Introducing the UroClub:

Attention Male Golfers! How many times has this happened? You arrive at the golf course, and soon you’re on to 18 holes with your best buddies. After drinking sport ades, water, beer, and whatever, you’re on the 3rd hole with no rest room in sight. There are no trees or bushes around and you just gotta go, what are you going to do?

Now if someone would only market the UroGear Shift^TM for those unexpected rush hour traffic jams after my morning coffee.

Two stories that I ran across on the web today give me some hope for the human race: Nun offers mercy, but robber gets jail (via Fred Clark) and 'Unbelievable' sportsmanship in softball game (via MeFi).

I need to get this off my chest.

Borland's Austin office is located in a big multi-company office building. In the back of the building is a multi-story parking garage. The parking spaces on one side of each row are huge, and on the other side they are very narrow and designated as 'Compact Cars Only'.

In the morning, the big spaces fill up first for two reasons: they're on the side where the doors to the building are located, and they're easy to park in. Of course, since those spaces aren't marked 'Big ass vehicles only', people who get there early, regardless of car size, parks in those spaces.

Those who arrive later in the morning have two choices: park farther away in some of the other big spaces, or a little closer to the door in a narrow space. And of course, by that time, many people park in the closer narrow spaces regardless of the size of their car.

If I want to park in the narrow spaces (I drive a pretty small car, by the way), often the car that's already there is right up against the dividing line or slightly over it. In this case, it would be impossible to park in the adjoining space without going over the next line. So, instead of leaving 3/4 of a space open, I just pull next to the car that's already there, which puts me further over the next line. Sometimes, later arrivals continue my pattern of disregarding the lines to make reasonable sized parking spaces, and sometimes the next person leaves the remaining partial parking space on the other side of my car open in order to park in the next designated space (there's a lesson about personality types in there somewhere).

Well, that was all fine and good before the building management started putting the stickers above on the cars that are parked over dividing lines. It pisses me off to no end that I'm parked over the line in an attempt to work around the management's stupid arrangement of spaces, and then I get a hostile sounding note from the management for my parking.

I would complain to the building management or to my company's facilities people, but it wouldn't serve any productive purpose. I guess this type of ranting is what a blog is good for.

A late spring cold front blew through Sunday morning, and when I got up yesterday morning, it was sunny, dry and 46 degrees outside. A small respite before four+ months of hell to come.

Most of the items on this list are no surprise, such as the worst breakfast: Bob Evans Caramel Banana Pecan Cream Stacked and Stuffed Hotcakes. However, the worst drink is from a surprising source:

Jamba Juice Chocolate Moo'd Power Smoothie (30 fl oz)

900 calories
10 g fat
183 g carbs
(166 g sugars)

Jamba Juice calls it a smoothie; we call it a milkshake. In fact, this beverage contains more sugar than two pints of Ben and Jerry's Butter Pecan ice cream.

Via John Scalzi.

My resume comes up as the first result on a Google search for "software QA manager." That's wild.

I enjoy reading the New York Times, but the paper regularly runs this type of article that seems to cater specifically to (a subset of?) the New York City area readership. These articles just get under my skin.

This is from Larry Vaughan, one of my favorite bloggers and someone I like to think of as an internet friend:

I have learned this lesson late in life. When I was young I thought that people who asked for my opinion actually wanted it. I would dig deep into my cerebellum and deliver (sometimes eloquently) my verdict. I’m laughing right now at the folly of it all. This is why most people have never followed my advice; they didn’t want it in the first place.

My new friend has reminded me of the power of attending. The only thing he wants; in fact, the only thing he needs, is to be heard. Not understood. Understanding would be nice, but at this point it’s just the icing on the cake. In telling his story he shares his life. Now two people carry the load.

No advice. No comprehension. Just listening. Not understanding. Not empathy. Just listening. Followed by change.

Side note: As I was preparing this post, I realized I didn't have a category for this post. Usually when this happens, I just create a new one and make the post the first entry in this category. In this case, however, I couldn't really think of a good pigeon hole for this post. Interesting.

I am the wind on the sea.
I am the ocean wave.
I am the sound of the billows.
I am the seven-horned stag.
I am the hawk on the cliff.
I am the dewdrop in sunlight.
I am the fairest of flowers.
I am the raging boar.
I am the salmon in the deep pool.
I am the lake on the plain.
I am the meaning of the poem.
I am the point of the spear.
I am the god that makes fire in the head.
Who levels the mountain?
Who speaks the age of the moon?
Who has been where the sun sleeps?
Who, if not I?

- Celtic poem by Amergin, as recited during The Inner Landscape of Beauty

This is a photo of Gumby and Jesus who stand on my desk. My coworkers love to reposition them. I wanted to Nail Gumby to the cross for Holy Week, but I figured that might not be the best idea for good relations with my company and coworkers.

I saw this book yesterday at the grocery store checkout counter:

Oh, and check out this Amazon.com review of the book.

I was wondering... If you post a daily photo of your dog on your blog, and the advertising revenue from said blog is your primary income, can you write off care and feeding of said dog as a business expense?

Don't use black rice in your home-made turkey and rice soup unless you want it to have a less-than-appetizing purplish-black color. Even the pieces of turkey and the carrots are stained. That's good eatin'!

Space is a little tight at the office, so when Jeff discovered he'd been demoted to an open area, he used duct tape to demark his cubicle. He also borrowed one of the fake plants in order to class it up a little.

My pastor emailed me his sermon so that I could publish it on the church web site, and here are the targeted ads that Gmail displayed along side the email:

I am not going to click on that ad even to satisfy my curiosity.

Via Ugly Food.

In this morning's team standup meeting, one of the team members reported on her progress with some automated testing. Afterwards, our scrum master asked her, "But the real question here is: 'Do you consider Watir testing to be a form of torture?'"

Wired News ran a contest for the saddest cubicle. Check out the winners. This reminds me of when I worked for AT&T in New Jersey back in 1996-97. AT&T had a hiring freeze on, so I was hired as a contractor from a non-personnel budget. Furthermore, this was right after the AT&T/Lucent split, and the group I was working with was working in an overcrowded building that had gone to Lucent.

