Postpourri - politics, headlines, peanuts

Something that sounds wrong, even when you're just thinking it to yourself, "I know, I'd like a mouthful of peanuts."

Stupidest and/or scariest headline in my Eagan Sun Current this week "Lead levels in county exceed EPA standards: Eagan site likely responsible; area affected likely smaller than county." My bold and italics. Likely smaller than county? As in, whew, at least it's not the whole county, we're so very fortunate? WTF.

The 2008 Wassup Video


Ron Howard's Call to Action:

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Slacker Weekend?

It felt like I didn't accomplish much this weekend, like I'd just been sitting around trying to motivate myself to do something. But I tried to recount what I'd been up to, and it seems like I managed to finish more than I suspected.

I went on a 23 mile bike ride with Ming and Kyle on the Gateway (pictures below) and formulated a plan to try and eat a 30" inch pizza with them if we can get Dan'l to be our fourth (free t-shirts, win or lose! Free pizza if we can eat it in 30 minutes. Just over a 14" pizza each).

I watched a large portion of Hogfather on video with Eryn and Pooteewheet, as well as Leatherheads. I enjoyed seeing The Great Atuin and his four elephants supporting Discworld more than I enjoyed George Clooney.

I went out to Origami at Ridgedale for sushi with Kyle, Pooteewheet and Eryn, post bike ride. On top of the pizza it was almost too much. I did several hours of yard work on Saturday, mowing up the leaves, mowing the grass that was way overdue, packaging it all up in about 6 multi-load bags beyond the standard plastic container that usually manages, and putting away all the sprinklers, hoses, swimming pool plus toys, hammock stand, and other things littering the yard.

And the family went out and bought a new recliner and a new sofa that has recliners on both ends. That's right. As of next weekend there will be three reclining locations in our basement, and a new area rug (already in place) to make it look like we replaced the carpet, when we really didn't. This will make my mother exceedingly happy, as she's disgusted with the lack of reclining locations within my extended family.

Oh, and I figured out how to buy Wiipoints and purchase the internet browser so my family can listen to music on YouTube while we play board games on the new area rug. I also bought Mario 3, which may excite my sister almost as much as seeing The New Kids on the Block did.

The Gateway Trail. Pretty in the fall, despite that it was a little wet and kept getting colder.


Ming and Kyle, dressed for warmth. We had to wait about 45 minutes for our pizza, which seemed like forever because it was so cold after riding.


Ming learning all about the park he bikes to several times a summer. More than anything, I wanted a picture of the pretty tree in the background. Ming was incidental to the picture.


One of my favorite things to photograph, a no biking sign.


My bike, all covered with muck and out for perhaps the last ride of the season before I move my rides indoors.


Eryn enjoying a skewer during the post-ride trip to Origami for sushi. I'm proud of her as she tried a small taste of wasabi tobiko.

Child Labor Camp

We run a gulag for children at the rental property in Apple Valley. Here's Eryn in charge of the nailer, putting up a piece of trim. Andrew has to give up the "little bit of white caulk" jokes when she's around.


And once the trim is up, it must be painted. Eryn is wearing the clothes of one of the female renters so she doesn't ruin her good shirt. She also helped sand the window frames to get rid of the polyurethane bubbles, and taped them to pick up the dust. It seemed appropriate as the company is E&O for Eryn and Oliver, and not A&S for Andrew and Scott.

Parking Lot Sushi

Really. There's not much more to say about it than "parking lot sushi". It was in the lot at Ring Mountain, being chilled by today's brief snow storm. I could say it was ironic because I was at Origami two nights ago where there was good sushi, but that would be a misuse of the word. Gross is a much better choice. Eryn refused to let me put it on her lemon sorbet, despite that she was at a sushi restaurant drinking Limonata less than 48 hours earlier.

One is the loneliest

One is the loneliest pelvis you'll ever do... Two can be as sad as one, but they're usually not, because two can have fun.

Taken at the clinic. I think he's crying because his iliopsoas hurts. Maybe this is why Tom Cruise thinks aliens inhabit people.

Gone Rogue

Interesting. From Politico, via Yahoo:

"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

"I think she'd like to go more rogue," he said.

I immediately had to go look up rogue and see if it could anyway be considered a synonym of maverick. Not surprisingly (I have a good effective vocabulary) it's not, but I don't think it would be outside the realm of good language to state that a maverick is likely to "go rouge".

