Pause Before Shouting Happy New Year

Tonight's the big night. The big show. The blowout, if you will.

I plan to go to bed before 11, same as I do every other New Year's Eve. It's just another day to me. All it means to me is another January of putting the wrong year down on everything from checks to business letters until somehow, someway, I finally get it into my system that we're in a new year.

If you're staying up tonight, more power to you. And you might want to pause for a second before shouting "Happy New Year!" No, not to reflect upon this past year and make any New Year's Resolutions, but to make sure that when you shout "Happy New Year" that it actually IS the new year. Because 2008 is going to be one second longer than a normal year thanks to a Leap SECOND that was added. Actually, it was already 24 hours longer than a normal year thanks to 2008 being a Leap Year, so I guess it would be truer to say that it's going to be 1,441 seconds longer than a normal year.

Whatever. Somebody just tell me what time it is and what year it is when it's all over.

My Bengals Prediction

Just before the start of the 2008 NFL season I made a prediction about the Cincinnati Bengals and how they would do. I then got bold and made 6 more specific predictions. Now that the season is over I'd like to take a look back and see how I did. Let's start with the six more specific predictions.

Specific Prediction #1: The Bengals will go 5-11 this season.

In Actuality: The Bengals got as close as they could get to this prediction without me getting it exactly right. They finished the season with 4 wins, 11 losses, and a tie (Thanks, Shayne Graham!).

Prediction Accuracy: 97% (I came up with that number by dividing 15 1/2--the number of wins or losses I correctly picked--by 16--the number of games in a season.

Specific Prediction #2: Chad Johnson will miss 5 games due to injury. There will be plenty of speculation that he's not really injured.

In Actuality: Ocho Stinko missed three games due to injury. There was plenty of speculation that he was not really injured.

Prediction Accuracy: 88% (Like Prediction 1 above, I divided the number of games I correctly called--the 3 he didn't play and the 11 I said he would--against the total number of games)

Specific Prediction #3: Chris Henry will get suspended for some off the field misdemeanor sometime about week 11 and will be given a lifetime suspension.

In Actuality: I was dead wrong. Not only did Henry not get suspended, he managed to avoid any news of wrongdoing during the season. He was a model citizen!

Of course, he didn't help the team much, either, and there's still a whole off-season where he could get into trouble. Nevertheless, I have to give myself the following:

Prediction Accuracy: 0%

Specific Prediction #4: Carson Palmer will have career highs in sacks and interceptions, and will miss a total of three games due to injury.

In Actuality: I almost had this completely backwards. Instead of Palmer MISSING three games due to injury, it was closer to the other way around. He only PLAYED in four games and was out the rest of the time with an elbow injury. Since he played so little, he really had no chance to amass career highs in sacks and interceptions. Between him and his replacements, however, 15 interceptions were thrown, which really isn't all that bad. The team did set a team record in sacks allowed, though.

Prediction Accuracy: 35% (No real mathematical reason for that number. I gave myself some credit for getting the spirit of the prediction correct--the Bengals QB's weren't good and Palmer did get injured.)

Specific Prediction #5: The defense will be the worst ranked defense in the NFL. Some of that ranking will be unfair and really be the fault of the offense as the offense will have been on the field for such a short amount of time that the defense just found itself exhausted by the end of the game.

In Actuality: The Benglas finished somewhere from the middle of the pack to the 2/3 point of the pack in almost all categories. They were not in the bottom 5 in ANY defensive category. They definitely were NOT the worst defense in the NFL. In fact, many would say the Bengals defense was the lone bright spot of the Cincinnati team this year. The only part of my prediction that was accurate was that the Bengals dismal play on offense probably did contribute to the Bengals defense not being ranked even higher.

Prediction Accuracy: 5% (for stating that the offense would be the real reason for bad defensive stats)

Specific Prediction #6: This will be Marvin Lewis's last season with the Bengals. He will not be fired. He and Mike Brown will decide together that it is time for Lewis to leave, and he'll be glad as hell to get out of town.

In Actuality: It's too early to tell for sure, but all signs seem to indicate that I was dead wrong about this prediction. Mike Brown has stated that Lewis is his guy, and Lewis has shown no signs to want to leave.

Prediction Accuracy: 0%

So that's how I did in the specific predictions. I got some things right. I was way off on other things. Probably like most people would have been.

As for the overall prediction, the one I said I was making because I was on a "prophetic bent":

Prediction: The Bengals are going to be terrible.

Prediction Accuracy: 100%!

Thank God it's over! It was like watching the third Matrix movie. I'd seen the first two, was invested in the story, and felt I needed to see how it ended, but that's not to say I enjoyed it!

When do the Reds start spring training?

Let's Get Real!

Welcome to what is the first of I what I think will be a semi-regular section of this blog, which I've decided to title "Let's Get Real!" Let's Get Real will explore the difference between the supposed definition of a word and what it often actually means in the real world. Today's word is

networking

If you look it up at dictionary.com, this is the definition you get:

networking (n): a supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having a common interest

Let's Get Real! Here's the real meaning:

networking (n): 1. Sitting around a table and talking 2. Having lunch with some friends and talking about the NFL 3. Going to Hooters with a guy on his company credit card, getting drunk, and possibly violating state purchasing laws in the process.

Before and After

A few weeks ago I posted a photo of what the living room in our new house looked like BEFORE we moved in and a few photos of what it looked like after we decorated for Christmas. Today I thought I'd show you a couple more rooms. Specifically, the girls' rooms.

Here was Meredith's room BEFORE we moved in (Sorry for the small photo. Pulled it off a realtor's website).

Here is a photo from the same general location today:

A more dramatic change was in Natalie's room. Here is Natalie's room BEFORE we moved in.

Here it is today:

Family Christmas Photos

Hello, all. I uploaded photos of our Sweasy Family Christmas to the family online photo album, which you can access by clicking the link to the right or by going directly to this page:

Click here to see the photos.

I Would Have Done It!

I know I'm supposed to be shocked and concerned by this article, but the truth of the matter is that I'm on the side of the kids. I think it's funny as heck, and I wish I had thought of it myself!

Click here to see what I'm talking about!

Merry Christmas!

Below is one of my two all-time favorite Christmas carols, and this is my all-time favorite version of it!

The song is so melancholy and sad, hinting at major troubles happening in the speaker's life. But there's a note of hope as well, that next Christmas things will be better. It was originally sung by Judy Garland, and her version is beautiful, but it doesn't communicate the simultaneous sadness and hope that I hear in James Taylor's voice (though that may be because the song was too heavy handed and sad for the movie in which it appears, and Garland knew it).

Also, I just like James Taylor. Here's a dude that looks and acts like a college professor (Seriously, when he first walks out onstage for a concert I expect him to pull out a briefcase and start fumbling through it before looking up and saying apologetically, "I know the class syllabus is in here somewhere!") but sings with such a beautiful voice.

So Merry Christmas, and enjoy.

Favorite Christmas Presents, part three

As I consider my list of all time favorite Christmas presents, there is only one that wasn't given to me by "Santa Claus."

In December of 1979, my older brother Tom returned for his first leave from the United States Navy. I guess it was the first time Tom had earned an adult's salary, and he was very generous in his Christmas gifts. And what he gave to me and my two younger brothers was an Atair 2600 video game system.

Ah, who grew up in the late 1970's or early 1980's and didn't have an Atari 2600? So I guess I don't need to describe it in great detail, but for those who perhaps didn't grow up then, Atari 2600 was the first successful cartridge-based home video game system. It came with two games, Combat (a tank game) and Video Olympics (6000 versions of Pong), and it was a blast. Over the course of the next four or five years we purchased forty or fifty different games, each averaging about $15 each. Which means I spent about $600 of my own money on video games. So maybe I shouldn't be so grateful to Tom after all. Look at all of the money I wasted.

