Matt's Maunderings

I must not drink enough!

2012-01-16T14:01:00.002-07:00

Today, on the anniversary of the beginning of prohibition in 1919, I came across an interesting (if not terribly well written) article in the NYT last week about the prevalence of binge drinking. It makes me look reealllly good.

However, I have two problems with the article, which are below. See if you catch the same things I did, or if I'm totally misinterpreting something. (My emphasis.)

Binge drinking prevalence increased with household income. About 20 percent of people who earn $75,000 or more annually reported binge drinking. However, the data showed that people with lower incomes tend to binge more frequently and consume more alcohol per sitting.

and

Over all, states with the highest age-adjusted prevalence of adult binge drinking were in the Midwest and New England, and included the District of Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii.

Now, in the first one, they may have meant that a higher proportion of wealthier people binge drink, but of those poor people who do binge drink, they tend to do it more frequently, but they didn't say it very clearly.

The second one has no explanation.

And while I consider the amount of drinking that I do to be on the higher side of what is reasonable for someone of my age, I'm apparently waaay behind the curve. I don't remember the last time I had nine drinks in a sitting [wait a minute, could that be a correlation?], and I definitely don't do that five times a month! Sheesh, bunch of drunks out there!

Reminds me of this exchange from Marketplace Radio just before New Years that finds that walking drunk is 800% more dangerous than driving drunk (per mile traveled). Worth a listen / read.

Afilumaphobia - The Fear Of Running Out Of Yarn

2012-01-12T19:00:00.000-07:00

Is there a name for the stress induced by the fear of running out of yarn when you are half way through a crochet project? If there's not, there should be... Abibliophobia is the fear of running out of reading material, so I'm sure I'll think of something. Just gotta figure out what the Latin for "yarn" is, and it should fall into place.

[Ten minutes later...] Apparently there wasn't really a Latin word for yarn, but khorde is Greek for "gut string", which is probably what was used as one of the original yarn-like things. Filum is thought to be the root of fiber, so maybe that would be the best fit. Therefore, my newly christened word for the fear of running out of yarn is Afilumaphobia. Not sure if that'll stick of not, but it's worth a shot.

The reason I bring this up is that Tuesday night I started (and subsequently finished Wednesday) a new crochet project with some really nice, expensive yarn. It was a really neat pattern (which I kinda altered / flubbed), but the yarn I got was not the weight that I was looking for. I was looking for a "super chunky" (4 wpi-ish) yarn that was part wool and part something exotic, but I ended up with a "bulky" weight (9 wpi-ish). The yarn is really nice, 50% merino wool and 50% yak, and super soft, but because it was about half the weight I was looking for, so I decided to work it with two strands at once, trying to get the same chunky effect as with the original yarn, and although frustrating to get started, I think it went well.

Shot of my Yak cowl before blocking and while it's actually still a scarf. Almost done!

But because of this change it took more yarn than I originally thought, so when I was a little less than half way through with the original pattern I started to notice the two balls of yarn shrinking much faster than I thought in the bag I was pulling them from and got really worried I wouldn't have enough to finish. Each hank was only 125 yards, and i was using twice as fast as I thought! (See Afilumaphobia, above.)

Ordinarily this wouldn't be too big of a deal -- just go to the store, try to find the same dye lot, and buy some more. But this yarn was $20 a ball, and due to my lack of planning ahead, I had absolutely no opportunity to go get more before my deadline. Fortunately it all worked out fine, and I just ended up making it one row shorter than I intended.

I think it will be fine, since the yak seems to have really good loft and did a lot of reading about "blocking" your projects as a final step to even out the stitches and get the fibers to relax and soften up a little. To block a project you basically soak it in the sink, squeeze it out, and lay it out in the right shape, and let it dry.

I had never done a project that I figured could benefit from blocking, so I gave it a try this time, and wow, is really did soften up! And even more surprisingly, it stretched out by nearly 20%! Whoops! I could have made it significantly shorter and added that last row to make it thicker. Oh well, live and learn. Now I've just got to turn the scarf into a Möbius cowl by giving it a twist and sewing it together. I'll follow up with pictures of the finished product and maybe even a model shot!

So that's why they call it that. Or not.

2012-01-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

Didn't see that one coming...

Just read it again.

See what they did there?

Yeeeaahhh... strange.

Some People's Kids

2011-12-16T12:14:00.003-07:00

A couple of quick work rantings here...

For those of you who don't know, I currently manage a self storage facility, which is really a lot better than it sounds. But sometimes the people who I have the privilege of dealing with make it seem, well, less good.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago, some lady called just before closing and ask what our smallest unit was and its price, then ask if we had a "State Farm discount". When I said no, she promptly hung up. Strange.

I have never in my life heard of business offering a State Farm discount. AAA or AARP, maybe, but State Farm? Now, to be fair, there is a large State Farm Insurance office just outside of town, so maybe she is used to getting special treatment for working there, but I don't really see that as being very realistic.

And then just now an older (sounding) lady called and asked if we were still having the storage auction that we had planned on. Normal, reasonable question, because we are holding one tomorrow, but they sometimes get rescheduled or cancelled at the last minute for various reasons. For this reason we maintain an email list for people who are interested in coming so they don't come to an auction that isn't happening. I asked her if she was on our email list and she said she didn't think so I offered to add her to it. She said okay, but when I got to the email address part, she goes, "Oh, I don't have an email address."

I don't know about you, but when someone asks me if I would like to be on an email list, I assume there might be the requirement of, oh, HAVING AN EMAIL ADDRESS to complete that interaction!

It's folks like this that make me sad and fearful for the future of America, nae, the world, because these people breed.

Björk ("Byerk") is super strange

2011-11-03T14:14:00.000-06:00

So, I'm really easily distracted. I was reading a Lifehacker article about something and noticed a cool picture on the io9 cell of the Gawker spam in the footer which led to a rundown of "10 Debut Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels That Took the World by Storm", some of which I think I'd like to read. Someday. And really just the two most sci-fi / lease fantasy ones: The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester and Neuromancer by William Gibson.

Supposedly there has been talk of a Neuromancer movie project for years, but nothing has ever come out of it, according to the comments. One director people seemed to be excited about though was someone named Chris Cunningham. Apparently he is a semi-famous director who worked on movies like A.I. and such.

But anyway, someone posted this cyberpunkish video of Björk "All is Full of Love." that he made. It is super strange. I'm pretty sure the robot tries to touch herself at one point.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure who's weirder - Björk or Cunningham. Although I must admit that I have no clue as to the underlying meaning / message of the song or accompanying video.

I was on TWiT's AAA! ...Kinda

2011-08-23T17:04:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I was featured on All About Android #22, the TWiT network's weekly show about, well, the Android smartphone ecosystem! Okay, not me in the flesh, but my question was read and answered on the air, and it was one of the best nerd moments of my life. And of course, because it's TWiT, it's on video.

Let me set this up for you. I've had my first Android phone, a LG p999 Optimus X2 / G2x on T-Mobile, for about four months now (since May '11), and I really dig it. But lately I've been getting pretty annoyed by some of its quirks and decided to root it so I could get full control of and do a good backup in preparation for a change of some sort. Having not gotten the OTA update to Gingerbread from T-Mobile, I was all ready to load the CyanogenMod ROM, but then I got a little freaked out by a warning about my phone being unrecoverable if something went wrong.

So, after reading the XDA forums for way too long, I decided to write to the all-star crew of All About Android and see what they had to say about it. I remembered that Leo had a G2x (and apparently still does), and hoped that they could help me out.

What I got was way more than I could have hoped for. A three minute walk through of exactly what to do for my situation, from the man, Leo himself.

(If you want to see Eileen read my slightly wordy question, start here. And of course, watch the whole episode from the beginning for some really good stuff.)

So there you have it. I'm saved by the TWiT AAA team and Leo Laporte and now I've got a plan on how to attack my phone and put a sweet aftermarket ROM on it.

Of course, now I hear that you can force the update to 2.3.3 from T-Mobile, but I have a feeling that would undo my root, and at this point, I'm feeling pretty confident about just jumping right into CyanogenMod.

The Republican Primary So Far, and Why We Might Be Screwed

2011-08-19T11:50:00.001-06:00

The Atlanta Wire, not known for its conservative leanings, had A Brief History of the Republican Primary So Far posted recently that is actually a very reasonable breakdown of the revolving door of media infatuation with the GOP's most recent presidential hopefuls. They chart the beginning, middle, and if applicable, end of each candidate's moment in the limelight, complete with Google analytics to back it up. Pretty nifty and worth checking out.

And here's why the Republican party is kinda screwed, at the moment: all of the candidates that the media has been in love with for more than a week or so are crazy. Trump, Palin, Bauchman, Perry -- they're all a little off their rockers on one thing or another.

And the actual crazy one, Ron Paul, is being ignored like he's not even there! I mean, the guy nearly won the Iowa straw poll, less than 200 votes behind then-sterling Michelle Bauchman. But Paul is boring and consistent with his message of isolationist and anti-war stance,which I think the press (and most of the Republican electorate) got bored with about five years ago. While Paul has some very valid points and concerns, he is about as unelectable in a national race as Mel Brooks would have been in the 1960s.

It seems like the only semi-viable candidates at the moment are the Mormon ones. Jon Huntsman is my current favorite, but he needs to learn how to run a campaign; and Mitt Romney is still attractive in that executive-experience and really-good-hair kind of way, but neither are garnering much positive attention right now.

Oh well, the GOP race got started way to early and there's still a year left before anything meaningful happens anyway, so I suppose I shouldn't get to worked up about it just yet.

Broke and Hungry

2011-06-22T12:29:00.000-06:00

I'm pretty broke. As in, my income is less than my expenses and has been for a while, and I'm nearly out of savings. Hopefully a couple things will change in the next couple months to help fix that, but for now, broke is the status.

But I still have to eat. I don't exactly have high nutritional standards (I've eaten a room temperature can of store-brand soup three days a week for the past four months), but I can't eat ramen noodles too often or I want to poke my eyes out. Yeah, they're cheap, but they taste cheap, they're devoid of all nutrition, and eating them more than once a week makes you feel like a poverty case. I'm also not an athelete, nor do I work out much, so I don't have the caloric or protein requirements that some people do.

So, inspired by a post from a friend and an MSN Money article I found via Lifehacker, I'm going to share some of my tips on how to save at least a little bit of money and still eat at least decently.

Don't go to McDonald's. I know the Golden Arches beckon, but you're going to end up paying $7 for 1,000 Calories of unhealthiness.
Spend a lot of time at other people's houses. Eventually they'll feel obligated to feed you. ;)
Date someone who works for a restaurant. Sometimes there are leftovers or messed up orders than just need a good home. Like a to-go box and then your belly.
If you're always running late in the morning, don't hit the drive-thru and drop $5, keep a box of Slim-Fast handy and slam one on the way to work. For only having about 200 Calories, they do a decent job of fending off the hunger until you have time to regroup.
Buy bananas. They're cheap, nutritious, they've got a built-in handle, and the thick skin means organic is a waste of money.
Make coffee at home. I use a Clever Dripper almost every day. Yes, it takes a few minutes, but so does driving to a coffee shop, parking, waiting in line, ordering, paying, waiting again, and then getting back on the road. I even bought a whole bunch of the paper coffee cups and lids that coffee shops use and take that instead of a mug that I'll probably loose. Not exactly "eco," but at least it feels like a coffee shop experience.

Also, if you're watching your weight, black coffee or tea is basically devoid of calories, while a Grande Mocha has at least 200.

Get off your high horse and shop at Wal-Mart for at least some things. Yes, they're a gigantic corporation, but they employ a lot of people and pay their taxes, just like everyone else. (Plus, they're basically free of union influence, if that matters to you.) Their massive size enables them to get screamin' deals on some common items, but don't just assume they're cheapest on everything - Safeway and King Soopers are sometimes better, just check the ads.

Food "staples," like oatmeal, yogurt, eggs, etc are generally cheaper at Wally World, and non-food necessities, like TP, dishwasher detergent, etc, can trim a few bucks you can spend on better food.
Figure out what you can eat a lot of or what you can eat often and try to find the raw materials in bulk. My favorite items are pasta, oatmeal, eggs, peanut butter, and pretty much anything involving broccoli. Not really anything that you can get in bulk, but the big can of store brand oatmeal is always less per ounce than the smaller packages.
Buy things that keep while they're on sale and stash them in the cupboard / pantry / stack in the corner. Remember about what's there, and supplement them with the fresh or perishable stuff when you're looking for that night's dinner at the store.
Your freezer is your friend. A big hunk of cheese isn't that much more than a little one, but it'll spoil if you just leave it in the fridge. Cut it up and freeze the part you're not going to eat right away. Also, frozen veggies are usually a better deal then fresh, and their texture and nutrients are better than canned.
All that being said, just buying the cheapest crap you can find isn't really going to help your body or mind. You should also figure out what you need to or are willing to spend a little extra money on to feel better. I noticed that when I buy cheap bread, I need to eat a lot more of it to feel satiated; so I've started buying the redorkulously expensive Ezekiel bread that's in the freezer section, because it actually has some food value and fills me up.

Of course, I don't follow all of these tips all of the time. I get lazy and buy a frozen pizza sometimes, and I still go out to eat, and out for good coffee, but keeping this stuff in mind does help save a bit here and there.

Now here are a couple of my fave cheap meals...

