kapgar

No time for losers...

Wow, it is getting truly wicked out now. Visibility from the window outside my office is maybe 1000 feet. Beyond that, all whiteness. It's almost like I'm coming close to living out my own Jose Saramago nightmare.

It's times like these that I feel I should have an overnight bag ready to go for work just in case I get stuck here. I can't imagine what it would be like to be stuck at work overnight due to weather that is unplanned. Sure, I've pulled overnight shifts, but they were known ahead of time and I was able to plan accordingly. But this? This is nuts. And I really don't want to be stuck. Not now. Two days until Christmas, for Christmas' sake!

Oh please may the roads be plowed before I have to leave.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): Do I look?

Do I dare to actually look and see how it all played out? Oh hell, I guess I'd better...

 

I WON! I WON! I never win fantasy sports! I've been known to play upwards of three leagues in a single sport at one time and never placed higher than second or third. In the three years I've played in Brandon's DOWN WITH PANTS league, I placed seventh and 11th... pitiful. This, though, is awesome!

Okay, enough tooting of my own horn. Now I get to go ball up in a corner and cry that the season is over and I have to wait another eight months for the next season to begin.

But, before I go, can someone please tell me what the hell RW's avatar is? Looks like a booger or Slimer from Ghostbusters. I know I've seen it before or maybe it just reminds me a bit of the smiley from the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Wildcats, football... Wildcats, football...

There are pros and cons to having been subjected to the flu this past weekend.

• Pro #1: Without going into any details, I feel the thinnest I've felt in a couple years.

And, actually, that might be the only pro.

• Con #1: I was sick during Katie's first weekend after her classes ended. The weekend we should've been celebrating not only that she was done for the semester, but that she pulled in another 4.0 GPA. I'm ridiculously proud, but couldn't do much to celebrate.
• Con #2: My diet becomes Katie's diet. She's not a big fan of cooking for one. So she was eating the same bland crap I was. Chicken noodle soup, noodles, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with those foods, but, after a while, you kinda want a little more.
• Con #3: Missing one of her family Christmas parties. I guess we only have three this year instead of the normal four. But it still kinda sucks.

I'm not completely over it just yet. But hopefully soon.

Moving on...

I've got a third Five Questions to run through. This set comes from my neighbor to the north, Nat! Here is a link to her 5Q.

1. You recently shared a 10th anniversary with Katie. If you could give her anything in the world what would it be? (She's already had your hunka-hunka burning love.)
You realize Katie laughed her ass off when she read "hunka-hunka burning love," don't you? Thank you for that. I would give her a baby. Simply put. And we will, SJ. Fear not. Mini-Me will happen soon.

2. I have noticed (I could be misunderstanding) that you take it personally when specific Chicagoans or Americans do dumb things. I think "ashamed" was the word you use. Why do you think that is? (And weren't the Bush years just a bit brutal on you?)
You're not misunderstanding. Not in the slightest. I realize what a tenuous relationship the USA has with the world as a result of the Bush Administration. Although I'm not placing all the blame on him, his admin certainly does deserve a big chunk of finger pointing. So the reason why I feel so ashamed is because, even though I realize that stupid people are typically the minority of any population, they are the ones that achieve the headlines in the news. And, given the World Wide Web, these news stories circle the globe faster than the fallout from that meteor in the beginning of Armageddon. And, when that person receives such notoriety combined with the low expectations the world already has of us, it tends to reflect on the rest of the population of the USA as though we're all complicit. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but it's truly amazing how often you hear "stupid American" or "ignorant American" while having done nothing personally to deserve it. Know what I mean?

3. Football. I don't get it. I mean you get more people at college and high school games than we get at the Grey Cup. What's up with that?
As sung by Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes, and Goldie Hawn, et al, in the movie Wildcats, "It's the sport of kings, better than diamond rings... football."

