2004 stuff
2005 stuff
2006 stuff
Photos!
You're absolutely FABULOUS darling
1/5/08-- Brief hiatus while I archive the '07 crap, a bit of leg-work involved. Back in a jiff !
12/31/07-- Last Call: And so 2007 comes to a close in just over two hours. I find myself limping, hobbling, dragging myself along - sort of like a triathlete who has hit "the wall" 30 feet from the finish line. '07 was terrific, don't get me wrong. But I am frazzled. Tomorrow will be a great day to lounge in a pair of comfy sweats.
As for tonight, the usual - Dick Clark (or whoever is hosting it nowadays), some java, and $13 bubbly as the ball drops. Lame, maybe. But is New Year's Eve really a good night to get tanked up at some party and drive around? Nah. Perfectly content right here.
Cheers everyone. See you next year.
12/27/07-- Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto assassinated. Just in time for elections, hmmmmmm... imagine that... That is one f-ed up country...
-- How to de-clutter that post-holiday mess in your fridge.
12/26/07-- The Christmas That Wasn't: Anyone who reads this blog knows there are two things that set me off into great fits of melancholy:
1) Vacations that have come to an end
2) Holidays that have come to an end
Is there any day on the calendar more depressing than 12/26? How positively dreadful. Fortunately we were able to assuage our depression for a few pleasant hours this morning - we lugged the kids to see Grandma Nanclyn and Aunt Kos for a miniature "Auxiliary Christmas" of sorts.
But the truly depressing issue at hand is the fact that this was the first holiday season - ever - in my thirty-whatever years where I completely let it go. Hardly any buildup whatsoever, save for a few isolated moments here and there. The big day came. And then it was gone. Poof.
Late nights at work... financial stressors... little or no exercise... there are a number of factors to which this can be attributed. But excuses, as they say, are like rear ends - everybody has one and they all stink. I've let Christmas down, and will be regretting it for some time to come.
But all is not lost. The boys had a terrific time, even though neither of them really seem to "get" it yet. And lets face it - this holiday is all about them now. On Christmas morning we turned them loose and let them attack their mound of gifts, leaving the living room in a wondrous state of wreckage. The spectre of a highly contagious stomach virus (see 12/24 post) turned out to be much ado about nothing. Christmas Eve and Day were filled with laughter, wine "A Christmas Story", and great eats. And best of all we're looking at an extra-long weekend of decompression, reflection, and preparation for what may come in '08...
12/24/07-- Christmas Conundrum: Long story short, we might be ticking time-bombs, carriers of a stomach-virus thing that could potentially keep us face-down in the bowl for Christmas. We've been in contact with friends who've been in contact with a family of power-barfers. We know from experience (Christmas Eve 2005 comes to mind, where 22 family members ended up spending the holidays in their bathrooms) that these things are highly contagious, especially at holiday parties where everyone is kissing/hugging, dipping into the same pretzel bowl, taking sips of each other's drinks, etc. So what to do? Stay home and completely miss Christmas on the outside chance that we might infect people? Go on as if nothing happened and potentially infect two dozen merry-makers? What to do? What to do? What to do?
12/21/07-- Might've been the cutest thing I've ever seen. Was watching Jakey play the other day and wondering what the heck he was doing: for some reason he was laying a toy robot on the ground and stacking batteries (don't ask why we have a basket of depleted AA batteries lying around the house) on top of its head. He was also trying without success to jam the batteries into each and every orifice on the plastic robot's body. Then I remembered that the robot is actually battery-operated - Jakey was trying to get it working. No idea where he got the general idea that batteries make stuff go, but it was seriously cute. If only we'd had some live batteries in the house to reward him for his efforts.
12/19/07-- A list of the 15 worst Christmas songs ever created. I have #16: "Grandma got run over by a reindeer."
12/18/07-- Attended a pleasant holiday party on Sunday at our friend JW's house (photo here), as we were leaving a light snow was falling on his extensively decorated home. For a second -- just a mere second, mind you -- I was hit with a much-needed dose of Christmas spirit. The scene was irresistible.
12/17/07-- Wife was browsing the Dup15 discussion forums last night and learned that yet another child died recently, completely unexpectedly and for causes unknown. Don't know how many that makes in the past year, maybe 6? 7? To say we're not worried would be lying. But what to do? Worry obsessively? Takes shifts watching Aidan sleep? Here is the official Physician Advisory, which unfortunately does not look like it has been updated with any new information in quite some time.
-- Dark Knight trailer looks friggin' awesome, whooda thunk Heath Ledger would make a halfway decent Joker...
12/15/07-- Respect: My beloved Corrado (mine was a '92, black) made it to MSN's list of "Cool Cars We Miss." Gawd I miss that ride. The handling was sick. Shifting like butta. Accelration like a jet plane. Click here for more Corrado details than you'll ever need.
12/14/07-- Come on, admit it. When no one is around you listen. And you sing. Admit it...
-- Gratz to Andrea (Angie) for being accepted - and accepting said acceptance - to Sacred Heart University! I'm told it's a terrific school, and best of all you can still be home in a jiff to
-- An unbelievably awesome Google Map view of my beloved St John, USVI. Zoom in. Zoom waaaaaaay in. Gotta love it. Gibney Beach, I sure do miss you. And speaking of St John, Mother, we received your gift subscription renewal to CT&L Magazine. And while I love this publication and appreciate the gift, this definitely falls under the category of "Cruel and Unusual Punishment." We won't be swimming with those sea turtles again for a loooooooooong time...
12/11/07-- Whenever I'm having a bad day I just fire up this video. And just like that, everything's ok...
12/10/07-- NYT: The 53 places to go in '08. Just give me Virgin Gorda, a good book, a tube of SPF30 and a mojito and I'll be perfectly content...
-- Happy birthday Dr. G !
-- Delighted to hear that Bioshock beat out Halo 3 for game of the year, despite the trillion gazillion dollars M$ spent to hype its offering. Bioshock is absolutely amazing.
12/9/07-- Dreaming of a White One: Fondly reminiscing about that Christmas a few years back. When was it, 2002? 2003? It snowed about 11 inches on Christmas day. Absolutely spectacular. And when you really think about it, the odds of that ever happening again - at least to that extent - are Slim and None (and Slim is out of town). But hey, here's hoping...
12/7/07-- Driving in to work yesterday morning and noticed the fellow behind me in the Audi TT had the TOP DOWN! It was around 29 degrees. I'm thinking it was one of the following:
1) There was a mechanical or electrical problem with the car that would not let him put the top back up
2) He was doing it as a dare, or perhaps because he lost a bet of some sort
3) He was an idiot
12/5/07-- Watched the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show last night and was sorely disappointed. Nary a derriere to be seen, these girls really need to eat something. And what was up with that nauseating duet between Heidi "Has Been" Klum and her husband Seal? Gag me with a stiletto. And those angel wings stopped being cute about three years ago. Cancel that, they were never cute to begin with.
-- How to score a Wii this Christmas. It's nearly impossible to get your hands on one, but I'm worth it.
-- If by chance you weren't CC'ed on the original email, my wife was having some fun online last night and produced this atrocity. Normally this would have called for her immediate execution. However, it was refreshing to see her laughing that hard (borderline peeing her pants), so we'll let it slide this time...
11/27/07-- Scrape-no-more: De-ice the night before... Brilliant!
-- Best time to get a Mac is at 3AM, apparently.
-- Took in a farm league hockey game on Sunday in Bridgeport, and though I would normally prefer a lobotomy over hockey, I had a terrific time. Logged some QT with my pops, uncle and cousin, and the Bridgeport Sound Tigers played their butts off - winning in a thrilling overtime shoot-out. When you get right down to it, these guys are more motivated than any NHL'er - there is a definite desperation in every second spent on the ice. They know the big guys are watching, and a great night could lead to a phone call and a fat contract in the big leagues. I formally apologize for every time I've ever bad-mouthed hockey, and let me say it loud and proud: GO TIGERS! GO!
11/22/07-- Double celebration! It is concurrently Turkey Day and mine and Maria's 4th wedding anniversary! There will be alarming amounts of eating, drinking and merriment going on. Cheers everyone!
11/20/07-- Looks like dooce had a facelift.
-- So much easier: Goofing around with the boys the other night. Mama takes a toy and holds it up between her toes, to the delight of Jake. Ten seconds later he's trying to do the same thing, and damn near pulls it off. It was adorable, of course, but at the same time sad. Little things like this happen all the time, things that really demonstrate how much faster "typical" kids catch on to stuff. His brother would have a near-impossible time of it.
-- And so, after driving home in the "Tuesday before Thanksgiving" traffic, I have to come to realize something about you ("you" collectively refers to everyone who takes I-84 between 6PM and 7PM): you are all f*cking insane and I can't drive with you anymore. Nothing personal.
11/16/07 -- National Geographic issues a stern warning to my beloved St. John. This sort of thing bums me out...
-- Feeling violated: I have good reason to believe that someone tried to infiltrate my PayPal account. I was going through some old messages in my Hotmail account (which is so overrun with spam that I only use it for services - not for any real correspondence with actual human beings) and noticed that a Hotmail "password reset request" email had been sent to me around 11/2. I then noticed that a similar message had been sent from Paypal around the same time. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what was going on. Nice try, suckaz! If there's one thing in this world that I do well, it's passwords. For each of these services I use a completely random combination of upper + lowercase letters, numbers and symbols of no fewer than 8 characters in length. I change them frequently. So guess away, scoundrels, and good luck.
11/15/07-- How to make perfect mashies this Thanksgiving...
11/14/07-- WAPO: Where are the missing emails? Damn good question. This is Nixon erasing tapes all over again, and the testicle-less Democrats aren't going to do anything about it.
-- Back it up. It's happened twice at the office in the past month, about three times in the past year or two. Hard drives. They have moving parts. And they fail. All of them. Sooner or later, the hard drive in your computer will fail. It is inevitable, so plan on it. Each day you use your computer, ask yourself: what is on this computer that I absolutely cannot live without? Then back it up. For us at home it's our iPhoto library. If that were gone we would be devastated - pretty much every photo taken of the boys would be lost forever. At work it's my Entourage database. Work-wise I'd be in a heap o' trouble without it.
Either get an external firewire drive, burn it to a CD or DVD, or subscribe to one of those online backup companies. Just do it.
11/13/07-- Some disgustingly cute pics of mom's new pups.
-- Project Underwear: Hey it was their idea, not ours. Aidan's school recommended that we send him to school sans diapers. They're brave. The hope is that if he "goes" in his undies, the uncomfortable sensation will prompt him to start telling them beforehand (of which he is perfectly capable, but sometimes doesn't seem motivated to do). This experiment started today, we're anxious to see how it turns out. I see one of two possible outcomes: 1) this is the kick in the pants that propels him into the next level of potty training, or 2) a complete and utter fiasco that costs us a fortune in boys underpants. We shall see...
Aidan seems excited enough about the project. This morning he was darting around the living room in his light-blue skivvies, displaying James Brown Sex Machine-like footwork. It must've been the underwear, he just started inexplicably dancing. There wasn't even music playing. Momma caught the event on film, but there are far too many perverts and pedophiles out there for me to post.
-- Starbucks snobs, it's almost time to stock up on your beloved Christmas Blend. Oh, and um... save me a pound, will ya ?
11/12/07 -- That beat... that infectious loop. I could listen to it all day, all night. It brings me back to 1992, simpler times... I'm in my dorm room doing the Ed Lover Dance, watching Yo! Mtv Raps. I had a full head of hair and abs like a Roman suit of armor. I was penniless and didn't give a damn. The toughest decision I faced was whether to spend the evening doing laundry or playing basketball. **SIGH** take me back, even if only for a moment. Ahhh yes, that beat, that infectious loop...
-- Study: Online porn is more addictive than crack cocaine...
-- A comparison of fast food numbers that you probably would rather not see .... (via kottke)
-- The big news, of course, is the latest addition to the family - two additions, actually, Gus and his brother ??? (name TBD). My mom got Springer Spaniels! No mortal being can resist the puppy smell, no one. Congratulations, Mother!
11/9/07-- Attention Shoppers: Do Not Preload! You know who you are. You're the annoying little bugger who gets in line behind me at the grocery store checkout and STARTS LOADING YOUR CRAP onto the 2-inch strip of unoccupied conveyer belt behind my items. You simply CANNOT WAIT until the clerk has advanced my items a bit farther, you feel compelled to MOSEY RIGHT UP ONTO MY ASS and start piling up your frozen tater tots and Motts juice boxes. Why? Why do you do it? Why? You must understand that this is not going to get you checked out any quicker. And on one or two occasions it has even caused the cashier to include one of your items with mine. Just STOP already!
11/8/07-- It's official: My wife received enough TJ Maxx gift cards for her birthday to buy the joint outright.
-- Verizon users: VZW is about to sneakily share your mobile information with marketing partners. To opt-out call 800-333-9956, only takes a sec.
11/7/07 -- Today is my lovely wife's birthday, and to celebrate I got sick. Instead of pampering and spoiling her, yesterday evening I spent much of the night in the lavatory "assuming the position". Maybe tonight will go better.
My current affliction is particularly cruel, and here's why: to anyone who has ever blown chunks -- and that would be all of us - the anticipation is the worst part. First the cold sweat. Then the churning, gurgling sounds from down under. Then the rush of warm saliva to the mouth. Then, as you're face-down in the bowl, the dialog in your head starts: "Ok here it comes. Let's get this over with. Heeeere it comes. Come on, let's get this over with. Geez I really need to clean this toilet more often. Ok, here it comes...". Only it never came. I sat in this dreadful state for over an hour last night, and the BIG ONE never came. Cruel.
11/5/07
-- An assortment of pics from Halloween night.
11/2/07-- Quote of the Day: "The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year is a Mac." -PC World
-- Scary: Scientists have created a batch of "Mighty Mice" by tinkering with their genetic makeup. I can already see the professional athletes lining up to get their genes spliced...
-- Imus is back. Hey Al Sharpton, go **bleep** yourself.
-- So Halloween came and went, and of course I'm feeling sad about not having gotten more "into it." But what exactly does that entail? Carving more pumpkins? Watching more scary movies? Setting up more spooky decor? Something was missing, and I can't quite put my finger on it... **SIGH** guess there's always next year.
What a gorgeous night though. We took the boys around the condo complex and hit a couple dozen people up for candy. Some folks had set up a haunted house, err, room in the common area which Aidan absolutely loved. You would think that blinking, howling corpses draped in spiderwebs would scare the pants off him, but I guess not. Then we stopped by a local mega-church where a carnival of sorts was underway. The boys enjoyed the bouncy-house and the hayride, but the whole thing felt like a regular ol' carnival - decidedly un-Halloween'ish.
By the time we got home, brushed teeth, read books, tucked in, etc. I was far too exhausted to watch any of the three spooky movies I had lined up (Sleepy Hollow, Young Frankenstein and An American Werewolf in London). As I said, there's always next year... **SIGH**
10/31/07-- Rowlings releases Potter off-shoot, "The Tales of Beedle the Bard". But don't get too excited, only 7 copies are being produced and the bidding starts at $62,000.
10/30/07-- A collection of some of the coolest movie-based pumpkin carvings you'll ever see.
-- Lame: Blanchett, Pitt and Walken hide their haunches onscreen.
-- See mom? I told you all those hours of gaming would pay off. $1 million up for grabs in a Halo 3 tourney.
-- A weekend chock-full of seasonal celebration. Friday night we drove to a birthday party/Halloween celebration in R.I. During the trick-or-treating we made the tragic mistake of allowing Jakey (playing the role of Woody that night) to eat every bit of candy he collected, AS he collected. About an hour later, halfway through a rousing chorus of the happy birthday song, he opened wide and vomited the equivalent of a chunky Lake Huron -- gallons upon gallons upon gallons of the stuff rocketed forth from his innards, all over my wife's sexy pirate costume. The party started wrapping up shortly thereafter... Party pics here.
Despite a rainfall on Saturday of near biblical proportions, Sunday was sunny and dry enough for a pumpkin carving gathering at mother's. There have been a few off-years here and there, but overall this is probaly close to the 20-something-ith year we've done this at one house or another. Always a good time, plus it gives me an excuse to cook up a batch of my world-famous chicken soup. Photos here.
10/29/07-- An interesting look at the role coffee played in the Civil War.
10/26/07-- Fall photos galore...
-- Not-so Fair Honda: So after our car battery died the super-secure stereo system was reset, and only by entering a CIA-approved numerical code would it come back to life. So for two weeks we've been driving around in deafening silence. Apparently the code Fair Honda gave us when we bought the car was the wrong one, so we had to take the car in to have the damn thing reset. And those SOB's wanted $100 for the time involved with fixing their boo boo. Luckily we have a friend of two in high places over there (J.F. and J.W., we owe you one!), and the matter was resolved free of charge. But jeez !
-- Halle Berry is beautiful as ever in pregnancy, or course. It's her boobs that are out of control.
10/25/07-- Bigfoot lives.
-- Study: By 2017 the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will have cost U.S. taxpayers $2.4 trillion, largely due to the fact that much of the money will be borrowed - with interest. Well at least by then we'll have accomplished our objectives... wait, what were those objectives again?
10/24/07 -- Infoworld: Leopard (Apple's new OS, set for release in a few days) is a "beautiful upgrade." No current plans to make the jump for me, much as I'd like to. Our aging Powerbook G4 barely meets the requirements to run it. I'm sure it would run, but it might be pokey.
-- A terrific People Magazine spoof on Dumbledore's "coming out".
-- A reason to watch the French news, even if you don't speak a word of French.
-- Attended a family gathering on Sunday, and Aidan's fair-haired cousin (pictured above on tractor) excitedly remarked to his grandmother: "Granny, Aidan can talk now!" Seeing Aidan every day we don't notice it as much, but he has in fact become a little chatter-box :)
10/23/07-- Took in some Mexican fare and a mango margarita or two last weekend at one of our favorite watering holes, compliments of an exceedingly generous gift certificate from Grandma Nanclyn. Of course the mariachis were on hand, and we were treated to the most delightful rendition of Guantanamera we've ever heard. Muchos Gracias, Nanclyn, and also to Grandma Rie-rie for taking kid duty.
-- Say what you will about Ben Affleck's writing/acting skills (or total lack thereof). But in my book he will always get props for two things: 1) J-Lo's booty. He's been there. 2) The "You owe it to me" monologue (or would that be a dialogue?) from 'Good Will Hunting'. Heartbreaking but somehow uplifting at once, gets me every time.
