MeanMrMustard's Musings

Star Trek

2008-11-23T19:56:00.001-06:00

Cross-posted from worth1000.com.

Hi. My name is Larry, and I'm a Trekaholic.

Hello, Larry.

So, I look at this trailer, with the way-cool effects and the amazing Zachary Quinto and all, and part of me says, "This is going to be even cooler than Iron Man." Part of me salivates in anticipation. The part that secretly wishes he had more time for movies by Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay and other guys who know how to make stuff Blow Up Good.

The human part.

The coldly logical Vulcan part, however, notes that the filmmakers seem to have crammed into about two minutes of trailer as many deviations from canon as possible. Constitution-class starships were assembled and refit in orbit, not on the ground. Kirk never met Christopher Pike until Kirk was assigned to replace him as captain of the Enterprise. Kirk didn't know how to drive, and spent his teen years off-world. Chekov wasn't a member of the Enterprise's bridge crew until well after Kirk took command. And most importantly, the Federation and Romulans had had no contact for 100 years prior to the "Balance of Terror" episode of the original series, and nobody -- certainly nobody on the Enterprise -- even knew what a Romulan looked like; so what's with the hand-to-hand combat?

If the filmmakers care so little for the established facts of the Trek universe, it's hard to believe they'll care all that much for Roddenberry's guiding vision. What Star Trek was originally about, when you boil it down, was getting along: humanity getting along with each other, and getting along with other species in an often dangerous universe. Often the best episodes didn't feature a villain per se (we never even heard about Klingons until the end of the first season). Rather they were about ideas, and morality, and the need for understanding.

Think about the two pilots, "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before". In neither was there a true villain; in the first there was a dying race struggling to survive, and trying to help a crippled human in the process; in the second there was Kirk's best friend, unwillingly made something both more than and less than human. Roddenberry was pitching adventures in which the antagonists weren't monsters, but moral dilemmas.

Or think about series episodes like "Devil in the Dark", or "The City on the Edge of Forever". Most people (who care) would rank these in the top tier of Kirk-era episodes, and again, neither features a true villain at all. Rather, they're about big ethical questions, like when it's acceptable to kill (or allow to be killed) and when it isn't.

Kirk-era Trek was often heavy-handed to the point of cheesiness, and way too sexist for the 23rd century. I'm sure there are people who can't forgive those failings, and I may on occasion be one of them. But neither cheese nor sexism was what the stories were about. Judging by what's in the trailer, the new film is about ... well, I'm not sure. I see that it's about young Kirk and young Spock and slightly-less-young McCoy and all, and I see that it's about a big fight with Romulans that never happened in the Trek universe I know, and I see that it's about things Blowing Up Good.

I just hope there's a point to it all other than "Make lots of money and crank out a few more."

For Kevin

2008-08-27T06:51:00.001-05:00

Some advice from the Right Reverend John Hagee.

A Hypothetical

2008-08-26T21:18:00.002-05:00

Hypothetically -- just hypothetically -- let's say you took the day off to go to Valleyfair with the family. And let's say you needed to go to the bathroom. So you walk over to the nearest restroom, and standing outside of the restroom is a former co-worker, from the other side of the skyway. Without thinking, you say "hello", and the former co-worker -- standing, I remind you, outside of a public restroom -- extends his hand to shake yours.

In this purely hypothetical circumstance, who is the last former co-worker you'd want to exchange a handshake with?

iPod

2008-06-30T06:44:00.003-05:00

I'm not even sure what Motorhead's "Ace of Spades" is doing on it, but shuffle mode followed that up this morning with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's "Urban Spaceman".

It's going to be that kind of day.

WALL-E

2008-06-29T19:59:00.003-05:00

Fun. Smiles all around. I was damned impressed by the visuals in "Ratatouille", but this far surpassed them. In fact, some really obvious, welcome inspiration from the good folks who did the special effects for "Firefly" -- the camera jitter, unsteady zooms, finding of focus that made the "Firefly"/"Serenity" CGI work seem so real.

Gets a 10 from me. Almost lost a point due to excessive "Hello Dolly", but gained it back thanks to smart use of Sigourney Weaver.

The Truth ...

2008-06-08T15:03:00.003-05:00

... despite what my brother suggested in an earlier comment, the truth is that I watch pretty much all of the sports I care to. Now, true, I'm constrained by the fact that we don't have cable or satellite (a decision I'm fully on board with), and that the games I'd care to watch aren't broadcast here in Minnesota the vast majority of the time. But if there happens to be a game on that I want to watch, it's my decision whether to do so or not.

On the other hand, I see way too many chick flicks.

While I'm Waiting for Game 2 ...

2008-06-07T11:00:00.000-05:00

... a very, very brief update on what's been going on in my life lately. Because I just know you care.

At the end of April, I walked across the street to attend the College Bowl national championship tournament, which was hosted at Macalester College. I got to see old friends and teammates Ron Trigueiro and Chris Baxter; both were officiating, and Chris, an events coordinator at Macalester, was handling lots of logistics. Sadly, I see now that College Bowl has officially come to an end. Sad, but I'm glad I got to see another Nationals before it left us.

In May, work sent me to Chicago for three days, for the BEA Participate conference. The main perk, besides three nights on the top floor of the Hyatt Regency, was this sweet thing, an iPod Touch.

(It was, at the time of the photo, piping Jonathan Coulton through some old amplified PC speakers. If you don't know Jonathan Coulton, you should. Well, you should if you like songs about laptops, the Mandelbrot Set, George Plimpton, mad scientists, Ikea, zombies, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, curling, Pluto and Charon, lonely programmers, Leonard Nimoy, and outdoor sex. If you prefer your songs to be about romance 'n stuff, you probably shouldn't bother.)

Also in May, Emma had a ballet recital and a school band concert. She was excited to be able to play her very own Yamaha trombone in the concert, instead of the rental she'd had all year; we picked the Yamaha up, barely used, from eBay. It still had paperwork and a polishing cloth from the music store in Madrid, Spain where it was originally purchased, though the seller was in Arizona.

More later, unless I forget again for a few months.

Lakers-Celtics

2008-06-05T17:30:00.000-05:00

Yeah. Tonight.

21 years ago, I was preparing to move back to Los Angeles, where I'd work for a law firm with Laker season tickets, and get to go to a couple of playoff games and watch Magic, Kareem, Byron, James, Coop, A.C. and (of course) Kurt Rambis. But even though they won a championship that first year I was back in L.A., beating Detroit in seven games and the first repeat championship for any franchise since the sixties, it pales in comparison to beating the Celtics in '85 and '87.

These days, I don't follow sports much, but for this I'll make an exception. Kristi and Emma are in Montana, and from there going to California, so Smudge and I are going to have some serious guy-time in front of the big screen: drinking beer, eating chips and cheering Kobe and Derek and Pau. It won't be the same, even though Kurt's still on the bench, and still suited up -- though now he suits up in, well, a suit.

I'm guessing Kevin McHale will be there. Kurt had better watch his back.

Tap Tap

2008-06-05T06:31:00.001-05:00

Is this thing on?

Wow

2008-03-19T19:33:00.000-05:00

Still haven't had time to watch all of Obama's speech at one sitting, but I've seen a highlight reel now. I am impressed by the size and brassy nature of his testicles. Candidates aren't supposed to be honest. What the hell was he thinking?

Talk about raising the bar.

I have been informed ...

2008-03-16T16:10:00.002-05:00

... by various people lately that I need to blog more. It's hard for me to imagine why this should be important to anyone, but I'll try. Of course, "blogging more" is relative; given how little I've been blogging, this post really should get me a pass for at least three weeks.

Emma and I drove down to St. Peter yesterday to see Klund and his son Koleman starring in the St. Peter Area Children's Theatre production of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". When I say "starring", I mean it; Klund played Willie Wonka and Koleman played Charlie. It kind of surprised me that the Oompah Loompahs didn't consist of the rest of the Lund brood, since there are certainly enough of them to do the job. Clearly somebody thought two Lunds in the cast were sufficient, especially given that Klund himself had a dual role.

The play was a lot of fun. Scooter and Poo-Tee-Wheet and their daughter also came down, as did Tall Brad and Not-Yet-Showing Mary. We spent the night, played lots of Wii, had breakfast this morning and hit the road back to town.

I have no pictures, owing to a horrible lack of foresight in assuming the camera batteries were charged. But I'll cross-link when any of the above-cited blogs decide to post some. In the meantime, if you know Klund, picture him in bright-yellow slacks and a purple coat and top hat. (And that was just at breakfast; wait until you see his costume!)

Sicko

2008-03-02T06:41:00.003-06:00

So, yeah, haven't been blogging for various reasons. The best excuse I have is "pneumonia!", which actually should be a good enough excuse for you, so shut up.

Except for a lingering hacky, rattling cough and the feeling that I never quite get enough sleep, I'm over it now. At least I think I am; I have a follow-up chest X-ray scheduled for Wednesday, at which time I suppose I'll know more.

Kristi and I watched "Sicko" last week. Good timing. Just like the bad timing that brought this whole thing on right when The Company changed its sick-day policy from "basically unlimited" to "six per year". Fortunately I have understanding management. There was also our switch this year from $20 copays to $40 copays, but that was our own damned fault. Anyway, "Sicko" was thought-provoking, but most of the thoughts were along the lines of, "This could have been so much better a movie if somebody other than Michael Moore had made it." Sad, but true.

Of course, other video was watched during my convalescence. Lots of "Heroes." "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." "Pride and Prejudice" (okay, it was on PBS, but we missed the last night because of the Oscars so we broke out the DVDs to wrap it up).

And now I'm feeling better, and Kristi is sick. Hopefully not pneumonia sick, but her fever is as high as mine ever was and she feels like crap (it's true, I felt her). So Emma helps by breaking out the "Harry Potter" collection and subjecting Kristi to the entire series, in order. Could be lots worse; could be that damned "Hannah Montana" DVD over and over and over. I wonder when Emma will be ready for "Firefly"?

While I was standing around the clinic a week ago waiting for my antibiotics prescription to get filled, I popped across the hall to say "hello" and "thank you, a million times thank you!" to my former physical therapist, Allison Trombley. She is truly a miracle worker.

Valentine's Day

2008-02-15T06:43:00.003-06:00

Knowing that one of my New Year's resolutions had been to start playing my dad's guitar, Kristi had it restrung and bought me some instructional books. And five picks! One for each finger, apparently -- or one to use when Emma and Smudge have appropriated the other four.

Damn You, Scooter!

2008-01-30T16:52:00.000-06:00

Even though you didn't meme me, I know you wanted to and just forgot. Damn you for both.

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Engraver
2. Dishwasher
3. Lawyer
4. Lead Software Engineer

B) Four movies I would watch over and over
1. "Lord of the Rings" trilogy
2. Spirited Away
3. Blade Runner
4. Brazil

C) Four places I have lived:
1. Los Angeles, CA
2. Fresno, CA
3. San Francisco, CA
4. Saint Paul, MN

Four TV Shows that I watch:
1. Heroes
2. Masterpiece Theatre
Um ... we don't have cable and TV is mostly crap, so that's largely it -- unless you count DVDs we own/rent/borrow, in which case you can add Buffy, Farscape, Firefly, etc.

