Local blog Fire Dennis Moore reports that our Kansas Third District US Representative was spotted at Hy-Vee in Lenexa... Purchasing Miller Lite!
Also, he attends mass but doesn't take communion. (FDM requests that you send in Dennis Moore sightings, but is sure to mention that you should not stalk him.)
Geez. The guys over at Fire Dennis Moore just sometimes try too hard. Moore is one of the few sane representatives I have here in Kansas, so I of course am not sympathetic to the goals of FDM. That said, they're not really doing much to convince me. What do we have on the front page of FDM right now? Besides the stuff about other Johnson County races, which I will exclude, there is:
Moore Does Not Support An Estate Tax Cut
Moore Has Raised Campaign Money (but not as much as before)
Some Other Democrats Lost In April Elections
I honestly don't have strong feelings one way or the other on Moore. I've just been forced to vote for him when all the Republicans will put up against him are either way too conservative, or are seemingly well meaning moderates who are forced to the right by the whack-jobs who run the Republican party around here. If FDM is doing anything, it's solidifying me as a Moore supporter.
My ancient computer equipment at home is finally starting to give up the ghost. The most recent component to go is my trusty old Microsoft Wheel Mouse. This good friend has served me since 1998, but I think I'm finally going to declare him dead and move on.
So what's up with mice these days? I know I'm going optical, but does anybody have any recommendations as to brands/models? Are there some mice out there that are more precise than others? Are wireless mice pretty good these days? I'd like to go wireless, but even small problems with the wireless connection would about drive me nuts, it has to be 100% bulletproof.
Your input would be greatly appreciated.
I was just driving by this house yesterday and I thought I saw some new ones. Does anybody know how long these have been there?
So beards are in, eh?
Now I only have to work it so that fat is trendy and I'll be well on my way to world domination.
(Thanks to Bex for the article.)
Yup, I've actually had this up for half a decade now. I had planned on redesigning the site for the big day, but on reflection it's more in character to have thought about doing something with the site and not actually done it.
So hooray! My thanks go out to all my readers (all three of you) who make posting the mundane details of my life, Kansas Sunday Liquor Sales news, Kansas City Sports Radio news, and bad Green Bay Packers commentary worth it.
God damn it, does one of our guys have to do this every year? It looks like Green Bay Wide Receiver Javon Walker is going to start a contract holdout. You know, I think I saw this coming when I saw that crappy flash intro on his official website last year.
Please don't do it, Javon. One more year and you get paid. I don't want to hate you too.
The Time Traveller Convention is Saturday, May 7.
Spread the word.
Just out of curiousity, I went to the "Your Account" section in Netflix and asked for my complete rental history. They'll only give that to you in an email, and it took a while for it to make it, but it finally did. Since I signed up on October 24 of last year I've rented 42 DVDs. When I first signed up they were charging $23.64/month, but starting my second month they dropped their price to $19.34/month. (Why it went up to $19.37 this month I couldn't tell you.) So I've paid Netflix a total of $139.71.
So my current cost per movie with Netflix is $3.32. That's maybe a bit below Blockbuster's rental price, but I'm so bad with returning movies that I could just about guarantee that any Blockbuster rental would turn into a $10 expense after I've paid my late fees.
Netflix rules.
Let's just hope it's a choice I'm never forced to make:
Give up your Green Bay Packers season tickets or go to jail.
I must point out that the judge isn't asking her to give up the season tickets forever, just to donate this year's tickets. I also must point out that if she began serving her 90 day sentence now, she'd be out in time for the first preseason game.
And honestly, is there really any better way to make the off-season go by faster than a little jail term?
Update: I guess there are worse choices to make.
Well, the University of Houston Student Video Network has once again redesigned their webpage. They're doing about as good a job keeping the website up to date as I did back when I was in school, so the programming schedule is only good through February 19th. On the plus side, it looks like they're producing original programming again. There are five shows listed on the Programs page (although, Pirate TV is sadly absent).
If you're visiting, be sure to check out the Photo Gallery. From those pictures I can't figure out where they're located now, but it looks like they have some pretty nice digs now. It's good to see that the studio is back on its feet after the flood.
After Hit and Run pointed out to me that Peter Bagge had made a contribution to this month's Mad Magazine I figured I'd have to grab a copy. I was really hoping for one of his Suck/Reason style docu-comics, but instead he only had the last page, a list of "Things You Don't Want To Hear From On A Technical Support Phone Call", and he only supplied the art. The "humor" was by someone else.
OK, maybe I should have thought a bit harder about Mad's target audience before I got my expectations up, but I'll still point out things that upset me about this issue:
Strike 1: $3.50 is not cheap.
Strike 2: They have ads now? What the hell?
Strikes 3-296,234: Mad Magazine is publishing fucking Ted Rall??? That Ted Rall?
