Damon's Daemon - OfficeCam

Happy Leap Day everyone!

The annual KVSC 50-hour marathon trivia contest is finally done, I can rest now. We took 5th, which was a bit of a disappointment, but we played the game the best we could with the resources we had.

Since Christmas, most of my free time has been devoted to getting ready for the contest for various reasons. This year saw a large jump in the IT needs of The Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, but I managed to rise to the challenge and delivered a solid performance as the IT department for our team. I can’t really elaborate here for strategic reasons as to what all the preparations involved, but the end result was, in the words of one of my team members, the lowest level of stress she’s ever encountered during the 50-hour contest. Everything performed reliably, and other than we could have used even more bandwidth than we already had provisioned, everyone local and remote was happy and had a great contest.

It feels weird sitting at home after my normal workday with little, if anything, pressing to do. ‘course, there is only 250 or so days until we start the preparations all over again. I can’t wait.

I’ve been really lame. I haven’t been updating this at all. Although life has been kinda run-of-the-mill, there are plenty of things I should have written about but didn’t. So, to catch things up…

• Ended up going to the Minnesota State Fair a total of 7 times
• Had a wonderful day at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival
• Enjoyed a 10-day vacation to Disney World
• Took a weekend trip up to the North Shore
• Celebrated the birth of my coworker’s son, Devon
• Went to Sever’s Corn Maze
• Spent a bunch of weekends (and weeknights) working on my sister and brother-in-law’s new tile floor (all 500 sq. ft. of it)
• Had a wonderful, bountiful Thanksgiving
• Started learning a new programming language that I’m falling in love with, Ruby on Rails

All that, and our first “real” snowfall happened about a week ago, so everything is all nice and white.

Otherwise, I’ve been working too much, projects are piling up, what’s new there, eh? Soon Christmas will be here, then New Year, then the KVSC 50-Hour Trivia Contest. Maybe I’ll take the time to drop an update here about those? We can all wish, can’t we?

I escaped work around 1:30, and off to the fair I went.

Sure, I knew it was raining, but it was the first day of the fair! Not to mention, Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband was performing at the Leinie Lodge, the free stage across from the Food Building. And the Pronto Pups were calling my name. And the Bull Bites.

I’ve been to the Minnesota State Fair every year of my adult life, most of the time more than once in a single year. This year is no different - I’ve already planned 6 days of visits…starting on opening day, today. Sure, there are the days when I’ll be playing the dual role of tour guide/navigator, or Monday night when I’ll be heading down to attend the Weird Al concert, but then again there’s also my visit today, which will be completely unattached and unencumbered by schedules. Just time for me to do all the people-watchin, pronto-pup-eatin, commercial exhibit display-viewin that I cherish so much.

If you’re gonna be down there, drop me a line, maybe we can meet up and compare notes on the new foods…I sure hope the Sloppy Joe-on-a-stick is better than that gross Spaghetti-on-a-stick I was so unfortunate to have tasted a few years back.

And if you’re not planning to go…well, you’re missin’ out. Don’t take it from me, take it from Bonny Wolf, commentator for NPR, who flies in from Washington state every year to partake in the Minnesota State Fair.

I’m a digital (as well as physical) packrat. I have all my emails going back to 1994, most of the documents I’ve created in that time (as many as allowed by my previous employers) and a whole collection of IMs. The text messaging on my phone has always been a missing bit of data - until now there’s been no good way to get it off of my phone.

As details have emerged on the iPhone’s internal data structures, I realized that there might be a chance to extract those text messages and archive them offline. Also looks like voicemails can be archived in a similar fashion. I’m almost ready to share the utility with the world, but until then I thought I’d share my iPhone database structure notes. For those geeks interested in such matters, click through to the extended entry. (Thanks to Erica Sadun for porting sqlite3 to the iPhone - made this whole thing much easier)

To anybody wondering, looks like everyone in the immediate circle of friends and family were safe from the bridge collapse. I almost said unaffected just now, only to realize there’s no one in the twin cities tonight that is unaffected by tonight tragedy. We’ve all driven over that bridge plenty of times, walked and biked under it many times, too. It could have been any of us.

To those that lost someone they care about tonight, my thoughts go out to you and your loved ones.

All I can say is, it really does work. The virtual keyboard. The full-page rich web browser. The pinching UI fingertip motion. The double-tapping to zoom in/out. The new iPod interface. (With built-in speakers…finally I don’t need to share my earbuds!) Mail viewing. Everything the hype said it would do, it does flawlessly.

Two let-downs so far? For some reason, if you overzoom the Google Maps application in satellite view, it responds by filling your screen with “No Images” messages. Second? Lack of mail rules, but I should have been doing those server-side this whole time anyway, so I setup procmail this morning and I’m good to go. So, in replacment of mail rules, I’d nominate the lack of wide-screen mail viewing. For fixed-width 80-column mail messages, such as system reports, the portrait mode just doesn’t cut it.

I finally got out of work today around 3:45. The past two weeks have been 12-18 hour days, it was good to escape…especially because I had succumbed to the hype and decided to treat myself to the a new geek toy. The iPhone was to be mine.

The long story is included below. The short story is I got one, activation went flawlessly, my existing number has been ported and I love it! Indeed, I’m writing this post from my iPhone while sitting on the couch.

On the way back from lunch on Tuesday, I forced my coworkers to sit in the car while I filled up with gas, so I didn’t have to do it after work. What did I find on the pump?

So, do they need proofreaders, or do they just need someone with half a brain who cares enough to check the stickers before they are placed upon every single pump? You’d think with today’s gas prices, they’d have enough profit margin to double-check these things before putting them up for everyone to see.

What happened to me today?

My coworkers and I went to Joe Senser’s for lunch today. I hadn’t been there for years…the inside looks completely different than it did the last time I visited. They also seemed to have added NTN since the last time I was there. Rock on, just what I wanted over lunch, a trivia quickie!

I asked for a Playmaker, thinking I’d just play a little in the background while chitchatting with coworkers over our meal. Low and behold, the first full game I played, I ranked 21st in the entire network. Sadly, they only show the top 20 on the big screen, but I took first at our location. I was still pleased…I’ve never placed so high in the network standings before.

What happened on the next full round? I ranked 5th in the entire network. I only missed 544 points the entire round. My name (SRLOIN) was up on the big screen. I expected balloons to fall down from the rafters, noisemakers rattling, bells sounding, but all I got was the congrats from my coworkers.

I tried to get a picture of my sunburn, but the camera refused to take the picture. It couldn’t handle opening up its shutter, the red glow was just too bright. *smirk*

Truth be told, the sunburn on my legs was quite impressive. The horizontal position really gave them quite a bit more sun than the upright bicycle’s vertical position (who would have guessed?) and I’m paying the result even today.

Liberal applications of aloe gel didn’t help, neither did the milk treatment. Other than draping cold packs over my thighs and knees, the only real relief has been a good thick spray of Solarcaine every few hours. I try and time it when I know my shorts will be rubbing against the top of the sunburn, as the exposed section on the top of my knee on my lower thigh seems to have gotten hit the worst.

I got a bit of sun on my face as well (I sweat too much for anything to be really effective there) but the pain there has been manageable, and it seems that it is already starting to peel.

Sleepless nights, waking up every time I roll over onto a sunburned side-of-leg, and painful days, cringing every time I stand up from my desk and feel my shorts scrap the sunburn, are nothing compared with the success I feel from finishing the 62-mile Ironman Bike Ride again. It is all worthwhile.

Now, ask me when it gets all itchy and peeling…well…

The weather forecast was promising. Sunny, high around 80. Compared to the last two years (2005, 2006) of the Ironman Bike Ride this year was going to be a piece of cake. I had spent many weeks preparing my new trike for the ride, sometimes to the detriment of my own training, but I felt comfortable that if I just took it easy, I could overcome the metric century (~62-mile course).

The short story is, I did it. Although the weather was much better this year, I was riding a bike that weighed twice as much as my previous ride. Here’s the overview of my ride over at MotionBased as my GPS saw it. You can read more details after the break…

Life has been good since I got my Sun EZ Tadpole. ‘course, most nights have been spent working on said bike, but I have to admit I’ve been learning a lot. Spent so much time staring at the bike I had to give it a name…Pollywog would be her official name, but everyone know she’s Polly for short. Fitting for a tadpole bike, dontcha think?

A week with the new trike. I have to say, it has been a blast. Almost like learning to ride again. Different muscles, different techniques, different habits. 17 miles doesn’t seem like a lot (my total according to MotionBased), but I’ve spent more time working on the trike than riding it in this first week.

Team Boobylicious is TwoDolla’s Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk team. This will be her third year, each year I’ve supported her with monetary donations and buying cookies from their Christmas cookie fundraiser (better than Girl Scout cookies!).

This year they picked up on a fashionable trend and decided to hold a Bar Trivia fundraiser. I sent out emails, pulled together a team and we made the trip down to Hubert’s Bar and Grill. My sister, brother-in-law, his parents (visiting from Austrailia) and Kelly combined to create the team, “No, You’re a Boob”. First place was 49 points, we managed to pull in 44, not quite sure where that put us. Still, it was a blast, and evidently only the first “Trivia for Boobies” night…it was such a success, on May 1st Team Boobylicious will have a Bar Trivia night at the most appropriate place in town… Hooters. Be there, or be square!

I made the trek down to Madison (275 miles each way) on Saturday to pick up my trike. This brings a journey to an end. For my 30th birthday (last June), my parents gave me a large sum of money to buy a new bike. I put it in savings, contemplating my options.

I thought about getting an upgraded upright road bike, ‘cept it appeared that with my weight most of the “upgraded” bikes weren’t suitable. Next, I entertained going to a 2-wheel recumbent. No matter what equipment I used, riding my upright was a big pain in the butt, both literally and figuratively. 300 pounds pressing down onto a tiny little seat…you don’t need an engineering degree to figure out how poorly that works out. Recumbents provide a full, comfortable seat, complete with back support and a big padded seat. The 2-wheel models vary in size and shape, but they all provide a much more aerodynamic riding position with a much more comfortable seat. More than likely, I’ll still end up getting a 2-wheel recumbent here in the near future, but I took a test ride on a trike a few weeks ago and immediately fell in love. The only way I can describe the ride…it doesn’t feel like a bike at all. Instead, the ride is much more similar to a go-kart, albeit human-powered. You corner like you’re on rails, no leaning over, simply steer and you turn. Add to a go-kart independent braking for each side as well, adding another method of controlling a turn.

• Minnesota RollerGirls bout Friday night (followed by Grand Ole Creamery ice cream, no doubt!)
• Get my new (to me, at least) recumbent tricycle down in Madison on Saturday
• Brave New Workshop show on Saturday night
• Sunday: Rest, watch the snow change to rain and wash everything away

Considering all the other distractions as of late, I was originally going to take tonight off of pub trivia down at Leaning Tower of Pizza. My sis and bro-in-law are busy getting ready for his parents’ visit, I’ve got a bunch of work I could be doing and need to plan my trip down to pick up my new bike this weekend. However, when Kate told me that Dean already was down there, had saved us a table, I decided I should push myself to go out.

Yeah, we placed 7th this week, a very poooooor showing. (If you were a big American Gladiators fan, you would have received 8 big points in the picture round by identifying your favorite gladiators by their mug shots…I managed to score two of the names, but we assigned them to the wrong players) The fun? Our favorite trivia reader sat down and played the game with us this evening. What a blast having him on our side for once! Usually we just heckle him (our team name is always a play on his name) and give him grief…tonight we could just relax and socialize a little between questions.

Even more fun? After the game, we ended up closing the place, talking for hours and hours. Everything from how electricians can diagnose problems using such clues as the way electricity smells to stories upon stories about what acid trips are like and how ‘shrooms can be prepared and used most effectively. Also in the preparation category, feel free to use an empty toilet paper roll to cook your egg rolls in the microwave. And, most importantly, just how humorous people can be when engaged in any of the previously listed activities. I actually got a side ache from laughing so hard. (Evidently, I could likely look forward to the same side-ache effect if I were ever to partake in ‘shrooms, from what I’ve gathered tonight)

According to my MotionBased account history, I haven’t gone for a ride on my bike since August 8th, 2006. I got caught up in moving to the new pad, and before I knew it winter was upon us and the bike was put away. Work and a number of other things got in the way, too, but knowing how much I miss it I’ve determined that I’m going to try and get back into decent condition so I can attempt again the 62-mile, if not the 100-mile Ironman Bike Ride this year. I’ve got my work cut out for me, tho, based on my quick ride today. Today, about the same time as last year, I begin my path to Ironman…albeit with more of a whimper than a bang, as I just rode to/from work, but it was a start!

Whenever I find myself visiting my local Apple Store, I just can’t resist those wonderful kids stations. (Assuming there are no kids there…I’m not gonna chase them away, but if a station is free, why not play?)

Most of the time when I sit down at one of those stations there is already some game already loaded up. A few months ago I was lucky enough to stumble across Cosmic Blobs. Imagine virtual Play-Doh, ‘cept you’ve got an unlimited supply of every color imaginable, it doesn’t bleed together if you don’t want it to and your hands never get that weird Play-Doh smell.

I broke down this weekend and picked up a copy. After I finished work late tonight, I wanted to relax a little, finally got around to playing around with it…already I’ve created a cool spaceship, matching moon and used the animation functions within the program to make my own movie! All in under an hour. Neat-o!

Click on the images below for closeups and the movie

My Grandpa had surgery today to install a defibrillator.

Prior to surgery, he shared with me a pamphlet that explained the procedure, what to expect, etc. We shared with each other our amazement of modern medical science, how they had created a device like this that could be implanted and hardly noticed. After the procedure, the pamphlet explained there would be an overnight stay, that he would be sore and tired after the procedure.

I head over to the hospital after work today, walk into the “Care Center” section (post-op recovery) expecting to find my Grandpa laying in his hospital bed. Instead, I find my Grandpa sitting up on the edge of the bed, chowin’ down on some great-smelling food, alive, awake, alert, discussing politics with my Sister and Brother-in-law. Four hours after surgery, he’s bouncing around as tho he was ready to go on one of his daily 2-mile walks around the mall.

He’s not only alive upstairs, as I’ve mentioned before, again and again, but his awake, alive mind evidently leads to a very healthy body as well. Or maybe it is the other way around. (He does walk 2 miles everyday) Either way, having my Grandpa around is a great inspiration to live life.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have mad ninja skills. Besides my mad ninja programming skills, I also am a master of disguise; an expert at keeping a calm, yet alert mind; and I make a mean lasagna. (You had no idea lasagna was so core to the ninja lifestyle, did you?)

I can now add one more highlight of my ninja skills. My ophthalmologist informed me this morning that I sleep with my eyes open. Now, what types of people are referred to as “sleeping with their eyes open?” Trained assassins, that’s who! We’re not talking some optometrist, or an optician, we’re talking a full-fledged board-certified 12-years-of-post-secondary-schooling ophthalmologist. This guy is an expert…and when dealing with experts, you should listen to what they have to say!

I’ve had the orange and blue design for a few years now (According to this old post, I rolled it out on October 7th, 2004) and I had been meaning to make a change for a while now. I had looked everywhere for inspiration, but eventually found most of what I wanted on The Style Archive in Newsline.

The Newsline style needed some polishing to fit my site, but eventually I’ve massaged it into shape as what you see here. The main thing that I’ve always looked for when contemplating redesign options is a variable-width layout. There are simply too many different resolutions people view the web at nowadays, having a static-width layout could leave a large amount of a user’s web browser window unused…or even worse, on a small screen you may end up having to scroll back and forth just to read the entire thing! The second thing major thing that drew me in to the Newsline style is that it didn’t rely heavily on graphics to get things done - it was a neat, polished style with few graphic embellishments. The fewer the graphics, the easier it is to mod a style in my opinion.

There is still some work to do on the site, I’m thinking I need to bring back a menu again for easy access to OfficeCam and the other major areas of the site, but for now I’ve created a “Features” heading on the sidebar. Also need to reformat said OfficeCam page for the new CSS stylesheet, as well as many of the other static pages. For now, tho, most of the main site is rendering just fine.

As I mentioned in my post about The 2007 KVSC Trivia Contest, KARE-11 News sent Boyd Huppert to do a sweeps feature for his Land of 10000 Stories news segment. Tonight the story finally aired.

Looks like they did a great job of giving everyone on the team a bit of face time. I’m featured more than once, from various angles. (And from the editing, it looks like I’m in both rooms at once. How’s that for magic? When they show the first half of the basement, I’m in front, long white t-shirt, back to the camera…when they show the second half of the room, I’m sitting on the couch in a striped polo shirt) You can see my sister and Davin in numerous shots as well, and Kelly (who only joined us for 2 hours of play) is even in the clip calling in the “101 Dalmations” guess. My biking partner Kate, who is the one responsible for hooking me up with the team, is in there sticking out her tongue and calling in the answer “Paco de Lucía”. Tim, the captain of the team, who was there when I met Kate on the Tour of Saints is the guy in the black t-shirt shouting out, “OK, we got number 1”. Dean, who Kate and I often play trivia with down at Leaning Tower of Pizza, is featured leaning in to listen to the radio during the Big Question, which is fitting considering his specialty is music.

All in all, I’m amazed at how well the piece came together. You can view the piece here on KARE-11’s website, or contact me if you’d like to see it in higher-quality, as I’ve got a number of clips of it saved off of the Tivo.

As I mentioned before, I was awaiting with much anticipation for my Woot Bag O’ Crap. I received my Bag, er, Box o’ Crap about a week ago, I opened it upon my return from my trivia break. Just today I finally got around to taking a snapshot of it all.

As you can see, for my $3 + $5/S+H I was given the following items:

• Virgin Pulse 2.4 Ghz Cordless Phone w/Caller ID (Model VP-12)
• Samsonite Ultra Protective Camera/Camcorder Bag (Model AS1.5)
• 3 Cross MicroPens
• RCA Chipper Keychain Doll

I don’t have a landline, so the phone will be either eBay’d or given to someone I know who can use it. The camera bag I may keep for myself, it looks like just the right size to carry my cell, GPS and camera all in one neat little belt-attachable bag. I know plenty of people with PDAs, so they’ll get the MicroPens, and the keychain doll will make a great stocking stuffer. All in all, not too shabby for $8.

I got an email today from Accounting Nicole, forwarded from her husband, that made me laugh out loud with delight.

I actually have considered answering this before during a particular difficult geometry test, which makes this one especially funny.

More below the fold…

I went to my local friendly neighborhood grocery store to pick up dinner tonight. One of the joys (and pains) a single diner has is what to eat. I wanted a night of relaxation, so I decided I’d go to my old standby, a Totino’s Party Pizza. Easy to pop in the oven and enjoy minutes later.

What to my surprise do I find splashed upon the front of the Totino’s Party Pizza box? A big, bold announcement that I was eating “America’s Best Selling Frozen Pizza”!

Evidently, I couldn’t have made a better choice if I wanted to feel a sense of community tonight while I sat like a hermit in my humble abode walking my way through my Tivo’s Now Playing list.

I’ve read Desiderata before, but this quote displayed at the mall tonight particularly caught my attention:

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Now that all the work associated with this year’s KVSC Trivia Contest is behind me, it has been a busy week getting back into life. Trivia takes quite a toll, weeks of preparation, multiple trips up to Saint Cloud, weekends consumed with setup, nights consumed with computer imaging/building. That’s all over now…

‘course, coming back to work on Tuesday, I spent the first day and a half just getting caught up with everything that happened while I was gone. (I was gone for 2.5 days, keep in mind, but at the speed we’re moving chasing new business that was like 2.5 weeks) Carbon Leaf concert on Tuesday night, which rocked as always, then all the excitement over Valentine’s Day on Wednesday. Tonight I worked late, finishing up a project, then came home and finished my self-review around 11pm. (It was due at midnight)

This weekend? Sister’s birthday celebrations, need to go test ride the two options for my new recumbent bike, some much needed laundry and rest, I think. The chances that each of those will really happen? 100% on the first, 60% on the second, 50% on the third, 10% on the fourth.

Aren’t we Minnesotans supposed to stay inside, huddled around the TV during the winter months, only to emerge once the world thaws out? How can I be so busy!?!?

Every year, KVSC, the student radio station of Saint Cloud State University in Saint Cloud, MN, puts on a 50-hour trivia contest. Last year I participated in the contest for the first time, had a blast, so this year I was even more excited.

The short story is that we took 3rd place (out of 80), down a bit from our first place showing last year. We fell behind early in the contest and never managed to catch back up to first.

You don’t just want the short story, tho, do you…

Relive your adolescence.

Collected Playlists from MTV’s 120 Minutes

Serving the Minneapolis music hunter since 1968, The Electric Fetus has been my preferred location to pick up CDs since I was 18, working downtown and just discovering the joys of music. I’ve prbly purchased 60 CDs over the years from that great store…I continue to do so, to this day, even tho it often means I’m making a special trip downtown just to CD shop.

As I was ripping my newest purchases for iPod transfer this evening, I thought I’d take this moment to outline the reasons for my love of this fine establishment:

• Selection, selection, selection. The Electric Fetus has everything you’d ever need or want: CDs from all genres, local groups, rarities, imports, concert tickets and gifts.
• 10% Off each regularly-priced CD when you purchase 3 or more.
• Not only does the store smell of incense, but your CD does when you get it home, too!

I’ve been the occasional Woot watcher for about a year and a half now. One of my habits is to bring up the site on my way to bed (the product of the day launches conveniently at Midnight CT, my favorite time zone) and see if I find it interesting. I’ve picked up a few items in the past, but the majority of things would just find their way into a junk drawer, and I’m just plain out of junk drawers. However, once in a blue moon Woot delivers.

Woot-offs are especially exciting, not only for the smorgasbord of products, but for a chance at the coveted Bag O’ Crap.

Not only did I pick up a few choice items during the Woot-Off this month, such as the LeakFrog and the Pig, but I managed to score my first-ever “Bag O’ Crap”. I’ve gotten through the ordering steps before, but have always been thwarted in the end, being told there were no more craps to go around.

This time, tho, I managed to receive my order confirmation, confirming crap was on its way. Accolades from my coworkers (who have, themselves, attempted to grab a “Bag O’ Crap” before but have been thwarted many times) followed.

Now we all wait and see what the Woot gods will deliver.

Why didn’t I see this before Christmas?!?! Oh well, direct from the YouTube mothership…

“Charlie Brown Christmas - Performed by the Cast of Scrubs”

Last night at The Legendary Roy Wilkins Auditorium we got our first taste of the new “local” Minnesota RollerGirls season. (The first half of the season were “traveling” games, where we pit our best players against teams from other cities.) The Garda Belts, my favorite “local” team, put up a good fight, but they lost to the Atomic Bombshells.

