qualifies it for top 50, in my opinion. And it is by GOD better than "Rico Suave." (As of right now, they have posted some videos for 41-60, and, for example, "Interstate Love Song" could easily swap with the Shania Twain or Marky Mark tunes. Yes, I said Marky Mark.)

Obviously, this list was generated by people whose sole purpose is to have something to be snarky about; snark seems to be VH1's modus operandi for these "Greatest" shows. But come on...by what definition of "great" does a person select "Rico Suave", or anything by Nelson, or even "Gett Off"?

Update 12/20/07: I have found the complete list and wow, are there some clunkers. But it turns out that in this case, there were no objective criteria for greatness. They should have called it "100 songs that people voted for" or something, because that's all it is. (Jesus..."No Diggity"? "Mr. Jones"? These are what people consider better than "Epic"?!)

He's not directing, thank God.

2007-12-18T19:42:00.000-06:00

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that Peter Jackson is not directing "The Hobbit". Now maybe it's got a chance to be good.

We just have to hope that he hires a director who, unlike himself, will allow his actors to act rather than having computer graphics do all the heavy lifting. And who will have the courage to say, "No, I will not make a twelve-hour movie out of a 100-minute property, the way you did with 'King Kong.'"

I'll keep my fingers crossed that he's not going to write it either. The article hints that he's not, but I want confirmation.

Onslaught

2007-12-17T06:49:00.000-06:00

If you have a day to waste, consider wasting it playing Onslaught. It's similar to Desktop Tower Defense--wave after wave of enemies comes flying at you, and you need to build up a weapons network that will stop them from reaching your base.

My best performance so far has gotten me through level 475 or so on the Easy skill level. Apparently, that's not very good, although it's good enough to "beat" Easy.

It's fun and mildly addictive. I don't want to know what happens if a person plays it at work. Probably nothing good.

Seriously. Madonna?

2007-12-15T19:14:00.001-06:00

I have finally lost the final shreds of respect I had for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They've had some questionable inductions in the past--Miles Davis and Michael Jackson spring immediately to mind--but this one takes the cake.

Madonna.

MADONNA.

Now, I don't have a serious problem with Madonna per se. She's certainly a groundbreaker. You can't deny that she's been successful at pretty much everything she's tried except acting. She's no Laurence Olivier. (She's not even Bob Olivier, who's playing Biff in "Death of a Salesman" out at the dinner theater on Route 30.)

I'm not sure what the reasoning behind inducting Miles was--that was a real head-scratcher--and I suppose you could make a stretch and include Michael Jackson on the merit of his work with his brothers. But Madonna's career has had nothing to do with rock at all. The Rock Hall mentions only that she's had lots of hits and #1 albums and is "ferociously original".

If Madonna is in the Hall, they might as well change the name, because it now has nothing to do with rock. They might as well induct Culture Club, also eligible for induction this year. Air Supply has been eligible for a while now--why not let them in? They'd be just as legitimate.

Madonna.

Seriously.

(Here's a list of past inductees. Who else shouldn't be there?)

I could go on...

2007-12-14T22:17:00.000-06:00

...and on about how last year's election "miracle" has turned into spineless cowardice and rank capitulation.

Over at daily kos, which is worthwhile in spite of their treatment of our favorite lawyer, smintheus has taken care of it for me, urging us to stop the FISA sellout.

Aboriginal Mathematics

2007-12-14T21:56:00.000-06:00

Over at noise to signal, David has posted a long-ish (for the Internet) but fascinating video about the use of fractals in African societies. The presenter talks about how the use of fractal geometry is widespread across the continent, in village designs and cultural relationships.

My favorite part is where he talks about the fence-maker and says that the fence's curve matches engineering tables. It's near the end.

Wer wusste?

2007-12-11T20:09:00.000-06:00

Wer wusste? Sandra Bullock kann Deutsch--stark und selbstsicher!

Schau dir mal an--Deutscher Rap ist mit dem Englischen gleichartig! Gleichen Themen, gleicher Takt. Rap ist universal!

Also hier ist ein Medley aus "Wicked: Die Hexen von Oz". Ein Freund hat's uns gesendet--deshalb schreibe ich heute auf deutsch.

Ja ja, halt's Maul, mein Deutsch ist beschissen--leck mich! ;)

You can run, you can hide, but they'll get you...

2007-12-09T22:14:00.000-06:00

MUTANT CATS FROM HELL!

Apple Maggot Quarantine Area has a website!

Normally, I am a teetotaler

2007-12-09T21:31:00.000-06:00

I do go out for a drink occasionally; the late playwriting group I belonged to was mostly an excuse to go have a beer or two every week, and I just had a good time drinking with a writer friend of mine last weekend (my poison: Sapphire and tonic; his: gimlets). But I am mostly a lightweight, which I suppose isn't a bad thing.

The thing that makes me wary of alcohol--apart from the fact that I don't enjoy being warm and flushed--is the same thing that makes me wary of coffee: if the only way you can drink the stuff is to mix it in with things that mask it, what's the point? Perhaps I'm missing something, but I've never really understood that.

However, I have stumbled across a pretty good drink that I had to try tonight. It's an apparently not-well-known concoction called a Gin Buck. It's 1:3:12 (or so) lemon juice, gin and ginger ale. I mixed myself one that was about 1:3:18, and it was quite tasty--the lemon juice and ginger ale go together remarkably well. The gin is barely an accent (it's a shot or a shot and a half), but it makes its presence known.

I still don't understand the point of mixed drinks...but this one was good.