It's interesting to see that phrase being bandied about, considering it was Monegan's "rogue mentality" (AndrewHalcro.com) that was her reason for firing him. Does logic then dictate that McCain should fire Palin for the same reason?

And I wonder why she feels "going rogue" will in some way aid her, when the result is a change in behavior such as, "Palin had also sought to give meatier policy speeches, in particular on energy policy and on policy for children with disabilities." (Politico)? Why? Because as Klund showed with this video on Facebook, when she's aiming for meatier speeches, she's still clueless.


And for everyone who's told me about how she at least did a nice job with the pipeline negotiations, even that's up for questioning now (AP).

McCain Rallies

I'm stealing wholesale from Majikthise again. I recommend reading her blog - it may be one of my favorites lately. She has a nice series of videos from McCain/Palin campaign rallies.

St. Clairesville, OH


Johnstown, PA


A nice video with McCain/Palin supporters

Shufflin II

I blogged about Shuffle Crews and the Superbowl Shuffle about two months ago. This is what happens when Shuffle Crews go horribly wrong.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Busy Day - Rochester, MN

I was in Rochester, Minnesota, today attending training on business writing and presenting. The most stressful moment of the day, as far as I'm concerned, is when the professor said, "It's time for the break. You have 20 minutes, and when you get back, you'll need to present a two minute presentation on a topic of your choice." Oof. I don't think Ming, who was along, was any more comfortable than I was. I chose to talk about how to ride a century on a bicycle, focusing on set a goal, fit your bike, and train. The comments on my presentation style included that I lean a little to one side. Which is true, but not because I'm a natural leaner, like the prof might suspect, but because I have one leg shorter than the other and tend to try to even out a bit so my feet don't ache. I think I should have mentioned that in the presentation just to head off the criticsm. I wanted to mention during the bike fit portion that you should put your wheel on the right way, because Ming of the wrong-way wheel was in the audience, but I thought I'd laugh and lose my place if I did that. One speaker gave us a nice little 80 second presentation comparing sex selection via ultrasound in India to abortion in the U.S. That was special.

The weirdest moment of the day was getting on the escalator at the Rochester Mall/University to head down to find my ramp ticket, and seeing Klund and some of his family as I descended. I stared at him for a moment as he stood in front of the chocolate shop, and he stared at me as I slowly descended, clutching a cup of decaf. I think we were both trying to figure out if we were really seeing each other in a mall in Rochester. When I was sure it was him, I said I'd be back as soon as I could do a u-turn at the bottom.

The best food of the day was at Little Oscar's, just south of Eagan in Hampton, Minnesota. We stopped on the way home to have a Caboose Burger, half a pound of hamburger topped with hashbrowns and scalding hot, and a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie ala mode. Exceptional. I'll be going back to try breakfast sometime, perhaps on the way to the Cannon Valley Trail.

Bailey Moves In

When I got home on Friday, we had a new member of the household. Pooteewheet and Eryn had been to the Humane Society, and I'd gotten a call at work from Eryn providing me many details about the really nice kitty she'd met, and how much she liked the kitty, and it was a wonderful kitty, and would it be ok if we had two kitties? I've always had a two cat rule, and although I prefer manx and munchies because weird cats have more character in my opinion, it's not a given that it has to be deformed in some way, and we were currently running at one pet if you don't include the fish.

So Bailey has joined our family. Here Eryn has left her a welcome message.


She's been living on the porch while she and Cleo (the Manx) become acquainted. Most of the time they meet, it involves ineffectual slap fights through the glass door to the porch. Bailey thought Eryn's play house was interesting, and she's been spending her time there, on the little couch on the porch, and in Eryn's room.


Bailey checking on her food dish to make sure it's not going anywhere now that she has new digs.

Do Not View This Post if You're Doing the Halloween Caching Series II!

At the end of last week, we went after a third cache in the Halloween 2008 cache series. We were going to try and find two, but one of them was in the middle of a corn field marked private property, and I couldn't find the note that said we were allowed out there. So we wandered around a cemetery next to the field for a while instead before deciding it was too late for little girls to be up anyway.

But we did find the first one, which involved wandering around a park we'd never been to in Lakeville. The GPS took us to a wooded hillside that had obviously been a dumping ground, and was covered in broken concrete, rusty barbed wire, and many sticker bushes. Here's a taste of what we were tromping around next to in the dark with our little flashlights.


