Sesame Street: Herbie Hancock Makes Sounds. In this video, Herbie throws on his finest pajamas and digital watch to stop by the Sesame Street studios and explain these newfangled synthesizers to children. Apparently the 80's just crack me up.

Stunning photos of pilot ejection.

I love cheeseburgers. These ads are hard to avoid now.

How to play Snake/Centipede on Youtube.

Sink the Bismarck! The world's strongest, most expensive (and frightening) beer.

Struttin' - Dude interrupts Huntsville reporter with his disdain of anyone who may be "struttin' that ass"

Lightning picture, anyone?

Undercover Karaoke with Jewel. Some of the reaction interviews are great. This proves that you only need one wildly successful album to live forever.

Tone Matrix. Once you click about ten random squares, you're addicted. You can also hold down the mouse and "paint" shapes on there. No matter what you do, it sounds good. (Hit space bar to clear the whole thing)

Rectified Flowers. Math. Photoshop. Flowers.

knork.net. An "improvement" to the fork, really? I want one.

Psychic Octopus Received Death Threats.

Extremely Low Limbo.

Perfect Guess of Showcase on Price is Right. The story behind..... well, the story behind this video.

Diesel Facepark Event. A small idea that might change the world, but probably won't.

12 Terrifying Jell-O Recipes.

And finally, the Grand Poobah of all my links....

Audiotool. You can string drum machines, synths, loops, and guitar pedals together to make music right in your browser, without downloading any plug-ins or anything. You can save your progress and come back and work on it later. You can make your tracks public and allow people to improve/remix your stuff. Pretty cool. Version 1.1 was just released yesterday.

I know it hasn't been long since my last post about the demoscene, but here is a trailer for The Demoscene Documentary. Certainly nothing exciting, but it's still cool to me that the demoscene is still alive in a slightly different form.

The demo they used as an example features a track from md/kschzt (1, 2, 3, 4). He was a huge influence on my music and I even own an "appelsap" t-shirt that I still wear. The person being interviewed is one of my favorite artists fthr (1, 2, 3). He was the first person I knew of that did impressive things with photoshop.

Setting up my RSS reader has made me follow a lot more people on twitter. That, in turn, has made me privy to a bunch of useless information. Kind of fun, kind of a waste?

From the outside, everything looked great for The Monkees in 1967. In one year they had leaped from semi--or total--obscurity to overnight superstardom. They had a hit TV series, two #1 singles ("Last Train to Clarksville," and "I'm A Believer"), and two #1 albums ("The Monkees," and "More of The Monkees"). The only problem was the Monkees weren't allowed to play on their own records. Why not? Because Don Kirshner, the musical supervisor of The Monkees, said so. It was... well... embarassing. Here they were, pretending to be a real group, when in fact they had almost nothing to do with "their" music. Critics made fun of them. Even worse, teenyboppers idolized them for something they weren't doing. And to add insult to injury, Kirshner made more money from their records than they did. They each got a 1.5% royalty, but Kirshner go 15%! They had their pride, after all.

Trouble had been brewing for some time between Kirshner and the group, particularly Mike Nesmith, who wasn't even allowed to play guitar on the songs he wrote. That was Kirshner's studio policy, The Monkees just sang vocals while studio musicians played on the tracks. But what the hell, Kirshner reasoned, he was getting results--hits--and that was his job. So what if Nesmith had to stand by and watch Glen Campbell put the guitar licks on his own song, "Mary Mary"? This was the only way management could be sure it was right. The bottom line was what counted, after all. Nesmith, a genuinely creative individual, just stewed.

"Essentially, the big collision I had with Don Kirshner was this," said Nesmith; "he kept saying, 'You can't make the music; it would be no good, it won't be a hit.' And I was saying, 'Hey, the music isn't a hit because somebody wonderful is making it, the music is a hit because of the television show. So, at least let us put out music that is closer to our personas, closer to who we are artistically, so that we don't have to walk around and have people throwing eggs at us,' which they were."

