I Am Ordained

Well, most of my coworkers know about it already - I just couldn't keep quiet because I was so happy I finally went to the trouble to get ordained. In my defense, I can claim I waited so long because a.) I wanted to do it on Easter and b.) I wanted to do it on Erik's birthday. Waiting until they coincided was the big issue. But, all waiting aside, I am now an ordained reverend in the Universal Life Church, which boasts a monastery in Tucson, AZ. When I go to visit my parents this fall, I'll post a picture of me standing in front of it. Just getting ordained in Minnesota isn't enough to officiate at weddings, however - to do that, you have to file official paperwork with the county (so I actually had to spend $9.90 including shipping and handling of the signed certificate) and, as near as I can tell, your church has to have a physical structure and some way of meeting, even if it's just email or an online forum. Hence, my choice of a church that has both a church and a monastery, even thought it doesn't care what it is I'm advocating. When my official certificate gets here, I will be able to file with Dakota county so that I can perform weddings. Do I ever expect to perform a wedding. Not so much. But it's fun to know I can - I've been giving Erik ideas about how he needs a West Wing-themed wedding. Do I ever expect to tell someone who preaches to me about the Schiavo case(s) or any other morality issue, "In my capacity as a minster/reverend..." - heck yes (I would have said "hell yes" before, but I have a duty to my flock now).

So, give me about two weeks, and if you actually do need someone to officiate at a wedding, perform a baptism, whatever, I'll be good to go. Not that I'll know what I'm doing, but we can make it up as we go. Note that I am allowed to:

• Perform funerals.
• Perform marriages.
• Start a congregation.
• Perform exorcisms: Universal Life Church Ministers are authorized to perform sacerdotal ceremonies including the rite of Exorcism, however in this particular practice of a rite or ritual there are additional aspects... Not that I have to believe in demons - but I can if I want to.

By the way I have very little to do with people who are serious about being ordained - like this person, although if you do need some guidance regarding the tree of life, I know just enough to be really annoying - blame it on a liberal arts education at Hamline U - I met about 100 people just like this while I was attending writing classes there.

Blue v. Red

I knew that in the last election, Eagan was a little more evenly split than anyone expected - I was just startled to see that the divisions carried over onto the Blackhawk playground. The red play area is full of bird crap inside, rather run down, imposes authoritarian rules/propaganda on children ("Playshaper!"), and is the venue of children cast off from the other play area because of their inability to socialize with pleasant children (it also has a convenient bowl in which to deposit your money for the children who live in the half million dollar-plus houses that surround the area). The blue play area, on the other hand, seems more concerned with the real needs of children, more prosperous and spreading into the outlying areas of the park, the home of a multiculturally diverse group, and anchored on two coasts/towers instead of just sitting there in a heartland configuration. You might worry that Eryn is hanging in the red play area, but it's not really her fault - she became momentarily confused by the private account retirement calculator.

(clickable picture)

I'm pretty sure it's just me

and the fact that I grew up as part of the ZZ Top generation, but if my wife hung a picture of a pearl necklace up on the work photo board with the title, "An Evening Remembered", I'd be incredibly embarrassed.

The Life CD Project

A link courtesy of Home News, because it's just so...so bad.

The LIFE CD Project to Save Terri Schiavo
(the MP3 of the song is about 2/3 the way down the page)

ThisWeek in Eagan

Because there are so many exciting things to go to!

• Sex Ed God's Way! April 2nd in Lakeville - your children (grade 4-6) can be presented with "a practical, biblical view on our bodies, the changes they go through, and the relationship God intended for husbands and wives." Students get a notebook they can refer back to at the end and Christian perspective on the stewardship of their bodies, all for only $5! Remember..."Information on intercourse is optional".
• My favorite quote in this week's news, "Lutsen saved my leg, and quite possibly my life." (James Rice III, Member, Troop 445) - referring to one Scout saving another whose clothes were on fire. The quote struck me as extremely funny for some reason, though I applaud Lutsen Adrian for his quick thinking.
• For teens, a "Lord of the Rings" All Night Party. "Come dressed as your favorite character from the series." I guess we should be glad they're just socializing and not at Star Trek conventions, but going to these sorts of parties seems only slightly less likely to keep you a virgin than a Harry Potter party or doing this. On a positive note, Israel says you're not fit for military duty, so if the U.S. Army believes the same, maybe you're just playing the long term odds.