E) Four places I have been:
1. Rome
2. London
3. Madrid
4. Paris

F) People who email me (somewhat frequently):
(I exclude work-related emails from this list, because then my top four correspondents would probably be automated systems, or my management.)
1. Scooter
2. Ming
3. Kevin (though he's slacking lately) (of course, so am I)
4. Tall Brad (ditto)

G) Four of my favorite foods:
1. A Chipotle burrito
2. Nikki's Pasta
3. Any good vegetarian Indian/Nepalese buffet
4. Pumpkin pie

H) Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Having breakfast at Michael's in Taos
2. Having lunch at Taco Temple in Morro Bay
3. Bicycling someplace warm and sunny
4. See answers to question E

I) Things I am looking forward to this year:
1. Finishing some projects around the house, like the media cabinets upstairs
2. Teaching myself some guitar, maybe
3. Losing 10 pounds
4. The end of winter

Even though Scooter didn't tag me, I'm tagging Kevin. And Ali.

So Wrong

2008-01-21T21:23:00.001-06:00

Izzy

2008-01-08T20:49:00.000-06:00

"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over."
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I never really even got over Rambis, and now Izzy has joined her. I thought this would be easier somehow. Far from it.

Getting in a little rug time, early last year.

Enjoying a spring day with Smudge.

A week or so before the end.

A few weeks ago -- her sunny window, with heated pillow and steps to help her up and down.

"Sick Day": my all-time favorite picture of Izzy, and probably my all-time favorite picture of Emma as well. Try to find a sweeter cat than this one. I dare you.

I'm Fairly Certain ...

2007-12-31T13:09:00.000-06:00

... that this is how Scooter and his family handle their rental properties.

Truly Sad

2007-12-29T06:22:00.000-06:00

Emma isn't impressed by the Marx Brothers. And I was so sure she was my daughter.

Perhaps starting her with "A Night at the Opera" was a mistake. Too MGM-ish. I might get one more chance at this; do I go with "Animal Crackers" or "Duck Soup"?

White Christmas

2007-12-26T13:40:00.000-06:00

We had one. A solidly white Christmas, like I can't remember having had since we moved here. Some years there has been snow on the ground, but old, dirty, salty, dog-pee-stained snow. But this year was a storybook Christmas -- it looked almost like a fake stage production, with big fat flakes falling straight down outside the family room window as Emma and I sat at the table, beating up on Kristi at the "Sorry!" board. (Kristi is far too nice a person to succeed at "Sorry!")

We spent the day opening presents, playing with presents, reading presents, watching presents on TV, cooking and eating (not the presents, doofus), and generally having a fine time.

Between my birthday and the holidays, I always make out like a bandit compared to Kristi, which never seems fair. Even so, let the gloating begin! Though I'm sure I'll forget something, here's the list: several CDs, including Springsteen's latest; pretty much every Marx Brothers movie ever made, in two box sets; the latest "Harry Potter" movie (more a family gift, really); "To Kill a Mockingbird" on DVD, which we watched Christmas Eve; "Heroes" season one and "Rockford Files" season one on DVD; several computer books, because yes, I am a nerd; a laptop stand and cheap keyboard, so that my laptop can impersonate a desktop computer (I highly recommend this, as the ergonomic difference is enormous); a Caribou Coffee gift card; a Dilbert desk calendar; lots and lots of Red Vines; and a Sansa Clip 2-gig MP3 player, which is making Emma (who bought herself an iPod Shuffle earlier this year) drool uncontrollably.

Shoveling is much more pleasant with an MP3 player; even though I wasn't feeling great, I was laughing my way through Weird Al's version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" when I realized I'd done the next-door neighbors' sidewalk as well. (Which is good, since they're on vacation.)

Scooter

2007-12-16T06:06:00.000-06:00

He thinks he's funny. And you know, he kind of is; the photoshopping is pathetic, but he's improving; it used to be gawdawful. In the meantime, his post inspired me to force Kristi to watch a couple of Buffy episodes last night, which means she can blame him for it, which means that the chocolate chip cookies she promised to make him might come out a bit ... funny.

Just so you know whose fault it is, Scooter.

I'm in fact going to Sunnyvale, not Sunnydale, Monday afternoon and returning Wednesday evening. I'll be too busy with work (and too transportation-impaired) to visit with Ali, I expect, but here's her notice anyway.

Isabella Katarina Tillerini

2007-12-11T11:14:00.000-06:00

Let me tell you a story. I blogged a bit about my cat Rambis in her last days in October of 2005, and after she died. I don't know if I ever discussed her sleeping habits. Unlike any cat I've ever had, she would curl up next to my chest as I slept. I was her person, and she was my cat, and there was never any doubt of either.

By contrast, Isabella Katarina Tillerini is (and has always been) Kristi's cat. At night, Izzy has always slept on Kristi's pillow (or one of them; Kristi took to using two to allow a little extra room for Izzy). When I say "always", I mean "always". Every night. Even when Kristi and I separated for a few months in 2000, Izzy slept on that pillow -- never on mine.

Then, Rambis died. For several weeks, nothing changed. Then one night I came to bed to find Izzy curled up on my pillow. The next night, same thing. Most nights for a period of a couple of months, she stayed with me. Then she switched back to Kristi's pillow, and has (mostly) stayed there since.

I suppose you could explain this by saying that, with Rambis gone, Izzy was just trying out a new spot (even though that spot was available all along, even when Ram was alive). I'm sure you could come up with two or three other plausible explanations for why she would do what she did. But I know why she did it. She was comforting me. Because that's the kind of creature she is.

It's our turn to comfort Izzy now, as best we can. She's 16, suffering from arthritis and kidney failure. We give her Lactated Ringer's subcutaneously, almost every night, just to keep her hydrated. She has her own room (the computer room, where I'm sitting now -- the room where Rambis spent her last days). We've built makeshift steps for her to climb up and down to her favorite window spot, and put a heating pad there for her aching hips. She's got her own litterbox in here that Smudge can't get to, set on an oil drip pan so that if she misses the box (as she does too often, her hips not allowing her to crouch low), no damage is done. But for all that, she still sleeps at night on Kristi's pillow. And, very occasionally, on mine.

oOo

I've been reading a book called "Dominion," by Matthew Scully. It's a powerful indictment of how humans abuse animals. The chapter I've just finished is an attack on the scientific rationalizations that are often used to support the abuse. There are, apparently, plenty of scientists who will happily claim that animals don't feel "real" pain, that they aren't capable of true rational thought. Reading their words made me want to try out on them some of the things they say don't cause animals to suffer. You know, just to see if scientists feel "real" pain.

"Dominion" can be a little bit off-putting (for me) when it focuses on religion; I am not a religious person, and I don't see where religion has, historically, often proven to be a great starting point for ethical conduct. But I give Scully credit for not shying away from the hypocrisy of those who claim to be godly while behaving abominably toward animals. In fact, I give Scully credit generally for being his own man; he's a bizarre combination of committed vegetarian, sincere opponent of animal abuse, and card-carrying conservative Republican. How can one hold the beliefs he does and still work for the likes of Bush and Cheney, as he did? I don't know. It's a mystery. But I like his book, and I suspect I'd like him, even if we'd never agree on either religion or politics.

Modern Slavery

2007-11-26T16:10:00.000-06:00

We watched "Amazing Grace" over the holiday weekend. Even Emma paid attention through (most of) it. It was an inspirational story, and well acted, if somewhat cloyingly written. (I mean, the stuff about losing his singing voice and then finding it again? Come on.)

That film got me thinking about something I'd heard on Air America the previous week. Thom Hartmann was expounding on one of his heroes, Thomas Jefferson, and his ambiguous record on the issue of abolition of slavery. Hartmann's point was that the record was nowhere near as ambiguous as Jefferson's critics would maintain. However, none of that is what caught my attention; I'd heard most of it before. What captured my imagination was Hartmann's statement, at the end of his defense of Jefferson, that instead of ending slavery in this country, we've merely outsourced it -- and the free trade agreements of the last decade or so have made the situation worse.

There have been examples aplenty of U.S.-based corporations getting rich off of third-world sweatshop labor. This came to mind again this morning when I saw this New York Times story, linked via Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo; I'd never thought about government entities doing the same thing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T12:11:00.000-06:00

Except for our Canadian friends. (Did you wish me a happy Thanksgiving when you had yours? No? Then don't complain.)

We've had snow falling gently all morning (all night, really). Big, fat flakes. Not sticking too much, but still very pretty, especially for my mom, who is visiting from California.

Later we'll be having our traditional meat-free feast, accompanied by "Alice's Restaurant." Call us hippies if you like.

Which reminds me: does every Jimmy John's have a "No Hippies Allowed" sign inside, or just the South Saint Paul franchise? That combined with the sign dissin' the French ("Bread so French it has to be liberated") and the U.S./God sign whose language I can't recall offhand, and I felt pretty much out of place and completely uninclined to try it a second time. Just sayin'.

Not The Daily Show, With Some Writer

2007-11-16T14:33:00.001-06:00

Jason Ross explains the writers' strike to you.

Did I Miss a Memo?

2007-11-08T09:13:00.001-06:00

When did the Country Music Awards pick up a sponsorship from Starfleet?

Honestly

2007-11-07T08:04:00.001-06:00

Was there ever a country more awesomely stupid than my country?

Seasons

2007-11-05T20:23:00.000-06:00

Sunday was a gorgeous day, relatively speaking; mid-50s and sunny.

Today, I went out to lunch. It was sleeting on the way back, with a biting wind.

Sigh. Just a little reminder of where I live.

Ha!

2007-10-30T20:36:00.000-05:00

Kristi won't let me grocery shop, because she doesn't think I'm capable of it. For instance, I once brought home a gallon of milk that was five days from its expiration date. Yes, I should've checked, but we can go through a gallon in five days; no big deal.

But look what she did. She brought home this pizza crust:

Here, let me zoom in on the expiration date:

I guess that makes my "drink-it-in-five-days" milk look pretty damned good, doesn't it?

Memed Again

2007-10-29T20:08:00.001-05:00

Damn it. Here I was, not blogging and having a fine time of it. Then Scooter memed me.

1. Name one person who made you laugh last night.
Angela. Biscuits make me laugh.

2. What were you doing at 0800?
Nursing a cup of coffee that Scooter poured me, and trying like hell to make sense out of the wacky database stylings of Randy Kleinhuizen and his Oracle Obsessions.

3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago?
Reading blogs.

4. What happened to you in 2006?
Left Thomson-West for Thomson-FindLaw.

5. What was the last thing you said out loud?
"That bastard Scooter."

6. How many beverages did you have today?
OJ at breakfast, two coffees, one huge iced tea at lunchtime, water, water, water. Seven.

7. What color is your hairbrush?
Like I have enough hair to worry about that. My former hairbrush, appropriated by my daughter, is wood. So, um, brown? Tan? Wood-colored.

8. What was the last thing you paid for?
Lunch.

9. Where were you last night?
At home.

10. What color is your front door?
Brown. But not tan or wood-colored.

11. Where do you keep your change?
In a cute little Chinese box bought for me by either Bob Kempf or Tim Ryan after the three of us played the Gods in Brecht's "The Good Woman of Szechwan" at CSU Fresno in 1981.

