doodledee

KC came over last night with a metal detector he borrowed from his work. (My work doesn't have one.) I needed one because I'm in the middle of a somewhat major household plumbing redo/disaster and I need to locate some pipes running in a couple of walls and ceilings. After I find them, I can replace them and have a functioning shower again. Wee!

Turns out the metal detector didn't work at all. ("I knew it wouldn't. You're such a dumbass." - KC) It didn't work mainly because my walls and ceilings are lathe and plaster which means they're full of nails which means the metal detector will just beep all the time no matter which way you move it around. Uhh, yeah, there's that then.

But all was not lost. Before KC took his toy home, I got to sweep my front yard. I found 3 potential Rolex watches and/or gold bars buried beneath the surface, but it was dark and I couldn't see very well, so I just marked them with sticks. As soon as I get home I'm gonna dig them up. Look for them on Ebay in the morning.

Jackpot, suckers!

How to Build Your Own Metal Detector
How Metal Detectors Work [howstuffworks]
24k Troy Grain Gold Bar [ebay]

I am *so* hooked on that Tyco trial stuff. It's way, way better than the Martha trial. In case you're not, here's what you've missed in a nutshell:

• In 2001, Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski bought a couple big money paintings. Big like $13M big. Instead of having them shipped to his NYC apartment, he pretended to have them shipped to the New Hampshire headquarters of Tyco because - brace yourself - New Hampshire doesn't have any sales tax. Sneaky! Trump no fire you Mr. Koz!
• Uh oh, the feds find out about Koz's sneaky tax avoidance! Feds investigate. Feds find out Kozlowski tampered with evidence. Feds find out he made his employees in New Hampshire sign for empty packages to make it look like the packages went to NH. Feds also find out Koz kicks puppies. Bad Koz.
• Feds dig in more. Feds find other goofy behavior besides expensive artwork schemes. They found out about how Kozlowski was given some seriously huge - like $100M in total huge - no-interest loans from the company. And how those loans were later forgiven as part of a 'bonus' plan. And maybe those 'bonus' plans were all good and maybe they weren't. Feds suspicious.
• More digging. Kozlowski and CFO buddy Mark Swartz also maybe lied about the company's finances. And maybe drove the stock up in the process. And - brace yourself again - maybe they sold a bunch of stock and maybe made hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. And maybe that was all good and maybe it wasn't.
• Feds indict Koz and Swartz on 32 counts of being jerks or something. Ouch.
• Trial starts late last year and is full of good dirt. Stories about spending $1M of company money on a huge birthday party for his wife where he flew Jimmy Buffet in to play for her and commissioned a frickin' ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David that had vodka coming out of it's pee-pee. Stories about $6000 shower curtains and luxurious 'company apartments'. Wee!

After 6 months of testimony the jury is finally in deliberation. It's not going well. Apparently one of the jurors is holding firm in her belief that Koz and Swartz aren't guilty and she's kind of being a beyotch about it. The jury sent a few notes out to the judge claiming the atmosphere in the jury room is 'poisonous' and that they weren't making progress. To top it all off, Ms. Beyotch sort-of kind-of made an 'ok' gesture to the defense team the other day.

Courtroom.frenzy()

Media.downshift(hysteria)

The craziest part is that many legal analysts think that Ms. Beyotch is probably right. The prosecutions case swings around the notion of criminal intent, and many doubt that they've proved it. Sure, Koz and Swartz are fist class crap bags, but that doesn't mean they necessarily broke the law.

Huh.

Judge Denies Mistrial in Tyco Case [myway] [today]
Jurors see tape of Kozlowski's party [cnn] [2003]
Kozlowski, Tyco face more questions [cnn] [2002]

I managed to scrounge up a ticket to the Ben Kweller show at First Avenue last night. It was a surprisingly hard ticket to track down. I had to go to three places to find one. Who knew?

It turned out to be the first all-ages show I've been to in a long time. I say 'turned out' because I didn't know it was scheduled to be until I walked by the club around 5:00 and noticed that - even though the doors didn't open for 30 minutes and the music didn't start for 90 - that the line to get in was already like a block long. And it was full of 16-year-old kids. Ohhh, boy.