Poker at Brad's

Last night I played poker at Tall Brad's - Texas style. I made the decision, before I went, to play tight. Squeaky tight. So tight it might sound like I was rubbing against the chair even when I was sitting perfectly still (all right, that was probably the guy kitty corner to me farting, but still, I was playing that tight). I played so tight that a few times an Ace-non-face-card combo was a laydown if I felt out of position and wasn't in it for any money. It seemed to serve me well. I played/showed a very minimal amount of hands and all of them looked strong (at least I thought so). The one bad hand I played was a limp in because my opponent wasn't raising and he gave me a chance to draw into 17 outs (out of about a remaining 34 cards) on a 10-4 suited when I was already in for the big blind, leaving me on the river flip with a possible flush/straight/high pair drawable hand. Overall, I placed third. My last hand was probably my worst, but I'm pretty sure I played it right. I had a pair of kings on the flop with a solid second card, and junk on the table, only three people in (so I could play a bit looser), and I bet hard (I think I had about 33% of the chips to 42% and third place had about 25%). This is when you're really cheesed to find out that the other guy, the 42% guy, was dealt aces, and that's his hand. Doh! No guts no glory - at least third place covered my stake (less the bounty, and I made up for that by drinking one of Brad's beers and eating his food).

On an ironic note, I did take most of my chips from one of the managers at work. I had joked to Brad earlier that now that my lead was no longer under that particular manager, I could feel free to do just that. He didn't look as amused.

Bus-eum

Sunday I tried to go to the Bus-uem exhibit outside the Apple Valley library. Eryn foiled my attempt to check it out when she arrived at a combination of extremely tired and obsessed with the driver's seat on the bus. Fortunately, I managed to cut out of work early enough yesterday to catch it at the Eagan library. Eryn was there too, but she didn't show up with Pooteewheet until quite a while after I'd already been there, so there weren't any issues about driving the bus and beeping its horn.

There's a good write up on the Bus-eum and the Midwest POW exhibit in Sunday's Pioneer Press (I'd link, but it's got registration - "Rolling museum tells POW stories"), the Dakota County section, but you can also read about it at the Traces.org website. It was fascinating to tour and there were first hand accounts of life as a POW in Germany, letters home, and art (not to mention some WWII vets who had come to see it who were discussing their experiences with each other and the director of the Bus-eum). I learned some things I didn't know, such as:

• many POWs after they came home would frequently get up in the middle of the night and check the fridge, just to make sure there was food
• POWs who were freed from camps in North Africa had to cross the desert to leave Africa in many cases, and were forced to trade everything they had on them, including their clothes, for food and water, to the extent that many of them were crossing the desert in their underwear and socks.
• There were 400,000 prisoners of war held in the U.S. and there were POW camps for Germans in Minnesota (and for all three axis nations in Iowa) - that link has a great article at Traces.org about camp Algona, in Iowa, and its 34 branch camps, including camps in Princeton and New Ulm, Minnesota (and a lot of good pictures and even first hand accounts of interactions with German POWs). It certainly makes sense that if you want to keep prisoners of war as far away from escape as possible, in the middle of Minnesota/Iowa is the right location.

If it comes again and you're at all interested in local/Midwest history or the history of WWII, I recommend a visit.

Eryn leaves some tracks

This is a fun picture I took of Eryn playing in the snow yesterday. Not fun because it's reminiscent of that over-publicized poem about "Jesus carrying me", but fun because she was purposefully trying to make tracks.

anjali

Saturday night I went to anjali, a “moving tribute to victims and survivors of the tsunami”, which was put together by Vibha, a volunteer organization working to help children in India and the United States. Nidhi, a coworker who, unfortunately for her, shares the closest proximity to my cubicle, and whom I’ve known since she was a 21 year-old intern over five years ago and, come to think of it, now shares a manager with me once again, sent me an email telling me about it and urging me to go. Having never been to any sort of Indian dance event before (not the Native American kind, I have seen Native Americans dance many times – you generally can’t get out of the MonDak area without a Native American rodeo and dance, particularly if your grandmother taught on the Res), I felt it would be at the very least different, if not enjoyable.

Tall Brad was worried I was going to go by myself, without Pooteewheet, (he was there too, with Mary and a third individual he claimed was a friend of Mary’s), but I called up my friend Kyle (see my previous post for a picture of Kyle) at the last moment so I had company and an excuse to stop for beer afterwards. Kyle’s a good bet for any sort of cultural event – the absolute proof being that he went with me to a Kabuki event in college, even though he knew it wouldn’t be in English and would be co-attended by my mother.

