Can you just feel the nostalgia in these words?

Declaration of Secrecy

I, the undersigned, hereby acknowledges towards LEGO System A/S that all pieces of information, whether submitted orally or in writing, documents, drawings and any other kind of material (hereinafter referred to as “Information”) which I receive during test of LEGO Universe, until launch of game, shall be treated strictly confidentially, and that all such Information shall always be kept in a satisfactory way and shall not in any circumstances be revealed to any third party.

Furthermore, the undersigned declares that all such Information shall only be used in connection with the co-operation with LEGO System A/S and shall in no circumstances be copied or reproduced in any way without the prior written consent of LEGO System A/S.

The undersigned hereby furthermore declares that I will never use the Information as mentioned above for any commercial purposes.

The undersigned accepts that all such Information remains the property of LEGO System A/S and therefore, at LEGO System A/S option, either has to be returned to LEGO System A/S after the termination of the co-operation or has to be destroyed.

Congratulations, you have been chosen to participate in the Closed-Beta test of LEGO Universe!

The Maelstrom is trying to destroy imagination, so hurry up and create a LEGO Universe account with your LEGO ID. You’ll be a heroic minifig before you know it.

What I find funny is that there are limited times when I can play. It must be server maintenance or something.

So, if you want to find me, here are the times:
* Thursdays: 17.00 – 03.00 EU (CET) / 11 am – 9 pm US (EST)
* Saturdays: 20.00 – 02.00 EU (CET) / 2 pm – 8 pm US (EST)
* Sundays: 14.00 – 17.00 EU (CET) / 8 am – 11 am US (EST)

Here it is.

The craziest part is that it’s searchable.

The irony of all-out Nerf warfare on the show did not escape my sense of timeliness.

Okay, so maybe some spoilers from me, but Nerf is not integral to the plot.

Or is it?

Thanks to everyone who listened to my beautiful wife on the radio. I’m proud. And for those that may wonder if celebrity has caused her to ignore the little people, she still helps us out:

This is how my wife clamped down the lining for my orthopedic insert for the glue to dry.

Video game news: If you haven’t gone to Gamestop yet to get your free demo disc of Monster Hunter 3, you need to. I initially set out to play a Final Fantasy-esque protagonist with a giant sword:

but the camera angle (which doesn’t rotate with you…unless it’s an unseen option) couldn’t keep up with the hunt.

I’m not too proud to admit that I switched to the hunter with the shotgun. Those poor herbivores never saw it coming.

On the topic of Final Fantasy, FFIV (or II if you were like me and bought the original cartridge back at Babbage’s) released on the Virtual Console today. Airships and dragoons are always fun additions to the party. I didn’t pick it up (since I still have the original cartridge) but I’m holding out for the actual FFII and III for the Virtual Console. Is it sad that I’m more excited for those than the big release of Final Fantasy XIII this week? (And yes, Dad, I know that since there’s 13 of them, Final is not an appropriate adjective. Don’t get me started on the Crystal Chronicles spin-off.)

It’s true that about 80% of all jobs aren’t advertised. Although most job hunters spend hours every day responding to online openings, let’s face it: it’s probably easier to break into the Pentagon than to be noticed via an online job application.

Like in traditional bloggh format, we’ll celebrate today’s posting achievement with a song:

Seriously. Who knew politicians were so entertaining? And applause for rhyming “preterite” with “Connecticut”.

This came across my e-mail today:

Choreographing all of those middle schoolers is actually pretty impressive. I also would love the compliment of some kid holding up my book and screaming while pointing at it.

The related videos on the “district appropriate video service” (YouTube being completely blocked) made me laugh:

In video game news:

Did you see the kid who created a strategy guide for Zelda – for people who can’t see?

The impossible is only the untried.

Also – the Playstation Smartphone should debut sometime this year. This year will also see Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M.
What is Nintendo going to release for Christmas? Probably Zelda.

Finally – You’ve gotta love Yahoo tech blogs.

Regardless of it’s sales, it’s still fun to play.

Which it’s is it, people?

If you heard rumors that the first draft of my current writing project is done, those rumors are valid. It came in at 56,000+ words, which is more than book two of Ally Carter’s Gallagher series. Right now I have my two most trusted editors reading through it to make sure it’s readable. Then it will be time for the second draft.
I think it’s a good sign that I’m excited for other people to read it.

I am indeed waiting for a phone call right now. My grandma went in for a triple bypass surgery today. It’s something like this.

Other odd highlights from today:
Two unrelated people spoke the same line from my life’s script. “You’re a librarian? That works. You can reach the highest shelf.” The first person had initially said that I was too tall to be a librarian until the shelf epiphany hit. The latter person (I’m the ladder person, I guess) was at the Apple store.

“You need a new power cord for your MacBook? Let me get the…nevermind.” I pulled the box down. I had to stand a little on my tiptoes – a truly tall display.

Did you see talkinturkey’s exciting MacBook news? Very exciting, to say the least. I should have had the Apple Geniuses/Geniusi etch a giant lumberjack on my MacBook.

And Mike, you will be proud. A conversation teaching my youngest to use the word “rear end” instead of what she was saying devolved into the four of us singing Mr. Roboto in the kitchen.

March 8 – Free Monster Hunter demo disc at GameStop
May 23 – Super Mario Galaxy 2
June 27 – Metroid: Other M

On June 14 the DS will have a “game” called 100 Classic Books that will let you read public domain classic books. The $19 price tag is cheap when compared to other DS games but expensive when compared to Kindle-ish apps for phones. A plus, though, is the ability to download new content via the Nintendo WFC. I’m intrigued to see how this plays out. I know that people bought a PSP just to watch movies. Will people prefer this over an iPod Touch?

Plushenko has created the platinum Olympic medal, solidifying his place in history as The Scary Russian Guy That You Have To Beat in a Sports Movie. Ivan Drago, we salute you.

Another fun mash-up from today: Buzz Lightyear as a River/Dollhouse character from Joss Whedon. He has memory loss; his altered perceptions cause him to blank out and shoot lasers at people. I believe that he is the prototype for a Firefly character.

Do you remember these clips from Sesame Street? Did that cake guy always trip? Is the cake guy Jim Henson?

Watching Sesame Street today on non-Hulu it was the habitat/40th anniversary episode. That was playing the last time I stayed home sick.

Saturday, to de-compress from our coordinating/catering, we watched the G.I. Joe movie (not the cartoon movie with Nemesis Enforcer…that would have been more realistic). Yes, I understand that the Bloggh should have certain standards and now I have learned my lesson.

Here’s the set-up: Cobra creates genetically-engineered fearless soldiers. So, if they’re so fearless, why do they scream in panic when they fall down a conveniently-placed shaft and/or have a grenade shoved under their collars? Next time, can I get hired to read over the script? $10 for a quick run-through. Was it supposed to be gritty or cheesy? The language says gritty. The impalements say gritty.

Seriously: next time you watch the film, keep a tally of how many people get impaled in the movie. Double the score for each time the spike is revealed stabbing through another device, like a datapad/pillar/Hummer.

I don’t care what anyone tells you, take it from me: Marlon Wayans is cheesy in the film. Plain and simple.

I was okay with one thing they changed about the franchise, though. I like that Zartan can switch faces. The action figure just turned a sickly blue in the sun. But replacing the president as a shapeshifter? X2 did that well with Senator Kelly. Heroes copied that. G.I. Joe copied that. Through the Xerox effect, the initial luster has dulled and the copy has become muddled and inky.

I also broke down and got Tomena Sennar for my brother’s bachelor party. Yes, it is as psycho as advertised. It was a great way to keep the guys’ attention while we waited for Mike to bail us out with Rock Band 2. With the left-over WiiPoints, I sent Mega Man 3 to myself. I hadn’t played that game for 15-20+ years. I beat Tomena Sennar before I went to bed on Friday night.

Let’s just say video games have been dumbed down over the years. My wife laughs at me losing horribly to a game I could beat as an elementary school kid.

And yes, Chaarli, today’s wootshirt is very librarian-esque:

Permit me to rant to my even wider audience about access of information. Why does the status of Jon and Kate’s relationship (you know, the 8 Kate) still rank higher for the news than the capture of the Taliban’s second-in-command?

Also, have you ever taken the time to read the crazy stuff coming out of Ahmadinejad’s mouth? Having hung out with snowboarders at NAU (and by “hanging out” I mean “documenting misdemeanors for Residence Life” – Mike has an even better tale), the comments from Shaun White’s coach don’t surprise me. If NBC has been covering snowboarding for longer than a week, they should know to what degree the trick should be stomped and what adverbs get attached to said stomping. Do people not give Ahmadinejad press time or do we just not care? We care more about a coach’s naughty words, not “I will wipe the entire people group out”.

