A Nod to Nothing

Twilight Struggle

2012-01-27T19:07:00.002-06:00

Saturday, Troy invited me over to play some war games, and we agreed on Twilight Struggle, which I've never played before. He played the US. I play the USSR. Had history gone according to our game, the cold war would have ended by 1969 with the USSR winning before Reagan ever had a chance to muse about Star Wars. Besides. In our alternate reality, the USSR owned the space race.

It was an interesting, card-driven game, where the goal was to use the cards in your hand in conjunction with placing influence points on a world map to influence the various areas of the globe to follow your ideology, while avoiding the catastrophe of nuclear war. Think risk, but shorter (particularly if you only play six of the ten turns), and much more interesting.

My strategy was to push for victory points at every turn, which seems like a good strategy. But it's a better strategy if the dice and the cards seem to be falling in your favor and your opponent forgets for a turn that a military operations differential at Defcon 2 or 3 can net you a few extra victory points (that's much more obvious when you're playing).

My favorite milestones of the game:

Refusing to influence Malaysia to be communist. A personal homage to Ming.
Getting African scoring, because I threw my "left over" points all over Africa.
Keeping the defcon at 2 most of the game, just above nuclear war, because no one dukes it out during defcon 2, so no one takes over Africa.
Troy totally side swiping me in Central America/Mexico which turned on me like the Germans were hoping they'd turn on the US due to the Zimmermann Telegram.
Getting South American scoring and realizing that my total lack of presence there was still more than Troy's presence and that it was enough to win the game.
Backing up my indignation at the U-2 Incident by encouraging UN intervention in the Ussuri River Skirmish. The US can suck it - China will never be their friend, U-2 spy planes are pieces of junk, and I deserved a lot of victory points for my commentary on the subject.
We Will Bury You! - the card said I would. I did.
The uncomfortable-ness that accompanies playing Missile Envy in a mano-a-mano war game. This was the the card that would have placed the ending of the cold war the latest in our game. It's noted that it took place in 1984. So Reagan would have been president, and The Gipper would have been the president that lost the Cold War. Shame. But I quote the Missile Envy card, which you have to trade with each other (Troy played it!), "(1984) A term coined by Dr. Helen Caldicott, it reflects the general feminist critique that the Cold War was driven by male ego with very Freudian undercurrents. When one examines the terminology of "deep penetration" and "multiple reentry" one wonders if she had a point. Caldicott went on to found Physicians for Social Responsibility, and her book became a rallying point within the anti-nuclear movement."

Excellent game. Definitely something worth playing again.

Webcomics

2012-01-26T20:26:00.000-06:00

I thought today's Snarky was funnier than usual. But then it was more manager-centric, and I'm partial to those. I was worried no one would appreciate the boundaryless humor, but it was retweeted at least once.

I don't think Snarky's art is necessarily better (although Lupi of Altered Aesthetics did a fine job - we just don't have color and stick to a limited set of single panels), but I generally enjoy our humor better than 99.5% of the other comics I run across on the web.

For instance, Web Comic Wednesday, five tech-based web comics.
Five obscure humor web comics
The best webcomics according to PC Mag (arguably, a better list, as XKCD is on it)

Books - Recommendations from Various Folks

2012-01-25T22:15:00.002-06:00

A lot of my time has been spent lately thinking about what I want to read next. I dare say I spend more time worrying about what I want to read than actually reading. One of the developers I work with solved part of the problem by writing his own book and publishing it on Amazon. So I'm reading Erik Hyrkas' Tritium Gambit. Unfortunately, it's a damn quick read and after a (week) day I'm already half way through it. I'm enjoying it so far. Sort of Men In Black, but with aliens instead of humans, set in Minnesota. I hear it may be free for your Kindle on Amazon this weekend. $0.00 is a pretty good deal.

And I also read the Leviathan series - Leviathan, Behemoth, Goliath - by Scott Westerfeld. Mean Mr. Mustard recommended it. Young adult, but well worth the read. Puts The Hunger Games to shame in my opinion. Not nearly so whiny. And that's from someone with a predilection for dystopic literature (so I'd trend toward The Hunger Games). It's a steampunk alt history novel about WWI being fought between Darwinists, who manipulate life, and Clankers, who manipulate machines. The lines follow the political lines of WWI (Britain/Russia = Darwinists, Germany/Austria = Clankers, US/Japan = amalgam), but it's much more complicated than that. He does a great job of interspersing actual history with his steampunk vision. I've been harassing Eryn and my wife to read it with assurances that they'll love it.

I read this article, about what book introduced various authors to science fiction and fantasy. I'm interested to read The Wonderful Trip to the Mushroom Planet and Planetoid, The Riddle-Master of Hed, and The World of Tiers. I apologize with characteristic Minnesota niceness to Galen Dara, but no one should consider their intro to sci fi to be Anne McCaffrey and The Wheel of Time.

I think this article on alternative families in fantasy and science fiction only told me what not to read.

Which brings me to the icing on the cake. David Brin wrote a damn splendid write up of his favorite sci fi books. In categories. Huxley. Banks. Vinge. Heinlein. Bear. Asimov. Niven. Sheffield. Wilson. Gaiman. Mieville. Haldeman. Dick. Westerfeld! This is a f*ing fine list. The only immediate book that jumps to mind that I disagree with is Harry Turtledove's Great War Series. And to be honest, I don't know that it's a bad series. I only know I hated the first book of the World War series so much it still makes me angry. Mean Mr. Mustard can attest to that as I brought it up outside his workplace. The only book that ever made me angrier was a Hammer's Slammers book by David Drake a friend game me where the protagonist was rewarded for trying to rape a lesbian by having sex with her and her partner in the end for saving their lives. Ick. Anyway - Brin's list. Print it. Read all of them. It's the best list I've ever seen.

And finally, something for the not so scifi/fantasy inclined. Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free From the Annual Performance Trap by Jeremy Hope and Robin Fraser. It comes to late for this year's review process, and I haven't read it yet, but it came highly recommended by the speakers at the Code Freeze Conference and it's on my Kindle (iPad).

And 30 Books Everyone in Software Business Should Read (and why). This is actually a very good list as far as software development lists go. Spolsky's books were important to me, and I still quote them and explain to people how the ideas in his books explain much of the software we work with every day at my workplace. I've read a number of the others on this list and I'm currently reading the Pragmatic Programmer. While developer books can quickly show their age, if you get past worrying about the specifics and focus on the generalities of what never changes, you gain some valuable insight.

Code Freeze 2012 Continuous Delivery - II

2012-01-16T17:53:00.002-06:00

Presentation number two of Code Freeze 2012 was Michael Nygard who spoke on "Dev Ops Cooperation at the Worst of Times" or, as he called it, "When the fur flies." Michael is the author of Release It! by the Pragmatic Programming group, in case you're familiar with the book. His presentation was less "how to" and more "what happened." Anecdotes about a situation he was in where (product) life when horribly wrong, how it went wrong, and what they did to compensate. And subsequently what the efforts to make it right meant to company culture (a focus on heroics and looking for the next hero). It was a good talk because, if you work for a large company, it seems very few people talk about the bad stories at work. Why? Because the people involved in the bad stories and the bad decisions are still there and possibly in executive management and they don't want to be reminded that something went wrong and cost millions of dollars.

To summarize Nygard, I state what so many people have said before, small teams often work much better than large teams. And although he spoke to the connection between Dev and Ops and the collocation of both, to me the real point is that no project stands on any one team alone, and the more you understand the stack and the role of others and work with them to identify the connection points, the more success you'll have. As he said, organizational boundaries can become process boundaries and while it might seem like that's the sign of a organizational maturity, it is anything but.

Nygard had quite a bit of advice on the interaction of Dev and Ops (and other teams). He reiterated there is no "they" and there should be no stereotypes such as "ops is crabby." And the reverse is true, Ops shouldn't complain about "my poor system" and try to shield it from the "hordes of developers" intent upon subverting it by talking about putting developers in jail with no sudo rights. Some software solutions rely on hardware solutions. Some hardware issues can only be resolved by working with the developers and understanding what the conditions the software was architected under.

Nygard listed four traits he feels are necessary for effective DevOps:

Culture
Automation
Measurement
Sharing

He also listed the types of folks he prefers to avoid. Among them are "function point project managers", a term I hadn't heard before. It refers to project managers who see the date as the overriding rule for a project to which all things should take a back seat.

And he mentioned the attrition rate for developers (coders) is very high in the first three years, and 50% by year 10. I'd be interested to know where he got that statistic. I'm obviously an example, as I moved into system training (with some development) by year 9 (at my current employer, if you include contact time), and management by year 11. But I haven't given any thought to whether that holds true across most folks I know. Ming obviously. Erik not (in my opinion. He still codes). Mean Mr. Mustard not. But then again, that's 50%.

The one thing I found humorous about his presentation, rather than his general humor, including a Magic The Gathering card of The Machine That Goes Ping, was his diagram of the usual dev ops interaction. I've recreated it as best I can from memory below. I find it ironic that on the U of MN campus, someone is diagramming Dev Ops interaction as a glory hole. If you're not familiar with the term, look it up. Just not at work.

Reason 1000 or so not to own rental property

2012-01-16T17:20:00.001-06:00

I think we're truly slum lords now. If the big "bitch" on the wall wasn't proof enough, perhaps the fact that there's so much trash next to the house is (I did pick up trash when I was there in the fall. This is new trash). And no, the renter didn't send us a photo of the graffiti. I heard about it from my neighbor (who owns the rental house next door) who drove Eryn and I to coffee this morning when he caught us walking because Pooteewheet had both sets of car keys. His ex-wife (who helps with the rental properties) sent me the photo. So tomorrow I get to talk to the Apple Valley police and then try to find matching paint that will no doubt peel off because it's too cold to paint. But will at least obfuscate the word. I'd have been down there today, but my new project at work was kind enough to have a prod issue and a developer on pager unreachable by pager. I'm not looking forward to de-bitching in the dark.

Code Freeze 2012 Continuous Delivery - I

2012-01-15T20:29:00.000-06:00

I went to Code Freeze 2012 at the U of MN this week. I've been going for years and although some years are better than others, I generally walk away with something worthwhile. This year's topic was "Continuous Delivery", a subject I'm very interested in as, before I was moved off the desktop products I was managing, I was trying to get them up to speed with Continuous Build and Continuous Delivery. There were almost 13 separate products without unit test that were deployed to the desktop: e.g. 64 bit windows, 32 bit windows, Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Office 32 bit, Office 64 bit, Office 2007, Office 2010, and a variety of other configurations. One of the more amusing days was when a customer called to complain that our product didn't work quite right under Parallels. As if we'd tested that configuration given we weren't testing anything other than manually over a two week period. Embarrassing.

The conference was better than usual, with presentations by Jez Humble of Thoughtworks, Michael Nygard who wrote Release It!, Jenna Pederson (can I say cute local developer and not get in trouble? She's more than cute...her brain is cute, as proven by her blog and, I could add, Jez Humble was good looking as well, and had a better accent...perhaps that protects me from developer sexism), David Hussman (he of the many "dudes"), and John Penix of Google. It made me appreciate that no system was so legacy-ridden or large that it couldn't be refactored.

Jez Humble (not a consistent blogger) of Thoughtworks was not only informative, but incredibly funny. He's a walking series of sound bites on legs. One of my favorites was about Agile, "Everyone's taking orders standing up instead of sitting down." Or, "We shouldn't have to come in and sit in a data center for the weekend. Life shouldn't be like that." Word. And, after talking about a dev ops moment in which dev ops said "no thank you", he clarified, "They were operations people...they were not that polite."

Jez talked about lean software development, quoting Eric Ries, a proponent of a Minimum Viable Product. For those of you in agile, this is the concept that you should always have working software. And just enough. I'm a huge proponent of this. It's perhaps the most important aspect of agile to me. If you have a project, then you should have short cycles where you provide something that works. Might not be perfect. Might not be what you want in the long run. But it's a deliverable that if you were to put it in front of customers, it might make money. It gives you a plateau where you can decide whether to continue at all, take a break, fire your developers and hire new ones...some location where you can make a decision and still have something in hand that is concrete.

He talked about flickr.com, where they do 10 releases a day. When Yahoo picked them up, they tried to change them, but were changed instead. As is appropriate.

He talked about Poppendieck's Implementing Lean Software Development and the idea that you can measure your product by the amount of time it takes to change one (1) line of code (pg. 59). Based on the products I managed, 24-48 hours minimum, even if all the Directors and VPs are available. That's too long. The line should change in 1-2 hours, and the build/test/deploy/test should take another 2 hours. Max.

And Jez talked about how continuous delivery is composed of three major parts:

Automation
Patterns and Practices (the subject of his own book about continuous delivery)
Collaboration

Sounds about right to me. If you don't include the perspiration.

Ebony and Ivory...

2012-01-15T19:49:00.000-06:00

Ebony and ivory, pancakes living together in perfect harmony...half of these pancakes are Eryn's. Half are Morgan's. At least one pancake was left behind with the chips scraped off the top.

Chipotle Reunion

2012-01-14T18:00:00.000-06:00

This happened a few weeks ago, but I wanted to a.) get it on my blog and b.) put something on top of the naughty librarian so it's not the latest post for anyone who goes directly to my blog.

My old development and business team, plus some folks who were on the team (business side) after I left, plus some adoptees (Mean Mr. Mustard). This was our best turnout at the local Chipotle (which opened while most of us were on the project) in quite some time. Sandy, who was my lead, is holding the camera and, left to right: me (looking sort of Sling Blade or Rainman), Dawn, Christy Twofist, Aaron (whose face is fuzzy if you zoom in - it's creepy, like what you'd expect the truth to be about vampire pictures, that they'd be just distorting enough to fool facial recognition software), Boss, Mean Mr. Mustard, Julie Mousehammer, Flat Chili Monica, and Dan.

Lawbooks - the NSFW Version

2012-01-14T17:52:00.001-06:00

In my ongoing series related to questionable pictures I find on the web featuring a certain series of books. Apparently she was comfortable studying until the jerk with the camera showed up. Is nude studying covered under Young vs. Arkansas?

Remember to Clean Up

2012-01-14T17:49:00.002-06:00

I was going to add this picture to a post about sexy Marvin the Martian costumes after seeing it on the web. So it's been sitting around on my desktop for weeks. Isn't she fetching?

