Grandma Audrey’s memorial/celebration was convicting. A life lived for Jesus is a beautiful thing and I hope that legacy will continue with our generation.

Once again we had the guys of the family grab a shovel and fill in the dirt. Death is so not-talked-about in our culture, sometimes to what I feel is an unhealthy distance, that there was something very real, very tangible, very transitional about leveling off the final shovelfuls. Thankfully I know that something similar to Luke 24:5 is being enacted, so the shoveling is more for us.

My wife did a great job of making sure that my youngest’s birthday was not forgotten this weekend. She and a friend unfolded an entire Dora story arc for the toddlers and their amigos.

Dora and Boots

Let’s give the toddlers blunt weapons and promise candy:

The setting was farm-ish (if The Map, The Map, I’m the Friggin’ Map is to be trusted), so bring on the cute photos of kids holding baby chicks:

And then the still cute, if yet frightening, re-enactment of Act V of MacBeth:

Some loving, if yet crazy, members of Christ’s Body decided to show us love in a very appreciated way by cleaning our house while we were at the memorial. I’m still overwhelmed and learning how to accept grace. My youngest, though, has learned how to accept a Memory game. She says thanks!

In the midst of a birthday and a memorial, we had cousins over.


The Polly Pocket/Beast wedding was going well until Vader showed up. Thankfully Beast has a wookiee for a best man.

Yep. It was a good weekend.

Writing is going well. I’m already 100 pages into my second round of edits.

I must admit, I prefer editing paper with a red pen versus editing on the computer screen (you know, with a cursor…Taciturna disagrees with me writing on the monitor). When your book’s 220+ pages, that’s quite a bit of paper for each go around.

Devin, your Colors of the Wind morning song might be a call to arms from the Forest Guardians to enact Captain Planety justice.

I don’t know if I had high expectations for Glee last night. I wonder if my enjoyment of an episode is dependent on if I like the songs they cover. And yes, Gleek is a dumb name.

Last night’s episode especially left me with some awkward “trust me, last season had some cool parts” moments today.

One staff member complained that the episode was too theatrical.

Pause

I got to watch Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker with my daughters. I am really enjoying Netflix on Wii. My wife and I go back and forth with what movies to get for the kids: she always votes for movies about sharing and dancing whereas I want to raise kids that can jump kick. Netflix gives us both.

If you didn’t see the Twitter feed, a mother duck (which hints at vulgarity) with a bunch of ducklings walked through our neighborhood on my way home from school. I debated picking them up to take them to safety but figured if they got this far I didn’t want to disturb the Circle of Life. You know, in case any Forest Guardians were in the vicinity.

I took a picture with my phone. If I was cool like sidewalkdriver I would have a 100xkajillion telephoto lens SLR in my Scion at all times.

That’s not the reason to avoid creating a character after midnight.

No, that reason is because when you’re at work you’ll float in and out of consciousness, thinking that you can crush doors with your mind.

You’ll also attract a flock of birds that will strafe the parking lot with their “payload” while you run to the Scion. I’m not joking; five confirmed hits to a one foot radius in one minute.

But the surreal moments didn’t stop there. I looked at an activity happening on campus and thought, “Wow. That’s really cool what those students are doing.”

I had forgotten it was an activity I had created when I joined on as librarian.

Today also marked the start of our student film creations. There are a lot more students who have their own video cameras. Much booyoring but it’s very exciting.

More excitement came when my principal asked me to join his team of master teachers at a conference this summer on how to run a school in difficult times. It gave me confirmation on how my principal views my job performance. Now we just gotta hope for the district school board/superintendency/Moff council to not go crazy in fear of Prop 100 not passing. (If it doesn’t pass, many teachers will be fired. That’s why I mentioned the classes of ~35-40 students.)

Elementary librarians are split between schools right now. I think we’ll see more of that and more elementary librarians get cut before the secondary ones, but committees of people have been known to do crazier things before.

I can’t help but laugh when I see the “Protect Public Safety – Yes on 406″ vs. “Protect Public Safety – No on 406″ ads. A new site has been created called clearuptheconfusion.com. Some of the budget items for the town are like, “Well, yeah, don’t waste money printing the Your Town newsletter.”

I hope the confusion doesn’t take away from 100, though.