Hopefully some junior highers will leave school this year with a wider worldview.

Did he not see my staff shirt? Maybe he didn’t think things through.

2. You may argue that curling is a real sport. I, for one, understand its intricacies.

3. You may go to freedom.fcov.org/podcast and see if you recognize any voices.

Whenever I turn on Pandora, I write. A lot. Many thanks to James Horner and John Williams for their compositional efforts. The final stage is set. The confrontation between good and evil will play out to its end sometime this week while I’m at work. (I’m talking about my book, if you didn’t catch that.)

Today I also got a certain bachelor party planned, a certain bachelor party involving lasers and teen wolves. My brother is getting married on Saturday. If you’d like details as to where and when, message me. It’s low-key, so I don’t want to invite the whole Interwebs.

Like that “i’mnotbettywhite” person that keeps wanting to comment…

Add in the poison spraying I did in the yard and I’d say it was a very productive Monday. Nothing says “Remember the Presidents” like gallons of Ortho coating ragweed and dandelions.

I must have been really tired, though, since I could have sworn I saw Nick Jonas and Snoop Dogg singing with Celine Dion.

Wait. That was real?

And I bet you’ll try to convince me that I saw a time-traveling Elvis confront Mike who thought he was Pablo Picasso.

That was real, too?

(Picasso at the Lapine Agile by THE Steve Martin is actually a fun show and yes, Mike, you did become a convincing Picasso.)

One thing that I did pay attention to last night was the montage leading up to the opening ceremonies. The landscape is spectacular and the tourism ads made me actually consider living in Vancouver (we all get one government-funded orca, right?). But the video bit about the six American diplomats being rescued by Canadians grabbed my attention.

Modern history is a blur in my memory. I can remember Tienenman and Kosovo, but the Iran hostage situation in 1979/1980 I don’t know much about. That was always the last chapter in our history textbook but we never got to it.

So, especially for you punk kids that follow me on Facebook, here’s the Canadian Caper.

53 Americans were held hostage on November 4, 1979 and on January 20, 1981 they were released (notice the proximity to Reagan being sworn in). It’s all right around when the Iranian Ayatollah came to power to replace the shah monarchy on February 11, 1979. The U.S. helped the shah get medical attention and as punishment, extremists captured the Americans. Things have calmed down in Iran, right?

The image I put at the top of this post is a sketch from Ken Taylor, Canadian ambassador to Iran. John Sheardown and Ken Taylor kept the six diplomats (all in the 25-34 years-old age bracket, scarily enough for my own personal relevance) in their personal residences until they could sneak them to Zurich on Canadian passports – Canadian passports that were forged, along with fake Iranian visas.

The Canadian government and the CIA worked together on a cover story. A movie called Argo was supposed to be made and there were even movie posters created and a fake PO Box in Los Angeles set up. Tony Mendez, CIA make-up specialist, worked with John Chambers (Star Trek and Planet of the Apes make-up guy) to change their appearances to look like a frumpy film crew. (Clayton, how does that make you feel?)

The Canadian embassy in Iran mysteriously shut down for the day. Ken and John also moved their families back to Canada. Ken, John, and their wives received the highest civilian honor from the Canadian government.

An award should also go to Jean Pelletier, the Canadian journalist who figured out what was going on before the plan was completed. He pressured the newspaper to not run the story until the six hostages were safe. The others still had a long time to wait, but I’m sure the family of the six were thankful.

The United States started saying “Thank You, Canada” on signs all over the place. Also, if you were Canadian you ate free for a while.

To be fair with me not knowing much about the Canadian Caper, many of the details were hidden until 1997.

Ken Taylor with Governor General Edward Shreyer

Our military’s response was Iceman and Joker? Were Maverick and Goose busy?

I always envisioned a giant mech. We’re one step closer. A weapon that can “send a sheet fire into the air and shock waves rippling through the desert in all directions” sounds familiar.

Doritos Samurai wins for Best Commercial. Any company that can make a fake suit of armor out of hydrogenated corn stuff has my vote.

Usually I’m pretty excited about the commercials. I will replay them in my head the next day, laughing the whole time. But most this year I’m trying to erase from my brain’s DVR.

To paraphrase Darth Vader:
I find your lack of pants disturbing.

(The link is actually safe. Check out how many lines in Star Wars take on a new meaning with the word “pants” interposed.)

If this is a commercially-created culture, where some say it’s the second busiest food holiday compared to Thanksgiving, I wonder how long the Super Bowl will go on. We’re at 44 now. Will we see a 344 (CCCXLIV for all you aqueduct-loving sports fans)?

As long as we haven’t given our pockets to Starfleet, I think we’ll still have a Super Bowl. (A serious question: I understand that Starfleet and the Federation have done away with money, but does no one chew gum in the future?)

I wonder if we’ll still have beer ads for Super Bowl CCCXLIV. I think in that time we’ll probably see an epic match-up between the Atlantis Constructs (we’ll finally annex the island) and the Sea of Tranquility Eagles (one of the biggest franchise moves since the Cardinals).

I just have to be patient. Of course I’ll live to see Super Bowl 344 – I’ll have my brain transported to a new cloned T-Rex body every 20 years.

We’re going to need more than 50 McNuggets. I’ve given you enough notice.

Thanks, Ohm, for your parting gift of another disturbing site in the style of the Cheezburger Cats: Man Babies?

with Picasso edging out the others in a knife fight. On the streets of Malaga, he was known as Picky the Cubist. Experimental vantage points? No. Cubes were all that was left of his opponents. The only one to survive an encounter was Van Gogh:

Pablo let him live because he liked his hat.

Pop Quiz 13, determining the queen’s immortal lineage:
Highlander 20%
Vampire 20%
Girl Scout 60%

What’s interesting is that the Girl Scouts connected to the UK can win the Queen’s Scout award, which is the highest rank:

versus in the US it’s the Girl Scout Gold Award:

I think the Highlander Badge would have been more stunning:

But the competition would have to be more fierce.
Because, you know, there can be only one.

My money is on Richard Branson as the Supreme Overlord of the COBRA terrorist organization. Be watching him in the coming years – first he launched his own spacecraft, then he created a plane that could go underwater.

Within the next three years expect to see a HISS tank and/or Tomax/Xamot being announced as co-VPs of Virgin Megalomaniacal.

I’m glad we got that cleared up.

Queen Mum is a name for a widowed queen consort (a queen dowager). Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the current Queen Elizabeth’s mom) had an interesting rise to the throne. Her husband, Prince Albert, was not next in line – his older brother, Prince Edward, was. Edward abdicated and let Albert transform into George Super-Saiyan Level 6.

Seeing where the trend of votes are leaning, an “always prepared” Princess Elizabeth changing a tire makes a lot of sense:

Queen Mum is of the same long-livingness lineage as the current queen, so the qualitative assessments should not have too large of a margin of error.

All this talk of Elizabeths has good timing, I guess (Elizabeth being the name of John the Baptist’s mom). Today is Candlemas, a church holiday celebrating Luke 2:22-35. Simeon says, “I’ve been waiting for this. Now I can die a happy man. This kid is going to do awesome stuff.” (I paraphrase.)

I just thought that February 2 was Groundhog Day.

It’s the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club that announces Phil’s divinations. The Inner Circle? Because we don’t want the Outer Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club getting too uppity, right?
Every February 2 should have a subtitle of being Bill Murray Day.

Phil: There is no way that this winter is *ever* going to end as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don’t see any other way out. He’s got to be stopped. And I have to stop him.

Today’s post brings you TWO Pop Quizzes! Mike seems to have snuck in an advertisement for his show and brings up an interesting question.

The first quiz is here

and the second one is here.

Video

Totally wish I knew how to embed…because I would.  Instead I will just link.

The fact that Space Buddies was playing in the background was not a help. You should know that we have sneezed so much that my youngest is currently fake sneezing, saying, “Achoo! Oh, bless you!” over and over again in a sing-song voice.

I went on Microsoft’s Social Problem website to find a fix to my Internet connection (I browsed using the MacBook – Internet to the home was just fine). The solutions ranged from “re-install Windows 7″ to “don’t let your computer go to sleep”.

Don’t let your computer go to sleep? Wasn’t that Nightmare on Elm Street?

I tried one option that involved ipconfig and the typing of subnet masks. When that didn’t work, I tried the whole “unplug the router, modem, and computer then watch Budderball pass gas in his space suit then reconnect everything” option.