Oatmeal. I have a hard time getting bored with the humble oat. It's just so versatile. For breakfast I often do hot oatmeal with brown sugar and some combination of peanut butter, fruit (bananas or blueberries are the best), bacon bits (the real kind, not the weird little crunchy ones, and yes, I said bacon), raisins, walnuts, etc. Water or milk, 4:30 on half power in the microwave.

For a cold breakfast, half a cup of dry, rolled oats with a little tub of yogurt it the shizz.

For a savory switch, make oatmeal and stir an egg, some soy sauce, and salt and pepper into it. It may need to be re-nuked a bit to cook the egg all the way, but it's pretty tasty. Bacon is also a good addition, as always.
Grilled cheese. You can't go wrong here. Bread, cheese, condiment of your choice, butter on the outside (or in the pan, if you prefer), and BAM, lunch. Or dinner. I like to make mine with a little piece of lunch meat and mustard inside, then fry an egg over-easy and put it on top. The egg, meat, and mustard kind of simulate a fancy French sandwich that I can't pronounce. Pesto is a nice touch, if you've got some handy, but there are infinite possibilities here.
Crazy-ass peanut butter broccoli noodle concoction. I can't find the actual recipe, but here's the basics: Japanese noodles (buckwheat, maybe?), broccoli, cooked chicken or tuna (canned is good) or raw or cooked shrimp, peanut butter, soy sauce, cider vinegar, something spicy. Cook the noodles in boiling water and when almost done, add the broccoli and shrimp, if you're using it, and cook or warm through. Meanwhile, mix the peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar, and spicy stuff in a small bowl (gently microwaving or heating on the stove helps combine everything). Drain the noodles and add chicken or tuna if you want that way, then stir in the peanut sauce. There ya go, nutritious and delicious. Adjust seasonings to taste, of course.

I hope this gives you some good ideas, but you know your body best, so don't deprive it of anything it needs. Hopefully cheap food can be fun and healthy, too! Got anything to add? I'd love to hear it.

Les Paul's Birthday Google Doodle

2011-06-09T10:26:00.000-06:00

Even though Les Paul passed away in 2009, he will always be remembered as the father of the solid body electric guitar as well as multi-track recording. Plus, he was one heck of a guitar picker! For what would have been his 96th birthday, Google has unveiled probably their coolest interactive Doodle yet - the electric guitar doodle. After the fact you can probably see a picture of it at Google.com/logos, but you'd better hurry up and and try it out now!

You can just aimlessly pluck strings with your mouse pointer, or you can use your keyboard for a bit more precision Here's a link to me slowly tapping out "Happy Birthday" - http://goo.gl/doodle/hfQh. Not sure how long the link will last, but it's pretty nifty while it does! (My version of Happy Birthday is played "5565 887 5565 998 5508 8876 440898")

Also check out LesPaulonline.com and the Wikipedia entry on him.

Rainy morning

2011-05-11T11:45:00.001-06:00

Just a quick post to try out a couple things. First, posting from my new phone, the G2x, using the Blogger app, and secondly posting a picture edited on the phone with the Little Photo app.

I have a feeling the picture might be oriented the wrong way, but we'll see!

Rice Pudding is Awesome

2011-04-03T14:13:00.000-06:00

(And so are digital cameras with good lenses and great exposure control.)

Seriously, why don't I make this more often? Probably because it takes 45 minutes to cook, and when I'm hungry, I'm usually hungry now. Plus, I'm usually running late for something and don't have that kinda time to mess around making amazingly tasty, custardy rice pudding. But it's totally worth it when I do.

Here's the recipe from Erica G. at Allrecipes.com:

Ingredients
3/4 cup uncooked white rice
2 cups milk, divided
1/3 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
2/3 cup golden raisins
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions
In a medium saucepan, bring 1 1/2 cups water to a boil. Add rice and stir. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
In another saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups cooked rice, 1 1/2 cups milk, sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat until thick and creamy, 15 to 20 minutes. Stir in remaining 1/2 cup milk, beaten egg and raisins. Cook 2 minutes more, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and stir in butter and vanilla. Serve warm. Makes four servings.

And here's what I do differently:

There's no good reason to use two pans. Just cook the rice and then add the other ingredients to it. (I know that you're only supposed to use 1-1/2 cups of the cooked rice, and 3/4 cup uncooked can yield a bit more than that, but it turns out just fine.)
I used short grain rice - supposedly it makes it a better texture than if you use long grain. You could go all healthy and use brown rice if you wanted, but it wouldn't taste the same.
Speaking of cooking rice, I use Alton Brown's method of heating the dry rice in the pan for a bit and adding the right amount of boiling water to the hot rice. Really kick starts the cooking process.
It might not be necessary, but I temper the egg mixture with some of the hot stuff from the pot before adding it. I also add a little cream to the milk at this point, if I have any handy.
I prefer Craisins to raisins in this recipe, but you can really leave them out or just use whatever is around.

Sooo good. But it is super rich, so pace yourself!

Blog = Domain (Finally!)

2011-04-02T13:55:00.000-06:00

As you may or may not have noticed, I finally got my ol' blog moved over to my own domain! Phew, what a struggle that was.

The process of transforming my "Steaming Pile" blog at http://mnthomp.blogspot.com into "Matt's Maunderings" at www.mnthomp.com is mostly complete. I need to make some changes to the theme / CSS - pull the title a little closer to the top of the page, move stuff around on the side bar - and add some content - the "about me" page, my photos, feeds, resume, etc. - but it's coming along nicely. Steaming Pile still may have been a more appropriate name for what I post here, but it doesn't sound very professional or adult. Although, when you think that I started this whole thing in 2005, it isn't so weird.

***

...So, I thought the process of transferring your Blogspot blog to a domain that I bought through Google and have Apps for Your Domain running on would be easy, quick, and simple. I was wrong. Turns out (obviously, in hindsight), that if you have the "Sites" service running on your Apps account, then you can't publish another site on top of it, because sites.mnthomp.com and www.mnthomp.com both point to the same place. Duh.

Luckily, after a bit of digging (not simple) and some poking around with the domain management setting of my domain host (not easy), it all falls into place. As soon as the DNS records update (not quick). These two webpages were invaluable in helping me sort it all out: The Blogger help page "create a subdomain through eNom" (since "www" is actually a subdomain) and the post "Another blog is already hosted at this address" at The Real Blogger Status blog.

This still leaves me with a small question in the back of my mind. My Apps account and my Blogger account are not the same. How did Google let me put a Blogger blog attached to account A on a domain that is attached to account B? I mean, I did have to change some of the domain settings that you shouldn't be able to do without access to both accounts, but they were not major changes. So could I just start entering random domains into the custom hosting box and see of one takes? Not sure how that would turn out, but I'm not gonna find out, either. I'm leaving well enough alone!

Ch- ch- ch- changes... (to the blog)

2011-03-27T20:08:00.000-06:00

...Turn to face the strange!

Okay, well, not that strange. I just figured that, with a few other recent changes in my life (that may or may not appear here), it was high time to update the computerized version of myself.

I started with my computer's desktop. I've never been able to leave well enough alone, including the look of my computer. I've tried Samurize, putting html on the desktop, dual monitors, aftermarket Windows themes, and the like, but now that I'm down to one monitor for a while and pretty happy with the desktop slideshow feature and most of the Aero chrome of Windows 7, I decided to give Rainmeter a go. Here's the result (for now / click to make it bigger):

It's the Elementary 1.2 skin, just rearranged a little. The guy who made it did a great job, but I had to shift stuff around to get the clock and weather where I wanted them and add a "D" drive to the system monitor. The little buttons at the top-right are from somewhere else and control Winamp. Something is amiss with my Winamp install, or something, causing the song title not to show up, so I just left Winamp in "Windowshade Mode." This lets me control the volume, too, which is nice. I found the desktop image at Simple Desktops.

Now I'm going to move on to my blog / website. As of this writing, if you go to www.mnthomp.com, you get a really stupid looking page I through together with Google Pages. It does what it needs to, I suppose, but it's pretty lame. My plan is to move my "steaming pile" blog to mnthomp.com, since even though the blog is still kinda lame, it's to a lesser degree. We'll see how it goes. (I'm using this mashable article as my guide.)

Also, I went hiking yesterday, which was fun. Would have been better if I were slightly better prepared for the snow and ice, but still good for the first one of the season.

Oh, NPR

2011-03-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

You're still "National Palestinian Radio," aren't you? I thought you had changed for the better -- moved towards the "center," if you will -- over the last couple of years. Apparently it's all been an elaborate liberal hoax.

As a relatively regular NPR (KUNC, more specifically) listener, I am well aware of their biases. The editorial content is obviously to the left, but the straight news coverage has gotten much better than it was in the past. The slant still shows up in the choices of stories they choose to cover and the depth / airtime each one gets. Just how many puffy human interest stories can you throw into an hour of programming and still consider it "news?"

Maybe it's more of a DC / East Coast bias towards that kind of thing that us out here in the West just aren't enlightened enough to understand. But with today's ~~firing~~ encouraged resignation of National Public Radio's president and chief executive, Vivian Schiller, and the accelerated resignation of their head fundraiser, (unrelated) Ron Schiller, over statements he made to a conservative activist, it's pretty clear that the liberal bias started at the top and trickled down. Reaganomics style. ;)

If they just could have kept their mouths shut over the Juan Williams thing last fall and quietly lobbied to keep their federal funding, it's likely none of this would have happened.

Speaking of "public" broadcasting, -- NPR, PBS, etc -- what exactly makes it so public? Other than the fact that some small portion of our tax dollars funds it, what makes it all that different than most other stations? It's not commercial free, as they would like you to believe. There are plenty of underwriting sponsors who have their copy read allowed several times an hour. It's not public like a park where anyone can join the party. It's a huge broadcasting corporation, just like CNN or Fox News. So-called "community" radio is the closest most people can get to having their opinions and musical choices on the air, and they're in way more financial trouble than your local NPR affiliate station. I'm still not sure that public broadcasting should be defunded though, if only for the sake of those local stations. Maybe a little reshuffling of assets is in order.

All of that being said, I will still probably be listening to NPR as I drive to work most days. Partly because I don't need to hear about Denver traffic when I'm driving around Northern Colorado, partly because KUNC has got to be one of the best run NPR stations around [in spite of one unfortunate recent event], but mostly because I know enough to see the bias - and raise it some common sense.

Remixes and Realizations

2011-03-07T20:31:00.001-07:00

I'm not even going to mention how long it's been since I've blogged. Whoops, I just did. Oh well, moving on...

I'm totally obsessed with electronica remixes of vaguely folkish music. And apparently YouTube is the only place to discover them. Take this one for instance:

It's The Twelves remixing Fleet Foxes "White Winter Hymnal," and they're both kinda mainstream (as well as completely awesome). This track was featured on The Twelves' BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix from Dec 18 of 2009, so it's likely available elsewhere.

However, I would have never found this gem if it weren't for the 'Tubes, and it is a beautiful work, worthy of radio time:

Some producer called Maffiss totally reworking the haunting, auto-tuned, vocal-only, four-line Bon Iver track "Woods" into some danceable awesomeness. Looks like you can legally obtain all of his remixes for free at http://maffiss.bandcamp.com/.

Speaking of Bandcamp (the website, not the horrible joke from American Pie), there's some pretty good stuff on there. Like Apple Juice Kid. Look him up.

*

I've realized that I do need to actually work out a little bit, because as much as I love dancing, and as much as I do it (couple times a week, not as much as I'd like, usually), it doesn't really do much for your anaerobic fitness level. I also realize that I'm probably never going to go to a gym again and I don't plan on buying a bunch of free weights, so I need something to do that doesn't take much (any) equipment and is a little broader than my usual crunches / push-ups action.

A few weeks ago I came across an article on Lifehacker about J.P. Müller's My System. First published in 1904, it was apparently the Victorian version of South Beach - effective, but controversial. Also, it's not a diet. It's a 15-minute, zero equipment, core-strengthening routine that, even though it's 107 years old, seems pretty effective. I found several scanned copies on the interwebs and decided to skip the intro, etcetera ("Why Be Weak?") and go straight to the workout, which is broken down into a five-week build-up to the ultimate 18 exercise routine on week six. I'm on week two, and I can totally feel it in my "flanks." I think I need to supplement it with extra push-ups to really get what I want out of it, but it's going pretty well. [Also, apparently someone else was similarly inspired, but they decided to put it online. www.mullersmysystem.com]

*

Along similar lines, I also have realized that my diet is in serious need of some help. I think my daily caloric intake is somewhere around 1800, including a couple hundred worth of booze, usually, when it really should be closer to 2600, with less alcohol. [Not that I am worried about my drinking, or even that I drink that much, average of a drink or two a day isn't bad, is it?] Today I had some hot chocolate, some cereal, some ridiculously tasty oatmeal**, one slice of salami, and some "apple nachos." Now it's 8pm and I would rather head out the door to go dancing than fix anything to eat. I suppose I'll have a cookie and see if there's any free pizza available at Avo's when the kitchen closes. And a beer. Beer counts as food; it's basically bread.

But yeah, like I was saying my diet needs some improvement.

**Ridiculously Tasty Oatmeal: So, a very nice girl, who has the shift after mine at Everyday Joe's, has gone through a lot in the realm of eating and being healthy. She was anorexic and addicted to exercise, and therefore really unhealthy. I don't know if she even weighs 100 pounds now, seeing as she's a pretty small girl and still extremely active, but she's apparently significantly healthier than she was. Anyway, we were working together last week and somehow oatmeal came up in conversation. I mentioned that I liked bacon in my oatmeal [you'll laugh until you try it], and she mentioned that she puts peanut butter in hers and loves it. I had never thought of putting peanut butter in my oatmeal, but I love peanut butter, and I love oatmeal, so I figured I'd give it a go. Oatmeal, brown sugar, peanut butter, a little jelly, enough milk to float it all, and five minutes in the microwave at half-power, and damn if that wasn't the yummiest thing to come out of that box in a long time.