I had no interest in standing in line and rushing in early, so I checked the set times and headed over to my office to kill some time. I figured I'd gamble with my usual 'get there 2 minutes before the show starts' strategy and if I ended up having to stand in the back I'd just deal with it.

Turns out it wasn't an issue because, guess what? I'm old now. And I just found out that being old comes with at least one perk: kids at First Avenue get out of your way. Seriously. I was like frickin' Moses. I'd just walk through the crowd looking kind of pissed off and all these kids would just part and let me through. Was it out of respect? Probably not. Fear that if they didn't I might call their parents and narc them out for smoking cigarettes? More likely. But who cares. I got my usual spot on the back steps and settled in to hear some guitar pop.

Rock on.

Over the last couple of days I've listened to most of the 9/11 hearings on NPR. I think that's technically considered Adult Contempo, though it might be Easy Listening. Either way, there's been plenty of good stuff. Government in the open makes for much better drama than closed door meetings that The People never get to hear about. Funny how that works.

While I'd like to leave the 'real analysis' to the pundits who 'really know how to analyze' these types of things, there were a couple of things that I noticed that I just can't resist pointing out. Self-control was never one of my strong points.

First is how active the crowd at the hearing is. There's like clapping and stuff. What's that about? I thought the only time government clapped was at the State of the Union and/or when some lobbyist calls to invite it to the Palms for 5 martinis and a steak. Guess not. These hearings are packed with applause. Especially after somebody delivers a good zinger. I swear I heard someone yell "da-aaammm!" when Clarke shot back with his [now famous] "it's not a question of morality" comment. Burn!

The second is the whole Condoleezza Rice deal. The panelists are always begging to get to talk with her. They beg other people who are testifying to go ask her to testify. It's pathetic. She has agreed to testify, but not in public. They say say it has to be in public. She says no. They say please. Uhh, still no. Rinse. Repeat. Ralph.

I'm disappointed that she's not testifying, but I have to admit that all that "separation of powers" nonsense does seem at least a little bit reasonable. So here's what I say: if you don't agree to testify in public, you don't get to hide behind a podium and rebut the public testimony of some other dude. It's just not fair. Clarke got grilled for hours by a sometimes hostile group of questioners. Condi got softballs from Katie Couric. Lame lame lame.

Note that when I am president all these rules will not apply.

Executive Privilege [cspan]
White House Wages A War on Clarke [wpo]
Clarke testifying [y! img]

You know those Wonder Twin guys? When they used their super powers they could change into different things. Like an animal or a surfboard or a taco or whatever. It was cool. At first whatever it was they changed into didn't make any sense. Like one would be a pterodactyl and the other would be a bucket of ice cubes or something. Ice cubes? What's up with that?

But then later, when the pterodactyl dumped the ice cubes onto the evil villain's head and he got knocked out, it all seemed so obvious.

I went looking for some links to Wonder Twin stuff on the interweb. Go figure, there's tons of it out there. Who would have thought that 80's cartoon fans would have managed to find their way online? Oh wait I totally would of.

Super Friends - Wonder Twins [seanbaby]
Wonder Twins movie in the works [e!]

I almost spit out my pan au chocolat when I read this this morning:

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last week found that nearly 6 in 10 registered voters said that John Kerry said what he wanted people to hear, rather than what he believed.

Only 6 in 10 people?! How could that be? *All* career politicians say what they think people want to hear. And when I say 'people' what I really mean 'real people during election years' and 'huge corporate lobbies the rest of the time'. It's just how the horribly broken system we call "fake representative democracy" works. And here's the real kicker: it's the best thing going!

Yee haw!

Some Democrats Say Kerry Must Get Back on the Trail [nyt]

Sometime in the last week or two, Bylery's switched to the new "improved" gallon milk jugs. Overnight, their price for a gallon of milk went up 60 cents. Seems fair. Oh no wait it totally doesn't.

On the way out, I pulled the store manager aside and talked to him about how disappointed I was in the switch. (I stayed remarkably cool.) I told him about how I was happy with the old jug. I explained to him how, before the change, Bylery's was killing every other grocery store in town on milk prices because they hadn't bumped their price because they hadn't 'upgraded' their jugs. He nodded and listened politely - though he did raise his eyebrows when I used the word 'extortion' - and he said that I was the first to say anything about it either way.

