Sunday, July 31, 2005

Colorado


I give you... crab cakes!

I have has a good time in Colorado so far. Yesterday we went to the races, which had figure 8's and trains. Today’s main event was going to my dad's friend's (Jerry’s) house to have an outdoor dinner party, Jerry fixed some awesome stuff and it was a good time. Tomorrow it looks like we will be heading out to Boulder to have some hippie fun.

I will post more pictures from the last two days when i get back home.

Saturday, July 30, 2005

"10th Planet" Discovered

Nasa (article)


The planet, which hasn't been officially named yet, was found by Brown and colleagues using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego. It is currently about 97 times farther from the sun than Earth, or 97 Astronomical Units (AU). For comparison, Pluto is 40 AU from the sun.


Cool deal.

Garden



Just got back from the Stuck on Broadway show here in Garden. The show started quite late, but it was a good one.

Oi, i need to goto bed.
Off to Colorado tomorrow.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Spreadshirt sucks!

Do not shop at spreadshirt.

Why? Look at the post below this one, they decided to comment spam me. Was it one of my readers impressed by their service and wanted to let me know that spreadshirt is better than CafePress? No, it is spreadshirt writing the comment, probably after googleing CafePress. At least they said that they were the company leaving the comment, right? Nope, they left their name as bart, but if you click on the name you go directly to their web site.

In summary, speardshirt uses dirty, underhanded practices to promote their site, and therefore should be avoided. I have contacted them to tell them that I did not appreciate them using my blog as and advertising board, and I said that I will campaign against their company until they apologize here.

On a different note I am about to head on out to Colorado, so once again I will be posting about once a day. But there should be some good pictures up at some point. Rock on!

p.s. Speardshirt sucks.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Arrr! here be the winner!

For all you Pirates out there this is the flag that won the voting to be the flag for the Pirate Islands:



I have also been working on some more stuff for the CafePress stores such as:



and


I am thinking about ordering stuff later today, so if you want something let me know.

Goodenow stepping down as head of NHL players' union

Yahoo! Sports (article)


Bob Goodenow is stepping down as head of the NHL Players' Association, less than a week after the union and league approved a new labor deal to end a lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season.


This is no surprise. He led the players into a war, which they lost, and they lost in spectacular fashion. For example, they ended up with a deal worse than what was originally offered. Hopefully the strong showing of the NHL owners during the lockout will severely weaken the strength of the players union and they will have the relationship like the NFL does, i.e. one that works.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005


For Pickles birthday we all (and some of his co-workers) went to Cossetta, a cafeteria style restaurant that has just Italian food. I enjoyed the food there greatly, and we all had a good time talking. For Pickles birthday cake Julia bought a cheesecake sampler with five or so different kinds of cheesecake in it, it was very good. If you can get a table this place is worth the wait.

For lunch on Monday we ate at Big Bowl, which is a very good Chinese restaurant. Besides the food being good, they also had a very good selection of tea, including hibiscus iced tea, which was a very good change of pace from the normal iced tea. This too is a place that I would recommend eating at if you have the chance.

(p.s. good is used 5 times in this post)

On Sunday night Julia and Pickle cooked dinner for us, but to do so we stopped at Byerlys, a cool store that is a cross between Dillions and Whole Foods Market. They had a lot of fun stuff there, but one of the best things was a nifty olive bar. I also found Republic of Tea bottled iced tea, which was very good.

Disc Golf

Currently I am at Hale Library. I decided to take a break from looking over the pictures from Minnesota to play a game of disc golf with Aaron, Chris, and Nicole. I didn't do too badly, but not my best game ever either. Aaron is figuring up the scores right now, and Jenette is doing some research for a paper that is due tomorrow (that is why she didn't play today).
The final scores are:
Nicole: 85
Aaron: 73
Me: 68
Chris: 66

Good times.

This is the prettier part of the building that Julia works in (at University of Minnesota), she actually works in the basement, which doesn�t look that impressive, but just imagine that she works in this part of the building. :)

On Sunday we went to go play some pick-up ice hockey, I didn�t do that good, but not that bad either. As you can see Pickle is contemplating the building, or life, or something...