In any event, we certainly got our money's worth out of the system, playing it so much that we wore out multiple joysticks and paddles. Here are some of my favorite games:

1. Atari basketball: Great one on one game that was more playable than later 5 on 5 games
2. Atari football: You could sack the quarterback by running your safety through the bottom of the screen and having him come out the top of the screen. He'd be in the backfield but wouldn't be counted offsides.
3. Pitfall: Sort of an Indiana Jones-type game. For whatever reason, you spent a lot of time jumping on alligator heads.
4. Space Invaders: The first "killer app" in the home video game era.
5. Activision boxing: It was fun to beat people up.
6. Asteroids: Very similar to the Atari arcade game
7. Pac-man: This game was actually the beginning of the end of the Atari system. It was such a poor port from the arcade to the home system, and it was a sign that there were too many games coming out too quickly. Still, I thought it was fun.
8. There's an 8th game I can't remember the name of. But the point of the game was to catch bombs in buckets as a striped convict at the top of hte screen dropped them. Sounds weird, but it was fun. And it was a great game for teaching focus as you almost had to go into a trancelike state in order to keep up with the little guy as he dropped things. WAIT: I just googled "atari convict bombs bucket" and found the title right away: It was called Kaboom.

So despite the money that I spent on all of the games, I still think fondly about the system. One of the funniest things, though, is how amazingly simple all of the games were. There are places on the Internet where you can download an Atari simulator and then download the ROM's of the actual games and then play them on your computer (It's illegal, though, so don't do it. That's why I'm not including links to these sites). And every game I ever owned AND the simulator for the games could all fit on a single floppy disk. And I could fit 2,250 of those floppy discs on the DVD's that Nintendo Wii or Playstation 3 games come on today.

But this was the system that started it all, and it definitely would make the list of favorite Christmas presents!

Two Days Until Christmas!

The kids are getting pretty excited. Even Meredith, who has been quite a bit cooler this year than in year's past, is getting wound up about Christmas getting close. And truth be told, despite the fact that I know I'm not getting anything fantastic (Lisa and I both keep reminding each other that we got a new house and new appliances for Christmas), I'm still getting excited, too. Can't help myself!

Christmas began, I guess, Sunday with the Sweasy Family Christmas. It will continue tomorrow night at Lisa's sister's house, and then the big shebang is the next morning whenever the girls wake up!

I hope your Christmas is a good one. And I'd like to share with you a video. I have two all-time favorite Christmas carols--no other songs even come close. And though I like several versions of each, I have a preferred singer for both songs (and in both cases, it's not the version preferred by the general public). Here's the first of the two.

Arggh!

Okay, I'm back to hating Windows Vista again!

Yesterday the Sweasy side of the family had its annual Christmas get together in Frankfort. It was nice. I had planned to take the video that I had filmed, which included some really nice video of Luke getting excited about his new Transformer, and editing together a quick video, uploading it to YouTube, and then putting it right here for everyone to see.

Unfortunately, this was the first time since we got our new computer in February that I tried to connect my old Sony Digital 8 camcorder to the computer, and what I found was--surprise, surprise!--Windows Vista is not compatible with my camcorder.

Argghgghghgh!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, for those of you who weren't there, I won't be able to show you video. But trust me. We had a great time. Mom looked great, and (almost as important) she felt good enough to make a GREAT turkey dinner. It was like the old days.

Except she didn't set the marshmallows on the sweet potato casserole on fire!

However, in honor of the sweet potato marshmallow disaster, Rhonda DID bring a bunch of yummy cookies, including this chocolate marshmallow thing that was delicious.

Keep My Mouth Shut!

As a Christmas activity yesterday afternoon, the family sat down in front of the TV and watched our home Christmas videos from 1996 through 2002. And as we watched them I discovered two things:
1) My children were (and still are) precious. Their excitement about Christmas was so genuine and infectious.
2) I sound like an idiot most of the time. I am not nearly as smart, witty, or charming as I think I am. From now on, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut most of the time.

Especially when there's a camera running!

...Then I Met a Man Who Had No Arms AND No Feet...

The title is referring to an earlier post, which is itself referring to a famous saying. If you don't know the famous saying you're probably thoroughly confused by now!

And if you ARE thoroughly confused, you may not even want to bother looking at this article, which left me confused and wondering how stupid these parents are. Were they TRYING to get their child beaten up? Were they TRYING to get him to reject them. Because I don't know what else is going to happen in this tragic story, but I can pretty much tell you two things: 1) As soon as this child reaches legal age he's going to have his name changed, and 2) He's going to resent his parents forever.

Click here to see what I'm talking about.

Favorite Christmas Presents, part two

In 1975, when I was seven years old, I came downstairs on Christmas Day to one of my favorite Christmas presents of all time, the Evel Knievel action figure with wind up motorcycle. My younger brothers, who were only three and four years old at the time, also got one.

The toy worked like this: You'd place Evel on his motorcycle, place the motorcycle on the wind up launch pad, and turn the hand crank like a madman (This is probably the impetus of the shoulder injury I had earlier this year). Once you were completely exhausted you pressed some switch and Evel took off on the motorcyle. Sometimes he'd pop a wheelie while he was riding. You could take him up a makeshift ramp. The TV commercial (see below) always showed Evel nailing the jump and then merrily riding away into the sunset in a manner that defied real physics. That didn't matter, though. As kids we all understood that the real fun was watching Evel wipe out.

We didn't have the van or the rocket ship or anything else, just Evel and his motorcycle. I absolutely LOVED this toy. Unfortunately, I also recall that it didn't last very long. I think we broke it fairly quickly, probably because we eventually started setting Evel up to fail, creating ramps that ran directly into walls and doors. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

Regarding Yesterday's Post

You see, this is why--and I've mentioned this before--people need to leave comments for me.

No one with any sense tried to convince me that it was a bad idea, so I did it:

Favorite Christmas Presents, part 1

With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I'd make a few posts talking about some of my all time favorite Christmas presents. I write about these this year mostly because what I'm going to get for Christmas this year are some appliances that I'm already using! They're expensive, but it doesn't really make for a magical Christmas.

But my childhood Christmases were absolutely magical! And one of my favorite Christmas presents came in 1977, when I got Baron Karza and Andromeda, a Darth Vader like bad guy and his horse-creature. The toys were both members of the Micronauts line of toys. Micronauts were a lot like their grandchildren, the Transformers, in that the toys could transform into various configurations. In some ways, though, the Micronauts were BETTER than the Transformers. While Optimus Prime can only be a big robot or a truck and that's pretty much it, Micronauts had a number of configurations possible. As in the picture above, you could remove Baron Karza's legs and Andromeda's head and attach the two to create a centaur. You could also remove Karza's arms and place the missile launchers that are in the side of the horse onto Karza's trunks. You could even put wheels on the horse instead of legs!

There were dozens of possibilities. And to top it off, the toy shot missiles out of the missile launchers and out of Karza's chest. In addition, the fists shot off of the arms.

There was plenty of creativity possible with the toy, and I played with it for hours. I remember irritating my mother (but not in a bad way) when she asked me what my favorite present was that year. I told her Karza and Andromeda, and she laughed, and said, "You just never know. We spent all that money on BLANK and you want to play with this cheap toy. Amazing!"

And to irritate Mom even more, I no longer even know what BLANK is. I just remember that whatever it was, Mom and Dad paid a lot for it and they thought that it would be my favorite present!