Right now I have to remind myself that at least I don’t live in Panem.

On the topic of schools and politicians, you can assign a grade for Obama here. I wish you could assign CBS a grade. How many CSI/NCIS shows can you have?

It should be noted that when my principal told me the list of teachers he chose to join us at the conference, I said, “That’s like the Justice League of Teachers” and my mind thought, “I’m a Master teacher? Does that mean I get +3 to all my defense checks?”

No joke.

And this, my friends, is why you put away the character sheet before midnight.

You’d be surprised how many mogwai rules also apply to gamers.

My brain hurts. I was subjected to the district’s version of Chuck conditioning. (My wife spent the afternoon researching Phillip Glass songs, so my YouTube recommended videos are quite interesting. Let’s just say I spared you some trouble.)

The Clockwork Orange known as Bus Training involved a very long video reminiscent of Driver’s Ed – except now a voice kept repeating, “It’s all your fault!” as I watched buses get repeatedly slammed by trains and semis, buses running over pedestrians, and kids being extracted from the wreckage.

I watched this in the lobby while the rest of the already-trained bus drivers drank coffee before going to their routes.

The second video wasn’t too bad – 22 minutes (I checked the VCR (that I helped set up)) worth of information about proper mirror adjustments. When you’ve got that many convex lenses to align, it makes sense.

I did get to do behind the wheel, complete with pulling that lever to swing open the door. My instructor asked if I could turn on the air conditioning. I felt like I was fumbling for the hyperdrive switch as I made my way around a couple miles worth of suburbia.

When we returned to the Bus Barn (actual name) the buses were returning from their route. These drivers have done this so many times, it’s a synchronized ballet of giant metal transports sliding perfectly into their spots – backwards!! – without any hesitation. I expect that Stanley Kubrick directed today’s routine.

Then it was my turn. Buses waited for me as I looped around, swung the bus left and right, pulled forward, pulled back, pulled forward again, pulled forward more, was warned that the mirrors stick out farther than they look, slowed down, and finally completed some reasonable facsimile of a parking job.

Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time with me can agree on two facts:

1. Parking is an unnecessary detail in my mind.
2. I move the seat back very far.

A bonus to the bus? Lots of head room.

I have a lot of respect for bus drivers. I wish I could have chatted about this with my grandpas, both being masters of heavy vehicles. Kids, don’t act stupid on buses. There are way too many blind spots (like giant metal panels) – not to mention the video clip where the kid followed his frisbee under the bus will stay with me for a while.

You know when you work out for a while, like riding a bike at a fast pace for an extended period of time? Or running with weights on your ankles? When you take off the weights (Harrison Bergeron, anyone?) it takes very little effort to move, almost like you’re flying. That’s what it felt like driving the Scion out of the Bus Barn.

After an exhausting, impromptu training (I found out today I have too many students for the school van), I can officially drive…the short bus. Yes, it has been mocked before, but it is MY short bus and I am very defensive of it.

I signed an agreement that I would drive defensively.

(Pictures hopefully tomorrow.)

I must confess to you now that I fell into propaganda. I was emphatic about buying a truck because I saw an ad that it was Truck Month. If it’s only for one month, those deals will run out!

Then my high Wisdom modifier wife made a lasting comment: “It’s always Truck Month.” Over recent years I have noticed this same thing: every month is Truck Month.

So, like in good bloggh tradition, I’ve decided to keep track of the Truck Months. It’s like a paper chain counting towards Christmas, but instead of Christmas, it’s over-hyped vehicles. And instead of paper, it’s words on a screen. But other than that, it’s the exact same.

For the first one, the October one, Ford warns that it is the Final Days. [insert multi-horned goat/2012 joke here]

On the topic of Abominations of Desolation, have you seen the new Range Rover Sports? They definitely know that the era of the gas-guzzling SUV is waning, and I might be wrong, but I think they’re taking style tips from a mix between the Scion xB and a RAV4.

I wonder what the difference is between the $17,000 xB and the $60,000 Range Rover Sport. $43,000 floor mats?

