Odyssey of the Mind

As I mentioned a couple of nights ago, Lisa and Natalie have been in Iowa since Wednesday for the Odyssey of the Mind World Competition. A lot of times people use the word "World" loosely. As in the Major League Baseball calling its championship game the "World Series." It ought to be called the "U.S. and Canadian Series" since teams from--oh, I don't know--Cuba, Mexico, and Japan aren't invited. 

I'm off point, though. My point is that the Odyssey of the Mind "world" competition really is just that: something like 16,000 competitors from 45 countries. Don't quote me on that. I read an article earlier in the week and the numbers were something like that.

Anyway, the whole thing is over now, and Natalie and her team finished 19th in the world! That's pretty darned good. In their problem and age group there were 41 teams that competed, so her team finished in the upper half. Not too shabby! And typically, the international teams are hard to beat. After all, they're not state champions. They're NATIONAL champions. But Natalie's team bested teams from Canada and Poland. They also bested a team called the Europoean DoDDS, which I thought was an international team until I did some research online and found that it's the name of the American school system in Europe for children of soldiers stationed in Eurpoe. Ehhhh! They live in Europe. Let's call 'em an international team anyway!

You can read all of the scores for teams in Natalie's group and age division by clicking this link. 

The other Beechwood teams all did well, too, all finishing at least in the top half of the rankings. One team, made up of Beechwood seniors who had been performing in Odyssey of the Mind since they were younger than Natalie, finished 6th in the high school level for their problem. 6th place gets an award and gets their name shouted out during the awards ceremony, so they were ecstatic (The photo above is of Beechwood team members celebrating their 6th place win. Sorry, Natalie's not in the picture anywhere that I could tell). 

The last I heard from Lisa was at 11:30 PM Iowa time, which is 12:30 in the morning in the real world. She and Natalie and some of Natalie's friends were at the big "Pre-teen Party" which was located in some indoor practice football field on the Iowa State Campus. So there's no way they were getting to bed before at least 1:00 in the morning our time. Which means they won't be up at--as her dad says--"O Dark Thirty" to head for home. It's a 10 hour drive and they lose an hour coming home, so I don't expect to see them until after dinner sometime. I think Natalie had the time of her life, but I'm sure she and Lisa will be absolutely exhausted. 

But I'm also sure they'll look back on it and say it was worth it!

Funny Video

Lisa made me aware of the video below, which is a comedian doing a little riff on a piece of classical music. I love it because a) it's just funny but also because b) this is one of my favorite pieces of classical music. Honestly, as wimpy and girly as this might sound, something about this piece of music when it's done correctly almost brings me to tears. I think it's just the simplicity of the underlying structure--I don't know, but I think it's absolutely beautiful. Also, because the piece is written in the key of D and because the key of D is second nature to me on the piano* I actually accidentally found myself playing this piece one day on the piano, and I find playing it as satisfying as listening to it. 

Anyway, this video turns all of that upside down and really does a number on the piece. 

*I wish I could say it's because of years of classical piano training, but the sad truth is that it's because most of the published sheet music for the band Styx was--for whatever reason--written in the key of D, and I cut my teeth as a keyboard player on Styx sheet music. What a loser! I can still play "Babe" from memory, and "Too Much Time on my Hands" and the organ intro to "Blue Collar Man."

My Life as Fiction

I'm going to do some fibbing for a while. Actually, I've already started...

Let me explain.

But before I explain, let me describe two separate events that have led me to make that decision.

Event One: At breakfast this morning, I was reading this week's Newsweek magazine. In the magazine was a little, mini-article that talked about the fact that several "celebrities" on Twitter are not the actual celebrities, but instead are impersonators. The three example people mentioned were Tina Fey, Bill Gates, and Kim Yong Il. They're not really on Twitter, and the people who impersonate them have warped their personalities. For instance, Bill Gates is--as expected--a great big geek, and for whatever reason, the Tina Fey impersonator has made her obsessed with food. I read the article, chuckled, and thought I had forgotten it.

Event Two: I had three cups of coffee this morning after a couple of months of being completely off caffeine. Being the digital citizen that I am, I decided to report this on Twitter (which also updates my Facebook account, by the way, as well as the "My Life as Fiction" in the opposite column on this site), and after doing so, I quickly added two more "tweets" (Hey! That's my first time ever using that word! Don't know if I should feel cool or like a loser!) listing all of the things I thought I was going to do in my caffeine-induced high.

This was a tiny fib. I did feel a little more energetic after the coffee, but I didn't really have a euphoric high. I thought this would just make for a funny string of posts. 

Later, it occurred to me that it would be funny for me to make a post a couple of hours later about how I had crashed and then a couple more hours later make a post about how I had dosed myself with more caffeine in order to overcome the letdown. Neither of which happened. I usually don't crash from caffeine, and I definitely know better than to have caffeine after 2 PM, but again I thought this would make for a couple of funny posts.

And that's when the two events came together for me in a kind of eureka moment: It occurred to me that the three impersonators were writing fiction, and that--ever since the posts about what I was planning to do in my caffeine-induced high--I, too, was writing fiction. And the idea came to me: I could create some new kind of fiction using Twitter and Facebook!

Maybe it really WAS all of that caffeine that was talking, but the idea seemed like a really good idea at the time. Think about it. Why are books "better" than movies? Because in movies, there's really little (if any) room for a person's imagination. 99% of the experience is happening on the movie screen and only a little in the person's imagination. With a book, maybe 70% of the story is happening in the writer's head and the other 30% is being imagined by the reader. Well, with a Twitter/Facebook story, those percentages get shifted even more.