But it wasn't. I had Baron Karza and his horse around for years. And I remembered it so fondly that when I first learned about ebay almost a decade ago I purchased a used Baron Karza to replace my long lost toy. It's in a plastic bag in the basement of our house, but I'm seriously considering putting it on display in my office at work.

I hope someone with some sense convinces me not to do so!

What Reflexes!

I don't want people to think I'm making complete fun here, or that I don't respect the office of the Presidency, because

• I think the shoe attack on the President was despicable and shows a lack of respect not just for President Bush but for the United States as a whole.
• I was shocked that it seems to take the Secret Service so long to get to the President's aid. I don't think that guy should have ever gotten off a second throw.

Those things said, the first thing that struck my mind when I saw the video was...

...I want the President on my dodge ball team!

His reflexes are uncanny! You can tell that this is a guy that working out is important for. And I'm not mocking him. This is one of the most physically fit Presidents we've had in a long time. That shoe attacker came from out of nowhere. The President wasn't looking in that direction immediately, but he ducked VERY quickly. It was all instinct. I think he would have done as good a job with the second throw, too, if the Iraqi Prime Minister hadn't put his hand up in the President's face, obscuring his view of what was going on. And he didn't need to do that. I'm sure the President had it all under control based on how he reacted. I think if others hadn't intervened, in fact, that the President might have popped down below the podium and come up firing with his own shoes!

Okay, I was being a little sarcastic there. In all seriousness, this is a shocking video. You know there's no way the Secret Service is ever MORE prepared than when the President is in Iraq. This is a country where more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the last five years. We know there are enemies. That a guy like this could even get into the room and then get off two shots bothers me.

Then again, with those reflexes, the President may not have to worry about it.

Let's see Barack do THAT!

Mike Brown Bashers

For no good reason I just decided to read the Wikipedia entry on the Cincinnati Bengals. What I found is that someone has snuck into the entry some fairly dubious statements about Bengals owner Mike Brown. These opinions are presented as facts and will most likely be accepted by less discerning readers. A good example:

Shortly after his [father's] passing, Mike Brown decided that making a profit rather than winning was the new agenda of the Bengals franchise.

Normally I'd edit the wikipedia entry to correct this problem. However, since I pretty much agree with the writer, this time I'm not going to do so.

You can read the entry yourself by clicking here.

Evolution (or My Favorite Comedian Who is Not a Ventriloquist)

I just put that ventriloquist part in there so as not to hurt anyone's feelings...

...My favorite comedian (of the moment) is Jim Gaffigan. I guess I first saw him about two years ago. One of the things I found so funny about him is his propensity to comment parenthetically on his own stand-up as if he were in the audience watching it. He'll tell a joke in his normal voice and then comment in a slightly different voice, "That joke wasn't even funny!"

I visited his website recently, though, and something jumped out at me. He has a number of video clips on the site, and they're arranged top to bottom from most recent clip to least recent clip. Some of the clips at the bottom are from the old tv show Dr. Katz, which I know is from the mid '90's. And it's really interesting to watch all of these clips and see him evolve into the performer he is now. In some of the clips he tells the same jokes he does now, but they're not funny, or at least not AS funny. And it's interesting to see how in the old clips the parenthetical voice is not there AT ALL and then to watch the newer clips and see it start to happen and then just be there.

If you haven't ever seen Gaffigan at all (He's not a household name, so I guess that's certainly possible) you can watch his fully formed comedy below. The intro that lasts the first minute and a half is pretty dumb, but after that you can really see the parenthetical voice in action.

I did it!

I'm posting this Saturday morning, but I'm actually writing it Friday morning...out of frustration...to avoid throwing a computer out the window...

It took me more than a year of use, but I did it: I finally managed to completely screw up a Windows Vista computer!

When I first started keeping this blog, I wrote about my frustrations with Windows Vista. A lot of the frustrations that I had back then are with me now, too. I STILL can't put my home Windows Vista computer to sleep without it crashing, and I STILL can't go to fullscreen without it occasionally locking up on me. Websites blame at least the latter on my video card, but I have the latest drivers of a video card DESIGNED EXCLUSIVELY FOR VISTA and it still won't work.

Despite all of those complaints, though, I'll say this about Windows Vista: It's a pretty stable operating system. It still has some bugs like the ones mentioned above, but overall it avoids the infamous "Blue Screen of Death," and it usually manages to avoid getting stuck in a loop.

Until today, that is. I finally managed to do it. I was setting up a tablet PC for the district assistant-superintendent, and I was trying to setup the system to use two monitors at once. I accidentally gave the opposite monitor settings for each monitor and--wah lah!--the computer went into an endless loop that I couldn't get it out of no matter WHAT I did.

So I had to basically wipe the computer down and start over. And I'm really frustrated by that. And I don't necessarily feel any better for having typed this. I guess I'm going to have to discipline myself like I was disciplined in fifth grade:

I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.
I will not throw my boss's new computer out of the window in a fit of rage.

Wow, cutting and pasting makes THAT punishment a whole lot easier than it was back in the 1970's. Which may be one of the reasons why it's not used anymore.

Along with the fact that it's just stupid to start with anyway.

Sort of like this post.

I Think I Can Make One More Trip...

In September I paid $4.15 a gallon for gasoline and was glad to do it. In the first of November gas had fallen to $2.19 a gallon, and I wrote that as a result of this I now had a hoarder's mentality, feeling like I should purchase all the gas I could while it was at such a low price.

Gas prices have kept falling, however, and I now have the opposite mentality: I don't want to buy gas because I keep thinking, "If I wait another day, gas will probably be cheaper tomorrow!" And the thing is, so far I've pretty much been correct. I finally broke down and HAD to buy gas yesterday, the first time since I bought that gas back at the first of November (a benefit of my work and my home being so close together and having a fairly fuel efficient car). I pulled into a gas station that was charging $1.51 a gallon. Amazing! That's a 73% drop in the price of gas in 3 months. I've never seen anything like it. I couldn't believe that I filled up my gas tank, which was almost completely empty, for less than $20. What is this? 1986?

And guess what? That gas station was charging $1.49 a gallon this morning!

Blagojevich for President!

If you've read this blog before, you know that I've been a fairly strong supporter of Barack Obama. However, I now think that we elected the wrong Illinois politician. I say it should have been Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich for President!

After all, who do you really want trying to fix our country's economy? A (mostly)* squeaky-clean politician like Obama, or someone like Blagojevich who knows how to get things done, how to make money!

People from both the right and the left are complaining about the billions and trillions of dollars that we're spending to right the economy, but imagine how much money Blagojevich could make as a U.S. President. I bet Obama didn't get a single dollar for his appointment of Hillary Clinton to the Secretary of State position. Do you think Blagojevich would have let that opportunity get by him? No way! And what would he have said to Secretary of Commerce Bill Richardson? Maybe, "Thanks for delivering the Latino vote there, amigo, but that ain't enough. You can't just [EXPLETIVE] walk in here and expect some mother [EXPLETIVE] position in my cabinet. You're going to have to [EXPLETIVE] make it [EXPLETIVE] worth my while, comprende?"

And imagine how much better off we'd be as a country if Blagojevich was taking all of that money he was raising and paying down our growing national debt. The National Debt Clock might be able to take that extra digit back down off of its sign!

I say Blagojevich in 2012...provided he's out of prison by then, that is.

*Thanks, Tony Rezko, for forcing me to include that parenthetical.

A Late Birthday Greeting!

You may have missed this yesterday (I almost did), but yesterday marked the 40th birthday of the computer mouse. Yes, on December 9 of 1968 (when I was less than a year old) a Stanford computer scientist stood up (or rather sat down, as the photos I've seen show) at a conference and demonstrated the world's first personal computer, complete with a working computer mouse. The mouse was technically not all that different from the rolling ball mice that you probably used on your first personal computer (though that first mouse was probably five times the size of your old wheel mouse).