After wandering for a while, what do we see? This. What looks like a huge tombstone/monument in the trash-ridden woods. I thought, "Hey, there's an overgrown cemetery back here somewhere." But when we got closer, it was obvious this wasn't an overgrown graveyard, but a large Styrofoam cache.


Here's proof. It has an inscription. "Here Lyes ye Bod of Geo. Cach. Born 3rd of May 2000 buried yesterday who died today." Eryn is disturbed that he was buried before he was dead. You can see where you remove the faceplate to find the container for taking a spider ring and signing the log.


Pooteewheet took this picture on the bridge over the lake in the park. If I was out of the picture, I think I'd have it blown up for my sister and framed, because it looks like Eryn is being dejected and heading into the darkness, sort of like the corner scene in The Blair Witch my sister is so fond of.

A Big Dump

Last night I went to the rental property in Apple Valley and filled up a trailer with a load to take to the dump. Because of my work schedule and weekend things to do, I wasn't going to be able to get there the same day I picked up the waste, and planned to shoot over this morning, ready to pull in when it opened at 6:30 a.m.

It's dark and 6:30 a.m. So it's difficult to see, and after getting up at 5:45 a.m. my judgment isn't so great. What I learned at the Burnsville dump this morning is that just because the great big dump truck in front of you pauses on the scale for a few seconds and then takes off up the giant mound of garbage, that's not what you should do. I found myself next to several large trucks on a particularly smelly mountaintop, approached by a large bulldozer/scooper. The scooper man pulled up next to my little Diamante (on loan from my father in law, along with the trailer) and said in the most cheerful, 6:30 a.m., surrounded by stinky trash voice, "They called up from the bottom. You weren't there long enough. You need to head back down and weigh in and pay at the same time."

I asked, "Do I come back up here?" And it was a long way up.

"Nope. The dumpsters are right near the entrance."

DOH! The lady at the check in wasn't nearly as amused with my suburban antics, but she took my money and pointed me at the right bins anyway.

As an addendum to the day's trailer stupidity, when I got home this evening, I realized I couldn't find my checkbook, which also has my license and credit cards. I looked all over, even going so far as to look in the grass near the unhitched trailer. Nothing. After checking online to see if there had been charges or deductions to the credit card and bank account, it occured to me that I had unhitched the trailer in the dark, when it was black. That clicked. So I looked at the spare tire on the front of the trailer, and there was my black checkbook, so perfectly camoflauged I couldn't see it from 5 feet away unless I was looking for it. Twelve hours, and no one had touched it. Finding it made me feel better about losing my vpn dongle. At least no one can drain my bank account with a rotating vpn key chain.

My Favorite Political Post Today

From Majikthise in the entirety, via folo - just worth repeating:

John Cole spotted this on a comment thread at Townhall:

At an Ohio campaign stop last week Obama gave a speech with a background of American flags which is quite common. However, if you look closely some of the flags are not American flags. The blue field has been changed to show an Obama seal. Yes, there are also stars but have no pattern and they do not add up to 50.

With Obama making his own seal and now this it looks like maybe he is putting some credence to the recent article by Stanley Kurtz in the National Review. Is he planning on creating an African county within the US.

I think the presence of these flags should be viewed with alarm. And I don’t want to hear any looney left comments that they are only decoration. They ARE a modification of the American Flag.

And on down a few comments, this:

the flag you’re asking about is the state flag of ohio.

Do Not View This Post if You're Doing the Halloween Caching Series!

You've officially been warned. I'm going to show some pictures of the Halloween caching series down here in the Eagan, Apple Valley, Burnsville, Rosemount area, and if you intend to do the series, these are just as much spoilers in my opinion as being told the end of an anticipated movie. The joy of the series is finding the crazy Halloween containers - 13 of them. 11 regular. 1 multi. 1 puzzle, where the puzzle solution is found by obtaining the secret code values at the other 12. If you want to experience them in all their glory, then I suggest going in the dark as Eryn, Pooteewheet and I did. Tonight's full moon helped, but it was still pretty dark, and Pooteewheet kept trying to poke out her eye on every branch that came along because her night vision is horrible. Eryn only worried that the fox monsters would come out.