Due to all of these factors, my AT&T manager couldn't request an office for me. I worked for several months in a data center. Go to the basement, unlock the door to a huge, roaring data center at 65 degrees. Walk through it to one corner that had been walled off. Inside was a small testing lab that was somewhat warmer and somewhat quieter. That was my office. Lovely.

A few years ago, Samuel attended a birthday party at an 'inflatable party zone' (like this, but not the same one). One of the inflatable toys was a caterpillar through whose body the kids could crawl. They went in under the head and exited via a vertical slit on the back end. It was one of those occasions when I really regretted not having my camera. But that was nothing compared to this (which I found on the internet):

That's a child psychologist's money machine.

I'm a big fan of the band The Decemberists. I downloaded most of their music that is available on eMusic and purchased their most recent album at a retail store (the only CD I've bought since I got my iPod two years ago).

I listen to The Decemberists all the time, but I had never actually seen the band--not even photos. I caught their recent performance on Austin City Limits this weekend, and I was shocked that lead singer Colin Meloy looks nothing like I imagined him.

With his distinctive tenor voice, I'd pictured Colin Meloy as a thin 20-something hipster. Instead, he looks like he's in his 30s; he's somewhat heavy set and wears glasses. He looks much more like a fellow parent who I would run into a a PTA meeting. I didn't realize until I saw him in performance what a strong mental image I'd formed of him. Strange.

I've seen the new diet drug alli promoted heavily at Walgreens. This blogger interprets the marketing hype for us: "A simplified medical description of the drug is that it’s a fat blocker. It stops your body from absorbing some of the fat in your diet. . . But here’s the most important thing the drug does: it makes you shit oil. Worse, it makes you shit your pants."

My favorite part of the post is the blogger's interpretation of the alli web site bullshit (aka WSBS):

WSBS: The excess fat that passes out of your body is not harmful. In fact, you may recognize it as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.

No BS: Oh dear god. Pizza is one of my favourite foods and these evil fucks have done their best to turn me off it for life. It will be very hard to look at a pizza again without wondering if someone on this drug has taken a shit on it.

WSBS: Eating a low-fat diet lowers the chance of these bowel changes. (my emphasis)

No BS: Even if you do cut back on fat, you’re still going to shit oil.

WSBS: …pick a day to begin taking alli, such as a weekend day so you can stay close to home if you experience a treatment effect.

No BS: Do not go out in public after taking this drug. You are going to shit yourself. Stay close to a toilet.

WSBS: If you’re getting ready to travel or attend a social event, hold off on starting with alli until the event is over.

No BS: Don’t say you weren’t warned. You are seriously going to shit yourself.

WSBS: You may not usually get gassy, but it’s a possibility when you take alli. The bathroom is really the best place to go when that happens.

No BS: You’re old life is over. Forget what you think you know about your body. You are going to fart uncontrollably. And there will be follow-through. This is not going to be something you want to share.

And my absolute favourite (which is to say, the part of the website that horrifies me most):

“You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.”

Oh. My. Fucking. God. They are so sure you are going to shit your pants they are saying you should accept the inevitable. There is no way to avoid this. So wear dark pants to hide the liquid shit stains. And bring a change of clothes. Because your first set are going to get impregnated with liquid shit.

Today, AP has a story about a cat that predicts the death of nursing home patients:

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

...

Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don't know he's there, so patients aren't aware he's a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.

The AP reporter is missing the other obvious conclusion: the cat is sucking the life out of the patients. Everyone knows, after all, that cats can kill babies.

Last week, I was chatting with the phlebotomist while I was donating blood. In the course of the conversation, he told me, "You know, one of the first thing we teach new people around here is that if you make a mistake, don't say "Oops!" or "Uh oh!"

I keep my resume on my personal web site all the time as part of my online profile, even when I'm not looking for a job. As a result, I get quite a few calls from recruiters. Over the years, I've discovered that most of them follow a funny pattern:

My cell phone rings. I see that it's a number I don't recognize, often from a different area code. The beginning of the call almost invariably goes like this:

Me (using my sonorous, who-the-hell-is-calling voice): 'Stan Taylor'

Caller: Hi, Stan Taylor? How are you today?

Me (suspicious): Fine, thank you.

Caller: Is this a good time to talk?

Me: I don't know. What do you want to talk about?

Caller (sounding surprised by my answer): My name is Joe Blow, and I found your resume... I have a position that I think you're qualified for...

I'm not sure why they always ask how I'm doing before they say anything else. I guess it must be that 'make a personal connection' thing. Likewise, I don't understand why they ask me if it's a good time to talk before they introduce themselves. I guess if they introduced themselves first and then asked, it would be easier for me just to hang up.

I remembered these photos or Norman, so I thought I should get in on the game...

"Let Are Kids Walk!"

From the accompanying article:

FORT WORTH — Students who had been planning to walk across the stage at graduation ceremonies this weekend were instead walking a picket line Thursday morning.

The Trimble Tech High School seniors marched in front of Fort Worth Independent School District headquarters to protest Wednesday's decision by trustees to bar students who failed the TAKS test from commencement exercises.

This is an AP story, but if it's not a hoax, I'm not going to sleep well: 11-year-old boy kills a 1050-pound wild hog with a pistol.

UPDATE: Looks like I can sleep well after all. StinkyJournalism analyzes the photos and concludes that the pig wasn't really as large as claimed. Quelle surprise!

From this list of party suggestions for Cinco de Mayo:

Put a "border guard" at your front door to give guests the feeling of going through customs.

Last week I ran across this collection of awesome dog-themed CafePress products. I ordered a T-shirt with this one:

I really want one of these:

Today I read this headline and was confused. Here's the history, I think:

1. AT&T spins off AT&T Wireless
2. AT&T Wireless is bought by Cingular, who gets rid of the AT&T Wireless name
3. Cingular is bought by BellSouth
4. Meanwhile, AT&T is bought by SBC (Southwestern Bell) which promptly renames itself AT&T
5. AT&T (formerly SBC) buys BellSouth, thereby acquiring Cingular
6. AT&T gets rid of the Cingular brand name, renaming its wireless service AT&T Wireless.