So, on to the actual event. First off, just to get it out of the way, it was great. When you spend a few hours watching Indian dancing and listening to Indian music, you realize how much it shares with Irish folktunes and Mexican/Spanish dancing. I suppose there’s probably a whole body of knowledge devoted to correspondences in traditional music/dance, I’ve just never noticed it myself – I focused on political history, not cultural convergence. There were several different performers: a sitar player and drummer (a lot of work goes into tuning drums for Indian music – he spent a good five minutes twirling the drums around to get them into the proper position while simultaneously seeming to tighten various things and hit other things with a little silver mallet – perhaps it was all for show, but it did give him the air of knowing what he was doing) who did “an improvised piece” from the Hindustani; a mother and daughter dance team (Bharatnatyam and Kuchipudi dance style – it was a very active dance, looked like a lot of work – the daughter’s, Anisha’s, dress was cool – it had a sort of accordion, pleated style to it that seemed designed to actually work with the dance style); a dance troupe (Kathak, also the name of the style) that did several dances, including one where a god held a mountain up with his finger (one of the dancers is a postdoctoral in pharmaconeuroimmunology - you couldn't tell which one just by looking at them); a 15-year old dancer from Minnesota (Mohiniyattom style) who I thought was exceptional; a women’s dance group that did this interesting piece with sticks and lots of crawling and stamping that got more energetic, and more interesting, as they progressed; and a (male) singer of Indian/Bollywood showtunes. Personally, I’d have moved the singer somewhere else in the line up as he was sort of the weakest of the performers (it just wasn’t as exciting as the dancing), but then maybe he was more exciting for people with an Indian heritage. Kyle rightly pointed out that many people in the audience seemed to know the songs fairly well.

Of course, there were amusing parts as well, such as the kid running up and down the aisle and finally trying to climb up onto the stage because being loud and fast just wasn't drawing enough attention. It was a production for a group that volunteers time for children-related projects, however, so there's only so annoyed you can be with children trying to steal the spotlight. There was the announcement that someone-someone-Hussein would be showing up for a future concert, which was followed by an audible gasp from the audience. I thought at first I imagined it, but Kyle heard it too and we had a chuckle about it after the concert trying to think about what singer we would know the name to that we'd actually gasp about - I think the best we could manage would be to gasp because there was an inappropriate singer at an event we were going to...and opening for Metallica, Celine Dion! The (one) male dancer had listed in his little bio that in addition to Indian and Morris dancing, "Currently, he explores contact improvisation with Mandance." (it's just funny if you say it to yourself a few times - I'm pretty sure it didn't have to be worded that way). During the stick dance, there was a young girl who danced across the stage very slowly - at one point, one of the stick dancers gave her a sound whack in the foot - I'm pretty sure it wasn't part of the choreography. And the drummer, well, he looked a lot like my math teacher from Junior High, Willie Nelson - and picturing him drumming Indian drums was just strange.

To top off the evening, we had a nice drive out of the St. Paul U of MN campus past the swine fields, which almost put us in the ditch. It started out like someone had farted and progressed into an eye-watering, stomach turning gas attack that had Kyle looking like he was actually going to gag. It let up before we got to the abandoned pepper booth in the State Fairgrounds. In my youth, this is the point where I'd have caused trouble by running around the fairgrounds in the dark or something, but easier access to alcohol has actually blunted my desire to do anything troublesome, so instead we went to O'Gara's for several bad beers (their beer all has the same vinegary back taste - probably yeast contamination, or using the same yeast for all their beer instead of varying it) and cheesy bacon fries and nachos, the former looking like someone held melted a whole block of cheddar on them and sitting in the stomach like you'd eaten half a block of cheddar - go figure.

There's an obvious answer

The BBC has an article up about Korean dish 'may cure bird flu' in which they note that they fed kimchi to chickens for a week and the birds started recovering. They then add the caveat:

"The researchers said the results were far from scientifically proven and if kimchi did have the effects they observed, it was unclear why. "

Having a Korean sister who's made kimchi for me before, I know the answer to this scientific dilemma. They got better so people would quit feeding them freaking kimchi!

Celebration Time, Come On!

Pooteewheet always gives me a hard time about my obsessive reading of the local paper, particularly as there's usually nothing more exciting in it than recurring stories about coyotes eating pets, teenagers getting in fights or getting killed, and locals getting married (including couples from work). However, there's a special "Holy Week Directory" in the Eagan Sun Current this week, and I believe it's important to point it out because there are so many exciting choices to worry about for your Easter Sunday.