It's hard to believe that the computer mouse is that old. What's even more amazing is that many of the "new" technologies that we use were created in the late 60's. Not only the computer mouse, but the Internet (which was called the Arpanet back then) was also created in 1968 (or '69--depends on whether you count the IDEA or the IMPLEMENTATION as the creation date). Email is even older than that, having been created simultaneously by several researches in 1965.

It's just amazing to me that these "new" technologies are so old. I like to think that I have some foresight into the future, but I could never have predicted in the 1960's that computing would look the way it does now. Never mind that I was less than 2 years old at the end of the 1960's--I'm not talking about that. I'm just saying that I can't see that far into the future.

But some people could. Specifically, one of the guys I am most impressed by is J.C.R. Licklider, who ran ARPA in the early to mid 1960's. He wrote a paper in 1968 predicting how computers would be used by ordinary people to make their lives more productive. Now keep in mind, this was in 1968, when computers were gigantic machines that took up whole floors of universities, and were things that ordinary people only saw in movies, spinning tape heads and spitting out strips of printout. The idea of a computer being in every home probably seemed like science fiction to most people back then. That Licklider could then predict--prior to the invention of the mouse or the Internet--what he did about the future is incredible. And I'm not just saying the guy predicted computers would get smaller, or that there'd be one in every home. If you read the entire paper I linked to above, you'll see that he predicts the following:
1) Office suites like Microsoft Office
2) Chat rooms and dating sites
3) Audio and video on a computer and download sites like YouTube
4) Porn (and other base human desires like gambling) taking over this future network
5) A commercial use of the network
6) A disparity between wealthy humans who could afford computers and the network and those who couldn't (Today this is often referred to as the "Digital Divide.").
7. Denial of service attacks on computer networks (The dude not only was discussing a hypothetical network, but how to hypothetically hack his hypothetical network).

So I want to recognize the mouse on its big day, but more than that, I want to recognize people like Licklider who could see so clearly what the world would be like today.

Decorating for Christmas

We've ALMOST completed the move in to our new home. Over the weekend we actually took time to setup the Christmas decorations. I thought I'd quickly provide some photos.

Here's a BEFORE shot of what the house looked like when we first went through it with our realtor.

And here are some photos from Saturday afternoon. It was a great day for getting out Christmas decorations. As I mentioned a week ago, it's been hard to get into the Christmas spirit, but Saturday we got about 3/4 of an inch of snow--not enough to make travel difficult, but enough to make the ground white and really make things seem, well, Christmassy! (You can see the snow through the window in the picture of Natalie with the beads. Click on the picture for an enlarged view.)

My Former Boss

During the 14 years that I worked as an English teacher I had a number of principals and assistant-principals as bosses. Often the assistant-principal position is an unofficial requirement for a year or two before jumping to a full building principal, so the assistant-principal position becomes a sort of revolving door.

The leadership styles of the principals and assistant-principals that I worked with have varied greatly from a relaxed, easy going, almost catatonic assistant-principal who only lasted one year to...well, how can I say it...a much less relaxed person.

In fact, rather than explain it to you, maybe I could just show you. Here is a video clip of Will Ferrell when he was on SNL. I swear he is channeling my former boss in this skit. At least at the beginning. It gets a little ridiculous towards the end, but the beginning is spot on...

Not to put a damper on your Christmas Spirit...

...but apparently the next fews weeks are going to be eventful:

Click this link to find out more!

-----------------------------------------------------------

Oh, and that's where I planned to end this entry, but I couldn't resist--I had to include just a little bit more...

If you visit the website above, you'll find that you can order the book that's being advertised, but you can also DOWNLOAD A FREE COPY to read on your computer. I did, and I started thumbing through the pages (in a figurative sense--I was clicking the mouse with my forefinger, though. Maybe I should say "I started forefingering through the pages," but that sounds weird) and I found this gem of a paragraph:

What does all this mean? Simply reading this does not tell you
anything specific. It was not written so that just anyone reading it
could understand. For that matter, none of the Book of
Revelation was written so that just anyone reading it could
understand. It has to be revealed through God’s servants, and
most of it was reserved to be revealed at this end-time through
God’s end-time prophet—me.

Precious! It's hard to debate with someone in that mindset. I'd like to be standing beside this guy at midnight on New Year's Eve to get his take on the whole matter. I'm sure he'd have some rationalization.

I Met a Man Who Had No Feet

With a last name like "Sweasy" I took a lot of ribbing as a kid. Nothing serious, nothing that left a real mark, but still, quite a bit of teasing. Maybe it was because the name was so unusual, and people naturally started playing with it as they tried to get a handle on it.

"How do you pronounce your last name?" they'd ask. "'SWEEzee' or 'SWAYzee' or 'SWAYsee' or what?"

I'd say, ""SWEEzee. It rhymes with 'easy.'"

"Uh huh," they'd say. "It also rhymes with 'sneezy' and 'greasy' and 'breezy' and 'sleazy.'" And before I knew it, I was Greasy Sweasy or Sleazy Sweasy (which never really fit, but that didn't stop it from ticking me off).

I'm not here to talk about me today, though. As I was working yesterday morning I came across a female with the first name of "Nasteho." And that really made me feel better about being a Sweasy. Because compared to Nasteho, Sweasy is nothing!

The name is not an English name, of course (My guess is it's Somali.), and I doubt that the parents who named their child this even knew English, because if they did they surely would not have done this to their child.

Still, it makes me feel better about my name, and my prior experiences make me a little more sympathetic towards this person.

Quotes of the Day

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

-------------------------

The great thing about power tools is that they allow you to make bigger mistakes faster!

Me, after I punched a hole in the wall with a cordless drill in 1998 (The cordless drill then kept spinning, which pulled my hand across the top of the window, creating a long gash)

Still Plenty of Boxes

I was planning to take some photos of the house last night and post them here this morning alongside photos of the house before we bought it. You know, a before and after comparison. The only problem is...I can't find a digital camera. We have 2 or 3, but I don't know where ANY of them are.

The are still a lot of boxes in the house. And lots of stuff we haven't unpacked.

The good news, though, is that everything is HERE, in one place, and the house is beginning to take shape.

This moving thing is tough. In the first 10 years I lived in Northern Kentucky I moved 10 different times (No, I didn't move every year. Some years were more tumultuous than other years), but something has happened in the last eight years, and moving this time was a lot harder.

I think that something is I got a decade older. My back is just now starting to recover from all of the lifting and pulling and twisting and turning.

I don't want to move again for quite a few years, and I can't imagine what it will be like then. Hopefully I'll have enough money to pay someone else to do a lot of what I did this time.

Homeland (In)Security

I stumbled upon this article, and I'll be honest--it sort of scares the bejeebees out of me!

The article (in case you don't want to read it) states that some atheists are suing the state because the state charter for the Kentucky Department of Homeland Security requires the department to post a plaque stating that the safety of the state "cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God."

I don't care one way or the other about the atheists' lawsuit (The plaque isn't damaging the atheists' ability to not believe. I think lawsuits like this are just a way to keep some attorneys employed), but the plaque DOES bother me, and not for religious reasons. Here's my problem: I sort of want the Kentucky Department of Homeland Security to be trying to achieve safety via HUMAN methods, not religious ones. Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of reliance upon God, but sometimes, as the saying goes, God's gonna help us if we help ourselves. I mean, come on! That's what the Department of Homeland Security is all about!