I realize now, looking back, that I forgot to mention back in November that I finally bought my iMac. A beautiful 20” iMac. I had survived on hand-me-downs from work for my home computer for quite some time now, years in fact. I finally realized that between my iTunes, video and photo libraries I was in need of a home media management workstation.

Tonight I finally completed the final transition, moving my PC’s iTunes Library over to the Mac. I had moved over my photos and video files earlier, figured out how to get my PasswordSafe and OpenSSH keys moved over. NeoOffice installed for any necessary MS Office work, Safari setup the way I wanted. Adium configured for all my IM accounts. BootCamp installed so I can switch back to Windows if need be, such as to load maps on my Garmin GPS.

However, I had been putting off cutting over iTunes. Not only was I not looking forward to the >100GB file copy, but I’m very sensitive about losing any of the metadata iTunes had collected since I started using it on November 2nd, 2003. I had attempted to move over my iTunes library file once right after getting my iMac and lost all of my “Date Added” information, valuable when you’ve got Smart Playlists setup to use that field for filtering/collection purposes.

As it was, I found out I had been overcomplicating the whole thing. I had read a procedure online for moving iTunes libraries from PC to Mac that involved copying the “iTunes Library.XML” file from the PC to the Mac, zero-ing out the binary “iTunes Library” file on the Mac and then letting iTunes rebuild the binary file from the XML file.

Come to find out, that’s not necessary in the slightest. Simply copy the iTunes folder from the PC’s My Music folder into the Mac’s Music folder. iTunes will try to fix the file locations to match their Mac equivalents, but if all else fails it looks for the file in the /Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder on the Mac. Simply move your PC’s iTunes library into their and viola!, you’re good to go.

So, yeah, lesson? Don’t overcomplicate things. Someone’s already thought about your problem.

First song played on the iMac? “Awoo” by The Hidden Cameras.

Well, I’d buy you a green dress (but not a real green dress, that’s cruel!)

I wouldn’t buy you this book, Hedge Funds For Dummies. I have to reiterate what Michael Gartenberg said so eloquently, “If you really are in the target market for this book, perhaps the hedge fund is not the best way for you to invest.”

(I’m open to others doing the inventing/creating…but then let me buy it!)

• An inkjet cartridge replacement that printed chocolate instead of ink. Can you imagine printing a message to your sweetie in chocolate? It also could be used as an anti-spy device… if you fall into enemy hands, just shove the document into your pocket. Muahahaha!
• A chair that would measure your foot-to-knee length and thigh length as you approached it and then adjust its own depth/height to match your measurements exactly for a perfect fit. I could also use this option on a couch. Nothing is worse than sitting in a chair that doesn’t come close to supporting your legs, or forces you to stick your legs out at 45 degree angles just so that your thighs are supported and your feet are resting on the ground.
• I want an option on my programmable thermostat that allows me to “override” the program one-time if I know I’m going to be going out for the evening, or if I’ll be coming home early. My schedule varies quite a bit every week, some nights I’m out late, some nights I’m in early. Regardless, usually when I leave in the morning I know when I’m going to return. Allow me to tell the thermostat, “Override your default programming for this evening, I won’t be coming home until 11pm, don’t bother heating up the house until then.”

How did I get through life this far without encountering “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen before now?

Thankfully the DJs at 89.3 The Current got my back. This is one amazing poem/song. The only words that come to mind… “Haunting Love”

…You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half crazy
But that’s why you want to be there…

You know those studies that claim that the more optimistic you are, the less likely you are to get sick? Well, I’m often held up as the poster boy around work. I’m hardly ever sick…and when I do get sick, my body usually forces me to bed early and the next morning I’m up and ready to go.

Evidently, I must have been really pessimistic sometime in the past week, or this must be one helluva bug. In either event, I felt the throat tickling on Friday night, by 3pm on Saturday I’m fully loaded on Nyquil (the real Pseudoephedrine kind, not the wimpy Phenylephrine formula) and popping Luden’s like they are going out of style. Nose blowing commenced shortly thereafter, then the deep cough and then the inevitable runny nose. Sunday night I’m beginning to feel better, but after a night filled with more awake time than sleepytime, I gave into the cold’s power and called into work sick today.

Having nothing better to do, my mind came to a few revelations today…

I had been looking quite a bit over the past few months at different vehicle options. My current ride, the 2000 Blue VW Turbo Beetle, had treated me well but was definitely aging around the edges. I will forgo the laundry list out of respect for its years of service - suffice to say it had 130,000 miles on it and was beginning to show it.

What would replace it? I had been looking at such disparate choices as the Honda Element, Pontiac Solstice, Scion xB, Pontiac G6, Nissan Maxima and Chevrolet SSR. I wanted something under 30k, with a good selection of comfort features, flexibility for hauling people and equipment (bikes) and wouldn’t sacrifice too much in terms of economy from my current Beetle.

Like the Overlooked Songs of 2005 list I put together last year, I thought it appropriate to once again highlight a number of tracks that didn’t get up in the playcount for one reason or another, and as such didn’t make it on the main Songs of 2006 list. Maybe they got added to my library really late in the year. Maybe I fell in love with the album instead of the tracks, resulting in much lower playcounts for all involved.

Whatever the reason, there are a number of songs that should have been highlighted for the year that didn’t, so I will list ‘em here. Not all of these songs were released this year… in fact, more than a few of them are songs that I rediscovered or finally picked up the long-put-off CD. They were all, however, added to my iTunes library in 2006.

As I’ve done at the end of both 2004 and 2005, I present my list of my most frequently listened to songs across 2006. As always, since I use my central iTunes library to keep track of my statistics, the playcount of a song is only increased if I listen to it in its entirety.

For the second year in a row, “The Boxer” by Carbon Leaf is the top played in my library, at 36 recorded plays over the past year. “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service slipped to 2nd place for all-time plays, falling one play short of “Life Less Ordinary” by Carbon Leaf at 134 plays, the new leader.

iTunes Library Growth Over Time:

This year’s stats (and my listening habits) might have suffered from a few more repeats than previous years since I put playlists on my iPod representing the Songs of 2005 and Overlooked Songs of 2005. These were often my “goto” playlists when I wanted to listen to something familiar and comfortable. This meant I was shuffling my entire library less frequently, meaning playcounts were concentrated on previous top placers. Also, podcasts really came around this year, so a good deal of my time was spent listening to non-music.

It started off with rain this morning…then sleeting a bit after that…then shortly after our potluck lunch, all of a sudden, we got these ginormous snowflakes coming down here at work. (Yes, Virginia, that’s an actual single fallen snowflake!) An hour later, professional productivity had dropped to zero. The parking lot was filled with the circular tracks of donut-doers and snowballs surrounded the vehicles that were used for target practice.

Looks like we might have a white Christmas after all, if it doesn’t all melt. I’m so excited!

‘nuff said.

One of these days, I’ll find the magic balance. There always seems to be a reason why I need to work just a bit later, just a bit harder, carry just that little bit more of a load.

I need to find something else to believe in…

I hope Santa sees this list in his RSS aggregator…

• Subscriptions
  • Dell Math and Logic Puzzles
  • Scientific American (Renewal)
  • Science Museum of MN Membership (Dual)
• Lego Mindstorms NXT
• TurboNet card for my Original Tivo
• KNG America FUNKit
• Slipstreamz Cycling Earphone Covers
• Heavy-Duty Electric Wok
• Weber Performer Charcoal Grill
• Gift Certificate/Directed Money towards Bedroom Set or new Couch
• Nintendo Wii or Playstation 2
• Electric shaver
  • I have had a rechargeable Panasonic wet/dry razor for a while, had good results, but would like a newer model, better battery, prefer the wet/dry use.
• Recumbant Exercise Bike or Elliptical
• Bluetooth headset for biking with my iPod
  • Mono, covering one ear only, a2dp protocol support

Also, you may find some additional items on my wish lists at Amazon and ThinkGeek

The long version of the back-story will have to wait…but the big news will not. My childhood Apple IIgs and are back together, at last!

The fact that my name, backwards, spells “Nomad” has always fascinated me. At times, I’ve taken it to mean that I’m destined to stay in one place. This past month has only reinforced that idea.

I’m not meant to be nomadic. Damonic, maybe, but never nomadic. I’ve simply have too much stuff to fit on the camel and/or horse. I filled up a 16’ moving truck once, four round trips with a full Twinkie, 3 round trips with a full minivan. That’s easily the equivalent of a 24’ moving van, I’m sure. Sure, maybe the Trojan horse would fit all my stuff, but that’s the only horse that would do!

Everything is finally done, tho. Keys are handed over to the old apartment manager. My final walk-thru is completed. My multitudes of things are in my new place, either packed in the garage awaiting the decision as to their final destination (trash/storage/give-away/placement inside the new pad) or have already met their fate.

Some words of wisdom:

• Don’t buy a king-size bed until you’re done moving for a while. We would have been hoisting it through the upstairs window ‘cept the two-story living room made the process a tiny bit easier.
• When moving said king-size bed, find yourself an old queen-size sheet (or, I suppose, a worn-out king size) and wrap up the king-size mattress with it like a diaper. Not only do you get a handle on each side, but you can slide it down hallways with no worries about damaging the mattress itself.
• When you make your list of “must-have” things to sleep the night at the new place, shower in the morning and get dressed to go to work, remember the shower curtain.
• Rubbermaid utility carts you borrow from work make great sofa moving aids.
• CDs are heavier than they look - don’t fill up a complete box and expect it to stay in one piece.

Overall, the move went great. I’m glad it is done, for sure. Now the real fun begins…can I get my second garage stall emptied of boxes before first snow…?

After noon on August 31st (and quite possibly sooner) I will be changing my place of residence. Trust me, the new location will be much more stalker friendly. No more climbing up trees, employing periscopes from ground level, repelling your way down the side of the apartment building or using your feminine charms to get past my security guards. Now you’ll be able to simply drive-by. What could be easier?

When I upgraded/changed servers a few months ago, I had the best intentions. I replaced my old, comfortable, reliable stylesheets with new stylesheets and templates that promised all kinds of wonderful new features. I thought I’d make time to nuture that new style into something wonderful.

Turns out, I didn’t need those new features, and I didn’t make the time. So, for now, I will return you to the relative comfort of my old style. Love it.

Sometime in the next few hours, my belly button will turn 30.

I’ve enjoyed the ride so far…thank you to everyone that has shared it with me over the 30 years.

(This is a seriously post-dated entry. Deal with it.)

After a great bike-riding start, the weather turned into a horrible mess. Rainy, cold…snowy even! I persevered, but while I don’t mind riding in rain, or riding in the cold, I refuse to put up with both! I managed to get one decent training ride in last week, but even that ride was interrupted when I stopped by the bike shop for what I thought would be a simple derailleur adjustment that turned into a full rear wheel and axle replacement. For the last week leading up to the 2006 Ironman Bike Ride I didn’t get to ride once, indoors or out.

For those that want to skip to the end of the story, I managed to finish the 62-mile ride in the face of a day of rain, cold and wind. Here’s the summary and a link to the MotionBased activity I recorded with my GPS. If you want all the details, read after the break…

I took off early from work on Thursday to go biking, rode to/from work on Friday (4 miles each way) and went out for a ride this morning. I left off 2005 with 1737 miles on the ol’ bike odometer…after these past 3 days, it now reads 1768 miles. Sure, it is messier on the roads this time of year, least compared to when I started the 2005 biking season, April 14th. However, I’ve got a goal in mind (doing the 62-mile Ironman) and a little more than a month to prepare for it, so I don’t care. Time to bike!

For Christmas this year, my parents gave me the gift of a Garmin eTrex Vista C, along with a bike mount. I wanted to bring a bit more of an analytical slant to my biking and a GPS seemed like a great tool. In my search for analytical software, I came across the hosted service, MotionBased. MotionBased offers you an opportunity of uploading your tracklogs and then it performs all kinds of analysis against it and offers you the results right through your web browser.

I’ve been waiting every since Christmas to try this setup out, so on Friday morning I mounted the GPS to my bike and used it to track my commutes to/from work. Both times, I completely misunderstood the GPS setup directions and recorded absolutely nothing of any use.

Finally, during my ride today, I finally got the hang of it and got a great tracklog of my recorded route. I uploaded it to MotionBased; you can see the overview they put together below. If you click through to the website, they offer all kinds of great ways to look at the data, from comparing your elevation/speed, comparing it against the weather, to a SVG-enabled method of watching your progress visually, like a movie.

It’s been a busy few weeks, to say the least. Sure, last weekend I did a bunch of chores and found some good time to relax, but first thing Monday morning I was thrust back, neck-deep, into my professional life.

I didn’t get to leave for lunch until nearly 1pm today…only to find out it was a great day outside. High of 50 or so, the slightest breeze, sunny sky as far as the eye could see. Got back to work around 2pm…by 3pm, I realized that my heart just wasn’t into working anymore. I couldn’t concentrate; everything seemed to be blending into one gigantic task.

What’s a guy to do? I packed up my laptop, grabbed the nearest blank sheet of paper, wrote “Gone Biking”, propped it up on my desk and took off. Got a good feel for the temperature on the way home, threw on some warmer biking clothes, inflated the tires and headed out.

Before I knew it, I was down the big hill on East Bush Lake and proceeded along my “normal” route, around Lake Normandale, down Normandale Blvd, across on Old Shakopee. I was thwarted on my attempt to take the trails in Hyland Park Reserve, so I turned back out to the street, over to Bush Lake Road, then back up East Bush Lake Road to the apartment. 10.5 miles in almost exactly an hour’s time. Sure, not the speediest run, but that wasn’t the point - it was just to get out there and see what I still had left in me (and my legs) after a winter kept me indoors.

I’m thinking the 62-mile Ironman ride is within my grasp this year, which would be a great start to the season. 55 days to get myself there…even with all the spring weather, I’m sure I can do it. Last year I did 30 on the ride, and I started more than a month later.

A wonderfully productive weekend.

• Did a bunch of reading
  • (slowly making progress through “The Road To Reality”, read “If the Buddha Dated” again)
• Brought order to vast portions of my apartment
  • (still have the kitchen and bathroom to clean/organize, but these are traditionally the two rooms that get cleaned the most frequently, so I doubt they will remain messy for long)
• Went down to the Bike Expo
  • (Registered for the Ironman at a discount, met the representative from the Tour of Saints who commented on my blog here, got some information about “sprint triathalons” from a representative of the Twin Cities Triathalon Club and saw a crazy six-person bike!)
• Still found time to put together a bunch of new playlists on the iPod and listen, listen, listen!

Just what I needed, for sure. Felt so good to wake up and not worry about parrying around items littering the floor in order to make it to the bathroom! Now I just have to get training…less than 8 weeks until the Ironman ride…and this year I’m going for 62 miles _(over last year’s 30 miles).

Somewhat fitting, as I was sitting at work tonight (late, but not nearly as 5am late as Tuesday night/Wednesday morning) helping a customer out with some data migration work.

“You have an unusual understanding of the problems of others.”

‘course, I’d like to think it is just as applicable in my personal dealings as my professional life. I wonder what they mean by “unusual”, tho…hrm.

It is funny. Last year I had this great February project planned, but wasn’t able to carry it out because, for the most part, I was way too busy.

This year I was even busier than last year, strange as that might be. I wonder what it is about February…it doesn’t seem like it would be a busy month, especially here in Minnesota, considering it is the dead of winter.

The month started out with a mad rush and many, many trips up to Saint Cloud for the annual KVSC 50-hour Trivia Contest. Then it was off to Las Vegas for a much-needed vacation. Back home, back to work, busy busy busy, culminating in a action-packed February 28th.

(Continue reading about the trip)

The true sign of managing your job at work, at least to me, is that when I’m gone on vacation I don’t come back to piles of work that built-up while I was on vacation. Otherwise, vacation time is really just “delay time”. I was generally pleased, other than a few projects/tasks I knew were going to be waiting for me once I got back, I wasn’t deluged. Of course, that didn’t mean that the first week back would be a cakewalk. Nope, of course, a huge proposal needs to be sent off by the end of the week, tying up a huge portion of my days (and some nights).

Things haven’t really slowed down since then, underscored by the fact that on the night of February 28th, as if it was February’s way of giving me a send-off, I end up going out after work for an absolutely wonderful dinner, only to be called back to work at 10pm. Working until 4:30am the next morning, and having to be back into the office by 9am, it certainly was a long final day of the month. Made me wish I could create a leap-year-on-demand!

(Continue reading about the trivia weekend)

6 hours after I arrive home with the first carload from the Trivia weekend teardown, I awaken; to find out I had overslept. (Gosh, what are the odds of that, operating on 7 hours of sleep over the weekend!?) I rush to unload the front seat up to my apartment, drop off all 10 monitors at work and then head back up to Saint Cloud to collect everything else. When I pull in, everyone knew I was in a hurry to make the flight, so they all chipped in, helped load me up and within 15 minutes, I was leaving the PigPen again with a full car. I drop off a bunch of stuff at Kelly’s house, pick up her and her bags, then sprint back down to the cities. A quick repacking once I arrived home (less than 10 minutes) and my coworker, Theresa, picks us up and delivers us to the airport with almost exactly an hour to check-in, check our bags, pass security and rush down to the gate. Of course, one of our bags is overweight, so we had to move stuff around, only delaying our progress.

Every year the Saint Cloud State Student Radio Station, KVSC, organizes a 50-hour long trivia contest. I had wanted to play for the past 4-5 years…only I’d realize this when I heard the winners announced every year. This year, I got to join the team “Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women” since Kate, my biking buddy, has been a member of the team for years. They run an amazing organization, have a great playbook (which I’ve been sworn to secrecy not to reveal!) with all kinds of great strategies proved over their many, many years of playing the trivia game. I had been looking forward to the contest for over 8 months since I first met Kate and found out she played…

Remember when I was crowin’ about my Beetle passing 100000 miles? Well, another Beetle milestone was passed today…the last payment on the loan for the Beetle cleared my account. It is now 100% mine! Yay!

Some web entities that I wanna send some link love to:

• TikiBar TV: TikiBar TV deserves to be on your podcast subscription list. Even if you don’t know or care about podcasting, visit this site often to watch their hilarious videos. I can’t get enough of ‘em. Amazingly high production values for a podcast…only a matter of time until they get picked up by some enterprising broadcast/cable network.
• Nyssa J Brown: Nyssa did me a great favor a few days ago, even tho she had never known of me prior to me asking her for the favor and being half a world away. Until her website comes back online, go give her some love on her deviantART site.
• Dictionaraoke.org: Imagine midi files, mixed with vocals provided by online dictionary pronounciation samples. This is hilarious! I can’t stop listening…like a car crash, you gotta look!

• Team Boobylicious: Wendy and her 3-Day Breast Cancer walk are at it again…this time, homemade chocolate truffles, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Even if you don’t like chocolate, you can always directly donate to her cause here… Go support boobies again!
• Jean’s ‘Walk To Cure Diabetes’ Effort: My good friend, Jean, is walking this weekend for an 8 year-old boy with type 1 diabetes. No team action here - she’s doin’ it all on her own.

**Warning: This self-reflective diary-type post is intentionally vague. Those that know why know why, those that don’t know but care can feel free to ask.

The past few weeks here have been filled with all kinds of wonder. Coming off a very enjoyable holiday season, events transpired to complicate life in a big way. Not entirely unexpected, but definitely unexpected in their magnitude and scope. I’m excited about it, tho, and I think the changes that have been set in motion will be a good thing, especially in the long run.

My brain has been working overtime for the past few weeks, tho, thus the “Full” indicator above. Lots of things to process…my dreams have been absolutely cray-ZEE! Popular wisdom says that we don’t use almost 90% of our minds…I’m sure I’ve been using more than 10% for the past few months now, but in the past few weeks I feel like my brain’s landscape has been in the middle of transformation similar to that occurring in today’s downtown Beijing. Construction everywhere, old buildings being demolished, new, tall skyscrapers being erected with all their steel scaffolding. Buildings empty for now, structures waiting to be filled. An air of opportunity envelops the downtown of my mind. I can’t wait for the new ideas to move in, fill up all those structures and take up shop.

I haven’t felt like this in years…I’ve missed it. I’m not content with static life…give me change, opportunity and experience.

I’ve been reflecting on the Songs of 2005 list I put together based on the automated iTunes libary data. The thing is, while using the new year as a measuring point is useful, it completely overlooks a number of great songs I listened to over time. Sometimes, I only obtained the song near the end of the year, so whle it was on heavy rotation it didn’t have a chance to build up a high enough play count to appear on the list. Other songs get penalized because they are a non-workout song released during the summer months, when I’m mostly listening to upbeat groovy music.

Regardless of the reason, I put together another playlist this year called “Overlooked Songs of 2005”. There’s a number of great tracks in this list…and very little fat, as this play list was hand-selected by a team of specially trained monkeys. (OK, so there was only one monkey, me, and I have very little training in this regard!)

Enjoy!

One of the best things about the music setup I have, with my iPod, the Tivo/AudioFaucet/Airport Express and my JBL On Stage is that iTunes automatically tracks all of the songs I listen to for playcount stats. Of course, it only counts it as “played” if I listen to it all the way through, but analyzing the data can still yield some meaningful information on my listening habits.

I’ve listed my top played tracks from 2005 below. The track I listened to the most this year, “The Boxer” by Carbon Leaf, had 64 recorded plays, but the most listened to track in my library of all time remains “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service at 104 plays.

At the end of last year, I had 7861 total plays across 2084 unique tracks out of a total of 6505 tracks. This year that number rose to 17996 total plays across 4703 unique tracks out of a total of 10322 tracks. (With the addition of Podcast support in iTunes, I probably should add that I have 838 podcast tracks in my library, responsible for 186 total plays)

Compare it to my list Songs of 2004 from last year.

Today was the last day of my 5-day extended holiday weekend. Tomorrow I go back to work - by the calendar a “short” week, but, in actuality, it will be a very long, intense 3 days of work getting a new project out the door and into our customer’s hands. We’ve been working on this for more than 3 months now; it will be nice to see the fruits of everyone’s labors coming to fruition.

The weekend was go, go, go, with multiple Christmas parties and other family events taking up almost every last moment. I loved it. Sure, a few times it got tiring, or frustrating, or complicated, but all in all a wonderful weekend. In the gift department, I took in all kinds of wonderful prizes, some things I wished for, some things I didn’t even know I wanted. Got to play with many of the new toys today…what else is an extra vacation day like today good for? ☺ (OK, so I shopped the malls and then came home for a nice nap, too…but playing was foremost on the agenda!)

Only tell him part of the future. Least the part I got was very, very pleasant.

