just procrastinating

2011-12-16T20:25:00.000-05:00

Checking In
Just seeing if this thing still works.

2008-08-12T13:49:00.003-04:00

Baby Boy

Happy Birthday!

2008-08-08T15:07:00.002-04:00

New Post
Look how time flies. Just checking to see if the old blog still works. Busy week coming up. Lot's of work related stuff, and the birth of our second child (a still as of yet unnamed boy). One way or another the little guy will make an appearance on or before Tuesday Morning. I will post pics.

2007-06-18T21:52:00.000-04:00

Birthday
Father's Day was also Zoey's first birthday. She didn't really understand the concept, but seemed to like all of the wrapping paper and frosting that were involved. Here's a pic. More here.

2007-05-22T18:21:00.000-04:00

Walking
The end of this is cute:

2007-04-29T19:29:00.000-04:00

Cold Diet Coke
Is there an airport on this planet that sells a cold Diet Coke? I was travelling last week from Dulles to O'Hare and then to Frankfurt and then through London on the way back to Dulles, so I think the answer is probably no. Why even bother with those open air coolers? Those never work; they're always luke warm, even the ones in the very back. Oh sure, I could get the fountain drinks with ice, but that's not really the same. Too much discretion with the syrup mix, it's totally unrealiable. And the airports in Europe don't even sell regular Diet Coke, it's that Splenda version that's so sweet I can't even drink half of one of them. I could drink a 6 pack a day of the Aspertame sweetened version. So it's good to be home.

2007-04-07T17:25:00.000-04:00

Hiking
Here's me out hiking with a passenger. A couple more here.

2007-03-28T21:30:00.001-04:00

I liked that guy
I've watched more of this season of American Idol than I should admit publicly, but I was a bit disappointed that they sent the chubby guy, Chris Sligh, home tonight. I guess America wasn't with me on that one either. Admittedly, he flubbed "Every little thing she does is magic", which is one of my favorite songs. It makes you realize how good the Police, and Sting were back in the day. For American Idol, if you can't sing the song better than the original artist, why even bother? It just makes the audience wish they were listening to the record.

2007-02-12T21:53:00.000-05:00

Changes
Sorry for ignoring the old blog, but I've has some changes recently. I was staying home with the baby for the past six months, but last month I went back to the old kind of work. The kind where I essentially count money and various other things for a company that I don't own. I started a new job last month at a company near here that makes plastics, or some kind of stuff...I'm still trying to figure it out. They buy stuff, turn it into something else and they sell it for a profit. A typical business model.

I'm actually going to Germany this weekend to visit one of the other plants, which will be my first trip over the pond. In my 37 and half years I haven't made that trip, not for lack of interest, but more related to a dislike of long trips and and plenty of other locations that are closer that I'd rather visit. I'm looking forward to being there, but not getting there. The 8 hour flight is more time in the air than I am used to, and I can't upgrade because I have to fly Delta. Oh well.

Here is a cute pic:

2007-02-04T21:35:00.000-05:00

XLI
Things got off to a great start thanks to Devin Hester, but it just wasn't meant to be. By the middle of the second quarter, I started to have a bad feeling about this. The Colts offense was on the field too much and the Bears defense wasn't really stopping them. It's easy to blame Rex Grossman, and believe me I do, but it wasn't all his doing. First of all, what coach would build a team around a quarterback named Rex Grossman. But anyway, there's plenty of blame to go around.

Again, like I mentioned earlier, since I haven't emotionally invested much in this team, this loss, while unfortunate, disappointing and slightly infuriating, doesn't mean much to me in the vast scheme of things. I lost a bet and have to cook a new menu dinner for my wife, who bet on the Colts. That's about it. But I think back to Super Bowl XX and how important that was to me. If the 1985 Bears had lost, I can't imagine how disappointed I would have been. My life would have been totally different. I probably would have dropped out of school and turned to a life of crime. Who knows where I would be now? Thank you Walter Payton, Jim McMahon, Mike Singletary, Mike Ditka and the rest of the 1985 Bears for making me who I am today.

2007-02-03T19:31:00.000-05:00

Crawling
Zoey just figured out the forward gear today. Time to start baby-proofing everything.

2007-02-01T17:44:00.000-05:00

Boston Police
According to this article the authorities in Boston are still pretty upset about wasting every one's time yesterday. I got a kick out of this line from the article:

"Officials have vowed to hold responsible Turner Broadcasting Inc., the parent company of the Cartoon Network, which airs the series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball."

Sounds intriguing.

2007-01-22T22:07:00.000-05:00

Bears
So are these Bears for real? Living outside of Chicago, it's hard to get a sense of the real scoop on these guys. I remember the excitement surrounding the 1985 Bears like it was yesterday. I can still name the starting line up of that team by position, but now that I get to see maybe 2 or 3 games a season on TV, I don't know this team at all. I've always had my doubts about Rex Grossman with that goofy wet behind the ears face of his. He's no Jim McMahon...or is he?

Since Jordan left the Bulls, I try not to get too emotionally invested into any team from my hometown. Oh sure you have White Sox last year, but I'm a Cub fan. I'm used to disappointment. But I'm starting to feel that maybe this might happen. Go Bears!

2007-01-08T21:36:00.000-05:00

Cute Pic
I see you can finally post pics directly from your hard drive using blogger without having to link to them from some other source. That's nice. Here's a cute pic of the little one at bath time.

2006-12-27T22:06:00.000-05:00

Ford
Gerald Ford was the first president that I voted for. As I recall in a mock election in my first grade class, Ford beat Carter by a 16 to 1 margin, and this was in the heavily Democratic south suburbs of Chicago. I suppose it wasn't a very representative sample.

Great guy though, or so it seems. I went to grad school at U of M, and they had some old photos of him as a football player in the student union that were pretty cool. Too bad he couldn't figure out a way too keep us from 4 years of Jimmy Carter, but I suppose we get the government we deserve.

2006-12-07T14:32:00.000-05:00

Local Celebs
I was just out walking on Charlottesville's downtown mall with the baby this afternoon and I saw another local celebrity, John Grisham. You'd think after 6 years I'd finally see the guy, and yeah well, today was the day. He must have come from some book signing, which he occasionally does at some of the bookstores on the mall. He had nice shoes and looked older than I thought, but it was him. I was tempted to say "Hey man, I loved The Firm", but instead of wowing him with that insightful comment, I just said "hi" and walked on by.

2006-11-19T16:45:00.000-05:00

Rematch
Personally, I'd like to see that Michigan - Ohio State game played again on neutral turf in early January. I think the result would be different. It's great to see these Big Ten teams playing like this, and to see the Florida football factory schools losing. Like Miami losing to Virginia yesterday...and Virginia is awful this year.

2006-11-08T12:37:00.000-05:00

Election Results
Last night was about what I expected and I'm happy to see that Jim Webb looks like he might take George Allen's seat. I don't claim to know a thing about Jim Webb, except that he looks like he might be hitting the sauce a little too frequently. That's OK though. I've seen George Allen's mug now for a dozen years and I've gotten tired of his schtick. Time to give someone else a chance.

2006-10-27T15:21:00.000-04:00

Sitting Up
Just over four months old and almost sitting up on her own.

2006-10-20T22:05:00.000-04:00

Bugs
Wednesday the sun was out and I spent the afternoon fighting off an invasion of ladybugs. I guess this time of year they go looking for a warm place to stay for the winter, and they use the last sunny days of the fall to invade the homes of regular people like me.

These aren't the nice pretty red ladybugs that everyone likes. The red ones are the kind that land on you in the summer, and you might smile and call someone over and proudly say, "look a ladybug is on me." These are the nasty orange kind, the Asian Lady Beetle, that bite, smell and leave a yellow residue if you mess with them. Once inside, they spread out from where they entered and then bunch up in groups in the corners by the ceiling. I've vacuumed up hundreds of these monsters over the past few days, and I don't feel a thing for them. In the spring, the bastards that survived will get the itching to leave, and will get the same treatment.