It's hard to explain the appeal of American football sometimes. It's even harder to understand why they use the word "football" to describe a sport where feet only touch the ball (or should only touch the ball) a grand total of a few seconds per game. But, in my mind's eye, it's a fantastically fun sport that requires a lot of strategy, balls, and luck. It's organized war. Their playbooks in the NFL are larger than those in a war room, I would imagine. And some people are fanatical about it. No different than football/soccer in the rest of the world. Both sports have equal levels of fanaticism. In fact, considering the movie Green Street Hooligans, I'd almost say that football/soccer has greater levels of fanaticism. I've never seen street gangs fighting and killing to support the Bears over the Packers. Seriously people. It's a freakin' game! Well, except maybe in Texas. But that's a whole other story.

4. I am toying with running the Chicago Marathon in 2009. Care to join me?
If by "join" you mean "stand on the sidelines and cheer like mad," then sure!

5. What one obscure film do you think everyone should see?
Oh, for you documentary buffs, I would highly recommend a little known, barely seen film called Barbed Wire Pioneers: Inventing a Community. Not sure where you'd obtain a copy in all honesty, but I would recommend it if you are creative enough to nab it. And, no, it wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that I helped make it in grad school.

Want to be part of it? Follow these instructions:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): Oh great, I've lost Katie forever. Thanks a pantload, SJ.

Click on the image to be taken to this shirt on SJ's Zazzle storefront.

Oh tidings of comfort and joy...

We interrupt this week-long 5Q Extravaganza to bring you... SNIPPET WEDNESDAY!!

FreeLee
I am an unabashed fan of Amos Lee. Have been since Katie and I first saw him perform live as the opening act for Norah Jones some years back. And I'm doing my part to promote his fantastic music by blogging when he releases new music or material. Well, he now has a five-track Live Session EP available on iTunes. While I would highly recommend just going over there and buying it outright for yourself (it's only $4.49 and it's iTunes Plus, meaning that it's higher bitrate and DRM free), I'm going to give away a copy here. The deal? Leave a comment saying you want to be entered in the contest. The catch? You have to be an iTunes user as this is an iTunes-exclusive album. Come next Monday at whatever time I decide to write my post, I'll close the contest, assign numbers to the entrants, and use some number randomizer to pick one of you to receive a copy. That simple. And, no, this is not limited to just people who have commented here before. Maybe this will serve as a bit of a delurker carrot-on-a-stick if you will. C'mon out and play!

Blogrolling
The third-party Blogrolling service has now been down for more than two months. Apparently they were hacked and are both fixing their security holes and upgrading to what they're calling Blogrolling 2.0 all in one fell swoop. And it's pissing those of us who still use the service (because we're too damned lazy to just handcode our rolls) off severely. I have a ton of people I need to add and some I just discovered desperately need to be updated. My blogroll still has Hilly's old Typepad URL for chrissake! So any of you more recent reads, don't think I'm dissing you. I'm not. I just can't make an update. If it's not fixed soon, I may have no choice but to handcode. I'll give them until the New Year or until I'm so inclined to do it myself, whichever comes first.

Faced
Just when you thought Facebook and other social media services were our friends comes this little bit out of Australia about a couple who were in default on their mortgage. After months of trying to find them and serve them with legal documents about their situation, lawyers convinced a judge to allow them to serve these docs, legally binding, via their Facebook accounts. The one condition was that they couldn't be posted in a publically visible area of their profile. Wow, if ever there was support for Miss Britt's belief that Facebook and MySpace were evil and used for stalking (listen to the episode dated 12/03/2008), this is it. Tip for anyone hiding from authorities of any sort... don't keep using social media accounts while on the lam, 'tay?

Cube'd
I found my ideal Christmas gift. It has to be one of the coolest things ever... the Cube Clock. Basically, it's a cube-shaped clock made to look like a Rubik's Cube. No, it doesn't have the full twistability (is that a word?) of its inspiration, but it does twist in at least the top layer. If you look at the top right cubit, you'll see a sticker indicating time (facing), alarm (right cubit), calendar (not visible), and temperature (also not showing). Simply, whichever of these panels is aligned above the clock face controls which mode the clock is in. And the three cubits underneath the display help with settings. I wonder if you just smack the top of the cube for snooze.