But during the time between saving the picture, and this post, I helped a friend troubleshoot a web app. What the two things have in common is that I tested the upload functionality of the app repeatedly, using this image of Ms. Martian. So when all the files were dropped back into Dropbox, there were probably 100 copies of this file (part of the upload process was to tag the files with a numeric portion so there wasn't duplication, even if two people uploaded Readme.txt) in the mix. The Dropbox folder was shared with the friend's client. Fortunately, while sitting around reading, some part of my brain thought about the picture. And then I thought about testing the app. And then I drew the line from A to B (B1..B100). I'll be interested to know if Dropbox prompts the client with "100 files removed from Dropbox."

Favorite Moments of 2011

2012-01-07T23:14:00.000-06:00

I have three favorite moments from 2011, and they're in order, despite that my family isn't first. I suspect they'll understand, given that the first one is a.) bicycling and b.) with Ming.

1.) Bike the Border with Ming.
2.) Ride from Colorado to Montana with Grandma and Eryn
3.) Orlando with Jen and Eryn

This is not to say I like vacations with my wife the least, it simply points out that bicycling trumps all.

Dr. Who vs. the Ghostbusters

2012-01-03T20:34:00.001-06:00

This is for Kyle and his nephew. The 10 geekiest burlesque performances. Not only is there a dance that involves Dr. Who and his scarf, but a dance involving Slimer and the Sta Puff Marshmallow "man". Although Data and the Klingon are WAY more disturbing.

Enjoy some uncle/nephew bonding!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-10-geekiest-burlesque-performances-nsfw

Things I'm learning about Fable II...

2012-01-02T16:04:00.003-06:00

Eryn's been playing Fable 2. It has an MA rating. We figured we could just walk her through the risque parts and explain the birds and bees. But I've been reading on line, particularly as I watched a humorous scene the other day where Eryn's spouse kept basically calling her a fame whore and divorced her. This involved Eryn chasing her husband down a path in the woods and offering him a diamond ring repeatedly, while he initially spat back snarky comments about how much she preferred glory to being married to him, and then just ignored her and stood around in the woods. I was interested to see if this was a normal part of game play, and came across some game advice:

"In Fable II there is no safe way for lesbians to have sex, the game forces you to have unprotected sex. This results in a high number of STD's on your tracked stats."

Apparently Fable II has a rich environment full of loving relationships:

"My wife hates me in fable 2 i think...? the reason why i say this, my one wife which is in the city after you go to the spire, i married her (she is one of the hookers) and when i try to have sex with her she ignores me and walks away. Also when i give her gifts or do expressions they hardly work. even though the family description says she wants sex, she wont...so is it a glitch or what? and how would i solve it."

Yet, strangely realistic:

"Spouses keep track of how long the player has been married to them, they will occasionally make remarks on the length of a relationship. "Do you realize, we've been together now for three years. People said we would never make it this long!""

At the moment Eryn is downstairs playing Call of Duty MW3 with a shotgun she tricked out herself, and my wife already gave her the "this isn't like real war, in real war people would be dying or dead at your feet, and there would be blood, and soldiers with PTSD, and alcoholism, and dead civilians, and children, and pets," until Eryn looked like she'd curl up and cry, so the MA portion of that game has been acutely clarified for her. I think Fable II just has a more nuanced and varied set of MA issues to worry about.

Santa and a Very Giraffey Christmas

2011-12-30T16:49:00.000-06:00

Santa left Eryn a giraffe hat. A giraffe pillow. And a half-eaten cookie.

At Grandpa Larry and Grandma Geri's, he showed up in person to deliver additional gifts.

Books!

2011-12-29T18:21:00.000-06:00

I saw this Old Spice advertisement in a gaming magazine. I can't figure out why our books are on the shelves behind him. I'm not sure that they pertain to either side of his personality. But this is yet another in my long line of advertisements and pictures featuring our books.

Little brother?

2011-12-29T18:17:00.000-06:00

I walk past this picture at least twice a day on the fourth floor at work. The first few times, I had to stop because out of the corner of my eye it looked like my brother was walking past a creepy picture of Dexter. This would be a very large version of my brother, but I think it still looks like him. Looks a little like me when I was 285 and had glasses, if you topped the then me off with the current me's hair.

Lines of thought...

2011-12-29T06:49:00.000-06:00

Apparently XKCD and Mitchell and Webb have arrived at the same idea involving alcohol and Microsoft products...

XKCD and the Ballmer Peak:

Mitchell and Webb: Slightly less than two points (season 4, episode 4)

Burlesque

2011-12-28T19:14:00.000-06:00

I'm making up for missing 9 days of blogging. I'm going to use being ill as an excuse. And the holidays. And all sorts of other things. I have much to talk about.My friend Chris was in town on Thursday. He's the new VP of what amounts to R&D for Telerik (if I was hearing everything correctly). They do .NET controls (from my perspective - they may do other things as well) and are based in Eastern Europe. Very cool job. He, Cookie Queen, Kyle and I went to Brasa for dinner (delicious - glad the waiter talked us into smaller portions) and to the Nutcracker Burlesque show afterwards. The show was peculiar. The first half was fairly boring. It wasn't until the second half that we were treated to the dreidel burlesque dance, the native american skinning a bunny and dancing in his skin burlesque dance, etc. I had warned Chris before hand I hadn't been to this event, and my experience with Nutcracker derivatives was sketchy (search my blog for Nutbuster). But I had a good time once they started embracing burlesque. And the woman who played Clara did a great job. Sort of fetishy on my part I suspect, but I liked that when she was watching the dancers, she was always on her toes, even when sitting behind a table. Sexy. Weirder was that the band seemed to include someone I knew. But I wrote it off because his hair looked longer than I expected. Until I ran into him in the entryway. He's a manager at work. His wife worked for me until recently. Damn strange.In the end, everyone seemed to have fun.

If you don't believe me, here he is, enjoying himself. Although two people, including my daughter, asked me if the person sitting on his lap was a woman or a man.

And Cookie Queen with one of the male dancers. I wish he had worn his Superman pouch (I'm not sure if that's exactly the right word...very small underpants, however you paint it), because that was damn hilarious. I did not get my picture taken with Clara. I just told her I appreciated her performance. She was either surprised (she'd been standing around for 15 minutes) or creeped out by the skeevy old guy who was the only person to tell her "good job". In the end, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would given the first act.

Grrr...grrr....GRRRRR!!!!

2011-12-28T18:54:00.001-06:00

I'm whitening my teeth. It makes me drool so much I have to find a sink to dislodge a mouthful of drool every 5-10 minutes. And I mean a mouthful - almost cheeks bulging. Like some sort of masticating hamster. And if Ming is reading, I mean I'm like a hamster in every cheeky, well-endowed, visit the vet for $100, way. I wouldn't normally be so vain as to care about my teeth, particularly given the amount of coffee I drink. But the last time I was at the dentist, between myself and insurance, I was over my payment by about $85. So when I received an email from my dentist stating I could whiten my teeth for only $15 more, it seemed like kismet. A bonus was they gave me the plasters of my teeth. I sneak up behind Eryn clapping them together so she can be freaked out.

iPad Rundown

2011-12-28T13:55:00.001-06:00

iPad rundown. I've done it before, but this time it's for Kristine. Caveat - I'm still running on a first gen iPad. No camera in mine. And I have other things on my iPad, but these are the things that are commonly used (although Eryn has some tap games she likes to play that aren't on here, like Dragondale).

Education:

TED talks
NASA
Star Walk
BrainPop (Eryn)
See games

Media Consumption:

Netflix
Kindle
Link to Kindle store (instead of buying through the Apple store)
Zite - news, not current, but based on topics - best way to get programming posts on the iPad
Facebook
Twitter
Pulse - aggregator (I don't use Flipboard since I got it, but my wife still uses Flipboard)
Pandora - free music
YouTube
Flixster - movies (rotten tomatoes ratings, local theaters, & hook to netflix)
Trailers - movie trailers
Westlaw Next
Maps
McSweeny's

Productivity:

Fat Secret (calorie counter)
Dropbox
Textastic
Penultimate (probably better out there - for free form notes)
Timer (countdown)

Games:

Carcassonne
Small World
Life
Tichu (cards)
Words (with Friends)
Ticket to Ride
Civilization
Toontastic - Eryn, make kids videos
Lots of chess apps
Lots of math/geography apps
Sudoku (Kids)
Angry birds (Eryn)
Cut the Rope (various versions - puzzle)

Music:

L&M Guitar
Guitar Toolkit

Food:

Whole Foods
Epicurious
AllRecipes
BigOven
SparkRecipes
RecipeGrazer

Links:

Work Email
CBS (local news) - most newsreaders suck
Kickstarter
Khan Academy
MIT Open Course

I wanted an iPhone...

2011-12-28T13:40:00.001-06:00

Felicia Day pointed me at these links via Laughing Squid:

Disgruntled people complaining about their Christmas gifts on Twitter... Compiled by Jon Hendren.

Below, Jonathan Mann turns it into a song...WTF?! I Wanted An iPhone!!!

Monitorwang!

2011-12-28T12:58:00.002-06:00

I was doing open source review the other day. This was an option for some code I was reviewing.

DELL…
ACER…
LG….
VIEW SONIC

I immediately shouted in my head, "MONITORWANG!!!"

Are they wishing me a happy holidays?

2011-12-19T18:42:00.000-06:00

I don't think they are...

11 Best Science Books of 2011

2011-12-19T18:30:00.000-06:00

Just so I don't lose it, Brainpickings.org lists their favorite science books of 2011. I should really get Eryn the Dawkin's book.

Learning to Read...

2011-12-19T18:09:00.000-06:00

A little fuzzy, but you can read it, "PLEASE RETURN YOUR OWN DISHES TO THE CAFETERIA. Janitorial does not do this." Obviously we need to start a remedial reading program at work. As they say on The Chive, some people just like to watch the world burn.

Santa...

2011-12-17T22:18:00.000-06:00

...apparently stays at the Grandstay Hotel and Conference Center when he's visiting Burnsville. And he likes to promote that fact. And he's sponsored by Buck Hill and John Adamich's Dodge of Burnsville. John needs to change his logo, because his d backed to a b (dodge of burnsville) looks like two balls and a wang shooting a small o of jizz out the end. Apparently, it's been worse than just a visual (link to blog).

Luna and the Pancake

2011-12-13T20:43:00.000-06:00

Pooteewheet says I'm mean because I sometimes throw a pancake for Luna on top of her indoor pen. I feel I'm being considerate, because that way she doesn't burn her mouth trying to wolf down a pancake in the two seconds it would take her if it was where she could immediately reach it. There's video at the bottom.

Shaving Cut, Remix

2011-12-13T19:35:00.001-06:00

Given that just below my nose bled for over two hours this morning, despite having chapstick in my pocket, I'm going to disavow all the advice in that last post. It went on despite twenty minutes of ice, twenty minutes of pressure several times, and the chapstick trick. I hear Sank's recommendation about the styptic, but I suspect that wouldn't have done the trick either. It went on so long I googled, "Is it possible to become a hemophiliac?"

Fortunately, that's not likely. But I did find the potential root of the problem over on reddit. There's a consensus that the number of blood vessels in the face, coupled with the lack of jagged edges on a small razor cut, inhibit clotting.

While reading through the thread, I got to this comment, "Yah it's actually a pretty common thing in equine medicine too. Horses have a tendency to injure themselves, especially the faces and especially the eyelids which get ripped off quite a bit. Every one of those bleeds like hell and makes you freak out that your patient/pet is going to die but isn't really all that severe (sans the last one)."

I thought, wtf. I've never seen a horse with its eyelid ripped off. But then my horse experience is limited to the horses at my grandmother's house, which included Goober, who later came to live at our house. Fortunately, someone else had the same surprise and asked, to paraphrase, "wtf?"

The response: "It's not an every day occurrence but it's not exactly rare either. As for how it happens, it depends. They can catch it on a fence screw, or on the feed bucket, or a piece of barbed wire, or pretty much anything. Once it's caught the horse flips the fuck out (as they're prone to do) and then jerks their head away, thus ripping off the eye lid. That's one of the reasons it's always a good idea to train your horse NOT to freak out whenever it's bound up (as much as possible). That and them walking through barbed wire that's gotten blown down/knocked down. If you teach your horse to be OK with having stuff wrapped around its legs (kind of like sacking-out), then it won't jerk away from the barbed wire (thus digging it deeper into their flesh), but rather stay put (since trying to walk off would be painful) until you can help.

Which led to my favorite question, "O.o how do they survive in the wild?"

Which of course had a very cogent answer, "To be fair in the wild there aren't feed buckets and barbed wire."

Touche'.

This was backed up by a picture of a horse with a ripped eyelid. I know...I didn't warn you, it's gross, and it probably isn't what you were expecting at the end of a post about shaving cuts. But now you know not to panic horses unless you're a mean fucker, and why they don't have their own haunted houses at Halloween.

How to Stop a Razor Nick from Bleeding

2011-12-13T07:10:00.002-06:00

This might be the most helpful post I've read in a very long time, even though #5 never seems to work for me. If I relied on that, I might bleed all day. This all reminds me I need a mirror in my office so I don't walk out with blood all over my face looking like Sweeney Todd the Manager. From The Derm Blog:

Here a 5 tips to stop a nick from bleeding:
1. Grab an ice cube. The cold causes the tiny blood vessels to constrict, slowing the blood and allowing a clot to form.

2. Use your Chapstick or apply a dab of Vaseline jelly: the waxy ointment help seals the tiny nick and provides a surface for a blood clot to form.

3. Soak a Q-tip in witch hazel and apply gently to the cut. Witch hazel is an astringent, which like the ice cube, constricts blood vessels, slowing the bleeding enough for a clot to form. Warning: this will sting a little.

4. Use your deodorant. This is my favorite tip. Most deodorants have aluminum chloride or a derivative of aluminum chloride like aluminium chlorohydrate. It acts as a hemostatic agent, allowing a blood clot to form quickly — in fact, aluminum chloride is what I use in clinic countless times each day to stop bleeding from skin biopsies. Apply a little bit to your fingertip or spray onto a Q-tip to apply. A styptic stick, if you happen to have one, works the same way.

5. Just hold pressure. As we say in medicine: “All bleeding stops eventually.”

Eryn's Guitar, Ming's Poster

2011-12-12T20:47:00.001-06:00

A very nice picture of Eryn playing guitar while wearing her new Christmas dress. In the background, you can see my cool artcrank poster from pedlar that Ming bought and framed for me for my birthday. It's not on the wall yet, but will be soon.