2006-10-16T21:32:00.000-04:00

Jinx
Thanks ESPN. You do a big monday night pre-game on how great the Bears are, bring out Da Coach and now they're down 14-0 to Arizona in the First Quarter. Plenty of time left, but still...

Update: 20-0 at halftime so I went to bed. My bad. Bears 24-23!

2006-10-13T20:06:00.000-04:00

Garbage Detective
A faint smell of garbage kept hitting my nose late yesterday on the couch. I suppose it's time to take out the garbage. Problem solved? No. Hmm, run the garbage disposal maybe? Nope. Alright look under the couch: no. Look under coffee table: no. Remove all couch cushions: no. Is it the cushions themselves? Have they been supersaturated in spip-up and are finally rotting? They don't smell great, but that ain't it either. Crap.

Oddly the smell is pretty localized to one part of the couch. Hmm, and right behind that spot is my backpack, which, ugh, now I remember, has the remnants of a Potbelly sub that I bought at Dulles and didn't finish on the airplane last week. Whew, major house cleaning avoided for another day.

2006-10-01T20:36:00.000-04:00

Fame
So if you were watching the Today Show on Saturday at about 8:45 you might have seen Zoey and me. My parents saw us. I didn't get there early enough to be in the front for one of those crowd interviews, so I was just another one of those idiots in the crowd waving. I actually met Lester Holt right when I got there. He was coming out for a segment and I had the baby in the baby bjorn and he asked me her name. I was kind of hoping that these television folks would be shorter in person, but he was taller than I thought he would be. I figured him for a 6'0" kind of guy, but he's more like 6'2".

2006-09-29T09:30:00.000-04:00

New York City
I'm hanging out in New York City today with the wife and little one. We are staying at the Marriott on the east side which is only about half a mile from 30 Rockefeller center, so I went over to the Today show with the intention of trying to get the baby on TV. However, the place was mobbed because Janet Jackson was playing, so I saw a little bit of her and headed back. Maybe I'll try it tomorrow with the weekend crowd.

2006-09-25T16:22:00.000-04:00

Baby in Mirror

2006-09-17T21:56:00.000-04:00

Commercials
I just saw that Liberty Mutual commercial again and thought, you know maybe I should switch all of my insurance to them. Well not really, but jees, every time I see that I well up like schoolgirl. It's this one, where people are going about their day and they see somebody help out someone else and kind of pass it along. It's a nice idea, and the song is really what does it, which, I've learned is called "Half Acre" by Hem.

Also, I stll laugh at that commercial for Chicken Fries at BK. This is the one where there is some race pit guy whose job is to pass the chicken fries to the driver at pit stops, and they go into the history of passing chicken to the driver. Originally, the would just use big pole and they would stick a whole chicken on it, which would then be passed to the driver. And then they show an example of this in the commercial, but the chicken never makes it through, it just stays stuck on the pole. It's brilliant.

2006-09-12T09:07:00.000-04:00

Path to 9/11
I watched most of the controversial Path to 9/11. True or not, I thought it was pretty good but for this, as noticed by Tim Cavanaugh:

However, having checked out a few minutes of last night's episode, I do have one plangent cry from the mouth of madness: Please, God, please, let the era of the shakycam come to an end! What sinister plot, what hatred of the west, what terrorist conspiracy is it that subjects the world's greatest democracy to the stomach-churning effects of artsyfartsy handheld camerawork day after day, movie after movie?

It is a nice effect, but really not for every scene. The only still shots were where the subjects were so far away that the jiggle effect would make them unrecognizable.

2006-09-06T21:30:00.000-04:00

Captive Audience
I've been playing a lot of guitar and getting the calluses back on my fingertips now that I have a captive audience back at home to listen. I probably need to update my repertoire to be more age appropriate, but I can do a rendition of "Interstate Love Song" and "Under the Bridge" in a laid-back, almost lullaby that even the brightest 11-week old kid could appreciate. Especially when her only musical experience comes from her bouncy seat and her water activity gym. It's fun for me, and she seems to like it at first and then falls asleep, so that's a win-win.

2006-09-04T20:53:00.000-04:00

Frickin' Cable
Now that I am no longer employed by the cable company, I can complain publicly about the service around here. Ernesto brought some rain through on Friday and our power went out for about 4 hours, but the cable was down for 2 days. Come one guys, a 2 day outage isn't exactly going to win any customer service awards.

So anyway, on Saturday I turned 37, which is probably only meaningful in that it takes me out of my mid-thirties (which I'd say are 34-36) and puts me in my late 30s, although my early-late thirties. I remember reading an article about how back in his day, Clark Gable was considered to exemplify an adult man at 37 when he was in "Gone With the Wind". Somehow he seemed a lot older than that.

But hey, another year and I can't complain. Sure, I'm unemployed and not sure what I'm going to do next, but that just means I've got options.

2006-08-26T22:24:00.000-04:00

Dad, Can I Borrow Your Gel?
You gave me this hair. At least you could let me use some of your hair products. More here.

2006-08-14T22:01:00.000-04:00

When You're Smiling
OK. You can stay.

2006-08-09T19:23:00.000-04:00

Another 12 Pack of D Batteries Please
I think we've been going through about one D battery a day here between the vibrating bouncy seat and the Baby Papasan Cradle Swing (which rocks...thanks Mom and Dad). You would think that some of these kid toys would come with an AC adaptor. But no it's all D batteries, all the time. I actually got some rechargeable ones, which are more expensive and they don't last quite as long. But at least I can rotate those into the mix.

There must be some collusion between the Fisher Price people and the battery cartels to keep these things running on D's.

2006-07-30T11:29:00.000-04:00

Moving On
I've known about this for awhile, but July 31 will be my last day here at work for the cable company (Adelphia Communications). For the past 2 years or so I worked in Finance at the Regional office here in Charlottesville and since Comcast is taking over the Adelphia assets here in Charlottesville, they already have a bunch of people like me up in Philly or wherever, so it's back to the unemployment line. And that's OK.

It actually couldn't have worked out better since my wife has to head back to work on August 1, so I can stay home with Zoey for awhile, until something else comes around.

We've been in Charlottesville for 6 years now (but for the couple of months we were in Knoxville), and this will be the 3rd time that I've been laid off. I'm not an idiot, so maybe I should take a hint from this. But then again, we like it here, my wife has a good job and, but for the whole career thing, it is a great place to live.

I've been posting less and less on this blog, and that will probably continue for awhile unless I think of something funny or clever that I just have to post, or have more pics that I want to post here. Anyway, that's my story.

2006-07-12T21:06:00.000-04:00

Nice Combover
My daughter's is starting to resemble a middle-aged man; not me, but someone with a early stage combover.

2006-07-06T08:15:00.000-04:00

New Baby/TV
In addition to our first born child Zoey our household was recently blessed with a brand new HDTV! We ended up going with this one from Sony, which while not the highest ranked nor the cheapest, it was the best choice for us in a Greg Brady/Johnny Bravo kind of way, in that it fit the best in our built-in bookcase.

We haven't had a new TV in a while so were pretty easily able to rationalize this purchase. But, since it was such a big purchase we also collapsed several holiday gifts into one which is something that I'm sure everyone does that I'm calling "gift slashing". So for me this was a Father's Day/Birthday/Christmas present, where you actually say the word "slash" in between for effect. Of course, when my birthday comes around, I'll expect something, but it will just be some trinket or other, since this TV already covered it.

Another thing about the new TV that might be a caveat to potential buyers out there. One of my big selling points for getting a new big TV was my belief that when you have a big HDTV in your house, every day is better than the one before. And that was very true for the first day, and then the next few as well. But after that, things sort of fell back into place so that by the fifth day or so things were more or less back to normal, except that I can now read the tickers on CNBC from the kitchen.

2006-06-29T13:49:00.000-04:00

More pics
Since all I really do now is go to work, come home and take baby pictures; there are plenty more pics of Zoey on my fotopages page here. Here is a pic of Zoey trying to communicate something profound.