Eventually the feud came to a showdown in early '67 at Kirshner's suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Kirshner had just handed the four Monkees some new demos (including "Sugar, Sugar," a bubblegum hit later for Kirshner's Archies) that they would be putting vocals on. Nesmith stepped forward and demanded that musical control be given to The Monkees. When Kirshner refused, Nesmith angrily smashed his fist through the wall, declaring, "That could have been your face!" Then The Monkees went off to record some original material without Kirshner's approval.

What happened next is a little unclear. While The Monkees were working out their own songs, Kirshner appears to have approached Davy Jones, one of the members of the group, and talking him into going into the studio without the rest of The Monkees. Jones put the vocals on several tunes, one of which was "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You." But The Monkees weren't doing the backing vocals. Who was it? Eric Lefcowitz, author of The Monkees Tale, speculates "Kirshner was quoted once as saying that Neil Diamond and Carole King had sung back-up vocals on some Monkees songs, and I think that if you listen closely to 'A Little Bit Me,' you can hear them. It sounds like Neil Diamond to me." And why would Jones record without the rest of the group? "I don't know, of course," Lefcowitz says, "but Davy Jones hadn't ever had the chance to sing lead before. This was his session. Maybe that had something to do with it."

Maybe, maybe not. The important thing is that in a power play, Kirshner recorded and released "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" without even telling The Monkees he was doing it! That was the last straw. Monkees' producers Bob Rafelson and Bart Schneider wanted hits, but they weren't going to put up with that from anyone. They fired Kirshner, and yanked the single out of American record stores. Then they re-released it with a Monkees original--Nesmith's "The Girl I Knew Somewhere"--on the B side. Finally The Monkees could smile. They were out from under Kirshner... and a song they'd actually played on made the Top 40--"The Girl I Knew Somewhere" reached #39 on the charts.

There is a lot of talk recently about enacting new "Financial Literacy" requirements in order for students to finish High School in this area. A lot of schools have pushed back the launch of the program for another year because of budget problems. So, the states who mismanaged their money are teaching our children about financial literacy? Am I the only one bothered by this? To quote Bill Hicks, "It's irony on a base level, but I like it. It's still a hoot."

I got this link off fazed.org: The 100 best free science documentaries online. This is my kind of thing. Documentaries. Free. Online. The list loses a great deal of credibility when Super Size Me is the first "science documentary" on the list, though. Just saying.

Michał Jacaszek finally came to America. Just come do D.C. and I'm there! A partial clip from his concert in NY on Feb 11:

I like to say how much I love Lightroom and that I don't miss Photoshop at all. This is only partially true. I sort of have to say that because I spent $299 on Lightroom version 1. With that money, you get all 1.xx upgrades until version 2 comes out, then you have to pay $99 to get all version 2.xx upgrades. I saved my $99 and did not get version 2, but version 3 is coming out this April, and I will spend the 99 bucks on it. They have put some Photoshop-like features in that will make me miss Photoshop even less, such as the ability to make selections, the ability to combine photos into HDR images, and improved features all-around, notably sharpening and noise reduction.

I have been wearing Acuvue 2 contacts for about ten years. These are now considered the "old style." They have advanced several generations since then. Now the contact lenses are made of different material and they allow your eyes to "breathe" more. When I got an eye exam two weekends ago, the optometrist gave me one pair of Acuvue Oasys and one pair of my good old standbys, Acuvue 2. I put on the Oasys contacts at the doctors office, and at first my vision wasn't as clear as it should have been. I think that after I got used to them, they were fine, since I do not notice a major difference right now (I just switched to the Acuvue 2 pair about ten minutes ago). The side of the story that I did not tell my optometrist is that I never take proper care of my contacts/eyes. I leave them in for 2-3 weeks without ever taking them out before bed. This is why I am leaning towards the newer, more expensive contacts that allow oxygen transfer through the lens. Another notable thing from my exam: I haven't needed a stronger prescription in the last two years, so that's a good thing.

