December 2005 Archives
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Originally uploaded by Big DC.
Jesus bobblehead
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Originally uploaded by Big DC.
Who's taping FSN? Ellie's on TV!
Bruce Schneier, security expert, is definitely someone smarter than me. He's now weighed in against the NSA surveillance program with an editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. In it, he argues that President Bush has now established a dictatorial rule in the United States. My favorite chilling quote: "If the president can ignore laws regulating surveillance and wiretapping, why is Congress bothering to debate reauthorizing certain provisions of the Patriot Act? Any debate over laws is predicated on the belief that the executive branch will follow the law."
There's two ways to take the title of that post: the Johnny Carson intro version, or the Jack Nicholson in "The Shining" version. I imagine there's people on either side. I'm going to go for the former though.
4 years, $52 million. That works out to $13 million a year. It's more than I would have liked to pay, but all things considered, it's not horrible. After all, Bernie Williams made almost $12.5 million in the same position last year, and Damon has to be an upgrade both offensively and defensively. With the price tags of the other possible centerfielders far too high, I think the Yankees did pretty well with this deal.
Oh, and don't forget they also signed Octavio Dotel. That guy could be good if he's able to recover from his surgery. Lord knows that Yankees need help in that bullpen.
I hate to jinx myself, but our men's curling team is really good. We put the team together to compete for the Francis Dykes Bonspiel, which is a regional bonspiel for curlers with less than 5 years of experience. I actually play lead, which, like many people, is the position I first learned to play. I actually enjoy playing this spot as I have pretty good draw weight (leads play guards for the most part), and I'm the main sweeper for the rest of the rocks. This means that I'm pretty much in charge of deciding if a rock needs to be swept or not, and I've been getting pretty good at that too.
Last night, our team won fairly easily. The opposing team only managed a single point in each of their three scoring ends, and we took 3 and 4 points in our two big ends, and wound up winning 9-3. We played very well the whole time, never allowing the other team the chance to score a lot of points, and giving ourselves plenty of chances to score big (we actually had a chance at 5 points, but our skip sailed a draw through the house leaving us "only" 4 points instead).
I'm definitely looking forward to the big bonspiel. It's being held at our own club this year, from February 9th - 12th. It would be awesome to win the trophy in front of the home crowd.
Daniel Negreanu is jumping onto the Apprentice bandwagon, offering poker players a chance to become his "protege." It's actually a pretty sweet deal if you manage to win, 4 $10k entries into major poker tournaments for starters. The catch is that qualifying can get tricky. There are ten ways to qualify, but most of them involve wading your way through basically a freeroll tournament with thousands of players. And then you are only one of ten finalists!
Still an interesting ploy. Whether you think it's worth it to be Daniel Negreanu's protege is up to you. For him, it's a can't-miss proposition. Anyone who manages to survive all the qualifying events is going to be a solid player already, and Daniel will probably look like a genius.
President Bush continues to assert that his authorization of an NSA progam to spy on people inside the US without a court order of any kind is legal. The Attorney General Alberto Gonzales points to the resolution authorizing force passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, saying it "implicitly" allows such actions. But then there's also this quote from the Washington Post article:
"This is not a backdoor approach," Gonzales said at the White House. "We believe Congress has authorized this kind of surveillance." He acknowledged that the administration discussed introducing legislation explicitly permitting such domestic spying but decided against it because it "would be difficult, if not impossible" to pass.
So Congress implicitly authorized it, but if they had to vote on explicitly permitting it, it would not pass? Sounds to me like he's admitting that Congress intended no such thing, and the fact that they're scheduling hearings on the program confirms that.
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III has just ruled that "Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in the Pennsylvania public school district of Dover. I think this quote about sums up the entire affair:
"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."
The DC Council again postponed a vote on the stadium lease for the Washington Nationals. I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to call them the Washington Nationals. They may not be around much longer at this rate. Frankly, it shouldn't be a surprise. The council managed to push through a preliminary agreement before the newly elected members took office. Now, those new members are likely to vote against the lease agreement, scuttling the whole deal. Faced with this pressure, Mayor Williams asked to postpone the vote to change the lease language, AGAIN. Good lord man, if you couldn't get 7 votes up until now, I'm not sure what makes you think any changes you make now will matter.
The Nationals are already on the verge of turning into the Expos again next year. The novelty of having a team again is wearing off, and the team is not able to sign free agents without ownership or a stadium deal in place. It's a far cry from a year ago, when I was celebrating baseball coming back to DC. I only hope they can salvage something quickly and keep it here.
Target is now apparently selling "Holiday trees". I understand some points of political correctness, saying Happy Holidays, having holiday sales, etc. But you don't see them selling menorahs and calling them "holiday candelabras", do you? So why call a Christmas tree a holiday tree? It's pointless.
