doodledee

I'm thinking about starting a starting a photoblog type deal. The only reason I don't is because I figure I'll only keep it up for a few months (days?) then it'll get neglected. Plus I'd have to write some code to support it.

Hmm... Maybe it's not all bad, then.

So I looked around at a few of these things tonight. I thought this particular series of pictures was neat. Reminded me of that movie Smoke where the owner dude took a picture of his shop every morning. At least I think it was Smoke... It may have been Pootie Tang, I don't really remember. Either way, I don't think I could get away with taking a picture of my cube every day.

Day 1: "Look, there's Colin!"
Day 200: "Look, there's Colin!"

Blah.

While surfing around, this one made me laugh. Not sure why. I think it's the crazy techno music.

I got three in a row one time. Pootie Tang!

Apple announced a new online music service yesterday. It must have been a big deal because Steve Jobs broke out his formal jeans and tennis shoes. Well, that and the fact that during the press conference, Dylan's 'The Times are a Changin' played in the background. Attention marketing geniuses: stop trying to be counter-culture, it's silly.

To supply the new service with music, Apple has partnered with the five largest music labels to put their stuff online. The library will start at 200,000 songs, which you can download for $0.99 each. If you download a whole album, you'll probably get a discount or something, too, who knows.

The music will be distributed in the MPEG-4 AAC format. Like MP3, AAC is a 'lossy' compression algorithm, but AAC provides a much better sound for a similar sized file. Apparently that's good. I'd still prefer a non-lossy format, but I don't know if that's gonna happen anytime soon. In the meantime, kids everywhere will get used to crappy sounding music. Suckas.

Another notable feature of AAC is that it has a bunch of fancy Digital Rights Management (DRM) stuff built into it. That may or may not be good. Depending on how it's used, DRM could start to infringe on your 'fair use' of the song. For example, initially with their service, Apple has chosen to limit the buyer to making only 10 copies of the song once it's downloaded. In the future, I could see things getting a lot crazier than that.

For now you can only download songs onto a Mac. A Windows version will be available within the next 8 months. It'll be interesting to see how this thing takes off. Like it or not, at least the industry is finally trying something.

In other news:

• New Trey Band album is out on Tuesday. Your mission: go get it.
• Wilco is giving away a 6 song EP through their website. Your mission: go download it. They will also be headlining the annual outdoor sculpture garden concert at the Walker this June. No big deal if you don't go to that, as fewer people means I'll be able to get closer to the stage. (Note: Libby won't be going: "Uhh, Dave, I don't really like Wilco." Whaaa??!)
• Libby found several good pairs of overalls in the 30 or so bags of prego clothes that she's amassed from friends and family. Excuses for not wearing them are running thin.
• I am the new mayor of Baghdad.

In a victory for vengeful wackos statewide, the Minnesota legislature has *finally* managed to pass the aptly named 'Minnesota Personal Protection Act', also known as 'The Crazyass New Law that Makes it Legal for Tons of People to Carry Concealed Handguns'. [article]

This one totally baffles me.

Minnesota now stands eighth-lowest in the nation in the rate of firearm deaths from homicide, suicide and accident. All of the states with better rates have gun laws similar to the one Minnesota is abandoning. The dozen states with the highest rates of firearm deaths all have the system Minnesota is adopting.

Huh.

Estimates are that that 2% of the population will apply for the new permits. On a big day at the State Fair, 150,000+ people pour into the fairgrounds. For those too lazy to do the math, that means that next fall there will be 3000+ guns going through the turnstiles with the rest of us fatsos. Remind me stopping begging strangers for a free Sweet Martha's Cookie. They might pop a cap in my ass.

On a good note, there's this analysis:

"It probably isn't Armageddon," said Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, with a sigh.

It 'probably' isn't Armageddon? Well that's 'probably' good news, then.

Prediction: in 5 years this law will officially be labeled 'stupid'.

Libby and I went and saw Ira Glass down at the recently remodeled and reopened Pantages Theater. Ira is the host of This American Life, a truly great radio program. He was in town to give a talk about why some stories - particularly the ones featured on his show - work so well at hooking a listener and getting them to empathize with the characters.