Unrelated news: the word count is at 7,000+ as of last night/this morning. Also, Mike, you could be a mayor who patrols like Batman/the mayor of Newark. When Hulu puts up Conan’s interview with him, I’ll try and link to it. (The reason I heard about the Flagstaff mayor was because she broke up a drug deal right outside of one of her meeting rooms. She was on the news saying something to the effect of, “Not on my watch!”)

Have you seen Auto-tune the News?

I know that I’ve left some off – with all of the big summer blockbusters in May and beyond, I’m sure you can think of some more.

Worthy of mention is Chief Wiggum’s Sunshine and Lollipops, but I classify that as more of a chase scene.

The Holmes Part
I’m researching the history and motivation behind the creation of Professor Moriarty. He’s been showing up every ten chapters in Vanguard, doing his supervillain thing (being one of the first supervillains).

But have you heard of Adam Worth?

This is the original “Napoleon of Crime” that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may have used as a reference point. Worth had been marked accidentally as killed in action in the Civil War. Having no identity, he floated from regiment to regiment earning sign-up bonuses and then leaving. He then took his earnings to Boston, coordinated a pickpocket ring, and then took the show over seas for bigger heists.

Having exhausted Tchaikovsky for the moment, I’ve been listening extensively to Johnny Cash. I don’t know if that can coexist in the Scion, but we haven’t had a matter/anti-matter baryogenetic explosion yet, so I think we’re cool.

So now, as I’m typing chapter 50 of Vanguard (remember: short, James Patterson-esque chapters), I wish I had Ghost Riders in the Sky or Folsom Prison Blues playing through my head as The Hessian Horseman tears apart Wilbur Gloaming Junior High.

Nope. Oh What A Dream. D’oh. (At least it’s not Ghost Chickens in the Sky.)

The Star Wars Part
Sadly, I’ve actually wanted to see this happen to Donald for a long time:

It’s better than if I wanted to see Minnie in a Slave Leia bikini. Oh, wait. I guess some guy at Disney thinks that’s important. Check out the figurines. The crazy part? Think limited edition Star Wars collectible. Now add a Disney character into the equation:

f(How much you’ll pay) = (Ability to name Ellorrs Madak)^{Number of Mickey shirts worn this year}

The math is staggering.

And by the way…my phone rocks. And the Torrent that my dad is loaning us is pretty cool, too. Dad, did you know that you have an AUX port where you can play music from an iPod/phone over the stereo system. I swear Pontiac must share some factory space with Scion. (I miss my Scion. It’s weird how over the course of a few days I am really humbled about a ding in the car.)

Torrent at Wilcox:

Torrent at Deming:

And on top of the weird goings-on, check out what one of our budding Sherwood Forest thieves did at school:

Tonight I was at Fry’s picking up the necessities for taking care of a sick baby. I was sitting in the Scion when an elementary school kid in the truck parked next to me slammed his door into the side of the car. I did get out quickly to check the scratch but pulled back when I realized what a 6’9″ scowling Hairyman must look like to the poor kid.

Now imagine my encounter with humility as a mom with two young kids is sobbing as she gets them into her car. She’s got the scarf and look of a chemotherapy patient. As she’s crying, I’m thinking, “Do I treat her kids to Baskin Robbins? I have to get home. Should I go get them dinner?” While my brain is in discourse, I watch as a group of women from all walks/sedans/SUVs of life, including a cashier in full uniform, come support this woman and comfort her. People surprise me. (To feel like you were in the Scion with me, check out what I was listening to.)

Think about all of the heartache that we see/endure/cause during the course of one day. Opportunities.

Also:
I was glad to hear from The Cannon (our stand-up comedian/puppeteer friend)(re-printed in case you missed the e-mail):

Either gender is welcome. Yesterday I got two tickets to go see Tim and Eric (a hilarious comedy duo) for Sun. January 18th 7:30pm. And, then afterward I wish to go see a weird circus sideshow act at the Trunk Space. It’ll be an all expenses paid trip to wacky fun land. The first response I get is the person I take with me on this grand adventure.

Wacky fun land is, in fact, truth in advertising. Any takers?

And Israel/Gaza/Puppy breaks it all down nicely:

We’re taking things easy. (This is earth-shaking for my family.)

Instead of being annoyed at cranky dad and cranky kids, my kids are going to sleep in their own beds at their regular bed times. We’re swinging by my in-laws to see family from Montana and that’s about it. If you’re not doing this, that’s okay. This is an experiment for me. I shall take you along on this experiment.