2006-06-25T21:54:00.000-04:00

Tired
I'm amazed the human race has held up and continued to thrive. A week of looking after a newborn, with maybe, say 15% of the responsibility, and I'm ready to say that's enough reproducing. How do people do it? Twins? Triplets? Crikey. Just the thought makes my palms sweat. There is nothing more stressful and overwhelming that trying to console a breathlessly crying infant. Well, of course there are, but it's still hard, especially at 3AM. But who knows? Everyday it seems easier.

Someone told me I'd look back on these first few weeks fondly, with that very human kind of misrecollection and I thought, yeah, you know, I'm exactly that kind of person.

2006-06-19T20:06:00.000-04:00

Welcome
This is Zoey Payton S. and her proud dad...just in time for Father's Day!

More photos here.

2006-06-13T08:16:00.000-04:00

Helmets
When you play a sport that requires a helmet, you would think that through years of getting your bell rung you would understand why it is a necessary piece of equipment. That's why this Ben Roethlisberger accident seems a bit oddd. I feel bad for the guy, but he clearly knew the risks and chose to take them. But at some point you have to realize that even if it looks real cool riding a motorcycle without a helmet, it doesn't look real cool riding it without any teeth.

2006-06-12T08:08:00.000-04:00

MS Tour De Vine Update
Well, despite my best intentions, I didn't do the whole 150 miles as I thought I would. Saturday I got up, felt great went out strong at 7:10 AM and had the first 20 miles done by 8:30. At this pace, I was going to be done by noon. Ah, but then, the wind started kicking up and the hills started getting steep. I made it to the lunch stop by 11:15 which was mile 47. There I met my wife and in-laws who tried to persuade me to leave with them, but I pressed on.

Somewhere aroung mile 60, something bit me on my side, and it hurt. I shrugged it off despite persistent thoughts that maybe it was black widow spider and I was developing necrotizing fasciitis. After the rest stop on mile 66 everyone said the rest was supposed to be downhill, except for the last mile. Once you plant that in your mind, it's hard when you run into more hills, but I made it. I crossed the finish line around 2PM, so about 7 hours of riding.

I'm glad I did it, but when the alarm went off on Sunday, I decided that I wasn't up for another day on my bike, so I turned it off and went back to sleep. After you climb Mount Everest, it's not like you are going wake up the next day and do it again.

2006-05-30T08:06:00.000-04:00

United 93
We checked out United 93 over the weekend. I wasn't sure if I wanted to see this because I knew how it ended, but it was the only real option on Charlottesville's downtown mall this weekend. But they did a great job with this movie. Even though you know what is going to happen, the movie was filled with suspense. I felt like I got a workout because my heart was racing so much during it.

The directors did a great job of capturing the confusion on the ground. They mention at the end of the movie, after all 4 planes were down, the military finally got the OK to shoot down any hijacked airliners. Whoever received that order decided not to pass that along to the pilots in the air, because there was so much confusion that he was worried that they might make a mistake. Great call by that guy.

If anything it made me think about the real people who were on that flight, and I spent the rest of the night googling people like Thomas E. Burnett, Jr., who seemed to be the real leader of the effort and Jeremy Glick, the judo champion, who took it upon himself to attack the guy with the bomb and confidently stated that he would just break his arm. Just normal, everyday people who wake up one day and find that they have to do something extraordinary.

2006-05-25T08:11:00.000-04:00

American Idol
I didn't watch much of American Idol this year, but I had to watch last night. Here is my uninformed commentary: I can't believe that Jay Leno-looking dude won. He probably was a better singer, or at least had a more unique sound, but who would vote for a pear-shaped gray-haired guy to be the American Idol? I guess you can't judge a book by it's cover, but when you have cover as appealing as Katherine McPhee, you'd think she'd win on looks alone. Guess not. Oh, and why did Prince agree to be a part of this?

2006-05-18T13:39:00.000-04:00

MS Tour De Vine
I'm going to be participating in the Multiple Sclerosis Tour De Vine, which is a 150 mile event over 2 days, June 10-11, here in the Charlottesville area that will raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. I'm planning on doing the whole 150 miles even though I only recently put air in my tires and checked to see if I could still ride a bike. (I can!)

If you are feeling in a giving mood, know that your donations are likely tax deductible, and you can donate to a great cause right here.

2006-05-18T08:32:00.000-04:00

Too Many Criminals?
This from Andrew Sullivan has been kind of bugging me lately:

Land of the Jailed

King's College, London, just out put their latest PDF report on rates of imprisonment in the world. The rates are given as the number of prison inmates per 100,000 people in the population at large. It's pretty staggering that by far the highest rates of imprisonment occur in the U.S. The U.S. rate is 724 for every 100,000 people - up from 505 in 1992. Of major countries, the only close competitor is Russia with 581, and Cuba at 487. Iran and Israel, to give examples of countries with internal conflict, clock in at 206 and 209 respectively. Most major U.S. allies are in the 130 range or lower. I'm not sure what any of this proves. But this much we can say: the land of the free is also the land of the unfree. Millions of them. Texas, by the way, has an imprisonment rate of well over 1,000. There's no country on the planet - no dictatorship on earth - as confortable with locking people up as the state of Texas. The detention policies of the current administration may be more understandable in this context.

Is there something about Americans that make us more criminal? Of course not. We've got too many cops with nothing to do and too many bullshit laws (i.e. War on Drugs) that have prison sentences. People should be more outraged about this kind of thing.

2006-05-15T13:34:00.000-04:00

Clean Windows
Twice a year or so they wash the windows of the building where I work. I'm on the fourth and top floor and they are up there making a big racket today. They wash them "old school", which is my own term that means with the ropes and the swing-like seat, not the lame scaffolding thing that moves up and down the side of the building. These guys are the elite of the janitorial staff and they know it. No averted glances or sheepish "Hi" from these guys when you walk by them in the halls.

One of them walked by me earlier all harnessed up and kinda looking like fighter pilot and it made me feel a little inadequate, as I headed back to my desk to sit at my computer and click away, while he was out risking his life to bring a little more sunshine through.

2006-05-15T08:07:00.000-04:00

King Kong
We rented King Kong this weekend. I liked it enough to sit through all of it, but my wife gave up on it 2 hours into it, realizing that there was another hour to go. This is another movie that probably played a lot better in the theater. It appeared to be visually stunning, but that just doesn't have the same impact when it is shown at home on my 27 inch screen in widescreen. (I'm real close to getting a new TV for this reason, by the way.)

Anyway, you might get the feeling that you have seen this movie before and it's not because of the original in 1933 or the remake 43 years later. The beginning of this movie is very Titanic-like and the middle is a combination of Jurasic Park and Indiana Jones' Temple of Doom. I can't think of what the ending reminds me of, so that part might be original. Naomi Watts is great in this. She is year older than me and looks like she's still in her 20s.

2006-05-12T13:00:00.000-04:00

Highlander
I just crossed paths with some guy in lobby who made me do a double take. I was walking in and he was walking out carrying an office chair, and he looked exactly like this guy I knew in college. I was sort of friends with him and he ended up transferring after a couple of years and that was last I'd seen or heard from him. Except, this guy looked exactly the same, and hadn't aged a day. That was almost 17 years ago and he looked exactly the same.

Anyway, that reminded me of the movie the Highlander ("There can be only one"). In that movie, there were a bunch of people throughout history who became immortal for some reason and they would all have to fight it out in the end, since, well, there can be only one left. The immortals don't age so they can't really sustain relationships with other people for very long since families and friends die off and they are left alone. Is it possible that this guy is actually an immortal, doing a stint in Charlottesville delivering office furniture?

A quick google finds that person aging and balding, so no probably not.