I feel a little less safe knowing that the plaque is there, and that the Kentucky Homeland Security director is being directed to rely upon God. Picture this press conference:

Press: How is the state of Kentucky ensuring that the few high rises it has are safe from terrorist attacks?

Homeland Security Director: We're going to count on God.

Press: What is your contingency plan in the event that an epidemic, such an outbreak of avian flu, were to strike the state?

Homeland Security Director: We' re praying about that.

Press: Have you considered the idea that large bridges, like the bridges in Louisville and Northern Kentucky, could be vulnerable to attack?

Homeland Security Director: Have YOU considered the lilies of the field?

I hate to side with the atheists, but I'm all for getting rid of the plaque, too!

The Price of Progress

This morning I was reading the Frankfort State-Journal's website online, which is something I don't usually do, but I was interested in what the Frankfort paper had to say about Beechwood's win over Frankfort High Friday night. As I was looking for THAT article online I saw another article that said that--after decades in business--the Cliffside Restaurant closed for good last weekend.

I remember as a teenager delivering hamburger on occasion to the Cliffside Restaurant, and I remember as an even younger child stopping there with Dad on the way home from the grocery store. He was making a delivery of hamburger as well, but my memory isn't focused on that. We both had an ice cream cone (I remember mine was butterscotch) and I wasn't supposed to tell Mom (Sorry, Dad, if I just got you in trouble. Lighten up on him, Mom. It was 35 years ago!).

Anyway, the closing of the restaurant makes me a little sad. Though I haven't been in there in 20 years, I always had fond thoughts of it (And I suspect that Cliffside Restaurant is the type of place that is much nicer in memory than in reality anyway). It's just another of the "old" Frankfort establishments that have gone away over time. Like Sweasy's Grocery, the Cliffside Restaurant was a relic from another era, when restaurants and towns had individual identities. Sweasy's Grocery was supplanted by a Kroger that looks just like the Kroger in Erlanger which looks just like the one in Louisville which looks just like the one in Batavia, and the Cliffside Restaurant was supplanted by an Applebee's that looks just like the one in Florence which looks just like the one in Lexington which looks just like the one in Crestview Hills.

Such is life.
----------------
P.S. The comments at the bottom of the Cliffside article are really funny. Don't people have anything better to do than argue with one another online? On the other hand, I guess they could say, "Don't you have anything better to do than read the arguments of other people online?"

Moving In!

Well, today is the big day! The movers come at 9 AM today to move the few items that we didn't feel like touching ourselves (The washer and dryer, the couch, the TV cabinet, etc.). And tonight we will sleep at our new address!

We're all pretty excited. We're all also pretty tired. It's been a long Thanksgiving weekend of moving, and I'm glad that--despite the dozens of boxes all over the place, and despite that I'm not sure where my brown dress shoes are--at least we're in one place, one painted, moved into place, and though we still have a lot of work left to do, at least I don't have to hear anymore, "That's not here. It's at the other house!"

If you're in the process of moving, is that an axiom: "No matter what you need it will be at the other house"?

End of November

So it's the last day of November, and Christmas is coming soon. But I don't feel it. I'm just not in the Christmas spirit yet, and I don't know why. Here are some possible reasons:
1) We're moving, so we haven't gotten the Christmas decorations out yet.
2) It hasn't snowed anything more than a flurry or two yet.
3) The economy is so bad that it's hard to think about spending money frivolously.
4) Work is so busy right now that it's on my mind a lot.
5) I'm getting older.

I don't want to accept #5, so it must be one of the others, or maybe all of the others together. And a couple of things DID happen a few days ago that has STARTED to get me in the Christmas mood. First, my kids each gave me a Christmas list. Second, we drew names for presents at my family's Thanksgiving get together on Thursday, and that gives me a couple of kids to shoot for. And the kids that Meredith and Natalie drew are both about 2 years of age, which is a GREAT age for presents. They're pretty much going to like anything that we get them.

So maybe I'll start getting into the Christmas spirit for real soon.

I'd better. There are only 25 days left!

REALLY Red States

Every day there's another story about the state of the U.S. economy, and every industry in America, it seems, is asking for government money--usually in the hundreds of billions of dollars--to fix the problem.

The problem is, though, if you add up all of these requests for money and all of these government plans, you start getting into totals that are multi-trillion dollar totals. And I don't know--maybe the U.S. is so big that it can say, "What the hell! What's a trillion or two dollars here or there?" But I don't think so.

Another thought that occurred to me is that--at the rate we're going--sooner or later the U.S. government might own EVERY supposedly "private" industry in America. Once that happens, how is it any different from communism? And maybe that's been people's plans all along. Look at Henry Paulson in the photo to the right. Go on. Look at him! Doesn't he look like a commie to you? (And notice the red tie? It's a symbol! I bet that pattern on the tie--which is too blurry to see in this photo--is a hammer and sickle!) He could be sitting right beside Nikita Kruschev in that photo and he'd fit right in! The commies have infiltrated our government, just like we feared for all those years, and now--when we're distracted by a little economic challenge--they're using that distraction to take over our country!

Commie Bastards!

Couldn't Stop Myself

As I predicted, I was unable to take off the entire day on Thanksgiving. I was planning not to do ANY kind of moving on Thanksgiving. I was just going to rest. But I ended up spending about 2 1/2 hours cleaning out the delivery truck we'd borrowed (It was pretty dirty, especially in the cab) and filling up the truck for the first move this morning. So I failed at relaxing for an entire day. But it's not my fault! Really!

First, Thanksgiving dinner was so early that we were back home by about 3:00. And that meant there were hours left in the day. I couldn't just sit around.

Second, I decided that I WOULD just sit around. I'd watch the football games. But I turned on the first game and--as expected--the Lions were getting blown out. So I didn't see any reason to sit around and watch a game unfolding pretty much the way I was expecting it to do (The same could be said for the second game, too). Why waste my time doing this, I thought, when I could actually be working? So I went and started loading up the truck.

It's not the biggest truck (It's maybe the size of the smallest U-haul truck), but it's still pretty big. Our dining room was filled with boxes, but I put every box in the dining room and all of the boxes in storage in the basement in the front 1/3 of the truck and still had space to spare, so I loaded up a few bookshelves and most of the outdoor furniture we own (which is going to be a problem for us as we have only a small patio at our new house and we have enough outdoor furniture to fill the entire patio two chairs high. We're even leaving some behind!). We fit so much in this first load that we're going to do later this morning, in fact, that I'm worried we may move too much too soon and have all day Sunday to do nothing but lament that most of our stuff is at the new house but all of the big stuff is at the old house.

Then again, I've been conistently wrong about how long it would take me to do most things in this process. I honestly thought I'd paint all three rooms that we painted on Friday, Saturday, and MAYBE Sunday morning, and it took until late Wednesday to finish. And Tuesday night I sent Lisa a text message that said, "Cell phone dying. Will be home at 12:30." It was more like 1:30. That's pretty typical for me.

So don't be surprised to read a blog entry in a day or two that talks about how I didn't get everything done as quickly as I thought I would.

Thanksgiving

It's a bit cliche, I know, to write this today, but I don't really care...