For a reason I won’t disclose here, I ended up having very limited time this weekend to get some of my “Shopping To-Do’s” done. Luckily, all of the projects on my plate at work have reached milestones, allowing me to escape for my annual “Day of Shopping”. I enjoy taking off a day in the middle of the week, shortly before Christmas, to not only finish off some last minute shopping, but take some time to people-watch as they scurry around trying to finish off their shopping. I’ve done it each of the past 3 years, although I remember doing it selectively, on and off, for at least 10.

Today was a non-event, really. Slept in, combed through my list a few times, checked on the delivery status of all my online orders and then hit the road. As has often been the case, I drive up to Albertville, work my way through the outlet shops, then follow Interstate 94 back towards the cities. There’s an amazing variety of shops along that 40 mile stretch of road…and since you usually end up driving back towards town at the same time everyone else is trying to head out of town after their workdays, traffic is rarely a problem. (Try it sometime…I doubt you can find a more relaxed day of shopping anywhere else with more variety)

Twodolla and the rest of her “3-Day Walk” group Team Boobylicious decided to have a cookie fundraiser.

How can you beat the price, about $4/dozen? I ended up ordering way more than I ever needed, 4 dozen sugar cookies, 4 dozen chocolate chip and 4 dozen peanut blossom cookies. Got them this morning…shared them around the office, most of them are going home with me, some destined to be frozen for an easy holiday party potluck offering, others to be gobbled up over the next few days. They are soooo yummy…

Go support boobies!.

Wow, I’ve only posted 4 times since November 1st. What’s wrong with me? Has my life become that boring?

Yes, in many ways I suppose. Been busy working on a huge project at work…been taking up the vast majority of my time. A few weeks over the past month-and-a-half I’ve been only at home to sleep, shower and dress.

There have been a few highlights of the past few weeks, tho. The project referred to above is quickly coming together, I’m nearly done handing over the project to our operations group, letting me move on to other things. Thanksgiving went wonderfully with everyone together, the turkey turned out perfect, the rest of the food was equally delicious. Continued good luck at Pub Trivia nights, even took a second place after a bitter triple-elimination following a three-way tie for first. Went to the Barenaked Ladies Holiday concert, along with everyone I know…least it seemed that way. Got Gumby/Pokey installed finally this past weekend…which is why you’re seeing a new style here. Still need to tweak it, add the menu back, get the rest of my pages fixed, but it will do for now.

There have been a few lows as well. My Beetle ended up needing to make a visit to the car doctors at Westside VW. The oil pressure light began flashing whenever it was running faster than idle…the cause was a clogged oil pickup tube. A couple hundred for the diagnosis and fix…but I can’t complain too much, only have 2 more payments left, then the car is completely mine. I figure for 2-3 months worth of payments I can restore my good ‘ol Beetle back into a decent shape, ready for another 50k miles or more.

May I never be the recipient of a big ceramic barnyard animal…

• George Foreman: Next Grilleration
• Small to Medium Wet/Dry Shop Vac
• JBL OnStage II
• “Shoot The Moon” game
• Subscriptions
  • Dell Math and Logic Puzzles
  • Scientific American
• There’s no place like 127.0.0.1 Door Mat
• BSD Sticker
• VW Beetle
  • Replacement Fliplid for the Trunk
  • Hitch socket with 2 or 3-Bike Hitch Rack
• Bike
  • GPS w/altimeter, tracklog (such as Garmin eTrex Vista C)
  • Beyond Fleece’s Vayu Plus
  • Super Hat’s Fleece Hat
    • This is a small kiosk in Ridgedale selling these fleece hats. They are convertible; they cover your face, provide ventilation, etc. Perfect for cold-weather biking when paired with the Beyond Fleece item above.

• For more items, visit my Amazon WishList

We’ve been slowly working our way up the ladder at Pub Trivia night at the Leaning Tower of Pizza. We started in 5th place the first week, since then we’ve fluctuated between 5th and 12th. Over time, we’ve picked up a few members along the way…but considering we only took 3rd place in the “70’s Trivia” last week (realize, our team’s average age is about 37) I thought the #1 spot would elude our grasp until we grew in size to match the 10-or-more member teams.

Of course, just to prove me wrong, this week our team of four took 1st place! The categories (Blue Things, Child Stars, On The Runway, Band Frontmen, The Tonight Show) still had an “older” slant, but regardless we were the lucky recipients of the $30 gift certificate.

Yay!

As I left work today, my walk to the car was accompanied by the first snow I’ve seen since last winter. It doesn’t sound like we’ll be getting the massive snowfall they first predicted, but the fluffiness falling down was a wonderful sight…the reward I’ve been waiting to see since the sun started cutting its daily visits short.

Welcome, winter!

A thousand pardons to everyone out there who cares to review, on a regular basis, this little corner of cyberspace.

Work has been crazy, and I mean CRAZY, busy.

Over the past month or so, I’ve had almost no social life outside of work. Working late almost every night - even had to work a few hours this past weekend. Trying to make a deadline that was unreasonable, but I knew I had to make it nonetheless, otherwise the next few months would be boring. (‘cause no one announces new products in December!)

Luckily, as of 7:30 last night, my crazy assignment has finally been turned down from a rolling boil to a simmer. This happened just in time, as tonight was my Mom’s birthday celebration at Kincaid’s. Not only would I never miss my Mom’s birthday celebration, but I’d never miss a meal at Kincaid’s, either!

Now that the meal is over, I finally had some time to get around to bringing three items out of draft, and there will be a few entries I’ll be writing over this weekend. Hopefully, they will include installing the new Gumby server into production. That’s what I’m working on now. ‘course, considering that it has sat here languishing in the server stack near my desk for most of the past month, I now need to upgrade things before I can even contemplate putting it into production. Oh well, might as well test the upgrade process before I put it into production, right?

I’ve been checking CompUSA every day for the past week or so, waiting for them to receive their first shipment of 60GB iPod with Video units.

See, Janine, my 40GB 3G iPod, filled up about 6 months ago. Since then, I’ve had about 8 GB of my music library ripped from CD, yet kept outside of iTunes ‘cause I didn’t want to turn off auto-syncing. As I’ve unchecked the songs I didn’t care to carry around with me, most of that space has been filled up with new CD purchases, podcasts and other miscellaneous MP3’s. Couple that with a slowly decaying battery (still under warranty, but who wants to do without their iPod for the days it takes to have the battery replaced by some Oompla-Loompa’s in Cupertino) and I knew I was ripe for an upgrade.

I was tempted to pick up a 60GB 4G iPod, but I kept on putting it off. The rumor sites kept on foretelling that a new, revised iPod was just around the corner. Would it have video? Built-in wireless? I honestly didn’t care…I had pretty much decided to pick up the biggest 5G when it came out.

As luck would have it, they did include video, a much nicer screen, improved battery life, doubled the cache RAM and made the package even smaller. I could have ordered it right away, but I love taking advantage of CompUSA’s 6 months no-interest plan.

So, now I’ve got it. A brand new white 60GB iPod with Video. Yay! I can’t wait to play with it, run it through its paces. And, with the new arrival, the old Janine will get a chance to get a new battery without leaving me without tunage.

My new cell phone came with a 1-megapixel camera, takes great pictures, saves me from having to carry around a camera for those “candid” shots I want to capture as I wander through life.

A great convenience, but I think I wouldn’t have missed it if I hadn’t gotten it. However, the new service, ScanR, is the killer app for cell phone cameras.

• Say you’re finishing a meeting; a whiteboard of notes sits in front of you that you would normally have to scribble down into a notebook. Instead, just take a picture with a one megapixel (or greater) cell phone, send it to the service and a few moments later you have a PDF file of the whiteboard sitting in your inbox.
• Next, you’re at a cocktail party. You’ve just been introduced to someone you might want to do business with, but you’re worried about leaving his business card in your shirt pocket ‘cause you always forget to empty it before you send your shirt off to the cleaners. Instead, snap a photo of the business card with your cell phone, send it into ScanR and a PDF of the business card will be waiting for you first thing Monday morning.
• Finally, you’re in the library researching a quote. You finally find the quote, but you can’t check out the reference material. Instead of copying it down into your notebook, just snap a photo of the book’s page and send it into the service. Once again, you’ll find it in your inbox.

The best thing about all this? You can optionally give the service a different email address, or even a fax machine number and they will transmit the resulting PDF to those destinations as well.

As a whiteboard user, visual thinker, I just know my love affair with this service will continue, even after they eventually get around to charging for it. For now, feel free to try it - you’ll love it.

Tonight, as the clock rolled into the new day, another milestone was passed - my 2000 VW Beetle official went into 6-digits territory as its odometer passed 99999 and turned to 100000.

Now, I know automobiles roll past 100000 all the time, but just because we all have birthdays doesn’t mean there’s no need for celebration.

It is pledge time again…the local public media outlets are filling the airwaves, rolling out their most impressive programming, trying to hook people into contributing or renewing their memberships. Every time this happens, I think back to a potentially scarring incident that occurred in my 10th, maybe 11th year, here on this Earth. Luckily, for MPR, the incident didn’t really affect me, since they count me as a contributor today, but as you will see it so easily could have scared me away from public media forever.

Things have finally calmed down, whew!

Monday night I took one complete night for myself. Cooked up some party pizzas, listened to music, did a crossword puzzle, read a bit, napped a bit. Absolutely beautiful in contrast to the hectic schedule I had kept up for the past few weeks. Tuesday, I biked to/from work, even tho the ride home at 11pm was absolutely bone chilling. Tonight was dinner at Buca and some computer shopping with a friend, very relaxed.

Ah, but Damon’s relaxation doesn’t make for good reading you say? Well, lemme tell you about this past weekend then…

A quick aside/story related to the wedding reception I attended on Saturday.

I spent the last week purposely avoiding all M. Doughty-related music. (Standard operating procedure for me before a live show - I like to go into the show ready to hear the performance, not involuntary spending my brain cycles comparing it to the recorded versions!) I looked forward to tonight’s concert at First Ave ever since I snagged a ticket. It was going to be great. I’ve been a fan of M. Doughty since Ruby Vroom. He could play anything from his catalog and I’d not only recognize it, but also know every last lyrical line of goodness.

I regret to say that, nevertheless, I was disappointed.

I thought that just posting one Far Side cartoon when talking about the The Complete Far Side 1980-1994 gift wouldn’t be a big deal, but as you can read below, they take it very seriously.

So, the “Midvale - School For The Gifted” Far Side cartoon I put up has now been removed.

Sorry folks.

Life’s been busy, sorry I don’t write. Good things are happening, tho.

Today, of all days! Tonight I go see M. Doughty.

Happy M. Doughty Day!

So, a few weeks after I got my new Dell I noticed the backlight wasn’t balanced appropriately. I emailed their support with a URL pointing to some pictures I had taken of the issue. A few hours later, I received a note back explaining that I would need to send my laptop back for repair. I had figured they could just send me a new screen and I could do the swap myself. Because of the 5 day turnaround, I never really took them up on the offer. (The backlight would balance after a few minutes of warming up)

That was almost a year ago. About 3 weeks ago my spacebar started sticking when I’d type. I removed the key cover, thinking that something had been jamming it, only to find that the little metal clips the plastic key springs fit into were bent/missing. I reassembled the spacebar as best I could, but it sat forever more at an akward angle and stuck down about 3 seconds between keypresses. Finally, a few days ago the spacebar stuck down and has been stuck down no matter what I do. Now there’s no travel at all…brush your thumb against the spacebar and you get a random number of spaces.

So, now I cannot put off service, back off to Dell my D800 will go. Now I have to figure out some time I can do without it for a few days…too bad I don’t have a vacation coming up or anything like that. Hrm…until then, please excuse any additional spaces you might see…

It’s been 2 weeks since I last wrote…what have I been up to?

• Been busy working on Gumby/Pokey, the new server(s) meant to replace Red and Farmer. I really should have done this months ago…in another month I won’t care that the two old servers put out more BTUs than my furnace. (The new machine(s) puts out about 25% less than the old two). Most of you couldn’t care less about this…but it is a Big Deal ™, I assure you.
• Work has been busy. Real busy. Don’t even bother to open up my IM client busy. The good news is, most of the projects that have been keeping me busy are either coming to a close or have reached a breakpoint. The bad news is, there are lots of other projects waiting in the wings, more than likely leaving my IM client unstarted for many more days, if not moons.
• I’ve taken some time out of the busyness to get the apartment even more organized. Good to have the nest a bit less cluttered before winter arrives.
• Celebrated two birthdays over the past 2 weeks.
• Managed to make it to the first Minnesota RollerGirls roller derby bout of the second season. Love their new digs (they are now at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium) and the show is really becoming much more polished and entertaining.

There’s more, but those are other entries…

I finished my ride tonight (lights come in handy in these fall months) and needed to head back to work to pick up my effects. I had left my clothes, laptop and other such items in at work so I didn’t have to lug it around on my ride.

As I was driving down Highwood towards 169, on my way into work, I spied a bunny hopping around along the side of the road. As soon as my headlights hit it (I was coming around a curve, heading up an incline towards it), it stopped in its tracks and stared back into my headlights. I slowed up a bit out of caution, but just as I thought I was in the clear, at the last second before I passed the bunny, it jumped into the street…I was upon it almost instantaneously and I heard a telling double-thump on the bottom of my car.

I knew, at that moment, that I had accidentally killed another living creature. I don’t know if wild bunnies are safe to pick up or not…but in any event, by the time I recomposed myself and drove back around to check out the scene the bunny had been smooshed flat.

I’m not a violent creature by any stretch of the imagination…I don’t even kill spiders or other bugs I come across in the house. (They are usually moved out of the way or outside, depending on what kind of creature they are) When I bike, I try to brush off any bugs that get caught up on my sweaty skin instead of smacking them dead. I know it was an accident…however, that doesn’t seem to completely soothe my guilt in this case. I generally follow a code that only allows for killing other creatures that pose a threat to me. This bunny, obviously, was of no threat to me. Had I changed to the other lane, instead of assuming the still bunny would have remained so, I prbly would have avoided hurting the bunny.

I will be biking by the location tomorrow morning on my way into work…and I mean this in all seriousness: I wonder how one atones for an accidental bunny death?

I’ve calmed down quite a bit since my last post. The irritation was easy to put out of mind once I got to sleep…how, you might ask? Well, yesterday I spent all day in a meeting with some board members, last night playing trivia at Leaning Tower of Pizza again, this morning on a sales call, this afternoon in meetings, and finally got to do some real work the last hour or so of the day, which hit a milestone in an ongoing project that had stalled with all the distractions of the few days.

After all that, I gave myself the treat of a bike ride and Totino’s Party Pizza for dinner.

There were other happy events over the past few days, too. I had to wear pants for the first time since April 15th or so for the sales call this morning. After going through all the pairs of pants I had, the pair that fit the best was still about 4 inches too big around the waist. Even tho I haven’t seen any drop on the scale most of the summer, at least it means I’ve dropped those inches. Yay!

My mood matches the storm outside. Flashes of lightning, rumbling thunder, hard hard raindrops pelting everything in sight.

I can only hope that my anger and disappointment are washed away like pollen on the wind as the storm passes.

I was a bit trepidatious this year…I was still nursing the ankle injury I picked up on my 60-mile ride, I had rode a few times but I was worried about agitating it again and having to sit out the remainder of the season. Still, the allure of repeating the Saint Paul Classic Bike Tour for a second year, being able to compare my performance from last year and enjoying the beautiful ride, was irresistible. I signed up, made my plans, and gave myself plenty of rest.

I only rode a few times last week, and those times I did ride, I took everything really easy. I did get a chance to get used to the new gearing on the bike, tho, and I have to say I’m very pleased with the change. It still may need a little adjustment to shift correctly (it only seems to want to upshift in multiples of 2 on the rear wheel) but I like being able to do more than coast down the steep hills I ride around my apartment.

The morning of the ride, I was up by 7am. It was going to be getting warmer and sunnier as the day moved on (75 around ride start, 90 for a daily high), so no need to risk any more sunburn than I needed to! I picked up my bike at work and drove off to Saint Paul. I was on my own this year, which meant that I had to break the pledge and drive myself down to the ride. (They want you to carpool or ride the bus) Anyway, I parked about a mile away from the starting/ending point, got geared up, and headed over to the staging area around 8am.

My dad and I had run into his cousin on the ride last year, so I snuck a peek at the registration list when I was checking in and saw he had registered. I kept my eyes open for him over the entire ride, but I didn’t see him. Next year I’ll have to try to get a hold of him beforehand and see if he wants to ride together, or if nothing else meet up at one of the rest stops.

Since I had done this ride once before, I was able to pace myself quite effectively. I wore my heartrate monitor and managed to keep myself pretty much in my target heartrate zone for most of the 2 hours and 10 minutes I rode. As one would expect, on the three steep hill climbs I did break out on the top side of my zone a bit, but unlike last year I didn’t need to stop and catch my breath at the tops - I just kept on going, confident that I could recover while keeping up a steady pace.

In the end, I pulled into the finish just under 2 hours and 10 minutes, giving me an average speed of 14.0 miles per hour over the course. This is a great time, considering that last year I only averaged 12.5 on the same course, and I often don’t pull in anything more than a 13.5 during a nightly ride, which is often shorter (yet has much more hill work).

WARNING: PURE GEEK POST AHEAD. CONSIDER TAKING EVASIVE ACTION.

Over the past week I’ve setup two different heavy-iron machines (or, at least they were when they were initially purchased) with FreeBSD. Uncharacteristically, I’ve run into a few issues I thought I’d share so that others will not waste all the time I have troubleshooting, since this post will inevitably make its way into Google’s index.

Delayed by the rain yesterday, I finally made it back to the Minnesota State Fair for my second visit today. Knowing I wouldn’t be returning on the last day, tomorrow, I knew I had to arrive with eyes wide open, and the belt loop one-notch looser, in order to squeeze in all that fair goodness.

Here’s a blow-by-blow blog of a REAL disaster management/recovery situation, direct from New Orleans.

http://mgno.com/
If that link doesn’t work, use
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/

Starting back on Tuesday, you can read all about their efforts to keep their data center up and running. Obtaining fuel for the generators, figuring out maintenance on said generators, physical security, upstream bandwidth availability, employee’s safety and family updates, even such secondary activities as payroll and webcamming views outside of the offices.

Otherwise, I have nothing else to say. My mind is filled, has been filled, will be filled with thoughts for those people who are living this disaster first-hand. Most people knew this kind of disaster was coming, but that doesn’t make the absolutely horrific situation down in New Orleans any easier to swallow.

• Monday was spent giving my ankle time to recover. It seemed to do the job…Tuesday I took it easy, avoiding stairs by riding the elevator in the apartment building…by Wednesday morning I woke up with no pain or stiffness at all. During the moving on Wednesday night, I stressed it out a bit, but this morning (Thursday) it still seems fine.
• Tuesday was a busy day at work in the morning, but by afternoon, it had calmed down a little. Dropped the bike off at Erik’s to get the loaner freewheel replaced with a new part and get the new chainrings installed to increase the gearing. Then it was off to trivia for the evening, then driving home I noticed I had a quarter tank of gas remaining and felt kinda guilty about filling up, considering I didn’t really need it yet.
• Wednesday I had lunch with Sneebish, dropped off coworker New Theresa at the airport for her long-distance booty call and then over to Incense’s apartment to help her move. To her credit, almost everything was boxed up by the time I got there, but it still took us almost 5 hours to move her less than a quarter-mile to a different apartment building in the same complex. She did provide plenty of pizza and drink, tho…although my ankle sure didn’t like walking up and down all those stairs quite yet.
• Thursday was cleaning day at the workplace. I’m notorious for letting piles of papers accumulate on my desk, intermixed with all the desk toys anyone could want. The CEO came in and gave JManDoo and me an order to have the Development office cleaned up by the end of this week about 3 weeks ago…I’m glad to say I didn’t wait until the last day! After performing one pass to remove all of the loose paper, and sorting those papers into a “To Be Shredded” pile and a “Dispose Normally” pile, I then worked my way throughout the day disposing of the remaining items. Still have a few piles around the desk, but I think most people would now find it as sanitary and comfortable as a workplace desk could get. Now if only I could work the same magic at home! After work I’m heading back over to Incense’s apartment, need to help her assemble her Ikea dresser and share a proper meal together.

Hopefully, the upcoming weekend will be a relaxing time. Another visit to the State Fair…and I’d really like to do some biking, too. We’ll have to wait and see if the ankle continues to be happy before I’d do anything, tho. I’d rather err on the side of caution, since I don’t want to miss the 30-mile Saint Paul Bike Classic next weekend.

With my ankle slowly on the mend, neither Kate nor I had any desire to go biking when we got together tonight, so instead we went to one of her old hangouts, The Leaning Tower of Pizza. Located in/near Uptown, it is your typical neighborhood pizza joint with one difference - Tuesday nights @ 8:30pm is a restaurant-wide trivia game.

Unlike NTN Trivia, this is all done with sheets of paper and pens. You go through a number of rounds, each consisting of 8 questions. Our rounds tonight were: State License Plate Mottos, Presidential Pets, I Love The 90’s, Automobiles and one round of pictures of semi-famous people where you had to put a name to the face.

Kate, a friend of Kate (I think her name was Rita…but after 3 Guinness and 1 Scooby Snack, I’m not 100% sure! Ruth) and I teamed up and adopted the name, “Katrina on a Stick”. We placed 5th with 28 points, there was a tie for first place at 31 points between two teams, each with at least 7 people on ‘em. This is certainly a game where larger teams sure come in handy, since you have plenty of time to debate answers, as the time limits are very relaxed.

I let down the team once…I totally got the model of Wayne and Garth’s car wrong…Pacer, NOT Pinto! Jebus!

Anyway, it was a blast…hopefully we can do it again sometime soon. Woo-hoo!

It’s been 48 hours since I did whatever I did to my ankle. I stayed off of it for most of the day yesterday, other than a leisurely mile walk around Centennial Lakes in Edina after lunch. The only real pain I felt was when I went up and down stairs, although towards the end of the day yesterday my ankle felt like a bunch of rubber bands, stretching and rubbing against each other.

This morning it seems to have healed up nicely - still a bit stiff, but no pain to speak of at all. I don’t plan on going out for a marathon, nor will I ride my bike today, but I think I’m out of the woods.

I’ve got today off of work…will I go to the fair? Will I sit on my bootay all day long? Will I come up with the answer to world peace? Stay tuned…

After riding 60 miles, I knew I basically had a free pass to go to the Minnesota State Fair and consume large quantities of deep-fried-on-a-stick goodness!

Tonight was a food excursion, plain and simple.

I dove right in and started off with a new food, the “Carolina BBQ Pork Baked Potato”. There’s a food court restaurant at the Mall of America, Col. Muzzy’s Texas BBQ, which does a much better job at this, but it was completely acceptable fair food. Served hot and delicious, it was a great way to start off the consumption. A bit of lemonade, out of one of the refillable “souvenir” bottles washed it all down.

