July 30, 2003

Highway Safety Films

Remember those grusome safety films they made us watch in Drivers Ed? Somebody made a movie about those films. Looks cool - doesn't seem to be coming to a theater near me anytime soon though.

via Michele

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July 28, 2003

Free Gas at Taco Bell

Really, I'm not kidding.

I'm not sure why it is a promotion though. I thought gas came with every meal at Taco Bell.

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July 25, 2003

Random Thoughts

A few random thoughts that have occurred to me as I commute across three time zones, two deserts, and one ocean daily just to put food on the table for my family.

  • Briefcases on wheels are a very bad thing, especially when the idiot steering it rams your ankles on a busy sidealk. If you have that much crap maybe it's time to clean your briefcase.
  • Guys can not wear athletic shoes with their suits. I know women have been commuting for years in comfy shoes, then putting on the heels once they get to the office. It doesn't work for men. You look ridiculous in a Brooks Brother suit and Nikes. High quality men's dress shoes are usually quite comfy. Invest in a pair.
  • If you see the same homeless guy sitting on the same bench every day, is he really homeless? It seems like the bench is his home.
  • It's getting very difficult to differentiate between the crazy bums talking to themselves, and the self important folks talking into hidden cell phones.
  • People drive like idiots. This is not news, but it is much more noticeable when your sitting on a bus and not concentrating on driving yourself.
  • Do Dept. of Agriculture employees really need to carry guns?
  • There are a lot of really attractive women in DC. I never noticed when I was working in faceless suburban office parks.
  • Tourists really do stand out like a sore thumb.
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July 24, 2003

Holy Reproduction Batman!

Chris O'Donnell is a father again! Not me - that other Chris O'Donnell.

Maybe some confused fan will send me gifts by mistake.

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Handsome Chris

Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 03:53:23 +0100 (BST) From: "grace gajes" | This is spam | Add to Address Book Subject: handsome chris! To: chrisodva@yahoo.com


hi chris,
u know im your no.1 avid fan here in the philippines. Your so charming thats i cant help myself falling from you knowing that we're miles apart. may i have a request? will you pls. make a movie coz i miss your handsome face, you're so cute!!!!
i love your movies 'batman n robin, the bachelors' and i hope you are still a bachelor.
I'll wait your reply. here is my email ad:axelle_07@yahoo.com.
By the way , my real name is grace gajes!
ok, bye !!!
be safe,
dying of u

The lesson here is that I will read messages when you flatter me in the subject line :) Of course, if she was really his #1 fan she would know that he is married with a kid.

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July 23, 2003

Mike's Movie Rules

From Liquid Theater developer Mike Shea - his rules about movies.

My favorites are:

- No movies starring a Friends cast member
- No movies with a plot stolen from a Three's Company episode
- The more vomit it shows, the better the movie.
- No Gangster comedies

To his list, I would add the following.

- No Chris O'Donnell moves
- All John Cusack movies are good.

Got any rules to add?

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July 22, 2003

(Almost) a Spam free Inbox

It took some help from my web host - not because I couldn't figure it out, but because I only have shell access to the main email account - not the POP accounts, but I now have Procmail functional on ODonnellWeb. Any email tagged by SpamAssassin is automatically forwarded to a spam catcher account that I can check as infrequently as I like. No more downloading 125 emails with 120 going to the Spam folder.

If you have a domain account you most likely have access to Procmail, look into it. A good tutorial on setting it up is here.

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July 20, 2003

Miner 49'er

On Saturday, we took a roap trip down to Morefield Mines, an operating gem mine in central VA. They dredge out tons of raw material from below the surface and dump it up top, where the public (for a small fee) can dig through it, collecting bucketfuls of material which you then screen in a running stream of water to expose the rocks, just like the old school miners did it 150 years ago. I have to admit, I got rather excited when something pretty turned up in my screen. I can only imagine the thrill if that something was a shiny gold nugget. Normally, I would have pictures to share, but I was so into mining I forgot to use the camera! We took home about 10 pounds of rocks, including:


  • Several pounds of Amazonite
  • Fluorite
  • Topaz
  • Amethyst, including several stones that are fine jewelry quality once they are polished.
  • A couple of very small, but very pretty Garnet stones.

Plus some other stuff that is pretty to look at, but I have no idea what it is.

Morefield has a permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian, so it does occasionally turn up world class gems.

A lot of fun, and a highly reccomended trip if you are in the DC area.

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July 18, 2003

The final word on Iraq

Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive. But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership.

That is something history will not forgive.


British Prime Minister Tony Blair

That pretty much says it all. Read the whole speech.

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July 16, 2003

Don't Lick The Cup!

SteveO licked Lord Stanley's Cup. Go read the whole story.