The Head and the Heart

2011-12-09T22:13:00.001-06:00

I'm late to the game, but I really like Lost in My Mind by The Head and the Heart (you can download two of their songs for free at their site):

Ballet

2011-12-09T22:06:00.001-06:00

I was watching the Nutcracker at Burnsville's Performing Arts Center tonight, and during one dance I found myself wondering, "When do they create a new signature ballet move?" Was there a day when a ballerina was on her tiptoes, and started shimmying her legs, and the trainer yelled, "YES, YES! You're on your toes, and your legs should look all stiff because you're on those tiny little points, but you're shimmying them and they look loose! It's a visual oxymoron! That is the SHIZNIT! Do more of that! Much more!" Or something similar, but probably in Russian because all ballerinas used to be Russian. At least as far as I know. Although shiznit translates to shiznit. At least according to this online translator. So at least part of the excitement was palpable in any culture.

Erik did this to me...

2011-12-03T14:17:00.001-06:00

I'm going to blame him, and not Microsoft...

Front Controller

2011-12-03T14:01:00.001-06:00

If you're just starting a chapter on MVC, this does not explain the Front Controller pattern at all.

Why is it...

2011-11-29T20:18:00.001-06:00

...that I can't use a computer created in 1982 and write better code than if I was coding on a computer created in 2011? Violinists do it all the time. My violin is from 1742...it's a Gauadagnini (isn't that Voldemort's snake?)...it's worth a million dollars. If this just held true across fields, I could be coding enterprise masterpieces on a Vic 20 with a tape drive. Tempting.

2011-11-29T19:25:00.001-06:00

There's no snow. For end of November, it's beautiful outside. I feel so happy I've paid $220 to ensure the duplex/renters don't have to shovel their drive. But I have a first snow of the season picture of Eryn to post, despite that it has all melted.

How I can tell my sister reads these blog posts carefully...

2011-11-29T19:21:00.001-06:00

She thinks Eryn got her own hedgehog.

I paraphrase my response, "I told Eryn that if we had a hedgehog, rabbit, mouse, or parrot, I would let it die rather than take care of it. And I would try to stop Pooteewheet from taking care of it, even at the risk of its life."

And no hamsters. I'm worried they might molest me with their giant dongs.

Caching Overlook

2011-11-29T19:04:00.001-06:00

We went caching for two virtual caches not so long ago. According to geocaching.com, no new virtual caches are allowed, but old virtual caches are still grandfathered in. These were sort of in our backyard (St. Paul), so I thought they were worth checking out.

Here's Eryn, at the footstep of the first cache.

Yes, that is Pooh at her feet. Sort of Banksy in nature.

Not the virtual cache. But I couldn't help but thing the gay versions of Arsenic and Old Lace lived here.

What we were really after was the Prospect Park water Tower. If you've read Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, you can appreciate the witch's tower for the parallel fairy domain it really is. The plaque reads, minus the screaming type: "The Witch's Hat Water Tower was designed by Norwegian architect Frederick William Cappelen and constructed by the city of Minneapolis in 1913. Occupying the highest natural land area in Minneapoplis, the water tower was built to improve water pressure in the homes of Prospect Park residents. The tower was decommissioned in 1952, but has been preserved as a significant part of this city's history. The Witch's Hat Water Tower and Tower Hill Park are listed in the national register of historical places."

Can you see an evil fairy lurking up there? Black gauzy 80's clothes, circa Prince and the Revolution? Sexy evil...

The view from one direction at the top of the hill. That is our fair city of Minneapolis in the distance. Closer is Moos Tower, home of many sexy nurses. And my sister and mother. And I'm not sure what the building in the foreground is.

Looking in the other direction. Absolutely beautiful.

Our second virtual cache was part of a trip around the world. It is the 45th parallel. It exists in many places in the twin cities, but is only commemorated in one location.

Croutons

2011-11-28T21:36:00.001-06:00

I wish I had a picture of what I'm about to describe, but I don't. And a quick perusal of the web revealed nothing that captured the moment. During lunch today, there was a bet at the table I was sitting at, "A container (think larger size take home container) full of croutons, passed off as a salad, on a per-ounce cost basis, will still ring in at less than $4." The issue was around what was the best deal on a cost basis at the salad bar. And there was some discussion about whether croutons might actually come in below the price of a box purchased at the store.

The result was $3.96. Mike, during the height of lunch hour (noon), stealthily scooped out a whole container, sometimes taking no more than two at a time, and paid cash. I opined that a similar container full of sunflower seeds would probably run $1000. I hope there's not a crouton shortage later this week. Mike wasn't willing to waste them. He was calmly eating them as a snack food right up until he looked slightly ill.

Hedgehog

2011-11-28T21:32:00.001-06:00

Eryn got to pet a hedgehog last time we were at the Minnesota Zoo. And before Ming asks, I have no idea whether they're as well endowed as a hamster. You'll have to ask the zookeeper.

Here's the little guy eating his lunch.

Invisible Ink

2011-11-28T18:14:00.001-06:00

We used Eryn's Chem C2000 kit this weekend. We added ammonium iron(ii) sulfate, water, and potassium hexacyanoferrate(ii) solution to create a beautiful Prussian blue. The color, not the racist band of little girls who became liberals after a public education. Not that we wouldn't have been pleased as punch to create an anti-racist potion.

You can use the combination to create an invisible ink that turns dark blue when the second chemical is applied. Obviously, it's cheaper to use a lemon and vinegar, but not as much fun. This is a seriously science-laden/engineering heavy table.

Two married oceanographers...

2011-11-28T05:47:00.001-06:00

Two married oceanographers, Marine and Stratus League. One deep sea research sub containing two single person reinforced mini subs for even deeper exploration, beyond where anyone else has ever gone. The kicker, they want a divorce, but their careers can't afford it. Will their romance be rekindled by the dangers of the deep? Or will they learn to love again with the advice of their two gay crew members? Who gets the kids? Who gets Jeeks the dolphin who accompanies them on excursions and gets them out of tight binds? Lost cities! Espionage! The giant albino kraken that haunts them in their travels! Join us for an 80's style marriage adventure comedy, Two Leagues Under the Sea!

This was my dream last night. Enjoy the madness that haunts my sleeping hours.

It's a Chuck Norris Christmas

2011-11-27T21:22:00.001-06:00

It's a Chuck Norris Christmas. He and his enemy, the Red Ninja, have found common ground on our Christmas tree to celebrate peace and goodwill. Well done you two. You give hope to humankind.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-27T20:46:00.001-06:00

Thanksgiving was once again held at our house. We cooked both corporate turkeys. Mine, and Leon's. I think we could have once again done with one, but two ensured plenty of leftovers. Lee and his family showed up. Lloyd (my other uncle in law - or Eryn's great uncle, depending on how you color it). My father in law and mother in law. And my sister in law and her family. Cookie Queen and her kids showed up later for some play time.

Apparently snrky.com did a special cartoon to celebrate our turkeys noting, "It's the intangibles that count."

There were two rounds of poker. I lost the first, despite putting the hurt to my father in law and Eryn (that's right, no mercy in poker, even for my own daughter. And yes, she plays Hold 'em. I need to remind her to save some money for New Year's Eve). And won the second. $12. Enough to offset half a bottle of one of the two bourbons I bought for Thanksgiving, as that seems to be the drink of choice - both for the menfolk and womenfolk. The beer was virtually untouched.

Buffalo Trace and Eagle Rare. Kyle's Kentucky trip influence is clearly visible in my choices. When I was buying my bottles at The Cellars, there was a kid in a suit shopping for Scotch. He was clearly excited and I had the impression he was either hosting Thanksgiving, or taking a bottle to Thanksgiving, or had gotten a promotion. He had some good $40 bottles in hand. Then asked the guy from the Cellars, "So these are nice, but what's your favorite?" The clerk noted his favorite was just over $100 a bottle and the kid looked simultaneously taken aback and intrigued. Definitely the appropriate approach. Some skepticism in your $100+ purchases. I should have taken down his name and number so we could do scotch sharing nights. That's the best way to try $100 bottles. Hear that Kyle? Up for Scotch or Bourbon nights with a group of 4 or 5?

My wife and I discussed the possibility of making squash soup for Thanksgiving next year. I am loving the squash soup with crustini/french bread. Don't panic. In addition to the turkey, not instead of the turkey. While listening to MPR, I heard them discussing this recipe, harvest stuffed squash, which I'd also like to try. Might have to experiment earlier to get an idea for whether it's good. But the ingredients sound delicious. Here are the details, courtesy of Beth Dooley at MPR.

HARVEST STUFFED SQUASH
Serves 8
Ingredients:
4 small Cinderella pumpkins or acorn squash, halved and seeded
2 tablespoons sunflower oil or olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 fennel bulb, diced
1 red bell pepper, seeded, deveined, and chopped
1 large carrot, finely diced
1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts
2 cups cooked wild rice or barley
1/2 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons rubbed sage
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the squash cut-side down on a baking sheet and bake until it is tender, about 40 minutes.Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet and saute the onion, garlic, fennel, red pepper, carrot, and hazelnuts until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the wild rice and herbs, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove the squash from the oven, turn it over, and place it cut-side up on the baking sheet. Fill the squash with the stuffing. Return the squash to the oven and bake it an additional 30 minutes.

Finally - you can't declare Thanksgiving over until the naked Barbie balances on an exercise ball. Haven't heard that saying before? Get used to it. And just so you don't have to imagine it...

Douchery

2011-11-27T18:14:00.001-06:00

Old Chicago shows me this picture when I go to their website. I'm glad this guy doesn't hang out at my bar. He looks like a tool. They're encouraging douchery by showing him with two women, while the guy behind the woman in pink is just joking with the bartender about color coordinating beer and is all alone. Unless he's gay. But if he is, he's still alone, which is sending a message. And I think this picture just tells one of those sad love stories. Girl in pink likes guy, is trying hard, getting all up in his chair space. Drinking with him and hoping he'll "take advantage" of her even though it's a set up. But guy is more interested in chesty brown shirt girl, and is trying so hard not to look at her chest that he won't even acknowledge yes, she did eat a lot of wings. Meanwhile, she won't even drink a beer because she doesn't want to find herself in a beer goggles situation at the end of the night where he looks as much like Brad Pitt to her as he does to himself.

They should have spent more time thinking about their advertising message.

Grammar Boss

2011-11-27T18:12:00.001-06:00

Kyle let me know that a fourth season of That Mitchell and Webb Look was on Netflix streaming. My favorite bit so far was the grammar boss.

Computer Technician

2011-11-26T21:49:00.001-06:00

I spent part of this weekend fixing Dan's new Gateway laptop. Cookie Queen bought him a new machine because the old laptop is the only machine at her house that will play the kids' games. But apparently he got hold of it and it wouldn't work. I think normally this would entail just taking the damn thing back to Best Buy or ordering the recovery software which they never seem to ship anymore and has a separate fee, but having been a consumer who wants a machine in a few days, not a few weeks, I can sympathize. So I took it on, and booted it up. I was expecting to find water in the boards, or a porn-related issue, but as near as I can tell, part of their OEM install was a copy of AVG that crashed Win7. Or at least auto-updated to a crashable state.

I poked at it for a while, and then decided the easiest plan of action was just to nuke it. So I installed a new copy of Win7 Home basic over the top. Reminder - read the bottom of the machine so you know what version of Windows to install now that there are about a thousand of them. I had to burn a second disk with Windows Premium Home on it.

That worked. I followed it up with browsers - Chrome and IE9, both with their home page set to the theme song from Small Wonder. Patched the Ethernet so it could reach the web (nice job of making that publicly accessible, Gateway. Much appreciated). Added Ghost Busters wall paper with nametags for Kyle, Dan, Ben, and myself. Grabbed a bunch of pictures from Facebook for the screensaver so he can see his kids. Installed League of Legends. Most of Lord of the Rings MMO. And Steel Panthers (with a hack so it works on Win7). And put AVG back on it - can't be too safe with a machine that's intended to be used in a solo pad with friends and beer (enabled the full scan three times a week with a failsafe to kick in on the next boot up as well if the scan window is missed).

Runs like a champ. Cookie Queen told me Dan'l was dubious I could get it going because his friend couldn't get it going. Dude - if your friend could fix PCs, he'd be making more money as tech repair, not working for the Catholics as a maintenance guy.

At least it wasn't f-ed up hardware. I can fix that too - but it makes me cranky.

Elm Creek

2011-11-15T20:35:00.001-06:00

I went geocaching after vacation up by Kyle's house. I needed to pick up Luna (she didn't eat one of his combs this time) and I had the day to myself, so I spent it hiking around in the woods. Elm Creek wasn't nearly as rich a geocaching environment as the Woodville Trail. But at least no dogs tried to eat my ankle.

It was chilly out. Which was good. Running away from this next full of wasps might have been more difficult during high summer. Toward the end of the day, I looked for a cache at a place called "lake view" or something similar. After stomping around a big tree for a long time I thought, "maybe it's a diversion, and the cache is really at that nearby bird blind." I poked around the bird blind, and then went to reach behind the sign in the blind that listed the birds you might see. At the last second, I hesitated, withdrew my fingers, and took a peek. Behind the sign was another wasp nest and half a dozen groggy wasps. I took it as a sign that caching was done for the day.

This nest was NOT a cache.

But this bird is a cache. You have to fish a small rolled up log out of his cloaca.

Out at the moose cache, which I almost skipped because it was almost a mile from the previous cache, there was a particularly interesting choice of loot. I'm glad I didn't take the Casey Scott album because a.) it's a little boring if you look it up on YouTube, and b.) the First 4th of July has to do with printing presses, so it gives me some insight into Kyle's worklife. I'm much more in tune with the day-to-day struggles of a friend.

I know they're just child zombies, and it's not their fault, and I should feel bad for them. But they're zombies in the end and they'd eat my brain given half a chance, so I had to call in the troops. A lady on a horse asked me if I'd found a cache. I bet seeing a guy playing with toy soldiers and zombies on top of a thermos top isn't something you see every day while riding your horse in the woods. I think Lewis Black once made a joke to that effect.

It doesn't look nearly as sinister as it was. I followed trails in a circle for what seemed like forever.

