doodledee

Patriot pop-quiz:

Q: Who does a better job of demonstrating their support for the troops:

• Sandy Point Supper Club [picture]
• The birds in my backyard [picture]

A: I wanted to go with the birds on a count of purple not being one of our national colors, but earlier today a squirrel told me that one of the birds spent the afternoon talking with an Arab television station. As a result, I'm left with no choice but to give this one to the real American heroes: the good folks down at the Supper Club.

On a non-cable-news note, Gerry and Tracy had their baby yesterday. It turned out to be a boy. And even though I was suggesting Paul Bunyan Blanck, they went with Gavin Gerald Blanck. Either way, I bet he's a cutie. I'll put some pictures up after we go see them.

We had dinner with Libby's grandparents tonight. It was fun. Grandpa was telling some stories about his monthly poker game and how it got started back in the 50's. Good stuff.

I asked him about the stakes they play for and he said it's mostly nickels and dimes. That didn't sound like much, but he one time he lost $4 in a single night, which, if my math is correct, would have bought a car back in the 50's, so it probably stung quite a bit.

This differs considerably from my poker group, which has gone crazy over the last year or so. In our games, the greenbacks are out early and often and the stakes can get uncomfortably large. Large enough that when you lose a few in a row you kinda shake your head and maybe feel a little sick. And probably a little pissed because Borly just won for like the 30th time in row and that jackass never loses. And ok, sometimes you maybe feel a little tipsy, too.

So ok, back to Grandpa. Turns out there are only 2 original members of his poker club still playing, one of whom is Grandpa and the other being Hoot Ingebretsen. (Yes, that Ingebretsen.) I asked him what happened to the other dudes and he said, "Well, when you get old, things happen."

He's right, you know.

A couple of things to clear up.

First, there has been some dispute over the correct pronunciation of 'jesusgoose'. The correct way to say it is with a soft 'j', so that it rhymes with 'hey'. For future reference, here is a wav file that uses the word in a sentence. Also, just in case Missy reads this, here is a flipped down and reversed version.

[Reminder: right-click and 'save as' if you have problems.]

The other thing I have to clear up is that, yes, foot infections are one of the leading causes of death for elephants in captivity.

Buckle up folks, 'cause things are gonna change.

Libby and I are expecting a doodledumpling sometime this October. Check out the first pictures.

Kick ass, eh?

Went down to the Dayton's Field's flower show this evening.

There were quite a few people there - way more than I expected for a Tuesday night. And man were the oldies out. The crowd was so old I looked around to make sure I didn't accidentally board a Caribbean cruise when I got off the escalator. (Nope.)

After some thought, my conclusion was that the senior crowd just likes to look at the flowers. Almost as much as they love coffee. And they love their coffee. Everywhere you looked, little old ladies were carrying cups around. One hand would gently lift a lilac bloom into sniffing range, while the other would cradle a latte.

And most strikingly, nearly all of them were drinking Starbucks. WTF?! Has The Greatest Generation sold out to mass consumerism? I never thought I'd say this, but I feel that I have to:

Ah-boo old people.

My rage passed pretty quickly. It just smelled so damn good in there, it was impossible to stay mad.

I went and saw the Jayhawks down at the Guthrie tonight. This was the first show on their current tour and was an album release party of sorts. The whole thing was acoustic, which works well with that love-song heavy country stuff that they play, especially in a venue as intimate as the Guthrie. Good stuff. Sometimes great, even.

Here's one picture from my mini-spy cam. All the pictures turned out like crap, but I figured it's worth posting one just for kicks.

Ol' Yeller opened and were also quite enjoyable. More local boys, they play that same kind of mellow alternacountry stuff. I kinda thought their bass player looked like Andy Dick from a distance.

Turns out he didn't look like Andy Dick up close. I know this because during the Jayhawks set, the Ol' Yeller dudes sat [literally] right next to me. It sounds kinda cool, but they smelled like rum and BO, so it wasn't all that great.

Dan Murphy came out and helped sing for the final encore. That was fun, too.