2006-05-08T15:34:00.000-04:00

Googled
The job I have currently will likely cease to exist come August, so I've been interviewing here and there. I had a long all day interview with a company in Richmond, and while I was there, it looks like someone googled me and found my blog. Hi! There was a search for my name that made it here. So it looks like companies do google their candidates. I suppose that doesn't really matter since this blog is quite tame, or lame maybe, and now merely existing until it can become reborn as place to post baby pics in mid-June. But it's always kind of interesting when someone cares enough to look for dirt.

2006-05-03T14:17:00.000-04:00

Sixes
My wife's due date is 6/15/06, but if she happens to go 9 days early, that could be a problem:

For one group of expectant mothers, their due date holds an extra dimension of dread. The prospect of giving birth on June 6, 6/6/06, has prompted talk of spawning devil children on Armageddon day.

That would end up being a bit of a bummer; being all excited about having a baby, and then it turns out you spawn Satan and the world ends. All those cute girl clothes would go to waste.

2006-05-02T13:47:00.000-04:00

George W. Carter
Andrew Sullivan hits on something that I've been thinking for awhile. Bush is Carter:

Both Gallup and CBS now have Bush at all-time lows in approval numbers; and the ratings for the GOP appear to be way below the water-line for November. Things can change. But I have a feeling that Bush has now become Carterized. It is very hard to see how he can regain his footing at this late stage. After six years or so, the public knows who you are; and they have come to a judgment.

It's a shame too, but you reap what you sow. I still like the guy though, and that bit he did with Bush impersonator Steve Bridges solidifies that. But he's just in over his head here.

2006-05-01T09:41:00.000-04:00

Dog Weekend
We moved into a new house last year and were the only house on the cul-de-sac, so we kind of just let our dog out and she had free reign. She usually stayed in the yard and came back when she felt like it. Well now the cul-de-sac is filling up with houses and theses houses have kids, and we have to do something to make sure that she stays in our yard, especially because we aren’t going to have as much time to look after her once this baby comes next month. She has no idea what she’s in for.

So I spent the better part of yesterday trying to install an electric fence for my dog. Like most household projects, I enter them optimistically thinking that I should be able to take care of them in a couple of hours or so. You know, 1000 feet of wire to bury, figure I can do about 10 feet per minute, done in a couple of hours. For whatever reason, it never seems to work out that way. There are so many rocks around here and the ground is so hard from lack of rain that I was lucky if I could get 2 feet of it buried per minunte. We got about a quarter of it done and decided that maybe it would best to put the rest of it off until after the next rainfall.

My dog was watching the entire time and I kept telling her, "This is all for you." But it really is all for us. She isn't going to like it one bit, but it will put us at ease to know that she isn't out getting hit by a car or terrorizing the neighbor's kids.

2006-04-26T20:52:00.000-04:00

JC
I finally caught The Passion of the Christ on cable the other night. I'd like to say that I'm the kind of person whose reaction to a powerful film like that would be something profound, and perhaps even re-energize my faith. In fact though, I'm the kind of person whose only insight was to suggest that Jesus would have had better abs in real life.

2006-04-24T08:03:00.002-04:00

Wilco
Wilco came through Charlottesville last night and the wife and I decided to go check them out. Charlottesville has this new pavillion just off the downtown mall and have been getting increasingly better acts. We went to the Spin Doctors and Blues Traveller last fall and they hadn't quite got the sound right in the pavillion, but Wilco sounded great last night. Wilco isn't the kind of band that you would say, "Those guys so fucking rocked", more of a relaxed "I was really enjoying the music" kind of band. They played some new stuff and some stuff off of albums that I do not own, but pretty much everything sounded good.

Since my wife is eight months pregnant, we decided that someday we will have to tell the little one that Wilco is the first show she ever went to when she had ears, since I suppose she was around for Blues Traveler but probably wasn't quite aware of it.

2006-04-18T07:59:00.000-04:00

Buffet/Bond
Exciting times here in Charlottesville as the the local Chi-Chis reluctantly came to the conclusion that the 80s are over and has closed. In it's place they have decided to go back a decade and put in a "Cheesburger in Paradise", which however cheesy, sounds kind of fun. I once heard an interview of Jimmy Buffett who said that somehow he managed to tap into a certain segment of the population's everyday need for escapism and it has carried him pretty far. And I thought, yeah, you know, I listen to those songs and I think of being on a beach in Florida or Mexico with a Pina Colada or a Corona in my hand.

But back to the whole escapism thing. On the hard drive of my DVR I have Dr. No, Goldfinger, From Russia with Love, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice, which, I suppose are there as my go to movies for escapism. I used to watch this video of Raiders of the Lost Ark back in high school all the time as well. It's the same thing really: after a boring day of spreadsheets and meetings, maybe I could be like James Bond?

2006-04-13T14:57:00.000-04:00

ATF Clowns
I'm feeling a bit less safe these days, not because of terrorists, but because of the assclowns that are being hired to protect us from them. This story from the University of Georgia could have turned out a lot worse. Some kid dresses up as a ninja. A dimwitted ATF agent on campus for "Project Safe Neighborhoods" seminar thinks it looks suspicious, so they tackle him and cuff him.

After telling agents he only had his keys, wallet and cell phone on him, Ransom said the agent pinning him to the ground responded that, being trained officers, they would not mistake any of those items for a gun.

The victim here, Jeremy Ransom, is fine having a bruise on his back is thinking about suing. I hope he does.

2006-04-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

Thank You For Smoking
My parents were in town this weekend and we decided to see Thank You for Smoking on a rainy Saturday. Finally, a movie comes out where I can stand up and say with pride, "The book was better." But the movie was good too, a solid 3 stars out of 4.

2006-04-06T13:01:00.000-04:00

Today
So Katie Couric is leaving the Today show and headed off to read the news at CBS? I do think the Today show could use some new blood, but I still kind of like Katie Couric despite our political differences. Of course, NBC decided to go with the even older Meredith Vieira, which shows how on the ball that network is. I'm sure she will end up like Deborah Norville: short tenure, universally despised. Or not, I'm not even sure which one from "The View" she is.

The other candidates were Campbell Brown, Natalie Morales, Ann Curry. Ann Curry is nice enough, but there is something missing there, maybe her sense of humor? Natalie Morales is OK, but she sure is scrawny. I'm not sure if the newlywed Campbell Brown is up for the job either. I've criticized her in the past but I've warmed up to her recently. The one thing that Campbell has that Katie doesn't: Campbell can read the news with the best of them; Katie, I'm not so sure. NBS should have just swung for the fences and went with the sometime correspondent and super hot Maria Menounos.

2006-04-04T14:16:00.000-04:00

Fun Fact
Speaking of time, this is pretty cool, via Reason's Hit and Run:

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be: 01:02:03 04/05/06.

That won't ever happen again.

Actually, this kind of thing terrifies me. I'm off to get some duct tape and milk.

2006-04-03T09:53:00.000-04:00

Daylight Savings Time
Here is an article in the National Review by some idiot who doesn't like Daylight Savings Time (DST). I couldn't disagree more. This is the best time of the year: you come home and the sun is up for a few more hours to go play tennis or go for a walk. It's great.

Ultimately, besides the tax cuts, one of the most useful pieces of legislation our President has signed is to extend Daylight Savings Time. Next year DST will be starting on March 11, and from now on will be the second sunday in March to the first Sunday in November from now on. It's only another month or so, but I'll take it.

2006-04-02T19:30:00.000-04:00

Spring
I was walking around the mall in Richmond yesterday with my fall/winter/spring jacket on and I was sweating, while everyone else was wearing shorts. For good reason I guess—it was 77 degrees. I guess just can't adapt as fast as other people, mostly because I can't stand putting stuff in my pants pockets, and my coat is great for comfortably fitting my wallet, phone and keys. Not to mention change: that annoying jingly-jangly sound, the imbalance and the loss of the element of surpise. I go out of my way to have little or no change on me, whether that means overtipping the people at Starbucks, leaving pennies at the counter or dropping it into the pocket of an unsuspecting wife. But anyway, except for that, it's nice that it's getting warmer.