That said, that is the extent of my agreement with the zealots fighting the war on Christmas. Target and everyone else should run holiday sales, not Christmas sales, if they feel like it. As the Washington Post article indicates, much of the criticism leveled by Bill O'Reilly and the like is horrendously misplaced. A children's play did NOT change the words to Silent Night, the play says Christmas several times throughout, and the song just uses the tune of Silent Night that a lonely Christmas tree sings. There are plenty of other examples, but any apologies from the "fair and balanced" host? Not a chance. It's all about the anger.
Well, here's something that should make them angry: Christmas is a made up holiday that the Christians set at December 25th so that they could usurp the pagan festival of Saturnalia. Early Puritans in America even banned the holiday because of its link to the pagan holiday! There's lots more in the article, so I highly suggest reading it.
And none of this will stop me from celebrating Christmas this year, and I don't think it'll stop anyone else either. But it's darned close to driving me to celebrate Festivus instead. "A Festivus for the rest of us!"
This was a weekend of all types of scoring. First off, my fantasy football team, led by the mighty Tiki Barber (they should have been chanting M-V-P!), was the high scorer this week. I had Tiki, Rudi Johnson, and Steve Smith leading the way for me, as they have all year long. I'm in the Fantasy Super Bowl this weekend!
The just-right score was the Giants pulling out a big victory over the Chiefs. A much bigger game this weekend, when they face the Redskins in Washington on Saturday. Unfortunately, the one time I actually want to watch the Redskins on TV, we'll be in Detroit, where they will be showing the Lions against the Saints. I may have to find a sports bar to watch the game... One thing I have to say that I like about the Giants this year is their commitment to running the ball. Tiki had only gained about 20 yards on his first 10 carries on Saturday, but they kept giving it to him, and he rewarded them with some nice long runs as the game went on. It's very important for them to do that, because Eli still seems to be learning. Seriously Eli, another pick at the 2 yard line? You gotta stop doing that buddy, you're taking points off the board every time you throw an interception in the red zone (technically, he threw that INT when they were at the 30, but you get the idea).
Finally, the low score was for the other team in our curling game last night. My team finally had our thrid regular player, Jennifer. She's very good, which was a nice surprise. We also had a guy subbing for us as vice who is very good. He helped me a lot on some shot calls. I tend to be more conservative, but he convinced me several times to play more aggressively, because we were doing well at pressuring the other team into very difficult shots, which they just weren't able to make. We never had the hammer (last rock) in any end, and we stole 3 in the first end to go on to a 8-0 win, quitting after six ends. And all this after I left my curling stuff at home and had to use a borrowed broom and slider. I should forget my stuff every week!
We also got to see the baby panda yesterday. It was a close call though. Our tickets were for 11:40, but we showed up early to see the elephants get a bath. Our friend from around the corner is a member of the Friends of the National Zoo, so she knows all the ins and outs of the zoo. She informed us that at 10am, they give the elephants a bath, so we thought that would be a great idea. We got there about 10 after 10am, and it looked like we were too late, as they were turning off one of the hoses. But we stuck around a little while, and lucky us, they started giving the baby (well, 4 year old) elephant a bath. Ellie was mesmerized. The handlers got the elephant to lie down and expose his belly so they could scrub all over, and it was very entertaining.
We wandered over to see the panda parents outside eating their bamboo breakfast, and Ellie was getting really excited about seeing the baby panda. We were planning to meet our neighbors there, but their son came down with croup on Saturday, so they had to bail out. Instead, we met some random people there who were able to take their spots. We still had some time to kill after that though, and wandered up to see the emu, the maned wolf, the zebra, and the baby cheetahs (they're about a year old now). FYI, the maned wolf's urine smells awful, like skunk. Apparently they're really big into marking their territory. Yech!
We got in line around 11:15am, and not long after that, we were ushered under a white canopy to wait for our turn. The twin boys who were going to see the panda with us entertained us with their song and dance, and then it was time to go in. Only there was no panda. Apparently he had gone back into his den as the last group was leaving. It's one of those random things, they can't guarantee that he'll be there to see. Luckily for us though, they allowed a handler to come out and try to coax the panda to play. The panda didn't want to come out though, so the handler just picked him up and brought him out to play. Hilarious little guy, but I felt bad that they had to drag him out to show us. Little Butterstick still isn't quite sure of himself on the rocks, and tumbles around quite a bit. He's actually smaller than I thought he would be, even though he weighs in at 40 pounds now. Not long after that, our ten minutes were up, and the next group came in.
The mix is done. It should be in the mail to those who requested it as we speak. For those who didn't request it, I did a lot of research and found that a lot of the music was available in one form or another for free! Here's the track list, fully linked to artist websites, including MP3 downloads where available, and albums from Amazon.com.
Verbal - Come Clean from The Name We Sell Now: My cousin's band. He'll hate the fact that I picked the only song that has words (they're an instrumental band, naming it Verbal is ironic).
Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #2 (Laika) from Funeral
The Go! Team - Bottle Rocket from Thunder, Lightning, Strike
MC Frontalot - Message No. 419 from Nerdcore Rising: Geeks rapping about Nigerian scammers. Can't beat that.
MIA - Galang (video) from Arular
Danger Doom - Sofa King from The Mouse and The Mask
Blackalicious - Powers from The Craft
Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict A Riot from Employment
System of a Down - B.Y.O.B. from Mezmerize
The National - Abel (video) from Alligator
The Hold Steady - Your Little Hoodrat Friend from Separation Sunday
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema from Twin Cinema
The Decemberists - 16 Military Wives (video) from Picaresque
Of Montreal - Forecast Fascist Future from The Sunlandic Twins
Harvey Danger - Little Round Mirrors from Little by Little (full album download!): Heard them first on KEXP's podcast and really liked this song. Then I found out that they had that song a while back "Flagpole Sitta" ("I'm not sick but I'm not well, And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell... Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding", etc.). This could be their comeback from one-hit wonder status.
Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr. from Illinois
Iron and Wine/Calexico - He Lays in the Reins from In The Reins
Spoon - I Summon You (demo version MP3) from Gimme Fiction
If you've been to a concert recently, you may have noticed that the kids today are holding up their glowing cellphones instead of lighters, like us old fogies used to do. Now, the best of both worlds: Lighter Cellphone Wallpaper. Wallpaper for your cellphone that makes it look like a lighter. Too funny.
A article in the New York Times today says the NSA spies on US calls, and that emails are intercepted without warrants. Apparently the President said they could do this without getting approval from an already secret court, in the interest of speeding things along so that no bad guys got away. Stuff like this is exactly why I argued that Congress should have killed the Patriot Act.
Update: The Senate picked a bad day to schedule the vote on renewing the Patriot Act. The expiring parts were rejected 52-47 today.
Surprisingly, the weather wasn't horrible last night. The forecasters actually got one right, and the snow and sleet turned to rain before rush hour, allowing me to get home without much trouble. And now it's a beautiful day outside. The temperatures are warming up even more.
Inside, work is keeping me busy, and I'm looking forward to the weekend. The Giants play KC tomorrow afternoon, and we'll actually get the game since they play on Saturday. We're also going to see the baby panda on Sunday morning. We were one of the lucky ones who snagged tickets, and we're going with our neighbors across the street. And we're only a week away from Christmas! Hard to believe. I just realized that now, as I looked at the calendar and saw it. We're heading up to Michigan again this year and we'll be pretty busy up there too, visiting with friends and such. We're also going to an MSU hockey game at Joe Louis Arena, which I know Ellie is looking forward to. Apparently we have two extra tickets too, so if anyone wants to go, it's Thursday, December 29 at 4:30 pm. Let me know! She loves to watch the hockey practice in the arena next to the curling club. Of course, she especially likes to watch the Zamboni. The driver knows her now and gives a little toot on the horn and waves as he passes by. She loves it.
We're currently getting snow dumped on us like crazy. It's supposed to gradually start to turn into freezing rain, then rain, as the day goes on and the temperature warms up. It could make for one ugly commute home. I think I'll be sticking to the back roads, trying to avoid the traffic.
My fantasy football team is in the playoffs, but the situation is grim. My starting quarterback looks to be Charlie Frye, and I may have to play rookie Cedric Houston at the "flex" position. My opponent has Larry Johnson, among others, giving me more reason to cheer hard for my Giants this weekend.
The baseball stadium situation is looking equally grim. With a mayoral election rapidly approaching, and the entire city council being candidates, the jockeying is getting crazy. Each person is weighing their decision with how it will affect their election chances. I hope they just build the damn thing where they originally planned. Yes, they got screwed by getting no help from MLB, but the location could seriously get revived witha stadium nearby, just like the MCI Center area has been.
Looks like the snow is slowing down now. Hopefully the weather doesn't get too horrible.
I'm so ticked that I never found out about this before: The Centrifugal Force Car. Perfect for toddlers. Anyone who has one, or even who has seen one in action, knows that they randomly move steering wheels just back and forth, with no regard for what that motion is actually doing. This car uses that back and forth motion to propel itself forward. The worrisome part is that there's no indication of how to actually steer, if they were that advanced. Also, they say "breaking [sic] is as simple as ceasing the steering wheel motion and placing feet on the ground." That worries me because I doubt that some toddlers would be that smart. But the top speed is 8 feet per second, so parents should be able to keep up too. Fun! Too bad it's sold out. Boo!
