Ichiban News

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I’ve been meaning to post this for quite some time, but I’m finally getting around to it.  And I think it works out because the website seems to be very stable and operational at this point.  So, without further ado, I give you Ichiban News!

The website is developed by a friend of mine.  Basically the concept is similar to Digg or other news aggregating websites.  You can submit a story, any story at all!  If it strikes your fancy, go ahead and submit it.  It could be a serious article that you think people should see, or a funny one.  It could be a particularly good post by your favorite blogger (::ahem::).  The fun part is that you get to make up your own headline and description of the story.  Make it funny, make it serious, make it anything you want.  Once it is submitted people can vote a story up or down.  Users can also leave comments on a story.  The idea is that the more interesting a story is (interesting being a formula calculated from number of votes and number of comments, among other things) the farther up it will bubble until it makes the front page.  The less interesting a story is (less timely, more down votes, or nobody voting or commenting on it at all) it will slowly move down the page.  If you have enough users, the end result is that the most interesting news is always at the top!  So this gives the average person the power to affect what becomes “news”.

Anybody can uses the website, there is no account to sign up for.  But, in order to submit stories or vote you must have a Google (i.e. gmail) account (which is free of course if you don’t already have one).

So everybody go over there and participate.  The more people that use the site the more useful it becomes (more submissions and more votes means more good news brought to my attention).  Become an early adopter and get in on the ground floor!  Now is the time to put your fingerprint on the media!

Rolling Thunder

/ Shane / 1 Comment

So the other day I went to the bathroom at work.  There is one stall and one urinal, so when I entered the bathroom at about the same time as another guy there was a little eye contact trying to sort out who was going to take the stall and who was going to take the urinal.  I don’t know the guy’s name but I recognize him from around.  Let me say that he is a regular looking guy, but fairly professional looking.  I only say this to point out that he absolutely knew I was there.

So I take the stall and go about my business.  After a few seconds the dude blasts out what can only be considered a marvel of modern flatulence.  As it continued on and on, I had time to reflect on it, and I named it “rolling thunder”.  It would just sound like it was going to die out and then it would start to build into another crescendo.  He managed this 3 or 4 times, in one long continuous symphony with no pauses.  When he finished and the final echos faded away, the sudden silence seemed so quiet.  Immediately my body tried to fill that silence with hysterical laughter and it was all I could do to fight down the urge.  We’re supposed to be adults here!  But it was hard to stifle it.

Now I have two theories on why this happened:

1) Sometimes when you are at a urinal and someone is in a stall, they freeze up until you leave, afraid to even shift for fear the rustling will give them away.  As if you don’t know they are in there.  Sometimes they only freeze until you flush or wash or make some other covering sound.  So maybe this guy was trying to send me a signal, like “Hey, it’s cool buddy!  I’m hip!  Blast away!”  You know, set me at ease.

2) He felt it inside and knew he had something special.  He could have gone back to his office and let fly, but then no one would ever experience the shock and awe.  He’d have no witnesses.  So maybe he decided to get it out where there would be someone to enjoy the performance.  Even if we never talk about it, he knows that I know and now he can sleep easy.

I guess we’ll never know, but having heard a true master at the craft I could almost shed a tear knowing I’ll never hear the like again.

Unless I keep training Evie in the tub.

Update Post

/ Shane / 3 Comments

So I haven’t been posting much for the past week or so, but we’ve been really busy what with the holiday weekend and all.

So last week we had some friends from Philly (well Jersey really) visiting and staying at our place the whole week.  (Although I did mention our trip to Maggianos)  They have a daughter about Evie’s age, so it was nice for Evie to have someone to play with, or at least follow around and imitate.  It worked out pretty well for them to use our house as a base of operations and strike out from there all around Chicago.  We didn’t get to do all that much with them since we were working and all, but we did manage to go to the zoo with them.  Their daughter is really cute (maybe even a match for Evie, although exactly the opposite…dark hair and dark eyes) and smart as a whip.  Ever since they left all I can think about is, “Will Evie really be able to do all of that in 10 months??”

Then, last weekend we went on our semi-annual camping trip in Michigan.  It was the usual camping trip with Evie, which is to say, exhausting!  It is a lot of work running around after her in general, but it is like 10 times as much work when you are camping.  Especially this time because she wanted to be walking around (and into everyone’s campsite) from sun up to sun down and anything you wanted to do to get in the way of that was not appreciated!  So I didn’t have time to play any cards or any sort of games or anything.

