Nettrivia

 Entertainment, Family  No Responses »
Aug 262003
 

The La was sick all weekend with a sore throat and a fever that hovered around 102 for a while. She seems better now, but she’s been keeping us on our toes with the odd habit of holding all of her drool in her mouth, apparently avoiding swallowing because it’s too painful, and then randomly opening her mouth and dumping all of the drool out wherever she happens to be. Thankfully, most of the time this is on her own shirt, but we’ve taken to preemptively emptying her mouth with a washcloth to avoid any more collateral damage to the relatively new couch and our bed. We’ve been stepping in wet spots all weekend. She even slipped on one of her own drool slicks in the kitchen (no harm done, thankfully). Eeeew.

I’ve run into some interesting ‘Net trivia throughout the day today and thought I’d share:

 Posted by on August 26, 2003 at 1:04 am

Time passes

 Austin, Family  No Responses »
Aug 222003
 

There’s an article in yesterday’s Statesman about a small business. The interesting part is that it’s in the house where The Boy was born. The article briefly mentions that it was a “midwifery”. I’m not sure that’s a correct application of the word, but whatever. It’s not the type of store I’d typically visit, but it might be interesting to go by and see what it looks like now. Shelley had a cool tradition of putting the footprints of each baby who was born there on the wall not long after they were born. The Boy’s were on the east wall in the back bedroom. I suspect all the footprints have been painted over in the interim. I think it’s been at least one other business in between this current shop and when Shelley closed down. Visit the link now as you won’t have access to the article after Wednesday due to the Statesman’s stupid online policy.

 Posted by on August 22, 2003 at 6:53 pm

Lists, lists and more lists

 Miscellaneous  No Responses »
Aug 222003
 

There are tons of sites out there that allow you to make different sorts of lists. Amazon lets you make lists that are stored on their servers and they also make an API available to search their product database. Other sites take advantage of this and allow you to keep lists of DVDs, books, whatever. I’ve been displaying the DVD, book, CD that I’m currently listening to or lusting after in the blocks on the right side of the homepage, but I want it to do more. I just changed the reading block to show a list of what I’m currently reading via AllConsuming, which I found via Whitney’s site. It’d be nice if they offered the same service for DVDs and CDs. I keep a list of the DVDs that we currently own at DVD Aficionado. All of these sites have certain limitations, prompting me to want to develop my own system. The problem is that I don’t have the time. There’s also the limitation of having to write towards a particular content management or blog framework. I’m still annoyed that PHPNuke hasn’t implemented Trackback, a feature that’s commonplace in Moveable Type, among others. Can’t we all just get along? Crap, I wanted to rant on this some more, but I’ve got to get going…

 Posted by on August 22, 2003 at 3:12 am

Photographically challenged

 Family  No Responses »
Aug 202003
 

We haven’t been having much luck with photos lately, which is why I haven’t updated the picture of the week in a while. The Wife forgot to bring the camera with her to Reston. We also didn’t take many pictures while my mom was here this weekend. On top of that, it seems that the pictures that we do take don’t come out so well. Mom sent along some from this weekend, but I was unimpressed with the paltry sampling that she sent. So, you’ll have to make do with a poor shot of The Boy on his first day of school and a rather comical shot of The La. She literally fell asleep in the middle of dinner on Monday. I’m having fun with the captions in spite of the drought.

 Posted by on August 20, 2003 at 7:29 am

First day o’ school

 Family  No Responses »
Aug 202003
 

The Boy started Pre-K at UT Elementary School today. He started the morning bright-eyed in his uniform of a white polo and khaki shorts. He was yodeling or something as we were getting ready. I first said “Boy, please.” which he apparently didn’t understand as a request to stop. When I explained to him that I wanted him to stop the singing/yodeling because it was irritating, he commenced to singing the word “irritating”. Somewhere around this time, The Wife started paying attention to what we were talking about and laughed at me.

It sounds like he had a good time, but he was tight-lipped when I talked to him on the phone. He was very excited this morning and moved right into the crowd of kids as we left. His teacher, Mrs. Karasch, has her hands full with 19 kids in the class. She shooed all of the parents out the door pretty quickly this morning. We took a few pictures which I’ll upload tonight if they’re any good. Be on the lookout for stories about the school in local media. KVUE had a story Sunday night and KEYE filmed Henry and I on the way into the school this morning. The Wife says that News8 was there this afternoon (In fact, there’s already a story from this morning. You can watch the video version of the interview from the same page.) and that she spoke briefly with a reporter from the Statesman.

On a totally unrelated note, I managed to lose my sunglasses yesterday. Since I’ve had them for 5 or 6 years and they were $4.99 at Walgreen’s, I’m not going to search for them. The Wife, who hated the old ones, will be happy to find out that I purchased a new, considerably more expensive pair at lunch. Given the cost, I’m sure to lose them before the end of next week.

 Posted by on August 20, 2003 at 1:30 am

Interview Game

 Miscellaneous  No Responses »
Aug 152003
 

The Rules

  1. leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
  2. i will respond; i’ll ask you five questions.
  3. you’ll update your website with my five questions, and your five answers.
  4. you’ll include this explanation.
  5. you’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

My five questions come from Mr. Juicebox [Jeremy]

1) Which Simpsons character is your favorite, and why? [this assumes you watch the Simpsons. If not, pick a cartoon you do/did enjoy watching]
That’s a tough one. I think Cletus is my current favorite, mainly because he’s gotten some of the best lines over the past season. Uter is also a perennial favorite.