(Spoilers ahead: for those who haven't watched the season finale, stop reading now. I will reveal the winners)
It was an interesting premise: take families, instead of two people, and send them out on The Amazing Race. Good in concept, bad in execution. The producers unfortunately kept the race mainly in the United States, and the worst communication gaps the teams had to deal with was Spanish in Costa Rica (mainly at an American resort area) and French in Montreal. But seriously, it's not hard to find English speakers in either place, especially not Montreal, in spite of what some teams thought (and why were they still trying to speak French to people in Toronto???). Instead, it ended up being a huge roadtrip from hell, as judged by the multiple "production errors," in which the cameramen drained the batteries on two SUVs, causing teams to fall behind.
I enjoyed the last episode's curling challenge. The teams did very well getting their rocks into the house. Not what I would call skill shots, especially since most of them were just using all arms to fling them down there (I really don't use my arms at all, not the way they did, it's all leg drive, but some "old school" curlers do the backswing for rhythm more than anything), but they did well at any rate. Great plug by the Linz brother, who kept saying how he could go curling all day long, and he was going to find a club in Cincinnati as soon as he got home.
Very exciting end too, having to finish the geography puzzle under duress with both teams arriving at almost the same time. Thank God the Weavers didn't win. Yes, the show set them up as the bad guys, but I just didn't like them at all, especially the women. Rolly seemed okay, even if he acted his age at times. But the others got on my nerves with their hypocrisy. There's also a video of an additional contest that they ran after the race between the second and third place teams (Bransens and Weavers) on the CBS website. Pretty cool challenge: they had to find icons from the race, and place them on a map of where they occurred.
Thankfully, the next edition of the Amazing Race will be back to two people on a team. I'm already rooting for the geeks to win it all. How could I not?
Two photo galleries for your hump day amusement. First, the Scared of Santa gallery. Poor kids. Some of those Santas are really scary! Second, the Gizmodo "Portrait of the Reader as a Young Dork" contest. There will be more to come in this one, I'm sure.
Lisa actually made Pumpkin Ginger cake a couple of weeks ago for her choir group and I forgot to report back on it. I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin products, as I've mentioned before. Pumpkin spices, fine, pumpkin itself, not so much (although I do like squash/pumpkin soup for some reason). So I didn't really care for this cake all that much. But Lisa reported that it was a hot seller at "Cafe Soprano", the fundraiser for the soprano section of her choir. So I'm guessing it was a success.
Next up is peanut butter cookies, I think, since the lemon recipe requires the lemon peel to sit in sugar for 5 days. And now I'm all caught up on the recipes. Lisa promises that there will be Lemon-Poppyseed cake for me to bring in to work next week to placate the co-workers, and I'm think there might just be cookies too. She's trying to get through these recipes quickly because after that is Rum, followed by Spice, both of which seem very appropriate for the holidays.
Lisa's been sleeping on my side of the bed lately, because her shoulder has been hurting, and her theory is that it's because we sometimes bring Ellie to bed with us if she wakes up at night, and she lies on that shoulder to face Ellie. For me, this means that I've actually been getting up when the alarm goes off, because it's on the other side of the bed now, and I can't just hit snooze. Yeah, I know, I should just move the clock... But it's actually kinda nice to get up and not be rushed.
The downside is that we had another late night of curling last night. I got home and was able to have dinner, play with Ellie, and give her a bath before I had to head out to the curling club. Our game started about 9:15, and we actually moved pretty quickly. We gave up a point in the first end, on an unfortunate "pick" (when the rock picks up something, a piece of fuzz, or a weird spot of ice, it can "pick", or change direction very suddenly, screwing up your shot). But after that we took two in the second end, and kept the pressure on the other team, stealing points in each of the next 4 ends. The other skip was pretty frustrated, so he called it after only 6 ends. That mercifully allowed me to crawl into bed just before midnight.
I'm printing out CD covers for the mix as we speak, so they should get in the mail soon. It might not be quite in time for Christmas, but I will do my best.
It would be hard not to love Mocha bars. Unfortunately for the guys at work, we loved them too much to share and kept them all to ourselves at home. They're essentially brownies, with a little bit of coffee flavor. Very yummy, as expected, hard to screw up brownies frankly.
Sorry for the short review, I'm trying to catch up on the reviews. Plus, as I say, it's hard to screw this one up.
Next up is ginger.
Lavish Cinnamon Brunch Cake invites high expectations just from its title. So naturally, I didn't think it really lived up to the expectations. I'm pretty picky when it comes to anything resembling crumb cake, you know the type, with streusel topping, etc. My favorites are the Drake coffee cakes and the Krusteaz box mix. This was decent certainly, but nothing to write home about.
Lisa skipped the Coconut recipe, since the chocolate recipe she just did had coconut. So next up is coffee and mocha.
Busy busy. I didn't have a chance to update the web page at all on Friday, because I was offsite helping another project most of the day. I don't think I missed anything important. It snowed here on Thursday night, and this time it actually stuck. I'm wondering now what they are going to do with all the leaves they never got around to picking up off the curbs!