I present to you some options:

1. Howard the Duck – I say this at the beginning as a back up if all others fail. I mean, it’s a movie executive produced by George Lucas starring Lea Thompson (of Back to the Future) and Tim Robbins (of Shawshank Redemption). How bad could it be?
2. Check out the streaming video from EarthCam. Times Square, brought to your computer. You can also choose from 13 different still cams (as well as updating pictures from around the U.S. and parts of the world), and not once do you have to watch Brittney Spears, the Jonas Brothers, Ryan Seacrest or Fallout Boy if you don’t want to. Do they have a Dick Clark camera? Even though his robotic joints are being modded this week, I still want to make sure he’s okay.
3. If you’re like me and lived life instead of watching TV, now you can catch up on 24: Redemption.
4. Have you met the new ball?
   
   Should be pretty. You can also check the schedule of events to pretend like you’re in Times Square and see what the networks don’t think you want to see.

Compare it to EarthCam’s coverage.

Proof that we love our sister-in-law as we plan for her wedding reception:

You should have seen the neighbors’ reactions when the back of the Scion opened up. All stereotypes perplexingly thrown out the window.
But to repeat, for the sanity of grandparents, this is for the sister-in-law’s wedding reception and in no way related to New Year’s.

I did have to document the most amount of alcohol I’ve ever possessed. Substitute this for Vanilla Mocha Rockstar and a box of Hot Pockets and then we must question my temperance.

Mortar and Pestle for the win!

Argh! The senile Tortimer would only give me one party popper. My wife just got seven.

I didn’t vote for you, shell-for-brains.

Updates as they show up through the day/night/day.

Every time you hear a cacophony of metal hitting metal in the video, that is J and I “cheering” with strained voices.

Also, the Scion has a feature that rocks. Some readers may view it as archaic, but I view it as borderline arcane: the exclamation point. When ! shows up, it is necessary to check tire pressure. 35 psi for the front, 32 psi for the back. This is in the comparison to the, “Eh, looks alright. Maybe fill up that other side a bit more, now that I see it” that the Reliant inspired.

Muahaha. Your democracy has been set back five minutes.

And I think this may be the longest article title/URL. Come back for updates throughout the day, much like what I had first envisioned as The Longest Day.

6:08am – Watch as I nitpick Yahoo. “All that’s left is to vote, even for Obama.” That’s an ‘open to interpretation’ way to say it. Is there anyone you’re leaning towards, Yahoo? Hmmm?

6:13am – Uh oh. Make sure you scan that correctly. We don’t want a chad incident.

6:17am – They’ve now overflowed to the tables. No talking during the test!

6:57am – Make a Spot check.
As stealthy as a 6’9″ guy can be… (Although wasn’t there an example in one of the rulebooks for a Wookiee tracking a katarn in the rain? Devin, what’s the DC on that?)
I thought you might enjoy the most recent part of The Ruing:

Wooha!
- Wedge taking out the AT-AT with a tow cable

It should be noted that “Into the Trap” was playing in the Scion as I drove up today. Yes, it’s Return of the Jedi and not Empire Strikes Back, but it’s still an awesome squad theme song.

Brown Squadron, you have been given the go ahead. You are weapons free.

8:38am – Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy.
Actually, just warm.

8:50am – I shall drown my sorrows in RockStar Juiced.

8:52am – J was there at 4:45am at his site. Yeah, contact with the outside world!

8:54am – Review of Juiced: Good for drowning, not necessarily drowning sorrows. I can taste the mango skin. It’s…unnerving.

Not a vanilla mocha.

8:59am – For my wife:

Snaps is the name of the game, the name of the game is snaps.
Can you please
recommend a
*Snap*
physician?

11:15am – Back from voting:

I have my reasons.

12:02pm – Castro praises one of the candidates. Wow. It’s one of those “please don’t help” moments.

1:32pm – Found out from Peter about the Secretary of the Interwebs. (Yeah! Cory Doctorow in a hot air balloon versus Tron Paul!)

3:27pm -

Cooper Black? Times New Roman?

Ouch. I just sprained my sense of design.