I finally figured out what makes my desktop PC freeze. It's µTorrent, which is supposed to be the bittorrent client that is more streamlined. Before I had µTorrent, I was using Vuze, but that was too bloated and so forth. Anyone have any suggestions of torrent management software (preferably one with a smaller footprint than Vuze or BitComet)?

I take 3mg of melatonin before bed every night. Well, every night that I don't forget. I have been doing it for about a year now, and I really like it as a sleep aid. It is a naturally occurring biochemical, so it doesn't have the same effect as a "drug" would. The purpose is not to make you really sleepy or groggy; it just makes you feel naturally tired. Around 20-40minutes after taking it, I just sort of yawn and say "I think I should go to bed now. That would be good." It has other advantages, too, like the fact that it allows me to get up feeling completely normal if Stephen starts crying at 2am (where 99% of sleep aids make it much harder to get up before you have gotten 8hrs of rest). It is safe, has no side effects, and has no chance of addiction. The problem is that an overwhelming majority of the population says that melatonin has no effect on them. I will say that it took two weeks of me taking it every night before it had an effect on me. Maybe I wasn't noticing the subtleties before that, or maybe my body had not gotten adjusted to 3mg of melatonin at roughly the same time every day. No idea, but I like it.

And finally, How Tough are NES Games? Answer: really, really tough. Like, getting-run-over-by-a-car-and-still-working tough. Like, getting-dropped-thirty-feet-onto-concrete-and-still-working tough. (Note: usually when I find out about a YouTube video via another blog, I don't actually link to the blog post, but this is my friend Martha's blog, so I didn't take the credit this time)

Edit: fazed.org copied me for once (not really), and put up a link to the 60 Minutes story about the Bloom Box. Nice try, copycats! I was first!

Leon Redbone is a fringe performer with a dedicated following. I have seen him 8 or 9 times in concert.. if that's not dedication, I don't know what is. I have traveled to different states on more than one occasion to see him. I was literally the only one left to see his last 3 songs during a hurricane in Chattanooga at an outdoor concert. Leon Redbone strikes a chord with some people, and I am one of them. I am seeing him again next Friday, and I'm already excited.

Redbone's history begins at the beginning of his career because virtually nothing is known about his background or personal life. His real name, birthday, country of origin and ethnicity are all unknown, though people have speculated about these things for 35+ years now. He has claimed to have been born in Bombay during a monsoon to parents Niccolò Paganini (a composer and violinist who died in 1840) and Jenny Lind (a singer who died in 1887), which contributes to the mystique about his age. He has also listed his date of birth as October 29, 1929, the day of the stock market crash that sent America into the Great Depression. He often claims (erroneously, of course) that songs written well before his time were "stolen" from him. It hearkens back to the days before information was so readily available about celebrities' personal lives and upbringing. It appears he has worked very hard to create and maintain this mystique.

Leon Redbone has made a career out of arranging and performing songs that originated before my grandparents' time, though he attracts a wide and varied audience, ranging in ages and musical tastes. His style is hard to pin down as it is a mix of old-time blues, ragtime, jazz, country, and vaudeville. If it were necessary to sum up his style, one might say he does cleaned-up renditions of Tin Pan Alley classics from the 1920's and 30's. He has a very unique voice and is able to pull a lot of yodel-style octave jumps. He is also an excellent acoustic guitarist, which is often obscured by his interesting baritone vocal stylings. He is somehow able to emulate all the counterpoint of ragtime on a six-string acoustic guitar--a feat not attempted by many. Upon his arrival to the music scene, Leon Redbone was rumored to be an alter-ego of Bob Dylan, Andy Kaufman and even Frank Zappa.

He composed/performed the theme song to Mr. Belvedere (and apparently composed/performed the theme song to the sitcom version of Harry and the Hendersons, which I did not know existed). He voiced the character Leon the Snowman in the 2003 film Elf, where he was also featured heavily in the soundtrack and film score.