All in all, can't complain.

It's been neat watching the blogging community react to the war.

One of the things blogging fans like to talk up is the immediacy and uncensored nature of weblogs. People can pretty much do/say whatever they want, whenever they want. This means no 'big corporate cleansing' of a story and no delay in getting it online. In other words, you get *all* the details of how my Christmas lights were vandalized, not just the condensed, sanitized version that CNN wanted you to hear! Fight the power!

Sometimes blogs can be great. Take the September 11th attacks in New York, for example. Figure there are hundreds, if not thousands, of high quality weblogs being run out of New York. When the attacks hit, many of those bloggers grabbed their cameras and hit the streets. While the mass media [understandably] focused their attention on the big pictures, the blogging community rounded it out and filled it in with some smaller scale, personal stories. Cool stuff.

This time, however, it's a little different.

In the weeks and months leading up to the war, lots of bloggers made public their feelings about what we - the US - should be doing in Iraq. Seeing as it was all just personal opinion, it wasn't all that different than reading the op/ed pieces in the papers. (Other than the fact that, as a whole, the op/ed pieces tend to be better written.)

Now that the war is on - and being fought half a world away - blogs seem out of step. Most of the stuff you see people posting is just regurgitated from the mainstream press. Exit immediacy. Exit uncensored. Exit big selling points.

There are some exceptions. Kevin Sites, a reporter for CNN on location in Iraq, had a blog going up until late last week when somebody - presumably CNN - made him stop. There's also at least one (one!) dude in Baghdad who has been writing some interesting stuff, but some people don't believe he's legit. To be sure, there are probably more, but it's not nearly as potent as it could be if the story was in a freer, more wired society.

So there. I kinda developed a theory about localization of story and relevance of blogging. Now I think it's time for some snood.

>honk<

This afternoon, my soccer team won the championship of the indoor league we play in. It was fun. Well, except for the part where I got kicked in the stomach and lost my wind and I had to lay on the carpet and gasp for breath and hope no one kicked me. That wasn't so much fun. But hey, I've got a new long sleeved t-shirt, so it pretty much evened out in the end.

On a less painful note, it was a beautiful afternoon today, so Libby and I did a little - and I mean a little - yardwork. More specifically, I swept and Libby took down the christmas lights.

Our christmas lights haven't been working since maybe the last week in January. I just figured one of the bulbs burned out and, being stupid christmas lights, the rest of the chain went dead as a result. It wasn't until Libby went to unplug them today that we discovered the true cause of the problem: some jackass had snipped the wires. And when I say 'jackass', I really mean 'prankster'. And when I say 'prankster', I really mean 'terrorist'.

On one hand I was pissed because a perfectly good $1.99 strand of lights had been needlessly ruined. But on the other hand I wasn't that pissed, because it was a pretty harmless prank and because it was a new one for me.

So, to all you christmas light cutting dorks out there, I say this:

Nice one! You got me! Get a life!

While walking to my car the other day, I saw this goose walking around on top of one of the little ponds that dot the campus out here. The pond was still mostly frozen over, but it had been warm enough over the previous couple of days to start to melt the ice and turn it all dark and stuff. There were also a bunch of puddles on the ice, so if you just quickly glanced, the whole pond kinda looked like it wasn't frozen at all.

In the case of the goose, I'm not sure he ever realized it was still frozen. From watching for a minute, I'm convinced he believed he was actually walking on water. He was kind of strutting a little bit and his honks were loud and proud. I'm still laughing about it today.

If somebody wants to register jesusgoose.com, I just checked and it's still available.

[update]

To get the ball rolling, I created a logo that I will donate - for free! - to the first person to register jesusgoose.com.

Come on! Free the goose!

[update]

- I went to register jesusgoose@yahoo.com and it was taken! Stupid internet. If someone out there knows the jesusgoose, please tell him/her to immediately turn the address over to me. If they don't, the terrorists have won.