-- U.S. scientists prove that not getting enough sleep makes you cranky. Duh.
-- Good times for Apple, profits are up 67%. Lets hope it doesn't go to their heads...
10/22/07 -- New Japanese outfits enable the wearer to instantly hide from bad guys. Have things gotten THAT bad over there? I had no idea. Clever idea, though.
-- Dumbledore is officially out of the closet. I wonder if, now that the series has ended, JK Rowling is just making this stuff up as she goes along... I mean what's the point of throwing in plot twists now?
10/18/07 -- Stephen King's top 7 tips on writing. To his credit, this man has sold a book or two in his day...
-- Farmer hoping to strike it rich with genetically altered pint-sized piggies. I'll admit that they look pretty damn cute, but the cats might have a hard time sharing the litter box with one of these lil guys...
-- New iPhone ads are up. Cool.
10/17/07 -- Incredible turnout on Sunday for the 8th Annual Long Island Walk Now for Autism. I have no idea how many people showed up or how much cash was raised, all I know is it felt like New Years's Eve in Times Square. But in a good way. Absolutely perfect early fall weather, by noon most of us were in short sleeves and sunglasses. I'll tell you one thing - as crowded as that Jones Beach parking lot was on a Sunday in October, hounds from hell couldn't drag me anywhere near there between July and September...
-- Above and Beyond: Some dear old friends invited us to their son's 1st birthday party on Saturday, and (despite our energetic protests) all of the guests were asked to substitute a donation for North Star (in Aidan's name) in lieu of a gift. The response was overwhelming. To our hosts C.B.T., S.T. and S.T., to everyone who donated, and of course to lil E.T. - we humbly thank you. It meant more to us than you could ever imagine.
10/15/07 -- Surprise, surprise - 13,000 of us will be getting randomly audited by the IRS. Woohoo!
-- Design Flaw: In so many ways our '03 Honda Pilot is the perfect vehicle for us. Loads a room, drives like a car, dependable over the long haul, handles well in the snow, tough leather seats for drink spills, etc etc etc... but those really smart dudes at Honda made one critical design error. The interior cabin lights above each door should really have an on/off switch. As they are now, the entire light strip depresses for ease of activiation. But it is FAR too easy to inadvertantly bonk one's head on these strips while loading/unloading a squirming child. On several occassions (like last night, for example), this has led to an interior light being left on and a drained battery the next morning. Grrrr...
10/12/07
-- Myth finally debunked - chewing gum, as it turns out, does NOT take 7 years to digest. Well that's a relief.
10/11/07 -- Top 10 ways for improving your sleep.
10/10/07 -- Radiohead releases its highly anticipated new album today via download - fans pay whatever they feel it is worth. NIN has recently broken free of its contractual shackles and plans similar ventures. To quote Trent Reznor from his website:
"...as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate."
It doesn't matter if you like the music of these two bands or not. This could be the start of something huge. Take the greedy corporations out of the process. Strip the digital protection. Let the artists make their music and share it with their fans in whatever manner they choose. Beautiful.
-- The Wiggles: The show must go on...
10/8/07 -- Oil change for my old VW at one of those Jiffy Lube-like places today. And, as I'm sure their job training instructs them to do, the "techs" brought out my soiled looking air filter and recommended it be replaced. I never know for sure if this is a scam or not, but all of those franchise lube places pull this. I mean, by nature of what an air filter does it's SUPPOSED to get dirty. Right? But I caved. It had never been replaced as long as I've owned the car, and the previous owner didn't seem like the preventative maintenance type. So I figured for $10 it can't hurt. And I'm sure this kid had a sales quota to hit. At least I declined to have the wiper blades done...
-- When good software goes bad. Why do developers do this? Adobe Reader anyone? The past few versions have been utter crap. And word on the street is that Apple has a full-scale revolt on its hands for what they've done to iMovie.
-- Man on death's door from a mosquito bite. Jeez...
10/5/07 -- An interesting take on Apple's "iBricking" of hacked iPhones, and here's an equally interesting - but opposing - point of view.
10/4/07 -- I'm not the biggest Jack Black fan in the world, but will grudgingly admit that the trailer for "Be Kind, Rewind" (co-starring Mos Def) looks pretty darn funny. The basic premise is that two video store owners accidentally erase every tape in their store. To keep their business afloat they set out to re-film each and every one. Hilarity ensues...
-- Well they're not my numbers (though I think I did get 3, isn't that worth a couple of bucks?), it's nice to finally see that a Connecticution won Powerball...
-- Verizon releases its LG
Voyager
phone which, to use their words, is going to "kill the
iPhone". Ummm, okay.
10/3/07
-- Dialogue at the Dunkin Donuts
drive-up today:
Speaker Voice: Welcome to Dunkin
Donuts, how can I help
you?
Me: Hi, can I have a medium regular with milk and
sugar?
Speaker Voice: Medium hazelnut, no sugar?
Me:
Medium regular with
sugar.
Speaker Voice: Medium regular, no sugar?
Me:
Medium regular WITH sugar...
Speaker Voice: Please drive
up.
I ended up
with a hazelnut and very little sugar.
-- Both boys are sick. Sniffling, coughing,
wheezing, snotting, and
general misery have been the theme of the house for the past
few days. Now the missus has it. And I'm next.
10/2/07 -- Did You Know 2.0 ... some
really alarming enlightening incredible
stats.
9/28/07
-- $85 to re-register my car, which isn't worth
$85. Grrrr...
-- I guess Apple wasn't kidding (see
9/25 post below). If
you've hacked your iPhone to work with carriers other than
AT&T, the latest software update will transform it into an expensive
paperweight...
-- So yeah, the whole Jenny McCarthy Oprah thing. Right after
the show I'll bet there were a bazillion Google searches on
"Gluten free Casein
free diet", a few of these searches coming from our
computer. Are these dietary modifications the "magic
button" we've all
been dreaming about? Of course not -- what we eat will not
alter the building blocks of which we're made. But can such a
diet make a kid feel
better in general, and as such respond better to therapy?
Worth looking into.
I stumbled across this site, which takes the dietary link to
autism to a whole new level. Raw
butter? Raw cream?
-- Coppola movie script stolen.
What's this, Francis, not backing up your hard drive? Tsk
tsk...
9/27/07
--
Anyone have an official tally yet? We must be closing in
on $1 trillion.
-- Chuckled to see my comment posted recently on the News
of St. John blog (the bit about US Airways). I was half
joking, but am I wrong in
not tipping the "greeter"?
-- Official
review of "Bionic"
(see yesterday's post): kinda bland. Almost felt like I was
watching 'Charmed', at times. I think the show would
be much better off if they could give it more of an edge - too
bad it's not on Sci-Fi. As
for my girl Katee,
I'm undecided. The part calls for her to play a woman who is
slowly becoming more and more of a machine, and as such her
delivery is
intentionally robotic. Cool, but does this mean we won't see
the amazing depth she gives us as Starbuck? And the other problem - it's
tough for me to see her as
anybody but Starbuck. Call me close-minded, but Kelsey
Grammar will always be Frasier. Katee Sackhoff will always be
Starbuck. Anyway, it's nice to see her making some dough,
rumor has it the BSG
cast makes chump-change.
9/26/07 -- Pennies to get a
new
"tails" side in '09 ?
-- Don't laugh, but yes I fully intend
to watch NBC's Bionic
Woman tonight solely to see Katee Sackoff (my beloved Starbuck on BSG) as the lead villain.
Slate tried to post a review of the show, but it quickly morphed
into a gushing love letter about
Sackoff and her badass-ness. Can't wait.
9/25/07 -- Apple: if you hack your
iPhone, there will be consequences.
9/24/07 -- How to make your own Playdough.
-- For all the coffee lovers out there...
-- Attended a festival at a Connecticut winery
yesterday, where
everyone who has ever seen the film 'Sideways' suddenly believes they are
a wine expert and where an $8 bottle of Chardonnay suddenly
costs $15 because... well, I don't know why. Aidan was going
nuts for the free pony
rides, and Jake was running amok in the fields yanking grapes
off the vines and messily
devouring them - seeds and all. The nearby sign which read
"PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE GRAPES" did not seem to
deter him.
As for
the wine, we were only able to battle through the throngs of
wine snob wannabees once or twice to sample a couple of
dessert wines. Nothing
special. From what I understand, our harsh New England winters
and relatively short summers make for less-than-optimal
growing conditions. But
who knows, a few more years of global warming and Connecticut
may become the next Napa Valley...
The unbelievably
gorgeous weather prompted the following intellectual
conversation between my wife
and I:
Me: I think today might be the best day of the
summer.
Wife: It's fall. Yesterday was the last day of
summer.
Me: Ok
then, it's the best day of the fall.
9/21/07 -- Our bumble
ahode: So the theme of the week was "Well
whaddya want for an $800 house?", even if the gripe in
question had nothing to do
with the house. And when renting a house on Block Island you
can quickly tell the difference between what we rented last week and some of the
much more expensive rentals we've used in past trips. But ya
know what? For 1/2 of
what we usually paid we had a perfectly adequate place to
sleep, shower, eat and relax. As the old saying goes: ya
get what you pay
for, and in this case I was happy to have the extra cash
in my wallet instead of the realtor's coffers.
9/20/07 -- How to
pack properly.
9/19/07 -- So there we were in line with the car to
catch the depressing 5PM ferry home. All day long my primary
goal (aside from finding
an excuse to stay another day) was to immerse myself in the
Atlantic Ocean one last time. A final farewell to my
favorite place on
earth, to the water that I miss so much for most of the year,
to summer 2007 itself. About 15 minutes 'til boarding, I knew
it would be tight.
"F*ck it!" I'm going. Quick sprint across the lot to
Ballard's Beach -- not my favorite, but it would have to do --
in time to catch a
wave. The water was gorgeous, clear as glass. At a glance it
resembled the Bahamas (subtract about 20 degrees from the
water temp of course). A
brief romp in the surf and a gargling of that cool salt water
for good measure, and I was off. A barefoot, dripping wet mad
dash back to the car
(with a momentary pause to admire a 35 lb. bluefish someone
had on the dock) and into the driver's seat with seconds to
spare.
Was
thinking about how good that momentary surge of reckless
abandon felt, and how it would've gnawed at me until
next September if I had
played it safe and stayed moping in the car. Moral of the
story is: sometimes it's ok to obey the little voice in your
head. Especially on
vacation, when every second counts...
-- Avast me
hearties, today be "Talk Like a Pirate Day."
Arrgghh!
9/17/07
--
Amazing, spectacular, stupendous, incredible... pick the
overused adjective, it probably applies to Block Island '07.
I'm completely swamped
with work, unpacking, etc., but will try to do a recap soon.
And as for photos, we've got trillions...
9/11/07 -- So yeah, maybe the
weather man got it partially right. We have seen a few lousy
weather days out here.
But goddamn if today wasn't a near perfect beach day, 9.45 out
of 10. The kind of beach day that reminds us why we wait 'til
September to do
this. The kind of beach day I've fantasized about since
last September. The kind of beach day we desperately
needed. The kind of beach
day we will have again tomorrow :)
And it didn't stop
there. I've just spent the past hour gazing up into a starry
sky so impossibly
perfect that I'm thinking there's no way it can be real. Saw
four shooting stars to boot.
Apologies for not
blogging sooner, my online
access has been extremely limited (more on that later). Suffce
to say my usual hangout for geeking out & working on the
website while on
vacation has undergone some changes.
Off to bed, big
day tomorrow. We're heading into the home stretch, and every
minute
counts...
9/7/07 -- One week a year. It all comes down to one week a year. It's the week I think about and romanticize about almost every day of the year, and it starts tomorrow. And weather.com is calling for rain 7 of the 9 days we'll be on Block Island...
9/6/07 -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs has posted an open letter to the zillions of folks who purchased iPhones at full price and are enraged by yesterday's radical price drop...
-- Glamour magazine went a bit overboard with the Photoshop on this one, eh?
-- At last, the answer to the question that has boggled
our minds for centuries...
-- Caught myself saying
"frak!" out loud the other day, this
is a sure sign that I've been watching
waaay too much BSG. And I have. Via Netflix and iTunes
I've plowed through the introductory miniseries and then seasons 1-3 in no
time. And now I'm deeply regretting
not having paced myself, since season 4 isn't
kicking off 'til 2008!
If I promise never to blog
about it again,
promise me you'll at least check it out. It is absolutely
spectacular television. Don't let the sci-fi'ness scare you
off -- as I tried to
explain to my better half, it's terrific drama that just
happens to take place aboard a ship. Still don't believe me?
Time Magazine even says so, and The New Yorker agrees.
9/5/07 -- ... and on the heels of
the Ipod touch announcement (see below), there are rumors that the price of
the 8GB iPhone will
drop by $200. Suh-weeeet!
-- iPhone minus the
phone: Apple released the iPod
touch, extremely cool. And actually pretty clever, now
that I think about it. So many folks I've talked to absolutely
love the
look/feel/features of the iPhone, but are unwilling or unable
to give up their current cell phone plan/provider. This fills
that need nicely,
and it's much cheaper to boot.
9/4/07 -- Back to woooooooork.... **groan**. But we are in the home stretch. A week from today we will be basking in the surf. Oh yes, it draws near...
8/30/07 -- The day I visited that breeder in Sandy Hook, CT I remember wondering how in the heck had this fella not been picked yet. Amos (called 'Lumpy' at that time) was far and away the biggest, the healthiest, the heartiest, the most energetic in the litter. Some of his siblings had already gone to new homes, and there were other potential buyers pulling into the driveway. I wasted no time in scooping him up and getting the heck outta there.
Billions of great memories, but some of my favs:
- as a puppy he was into everything, of course. Once caught him running around the house with a semi-shredded book in his toothy maw. Book title: There Are No Bad Dogs.
- his love of swimming. He would jump in the pond at Terrywile and go, and go, and go. At one point I thought for sure I'd have to swim out to retrieve him. Only through the clever use of a tennis ball could we lure him back to dry land.
- tug o' war: baaaaack and forth, baaaaack and forth. His technique was to slowly tire out his opponent over time.
- gift opening. None better if you needed a present opened in a hurry, he could make short work out of the best wrapping jobs.
- he had a faint and distinctly pleasant clicking sound that arose from his throat whenever he had a comfortable pant going. I think this sound was unique to him in all of dogdom.
- of course, the day he took home the blue ribbon for Best in Show at the West Tisbury Agriculteral Fair. The whole ride home he had the pant click going on (see above), and looked extremely pleased with himself. Using my Uncle Paul's voice as his own, Amos conveyed his thoughts to us: "I'm a star."
He truly was.
8/29/07 -- Amos Lee (6/19/94 - 8/28/07): Amos, we all thank you for taking such good care of my mom for so many years. Rest well.
8/28/07 -- RS Magazine: The Great Iraq Swindle. Absolutely revolting. But oh what I'd give to be a contractor over there ...
-- So you're probably
wondering why I'm
not scampering to enter the Mixology Warehouse Essay
Contest. Ok maybe you weren't, but Imma tell you anyway.
Long story short: the owner of a St.
John liquor store is giving away the keys to his shop,
whatever inventory he has on the shelves, and a till full of
cash to the writer of
the best essay explaining why you (the contestant) would like
to own a business in paradise.
There are a few
reasons for passing on
this, really - there's the $100 entry fee for starters. Then
there was some comment the owner made during an interview, something about contestants who
have recently watched Field of Dreams and base their essay off
some elements of the movie will
have an advantage. I don't know if any prize is worth
having to endure a Kevin Costner baseball movie. Ok maybe Bull
Durham. But anyway... my main reason for not entering is
the prize itself. What would you really be getting
into? I've often
thought about what it would be like to live on my beloved St
John. And the harsh reality is this -- unless I had the
financial means to sit my
fat arse on Gibney Beach with my boys and do nothing
all day,
living there would suck. I have nothing against retail
businesses, but being confined to a store all day every day
(and well into the evenings),
while those otherworldly beaches were so tantalizingly
close... I remember when we last visited St John a few years
back, asking a young
waitress at Miss Lucy's what it's like to
live/work
in such a paradise. "It kind of changes things," she
said. "Every day is hard. And hot."
Ok and
then there's the
small matter of not being able to think of anything good to
write...
-- Oh Mine Goodness: S.
African miners claim to
have unearthed the largest diamond ever, 7,000
carats...
8/27/07 -- I'm running for president if for no other
reason than I'll get to fly in one
of these bad
boys.
-- Skydiving pugs...
-- Ask a stupid question...
-- Happy
Birthday Nanni Ebert Leo!
Make the old man take you out to dinner and spoil you rotten,
cuz no one deserves it more than you :)
-- Took
Friday off to escape
to New York for a day sans kids (thanks Grandma!). The plan:
No Plan. My favorite kind of plan. Well, that's not entirely
true. We did want to
visit the Crooked Tree Creperie (above) for some amazing
fruity crepes and coffee, only to find it closed! We also
planned to do some
people-watching, which you kind of do automatically in NYC.
Weather was great, if a but muggy. We certainly burned off all
of the junk we
consumed, what with the 57 miles of walking we did. It doesn't
count as getting lost if you don't really have a destination,
does it? As a cool,
pleasant dusk came around we happened upon a very decent
Mexican restaurant and sat outside with our chips + salsa and
frozen margaritas.
Bliss.
We're definitely not city folk by any stretch
of the imagination, but for a day trip you can't beat
NYC.
8/23/07 -- Now that the dust has settled I was planning
on posting an in-depth review of
the final HP novel, Deathly Hallows. But I couldn't
think of a way to do this without spoilers. So, out of respect
for the everyone who
has not yet read it (both of you), we'll leave it at this:
it's terrific. That said, I did have a few scattered thoughts
on Hallows,
and on the entire HP phenomenon in general:
I
remember first picking up Sorcerer's Stone about a
million years ago. It was a
rainy day on Block Island and I grabbed the paperback at the
Book
Nook just to see
what all the fuss was about. I plowed through it, thinking it
was a great kid's book. And there's nothing wrong with that -
I love kid's books.
But that is how I filed it away in my noggin.