The Celebration Church is offering an exciting sermon on "Why Did Jesus Suffer?" with musical guest Ian Lindsy. I hope Ian's an excellent musician, because anything you play for the audience after the nailing to the cross part is going to seem somber. Maybe he knows how to do a cover of Amy Grant's Galileo. And, if Jesus' suffering set to music isn't enough to get you worked up over Easter, it gets better. There's also a sermon on "How the Resurrection Rocked the Religious World!" (their !, not mine) with musical guest and "Minnesota Idol" winner Mark David Williams (you know he's a Christian singer because he uses his middle, Christian name). Doesn't being the Minnesota Idol winner basically mean you're not as good as all the people from American Idol, not to mention all the people who won in any state idol from a state significantly larger than Minnesota (sort of like when I lived in Monticello and we had to play tennis against St. Cloud Apollo or St. Cloud Tech - our number one player and their number one player were alike in number only). For some reason it reminds of high school, when there was that contest to see which school would get a free concert from Limited Warranty - they were from Minnesota and they'd been on Star Search! The River Hills United Methodist church is having not one, but two reenactments of The Last Supper (think about it, it's really funny). There will also be two EGGstravaganzas locally - don't I wish I'd put some sort of patent on that phrase! And, not least, just last, Bloomington Baptist will be having a tour with ten (10) "multi-sensory stations" depicting the events leading up to the crucifixion. "Journey to the Cross" takes 60 minutes - not quite as long as The Passion of the Christ, but probably not in the original Aramaic either, so you won't have to read any subtitles. Additionally, on a truly positive note, they do say "leading up to the crucifixion", so at least one of the multi-sensory stations is unlikely to be actually getting nailed to anything - I make no guarantees about whether they'll make you wear thorns or poke you with a spear.

As long as we're pondering my geeky past

I started moving all of the old files off of my oldest computer onto the newest one tonight. I have all the files I've ever had (i.e. word processor documents, spreadsheets, databases, pictures, scans, etc.) I've had on all my computers since as far back as about 1985 when I owned a COMPAQ portable (the kind that looked like a suitcase with the tiny little green screen and the full-sized keyboard folded up into the front). It's really a rather frightening collection of documents. So, among the gems are all sorts of old Dungeons and Dragons character sheets that can prove horrible things about my past and my penchant for DM-ing. That's right...I was a white-haired, single black diamond earring wearing, wizard/thief, red dragon speaking, Atlantean Dwome with a girdle of fire giant strength riding a giant frog named Glenda. How far I've fallen.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Character

GENERAL INFORMATION:
Player Name: Scott
Char Name: Lorrow Halfgnome
Class: Invoker/Evoker
Race: (WAS Dwome) Dwarf
Sex: Male
Level: 9/9 (x4 back)
XP: 236519/235678

Deity: *Berronar Truesilver (Dwarven)
Alignment: Lawful Good (LN)
Secondary Skill:
Bowyer/Fletcher (98%) &
Teamster/ Freighter (90%)
Alemaking (33%) working on
Titles:
Social Rank: Upper Middle
Father: Shipwright

ABILITIES:
12 STR:
18 INT: (76%) (96% learn/remember - 20 spells/level)
11 WIS:
17 DEX: (+2 missile/-3AC)
17 CON: (96%SS, 97%RS; +2 HP Bonus)
14 CHA: (+1 loyalty/+2 reaction)
8 COM:
10% Godcall

DESCRIPTION:
Age: 68 (1)
Height: 3'0"
Weight: 90#
Eye Color: Green
Hair Color: White
POB: Atlantae
DOB: 3/23/979
COMBAT:
Armor Class: 1
Armor Worn: COP+2/Gaunlets AC4
Rear AC: 2
Hit Points: (4+3+3+4+3+2+3+5+3+8 Frog) = 56 (includes +18 for CON)
HD Type: d4+d6/2

WEAPONS:
Jeweled Dagger: 1d4
(silver-10gp)
Dagger: 1d4
Sword: 1d10 (home)
Sword: 1d10 (home)
Sword: 1d10+2 magical
Axe: 3d4

Dagger: 1d4+1 magical
Short Bow: 1d6+2 mag
Quiver: 30 arrows
6 slowing arrows

LANGUAGES: Common, Atlantean, Cant, Red Dragon, beholder, 5 others
Items:

Standard: Iron rations (2), Belt, Boots, Cap, Cloak, Robe, Winter Clothes

Useable:
Wine Skins (4)
Oil Skins (3) - oil
50 feet of rope
Spikes (10)
Lantern (Bullseye)
6 torches
Magical:
+2 cloak of protection
1 Potion of Extra Healing3d8+3
Boots of Climbing (90%)
Potion of Giant Growth (1)
Gauntlets AC4
Girdle of Fire Giant Strength, +4 to hit/+10 damage, can throw 170# 10 yds. (stole)
WIZARD AXE (+1 Mag./Silver): Area effect spells +5%/level. Opponents save at -1 vs. all spells cast. If breaks, revert to 7th level. (Changed by Berronar)