On the plus side, they really did take Lost down a notch.
I didn't catch Andrew Bird when he was in Lawrence a while back because he was playing with Ani DiFranco, and I didn't have $40 to drop on a ticket. I'm hoping he might make it back sometime solo... I've heard he puts on an excellent live show.
He's about to head over to Europe for a little tour over there. The Amsterdam show on May 1 will be webcast here, so I'm going to have to remember to watch that. Too bad I'm not in Amsterdam, though. Then I could totally go see the show live.
I still say that we used up all our "Good TV Being Renewed" karma for this year when HBO announced that we're going to get another season of The Wire. Still, it would be nice if they renewed Arrested Development, and it is a good sign that they official page says "Returns This Summer". I assume that Summer reruns are either a good sign for the show being renewed or a sign that Fox just doesn't have anything better to put on. On top of that, I still haven't figured out what's up with GetArrested.com, the official Fox "Save Our Show" web site.
Well, I hear we'll know one way or another early in May. In the meantime, it's cool to hear that the Arrested Development team is apparently going to make a movie. Not an Arrested Development movie per se, but it does star Gob and was written by one of AD's writers.
In "Fort Awesome With No Cable" news, my months of taunting Bex for not being able to live without her CSI will come back to haunt me tomorrow as I scramble for a place to watch the NFL draft. I think I'll plan on trying to make it to the gym around the time Green Bay makes their first round pick. Maybe that'll help keep me on the treadmill for a while.
Of course, I'm over a month wishing you all a happy Pi Day, but I couldn't help but link this, which is perhaps the coolest thing ever.
Wow, they're really going to do it. A Kansas School Board subcommittee will hold hearings in May to discuss the legitimacy of Intelligent Design and Evolution. There will be three days of hearings, May 5-7, in which ID advocates make their case. May 12-14 has been set aside for a rebuttal from real scientists, but they're all boycotting the hearings.
Get yourself ready to hear plenty of quotes from the ID advocates on how the scientific community cannot answer their challenges, on how they have the evolutionists on the run, and for Kansas once again to be the butt of lame Jay Leno jokes. Politicians trying to make decisions on science reminds me of that time that the Alabama Legislature passed a bill defining the value of Pi to 3. Except that that was an urban legend, here in Kansas we really do have politicians trying to decide science for us.
Ugh. Someone remind me again why I live here?
Everybody's making with the jokes about the new food guidelines. I prefer to point out that the site which describes the new guidelines is currently hosed.
Oh well, I guess I'll just stay fat.
Correction: It appears only be be hosed in Firefox, or this copy of Firefox at least.
My weekend was dominated by two tasks. Saturday was the day spent cleaning the car. My car gets a good thorough cleaning about once a year. If I'm lucky, it gets touchup cleanings three or four times throughout the rest of the year. Saturday was the thorough cleaning. I washed, applied two coats of wax, and vacuumed the hell out of it. After finishing, I was forced to admit that even after a thorough cleaning my car no longer looks good, it merely looks passable. There are too many chips in the paint on the hood, too many stains on the upholstery, and too much paint flaked off of the hubcaps to say my car looks good now. My car is now entering the twilight of its life.
I don't have the same affection for this car that I had for my old Saturn. This car is simply a beast of burden that I intend on keeping alive as long as it is useful, but its passing will not be mourned.
Sunday was taken up by carpet cleaning. Harry is making excellent progress in the Housebreaking department. Though he is by no means perfect, and certainly not ready to be left unkennelled in our absence, he will use the bathroom outside if we give him ample opportunities. He will often go several days without an accident. In the first few months we had him, the accidents would be several a day, sometimes several an hour. We always immediately treated them with Petzyme and blotted up the liquid, but the wet spots in high traffic areas inevitably attracted dirt, and we ended up with black spots in the carpet in the dining room area of Fort Awesome.
We did a pretty thorough vacuum job, then rented a Rug Doctor. I think this was the first carpet cleaning I've done since purchasing Fort Awesome in 2001, and I'm very satisfied with the results. The black spots are gone for the most part, and it even got up most of the grease stains that my computer chair's casters have left on the carpet in the Computer Lab.
I'm hosting poker night this coming Saturday, and I kind of wanted to get things cleaned up a bit before we had company. If you're interested in joining us for poker night, let me know. We're always looking for more suckers players. The host always provides food, and I'm trying to decide between pizza, grill food and just cooking up some appetizers/finger foods. I'm leaning towards the latter since it looks like there's a possibility of rain on Saturday, plus that would make it easier to accommodate the vegetarians in attendance.