Then he started talking about the change and why it happened. In the end it all comes down to economics and, I hate to admit, it makes a lot of sense. See, the dairy industry needs to continue to innovate in order to create the new jugs and containers that the American public demands from them. And let me tell you, innovation ain't cheap. It can cost millions, sometimes billions, of research and development dollars just to create a single new milk carton design. Spendy, eh? But that's just the beginning of the story.

Once it's created, the new container has to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration through a complicated and expensive process that, even when it ends, still does not guarantee the ease of use, kid acceptance, or general marketability of the new container. Thousands of new cartons and jugs start the process every year, but only a small handful actually make the grade. That's understandable when you consider that the dairy consuming public expects our government to rigorously safeguard them against stupid packaging, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a financial burden on the innovator.

Now here's the real kicker. After all that money is spent on research and on government approval and on focus groups and on cows, the container innovator is only given market exclusivity for their product for a short period of time. (3-5 years is typical.) And when the container's market exclusivity ends, the door is opened for generic versions of the carton to flood the market. And that can only mean one thing: cheaper prices. And if the prices go down, the profits go down. And if the profits go down, the money available for innovation goes down. And if the money available for innovation goes down, the odds that we'll continue to see groundbreaking new jugs and containers brought to market goes down. It's a cycle of stagnation.

So, the manager dude concluded, we *have* to pay more for the same milk in different jugs. The very future of our milk buying experience is at stake. It's just not something you mess around with.

He was a wise man.

In case you missed it, the president of Taiwan was shot the other day while riding around in his Jeep Wrangler. Leaving aside the fact that he was shot (the injuries were minor), how cool is it that presidents of other countries cruise around in Jeeps? And how cool is it that they don't just sit on the back bench and ride around all regal like, choosing instead to stand up Tough Guy style in the back?

I'm going on record right now that when I become president I will insist that I be shuttled around Washington DC standing in the back of a Jeep.

Yee haw!

Chen back in Taipei after shooting [cnn] [look at the picture]
Jeep Wrangler [jeep]

Libby and I settled in and watched the newest Average Joe show last night. This is the one where the loser dude from the first show gets to turn the tables and pick his romantic match from a field of 20 hungry women. What a concept! Seriously, props to NBC for really taking a risk on something so unproven.

So I was at work today and we were all talking about the show - because that's what professional software developers do: we sit around and type 1's and 0's and talk about our favorite reality shows.

And that's when one of the dudes realized that we had all been tricked into watching The Bachelor.

There was a pause - and then it hit me like a thunderclap. The Bachelor? That show is for chicks and stuff. I don't watch that crap, I watch shows about Average Joes trying to live the dream of making out with a hot chick during prime time.

But no, he was right. This new show is just The Bachelor. And I'm already hooked.

What next, non-fat caramel mocha lattes? How 'bout I just leave my dignity in a box on the porch and have the Goodwill come pick it up?

Curse you NBC!

Average Joe: Adam Returns [nbc]
Adam Mesh Official Website [adammesh]

Look out! Here comes St. Patrick's Day!

Take cover!

Run for the hills!

Hide the women and beer!

I came home from work the other day and found a letter from Medica, our health insurance company, waiting for me at the door. What a treat! Better than ice cream! Trembling with excitement, I slowly opened it, taking special care not to rip the cream colored envelope any more than was absolutely necessary.

Turns out it was just junk mail. Darn.

But since I had gone as far as opening it, I figured it was worth at least unfolding the letter to make sure I wouldn't be missing out on the insurance opportunity of a lifetime. You never know, right?

It was just an ad. An ad for a new program that they're starting. A new program where they'll reimburse you up to $20/month for going to a health club and working out so - presumably - you don't get out of shape and then, uhh, get sick or something? Who knows.

I looked into it a little more and to me it feels like your basic sham deal where the only goal is to drive people to use one of the local health club chains. I really want to try and use the word 'synergy' to describe this co-branded piece of marketing wizardry, but I don't think the club is owned or operated by Medica, so I'll have to restrain myself. Instead I'll go with the phrase 'seemingly obvious bedfellows'.