Back at Kyle's house. I really enjoy this picture because it looks like some sort of official Ford advertisement for a Fiesta. It's just his front yard.

Doesn't his yard look beautiful? You can really appreciate it if you don't have to do any of the raking.

Blue Springs and the Manatees

2011-11-13T12:02:00.001-06:00

Our last full day in Orlando, we rented a car and went to Blue Springs State Park. When I was younger, let's say it wasn't 25 years ago, Kyle, Ben and I did a summer trip from Minnesota to Washington, D.C., then down the coast to Florida, and back to Minnesota. We were poor and operating mostly out of a car with a tent and some bicycles, so we did a lot of camping at ad hoc locations. One place we stopped was Blue Springs, renowned as a wintering area for manatees. Around mid-November they shut down the swimming because hundreds of manatees swim into the spring area to enjoy the relatively warm 72 degree water coming from the spring. But on November 1 swimming was still open and there was a chance we'd see a few. You're supposed to stay away from them as the rangers have had problems with teenagers carving their initials into them (yes, really) and pushing the babies away from their mothers, but even when you don't go near them, they like to come give you a shove and swim under you, and roll around in your space.

There are alligators in the area as well, although for the most part they seem to stay away from where the manatees are. I suspect they lose to the manatees in any shoving match. And the water in the spring area is so clear you can see everything in your space. Over the "boil", the spring, which is like 120 feet deep and has a constant stream of scuba divers going to and from it even on a slow day like the day we were there, you can see down to where all the water is welling up to push you around which is a bit creepy.

Near the entrance to the spring area, where it joins the river and the water is more brackish and full of weedy places to hide, there are many warnings about the alligators. They don't want you to miss them.

Although Eryn's not scared of any damn sign. I think I see some eyes in the water to her right.

The water is even clearer than it looks in this picture. All those brown things are big three foot long gars.

The staff pointed us at a geocache that doesn't seem to be in geocaching.com. Perhaps it's because it's full of two kilos of cocaine? I jest. Those are two bags of rock/sand, and the cache was some sort of Sea World cache. Eryn grabbed a coin and bracelet, but there was no way to log the find.

Let us get to the actual manatees. Here are the two that were swimming with Eryn and I. A mother and her pup.

It's not well known that manatees are particularly susceptible to mind control. Here I do my best to start my manatee army of evil by implanting the mental suggestion that they go forth and do my bidding. If you're an enemy of mine, I'd stay away from any temperate waters and avoid any manatees dressed as mermaids.

They seemed to particularly like Eryn and would follow her around. She was a little nervous when she was out in the open water where she couldn't touch the bottom, but there was a nice set of steps you could sit on, as well as some shallow areas with rocks. In this picture she wasn't going under to look at them first. They were definitely coming over to stare at her.

Go forth! Do as I command! In this picture do I look as cold as I felt? 72 degrees isn't freezing, but it's not exactly swimming pool warm, and there was a good breeze blowing branches out of the trees that added to the chill and called up goose bumps on my pasty white Minnesota skin.

Pooteewheet checking out the manatees. They made it a point to wander back and forth underneath her.

The steps I was referring to and the manatees getting a close look at Eryn. She says this was her favorite part of vacation. Even better than the roller coasters and Harry Potter world.

My favorite picture was one I could have taken in Minnesota. SQUIRREL!!! I think it lends itself to putting a word bubble on it so I can add silly captions.

The Other Univeral

2011-11-13T11:32:00.001-06:00

Between the days at Islands of Adventure, we went to Universal Studios. The area with Shrek, Jaws, Terminator 2, the Simpsons, and the sorts of rides I remember from being a kid at Universal in California. I think Eryn was originally dubious about why we'd want to spend time there when we could be going back to Harry Potter, but she ended up having a great time. Particularly on the interactive rides like the "make a movie" ride with Christopher Walken (nice orange sneakers!) where they film members of the audience and make them part of action-adventure movie/train ride. Or the MIB ride where you shoot at aliens with a laser gun. She's all about laser tag. My favorite was the Simpons' ride, where you don't really go anywhere, but the roller coaster car you're in shakes and rattles as the walls move around it, and giant screens make you feel like you're on a hell of a roller coaster ride that includes being chewed on by a giant Maggie.

Pooteewheet and Eryn not too long after the Jaws ride.

I got in trouble for spray painting on a wall.

Who's a dingus? Eryn's a dingus!!!

After a day of rides, we went to Hard Rock for dinner. Not my usual choice of faire, but Eryn wanted wings, and I was pretty sure that was the closest place with good wings. This picture is for Kyle. It's Alanis Morissette's harmonica, next to a picture of her playing a guitar. And it says she used it for a hand in my pocket, but if you're playing harmonica, then your hands can't be in your pockets. It's all very ironic.

Eryn wanted a picture next to Pete Townshend's guitar. Or what was left of his '73 Gibson Les Paul. I quote the Hard Rock Orlando description that it is, "a testament to the raw energy and aggression of The Who's brilliant guitarist and songwriter, Pete Townshend. A landmark instrument, it was immortalized in the famous print ad for the film The Kids Are Alright. The ad featured Mr. Townshend (at the Newcastle Odeon) with the guitar over his head moments before it was reduced to it's current condition. The caption read, "This Guitar Has Seconds To Live."

That said, this isn't that guitar. The waitress led us astray. But it is pieces of a Stratocaster Townshend smashed in 2002 during a concert in which he played The Kids Are Alright. Tomato/tomato.

The usual Universal Globe picture you have to take when you visit. The stuffed animal is "Patch." Eryn won it playing head to head whackamole against Pooteewheet. No one else would play and they guy felt bad for her because she'd been there for ten minutes without a challenger.

Islands of Adventure - Rain or Shine

2011-11-11T19:59:00.001-06:00

These are the pictures from Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. When we went on vacation to Orlando, Eryn's goal was to go to Harry Potter World. So in the interest of single threading our vacation (who was a developer?), I requested that we forgo Disneyworld during this trip and just focus on enjoying one theme park location. I bought the family a three day "base pass" which meant we could go to either Islands of Adventure or Universal Studios, although not both in one day. My assumption that Eryn would want two days at Islands of Adventure was correct. In retrospect, two days seemed like a long time to spend at one park. But the rain chewed up part of both days. And we didn't get to the roller coasters until Eryn had a chance to work up the nerve on the second day. And we discovered some things we'd missed by the second day. And we had the luxury of no lines whatsoever. If the lines had been 60-90 minutes long, two days might not have seemed like enough.

Doesn't it look like a great vacation? Umbrellas on Halloween! Guess who's dressed as Hermione for October 31st once again? This was an interesting picture because Eryn was being super cute, and only twenty feet away there was a couple having a serious argument about going to the amusement park while it was raining and about how vacation was ruined and whose fault it was, and who understood better how miserable the kids (4 and 6?) were, despite that the kids looked to be happy as clams until they realized mom and dad were fighting and asked them to stop. I can't picture dropping $200 on tickets to Islands of Adventure and then fighting over who was more miserable. At that point, the divorce is already a reality, even if the paperwork hasn't been signed.

But enough. This is a damn cute picture. We went and had coffee and muffins and waited out part of the rain while trying on ponchos only moments later, but it made for a great picture.

It also makes for a cute video, although the video displays a bit of the disapproval of going to an amusement park in the rain that the picture doesn't convey. You can't just hop on that bike and ride it, by the way. It's bolted to the stones. Not that I tried.

We're going to go about this in a rather haphazard fashion. This isn't the day it rained. But it's Eryn's first time seeing Harry Potter World...or the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (tm)...something like that. It's impressive when you first see it with the snow on the roofs, the wand shop, the castle, the sweet shop, the joke shop, the butter beer (ugh...sickly sweet...not my cup of tea), the neap cart (which a British tourist told us was a turnip), and the animatronic doodads in many of the windows. This obviously isn't very crowded and it's at least twice as crowded as the second day we went.

Back to the rainy day. The Forbidden Journey ride is in the school. You sit in a chair and it turns and twists and flips past animatronic trees and dementors, and almost seamlessly switches to video quidditch and a video dragon chase. Out of all the rides in both parks at Universal, this ride was the only one I couldn't go on more than once in quick succession. I had to have a 10-15 minute wait between rides or I'd have gotten ill. And it didn't matter that we did it several times. I was just as queasy the last time as the first time.

Another angle on Hogwarts. They did a great job using perspective to make it look enormous. It is enormous - you walk for a long time to get from the entrance to the ride. But it's not as enormous as this makes it look.

I front loaded some of my favorite pictures. I really like this one, because it turned out exactly as I wanted it to. This is at the kids' playground. The longest wait we had in the whole park was for the pteradon ride at the kids area because each flyer only seated two people at a time. Fortunately, we'd mistakenly gone on the Jurassic Park water ride (damn is that a serious drop into a big puddle of water after you're faced with the T-Rex) just prior to the play area, so it was a good chance for me to dry out for 90 minutes while Pooteewheet and Eryn were in line for the ride.

Here's the ever-so-long Pteradon ride. Looks like a great time, but you have to have a kid with you under a certain height to ride it. That is Pooteewheet and Eryn on the ride. You can tell by my wife's red hair. I watched a lot of riders go by before I finally caught them on film.

Crabby bird. The Lost Continent area was the first area after the little kids Seuss Landing that we encountered. It looked cheesy, but was very fun. Posideon's Fury was a mixture of acting and ride, and sort of an Indian Jones finds a trident adventure. The best part was that they led you into a small room and then flashed a strobe in pitch blackness. In the second your eyes were adjusting, the walls of the room lifted away to the ceiling and when you could see again it had suddenly turned from a small room into a huge area full of water, enormous screens to show Posideon fighting an evil sorcerer, and a water and fire display. Impressive. What was more amusing than impressive was that in the staging area where they did the preliminary story setup, one of the archaeology books was a book by my company.

There was also a sarcastic statue at Lost Continent. We talked to him on two separate days, and the second day he wasn't half as amusing as this day. Listen carefully and you'll hear "Bob" talking to Eryn. He sounds exactly like Louie Anderson.

This is for Kyle. He needs to go to the Harry Potter area and he could find himself a date. These women look well balanced. They have a hobby. They can afford over-priced outfits. And they have friends. I bet they're a catch.

But if you're not into black-hatted witches, there are also women who dress up like Luna Lovegood. The good news is they can find you if you're accidentally invisible, like I was.

Or even better, Pooteewheet and I conferred and felt you might like a crotch shot of Cathy. Sexy!

A sunny picture of Hogwarts.

These photos are from Toon Lagoon, yet another area of Islands of Adventure. Apparently neither Eryn nor I were smart enough to figure out how to appropriately use the Marmaduke picture kiosk. You're not supposed to stand on the cloud, but on the ground, so it looks like you're being pulled through the air by Marmaduke.

It is true that I'm heavier than Eryn. In that case, perhaps my picture is more appropriate. Damn Marmaduke.

In the Marvel Super Hero Island area, we went on the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, which was great, and then took a relative rest by riding the Storm Force Accelatron. According to the cartoons around the ride, our energy was used to defeat evil super villains. Yes!

Here's some video...the accelatron was actually sort of nauseating.

At the end of the day, we only had a few minutes before we had to get to the hotel shuttle, but Pooteewheet and I didn't want to sit in the parking lot, so we made Eryn go on the Seuss go round. As you can see from both the video and the picture, she was not impressed at being made to ride the "baby rides". That just made it more fun for Pooteewheet and me.

Here. You can ride it with us and put on your own crabby face.

The train into Hogsmeade! Across the street is Honeydukes. Eryn bought a chocolate frog. It's still up in her closest. We brought back half a suitcase full of candy and stuffed animals. Eryn's is dressed as Hermione, so you know what her first stuffed animal was don't you? That's right, Crookshanks.

The Frog Choir played here when it wasn't raining. It was Glee with realistic giant frog familiar puppets humming the Harry Potter music. It was also the one place you could get a good picture with all of the flags from Hogwarts.

While trying to avoid the rain on the second day, we discovered that the Jurassic Park area had a dinosaur exploratory area. You were encouraged to identify various dino eggs, and every half hour or so they had actors dressed as scientists show a hatching egg. Eryn got to name a dino "Emily" and was extremely happy. She'd wanted to be the person selected to talk to the wand seller (Ollivander), but only one kid out of a roomful is selected for that each time.

Another picture from the dino exploration area. I always try to show me inappropriately touching an animal statue. This time I show my wife inappropriately touching a brontosaurus. I think she's milking it.

Toon Lagoon had too many water rides. I say too many because it was pretty cool with all the rain, so no one was riding them during 2/3 of our visit. But the few times people were on the rides, Eryn learned from a local that you could feed a quarter into a machine that allowed you to squirt unsuspecting riders as they finished their ride. There was no escaping being wet. And on Popeye's boat, you could use one of the guns to squirt people on the barges for free. That may have been one of Eryn's favorite parts. On this day, probably 30 rafts went by with no one on them. I snuck down and got on one so she'd have someone to squirt at. I figured I'd get a little wet, but the barge ride was nothing like the one at Valleyfair or the State Fair. I was soaked top to bottom. When we went past Eryn I looked up, and she yelled "Dad!" and missed me, squirting the guy next to me.

Get 'em Eryn!

Evil wizards were afoot.

The flight of the hippogriff ride. This was the starter ride for anyone who wanted to work up to a big roller coaster.

A great time. We had no ideas what to expect for most of the rides, and it was a treat to be on things so different than what I was on over 20 years ago.

Berlin Wall

2011-11-10T19:52:00.001-06:00

One of my favorite things about geocaching is that it often takes me to somewhere new that I otherwise wouldn't think to visit, even when that someplace is a few feet from where I'm standing. Our last day at Universal Studios, I made sure to catch the virtual cache (no box, just a location) in the shopping area before we left for the day. What surprised me was that it was only a few dozen feet from where we'd been eating the night before. Not just a few dozen feet from the Hard Rock itself, but a literally a few dozen feet from the back of the restaurant near where we'd been sitting. You spend so much time looking around at the guitars and jackets on the walls that you don't think to just step out the back doors.

So while my wife and daughter were busy scoring a piece of banana cream pie from Emeril's, which she hadn't had since we went to New Orleans before we had Eryn, I got to touch a piece of the Berlin Wall.

Click through and you can select the large or original picture size if you want to read the plaque.