That one always works.

And Windows 7 Help Desk people – when my Internet is down, please don’t offer “have someone remotely connect to your computer” as the only Troubleshooting Wizard solution.

But kudos on Office 2010. I’m digging Word and Excel. PowerPoint, why can’t you be more like Keynote? [PowerPoint hangs its head and shuffles away.]

Internet’s up, I’m typing away, and now I will collapse on the couch.

Lightning Thief

and

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Diary Of A Wimpy Kid

Also, book three to the Hunger Games has a release date. August 24, 2010 (see? I told you it would be one a year).

1. All fires eventually die out; it’s just how much damage they do we try and prevent.
2. All cats eventually come down from trees.

You should see one of the .asf (who uses .asf?) movies I converted for a HazMat specialist today. A silo caught on fire and rocketed hundreds of feet in the air. At first I joined the students with, “Whoa! That was awesome!” and then realized: this is one of our student’s dads. Imagine if that’s your dad running into the giant explosion.

Timothy, you have my respect.

So when NBC debuts The Cape, about an angst-ridden ex-cop who turns to the superhero lifestyle, I will probably view it more like SuperBabies(and does NBC really need more angsty heroes? Because Sylar’s doing so well, I hear (only rumor, since I haven’t watched that whinefest for a season now)).

We’re both old. As I’m looking at our team’s roster, I’m hoping the other school’s staff is just as decrepit. I have a torn ligament, this guy just got done with knee surgery, this woman just had a hip replaced…

Remember when they called Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson old at 33?

I have to admit that I kept refreshing my browser (all the good sites were blocked) during the iPadapalooza whereas I wasn’t as glued to the State of the Union. I think that may be because we all have a general sense of the state of the union versus anything from Steve Jobs always promises to be a turtlenecked spectacle.

I still think that Obama should have presented a keynote using the tablet and then ended with, “Oh? What’s this, you ask? Why it does…” and then list off the tech specs. I also think that, of the stuff the iPad has, it was a big oversight to leave off a microSD slot. Of course they want you to spend more money on the bigger hard drives, but that instant expandability needs to be built into most devices these days.

If you remember a post from a while back, we looked at how being President of the United States was proof that stress causes gray hairs. Expect to see Obama’s hair get even grayer in the coming years.

The Jungle Cruise in Disneyland was told to ditch the red and white canopies to match Indiana Jones’ gritty realism.

Egroeg Sacul is one of the names paged in Star Tours.

Dustin Hoffman was originally picked to play Tom Cruise’s character in Rain Man. Steven Spielberg had to decline directing the film because he was busy with Indy 3. A young German composer had his first big break writing the soundtrack: Hans Zimmer.

Vangelis (composer for Blade Runner) had never done a movie soundtrack before Chariots of Fire. He was hesitant until he became inspired and wrote the entire soundtrack in a day.

Vierta el hormigón aquí.
Pour the concrete here.

Este es la ventana.
This is the window.

Brad Pitt y Angelina Jolie se separan definitivamente.
Even worldwide there’s TMI about celebrities.

Let’s add to the review from previous lessons:
Me llamo _____.
My name is _____ .

Tengo un martillo y clavos.
I have a hammer and nails.

¿Mi barba es muy buena, sí?
My beard rocks.

¿El X-wing rota puede consigo un paseo?
My X-wing broke down. Could I get a ride?

Howard Shore wrote the theme song for Conan’s show? Leno has a tough road ahead.

I’m really liking George Lucas’s Blockbusting. It mixes general summaries of 300 blockbusting movies from silent films all the way to modern day. But what I love are the charts.

Yes, I’m a librarian. (You should see the index!)

Some of the comparisons I wouldn’t have thought of, like how much footage it took to make Ben-Hur vs. Gladiator. One that I know my dad will appreciate is the rankings for James Bond films. It goes on to describe the cultural impact/timeliness of different movies, but looking at the worldwide box office revenue (earnings adjusted to the 2005 dollar value) it’s interesting to see which Bond earned more money for the Ian Fleming estate:

1. Sean Connery – Thunderball $848.1
2. Sean Connery – Goldfinger $820.4
3. Daniel Craig – Casino Royale $581.5
4. Sean Connery – From Russia with Love $543.8
5. Roger Moore – Moonraker $535.0

Does it come as a surprise that Timothy Dalton shows up for the first time at number 19 with The Living Daylights (right up George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service)?

A cubit is the measurement from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger.

Do they really need to use the word mammoth?

Have you seen the highlight video?

That would be the easiest bloggh post this month, but I won’t stop there.

(If you haven’t read about the build, make sure you click here first.)

Thank you, Dogwhisperer G, for watching Indiana. You’re a mercenary to the last, you old scoundrel. You’ll be paid in due time.

We just got word from the other build team that went down with us. The INS made one of the vans get out of the rental van and walk across the border as pedestrians.

What, to prove that Americans can be physically fit?

This was on Sunday, the final day of the build, when your arms are tired from slinging stucco and/or drywall. I’d be annoyed. Keep in mind that this happened at the U.S. side of the Giant Fence (where we are citizens).

While down in Juarez my mind slipped back into my college minor. I used to (I guess I still am) be trained to also be a Spanish teacher. I keep that pretty secret (good thing I didn’t post that fact on the Interwebs for all to see).

My wife and I feel like we need to practice our Spanish more. But we’re not going to re-visit my college textbooks for Spanish acquisition.

We could care less where the nearest ferrocarril tracks are or how to get the camarero’s attention for more gazpacho. I’m also pretty sure we won’t be visiting any discotecas in Juarez anytime soon, so we can skip that chapter.

Each week, though, I’m going to put up some sentences under the Casas category. I promise that the bloggh won’t be overrun by the subjunctive (no more than usual, I hope (that was a grammar joke, by the way)) but I post it for my own benefit; feel free to join in the fun.

This week’s phrases (with rough equivalent translations):

My goal is to use these sentences this week.

Yeah, we got along.

His site is justinandjuliemissions.blogspot.com. It’ll be funny when he sees the trackback to his blog.

“Booyor? I don’t remember any Booyor signing a medical release form.”

I’m the guy that didn’t need a ladder, Justin.

What I love about Casas (okay, so I love a lot of things about Casas) is that we partner with the churches in the area. Our team builds and then goes back home. It’s important to connect the family with a body of believers in the area for more support. The pastor’s sister showed up and prayed with us at the site (the pastor was at a church service…on a Sunday…imagine that). She read from Psalm 127 (the link is in English):

1 Si Dios no construye la casa,
de nada sirve que se esfuercen
los constructores.
Si Dios no vigila la ciudad,
de nada sirve que se desvelen
los vigilantes.
2 De nada sirve que ustedes
se levanten muy temprano,
ni que se acuesten muy tarde,
ni que trabajen muy duro
para ganarse el pan;
cuando Dios quiere a alguien,
le da un sueño tranquilo.
3 Los hijos que tenemos
son un regalo de Dios.
Los hijos que nos nacen
son nuestra recompensa.
4 Los hijos que nos nacen
cuando aún somos jóvenes,
hacen que nos sintamos seguros,
como guerreros bien armados.
5 Quien tiene muchos hijos,
bien puede decir
que Dios lo ha bendecido.
No tendrá de qué avergonzarse
cuando se defienda en público
delante de sus enemigos.

and I think it summarizes my feelings for this build. I really connected with the kids and I think it’s the kids of the people we build for that will have a tangible reminder that God provides for them.

The build became a community event as people from the area jumped right into our stucco workflow. Many came out to pray for and bless the family.

I chatted with Lupe, Alberto, Brian, and Itzel (the cute little two year-old) about what they liked about iglesia and who Jesucristo is. We also played quite a bit of futbol and made dibujos depicting my zapatos grandes. Day 2 involved the kids from our team starting to mingle with the family. I feel like we really provided some hope for these kids.

Each time I travel internationally I am reminded that my wife needs to have the government office of Ambassador to Everywhere. There would be a decrease in wars and an increase in dancing.
She did tell Maria that she would like to drink a photo (earning some weird stares), but acted as our extremely attractive translator.
(While I type this she’s bandaging my sliced finger. This woman’s impressive.)(Mom, don’t freak out. My finger just bled a lot. I guess that doesn’t help. Well, know that my hands work well enough to do this whole bloggh-thing that I do.)(Jeremy, I haven’t tried playing bass yet. I’ll use my Wolverine-like powers to regenerate…No, that’s right. I chose his giant facial hair, not the self-healing. Dangit!)

left to right: my hot wife in the NAU jacket, next to her is Maria, next to her is Maria, the little guy is Brian, then Norma, then Itzel

Venom (a teen from Concrete Pathways, not the Spider-man parasite) had fun trying to figure out what I was saying to the kids. She speaks Latin. I asked her how to say “square” (thinking it would spur my memory of the Spanish equivalent) but she admitted that the only vocab she knew involved words like “aqueduct” and “portcullis”. (Cuadrado is “square” in Spanish, by the way.)