Tonight begins the second half of my Bridge for Beginners class. The second half of the course is paid lessons, so only the truly committed will remain. I'm not sure who of my bridge pals will be sticking around for the second half of the class. I'd really like to learn to play bridge competitively, but I'm worried that I'll get to the end of the class and have no partners to play with in sanctioned matches. We'll see how that goes. (By the way, everybody should learn how to play Bridge. It's the craze that's sweeping the nation.)
I predict that it will soon replace Texas Hold 'Em as everybody's card game of choice. Duplicate Bridge tournaments will be broadcast on ESPN, and bars everywhere will have Bridge nights. It's going to be awesome. Take bridge lessons now and get in on the ground floor!
I did not know that Amazon owned IMDB. That fact came up in this article on Amazon courting partners in the online video rental business.
My first ever stock purchase was some Netflix stock, which then took a bit of a nosedive. Amazon selecting Netflix to work with in DVD rentals would do wonders for that IRA of mine. Amazon selecting Blockbuster to work with would upset me greatly.
Cartesian Products are not your friends.
David Sedaris's appearance in Lawrence tonight is sold out. Crap.
This Sunday morning I was on my way home from the gym when I hit a pretty bad traffic backup on the highway. Apparently there had been a somewhat bad accident that had I-35 shut down to one through lane just before 75th Street. I needed to exit at 75th and I was getting pretty annoyed at all the people blocking the exit-only lane then trying to cut into the one through lane at the last minute. When people started driving on the shoulder then trying to cut across both lanes, I nearly became a Road Rage statistic.
Some guy tried to pass on the shoulder and cut in front of me, but being the dick that I am, I sped up to not allow him in front of me. The guy behind me was more forgiving and let him in directly behind me. About twenty feet up the road I discovered why they guy wanted to merge back into the real lane so badly. Apparently there was a cop up ahead, and as I passed him, he stepped into traffic and waved the shoulder-driver back over. He had about six other shoulder cutters already lined up awaiting their tickets and was just walking back through traffic waving over every other one who had pulled onto the shoulder.
It was awesome.
It's one thing to do that during normal rush-hour traffic. (Though they're ticketing that these days, too.) If you do that, you're a dick. It's quite another when you do that during a traffic backup caused by a wreck. When you pull onto the shoulder, you're blocking the lane that emergency vehicles would use to get to the wreck and offer assistance. You could quite possibly be putting someone's life in danger. I certainly hope that all of the tickets issued yesterday reflect that difference.
This is the second time in about six months when I've had a bolt stuck through a tire. What's up with that?
And then it was over. I tuned in to 810AM last week to see what Renshaw was up to during the basketball tournament, but he wasn't on the air. I thought that maybe they had just switched to national programming during the tournament, but John Renshaw is no longer listed on 810AM's schedule at all. I read here that he was going to Satellite Radio, but I can't find anything about that anywhere else.
And so the saga ends. With Whitlock off the air and Renshaw now officially gone, Kansas City sports radio is now either patently offensive, bland, or Jim Rome. Oh well.
I kid 810, but their baseball coverage really is pretty good. The new Doghouse with Bill Maas is better than I was expecting, too. I just hope that there have been some changes in the morning come football season. The show on 810 just doesn't do it for me, and I just can't stand that little juvenile prick-ass twerp they have on in the morning on 610.
Does anybody know where one can find radio ratings? I'm curious to see how the various morning shows are doing.
How I love the signs of the coming spring... The grass comes out of dormancy, we throw open the windows at Fort Awesome for comfortable night sleeping, the trees begin to bud, and the first of the hippies returns to comment on my 2002 post on Bonnaroo.
The album by Air is Moon Safari.
The old Atari game is Moon Patrol.
They're different.
It's Election Day here in Shawnee. We're doing the Gay Marriage thing here in Kansas finally. Like this fella said, if you think that there's any chance of defeating this amendment, you haven't been paying attention. I'm just happy that we managed to avoid this being on the November ballot where it may have helped to unseat some of the moderates we otherwise managed to reelect. I'll be heading to the polls to cast my futile "No" vote today anyway.
There's a school board election. I'm voting for Cindy Neighbor because she's endorsed by the Mainstream Coalition. I was hoping I could find some evidence that her opponent Marc LaSalle supported the teaching of Intelligent Design, but no such luck. Red State Rabble has the rundown on that if you're in the Blue Valley school district.
(Speaking of which, Mainstream Coalition, do you need some web help? Can you please not put up an endorsements page with broken images? Sheesh.)
Other than that, we're electing a bunch of Water District folks. My only decision there is whether or not I will vote for a guy called "Vader". I leave this decision in your hands. Comment before I vote at lunchtime and I'll go with the consensus.
Update: Busy so I won't make it to vote at lunch. You're free to cast your votes for or against Lord Vader until after work tonight...
I think this is how things go in Episode III. The Emperor convinces Anakin to run for the local Water Board, and his career in politics is launched...
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