According to CNN, the war is 'apparently' on. It's kind of a downer. You sit here and listen to people on TV flippantly use a phrase like 'the beauty of a cruise missile' without even realizing what they're saying. Wow.

So instead of the war stuff, I think I'll talk about something lighter. Like maybe ice cream.

When you look at what you've got to choose from in the ice cream aisle at the grocery store, you'll see that you've got tons of options. You've got your rounds, your blocks, your tubs, and your fancy little gourmet brands that come in those little pint containers. Personally, I usually go for the either the plastic tubs of sherbet - rainbow, please - or the pints of fancy stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'll happily eat whatever, but when it's my money, I'm going with what I like.

Or I suppose you could always go out for ice cream. Any of the fancy places like Sebastian Joes or The Edina Creamery or The Grand Ole Creamery is bound to be better than most stuff you get at home. (Not that it shouldn't be for $4 a cone, mind you.) Plus, they have cracked-up flavors like 'cotton candy' and 'chocolate', so that's kind of fun.

Beyond the cream itself, I've always gotten a kick out of seeing how different people order/eat theirs. Myself, I'm a straight-up cone guy. Preferably waffle if you got 'em, and I'll need some extra napkins if I have a beard at the time. On the other hand, if you go with a scoop in a dish, sometimes you get more than you do if you go scoop in a cone. But then you don't get the cone, so that's kind of a bummer.

Enter the cone in a cup. (Also known as 'The Grossie'.) It's a risky maneuver at a soft serve place, where you might end up with a big hollow spot in the middle of the cup, but if you're willing to take the chance, you might just end up with the holy grail of ice cream purchases: quantity and cone. Don't say I didn't warn you, though.

So that's that.

India is in the semi-finals of the world cup of cricket. The 400 Indian contractors I work with are in a near frenzy. Some people I know are taking time off on Friday to stay home and watch the match on the satellite.

Am I the only one who didn't know that Indians were so into darts?

Guess so.

KC pointed me to this sled thing in his neighbor's driveway. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I'm pretty sure it proves that we're winning the war against terrorism.

On a non-deathtrap note, while scanning the headlines today, I thought I noticed that the Dixie Chicks always appear in the same order when they're in public together. In every picture I saw, the brunette one was on the left, the short one was in the middle, and the tall blonde was on the right. Not surprisingly, this is also the way they stand on stage while performing.

Later I found a picture where they weren't in their traditional lineup. Then I went to their official page and saw a picture right on the frickin' home page that showed them - you guessed it - non-traditionally posed.

So much for that theory, then.

Well, apparently tomorrow represents The Moment of Truth. You had to figure that if Bush & Co were really determined to go to war that it was gonna have to start before the end of March. After March, the climate in that area gets so hot and windy and dirty that it becomes a pain in the ass to wage a war. Especially if you have a lot of mechanical equipment with complex moving parts - *cough* helicopters *cough* - and doubly especially if you have to wage it wearing an airtight body suit to keep you from being killed by poison gas.

So a quick check of the calendar shows that, yep, it's March. And another check of the headlines and, yep, it's time to get your war on.

Here's a recap of the Rush to War and some thoughts about why it drives me crazy.

Last fall, the US talked tough and got the UN Security Council to pass resolution 1441, which reemphasized how much the world really, really, really wants Saddam to disarm. The resolution had all kinds of strong language instructing Saddam to fess up to what he's been up to, telling him to prepare for a new round of inspections, and - most importantly - laying the groundwork for what will happen if he doesn't cooperate.

Cue the inspectors. Witness chief inspector Hans Blix at the UN, reporting on his findings. Witness Colin Powell presenting hours and hours of evidence to his Security Council colleagues, insisting that Iraq is in violation of the resolution. Witness millions of people taking to the streets to protest the coming war.

Now it gets messy.

A lot of the evidence that Powell presented seems to be at least questionable [see Northern Iraqi poison factory], and in some cases, simply incorrect [see uranium purchases]. But then again, the inspectors did actually find a few missiles that are illegal under previously existing UN resolutions - and that Saddam forgot to mention in his 'full reports' - so maybe there's a case to be made after all.