After the Mall of America we decided to go to an Ethiopian place called Fasika. It was very different food, but it actually tasted pretty good, and at a reasonable price. If I were to go back I would just go for the veggies, but everything was pretty good. If you are in the Twin Cities area it is worth checking out this place at least once.

On Saturday we went to the Mall of America. Let me tell you, that it is a big mall. There were four levels, and an amusement park in the middle. We were there for a couple of hours and we didn�t get see nearly all of the stores. Also it looked like the food there was pretty good... next time I will set most of a day aside to wander around it, next time.

Athos on the other hand is entertained by things for about two seconds. He will jump on your lap, survey the area and find something else that he wants to go check out, such as chewed up chunks of cardboard. He is a very hyper dog, and likes to bark when he gets bored.

On Saturday it was pretty nice outside. This is in Pickle and Julias backyard, which is pretty big. Calla really likes to play fetch, which she will do with anything. May favorite is when she brings chunks of chewed up cardboard to throw... it doesn�t work too good, but even if you throw it a couple feet it keeps her entertained.

A little north of Des Monies we stopped at a Kum and Go, which for all we can tell is the store that Lance worked in (back in the day). In the bathroom the hand dryer had a sticker that says �Feel the Power�. Well, I felt the power, and it was awesome. It is just a very strong air blower, but it is impressive. Anyways, the Kum and Go was a pretty good quick shop, they even had Good Earth Chai on tap. :)

By the time we got to Des Monies we were hungry again, unfortunately the city doesn�t have that many good restaurants along the interstate (at least that I could see) so we ate dinner at Fazolies, not bad, but not all that good either....

On Friday we ate lunch at Aladdins Caf� before we left for Minnesota. The food there was pretty good, especially the salad dressing.

After dinner at On the Border, Nicole, Newgen and I went back to Newgens apartment and played a game of Warhammer. This is the how the battle ended, and even though Newgen lost all of his guys he was actually pretty close to winning the game. (The scenario was him trying to last as long as possible, since Nicole and I had a combined points total of twice his.)
Good times.

Pictures for all!

Today I�ll go through the pictures from the Minnesota trip and post the good ones. This one is from On the Border in Lawrence. It was the first time that I have been to this new restaurant in Lawrence; the decorations there are pretty impressive. The food that I got was only ok though.

We are back from Minnesota. We had a good time up there, and tomorrow I will post a lot of pictures (and some videos) from it. But for now I need to get to bed so that I can wake up early in the morning to take my car down to ye old repair shop (for a general look over) because soon we will be on our way off to Colorado.

Yay for summer!

(The picture is from just north of Kansas City)

Monday, July 25, 2005

Minnesota Update 2



Yesterday ice hockey went pretty good. It took awhile for me to get used to skating on ice, but once I did it was enjoyable (plus everyone there was pretty nice, although we did have to stop playing once because of a minor scuffle). After hockey we went to go eat at the Green Mill, an Old Chicago/ Applebee's sort of place. Then we looked around a mall for a bit. For dinner last night Julia and Pickle fixed a really good dinner featuring Two Onion Gratinee (soup). Today we went to Big Bowl for lunch (a very good Asian place) and then we looked around at a really big Games Workshop store and then we went to go get coffee at Caribou Coffee (pictured above). The coffee there was very good.
Soon we will eat dinner at an Italian place for Pickle's birthday.

More pictures when I get home.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Minnesota Update

Today we had a good day up in Minnesota. We played around the Mall of America for awhile and then ate dinner at an Etheopian place. Tomorrow we are gonna play some drop in ice hockey and do some other things.
Welp I'm gonna head off to bed now so that I can wake up in time to go play some hockey. I will post pictures when I get back to Manhattan.
Rock on.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Lawrence

Right now I am posting from Newgens computer. So far today we ate at On The Border, and checked out some stuff at Best Buy. Now we are gonna play a quick 1000 point battle of Warhammer (Newgen will be the High Elves, Me the Tomb Kings, and Nicole the Vampire Counts). Afterwards we will go to sleep so we can wake up in the morning and head off to Minnesota.

Northward!