Think about it: You're reading your friends' statuses and one of your friends posts, "Digging through the crafts on a rainy day to have an activity with my 5 yr old and 3 yr old." An hour later there's another post that says, "Why did I think I HAD to answer the phone? Does anyone know how to get finger paint out of curtains and carpet?" In those two, brief posts, an entire story has been told! Only about 1% of what happened is on Facebook, but your brain can fill in the remaining 99% of the story for you. It's the exact opposite of a movie as far as the requirements it puts on the reader to create his own story! Plus, with the Comment features in Facebook and Twitter, this new Twitter/Facebook story is interactive, something you couldn't get in either a movie or a novel. 

So why am I telling you all this? Because I know that some of the readers of this blog also are Facebook friends or are following me on Twitter, and I just want to give you a heads up in the event that you get freaked out by my story, which I plan to "write" over several days, possibly even  about five months or so if the idea works. Also, I want to have this page to send other Facebook/Twitter friends to if THEY get concerned by the events in my story. 

Also, I need to write this to some extent just to help organize this thing myself. I've never written anything large (and by large I mean longer than 10 pages in length) without a detailed outline of the work. Both of my novels--the one I actually wrote and the one I only wrote the first three chapters of--were preceded by about a 20 page detailed, chapter by chapter summary of the events of the story, a list of characters, the back stories of the major characters, etc. Even research papers in college had an outline before I started writing. But I actually started this story before I knew I was even writing it, and so I need to get some things straight in my head.

First of all, I DO have an idea of where this story is going. I don't know what I'm going to write tomorrow, but I can see in my head the general arc of the whole story from beginning to end, and that will help guide me. Second, I have some ground rules that I plan to follow:

• Except on rare occasions, no more than 5 posts a day to the story.  That way visitors to this site who are not Facebook/Twitter subscribers can follow the story each day here.
• All of the characters in the story will be real people in my life. It will be as if the story I am telling is in a parallel universe. "I" will have the same job I have in real life. My kids names will be the same. I will do pretty much the same things. The only difference will be the elements of the story that I am telling.
• Also, other than the aforementioned "My Life as Fiction" section, the Sweasy.net website is NOT part of the story. I will not by lieing here. Well, any more than I already skew the truth to make me look FANTASTIC!

Will all of this even work? I don't know. I know that I run the risk of ticking off some people who won't know that what I write isn't really happening, and I know that the whole concept might turn out to be completely stupid, but now that the idea has come to me, I want to give it a try and see how it works. Who knows? Maybe I will have invented a whole new genre of fiction!

Somebody invented the novel, after all!

Or like I said, maybe it really is the caffeine talking...

Wonders of Technology

I'm lonely tonight. 

But then again, I'm not really, thanks to technology...

Lisa and Natalie are in Iowa tonight for the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals, and they'll be there for the rest of the week, getting home late Sunday night. Meredith and I would have liked to have gone, but Meredith's absences would have been unexcused since she's not on the team, so she and I are home tonight. And after I put her to bed at 8 o'clock, as Glenn Frey said way back when, this big old house gets lonely. And my wife and daughter are 500 miles away.

Except it didn't feel like it. Lisa called on her cell phone to tell me that the Opening Ceremonies of the World Finals were being broadcast live over the Internet, so at 8:30 PM I went to the Odyssey of the Mind website and (after downloading Real Player*) I logged onto the live broadcast and watched the Opening Ceremonies as if I were there. Lisa and I texted back and forth throughout the ceremony, and during a lull she called me. As we talked I could hear in the background what was happening live, and I discovered that my stream was about 12 seconds behind real time, which isn't bad. Lisa would say, "The parade is going past me right now" and in twelve seconds I could look and there she was on the front row. It was really nice.

The Opening Ceremonies are just like the Olympics. First all of the international (Non-U.S.) teams marched into the stadium, followed by each of the participating U.S. state teams. Only one team member from each school was allowed to parade, and Natalie was not that person for her school. But like I said above, that was okay...she and Lisa had front row seats.

The photo above is a screenshot of what I was watching, in actual size. The screenshot is the moment that the Kentucky paraders entered the stadium.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, this whole Odyssey of the Mind thing is new to this family, but we've been assured that Lisa and Natalie will have the time of their lives. I'll write more about it later. And if you're interested, the Awards Show this Saturday from 8:30 until 10:30 (EST) will also be streamed live at the Odyssey of the Mind website above. 

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*Who, other than Odyssey of the Mind, uses the Real Player anymore? I didn't even know that software was still around!

Another Dumb Sign

Two days ago I shared with you a dumb sign I discovered last Saturday at the library. Here's one I noticed a few days ago when I was getting onto an elevator. As I was waiting for the elevator door to open, I noticed this sign on a lockbox beside the elevator:

As I waited for the elevator, the following questions popped into my head:

1) Was this a problem to start with? Before they put the sign on the lockbox, were others trying to get into it? Because I have to tell you, if I saw the lockbox there beside the elevator and it DIDN'T have the sign on it, I wouldn't have assumed that it was there for just anybody to use.

2) If there WERE other people trying to get into it, does it even matter? Other than the maintenance company, does anyone else have a key to this lockbox anyway? Of course not. If people want to try to use their house keys or their car keys to get into the lockbox, let 'em try. Their key's not going to work. Who cares?

These are the kinds of things I think about when I have 60 seconds of down time...