I thought today, on Thanksgiving Day, I'd make a quick list of things that I am very thankful for. So here they are, in no particular order

• I am thankful my niece is doing better and out of the hospital or coming out of the hospital soon.
• I am thankful that my other niece had a healthy baby and also is home.
• Speaking of homes, I am thankful that a) we found a new house, b) we could afford it, and c) I have a wonderful family to live in it with.
• I am thankful that MY daughters have not been in the hospital recently.
• I am thankful that I have a wife that I love very much.
• I am thankful for my job. Despite the headaches it's given me the last couple of months, it's rewarding and I wouldn't want to do anything else (except maybe be a rock star or a movie actor).
• I am thankful that I am finally through painting. That was enough painting to last me a while.
• I am thankful that in just a few days we'll be living in our new house.
• I am thankful for a father-in-law who knows a little bit about real estate and was there to give us guidance along the way.
• I am thankful, actually, for all of my family on both sides. It is nice to be self-sufficient, but it's also nice to know that if self-sufficiency ever fails that there are people who love you and are ready to lend a hand.
• I am thankful that Bengals are SO bad that I've just stopped watching them. If they were only pretty bad I'd be hanging on still, hoping that they might still make the playoffs.
• I am thankful that someone discovered chocolate.
• Speaking of food, I'm thankful that I gave up that whole complete vegetarian thing before Thanksgiving. After all, turkey is pretty much my favorite food that isn't a dessert.
• I am thankful for Choco and for all of the other ways that my children help me to be young.
• Speaking of my kids, I am thankful for each of them. I cherish them and cannot believe that I have been lucky enough to have such wonderful children. I absolutely don't deserve them. Just ask my mom and dad.
• I am thankful for spell checking to fix my errors as I type.
• I am thankful to God for these and for more. I am thankful to just be alive.

If I don't see you today or this weekend, Happy Thanksgiving.

Home, Sweet Home

We closed on our new house last Friday, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, I spent the whole weekend painting. Now it's Thanksgiving weekend, a long weekend, and that's good, because we're planning to REALLY get moving with this whole moving thing now.

Last night I borrowed a big delivery truck, and we're going to move the majority of our stuff ourselves, but not quite yet. Today we're going to finish painting the house and give it a good cleaning.

Tomorrow, if we can, we're going to take the day off and actually enjoy Thanksgiving. I say "if we can" because I know myself, and once I get started on a project I just want to finish. We're going to my brother's house near Louisville for Thanksgiving dinner with my family, but we're eating early, and we may be back home before it's too late. And I know that I'll think to myself, "I don't really want to WATCH these NFL games. I could just LISTEN to them on the radio while I'm moving stuff!" But I'm honestly going to try to resist the urge because I think I'll be worn out and needing a break, and I want to be able to make it through the weekend.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we're actually going to be moving using that delivery truck I've borrowed. As I said above, we're going to move everything we possibly can ourselves. We'll have to plan it out carefully, because we don't want to move essential things like our dining room chairs until late in the day Sunday. I'm looking forward to moving stuff, though. It's good, physical labor, as opposed to painting, which a lot of time is just trying to hold your hand steady, like in the game of Operation. Which is why I always pump myself full of caffeine when I'm trying to paint, 'cause that helps keep my hands steady! Sheesh!

Anyway, it's a lot of work, but I know in the end it will be worth it. Right now, though, our new house feels like anything except a home, sweet home.

WARNING!

As I was painting this weekend I noticed that most of the products I was using (paint, caulk, cleaners, etc.) had the same warning label on them. After reading a Wikipedia article about the warning label and how vague and far reaching it is, I figured I'd better post this warning on my site, just in case someone living in California reads this:

WARNING: This blog contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

There. I feel better for having posted that. Just covering my butt!

Also, as I worked this weekend, the following occurred to me (This is what 33 hours of painting in three days will do to a fellow. Or maybe it was the fumes):

1. Is California bragging with all these labels? Is it trying to show how much smarter it is than the rest of the states?


2. Why should I trust California? I've never met the state before. How do I know that these claims on these paint cans are legitimate? Maybe California is like that hypochondriac cousin at a Thanksgiving dinner who won't drink tap water because it's been poisoned with chlorine, or won't eat the green beans because they came from a tin can and the can opener may have been defective and may have put tiny shards of tin into the green beans.


3. It's a good thing the other 49 states haven't come up with a boneheaded law like this, or these labels would be even longer than they already are.


4. What if all 50 states DID have a similar law but then had different findings? I could envision a label that said "This product contains chemicals known to the states of California, Wyoming, Tennessee, New Hampshire, South Dakota, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Illinois and Indiana aren't so sure. They've done some tests, and they think maybe there's a chance these chemicals are cancerous, but they're taking a wait and see approach. Washington, Minnesota, and Michigan are leaning towards these chemicals NOT being carcinogens. New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, and North Dakota state they definitely are NOT cancer causers. But South Dakota claims that North Dakota doesn't really believe that and only says so because South Dakota knows they ARE cancer causing, and North Dakota always takes the opposite stance of South Dakota because he doesn't like South Dakota. To which North Dakota replied, 'Same to you but more of it!' Colorado says that both Dakotas are being childish and need to stop this right away. The remaining states have no position on these chemicals."



5. Based on how many of these chemicals with warning labels I've been using, I'm probably going to die of cancer. Soon.

Holy Cow!

And to think, I can say I knew him when his Comedy Central Specials were only getting GREAT ratings, not amazing ones!

Click to see what I'm talking about!

_________________________
P.S Gas Watch: The gas station across the street from my office is charging $1.71 a gallon today. And that's with the Thanksgiving Holiday coming up, which is usually a time when gas stations RAISE prices!

Oops!

Sorry I forgot to post anything today. I've been painting all weekend.

Almost literally all weekend.
I painted from 5 to midnight Friday, from 9 to 9 Saturday, and from 6 AM to 8 PM today.

Fun, fun, fun.

A Shower Moment

Yesterday morning I had one of those moments in the shower. You've probably had them before, too. I was going through my shower routine that I got through every morning, checking items off the list when I suddenly realized it--I couldn't remember if I'd washed my hair or not!

This always bothers me. After all, I'd been in the shower less than two minutes. How could I not know what I had done during the last two minutes? I wracked my brain, but I simply couldn't say definitively one way or the other.

Then, what usually happens to me in that situation happened. I opened the bottle of shampoo and poured a little into my hand, and as soon as I did I remembered: I HAD already washed my hair. I'm not sure what tipped me off. Maybe it was just the act of reaching for the bottle. Maybe it was the feel of the cool shampoo in the palm of my hand. Maybe it was the smell of the shampoo. I'm not sure, but something clicked in my brain: I had just done this.

I guess worse than not remembering whether or not I've done something in the shower is to actually forget to do something. That doesn't happen nearly as often, but it does happen. I've turned off the shower and started to step out only to remember, "Hey, I never rinsed the shampoo out of my hair!" Or "Wait a minute! My underarms still have soap on them!" Something like that.

Maybe I'm getting old. Or maybe I'm just not awake first thing in the morning. I don't know. I guess, considering the alternative, that I'll go with the latter option.

Worn Out

A couple of weeks ago I posted a link to an article about a major change going on at my work: We are replacing our old student information system with a new student information system. A Student Information System (I'll call it an "SIS" from now on) is a huge database housing almost every bit of information we have on students: grades, attendance, behavior, state and federal test scores, parental contact information, health information, special ed information, transportation information, lunch status, and membership in state and federal programs. Switching to a new system is a major task that involves almost every one of the more than 300 employees in the district.

Yesterday was the first day that we actually utilized the system district-wide (about 25 employees in the district had access to the system for the previous few days, looking for errors). As you might imagine, the three of us on the implementation team were slammed with phone calls, emails, and personal visits. Everyone assumes that their little piece of the SIS is the most important piece of the software, and they needed their problem fixed now!

It made for a hectic day. Over the course of the 9 hours or so I was at work, there was a grand total of about 35 minutes where I wasn't on the phone helping someone. I literally never left my office except once to grab my lunch out of the refrigerator and one other time just to walk away for 10 minutes. I'm worn out.

Thank goodness this weekend I get to do something easy...like painting and moving!
_______________________________
P.S. Gas Watch Update: Today the gas station across the street is charging $1.75.