2006-03-29T15:30:00.000-05:00

Maps
Check out these maps at A9.com (whatever that is), which are only available for some big cities. They have pictures that were taken on each side of the street. Definitely way cool to see some old places where I used to live.

2006-03-27T15:07:00.000-05:00

Global Warming
Time Magazine has a big global warming article this week that made me doubt my current position (Bring it on!) for a moment or two, at least until the end of the article, which provided no opposing viewpoint and breathlessly concluded:

Curbing global warming may be an order of magnitude harder than, say, eradicating smallpox or putting a man on the moon. But is it moral not to try? We did not so much march toward the environmental precipice as drunkenly reel there, snapping at the scientific scolds who told us we had a problem.

The scolds, however, knew what they were talking about. In a solar system crowded with sister worlds that either emerged stillborn like Mercury and Venus or died in infancy like Mars, we're finally coming to appreciate the knife-blade margins within which life can thrive. For more than a century we've been monkeying with those margins. It's long past time we set them right.

Whatever. Even in Virginia it's kind of chilly, so we'll probably move further south...or the south will move to us.

2006-03-20T09:08:00.000-05:00

Stuff
Not much going on around here for the old blog as of late. But anyway here's something: I was at Giant (supermarket) on Saturday morning and this concerned looking woman ran out from behind the butcher counter towards a group of employees standing around and said, "Curt fell down, get help". I was nearby, so I went with them to take a look for a moment locked eyes with a very sick looking man. Curt was in his 60s I'd say, and I figured he was having a heart attack.

But there plenty of people that worked there looking after him, so I thought I'd just mind my own business and get back to shopping. Still, I thought that if I was having a heart attack, I'd probably want to chew on a aspirin or two, and the folks in the butcher department probably wouldn't have thought about that. So I went over to aisle 14 and picked up some aspirin and headed over to the scene again. This time there were about 10 people around Curt, who now was unconscious. I spoke with someone nearby and she said there was a medical person there taking care of him, so I figured my services were no longer needed, and he couldn't chew the aspirin at that point anyway.

I wondered if that might have been that poor bloke's last day. We'll all have our own someday, but it's strange when it plays out in public. It reminded me of this time I was in O'Hare airport in the connecting tunnel between the United terminals and this man was getting CPR at the end of the moving walkway. His wife and daughter were standing there, almost in a trance. It was clear that he wasn't going to make it, since they were working pretty hard on him and he wasn't responding. They had opened up his shirt and his fat belly jiggled around as they pushed on his chest. It wasn't a very dignified ending. The saddest part was that they were heading toward Terminal C, which meant that the vacation never even got started.

Anyway, so I went back to Giant yesterday to see how this guy fared, and thankfully he was fine. Turns out he was just really dehydrated, which means he was either really hung over, or that he had a serious case of diarrhea. And if it was the latter, which I bet it was, that tells me more about the sanitary conditions in the Giant meat department than I'm prepared to deal with.

2006-03-15T09:08:00.000-05:00

Walk the Line
We rented "Walk the Line" over the weekend. Reese Witherspoon as June Carter was very good, but I'm not sure if it was Oscar-worthy. It's almost as if she won because the expectations of her were so low from movies like "Legally Blond" that this performance seemed like more of a breakout than it actually was. As for Joaquin Phoenix, it takes guts to go up there and try to sing like Johnny Cash and he did as good a job as anyone could.

But that being said, the movie seemed a little dull to me, kind of like Johnny's music. I never really got into it. I know it's cool to like the man in black, but his stuff just never clicked with me.

2006-03-09T10:25:00.000-05:00

Old Navy
My wife and I went to Old Navy to pick out some semi-disposable maternity clothes since she's 26 weeks into it now and...well I'll just leave it at that. Anyway she got like 4 shirts and 3 pairs of pants and I picked up a sweatshirt that was on sale for $10. Total Bill: a shockingly low $100! A lot of stuff was on sale, but jees that's cheap.

So I used this occasion to talk about how great globalization is, and if this stuff was all made in the Carolinas instead of Myanmar or Pakistan it would cost twice as much. Sure, those folks had to lose their jobs, but those jobs sucked and now they all work on pit-crews for NASCAR or at the local Piggly Wiggly. Win-win I say. And since the child labor laws were less stringent in those countries you can get the kind of detailed embroidery that can only be produced by tiny fingers working 14 hour days. (OK, I kid, I kid).

When we got back home and looked at the receipt we realized that the reason it was so cheap was because the checkout lady only charged us for about 5 things, instead of 8. Oh well, my point was still valid!

2006-03-07T15:59:00.000-05:00

VW
I've been waiting for Seth Stevenson who writes about advertising in Slate to comment on those new Volkswagen ads that tell us to "Make Friends With Your Fast". Well today he did, and I'm actually surprised that he gives them an A-. That doesn't mean he likes them, but he thinks they are going to be effective for the target, men under 25. I hope he's wrong because I hate those ads and I can't really understand what the stupid "Fast" character is saying half the time. I think they are a disaster and bad for VW's image, but maybe I'm out of touch with that demographic.

2006-03-06T07:53:00.000-05:00

Oscars
I couldn't quite stay awake for the whole Academy Awards, since there really is no well defined end point for these, and I usually end up just giving up hope that they will get to Best Picture before midnight. So I was happy to see this morning that "Crash" had won, if only because it was the only movie that was nominated that I've seen. I do want to see "Munich" at some point and suppose I'll have to check out "Brokeback" as well, but a lot of the movies this year just did not appeal to me.

I also saw "March of the Penguins", which I found to be one of the more depressing movies that I have ever seen. Those penguins...I don't know how they do it. What's the point really? Back and forth, always hungry, year after year.

2006-03-02T12:51:00.000-05:00

I Fought The Law
Well, not really, I just got back from court for my expired tags, and since I renewed them, they dismissed it. I could have just paid the $81 fine and not have to sit in court for an hour, but I figured it would be a good excuse to get out of the office and see how my tax dollars are being spent.

I sat through about 20 or so cases, most were speeding or DUI, but some were actual criminal cases. For these the defendants weren't even there, they were at the jail and appeared onscreen. One of them was a 20ish girl and I felt kind of bad for her because she just looked miserable. I'm not even sure what she did but she was in the pokey because she had missed her court date apparently because she had been ill. Sitting there you sort of get a little more sypathetic to liberals: sure, these folks have done wrong, but when they get a felony conviction, a big fine and jail time they end up losing their jobs and we the taxpayers end up paying for their housing and meals.

There were a lot of U Va students there, most of them were on speeding charges and some chose to plead "not guilty". These were kids who clearly thought they were way smarter than these local yokel cops. Right. I used to be that 21 year old who thought some clever thinking might sway the judge, but not anymore. One guy in particular, a tall Indian kid brought in a sheet with the specs of the radar gun that the cop used and attempted to convice the judge that the radar gun could have been picking up another car. The officer then said, "Buy you were the only car on the road." Oops, that'll be $90.

After about an hour of not being called, an officer came up to me and saw me with my registration in hand and asked who was the officer that pulled me over. I said, I thought he had left, and this officer looked at my ticket and said "Oh, no he's over there". To which I thought a clever but inappropriate response might be, "Well, I can't tell one pig from another." He showed the officer my registration and said I was free to go.

2006-02-27T07:43:00.000-05:00

Last Olympic Post
Well the Olympics are finally over. They kind of dragged this year and there didn't seem to be that many exciting olympic moments like we have all come to expect. The best thing this weekend was Apolo Anton Ohno's gold medal in the 500M. He seems like a decent guy and a good sport, and the fact that he is Shani Davis best friend further bolsters my position on Speedskater Chad Hendric: that he is a douchebag. Early on in the Davis-Hendrick fued, I thought that both were being selfish, but now I'm leaning more towards thinking that Shani just wanted to run his race and Chad is a douche. Chad Hendrick reminds me Rachel McAdams's boyfriend in "Wedding Crashers".