All
these years later I'm starting to think that this was by
design, all part of JK's
master plan. How they've matured so flawlessly over the years
-- by "they" I refer to three entities: the writing
itself, the main
characters, AND the bazillion readers around the world. JK's
writing didn't simply get better with age -- its evolution was
a brilliantly
intentional move on her part, perfectly keeping pace and
growing up just a bit more with each installment.
As
in real life, growing up
comes at a cost. While the dangers faced by young Harry et al
were grave right from the start, it was around Book 3 when
things got dark. For
good. In books 4 through 7 the bad guys officially played for
keeps. There was death. And blood. And swearing. And raging
hormones. Grown up
stuff. And while ducking Death Eater killing curses and
stepping over piles of corpses in the last few books, I found
myself missing some of the
kid's stuff: The Wizard's Chess games by the fire in the
Gryffindor Common Room. The sneaking around dark passages
after hours, uncovering
clues. The excitement of Quidditch practice. The tea and cakes
in Hagrid's cabin while Fang begged for scraps. Shopping
sprees in Diagon Alley. Pumpkin juice and butter
beer celebrations after Quidditch
victories. The turning of the seasons at Hogwarts.
Halloween/Christmas celebration feasts. Waking up Christmas
morning at the Burrow and opening
gifts. Hushed plans made with Ron and Hermione in the library.
It's this coziness that is also missing from the movies, as
the directors race us
along trying to hit all of the major plot points in under 2
hours (though I still think they are terrific). But alas, we
can't stay young
forever. Sooner or later it's time to grow up and kill bad
guys.
It's the consistent excellence over such a long
haul, that's what
amazes me most about JK. While some were of course better than
others, these books never jumped the shark. Not once.
Extraordinary.
If you held a wand
to my throat and forced me to come up with a gripe, I suppose
it might be the Hallows epilogue: Could've done
without it. I suspect
this was added to prevent the inevitable deluge of questions
from desperate fans demanding "THEN what
happened??!!" But who am I
kidding? I was so sad to see this thing ending, I ate it up
anyway.
We've all spent countless hours flying
through the pages of JK's
world, and one thing is for sure: All was well...
-- Flying ninja kick LOOK OUT !
-- Sexy
Senior Survey: age is no barrier...
8/22/07
-- Bulletproof baby products.
--
On
Proper Patronage: There are unwritten rules to be
adhered to if you visit Dunkin
Donuts during rush hour. This is what you do: You get in
line. You order coffee + (optionally) 1 other item. This item
must be pre-made and
already in the display case. Under no circumstances may you
order anything that requires extra work by the staff, such as
the toasting/buttering
of bagels, preparation of egg sandwiches, etc. And that's
it.
In review: Get your coffee. And your donut. Pay.
Leave. Next!
8/21/07 -- Oh my gawd, Salma Hayek needs to pop already.
-- Slate on the 'Presidential Advance Manual'. Comical and pathetic at the same time. If you attend a taxpayer-funded public presidential speech while wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt -- even if you just sit there quietly and listen -- you could be ejected from the event, cuffed, stuffed, incarcerated, fingerprinted and arrested for trespassing.
-- Cooler.
Long-sleeve tee during the
day, fuzzy bumper at night. Driving with the
top down is brisk and
exhilarating. This is by far my favorite kind of weather, it
heightens the senses and teases of Block Island in September.
Ideal sleeping
weather. But here's the problem: it's AUGUST...
8/20/07 -- Suffer from the
"post-lunch dip"? Here's how to best deal with it.
-- She drinks to excess. She smokes stinky cigars. She cusses
like a sailer. She
gambles. She punches commanding officers in the face. She
sleeps around. Yes, she is tragically flawed in many ways. But after
watching the superb BSG episode last night entitled "Scar", I realised that I've got it
bad for Lieutenant Kara Thrace (aka 'Starbuck').
-- Sounds like Apple screwed up iMovie '08 big time. I think we'll be sticking with the previous version until this gets straightened out...
--
Australian woman killed by her amorous pet
camel...
8/17/07 -- Gamerspeak: was asked recently to define
some of the most popular (if a bit
outdated) terms you'll see flying around the chat channels
while playing games online. Here is a short list:
lol
= Laughing Out
Loud
rofl = Rolling On the Floor Laughing
pwned =
defined as "soundly defeating an opponent", likely
derived from people
trying to type "owned" and mistyping
pwnt =
(same as above)
meh = usually means "whatever"
or "no big
deal" or "not impressed"
hax0r = hacker,
someone who cheats by manipulating gameplay somehow
l33t =
short for
"elite" or highly skilled
wtf = What The, umm,
heck
n00b = Newbie, someone new to the game who is not
very good
stfu =
Shut The <expletive> Up
ftw/ftl = For The Win/For
The Loss
There are oodles of these, I only know the
really common ones.
Wiki has a good writeup of this phenomenon here.
-- Study: If
exercise is easy, it's not helping you much. Duh.
-- A
hurricane is pounding the Caribbean, this is one time
when I'm actually glad to not be on St. John...
-- Shag your way to a healthy
heart...
8/16/07 -- Another rat flees the sinking ship...
-- Forget what you saw in Grease, here's the REAL hand jive, baby !
-- He shoots, he SCORES !
8/15/07 -- How to resign gracefully...
-- Don't take this flyer down. Don't.
-- Slate dares to use the D-Word. I wonder if there are
any good jobs to be had in Mexico... or maybe Canada? I
understand that everyone should do their part, but I refuse to
die for some rich man's
bullsh*t.
-- As mentioned a few days ago, I picked up
a Canon
Powershot SD-1000. The nickel review: tiny, well-made,
easy to use. Nice image
quality (see above), even in a dimly lit crappy interior
setting. Lots more testing to do, but so far I'm a satisfied
customer.
8/14/07 -- Not gonna lie, this one hurts. Not by any
fault of the
dentist, he was terrific. But the offending tooth was in a
difficult-to-reach
place, and I was therefore required to keep my jaws fully
agape for over an hour -- the pain is more a muscle ache from
the effort involved than
anything else.
This road to dental wellness is not
yet fully paved, unfortunately. There is one more filling to
be had, though it is
small and not as urgent as the others. And then,
IT is out there. Looming like some dreadful
specter of death. Each passing
day, hour, minute, second brings me closer to the day of...
THE EXTRACTION! Nooooooo! Yes. Why oh why didn't I just get
all four wisdom teeth yanked when I was 16? I was
semi-catatonic anyway when they
ripped out my bottom two. Damn me!
8/13/07 -- Once more WITHOUT
feeling (hopefully): more suffering scheduled for 8AM
tomorrow morning, another filling to be ruthlessly applied to
my molar. What have
I done to deserve this misery?
-- Alright that does
it, Mario Kart is officially coming to the Wii..
SOMEONE PLEASE GET ME ONE !!
-- Karl Rove stepping down... this should
be joyous news, but I
can't help but think: 1) he's up to something, and 2) the
damage is done.
-- Looks like our Fujifilm digital
cam (which we were never
really that fond of, though it took some decent pics) has
officially sh*t the bed. But I think I've found a reasonably
priced successor in the
Canon Powershot
SD-1000...
-- He hates his medication, hates it.
We have to pretty much pin him down. Good news is it really
seems to be working.
His face is practically clear of bumps, and the mess on his
hips/thighs/rump is fading fast.
8/10/07
-- Turns out the rashes on Aidan
aren't due to a simple case of poison ivy or chicken pox. Poor
lil bastard has
something called Erythema multiforme. Bring on the
steroids...
-- I could smell it. The burning bone fragments
cascaded from the bone surface as the drill probed deeper and
deeper...
WREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER
RR RRRRR !!!!
-- Tick tock
tick tock... Three hours
'til I get a filling put in, may as well be a firing squad.
Positively dreadful. I want enough novocaine to sedate a
rhino.
8/9/07 -- Zoinks. Received a message from Pair Networks, the company who hosts this
lame blog - looks like there are some major server upgrades planned. Shouldn't
affect anything here as
far as I can tell, but if you do notice any website downtime
during the next few weeks, we can blame them :)
-- PC Magazine: Macs poised to take off. It's true. Said it before and I'll say it again: for general home computing (web, email, photos, music, chatting, video, etc.), as well as for small to mid-sized business, there is just no reason to go with Windows. It's true that if you go Mac your bill might be a bit higher at the time of checkout. But talk to me a year later, keeping in mind that time (and frustration levels) is money.
-- I don't care if you have the healthiest set of choppers in the world,
there's no way you
don't hate going to the dentist. Even the most routine checkup
is just damn unpleasant. The bright lights, the poking, the
prodding, the
scraping, the salivating... just ewww. I went today after a
dental layoff that was longer than I care to admit. Overall
things were good, but I
do need some work here and there. Suffice to say I'll be back
for a follow-up visit or two, wallet permitting...
8/8/07 -- Laaaaame, Office
2008 for Mac delayed until, well, 2008. But I'm sure it'll
be worth the wait
-- as much Micro$oft bashing as I do on this blog, I actually
think Mac Office 2004
is damn good software. I'm in it pretty much all day, 5 days a
week.
-- On paper, Barry bonds
now holds the
record for most home runs. But the reality is that he
cheated, and he'll never be half the athlete - or the
individual - this man is.
-- Announcement from
the PA House of Representatives:
House Bill 1150 was
passed, requiring insurance companies to cover services for
individuals with autism. Click here for deets. Now it moves to the
State Senate. I don't really know
how this stuff works. I mean, that's Pennsylvania. Would this
sort of thing catch on in other states? How? And isn't
Congress on vacation
through September? Whatever the case, it's a start. I think
it's time to start spamming our senators with
letters.
8/7/07 -- Mary J. Blige made a
cameo on this week's Entourage. Girlfriend should stick to
singing. Seriously, it
was painful. Fortunately all of her screen-time was shared
with the excellent Jeremy Piven, who can compensate for
just about anyone.
-- Can't decide who to vote for?
Here's a visual guide...
8/6/07
-- ...and there was punishment to
be had, the surf at Long Island's Smith Point was determined to make its
presence felt. I have a nice gouge on my back to show for it.
Too rough for the
young-uns, though we did dunk them a few times for good
measure.
Single ladies, you owe it to yourselves to
pay that beach a visit.
Apparently the life guard crew there won the national
lifeguarding championships (who knew they had competitions for
that sort of thing?).
Imagine the studs of Baywatch in real life, only the swim suits
are even skimpier.
Stationed in pairs high up on their perches every 30 yards or
so, when not scanning the surf for potential drowning victims
they pass the day
flexing their lats & pecs, digging ditches in the sand and
running sprints along the shore.
During the course of
the weekend we
almost managed to kill both of our boys. Jake started to choke
on one of those fruit strip things, fortunately it came up
just when things
really started to get serious. Aidan's little body became
riddled with mosquito bites -- to which he apparently had some
kind of allergic
reaction, causing the bites to swell up into giant painful
welts. Long Island mosquitos obviously take steroids, Grandma
Nanclyn also sustained
a few bites and had a similar reaction.
--
Whoopsie! About 190,000 weapons in Iraq seem to be missing. I'm sure someone
inside the Pentagon right now
is saying "My Bad!". This might be funny were the
implications not so tragic...
8/2/07
-- Off to Lawng Guyland (LI) for
an extended weekend of sunburn and punishment in the surf.
Bringing a laptop, but
not sure about the web access. Have a great weekend!
-- Parents beware: Fischer Price issues major toy recall...
-- The
Parking Nazi saga (refer to 7/24
post below) took a bizarre turn yesterday. We received a
letter from the condo association stating that we have
reportedly been using the new
handicap reserved spot which has been installed for a
neighboring unit. However, since we do have a
handicap permit they will happily
reserve a second spot for us upon request. Thing is, we
haven't parked there. Not once. Since the sign was installed
we've grudgingly admitted
defeat and left it alone. Obviously the P.N. is behind
this.
We're trying to resist the temptation to
unleash a litany of complaints to
the condo assoc. about this clown, trying so hard not to
stoop. The fact that I've wasted 90 seconds of my life just
now to write about it irks
me enough. But I think this might call for a subtle
retaliatory strike...
8/1/07 -- A real-life recipe for
Butterbeer!
-- NSA spying: worse than you thought...
-- I
recently had another AHA! Raiders of
the Lost Ark revelation (scroll down to the 5/9 post below,
Alfred Molina). Upon seeing the newest Harry Potter film I
recognized British actor
George Harris playing the role of Kingsley Shacklebolt (a bit of a miscast
IMHO, but oh well...).
Harris popped up again the other night while I was watching
the excellent film Layer Cake. I found myself wondering where
I'd seen him... where... where... wearing a sailor's hat...
saluting...
AHA! Harris played the role of Captain Katanga
in Raiders of the Lost
Ark! Once again I can sleep at night.
-- Video: Faith Hill reprimands a
fan for grabbing her
hubby Tim McGraw's package during a performance.
Hilarious!
7/31/07
--
Rowling dishes out some more details about what happens after the
Deathly Hallows epilogue (so THAT's who Victoire
is!). WARNING: Spoilers abound. If you haven't read
Deathly Hallows yet I
strongly advise against clicking that link...
--
Born Lucky: Secretariat had an unusually large equine
heart, Einstein had
his abnormally large brain, and as it turns out Lance
Armstrong has his 9
gallons of blood per minute. Interesting stuff. No
fair.
-- Promising myself that I'll be "all
business" during August,
it goes without saying that I chose Harry over shoulder
presses (see yesterday's lunchtime post), and finished off
Deathly Hallows. Absolutely
terrific. I'm mentally prepping a full review, hopefully later
this week.
7/30/07
-- Lunchtime. Go to the gym, or finish 'Deathly Hallows' ? Gym... Deathly
Hallows... Gym... Deathly Hallows...
-- Spent the
weekend in RI and logged some
quality hours on the beach. I was delighted to see how much
the boys enjoyed it, all smiles and virtually no whining!
Aidan is showing signs of
becoming a body
surfing junkie like his pops. This is simultaneously cause
for joy and
concern -- while I look forward to many forays into the surf
with him this summer and a hundred summers to come, this also
means that his fear
and respect for Mother Ocean may have diminished. And that
means that from the point forward at the beach there must be
eyes on him at all
times. All times.
Jakey isn't so much a surf
guy just yet, his joy is derived from shovel and pail.
Yesterday he tried to make
it to China.
7/26/07
-- What to do if you're kidnapped by
terrorists.
7/25/07
--
Karma Points: Noticed a beautifully colored
dragonfly floundering in the hot sun on the sidewalk today,
stuck on its back
unable to right itself. Using my car key, I gently flipped him
over and watched him speed off into the afternoon sky.
-- Damn. Oprah
made $260 million last year. Damn. Other notable TV salaries:
Simon Cowell: $45 million, Judge Judy: $30 million (!!!!!!),
Matt Lauer: $12
million. This is too depressing, here's the
article...
7/24/07
-- Give this girl a lollipop.
--
Chalk Up a Victory
for the Parking Nazi: I don't think I've ever blogged
about the Parking Nazi before, so here goes:
Our
neighbor - for
discretion's sake we'll refer to him as, ummm, "Bob"
- spends most of his time obsessing about the parking
situation in front of our
condo block. He feels it is his sole duty to police the
parking spots at all times to ensure no one is straying
outside the condo association
(of which he is NOT a member) policies. We've locked horns a
few times over the matter. Once during a party he repeatedly
knocked on our door to
complain that our guests were occupying too many spots (though
there were still other spots available). He has reprimanded
friends and relatives
who dared pull up in front of the condo for a quick
pickup/dropoff. Even during the harshest winter weather his
main door is never closed - his
view of the parking spaces should be unimpeded at all times
through the screen door.
It has become apparent that
he suffers from some
sort of OCD. He and his wife
MUST have the two
"corner" spots. Their matching Jeep Liberties MUST be
parked in perfect tandem in spots #1 and #2, facing outwards
(of course) and exactly equidistant from the curb - far enough
away, mind you, to
avoid the sap from the nearby pine trees. Any disruption from
this causes him untold stress. In fact if someone else is
takes those spots (how
dare they) and leaves, he will instantly hop in his Jeep and
correct the situation. That's right. He'll start up the
ignition, move over three
spots, turn off the ignition, and return to his lair. I have
to believe there is more to this than him simply not wanting
to walk the extra 30
feet to his door.
Of course having this situation has
made for some irresistibly fun opportunities. I've made it my
mission to
"steal" one of his spots any time the they are
available. I like to think I'm doing him some good from a
therapy standpoint, helping
him come to grips with his illness.
But recently he
took things to a different level: the Parking Nazi applied for
- and somehow
received - a handicap parking permit. A blue sign has been
planted by one of his spots. The gloves are off, and my little
sport has just become
illegal. Interestingly, there doesn't appear to be anything
wrong with him. He works full time. He walks. He talks. He can
climb all around and
on top of the Jeeps with a bottle of Windex. He
shovels during winter storms.
So
what to do? We recently received a handicap permit for Aidan.
Should we thank him for thinking of us and continue to steal
the spot? At the very
least I intend to casually inquire about what condition he
suffers from. What are good neighbors for?
-- Reason
#3,487 to get an iPhone: it
tells you where unknown callers are coming from...
-- NYT: US troops will still be in Iraq in '09 and
beyond...
-- Acer: Vista sucks.
-- Because $9.85 isn't
enough for a cuppa joe...
7/23/07 -- The numbers are in: Deathly Hallows
sold 8.3 million
copies in the first day.
7/22/07 -- Initial impression: holy crap, she's
done it again. I don't want to put it down...
7/21/07 -- Hey Borders, take your color-coded bracelet
and jam it up your arse. After
battling claustrophobia for hours with legions of other
bracelet-wearing morons last night for my copy of Deathly
Hallows, I caught
wind of an unannounced book party across the street at Stew
Leonards. Five minutes in and out, plus a free soda to
boot.
Now to get
down to business...
7/20/07 -- God help us, Cheney to take the helm temporarily while Bush is laid up.
7/19/07 -- I didn't know that Lloyd Alexander had died a few months ago. His Prydain books give Harry and Company a serious run for their money, totally worth a read if you've never done so.
-- Elvis Has Left the Building. With the Money: I tried to sneak over to the bank at lunchtime and found myself turned away by a horde of police cruisers. As it turns out, the bank had been robbed minutes earlier by an Elvis impersonator*. I'm not making this up. I can just see him now, the King of Rock & Roll: "Put the greenbacks in the bag, honey. Thank ya, thank ya verra muuuuch..."