Here's Eryn getting ready to go cache. This is your last chance to bail before the fun stuff. It's not 2:30, like the clock says, it's closer to 6:00.


Cache number one, "Bubba Sawyer's Hideaway". That's not a toy chainsaw. It's the real deal. Except the blood. The front is held on with two nuts and the cache velcroed to the inside. It took us a while to zero in on it as the GPS kept bouncing around down in the little swamp. But there are no wood ticks or mosquitoes in Minnesota this time of year, so it was great. We put it back and got a few hundred feet away before we realized we'd forgotten the secret code and had to go back to retrieve it.


Cache #2 - "Polycephaly, Not a Muse". We're triplets! This one was a bit harder to find and I missed it on the first pass of the location. Eryn was fascinated and would only touch hims when hes was facing away from her. She wanted no part of a picture in which she was giving hims a big kiss.


This is how you get the log to sign, out of the monster baby's back. Hes's like a golem, you write down words and put them inside hims.


Back in the natural caching habitat, a bit further above the ground than the top of my head. Hes looks so peaceful, like hes's in a loving cradle. Awww....goochy goochy little guys.

Pop Quiz for Mean Mr. Mustard and She Says

Bacon keeps an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters in his basement, hoping one of the monkeys will come up with Hamlet. Bill Shakespeare, Bacon's buddy, comes over one day for dinner when several of the monkeys escape. As Shakespeare enters the yard, he sees on of the monkeys sitting by a wall, throwing rocks at another one. As he walks towards the door, another monkey sneaks up behind him and throws typewriter at the back of Shakespeare's head. when Shakespeare sues Bacon in strict liability, can Bacon successfully defend on contributory negligence grounds?

You can cite Prosser and Keeton on Torts as necessary.

It's On

20 years ago...or more...definitely more, my mother asked me, Scooter, should LissyJo be able to go to the concert on Harriet Island to see The New Kids on the Block. Being wise beyond my years, I said the equivalent of "F-No. There are going to be 200,000 underaged girls (I didn't add, "in the pre cell phone era", it was just implied) and it will be a madhouse. If it was in an auditorium, then sure. But not on the island."

This screwed my sister out of getting to see TNKOTB live. Much to her benefit, as many children went lost that night, stole their parents' cars, etc.

But today, I made up for a little bit of that anger and sadness to which I subjected my sister. I won her TNKOTB tickets. Sure...she's in her early-going-on-mid thirties now and it's not quite the treat it might have been at 12. But they're FREE TNKOTB ticktets! When I asked her if she was going before I won tickets she said "no" and then sort of added "tickets are expensive". Now she has no excuse. She can go and spend no money other than what it takes to get drunk enough to pretend she's not a 30-something year old going to see TNKOTB just so she can hope Donny the Bad Boy accidentially flicks sweat onto her. Seriously - I hope she has fun reliving a bit of her past that might otherwise seem like a financial waste.

Hang Tough, LissyJo....Hang Tough!

Codecamp V

On Saturday, I went to Twin Cities Code Camp V. I know, strictly speaking I'm not a developer anymore, I manage them instead, but it's important to me to keep up on the latest technology, even more so than it was in my last job, and I taught myself a bit of constructive Java programming in that role (I got a thank you for the code I wrote that cut out three hours of resetting training materials each time there was a new training class - that's success as far as I'm concerned).

The first presentation I went to (with Erik and Bhavin, I met up with them there. Erik and I had breakfast at the Original Pancake House first) was "Software Evolution: Inversion and Injection". I came away with the following important bits:

• Think of a delegate as a single method interface.
• Injection is the loss of control. Don't get too uptight about loss of control.
• Injection/Inversion and the Provider Model are not that far apart.
• There are several good injection/inversion packages, and if you're playing with them in this order, it takes you this long (approximately, depending on your state of mind): Unity (MS) - 3 days, StructureMap - 1 day, Spring.Net - a long morning, Castle Windsor - 2 hours.
• Faced with an abstract class vs. an interface, abstract classes are sometimes more helpful because those "in the know" can use the implementation you set up (I have experience with this trying to build a provider model with implementation behind bits of it)
• Filearchy is a funny word
• Sometimes just squint at your code and try to think, while I'm squinting, what's the minimum I need to know (e.g. my code needs to know)
• Some objects have a transient lifestyle - this conjures funny images of classes with hobo sticks thrown over their shoulders

Next I went to "Advanced OO Laws & Principles with .NET" by Clint Edmonson. A high level, although very interesting presentation on what developers keep in their programmatic toolbox.