12. What’s the weather like today?
As Scooter says: "Around 65 and very pleasant." Sunny. Izzy got some outdoor time. Smudge isn't allowed to get outdoor time because he insists on killing things and bringing them back in the house.

13. What’s the best ice-cream flavor?
Cherry Garcia. I just said that to be predictable. Actually, my favorite is Breyer's Natural Vanilla. It's really, really good, and can be dressed up as appropriate for any occasion (I prefer chocolate sauce and a sprinkle of chopped nuts).

14. What excites you?
Bicycling. Puzzles (word, math, coding). Discussing politics and/or religion. Some music. Some movies. Good books. God, I'm boring. I mean, books and vanilla? Come on.

15. Do you want to cut your hair?
Yes. Not that you'd notice much if I did.

16. Are you over the age of 25?
Way over. Thanks for asking.

17. Do you talk a lot?
I don't think so. The content writers over the cube wall probably think I talk way too much, though.

18. Have you watched any television series, regularly, to which you be ashamed to admit your regular viewership? What was your favorite episode?
I'm not at all ashamed of my Buffy addiction; sorry, Scooter. I'll have to say Star Trek: Voyager -- it was a guilty pleasure of Kristi's and mine. Favorite episode: that one where the Doctor does something really funny. You know.

19. Do you know anyone named Steven?
Several. That reminds me, I need to try to get in touch with one of them. Thanks!

20. Do you make up your own words?
Occasionally. More often I try to use existing ones in new ways. Emma and I were talking about the solar system. She was wondering what people from Jupiter would be called. I told her I was more interested in what you'd call someone from Uranus. She thought that was funny. I told her they were called Urinals. She thought that was even funnier.

21. Are you a jealous person?
Not so much.

22. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘A’.
Amanda.

23. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘K’.
Kirk.

24. Who’s the first person on your received call list?
My what?

25. What does the last text message you received say?
I don't text. My thumbs are too old to text. So the last one was probably Virgin Mobile trying to sell me ring tones.

26. Do you chew on your straw?
Yes. And my ice. Disgusting, I know.

27. Do you have curly hair?
To the extent I have hair at all, yes, I do.

28. Where’s the next place you’re going to?
Work, in the morning.

29. Who’s the rudest person in your life?
Scooter. I'd choose Kevin, but he's too far away to really be a nuisance.

30. What was the last thing you ate?
A home-roasted pumpkin seed.

31. Will you get married in the future?
I'm booked up at present. Check back later.

32. What’s the best movie you’ve seen in the past 2 weeks?
We went to see Ratatouille at the cheap theatre in Roseville. I loved it.

33. Is there anyone you like right now?
Gee, thanks, Scooter. I like you too. And Kevin, even though you're both rude. And Brad, and Ming. And most of the people I work with at FindLaw. And the staff at Worth. (Bob and Amanda and Sean and Randy and Kirby and Lisa and Avi and the rest of the admin gang, and the jurors -- well, most of the jurors. Well, Angela. And Ali; Ali's okay. I'm withholding judgment on the rest of them, though.) And my family -- all of them. Even the ones I don't like, I like. And the cats, except when Smudge has something dead in his mouth.

34. When was the last time you did the dishes?
I do the dishes daily. It's one of my things. I inherited it from my dad, or I picked it up while dishwashing in college. Either way, it's a chore I like to do, and since we don't have a dishwasher and we like to cook (and Emma often won't eat what Kristi and I are having), there's plenty to be done.

35. Are you currently depressed?
It would certainly explain some of my physical symptoms, but I don't think so. Unless I'm depressed about my physical symptoms.

36. Did you cry today?
No.

37. Why did you answer and post this?
Because Scooter will hound me if I don't.

38. Tag 5 people who would do this survey.
Ali, Sean, Kevin, Maggie, Amanda. If any of 'em are paying attention, that is.

AND, feel free to change out one of these questions for anything else you want to ask and answer.

A moment of silence, please

2007-09-23T08:10:00.000-05:00

A Renaissance Festival Poem

2007-09-22T06:59:00.001-05:00

Dragon snot.

Ice when it's hot.

Human benches.

Inspiring wenches.

Em takes wing.

Zilch ... doesn't sing.

Renaissance dog.

Dudes on a log.

Paper making.

And corn snaking.

Emma flies high.

Twig says 'bye'!

Synchronicity Update

2007-09-07T20:04:00.000-05:00

It seems Emma noticed that her classroom's copy of "A Wrinkle In Time" was looking decrepit, and offered to take it home and try to repair the cover. Turns out it's also moldy, so that ain't gonna work. Still, it's one of those weird coincidences ....

Synchronicity

2007-09-07T16:16:00.000-05:00

Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday. I came home to find a very beaten-up copy of "A Wrinkle In Time" on the dining room table. We do not, to my knowledge, own a copy of "A Wrinkle In Time," and the source of the book (and the reason it sits out) will remain a mystery until Kristi gets home. Add to that Scooter and Poo-Tee-Wheet's daughter starting this year at Tesseract, and I figure it all has to mean something.

I'm such a nerd

2007-08-18T16:39:00.000-05:00

I just saw a commercial for the Green Dot card. I swear, I thought they were saying it was a "Gringotts card".

Yeah, I know, where've I been, blah blah blah. Work, vacation, recovering from vacation, frantically getting CDFFL ready for the 2007 season. It's not like I wasn't thinking about you, though.

And We're Back

2007-07-11T20:56:00.000-05:00

Not that I've actually been gone or anything. Just enjoying my summer too much to blog. Or, alternatively, being so tied up with work and home projects and cycling and CDFFL and three god-damned admin-only head-to-head contests at Worth that I really haven't had time and energy to blog.

Speaking of bicycling (no, you can't tune out now, you'll like this post, really), there are a number of hazards involved in bicycling in Saint Paul and its surrounding communities. Cars, obviously, and trucks. Potholes and other wheel-damaging things in and on the roadway.

Then too, there are the living hazards. People. People with dogs whose leashes stretch the entire width of the bike path. Dogs without leashes. Squirrels and rabbits. The occasional deer. And, of course, Orthodox Jews, who (as you can imagine) are considerably more dangerous than the rest.

Seriously. Part of my commute involves a ride down (and in the afternoon, back up) Edgcumbe Road, a curvy hill connecting the lower and upper Highland Park neighborhoods. Near the top of the hill is an Orthodox (possibly Hasidic/Lubavitch) temple, Adath Israel. There are no sidewalks on this stretch of Edgcumbe, and even in the early morning darkness I'll sometimes be speeding downhill around a curve at 20-something mph only to find a bearded dude dressed in solid black walking up the road right at me. It's scary. And not just because they're Orthodox. I've taken to riding out closer to the middle of the road -- there are sometimes fewer cars than Jews out at that hour. And Orthodox Jews aren't generally in the middle of the road.

More Bike Blogging

2007-07-02T17:00:00.000-05:00

There. You were warned.

Scooter is hard at work training for RAGBRAI, and I'm so glad I'm not going. Seven days and 476 miles sounds, well, brutal. Add to that the sleeping on the ground and I'm just as happy not to be going; my lower back has been complaining a little about the mileage I'm putting on as it is.

Today's commute was smooth. The return trip in particular felt really good: 56 minutes, 13.8 mph. For me, that's about as good as it ever gets with the hybrid and the panniers.

Sightings: a truck driver who didn't cut me off at an intersection when he could have, but instead waved me through. A pair of inline skaters who (as all inline skaters seem to) completely ignored the yellow stripe dividing their portion of the path from that belonging to oncoming traffic. Many bunnies, even a few on the afternoon leg of the ride.

Blogging has slipped again ...

2007-06-30T15:10:00.000-05:00

As if anyone cares.

I rode to work yesterday -- only the second time this year, but I'm doing better than last year, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. Today, I volunteered to basically repeat the ride; Kristi had three books being held for her at the Westcott branch of Dakota County library, right down the street from Thomson-West, and one of them was coming off its hold at the end of the day today. So I got back on the bike and trundled off across two rivers again.

It was a nice ride, about 22 miles round trip. Much of it was on my regular commute route. But while I normally have the bridges and trails by the river to myself on my morning commute (and nearly to myself in the afternoon), on a Saturday morning there are all kinds of people about. Not just bicyclists, either -- lots of inline skaters to share the path with. Inline skaters, in my experience, aren't really good about this; they shoot back and forth across the entire width of a 7- or 8-foot-wide bike path, and appear downright resentful when they have to coast for a moment to let a bicycle past. Imagine the nerve! A bicyclist, on the bicycle path! Nor did the bicyclists themselves come off particularly well. Word: I don't care how much in love you are, you don't ride next to each other on a narrow bike path, especially when there's another cyclist riding right at you less than 50 feet away. Sheesh. For once, the drivers came off much more polite and aware than did the riders.

The ride itself felt great; surprisingly, I felt stronger than I had during the Friday commute. I'm hoping to bike-commute again on Monday

Sightings

2007-06-19T20:46:00.000-05:00

Surrealism.

Riding the Highway 13 bike path below Acacia Park cemetery this morning at about 5:20 -- looking through the trees, caught site of a mylar balloon slowly skipping across the lawn, and suffered a serious flashback to The Prisoner.

At work -- a maintenance cart with a single computer on it -- no monitor, no keyboard, no power cord or mouse. Taped to the computer, a very prominent sign: "Do Not Disconnect This Computer!"

Outa Shape, Part 2

2007-06-19T17:01:00.000-05:00

Rode to work today. The ride in, which (when I'm in shape) takes an hour, I clocked in 1:04. Pretty good, really, considering.

The ride home? 22 mile-an-hour winds gusting to 31, out of the northwest. My ride is into the northwest. Took 1:16 and nearly everything I had. Every now and then I'd hear that Danny Glover voice in the back of my head saying, "I'm too old for this shit," but I stayed on the bike the whole way -- even up the hill on Edgcumbe where I was certain I was going to give up.

Father's Day

2007-06-17T07:53:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my next-door neighbor, Steve, recommended that I try out the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis. Never having ridden it, I thought that sounded like a fine idea, so this morning I headed on over.

The greenway runs east-west through the heart of Minneapolis, all the way from the Mississippi River Parkway to Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles. Oddly enough, as I transitioned from the River Parkway to the greenway, I saw yet another two-door purple RAV. They're suddenly everywhere I'm bicycling, but when I'm out driving mine, I never see another one. Weird.

The greenway makes good use of existing and former railway rights-of-way to carve a path across town with a minimum of cross-traffic. Much of the route is below-grade, between 29th and 28th streets, with "onramps/offramps" every half-mile or so to get you back into traffic if you're so inclined. (Here's an example of one looping off of the greenway and up to 18th Avenue, and here's a picture of one from on the greenway itself.) Dotting the path are community gardens and other things to look at, including a restaurant patio at the back of the old Sears building (now upscale condos, hotel, shopping and dining). When you get to Uptown and close to the lakes, people's front yards come right down to the path, and you can admire the landscaping and (inwardly) thank them for the scenery.