Deep down I was hoping that the inspectors would find something huge. Like maybe a bunker with a couple nukes in it or something. Barring that, I wanted the evidence that the US presented to be unbelievably solid. None of this fuzzy half-truth crap that the conspiracy theory crowd can't get enough of. I wanted something solid.

I didn't get it.

But apparently the US and Britain (and Spain, and more!) had seen enough. They've been back at the UN asking for a resolution authorizing the use of military force to disarm Saddam.

They didn't get it.

This all leaves us with a big ugly mess. We've got a quarter of a million troops ready to march into Iraq. We've got a world divided. We've got a new foreign policy - based on preemptive military action - that represents a complete paradigm shift for our country. We've got junior high school students walking out of class and trying to use words like 'jingoism' when they're interviewed for the school paper. And we've got yard signs. Lord, do we have yard signs.

Not unlike asking a girl out on a date, this is one of those times where you want to know how it's going to end before it even starts. If we leave Saddam alone, will he mellow-out in his old age? Or will he funnel a small nuke to a terrorist group so they can set it off in midtown Manhattan? Will he have learned his lesson? Will that be the lesson we wanted him to learn? There's just no frickin' answer.

Unfortunately, I don't think the US and Iraq have a mutual friend, so we won't get to find out if Saddam just 'hates us' or if he 'hate, hates us'. Either way, if/when we start dropping bombs on his house, I bet he stops inviting us to his birthday party.

Because of the nice weather, tonight was host to the first cookout of 2003.

The first cookout is fun for a couple of reasons. First, you get to stand on the driveway and drink a beer outside. Figure it's probably been a good couple of months without an outside beer, so the first one's always a treat.

Next, while drinking that beer - and tending the fire - you also get a chance to poke around the garage a little bit. During the winter, a detached garage is hardly a place you want to spend any real time. As a result, you forget about all kinds of fun stuff that you put in there last fall before the winter hit. Stuff like fireworks, for example. And really, who doesn't like fireworks?

Lastly, the first grill is fun because it officially ushers in a new season of ripping on people for slicing completely through the hot dog buns. Oops.

On a non-braai note, the new formfactor for the Gameboy Advance looks pretty frickin' sweet. I think I might get one.

I think it's funny when one of those helper motors gets put on a door and it ends up making the door almost impossible to open without pushing the little button. I'm normally against pushing the button, but sometimes you just have to.

I also think it's funny when somebody uses the helper motor to open the door and then the next person to walk through gets hit by the door as it closes. I call that getting 'handismacked'.

I also think it's funny when doofs in congress prove they're doofs.

I also think it's funny when your co-worker eats 12 of your 'cookies for sharing' in under 4 minutes.

Lastly, I think it's funny that you can find some pretty sweet sound captures from the movie War Games on the internet. Or better yet, I think it's funny that nerds provide written arguments about why the movie was unrealistic.

Weee!

I've been a Yahoo Instant Message user for a couple of years now. It started when the company I work for got big enough that the traditional messaging technique - namely getting up and walking over to the other person - ceased to be efficient. Seeing as most of us (a) don't really like answering the phone and (b) are geeks, IM seemed like the next logical evolution for office communication. Today, nearly everyone in the office is online and it's become a fundamental tool in how we all interact.

And my company isn't alone. As this recent Times article points out, tons of businesses have started to utilize IM for both internal employee communication and to more effectively interact with outside customers and business partners. At long last, IMing may be shedding its teenage chat-app stigma. Horray!

There's just one problem.

None of the providers have figured out how to make money off it.

And it's not that they're not trying. Most of the big players are focused on creating an enterprise class IM solution that is secure, certified, encrypted, audit enabled, blah, blah, blah. Here's the story of how AOL is approaching the problem. And here's some recent press Microsoft's solution is getting. IBM, HP, and a host of others are in on the action as well. They'll each come up with something that's supposed to be special and different, but in the end they'll all be basically the same. Also, in the end, somebody will figure out how to get rich in the process.