• Domain Driven Design
• Separation of Concerns
• DRY principle (Don't repeat yourself - shared code costs 3x as much as non-shared. So if you have to cut and paste more than three times, you should be sharing the code)
• Theory of the one right place (for your code to live)
• Unit of work - focus on transactional boundaries
• Open-closed principle (open for extension, closed for change)
• Design by contract
• Declarative programming (web methods)
• Provider Model
• Inversion of Control/Dependency injection
• Object:relational mapping (ORM - Hibernate)
• Scenario Driven Design
• Occam's Razor
• Pareto Principle (80% of consequences from 20% of code)
• Law of Demeter (don't talk to your neighbor's neighbor, get the information directly)
• Least resource usage
• Least Privilege
• Liskov substitution (derived classes must be able to sub for their base)
• Idempotence - pass the same item many times, process once
• Cyclomatic complexity - depth of nested decision making should be limited (there are tools to test this)
• Purpose Driven Design (alt) - think about each decision - why is the default set that way, and why are you allowing that choice to be made for you.
• Clint Edmonson's blog: Notsotrivial.net

Break it down, it's Eryntime...

What the critics are saying about me today, "He's the tune you never play on your iPod."

Some pictures of Eryn lately for the relatives. Here she is on a rusty scooter at the rental property in Apple Valley. She saw this in the junk pile when we were down there and wanted it. I told her the tenants who had left us all the junk had to clean up their trash, and if they were just going to throw it away, she could have it, but otherwise it was still their scooter, even though they'd dumped it with several mattresses, half a dozen computer screens and televisions and assorted electronics, and all manner of non-curbable trash that they felt was our responsibility (picture an old lady with a walker wandering up and down the sidewalk muttering to herself very loudly, to make sure everyone can hear, "that's trash, we're not taking it, it's trash." It was quite the scene). I told her that I'd be willing to go in half on a new scooter if she liked, and she felt that was reasonable, although she stated that if the trash scooter was available, she'd prefer to save her money. I think she's got a good understanding of what it means to spend all your money already. In the end, we went to the store and she bought half of a Spider Man scooter she loves, frequently buzzing up and down the sidewalk at school, and hauling me along for a ride down the side of the street (we don't have sidewalks in our neighborhood). Then the ex-tenants took everything but the trash scooter (my brother set it aside), so Eryn currently has both, although I need to wrap the trash scooter in handlebar tape and clean it up. It works out well because then we can have one in each car, as she likes to putter around when we go anywhere.


An early peek at the Hermione Granger Halloween costume. That's the wand that lights up that she broke pushing open a door and cried and cried. I managed to glue it back together and replace the button with a little piece of plastic that keeps it running. It's not as aesthetically pleasing as a new one, but Eryn prefers it to having to replace it herself (another money lesson - we told you not to push on things with it, and it broke, so if you want a new one, you can buy a new one if the repaired one isn't sufficient). Not surprisingly, the spell for repairing a wand does not work on the wand itself. Grandma made the robes. Grandma and Pooteewheet both bought a tie. And Pooteewheet is responsible for curling her hair a bit. I guess it should have been my responsibility to teach her how to talk with a British accent.


The school Fall Festival. It looks like she's one of those animatronic/mechanical people who tell your fortune by spitting it out of their mouth. Instead, it's just a sucker at a strange angle. No fortune for you!


The ring toss at the Fall Festival. I took over staffing the ring toss from my Aunt in Law. She would bend over and pick up the rings for each child. I instituted a fairly strict, "Before you can have a prize, you have to pick up the rings and hand them to the next child" rule. Saved on the bending and some of the touching of disease-ridden rings. Eryn is indeed commiting a foot fault, but she's very good natured about the fact that I sent her back to the blue line instead of letting her throw from halfway to the rings as we were allowing younger kids to do.

Geocaching Lebanon Hills Style

What the critics are saying about me today. "Beautiful. Sparse. Intimate. Fresh, wise and alive. Touched, unbalanced and pungent."

I took a half day off to go geocaching with The Boss yesterday. It was a perfect half day to skip work because it was beautiful outside. Almost four hours tromping around the woods and tracking down eight caches, until I had a sunburn, was a great way to finish a week.