Saturday was the day of 1000 birthday parties. OK, only 2, but it seemed like more than that because we were rushing around so much. It was Ryan Foos' first birthday. He was pretty quiet, but I guess that's to be expected with 1000 other kids running around and you can only crawl. It took a while for him to warm up, but he eventually got into his cake and got a bit messy. Luckily the frosting was white, so he was nowhere near as bad as Ellie is. The highlight for me was watching a little basketball in HD. Unfortunately, it was just Cal/Kansas, but it was still cool.
We drove back towards home and dropped Lisa off to get her hair cut. She had her big choir concert later that night. Ellie of course fell asleep, so I ended up sitting in the car with her, waiting for Lisa to get done. Then it was off to our neighbor, Brendan's third birthday party. This one was more laid back, only a few kids running around. But then Brendan opened his presents and found the loudest helicopter ever made. Thank goodness Ellie doesn't have anything like that! Really obnoxious with flashing lights and the whole nine yards.
Lisa ran off to her concert, and we stayed at the party a little longer and had some daddy-daughter time together that night (we thought it would be a little much to do two birthday parties and the concert in one day). I would have thought Ellie would be all tuckered out, but she managed to just barely stay awake until Lisa got home to put her to bed.
Sunday was much less busy, but still felt rushed. We slept in a bit and were so lazy that Ellie never got out of her jammies until after her afternoon nap. Lisa went grocery shopping while Ellie and I stayed home and played. The checkout person was really slow, so we had to rush out the door to get to curling. We showed up just a tad bit late, and my team was already down 2-0. Not good. Our subs this week had a bit of trouble hitting our shots, and just weren't quite as strong sweepers as I am used to, causing me to just narrowly miss some important shots. We only ended up losing 7-3, but those little misses killed us. Speaking of tiny misses, I got to watch a tape of the Canadian Olympic Trials final yesterday too. Brad Gushue and Jeff Stoughton played some high level curling, back and forth for the full ten ends. The difference came down to one rock rolling just enough to the outside to not quite touch the rings (it was literally about a millimeter out). Congrats to Brad Gushue, who will represent Canada in the Olympics.
I also watched a little bit of the curling that they had on NBC. The Olympic teams for the USA were playing each other in a Skins game, and the men pretty much crushed the women. It wasn't too exciting to watch; I find it hard to follow when they jump right to the skip rocks without showing how they got to that point. Hopefully their Olympic coverage will be better and show the whole games.
One last curling thing, I promise. In the previews for the season finale of The Amazing Race (best reality show on TV), it appears that one of the challenges for the families will be curling! Not sure if this means they'll be going to Canada, or just North Dakota or something (the last pit stop was in Montana, I think). It should be amusing if for no other reason than they make them all wear helmets so that they don't hit their heads on the ice!
A new survey is out from Scientific-Atlanta (the set-top box maker, so the results are a little skewed) about HDTV. In essence, it says that 23% of people think that they're watching HDTV when they're not, because "a message at the beginning of the programs they watch tells them that those programs are being broadcast in HD." Almost half the people weren't taking full advantage of HD (which by their definition means they didn't buy special equipment to watch HD, so it may not be 100% accurate).
These people are exactly my in-laws. They got a new HDTV the last time I went over there. They actually got the special box from the cable company, but were still watching (badly stretched) standard definition TV, not realizing that the HD channel was down the dial. I ended up watching a BBC concert on PBS, just to watch something in HD, but I'm still not sure if they figured it out. You can be sure that when we visit for Christmas, we'll be watching the HD version.
The Good: "A Christmas Story" in 30 seconds, as told by bunnies.
The Bad: Disney's updated version of Winnie the Pooh will give "a breath of fresh air" to the classic by turning Christopher Robin into a girl! It wasn't bad enough to take the Milne stories and Disney-fy them, they have to Disney-fy the Disney version. Ugh.
The Ugly: "A Christmas Gory": a spoof trailer of "A Christmas Story", if it was released as a horror movie. No actual gore, just humor.
Holy cow! The Nats actually made a trade! I'm in shock right now. They traded Brad Wilkerson, Terrmel Sledge and Armando Galarraga for Alfonso Soriano. Huge, huge deal. The Nats will now have some big power to help Jose Guillen in the middle of the order (let's face it, Vinny Castilla wasn't cutting it). It will hurt to lose Wilkerson though. He was a big part of the Nats' success early in the year, but he was striking out way too much toward the end of the year (and yes, I realize Soriano will strike out just as much, but he won't be leading off or hitting second). Since the Nats have Jose Vidro at second base already, it seems that Soriano may get shifted to the outfield, especially since Wilkerson and Sledge, both outfielders, will be gone.