The whole ride this morning was about 17 or 18 miles. Sitting at the lakes, I considered riding south past Calhoun and Harriet and catching the Minnehaha Creek trail back east, but I figured that would've taken too long. So I simply retraced.

When I got home, Emma had a Father's Day present waiting for me. I'm wearing it now: a blue t-shirt with "Dad: The Man, The Myth, The Legend" embroidered on it. (Very tastefully.)

After a (prolonged) call to Kristi's dad, we walked down to the Saint Clair Broiler, where Emma has bought me breakfast the last two Father's Days. With Kristi no longer working weekends, this was the first time we'd all eaten there together. Food: fine. Company: great. Booths: in serious need of repair.

Then a relaxing rest-of-the-morning around the house, followed by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End in Oakdale. I was thoroughly satisfied; despite what I'd heard, I had no trouble whatsoever sorting out the various plots and double-crosses. Topped off everything with dinner at Sawatdee, another Father's Day tradition.

Nun Soup

2007-06-16T07:39:00.001-05:00

Over at Worth, TheNightfly pointed out the resemblance between the star of Pixar's 2008 release, "Wall-E", and Johnny 5.

I've long been (mildly) critical of "Lilo and Stitch" for what I perceived as a blatant recycling of the plot of "Iron Giant". However, this mention of "Short Circuit" reminds me that it was, in fact, an earlier example of the "incredibly destructive war machine develops a conscience and makes friends" plotline.

Was it the first? Anyone got an earlier example? I'm guessing there were earlier sci-fi books or short stories, maybe a Twilight Zone episode, but I can't think of anything offhand. And it's important that I know. I'd hate to think that something starring Steve Guttenberg was actually original.

Outa Shape

2007-06-15T20:05:00.001-05:00

I took Thursday and today off -- we'd planned to go camping, so Kristi is off too (Emma's last day of school was Tuesday), but those plans changed. Anyway, this morning I took a bike ride.

Oof.

Haven't been on the bike much at all this year so far, and it shows. I did an 11.5-mile loop to Dakota County, across the 35E bridge and back across the Mendota bridge. And I'm feeling it.

I did, however, notice some things. The cool quasi-historical markers on the bike trail coming off Lilydale Road (never ridden that path before). The birds flying out of "nests" that are holes in the sandstone (?) bluffs above the path. The purple two-door RAV, just like mine (you hardly ever see 'em), parked just off Hamline above Montreal. The impression of bicycle shoe cleats in the concrete steps leading down from Fort Snelling to the Mississippi bridge along Highway 5 (how did I never notice those before, and how did that guy ever get the cement out of his cleats?).

Yesterday Kristi, Emma and I had an adventure afternoon. Around noon, Kristi took us to REI to climb the pinnacles. Emma has tried before and barely made it her own height off the ground; this time she did somewhat better. Kristi made it more than halfway up the adult beginner's route. And I made it all the way up. (I was very disappointed to find out there was neither a bell to ring nor $20 to grab. What a ripoff.) After that we dropped our car at the megamall and took the Hiawatha light-rail line to downtown Minneapolis. The plan was to go to the viewing deck in the IDS building; Kristi had called the Wells Fargo building and asked if they had one, and they said no, but IDS does. So we go to IDS, and yes, there's a viewing deck, but it's closed. For the last 28 years. Sigh. We had a nice lunch at Panera and came home.

Anyway, between the 50-foot climb yesterday and the ride today, plus lots of hand-planing of the new porch screens to fit their openings and cutting/hanging of trim in Emma's playhouse, I feel a little like somebody's been kicking me in the ribs and shoulders. Repeatedly. And hard.

Ow.

To Be Fair to Mr. Bush ...

2007-06-08T17:49:00.000-05:00

The bottle in this picture is a Buckler, which is a low-alcohol beer brewed by Heineken.

However, you should know that "low alcohol" ain't alcohol-free. And you should know that there's no guarantee that what Bush was drinking came out of that bottle.

However, let's suppose it was. Let's suppose that Bush went to a G-8 diplomatic summit hosted by Germany and ordered a low-alcohol beer. A Dutch low-alcohol beer. In a country that prides itself on brewing the best beers in the world, Bush ordered an import. (And yes, before you ask, apparently there are plenty of German low-alcohol brews to choose from.)

Typical.

A Quick Post From Work

2007-06-08T06:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Bush was seen drinking something that looks an awful lot like an alcoholic beverage at the G-8:

This morning, Bush missed several hours of G-8 meetings because of a "mild stomach ailment".

Coincidence?

UPDATE: Dependable Renegade has the definitive photographic evidence.

My Wife Is Very Smart

2007-06-05T06:18:00.000-05:00

So why is she completely unable to insert a Netflix movie into its return envelope with the barcode visible before sealing the flap?

Caterpillar Stampede!

2007-06-01T19:55:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I was almost trampled in a caterpillar stampede. Yes, they're small, and they move slowly, but they have lots and lots of legs. And there were lots and lots of caterpillars -- dozens of them, migrating across our yard and front walk, all heading east. I'm lucky to be alive.

They were black, with spikes, and red feet/legs. Not sure what kind of butterfly or moth they'll turn into Nor do I know why they were all on the lawn, or why they were all going the same direction. There was something vaguely Hitchcockian about it all.

Hidden Jewel

2007-05-29T15:46:00.000-05:00

Well, Scooter and Ming may (or may not) have gone to House of Wu without me today, but I had a fine day regardless. Mom and I went to the Museum of Russian Art. Aside from a painful detour caused by the Crosstown Freeway construction, it was a brilliant success. It's a small but beautiful museum with excellent handicapped access (we'd rented a wheelchair for mom, as she's having some serious mobility issues again). The current exhibitions are all spectacular. I particularly enjoyed the Andrew Moore photographs on display in the lower level gallery; really beautiful work. But the "Soviet Breadbasket" display has some incredible paintings in it. The gift shop is quite something, too, very different from your "typical" museum shop.

On the way out, we ran into Judi Dutcher. She's been working at the Museum as Director for several weeks, and seemed on top of her game already, seemingly knowing everything about the current and planned exhibitions. She was very nice and very helpful, answering mom's questions and retrieving some additional info from her office for us. I'd vote for her, E-85 or no E-85.

Odd Non Sequitur

2007-05-28T17:23:00.000-05:00

Kristi, googling for "senior" art classes for my mom: "Hmm. 'Hot senior babes getting nude.'"

Mom, continuing a prior conversation: "Where's my picture?"

You kinda had to be there.

My Brother Says I Should Blog More

2007-05-28T06:36:00.000-05:00

He's right, of course. Older brothers are always right; if they're wrong, they beat you up until they're right. Them's the rules.

Right now my mom is visiting from California, it's been prime gardening season (which means Kristi's busy, which means I'm cooking/dishwashing/Emma-shepherding, I've been attempting to rebuild our porch screens, my allergies are kicking in, work has been high-maintenance, and it's prime development season for CDFFL, which is getting an entirely new look, 100% new code (of course), and a number of new features. And I've been catching up on my missed episodes of Heroes. In short, I've been busy. Deal with it.

Believe me, if I'd had time to blog, you'd have heard lots the last few weeks about Alberto Gonzalez and his nonstop effort to subvert the Constitution. You really weren't interested in reading about that, were you?

I'll do better.

If It's Not Here In 30 Minutes, Do I Get It For Free?

2007-05-07T12:22:00.000-05:00

I just received the following at my gmail address. Since I'm in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the Domino's franchise is in North Yorkshire, I have a feeling the garlic pizza bread is going to be cold and soggy by the time it gets here. Damn.

Thank you for ordering Dominos. This is your order confirmation - please note your order details in case of any queries:

Store telephone number: 01423 873737

Your Order Number: 3235582

Order Details:
1x Small Create Your Own
+ Single Onions
+ Single Roast Chicken
+ Single Smoky Bacon
1x Medium Football Fanatic
1x Medium Full House®
1x Garlic Pizza Bread

Price: £33.46

Delivery Details:
20

Heath Grove
HARROGATE
HG2 0PX

Delivery Date: Mon 07/05/07
Delivery Time: 19:00

Relax, it's on its way.

The Domino's Team.

http://www.dominos.co.uk

Feisty Fawn

2007-05-06T18:09:00.000-05:00

Even though my Linux guru, Sean, is offline for the next couple of days, I decided to risk upgrading my creaking Ubuntu install to Feisty Fawn (7.04). Went like a charm. The upgrade process was painless enough, and even though I'm hardly ever in Linux these days (should I dual-boot the laptop? hmm...), I remembered enough to manage where it wasn't entirely pain-free.

While I was at it, I upgraded Firefox from 1.5 to the current release (Ubuntu wasn't nice enough to do that automagically, but I found a lovely script on their website to take care of it for me), installed IE6 in Wine per Sean's marvelous find, increased the screen resolution options (yeah, I remembered where xorg.conf is all by myself), installed upgraded versions of mysql5 and php5, set up a working copy of my CDFFL subversion repository, told apache where to find it, and verified that yes, I can do CDFFL development in Feisty.

Not so good, but much more amusing: attempting to install Silverlight into Firefox on Ubuntu. Not that I expected it to work, but the failure was so silent as to be amusing. Did it work? Did it not work? Who can tell, when all the links take you to the page you're already on? They're generated using javascript, but there's no "else" clause to handle cases where you're not a Windows or Mac user. Did Microsoft not expect someone running Firefox on Linux to try? Scooter calls it "the way of the web," but Scooter is notoriously (albeit non-maliciously) Microsoft-centric. Shouldn't "the way of the web" be available to open-source users? Or maybe Scooter meant that Microsoft's "the way of the web" is that all pages link only to themselves.

What I especially enjoyed about the Silverlight page, as rendered in Linux/Firefox, is the absurdity of it all. The page says that if I click "Install Now," I'm accepting the Silverlight licensing agreement. Okay, I can live with that (even though, as already noted, the link goes nowhere). But in Linux/Firefox, the javascript-generated links for "Detailed Installation Instructions" and "System Requirements" are identical to the one for "Install Now," which suggests that I'm accepting their license by asking whether I can even install or run the software.

So I'm accepting a license for software that I can't possibly run? That's some catch, that Catch-22. Maybe I should check out the terms of the license agreement I just accepted. There's a link to it -- and hey, this link actually goes to a different page! That's exciting. I'll click it. Oh, look. Empty window. Viewing the source shows why: another set of javascript ifs without anything to catch the unexpected. Apparently Microsoft can't afford the developer time to have someone write:

if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Linux") != -1){
window.location = "your-free-os-sux!!1!.aspx";
}

It's all rather Microsoft-like, which -- given that this is Microsoft -- shouldn't surprise me much.

Oh, and yes, I thought about installing it in my nice new Wine/IE6 install, but thought better of it. Why risk it?

Snelling Avenue

2007-05-04T16:00:00.000-05:00

Monday night, the "High Winds Fund" at Macalester College held a public hearing on a proposal to tweak Snelling Avenue where it runs past the college. Since we half a block off this stretch of road, across Snelling from the college, I probably should have attended. But I was lazy and tired (allergies + antihistamines), and I knew that at least two of my neighbors would be attending. So I flaked.