3:57pm – There’s a guy here taking a picture of his votes with his cell phone. What a weirdo.

Unless…

Does he have a rival website, also full of Order 66 and El Pollo Loco? I should ask rather than assume.

4:03pm – I got distracted instead by fonts with a live preview.

4:26pm – Why to avoid exit polls and why CNN vowed to not use them after the 2000 election - did they hold to it? Did you know that in France it’s illegal to conduct a poll within 48 hours of an election? It’s also city ordinance for Parisians to have a permit before using a tripod to film. Madness.

4:40pm – Make your own mini Sheriff Megatron. Fun for the whole family at the cost of one sheet of cardstock.

Click on the picture to hugeify it.

5:09pm – I don’t think we should call it just yet.

vs.

I’ve never actually been to Maine, but I could have sworn they had more people than that.

5:41pm – Political Analyst John Elway

5:42pm – Just got called “dude” by one of the workers.

Cringe.

5:44pm – Why is ‘John Elway’ in single quotes? Is it a quote inside the dialogue by Yahoo? Did Tolkien write the Flash dashboard?

5:46pm – Bwaha. Tatyana Ali? Little Ashley Banks?

6:16pm – Considering running on the Monster Raving Loony Party ticket. Do we have a U.S. branch? I guess we do. (Hosted on Tripod. Tres officiale.)

6:30pm – Town Crier just did his “Polls close in 30 minutes” yell.

7:58pm – They have finally packed up. And they still didn’t lean my name. Much shivering, much creeped out. Everyone must leave. Go home.

9:43pm – It’s funny that there’s still ads for McCain/Palin surveys saying “Can they win?” on Yahoo. There’s always the time machine option. I wonder what my grandpa would have thought. Also, I find it dreadfully ironic that the maps aren’t even all colored in yet. (Our state being one of them.) Did all of the hurtful words add up to much? Now to support our new president and be done with political ads for a little bit! Wooha! (Although be prepared for a “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.” from time to time.)

I always noticed this up at NAU. The German students had a thing for mocking our presidents with masks. I guess it’s the next generation:

My oldest is a comedian. She kept switching the words around, cracking herself up. Keep in mind that I didn’t read any of it to her:


My youngest has a more “Theatre of the Absurd” sense of humor:

Other nerd news:
I will be watching Heroes hours before you mere West Coasters even dream of the show. I should make some “predictions”. And then next Monday I, too, shall have my powers stripped. But I will say this: our basement apartment has an HD big screen TV.

And the iQ, the 56 mpg Toyota? Yeah, it’ll be a Scion.

1. The whole community gets involved with the football games.
   
   They have the police do donuts (is that irony I smell?) in the football field with a giant prison break siren wailing. To make it even more realistic, the announcer lady (who I swear is from NPR…the shows that are on at 3am) lectures the crowd about how showing loyalty can be declared through good sportsmanship and not starting fights. Yeah, let’s name the team the Criminals. Real positive role-modeling, district board.
2. Actually, the band is the least involved in the game. After the half-time show, they check out for a rave:
   
   Did you ever see Matrix 2: Reloaded, where they have that giant, muddy dance scene for 15 minutes? To be fair, we used to check out for 3rd quarter, as well.
3. 
   Do you remember T-Ball? Same type of visitor’s stands. They have fireworks, neon signs, sirens…but they prioritize based on how many people would actually make the road trip out there.
4. Not all of the cheerleaders go on the road trip, either. You may have to bring your own:
   
5. Everyone was very nice and welcoming, especially the band boosters.
6. My only complaint? Make sure that when you approach Ave 36E, turn off the outside air to your car (Greeley Dr. Pepper up the nose level of stank) and circulate what you have. And please, don’t do like we did and start circulating once the stank had already penetrated the car.
   I put up a warning for people:
   

Marvel vs. DC
To get the biases out of the way – Batman is my favorite superhero, but once you start talking rich universes I’m more of a Marvel guy. Exception: Flash is cooler than Quicksilver, although Quicksilver has a cooler lineage.

But what about the fruit snacks?

It should be noted that Marvel first produced the Transformers comic books.
To start, let’s go supervillains:

Joker (left) vs. Green Goblin (right)
Both are fans of purple and green. Both are insane. Both are globs of modified corn starch and fruit juice concentrate. Maybe not a good place to start. It looks like they weren’t even trying.

