Fun Stuff

Incomunicado

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I will be gone to a conference next week, so I won’t be able to update anything.  It will be interesting because this will be the longest I’ve been away from Evie and the longest Sara will be alone with her.  I know she is nervous about being able to get everything done and get to work on time, etc.  To all you single mothers out there (Hi mom!) I don’t know how you do it, because I can’t imagine not being able to hand her off for a second when you need to make dinner or uh…use the facilities.

Anyway, to hold you over I will leave you with this game.  It is the perfect balance between being slightly challenging so you feel accomplished, but not so challenging that I couldn’t beat it in one day.  Just make a path to get the ball to the box…simple!  All you do is draw lines and let gravity and physics do the rest.  So you’re like learning and stuff while you play!

If you get bored with that one, you can move on to this one.  It is a simple turn based RPG (remember how popular those used to be?)  I haven’t beat it yet, I’m on the one with the submarines.  And if you beat THAT one, you can hit up parts 2, 3, 4, and 5.

P.S.  The Office was off for so long, I almost fell out of love with Jenna Fischer

Audio books = brilliant

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I must be like 100 years old because I am just not interested in listening to music radio anymore, only talk.  Opie and Anthony had such a short tenure here, it is almost not worth mentioning, and normal “safe” morning zoo-type radio disgusts me.  I can’t handle listening to political talk radio of any persuasion because I abhor fanatics and I always end up so mad when I get where ever I’m going.  So after football season ended, I just couldn’t take listening to the radio anymore (you KNOW I wasn’t going to listen to baseball talk) but what the heck was I supposed to do on my extremely boring commute to and from work? (*for NPR see below)

But then on a whim, I discovered that the Chicago public library lets you check out and download audio books for free!

To make a long story short, I tried many (mostly illegal) ways to get the audio books onto CDs to listen to in the car.  Ignoring the price of the blank CDs I would go through (audio book are really long…like 16 hours), most of the methods for cracking the encryption etc. take so many steps and so much effort, it just wasn’t worth it.  I am too lazy even for criminality!  Finally Sara agreed to buy me an mp3 player for my birthday (not an iPod since they’re not compatible with the audio books) and the matter was settled.  For much less than the cost of satellite radio I have basically unlimited entertainment now!  (I’d also like to take this moment to point out that I didn’t get the mp3 player until like 3 months after my birthday and only then because I ordered it myself…Happy Birthday! 😛 )

Oh man, and it is so fantastic!  Thanks to Evie I don’t have much (any) time to read anymore, and that was really killing me.  And now I find more and more reasons to listen to my audio books.  For example, I used to read before bed every night, but had to stop when Evie was in there.  Also, it passes the time when I’m doing dishes, which I hate more than anything in the world except yard work.  So anyway, I am thoroughly enjoying the mp3 player.  Oh yeah, its good for music too.

*What about NPR you might be asking?  I will admit that I stumbled upon NPR a little late, but that might have fit the bill.  By the time I figured out how awesome it was, I was already committed on the mp3 player path and that worked out so well I haven’t really gone back.  Everybody I know already listens, so in my desperation for entertainment I gave it a try.  I used to think what everybody who doesn’t listen to it thinks; that it is boring, random and snooty.  But it turns out the first two end up being the strength of the station.  A story comes on about like the shell mound people of central south america (as opposed to south central america) and you think to your self, “how could I possibly be interested in that?” but then you listen to the whole thing.  And then it jumps to a story about a special filthy hippy school at Waldon pond, and you get sucked into that.  You couldn’t make up a transition more random than the ones they actually have, and surprisingly, it ends up being great.  So anyway, I now listen to NPR when I get a chance, but that’s not often now that I have the mp3 player.

In other news, my vast network of Internet spies has informed me that if you liked the Internet Forum Business Meeting, you will perhaps enjoy the sequel or see what happens when the Internet takes on a funeral.  (Take that Meg) (Aw shoot, I went over to her blog and she already had something better! )

P.S.  I think this marks the first occasion when somebody actually submitted something to me for my blog.  Usually I either find the stuff myself or people send me stuff because I would enjoy it personally and it ends up on here.  It’s going to be Fark around here soon…

Fun Stuff

/ Shane / 4 Comments

It has come to my attention that certain people feel I haven’t been posting enough fun stuff lately, so I guess I need to rectify that.  As such, I have shamelessly stole this video from her.

This is what would happen if business meetings were like Internet forums (including strong language):

And also, now that Meg has visited my new blog, I finally have a dot from outside the U.S. on my Sitemeter!