2) Describe how you came to live in Austin.
I came down here from Dallas to go to UT in 1989 and have been here ever since (except for a two year stint in Manhattan/Queens for grad school). I have no plans on leaving anytime soon.

3) I see you’ve got a link to Wil Wheaton dot Net on your site. How did you come across his site?
He did an interview on Slashdot last summer and I first checked out the site then. I’ve always been a big fan of Stand By Me. He and I are pretty close in age and have similar interests, so I kept reading.

4) If you could go back in time and ‘tweak’ history, when/what might that be?
I’ll be selfish and do it for personal gain. I’d go back to 1990, take the money that I had available and invest it in several of the emerging tech stocks: Dell, Cisco, Microsoft among others. I’d then take the earnings from those and ride the wave of crazy IPOs in 1998-2000. Finally, I’d sell everything in February of 2000 before the first big drop and retire.

5) Talk about a favorite actor/actress/director from the Silver Age of movies [mid ’50s to early ’70s].
I googled for the silver age to get an idea of who I should focus on, but couldn’t find much oddly enough. I’ll have to go with Alfred Hitchcock. He spans a longer period than that, but he’ll do. I can’t say more than has already been said. He’s a genius. I’m partial to Saboteur, Notorious, Rope, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Trouble With Harry, Vertigo and North By Northwest among others.

 Posted by on August 15, 2003 at 7:38 pm

A clue, a clue!

 Entertainment, Family  No Responses »
Aug 142003
 

The Wife and kids returned from Reston yesterday morning. I picked them up from the airport, had lunch with them and then headed to work for the afternoon until my dentist appointment at 4:15. I got out of the dentist appointment in time to catch Steve Burns’ in-store appearance at Waterloo Records, although I missed the live performance. I really wish the rest of the family could’ve made it as I felt a bit creepy standing in line to get Steve’s autograph on his new CD. They were stuck at home since The Wife loaned her car out to a friend while she was gone and didn’t get it back until late last night. Most of the rest of the line consisted of parents with their preschoolers. He dutifully took pictures with some of the kids (one even holding a stuffed Blue). The weirdest moment was some older woman asking him to put lipstick on and kiss a napkin or something to leave a lip print. I was amazed to see him comply, although he ducked behind the counter to actually apply the lipstick and kiss the item. I would’ve refused if I were him. Steve noted that I didn’t look like a typical fan of his. I explained the absence of the rest of the family, told him that we miss him on the show (Does anyone like Joe better?), and said that I dug the web site and “What I Do On A Saturday”. He signed our CD and I headed home. The music has some Radiohead and, oddly enough, Pink Floyd elements to it. It may also sound something like The Flaming Lips as they collaborated with him, but I’m not familiar with any of their music.

 Posted by on August 14, 2003 at 7:08 pm

Sweet irony

 Family, Politics  No Responses »
Aug 112003
 

I sent our little gift from G.W., “Tax relief for America’s families” as it said on the check, to my bank last week. It was returned back to me on Saturday with a note, “Payable 2 parties – cannot deposit to single”. Turns out that because of the Patriot Act, they need a form filled out with The Wife’s signature before they can take the check (the account is in my name) even though we both endorsed it. I find it very amusing that the administration that’s trying to get me to spend and be a good little consumer is keeping me from doing so with it’s useless, overly paranoid bureaucratic red tape. It’s a good thing they’re here to protect me from myself.

 Posted by on August 11, 2003 at 6:21 pm

Bachelor weekend

 Family, Politics  No Responses »
Aug 112003
 

The Wife and kids are in Reston visiting the in-laws, so I’m having a bachelor daddy weekend. I went to the redistricting rally at the Capitol yesterday morning. I’m apparently a horrible judge of crowd size as I estimated the crowd at a few hundred and the Statesman reported close to 5,000. There’s actually a decent analysis of the situation in today’s Statesman as well. In addition to the rally, I’ve been going out on the town. I’m a little wiped out from trying to keep up with my single friends. I’m definitely out of practice.

 Posted by on August 11, 2003 at 5:56 am

Redistricting and our park

 Austin  No Responses »
Aug 072003
 

There’s a rally this weekend against the redistricting crap that’s still going on here. I’m planning on attending. This blog has a pretty good collection of links about what’s been happening for those that are unfamiliar.

I attended a public meeting about the current status of the Mabel Davis Park cleanup project last week. I’m planning on writing a recap of what happened, but it’s a long and sordid tale. The short story is that the park was built on a landfill which wasn’t really ever properly contained and now it’s causing problems.

I may even register a domain name to keep news posted. I’ve got the email address of the guy who chaired the public meeting. He made a point to say that he doesn’t mind people checking with him for updates. He also mentioned making the powerpoint presentation that he showed us available online. I’m not sure if he’s done that or not. They’ve been pretty bad in the past about keeping the public up-to-date on what is happening.

 Posted by on August 7, 2003 at 1:12 am
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