Seeing Leon Redbone live is akin to stepping in a time machine. His fedora hat, dark sunglasses and cane contribute to the mystery and timelessness of the act. The stage versions of his songs are stripped down to the bare essentials. For the past ten years or so, he most often performs with just a trumpet player and pianist. His act is peppered with banter and jokes that feel over a century old. He often shuffles through papers and proposes "a sing-along" to his instrumentalists; the suggestion is met with a sigh and eyerolls as Leon breaks into song (usually "I've Been Working on the Railroad" or "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star"). At the end of nearly every show, he re-emerges on stage to take a picture of the audience. If I were to ever develop a stage presence, I often wonder which of Leon Redbone's stage gimmicks I would "borrow."

Here is a video of Leon performing Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone, originally released in 1930:

Some of those guitar licks are extremely difficult. It is very laid-back and does not give that impression, but do not be fooled. This is the magic of Leon Redbone. It sucks that his left hand is obscured in this particular camera angle. Here are some more videos...

On Alf's talk show
I Ain't Got Nobody
Walking Stick
Harvest Moon (better version than the Alf one)
Leon Redbone can certainly whistle

The forecast for Manassas has changed. Instead of two straight days of snow, it is supposed to rain all day today and tomorrow. Possibly we will get a snowstorm on Thursday now. So maybe the rain will clean up all the snow and sand for a couple days, then it will dry up on Wednesday, and then we will get more snow. We'll see. My car still has snow on it and Stephen has a Dr. appointment at 8:10am tomorrow. I hope the rain comes today and cleans off my car. Then I will have officially gotten away with never cleaning 30" of snow off my car.

There was an interesting story on the most recent 60 Minutes about The Bloom Box. This is yet another alternate power source that people think might slowly start to replace our current grid. It is compact, wireless (yes, wireless electricity) and "clean." John Doerr, the famous venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, has contributed over $100million to K.R. Sridhar and his company, who have raised nearly half a billion dollars in capital. John Doerr has invested in some famous flops, namely the Segway Scooter. Like the Segway was supposed to revolutionize travel in the U.S., this new power source is supposed to revolutionize the way we power our homes. Everyone would theoretically get their own little box (it really is quite small, about 4" cubed) in their back yard and generate their own power. K.R. Sridhar made the same type of invention for NASA before he ventured into the private sector.

I just sent off a request to this place for a week in August. We are trying to take a vacation with both sides of our family. This place would be ideal. It is close to the ocean and right on a lake. This way, my dad could bring his jet skis and Jaime and her dad could go deep sea fishing. It has internet, pool table, two family rooms, three floors, a pool.. even an elevator, hehe. We only have one week of availability because Billy is enrolled in classes all summer and his fall semester starts in late August. We narrowed down the list last night based on availability and pet allowance. Hopefully everything works out. It will be nice to have the planning of this out of the way. It looks like a good place for photos. I may try to rent a zoom lens for that week.

I have a good couple of weeks coming up. My brother Robert is visiting for his spring break the week of March 7. My brother Billy is visiting for his spring break the week of March 14. Back-to-back weeks. I am going to The Birchmere three times in less than two weeks. Gaelic Storm on March 4 with a group of six. Leon Redbone on March 5 with a group of five. Bobby McFerrin on March 17 with Billy. The Birchmere won't go out of business as long as I'm still in this area.

Stephen is officially nine months old today. His Uncle Gavin is officially twenty-six years old today. It was thirty years ago today that the U.S. hockey team (comprised of U.S. college players) upset the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team, which of course had a lot of political implications as well.

Here is an article about many convergent studies on the potentially negative effects of ingesting fluoride, complete with more links and citations than you'd ever care to click. Fluoride is, of course, good for your teeth; a lack of fluoride accelerates tooth decay. That is why fluoride is in toothpaste and mouthwash... but you don't swallow toothpaste and mouthwash. Fluoride is also in nearly all tap water in the United States, and is not removed by Brita or Pur home water filtration systems. It also can not be removed from water by boiling or freezing your water. I don't believe fluoride in our water is a big conspiracy like Alex Jones does, but I leave open the possibility that we as a nation may have rushed into the fluoridation of our water supply without thinking. We seem to place a lot of emphasis on teeth and beauty, sometimes above all else. (What's the first thing Americans say about the British population as a whole? Man, those Brits have some ugly teeth).