The Nats have had trouble making deals with free agents this offseason, partially due to the money that starting pitchers are commanding, and partially due to the unsettled ownership situation (wake up baseball! Give us an owner now!). It's good to see that they were able to make this deal in spite of all that, and in spite of Jim Bowden's equally uncertain status (he's interviewed with Boston, and is only under contract through January). The Nationals should now have their starting infield set, with Vinny Castilla being traded away, Ryan Zimmerman will step in at third base, and two of their three outfielders in Soriano and Jose Guillen. So, like most teams, they're looking for a centerfielder/leadoff man. They will probably have to get by with Ryan Church and/or Marlon Byrd, as their most pressing need now is starting pitching, and lots of it.
So last night, I was putting together the mix CD, and thought that it might be a good idea to add some of the CDs to my Media Manager queue so that I could easily link them up all pretty when the time came. Did you say "easily"? Not so fast my friend.
For some unknown reason, Media Manager keeps giving me an error:
"Could not find Error retreiving Amazon info: in at lib/MediaManager/Util.pm line 66"
This of course is what I like to call a completely useless fucking error. So I decided to reinstall it. Oops, say goodbye to all the items you had saved. So I tediously go through and reload all of them again, even re-linking up the reviews. Finally, it appears I'm done, but it's so late that I decide to go to bed rather than add the CDs from the Mix.
This morning I get in to work, and the same damned error happens again. I can't see any of the items in my queue. This time though, I got smart and saved the database tables that contain the data I need. I reinstall again, then try to restore the data, and nothing works again. Eventually, I think I managed to delete one troublesome item from the list, but I'm not entirely sure that it was the problem after all. I've left a comment on the developer's web page, so we'll see what happens from there. It's stuff like this that really annoys me. Hopefully I can get something figured out before I have to update any other items in the queue (I'm almost done with my latest book, so it may be sooner rather than later).
Update: Got an email from the developer, not too long after I left the comment, and he's pretty cool about it. Hopefully we can figure out the solution...
Another big win for the Spartan basketball team last night, taking out previously undefeated #6 Boston College. They were smoking hot shooting in the second half, and made their free throws when it mattered most. BC had drawn to within 2 points, and four different players for the Spartans stepped to the line and made two free throws each. There were some poor plays by State to let BC back into it, but they redeemed themselves with a good win. They've got a few more games before the Big Ten opener against Illinois, including an interesting Wichita State squad on Saturday, which lost by one to Illinois and beat Providence.
The formula for the 'beer goggles' effect has been discovered. Naturally, alcohol is the biggest factor, but other things come into play as well. So let this be a lesson to you: wear your glasses or contacts, avoid smoky rooms, and get a good up close look before you act.
An = number of units of alcohol consumed
S = smokiness of the room (graded from 0-10, where 0 clear air; 10 extremely smoky)
L = luminance of 'person of interest' (candelas per square metre; typically 1 pitch black; 150 as seen in normal room lighting)
Vo = Snellen visual acuity (6/6 normal; 6/12 just meets driving standard)
d = distance from 'person of interest' (metres; 0.5 to 3 metres)
Once again, NBC is broadcasting its "ICE" special, featuring luge, bobsled, skeleton, and curling. ICE 2005 airs Saturday and Sunday, 4-6pm. The curling this year has an interesting women vs. men matchup with the US Olympic qualifiers facing off.
Also, CurlTV.com has been showing the morning draws of the Canadian trials. I can't believe I didn't discover this till now!
For most people, I imagine this utility isn't very useful, but it came in handy when I wanted to create a album art mosaic for my mix (almost done!). You plug in a URL from iTunes, and it spits back a bunch of XML, including, for me, the URL for the album art, as well as URLs for the 30 second previews on that page. The guy who figured this out reported that it's very useful for saving previews of the videos that iTunes sells now. NBC just jumped into the fray and is selling episodes of Law & Order, The Office, and Surface, and clips of the Tonight Show and Conan O'Brien. In addition, since they own USA and SciFi, shows like Battlestar Galactica and Monk are also available. Plus, vintage shows like Knight Rider, Dragnet and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
I will resist the temptation to quote Knight Rider and instead say that those are "Just the facts, ma'am."
For a group that's largely Canadian, or at least northern-born, our curling club sure is a bunch of pansies. As you can see from the previous picture, we got about 2-3 inches of snow yesterday, starting around noon. Of course, none of that snow really stuck to the roads, and I'm sure that the traffic would have sucked, but I still wanted to curl. Not enough to go all the way out there just for a pickup game though, which was an option. I even loaded up my iPod with a bunch of new podcasts to listen to on the way over there. Oh well, we'll play next week I suppose.
Speaking of curling, the Canadian Olympic Trials are well underway as we speak. They'll play the semis and finals this weekend, so I may have to head up to the club a little early on Sunday to watch some good players. You never know when you'll pick up some tips. Randy Ferbey, who has won umpteen Canadian titles in a row, is in deep trouble, with a round-robin record of 1-4, with only 4 games to play. Four teams are currently tied at 4-1 for the playoff spots, meaning that six time Canadian champion and four time World Champion Ferbey will most likely miss out on the Olympics yet again (Kevin Martin represented Canada in the 2002 Games).
