Dim Sum

Over six hours (not two, Ming) after Ming took Kyle and I to Dim Sum in St. Paul, and my stomach is finally starting to calm down. I came home, got on my bike to do a few hill laps, went about half a block and a grinding stomach cramp nearly took me down in the middle of the street. Many Tums later, the twisting in my gut is settling down a bit. I suspect there's something in one of the dishes I should not be eating. I've never had anything I've eaten keep me off my bike before, and a Chipotle burrito with red sauce is a normal mid-ride lunch for me. Don't think I'll ever be doing that before or during a ride again. At least I'm prepared in the future.

(But thank you for lunch, Ming and Julie [and Logan]). I appreciate getting introduced to someplace new even if it had a bad side effect.

Cannon Falls III: Combine Demolition Derby

After bicycling, the sculpture garden, and tubing (what, this isn't what you do on a typical vacation day?), Eryn and I changed out of our stinky river clothes and met up with Pooteewheet and Kyle at the Cannon Falls bicycling lot, where the Cannon Valley Trail starts. They'd been checking out the winery and the swans, and at least Pooteewheet stopped by Little Oscar's to have the hashbrown-laded Caboose Burger (sooooo good). I asked her if she'd seen $100 lying around.

Everyone was meeting up so that we could go to the 2009 Cannon Valley Fair. I had heard from my boss that there was a combine demolition derby that took place during the event, and it seemed like something that had to be seen to be appreciated. We wandered the fair (poor Miss Minnesota whatever year she was - she was just wandering around the fair grounds with her chaperone and no one asking her for a picture) and checked out a few of the rides and the food and animals. Then we spent several hours watching combines, pickups and compact cars smashing into each other. I think I have the consensus of my fellow watchers when I state that it would be exciting to see a combine/compact car combination demolition derby.

The videos are below the photos if you want to jump to the live action.

Each combine has a theme and does a circle of the demolition area to show off. Here we see a beach theme. Beach balls fly out of the hopper. Following combines tried to run over as many beach balls as possible to prove their superiority.


This combine sported a General Lee Dukes of Hazard theme. There was also The Incredible Hulk and a ladybug.


This is what happens when a combine takes a solid hit. According to the rules of Cannon Valley Fair Combine Demolition Derby you can get pushed back up once by the forklift.


But getting tipped over seems to have an impact on your ability to retain important fluids. See the missing wheel on the back? That's the #1 bit of damage in a combine demolition derby. You'd think that would stop them, but they just keep going, even without the back wheels at all in some cases. Particularly if they're those big John Deere monstrosities. It was amusing to watch the big John Deeres in the ring with the tiny old ladybug combine. The ladybug would run around letting the big combines duke it out and then every once in a while run into a combine in tandem with another with a great big, "tink".


Combines at play. You can see a few of the John Deere combines and the ladybug.


And here's a plethora of video. Pooteewheet seems to have shot everything in 30 second or less segments, so you have to watch in incremental pieces.

Extended demolition:


Combine gets its tail crunched:


A big hit...


Tipping over:


A combine tire bites the dust:


A pickup pushed through the retaining wall (not by a combine):

Cannon Falls II: Tubing the River

After our bicycle ride and tour of the Anderson Center, Eryn and I hurried back to Welch to go tubing on the river. There's a tubing/canoing/kayaking outfit in Welch, and they'll haul you up river either 1 hour by tube or 4-5 hours by tube. I'm pretty sure it was the part of the day Eryn was most looking forward to. We had it all planned out to get there by noon so that it warming up a bit - it was pretty chilly at 9:00 a.m. - and we could do the 4-5 hour stint which Eryn was keen on, rather that a few one hour laps. It was perfect until we opened up my backpack to pull out the $100 in cash I'd picked up at the local ATM that morning. And discovered it was gone. Not in the backpack. Not on the floor. Not under the seat. Not tucked in a pocket. As tubing is cash only, it was a serious letdown. I hope I left it at Little Oscar's, because at least then there's a waitress with a great big smile on her face instead of some bicyclist with a tricked out machine that doesn't really need it. What had me most worried is that I hadn't seen a real gas station with an ATM on the way to Welch (and there's not much in Welch besides tubing and an ice cream store), but fortunately the bar at Miesville, which was hoppin, had an ATM and was only ten minutes down the road. So we were an hour behind schedule, and I was worried about our timeline for meeting up with Pooteewheet and Kyle in Cannon Falls, but we threw caution to the wind when we saw the long tour was running 3.5-4 hours.