Sidewalkdriver, for the record, can draw the best caballos ever. She grew up sketching horses. It makes sense, then, why my horses always look like alien beasts – that’s what I grew up drawing. I didn’t know how to say “robot” or “Star Destroyer” (didn’t draw those – did butterflies/mariposas and coches instead), but the kids sure loved my impersonation of Bumblebee from Transformers. (They had a broken version of the toy but had no clue what it was.)

“Los manos dicen pew pew pew.”

They also liked the fact that this big guy didn’t know what a grape was (they had to remind me that the word was “uvas”). Try explaining fruit snacks that our team packed. The kids didn’t know what a peach was.

Who I was most impressed with is my oldest daughter. She was right there with me speaking as much Spanish as she knew. Even though it was “Buenos dias” and “No bueno”, it still was enough to make some friends. She also worked very hard:

at shoveling, filling buckets, and then cleaning buckets. I’m a very proud father.

She was a little tired at the end of the day. Thankfully I didn’t get interrogated at the border like I did yesterday. My daughter helped the U.S. border agent figure out that she belonged to me. You try being confined in a tiny space with guys with attack dogs asking you when your daughter’s birthday is and we’ll see how nervous you get.

On the topic of dogs, Ron is one of the bravest stucco savants I know. The family’s guard dog could probably take his hand off but Ron wanted a picture of Whiskey el Perro’s really cool eyes (one normal, one evil). What’s funnier is Ron’s fondest memory of me. He hadn’t seen me for a while, walks up to me, and the first thing out of his mouth is, “You’re that guy that broke up the pack of wild dogs.” I’m glad I could be remembered for some contribution. (Ron, that was years ago!)

Here’s the store where my wife negotiated for cheap soft drinks.

This is how dusty the whole area is. I get to go back to the hotel and shower. The family lives in the dust. Every single thing that they have is covered in it. You can imagine the difference between a house made of grocery store pallets versus a house made of concrete and stucco when a dust storm hits.

I still don’t know what was going on with the crutches, but I thought they looked cool.


Casas por Cristo: Faith Foundation 2010

Here’s a paradox, though: Why do I freak out? I broke no laws today. I am a U.S. citizen.

And yet when I saw the dog sniffing the car in front of us (the SUV that cut in front of 10+ cars just to squeeze into our van caravan) I got nervous. I had been reading the inspirational music on the different pages of my passport, words about liberty for the entire human race and forming a more perfect union, and it made me sad.

Why can’t people be cool to each other? The people that we worked with in Juarez today were.

The family is super nice. It’s a grandma, her daughter, and the kids. Alberto, roughly the same age as my oldest, thought I was crazy when I told him that we were almost done building my leg.

Piedra means leg. Pared means wall. Simple mistake, but you should have seen the looks on the kids’ faces.

Mike – With the Cardinals losing today, if your character goes to the Dark Side tonight, it would be understandable. Yes, I know he’s not Force-sensitive, but I’m sure you’ll find a way.

Devin, Jesse, Steve, and Gary – I’ll pass on a word of advice about Sith temples: Don’t drink the water. Sith temple being a euphemism for the U.S. Border Patrol station.

I will uphold my photo quota when I can steal…ahem…borrow some photos from friends. When I wasn’t wheelbarrowing concrete I was negotiating prices for botellas de Fresca, so I didn’t have much chance to snap any shots.

I can, however, steal this photo from the Concrete Pathways:

Thanks for helping me appease the grandparents.

The natural flow of conversation led to molecular bonding and I was having her picture water molecules made up of hydrogen and oxygen. I couldn’t remember whether carbon had six protons or if it was oxygen. Oxygen has eight protons, for the record. Thanks for the flood of responses. My daughter avoided car sickness and learned the Bohr atomic model mixed with some Heisenberg Uncertainty – to balance things out, of course.

While traveling you see many things like, oh, I don’t know, bison.

Sometimes you just have to suppress your grammar gene, with such signs as ‘Git yers!’ advertising a store’s wares. And did anyone else have high expectations of The Thing based on their cool billboards? As a kid I’d get excited and Grandpa H would tell me to calm down. Even worse, he’d say it was a rip-off and that he wouldn’t stop.

The Thing…was it a snow alien from the arctic? A fantastic superhero with rocky skin?

Nope. Gas station with lots of turquoise jewelry.

So when I saw this sign (not at The Thing but another of its ilk) tonight:

I knew that there had to be more to the story, perhaps a local worker who was frustrated with someone else from the community. I would have investigated further, but my family’s conversations with gas station workers previously had not been positive.

It’s like the passive-aggressive wi fi networks that are starting to pop up, networks named things like “caitlin stop using our internet”.

We made it to the hotel. There are certain high school students who will be upset that the mall no longer has the arcade. It has been replaced by a hat shop. I didn’t get a chance to see if it even was a decent millinery.

Check back tomorrow for photos of the build.

And to my Star Wars guys: When Sean plays my character tomorrow night, remind him that I’m crazy. I want only eccentricities from my venerable Force hermit – none of this “team player” stuff.

And make him rhyme.

I don’t use Netflix at all. The times when I do watch movies are the $1 Redbox ones. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten up to $9 worth of rentals. Before I commit I’d have to see how many TV shows the Wii version of Netflix would offer.

(The ability to have any Disney film a Wiimote click away would be pretty cool, though. Then my kids wouldn’t be watching Little Mermaid repeatedly.)

It’s supposed to come out in Spring.

And yet Jimmy Kimmel still tries too hard:

In the course of entertainment, it becomes self-evident that power must be held by the few or the one – that one being myself. With your investment, I plan to offer programming that the masses will enjoy, the masses that many have chosen to exploit. The fire of Leno has gone out of the universe. We, a new entertainment order, will terminate the other networks. Immediately. All will be made right in the galaxy by instilling peace through might.

You don’t know how hard I found it, signing the order to terminate them. NBC was charming to the last. But lying to us about the time slot location of Conan O’Brien was inexcusable. Perhaps they will respond to an alternative form of persuasion.

Please consider helping us bring Conan O’Brien to Late Night for good. With our prospective network, the regional broadcasters would have direct control over their territories. Air Conan O’Brien at a time slot that he deserves. Join us – or die.

Thank you for your time and interest,
Wilhuff Tarkin
Grand Moff of Marketing and Sales

(Thanks to Devin for the inspiration.)

For more information, refer to articles here and here.

But some things remain constant…

1. I have to crouch down for government-issued photos.
2. My beard can be used as a unit of measurement.

I remember a decade where every January 9-10ish we would have a bean party. In honor of those days, and for the days to come, I hope you enjoy our Virtual Bean Party.

What do you need for a Virtual Bean Party?

1. Watch a Mr. Bean video.
   
   As my wife puts it, “Only Mr. Bean can have so much silence and then so much laughter.”
2. Eat lots of beans.

If you think you’re a bean expert, try this quiz.

On the topic of parachutes, tanks, and machine guns, check out the A-Team movie trailer. Before you make any judgments about the cheese factor, let’s remember the source material.

What would be better? The Star Trek crew as the A-Team:

Happy birthday, Mike.

How about the Star Trek Knights of the Round Table?

(John Cole also has some cool Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials.)

This concludes tonight’s typography nerd anecdote.

As promised

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.)

A big announcement if you ever hung out with me at Peter Piper Pizza during junior high and/or are my brother/roommate from college.

NBA Jam is coming to the Wii. It’s going to be in stores, versus a digital download, so we might see some new content. I would be okay having Kevin Johnson take on Hakeem Olajuwon again (remember that dunk? I do.)

For my brother’s sake, I hope they let Kobe be a playable character. I remember that Michael Jordan had his own licensing, so the biggest #23 fan (the only #23 fan) in the family had to choose between Scottie Pippen and some guy with goggles.

How many sites mentioned Horace Grant today?

I could mention how I modeled myself as a player after Mark West, making three obscure basketball references, so that the announcer could yell, “The bloggher’s on fire!!!”

But I wouldn’t want to get a big head. [rimshot]

The fact that some assume there is a process is comedy enough. If I were to have a process, I would consider my target audience.