*Note: there appears to be an error in the article, I think it was actually a Wachovia bank not Webster. But I could be wrong.
7/18/07 -- Wired rates the most popular Harry Potter spells. Notably absent from the list is my favorite: petrificus totalis, which completely immobilizes the victim as in a game of "freeze tag". The down side of this, however, is how long it would take to utter this spell during the heat of battle - it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue...
Speaking of HP I received a call today from Jim Dale, the beloved voice behind the HP audio CDs. Well ok it wasn't really him in the flesh, it was a recording. But it was great to hear his soothing accent again as he reminded me to pick up my reserved copy of 'Deathly Hallows' this Saturday at Borders.
7/17/07 -- So after two long sessions at Yale and hours of tabletop play, eye tracking and assorted other tests and observations, the official diagnosis is in: Autism. With a capital A.
On the surface this should have been one of those announcements that causes the room to spin, a moment a parent remembers for the rest of his or her life. But for some reason I'm relatively unfazed. Denial? Maybe. But what does this mean, really? When we wake up tomorrow will anything be different? Nothing. Aidan will be Aidan tomorrow, next Monday, and every other day of his life. If nothing else we now have an instantly recognizable label that could potentially work wonders when it comes to applying for local, state or federal services. Therapy on someone else's nickel... The best parking spot at the mall... the front of the line at Disney... any and all benefits that may come of this (if any), we'll take it. All of it - sans guilt.
7/16/07 -- iHeld it in my hand for about 15 minutes and was smitten, BIG time. iMust have it... iWill have it... Once again Apple has come out with a device that actually
Busy start to the week, have to get up at the crack of dawn today and tomorrow and head down to Yale for a follow-up eval on Aidan. Off to bed we go, more tomorrow...
7/13/07 -- Been trying to decide what to buy with my LL Bean online store credit, and I think my search is over...
7/12/07 -- Bare It Like Beckham: Yowza, Posh & Becks posing together in a smoldering photoshoot for "W" Magazine. He, of course, is beautiful to behold. Posh on the other hand reminds me too much of a femme-bot. Some pics here and here -- no peeking before 10PM, and first make sure the kids are in bed!
-- Discovered another cool show recently, a very likeable new Robin Hood series by the BBC. Netflix still needs to get on board, however. CORRECTION: they do in fact have it, queue me up!
-- So much for DMV. I have none of the required forms of ID they'll need to replace my license. None. Guess I'll have to go through life hoping I don't get pulled over or carded at a liquor store...
7/11/07 -- Wallet update (see 7/10 post below): I've thrown in the towel, it's gone. Canceled the credit cards, and I plan on doing DMV tomorrow night for a new license. Aha! There is a silver lining: when I renewed my license last month my picture came out unbelievably awful. Maybe tomorrow's mugshot will be better.
-- For the most part I've always despised Metallica, and was never really a big fan of heavy metal in general. They really ticked me off when music started making the big move to the internet, they were very vocal in their whining about how it would kill the industry (ooh but don't look now, you can buy Metallica music on **gasp** iTunes! Go figure...) But there's no denying that they have two important things going for them: 1) 'Enter Sandman' is one of the rockinest sockinest kick your assinest jams ever (freaky video too, creepy old dude + snakes + 18-wheeler = SCARY). I caught it yesterday on I-95 while driving home from work, and for the rest of the night was mouthing that killer riff and playing air guitar. 2) Lars Ulrich might be the coolest name of all time.
-- Slate likes the new Potter movie, and over at
Rotten
Tomatoes the general consensus is that
it's damn good...
7/10/07 -- Bush: Operation 'Send
More Dudes' WILL work! I
promise! We just need more time. And if I can just
keep duckin'
and weavin' until 2008 it will become someone else's
problem...
-- Still no sign of my wallet (see below),
but no sign of credit card
activity, either. This is maddening. Do I call now to cancel
the cards, knowing full-well that the wallet will turn up five
minutes after I make
the call? I've narrowed this down to a few possibilities. It's
either:
a) At Dunks, even though I visited this morning
and they claim they haven't seen it
b) In the hands of
some scalawag who
picked it up and plans to rob me blind and steal my
identity
c) In the hands of some kind person who this very
moment is mailing it to
me
d) Somewhere in the house buried under the rubble
(though every nook & crannie has been searched)
e) In
a gutter somewhere on the
side of the road
f) With the Iraq Weapons of Mass
Destruction
-- Sprint to its whiney customers: see ya !
-- Alright if
you happened to have found a black leather wallet near the New
Milford Dunkin Donuts since Sunday afternoon, please do me a
favor: take my
credit card to the mall and go on a MAD SHOPPING SPREE!
PLEASE! At least then I'll know for sure that the wallet is
indeed gone, and not buried
somewhere in the house under a pile of toys...
--
Love him or hate him, you gotta give Moore his props for
absolutely ripping CNN a new one. And they had it
coming. I haven't seen 'Sicko' yet,
though I intend to. Sadly, it's highly doubtful our system
will ever change. Too many well-placed people make far too
much money from the
current system.
7/9/07
-- Sign the petition.
Speaking of which, have you
reserved your copy of 'Deathly
Hallows' yet?
I've shamelessy signed up for a 7/21 midnight release party at
Border's in Danbury, though I do not intend to dress up in
some ridiculous
Hogwarts outfit for the event. Nope, my plan is to guzzle a
pot of coffee, grab a copy of the novel, find some secluded
nook in the store and
get down to business...
7/6/07 -- Nabbed: a Geek
Squad rep pilfering nudie pics from a customer's
PC...
-- Top 10 things you should know about
procrastination. Read it later if you get a
chance...
7/5/07 -- Interesting look at Disney's recycling of animation in different
films.
7/4/07 -- Timing is everything: Last
night we went to visit Great
Grandma Nanclyn and were hoping to catch a glimpse of the
Danbury Fair Mall fireworks from her front lawn. But alas 9:30
came and there was
nothing to be seen in sky, though we could hear the pop! pop!
popping in the distance. So in a "why not" moment of
reckless abandon we
jumped into the Pilot and headed towards the mall, knowing
full-well that we would have a snowball's chance in hell of
finding a parking spot --
people camp out for this event hours in advance every year.
But I'll be damned by some miracle we were able to nestle in
between some nice folks
and catch a few minutes of the rockets red glare and the bombs
bursting in air, giving proof through the night... you know
the rest. After a few
minutes Jakey seemed to sense that the end was drawing near
and started getting squirmy, so we piled back in the car. The
precise
moment we hit the stretch of I-84 overlooking the mall, the
brilliant explosive finale kicked in while Beethoven's 1812
Overture thundered on
the stereo, wooooohooo! To cap it off - we reached our exit
and sped back home, perfectly beating the ensuing traffic
mayhem that would strand
hundreds of people in their cars for an hour.
Happy
4th !
7/3/07 -- Why oh why oh why oh why didn't I think to buy the iPhone.com domain name back in the 90's?!? Dude who owned it just sold it to Apple for an "undisclosed seven-digit sum." Damn!
-- Bush lets his buddy Scooter off the hook. Is anyone actually surprised by this?
-- A half million lucky
bastards bought iPhones during
the big launch weekend, and I wasn't one of 'em. Though I will
admit that I called Verizon yesterday to see how much longer
I'm stuck in their
contract...
-- Finally got around to catching an
episode of the new
Battlestar Galactica series everyone's been raving about
(Time magazine, Rolling Stone magazine and New York Newsday
named it the best show
on TV in 2005). It is seriously good tv -- seriously, and not
just for sci-fi nerds. Queue me up, Netflix, and add it to my
already too-long
list of addictions.
7/2/07 -- So, the conference.
Where to start? It was at
once enlightening, entertaining, informative, joyous and
heart-wrenching. Lots of lectures, some were amazing, some
downright dull. We were
given a 3-ring binder loaded with scientific mumbo-jumbo, but
at the same time teeming with invaluable resources and
info.
What was
most interesting to me was to actually meet kids (and their
parents) with the same exact condition as Aidan. This was a
first, and in all
liklihood we will not see any others until the next IDEAS
conference two years from now. We were given a real sense of
just how varied the
symptoms of idic(15), aka Dup15q (this is the newest and more
commonly accepted name for it) can be. And of just how lucky
we are: some kids appear completely typical. But some can
hardly move on their own.
Some are verbal, many are not. Some can sprint around like
track stars, some will spend their lives sitting down. Some
appear perfectly happy,
and can sit patiently doing their own thing while a speaker
loads up tedious Powerpoint slides and drones on and
on about genetic thingamajiggies. Many completely freak out
and cannot sit still
for 10 seconds. And some are just not there, almost like
they're on a completely different plane of existence. And
worst of all -- a few are
just not there. Literally. In the past two years there has
been an alarming
spike in the number of sudden Dup15 deaths, causes
completely unknown.
Again, how lucky are we?
One of my favorite parts
of the trip was the dinner banquet on Thursday night. If ever
there was a perfect opportunity to turn Aidan loose in a
public place and let him
run amok doing whatever the hell he wanted, THIS WAS IT.
Finally, a place where everyone will -- and did -- understand.
No need to apologize for
the ruckus, no need to shadow him. He darted back and forth
amongst the dinner tables, cackling endlessly. He even struck
up an energetic game
of tag/hide & seek with some of the other rugrats. It was
the most fun I've seen him have in quite some time.
In conclusion, it was
three days very well-spent. Count us in for Indianapolis 2009.
Kudos to Grandma, Grandpa and Andrea for keeping our two
monkeys out of trouble
while we attended the lectures, we owe you big
time !
-- In an apparent attempt to
muscle-up television
ratings, the MLB has injected Barry
Bonds into the All-Star lineup. His presence is expected
to have a performance enhancing effect on the
National League team.
-- Back from the conference. lots to tell, right now just
scrambling to
get caught up at work. Hopefully will steal some blog time
during lunch or something...
6/28/07
-- We are here through Saturday night, more
later...
6/26/07 -- Apple's next operating system (code named 'Leopard') features a built-in cheap shot at Microsoft Windows...
-- Racy Times Squre billboard features an array of smiling buttocks...
6/25/07 -- My Dickens is a bit rusty, but I'm reminded of the classic "A Tale of Two Cities" opening line: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..."
Did a Block Island walk-on for my birthday. Weather was absolutely phenomenal, the ocean was crystal clear (but frigid), the streets & shops were accessible and welcoming - not a trace of the July/August hordes. The stage was set for a pleasure-filled early summer prelude to our September vacation.
But our boys... they just weren't up for travel. Maybe it was their colds, maybe they didn't sleep well the night before. But by my estimate we were on Block Island soil for six hours -- they cried/whined/screamed/complained/squirmed for 4. But try as they might, my BI goodwill will not be daunted. And though I considered tossing Jakey off the bow of the BI Ferry, I will not budge on my overall opinon: any opportunity to steal a few hours on BI should always be taken.
6/22/07 -- As an early birthday gift (the big day is actually tomorrow!) I received a pair of black crocs! But rest assured I will never ever ever EVER wear them like Dubya...
-- First look at
Harrison
Ford in the old Indy garb for the upcoming Indiana Jones 4
- I can already hear that iconic Raider of the Lost Ark march
theme! He doesn't
look half bad for an older gent, eh? How I've missed that
battered fedora...
6/21/07 -- I've lost NPR. The ragged stereo in my car has
always gotten iffy reception,
especially on cloudy days. I had just grown accustomed to
listening through the static. But as of this week NPR seems to be gone completely,
regardless of the conditions -- even at full volume I can just
barely make out Steve Inskeep's voice. Can anyone
recommend any good
CDs?
6/20/07
-- So an insurance rep comes out
to the house last weekend to
check our vital signs and evaluate what kind of life insurance
policy we qualify for (see 6/5 post below). Dude was easily
over 300 lbs! Not
that it's any of my business, it just seemed... odd... for
some reason. Nice enough fellow, though. Smart. Used to be a
paramedic. He drew some
blood, checked our pulses asked lots of nosey questions. I
think we passed with flying colors (though I had severe
performance anxiety when
instructed to pee in a cup, had to mentally focus on
waterfalls and trickling garden hoses to get things moving).
I'm wondering if I shouldn't
have been brutally honest when answering if I'd been to a
hospital in the past year -- I told him about my near brush
with Lyme Disease and the
big circular rash which prompted a visit to the ER late one
night. This seemed to cause him concern, even though a week of
antibiotics set me
straight.
-- Moore calls for a new probe into 9/11. Of
course lots of folks dismiss this stuff as lefty loony bunk,
and who knows? It probably it is. But if it's true that only
16% of the country
believes the official
reports on what really happened that day, why not
take this opportunity to restore some semblance of
credibility: show us the damn
tapes. Prove the "loonies" wrong. And while you're
at it, tell us what really happened to Building 7 -
because what we've been told so far is utter crap.
--
Slate on Signing
Statements, scary stuff...
6/19/07
-- Father's Day morning I somehow
woke up in Aidan's bed with him sleeping in the trundle below
me -- no idea how
this came about, most likely he woke up in the night and I
zombie-walked in there to soothe him. But that morning he gave
me the best F-Day gift
I could ever have asked for, he clambered up onto the bed
wishing me "g'MORNING" over and over, all
smiles.
Took a quick ride
up north to say hi to my Pops (who had to work, tragically)
and give him his gifts: a picture frame - sans photo, but
we're working on that -
and a new Speedo. No, not that kind of Speedo, it's
knee-length. Then it was down to Danbury for the mall carnival
(above) and some sprinkler
time at Grandma and Granpa's. All told, a great
day.
6/15/07
-- Indescribably
busy today, no time for blogging. Oh wait, I just
did...
6/14/07
-- Madonna
is in desperate need of
a hot meal and a suntan. Girlfriend is trying waaaay too
hard to turn back the
hands of time...
-- At last, a chance for me to hook up
with America Ferrara...
6/13/07
-- Around 6:30AM today I had an
imaginary one-way dialog in my head with Barney, went something like this:
"Barney, I've always
hated you. But just for today, if you can keep Jake
entertained & occupied for just 20 minutes so I can go
back to sleep, I'll... well...
I'll still probably *$#%ing hate you. But still, please
try."
Didn't work.
-- Mr. Wizard has passed away
at age 89. I
always hated that show.
-- Woman gets 2
1/2 years for ripping off a man's, um, stuff. Too lenient
a sentence if you ask me...
6/12/07
-- The world according to
Dubya...
-- To the
dismay of my wife, ESPN Classic has been playing past NBA
Finals all week. Man that
was good stuff -- $, Pippen & Rodman in their primes, Greek gods carved
out of marble. I remember
watching every second of those games, not daring to get up or
even change positions on the couch lest I somehow jinx my
Bulls.
The
Finals were fun back then. These were games that created fans
out of people who had never watched a game in their lives.
I'll never forget my
aunt calling me up at 12:30AM after a Jordan buzzer-beater:
"Did you see that!!??"
Now I watch more out
of obligation than
anything else. Of course it's been thrilling to see LeBron and Company make it this far, but
who wants to watch them surgically dismantled in four straight
games by the boring
(but fundamentally flawless) San Antonio Spurs? It'll take some
time before these June games are thrilling again. The Cavs
need to sign a Scottie Pippen-esque player to play Robin to
LeBron James' Batman, First
Officer Riker to his Captain
Piccard... you get the idea.
History has shown that no superstar can do it alone. It may be
a few more seasons, but sooner or later the Finals will once
again be required
viewing. And I'll be frozen to the couch, glossy-eyed and not
daring to move.
6/9/07
-- Apple: Safari will now
run on Windows. Ladies and gentlemen, start your
downloads.
-- My
big chance!
6/8/07
-- So everyone knows that if
you're in the market for
a laptop, Macs are waaaay more expensive than a Windows
machine... right? Not so,
says Computerworld...
--
Slate explains the expression "Pee Like a
Racehorse" ...
--
Disturbingly creepy: a collection of images of people
Photoshopped so that
they're kissing themselves (via Kottke).
--
Bummer: No last
crusade for Connery, he will not be involved with Indy 4...
6/7/07 -- The
world's most
polluted river. Utterly disgusting.
-- Chalk one
up for Windows XP (can't believe I just typed that).
Earlier this week
something was majorly screwed up with our Windows PC -- it
would freeze shortly after bootup. Probably a virus or some
malware or something,
typical Windows crap. None of the usual troubleshooting tricks
helped. I was on the verge of doing a wipe/reinstall when a
friend recommended I
use the built-in System Restore feature. I'd heard of it,
but assumed it
was just one more thing that probably wouldn't work. Well I'll
be damned it did just what it was supposed to -- returned the
PC to the state it
was in back in late May (I actually had quite a few dates to
choose from). The only downside is that it looks like my
installation of WoW
is messed up, so I might need to uninstall/reinstall that. So
XP, I apologize for all of the bad things I've ever said about
you. Well, most of
'em anyway.
-- Watched snippets of the ALMA
Awards show Tuesday night and
came up with two conclusions: 1) Latina women are gorgeous,
and 2) Los
Lobos is (still) a fantastic band...
6/6/07 -- A case for the guillotine:
a recent execution
by lethal injection took
10 tries (the condemned was even allowed a pee break) over
the course of 90 minutes...
6/5/07
-- So the wife and I met with a MetLife dude on Saturday to talk about,
well, all kinds of stuff. We'll both be starting up new life
insurance policies
which will make one of us very rich if the other one is hit by
a blimp. To see what "level" of insurance we're
eligible for, a medical
person will be coming out to the house to take our blood
pressure, height, weight, etc - basically evaluating our odds
of kicking the bucket
during the policy term. Would doing a bunch of situps/pushups
and running laps around the house right before they arrive
make us appear more
fit, and therefore eligible for a better rate? Or would it
have the opposite effect - jack up our heartrates and give the
appearance of a
heartattack waiting to happen?
-- Best ever MySpace page.
-- The new iPhone ads are extremely drool-worthy
(especially
"Calimari")...
6/4/07 -- Stumbled across this website recently... Ok so I'm going
to set up a website called
whiteathlete.net, let's see how long it takes Al Sharpton to
bitch & moan about it. Ridiculous.
-- So I sat
down yesterday for my bi-annual leg-hair trimming. This is not
as sick as it sounds -- it just involves a small pair of
shears and some light
manscaping along the shins/calves. Trust me -- if you've ever
seen me in shorts, I AM DOING YOU A FAVOR. But yesterday I
noticed an alarming
emergence of bluish veiny things here and there. Does this
mean I need to start wearing support hoisery? Or maybe I
should just keep the
shin/calf hair ultra thick to hide these new
flaws?