On a lighter note: The weirdest video you will see today. This is more a testament to my odd sense of humor than anything.

My site is getting a lot of Valentine's Day-related hits recently. I'm not complaining. Here are some google searches that have brought people to my site:

• valentine sippy cups
• valentine blog
• valentine widget for wordpress
• valentine's gift ideas
• music for valentine's day
• useless valentine facts
• valentine font

I have also found out about other people with my name. Other Evan Valentines in this world include:

• A highschool athlete who plays tennis and football
• A [female] pornstar (I use the term "star" very loosely lightly here)
• A standup comedian

Who would have ever thought that someone crying at the end of a movie could be so funny and adorable? Parker Stech thought so, and he went where no man has gone before. His wife cries at the end of virtually every movie they watch, and he records interviews with her while she's crying and posts it on YouTube. Just go to cryingwife.com and click "videos" to see for yourself. Some of the movies are sad and deserving of crying, but some of them are not in that realm at all, such as Back to the Future. Hilarious.

I have been discussing with a friend of mine about SEO optimization (at great length). There are different ways to essentially 'game the system' and increase your page rank on google. The fact of the matter is that my URL has no keywords at all and that makes it difficult for me. I have taken some steps towards trying to create backlinks and I have renamed my blog. At first I thought about trying to corner the market on "professional photographers in the DC area," but upon further research it seemed that those were hard keywords to advance my page, so I settled on something to do with "stay at home dads." I renamed my blog "Evan Valentine, The Stay-at-Home Dad" to try to get some more search results. It has worked a few times so far. I am doing research into hosting the same blog via multiple URLs. More on that later.

I have made a few recent posts in a shameless attempt to figure out search engines. First I made my "Kurt Warner Retires" post. I made this post 2 hours before the news was officially announced in an attempt to get a jump on the competition. It did not work. Then I made my "WordPress Plugins Used On This Blog" post in an attempt to get some visits from nerds trying to do research on how to gain an advantage on their blog. That also has proved unfruitful. Running a blog seems like a full time job, and it is a constant learning experience.

The funny thing is that my recent post with pictures of the snow behind my house has gotten way more hits than any of my other posts, because of people searching "snow" and my city.

Growing up in a place that had no winter weather, there were a few things I had to get used to when I moved here. I had never shoveled snow or owned an ice scraper (a credit card/student ID always worked fine in the unlikely event that there was any ice in the morning). Another thing I didn't expect was that chap stick is a near-must when the weather is cold and dry for a prolonged period. I had never used chap stick, and now I have a near obsession with it four months out of the year. Luckily I have like five sticks in my drawer. Another weird thing that you don't think about: I never needed windshield washer fluid in Georgia. Wiping down your windows every other time you filled gas was quite enough. But when you get hit with splashback from a brown puddle of melted snow mixed with salt and sand, it's over. You absolutely need that instant windshield wash.

Ever wanted to be an investigative reporter? Let Charlie Brooker show you how.

A story about Nintendo from 1988. Part of the humor is seeing a very young Bill O'Reilly on Inside Edition from back in the day (back in the WE'LL DO IT LIVE! days). The other part that is interesting is how unbelievable it now seems that adults had never heard of Nintendo--and this is within my lifetime. Asking people if they had ever heard of Nintendo, they respond with "No, who is he?"

Two songs that make me happy every time I hear them:

1. Bruddah Iz - Henehene Kou ' Aka
2. Gui Boratto - Beautiful Life - Great vocals come in just after the three minute mark.