Gas Prices

I've never seen anything like the deflation in gas prices that we're experiencing now!

I know I've mentioned this at least on a couple of different occasions (Occasion 1 and Occasion 2), but I'm just absolutely amazed! When gas prices rose briefly to $4 a gallon and then deflated into the mid $3 range, I remember listening to an economist on the radio stating that decreased demand coupled with speculators losing interest in oil was the reason that oil prices were falling so drastically, but the person ended his description with this: "But don't get too excited. Gas prices are going to stabilize soon. The days of $2 a gallon gas, even $2 and a half, are over. You'll never see it again."

Well, we've seen gas prices that low and then some. Currently the gas station across the street is charging $1.83 a gallon. A deflation in prices of 56% is utterly amazing.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm just amazed. Most likely, anyone reading this will never live through a time like this in his/her life again.

____________________________

P.S. I wrote the above Wednesday evening, and I had to come back this morning and update it: The gas station across the street is charging $1.78 a gallon this morning.

I Got Nothin'!

I knew this day would come sooner or later: I am absolutely drawing a blank on anything useful to say today. So I'll just babble a little about what's going on...

...We're really getting ready to move. Purchasing a house and moving aren't really two separate things. They're really about a thousand separate things! Looking at houses online. Contacting a realtor. Visiting a house. Visiting another house. Comparing prices of those houses with other houses. On and on and on the list goes, through making an offer to countering an offer to applying for a loan to qualifying for a loan to the house inspection to setting a closing date to picking a moving company to packing little items and on and on the list goes. And I've left out a bunch of steps along the way. So though I fully intended to buy a house and move from the first step (Okay, maybe from about the sixth or seventh step) it still never really seemed real to me. I always assumed that something else somewhere down the road was going to trip us up and the deal would fall apart. But now we're just a few days from closing. I will be spending this next weekend painting and moving. Life is about to change drastically!...

...I have a sick relative in the hospital, and she's on my mind a lot. I pray for her, and I'm a person who believes in the prayer, but at moments like this prayer feels so empty and impotent. I want it to mean something, I need it to mean something, but she's so far away and I can't get out of my head the feeling that my prayer doesn't mean anything. It's just empty words. But it's all I can do, so I plow ahead with it...

...I don't know how I feel about the possibility of Hillary Clinton being Obama's Secretary of State. On the one hand I think she'd do a good job. On the other hand, I voted for Obama in part because of his cry for "Change," and I don't see the Clintons as much of a change. On the third hand (Where'd that third hand come from?) EVERY new administration I remember has had the same debate about whether or not the incoming President is really different because he's hiring the dreaded "Washington Insiders." You only have to go back to the current administration to see this. Bush campaigned that he was a businessman who'd made the state of Texas successful by treating government like a business, and that he would do the same in Washington. He then hired mostly Washington insiders to run his White House. So it really doesn't matter who the President picks, I guess. It's what he DOES that will determine whether he's really an agent of change.

...Speaking of change, a lot has changed in 8 years. Considering the state of the economy today and the state of many businesses, if a candidate TODAY campaigned with the idea of treating government like big business he'd probably lose in a landslide. The truth of the matter is I think that trend has been reversed: many businesses today are treating their business like big government: bloated, with excessive spending that exceeds income.

There you go! Even when I have nothing to say I can find something to say. That's what eleventy-five years of college will do for you!

A Roof over my Head

When I was a child, I used to be afraid when I went to bed. Because of this, I went to bed with the blankets pretty much completely covering me, with nothing sticking out but my nostrils so that I wouldn't suffocate.

I don't write this out of need to explore my childhood fears, or to talk about neuroses I might have developed, though both of those could possibly be topics for future posts. I am writing this to give at least a partial explanation for this next four word sentence:

I love the snow.

I've wondered before why snow makes me so happy. Most people complain about it, but not me. Well, that's not true. I complain about it to fit in with everyone else. I'll walk into my office at work and say to the secretaries, "Whew! It's cold out there! And nasty and snowy!" And they'll just shake their heads in disgust and agree with me. But I don't really think the weather is nasty. Inside I'm singing: "I love the snow!"

I used to think that it was just because the snow reminded me of Christmas, and that's true, but it's more than that. I like the snow in January and February, too. I used to think that I liked it because, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, I don't like the heat, and the snow means it's cold outside. And that's true, too, but it's still more than that. Not too long ago I decided that a reason I liked the snow was because it meant that when I was inside I was warm and safe, and no matter where I was, I felt like I was where I was supposed to be because I was inside and warm.

And all of that's true, but yesterday afternoon, as I was driving home through a fairly heavy little squall, another idea occurred to me: I like the snow because when it's snowing, the clouds always seem lower to me. I feel like the roof of the world is a little less tall. I think I maybe feel a little like I felt when I was under the covers at night. Safe. Secure.

Unless I'm outside in the blowing snow. That stinks.

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A New Song I Love

Okay, you have to understand right off the bat that "new" is a fairly relative term when it comes to me and music. The last time I posted a "new" song on here it was a two year old cover of an even older song. The song I want to talk about today was a hit seven months ago, but I'm just now finding out about it.

I don't listen to new music much anymore, I think for a couple of reasons: 1) I don't like most of what I hear on the radio, and 2) I have CD players and MP3 players which keep me listening to music I already know. The other day, in fact, Natalie wanted a song off of a greatest hits CD in the library (Some 21st century version of a K-Tel album, I guess). The cd, according to its own cover, had "22 Top 40 hits by the original artisits!" I put the CD in and I literally had heard NONE of the songs before. I'm just getting old, I guess.

And this song below, in fact, was NOT recommended by a friend. MEREDITH told me about it. For the last three weeks she and Natalie have been wandering around the house singing, "I can ride my bike with no handlebars, no handlebars, no handlebars."

At times it was incessant, so I finally said to them, "WHAT are you guys singing?"

"It's this song everyone's singing at school, Dad," Meredith said. "Will you play it on the computer for us?"

"Not now," I'd said then. They asked me several more times to play it, and I finally acquiessed Friday night. I was flabbergasted by the song. I don't like rap as a general rule (and I'm not 100% sure this song is rap anyway), but I loved this song.

When I told Meredith I loved it, she laughed, and said, "Really? Why? It's about nothing." But if you watch the video you'll see that's not true. The song is about the almost limitless potential that human beings have, and how we often abuse that potential.

Despite the innocent beginning, though, it is NOT a children's song, and it gets increasingly sinister.

Thematically it's actually pretty similar to Paul Simon's "Boy in the Bubble" from his GRACELAND CD.

This is a COOLER song, though, and ALMOST as cool a video...

Can't Stop Looking!

Sarah Palin needs to just shut up!

I think people are afraid to say that about her because they're afraid that they'll be viewed as sexist. "What?" they're afraid will be said to them. "A woman can't have her say? Because she's a woman she should shut up? You can't take a strong woman standing up and saying what she thinks? Doesn't she have a right to respond to her critics? Do you hate women that much?"

No, I don't hate women that much. That's not why I say Sarah Palin needs to shut up. I say she needs to shut up because...she needs to shut up!

Someone needs to take her aside and tell her that you don't have to do every interview. And you don't have to answer every question. Sometimes it's best to disappear for a while.

And someone needs to tell her the election is over. I read an interview yesterday where she was still harping on William Ayers (Couldn't find the interview today, but it's referenced here), saying that she was still concerned that Obama was "palling around with terrorists." The connection between Obama and Ayers was always tenuous, but two weeks ago it was okay for her to bring it up because that's what you do during an election: you use whatever weapon you can find to try to win. But the battle is over now and she lost, and comments about the President-elect being friends with terrorists are a bad idea. Two weeks ago she was talking about this tall geeky Senator from Illinois. Today she's talking about the most powerful person on the planet, and someone she's going to have to work with if she hopes to further Alaska's interests at the national level.