I have heard people say in conversation, “Yeah, I actually heard about that news on Booyor’s thing.” (Real quote, sadly enough.)

So I would start with some news in my post:

The Senate passed legislation.

but then I must be true to myself and include some nerdery:

The Imperial Senate passed legislation.

(I’ve considered a category called “nerdery” for my posts but I’m not a fan of redundant recursion in my code.)
A few come to this site looking for tech news:

The Imperial Senate passed legislation against rebel insurgents led by Steve Wozniak.

To keep my brother interested, I throw in some pop culture references:

The Imperial Senate passed Shaq’s Wii Motion Plus legislation against hoverboard-riding rebel insurgents led by Steve Wozniak.

I need to grab the attention of grandparents and family members with:

My toddler clapped along as the Imperial Senate passed Shaq’s Wii Motion Plus legislation against hoverboard-riding rebel insurgents led by Steve Wozniak.

The final readers to consider are my Facebook stalkers. They don’t care that it’s an RSS feed importing into a note. Those readers just need something to look at while recovering from a photo slideshow binge:

My toddler found a Little Lost Penguin on her Farm in Farm Town when the Imperial Senate passed Shaq’s Wii Motion Plus legislation against hoverboard-riding rebel insurgents led by Steve Wozniak.

Hopefully today’s post can be used by other writers to illustrate the importance of knowing your audience.

(If you click through the archive calendar on the sidebar, I think this may actually be my process.)

My youngest was excited to go to Zoolights last Sunday.



My oldest took this photo of my wife and I.

Cabby hat? Toby Mac

Today also marks a momentous circumstance that had a bit of pomp.

We picked THE orange from the tree.

Not AN orange, THE orange.
A bird squawking out front alerted the armed guards.

Having forced the avian menace into retreat, an apprentice and I honed our shinai skills.


I swear that’s watercolors and not Celtic war paint.




The kids asked for more. I told them to wait another six years.

1. A software developer will release a compilation of party mini-games for the Wii.
2. The PS3 will welcome a game that has excessive amounts of entrails and nudity, garnering a Mature rating. I will still question the ESRB as to why sociopaths are not valued as the paragon of maturity for our society.
3. The XBOX360 will add a game to its library where the hero has a machine gun and the entire game’s perspective is from behind that gun. It will be hailed as the most innovative game of the year.
4. A country with nuclear (or even nuculear) weapons will threaten the US. Our population will not be able to identify the country on an unmarked map (unless the country was featured in an XBOX game).
5. In the light of my disappointment at space stations in the year 2001, I’m guessing that the manned mission to Saturn to find the Star Child will probably be postponed until some time after 2010.
6. Universal Health Care will not be as universal as advertised. The Star Child’s mother will still be paying towards a huge deductible from the Star Hospital, due to an error in a DRG code.
7. A celebrity will die and the news will run the person’s picture for a week. Thousands will die from hunger-related complications each day, receiving minimal media coverage. Money from the celebrity’s funeral could have fed a significant amount of those people. (Oh, am I ranting on the bloggh? That’s never happened before.)(Here’s one of the scariest Excel spreadsheets ever.)
8. A sports player will get arrested.
9. One local professional team will do well while the rest sit in mediocrity.
10. Erin Hunter will publish five books about a cat civil war. I, on the other hand, will be thankful to publish one book (not necessarily about a cat civil war).
11. I will lobby for nutmeg to be the main ingredient for every family meal.
12. Disney will release another Buddies movie. (We’re watching one of the four-pack that my mom got my daughters. Gee. Thanks, Mom.)
13. Chuck will rock.
14. We all thought Apple was releasing a tablet. Nope. Mind-control device.
    
15. We’ll start bracing for teenage adolescence. The next decade makes me nervous.
16. I will replace my torn-ligament foot with a giant metal claw.
17. I will update something called a “bloggh” from time to time.

Ten years ago I was a Resident Assistant in a Freshman dorm, hung out with this hot girl who bought me donuts, and played Final Fantasy VIII in Mike’s room until insane hours of the morning.

Things have progressed, as I now have my own assistant in my library, I married the hot girl with the donuts, and I play Star Wars in Mike’s living room until insane hours of the morning.

Ten years from now I will have a famous book about a toilet in an elevator (old RA joke), my hot wife will be baking health-smart donuts (I’ll be 40, after all), and I will probably be obsessing over some nerd entertainment in Mike’s holodeck. (It will be something akin to when Picard thought he was Robin Hood, but we will find some way to turn Riker to the Dark Side. Consider the beard.)

Did you know that ten years ago I had been asked if I could grow a goatee? The rest, as they say, is history.

Some of the action takes place in a Chemistry lab, so I’m brushing up on my moles and sig figs:

In the realm of the true sciences (enough of these avocados numbers), here are the results from
Pop Quiz 11:
Past 14%
Present 43%
Future 43%

The Ghost of Christmas Past always gets left behind. [rimshot]

If you haven’t seen Dave Barry’s year in review or the fact that you can now download Oregon Trail to your DSi, both articles are worth your time.

Things learned while at the dealership:

1. The Scion is ready for Casas.
2. Journaling on T9 for an hour is thoroughly satisfying even if the service manager thinks you’re in one really intense game of Breakout.
3. People should clip their nails in private. This has started an interesting string of Facebook comments and rationales. (Interesting if you’re into fingernails, to clarify.)

I also got pretty far in Ally Carter’s Heist Society, which is good since certain sites have taken to open threats against the Bloggh.

Perhaps I can appease them with something I found on Pandora. While cleaning the bedroom I left on Pandora (my Nobuo Uematsu (with Konami added for variety) is killer). Did you know that you can only listen to 40 hours for free on Pandora? Can you guess what supplied the soundtrack for Christmas this year?

Who maxed out Pandora? This guy.

We survived our trip to Hoth. It wasn’t as cold as last year and not one animal had to have its innards lightsabered, a success to say the least.

Now for the random photos:

I found this while dusting my dresser. Do you remember when 10KB was a lot for a PDA to store? Let’s just say today’s journal beat that. Yes, it has been some time since I’ve dusted the dresser.

Nothing says Christmas like hot chocolate, angels, and adamantium.

It was a tear-filled send-off, which I think is quite appropriate for Christmas. Today was bessiejo’s first day at work as a super-important numbers person. I’m pretty sure her nametag says that. She’s the big super-important numbers person for Schreiber Foods. This bloggh has always been cheesy, so it shouldn’t be too big of a stretch for my readers to support the dairy industry.

You know how you can make a guitar using a piece of wood, a box, and some rubber band/elastic strings? This is what happens when you hook up an amp pick-up to the homemade guitar.


How do you smuggle in a life-size alligator replica as a gift? This is how. You should have seen it perched high on a shelf. G walked into the other room, we heard a “What the??”, and we knew that our gift was a hit.

More pictures will come of the time with my side of the family. I just had to capture this wrapping paper on my phone. It’s safe to assume I knew what my gift was. Yep. Captain Kirk handkerchiefs. I was way off, though. I’ll have to settle with getting the best Star Trek movie instead.

In great bloggh tradition, I shall attempt to prove how video games make everything better.

Thank you, J, for pointing me towards Rush Coil’s 8-Bit Christmas album. Scroll to the bottom of the linked page for the Flash player.

If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

Thanks to Bob Kauflin, someone I consider to be a mentor about worship, for this video:

That’s Christmas! from St Helen’s Church on Vimeo.

I present to you…Web Site Story.

For anyone who has wanted to punch Clippy in the face: What if the Matrix ran on Windows XP?

Now to get him a login for The Bloggh. He’s been a Cardinals fan for a while, so you know he’s diligent. I think that I have not had enough banjo-centric posts and I’m looking for some help.

I’m sad that Mike’s cat, Cleo, passed away today. She’s from the NAU days and transitioned into her role in the valley (I wouldn’t go so far as saying “grown-up life” (a time yet to be determined for us)) as “Official Star Wars Night Dice Stealer and/or Foot Warmer” quite nicely. I’m going to miss her.

You might appreciate news that the Old Republic is coming soon to PCs. IGN has a great list of must-haves for the game:

Monoclimes: Let’s face it, with an entire galaxy full of interesting worlds, it would be a bit boring if all of them had glaciers or forests or deserts. I mean, what would be the point of interstellar travel if you could find tundra and lava on the same planet? In order for The Old Republic to maintain some continuity with the franchise, it not only has to have Tatooine and Hoth and Endor, but any new planets must be defined by a single ecosystem that includes only one type of geography and weather. For true authenticity, you have to state these before the name of the planet, as in, “The Sith spies have taken refuge on the thicket-world of Olebe.”