I'm happy to report that Eliot Gelwan, one of my favorite bloggers, is blogging again after an unexplained hiatus that started last fall.

From NPR news:

A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Two executives from the company may also serve jail time. The Golden State Fence Company's work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.

From an IM conversation with a friend whose son is about 3 years old now:

Friend: My plan is to get him playing Dungeons and Dragons when he turns 10. That way we can guarantee that we won't have any girl problems until after he's 18.

Me: That plan worked out for you, didn't it?

Slate writer Jack Shafer notes that "As recently as 1980, the New York Times reserved an honored—if small—place in its pages for "bus plunge" news. Whenever buses nose-dived down mountainsides...the news wires moved accounts of the deadly tragedies, and the Times would reliably edit them down to one paragraph and publish." In more recent times, however, the Times has been virtually free of bus plunge news.

The reason: the move from manual to digital typesettings. In the manual days, such short news items were used to fill in remaining space in columns. Nowadays, that's not necessary. Most interesting is that many such items were written in such a way that they could be shortened even further due to space needs:

This Times plunge story, for example, filled the loose space at the end of a news column on July 21, 1964:

Bus Plunge Kills 8

LAS PALMAS, Canary Islands, July 20 (UPI)—Eight persons perished today when a small bus plunged over a 300-foot cliff into the sea near the town of Mogan. One man jumped from the vehicle before it reached the edge and was saved. All the victims were Spaniards.

As typeset, this article takes up 10 lines. I assume that the copy editor who cut this piece from the AP wire included the sentences about the jumper and the victims' nationality to maximize the makeup editors' options. By physically snipping one sentence, the makeup editors could reduce it to a nine-line story on the fly. By snipping two, they could cork an even smaller layout hole with a six-line story.

On a related note, I can't get the Bobs' song Bus Plunge out of my head now.

(via Rafe Colburn)

UPDATE: This made it onto MeFi after I blogged about it. Mildly interesting thread.

Today I received the following email via the contact form at the web site I run, religiousresources.org:

I'm thinking we won't take them up on their offer.

This is my first Youtube post, but it's well worth it:

A great comment on MeFi:

I love MILF's for their tragically unavailable, deer in the headlights "What'd I do?" selves, which is suddenly-gorgeous-and-completely-spontaneous in a way that makes the angle boned, air-brushed cover girls shot from low angles seem like pitifully dry and frail waifs. Show me a girl who can sling a 40 lb two year old, a big ass purse, and a diaper bag on one arm, and reach for groceries with the other, and I'll show you a girl who will know what the hell to do with a baby sitter, a warm bath, a bottle of wine, some good takeout and 4 hours in a quiet room of a respectable hotel.

She'll know, but 99.995% of the time, God love her, she won't go, and on her typically wistful common sense lies the hope of civilization. But the hope that springs eternal in every man's heart, that feeds love and lust and occasional wonder, is ministered to by the other .005%, who make grocery store day dreams on short odds a worthwhile endeavor.

I've long been convinced that developers who name subdivisions and shopping centers simply select 'one from column A' and 'one from column B' from lists of generic names. Well, I'm not the only one who thinks that. This blogger actually made such a chart for Denver.

This blogger also notes that the less desirable the subdivision, the grander the name. I've noticed these same trends in our own neighborhood. We live in the original development using the name 'Blackhawk': the Fairways of Blackhawk. Our neighborhood does indeed have a golf course in the middle of it, which was originally its big selling point, so the name is pretty descriptive.

But then several other Blackhawk neighborhoods popped up nearby, and the names begin to get more generic: The Meadows of Blackhawk, The Park at Blackhawk and Lakeside at Blackhawk. The lake that's in Lakeside is a small pond. Go figure.

The most recent addition has the cheapest homes and is furthest off the beaten track. Therefore, it has the grandest name: The Estates at Blackhawk.

At least the word 'Blackhawk' is somewhat appropriate to the area: high plains with lots of redtail hawks and owls. What gets me are the totally inappropriate names, namely any subdivision or shopping center in Central Texas containing the word 'Brook' or 'Meadow'. We have creeks and fields, no brooks and meadows.

Over on ask.metafilter, someone posted this question:

What's the appeal of Steve Wozniak?

He's everywhere these days and many nerds love him. To me, he seems like manboy who has managed to ride his Segway Polo-playing well beyond his 15 minutes of fame. He preoccupies himself with toys, is an awkward conversationalist (see here) and generally resembles a larger, mouth-breathing version of The 40 Year Old Virgin.

Seriously... what's the deal?

The question got lots of interesting commetns, but even more awesome is the fact that Steve himself commented.

Giant insect devours German farmland

It's a miracle!

Mildly funny humor. I just know that the artist creates these cards during mind-numbingly boring meetings at the office.
(via Matt Haughey)

This article tells of a woman who used her own sleuthing skills to track down the youths who vandalized her house and cars. The article focuses on the woman's tenacity and ingenuity, but another aspect of the story struck me: the local grocery store went through receipts for her, and after locating the likely purchase, they went through their surveillance tapes with the woman to identify the purchasers. The article mentions that the perps made a cash purchase. If they'd paid by credit card, would the store have given her the purchaser's name?

I find it disturbing that the grocery store management went to these lengths to help a PRIVATE investigation.

This is funny.

I watched the first episode of SciFi's new series Eureka, and I have to say, it was pretty awful. It was very clear to me that the producers came up with a concept and characters first, and then wrote the screenplay for the first episode afterwards. In several cases, characters, character traits, and plot turns bore no significant role in the story told in this first episode. They were seemingly added only as needed exposition for the series.

For instance:

• The dog catcher and the omnipresent dog. What the hell was that all about except to introduce a character in the series?
• The psychoanalyst cum innkeeper has the hots for the the marshall/innkeeper. That subplot had no bearing on this episode. It was clearly included as exposition for the series. Let me guess, they're going to be romantically involved
• Marshall suddenly decides, with no motivation, to follow the dog into the forest. What do you know, he sees burned trees and cows (important to show's concept and plot of this episode). What an amazing coincidence!