The “white flavored” snacks are arranged in order of coolness. The insignia from the movies/batarang. Woot.

Next, a spiderweb. I’m diggin’ it, but it could be left over from Dora the Explorer Halloween Snacks. (We never had them (I loathe the undead), although the Dora Saves the Mermaids ones are tasty.)

But what’s up with the Third Reich covered truck bed Transformer? It’s like the Scion-wannabe Chevy Groove or whatever that ugly spawn of a Sith-corrupted PT Cruiser is that’s driving around. Nissan, just don’t.

Let’s look at the “blue flavored” snacks. Venom is really cool, but his tongue-lash does not an appetite make. Optimus is great, but his faceplate and pronged sideburns don’t stand out.

The Batman bust sticks out. The snack is deeper than it is wide, so you have to flip it to see the picture straight on. I like it.

Yellow. Mangled Bumblebee face or clear insignia? Insignia.

Evidence that the Batman fruit snacks are cooler than the Spider-man and Transformers ones combined. (Photographic play on words in memory of Brenda.)

In conclusion, DC (in this instance) beats Marvel and Libya remains a land of many contrasts.

My daughter was kindof shocked by the sacrifice required by science of her fruit snacks:

In an unrelated story, my wife went with my sister-in-law to go see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 during lunchtime…

For my loving family (and Internet stalkers) I have my non-district blocked Twitter-ish system.

5:35am – roll up with stereo thumping in the Scion, old people waiting outside my door.
6:05am – get all the books checked in and queued up for re-shelving
6:10am – check e-mail
6:22am – finish e-mail
6:23am – realize it’s going to be a long day…I should have brought a book
7:04am – Jeremy called – he’s sitting at the church, keeping it open for polls – let’s rock it for America! Woo!
7:55am – breakfast burrito and a strawberry milk (you want to be me) and a conversation with the principal about Call of Duty 4 – hoping that my assistant stops singing the score from Mama Mia
8:18am – election workers started up a game of Balderdash – the irony is not lost on me
8:37am – sad realization that less than 10 voters have shown up so far – do people care about local government?
8:51am – sitting down to Betrayal on Orbis 2 and a Rockstar Vanilla Roasted Light
8:55am – elections supervisor came in: “Oh, no one uses the library anymore. No wonder they let you use it.” – I had to interject – and restrain my Force Grip – I kicked a class out for you, buddy – follow me on a normal day
9:04am – read character creation rules e-mail from Sean and the Ewok section of the rulebook to calm down Librarian Rage
9:14am – the chosen one in the book is referred to as The Scion – heh heh
9:17am – D’oh! Just read the warning on the Rockstar – “This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” Well, dang! Why am I drinking this espresso and milk if not to cure my Krytos fever?
10:09am – encouraging picture from the other polling place – if they have more voters show up it will be through sheer cuteness alone

12:02pm – visited by beautiful family bearing McDonald’s – I am, indeed, loving it
12:49pm – disputed election worker’s claims that presidents only get retirement until 80 (so you should vote for McCain, who would draw no retirement from taxpayer dollars if serving two terms) – according to the Former Presidents Act, established in 1958, presidents receive a lifetime pension based on the current rate of an executive officer during their presidency – that pension is currently $191,300 – Barack would still theoretically cost more if you went solely off of lifetime pension, but it’s tough to predict the lifetime of a president
And that, my friends, is why you have a librarian – Boom, baby!
3:42pm – received threatening e-mail


5:40pm – visited by Jeremy and Company
6:25pm – found proper Wookiee prefix and suffix name appendix for my new character (by the end of the night I will have every bloggh category used)
6:33pm – realizing how long of a day it is that I can be this excited about some clan’s Wookiee name guide
7:59pm – only 2 Rockstars and coming down hard – I am a leaf in the wind…I am a leaf in the wind
8:35pm – When Boo-yor was in Li-Brar-Yyyyy….Let my Fiction gooooo

8:38pm – Could it be? Is it true? Will the librarian leave after only 15 hours in the library? Quick, while no one’s looking!
9:25pm – HOME

I was all psyched to watch the Olympics and then multiple people ruined the China versus USA basketball results (the only event I wanted to watch). I then read about the adult diapers that the drummers in the opening ceremonies had to wear and I checked out. It was fun to think of continuous coverage on my TV, but after a minute I would always get bored.