His theories revolved around something like seven talking points. They included things like 'pleasant surprise' and 'narrative structure'. He talked through each one, highlighting them as he went with audio clips and anecdotes from his show and from his life.

What a snore-fest, right?

Hardly. I was totally frickin' mesmerized. It was 2+ hours and it absolutely flew by.

As a bonus, as would be expected at most any MPR event, the crowd was full of hilariously self-righteous doofs. These are the people who can't wait to clap when someone makes fun of television or suggests that Bush 'stole the election'. The groupthink makes for some fun people watching and, in some cases, some fun eavesdropping.

Witness:

Ira: See, radio is the most visual of all mediums. Lady behind us [whispered]: That's so true Ira: No it's not. But if you say it the right way, people will believe it. Dave [whispered]: Coppertone!

On one level I suppose it's sad, but for now, I'm just gonna keep laughing.

Amy [sister] and Brent [sister.husband] just bought a new house. We got to go inside over Easter and check it out. She put some pictures up on their website. Check it out, it rules!

There's a 90210 reunion special coming up. Shockingly, Tori Spelling is apparently too busy to be on it.

Busy doing what, exactly?

Ahh who cares. The Wild won and suddenly Tori doesn't seem all that important anymore.

Tiffani, yes, but Tori, no.

The record industry has decided to sue some students who were/are running music sharing software at their respective universities. The software the kids were running acts as a central 'server' of sorts, aggregating files people are sharing throughout, for example, the entire dorm, and making them available for everyone else to see/copy/whatever.

The suit seeks $98 billion (with a 'b') in damages. Ouch. That's some serious scratch.

None of this really surprises me. As I've gone on about before, all this P2P file sharing stuff is here to stay. There's a whole generation of kids who can't imagine living without it. There's also a whole generation of music executives and artists who are crapping their pants about how they're going to make money. (Hint: it's not by giving stuff away.)

But what's the big idea? Kids are buying more CDs then ever, right?

Not unless you count blank CDs, nope, they're not. At least I don't believe they are, and nobody seems to be able to show me otherwise. They're downloading everything. Movies, TV shows, music, and, like anything else associated with the internet, there's probably porn mixed in there, too. And the kids don't even seem to deny it anymore. The arguments have shifted from "I still buy tons of CDs" to "CDs are too expensive, make them cheaper and maybe I'll buy some." Nice.

But the kids still see it as wrong, right? Guess again.

Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University, says:"As we have tried to educate our students, half of them understand it's like going into a store and putting a CD in your pocket and the other half just can't see it that way."

Wow.

It's too bad, really. All this hubbub will take away from the good side of a pretty mint piece of technology. Think what P2P could do for a campus environment. Miss a day of class? Go out and find someone who is sharing his or her notes. Want to hear the latest concert by a band that says it's fine to share their music? Go get it.

Hmm. Ok, that's all I can think of. The rest of my examples are all shady, like copies of old tests and stuff like that. I hope it's just me who can't think of other good uses. But that shouldn't take away from the fact that it rules.

At least administration seems to agree with me:

"If this becomes more about a challenge to the technology than about downloading music for recreational purposes, that is a serious concern for us," said Peter McDonough, general counsel for Princeton. "Because we emphatically believe the technologies themselves are not illegal."

Good for you, Pete.

Baked Doritos are unnaturally orange. Way more so than the original Doritos are. It's like a chemical orange color. I feel like when I eat them I should have a canary in a cage next to me, just in case.

That said, they're not all that bad. They're crispy and cheesy and not so overly bad for you. They're probably not good enough to warrant their own fan site, but hey, I still eat them.

Oh wait, maybe they are good enough to have their own fan site.

Uhh yeah. That's worth $35/year. Doof.

Things are getting messy in Bemidji. [full story]

Citing frustrated housekeepers and the high cost of cleaning up messes, the Innkeepers of the Bemidji Area advised pizza parlors this week that they will charge 50 cents for every box delivered to their hotels, starting Sunday.

"I've had housekeepers break down and cry," said Jerry Bialke, general manager of the Best Western Bemidji Inn. "We have had brand new chairs that had pizza mooshed in them. Pizza all over the walls. Pizza debris in the pool.