You know how when you were like 13 you thought your parents were just *so* embarrassing?  Well they probably were.  I mean, if you could peer into our house at any given moment, you would see some pretty embarrassing behavior, such as barking like dogs, doing silly made up dances, making hideous faces and rude noises at Evie; anything for a smile.  I’m sure after a few years of doing that you have no choice but to completely lose your sense of what is embarrassing and what isn’t.  You really couldn’t help it.

Evie is crawling a little bit now.  She says pretty much every sound in the alphabet except for “Ma” which Sara doesn’t take to kindly.  When she is really upset / crying she has started going “nein nein nein” for some reason…must be in her German blood.  And I think she is a little confused because everytime she sees the cat she starts yelling, “Da da!  Da da!”  Also, sometimes she makes this angry really loud breathing noise through her nose like Melissa trying to get Butters to attack her.  I hope Melissa reads this because that would only make sense to her.

My mom is obsessed by the game Scrabble.  I mean, really obsessed.  She even has jewelry made out of scrabble tiles.  She can never get anybody who wants to play with her, so she invented a game called Speed Scrabble (at least I think she did, she could have stole the idea from someone else and passed it off as her own).  Anyway, we have been playing that game since we were little and I have introduced it to many people over the years.  Well, in the tradition of Uno, Skip-bo, etc. someone has taken that game and monetized it into BananaGrams.  Boo!  My mom deserves a check.

I have endorsed ThinkGeek on this blog before and I probably will again.  That is one of the coolest stores online.  But I am not only doing a commercial, I also am a customer!  (You may have seen Evie in an “I TCP/IP but mostly IP” shirt, among other things)  I have even signed up for their mailer, something I would normally NEVER do.  But every time, there are such good things in there that it is worth getting an email about, such as a personal soundtrack shirt with a built in speaker for playing the soundtrack to your life, selected from a remote in your pocket.  Now it turns out it was just an April fools’ joke, but compared to some of their other products it doesn’t seem ridiculous. Well apparently it was not so crazy because they got so many orders and emails that they are now going to produce it!  So anyway, if you are a geek and you like things, then you should check it out.  And while you are there, perhaps you can buy a Defendius Labyrinth Security Lock for your home:

Oh yeah, and Guns and Roses rocks.  FACT.  I just needed that to be down in writing.

Spring is in the air (kind of)

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Today we attended an outdoor “Spring is here!” party.  It was like 40 degrees, grey and rainy…not very springy!  Also, it was in a garden that is still all dead and brown, which didn’t scream spring either.  Still, we were there hoping we could get a plot this year, both to grow some food for ourselves and so Evie could have a *little* green space here in the city.  There was actually a lot of really good food and everybody was really nice, even though we didn’t talk to that many people.  There was obviously a sense of community.  A few of the people were…interesting, to say the least.  It is a very eclectic group of people, that’s for sure.

The strangest thing that happened while we were there was some sort of protest / performance art that took place.  There were people linking arms and digging in the dirt with hands and the next thing I know we were repeating things like “they are poisoning our food supply” and “we embrace Mother Earth.”  As Sara said, it was “worth the price of admission.”  The best part was the disclaimer that the views represented were “not necessarily the views of the gardeners, the experimental station, or the performers themselves.”  Well, who’s views are they exactly??

Last weekend a very strange coincidence happened.  I was browsing one of my favorite blogs, Hyde Park Progress (see over there on the right ->), but it is on hiatus at the moment, so there wasn’t much time killing to be found there.  Next I flowed over to I Hate My Developer for the Woodlawn perspective, which I fully intend to spend more time reading.  There I found a post pointing me to another Woodlawn blogger, Swim and Glitter, with a very nice review.  So I started reading that and lo and behold, I find out that I know that person!!  Well I kind of know the person; they used to be our landlords!  I don’t know how much time you spend on the Internet, gentle reader, but it is a very large place!  So, to stumble randomly upon someone you have had contact with in the real world is very startling.  Needless to say I have subsequently been cyber-stalking her.  Her blog is everything I wish mine could be, so pop on over there for T.M.I. and some frank talking.

Finally, I will leave you with the pinnacle of human achievement.  Gentlemen, I give you…the Dough-Nu-Matic!  And yes my friend, there is a video.  Okay, it’s not quite the pinnacle of human achievement, because Tony Vegas came up with a rotating conveyor belt with 3 Dough-Nu-Matics on it, rotating once per minute so you were never without a doughnut popping in your mouth.  Apparently, even the perfect can be improved upon!

Jimmy Kimmel

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You may have seen these already, but if not you should definitely take a look.  Just as some background, apparently every night at the end of Jimmy Kimmel Live, there is a running gag where Jimmy Kimmel announces that they are out of time and they have had to bump Matt Damon.  That is, until Jimmy’s girlfriend, comedienne Sarah Silverman, dropped this bombshell on him:

Well Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t going to take this lying down.  And, like any good sequel, you need way more star power.