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July 15, 2003

Baseball Uniforms

Bambino's Curse writes about baseball uniforms today.

It seems like Little League uniforms have gone downhill since I was a kid. When I played, we were issued real uniforms. Button up jerseys, the color coordinated stirrup socks, etc. Nomar Jr. this year got a T-Shirt with the logo of the city Parks & Rec. Dept on it, and a number on the back. No team name anywhere. It is the proper color for the San Francisco Giants, and they do have real baseball hats with the Giants logo. Pants are supplied by the parents - and real baseball socks seem to be a thing of the past. He does have socks with a black stripe up the side, sort of an approximation of an old school uniform. Of course, he wears his pant legs up high - showing as much sock as possible.

It's probably a money issue - what isn't these days? Licensing fees on the logos may make the shirts cost prohibitive given whan the city wants to charge for the league. Still - there is something to be said for looking like a real baseball player when you are playing the game.

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July 14, 2003

Sex sells, and sells, and sells

Michele over at A Small Victory has penned a screed on the way sex is infiltrating the lives of even the pre-junior high school set. Very scary for us parents. In a pop-culture world dominated by Britney Spears, Christina Agulara, and whoever is next, what can a parent do to shield young kids from concepts they are not ready to deal with?

Avoid pop culture is one obvious answer. We do it pretty well, but we are homeschooling so we have a level of control over the inputs into our kids lives that a school parent will never have. You could have no TV, no radio, hell, no electricity, and your kid will still pick up a lot of inappropriate stuff from his or her peers at school. Where did you learn 90% of the stuff your parents didn't want you to know?

I have hope though. If current trends continue, my daughter will spend most of her teenage years with horses and not with other teenagers. If given a choice today between hanging out with her friends or her horse (not that we've actually bought her a horse) she would choose the horse most of the time.

Actually, a partial answer may be revealed in that paragraph. It seems like kids that have no other interests other than what other kids think about them are the kids most prone to dangerous behaviors. The kids with a passion for something, whether it be sports, music, art, (or in my case D&D) are more likely to get to adulthood without seriously damaging themsleves.

Or at least it seems that way.

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July 12, 2003

Saturday Morning Record Reviews

Don't ask how I came to do this - it's not a pretty story. But I was poking around Amazon this morning, and I ended up listening to track samples from a few 80's metal bands that are still trying. So here you go, reviews based on nothing but the song samples at Amazon, plus full length samples from the band web sites. when available.

Lynch-Pilson: Wicked Underground
There is nothng really wrong with this collaboration from the creative force behind Dokken's best work in the 80's. That said, if you go throw Back From The Attack into your CD player you'll hear pretty much the same thing.

Bret Michaels - Songs of Life - Ugh. Even the 30 second samples at Amazon were torture. Power ballads run amok.

Sammy Hagar - Hallelujah
I might buy this. It's a greatest hits live compilation spanning his Montrose, solo, and VH days. The production was loud and sloppy, just the way a live album should be done. He spent some bucks on his web site too.

David Lee Roth - Diamond Dave
No song samples at Amazon, no audio on his web site. That probably tells you all you need to know, but I have no idea.

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July 11, 2003

First Candidate Poll of the season

The silly season is officially upon us, the first "which candidate do you match up with" poll is out.

Not surprisingly, I am a 100% match with the unspecified Libertarian candidate. President Bush was 2nd, Howard Phillips 3rd, and Senator Evan Baye from Indiana 4th. My top 4 are all from different parties. That seems a bit odd...

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July 10, 2003

Twister

I had a rather eventful ride home from Little League with Nomar Jr. They won by forfeit as the other team only had 7 kids show up. We loaned them a couple of ours (we had 13) to play a scrimmage game, but it was called due to lightning in the 2nd inning.

The storm was getting rather fierce, and the cloud formations had those characteristic low spikes of cloud that are a harbinger of tornados to come. (Those of you in the midwest will know exactly what I'm talking about.) As I'm stopped at a stop light, a lightning bolt and thunderclap popped very very close to the car. It seemed instantaneous, and since light travels much faster than sound, it had to be close be seen and heard simultaneously. It was so loud that it startled me and Breck, and the lightning was so close that we had no sense of where it was exactly. It just lit up all around us.

About 3 blocks later, I'm at the stop light to turn into my neighborhood. As I looked to my left, I saw a funnel cloud that appears to be only a 1/4 mile or so away. It was not a forceful tornado at this point, more of a lazy rolling cloud formation but there was a very obvious counterclockwise swirl that got noticeably faster and tighter in the 30 seconds I watched it. When the light turned green, I exceeded the posted speed limit in the neighborhood to get home to the safety of my basement if needed. I turned the TV on and sure enough, the super duper Doppler 9000 radar was showing a tornado at the exact intersection I had just passed through.