Ya know, I think I may have some more of that before I go out dancing after all. I can get there at nine instead. Still not a balanced diet, but I'll worry about that another time.

*

There's more news, like the job I got, my constant truck tribulations, the super awesome balboa weekend, etc, but that may have to wait or be skipped. Watch my twitter if you're really interested in what's going on day to day.

2010-11-01T17:32:00.000-06:00

While doing a little light research on performances of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet, I found that a television station that I don't get and have never heard of (Ovation TV) does a "Battle of the Nutcrackers: Dance Off!" every December where they show five different performances of the ballet and their viewers vote on which one will be re-aired on Christmas Eve.

Nifty idea, but not nifty enough to keep me from getting distracted by a clip from their E! meets HGTV show "Anatomy of a Closet," which apparently counts down ten "style icons" found in many closets. The selected preview clip was probably one of maybe two that I could possibly identify with, the White Tee Shirt; assuming the other would be blue jeans, of course.
I especially like their comparison of 1930's gay erotica to modern Abercrombie and Fitch.

That being said, the white tee shirt is definitely one fashion icon that I can embrace. And do, on a regular basis.

...Oh, more on the Nutcracker thing later. Maybe.

Fort Collins Brewfest Preview 1

2010-06-21T21:30:00.000-06:00

I know lots of people are dissapointed with the new format the 21st Annual Fort Collins Brewfest (officially the Colorado Brewers' Festival 2010) has taken. Even more are discouraged by the new price structure. I've got a little bit of inside knowledge on the subject, and I'd like to share my thoughts.

Regarding the new structure:

I am going to really enjoy being on the grass at Civic Center Park and not on the scorching asphalt of downtown.
I'm also going to enjoy getting to talk to the brewers about the beer being served.
I'm going to like not having to choke down something crappy that I dropped a $2 token on.
And I'm really going to like not running out of $2 tokens and having to wait in line again!
Did I mention the grass? Just checking.

Here's my take on the pricing:

I thought $35 presale and $45 at the gate was too much. $25 presale is much more reasonable.
It's really easy to spend $25 at the liquor store and not even get to try three decent beers. Even at a well stocked bar like Old Chicago you'll drop $3 to $5 per beer and get to try five to seven beers. But if you buy and drink seven pints of beer, you're going to be totally tanked and not have any clue what the last four beers tasted like. And if you buy a $9 six-pack and it sucks, you're stuck with five beers you don't want to drink.
At Brewfest, you get unlimited samples of over fifty of the best beer that Colorado has to offer. If you like one, get another! If it sucks, pitch it! And unlike the Great American Beer Fest, which costs over twice as much, you get a 4 oz sample, not some puny 1 oz joke.
Also important to consider with regards to pricing is the fact that Brewfest is not a charity event. Brewfest is where the DBA makes most of the money it takes to put on all the other great events for the rest of the year. I know it's a straw man, but if you don't go to Brewfest, you're taking away Christmas from some kid. ;)
Finally, in previous years I usually spend over $20 on entry and beer, and when I was done, I rode my tipsy ass home. This year there's going to be great live music to sober up to. I'd say that's worth $5.

Just my take. You may disagree, and that's fine, but Brewfest is still Brewfest, and it's still going to be tons of fun for all of us who go.

***

Now, onto the beer!

I decided to pour some Dale's Pale Ale from Osark Blues into the 4 oz taster and give it a go. First off, four ounces is suprisingly satisfying. Secondly, and more importantly, it's easy to see how America's first hand-crafted canned beer has won so many awards. It has a really nice, deep amber color and very good head retention. It's 6.5% ABV and 65 IVB, so it let you know who's the boss when you take your first sip. I'm not sure which variety of hops are used, but it's not quite as citrusy as, say, Odell's IPA, but it's nice and bitter with a good body that keeps the pucker-factor in check. I give it an "A".

A Spectators Guide To Competition Barbecue

2010-05-26T18:37:00.001-06:00

Katie's dad is highly entertaining.

He doesn't do anything half way, so when he got into competition barbecue a few years back, nothing was going to stop him from winning everything he could. He even wrote a book called "The Spectator's Guide to Competition Barbecue" which is now in its third printing (I think) which really illuminates this strange world to the non-Southerner newcomer who is not accustomed to this kind of pastime. He even sent me down to Texas last June to pick up a shiny new "rig" (which is composed of the "pit" where the meat is cooked and the trailer which it is mounted on) built by the best in the business, Jamie Greer of Jambo Pits.

He'll be cooking on our side of the hill at the Loveland Loves Barbecue competition in July.

Not really sure where I was heading with this post, but I just saw the video on the KCBS website and had to share it.

Oh, he's also a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a magician.

Happy Birthday, Mustang!

2010-04-18T15:39:00.000-06:00

I know I'm a day late on the draw here on the blog, but I was on time on Twitter, so I shouldn't be accused of just being unaware. Anyways...

Happy Birthday to the Ford Mustang!

First released on April 17, 1964, and still going strong 46 years later, the Mustang was a true game changer for Ford Motor Company and for the American auto industry as a whole. Ford single handedly proved that you could offer one car that appealed to both housewives and teenagers, and do it affordable and successfully.

The Mustang was a wild success from the very beginning, selling 22,000 units on the first day alone. Now over eight million Mustangs have been sold, and in 2005, it was even named the Canadian Car Of The Year.

I've driven several Mustangs over the years, from the first generation models up to my 2008 GT, and I can definitely see why they draw people like moths to a flame. The classic proportions, accessibility, comfort, performance, and aura of cool that just oozes from every body panel make these a true American classic. And for 2011, it looks like Ford is prepared to hit another home run with the return of the "5.0" badge to the front fender. The competition had better watch out! Autoblog calls it A Game Changer, and for $20,000 less money, Jalopnik speculates that it might be better than a BMW M3. The entire 2010 line has even been recently recalled for being too cool.

So anyway, happy birthday, Mustang, and good work, Ford. Here's to another 46 years. I wonder what a 2056 Mustang would look like? I suppose it depends on who is in charge of the EPA.

Songs about rain

2010-04-17T18:24:00.000-06:00

After threatening all day yesterday, the weather finally got its act together and actually rained for a little while today here in FoCo! I love the rain (when I don't have to work in it, that is), and this was just a nice, steady, gentle shower that is really going to help get the grass and plants going! Not to mention rinse some of the infernal dust and pollen out of the air for at least a little while!!! Sheesh, my allergies are killing me this year!

Driving home through the nice little rain shower got me thinking, there's a lot of good songs about rain, and I should make a playlist / compilation of them! I started to make a list, so let me know what you think, if you want to email me any mp3s, and if I missed anything!

I Love A Rainy Night - Eddie Rabbitt
Rockin' With The Rhythm Of The Rain - The Judds
Raindrops keep fallin' on my head - B.J. Thoma
I'm Only Happy When It Rains - Garbage
Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again - The Fortunes
Kentucky Rain - Elvis Presley
Here Comes The Rain Again - The Eurythmics
(It Must Be) Raindrops - David Cassidy
Have You Ever Seen The Rain/Who'll Stop The Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Fire And Rain - James Taylor
It Never Rains In Southern California - Albert Hammond
Rainy Days And Mondays - The Carpenters
Laughter In The Rain - Neil Sedaka
Never Liked the Rain - Clint Black
Rain In My Heart - Frank Sinatra
(Somewhere) Over The Rainbow - Judy Garland
Rainbow Connection - Kermit The Frog
Singin' In The Rain - Gene Kelly
Box of Rain - Grateful Dead
Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain - Willie Nelson

Once I get the list finalized, whittled down to a reasonable number, and find all the songs, I'll try to figure out a way to share my new list with a few people. Like I need another project...

Just needing to bitch a little

2010-04-14T18:45:00.003-06:00

So, it's five 'til seven, and I really should be getting out of this coffee shop, getting something to eat (even though I'm not really hungry) and heading to swing dance practice. But I don't want to. I just want to sit here, with the sun streaming in through the old window panes, listen to the murmur of the random conversations surrounding me, and just be. Be lazy, I suppose would be more specific, but I'm not gonna get picky here.

I did my taxes last night and realized that my taxable income was below the poverty level. I also had to pay self employment taxes on the little bit of money I made from teaching and gigging swing dances. Lame. Yet somehow I still have my condo, even though it literally takes all of my money to do so. Interest rates are still good, but you can't refinance without a decent job. (Which is kinda ironic - you'd think they would like to give poor folks who are still making their payments the chance to lower that payment and increase their chances of *not* going into foreclosure or walking away, but that's not the way it works.)

I can't seem to better my situation lately, and it's really discouraging, but I guess I'd better keep trying. I've got a cover letter to write for a project engineer position at another nameless company that I found on Craigslist, but based on the last x number of cover letters I've written, this one will be another waste of time.

Oh well, I guess I'll get back to that cover letter and head to practice now. Just needed to bitch a little.

Creating Some Content

2010-03-03T15:35:00.006-07:00

I was thinking earlier today about content creation versus content consumption and the hardware needed best able to do each - specifically that the horribly named iPad is really just a large, awkward device to consume the content that Apple wants you to - and I came to the conclusion that I need to be a better content creator. I know I say this pretty much every time I let my poor old blog languish for a few months without a post, but this time I'm thinking in a more general sense.

But, as it's been nearly four months since I've last created any content over 14o characters long and doesn't say "Jumpin' JiveCats" on it, I figured a quick update was in order.

Thanksgiving was good. Christmas was good. I crocheted this cool and extremely warm Santa hat that somehow sheds white fuzz like a cat.
I also learned how to make this amazingly good and super simple artisan bread.
The only problem is that whenever I make a loaf, I eat half of it within a couple of hours and then there isn't enough left to share. I suppose I should just make two loaves at once.

I also took this fun picture of myself drinking a homemade latte out of this sweet mug that I won playing bingo at Everyday Joe's a couple of years ago.
Since I am still out of work and don't really have much better to do with my Fridays, I have been volunteering as a barista at there since October. Needless to say, this has not tempered my coffee habit one bit. In fact, it has increased my level of coffee geekdom to the point that I worked - er, volunteered - at the Mountain Regional Barista Competition over Valentine's weekend as a machine maintainer and a technical judge.
And I suppose that it goes without saying, but I am still totally over-committed to my swing dance troupe, the Jumpin' JiveCats and spend way too much time being co-director, PR person, social media guru, email answerer, teacher, and performer with them.

Well, that's about it. I've officially created some content. Hopefully this content won't be to contentious. ;)

Now I'm off to pick up some Girl Scout cookies I forgot I ordered and find somewhere to make a gigantic print of this picture that I took this morning.

Berlin Wall vs Sesame Street

2009-11-09T17:05:00.004-07:00

Or, "Can you show me how to get; how to get to West Germany?"

I know Google is not required to agree with me on their choice of homepage logo doodles for a particular day, but doesn't the fall of the Berlin wall on this day twenty years ago seem a little bit more significant than the fortieth anniversary of the Sesame Street show?

Could be just me, I suppose.

Wordle Word Cloud From Your Twitter Stream

2009-10-21T14:04:00.005-06:00

Apparently I went about getting my previously mentioned Wordle word cloud of my Twitter stream in a extremely roundabout way and didn't realize that it isn't as simple as I thought.

From what I can tell, Wordle will create a word cloud from any url that supports an RSS feed. To find the RSS feed of your (or anyone's) Twitter updates, go to http://twitter.com/username (replace username with the one you want) and click on the "RSS feed of ___'s tweets" button on the lower right-hand side. This will give you the RSS page address that Wordle needs to create a word cloud. Copy the url from the location bar and paste it into the appropriate box at www.wordle.net/create and hit Submit.

Unfortunately, there are only 20 updates included in Twitter's RSS feed at a time, and I'm not sure exactly how many of those Wordle decides to use. It's not very many, so you end up with a really crappy looking word cloud with a lot of @s, usernames, and tinyurl links. Not very entertaining.

The way I stumbled upon my really cool looking word cloud was pretty convoluted. I started out at the TweetStats site graphing my tweet timeline, tweet density, and some other cool aggregated statistics about my tweets. (Which, incidentally, you can check out here.) There is some really nifty info there, and if you click on the little "Tweet Cloud" button near the top, you get their version of a word cloud made from you tweets.
Kinda near the middle-right of that page there's a little blurb that says "Don't like the TweetCloud? Well then, go make a Wordle! (no @'s)" Click on the link (I like the no @'s version) and it takes you to a Wordle page with all the hard work done already. Then you just mess around with the colors, layout, etc, and take a screen shot of what you like. Bam!

There's also a "save to gallery" button, but I wouldn't waste your time there, since the gallery is chronological and cannot be searched, therefore rendering it basically useless to find your creation in the future.

I have to assume that there is some RSS-foo going on in the background of TweetStat to get a better sampling of data than I was able to find using the RSS button on Twitter. I also assume that if I spent long enough messing around with the public API, I might be able to figure it out, but since someone has already done it, I'm not gonna waste my time.

Also, I'm pretty sure that your updates cannot be protected for all of this to work, but since mine are public, I can't tell you for sure.
Happy graphing / clouding!

Things that make me happy, things that make me unhappy.