According to neighbor Sheila, who attended and has a lot of experience with community issues, this was just the beginning of the process, so I don't feel like I missed too much. They're considering ideas to make Snelling safer and more attractive. This will likely involve a median strip (possibly wide enough for landscaping and trees, possibly narrow enough to be bare concrete), may involve the elimination of on-street parking or the widening of Snelling, and might possibly involve free pie for everybody. (I may have made that last part up.)

Anyway, the whole thing is being driven by Macalester's "High Winds Fund". I assumed that this fund had something to do with the electricity-generating windmill on campus, but after googling it I find that it's existed since 1956. Apparently, that was around the last time its website was updated as well, since it lists local utilities as being U.S. West and Northern States Power.

There was probably a point to this post, but I'm afraid I've lost the thread. Mostly I think I'm doing it so that the next time somebody googles 'macalester college high winds', they'll find some information post-dating the Clinton presidency. Consider it a public service.

Side note to klund: surely Gustavus Adolphus would've been a more appropriate place for a "High Winds Fund" dedicated to improving the appearance of the area surrounding the campus. Just sayin'.

Stalled

2007-04-30T20:16:00.000-05:00

It kind of figures that the minute I stumble across a television show I'm willing to take time out to watch, it gets cancelled.

Farewell, Drive. Klund can rest easy.

I have discovered ...

2007-04-26T21:14:00.000-05:00

... the goodness that is "Drive". Fox, Monday nights. Tim Minear, Joss Whedon's co-producer on "Firefly" and right-hand man on "Angel", is doing a pretty impressive job of keeping me entertained. Having Nathan Fillion around, plus occasional glimpses of Amy Acker and Richard Brooks, boosts the nostalgia factor. But without that, it'd still be butt-kicking fun.

If you've missed it so far, catch up online at your convenience. You almost certainly don't want to try to jump in without at least watching the first two hours, though I'd recommend all four -- things move fairly fast.

Gone But Not Forgotten

2007-04-16T16:05:00.000-05:00

Courtesy the Los Angeles Public Library, a moment of nostalgia for my brother, Kirk and Kassia, and anyone else interested.

For more heartbreak (or possibly heartburn), go here.

One restaurant unmentioned on those pages: Bruno's, on Centinela. Looked like an Italian church (or very small cathedral) inside, with an arched central nave flanked by raised aisles -- lots of marble and sculpture. Apparently closed around 2000 and converted, appropriately enough, into a church.

Unless my Google skills are fading, there's a dearth of pictures of either Bruno's or Kelbo's online. A shame -- I'd really love to see a good photographic record of the lucite kitsch wall in the West L.A. Kelbo's, which was described lovingly (if inadequately) here:

The building looked wild. It was surrounded by tikis and tropical foliage. It had murals that dated back to the late 50s depicting native chiefs and topless maidens. Men were running toward the trees carrying naked women on their shoulders, while creatures seeming to be half ape, half man, chucked coconuts at one another. Could a mere dining experience truly live up to the kind of idyllic primitivism that these murals seemed to promise? We had to see. Inside Kelbo’s was more excessive still. The ceiling was festooned with puffer fish converted into lamps. Each had a different colored light inside, and emitted a soft eerie glow. The place was very dark, and as our eyes adjusted to the darkness it seemed that every square foot of space was filled with some garish trinket or display. On a bamboo platform behind the cashier there laid a mannequin in a diving suit stabbed in the chest with a knife. There was an entire wall made of lucite, and embedded in it where hundreds of doodads from 1963, the year the wall was made. It contained an irrational assortment of items, none of which seemed to bear any relation to the others: Barbie dolls, lipstick, guns, children’s toys, even two fried eggs. How any of this related to the theme of the restaurant I couldn’t figure then and still can’t. But it was stunning, and mind-boggling, and in a lurid pop art sort of way, beautiful.

The best (only, really) picture of the wall I could find online is here. It almost completely fails to capture the magic of it.

Gorgeous

2007-04-15T15:10:00.000-05:00

Spring has made it to the Cities, finally. We've had a beautiful weekend, and for me, that means getting on the bike. Yesterday I made two neighborhood rides, once to Office Max for a printer cartridge and once to Kowalski's for some artichoke hearts. Today, while Kristi took Emma for her swim lesson, I did a 12-mile loop around western Saint Paul -- started out reversing the route of the Saint Paul Classic 30-mile loop, then ... well, here's a map, including the detour to Minnehaha and Snelling to find out that the Minnehaha library branch is closed on Sundays. About 12 miles without getting out of the saddle, which in April is enough to wear me down. But it felt good -- the knee is solid. And 12 miles is just a little shy of the 13-mile ride to work, so I'm thinking that I'll be in solid commuting shape well before Emma goes into a summer program that stretches to late afternoon and I actually have time to do the commute.

Oh, yeah. And taxes. The less said, the better. We owe less this year than last, but that's largely because of donating Kristi's old Mazda last year; I doubt we'll be doing that again soon.

Sketch-Up

2007-04-14T10:36:00.000-05:00

Google's Sketch-Up is a blast. I've had it for a while and never done much with it. But we're preparing to cut open one of our newly-remodeled walls upstairs to add built-in media storage under where we'll hang the TV, and it's great to visualize. I ended up doing a lot more than necessary, because it's so much fun I didn't want to stop. Still no furniture, but I'm sure I'll get around to it soon.

Sketch-Up (including the location of studs in the TV wall):

For comparison, from December:

Sleepover

2007-03-31T20:54:00.000-05:00

After the Chris Moore ramble-a-thon last night, Klund came over to our house. We had a couple of beers and I introduced him to the magic that is Firefly/Serenity; then he used our guest room. This morning we fed him coffee and pancakes and sent him on the road home to St. Peter, with all of our Firefly/Serenity DVDs in his clutches.

Enjoy them or don't, Kevin, but I expect some sort of blogging about it. Perhaps even a Haiku Review.

Christopher Moore

2007-03-31T10:10:00.000-05:00

So last night Klund, Scooter, Poo-Tee-Wheet and I had a fine dinner at Jewel of India, and then drove across the river to the U of M's student union and a "reading" and book signing by Christopher Moore, who is touring to promote his latest book, You Suck. "Reading" is in quotes because Moore doesn't do readings; instead he rambles for about an hour from notecards (post-its, actually), newspaper articles, and anything else he can think of. The podcast isn't up yet on the U's website, but I'll try to remember to post a link when it is. Basically there was a lot of foul language (including proper spelling thereof), some discussion of chest-shaving as it relates to book tours, many put-downs of Hollywood types, the usual sorts of unexpected (not to say "shallow") questions ("What's your favorite simile you've written?"), and a goodly number of laughs.

I didn't buy a book for Mr. Moore to sign, mostly because Lamb is not currently available in hardback. However, Moore revealed that there will be a new hardbound "gift" edition of Lamb out sometime this year, and I will definitely pick that up and catch him on his next tour.

Interestingly, in a brief conversation I had with Moore while he was signing Kevin's copy of Lamb, I learned that he was working at the little restaurant in Harmony, California when he wrote his first book, Practical Demonkeeping. Since it was copyrighted in 1995, there's a good chance Moore was working there when Kristi and I got married in the Harmony wedding chapel in 1994. I will from now on be claiming that Moore was at our wedding. Try to prove me wrong.

UPDATE: it has come to my attention that Practical Demonkeeping was copyright 1992, meaning that Chris Moore was well on his way to publishing superstardom by the time Kristi and I got married in Harmony. Rather than indicating that Moore wasn't at our wedding, I prefer to think of this as meaning he was there, but incognito, as befits a rising star of his magnitude.

No Biggie

2007-03-31T06:53:00.000-05:00

So, does anybody remember what a big friggin' deal it was back in 1997 when it turned out that Al Gore had used his office telephone to make fundraising calls for the Clinton-Gore 2006 campaign -- even though he'd actually used a credit card so that the government wasn't billed for the calls? Does anyone remember how he was ridiculed for saying that there was "no controlling legal authority that says that any of these activities violated any law"? Because I sure do. Even though I didn't have cable, barely read a newspaper (hey, it was the Fresno Bee, you can barely call it a newspaper), had never heard of this thing called a "blog" that didn't yet exist, and barely listened to talk radio, I still heard about this constantly. If Washington politics is big news in Fresno, California, you know the coverage is extensive. And it continued to dog Gore right up through the 2000 presidential election. Hell, ten years later you can still find plenty of references to the controversy in CNN's archives.

Let's compare and contrast that peccadillo with what's going on right now in the General Services Administration.

If you go to nytimes.com and search the allegedly left-wing Times archive for mention of GSA administrator Lurita Doan, you'll find the most recent mention of her was a February 4 article about contractors. There's certainly nothing there to indicate that two days ago she was up in front of a congressional committee being grilled about the politicization of the GSA.

At least the Washington Post was on the story.

In a letter to White House political affairs director Karl Rove, the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), asked about the Jan. 26 videoconference by Rove deputy J. Scott Jennings, which was directed to the chief of the GSA and as many as 40 agency officials stationed around the country.

Jennings's 28-page presentation included 2006 election results and listed the names of Democratic candidates considered beatable and Republican lawmakers thought to need help. At a hearing Wednesday about the GSA, Waxman said the presentation and follow-up remarks allegedly made by agency chief Lurita Alexis Doan may have violated the Hatch Act, a law that restricts federal agencies and employees from using their positions for political purposes.

Specifically, Doan has been reported, in sworn testimony before Congress, to have gotten up after the PowerPoint presentation and asked the participants "how the agency could help GOP candidates win in the next elections." I can't emphasize that enough: she asked how a taxpayer-funded government agency could be used to the advantage of the party holding the reins of that agency.

Note that this all occurred using GSA video conference equipment, in GSA offices, on GSA time, and is the subject of a congressional investigation. So (as of Friday, March 30), where's the NY Times coverage? Where's the LA Times coverage? Okay, I didn't really expect anything in the Wall Street Journal, but why no hits on MSNBC's search engine? Or CNN's?

Sigh. Stupid liberal media.

Cats

2007-03-24T06:02:00.000-05:00

Ever since my parents gave me Rambis in 1989 I've been a morning person. Not by choice; Rambis felt it was her God-given duty to get me up no around 5:00 or 6:00 every morning to feed her. And give her credit; she did it well. No pussy-footing around for her (yeah, pun intended); she'd just head-butt my face until I got up and got her some canned food.

Ram is gone now, and so is the early-morning head-butt. I miss the simple honesty of it. Smudge has stepped up, but now the morning wake-up call involves meowing, rattling the blinds, sharpening claws on the night-table, and other passive-aggressive behaviors designed to get me (or Kristi) to feed him just to shut him up.

My Friday Afternoon

2007-03-23T16:22:00.000-05:00

Saint Paul elementary schools have the day off, so Kristi and I split the day; I took the afternoon shift at home with Emma, who (as it happens) has spent pretty much the entire afternoon playing outside on a truly beautiful day.

I've spent a little time working, a little time playing (i.e., working on this year's CDFFL redesign, which is going to kick ass; I promised myself an early start this time around, and delivered), a little time catering to the needs of a slew of kids with squirtguns but no water (I hadn't yet turned the outside taps back on after the winter), and a little time reading my father's copy of Ivanhoe.