In addition to that, the portrayal of the relationship between the marshall/sheriff and his daughter was just abyssmal.

I don't think I'll be programming my DVR to record the weekly episodes of Eureka.

This just makes me sick:

US Airways wants to make the most out of a nauseating situation. The Tempe, Ariz.-based airline plans to sell advertisements on its air-sickness bags _ those pint-sized expandable envelopes tucked between the in-flight magazines and safety cards.

"They're in every back seat pocket," said spokesman Phil Gee. "We figure while it's there, why don't we make it multipurpose?"

I'm not too sure what I think of this comic, but hey, it's not often that computational linguists are mentioned in any context. I'll take what I can get.

Very silly

From the Richmond Times Dispatch

(via Eliot Gelwan)

While browsing the web this morning, I came across this review of a recent coporate identity redesign. I think the author has some interesting thoughts on the redesign, but I couldn't decipher his meaning very easily due to his extremely long sentences. An example:

Just recently, in late June, Kansas-based Payless Shoesource, unveiled a new logo and a new direction for their retail stores as a result of new leadership change in the summer of 2005 when Matt Rubel, who previously worked on retail brands like J. Crew, Revlon, Tommy Hilfiger and Nike’s Cole Haan division, joined the company and procured Payless Shoesource in need of a new, more focused direction: to dispel the notion that they only sell “cheap shoes,” to appeal to a more design and budget-conscious customer (in other words, Targetize it) and, ultimately, to somehow deliver on the brand’s promise and strategic direction, “to democratize footwear and accessory fashion and inspire fun fashion possibilities for the family.”

Parsing that sentence gives me a headache.

(To be fair, it seems that the author is not a native English speaker)

Water-assisted flatulence

After installing our new water cooler, coffee brewer and vending machines, the technician left his card:

I want to work in Refreshment Services!

NOTE: I've obscured his name and telephone number to protect the innocent.

Listed here, all on Youtube.

The press release is titled: "Kroger Introduces 'Disney's Old Yeller' Chunk Style Dog Food." What's next? 'Song of the South' fried chicken bucket at KFC?

This little gem of wisdom struck me this morning: Life is like a Taco Cabana drive-through: you rarely get exactly what you ordered.

The NY Times reported yesterday that the former Bell Labs headquarters in Holmdel, NJ, will be demolished (here is the building on Google maps/satellite). It's too bad that it'll be destroyed; it's an amazing--and amazingly large--building.

I worked at that building for a few months in 1996/7. My first official job in Internet technologies was contracting for AT&T. This was just after the AT&T/Lucent split, and the though the Holmdel building had gone to Lucent, the AT&T that group I worked with was still located there. Due to a strange convergence of facts (I was a contractor who was hired from a non-personnel budget, the building belonged to Lucent, space was tight), I did not have an office until the AT&T group that I worked for moved to an AT&T building. I spent my few months in Holmdel in a testing lab. The lab was located in the corner of a HUGE server room: 65 degrees, roaring computers. The lab was only marginally quieter and warmer. It was quite an experience.

According to this no-duh article, shoppers have reported the following problems:

• 50 per cent have had a retail problem.
• The main problems are time it takes to find parking or the product the consumer wants, and unknowledgeable or rude staff
• The bigger the store, the higher the chance there will be a problem
• Men are less loyal than women.*

After analyzing the results of the survey, Wharton School marketing professor Stephen Hoch made the following recommendations:

If businesses want to stop the bleeding from negative word-of-mouth, it's clear that they need to invest in ensuring that each customer experience is first rate – from adequate parking, to trained front-line staff, to the right product mix, both in stock and on the shelves.

Boy, the sponsors of the survey got their money's worth with that astounding act of analysis.

* That's a shocker!

I think I'm glad that I don't run in circles where I've ever run into (or even heard of) this problem: waiters pushing expensive bottled water on diners.

In anticipation of some traveling related to my new job, I recently joined American Airlines' frequent flyer program, and today I received my first statement (problem highlighted in yellow):

I pass by this apartment complex every day on my way to work. I'm not sure why the management thinks this is an amenity:

Jeff Gates muses about running into a John Bolton lookalike on his morning commute. I remember when we bought our house just over three years ago. After meeting the next door neighbor, I wondered, excitedly: is he THE Cyrus Vance? Alas, a quick Internet search revealed that he isn't THE Cyrus Vance.

(In high school, I read the three major news magazines cover to cover each week (I know; what a geek) in preparation for informative and persuasive speaking contests, so I was familiar with all the major members of the Carter administration.)

(via Real Live Preacher)

I'm in the midst of deploying a blog redesign (blue=old, purple=new). If you see any problems with purple pages, plesae let me know in the comments of this entry.

Whenever I spend time browing our ReligiousResources directory or reviewing submitted sites, I'm amazed at what I find. My latest find is TV Guardian:

TVGuardian® technology automatically filters offensive language from the programs you and your family watch. TVGuardian® is a device you plug into your TV and it removes the bad language (cursing and profanity). It works with Cable, Satellite, DVD players, VCR and over the air channels. TVGuardian® makes movie time, family time again.

So, you can watch shows and movies that contain offensive language but feel secure that you're protecting your and your children's fine sensibilities. Here's an idea: if that stuff offends you, don't watch it!

This is the funniest Ask MetaFilter thread ever.

A while back, Norman started making pre-gacking noises while we were sitting in the living room with guests. He was on the carpet, of course. Katie was a little late on grabbing him to move him onto the kitchen floor. He completed the job right as Katie was turning around with him, projecting cat vomit across the room and down my mother's leg.

Take a look. But remember, kids: tattoos are for life (more or less).

Interesting comparative photo set.

This otherwise so-so article about office cubicles contains this awesome quote:

Reviled by workers, demonized by designers, disowned by its very creator, [the cubicle] still claims the largest share of office furniture sales--$3 billion or so a year--and has outlived every "office of the future" meant to replace it. It is the Fidel Castro of office furniture.