Moving Day

2007-12-08T20:22:00.000-06:00

I like today's Saturday 8 for the last question.

1. when was the last time you moved from one home to another? A few years ago, when we moved from our apartment near Hooters. I'm glad we don't move that often, and that we aren't planning to move for a long, long time. I don't like it. Of course, that last time we were moving from an apartment to a house, so that was good.

2. when was the last time you moved at work? Let's see, it must have been sometime in 2006. There was a big reshuffle, and a couple of people moved into window offices and I moved from a cubicle into the office I have now. I was glad to move. I like having a door.

3. have you ever had any problems with a hired mover? No. We used Two Men And A Truck both times we moved--from apartment to apartment, and from apartment to house. They were great. We would totally use them again.

4. one day at work, i was given less than 24 hours to move my desk. what was the shortest amount of time you've had to move in? In all of the cases where we've had to move, we've been fortunate enough to set the timetable. Even at Esker, we had plenty of notice when we moved office buildings, and at my current job, I was at the mercy of the Facilities people who had to set up my office, so I had a ton of time.

5. in your house, what would be the hardest item to move and why? My workbench, because it's bolted to the wall. (If/when we move out of this place, the workbench won't be coming.) The hardest item that we'd actually move...if we count the book collection as a single item, that would have to be it. I conservatively estimate it to be around five thousand volumes--that's enough of a "why" for me.

6. at your office/work, what would be the hardest item to move and why? Probably the dual LCD monitors, because they're the most fragile. Everything else is pretty sturdy.

7. if you had to move at work, describe your perfect office location (guinness taps optional!). This question is a little ambiguous. The perfect office location in our current building is the office just vacated by one of our top executives. It's a huge corner office with a beautiful view of the lake. I would love to have that office--but it's not going to happen. If, however, we're talking about where the company is located, then there's an office building within walking distance from my house that would be perfect. And it's for rent!

8. if you had to move your home, describe your perfect home location. good schools? pub withing staggering-home distance? I've thought about this a lot over the years. In general, Madison is a great location: we don't have natural disasters to worry about (apart from the rare possibility of a tornado), we're close to three big cities (Milwaukee, Chicago, and the Twin Cities) but far enough away that we have our own identity, we've got a university (which means that there are lots of intellectual opportunities). A lot of other benefits, too. I couldn't wish for a better place, even with the super cold winters and all of the snow. The only thing that makes me want to move, even a little bit, is that I've got a touch of residual paranoia about walking anywhere near ice, thanks to that fall I took back in March.

Now, community-wise, here's what I'd like to see: good schools, absolutely; a bookstore and grocery store; a good neighborhood bar (not a chain); a good restaurant (not a chain); all within walking distance. We have a bookstore and grocery store within walking distance, although we almost always drive. There is a bar and restaurant close by, but it's a chain--we live in a portion of town overrun with chains. Other requirements: good record store (yup); electronics store (yup); library (yup); professional baseball within an hour's drive (yup [technically, 80 minutes]); gas station (yup). The only thing that would make it all better is having my five-minute commute back!

Please stop. Please.

2007-12-08T20:11:00.000-06:00

I am here tonight to beg two groups of writers to stop using two phrases.

First: Gadget blog writers, please stop using the word "rocks" as a substitute for "has," as in "this USB hub rocks off switches" or "this setup rocks dual monitors". It's awful. It's bad enough that every damn person on "Project Runway" uses "rock" to mean "wore well," as in "The model rocked my outfit!" I don't need to have EVERY SINGLE REVIEW I read say that gadget X "rocks" feature Y. It's stupid.

Second: Food catalog writers, please stop using the word "decadent" as a substitute for "chocolate." I swear, I was looking at a food catalog today and it seemed like every single chocolate item description contained the word "decadent" or "decadence." We get it. It's chocolate. It's rich. Break out the Roget's and use another word.

I shall expect these changes to take effect immediately. HOP TO IT.

Bullet Time

2007-12-05T22:45:00.000-06:00

In no particular order, tell 'em what's up, Rocky!

University of Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan is up for the Heisman Trophy and will be in New York on Saturday to lose the trophy to either Tim Tebow or Darren McFadden. If he didn't win the Heisman last year, he's sure not going to win it this year. It's the curse of the WAC.

Speaking of the curse of the WAC, Hawaii has hit the NCAA's glass ceiling. They could go 12-0 again next year and still not get any higher than number 10. It's all supposedly about "strength of schedule". The "major" conference teams like Michigan won't play Hawaii because they don't want to take the loss. I don't want to hear about strength of schedule; you play the teams that will play you.

I honestly do not understand people who can listen to Beavis' doublethink on the National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iran's nuclear program (example: The reports that says that Beavis is wrong, wrong, wrong proves that Beavis is right) and say "Yeah, makes perfect sense to me."

Of course, what do I expect? These are the same people who said that the fact that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction proved that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Seriously. You could not make these people up. If you tried, no editor in the world would buy it. "Nobody is THAT stupid," the editors would say.

Let me add my voice to the chorus: The BCS division needs to move a playoff system, the eleven conference champions plus five at-large. The only drawback to this idea is that it would put a lot of "BCS experts" out of work. How do we know this will succeed? The other NCAA football divisions already do this, and the world has not ended.

No, really. Beavis just continues to amaze; every day a person wakes up and says "He cannot POSSIBLY get stupider" and he always manages to pull it out in the end.

I haven't talked about "Heroes" much this season. I enjoyed it--but man, Hiro is one cold S.O.B.

Finally, here's a video for my homies from way, way back. And for my sister and brother-in-law. CHECKERS AND POGO!