I don't know if my brother knows that I have it. It sat for several years after dad died, so I kind of assumed he didn't want it, and on one of my trips to Fresno I took it home with me.

According to the inscription it was given to him by a Mrs. H. Schreiber in July 1938, just a month or so before his 12th birthday. I actually had never read Ivanhoe before bringing dad's copy back to Saint Paul. It's a fun read -- probably beyond what Emma will be reading when she is 12, but I can see where dad would've liked it enough to keep it for 63 years. We recently borrowed the Errol Flynn Adventures of Robin Hood from the library, and before watching it I outlined a bit of the backstory for Emma -- the whole Norman-Saxon conflict, the Crusades and King Richard, yadda yadda yadda -- all of which reminded me how much I'd enjoyed the book the first time. So I'm halfway through it again.

(I kind of figured watching Robin Hood would prime Emma for getting out her archery set, but so far she hasn't mentioned it yet this spring. Which is okay, really.)

Coincidence?

2007-03-23T14:14:00.000-05:00

This is the logo of the good people for whom I work:

And this is the logo on my mid-1980s-era Osterizer:

Apparently, I avoided working in small appliances by a very narrow margin. (I suppose it's still possible, if they disapprove of this blog entry.)

(Special added bonus for visitors from Worth: the last two buttons on the Osterizer are "blend" and "liquify". Yes, this is why I stopped Photoshopping and starting drinking heavily instead.)

"The Bunny Story"

2007-03-20T19:23:00.000-05:00

By popular demand. Really, this is Kristi's story to tell, but she thinks blogging is every bit as big a waste of time as watching Buffy DVDs or reading the Worth1000.com forums. So it falls to me. I know I won't do it justice, but a man's got to try. I apologize in advance.

Emma has been particularly difficult lately. I won't go into all of the details; just trust me when I say that she's been a real strain on both my patience and Kristi's. One way it manifests itself is hypochondria. Every couple of weeks I'll get a call from Emma, using the school nurse's phone. "Dad?" "Hi, Emma." "I'm not feeling well." Even when the nurse says she's got a fever and I take her home, by the time 4:00 rolls around and Elli next door gets home, Emma is feeling great and wanting to play (not that I let her). Kristi and I have talked to her about our jobs and responsibilities, and how we can't just take off any time Emma's not feeling 100%, and how school is her job and she's got to tough it out just like we try to do when we're not feeling great.

One morning a couple of weeks ago, I got three calls from Em. Each time I told her that if she didn't have a fever she needed to stay at school. She did, finally, stay until school was over. Kristi and I were at a loss to understand this one. Finally, though, after Emma went to bed, Kristi had a sudden realization while brushing her teeth, and burst out of the bathroom to tell me about the drive to school that morning.

The girls were (typically) rushing to get Emma to school in time to avoid another tardy slip. Kristi was driving, concentrating on balancing speed versus safety. Emma, on the other hand, wanted to talk about her material needs. Specifically, she wanted to discuss her need for another pair of red cowgirl boots for her birthday.

Now, this would be her third pair of red cowgirl boots. She outgrew pair #1 years ago, and passed them on to her cousin Tatum in California. She can still squeeze into pair #2, but not comfortably. So clearly she needs another pair (much like I need to start a collection of Angel season sets, now that my Buffy collection is complete).

Kristi, being a reasonable adult (and a stressed driver), pointed out that Emma's birthday is in April. If she got tooled leather boots in April, she wouldn't wear them most of the summer (they're too hot, and summertime is flip-flop and watershoe time anyway). And by the time things cooled off in the fall, they probably wouldn't fit anymore. Why not wait for Christmas?

Emma, being an 8-year-old girl and thus inherently unreasonable, wouldn't accept this. If she couldn't have them for her birthday, what about Easter? "Easter is in April too," Kristi pointed out, "and if we're not buying them for your birthday, we're not buying them for Easter either." Emma tried cajoling, arguing, and finally whining, and (I think) Kristi actually pulled over at this point because she was so stressed.

"We are not buying you the boots. We're not buying them for your birthday, and we're not buying them for Easter." "Fine," pouted Emma. "Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring them."

At which point, Kristi clutches at the air with both hands and shouts, "Emma, I am the Easter Bunny!!!"

Result: one sick child.

You know ...

2007-03-18T19:25:00.000-05:00

Hardly a day goes by when I don't think, "I should blog about that." And then for lack of time, or energy, or something, it just doesn't happen.

Maybe I need to take it in smaller chunks again. Lately it seems like I have a lot to say, and no time to say it.

We had Emma's friend Meghan for most of the weekend. She's a great kid -- a very good friend to Emma. It was going to be a single-night sleepover on Friday, but after a break Saturday (so that Meghan could go to a friend's birthday party), we had her back again last night.

This afternoon we took the girls to the Tropics waterpark, in Shoreview. At the end of the afternoon, as I was waiting for Kristi and the girls to come out of the locker room, the people at the next table (in the snack bar area) were talking politics. Two couples, close to my age. Since Shoreview is Michele Bachmann territory, I shouldn't have been surprised at the references to "Obama Bin Laden" and Hillary the lesbian. Nor, I suppose, should I have been annoyed when one of the men suggested that if a Democrat wins the presidency next year, people will likely reconsider their votes after we suffer the inevitable nuclear attack. The part about how the media created the Iraqi insurgency, though -- that part was actually funny. Thanks for the chuckle, guys.

This was our second trip to Tropics with Meghan this month, and both times Emma swore she'd go down the big slide. Still 0 for slide. She wants her birthday party there again this year. Sigh.

Friday's sleepover was a St. Patrick's Day celebration. We told them (courtesy klund's lovely wife) that if you leave out cookies for the leprechauns, they'll visit and make mischief during the night. So we made cookies. But the girls wouldn't go to sleep. Instead they concocted several different varieties of leprechaun trap. Finally they passed out at about 2:00 am, and Kristi threw their clothes all over the room, sprinkled green glitter in their hair, and generally made mischief. (And took the cookies, of course.) (They were delicious.)

Snow

2007-03-02T19:24:00.000-06:00

We've had a little. Keep in mind that we don't have a hill on either side of our front walk; that's all snow. Nor do we have a snowblower; that was all thrown there by shovel. And Emma's playhouse -- there's a whole mess o' snow there too.

Sorry about the lack of blogging (if you care). Combination of business, ennui and strep. (Emma's over it, Kristi's got it, and I figure it'll hit me tomorrow; I always get sick on weekends. It's a curse.) I'll try to do better.

I Find This Funny

2007-02-12T07:06:00.000-06:00

I've never heard of Mitch Benn before, but this morning, he's my hero. mp3 hosting provided courtesy my close friend and frequent collaborator, Neil Gaiman.

Valentine's Day Preview

2007-02-10T20:08:00.000-06:00

Emma bought a box of Twisted Whisker cards to give out in class. She was dismayed to find that far too many of them were mushy, and that she didn't have enough tame ones for her class. "I'm wallowing in despair!" "I've only got 16! I'm outraged!"

She's hilarious, really.

Kristi spent the day today staffing the Red Cross booth at the Hands On Twin Cities Volunteer Expo, at the Mall of America. Because Emma and I didn't have anything better to do after Emma's swim lesson, we drove over, joined Kristi for lunch, then checked out the other volunteer opportunities. Among the cooler ones I wasn't familiar with were Rebuilding Together Twin Cities, who rehabilitate houses for low-income homeowners, and the Wildcat Sanctuary, north of the Cities in Sandstone.

I notice that the Volunteer Expo was co-sponsored by Thomson-West. Yay team!

Meme!

2007-01-25T06:01:00.000-06:00

Kevin has invented a new meta-meme. And tagged me. Sigh.

1. Memes have been called "crack for bloggers" - why do you agree with this statement?

Because I always agree with whatever Kevin says. And because, like crack, memes aren't nearly as popular as they used to be.

Incidentally, "meme" was Beaker's only line on The Muppet Show.

2. Which is more gay - writing a meme or answering a meme?

Jim Henson would beat you up, if he weren't seriously dead.

3. In what way is this the best meme you have ever answered?

It is clearly the best in the sense that responding to it requires no serious thinking whatsoever. Yay!

4. Scooter said he never made out in a movie theater, while Mean Mr. Mustard is a fan of Sam Shepard. Which one of them is the biggest loser?

Scooter. Duh!

5. I've only been tagged once to do a meme. Does this mean I'm very lucky, have no friends, or both?

I'd say you're very lucky, but that's only because I know your wife.

6. If you were stuck on a deserted island, which three memes would you want to have with you?

This meme is silly.

7. Why is question number 7 always the best question in a meme?

That's a popular misconception. The position of the best question varies depending on the overall length of the meme. In the case of an 11-question meme, the best question is usually number 13 or 14.

8. If you could answer a meme about any topic, which topic would it be?

Homosexual giraffes.

9. Which would you rather answer - a meme about homosexual giraffes or one about dryer lint?

Okay, now that is a scary coincidence.

10. Does your answer to question number 9 mean that you are A) a homophobe, or B) a lintphobe?

You're clearly not reading my answers.

11. How happy are you that this meme is done now?

I won't tag anyone else, because, yeah, silly.

Blood Money

2007-01-18T17:35:00.000-06:00

In a comment on this post about apheresis donations, my good friend Kevin asks, "Do you get money for this or not? That's the only thing I need to know about it."

Not at the Red Cross or other non-profit blood centers. But if you insist, then yes; there are for-profit "plasma centers" where you can get paid to donate plasma. (Technically, I don't think they can legally pay you for your plasma, so they skirt the law by paying you for your time.)

But by law, "paid plasma" can't be used to transfuse patients; it can only be used in manufacturing of drugs -- and even, apparently, cosmetics! (And that makes sense; if you need a transfusion, or an infusion of platelets or white blood cells, which would you rather have pumped into you: blood products from someone who donates out the goodness of their heart, or blood products from somebody who does it for money?) So the "plasma centers" are typically operated by for-profit pharmaceutical companies like ZLB Behring, which make lots of money converting the $20 plasma they buy from you into drugs -- whereas the blood and platelets and whatnot that you donate at the Red Cross actually helps people immediately and directly. (It has to help immediately; a platelet donation has a very short shelf-life, something like 5 days. So getting donors in frequently is a must.)

What? Oh, I'm sorry, Kevin. You were hoping for snark? Well, then. No, I don't get money for it. I get sex.

Hold!

2007-01-18T16:03:00.000-06:00

I've been watching the Saint Paul library's online catalog daily to see when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows showed up, so that I could place a hold on it ASAP. It showed up last week, but the website reported that "There is no publication date for this work in progress," and refused to let me place a hold. Fine. So I kept checking daily. And Friday, it still said "There is no publication date for this work in progress," but there were also five holds, and I still couldn't place one.

Kristi's theory was that it was library staff getting a jump on the public. I didn't like the theory much, but what the heck. I continued watching, and today it got up to 15 holds, and I got annoyed. So I called. Turns out there's something wrong with their online catalog, and those holds were all placed either in the library or on the phone. So I'm number 16 in the system. Since they're guaranteed to get more than 16 copies, I should get it fairly quickly. And then I'll read it to Emma.

I love libraries. I really do.