My Eyes on California

Today the Supreme Court of California is supposed to rule on whether or not to uphold last year's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state. As I mentioned a few months ago, I very much hope that the California Supreme Court does NOT overturn the voter initiative. Not because I'm against gay marriage (Try as I might to come to a resolution, I find myself completed conflicted about gay marriage), but because I'm against the courts telling the people that they cannot change the constitution using rules that are actually in the constitution. If they do that there really is no recourse against the courts. If a law is passed that the court doesn't like they can declare it unconstitutional. If the people then pass a ballot initiative to reinstate the law the courts can then declare that the people don't have the right to do this. It puts absolute power in the hands of one part of the government, and that's dangerous.

Anyway, I'm hoping that--if you watch the nightly news tonight--you'll hear the anchor say that the Supreme Court of California upheld the voters' rights.

______________________________

Update (1:42 PM):

The California Supreme Court DID uphold the voters' rights. You can read more here.

Dumb Sign

One of the benefits of carrying a cell phone around with me is that when I find an exceptionally dumb sign I can snap a quick photo of it and share it with you, as I've done in a previous post. Here's another:

My cell phone camera isn't the best, so maybe you can't read it all that well, but it says, "WARNING! BRIGHT LIGHT! Do not stare into light beam. Do not view at close range. Failure to do so will cause permanent eye damage."

So what's so dumb about the sticker? I found this teeny, tiny sticker on the side of one of those warning lights on the top of police car (No, I wasn't getting arrested. I just parked beside the police car at the local library). The sticker, as I just mentioned, is small, and it's right below the light, which you can see at the top of the photo. The sticker is telling you a) not to look in the direction of the light and b) not to stand "at close range" to the light. If the light isn't on, then the whole message of the sticker is moot, but if the light IS on, THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN READ THE STICKER IS TO DO BOTH OF THE THINGS THE STICKER IS TELLING YOU NOT TO DO!

It's as if whoever designed the sticker is TRYING to blind you.

Mary Logan Blaine

On Friday, May 22, a memorial service was held for Mary Logan Blaine, Lisa's step-grandmother, who passed away a week before. As part of the memorial service, Lisa gathered photos from several family members and created a short movie that played in the church prior to the start of the service. Several family members and friends commented on the film and said they'd like a copy, so I uploaded it to Youtube. 

The original video had different music playing along with the photos (Carolyn Arends' "Seize the Day") but due to copyright concerns I replaced that music with the legal music below. It ain't so good, but then again, I'm not going to jail for breaking the law. Viewers can turn the computer speakers down and play their own music. 

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Update 05/27/09 9:15 PM
I just learned today that Youtube has a service called "Audio Swap" which allows you to swap out your soundtrack with a musical piece that Youtube has licensed. It's actually a pretty cool service and there are hundreds of pieces of music to choose from. Thus, I selected a song and replaced my original replacement with a song that's a little more appropriate. It's still not exactly what Lisa was shooting for, but it's a little closer. 

New Design

I hate it when a website that I'm used to visiting suddenly decides to premier a new design. Suddenly, I have no idea where anything is anymore!

I have the same feeling when I go to the supermarket and they change things up. The Bigg's in Florence was notorious for that back in the '90's when I was shopping there weekly. Maybe twice a year I'd go in and the drinks aisle had been moved over a couple of aisles for no apparent reason! And the applesauce, which used to be the top shelf at the end of aisle 5 on the left side, is now on the bottom shelf closer to the middle of the aisle. That kind of stuff infuriates me.

I never know why either websites or stores feel a need to do this. That's not true. I know why both do it, and it's for different reasons. Grocery stores move items around so that you have to search to find them. Because if you're a regular shopper in a store, eventually you sort of get blinders on and you only see things that you normally buy. Then the store shuffles things around, and while you're looking for that 32 oz. jar of peanut butter you'll find yourself saying, "Hey, look! They sell computer screen cleaning kits here!"

Websites make the change just to "freshen up" the site a little. And I guess that's why I made my change. I did try not to make it too terribly different. I just changed the colors a little and flipped the columns. I'm not even sure if I like it. It may be in a week or so I'll put it back the way it was. But this is what happens when boredom sets in.

Dinner at Best Buy

Last Saturday night a co-worker of mine was thrown a surprise retirement party (The retirement wasn't a surprise--the party was), and I attended. The party was held at a Buffalo Wild Wings Bar and Grill, a place I'd never been to before. They're all over the place, and I'd seen them advertised lots of times on TV, but for whatever reason (maybe because I'm not a drinker) I'd never been in.

For anyone else who's never been in one, I think I can describe it to you fairly easily: just imagine that you're having a meal in the TV aisle of a Best Buy. There are TV's everywhere, many of them a lot nicer than the ones at your house. You'll find yourself looking around and imagining that THAT TV would look just right in your bedroom, and THAT one is your dream TV for the living room. There's a thumping loud beat of distant music, which is just like the guy at Best Buy over in the stereo aisle trying out some new speakers. There's even a uniformed guy that comes by every couple of minutes to ask if you need any help. The only difference is that THIS guy will bring you food!

The parallels are all there. So don't be surprised if you see me in the actual Best Buy sitting in the TV section eating some chicken wings. When the shocked salesperson comes over and asks if I need some help, I'll look at him and say, "Yeah, can you bring me some more of that Mango Habanero sauce? And what do I have to do to get ESPN2 on the BIG TV?"

Left to My Own Devices

I have spent the last two nights away from my family. Yesterday and today I've been at a Kentucky Society for Technology in Education meeting, and tomorrow I'll be at the Kentucky Student Technology Leadership Program annual conference. Both the meeting and the STLP convention are in Lexington, so after I drove down midday yesterday I just stayed here.