We went on a hike and we saw two sets of deer bounding out of the woods onto the path in front of us.  It was really quite amazing considering we were singing childrens’ songs at the tops of our voices to keep Evie happy!  As a side note, I did have some outside confirmation that my family has a preternatural ability to spot deer at any time.  I always thought I had a knack for it, but compared to my dad, I’m pathetic.  Anyway, we also managed to make it to the beach one day.  You know, it’s funny, every time you go in Lake Michigan, or even swimming in general, you say, “Once you’re in the water it’s not so cold!”  But then the next time you’re like, “Oh yeah, well not this time because it is COOOOLD!”  And then you get in and say, “Once you’re in the water it’s not so cold!”  Plus everybody around you is repeating the same thing.  How many times does that have to happen before it really takes?  So we went to the lake and the water was super super cold but then we got in and were surprised to discover it wasn’t that bad.

Only tangentially related but, when I was little we always had 2% milk.  When I would go to someone else’s house and they had skim milk I just couldn’t stand it.  It just seemed like colored water to me.  (Of course now all we have is skim milk, but that’s not my fault).  Well, when we were camping, Chris (who was the main skim milk house that I went to when I was growing up) said that sometimes he just puts water in his cereal and it tastes exactly like skim milk.  Aside from sounding completely disgusting, I think this upholds my theory that skim milk really is just colored water.

In terms of an Evie Update, she has really been surprising me lately.  I think she is entering into a stage where she is just learning everything so fast and picking up things you don’t realize she is picking up.  This might be fatherly doting, so if you don’t want to hear it skip a bit, brother.

Three times today when we were going through a book she pointed at something I didn’t know she knew and said the word for it aloud:  house, apple and flower.  Sara told her to knock on the door and she went over and knocked on it just the way you would.  When has she ever knocked on a door?  Today she took Sara’s keys and went over to the door and tried to reach up to where the keys go.  Probably the funniest thing was I had her little horse and I was pretending that he was telling me secrets.  I would just put the horse up to my ear and whisper, “spsh spsh spsh” and she would laugh hysterically.  So I just kept doing it because she thought it was pretty funny.  Later I gave her the horse and she put it up to my ear and sort of “spsh spsh spsh”ed.  That really cracked me up, that she copied that part!  I didn’t even really realize I was doing that.  Now in retrospect I think she wasn’t laughing at the idea that a horse was telling me secrets like I originally thought; she apparently understood much better than I knew.  She was laughing at what an idiot I was making of myself sticking a horse in my ear and making funny noises!

Evie also has two new tricks.  The first is making herself so mad that she pukes.  That is a fun one, let me tell you.  The other one is farting in the bathtub, which she is not too young to think is funny.  She gets a little devilish grin on her face and heeeeaves up her stomach and really cuts one.  Then she looks at me and laughs.  She gets good resonance out of the tub.  Sometimes she tries to lift up her legs to see the bubbles.  This is now a multi-night occurrence.

And finally, football season is finally upon us!  I’m only in one Fantasy league this year for the first time in a long time.  I think that will work out nicely though since I have less time then I’ve had in a long time.  I really get giddy with excitement when I think about the Packers on MNF!

First Cousin, Once Removed

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Kelsey
Born Tuesday 9/2/08 @ 7:45 pm
8 lbs 1 oz, 20″ long
Congratulations Cousin Heather!

Chromed

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Just released: Google’s new webbrowser, Google Chrome.  I installed it 6 minutes after it went live, in fact, I am blogging from it right now.  You can learn more about it in comic form, arguably the best way to learn anything.  (Remind me to tell you about the Cartoon History of the Universe sometime…fantastic!)

So far so good.  Fonts and things are kind of looking funny.  It will take some getting used to with the tabs on the top, but I think it makes sense.  It imported everything from IE seemlessly.  There are a lot of speed and security enhancements, which are hard to quantify.  Best feature so far is the “new tab” page.  Rather than making a blank page when you go to a new tab, it displays a page that is customized to your personal browsing history.  Your most visited pages are there with one click access.  And somehow that new tab seems to load faster than the blank page in IE!

So, first impression is good.  It seems faster than IE and Firefox, but maybe that’s because I haven’t loaded it down with plugins, etc. yet.