I had been looking forward to the Woodbury Days Bike Ride for a few weeks now, ever since I noticed the flyer at Erik’s. I did 50 miles a little under 2 months ago on the Tour of Saints, and with all the riding I’ve been doing, I figured a 60 would be a great accomplishment to get under my belt.

I headed over to Erik’s last night to pick up my bike.

The bill surprised me…they were able to true my rear wheel, everything looked good, so the only thing above the labor charge was a new chain. Quite the deal.

Since I had budgeted for a bit more, I talked to Dave about changing out my gears. I spend almost all my time in my hardest-pedaling gears…I often take anything flat or more declining in my final gear. Because of the design of the bike, he suggested it would be cheaper and easier to swap out the chainrings in the front than attempt to do any magic in the back. We ordered the part, and then I was off on my way.

Even tho it was overcast, and was going to be dark in a little bit more than an hour, I thought I would drop my car off at work and bike home. No sooner was I on the bike and I knew something was amiss…now when I was in my final gear, any amount of real power applied would cause the chain to slip. I hobbled home, content with just being able to ride again, even if it was without my final “overdrive” gear.

I had dinner with Grandpa last night. I think he was in a reflective mood, which worked well considering that I was in that kind of mood as well. We talked a bit about our normal subjects…politics, catchup on life’s activities, iPods. After that, tho…

The remainder of the evening was filled with all kinds of wonderful conversations on life. Talking about the way my family (I talk here of not only my parents, but my grandparents and aunt as well) raised me, how thankful I am that I had the influences, freedoms and liberties I had when I was growing up. However, in the midst of all this pontification, my Grandpa uttered what I think is a great observation…

“The thing I miss most without your Grandmother around is having someone to share the curiosities in life. Whenever I’d come across anything new or different or interesting, the first person I wanted to share it with was your Grandmother. I think that might be a measure of love.”

We talked through my Grandpa’s point a bit, exploring how different “levels” of love/friendship might lead you to the same kind of experience with a friend. For example, I know there are many times I have uttered something like, “Oh, I can’t wait to show [insert friend here] this [cool new gadget]” It certainly isn’t a cause of love…but it maybe a symptom?

Knowing someone who has a similar curiosity about life…certainly not your exact same curiosities, but similar enough so that you can share discoveries with someone…seems to be quite a sign of a loving bond at some level.

I love my Grandpa so much. I’m glad he’s still with us…he never seems to run out of things to share.

Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do Kihn Do

I passed by the 1500-mile mark on my bike sometime last week. I had no idea I was so close to such a milestone, otherwise I might have thought to watch where it occurred. No matter - after getting off to a very slow start at the beginning of the season, I’ve picked up my pace and look to surpass easily the number of miles I’ve ridden in each of the past two years.

I guess after carrying me 1500 miles, anything deserves a little break and a some TLC. Last Friday, I thought I’d take a spin around town after work to try out the new, taller seat post I had just installed. After riding a few blocks down the road, it soon became apparent that my bike wasn’t happy.

I meant to write about this a few days ago, but life got busy. However, the Salon article “Thigh the beloved country” has stuck with me for the past few days and I thought I should write about it here, so that others may pay it the proper attention. (It is worth watching the Site Pass to read…I promise!)

Basically, it is a write-up on a new Nike ad campaign that emphasizes a more “real” looking women achieving their training goals without letting society’s prejudices alter the vision of success. For example, here’s a spread that appeared in the September issue of Glamour magazine (click for a bigger version):

Over the many women I’ve dated, many of them have felt awkward because of their size. Too short, too tall, thighs too big, tummy too big, arms too big, etc. Many of these women have been fairly fit - it wasn’t that they did not feel out of shape, nor were they really; they just imagined they were because of society’s near-constant reminders of “the perfect form.” Hey, the average dress size for women in America is somewhere around 12-14…so why must we constantly see size zeros?

I’m a guy who has been told he carries 300 pounds as though it is not a hair over 250. I may have a tummy, but from all the biking, my legs are lean, mean machines. I don’t get out of breath walking up stairs - I’m happy with my general physical health, and so is my doctor.

As such, I’d rather see someone with curves, not all bones! Yeah, baby, nothing sexier than a woman with elbows that look as if they could pierce their way through the skin at any moment! Get real. Gimme more proud women with proud butts! Gimme thighs of justice!

OK, I love my iPod. I love my iTunes, which will stream to my Airport Express/stereo, all controlled by iSee iTunes on my Tivo. I love my 400+ CDs, all lovingly displayed in my living room, ready to be played. (Why would I do that considering almost everything is ripped to iTunes and is a remote click away now I don’t know, but whateva!)

However, in less than 12 hours, Pandora has rocked my world. Run, don’t walk, to this service. (I have invites if anyone wants to try it!)

The idea is straightforward, although not simple in the slightest. A bunch of music geeks got together and classified, on a song-by-song basis, their huge libraries of music. (Least that’s the story…) For example, here’s the description of Soul Coughing’s “True Dreams of Wichita” as provided by the service:

“featuring electronica influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, major key tonality, groove-based composition and mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation”

What do they do with all this data? You login to the service and you can create 100 streaming “radio stations”, each seeded with either an artist or song title. From the seed, the service automagically creates a stream that closely matches your chosen seed artist/song. You can emphasize songs you particularly like in your stream, or you can eliminate songs from ever being played again. Everything is streamed via Flash applet (cross-platform yumminess) at 128kbps to your web browser, out your soundcard and into your ears. Album cover art is displayed for the vast majority of songs, and each song/artist is merely a click away with the built-in Amazon and/or iTunes store integration. You can also share your “channels” with others, so once you find your perfect stream you can share it with others.

I’ve already created a Carbon Leaf channel, a Beulah channel, a Soul Coughing channel, a Ben Folds Five channel and a Barenaked Ladies channel. Each one of the channels does accurately match the seed so far…and by nudging the “Soul Coughing” channel a bit I’ve slanted it a bit closer to Ruby Vroom Soul Coughing instead of their later stuff. Who knew how great “Derelict Organ” by Lenola went with Soul Coughing, let along some Talking Heads thrown in next? I’d never even heard of Lenola before today…now I’ve got them on my list of CDs to pick up!

I’ve used some of the other “customizable” streaming services before. I’ve always been disappointed with their selection (not nearly deep enough) and their lackluster DJ algorithms, but so far Pandora seems to have all of them beat. It will be interesting to see if I’m this excited about it a week from now…if so, the $36/year they plan to charge (after the beta period is over) will seem like a small price to pay for the service.

OK, so one question has puzzled everyone I’ve asked. I’ve even queried some of the servers at the establishment in question.

Why is Buffalo Wild Wings referred to as BW3?

Remember when I declared that “The Project” “handled its first real-world challenge with only minor coding changes”? Yeah, well, “The Project” had been languishing in this quasi-state of beta for the last 4 months or so. A few live users, a bunch of internal load testing and quality assurance testing.

Most of the bugs found in the beta phase have been relatively quick fixes because of the code segregation methods I followed when doing the original coding. The problem with the coding method I followed is that the “big” bugs are terribly difficult to track down…and as you might guess, the primary “big” issue was the lack of stability. There are simply so many things going on at once even with a very verbose log file it is nearly impossible to know the state of code at any one time. Compound this with the poor, poor handling of ADO calls on the part of Microsoft and you end up with one frustraited Damon.

Well, today I’m pleased to share that I officially have released code to our Operations group that has zero defects, according to the current bug reports. There are some feature enhancements still missing which are forthcoming in version 2, but every bug has been squished. They load tested it this morning…everything behaved wonderfully!

So, I turned on the celebratory christmas lights lining the office door and have been on cloud 9 most of the day. In the words of Was (Not Was), “I feel better than James Brown.”

Yesterday in the office…

Worker #1: “I see on Slashdot there’s a story, “Games Should Be Like Female Orgasms”.”
Worker #2: “Games are a myth?”
Worker #3: “Aren’t games already a huge waste of time and effort?”

Worker A: (to Worker B) “I’ll get that to you in a minute.”
Worker B: (shouting) “55…50…45…40…”
Worker C: (interrupts) “You know, I don’t think the entire office wants to know how long you can last when trying to satisfy your woman”

Am I lazy because I purposely parked my Beetle out in the middle of the parking lot in order to get it washed?

This morning I heard the forecasters say we could expect some heavy storms this afternoon. I thought if I parked my car out in the middle of the lot, any rain that was released by the storms would have a clear shot at washing some of the grime off my car.

Judging from the lightning I can see a few miles away, with dark-as-night clouds as a backdrop, I think they got it right.

[Updated: 3:44pm]: Car is sparkly clean, thanks!

How do I live life more with less?

I moved into my apartment 2 years ago as of the first of the month - other than a short-term stay in a tiny little apartment just down the hall, my only previous residences have been my 3000+ square foot house in Hudson and my parents’ basement.

I don’t really consider myself a “too much stuff” kinda guy. Nevertheless, when I moved from the huge house to my 1100 square foot apartment, I really felt the pinch.

Besides the normal assortment of “stuff” indicative of a middle-class lifestyle, I’ve got three major “collections”. I call them collections ‘cause, frankly, the three categories of stuff just exist to accumulate more stuff. Kitchen gadgetry doesn’t count, ‘cause I can honestly say I’ve used everything for its intended purpose (and many unintended purposes) over the years, even if I don’t have tons of room in my kitchen here at the apartment. I’ve got tons of books but, once again, all of them have been used for reading at one point in another, and I appreciate keeping them around as a reference or to loan to curious others.

No, my three collections are much less utilitarian than either of those examples. The first is my Toy Story collection. I started collecting everything Toy Story I could get my hands on when the movie first came out. Due to the lack of enthusiasm for the Disney-distributed Pixar film prior to release, very few merchandising deals were made, making it relatively easy to collect a majority of the original set. Most of the items bigger than an action figure still have their boxes, but almost all of them have at least been removed at one point or another to be played with and/or exhibited. However, almost none of the toys are currently on display here in the apartment…I just don’t have the room. Well, I might have the room, but if you combine this collection with the next two, I’m just plain out of space.

The second collection is my desk toy collection. Working, as I have, since I was 16 years old at a desk job, I’ve already collected an entire lifetime of fun desk toys. I’ve got stuffed characters of all types, snow globes, action figures, time wasters, curiosities, etc. Right now, almost all of these items are stored away in the closet in file boxes. About 10 file boxes, to be exact. What does one do with all of these? I’ve already tried recycling some of them into my current work environment…if I kept my desk clean there I imagine I’d find more success. Instead, they just get added to the existing items decorating my current desk and add to the clutter.

Third, my collection of old computer hardware/software/books for the Apple II series (and a few other older systems) takes up more space than any of the previous collections. Taking up a good portion of the unused floor space in my second bedroom, the wide assortment of old machines, and their accompanying accessories, is something that has a meaning so nostalgic to me that I really can’t imagine ever getting rid of them. I’ve got both my original Apple IIe and my second computer, my Apple IIgs. Both of these computers set my parents back a pretty penny in their day…and both of them together are often referred to as “the best investments in [my] future they’ve ever made.” I’ve also got an even older Apple II+, piles of software, most of the Nibble magazines published and enough spare hardware to make sure things will continue to run long into the future. That is, if they are ever powered up. Most of the systems are still in the boxes we packed them into when we retired them.

Without any of these three collections, my apartment would be furnished, but not crowded in the slightest. Instead, I’ve got a storage closet filled with desk toy boxes and Toy Story toys, a spare bedroom mostly filled with old computer equipment and piles of things that could be better stored away in an organized way in the living room awaiting their final destination due to overcrowding by the collections. Do I just get rid of all three? Do I decide on one to stay with and dump the rest? Each of them pull at my memories in a different way…representative of a portion of my life, breadcrumbs leading to who I am today.

Something to ponder…

Work’s been, frankly, work the last few days. Haven’t had much time to work on the answer to world peace…with activities both Tuesday and Wednesday I was really looking forward to tonight, another exploratory trip around Minneapolis with Kate. Be good to get out, show my allergies who’s boss and get my second chance to try out the new pedal system.

The culmination of a three-part series on my clipless pedals/shoes buying experience…it was just too much info for one post!

Last week, as you might have read here, was one of those weeks where biking just didn’t work out. When I did finally have some time over the weekend, I ended up trying to move from one air-conditioned space to another, avoiding the pollen floating around in the air.

Meanwhile, Erik The Bikeman has had my shoes and clipless pedals waiting for me to head over, pick ‘em up and get ‘em installed. For those of you who don’t remember, my Grandpa gave me my choice of pedals and shoes for my birthday. I had ordered everything almost 3 weeks ago…but just as the shoes came in, Erik’s started up their summer sale…and while I appreciate the prices during their sales events, the service is lackluster due to the large quantity of people vying for the attention of the salespeople. I wanted to have a nice relaxed time getting the pedals installed, getting the most out of the wonderful service Dave B. at the Eden Prairie location usually provides. I’ve never had clipless pedals before…I knew I’d need as much help as I could get!

So, tonight was the night. Tomorrow and Wednesday I’m busy with non-biking activities, and Thursday I’m supposed to pick up a ride with Kate. Biking over after work, get the pedals installed, absorb the training and tips Dave would offer and then take a nice ride back home to get used to it before Thursday.

Second in a three-part series on my clipless pedals/shoes buying experience…it was just too much info for one post!

In the shoe department, the choices were a bit more limited. I wear size 15/16 shoes, depending on the style. Believe me you, I realize how hard it is to find regular shoes that fit me, let alone a biking shoe. Dad had alerted me to SIDI, which manufactures shoes in my size. Low and behold, when I presented Dave, my sales guy at Erik’s with my shoe situation he brought up the SIDI website right away. We evaluated my options, talked through the different tradeoffs and compromises each shoe brought to the table, including price. The pedal choice limited our options a bit, but in a good way. I wanted a shoe that I could occasionally use off-bike, say to pick up things at the grocery store or Target on the way home, without tap dancing down the aisles.

We settled on the SIDI Bullet 2. ‘course, this was a special order, so I put down my 50% and waited for the call.

By the way, just an FYI in the very unlikely event the SIDI web designer might ever come across this information. Side-scrolling websites are damn annoying. What’s wrong with scrolling up/down? Thank you.

First in a three-part series on my clipless pedals/shoes buying experience…it was just too much info for one post!

I went into Erik’s thinking I wanted a pair of Speedplay’s but Dave, my favorite sales guy at the Eden Prairie location, sold me on the benefits of the Eggbeater design. I picked out a set of Crank Brother’s Eggbeater sl’s, which Erik’s had in stock. Lighter weight, upgradeable (you can bring the Eggbeater sl pedals all the way up to the level of the Eggbeater 3ti by purchasing one part at a time) and very low maintenance. The cleats are formed out of a weaker metal than the pedals, which should lead to an increased pedal life. The 4-way pedal design was a welcome comfort for a newbie like me, and the 2-year warranty was also a big selling point.

I know I haven’t written in almost a week. Gosh…it isn’t like I haven’t been doing anything noteworthy…nor is it that I’ve had no time to update. Guess I’ve just lazy…oh well, just to catch everyone up.

• Spent Monday night and Tuesday night up at my parental units’ abode. They had to attend a funeral…my father’s mother’s sister’s husband passed away unexpectedly last week. They drove down, with the rest of the local Durand clan, to Kansas to attend the funeral, while I housesat and watched their dogs, bird and fish. (This usage of the word ‘fish’ is meant to be plural, for those playing the home game) The housesitting went well…Beaker, my parents’ bird, had confused me with my father…which meant that he was much more friendly than he normally is when I visit.
• Wednesday night I went out with my old friend, Jean. Realized that we’ve known each other for at least 10 years now…seems like only yesterday we were making fun of “Bumble-Bee Girl.” Been quite the rollercoaster…but anyone who can stand 10 years of me certainly deserves some kind of medal and/or recognition.
• Noticed that the chainsaw noises I heard out my window earlier this week were not just my imagination or lucid dreaming. There is now a wide path cut into the forest behind my apartment…I’m guessing it is part of the work to put in the new bike path along East Bush Lake Road. Looks like it will be set back just enough so I can continue to sit in my apartment (semi-)naked and stare out at the forest without getting some kind of indecent exposure complaint.
• I’ll make an announcement regarding a new website, DodgeGolf, in the near future. For now, does anyone have suggestions as to what the best way is to fix divots in commercial-grade carpeting?

Did stuff the rest of the week, too. However, as the week went on my allergies got worse and worse again…meaning things slowed down quite a bit as I coasted into the weekend. Dunno if I’ve got two allergies, one that struck earlier in the season and then another right now, or if it is something constantly there and I’m doing something else to bring it on. Wash the sheets, hermitically seal the apartment and start dropping allergy meds like they are going out of style. No messing around this time, tho…if more than a few days go by with no relief, I’m off to the doc to get this officially diagnosed and treated.

Last year, I took Kelly down to the Minneapolis Aquatennial’s Milk Carton Boat Races and Sand Castle Competition. It was a hot, sunny day…but she was won over by the wonderfully executed sand castles and made me promise we’d do it this year.

Well, low and behold she actually remembered this pledge…and when the time came around she began asking about it. Between the weather forecast (hot hot and muggy again!) and her being diagnosed with strep on Friday, it seemed that our participation was in doubt. Nevertheless, Kelly persevered and exclaimed that nothing would keep her from the 10 by 10 foot square of beachfront property. This left us on Saturday night with a will, but no plan or way.

Last night was the end-of-season party for the inaugural season of WAKA TC. We had space set aside for us at Grandma’s Saloon and a $600 division-sponsored budget for the evening.

LMP met up at Jason’s Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner before heading down to the party a few blocks away. Jason’s restaurant in downtown Minneapolis is well managed (he is the manager of the restaurant, so we’d hope so!) and the pasta base was perfect for a long night of many alcoholic libations.

LMP got down to Grandma’s around 8:30 or so. There was already a volleyball game going on, people finishing off beers, etc. I took some pictures and then joined in the volleyball action. I hadn’t played since high school…but it reminded me how much I loved to play. Maybe after I lose a few pounds (so my shins don’t leave my body in protest) I should join a non-competitive adult league. I digress…

After volleyball, the division president, Amy, distributed the drink tickets, someone ran across the street to buy cups and we started flipcup. The setup was less than ideal…but we managed to cobble together 3 hightops along a wall and got quite the game going. Most participation all year, I’d guess. Anyway, we must have played for 3 or 4 hours with only periodic potty breaks…the competition was intense. At one point, we even had a non-English speaker battling it out from the non-kickball crowd nearby. No real champions of flipcup were crowned at the event…contrary to Nick’s post I remember no two-cup showdown flipcup. I congratulated him on finally drinking BEER in his flipcup, but otherwise it was team action all night long.

I realized about halfway through the night that I was the only photographer in attendance, which sucked since I knew my camera had been acting up recently on close-ups. Most of the pictures came out just fine, tho, you can check out the gallery here. I had come to the party with two charged batteries and four memory cards, which meant I was busy snapping pictures (and a few movies) most of the evening. Even managed to score a posed shot with the president of the division, Amy, handing over the TC division trophy to the winning team, the Sexy Ball Kickers.

Around 1am, Amy once again called everyone together and convinced many of us to head down to the basement’s dance floor for some hot booty-wigglin’ action. Jason even gave some of us white boys (and girls) some great dance lessons. At least now I can say I suck less than I did at the beginning of the event! There’s even a shot of Jason, myself and Josh dancing to the Run-DMC track ‘It’s Tricky’. Heh.

The house lights came up around 1:45; we slowly filtered out and walked back to the cars. We made plans to get together again this next Thursday as a team, just for a social event. Plans were also made for a possible fall WAKA TC kickball season…hmmmm…

I can certainly say that the kickball season sure went much better than I ever imagined. It certainly wasn’t what I imagined it would be when we started out…I thought it would be kickball with drinks. This certainly turned more into a social outing as the season went on…friendships were made, new skills (flipcup, the importance of keeping the ball on the ground) were forged and I was introduced to new media (Chappelle’s Show, Entourage) that I will continue to enjoy long after the season fades. Hope to see everyone next season…until then, in the words of LMP’s captain, Josh, “Stay Classy!”

LMP’s season came to an early, unexpected end Thursday night as they lost in the first round of the Twin Cities Division of WAKA’s inaugural season championship.

As you might have read elsewhere, LMP had its sights set on the finals. Many observers expected LMP to easily overcome Number One Spot, which they beat twice in the regular season. However, Number One Spot came out onto the field in tip-top shape, got a lead early on some great ball kicking, then kicked us in the balls with their great defensive skills. (Heh, been waiting all season to use that line!)

After our loss, being the perennial good sports LMP has been all season long, we stayed around and watched the semi-final game and the championship game. In the end, the team who won the regular season as well, the Sexy Ball Kickers, won the playoffs.

The remainder of the evening was spent at Williams playing flipcup. Nate Nick and I had a chance to settle our 2-on-2 flipcup matchup…he pulled out a win, breaking the tie and can sit smugly in victory until the next season…when he will, I repeat, he will be goin’ down!

Tonight we’ve got the end-of-season party. $600’s worth of free beer…that’s a good amount of flipcup, that’s for sure. In addition, we’ll be getting a good base in the tummy by stopping off at Jason’s Old Spaghetti Factory for a meal beforehand…should be awesome.

Pictures available here. Enjoy!

Tonight we’ve got the WAKA Twin Cities Division division playoffs.

We finished third in the division, which will mean we’ve got to play two games before we get to the finals. (Had we won last week, we would have gotten a first round bye) The first round we play the Number One Spot, which we beat both times we played them in the regular season. The second round is against the Godless Whores. We lost early in the season to them, but beat them the second time we played.

If we win both those battles, we’re up against the Sexy Ball Kickers for the division final. (Unless, of course, they lose in the second round to their opponents) We barely lost to the Sexy Ball Kickers in the season finale but this time around, they promise to have their full team on-hand.

Tonight was the big IAI reunion I mentioned in this post about a month ago. I didn’t get down there until almost 6:15 or so because of traffic (it started at 4), but there were still plenty of people hanging around Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis when I arrived. The weather was wonderful…none of the stinging heat we’ve been treated to as of late, just a breezy, sunny evening around the lawn bowling greens on top of the pub.

I find it amazing that almost all of them still have jobs in the financial industry, many doing either the same job or a similar job with more responsibility/status. I guess this is how things go for the most part…but I certainly felt like an outsider when it came to many of the discussions, ‘cause I just wasn’t tuned into that sector anymore. Nevertheless, it was wonderful to reconnect with many of my old coworkers. Some brought their kids, some brought along pictures. Even those who couldn’t attend were the subject of discussions…”I knew someone who knew someone who just talked with them the other day!”