Mount:
• Glenda (Lorrow's familiar, a giant frog, 5' high at back).
Lvl=2; AC=6; HP=16; Attack 2d4. Adds 8hp to my total.
Saddle, Harnass, Bridle, Saddle Bags, Bit (14 CON)

Money:
DP:
MP: 14
PP: 18
GP: 101

Rosalind still owes me 1500gp
SP: 29
CP: 57
EP: 49
Jewelry:
2 Black Diamond Earrings (5,000gp/ea) - wears 1
Black Diamond Ring (10,000gp) - wears
Flawless Emerald Ring (25,000gp) - on person
Black Diamond Necklace (25,000gp) - bought off Bort

Gems:

Other:
• 36'x72' bow and arrow store at Kapesh (Nargoth Pass)
(cost 6,600gp) - 700gp/mo. income (>Started March,1045)
Pd. through > October 1046
• 100'x100' house @ Nargoth Pass (cost 3,000gp) - 3400gp
furniture
• Coaster (boat) - Cost 5,000 gp - Saves for first year (through
November 1046) - makes 28,900 gp first year. Named it
The Bobbing Cork
SPELLS

Invocation/Evocation - opponent saves at -1
Greater Divination/Necromancy on either side of my school.
+1 SKILL/-1 to opponents' saves for staff/+5% per level for area)

Level 1 (4)
1.) Magic Missile (1d4+1)
2.) Wall of Fog (40' cube, 2d4+1 rnd./level)
3.) Comliness (see p. 21 of Netwizard)
4.) Alpha's Acid Stream-1d4/lvl., save for half (save for items) - (p.15 netwizard)
5.) Color Spray - blindness or unconsiousness
6.) Identify

Level 2 (3)
1.) Web
2.) Arcane Bolt - 1d6+1/lvl. - opponent can save for full.
3.) Stinking Cloud (save vs. nausea for 1d4+1 rounds)
4.) ESP
5.) Detect Alignment

Level 3 (3)
1.) Windsmite (1d4+1/lvl)
2.) Fireball (1d6/lvl)
3.) Melf's Minute Meteors
4.) Feign Death
5.) Word (1d2 dam./lvl) - TSR 30 min/lvl
6.) Lightning Bolt

Level 4 (2)
1.) Ice Storm
2.) Dig
3.) Otiluke's Resilient Sphere
4.) Wall of Ice

Level 5 (1)
1.) Summon Shadow

Level 6

Pick Pockets: 95%
Open Locks: 51%
Find/Remove Traps: 31%
Move Silently: 42%
Hide in Shadows: 31% (+5% for size)
Hear Noise: 31%
Climb Walls: 31%
Read Languages: 31%
Detect All: 31%

Stole: (caught 3 times in Tietia-20% suspicion rate)

Looks like me

I was reading Boing Boing today and there was an article on how to make your own Bluetooth sniper rifle. This, in and of itself, was interesting 1.) because it was just pretty cool, like most programmers, I appreciate technology for technology's sake, 2.) because no one got arrested for pointing what looks like a rifle at a bank building in downtown L.A. (way to spend those Homeland Security funds!), and 3.) because the guy in the article (John Hering from Flexilis) looks strangely like me when I was in high school.



As proof, and because I know Mean Mr. Mustard might eventually pay my wife for similar fare if we're both still at the same employer when I turn forty, and I don't want her to feel like she's prostituting herself, here are pictures of me from my younger, trimmer days (clickable to slightly larger versions).

My tennis days. I also played for the boys' team. The girl third from the left (top row) is an old girlfriend, Julie. The one second from the left (top row), Katie, married my best friend Dan (same high school, though not right out of high school - by then she had a Master's degree and he'd had enough of Desert Storm) and I was best man at her wedding. The one just to the left of me (first row), Tori, I tutored in physics. The one on the far right, first row, with the Flock of Seagulls haircut, is also a Julie and was my brother's first girlfriend - not like the first girlfriend you have when you realize you might want to kiss them, but the first girlfriend you have when you're about 7 or 8. She used to chase me around the playground because I was her "boyfriend's" older brother. She was a very good tennis player. I'm front row, second from the left. Next to me is Pat. He and Katie once had very similar perms.


An action shot - I looked a lot better when I was exercising four hours a day.


This is the one I think looks similar to the picture above. Mr. Mustard will appreciate this one, it's a knowledge bowl picture - he once coached knowledge bowl or something with a similar name. I think it was to meet hot chicks.