For the love of God (so to speak), please refrain from creating choral arrangements of simple, familiar hymns. In order to justify the effort, it seems that you cannot resist the urge to fill these arrangements with musical cliches: key changes, time signature changes, bizarre harmonies, cliched accompaniment, etc.

The people who know and love these hymns will scratch their heads at the arrangements, and such arrangements will not increase the appreciation of those who may be unfamiliar these hymns, or of those who do not like these hymns.

Upon reflection, I guess I could take a market approach: church choir directors, for the love of God (so to speak), please refrain from buying these arrangements for your choirs. We'll all be happier in the long run.

It's easy to make jokes about Vice-president Dick Cheney's accidentally shooting a fellow hunter last weekend. But as much as I'm tempted, I'm reluctant to join the merry-making.

I grew up in the Texas Hill Country, surrounded by ranches. Pretty much all ranchers there supplement their income by leasing their property out to deer hunters. I knew not to go on or near ranch property during deer season, and I know that the ranchers themselves are worried about the risk of being shot while working on their ranches. They mitigate these risks by trying to lease to the same people year after year and by stipulating that only the agreed upon people can hunt on the lease, minimizing the possibility of their hunters bringing less informed friends out for the weekend. Many ranchers also make it a point to wear fluorescent colors when they're out taking care of their livestock during deer season.

Depsite all of these precautions, when I was in middle school or so, my best friend Reginald's uncle was shot and killed by the hunters on his ranch while he was out tending his cattle.

Wow, they charge $29.99 $19.99 for this. Somehow, I'm thinking the site owner isn't getting rich.

Physicians tell the lessons they've learned from working in the ER. For instance:

Stay away from people named "Some Guy" or "This One Dude", because they for whatever reason, just punch someone in the face or hit them with a crowbar and run off. If I see them on the street, I cross the street to get away from them.

Never, ever leave flashlights, shampoo bottles, beer bottles or any long, circular object on the floor because someday you will fall on it and it will somehow, work its way up your rectum.

If you have taken 7 home pregnancy tests that are all positive, and you come into the emergency department...chances are that test too will come back positive.

(via BoingBoing)

I care a whit about football and have never watched any professional football game, but I noticed something this week: I guess you have to pay for rights to use the term 'Super Bowl' in your advertising. I noticed a sign outside a Luby's yesterday, reminding people to order food for 'the big game on Feb. 5', and last night I saw a similar McDonald's TV commercial also talking about the unnamed 'big game.'

Keep Austin Weird bumper stickers are all the rage these days, but this morning this bumper sticker made me smile:

(Round Rock is a suburb of Austin)

I really have no idea how many people read my blog. If you do, I'd like to hear from you. Either add a comment to this post or drop me an email. I'd like to know:

• How long you've been reading my blog
• What you like and dislike about it
• How you found my blog, if you remember
• What you'd like to see more of

Thanks, Stan

I find Signs of Life oddly fascinating

From the news wires:

Pack of angry Chihuahuas attack officer in Fremont

A pack of angry Chihuahuas attacked a police officer who was escorting a teenager home following a traffic stop, authorities said.

The officer suffered minor injuries including bites to his ankle on Thursday when the five Chihuahuas escaped the 17-year-old boy's home and rushed the officer in the doorway, said Fremont detective Bill Veteran.

The teenager had been detained after the traffic incident, Veteran said.

The officer was treated at a local hospital and returned to work less than two hours later, Veteran said.

Well, MetaFilter has had its seemingly annual discussion of the value of perpetuating the idea of Santa Claus to children. One thing that strikes me about the discussion is that very few people have recounted what they have done or are doing with their own kids. I think that many MetaFilter members are young and childless (especially the ones posting on Christmas day perhaps).

I remember back before we had kids, I would make statements about what I never/always would do with my future children. My father-in-law would just gently shake his head and snicker. Now that I have kids, I understand my father-in-law's response. Raising children challenges every preconceived notion you have and destroys many of them. You really can't imagine what it'll be like until you are a parent yourself. Things that you thought would be important turn out to be inconsequential and you devote large amounts of emotional energy to issues you never even thought of before.

This is awesome (if a little vulgar for my tastes). An excerpt:

Can we back up just a couple steps here? At what point did a basic understanding of the separation of church and state become a f*cking war on religion? And how did we get to the point where you can call an organization set up to defend our civil liberties “Terrorists” on national television and no one fires your *ss? Enough. F*ck all of you lying little sh*theads who wish the world was out to get you so you could play the poor oppressed victims. Wake up *ssholes — you’re the cowboys, not the f*cking Indians.

(Sorry about the censorship; I don't really want my blog to get blacklisted by nanny programs)

Triplets!

An AP Story, via USA Today:

Sparrow knocks over 23,000 dominoes before being shot

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — A sparrow knocked over 23,000 dominoes in the Netherlands, nearly ruining a world record attempt before it was shot to death Monday, the state news agency reported.

The unfortunate bird flew through an open window at an exposition center in the northern city of Leeuwarden where employees of television company Endemol NV have worked for weeks setting up more than 4 million dominoes in an attempt to break the official Guinness World Record for falling dominoes on Friday night.

Only a system of 750 built-in gaps in the chain prevented the bird from knocking most or all of the dominoes over ahead of schedule, "Domino Day" organizers were quoted as saying by the NOS news agency.

The bird was shot by an exterminator with an air rifle while cowering in a corner.

The organizers are out to break their own record of 3,992,397 dominoes set last year with a record of 4,321,000.

The screenshot below (click on the image for a larger version) is from a Microsoft Small Business article titled 8 e-mail mistakes that make you look bad. I think they should add mistake #9: Failing to proofread.

We decided to pop some popcorn for Halloween, so I broke out our harvest gold hot air popcorn popper from the 1980s. The kids had never seen such a device and were fascinated by the popcorn popping and coming out the shoot. Next time they complain about being bored, I'm breaking out the Popcorn Pumper again.