Florida Beer

2011-11-09T21:19:00.000-06:00

Orlando was very confusing because they don't sell beer in the liquor store. At least not beer worth drinking. I tried three different stores and came up empty, which led me to my iPad where I verified that there were breweries in the area, which was my recollection. A search revealed that the Whole Foods, about 2/3 of a mile from the hotel, had beer. I walked over there, figuring I'd get some sort of gluten-free nonsense, but lo and behold...beer! Lots of beer. They even had Oskar Blues, which I didn't think was sold outside Colorado. And Whole Foods sold by the can, so I could sit next to the pool and enjoy a variety of yeasty goodness. Here's a picture of my Whole Foods purchase. You can imagine my excitement.

Shingles

2011-11-09T21:14:00.003-06:00

So about every three or four minutes, it feels like someone is shoving a knife blade under the ribs on my left side. On the plane ride back from Orlando, I had this pain in my left shoulder. I thought I'd done something stupid like pull a muscle while swimming at Blue Springs. The next morning, a spot on my chest hurt, sort of where the ribs run into the sternum. Picture an imaginary bullet shot by a little person. In one side, out the other. I poked around on line and thought, it's probably just where the muscle in my back attaches in the front. Then I got a very light rash on my abdomen. I'd had hives in Orlando due to something I was allergic to in the water at the amusement park, and it seemed like this was just a recurrence. Then it started to really hurt. So I was back to see Jennifer at urgent care in Eagan for the second time in two weeks. Shingles. Damn it. They put me on an anti viral. My mother recommended lysine as well. And now I can expect 3-5 weeks of tender skin and sharp pains. It's not keeping me from doing anything, but it sure is a distraction at work. On a positive note, after taking the lysine, I seem strangely energized and like my old self. I'm interested to see if that's consistent and whether the shingles are the result of some sort of imbalance. Hopefully, between the dog bite, the splinter so deep in my palm it wouldn't come out, the shingles, and the allergy to the water, and...I think there was one other malfunction in there somewhere...I should be done for a while.

Kennedy Space Center

2011-11-08T21:46:00.000-06:00

Our first full day in Orlando, it was scheduled to rain. So we made the decision to rent a car (from the lovely, chesty, Welsh redhead at Enterprise Rent a Car, Jess...think Eve Myles, but much cuter, chestier, an no gap tooth). The hotel we stayed at was only about a third of a mile from the rent a car location, so I just wandered over in the morning. It made it very easy to have a car only on days we wanted one. Anyway...I digress in more ways than one. We assumed Kennedy Space Center would be more rain amenable and drove to the East shore to check it out.

This is Eryn with a fake astronaut. He's giving her the thumbs up because she passed inspection at the metal detector. I'm not sure what they were so worried we'd bring into the area. Perhaps it's because after that checkpoint it was possible to get on a bus and go to the staging and launch areas. The guard at the metal detector was very nice and gave Eryn a few photos - not prints, photos - of the last shuttle launch.

Eryn - and family - with a real astronaut. Robert Springer. He was incredibly enjoyable to listen to for the 30 minutes he spoke about the two missions he'd been on. One "public" and one military. He talked about how they reset the astronauts internal clocks for the military mission as those missions tended to launch at 3:00 a.m. About how excited he was when he was up there and how much time he spent looking out the window. Shared some of his own photographs from space. Showed a picture he took of the oil fields burning during the Gulf War as the military had asked the shuttle crew to provide what pictures they could. He was a great speaker to boot. I got a signed photo for Greg, who was on my team before the reorg that happened as I was stepping out the door for two weeks of vacation, not knowing Greg had actually worked on Robert Springer's STS-38 military launch as an engineer.

And yes, yes I did wear my Marvin the Martian shirt to the space center.

One more astronaut. This one was spying on us. Creepy. Maybe it's just a knowing look because he's sure we'll go see the Star Trek Live presentation, which ended up involving two Canadians - one of them Vulcan - doing a play about tribbles, time travel, and the last Star Trek movie. Most peculiar, although it made Eryn very interested in tribbles. Until now her old Star Trek experience has been limited to knowing that when someone shouts Pon Farr, you should respond, "dunt dunt dun dun dun dun dunnn dunt dunt da daaaaaa...."

Eryn in a Mercury capsule. She would have been the right size to be an astronaut.

Eryn in another capsule. This one had more leg room.

And yet another. We talked about how creepy it probably was being in space in one of these things, particularly wearing a space suit that took up even more of the available room.

Quick cut scene to Pooteewheet and I getting amorous...and...rockets!!! Hmm....that just seems perverse with seven rockets.

And isn't the rocket in the scene always blasting off, or blowing up on the launch pad? Maybe adding a fountain to the scene with only one rocket center stage works more effectively? Probably not - that's not the movie cutaway to symbolize gettin-it-on, that's the movie cutaway to symbolize I drank too much beer and I have to pee.

One more gratuitous rocket picture.

Eryn and I as astronauts. I'm having more fun than she is. She was worn out by this time. She did frame her face better than I did.

In the faux shuttle with real shuttle wheels. While walking around we passed an Amish couple. It seems oxymoronic to see Amish folks getting on a shuttle, even a fake one with real wheels. I'm reminded of The Chive's meme about presenting something totally crazy and then claiming "your argument is invalid." An Amish couple riding the space shuttle. Your argument is invalid.

This guy creeped me out. It seems very 2001 A Space Odyssey. And don't focus on his crotch zipper too much, because that's really the creepiest part.

Eryn in front of a big, big, big engine. I think this is the Saturn V they have on display. Nearby, completely overshadowed, is the astronaut van. I shit you not. It's a van, with a few leather seats in it, and a sign that says "astronaut van".

The launching pad. The tracks in the foreground are where the launch vehicle drives the shuttle (drove, although they had a new mobile launch vehicle there to take the new Mars rover to the launch site - I think Eryn just told me it's called Curiosity). It was great to get out there and see the staging building, the launch pad, and across the water, the Cape Canaveral unmanned and private-public joint venture launch sites. I can see why so many people would want to be there for a launch. It has to be exciting. We also saw a large alligator in the water from the viewing area.

Finally, the constellation ball that floats on water at the main area. If you push hard enough, you can make it go in a particular direction. Eryn thought it was exciting that she could move something so large.

I wasn't sure I'd enjoy the Space Center, but meeting an astronaut and the bus ride out to the viewing areas sealed it for me. Well worth the drive and giving NASA some cash.

Florida, Poolside

2011-11-08T21:07:00.002-06:00

We had a pool side room on the top floor at our hotel in Florida. The first few moments in the room, looking out the window, this is what I saw. He would slowly lift up one arm, then the other, then the first one, over and over....very, very slowly.

After a while it quit. Why it was necessary to smell the hands after they'd exercised. I'm not sure. Perhaps he had been catching sunshine and was now enjoying it after it had accumulated in his hands.

And this is Ken. He's from Wales. His daughter and Eryn became very good friends and swam together almost every night at the swimming pool. The first few times I saw him at the pool, this was what he was doing. Nap time. Can't say I blame him. If I worked on the ocean for oil around Britain, presumably in the cold North Sea, I'd consider Florida a chance for a bit of power napping as well.

Two Signs and a Lizard

2011-11-06T10:04:00.001-06:00

This sign was at Kennedy Space Center as you drove in. Or out. All I could think was, "Maybe I won't cache too much while I'm in Florida." I don't have to worry too much about spiders and snakes here in central Minnesota. I always have to remind myself the rest of the world isn't so benign.

I thought this sign combo near our hotel was funny. Either you're too stupid to drive and plowing into the trees rather than the show entrance, or the show entrance is a do-not-enter zone, in which case you're just stuck at the signs, pondering how you're ever going to get into the building to take part in what looked to be an incredibly cheesy Pirate show, along the lines of Medieval Times. See the trees decorated with lights for Christmas in the background? Here's a closeup...

...infested with lizards! You'll have to trust me that there were many more lizards than just this one. One more geocaching hazard. Reach for a cache, potentially squish a lizard. Ick.

We Went to Cocoa Beach

2011-11-06T09:55:00.001-06:00

After we went to Kennedy Space Center for a day - you have to deal with my nonlinear posting here - we thought we should try to see a beach in Florida, as we were close to the ocean. So we went to Cocoa beach. It was late. It was raining. Where we parked seemed to have people hanging out who weren't actually going down to the beach, but talking to each other through open windows. I'm sure they were just exchanging beach towels. This is our picture from the beach.

It was far more comfortable inside the Pig and Whistle, where I had the delicious looking Shepherd's Pie pictured at that link. Although mine was the steak version because it was on special.

Roller Coaster Vacation

2011-11-05T11:27:00.002-06:00

Our second day at Universal Studios, Eryn decided she wanted to try a big roller coaster. She was eyeing the RockIt at Universal, which has a huge drop and two loops. I said I'd go, but Pooteewheet wanted to see the Terminator T2 "ride" first, so we went to that. It was lame. Absolutely the one thing I didn't think was very interesting at Universal/Islands of Adventure. After we got out of the rather melodramatic "play" that was T2, we headed over to RockIt. Eryn tried a seat to make sure she fit, and then they closed down the ride. We may have been the very first people turned away. Apparently a company was renting the park for an hour between the normal operation hours and when the Universal Haunted Evenings began. Eryn was mad. I promised her we'd try to find an equivalent ride the next day. Perhaps the Dragon Challenge Ride at Harry Potter World.

The next day she held me to my word, and we stood in a very short Monday line to ride the Dragon Challenge. It's a roller coaster where you hang down in an individual seat and it flips you upside down and in twirls, like you're riding a dragon. There are two separate roller coasters that take different paths, to give you the illusion that you're in a dragon race between a blue and a gold dragon. We rode the coaster. And Eryn wanted to do it again. So we did it again (no waiting). And again. And again. Then we stood in the slightly longer line for the front of the coasters and did each one from the front row. If you don't think that would be different, you haven't experienced being hurtled at a stone wall and then shooting upward in front of it. After six rides, I was all done. But Eryn went back two more times by herself to ride them again.

Here's one coaster.

Here's the other. We're on these somewhere. Pooteewheet was trying to capture the ones we were one.

Later, in the Marvel area, we went on the Hulk coaster twice. It accelerates you from a crawl to 40 mph in 2 seconds as you exit the tube at the beginning. Lots of loops and it even goes sort of underground. It roars most of the time, like The Hulk. I'm obviously full of radiation after riding it.

Caffeine in the Hat

2011-11-04T21:33:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted for a week because I've been on family vacation. We took Eryn down to Orlando, Florida, as she's been asking to go to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios for a year now and Halloween seemed like the perfect time. We had a great trip. I didn't bring back much in the way of touristy swag. Only one item if you don't include the autographed picture of an astronaut I had signed for a coworker who used to work for NASA. Here is my Cat in the Hat (tm) coffee cup for work so that I can switch between it and my Dr. Who Tardis mug. I'm dangerously close to being "the manager with all the stupid coffee cups."

National Cache Coverage

2011-10-26T19:43:00.000-06:00

To quote another meme on TheChive, this is one of those first world problems. It seems we are rapidly running out of space to put any new caches. I'm not sure how we're going to be able to add a dimension so we can layer caches more effectively and get a better 3-D density.

If you zoom in, there's still plenty of space. This is just an amusing way to visualize U.S. caches.

Geocaching Woodville, Part II

2011-10-25T20:41:00.001-06:00

A continuation of the earlier post. Yet one more location where I didn't realize I was looking for a mystery cache. I ended up crawling around in a drain under a highway and wondering how it would be accessible if water was running under the road.

Who is the inspector dude? I recognize him from cartoons, but they weren't cartoons I watched.

It's Alice!!! Run for the bridge across the chasm! Fusaki! Fusaki!!! It's ironic that I managed to get past a raptor and score the cache it was guarding, only to be chewed on later by a bloodhound. Luck was with me, it wasn't a pack like in Jurassic Park. Individual raptors are stupid. Stooopid. Play some tap music, and they start tapping their hallux and can't stop.

This took me back to the days when I had hemorrhoids and Eryn and I were doing the Halloween series here in the southern metro that Bart had placed. That was a watershed. Pizza challenge, Halloween caches, hemorrhoid surgery. Put enough big events in a two day period and you never forget it.

Somewhere, nearby, natives are guarding giant gates holding back an even gianter great ape. Or perhaps Marie Laveau was caching before me, despite the lack of a signature attesting to her presence. More importantly, don't put a finger in your mouth after touching a rusty, corroded, moldy, cache necklace. That's the real lesson you should come away with.

A sneaky cache hidden in some rusted out old farm machinery.

Let the photoshopping begin. What can you put on the missing half of my head that would be most amusing? Some caching bling.

The raptor trespassed. Stooopid raptor. Now he's married to some farmer's daughter. So...a raptor went to a farm house and asked the farmer, "Can we spend the night at your farm?" The farmer said, "Sure you can. Just make sure you stay away from my three beautiful daughters." The raptor assured him he could. But in the middle of the night, the first daughter came to visit him where he was staying in the barn and the raptor found he was no match for her curvaceous charms. Wild trans-human sex ensued and the raptor fell back to sleep. A few hours later, the second daughter showed up and although the raptor thought there was no way he could get aroused so soon, she was even more persuasive than the first daughter and they did it dino style. He went back to sleep. But a few hours later the third daughter showed up and she was a vision. The raptor perked up and showed her the meaning of terrible lizard. Hours later he was awoken by the farmer who was pointing a shotgun at him. "You defiled my daughters, and now you have to pay. You'll be marryin' one of them." The raptor, a comittaphobe, was initially concerned, but after a moment to think it through, decided marrying the youngest daughter was preferable to a hide full of buckshot. A wonderful ceremony ensued, and the minister asked, "Do you take this raptor to be your lawfully wedded dinosaur?" And the farmer's daughter assured everyone she did. The minister stated, "And do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded human?" The raptor assured everyone he did. The minister stated, "I now pronounce you dinosaur and wife." After that they lived happily ever after, raising a brood of Sleestak and creating one of the most profitable farming combines in history, eventually selling out to Monsanto and creating a habitat where all human/dino halfbreeds could live in peace. Damn it...I was going to use the punchline "I don't know about his ability as a farmer, but when we were doing it, I was in raptor." That probably would have been better.

The cache description implied these were lunch pails. They looked more like a good place to take a leak. Not that I did! They just looked appropriate.