And finally, because it's funny, my picture for the independent study class. There's Katie again (front row, left). Behind her, the tall guy, is Chris Sells, Microsoft evangelist, renowned author of C++ and C# books, friend of Don Box, and owner of www.sellsbrothers.com. I look forward to the hits from Microsofties - leave your Biztalk advice in the comment section. Second from the left, back, is Mark who set records running cross country for Duke and may or may not have been a Jesuit for a while (when I was on my class reunion bike ride last year, a female friend of his snorted when it was noted that he was a Jesuit and remarked that he may have been teaching for them, but he certainly would never "be" one). Fourth from the left, Kyle - a good friend of mine still and currently plying a jack of all trades roll as a printer and layout artist (among other things). Fifth from the left, Mark, who just got done with a tour of Antarctica setting up weather stations. Sixth (and shortest), Shelly, my fake wife from psychology class who was greatly embarrassed when some friends (refer back to "Kyle") ran into our classroom with a cabbage patch doll proclaiming she'd been unfaithful. And, on the far right Tanya, then (a different) Mark. Tanya was the recipient of a wonderful tape my brother dj-ed for her while she was in Japan studying veterinary science - he recorded romantic tunes for her like Dokken's "Beast from the East". Mark - well, I don't know where he is - one of the last times I saw him I was trying to trick him into eating an orange die with a barrage of peer pressure and the hypnotic suggestion that it did indeed look like candy.

A Rather Full Sunday

My weekend was rife with XML and XSL, which is really XML when you think about it, which is just used to make more XML (most of the time) - which is a lot of XML, which is why I'm sort of crabby about my weekend. I'm pretty sure normal people don't get up at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday to work on stylesheets.

But, that aside, I managed to have an enjoyable day. We caught Maria's for breakfast with my sister and brother in law - I had the corn pancake (and a raspberry pancake, I was hungry) with cojita cheese. I know it sounds horrible on the surface, but it's absolutely delicious and worth the trip all the way up to Franklin Avenue. By the way, follow the previous link – Cuban Restaurants USA has quite the write up about “a Columbia woman who came to the U.S. and became famous for her pancakes”. I noticed on the way home that the restaurant is very close to the Cedar rail system – theoretically, I could bike to the Mall or Fort Snelling and catch the train to breakfast. I’m sure that would be about as unhealthy as my discovering it’s possible to bike to a Chipotle burrito. There was live music near the end of breakfast, and Eryn was fascinated. She stared at the guitar player and would turn around only to order me to dance. I’d like to say I did, but my Minnesota reserve is a little too powerful to dance in a room full of other Minnesotans having breakfast.



My brother in law told us a good story during breakfast. He and my sister (and niece) are going to London to his aunt’s wedding. Seems his uncle-to-be was around five years old during WWII and actually had a German bomb explode in his house, killing the family on another floor, dumping their floor into the first floor, and burying them all in rubble. They were hauled out, but he and his dad were taken to one hospital and his mother to another, whereupon the respective hospitals told the respective parents that the other parent was dead. At this point you think, “Horrible! But at least you get your spouse back. That’s a relief.” Well, sure, but four to five months later! Pooteewheet knows that if I was spouseless in London for five months, I’d be remarried to Welsh or Scottish redhead before any reasonable amount of grieving was complete.

We indeed went to the Girl Culture exhibit at the Minnesota Center for Photography. It was an exciting trip there as we took a left instead of a right coming off the highway, and ended up in the scary part of north Minneapolis. I have to say, it’s very difficult to tell parts of Minneapolis apart from some of the bad parts of Chicago, right down to the take out chicken stores you can’t tell the foreclosure status on, to the numerous strip-mall type churches. It’s sort of disheartening to realize that someplace that depressing looking exists in your back yard. On a positive note, via the magic of multiculturalism, I learned three different ways to say “Enter in rear”, so if you hear me telling a boss something that sounds like “oogly googly”, there’s a good chance I’m telling him/her off. We could only stay at the exhibit for about an hour as Eryn was getting pretty twitchy, but that was enough time to do a fairly thorough tour. It was a fascinating exhibit of photographs and testimonials by the subjects of the photos. I think more than anything, you came away with a sad feeling that many, many girls in the United States spend a lot of their time worrying about clothes and looks, where to get money to get clothes and looks, how to publicize their clothes and looks and the money they have for those clothes and looks, what they’ll go through for clothes and looks and money and how they view their bodies/sexuality as a tool toward those ends. Particularly disturbing was the 19 year old talking about how she was an ideal southern belle and the skills she felt promoted that heritage, that was followed by tales about her eating disorders, exercise addiction, belief in subjection to a husband and assertion that she’d rather be a slut than ugly, and the five year old talking about how she shops at the same store as Britney Spears, how Britney is a role model, and how she (the five year old) really likes belly shirts, “Girl Power!”