But I'm not writing this to give you a punch by punch of the last two days of my little life. What I wanted to write about is how different an animal I become when I'm away from my family. Because I end up staying in a hotel due to conferences or meetings not that often, but maybe five or six times a year, and what I find during those times is that, left to my own devices:
1) I don't watch much TV. I've been checked into this hotel room since yesterday afternoon, and I haven't had the TV on at all. The last conference I attended, back in January, was three days long, and I never turned the TV on then, either. Before I thought it was maybe that hotel rooms don't lend themselves to watching TV, especially since I'm not much of a horizontal TV watcher, and I don't like watching TV on little 19 inch screens. But this hotel room that I'm in tonight is a nice little suite with a 32 inch LCD TV and a nice little couch with an ottoman. But I'm using the couch to hold my ironed pants and the ottoman to hold my suitcase.
2) I burn the midnight oil when I'm alone. I learned this a long time ago. It's not that I need less sleep when I'm alone, but instead of going to bed at my usual 9:30 or so I seldom go to bed when I'm alone before midnight.

So there's no point to this post, really. Just something I noticed.

Star Trek

In an earlier post I mentioned that, despite my insistence that I would never go to the movie theaters again, I was considering going to see Star Trek, the first movie in a long time to really excite me. Well, I was a week and a half late, but I did finally go see the film last night. And I have to tell you, I thought it was great.

The movie paid just enough homage to the Star Trek canon to satisfy me. Not that I'm a big time Trekker. I guess I'm more of a Trekker than the average bear. I have seen every episode of the original series, of The Next Generation, and of Voyager, and I've seen all of the movies, but I've never been to a Star Trek convention and don't plan to go. Also, I didn't watch but a handful of episodes of Deep Space Nine, and I didn't even make it through the first episode of Enterprise. Also, I don't own any old Star Trek props or clothing or pajamas or lunch boxes or anything else. I never learned casual Klingon. On the other hand, I am aware that such a book exists, and I have flipped through it at the bookstore. Call me a beginning Trekker, then.

But I digress. My point was that, as a beginning Trekker, I found the film satisfying. Chekov's accent, McCoy's nickname and the explanation for it, the clothing--all of these things were true to the original series. At the same time, the film manged to be just different enough to be exciting. I think non-Trekkers can enjoy the film, too.

I will quibble with one thing: I don't like movies that solve problems with giant coincidences, and there's a big one of them in this film. I don't want to get into details in case you wanted to see the film but haven't yet, but let's just say that the way that one of the characters in the film meets an older version of another character is ridiculous in both its timing and the odds that it ever would have happened. It reminded me as I was watching it, actually, of when--in the movie Monsters, Inc.--Mike and Sully meet the Abominable Snowman. It's pretty much the same scene, actually, but without a one-eyed, green monster.

Overall, though, the special effects were great, I never got bored, and the film had some funny moments. Plus, we get to find out why Christoper Pike ends up in a wheelchair. It's good stuff.

Fake or Real?

Here's a video I stumbled upon and I can't figure out whether it's real or an elaborate fake. If it's a fake, it's a GOOD fake. I mean, the cups shake when the balls hit them and everything!

If it IS fake, these boys wasted a lot of time pretending they were throwing ping pong balls and then drawing them in with computers. Hours and hours of time.

If it ISN'T fake, these boys wasted a lot of time filming these shots, as they MUST have missed more often than they made the shots, meaning that each shot of this video must have taken attempt after attempt after attempt to get it right and it would have taken a lot of time. Hours and hours of time.

Either way they wasted a lot of time.

And now, thanks to this post, you can waste time watching them:

Spring Fever

I have never been much of a believer of the concept of Spring Fever, that idea that both students and teachers alike get ancy and jittery the last few weeks of school and have trouble concentrating. The only time as a student I remember having anything like Spring Fever was during my senior year of high school. Once the A.P. tests were taken in mid-May I pretty much quit. I remember right after the A.P. English test our English teacher handed our class a copy of Joyce's PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and said, "With our remaining time in this course we will be reading this novel. We will not take a test on it, but we will read and discuss it for our own edification." Uh, no WE won't, I thought to myself. And to this day I have never read that book.

But my senior year was an exception to the rule, in part because I think I understood I was staring at a giant change coming to my life, and I was distracted by that. Other than that one instance, I have never really felt that inability to focus in April and May, and as a teacher I fought against it with my students. I never stopped teaching until the last day of school (and I never told my students that something we did in the last two weeks of school was for their edification only, either) and when they complained I would brush off their complaints and say, "Look, your parents are paying me to teach you for 177 days, not 150," and then I would just go on. I knew teachers in adjoining classrooms had already packed it in for the year and were playing Trivial Pursuit in class or something like that or watching movies, but I didn't care, mostly, I guess, because I believed that sentence I was saying to the kids.

All of that said, though, I need THIS school year to be over. It has been a long one and a tough one for a lot of reasons, and I need these students and teachers to go away and leave me alone for a couple of months.

John and Kate

Sometimes I feel completely out of it. I am writing this late on a Saturday night as I am standing in line at a Kroger. And I am looking at all of these tabloids about some people named John and Kate and the fact that they might split up, and I can't help but think, who are these people? How is it that they are on the cover of almost every magazine at the checkout stand, yet I have sincerely and literally NEVER heard of them?

And this isn't the first time. I remember a year or so ago the tabloids and the TV news stations were all obsessed with "Where is Caylee?" To this day I still have no idea who Caylee is, this despite the fact that my wife and two others tried at different times to explain it to me. It is as if my brain will not hold onto these kinds of stories.

And I guess that isn't something I should be complaining about.