I have a strange view of myself (don't we all?). Unfortunately, I assume everyone doesn't understand me and automatically thinks I'm an asshole, and that sort of leads me to fulfill that role, even though it is self-imposed. I also assume everyone thinks the music I like/make is weird and I am being judged because of it, when in reality that's not true at all. I usually don't speak much when meeting new people. I never talk about my music with people (if you want to see someone in an extremely uncomfortable state, just play one of my songs in front of me. I can't even begin to describe how horrible it is). Some people immediately think I'm cool because of that (silence is often mistaken for wisdom) and some people immediately think I hate them because of that. I think my friend Adam said it best. Some people are focused on what they think of other people (that's me), and some people are focused on what others think of them. Neither is healthy, though I think someone like me is much less likely to get their feelings hurt.

In the end, I know that what I think doesn't really matter, but I am not good at relating that. I realize that it's just one person's opinion, but I can come across like my opinion is the only one that matters.

Here is an article about a Japanese DVD that supposedly helps you maintain eye contact when talking to women. It has all different types/ages of women, some with lots of cleavage showing, and you are supposed to maintain eye contact with them for the duration of the video clips. So odd... Japanese people apparently think they can solve all problems, both big and small, with technology.

Speaking of weird things in Asia, check this out. This fish is called a Human-faced Carp (warning, this video is a bit loud), and now you'll know why. Some of the YouTube comments say this video is a joke/hoax. Real or not, it freaked me out more than I'd like to admit.

I don't think Wolfram|Alpha has gotten enough publicity (not that putting it on my blog will help with that). It is definitely the next generation of search engines. It combines data from google searches, databases, and Mathematica to not only retrieve information but put it in a useful format. It also traces your IP and chooses results most likely to relate to you. For instance, if I search Springfield from my PC, it assumes I mean Springfield, Virginia because it is only a few towns over. Here are a few more examples:

weather in washington dc when rickey henderson was born. Despite the fact that Rickey Henderson was born in Chicago and has nothing to do with D.C., it retrieves his birthday and displays the weather in Washintgon, D.C. on that date. It turns the information into graph form, which is typically much more useful than straight data.

internet usage in europe. Again it displays it in a variety of forms, including a color-coded map, all which it generates real-time. It does not have to store all of this information (graphs, maps) anywhere on a server; it just calculates it as you search.

x^2 sin(x). Not sure what is going to keep people from cheating on math homework. You can go down to the derivative section and click "show steps," and it will show the answer and every step and rules that were applied.

new york. Basic city search. Shows current local weather in addition to the usual population-type stuff.

ibm apple intel. Real-time stock comparison. It not only shows current prices, but it plots graphs that historically compare the prices of the stocks you entered. It also compares their performance vs. that of the S&P500, bonds, and T-bills. This is all information that was readily available before, but this kind of comparison would have taken at least 30 minutes of work prior to Wolfram|Alpha. Now it takes seconds.

eiffel tower sears tower empire state building. It shows all measurements in standard U.S. measurements because it knows I am searching from a computer in the United States. Metric can easily be accessed, of course, by clicking "Show Metric."

2 slices bread + 8oz 2% milk + 2 eggs + 1tsp butter + 1tsp olive oil. Typical American breakfast. I included the butter for the toast and the olive oil for the eggs. It combines nutritional information for all listed ingredients and makes a food-label type list of nutritional information. Normally it would take some time and thought to calculate the calories alone in this meal. Now you can see everything from calories/fat content to Riboflavin content in seconds. If you would like to be more specific, you can change a lot of the information at the top of the page, just under the search query bar. You can change "eggs" to poached, fried, scrambled, etc. You can change the type of bread to wheat, rye, pumpernickel...

$200,000 15 year mortgage at 4.125% interest.

valentine mcdaniel huff young. Comparison of a lot of surnames in my family. It can also tell you how two people are related like daughter of my first cousin or great uncle's father's brother's daughter's son.

That's quite enough. Most categories can be expanded by clicking "More" in the upper-right corner of the results box. Also, you can save the results of any search as a .pdf file to be used in presentations and the like.