And hey…I read Siddhartha. I have an attention span.

I reserved my copy of Force Unleashed today. I don’t know if I could handle the Wii Fit shenanigans again. With Target you buy a $5 gift card to reserve a copy for seven days. That $5 gets applied to the purchase of the game…and a wall cling of a Sith apprentice! Where would I put that?

Oh. The Star Wars room.

Yep. Nerdy librarian. Generation Dead is right up your alley, Devin.

On Saturday we went to a friend’s birthday party and played Citadel. It’s a city building game where character cards give you special abilities. I was a fan of the Assassin and Tax Collector hanging out at my Docks and Fortress. Throw a Warlord into the mix if someone already grabbed one of my favorite characters and fun was had.

I also thought that it was funny that it’s possible to make an exact likeness of NAU:

Check this out from my trip home from work:

This thing was holding on until it crawled onto the roof. I was expecting to see it get tossed.
It “closing ceremonied” my expectations.

I have been called many things on this trip: Tall Drink of Water, Slim, “Mom, look at how huge that guy is!”, BWDCAB (much props to my FBWDCAB).

I have also learned many things on this trip.

1. Tall = Stares
   Homemade Motorcycle = Claps
   Tall Man on a Homemade Motorcycle = I’m My Own Flippin’ Fourth of July Parade
   
   This thing is made of car mufflers, armchairs, and awesomeness. My cousin-in-law is a genius. He gets swarmed with people asking him for Ace of Cakes autographs.
   
2. No one messes with Lucy
   
3. Concert by the river? Beautiful
   
   Concert Worse than Karaoke in a Cage Downtown? Not Beautiful
4. Fighting Bison? Cup of Gravy!
   
5. There can be only 3 Scions in the town of Laurel at any given time. Town ordinance.
6. Trains do entrap Laurel, even if you’re late.
   
   (Two trains in this photo.)
7. This is the plate du jour in Montana.
   
8. This is the hottest garage in Montana.
   
9. This is the quintessential sportscar of Montana.
   
10. No matter how cute, daughters-of-cousins-in-law need to still have driving instruction. Especially in the Scion.
    
11. Family, no matter where they live, are great.
    
    
    
    (More family photos to come.)
12. And my daughter can turn any placemat into a work of art.
    

Now to tackle the open road once again. Here’s hoping that the kids do just as well returning home. Tomorrow’s stop? SLC. After that? Vegas. Imagine the irony.

To appease the AppleTV users, all of the photos uploaded today are on Flickr. Search for photostream booyor (comin’ out of nowhere).

I should correct that statement.

My Scion xB has killed many things on this trip. Awesome handling, powerful air conditioner, lots of technology, and a style that has had many people stop and stare in the windows/check my tires without realizing that I was sitting there watching them.

But the cool box shape?
Death. Lots of death.

I have hit every single bug from Arizona to Montana. I have washed my windshield five times. There’s different manner of wings, antennae, and whatever is inside bugs all over my grill.
It is an Exoskeletal Holocaust.

The bugs are like, “Scion? Who makes tha…?” [slam]

Fanfares and all that.

As we are on the last leg of the trip to Montana (aside from the actual being in Montana and then getting home), we come to the last haiku. I have definitely kept my writing sharpened since college. The daily writings and postings were helpful when it came time to do a technical guidebook for my district and I was basically tech blogging.

I think I will miss the daily challenge. I have a couple of other concepts bouncing around. But first we have today’s adventure:

1. Yellowstone – I hear there’s bears. Or was that Jellystone?
2. Another full day in the Scion. I busted the entire 6 hour drive yesterday and was ready to keep going. I am a new convert to cruise control.
3. A potential foray into…dial-up…where we’ll be staying for a week. You may find me huddling in the parking lot of a local hotel. If the locals have “WHS” (hotel-speak, I guess, for wi-fi. Much shorter/clearer abbreviation than what the rest of the world uses).