My Work

I've been the head technology guy in my school district for five years, and in that time I've had to deal with lots of little crises that have popped up: a router that died at one school. Corruptions in databases. Administrator computers that have pooped out. I'm always reminded of Judd Nelson's comment in the movie The Breakfast Club when he's accused of taking the screw out of a door that causes the door to slam shut: "Screws fall out all the time. The world's an imperfect place!"* In the same vein, computer systems are made up of physical pieces of hardware, and sooner or later the pieces are going to fail. The world's an imperfect place.

One problem I haven't had to deal with, though, a bullet that I've been able to dodge, is the death of a server. For some reason, that's the gold standard in IT. When people talk about crises they've had to deal with, whether it's the Internet going out on the first day of school or a construction crew running over a fiber optic line or a bulb from an LCD projector blowing up and catching on fire (all of these things have happened), the question that always comes back is, "Have you ever had a server die on you?" And I've always been able to say no.

Until yesterday.

One of the oldest servers in the district, a server that I actually have had it in my crosshairs to replace for about 18 months now, finally bit the dust yesterday. And I had an out of the district meeting all day today in Owenton, so I really didn't get a chance to work on it. So I'm going in to work on a Saturday, something I rarely ever have to do, to try to fix things before school starts Monday. It will be an adventure. I try to tell myself that situations like this are growth opportunities for me. I won't be nearly as freaked out the next time it happens as I was yesterday (and truth be told, I wasn't nearly as freaked out yesterday as I was when the first crises I faced came upon me).

And I was just telling someone the other day, one of the fun things about my job is that--most of the time--I get to decide what I'm going to do with the job. I'll look at my calendar and I'll say, "This morning I'm going to work on the District Technology Plan, and this afternoon I'm going to configure the new Power Over Ethernet switch for the middle school."

But on days like yesterday and tomorrow, the job sort of dictates to me what I'm going to be doing. "That might be what you THOUGHT you were doing today," the job says, "but I have other plans for you..."

I actually love crises, though. 

Of course, if I can't get the essential data recovered from this server and get a suitable replacement in place ASAP, I may not be loving it so much Monday. 

__________________________

*Never mind that his character really DID steal the screw. 

Words of Advice

I was browsing the Internet last night and stumbled upon this ad. As one who has had LASIK surgery and had complications, I can tell you that if you're considering getting LASIK, don't let an ad like this sway you toward a doctor. After all, if you paraphrase the text, it's basically saying, "Hey! Get your LASIK here! And if we screw up your eyes we won't charge you for it!" Go with the best doctor you can find and don't go for a gimmick like this. Your eyes are too important! 

Drug Commercials, part three

I promise this will be my last post (for now, at least) about drug commercials! And it won't even be very long...

I just wanted to add one last thing that I love about drug commercials, and that is the action that happens in them. Specifically I'm referring to the drug commercials that spend 85% of their time listing all of the side effects and warnings regarding the drugs. The producers of these commercials are left with a quandary: what are they to do onscreen while the narrator lists all of those terrible side effects. You don't want to show a person puking while the narrator describes nausea. That's not going to sell any pharmaceuticals. And you wouldn't want to see a bewildered old geezer walking around with a woody while the narrator intones him to see a doctor if his erection lasts too long. So what do the producers do?

There's no single answer, and I enjoy seeing all of the different solutions. Should we show Sally Field gardening or exercising with a yoga ball? Or maybe we should show a bunch of people who, when dressed properly, look just like a plate of fattening food. Or maybe we should have two commercials that are exactly the same except one is live action and one is a sort of cartoonized version of that same live action?* The possibilities are endless.

And with that said, I will get off of drug commercials for a while.

*Sorry, I forget what those commercials were even selling. I just found them fascinating, and not just because they showed some women in bathing suits walking around.

Be Careful What You Wish For

When we lived at Vent Haven, we often wished that there were neighborhood kids the same age as our children so that they would have someone else to play with. For a couple of years, when Meredith was VERY young, there was a girl across the street named Naomi who was the same age. Her family was from the U.K., though, and they moved back to England about the time Meredith was in first grade. And from that point on there were no other children on our street.

When we moved out of Vent Haven, we selected the house we live in now for several reasons, but one of the most important ones was its location to their school. We are literally just a couple of football fields away from the front door of the school. How convenient, we thought! The kids can walk to school.

Well apparently, every other family on our street bought their house for exactly the same reason, because this one street of about 25 houses is absolutely TEEMING with kids! We couldn't tell this when we moved in back in December--it was too cold to be out and all of the kids were tucked away in their warm little abodes. I did get a little warning, though. When I met our next door neighbor in the front yard just before Christmas I introduced myself and he introduced himself. He told me it was just him and his wife. I told him that it was my wife and myself and that we had two daughters. He nodded seriously and said, "Yeah? There are a lot of kids on this street." I told him that was good, that my kids were hoping that was the case. But then he leaned in, and his eyes got really big, and he said, "A LOT of kids!" He said this sentence the same way that creepy guys on porches in scary movies say things like, "Yup. Lotta people go missin' in these parts!" I honestly think there may have been a thunderclap after he spoke.

But I just assumed the guy was a weird old fart and didn't really think much else of it. But now I'm starting to get the idea of what he was getting at. There ARE a lot of kids on this street. A LOT of kids. I think there are--no exaggeration--probably 20 kids on this street who are within two years of one of my daughters. They will not suffer for playmates this summer.

And that's something that Lisa and I are having to learn to deal with. First of all, just getting home from work can be tough because our street is a little narrow and on a warm day there might be six or seven kids in the street playing ball or riding bikes. And today Lisa came home from work to find that she had to maneuver around the kids to get into the house. Apparently Natalie and several friends were playing "Cops and Robbers," and our front porch was the prison.

I'm sure the girls will love it, but it's something Lisa and I will have to get used to.