Problem solved.

Ok, I lied, there's not just one problem.

There are tons of problems, not the least of which is that none of the IM clients can talk to one another. This is fine if you're AOL, which is used by 40% of all Americans ages 18-24, but if you're somebody new trying to break into the market, you're screwed. You're also screwed if you're a business owner and your customers and partners all use different 'flavors' of IM. Somebody has got to get these doofs to agree on a standard. Soon. Please.

Then there's the fact that many corporations are less than thrilled with the idea of putting a chat tool on everyone's desktop. (See: Isn't IMing just a teenager thing?) And what about the increase in IM spam over the last year or two? Yup, that's an issue, too.

But really, who cares. Instant Messaging is here to stay. And it's gonna be huge.

I'm typing this on Libby's new laptop. I've got it hooked into the home wireless network, which was a surprisingly easy thing to do. On the good side, it's got a big screen and iTunes. On the bummer side, Target set her up with OS9.2, which totally blows.

So close, yet so far.

There's this thing in the blogging world called the Friday Five. Five questions get published on this website and you're supposed to run out and answer them on your site.

It's cracked in so many ways.

First, while I clearly write a lot of crap about Dave's Daily Life That Nobody Really Cares About, the Friday Five takes it to a whole new level. From this weeks' questions, for example:

5. Who are the last five people you talked to?

Holy crap. Do people really care to know the last 5 people you talked to? If so, there are way, way bigger problems in the world than the Situation in Iraq.

And then beyond the insipidness of the questions, there's this whole freakish culture around answering them that just seems a little too... into it. People camp on the site at midnight on Thursday to try and be the first to answer them. Then they post in the forums - frequently before they're done answering - presumably to get people to come visit their site.

Again I say: huh?

Recently, some of the more 'famous' bloggers got all academic about blogging. A couple of them tried to apply power laws to the universe of blogs - which I think some dorks call the blogosphere.

Big surprise, some websites are more popular than others. Maybe that's because some people have something to say, and other people want to tell you about the last 5 people they talked to.

"La la la la, connect the dots" - Pee Wee Herman.

On a non-blogblock note, the Huna wrote to the good Senator Dayton to complain about the Computer Owners' Bill of Rights. Hoot.

In music news:

• Libby requested that I pick up the latest Maroon 5 album the other day. It's surprisingly fun. Sure, it's poppy, but it's funky enough to nearly be funktastic.
• I downloaded my first show from LivePhish.com on Saturday. Great bandwidth, great download client, great show. (Except for the 'vocal harmonies' on Drifting... brutal.) It went so well that I'm a little nervous I'll be spending $12.95/night downloading everything they release. Help!
• Robert Randolph's Live at the Wetlands album has been in my rotation for the last few weeks. Check it out of you like rockin' to jammed out pedal steel ala Duane Allman.

In non-music news, would somebody please buy Libby the Beavis and Butthead - Best of DVD Collection so I can stop listening to her beg?

Come to Butthead.

This came out yesterday, but I was little under the weather, so I didn't feel like bringing it up. Today, I'm up for the job.

Minnesota's Senator Mark Dayton has had enough of big computer companies sticking it to the little guy. He claims that the American people harbor a "huge reservoir of frustration and resentment" and "a feeling of being ripped off by some of these [computer] companies." And he can personally identify: on one occasion, Sen. Dayton sat on hold for 45 minutes with a tech support hotline.

Buckle up for legislation!

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Computer Owners' Bill of Rights. This thing is a total hoot. It directs the FTC to set-up mandatory guidelines for technical support. It's also got some wording about a 'do not Spam' list and a special provision for childhood computer literacy standards - cleverly titled 'no child left offline'.

This thing is broken is so many ways I don't think I need to say anything more.

Do not spam... Oh, that's rich.

I stumbled on this time and date site the other day while trying to find out what number day of the year it was. Talk about date geek heaven. Tons of cool stuff there.