2009-10-21T08:40:00.011-06:00

Well, since I just can't neglect my blog any longer (it's been nearly three months!), and since I'm pretty sure I don't have any regular readers anymore, this post is all about me. What makes me happy and what makes me unhappy.

First of all, since I was passively watching TV and this commercial just caught my eye, I love the music they use in the Lincoln car commercials. They always have some really sweet remixes of classic songs, and that makes me happy. They need to release an album.

I've kinda gotten into the AMC show "Mad Men" this fall, and while I am way behind on the plot and don't really watch with any regularity, I'm really intrigued by the setting and props used on the show. I love the old houses, appliances, clothes, furniture, and especially the cars that make their way into the show.

Anyway, what I wanted to share is the "Mad Men Yourself" page on the AMC Mad Men blog. It's pretty awesome. You start by selecting your gender, body type, skin tone, and facial features, then you move on to your clothes, accessories, and setting. And all the while there's a swank, loungie theme song playing in the background. The best thing is that you can download the results in several different sizes and the results can be pretty spot-on.

This "wordle" also makes me happy. They take your most common words from your Twitter tweets and turn it in to a picture. The larger the word, the more often it has occurred. The shape is pretty random, but I like the way this one turned out. Since the whole site is a java app, you can't directly save the image, but you can link to is, so go check it out. Make your own; share it.

The fact that "for a limited time" you can get 155 Mojo Nixon tracks for free from Amazon mp3 makes me happy. If you're not familiar with his music, it's pretty much as trashy and lowbrow as it gets, but it's quality rockabilly goodness just the same. Go here for the deal.

This doesn't make me very happy. In an article on MSNBC.com asserts that "higher jobless rates could be the new norm" and quotes a really good economist to back it up.

"This Great Recession is an inflection point for the economy in many respects. I think the unemployment rate will be permanently higher, or at least higher for the foreseeable future," said Mark Zandi, chief economist and co-founder of Moody's Economy.com.

With unemployment headed to 10% and no real relief in sight, it's kinda discouraging.

Well, there's a review of the things that are currently making me happy and unhappy. It's too bad that the bad thing is so bad, but at least there are more good things. Let me know what's making you happy in the comments.

Also, my hornet sting from Monday still itches like hell. Not happy about that.

Breakfast of Champions

2009-08-03T18:08:00.001-06:00

Well, more like, Breakfast of Someone-With-Time-On-Their-Hands, but still extremely yummy.

Fried eggs with cracked black pepper, Kosher salt, and a dusting of cayanne; topped with homemade (and home grown) basil pesto.

Follow that up with a mocha latte made with espresso from Kona coffee, dark chocolate syrup, and topped with homemade whipped cream.

Pretty much doesn't get any better than that.

And really, other than having the pesto on hand from a masive pesto making session at my parents' house, the whipped cream left over from a previous dessert, and owning an espresso machine, this could all be made any time! ;)

I'm getting hungry just looking at it!

I Blame Twitter! Kinda

2009-07-30T09:32:00.000-06:00

I've been a bad blogger lately. I only have one post since May, and that was just a YouTube video of Obama's teleprompter falling over. And while funny, there was no real thought there.

A few monthes ago I even signed up for a service called "Plinky" that is supposed to prompt you with interesting questions to answer / ponder on your blog. I've done a grand total of one of those. When the email comes I just hit delete and move on.

The other think that I blame this lack of blogging on is Twitter. Twitter has seriously made me lazy. If I can just bang out 140 characters at a time from the status bar of my browser with TwitterFox or from my BlackBerry with UberTwitter, why would I spend the time to go to my blog, think of something thoughtful, carefully word it into something semi-coherent, think of a good headline, and finally post it? Who knows, but apparently that's what i've been doing, since I have nearly 700 Tweets since last fall.

The other thing, and more likely to be a the root of the problem, is that since I haven't had a real job in, oh, almost eight months, I have had a serious lack of ambition and motvation to do anything creative. I don't even take pictures anymore. I used to cary my camera around litterally all the time, and now one of them sits in my office and I'm not even sure where the other one is.

But speaking of no real job and no motivation, I do have a ton of work for my psuedo job to get done today that I have, of course, been putting off all week, so I'd better get to it.

What did you expect? Some sort of revelation? ;)

RIP, TOTUS

2009-07-15T17:36:00.003-06:00

The TOTUS (Teleprompter Of The United States) just couldn't bear lying to our Fearless Reader, Mr Obama, anymore, and apparently took a nasty spill the other day.

Too bad, I think TOTUS is the hardest working member of the administration!

Oh, wait, this just in... he's okay!

What does the market think your house is worth?

2009-05-30T16:06:00.002-06:00

As off-the-wall as I think Glenn Beck is most of the time, it'd be a lot easier to not like him if he didn't make so damn much sense.

In this video from February he explains (with the help of a gigantic graph!) the historical price of houses in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, of course, and finds that they tend to stick around $100K. You can ignore the parts with Obama, if you'd like; they really don't affect the analysis.

Now, I haven't independently confirmed his figures, but they do seem reasonable, and if the trend line he draws actually continues like that, we're totally boned. I don't personally think that prices will continue to plunge like they have been, but we were long overdue for a major correction in housing prices.

Because "He is Latino," eh?

2009-05-27T22:05:00.004-06:00

So when Democrats choose (behind closed doors, of course) to exclude an otherwise qualified individual from a U.S. Supreme Court nomination because "he is Latino" it's totally acceptable, but when Republicans raise valid concerns about a Latina's potentialy dangerous opinions, statements, and actions, they're racists and sexists.

Read for yourself how congressional democrats borked president Bush's Supreme Court nominee Miguel Estrada in a November 7, 2001 memo to Senator Durbin:

"The groups singled out three--Jeffrey Sutton (6th Circuit); Priscilla Owen (5th Circuit); and Caroline [sic] Kuhl (9th Circuit)--as a potential nominee for a contentious hearing early next year, with a [sic] eye to voting him or her down in Committee. They also identified Miguel Estrada (D.C. Circuit) as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible." [My emphasis.]

Wall Street Journal, Saturday, November 15, 2003.

Sounds about like typical Democrat shenanigans to me. The sad part is, the uninformed public will let them get away with it, time and time again.

In-Box Overload

2009-05-23T21:40:00.000-06:00

That is an awfully large pile of work for someone who doesn't have a real job!

Those are all anonymize surveys (remember my "data collection?") that I have to enter by hand into web forms. Talk about crappy and carpal-tunnel inducing. Oh well, at least I make a few bucks doing it.

Global Warming - Brought to you by The Climate-Industrial Complex

2009-05-22T10:10:00.002-06:00

If you've talked to me or read this blog at all in the past you are probably already aware of my stance on Anthropogenic Global Warming -- I think it's basically an overblown farce designed and presented by rich scare-mongers (like Al Gore) to give people something abstract to worry about and line their pockets with cash in the process.

Now the U.S. House and Senate are debating a European style "Climate Change" bill, complete with handouts to the worst carbon-emitters, coal companies, and this weekend the Copenhagen Climate Council is hosting the World Business Summit on Climate Change hoping, as Bjorn Lomborg writes in today's Wall Street Journal "to push political leaders into more drastic promises when they negotiate the Kyoto Protocol's replacement in December."

Lomborg continues:

Naturally, many CEOs are genuinely concerned about global warming. But many of the most vocal stand to profit from carbon regulations. The term used by economists for their behavior is "rent-seeking."

The world's largest wind-turbine manufacturer, Copenhagen Climate Council member Vestas, urges governments to invest heavily in the wind market. It sponsors CNN's "Climate in Peril" segment, increasing support for policies that would increase Vestas's earnings. A fellow council member, Mr. Gore's green investment firm Generation Investment Management, warns of a significant risk to the U.S. economy unless a price is quickly placed on carbon.

So really, these businesses stand to gain significantly from radical (and radically expensive) climate change legislation being pushed on countries rich and stupid enough to sign their citizens up.

And don't believe for a second that these "green jobs" being "created" by the clean energy companies are free:

Spain has been proclaimed a global example in providing financial aid to renewable energy companies to create green jobs. But research shows that each new job cost Spain 571,138 euros, with subsidies of more than one million euros required to create each new job in the uncompetitive wind industry. Moreover, the programs resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs for every job created. [My emphasis added.]

So with the global economy in the state that it is in (not so good), do we really need to be costing tax payers billions of dollars in additional taxes while at the same time ensuring that many more will join me in the ranks of the unemployed? That doesn't sound like good policy to me, it sounds like pandering to some self-serving interest groups.

President Dwight D Eisenhower famously worried about the Cold-War era Military-Industrial Complex that "there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties." The same can now be said about the unholy alliance of self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners making up the new Climate-Industrial Complex.

*****
Also, I highly recommend Mr Lomborg's 2007 book, "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming." Among other things, it is an eye opening look at how much good we could be doing with all the money we are throwing at global warming -- like eradicating malaria, providing everyone in the world with clean drinking water, or controlling AIDS.

Coolest thing I've seen about Linux yet!

2009-04-22T20:18:00.005-06:00

So, I've been using Ubuntu (first 8.10 and now pre-release 9.04) on my IBM laptop (thanks Lana!) for the past several months, and in general, I have been very impressed with its usability, capabilities, and function.

First of all, Ubuntu, like most Linux distributions is free (as in beer and speech), so that instantly gives it a leg-up on Windows for the computer tinkerer who occationally messes up their system beyond help and needs to reinstall. It also has a great update manager that keeps your system up to date without hitting you over the head with "genuine" versions and involuntary reboots. The out of the box folder organization leaves a little to be desired for users who are not used to Linux, but that's a pretty minor point of contention.

To further my uber geeky experiments, I recently setup a headless (no monitor or keyboard) file server to share, um, "data" between a small group using Ubuntu Server Edition 8.04. The setup was mostly smooth and the updates and installation of the pertinent programs was very straight forward, but using a text-only Comand Line Interface really left something to be desired when it came to renaming and moving files around. It's a long adventure of typing in the full path of the file you want to move and then the full path of where you want it moved to. Not really my idea of fun.

This brings me to my point of the coolest thing I've seen about Linux yet. While I was Googling around to figure out how to use SSH to access my server from off-site, I found this gem:

Re: How to use sshd

You can also do:

sftp://username@IP.add.re.ss

in nautilus or konqueror and it will allow you to do drag'n drop file moving.

How friggin' awesome is that? Not only does it get me a secure connection from any computer running Linux back to my server at home, it gives me a graphical environment to manipulate files and folders! Rock on!

Now, there's probably a Windows version of this, but it probably isn't free and definitely requires more work than I just invested in figuring this out.

My first job: landscaping

2009-03-28T22:02:00.001-06:00

This is my first experiment using the website Plinky.com to help avoid "blogger block" by answering their daily prompts. The prompt that, um, prompted this post was "What industry ushered you into the workforce?"

I worked the summer I turned 16 for the landscape maintenance division of a local real estate developer. I made a little over $6 an hour and was the only native English speaker on the crew. For the first three weeks of work my dad had to drop me off at the yard in the morning and pick me up in the afternoon because I was still 15 and hadn't gotten my drivers license yet.

Who has time to vote for town hall questions? Oh yeah, stoners!

2009-03-27T18:14:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, President Obama hosted an online "town hall" campaign stop, er, meeting where he took questions submitted by the public and answered the most popular ones. In addition to the obligatory softball questions, thanks to the winners over at NORML, many of the top rated questions had to do with the legalization of marijuana. As Politico reports:

In this moment of national economic crisis, the top four questions under the heading of “Financial security” concerned marijuana; on the budget, people voted up questions about marijuana to positions 1-4; marijuana was in the first and third positions under “jobs”; people boosted a plug for legalizing marijuana to No. 2 under “health care reform.” And questions about decriminalizing pot occupied spots 1 and 2 under “green jobs and energy.”

Luckily, even though Mr Obama does have some experience in the drug world, he stuck to his political and reasonable guns and answered the question directly: "'The answer is no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy,' he said, as the audience in the room applauded and joined him in a laugh."

Even though I think that the "War on Drugs" has been an abysmal failure and is really misdirected in its goals and tactics, I am still against the blanket legalization of pot and most other drugs, and this was certainly not the format for it to be addressed. It does seem kinda obvious though that it's the pot-heads that have the time to vote those questions to the top of the list.

Blackberry Upgrade, A Week Later

2009-03-20T12:18:00.002-06:00

Okay, so last week I posted about the firmware / operating system upgrade from 4.2 to 4.5 that was offered to Blackberry Curve users (and others, I would imagine). Well, after a three hour installation process (hands off, thank God!), having to reset my ringtones and alerts, and fiddle with a few apps, I have to say that I am quite pleased with the upgrade!

I'll go through the features and give my impression of each:

Video recording capability - Freakin' cool! I've never had a phone that could do that before, so it's a lot of fun to mess with. Not the best quality, but I've also seen worse.
HTML email for
Internet email accounts - I know what this should do, but since I have my mail working with the Gmail app, I'm unaffected by this one. Only thing I'd like Gmail on my phone to do better is to be able to click on embeded links.
Music and Video Streaming video capabilities - Also freakin' cool. YouTube and other embedded flash video on a phone that's not an iPhone. The quality is pretty crappy (as it is on the iPhone), and it doesn't quite go full screen, but it's spiffy nonetheless.
New browser home page design - I could take or leave this. Could be good for non-tweakers, but I had my iGoogle page setup for my phone, and it worked perfectly. Luckily you can reconfigure this to your liking.
Improved downloading experience - Seems quite a bit faster... that's all I can tell.
Improved UMA and data performance - Definitely faster. Feels like you're on a 3G connection when you're really still on the older EDGE. I'm impressed.
Attachment downloading and document editing - Downloading good, haven't tried editing yet, but the upgrade did include Word To Go and Slideshow To Go, so it should work.