6/1/07
-- Rolling Stone rips
Rudy a new
one.
-- Found this poking around online: 15 reasons why Mr. Rogers was the best neighbor ever. Hear hear ! Followed a few links and found myself watching Fred Rogers present his case to the US Sentate for increased funding - fantastic, absolutely fantastic...
-- Oh no, not another boring basketball
post. But yeah, it really was
that good. Some are saying the best playoff performance
EVER. To use this word,
ever, would imply that this 22 year-old
kid was more amazing last
night than guys like Bird, Magic, Thomas, Jabar... and
yes, even $
Himself. I was falling out of my chair last night watcing
this 22 year-old kid hit impossibly difficult shot... after
shot... after shot...
after shot... Monster dunks in traffic. Off-balance 3-pointers
with guys in his face. Twisting, fading jumpshots from
unlikely angles. Kid
scored 29 or the Cavs' last 30 points -- 48 total -- dragging
the Cavs along with him to a double-overtime win. Guess this
will silence the
critics who claimed he has been too unselfish in previous
playoff games and needed to shoulder more responsibility. Call
him a ballhog or
whatever, but his 7 assists led both teams. And oh, did I
mention that he's 22-years old?
5/31/07
-- "Spam King" arrested in
Seattle. This is too bad, now how will I know where to get
my V1aGrA and C1Al1s?
5/30/07 -- Kobe wants out of LA, it's official...
-- M$ finally invents something cool, seemingly on its
own! Seriously, the table computer looks very nifty and - dare
I say it - Apple-like.
-- Girls With Corpses. I am SO
subscribing...
-- Saddam's golden palaces ain't got nuttin' on the $592
million US Embassy being built in Iraq, complete with
giant swimming pool and tennis courts.
5/29/07
-- This gorgeous weather has me
thinking about Block
Island at least once per hour. A wise woman always used to
tell me: "Don't wish your life away." And of course
she's right, I'm
sure this summer will be chock full o' good times. But suffice
to say I'll be good and ready when September finally gets
here...
--
Note to self: never ever ever ever visit Stew
Leonard's again on Memorial Day.
Ever.
5/24/07
-- Smart
bird.
-- May
Babies: long overdue mass Happy Birthday to the
13,873 relatives/loved
ones who were born in May: Father, Kate, Mason, Nina, Kiki,
Debbie, Bubba, Kos, Abbott, and the countless others I
probably missed - HAPPY
B-DAY!
5/23/07
-- Little known fact: a directive was signed this
month that, in the event
of a national emergency, grants the president complete control
of all government and business activities until the emergency
is declared over -
sans congressional approval.
Anyone else find this
creepy?
-- Hi-Definitely not: First
and foremost, kudos to
Costco.
They allowed us to return a 2 1/2 year-old tv due to a problem
with the "on" button (more cosmetic than anything
else - tv worked
fine) for a full refund, no questions asked. So using the
dough they refunded us we grabbed a nifty 36" Hi-Def tv.
But here's the thing: to
see Hi-Def in all its glory, and it IS glorious, you need to
subscribe to Hi-Def. No thanks, my cable bill is already
ourageous as is. And what
we quickly learned is that watching "regular"
channels and DVD movies on a Hi-Def tv leaves a bit to be
desired. Picture quality is
less than optimal. Gonna give it a few weeks and see how it
goes, we have 90 days to bring it back should we so choose. Oh
and one other thing -
thanks to brother-in-law Pete for helping us lug the behemoth
that was our old tv down the stairs and into the car. My body
still aches.
-- Charting world
chubbiness, guess who's #1...
5/22/07 -- Don't look now, but Michael
Moore's "Sicko" just got a very positive review from
Faux -- er, Fox News. And why wouldn't it? Unlike some of his
other work, which might be considered just a
smidgen partisan,
"Sicko" takes on our laughably dismal healthcare
system -- something that we all need fixed regardless of our
political affiliations.
Let's face it: we're all going to become ill. We're all going
to need medical care. We're all going to have to cough up a
lot of money to pay
for it (unless you are a member of Congress, in which case
yuor medical bills are paid for by US taxpayers).
--Another day, another explosion. Hey Dubya,
how's that Operation "Send More Dudes" (aka Surge)
working out for ya?
-- Took in 'Little Children' over the weekend.
Disturbing to say the least, by the closing
credits my jaw hurt from my teeth having been clenched for two
hours. Very well acted. Anyone remember "Kelly" from
those stupid Bad
News Bears movies? Well Jackie Haley is all grown up now, and he
was creepy and amazing in this movie. And my God Kate Winslet is gorgeous even when the
director is trying to make her look
frumpy. Highly recommend this one - just make sure the kids
are in bed!
5/21/07
-- Why do you do it? Why, crooked parkers, oh
why? I refer to the two or three morons in every parking lot
who position their
vehicles diagonally, occupying two spaces. What makes you so
special? Is it to make it impossible for another car to park
directly next to you,
thereby avoiding the risk of a door-ding? I could understand
if you drove a Bentley or a Rolls Royce. But what about
you, Mr. Pontiac Grand Am?
-- Need to
take yoga or something, or maybe medicate myself. Whatever it
takes to become more patient. Cuz as it stands right now,
dinner at any public
place with the boys is officially cancelled until further
notice. Anytime we sit down at a restaurant the boys quickly
become miserable. This
leads to all nearby restaurant patrons becoming miserable,
which leads to us becoming miserable. It's a lose lose
lose.
Takeout
anyone?
-- A completely useless
but nonetheless interesting medical hypothetical: If Lincoln
received the same
gunshot wound today, there is a very good chance that modern medicine would
save him.
5/18/07
-- Holy mackerel, a 650hp VW GTI. It's not fair that this
car is allowed to exist and I shall never be able to drive
it.
-- This just
in: '300' to be released on DVD and Blu-ray on
8/1, can't friggin' wait. But
what's with this Blu-ray crap? Please stop bombarding us
with new media formats we're
supposed to embrace. I'm hoping these things go the way of
those laser disc thingies from the early 90's...
5/17/07 -- New analysis all but proves that
Oswald was not the only shooter. Well duh...
5/16/07 -- I read this. Then I wrote my Senator.
The message was simple,
I sent him the link and two words: DO SOMETHING.
--
Really good read: the Cyberstalker who
stalked Linkin
Park. Creepy. Moral of the story is - don't use obvious
passwords for your online stuff, and change them often.
5/15/07 -- As with a lot of kids "on the
spectrum", Aidan uses eye contact
sparingly. It does happen, just not as often as we'd like. But
I've discovered a trick that works like a charm: silliness.
Particularly a game
called "I gawt yuh." It basically entails attacking
his mid-section and giving him rasberrys wherever there's an
opening, the whole
time yelling "I gawt yuh!" (that's "I got
ya" with a Northern London accent). He loves it,
squirming around trying to block
the rasberry attempts, and locks on -- iris to iris, pupil to
pupil.
Hey whatever works -- silliness it is,
then.
5/14/07 -- Iraqi lawmakers to US: leave.
5/11/07 --Ya get what
ya pay for:
Was noticing this morning that the two pairs of boxer shorts I
bought for $4.99 at Target around Christmas time have holes in
them. So I've demoted them to car rags, and today I'm wearing
the J Crew boxers
which cost around $19 sometime in 2003 and still look/feel
brand new...
-- Gonzales gets ripped a new one.
Squirm, buddy,
squirm !
5/10/07
-- A complete list of the top Nike commercials of
all time. Hands down, Jordan on failure (#17) tops my
list, followed closely by XXI (#2). Goosebumps and misty-eyed
every time...
-- A question of office ettiquette: I'm
wondering what the statute of limitations is on unclaimed hummus in the office fridge. It's
beckoning to me... by now a weaker man would've
grabbed it, thrust his face into the bowl and licked it
dry.
-- Blair to resign in late June. Why wait?
Leave now. Toady.
-- Will Wheaton's Geek in Review is excellent this week, he
talks about an alarming trend that
appears to be on the rise: substituting technology for
parenting. That is rather than interacting with your kids,
allowing them to veg out on
the latest handheld gadget or a movie while you do...
whatever. It does bug me at times, if we're trying to get
something done around the house
seeing the boys sit slack-jawed and saucer-eyed in front of
the idiot box. Moderation is key, moderation must be
key. But if I'm
running late for work and I'm shaving with one hand, brushing
my teeth with the other while preparing lunch with the toes of
my left foot, by
God I will not feel guilty accepting some
help from Elmo and Big Bird while Aidan and Jake eat
breakfast. And we'll make no
apologies for bringing a portable DVD player on a six hour car
ride or air flight. As I said, moderation. And if we're ever
on a camping trip
(see paragraph 3 of Wheaton's article) there will be no World of
Warcraft........................ at least not before 9PM
;)
5/9/07 --
Yesterday I solved a puzzle that's been bugging me for about
25 years. Everyone knows of the excellent actor Alfred Molina
(Diego Riviera in 'Frida', Dr.
Otto Octavius in 'Spider Man 2', the Comte de Reynaud in
'Chocolat' and of
course Hercule Poirot in the TV version of 'Murder
on the Orient Express', among dozens of other roles). But
something about that face -- that chubby, memorable face, I
had seen it years
earlier... someplace... a lesser role... when it was young,
handsome, mischievous... and then yesterday it hit me:
"Give me the
whip!"
"Throw me the idol. No time to argue!
Throw me idol, I'll throw you the whip."
Ring a
bell? Molina played the
role of the ill-fated Satipo in the classic 'Raiders of the Lost
Ark'. Finally! I can sleep at
night. And by the way if you don't remember that scene, well,
you've got to get a life...
5/8/07 -- PC World: 10 Things We Love About Apple, along with 10 Things We Hate About Apple. Pretty much spot-on...
-- Thought last summer was bad? Prices might hit $4 per gallon within the next few months...
5/7/07 -- Had the opportunity to take a 10-minute test drive on the highly touted Windows Vista this past weekend. Only the test drive lasted 5 minutes since I was immediately confused and irritated by it.
-- MSN on what women want their men to be wearing. Is this true? Then women should be throwing themselves at me - I subscribed to the "just don't give a damn" school of fashion long ago (see item 19).
-- ABC: 'Lost' to air for 48 more episodes over 3 seasons. Does this mean more tedious flashback episodes?
-- It's
official: Jake called me
Dada this morning :)
5/4/07 -- NYT: How to exercise properly
(intervals FTW (for the win)).
5/3/07
-- Another **slurrrpp** article
touting the possible health benefits of **sippp**
coffee.
5/2/07 -- Yeeeeeehaw, the General Lee (one of 'em anyway, I've read there were many over the years) is up for grabs on eBay - $2.3 million bucks with two days of bidding to go!
-- Aidan slept all the way through the night for the first time in, well, maybe ever. Could it be a coincidence that last night was the first night in a long time without clonadine? The tradeoff seems to be that with clonadine it's much easier to get him to go down, usually within a few minutes after his bedtime stories he's out cold. But invariably he would wake up hootin' and hollerin' around 3AM. So without clonadine we have to grapple with him for a half hour to get him to sleep, but he makes it through the night. Which is better? Time will tell...
4/28/07 -- Update on Allen Houston (see below), the man is in fact retired due to a bum knee, and still earned over $20M this year by his contract...
-- A rundown of current NBA player salaries.
Check out the top 5:
Kevin Garnett: $21,000,000 - earns
every penny, a pleasure
to watch him play.
Allan Houston: $20,718,750 -
HAHAHAHAHAH! Who's the sap who gave him that contract? Has
Houston even played this
year?
Michael Finley: $20,154,625 - a has-been. Five years
ago, maybe worth that. Now shave about $17M off that
number.
Shaquille
O'Neal: $20,000,000 - when healthy, in-shape and motivated,
worth every penny. But is starting to show his age...
Chris Webber: $18,307,008
- see Michael Finley above.
Speaking of the NBA, how
about dem Bulls? Man I
haven't said that in about eight or nine years. But last night
the young'uns swept the defending champion Miami Heat right
outta the building,
led by a guy named Gordon. That's Gordon with a "G", not a
"J".
-- Snoop Dogg explains why rappers can
use "ho's" but
Imus can't: "It's a completely different scenario...
[Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls
who have made it to
the next level in education and sports. We're talking about
ho's that's in the 'hood that ain't doing sh--, that's trying
to get a n---a for his
money."
So there it is.
-- The latest
issue of CT&L
has a write-up on Cuba, simply magnificent. Castro needs to hurry up and kick the
bucket so this paradise can become a
legitimate vacation destination.
4/27/07 -- Denied. Again.
We had hopes of sending Aidan to a Danbury-based Physical
Therapy center for some much-needed help with his core
strength and coordination. Health Net
has other plans: per our policy this sort of thing would only
be covered if it
was necessary to recover from an accident/injury or some
short-term medical necessity. Coverage of a
"long-term" disability (that is,
anything that might cost them real money) just ain't gonna
happen. And we can argue with them 'til we're blue in the
face, but there it is in
the policy book, clear as crystal. But that doesn't mean we
have to be happy about it. I think a long, rambling, ranting
letter is in order just
for the sake of being nasty.
-- New fetish amongst
married folk: cuckolding. I'll pass, thanks.
--Took in Notes on a Scandal last night, a terrific
film that I feel guilty for having enjoyed so much. Dench
is masterful as a venomous viper, a conniving old crone of the
highest (or perhaps that would be lowest) order. Do add to
your Netflix queue at
once.
4/26/07
-- Oh no he didn't... Oh yes he
did - Rudy G. is already
pulling the "Vote for a Dem, be killed by a
terrorist" bit, pulling a tactic from the Bush/Cheney
9/11 fearmongering playbook.
4/25/07
-- Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio,
has formally introduced articles of impeachment against Dick
Cheney. Finally someone
is showing some cajones in Washigton.
-- Roger Ebert: down but not out. Gotta
respect the
guy...
4/23/07
-- How to
fix some of TV's top
shows, and YES these are in need of fixing **ahem, Lost...
-- Billions of honeybees have vanished. No one knows where or why.
-- Finally spring has arrived for
real. My Cabriolet top is down (can't believe the old guy
survived yet
another New England winter, 187K miles and going
strong!), our windows are open, flowers are growing, the cats
have taken their places on
the window sills... life is good. Is it just me, or did
this past winter seem
to last about 8 months? We took the boys to the park yesterday
for a quick picnic, and while they were off with Grandma and
Grandpa I stole a 15
minute snoozy on a blanket under a tree -- I truly believe
those 15 minutes were more theraputic than a decade of
psychiatric
sessions.
4/20/07
-- As I've been trying to get back
into this workout thing
I've been studying/admiring the training facility used by the
guys who appeared in the film '300'. Obviously whatever these guys did
during the three months or so before filming -
worked. But it certainly
didn't come easy, sounds like they went to hell and back every
day. Just watch the video. Gym Jones,
as the facility is called, is extremely
hardcore. Old school equipment and training techniques -
medicine balls, olympic rings, push-ups, sit-ups, roman chair
ab workouts, heavy bags,
deadlifts, pull-ups... This is a gym with no mirrors, no AC,
no benchpresses, no babes in spandex adjusting their eyeliner
between sets. No guys
in bike shorts craning their necks to admire their reflection
while curling dumbbells. It is by invite only.
In
response to some of the
fitness magazines who asserted that the only way the '300' actors could have
become so fit so quickly was by using steroids, Mark Twight
(founder of Gym Jones) offered this scathing rebuke. It's refreshing to
see an expert who is that passionate about his work, that
good at what he
does, who can actually back up what he says - in spades.
-- Gonna be upper 60's this weekend, would've been mint
conditions for spring
skiing at Killington. Soft snow, blue sky, barbecues
and live music on the deck... two
seasons running and I haven't laced 'em up at all,
**sigh**
4/19/07
-- DISCOVERED in a bag of Tostitos.
Eeeewwwww...
-- So the Va Tech killer mails a package to NBC
containing videos and photos where he rambles on and on about,
well, nothing
(apparently he tried to reproduce scenes from a South
Korean movie called 'Oldboy'). He seemed to be playing the
"misunderstood heroic victim of society" card.
Moron.
4/18/07 -- The new Nine Inch Nails
album dropped this week, and even if you don't care for Trent
Reznor's music it's hard not to find the album's marketing
campaign creepy and brilliant.
Cryptic messages hidden on concert t-shirts, Flash drives
containing music samples dropped in concert bathroom stalls
and other subtle clues
left here and there during the past few months -- all
directing fans to eery websites (like this one, wait 'til it loads then click
and drag around across the image) that tell of a future that
is gray-skied,
dystopian, government-controlled and where our every movement
is monitored. Any behavior deemed "Anti-American"
could lead to your
removal. A chemical called Parepin has been added to the water supplies of all
major cities to strengthen our immune systems against
bio-terror attacks, but there do seem to be side-effects...
Web sites dedicated to the
Reisistance are popping up here and there,
just don't let anyone know you've been
visiting them because you don't know who could be
watching... Three weeks ago I
received this email from the "Bureau of
Morality", yikes! Guys in dark suits
will be pounding on my door any minute now. Anyway, I find the
whole thing extremely cool.
-- On the eve of the tax
filing deadline it
looks like there was a massive failure of the TurboTax efile
servers, doh!
4/17/07
-- Had to guess it was just a
matter of time before
some idiot (ahem, Dr. Phil) would blame
video games for the shootings. I mean lets face it, there
had never been
murders or shooting sprees in the old days before video
games...
-- VT prof braces door shut to enable
students to escape through the windows during the
shootings. It was later confirmed that he was in fact killed.
4/16/07 -- Dude goes nuts and
shoots up VA Tech
campus, around 30 dead including the shooter. It's unknown
whether he took his own life or police shot him. Freakin'
idiot, however he went
I hope it was slow and agonizing.
4/13/07 -- Almost neglected to wish Grandma
Nanclyn a happy birthday today! The four or us will be
invading your house this weekend for another one of our calm,
relaxing gatherings :)
-- Media Matters: Imus ain't the only one. Take a look at
some of
these beauties, makes Imus' firing seem like an even bigger
load of BS than it already is.