I have to admit…during my employment, and especially near the time I left IAI, many people pointed out just how much I grew up at IAI. When I compare my high school reunion to the IAI reunion, I think the IAI reunion left me with way more warm fuzzies in my heart afterwards. I really did grow up there; many of the people at the event were my mentors, team members or close confidants at some point in my tenor at the firm.

I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Minnesota Zoo’s IMAX Theatre on Sunday afternoon with Kelly. The place was packed…indeed, the combination of the 95+-degree weather outside and the number of people inside caused the theatre to get a bit warm by the end of the show, but I heard no one complaining. We were all fully immersed in the movie’s experience.

I say experience ‘cause it wasn’t just an entertaining movie from the plot/character perspective…it was also a beautiful film to watch. Glorious colors filled the screen when we moved from room to room in the factory…the chocolate waterfall room, filled with the greenest grass and the brightest candy apples…to the television room, which was the whitest white you could ever imagine. Outside the factory, things were drab in their drabbiest way…especially Charlie’s home.

I appreciated that this film wasn’t exact remake of the previous version with Gene Wilder. There were no remakes of the classic songs from the originally, which meant I wasn’t sitting there singing along to a song which “didn’t quite seem right” and I thought the new music matched the visuals perfectly. I felt that the characters were better developed as well, especially Willy Wonka. I actually understood why he was behaving the way he was - in the earlier version, I was confused as to why he had behaved in many of the ways he did. I got the “creepy” vibe from Depp’s performance, but not in that “Michael Jackson” kind of way everyone was so worried about. I also appreciated the way the characters had a much better understanding of what was going on around them. For example, after a particularly entertaining Oompa-Loompa song that mentioned Augustus Gloop by name, Willy Wonka had to deflect questions from the characters about why the song seemed “so well rehearsed” for something that was an apparent accident.

While I’m sure there will be plenty of people disappointed by this new interpretation of an old classic, I for one enjoyed it quite a bit. In a lackluster summer movie season, I think I can safely say that this has been my favorite general-release movie so far.

Sure, I did 50 miles on Sunday. However, if I just took the next two weeks off it wouldn’t be that amazing now, would it?

Well, just to squelch any of the naysayers:

• I did 26 miles on Wednesday (including the morning ride into work) with Kate. We explored a bunch of wonderful riding on both the east and west sides of the river near Lake Nokomis, Minnehaha Falls and Fort Snelling.
• 26 miles on Thursday after work, too. Rode over to Erik’s, down the LRT trail to the White Castle in Saint Loius Park, and then back home.
• This morning I woke up, hopped on the bike and did my usual tour around Lake Normandale and the Hyland Park Reserve for a total of 22 miles.

I’ve been listening to San Francisco Nights by The Animals for the past few days…I remember listening to this tune back while I was in high school one summer.

My dad and I were installing some new carpeting and tile for a local high school at night. In the heat (the high school didn’t run the air conditioning in the summer…especially at night!) all we had were our knee pads, fans, flooring products and this old cassette player to get us through the night. The Animals were one of the tapes my dad had on heavy rotation, mixed in with a smattering of old 60’s and 70’s tunes. (I was really into both decades around that age) I hadn’t heard the song for years, until I stumbled across it in iTunes one morning.

So, in honor of this, one of my favorite songs, I’ve included the opening of the song below…cause, well, it is my favorite part of the song. The rest of the song has this beautiful folksy sound…but this passage is read at the beginning of the song in a sort of “radio announcer” style…

“This following program is dedicated to the city and people of San Francisco.
Who may not know it, but they are beautiful. And so is their city.
This is a very personal song, so if the viewer cannot understand it, particularly those of you who are of European residence, save up all your bread and fly Trans-love airways to San Francisco, USA. Then maybe you’ll understand the song. It will be worth it. If not for the sake of this song, but for the sake of your own peace of mind.”

Earlier today, I rode the 50-mile Tour of Saints bike ride. The Tour of Saints describes itself as “not a race…a heavenly little ride.” It has both a 35-mile and a 50-mile course winding in and around the towns near Collegeville. My favorite part of the ride is that you didn’t need to decide which route you are going to take until mile 31. Considering that I had never ridden more than 34 miles or so in a single day, this option was a welcome part of the tour…I’ve always wanted to attempt a longer course, but my confidence wasn’t quite there to choose it right out of the gate.

Yesterday I got talked into going to the Great Satan by a coworker on the way back from lunch. (Regular readers/friends realize that I usually try and avoid Wal-Mart at all costs…but it was suprisingly free of the regular Wal-Mart annoyances like crying babies during this visit) While she was dropping off some film to get developed, I got to take a peek at that row that greets you when you walk in every Wal-Mart. Right there, for $5.92 I found a wonderful new drink holder, a Bubba Keg.

The Bubba Keg (my model does NOT have the big “20” shown here…just a plain stainless steel band) is a huge insulated mug holding 52 ounces of your favorite fluid. It promises to keep cold drinks cold and warm drinks warm for hours on end. I found an orange Bubba Keg, verified it was in good shape (the first orange one I picked up was cracked) and headed for the cash register.

I did some initial testing here at work. The entire top of the Bubba Keg unscrews from the body, allowing plenty of room to fill it with your favorite beverage. No complicated spigots or other hard-to-clean items on the mug…everything is easy to wash and keep clean. When the sipper is closed with the flip-top cap provided, nothing spills out of the Bubba Keg at all.

The real test was the kickball game. I loaded it up with a full tray of ice, filled it to the top with water and sealed it up around 6pm. Once I got down to the game, I sat down and enjoyed some nice cool refreshing water from my Bubba Keg. It sat out in 85-90 degree weather for a good 3 hours until our game was finished, when I carried it back to the car I could still hear some ice cubes and water sloshing about inside. Drove over to the bar, parked in the shade and went inside. Upon my return around midnight, the Bubba Keg still had a few ice cubes floating in the water.

I think the Bubba Keg is a great product…certainly performs as advertised, has plenty of capacity (but not too much, it isn’t too heavy to carry at all) and has a good design. Now only if it came with a bike attachment…

We went into our final game still high off the previous week’s victory over the first of the undefeated teams in the division, the Godless Whores. This week’s game, the last game of the regular season, was against the other undefeated team, the Sexy Ball Kickers.

The first game ran really late, so in celebration of Michelle and Debbie’s birthdays we all consumed a few alcoholic beverages before heading over to the secondary field for our game. Upon arrival, we discovered that the Sexy Ball Kickers were short one girl. (League rules dictate that you must have at least 4 boys and 4 girls making up your squad each game) This would normally force a forfeit, which would have secured another win for LMP, but our team decided that we’d rather play our final game of the season, so we decided to let them play. Usually that would be the end of it, but considering they are undefeated, we added a compromise that they would automatically receive one out at the bottom of their batting order and have to field with only 10 people.

We lost the rock/paper/scissors, so we ended up batting first. We pulled in an amazing 4 runs in the first inning, totally pumping us up towards another win. Due to some fielding errors and questionable calls by the refs, they also ended up scoring 4 runs in the bottom of the 1st, tying us all up. A few more runs were scored, a few more errors made in fielding, a few more questionable calls (both benefiting us and penalizing us) and we entered the 5th inning down by a run. We managed to pull it in, but in the quest to bring in the go-ahead run we made a bad move and kicked on what would have been a walk forcing a runner home, bringing an end to the top of the inning. In the bottom of the inning we were unable to hold them back, they scored their one run to break the tie, and the game was over.

Certainly, we made some errors, but overall it is great to see how the team has come together over the course of the season. LMP certainly has grown and gotten better over the season, and I look forward to the playoffs where we may again meet the blue team again for the division championship.

After the game, we made our way to Williams. Flipcup was just getting organized (with plenty of cups this week, since even people not “responsible” for the cups brought a few packs) so I sat down and ordered some snacks to fill up my stomach. After chitchatting with the team, I was called over to the Flipcup table and ended up on the SUCKY side. Ugh! After we brought on some help from other non-kickball playing bar patrons, we did finally manage to pull in a win.

Nick and I had a rematch of our 1-on-1 2-cup Flip Cup deathmatch from my birthday night, only I went down in a best 2 out of 3 in 2 straight games. I’ve won one match, he’s won one, so look forward to another update for who will take home the season title!

People cleared out early again…I hung around with some members of Your Team Sucks and chatted a bit. Most of them are U of M ACM members, which makes it easy to explain what I really do for a living when asked.

Playoff schedules will be forthcoming…it sounds like the word on the street was that we would be first playing against the Number One Spot, which we beat twice during the regular season. If that’s the case, then our first playoff game should be a snap. *crosses fingers*

I scored [against a] Godless Whore last night!

Yes, readers, I finally scored! Game/Week 7 and I finally scored. Sure, I had crossed home base before a few times…but each time it was just after the third out of the inning.

While LMP was in good spirits, we were all acutely aware that we were going up against one of the two undefeated teams in our WAKA division. The Godless Whores (otherwise known as “The Angels”) were 5-0-1, their tie coming from their game against the other lossless team, The Sexy Ball Kickers. The weather was miserable…it alternated between a light mist and a heavy drizzle for 30 or so minutes before gametime, leaving not only the fields slick but the ball wet as well.

We built up a huge lead early in the game, which thankfully gave us some cushion room when The GW’s came out with legs a kicking in the 4th inning. I was supposed to sit out the inning, but when it was discovered that an oversight left right field open I got pulled back onto the field. What a mistake!

I usually like to play my right field position fairly far back. Due to my biking, I have a good deal of sprinting ability, but I’m not nearly as flexible as most people. By playing back, I can usually run up at the ball, allowing me to catch it in front of me without having to twist around.

After the first kicker dropped a ball right behind our first baseman, Josh pulled me in from playing so far back. ‘course, then the next kicker kicked the ball back beyond my position, meaning I couldn’t make that play either and ended up bobbling the ball. (Never mind the rain/mist that made everything slippier than normal!)

So, yeah, I shouldn’t have been in the 4th inning, but whatever. We still ended up pulling in a huge win!

The afterparty at the bar wasn’t all that and a bag of potato chips, but it was still fun nonetheless.

Next week is our final game…against the other undefeated team, the Sexy Ball Kickers. Hopefully we’ll have just as much (if not more) luck than we did this week and pull in another victory for the season.

I’m not sure what prompted me to get up early this morning, but I did. I followed my usual Tuesday morning ritual - startup iTunes and download the weekly free songs. Only today, I was greeted by an ad embedded in the iTunes music store bragging, “Podcasts are here!”

I’ve written about my love of Podcasts before, but up until today I had been (unhappily) using iPodder. iPodder is always fussy about its connection to iTunes…sometimes songs wouldn’t get imported properly, and they almost never got labeled properly as a “Podcast” for integration into my assortment of Smart Playlists. Just as these things were getting on my nerves Jobs announced the integration of podcast support in iTunes 4.9…I had been eagerly awaiting the upgrade ever since.

Apple sure didn’t disappoint…while things are still a bit rough here and there, and the lack of “enhanced Podcast support” on my 3G iPod is somewhat disappointing, I think Apple has scored another win. Within minutes, I had moved over all my subscriptions into the iTunes interface, synced up the iPod and I was ready to go. All of the podcasts are organized efficiently in a separate view with collapsible headings and a slightly different UI. The modified UI allows you to download manually anything you might have skipped over or otherwise excluded in the Podcast preferences section. The only thing I’m missing is per-feed aging and syncing preferences…but overall, this is a limitation I can live with considering how clean the rest of it is.

Had my birthday with the family today…we ended up hitting the Machine Shed for lunch, and then we went and saw Bewitched. I’m happy to report that not only was the company wonderful, but that the food and movie were great, too!

After both, we went back to my aunt’s house to open presents. Got all kinds of goodness…my Parents got me an Apple Airport Express, which will allow me to stream my iTunes library out to my stereo (and upgrade the wireless in the apartment up to 802.11g) along with a birdfeeder for the deck outside my apartment and a number of books from my Amazon Wishlist. An assortment of DVDs (Simpsons Seasons 4 & 5, Big Fish) and gift cards from my Aunt, and my Grandpa gave me money to go out and buy my clipless pedals and shoes for my bike. And, although they couldn’t be here, my Sister and Bro-In-Law got me Lumines, a new puzzle game for my PSP.

A sentimental highlight was a gift I received from my Aunt. When we had gone to Disney World when I was young (10 or so, if I recall correctly) my late Grandmother and her had picked out a luminescent Goofy portrait for me. It had been packed away and forgotten until my Aunt unpacked a box a few months ago. ‘twas a neat reminder of my Grandma at the party…

We ended the day with the traditional blowing out the candles, song and cake. This year’s cake was a white cake with yummy whipped topping. Mixed into the white cake were little bits of lemon puddin’. It tasted so wonderful. Mmmm!

When I picked up the wrapped birthday package from Kelly, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I thought for a moment that it was something made of cement. Or marble. All I could tell was that it was large and heavy - very very dense.

When I finally unwrapped it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I am now, after admiring it whenever I spotted it at a bookstore since its release, the proud owner of The Complete Far Side 1980-1994 (2 Volume Set). Weighing in at 1272 pages (or 20 pounds, whichever you prefer), these two volumes catalog every Far Side panel ever published.

Those of you who have known me for many years remember the ever-present Far Side calendars on my desk at work throughout the 90s. I was always a big fan of the series, starting from the first panel I remember seeing when I was still in elementary school of the child trying to push open the front door belonging to a school for the gifted. (Someone had replaced Midvale with Westwood, which was fitting considering we were the gifted/talented program magnet for the district)

So, a big public Thank You to Kelly for the wonderful gift. Woohoo! I will treasure it always…

[ed: I was asked to remove the Midvale cartoon originally included in this post. See here for more details.]

Although I think all two readers of this blog wished me a happy birthday already, I’ll make note of my 29th birthday here for posterity in case future cockroach archeologists dig up this blog after the nuclear holocaust.

My official birthday (it sounds like it may stretch out into a weekend-long celebration) was wonderful.

I worked today, but that didn’t mean that any fun was lost! JManDoo and his wife made me a cake, while I received many candy gifts from other co-workers as well. Lunch took the form of an outing to the Chic-fil-a Express down at the U of M, which was just as yummy as always. I shared my cake around the office, turned on the celebratory lights and put the finishing touches on a project that had been sitting on my plate for way too long.

My kickball games are always on Thursday night…tonight was no different. Even tho the temperatures at game time were over 95, both my parents and Kelly came to the game. My parents, besides bringing big “Happy Birthday” balloons to tie to their chairs, also brought little party-favor squirt guns for everyone on my team (I got a huge super soaker since, well, it was MY birthday!) Considering the temperature, the party favors were the perfect choice, since when not shooting each other they could be used to cool oneself down a bit!

The Lake Minnetonka Purifiers brought home an absolute victory over “Your Team Sucks”, which was absolutely the best gift the kickball team could have given me for my birthday! At the bar following the game, I also managed to avenge my team captain’s loss a few weeks ago to one of the black-shirted “Your Team Sucks” members in a 1-on-1 2-cup Flip Cup deathmatch. Even better!

Birthday with the family is on Saturday…stay tuned!

Well, this year has been a major headache for my biking program. Bitterly cold, rainy, the combination of the two…one just can’t win.

I have managed to get out a few times…last Friday night I did a full 31-mile ride after work and tonight I did 17 miles.

Considering I can now do 31 miles AFTER work and still not wake up in any pain the next morning, I think I’m ready to attempt a 50-mile ride like the Tour of Saints. I especially like this one since, unlike the Ironman where you had to decide 4 miles into it if you wanted to take the long route, this course allows you to delay that decision until mile 31, which seems perfect to me. That way, you can do most of your ride, and if you’re ready to attempt the full challenge, you may do so after evaluating how well you’ve done thus far.

This year for Father’s Day, we all headed over to the Minnesota Zoo’s IMAX Theatre to see Batman Begins. The place was packed, concessions were slow (on Father’s Day you may want to have more than one poor woman working the concessions!) but the movie presentation was flawless. I still believe that the UltraScreen where I saw Star Wars is bigger (and probably better) but the IMAX screen was still great.

On top of that, I think Batman Begins is an excellent feature. It basically had the same job Star Wars Episode 3 had…explain how we get from point A (Bruce Wayne’s parents are shot when he’s a child) to point B (Bruce Wayne as Batman, defending the city of Gotham)…but it did it in a much more entertaining and thoughtful manner.

Afterwards, the clan headed over to El Loro (review), had a great mexican meal and opened presents. Both my Dad and Grandpa took in quite the haul, but the highlight was certainly my Grandpa getting his very own iPod Mini. I don’t think he quite knew what to make out of it at first, but if you’ve read any of my previous articles on the man, you’ll realize that my Grandpa is still a gadgeteer at heart.

I went over to Grandpa’s house on Tuesday night and showed him the ins and outs of iPod usage. He picked it up right away, as I might have guessed, and only got tripped up by the hierarchical menu system. (I have a feeling, if the display could handle it, he’d be well served by standard breadcrumb navigation at the top of the screen)

Happy Father’s Day to both my Dad and my Grandpa. (Picture from YEARS ago, obviously!)

Josh was gone this week for the game, and so was our first week’s captain Jodi, so the honorable Dan Rothstein was our captain for the evening. During the week, I had setup LMPKickball.com, your source for authoritive LMP kickball coverage. As part of that effort, I put together a little Questionnaire to help complete each player’s bio page on the site. While we were waiting for the game to start, a few people took advantage of the downtime and filled out their questionnaires…the rest promised to submit them over the next week. I threatened that anyone not doing so would be punished by having a completely false bio put together…we’ll see how many people take the threat seriously.

This week we played the Uncle Rico’s Raiders, captained by the division president, Amy Ciardiello. As an added bonus, my parents made it out to the game to take in everything WAKA kickball is about (as much as they could without playing, of course!)

The game started off in a bad way for LMP, but in the end we managed to eek out a tie. Amy got semi-violent (you know she was that way ‘cause a beer went flying up in the air!) when the ump made a questionable call for the 4th out of an inning, but otherwise the game went off smoothly.

My mother’s comments were great…

“Whoever the captain of the green team is sure has a potty mouth!”

My parents and I took in a wonderful meal at Kinh Do and I headed over to Williams afterwards. The flipcup games had already began, so after visiting with the team (and picking up my first 2-for-1 drink special, Scooby Snacks, please!) I joined in and played my heart out as you may be able to see if you browse through the selection of pictures on the league’s photo album.

The mid-season party was on Saturday as well…sadly I wasn’t able to make it. Word is, tho, that the LMP members who did make it performed admirably in the “Flipcup Cup”, taking the grand prize. Way to go LMP! Yeah!

Well, the few days I’ve with my PSP have been fun. I honestly wouldn’t have ever purchased the PSP myself with my own funds, but getting it free was awesome.

I do have one gripe, not so much on my account but from the perspective of someone who just shelled out $250 bucks for a PSP. Why doesn’t it come with at least ONE game? The “Sampler Disc” it comes with only has game previews on it (little videos of the gameplay) and not one playable game.

Because of this, I had to rush out the very next day and pick up something to play. I picked up two games and a USB cable (which, coincidentally, can both connect the PSP to my computer to use as a memory card reader/writer but ALSO can be used to charge the unit from my laptop’s USB port).

The first game is Hot Shots Golf, which is a hilarious little golf game. JManDoo and I played wirelessly against each other (he ran out and bought a PSP over lunch the day I brought mine in) and had a blast. Seems like everyone around the office has taken in a few holes, it is a hit across all ages and skill levels. As you play more and more, they reward you with different items…shirts, hats, better clubs, different characters, etc.

The second game I picked up is ATV Offroad Fury:Blazin’ Trails. I’ve always wanted to go riding on ATVs…this is as close as I think I’ll get for a while, considering how often I crash into things or fall off my ATV. Games like this usually disappoint me, due to the complexity of controls. I don’t want to spend the time learning all the different key combinations in order to play the game, but in this case the training mode helps out quite a bit, and the key combinations are intuitive and easy to use. This game, too, has a local multiplayer option, but since JManDoo didn’t buy this game, we couldn’t play against each other. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but it has an Internet multiplayer option as well.

Finally, the USB cable I purchased allowed me to use the utility PSP Video 9 to convert a few video clips I had available onto my PSP. Even at the lower quality settings (due to the limited 32MB size of the included memory card, which I certainly someday will want to upgrade) the video was clear, crisp and easy to watch on the gorgeous PSP screen.

All in all, I’ve had a lot of fun with my PSP so far. Considering my relative dislike for computer gaming, the PSP so far has exceeded all my expectations. Still not quite enough for me to say I’d have paid $250 bucks for it, but I certainly enjoy what I’ve been given.

I went down to my post box yesterday, pulled out the mail and felt something rather stiff and substantial. Upon closer inspection, after noticing the Minnesota Public Radio sticker on the packaging I realized it was my Founding Member CD. A note inside explained that the matching vinyl was taking longer to produce than they anticipated, so they thought they would send us out the CD to satiate our hunger.

The tracklist was already announced here, so there’s no need to repeat it here. All of them are live in-studio performances - it really is kinda fun to hear some of the songs that first graced the 89.3 frequency. Gives you that heartwarming feeling inside, too, knowing that you were there and supporting the station since the first sounds of Atmosphere were broadcast that cold February morning.

Last night, with the mere flip of a power toggle, IAI’s IT systems ceased operations.

Fifth Third had been slow to replace the IT operations of Paladin/IAI after the acquisition - the staff had continued to use many of the same systems they had beforehand. As systems were replaced, things were turned down, but the “core” of the Novell, Microsoft NT and Lotus Notes networks continued to operate. Last night, after one final replication off the Notes server to a spare workstation, all three networks ceased operations. Servers were turned down, UPS power turned off, cables unpatched and cleaned up.

Together we pulled out all the KVM units, at least 100 network cables, 8 phone lines, and 8 or 9 leftover server chassis. We had a chance to tell stories, stack up all the leftover equipment, even took a moment to admire the hack job we performed on move weekend years ago to finish the wiring job the electrician didn’t do in order to get the UPS up by SOB Monday morning. Mike Anderson had the honor of turning off THOR and ZEUS, the main Novell and Microsoft NT servers, respectively, and I turned off the UPS power. Thus was the end of the IAI IT Infrastructure.

It is fitting, tho, that there is going to be an IAI reunion party next month. Perfect timing? I certainly think so! In the lead up to the party I’ll be writing a bunch of nostalgic pieces about IAI…there are so many stories I was reminded of last night that I’ve never put down into words.

Circumstances at work yesterday required me to man our booth at the NAMB 2005 National Convention here in Minneapolis at the convention center. I ended up going in the place of our Director of Operations. As you might imagine, I was none too pleased with this outcome…but I came to grips with my lot in life and off to the convention I went.

