Note to journalists: If you're covering something fun, it's best not to participate. A reporter and a photographer were sent to cover the 'beer pong' phenomenon, and later admitted to playing the game with the drunks. Whoops, they're unemployed now. #

Tips on how to remain creative...too bad the whole article costs money, I'd like to read more. #

Roger Ebert gets a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame -- if there's anyone who's had a lifelong impact on the movie industry today, it's Ebert. #

Looking for the worst food in New York? Google Maps is happy to help! At this date, there were zero results in San Diego and San Francisco. Everything tastes better in California, I suppose. #

Enroll at the University of Nigeria! Learn methods of making money through eBay fraud, mass emails, and international deception. It's a 'is this for real?' kind of website. #

Children of the 80s: Nintendo themes sung acapella. I didn't recognize them all, but their Tetris rendition, with choreography, was impressive. #

Rogers Cadenhead wins the Pope URL Speculation Award -- Benedict XVI was one of his newly-registered domain names. #

Apr 17 2005 0 comments

Yesterday was a Day Off. We so rarely get a Day Off -- usually what we call a day off is merely a day where the obligations are non-profit-generating. Yesterday was a real Day Off -- obligations were ignored, work was left alone.

Friday night, we made plans to go rummaging on Saturday. We got up at 9, set a budget -- $10 per person -- and headed out into the wilds. This wasn't our regular rummaging, mind you. Without the antique mall, and with a basement full of inventory, and our small budget, we really had no commercial interest in rummaging. D was awestruck at the idea of going shopping just for ourselves - another rare occurrence. Sure, we did pick up a few resellable things, but none cost more than a dollar.

By noon, we had only spent half of our budget, and decided we were hungry. McDonald's was our respite, spending most of the rest of our budget. There were a few dollars left, allowing us to spend the rest on our way home. In the end, I had a dollar fifty in nickels and dimes when we got home -- that, and two pairs of jeans, a Dictaphone, and a couple books.

Upon arriving home, we sat on the couch for a few minutes, and then I remembered I had planned on watering the lawn (I splurged on a $1.85 spinny sprinkler at WalMart). In addition to running the hose to the front yard, I brought two chairs.

D and I sat on the front porch for darn near three hours, reading, talking, moving the sprinkler, talking to the neighbors moving out. Shortly after the neighbors left, two different realtors showed up to show the house. We talked one realtor into letting us see what's inside. If you've ever seen a Montana rustic ski lodge vomit, this is what it would look like. There was a sanded and shellaced TREE in the kitchen, appearing as though it were growing through the basement, up to the roof.

With the lawn sufficiently watered, we saddled up the dogs and went for a walk to get groceries. You may think we went directly towards the store, in our usual path, but no -- we went a very roundabout way, exploring parts of our neighborhood that we'd never had the occasion to wander through. We walked and talked about owning a house someday, what we'd do, how we'd handle work and kids and such in a single house.

After finding our way to the grocery store, we came home, made dinner (sandwiches and chips - simple and effort-free) and watched a movie on TV. D took a two-hour nap.

Yes, while D napped, I did go work. I couldn't be expected to go a WHOLE day without programming, right? It didn't take away from how nice it was to sit on the front porch with my wife, reading and talking.

Apr 15 2005 0 comments

Burger King was the dinner of choice tonight.

Deanna ordered her specialty: "that's a double whopper, with cheese, WITHOUT onions, because I want to have it my way."

the clerk mumbled into his microphone, "double whopper, no onions." We could hear the order echo from the kitchen area.

I continued the order, "And two cheesecakes."

Deanna had a question: "And, what's with the cheesecake? You have vanilla, then to change it to this caramel."

I added, "Maybe we want vanilla."

"I dunno," said the clerk, "I liked vanilla, too."

"Maybe we want one vanilla, and one caramel," I offered. "That's how we want it done our way."

The clerk ignored me with veiled amusement. "Is this for here, or to go?"

"To go, please." I handed him my debit card and we stood by, waiting for the slip to sign.

Deanna struck a deal, offering "We might stay if there was a floor show."

"Sorry, no dancing here."

"It could be something like those commercials," Deanna said.

I asked, "You don't have one of those King costumes in back, do you?"

"No, we don't."

Deanna agreed with the clerk. "If he knew, he'd already have it on."

"You need to get one of those," I said.