Make sure you hang on to closer to the end for a special tree.

Here's our floatmates. Three couples, four men, two women. Eryn and I got to hear a lot of stories about Pride, bear attacks (in the context of Pride, not the woods), drinking escapades, how many mosquitoes a bat can eat, and a good one about how one of the guys was high on weed and couldn't remember playing tennis at all, but his coach congratulated him on his best damn game ever. Eryn didn't seem to care too much about the running commentary, although she snickered when they swore.

There are a few bikinis way in the background there for my more salacious friends. You'll be disappointed to know that I got Eryn in the water and a quarter mile downstream before the 21 year old barely dressed girls could get their s*** together. A few pot and Pride stories don't worry me, but I was concerned what Eryn might be subjected to with a dozen young 'uns floating next to us.


Ah...so peaceful. It was too bad about the clouds, because we got cold on and off. Eryn had a blue lips a few times until I demonstrated how to move your arms around a bit to allow the tube to capture heat.


That was foot cam. This is hairy leg cam.


Eryn, obviously happy afloat on the river.


And it's a good time to practice your "granny lips" tongue thrust exercises.

This may be shortly before we bottomed out. There were a few places on the river where the rapids brought the rocks up within an inch or two of the surface. That doesn't fly for a big guy like me and I got a few bruises on my bottom before I could get up and drag us somewhere deeper. Eryn thought it was pretty funny until she hit a rock once herself. I'm glad we were wearing shoes so we could navigate the shallows as necessary. After we made it through the first set of shallows, we heard this about five minutes later, "Ouch. Ouch. OUCH! Damn it!" Followed by the sound of women giggling. "Damn it! Ow!" Laughter getting louder and louder. "Turn around. Turn around. This is NOT the way to go through the rocks!" Followed by raucous laughter. Apparently our floatmates were getting a little bit of ballknocking action.


There were mating bugs all over the place. This is the blue one. But we saw red, green and black as well. At times there were four or five on each of us.


Very happy.


Spotted as we got closer to the end. This tree has wood. Eryn thought the fact that a tree had a penis was hilarious.

She also thought peeing in the river was hilarious. She had to go bad after about an hour and I pointed out that there simply wasn't anywhere to get out and do her business, and she was just going to have to do it and be done. She bounced all over the place for 15 minutes then calmed down, noting, "Ah...that's warm." After that she didn't hestitate and announced loudly every time she couldn't hold it and went. I pointed out that the going wasn't a real problem, but the announcement certainly was.


As we pulled into Welch, we were treated to a golden eagle overhanging the last set of rapids, watching for fish. A great trip, despite a bit of bruising and a slight chill.

For the parents, here's some video of us tubing:


And a few seconds of one of the canoes following us bottoming out. I only caught a bit of it, but the grinding noise went on for quite a while and could be heard bouncing off the river valley walls.

Cannon Falls I: Anderson Center

Eryn and I went bicycling in Cannon Falls yesterday, among many other things. We hit Little Oscar's on the way to Welch for breakfast, then pedaled toward Red Wing and back from Welch, indulging in picking wild raspberries by the Bald Eagle area (Eryn won't eat raspberries from the store, but she loved picking a few wild ones to eat), and finally, after many rides in Cannon Falls, following one of the trailside signs that indicated there was an attraction nearby.

We were dubious, because there was a little clearing with a bicycle rack, and then a hike into the woods that led up this big series of steps. On our way out much later, a jogger saw us coming out of the woods and doubled back to see what was so interesting. I warned her about the steps, but jogging was working for her (she was 3 miles from the nearest trail entrance I knew of, and she looked good in her jogging outfit - not one of those rail thin joggers), and she thanked us and took off up the steps. Eryn was surprised anyone was willing to jog up stairs that required several rest stops on her part.



At the top, we found Anderson Center, a sculpture garden, as advertised. But it wasn't just a few sculptures nestled away in the woods by some crazy guy, which is what I was expecting. Instead there was a huge field with a variety of species of trees and a whole series of sculptures. Eryn was particularly happy to find the sculptures after our climb to the top of the river bluff as she has almost as much of a thing for sculpture gardens as I do.


The Anderson Center is an artist retreat and display area near Red Wing. This is the complex. The tower is called Tower View. I recommend the history page for the center, which states that Alexander Pierce Anderson is famous as the inventor of puffed rice, "The Anderson Puffed Rice Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quaker Oats, was set up in 1901 and continued until 1941. Alex worked from a laboratory in Chicago and puffed rice was introduced publicly in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair. "

I don't know why there's a giant rubba duck on a trailer. It must be for artistic purposes yet to be enacted.