After a bit of time in the booth, things get old quickly. So, I told my coworkers I was going to go look around at the other booths and made my way over to “Aisle 100” and started walking up and down the aisles. Being a vendor at the show and having only limited cargo capacity, I judiciously chose which chotchkies I picked up as I walked from booth to booth. I saw some amazing products…there really is quite a bit of domain expertise in the mortgage space, and a lot of it was on display as I walked the show.

As I’m walking the show, I notice a bunch of people in an obviously confused state over at the big Ellie Mae booth. They were trying to get the buttons Ellie Mae was giving away to flash. I stopped to contribute my problem solving skills to the situation…eventually we figured out that the light would start flashing once you clasp the pin portion of the button, completing the circuit. I pinned the badge on my chest, with the little LED flashing away, and continued to walk the show.

The next aisle over I had noticed a neat little giveaway that I figured I could use as an iPod holder here at work. I approached the booth, and out of nowhere, completely unexpected, I hear this shout from behind, “You’re our first winner!” I turn around and there are three representatives from Ellie Mae. I’m sure they saw the confusion on my face…I found out the explanation for the situation as they pointed to my Ellie Mae badge which I had put on minutes earlier. They invited me back to their booth and we proceeded back.

I still had no idea what I had won at this point…as we walk up to the booth I see a sign posted above the container I had fished my flashing light button out from earlier…

Be seen wearing this badge, win a Sony PSP!

My heart skipped a beat, I’m sure. I’d never really considered buying a $250 portable gaming system, since I’m not really a big computer gamer, but getting one free was certain exciting! I shook the VP’s hand and posed for the picture as he handed me my PSP, smiling from ear to ear. I spent a short bit of time discussing with one of their salespeople the issues we had run into when we tried to get Encompass to run in our environment, found out they were hosting the product themselves (with the same code fixes we thought would be necessary to make it cost-effective) and walked back to our booth, grinning, still a bit in disbelief over what I had just been given!

I’ll write more about my new PSP later on…suffice to say, today was unexpectedly a great day!

After our first week’s romp over the Number 1 Spot, the Lake Minnetonka Purifiers went down two straight weeks in a row to both the Sexy Blue Kickers and the Godless Whores. We were hungry. And, considering the messed up schedule our division put together, luck gave us another shot at the Number 1 Spot again. (Even tho we still haven’t played Your Team Sucks or Uncle Rico’s Raiders) A perfect meal?

Josh, Jason and I ref’d the early 6:30 game between the two undefeated teams, the previously mentioned Uncle Rico’s Raiders and the Godless Whores. The game started late, and ran even later. In the final inning, the Godless Whores pulled in just enough runs to end the game in a tie, leaving both teams still undefeated!

We grouped up and realized we only had 11 people show up this week. (The same number we had show up for the first game of the season against the same Number 1 Spot team) Luckily, it broke down that we met the minimum number of both boys and girls so we good to go. We lost at Rock, Paper, Scissors, which meant we were up first.

We totally had our game on, even with our reduced numbers, and pulled out an 9 to 3 victory, bringing our season record to 2 wins, 2 losses (on the kickball field). After the obligatory “good game” handshaking/high-fiving line, we were off to the bar.

The flip cup games weren’t well organized or played…and once again, the beer provisioning left much to be desired. However, our team captain, Josh, finally got to take on the wise-talkin’ member of the Your Team Sucks on a 4-on-4 showdown on flipcup, and bested him 2 out of 3 games. [Video Provided Here]

I felt so off balance yesterday when the servers were down. No personal email, no blog, no shell access. I missed 10 or so emails over the course of the day…the senders only knew my personal address and/or website. Considering that both of these were down until 4pm when they finally restored power at home, I didn’t get the message until nearly the end of the work day when email finally came trickling back into the servers.

Amazing how reliant one can become on their technology.

I finally drifted off to sleep last night around 2am. As my eyelids began to droop, I got to watch quite the show outside as the winds and rain battered the outside the apartment window. Lightning all over, trees being whipped back and forth by the wind, it was all there.

I wake up around 6:30am. I can’t read the clock…not all that unusual in the morning, due to the light coming in the window glaring off its display. Walk over to the bathroom…the light doesn’t work! Sure ‘nuff, the entire apartment is out. I checked the only wall-powered mechanical clock I have in the apartment, on the stove, and find out the power went out shortly before 4:00am. To eliminate the possibility that the power issue was contained within the apartment (circuit breakers, etc) I opened the door to the hallway…yup, only the bright red EXIT sign illuminated the hallway.

The day was perfect…a bit muggy, but the Lake Minnetonka Purifiers were ready for battle against the dreaded “Sexy Ball Kickers”.

I called upon my trusty chariot Twinkie to travel down to kickball tonight. Twinkie hadn’t been on a long drive in some time…and considering the wonderful weather we had for the game today, it seemed like the perfect vehicle to ride into battle. I found a spot right next to the battlefield, parallel parked with haste and headed over to watch the 6:30 battle already in progress.

After the forces collected themselves, the traditional rock/paper/scissors contest decided we would be on the offensive first. Our captain, Joshua, revealed his plans to his troops for the battle. With our order set, positions assigned, we proceeded engage the enemy.

It was a bitter battle…balls were thrown, kicked, caught and then thrown again. In the end, the Lake Minnetonka Purifiers fell in battle 4 to 7. Wounds were bandaged, scorn was leveled, defeat was admitted. Then everyone retreated to the Williams Pub to negotiate the next stage of battle…flipcup. We did no better in flipcup than we did kickball this evening…the Uncle Rico Raiders finished us off in 3 straight team versus team flipcup matches.

The question on everyone’s mind - how does one pay for beer which is handled in a community manner at the flipcup tables? Should everyone bring their own beer? Should each team be responsible for their own tabs? These and the actual questions relating to the Lake Minnetonka Purifiers’ kickball performance will all be answered in time…we hope.

Also up for consideration…given how central flipcup (and by extension, beer drinking) is to the kickball experience…how long can Damon continue to categorize these entries in the “Fitness” category?

A few months ago, I audited the contents of my iPod, Janine, against my collection of CDs and pulled out all of the CDs that needed to be reripped to complete the complete digitization of my CD library. I finally got down a few weeks ago to working my way through the CDs yet to be imported and watched my music library grow in size as I imported them into iTunes.

I knew it was going to be close…but with 50+ CDs left to go, Janine finally complained she had all that she could handle. The entire 40GB had been filled up at 8399 MP3s. (I rip my tunes using LAME with —alt-present standard which usually yields a 170kbps to 210kbps VBR file)

I managed to fit everything I had my using the “Only update checked songs” option in iTunes and unchecking the Holiday music and old podcasts. However, if I’m gonna squeeze in the remainder of my collection I’ll need to get the ratings in order so that I can sync based on ratings, which to me seems the best option at this point. I’ve already got a headstart on this…I’ve rated most of the music I’ve ever listened to, but there are many, many tracks I imported in my mass ripping efforts that hadn’t been listened to yet, and thus, doesn’t have a rating.

The second week of WAKA kickball was a promising outing. My team, the Lake Minnetonka Purifiers, was hot off a 12-2 blowout of the Number One Spot team from game 1. Our captain, Joshua, would finally be joining us after finishing his finals at school. All of our team would be in attendance (we only had 11 of the 17 people on the team at the first game). The outlook was incredibly hopeful.

As you might guess from above setup, this week’s game against the Godless Whores did not go as well as our first outing. We managed to pull in 5 runs, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the 6 runs the GW’s brought in. Disappointing, to be sure, but luckily we’ve got many more games yet to play during which we’ll be able to prove our unmatched kickball prowess…

Well, the old adage, “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should” certainly applies to me today.

Sure, getting to tell stories of great diving catches, lunges back towards a base after an overrun and bringing home the first game in the “Wins” column were quite ego-boosting, walking around like a crippled old man wasn’t all that great!

My muscles aren’t sore…I think I have my biking to thank for that. However, the impact of a bike ride is nothing compared to running full speed towards a base, only letting up at the last minute and having all 300+ pounds of me push down on my legs when I try to stop on a dime. It feels like each of my joints are crying out in pain today!

In other news, the Twin Cities WAKA League photos from Week 1 were posted today. Frustraiting you can’t download full resolution photos from the gallery site, but they did manage to catch quite a few great shots (including some of yours truly, as you’ll see below!)

Tonight was the first game of the inaugural season of WAKA Kickball here in the state of Minnesota…and the City of Lakes, Minneapolis specifically. I had signed up a few weeks ago and had been waiting with great anticipation ever since.

WAKA, or the World Adult Kickball Association, has been around since 1998 and has been spreading around the US ever since. Our division, the MN Twin Cities Division has 6 teams, all averaging around 18 players. We play over on the soccer fields near Lake Calhoun, which makes for a beautiful setting and easy access for me via the bike routes if I ever chose to commute to the game via bike. Our season is 8 weeks long, plus a playoff event afterwards. You can find me/us at both 6:30pm and 7:15pm each Thursday night. I was assigned to the “Lake Minnetonka Purifiers” team, headed by a veteran player from one of the many DC divisions. (The league started, and is particularly popular, in the DC/Virgina area as you can see on this page over at the WAKA site which lists all the divisions)

I got to Lake Calhoun Park a bit early, which was perfect since I got to see the previous game between the “Uncle Rico Raiders” and the “Sexy Ball Kickers”. It looked like everyone was having great fun playing…and I was eager to get out onto the field, if for no other reason but to get a better chance of getting blown by some wind to keep the gnats away.

As the first game wound down, our team gathered together and did introductions. We got our official team jerseys and picked out our starting positions. (We’re the white team, which means I’ll be giving Era a workout this season in an attempt to keep the t-shirt nice and clean!) Soon we were walking over to the playing field and prepared for play.

After the referees read a standard rule and disclaimer, a game of rock/paper/scissors was used to decide who would kick first and who would field first. We won the toss and chose to kick first. Our kicking order was decided in rough alphabetical order, which placed me, the left fielder, second in the line-up between our center fielder and pitcher. Jason, the center fielder, kicked a single, and I kicked a single as well. Now we were rollin’!

We went through the first two innings with hardly any scoring pressure. I think we were all trying to establish our bearings after not playing for 10, 15 or 20 years. It wasn’t until the third inning that our batting order choice finally clicked in just the right way. We scored 9 runs in the top of the third, unanswered by our opponents when they were up to kick. In the fourth inning, we picked up an additional 3 runs and limited our opponents to 2 points in the bottom of the inning. The fifth inning was scoreless on both counts, leaving us with a point in our “Wins” column with a final score of 12 to 2.

On the defensive side, I only dropped two fly balls; otherwise, I think I must have caught 5 or so fly balls during the course of the game. In one particular case, I lunged forward to catch the ball as I ran up to catch it right behind the third baseman and felt it slip through my hands. I did manage to deflect it under my body, came down hard on it but had it wrapped up underneath me. I heard my teammates yell for me to send it to second, so I rolled off to my side, located second base and threw it over leaving just enough time for the second baseman to catch the ball and tag the runner.

After the game, we went over to the Uptown Bar and Cafe, the league bar and tossed back a few drinks over conversation. They have certainly got the best hot dogs I’ve had in a long time…and at $3.50 for a hot dog and a cold Grain Belt the price was certainly right, too.

Of course, now I’m paying for all the crazy plays, moves and lunges I performed over the course of the game, but it was so totally worth it. I enjoyed every last minute of the game…the team I’m on has great chemistry right out of the gate, and I really loved getting to play kickball again after all these years. I had forgotten how wonderful it was to play - all of the excitement of reaching home plate, watching that pop-up just drop right in the pocket gaining our team a base hit (kick).

Considering the current Star Wars theme around here as of late, which is likely to change after tonight’s inaugural WAKA Kickball Twin Cities game, I thought I’d take a moment to link to a few wonderful nuggets I’ve been introduced to in the lead-up to Episode 3’s release.

First, we have StoreWars. This is a wonderful spoof of the original Star Wars movies from the same group that brought us The Meatrix, both of which attempt to inform the viewer about organic and family farm issues.

Secondly, there is The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster. A blog written from Darth Vader’s point of view, set in the original movies once again. Quite humorous at times, other times quite informing.

Amazing what fans will put together when they really set their minds to it. Just like Troops from years ago, fan work is sometimes more entertaining than the original work.

No spoilers, in deference to all my friends who haven’t made it to the movie yet.

Judging from the quantity of toys I have from my childhood, I used to be really into Star Wars. As I grew up, the toys were put away and I moved onto other interests. When Episode 1 came out back in 1999, I realized that there were still many, many people around me who still were into it - much to my surprise.

I went to the midnight opening of Episode 1 with my then girlfriend, Briana, Alanna and her buddy. Alanna and I were originally gonna go together…but when I fell head over heels for Briana, and she told me how excited she was about Episode 1, I knew we’d have to be more inclusive. Alanna took this pretty well…spent most of the evening making fun of Briana and/or myself…least I know I deserved it after Briana dumped me a week or so later…but that’s a whole other story.

So, it was quite cool when she sent me a message about a week ago explaining she had an extra ticket for Episode 3’s opening midnight show at the the Marcus Cinema’s Oakdale Theatre 17 on the UltraScreen. Alanna and I always get along really well when it comes to movies…best movie buddy I’ve ever had, I think. We have similar interests, but we’re always exposed to different films than the other, so we drag the other along to it.

We got there about an hour before the show…they had costume contests, trivia contests and lots of lines. ☺ Alanna managed to score us some pretty slick seats in the UltraScreen theater while I was out getting some snack bar items. Around midnight a manager came in, thanked us for our patience and explained to us that there were over 3000 people at just that theater alone watching Star Wars at midnight. Then the house lights dimmed and the previews began.

The showing was flawless…I can’t say enough about the UltraScreen theater. You could actually feel the concrete under your feet vibrate just before a big star cruiser came onto the screen. All the normal surround sound, all the normal big-screen viewing, just more of both!

Like I said before, no spoilers here. Nevertheless, I will say that I really enjoyed the movie as well as the presentation. Answered just enough questions to tie everything up in a neat package…but still quickly paced and action-filled. I look forward to going to see it again… ULTRA or not! ☺

I just got home from the midnight show of Star Wars Episode 3. Alanna, my long time movie buddy, and I went to see it on the UltraScreen at Marcus Cinema’s Oakdale 17.

I’ll do a full write-up tomorrow…but I agree with much of what I’ve heard from critics and the few fans that got a sneak peek alike…this is, certainly, the most exciting and fun Star Wars movie of the most recent 3 episodes.

It was a great show. I’m no huge Star Wars fan, (unlike my Bro-In-Law, who wrote up this thoughts here), but I do plan on seeing this one again. ‘specially on the ultra, Ultra, ULTRASCREEN! Heh heh heh…

I got my Tivo as a Christmas gift back in December 2001. Since then, I’ve convinced my Parents, Sister & Bro-In-Law, Aunt, Grandpa, Mike, coworkers and many other people to get Tivos.

When Tivo introduced the Tivo Rewards program about a year ago, I signed up and started racking up points. Got a referral from my coworkers, two from Mike, one from Grandpa.

Tivo sent me an email offering me a number of 140-hour new Series 2 Tivo units for free. (All I had to do was pay for a 12-month gift subscription or product lifetime subscription for each unit!) I’ve been pondering an upgrade to a Series 2 unit for a long, long time. My first and current unit, a Sony SVR-2000 is a Series 1 unit…allowing for a lot of hacking, but not quite as advanced as the Series 2 units sold nowadays.

I’m so excited…a brand-new toy! I can’t wait to use all the new Series 2 features, including the new custom applications people have coded, such as the iSee iTunes plugin which allows your Tivo to control Apple’s iTunes/Airport Express remotely!

OK, so it has been a week since I’ve posted.

No, I’m not dead.

I got stuck in one of those logjams again like I did a few weeks ago…all over writing up the trip to the MN RollerGirls. So, to break the logjam, I will quickly recap the experience…

• I had an excellent time
• We sat right on the floor, next to the rink, right on the line. While my legs suffered for it (I had just completed the Ironman Bike Ride earlier in the day) the action was awesome.
• Got to see Cruel Ella, who commented on my post from last month’s event!
• Also got to see Twodolla, although we didn’t recognize each other at the time.
• Once again, buy the tickets that night…sure they are more expensive, but the line is shorter, you get in uber-quickly!

Can’t wait for next month’s season finale!

There are tiny snowflakes falling here in Eden Prairie right now.

None of them are sticking, of course…but, I mean, WTF?, mate! Here we are, days away from May 1st, and we still have snow?

Short story: I survived 30 miles with only a week and a half of training!

It was a cold (47 at start, 57 at the end), windy day. No rain, luckily, but the wind’s effect on the event could not be overlooked. My guess would place it somewhere between 20-25 mph, which when trying to bike down a path adjacent to huge farm fields becomes quite the challenge.

Because of the temperatures, I wanted to get to the ride as late as possible, so I’d be as warm as possible throughout the ride. When I arrived at 9:30, parking was quite the issue…until, as luck would have it, I tracked down someone leaving (I guess they had already completed the ride!) so I got a spot right next to the entrance to the high school. This allowed me to leave the bike in the trunk of the Beetle until I got registered and all ready to go, which made the process much easier than having to not only bike to registration, but also securing the bike while I went into the high school to register.

The ride started off really hilly. Besides a mile route around the Lake Marion, the first half was completely up and down, one hill and then the next. I’m used to this kind of hill-intense biking around my apartment’s area, but after the Saint Paul Bike Classic’s fairly level course, I was expecting something a little bit less demanding, especially near the start. As luck would have it, most of the inclines were into the strong winds, which made it even more demanding. ‘course, as the website for the event explains,

“The Minnesota Ironman is not a race - but it is quite the test of personal strength, stamina and your commitment to cycling. The tradition began back in 1967 when the first IRONMAN Century was held, and named IRONMAN because of the time of year, the obvious lack of training, and the probability of inclement weather…”

After a rest stop around mile 18 that was well provisioned with lots of food and drink, I was off on the course again. The next 6 miles or so were mostly on nice, smooth trails with fairly level riding…with the wind to my back, I ended up easily cruising at a speed of 25 mph or more. Besides the final, huge climb in the last mile, which was only made difficult due to the proximity of the finish line, the most strenuous sustained pedaling was from mile 20 - 28, which was run alongside farm fields that provided no cover from the strong headwinds.

I finished the route in almost exactly 2.5 hours, which gives me an average speed of 12.4 mph, since the route was 31 miles long, according to the map/organizers. (I only registered 29.4 miles on my odometer…so I have made a note to check the calibration on the unit) Once I returned to the high school, I took down my bike, packed it back in the Beetle and went in to check back in. I picked up my t-shirt, gift bag and gobbled down some cookies on my way back out to the car.

I look forward to doing the ride again next year. I don’t know if I’d attempt the 60-mile ride without upgrading my bike, but I can certainly envision training better next year and attempting to quicken my pace now that I’ll have the experience of my first ride to guide my efforts. If I manage to not only upgrade my bike this year to a road bike, but also get a further head start on training, I certainly would love to attempt the 60-mile ride. The sag support, even on the 30-mile ride, was excellent and would be a welcome safety net on a longer ride. The rest stop was well organized, staffed and stocked to provide all the support necessary for the riders.

Newsflash!!!

The entries on the Ironman Bike Ride and last night’s MN Roller Girls will be forthcoming…but this news just couldn’t wait!

I’ve signed up for the upcoming season of the World Adult Kickball Association’s Twin Cities Division.

More details soon!

Someday I want to be in a position like the military generals were in old movies.

I want to be able to pick up the phone and shout out, without pause, the phrase “Get me the President!” and have it actually work.

Sure, right now I can do that at work…but all I hear back is dialtone.

I know for this to work there would have to be someone there, waiting for me to shout out the order, 24/7. Heck, I’d even take 8/5 availability.

When I have a job where that works, I’ll know I’ve arrived.

UPDATE: OK, so I know this is nearly a dupe of this post, but I just couldn’t help but mention it again!

4 days to go until the 30 mile Ironman Bike Ride!

Since I started the biking season last Thursday, I’ve biked as often as I could (considering we’ve had quite a bit of rain as of late). I started with a 17-mile day last week, followed by another 17-mile day Friday. (Friday also saw my odometer roll over 1100 miles as well!) Monday, I took a wonderful ride on the way home past the video store to drop off a movie, which brought me all around the construction going on around Highway 169 and a 12.5-mile day. Finally, today I broke 20 miles between the commute into work this morning and a nice tour around Normandale Lake and Hyland Park Reserve this evening.

More than 66 miles so far? I think that’s a great start…and I should be able to squeeze in some riding over the next few days as well.

I also stopped by Erik The Bikeman last night and went over a bunch of stuff. I brought in my Arkel Briefcase Pannier and explained to them how difficult it was to pedal properly when your feet are so big. (My foot hits the bag if I pedal on the ball of my foot, so I often pedal from the arch, a big no-no!) I think we decided the best approach was a front wheel rack, which it looks like they can order for a reasonable charge. My pannier will then hang off of the side of the front wheel instead of the back, which the bike guy assured me would take me only a few blocks to get used to once it was installed. Getting my pannier out of the way also lets me think about picking up some clipless pedals, which is something on my list for this year.

In addition, I complained to the guy about the difficulty I was having getting a comfortable riding position this year. It might just be that I’m pushing myself harder than I normally do at the beginning of the season, but this year I definitely don’t feel as comfortable in the saddle as I have done previously. He suggested I take the plunge and get myself a good pair of biking shorts to replace the cotton shorts I predominantly wear while biking which have seams in the wrong places, no padding, etc. I chose a pair of Mt. Borah Mens Baggy Shorts which I wore today much to the relief of my booty bones. :)

Weather is looking up for Sunday…I’m excited, it will be great to get a 30-mile in this early in the season. Speaking of weather, I have dumped AccuWeather after their horrible site redesign and have switched back to Weather Channel. Weather.com not only offers a spyware-free desktop weather applet, but you can customize the information depending on your needs. My Weather.com profile is setup to not only give me one-click access to hourly weather (important when you’re trying to figure out when the rain will really arrive) but it gives me a wealth of information such as sundown, daylight left, humidity, clothing suggestions, etc, which is perfect for an outdoor fitness enthusiast like myself.

So, a new pope has been elected. His given name is Joseph Alois Ratzinger - although he chose the name of Benedict XVI for his papal reign.

It had me thinking…why did he change/adopt a new name, and why is that fairly standard practice for popes?

Well, after a bit of investigation, I found out that it isn’t just popes who do this. Other monarchs do it as well. Prince Albert Edward became Edward VII, Prince Albert became George VI. Sometimes the regnal names are chosen to honor a previous monarch, sometimes they are chosen to keep a pattern (such as the Dutch kings William I, William II and William III) and sometimes they are just chosen to avoid an unpleasant/inappropriate name from being used as a monarch’s title.