A little juvenile humor for the middle of the week (click on image for larger version):

Our office manager usually keeps individually wrapped wintergreen Life Savers in the candy dish on the reception desk. But last week, she put out a Halloween bucket filled with chocolate. As I was eating more of the chocolate than I should have, I realized that they chocolates all had 'Fun Size' on the package. This got me thinking about the marketing team at Mars sitting around discussing this new product.

Marketing drone #1: OK, we've got this new product: bags of small mixed chocolates. How do we market them? We can't market them on using our usual parameters: an increase in something--size, flavor, etc.

Marketing drone #2: I know! How about 'Fun size!' It's devoid of any actual meaning, but it conveys excitement for a product that really has nothing going for it except that you can bag them up.

Kyle Lake, pastor at Universtiy Baptist Church in Waco, was electrocuted while performing a baptism yesterday. According to the AP story:

The Rev. Kyle Lake, 33, was stepping into the baptistery as he reached out for the microphone, which produced an electric shock . . . Water in a baptistery usually reaches above the waist, said Byron Weathersbee, interim university chaplain at Baylor University.

From my Monday morning commute:

NOTE: Jesus seemed to be a courteous driver. As you can see, he uses his turn signals.

I did not know this: the standard unit of inductance is the henry.

This is hystical. This (apparently straight) guy bought the most outrageous clothing from International Male, wore it in pubilc and documented the reactions.

While waiting at the supermarket checkout line a couple of days ago, I noticed that three of the celebrity news magazines (a.k.a. tabloids) featured the very same photo of Ashton and Demi on the cover (by using just their first names, I sound like I have some actual interest in their wedding or other celebrity 'news'). I would think that each magazine would want a distinct photo. I would be interested in the learning about the processes that resulted in such amazing homogeneity.

When we are at the grocery store, the kids occasionally get me to agree to play the grab-a-plush-toy game. Man, our grocery store looks boring now. If we lived in Japan, we could try out hand at catching our dinner:

I've been a geek for too long. When I was writing the previous blog post, my fingers kept want to type 'Perl' instead of 'Pearl'. I had to backspace and correct it two times.

While scanning my spam folder this morning before deleting the 64 messages that came in overnight, this one caught my eye:

By the way, Gmail's spam filter is great: of the 150-200 spam messages that I receive each day, only about half a dozen don't get filtered into my spam folder, and the false positive rate (good email that gets incorrectly identified as spam) is very low, maybe one message every few weeks.

Our neighbors named their children Faith, Hope and... Paul, Jr. For some odd reason I find this endlessly humorous. I wonder if they were planning on their third child being a girl.

I just upgraded MovableType (the software I use to maintain this blog) to the latest version, 3.2. I had been leaving comments and trackbacks turned off on my posts, due to spam. Now, I'm going to turn them on with new posts, since the new version of MovableType offers several options for catching spam messages and pings.

Feel free to comment away!

This Washington Post article gives some insight into why many poor people didn't evacuate New Orleans before hurricane Katrina hit.

In particular, this comment caught my eye:

"It's hard to just get up and go when you don't have anything," Jermaine said. "Besides, everything we know is in New Orleans."

Many years ago, Katie was a semester-long substitute teacher in a high school special ed class. Many of her students were bussed from the poorer parts of Austin. After spring break, she asked her students where they had gone. She was shocked to learn that not only had most of them not gone anywhere, but that many of her students had never been outside Austin.

Guess I should add that to John Scalzi's 'Being Poor' list: Being poor is never having been outside your hometown.

Rafe Colburn's mother tells of relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina refugees in Orange, Texas. Also, make sure to read her update in the comments.

The news is all over the people who got stranded (or chose to stay) in New Orleans, but let's not forget that they're just the tip of the iceberg.

There are tens (or hundreds) of thousands of others who did get out before the hurricane hit. In the best of situations, these people are displaced from their homes and jobs for weeks to come. In the worst case scenario, their homes and/or jobs are gone for good. They have nothing but the clothes on their backs, and they won't be going home for a long time if at all.

In Pflugerville, St. Mary's Baptist Church is dealing with seventeen refugee families, and Katie is helping our church and the greater Pflugerville community to get involved in aiding them.

One of my coworkers said that the parents of one of the children on his son's soccer team had 12 displaced relatives show up on their doorstep.

And those are just the stories I've heard about directly.

Imagine if a bunch of your relatives showed up on your doorstep and needed a place to live and other aid for weeks or months: you wouldn't want to turn them away. At the same time, you'd be hard pressed to serve their needs yourself.

By all means, give to the Red Cross and other charities, but also see how you can help directly in your own community. With the devastation that this storm has caused, I'm sure you can find refugees in pretty much every community in the US.

Update: Katie heard from a neighbor who works in the middle school that a family in our subdivision had twelve displaced relatives show up on their door. This weekend, we're going to try to get ahold of the family, make sure they're aware of relief efforts that are already starting up via St. Mary's Baptist Church, see what their needs are, and do what we can to get them help.

In Japan, a company is marketing nonalcoholic beer to children. Awesome!

Over at Defective Yeti, Matthew Baldwin has invited his readers to offer dating truisms. One commenter advised, probably wisely: If the guy can't remember how many girls he's slept with, that is a good sign that maybe he's not the one for you.

As someone who has had a very limited number of sexual partners in my lifetime (sorry, no details), this got me wondering about people who've slept around a lot: at what point do you quit counting? And if you do remember, how to you decide to answer a new date's query: to lie and say you don't remember or to be truthful with a large number? Well, if you're concerned about the size of the number and decide to lie about it, I imagine you might as well lie and say a much lower number rather than claiming not to remember.

Boy, life complications that I've never even considered.

This is so cool. This guy got photos of a praying mantis that had just caught a hummingbird.

Following on my recent good experience with Sony's repair of my camera, I just had another very good support experience. I've worn a FreeStyle Shark Mako watch for several years, and I have been very pleased with it. I'm hard on watches, so that fact that I've worn it pretty much daily for several years is a positive indication of its durability. The only problem is that the plastic band has split two times. A couple of weeks ago, I sent it back to FreeStyle for its second new band and a battery ($24). On Friday, it arrived home. Only it was a new watch! No indication why they replaced the whole watch instead of just the band and battery, but I'm not complaining.