Weird Name

I saw these Doritos in the supermarket a couple of months ago and laughed out loud: I guess Doritos is starting to run out of names for their snacks.

I guess what interests me most about this package is all of the extra wording. They could have just been called "Doritos Taco Flavored." But no, Doritos chose to call them "Doritos Late Night Tacos at Midnight." I didn't know that all of that extra wording is necessary. How do tacos at midnight taste different from tacos at, say, three in the afternoon?

Oh, but wait, I guess I know. Tacos at midnight, in addition to having a taco taste, would also have either a beer puke taste or a marijuana-breath taste. I wonder if THAT's the extra flavor that the makers of this chip were shooting for!

In any event, though the title made me laugh, it DIDN'T convince me to buy any Doritos, so I can't give you a review of the chip. And in that sense, I guess the weird name failed the company.

Typing While Staring at the Clock

For the third weekend in a row I don't have a good post for Monday morning. And I planned to write one on my cell phone but then I just saw a note that blogger.com, which is where my blog is hosted, is going down for maintenence in TWO minutes, so I only have time to say that I hope their clocks are not fast. And I was going to write more about drug commercials!

Drug Commercials, part two

Two days ago I wrote about how much I enjoyed watching drug commercials on TV because I like how they list all of the side effects. Today I want to talk about a second reason I like drug commercials: because I find the names of the drugs comical.

Once upon a time, a drug was given a name that had something to  do usually with the chemicals that were in it (as in "aspirin," which is short for Acetyl Chloride Spiraea Ulmariain ). Lately, however, drug companies have given drugs names that suggest something positive about the drug. Viagra, for instance, sounds a lot like "vitality" or "vivacious," which is supposedly how people will feel if they take the drug. Another example would be AllerNaze. You don't need a genius to tell you that this drug is going to help with nasal allergies. 

With that in mind, I thought I'd thrown out some possible names for some new drugs. 

For Erectile Dysfunction: Hardenonenon

Anti-depressant: The Happy Pill (People have been calling ALL anti-depressants this for decades. Why not patent the name and make it your own?)

Cholesterol medication: EldeeEllaway

Restless Leg Syndrome: Stopyatwitchin

Seasonal Allergies: Nosneaz

Chronic Acne: Zitgon

Pain: Morphine. Okay, I know that one's taken, but why try to improve what seems to be working for everyone?

Any pharmaceutical company that wishes to use any of the names above can just let me know and I'm sure we can work something out. 

Quote of the Day

I can't believe I'm posting this!

I absolutely HATE chain emails, and I usually don't even read them, but this one was sent to me yesterday and I really thought it pretty profound. I did some fact checking and it actually appears to be the truth, too, though I wouldn't be my life on it. This isn't the whole thing sent to me, just the beginning, but the beginning is the best part. The rest gets pretty tedious.

_______________________________

Brian Dyson, CEO of Coca Cola Enterprises, included the following comments in a university commencement address he delivered several years ago on the relationship of work to one's other commitments in life:

"Imagine life as a game in which you juggle in the air five balls named Work, Family, Health, Friends, and Spirit. As you endeavor to keep them all in the air, you will soon realize that Work is a rubber ball, and if you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls, however, Family, Health, Friends, and , are made of glass. Drop one of them, and the ball is irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered, never to be the same. You must understand this fact, and strive for balance in your life. "

Drug Commercials, part one

There are plenty of funny and eye-catching commercials on TV, most of which premiere during the Super Bowl. And there are a bunch of great commercials that have aired just within the last year or so. Off the top of my head I can think of the talking baby in the e-trade ad, the many Budweiser commercials that run during the big game, and the "Gimme back that Fillet-o-fish" McDonald's ad that ran during Lent.

But by far, my favorite type of ad is the prescription drug commercial. I guess I like them so much because they have so many strings attached to them, and it makes their commercials completely different from everyone else's commercials.

In fact, I like prescription drug commercials so much that I KNOW it's going to take at least two blog entries to get to everything I like about them. Let's start today with those strings I just mentioned...

The FDA regulates prescription drug advertisements, and it has stated, in its infinite wisdom, that a drug company can create a commercial which mentions a specific drug but not tell the viewer what the drug does and the FDA doesn't have a problem with that. They're also okay with the opposite advertisement: An ad can mention a specific treatment and that there is a drug out there for it, but if they do that they can't mention the name of the drug without strings. Or an ad CAN mention both the name of the drug AND what the drug does, but if the ad does that then it also has to include any warnings and side effects and it also has to include a web address and/or a magazine ad where the viewer can get even MORE information.

And that makes for some fun commercials. I've seen all three types. I've seen commercials where a drug's name is mentioned but the viewer has NO IDEA what it is the drug does. "The next time you're at the doctor," the ad might state while it shows a completely unrelated image of a man running down a park path, "ask your doctor if EXEMPLIFY might help you." Might help me do what? Apparently I have to go do my doctor and ask.

I've also seen ads of the second type, where a condition is mentioned but no specific drug name is listed. One that jumps out at me was a couple of years ago there were numerous ads for Restless Leg Syndrome (I remember that because Lisa is convinced I have this). The ads would say, "Do you find yourself tossing and turning at night? Do you find your body twitching as you sleep? If so, you may have Restless Leg Syndrome. You should see your doctor about possible treatments." Of course, an ad like that is usually only run by a company that has the ONLY drug for a specific medical condition.

But it's the third type that are the most fun. I love that the drug ads that list both the product name and what it does usually have such a long list of warnings that they barely have time to even mention the drug and what it does anyway. "If you have high cholesterol," the ad begins, "you should ask your doctor about new Remolan." And then the ad spends the next 50 seconds listing side effects that range from dizziness to bloody urine to bad breath to coronary arrest! I enjoy it immensely.