Here we are in Lebanon Hills near Jensen Park. Almost looks like summer.


I was a little hot wearing jeans. But I think The Boss was wishing he had worn jeans after we hit about the third patch of raspberry bushes. Can you see the cache in this picture?


The cache in this picture isn't the guy - he's just standing there because he got it out of the break in the tree. This was a tough one because our GPS units were only accurate to about 49 feet. That's a lot of space to cover. Nearby, there was a cache on an island. I didn't strip down to go get it. Not because I have worries about swimming in a lake in my skivvies, but because I wasn't sure how I'd get my unit...my GPS unit...and a pen over there in good condition.

The last cache we found was wrapped around the branch of a pine tree with a bit of velcro, and we noticed my uncle in law and cousins in law had already found it before us, which had us wondering if they had sharper eyes because it took us a while to find it, despite that it was a ringer (near a horseshoe pit).

I joined the geocaching website as an official member yesterday. I kept meaning to, but it had refused my PayPal account several times and I hadn't gotten back to it yet. But The Boss took me to a cache that was for "members only" (there are some) so I had to sign up to record it. Fortunately they're taking credit cards now.

When Did You Hear About Obama

My sister is bemoaning the fact that the campaign is getting a little frightening in the final weeks and we, as Minnesotans, get to enjoy a ring side show while McCain tries to rein in his supporters during a Lakeville rally. I'm not so sure I agree with her blanket statement about Americans - most of the liberals I know aren't screaming about Palin or McCain, they just consider them with that sort of "are they serious?" expression that Republicans seem to associate with elitism instead of incredulity, that look you save for someone who's been making your job harder for the last decade and you constantly wonder why they still have their job.

My sister should have posted video however. You've probably seen most of these, but in case you haven't, here's post-rally in Ohio (via Majikthise), and during the rally in Minnesota. If you scroll to the bottom of this post, you can be assured that my family knew about Obama over four years ago, although we can only prove it as far back as about 3.95 years ago.



Ohio Rally, Part I


Ohio Rally, Part II


McCain and the frightened supporters:
(tpmtv)

Interview with the McCain supporter with transcript:
(TheUptake)

Handshake

Today I noticed someone walking up the stairs at work trailing their hand along the handrail. I realized it was the same person who had once refused to shake my hand before an interview. This got me to thinking, "What's the difference? A lot of hands have touched that rail." It wasn't that she wouldn't shake anyone's hand. She shook the hand of the female co-interviewer on the way out. So it was more of a "don't shake hands with guys thing." But given who many hands had touched the rail, it had to be more of a "don't shake hands with guys in public" issue, not a concern about boy cooties. Which is fine. I don't have to agree with your religious practice to respect it, and in the end, I don't even care if it is a religious practice - I'm not going to force or pressure you, beyond the initial thrusting of the digits, to shake my hand.

But I was still interested in the whys and wherefores, so I went in search of someone on the web who could speak to why it was taboo. Which led me here. Which only led to more questions if, as this comment suggests, there are Muslim options around handshaking, which I think I was experiencing (and not just a physical revulsion in response to me personally).

1.) It's an option to not make physical contact, and it's a choice issue. Then why is it acceptable to shake a woman's hand, and not a man's hand? If it's seen as improper because of sexuality issues, then how do you function in a society where an encounterable percentage of the women you meet are gay? I'm not saying they have any interest in you, but neither do all the men you meet. The context seems to be the same.
2.) It doesn't have to be a religious reason. Sure. It could be that you're scared people don't wash appropriately. Perhaps you know Mean Mr. Mustard and that he shakes hands and who he shakes hands with. Therefore you don't want to shake hands with anyone he knows. But in that case, once again, why avoid shaking men's hands only. Sometimes women shake Mean Mr. Mustard's hand, even though they shouldn't.
3.) It's a relative/non-relative issue. Once again - then why not shake a man's hand, but shake a woman's hand if both are equally unrelated?
4.) The primary poster writes that in the story in question, the difference is professional vs. personnel. That also doesn't hold in the case I'm referring to, as it was professional from front to back.
5.) The poster's metaphor that it's like "a full face snog with your boss" is way off. I can empathize. I've seen almost the equivalent of a full face snog between a boss and an employee - at the very least, I know they were considering it. But in that context, once again, are you having a full face snog with your female coworkers when you shake their hands?
6.) And here we see the sexes reversed, and a discussion about whether it's acceptable with a glove, which also doesn't seem to get universal agreement if you read the answers until you get to the item about haraam.