Today we (Nicole and I, and soon to gather Newgen, Katamari style) will be rolling on up to Minnesota to visit Pickle and Julia. I will try to update this, but the postings will be sporadic.

If you want something from CafePress let me know in the comments in that post. I will probably be ordering that next wed. or Thursday.

Onward to Lawrence...

Hummm... to get my ball big enough to add Newgen to the ball I am gonna need to roll over some tacks, and legos, and a few chickens. Good thing I won’t be in Lawrence for another couple of hours... ^_^

In New Security Move, New York Police to Search Commuters' Bags

New York Times (article)


New York City will begin tomorrow morning randomly checking bags at subway stations, commuter railways and on buses, officials announced today in the wake of the terrorist bombings in London.


Is this not against our rights?

FLIPBOOK! (site)

I drew a detailed (animated!) map on how to get to Pickle and Julia's, check the link out.

Look what Nicole made for me! :D

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Get out yer vote!

I have been working on a flag for the Pirate Islands (as in a flag for all 15 nations). I have made five designs, now you can vote for them, and the one that gets the most votes is the winner. If you are a member of the Pirate Islands, you get to vote on all five flags, rank your favorites 1 through 5, with one being the best. If you are not a member of the Pirate Islands you may vote for your two favorite flags. I will count the vote totals in a week so don't be slow about it. Enjoy!


A)




B)




C)




D)




E)


Notes on the designs: I used 7 (Stars, stripes) to represent the original 7 Pirate Island Nations. I used 15 (Stars, points on stars) to represent the current 15 Nations.
If you have any suggestions let me know.

Congress to add 2 months to Daylight Savings Time

suntimes.com (article)


"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use,'' said U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored the measure with U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.).


"Ummm... yeah sun, sorry, we... uhh... passed a bill... yeah, umm... we are gonna need one more hour of daylight from you a day in America... yeah ummm... so can we ... uh... get you to do that?"

Ah, the simple mistakes when speaking are the best. :)

Super-speed broadband could arrive as early as '06

CNN Money (article)


Broadband Internet access via TV cables will be able to hit 100 megabits per second as early as next year, 50 times faster than the average broadband speeds now offered to cable TV homes, a Finnish firm said Wednesday.


Could this be the beginning of streaming high quality movies and sports over the internet? Could I get NFL Sunday ticket over the internet? Please?

In twenty years we are gonna know our cable companies not because they provide archaic cable to our TVs but they provide the cable internet to our homes. (But hopefully by then they got that fiber optic stuff going.)

Blurb Racket

Gelf Magazine (article)

This article looks at the blurbs that movies, books and others use to promote their products. Often times the good sounding blurb comes from a not so good review, for example:


The Girl in the Café (HBO)
Oregonian: "An endearing romantic comedy."
Actual line: "This new offering from HBO Films is at its heart a bit of political propaganda wrapped into an endearing romantic comedy that starts losing its laughs when it gets to Reykjavik and decides its teachable moment has arrived."


It is fun to see how writers re-write a bad review to sound good enough to stick on a package, this is about as close you can get to lying without actually doing it (although, I guess some of the stuff is just a flat out lie).

Bubble Fun


Bubble Fun (game)

Bubble fun is an Othello like game where you try to pop as many bubbles at once by filing them up, you win if you turn the board all your color. Quite fun.

It's the little things.


This is from Stuck on Broadway's upcoming schedule. She Said is my sister's band.


:)

In Canada: Cache a page, go to jail?

CNET News.com (article)

A related story to the Wayback Machine story:


A bill before Canada's Parliament could make it illegal for search engines to cache Web pages, critics say, opening the door to unwarranted lawsuits and potentially hindering public access to information.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

CafePress stores for all!



I threw together a CafePress store for each country. Alot of the stuff turned out pretty spiffy. I set the mark-up to low (to keep track of sales; if there is no mark-up then it is very hard to see when something is bought) but I think I will be ordering some stuff soon, so let me know if you wants something and I can get it for you at cost (actually below cost because just today CafePress sent me a 20% discount off of anything in my own stores ^_^).



here are the links to the stores:

Ambersandia
Futontopia
Grog Islands
Harbor Coast
Kreplachistan
Nettethuania
Pirataly
Rzanistan
Schizouania
Scotslandi
Snotiva
Sparrow Island
Svinksland
Tea Republic
Tsukestan





All the Pirate Islands flags

Is being generous good for business?