Blago
Okay, I'm sure you're all sick to death of me ranting and raving about busted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, but I have one more thing I need to share with you. And I'm sure when you hear that it was sent to me by everyone's fave Sheila over at Charm School Reject, you'll likely read attentively. And it's also sort of a holiday song. Sort of.

"Blagojevich" by John McHugh
(to the tune of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen")

Get packin', Rod Blagojevich
The state's in disarray

The Tribune wants you unemployed
At least by Christmas Day.
The TV pundits want your head
Could there by pay to play?
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Save Illinois!
Oh tidings of comfort and joy

Good riddance Rod Blagojevich
Your Elvis look's inane,
The Senate's mad, so's Lisa's dad
You drive us all insane.
Our transit's broke, the state's a joke,
The Tollway's one big pain.
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Save Illinois!
Oh tidings of comfort and joy

Good luck old Rod Blagojevich
The feds have quite a place
Fitzegerald's poked his nose around
And if he has a case,
George Ryan's moving stuff around
Creating extra space.
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Save Illinois!
Oh tidings of comfort and joy

Until next week, I bid thee adieu!

I'm back in the saddle again...

After a two-week hiatus during which he saw the world, reinvigorated his persona, and bedded many other blog theme days, Snippet Wednesday makes his triumphant return!

Razr
Yeah, I'm back on my Razr for a little while as I had to send my Nokia E71 back England way yesterday. I may have griped about a few issues I had with it here and there, but it is certainly a great phone and I will miss having it around. Dammit.

Comments
So did you all notice anything new about the comments here? 

Yep, Typepad implemented a new comment system for their users. It's opt in only so not all the Typepad blogs you visit may have it rolled out yet. Basically we now have an avatar system (although you need to set up a free Typekey account, which is apparently now known as a "Typepad Profile," so your avatar will show up), nested comments with direct replies, and e-mail notification should a reply be posted to your comment (also requiring Typekey). The fact that it requires Typekey/Typepad Profile kinda bugs me, but it's a step in the right direction.

War
When Katie and I bought my camera the other day, I opted for a four-year warranty. The 20% off that I received covered the cost of the warranty, so why not? Anyway, the woman at Sony asked me if I was aware that the warranty covered X, Y, and Z, but not A, B, and C, with "C" being "acts of war."

Me: Acts of what? You mean the warranty actually says that?

Her: It does now.

Me: I'm guessing for reporters in warzones?

Her: Yep.

Me: Wow!

Panda
Jesus, we can't win for losing with movies on Netflix. First it was the travesty known as Fred Claus and, last night, it was Kung Fu Panda. Maybe it gets better the further you watch into it, but we got through the first half hour or 45 minutes and were bored to tears. We hadn't even chuckled once by the time we shut it off. I'm on the verge of deleting all films from our Netflix queue and just populating it with TV discs. Okay, not really, but you get my point.

Nottie
Speaking of bad movies (and I admit I brought this one on myself), I was flipping through the on-screen channel guide and saw that some channel was playing The Hottie and the Nottie last night so I flipped it on out of sheer morbid curiosity. "The what and the what?" you might be asking. It's a Paris Hilton attempt at an acting career. Need I say more? I got through three minutes and 32 seconds before flipping the channel. Simply put, David Caruso can out-act Paris Hilton and that's saying something. What it's saying, I'm not sure, but it's something. The fact that this movie came out earlier this year and is already on extended cable also says something... about it stinking like year-old eggs, perhaps, but still.

It's so cool, it's so hip, it's alright...

'nuff said.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I like when certain Web sites dynamically change the proverbial little things each time you revisit them. For example, a Javascript-based image rotation or how Flickr welcomes you in a different language each time you log back in or reload the page. I like that sort of thing.

FeedBurner does the same sort of thing. It's a corny message about "your feed" and what it's capable of. And last night's message certainly spoke to the geek in me...