Blood

2007-01-17T20:37:00.000-06:00

Well, not really.

Today I did my first apheresis donation. This may seem odd, since Kristi worked for the better part of two years as a Red Cross apheresis nurse, but the fact is that I never felt I had the time to do it; a two-hour commitment is hard when you and your wife are working incongruent shifts and there's a kid to deal with.

But Kristi has now moved to an 8:30-4:30, five-day-a-week position as an apheresis recruiter, and yeah -- she recruited me.

The difference between donating platelets and donating whole blood is amazing. Apheresis donors get the comfortable, cushy beds. They get blankets and televisions and personal DVD players and a library of movies from which to choose. They get lots of personal attention. And you know what? They deserve every bit.

You're on that cushy bed for about two hours. You have a needle in each arm the entire time; you can't so much as scratch your nose by yourself, so the staff is more than happy to do that for you. (No, Scooter, I didn't ask them to scratch me anywhere else.) Small bladder? This might not be your thing. The anti-coagulant they pump into you binds with calcium in your blood, which can lead to physical reactions -- not severe, but odd. Plus, for whatever reason, the saline and anti-coagulant enter your body at room temp, not body temp, so you get cold quickly; blankets, heating pads and hot water bottles for your hands are standard equipment.

So this afternoon I watched a couple of Farscape episodes, got lots of TLC, and maybe helped save someone's life. Platelet donations end up, oddly enough, going to people who need platelets -- which often means cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Man, if there was ever an easy way to do something to make you feel good about yourself, this is it.

And the beauty of it is, I don't have to wait eight weeks to go back, as I would after a whole blood donation. In fact, I could go back in three days to donate again -- though I think every two weeks will be enough.

That Was Cold

2007-01-08T18:10:00.000-06:00

Thanks, Kevin.

Your results:
You are Mr. Freeze

Mr. Freeze		48%
Dr. Doom		45%
The Joker		42%
Riddler		40%
Lex Luthor		40%
Venom		39%
Catwoman		38%
Poison Ivy		38%
Apocalypse		37%
Mystique		36%
Magneto		34%
Two-Face		32%
Juggernaut		28%
Dark Phoenix		26%
Green Goblin		24%
Kingpin		23%

You are cold and you think everyone else should be also, literally.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

Movie Meme

2007-01-03T20:45:00.000-06:00

I've been tagged by Scooter.

1. Name a movie that you have seen more than 10 times.
The first one that comes to mind is Princess Bride, but I don't want to repeat what Scooter said, so I'm going to have to go elsewhere. My dad used to enjoy watching movies over and over, and I probably sat through Silverado ten times with him, so that's gonna be it.

2. Name a movie that you've seen multiple times in the theater.
2001: A Space Odyssey. When I was younger I'd catch it at art houses whenever I could. I saw the original Star Wars at least twice in the theater and once at a drive-in.

3. Name an actor that would make you more inclined to see a movie.
Hugh Grant (yeah, he's always Hugh Grant, but Cary Grant was always Cary Grant and it worked out pretty well for him). Kevin Kline.

4. Name an actor that would make you less likely to see a movie.
Cruise. Travolta. Madonna. There's your dream cast right there.

5. Name a movie that you can and do quote from.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.

6. Name a movie musical that you know all of the lyrics to all of the songs.
All of 'em? None. But I'd do pretty well with Guys and Dolls and Little Mermaid. Do Beatles movies count?

7. Name a movie that have been known to sing along with.
A Hard Day's Night.

8. Name a movie that you would recommend everyone see.
Paradise Now. You might absolutely hate me for it, but you should see it.

9. Name a movie that you own.
Emma owns most of the movies in our household. I own Almost Famous, though. And both Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2.

10. Name an actor that launched his/her entertainment career in another medium but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops.
Sam Shepard is mostly known as a playwright, but I've always liked him on screen.

11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in? If so, what?
Star Wars, for one. With Shelley Jeffers.

12. Ever made out in a movie?
See above.

13. Name a movie that you keep meaning to see but just haven't yet gotten around to it.
An Inconvenient Truth. And Syriana. And Brokeback Mountain. There's a long list, actually.

14. Ever walked out of a movie?
Can't remember ever doing it.

15. Name a movie that made you cry in the theater.
Can't think of one.

16. Popcorn?
Nope. But if Emma has some, I'll steal quite a bit of it.

17. How often do go to the movies (as opposed to renting them or watching them at home)?
Very rarely.

18. What's the last movie you saw in the theater?
Emma and I saw Over the Hedge at the Grandview Theatre on the day of the Grand Meander in St. Paul. Kristi and I were going to see The Prestige on my birthday, but we got a late start and settled for a leisurely dinner instead.

19. What's your favorite/preferred genre of movie?
Like Scooter, I like sci-fi, but I enjoy lots of different kinds of movies.

20. What's the first movie you remember seeing in the theater?
Might have been Mary Poppins.

21. What movie do you wish you had never seen?
I can't really think of one; if something is that bad, I think I must just block it from memory.

22. What is the weirdest movie you enjoyed?
Eraserhead. (Though I doubt I'd enjoy it much if I saw it today.)

23. What is the scariest movie you've seen?
The original Alien scared the bejeezus out of me in the theater; that's the first thing that comes to mind.

24. What is the funniest movie you've seen?
I have a huge soft spot for What's Up, Doc? and Blazing Saddles.

Let's see -- I'm going to tag Sean, Ali and Ben, just to see if any of 'em are paying attention.

The Party Of The Year

2006-12-30T11:31:00.000-06:00

Last night was Tall Brad and Proud Mary's wedding and reception. The wedding was lovely. (Well, there was the disappearing bridesmaid incident, but I'm pretty sure there was a good explanation for it.) The reception was spectacular -- held at the Minnesota History Center (the same venue that FindLaw used for its holiday soiree). It will long be remembered as either "The Wedding Reception With The Extended Drum Solo" or "The Big Party The Night They Hanged Saddam", depending on your outlook.

I believe the quote of the night (from Erik) was something along the lines of, "Chicken testes taste like onion!", though I'm going to rely on Scooter's better memory to get it right. (I'm sure both he and Poo-Tee-Wheet will be blogging the party, especially since they have the great photos of Christy F's cleavage.)

Another strong contender for quote of the night would by the lovely bride's pronouncement (over the loudspeaker) that she had "finally settled". We all knew that already, Mary.

The third nominee would be the groom's brother's self-introduction (also over the loudspeaker): "I'm Brad's brother and Mary's sister." This may have been the shortest best-man speech in recorded history. Or ever.

By the way, that's two parties this month at the History Center for Kristi and me, and both nights there were Minnesota Wild games downtown as well. Somebody needs to plan these things out better.

UPDATE: Scooter comes up with another version of Erik's quote -- but not on his blog. Although his is probably more accurate overall, I stand by Erik's use of the word "testes".

Birthday Follow-Up

2006-12-23T17:49:00.000-06:00

So, the gift list, which was very satisfying in a geeky sort of way (although, really, nothing can compete with the Toshiba notebook computer Kristi gave me for my birthday/holiday present last year):

A Rockler gift card from my brother-in-law and his family;
Two CDs from my sister-in-law and her family (a Kinks CD to fill a gap in my collection, and Marykate O'Neil's latest;
Four O'Reilly books from my mom and Kristi's parents (the CVS and shell scripting books are going to come in very, very handy in my new life as a NetKernel-on-Linux developer);
Also from Kristi's folks, the seventh and final season of Buffy on DVD, finishing out my collection;
From Emma, a tub of Red Vines (my favorite treat);
And from Kristi, a fondue set (yes, I've been wanting one for a while, 'cuz if I can make cheese fun for Emma, maybe she'll actually consume some protein -- plus, you know, chocolatey fun).

We took a drive (the five of us in a Yaris (cramped but, well, cramped) down to Red Wing, just to get out of the house. John hadn't been that direction before, and it's been years and years since I have. Tonight Kristi and I will do dinner and maybe a movie -- depending on how soon we get out of here.

Birthday Report: Early Edition

2006-12-23T06:32:00.000-06:00

It's a funny thing. I woke up knowing it was my birthday, but it never occurred to me until I sat down to write this that it was my birthday and that I was another year older. So I'm kinda thinking maybe I'm not.

Kristi got up early to get groceries, and I got up early to do some work (writing documentation) -- but thought I'd pop in here quickly to wish myself a happy birthday. I know there's a pumpkin pie for me in the fridge; beyond that, the gift situation is hazy. More later.

The Upstairs

2006-12-22T09:00:00.000-06:00

So, the remodel is mostly done, and Kristi's parents are our beta testers this Christmas. We still have lots of detail work to do, plus general decorating (rugs, pictures, etc.). But it works.

Looking down the stairs from the landing, you can see the new maple treads. You can also see the masking tape on the treads and wall, because I haven't finished painting the stair skirting. Kristi textured the stairway walls, and they look great.

So, once on the landing, you can take in most of the space. The front alcove is to the left, with a table for games, puzzles, etc. Barely visible behind the baluster in the middle of the picture is our new 42" LCD TV, which will ultimately mount on the wall above where it's currently sitting. To the right of that is the gas stove, which does a great job of heating the room.

Coming off the stairs, now you can see the built-in bed, as well as the new armoire, couch, gliders and tables.

I'm kind of proud of the bed. Much of the work upstairs was contracted out, but I did everything on the bed except the drywalling, from the framing on. I built the drawer faces to match the cabinetry in the bathroom.

Speaking of the bathroom: the shower glass looks pretty good.

So does the rest of it.

Wow!

2006-12-17T06:39:00.000-06:00

I'm Time Magazine's Person of the Year! I have to admit that this is something I never, ever anticipated. I mean, to share an honor once held by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush and Bono ... what can you say?

This is going to look so fucking good on my résumé.

Eventually ...

2006-12-12T07:23:00.000-06:00

... Scooter will find out about this photoshop contest at Worth1000, so I might as well let him in on the secret now. Yes, Scott, the second-place winner is the love-child of my doomed relationship with Miss Cayucus 1973.

Quote of the Day

2006-11-14T10:51:00.000-06:00

In an email from Scooter:

"Yep, you forget, it'll be like pon farr in Amok Time...except with no mating, just fighting, and treats..."

And he calls me a nerd.

More Nostalgic Crap

2006-11-05T07:28:00.000-06:00

There. I warned you.

At the same party where I received the SR-10 (see previous post), I was also given a stop sign. A real stop sign, on a 4" x 4" white wooden post (as stop signs routinely were mounted in those days). Why? I'll let Paul Linhardt tell the story.

The story was that after several aborted attempts, Josh, Dan and I took off to San Francisco on our first official road trip after getting our licenses. Driving around the streets of San Francisco we noticed a stop sign lying by the side of the road which we threw in the back seat with the sign post sticking out Dan's sun roof. After lengthy discussions about what to do with it, we decided we should make a present of it as a symbol of affection to our good friend Larry Rubinow who was leaving our little group for greener pastures. However, we felt that it might be a little inconvenient for Larry who was moving to some place like Fresno, since we didn't know if his family's car also had a sun roof. So we took it back to the basement of my uncle's place and came up with an elaborate system of hinges and locks so that the sign could be folded up into a convenient carrying container. Incidentally, my uncle later reported to my mother that I had fallen in with a bad crowd and was prone to defacing public property.