At first I thought the $20 might be a pretty good deal. And when I say 'good deal' I really mean 'maybe I'll actually *make* money, chumps'. Then I dug in and saw that the membership fees at the club you HAVE TO GO TO IN ORDER TO GET REIMBURSED are pretty spendy. Like $70/month spendy. Like way, way too much for me spendy.

That's seems like such a joke. What's the difference if I go work out at some 'fancy' club instead of just going to the Y? Or better yet (because I'm still too cheap for the Y), how about if I promise to go run around Lake Harriet a couple of times a week? That seems healthy, right? And what if on top of that I play a couple games of soccer or maybe some softball and maybe after softball I promise that I'll drink maybe 4 or 7 beers and maybe throw down a couple of bratwursts?

Ok, forget the beer and brat stuff, but the rest of it feels like good enough justification for them to pay me. Somehow I think they might disagree.

Verdict: stupid program.

A couple years back Kid Rock was scheduled to play a show over at the Alpine Valley and Libby, being a huge fan of bad country rock/rap music, naturally begged me to go. I, being somewhat less of a fan, naturally declined the invite. She politely insisted. I politely resisted. She put on the full court press. She stomped her feet and yelled things like MY NAAAAAME IS LIIIIIIIIIIIBBBBBYYYYYY!

I still took a pass.

She downshifted into guilt mode. She pointed out that I once dragged her all the way to Charlotte, North Carolina to see the Dead*. She got out a map and showed me how Minneapolis is way, way closer to Wisconsin than it is to North Carolina. She reminded me of how we had to sleep in the back of the van on a beanbag at rest stops instead of getting a motel. Powerful stuff, yes, but I stayed tough and held my ground.

Ten minutes later I acquiesced and promised we'd go see the Kid next time he visited Minneapolistown. Spit. Shake. Deal.

Well my friends, yesterday, March 13, 2004, Libby's long wait finally ended. Woo hoo! Get out your cowboy hats, take off your bras, and put on your ass-kickin' attitude, 'cause we's about to tear one up!

If you don't want to hear how the show was, just try and remember what I said in my Dylan review from the other night, because Kid Rock put on basically the same show. Well, I guess not *exactly* the same show, seeing as at the Dylan concert the strippers pole-dancing in cages on the sides of the stage were all wearing black bikinis, while at Kid Rock, a couple of the girls were dressed in red. Details, details.

But the details are best part. See, Kid Rock puts on a capital 'R' Rock capital 'C' Concert. He had huge pyro - flames and showers and explosions and all that stuff. He mentioned Minneapolis by name approximately 30 times - and the near sellout crowd went crazy every time. He strutted around the stage, singing and dancing and yelling and, by the end of the night, taking a turn playing every instrument in the band. During the harder songs, his guitar players lined up and headbanged in unison as though they were soldiers in an army of metalheads. During one of the ballads, he rose out from beneath the stage playing a white grand piano. Who can get away with stuff like that?

Kid Rock can, I guess.

About 30 minutes into the show, with nearly every Rock Concert cliche already exhausted, I thought to myself that the only thing this show would be missing would be a roadie coming out and trying to put a cape on Kid ala James Brown.

Needless to say, that's how the pre-encore show ended.

And people went gonzo.

And I was right there with 'em.

Compared to the shows I normally go to... well, it's not really comparable. Seriously, it's not. People used to say Dead shows were half baseball game, half church. Kid Rock seemed to be more like half bar fight, half ashtray. Or maybe half biker rally, half wrestlemania. And the whole thing had maybe two-thirds stripclub mixed in for good measure.

Anyway, it was fun.

* - props to the Puds for letting us use their van

Went over to see Dylan play at the Roy Wilkins tonight. It was a packed madhouse of a circus and was a real good time. There was even like a 10-person lot scene. What a hoot.

Bob played piano on every song, which I'll admit surprised me a little bit. I had heard rumors that he was having some arthritis problems, but I didn't realize it was bad enough to keep him off the guitar for the whole show. Out of necessity, the band has added another guitar player to round out the sound and - interestingly - another drummer, presumably to appease all the old hippies in the crowd by trying to make the band look more like the Dead.