Affirmative Action: The Republic has always been a leader in providing good jobs to non-Basic speaking races and shown particular acceptance to those races who mangle the language by confusing word order or inserting an annoying “sa” at the end of every pronoun. This tolerance even extends to droids who communicate through a sophisticated system of beeping and shoving. All the human player characters will be required to have at least one non-human or droid sidekick that doesn’t speak any Basic but is still able to understand and be understood by everyone else in the game. To keep these sidekicks in their proper place as defined by the traditions of the Star Wars universe, their promotion opportunities will be limited by the so-called “cockpit glass ceiling,” leaving them stuck as co-pilots and completely unable to find work as main characters.

Absentee Fathers: Whether we’re talking about virgin births or just run-of-the-mill orphaning, there’s just something about the Star Wars universe that encourages the idea of ambiguous ancestry. In the case of the game, we’re hoping that at least a few of the characters have to confront the idea that their dad just isn’t around, either because he’s wrapped up in his job as a high-level manager of an evil empire or because he’s the intangible force that binds the entire universe together. Even if a character happens to find a suitable substitute, you can pretty much bet the new dad won’t stick around much longer than the first one. They might still show up in the occasional beyond-the-grave cameo, but if you’ve ever tried to play catch with a blue-tinged apparition, you know just how frustrating this can be.

Super-scaled Villainy: Among the more evil megalomaniacs of the Star Wars universe, there’s no appreciation for the concept that less is more. Even for megalomaniacs, these guys are taking it pretty far. Some may simply be amassing an army of clones; some might be in the midst of constructing a massive space station that can destroy entire planets; still others might be searching out a weapon that can destroy entire suns. Whatever their motivation for wanting to control the galaxy, the bad guys in Star Wars never do things halfway. Once the Sith decide to walk down the road to the Dark Side, then the schemes and devices they use in The Old Republic have to absurdly oversized. We’ve already seen the Death Star and the Star Forge, so the new Sith super weapon has a lot to live up to.

Amputations: This one was an easy one. The world of Star Wars is already an incredibly dangerous place, what with the complete absence of traffic lights in the skyways above densely populated cities. To make matters worse, the security of the Republic is entrusted to a group of mystics armed with laser swords and trained in an overly theatrical combat style. Throw in an equally reckless group of similarly armed mystics in opposition to the first and you’ve got a recipe for massive amputations. At least once every few levels a Jedi or Sith character will be involved in an amputation, either as a victim or perpetrator (or possibly both).

Indigenous Empowerment: This is a tricky one. Once the bad guys have created their well trained, highly motivated, technologically superior army, they’re going to drop all pretense of “peacekeeping” and start capturing worlds left and right. While things are likely to go well for the villainous invaders when they’re facing opponents who fight on the same terms, they’ll want to make sure to avoid any direct contact with any outgunned or outnumbered indigenous forces. As powerful as those tanks and guns and giant walking robots may seem to be, they will be no match for the firm hearts and pointy sticks of the enemy. How embarrassing to have the entire invasion stopped dead in its tracks just because values like courage and self-sacrifice are more effective than the combined technological and military output of a star-spanning civilization.

There Is Another: Star Wars frequently gives you the big payoff and then resets the problem. Since that’s also the premise of the entire MMO genre, we think it’s definitely an aspect of the franchise that has to be included. Blow up the evil empire’s space station? Don’t worry! They’ll just start construction on another one. Slice that nasty Sith apprentice in half? Good job! We’ve got his replacement waiting in the wings. Even in situations where someone is clearly your “only hope” there’s no reason not to expect that they don’t have a sister who might be just as suited to the job. We’re happy, of course, when life hands us second chances, but The Old Republic will have to expand on that concept exponentially.

Parliamentary Procedure: With so many public schools across the country cutting back on Civics lessons, this is an area that BioWare simply can’t ignore. While it’s all well and good to showcase the big space battles and lightsaber fights, we all know that the real action in the Star Wars story takes place in the Senate chambers. Whether players are caught debating the course of the Galactic Civil War or merely filibustering the latest attempts to restrict the right to bear Lightsabers, characters need to have a chance to experience the intense excitement that can only be found within the endless speeches and votes of the democratic process. A copy of Robert’s Rules of Order might not be much help when facing down a herd of rampaging thicket-wraiths, but you’ll be glad to have it when you need to get amputation coverage added to the Galactic Health Care bill.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”: Yes, we know “May the Force be with you” probably ranks a little higher in terms of cultural relevance and comfort, but the true essence of Star Wars lies in the disturbing sense that things are about to get really bad. What’s particularly notable is that even those characters who aren’t able to tap directly into the Force are still able to predict that whatever situation they are in is going to get worse before it gets better. (Fish-headed leaders of space fleets are the notable exception.) During the course of every adventure, at least one character or companion will have to say this phrase just before things really start to unravel. For an added dose of realism, anytime something actually does go wrong, the same character should anxiously declare, “It’s not my fault!” If the crisis is caused by a piece of malfunctioning equipment, players should be able to hit it to get it working again.

Now for yours.

Facebook stalkers, the quiz is here.

Check out more details here. It even has smuggling compartments.

For a bed like that to fit me, I think I would need Docking Bay 94.

Also…has anyone else tried out lala.com? Pandora is excellent for introducing a variety of artists and making recommendations I wouldn’t think of. From what I can tell, lala.com is good for if you know the specific song you want to listen to right now. The catch? You can only listen to it once! Muahahaha! (That’s the RIAA striking a malevolent pose that you see.)

Here’s the non-coolness from First Premier:

First Premier lowers fees to just that limit — $75 in the first year for a credit line of $300. But the new law doesn’t set a cap on interest rates. Hence the 79.9 APR, up from the previous 9.9 percent.

“It’s the highest on the market. It’s the highest we’ve ever seen,” said Anuj Shahani, an analyst with Synovate, a research firm that tracks credit card mailings.

The terms are eyebrow raising, but First Premier targets people with bad credit who likely can’t get approved for cards elsewhere. It’s a group that tends to lean heavily on credit too, meaning they’ll likely incur the steep financing charges.

So for a $300 balance, a cardholder would pay about $20 a month in interest.

It’s like they’re saying, “It’s not our fault that we help perpetuate a vicious cycle.”

Coal. That’s what the company is getting.

I shout out for peace
For a glimpse of the river
Washing us today

Can’t talk.

Editing video for tomorrow’s assembly.

Voice Gesture from didier.brun on Vimeo.

All programmed in Flash. Pretty cool. Watch the circle in the top-right corner. He hasn’t programmed in the sound of a can hitting the table yet.

This whole time I thought Ben Folds only worked with William Shatner.

But he was able to give a good critique on Sing Off, like he actually IS a musician. Educated comments from a reality show judge? Craziness.

One of the groups lived in the college house at USC designated for the a cappella group. That house sounds fun and terrifying. Can you imagine how many people would be singing all crazy in the morning? They even took a risk by singing “Somebody to Love” and made a reference to Glee. That’s tough to live up to (but the more Queen songs I can see on TV, the better).

I obtained a certain bounty yesterday at our small group’s white elephant gift exchange.

“Bring me a dead fish to hang on my library wall. And no disintegrations!”

Denny’s now has redbox. Finally.

Got a question in Prussian history? We have a resident expert for that.

Have a term paper due on beardery tomorrow? Try me.
3%. Whew.

The Apprentice is a gladiator.
Check out the trailer here.

The game site is here.

Wii Motion Plus? Or even not watered down, missing half the storyline…plus?

Taciturna asked me if the trailer was intense. It’s the usual unleashy-ness. But what I would love would be to see Wedge leading Rogue Squadron against some Vong. Give me that game, Lucasarts. I’m still intrigued, but you can only build rancors so big before they become unrealistic.

You know, unlike the realistic one from the movie.

Thanks, Devin, for the heads up.

I made up a booklet for chess notation using Publisher. I really like how pieces of the Ribbon highlight with different colors to make suggestions, instead of having windows and yellow text boxes punch my eyes. Changing a table’s dimensions was not as easy in Publisher 2010 as it was in Word 2004 this morning. Is it Word? Is it Publisher? Is it general fatigue?

I’m liking the experience in 7 so far. I do appreciate Office 2010’s new design (it’s a big jump from 2003). I really dig the floating formatting palette that materializes next to your mouse cursor.

For people who want easy access to files: I know that there’s Windows Live with all of your accounts and everything.