As far as I know, it did not touch down anywhere near us though.

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July 09, 2003

Teacher pay negatively related to student performance

From the article


Unions, which generally oppose performance-based pay for teachers, argue paying teachers more across the board will improve student test scores.

But Vedder, who favors tying pay to classroom performance, doesn't buy it. He questions how private schools manage to outperform public schools on standardized tests when private-school teachers earn much less than public-school teachers.

And homeschoolers, who outperm everybody, have teachers that are not paid and in fact are shelling out a lot of cash, plus foregoing the opportunity to have a career. What we have here is a perfect inverse relationship. The less cash you pay the teacher, the better the students do.

Of course, the benefits of homeschooling are awsome, no monetary value needed!

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July 07, 2003

TV Recommendations?

I spent some time this weekend looking at televisions, as I've decided to upgrade the boring ole' 27" TV we have in the family room. Can anybody offer any personal experience with a direct view HDTV in the 34" neighborhood? I'm mostly interested in how much better the picture is when watching regular DirectTV. I'm probably not going to shell out $500 plus $10/mo for the HDTV package until it gets a little beefier on content. All the TV stores are pumping real HDTV programming in, so the pictures in the store are stunning. However, since I won't be watching HDTV Discovery 24 X 7 at home, I'm in need of some real world feedback.

Actually, what I really want is a 42" Plasma TV :) However, I just can't find any justification to buy a TV that is worth more than my car!

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July 03, 2003

Hogwarts Homeschool

This homeschooler is building a curriculum around the idea of her kids attending Hogwarts. Cool...

"Care of Magical Creatures" sure sounds more interesting than biology.

Reblogged from Number 2 Pencil.

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Life in the Future

Life in the year 2000...from Popular Mechanics in 1950.

A few of the more fun predictions from the article...

Tottenville is as clean as a whistle and quiet. It is a crime to burn raw coal and pollute air with smoke and soot. In the homes electricity is used to warm walls and to cook. Factories all burn gas, which is generated in sealed mines. The tars are removed and sold to the chemical industry for their values, and the gas thus laundered is piped to a thousand communities.

Oops! Sort of missed on that one.

Around this central unit the house has been pieced together. Some of it is poured plastic—the floors, for instance. By 2000, wood, brick and stone are ruled out because they are too expensive.

Not too bad. Obviously wood and stone are still the core, but plastics and other synthetic materials are heavily used in residential construction.

It is a cheap house. With all its furnishings, Joe Dobson paid only $5000 for it. Though it is galeproof and weatherproof, it is built to last only about 25 years. Nobody in 2000 sees any sense in building a house that will last a century.

Just a little bit off on the price...although they were dead on with the durability prediction. Today's homes will not stand for 100 years like the homes of our grandparents.

Everything about the Dobson house is synthetic in the best chemical sense of the term. When Joe Dobson awakens in the morning he uses a depilatory. No soap or safety razor for him. It takes him no longer than a minute to apply the chemical, wipe it off with the bristles and wash his face in plain water.

Heh! They predicted Nair!

By 2000, a vast amount of research has been conducted to exploit principles that were embryonic in the first quarter of the 20th century. Thus sawdust and wood pulp are converted into sugary foods. Discarded paper table "linen" and rayon underwear are bought by chemical factories to be converted into candy.

They predicted McDonalds!

Of course the Dobsons have a television set. But it is connected with the telephones as well as with the radio receiver, so that when Joe Dobson and a friend in a distant city talk over the telephone they also see each other

The ubitquous videophone. A staple of every vision of the future.

By 2000, supersonic planes cover a thousand miles an hour, but the consumption of fuel is such that high fares have to be charged. In one of these supersonic planes the Atlantic is crossed in three hours. Nobody has yet circumnavigated the moon in a rocket space ship, but the idea is not laughed down.

I would have expected Popular Mechanics to be more optimistic on the possibility of space travel.

Cities have grown into regions, and it is sometimes hard to tell where one city ends and another begins.
They nailed that one. However, they also predicted commuting to work in personal helicoptes or huge flying busses.
It takes no more than a minute to transmit and receive in facsimile a five-page letter on paper of the usual business size. Cost? Five cents.
The fax machine.


Really - that had a lot of the major trends correct. Just missed where they would be in 2000.

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July 02, 2003

Dog Yoga

Really, how bad can the economy be if people are still spending money on stuff like yoga for their dogs?

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Mariah Carey to cover Def Leppard

Mariah is releasing a cover of Bringin' on the Heartbreak.

This should be the final nail in the coffin of Def Leppard's career. Can they refuse to let her record the song?

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