Oh, speaking of Rachel McAdams I saw "Red Eye" on Saturday. I could probably watch Rachel McAdams for hours while she was explaining accounting rules and call it a great performance, so take this for what it's worth. "Red Eye" is a thriller and it was pretty good: 3 stars out of 4 I'd say. It felt a little underdone in places, like it was the TV "movie of the week", and I usually complain about how long movies are but this one only clocked in at about 80 minutes or so. But Rachel was great and the creepy-eyed Cillian Murphy did a nice job.

2006-02-24T08:03:00.000-05:00

Mr. Belvedere
I woke up this morning with the theme of "Mr. Belvedere" playing in my head(?), which actually is a step up from that Kelly Clarkson song that's been getting a lot of unsolicited airplay in there. I think Leon Redbone actually did that one. Anyway that got me to thinking of that Saturday Night Live skit, "The Guy Who Plays Mr. Belvedere Fan Club". Here is a transcript of it. It may be one that you have to see to get because it doesn't read as funny as it played.

Here's the part I was thinking of, where they are going through an exercise that helps them clear up the line between fantasy and reality in the way they interact with the guy who plays Mr. Belvedere:

Cheryl: Okay. I should want to shake hands with Mr. Belvedere, I shouldn't want to grab a lock of his hair.

Mr. Chairman: That's good, Cheryl. And, even though it would be really neat to have a lock of his hair, we know that's not right. Someone else?

Mike: Yeah. Okay. I should want to send him a fan letter telling him how good he was in the episode where he teaches everyone how to cook, but I shouldn't want to type the letter on a death certificate.

Mr. Chairman: Yes! But, then, you learned that one the hard way, huh? Okay, so let's keep going. Come on.

Adam: I should like watching "Mr. Belvedere" a lot, but I shouldn't have to masturbate at the end of every episode.

Mr. Chairman: That's right. That is right. Discipline. Next?

Melanie: Uh, yeah! I should want to cook Brocktoon a simple dinner if he truly accepts the offer, but not if I sense that he accepts it telepathically.

Mr. Chairman: Yes, okay.. but let's keep the exercise in the form of "should" and "shouldn't", okay? Next?

Phil: I should want to cook him a simple meal, but I shouldn't want to cut into him, to tear the flesh, to wear the flesh, to be born unto new worlds where his flesh becomes my key.

Mr. Chairman: [ considering ] Good.

Doug: I got one. I should want to say hi to him nicely, I shouldn't want to keep him in a big jar in my basement.

Mr. Chairman: Alright, Doug, that's great, we understand that now. Go on, though. Why shouldn't you put him in a big jar in your basement?

Doug: Because.. his breath would fog up the glass, and I wouldn't be able to see him..?

Mr. Chairman: Well, now, there is that, but..

By the way that guy who played Mr. Belvedere, Christopher Hewitt, died 5 years ago.

2006-02-23T15:32:00.000-05:00

Bob Marley
Mildly annoying Slate article here on Bob Marley and how suburban white college students have ruined his legacy. This article was written by one Field Maloney, a Princeton grad who would know! His point: Bob Marley is more than his greatest hits "Legend" and middle-class white kids can never understand his work the way he meant for it to be heard. So? Has that really ever been a requirement to listen to something?

Unless Maloney is just making fun of the white kids with dreadlocks playing hacky sack and listening to Buffalo Soldier. Then I'm with him on that.

2006-02-21T07:57:00.000-05:00

Boring Olympics
I don't know why these olympics seem kind of boring this time around. I remember really enjoying the 2002 Salt Lake City ones, but I just can't seem to get into these. I'm not alone with these thoughts and some have suggested it may be the fact that the Salt Lake City games played out in real time. Admittedly, whenever the news says "if you don't want to know the results, turn your head now", I look, so that does take away some of the excitement.

I've noticed that Ice Dancing is getting a lot of coverage this year, which is odd because I've always considered it to be the equivalent of Rythmic Gymnastics (the one with the ball and the ribbon): a sport, but not quite the same thing as it's more athletic cousin. But there is a good reason for all of this coverage. There is a really, really, really hot chick competing.

2006-02-17T08:55:00.000-05:00

Sammy Sosa
Is Sammy Sosa going to retire? This article says probably. I still consider myself a huge Sammy Sosa fan, despite all of the bad things he's done: the corked bat, the steroids, the phoniness, etc. But it probably makes sense for him at this point just to fade away.

2006-02-13T08:02:00.000-05:00

Olympics
This morning on the Today show I saw Bob Costa's exclusive interview with Michelle Kwan...for the the fifth time. These guys need to come up with some new material. We get it, she pulled her groin. It's too bad. So now, straight from band camp by the looks of her, this this Emily Hughes is going to take her place, but she's stuck in the snow. I've seen that interview three times now. Either I'm watching too much TV or NBC needs to get some more content.

2006-02-08T11:20:00.000-05:00

Pets
I'm sporting a fat lip today after being outsmarted by my dog. We were playing tug-of-war with this old shoe that she has while I was lying on the couch, and she pulled the old "Italian Arm Wrestle" trick on me. She let go at precisely the right time and the right angle and I smashed myself in the face with the shoe. It was pretty startling and it took a second for me to realize what happened, and then I felt really, really stupid. She gave me this concerned look like "What the hell are you doing?"

2006-02-06T07:47:00.000-05:00

Super Bowl
I'm not a big Steeler fan, but I guess I'm happy with the outcome. I guess I was supporting the Steelers for the sake of the only Miami University (Ohio) football player to make a name for himself, Ben Roethlisberger, and since we both were coached by Terry Hoeppner at Miami.

For me, the most interesting part of the game was at halftime when Mick came out and said, "We could have done this one at Super Bowl One" and launched into "Satisfaction". That's a pretty amazing thing.

2006-02-02T07:59:00.000-05:00

Karma
Got a call at lunch yesterday from the Frateral Order of Police looking for donations and I replied with my standard, "I don't support the Police", especially not after seeing that cop shoot what appeared to be an innocent guy yesterday. So wouldn't it figure that on my way home from the gym at about 7PM, I get pulled over. Turns out my tags had expired last September. So I got a ticket and have to go to court to get it expunged.

All of which goes to prove my point, that I don't support the police, financially anyway. There are too many laws, too many cops with nothing to do and too many non-violent people in jail.

2006-02-01T21:36:00.000-05:00

New Additions
Just 18 1/2 more weeks until this one arrives. These 3D ultrasounds are pretty cool. More pictures of Zoey here. She already has her Mom's big hands, and looks like she has her Dad's mouth.

2006-01-31T10:49:00.000-05:00

Miracles
Wow, it looks like the Vatican may have found a miracle that they can attribute to Pope John Paul. If that's true he's a shoo-in for sainthood. And if it's really, really true then I better stop making fun of this whole process. But here's a great quote here from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution that sums up my feelings on this charade:

I would be more impressed, however, if the cure rate of those who prayed to John Paul exceed that of those who prayed to Elvis. Will the Vatican be performing a t-test? I suspect not.

2006-01-30T10:49:00.000-05:00

Knees
My knee has been bugging me for about 3 or 4 months now and it's been getting worse, so I figured I'd go get it checked out. I went to this sports Doctor and ran on the treadmill for awhile, had some X-Rays taken and it turns out I have Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome. That's a long name for what I think can better be described as "Suck it up, crybaby". According to this article, the injury is common among girls aged 10 - 20 years, so it's nothing I can brag about around the gym. So I get to go to physical therapy and wear one of those straps around my knee. But at least I'll get out of work when I go to physical therapy.

2006-01-24T08:06:00.000-05:00

Starbucks
My wife and I were just talking about how the smallest size at Starbucks is called "tall" and appears to be an english word, which is then followed by "grande" which might be Spanish or Italian, and then the hideous "venti" which may not be a word at all. (Actually I just looked it up and it's Italian for twenty. Oh, OK) But why call your smallest size "tall"? Answer: Because it is not the smallest size! From Slate:

Here's a little secret that Starbucks doesn't want you to know: They will serve you a better, stronger cappuccino if you want one, and they will charge you less for it. Ask for it in any Starbucks and the barista will comply without batting an eye. The puzzle is to work out why.