SIR! We have secured Gearburger Hill, Sir! We now have a commanding view of the entire bike. You may rest assured that no [insert culturally inappropriate word for enemies here] will ever be able to rest this bike from our control. I have deployed snipers to the pedals and we have flamethrowers cleaning up the headtubes where the enemy has gone to ground. Disregard any rumors you may have heard about soldiers setting fire to innocents in the spokes.

I stood in front of this cache for a while wondering whether it was a trap. I followed the rope up to the end of the line just to be sure I wasn't going to pull a pot full of pig's blood down on my head.

End of the line! I talked about the hill leading up to this stop sign in the last post. When the county cop was talking to me I was wondering whether he'd be concerned that I'd reached the county line and think my dog bite belonged to the next county over. But it all worked out. Except for this tetanus shot. That thing blows. Feels like I've got the flu and my arm is a mess. I just tried to haul a dozen bags of sticks and grass and leaves to the corner, and I have to load the dog cage in the car tomorrow and I'm not looking forward to it. I once had a nurse who told me tetanus shots don't make your arm hurt. To which I say, "Bull*LKDJFL!@$^#$%^." But, it was a good day except for the bite. Good caching. Good bicycling.

Geocaching Woodville - Part I

2011-10-25T15:16:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I did the first end of the trail in Woodville, Wisconsin, and logged 27 caches. I don't think that's my best day. If I go look at the geocaching statistics on geocaching.com, it appears it's my third best. 34 with Klund and Ming trumps earlier this year. And I had a 28 cache day with The Boss. I'm disappointed I didn't find two more caches yesterday just to bother Boss. That might have made being bitten by a dog worth it. But it is my best solo day ever.

Here's a summary montage of some of the pictures, for those of you like Ming who are impatient with long posts.

Here's a picture of the path I followed, starting from the north end. Where the green unfounds start isn't the end of my ride, it just happens to be where I quit to find the end of the trail by bike so I was sure I'd have time to get back to the car in time to get Eryn from school. If I had just kept caching, perhaps I'd have avoided the dog.

Whose sign is this? Nacho sign! If I hadn't been bitten by the dog, I would have driven out to try out the brew pub. I may go back to try it out, but I'll cache in Stillwater on the way and only hit the end of the trail where the "13 Days of Christmas" caches are that I didn't do.

The day started at this sign, which didn't seem to officially be part of the trail as there was lots of wet grass as it cut through the woods. It was right after this sign that I lost my camera while taking a...break. My first geocache of the day was to find my own, new camera, worried that it was now wet with nasty...forest...residue. From here, the path seemed to follow the direction of the path on the other side of town, so perhaps it's part of an old rail bed.

My first cache of the day! I had to hop across a narrow ditch full of water. But prior to hopping, I put one foot into the ditch and water flowed into my shoe through the toehole I've worn in it while bicycling. So this cache stayed with me all day in the form of a slightly soggy foot.

If there was a hot redhead in a sundress lurking in this picture, I'd be a shoe in for The Chive's hot girls in the middle of nowhere series. I did the lighting on purpose for this picture, and it turned out nicely, so I'm very proud of myself. "Hot Cache in the Middle of Nowhere".

I didn't pay attention to GSAK settings and it's been a while, so I didn't realize I had a mix of traditional, multi-stage, and mystery/puzzle caches in my GPS. Unfortunately, that meant I ended up at a mystery cache at the cemetery looking for a traditional cache. Caches are almost never on private/church land, so it made me rather nervous. I felt like I did when the guy in North Dakota came to grill Ming and I about why we were looking around the city sign for a cache. After 20 minutes, I figured something was up and gave up. But this tombstone was very close to where I was looking in a series of pine trees. The cache was something about Norwegians, so this confused me. Virgil and Leona, very Scandinavian sounding. Wang? Research shows that it's a very Scandinavian name, derived from Vang.

One of the first caches. Thought they were clever with the magnet in the old paint can. There weren't too many magnet-based caches during the day. Most of them were just hidden in the brush well off the trail and not exactly at the coordinates, so you had to do quite a bit of digging around to find them. That, or my GPS was off by up to 40 feet all day.

This was a more surmountable obstacle than the big puddle I encountered earlier on the trail. I'm always happy to see that trees fall when no one is around, that way they don't fall on me.

Couple of caches were in pines. Smelled wonderful.

This is an example of what I was talking about when I said they were just laying around off the trail. Go 20-50' into the brush and junk on the side of the trail, and some of them were just laying in the open. Others were damn hard to find, particularly when there were four or five layers of desiccated shrubbery.

Woodville's troll. Guarding the grain storage rather than a bridge.

Obviously "official".

I found a pair of glasses in a cache. I didn't swap anything for them. My trades were for coins and things Eryn might like. But I do take my picture with cache "props" when I get the opportunity. I should have stayed on the path to being a Tudor/Stuart history professor. I look like someone's professor. Or grandpa. Notice it was warm enough to wear two layers of t-shirts? Might be the last day of the year with a reasonable temperature.

Boring cache picture. Unless you're really into cache p0rn.

Almost every cache was slightly different. I think someone had a lot of old containers sitting around that didn't make it out the door at the garage sale.

This one was peculiar. I'm not sure why it needed to be in the form of a baseball cap. One of the cachers up here did a series using all the team caps, but this wasn't part of a series that I could discern. I did finally catch on by about this point that the name of the cache, which doesn't show up in my GPS unless I back out a screen, is uber-important. Names like "Wrapping Tree" and "Don't Trespass" really help you hone in on the right location when the cache is just in the general vicinity.

The fence posts were interesting. I don't know what sort of wood they were made out of, but this is one of them from the top down.

Rolling under I-94. This is the only paved part of the whole trail. Overall, it's pretty bumpy and hilly and, in some parts, it's composed of rocks about a third the size of a golf ball. Rough riding, even on my mountain bike with the wide (although non-knobby) tires. At the very end was a hill so steep, so rocky, so covered with loose dirt and leaves, that I couldn't make it even half-way up on my bike. A strange feature for a bike trail.

Bitten!

2011-10-25T13:22:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, I went to Woodville, Wisconsin, to ride my bicycle on the local trail and do some geocaching. There's a nice string of caches that follows the trail from Woodville south. I'll post about the caching later. Lot of fun. But let's skip to almost the end of the seven mile trail, when I'm exhausted from 27 caches (and a few did not finds [e.g. DNF]) and meet up with some small dogs that are the vanguard for a lady walking four animals. They came up to check me out and were being a little pushy, so I remained on my bike where they couldn't really reach me. Unfortunately, one of the other two dogs wasn't so small - a bloodhound of sorts - and decided to take over. Not with a slow jog along side my bike hinting of warning, but a sprint/lung/attack on my left leg. It wasn't even like I was wearing a Vikings jersey or, as Kyle asked on Facebook, a retro Brett Farve Packers jersey. Fortunately, it was rather chilly out, so for about only the third time in twenty years, I was wearing a pair of Levi's instead of shorts. That didn't stop me from bleeding, but it probably did prevent hanging strips of skin or deep punctures.

I put the bike between the dog and me and the dog stopped when his owner got there. She gave me her name, a phone number, the dog's name (Daisy) and the comforting advice that she didn't know if it had rabies shots because it was her son's dog. As I got back on my bike, it lunged at me a second time and I hopped off the far side and pushed the bike toward it. That was the only time I saw the woman panic, presumably because she thought the dog might get hurt. She grabbed his collar to hold him while I biked away. I pedaled six miles back to Woodville (actually, about eight, as I quickly pedaled to the end of the trail as that had been my goal all day) and asked the librarian to point me at the police station. She pointed me two doors down. I walked to the Woodville police station, where they asked, "Where did this take place?" When I noted it was five to six miles south of town, the receptionist assured me it was a county matter and handed me a phone number on a sticky note. Not a big deal - I wasn't bleeding out, and the local policeman came out to talk to me while I sat on a bench outside their headquarters. Twenty minutes or so later, the county cop showed up to take down my story. He learned two interesting facts. 1.) that there was a trail leading out of town. And 2.) what geocaching was. I learned the strange coincidence that his last name, an uncommon one I'd never heard before, might be the same last name as the company that just did the concrete driveway for my neighbors. He was great. He gave me a case number and assured me they'd call me after talking with the woman a second time as she was tracking down vet details. The dog was a brand new purchase off Craigslist and paperwork hadn't exchanged hands yet. As you can imagine, I was a bit nervous about that and worried that there might not be documentation, or even a vet. Rabies shots were not something I was looking forward to.

I drove back to Minnesota and picked Eryn up from school and went home to make dinner as urgent care didn't open until 6:00 p.m. and there wasn't a chance I'd die from rabies or lockjaw in the next hour or two. I was less concerned about those problems than the twenty sick people in urgent care touching everything. After about an hour and a half, they ushered me into a room and cleaned the wound and gave me a tetanus shot. Antibiotics are only if I start to show symptoms of infection. If it had been a cat bite, they'd have given me antibiotics de facto. Cats are nasty, disease-ridden, germ bags - at least that's what I take away from the conversation with Jennifer, who processed my wounds. I told Eryn during our ride home from school that rabies was a possibility. Then I barked at her loudly. Freaked her out, although she thought it was funny after she'd recovered.

So overall, pretty harmless. Four wasted hours of my life. A $20 copay. A very sore right arm from the tetanus shot because they don't want to mask my heart attack by giving it to me in the left arm, and a sore upper ankle where I have a deep tooth scrape. Wisconsin made out less well because after I got bit I wasn't willing to eat at the local cafe or fill up the gas tank, so they lost my day of tourism dollars.

This is for Ming

2011-10-19T19:44:00.003-06:00

...and because it's for Ming, it's also for Kyle. Courtesy of the trip Eryn and I took to Groth Music today. I think this was title of a piece of fan fiction Ming was writing.

St. Anthony Falls

2011-10-18T19:42:00.000-06:00

St. Anthony Falls. Yes, it's just a big chunk of concrete, to keep it from wandering up river and completely disappearing, but you can appreciate the historical significance of a falls that powered Minneapolis through the lumber and grain days.

Sweaty

2011-10-18T19:41:00.000-06:00

Got on my bike for the first time in about 14 days. Our internet connection in the computer room has been cutting out after about 3 second with each refresh, and no matter what I did I couldn't get the connection to stay up (I was going to say "it to stay up", but that might lead one a bit of Shakespearian double meaning). Everything else in the house accessed the internet fine, so I suspect the card was going, despite that it was lit up. I gave up trying to get Netflix streaming going, kept my Netflix DVD account, and figured I'd just own the account for myself and get a new DVD every two days to pop in the computer. Not bicycling generally leads to beer drinking, so it's important to get on the bike and not swing my health completely in the wrong direction. The video came today, I hopped on the bike, and the internet connection performed flawlessly. SOAB. I think someone at my internet provider is seriously messing with me.

So 62 minutes watching I Am Number Four, which shouldn't be watched once, let alone twice because you didn't review your queue after renting a stupid movie in the Redbox lookalike at Kowalski's a few months ago. But, the bicycling was done and I feel way better than having had a beer. Mission accomplished.

Segway

2011-10-17T19:54:00.000-06:00

On Saturday, Pooteewheet and I went on a Segway ride at St. Anthony Main. She bought two gift certificates as a birthday present 11 months ago, and we finally got around to using them. It was a perfect day for it as far as I was concerned. Just a little on the cool side, but not so cold my hands hurt, and I didn't have to worry about sweating or having to strip off clothes.

You do have to wear a helmet during the ride, but for the introduction - stepping on and stepping off before the video - there's someone there to catch you. Here's Pooteewheet learning to move around in front of the Segway shop. The little round circle by her feet gives her a shield frequency of 257.4. Useless against polaric energy, but useful against uncloaked Romulans.

Jason, one of our two tour guides, and the voice over actor who did the narration for the training video, done in something of a native Chicagoan. Perhaps one of the better training videos I've ever had to sit through. He and Renata did all of the history bits of our tour and they did a great job. We talked to Renata for quite a while at the back of the pack as I knew just enough history about the falls area from the underground Twin Cities book I'd read to be able to have a conversation. Later, when we went out to the open area by St. Anthony Main that allows you to get close to the falls, there was a plaque talking about what I'd heard about how they'd almost collapsed the falls in the past.

In the background, you can see our famous Grain Belt Beer sign.

The rail bridge between Boom Island (where they used to process lumber in the lumbering days) and Nicollet Island (home of the Grain Belt sign and DeLaSalle High School). I hadn't realized there was a whole neighborhood out there. Apparently it used to be the hangout for a bunch of a hippies and a pet donkey. I remember this bridge from when I was in college and it didn't have the safety rails. People would sit on the girders on the sides and fish.

THIS IS MY SEGWAY. THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT, BUT THIS ONE IS MINE. MY SEGWAY IS MY BEST FRIEND. WITHOUT MY SEGWAY I AM USELESS. I MUST DRIVE MY SEGWAY TRUE. I MUST DRIVE IT SURER THAN ANY OTHER SEGWAY WHICH IS ATTEMPTING TO RUN ME OFF THE ROAD...

The Mill Museum. We stopped here for a cookie and coffee.

Dorks on Segways! I told Pooteewheet it's my goal to always have my picture taken in Marvin clothing from now on. Proof I'm rapidly sliding toward retirement age. That's the Stone Arch Bridge in the background. Where we're at is a common place for people to smoke their weed, according to our tour guide. We didn't smoke any weed - we were driving.

Stone Arch Bridge sans dorks.

Putting one dork back in the view. Pooteewheet is apparently monstrously shorter than I am when I'm up on a Segway. The ride was 2.5 hours long. Quite the trip and we were actually sort of tired at the end. It went across the Stone Arch Bridge, down into the ruins park, back up past the 35W Bridge Memorial and the Guthrie, into the Mill City Museum, along the riverfront to Boom Island, and back along Nicollet Island. Eryn was incredibly jealous, as we'd dumped her with Grandpa and Grandma for the evening. She was too young for the Segway and too young for the Haunted Basement. We let her have our Segway drivers licenses and told her if she saved her allowance, she could buy a Segway for $6999 and then the age restriction wouldn't apply.

Snarky Reboot

2011-10-17T17:46:00.002-06:00

Snrky.com has rebooted! You can probably see the picture/link on the right of this blog, but in case it's too small, the art is brand new. The site is temporarily moving to five posts a week while it reposts three of the originals each week and posts two new cartoons as well. There are even some new frames that will be showing up. It finally looks like something that could be put on the side of a coffee cup or on a wall.