So now my only gripes are with Google. You can view attachments sent via Gmail, but that's it. No saving, editing, etc. But, I suppose if that's the worst thing, it's still not that bad.

In conclusion, good work, RIM!

BlackBerry Upgrade!

2009-03-10T15:59:00.002-06:00

Finally, BlackBerry sent out an upgrade to the newest version of its operating system (4.5) to upgrade those using the older (4.2) version. There's some sweet new stuff in this upgrade, including video recording and video streaming (YouTube?).

Here's the new features list for my phone, the Curve 8320:

Video recording capability
HTML email for internet email accounts
Music and Video Streaming video capabilities
New browser home page design
Improved downloading experience
Improved UMA and data performance
Attachment downloading and document editing

These are all fancy things that the new BB Bold is supposed to do, and I couldn't understand why they didn't push an upgrade out to their existing users sooner. However, in hindsight, I should have known that it was a ploy to get users of older phones to upgrade to the fancy (and expensive) new models instead of waiting for an update. I'm glad I waited it out!

I'm currently installing it on my phone and I'll follow up with my impressions.

Inanimate Valentines

2009-02-16T15:45:00.002-07:00

Happy (late) Valentine's Day!

Thought this video might serve for some inspiration (or retrospect) for you weekend.

See more funny videos and Technology Videos at Today's Big Thing.

(Nice stop action work, though, eh?)

Bad-ass 3-D scanner and printer

2009-02-06T13:28:00.002-07:00

Also known as a rapid prototyping machine. This thing is sweet.

NextEngine's 3D Scanner

Everything you need to scan and digitize 3D models at a reasonable price. Made in America.

Farewell, Dubya

2009-01-20T09:43:00.002-07:00

Well, I'm not sure what I can say that hasn't already been said by someone about today's inauguration of our new President, Barack Obama, other than to say, "good luck, and try not to screw up too bad."

To paraphrase on commentator that I recently heard, "Obama is going to be a very activist president. He's going to get a lot done. We're going to enter this administration as a capitalist nation and we're going to leave it as France." I hope he's wrong.

But I'd also like to say something that isn't getting said very much: Thank you, Mr Bush. Thank you for protecting the country after 9-11. Thank you for lowering taxes. Thank you for working towards free trade in the Americas and standing firmly beside Israel in her trials. And farewell.

Wacky weather, Bill like's Bush's carpet, Obama's "tax cuts"

2009-01-08T19:06:00.005-07:00

So, today, January 8th, the high temperature was 60 degrees here in Northern Colorado and the low temperature was -60 in Fairbanks, Alaska. I know, Alaska is supposed to be cold, but their normal January lows are closer to -30 and our normal highs are closer to 30. What's up with that? Good luck telling Alaskans that its global warming.

By now you've probably heard or seen former President Bill Clinton at the White House today expressing his love for the rug in the Oval Office. But what you probably didn't know is that that rug was custom designed by Laura Bush and is heading back to Texas with the Bushes very soon. It really is an impressive rug.

You've probably also heard about President-Elect Obama's "$300 Billion Tax Cuts" that he wants congress to pass ASAP. Investor's Business Daily has a good piece examining why these so-called "tax cuts" are nothing more than plain, old income redistribution: taking money from the successful and giving it to the unsuccessful. Rewarding failure does not promote success, it reinforces failure.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T02:37:00.004-07:00

Merry Christmas, y'all. Here's hoping you and yours are having a joyous and blessed season!

Not that I have anything against consumerism, but lets try to remember what this day is all about - the greatest gift any of us can receive has already been given to us, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. That being said, I'm really happy about all of the nice things that my generous friends and family gave me! :o)

And here's a short message from Presiding Bishop of the ELCA, Mark Hanson:

Espresso Mocha Martini

2008-12-06T23:15:00.001-07:00

Alcohol and a caffiene buzz at the same time!

Espresso Mocha Martini:
1-1/2 parts vodka
1 part Godiva chocolate liquer
1 part light cream
1 part fresh espresso
Shake with ice, strain into a martini glass garnished with chocolate syrup. Enjoy!

I knew my new(ish) espresso machine would come in handy for more than morning drinks!

Whoo hoo! I'm a statistic!

2008-11-13T16:33:00.002-07:00

Initial claims for jobless benefits jumped 32,000 to a seasonally adjusted 516,000 in the week ended Nov. 8, the Labor Department said Thursday.

And I'm one of them. Now if I ever get these so-called "jobless benefits" it'll suck a little less.

Thank you, Veterans

2008-11-11T14:24:00.002-07:00

Today, the 11th of November, is the 90th anniversary of the signing of the armistice between the Allies and Germany at Rethondes, France, marking symbolic end of World War One — signed on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in 1918. It became known as "Veterans Day" in 1954 when President Dwight Eisenhower and congress passed a bill declaring it so.

I'd like to take this opportunity to give thanks to all who have served and are serving our great country in our military. Their sacrifices make it possible for the rest of us live the lives that we live today in freedom and without fear of outside attack. Thank God for our service men and women.

In related news, President Bush honored veterans today at the rededicate of the World War II aircraft carrier USS Intrepid in New York where he also received the Freedom Award from ...someone that I can't seem to find. The President gave a very enjoyable speech, but I can't find a video of it yet, so here is the text of the speech. Hopefully the video will get posted and I'll add it here. Here is coverage of the event from the AP and Bloomberg.

Boy, this being home during the day sure lets me watch a lot of news...

D.I.Y. Obama Platitudes

2008-11-05T12:15:00.003-07:00

Well, even if I'm bitterly disappointed about the election results, that doesn't mean I can't find entertainment value in Mr Obama. For example, there is an Obama platitude generator at buttafly.com that is pretty clever:

Generate a Barack Obama Quote!

"These people haven't had snuggles for fifty years. So you can't be surprised if they get bitter and cling to their brussel sprouts and their liver and onions and their pickled pigs' feet. That's what my campaign is about. Teaching all the little people in this country that they can have fluffy kittens."
Generate your Barack Obama quote at Buttafly.com

Just insert your key words, and bam, you're presented with three choices of cleverly crafted yet utterly meaningless statements! It's just like the real thing!

Predictions for an Obama Presidency

2008-11-04T21:30:00.001-07:00

Some of my predictions now that a majority of American voters were gullible enough to believe the false promises of "hope" and "change" and elect Barack Obama to the most powerful position in the world.

Unemployment will go to 10% or more
The GDP will shrink
Gasoline prices will increase
It will cost more to heat your home
American manufacturing will loose even more jobs and market share
More mortgages will go into foreclosure
At least one American auto maker will go bankrupt
The cost of healthcare will not go down
The Middle East will become less stable
Iran will obtain a nuclear device
Russia will continue to expand it's control inside and outside it's borders
China and India will not pollute less
Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea will not get any friendlier
Our dependence on foreign oil will only go down because we can no longer afford to pay for it
"Global Climate Change" will not suddenly stop
The oceans will not suddenly stop rising
Etc.

Don't get me wrong, some of these things might happen no matter who is in the White House, and maybe, just maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised by Barack the Redistributer's magical ways. But I doubt it.

I wonder of Prozak is one of Wal-Mart's $4 generics... I have the feeling I'm going to need it.

Vote McCain!

2008-11-04T11:00:00.002-07:00

Just say NO to socialism!

Equality of opportunity should be guaranteed, not equality of outcome.

Idiot Obama Supporter Caught On Tape

2008-11-03T10:03:00.004-07:00

This woman was apparently really excited after attending an Obama rally recently, and pretty much sums up in a few seconds what is wrong with an Obama presidency and a good chunk of America in general. She says she will vote for Obama because "I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car and I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage," and thanks to YouTube, it's immortalized for all to see.

This kind of thing just boils my blood. That people in America actually feel this way and believe that this is the way things should be just pisses me off.

Glenn Beck's take: "He's going to pay for your mortgage? Not likely---he won't even pay for his Uncle's mortgage (evicted) or his Aunt (living in a Boston slum) or his half brother (who makes $1 per month and lives in Kenya in a hut)."

Note to Obama supporters: Money isn't free. Someone earned that money, and it is wrong for the government for forcibly take it away from them and give it to those who did not earn it. Choices have consequences and words mean things, so while you're hoping for change, I'll be working my ass off to pay for your dumb ass to sit at home and collect welfare.

Biden "guarantees" International Crisis

2008-10-21T15:18:00.004-06:00

This may be one of "say it ain't so" Joe Biden's most significant slips of the tongue yet. Yesterday he let it slip that he believes that within six months of Obama's presumptive election the world will test us with an international crisis. He goes on to babble about the "little people" showing the way and ends trying to prop up the utter lack of experience his running mate possesses, but the important part was already out of the bag.

The rest of the world doesn't trust an Obama presidency. The rest of the world looks at an Obama presidency as an opportunity to exploit our new found weakness in leadership and judgement. The rest of the world looks to take advantage of an inept President Obama to further their totalitarian fantasies. I am honestly truly frightened of what an Obama presidency may bring to America and the world.

If you want a little more convincing, listen to these two clips from Glenn Beck's radio show Monday.
YouTube - Glenn Beck Radio - Biden "guarantees" International Crisis
YouTube - Glenn Beck Radio - Biden "guarantees" International Crisis 2
Glenn, as usual in my opinion, goes a little overboard on the fear and conspiracy, but the message remains valid.

Save the world this election. Vote republican.

Hey, Sven, is that Windows Mobile on your iPhone?

2008-10-15T14:27:00.002-06:00

Just happened across this little bit of iPhone hackery while investigating some other, more realistic hackery for those of us unwilling to pay $100 a month to AT&T...

A Norwegian programmer built a bootcamp-like program for the iPhone to let you choose between Windows Mobile and the regular iPhone OS.

Pretty nifty, but I have never really heard much good about Windows Mobile, so I'm not sure how many users will really jump on this one. I am impressed with someone hacking a non-Apple OS into a notoriously closed-system Apple device, though.

From Code Retard.

"One Froggy Evening"

2008-10-14T09:58:00.003-06:00

One of my favorite little cartoons of yesteryear, Merrie Melodies' "One Froggy Evening" from 31 December, 1955. (I didn't realize it was that old!)

MERRIE MELODIES-ONE FROGGY EVENING

Thanks, Internet!

Happy Columbus Day, Dow Jones!

2008-10-13T14:30:00.003-06:00

Holy cow, Dow! After last week's slow free-fall of the world wide markets, the 10%+ gains in Europe and Asia overnight seem to have kicked a little life back into the U.S. markets today.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up nearly 1,000 points (well, 936.42 or 11.08%) to close within sight of 10,000 again after its largest daily point gain ever. The S&P 500 soared 11.6%, the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 11.8% and the Russell 2000 jumped 9.2%. Who said that last week's dips were a buying opportunity? I won't make you guess; it was me.

But don't get too excited. As the Wall Street Journal reports today:

Despite Monday's massive rally, many Wall Street veterans remain on the lookout for a grinding period of weakness in the global economy and stocks in the months ahead.

"The danger here is that people will be lulled into the idea that a strong bull trend is now in place rather than the idea that the market is just bouncing off a short-term oversold condition," said Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners, a trading and research firm in Greenwich, Con.

They continue:

Doreen Mogavero, president and chief executive of the New York floor brokerage Mogavero Lee & Co., said she's still looking for a round of capitulation, or last-ditch selling to pave the way for a more sustained rally. While there were some hopes that Friday's intraday market low, including a nearly 700-point decline for the Dow, would mark such an event, she believes there wasn't enough volume behind the selling to confirm it as a true capitulation.
"At best, I think we're looking at a short-term bottom here," she said.

So basically, if you're one of those who couldn't stand the heat last week and jumped out of the frying pan, you may have really ended up in the fire after today's up-surge. But only time will tell where the real bottom is and when the real recovery will happen.

Less than Happy Anniversary

2008-10-09T16:24:00.005-06:00

Crap.

The stock market's collapse accelerated Thursday as bank lending remained stubbornly clogged and investors remained unwilling to hold anything except cash and government debt, no matter how tiny the returns for doing so.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined for a seventh straight day, plunging 678.91 points, or 7.3%, to 8579.19. Blue chips last dipped below the 9000 level five years ago. Thursday's fall was the Dow's third-worst all time in point terms and 11th worst in percentage terms. During its recent losing run, blue chips have fallen by a startling 20.9% and are down 39.4% from their record high, which was hit exactly one year ago. (WSJ, 9 Oct 2008)

All that basically sucks, but it doesn't look nearly as bad when you look at the (really) big picture...It doesn't look quite as bad.

Personally, even though my 401k is probably getting hammered in the rear right now, I've got long enough before I need to draw from it that this decline in prices is basically a buying opportunity. Not a pretty one, but even though my value has gone down, my buying power has increased significantly!

Also, crude oil prices fell to their lowest point in eleven months today, to under $87 a barrel, but gas prices at the pump haven't kept up the pace:

The last time oil sold for $87-per-barrel was October 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. But current gas prices nationally and in Phoenix remain more than 60 cents higher than last October.
The national average stands at $3.40 per gallon, well above October 2007’s $2.77, according to AAA. Phoenix-area average prices stand at $3.27 per gallon compared to $2.65 a year ago. Current prices, however, are down from summer highs of more than $4 per gallon. (Phoenix Business Journal, 09 Oct 2008)

I don't know why that is, but I don't like it.