I guess what I like about these ads is that I feel the FDA has the drug companies in a very uncomfortable position. They HAVE to tell the truth or risk millions of dollars in fines and millions of dollars in lawsuits. I can all but feel the drug company CEO squirming as the narrator talks about painful 4 hour long erections that lead to a heart attack.

I wish the FCC would have the same gonads as the FDA and make ALL advertisers have to tell the truth about their ads. Imagine:

• An attractive barmaid saunters across the bar and hands a frothing glass of Budweiser to an attractive young man. A voice comes over the TV that says, "Drinking Budweiser while socializing can lead to an unattractive beer gut and to you saying something completely stupid that you'll later regret. In some instances, certain people who use Budweiser for extended periods of time may develop an intolerance to alcohol. Periods of amnesia followed by unwanted tattoos and sexually transmitted diseases have been reported by people who use Budweiser."
• A late night ad shows a number of people watching TV, reading, drinking a cup of coffee, or having a conversation, all while wearing a Snuggie. A voice over states, "Warning: Wearing a Snuggie will make you look like either a monk or an escaped mental patient. Also, couldn't you just use a bathrobe turned backward?"
• Some happy music plays as a family sits down to a heaping plate of pancakes at IHOP. An announcer states, "Before visiting an IHOP, realize that each meal has the caloric equivalent of three days of meals for a standard human being. Whatever you're thinking about buying and eating from IHOP, you'll probably regret ten minutes later."
• An ad for a Chevrolet Corvette shows a red car racing around winding curves. An announcer says, "If you attempt to drive like this, you will probably die. Also, Chevrolets have one of the worst reliability records in the auto market today. Maybe you should look at a Honda."

I'm waiting for the day I get to see commercials like that!

The New Joe Biden

Before I even begin this post, let me just say...that Joe Biden comment on TV news about telling his family not to fly and not to be in close quarters around people...that was awesome! Great stuff! I am so glad Obama chose this guy to keep us all entertained for four years!

That said, it would appear that Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning is gunning to be the Right's Joe Biden. He has said some really outrageous things over the last few months, and his latest rant against Senate Minority Leader and Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell will keep Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman salivated for days. It's good stuff. Read it here.

Honestly, no joking aside, I think there's something wrong with Bunning. As in mentally. I'm no politician, but even I know you don't say some of the things he's said lately. I think he's mentally unstable, and I hope he leaves politics soon...not because I have a problem with his positions or because I find him an embarrassment to Kentucky, but because I think he needs help and he needs to rest.

More Donkey Basketball

A couple of days ago I provided a photo and some video of me playing Donkey Basketball for a fundraiser in Erlanger. I mentioned in the post that there were some local "celebrities" playing in the game. One of them was the morning DJ for Kiss 107 in Cincinnati, and there are more photos on the KISS 107 website ,which you can see by clicking this link.

I don't listen to KISS 107 FM (younger and more urban type of music than I listen to) so I didn't recognize the DJ by his face or his voice. However, in between the first set of games and the second I was talking with a young woman who seemed vaguely familiar to me. She was asking me about the game and what I thought of the donkeys, stuff like that. I thought maybe she was a former student or a teacher who'd been in the district for only a year or so, something like that. Then during our conversation I saw the "Channel 5" on her shirt and it dawned me. "You're Valerie Abati!" I said. "I KNEW I recognized you from somewhere!"

Anyway, there's a pretty dark photo of me tugging on a donkey in the slideshow (Photo 23) and a photo of the "celebrities" a few slides later (Photo 26).

I Must Be Missing Something Here

I need someone to explain this whole line of reasoning to me...

Yesterday I read an article on the New York Daily News website that stated that top Democrats are urging President Obama to place a non-judge on the U.S. Supreme Court to take the place of outgoing judge David Souter. One U.S. Senator, to quote from the article, "agreed that the eight other justices on the bench who were lower court judges were plenty."

I MUST be missing something here. Because it seems to me that a Supreme Court judge should first and foremost BE a judge! Who are these people wanting? A mechanic? A homeless guy? Andrew "Dice" Clay? I would think that the person who is going to be ruling on Constitutional Law should have a background in--wait for it--CONSTITUTIONAL LAW!

Please, someone, explain to me what I'm just not getting, because if this article had appeared in The Onion I would have bought it as a joke. A badly written joke that missed some pretty obvious chances at humor (see Andrew "Dice" Clay comment above), but a joke nonetheless.

Banal

It's Monday morning, and I don't have anything to report because I didn't DO anything yesterday. Sure, I could dig down and find something to write about, but it would be pretty banal stuff, really. So rather than waste MY time writing about nothing and YOUR time reading about nothing, I guess I'll just write that there are some days when there aren't any things to write about. And that's not a bad thing, when you consider what some of the other possibilities could be. 

Donkey Basketball

I'm still not sure how, but somehow I got talked into participating in an Erlanger fundraiser called "Donkey Basketball." I honestly don't even know what the fundraiser was for. All I know is that my superintendent said something along the lines of, "Bryan, May 1, you're playing donkey basketball at Scheben!"

"I am?" I asked.

"Yes!" he said. "Trust me. It will be fun."

And it was. Though I have to say that I was a little nervous at first. Before the games ever began we were all taken into another room and the man who runs this Donkey Basketball thing went over the rules with us. And he said a couple of things that really jumped out at me. At one point he said, "Of course, you all have to sign a waiver here releasing me from any liability if you get hurt. 'Can we get hurt?' some of you might be thinking. Well, you're going to be riding a donkey on a basketball court. OF COURSE YOU CAN GET HURT!" 