Jaime Barber's Snark Tank. I think it should be called Viagra Spider. It reminds me of the Maman Giant Spider sculpture at the Tate.


Andrew MacGuffie's "When It Rains". I'm not sure I get it, but Eryn thought it was cool you could see up inside it. She was pretty sure the piece overhead was a bird. I think it catches rain and then rains on the sculpture separately.


Zoran Mojsilov's "Moby Dick". This was neat to see, because Eryn and I had been talking about Moby Dick a few times recently, so she knew it was supposed to be a whale from a book. However, I don't think she made the connection between the weasel in Ice Age 3 and Moby Dick today, so it hasn't been a perfect education.


My Bilbao by Andrew MacGuffie. Bilbao is a city in Basque Spain, so I'm not sure what that has to do with this sculpture. I thought for a moment he meant billabong, as in a small lake, and that it was a metaphor for a place to get away. But obviously not. Bilbao is known for giant flower dogs and, hey!, the Guggenheim Spider. I sense a theme.


The GREAT A'TUIN, cheyls galactica! He carries all of Discworld on his back! What the f*** happened to the elephants? The statue's actual title is "Keya Tanka Lucie", which has no hits on Google, so I don't know what it means.


Michael Bigger's Honda Blue. Only amusing because I'm currently working with a server called Honda at work. Now I will picture this statue every time I have to work with it. If I had physical access, I'd put a picture of the sculpture on the side of it.


Eryn near Sam Spiczka's "Birth of a Martyr". An interesting piece. I'm not even sure it needed the base, but it does add to it.


It's much more photogenic close up.


Untitled by John Turula and Russ Vogt. Eryn and I had this conversation.
Eryn: "What's it called?"
Me: "It doesn't have a name, it's untitled."
Eryn: "But that's a name."
You know where it goes from there. I was a little worried she was yanking my chain just to have some fun. It's not like that behavior has been thoroughly role modeled.


A close up of Untitled. The pink ceramic pieces looked like two hands on opposite ends of an arm covered in blood. I'm not sure if that was the intent, but it drew both Eryn's and my's attention.


This sun dial had a plaque that talked about the solar system nearby and how far apart things were. I wasn't entirely sure why. Later, on the trip back to Welch, Eryn and I found a stone on the side of the trail (so about 7 miles from this sun dial) that said "Neptune". I suspect there are stones about as far away as the planets should be from this sun dial if it were the solar system, but I can't find verification of the fact on line.


Standing Time by James Borden. This sculpture is kinetic. If you push that weight it will make everything slowly start to turn. Eryn's cup of tea.


And pretty when viewed as a looming tower.


This sculpture was supposed to make you feel the pressure of the walls.


"A Chair for Copernicus" by Andrew MacGuffie. I felt it was good karma to put Eryn in a chair meant for Copernicus. Because of his brains, not because of his treatment by the Catholic church.


Eryn sitting on Peter Lundberg's Kamas. Which is a town in Utah, or a set of pointy martial arts weapons.


From further afield, in case you want to see the whole thing.


And one more. This was before we started taking pictures of the nameplates so we could identify the sculpture in our digital pictures which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the greatest benefits of a digital camera. Eryn looks happy, but she was annoyed with the deerflies. They kept dive bombing us, only to lose acquisition when we walked through trees. If they were Gold Five Squadron and we were the Death Star, they'd have failed miserably.

Black Lust

Our renter whose lease we chose not to renew has moved out. I spent a chunk of my day at the duplex catching up on some of the items the city inspector asked us to fix (please keep in mind, there are always issues, no matter how much work you do they'll find a new batch each year). However, as a bonus for today's festivities, our renter was nice enough to leave us an absolutely filthy half of a house, including a pot of cooking oil my brother spilled on himself (which is technically more disgusting than the pile of porn mags falling out of the drop down ceiling on him - but that was the last renter on that side), and a fourth of a garage full of junk: two mattresses, two huge dressers, chairs, mirrors, lights, skateboards, rugs, luggage, electronics galore, maxipads, bras, Hennepin County library books, etc. If she doesn't come to get any of it in 60 days, I encourage you to be the first to ask me for the bootleg copy of "Black Lust". We didn't position it next to a holy book to make a point, they just happened to be in exactly the same area. And, just so I don't disappoint any takers, I don't know if Black Lust is porn or a religious DVD condemning lustfulness. I wasn't willing to touch it for long enough to put it in a DVD player and find out..