Some monarchs don’t create a regnal name at all…for example, this passage from the wikipedia entry explains how Queen Elizabeth felt about changing/adopting a new name…

When Princess Elizabeth as Heir Presumptive became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1952, she was asked what name she wished to use, and she responded, “Why, my own name — what else?” There had been speculation that she would take the name of her grandmother, the queen consort Queen Mary, and reign as Queen Mary III. (Her given names are Elizabeth Alexandra Mary.)

After all this research, I’ve determined that I need to come up with my own regnal name with utmost urgency. Just in case I’m called into service to act as a monarch, I need to have a regnal name already picked out.

Should I have to make up for color-blindness on the part of some ancient nature-surveying biologist?

JManDoo tells me that the bird outside our window is a “Red-Breasted Robin”. I explain that the bird is clearly orange in color…thus I proclaim it an Oriole. “‘cause everyone knows that Orioles are orange!”

I think I’ve finally convinced him that the bird was clearly orange in color. Beyond that, I couldn’t care less what scientific classification the bird fell into…all I know is, that bird was NOT red!

1. I just received a letter in the mail that the Mazda is officially paid off
2. Twinkie’s battery problems have been overcome, is now parked at work and available for lunch and rainy-day support during the bike commuting season
3. Rolled over 1100 miles on the bike’s odometer Friday night, making my two-day start-of-season total nearly 30 miles
4. Got my confirmation number for next Sunday’s Ironman Bike Ride
5. Raises went into effect on this week’s paycheck
6. Profit sharing was paid out from last year

The last item deserves a bit of comment, I think. It is so wonderful to see the business finally get turned around…and wonderful to see our corporate leadership (CEO, the Board) not only recognize their own contributions, but realize the role every employee played in the accomplishment. From very large projects which save us hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the little efforts like making sure all the lights are turned off when on one is around (“Hey, you’re spending MY profit sharing on those unused lights!”) we all performed together to bring in a great year.

So, for all the reasons above and more, I am in a celebratory mood. I forecast many Oreos and Northwood’s Creme Sodas this weekend…

So, here I was prepared to write up an entry complaining how I was getting a late start this year on bike commuting, until I went through my archives and found this post from last year. I’m actually starting on the exact same day I did last year…how cool is that?

‘course, last year I didn’t have the 30 mile Ironman Bike Ride scheduled before the end of this first month! (Sunday, April 24th to be exact!) I’ve got my work cut out for me as I try to get myself ready for the same length of ride I finished the season with last year.

The West Bush Lake Road bridge over 494 was finished over the winter, which means that I can take either my original route from two years ago or the alternate route I used last year to add a bit of variety to my commutes. The options will be invaluable this year as I have already decided I’m going to attempt to ride much more often to work than I did last year…the flexibility of having two running vehicles should make that goal a bit easier to achieve. (Twinkie is one of said vehicles…making transportation of my bike much easier than squeezing it into the Beetle every time I want to take it somewhere!)

I had dinner with Grandpa tonight. We discussed our usual topics…politics, religion, money, the relative tastiness of fat-free sharp cheddar. The highlight of the night was my Grandpa’s presentation of his new gadget.

Before I explain the product, I need to explain my Grandpa. My Grandpa turns 81 this year, although I doubt anyone would guess he’s anywhere near 70. Does the following list of attributes sound like an 80 year old to you?

• Loves his Tivo
• Is on his third digital camera
• …and second photo printer and scanner
• …and third computer in 8 years
• Thinks iPods are rather slick
• Watches The Daily Show with Jon Stewart every night (thanks to Tivo)
• Has On-Star and knows how to use it
• Has made whole CDs filled with scanned photos from the family’s past
• Has outwitted squirrel after squirrel in defense of his bird feeder’s stock of seeds
• Will go to church as long as he always gets his jelly-filled donut
• Walks 2 miles a day
• Loves Applebee’s Riblets and Uno’s pizza

You’ll notice all the gadgets in that list…I can’t even begin to enumerate all of the gadgets he has for fishing, cooking, home maintenance and anything else you can think of!

So, it prbly shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, that my Grandpa tonight showed me his latest gadget, the Humminbird SmartCast RF20. This device is similar to a depth finder…it uses sonar technology to map the lake, its bottom and any fish swimming around. However, this device is much more than a normal depth finder…you attach it to a fishing pole/line, allowing you to cast it out away from the boat. The bobber contains all the sonar technology; it scans the lake and transmits the data wirelessly to an LCD display device you attach to your fishing pole.

My Grandpa was quick to point out the beauty in the design of the product. Like any good gadget, the little touches are what make it even better. The bobber has two exposed terminals…when placed in water, a circuit is closed in the bobber and it begins pinging and transmitting the results to the display. When you reel in the line and take the bobber out of the water the circuit opens again, saving the bobber’s battery life. The display device has a number of different attachments, to fit any size rod. Heck, I’m not an angler by any stretch of the imagination, but even I could see the beauty in this design. All for a street price of under $75 bucks!

So, yeah. I come from a long line of gadgeteers. My Grandpa, my Dad, myself. Someday, hopefully my children as well. The continuing love of new things, not only accepting change but also driving it oneself is surely a sign of an awake mind. It brings me no greater joy than to see my Grandpa still alive in this way…it gives me hope that I’ll never lose my spark, my love of change.

I’m home sick today…got a nasty, late-season sore throat. While I mostly slept and enjoyed the comfort of my bed, comforter and the sound of rainfall outside, I did get a chance to off-load the pictures from my recent trip to Texas.

Amongst all the regular pictures of family, new lawnmowers, projects completed, there were three oddities I captured on film, which I present now for your amusement:

The first was on the package of the snack they passed out on the plane on our flight down to Texas. I read the warning…and imagined what a factory would look like that manufactured peanuts. Processed peanuts, sure…but manufacturing peanuts sounds just plain wrong!

Here we see something even curiouser…are we to assume that there are non-baby shaped Huggies available? Why in the heck would you not make your baby diapers “Baby Shaped”?

Finally, both my Sister and I got a chuckle out of this tagline on the boxes for her new toilet seats. “The Leader in Bathroom Seat Merchandising” I didn’t catch it in the picture, but the new toilet seats are made in the U.S.A. I’m so thankful we have an American company, with American workers, leading the bathroom seat merchandising sector. I don’t know what I’d do if we had a bathroom seat merchandising gap with the Russians, Japanese or French! Whew!

Not only is it the first day of Kelly’s 26th year here on planet Earth, but I’ve known her for a little over a year now, too.

We’ve had our ups and downs, for sure, but overall she’s brought so much joy, happiness and laughter into my life I had to celebrate her birfday with an entry. (She says she has always scans the posts looking for her name…wonder if she’ll see this one?) Threats of nipple-twisting aside, her playful attitude is a welcome addition to my life, and her stories of times at the KIDSTOP are always good for a laugh or two. She was there when Twinkie was launched (and had to drive behind Twinkie when it was all stinky driving down the road) and she was there when I got home from my 30-mile Saint Paul Bike Classic Tour. She’s always been supportive of me in my aspirations - and understanding when I need my space to reflect and continue to grow myself into a grown-up. :)

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you!
You look like a MONKEY,
you smell like one, too!

*laughs* MONKEY!

Well, we didn’t end up going out to do anything…instead, we hung out at the house and finished a bunch of things up.

We had purchased a lawnmower and a trimmer/edger earlier during my stay…today was the day we set it up and give them both a spin around the lawn. The lawnmower my Sister and Bro-In-Law picked out a Craftsman 6.5HP Self-Propelled Rear Bagging model, which came almost fully assembled. (Just screw on the handle and away you go!) The trimmer/edger was even easier…just twist a guard into place, plug in and go - the nylon line was already installed for the buyer at the factory.

Also had a little cookout with the new grill my Parents got Michelle and Davin as a housewarming gift, which necessitated a trip to Central Market, which is always a wonderful excursion while in Texas. It is an amazing place as I wrote about previously during my last trip. 10 different kinds of freshly prepared bratwursts and sausages, 20 different kinds of pickle relish - everything you need for a cookout!

After Davin made lunch, it was time to pack up and head to the airport. I said my farewells to Michelle and Davin, told them I’d see them again soon and walked into the terminal. Flight back was uneventful…even fell asleep for a portion of the flight.

While it was a great time, and I’m glad I went down to visit and help ‘em out, I’m very happy to be back home and in my own bed once more. :)

Today Davin had to work from 1pm to 10pm at the library, so my Sister and I had almost an entire day to ourselves.

This morning while Davin was still around we did a thorough cleaning of the kitchen, unpacking the remaining boxes and finding a place for everything. I collapsed any empty boxes from the previous three days’ work and prepared them for recycling, while my Sister and Bro-In-Law sorted out what they wanted to do with their reading area. They have close to a thousand books, by my estimate, and it appeared that the existing bookshelves they had would be insufficient to display all of the volumes.

We had lunch together at Sonny Bryan’s BBQ, which was a wonderful choice. Everything prepared wonderfully, bottles of BBQ sauce (each served in an empty beer bottle, oddly enough) and “Big Red”, a childhood favorite of mine, on the soda machine. Afterwards, Davin went to work while Michelle and I drove over to Lowe’s to pick up a variety of items we needed for the day’s projects.

Today’s projects included:

• Installing a peephole in the front door. This was particular difficult for two reasons. One, because it is a hollow metal door, once you drill into it the loose styrofoam insulation on the inside comes spraying out all over. And two, it is very difficult to cut the thin metal making up the door without making it blister out or cave in. I merely provided guidance and support to my Sister, who took on the project and had quite a bit of fun, I think, drilling through her front door.
• The installation of the new doorbell, to replace the “ghetto” doorbell my Sister disliked so intensely, wasn’t so successful. She purchased a replacement yesterday that sat flush against the wall, whereas with the brick finish on the outside of the house was made for one that sat out from the wall in a housing. We didn’t realize this until she had completed all the rewiring; she should be able to do it just fine on her own after she finds a suitable doorbell.
• Unpacking more and more books, placing them on the bookshelves in the reading room and placing said bookshelves in their proper locations. We were fairly successful in this endeavor, although our attempt to purchase another matching bookcase from Target today in order to fill out the reading room was stymied because Target had altered their supplier/design. My Sister said she would attempt to find another online to make sure they all match.
• New toilet seats. The previous owners had those annoying squishy foam toilet seats…not only annoying to sit on, but considering they were prbly years old a pain to look at, too. Out with the old, in with the brand spanking new!

My Sister and I were on our own for dinner. After much contemplation, we decided to go to On The Border for some Mexican food. On The Border offers a “Build Your Own Burrito”, which I took advantage of in order to create my perfect burrito creation. Roasted pepper tortilla, shredded beef, Mexican rice and caramelized peppers - prepared as a chimichanga and covered in ranchero sauce. Yum!

We spent most of the evening, both at dinner and once we got home, talking about our jobs, life and the universe. It is so wonderful to be able to still connect with my Sister, talk about our achievements without engaging in competition and share our theories and thoughts about life and our family. It is amazing to me to consider my Sister a “friend” after all these years and miles, only on a much higher level than we were as children. We’ve each matured and saw many different parts of the same world over the past few years…but we’re still connected in that way long time friends often are.

I leave tomorrow around 4pm, and tonight my Sister seemed to lean towards doing something fun tomorrow before my departure. It will be difficult to leave, knowing there are still so many projects my Sister and Bro-In-Law want to attempt around the house and the fun we’ve had doing many of them together over the past few days. However, I know that part of the joy is doing some of these things on your own, making the house a home. I envy them…apartment living isn’t a home, no matter how hard you try to make it such. Seeing their new house down here, doing all the projects around the house reminds me so much of the house I owned with my ex-wife out in Hudson. Someday I’ll have that again, I know, but having a home is certainly something we all crave. I hope that I’ve given my Sister and Bro-In-Law a head start into making their own house into a home.

Today was “Wall Day” at Casa De Durand.

“Why Wall Day?” you might ask.

Well, almost the entire day was spent hanging things up on walls.

• New vanity lights in the master bathroom. This required a bit of electrical as well, but anchors came into play in order to provide a solid mount for the new pair of silver 4-bulb lights, one for each washbasin. Mimicking the previous day’s efforts with the motion sensor lights, I installed the first light while my Sister installed the second.
• Hanging new shelves in the study. After Davin and I planned out the placement of the supports, he did most of the work hanging the rails from which the cantilevers hook into to support the shelving. We got away with only one set of anchors being used for the middle rail…the remainder were all installed directly into studs, providing much better support for the piles of books planned to be shelved in the office.
• The previous homeowners left behind most, if not all of their window treatments. All of them had been taken down to facilitate the painting that had been going on around the house over the past week or so. Considering the forecast for tomorrow is for a warmer day, it will be nice to have shade from the sun beating down on us.

Besides the vertically orientated projects, we also found time in the day to go buy Michelle and Davin a new lawnmower, compliments of my Aunt and Grandpa. We also returned the unused motion-sensing lamp from yesterday, exchanged it for a variety of lawn and garden implements. Davin and I also finished off the custom-cut MDF shelves for the rails we installed earlier in the day by ironing on the finishing trim on the cut sides.

Davin and I got some one-on-one time when my Sister left for a bit to attend a work-related function. It is so wonderful to have him in our family. I never had a brother while growing up, but I’m so comfortable around Davin it seems like we’ve known each other for a long time now. My Sister could have picked any number of people to marry, I suppose, but I doubt anyone would have fit so well, not only with her, but with the rest of the family as Davin.

Lunch was another visit to Chick-fil-a, which suited me just fine. I love the fact that Michelle and Davin are such great fans of the chain as well…makes it easy to visit ‘em many, many times during my visit. Dinner was pizza from Cafe Tuscana, an Italian restaurant here in Carrollton. I didn’t care too much for the sun-dried tomato and goat cheese pizza Davin and my Sister ordered, but I loved the canadian bacon and fresh tomatoes that I ordered. Yum!

We finished the day consuming pizza while watching the “Space Mutiny” episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, my favorite episode of the entire run. Both Davin and I were in stitches as we reveled in the blaring continuity errors and horrible “com-PUTE-r” graphics. Ha!

Today was a busy day around the Texas Durand Family Compound.

First off, Michelle and Davin unpacked the kitchen. Since I really didn’t know where anything went, I asked for a project to keep myself busy and was handed the task of priming and then painting the pantry shelves.

As many readers know, painting is one of the least enjoyable tasks I can be assigned. I’ve never been able to get the hang of it, I guess. I either put on the paint too thick, too thin, leave unpainted corners, spill the paint…if you name the painting-related malady, I’ve experienced it. Luckily, the assignment consisted of some simple MDF pantry shelves, none of which would regularly be seen by anyone (including Michelle and Davin) since they would be covered by foodstuffs almost immediately after installation.

By the time I finished both the primer coat and the paint coat, I felt a bit more confident in my painting abilities. Having a forgiving project took the painting job from being a detail-oriented job and turned it into something I could experiment with a little. I tried both using a roller and a brush, lots of paint with infrequent fill-ups, a little paint at a time, different patterns, etc. In the end, only one shelf came out less-than-ideal…not too shabby if you ask me, considering the confidence I had going into the project!

There were many other tasks to be done around the house. I helped my Sister piece back together their home office desk, installed switchplates throughout the house (which had been removed during all the painting that Michelle and Davin had done prior to my arrival) and explained how the sprinklerheads could be adjusted on their in-ground sprinkler system.

The most notably install of the day were the motion sensor-activated lights in the backyard for both humans and dogs at night. Michelle and Davin had previously picked out three different lights with the idea that each light would cover a third of their L-shaped backyard. They already had some “craptacular” external lights right next to either end of the L, which made installing the lights in those locations a piece of cake. I did the first light, explaining what I did to both Michelle and Davin, then Davin put up the second light. Later after dark, Michelle made the executive decision upon auditing the install that a third light at the angle of the L wasn’t necessary.

We finished off the busy workday with a hearty dinner at Babe’s and a viewing of Orgazmo. We had Babe’s the last time I visited, back in November, and it was just as good as I remembered. Excellent chicken, perfect mashed potatoes and wonderfully creamy gravy. MMMM!

First off: I was rudely awakened this morning by a call from 888-587-0496. Therefore, I will rudely awaken this entry with the following message: 888-587-0496 is the phone number for the automated schedule notifier/Care Alerts for Orbitz.com. They don’t tell you this anywhere, nor do they make it available for reverse lookup on the usual sites. I’ll put this here in the hopes that the great Google may look highly enough upon this poor blog post to index the information for others to share.

The trip down to Texas this time came out of an offer to help my Sister and Bro-In-Law move from their apartment into their first house. Although they closed on the house a few weeks ago, waiting for me to visit didn’t really end up being too onerous of a wait. First, the previous homeowners ended up renting the house back from them for a few days while they finished their move out of the house. Then, the remainder of the time my Sister and Bro-In-Law spent painting many of the rooms, getting a fence installed for their dogs and doing other assorted chores best done before you need to move everything in and live in a home.

Today is my Aunt’s 50th birfday!

We celebrated by picking her up in a limo at work, went for a ride around the lakes and then went to dinner at Kincaids.

My Grandpa, DiAnne (a friend of my aunt) and I all attended the night’s festivities. My Parents provided the limo (they are off on holiday) and my Sister and Bro-In-Law sent a wonderful floral bouquet making sure everyone knew at my Aunt’s work that it was her big day.

We had a wonderful ride, a marvelous meal and listened to many stories from my Aunt’s 50 years in this world. Kincaids sure took care of us…even offering us a bottle of wine when dinner was slightly delayed in arrival.

So, it took two cards to do it justice in real life, but I wanted to say “Happy Birthday” to my Aunt here, too. Here’s hoping she has another great 50 years ahead of her!

1. I finally got around to checking out the Best Buy Weekly Ad and I found out that Orgazmo was finally released on DVD! Picked it up over lunch…watched it after I got home tonight. I’ve rented it so many times over the years I know the movie by heart…it is wonderful to finally have a DVD version with all the extras.
2. Review today at work. Went well, very few surprises. As my boss said, he’d tell me well before now if I had been doing something incorrectly or inappropriate. Received very high marks on both communication and problem solving - considering I feel these are my two strongest professional aptitudes I was happy to see that they were recognized.
3. Waking this morning to a great spring rainstorm was refreshing. Great to see all the leftovers of winter get washed away, everything getting ready for growth once more.
4. Getting ready for a busy next 72 hours:
   • Drop off my parentals at the airport 5:00am Friday morning
   • Aunt’s 50th Birthday celebration Friday night after work
   • Leave Saturday morning for a quick trip to Dallas to help my Sister and Bro-In-Law move into their new home

3pm, Mostly Cloudy, 64 degrees!

I left for work this morning driving my Beetle. I didn’t even make it a block down the road before I turned back, unlocked Twinkie and drove it into work instead. Windows all open, breeze running through my thinning hair, the wind causing the sleeve of my shirt to flutter.

Absolutely beautiful day…ahhhhh.

Welcome spring…I can’t wait to get the bike lubed up and hit the pavement. woot!

I like having my CDs out for visitors to peruse through - or for the occasional listen without the aid of my iPod.

A curious thing struck me this evening. Months ago, I sorted most of the CDs in library order: artist’s last name, then first name, then album name. This has worked out well…until tonight.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The 2005 Facial Hair Experiment is Over

Bloomington, Minnesota (PRSOURCE) March 23, 2005 - With a pull of the razor, Damon Durand’s accumulated facial hair was removed this past weekend. “I haven’t looked back,” Damon exclaimed today in an interview.

Reviews and polls were mixed during the two-week trial - most people responded that Mr. Durand looked good with facial hair, but they also indicated that he looked good without it, too. Among those that expressed a preference, only 15% of respondents indicated Mr. Durand looked better with the manicured facial hair growth.

“Considering the upkeep and my facial hair’s ability to capture bits of almost everything that came in contact with my mouth, I thought it best my facial hair and I parted ways,” Mr. Durand explained at a press conference.

For those still interested, Mr. Durand advises that they can still tune into OfficeCam most Thursdays and Fridays - most weeks he lets his facial hair grow unchecked. “Most weeks I let it grow out during the week,” Mr. Durand explained, “cause frankly, even daily or semi-daily shaving just seems to be too much work that early in the morning!”

About a month ago, I read about the season opener of the Minnesota RollerGirls on twodolla’s blog. That same weekend the Strib had a big front-Variety-page article on the league, its formation and the players in the league. Going to see the bout didn’t happen for a variety of reasons…but this weekend all the stars aligned and I got to go!

The previous post sat in draft state since Monday, jamming up the portion of my brain responsible for blog updates. I knew I had to get it out there, and nothing else pending wasprocessed until I got that status toggled to “Publish”. So, an update on the previous week:

• I found my digital camera. There was much rejoicing amongst fans around the world when I found my digital camera in a pile of holiday decorations here at home. I had thought it lost for the past few months while I searched hi and low for the elusive camera. You know they say you miss things the most when you don’t have them…well, over the past few months I’ve time and time again been bitten by the desire to snap a photo of something. Now that I’ve found the camera, of course, I expect all photo desires shall immediately cease.
• The 2.6 GB bittorrent download of the free MP3 collection from artists appearing at the South by Southwest Music Festival finally completed. Get it while its hot, there are some great gems in there.
• I got my premier issue of Make. I meant to sign up well before the initial issue hit the streets, but it wasn’t until it did that I finally got up the courage to sign up for a year. So far, I’m nothing but pleased. It is a tinkerer’s dream - tons of projects and neat tricks to keep the curious entertained.
• Booked tickets to fly down to Dallas to help my Sister and Bro-In-Law move into their new home. I expect a lot of work…but I also expect a lot of Chick-fil-a!
• Speaking of Chick-fil-a, if you examine the container from an 8-piece order of nuggets you’ll notice there are punch-out holes for “N”, “S” and “K”. While all participants of our visit to the U of M - Twin Cities campus (the only Minnesota Chick-fil-a location!) on Monday for lunch agreed that the “S” stood for “Strips” and “N” for “Nuggets”, JManDoo hypothesized that the “K” stood for “Knuggets”. (Neither the “K” nor the following “n” are silent, according to JManDoo). Research later revealed the “K” must have stood for “Kids”, since the kids meal at Chick-fil-a has a 4 or 6-piece nugget option. JManDoo is still sticking to his theory, tho.
• My review was due yesterday at work…so I sent it in at precisely 11:59pm last night. Double-B (the boss) did say I had until midnight to send it in. I hope I’m not the only one who sees humor in it, tho!

That’s not everything (my life isn’t THAT dull and boring!), but it is the stuff I found blogworthy over the past week.