Every weekend is more and more busy.

On Saturday at 11:10am, we saw Avatar in digital 3d. I have to say, I was not expecting much when we walked into the theater. I am not a fan of action movies, fantasy movies, or most any movie that cost over $50million to make. Having said that, I liked it more than I thought I would. There was definitely some poor acting by the main character and Michelle Rodriguez, but it wasn't horrible. And also, the mineral that they are mining is called "unobtainium." Really, James Cameron? Unobtainium? I understand that the term is sort of tongue-in-cheek, but it just sounds so awful when the actors try to say it with a straight face. The political and human rights side of it kind of bashed you over the head. I've heard James Cameron say that his pro-earth messages are subtle. Far from it. This is the non-cartoon version of FernGully.

Visually, it was definitely a step-up from anything I've ever seen. The first major motion picture to use CGI extensively was Jurassic Park, and to be honest, CGI characters haven't gotten that much better since Jurassic Park in my opinion. Every time Jurassic Park is on TV, I always marvel that the CGI in 1993 looked about 80% as good as most effects today. But Avatar was a step up. All the scenes where they were wandering around at night were phenomenal looking. This must be what it felt like when Star Wars came out.

Most people told me that it was not worth seeing unless you saw it in 3d. I guess 3d is the new trend to get people to go to the movies. This is marketed as some "new kind" of 3d, but this technology has been around about as long as I have. I saw 3d just as good as that (using the same technology of different polarization in each lens) in Disney World when I was six years old (Captain EO ftw). Fake 3d is more of a distraction for me than anything else. On one hand it's kind of cool, but on the other hand it's just not quite right and I'm always looking at the background instead of the foreground. Everything is just a little "off."

Then we ate at California Pizza Kitchen before picking up Stephen. Avocado egg rolls. Barbecue chicken pizza. Couple beers.

Yesterday was chores all day. I cut my hair, did four loads of laundry, and installed our new baby gate that can accommodate the weird angles and banisters at the top of our stairs. Installing that thing was no easy task. Seems like I still need to make a few adjustments, but it is going to work. We also went grocery shopping, cleaned up the house a little, and watched football.

Every NFL game this weekend turned out the way I wanted except for the Cowboys winning. That kind of pissed me off, actually. And of course, we were grocery shopping for the second half (and overtime) of the Cardinals/Packers game--the only good, exciting game all weekend. I think the Cardinals are my favorite team in the playoffs. Kurt Warner is an absolute machine in the post-season. When I was young, my family watched Joe Montana tear it up in the playoffs nearly every year, but I think Kurt Warner is just as good. He is every bit as calm as Joe Montana was, and more athletic. Warner's problem is that he will not run for yards... ever (and sometimes he likes to throw five interceptions in a game, but not in the post-season). Yesterday he completed 29 passes with a nearly 90% completion rate, and he threw more touchdowns than incompletions. Pretty staggering to throw five touchdowns and only four incomplete passes all day. The Cardinals were so efficient on offense that they only had five 3rd downs in the entire game.

We randomly started receiving Rolling Stone magazine addressed to my wife a while back. I'm not sure if someone bought us a subscription as a cruel joke or what. This month's edition features two massive articles about global warming. They do a big spread on the "earth's biggest enemies" and trash McCain and a lot of big oil executives and such. Just when I thought Rolling Stone couldn't get any worse. I know they have always focused on some things other than music, but how can you claim to be a voice of the counter-culture when you espouse the views of a major political party and Lady Gaga is on every other page?

My wife volunteered to walk the dogs for me this morning because we slept in and she didn't have time to do her normal morning routine. I said thanks and went back to sleep. Turns out it was nine degrees outside. Oops. Now she will never volunteer to do that again.

I was doing very well at making at least one post per day, but over the past 15 days I have fallen off. Things are back to normal now and hopefully I can continue.

As a complete aside, here is an old video that makes me laugh and cringe at the same time.