Drive by Ricing

I was at the Mall of America this last Sunday with the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment and his wife, enjoying a cold coffee drink in the food court. A flicker caught my eye, and with a plink, two pieces of squashed together fried rice fell from the sky and landed on my shirt, leaving a nice grease stain. There was no one walking by. No one at the next table with fried rice. No one within several tables with a plate of fried rice. Someone, somewhere, was so vigorously eating their fried rice that it managed to cover at least 40 feet of food court just to violate my shirt. Nasty.

Beach Observations

Eryn and I went to Schultz Beach yesterday for a few hours because she'd missed a big chunk of water day at school (and just because the beach is nice). I offer some observations:

1. If you have a fleur de lis tattoo where it's not normally visible except when you're in your bikini, it doesn't look like your French, or royalty. It simply makes it look like you've been nailed by a Boy Scout.
2. Immigrants who bring their children to the beach and all the boys go in the water and the women have to sit on shore in their full length outfits...that's just strange. I haven't quite figured out how you rationalize to your daughters all the other girls swimming with their brothers, or to the boys all the girls who get to swim while their sisters do not. I expect it's just "that's the way it is" because of religion or culture, but damn if that doesn't seem like it's going to bite you by the time they're teenagers.
3. Board shorts for girls. As the father of a daughter who's rapidly getting older do I ever approve. When the grab-assing starts, it seems a bit more constrained. And it looks just fine with a bikini top.
4. Young lady on the beach closest to my chair. That was less of a lotioning and more of a one-woman show, what with the arching of the back and the hands in all sorts of risque' places, although perhaps you're just really unself-conscious and extremely thorough. I'm happy for you that your nipples won't burn through the fabric.
   

Hometown News

Seems my hometown is in the news:

From Minnesota Independent: “What Would Jesus Do” if he owed money to a collection agency? That’s one of several questions raised by a lawsuit filed in a Minnesota court. A Monticello debt collection company is facing a federal class action lawsuit because it sent out collections notices with a WWJD header. The case pits the religious rights of a small business against the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act which prohibits harassing, oppressive or abusive communication in debt collection procedures. (Via Secrets of the City)

Strange Children's Books

The Furry News as a children's book title made me laugh. I'm obviously too old to think that furries are harmless little animals creating a newspaper. They're more likely to create their own wiki.

Duck Slide

Dan'l and Cookie Queen canceled their backyard water park today, so we set up the slip and slide in the back yard for the second day in a row while I mowed. I was in a good mood. The girls made me pancakes for breakfast, including a unicorn pancake. After Kyle referencing Legend yesterday, I got to feel like an evil overlord demon while pouring on my syrup and devouring the unicorn's head. Which reminds me, Eryn got a unicorn from build a bear she really likes, and I told her about how unicorns are actually somewhat mean and use their horns to poke little girls just so they can drink their tears. She wasn't amused until a day last week when it was raining and I pointed out that the unicorns must be poking the angels. Other people getting poked, that's funny.

Slip and slide preparation. Papi and Diego will soon need rescuing from the lake at the bottom.


Here comes the lifeguard. If you squint, you can see the figures from Dora drowning in the pool, in need of rescue. Poor Diego should have sent out a message to his dolphin friends.


For Ellen. The ducks are unperturbed by the whole mess of nonsense.

Back to Brewing

Last weekend, when I felt it was far enough past the software release that I could travel outside Eagan city limits, the family and I met Kyle for breakfast at the Uptown Diner (four egg greek omelets are two damn big, and I use the word two purposefully in reference to the eggs) and then went over to the brewery store to ponder a homebrew kit to make for the first time in many years.

This week, Kyle came over and I broke out my Father's Day present from 3+ years ago - a deep frying kit - to cook up the Cream Stout kit I purchased last weekend. It's happily burbling away behind me as I type. It's a very healthy noise for a carboy full of proto-beer.

Here's Kyle. He was in charge of the gas flow. The outdoor cooker is excellent for fine tuning the heat. On the flat top stove in the kitchen I can barely get a boil. It was one of the reasons I quit brewing, because nothing would cook right.


Here it is, boiling energetically. When I state I couldn't get a good boil on the flat top stove, I mean I couldn't get a good boil with half this much liquid. Being able to boil up several gallons makes for a better tasting beer because you don't have to add (much) water on top of the mixture, it all gets cooked up together.