There will be an automated post coming up. I will be on the road by then, but I still found the haiku fun. As The Robot promises, there’s a fun treat in post I’m writing (blogging on the road leads to some space-time thingys).

an-open-letter

Enjoy this most recent to the ultimate album, Ultimate Karate.

Thanks for the adventure!

A lot less awesome than when Devinistan’s Led Zeppelin Armada participated in a coup by Lord Beverage.

Since last we met our fair heroes, a new car had been introduced into the mix. Firefly transports being a little fuel inefficient for my taste, I had another option. A 2009 Scion XB. (Yes, I added a new category but I won’t rant too much. But I will be tracking some stats. (Like any good testing coordinator.))

I just finished making labeled DVD boxes and stuffing them with stickered DVDs, enough for 19 ballet parents to enjoy. (Thus the hour of my post. Woo, summer! Anything is possible!)

While working on the DVD project I learned a lot of stuff.
(Some of this pertains to even non-Mac users, but if you don’t want to read about DVD technology, you can scroll down.)

(You’ll know it’s time to turn the page when you see Mittens dance like this:
)

Let’s begin:

1. DVDs have uniform digital codes in them that give clues to a player on how to interpret the signal.
2. There’s a code that allows newer-ish DVD players to do what’s called “Pan and Scan”.
3. Pan and Scan is where instead of letterboxing a widescreen film on a 4:3 TV, the DVD player tries to guess where the camera motion is going and zooms in on that part, cutting off a huge chunk of both sides of the picture rectangle. I guess this was invented for those old guys who would come in and argue with Jeremy about how widescreen cuts off the picture. (It doesn’t. Just watch the end credits of A New Hope. (By the way…now I know why watching the podrace scene in Episode I hurt so bad. My copy did pan and scan. (Second reason it hurt, I guess. The first was the two-headed announcer’s,”Oh, that’s going to leave a mark.” [shudder]))
4. Jeremy is officially the man when it comes to DVDs. I had spent some time trying to figure out why my iDVD-produced ballet project was zoomed in in a weird spot. He walks into the room. “Oh, hey, it’s a pan and scan DVD.”
5. I found a mini-program that takes a DVD disc image and tweaks it how you’d like.
6. iDVD doesn’t just do pan and scan by default, it doesn’t let you turn that off when you burn discs. Still boggled by that. I watched Fever Pitch and wondered why I could only see the guy’s mouth and it was all pixely.
7. Here’s the program by Daniel Rogers that lets you tweak the IFOs automatically on your disc images. (Without having to edit in hexadecimal. It has been nine years since I’ve had to do that.) Put the two utility Perl programs in your usr/local/bin. (Yeah, I know. Me, too. How I found that folder was Finder->Go->Go to Folder and then typed in usr/local/bin.) Now you can type “idvd-ws-fix” and your option codes (check the README) in Terminal and it will start tweaking your disc image.
8. I like seeing crazy decimal percentages scrolling by to tell me my progress. I think it said David Lightman was ready to play.
9. Another issue is that QuickTime will display a video in 720×480 even if the aspect is, say, 854×480. Simple fix (Thank you, Peter the Futile Ohm, especially since my crazy schedule postponed you from Tuesday to Wednesday to Thursday.). In QuickTime, go to Window->Show Movie Properties and click on Video Track. Uncheck Preserve Aspect Ratio and change the dimensions to what you need. Make sure that you save.
10. Here’s another cool trick for iDVD (Thanks again, Peter!). You can only do automatic chapters every few minutes, right? Not limited anymore! If you add chapter markers in Final Cut (or even iMovie), iDVD will honor those. Now I have unleashed Ultimate Ken Burns Power XIII!!!

Go, Mr. Mittens!
Thanks for indulging in that little DVD geek session. It’s mainly for my own reference later, but I know that I could have used an article like this…Now, to work on the district technology handbook…ballet is done!

As promised in days of yore…yore being Wednesday…here are some pictures!

Here I celebrate two of my favorite things from Japan. Auron was not present for comment.

My wife took this picture of my first hundred miles. I’ve never had a new car (Frankly, I only had the ’88 Reliant K. This is kindof a jump.).

We then went with a friend to RA to get some official sushi.

The Haiku(s)
Dinosaurs happen
Get used to the claws and horns
That’s just how it goes

I thought I was cool
Until I complained about
the teenager noise