And further proof from the WSJ that the stock market operates purely on emotion and speculation, not hard data:

Strategist Jim Paulsen, of Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said the fear that has seized the market lately may be an unintended, self-fulfilling consequence of recent efforts in Washington to pass a $700 billion rescue of firms saddled with illiquid mortgage securities.

"To sell the bailout to the public, everyone from the President on down had to go out and tell people how bad everything was, that the world was coming to an end," said Mr. Paulsen. "Ever since, people's expectations about the economy have gotten worse and worse and worse, and their reaction to each new action to fix the problems has gotten worse and worse and worse."

Oh well. Remember, buying opportunity!

**In other news, I might have to figure out how to be Freddie Mac for Halloween. :D

Damn, Dow!

2008-10-06T13:57:00.004-06:00

Well, Congress' $700 billion tax-payer-funded "rescue" of the U.S. credit markets doesn't seem to have had the desired instantaneous positive effects that some predicted. The Dow Jones Industrial Average took a swim below 10,000 points for the first time since October of 2004 and crossed into territory that it first broke back in April of 1999 (when I was a junior in high school!).

Luckily, today will not be remembered as the first close below 10,000 since 2004, because the Dow rallied at the close to at 10,000.34 points, down 303.85 points (2.94%) on the day.

But before everyone goes blaming President Bush and / or John McCain for this calamity, remember these two things: Barack Obama voted for this thing as well; and turning around the tight credit market is not like parking a VW Bug, it's more like U-turning an oil tanker - these things take time.

Update: D'oh! Apparently, in the time it took me to type this, some final numbers came in, and the DJIA did not, in fact, close above 10,000. It came to rest at 9,955.50, down 3.58% on the day. But at least I'm not alone - the Wall Street Journal had to change their website headline, too.

They're starting to turn...

2008-09-23T07:29:00.002-06:00

As the Autumn leaves start to turn from green to yellow, some prominent democrats are turning away from (socialist) Barack Obama:

Top Clinton fundraiser backs McCain over Obama
By ANN SANNER – 18 Sept 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Hillary Rodham Clinton fundraiser threw her support behind Republican John McCain on Wednesday, saying he will lead the country in a centrist fashion and accusing the Democrats of becoming too extreme.
"I believe that Barack Obama, with MoveOn.org and Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, has taken the Democratic Party — and they will continue to — too far to the left," Lynn Forester de Rothschild said. "I'm not comfortable there."

At least some democrats can see where the "post-partisan" Obama campaign is going... all the way to the looney left.

Never Forget

2008-09-11T17:48:00.001-06:00

Seven years ago today, the world changed. Let's not forget that. Ever.

The End is Near!

2008-09-10T14:20:00.004-06:00

Oh, wait, what? Just turning on the Large Hadron Collider didn't create a black hole to gobble up the Earth? And it didn't produce a strangelet that destroyed all matter? Oh... well, huzzah for CERN then!

As you may have heard, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, better know by its French acronym "CERN," switched on it's new toy at about 2:36 a.m. Mountain time this morning -- And nothing bad happened. Their new $5 billion, world's largest and most powerful (14 trillion electron volt) particle accelerator came online this morning without a hitch and sent a few partiles in a clockwise trip around it's 17-mile loop. It won't get to do any smashin' for a few more weeks, but it will hopefully help physisicst a better understanding of the birth of the Universe by letting them see what the very first few nano-seconds of the Big Bang may have looked like.

Cool. More news at Wired and Google News, and of course, at CERN's site.

Words to live by

2008-09-10T08:12:00.000-06:00

"Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent."
- Marilyn vos Savant

Shiny new toy from the Big G!

2008-09-02T13:53:00.006-06:00

Just announced (via comic book) yesterday and released to the masses today, Google's new open-source jaunt into the browser world, "Chrome," aims to help us get more done on the Internet with less junk in the way.

Read about Chrome's nifty features here, and download it here.

I downloaded in about 15 minutes ago and am immediately impressed. It has a very Safari look to it, which is alright, but the first neat thing I noticed was the lack of a normal Windows title bar at the top of the window - talk about getting things out of your way! I also promptly missed my Firfox extent ions, specifically mouse gestures and Focus Last Selected Tab, but Chrome imported all of my bookmarks without any problems (other than having to close Firefox to do it), and everything seems to work. Since the "awesome-bar" name was already taken by FF3's spiffy new multipurpose address bar, Google called theirs the "omni-bar" since it's the one place to type anything at the top of the screen. It seems to work very smoothly though, ever smoother than the 'Fox's.

The other big thing is where the tabs are in relation to the address bar. They're above it. Each tab has it's own address bar, bookmark buttons, etc. This may seem a little bit weird, but it really matches the way Chrome works - each tab is its own process in memory, so it doesn't have to share and when you close it, it's actually gone. This lets Chrome handle memory much better than Firefox 2 or 3. With four tabs open it appears to be consuming about 42 MB of RAM for the program itself and then 4 to 16 MB for each tab, depending on what each is doing, each in their own process. While not exactly light weight, this is certainly not bad. I will have to keep an eye on it to see how it goes after a couple hours worth of surfing.

Of course, being Google, this new browser was released in beta form, but it definitely will be taken as a shot across the bow and a direct challenge by Microsoft. Since Google's Chrome browser is written from scratch and with the open-source community in mind, I'm not sure how the other open-source browser, Firefox, will react to this development, but I think this is just what we needed to kick the browser wars up a notch.

Give it a try, lemme know what you think!

Also, check out Lifehacker's screenshot tour here.

McCain picks his running mate. His hot, smart running mate!

2008-08-29T10:24:00.002-06:00

This morning, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain gave himself a 72nd birthday present and selected first-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (say "PAY-lin") as his vice-presidential running mate. I think that was a good choice because she is a reformer, pro-small government, a solid conservative, and a former beauty queen(!) who has been a force to be reckoned with in Alaskan politics since she was elected Governer in 2006. She does lack international experience, but I think she will be a great contrast to career politician Joe Biden, Barack Obama's pick for VP.

This is going to be an interesting couple of months. Just 66 days 'til election day.

Isn't GM was loosing market share? Not in Russia!

2008-08-27T16:18:00.006-06:00

Evidently Reuters' Russian correspondent is not terribly familiar with American auto makers, that, or there has been some major restructuring going on that I somehow missed.

In the article "Russians laud size, not fuel economy at car show," published this morning at Forbes.com, Simon Shuster (apparently not the publishing house owned by Viacom- which is spelled differently anyway) seemed to claim that General Motors ("Chevy" to you normal folk) makes both the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Ford Focus.

...visitors on press day flocked to be photographed in front of GM's Jeep Grand Cherokee...

General Motors, whose fuel-efficient Ford Focus is the best selling foreign car in Russia...
[emphasis mine]

Now, they may do things a little differently over in Mother Russia, and I know they have a bad reputation for copyright, trademark, and patent violations, but I am nearly positive that Chrysler makes the Jeep Grand Cherokee and that Ford makes the Focus. I keep track of this sort of thing.

Silly Ruskies, cars are for capitalists! As is copy editing, apparently.

British Research Makes Amazing Discovery!

2008-08-20T16:23:00.004-06:00

I was completely shocked when I read this headline from the London Daily Mail: "Petite, leggy women with big busts are the most sexually attractive, study reveals." I was apparently duped by our American media and Hollywood stereotypes into believing that guys liked linebackers. Lucky for me, the study revealed the hidden truth: "that women with low 'body masculinity' - who are short with long legs and a larger bust - are highly desirable to men."

Phew, well, I'm glad that's cleared up now. Thanks, no doubt, to a government sponsored "study." At least it was British taxpayer money.

Along the same (panty) lines... the hottest thing in underwear for the upcoming fall season is "vintage underwear that pays homage to Hollywood glamour and Fifties pin-ups."

Just thought you should know.

Ernest Borgnine on Fox And Friends (OMG!)

2008-08-18T20:50:00.002-06:00

Ernest Borgnine sure does look young for being 91 years old. What's his secret?

Now, that's what I call a fountain of youth! (Eeeeew! I can't even believe that I just typed that! I need to go wash my hands now!)

This week on the web

2008-08-08T16:14:00.003-06:00

Here's a mish-mash of stuff that I accumulated over the past week that I mean to blog about, but never got the chance. I may have to start doing this every week, or at least when I think about it. It's kinda like James Taranto's Best of the Web Today on WSJ.com, but not daily, and quite a bit less clever. I may have to start doing this every week, or at least when I think about it.

Still uncomfortable with Obama and his elitist arrogance? You're probably just subtly racist. (link)

Steve Tobak explores the alternative-energy bubble on CNet news. "What, you don't believe that there's an alternative-energy bubble? Then you're just not paying attention." (link)

"With [Moqtada al] Sadr's 'retirement,' we've taken another long stride" towards a irreversable victory in Iraq. (link)

"Coffee Served Right" (wing) at the Conservative Café in Crown Point, Indiana. "Latte-swilling liberals welcome, too." (link) & (link)

"China breaks Olympic promises on rights, media, pollution" -- Are we supprised by this? (link)

Busweiser (Anheuser-Busch)'s takeover by Belgian InBev may have been motivated by European corporate taxes that are nearly half of what Anheuser-Busch payed in America. How does that happen?! (link)

"Suddenly being green is not cool any more" in Britian. (link)

Well, there ya have it. I read and posted those articles, so I think they're probably worth a little bit of your time to read. If you have some time, that is.

I'll see you at the debates, bitches

2008-08-08T08:53:00.003-06:00

Since John McCain mentioned Paris Hilton in his "racist" ad talking about Barak Obama's celebrity lifestyle, she is apparently running for office! That's so hot.

It's kinda funny, but her "energy policy" is actually pretty close the "All of the Above" plan that House republicans were pushing before the democrats decided that America's energy security was not as important as their August vacation plans.

Relax...

2008-08-06T15:10:00.002-06:00

Welcome to your relaxation time...

Let this wonderful '80s classic soothe you...

Just a nice, warm, happy time...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax (Zoolander Remix).mp3 -

Man, I love the Internet. And "Zoolander."

Scrabulous + Lawsuite = Wordscraper?

2008-08-05T09:05:00.004-06:00

Man, I miss playing Scrabulous on Facebook. Even though I really didn't play it much, and have not kept abreast of all the recent controversy, it was a fun diversion inside of a diversion (Facebook).

For the uninitiated, Scrabulous was a direct knock-off of Hasbro's game, Scrabble, that you could play with your friends on Facebook. It was literally just like Scrabble, but on the computer, which was nice. But, surprise (not really), Hasbro filed suite against the two brothers who built Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, so they responded by removing the application from Facebook.

...And setting it up on a standalone website at www.scrabulous.com where you can play against other people online, over email, or just against the computer. So Scrabulous addicts can still get their fix, just without the Facebook integration, which is really half the fun, since you could challenge your friends and play on and off whenever you happened to be checking your account without having to go to another website.

Enter Wordscraper, the Agarwalla brothers' newest attempt at Facebook "Scrabble." But in this version, the board is different, so they probably won't get sued - at least not as quickly. Users can actually change the board around to their liking for each game, even if they want to make it exactly like that other board game.

Despite some complaints, Wordscraper is still getting a 4.6 our of 5 rating (with 105 reviews) and has over 133,000 active users, as of Tuesday morning.

Hasbro's attempt on the other hand, the New York Times is reporting that "players are not universally flocking to Hasbro’s official Scrabble game," and that despite their best efforts,

Hasbro and Mattel’s official versions of Scrabble on Facebook continued to draw nearly universal boos. The Hasbro version continued to seize up on Sunday, letters were impossible to play and common words were not accepted.

So, anyone up for a game of "Wordscraper?"

Can your afford it?

2008-08-01T14:27:00.003-06:00

The saying used to go, "I can't afford to vote republican," but given Barack Obama's stated presidential goals, such as spending an additional $65 billion a year of American taxpayer money ($2,500 a year each) to "cut worldwide poverty in half," a wholly unrealistic goal in the first place, it would be much more realistic to sloganize, "I can't afford to vote Obama."

Read the IBD's series on Obama's ideas here.

I don't think they really Considered All Things

2008-07-28T09:44:00.004-06:00

From Rush's daily email last Thursday:

For two 400-pound people hurt by the economy, meat is out of reach. Didn't anyone at NPR think to leave the photo of these ladies out?

Here is the picture:

The post at Sweetness & Light has a copy of the transcript from NPR's "All Things Considered" on 17 July where they gush about how tough this family has it and how they just don't know what they're going to do now.

Just a sampling of their tribulations:

[They live in a] subsidized housing complex in Fostoria, Ohio...
Nunez, 40, has never worked and has no high school degree...
Nunez and most of her siblings and their spouses are unemployed and rely on government assistance and food stamps...
The only one with a car is Irma Hernandez, Nunez’s mother...

How did this happen, when "Her father worked at General Motors for 45 years before retiring. Her mother taught driver’s education. Nunez and her six siblings grew up middle class."?

Sounds to me like somewhere along the line, someone got lazy and decided that someone else will have to take care of them. The union took care of their father, so it looks like they decided that the government will have to take care of them (with money from you and me).

I have no sympathy here.

Cooking Impliments "Racist"

2008-07-11T11:24:00.004-06:00

Apparently, cooking equipment is now regarded as racist, too.