On a vocal note, I'll be the first to say that Bob is back to being nearly impossible to understand. The golden era of enunciation has come to an unfortunate end. Seriously. I know most every word to most every song he sang, and there were *tons* of times that I couldn't synch the lyrics in my head with whatever the hell it was he was saying. Shrmumpuuump bumphump eeeee HIGHWAY 61!!!

Song highlights for me included a fantastically mellow 'Girl of the North Country' and the newly reworked 'Like a Rolling Stone'. I know it's dumb to pick Rolling Stone, but this newest version is pretty neat.

Other highlights included the fact that we bailed when Rainy Day Woman started and headed over to Mickey's to get some coffee and hashbrowns. Good god I love their hashbrowns.

Big ups to Molly for the tickets.

Bob Dylan - St. Paul, MN - 3/10/2004 [execpc]
Mickey's Diner [citysearch]

Brace yourself, people, because the cavalcade of dumbass television business stories has reached a fever pitch! I feel so alive!

The current banner headline is that EchoStar - also known as Dish Network by most everyone on the planet but who for some reason still goes by EchoStar in the business pages - followed through with their threat to stick it to Viacom and stop carrying CBS and a bunch of other Viacom properties like Mtv and Comedy Central. Their reason for doing so is based on a "disagreement" with Viacom over channel line-ups and fees and other stuff that only grown-ups understand. My interpretation is that Viacom is trying to force EchoStar to carry some new sucky channels that nobody watches yet because they're too new and too sucky and - go figure - EchoStar isn't thrilled with carrying and/or paying for them. My understanding is also that EchoStar is behaving like a 3rd grader.

But really, who cares about the details. What really matters is that if you're an EchoStar subscriber and you call to complain about how mad you are that you don't get the South Park and The Real World anymore, the prerecorded message instructs you to CALL VIACOM'S CEO AT HOME and ask him what happened to your channels. And just in case you don't have the number, THE RECORDING GIVES IT TO YOU.

That rules so much.

And then there's the whole Victory Sports Network deal. It's the brainchild of famous Twin Cities area geezer/pauper Carl Pohlad, who decided that the best way to make more money off the Twins would be by starting his own television network and extorting a bunch of distribution fees from local cable operators. Whoops! The cable companies balked at his list of demands. And whoops again! His winter ace-in-the-hole Gopher Hoops squad laid a huge egg.

So now it's spring training and nobody has the network and Carl is sweating the media blitz is cranked up to 11. Radio and television [huh?] ads feature Twins players saying that if we don't all cough up the $4/mo Polad wants that the Twins are gonna lose tons of games and then they'll be contracted because we'll lose so much and COME ON the Yankees have their own station and it makes a ton of money and look they got ARod so please please please call your cable company and beg them to "take one for the team". Please?

Boo Twins. That is so weak.

Maybe I should call Carl at home and tell him how I feel. You think Time Warner would give me his number?

Viacom Press Release on EchoStar Situation [viacom]
EchoStar Drops CBS Stations [myway]
Twins 2004 TV Schedule [mlb]
racketeering [dictionary]

Amid the media hysteria surrounding the Martha verdict the other day, I found the real gem to come from - of all places - the E! Network:

Of course, if she'd copped to the sketchy trade when the investigation began, Stewart could have gotten off with a $200,000 fine and no jail time, federal investigators say.

Funny that CNN & Co. never seem to mention that. To me it's the saddest part. Instead of just paying her way out of the problem, she insists on her innocence and goes ahead with a full-blown trial. As a result, we get a circus and/or a witchhunt depending on your point of view and everyone ends up looking just a little silly.

Especially those dorks waving the red scarves on the courthouse steps. Those people were just idiots.

Curtains for "Martha" TV [y!]
One if by Land, 2 if by Sea (or Vice Versa?) [nyt]

Besides, I think that's selling the notion of historic fabric pretty short if it can be destroyed by one business.

That's a quote from Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Moore downplaying the impact of a cute little mom-and-pop like Wal-Mart on a small town in Georgia.

I'd rather take it way out of context, though, it's funnier that way.