Mooshed?

Back in the heady dot-com days, the company I work for built a super fancy conference room. It had some kind of crazy expensive fabric wallpaper in it. Man, it looked sweet.

When the room was finished, a note went out reminding people not to smear food on the walls, as they would be difficult to clean. At the time, I thought it kind of a strange thing to say, but after reading about the pizza problems in Bemidji, I have a whole new perspective. Who knew that people really did that stuff?

On a non-food-wall-confrontation note, I saw the Mighty Wind movie last Friday. Despite having to sit in the balcony of the Uptown - note: hard seats make my butt hurt - it still was a hoot and a half.

Your mission: go out and see it.

Work hard.
Set a new franchise record for wins in a season.
Have a possible league MVP on your team.
Get home court advantage for 1st round of the playoffs.
Draw the Lakers.

Poor Wolves. I think we could have beaten Portland, but LA is a different story.

While surfing over at Amazon just now, one of their new promotions caught my eye. Apparently they're paying people to prove that they've memorized Amazon's marketing material. Or, in this case, maybe they're just paying people to prove that they took enough math to know how 'percents' work. (Hint: nobody really knows!)

So long story short, I now have one nickel in my Amazon account. Ooo. Stop me before I click again.

Libby has been sick for a couple days and it's driving me insane. Normally when she's sick, I make a big pot of chicken soup with parsley and green beans. But since the whole prego thing started, she prefers not to eat chicken. And when I say 'prefers not to eat', I really mean 'prefers to not see, smell, taste, hear or otherwise sense'.

So no soup for her! And, unfortunately, no soup for me, either.

Late tonight she finally let me make her a grilled cheese. Wee. I fell so useful.

The whole anti-chicken thing was toughest in the south. As some of you may know, when driving through the south, you pass a fried chicken place on average about once every 4 blocks. And they're mostly Popeye's. To my knowledge, Minneapolis has only one Popeye's and it's over on Lake Street by the big K-mart. The problem with that one is that it's so close to both a White Castle and a great soup house that by the time I get in that neighborhood, I get distracted and end up eating somewhere else. But in the south there are no distractions... There's only delicious cajun-spiced fried chicken. And dirty rice. And slaw. Lordy.

While Popeye's rules, KFC is still off limits for me. I checked-up on the PETA boycott and it's still going strong. They keep a timeline of all the stuff that has happened since it started. A recent entry caught my eye:

March 15, 2003 - PETA President Ingrid Newkirk calls KFC President Cheryl Bachelder at home, pleading with her to make the much-needed animal welfare improvements that PETA has been recommending all along.

At home?! Those PETA doofs better watch out or they're gonna end up getting put on somebody's Do Not Call List.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's 2.

Sky-U-Mah

To help balance its bloated budget, the mayor of New York has been talking about selling off the naming rights to certain 'things' in the city. Stuff like getting Alpo to sponsor one of the dog parks in the city or something.

At first I thought it was silly, but now I'm not so sure.

While this type of corporate sponsorship probably wouldn't fly in Minnesota, why not help balance our Federal budget by selling the naming rights to the Department of Homeland Security terror threat level.

I propose:

• The Scope Green Condition. (When it's 'low' it's a 'condition', not an 'alert'.)
• The IBM Blue Condition
• The Juicy Fruit Yellow Condition
• The Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Alert
• The Coca-Cola Red Alert

Think of the money we'd make. We would all live in solid gold houses.

If they get this through congress, I promise I'll look the other way when Bush's tax cuts go through.

Oh wait, I mean I'll look the other way when The Fiskars Scissors Tax Reduction Package goes through.

Made it back from the east coast in one piece. Had a great time. And as a bonus, even though it was rainy as all get out in the days before we left, it was sunny and beautiful - if not a little windy - while we were there.