Soap Factory Haunted Basement

2011-10-16T16:09:00.000-06:00

Last night Pooteewheet and I went to the Haunted Basement at the Soap Factory for the second time (annually). Last year was definitely more scary. Although this year, they claimed to have more "uncles", and we actually saw a woman being escorted out hyperventilating. I suspect the issues were 1.) they went to a lot of trouble to separate everyone individually (something Julie would have hated), and 2.) they put you in small boxes for a while. Scary if you give a **** about tight spaces. Irrelevant if you don't care. Most of the night I wandered in directions where they had to pull me back onto the main path, did as they requested (like sitting on a mannequin, which seemed to be an exception to the rule), wandered around the wrong side of the table of gross food, and laughed when I guy tried to use a stapler on me. Not that it wasn't a little bit creepy, but mostly it tickled. We were paired up with Julie and Alan and we used their names a lot, just to give the actors something to work with.I think the weirdest thing was the photo exhibit at the beginning which was an Asian woman in various states of bondage involving total nudity and ropes. Not part of the haunted house, but definitely a weird intro.

This has little to do with the haunted basement other than that we were walking from Aster to the basement near University. Pedal Pub has a headquarters right along the street, so we saw all the pedal pubs finishing up for the night. I have to do this. Even if it means making more friends.

The bell they ring to announce you're headed into the Haunted Basement. I asked the gentleman nearby if they tweaked the basement to make it more scary based on participant feedback. No such luck. That poster in the background is for the company that makes nasty smells for the haunted basement. The smells didn't bother me until I got to the old ketchup, which they had nothing to do with. Old ketchup makes me feel ill.

At the end or the haunted basement. You can watch other folks freak out. this was more fun last year when you could watch people wander around the maze for 30 minutes.

Can't tell if this makes sense, but there was a fish dude who puked water. Having to walk through a floor covered with a layer of water was pretty creepy. Not because you felt all cthonic, but because you were worried about being electrocuted.

Miscellaneous Photos

2011-10-16T15:55:00.001-06:00

A few pictures from the weekend that don't really fit into any other category. A nice picture of the cityscape from Riverplace. My new camera does an incredible job of gathering light. Almost too good. When I wanted to grab a picture of the city at dusk, it kept looking like just a slightly dreary day.And Eryn in the car at Riverplace. We spent both days at Riverplace over the weekend. A great time - Segway riding, having a few beers, haunted basement, trading Eryn with Grandpa. Good times.

Leaf Raking!

2011-10-12T18:45:00.000-06:00

Don't let her fool you. She didn't fully rake the yard. There's just a small pile of wet leaves sitting in the middle of a big yard full of wet leaves. But she did rake them very stylishly in her hat and skirt. Not that I couldn't have pulled off the look.

That's some of the grass Pooteewheet is allergic to that she planted. You can't see our new rocks from the cabin on the corner, just out of sight. They're not huge, but to get them into my Dad's trailer, I had to roll them onto an old sled just so I could eliminate enough friction for them to slide. Pooteewheet planted tulips next to them. She's not allergic to tulips.

And that's the tree I pruned during my 12 hours of branch pruning and chopping up into little pieces that fit in leaf bags effort over the last three weekends. I still have a few hours left to go to eliminate the dregs at the rental property. I forgot my clippers last time I was there, and the chainsaw is a bit too brute forest for your fingerling branch. Not to mention, using it to hack up bundles of thin twigs has dulled the chain to the point where it's just sort of chewing through the wood instead of cutting it. Notice there aren't many branches hanging down where you have to look at them. I'm going to assume no low hanging branches drives away the squirrels because they won't be able to get into the trees, eliminating my worries that they're trying to infiltrate my attic.

New Camera!

2011-10-11T21:45:00.000-06:00

It's been over four months since I last posted a picture I took with my camera (at least according to Flicker). This is because I loaned my camera to a gaggle of 8 year olds to make movies about the pros and cons of Jello (seriously), and they did something that knocked out my colors, forcing me into a world of greens reminiscent of the shallow waters of Lake Nokomis. I know this from experience, having swam there in the algae despite the very real threat of brain-eating amoebas. I biked over to Target to take advantage of a good deal on an Elph 100, only to find it was the only camera that was out of stock. The clerk graciously offered to find me an alternative store. I asked him if it was within bicycling distance. So I went home and upgraded to an Elph 300 (Cannon) on Amazon. Nice camera. Beautiful shots. And the movies are so much better than the last camera that it's a bit surreal. More storage space, but it was about time I had an excuse to go find a 1TB drive and a new desktop machine (the wireless card on the old one has died, and I figure it's easier to just buy a new machine and move over the content via the portable hard drive).BUT I DIGRESS! Yes, yes I do. I have a new Cannon Powershot Elph 300 HS. It will serve me well on vacation. To test it out, I took random photos for you to enjoy. First, Mean Mr. Mustard mimicking his boss by downing 12 Super Hot Buffalo Wild Wings in 6 minutes! That's right - it's a magical camera, you can see pictures of vegetarians eating meat. Or not. But it does take pictures of leaves. GLORIOUS LEAVES! Truth be told, they're kind of pretty with an HD point and click.And...wait for it...my front yard! That won't be the view for too long. That river birch is a thorn in my...eye. One third of it is dead. One third is over my house, though recently whittled way back. And one third threatens my neighbor's house and his innocent tree. I have worries that if I remove the 1/3 that's dead, the other two thirds will take out my garage, his tree, and perhaps his living room, depending on how far it manages to lean during hari kari. Two guys from work came by to take a look. Unbonded. They're pretty sure it's not an option given their limited insurance.I uploaded a video as well, but HD video is 129 Megs for 30 seconds of video! I wrote this whole post, and there are still 12 minutes of upload time remaining. I'm going to go do some shit on Facebook. Maybe make fun of Kevin. Then I'll be back so you don't miss this enormous video that shows you nothing but leaves rustling while I read Lev Grossman's "The Magician King".

Pro-life movies

2011-10-10T19:40:00.001-06:00

34 and counting. I'm that close to 2500 posts. Scary, particularly as I'm not posting as regularly as I used to.Last night, Pooteewheet and I watched "The Forgotten" just before bedtime. I didn't know much about it, other than my brother warning me it wasn't very good. It was awful. And it waited until the very last moment to beat you over the head with the fact that it had a message that was very, very important. I'm going to spoil the shit out of it for you. When aliens try to steal your memories, they should realize that the first memory you have of you and your child is not when they're a baby, but when they're growing inside of you.In the interest of who the hell cares if your movie is prolife or not, these are categorized by students for life (.org):

Films with a Pro-Life Message:

Amazing Grace (2007)
Bella (2007)
Children of Men (2006)
Apocalypto (2006)
The Island (2005)
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
The Forgotten (2004)
Gattaca (1997)

Films with a Pro-Abortion Message:

Vera Drake (2004)
Cider House Rules (1999)
A Handmaid’s Tale (1990)

I'm not so sure A Handmaid's Tale is a pro-abortion movie, although this individual (Anne Barbeau Gardiner) disagrees. She points to a part of the book where someone historically refers to abortion as birth control, proof that we're being clubbed over the head with an anti-abortion rhetoric by Atwood. But if you have an abortion to prevent a birth...isn't it birth control? I fail to understand how you could refer to it as anything else. Yes, yes...murder, etc. But still...it was used to control a birth. Even if it was a murder in your mind, it's still birth control. Saying it's one of the other is semantics. The Handmaid's Tale isn't about abortion, it's about someone else controlling your body so completely that you can't help but draw parallels to how people do and want to control your body in the current culture.

Darngood v. Landers and PUDS

2011-10-05T19:15:00.000-06:00

I took a few days off recently to donate my time as a mock juror for William Mitchell College of Law. Both days I sat as a juror on the same case, Darngood v. Landers and PUDs. The basic plot: female CEO from what looks like a fictional Best Buy if Best Buy was owned by a single family is run over during the Holidazzle Christmas parade by a fictional UPS man who just left the company Christmas party which had an open bar and is still on the clock because he has one final delivery.Ms. Darngood is hit in the crosswalk by Mr. Landers. She claims it said walk. He claims he entered and it switched to yellow and he was being careful. In this case, the facts were presented by real lawyers, not students.It was fascinating. Particularly to sit in on the same case two days in a row. At no point on the second day did anyone mention that if the light truly changed colors after he entered the intersection AND if the walk sign was on, he was doing less than 8 miles per hour. On the second day, Ms. Darngood's lawyer showed us exactly how far into the intersection she was, all by herself. It was a very long ways. Not what she was really trying to demonstrate, methinks. And the defense on the second day was more aggressive and got Ms. Darngood to state on the stand, "the driver is always at fault." Which clearly is not what the law states.Neither day did Ms. Darngood's lawyers stress that Mr. Landers weighed 140# and that the difference between "2 or 3 drinks" was .6 and .9 BAC. And that if he had tested at .6, an hour and a half after the accident, he was probably a.) close to .8 at the time of the accident, and b.) well over legal limit when he left the party and clearly over 3 drinks. Neither day did they show us the company policies about drinking and delivering. Although I heard from another juror that these did exist.The results were even better. My first day, we gave Ms. Darngood $200,000. The primary argument, it was a problem between corporations and it was appropriate to give her one year's salary so the company could deal with finding a new CEO. The second day, we gave her $0. She was clearly in the intersection alone, 6' out, and literally sprinting while he was being careful, and the cops didn't do due diligence by giving him a breathalyzer right away, but only a field sobriety test which he passed. However, my coworker Ron's jury gave her $5 million for physical and mental damages, and my wife's jury gave her $22.5 million for similar reasons. Ron was disgusted because the jury was pretty sure she was the majority of the problem, but felt she had been injured and needed compensation.My first day, I had a juror who was almost yelling about how Ms. Darngood was a Type A personality, and they were almost always at fault, and she knew what they were like, and that was the problem. Nice use of evidence, lady. Although on the first day, the lawyers also asked the jury questions about their own accidents, but didn't ask me whether I had relatives/immediate family who'd been in big accidents (I have). They didn't ask me many questions at all, which seemed to be sort of a reverse discrimination...businessy-looking white guy must be reasonable? All in all, very fun. And amusing to see two trials and compare notes with two others.

The Sudden Lovelys

2011-10-05T19:00:00.001-06:00

I did my first Kickstarter funding the other night and sponsored a musical duo and an calendar project by Altered Aesthetics. The duo, The Suddenly Lovelys, raised the money they needed, as I received 3 CD & 3 records (yep, records) in the post today, personally signed with a thank you. They've created three albums this year. That's a lot of music. I'm very interested to go see them at the Acadia next Wednesday if anyone is interested.Dirty Rotten Apple:

Managerial

2011-09-27T19:16:00.000-06:00

Mean Mr. Mustard told me at breakfast after the St. Paul Classic that I was pushy. I pointed out that it was necessary, I wasn't waiting for hypothetical church goers to steal my chair. But I've come to realize I'm a bit more "get it done" since I've been a manager for two years. If you phrase it in a particularly positive manner. Case in point. Today a PM came in to talk to me to tell me that another PM I work with was holding up her ability to get estimates on a growth project and wanted to put the estimates off indefinitely. My response, "Tell him in a less sexist manner, 'Man the hell up, and find the time.'" I sound more like my last boss every day. When he came back to me to tell me there wasn't time after I stepped in before the other PM had to reiterate my advice, I said, "Make it happen." I'm either drunk on power, or a dick. Probably a bit of both. On the other hand, the PM I like and the developer who rely on me got what they need, and that's important, even if it means I have to be a dick.

The Last Circus

2011-09-27T18:52:00.001-06:00

The Last Circus is on tonight at the Trylon! Get tickets while you can. Kyle and I went last week, and if you don't mind a spoiler, I'll sum it up for you.Kid's dad is a clown. He gets drafted, in his clown suit, during the Spanish Civil War at the end of the 1930s for the wrong side. So after killing people with a machete, he gets put in a work camp building a giant church/cross the size of one of the twin towers where they can store all the skulls of those who died during the war in caves beneath the cross. The kid visits his dad and says he too wants to be a clown, a happy clown. His father tells him he can't be a happy clown, only the sad clown, because he hasn't had a childhood...unless...revenge! Revenge will make him a happy clown! Kid gets revenge by blowing up a bunch of people in the caves and getting a bunch of people killed and inadvertently putting out the eye of a general before escaping. Cut to years later. Kid joins the circus as an adult as the sad clown. The happy clown is a sadistic asshat who beats his girlfriend and likes to kick the shit out of people for fun. The girlfriend likes the sad clown and hangs with him, which leads to clown on clown smack down that puts the sad clown in the hospital. When he learns the girlfriend is going back to the happy clown, he gets out of bed with his broken ribs, heads to the circus, and bashes in the happy clown's face with a trumpet until he looks like The Joker. Obviously the police don't like this. So the happy clown flees into the woods where animals fall down through the roof of his shelter and he can eat them raw and naked. Everyone is naked. Him and the animals. One day a boar falls through the roof and chases him. But he's saved by a hunter, who turns out to be the one-eyed general, who recognizes him. He forces him to act like a dog and fetch birds in his mouth. He acts like a dog so well that he bites Franco in the hand, so they decide to put him down. While waiting his execution on the general's property, he goes mad, and uses an iron and chemicals and boxes of Christmas decorations to burn/maim/bleach/accessorize himself into a happier revenge clown. He kills various folks and wanders into the city armed with large weapons to hunt down girlfriend beating happy clown. Terrorists blow up the general, lest we forget this is a historical piece. He finds the girlfriend, now working burlesque instead of as a ribbon dancer for the circus, and takes her to the giant cross where all the circus animals are hidden. Happy clown gets the police and chases him down. Sad clown, happy clown, and ribbon dancer girlfriend all chase each other to the top of the cross for hand-to-hand fighting. Circus friends get their act together and pull up the rocket motorcycle daredevil's improved-fuel motorcycle. He jumps to save them! And blows up against the side of the cross. Shooting from the police! Hand to hand fighting between the clowns! All is lost! But there's a bolt of cloth, and ribbon dancer abused girlfriend who may or may not love mutilated sad clown wraps the cloth around her and jumps. It's beautiful! She spins. She spins! She Spins!!! Until the cloth ends and she snaps her back and dies, hanging a good distance off the ground. The cops take the clowns to the paddy wagon where sad clown bursts into maniacal tears and happy clown bursts into maniacal laughter.Obviously I'm skipping some of the important bits like mutilated happy clown wearing a beard to a children's party so they can't see his teeth through his face, but I don't want to spoil the whole thing.The trailer is below, but first, if you dare, Raphael's Balada de la trompeta (Ballad of the Sad Trumpet) - don't let it drive you insane as it did the sad clown.The trailer - I'm pretty sure this is NSFW:

Trollhunter

2011-09-27T18:29:00.001-06:00

Kyle, perhaps we could get Ming to go to Trollhunter to make up for all the movies he's missed. Ain't It Cool News calls it "Pretty Darn Spectacular!" And it's obvious the heads on the trolls don't stop at one, nor at two. And just because they show three heads, doesn't necessarily mean it stops there. That's just the trailer. It's at the Riverview September 30th through October 6 at 9:20 p.m.