Later, he was giving us tips on how NOT to get hurt, and he said, "These donkeys like to do what we call 'ducking.' That's when they take off really quickly and then stop and duck their heads in an attempt to throw you over their heads. When that happens, your first instinct is going to be to clamp down with your legs and try to hold on. But trust me! You're coming off that donkey. The question you want to ask yourself is do you want to relax and slide off and land on your feet? Or do you want to clamp down and then have the donkey buck up its rear and REALLY throw you off? It's your choice."

Luckily for me, I never had that problem. There were four total teams in the Donkey Basketball tournament: 1) The Erlanger Police, 2) Erlanger Faculty A, 3) Erlanger Faculty B, and 4) Local celebrities (made up of local newscasters and radio personalities and one guy dressed up as Elvis!). Each team played two games. I was on the third team above, and our first game was against the local celebrities. I found out later that I was on the most docile of all of the donkeys, and she let me get on and off her at will and really was no problem at all (The photo above and video below were from the first game). 

We won that game, against the local celebrities, 4-0--there's not a lot of scoring in donkey basketball as I don't think the donkeys get the finer points of the game (which you can see in the video below as my donkey at the end starts fast breaking in the wrong direction). That meant that we played later in the "championship" game against the Erlanger Police Department. In that game I had a different donkey (It's the small, brown donkey in the foreground at the start of the video below), and he was the polar opposite of my first donkey. In all four games he wouldn't let ANYONE ride him. He'd lower his neck and kick as soon as you lifted a leg to straddle him.  And in the final game he actually pretty much stood at center court and wouldn't move at all. At one point I jumped off him and grabbed his reins and pulled and pulled (my feet were spinning under me like Fred Flintstone) but he just wasn't going anywhere.

We lost that championship game, but I don't think that anyone cared. And no one got seriously hurt, so that was good. 

On Being a Geek

Okay, I'll admit it: I'm a geek. And I know this because I'm about to tell you two pieces of information that will prove this anyway, so I might as well get out in front of it and admit it myself before you start to think I don't know.

Damning Piece of Evidence #1: I'm all fired up about the new Star Trek movie coming out next week.

When I first heard years ago that the new Star Trek movie was going to feature actors from NONE of the TV series, I thought, Well that's stupid! Who'll go see a movie that isn't about any of the characters they love? But that was before I learned that the new movie was going to be a back story about the early days of the original crew--you know, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scotty. Then the movie sounded more interesting. The trailer made it look like just another shoot 'em up movie with no feel at all for what's come before it, but reviews that I've read so far give it high marks. So now I'm excited. When the family finally broke down and bought our extra large HD giant state-of-the-art 1080P LCD television a while back I promised that I'd never go to the movie theater again, but this is the first movie I've seen that's tempting me back. I may go next Friday on opening night.

Damning Piece of Evidence #2: I'm a passionate follower of Roger Ebert.

I visit his site at LEAST once a week to read reviews, even for movies I'm not planning to see. Even more damning evidence: I was so excited about the new Star Trek movie that I went online to Roger Ebert's website and read all of his reviews of past Star Trek films. Holy cow, I think I'm more ashamed to admit that than I would be to admit a drinking problem or a porn addiction!

Anyway, what I wanted to share with you today is something very funny that Ebert wrote about the previous Star Trek film, Insurrection. Ebert was apparently channeling Andy Rooney on this day:

I've also had it with the force shield that protects the Enterprise. The power on this thing is always going down. In movie after movie after movie I have to sit through sequences during which the captain is tersely informed that the front shield is down to 60 percent, or the back shield is down to 10 percent, or the side shield is leaking energy, and the captain tersely orders that power be shifted from the back to the sides or all put in the front, or whatever, and I'm thinking, life is too short to sit through 10 movies in which the power is shifted around on these shields. The shields have been losing power for decades now, and here it is the Second Generation of Star Trek, and they still haven't fixed them. Maybe they should get new batteries.

If you're a Star Trek fan, you gotta admit, he's hit the mark. Also, at my work I have a wireless network controller that will sense the traffic on an access point and if it's too high move some of the users to access points in adjoining rooms. It's called "load balancing," and it's been around in I.T. for decades (I have a pair of servers that function as one that do the same thing). 400 years from now don't you think the shields would load balance on their own? I don't know. I just found his comments funny. And I agree with him. But I still can't wait to see the movie!

The Swine Flu and Chrysler

These days I find the news pretty boring. And that may be shocking to some because everyone I talk to seems pretty uptight about all of it. "What do you mean 'boring'?" they ask me. "We're all going to die of swine flu! Did you know that there was a confirmed case in KENTUCKY? And what about Chrysler going bankrupt? Who would have ever thought that?" And if you watch the nightly network news, they are sort of whipping everybody up into a frenzy.

But let's start with the swine flu thing. First of all, as far as anybody knows for sure, we're just talking about the flu! The flu comes and goes every year, and yes, it kills people. According to the CDC website, 36,000 Americans a year die from just the plain old, ordinary, run-of-the-mill flu. So the flu is somewhat dangerous at any time, but is the swine flu a bigger deal than any other flu? There's no hard evidence to say so.

And as far as Chrysler goes, I don't really care if they go under or not. I would never, NEVER, NEVER consider buying a Chrysler anyway, so it's no sweat off of my back. Sure, thousands of people will be out of jobs, but people are losing their jobs left and right in this economy. I feel bad for the auto workers and all of the other affected parties, but I'm really not all that moved by it. 

So I guess I'm just saying to everyone who's in a panic, relax. We'll all look back on this time in a few years and laugh about it. The way we laugh at Y2K today.