Heh heh. Sorry, it's the little things in life for me.

A wise man once told me...

Typically, today would be Snippet Wednesday and I tried, I really tried, to come up with enough snippets to populate a post. But I kinda blew that on Monday with what was effectively a bunch of snippets, but on the wrong day. Oh well. So we're fiddling with the format a bit today. Why? Because I need your help.

I'm looking for a wise man (or woman, lest I be called sexist)... someone I can turn to for spiritual advice or guidance. A person whose actions are of such reproach and whose judgment is free of moral and ethical question (by my standards, of course) that I would feel comfortable, in a difficult situation, simply asking, "What would such-and-such do?"

But it's not just mentally asking the question, I feel the need to make it known to the world that I look to this person for this assistance. To achieve this, I will need physical reminders around me at all times. Do you remember the old WWJD ("What Would Jesus Do?") bracelets from several years ago? Yeah, something along those lines. I want a magnet on my office cabinet, a coffee mug, a mousepad, and a bracelet, maybe more, so that no matter where I look, I will see the solution to my nagging problem, the light at the end of the tunnel. So obviously this person must not only be wise, but marketable.

I'm turning to you, my blogopeeps. Who gets me better than all of you? That's why I want one of you to be that person.

I began considering some of you and came up with a list of positives and negatives, which I have detailed in this post. Do not feel offended if your name is not listed below. If you feel you would be a viable candidate for this role, nominate yourself! Tell me why you would be a good soothsayer. I will certainly take you under consideration.

Be my sage.

So far, I have:

Avitable
Let's see... What Would Avitable Do? I think the appropriate question here is more What Wouldn't Avitable Do? And the answer scares me. Plus, WWAD looks too similar to wad, like "spitwad."

It's Me... Penelope
I love Penelope too much to wear a wimpy bracelet in her honor. Seriously! WWIMPD. "Wimp" right in the middle of it!

Delmer Wells
What Would Delmer Wells Do? WWDWD. That's truly a mouthful, but kinda looks cool on paper.

Snackiepoo
What Would Snackiepoo Do? I dunno. Kinda reminds me of Return of the Jedi, "Bantha poodoo."

Karl Erikson
What Would Karl Do? See "Avitable" above, but realize that, by comparison, Adam has shown considerable personal restraint.

Iron Fist
If I want to be a world dictator, this is the way to go! What Would Iron Fist Do? He'd rain down hellfire and brimstone, I tells ya!

NYCWD
What Would Watchdog Do? If I split "Watchdog" in two, we get What Would Watch Dog Do, WWWDD. A FULL HOUSE, baby! My favorite hand in poker. That's gotta be good for something, right?

Wil Wheaton
What Would Wil Wheaton Do? That's a lot of Ws. Even more than the World Wide Web. So I, like the World Wide Web Consortium (abbreviated W3C), will have to shorten it to "W4D" to make it easy. It's nice and concise as well as memorable and I feel I can trust Wesley Crusher to not guide me astray so long as I can get over the idea that the acronym sounds like a lubricant spray.

Dave2
We all know Dave is evil. He declares such on a regular basis. Why would I want to use someone who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of all things evil as my daily inspiration? It's simple, evil gets stuff, be it items of wealth or favors or praise. Who wouldn't want that? Besides, that bracelet would read WWD2D, which sounds an awful lot like a certain Astromech droid who, through six Star Wars movies, made his vast knowledge and ability to accurately read a situation quite apparent, even if few people listened to his chirps and tweets. Plus, I could then make a What Would Bad Monkey Do? bracelet.

So what do you all think? One of the above or another blogger altogether?

And, baby, I'm the walking dead...

Dear Lord,

I pray you grant me the strength to survive tonight. It will be one of the biggest challenges of my life to go into the heart of the lions' den and come out with my wits intact and my hands free of blood from having throttled people who clearly know no better.

I pray you grant me the patience to brush off and hear through the insensitive cooing and sighing and screaming that will no doubt occur at his very first appearance and more than likely every instance thereafter. I can't say I entirely understand their level of love and adulation, so I will need your help to weather the storm.