Three things that changed while we were out of town:

• It turns out that CNN is only broadcasting news that won't get its employees killed. Some people are outraged by this revelation, and while I can easily see their point, I'm still glad somebody was in there recording what was really going on.
• It turns out that kids will still run around and light fires and get pepper sprayed after the Gopher hockey team wins the national championship. Total jackasses. And how bout the ones who went on TV and waved to the cameras and talked about how 'fun' and 'cool' it all was. "Hi mom! I'm getting expelled!" Doofs.
• Team Yep's lucky softball bat broke during some preseason batting practice. I'm glad I wasn't there for that one... I'd hate to cry in front of the guys.

Off to Washington DC to meet up with Libby and see the nation's best terrorist targets sights. From there, we're driving to Raleigh to see my mom's side of the family, including my 142 year old Grandma. Should be a hoot. Here's hoping I don't barf on the plane.

Go Gophers.

RedHat released version 9 ISOs to the general public today. Seeing as the mirrors will all be chaos, I've be using BitTorrent to download them. So far it's working out ok, but my throughput isn't as good as I would have hoped. I'm guessing it's a problem of scale, as I currently have 30+ people connected to my box either providing me data or pulling from the 7% I've already managed to get. It's neat stuff, and I'll have everything down in ~20 hours as opposed to weeks of camping on some stupid FTP site.

I've been surprised at how the anti-war movement seemed to freeze-up once the war got going.

In the weeks and months leading up to the war, it really felt like the anti-war crowd was gaining momentum. Worldwide, millions were gathering, writing letters, calling people, walking out of class, and - lest we forget - putting signs in their yards to let the W Posse know how they felt. Here in the Twin Cities, there was literally a new protest every weekend. We drove by one at Loring Park that was enormous. It was neat.

But at the same time, this anti-war crowd was a strange one. They spent way too much time bitching about the 2000 election and not enough time working for peace. Sure, your 'Buck Fush' and 'Commander in Thief' posters are cute, but for the love of jesusgoose, move-on people.

It truly bums me out that otherwise smart people remain so hung up on the election.

So the movement was probably more political than it should have been - especially at the beginning - and, as a result, it alienated sections of society that might otherwise have joined on. But slowly but surely it grew, and as it did, more 'regular' folks started to take notice. And as the ranks grew, the demographic gradually changed. By the end, it was almost starting to look like slice of society as a whole.

Then the war started.

That first weekend there was some big activity, but I haven't heard/seen much since then. A new Post poll shows that currently only 16% of Americans are against the war. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I'm pretty sure a *lot* of people changed their opinion over the last 3 weeks.

I've got my own theories. It could be that the war is going so well, with so few American casualties and [apparently] so few Iraqi civilian ones - in stark contrast to the millions [!] of civilian casualties that I heard some members of the anti-war crowd predicting - that people are comfortable enough to say they now support the war. Or perhaps it's because today's wars are fought so quickly that once they start, there's really nothing left to do but hope for the best. Or maybe, just maybe, all those people who said they were going to move to Canada actually did this time.

In any event, I hope someday somebody does a follow-up story on the anti-war movement and why it ran and hid when the bullets started flying.

On another note, while war is rarely, if ever, funny, I have to laugh when that Mohammed Said Sahaf dude goes on TV and says that Iraq still controls the airport and that coalition forces are actually hundreds of miles from Baghdad. Uhh sir, people can see the tanks driving through town. Please stop lying now.

And hey, while we're laughing, check out this footage of Ashcroft's latest concert.

That is so wrong on so, so many levels.

Molly and I checked out Leftover Salmon tonight at the Cabooze. Great tunes with great, fun energy make Dave dance like a maniac. But jesus was it packed. Fortunately, we found some good space over by the side of the stage and soaked it all in from there. And when I say 'soak in', I mean the music, the beer, and about 4 lifetimes worth of cigarette smoke.

Here's a spycam shot of the new banjo player. He's great. At one point some hippie chick turned to me and yelled, "His fingers are magical!" Uhh, ok?

On a non-fish note, I just saw the clock on my computer adjust for daylight savings time. I thought it might play a sound, but it didn't. It didn't really do anything but change the time. Huh.

Libby and I had an interesting argument last night at dinner. She disagreed with my theory the swing dance craze that swept the nation back in the mid-90's was started by that one Gap Khakis commercial that featured a bunch of people swing dancing and snapping their fingers and looking pretty. I don't remember what her side of the argument was, which means that either (a) I was right or (b) my Minestrone came and we dropped it.