I just happened to stumble across this post about the phrase "the pot calling the kettle black" from Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote, which happens to dovetail very nicely with yesterday's post about blackholes' apparent racism. It's a little wordy, but it's worth it:

...not long ago I was delivering a training module on conflict resolution to the staff of a large government agency. In my talk, I included the time-honored saying, "the pot calls the kettle black." Afterward, the African American woman who was the leader of the training program (a good friend of mine, incidentally), came to me in something of a dither. "Do you realize what you said?" she asked. "That is very offensive to black people." I was taken aback. I explained to her that this little saying is from Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote, one of the most famous novels of all time, and that it is the perfect metaphor to use in discussing conflict resolution, in which a principal objective is seeing the other person's point of view. She was unmoved by my explanation, saying "I don't care where it came from, this is clearly a racist remark, and I know it offended many in our audience." I said, "Look, Linda, the saying refers to a pot and a kettle hanging on hooks over a fire. That's the way they cooked in medieval times. It means that both pot and kettle become blackened by the fire. The analogy is that when you criticize someone else while ignoring your own faults, this is like the "pot calling the kettle black." Both pot and kettle are black. Of course, she simply responded that it doesn't matter what the real meaning of the saying is, it is the perception of the audience that counts.

I'm not even sure what to say, but it does make me a quite sad that there are people out there, in our great country, that have been afforded the same opportunities and liberties as everyone else, who still choose to remain ignorant to the facts and continue to play the victim.

Change, North Korean Style

2008-07-10T16:51:00.001-06:00

Black Holes "Racist"

2008-07-10T14:25:00.003-06:00

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets went pear shaped this past Monday when county commissioner Kenneth Mayfield (who is white) described the central collections office as a "black hole" because paperwork routinely gets lost there.

The Dallas Morning News describes what happened next:

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.
Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term.

Apparently, certain black democrats in the Dallas County, Texas (namely Commissioner John Wiley Price and Judge Thomas Jones) are either totally ignorant of some basic principles of science or are unapologetic, bigoted race-baiters.

A black hole is

...a region of space that has so much mass concentrated in it that there is no way for a nearby object to escape its gravitational pull. ... Incidentally, the name 'black hole' was invented by John Archibald Wheeler, and seems to have stuck because it was much catchier than previous names. Before Wheeler came along, these objects were often referred to as 'frozen stars.'" (source).

This seems like a pretty reasonable description to apply to an office where paperwork goes in and is never seen again. And I am pretty sure that replacing the non-catchy and less correct term "frozen stars" with "black holes" was not racially motivated.

Some people's kids. Sheesh.

*Update (18 July 2008): 850 KOA radio host and Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Rosin expanded on this debacle in a column in today's paper. Mike's much funnier than I am, but he does get paid for this kind of thing. I'm glad this story got some national attention. Stupid people need to be called out into public once in a while.

New (to me) photo activity: Jowling!

2008-07-09T08:50:00.005-06:00

This is called "Jowling." I saw this on the digital Photography School blog the other day and it looked too fun not to try out. However, a self-portrait at eight in the morning, at work, with a headache, it proved much more difficult than previously indicated.

As you can see, I just end up looking like Cletus The Slack-Jawed Yokel. Not attractive.

The idea is that you relax all of the muscles in your face so everything just hangs and then shake your head back and forth as fast as you can while someone takes a picture - with a flash, of course - trying to catch the motion. I am sure this would be much easier after a drink or four to loosen up the muscles a bit.

I'm going to see if I can find a few victims, er, volunteers, tonight and we'll see what happens.

(jowlers.com via dps)

Hehe... What will Obama say next?

2008-07-07T11:56:00.002-06:00

I probably shouldn't laugh at things like this, but when Mr Obama does an about-face on one of his cornerstone issues, it is kind of humorous.

...Obama stands poised to adopt the three major elements of the Bush-administration foreign policy — staying the course in Iraq, endorsing the doctrine of preventative war and the strategic expansion of executive power to fight the war on terror.

Apparently all is not so well in Obamanation.

Hawaiian Shirt Day

2008-07-02T10:57:00.003-06:00

Tomorrow, in honor of Independence Day, a.k.a., the 4th of July, my office is bumping up our normal weekly ritual of Hawaiian shirt / "Fish shirt" / casual Friday, and I just thought that this clip from Office Space was all too appropriate.

lol

Single Payer Healthcare, eh?

2008-07-01T16:48:00.002-06:00

Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.

The Canadian government pays for U.S. medical care in some circumstances, but it declined to do so in de Vires' case for a bureaucratically perfect, but inhumane, reason: She hadn't properly filled out a form. At death's door, de Vires should have done her paperwork better.

Sound like a good situation to you? It sure doesn't to me, but if it does, make sure you vote Obama this November. (haha)

Claude Castonguay, "the father of Quebec medicare," and consequently, the entire Canadian single payer healthcare system, now advocates giving a greater role to the long-shunned private sector. "We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay.

Apparently, they were wrong. But don't tell liberal legislators and lobiests in the States that -- don't even try to break the delision that Big Government can fix everything for everyone, even when it has been demonstrated (in Canada and elsewhere) that it cannot.

Twenty-six?

2008-06-24T07:24:00.001-06:00

I'm now closer to 30 than 20... wtf?!

Oh well, that means a party! Yay! Or at least beer... yay!

First day of summer... sigh

2008-06-20T15:48:00.005-06:00

Today (20 June) is the official first day of summer -- the longest day of the year. Well, the day with the most daylight hours, at least. Today (and tomorrow) the sun rose at 5:30 and won't set until 8:35, giving those of us at 40.58° Latitude 15 hours and 5 minutes of official daylight (16:12 if you count twilight).

I love the long days and short nights that summer brings. For those of us who work from early til (relatively) late, it's sooo nice to have a few hours of sunlight after you finally get home from work. It just makes everything seem so much better. Not going to work in the dark is nice, too.

But since today is the solstice - the "point at which the sun seems to stand still," [Middle English, from Old French, from Latin sōlstitium : sōl, sun; see sāwel- in Indo-European roots + -stitium, a stoppage; see stā- in Indo-European roots.] - it also means that ever day for the next six months will be shorter than the last, and frankly, I find that really depressing. I spend all winter and spring wishing that the sun was up for longer, and when it finally gets here, it slips away so fast.

Sigh... Happy summer.

Get Firefox 3 Today!

2008-06-17T12:44:00.004-06:00

Four short years after Firefox 1.0 started to "reclaim the web," Firefox 3.0 has arrived! So help set a Guinness World Record (for most software downloads in a 24-hour period) and get Firefox 3 today here. (Or, the direct download link here.)

I've been using the release candidates for over a month now, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone to use.

Do it! All the cool kids are! ;)

Whoops, didn't see that coming!

2008-06-12T08:23:00.004-06:00

I'm not real big on over-regulation and bureaucracy, especially when said regulation is rooted in pragmatism and short-term appeasement of some advocacy group's gripe. That's why I was pleased when I came across this interesting and well written column from the Freakonomics blog back in January examining the unintended negative consequences of several well intentioned laws.

Here are a couple of gems:

"...when the A.D.A. was enacted in 1992, it led to a sharp drop in the employment of disabled workers."

and

"...economists make the argument for 'the distinct possibility that the Endangered Species Act is actually endangering, rather than protecting, species.'"

I recommend you read the column. It's pretty short and doesn't really assign any blame, it just explores a little bit.

My Theory Proven: Liberals DO Whine More!

2008-06-11T09:20:00.005-06:00

From a recent column at the National Review Online...

A wide body of research shows that modern liberals are much more likely to complain about things in their lives. Conservatives are more content with their lives. When asked “How satisfied are you with life these days? Sixty-six percent of conservatives said “very satisfied” compared with only 46 percent of liberals. Conservatives are more likely to say they love their jobs (53 percent vs. 41 percent) and even enjoy their hobbies more (63 percent vs. 51 percent). When asked by the Social Capital Survey whether they were satisfied with their income, liberals were more than three times as likely to say “not at all satisfied” — even when they earned the same as conservatives.

When it comes to something like housework, Democrats are much more likely to complain that the division of work in their home “is unfair to me” than Republicans. In fact, they are five times as likely to whine about it. Another study in The Journal of Applied Psychology found that feminist women do less housework than traditional women — but complain more about it.

Hahaha... the truth comes out!

(Thought I needed something a little less, charged than yesturday's post.)

The Audacity of the Democrats - American Thinker

2008-06-10T15:12:00.002-06:00

The Democratic Party has devolved into a club for the illegitimately aggrieved, the self-absorbed, the self-hating and the perpetually pissed-off. It is a sanctuary where solipsistic malcontents and their disjointed causes find refuge and support. It has long ceased being an earnest gathering of broad minds where man's timeless problems are examined against the backdrop of the Constitution and solutions to them proposed based on the actual realities of the human condition. It is now the political province of the intellectually deceased...

So what does all of that have to do with the propulsion of Barack Obama to within a whisker of the Presidency? Everything.

Read this good, long, column in last Saturday's American Thinker where Rocco DiPippo details how it is even possible that such an unqualified leftist could be thrust to the top of the democrat party and the long chain of events leading up to this election season.

In a very large nutshell, here is now Mr DiPippo summarizes the "mechanics of the crude, hate-based initiative the Democratic Party and its media wing have forced on America since 2001:"

1) Invent, inflate, and over-report bad war news. Tie all bad news to Bush and/or Republicans. At the same time, ignore or downplay good news as it relates to Bush, the Republicans or the war(s).

2) Create the illusion of widespread, honest dissent to Bush policies by giving plenty of airtime to leftwing groups and individuals historically antagonistic toward the projection of US, and only US, power. Fail to report the true agendas of those groups -- when covering antiwar, anti-Bush protests and events, make sure to meticulously portray antiwar marches as spontaneous gatherings of mainstream, mom and pop Americans.

3) Downplay, ignore and disparage American success wherever you find it.

4) Exalt in, sympathize with and mythologize America's enemies, vilify and deconstruct its protectors.

5) Downplay America's generosity and righteousness. Recast a mission that includes saving a nation from a murdering brute and his rapist, sociopath sons as a brutal occupation in the pursuit of American Empire.

6) Fill the Nation's airwaves, from sea to shining sea, with questionable and sometimes outright false tales of Bush-related misery, butchery, fraud and waste.

7) Foment as much national anxiety and hatred of the Republican leader as money and can buy. George Soros and other moneyed leftists will fund you. Give airtime and print coverage to leftist radicals and Democrats who call Bush a war criminal. Present those radicals and their crazy plans to try President Bush and Vice President Cheney for "war crimes" as worthy of consideration.

8) Provide coverage to leftwing intellectuals and scientists making anti-Bush statements. Present them as legitimate, non-partisan experts in their fields. Publicize their specious, politicized findings, present those findings as non-partisan, accurate and objective.

9) Present major news coverage of every antiwar protest you can find, whether it draws 100 people or 10,000 people, ignore all pro-US, pro-Iraq War, pro-troop rallies completely or portray their attendees as violence-prone, fringe-lunatic jingoists.

10) Blame a hurricane's aftermath on Bush. Give news coverage to racists and Democrat crackpots who say Bush and Cheney actually caused the hurricane and blew up levees to kill African Americans. Keep that Bush-hate buzz alive at all costs.

11) Give airtime and print coverage to groups and individuals accusing George W. Bush of having engineered and directed the 911 attacks. Remember, it is not the credibility of accusations that count in shaping public opinion now, but the seriousness and sheer volume of accusations that do.

12) To sow further strife, anxiety and confusion, continue stoking the fires of racial tension and class warfare.

13) Once the onslaught of lies, moral relativisms and crazy notions have created a self-sustaining, luciferous, widespread unhappiness and confusion, dangle a fat bait of silence and tranquility -- of Hope, Change and Progress -- crowning your deceptive achievement by hooking the same fish you made hungry.

And this, my friends, is how the Leftists and the dominant liberal media believe that they will get their messiah, Barack Obama, into the White House -- with a shimmery glint of their brand of socialist, defeatist "hope."

Relative Risks of Alternative Actions

2008-06-09T11:02:00.001-06:00

more graph humor and song chart memes

Geohashing - 2008-06-07, Denver graticule

2008-06-06T08:07:00.003-06:00

Tomorrow's Geohashing location falls in a pretty convenient place for those of us in the Fort Collins / Loveland area -- just across the street from the Larimer County recycling center and landfill! (Click on the title link to see exactly where it is.)

I'm not sure which is lamer: not going there at 4:00 Saturday afternoon because I might still be downtown for my dance gig; or not hanging out downtown at 4:00 Saturday because I wanna go see if anyone else will be at the Geohashing meetup place.

Hmm... what a dilemma! If I do go, I'll take a picture.

Move info on the Denver graticule here.

Economics, Beer, and a New Sexual Identity

2008-06-02T16:47:00.005-06:00

Just a short roundup of what I thought was cool today on the Internets:

**Battle of the Sexes: Dr Lott examines why our government has gotten so big.

"What changed [regarding expansion of the federal gov't] before Roosevelt [and the 'new deal'] came to power that explains the growth of government? The answer is women's suffrage."

**NY Times names my favorite beer, their favorite beer!

"Still, our No. 1 bitter was an American brew, the beautifully mellow Sawtooth Ale from Left Hand, which I felt was a dead ringer for a British bitter right down to the gentle carbonation."

**The Daily Mail knows what women want: a "Retrosexual" man.

"Gone is the metrosexual man, now women have been demanding the return of the real men, like Indiana Jones."

Enjoy!