And I pray you grant me the ability to forgive my wife for buying tickets for the opening night of Twilight. But, like me, you know that she loves those damn books.

In your name I pray.

Amen.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): My head is swimming right now.

Why?

Both Gmail and Typepad have hit me at the same time with all kinds of new features and I'm not sure what to do with myself.

Gmail now has themes that have been pushed out to a select group of users (I say "select" as opposed to "random" to make myself feel specialer). Now you can pick any one of a few dozen different display themes to make your Gmail experience, I suppose, cooler. Some of them are just strange, some are cool, and some, like the one I chose, could be so much cooler than they are. I chose "mountain" because I live in the wonderfully un-hilly region of northeastern Illinois and desperately miss the mountains that I've seen when visiting Colorado or flying out west. But, while it's a beautiful photo, it needs to fill more of the available screen. Too much of my monitor is covered in the slate grey fill color associated with the theme. I'm sure these themes will improve with time, though.

Typepad has a whole new blog entry interface. They've been talking about it for what seems like a year now and only now am I finally having it rolled out to me. It has a much better RTF toolbar with greater functionality and more choices. But, key for me is the built-in image editor. Sure, I'm a Photoshopper and will still use this. However, if I happen to be blogging from another computer that doesn't have Photoshop installed, it's nice to know I can still do some basic work to images before posting them. Yeah, there are several online options and I've used them. But their use is so infrequent that I can never remember which one I've used and then have to get accustomed to a whole new control panel for a single image for a blog post. Not fun.

Now, if only I can talk Typepad HQ into implementing an image library so I can easily choose an image to use over and over again. As of now, the image uploader only looks on your computer for new images. Something to work on, Typepad.

BTW, you can click on either of those images to get a full-size version for closer examination.

So it looks like I've got some new toys to play with.

Rollin', rollin', rollin', keep them doggies rollin'...

Facebook
Even though Katie and I no longer work at the gym (we still work out, just not work at), we still talk regularly with many of our former coworkers and we've become friends with some of the newer employees by extension through our continued relationships. Since I'm a guy who doesn't often think of himself as actually being 33, it's cool to have these "friendships" because they help continue my delusion of youth. The other day, though, this came crashing down when, during a discussion of a picture on my Facebook account of me with my BiL, Scott, that one of these gym girls thought made us look like twins (poor me), the other said, quite bluntly and clearly as an age jab (I hope unintentionally), "you have a Facebook account???" Um yeah. Thanks.

Rustling
Ha! Times are so tough that people are digressing back... way back... like 1800s Old West back. A cattle rancher in Maple Park, IL (two towns west of where I live), reported that six of his bull Holstein calves were stolen over the weekend. One has since been recovered. If one of them was named Norman, we could pin blame to Billy Crystal. Or, I guess it could be PETA reps since his plan was to ween them to full size and then sell them for meat. But, regardless, this is only the second case of cattle rustling in Illinois in the last 15 years. Giddyup!

Apple
Apparently, the apple on the cover of the book Twilight bears a bit more significance than it may seem. Robert Pattinson, who plays vampire Edward Cullen in the movie version due on November 21, was caught shopping in the Manhattan Apple Store. See? Vampires have taste... and for more than just blood. Suck on that, y'all! Get it... "suck on that"... vampires? Of course, don't pay any attention to the freaky seven-year-old's request to be bitten that is actually the substance of that IMDb post.

Obamac
Oh yeah, speaking of Macs, according to Famecrawler, President-Elect Obama is a Mac user, too. My officemate said, "just when I thought my love for Obama couldn't get any greater." Yeah, she's a Machead too.