And this was my makeshift cooler. I have a copper cooling coil, but dropping it in the pot makes a huge mess. This seemed like a great way to cool it down and water the yard at the same time. I know - there's some dirt, but it never came near the pot. It's the fastest I've ever cooled a pot, and it was twice the usual liquid.


So in two weeks I should have something I can bottle or keg. I'm looking forward to my first drinkable production in many years.

NSFWPL = Not Safe For the Work Parking Lot

You were warned in the title. On the way out of work today, I went the wrong way and headed toward the back lot, where I usually park my car, despite the fact that I had purchased donuts on my way into work for the treat list, resulting in the unusual situation that I was parked in the front lot. Therefore, I had no business being in the back lot. Except the lord led me there so I could find this little gem that a coworker had dropped. I can't tell if it's an eraser, a novelty pencil end, or a strap on for Dingle the TR Parking Lot Gnome...

DP and 9 Other Things

It's a bit between posts lately. I think it's mostly because I'm not doing much that's exciting. Although I did buy a beer kit with Kyle last weekend. I intend to boil it up this weekend. The She Says are coming to town in two weekends. Eryn's been at soccer camp. And I made it through my first big release weekend where I had some sort of managerial input.

Seems like a lot, but it wasn't all that blogable. I'll tackle a few other things.

1.) Eryn has taken an interest in Pokemon. She's watching something called Pokemon DP in the mornings. All I can think of is Pokemon Double Penetration. I know. Wrong. But WTF? I cleared out one of my old Magic the Gathering collector card books so she can store some Pokemon cards. I know...laugh it up. But I think I still have a few thousand dollars worth of collectible cards sitting around that I won a few tournaments with, so maybe they'll help pay for books when she goes to college.

2.) My first big release cycle is behind me. I should have ten more months. This is good. I can get back to a normal life.

3.) I have a Proof of Concept for an ADABAS to distributed system (Oracle) week-long event next week. So it's not quite life as normal, but it's an excuse to cancel almost every meeting I have, so that's sort of a positve.

4.) NOM has called their new program against gay marriage 2M4M. I don't watch or read nearly enough news lately. They might as well have called themselves NOM DP.

5.) I was told at work today by another manager that she had contacted me because I was "the Agile guy" for my group. I come from one of the few groups where there's a preexisting piece of software that must match, as closely as possible, the resulting piece of software. We are the posterchildren for not using Agile. So it's interesting that the wandering around and talking to people I've been doing lately generates so much visibilty. I should point out that it also impacts my fun blogging, because the Agile blog I do at work sort of saps some of my usual blogging energy.

6.) I shared the soccer/manager meeting/ripped pants story with a few people at work and a few others found it. It makes people happy, so in the end (heh) it was a good thing.

7.) My father sent me a post about a koala bears that were too hot and were approaching people for water. I don't know if it's snopes-able or not, but the bath part seems real and is a serious cute overload.

8.) Fimoculous links to Hunch's Which Sci-fi Movie Should I Watch?

9.) Secrets of Six-Figure Women is on the shelf at work. The title made me laugh. I thought it was just me being juvenile until I went to Amazon and the contextual advertisement was for Olga Women's Secret Hug Nylon Scoop Brief #873 (from $8.99).

10.) If you're not from the cities, then you probably didn't see the Michele Bachmann comic in the City Pages. It's not gold, but you might enjoy it.

Work Related Discomfort

I understand that as part of my current role there's the necessary evil of overseeing (vaguely) the installation of software over the odd weekend in order to avoid, as much as possible, issues for customers and downtime resulting in potential loss of revenue. What I don't understand is why I have to do it in the dark without any air conditioning in a space where the ambient temperature is 10 to 20 degrees above what's comfortable because of all the running desktops. If the goal is to have all the players who control the moving pieces in one location to avoid unnecessary searching for distributed resources, couldn't we just redistribute ourselves to someplace co-located with beer or ice cream, sandwiches, bright lighting and at the very least a fan?

I Find it Disturbing

I find it disturbing to use the urinal while they loudly pipe in music where some guy is proclaiming, "I'll taste every moment." I'm uncomfortable with the thought of anyone tasting me while I'm using a bar urinal.

In Which I Tell the Embarrassing Story

Yesterday and half of the day before I was at my very first management offsite. This used to be a big deal where they bussed the managers and directors and vp's and a few assorted other titles up north, but over the last few years has been a more subdued event with locations like scenic downtown Eagan (e.g. the community center).