In a Historic Black Hamlet, Wal-Mart Finds Resistance [nyt]

Now that Libby is a stay@home mom she and Nick have moved to my health and dental insurance. The transition has been smooth for the most part, but there have been a few hiccups with prescriptions because stuff that was covered under her old plan isn't covered the same way under my plan and because nobody really understands how any of it works and you have to call 10 different people and it understandably takes time to get something as complicated as "entering a new number into a computer" to get figured out to the point where you only have to pay the $11 it says you should have to on your card instead of the $300 and 18 hours of community service that the clerk at that pharmacy insists that you owe.

Anyway, so I was on the phone today with a remarkably helpful customer service rep at Medica and after she got done explaining why some pill we need was going to cost a whole heck of a lot more than I thought it should, she tried to sell me on using the Medica mail-order pharmacy for all my medicinal needs. Initially I told her I wasn't interested because I prefer the inconvenience and long lines at my neighborhood pharmacy and also because I don't support sending our valuable domestic pharmacist jobs to some offshore warehouse pharmacy in India.

That's when she told me that if I ordered 3 months worth of refills through their pharmacy that I only have to pay for two.

That's when I asked for more information.

She didn't really have any more, but she repeated what she had said before and I listened again. Seemed like a pretty good deal. I'm going to assume that Medica can afford to offer such a good deal for two reasons: volume, volume and volume. And all this volume translates into buying power which translates into leverage with the drug companies which translates into cheaper prices which translates into buy 2 get one free for me. Or maybe they just import all their drugs from Canada. Or maybe they just "hide" the "discount" in the "huge increases" in the premiums that seem to happen every year. Who knows.

Either way, it reminded me again how I boggled I was by the provision in the new Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage that prevents the government from using its own buying power - in that it would be buying drugs for all seniors on Medicare - to "negotiate" lower prices with drug companies.

Remind me again of why that is? I forget. Is it because we still don't trust the government?

The new Minnesota job market: Health care jobs thriving [strib]
Three bills challenge Medicare drug benefit [kc.com]
Canada's homepage [canada]

The other day I was allowed to leave work for a few minutes and go get my teeth drilled. While I was sitting in the chair my phone started buzzing in my pocket. I didn't answer it because it was mid-drill and I didn't want to make the guy stop what he was doing just because I need to chat.

Turns out it was Colin calling. From the beach. In Hawaii.

Insut.toInjury().

So today I was talking to this dude at work and he was all pee-your-pants-giddy because he'd seen the new 'Passion of Christ' movie over the weekend and he wanted to know if I had seen it, too. ("Come on, dude, it was *way* more violent than Blade Runner, seriously.")

I told him that of course I hadn't seen it because I spent the weekend chipping ice off my driveway and trying to decode the crazy abstraction that is UCCNet and because, in reality, I wasn't really all that interested in seeing it.

And that's when it hit me.

I bet a lot of us not-interested people would enjoy a movie like the Passion more if we could have a few drinks beforehand. After all, nothing gets me belly-laughing after a couple of beers more than a super-realistic crucifixion recreated on the big screen. Wee!

And that's when I invented the concept-but-not-the-rules for the Non-Gibson-Authorized Passion of Christ Drinking Game. I'm a genius. An offensive genius, yes, but a genius nevertheless.

Later, I sat down and tried to enumerate the rules. Because I haven't actually seen the movie - though I have seen plenty of other Quentin Tarantino flicks - most of the rules were speculative and/or based on things I can only speculate might happen during a showing. I started with things like "if the movie is a sell out, take a drink" and "if some moron brings a child under 10, take a drink" and "if some other moron whistles at Mary Magdaeine, take a drink".

I stopped making up rules pretty soon after that. Partly because I got bored with the idea, but mostly because I came to the realization that there was no way that a showing of the Passion wouldn't include 80% of the audience discussing 'The DaVinci Code' before the lights went down and the previews started. And if that isn't a drink-and-keep-drinking type of situation, I don't know what is.

Game over.

Ha! She's got a semi-hot one-dimensional boob of a Fabio hater and she *still* picks him over the emotional faucet yet reasonably nice guy that is the Average Joe.

That is so great.

PS - Fabio has like the greatest home stereo on the planet.