Lounging in the Library (NSFW)

2011-09-26T20:27:00.001-06:00

I'm not sure if this will make it below the line. I suspect it won't. So if you must, avert your eyes quickly and shrink your browser as necessary. While there is no actual nudity...that's actually a lie - she's obviously naked, she's just not showing her naughtiest bits...there's a lot more nakedness implied than you're actually seeing.I noticed in the paper the other day that Sweetpea was bringing "Naked Girls Reading" to Minneapolis, starting with "A Tale of Two Cities." I had an urge to go, but wasn't sure what it entailed. After a bit of poking around, it was obvious that this endevour, which started with Michelle L'amour, is a case of truth in advertising. There are girls. They are naked. They read. Lots of reading. Lots of nakedness. I'm all for reading. I'm all for nakedness. I'm not sure how I feel about sitting in an audience while the two are combined.What surprised me most while reading about the origins of Naked Girls Reading wasn't that it happens - I'm willing to believe people will do anything naked. It's that Ms. L'amour decided to pose with my company's books strewn all around. Considering my old team once removed a woman from a web header because she was showing a little too much cleavage, this takes it to a new extreme. Perhaps we should have had this available to put our header in perspective.

Cycle Shop

2011-09-18T18:00:00.001-06:00

Ming, I got my new wheel today after the whole kerfluffle at Penn Cycle, and something occurred to me after I sent you the email about how it was 12:10 and their doors still weren't open.

I originally had one technician involved in my "fix my wheel" use case. She popped the tube, but noted in her notes that it had been her and I shouldn't be charged. She called me personally and recommended a new wheel because of the extra broken spokes and gave me an eta for the delivery of the wheel and the fix. She wasn't involved in the bits in between but, today she put my tube/tire on the new wheel and came out to personally apologize for the problems and that perhaps they'd been caused by her being out of the store in the day between the recommended wheel and the delivery of the wheel.

Contrast this to the men involved. First was the male technician who told me that the first technician to look at my wheel had been junior and "wrong". This didn't jive with him taking her work and doing it for her, while not reading the details about the tube or about the ordered wheel. He's also the one who charged me for truing and did NOTHING to the wheel other than replace the two spokes.

Or the manager who tried to charge me for a tube despite the note on the receipt until I corrected him and said I'd brought in a perfectly fine tube.

Or the manager for Penn I contacted via email who said they'd replace my wheel for the original cost, but who lectured me in email that they'd told me I should get a new wheel, despite that I'd approved the wheel and they'd gone ahead and changed what they were up to without me.

Or the store manager who was rude and lectured me about labor today when I asked if I should stick around or come back later and who had the doors still shut 15 minutes after store opening.

Three to four men involved. All of them obnoxious; two of them pointing out the new, female technician, was at fault; three of them stating it was my fault in one way or another despite charging me for two services at some point that they either didn't do or had caused, and eventually telling me they hadn't done any work at all (although even that was incorrect, there were two new spokes).

If you discount the customer problems, this might be a case of Dudey Free Zone at work.

Stereo

2011-09-13T16:49:00.003-06:00

On the way home today I was listening to Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall and realized as I stopped the convertible at the stop light that the fidelity was absolutely amazing. The sound of the children hubbubbing was downright creepy. Then I realized they were being supplemented by real children playing in the church playground near the car. Fortunately, I could see no meat grinder.

Truing

2011-09-10T11:29:00.000-06:00

This is my bike wheel after a $16 truing from Penn Cycle in Eagan that was part of my spoke replacement.. When it slows down, you'll be able to appreciate the non-truedness of it more fully. As I mentioned before, I'm becoming very disillusioned with bike stores and their ability to repair anything. The fact that I carefully put my receipt where I could find it in case I didn't like their work speaks volumes to my growing distrust.

Creepy

2011-09-10T11:10:00.000-06:00

This morning I looked at my toes and noticed the nail on my middle toe had a bump. So I poked it and most of the nail fell off. Gross. But there was another toenail beneath it. It seems like a new nail had been forcing the old one up and out of the way. I'm not sure what would cause that to happen. LissyJo, CookieQueen, is that what MyChart is for? Or should I just stop the teleportation experiments?

Ozploitation

2011-09-09T19:50:00.000-06:00

Klund, if you liked Hunger Games, you should really watch the movie Turkey Shoot (second source) - it has a similar theme. Kyle, Pooteewheet, and I went to see it last night at the Riverview.

"After these egregious and unsavory moments, the film inexplicably introduces a WTF character named Alph (Steve Rackman), a mentally-impaired, inhuman monster who looks like the unholy love child of Mr. Hyde and Dr. Moreau’s humanimals and who obeys all of Tito’s commands without question.

Now remember, this is supposed to be a dystopian film about a fascist Australia and a “most dangerous game”-style hunt, not a strange fantasy featuring mutants and other fanciful creatures. But whatever, the monstrous, hirsute Alph shows up on the scene and, eventually, gets bisected by a bulldozer bucket (but not before he dines on one of Dodge’s amputated toes)."

Silly Rhymes

2011-09-09T18:58:00.000-06:00

I ordered a copy of Trace Beaulieu's Silly Rhymes for Belligerent Children as a gift for as an unyet to be named niece or nephew.

Trace said Len Peralta had done the illustrating, and you can appreciate Len's geek a week trading card series here.

I'm particularly fond of the Felicia Day card.

A flower by any other name...

2011-09-09T18:39:00.000-06:00

I realized today that I've had this in my cube/office for almost five years now. One of my friends at work gave me a present with a bow and his picture on it, and I clipped it to my remember-to-give-someone-an-award paper holder and it became sort of a strange flower that I see every workday.

Hatpropos

2011-09-08T19:26:00.000-06:00

I found this hat/sun visor in the parking lot about 10 feet from my car as I was leaving work today. If you know what I do with some accuracy, this is highly amusing.

What's a Horse's Favorite Band

2011-09-07T23:28:00.002-06:00

Why, Snow Patrol of course. And I'm sure they're very excited about Called Out in the Dark. Excellent tune.

MST3k - Eegah

2011-09-07T23:15:00.000-06:00

Kyle and I went to Bryant Lake Bowl tonight to watch Eegah, the MST3K episode of the month. Made more enjoyable by chicken nachos and a wide selection of beer. A special surprise tonight was that Trace Beaulieu was there. In case you're not familiar with his role on MST3K, he was both Crow T. Robot and Dr. Clayton Forrester. He was promoting his new book, Silly Rhymes for Belligerent Children. He read a few of them, including one that involved a tapeworm. Seems like Christmas gift material to me.

My favorite quote from Eegah, "He's like a cabbage patch Elvis."

Songs to drive home to

2011-09-07T23:10:00.000-06:00

I love my convertible. Even as it rolls into fall and the temperatures drop, I leave the top down close to midnight and turn on the heat for my toes and crank up some music. It's like discovering senses that have been shut down for a while. I get to enjoy the smell of back yard fires, smores, and all the things dogs stick their noses out the windows to savor.

Nine Inch Nails - Terrible Lie

Tom Morello, The Nightwatchman - Black Spartacus Heart Attack Machine

Managerial scope

2011-09-07T18:38:00.000-06:00

One of my reports came by for a one on one today and asked about a promotion. I pointed out asking was definitely the right thing to do because with so many people in the department, it was difficult for any one person to know everyone and their skill level, particularly with a bit of employee churn. Now that I was sure in no uncertain terms there was interest, we could make sure that if there were other managers in the department who didn't know the individual or didn't have team members who had worked with them, we could look for an opportunity, and so that the individual's lead and I could watch for opportunities to provide mentoring, leadership of small teams (technically in this case), interteam interactions within and outside our 200-or-so person department, visibility to upper management such as directors and the VP, and good documentation that specifically speaks to next-level responsibilities in mid- and end-of-year reviews. All of it contingent on a solid bedrock of being a good programmer, of course. I also pointed out that it was a good time to think about what it meant to be at the next level and if it meant a change in responsibility that might impact lifestyle (believe me, a valid concern - both for your ability to get out of the office on your own terms, and your ability to be heads down in the code instead of advising and leading others).

The response, "I only thought it was up to you."

It's nice to know it looks like I have some sort of authority.

Glitter Bomb

2011-09-06T20:43:00.000-06:00

I saw the video of the glitter bomb of the anti-gay marriage group at the Minnesota State Fair and wanted to make sure my family saw it. I wish it had been more impressive, but it's still amusing to see people dumping glitter off the tram on a booth. Particularly as Ming posted a link to an article stating that 70% of fair goers disapproved of amending the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

Bike Repairs

2011-09-06T20:27:00.000-06:00

Back when Ming and I went to Minot, North Dakota, to ride around the flooded plains, I took my bike in for a tune up before taking it out for 150 miles of riding in the middle of nowhere. I took it to Erik's in Eagan because that's where I've been going since I had the argument with a Penn Cycle employee about whether he "wouldn't" sell me a new chain unless I also replaced my cogs. Before that, I had taken my bike to Erik's in Richfield until they gave me back my bike with the front wheel on backwards and my odometer in a non-functional state. Erik's in Eagan didn't fare much better, as I got my bike home, popped it off the rack, and discovered the front wheel wouldn't turn. I mucked around with it for a while and adjusted the brakes, then rolled down the street. Back and forth and up and down as well as straight ahead. Seems an expensive bicycle tune up doesn't include actually truing the back wheel, which was so out of true that my wife recognized it, and it rubbed against the brakes. I trued it up just enough to make due (I'm not very good at it, although I can get a wheel in passable shape if I spend an hour at it), and went on my trip the next day. Ming can attest that I was very grumpy, although not grumpy enough to take Erik's to task when I got back - the idea of having to deal with someone who's either a.) incompetent or b.) doesn't care about their job or the people who pay for their service, feels like a waste of time.

So this time, when I needed new spokes, I took the wheel back to Penn, violating my rule of never going back to a place that irritates me. One strike! I dropped off the wheel, and that evening I got a call from a mechanic who said that a couple of spokes were in bad shape and perhaps they should swap out the wheel. I commented that it wasn't that old for a wheel, although it was true I'd put some hard miles on it, including towing a tagalong, which is rough on a back wheel. But I approved the order. So I was surprised today when they called again and left a message for me that it was ready to pick up and there were two new spokes. I called back and asked for details, as I'd approved a new wheel, and they said that it had been a newer mechanic who made that call, and they'd determined the wheel could be salvaged. I asked, "Why did it cost me $50 for two spokes when a whole new wheel only costs $70?" They rattled off the spokes, the labor, and the cost of installing a new tube. That surprised me, as I had dropped off a perfectly inflated wheel.

They had popped the tube and were trying to charge me for a new one. SOAB. They apologized for the mistake and took the $20 for installing a new tube (really?) off my bill.

So I don't know where the hell I'm going to go next. Maybe I have to just strap my wheel or defective parts to my back and bike it up to the greenway on my other bicycle.

So-called Cosmic Rays

2011-08-31T21:07:00.000-06:00

The 700 Club just tried to refute global warming by using the phrase "so-called cosmic rays." Are they trying to reserve the possibility that they might have to refute cosmic rays if they're successful refuting global warming? Wouldn't want to commit to anything, after all. Those rays might be Jebus-emenating earth-warming holy-illumination beams that were sent specifically to save the planet. They might not be cosmic at all.

99 Problems

2011-08-31T05:25:00.000-06:00

For Ming. He and I went to a late showing of Fright Night on Monday and 99 Problems by Hugo was the closing tune. It's a cover of the Jay-Z tune - definitely needs to be loud with lots of bass. And no, this isn't a clever cover for Ming and I going to No Strings Attached, which also featured the song.

The Muppets and OK Go (for Eryn)

2011-08-24T21:35:00.001-06:00

Bad Mug...

2011-08-24T18:25:00.000-06:00

I was in a meeting today and the woman next to me had a thermal coffee mug that read:
I ❤ SEM
I'm sure that's strategic e-something marketing, but all I can say is, bold choice. Very bold choice.

Wombats

2011-08-24T18:22:00.000-06:00

My song of the moment, The Wombats Anti-D

Automated Regression Testing

2011-08-17T20:36:00.000-06:00

Per the modern definition of "legacy code", my new projects (which I've had for six months) are legacy. No automated regression. No continuous integration. No unit tests. It should be left unsaid that the next time someone says, "We want you to take this project and own it," my response will be, if it doesn't have a.), b.) and c.), you will provide me a budget for software and the necessary resources of at least a certain level based on the age of the project and the scope of the code to implement those things, or I'm not interested. Live and learn. I spent part of tonight playing around with Watin, Selenium, iMacros, and TestComplete. Most of those don't actually target desktop applications, which is what I'm after, but it's interesting to fool around with the tools and see what I can accomplish. I had someone else ask me about the possibility of pulling a mailing list from the web, and using a testing tool that can be extended to write to a file using javascript or C# (actually any language, but those are my sweet spots) works perfectly in that case.

Not very managerial, but then neither is automating the scripts for open source analysis, analyzing code for security holes, or config-developing the tools necessary to poc the new open source jars.

What is managerial is that the developer I've been trying to promote for several months got his promotion to Lead Software Engineer today. He's been a lead for other LSE's (2-3 depending on the time frame) for the last 12 months, so it was way overdue. Proof that working for a big company with some golden handcuffs can still pay dividends depending on your goals if you step up when no one else will. He earned the promotion and I'm excited to see him landing not only the change in title, but a raise, and a potential award (with cash) in the near future.