"It could be like a Vegas show," Deanna suggested.

The clerk, entertained by us but ready to move us along, said, "Well, it's too bad we're in Fargo."

Our food arrived very shortly after. Entertaining the wait-staff tends to move time along much faster than staring at the floor.

Win Predator 2 on DVD! Um...well, if you really want to. It's kinda like winning a 1989 Subaru stationwagon. You've won -- but what, really, do you get out of it? #

To click here, or not to click here -- I'm in the 'hate Click Here with every bit of my soul' category. They do make some good points for it, though. #

The Webby Awards have been announced, and -- yet again -- I was not nominated for a dog damned thing. Oh well...maybe next year! #

I submitted this headline to Fark, using the officially accepted phrase 'cut the muster'. Someone saw it fit to change it to 'cut the mustard'. My language skills go unappreciated yet again. #

When asked what kind of records he used to cover his house's walls, CA Bowman said "All the Eagles I could find, I hate the Eagles." #

I've long dreamed of doing this, or something similar, ever since they did it in a cartoon many years ago. #

I was planning on writing about this article, an editorial commentary on bloggers who post that they have nothing to say, but I'm rather busy and can't really talk right now. #

Garrison Kiellor talks about reading and the poor state of newspapers that are becoming sort of glossy pieces about lifestyle and home decor and cooking and how to bring up your children and not what people read newspapers for. #

Apr 8 2005 0 comments

Well, The Screen Savers is now called "Attack Of The Show." While I don't completely appreciate the humor of the hosts, they weren't really a Screen Savers crew. The hosts looked like children dressing in their older brothers' clothes. It didn't fit them; it was clumsy, frantic, an impersonation of what a grown up TV show was supposed to be.

Attack Of The Show is a much more fitting title, and the crew seems to be happy to fit into their own Converses, baggy jeans, and t-shirt that they got for free for sending in a postage-paid postcard.

The first episode, now a couple weeks ago, involved inserting a thumb-sized webserver appliance into the ass of a willing subject. Yes, a doctor inserted it into the person's ass, still connected to the internet, and people could view a page served from inside volunteer's ass.

Now, if it were The Screen Savers, they might have gone that far with a skit, but they would have told us who made the webserver, what it's capabilities were, what operating system it used, what it's power requirements were.

Attack Of The Show, however, could not be burdened with such trivial pieces of data. The webserver was in some guy's ass. That's show-worthy!

The show isn't so interesting anymore. The Screen Savers was amusing, in the "watch them act uncomfortable" way that seeing your high-school teachers interviewed on TV is funny. They put work into creating a show that the hosts can slip into quickly and comfortably, and that's to their benefit. Before, when they borrowed links from last week's B3ta and did a piss-poor job of interviewing intelligent, thoughtful guests, it was a mess of a show. Now, stealing links and crappy interviews is expected, possibly encouraged. That doesn't interest me.

Apr 3 2005 0 comments

I'm on my own this weekend -- it happens a coupla times a year, depending on the schedules of D and the kids. D, Hunter and Allie are in Wisconsin, Des is at her mom's, and I'm here. My parents have acted upon their deep sympathy for my assumed loneliness and have bought me dinner two nights in a row...I can't complain about that, eh?

In Thursday, I was feeling 'off.' It's spring, and I always get deep, unignorable Spring Cleaning urges. "I feel like rearranging," I said to D. "Maybe the upstairs, or the office." She didn't really acknowledge it; both involved me causing frustrating levels of chaos before putting it all back into order, so she didn't want to encourage me.

Having an empty home, however, gives me plenty of opportunities to rearrange. I had moved the upstairs around everal weeks ago, so it didn't require anything new. The office, however, was atrocious. We've been moving away from eBay, attending more to website construction, but my workspace was full of eBay products. My audio equipment was piled on and covered, and had been disconnected and reconnected in numerous useless ways, in hopes of getting at least one thing running at any time. The home servers had been placed certain ways, but there was a big empty space on he tech shelves. Records were piled all over the place. It was horrible.

So, yesterday afternoon, I rearranged -- click the picture for the description. My workplace is now less arranged for eBay, more for design, audio, and media production. And, above all: I can walk without stepping over boxes.

One drawback is I took the books off the shelves...without having any new place to put them. They're stacked in piles in front of the servers. I never said I was perfect, right?