Also, she's been on pretty much every TV station the last week or so complaining about all of the negative press she's been getting, telling people how she knew Africa was a continent and she never spent GOP money on clothes and she knows who's in NAFTA. But you know what? If she had given NO interviews in the last week, if she'd gone back to Alaska and put her nose in her work and ignored everything, the press would have moved on by now. They have the attention span of three week old beagle.

What she SHOULD have done is disappear for a while, work hard, let the furor settle down, and mount a "comeback" in six months. By then people would have forgotten some of her worst traits, memories of Tina Fey would have faded a bit, and maybe we could all take her seriously again. But no, she had to keep going, keep campaigning, keep talking those long, poorly constructed sentences that resemble a winding road along a seaside cliff.

But do you want know what really perplexes me? Despite all that I've said about wanting her to go away, I can't get enough of her. It's like a train wreck--you don't want to watch but you can't stop looking, either. I don't know what it is, but if I'm flipping channels and there's a picture of her on a station, I'll flip back to see what's being said. It's not that I'm a sadist, and it's not that I've got a secret crush on her. Maybe it is what psychologists talked about this time last week, campaign withdrawal. I'm sad now that the campaign is over, and I don't want it to end. And here, talking on CNN, is someone who doesn't know that it HAS ended.

Useless Sign

I'm always amused by signs that tell me not to do something that I wasn't thinking about doing in the first place. Inevitably the presence of the sign sparks my rebellious side and makes me want to do the very thing the sign is telling me NOT to do.

I wrote about just such a sign back in June. Over the weekend I saw another one.

The city we live in doesn't have many parks of its own, so one of the things the city parks department does (and I appreciate it very much) is several times a year it pays for residents to attend a citywide event at a local entertainment spot. This past weekend the city sponsored a free night at the Town and Country Sports and Health Club, which has a nice pool, and a really nifty play area for the kids. The girls each took a friend and had a great time.

At one point during the night I went into the men's restroom to do what people do in restrooms. And as I was standing at the urinal I noticed this sign (Actually couldn't help but notice it as it was taped to the wall that was 10 inches in front of me). Immediately it made me laugh, so before I left the room I grabbed my camera and snapped this picture.

Worlds Are Colliding!

Okay, only a real science fiction geek like myself would find this entertaining--and to be honest it's not all that well done--but it does fulfill a scenario I've often imagined...

Jack of all Trades (part one)

I had so much fun with the "Jesus Was a Democrat" post that I thought I'd create another, longer piece that could span across multiple posts. And again, this is an idea that's percolated around in my mind for a long time...

The title of this piece, of course, comes from the expression "Jack of all trades, master of none," signifying (and I'm quoting from wiktionary here) "one competent in many endeavors but excelling in none." It occurred to me not too long ago that the definition pretty much summed me up. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the job I have now demands that I have a fairly far-reaching breadth of knowledge about the topics of technology and education, but my actual depth of knowledge doesn't have to be that great. So it's not a bad thing...

...though that's not the way I felt in 1985, in the autumn of my senior year of high school. That's the first time that I remember anyone saying anything like that about me. It was in the cafeteria of my high school during the school's Fall Sports Banquet. The Fall Sports Banquet was supposed to be a celebration of all fall sports in the high school: golf, soccer, cross country. But let's face it--those all took a backseat to the real fall sport: football, and that year more than any other year because my high school had never been very good at football, and my senior year was the first year that we'd ever had a non-losing season (though we weren't exactly tearing up the state, either, as we finished 5-5).

I'd played football as a middle schooler and a freshman, but after not playing football my sophomore and junior years (just got bored with it), I came back and played my senior year. I didn't get a ton of playing time, but I got in every game (as 2nd string safety and a starter on special teams), and in some games for significant time. And I honestly didn't really care. I loved the game, and I'd told the coach that I didn't care if I started every play. I understood that I'd forfeited any expectations of getting special treatment as a senior by not playing the two years before. I was there to be a body at practice and to play sometimes.

Anyway, I'm off point here. That night, at the sports banquet, the head coach talked for a minute or two about each of us seniors before giving us a Senior Award. And for most of the seniors he said something like this: "John was the heart and soul of the offensive line! I always knew that if I wanted a run play to work, I'd run it to John's side, and it didn't matter, hell or high water, he'd get the job done. I've never seen such courage as I saw from him!" Or he'd say, "I've never met a more gifted running back than Michael, and he had a lot to live up to. His older brother was popular and a good athlete and was loved by everyone, and I always worried that Michael would feel he had to do everything his brother did. Well, in the end, he did that much and more. I am honored to have know him."

Eventually it was my turn, and here's what my coach said: "What I remember most about Bryan is that in practice he'd play any position, and he'd play every one of them okay. We didn't have a lot of players on the team, and sometimes in practice--when the first team was lined up--there weren't but about 15 kids left to be on the practice squad. And I'd shout out, 'I need somebody to play linebacker!' and most of the kids would shrink back, afraid to take on the first team. But Bryan would be the first person to jump up, shouting, 'I can do it, Coach!'

"Now, had Bryan ever played linebacker before? No. But darned if he couldn't get in there and play the position like he'd been playing it his whole life. He wasn't good enough to start, mind you, but he could play the position well enough that the starters got a workout. He knew when to blitz, and he he knew when to drop back into pass coverage, and he wouldn't shrink away when a couple of 250 pound offensive linemen tried to double team him.

"And it wasn't just linebacker. I watched, and over the course of the season I think Bryan played every position but quarterback...and heck, he probably would have played quarterback, too, if we'd let him! And in every case, he understood the position and knew what to do.

"So this Senior Award goes to Bryan, one of the finest practice team players I've ever seen!"

It's not the ringing tribute that you dream of hearing when you're playing backyard football as a kid, and I went home that night, to be honest, a little sullen. And I took a little ribbing for what the coach said, too, with other players on the team coming up and asking me for my autograph, asking if I'd sign it "The Best Bench Warmer Ever."

But though I was bothered by it then, I now see my coach's backhanded compliment as perhaps more true than even he knew. It is my personality or character or whatever that I quickly catch on to most skills but then often don't have either the ability or the gumption to become highly adept at that skill. And that's what I'd like to talk about over the course of a few more posts: things that I can do that look impressive, but that when you get behind them there's really not much there, like a fake storefront on a movie set. And I also want to talk about how that's okay, and that in the case of my job, sometimes a little bit of knowledge is just enough.

Disconcerting

One of the most terrifying things you will ever do in your life is to be the first person in line in the left turn lane at an intersection where there's no island between you and the lane beside you moving in the opposite direction. This is especially true if the vehicles with the green light are coming toward you from your right side. Every car looks like it's going to take off your front bumper!

And it's amazing as these people whiz past you just a foot or so away to watch them:

1. Talking on a cell phone


2. TEXTING on a cell phone!


3. Head turned talking to someone in the back seat


4. Eating a cheeseburger
   

Occasionally you'll see them coming right toward you, cutting the turn a little too sharp. And then you'll see them notice you and their eyes will bug open and they'll jerk to their right to avoid you.

And don't get me started about 18 wheelers coming in that direction. I see them coming and before they even turn I think, "Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap!"

But then, you know what? They ususally are the ones who stay furthest away from my bumper. They swing WAAAY out and somehow fit that giant vehicle into the lane beside me without ever really getting close to my car.

I guess that says something about the difference between amateurs and professionals.