The receptionist at the exhibit seemed to enjoy my family – Eryn and I sat in the entry area while Pooteewheet was finishing up, and Eryn pulled herself up into a chair and lamented loudly, “Mom lost.” I assured her Mom was not lost, but was enjoying the pictures. At which point Eryn noted, “Mom hiding.” I replied that she was not hiding, but enjoying the pictures. Eryn demanded, “Mom sneeze,” meaning she wanted Mom to sneeze so she could find her (part of our hide and seek ritual). I explained that Mom wasn’t going to sneeze so she could find her, and so we went right back to Mom lost, at which point the receptionist laughed out loud.

I read a really good article on The Atlantic on line about the state of the New World before Europe showed up, or at least right after they showed up and possibly decimated 96% of the indigenous population. It’s a fascinating article because it offers entirely new ideas (at least to me) about what life was like here before Europeans showed up, how many people might have been here (could have been more than in Europe), and that the Cahokia Mounds might be just the tip of huge environmental changes engineered on scales Europeans couldn’t begin to appreciate. If you have access to a current copy (April 2005) of The Atlantic, I also recommend David Foster Wallace’s article, “Host”. It’s done in the traditional Foster Wallace manner (check out Infinite Jest), heavily footnoted, but in this case, the footnotes are multi-colored highlights tying the whole thing together like a printed web page. The article itself is an extensive examination of a conservative talk show host, and though it doesn’t offer any truly deep insights, is just very enjoyable.

I also learned from The Atlantic that I’ve been missing out on the perfect way to exercise and, that if I had purchased the appropriate machine (the ROM) when I was 7, it would have cost me just a little more than $500 a year (not including tax and interest) to perfect my physique. I’m not sure what makes an exercise machine worth $14,615, which their company assures me is more expensive than 99% of the exercise machines on the market, but I’m encouraged to think of it like I was purchasing a Lamborghini or a Rolls-Royce. Those are bold words to wield at someone who drives a 1997 Saturn stick and leaves his wife with the “good” car - a used Ford Focus. The one thing I bet charging $14,615 ensures is that if you have said ROM, you’ll be encouraged to use it just to create a good exercise to cost ratio. And, just as a side note, I find the idea of having a current owner stop by to show you their exercise machine sort of…unnerving. Not that I’m worried they’d see me being flabby and un-ROM-worthy, but, just, well, ish.

And, speaking of things my magazines are trying to sell me, this (probably not safe for work) turns up in fully ¾ of the magazines I subscribe to – Wired and Bicycling for instance (I don’t mean anything with naked people). I’m not sure what it is about my reading selections that encourages anyone to think of me as the optimal target market, but I guess I’m flattered – someone thinks that my life of technology and bicycling is tied into a life full of sex and lots of kinky toys (or the need for those toys). I bet if I had a subscription to XML/XSL Developer Weekly, the advertisement would be on page one or two.

Stephen Baxter is an Asshole

I just finished reading Coalescent. Now, I really like Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships is a great book - it's science fiction in this immense, expansive panorama of time and space, sort of like Moorcock for science fiction, but with even less focus on characters and more focus on the sweep of time. Coalescent is not such a book, at least not directly. I bought it because I really wanted a good, hard science fiction book, something new to read that would give me a break from depressing stories about Korean adoptees (sorry LissyJo) and The Rape of Nanking (I simply can't get more than a few pages into that damn thing, I have the same problem with it I have with The Lord of the Flies. I know it's going to be so freaking depressing it'll be unbearable, so I find it impossible to start, regardless of how interested I am in the subject matter). But is Coalescent a hard-driving science fiction book? Chapter 49 and chapter 51 are certainly science fiction - sort of Armorish in some respects. That would be cool if they were the majority of the pages instead of something like 18 pages out of a 525 book.

I can summarize this book in very few words, "Stephen Baxter you f-ing bastard, you sold out to Dan Brown devotees!" That's right, it all takes place in Rome, over a sweep of history, with lots of historical crap (pretty much a given if it's over a sweep of history), including interweaving of fictional characters with real characters, ruminating about historical events and detail, etc, etc, etc. I'd tell you it had everything but the Holy Grail, but Arthur shows up, so I guess, by default, it does have The Grail - at the very least it has Excalibur. Did I mention I hate Dan Brown? Angels and Demons comes in at pretty much the bottom of all the books I've ever read, and that's a pretty impressive bottom, including some absolutely atrocious horror novels and at least one book by Faith Popcorn. So anyone who's trying to copy or cash in on the Dan Brown craze earns some of my enmity.