Gelf Magazine has a regular feature where they pair up reviewers' quotes used in media advertising with the full reviews from which they were taken. Not surprisingly, the entire review is often not as flattering as the short quote used.

For instance, advertising for the HBO movie The Girl in the Cafe uses this quote from The Oregonian:

An endearing romantic comedy!

But here's the paragraph from which that quote was pulled:

This new offering from HBO Films is at its heart a bit of political propaganda wrapped into an endearing romantic comedy that starts losing its laughs when it gets to Reykjavik and decides its teachable moment has arrived.

This is awesome!

I just ran across this great quote by Eleanor Roosevelt:

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

This blogger has created his own religion.

The weather reports are on auto-pilot from now until the end of August (click on image for larger version):

Today, I ran across The Teenager's Guide to the Real World, which has many chapters online. I scanned chapter 1, Money Really Matters, which outlines how much money it would take to start a (really poor) life on one's own as a young American, and then shows what a typical family's budget might be.

Katie and I periodically do a budget by category, like the ones in this chapter. The book reminds me that when the kids get older, we need to show the budget to them and help them understand it.

This looks like a great book. I'll have to keep it in mind for when my kids get older.

Today, I saw a car in the parking lot at my office. In the window was one of those yellow diamond shaped plastic signs that used to all say 'Baby on Board'. This one said:

No lavo mi carro porque amo a mi tierra

English: I don't wash my car because I love my country/earth

I understand the words, but I don't understand the message.

Anyone? Leave a comment.

Last summer, Katie bought me a Sony Cybershot DSC-W1 digital camera, and I have really enjoyed it.

But during our short vacation in Galveston in May, my photos developed black spots. I quickly concluded that Gulf sand must have gotten inside the camera and settled on the optics or the digital sensor. I took it to a local camera shot, and they confirmed my diagnosis.

The camera shop employee suggested that I send it to Sony for cleaning/repair. When I mentioned that it was purchased just less than a year ago, the employee told me he doubted Sony would clean/repair it under warranty. That made sense to me, as dirt getting inside probably was not due to faulty workmanship or parts.

Well, I sent the camera off to Sony service, and it came back exactly one week later, fixed at no cost. I was pleasantly surprised--both that Sony fixed it under warranty, and at the fast turn-around.

When I was first trying out Flickr, I uploaded a test photo of our golden retriever Xena, and tagged it with 'Xena'.

Today, I happened across my Flickr photos and clicked on the link to see all photos tagged with 'Xena'. To my surprise, almost all of them were of pets, and only a few were of the television character. In particular, the user Kevin Steele really likes to photograph his cat Xena:

So, this guy won a contest with American Airlines. The prize: twelve flights for two people from any American city to any worldwide destination that American Airlines services. Cool!

He understood that he would have to claim the prize value as income on his tax return. But when he looked at the fine print of the offer, he realized that AA has assigned such a high 'full retail value' on the prize, that for all but the most distant and expensive destinations, he would owe much more in income tax for each ticket used than a comparable ticket would actually cost him retail. Crazy!

(Via This is Broken)

A little blasphemy is good for the soul: Jesus of the week, Dress up Jesus.

Newsweek just released its list of the top 100 U.S. high schools, and it's been all over the local news that two Austin area schools, Westlake HS and Westwood HS, made the list.

There is a strong consensus among Austinites that these are both very good schools, but I have no idea how they stack up nationally.

I am generally very skeptical of such lists--or at least of their value--but Ed Felten goes a step further: he questions the methodology used to compile the list.

On of Katie's wealthy foreign college students told her that he went to buy a car in Austin--no financing needed--and the dealer would not sell it to him without a credit check. Problem is, this foreign student does not have a social security number, which is necessary for the credit check. The student told Katie he was arranging to give the dealer the SSN of some relative who lives in the U.S.

Any idea why the dealer insists on running a credit check if the buyer isn't applying for, uh, credit?

When he was a child, Ron Hudson's family ran a store and restaurant along a busy highway in North Carolina. In his blog, Ron reminisces about the accidents and deaths that he and his family members witnessed on the highway in their little town. Sounds like it was an odd family bonding experience.

The BBC has a slide show of an Iraqi sandstorm. Amazing:

If I weren't so damn cheap, I'd get me one of these bracelets.

Seen here:

Yesterday I told the kids that I was sounding like a broken record. Then I had to explain what I meant, since they have absolutely no idea:

• what a record is,
• how it works, or
• how it can still work when broken, and thus
• why it then sounds like it does.

Sigh. I'm not just their Dad, I'm now officially an old fogey.

Gee, I hope they weren't packing nail clippers. I feel so much safer, knowing that the penguins were screened.

Protect our troops - from the womb to the war. What if the fetus you were going to abort would grow up to be a soldier bringing democracy to a godless dictatorship?

I notice that MissPoppy.com also hosts the Landover Baptist Church online store, so I'm inclined to believe they appreciate the absurdity of this object. But I have to wonder how many earnest buyers they get.

(Via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

I saw these Huggies 'Baby-shaped' diapers in the grocery store this morning:

So, what shape are the other diapers? Hyena shaped? Wombat shaped?

From the unfortunate-use-of-the-English-language department (click image to see a larger version):

Words and phrases that sound gross but aren't - juvenile yet amusing

The office complex where I work has a small gym for the tenants' employees. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I leave the house at 6:00 a.m., beat the traffic, and then run on the treadmill before work.

I've never worked out with weights, but from what I understand, the best routine is to use relatively little weight with lots of repetitions. If that is correct, in all the times I've run at the office gym, I've only seen a couple of people follow this routine systematically.