So if the issue is opposite sex, skin touching, I'm going to go out on a limb here and offer my take and see if someone disagrees. Wouldn't it just be easier to claim skin contact is not allowed and not shake anyone's hand? Or would that be seen as an unacceptable compromise?

Sometimes Kids Don't Say the Cutest Things

We aren't known for eating at the kitchen table, but every once in a while we try to get Eryn to spend some time there and cultivate a few manners that might transfer to a nice restaurant. This evening we tricked her into finding the kitchen table interesting by putting two tapered candles in my parents' 40 year old candle holders and promising Eryn she could blow them out after dinner. It worked somewhat, and after dinner she reached over, grabbed a candle, blew it out and announced, "It's like there's a little incest in our house."

She thought about it for a second, and then corrected herself. "Incense." Yeah...I won't be sending that one to Reader's Digest's "Life in These United States" column anytime soon.

And the body of a 60 year old!

I took the brain test She Says linked to from her blog (here's the direct link, but I'd go to her blog for directions). At the height of my caffeine deprived, sleep interrupted, leg kicking craziness, I managed to score a brain age of 24. Not bad. I can only assume everyone else manages in the teenage brain range.

She Says also embeds the Sarah Silverman voting video. Good stuff.

Feed My Starving Children

I donated two hours of my time yesterday to stuff bags full of rice and flavor powder and rye and dried vegetables (primarily for color, I think). There were 40 of us from work and 9 other people I didn't know. We packed 24,408 meals, or 4,068 bags (6 cups/meals per bag), or 113 boxes (36 bags per box). While one cup doesn't seem like a meal, FMSC primarily targets starving people, not just malnourished, so the cup of food is enough to keep them them from getting sick on too much food after not enough until they're well enough to eat more. The food we packed will feed 67 people for a year. It's a religious organization, which is a bit weird for me, but I figured as long as I personally didn't have to pray over the pallets of food and they weren't distributing food to only card-carrying Christians, I didn't care. It's a good cause. Supposedly they'll package 64 million meals this year, and hope to reach 100 million by 2010. They opened another packaging center near Chicago to expand their operation. All in all, a good use of my two hours, despite how bending over to bag and dump cups of rice and rye made my back ache a little, and my hair smell like (vegan) chicken flavor powder. At the end, they even let us try a little cup full of the food. It needs tater tots.

Here I am in my hair net (blue shirt and dress pants) setting up food bags.


The lot of us in front of the charity. Ming's on the right (a familiar face from my blog). I'm back left (where tall guys belong).

Panty Liner

I got to Eryn's school festival yesterday, where I was scheduled to run the ring toss, and after I entered the gymnasium, Pooteewheet was flashing one of these at me from her pocket and pointed out that they could be won for scoring a successful ring toss. All I could think is, "Why would they give away panty liners to children?" Followed closely by, "What sort of idiot makes and/or wears a psychedelic panty liner?"

Turns out, it's a book mark. I should have known. Although if it WAS a pantyliner, perhaps this was the intended use.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua

I took Eryn to Beverly Hills Chihuahua today because Pooteewheet assured me she didn't want to go, despite that I took Eryn to the last few movies (WALL-E, good! Igor, bad!). I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. You think I'm kidding, right? Nope. Cream of the crop at Rotten Tomatoes (link above) gives it a 50%. That's like 10,000 times better than Garfield, A Tail of Two Kitties. The rating system is logarithmic every 10%, just like the Richter Scale. Don't believe me? Watch something in the single digits sometime, and then watch something in the upper teens. Both suck, but the single digit movies can't even be saved by a six pack of barley wine or cheap scotch and friends pretending to be bots. I went in expecting a 20% at best, so I was ecstatic to be treated to something finer with a good story that built from amusing to pretty silly and threw in enough scary to make Eryn yell, "Mommy!" a few times (that's her terrified cry). And the closest movie to compare it to isn't Lady and the Tramp, but Legally Blonde, which I was forced to sit through, so seeing it with dogs and with an age-appropriate audience this time was a step up in my estimation. If you're an adult without a kid, it's not for you. But if you have a five year old, it's parent tolerable, which is high praise.