Early morning snow
Originally uploaded by Big DC.
Our first snow of the year.
The Washington Post's tech columnist, Rob Pegoraro, brings up an interesting point in the FCC cable "a la carte" discussion: Rogers Cable in Canada already does it, and it doesn't seem that anyone's complaining up there. Here's the scoop on their pricing:
1 channel: $2.49, 5 channels: $9.95, 10 channels: $14.95, 15 channels: $18.75, 20 channels: $21.99, 30 channels: $26.99, All Customer Choice: $39.99. I think that's on top of a "basic cable" package of some sort, but it's definitely interesting.
Everyone today who loves the BCS will be crowing about how it worked, and the best two teams will play each other for the national title. Duh. Like it's hard when there's only two undefeated teams, and it's clear that they are the best. For the record, I pick Texas to upset USC. Judging from my luck picking the NFL this weekend (two-game parlay, Buffalo and Cincy straight up to win; Buffalo blows a 21-0, and 23-3 lead to lose 24-23), feel free to take USC.
Anyway, back to the BCS. Yes, the top matchup is a good one, that everyone wants to see. But then you've got the Big East champ, West Virginia, taking on Georgia. Is it even fair to have the Big East champ get an automatic bid any more? And since Virginia Tech lost to Florida State, FSU plays Penn State in a battle of the ancient coaches. At least Notre Dame-Ohio State should be a good one, and they were the at-large teams. I guess this means that I don't like the automatic bid scheme. Plus, Oregon, whose only loss was to USC, was left out of the BCS, and dropped all the way down to the Holiday Bowl against Oklahoma. Ouch.
Well hey, the Giants managed to overcome another Jay Feely missed field goal (that one's on you Jay. You gotta make the chippies) to defeat the Cowboys and take over first place in the NFC East all by themselves. The defense certainly has turned itself around, and even scored the game-winning touchdown. Hey Eli: I'm coming to your house if you throw another interception in the end zone. While the missed FG could have cost them, the pick in the end zone took away another potential FG (it came on a third down play when he should have just thrown it away), and his second interception led directly to Dallas' only touchdown. That's a ten point swing, for those counting at home. Luckily, Julius Jones failed to get out of bounds 3 times in the Cowboys' final drive, and the Giants escaped with the win.
My curling team escaped with a win last night too. We got down 3-0 after the first two ends, but came back with 2 in the third. The other team took their one in the 4th, with us taking one in the 5th. Down 5-3 going into the 7th end, which because of time constraints was our last end, we needed to get a lot of points. Thankfully, my first three players made all their shots, and got the other team to miss a couple, and I didn't even have to throw my last rock, as we had three sitting for points, giving us the 6-5 win. Tonight should be interesting, as we're expected to get slammed by an ice/snow storm this afternoon, which could make for a long ride up to the club.
Dang it's cold here tonight. The weather on my desktop says 30 degrees. Brr... So here's 4 more cool things for your enjoyment, in case you're someplace warm, like Florida. Jerks.
USB Powered Air Darts - Control the aim and the firing mechanism of the darts via your computer mouse, all powered by the USB ports on your computer. Sweet.
More MacWorld rumors - "Content purchased will be automatically made available on a user's iDisk, which Front Row 2.0 will tap into. When the user wishes to play the content, robust caching technology Apple previously received a patent for will serve it to the users computer as fast as their Internet connection can handle. The system will also likely support downloading the video content to supported iPods but at no time will it ever actually be stored on a computer's hard drive." Wow. Amazing if it's true.
Personal Weather Station Google Map - Map of people with personal weather stations in your zip code, when you click on one of them, the current weather data pops up. If there's one close to your house, it's interesting to see how it deviates from the news station's weather stations.
Free Ice Cream - Supposedly, if you sign up to be a Ben and Jerry's "Chunk Spelunker", they'll send you a coupon for a free pint of ice cream. (Credit to Grubby for that one)
Listening to the iTunes New Music Tuesday Podcast last night, I heard that the new album from The Darkness was out on iTunes. So naturally I cruised on over to listen to some preview clips. I immediately noticed the price: $13.99!!! Are you kidding me? There's only ten songs on the album, and usually in that case iTunes sells the album for $9.90, rather than the usual $9.99. What a crock. But now I know why. They include with your album-only purchase two extras: the video for the first single "One Way Ticket", and a digital album booklet. It's not just PDF liner notes though. No, a new company called TuneBooks has a whole new format for digital liner notes, which they claim "combines traditional visual elements - liner notes, cover art and band collateral - with custom-designed interactive art and media to create a new visual experience." Not to mention adds at least $2 to the price of the album (assuming $9.90 for the songs themselves, plus $1.99 for the video, that leaves about a $2 difference in price). That had better be some damned interesting liner notes. Definitely passing on that album for now. It's enough to drive you back to buying CDs again!