The drink in question is the elusive "short cappuccino"—at 8 ounces, a third smaller than the smallest size on the official menu, the "tall," and dwarfed by what Starbucks calls the "customer-preferred" size, the "Venti," which weighs in at 20 ounces and more than 200 calories before you add the sugar.

This secret cappuccino is cheaper, too—at my local Starbucks, $2.35 instead of $2.65. But why does this cheaper, better drink—along with its sisters, the short latte and the short coffee—languish unadvertised? The official line from Starbucks is that there is no room on the menu board, although this doesn't explain why the short cappuccino is also unmentioned on the comprehensive Starbucks Web site, nor why the baristas will serve you in a whisper rather than the usual practice of singing your order to the heavens.

Sounds like a profit scheme.

2006-01-23T08:10:00.000-05:00

Can't Judge a Book by It's Cover
I picked up Confessions of an Economic Hit Man at Barnes and Noble last week. Just looking at the cover, it seemed like my kind of book; a man in a suit with a briefcase in some 3rd world country. Could this be James Bond with an MBA? I'm in!

Bad decision. My first mistake was not reading a few pages before I bought it. I would have immediately realized that my impression from the cover was way off. The second mistake was misunderstaning what the woman at the checkout meant when she said, "This book is infuriating." I thought at the time that if she (former hippy-type) said that, then it was exactly what I wanted. Well about 3 pages in, the book started on it's anti-globilization kick and never stopped.

The author, John Perkins, worked as a consultant for Chas T. Main back in the 1970s or as what he referred to as an "Economic Hit Man". The crime that he claims to committ? Chas. T. Main develops electric utilities across the globe and as Chief Economist Perkins inflated the forecasts for electric demand to help third world countries secure loans to pay for the growing electric plant. The demand never met his forecasts so countries were forced to default on their loans, therby becoming a pawn of the American "Empire" or "corporatocray" and forced to do our bidding.

If you buy into that then I suppose you'll like this book and be infuriated like the hippy clerk at Barnes and Noble. I personally think that theory is patronizing and empirically baseless, but I was willing to go along with him for the rest of the book to see if he could convice me. But he couldn't because he didn't even try. His audience, the hate-America-first liberals, takes it as an article of faith that everything we do is wrong and everyone else gets it but us.

And John Perkins is the worst kind of hate-America-first liberal because he actually felt he was doing something wrong, but kept doing it for the money.

2006-01-20T08:36:00.000-05:00

Jack Abramoff
I've felt kind of bad for this Jack Abramoff character ever since he's been in the news. I actually heard the story 4 years ago because a friend of mine knows this guy who was one of Abramoff's partners and he told me about how rich they got from lobbying for these Indian groups to keep exclusive rights to their casinos. It sounded pretty legit at the time; it was a win-win for everyone involved. Anyway, I guess he did some other bad stuff, so I'm sure he's getting what he deserves.

So that being said, I missed the George Clooney's stupid remarks at the Golden Globes, where he said, "Who would name their kid Jack with the last words ‘off’ at the end of your last name? No wonder that guy is screwed up". Well, turns out the person who did the naming has a thing or two to say to Mr. Clooney and he makes Clooney look like a complete jerkoff. This takedown of George Clooney by Jack Abramoff's Dad is perfect.

My son was named after my beloved departed father. His name, too, was Jack Abramoff. And, were he alive today, would be standing firmly behind his namesake, as his entire family and many more true friends than you will ever know.

Not that it matters to you, I am sure, but the worst part of your tirade is that it played out in front of many young people, including my sweet 12-year-old granddaughter, one of Jack’s five children. Jack did not waste his time watching the garbage spewing from your mouth, but his daughter did. You drove her to a fit of tears. Are you proud of that?

The rest of the letter it is pretty good and it really makes Clooney look like a heel.

2006-01-18T14:11:00.000-05:00

Viruses
Do you really need to keep your anti-virus software up to date? I tested that theory for the past year and it looks like the answer is yes. Yes, you really should. My home laptop stopped working over the weekend and I had to take it in to some pros (geeks) since Windows wouldn't even start in safe mode. They found 21 viruses infecting it and had to do a completely new Windows re-install and recover what they could from my hard drive. Oh well, live and learn. On the upside, after the $161 repair and new windows install, the thing runs like a completely new machine.

2006-01-16T08:22:00.000-05:00

Bears
Oh, well I guess a repeat 20 years later just wasn't meant to be. Rex Grossman had a bad first half. You know, something bugs me about that guy. He always seems to have a stupid grin on his face, like he is just happy to be out there on the field, win or lose. I can't say I blame him for that; I'd look exactly the same way for a couple of games at least, but this guy has been in the league for a few years.

2006-01-13T09:05:00.000-05:00

Drakkar Noir
I just walked by one of my younger colleagues and got blasted back to my Freshman year in college. He must have a hot date tonight because it smells like he bathed in Drakkar Noir. What is about about scents that they can transport you through time for an instant?

2006-01-11T07:45:00.000-05:00

Office Etiquette
How late it is acceptable to bring in unloved Halloween candy? Someone here is testing the boundaries of etiquette. Normally, I would say it's never too late, but since I'm trying to lose a couple of Christmas pounds, it's hard to do that when you are eating stale Tootsie Rolls and Nerds all day. Although I imagine that Nerds have a shelf life that extends into the next millenium.

2006-01-10T11:24:00.000-05:00

Alito
I'm kind of bored by the Alito coverage and I haven't really been following it, but that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion. I think this Radley Balko piece kind of sums up my thoughts on him. Here is the bottom line:

The real ideological split these days is between judges who are skeptical of government power, and justices who embrace it. In that vein, Scalia and Ginsberg, et al. are one and the same. Brown, Thomas, Rehnquist, and O'Connor (to a lesser extent) are the good guys.

By all indications, Alito is in the former group. Which is why I think libertarians -- and principled conservatives, come to think of it -- ought to oppose his nomination.

I'm sure he is a fine judge, but I can just tell by watching him that he's not my kind of guy.

2006-01-09T13:52:00.000-05:00

Coach
Tim Noah doesn't understand why coaches should get respect:

There is surely no American archetype more preposterously overpraised at this cultural moment than the Coach. He has become a vessel of redemption, a wise old pappy who could tell us a thing or two about this thing we call life if only we'd bother to listen.

Fair enough, but read on and you'll see why:

My own chief memory of high-school coaches (in my case, they were all physical-education teachers, since I was never on a team) is that they enjoyed being mean to the fat kids. That kept skinny-but-uncoordinated kids like me out of the line of fire.

A few months ago Tim Noah wrote this immature take down of Jack Abramoff, who was classmate of Tim Noah, and reading it you can understand exactly why Noah doesn't like coaches or popular kids: Tim Noah still has a chip on his shoulder from his days as a high school nerd.

2006-01-07T00:27:00.000-05:00

Battlestar Galactica
I've been reading good things about that new Battlestar Galactica series.

Wait a minute. When a 36-old man takes the time out of his day to write about Battlestar Galactica in his blog, that person might be struggling with content issues, or something worse. It's bad enough to admit publicly that Star Wars and Indiana Jones are your favorite movies, but when some you start hoping that some sorry excuse for Star Wars over 25 years ago is being remade and worth watching, well, you're just pushing it I think.

That being said, I was watching the previews and it looks pretty cool: The fighters are an updated take on the ones from the original series, which I watched all the time. Remember that Starbuck and Apollo from the original? Those guys were awesome. The Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) was a good looking guy and ended up being Face on The A-Team (which also rocked in it's day, BTW).

OK, but the point of this was that whenever I hear the words "Battlestar Galactica" and I'm hearing them more and more this year, I think: Battlestar Galactica...Space Glow...Putty. Can anyone remember this? They actually sold Battlestar Galactica branded silly putty-type product that glowed in the dark, and there was a really dumb commercial with an god-awful song that went along with it.