Geohashing

2008-05-23T14:12:00.002-06:00

Okay, so some people have probably heard of Geocaching - where GPS nerds get a set of coordinates off the Internet and go find it / them and make a little game out of it. But I doubt anyone has heard of Geohashing yet, since I think it was invented earlier this week when the folks at the totally nerdy web comic XKCD posted this comic:
Essentially, the date is combined with the Dow Jones Industrial Average's opening value, put through an md5 hash algorithm, split into two numbers, converted from hexadecimal to decimal, and then added to the end of any set of whole number (no decimals) latitude and longitude coordinates.

Still with me? Okay, good. Since I am going to Grand Junction this weekend, I put Saturday's date (2008-05-24) into the map lookup and click on Grand Junction. The results of the hash must have been 0.126648 and 0.547534, which, when added to the nearest latitude and longitude of N39 and W108 result in the coordinate location 39.126648°, -108.547534° or N39°7'35.93", W108°32'51.11", which turns out to be about one-half a mile north of H Road on 27-1/4 Road, just West of the airport, Walker Field. Seems like it should be pretty easy to get to.

Here is the group participation part of this extremely nerdy game: there is a "meeting" every Saturday at 4:00 p.m. at the randomly determined location in each graticule (area within the integer lat, lon lines) where, if anyone shows up, you have a little party. Or something. Apparently, Denver has a relatively active Graticule (four, actually, but you can read about that here), so you might actually see someone there. GJ, on the other hand, does not, so its gonna be lonely if I actually make it there on Saturday at 4 o'clock.

Not sure if this little concept has any staying power once the novelty wears off, but if you just need a random place to meet someone within a certain geographic area, it should work pretty well, as long as the place is accessible, that is. Since, by the very nature of this thing, it is random, the coordinates might end up in a lake, the ocean, military base, cliff, inaccessible mountain, etc. If that happens, I suppose you can either wait for a better location or just put in another date and see what happens.

Sorry, that was too nerdy not to share! Check it out!

The Obama Gaffe Machine

2008-05-22T07:51:00.005-06:00

We've all heard democrat messiah and soon-to-be presidential candidate Barack Obama misspeak a time or two, and to be fair, we all have a slip of the tongue from time to time, but Michelle Malkin has a good piece in the National Review Online highlighting just a few of his more agregious recent blunders.

I think this one is my favorite:

Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.

This guy is a joke, right? He is an empty suit with no experience or even any common sense, yet somehow a good portion of my fellow countrymen (and women), worship the ground this bozo walks on! It will be a sad day for America if Obama is ever actually elected president.

Dale Carnegie On Talking To The Boss

2008-05-09T07:27:00.003-06:00

"If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive."
--Dale Carnegie

At some point in our life we find ourselves dealing with people that we just can't win with. It makes it worse when the person we want to persuade is our boss. It is frustrating when we know we have good ideas but no one cares to listen. Here are a few recommendations on approaching people who are not as open-minded as we would want them to be:

Begin in a friendly way. Start a conversation with your boss and than see if it might be a good time to talk to him/her about your ideas. Begin the conversation with "small talk." Try to focus on topics your boss would be interested in. This way your boss does not only think of you as an employee but as someone with whom he/she might have a short and fun conversation with on occasions.

Know your boss. If you have previously tried putting your ideas before him/her than you should have an idea about what they're going to say next. Work on that and reflect. Anticipate responses and have an idea of what you're going to say. Remember to stay professional and don't let your emotions get in the way.

Don't criticize. If the assignment that you were given was your boss' idea, he or she might take it the wrong way when you try to change it. Make sure when you come up with a better alternative to the task you still give credit to your boss. For example, "your assignment had inspired me to take on a greater task".

Put yourself in his/her shoes. Why would you as a boss even consider this idea? Is this something that would be beneficial to you, the boss? Even if the idea is not directly connected to your boss there is always something he/she would benefit from. Don't forget to specify that.

Stay professional. If you going to build a relationship with your boss keep it steady otherwise it will become very obvious that you only converse with them when you need something.

Source:
Dale Carnegie Course
12 Weeks, 3.5 hrs per week &
Carnegie Immersion Seminar
3 Eight Hour Days

I wonder if Carbon Credits

2008-04-28T15:21:00.002-06:00

...are printed on unbleached, 100% recycled paper using only soy based inks on printers that are Energy Star certified and run on solar power?

Doubt it.

Making money at the gym

2008-04-24T15:08:00.005-06:00

A little over a month ago I decided it was finally time to "get in shape," so I joined the gym / fitness center / health club that is about a mile down the road from my office. The plan was to go during lunches three days a week, and, so far, that has worked pretty well. I have been consistent for over five weeks now! Although I have not noticed much of a difference in my appearance, I think that I am getting a little bit stronger, and I even started running on the treadmill a little (makes me kinda proud, even three or four years after my knee surgery).

This gym, which is pretty state-of-the-art, but does not have a website, has been open for about a year now, yet is still partially under construction and has not had it's "official" grand opening. What this means for me is that they are still charging their pre-grand-opening prices. Combine that with the corporate discount that I get since about half of my office are members there, whether they actually go or not, and it's a pretty sweet deal. Twenty-five bucks a month plus a $50 "processing fee" (they are careful not to call it an initiation fee) is about the best thing going.

To sweeten the deal even further, my company's health insurance provider offers discounts off our premiums for "healthy lifestyle" choices - one of which is joining a gym! The discount only works out to $4.50 a week, but since there are 4.33 weeks in a month, that saves me $19.50 every month off of my health insurance premium, making the real cost of my monthly gym membership only $5.50, if you don't include the processing fee (and only $1 more if you do).

Combine all of that with the fact that, since I go work out during my lunch hour, I don't have time to go out to eat on those days and am therefore forced (or at least encouraged) to bring my lunch to work, saving me even more money!

So really, by joining and going to the gym, I am somehow making a net profit on the decision.

Sweet.

=============

This video or Arnold in his earlier days is probably not safe for work or children, but I'm still totally entertained by it.

What Can Brown Do...

2008-04-23T08:26:00.005-06:00

...for your waist line?

Mmm... breakfast.

(There's a good chance I'm going to die at 30.)

Psychologically Manipulating the Beeb

2008-04-10T15:58:00.003-06:00

Wow, if I knew it was this easy to manipulate a major news organization into changing a story to better fit your agenda, I would have started doing this years ago! (Read the linked article at American Thinker.)

If it only takes a few well placed forum postings, idle threats, and insults of intelligence to change this:

Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007... This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts have also forecast a record high temperature within five years, probably associated with another episode of El Nino.

into this:

Global temperatures for 2008 will be slightly cooler than last year as a result of the cold La Nina current in the Pacific... But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases.

then I've been going about things all wrong! Who needs logic, critical thinking, and evidence?!

And really, is "way above average" even good writing for a "journalist"?

I'd tap it...

2008-04-09T14:32:00.001-06:00

So. Not. Right.

Gmail Custom Time

2008-04-01T07:47:00.005-06:00

Google always has to be on the bleeding edge of innovation. Today they introduced a new feature that is sure to be the envy of all of the other geeky email services: Gmail Custom Time.

Now you can send email from the past, (not before 01 April 2004, though) and have it show up in the correct order in the recipient's inbox!

They must be rolling it out slowly though, like they have done with other new features, because I still don't have the "custom time" option in my compose window. Oh well, I can wait - because when I get it, I can always send an email from the past as if it were already there!

April Fools! That's totally not possible.

Yay, that was a good one, Google.

**Update: More Google April Foolery - Project Virgle! A colony on Mars.

Proof that people can't drive

2008-03-21T10:16:00.002-06:00

Finally, here it is: Laboratory proof that people can't drive.

Japanese scientists recently tried to replicate "shock-wave" traffic jams in a laboratory setting and succeeded.

These types of traffic jams are the ones that seem to occur for no apparent reason. You'll be driving along, minding your own business, and all of a sudden there's massive gridlock. And by the time you get up to where you think there should be an accident or a gigantic sinkhole in the road, there is nothing at all.

Watch the video to see it happen before your eyes. This must be what the helicopter traffic people feel like!

Via Autoblog via New Scientist

Barack is the company he keeps

2008-03-14T10:05:00.004-06:00

(Video is a little NSFW)

Barack Obama's mentor, Jeremiah Wright of Trinity UCC (United Church of Christ) preaching on the notion of a black Jesus being oppressed by white people and his tirade against Hillary Clinton stating that, "Hillary ain't never been called a...."

What a racist piece of trash.

If "Jesus taught" Jeremiah Wright "to love [his] neighbor" so much that he would never be "reduced to their level" of hatred, ignorance, bigotry, etc, uh, wuddaya call that, Rev? And this guys is Barack Hussein Obama's "spiritual mentor". Rev Wright and Obama's America-hating wife, Michelle, don't bode well for the concept of the 'open minded,' 'caring,' 'hopeful' liberal that he is trying to portray. This paints a picture of a resentful, entitled, bigoted man with delusions of grandeur and misplaced priorities for a presidential hopeful, completely unable and undeserving to be our next president.

Back in January, Newsmax.com had a very interesting article about Barack Obama's Racist Church, the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Apparently,

...its pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. subscribes to what is called the Black Value System.
While the Black Value System includes such items as commitment to God, education, and self-discipline, it refers to “our racist competitive society” and includes the disavowal of the pursuit of “middle-classness” and a pledge of allegiance to “all black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System.” It defines “middle-classness” as a way for American society to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off directly” or “placing them in concentration camps,” just as the country structures “an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.”
In sermons and interviews, Dr. Wright has equated Zionism with racism and Israel with South Africa under its previous policy of apartheid. On the Sunday after 9/11, Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later, Wright suggested that the attacks were retribution for America’s racism.
“In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01,”...

Obama has tried to distance himself from his mentor's most radical stands, but as the column goes on to say,

...if Obama rejects Wright’s warped view of this country, why does he continue to attend his church, raising the question of whether Obama secretly agrees with his friend and mentor? At the least, Obama’s membership in Wright’s church suggests a lack of judgment and an insensitivity to views that are repugnant to the vast majority of white Americans who are not bigots.

I suppose you can decide for yourselves whether Obama and his comrades are fit to run the most powerful country in the world. That is, unless the "Clinton Machine" gets to him first. But they, and the McCain Camp, are probably too worried about being called racist to call him out on any of this.

Not Creatures of Logic

2008-03-13T07:18:00.006-06:00

"When we are dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bursting with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity."
--Dale Carnegie

I think that this is on reason why I have such a hard time with some people and some people's decisions. I find it even more frustrating when some of my own decisions come down to this highly illogical concept. Decisions and actions, which, at the time sound good, often end up being unreasonable and sometimes contradictory to one's own big-picture.

But most people just are not motivated by logic, at least in the short term. That is why courses like the Dale Carnegie training teach managers to try to find what inspires people to do their best work without dictating too much intangible logic. Everyone's drive is different, but we all have similarities; this is what can be leverage to get the best out of people.

Don't dictate -- inspire
Don't direct -- win people to your way of thinking
Begin with praise and honest appreciation
Build morale and earn loyalty
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to

(I love some of the quaint language that they use. "A fine reputation." Uh huh, and remind them that Herbert Hoover is no longer President.)

But really, when you think about it, how do you want to be told to do something that you would rather not do? You probably don't just want it to be shouted at you by someone you don't like with no reasoning to back it up. That is not going to inspire anyone to do a good job on any task that isn't completely menial.

Now if I could just remember to use some of my Carnegie skills at work, we'd be in good shape!

Bringing OCD to the Desktop

2008-03-05T15:38:00.005-07:00

So, maybe I need to sit in front of the computer less. Maybe I should geek out a little less. Or maybe I just need to not worry about exactly how much processor time and RAM my computer is using this very second. Or maybe I need a prescription.

In any event, if you, like me, need to know precisely what your computer is doing at all times, let me be your guide.

First, you'll want to download Sysinternals' Process Explorer to replace the lousy Windows Task Manager that doesn't really tell you much. It's currently in version 11.11, so it looks like I'd better upgrade! Download the .exe and plunk it down in your c:\windows\system32 folder. Ctrl-Shift-Escape to launch it, then click on View and Select Columns. Then in the Process Memory tab, check Working Set Size and hit OK. Mess around with it a little. It's pretty spiffy, and now you're just a key combo away from knowing what's running, killing stubborn processes, and restarting the ones that actually need to be there.

Secondly, since you may actually need to get something done, and that involves not watching the Process Explorer non stop, you'll want to download Serious Samurize so you can embed some of that info (and tons more) right on your desktop.
All my configuration currently does is display the date, processor and memory use, and the current Winamp track in a little box in the lower right corner of my screen. Now I don't even have to open Process Explorer to constantly glance at my computer's resource use. (Which seams unreasonably high, but that's just another thing for me to fret about!)

I was going to try to include the configuration file so you could be exactly as cool as me, but I can't figure out how to host anything other than pictures and videos here.

Anyways, that's my little obsessive compulsive computing tip for today. Do with it what you will, but if you find yourself constantly looking at how much processor it takes just to open a new tab in Firefox, don't say I didn't warn you!

William F. Buckley Jr., Rest In Peace

2008-02-27T11:57:00.004-07:00

William F. Buckley Jr. was the founder of conservative magazine "National Review" and one of the earliest and most influential personalities in the modern American conservative movement. He died Wednesday 27 February, 2008 at his home.

His magazine's editors remember their founder and inspiration here, and a National Review columnist remembers him as a true gentleman here. More remembrances have been posted even since I started writing this post. The Wall Street Journal reports his death here.

Even though I do not agree with all of Mr Buckley's opinions, he was one of my favorite columnists. He always had such a way with words that it was hard not to at least see precisely what he was saying. He will be truly missed, but his movement will rumble ever forward in his memory.