HoustonChronicle.com (article)


But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.
Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."


Good, I hate companies that chase easy profits instead of being an all around good store. It looks like Costco is a good company. I may have to go check them out again when I have a chance. I know that we bought our metal bowls there for extremely cheap a couple of years ago (I think it was in Iowa).

The 15 Nations of the Pirate Islands

So what did I do last night? I made flags, flags for all.


First is Sparrow Island (Andy). I think that this is one of my favorite flags. It is fashioned after the design of the Solomon Islands flag, using the colors that I used for his fantasy football helmet.



Next we have Svinksland (Davin). I followed the patteren of Scandinaivian flags for this one. Again I used the colors from the fantasy football helmits that I made.


Here is Tea Republic (mine). The original design came from the rugby shirt that I bought for Game Olympics from a couple of years back. It was a pretty simple flag to make.


Next is Tsukestan (Pickle). I loosely based this flag off of Greenland’s flag. I really wanted to have green as a dominate color, but still keep it separate from Snotvia’s white and green, so I added some black. The center oval symbolizes the Pickles that are abundant in Tsukestan.


Snotvia's (Nicole) flags was made by Nicole. She modeled it after the Macedonian flag (she just changed the colors). It is green, like snot, and white like ...via.


Schizouania's (Rhonda, my mom) flag was made by my mom. You see, everyone in Schizouania is crazy, so they see their own flag in the white field. This was the easiest flag to make.


Scotslandi’s (Julia) flag was made to look like Scotland’s flag. I couldn't get it to look right, so I alternated the orange and blue fields, and I think it turned out well.


Pirataly's (Michelle) flag was designed my Michelle. It was based off of Italy's flag with more piratey colors added, and a skull, you need the skull. This was a pain to make, but I think it turned out very well.


Rzanistan's (Rzan, or Ryan depending on how cool you are) flag was modeled after Uzbekistan's flag. It is a very simple flag, but I think it turned out real well. Again I used the colors from the fantasy football helmets that I made.


Futontopia's (Newgen) flag was designed by Newgen, while he was on drugs... or something... with that swirly thing and all. Actually, since this was one of the last flags that I made it went quickly, even though there was some technically difficult things to do on it.


Harbor Coast's (Lance) flag was the only flag that I did twice. The first one did not turn out real well, so after making a couple others, I went back to work on it. I added black to the flag which helped in giving it some weight. I didn't really model the flag off of any country, but it turned out like Trinidad and Tobago's. Oh well...


Nettethuania's (Jenette) flag was designed by Jenette off of her shirt that she bought for a jersey for the Game Olympics from a few years ago. This is the National flag for the country; they also have a battle fla,g which has a guy riding a tractor on it, a battle tractor.


Grog Islands' (Chris) flag was designed by Chris. The XXX are representative of Gorg, and I think the colors are loosely based off of his national jersey, although I am not totally sure about this. This flag was actually more complicated to make that it looks.


Kreplachistan’s (Aaron) flag was designed by Aaron using the design on his national rugby jersey as inspiration. I made this flag awhile ago, when I was just messing around.


Finally we have Ambersandia’s (Amber) flag. This is the only flag that I would not say is ‘official’. She has already made her own flag, but it is impossible to made in Illustrator, and after about an hour of trying to get the swirls to look un-stupid, I abandoned the attempt, and made her a new flag. The flag is based off of Abkhazia's flag, with the colors changed to match the fantasy football helmet that I made for her team. The 21 pointed star is representative of Peter Forsberg, of the Colorado Avalanche fame, so you know the flag must rock.




So there you have it, one full night of work. I threw all of the flags together and put them on some stuff at CafePress, the store is called Pirate Islands. Some of the stuff turned out pretty good, especially the large poster (it is almost two feet tall!).

Anyways, if you have any suggestions, complaints or comments about the flags let me know. But, for me, I am gonna head off to bed.