In case you missed it, ABC has announced that this is the last season for 'Alias." It's not really all that surprising, as the show's attempt to work around Jennifer Garner's pregnancy wasn't, in my opinion, working all that well. The show was still interesting, but there's only so many times you want to see Sydney using the pregnancy alias. It gets old, that's all.
In related news, Jennifer Garner had a baby girl Wednesday night and named her Violet.
Update: Entertainment Weekly has a brief interview with Jennifer Garner (apparently before baby was born) in which she hints that the finale will be one worth waiting for. I sure do hope so.
Ski season is fast approaching, and even the East Coast papers are previewing area and national slopes. Since I grew up in France and skied the Alps pretty much every winter, I thought that made me enough of an expert to chime in.
First off, if you're going skiing anywhere around DC, within about an 8 hour drive, you're not really going skiing. The same applies to most of Michigan, in my experience, outside of the UP. It's embarrassing to claim a hill with a 500-1000 foot "vertical drop" is a mountain, to be honest with you. Most places in the Alps have a 1000 meter vertical drop, minimum. The local hills are fine to figure out the mechanics of skiing, but they don't give you anything near the experience of skiing. For that, you'll need to head west.
I'm most familiar with Lake Tahoe out west. We went there for Spring Break my senior year of college. It was quite humorous watching the guys in our group who thought they were hot shots in Michigan trying to plow through the fresh powder we got there one day. They needed three days to recover. Pansies. The first time I was there, I wasn't all that impressed. We only went to a couple of places: Northstar, Heavenly, and Alpine Meadows. Northstar, frankly, sucked. It was just so boring and there was nothing to it. Heavenly was the place that got a lot of powder, so that wasn't too bad, and Alpine Meadows might have been fun if I was with more adventurous people who didn't mind going off the beaten trails. But forget all of them. If you're into skiing and you're at Tahoe, there's only one place for you to go: Squaw Valley. Home of the 1960 Olympic games, it had by far the best runs I skied in Tahoe, and it was the most fun too. You can even ice skate in their outdoor rink! The instructors there even managed to teach Lisa how to ski. Sorta. The snow is great there, and there were plenty of areas to explore. I don't think I got to all of them in the time I was there. Very cool.
Unfortunately, I haven't skied the US much outside of Tahoe. I've been to Aspen plenty of times, but during the summer, when my wife was doing conference planning for the Aspen Institute. It's a beautiful place in the summer, but it's hard to get a feel for what the slopes would be like. The hiking is really good though. If you can afford it, definitely give it a shot at least once.
I will tell you a few places I want to go skiing in North America, based on what I have heard about them, and maybe you can use that advice.
Whistler-Blackcomb, BC, Canada: home of the 2010 Olympics. We're definitely going to try to make it there for the Olympics. The skiing is supposed to be top-notch, and if it's anything like the other OIympic sites I've been to, it'll be worth it.
Jackson Hole, Wyoming: unfortunately, I won't make it there before they close down their classic tram this year, but it's on my list anyway.
Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, Canada: Closest big ski resort on the East Coast. I'm still debating if Vermont or New Hampshire slopes would be worth it.
Park City, Utah: another Olympic site.
Early season skiing is pretty cheap right now, so get out there and get schussing!
I'm probably the only one who finds this interesting, especially since the story was not on the front page of the paper, but tucked away on page 2 today. Anyway, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday expressed skepticism at approving Jose Padilla's transfer to the Justice Department. As I previously mentioned, Jose Padilla was held for three years in a military brig under the "enemy combatant" rules, accused of plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the US. Recently, he was charged in a civilian court when it became clear that the Supreme Court might rule that the administration couldn't do stuff like that. But the charges had nothing to do with dirty bombs. The appeals court is now asking why "the different facts that were alleged by the President to warrant Padilla's military detention" are so different from "the alleged facts on which Padilla has now been indicted."
The plot thickens.
I never understood the "shopping days" concept. Aside from Thanksgiving, every day is a shopping day, and there aren't a whole lot of people who start their shopping before Thanksgiving.
At any rate, we're doing well with our shopping, even if we're going over the budget a bit. I have ideas for Lisa finally, so it's just a matter of finding the time to get something. And yes, she'll read this and start wondering what she's getting. I'm mean like that. Hehe.
Last night I spent a little over an hour getting the mix CD put together. I'm about halfway through. Well, I've got half the songs picked out, but not the order, so I'm probably only about 25% done, since the order is a big part. I'm trying hard to keep it to 2005 music, but I think a track or two may technically have been released in 2004, but the artists blew up in 2005, so that will be good enough for me. I brought a bunch of music with me to work to listen through and pick out some more tracks, and I'm hoping to get it in the mail next week. There's still time for you to request one, just leave a comment, and I'll coordinate with you. Gonna be some good stuff on there. A lot of indie type stuff, but some hip-hop, a little metal, and just good music from the past year.