This morning it was just me on the treadmill and one younger guy who came in to use the weight machines. He cracked me up: he would put on lots of weight, do three or four difficult reps, get up, stare at himself in the mirrored windows while flexing and rubbing the affected muscles, then repeat. He spent more time caressing himself and staring at his reflection than actually lifting weights. I also noticed that he only worked the muscles that he could easily see: arms, chest and shoulders.

Heather Armstrong discovers the Good Dog Carl books, and says (though with more vulgarity) pretty much the same thing I did when I first read one of them:

What mother in her right mind leaves her baby in a stroller at the bottom of an escalator in a department store TO BE WATCHED OVER BY A DOG? Do the police know that this is in print? AND I�M THE BAD MOTHER?

The person who named the food that we bought for Samuel's hermit crabs had a sick sense of humor. Not 'Hermit Crab Chow' or 'Hermit Crab Food', but 'Hermit Crab Cakes'! Mmmm.

My wife is a college rhetoric and comp instructor, so I frequently hear about instances where students let the spell check substitute the wrong word. Check this out (click on photo for a larger version and read the small type along the bottom):

A 22-pound lobster was caught off Nantucket, Massachusetts. Interesting. Even more interesting, from the article:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent Wholey [the owner of the lobster] a letter asking him to work with the group to release Bubba back in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine.

Another group calling itself People For Eating Tasty Animals reportedly offered Wholey a hefty price for the lobster. At Tuesday's price of $14.98 a pound, Bubba would retail for about $350.

UPDATE: Here's the lobster:

Part of growing up is realizing what a prick you used to be. --Cyrano

Yesterday, I browsed in Barnes and Noble, and noticed that they now have a 'Religious Fiction' section (thanks to this, I assume)--located, of course, next to 'Christian Inspriation', not near real fiction.

A McSweeney's list

From the Sydney Herald:

A rare - and dead - oarfish washed up at City Beach in Perth yesterday, proving more than a handful for Troy Coward, Andy Mole and Axel Strauss (pictured).

The serpent-like animal was found six metres offshore, bringing to at least six the number of oarfish that have washed up on the West Australian coast in recent months. Prefering to live in the depths of the ocean they have only been known to come to the surface when sick or dying and have rarely been seen alive.

Living in the world's warmer oceans, it feeds on plankton and is harmless to humans. The longest bony fish in the sea, it grows up to nine metres long with a bright red crest that runs the entire length of its body.

It is probably the creature that sparked "sea serpent" legends following sightings by ancient mariners.

Oriental Trading Comany is selling Kosher Easter Eggs (click on image for larger version):

Oh my goodness.

The PetsCell� will allow pet owners to talk to their pets as well as allowing owners to request assistance should they become incapacitated and require help. In addition, and perhaps more valuable, pet owners will have a peace of mind that if their pet is lost and someone finds their pet wandering the streets, with a simple press of a button on the PetsCell�, the auto dial function will dial the owners [sic] home alerting the owner to retrieve their pet.

The first selling point (calling and talking to your pet) is vanity. Whatever. Katie's been known to call and leave a message at home for the pets, knowing that the incoming message is played from the speaker as the machine is recording it.

The second selling point sounds about the same as devices you can already buy for yourself: a small device that straps to your wrist with a button you can push to call for help. But if you want to use this device for that purpose, don't put the collar on your cat. If you fall and can't get up, he'll just sit across the room and stare at you.

The third selling point sounds really stupid. If I understand it, it's this: if your pet gets loose and someone finds him, they can simply press the button on the collar and you'll get an automated telephone call. I guess it's too difficult for the finder to read the telephone number off the tag and call you himself or to call the vet's number on the vaccination tag.

The device claims to use GPS. Here's what I need: if my dog gets out of the yard, I need a web page that will show me his current location so I can go get him. It appears that this device does not (yet) offer this feature. Well, actually, the company does not yet offer the product at all. It appears that they haven't yet released any products.

It really irritated me when I heard people comparing the devastation caused by the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean to the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 1, 2001. Rob Cockerham puts things in the proper perspective.

As I was stopped in traffic this afternoon, I looked over into the car next to me, and the driver was pulling ear hairs with tweezers. When he finally looked my way, I continued staring at him for a second, smirking.

Stephen Roberds, a popular professor at Southern Utah University, was just fired, supposedly for using 'the F word' in class.

This story causes a flashback for me. When I was in high school, my health teacher, Coach Mac, was fired, also obstensibly for using the F word in class. I was in the class in question, and she did indeed use the word in the context of a lesson--though she never actually said it, opting instead to say 'firetruck' (it was some lesson about cognitive development or the like where Coach Mac used an example 'little Johnny hears this word...'). She was a great teacher, and I, along with most of my classmates, attended the school board meeting and spoke in her favor.

Unfortunately, Coach Mac's use of said cuss word was just a front for the real reason she was being fired: she was a lesbian and girl's coach. Of course, nobody ever stated that publicly, but it was common knowledge. I honestly don't know if she did anything inappropriate, but most likely, some parent deduced her sexuality and complained out of general homophobia.

As I understand it, the school board could have (and could still today) legally fired her for her sexuality, but they were chicken shits. They chose to use a front case.

This really makes me wonder what is really going on in the case of Professor Roberds as well.

Pet strollers: "On your next adventure allow your pet to safely join in-whether over grass, beach, bumpy city sidewalks, or forest trails"

(via Kottke.org)

This afternoon I ran to Home Depot for a few items. When the man in front of me got to the register, he handed his debit card to the cashier. She looked at it and then asked him for an ID. He said it was his fiancee's card. The cashier called the manager, the manager said he couldn't use it, he pulled out his own card and paid. I was pleased to see that Home Depot was taking such security measures.

When I saw the cashier call the manager, I jumped to the next register. My cashier didn't ask to see my debit card. I happened to walk out at the same time as the guy who was 'carded'--who happened to be black. I told him, "They didn't ask to see my credit card. You think it was racial profiling?"

He shrugged and answered, "Probably." We parted ways. I got the distinct impression that it was a scenario he's used to. Pretty sad state of affairs.

John Scalzi has compiled The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time (that never were). Funny, but some real ones were just as bad (I'm thinking the Star Wars Christmas Special).