But have you seen drop.io? I sent a picture MMS from my drop folder to my phone with just a right click. It shows up easily.

I just right-clicked on a song we’ll be playing on Sunday. We’ll see if it comes through. It’s 3MB.

In a shocking news release yesterday, the EPA told reporters that greenhouse gases could kill human beings.

This is very unnerving, indeed, considering how greenhouse gases have only received praise from the media. This tarnishes the impeccable reputation previously sustained by greenhouse gases, putting them in the same league as kilohertz and Niehls Bohr for scary-sounding science vocabulary.

One neighbor was quoted as saying, “I don’t think any of us could see it coming. Greenhouse gases were always such good neighbors. They were quiet and kept to themselves. It’s a real shame, if you ask me.”

In other news, Richard Branson, winner of The Bloggh’s 2008 Beardiest Billionaire Award, finally made it possible for people with lots of money to escape the confines of Earth and rise above their tortured existence of having lots of money and getting what they want. I’m glad their dreams can finally be fulfilled.
In keeping with VSS Enterprise tradition, Branson gave a Shatner-esque double thumbs-up, called a spaceship sexy, and put a picture of a woman in tights on the hull.

It should be noted that Windows now gives a rating to describe your OS experience, on a scale from 1.0 to 7.9 (the 6 scale already being taken by ice skating judges and the 10 scale done to death by beauty pageants and/or video game magazines)(Will it expand to 8 with a future OS?).

My machine, with its new hardware, was ranked by Windows 7 at a very encouraging 1.0. Oh…7.9 was the good one. D’oh.

I don’t have Aero running, but the new look is still not lost on me. It is simpler, as advertised, and that’s what I love about Snow Leopard. Get me to what I want to do in the quickest way you can. 7 is definitely a jump in the positive direction from XP (which still had a lot of hold-overs from Windows 95 and 3.1).

Two things so far will take some getting used to:

I didn’t realize just how much I threw around my windows and project files until the windows started resizing on me. With 7, if you drag a window to the top of your monitor, the window maximizes. For the most part this is pretty cool. But when I got into the thick of a project last night I had windows inflating all over the place.

I read promises of pinning to the taskbar at the bottom, like the dock in OSX. You can pin applications, but you can’t pin folders (I probably haven’t discovered how to do it yet…I’ve only had one day with the system). I like to have my documents right there in the dock for one-click access. So far, no deal on the docs. I did put it in my Start menu.

Those two issues are not dealbreakers. They’re not intuitive, but I know I’ll adapt. (Isn’t that how tech works? You adapt instead of the software adapting.)

I already had back-ups of my documents, so I didn’t do the back-up procedure recommended by the upgrade manager. Like I told Devin, I felt like I was rolling up a new character who hadn’t wasted all his feats on stupid stuff like Mobility or Martial Arts I. I’ve set up a lot of computers since we first got this desktop. I now get to organize the files in a more logical sense, instead of trying to play catch-up.

What I didn’t realize was that Windows 7 still stored my documents, even though it said it wouldn’t. I’m not complaining. It’s in a folder called Windows.old. I wish I had known that before trying to set up my anti-virus. The program wouldn’t recognize my serial number – I had until February to renew, but I purchased a renewal last night. To download the free trial you still had to purchase it, they would credit back your account. Very tricky.

We set up the Office 2010 beta. I’m liking what they did. I mainly do web-based stuff, so I haven’t had to type anything up yet. My current book project is in Google Docs. I wanted to type it up in the new Word, just because it looked like so much fun. I know I’ll get there. I may even have to use Word’s help feature for the first time in my career, if only to see what it looks like. (I take that back…I had to use help to figure out mail merging for the office secretaries. It’s not like I merged a lot of databases to form letters in college. I didn’t major in Junk Mail (but I did minor in Spam)).

On day two I only have two complaints (appropriately enough).

7 has a great new search feature that is very similar to Spotlight in Snow Leopard. I’m not seeing easily how to search for files of certain sizes or specific file types (except for using wildcards with the file extensions). In XP you could hone down the criteria for your search even in the default search function. I’m not seeing it in 7 but I hope to find it in time. Now if I could only create Smart Folders…

My biggest complaint is what they’ve done with setting up a home network. If I had another machine running 7 I could set up a new thing called a homegroup (a little different definition than I’m used to). But I miss the My Network Connections section of the Control Panel. It was really easy to set up a network between the MacBook and my PC before. My first time trying it the router had the two machines sharing the same IP address, allowing neither to connect to the Internet or each other. My second time trying to set up a network disabled my LAN. I had to call up my ISP to figure out how to enable my network adapter again (basically I called but then went through the 7 troubleshooter a couple of times until I found the LAN settings…the poor tech support guy had to listen to me figure it out myself. He hadn’t used 7 yet.)

I’m finally able to share documents, but I still can’t get the printer on the network (even though it says it’s sharing). The home networking setup procedure is not intuitive any more.

Overall I’m very happy to be running Windows 7. I’m very excited about Office 2010 and how fast my computer is running. I also like that there’s now a decent screenshot utility built into Windows. For as many tech manuals as I’ve made, it’ll make my life easier.

I know this has probably circulated already, but at work I opened up my fortune cookie and found this:

The back said, “Please someone at work by being calm and impartial.” Easy for you to say, Courier Cookie. Your employer didn’t block Google. Thankfully it wasn’t every Google service (I’ve already used Wave to coordinate two major projects and Docs lets me write spontaneously). We’re now asked to use Bing as a campus if we’re looking for images. I like the image search, to some extent. What I find really funny, in a “the tighter you clench your fist the more systems will slip from your grasp”-type funny, is that YouTube is blocked completely on campus. I unfortunately had mentioned at the district office that blocking didn’t make sense because the results still came up in Google Video. Well, in Bing those YouTube videos still come up. Now it’s even easier because you hover over the thumbnail and it plays automatically.

I used to find that feature annoying but now it cracks me up. Bing, even though your name doesn’t conjugate well, you’re starting to grow on me.

I see this as a great opportunity to be a well-rounded computer user, to see both sides (until I become a famous author and can afford an iMac).

Sketchy Santas

Does anyone really treasure a Santa photo they have from when they were a kid? Why is this tradition still around?

Tonight my oldest brought home a Star Wars figure for a gift she’s giving a friend. One of the things with the new series of toys is that each package includes a piece that eventually will form a new figure. The first one I saw was one of the Death Star astromechs. This marketing concept goes all the way back to collecting all those UPCs so my friends could get an Emperor Palpatine toy.

The toy to build now is a YVH-1. Here’s to hoping for a Corran Horn or Kyle Katarn figure.

I saw a Grand Admiral Thrawn and Talon Karrde package the other week. This is a pretty cool (in the Star Wars nerd sense of the word “cool”) development.

A quick search revealed this. Whistler? Craziness. There’s even the guy we used to make fun of in the Alien Anthology book. Tycho?

Where have I BEEN?

What would happen if you had concept art characters fight it out?

But if you’re current…my goodness. Some Van Halen mixed in with Charlie Chaplin theme music. The preview for the season finale is crazy. Finn’s punching fury leads me to believe that some serious stuff is going to happen.

Just a hunch.

This is similar, except with less Gettysburg. Put on your headphones and have fun at the virtual barber shop:

If you have trouble listening to something for an extended period of time, you could make an animation while you wait at Aniboom.

That in and of itself could make for a good bloggh post.

But wait! There’s more!

If you want to read articles from The Professional Site, read on:

I had watched a demo video at wave.google.com over the summer debuting Wave. As with any tech thing, my thoughts started racing with how to use it in an educational community setting. Over the weekend I got an invitation to be a part of the limited preview. (Happy Thanksgiving, right?) I’ve been chatting with people about Wave and here are some general questions (before we tackle how to use it in a school setting) I can answer after having used it.

What is Wave?
The best way I can think to describe it is that Wave is what e-mail would look like if it was invented today instead of decades ago.

But I already do e-mail. Why would I use this?
E-mail is extremely linear. When you are e-mailing a simple message to one person, that works. If you start e-mailing back and forth in a conversation, that’s where stuff starts to get cluttered and it’s tough to see the progression of ideas. GMail started the whole “conversation” idea, making it easier to follow who said what. Wave takes it further.

I was able to embed a map, a YouTube video, and a picture into the Wave very easily. That’s a definite plus. In e-mail those resources sometimes don’t come across.

How could it make my life easier?
For me, e-mail gets confusing the more recipients that I have per message. Before replying, I have to sift through what everyone else said. Many times that entails opening up multiple messages and checking when they were sent. With Wave, it’s one message and the responses are shown more like threads or comments at the bottom of a blog post.

