My So Called Life

Willis Tower

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Do you recognize that building? The tall, iconic one majestically rising above the skyline? The tallest building in the U.S.? Oh, you must mean the Willis Tower of course!

A couple of days ago it was announced that the Sears Tower would be renamed the Willis Tower. I just hate that. I mean, I understand that the Sears corporation hasn’t occupied it since ’92, but when you have something that is so iconic, you can’t just go around changing names. Ugh! And believe me, it’s not going to bring you more customers, if anything, it will drive people away. We’re talking about the city that is still upset over the name change from Marshall Field’s to Macy’s almost 3 years ago.

The strangest part was that, reading the article it sounded like Willis didn’t pay to have the name changed and will not take up a significant portion of the building (only 3.5%). There is some confusion over that part, so I may not completely understand, but that is even more heinous. I could understand if the company was giving them a few million to stay afloat in this economy or something. Money talks. But the way it sounds, it is completely arbitrary.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, at the very bottom of the article, they throw out that the building might be repainted silver. Silver! A new name *and* a new color? Preposterous!

Absolutely Heartbreaking

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I came across this story today and it is one of the saddest things I have heard in a while. Ryan Moats is an NFL running back, but that is irrelevant to the story. That first link really covers the story well, so I suggest you just go read it there. You can also watch the video from the dashboard  camera in the police car, but I think reading the text summary is enough.

To make a long story short, Ryan Moats received a call that his mother in law was in the hospital and only expected to live for a few minutes. The family jumped in the car and sped to the hospital. Just before pulling into the parking lot, Moats failed to come to a complete stop at a red light, though he did slow down and make sure there was no traffic (and it was at night, so most likely he would have seen). He even appears to have his 4-way flashers on. A police officer pulls out and turns on his lights, but at this point Moats was cloase enough that he just pulls over and parks in the hospital parking lot. The police officer ignores his pleas to see his dying mother in law (though his wife does run into the hospital) and proceeds to lecture him for almost 15 minutes. At some point, hospital security and a nurse both come to confirm that his story is true and his mother in law has only seconds to live, but the officer is unmoved. By the time the officer lets them go, his mother in law has died.

Through it all, Moats was a real trooper. He is frustrated (obviously) but he doesn’t cause trouble, just begs and pleads for the officer to let him go. He never mentions that he is a football player or anything like that. I’m not sure I could have kept as calm under similar circumstances.

Much is being made of the fact that the officer pulled a gun, but I don’t blame him for that. If you pull someone over and then a bunch of people come spilling out of the car, as an officer I think you have a right to be nervous. It has also been questioned whether this was racially motivated. I honestly don’t think so. I think it was a simple case of an officer with no common sense and a power trip, being a complete and utter idiot. But one thing is for sure, it is tragic and I can’t imagine what it feels like to be Ryan Moats right there.  All that frustration and grief and anger. And he handled it like the ultimate stand up guy.

I think the police are handling it appropriately and, in particular, I thought these were some good comments from the Chief of Police and his assisstant respectively:

“At the point the officer was told that they were responding to a dying family member, that should have been his concern: to allow those people to get access to that family member.”

“When people are in distress, we should come to the rescue. We shouldn’t further their distress.”

Savory Cupcakes

/ Shane / 6 Comments

My love of delicious cupcakes has been a topic of conversation on this blog, but what if the cupcakes were savory and not sweet? For example, what if they were meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting?

Enter the Meatloaf Bakery.

I don’t know exactly how I feel about it, but I think I like it. I haven’t tried them of course, but I would certainly be willing.  I would think the trick would be to keep from thinking of them as cupcakes. But I get a craving for meatloaf now and again, and I bet you can make some really delicious meatloaf if you put your mind to it.

Link courtesy Dabu. Dabu, why don’t you have a blog?

Garden Season II – Potential Hiatus

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Just when I write a nice post about the garden, we hear word of its ultimate demise. I mentioned before that there was some doubt about its future and, according to the most recent transmission, the garden will be closed in the “fall of this year” to be used as “staging during construction” of a new building. The semi-good news is that the University “would be willing to help relocate the community garden to a new site”.  This is only semi-good because A) there’s no where that could possibly be as convinient for us as where it is now, and B) who knows what that means in terms of our plot personally (i.e. the garden may be smaller and we may be bumped, the individual plots may be smaller, etc.)

On the other hand, someone made an absolutely awesome webpage for the garden! As a programmer, it does my very soul good to see such a beautiful, clean, focused, professional website. And it contains everything you could ever need. Including the wiki for gardening tips was a stroke of genius! I didn’t see anything to indicate the identity of the creator of the webpage, be it an individual or company, but I would certainly recommend them based on this web page alone.

The Garden, Season II

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Spring is in the air, quite literally since I woke up this morning with itchy eyes and a vague tingling in my allergy sense.

And with all this nice weather comes another attempt at gardening! Our garden received a stay of execution for another year. We still don’t know if they are planning to build a building on top of it, but I think with the economy as it is, it is safe to assume it will be some time before the University gets around to breaking ground on a multi-million dollar new building.

We were out on Sunday cleaning out the leftovers from last year and even a few new things that had already taken root.  Last year we didn’t get our garden until pretty late since we were on the waiting list and everything, so hopefully getting started earlier on it this year will mean less weeding, etc. We even plan to plant some lettuce and other things that come up early to maximize the gardening potential. Did you know there is something called Grand Rapids Lettuce? Well, there is.

We haven’t got the layout planned yet, but we did buy all the seeds over the weekend. I am also going to attempt to grow cucumbers on the back porch to start my own pickle supply. I have my grandma’s recipie which I am on record as saying is the food of the gods. Hopefully they will grow better than the porch tomatoes did last year. Does anybody know if cucumbers need a lot of sun? I don’t need big ones. They are supposedly a kind that is conducive to growing in small spaces. Ah, who am I kidding I only bought them because they were called “Spacemaster Cucumbers” and I’m hoping they float or grow in the dark or something.