-- Well now we can
really declare Jake as a
walker. Sure he's shown smatterings of it in the past few
weeks, but he would always default back to all fours when he
really needed to get
someplace. But the fact that walking has now become his
preferred modus transporti, I think this is the point
it becomes official. BTW
(that's "by the way" for the cool-impaired), I don't
think modus transporti is a real latin phrase, I just
made it up. But it
sounds good.
-- Well "Reverend", you got
your way. A legendary radio show of 30 or so years has been cancelled. Absolutely ridiculous, turn on
MTV Jams or any hip hop radio station and hear women degraded
in ways far worse
than what Imus said (and was clearly clowning around as he
said it, just as he's done for 30 years). Absurd.
4/12/07 -- Lee Iacocca for president.
--
<expletive> you, Basketball Gods. Nineteen years of
slave-like servitude and
you reward me on my last ever organized game with 3 points on
1-10 shooting? <expletive> you, I'll take up
golf.
4/11/07 -- Two essential lists for your viewing
pleasure: The Top 10
cheesey cringe-worthy movie moments of all time (I love
how they refer to the
end of An Officer and a Gentleman as simply "THAT
scene"), followed by the Top 10 "Holy
Sh*t" movie moments of all time (the scene from
American History X creeped me
out for a loooong time, consider yourself warned).
--
Postal rates are about to go up again, why don't they just get
it over with and
make stamps a *&#$ing dollar...
-- Was listening
to Justin
Timberlake the other day and wondering how he got so rich
and famous with that lousy falsetto. I definitely give him credit for
the dancing (he can move, there's no denying it - the
choreography in
the "My Love" video is superb), his bank account, and
the rumor that he had an intimate run-in with Scarlett Johannson. I also admire the fact
that he's willing to take a chance
with a sound or a song that is "unorthodox" (though
his most
notable hits in this category: "SexyBack",
"Cry Me a
River", "My Love", etc. are more the works of
genius producer Timbaland, but whatever...). Guess he's
one of those dudes that I can't decide to like or despise, but
for now he'll get a
few megabytes on my iPod. For now.
4/10/07 -- It is physically impossible to
look at these photos without going
"Awwwwwwwwwwwww!"
-- Spent a chilly Easter
Sunday inside celebrating Grandma Marie's birthday (yay!), but
did
venture out long enough for an abbreviated Easter Egg hunt
(see above).
-- Saturday night I participated in Kent Quiz
Night and took Third
Prize honors! Our team, Long Mountain Mensa, consisted of
Uncle Jim (Jimbob), Aunt Karen (Untie), cousin Nina (Nerge)
and myself - a nice blend
of baby boomers and (relatively speaking)
young-uns. The key to our
success was the fact that many of the questions were
music-based, definitely our strongest area. We would've placed
even higher had I not
reversed our answer of "eyes" to
"nostrils" in answer to: "If attacked by an
alligator you should defend yourself by
sticking your thumb in its ...<blank>?" Damnit
damnit damnit!!!
4/9/07
-- Depressing: Every hour that Americans have
worked so far in 2007 has gone towards paying taxes. And
we're not done
yet...
4/6/07
-- Bond vs Bourne. There just
aren't enough
articles like this on the web, I love this stuff...
-- iPod saves a US soldier's life.
4/5/07 -- Met with a finance
dude from MetLife this week. He was discovered by
Nanclyn (good find!), and seems like a
good fit for us on account of his 5-year old daughter having
Special Needs. There was talk of trust funds, market averages,
IRAs, CDs, 401Ks,
HIJKLMNOPs and several other things that went wooshing over my
head. Long story short there is a lot of planning that needs
to be done in terms
of our retirement (ha! what's that?), education for the boys,
and especially what's in store for Aidan long-term. We may be
eligible for help
from the feds, if they deem we are poor enough to really need
it. And there are legal ways to make it seem like we need it,
even if we don't.
But we do. Make sense? It didn't to me either. But we'll
hopefully meet again in a month or so to hash some of this
stuff out. Of course by then
I will have won Powerball so it won't really matter
much.
-- If ever there was a
time to start up a subscription to Rolling
Stone Magazine... well, nevermind.
-- How you
know it's time to get back to the gym: your 3-year old son
with hypotonia has better abs than you
do...
4/4/07 -- New improved Daylight
Savings: no savings whatsoever.
4/3/07
-- The decision to try medicating
Aidan to help him sleep was not an easy one. But it came down
to the benefits of
him getting a full night's sleep outweighing the lameness of
giving your kid drugs. When he isn't well-rested (which is
most of the time) he's a
mess: clumsily flopping around, stumbling, toe-walking, etc.
He should be napping every day, but he simply refuses to do
it. And while he has
been going down fairly willingly around 8PM, he ends up in our
bed every night without exception. So finally last night we
tried clonidine at bedtime. The result: he was
up the entire night.
--
Alarming: While we slept snug in our beds
last Friday a mile-wide asteroid wizzed by, missing earth by 2.1
million miles (I guess in space terms that's spitting
distance). Had it struck home the damage would have been
cataclysmic. According to the
article, in 2036 we may not be so lucky. Where's Bruce Willis
when we need him?
-- I can name at least two people
who fell for my dumb
April Fool's
joke, though they shall remain nameless (Andrea,
Kate....). 'Fess up !
3/30/07 -- Just tried an orange-flavored Hersheys Kiss
for the first time and almost
vomited. Hersheys should know better than to mess with
perfection...
-- Project "Respectable Shape By
My Birthday" is
underway. So far it has consisted of two sessions of huffin'
and puffin' on the treadmill and only having 7 pieces of
chocolate last night when
I normally would have had about 12. Hey it's a start...
3/29/07 --
Tubbies take Manhattan: Can't stand the Teletubbies show, it
absolutely freaks me out. It has no redeeming qualities
whatsoever, and I really think there are some creepy
subliminal messages being sent to
our kids. The news that they're storming through NYC with a publicity tour and
retail store is depressing. However they do plan
on raising money
for Cure Autism Now and Autism Speaks, so I'll grudgingly
allow them a temporary pardon.
-- Now THAT'S a
crib: Over 35,000 square feet on 5.6 acres, a 6-car
garage, a 2-story walk-in closet, 11 bedrooms, a bowling
alley, a movie theater and
a giant sculpture of his own head: check out the specs on LeBron James' new
house he is building near Akron, OH.
3/28/07 -- 'Shooter' will not win any awards, but I'll
go
so far as to call it "damned entertaining." At the
very least it warrants a spot on your Netflix queue.
-- Cover art for 'Deathly Hallows' released,
appears to show a "final showdown" of sorts between
HP and
Voldy...
3/26/07
-- Though I haven't been following
the NCAA tourney very
closely, I did go ahead and fill out an online bracket. As of right now my
ranking is 256,676th, yet I remain ever hopeful. Go
Florida!
-- Happy birthday to my one year old son who
is lots of fun! (now you see
why I don't write poetry...). The condo was filled to the brim
Saturday night with friends/relatives, and our little showman
kept them all
entertained. Immediately after the candle snuffing, the Elmo
and Big Bird figurines (above) were thrown aside and the cake
was reduced to a
state of wreckage. Thanks for great time everyone!
3/23/07 -- Company
specializes in making paper out of elephant crap, we'll call it
Pachyderm Poopy
Papyrus.
-- I'll share a little secret: last night I
watched Rocky
Balboa. And here's another secret: it wasn't half bad. In
fact I really enjoyed it. No, seriously. I refuse to
acknowlege that its
predecessor, Rocky V, even exists. But this last round
was sweetly told and
even a little sad. And by the final "ding-ding" it
really had me. The old guy looks amazing (my God is Stallone
really 61?), though
his veins are starting to look less like bodybuilder veins and
more like old man veins. One more secret: it doesn't end like
you think it will.
No, seriously.
3/22/07 -- New online dating site: ugly people need not
apply...
-- You haven't experienced true anguish in
your life until you
realize you aren't eligible for the $7 Casino Royale DVD rebate because you
threw away the box with the UPC code.
3/20/07-- This haircut would've really
come in handy when I
was in high school...
--Watson
to step down from playing Hermione
Granger?
-- The ugly truth about dog food...
-- CNN
has 3 tips on how to get a better night's
sleep. I got 1 -- be someplace other than our
condo.
-- To Wii or not
to Wii... Did reasonably well with our income tax
refund this time around. So once again we face the dilemma of
what the hell to do
with it. Last year's refund seemed to be inhaled by the usual
rotation of bills; one minute the money was there, then I sat
down to pay the
bills and suddenly it was gone. And who am I kiddin', that is
most likely what will happen this time around. But let's
pretend for a minute
that, after getting a little "caught up", we still
have a decent chunk of change left over. Here are some of the
options:
A)
Squirrel it away. Every nickel of it. Pretend it never
happened. Open up some sort of interest-bearing account and
forget it exists, then
remember it when we're in our 70's or 80's. Financial gurus
would probably agree that this would be smartest.
B)
Pay off high-interest
credit cards and similar bills. Financial geeks would cheer at
this one as well, and they might even rate it as the number
one priority.
C) Give it all to charity. Wish I could, but it's just
not possible.
D) St. John anyone? Don't
tempt me...
E) Blow it all on electronics and other
goodies such as a Nintendo Wii. Ok
fine, I won't.
F) Buy bunches and bunches of
scratch-off lottery tickets
and pray for a big winner.
Tips?
Suggestions?
3/19/07
-- Just when you thought KFed
couldn't get any cooler, homeboy launches his own search engine...
-- Cate
Blanchett lands a leading role in
Indy 4, and there have been unconfirmed whisperings that
Sean Connery may un-retire to appear in this film...
--This is cool: a family has been taking the exact same photographs of themselves every
year since the 70's. Really amazing to see how friendly, and
then unfriendly, the
passage of time can be.
-- Wallet
Miracle: morning after the snow storm I was going
insane trying to find my wallet.
After several hours of frantic searching (and lots of cursing)
I finally retraced my steps to the Chinese restaurant next
door -- the previous
night Jake and I had braved the snowy elements to get takeout.
Though there was a bit of a language barrier, they denied
having seen it. On the
way back out of sheer desperation I dropped to both knees to
dig through the snow, and I'll be damned there it was right by
the hole in the
fence that we had wriggled through. Everything was intact, but
talk about hard cold cash...
3/16/07
-- Gorgeous snowstorm in
progress, probably the last one of the
year! The office closed early so I drove home in the thick of
it, dodging spin-outs and plow trucks. You don't have to be an
expert driver like
myself to do well in the snow, but for your reference I have
compiled a few of my top snow-driving tips:
1) Don't.
Just don't. Where do
you really need to be that is so important? With global
warming roasting the planet, beautiful snowfalls like this may
soon be a thing of the
past. Stay home and enjoy it.
2) Slow down. No elaboration
needed.
3) Following distance, following distance,
following distance. Leave
an enormous cushion between you and the dude in front of you.
I don't care if there is a long line of pissed off people
behind you, ignore them
and be safe.
4) Make the next guy be the brave one: try
to get behind an SUV or truck (or best case scenario, a plow
truck) and stay in the
tracks he creates.
5) Take the road more
traveled. Don't take that secret backroad shortcut, more cars
= more passable
road.
Even the professionals (i.e. me) are going to
get in an accident at some point due to forces beyond their
control. You might be
the best snow driver in the world but you have no control over
how the other guy drives. But your accident doesn't have to be
today. See tip
#1.
Enjoy!
3/12/07 -- Khalid Shaikh Mohammed admits under
-- Very intersting "what if" dino scenario...
-- Though
he looks pretty miserable in the photo above (taken sometime
last week as he
boarded the school bus), Aidan seemed happy as a clam this
morning as I buckled him in - no tears, nuttin'. Maybe this
school thing will work
out after all...
3/14/07 -- Dems collapse like a house of
cards, Bush free to drop
bombs on Iran at his leisure...
3/13/07 --Historian rebukes the inaccuracies
of 300. He is obviously very well-versed on the subject,
buuuuuuuuuuut he seems to be forgetting something. Sir, say it
with me slowly:
It's..... based...... on....... a....... comic book.... K
?
-- Youtube is about to get a lot more boring...
-- Deathly Hallows... to
pre-order or not to pre-order? Pre-ordering with Amazon is a
safe bet, but you run the risk of not having it THE DAY it
comes out. But not
pre-ordering runs you the risk of being turned away at a book
store because they sold all 4,987,776 of their copies by
12:06AM that morning.
What to do?
-- Tired of those bushy-tailed critters
stealing all of your bird food? Try Twirl-a-Squirrel.
-- Casino Royale comes out on DVD today,
kewl...
3/12/07 -- Jake made some sort of lower body movements
this morning and inched forward a
bit, but I think it was enough to officially declare them as
his "first steps." Thing is, he is definitely
physically capable of
walking. He just doesn't know it yet. Plus he's so adept at
crawling that he probably figures "why bother?"
-- 300 set a new
box office record for a March release, tallying
around $70 million. I wanted disembowlments, beheadings
and dismemberment and I was not disappointed. But even if
that's not your thing,
this movie is absolutely fantastic. I'm awarding it 9 severed
limbs out of 10 (note that no movie has ever scored a perfect
10 in my very
unforgiving rating system, not yet anyway). Rather than trying
and failing to compose some Roeper-esque review,
here are some randomly
ejaculated thoughts/notes/observations:
* At one
point I almost jumped out of my seat, screamed
"YEAH!" and started bashing
people over the head with my popcorn bucket. I haven't felt
that kind of battle lust since watching Chingachgook impale
Magua in "Last of the Mohicans."
* Seeing a
woman in a role of power and
self-assuredness - in this case Queen Gorgo, played by
the absolutely stunning Lena Headey, was 10X sexier than the usual
helpless bimbo role seen
in most movies.
* Was that was really Gerard Butler's torso or was that
rippling rectus abdominus somehow cgi'ed on there
with a computer? Whatever the case, I need to start doing some
damn sit-ups.
* I
loved Rodrigo Santoro as metallic-voiced King
Xerxes (pictured here). He was
like a cross between RuPaul and James Earl Jones. Terrifyingly
narcisstic, a great interpretation of the character.
Keep in mind that this is not a historically accurate
rendition of the Battle of Thermopylae. The only similarity
is the fact that a
small band of Spartans (there were actually more than 300)
used superior tactics and a terrain advantage to hold off a
massive army of Persians
for an astonishingly long time before being wiped out. Not to
diminish this last gallant last stand, of course, but I'm glad
this movie was
based on a graphic novel (aka a comic book) and not historical
fact. Keep that in mind, folks, and have fun.
3/9/07-- Photographs of people
sleeping. Interesting. Why do people look so troubled
while they sleep? Stress?
Bad dreams? Stinky weimaraner lying next to them?
--
NYC firefighters dis Giuliani big
time...
-- Lukewarm CNN review of 300.
The author concedes in the end that nothing he's written there
will matter -- the
kids just want to have fun. Well duh, what else was he
expecting in a movie like this? Gripping dialogue? Cleverly
interwoven plotlines? Here is
why I intend to see this film: swords, spears, rippling
torsos, blood & guts and shameless machismo. I intend to
check my brains at the door
and have a lot of fun. Period.
--
Free Starbucks for everyone on Thursday, 3/15 between 10am
and noon.
3/8/07-- Vintage live Radiohead, good stuff (thx jkottke). Love
the way he hits those hard chords, like he's trying to rip the
strings off the damn
guitar.
-- Uncut Rated R version of the trailer for
300. I just might have to make an exception to my "no
movies on opening weekend" rule...
-- Lost by
about 12 last night.
I was atrocious. Shot was flat, legs felt like rubber and were
devoid of any spring whatsoever. Been playing on borrowed time
for too long now,
by that I mean just showing up for games about twice a month
and expecting to play well. Hell, if nothing else I'm
currently a great candidate
for a "weekend warrior" type of injury -- maybe an
ACL or something. Prior to last night I
had been shooting miraculously well considering the time
(errr, lack of time that
is) I've been putting in. Hitting deep threes with people
tapping my elbow on the release. Shots that had no business
going in. But as I said,
borrowed time. Last night the basketball gods closed the
bridge on account of the toll not being paid.
3/7/07-- Update #2: I am the Alpha and the
Omega.
--
Update: 122 seconds and a B+, beat that
suckaz (see below) !!!
-- You are the red ball. Avoid
the blues. Sounds easy, but it's
not. Totally addictive. My
best was a paltry 111 seconds, despite my inhuman gaming
skills. Hint: hiding in the corners is not a good idea.
-- Attended a Mardi
Gras event recently (click here) which started off tame enough, but
ended with a bunch of us
air-guitaring the ending solo to Prince's "Let's Go
Crazy." Had a great time, and scored some nice loot in
the form of Jagermeister
tee-shirts, Mardi Gras beads and a sweet purple top hat. Guess
it's kind of hypocritical to wear the Jager shirts, since I wouldn't drink the
stuff unless I was trying to purge my body of some toxic venom
and needed to induce
vomiting. But hey, a free shirt is a free shirt.
3/6/07-- A
product to help you feel good about your betty again. I've
officially seen
everything...
-- I know I'll be kicking myself when
the day actually arrives. Everyone needs a day after vacation
to
"de-brief" and mentally prepare for the next day at
work. With that in mind we were originally scheduled to return
from Block Island on Saturday, 9/15. But I
simply could not bring myself to
leave Sunday the 16th on the table as one more day we COULD'VE
had on Block Island, a day spent moping and unpacking at home
that might have
been spent on Mansion Beach. A year is such a long time
between vacations... And so, two desperate phone calls later
the deal is done. I am weak. But I will be tan.
-- Took Aidan to Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital earlier
this week for a
follow-up annual visit. The doc who saw him last year is long
gone, unfortunately. His replacement was an hour late and
appeared to have quickly
scanned the files on her way to the room. Overall the visit
was pretty pointless, though she may prove useful if we need a
referral or a
prescription of some sort. She did give the green light to try
giving Aidan small doses of melatonin to help with his sleeping
(though the half-tablet he took last night seems to have had
the opposite effect, he was
up a LOT). She also gave us the cheerful prediction that for
his entire life Aidan will perform at 2/3 the cognitive level
of a
"typical" person. Don't pull any punches, Doc. And
next time read the file beforehand.
3/5/07-- Awesome compilation of photos from
the recent lunar eclipes that I forgot all about.
3/2/07-- Save the Aye-Aye!
-- I... I... I
just don't know what to say about
this...