2006-01-05T16:09:00.000-05:00

Are You An Assassin?
I don't know if I mentioned this at some point before, but the company I work for is being bought out by a large cable company that rhymes with the word "bombast". In fact if you swapped out all of the "b's" in "bombast" for the next letter in the alphabet you'd have it. Well today we met the folks who will be our new corporate overlords...and our eventual assassins. It's unlikely that will keep an office here since they have facilities nearby in Richmond and DC. But who knows? I'm not worried yet, since this deal will still take some time (6 months maybe), but I guess it's time to polish off the old resume.

But anyway, this scene from Apocalypse Now was running through my head today:

Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?
Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?
Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.
Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
Willard:I'm a soldier.
Kurtz: You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

2006-01-04T10:15:00.000-05:00

Naps
Interesting article here about the benefits of napping. Here was something interesting that I’d noticed but couldn’t figure out. Usually when I nap, I wake up pretty refreshed if it is just a 20 minute one, but sometimes I get real lethargic and am stuck like that for awhile. Well here's why:

There is, however, a pitfall in all this sleeping around. You have to carefully time the duration of your nap in order to avoid waking in slow-wave sleep. This can produce what's known as sleep inertia. That's when the limbs feel like concrete, the eyes can't focus, the speech is slurred, the mind is sluggish. Sleep inertia can ruin your day. You must keep the nap to 20 minutes or slightly less, and if you need the extra sleep, wait until the 50-minute mark. This will safely keep you on the power side of your nap.

OK, I'll nap longer then. Via Newmark's Door.

2006-01-01T00:35:00.000-05:00

Chuck, Chocolate
Sat through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on PPV last night. Johnny Depp wasn't quite as creepy as the reviews seemed to indicate, but I'll take Gene Wilder over him any day. This new version really didn't step up to the plate and deliver anything interesting.

Given the technology today, Tim Burton could have done a heck of a lot more with the edible candyland garden in the early scene of the movie, and it wasn't really any better than the 1971 version. The Oompa Loompa numbers were more lavish, but it was hard to hear the lyrics (these kids today with that music...I tell ya).

Gene Wilder rocks in the original, so it's hard for Johnny Depp to compete on that level. I still find myself humming that little tune from the original: "There is no life I know, that compares with pure imagination..." Anyway, not a bad take on a classic, but not something that I'd watch more than once.

2005-12-29T21:39:00.000-05:00

Christmas Colds
Back from the great city of Chicago. Good times all in all, although the wife and I are both experiencing the side effects of spending time with sick nieces and nephews. Just colds though, nothing major.

Chicago was typical. I recall seeing the sun on Saturday morning prior to descending through the clouds over Lake Michigan, and then saw it 5 days later as we broke through the clouds over Lake Michigan Thursday afternoon. It's always up there, but sometimes you forget that in a Chicago winter. But hey, not complaining, because the temperature was actually quite balmy for this time of year.

We got pretty lucky from a travel standpoint: No delays, little traffic. As bad as I think travel can be for just the two of us, my wife remarked that we will never travel so easy again, which is a little scary. It was great to see everyone over Christmas, but it's also great to be back.

2005-12-23T14:18:00.000-05:00

Everyone is Doing It
Oh well, here's one of these:

Four jobs you've had in your life: Paperboy, bagger, bartender, batting-cage worker

Four movies you could watch over and over: Die Hard, Star Wars, Point Break, Road Trip

Four places you've lived: Chicago, IL, Washington, DC, Ann Arbor, MI, Oxford, OH

Four TV shows you love to watch: Seinfeld re-runs, The Apprentice, South Park, Curb Your Enthusiasm

Four places you've been on vacation: Bermuda, Cozumel, Orlando, San Francisco

Four websites you visit daily: Fark, Instapundit, Drudge, Yahoo Finance

Four of your favorite foods: Pepperoni pizza, biscuits, peanut butter cookies, cheese puffs

Four places you'd rather be: Napping on my couch, napping by a pool someplace warm, at that one bar by the lighthouse on Hilton Head, in bed

2005-12-22T09:13:00.000-05:00

Google Day
Most of the office is out today and tomorrow, so many in fact that I'm in charge on Friday, where I will command that everyone go home. It's nice having a couple days at the office when you can catch up, and by "catch up", I mean sit and surf, read blogs, google old friends, current friends, etc. It's a nice break from the day to day here of looking at numbers and responding to a variety of meaningless corporate fire drills.

I'm heading off to the great city of Chicago on Saturday morning for a few days, and will be back here on Thursday.

2005-12-19T15:12:00.000-05:00

Gap
This article in Slate about the new Gap ads makes an observation that I've had recently:

Gap decided a while back that its retail stores were looking dated; the displays needed freshening up. So, the company made some changes in the layout of its shops.

Meanwhile, the company itself is in dire straits. In November, Gap Inc. reported its worst quarterly results in three years. Analysts said it's "time to get serious," and that the numbers suggest "customer defections continue unabated."

You can blame Gap's clothes. (I know I don't shop there anymore--none of their stuff appeals to me.) You can certainly blame the marketing. (Ad Age says Gap's focus on celebrity endorsements has been a big failure. I'm not surprised, especially since they chose really lame celebrities. Lenny Kravitz? Joss Stone??) But Gap has taken out its frustrations on the floor plans.

I'm certainly not Mr. Fancy Pants, but the Gap almost seems to have gone down market. In my mind it was a near peer of J.Crew and Aberchrombie back in the 90s, but now it's a step below. Gap used to be pretty solid on staple-type items. I used to get all my jeans there until a few years ago. Eventually, I drifted over to Banana Republic for jeans and never went back. Except for the occasional long sleeve thermal-type shirt, Gap has little else that works for me.

2005-12-15T08:49:00.000-05:00

No Late Fees = No Movies
Who saw this one coming?

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Blockbuster Inc. stores in several states are quietly resuming late fees for customers who keep movies too long, rejecting the video-rental chain's national advertising of "No Late Fees!" because they can no longer keep popular movies on their shelves.

Many Arkansas stores resumed the late fees Nov. 21 and charges will apply again soon at various stores in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Arkansas attorney general's office has heard complaints that the fees restarted without any notice.

Blockbuster last winter said it would drop late fees, but its fine print said the company would charge consumers if they kept the movies too long, then charge a $1.25 restocking fee if the movies were returned. In March, the Dallas-based company settled complaints heard in 47 states and authorized refunds for offended customers.

My wife and I were in Blockbuster the other day and she remarked that this no late fees thing wasn't working out so well, since there were no movies on the shelves. Who would have guessed that if there are no late fees that you'd sit on the movie for a week or so?

2005-12-13T20:34:00.000-05:00

Cool Pics
These color pictures from the 40s are pretty cool. This one, from 1943, looking north with Michigan Avenue on the left there (I think) is pretty impressive when you think how the skyline has changed. Something about color makes these pictures and the people in them seem more real.

It's hard to explain, but maybe something about growing up with color pictures makes black and white seem dated and distant. I don't know. I had the same reaction when I first saw these color photos from Tsarist Russian. I'm sure in a few years the kids will have the same reaction to color pics or movies that aren't in high definition, and then later some other kids will have the same reaction to images that aren't 3 dimentional. Via Fark.

2005-12-13T08:19:00.000-05:00

War of the Worlds
We rented War of the Worlds this weekend. I wasn't expecting much since Ebert's review was pretty lousy--he only gave it 2 stars. I thought it was better than that. Oh sure, Tom Cruise was pretty annoying and Tim Robbins character was unnecessary. But the movie was intense, and kept me on the edge of my seat. It's the kind of movie where if you have a significant other that likes to talk a lot and bother you during movies, you might suggest that she gets on the treadmill or goes and does Tae-Bo while you are trying to watch it.

The ending to the movie was pretty unsatisfying. The credits started to roll and I was like "That's it?" But it still was worth seeing.