I'm not sure that really answers the "Why?" question for most people, though it satisfies me completely. The folding arrangement truly was ingenious; the whole 6-foot-plus package folded down to something little larger than the sign itself (which, to be fair, wasn't exactly small). When last seen by me, the sign was in my brother's garage; I hope it's still there, though I haven't asked.

If Paul ever reads this post, he might be interested in knowing that I had a brief correspondence several years back with Sherri Gottlieb, owner of the late, lamented L.A. sci-fi store, "A Change of Hobbit." She was doing well, but I can't remember much more. I'll see if I have them archived somewhere.

Continuation of a Theme

2006-11-04T13:00:00.000-06:00

Random adolescent memory sparked by recent email traffic:

In August of 1974, just before my senior year in high school, my family moved from Los Angeles to Fresno. That summer my friends in Los Angeles gave me a going-away party. I'm not sure whose house it was at -- Andy Mishkin's? Anyway, I do remember there was beer there; I think it was the first time I ever tasted it (at 15 years old). And I also remember the incredible gift they bought for me.

A Texas Instruments SR-10.

You may look at the SR-10 today and laugh, and I'll understand. But at the time, this was an incredible piece of equipment. Rechargeable NiCads. Square-root functionality. Exponential-notation display. And $150 retail, for a bunch of high-school kids in 1974, was a truly significant chunk of change.

If you didn't know me then, you might wonder why the gift. Most of us were in a "special" math program together. (Incidentally, Scooter, I mean "special" in a good way.) SSMCIS: Secondary School Mathematics Curriculum Improvement Study, also known as "Unified Modern Mathematics." It was a six-year experiment to see if math could be better taught in an integrated program, rather than a year of Algebra followed by Geometry followed by Algebra II followed by Trig followed by Calculus.

Going into Emerson (and Webster) Junior High, I suppose our sixth-grade teachers picked us out as those most likely to thrive in a program like SSM. It means we were guinea pigs. But we were willing and enthusiastic guinea pigs. And wow, was that program fun. Those who stayed the full six years never got to compare it to anything else. In Fresno I found myself in a very boring AP Trig class (absolutely nothing there I hadn't already learned, but they refused to put me in calculus even though I'd already started calculus in SSM), so I know what I'm talking about.

The calculator was, frankly, not much practical use to me. But it was a tremendous symbol of the bond everyone in the program shared.

Rear View Mirror

2006-11-03T22:00:00.000-06:00

A week from tomorrow night is my high school reunion in Los Angeles. My thirtieth high school reunion. I won't be attending.

At first I was looking forward to it. And yet, as it approached I found that I really wasn't excited. The committee had originally planned it (tentatively) for August, and we were going to work out our cross-country car trip to synch up with it. But then it moved to November. I just changed jobs, Kristi's work schedule makes it difficult to leave town because of Emma, blah blah blah. It was going to be a fair amount of money and logistical difficulties ... for what? I went to my tenth and didn't particularly enjoy it; why bother?

And then the emails started coming in. Glenn Berkovitz put together an email list of twenty-odd (and I do mean odd) key figures from my past, from fifth grade on, and arranged for a night-before-the-reunion party. People started sharing life stories. And suddenly, damn it, I'm wishing I could go. Even though so many of us are scattered so widely that (like me) most won't be in Los Angeles next weekend, it would be a joy to see Josh and Glenn and Denise and Andy and all the others who will be at dinner on Friday.

The last few days have been very emotional for me -- seeing names in my inbox from 30 years gone, suddenly remembering extraordinary events long forgotten. Life cheated me out of some key time with these people (my family moved to Fresno before my junior year, and though I went back to L.A. on my own as a senior, I graduated early -- only three semesters of high school spent with them). So really, I was missing them even then. And I'm missing them still.

So, if you're from the class of '76 and passing by, hi. Drop me a line. If you're ever in flyover country, come on by. You're always welcome.

The Miracle of Wi-Fi

2006-10-25T15:50:00.000-05:00

So I'm parked on the street waiting for Emma, watching for the aforementioned offensive gold Honda minivan, and blogging courtesy of some unsecured wi-fi connection.

Life is weird.

Again, Apologies ...

2006-10-22T16:11:00.000-05:00

... to those of you might see (or might have seen) my "Apologies" post from last month zoom to the front of the Atom feed for this blog. I switched over to the beta version of the new Blogger, and apparently it hiccupped a little.

UPDATE: the Atom feed's order appears to be essentially random now. Sigh. Just read the damned blog instead until Blogger gets this all figured out, mkay?

FURTHER UPDATE: it's the new labeling feature that's hosing everything. Grand.

My Nerdiness, Coming Out Again

2006-10-22T14:30:00.000-05:00

I found this moderately funny. And it disturbs me that I find this even funnier.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

2006-10-22T12:18:00.000-05:00

Well, mine at least.

More People I Hate

2006-10-21T07:57:00.000-05:00

Cars generally line up at the curb on the side street where I park to pick Emma up from her after-school French program. Except this one gold Honda minivan, which passes up all of the parked cars and pulls up at the red curb. Blocking the crosswalk. The crosswalk that kids will be using (or rather, not using) momentarily when the after-school programs let out.

This woman does this pretty much every day. And then, on many days, she gets out of her minivan and runs up the steps (two steps at a time) to attempt to get in the doors (which are locked, but often there's someone there to let parents in).

Let me stress: two steps at a time. Did I mention the handicapped placard hanging from this woman's rear-view mirror?

I am tempted to mention the "Bush/Cheney '04" bumper sticker, but why pile on?

Proud!

2006-10-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

This blog is proud to be the #1 Google hit for the search matthew mcconaughy blow up doll. It might have been more impressive had I spelled "McConaughey" correctly, but I'll take what I can get.

Non-Pictorial Post

2006-10-11T18:33:00.000-05:00

Just to respond to a few comments:

Ducky: see previous posts, whoever you are.

xxxxxpp wants to know how "Capote" is. Well, we still haven't watched it. Sorry. With Kristi working evenings, our schedules rarely permit us to sit down and watch a movie together. We may have to start watching them separately.

Ali wants to know if I work for the CIA. If I told you, Ali, I'd have to kill you.

Stuff and Other Stuff

2006-10-11T18:08:00.000-05:00

As previously noted, we went to the Renaissance Festival, and didn't see Twig. We did, however, see these guys.

Emma had really, really wanted to try the Jacob's Ladder. So she did.

Hey! I don't know who you are, but get your hand off my wife's butt!

Back at home, Izzy proves she's not very discriminating.

And finally: today, the RAV saw snow for the first time this fall.

Week 1

2006-10-07T06:56:00.000-05:00

Well, you know, I'm really not supposed to blog about work. So I won't. If you have questions, ask me.

In non-work-related life, Kristi's mom left Wednesday night, and we were all sad to see her go. Hopefully she and John will come back for the holidays. "Capote" is sitting in the NetFlix envelope, awaiting our attention. Kristi's schedule has been rough -- worked Mon-Wed evening, working the weekend day shifts, then working the Mon-Wed evening shifts again -- plus giving a granulocyte donation herself Monday morning. She's going to be wiped out. And then Friday we tool over to Wisconsin Dells to pick up my mom (she's taking the train from Chicago, where she'll be visiting her brother), take mom to visit Taliesin, then shoot back home to spend a relaxing, um, one day before we put her back on a plane to California.

In other words, we're busy, tired (but generally happy) people. Hence the blogging deficiency.

And Let Me Add ...

2006-09-30T06:37:00.000-05:00

... in the few remaining minutes before everybody wakes up, that habeus corpus is highly overrated. I mean, so what if the government can declare you to be an enemy combatant -- even if you're a citizen -- and lock you away with absolutely no right of appeal, and then do horrible things to you that aren't really torture because the President decides what is and isn't torture?

Hey, if it keeps us safe and free, that's good enough for me!

The preceding message has been brought to you by the Department of WTF Is Wrong With Our Government??!?

Apologies

2006-09-30T05:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Tall Brad came down to my cube to question me about Blogger templates on behalf of his fiancee, Proud Mary (who needed an adjective -- I'm open to other suggestions, that's the first one to leap to mind). That visit served to remind me that yes, I do have a blog.

I've been very, very busy. Monday I'm starting a job in a different area of the company, and I've been working on cleaning up loose ends in my old job. I've been working for five years on one project, and that adds up to a whole lot of loose ends. In addition, we have company again -- Kristi's mom came to make a surprise appearance at Grandparents' Day at Emma's school. Today we'll be going to the Renaissance Festival, a yearly tradition for us (though we usually don't wait until the last weekend to do it). I hope I remember to bring a camera. I hope I remember to use it to get a picture of Twig.

Incidentally, I have to point out to Scooter that I, too, watched DeLancie during his pre-Q period on"DooL". I saw more than he did, in fact; I can remember his first appearance, as a patient of Marlena's who kidnapped her, thus setting up her rescue by Roman Brady and a decade(s)-long story arc. He wasn't initially comic relief -- it took them a little while to figure out Eugene Bradford's potential. And I bring this up not merely to embarrass myself, but to embarrass myself thoroughly.

Odd

2006-09-19T16:48:00.000-05:00

Today at work I was going up to Caribou in the elevator. Also on the elevator was a gentleman clutching in his left hand a Netflix envelope and half a dozen wire coat hangers.

I successfully fought the compulsion to ask what the movie was.

Hah!

2006-09-18T14:51:00.000-05:00

CNN.com headline today on its RSS newsfeed, verbatim:

Al Qaeda group warns pope, West, 'doomed'

Looks like I'm getting out just in time. (If you don't get it, you're probably not alone, so don't sweat it.)

Lack of Blogging

2006-09-16T10:03:00.000-05:00

What with out-of-town company and whatnot, blogging has been light. Apologies to the two of you who actually care.

Last weekend we all rode in the Saint Paul Classic. Kristi and Emma did the short (15-mile) route; I did the 31-mile with our guest Tom and a bunch of folk from West. Scooter blogged it well so I don't have to -- but I'll probably add more later. (For those who track this sort of thing from year to year, my knee held up perfectly.)

Overheard In Our Kitchen Tonight

2006-09-08T19:41:00.000-05:00

"This must be my lucky wedgie!"

No, it wasn't me.

As Scooter Notes ...

2006-09-05T18:24:00.000-05:00

... Steve Irwin is dead.

This is obviously big, big news, as it was splashed all over the top of the various news outlet webpages yesterday.

I wish his family well, I'm terribly sorry that it happened. But honestly, consider -- Steve Irwin was killed by a dangerous wild animal that he got too close to while filming. Pardon me if I fail to register shock at that news.

"Steve Irwin killed during attempted bank robbery" -- that one would surprise me.

"Steve Irwin fatally beaten by koala bear" -- shocker, yeah.

"Steve Irwin, five others die during ill-fated space shuttle launch" -- okay, surprised me there.

"Steve Irwin forgets safeword" -- um, yeah, okay.

But he went much as I would have expected he'd go. For his sake, I'm glad it went down as it did; had to be more pleasant than being mauled by a crocodile.