-- Radcliffe signs on with Warner Bros. to see Harry
Potter through to the
end.
-- Probably the smartest Powerball winner ever. But come
on dude, a used Jetta???
3/1/07-- More shrieking this morning while mama
fumbled with the carseat buckles on the bus. Aidan's teacher
described day 2 as
"weepy." At night he is ultra-clingy, won't let mama
more than 5 feet away from him. This school thing is gonna
take some getting used
to...
2/28/07-- You paid $2.35M for THAT???
-- Aidan
officially started school yesterday (no short bus
jokes, please). The parting was a bit
traumatic, as it was this morning. And according to his
teacher he had what was described as an "up and down
day." I think that was
her way of nicely saying: he freaked. But who among us did NOT
freak on their first day?
2/27/07-- Well it was good while
it lasted. In the old days you could drag some busted-up tv
you bought at Costco in 1912 and they
would give you a
replacement on the spot, no questions asked. Not so anymore...
-- Found this
waiting for me when I booted
up this morning, looks like Apple has released an update to
address the new daylight savings schedule (see 2/20 post
below).
-- Damn,
they missed...
2/26/07-- The complete Oscar winners and loohooosers list.
-- Attention professional ebayers, the IRS is coming with its palm
outstretched. It's just a
matter of time...
-- The weekend consisted of three -
count them - three parties for Aidan's 3rd b-day. Friends,
family, cake,
cartoons, balloons, presents, pasta, music and general mayhem
for about 55 straight hours.
2/23/07-- DJ dies at age 52, very sad business.
A lot of Bird's most spectacular moments were
facilitated by DJ, who
was perfectly content to humbly take a backseat - all he
needed was a nod and a point from Bird. That legendary play during the '87 playoffs
sums it up perfectly - I'll never
forget longtime Celtics announcer Johnny Most: "Now there's
a steal by Bird, underneath to DJ! He lays it up and
in!!...Right at one second left!! What a play by Bird! Bird
stole the inbound pass, laid it
up to DJ, DJ laid it up and in, and Boston has a one-point
lead with one second left! This place is going crazy!!!"
Sure the steal was
great -- but without DJ cutting to the hoop, Pistons
win...
-- Study: getting snipped reduces the risk of HIV by
60%. That, plus it just
looks better.
-- Jake went to the doctor this morning
and as it turns out he has TWO ear infections. Plus the doctor
expressed concerns
over his (Jake's, not the doctor's) weezing, which never seems
to get any better despite the 2X per day nebulizer sessions. So he'll be on
antibiotics, Motrin and some steroids for
his lungs. Poor lil bastard has been sick for about 3/4 of his
life so far...
-- In honor of his 3rd birthday this
morning Aidan
treated us to the worst poopy diaper of all
time. Kudos to grandma, who slept over last night, for donning
a gas mask and doing
the dirty work...
Anyway, HAPPY B-DAY BEST BUDDY
!
2/22/07-- The sad ugly
truth about NBA
All-Star Weekend. I love the line about "Woodstock
for parolees, wannabe rap artists and baby's mamas on
tax-refund vacations...."
CLASSIC. But it's true - the two recent NBA All-Star Weekends
I was fortunate enough to attend (Atlanta and Philly) were
indeed thug-fests.
-- Fishermen in New Zealand have captured an intact Mesonychoteuthis
hamiltoni weighing
almost 1000 lbs with hooks the size of car tires,
extremely cool...
-- Quite a scene
this morning around 7:15AM, the
four of us all in one bed: Jake trying to sleep off a
scorching fever, Mama trying to sleep off being up with Jake
all night, me trying to sleep
off being up with Aidan most of the night (he was having
nightmares or something), and Aidan practicing the chorus (as
only he can) from Dan
Zanes' 'Malti', which goes something like "ay di di lai
di di lai di di leio", (full lyrics here). It might have been funny were it
not for the fact that
very little sleep was had last night by anyone. But this is
nothing new...
-- GQ to draft six articles of
impeachment for
Cheney...
2/21/07-- So I emailed CL&P asking when their rate increase
went into effect and how much of an increase it was (this was
after I picked myself
up off the floor from reading our $409 January bill). The
reply:
"Thank you for your recent e-mail. The
current rate increase went
into effect January 1 and is, on average, 10.4% increase.
However, that percentage can vary depending on how much or how
little you use. If you
need any further assistance please contact our Customer
Service Center toll-free @ 1-800-286-2000 or @ 860-947-2000
within the local
Hartford calling area."
We must fall within the
percentage that "varies".
--This was to be my first foray into the world of mechanics. My windshield washer squirter has never worked, and recently I decided I would roll up my sleeves and actually pop the car hood to fix it. It seemed like a good way to get my feet wet with car stuff, what's the worse that could happen? Even if I screwed up, the car would still (hopefully) be operational. So after dropping $19 on a new motor pump thingy that pushes the cleaning solvent through the tubes and nozzle, that lovely azure fluid actually shot onto the windshield three times! Squirt squirt squirt! Oh, bliss! My days of peering through a dangerously murky windshield were over. Or so I thought. After the third squirt it stopped working. Nothing. No noise, no fluid. Then while testing with a friend I held down the lever continuously while he jiggled the wires, and SMOKE BEGAN ISSUING FORTH FROM THE STEERING COLUMN. Probably a funky wiring issue in there, out of my league. Guess it's back to a roll of Bounty and a bottle of Windex...
-- Mr. Sulu
(actor George Tekai) responds to Tim Hardaway's recent anti-gay
comments, friggin' hilarious...
-- Three runners
cross the Sahara in 111 days, the
equivalent of running two
marathons per day under a scorching sun. Gatorade anyone? If
you ask me they're nucking futs. Why? Why do this? Why? I just
don't get
it.
2/20/07-- New footage of JFK's
motorcade near his final moments has been released.
Supposedly this footage is
adding some more fuel to the conspiracy theory fire, in that
Kennedy's jacket appears to be bunched up in the back. This
would make it
impossible for the entry wound in his body to match the
expected position on his coat. Don't get me going on this, I
wasn't even born yet but it
pisses me off how lame the official explanation of the
shooting is.
-- It might be the Y2K Bug redux, only
this time it'll be the
Daylight Savings Bug. This year there is a new law which moves
Daylight Savings Time to the second Sunday in March through
the first Sunday in
November. The goal is to increase daylight hours and therefore
save money on energy. That's all well and good, but our
computers might freak out
- software written before 2005 didn’t have a contingency
plan for Daylight Savings time changing on the calendar. Per Microsoft,
if you have appointments scheduled in your Outlook Calendar,
be warned that you might be late. Or early. Bottom line is if
you use your computer
to plan/schedule conference calls, meetings, etc., it might be
a good idea to pick up the phone and coordinate with the other
invitees the old
fashioned way, juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust in case...
-- All
Star Weekend has
come and gone in somewhat ho-hum fashion. West clobbered East
without really trying. A few new interesting tricks in the Dunk Contest, my favorite being Dwight Howard slapping a sticker of his
own smiling face high -- and I
mean really high -- up on the backboard while
catching and jamming an alley-oop pass from Jameer Nelson. Top
honors went to Gerald Green with a tribute to the Dee
Brown "blind man's
dunk." But I saw him peek. Best part of the Dunk Contest
was the lineup of judges: Doctor J, Dominique Wilkins, Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant, and of course $ himself. Some good sets of legs in that
bunch.
2/16/07-- And you thought YOU got
kinky on Valentine's Day, check this out...
2/15/07-- Some really amazing photoshopped
images...
-- This commercial is so sublimely awful that
I
had to watch it twice. Then I drove to Montgomery and bought a
sleeper sofa, chair and ottoman.
2/14/07-- Snowed, err, iced in.
Not exactly a blizzard, but it had the desired effect in
closing the office :)
In the spirit of this romantic holiday I have gone to
great lengths to research the top all-time movie smooches. And
no, you will not find
Rhett Butler on my list. It wasn't easy,
but here goes:
Best Overall Movie Smooch: 'Thelma &
Louise' - Michael Madsen (as
"Jimmy") lays one for the ages on Susan
Sarandon. Regrettably I couldn't find any images or video
clips, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Or go out
and rent it. Pucker
up!
Honorable Mention #1: 'Spider
Man' - Tobey
Macquire and Kirsten Dunst do it upside down in the rain.
Nicely done. Though I read in an interview that Macquire had a horrendous time filming that
scene, what with all
that water trickling into his nasal passages and all. Boo hoo.
You're getting paid millions and locking lips with Kirsten
Dunst, stop
complaining.
Honorable Mention #2:
'Some Like it Hot' - Marilyn Monroe
and Tony Curtis. Curtis said of this scene it was "like kissing
Hitler." I guess Marilyn was tough to work with at
times. Again, boo hoo. Like
most old-school Hollywood flicks, the kissers are tight-lipped
with tongues securely in their sheaths. But God I love that
scene.
And
just to round things out, I also looked into the
WORST all-time Hollywood smooch scene. This
one was very difficult indeed, but
the top honors must go to the tongue-wrestling
session between Ralph Macchio and
Elisabeth Shue at "Golf N Stuff" in the first 'Karate Kid'
(actually, forget I said "first" - as far as I'm
concerned there was only one Karate Kid). Again, I was not
able to find any photos or
film clips to back this up, but take my word for it - they
were like gagging goldfish. Poor Elisabeth Shue tries to be a good sport
about it, but you can see her subconsciously pulling back in
revulsion. This scene
affected me deeply, as I was around 13 at the time this movie
came out. And though the notion of kissing girls was still
incomprehensible, it
was something I knew I’d have to start doing soon
because everyone else was. This smooch scene set me back a
number of years and filled me
with anxiety.
Honorable Mention #1:
'The
Shining' - During a dream-like sequence Jack Nicholson
begins to make out with a
beautiful woman he found bathing in a vacant hotel room, only
to discover mid-kiss that she is actually a horrifying undead
zombie scary lady.
I've long been traumatized by this scene.
2/13/07 -- Dancers in mid-flight. Cool (via Kottke).
-- Calling for 8-12 inches of snow tonight, I'll believe it when I see it. And shovel it...
2/12/07 -- This is sick: a real life 'Flowers in the Attic' story, three girls locked up in darkness by their mother for 7 years.
-- Perhaps the best movie line of all time...
-- Fashion tips for nerds. But disregard their advice on Hawaiian shirts, those are always a good call.
-- Found ourselves with an hour or two to
kill last night and decided
to take in the Grammy show. Here is the rundown
of winners, (note that Dan
Zanes took one home for best children's album!)
and below are some random observations:
* The Police: how could
it be any other than Roxanne? When I die I want to
come back as Sting. Good as ever, hope they crank out some new
stuff...
*
Justin
Timberlake doing some strange thing, filming his face with
a video cam from about six inches away while he performs. I
don't get it, he
looks like a goldfish staring out of his bowl...
* Stevie
Wonder: I love
ya baby but damn you need to hit the gym. And why must you
tease me with just a few lines from "Overjoyed," now I need to hear
the whole thing...
* So I guess we're supposed to vote online for girl who
will sing with a duet with Timberlake... based on the five
second song snippets
they provided all three girls sound exactly the same. Guess
it'll go to whichever one is best looking...
* I'll
grudgingly admit that I'm fast running out of reasons to NOT
like John
Mayer - despite
that hairdo...
* Mayer, John Legend and Corrine Bailey Ray performing together -
SERIOUSLY excellent...
* Mary J's night it seems...
*
Lead singer for Pussycat Dolls used to be so incredibly
attactive, now she looks
like Ghandi. Why are women starving themselves (Jessica Alba anyone? Formerly
beautiful girl who looks positively haggard
nowadays)?
*
Shakira, deeeelish. Praying for a wardrobe
malfunction...
*
Gnarles Barkley dressed as Idi Amin Dada.. I just dont get
it.
* Mary J: we get it. Enough caterwauling,
please.
* Rascal Flats with a tribute to The Eagles.
A passable rendition of Hotel
California, though that was never my
favorite song of theirs... Carrie Underwood does Desperado. No. Just, no...
* Some Best New
Group nominee has birds nests and twigs in her hair, what the
hell? Trying to find a photo...
* Smokey's had a bit o' work done, eh?
* Lionel Richie soundin
good, baby... but I hate that song ("Hello"). why
not do "You are the Sun"?
* Some R&B
kids performing while
wearing scarey masks and using annoyingly energetic
syncronized dance moves, I'm getting tired just
watching...
* Christina A.'s tribute to the late great
James Brown - girl has got
some pipes, belts out "It's a Man's Man's Man's
World".
* Off to bed. Did I miss anything good?
Looks like Dixie Chicks won
the whole damn thing. Couldn't care less for their music,
but it's nice to see
them stand up to the 8 or 9 Dubya supporters left in this
country and do their thing.
2/9/07 -- Study: 1 in 150
children has autism.
-- The Big 3 compared: Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo
Mail...
-- Heeeeeere we go
again: Wardrobe malfunction redux at the Super
Bowl. Or would that be instrument
malfuction? At least Prince was sneaky about it.
2/8/07 -- Exposed: the Megapixel Myth. When
buying a digital camera, more isn't necessarily better.
-- Anna Nicole collapses and dies. Who knows
for sure what was going on with her, but it seems like she led
a tortured
existence...
-- Slate
on space sex...
-- Downtown New Orleans
phonebooks, side by side - pre and post
Katrina.
Wow...
2/7/07
-- And speaking of H.P. (see below) it
looks like our little
boy is all grown up, as is Hermione...
call me dirty for posting these, but hey - don't shoot the
messenger.
--
J. K. Rowlings: saying goodbye to H.P. has not been
easy...
-- Ok
it's official: I'm using Firefox more than Safari...
-- Had a game last night against what appeared to
be most of the Danbury High
School Varsity squad. In previous meetings they've creamed us,
but last night the old guys took 'em to overtime. We ended up
losing by 3 pts,
but it's nice to know that on some nights we can still compete
with the young cheetahs.
-- Having been forced to
endure way too many
tediously lame Powerpoint
presentations during
my professional life, I was naturally resistant to the notion
of sitting through a quick tutorial this morning on Apple's Keynote. But I must say that based on the
little bit I saw, it is an
amazing app...
2/6/07 -- Happy birthday to
the late great Uncle
Peter, the original Admiral of the Sea. We love you and
miss you.
-- Bye bye
Big Bird. Bush takes a
machete to PBS
budget. Not even Trash Gordon will be able to bail them out
of this
one...
-- Brought Aidan to
Hartford last weekend to see Dan Zanes in concert. We've become huge
fans in the past few months - fun folksy kids music that
grown-ups might be secretly
inclined to play while driving to work, even when there are no
kids in the car. Uhhhhhhhh, ummmmmm, or so I've been told...
Pictured
here is the big, errr, little guy himself (dude's about
5'3" even with that
crazy hairdo) on the other side of the glass door. We weren't
able to wade through the mob for an autograph, so that was as
close as we could
get.
Anyway, since Aidan really seems to love Dan
Zanes' music we assumed he'd have a blast at the show. But
right after the opening
number the meltdown began. Don't know if it was the applause
that bothered him or the fact that the songs had to eventually
come to an end, but
in between each song he would have a freak-out. At one point
Dan Zanes even called out "Everybody ok up there in the
balcony?"
But no matter. By the closing number Mama had him dancing
and giggling. Maybe Aidan's not the concert-going type. I'm
kind of the same way,
crowds tend to tick me off. We still had a great time and
scored some sweet DZ goodies.
2/5/07
-- I'm not the only one who thought
Prince rocked it last night, the NYT is practically
gushing...
-- Can it
be true? Have Apple and Apple FINALLY decided to 'Let
it Be' ? Ladies and
Gentlemen, after too many years of too much bs, The Beatles
may finally be coming to itunes...
-- Bloggin'
da Bowl, as events occurred:
FIRST QUARTER -
-
Possibly the worst
ever rendition of our National Anthem, compliments of
Billy Joel. What, they couldn't get Rosanne Barr?
- Dan
Marino is hot in a David Hasselhoff/Tom Selleck kind of
way...
- I'm really here
for the commercials, and so far every goddamn one is about
cars...
- Holy crap some really fast man just returned the
opening kickoff for a
TD
- The on-screen player mugshots are "live"
which forces them to sit there staring ahead blinking
awkwardly, whose idea was
that?
- Aidan and Jake are completely trashing the living
room...
- Waiting... still waiting... for a commercial
worth the eleven
trillion dollars it costs to air it during the SB...
-
Oooh, Prince
will be doing the halftime show - SUH-WEET!
- Colts
are sucking, how did they make it this far?
- Oh wait now
they're kicking
butt...
- Or are they?
SECOND QUARTER -
--
Finally a worthy commercial, Coke's "Give
a Little Love" a take-off on the uber-violent video
game Grand Theft Auto. Awesome commercial.
-- And the careerbuilder.com spot with the blowdarts
in the jungle was pretty damn funny. Ok things are looking
up.
-- Commercial
with naked men washing a car, eeewwww.
-- Bud Light face
smacking is pretty good too, ok the commercials are definitely
picking up (sorry
can't find a link to it).
-- Wild
Hogs looks really really stupid.
Seriously.
-- Seems to be a fumble every friggin' play,
who put Crisco on the damn ball?
HALFTIME -
-- Prince, I will always love you, but
tonight you look like Aunt
Jemima.
-- Helloooooooooo backup dancers...
-- Prince,
you're forgiven for wearing that thing on your head because
you are absolutely
f*cking fantastic and always will be... It's probably safe to
turn off the TV now because that was the highlight of the
night.
THIRD
QUARTER -
-- Ok the first careerbuilder.com ad was great,
now they're
overplaying their hand a bit...
FOURTH QUARTER -
-- Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
2/1/07
-- So the consumer version of Windows Vista has
been released to the public. Get your copy yet? Me neither.
Plan on upgrading anytime soon? Me neither. My advice is to
wait until at least the
first Service Pack is made available, if you absolutely
must upgrade...
-- How to do the Charleston
properly (via jkottke)
1/30/07 -- Ah, Athens... a city rich in history,
culture, beauty, and mountains of overflowing garbage...
-- America the Beautiful: Ugly
Betty (actress America Ferrara) is anything but...
-- Alright already, Netflix. Stop listing the release
date for Casino Royale as "unknown,"
you're starting to tick me off...
-- I emailed CBS Sunday Morning with a rebuttal to Ben Stein's Opinion piece from last
Sunday:
Subject: Bueller... Bueller... ?