Ankles
I finished my second yoga session several hours ago and my teacher (Yogi? Berra?) is impressed with what I'm able to do as a beginner. It's kinda funny, but several moves are ones that I used to do in pre-practice stretches for football in high school and they've stuck with me through the years. Who knew football would prepare me for yoga. Today, as I was sitting with my feet pulled in and the bottoms of them together, she expressed how impressed she was with the flexibility in my ankles and insteps. And to prove it, she asked if she could stand on them... on the bottoms... as they faced upward. That was, er, weird. Thank God she weighs only like 95 pounds soaking wet.

And thus we wrap Snippet Wednesday #24.

I feel fine and I feel good, I'm feeling like I never should...

Hey all.

Sorry, I really thought I'd have something more meaningful to say than "hey all," but I suddenly realized, late last night, that I messed up the importing of about two dozen CDs into iTunes. I had the import functionality set to MP3 format at 128 Mbps (very low quality for you non-techies) because I was creating ringtones some weeks back. And for a few hours, I've been trying to reimport some CDs I still have at better quality, lossless settings (yes, MP3s can actually lose quality over time if reimported or moved around or otherwise messed with enough times).

Thankfully this doesn't affect what I've purchased off iTunes and Amazon.

I've found about a half dozen of the CDs, but I've had to go on the library Web site and re-request a ton that I have already checked out. That won't raise any eyebrows amongst the librarians, will it?

Anyway.

So I'm leaving you with a video. File this under "How in the name of all that's holy did I miss this one when it came out earlier in the month?" I just cannot forgive myself.

Thank you to Funny Or Die for the embed code that the original Huffington Post did not provide.

Oh, and I have a meme for you in the extended post.

Out cold...

Guess what! Snippet Wednesday can now legally drink! #21, y'all!

Plurk'd
In the midst of my frustration over being frozen out of Twitter (which has allowed me back to play in their sandbox, BTW), I went ahead and signed up with sue on Plurk. It's a far different experience than Twitter although both are marketed as microblogging social network sites. Instead of being message on top of message, like Twitter, the messages you post are listed in a timeline and you can continue a conversation based on a single Plurk (?) in a threaded box as opposed to having to dig around to find a reply if your respondent forgets to throw the @ to make it a Twitter direct reply. I also like that it's all Ajax based and dynamically updates itself. It's pretty nice. The only downside is that there aren't nearly as many people in Plurk as there are in Twitter. So I'll use both. For now anyway. Gotta up my karma rating. ;-)

Griping
A friend forwarded this to me and, as a Web designer, I gotta admit that I love it. Thank you to vilain.com.

[click on image to increase size]

STD
It blows my mind to think that a Web site actually exists that allows a person to send an e-card to people that they may have infected with some STD. Yeah, you read that right. If you have contracted an STD, you can enter all the information you have about former lovers and have an e-card delivered to them informing them that they should get tested. While it's better than no notice at all, I'd really think that there must be a better, and less anonymous, way.

Single
I think I can now consider myself at least a tangential San Francisco 49ers fan. Why? Because my man, "Samurai" Mike Singletary has been named head coach of the team after the sacking of former head coach Mike Nolan. Need a reminder of my love of Singletary? Here you go...

Nokia
About a week and a half ago, I got a killer invite. Some site asked if I would be willing to trial a smartphone and write about it on my blog. It's a Nokia E71-NAM and it's a gorgeous phone, here's hoping the functionality equals the form factor. I began talking with the rep at this site and she seemed pretty gung ho about sending it to me. Then the ball was dropped. I could only have it for two weeks and I was required to pay for the service on the phone. First, two weeks is not nearly enough time to really get a feel for the phone. Second, it's a load of crap that if you are solicited to review something that they are not paying for it. You're using your time and your resources for it, right? It's one thing if I could take the SIM card out of my AT&T Razr and put it in this phone to try it, but this phone is locked to T-mobile. A week ago I asked them how much the service would cost for the two weeks and they have yet to get back to me. It could've been so much fun to play with this phone. Dammit.

Punched
If I never buy another game for my Nintendo Wii, let it be this one... a revised version of the classic Punch-Out! with all the same characters and even the same music, but updated and looking FINE! The only problem is that I have to wait until 2009 to get my grubby mitts on it.