All in all, it was enjoyable. I don't get to talk to many of the managers outside my immediate area on a regular basis, and there's quite a few of them. It was good to hear them addressing some of the same concerns I have so I know my issues aren't limited only to me.

After the talking/roundtables, a presentation on new projects, a presentation on finance, and a management expert, there was a management picnic at the local park, Trapp Farm. There was food and fun (I learned to play Kubb), despite it being a bit cool and sprinkling on and off.

Later in the picnic, a volleyball game started, and despite having dressed a little too formally in Dockers and a long sleeve dress shirt, I joined in. Many of the management guys (no women were playing) are damn good volleyball players, playing in volleyball and soccer leagues a few days during the week. It wasn't my usual experience with volleyball at work which generally entails a dozen out of shape individuals pushing the ball back and forth and out of bounds over the course of sixty seconds (although this is getting to be less the norm with all the young 'uns in development - e.g. as I get older). Instead, there was setting and spiking, and setting and spiking, and blocking, and spiking and only overhand serves, and almost no out of bounds plays. I think the first point lasted five minutes. I was working up a good sweat after the first game and was wondering why I had ever bothered to grab my jacket from the car before play started.

The second game started, and we were on about the third point and the ball was slammed toward my feet. I dived. And missed. Hard. No injuries, not to my person. But there was a very quiet rustling sound. I threw the ball under the net, and pondered the sound. I reached behind myself and felt a bit of, for lack of a better word, "leg". This wasn't a small pants rip. It was big. Although I wasn't sure how big because I didn't want to go rooting around while standing there in the sand. One of the guys on the team looked at me as I started taking off my dress shirt and stripping down to my t-shirt, waiting patiently for me to finish so play could resume, assuming I was too hot. I wrapped it around my waist, held up my finger, and moseyed over to where my jacket was and repeated the maneuver. He asked if I was ok and I replied that I had to go. He said, "Why?" And I replied, with honesty, "Ripped my pants."

"That's not bad," he said, not having a line of sight to the hole. "You can still play."

"No. No, I don't think I can. You'll have to find a sub."

I skirted the court, and came up behind a few managers and a director who were finishing up a game of horseshoes, putting my back to an area of the park without visibility to my backside. I followed them up the hill, chatting cheerfully while one of them commented on my "Rambo" look in just a white t-shirt, and slowly circled to the far side of the path and the pavilion, keeping my butt to the trees. I probably looked like the moon (heh), always presenting one side. I got in my car, and went home to check out the damage and find some new pants, vowing never to go to a picnic again without a pair of shorts or jeans in the back of the car.

So...how big was this hole that another manager thought I could continue to play volleyball with at my very first management offsite/picnic with peers and bosses and bosses' bosses from several cities and India? The fact that he didn't know how bad it was and was the only one in a position to notice gives me a good feeling about how closely I avoided the title "the manager whose ass was hanging out at the 2009 picnic".

Here's the hole, in no way altered from it's picnic state.


For some perspective, I could have passed my wife's head.


I'm fortunate it was an odd year so we weren't at Blackhawk where the volleyball court is closer to the action and not on the far end next to a lake. And that it wasn't our department picnic where people gather around to watch volleyball tournament style. And that I was in the serving position with no one behind me because there were only five people on each team. I'm unfortunate in that I will no longer subject Mean Mr. Mustard to work-related volleyball jibes.

Graduation Videos

Eryn graduated from Kindergarten last week. Pooteewheet posted plenty of pictures on her Facebook account and I don't want to do double duty, so I'm just going to post the videos. I believe they're a bit long. My mother in law just let the camera run, but these are mostly for grandparents and family anyway.

Zipedee Doo Dah


Presentation


Diplomas

Caponi Art Park

I've lived in Eagan for over 6 years and never been to Caponi Art Park, despite it lying between me and work. So last week after Eryn got out of school, we headed over there to check it out. No picnic or anything, just a visit to see what it was I was passing every day. It's not as interesting as the Franconia Sculpture Park, which changes sculptures yearly, but I was excited to see they have a Shakespeare Festival and I fully intend on going. Ming, do you want to go to The Tempest with me? Hmmm? It might be as good as the version you saw at the Theatre in the Round...

I've been missing out on giant rock mushrooms...


What may amount to child pornography. Originally this was a statue of Caponi's children, the younger being carried on the shoulders of the older, but it fell over and was used as part of the retaining wall. It gained a bit of obscenity during the transformation process I think.


I've been missing out on big green phallic plants, of the sort you see in The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill.