Anyway - bleah, I give it a Q out of 100 (I'm pretty sure that's a Klund rating). The only reason I give it a higher rating than a Q*.25 is because the science fiction part (those 18 pages) is actually pretty interesting - it just didn't need a whole 507 other pages as set up to explain [this is your spoiler alert!] that humanity might develop along divergent lines, one vibrant and aggressive and individualistic, the other antlike and an evolutionary dead end (H.G. Wells did it in fewer pages, and those Victorian-type writers were damn wordy, even on their best days). Baxter broached the topic in his other books and it didn't require sucking up to every idiot who's read The DaVinci Code (no offense Tall Brad).

Mr. Mustard - as I did with that horrible new Dune book (the first in the series by his punk son - I refuse to name it, it deserves no publicity, let's just call it House Crap), I will do with this book - I refuse to infllict it upon you. Klund may cry out, "Yet you inflicted that nasty, whiny Tad Williams fantasy series on me!", to which I can only reply, "Yes, but you made fun of me once and never bought me a cup of coffee by way of apology."

What Can You Do

with a 38.6K modem connection? From the looks of my machine at the moment, you can simultaneously consume podcasts, retrieve your RSS feeds via RSSBandit and post to Blogger. Of course, I can't do any of it very fast, but I can still do it. If I had a cable modem or DSL, I could be listening to streaming music and bittorrenting at the same time as well. But I have a difficult enough time keeping up with 38.6K of data, so I'm pretty sure it would just be lost on me.

Odds and Ends

Well, it seems as though my trip to Half Time Rec was attended by more than just me and my wife's former classmate. Two coworkers were there as well. Not in the audience--though for all I know, half of the audience was from work--but actually in the band. The two in the red shirts are a coworker and a former coworker, though no one in my immediate group. Which explains why the accordian player looked so familiar - I just thought I recognized him from a previous accidential Cajun music exposure. I wandered over to his cube after I found out about him and he knows my wife's former classmate. Ah, the world of Cajun music players, Cajun dancers, legal information pubishing and accidental Cajun attendees who like Guinness is such a very small one. Note that one of them retired from work at the ripe old age of 47 - almost as young as Klund.

My sister, LissyJo, just made it into the Family Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Minnesota, after applying just days short of her delivery of my niece. Congratulations! On another note, she was snubbed at the Lands End Inlet by a former friend of mine this last weekend - unremarkable, really, but funny for me.

My friend, Numbucket, from up north in Pequotland, who used to work with me for the evil that was my first consulting company job, has been trying to convince his wife that he needs this:



I've always been of the opinion that if you need one, you should go to the trouble of trying to build one yourself (not the electronics, mind you, just the buckets and frame/etc) - much cheaper, and proof positive that you really mean business - although I absolutely understand the allure of this beautiful, shiny automated producer of beer. I mean, the only way Pooteewheet could compete is to don a suit of armor with a spigot. I once dropped some information at a drinking event for my last consulting company about how to build one of these (I don't own one myself, I'm more of an extract guy for the most part - less fuss) and a friend (cargo pilot for a local airline) immediately ran home and built one. He was the unmarried one at the table - go figure.

I haven't yet had a chance to go see this exhibit on Girl Culture at the Minnesota Center for Photography, but LissyJo assures me it's great.

My friend Sanchita had her first child recently (well, a month ago) - a daughter named Minnoli Raghavan! Congratulations are due there as well. Beautiful!

My daughter, Eryn, was the recipient of a new plastic house that takes up a large portion of my porch - courtesy of Papa and Granna Pooteewheet. Eryn noted, while all the pieces were lying around and she was waiting for the second truckload to arrive, while dancing up and down and clapping, "House! Eryn happy! Cleo [our Manx] happy too!" And while it looks strictly like a house from the outside, from the inside, while you're being forced to remain in it for long periods of time and compelled to pretend wash your hands over and over and over, it more closely resembles a white collar prison. If you're lacking little kid news lately, my wife keeps a pretty good running commentary at her site.

And finally, because everyone does a bit of cat blogging now and then, I offer another anti-cat-blogging moment: Wisc. Hunter Wants Open Season for Cats

News From Buffalo, MN

Well, this is pretty cool: Motorola Mesh Networks Solution Transforms The Way Minnesota Town Communicates. This sure would have made it easier for the police to access my brother's driving record the several times they pulled him over when we lived in Monticello, just down the road. Good thing that was before the internet was really a force in anyone's life.

"Motorola's Mesh Networks technology was originally developed for the military battlefield in order to provide instant, ad-hoc communication networks where fixed infrastructure was not available or deployable. As a result, users receive a robust, mobile broadband communications network that is self-forming and self-healing. The technology is capable of delivering seamless broadband connections to vehicles moving at highways speeds."