My Grandpa, to this day, speaks of his many years in the Democratic (DFL) Party here in Minnesota, and more specifically, the southern Minneapolis precinct. He, and to an even greater extent my late Grandma, were very active in school board, union, and DFL politics for a good part of 35 years.

Often times, when we find ourselves lamenting over the Neo-Conservative agenda that prevails in the Republican Party as of late, he talks of the differences between “Old” Republicans and “New” Republicans. The story he uses to illustrate the difference is something similar to this:

The “New” Republicans are all about lowering taxes and reducing government. They believe the money can be better spent by businesses and/or constituents in order to employ people, produce products and drive the economy. You often here the mantra, “It’s MY money - I earned it” They take a very shallow view of their lives. They didn’t get a check from the government every month - thus they don’t see all of the support they received to get to the place they are today. Did they drive on a road to get to work everyday? Did they receive a public education? Did their employees receive a public education? Do they rely on the police to enforce order?

The truth is they only earned the money because of the entire infrastructure provided by taxes and their government disbursers.

The “Old” Republicans would certainly look to reduce the size of government, but would realize that government is more of an enabler of business than a tax upon their business. Instead of just looking to reduce taxes, they would look at the value obtained for the money spent and try to direct it where it could benefit his business constituents the most. You need to spend money to support infrastructure: businesses needed good roads and highways in order to move their product efficiently, businesses needed good schools in order to get graduates to employ, businesses needed police and social welfare to ensure order so consumers felt safe spending their money, etc.

My grandpa goes on to explain that, at the time, it was this shared belief between the Republicans and Democrats in making government WORK instead of just shrinking it made it much easier to come to compromise and use the tax dollars that were collected efficiently.

This post over at iamericka linked to this wonderful interview over at City Pages with Dave Durenberger. In the interview, he laments over the very same change from an “Old” Republican’s perspective. It was incredibly fascinating to see a perspective from inside the Republican party over the same change my Grandpa has identified time and time again as one of the reasons we see politics devolving over the past 10-15 years.

It’s a measure of how far the Neo-Cons have infiltrated the GOP since Durenberger, who left the Senate only a decade ago, says he could never get the endorsement of the GOP today to run for office.

I received a catalog in the mail yesterday from Agri Supply. “Why?” you might ask? I have no idea…but it was specifically addressed to me, here at my work address. I can assure you, I’ve never ordered any farm equipment, especially delivered here to work!

I’m not the only curious person here at my workplace; even Accounting Nicole stole a peek when she dropped off the mail. I paged through it a little bit upon first receipt…however, I was disappointed when I found nothing “unusual” in the catalog. Once I got past the initial disappointment, I started showing off my unusual gift (just on the basis of it being an agricultural catalog itself) to coworkers when they would stop by my desk.

I don’t remember who found it first, but one of my coworkers found a listing for an egg incubator and its accompanying “egg turner”. None of us even considered the need for turning eggs during incubation. The item might have soon been forgotten, had the “47 eggs” not stuck out of the item description.

So, I applied the new iPod Updater 2005-02-22 firmware a few days ago to my old trusty 3G iPod. I read about Apple putting the Shuffle Songs option in the main menu, just like it was in the 4G iPods, but it wasn’t until this morning when I wanted to create an “On-The-Go” playlist that the firmware basically upgraded my 3G completely to a 4G!

This means that not only do I now get Shuffle Songs on the main menu, but I can now put the Clock option on the main menu, too! Makes setting the Sleep timer much more convienient. I also get the ability (finally!) to delete songs from the “On-The-Go” playlist, and I can save the playlist directly on the iPod rather than having to wait for a sync event to save it.

‘course, one wonders if keeping the 3G and 4G feature sets apart this whole time was just an Apple ploy to get people to upgrade to the 4G. Now that everyone who would upgrade has, they collapse the feature sets together so they only have to manage one firmware?

I’m not complaining. I learned a long time ago when I bought my Newton that when you buy an Apple “consumer electronic product” you are buying the exact feature you see at the time of purchase. That’s the consumer electronics mentality, and just because Apple is also a computer company doesn’t mean your electronic device is/will be upgradable. ‘course, it is wonderful when they do (I do love my On-The-Go playlist editing!) but ‘tis nothing to be expected.

1. I finally got my book, “The Road To Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe”
2. From 43 Folders’s feature on rules of thumb, If you don’t know what you want, it’s probably sleep.
3. Cheap generic lemon sandwich cookies totally hit the spot
4. Mailinator has been my friend for a while now…and it deserves your friendship as well
5. There is and always will be a 5…or, rather, “5ves” by the Heiruspecs, my #1 chart-gainer in the month of February in the iPod playcount list!

I heard Roger Penrose back in February on “Science Friday”, which is the Friday mainstay of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation”. The interview was rather short, but the name of his most recent book stuck in my mind. A few days later, I was killing some time at the Mall of America’s Barnes and Noble and saw his book sitting there on the table. I picked it up (all 1136 pages) and read the jacket copy.

Now, I tend to support brick and mortar bookstores because I value their ubiquity and browsability. I think it is a wonderful luxury of this day and age to be able to travel a very short distance, walk in and purchase a book whenever the mood strikes me. (Much better than waiting for a monk to transcribe the book from an original) I also love the ability to review the books before I purchase them…read a few pages, a few chapters, whatever I need to do in order to gauge the value of the book and compare to its purchase price. These reasons mean I am usually willing to pay a slight premium in order to keep my favorite bookstores around.

This book, however, was $40. Not a showstopper, but when I had nothing to go on besides a 10 minute radio interview which only touched lightly on the book (along with only enough time for a cursory examination of the title) I was a bit leery of an impulse buy. (It also didn’t help that I found the book at Barnes & Noble…my least favorite bookstore) I knew I should look into this book a bit more before committing to such a purchase. I put it back on the shelf and made a mental note to check into it when I got home.

After I got home, I did a little more reading on the book. The more I read, the more interested I became. Penrose spent 8 years creating the work. Positive reviews all over the place from both laymen and experts. I also found a full website devoted to errata and problem solutions from the book, a sure sign of a quality technical work. I checked Amazon for its price - $26 bucks. That price, combined with Super Saver Shipping, made it a done deal. I thought I could wait patiently until it arrived.

Of course, I spent the next week and a half tracking the shipment as it moved around the country. I got really excited last Friday, since it seemed it would arrive at work just in time for the weekend. Sadly, it didn’t arrive until Saturday, which considering we don’t receive mail at work on Saturday, meant that I didn’t get it until this afternoon’s delivery.

One of the reviews I read compared the book to two independent study courses: one on the intersection of geometric and algebraic mathematics, the second on the history (and future) of physics. Reading the prologue and foreword, I have a feeling the reviewer was right, at least when one considers the amount of effort it will take to consume and understand the book. The first portion of the book is devoted to teaching you the mathematics you’ll need to understand the remainder of the book…maybe I’ll finally understand vectors and matrices! As the author writes in his introductory text, “It is always the case, with mathematics, that a little direct experience of thinking things over on your own can provide a much deeper understanding than merely reading about them.”

As I continue the struggle to emerge from the month-long hiatus from all things cultural, I came across this wonderful new Burger King TV commercial for their Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch chicken sandwich.

I can’t stop laughing. It has Hootie singin’ this promotional song about the new chicken sandwich to the tune of Harry McClintock’s goofy hobo song, “Big Rock Candy Mountain”. (Here’s a link to my favorite version, by Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers)

Quite catchy…and the sexual innuendo is subtle in a very obvious way. Watch it. Enjoy it.

I’ve written about having dinner with Grandpa before, but after tonight I just had to celebrate it again. I ended up getting out of work a bit late, so I didn’t get over there until almost 6:45. He greeted me chipper as usual; we hopped back in the warm car and drove off to dinner. Uno’s was the place of choice this week (the last few weeks we’ve been going to Applebee’s, he loves their riblets, so we thought we’d head back to Uno’s again for a change).

It never ceases to amaze me just how great of a man my Grandpa is. Not only does he have (still, at 80!) the intellectual and reasoning capacity, but he’s got such a wealth of experience to draw upon he never fails to be an entertaining and rewarding conversationalist.

Tonight’s highlights included:

• retirement planning
• my grandpa’s love of his new Tivo
• oil change patterns and the whole synthetic/natural oil debate
• the possible labor-related causes of foreign manufacturer’s larger engine oil capacities
• the oddity of 7’1” men bringing 7’0” women as guests to church services
• if we accept that the big bang really happened, what was here before it and, more importantly, why was there a big bang?
• the “bump” method of lock picking
• the wonders of a truck stop gift shop
• arch support and heel replacement on shoes
• the need for another family board meeting next week after my aunt returns from her tour of England
• the home price bubble

3 hours. 3 flavored iced teas, each. (His were raspberry, mine mango) A wonderful evening all-around, once again reminding me of the joys of having such a wonderful Grandpa!

OK, so I’m guessing I’m the last person in the world to hop on the podcasting bandwagon.

That might not be true, I guess, considering I first installed it months ago. At the time, tho, I didn’t really find anything interesting…but another look after reading this month’s Wired article on Adam Curry and I’m finally excited about it.

Not only can I get one of my favorite NPR programs, “On The Media” via a podcast, but there’s also a fascinating podcast called “open source sex” which is wildly entertaining. Nothing like listening to a quick reading of some erotica on my 5 minute drive into work in the morning. *laughs*

Those of you without iPods, don’t fret. Just because it is called podcasting doesn’t mean you need to get an iPod to listen. Just download iPodder or one of the other podcast clients and give it a try! I’ll be here enjoying my podcasts and holding out hope that “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” or “Marketplace” will be podcast soon. I end up missing both of those on a regular basis ‘cause they are aired at crappy time slots on MPR.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been working quite a bit more than I’m used to as of late. Therefore, I took today off from work to let my mind rest a bit.

Last month was incredibly busy at work. I knew most of it was coming - yes, I even knew that considering the stress I’d be under I’d prbly get sick, too. (I did, of course) Nevertheless, it was exhilarating to participate in such a huge project at work, seeing everyone put in the effort that they needed to in order for things to go off with hardly a hitch. We changed almost everything over the course of the previous month; almost every customer was affected. To have only one customer encounter a major issue with the change is quite a testament to the skills and hours everyone contributed to make it a success.

The rest of life has been pluggin’ along as well. The biggest surprise involved a change in the management here at my apartment building. Mary, who’s been here for over 4 years, moved next door to me just before Christmas. It was a mixed blessing - it was wonderful to know I had a responsible tenant next door to me after the previous two were so horrible. Then for Christmas I get a new surround sound system and I then I worry about disturbing her!

All of a sudden, in the middle of the second week in February, I leave my apartment to head off to work and there are 4-5 movers carrying things out of Mary’s apartment! I peer inside, see no one moving about and begin to wonder. On my drive out of the parking lot to work, I notice a huge moving van in the circle with “Northfield” written all over it. “The manager is moving out?” I say to myself incredulously.

I keep an eye out for Mary in the office, only to be disappointed time and time again. I begin to wonder if she had passed away or something similar, since it was all so sudden. Eventually I catch a glimpse of her working in the office, but that then makes even less sense. Finally, nearly 3 weeks later, just before the end of the month, posters go up inviting everyone to her going away party.

Come to find out, she bought a place down in Northfield a few months ago. She advised the management company she was moving, gave plenty of notice and thought they would make some kind of announcement to the residents about her leaving. She didn’t tell anyone in the meantime, hoping that it would be a smoother transition. When her final day approached and there was still no announcement, she took it upon herself to let all of the residents know what was going on, still not knowing who would be replacing her. She’ll be missed, for sure.

Today’s agenda has three things on it:

• Finally finish Gumby, get it into the guinea pigs’ hands
• Finish laundry
• Get my haircut

Seems like a good list of things to do on a day off, doesn’t it?

Well, I can’t really give myself passing marks for the February Project I set out on at the beginning of the month. I only made it up to the letter F, and that post didn’t even make it online until the 21st of the month.

A lack of planning was the primary issue I ran into while trying to keep up with the entries. While I had come up with the subjects for a few of the entries (of which “M”, “S”, “T” and “X” never made it online), I didn’t write any of the entries in advance. I didn’t think this would be much of an issue, considering I usually write about an entry a day. I didn’t take into consideration that my daily entries are usually far less structured than the February Project would require.

Writing up some of the entries in advance also would have been a good idea considering we had a gigantic project at work this month. Although the workload was heavy almost the entire month, February 16th - 23rd were so heavy I hardly had time to sleep:

• Wed 16th: 7:30am - 6pm, 11pm - 4am
• Thurs 17th: 9am - 6pm
• Fri 18th: 9am - 6pm
• Sat 19th: 1am - 4am, 9am - Sun 7am
• Sun 20th: 2pm - 5pm, 8pm - 11pm
• Mon 21st: 6am - 6pm
• Tues 22nd: 9am - 6pm
• Wed 23rd: 9am - 5pm

Before things got all crazy on me, I certainly did enjoy being able to get some of my thoughts written up on the site for others to react to, both privately and publicly. Maybe next year I’ll attempt the same thing, only plan things out a bit more in advance.

So, for now, back to the simple blogging I am used to doing (and love so!) and which I missed so much during February.

[This entry was going to be about FAILURE, since it is now the 21st and I’m two weeks behind. I’ve only had a few spare moments over the past two weeks, limited mostly by my obscenely busy work schedule. Now that work has mostly calmed down (project done, customers happy, OK!) and I’m actually enjoying a night at home for the first time in a week, I think I will attempt to complete the task I set forth upon at the beginning of the month. The posts may not be timely, but they will be here for the sake of completeness.]

FAMILY

[Sorry about this MAJORLY late posting…a combination of work and lack of inspiration contributed to the delay!]

EQUALITY

DIVORCE

CHALLENGE ME

BOOTYS, BOOBS AND BRAINS

[Sorry about this late posting…pulled an all-nighter at work last night, spent most of today recovering]

ACCEPTANCE (and forgiveness)

February is a rather unique month. Not only does it change its length every few years, but it also has the fewest number of days of all the months in a given year. In addition, it has two valid pronunciations (courtesy Dictionary.com):

“Usage Note: Although the variant pronunciation (feb-yoo-ary) is often censured because it doesn’t reflect the spelling of the word, it is quite common in educated speech and is generally considered acceptable. The loss of the first r in this pronunciation can be accounted for by the phonological process known as dissimilation, by which similar sounds in a word tend to become less similar. In the case of February, the loss of the first r is also owing to the influence of January, which has only one r.”

Like many months, February’s name comes from Latin, Februarius mensis or “month of Februa”. Februa, or Februalia, was a month-long festival celebrating the god of purification, Februus. Homes were cleaned and blessed, offerings of reparation were given and peace was made. (A perfect thing to do as the winter months wind down, don’t you think?) Februus and his festival became so important to the Romans that eventually they named a month after him.

Although my research isn’t quite clear on this, eventually you get around to some of Februus becoming associated with the god Pluto, ruler of the Underworld, and other parts become identified with Juno Februa, the goddess of fertility and passion. The same festival continues, tho, celebrating Juno Februa. Years later, the early Catholic Church comes up with Saint Valentine’s Day in an attempt to bring all of the pagan festivals and celebrations under Catholic control.

Now that the history lesson is out of the way, and we all understand (sorta) how we got to February being about love, why am I posting about it?

I’m gonna try something that has been percolating in the back of my mind since December. From the first time I told a girl she liked me (I “dropped” a note to her during pass time in second grade…she laughed at me and made fun of me with her friends) to when I got married (and later divorced) I’ve collected a number of experiences I’m going to share this month. Some will be celebratory, some lessons to learn, some will simply be amusing stories. I hope that everyone will enjoy them (and share their comment-love!)

Considering I’ve already used February 1st for this post…and there are 27 days left this year, I’m gonna try to up the ante a bit. Considering there is 26 letters in the alphabet…that leaves one letter, per day, with the final summary post being featured on the 28th. Brilliant! Stay turned for tomorrow…

I got 3.5 hours of sleep last night ‘cause of work-related issues.

Gimme a break, k?

In other news, I’m very happy that 89.3 / The Current / KCMP has been continuing its strong performance. My iPod use has been cut dramatically while driving, for sure. (I may even be able to part with it long enough in order to get its battery replaced) Not all of the music is my favorite, but the variety is perfect. I actually get the feeling that a higher intelligence (rather than computer) is mixing up the tracks. Last night I heard a Soul Coughing tune (a live Casiontone Nation) spun right before a Madvillain track (Money Folder). The two worked perfectly together…woot!

With the playing of “Music By Beethoven” WCAL, from Saint Olaf College, went off the air after 84 years…to be replaced by The Current, brought to us by MPR.

The first song was MOST excellent. Sure, some people had ideas what they wanted…Left of the Dial, Dave Matthews Band, etc. But what the staff chose was perfect. A great song, I had never heard brfore, but totally fit. This is why I’ll tune in and others will as well. That’s what radio is supposed to be about. Being exposed to new music that’s familiar but that you’ve never heard before. A DJ should MIX the tracks, one leading to another almost as if they were giving a speech.

I’m excited. I first got “into” music when KJJO was still on the air spinning some up some of the great early “Alternative” tracks. REV 105.1 came around after that and filled the void. I tried Radio K for a while, but it was too young and unpolished. Cities 97 was too old and too predictable. Drive 105 tried, and honestly was all I had to turn to, but it didn’t seem “right”. Too much repetition…and not enough variety.

I’ve heard four tracks so far. The first was awesome, a hidden track by “Atmosphere” off of their “Seven’s Travels” album. The second I didn’t like too much…but the most recent two were great. That’s what it is supposed to be about, tho. I won’t like everything…but even what I don’t like will be somehow familiar, fit with the songs played around it.

Here’s the lyrics from that first Atmosphere song…

A few weeks ago, I was possessed to go visit Alton Brown’s website. I didn’t really go up there looking for anything in particular…I think I had just finished watching an episode of Good Eats and thought I’d check it out. I noticed an AB on Tour link and clicked through. Low and behold, Alton was coming to Minneapolis to promote his book! I added it to my calendar…and thought I’d forget about it until shortly before.

However, even with the stress of the last two weeks, I’d often find myself looking forward to the book signing. I checked the website a few days later, noticed that an independent bookstore, Bound To Be Read had been added, decided that’s where I’d go.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

I don’t think I’ve seen this much fluffy snow fall so far this year here in the great state of Minne-snow-ta. It is so wonderful to see everything all white and pristine…makes all the bitterly cold temperatures worthwhile when you get soft snowfall like today. I feel like throwing on the snowpants, running outside and making a snowman. I wonder if it is sticky enough snow to make snowballs? Might have to test that out tonight as people leave work…heheheh.

One more quote…then I swear I’m done! Quoteth Mr. T:

“I love it when a plan comes togetha!”

I think we all loved it today. “The Project” proved itself to be every bit as valuable and extensible as I designed it to be, and it handled its first real-world challenge with only minor coding changes. (I might bump up the version to 1.0 just to celebrate!) The mad ninja code I wrote in a matter of three days (including a complete rewrite because of a silly Microsoft undocumented feature) plugged in beautifully - and with the rewrite it ended up working even more elegantly than I had originally thought possible. In the end, the customer project was finished only 3 hours late (3pm instead of noon) but we still got it done today thanks to some last minute scrambling by JManDoo and I. (Truth be told…not that we need excuses, mind you, but I should point out that we lost 3 hours yesterday because of some Fishwall issues…so we really came out right on time!)

It felt good to see everything working like we had planned…even moreso after we were told in no uncertain terms by “people who know” that what we wanted to do was impossible. IMPOSSIBLE Muahahahah!

The mad ninja programming skills are getting quite a workout these past few weeks. (It seems to me I gave up programming years ago…why am I still doing it today?)

It seems that there are portions of the Win32 API (Specifically, IPHLPAPI.DLL / IPHelper) which do not respond well to impersonation calls. I’m sure someone somewhere at Microsoft thought this was a great idea…but it has caused me and JManDoo much aggrevation for many hours tonight. Now I’ve got to take a nice, straightforward piece of code and slash it to bits to make it work without impersonation.

As mentioned here, this week is another busy week in the land of Damon. Got a bunch of projects at work all coming to a head this week. Indeed, I put in the equivalent of a full work day yesterday as I hacked away at Fishwalls project trying to get it into a state where I can hand it over to our operations group.

Still have hardly started on the project due on Thursday at noon for one of our clients…ugh.

While my existing rates remain unchanged for men, I have created a special new rate structure for women looking for help with their computer. I am your one-stop shop for all your computer setup, maintenance and installation needs. Contact me today!

“Meet the IT Gigolo!”
from Sync Magazine, Oct/Nov 2004

34-year-old systems engineer “Ray Digerati” enjoys fixing computers. And having sex. So he combined the two.

How long have you been a tech-support manwhore?
A few months. This really attractive friend was having trouble connecting to the Internet, and the idea popped into my head: “Wow, it would be nice if I could get sex for this.” I placed an ad on Craigslist that read, “WILL FIX COMPUTERS FOR SEXUAL FAVORS.” The response has been overwhelming.

This scam actually works?
Yeah. Most of the calls I get are for spyware removal and viruses. One girl didn’t even wait for me to finish the virus scan - she just grabbed me and gave me a b.j.

Do you have a set, you know, pay scale?
No, it’s up to their discretion. One girl didn’t want to have intercourse, so she offered a massage and then finished me off with her hand. It’s all about the time I spend. If I’m working for one or two hours, I’d like a hummer. An orgasm for every two hours of service is fair. If it’s something simple that I can fix in 15 minutes, I’d like to get a foot massage.

Do you see photos first? Ever rescind your offer once you saw the girl?
I’m pretty open-minded. I’m a stickler for hygiene, but I don’t discriminate.

This is sort of awkward, but my hard drive keeps crashing and…
No guys. I mean, I’ll help you out for money. But if you know any ladies who need help, I’m ready, willing and able.

Coming off the heels of a very busy week at work, I received word late on Friday that my life will be consumed with work over the next few weeks. A big project, under a deadline that only crazy people like JManDoo and I would attempt to make, will combine to make for a very busy few weeks.

I wouldn’t have it any other way, honestly. I love, if not thrive on, the stress which comes from this kind of work. I’m excited…it isn’t just a wham-bam-thankya-ma’am install, we’re talking about a pretty major install with all kinds of new things involved combined with a hack that, when it works, is quite elegant and beautiful, considering the pain which it solves. (That’s quite the sentence, isn’t it?)

I don’t play the lottery (it is a tax on people who didn’t pay attention in math class) but I’m thinking I might want to go out and pick up a ticket. I mean, what are the odds…

Back around the end of October, I found myself unable to drive my car to my assigned parking spot because there was a car blocking my route. I had to push the car back in to the spot,