Usually the Opinion
piece is done by Nancy Jiles, who has made no secret of her
opposition to the policies of the current administration. So
it's understandable
that CBS Sunday Morning occasionally shows arguments for
"the other side". Who better for this role than Ben
Stein - his patented
monotone delivery almost makes it seem as if he believes in
what he is saying. Because no reasonable person of sound mind
could possibly
"trust" the president to get us out of our current
abysmal situation. "Trust", Mr. Stein, is why we are
where we are
today.
Respectfully,
Jesse Leo
--
WWII Vet wins $254 million Powerball
jackpot...
-- These days a game would have to be
pretty amazing to make me
turn my back on WoW. Cyrsis just might be that
game...
1/29/07
-- Netflix
screwed up and sent us the wrong DVD. But since the errant DVD
in question happened to
be Magnum PI Season 2, you won't hear any
complaints here...
--
Seems I'm not the only one being bothered with Nigerian ebay
scams (see below, 1/8 post). Looks like this type of thing is becoming very
common. Interestingly they seem to frequently target
transactions involving computer hardware.
-- Booked
'em, Danno: to hell with
the floundering and flip-flopping we usually do when trying to
agree on a house for Block Island this September, we are
penciled in for September 8th - 15th. The old saying "If
it costs 10 cents, chances
are it ain't worth a dime" may very well apply here, for
the place we found has an almost miraculously reasonable
price. But hey, this is
Block Island - give us a place to sleep and a place to shower,
what more do we need?
-- Rockstar
Floppanova...
1/26/07 -- NASA plans to slam a rocket
into the moon for testing purposes.
This just CAN'T be a good idea. Didn't they ever watch Thudarr the
Barbarian? The entire
premise of the show is based upon cataclysmic destruction
unleashed on earth due to the moon getting whacked out of
orbit. Don't do it
!
1/25/07 -- So by
now you've probably gotten
the email spamming its way around the internet about how Barack Obama is
secretly a Muslim who wants to kill us all, and his plan is to
win the presidency so he can sneakily work his evil in the
name of Osama Bin
Laden. This is simply not accurate. But alas, the seed has
already
been planted - the simpletons who make up the voting masses
already have this embedded somewhere in the backs of their
minds. So if Obama does
beat out Hillary to run in 2008, people will take to the
polls, see his name and say to themselves: "Can't vote
for him, didn't I hear on
O'Reily
Factor that he's a Muslim? Now I'd better pull this lever
for Jeb Bush and get home in time to catch Dancing With the Stars."
--
RS Magazine: Run, Al, Run. It kinda
makes sense...
-- Come to find out my beloved News of St
John newsletter has
a podcast! For those of you who use itunes
(and you really should, it's free for
cryin' out loud), just go to the podcast directory and do a
search on "news of st john" (duh).
--
Netflix and Blockbuster
Online compared...
-- Kudos to my sister for doing a terrific job on Jake's
first haircut !
1/24/07 -- This photo appeared on the Washington Post
website, the prez sure knows how to keep the crowd alert and
interested during his State of the Union speech (thx
Marion!)...
-- Word
on the street (well, Rolling Stone magazine anyway) is that Alpha
Dog is a so-so movie at best - with one exception: Believe
it or not, Justin
Timberlake supposedly steals the show. I'm reminded of
another white boy who
broke out of a lucrative but cheesey music career a while
back: Mark Wahlberg fka
Marky Marky and the (giggle giggle) Funky Bunch. Remember it
was his amazing performance in Boogie
Nights that kick-started his career, now he commands $15
million a movie.
-- The women of WoW and their
celebrity lookalikes.
Uncanny, hilarious...
-- Big hullabaloo at
Sundance over the movie "Hounddog", which features
12-year old Dakota
Fanning in a rape scene. Challenging movie material or
child abuse?
-- 77 tips for upping the value of your
home. We'd better get
started...
1/23/07 -- Sent a letter recently
to an old client of mine from
the network consulting days. Just a "Hey how've you been?
I'm still here" kind of thing. Need to get something
going on the side - the
occasional weekend or night thing, nothing crazy. Could get an
off-hours "regular" gig at some store somewhere I
spose, but something
would bug me about that. Now I know what you're thinking, and
be assured this is not a "refusal to swallow my
pride" thing at all.
Over the years I've done more than my fair share of toiling in
the trenches and rowing with the galley slaves. But if I have
(or at least had at
one time) skills for which a respectable hourly rate could be
charged, it wouldn't make sense for me to do something for a
fraction of that rate
- especially since the value of time has tripled in the past
few years (for obvious reasons). We'll see...
--
Connery to consider appearing in next Indy
Jones
film.
1/22/07
-- Is that Jon Heder on the box for the DVD board
game Quip It?
I worried about Heder after seeing his absolutely fantastic
lead role in the instant classic Napolean Dynamite. How could he ever play
any other role - EVER? He
will always be Napolean. But in looking at his IMDB
profile, it is nice to see he
has a slew of films coming up and he's doing just fine.
-- Was reminiscing over one of the
great car commercials
of all time, "Pink Moon" made everyone want to run
out and
get a VW Cabrio. Of course the Golf "Da Da Da" commercial also
gets honorable mention...
-- List of five
Windows Vista sins. Items 1, 2 and 5 don't bother me much,
but I too have long felt that Windows search and Windows
networking (items 3 and
4) suck horribly. Sadly, It doesn't look like MS has addressed
either one of those in Vista...
-- Confirmed by my
tax guy, this is
not a myth - make sure you claim this additional credit
when you do your 2006 taxes.
-- I share my name with a younger cousin of mine. At family
gatherings in years
past I was referred to as 'Big Jesse', and he 'Little Jesse',
to make it easy to differentiate between the two of us. As
time went by those
titles became less and less relevant, and today they are
completely false. On occasion his baseball exploits landed our
name in a local
newspaper, and people at the gym would compliment me on having
had a great game. And if you're wondering whether or not I
would correct them, I
ain't tellin' ... Anyway, today the formerly 'Little' Jesse is
a new dad! And so, from one Jesse Leo to another,
congrats!
-- Today is
Blue Monday. Supposedly on this particular
day we will reach the pinnacle of our depression due to the
combination of
miserably cold weather, unpaid holiday debts, etc. And come to
think of it, I was feeling a bit down this morning.
Maybe because Aidan
kept me up most of the night. Or maybe because this time last
year we were on St. John, and it doesn't look like we'll
be back there any time in the near or even distant future (and
the Jimmy
Buffett music playing on itunes isn't helping, it's like
he's rubbing it in and
saying "Nyaaa nyaaaa, I made $40 million last year and I
fly my aquatic plane all around the Carribbean and you don't,
nyaaa
nyaaaa..."). Or maybe it's because my favorite travel
coffee mug broke this morning. Whatever the case, there is
some comfort knowing that
the feeling won't get any worse. A very, very small amount of
comfort...
-- Visited Kid City over the weekend, all kinds of
good stuff to play with (like the VW Bug pictured here)! Room after room of caves, slides,
crawlways, books, nooks/crannies to hide in, make-believe
kitchens, restaurants,
giant model train tracks... where was this stuff when I was a
kid?
1/19/07
-- Google Maps satellite image of Amazonian
deforestation. Sobering...
--
Powerball reaches $205 million. See you on the
beach...
-- Researchers receive grant to create Autism database.
-- Latest guilty
pleasure: HBO's Entourage. I don't know why, but I'm
secretly enjoying it (via Netflix) a little more than any reasonable
person should...
-- Though I've only had time to scratch the surface of
the new stuff, my initial review of the Burning Crusade Expansion (see 1/16/07
post below) is a rousing thumbs
up. New critters. New abilities. New dungeons. New missions.
Overall it has given the game a much-needed kick in the pants.
Oh, and the big
baddie in the picture (click here)?
Took him down, lickety-split :)
1/18/07 -- Everything you ever needed to know about
the presidential limo.
-- The WSJ
reviews Windows Vista: a worthy, but largely unexciting,
product.
-- Beware the Nigerian Email Ebay
Scam. Yes, this is
different from the Nigerian Email Scam mentioned below in my
1/3
post. I was selling my old PC on ebay, and the winning bid
went to a guy from the UK. Although I specified US ONLY on the
auction page I figure
I'd be a swell guy and allow the sale, so long as he was
willing to pay additional shipping. Plus I've been anxious to
get rid of the damn
thing. Next day I get an email asking if I could - get this -
send it to his son-in-law in Nigeria. He indicated that he was
willing to pay an
additional $150 for shipping. Of course at that moment I knew
something was fishy, but played along - I was curious to see
if any money would
actually make it to my Paypal account. Hours later this bogus
Paypal email arrives. Look
closely at the fine print, the funds weren't to make it to
Paypal until I had already shipped the item! Also
note the phoney baloney
sender email address. Do people actually fall for this crap? I
reported him to Paypal, and ebay is refunding my listing fees.
Anyone wanna buy a
PC? US BIDDERS ONLY, PLEASE.
1/17/07 -- Happy Birthday
Mother! Grandma
extraordinaire, professional vacationer, peerless quiche
creator, tireless planner &
zoner... 49 never looked so good !
We love you, all
of us. See you tonight!
1/16/07 -- Things continue to heat up in Greenland: new islands are being
exposed as global warming melts the ice away.
--
Adult film star Jenna Jameson has selected actress Scarlett
Johansson to play the lead
role in a film adaptation of her autobiographical book,
"How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary
Tale." I don't know where
to begin, so I'll leave this one with a ...
-- Looks
like Obama will be officially running in 2008.
Here's my bold prediction: it will come down to Hillary vs. McCain,
with
McCain taking it all. You heard it here first.
-- Netflix to
offer subscribers the ability to stream movies to their
computers. Get used to this sort of thing, folks. Over the
next few years the
computer will be come the centerpiece of home
entertainment.
-- Big day for WoW players, the long-awaited Burning Crusade
Expansion Pack has finally been released. It will supposedly
offer loads of new game content for higher level characters
(like my beloved shaman named
Agador). They will also be introducing two new races: Blood Elves and the Draenei. I pre-ordered my copy a while
back, of course, but am
not in any big rush. Many of my in-game buddies are planning a
mad dash to get to all the new stuff, but not me. The plan is
to enjoy and
appreciate the new content at a leisurely rate as time
permits. Kill some bad guys, find some nice loot, enjoy the
new scenery. I may even give
Aggy a rest and mess around with the aforementioned new
character races. A game is supposed to be fun, right? A few
players that I've spoken to
seem to have lost sight of this.
1/15/07 --
Eeewwww, Hussein's brother hanged
yesterday and was **gulp** accidentally
beheaded.
-- MLK Day: take some time today to watch and listen. If you don't have time,
make
time.
1/12/07
-- Won't be long now, our boy will don
his backpack and
Thomas the Tank Engine sneakers and head off to school.
February, in fact. Our little guy, all growed up
:(
1/11/07 -- After the recent
demise of Scooby-Doo creator Iwao
Takamoto, Slate takes a look at the enduring legacy of his
wondrous creation. Did you know
that Shaggy's actual name is Norville Rogers? And did you know
that Scooby-Doo is the longest-running cartoon franchise in
history? My favorite
episode would have to be the one where the kids foil
a plot by the villain to use a local ghost legend to scare
people away while he
makes off with the treasure. Oh, wait...
-- Update:
Becks to sign with an LA team. Hopefully
this will help this great sport gain some recognition on this
side of the
globe...
-- Confirmed: Peter Jackson will have no
involvement in the 'Hobbit' movie, nor any other New Line
Cinema film ever again. **Snort** Then I'll pass on seeing
it.
-- So
Dubya went on national TV last night to pitch his new
"Surge" plan for Iraq, sending some 21K
additional kids. So as I understand, the details of this new
plan are:
1) Send 21,000
more soldiers
2) ?
3) Peace in the Middle East
-- Forget June Cleaver, Lily Munster was my favorite TV mom when I
was a kid. Actress Yvonne De Carlo died yesterday at 84, sad stuff. I always
loved the way she
wouldn't take any crap from her 8-foot husband, and positively
refused to let him leave for work without a peck on the
cheek.
1/10/07 -- Reality check: Painful though it is to
admit, I'm probably not gonna be able
to swing a new iPhone. At least not right away. But by
the numbers it would be around
$150 or so to break free of my Verizon contract manacles. Then
there's $499 for the iPhone itself with a Cingular contract,
not even sure if
that would be a family plan or just for me. Plus my Better
Half would probably need a new phone as well. Tally it all up
and it's not looking
good. But who knows? Maybe I'll win tonight's Powerball
or something...
-- Becks
to leave Real Madrid...
-- The Perfect Storm.
1/9/07 -- They've done it again.
Today Apple announced their partnership with Cingular and
unveiled iPhone, which looks simply amazing. Now
how to get out of my wretched contract
with the criminals at Verizon?
-- Today is all about
Apple, as
the long-anticipated
MacWorld San Francisco 2007 kicks off in a
few hours. Traditionally MacWorld
is the scene of major product announcements from Apple. In
years past this has included the unveling of the iMac, OSX, and some little music
player thingy that everyone and their
mom now carries around - what are those things called again?
During the weeks leading up to the event Apple is extremely
hush hush, and this
year the rumors are flying about numerous nifty
gadgets that I simply must have. If you
are geeky enough (and I hope you are) to require a blow by
blow live feed of MacWorld coverage and announcements, click
here.
Steve Jobs will be donning his trademark
tattered jeans, running sneaks
and black turtleneck at high noon Pacific Time, stay
tuned.
1/8/07
--
Bad Call! So yesterday we're playing this
team that has whumped us pretty much every time we've ever
played them (basketball)
over the years. A collection of young studs in the prime of
life (them) vs. a rag-tag gathering of aging has-beens (us).
But some of our guys
caught fire. Shooting the lights out. Passing well.
Rebounding. Boxing out. With a few minutes left we were up by
5. But then, a Series of
Unfortunate Events ensued. A defensive let-down enabled them
to creep to within 1. Then it was tied. With a minute to go
our team clanked THREE,
count them THREE foul shots! Then, with two ticks left, a
young stallion of a point guard on their squad hit a tough
fade-away shot to put them
up by 2.
What happened next was surreal. With about 2
seconds left we were inbounding the ball from under our own
basket. Had to be a
long pass down court, not enough time for anything else. I ran
kind of like a post pattern down the side line, hoping for a
hail mary of a pass
to catch, maybe take one dribble, then hit the heroic
buzzer-beater 3-pointer everbody dreams about while practicing
in their driveway. Not that
we had a driveway -- or a hoop -- where I grew up. But I
digress. Anyway, the long pass was not quite long enough. The
stallion guard on their
team jumped up and got a hand on it, deflecting the ball out
of bounds. PERFECT! We retained possession, did not use up any
clock time, and now
we get the ball around half court! We might just pull this off
after all. But no. Ref neither saw nor heard the ball deflect
off the kid's hand,
even though everyone else in the building did. In his view the
ball simply sailed out of bounds on its own, bad guys' ball.
Game, set, match.
Nooooooooooooooo!
Ah well, the ref blew it. But it's
not entirely his fault. We gave the game away, can't miss
those free throws. Gotta
stay focused. But there is one thing I felt good about on a
personal level. Despite playing a fairly crappy game overall,
I really wanted to
take that shot at the buzzer. That is huge. And it might not
have been the case a few years ago. And ya know what? I would
have made it. No
question.
-- Don't walk, RUN!
Killer bees found in Nawlins.
--
By far the coolest gift I received for Christmas is a pair of
lightsabers that make cool sounds when
activated and swung around. They even make a
clash sound when you strike or parry, very cool. Just
hope the batteries don't die mid-duel, I could find myself
with a severed hand a
la Empire Strikes Back...
1/5/07
-- Follow-up to the NYC Subway hero story
(see 1/4 post), he was given a
civic award by the city, a year's worth of free subway use,
and ten grand from the Donald himself!
-- So yeah, I
opted to go with MS Trebuchet for this 2007 site. Say what
you
will about Microsoft,
but they've invented two of my favorite fonts: Trebuchet
(what's not to like about a font named after a medieval siege weapon?) and the
tried-and-true classic, Verdana.
Also went with a soft
purple background (#CC99CC
hex code for you web nerds out there). However, this color has
been met with some opposition and will probably be changed
when I get around to
it. Or maybe I'll just constantly change it every so often
based on how I'm feeling, a mood ring of sorts.
For
months I'd been
considering a really radical facelift for the overall look and
feel of the site. But when it came down to it I just didn't
have the time for
re-inventing the wheel. Lets face it, I'm not going to win any
web design awards here :) But the current lame-ass layout
(while getting a bit
long in the tooth) is easy on the eyes, loads quickly in the
browser, and I can post/upload in a hurry.
1/4/07 -- Hero time - NY man jumps onto train tracks to
save another man's
life, flattening their bodies to the tracks as the train
passes over, missing them by inches.
-- The somewhat
outdated idic(15)
(which now seems to be named chromosome 15q syndrome) website
has recently been given a terrific upgrade. It's now a rich
warehouse for info, ideas and contacts. While cruising around
the physical attributes section who should we
find, none other than our
handsome Duppy Conqueror himself (pictured as an example of
the epicanthal folds sometimes found near the eyes).
-- Incredibly cool 3-D artwork...
-- eBayers beware,
price hike going into effect for
2007...
-- Holy
mackerel! Japan's oldest person turns 114
today and she's
still going strong...
1/3/07 -- Sad, sad tale of a jackass
who actually fell for the Nigerian Email Scam...
--Don't trifle
with a praying mantis, check
this out...
-- No, Freckles, don't go! We'll stop hassling you!
1/2/07 -- Best album covers of all time. I have most of these.
-- CONFIRMED: filming of a 4th
Indiana Jones movie underway! I knew there was a reason I
got out of bed
today. How will a 64-year old Harrison Ford look in the old gear? Will
he
still be able to dodge arrows, avoid dungeon traps and kick
butt? Perhaps Indy himself said it best in Raiders of the
Lost Ark:
"It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage."
-- Back at work today, trying to dig my way out of this
hole. Amazing how
stuff piles up during the break... So much to recap here,
hopefully I'll get around to it in the next day or two. Plus,
I need to do my usual
end of year purge/archive of the 2006 jesseleo.com and come up
with a catchy color/font scheme for '07. Any
suggestions?