Remember all those people taking swing-dancing lessons? Fads are a hoot.

Last fall sometime, Kirby Puckett was busted at Redstone in Eden Prairie for [allegedly] dragging a woman into the men's bathroom and trying to grab her hooter. Today, on the eve of the Twins home opener, after hearing four days of testimony and deliberating for 8 hours over two days, a Minneapolis jury has finally concluded that yes, Kirby Puckett is fat.

He's also not guilty of a bunch of other charges.

This was kind of a tricky case to take a side in. On one hand you've got your former Minnesota Twins All Star center fielder. A local celebrity worshipped above all others. This cat even has a street named after him fer chrissakes.

But then again, lots of people suspect that maybe Kirby's some kind of crackpot. Remember, after all, that during his bizarre divorce trial a few winters ago, his wife claimed:

"[Puckett] had assaulted her and placed her in fear of death and immediate bodily harm several times including when he choked her with a clock electrical cord, when he placed a pistol in her face as she held their then 2-year-old daughter and cocked the hammer of the pistol and locked her in the basement after an argument" - and that - "to get to her and assault her, Kirby Puckett used a power saw to cut through a door in their home"

(Puckett denied all of it. Go figure.)

But come on, that's all in the past. I'm sure his days of guns and power tools are long behind him. Let's get back to the current story.

So on one hand you've got Kirby, and on the other you've got your basic drunk slut hanging out in men's rooms and flashing her boobs in public. Well, maybe that's not totally true, but that is what her friends are saying, so most likely it is. And even though I'm obviously pro-boob-flashing, it can create a wee-bit of a credibility problem.

So who do you side with? The well-connected [but psycho] former pro-athlete or the star-struck and drunk bar babe? Do I really have to choose?

After some thought, I decided I had to go with the woman in this case. It wasn't necessarily because I believed her version of the story, it just seemed like the easy side to be on. Easy because (a) I don't care what he claims, somethin' ain't right with Kirby and (b) by going with the woman, there's no risk of being in the "she was asking for it" crowd, and trust me, that's never a good crowd to be in.

As a bonus, now that Mr. Big Shot Athlete beat the rap, I get to be pseudo-outraged. Yee-haw!

Libby's new toothbrush is too fat to fit through the holes in our toothbrush holder. Bummer, eh? But toothbrushes are cheap, so she probably just went and bought a new one, right? Uhh, not exactly.

For the next six months, I'll guess I'll be sharing a bathroom with The Greatest Toothbrush Balancer in Edina.

Hoot.

Because I'm not on death row, I've never really thought about what I'd have for a last meal. Then the other day they had tater tots in the cafeteria. I like tater tots. I like them so much that I decided right then that they'd be on my final meal menu.

I mentioned my revelation to the cafeteria dude who was serving them and he said that, while he likes tater tots, he didn't think they were worthy of a last meal. Apparently he's more of a steak and onion rings kind of guy.

This got me to wonderin'. What do inmates really request?

Turns out there are - surprise! - websites that document the macabre details of an inmate's final meal. The State of Texas, for example, has a final meals page that records what each person ordered. (Holy crap, Texas executes a lot of people.) Another site - cleverly titled Dead Man Eating - seems to track stuff from lots of states. It also has an associated blog, which seems to have all the same information only with fewer stupid graphics.

More people than I expected declined a last meal. The pages don't say why they did, so I wonder if it's because they weren't hungry or if they were trying to make a statement. Some people have things like 'world peace' listed, which leads me to believe it's most likely a statement of some sort.

Beyond that, it's obvious that the inmates really like cheeseburgers. Except for the ones who only want a bag of assorted Jolly Ranchers or a jar of dill pickles.

And man, some people are *really* hungry:

Twenty-four soft shell tacos, six enchiladas, six tostados, two whole onions, five jalapenos, two cheeseburgers, one chocolate shake, one quart of milk and one package of Marlboro cigarettes.

24 tacos? Whoo-wee!

But what about tater tots?