I've been missing Pooteewheet telling off trees. Get thee to an arborist! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of twigs!?


And I didn't know Naga, the giant snake from Harry Potter, lived there. The digesting animals that are visible is a nice touch. Someone I was listening to on Monday compared a particular project to a pig in a snake. Maybe she'd been to the art park recently.


BRAINS!!! BRAINS!!!!!!! And finger food.


You can assume this is an accidental photo if you like.

The Most Embarrassing

One of the most embarrassing things that could have possibly happened to me happened today. It will amuse Mean Mr. Mustard to no end. Remember that sentence, it's important. I almost decided not to blog about it, but I will. Tomorrow.

In Which I May be at Odds with 95% of the World

I've been thinking about this carefully, and perhaps I'm not at odds with the rest of the world quite as much as I think. My contention is about the 2009 Star Trek movie. I don't think I like it as much as everyone else. That's not to say it isn't worth watching, and I would recommend it, but that whole 95% approval on RottenTomatoes makes me feel like I should rate it about 95% as good as a movie can possibly be, whereas I'm more of the opinion it was about 65-70% on my movie meter. But in RottenTomato parlance, that makes me part of the 95%. So it's difficult to say where that puts me.

I've held off for a while so that I'm not spoiling it for anyone (HUGE spoilers warning), and hopefully it's been out long enough that geeks won't harass me for my opinions, because I'm just not the sort to argue science fiction obsessively. I have watched more than my share of it - way more. But my interest is always in the macro, the themes and how they're being handled, and how their treatment compares to other similar treatments and the era in which the story was told and the story itself, whether it's good and compelling and consistent thought is given to the whole weave and weft. Not the micro. I could care less if someone f's up a minor consistency issue as long as they tell a compelling story and don't engage in enough inconsistency to yank me out of the story. And I don't particularly care about those little "aha" momments that are supposed to make me feel good because I obsessively watched the previous episodes/series. I want an incredibly good and cohesive story with strong, unique characters.

So...I can clarify. I felt the care given to the main characters ranks about a 95%. That's pretty much par for the course with Abrams. However, I felt the plot and science ranked more around a 20%.

I'll iterate my issues:

1. I hated the villain. HATED HIM. Why even have him? They'd have been better off forgoing a villain altogether. If Kiki's Delivery Service can get by without one, so can Star Trek 2009. I get it that his part is to come back in time and rewrite the present in order to rewrite the future, allowing the characters to have different personalities among other things. But he was so damn lame. I was listening to MPR or some other radio station (see, I'm not attuned to specifics) and one of the directors or writers noted that they wanted the villain from this Star Trek to be a villain on par with Khan. That appealed to me. But that's certainly not what was delivered. He was a miner. The sort that crushes rocks. And any depth he was supposed to have was poorly delivered, poorly conceived, and unbelievable. I'm pretty sure I could do a better job feigning angst about the death of my wife and child. You know what other movie has a bitter, villainous miner? My Bloody Valentine. I didn't believe his motivation for pursuing Spock, for blowing up one planet, for trying to blow up another planet, for destroying a star ship...nada. Give me Ricardo Montalban any day of the week.
2. Simon Pegg as Scotty. Actually, very good. But several times I found myself thinking, "Hey, it's Simon Pegg as Scotty!" That's incredibly distracting and yanked me out of the story. I was thinking zombies and sillly cop buddy movies. Maybe that's a deficiency on the part of my imagination. At least I wasn't picturing him as he was in Run, Fatboy, Run, because I've been fortunate enough not to see it.
   
3. Let's go back to the villain. How is that a mining ship...IT'S A MINING SHIP...and I don't care that it's a mining ship from the future, they haven't added jamming weapons and cannons to anything we've developed in the way of mining tools so far, and given the premium the Federation puts on tricking out their warships, no one goes willy nilly militarizing their ships, they just wait for them to get attacked before sending help, or dispatch an escort...can drop it's drilling wang through the atmosphere of two home worlds without so much as a "how do you do?" Are there ground based lasers attacking this miner? Particle weapons? Sattelites? Numerous layers of defense? Defense systems acrete outward and you'd expect them to be strongest at your home planet. Why the hell was anyone ever at war with the Klingons if the only thing the Klingons or the Federation needed to do was drive up next to the other's home planet and calmly get down to business? Maybe I'm out of line? Maybe they did? We win! No, WE win! No, we do! What? We're here, we win! We win back! As near as I can tell, defense of earth involves a bunch of cadets running out of Earth Federation Central, pointing at the sky and going OOOOOO.... There wasn't even an intraatmospheric attack on the drilling dong.
4. Why did Spock need a gigantic ball of red matter when only an eyedropper was necessary to create a black hole and eat up a planet? How many black holes was he going to create? And it's a black hole, so telling me he needed enough to create a "bigger" black hole is idiotic and you know it. And why did it have to be injected into the center of the planet by the mining ship's gleaming love sword? Stability issues so it doesn't hop off and go somewhere else? You need a nice even eating from the center for aesthetics? It didn't consume Vulcan evenly if that was the intent. Consuming the atmosphere and everything around and working centerward isn't enough of a planet shattering event?
5. Why do you need to dig a hole to the center of the planet when the center of a planet is just a big ocean of molten rock? WTF? Even if the intent isn't that it has to be injected at the core, but rather just below the mantle, we're back on #4.
   