How could it make my life more difficult?
First, there’s the “Great. One more account to manage; one more thing to check” problem. I’m hoping that Google will incorporate other services, specifically mail coming in from already-created e-mail accounts.

Next, you can reply to any portion of a Wave. The Wave’s status will show how many replies are unread. You need to scroll through the whole Wave to see the unread replies.

How could it give me a headache?
My friend are I were chatting (Google calls it “ping”…think Scott Westerfeld’s Tally Youngblood series.) and we had to scroll quite a bit. Just like in a main Wave, you can reply to any section of a ping. Think about how fast an online chat goes. Now picture someone posting a reply at the very top of the chat where the ping started an hour ago. My friend and I are decently tech savvy and we were lost. For friends chatting, it’s funny. But I picture a professor I had that did online chats. His idea of a chat was to have everyone type up their responses days in advance and then paste them into the chat all at once. That hurt to read. This will not improve that.

Where could it offend people?
I choose my words carefully. When it’s a really important e-mail, I’ll revise it a couple of times before sending it out. With Wave, my friend jumped in before I knew it and was watching me type my reply, letter by letter, so that before I was done he was already saying, “I thought so.”

Very disorienting. I like to spell things correctly. Typos become even more annoying as someone is virtually watching over your shoulder.

My friend was able to edit what I had said. Google changed it to read that we were co-authors of the reply. I’m glad he can spell well, because you can’t tell who said what after the specific reply becomes co-authored. I didn’t want someone to look through the archives of the Internet to see that I had misspelled a word when in fact it was someone else.

You know, because those things are important.

I also think about how many people write an e-mail angrily just to delete it as a way of venting. Wave records what you’re messaging, so someone could watch the playback and see what you initially said. For people who carefully choose their words when writing to others, you have to do a rough draft in your head. It slows things down and makes it more stressful.

Is it worth it?
Google is known for constantly changing, constantly growing. I think that the tech will change to meet the need and we’ll see more features show up once it’s out of preview mode. Just like any new tech, we’ll see it come out for a year as the people who use tech for gadget’s sake enjoy it. Some time after that we’ll then see the general populous join on IF it incorporates e-mail better.

___

Over the weekend, when I wasn’t figuring out Google Wave, I finished Crocodile Tears by Anthony Horowitz. Stormbreaker (as well as Haddix’s Among the Hidden) was the first YA book I read as a junior high teacher and it helped me to see how that market of books has developed over the years. If you remember my review of Ghost in the Machine by Patrick Carman, I made reference to how much I enjoyed Scorpia (my favorite of the series) and how Ark Angel was a letdown for me. (Yes, I’ve read Snakehead.)

As I began Crocodile Tears, I thought, “Can this get me back from ‘I enjoy the series’ to ‘I rave about the series’?”

I love how Horowitz starts out the novels with an opening scene much like a James Bond movie. We see minor characters involved in some sort of trauma, introducing a sliver of the main conflict. We also don’t see Alex Rider, for the most part. Chapter one gets you hooked with a disaster at a nuclear power plant. A charity swoops in to help immediately and we are instantly suspicious that the charity may have known ahead of time when the disaster was going to happen.

I was nervous, at first. I’m a huge supporter of helping out wherever you can, even internationally, so I was hoping that Horowitz would not paint a jaded view on aid organizations. There’s a great conversation where Alex Rider is defending people who donate because it’s the right thing to do, not because they’re playing some kind of game.

Desmond McCain is a good villain in the spy movie sense. There are some times where the cheaper, easier way to win would be to just kill Alex and be done with it. Nope. Just like it’s mentioned in Pixar’s Incredibles, the villain monologues and explains the plan, trusting the henchmen to finish the job. Not the most logical way to enact your evil schemes, but it definitely fits the style.

A student and I had debated on whether Alex Rider had actually killed anyone in his books. The villains pursue him to the “Captain Ahab” level of obsession to their own demise. In this one it’s pretty clear: bad guy is going to kill Alex, Alex kills him first – but it’s under a spy code of morality.

1. You point a gun at someone and shoot, you’re an assassin.
2. You create an elaborate plan to watch the person die, you’re a supervillain.
3. You create an elaborate plan using just what’s on you at the moment (perhaps feeling a degree of remorse), you’re a super spy.

Alex is angst-ier this time around.

Something that I had lost sight of is that the entire series has just been one year in Alex’s life. In other words, he has missed a TON of school. Crocodile Tears highlights this; the adults finally realize that this 14 year-old should probably attend a full day of school from time to time.

It’s definitely not the end to the series. There is still room for Alex to grow throughout the years. Crocodile Tears is an enjoyable read. (I’m still biased towards Scorpia, but I’m excited to see where the series goes.)

I have shorn my face. I apologize to those who in recent events have rubbed up against my rough personage, in both the figurative and literal sense. Thanks for grace about my face.

Devin opened up the world of Google Wave to me. It is like I pictured it and nothing at all like I expected, in one of those Google paradoxes I so love. I pinged (Scott Westerfeld, anyone?) Vafer today and we both realized exactly how old we are. The conversation took on a frantic, abstract, non-linear quality as we responded to threads at different parts in the conversation, all within one window. It used to be called a form of learning disability, but now it’s required to keep up in a ping flood.

I expect flying cars sometime soon, to be sure.

I’m really digging Pandora right now. I wish it was easier to get it to stream in the Scion. I discovered the soundtrack for Signs today by creating a station of Danny Elfman, Gregson-Williams, and John Barry (the James Bond guy). So much fun to write to.

I make the prediction here and now: if people start accessing Google Wave while driving, car accidents will follow. If instead they pull up Pandora, I think we’ll have a much more pleasant freeway system. Unless, of course, people are too busy thumbs-downing songs. Then horrible misinterpretations in body language occur and streaming media-related violence increases.

Can I add that the scales are imbalanced? For every survival horror game invoking a flashlight, it should be federal law requiring the release of a game revolving around nunchuk combat and/or two WiiMotes being used as John Woo guns.

Other game topics:
Did you see the tonberry cake?

How about the Marriage Program, complete with USB cupcakes?

Oh, semicolons. You make things happen.

Check out these and deformed turkeys at Cake Wrecks.
Makes me hungry for a M Crib. Right, Mike?

___
Choose Your Own Adventure books kept me coming back to the public library daily as a kid and I would be willing to bet partly influenced my decision to become a librarian.

A friend of mine sent me this link a while back and it’s taken me until now to sort through all of the analysis of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I hadn’t realized that as the series went on, there became less choices in the books. I have always wondered what it took to organize all of the pages to point to different places throughout the book. (I made a Choose Your Own Adventure radio show CD in high school, so I understand the effort on a smaller scale.) Check out this site for more of the math behind Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Also of note were the Lone Wolf books by Joe Dever. It makes sense that these types of books, ones where you jump around inside the framework of the book, came around during milestones in video game computing. (For my students that know how much I love video games, you should imagine what it would be like growing up on this game. Yeah, no 3D cards, just text.)

The Lone Wolf books were cool because they had a page at the end with random numbers scattered across them. This was to generate a score for your character’s skill checks and attacks. It was a book where you were the main character and it played out like a variation on a video game. You were supposed to close your eyes and point to one of the numbers, but my teacher would always get mad at me during silent reading time.

These books really grabbed my imagination because, no matter how hard I tried to predict where the story was going, it could always take a crazy turn. Some smart authors even put fake endings into the book to trap you if you were just flipping through the pages.

The worlds that these authors created I can still remember. That’s why the samizdat quote is so poignant:

It was the fact that after reading it you understood the logic of Gibson’s world. And that logic was portable to any new scenario you could dream up.

___

Justin Bieber got his start broadcasting videos of himself singing on YouTube, getting the attention of a record label. Now Web 2.0 stuff is creating some trouble for that record label. James Roppo of Island Def Jam Records is being charged with a couple of misdemeanors, such as endangering the welfare of children. A riot of fans broke out at a mall appearance on Friday; five people had to go to the hospital.
James Roppo is accused of not helping out the police in handling the angry crowd. Here’s what one officer had to say about it, from the Associated Press article:

“We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message,” said Nassau County Police Det. Lt. Kevin Smith. “By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.”

You want to do what you can to keep the fans safe. Those are the people that make a star famous. But I’ll admit it’s an interesting step in technology ethics by requiring someone to write a message on Twitter. Is that covered under the first amendment? Is this like yelling fire in a movie theater?