While browsing through some of the links, I learned about how/why Europe switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar way back in 1582. Turns out that after 1500 years of using the Julian calendar - which was just a few minutes off per year - the whole of Europe was 12 days behind schedule. It was crazy... People were shoveling their driveways in June and carving pumpkins for Christmas. Complete and total chaos.

To fix the problem, when the switch was made to the Gregorian calendar, October was changed to jump from the 4th to the 15th, skipping 10 days. Presto chango, all fixed up.

If you're up for it, read more about it in this article.

On a unilateral note, another reason I was looking for calendar stuff was to find out the phases of the moon. For a few months now I've been predicting that we'd attack Iraq on the night of the first new moon in March. After listening to Bush tonight, I knew I was right.

Now it turns out that the new moon was last Monday or something.

So much for that theory, then.

If there's one thing I've learned through the years it's that anything that comes in a package labeled 'Old Fashioned Kettle Cooked' is bound to be good.

We're finally starting to do some actual coding at work. After 3 months of tiptoeing around requirements gathering, nobody can accuse us of an irrational rush to war code.

I planned on spending the day building servers and getting things ready to go. But before I do any type of cube overhaul, the first thing I do is dust.

The building we're in has some kind of crazy ability to generate dust. I think it comes from the ventilation system or something, who knows. What I do know is that if you dust your desk on Monday, by Friday you have to call MNDOT to come in and plow out an area for your mouse to slide around on. Eww.

So after the dusting I hooked up the machine they gave me to use. It was loud. Super loud. Super... frickin'... loud. Like 10 fans all running at full speed loud. YOU HAVE TO SHOUT TO BE HEARD OVER IT. On one hand it kinda sucks, but on the other, if I turn up the music, I don't notice it all that much.

I feel bad for the lady who works next to me, though. She doesn't even have headphones.

What she does have, however, is an entire sleeve of Thin Mints. A sleeve that I provided to her. A sleeve that - when paired with a sleeve for me - make up the 2003 Thin Mint Eating Contest. (Rule #1: No Milk.)

For some reason she won't dig into her sleeve. I ate mine like a mad man for the first day, but after I went up like 10 cookies to 0, I backed off in order to giver her a chance to catch up. Try to keep it interesting and all that.

I am sad to say that reports of female Thin Mint eating capabilities have been greatly exaggerated.

I was gonna write something nice for Libby on her birthday, but then I realized that I couldn't possibly improve on what Nelly sings to Kelly Rowland in their Top 40 hit 'Dilemma'.

But I, I like your steez, your style, your whole demeanor The way you come through and holla and swoop me in ya 2-seater Now that's gangstah-ah-ahhh.. And I got special ways to thank yah-ah-ahhh.. don't you forget it

I obviously have no idea what any of that means, but Kelly seems to dig it, so I figure Libby will, too. Then again, Libby is 30, so maybe her gangstah days are finally behind her.

Aww, shucks, she'll always be gangstah to me.

The cover of Saturday's business section in the Strib ran an article about how smaller cars are [maybe] starting to become more popular. It didn't have all that much to say, but I thought this quote was pretty funny:

[A husband and wife] in Minneapolis have decided to downsize from their sport-utility vehicle to a family car that will accommodate them, two small children in car seats and, on occasion, three dogs.

Insurance, gasoline and maintenance on their 1996 Chevy Blazer cost too much. So they're in the market for a reliable, energy-efficient family car, possibly a Saturn wagon.

Who needs an SUV, anyway? That's what [the wife] wants to know. "Many people look at SUVs as being the trend for yuppies, and frankly, in this economy, is that so cool?"

And there you have it. Steve and Melissa bought the SUV, but now that they're not cool anymore, it's time to get a wagon.

This reminds me that I've been meaning to tirade about the use of the word 'yuppie', but I think I'll save that for another day. [Mental note.]

On a non-SUV note, we were in Rochester this weekend. We spent a ton of time with the Dunn family. We ordered pizza, watched basketball, and passed the babies around. Can't argue with that.