6. And why did Spock allow them to capture the red matter in the first place instead of just imploding his ship? I'm pretty sure they weren't sporting red matter trapping equipment on their mining ship, or they'd have had their own red matter in the first place and could have just stopped the super nova. And they didn't seem to be near a planet in the opening that would have been in danger of a big ball of red matter. And screw you if you think a logical Vulcan (the old Spock, not the kissy new one) wouldn't sacrifice a star ship to prevent a lunatic from getting his mitts on enough red matter to eat up a few thousand planets. The needs of the many outweigh the few, or the one - that was him, remember?
   
7. Why did they drop Spock off close enough to Vulcan to watch it get sucked up (I'm sorry, that just didn't seem as villainous to me as I think it was supposed to)? And as he was on such a close moon/planet (Vulcan was huge in the sky, much larger than our own moon), why wasn't the planet he (and Kirk) were on affected by the total destruction of a nearby world. I don't believe that the shredding of a planet, despite its mass being subsumed by a black hole and theoretically still there, would fail to have an affect on another planet/moon close enough to watch the event.
8. Back to the red matter. Spock was going to stop a supernova with it by introducing a singularlity. This I believed was possible. Until they decided to use the red matter to stop the wave front, not the actual star pre-supernova. No. You cannot throw a rock at Lake Superior and expect the waves to stop, or at a tidal wave and have it turn back. Doesn't work.
   
9. Spock and Uhuru. What? Kirk's father's death had nothing to do with Spock or his timeline. Butterflies are limited to the world in which they reside, their wing fluttering does not carry over into other atmospheres. Kirk's father's death would not make Spock randier. I admit that the new Uhuru is hot and any humanity in Spock should respond, but presumably she's the same Uhuru as in the old Trek universe, so he should have been all over her in the old series. Maybe he was but they were concerned about the interracial issues?
10. Kirk was in Iowa...I think there should have been a gay wedding. I joke. But I saw blatantly hetero characters throughout the movie. I'm sad that future Iowa/Federation doesn't include any blatantly homo characters. If you're going to mix it up, go for broke.
11. Mean Mr. Mustard convinced me my issue with Kirk was off a little. I was bit disappointed that he (Kirk, not MMM) spent most of the movie getting choked, getting saved, or getting fortunate in some life-saving way. MMM noted that this is the "new" Kirk and he can have a different personality, and holding on by his fingertips is an integral part of that personality. Fair enough. I buy that. But luck is finite. And he seemed to have a lot of it, and that can only be interesting for so long if the character isn't actively resolving his/her own problems. So maybe there will be a change by the next movie. But if there's no growth there, I'll be disappointed. I think back to some of my favorite sci fi, and there are incredibly deep characters who do layer upon layer of planning, only to find out that fortune is a harsh mistress and with all those lasers and diseases and aliens and all that red matter sitting around, even having a full proof plan plus luck can't save you. If you've got luck and no plan/issue resolution skills, you're SOL.
    
12. I don't know what Kirk's rank was prior to his promotion, but it all seemed incredibly dubious to me. Field promotion to first officer of a star ship? Before anyone is dead? Despite what must be officers with seniority on the ship - considering his father was on a star ship before he was born so it's not like it's the first star ship ever? Despite all the trouble he was in prior to his field promotion? I believe this was probably a jumpstep promotion and I imagine they don't happen much now when there isn't a multi-trillion+ star ship involved.
13. There's other bad science, which I leave up to Phil Plait.
    

Hard to believe I enjoyed it, eh? I'm just hoping that they tighten it up by the time they get to the next one.